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One of the biggest questions I get is how to run my ask campaigns. Welp... here ya go!

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larson and you're listening to a kind of late-night Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larson.

Hey, I'm super excited to be here today. Gosh I'm kinda freaking out just a little bit, I'm not gonna lie. In two days, I am speaking on Russell's stage, for two days. And I'm excited about it.

Gosh I love stage. I absolutely love it, but I'm kinda stressing out a little bit. I went and got my hair cut, and getting all the things ready that I need to, writing my slides right now. It's like 250 slides. It's nuts, but I'm kinda ... Anyway, I'm stressing out a little bit, I'm not gonna lie.

I did a lot of stage growing up, tons of stage, lots of stage, and I really enjoyed it. I sang a lot, I was in a band. I've said this stuff to you guy before, okay. Me being on stage is not the scary part. I actually love it, it's a special kind of rush and I ...

Anyway I crave it...

I love it when people ask me to speak, because I get really stoked about it. Well, this is Russell Brunson's stage, though. It's like, "What the heck. Holy Cow." It's a bigger deal for sure. So, anyway, I know that I'm probably not going to sleep much tonight or the night next also because I need to just keep preparing and I want to be awesome, you know.

Russell's changed my life, he's changed a lot of people's lives. I'm going to speak for two days at an event that he's putting on, and I'm really excited for it. It's just ... Anyway ... What's funny is I'm actually more nervous about him and other people that know me ... like seeing me on stage like turn on.

You know what I mean? When we talk to each other back and forth there's a certain presence we have personally. But then there's another presence we have when we go talk to someone when we are actually presenting. When we are actually teaching. You know what I mean? I'm a different person when I get on this podcast than when I'm talking to my mom or dad. You know what I mean?

And it's not that I'm a different person, I shouldn't say it that way. But my energy level's different. Usually when I talk to my mom or talk to my dad or talk to any family or my brothers or sister or anything like that, I'm not on there going,

"What's up guys? Whoa!" You know what I mean? For me to come out, that's my normal stage-on presence and I'm going to be that way for like 20 hours. I'm actually more nervous about that part of it than I am any of the content- I know the content. I'm just organizing it now- than anything else. Anyway, I know it'll be good.

Anyway, it's just a different side of me that many of the people that I work with over there have not seen from me. So I'm actually more nervous about that part than anything else.

All right, I want to address a question real quick that I continue to get asked over and over and over again. Real quick, though, I just want to tell you guys a quick story, though. I went and I started building Sales Funnels for companies well before I worked for ClickFunnels, well before I worked for Russell, and I started putting all these pieces together.

If you read a book from one person and you think you know it all, let me just tell you real quick that you don't. What's best is to go find a subject and then read all the books you can on that subject from all the different experts because each of the quote unquote experts is going to give you a different take.

Does that make sense?...

You're gonna be able to get all these different pieces from these people that you may not have gotten before if you just read one book, took one course.

So what I started doing is I started learning about product creation. I actually didn't realize that that's what I was doing, now looking back, but that's what I was doing. I was learning how to create products. I was learning how to put together offers and things that are attractive that would make others want to give me money and I needed to prove myself to the market.

You know what I mean?

I felt I knew how to do this stuff. I had done it on small scales with other people and my own stuff. I'd done it. But I wanted to get a big shot, you know, "Hey everyone! Look, I do know how to do this, you know? Please pay me for what I feel I'm worth."

You know what I mean...

And I know a lot of you guys probably feel that way. I'm sure you guys know what that feels like, right? To not get paid what you feel you are, right? What you're worth.

What I did is I went and this was about three years ago, I started shotgun sending emails to tons of different companies saying, "Hey, I want to build a funnel for you. I know you don't know what that is. I'll do it for free. If it makes money, will you hire me?"

Right? And I started doing that to tons of different companies. Well, one of them stuck. One of them caught and he came out.

He was like, "I don't know what that is but, I mean, if you want to build something that's going to be potentially cool for free, that's a great proposition."

So I jumped out there and all I did is I honestly just used Google forms. Google forms is free and what you do is you write- In the book "Ask" by Ryan Levesque, he basically has six different questions that you have, six or seven, but it's a few different questions that you go and you put together and the very first question is like this big, wide open net.

Basically, the first question is something along the lines, "Hey, what's your biggest question with X?" Or, "What's been your biggest challenge with X?" And you just leave it blank, totally open. That's it. That's the whole question. And you let them answer as much as they want to.

The second question starts to get more narrow. And there's more like multiple choice things. And the next question gets more narrow and the next one gets more and more narrow.

And each question is capturing the data, regardless if they actually finish the entire survey.

I was like, "Cool." I think I could do that. Basically what happens is, after you collect all this data, you pool in all this data and then you'll start to see the top concerns. You'll see the top questions, the top main buckets where people are struggling in and then you run another one with just that topic in mind.

I didn't even get as far as that. Typically, I don't. We've run that before just for the ClickFunnels community so that we could help and know what people needed help with. I have hardly ever gotten that deep into it. I've really just asked that first set of six questions and that's it.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'd go get the book "Ask" by Ryan Levesque and seriously read it. It's a great one. And you read that in companion with "Expert Secrets". Those two together? You'll know exactly how to create offers. It's amazing.

More clarity and how to create an offer in those two books than anything else I'd ever read before.

Anyway. So I went and I was like, "Well, shoot." I didn't know what Wufoo was. I didn't know what all the different form builders were out there. I didn't know any of that stuff. All I did is I went and I used Google forms because it was free. And I went and I put together this "Ask" campaign and I was doing it for a company that sold water machine, like hydrogen water machines, things like that.

So extremely health conscious, very homeopathic conscious minded type person and I basically put the question, "Hey, what's your number one health challenge right now?" And that's kind of a pointed question but I wanted to do that. I wanted the question to be forward enough that the people who actually answered it would give me results and it would be very valuable data.

Here's what ended up happening. He had a list of a couple thousand people. It wasn't that big of a list, to be honest. But I went and dropped out the email to his list and I said, "Hey everyone!" I put the title in there "quick announcement and a favor". That was my email subject title, my email subject line.

Quick announcement and a favor. I learned that by the book "Launch" by Jeff Walker. It's a great headline by the way. I've used that many times and I always get great results from it.

This is far more of a tactile podcast than I usually do but I just wanted to show you guys what I actually do in my "Ask" campaigns because I've been getting asked this question a lot. "Hey, how do I actually run an "ask" campaign? How do I get this out there?"

The first step: I made it in Google forms, then I went and I blasted it out there with an email and then I put a link to the Google form in the email, and then what happened was, there was about 150 people that responded to it over about a week.

When people didn't respond to it, I captured all those people who didn't. I resent it again. And I asked it again on the Facebook page and I asked it in several places. It wasn't just a one and done kind of thing. I dug.

And I was like, "Cool! Wow! That's more people than I actually thought it would be in the first place." What I did is I started reading all of the different pieces. I started reading all the responses with all the responses on one side of the screen and then a blank sheet on the other.

And if something happened that I just did not expect ... I expected that I would start to see the commonalities and I did. That was three years ago. I can't remember what they were now but it was extremely valuable. But I started reading through all of these different responses and people telling us, "What's the number one challenge with your health that you're struggling with right now?"

That's basically what the question was...

And number two was, "How much are you spending per month your health? Supplements or prescriptions or whatever it is- How much are you currently spending right now?"

And then number three, "Did you personally diagnose your own disease or did a doctor do it?" I needed to get down to the, "Who am I really talking to? Are these people who are kind of skittish and they self-diagnose and now they're medicating over it?

Or is this actually a legitimate disease, not that that says a disease is legitimate, but you know what I mean. I needed to know that kind of stuff in my marketing and my messaging.

What ended up happening, this totally shocking thing started happening because, as I actually sat down and I started reading all these questions, I started crying. Actually crying. It was really really intense. I was not expecting it. I was not expecting it. Because here's what was happening. People were answering the number one question with so much vulnerability, it took me off guard. It was nuts. I couldn't believe it.

And what ended up happening is I sat down and I started reading these questions and people were saying things like, "Hey, what's the number one challenge you're having with your health right now?" People were writing things like, "I'm sitting next to my spouse right now who is dying in bed and should die at any day. What can you do to help us?" Stuff like that. I was like, "Oh my gosh!" "Hey, I just lost one of my kids to cancer. I wish we had more of an answer about that."

Holy crap! And it was really really in depth, long answers...

And I had to stop three times because it was so intense. I gained so much affinity for my customer and the people that I was trying to go and learn about that I literally had to stop. I didn't expect any of that. I did not expect that I would have to go do that. I didn't expect that I would need to step back.

I didn't expect that, not that I didn't love the customer before or really care about the customer before, but my affinity for them, for what they were feeling, what they're going through, shot through the roof. It was so powerful, you guys. Oh my gosh.

I went and I just started putting into a bucket of, "Well, this is more of a question about this." "Okay, so is that one." "This is kind of a new category. Let's make a new category." Does that make sense? And I started tallying together all these different things, both one what I thought people's beliefs were and then also their biggest question as well.

So I started learning...

"Oh my gosh, these people are all wanting something like this." Do they actually want this or is it more like a Henry Ford thing and they think they want that but really, I'm going to give them this and it'll also solve the problem better. You know what I mean like with the car and horse and buggy thing.

It took me probably three or four hours just to go through the 150 questions and start to make little buckets with it. What ended up happening is I knew now how to speak to the person. I knew what their pain points were. I knew. They gave me the headline. Does that make sense?

They gave me the copy. They gave me exactly what it was that they were going to go and buy. Again, you can use this for good or bad, but I went and I created a little campaign. I made a trip wire funnel with the things that we knew that they'd go buy and then we launched it. And it made them like 50 grand. And 50 grand came through that funnel in the next couple weeks there. 20 grand in two days and then another 30 trickled in after that.

And I was like, "Holy crap! That Ask campaign worked! This is nuts! It's so crazy!" The only reason I'm bringing this up is, like I said, a lot of people have been asking me how does this work? How do you actually do an Ask campaign?

Here's some of the faults that I've seen from many people as they start to do this. One, they only ask once. They only ask one time. Sometimes my wife has to ask me three times just to take the trash out, you know what I mean? You're asking for some personal data and you might need to ask a couple times. Does that make sense?

I wouldn't just stick with one medium either. I would email it out and then I put it on Facebook. Then I'd do a Facebook live. Then I might put it on YouTube. Then I might go and do a periscope shoot about it. And then I might take some of the responses that are coming in and just anonymously read some of them.

"Man, I can't- This is so touching. I have to read these." Because that'll make other people want to go answer and tell their story since they know they're being heard. Does that make sense?

A lot of people that I'm watching, what they going and doing is they're asking just one question, which is fine, but you can ask the full six that Ryan Levesque talks about in the book which, by the way, I'd go get it. They're not paying me to talk about the "Ask" book. There's no promotion thing going on here but I just have it right in front of me and it's a great book.

But I wouldn't just ask one question, meaning, I wouldn't just ask, "Hey, what's your number one challenge with X?", email it out one time, and then do nothing else. Do you know what I mean?

I would also try to get as much as you can. I like what Russell suggested. Get at least a hundred responses if you can. Now, for me, that has meant that I have to boost the post. I actually had to put a little money behind it. I am data digging like a beast. Does that make sense?

The other thing I do is I'll go read reviews on other people's products that are indirect or direct competitors to what it is I'm selling and then I'll go make a list of all those things. I'll go read reviews on the product, whether it's on Amazon Top Seller's List, whether it's on- And I'll start digging. The whole point of the Ask campaign is not just for you to ask and have answers come to you. Which it is but you have got to dig. It is a period of market research.

It is a period of where you figure out really in depth what someone actually is thinking.

The thing, too, is you gotta look beyond the surface level...

I wish I'd pulled up the actual Ask campaign itself that I did. In fact, I might do that here while I'm ... You might hear some clicking sounds. I'm on my computer.

But I would go and, when you start reading the responses, what they're going to tell you is, first of all, they're going to tell you some surface level stuff and that's fine but you need to start looking at the underlying beliefs they have because of that. That's what Russell tells you to do, right? Go look at the underlying-

Sweet, I found it. Cool.

Hey, I'm going to read you the questions that I wrote so that you guys have somewhat of a framework for when you actually go do your Ask campaign, whether or not you've actually read the book "Ask".

My very first question was, like I said, a water company. What I said was, "Please be as"- This is all in Google forms, totally free and what's nice is Google forms also, in the responses section, they've got a tab there where it makes all these cool graphs for you so you can see the responses, the percentages that people are answering one or the other, whatever it is.

Anyway, there's only six questions. And I said, "Please be as detailed and specific as possible. Please go beyond saying, 'I want to be more healthy.' The more specific and detailed, the more likely I'll be able to cover your topic."

So the first thing I asked is, "What's your number one single biggest health concern or challenge right now?" All right? And I put in an example. "Example: I'm sick of blank and blank and I've tried blank for too long." And I just put a little primer question in there for them.

Second question was, I said, "Which of the following best describes you? I have a currently diagnosed health challenge or I don't have a health challenge but I'm careful about the potential of future health issues." The hard part is that you're going to want to load it like make any kind of bias as well.

Number three, I wrote, "I mostly take remedies and medicines, a, only prescribed from doctors, b, which are only homeopathic, c, from over the counter or, d, I rarely take any remedies or medicines of any kind." Right?

Number four said, "Roughly how much money are you spending on your health products or remedies and medicines, including supplements, each month?" And that was nice. I put some ranges in there. The reason I asked the price point because now I know, hey, if these guys are spending like $500 a month on their own health supplements or prescriptions that they're already currently buying, they're probably not going to have an issue if I just go asking for another 50 or $100 purchase.

Does that make sense?...

Mentally, that's not a price block for them because they're already spending a huge chunk. And I needed to know that kind of data. It was pretty interesting. Most people answered ... where am I? Most people answered that they spend between 50 and $200 a month on their current health supplements and remedies and things like that.

Number five, "What is your primary health goal?" The reason I asked that question is so that now that when I go talk to them, I can say, "Hey, you guys! I know that you want to do X."

How do I know that? It's because they told me. Does that make sense? And the copy speaks directly to them by asking them what their challenge is and their main concern is, you will now know exactly how to speak to them.

And I said, lastly, "I may follow up with a few people personally to learn a little bit more about your situation. If you'd be open to chatting for a few on the condition I promise not to try to sell you anything, please leave me your name and email below."

The reason I do that is so that is- Let's say someone put something really intense in there or something it just kind of makes me curious. Man, pick up the phone and call the person and be like, "Hey! Could you tell me a little more about that?"

The reason I'm going over this is because over and over and over again, I have seen people stand back and go, "Oh, you know what? I don't like Teletubbies or I don't like Beanie Babies, therefore, I am not going to make them." Okay, those are huge products. I don't like them either but I don't fill my own wallet. You do not fill- You are not your target market. You're not.

So put aside what you really like, you know? There's this whole area where you stop caring what you actually want to sell and realize what people are buying, okay?

What's nice about the Ask campaign and things like that and what Russell teaches is that you're going to get beyond what things you really really like. You might be really really good at stock trading. You might be really really good at some specific talent. Some skill. Something that you spent a lot of time getting really really good at. That's good and you need to have that but the way that you sell it, the actual marketing behind the sale is what you're trying to figure out. What tag lines or what things are people actually saying right now. Can I use that exact phrase inside my actually copy? Can I use what they're saying in my headline?

It's so funny. When I first realized what retargeting was, retargeting campaigns, first of all I didn't know what it was but it was funny because I would go to a few websites and put in a few pieces of data in there and then I'd go over to some other site, say YouTube or whatever where they've sold ad space, and then all of a sudden, I've got all these ads that are saying directly what I put into the last website and it was like, "What the heck? How do they know this?" Ohhh. Retargeting campaign. Interesting. This is crazy cool!

So you can use this on front end targeting. You can use it on background as retargeting campaigns. You can use this in your email. Use it everywhere. The whole point is for people to feel like that you are completing the conversation that's already happening inside their head.

Before I keep going, let that sink in...

You need to figure out what's already going on inside their head and use the same vernacular, use the same vocab, use the same phrases, the train of thought, the similes and symbolisms. The same things over and over again that's already going on inside their head. If you can do that then they'll feel like you know them.

They'll feel like you were there for them even more. And I want you to be. Right?...

Be truthful. Be honest. I want you to be ethical in this business and you are but it will also help you get the sale faster because you are joining the conversation that's already going on in their head. If you don't do that, you're guessing.

The whole point that I'm trying to make here is that if you get out there and you start making these campaigns, you start putting things together, you gotta realize that the creativity that you need to actually make money, 90% of the time is not actually inside of you. It's in the market.

All you're doing is you're harvesting from the market and the market's telling you, "Hey, you know what? I really like Teletubbies. I really like Beanie Babies." Personally, I hate that stuff. I imagine you do, too. That's probably not the market for the type of person listening to this podcast but that's not the point either.

Man, if I knew that freaking Beanie Babies were something that was going to sell, I wouldn't care. People are buying it. You know what I mean? And I would go and I would sell it.

I'm not telling you to get away from your main task or your main skill or the thing that you're good at or the thing you're going to sell, but what I am telling you is go ask what people are wanting and give that to them. That's all it is. Find a hot market.

You're going to ask them what they want and number three, you're going to give it to them. That's really all it is. Those are the three things. And it's as simple as that. And people go make it too complicated and they'll start guessing.

It's good to go deep. It's good to go find some awesome deep research and go really really hardcore and funnel hacking and things like that and you should do that. But you also need to realize that sometimes making things up on your own, man, that's gambling. I'm not a gambler. I think gambling's dumb.

I don't understand why someone would play poker. I would rather gamble my money, quote unquote gamble, in a business. You know what I mean? On ad spend- Anyway, whatever. I won't get on that tangent.

Anyway. That's what I'm trying to tell you guys. In order to actually go create the product, stop guessing. You don't need to guess. Just go ask and if you don't have a clear picture of what your offer is, it means you've not asked enough so go ask more. And go get your message out there and be like, "Hey, I'm trying to think of ... I really want to go have this product be out there."

Look, man. When we were in ... I'm sorry I tell so many college stories but, I've only been out of college for a year, okay? When I was in college, though, we had this business we ran and made three grand a week, this student ran business. We built it from the ground up and it was awesome and super cool and I was the CEO of it and it went really really good. The only reason we stopped it is because they made us.

That's another story but anyway, we literally walked around campus asking people to fill out surveys. It was super embarrassing for a little bit. It was kind of annoying. "Hey could you fill this out?" "Hey, could I ask you just a few questions?" You know, "Hey!"

Obviously in anything, you get a lot of people who are jerks, but at the same time, a lot of people really were helpful. Well, I'm terrible at cooking but we ended up starting a cooking business because that's what people wanted to buy. I hate it so much. I don't know that I really ever cooked. Maybe one time.

I was like, "Cool. Food." What kind of food do you want? And they went through and they told us. I was like, "Cool! What flavor do you want?" They went through and told us. Awesome. "About how much would you pay for this?" And so we did about a week of just hardcore research, day after day after day after day. And after a day, we'd sit back and go, "Hey, cool."

Well, that's what people want, all right, let's dive in one more step. Let's dive in one more step. Let's dive in one more step. And that's how I run the Ask campaign.

There's a lot of ways to run it. It's not just automatically electronically. We are literally asking people, getting into the emotions behind it. And getting into the reasons, "Why do you want food?" "Why do you want this?" "How come with us health challenged?" What really is making me say that? And if you can go one more level deep, that's really where Russell's book gets into.

Go one more level deep. And what it'll do is it'll start to show you all the false belief patterns that people have about your product. Now you know what your goal is. Now you know what the marketing is you have to go create.

You guys know that I always tell people, "A product and an offer are not the same thing." It's dangerous to have a product. It's really cool to have an offer. Go get an offer. Well, number two on that is, "Marketing and sales is not the same thing."

There's really four categories.

Number one, what's the product? Well, I found out, because I asked people like crazy that people want this food thing. All right, cool, I've got three more categories I've got to go find out about. All right, well, what's the offer? What do they really want with it? And that's what we did. We're like, "Hey, what do you want with it?"

You know what?

I really like chips and a drink. Cool. What kinds of chips and drink? They are literally building the offer that we're going to go sell them later. Does that make sense?

I'm sorry, this is a long podcast. I'm so sorry but I hope you're getting this.

Number three, what I did is I went, "Okay, well what's the marketing behind it? How are people going to [inaudible 00:26:16]? Cool. Well, what times do you want to get sold this stuff? About what time- How much money are you keeping with you at all times?" You know what I mean? You just work piece by piece by piece through those four things.

What's the product? Cool. We found that out. What's the offer? How are they actually packaging it and what do they want to buy with it? Number three, what's the marketing behind it? And number four, what's the sales behind it? Meaning, what do they want to have happen face to face? Turns out, they just wanted package deals.

You know what I mean? Marketing is what brought them to our counter. Sales is what happened when they were at the counter.

Anyway, I could keep going and going and going. I'm so sorry but I just hope that this helps with the Ask campaign. I hope that it's helpful what I'm telling you. The Ask campaign is such a crucial thing. I didn't realize that that's what we were doing when I was doing all that stuff but that's exactly, it was the same principles. We asked questions like crazy and then, after people bought, we asked them more questions.

And we found out things like, "Ugh, you know what? Christmas is coming up. I sure wish there was some hot chocolate around." Well, shoot, we just made hot chocolate and we charged a couple bucks for it. Actually, we brought it from $1500 a week from then up to $2000 a week and then it was up to $3000 a week. And then we started catering because people told us they wanted it. Your whole business is this way.

First, Ask campaign your way to find a product if you don't already know what that is. Number two, go Ask campaign your way to find out what offer people are willing to purchase. And if you don't know, make the offer. Hand it to them. And when they're holding the offer, or when they're looking at the offer, don't look at it with them. Look at their face. What reactions did they give? Why did they do that? And then ask them, "Why did you do that? Why'd your face go that way?"

And don't fall in love with your product ever because they'll come back and say, "I wish you'd done this." And if you fall in love with your product, people will stand back and, "I'm in love with my product. It's perfect how it is. You don't know what you're talking about." It's the wrong thing. You're not filling your own wallet, remember? You're not filling your own wallet. You are not your target market, even if you participate in the thing that you're selling, you are not your target market.

Number three, then you're going to Ask campaign your way to find out the marketing. That's huge what funnel hacking is. That's what funnels do, right? They're marketing pieces that bring people into your world. They're big marketing arms basically.

Number four, we go find out the sales part. Okay, what are people saying in comparing or in competitive offers? That's really when you start tossing in all the different things that people are telling me from the Ask campaign. I use that in my copy.

Those are the four things. You don't just Ask campaign one time and you're done. That is not the way do it. If that was the case, funnel scripts would not exist. If that was the case, I'd bet "Expert Secrets", the book, would not exist. If that's the case, ClickFunnels would not exist.

By continually asking over and over and over again what the market wants, you will stay ahead of the curve and you'll stay ahead of the other guy that ends up just caring more to the money and less about the customer and starts to fizzle away and die because they're in that cutting edge anymore. Does that make sense?

Anyway. Sorry, this is a long one but I just get really passionate about this topic because stop making it up. Because you don't know. And it's okay that you don't know. And the way to know is just by asking people. Just ask like crazy! Man, I ask questions to everyone.

My wife used to make fun of me for it because we'd be at the grocery store and I'd just start asking questions. "Hey, when's your busiest times? Oh, cool. What are they mostly buying? What are the things you guys are most scarce in all the time?"

And the cashier always looks at me weird but they answer my questions and I kind of have an idea now. And I just do that everywhere I go. I just make it a habit. I just ask questions. I suffer from insatiable curiosity and you need to do that. Suffer from insatiable curiosity. Go and just ask questions.

And if you're curious, ;people like to talk about their life. They'll tell you. Some people are having a bad day and they won't tell you. Who cares? Go to the next one. You know what I mean? People like to talk about themselves.

Anyway. Guys, hopefully I was helpful and these work like crazy. I just did several Ask campaigns last week for the product we just launched, ClickFunnels, which is too comical to coaching. Anyway, I gotta get back to producing my slides and getting ready for that but I thought I'd just drop this out to you guys because it's a big deal. And a lot of people do it really wrong.

Anyways, guys, I will talk to you later and you're all rockstars. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please, remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-billed sales funnel today.

There was a foundational error being taught in my college classes when it came to making money. It all revolves around the "product big-bang" theory..

Oh, baby. What's going on guys? It'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. And now, here's your host, Steven Larsen.

Hey, how you guys doing? I'm so grateful that you guys are tuned in. Let me just say that, first off. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. This podcast, last month, got 8,000 downloads, which is nuts. And then this month, we're only half way through the month right now, right?

Yeah, about half way through. And we're already at about 8,000 again. It's awesome. It just continues to grown and grow and grow. And I just really appreciate it, so thanks to all you guys. You guys are all rock stars.

About three or four years ago, I was talking to somewhat of a mentor, but he's also a professor. And I was like, "Man, I don't know what I want to do." Was this three? Yeah, it was about three or four years ago. I was like, "I don't know what I want to do." He's like, "Well, currently you're major is selected as finance." I was like, "Yeah, but it's so boring." And it's not that ... Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Finance is awesome, you guys are awesome. But it just wasn't interesting me ... To me, that much.

And I was like, "I don't know if I really want to do it." And he's like, "Well, you could do supply chain." I was like, "Okay, here's the problem. I could see myself doing any of the things that you're saying right now. Okay? I could see myself going out and doing this, or doing this, or doing this." And I was like, "What do I do? I don't know what I want to do with my life."

I did not know what I wanted to do with my life until about two years ago; no joke. And it was a constant question in my mind all of the time; constant question.

And I was always wondering that not just what should I do with my life, I was wondering product-wise, as well. Hey, what should I do with my life? What things should I sell? What's a good offer to go out there and try it? Have you guys ever felt that way? I'm sure you have. If you've ever felt that way before, give me a little nod. Okay? A little raised fist pump, or something like that. Because that's a huge question; hey, what do I sell? What do I do?

And it was kind of cool because he sat back and he was like, "You know what? I think you should do marketing." And I was like, "Marketing?" And I always thought marketing was kind of the burner ... If you didn't know what to do with your life, then you went and did marketing kind of thing. And he goes, "No, no." This guy was awesome, by the way.

He was the CMO of Denny's and Pizza Hut; it was Pizza Hut or Domino's. Anyway, he was the guy that invented the cheese stuffed crust pizza. Crazy story, by the way, really funny. Not that it's a huge deal, but we all have a special place in our heart for that stuff.

But it was funny because I was like, "All right, fine. I'll go with the marketing route." And it ended up ... I was taken to it really, really fast. And I was like, "This is kind of cool." And what was interesting is he started mentoring me outside of class far more one-on-one that I ever expected or thought he would. It was very, very interesting what ended up happening.

And at the time, I was trying to find all these products to sell, and he knew I was doing that. And there was all this stuff that I was doing outside of class. And most of my learning was not happening in the classroom, and I told him that. And he knew that. And he's like, "Yeah, I get that. No, that's fine. You're a little bit of a different cat." I was like, "All right, cool."

So anyway, he was like, "Hey, go do this. Go do this. Go do this." And he was really the first guy that actually started guiding me in the path, first of all of marketing, but then second of all how to actually create products that sell.

And a lot of it had to do, honestly, with this idea of the cheese stuffed crust pizza. And I know that that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I was like, "How did you know to do that? How did you know what to go out and ... How did you get your ideas? How did you find products to go sell?"

And I mean, I spent quite a bit of time with him. And I actually still talk/chat with him every once in a while. And he actually put me up for ... There was only 10 of us in the whatever thousand people graduating, nominated as distinguished entrepreneur student.

You know what I mean? It was really cool. I got a trophy and everything. It was really kind of fun.

But anyway, he started telling me these nuggets that were just amazing; they totally changed my life. Even just talking about it, I'm remembering all these little things he used to do. And he told me ... I was like, "Okay, well how do you get ideas for these products? Okay, you were CMO of Denny's, CMO of Pizza Hut. You were the head honcho guy of a lot of different companies." And he's generated just tons of revenue with his marketing tactics. And he honestly, along with one other guy, was by far the best teacher I had.

He's just so, so good. Anyway, I really had spectacular people in my business classes, which was just ... It was really, really cool.

But anyway. So I said, "Hey, how do you do this?" And he said, "You know what, ideas just come to me." And I was like, "Okay. But come one, you got to give me more than that. You know."

He's like, "Well, think about it." Okay. He's like, "Okay. When I was at Denny's, I was going to Kohl's. And as I was driving to Kohl's, I get out and I walk out. And as I'm walking up to the store, there were these posters of bands wearing the Kohl's clothing. And they were promoting the clothing; the bands were, by wearing it." And I was like, "Okay. That's interesting."

That's not very direct response [markety 00:05:55], and I prefer that now. I feel like those big corporate style marketing, I don't really like that style. But anyway, direct response marketing all the way, in my opinion.

Anyway. And he goes, "Okay. So I saw that poster, I saw that board." And I was like, "Okay. Well I'm going to jump out there and we should do that with Denny's." And so what he did, is he had all ... He said, "I started noticing all of these people after concerts would come into Denny's really late at night, really late. You know, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 a.m. because the concerts were over and they were hungry, so they wanted to come in and get food. And so they came in, and he's like, "That's interesting."

So what he did is instead, he started inviting some of the bands that were playing to come in and make food in the kitchens, just for fun. And they just experimented. They did whatever they wanted to. They made the craziest food, they made the coolest food, they made food that was all over the place. And it was just a bit of a research period for him.

But he would have these different high-end bands come in and literally make food with him...

I was like, "Wow, that's interesting. That's really crazy." And he said, "Whatever food they made, that's what we sold. We made a dish after them, and put their name on it, and sold like hot cakes." And I was like, "Interesting. Really." It's really funny. Have you guys ever been to Taco Bell?

I'm sure you've been to Taco Bell...

Everything on the menu is the exact same thing, just prepared a little bit of a different way. You know what I mean? Really, really interesting.

But that's basically what he did, though. And he's like, " You know what? And the cheese stuffed crust pizza, the way that came about is we were trying to make up something that was new to compete with some other market shares that were being taken from us."

And I was like, "Hey, let's take string cheese, and we're going to roll it into crust. And let's just see if it works. I don't know if it really, really will." And what ended up happening was it sold five times more than they expected, so they ran out of string cheese. And so, they told all of ... I think it was Pizza Hut.

They told all of the Pizza Huts to get out there and buy ... It might have been that or Little Caesars. Anyway, I can't remember; one of the pizza chains.

And what they ended up doing is they went out to all the different grocery stores and bought up all the string cheese that was there. Basically for weeks, string cheese was not available in the entire United States because he had told everyone to go buy it from all the grocery stores because they couldn't fulfill orders enough. And I was like, "Are you kidding me? That's how stuffed crust came about?" And he was like, "Yeah." I was like, "Okay, cool."

And there was some lessons, though. So he would tell me these stories. He's tell me all the different ... It was really, really cool. And it was all just one-on-one with him in his office. And he would just teach me and teach me. He's a really, really fascinating guy. Really cool guy.

I was like, "This is fascinating, though, that you knew to do that." And he goes, "You know what though?" And this is one of the key lessons of this entire podcast, and the entire reason I'm doing it right now. He said that it's less about coming up with the new products all the time.

For you to get out there and actually make money, it's less about coming up with something brand new all the time; brand new, brand new, brand new, stuff that's never been thought of before. And he said, "That's not what it is. What's it's more about is taking existing products, and modifying them, and putting them out to the market because you know the previous one already sold.

I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. That's very, very interesting." And for a long time, my mind just kind of rolled over this, and rolled over this, and rolled over this. And he said, "So what the game became for me", this is what he was saying,

"Is I would go find something that was already successful, I would take that thing, I would tweak it, and I would put it back into the marketplace because I knew it was already selling. But my own spin on it made it something slightly new. And I was like, "Whoa. That's crazy. Oh my gosh."

And it's so different than all the other business classes that I'm in that you're kind of also teaching...

Most of the other classes I was into, or the other books, or any other style of entrepreneurship that was out there was very much into, "Find something brand new. Come up with an idea that has never been done before and you'll change the world." And he's like, "Yeah, that doesn't really work."

"He's like, "It's such a big gamble. It doesn't really work that way. It's a great way to not win."

And what does that sound like to you guys? That's funnel hacking. That's what funnel hacking is. And what's funny is that he kept teaching me, and teaching me, and teaching me just kind of one-on-one for a long time. He was kind of one of my early mentors; and he still kind of is, honestly. We haven't chatted in a while, but he's awesome.

And there's a few quotes and things he told me. But I ended up writing a book, and e-book; it's about three years ago. I didn't totally finish it yet. It's a small one. It's just an e-book about the different things I had been learning, and the different steps that I took to create a several thousand dollar a week business while I college.

And I was like, "Wow, this is crazy cool." And one of the things that he told me, he's like, "Hey, so it's all about finding data and then trying something. Finding data, and then trying something. But doing it on already existing, already successful products that are out there." And he was doing it with all the crazy scenarios.

And he said, "Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius."

Does that make sense? You don't know at all; I said that on the last podcast.

You don't know at all, don't act like you do. You don't currently have the creativity that you need to be better than everyone else on the marketplace.

But the market knows. And so, what do you do is go find these top products and tweak them, and go put them back out there. Find the next products, tweak them, and put them out there. And that was his awesome show; that's what he was super good at. And it was, essentially, funnel hacking.

And I was like, "Man, this is really, really interesting." And I went through, and I started writing this concept in this e-book that I put together called ... Kind of in my own terms. Guys, it's less about ... I called it "Product Big-Bang Theory". You know, where something just suddenly appears out of nowhere; like brand new concepts, super new ideas, things that had never existed before. Whoa.

"Product Big-Bang Theory" is a piece of ... If you're trying to change the world, that's a great thing to do. But it's more about Product Evolution. I believe in Product Evolution. I know that Product Evolution works.

You guys know that MLM product that I currently sell? You guys know how I knew that that would sell? Well, because I started looking at all the other things that people are buying. And all I did was I put a twist on it, showed how it worked for a funnel world. I even took the same info product, I got it transcribed, I transcribed it, and then I put my own words and twists into it in the way I would teach it. And I put this whole spin with funnels on it, and then I just re-shot it. That's why it's so successful as a product. It came from a product and a content that was already killing it.

All I did was I went and I made my own version of it. And I put things on it that I thought made it even better. And that's why it still makes a thousand dollars a week for me. It's totally on autopilot. It's super amazing. Okay, does that make sense?

When you guys are making your products and your services, you're like, "I don't know what product to create." I've gotten that question a lot lately, too. "I don't know what product to make. I don't know what thing to go put out there. I can't figure this out. Oh my gosh. I can't do it."

It's so much less about getting out there and trying to make something up, totally brand new. Don't do that. Go find who are the other giants inside the industry you're wishing to sell into. How is revenue being generated in that industry? Go find that person, go find that business, buy it.

Follow and document the entire process, whether it's online or offline, whatever it is, record, screenshot, capture, do whatever it is so that you can go back, put it all on a whiteboard, and study it.

I did that for about six months before I launched the actual product, that MLM one. And it's amazing, this whole idea of Product Evolution versus Product Big-Bang Theory, it's such a big deal to me. That's what I call it, anyway. That's my own spin on it. I even wrote on ... I actually pulled up the e-book. I haven't opened this thing for years. It's crazy.

So this is a question that I asked, "How do you come up with new products all the time?" I was trying to put into words, the frustration I was feeling. After obsessing, after many ideas and trying to make many of them run, I felt like I conceptually understood what to do with a product once I had the product. But I couldn't seem to find the product or make it run.

I said, "I felt like I didn't even care what the product was, so long as people wanted it and it was helping people."

And this is what he said back to me. Luckily I wrote it down, what he was saying. He said, "Well, you don't need something ... That's new out there, anyway." He said, "Ideas just come to you every once in a while, while you're out looking for them."

He said, "Once, when I was trying to figure out what I could do for an increased Denny's sales during nighttime hours ... " Oh, I just told you that story. But anyway, it's super powerful, guys; super, super powerful.

What's funny is I went through and I ended up finding out a lot of the patent stats. And tons of patents get submitted; lots of them, people don't actually do anything with. You know what I mean? Brand new ideas that are the ... It works. It works like crazy. But all I'm trying to tell you guys, if you're trying to do a lifestyle business, if you're trying to do something that is not necessarily to change the world, but to change your world, change how you live, change your lifestyle, don't try to make stuff up. Just don't do it.

And the people... "Man, I don't even know what industry to start in. I have no idea where to even begin. There's so many things out there. I truly don't care what the product is. I have no idea where to start."

If you're in that boat and you really have no idea where to begin or what your interests are, you got to do what my dad told me to do. This has been really, really helpful for me, as well.

What he said is, "What do you think about when you have nothing to think about? What's the thing that you think about when you don't need to be doing anything at work. You know? When you're driving home and it's silent in the car, where does your mind go? When you're talking to somebody, but you're not interested anymore, and your mind starts to drift; where does your mind go?"

And for me, it was business. And more specifically, it was internet business. And more specifically, it was selling info-products. And more specifically, it was more about the automation behind it and how to build the funnel and the copy and how to put all these things together in my brain.

Constantly, it was in that space. I didn't know that they were funnels I was thinking of. I didn't know that's what they were called, but that's what I was thinking of all the time, for years and year and years. And I still do, and that's all I think about. When I have nothing to think about, that's what I think about.

And so, I knew, "Okay. Well, I'm naturally inclined in that area. Let me go find how revenue is generated. I'm going to start asking people what they want. But I'm going to go find products that are currently selling really, really well and asking people, 'Okay. Well, you like this product, what do you wish it did?'"

You know what I mean? Start reading tons of reviews. What do you wish it did? And that helping you create products really, really fast. So anyways, Product Evolution, not Product Big-Bang Theory.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much. Hopefully that was helpful. And give me a little shout out if you've liked this podcast. I really appreciate it. And I've had ... There's a lot of people listening now, which is really, really fun. But I'd love to know what you think about this. This is my ask campaign to you, right now. What do you wish you knew? What do you wish you were getting from this podcast? What do you wish I was providing for you that I'm not?

If you go to salesfunnelradio.com, scroll down to the bottom. There's a green button on the right. And literally, you can ask me any question that you want. It'll record a voicemail right over your browser, right from your computer. Just start talking. Click the button and start talking, and you can ask me. And you have about 30 seconds, you can ask me a question.

And I've got a segment, here, called "Hey, Steve." You start out saying, "Hey, Steve. My question is X, Y, and Z." And I'm going to queue up a whole bunch of them probably in the next episode or two here, and just start shotgun answering them. I'd love to know what it is you guysare thinking.

All right, guys. I'll talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free T-shirt when your question gets answered on the live "Hey, Steve" show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.

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The 3-Month Lesson I Learned From Russell Brunson's 3-Day Pitch...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to the greatest podcast on the planet, 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. Maybe a little biased there. Not the best podcast, not the greatest one on the, well I think it is. I love my podcast, it's so fun. I've had a lot of fun interacting with you guys a lot lately, it's just been great. All right, well I think I just mentioned in the last podcast, we just barely finished filming, it was a three day little launch thing that Russell's been doing.

We just launched the Two Comma Club Coaching Program, which is awesome. It's my baby. I get to take it under my wing and run it, and I'm really excited. I'm so excited for it.

I had this really cool experience though today, so we had at the peak of it, I think it was almost like 2600 people watching live as Russell would teach during this free masterclass, right? It was really, really cool. You know what's interesting? I know I talk about Russell a lot, guys I want you to know why. It's because I sit next to the guy, all right?

He's the greatest marketer, I believe, on the planet and when he asked me if I wanted to be his funnel building assistant, first of all I was in total, utter disbelief. I could not believe how amazing it was.

Second of all, it was like dang. Like I better keep my ears open and my eyes open everything I can, just start writing it all down, and so I actually have a huge list on my computer just of all these lessons that he's taught me over the last year.

I don't think he knows that I have it, actually, but I write a lot of the things he says. Just huge, huge lessons, right? Well there was a lesson today in selling that hit me so, so hard. We just finished this three day launch thing, and I just wanted to share the lesson with you because it's not something that I think a lot of us think about.

We have a unique position from where we are, sitting at ClickFunnel, there's over 41,000 active users of ClickFunnels now. If you don't have a trial go to salesfunnelbroker.com, you can get the free trial right there. Of course it's my affiliate link, just that's how the game's played man, all right?

We have a really unique spot because we sit here and we go, "Okay, we can see everything that's selling well, everything that's not selling." Hey, this works really well in this industry, that doesn't.

Wow, in this industry did you know you should sell this way? Wow, don't sell that way. You know what I mean? It's really unique to see and sit where I am and see these different places and be able to get feedback that way. I've got a little tip for you, and honestly it's just because it's a personal tip.

First I want to start with a quote. All right I believe this is from Frank Kearn. I think it's from Frank Kearn, I mean I can't remember. Guys I'm sorry if it's not. If it's not I'm so sorry, but just know that it's a really cool quote, okay?

He says, "The popularizing of a product has relatively little to do with the product itself. It has everything to do with being cool, all right? It has to be attractive itself."

That's the whole quote...

I was like whoa, that's a sweet quote. I can't even remember what course I was listening to lately when I heard that. The popularizing of a product has relatively little to do with the product itself. It has everything to do with being cool and being popular and being attractive.

Being something that's talkable, shareable and that's what's been so crazy cool about this Two Comma Club Coaching Program that we just launched is amazing, and it's being talked about all over the place, right?

Has very little to do with the product itself...

Now, keep that in the back of your mind, okay?

What happened was Russell got up and he's teaching all this stuff and he's really, really cool and it's fun for me to see, because I'll see him teach the same concepts over and over and over and over, and each time there's something a little bit different.

He said this a little bit different over here, and he said this a little bit different over here, which is why you guys have to continue to do webinars, publish. I urge you guys to go publish and start a podcast of your own or start a YouTube channel.

Whatever, I don't care what it is, just publish. Start talking and get your voice and your message out there, right? Because you'll get better and better and better and better.

What happened was day one was awesome, right? Day two was awesome. Day three was awesome. They were all awesome, but what ended up happening was on day one there was a Q and A session and I got to sit on stage on camera with Russell and do it for a little bit, and then day two we didn't, but on day three we did also, and what was funny was that on the third day we sat down and I start queuing up all these questions for Russell, I start telling him, you know, hey, people are asking this.

Hey people are asking this, people are asking this. Well, eventually somebody asked, okay what actually is in the Two Comma Club Coaching modules, like what are the modules? What's in each of those things?

I thought this was so clever, but it was a huge lesson to me, okay, this is so big. Turn up the volume, listen to this, okay? Russell said, "You know what? It doesn't matter that I tell you right now what are in those eight modules. What you need to know is that everything you need to become a millionaire is in those modules."

That was it...

That's all he said, and I was like, "Whoa. Really?" My immediate thought was like, wow, super powerful. Because of this, okay this was the context, I went though 10, 12 years of Russell's content and I found, I indexed all of it, and I went through and I found all these different pieces. Okay, this is the best video of him teaching this concept. Okay this is the best video of him teaching this concept.

Okay, these pages in the book are the best of teaching this concept. Then after I indexed years of content, then what I did is I went and I laid it chronologically together and said, "Okay, when you get through these three things you should have x output ready."

Does that make sense? Okay, when you go through and you read about the three secrets, or you read about your moral obligation to sell, by me going through that content, you should be able to produce x, y and z before you move on. It's super powerful.

I hand hold you the whole way through all of his material, all of his content...

It's massive. It takes most people 20 to 40 hours a week just to do a single module. It's incredible. Huge, huge, huge project. It has taken me three, almost four months to produce the thing.

It's massive...

You know to produce it, to build the whole members area inside ClickFunnels, to build the entire thing, I spent three months just building the product itself that we just sold for over three days, and guess how much he actually talked about what's in there? Like that was it.

When he said, "Yeah, there's eight modules and everything you need to know in order to become a millionaire, and I have 93 other examples of that." That's all he said, and that's what he was selling though. He was selling the product but he didn't actually talk about the product that much.

Now you think back, okay, why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

Why would you not talk about the actual product?

Because when I was doing door to door sales, right, and I was doing pest control and I was going door to door to door, person to person to person, I was talking about the product and I was pitching people. I was the number two sales guy, you know, for the first years. The other guy came out like six weeks before I did.

I would of had him but he had such a lead on me by six weeks, it was nuts...

Anyway, anyway what ended up happening was I would go door to door to door all over the place and I was out there for about five months. For the first two months, I was crushing it. I was crushing it, you know, I'd come back with a $1,000 a day, and back then for me that was huge. I was like this is sweet, man, holy crap, this is super, super powerful stuff what I'm doing right here. I'm loving this door to door sales thing.

It's hard, I'm getting rejected but I'm making money and it's been awesome. Well I started asking questions about the product, and I started learning about the product. It's not that it's a bad thing, it's not that it's a bad thing at all to know your product and know what it is, but when I learned about my product I stopped selling.

I started telling, and I started walking door to door to door and saying, "Did you know that our product has this chemical in it which is safe for your kids, you could basically lick it? You know what I mean? I would tell just random facts.

Yeah, it will totally take care of your wasp's nest, oh it will totally do that. It'll do this, it'll do this, because of this and I'd go into the science of it because I thought it was fascinating. I'd go into the science of this piece over here and I'd go into the science of this piece over here. It was because I thought it was really, really cool, this certain thing. It was awesome, I mean we legitimately had a great product. I thought it was awesome and super unique.

It was fun stuff, but my sales plummeted, I mean plummeted. Pretty much stopped...

I went from going and selling anywhere from three to five, six, seven, eight in a day to like three a week, I mean it dropped that hard. For a long time I kept going, man, what's my problem?

What's my issue?...

Number one I got distracted because I started thinking about online sales, stuff like that, but the real problem was that my pitch changed and I started talking myself out of the sale and I started telling too much stuff. It's not that you should try and be mischievous or keep things from being shown or trying to hide stuff, but the real problem is that you end up talking yourself out of the sale when you tell too much about the product.

That is not how sales happen...

So what ended up happening was I walked up to Russell afterwards and I was like, "Dude, holy crap, I just noticed man I just spent three months on this product and you didn't even talk about it. Why is that?" I think it's because that's not actually needed to sell and he was like, "You're absolutely correct."

He said, "The reason why is because if I start talking about the modules and I start telling people in there, people will think that they know it already just from the title, they're like, "Oh, I know it already" and then they'll dismiss it and then they'll immediately will not buy it because of that. There's no more curiosity.

There's no more scarcity, there's no more urgency. Curiosity, urgency, scarcity those are the tools of sales, and if you get rid of one of them, you're not going to sell. You've scratched the itch just by giving them the knowledge, right?

What ends up happening is that person's not going to go off and become a Two Comma Club person. Like if he had gone out and started telling about it, all these people, because it sold like hot cakes you guys, I mean this funnel that I built basically while he was pitching it, the actual funnel itself, the product took me three months to build, but the actual funnel itself I built while he was pitching it and put it together, but this funnel itself is going to be in the Two Comma Club really, really fast. All those people who have been jumping in, if we had told them, "Hey you, it's about this, this and this."

They're going to go, "You know what? I kind of already know that. Or I could go over here and learn that over here, or I could do this over here, or this other guy's product does that. I'll just stay with that."

You scratch the itch and you get rid of the sale and you get rid of the ability for someone to actually give you money, because there's no reason to anymore. They're not curious, okay?

So when you think of curiosity, urgency and scarcity, those are the three tools of sales. Those are the three things that make the sale happen. Anyway, so thought that was, anyway. Super, super awesome. The whole point of it is when you guys go out and you start doing your sales, if your sales are suffering, I know that we love our products. I know that they are our babies. That product that I put together, I know that it is probably one of the best products that ClickFunnel's ever put together besides ClickFunnel software itself.

It is amazing. It is so, so good. Oh my gosh. We've already created millionaires basically from this, it's incredible. Just in three months some people have made $700,000 from the content and what we teach in there. It's very different than anything else because of the hand holding and what I force you to do before you can move on.

It's a cool program...

Really great, really, really fantastic program. What's powerful about the whole thing about it too is that the way it was sold was through epiphany bridges. I mean the exact same way that Russell teaches you in the book Expert Secrets is how we sold it, and we literally sat down and said okay, what's the one thing? What are our three secrets? What are the false beliefs? What are the stories attached to those?

What are the false beliefs that people are going to have immediately when they hear the title of this presentation? We do the exact same thing we tell you guys to do, all right. We disclose all of it, that's the only difference between us and a lot of other companies.

Anyways, that's all I wanted to tell you guys. Stop letting the cat out of the bag, all right, you've got to leave some curiosity and you've got to leave some urgency and you got to have some scarcity.

If you can put those three elements on there, you don't even need to talk about the product, and it's not that you're hiding it, you shouldn't hide it. You can give an extremely high level overview of what's actually in the product itself, you know, but that' not how sales happen.

Sales happen through causing belief which creates action. That's it. Add a little urgency, scarcity and you'll be good to go. With a lot of curiosity and that's how sales happen.

It took me a long time to realize that and I did not understand that when I was doing door to door sales. I didn't get that. I didn't get that when I pitched people on stage for investors, when I thought getting investors was a good thing. I've done that many times.

You pitch people, you know investors, on stuff like that. Probably been three or four different, oh I can't remember, I've asked investors for money several times and I kept letting the cat out of the bag. Too many times, I kept letting the cat out of the bag when I'd go sell this stuff, or whatever it was.

Just don't let the cat out of the bag. It doesn't matter, and if someone starts complaining, "Oh, I wish I knew this. Oh I wish I knew this" that's probably not your ideal customer anyway if that's the kind of people that are not the action takers. You need people that are going to take action based on belief that they're going to get it.

Obviously, be ethical all that stuff, but anyway, that's all it was. What ended up happening is we had tons of people jump in and I went and I told the story about getting your shut up cheque, which is the ability to make money enough that you can hold the cheque up to anyone who's been poo pooing on your story and what your dreams are, and hold up the cheque and go, "Hey, shut up. This is my shut up cheque."

I hope you guys are all going to get your shut up cheque if you haven't got it yet. Anyway, that's it. That's all I wanted to share with you guys, is while I was talking to Russell and I watched what he was doing. He didn't not talk about the actual product. He didn't and it was so powerful. Such a powerful lesson for me to watch that, so anyway leave some curiosity there.

Don't love your product so much so that you barf all over everybody and literallytalk yourself out of the sale and you'll be ready to rock.

All right guys, that's it. Talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best Internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

The Pianist Makes The Music. Not The Brand Of Piano...

Hey, how's it going everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larson.

All right, all right, so about what was this, probably, three or four years ago, a lot of you guys know I was in the Army and a lot of my stories come from the Army.

I'm so sorry that it's just that way, it's just that was a lot life altering things that happen when you're in that kind of situation.

Anyway, there was this guy who was, he was kind of a hotshot to be honest. He thought he was anyway, right. He gets out there and he always tries to take charge and he's trying to be the man, which is cool, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the man and a lot of people want to be the man and that's fine if you know what I'm saying, but this guy he put his uniform on and he'd go out there and he would try and start barking orders around and stuff like that. Well one day we decided we got to go practice shooting, so we go and we get our M16s and we practice shooting and we're sitting out there at the range and it's freezing out.

There's snow everywhere, so we're laying tarps on the ground and we're basically kind of laying in water again ... I've done that a lot. If you listened to my last episode at all, I talked about that a little bit.

There's a point to this story that's very strong, by the way. He lays down right next to me and he starts, they're like okay ready, fires ready, take your aim, fire. We start shooting and we're practicing shooting at different distances, you know 300 meters, 200 meters, different distances and you've got to lob the bullet after 150 meters so you start aiming up just a little bit.

I'm a pretty good shot, I got what was it 36 out of 40 hits, which is awesome. It's really good. I actually won a phone call home in the middle of basic training cuz of that, which is really cool. I'm a pretty good shot, I've really liked it. It's funny my mom was like, and my wife and everyone, was like "why are you such a good shot" and I was like "Honestly, halo and call of duty." I think that's, I don't why besides that.

I actually did shoot quite a lot growing up...

Anyway, so we're shooting and this guy he's laying down right next to me and he thinks he somewhat of a hotshot, right, and he kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. I learned to become really good friends with him. I'm shooting and I'm having really tight groupings, and I'm doing really, really well I can tell.

The guys next to me has still not even fired a single round, okay ... Some of you guys are probably thinking, Steven, what does that have to do with sales funnels, I promise you that there is a huge lesson because I keep getting asked this. Okay.

Anyway, he goes out there and he, he's like "Larsen, dude, my weapons not firing, man, what the heck's going on with this thing?" I turn over and I look and his magazine, which is what holds the bullets holds the rounds, his magazine is in upside down. I was like what the heck, it wasn't just upside down it was also backwards.

The bullets were literally facing him...

I was like "Was that a joke, are you kidding me?" He's like, "No, sorry I've never really done this before. I've never really done this before." I was like okay that's kind of weird, and he turns around and he puts his magazine in the right way. He lays down and the next round of firing comes up.

I've gotten really tight groupings, I start shooting again. I'm doing all the correct, you know there's five different senses and you think through all your senses. You think through different breathing patterns. There's a natural pause in your breath when you're about exhale and inhale, that break in between is when you fire.

All these things are running through my head...

I really do like to shoot, and again there's nothing going. The kid next to me is not shooting. I was like "Dude, what's wrong? Are you okay?" He goes, he didn't even like pull the action back and actually put a bullet in or something like that, and that round stops or whatever. I'm looking at my shots and I'm like man that's a really tight grouping. I was getting better. I was really exciting.

We do this again and he starts shooting but he literally has nothing on the paper at all. He's not even ... not just on the target, his rounds are not even hitting the paper. I was like "Dude, what's wrong?" He was like "I don't know what's going on, man. I'm putting the front sight on the target."

He didn't have his rear sight up and then he didn't have it set to 300 meters, he had it set to 500 meters.

Anyway, it was like a ton of iterations over and over and over again that I had to coach this kid who thought he was a hot shot in the most basic function of being a solider, right, shooting. He didn't even know how to, ugh, it was so frustrating to me. From that very moment on he stopped acting like a hotshot. He stopped acting like this kid who knew everything and he became real after that.

Why do I bring that up?

What's the whole point of that?

You can hand me pretty much any weapon and I'm going to be able to shoot it pretty consistently over and over and over again, because I have practiced the talent of shooting. We'd lay on the floor and we'd smack our elbows, bam, bam, bam, smack our elbows on concrete as hard as we could over and over and over again because it helps build up stability if you're laying the in the prone for a long time, so your arms don't start shaking.

Bam, bam, bam, I'd smack my elbows into the concrete and it hurt like crazy at the beginning, then pretty much I got a whole bunch of resistance that built up inside of my elbows. I'd bam, bam, bam, smack it up. There's all these different things, these breathing patterns, all the things you do with your body, mentally what you're doing, the state you'd go into when he was about to shoot.

It's very different than if you're actually in a war zone, but the same principles apply no matter what weapon you hand me.

What does this have to do with building sales funnels? Everything! It has everything to do with everything. Why does this have everything to do with everything? Because, you guys, the point I'm trying to make right here, maybe I should go ... Here we go.

I played piano for a very long time...

This one should bring it home. I played piano for a long time. When I was eight years old, my mom started teaching me piano lessons. She taught piano lessons out of our home for a long time. I hated it. I hated the fact that it was my mom. I hated the fact that she made me practice all the time. It drove me nuts. So from ages 8 to 14 she pretty much forced me to do piano lessons and I thank her like crazy although I hated it.

Well when I turned 16, 17 years old, I was like crap the ladies really like this, so I re-taught myself and I got pretty good. I haven't played for like eight years since then, but ... Now I can sit down at any piano, it didn't matter on the brand, it didn't matter on who was around me. It didn't matter if it was even completely in tune, I could still make a really cool song from the piano.

Same with the drums. I play the drums, full kit, for about four or five years. It did not matter on the brand. It did not matter what kind of drumsticks I was using. I could still make really cool beats. I still keep beats. I play in a band for a little bit. I sang in a band and it was awesome. It did not matter.

Now, okay, the question that I'm trying to address here is that I get asked like crazy, okay, we just finished this campaign and I get asked like crazy, can we have like, what was it 2400 people watching live this webinar that Russell was doing.

I was moderating. I was reading all the comments. I was trying to answer as many questions as people had. The questions that continue to pop up and that still can pop up all the time, I still get them. I've been getting them for a long time.

What webinar software should I use?

What's the best, who's the best copywriter?

What's the best color for my button?

It's stuff like that where you're like, okay stop focusing so much on the tools. Stop it. The tools, talent is not in the tools. There's been a whole bunch of people coming to say "Okay, if I only had this kind of equipment, I would be successful. If I only had the top brand of computer or MacBook, or whatever then I would be allowed to go out and get my actual funnel done."

If I only had ... the best car then I would be the best racer. It's like that's so backwards you guys. That's not true at all.

Today I heard Russell ... Russell sat back and he said "hey, you know what, I'm not trying to brag, but I'm just trying to tell you that it has nothing to do with the tools." It's funny he said that because I've been thinking about this before he even brought it up.

I've had this podcast planned, and I was like hey, it's cool he's talking about it. He said, "Look you could take away click funnels. You could take away any of my branding. You could put me in a market where I don't even know the product. You could put me in a spot where nobody knows me.

Take away all these elements and I still would be able to make a million dollars really quickly because of the principles, because of the talent, because of the person growth that I've had in this certain area" right, this is him speaking. I was like yeah, that's really cool. It's super true.

That's the way, a lot of you guys though, what I've been noticing is hey I'm going to go build a sales floor, I'm going to go build this business, I'm going to go do this, but I would actually be successful at it if I just had this. Now, the tools matter a little bit to a degree, right. Going back to the shooting thing, if I was going to shoot with something that was super rusty versus something that was nice and clean, I mean that matters like 10%, 90% of it though is seriously the talent inside of you. 90% of the time the tool really doesn't matter.

Stop making the tool an excuse to not act.

Now, like I said sometimes the tool really matters, like no one else does what Click Funnels does. I mean you should use Click Funnels, but what webinar software should I use? Man, just use freaking webinar software. What chat box should I use? Google chat box and click on the first one and get it.

You know what I mean? Like there's this whole part that it really doesn't matter but people get caught up in it like crazy. It drives me nuts. Just choose one.

A musician makes a crappy piano sound good. It has nothing to do with the brand.

It could even be a little bit out of tune, and it would still sound amazing. You see what I'm, do you guys get the point?

Stop blaming the tool.

Stop saying, the tool is what it is.

The musician makes the crappy piano sound good because he is the talent, because the person is the talent, not the piano. Not the brand, not the tool. The tool really doesn't matter that much. You can't obsess over tools. What you need to do is personally obsess over being good, being the best. Being amazing.

It will just distract yourself to death with these tools.

Focus on being the best.

Guys one of the reasons I sit next to Russell, the reason I am Russell Brunson's funnel builder, the reason why, is because three years ago when I saw Click Funnels come out, it just barely left beta. I had been building funnels and other businesses and stuff on word press and other things like that and I was hustling, and I still am hustling, right.

I slowed down a little bit to just catch my breath. I went like eight months with barely sleeping. These last few months have been awesome, but I can feel myself trying to get into another hustle mode again. I'm trying to figure whether or not I should. I know how to hustle.

The reason why I sit next to Russell, is because three years ago when Click Funnels came out and left beta there was this really powerful moment for me where I was like okay, I'm going to learn this or I'm going to fail. Meaning there was this whole, I got, it's not that I wasn't serious before, but I put my pride, I put my name on the line.

I decided to go out and start building funnels...

What I would do is I would go stand in front of the mirror, you guys might think I'm weird for this but whatever, like it worked. I would stand in front of the mirror and I'd look myself dead in the eye and I'd get kind of psyched up and stuff like that, and I would just take my fist and I would start like punching the counter as hard as I could. Boom, boom, boom, and I'd be like I WILL BE THE BEST FUNNEL BUILDER IN THE WORLD! And I would yell at myself.

The only reason I'm not yelling now is cuz it's like 1:30 in the morning and I just had to get this off my chest and my kids are sleeping like two rooms over.

I would start slapping the counter as hard as I could. I would look myself dead in the ... and it's not that pain and pleasure are the only things that should motivate you, that's not true at all, but I was just trying to capture this feeling that I just needed to be the best.

Now, I'm not saying I'm the best funnel builder, but I will say that I've built probably more funnels than 99% of the people on the planet. 170 in the last year.

Like holy crap, man, that's a lot of funnels. Collectively they have brought millions and millions and millions of dollars. Even by themselves, there's several funnels that have brought in a million bucks just on their own. It's amazing. Super, super cool.

The reason why is because I stopped blaming the freaking tool. Okay? I stopped blaming something else. I looked at myself and I started obsessing over me. My expertise. Was I the best? If someone handed me a microphone and said you have 20 minutes on stage, what would I say.

Okay. Sometimes that's hard to do. Don't point the finger out. Point it back in and go okay what am I not good at yet? That is literally the reason I went and did door-to-door sales was to get better at sales and to take a crap ton of objections. That's why I did it.

I didn't necessarily like, I really hated it to be honest, but that's why I did it. Look at yourself and craft your life. When you start doing that and you actually get really clear on your goals amazing things happen, you guys. It's nuts. Two things are going to happen.

Number one, you're going to get a dump load of opposition. You'll get it from family, unfortunately.

You'll get it from friends. You'll get a whole bunch of, unfortunate on that as well, you'll get it from people who you didn't even know. People will come out of the woodwork and just tell you that you're going to flat out fall on your face. I don't even know who you were before I started going down this path and trying to do it. They'll just, anyway they'll just run right at you and just tell you, you can't do it. Because they can't, or they've go excuses and they think that they also apply to you.

The second thing that's going to happen, though, is you're going to start carving this line in the sand. You're going to draw a line in the sand, and you're going to start getting people coming over to your side saying yeah, Steven, you can do it. You can go pursue being the best funnel builder on the planet. Try it. Just go for it. See what happens. Am I? Nope.

But I know I'm really good. Amazing things has happened because of that, right.

Very intense, very focused, all the way through as much as I could. Studying, I mean, I can honestly say I earned where I am. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of that. But for a while it was, I mean I went through the same thing I'm tell you right now. It's not that I didn't go through it either. For a while I blamed the tool.

Oh the market was bad. When I did real estate and I was trying to flip contracts in the closing period for ten grand more than I got them under contract for, and it worked. I got seven houses under contract, a couple multimillion dollar pieces of real estate and just, I wasn't experienced enough. I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea. I didn't even know the vernacular of that industry. I was just taking massive action and I had tons of these people come in and try to help me and all these things going on, and it failed.

I did not succeed in that...

For a long time I blamed, oh it was the market.

Oh it's because of this guy, because of that guy, and it was really, really easy for me to go blame and put the finger outward.

All I'm trying to do is tell you guys stop blaming the tool, stop obsessing over which tools you use, and just start obsessing over you. Are you good? Be the best version you can be of your own self. To do that, you need to see, yeah, focus on my strengths, but there's also a few weaknesses that I can't progress without overcoming as well.

It's like that Robert Key Saki 00 quote I was just talking about a few episodes ago, like as soon as you start down the path of entrepreneurship, there are character flaws that will blow up straight in your face and you are not going to be able to progress in business until you address them.

That doesn't mean you've got to fix everything in your life, but it might mean you need to outsource, and go okay, you know what I'm not good at taking picture, let me go find some guy who's good at taking a picture. You overcame that. Does that make sense? It's the same thing.

Anyways that's all I wanted to do in this podcast was just tell you guys, I hope you see, it's like ... The tool barely matters you guys. It is so much about you. Are you good? Are you passionate? What's the thing that gets you excited? Are you really, really good at it? You can either be the first or you can be the best, which one are you? Lots of time I'm not very good at being the first so I try to be the best, and you know what?

If I'm number two, like I'm trying to be number one, but there's a lot of great things that come as number two also, not that I'm settling at all, cuz I'm not, but man really, really cool, anyway, I hope that makes sense, what I'm trying to say here guys. Don't distract yourself with the tool. Don't obsess over tools.

They matter like 10%, the rest of you is the other 90%. You've got to personally obsess over getting good. You get to sit down and ... Anyway just don't distract yourself with tools, that's all I'm trying to say.

Anyway, guys I hope you're doing well. Sorry I had to talk a little bit quiet on a few of these. It's super late. I just had this on my mind. All right, guys, I will talk to you later.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/free funnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

Yeah... I'm a 7-year overnight success story:) Avoiding pain would've taken me longer to get where I am now...

Hey hey, how you guys doing? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, so four years ago I was at basic training. It was winter time, which is a terrible time to go, and it was probably the second day. I mean, you know the quintessential Hollywood scene where the drill Sargent comes on the bus and he yells at you and has everyone get out, right?

I mean, that totally happened. We got on, they're screaming at us, you get on the ground, you're just doing endless pushups forever, you're sprinting back and forth in the dirt there, you're laying around all over the place, they're making you roll. I mean, they're doing everything they can to dehumanize you, right, and make you realize that you are now a number, you know?

It was interesting, you know, to go through that experience and to feel that, and to actually feel the shift inside of me, and that was really interesting.

But probably, honestly, the second or third day, you're scared out of your mind ... anyway. And they say, "All right, go grab your stuff," obviously with much different tone than that, but basically they start marching us over to ... which is more like a run, you know, you're basically running everywhere ... but they start getting us over to the spot and hand us all a gas mask, you know? And this thing looks like it's straight out of Call of Duty, you know what I mean, if you've ever played that game, or like the movies or whatever.

It's got the big knobs on the side, it's got the big, you know, the big circular glasses. I start getting fluttered, you know. We all do. We're about to go inside of a gas chamber, and it's no joke.

So, what we start doing, we start practicing basically how to put the mask on, right? One side you inhale really hard and it seals it around your face, the other side you blow out really hard and it ... you know what I mean? And it clears out any gas that might have been left in there while you're putting the mask on. We're standing outside of the gas chamber, we're in the middle of the forest and there's this gas chamber that's sitting there.

It's really, really, really interesting experience. They told us, "By the way guys, if you shaved today," which you're supposed to all time, "If you shaved today, just letting you know, it's going to burn your face, because it's going to get inside your pores really bad." And I was like, "Oh, all right. Sounds good. Crap."

So, we're helping each other, we're putting the stuff on, and putting these masks on and stuff like that, and then all the sudden they're like, "Okay," you know, "Next group," or whatever, and we're all going in as these groups. It's funny, because when you heard these guys go in as groups all you could hear in the ... like, as they started running in was just this ... I mean, like this coughing, a little screaming, you know? It was like you're going into a haunted house but it was real, you know?

Anyway, it was our turn, so we put these gas masks on outside and we start running inside of the gas chamber. You had to keep your head down and put one hand on the shoulder in front of you and just start running, following the guy in front of you.

I don't totally know why they had us do that, it might of just been part of the whole experience of sit down, shut up, and don't think at all, you know what I mean?

Anyway, but we get inside there and it was like ... I don't know if they purposely made the light like a misty green color, I mean, there's green ... it was green everywhere. The air was green, everything was green. And they take us and they shove us up against the wall, and they're like, "Okay, turn it on," and immediately I could tell that the gas was burning around the lining where the masks end and my face began to be exposed.

I just immediately could feel it, it was really, really weird. It's very interesting sensation. I could tell that it was trying to get around on my face, and you know, mentally you have to start ... you know, you kind of self talk a little bit, you're like, "All right, you know, you got this. Totally fine," you know? I was excited but nervous. I love that stuff, but it's also scary. It like scary stuff that puts me on the edge like that. It's really ... Oh man, you feel so alive, it's really interesting.

Very interesting sensation. I've had many experiences like that in my life...

Anyway, what they started doing is they started going person by person and they would go, "Raise your mask up, say the last four numbers of your social security," you know, which means scream it, "Scream the last four numbers of your social security, and your full name, and your birth date. And then what you're going to do is whatever air is left inside your lungs, hold it, put the mask back on. You're going to clear the mask with whatever air is left in your lungs, and then you'll reseal it.

And you'll know really fast whether or not you actually did it right." And you're like, "What the ... okay, all right." Now, this is just CS gas, but it was pretty high doses, you know what I mean? This is not normal stuff, you end up ... Anyway, I'll go into that in a second.

It was pretty interesting, though, because ... So, we cleared the mask, you know, and these guys and a few of the girls just start freaking out, like someone's trying to attack them kind of thing. They were jumping all over the place, the drill Sargent's shoving them back crazy hard up against the wall again, like, you know, "Shut up, get back there," you know?

And they get to me and I was like, "Man, like, what the heck is this crap? What did I do?" And I took the mask and I yell, "Larsen," last four of my social, you know, "April 22nd, 1988," and I start yelling all these things, I put it back on my face, and I clear the mask, and I reseal it, and I could tell I didn't totally reseal it correctly on the left side of my cheek, but I was trying to make it that way so it wouldn't get back in. I could tell instantly just the ... it was like insta lung burn, just ... like burn the lungs really bad, and you're like, "Holy crap."

They go through person by person and then what happened was they pull us over to the side and they said, "All right everyone, you're going to take off the mask completely and we're going to do PT inside of the gas chamber." Meaning we're going to start doing pushups and sit ups, and we're going to start jumping jacks and whatever.

Whatever it was, the point was to get the heart rate up, make us breathe really hard, and just start ingesting tons of it. And we're like, "Oh my gosh," so we just start doing it, and I take off the mask and my eyes start burning and watering like crazy, right?

Guys start breathing it in, we all start breathing it in, and what happens with that kind of gas is that it comes inside of you and it's actually, on a molecular level, your DNA's allergic to that type of gas.

So what happens is, it's one of the chromosomes, and so what happens is you just start ... It's not like a nerve agent at all, it's not that kind of gas, they wouldn't put us in that kind of situation. But that's what the training was for, to practice for those kind of contingencies and things like that.

So, the gas, though ... there's a point to this whole story, by the way, I'm just telling you ... the gas, though, it makes everything in your face defecate, okay? Anything on your skin that's exposed to it just burns like crazy. So, they finally are like, "Okay, get out of here. Run out, run out." And people are throwing up, you know, and it's like ... I can't even describe the scene, it was so crazy.

Now, why'd I tell you that story, all right, and ... Well, let me jump into something else, okay? All right, seven years ago I started a lawn business, okay?

That did okay, but I went into stocks and options after that and I totally failed in that, I wasn't that good at it. In real estate I really ... I got into real estate pretty heavily.

I would flip contracts in the closing period. So, I'd go get a house under contract and I'd get it under market value, then what I did is I'd go find someone who was looking for a house like that, and in the closing period, before I owed any money, I would flip the contract for like 10 grand more to the next guy, and his money would cover my costs and I'd take the spread, okay? That was pretty ninja, but it was cool, okay?

I eventually got into more hardcore real estate things, and we'd take peoples 401ks and they'd buy shares of huge pieces of future real estate. Then my buddy and I, we'd take that 401k money from them and we'd go invest it ... They knew all this, okay? There's tons of legalities with this stuff, it's obviously for the person who's far more intense in investing tolerance, you know?

So, obviously it was very different doing it with them for this thing. But we'd take that, and what would happen was we'd take that money and that would be the down payment on a big loan for a three million dollar commercial real estate property, right? And what would happen is those people invested would get shares in that property and the property value. It's super cool.

All right, that was pretty intense...

Then I got into MLM and I did all right. Then I got into telemarketing, and I was actually a hardcore telemarketer for a little bit. I was one of the team trainers, I was actually ... I competed with one other guy. Sometimes I was number one, sometimes I was number two.

Then I got into door to door sales and I'd grow my own teams, and put people together. Then I really got into writing e-books, and e-books, that was really cool. Actually, I never released the last one I did. Or it was actually the first one. But it was so good, holy crap. A lot of the things that I use now is still relevant in that e-book. I should probably pull that out some time.

Then I started this business with some other students for a college semester. We made $3,000 a week from a business we made from scratch selling things to other students in campus, that was pretty cool, but was not allowed to last. We had to take that one down, but it was cool.

I was the CEO of that one, that's fun. Then I started making landing pages for other businesses, because I realized that, during the student run thing, if I had actually started to drive traffic online I would of had more success. However, that's really how I started getting into more hardcore ... I mean, I had built sites with WordPress for other clients before, but that really is what started getting me into actually building ... I didn't know what was called funnels, and sales funnels.

All right, and then I got into traffic generation, and we had an investor who wanted to come put a whole bunch of money at us, because we had this awesome idea, and we had 15 businesses on a waiting list.

We were doing with all these other companies and it was working, it was really, really cool. But I was talking to the owners of Vivint, MLMs, was one of the client ... I had an insurance company I was doing it with. Then I started doing ... That's really around the time I started learning what Dot Com Secrets was, and I got into the launch method and ask campaigns like crazy.

I went and I built a insurance for phones after that, and we had customers, but, you know, we didn't really scale the thing.

Then I went and I built an actual MLM product, which is the one that still makes me the most money today. Then I went and I built a funnel for these guys over in Florida.

That was a big, long project, but that's the one that I knew that I knew what I was doing after that funnel. Because we made them a good chunk of money in a short amount of time using launch and ask methods on the click funnels platform, which is really cool.

Then I went into ... I build a charity funnel. It was really cool, we raised seven grand for wounded soldier's families to be able to fly out to wherever the hospital the solider was being kept at. It was really, really cool. I ran, it was a two page funnel using click funnels, in the middle of college.

We put together a five k mud run, and it was awesome, and we had the news there. We had several interviews, it was really, really fun, actually. That was really cool. Then I was about to go work back for that company in Florida, and then got scooped up by Russell.

We've built 170 funnels by now, including my own, Sales Funnel Broker and Sales Funnel Radio. Anyway, that's only seven years of my life, guys. I've been doing it way before that, too.

Any why do I ... okay, I got from as chambers to all these other things, and the whole point is holy crap, there are some people who've been reaching out. Okay, I can't name names, because ... you know. This just happened, okay? This guy came out and he was ticked, and he was like ... and he was swearing like crazy, and he's like, "I'm never going to make any effing money. I went and ... " He's like, "My laptop died. This sucks, and I'm not going ... "

You could just tell the whole tone of this big rant post. He was replying to a post of one of my last podcasts, I think it as a couple of them ago. And I was like, "Dude, you're not going to make any freaking money unless you change your dang mentality.

Like, stop, stop. You've got to take a breath, okay?...

Stand up, go to a 30,000 foot view, see what it is you're doing, okay?"

The point is to turn into the pain, okay? I made this lawn business, I didn't ... it didn't work. I'm not still doing it, but I learned about management, you know? The stocks and options, I'm not still doing it, but I learned how to get technical and strategies for making money. It was super crazy cool. In real estate I learned about contracts and legalities, and I learned how to not get sued, and I learn how to ... you know what I mean?

There was a lot of great things that came from that although I'm not still doing it, you know? When I was doing the hardcore big real estate strategy, you know, with the 401ks, I learned that there were secrets of each industry that are not spoken about, and if you can find somebody who knows those things, you're going to be more successful.

I was doing it with a mentor in real estate, I wasn't just taking peoples 401k. I got to say that and be careful and make sure I clarify that with you guys, like, I was not ... It was all legal, we were totally covered, everyone knew what was going on, there was nothing crazy going on.

But I learned that there were things going on, and I you just get someone who's taking you under his wing, like, shoot, man. Like, that's goof stuff, you know? You will move so much faster.

I started building sites for others, that's where I learned what funnels were, although I didn't know that's what I was doing...

When I was doing door to door I learned how to grow teams, I learned how to keep teams motivated. When I was doing telemarketing I learned how to talk. That really played in the door to door stuff. I learned how to write when I did all those e-books. I freelanced out this e-book, actually there's a couple of them, and I didn't like what she wrote, so I rewrote the whole thing two times because I didn't like it. I deleted and start over.

Kind of like what Russell did with the Expert Secrets book, I kind of laughed when I saw that...

Then we made that business making three gran a week? Man, I learned how to create offers in that business, that's really where I learned how to make offers, all right? Now, remember, this is all the time, I was in college during all this time. All of it. And I was in a business marketing degree. I don't know what I really learned in that degree.

This is all stuff I was doing in the middle of college because I realized that I was not going to get cutting edge material, and I was not going to be cutting edge when I graduated if I stayed on that track, right?

Then I started building landing paged for business. You know, all that really did for me is it taught me how to get an opt in, it taught me how to work with other companies, it taught me how to ... We had 15 business on a waiting list, they were begging for us. I mean, these strategies that I had been learning, they were, again, they were not like mainstream things you can read in a book, right?

There's some things you can not learn from a ... you've got to be in the weeds doing it, right?

With the insurance one that I built I learned how to work with a partner. Most of that stuff was solo beforehand. With my secret MLM hacks I learned about course creation. That was my first info product, and it's still doing really well, but it was ... That was really where I learned how to funnel hack itself, all right?

The water company, that was a big win, the charity one, that one helped me realize, okay, I got this, you know? Not that I'm going to win every time, but I get it.

I see how to actually make money, I'm turning thousands of dollars now and that's awesome, right?

Then obviously with Russell, I mean, I've built so many funnels there, I don't even know how many it truly is. I just guess 170, because a singe project can be 15 of them, right? And that's, I've been there over a year now.

That's the point though, okay? It's to turn in to the pain. A lot of times what happens is we will skirt along, right, and that's why I brought up the gas chamber story, to be honest. Because what was happening is I was sitting outside ... You guys remember my story of me laying in the water and I was so ... it was like 35 degrees and we start shaking because the body's trying to stay warm, but eventually the blood sucks back into your organs to keep it warm, so you stop shaking and it gets kind of freaky and your lips go blue, and you get little bit of hypothermia and things like that. You remember that story, I told that story?

And remember, I had that mentality shift like, "Okay, like, I got this. It sucks right now, but it's going to be an amazing story later on." So I changed my mentality and I was like, "All right, we got this."

I did the same thing with this gas chambers. I was watching other guys coming out the other side just barfing like crazy right before we went in. They throw up all over the place, their nose be running uncontrollably, their eyes are blood, blood, bloodshot red, I mean, it looked like a horror movie. You know, their skin's burning, they come out, they're not trying to breath, I mean, it was really ... like, that's kind of freaky, you know, to watch that. I

was like, "All right, I got this. I'm going to turn in to the pain," right? Turn in to the pain. Pleasure's always closer on the other side if you turn in to the pain. Pleasure doesn't come very quickly if you don't turn in to the pain, it gets prolonged. It gets prolonged. You won't know what it's like to go do all these things if you just keep skirting it.

I remember this time I went and I did a business ... I did a presentation of the city of ... It was a city competition for entrepreneurship and my buddy and I went in and we put our insurance business in it, and we didn't know what we were doing. There's all these guys making tons of money, making millions, and we just ... I started presenting.

I was presenting on stage like crazy, pitching our business. I won the business competition in my college, they sent me to another one to compete. I did not win. That's okay. I learned how to stage pitch, even way before I got to work with Russell. Way before, all right? That's the whole point of it, is that I know that a lot of you guys have these massive dockets of, "Hey, I tried this, that sucked. Hey, I tried this, that sucked."

And it doesn't matter...

Funny enough, the lawn business that I did seven years ago, and had ... you know, had all these people I was doing stuff with, had a customer base, thing like that, that actually plays into me building funnels in a weird way. There's more skills than just hey, what color looks good and where should the button go, you know what I mean?

So, these things you guys are doing, these guys that are going up and saying, "I'm not going to make any money," that, raise your mentality, all right, get your ... elevate where you are, and what's going to happen is you'll actually start seeing the bigger picture of what's going on.

For some of you guys it may not exactly be where you want it to be right now. It may not, and that's okay. That's all right. Take the lesson, learn, move on, do not sit and sulk. If you do that you're not going to move anywhere. "Uh, that didn't work. Uh, that didn't work." I made the mistake of personally doing that with one of the real estate things that I was doing with a buddy, and I sat and I sulked about it.

It wasn't fair to myself, it wasn't fair to my wife, wasn't fair to anybody, because things happened and sometimes crap just happens, you know, and you just move on. So take the lesson.

I dare you to sit down and write all of the failures you've had...

Do it...

But then next to it make a column and write down the thing you learned from it, because it is way faster, much more hardcore of a lesson than if you were to go to a class, because doing is completely different than reading. You know what I mean?

That's one of the points I've been trying to make with this thing. There's a really good guy, he's one of the first podcasters I ever listened to, his name was Sean Terry. And I learned a lot from that guy, and it's mostly because he's in the real estate world and that's what I had been doing, and I studied that world a lot. A ton.

And various reasons, things worked and then a lot of things didn't, you know, and again, that's fine.

But he had this really cool analogy, he said some of us want success so badly, which is awesome, but you want it so badly you need to imagine it like this. Imagine that there's this pool, all right, there's a swimming pool, and the pool is sitting there, it's pristine, it's nice, and in the middle of the pool is a bach ball.

And the beach ball's sitting in the pool and you are on the side. And you start swimming as hard as you can after this beach ball. You're swimming, you're swimming super hard, hard, hard. You're swimming as fast and hard as you can. You're doing everything you can to et to that beach ball. You're getting at that beach ball like it will either kill you or you have to kill it, all right? This is fight or flight constantly for you, right?

And you are swimming as fast as can toward this beach ball. Well what happens? The freaking beach ball goes away from you, right?

Ripples get created, things get pushed away from you, and the actual beach ball gets ... it starts pushing away from you. You're pushing so hard that you are pushing the people out. You're pushing the reason you actually do it out. You're pushing the emotions and the feelings of others, you're pushing out other things that are important in your life just to get that beach ball. You will kill yourself to get the beach ball, right?

Well then you're missing the point...

That was his whole point, too, he kept saying that. He gave that analogy a lot. I realized that there were, probably about half these businesses that I was doing that I just listed off to you guys, just in the last seven years, I mean, so, so, so very similar to that. T

here was times I just was killing myself. Sleeping literally a few hours a night, getting up, doing it again. Getting up, doing it again. Getting up. I don't know if you've ever read the book Rework, but they're like, "Oh, no great creativity happens when you do stuff like that." Like, that's stupid, you can't do that. There's an element of hustle, but there's an element of life balance, as well, which is mostly true.

I still think you have to be a bit of a monomaniac to actually be successful with some things. You got to be obsessed with what you do, all right? You have to, that's not an option.

Anyway, so that was the whole point, though, is ... There's been several people who've been reaching out, especially lately. Like, "I just wish I could do this. I wish I could do what you've done. I wish that it was this way. I wish I did this." It's like, man, stop freaking wishing, just do something. If you just do something you'll start to learn the things that have not been making you successful. Does that make sense? Like, I was not that good at talking with people, I still don't like talking on the phone, I hate it. So, I went and I did telemarketing, okay? I don't like going and trying to pitch someone face to face, and so I purposefully went and did door to door sales. That was on purpose for that reason, okay? I'm not amazing at writing, but I felt I needed to get this message out that I had been learning, like, "Oh my gosh, did you know you don't have to be creative ever until a certain period? The market will tell you everything you need to do?" That's when I started writing that e-book, that was like five years ago. I should probably launch that thing, it's a really good e-book.

Anyway, does that makes sense? That's the whole point I'm saying. The point of this is not ... You are not supposed to avoid pain. You're not. But so much of society tells you, like, "If it hurts don't do it." That's bull crap, all right? I wouldn't go to the gym if that was the case, all right? That's so true, anyway.

There was this time where, oh man, it as so hard. It was harder than when I went to basic. I know ROTC sometimes kind of gets made fun of, but it's super awesome. These guys, what they would have us do is they'd have us ... We'd run a mile in six minutes, which is fast, it's not crazy fast. So, we'd run a mile in six minutes and then we'd have a four minute break, and then we'd run another mile in six minutes, and four minute break. Mile in six minutes, four minute break. Mile in six minutes, four minute break.

And we would do that for an hour. You're just, you're completely spent after something like that, right? And then we'd do these things called 60 120s, meaning we would do dead sprint as hard as you can like a bear was chasing you. You'd dead sprint for 60 seconds as hard as you could, and then 120 seconds of walking, and then 60 seconds of dead hardcore sprint. We'd do that usually for about 20 to 45 minutes.

It sucks, you know, and we'd always try and make the new guys barf. Like, totally, you know?

But there's this mentality that I gained from that where it's just like, "Man, make it hard, coach." And I've told that to Russell several times, which by the way, I know he listens to these now. How's it going, man? But that's the point of it, like, make it hard, coach.

The reason why is, not that I'm a pain loving freak, it's because if I turn in to the pain I learn things that I would not have otherwise learned. You can not learn some of this stuff in a book.

Anyway, that's the challenge. Guys, this is the challenge I have for you for this podcast. You've got to sit down and write out all the things that you think you failed at. Make a huge list, all right?

That was just a very brief list I made right before this podcast, about 10 minutes before just brainstorming. And then right next to it a column of all the lessons I learned from it that I would not have learned otherwise. I don't think I would have learned them in the way I learned them, all right, with the power I learned them.

"Steven, how come you sit next to Russell? How came you lead Funnel Builder? How come you do these things? How come you're able to be successful at these XYZ?" Because, well I've made like ... that's freaking like 15 attempts in the last seven years.

They were honest attempts I was trying to have a cool product or service out there where people gave me money for it. Every time, okay? And now it's finally hitting. I have worked my butt off for it, that's why. I turned in to the pain. Make it hard, coach. Make it hard, make it challenging, make it rough, all right? That's where the best lessons come in.

Anyway, it does not come from a point of comfort...

Anyway, guys, sorry for the rant. I know that's 25 minutes long, but that's the whole point of this whole thing. Gas chambers, all right? Run in. Don't run into an actual gas chamber, okay?

Anyway, guys. Super stoked about the ... I've really enjoyed this one, to be honest. It's been on my mind a lot. Sorry it was a little bit of a rant, I haven't done a reallygood rant lately, so I thought I'd hit quota there. All right, guys, talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/FreeFunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

Progress in entrepreneurship REQUIRES you to face a few character flaws. Address them, and you'll move forward...

Hey, how's it going? Hey, thanks for tuning in. This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, you guys. Hey, if you listened to the last episode, I was talking about how I went and I spoke at Local Client Takeover and that was a lot of fun, had a whole bunch of fun doing that.

I don't know. The older I've gotten, not that I'm old at all, I'm 29, but the older I've gotten, the more I've realized I truly don't care that much what other people think about me and what's funny is that ... That's not like a chip off the shoulder way like, "I don't care. I don't care."

That's not it at all. It's just I've become far more comfortable with my personality and who I am and the value I think I can bring places and being energetic and if I feel like I want to yell, I'm going to yell. That's actually been part of the fun part about having a house now is man, I'll just start ... My little girl, my little 1-year-old and 3-year-old will just start running around the house screaming, right. I'm comfortable doing that in public settings now.

There's something to be said about being comfortable with you and self-expression...

You know what I mean?

Anyways, I was speaking at this event, right, or I was about to go on stage and this isn't a bash at all on that event. It was really, really good actually. It was awesome. Honestly, most of it was about SEO. I don't know anything about SEO. I don't really want to know anything about SEO and so, I tuned out for a little bit because my topic was about local funnels and how to structure agencies in order to sell to local businesses, right, and so that's what I did.

I went in and I talked about that, but beforehand what was happening was ... It was pretty funny. I noticed that the emcee, he probably wasn't an actual emcee. What he was doing was he was standing up and he was saying, "Hey," low energy, "Hey, welcome.

All right, it's time for our next speaker and here he is." That was like sometimes there's applause, sometimes that's it, the guy just stood up and it was like, "Hey," and I was like, "Oh, man," again, nothing against him. I don't think he's an actual emcee. I think he was just part of the employee staff that was there and I was like, "Gosh, that's really, really rough."

What I started thinking about was the time Russell asked me to introduce him to his inner circle. Now obviously, his inner circle knows who he is, right, and this was at the last Funnel Hacker Event we had and just my mind went back to it and I started thinking about it. It was huge lesson for me, right.

The event's about to start and Russell's like, "Okay," he comes to me, he's like, "Hey, Stephen, do you want to introduce me before I go out there?" and immediately I got nervous. I was like, "Man, I don't have any problem speaking.

I love speaking. I always want to speak, but I've never introduced somebody like what do you do? What's the structure? What's the model? What does it look like? What does it look like to successfully introduce somebody?" You know what I mean?

That might sound like a cheesy, dumb question, but to me, it was a big question...

I was like, "Dude, yeah, man, but like what do I do?" He laughed and he was like, "Dude, here's your only goal. This is the only thing that you need to do." There's a whole point to this whole thing, by the way, so just keep following me here. He goes, "Okay, all you need to do is you need to ... I don't really care how you do it. I don't care what you say honestly."

He's like, "The only goal that I have for emcees is that before I come on stage, they've got to be at a drastically higher state than before so that when I come out on stage, I don't need to lift their state. I don't need to spend time putting energy into the room. I don't need to spend any time helping them raise up to me because I'm a high energy speaker," and I was like, "Okay, that makes sense. Okay, okay."

He's like, "So that's all you got to do is get out there, whatever it is, elevate the energy in the room, elevate the state in the room and then, I can come out and meet them with high energy. Otherwise, it's weird. You get on stage and everyone's kind of like blah, like they're not energetic yet. They're not in a state to receive me yet."

I was like, "Hey, okay, that makes sense..."

I went out there and I told this cool story and I think it worked. It was my first time, the first time I did it was a little bit weird. I don't think I hit it. I don't think I nailed it very well, but second time, I did better. The third day, I definitely did all right.

Anyway, that's what I went up to this emcee and I told him, and if he hears this, please know that I'm not at all bashing at all, but it just really brought me back to that lesson of how important it was. I walked up to him and I was like, "Hey, how do I tell this guy that man, you can't be boring and it's really boring," and be respectful for what he was doing, what the event was, but at the same time, I didn't want to go on stage and have everyone just sitting there like, "Okay, dude, start talking. What are your gold bombs you're going to drop on me?"

You know what I mean? They got to be at this higher level of energy so that when I come in, I start to go nuts.

It's the reason Tony Robbins events are parties. If you change your state, you learn better...

If you change your state, you receive things better, you act better, you make decisions faster. I have bad days every once in a while.

I had a bad day just recently and I was like, "Crap," and I was telling Russell this and I was like, "Man, I'm sorry, man. It's a rough day. There's some challenges going on and I think I got to change my state."

I'll spend some time state control and try and get back into a fiery zone so that I can produce and be a high producer, right. Anyway, so I went up and I told this guy that and he did better and it went fantastic and it was awesome.

On the flight back I was listening to High Performance Academy. It's something Russell gave me. It's awesome. By Brendon Burchard and it's been super awesome. I was thinking about life and I was like hey ... I'm not trying and have this be like a super deep podcast at all just so you guys know, but I was thinking about like okay, what do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? What are the things I want to be known for? What's my life's work?

Things like that...

I want to be purposeful...

I want to be driven...

I don't want to just be ... What's that? I can't remember what book that is. He's like, "Most people are just floating around in a river without a paddle." Actually, they have the paddle. They'd just would rather drift and just stick the paddle in the water and start going somewhere.

Most people just take life as it comes. They don't really move in a certain direction.

I was thinking about all these things and I was getting an Uber driver and I sat down and the Uber app all of a sudden popped up and it said, "Your driver is hard of hearing or deaf. Just be aware." I was like, "Whoa, okay, cool." I just thought she'd be a little bit of hard of hearing, but she was actually completely deaf.

Obviously, she can't talk and she's sign languaging for me to sit in the front and things like that. It was really, really special. Actually, it was interesting. I have a niece who's completely deaf and so I have a few cousins and they're trying to learn sign language and things like that so they can keep communicating with her and it's really, really special, but it was interesting.

I sat there and it was dead quiet. There's nothing to say, of course, which is a little bit weird for me. Usually, there's some kind of interaction at least going on. I always like to ask the Uber drivers what's going on with their life and learn what they're doing and see what path they're on, stuff like that and all of a sudden, I just thought I've got 20 minutes before I actually get back.

What if I learned some phrases in sign language so that by the time I got out of the car, I could thank her and ask her some stuff and things like that?

I discretely pulled out my phone. I was sitting in the front seat. It's not like she couldn't know, but I was sitting in the front seat and I started going through and I was looking up all these sign language phrases and I was trying to practice them without moving my hands. We pull up to the house and I start signing thank you, please be safe, hope you're doing okay, stuff like that.

Her eyes lit up and she starts saying with really fast sign language and mumbling and all, and thank you and hope you're doing well and things like that and it was really, really a cool experience.

I had Brendon Burchard's High Performance Academy stuck in my head. I had a bit of the high from the event that I spoke at going through my head. I had all these things going through my head and then to top it all off, there's been this follower who's fantastic.

I'm sure I'll introduce him here to you guys shortly, but there's this follower who has reached out over and over and over over the course of several months begging to do something for free for me and I couldn't believe it and he reached out again. It was like all these events started coming together in one cool moment.

I came back upstairs, I came inside after the lady dropped me off from Uber and I came inside and all these things were just racing through my head. I was like I can't go to sleep yet. It was super late. I got back really, really late. I had to go to work the next morning, in just a few hours, but I couldn't go to bed and I started thinking of all the cool things that have been going on and this is something I recommend that you guys do.

The entrepreneurial journey is something that's very interesting, and this is a little side tangent real quick here, but there's a really cool part in one of Robert Kiyosaki's books.

I think it was the Cash Flow Quadrant where he talked about when you are beginning to move forward in entrepreneurship or any kind of thing in business, but particularly entrepreneurship, there's this really interesting phenomenon that happens where, as you move forward, let's say ... I'll just say it.

As you move forward, your character flaws begin to be exposed to you and it's very uncomfortable. It's painful and you don't move on until you address that character flaw. That's something that he taught.

You think about it, it's totally true. Let's say I was moving on with my business and there's all these things going on and I'm just getting things started, but I really can't control my own sched. Let's say that I just really can't control my schedule enough and so, I never get up on time and I miss a few crucial meetings and so, the business just sizzles out and dies, right.

That's a character flaw, right, and that happens for every single time you start a business every time or anything in business, right. These character flaws will start to blow up in your face. It's not like it's this soft blow. They will blow up in your face and you will not move on.

Your business will not progress. You will not do anything until these character flaws are taken care of and fixed...

When he said that, I was like, "Holy cow, that's crazy," and I was like, "That's neat. That's interesting," but it stuck with me. As I began to progress and move forward and as I've done things in my personal business and stuff with Russell and all over the place, character flaws have been exposed and it's uncomfortable.

I had that in my head and I had this stuff with Brendon and this really cool experience with this ... I had this really special quick connection with this lady who was deaf and I was trying to sign, and this high coming back from speaking, all these things coming on and then, the guy reaching out saying, "Please, let me help you. I see you're struggling in these certain areas." I just gave in. I was like, "You know what? Yeah, I do.

Character flaw is blowing up in my face right now...

I'm trying to ... I got to fix this one aspect of business. Can you help me? I will not move forward until I get help." He's been helping and it's been great.

It's been a character flaw of mine that I know in the last six months, I've not done as much as I can to be connecting with people and show concern for other people's welfare. It's not that I've been greedy. It's just been so focused that I've not taken the time to connect with other individuals at all, right. I was trying to do that with the deaf lady.

There's a character flaw that I've been fighting with is this whole ... Guys, I'm just trying to be super vulnerable. This is uncomfortable for me to say with this podcast, but I'm just trying to be open and honest about it, right. It's been a character flaw of mine to shut in and not express what my actual inner feelings are while I'm progressing on this journey.

So, I went and I spoke my mind, right, to that emcee and in a loving way said, "Hey, look, could you not do that in the way you've been doing it? Here, try it this way." You know what I mean?

It's been a character flaw of mine to suppress some energy and I'm actually much more of a open and out there and very high energy person in my head, but not always in public and that might shock some of you guys. I'm an extrovert, but there's also this part of me that needs to be alone sometimes to recharge and sometimes that can be a character flaw for what's going on around me.

It's been a really fascinating last few days for me as I thought about all these little pieces and all these things and this guy. I don't want to just keep talking about this guy, but I want to actually introduce him to you at some point. He's been awesome.

He's like, "Hey, man, I love support and it looks like your support sucks." That's basically that's what it came down to and I was like, "Yeah, my support does suck." I get hundreds of questions a week and it stresses me out to death. I'm not good at that. It's not that I don't want to talk to anybody. It's just I feel walls closing in. I feel confinement.

I feel like I can't expose myself and ... Whatever it is, I'm not good at support. I'm good at sales or marketing I should say. I'm good at speaking. I'm good at those kinds of things of the aspect of the business.

What was really interesting and I think what started this whole ... It's been on my mind in general, but what really started this is on the flight over to go speak, two or three days ago, while I was on the flight ... It was about a week ago when I was flying to Utah with Russell. That's what it was. I decided to read and pick up and read Ready, Fire, Aim and the very beginning of the book was really, really powerful.

I haven't got that far into it yet, but while on the flight over there, I just started to read. There was this really, really funny ... It wasn't supposed to be funny, but for the situation I'm currently in, it's been really, really funny, right.

Timely, I should say, but it's talking about the different stages of needing to work with other people and I was like, "That's funny. That stuff's been on my mind."

There's been this really, really awesome thing that popped up while I was reading and so I underlined it and I just wanted to read it here. It was on page 27 of Ready, Fire, Aim. If you guys have ever read that book, highly recommend it. I'm only, I don't know, 30 pages in, but I can already tell it's going to be one of those favorite books, spots on my shelf kind of thing.

Anyways, the bottom here says, "If you make it a practice to hire people with potential, the potential to do a particular job as well or better than you can do it, your business can grow. This way, with each tier being promoted to the next level and each stage of growth giving rise to the new level of challenge and reward for your employees.

Smart entrepreneurs will encourage their employees to hire subordinates who are as good and capable as they are. If you are not doing that, start doing it now. It will make everything easier later on."

Gosh, this is just so key. It's so amazing and it's not that I've been afraid to do that. It's just it's funny how relevant that is to me right now. He says, "Smart entrepreneurs will encourage their employees to hire subordinates who are as good and capable as they are, if not better." I thought that was so, so important.

You guys, you'll not do it alone.

You won't do it alone...

If you're going to do it, if you're going to try and do it alone, you'll get there to a certain extent. Don't go out and just try and start hiring people. Russell always says, "Hire when it hurts. Hire when you're in pain. Hire when you can't handle it anymore," but know that overall, you're not going to be able to do it alone. You have unique abilities that you're really, really good at and you have stuff that you suck at and it's cool to know what those things are and it's totally fine.

If you don't know what those things are, don't worry, just start moving, and like Robert Kiyosaki said, the character flaws will start blowing up in your face and start taking note of that and take some humble pie and just be like, "Okay, that's what it is. That's fine. I don't need to be the best at everything in the world. That's not possible anyway. What am I really, really good at?"

Focus on those things. Hire out on the other parts and super, super powerful...

Anyways, it's just really interesting to start thinking through all those things. Not going to do it on your own. Understand that you've got some character flaws are going to pop up. I understand this is not like a normal episode for Sales Funnel Radio because it's not totally about sales funnels, but as you guys begin to build or continue to build, just recognize that if you haven't done so before, that there are flaws inside of you and that's fine.

Just know that it's going to be way better to find somebody else to go hire and help you out...

What's been so cool is the guy who's been helping me out, man, it's been awesome to take stuff and put it on his shoulders and he's come back and be like, "Yeah, totally fine. I can do that. By the way, I've done X, Y, and Z also while you were gone." You're like, "What?" Oh, my gosh, I hired somebody as capable as I am, but in a different area, a different specialty. You know what I mean? It's been amazing. It's been so cool.

The level of stress has dropped dramatically in my life and I didn't expect that. I thought that I'd have to manage this person a lot. I thought I would have to ... Not like judging him, just I've never really done this before so I assumed that you would have to do heavy management of the situation and as long as you can hire a few rock stars, go for it.

My question became a couple of weeks ago while I realized I needed a person, I needed something, I needed someone and I started looking around. I started making little tiny hooks out there to just see this isn't something I want to care of. It's not something I can focus on.

I want to stay focused with Click Funnels and my current thing, but there needs to be some attention in this support area because I'm getting hundreds of questions a week and I can't handle it, but I tell people that they should ask me questions. I'm like, "Crap," that was ... Anyway, it's vicious little cycle there, but it's been cool to go out and vet people out.

What I've been doing to vet people is give them a little task and see how they react to it.

I was talking to Dan Henry and hope Dan's fine with me sharing this, but he was saying, he's like, "Dude, when you go out ... " I actually talked to a lot of people. It was one, two, three, four, probably five entrepreneurs. I was like, "Hey, what'd you do in this scenario? What'd you do in this scenario?"

I got all the feedback from all these different people and I said, "Hey, cool, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? And How do you actually hire these people? And how do you find this person overall?" Because you could hire anyone off the street, but he may not be that very good.

How do you find someone who's good and willing to go the extra mile and who's just full out in love with you?

Basically, it was, hey, see who's willing to do it for free, not that you're going to be free loading on them, but you need to find someone who's passionate and who would do it for free because they love your brand. They love what you do. They love the things and the direction that your business is going in.

Find somebody who would do it for free and actually doesn't ask for money and does a few tasks without asking for anything and excels in them and pushes forward and babysits the business a little bit and acts like it's their own and find that person.

Two or three days ago, I realized there was this certain person and I was like, "Oh, okay, he's the guy and okay, so let's do this." It was this big character flaw moment for me also. I got to give off some control and trust in a certain area and it's been amazing. Anyways, I'll bring him in here at some point and I'll do a little interview because he's got a cool story as well, but for right now, that's basically it.

I basically wanted this whole podcast when I came home and I didn't want to go to sleep, I just went to my white board and I just started brain dumping all over the place, all these things around my head and the common theme around all of it was this whole thing. Wow, I have character flaws. I'm totally fine with that.

I got to find someone because I'm not going to be able to do it on my own and that's fine. It's been fun to push forward in that area.

Anyways, guys, hopefully that was helpful and super excited for all the cool things coming up. Hope you guys all got the Expert Secrets Book from Russell Brunson. If not, go to expertsecrets.com. That book's amazing. I just barely got mine in the mail and I feel like I got to put it in a glass case or something.

These books have done more for me than my marketing degree and that's not to badmouth the education at all, but seriously, these are like the bibles of marketing. It's brilliance.

It's brilliance that the man's put in there. Anyways, guys, this was a fun one and I will talk to you all later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free, go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

Click above to listen in iTunes...

I HATE getting paid pennies for my expertise and you're probably the same. The reality is, you can probably charge more without your dream customers batting an eye...

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you are listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best Internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

What's going on everyone? Hey, I'm super excited. I'm actually sitting here, I'm getting ready for my presentation at Local Client Takeover, LCT baby. It's going to be awesome. It's down in Vegas. It's actually in a few days here and I'm excited for it. I always love preparing my presentations ... sometimes.

It's been a little bit challenging in the middle of this move and all the things going on here. But I always like it though, that's for sure. I was just thinking, so they want me to talk about local funnels and how you can use sales funnels in a local business, which is awesome. That's actually one of the first things that I ever did but it wasn't using click funnels and I didn't realize that I was using a funnel.

Does that make sense?

It's when I was doing traffic generation for Paul Mitchell, we were driving traffic ... What happened is they came to the college that I was going to and they came to the college and they were like, "Hey, we need these two guys. We need someone to help us please drive some traffic," and that's essentially what happened.

We were like, "Cool." The teachers came and they saw that my buddy and I, Ben Wilson, I think he listens to this, shout out to you man. Ben Wilson and I, we're doing all these crazy things in college and the professors knew about that so they recommended us.

We go and we start driving traffic for these guys and really quickly realized we could drive huge volumes of traffic but have none of it convert. We were certainly learning with other people's money. But we had some success with that as well, though.

What we were doing is we were basically putting in ads out there that were saying things like, "Hey, come in and say this secret word and you'll get a free tea tree scalp treatment," or something like that. It's Paul Mitchell hair company, which is funny because I'm totally losing my hair now. Anyway, it was really cool I'm excited to be able to go and give the presentation here so I thought that I would talk a little bit about price because that actually is one of the secrets.

So you guys know, if you have read the Extra Secrets book at all, if you've gone through Russell's Perfect Webinar Secrets at all, you will know that one of the major parts of what we do for selling is actually called storyselling.

And what we do first is we go figure out the core false beliefs of our audience and we write them all out...

The whiteboard literally right next to me has this. So what I do is I write out all the false beliefs that I know that people at LCT are going to have about how they can use sales online funnels in local business. Does that make sense?

So I write down tons of them and I put them all out there. I wish I had these lists next to me, what they are.

But things like, "Well I'm a word of mouth business only. So of course that's not going to work for me." You know what I mean? And just start writing them all down.

So I've got things like, "I don't want more business. I can't handle it. There's too much competition in my local market. There's no way I could compete online." Those are the types of things I put on there. "Ads are pricey so I'm not going to be able to do it." Does that makes sense?

And I list out all the false beliefs. This is how I prepared my speech over at ABcom too.

Every time you guys use any type of communication or you guys talk to your customer at all do this. If you don't have a list of the main beliefs ... Now I'm just guessing.

The more accurate way is for you to get out there and do like a Ask Campaign and really dive deep and call people who bought, call people who didn't buy and just get down there and start figuring out, in the weeds, what people are thinking when they hear about your product.

So I started doing that and I wrote down ... Then what I do is I write down all of the counter ... What's my counter to that? Well, "Ads are pricey but honestly, you can have less clients anyway and then make more money" or "Ads are pricey but with a break even funnel, you really don't need to pay for them."

You're just turning on an ads engine and maybe lose just a little bit of money but you're getting tons and you're getting basically free customers the rest of the time. That's a counter. And saying that is cool but it's not as effective as telling a story, where I get you in state and I start ... This is all from Extra Secrets book, where I get you in state and I start teaching you. I start telling a story of somebody else who went through that.

"Oh, there was this guy once that, he was in ... " this certain business and does funnels now.

Okay, one of the first funnels I ever built for somebody else was for this water company and they were super awesome. I have mad respect for that guy. He's built an incredible company and he wanted some more sales online so I ran an Ask Campaign to his existing list.

I got like 150 responses. I read through all of the responses and I figured out like, "Oh my gosh, did you guys know that your customer wants these things? Did you know that they struggle with these things? Did you know that they wish you did these things?"

And all we had to do then was create basically an E-com funnel selling their products online and it was practically a local business. He did a little traveling and speaking but it was most ... Anyway, they made like 50 grand through that funnel in the next like ... I don't know ... a couple day- ... like a couple weeks.

It was probably like five weeks after it's all said and done.

There was like 20 grand after the first few days and then leveled out to about 50 grand. Anyway, it was a good amount of money though, right? But I would dive more deep into the story and I would tell you guys my struggles with it and how I didn't think it would work and things that I was talking about with the boss man.

Anyway I would dive into it deep and that would help you guys realize that what I'm saying is true because I'm telling story with it. I'm not just saying the fact, does that make sense? So that's what I do then. So first, I've got all the false beliefs then my counter but then I also write a story that relates to that to help them show that their belief is false.

And then what I do is I go find the top three things, again, straight From Extra Secrets I go.

Find the top three false beliefs that have to do with the vehicle that I'm going to suggest, the internal belief that they have and the external belief that they have.

And those are my three secrets. So the title of this presentation for LCT, which I'm super stoked about, is going to be, How to Get Local Clients and Beat the Big Brands at Their Own Game.

I think it's a pretty sweet ... Anyway, it's behind the scenes of simple local client acquisition funnels. And what I'm going to go do though is I'm going to show them, basically, all these cool funnels that you can use to get clients in but that's a never-ending topic.

There's basically an infinite amount of ways you could probably do it, to be honest. So what I thought is it's more about how they're going to structure their business as a whole. What's their core offer?

What's a cool front end they could use to fuel that core offer? And then what's a back end product? So I'm essentially going to teach the three core funnels as I go down there and I'm excited to do that because ... I'll just tell you then. It's about 84 slides. I'm a little nervous because last one was like 70 slides and I ended with like three minutes left, so I got to talk faster on this one. Anyway, so the first thing I'm going to show them is how to use low-end products to pay for all of your customer acquisition. Crazy cool, right?

Especially for a local funnel. There's tons of local businesses that do that. They may not know they are using a funnel but that's what they're doing. Number two. I'm going to show them how to get treatment clients to abandon the big brands and cling to them instead.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to teach them about offer structure and how most people do not create an offer. They just have a product or a service. But that doesn't mean you have an offer. Does that make sense? Then number three. I'm going to show them how to 2X their revenues from half the clients and I'm going to go show some cool stories of that using high-ticket application funnels in the back end.

Or high-ticket supplement funnels or something like that. If you read Russell's book, DotCom Secrets, in there he talked about a cool chiropractor. He basically created a supplement funnel in the backend that was like a high-ticket $2,000-dollar package to help cure something that most people who came in and had. Does that make sense?

So anyway, so that's what I'm going to do. What I wanted to do though for this, real quick here, this will probably be a little shorter episode. My episodes lately been a little bit long. Sorry about that. I had a cool comment.

Someone's like, "I love that your episodes are like 15 minutes. Any longer and they'd be too long," but ... I don't know ... I feel like as long as I'm spitting value then whatever. So what I'm going to do though is I want to show you guys some of the cool ways you guys can charge more in your business. Right off the bat, I think this is from Joe Polish. Joe polish says, "How you price your products is determined in your ability to sell them."

Does that make sense? This is for the few people that I've told, "Hey, charge five grand in the back, have them come out to you for two days," or charge $2000 for a consultation and they're immediately fearful.

"What? $2000?" "What? $5000?" And the reason they do that and the reason they have this knee-jerk reaction experience whenever I say that is because they wouldn't pay $2000, or they wouldn't pay $5000. Guys it doesn't matter.

You're not your target market. You're not the one filling your own wallet. What you need to be concerned about is whether or not you can sell that. Does that makes sense? You can sell anything but how are you going to sell that? Do you have testimonials? Do you have success stories? Do you have things in the back that other people can look at for social proof, for creating community.

Does that make sense? You've got to make it ... Anything you got to sell ... Anyway, I just love that comment; "How you price your products is determined in your ability to sell them." It's fascinating. Very, very cool.

So he goes on to talk about that ... What it is, I wrote down a whole bunch of things about pricing and how to charge more and there's a really cold interesting point here at the end that I want to actually say to you guys but let me get through the rest of the list here that I wrote. He says, "Premium prices equals different expectations." So if you're going to go charge something high-ticket, people are going to expect more.

They're going to expect more from you. It's a little bit more of your time. Some massive piece of value, obviously that makes sense to you. That's obviously not something that you're probably going like, "We'll know. Duh." That makes sense, why wouldn't ... But honestly, all that means sometimes is just change up the delivery of your product.

Change up how people receive it, meaning, well what I did in a front end funnel that I created was I ... instead of having like this course come in a series of YouTube videos, all I did was I put it on a CD and made it a "Free plus shipping" CD. I changed up the delivery and by seriously changing up the delivery, you can put yourself in a momentary blue ocean and let me charge more money, let people come to me.

It let people be used to the idea that they should come in and pay money because I'm different...

Does that make sense?...

So change up the modality that you actually put people out there so ... And that lets you charge more money. People expect that there is zero delivery problems.

They expect that there is this ... If you pay high premium prices, they expect your polish, your fulfillment to be on point. Does that make sense?

And there's something that I've wanted to launch for quite a while now, probably about six months. I've known exactly what the product is, I've tested it, I know it will sell like hot cakes, I have a feeling it's going to make a $1 million if I ever get to launching the thing. But the reason I haven't done yet is because I don't have a fulfillment side set up yet.

 I'm just being totally open and vulnerable with you guys. Guess what? Steve Larsen is not perfect. I'm looking for a person to help me on a specific piece. It's got to be a certain type of person, someone who's excited on ... Anyway, and that's why. And that's fine.

I want to make sure that I can charge premium prices, that it's totally automated, because I don't have time to be doing my own product and so this is just out of fun in my net time, my no extra time, that Tony Robbins talks about.

That's the reason I haven't done it yet. So if you want to charge premium prices he says, "You got to get rid of delivery problems and ramp your service." Then you can charge more money. Very easy to do that. What's one of the major pieces people want with click funnels? They want customer service.

And they're willing to pay for it. We have people who pay extra amounts to get more premium support, more priority support...

All right this was the piece that I really, really like. You guys, sometimes the key to charging more money is to just put more money on your asking sheet. Okay, does that makes sense? Just ask for more money. Just ask for more. If you have serious inhibitions on that, then most of the time it's your own inhibitions.

A lot of time, like this is going to be such a stupid example, but when I was a kid man we'd go by those junior bacon cheeseburgers at at Wendy's like hotcakes man. We bought those things like crazy.

We'd ride our bike out there and we loved it because, I don't know why, it was just ... I was a freshman in high school. It was just cool to just leave, to go over to the place we'd ride our bikes all over the place and I was a super outdoorsy kid to be honest. I rode a long board, I skied for years.

Anyways, I was really, really outdoorsy. I went on a three-week backpacking trip once, that was super cool. Anyway, but I remember one day we were biking out there and it was a lot of fun, it was just a super fun adventure kind of thing but the price went up for them and I said, "Darn it." I still bought it.

Does that make sense? And they went up again, I was like, "Darn it," and I still bought.

That's a stupid example but do you guys get what I'm saying? Half the time your customers are going to be like, "Eh, whatever." Does that make sense? So this is a cool point that, I think it was Joe Polish that he made. He said, "Most all companies can raise their prices by 10%, afford to lose up to 40%, which is unlikely, and still maintain net profits."

That make sense?...

More money with less clients doesn't hurt if they even leave. Almost all have 80% increase in bottom-line by increasing just by 10%. Does tat make sense? If you increase your prices by 10%, worst-case scenario, let's say 40% of your clients end up leaving, just with a 10% raise, but you're going to get this massive increase in bottom-line revenue because most of your costs are already covered. Does that make sense?

All you're doing is it is you're just literally adding straight to your bottom line because the cost of goods sold, your COGS, your cost of goods sold has already Artie been covered with the other money already. You're just adding 10% of even more cream on for you. That's really all it is. That make sense? So just go add more money on.

Go charge more money and it's actually a lot easier.

Honestly what I did is ... I think it was Pat Flynn I learned this from, I reference a lot of people as you guys can tell. It's because I know that I'm not amazing on my own and neither are you and you should know that. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants.

Anyway, I think it was Pat Flynn that taught ... He was selling something, I can't remember what it is. I think it was an e-book but he said, "Hey, the reason I'm selling it for the type of price that I am, is literally because if I sell it any cheaper people will ask why it's so cheap."

Sometimes cheap hurts you...

Sometime cheap is actually a very, very big hindrance and the reason why ... Let's say you go to a car dealer and you go to this car dealer and you see this beautiful Porsche. Now let's say ... excuse me ... You could tell this is live radio because I'm not editing that out.

Anyway, let's say you go see this amazing car and it's actually on a new car lot. And you go and you pull it up and you saved up quite a bit of money. Let's say you've saved up for quite some time. You've had your eye on this car, you know this car, you know the exact amount of liters that the engine is, you know exact ... You know the car before you bought it.

You have been dreaming about this and you get up there and the guy's like, "Dude, this Porsche ... $5000." You'd be like, "What?" What would be the first thing that you ask? You would probably ask, "Well, what's wrong with it?"

You'll probably ask, "Well how come ... $5,000? Man, I saved up way more. I'm ready to lay down cash on this thing." It's almost a pride thing by that point and the fact that you're not putting the money down is hurting your pride because buying is definitely a pride experience.

I'm not saying proud as in a bad thing but there's some pride to buying. People like to buy and people like to know that what they bought is cool. Does that make sense?

And Pat, the one who was making the point that, "Hey, look ... If you charge prices that are so low you actually will devalue something that could be very valuable." People want to pay money and get good services for things. If they don't, I ask you to change your customer.

So that's the reason why...

That's the reason why ... When I was building funnels for other people I raised from 10 grand to 20 grand because I knew that my funnel was going to make easily that amount in a month and it'd be pure profit for them afterwards. Does that make sense? Just raise your price. Just charge more money. And you'll find that people actually sometimes will respect you more for that. It shows that increase in status, especially if you're a service-based business. It's a lot easier to charge money.

Just charge more money. If you're a product-based business that's fine also.

Charge more money...

If you've ... What's one of the lines Russel always tells me? I think it's from Frank Kern. He said, "If you can't be the cheapest, there is no strategic advantage you have from being the second cheapest, therefore you have to be the most expensive." Does that make sense?

I feel like if you go onto Amazon and you got two different products and they both say "New" but one is like five bucks and the other one's four bucks, you're probably going to by the one that's four bucks. There's no strategic advantage of being the second cheapest.

You've got to go for the most expensive...

Anyway, that's the whole point and sorry for keep going and going and going but I'm just really excited to give the presentation. I think it will be helpful and I'm excited to show some more strategies that we use for local clients. So anyway, it's going to be awesome.

Remember that how you price your product is determined on your ability to sell them. If you feel like you can't sell them, read Extra Secrets. It will teach you how to sell them. Raise your prices by 10% automatically, just go do it right now. You'll make more money and people will actually ... they're probably not even going to bat an eye so it is what it is. Guys I'll talk to you later and yes, let me know if this helps at all. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best Internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-billed sales funnel today.

Click above to listen in iTunes...

The curse and blessing of an entrepreneur is SO much opportunity. Remember your basics though...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

You know it's funny when I record these now, after I do my little intro and I put my intro music in there, I tend to in my mind go, "DeeneeneeneeDee LeDenDenDeDenLenee De". And I start singing along with the actual, even though I haven't even put it in yet. It's just what's in my head.

Hey guys, hopefully the mic quality is okay here for you. I just barely got a boom mic which is crazy. I got my desk set up in my home office. I've got whiteboards all over the place. I finally have ... when I was growing up, I had, uhm, and I'm trying to bring this back ... but when I was growing up, anytime, there was like a quote or something inspiring, or something like cool nugget, even in high school I did this, I would write it down on a piece of paper and I would thumbtack it to the wall.

And I did this for a really, really long time. And there would be anything from business quotes to religious stuff to just inspirational things. It was all about like success-driven quotes, you know, from really cool successful people.

And my wall was littered with it, almost to the point where there was no gaps. There were some gaps, but it was so, so close, you barely could see any wall. And I kind of set up my home office up the same way a little bit. I've got two bookshelves. I'm still finding all the books in our boxes as we've been moving in this new house which has been awesome.

I've got the sweet desk which is super cool.

I've got whiteboards, like I said, all over the place. But what I did is I left this huge area in front of me and to the sides of me, totally open, because I really want to bring back my quotes on the wall.

I enjoy doing that a lot. And it was a cool because I kept things top of mine. Like one of them I've got right here. I think I've talked about this one on the podcast, but this is a cool one, it's from a book called, How The World Sees Me.

Number one, "The world doesn't change for people who sort of care." Number two, You don't know learn how to be fascinating. You unlearn boring. You don't know what I mean. We're already fascinating by, by," ... Anyway, just tons of quotes all over the place.

"To become successful don't change who you are, become more of who you are." "And highlight your differences," ... and things like that.

I put stuff like that all over my walls, and I love it. So, I've got a ton of room here. I'm super excited to jump out and keep filling my walls all over the place.

What's kind of weird for me right now is usually I'm podcasting either into my phone or into my mic or whatever it is, and right now I'm look at a wall. So I'm going to have to get used to this.

You guys, I want to say a cool little success story out here. So when this podcast first started, I was super nervous. You guys may not believe that, but I was actually legitimately scared. I was nervous to get out there and put my voice out there.

I was like, "Do I know enough?"

"Have I done enough things in my life?"

Is anyone actually going to listen to this thing?" And huge fears, and I remember, I think I was kind of distracting myself, preparing lots of podcasts, or putting things together, or thinking that the logo was super important, or thinking ... you know what I mean?

And I was distracting myself.

I finally got to this point where I was, "Okay, I got to launch this thing, right. All right, I just got to do this."

And I launched it. And when I first launched the podcast, there was, I don't know, maybe like fifty people who saw the first episode. And I was emailing the list that I had at the time. It wasn't small, but it was a new channel.

And it was just fifty people that saw the first one, and then there was like eleven hundred downloads the first month. I was like, "Cool!" Eleven hundred downloads the first month of the podcast, I was like, that's really awesome.

Second month I think was fourteen hundred. Third month I think broke two thousand. And it kind of just started scaling. Guys, there has been four thousand episodes, I just looked at the stats, four thousand downloads in the last two days. Okay. This podcast is getting ranked like crazy, and I just wanted to thank you guys for being listeners. I appreciate it.

I even met a handful of you guys again today. Pretty much every day, either a listener is reaching out, or I'm getting to meet you, or whatever it is. I just wanted to thank you guys. I think it's really really cool. I had no idea that it would get this big.

As a has-been, you know respectively, I was through this way bigger podcast than that, but it's just really fun to see that and hear stories of people saying, "I did what you said on the podcast and it's been so freaking cool!" "And I went out there and I did it and it changed my life.".

Like those stories, gosh, it just gets me so excited. I know that a lot of people probably think that I'm crazy what I'm doing here, but whatever, I don't care.

My whole goal this podcast is to share with you cool Sales Funnel stories, and strategies and tactics, and little tips and tricks, and things like that. The things that I'm doing is as I move down my Sales Funnel path as well. And I'm just really thankful for you guys.

Anyways, didn't mean to take five minutes on that, but I just wanted to say that. So, hey, I just had a pretty cool experience. So I began, you guys know I got my start with the online business, doing door-to-door sales, which actually might surprise a lot of you.

As you guys know, for those of you, who I guess, haven't heard that story. Go back and listen to it. If you just start from the beginning I kind of tell that story. But I started noticing, right, that there were these people who are already planning on spending money on pest control, that's what I was selling door-to-door, and I did that for two summers.

First was security, and then I did pest control after that. There were people who already wanted it, right. They were calling billboards. They were calling ads. They were seeking for information.

And I was out there and I trying to convince people who were not planning on not spending money to try and spend money. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so much harder, right.

So, I laughed a little bit because, what was it, like two days ago, you know we've been doing a whole bunch of yard work, we've been getting the house set up, it's been a whole lot of fun, we're totally playing house, it's been awesome. You know we were in an apartment for five and a half years, and now we're finally getting to move into this house, and it's been great.

But, there was a ring on our doorbell. I looked through the little viewfinder that we have there, which is supercool to have that. I don't know how that thing works. It's like a picture. Anyway, I was looking out there and this guy was standing off probably about six or seven paces out. And he had his head down. He had a hat on. And he was turned sideways a little bit. He looked like he was looking at some little pamphlet. And there was something on his phone, or something like that.

And right off the bat, I knew exactly what this guy was doing because that was my move. I did that all the time. I opened the door and he turned around and he goes, "Hey, just wanted you to know we're taking care of your neighbors, and just wanted to see if you guys wanted to, you know, something like half off over here."

And like no other explanation...

I was like, my gosh, that was my pitch. Like the guy's using my pitch. Not that I wrote it, but I was like, he's doing the exact same pitch. And I could not keep the stupid smile off my face. I know it threw him off a little bit because my wife looked around the corner, and she went back and she's just smiling all goofy big. And my sister was still living with us for a little bit of the time there, and she smiled and was walking off.

And he's like, he didn't say anything, but his face said everything, you know, he's like, what the heck is going on here? And I couldn't keep the stupid smile, I was like, yeah okay.

I was trying to play hard. But, I love being sold and I like buying stuff, because I love the sales process. You know, like please continue to bring me through the sales process because it's just fun to have that.

So, I played with him a little bit, actually quite a bit. And I was asking him questions, and he got me out of the house, which is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to change the selling environment. You know think about that with an online term.

It's what I always tell people, if you can, when you're selling high ticket stuff, like call on the phone 'cause it changes the selling environment. People aren't hiding behind the computers. And he's changing the selling environment, and I was walking around the house, and he's pointing stuff out. And I was okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I knew the pitch really well.

I was the number two first year seller for a little while at the company I was working at. And it was awesome. I was killing it. I was making great money as a door-to-door sales guy.

But I mean he was doing all the tricks, like turning sideways, you know, and he would ... I'd say, "no I don't want, I don't want, no thanks." In truth, I totally wanted it. I just wanted to say no to him as many times as I could to see what he would say. Because we have bugs all over the place. Like we got a big yard now. We've got this awesome waterfall in our backyard.

We've got a pretty nice house. Especially for a first house, it's not normal. And I'm aware of that. I feel super blessed and very thankful for that. I've got a few products that are selling really really well. And anyway, whatever.

But we got a big house, you know for a first house, it's pretty big. We've got several rooms that are just empty here still and we've seen bugs, you know there's trees and stuff all over the place, and it's awesome. And we really really liked it.

And it's been fun to be screaming with my little girls, my two little ones, playing around and running around with them, and know that no one's below us or above us, you know, in apartment life.

But anyway, now he's all over the place. And I kept saying no, and then he would like sidestep it and hit me with this other side thing. And I was like, "Is this your first year doing this?" He's like, "Oh, you know, yeah I'm not that good." And I was like, "Okay well what if I wanted to call you, I don't know." So he handed me this card, and I was like "Cool, which number is yours." He's like, "Call that second one that top one's my manager."

And in my mind I was like, this guy is totally the manager and this is not his first year. Like he is doing this so well, he clearly is very good.

And if you sell like one or two things a day in pest control, like you're killing it. You're going to make a huge amount of money by the end of the summer. You know the guys that make three or four sales a day, that's more money than people make in a year, and they do that in a summer, which is why it's so appealing, you know what I mean.

Anyways, so I called him out on it, I was like "Dude, come one." And I was like, "Dude. Come on." I sold pest control, and I was pretty good at it. And this is not your first year. And he goes, "No.". And I go, you are the manager aren't you, and he goes, "Yeah.". And I start calling him out on his bluffs.

I was like, "Dude, I love that objection I gave you and you sidestepped it."

And it was cool because he and I got to sit back, and we started dissecting kind of the way he pitched me. And I was like, "Dude, what I would do, ask more questions when I come out. You hit me so hard. If I didn't know you were a pest control guy already, it was a huge turnoff.

And he's like, "I know, I know it's just you opened the door and all of you guys were smiling at me so cheesy, I didn't know what was going on." I was like, "Oh it's 'cause pest control is kind of what got me started in my current industry, and I've got a soft spot for door-to-door salesman."

I love buying stuff...

I was like, "Dude, I'm going to tell you right now, we need pest control. I'm going to buy it from you. But, I wanted to work you with the sale. I wanted to see what was going on.

And we had a really funny conversation.

And the whole time what he was doing, and what your told to do, and what we learn to do with door-to-door sales, and you should do this with your own sales too, by the way. In fact, I'm thinking about all the cool ways that I can do this. And it's been on my mind ever since.

But what happens is, okay so I bring up an objection, "Oh, I need to talk to my spouse.", or "Oh, is this safe for my kids?". And the first thing you do is you got to agree with them. Because if you come out and you say, no no no, you don't need to talk to your spouse. You know, what does that do, it turns them off. What I'm trying to tell you guys, is think of this in terms of an online sales funnel, okay.

Before I came out and said, oh don't worry about it, like your kids are totally safe. But I didn't really give any stats. Or I could read your body language and see that you really weren't quite buying what I was saying. You know what I mean? You've to be able to give a logical reason for why you're right. But also agreeing with them, it's kind of funny.

Even if you disagree with them, the first thing you do is say, "Okay, yeah, I totally get that. That makes sense." You know, "Hey Steven you look like an idiot, and you're head is a knockoff egg-shaped version of Adam Sandler.", which is kind of his head, and you can go, "Oh, yeah. No, totally I get it, you know, but really it's shaped more like Kevin Costner."

You know whatever it is...

But you could totally disagree with them, the first thing we do, though, is you agree with them, and then spinoff and show how you're right, with stories. And that's how he's trying to sell me, he's trying to sell me using stories the whole way through. And every single time he'd bring it back to this core offer. Well cool, if I could just get the technician the schedule anyways then I can get out of your hair.

It's just while we're here in the neighborhood, 'cause we're spraying your neighbors. Which is true.

But, he's always bringing back to the core offer, every single time, every objection, everything was back to getting this thing on schedule. When can I schedule, when can I schedule, and he's pushing back, back, back, back.

And you guys can probably start to see the point I'm trying to make here. There's a really good book called Good to Grade.  And I think it was in this book. And if it's not I'm so sorry the principle is true and I just can't remember the name of the book.

But I think it was comparing a business to like a hotdog stand. Gosh, I'm so sorry if this is not the right book. It's sounding wrong as it's coming out of my mouth. But just here's the principle okay.

There's a book and it's comparing business to kind of like a hotdog stand. And the point was made, you have a hotdog stand business, meaning, you're not in the business of selling relish. Can you have a hotdog stand business without relish? Yes you can.

Can you have it technically without ketchup or mustard or even a bun? Yes you can. Could you have a hotdog stand business without a hotdog. No. Right?

And the main point that the book was trying to make is you've got to know what your core offer is, and continually push on it over and over and over again. And what the temptation is for a lot of us, is we go build sales funnels, whether offline or online, is that we will go and we will get too obsessed about the relish.

And we will think that we cannot launch a hotdog business until we have the relish, until we have the mustard, until we have the ketchup and buns, and all the options, and all the fixings, and we've got whatever else random stuff you've got, chili sauce, cheese, you got chips, and those are good things to have, but it's not your business.

Does that make sense?...

And so when you're going through, and I know a lot of you guys who are listening to this podcast right now 'cause I've met a lot of you, you're trying to figure what your core business actually is. You're trying to figure out what do I sell? What is my actual value proposition to the word. And what you'll notice. And I want to give piece of feedback on that.

You got to keep it simple...

When you first start out, me, Steven Larson, I am very good at building sales funnels. I know click funnels like the back of my hand. I've literally have dreamt the ClickFunnels editor. I've brainstormed headlines in my sleep.

But I spent so much time in it. I've built so many sales funnel even before I worked for ClickFunnels. I was flat out obsessed with it. Okay, that is my core thing.

When I was speaking at Adcon a few days ago some of the people were like why don't you go out there and you start actually selling, you know get facebook ads going. It's like, "Because I'm on my core offer. I am standing on my peak. I do not want to come off my peak and learn another peak, facebook ads."

Does that make sense. And some of you guys you're getting out there and you're saying, "I've got to learn this. I've got to learn this."

And that might be true, but if it's taking you away from your core offer, then your screwing yourself. All right? You cannot do that. You cannot have the hotdog business without the hotdog. So, learn what the hotdog of your business is. Does that make sense. Learn what exactly it is that you actually offer. And there's some tips for that.

I remember for years I kept thinking for years, "Man, what am I good at?" What am I good at?" Little did I know, or notice at the time, that every single one of the businesses that I was trying and launching had to do with the internet. Little did I know that every single of them had to do with B to B or B to C sales. That's true for every business. But I was hardcore focusing on the sales part itself.

And little that I'd know that all the pieces that I was going through, have literally, they've all lynch=pinned to this one core offer, sales funnels, particularly online. Does that make sense?

I remember when I sat back and I started thinking about that, I was like "Holy crap, I should probably learn some online stuff." You know this is probably like four years ago. I should probably learn some online stuff, because every business that I've been trying up until now is always been online. Always. Every time, without fail. And I was like, "Okay, cool."

And so I stopped doing door-to-door real estate like I was doing, but I stopped doing door-to-door sales in pest control. It's not that it didn't help me, 'cause it helped me like crazy. It's just that I needed to focus on my core offer, right?

That's why I went and hired somebody to do some custom coding. I probably could have learned it on my own. I know a little code on my own. But it's not my peak.

So for you to figure out your core offer. And figure out what the thing is that your actually going to go out and sell. I want you to start thinking about some questions, this is what taught me, I think my dad might have taught me this.

I can't remember...

But he was saying, "Look Steven what is it that you think about, when you have nothing to think about." Does that make sense? I think Tony Robbins calls this like N.E.T. time, no extra time, right, like when you're driving in the car. When you have nothing that your supposed to be thinking about. Like, I was in the car when I was thinking through these questions and deeply you guys I was asking myself these questions every single day many times a day.

Like, "What am I good at? "What am I good at?"...

You know, and you've probably honestly felt that the same. Am I right? You've probably have. And what I started doing just started saying, "Okay, what do I think about when I have nothing that I'm supposed to be thinking about?". And where does my mind randomly play. What's the mental playground that I'm always in?". Sales funnels. Right. It was always online. And I'm like, "Okay cool."

And I took a step forward into the online world. And I was like "Okay, what am I still thinking about, it's like okay, it's like online process, e-commerce mixed with info products. Okay cool, and I took a step forward, and I was like, okay now let me niche down again, now what is it that I'm really, now that I've learned like crazy ..."

And every single time I took a step forward was like this hardcore learning period, where I'd go out and say, "Okay, I've got to learn more about x, y, and z.

I've got to know more about like ... one of the first successful phones I ever built was this MLM funnel. It still makes a grand a week, it's nuts. It's been doing that for a long time which is awesome.

Nice little cash flow business sitting on the side there like that. But, anyway, and I went through these huge learning periods, and I stopped learning on purpose, so that I could go execute. Otherwise, there was too much input, and I was not having any output. Does that make sense?

So, it was cool because I was listening to this sales guy, this door-to-door guy, and he was saying like, "Hey.", he'd overcome every objection. Overcome. Overcome. And he's always bringing it back to the core offer. I was like, "Dude you're doing it right, man. I know that you're not a noob.

You're not new at this stuff. You're not brand spanking new. I was like, you're the manager aren't you? And he goes, yeah. And I was like, come on dude.

Anyway, I totally bought from him and there going to come spray our house tomorrow. Or two days from now. There was a massive spider crawling after my three year old today. And she keeps thinking there are spiders all over and keeps screaming when there's nothing on her. And I feel bad. Hope it doesn't, probably develop a little complex or something, but ...

Anyways, that's my main point guys. I want you to know that you got to figure out what your core offer is. And realize where the relish in your head is. Where's the ketchup and the mustard and the buns? Where is that extra stuff that is nice to have, but is not but necessary parts.

If you can do that, and focus, and learn to say no. That's amazing. I remember, I think it was Seth Godin, yes one of his books called The Dip. I love that book. But in there he talks about how most people who are successful in life what they've done is actually learned how to say no, really, really, really well.

They have learned how to say yes to the right things...

And they have learned how to say no to like 99% of everything else. And it's hard, it's very hard.

I get offered deals like crazy. I mean there's so many places I can take this talent and I'm really excited for and that can be really, really cool. But, I have chosen to plant my feet with ClickFunnels in the time being. To stay here, this high-pressure, high-intensity learning area with ClickFunnels, and it's fun to do projects with Russell, and scratching an itch that I've had for a long time to go making info products which is awesome.

And learn with just the brilliance of Russell right next to me. And it's so cool. Just today we had this cool session. I love it when he comes over. You know my desk is in the same room as his literally. And he'll walk over, and he did that today two times, and he was showing me these maps and these different diagrams. I can't tell you what was on there, it's totally a secret, but just stay tuned and keep a close eye on what ClickFunnels is doing. But it's just cool to have that high-pressure hand right next to me the whole time.

There's one other point I wanted to make with this. It said that every time you add a single product, even just one more skew to your product line, right, one more info product, one more physical product, one more anything, you add 12x the complexity, in the amount of customer service, in the amount of time when you add the fulfillment in, when you add all, like just to support that product is 12x.

And you think about all the time it takes for you to jump from thing, to thing, to thing, to thing. All of the place thinking, no this is the new [inaudible 00:22:26], no this is what's going to make money, no this is what's gonna, and you jump all over the place. That's actually what's keeping you from being successful, 'cause you're adding 12 times the complexity.

Like stop. Figure out what you're main business is, and just focus on that. Just get that done. And you guys are going to love it. That's what I did. That's why the MLM one worked. I said no to everything else. I jumped out at, uh, I guess that wasn't my first successful phone. It might have been my second one. It was one of the earlier ones.

Very, very early ones...

And I focused like crazy, and it took me like six months to build because I was in the middle of college, and I was shooting videos, and I was transcribing, and I was doing all that stuff. Every waking moment I had was about that. And I want you guys to start doing that as well.

Now for those of you guys who have a core business and you guys are actually getting out there and it's thriving, I want you to apply the principle that I talked about like two or three episodes ago about "duct tape marketing".

What are people doing with the product after. You actually sell it to them, and that'll easily guide you into the next product you need to create.

Anyways, I've been going, going, going, but I hope that this has been helpful. I've really a good episode. Bear down on the core offer. Figure out what that really is, right. Russell gets hit up like crazy on tons and tons of these different offers he could go for. Cool opportunities.

You know, keep changing the world and stuff like that...

But, he's drilled down on this core offer...

And because of that, he still gets to make money and change the world at the same time. Right, because he's put the focus in. Anyways guys it's kind of a long episode, and I'm so sorry. It just made me think about that like crazy, like keep hitting the core offer. If you have more than one idea inside of a funnel, and it's not converting well, it's probably 'cause you have more than one idea. Guys, I hope it's okay.

And I hope the sound quality is okay. I have a boom mic now with this cool windscreen. And I can't promise it will all be this awesome-sounding, but I did some tests, and I was like, dang this sounds really, really good.

So, I hope you guys are doing awesome. And I would like to keep hearing some of the stories that have just been so touching, some of the things you guys have said and pushed out, And four thousand downloads in two days, my gosh, thanks so much. It's really ramping up like crazy.

I think it was four thousand downloads total two months ago. Last month was eight thousand, so it doubled. And then it's been four thousand the last two days. It's nuts. So, anyway, I just wanted to keep thank you guys for that, and I had no idea, and it's just very, very touching.

All right guys, get out there, figure out the core offer, and I will talk to you later.

Bye.

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