Not to blame my childhood, but a few early circumstances set me on quite the path. Here's a Mantra of mine...

Hey what's going on everyone this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio and real quick I just want to ask, how did you get started doing what you're doing?

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.

Alright now I know that that's kind of a ... that should be somewhat of an introspective question alright, there should be something that causes you to go like "How did I get here?"

And I hope that that's a question that you continue to ask yourself over and over it's actually been one that my wife and I funny enough have actually been asking about what I've been doing and why I have funnels that I've been working on my own and why is it that I work where I do and why is it ... it's been really cool to kind of work backwards and go "Woah, like if we hadn't made that one choice like we'd not be here" you know or "If we didn't do that one thing" you know or you know what, "if we didn't go down that path which totally failed but even though it failed it still led us here" you know what I mean?

And what was interesting is that's actually been a topic of conversation for us rather frequently over the last little bit here, it's been really really cool to look back and be like "Holy crap, I graduated like a year ago from college" I'm a bit older than the standard graduate okay but I did, I graduated a little bit over a year ago and like holy, man what happened, how did that happen?

What was the big difference, like why is it that I feel like I am just ... Guys I love my life, I love life and I love everything that's going on, I get so excited about everything that's out there, all the opportunity...

Whenever somebody says "Hey I need someone to go do this" or whenever this ... my knee jerk reaction is just to raise my hand because I want to try everything and I'm not trying to just talk about myself here on this podcast, I'm trying to show you guys how I have built successful sales funnels and how I continue to do it both personally and obviously with Russel where I work.

You know what it's been, as my wife and I started going and started dissecting right and going through all these things, this common theme started to bubble up and it's a theme, it's an attitude funny enough. I actually didn't realize ever that this is what I was doing ever but it's turned out to be this really really powerful ... it's turned out to be somewhat of a gift and it actually started when I was really really young.

My dad, and I've told this story a little bit before it's like the second episode ever of this podcast, if you've never heard it that's totally fine but you can go back and listen to it, but my dad had me be what he called the yard manager and we didn't have a small yard, it wasn't massive but I mean it was a good size though, there was a garden, there was a whole bunch of places to weed, there's a whole bunch of ... and it was really really ... anyway, it was a big task.

He said, I'm the oldest of six kids, and he said "Stephen, you're the oldest, I get it, but you are the oldest and you're the only one that I can ..." anyways I was deemed as the yard manager first obviously being the eldest and what that meant is he would have me go hire my siblings, he didn't tell me how to do it but I literally would write hiring contracts, I think I was 14 and I would write these contracts to hire my siblings for certain jobs, hey sibling number two would you please mow the lawn every week, that job is contracted at $13 every week or something like that, you know what I mean?

Then I'd go to the next sibling, could I contract you to do this? And they would sign it and there's literally an interview and it sounds so cheesy but oh my gosh like think about what that did.

Then I'd go to the next sibling and I'd do it and the work would get done, or if it didn't get done I'd have to pick up the slack, I was the contractor so to speak and that's how we set it up and my dads only point of contact for the yard was me and so when something happened or something didn't happen or if there was something out of whack he would come to me and then I would go to my hirees you know and I would go to my employees so to speak and I'd go talk to them and I'd say "Hey do this better, do this better" and obviously the sibling environment came around and said at times that we would fight about it you know and there was many renegotiations of contacts but whenever I wanted to get paid I had to go create an actual invoice and I'd turn it into my dad and then he would write it back and it was really, it was interesting, because while that story is cool the main point of it is that I would come to him and I would say "Dad, I don't know what kind of fertilizer to get"

And he would go "Oh interesting, yeah what do you think?" And I wasn't expecting that, I was not expecting that question at all, guys 100% I promise that this relates 100 and a bazillion percent to building sales funnels to please stick with me what I'm saying here okay, this thread after like months of introspection, this is what it came down to.

My dad would say "Well hey what do you think" and I'd go "I don't know" he's like "Huh, guess you gotta go find that out huh?" And it'd be like "Crap, are you serious that's all the help I get?"

And I remember feeling a little bit frustrated and annoyed and totally vulnerable and I would go and I'd just kind of get on google or I'd ride my bike over to home depot and I would price out stuff and shovels and whatever the yard needed and I'd go back to him and I'd say "Hey I think we should get this one because of this" and he'd go "Great, sounds good" and like no contest it'd be like wow okay.

Sometimes he'd ask "Does that fit within the bounds of the budget I've given you for the yard?"

And I'd be like "Well I think so". Repeatedly, over and over again, he stopped giving me answers and it was something that started very young in my life and I know that it's one of the major reasons for what has transpired since I was 14 and very very young he stopped answering all sorts of questions, he never got me a job, and I started working very very young, with actual jobs and I'd go, I would be the one going at the job and I did a crap ton of labor jobs and I'm so thankful that I did them, they taught me to work in crappy environments and make the best of it and bloom where I was planted which is huge.

Holy crap it's huge and then I'd go onto the next thing, and repeatedly over and over and over again this whole, you know I would ask my dad "Hey, I want to get a car, how should I get it?"

And he'd go "How do you think you should get it?" You know, it wasn't condescending at all he was truly asking okay cool, what's your plan?

He would have me being the one going through like hey, look at the different cars here you go so which one do you think you should get? I'd be like "Probably this one?" "Cool, go for it" you know and that was it, there was no other warm fuzzies yeah great job, or bad job, you know what I mean.

If it was a really critical thing he'd say "Hey you know what, maybe go for this or this or this, or he'd teach me and stuff like that but the large bulk of decision making was in my hands from a very early age and I've realized that it's one of the major things that set me apart army wise, set me apart school wise amongst my colleagues, even amongst some of my professors right.

Amongst so many scenarios the rest of my life the ability to solve my own problems and it's not that I know the answer, it's that I hunt the answer okay, I get out and I work my freaking butt off and I just find the answer, get out of my way I'm gonna figure it out, right.

This whole mentality started out and I didn't realize that's what he was doing and honestly I don't know if he knew that's what he was doing, I think the concept comes from the book Seven Habits of High Effective People, he did that with his kids with their yard and I don't know if that's why he did it but I'm glad he did but it started this whole thing.

I was not very good at school because I didn't want to be...

I didn't realize that was the reason why but I realize that now and I didn't want to go solve those problems, I didn't want to ... I barely graduated high school, I figured out how to learn when I was in college and that was great, I ended up getting mostly straight As almost the entire time except for like one semester which is awesome you know but guess how I did it?

I was a self solver, I figured it out on my own, it's not that I was smart enough to figure it out, it wasn't that I didn't halt every other activity until I found that answer, that's not it at all. I kept everything else going that could go forward until I found that answer, then I kept moving forward.

Does that make sense?

When I needed to figure out "Hey, how do I post something on youtube?" I would figure out "Hey, how do I build a website?" I went on the internet and I googled it, I found a tutorial and I just did it. I put the tutorial on one side of the screen and then I remember I was in word press the first time I did it for a client I pulled up WordPress and I just started building.

I would watch three minutes and I'd pause it and go do what he said, and then I'd play for three minutes pause it and go do what he said. It took me 8 hours, something like that, to build the first one even though it was like a one or two hour tutorial just because I was doing it with him the whole time. That's literally how I built my first website, was watching a tutorial for a client.

I don't know that he knew I was doing that, but anyway but it worked. That was the problem set infront of me, I did not stop just because a problem arose. You don't stop, you don't ... I get so animated about this topic because I'm starting to get questions sent to me over Facebook, I'm not starting to I've been getting them like crazy, people ask me things like "Steven, how do I move a button from the left side to the right?"

Freaking look it up!

It's not my job to solve that problem for you, you know what I mean? And it's the same thing, that's the mentality that I hope everyone is developing, that's what it means to be a business, that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, you are a 100% frontlines only person who owns it problem solver. That's it. How did I figure out how to build at click funnels?

I didn't learn when I was at click funnels, I was building for people way before Russel ever knew who I was, way before I ever got hired, way before I ever went to his event.

I went and I got clients, I said "Hey here's this cool funnel I'm gonna build it for you" and I knew just enough, there was just enough light infront of where I could see for me to go offer that to him and I knew there would be questions but I knew I could figure it out and again guys please understand I am not tooting my own horn but it's enough of a theme that keeps coming up I just feel like I have to share this, you've got to be a self solver.

I tell it to the two comic club students, I tell it to everybody I know. You need to solve your own problems! It's not that you are the one solving them, it's that you're hunting them, you're searching for them.

One of the biggest issues that I find over and over and over again with people who build sales funnels or entrepreneurs in general or people who are not quite entrepreneurs and are trying to break into being an entrepreneur or they've never actually made a dollar online or they're trying to create an extra source of income or or whatever it is, they're not obsessed enough.

They're not obsessed enough, you have got to be a monomaniac, when somebody turns around and they say "There's really online like three of the eleven business partners that I had in college that I still keep up with" and it's not that again, it is not at all that I'm bashing them, it's just there's this common theme that I saw every single time.

We would go and we'd meet, we'd have this sweet idea, a legitimate opportunity anywhere from ... any industry you can imagine, we tried to sell anything and it was awesome, my whole college was littered with that. I learned more doing that than I did in my actual major and you can expect that from anything you put your mind to.

What would end up happening, and it was true for any group project, it was true for ... things in the army, anywhere at all...

Not like this only happens in college, happens anywhere, at any time, any place. This is like human behavior that most of the time when there is something new that pops up, something unexpected, something that's like "Hey, here's a piece of adversity you should probably stop" 99% of people stop.

Don't stop, okay, if you stop, you're not obsessed enough, you didn't want it in the first place. That's my opinion, huge opinion, but I believe it to be true. I put my foot down behind that because I just holy crap like ... anyway, I wrote down a few notes here.

There's a few points I just wanted here with this is that you have to understand that when you start moving towards something it's like pushing a boulder up a hill, or even down a hill. It takes a lot of effort to get that thing to move at first, tons of efforts, like 80% of the fuel for a rocket is spent in the actual launch, right? Tons of it. Then this really weird thing happens, most of the people will give up just off of that first initial push, right?

They were in love with the idea of it rather than the activity of doing it, and what ends up happening is as you start to push this boulder forwards, this huge heap of work right, it becomes this sanctifying thing for the entrepreneur.

What it does, it starts to almost so to speak baptize them into the realm of entrepreneurship as they start to actually solve the problems because there's new problems every single day "How do I do this, how do I post to Instagram, you know, how do I get these videos done?"

You know how I learned how to video edit? YouTube. You know how I learned to do all the sound editing I'm doing right now? YouTube. You know how I learned to do what podcast intros are, how to put together a sales funnel right. YouTube and a combination of support docs on Click Funnels. I have read probably 90% of the support docs at Click Funnels, way before I ever worked there.

That's one of the reasons I work there. I know the system so dang well. That's why I've read a lot of the nitty gritties. Be a self teacher, you've gotta be a self teacher and what ends up happening is you push that boulder forward.

Number one, all these people back away. Seth Goden calls that the dip, great book called The Dip. Then this other thing starts to happen too, the boulder starts to move a little bit easier on its own right, a little bit of momentum starts to come together and really interesting things start to happen. It's almost like the world tries to say "Oh you want to go do that thing?

You want to go do that thing? Oh that's so cool, well we're gonna test the crap out of your will first and then once we see you're serious, lets go ahead and start placing little cool things in your path to help you."

Resources start coming out of the woodwork. It has happened every single time I have ever built a funnel or a business or anything ever whether it's my own project or someone else's, number one there is always unexpected conflicts that happens. We're tryna launch a certain kind of funnel right now. It's taken like six weeks, I'm super frustrated they're not out yet but it's because there's this one problem that is kicking my butt and I have got to figure it out and I know I'm going to figure it out I just haven't yet.

It's like a weight on my shoulders, I've got to figure it out. I suffer from insatiable curiosity, I've got to fix the problem. I suggest you suffer the same, please suffer from insatiable curiosity okay?

You've gotta be in love with it, you've got to obsess over the answer. Each individual answer, not just the outcome, make a million bucks, be successful, get on the cover of Forbes! You know?

Whatever it is, those are the outcomes, everyone falls in love with those really easy to fall in love with those, much harder to fall in love with the process. I'm asking you to fall in love with the process, because as you move forward, as the boulder moves forward resources start coming out of the wood work that you didn't know were there. You're like "Huh" so you can start to move them and use them and the boulder starts to move a little bit quicker.

You're pushing hard, as hard as you were before but you're actually starting to see some progress and you're like "Dang" and other people who fell out, they try to jump back on the bandwagon, happens every single time, I always get people "Oh did you need help with that?" Like no, I needed help with it at the beginning but you left and now you're just trying to backpack on what I've done.

Anyway what always happens is like this third stage, this third stage happens where this second round and this whole thing repeats over and over again in different areas but it's like this third round of testing your will comes out again, it's like okay push this big boulder, solve some of the immediate problems, little bit of momentum happens, resources come up and you're like "Wow cool, I didn't know I got this, wow there's actually ... alright sweet" it happens every time and then after that there's like this another big round of distraction that comes out and every time I start on some kind of new thing that I think is a cool business opportunity, it's the weirdest thing.

If I'm not trying to build something, there's no opportunities finding me, it's the weirdest thing...

The moment I start getting myself an action though and I say "I'm gonna go after this, just this one thing" tons of business opportunities and deals and stuff like that, they all just come out of the wood work and I was talking to my wife about it the other day like "It's so funny, I put my foot down, I'm gonna go after this one thing, just this one thing."

And she's like "Yeah and you started getting all these things coming to you again and again" I was like "Yeah it happens every time" then I gotta practice saying no and it's like the world is testing me saying "Do you really want that or can I distract you with this?

Can I get you with some shiny object syndrome here you go". It happens every time. It's kind of funny to watch it.

I just expect it now, any time I'm gonna go after this one thing, like boom and then I gotta say "Nope, not my plan" I truly believe that the ability to be a self solver, to obsess and fall in love with the process, not just the outcome is one of the biggest keys to being successful in anything. Building sales funnels, anything. I'm not a coder.

I know some code because I self taught it when I needed it. I just solved the immediate problem infront of me, I didn't just go try to learn code for nothing. I learned code ... when I say code I mean like CSS like really baseline stuff, I would not consider myself a coder programmer at all but the stuff that I did learn was the stuff I needed to use right then, I just YouTube it. I just googled it. Guys I freaking YouTube and googled my entire major.

I went and I took all my books, I got the PDF versions, I loaded them into this thing that spoke them to me at 400 words a minute, I would listen for three things I could rant about and that's how I wrote all my papers.

That's it. That's how I did it. I hacked my homework. That way I could go build sales funnels. That's the reason why. It worked. Anyway, yeah. There's a few other points I wanted to make with this but I'm running on 19 minutes now and I'm trying not to have these things be too long.

When I first started this podcast someone was like "I love that your podcasts are only like 12-15 minutes. They're perfect, any longer they wouldn't be awesome" but it's funny because I feel like I've gotten better so there's more good things to say and someone the other day was asking like "Hey, how long should my videos be, how long should my podcast be, how long should any content piece be?" And I said "As long as you're not boring, the moment you get boring it's time for you to stop."

So anyway, for fear that I am sounding like a broken record, I'm probably gonna end it here but just please know that I take this very seriously that when I would partner with somebody in the past or when I would do a project with someone or anything, they would not try to solve the problems that arose first by themselves, I would immediately fire that person.

I'm not kidding, I would do that with VAs, I do that with anybody. You're telling me you can't go to freaking google, the library of the world and just do a simple search try and figure it out yourself first before you bring it to me and solve the problem on your own?

Like holy crap, I don't want you on my team...

That's how I built it on college, that's how I do it now. Half the time, there's been so many ... god I can't even tell you how many times we will be at work and Russel will be like "Hey I gotta have this done, I gotta have this done". Sometimes, especially at the beginning, I had no idea how to pull off what he was asking me to do. I didn't!

Most of the time I would tell him, look I don't know how to do that but I know I can figure it out. Give me like 15 minutes, I'll watch a few youtube videos to get the just, I'll figure out the rest of the way.

I build the parachute while I'm falling and anyway, so if you don't feel like you can self solve, if you can go answer the problems that are popping up infront of you on your own without going to other people, my guess is you are not actually in love with the process itself, you're in love with the outcome, that's fine to be in love with the outcome, but honestly I was running like ... I'd run the two mile in 11 minutes and 54 seconds, is that Olympic speeds?

No but that's really fast...

When I was doing that, I didn't look at the finish line, I had to look at this three steps infront of me. It's the same thing with building stuff, you can't just start looking at the finish line all the time, you're gonna eat it. Anyway, be a self solver guys and just go and understand.

If you're going to ... it's fine to blow up support and ask them "How do I do this, how do I do this?" That's why they're there but man, look at freaking google, it's all there! It's how I learned everything. It's not that I know, I know it's not that I'm smarter! I know it is nothing to do with that. I barely graduated high school, that's not a joke.

I got straight D's in all math...

I got straight D's in all foreign language...

I got straight D's in almost every single subject it's not a joke, 60.1%. That's not a joke. You know the A's I got in, extra curricular stuff.

Yearbook. Stuff like that, theater, stage, singing. You guys don't know that about me, anyway, those are things and for the rest of my life it's just been, solve the immediate problem infront of me and that's the major reason I stopped reading just for the sake of reading for such a long period of time. I realized I needed to solve the challenge directly infront of me and stop distracting myself with reading the next book, taking the next course.

It's not that I have nothing to learn. It's that it gets distracting and you stop executing, you start getting slower than the other guy. Anyway I'm definitely talking too much now. Hey guys hopefully that helped, go be a self solver 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 funnels for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/FreeFunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today!

Here's a look at some of my favorite selling methods AND how I'm using them in my funnels.

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.

Hey, hope you guys are doing good. The last little bit here's been a little bit busy, we've had 4th of July, we had a bunch of family over. We went and bought a ton of fireworks. We blew a whole bunch of stuff up, and it reminded me a lot of my childhood. We used to take them all apart and make our own fireworks. It was not safe, but it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with family over, and it's just been busy.

There was a lot of people here just enjoying the house, enjoying the place we just moved into, and it's just been great. It's been a good experience the last little bit. I just literally have not had the time to podcast. It's 11:30 at night right now, and I just decided I should probably push one back out there.

I wanted to show you guys something really cool that has been on my mind the last little bit. This will probably be a quick episode, but I just wanted to share with you this really cool epiphany that I've been having about "The Perfect Webinar Script."

Now if you don't know what I'm talking about, "The Perfect Webinar Script" is the script that Russell Brunson has put together to help basically sell anything. Now it's perfect webinar script, but we've often mentioned how much we wish that it wasn't called "The Perfect Webinar Script" because it can be used for any kind of sales; whether you're doing stage presentation, whether you're doing any kind of obviously webinar, of course, video. Honestly guys, I use "The Perfect Webinar Script" on you guys, on this podcast, almost every single episode.

You probably just don't know that's what I'm doing...

I always come up with a story, and the story is structured similar or the same way. Usually there's a wall, my back is up against a wall, there's inner and external desires, there's conflict along the way.

As I go toward the main thing I think I want, there's this side transformation that happens.

You know what I mean? We go through the hero's journey, and I don't always hit them all perfectly every single time. If I was crafting an actual sales message I would, but I use that as a guideline for anything. You can use "The Perfect Webinar Script" for any kind of communication with any of your people at any time.

What's really been fun is a lot of you guys know that I'm the coach for the "2 Comma Club Coaching Program" of Russell's, and it's been a lot of fun. Every Friday I'll get on and typically there's anywhere from 30 to 70 people on the phone calls, a big range back and forth, but 30 to 70 people.

I'm there for about four hours, four solid hours and I've done that for probably four months now. Each week on Fridays for about four months now and it's been way, way past 40 hours of me and our little sound recording booth right next to where Russell's office is, and it's really awesome.

I go sit over there and it's funny, there's always an air conditioning vent right above my head, it doesn't stop, and it's way too powerful for the little tiny room, so I'm always numb by the end of the four hours, but it's a lot of fun, I really enjoy it. There's a bunch of people that get on and what happens is they'll come submit all their questions, "Hey, how does this work here? Should I use this script? Is my funnel set up correctly here? Is it this, this, this, this?" There's tons of questions that I get.

Hundreds that we've gone back and indexed...

Over the last, especially the last about six weeks, through this last group that's just gone through it, there's been this realization that I've been having more and more and more. You might look at this and might go, "Okay, Stephen duh, like, I get it. That make sense. How come you didn't see that, Steve, okay?"

But for me, I just barely saw this...

It takes me back to when I was doing door to door sales. I know I reference that a lot, but it really was a massive boot camp, so to speak, on how to sell, how to approach people and how to handle objections. Obviously you've got to do that in a sales funnel, this is Sales Funnel Radio.

I remember there was a guy that brought me to the side once, and he said, "Stephen, look," and he was actually the guy that recruited me into the company to go sell for them for that summer. He brought me to the side, and he goes, "Look, Stephen, here's the big secret. People already know whether or not they want the thing, whatever you're selling. They already have made the decision. You don't need to convince them to have the product, yes, or no. What you're trying to do is you're trying to help them come to a logical conclusion, so they can close themselves.

That's it. That's the whole thing. That's the whole secret.

You are not there to create desire.

You can amplify desire...

You can take someone's desire and you can blow it up, or you can poke at it a little bit and say, 'Remember, here's desire. Remember you do want this, remember, see,' then you start logically closing them, 'Hey, you should get it now because the price is going to go up,' or, 'You should get it now because you know what,' well, some pest control, 'We're spraying the neighbors so since we're here,' and you start logically showing them how that fits. How the decision to actually buy your product works." He's like, "That's the big secret, man."

When I was speaking at Dan Henry's event at AdCON in Florida, he actually had a whole speech about that very thing. That very, very same thing. I still remember the story, it was really, really cool. It was all about the same time. This whole thing started forming in my mind, like, "Oh, my gosh. Here's a connection, here's a connection, here's a connection. Wow! That works!"

Looks like we've been doing that all along, and I didn't even know it. What was cool was Dan Henry stood up, and he starts telling a story about when he was, I hope he's okay to tell me this, I'm sure he is ... Had a great interview with him, by the way, on this podcast go back and listen to it if you want to.

He told a story about when, I think he was selling Dish or TV services or something like that, and he was the top salesman in Dish; they'd sell two, three, four services a day and he would do 17, insane amounts.

These are sales funnels. Please try and think how you can use this inside of sales funnels. It's been really helpful, it's actually simplified the sales process for me a lot. Just work with me for just a second here. Stick with me. What he would do is he would stand up and go to these big conventions, and he would basically, as people would walk up to him, and they'd walk by the booth that they had set up there, people would walk by the booth and all he would do is he would stand up and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" and they'd go, "What?" and he'd go, "Get out of here," and he'd wait for the next person, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?"

They'd be like, "What? No, no." He'd be like, "Okay, okay, nevermind, get out of here." He just kept saying that over and over again, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "You know what, I did and ..." and he would go, "Oh, hey, it's fine. We got a form right here. You'll have it done in two minutes. While you're here it's super easy, and we got some cool thing.

Just do it right now," and he'd hand them a piece of paper. He'd hand them the form with the pen right there.

Did he try and convince them? No. But he would do that literally every single day for every single person and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "Did you forget to sign up for Dish" He just kept asking that over and over and over again. He said, "Guys, it's the reason I don't split test my ads, I split test my audiences. I keep my ad so targeted that the right person who hears that will be the easiest lay down sale."

He's going and he's grabbing the low hanging fruit that a lot of times we'll go and overthink. That was one of the first things. You take what he was saying about keeping the message in such a way that you're just tapping into desire that already exists. People already want to buy. They already want to buy. They always are ready to want to buy.

Buying is such an emotional thing. We get this dopamine release, we love to buy stuff. We actually physically get somewhat of a high from when we buy stuff. We all want to feel that. We don't want to feel sold because we feel taken, we feel cheated, we feel cheap, but we do want to go buy. We want to make that decision on our own and come to that conclusion on our own.

The way we do that is we start to logically close people and hopefully the message resonates with people who've already decided whether or not to buy it. Think about that.

Then you think about what the other guy was saying with door-to-door sales. "Look, man, they already have made the decision. They already know. All you're doing is you're trying to help them see why it's a good decision to do it now. Do it right now. Take action now. There's no time line. Nobody's ever going to do anything." Then you mix that with what Dan Henry was saying at his event, and it just amplifies that.

Taking the same message and just pounding it over and over and over and that's how he would get ... I think he got to go meet the VP of Dish and all this stuff because he blew away so many records with that kind of thing.

Coming back to the "2 Comma Club Coaching," the last little bit, we've been focusing heavily on webinars. How to create a million dollar webinar. That's part of what my job is I go and help them tweak the message, tweak the funnel, put all the stuff together, launch the thing. What happened? How do we fix it? Sitting where I am, it's a cool experience to go back and forth with them and do that. That's what the "2 Comma Club Coaching" is. There's a ton of other stuff but that's what the Q&A section is.

One of the reoccurring things that I've noticed over and over again with the way people write their pitches, or the way the people will write scripts. This is true for webinars, it's true for trip wire funnels, it's true for back end funnels where the really high ticket things versus low ticket, anything at all.

Someone sent a funnel to me that said, "Hey, Stephen, check this out." I went and I checked it out and on the copy, the actual sales copy itself, was a whole lot of logical reasons. There was nothing else on there but a whole bunch of logical reasons why I should buy the thing.

A lot of people write copy that way. A lot of newbs...

A lot of people who don't know how to write copy or people who don't know how to write any kind of sales messaging or have never done sales at all before. A lot of them will handle sales that way. They'll get straight into the logic of it. The problem when you do that is that you haven't tapped into the emotional side.

This is where Russell helps and bridges the gap like crazy. Especially with "The Perfect Webinar Script." He says, "Guys, look. Buying is an emotional experience. First, we've got to appeal to the emotions. Let's load up the front end of this pitch with a ton of stories." That's what "The Perfect Webinar Script" is. What Russell teaches and what "The Perfect Webinar Script" ... It's so funny, when I spoke at Dan Henry's event, I used "The Perfect Webinar Script." There wasn't a pitch at the end. When I spoke at LCT, there wasn't a pitch at the end, but it was "The Perfect Webinar Script."

Teaching and breaking and rebuilding belief patterns in general works for anything. Any kind of content and communication that you put out there.

The huge realization that I had recently about it is that when you ... There's a great book I'd recommend out there called "Pitch Anything." I don't remember the author but the book, "Pitch Anything" also illustrates a huge part of what I'm trying to say right here. When you think about the sales process, and I walk up to someone at their door, and I knock on the door and what's the first thing they're thinking inside their house?

"Wait a second. Who the heck is at my door? Should I be worried? Should I be nervous? Is there someone out there? Is there a killer? Is there a robber? Is someone going to come in and take from me? Is it the tax guy? Should I run?" You know what I mean. There's tons of question and red flags that get raised in someone's head when they're not expecting someone to come to the door.

They come to the door and what's the first thing? If I stand up and go, "What's up, man? I got this thing and this, this, this," and logical close, logical close, logical close. The very first thing that person's going to do is they're going to start backing up.

They're going to go, "Let me put as many walls up. How can I get rid of this guy? There's something on the stove. My wife's calling me. Not interested at this time." They'll just shut the door, shut the door, shut the door. That sucks but it happens in any kind of sale, even if they wanted it.

What the book, "Pitch Anything" goes through is it talks about and says, "Hey look, literally every single one of us has got these instincts on survival that have to be met before any kind of buying decision can be made." These are things that have been part of all humanity in our brains for millions of years, they make up the brain.

As soon as the sale starts, actually not even the sale, as soon as I approach anybody, the very first things that are going through their head are, "Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to ... Should I run? Should I fight? Can I eat it? Can I mate with it?"

You know what I mean? It's all the primal instincts that are just meant to keep me alive and there's all this subconscious decisions that are starting to fly through my head. I don't even know that I'm making those, but I do that every single time. Really fast, quick judgements on whether or not I should fight, flee, eat. You know what I mean?

Anytime I meet anyone, any new situation in general, we're constantly accessing through what the book, "Pitch Anything" calls the croc brain. We got to get through the croc brain. As soon as we help someone come down with all those different red flags, and we help them pull down the walls and pull down the barriers, they have to do that.

I can't do that...

If I try and do that it will feel like an infringement, and they will back up. But if I can help them convince themselves that everything's safe, everything's fine, this is new, it's exciting, there's novelty here. If it's boring, that's another wall. It can't be boring, that's another wall, run away. But if it's new, it's novelty, but it's not so new that it's scary, it's out on the fringes then, "Hey, who's this guy at my door?"

What Russell then teaches is that, a bridge from the book, "Pitch Anything" to "The Perfect Webinar Script" is why don't we tell some stories? The person I'm talking to might have some false beliefs. They may want the product but have a few questions.

I'm going to figure out what these people actually need, and I'm going to go answer that actual question. I'm sorry, I'm diving deep a little bit into a few different concepts here, and I hope that this is making sense.

I've talked for 14 minutes. I said this is going to be a fast episode. I hope this is making sense. I hope really this is helpful because a lot of the sales funnels that are being sent to me, honestly, an overwhelming amount of them I just can't look at them, but a lot of them what's actually happening I've noticed is that everybody ... You cannot make a sale by only going logical.

Even when people think, "Hey, I'm an engineer. Hey, I'm a software guy. Hey, I'm an architect. Hey, I'm a ..." Like the brainiacs of the world when they're self-proclaimed brainiacs of the world, even it they think that they need to be closed logically, they still have got to be closed emotionally.

Everybody makes the decision emotionally to buy first. Well, guess what? That happens before what Russell calls "The Stack." Before you actually get into the price, before you actually get into what the offer is, before you actually start asking for somebody's money, they have already decided if they want the product.

The price is almost irrelevant...

The price is almost always irrelevant. It's almost always a matter of whether or not you broke and rebuilt that person's belief patterns to accept your message. To accept the fact that the product does fit their life. If you have rebuilt their belief patterns that strongly, by the time you get to what Russell calls "The Stack," and if you don't know what I'm talking about go to perfectwebinarsecrets.com or join twocommaclubcoaching.com and you'll run through that and you'll see.

Hey, look first we're going to focus on false beliefs then, then ... Just so you know, Russell, when he does his perfect webinars, he doesn't start the actual logical closing phase until about an hour into the actual webinar. An hour. A whole hour. Crazy, ridiculous, that's amazing.

A whole hour...

The first hour is spent on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. The first hour. Then only 20, 30 minutes is spent on the logical part of it. But that's not how most of us sell.

Most of us think we got to get out there, and we got to start logically closing people. It's completely 180, it's totally the opposite. We'll start logically closing, "Well, it's on sale. Well, you know what, since you're here. Well, you know what, why don't we have you come over and just try it on?" You know what I mean? It's all these logical closes, "Well, it has these features. Well, it's better than that other competitor. It's better than that other competitor. We have this, this and this."

He's like "Oh, well I didn't even know that was an option so thank you for telling me about your competition."

Hopefully, this is starting to make sense, what I'm saying. There's really three major phases of the sale. Three major phases. Now this is what I found, this is what I've used. There's three major phases. Number one, you've got to get past their immediate knee-jerk reaction subconscious croc brain.

Number one, you've got to get past the croc brain. You got to get past all of the ancient parts of the brain that just keep us alive. You got to get past that. Part of that, I said, is meaning you can't just be boring.

That's another wall. It's still got to be new...

It's still got to be novelty. It's still got to be things that are interesting. Number one, you got to get past the knee-jerk gatekeeper of our brains.

Number two, break and rebuild belief patterns using story. The belief patterns, the false beliefs that they most likely have, you're making stories that directly go against what their false beliefs are, so you can break and rebuild the belief patterns.

Number three, that's when you start doing the logical closes, and it's typically the shortest phase.

I hope that helped. I hope that made sense to you. That was probably the most technobabble I've ever said on a podcast ever, and I'm so sorry. I hope that it made sense what I was trying to say.

Back to door-to-door sales. When I started learning more about the product that I was selling at door-to-door sales, my sales plummeted, they plummeted. It's because I started logically closing people. That was it. I got really good at getting past that gatekeeper, that part of the brain.

I got really good at getting past all those, the knee-jerk reactions, keep us safe, croc brain. But I was not at all, at all, spending any effort at all in breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. When they would ask me, I would barf fact all over them, all over them. I would barf so much fact all over them they would end up closing the door just to get me to shut up.

Man, it sucked so bad because I was selling like hotcakes until I started learning about our product. I think it's such a key lesson with that.

That's all I wanted to share with you guys. These are the three phases of the sale and it's, honestly, one of the major reasons why we have sales funnels. Number one, what are you going to do, we got to break ... This guy's actually here to help me. We give them a free thing at the very first part. We're starting to bring down those walls.

Number two, let's go with star story solution scripts. Let's bring in a character. Let's bring in a cool story. Let's go talk about a problem and a cool solution. That kind of script works really well as usually an up sale after they've already made the first commitment.

Then we start logically closing them. You know what I mean?

It doesn't work out perfectly that way, but all I'm saying is when we go out, and we start to logically close people, it is the easiest way to just lose the sale off the bat. Of all three of those phases, in my opinion, number two is the most important. Number two is the most important.

Number one we usually take care of subconsciously, we don't even realize we're doing it most, of us, if we're socially adequate people. That's all I've got for you guys, three phases. First, get the walls down then epiphany, working on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns, and the third part is the logical close. That's "The Stack."

Guys hopefully that is helpful, and I'll see you guys in the next one. I'm excited for you guys to go implement stuff. Please, honestly, let me know if that helps. Usually I don't do this form of podcast. I usually go into a little bit more, this is a different kind of style.

I should say it that way. I would love to know whether or not this actually was awesome and this helped.

That's how I look at the sales, that's how I look at the phases. It's not always perfect but that guideline right there, knowing that those are the steps that the individual needs to go through, super helpful. Totally changed the way I sell and definitely has helped me online a lot.

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.

I'm the "Anti-Renaissance Man! If you know anything about my message, I'm pretty against doing more than one thing/business at a time. I believe success comes to the "mono-maniac".

Oh, what's going on? How's it going guys? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a sweet episode of 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.

Now legally I don't know if I was allowed to include some of the soundtrack from Pirates of the Caribbean, but if the government comes after me I'll just ask them about their failing business. Ho, ho, how about them apples?

Hey. Hope you guys are doing great. Hope you guys listened to that last episode with Alison Prince, that honestly, that was such a good episode, oh my gosh. Anyway I thought it was great.

Hey, hope everything's going great with you guys. The last little bit here has been crazy busy. Not that that's any different at all than any other time so I guess I should say everything's normal, but I guess anyways it just feels like there's a lot going on because some holidays, you know, 4th July has been going on.

I actually have been able to detach a little bit and take a little bit of a break, which I highly recommend everyone does that every once in a while. It's a weird feeling, but I literally had to not bring my computer with me and we went to Pirates Cove, what?

Russell Brunson the man was super nice and did not need to do it at all actually. But he invited my wife and I to this place in Vegas. I can't remember what it's called, Boulderville, Boulder, something like that.

Anyways it's like 30 minutes outside Vegas. Apparently one of the guys who owns Nuskin is one of the top guys in ... he bought up all the old Pirates of the Caribbean stuff and ride stuff from Disney when they shut down the old Pirates of the Caribbean and they remodeled it for the new pirate stuff. Anyway he bought up all the old ... so you got all the old, like the dog in the corner and all the little pirates and stuff in their cages and things like that, and it's all over the place.

The guy built ... I mean he bought like five mansions all in this little neighborhood and built pools and water slides and stuff like that in between. It was awesome, it was so cool.

We were for several days just hanging out there and they got this crazy fast water slide that we were flying down that thing, I still have scabs all over my elbows for how fast we were going down that thing, it was super fun. Soon as the kids all went to sleep we were just hauling down.

Anyways it was a lot of fun, we did a lot of things.

It was honestly just a lot of play and it was good to detach and I recommend everybody do that every once in a while.

I have a hard time doing that because a little bit of ADHD in my head but it is anyway super helpful. My wife and I though, we drove around, we swan and played, we watched movies, we did nothing. I took a nap, that was the weirdest thing, I don't do that. It was great and we went on ... The Hoover Dam is like 10 minutes away from where we were so Lake Mead was right there.

We were over at the Hoover Dam, we were like, "Hey we should do a helicopter ride over here. And let's go do that, let's go to the helicopter tour."

And so we did. We booked it and we drive over early the next morning for this cool helicopter tour around the Hoover Dam. I had no idea it was that big first of all, I had no idea, and that it was built around the Great Depression, you guys didn't know this was going to be a Hoover Dam history lesson but I just took a sweet tour.

100 people died making it, like I had no idea it was that big...

So we get in this helicopter. Well I should say beforehand we drive up and the rental car we got was just super awesome sweet Camaro that was all tricked out. It was fun. We blew money, we had a lot of fun though. So we drive up to this little shack where we waited for this helicopter to come [inaudible 00:04:14] right next to this helipad, right.

It was super hot out, we go inside and we were waiting for our turn to get on this helicopter, and they're going through little safety videos and things like that.

It was so funny because we walked inside this little shack thing and there's like three guys in there and at first they're spraying this stuff on the windows and then they take this orange squeegee, then they're wiping it off again, and then they would do it again, so they spray it again, spray the window, and then squeegee it again.

And they do that again. This guy must have cleaned this window like I don't even know, like seven times. He's cleaning it and he just keeps squeezing off over and over and pretty soon I was like what the heck is, like what is he doing? It almost got kind of annoying because he just kept doing it over and over and over.

Pretty soon, this guy leans over and ... alright my wife's attractive, right, I know that, she's awesome. It always cracks me up when other guys start to hit on her and it's totally what this guy was doing. He leans over and there's no lead in, like he didn't set the stage at all.

All he does is he turns around while he's spraying this window, turns out they were tinting the window, and I've never seen that process before but they were cleaning it like crazy because they were about to put tinting on it, it's to keep the heat out because it was like 116 degrees. No joke, so crazy hot while we were there.

But he leans over and he looks right at my wife and he goes, "I speak eight languages." And I was like, "You got to be kidding me? Are you joking? Are you serious? You gonna ... you're hitting on my wife like that blatantly and you're clearly, you're not self aware enough to realize that's what's going on? That's what you're doing?" And he leans over he's like, "You know I speak eight languages." And she's like, "Wow, cool." And I was like, "Uhh, really? Wow, eight languages that's cool." He's like, "Yeah."

And he starts rifling off all these sayings in different languages, and I was like, "Dude, just coz you can say sayings doesn't mean that you speak the language, it just means you know the saying, you know?"

And he turns over and he keeps cleaning windows and you could tell he's in charge of the other guys that were there, and he was like barking orders at them like getting stuff done and he kind of like you know ... I mean it's totally what happens when I'm sure a lion sees a lioness, you know what I mean? They fluff the mane, you know, they start presenting, they start looking like all macho, they start fluffing the muscles out, you know what I mean?

Guys do that all the time, it's natural, you know what I mean?...

We try and impress the girl. I could tell that that's what he was doing, so I started like putting my arm around her and I was just like hey, like clearly we are together, like you see the ring on my hand, you see the ring on her. Like what are you doing? I was like whatever look, let's just play this out, this could be really fun. So I did.

He kept going. He's saying all these phrases in different languages, and like cool. And he goes, "How long are you guys here for?" Then he starts giving us all these stats of Vegas, you know just I guess, and he's like, "Dude," and he looks at me, "Any club you want to get into, here you go, here's my card. You just give me a quick phone call, I'll make a phone call, I'll get you into any club in Vegas."

And I was like, "Oh wow that's awesome."

He hands me this card and as he's doing it he also says like, "Hey what do you do?" And I was like, to people who don't know what internet sales funnels are, it's totally technobabble, and so I always tell people, oh I'm in internet marketing. He's like, "Oh cool, I'm actually a marketer also." And I was like, "Oh wow, okay cool." But he hands me this card and this has got to be one of the coolest cards that I've ever seen in my life. It is a relic.

This is like the prime example card. I'm going to take a picture of this and put it on the blog so you guys can see it if you want to, blog.salesfunnelbroker.com if you want to check it out. But it is the most ridiculous card I've ever seen in my life.

This guy was so proud at was he was doing. It was great for him, you should be, he was working hard, you could tell he knew what he was doing, which is awesome.

But he was handing a card to me while he was doing something that is not on his business card. And I started thinking, I was like wait a second, and I started looking at the card and I was like, this is the most ridiculous, stupid card I've ever seen in my life. Is he serious?

And he was dead serious...

He was telling me, "Yeah I do this. Oh yeah I do ... oh you do that? Oh I do too." I was like, "Oh wow man you do everything don't you?" I was like wow cool.

This is what his card says. On the back of the card, I'm not going to say his name obviously or the phone number or email or anything like that, but it is the most eccentric, eccentric, it's the most eccentric business card I've ever seen in my life.

On the back of it there's three categories, it's basically a resume. On the back, the first thing he does is management, corporate. Right, you do corporate management and you're tinting windows. Nightclubs, he's a nightclub manager and you're tinting windows? Bar and restaurants, loss prevention. What does that have to do with the others?

Okay first of all I'm not even a third of the way through this list. This is like really small fine print on the back of this thing. Just get a load of this, alright. Hopefully we all take this as a lesson okay. I'm going to wrap this all up here this will be a fast episode but this is pretty intense.

Alright so under management, we've got corporate and then the next one is nightclubs, bar and restaurant, loss prevention. Man that's a lot of things you manage on the side of your window tinting business. Alright next thing, marketing. This is the biggest ... I don't even know what some of these things are and I'd like to think I'm a marketer.

Alright, under marketing he has director of marketing. What is that? Second thing, creative marketing expert. Is that not the same thing? If you're a director of marketing and you're not a marketing expert ... anyway okay. So director of marketing, creative marketing expert. Next one is internet marketing. Next one is brand marketing.

Okay and by the way brand marketing is the most fluffy thing on the planet. Are you serious? Anyway that's what I think. Now there are some people who really go specialize in it and that's awesome, but I don't ever sit down and just start thinking through brand. I go create a cool product, make it look awesome, the brand kind of comes on the side.

Alright, that's how I shortcut that whole thing. Otherwise you could spend too much time doing stuff on business that is not revenue generating and that's frustrating for me, and it's frustrating for me to watch others go do that also.

I come up with a cool logo or honestly I just go to some place like GraphicRiver, I'll download one of their sweet logos and then I'll tweak it inside Adobe Illustrator because I do like graphics, things like that. But it's not something that I sit down and just, it's not like a checklist thing that keeps me from selling, it's like something that I figure out along the way.

I'm like cool, here's my brand I guess...

By that I guess that's what colors are. I mean I don't know. I'd rather call it culture, culture building, let's go focus on that. I really don't think many people care what my logo is. I'm the only one who cares what my logo is. Logos are just self backscratching things.

Anyway moving on, I'm only halfway through this list. Okay so director of marketing, creative marketing expert, internet marketing, brand marketing. Next one is direct marketing specialist, next one is social media marketing, next one is promotions manager. How's that not the same thing as the one before? Next one is special events coordinator.

Alright now we're branching out a little bit. Next one is corporate sponsorships. Does that mean you just did one event and you put those two things on there?

Alright, alright, alright, here's the third category. This is all on the back of a single standard business card. Anyway. I kind of want to keep this, this is a relic, this is a relic. Maybe I'll auction it off if we have some cool contest or something because this is ... I feel like I should have laminated this.

Alright next thing is under consulting, so we are management, marketing, and consulting. Okay. First thing on here revenue increase programs. Next one motivational communication. That dude was not motivating me, he was motivating me to slap him from stop hitting on my wife.

Next one, restructure business planning. Restructure business planning. Oh man, okay. On this card also PowerPoint presentations. Next thing, life coaching. Are you serious? There's so many different things on this. Alright next one, staff development. How many things does this guy do? Alright, I'm going to call this episode the anti renaissance man.

You guys, I so hope that we do not do this to our businesses.

I understand that we are all great at many things, we are. I love sound editing, it's one of the reasons why I like to do the podcast, I love it. It's super fun. Because I'm right now inside Adobe Audition recording it right now, right? I did the episodes previously, it was two or three ago about how I make my podcast, it's fun, I actually enjoy the process, for some reason podcasting is almost therapeutic to me. I enjoy it, but it's not my flagship talent, right?

Funnel building is. I choose one peak. Please go choose one peak.

There's a guy I was talking to recently, he's like, "Stephen Larsen I love the things you're doing, it's so awesome, so inspiring, it's so great. I really appreciate it. I'm learning all about funnels. I just built my first few funnels, now I'm going to go learn how to be a traffic expert." And I was like, "No!" It's not that you can't be. It's not that it can't be a side interest, but man like find somebody else who is passionate about ...

Okay, when I run my own stuff, I don't run Facebook ads on my own, I barely know how to do it. I go find somebody else who made Facebook ads their peak, who made it their summit, the thing that they want to stay on top of and be the top in the world at. Right?

I go find them, not somebody who's like dabbling in this and that and all over the, oh my gosh, back and forth, what are you actually ... it's like Russell says, man you give people schizophrenia with your offers if you don't know what you're good at, the one thing, the one opportunity switch and then you do a bunch of stacks of things that are related to it, right, from the Expert Secrets book. It's the exact same thing that I'm talking about here.

First of all, if you hand me a business card with all this stuff that you're doing on it and you're tinting windows, you're probably not making money with these things, therefore this whole card in my opinion it total crap. Right, the whole thing, it's all fluff.

This card is a nice card, you can tell it's laminated or it's great, it's amazing card, paper, whatever, it's like crazy high gloss, it's really thick. I mean it's a nice card, but man what a supreme waste of money. This is not revenue generating, this right here, this business card, it's not revenue generating at all, right?

I've had one business card ever and it wasn't even mine, I made it for my dad for his own webinar, that's it.

Alright, and it's because it's not a revenue generating activity. If you want to contact me, gosh, there's a ton of social media profiles I can direct you to, right, there's a lot of ways you can get in touch with me. Some of you guys disagree because I know a lot of people try to get a hold of me so I've had to build more and more walls and try and figure out who's actually serious and work with those people, you know what I mean? It happens.

You'll have to do it too at some point. But man, please only focus on one thing at a time and only make one of your skills your main thing that you're going to go climb a mountain on, right?

I think I've told the story before, I get so frustrated, this is about four years, about three and a half years ago, I got so frustrated with what I was doing, I realized that I had been learning and not executing and I was stuck in this education loop, right, and I was focusing just on learning and I was ... and yeah, yeah, you know what, sure maybe I could say brand marketing, I've made logos before. Maybe I could say promotions manager, maybe, I don't know, I've run a Facebook ad before, it wasn't good.

Social media marketing, I've posted stuff before. You know what I mean? Every single one of us has got multiple skills inside of our wheelhouse, but that does not mean that it's the flagship thing of my business. It's the same thing with you, don't do that.

It's so funny because finally I was relieved when we were talking to this guy and I was just trying to get away. He went on for a solid 10 minutes, which is forever, and he wouldn't stop so I literally was like, "Hey, I forgot something in the car, whatever," and we walked away.

The helicopter came, we went, we got on the helicopter, we were flying around the Hoover Dam, it was so cool, and came and landed and threw the little life jacket thing that they make you just hold while you're in there back in that room, and walked away as fast as I could because I did not want to start another conversation with the guy.

Do you think there's any chance at all I'm going to call this card? It's like heck no. Choose something. Choose something. Or at least don't barf all over me. If you're doing a sale it's so true, when I was doing telemarketing, when I was doing door to door sales, whoever does the most talking is usually the one who loses, and the dude lost so hard, oh my gosh, he barfed all over us.

I still don't know what he does besides window tint. I don't know what half the things are on this business card.

Anyway just choose one thing and be good at that one thing. Outsource the rest, right.

Every one of us has, what is it, is it Dan ... I'm going to misquote it, I'm so sorry, Sullivan? Maybe I'm mixing up names. Dan Sullivan? Anyway I think he's the one that talks about every one of us has unique abilities. You have this unique ability to do something in a way that nobody else can do it, just you, and it's the coolest thing. It's this amazing gift that god has blessed you with, that comes to you more naturally than anybody else, right?

Funnel buildings, systems and automation, little details, things like that, those things come to me extremely naturally, and I know that for a lot of the people that are like, "Ah, I can't figure how to put this together. I don't know how to do the funnel, I don't know how to do x, y and z." I realize like I actually I'm kind of good at this stuff but number one, which is awesome, but number two I kind of want to plant my anchor here.

After several years of trying stuff, right, in one of why previous podcasts I said I was the seven year overnight success story. After several years I was like, you know what, I think I've found it.

I'm going to plant my anchor, I'm going to drop anchor right here and I'm going to say no to everything else.

And I started doing that and it was awesome and things started happening. You can't brand yourself if you've got several things going on. I was like I'm going to brand myself as a funnel guy and I started building for free for all these people, and that's really when everything started happening.

Before I did that it was like someone would walk up and they'd be like, hey I got this cool thing. I was like sweet let's go do it, right? Because that's what I thought it meant to do business.

Deal, so you do deals, that's what business is. That was totally the Trump way. If you've ever read any of his books, business is just deal making all the time. I actually don't think that's true, I think that you do one deal, you know two deals, unless that's your thing, but whatever it is you're just doing one thing though, it's not multiple things.

Just choose one thing, do that one thing really really well, and outsource or figure out a way to get around the rest of it then everything's going to go a lot better for you.

Anyway that was a long story and I said it was going to be a short podcast but I think I'm going to take a picture of this thing and put it on the blog because that is just ... it's completely a relic. I feel like I should almost make a t-shirt out of it.

This is quite the card...

I am thoroughly impressed by the level of depth. Who was it that said ... it's one of the quotes I have written on my wall. I've got all these legal sheets all over my wall and I write quotes on them. I could have swore that one was on my wall, I'm looking around. Anyway it basically is that every time you open your mouth, you're either creating value or making noise, one of the two. It's not both, it's one or the other. And this card is all about noise.

Make sure your marketing is not all about noise, don't say you do this and this and this and this and this, that's the equivalent of a website, that's why funnels work better than websites, it's one thing.

Anyways I think I've beat a dead horse on that one. Hey guys, hopefully you're doing awesome, you're all rock stars, and I will see you on the next episode. Bye 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 https://salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

The Story Behind Alison's Ecommerce Empire...

Stephen Larsen:

Hey everybody, this is Steve Larsen, and welcome to a very special episode of 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 funnel. Now, here's your host, Steve Larson.

Stephen Larsen:

All right you guys. Hey, this is exciting. You know, for me I'm just selfishly wanting to talk to, in my opinion, one of the coolest people that is out there. One of the most inspiring stories. Doing exactly what they love. I'm just excited that I hit the record button and you guys get to listen in. There's a lot that I feel like I could learn from this person. I haven't done an interview in a very long time, and I'm excited to bring on just a complete rock star.

Everybody, this is Alison Prince. Alison, how you doing?

Alison Prince:

Good. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah. You've been running the, let's see, Pick a Plum and Because I Can Clan for a while now, right?

Alison Prince:

I have. I actually own seven businesses, Stephen.

Stephen Larsen:

Oh really? Don't tell Russell.

Alison Prince:

I know. I'm a little bit of a serial entrepreneur.

Stephen Larsen:

We get that. That's cool. What's your most favorite one right now that you're doing?

Alison Prince:

Do you know, it's actually the Because I Can Clan.

Stephen Larsen:

Oh really? That's your most recent one, isn't it?

Alison Prince:

It is. I launched that right after I joined the Inner Circle. Launched it in about March, officially in March.

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome. Just for everyone listening, the first time I ever met Alison is actually, actually do you want to tell everyone how you got into the Inner Circle? I think it's hilarious.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. I hope I don't get in trouble for it, though.

Stephen Larsen:

No. It'll be awesome.

Alison Prince:

I own a blog called How Doe She? I've been running that for almost eight years, which is crazy. We're always trying to learn, always trying to figure out new ways to do affiliate type promotions on the blog. I went to an affiliate conference, it was actually down in Las Vegas.

When I got there, it was not the conference that I signed up for. I went to the classes. The classes, I swear, every single speaker was drunk, or it was totally a click bait class. The title was one thing and then what they spoke on was totally different. I'm like, where am I?

I saw Click Funnel and I'm like, oh I wonder if this will really help my business?

I went and I listened to Russell, and his title was exactly what he spoke about. He wasn't drunk. I really appreciated the honesty from the title. His pitch, the way he presented himself, I was just super impressed with it. Then what, two weeks later I had joined the Inner Circle. From just figuring out who Russell Brunson was, two weeks later, joined the Inner Circle because I knew he was good. I knew his message was good. I knew he was honest, and so I just jumped in with both feet.

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome. I mean, it was literally, what, two weeks later you were at the Funnel Hackathon event, the FHAT event.

Alison Prince:

Yes, which was a wild ride.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, and you stood up and you were talking and stuff. It's funny because you introduced yourself and your story. I remember, I mean it's an intense three days. In the back office though, like back in Russell's office, he and I were both like, "Have you met that Alison lady? Oh my gosh, she's so cool. Where does she come from? Where are more people like that?"

When we see you as an individual, and you as a person and the things that you're doing, you just seem like the kind of person that is 100% truly genuine and there and happy. You're present in the moment, and it makes people wonder, "Who is this lady? How is she doing what she's doing and why am I not doing that?" It's really cool.

We talked all about ... Don't think, yeah, we were talking all about you. It's really easy.

Alison Prince:

Go for it. Lots of people do. I don't care.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah. It's really easy to see just that you absolutely love what you do. It's super unique, it's extremely inspiring. You've got the family side down and the business side down, it seems like. You're traveling. Anyways.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. Well there is. Okay, so I've been over to Thailand for the last three weeks. I have severe jet lag right now. I took my whole family over there. We were out there for three weeks doing service projects. Why?

Because we can...

I decided, I've been able to do this and I have lived my dream life. Now it's time to help others live their dream life too. This is, we have so many opportunities here in America. The education, like on YouTube University, everything that Russell gives. Stephen, your podcast is absolutely amazing. We have so much information to change our lives.

I decided to start the Because I Can Clan, because we can. We can change our lives. We can do the things of the dreams that we want to, and be in the moment. Have the family. I mean, I have four kids and we're over Thailand. Like real severe poverty, helping those kids, trying to help them change their lives. We were able to do some job training over there too. It was just, I don't know, there's just so much opportunity, so much excitement out there, to be able to live how you want to. Because it's just, it's there. There's so much out there right now.

Stephen Larsen:

It's so true. Before I hit the record button everyone, we were talking and you were saying, "It seems lik you and Russell don't sleep." That's so true. It's the exact same reason. It's funny, all these things that we learn and we go do, it's fun, but there's also a bit of a mantle that comes with it, it sometimes feels like. You have a responsibility, in my opinion, to go out and help other people know that you know how to do.

Anyway, I'm just completely in agreeance of what you're saying. It's so real and tangible. When you start getting to these levels of various success, that you've got to turn around. I believe and it sounds like you do too, that there's a little bit of a responsibility to turn around and kind of just help humanity, help the other guy who's still struggling.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. Then I think it's ... Okay, so let's go back. I think it might be a little bit of selfishness too, because when you serve, you feel so good. If you can create a business around serving, it just fulfills you. In the mornings when you get up, it's not hard to get up at five, six in the morning, and you're so excited to get to work. You don't feel like you're working.

It's just this beautiful thing that goes together, where you're actually having fun every single day, doing what you love. Then going to bed at night knowing that you did ... I don't know, you're just happy.

It just fulfills, it fulfills me...

Stephen Larsen:

That's so fun. That's so cool. Yeah. I love what I do for people. My wife always makes fun of me. She's like, "How come you get kind of awkward every time someone asks you what you do?" I'm like, well because I don't know what to say sometimes.

How much time do they have?

Alison Prince:

So true.

Stephen Larsen:

I want to just tell them everything, and they'll run away from me from that. I am extremely interested, my sister, my brother, lots of my close family and friends actually follow you very closely, and what you do.

They're incredibly inspired by it. I just wanted to ask, did you always want to have your own business? Is this something you stumbled into?

Is it something you created out of a side necessity? You know what I mean? What really put you into that?

Alison Prince:

Okay. I went to college and I was a junior high teacher, if you can believe that.

Stephen Larsen:

Wow. I had no idea.

Alison Prince:

I loved those kids. We laughed, or I laughed at them, every single day. Imagine, I don't know, 300 eighth graders that you got to see every single day. They were just a ball of energy. I know some people it's like their worst nightmare, but I love, we had so much fun together. We would do pumpkin chucking contests.

Then we would sit in shopping carts for the mass equals acceleration times whatever. I forgot. It's all physics stuff. We'd put a kid in a shopping cart, push them down the hallway to see if they would go faster if someone was in the shopping cart, out of the shopping cart. We had so much fun learning.

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome.

Alison Prince:

Then I got my first paycheck. Stephen, it was like a slap in the face. Because they handed me my paycheck and they said, "Oh, by the way, you qualify for food stamps." I was like, "Wait, what? No, I studied math and science for four years in college. What do you mean I get food stamps?" They're like, "Yup, welcome to being a teacher."

You know, I should have done the research beforehand, but when you're young you don't really think about money until you start having children and your husband's going to school full time and you have real bills.

I started a little tutoring business on the side. I could tutor one to two kids a night, but I had a baby at home. My husband was going to school full time and I just couldn't get enough tutoring hours in. Then I started hiring people. Hired them for $15 an hour but charged $20 an hour, so I made an additional $5.

Then I ended up hiring about four teachers, and so I was making as much money, not actually having to go and work those two hours. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is this? That's when the entrepreneur bug bit, as I figured out how I could free up my time by hiring other people to be able to grow a business, or to be able to work on the things that made me happy. I haven't stopped since.

Stephen Larsen:

That's amazing. What eventually made you leave that? I really wanted to be a tenth grade history teacher for a long time. That was actually my dream for a long time. That's the first time all you guys on this podcast have heard that. I really love history. I love war stories. I love all that stuff.

It was the exact same thing you just said, it was the paycheck that kept me from doing any of that. What eventually made you leave that altogether?

Alison Prince:

Well, we moved to Oklahoma. My husband got accepted to school out there. The pay was $10,000 less than the pay in Utah, if you can even imagine that. Then I was pregnant with my second child. We were on food stamps, state support, and I was working a ton as a teacher. I'm like, this is just, this isn't right.

This isn't right...

I don't want to be on state assistance. I've gone to college. My husband's going to college. I became a realtor at that point.

I had to stop the tutoring business because, this is going to tell you how old I am, but the internet really wasn't up and going at that point. It was hard to do a business out of state, so I became a realtor during the boom. I made $60,000 working part-time. Was able to get off all the assistance, be able to support, help pay for my husband's college.

Through that, real estate, I was helping new buyers and so I was still educating. I was still getting that fulfillment of educating people, but it was just in a different area. I was helping new home buyers find their first home, and it was awesome.

Then that just led to the next business and then the next business. Then eventually it rolled around into How Does She, which is the blog. I call it my playground, where I get to learn how the internet works, how to grow Facebook. We actually grew our Facebook page to two million followers organically.

Stephen Larsen:

That's huge.

Alison Prince:

I know. We just hit two million like two weeks ago. We did it in about two years, so we're pretty excited about that. I get to learn and play. Now I started the Because I Can Clan, helping others be able to do the entrepreneur side of things, to be able to change their lives. To be able to, if they are teachers and they need extra money, there's a way to do it where it doesn't eat all your time.

There's a way to do it to be able to bring in that extra income.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah. I know everyone's situations are different, especially the guys that are listening out there. Everyone's coming from different backgrounds, so obviously take what I'll say with a grain of salt here. I remember the exact same thing, when we were in college and all this stuff. When we were first starting out, we had to take loans.

We had to get all the assistance and stuff. I could not help but fight this incredibly huge feeling that I was just cheating, and I needed to go create a business. That's one of the major reasons I started doing that also.

You're heavily involved though, right now in eCommerce, right?

Alison Prince:

Yes.

Stephen Larsen:

Big, big, big.

Alison Prince:

Yeah, when I started the blog, with How Does She, we would do posts. They were creative posts, like how to make this or how to make that. Then people would say, "Where do you get your products from?" I was sending them to Home Depot. I was sending them to Michael's Crafts. Then one day I was like, "Why am I not sending them to me? Why am I sending them to these other stores? Why don't I set up like an eCommerce store?"

I started a business called Pick Your Plum, and sold out the very first day. What it was is, it was a daily deal site and I would have one product up every single day. The very first day, put up my product, sold out. Second day, sold out. Third day, didn't sell any. I'm like, dang it, is this the right thing?

Then grew it into a huge business within two years, just by sending people over. It was just one product a day. Now it's about 70, 80 products a day. In the beginning it was just one product a day. I had never done eCommerce before. Then we would sell out so fast, and a lot of our American distributors, they would run out of the product for us. I got on an airplane, went over to China, and started finding manufacturers. I don't know any Chinese.

I have never been to China. I've never taken a business class, Stephen, ever.

Stephen Larsen:

They're overrated. Off the record, they're totally overrated. I learn more from books. It's all good.

Alison Prince:

Yup. I learned more from doing and getting on that plane to China, than I ever could have in a classroom. It was scary. I had four kids at the time. My sweet husband was here and I'm like, "I'm going to China." He's like, "Okay." It's not just like going to the mall and getting products.

Stephen Larsen:

No.

Alison Prince:

It's crazy across the world. Yeah, got on a plane, went and found manufacturers. Then started to learn how to import. Did I make mistakes? Oh yes I did. Did I learn from it and created a successful business from it? Absolutely. It was well worth that.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, I remember, okay one of the most recent things that I've heard of that you've done is, you sold pillowcases.

Alison Prince:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephen Larsen:

First of all, how did you choose pillowcases out of every product that was out there?

Alison Prince:

Okay, so let me back up a little bit and tell you a little bit more about the story.

Stephen Larsen:

I would love that, yeah.

Alison Prince:

My daughters, they were sleeping in and just, they were 10 and 13 at the time. This is when I'm running How Does She, when I'm running Pick Your Plum. The girls, they were just being teenagers, and they were tired and sleeping in till 10. My husband and I were like, we don't want to raise children that are lazy. They were just trying to figure out what they wanted.

What we did is we said, "You guys have three options. You can move out of the house." Which of course, we didn't want them to move out of the house. "You can do more chores, which we're going to start at seven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday morning. Or you can start a business. Which of those three choices would you want to do?" Of course, they were like, "We want to start a business."

Stephen Larsen:

Cool.

Alison Prince:

What they did is they started this business. I gave them some resources, but I really wanted them to try and to test it, because I didn't want to be holding their hand the whole time. They needed to learn this journey.

Then you're not going to believe this, but in nine months, just nine months, they sold over $100,000.

Stephen Larsen:

That's crazy.

Alison Prince:

$100,000. Makayla, she was in junior high at the time, she would come home crying because she couldn't get her locker open. I'm like, "Don't worry honey, you just sold $5000 today. You can pay someone to open up your locker for you."

Stephen Larsen:

A 10 and a 13 year old, $100,000 a year.

Alison Prince:

10 and a 13 year old, yeah. Yes, they sold over $100,000 in nine months. I was like, okay, if these girls can do it, other people can do it. Then I of course went to my sister. You got to test it, right? Done it with my girls, so I went to my sister and I'm like, "Hey, let's try something." She needed something at the time because she needed a new roof.

There was just a lot going on in her life. She was budgeting and going to garage sales and just didn't have a ton of money to buy this roof that she needed. She went through this whole thing and she sold $129,000 in nine months. Apparently she wanted to outdo the girls.

Stephen Larsen:

New roof.

Alison Prince:

Got her new roof, yeah, it was pretty exciting. People have said, "Alison, well that's cool you've done it, and it's probably because you have these platforms." I'm not going to lie, How Does She has a great following of two million people. When the girls started, it wasn't that big of a number. People have said, "Alison, of course you can do it. You have these huge social media platforms."

This goes to the pillowcases. I build a business to prove that you don't need to have this huge social media following to be successful.

I went out and I found that pillowcases, yeah, like the lamest, boring product, were trending. That's the rule, secret number one, the rule to success is just sell what other people are buying. If people are buying it, just put it in front of them. You don't have to go out and have this huge, crazy shark tank idea. We went and we built this little pillowcase business. In 24 months we sold over a million dollars in pillowcases.

Stephen Larsen:

That is insane.

Alison Prince:

Yeah, and it was to prove that you don't have to have this big, huge social media following. On that pillowcase business, there's only like 55 Facebook followers. It's my sister and my brother, and I guarantee you they did not buy $1.1 million in pillowcases. Promise.

Stephen Larsen:

Now my brother and my sister, they've all gone through your course. They love your course. They talk about you all the time.

Alison Prince:

Yay, good.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, they just really, really love it, all the value you put out there too, and showing people how you do it. Their biggest question afterward though, and I was wondering if I could ask you here.

Alison Prince:

Put me on the spot.

Stephen Larsen:

Was, what are some of the methods you use to go find what people are buying?

Alison Prince:

I've actually built, and I go through it step by step in the course, so maybe I just need to point them to that again. You go and you, like there are specific sites that I look at to see what's trending. I check it almost every single day, except of course when I was in Thailand, because you couldn't get the internet half the time.

The internet is so amazing and so beautiful, and it just, it literally spoon feeds you the information. You just have to know where to find it, and be receptive to it.

Stephen Larsen:

Oh that's so true. Yeah.

Alison Prince:

Once you know how to find the #trending on specific sites, then you just see what's selling. Then you go, and you don't copy their idea, I want to put that out there. You don't copy, like if they've got a specific branded product, you don't copy it, but there's so many commodity products out there.

My girls, they didn't come up with some new crazy idea. You want to know what they sold? Did I already tell you what they sold?

Stephen Larsen:

No, I don't think so.

Alison Prince:

They sold scarves, Stephen. Scarves.

Stephen Larsen:

$100,000 with scarves. I told Russell the other day, if there's another like 12 year old that makes a million bucks, so help me, because it's ridiculous. The formulas are all out there everybody, for you to actually just make money.

Alison Prince:

It is.

Stephen Larsen:

You really just have to look around. The market will always tell you what you need to sell. I always tell people, the creativity that you need in order to make a lot of money is actually not inside of you.

You don't have it or you don't possess it. All you do is you look around at everything that's around you, and you look at the market through some of the ways Alison's talking about. There's these ways you can test and see before you jump in, and before it's scary and you might lose your shirt. The market will always tell you what to sell, it's not inside of you to know.

Alison Prince:

You don't invest a lot of money, I love that you said that. The girls, they didn't put in like $16,000. No. They bought some from California, and then they just tested it. We probably, I don't know, put in maybe like $100 to $200 to see if they would even sell, and they sold out very fast so we knew we had something.

Then we invested more, and then we invested more. Don't risk your whole life savings, you don't need to. That's crazy Stephen. I have sold so many products, and to this day I still won't invest huge money into stuff until I tested it. You don't need to. Test it first.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, 100%. I'm in the middle of doing that with my own thing. Just this small, little $100 thing, and it's been running for a long time. Finally, I feel like, all right, that's been tested to death, I think that I can actually jump full in on this other thing. It's been a lot of fun to do that. The testing is so key.

Everybody dreams, I feel like. We get caught in this, it's totally the shark tank mentality.

I need to sell something that's big and unique and crazy. I call it product big bang theory, where it's just boom, this big massive idea that no one's ever heard of before. The problem is that no one ever wants that stuff. They think they do. It's really product evolution. You're just finding other things that are selling and you add little tweaks to them, and go blow it up.

Alison Prince:

Yup.

Stephen Larsen:

This is Sales Funnel Radio. Which funnel do you use to sell that stuff?

Alison Prince:

Okay, so you have to remember that I just started ClickFunnels in March.

Stephen Larson:

You're a pro.

Alison Prince:

From February until June, I have been out of the country for two of the months. It has been insane and crazy, crazy stuff. I did a freemium funnel, and honestly the freemium funnel didn't convert as much as the 4.99 funnel did.

Stephen Larsen:

Wow.

Alison Prince:

I know, it's kind of crazy, right? The scarves, this was done before I knew about Click Funnels, the scarves, so we just did it on a basic shopping cart website. We did a freemium offer then, did amazing. We did three free scarves with the shipping, and then shipping and handling, and they did amazing.

We did a lot of those. It did really well. I've noticed that in the community that I am in, I work with a lot of bloggers. I work with a lot of marketplaces. The freemium offer isn't converting as well. I think people are a little scared of it. They've been burnt by it. It's too good to be true.

If we can just give them a really good deal, let's say we do the pillowcases for like two for 24, that goes like wildfire, with free shipping. Because it's an offer, and what you and Russell both talk about is give them an option, give them an offer they cannot turn down. Two for 24 with free shipping on these pillowcases, people eat it up.

What we've been doing is we've been putting a lot of funnels in place that just really focus on one item, and one really good offer, which you guys of course talk about nonstop. That's it. Stephen, all we have to do is just listen to you guys and do it, and it works.

Stephen Larsen:

I'm paying her to say that everybody.

Alison Prince:

No, but it is so true. We over complicate things. We just need to keep things simple, and listen. It works. It's just super, we overthink things, we over complicate things as human beings. I know when I built my course out, I was over complicating things like crazy. Stephen, like I asked you some questions and you're like, "Simple Alison. Keep it simple."

It converted so much better than when it was complicated...

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome.

Alison Prince:

Props to you.

Stephen Larsen:

Thank you very much. You know, it's funny, most people, they tend to think, "Well Alison right now, she's talking about eCommerce and I'm over here in info products.

That's completely different so I must need to disregard all of the things that she's saying." Or, "I'm doing this over here." Guys, it's all the same. It's human psychology.

These sales processes, the way you create offers and you put it all together, it's the same thing across the board. It doesn't matter if you're selling physical, digital, any kind of info product business, a service based professional service, like you're a dentist or something. It's all the same.

Alison Prince:

It really is.

Stephen Larsen:

You just have to think what part your business fits in that model, and then go fill the gaps and it starts to come together. That being said, how did you think up an offer that they can't turn down? That's interesting.

Alison Prince:

I just asked them.

Stephen Larsen:

It can't be that simple.

Alison Prince:

It is that simple. You put it out there, and if nobody buys, no one pulls out their wallet, you know your offer stinks. You don't take it personally. You just say, okay, let me come up with another offer. I was on Facebook the other day, of course, and I wish I can remember the quote. Someone was saying, the reason why he's successful is because he just puts out offers.

The more offers he puts out, the better he does. You take your product and you put out an offer. If it doesn't do well, okay, not a big deal, redo it and then test it again, and test it again and test it again. We need to be testing things constantly, until we can nail it. Then once we nail it, then of course we scale it, we grow it as big as we can.

To put out a Facebook offer, that doesn't cost a lot of money. If you've got a good following, it doesn't really cost anything to just test it. You put out an offer, you put $5 in. If someone bites, oh take it.

Tweak it just a little bit...

See if you can get two people to buy off of it. I think that's what people think, they put out an offer and if nobody buys they're like, "Oh, my product stinks." Or, "Oh, I'm not good enough." When that's not the case at all. It's they just need to tweak it and try it again. I mean you're an entrepreneur, you know this. The only way you fail as an entrepreneur is when you stop. That's when you fail right there, is when you stop.

Stephen Larsen:

You know it's funny, two or three days ago Russell and I were at the office still, it was 1:30 in the morning, as men do.

Alison Prince:

Are you sleeping at the office too? I know Russell is. On a cot or something.

Stephen Larsen:

Not always by choice. Sometimes I just fall asleep there. We got this big cot there and a tent right now. It's funny.

Alison Prince:

You know, okay a little, another pitch. Seriously, I am so grateful for you guys. All of the information that you give makes my life so much easier, so thank you for not ever sleeping, just for Alison Prince.

Stephen Larsen:

Oh thank you very much. We have a lot of fun doing it. It's very, very fun.

Alison Prince:

That does not go unnoticed. I am seriously very, very grateful for everything you guys produce and put out there.

Stephen Larsen:

That's much appreciated, very much. We were talking a few days ago. He and I, for some reason, we both got on this big rant. We had been working super hard on these things, trying to relaunch and tweak and fix. Exactly what you're saying, what's the problem with this one?

All right, let's go fix it. Just relaunch, relaunch. We both got on this topic, how did we both get started? He started going through his journey with me, and luckily we flipped the camera on, so it's going to be an episode here soon. It's really cool. He was walking through all the different products and all the sites and all the things that he had put out there.

The ones that worked and the ones that didn't. I started doing the same thing, and it was really fun.

He asked me, he was like, "When did it finally click for you?" I said, "It finally clicked for me when I realized that products and offers are not the same thing." For years, I had been selling products, and that's why I was failing, because I was the exact same as the other guy.

When I created an offer out of it and I made it this awesome thing, and you get this and this, or you get this and an info product, or whatever it is. I started bundling and creating offers. That's honestly when it blew up for me. He said, "Yeah, for me what I've noticed is that it's the people who are obsessed with the marketing who always make the money. But the people who are obsessed with the money never make the money."

It's totally about the marketing part of it and creating the offers. Anyway, I thought that was interesting you just said that.

Alison Prince:

It is. It is like, I call it the vision. How do you put together a product that's going to inspire people? On Pick Your Plum, it's a lot of like commodity, it's a product based site. I've never sold a product on Pick Your Plum. I sell the vision. One of my examples is, this is crazy, but when we first got started there wasn't a lot of money. I went out to my backyard. I found these blocks of wood.

What I did is I decorated them with some stuff and made them cute, made them into ornaments for Christmas trees. Made them into block kits for kids, stuff like that. I sold the vision of what you could do with these blocks. Stephen, we ended up selling over $9000 in trash.

Stephen Larsen:

That's so cool.

Alison Prince:

Because we never sold the product, we sold the vision of what you could do with it. That's what you sell, right? You don't sell something.

Stephen Larsen:

You sell the hole, not the drill.

Alison Prince:

Yes, yes, that's exactly it. What can they do with it, that's what you sell, that's what converts. That's what people want.

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome. How many times do you buy something and you never end up using it? Russell, it was kind of fun, he came over for dinner last night over here. We were geeking out over my books and the bookshelves. That's what we do, it's geeky and it's fun.

We're going through all these books and my wife walks up and she goes, "Are you ever actually going to read those?" I was like, "Yeah, of course I am." Yeah, whatever.

Russell was like, "Yeah, we read the titles and get the gist." It's funny that so many of us are like that though. We look at these, we'll go buy stuff, whatever it is. Exercise equipment is a classic example. Treadmills are just another kind of coat hanger for most people. It's because they got sold on the vision and not the actual thing. It's powerful.

Alison Prince:

It is.

Stephen Larsen:

Now I wanted to ask another part here. You've talked about how you just ask them and you create the offer. How do you get a lot of your traffic? How have you figured out that aspect of it? I know that's a big challenge for some of the listeners.

Alison Prince:

Okay. Remember what we learned in like kindergarten, about how to share?

Stephen Larsen:

Barely. I kind of skipped that one. Just kidding.

Alison Prince:

It really goes back to like elementary school, you share. You reach out to a blogger. You reach out to another shop, and you figure out how you can collaborate. Because that shop's trying to grow too, and you find out how you can work together.

It really, it's so simple and everybody makes it very, very complicated, but it doesn't need to be.

Like in blog land, we always are sharing each other's posts. In the eCommerce world, we're going out there and we're saying, "Hey, let's do a giveaway together. You've got a product that compliments my product, let's do a giveaway together. We'll get your readers and my readers excited, pumped up about it, and we can throw traffic to each other."

Then we go to, now I'm working with my course, my digital product, so now I'm going out there and I'm working with other people who have a complimentary product. Then we interview each other or we post each other's stuff. I'm helping them grow. They're helping me grow. Now when I do this, you have to do it with people with similar numbers.

If I came up to like Russell and I'm like, "Hey Russell, post me on your Instagram page." Something like that, and I only have like 200 followers or something like that and he's got a gajillion, it's not going to work. It's got to be something where, if I've got 200 followers, I'm working with someone with around 200 to 500 followers.

You do it in a way, it's more organic, or it's more like a friendship instead of go follow, I don't know, Cookies With Lacy or something like that. That just looks too spammy.

If you can post a picture that says, "Hey look at these cookies that Lacy made. They are so great." Vice versa. It really is networking and getting to know each other in the social world. It really does work. That is the big secret to how we grew our Facebook page to two million, is we just worked together.

We came up with, "Hey, let's share each other's posts." Then I've got some bloggers right now that are excited about sharing this course. There's a few things that I've been working on, tweaking on. Stephen, I'm still working on that.

I launched it in March, this course, and I've been tweaking it, testing it and perfecting it. Then I'm excited, I just got back from Thailand, to be able to start pushing it harder and harder and harder. I've actually got a webinar this morning and I'm really excited about it.

Stephen Larsen:

Oh cool.

Alison Prince:

I guess it's not a webinar anymore, we call them master classes, because nobody wants to go on a webinar.

Stephen Larsen:

Marketers.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. I've got a secret master class coming up today. I'm constantly tweaking that offer. How can I serve my people more? How can I get them more information? How can I help them become more successful? They see it. Then other people see it and then people start talking about it. It really goes back to what you learned in elementary, and it's to share. It really is so simple.

Stephen Larsen:

That's so interesting too, that you say it that way. Because I know one of the pieces of advice Russell and I give is, some people will be like, "Okay, I've got this sweet offer but I have no money for ads."

A situation that we've probably all been in before. "I've got no money for ads. I've got no following. I'm literally brand new, there's still green on my ears." We always tell them to do something that sound ludicrous but is very strategic, which is just to go find somebody who has a following who would want the product, and just give it to them. Don't even try and get any profit from it.

What you end up getting out of it though is a list, because you just send them out there and you end up getting all these people who opt in. Now you have another asset, there's a piece of value there.

You go to the next guy and you say, "Hey, I got this list, you got this list, you want to do a little cross promotion?" Just like you just said. Now your list grows and you've got a little money. You go to the next person and do it again. By the time you've done it and flipped it six or seven times, you're rich. It's exactly like you're talking.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. You are going to get told no, and I think a lot of people are scared by the word no. Who cares if you get told no, just go find another person. You don't want to work with them anyways, if they're ...

Stephen Larsen:

It's going to happen.

Alison Prince:

It is. If you're prepared to get one yes out of ten, then you're a rock star and you will feel good when you get that yes. Don't think that everybody's going to say yes. You're going to get told no, it's not a big deal, just move on to the next one. Move on to the next one. I mean if it was easy, if we were just to flip on a light switch and become a millionaire, everybody would be and then money wouldn't have any value.

We actually have to go out, do the work, build those relationships. Spoil those people and be treated how we would want to be treated. I know when I get a product in the door, a package, I'm like, "Woo hoo, this is the best thing ever."

Stephen Larsen:

I loved yours, by the way. Thank you.

Alison Prince:

Good. I'm glad you got it. That's the same thing. People want to be loved and want to be spoiled. Just treat them how you want to be treated. It's back to kindergarten.

Stephen Larsen:

That's awesome. I have one other area I just wanted to ask you about real quick. That is, okay you've got a guy over here who's saying drop shipping is the thing. Another person over here saying, "Do all fulfillment but only high ticket." This person says ... There's a lot of areas and a lot of facets of the eCommerce world, and you're obviously an expert in it. I just wanted to ask why you picked self-fulfillment, and low ticket, high volume?

That's mostly where you've been, right?

Alison Prince:

Yeah. The In-N-out Burger approach. Where we can sell thousands and thousands of a product at a low price and make good money. The reason why, a couple things. When I first started, I didn't have money to get a huge warehouse. I didn't have money to have someone fulfill my products. It's expensive to have someone fulfill.

The margins weren't there, and I knew a lot of people that needed jobs. I started, the very first one was in the garage, and I had people come over to the garage and help me fulfill out of the garage, because you do what you need to, to start growing your business. Then we got a little tiny warehouse, I think it was about 1200 square feet. Which I'll tell you what, scared the hejeebies out of me to sign that contract.

Stephen Larsen:

I bet.

Alison Prince:

When you're uncomfortable, I don't know, if we stay comfortable ...

Stephen Larsen:

Stuff happens.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. Don't stay comfortable...

You've got to get uncomfortable to be able to have results. Then I just found joy in writing people checks that I knew, that I grew to love, that I grew to find. Then there was more margins in it. We got to do a lot more fun things as a company. In my course I do teach self-fulfilling has higher margins, and there are great ways to do it, but I do give options about having other people fulfill for you.

The reason why I give both options is because I've been gone a lot, and I've been traveling. I want to be with my family. I don't want to stay up till two o'clock in the morning shipping products. That just, to me, is not fun.

There's other options that I give to help you, because the entrepreneur should not be shipping. They should not ever ship one product. Well maybe one, to see how the process goes, but they should not be shipping the product. I do give options. I do talk about ways to be able to get that off your plate, and how to hire it out. How to hire another company to do it when you're ready.

Things like that, just so you can truly focus on what you're good at. Finding the product, marketing, getting sales, getting out there, branding your product, growing your business. Not necessarily shipping, because that's, I don't know. Some people love shipping.

I'm not a fan of shipping.

Stephen Larsen:

No, and it's funny to hear you say that, with the amount of stuff that you ship.

Alison Prince:

Yeah, no. I had my fair share of shipping. Oh man. Find help. Do not do it yourself. Find help. I teach that a lot in my course, you do what you're good at. You have, tell me which one it is, you have a podcast that talks exactly about that. When you guys are at ... See I stalk you Stephen, I really like what you have to say. When you're at IHOP and you were asking Russell like how he can get so much stuff done. He just hires it out because he's like, "I don't know how to do it." Which podcast is that, do you remember?

Stephen Larsen:

I don't remember. You know, it's funny, I usually, I just know that there's something cool that I want to share and then I come up with a title later.

Alison Prince:

Oh. It was probably about a month ago, because I listened to it. It was probably about a month, month and a half ago, but it was really, really good on focusing on what you're good at. Everything else, hire it out, get it off our plate.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, he told me once, he's like, "Stephen, I realized that I am a starter, and you are a finisher, that's why you're here." It's so true. That's how it happens, he starts and I finish. We're a cool team like that. It's very true, you've got to know which one you are though, hire out the other.

Alison Prince:

Agreed. Absolutely.

Stephen Larsen:

That's so cool. Alison, I know we've been going for a little bit...

I just want to thank you for, I mean for anyone who's listening to this, I'm going to put so much stinking ad money behind this because I want everyone to hear your story and your voice and everything that you do. I am such a huge fan of Alison Prince and all the things that you do. It sounds like we stalk each other. You're just one of those people out there who's living and loving living. You set up what you do in a way so that you can love it.

There's a lot of trial and error that comes with that in order to have it be that way. Anyway, it's just a massive example. Where can people find out more about you?

Alison Prince:

Facebook page, I just started the Because I Can Clan about three months ago. You can find me on Facebook over there. I do have a personal Instagram account AlisonJPrince, which I will start converting over into more of the business side soon. I really like about the journey, talking about the journey, how we're doing it. You're going to see how I start doing that, and I'm sharing my story. Like right now, on the Because I Can Clan, I've been doing a Facebook Live. I did a Facebook Live every single day except for two days in Cambodia when I didn't have internet.

Stephen Larsen:

Wow, what's your excuse? Just kidding.

Alison Prince:

Oh Verizon and Cambodia do not get along.

Stephen Larson:

That's funny.

Alison Prince:

I even called them and they're like, "Yeah, no. We just don't work with Cambodia." I'm like, "Wait, what? You realize what year it is." They said, "Yeah, there's just a lot of stuff." I'm like, okay, I don't wan to get into it. There was a couple days that we couldn't do it in Cambodia. I did, I related our experiences of scorpions and elephants and crazy stuff that we ran into and how that related to business.

I did a Facebook Live. We're on day 19 today. I did it and I'm jotting down how fast that page is growing. In 17 days it had grown over 1000 followers, which I was pretty excited about. Then the next half the month I'm going to be doing that and then adding more. I'm documenting my journey.

I'll do it on the Facebook page, and then I've got a closed group, Because I Can Clan group. Then I'm sharing with people over there what I'm doing, so they can watch what I'm doing. What you guys do, watch the master's hands. We go out there, we test it. We tell people what we're doing and what works and what doesn't work.

Then they go out there and then they replicate it. Anyways, long story short, Because I Can Clan on Facebook, or my Instagram page. Then if they want to sign up for the course, that's 0-100k.com. You can find out all the information on the course. How people can make this a reality, if they want to get their kids going on it. Like my girls, they have their college education ready to go. They've got their savings accounts set up.

They actually set up Roth IRAs this year. My eight and nine year old little boy, they have Roth IRAs right now.

Stephen Larsen:

I don't even have that. That's awesome.

Alison Prince:

It's a gift that we can give them as parents to be able to set them up financially when they hit certain ages. You've got to think through the process of, no, they're not going to be able to get all that money when they're 18 and go crazy with it. We've set up milestones so they can get it when they're this age or this age or this age.

They have something, and they're eight and nine years old right now. Imagine what it's going to be like when they retire. Anyways, I talk about that kind of stuff because it's life changing.

Stephen Larsen:

It is.

Alison Prince:

I want others to be able to do it too, because it's not hard. You just have to listen to people. I think that's the biggest thing. Listen and do. You have to be a doer. You have to make things happen.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, and you can't be so afraid of appearing imperfect. I think that's the biggest killer.

Alison Prince:

Yeah.

Stephen Larsen:

I know it's one of the biggest killers, in my opinion, of entrepreneurs. Actually being vulnerable with your marketing, and getting out and sharing stories. Sharing the successes, but even more importantly the failures, if you are afraid of appearing imperfect. I always bring this up and people are always sick of me saying it.

Again, when you start down the entrepreneurial path, like your imperfections explode in your face and you can't move on till you fix them.

Anyway, it's awesome to have a person like you who's walked down the path. You know what it's like and you've been very successful. It's really cool to see. You're not afraid of messing up or being imperfect, or hey that test didn't work, and being public about it. That's a huge key.

Alison Prince:

You want to hear something funny?

Stephen Larsen:

Yes I do.

Alison Prince:

When I did my course, I set a date. Stephen, I set that date way too early but I wanted to push myself. I had stayed up for probably two weeks solid, just trying to get it done. I bought Liz Benny's course on the whole, how to set up everything for a course. Which Liz Benny, props to her, she is an amazing, amazing woman, a very wonderful teacher.

When I did, oh my gosh, talk about a hot mess. When I did the course, I did the master class, it went well. I had people buying the course after. I had linked them to Liz Benny's course. People would buy the course and then they'd say, "Alison, how come I see a lady that's like talking about monkeys?"

Which is her course, Social Media Monkey. I'm like, "Oh my gosh I forgot to change her link out."

Then it gets even better. Then the payment plan, I didn't know that Stripe, when you do a payment plan it automatically sets it to a free 30 day trial, so I had given everybody my course for free that signed up for the payment plan. I'm like, oh my gosh. Then it gets even better, because why not, right?

I put a huge type, like ginormously huge typo in the guarantee. I said, "100% money back guarantee if you are happy with the course."

Stephen Larsen:

Usually we don't care about typos that much, that's kind of a big one though.

Alison Prince:

That's a huge, huge typo. I am the perfect example of just do it. I ended up selling over, I think it was 26 courses my very first launch, and it was a complete hot mess.

Stephen Larsen:

I remember that. You did it, you crushed it. You just did it.

Alison Prince:

I just did it. You go out there knowing you're going to make mistakes. You tell people, say, "You guys, the tech's probably going to be screwed up because this is my first time, but the information that I have is valuable." It was. I was confident in what the offer was. I was not confident on the technology. They were patient with me and they were like, "It's okay. It's okay."

I was able to get Liz Benny's course off there and direct them to my course. Get the payments fixed. Change the guarantee. I didn't have one person ask for their money back, because of what I was giving them. Because they were so excited about the offer, that they were fine with the mistakes. I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit, and we're too scared.

Don't be scared. People are there to help you because they want to be helped too.

Stephen Larsen:

Yeah, they're all making it up.

Alison Prince:

Just do it. Yup. Mistakes and all Stephen. Everybody listening, who cares, just go do it. People need you. They need your information. They need your product, so just get out there and do it with mistakes and all.

Stephen Larson:

Yeah. I can't remember, I think it was Dan Kennedy, or I can't remember who it was, but he says, "You have an obligation to sell." If you've got something, it's actually an obligation.

Alison Prince:

Agreed.

Stephen Larsen:

Get out there and just do it. You owe it to your message.

Alison Prince:

Yup. You owe it to, I don't know, we were given talents, so let's go out there and share our talents. Let's do the best that we can, and live that Because I Can Clan life. Live how we want, because we can.

Stephen Larsen:

That's so true. Guys, go check out AlisonJPrince.com. 0-100k.com, I love that course, so good. The Because I Can Clan, the Facebook page. Alison Prince is the real deal. Super authentic. Very, very genuine, and is willing to be vulnerable whenever she makes mistakes like the rest of us. No reason to hide behind your own, because we all make them.

Alison Prince:

That's right.

Stephen Larsen:

Anyways, thank you so much Alison for being on the show, really appreciate it and all the value you gave.

Alison Prince:

Yeah. Thank you, it's been fun.

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.