Boom what's up guys it's Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio, and today we're going to talk about how to roll out products. This is my favorite rollout strategy.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up, guys? Hey, I'm excited for today; I'm excited to be able to share with you some neat things that, frankly, I don't see many people doing.

The first product I ever launched and put out the door was an utter failure - the thing was terrible, okay? But I didn't know that at the time.

I spent inordinate amounts of time putting together the product. I thought my product was the best product ever -I was so excited! I was running towards it.

In my mind, I was like this thing's going to change everything - this is going to be incredible. I was excited, and people would be like, "What are you doing? What do you spend all this time doing?"

I'd be feeling a little smug about it like, "You don't know - just you wait and see!" There'd be people coming up to me and saying things like, "Larsen, what's up now? You doing that thing again? Alright, good luck with that..."

I was actively seeking what I called, "My Shut Up Check." My shut up check"was something that I sought as fast as I could when I was launching.

This was four years ago, and I hadn't perfected the rollout strategy that I want to talk with you guys about today... But what was interesting was I'd go build these things, I was looking for my shut up check.

The shut up check was a concept I learned from a guy I was listening to six or seven years ago. The shut up check is the first check you get from your business.

So when someone says, "Oh, you doing that thing again? Is that even gonna work?" You can pull it out that check and be like "Shut Up! It is working, here's the money."  That's your shut up check.

I hope that you've gotten your shut up check to throw in the naysayers faces a little bit? Not that we would ever do that... BUT TOTALLY DO IT ;-)

What I wanna do real quick is share with you guys how I roll out my products.

What ended up happening with that first one is, I spent eight months building it... and then when I finally launched it, and I put it out there... nobody bought it. And it's because nobody knew about it.

It took three or four months before cash actually started coming on in, and I kind of abandoned it. Until I figured out better ways for traffic - and then I started making more money. But I don't want you to go through that, okay?

I was in the middle of college, I was doing stuff with the Army, I was super busy. So for me to spend eight months of my time - we're talking late nights, early mornings - time I could have been with my family... And then, to not have it work - that was so mentally tasking it was ridiculous. I don't want you to go through that.

So instead, I wanna share with you how I roll out my stuff.

I have marketing books in bookshelves all over the place. I was reading this book, Positioning (It's written by Al Ries and Jake Trout)

... just kind of thumbing through it.

Frankly, instead of reading front to cover, I'll thumb through and find chapters that look interesting, and I'll go learn something specific from it.

Anyway, it's kind of cool, they say, “When you make a new product you must by default, position against the old product.” I thought “Hey, that's super cool.” I totally get it, when you're making an opportunity... and he's saying a whole bunch of other great stuff.

I really like what they say at the beginning. They say that, “we live in a communication-saturated environment.” There's so much communication; you're listening to me, you're listening to other people ... Don't listen to other people, just listen to me ;-) There are so many people speaking.

Back in the day, not enough communication was the issue.  Inside of organizations, not enough communication was really the issue. Maybe even customer to business, or business to the customer - not enough communication. Those are serious issues for sure.

However, there are also massive tendencies to over-communicate now. I believe in consuming a very information very low information diet - as Tim Ferriss teaches and talks about in 4 Hour Work Week.

I'm very careful who I choose to listen to and very careful about what I consume. If I'm not learning for intent, then why am I learning? It's just noise. I ranted about that on a previous podcast.  I really like what Tim Ferriss says about the subject.

In Positioning they say, “Today, communication itself is a problem. We've become the world's first over-communicated society. Every year we send more and receive less.” Now as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, that is a terrible terrible place for you to be.

It has to do with something that was mentioned in the beginning of the book. There's a point that I really like ... (There are a few points that I disagree with too - sorry. Actually - not sorry - I believe it. Just from my own experience of rolling out products)

This is the point; “For years, all of us in the marketing area have taught to our students to build a marketing plan around ‘The 4 P's’.” If you guys don't know the 4 P's; the 4 P's are like the Bible, they're like gospel. Especially in corporate marketing.

The 4 P's are: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. What's the product - what's the price of it?  Where you gonna place it? How you gonna promote it? Now that makes sense, but he makes a great point. There's some areas here that I agree with and some that I won't here, and I wanna share with you why - and it has to do with my rollout strategy.

The next point is; “I began to realize some years ago, that some important steps needed to precede the 4 P's. All good marketing planning must start with research before any of the P's can even be set.

Research reveals (among other things) that customers differ greatly in their needs, perceptions, and preferences. Therefore customers must be classified into segments.”

Research, get them into segments. You can't serve all segments. I agree with that. I wanna walk you through how I do this without getting technical. So, I'm gonna put the book down.

The scariest thing ever, is for you, as a marketer, or Sales Funnel builder, to go out and launch a product that nobody has ever heard of. Scary, scary crap! That's so freaky.

I remember I was watching a lot of gurus launch their products, and these gurus would go launch their products, and a lot of times the product wasn't even built when they were selling it. I had this moral compass conflict inside of me, "Is that right? Is this ethical?" I was like, "that's kind of weird," and I had a hard time with it for a while.

Every time I teach this strategy, someone says, "Is that right? Is that real? Is that okay?"

Let me explain what's really is going on behind the scenes: They're doing the four Ps, they're doing research and segmenting, they're doing all these other things inside there. They're positioning the new product against the old one. This positioning game heavily affects what makes a good marketer.

The stories you tell, all that stuff that stuff matters tremendously. The reason I'm talking about this is that I'm doing it right now for two products.

If you guys are part of my group The Science of Selling Online, I just built 'Affiliate Outrage' live, in front of the group. I designed the marketing message, drew out the funnel,  and then I built the funnel live.

Now, I'm doing it again with another product in front of that group -  for FREE - anyone can watch it. I go through, and I say, "There's a need right here, right everybody?" And they're like, "Yeah, there is a need right there." "Okay, what kind of thing would you wish was inside that product? Awesome, cool. You know what, I'm actually go through in front of you, I'm going to design the marketing messages. I'm going to go through, let's brainstorm together what false beliefs there are about the product I'm gonna put out there." They're like, "Well if it's about funnels - I'm not a techie!" I'm like, "Oh, that's a good one community, thank you for saying that. Community, this is how I would combat that?" I go around and show them, "Well, that's a bad belief because of x, y, and z," and I retell them another story. Then I'm like, "Oh man, community, what are some of the stories you would expect somebody to be believing some of the experiences that they've gone through that's made them think they need to be a techie?" They're like well, "I saw this guy and he was an awesome funnel builder a great person online, and he was a coder. All these people were coders." I'm like "Oh that's great, that's great. Okay let me write that down, I need to break that story, I need to put a new story.” Does that make sense?

I'm going in, and I'm using the very people who are buying the product to help create the marketing message, and I'm doing it live in front of them. What does that do?

So I just did this for Affiliate Outrage - it's a free program. I took the time to go do it because I wanted to, number one, go through and show... there's a there's a sense of... I'm trying to display that I know what the heck I'm talking about. How do you say that word, I don't know what that word is?

...But I'm trying to say "Look, I'm not a fake. Watch me do it live. Watch me build and construct the thing in front of you."

I did for  Affiliate Outrage, and now I'm doing for another paid product. I'm literally building in front of the very people that I hope will buy it. That's the strategy - and I hope you all use it in your businesses.

The strategy is if you are selling an info product or you're writing a book or you are in retail or if you're in B2B. Take those products and deconstruct them in front of a customer, and put it back together, and say, "Here you go." That increases your sales like crazy.

Six months into working at ClickFunnels, Russell Voxed me, and he said, "Hey, dude, we're going to start a show called Funnel Fridays." "Like cool, what's that?"

A lot of you guys know me from Funnel Fridays. Every Friday, Russell gets on with Jim Edwards, fantastic copywriting expert, and Russell, obviously a funnel building expert... They take somebody's product, whether it's somebody from the audience or something else that they're doing at that time, and they build an entire funnel live in front of people in 30 minutes.

Now, do they always finish? No, hardly ever, that's not the point though. What that does... think about it... Russell CEO of Click Funnels and Jim Edwards creator, the seller of Funnel Scripts coming together and using the product in front of the customer. Doing exactly what their product sells - using the products in the live build.

Sometimes there'd be two, three, 400 people live watching live, giving feedback and asking questions. "Why did you do it this way... why did you do it that way?" Guys that's selling!

Does it feel like a sales script? “No!” The whole point I'm trying to make here is that if you are going, "Hey, I want to go build this product..." do everything you can to, number one, roll it out in front of your audience. Include them in your rollout strategy. Include them in the build. You'll create these true believers.

Let's say you're building software; your potential customers will remember the story of you going through and teaching them why this button exists. They'll remember everything that went on to create that feature.  Now they’ll have an affinity for that feature. Whereas before it was just a crappy little feature.

When you're building the little pieces inside of your product, you're putting things together, it's incredibly important for you to document the journey of its creation. That's the point of today's episode.

If you document the journey of the creation of your product - what you end up doing is pre-selling people for the day that you open the doors.

That is what I did not understand when I launched my first info product.  I did not understand for quite some time.

It's kind of like Hollywood right? Hollywood goes out six months before a movie goes out, they start getting people ready. They start creating curiosity, they start building pressure.

A marketer builds pressure over time towards an event - a purchasing event. That's really what a campaign is. It's building pressure towards a purchasing event.

There's a campaign and they're building, building, building, building, building pressure. They're building pressure - six months out - or even a year sometimes, right?

There's a preview for a movie -it's only two minutes long - but it's a teaser. Six months out there's another one, three months out there's another one. A week ahead of time, "Holy crap, oh my gosh, this is the launch date. Get your premiere tickets; pay extra to see the first showing of it in your area." Does that make sense?  They make an event out of the rollout of the product.

The issue that I find, more often than not, is that there's been no pressure, no talk, nothing about a product before it launches.

The problem with that is that you're gonna rely on ads and influencer name drops. And that's fine; I would use those strategies. I do those strategies myself. However, if you're not building the pressure ahead of time...

There are really two ways that you can build the pressure:

#1 Build the pressure ahead of the product launch  

#2 Then you can build pressure after the product launch by doing things like ads, closing the cart strategically, doing lots of stuff like that.

So anyway, I hope that this has made sense? I kind of dove deep with it a little bit.

I agree with what the book Positioning was talking about, but not just from a positioning standpoint, but from a rollout strategy. That's very very huge.

For you to think through how to actually put your product out the door. So if you want to see an example of that in action, go to thescienceofselling.online.

I'm saving the live product and funnel builds in that group so you guys can go back and watch them. It's been really cool.

If you wanna see the Affiliate Outrage one in there, you'll see how I designed the marketing, meaning the actual messaging, the sales message. There's a format, there's a template I used for that. Going out and then choosing the funnel to build. There's a format there's a template. 90% of this is just a big 'ol formula. People just convolute it.

Then when I'm actually building the funnel, there's a format, there's a formula that I follow to get that out the door quickly.  As I'm doing it live, I'm showing my prospective customers how I'm gonna be selling 'em. There's nothing wrong with that; this is a huge extra value add. Now they're like, "Oh man, I didn't know this is why you did that. I didn't realize Stephen that this belief I have is actually a false belief. Oh cool, you're going to put that feature in. Huh, Interesting."

What's beautiful beautiful beautiful about this whole thing is I'm going out and I'm showing them what they're getting without them getting it. So that makes the curiosity higher. When they've invested that amount of time with me on the internet, (they're engaging for free), if they don't get the product, the itch is not scratched entirely. So they have a massive incentive to buy.

Anyway, I just hope that you take that seriously. What I've been doing the last little bit here, is re-creating certain parts of the product after products are rolled out. I'll re-create certain parts of that product live in order to push more people in. The first time the product goes out, I'll make a whole bunch of it in front of the people. Sometimes not all of it, but key parts I know they'll be really interested in. Anyway, lots of fun stuff.

The whole point is to take the customer with you on the creation of the product (or certain parts of it.) It will create a massive affinity which leads to true believers.

Rather than go and find true believers, you create true believers - which is very powerful.

Alright guys, hopefully, this has been a helpful episode for you today! Thank you so much to all of you who've been reviewing the podcast on iTunes, it means a lot to me. Please keep doing that, and I'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.

Boom. Just try to tell me you didn't like that. Hey, whoever controls content, controls the game. Wanna interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com

Boom, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna talk about my greatest asset and my college transcript.

What's up, guys? Hey, today's a little bit different.

First off, I wanna apologize. The last few episodes that went out, we found out the mic on the camera was busted, and so that's kinda why they sounded a little bit weird.

Thankfully my super-ninja sound dude was able to take out a lot of the stuff, but we apologize for that. He's the man. You guys'll all get to meet him another time when we all feature our content team again.

But, what I wanted to do, this episode's a little bit different, and you'll notice it's a little bit longer, but what I wanted to do is...

 I did a Facebook Live to my group, and it's a little long but the lessons are huge, and it frankly is how I went from completely failing out of college; I had no idea how to learn. Did not know, right? I really didn't know how to learn. Even into my early 20s, I had to figure out how to learn.

In fact, the first thing I show you is my college transcript  - you'll see the huge difference between when I learned how to learn, and when I had no idea how to learn. And how that's blessed me in my life and frankly, everything else that I do.

Anyway, so it's a little bit of a different episode. We're going to cut over to it now. It's the recording from me in my group The Science of Selling Online. And so, we're going to cut straight over to that.

If you have any questions or whatever, please reach out.

The group itself had a great discussion about it afterward, and by the time I was done over 900 people had already watched it. And then a few hours later it was 1500.  It's been really, really cool.

There's some real talk, please go in with some thick skin. If you are easily offended, maybe don't watch this one. But anyway, let's cut over to it now and I'll see you in that episode.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is: How will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

Hey, I just want to share with you guys probably one of the most important assets that I've ever created. It's something that took me, probably, two years to develop. Um, of actively trying to do it, okay? And I want to show you this real quick though, hold on, let me; just pulling it up right here so you guys can see it.

I want to walk you through what I've done and why it means so much to me. And frankly, I know it's one of the major reasons why I am where I am right now. And it's because the lesson was so painful, okay? So let me share this with you guys...

Alright. Okay, check this out. I went through, and I found my college transcript. It's not like anyone has asked me for it, ever. Russell certainly didn't care. But I'm glad for what it taught me.

I'll never, ever regret going to college. Although, I you don't learn how to learn. You don't learn how to make money in college, right? But I'm glad I went.

Check this out. I'm gonna show you my transcript, okay? And I'm going to show you something. This is funny...

I graduated from college when I was 28. Right, and it's because I did like a two-year mission for my church; I took, frankly, a year and a half off. This was before I knew what I wanted to do. Before I tried enough things to know what I wanted to do. Right?

I took a couple of semesters for army stuff. You know, going to basic training and a whole bunch of things.  So it was a long time, okay? Much longer than normal people usually take to get through college, but I mean I had a family. We had kids; we had a different scenario and everything.

Anyway, check this out. Okay, I'm going to show you my transcript. No one laugh, but totally feel free to because I'm going to.

Let me make sure you guys can see this. Look at that first semester right there. D plus, A, F, F, F, F. That's the first semester. Okay, check that out.

I got an A in Apartment Leadership because it was a two-hour thing. I just sat down and did it one day, when I realized how screwed I was at the end of the semester. My GPA was literally .00017, okay?

I had no idea how to learn. I actually got kicked out of college. I got kicked out - and frankly, you have to go to class to stay in it. That's kinda funny.  I kinda stopped going to class about halfway through. But the issue was; I didn't know how to learn. Okay?

I had no idea how to learn, I didn't know the process it. I  barely graduated high school, okay. I'm not just saying that; I got straight D's in science every semester; in math, every semester; in English. I certainly did in foreign languages. Spanish, straight Ds.  And half of it was just because I didn't know how to learn. Right?

I was always interested, and at parent-teacher conferences, it would be like, "Your son seems really, really interested in this, he just hasn't applied himself." And that's what they said every freaking parent-teacher conference - from when I was in the fourth grade all the way through!

Until I finally went to college and removed my parents from the notifications list for the school. I didn't know how to learn.

The thing that I went and I figured out was, "how to learn." So  I thought it would be kinda cool to share my process for learning with you. Cause there's a process, and it's active.

Let me share with you guys the difference though... So I ended up having to apply for college again four years later. Okay, four years later, I went and said, "let's go finish this thing; I gotta figure out how to do this."

I did not learn how to make money in college. I did not learn how to be a marketer, even though I have a marketing degree - which is really funny. I didn't learn how to do any of that stuff in college. It was all my own side hustles going on, you know. I had actual clients going on, on the side.

But anyways, let me show you this. Okay, check this out. Alright, so that's the semester that I got kicked out, okay?

Then check out that row right there. A, B, A, A, A, A, A, A, B. A, A, A, A, A, A. B, B, B, A, A, A, A, A. A, A, A, A, A. I didn't get a single C the rest of the four and a half years that I was in college. Straight A's, a few B's here and there. Ended up with a 3.83.818, okay? That's crazy, that's crazy. And the difference was that I learned how to learn.

This was such a powerful lesson to me.  I remember where I was. I was over on the east coast, living in North Carolina.  I was on a mission, and I started learning how to learn.

I completely believe that God had every bit to do with it, okay? For some reason, kinda opened and expanded my noggin. But this is what I learned. This is the process that I learned. This is literally what I go through to learn.

It's no different, no different than what made me able to sit next to Russell in Build Funnels forum. It's no different, the exact same process.

In fact, even when I was sitting next to Russell, and he'd say, "Steven, go figure out how to hook up deadline funnel. Steven, go figure out how to do this. You got two hours to learn this whole software and integrate it into this funnel, go." Same process, okay, same process.

In fact, most of the time when I am coaching - I've brought 1600 people through this process now. Many of them became millionaires. Many became hundred-thousandaires, and lots of people made money for the first time in their entire life. It was by applying this process.

If I was sitting in Quantitative Marketing Research; blah, blah, right? I hate that, like; oh my gosh, that's terrible, right? I hated that stuff. Accounting!!! If you guys like that stuff, that's great. I don't, I'm not good at that.

In fact, my first major was CIT, blah. Coding? I'm not good at that, I hate coding okay? I do not know how to do it, I understand pieces of it, but my brain doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. And so, I had to learn how to learn.

The stats all say that every CEO is reading a book a week, at least, right. You gotta learn how to learn. And you gotta do it at speed, right? And that, if you guys go to; I'm not promoting or anything, but if you go to doublemyreading.com - it's the worlds fastest reader...

Every year Russell goes and does a promo with him.  He's got a course, it'll more than double your reading speed. If it only doubles, he gets mad about it.

I got to meet him. He read Expert's Secrets in five minutes. It was the craziest thing, I sat right in front of him, and I watched him. And then he had an in-depth conversation for an hour with Russell about all the details inside.

There's so much information around, the first thing you can do is be really picky on what you consume.

Stop listening to every podcast show that's out there. Choose the top two or three guys and go deep with them.

Stop reading every book. Choose the one or two topics that you want to get really good at in your lifetime, and that's it. Only do those things. Don't worry about the others, you're not going to get good at them anyway.

The first thing you can do is do what Tim Ferris teaches, and have a low-information diet, okay? And then you go deep on that thing.

I prided myself for a long time for being a Renaissance man. I could do ad copy, I could do the actual ad. I could do the actual funnel, I could set up the integrations. I could do the actual video, I could do sound editing. I could do all of it! And I was a one-man show and, frankly, for a while before you build a team, that's a great way to go so you know at least who to hire and who's good.

But after a while, stop learning everything. Okay? Cut it out. It's what's killing you. You just dive deep on just one or two experts that you really, really like. And you study 'em for years. That's the reason why Clickfunnels is literally three miles away in that direction, right over there. It's three miles away. Even though I was next to The Man that long, he is the silo that I have determined to learn and study from long term. I'm never not going to study deeply from him.

When I find out there's something that he is just freaking out about, and is super excited about. I read the same book. When I find out there's something; I still do it! Even though I had a massive brain dump just sitting next to the guy.

Anyways, what I want to do real quick is; I wanted to share with you the process...

The very first step, if I needed to go learn something that I didn't want to learn; I had to find a way to become curious about it. I had to become curious. I had to seek information, okay?

I looked at all the guys who were in my marketing classes, who were in my entrepreneurial class. Pretty much 99% of them were not doing a dang thing outside that class to learn on their own.

They literally surrendered all, all learning, All Learning, ALL LEARNING - to the teacher! That's crap! Don't do that! Okay, don't do that! You should be going and just getting extra little pieces done by that teacher.

If I'm coaching somebody (or somebody is in some program of mine), and they leave every single step up to me, I know they will fail. I'm that strong about it. If they have no drive,  if they do not learn on their own, if they've never opened up freaking Google or YouTube and typed in, "how do I _____ ____? I know they're not going to make it. Bar none! Done, right there - gone. Will not make it. Will not make money because they have zero drive.

Look, all these things that we're teaching you guys. Everything that we do is a formula. It will get you to the 90%. Okay? It will shortcut, save years of your life, Tens of thousands of dollars of you testing on your own. But that last 10% is up to the athlete. Right? It's up to you, right?

It's up to you; "Hey, this is how you do an econ funnel." Sweet, but I'm not going to go make an econ funnel specific to your exact product. So there's gonna be that last little 10%.

You'll make money during the 90%. You'll figure out how to be successful doing the 90%, or get leads doing that 90%, but it's that last 10%!

For the guys who can't stay up a few extra hours; who can't get up a few extra hours -  who can't and won't do it on their own... They surrender all of their learning to another person and say well, "But Steven didn't teach me how to do it with my product." Bullcrap! Not my fault. Not my fault, okay!

I realized when I sat down in college that people were literally leaving all responsibility for learning up to the teacher. That's when I realized; oh crap, it's actually freaking easy for me to be apart from everybody else.

That's the beauty of it guys. Study for an hour on your own. No one telling you to do it.  I'm preaching to the choir for a lot of guys on here right now. I know I am, but let me keep ranting, okay?

If you do just a little bit extra; in only a year's time... Six months guys! Six months from the time I built my first successful funnel was when I met Russell and got a job offer from him. Six months! It's because I dove deep.

Step number one, you've got to be self-sustaining. You've got to be diving deep, you have to be curious.

If there was something that I needed to go learn, I found a way to be curious about it. You must be curious. You must learn for the sake of wanting to do so. Reading is not enough, okay? Which leads me to step two.

As I was learning,  (and this was weird, okay), but I did this actively in college...

When there was a subject that I did not want to learn, you can see, I almost got straight A's. I got a 3.18 the rest of college after that. From straight F's? Right? I just showed my transcript to ya. What did I do?

One of my tricks was that I always "learned for two." That's the phrase I always say inside my head." I'm gonna learn for two, I'm gonna learn for two, I'm gonna learn for two." Meaning: As I'm learning something, one of the easiest ways for it to sink inside of my head; whether it has to do with funnels, right; or a script strategy...

Right now,  I am actually in funnel script.  I'm building out the webinar for funnel builder secrets to go do with all these cool JV's with Russell. Super cool, cool stuff. So anyways, that's what I'm doing right now. But, I'm learning for two...

Every time I watched Russell - even before I met him in person; before he ever knew who I was - I always learned for two.

Let's say there was some topic which I didn't want to learn it. I would sit back, and I would go: "How would I teach this to somebody else?"

I'm 100% convinced the reason I have this status right now is because of that principle.

It was weird guys; I would sit back, and I would say to myself: How would I teach this to somebody else?  For some reason I always imagined myself teaching it onstage. I don't know why but I always did.

I felt a little weird, little conceited even, doing that. And this became the basis for me to begin to publish - even though I didn't want to. Because in my head I'd future-paced myself enough times. Id think, "How would I say this onstage?" If I was gonna teach this; how would I simplify it? How would I draw in a picture so they can understand?

I'm not trying to sound super smart. I'm trying to sound "simple" - because it's actionable.

One of my favorite quotes... You know I'm starting my quote wall again, which I'm really excited about. I think it's that one right there. It says, "The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligence." Okay?

I'm not trying to sound all smart and crap. I'm a "geek out," guys. We go some deep concepts for marketing, right? The different psychology and ask, "what's actually going on in the noggin?" If you guys followed me in affiliate outrage, then you saw me do that a little bit while I've been building it.

So step number one is; be curious, seek. You've got to be able to deep-dive without anybody telling you to do so. Freak out over it, obsess over it. Be unreasonable over the amount of information you're consuming on it, okay?

I have mastered this to such a level that I feel like already that I could teach a master class on any subject if you gave me two weeks. I just dive, dive, dive, dive, dive.  You will be ahead of so many people, it's ridiculous.

So that's step number one, okay. You have got to deep dive. Find a way to be interested. Find a way to be curious. Seek, seek, seek, seek, seek actively.

Number two is, "learn for two." And more specifically, you need to learn how to document what you're learning, okay? Write it down, I don't always write stuff down.

I used to write a lot of stuff down, which is why I showed you guys my funnel journal. Which is a previous Facebook Live.

If you haven't seen that one. I showed you my funnel journal and everything I was learning. I just showed Russell like two days ago, and he's freaking out about it. Which is awesome. It'll be on a Funnel Hacker TV episode soon, which is cool, cause he was really impressed by it. But that's how I used to do it.

Other ways I would document, though;  let's say there was a subject I didn't want to go learn. I actively would find somebody after class, I didn't care who it was. There were strangers I did this to many times.

I would walk up to 'em, and we'd be getting on an elevator or something like that. And I'd be like, "Hey, this is gonna be weird, but can I just tell you what I learned in this last class?" And they'd be like, "Yeah, I guess." And I'd be like, "Cool! This is what I learned, isn't that interesting?" They'd be like, "Yeah, that is interesting."

I would go back home, and I would teach my wife for that purpose, guys. It was an active thing that I would be doing. I would take that piece back, and I would go and tell it. I would teach it to my wife so that it sank in my brain. If you can teach it, you know it.

Those are really the two steps, okay?

Now the way you teach it matters. You know what's funny is with Sales Funnel Radio; do you guys watch Sales Funnel Radio at all? I don't know if you guys watch it at all. Sales Funnel Radio is freaking amazing. Love the group. Hey thanks, Adam, I love the group too. Sales Funnel Radio is epic.

What's interesting about Sales Funnel Radio is everybody just wants the nuggets. Okay, they want the nuggets. It's funny cause I was totally surveying people and this is what they say.  It's funny, they'll tell me things like, "Steven this is a really good point, I wish you just got straight to the lesson though." And I'll be like, "Oh, interesting!"

So at the beginning, when I was first doing Sales Funnel Radio, you can hear a few episodes where I did that.  It was pretty straight tactics. Straight to the point, right to the nugget. And you know what's funny about that? Nobody ever remembered it. No one remembered the nugget. Nobody applied it. It didn't mean anything to them. After two episodes, I stopped. I was like, crap, that didn't work.

They want the nugget, but if I go straight to the nugget, no one remembers it. And frankly, you won't remember it either. And so you have to wrap your nuggets in stories. Okay? You have to wrap the golden nuggets in stories. That's how people learn, it's how what sticks in the brain.

It's what also assigns the value to the nugget. Alright? It's what gets people to go, "Oh my gosh, that was so cool!" It only happens when I wrap things in story. When I do 80% story, 20% nugget. So watch what I'm doing in those episodes. Okay, and again; 80% story, 20% nugget. When I do it that way, they're like, "Oh my gosh, that was such a sick episode!"

When I go straight tactical, and it truly is stuff that I would charge a grand for at an event to go teach. They're like, "Hey, that was cool!" And then I never hear about it again. When there is a story though, there's an emotional response that people will remember forever. So what does this have to do with anything?

So again, here are the steps. Number one: you've gotta be able to dive deep and be a self-solver when it comes to your education.

I hate it, hate it when people reach out to me and they're like, "How do I add a new funnel?" I'm like, "Freaking A! Did you even google it?!" I get so mad about it. Are you serious? Google it!! Right!

Did you do anything on your own to solve that question on your own? No! Therefore, I'm not even gonna help! That's my response to it, and I get pretty animated about it, which you just saw.

When people reach out, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, Steven, how do I write a Seinfeld series?" "Did you even google it?!" Right? "Did you look at Dot Com Secrets? Did you read the scripts? Did you even YouTube?" Someone already has the answer.

I have a YouTube education. No one taught me how to do what I'm doing. No one taught me, okay? My very first education was a YouTube education.

For a long time, I would go, and I would get these people to say yes to me.  I would turn around, I'd say, "Look, I know you don't know what these funnels are, and in fact, I actually don't know how to build half the stuff myself." I wouldn't say that. I'd say, "Do you want me to go rebuild your website?" And they'd say, "Sure."

All I knew was that there was a guy out there, somewhere in the ether, who had some little tutorial on how to build a website in WordPress. And I would say, "Sweet!" And I would dedicate two days; guys, I'm not joking.  I would say, "Yes, I'll go do it!" What I was really saying was: "Let me go figure it out."

I would grab whatever asset I found on YouTube; I would go grab 'how to build a website' and I'd have that on one screen. I'd do it in the library, guys. I didn't even have a computer sometimes.

One of the things that I would do is I'd say "yes" to people. And I would be like, oh man, I just said yes to filming that guy's thing; I don't even have filming software. You know, editing software. Oh cool, libraries do. And I would go edit everything in a library.

Or I'd say,  "You want me to come to your event and film a thing? Yeah, I could totally do that!"

I didn't know what I was doing for a while. I was in my age of exploration. I was just learning crap, okay? I was doing it on purpose. Just saying yes to stuff and figuring it out as I went.

Build a parachute as you're falling. Funny enough, the ground never comes, okay.

So I went out, and I would go, and I would say things like, "Hey, let me say yes to you on that and then let me deliver it to you in about two weeks." And I would literally just go and grab, I would just go and grab a tutorial and press play for 15 seconds and do what the dude did over on WordPress before Clickfunnels existed.

When Clickfunnels came out, I did the exact same thing in Clickfunnels. Guys, I probably read every support document that they ever had out. It's not a joke.

Two to three times a day, I would be reaching out to support asking questions. I was "THAT GUY!"  I knew that, and I was fine with that. But I was that 'oh crap, it's this guy again.'

That's how they knew who I was when I actually showed up to a Funnel Hacking Live event. That's why I got five job offers by the time I actually got there. They knew who I was because I was dedicated to educating myself. I was a self-solver.

This topic for me drives me nuts. I absolutely hate it. When people come, and they say things like, "But Steven, I just don't know how to find a product to sell." Google it! Right? It's like right there! There's so much information! Google it! Right! Are ya feeling me?

I know I'm totally preaching to the choir here. You guys are all; you're in a group called Science of Selling Online, right? This is like me going deep in innermost thoughts of my noggin, okay? But I'm trying to help everyone see like, nothing is stopping you!

It is not a matter of "how do I?" anymore. How does this happen? How do I do that? Is this what-- Is this how this works? Is this how I do this over here? It's not a matter of that anymore! Freaking YouTube and Google are amazing! Just go there! And do it! That's why I get so frustrated about it.

When I'm in a course for someone. Or there's like this little tiny contingency that only matters for the smallest little deep, darkest corner of their very scenario -that happens on a Tuesday, after a full moon... And I'm like, oh are you kidding? Just go google it.

I'm freaking just yelling right now. And I know, and I totally get that. But it's because it's a passionate thing for me. I just showed you my college transcript. I failed my entire first semester. They kicked me out, I literally had to reapply for college. What I learned in that scenario, was how to learn.

How to learn is never on anybody else's shoulder. If you don't know how to do anything it is nobody else's fault; it's no one else's fault - BECAUSE Google exists! YouTube exists! Guys like me, who are willing to teach you, exist! The 80 20 principle totally applies.

When I was doing 2 Comma Club coaching, and I was the only coach, there were 600 students. I was the only coach for a full year. How did I do it? You wanna know the honest truth? It's because the 80 20 rule still applied, and 20% of the 600 weren't even doing anything. Okay? You getting info is not what gets you results.

If you go out and you start saying things like... (I know you guys don't do this, okay), this is my rant to the world as if everyone can hear it. I should stand on my roof and yell, "Do crap! Just look it up! The answer is already there."

It has nothing to do with 'how do I?' anymore! How do I "X"? How do I "Z"? (I forgot "Y") How do I "X" ?; How do I "Y"? How do I "Z"?  "How do I one, two and three?" That's no longer the issue. The issue is always: Have you taken the freaking time to answer it on your own? Are you in a group? Are you in a course? Did you pay the dude who's taken a lot of time of his life to learn it some money so that he can show you how to short-cut it? Have you done those things?

If you do that, and you actually get in those courses. And you do it, and you apply it; that's like half the freaking battle. Just being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there.

In the army, there was a phrase; "You guys wanna know how you're not gonna get jacked up in this life? And you wanna know how you're gonna stay the course? It's simple; Be where you're supposed to be, when you're supposed to be there, in the uniform you're supposed to be in." And that's all they would say.

If you're supposed to be up at a certain time studying your craft, be up! If you're supposed to stay up late; be up! If you're like, "I don't know how to do this," make it your number one thing that day to figure it out. That is why I sat next to Russell Brunson. I am a self-solver, I am a self-teacher. God had everything to do with it.

When I asked him, "Will you please help me learn this because I'm kind of an idiot right now." Right, and I failed out that first semester of college, he helped, okay? And when I went out, and I said, "Look, I'm going to try and be curious about this." Rather than my attitude of like, "ugh I've got to learn freaking dream 100 again?," (Which is what I know people say), I was like, "Cool. How can I be curious about this? How can I seek the knowledge? How can I seek information and how can I get myself results? How can I self-solve and self-teach?"

There's no one else who's to blame except for myself if I don't learn this. Even the expert, even the guy teaching it. It's not his fault, it's always mine, okay? For my successes and my failures, never the expert's fault.

Number two, what I was saying is that you have to build a document somehow. I always follow the adage of "learn for two." Meaning, how am I going to go teach it? Either on a podcast or by writing somewhere? Am I gonna teach some random person on the street? Which I was doing to a hair-cut lady the other day as she was cutting my hair. She had a really terrible attitude about trying new things in life. Okay, anyway... You feeling me?

I don't care if the internet was to blow up; I'd be totally fine. Because I've learned how to learn. Does that make sense?

There's been a few times in my life;  a few projects that I've been on... This was true if it was a school project or a business project... Where if something changed the way we were running the business. And somebody started getting, "Ah, who moved my cheese? Ah, wait, am I gonna be taken along in that ride? Where am I gonna get mine?" It was always because they weren't a self-solver.

They always had the attitude of like, "Is, is this guy gonna remember; am I gonna be remembered? I'm gonna die in a gutter, blahhh!" And they would start saying that kinda crap, and you could see it. Their attitude would go that way, and they'd get a little more cut-throat. And we'd be like, "Dude, relax! We're still like fleshing out this thing. First of all, yes; you're still gonna be cut in this thing, it's okay."

I'm not gonna name a very specific project I'm thinking of, but it was always because someone didn't know how to learn on their own. They had no idea how to learn on their own. They had no idea how to self-solve. They had no idea.

There was a challenge that I used to run in the 2 Comma Club group called "The Self-solver Challenge." It's funny that I called it The Self-solver Challenge - all they had to do was just do the things I was teaching them. It was so ridiculous how many people wouldn't even do that. I'm like, "Are you committed to this?"

It's almost like Bourne Supremacy, you remember the Bourne movies, the Bourne Supremacy? "Will you commit to this program?",  Maybe a vague movie reference, I don't know? But I'm obsessed with Bourne movies. That's all I was asking for; "just freaking commit to it." And if they went and did what they were supposed to do in the program, I would go and do this special critique with them, or something like that.

There are two lies with this game. Especially in the info-product game. The first lie is that most of us start to confuse action with achievement...

Sorry, my hands shaky, I'm yelling too much...  

If you're learning things, that's great. But if you're not learning with the intent to solve a problem, that's a distraction, right? It's the reason why I have so many books on my shelves that I haven't read. I have no reason to learn what's in those books right now.

People are like, "But you're supposed to read a book a week." Alright, maybe the equivalent of that I'm learning through listening to a ton of podcasts and a few other things that I do. I'm still learning like an animal. But I'm learning with intent.

This is how the game works...  I don't see beginning to end, and it's the reason why most people don't get started. What happens is they sit back, and they go, "Steven, I see how this funnel game could work," right? And some of you guys have said that "I get it, I get it."

These are like the two lies, okay. This is the first lie; the lie is that someone says, "I must see from beginning to end to get started in this game," but this is always a false belief.

I know this by taking 1600 people through this process. 1600, okay, I think it's more than that now. I think we're nearing 1700. The door is about to open for more, I'm really excited...

See, I teach people how to do for themselves the very things I'm teaching them how to do to their customers. I say, "What are your false beliefs about this very process I'm about to take you through?" And I, one of those beliefs is always, "Steven, I can't see the whole path."

Engineers and designers are always the worst because they want to see beginning to end before they ever start a project. They're always the worst.

Every time I'm gonna go teach on stage, I always look and see who the engineers are. If I know who the engineer is, I'm like, "Crap, there's the logic person who needs to see every step before they'll do anything." There's nothing wrong with that, it's a different skill set, just be aware of it

I'll sit back, and I'll say, "Okay, wait a second, that's not how it works. We see the peak! I always see the peak. I know exactly where I want to drive the ship. You all do, too. I want this kind of thing; I want this success. I want this kind of outcome; I want this kind of life. This kind of revenue or profit or whatever it is. We all know, right, you guys know what your peak is.

The reason I found that most people don't get started, and the reason that I found that most people who were taking time was because they could see the two or three steps in front of them but there was this area that was totally dark. No lights on, completely black. And they're like, "Ugh, okay, I see how to build the funnel, but I don't know how to get traffic?' And I'm like, "What!?" Month two hasn't even happened! Right? That's not how the game works! That's not how the game works!

There's as much faith in it as in anything else. You sit down, you say, "I'm going for that peak." You look down, and you say, "I see the one step in front of me, and number two, number three. I don't even really see number four." I don't even see number four in my own business. I see the peak, and I know the major milestones to get there, but in-between it's completely, completely dark. It's totally black, I have no idea what's there. No idea, no idea.

If you're nervous about solving problems in entrepreneurship, like get used to it, or learn to love it because that's all it is. So all you have to focus on is step number one.

Don't worry about step number three until you've taken step number two. So many people are trying to put every little asset, every little thing in place. All these little pieces; "I'm not gonna be a good speaker. I'm not good at the funnel building. How does the offer go? How does this happen?" And they're like, "Oh my gosh."

Just start moving, and take step one. Don't worry about step two until it's completely there. You take it slow, and your speed increases over time. But you put that foot out, right there. You just put the foot out, and you place your foot as perfectly as your foot can be placed. Then you start to put a little weight on it. Lift up that back foot and get ready for step number two. And you hold it above, and you place that step as perfectly as it can be placed. And then the next one, and the next one. And you know what's funny is when you take the first step, a new third step always appears and begins to become visible.

The issue happens when people get distracted by it. "But how do I bill an affiliate product?" Man, you don't even have a product, who cares? And, "What's my affiliate program gonna be? I haven't set up backpack yet." You're not even selling your normal products on your own anyway, who cares?

Don't even worry about it until you get there. Don't even worry about it. Right, boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. That's like the first lie of the info-product, actually entrepreneurship game in general. Well, the first lie that people believe is, "Oh my gosh, I gotta know all these steps, I gotta know all these things. I'm not gonna be successful unless I do. I'm don't see from beginning to end." Okay, no one does, nobody does.

You guys know when we actually started the funnel for this book? Two days before the launch. Okay, that's some scary crap. I would not encourage you to do that. Okay, it's some scary crap, and we had a very pro team pulling it off, okay? But what I'm saying is execution is what matters. Done is the new perfect. Stop needing to see beginning to end, stop needing to be perfect.

Most of the time it's just a pride thing that the person is experiencing. "I'm gonna look like an idiot if this fails!" You mean when. When it fails - it will. Just get over it. When it fails, okay.

But because so many people are so scared to take action, if you just take a little, you're already ahead of 80% of humanity. Okay, that's why I can stay ahead. That's why I'm doing it the way I am. I already know it's not gonna be perfect. Right?

That's the way I started treating my learning. I didn't need to learn every little piece of detail.  I dove deep with it, right, I dove deep with it. I found step number one, just as I was talking about. Step number one. How can I be curious about what I'm learning? How can I dive deeply?

Then number two: How can I teach for two? I mean: How can I learn for two - so I can turn around and teach it to somebody else? Somehow document it. Somehow go around and turn around and be like, "Check it out, this is how it happens!"

Okay, anyway. There's some real talk there. Oh, that was lie number one. Lie number two is that "when I purchase something the problem is solved." That's the other lie that people believe.

How many you guys bought a treadmill and never used it? That's a perfect example. We've all done that. I'm not poking fingers. We've all done that, every one of us. That's fine, okay? But you have to buy with intent.

I buy stuff to funnel-hack it or to use it. There are times where stuff sits around. I'm totally guilty of that as well. That's the second lie of this game that people believe. When I go purchase something, it scratches the itch. And therefore I'll be successful, and we begin to confuse action with achievement.

So just to recap, cause I just said a butt-load of stuff and that was way longer than expected and I went into things that I wasn't planning to. That was gonna be like a five-minute little thing.

Number one, right? I showed you my college transcript. I literally failed out of college. I had to learn how to learn. I had to literally reapply, they kicked me out. Like, for real, okay?

Four years later, I went back in, I learned how to learn. Got pretty much straight A's, graduated with a 3.8 the rest of college. And then, then what I started learning, right.

The big difference between a straight A's and me failing out of college, which totally applied to me everything funnel-building-wise. And which is why I am completely convinced is why I'm doing what I'm doing now, right. In college, I learned how to learn, okay? I asked God for help, I learned how to learn.

I turned around, and I figured out how to get curious about things that I needed to learn but didn't want to. "How can I get curious about this? How can I seek, how can I ask for help? Who has the biggest cheese? Who can I go run after? Who's that person who that'll take me in to shortcut as much of the process as possible?"

Number two, I always learned with the intent to teach somebody else. I learned for two; learn for two; "learn for two, learn for two." It's like this constant thing that's going on in my head.  There have been awkward moments where I walk up to random people and say, "Look, I know you don't know who I am, this is gonna be weird, but I want to teach you what I just learned, so I remember it, is that cool?" Sometimes I would just tell them anyway. That was weird, a few times. But it worked

When I started funnel building  - the exact same thing, right!

The fastest time I ever built a funnel was in 11 minutes. I walked out of a 2 Comma Club coaching event.  Russell goes, "Dude, oh my gosh, good! You're out. This thing's launching in 11 minutes. Can you put it out?" I was like, "What?! Oh my gosh!" Right, whew! Right, say 'yes,' build the parachute while you're falling, funny enough the ground doesn't even come.

And then the two lies, right? Lie number one is that when I start anything, I believe I need to see beginning and end to be successful. That is a lie. That is not true. Nobody ever does. Get used to it.

Step two should never even be thought about until you've put a step in step one. I'm not talking about thoughtful planning. I'm talking about just executing and getting crap done.

The other lie is that when we purchase something we believe that the problem is solved. Like buying a treadmill and it just sits there, or buying into a member's area; we never do anything with.

The 80 20 principle sadly applies to everything that I've ever sold, ever. 20% of people do stuff with it. The other 80% will not. Some of them will come in, and they do stuff, and they get what they need from it. Or they'll funnel hack me, which is fine, too.

Guys, hopefully, this has been helpful. That was a lot, you guys commented like crazy. I haven't even read any of them. But that's my greatest asset. That's why I believe if something was to go to crap, it'd be fine. Because; let's say the internet exploded. I'm probably going to go into real estate, and I'm going to spend two weeks learning all the strategies and who has the biggest cheese, right? Who has the biggest cheese? Sausage number one, in the real estate game! And then I would go, and I would dive deep with them and do exactly what they said, right.

I'd find a Mr. Miyagi, which is why I have this thing. "Little Mr. Miyagi bobble-head," I gave one to Russell. I was like, "Dude, you're my Mr. Miyagi." You tell me to do things I don't want to do a lot of times, but when I do, money comes in. So that's why I do it.

It's not about what you think. Sometimes you think too much, sometimes you feel way too much.

(COMMENT FROM PEOPLE WATCHING STEPHEN LIVE ON FACEBOOK:)

Javier said, "Did you get kicked out for partying too much?" No, I literally just stopped going to class.  I didn't know how to learn. I'd go to class, I wouldn't know how to do anything afterward. I literally had no idea how to learn.

Anyway, hopefully, it's helpful. It's kinda some real talk, I guess if you want to call it that.

The YouTube education thing is huge, absolutely Billy. It's Tuesday, roar.

That's right, John. Google that crap, learn from my kids. Exactly.

Actually, funny, I used to use this as an insult and um, please take it as a learning thing if I ever do it to you, or do this in the group...

But if you're like, "Stephen, how do I make funnels?" Or how do I do this, how do I do this? Man, there's a site called let me google that for you dot com - It's the acronym for it though. Let me google that for you dot com, you type in lmgtfy.com

Anyway, what's funny about it is that you can go in and  I could type in 'how do I build a funnel. And it creates a little video gif, and you can-- It pops out a link. And you can send it.

In fact, I'll do it, I'll do it after this, okay? I'm gonna go drop it in so you guys can see what I'm talking about. And anytime that someone needed to ask me a question that was frankly stupid, or I could tell them, or I could tell that they had done no thought to think about the answer on their own, alright? This is what I would do.

As soon as the video is over, I'm gonna drop one for you. So you guys can see what I'm talking about. And it's not me saying, "Hey, I won't coach. Hey, I won't help," it's not me saying that at all. What I'm saying is; let's solve the greater issue.

If the person doesn't know how to learn. If they're not a self-solver - they literally have no responsibility for their own education. And they're putting it on everyone else? It doesn't matter if I even answer it, cause they're gonna come back with the next question, right?

This game is a series of questions. So I'll answer that one, and they'll be like, "Cool, I built a funnel! How do I change button color?" Are you kidding me?!

You know what I mean, oh my gosh! Like, you know what I mean? And so I want to solve the greater issue. I want you to be self-solvers.

Anyway, 100% responsible. 100% real talk.

FB COMMENT: "Stop yelling, you're scaring me." Good! It must be the Tony Robbins hat that's getting me kinda, hopped up on goofballs.

You guys are awesome. Good watching you as always.

"Great to see another veteran smashing it." Hey, thanks, Nathan.

Leslie, ha I just did it, fun stuff.

Awesome, cool guys. Hey, I'm gonna drop an LMGTFY for you, so you know what I'm talking about.

Please, please, please keep sharing the group. It means a lot. I know there's a lot of voices out there, and having built a lot of funnels; I think besides Russell, I think it's okay to say: no one else has built as many funnels in the world as I have. I mean, really.

People clone them, or stuff like that. But, and um... it feels weird to say that... I'm not trying to showboat. But it is a reality.

I'm trying to be a voice of clarity in the funnel world - and teach you how to sell crap on the internet, where you're not having to compete on price. I hate that. I don't compete on price, I sell for full-value. In fact, I mostly sell for premium values. And I'm trying to teach people how to do the same.

So if you guys like the group, it's my goal to go live in here daily. And it means a lot to keep sharing it. We screamed to over a thousand people so fast. I can't even believe that.  It means a lot.

So anyways, thanks so much for your involvement. I appreciate you guys being in the group and it means a lot.

Hey guys, I'll talk to ya later. Bye Ah, yeah.

Hey, wish you could geek out with other funnel builders and even ask question while I build funnels live.  Wish granted! Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free, just go to thescienceofselling.online and join now.

Boom what's up guys? This is Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio!

We're gonna talk about training wheels - and, “Is this a real gun?”

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up, guys?

Hey, first off this is not a real gun okay just so you know, it's an airsoft gun but is a replication of a few others.

Hey I know I give a lot of military examples, but I wanna give one for you right now, just 'cause it was a part of my life for a while, okay?

So, this lesson, if I can get you to understand how this relates to sales funnels... it has everything to do with sales funnels... follow me for a moment.

Okay, when we were shooting; we would shoot, and we'd shoot, and we'd shoot, and we'd shoot.

Before we ever shot a bullet; guys, for weeks and weeks and weeks - all we would do is we would lay prone on concrete. We'd sit down, and they would make us hit our elbows on the ground "bam, bam, bam," right on the concrete to make our elbows stronger.

It hurt like crazy for the first few days, but we started getting tougher and tougher and tougher so we could lay in the prone longer.

Anyone else who's in the service, you know you guys have been through this as well -  you know exactly what I'm talking about.

For like two or three days we did that - and each night in the barracks we laid down just" bam, bam, bam, bam," smacking on the ground trying to get my elbows stronger and tougher.

Then eventually we could lay prone for a long time, and it wouldn't hurt your elbows anymore - you wouldn't need little elbow pads - you didn't need any of that kind of stuff.

The other thing we would do is for a long time, we would just sit there in a prone, and we'd take a full canteen,  and we would hook it on the end of the barrel (so there's all that weight), and we'd just stay there.

There'd be no bullet, and all we would do was practice cycling the weapon. That was it, "bam cycle the weapon, bam cycle the weapon."

The next thing they would have us do is we would... (again I know a lot of you guys who have been in you know the service, you guys have done this as well okay, and you know exactly what I'm talking about). We would lay down there and we'd take a dime and sit it on the end of the barrel, and then we'd shoot...

There'd be no round, and there'd be no bullet; we'd take a shot right, and then we would recharge the weapon while keeping balance.  The dime, and even sometimes a canteen would be hanging off the end.

If we could cycle the weapon multiple times without dropping that dime and leaving belts you know without rotating back and forth, then we were successful.

We would do that over and over and over and over again; point, shoot, point, shoot - over and over and over and over.

We did this for weeks and weeks and weeks before we ever even put a live round inside of a weapon.

There were these guys that would show up, and they were like, Man I'm gonna be a sniper, and they expect to be this high-fluent guy - but they can even sit in the prone for like five minutes without hurting themselves - they were way way ahead of where they are, right!

One of the things I wanted to talk about with you guys real quick is this whole idea of funnel building.

A lot of people wanna be snipers when they can't even cycle a weapon in, right! A lot of people wanna build sales funnels that are successful when they haven't even figured out what copy is. They think, "Oh, it's not about copy, it's not about copy."

However, they don't even know the actual psychology of what's happening in the brain. They don't know the difference between marketing and sales. They have not done the things inside of their life, right and there's no pattern in their life to actually know how funnels work, or what a funnel is.

For a little bit, I used to think, "Oh, a funnel is pages." A funnel isn't pages -it's a way to do a funnel, okay?

Anyway, what I wanted to do real quick is - I wanted to show you guys a notebook, and how much I've dedicated my life to this topic, okay?

I wanna show you a notebook; this is the original notebook where I first heard about Russell Brunson and his very first course  - the first course that I went through of his was called "DotCom Secrets X."

Check this okay, I just wanna show you guys these pages. Here let me make sure you guys can see it. Check these pages out! They are chock full.

I stayed up till 3 AM for three months in a row, I mean look at that, studying funnelology. Studying.

Alright, this is all ads the beginning of it... This is all ad strategy - ad strategy, ad strategy. I mean look at that guys; this is one notebook!

I just found a whole bunch of 'em over there, and I've been kinda walking through memory lane. I probably spent too much time today doing that, but I was reminded like, "Oh, man, I really have spent a significant portion of time in this game," okay.

When I was in college, I would stay up till three AM studying Russell's first course, and this is the way I did it; I would press play, and I would pause after about five seconds, and I would write down what he said.

Okay, and I would press play, and I would press pause after five seconds then I would write down what he said. Look at this (Stephen flicking through pages of his notes), "Finding good sites," "These are the best tools," "This is the best way to buy banner ads," "This is the best way for media growth and traffic."The Online Traffic Blueprint:  this is how actual sales process happens part two of three, three of three, right! This is "Facebook strategies." I mean tons and tons of stuff, right... "How to take advantage of the lifeline of your leads," how to... I mean this is so rich, oh my gosh I can't even believe...

In fact, I was reminded of a few things that I'm gonna start doing differently!

I started calling this my "Indiana Jones journal." I wrote them down in my diary so I wouldn't have to remember, right? It's the exact same thing from Indiana Jones.

What I want you to know and understand is that if you're just starting out, or you've only been doing this for maybe like a month or two, and you're like, "It doesn't work,"  understand that's a false belief, it's not true! Get real with yourself and realize that when you're looking at other guys... don't compare yourself to where other people are!

Use it as leverage, use it as motivation - but don't compare yourself, or put your self-worth on somebody else.

That's the fastest way to go down.

Think dime drills, okay? Think you're laying down practicing...

This is like training wheels, okay? This is like Rocky; remember the first Rocky, and he's just breaking ribs pounding the meat in that freezer...

A lot of you guys haven't even done that yet, and you're expecting to go to an octagon, okay? Understand that this is a dedicated thing for you to get into.

If you're like,  "I don't know if I wanna get into this game?"  If that's a scary place for you to go, okay? I remember the day I was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, and I looked at myself;  I had done real estate, I had sold eBooks on the internet, I tried to through Amazon, I had done door-to-door sales, I was a telemarketer, diamonds, literally...traffic driving and that kinda...

I started seeing this funnel game, and I started getting into that.  I'd tried, I think it was definitely 17 businesses I think that I tried before one of 'em actually took off and was successful. It was easily like 9 or 10 industries.

I obsessed until I found the one.  

If you're asking yourself like, "Stephen, I don't know what I want to do?' Here's simple fix, "Try More Stuff," okay?

I started doing real estate, and I started doing stocks and options; I mean I obsessed. We go spend a lot of money to learn from the best person at just this one thing; just this one thing, or just this one thing, right?

I dove in as if it was what I was gonna do for the rest of my life.  I committed right, but after about three, four, five, six months, I was like, "You know what, I just don't feel like I've found 'the thing' yet? I don't know if this is what I want?" Then I'd go to the next thing, and I'd dive in as if my life depended on it.

I called it an "Age of Exploration.'  I actively entered an age of exploration. I actively wanted to know, "is this what I want to do?"

And then number two, once I find it, I sink my teeth into it. Does this industry, or is this thing that I'm doing... do I have the capacity to obsess?

I wanna look ridiculous to people that are outside of the industry. If they don't know what I do, I want them to look at me and be like, "Dude, that guy is crazy about what he does!"

If you don't see that you have that capacity in what you're doing right now... If you don't have a capacity to obsess; I mean insatiably, inconsolably...

Are you able to "obsess, obsess, obsess" and become one of the best, if not the best at what you do, right?

Am I the best funnel builder? No, but I'm probably up there. I don't know of any other person, besides Russell, that's built so many funnels as I have - which is interesting, right? You think about that...

 I was looking at some goals that I wrote three years ago, and one of my goals before I ever met Russell; one the goals I wrote down was, "I wanna hang out with Russell."  I just sent it to him, and I was like, "Dude, that happened. That's crazy!" However, it's part of it was part of the obsession.

When you obsess and declare what it is you want - it's funny how many things in the world start to conspire for you.

If you feel like things right now are conspiring against you - most of the time,  it's because you haven't declared what you want, right?

Things want to align up for your benefit, but if you've not declared - no one knows what you want. No one can help you. There are things that can't come together.

I'm not saying like, "the power of the universe." I believe in God, okay? However, I believe that God can't help me "do the thing" until I say, "This is what I wanna do."

So when those things came into alignment, and I said, "Boom, I wanna be the best funnel builder in the world," when I said that, things started coming together.

I saw that I had the ability; that this was an area where I was able to obsess.I saw it was an area and ability where I was able to try and become the best in the world. Where there was capacity and room.

If you're like, "Oh, I don't know what I want to do yet?' Well, start exploring with intent. Figure out, "Is this the thing I'm gonna sink my teeth in?" Are you just gonna be known for just this one thing?

What's funny is, when I actually got really really far down into the funnel game, suddenly this whole area's opened up where I can really obsess over; it's offer creation. So I've kinda become the offer creation guy.

I was like, "Okay I'm gonna put blinders on." You know those horses with the blinders? "I'm not gonna look at real estate anymore." If you're doing that, "great," I'm just saying I'm not gonna look at real estate anymore. "I'm gonna stops selling eBooks." I was really into that kinda stuff for a while. "I'm gonna stop looking into doing diamonds, stocks and options too." I'm not gonna look at that anymore. Instead, I got real focused.

I put down every book that had nothing to do with funnels.  Even though all sales have to do with funnels... I mean specifically funnel building, and on the internet. I put  everything away, and I was like, "Who is the best person to learn from?"

I was walking out of the event room at Clickfunnels one day (this wasn't long ago, I think this was like last fall), I was walking out, and Russell was walking out of one of the other offices, and we were walking back to his office, he goes, "What's up man?" I said, "Oh just recorded this sweet video." He goes "Dude, you know what I figured out about you?" I go, "What?" He goes, "You live by a principal, it's kind of interesting I wish more people lived by it..."  I was like, "Oh yeah, this is interesting! What is it dude?" and he goes, "You live by the principal of following whoever has the biggest cheese." I was like, "That's kind of an interesting way to say that." and he goes, "If you wanna go and learn how to do this thing, you don't go learn from like a sea-level person, you see who has the biggest cheese in that thing and you learn right at their feet." And he pointed out all these places I'd done that.

I was like, "yeah that's right, yeah I've done that." And he's like, "Think about funnels and me." I'm like, "Yeah you certainly have the largest cheese on the funnel game there Russell."

However, first of all, just figure out where you are and then just declare it. Decide and then declare, "This is what I want. This is where I'm going."  Then be willing to put the training wheels on. Do the freaking dime drills. Take time to hit your elbows on the concrete. Do what you're supposed to. Don't shortcut the actual process - fall in love with the process. That's the easiest way to stay in love with what you're doing.

I'm really really passionate about this topic because man, I remember growing up, I would have conversations with my parents -  you know kinda complaining like, "I don't know what I'm good at?" Like I'm not really that "crazy for sports guy," although I like it. I was really physical; still I wasn't really into sports.  I didn't know what I do?

I'm so passionate about this because after a while - when I accepted the fact that I hadn't just tried enough stuff yet - I tried stuff, tried stuff, tried stuff tried, stuff - and then suddenly I was like "Boom!" I declared right. I decided and I declared publicly.

It's the reason I always give you guys my goals at the beginning of each year. It's the scariest thing I do.  January first comes along, "Alright, guys, here's how I financially did last year. Here's how financially I'm going to do this next year." Do I hit it? Not usually, but I usually come close. And it's because I'm declaring intent.

Because I have the intent, I  find the person who has right the biggest cheese. Boom! This is a Mr. Miyagi scenario. Too many guys are fearing looking stupid while you're painting the fence and sanding the floor, right? "Oh that has nothing to do with what I'm going to go do, I don't wanna look like an idiot."

Man be willing to look like an idiot, you're gonna be. You're not gonna know anything about the industry for a while - so who cares?

You're not gonna have any following  - so who cares?

No one's really watching you for a while anyway, okay?

If you're gonna go and you're gonna choose, be willing to find your Mr. Miyagi, "the biggest cheese." Then when he says, "Sand the floor, paint the fence, put a water bottle on the end of your gun," be willing to do it.

What ended up happening with that shooting thing is; I dedicated so much of my time,( not that you have a lot of time in basic training) but in the evenings, I would lay down in the prone I would keep hitting my elbows. I would keep cycling like visualize my sight picture like crazy. I would do everything I was supposed to do over and over and over.

I became pretty obsessed over it in basic training, and I was one of two guys out of 200 to win a phone call home because of how well I shot.

I only missed a few rounds, and they're like "dang."  It was super cool these off iron sights; you know really really far sho - it was really fun. I obsessed over it, and it was those kind of experiences though and realizing fascinating.

It's the training regiment that gives you success once you actually find the thing and you declare that that's the thing you want just everywhere, to the market to whoever, to God, yourself, spouse, whoever when you declare it.

Then you put blinders on, and you're willing to find the guy with the biggest cheese and do as he says; it's the dedication to the training regiment, it's pressing play and stopping after three seconds - that's what ends up giving you success inside of whatever you're deciding to do. Anything, right anything that you do.

In fact, the way I started learning how to do sales videos was actually pretty interesting. I went, and I found this guy's sales training, and it was really cool.

I wanted to do it, but I didn't know how to write sales copy - so what I started doing was, I would find these different sales videos, and this was a serious pain in the butt, but it taught me like crazy...

I would sit down for  2 hours and be like, "Okay, I'm going to do nothing but this."  I would press play for about 5-seconds and listen to what the guy was saying in the sales video, and then I'd press pause, and I would write down what he said. There were five videos I transcribed; it took me 6 weeks to do that.  I was in classes and doing other things as well, but every day, I would dedicate several hours to doing this.

Then I'd go back and read 'em I'd be like, "Oh patterns,  patterns everywhere."

Then I'd do it again to the next video, I'd see what he was doing, and what he changed from the last one, right. (This is a guy in a different industry - it wasn't sales funnel industry.) Then I did it again, and I did it again, and I did it again.

In fact, Russell's told me this story; he's got a big stack of sales letters behind his desk it's a huge stack, big old stack of swipe files. Back in the day, what they used to do is they would go to events, (I don't even know if there's still events like this - there might be though). But he's like, "If you wanna learn how to be like a copywriter, a sales copywriter, what you do is you go to these events, and they'd hand you like the top converting top performing sales letters from multiple industries. You would spend 3 days rewriting the entire sales letter by hand.”

That's all the event was - because writing it and thinking through got you to learn the process.

Learn the process, learn the process. I guarantee whoever has the biggest cheese; number one: they're clearly masters, but what they really have is a process.

I have a process for funnel building. I have a process for pumping funnels out of the door.

Just like there was a process for the shooting; there's a process for me going through and learning that stuff - there's a process for me.

I got third in my first sprint triathlon - which is really cool. It was a while ago - it was like five years, six years ago. There was a process I was going through... the process is the success, okay? What's funny is, if you wanna shortcut it; first, set the sight and declare. Go find the guy with the biggest cheese and learn that person's process. When you do that, it's the process, it's the training regiment that gives you the success.

Anyways, this feels like it's all over the place.

I just want you to know I know why I am where I am. I know exactly why, and it's because of these little realizations that I've had along the way.

It's kind of like if you guys remember the movie Titans? Great movie, right, great move. Remember in that training camp, and they're doing all these things that might seem kind of trite, right? The coach knew what was up; he knew exactly what things would cause what outputs.

So when you find that person; you find that Mr. Miyagi, and you're doing "wax on, wax off." You're doing all these things - you're doing dime drills.

The equivalent of that is you're pressing play and pause every 3- 5 five seconds.

Those are the things that make you a master. You do those things - don't watch the clock. Throw, shoot your clock. Okay get rid of it, don't watch the clock, and you'll realize that within like a year of you doing that kinda thing you're gonna be an expert. Meaning, more so than 80% percent of the population you keep doing that stuff.  You're gonna go 90% alright 91, 92 and you're gonna get without that much time - you're gonna get a lot of progress. You're gonna be able to remove those training wheels and suddenly you'll be training others.

You have to understand that most of the time when someone asks me, "What should I go do?"  I'm like, "Man you haven't tried enough stuff. Go try stuff and then declare what you want. Go find someone with the biggest cheese and learn from them - learn their process they've somehow formulated their process, learn their process."

In that training regiment, there's virtually guaranteed success. Then you turn around you start teaching others that solidifies what you've learned. That's the model that I use, and it's literally why I do this podcast.

If I can turn around and I can teach you guys what I'm learning at the same time, it serves me just as much as it serves you. I'm living the exact process I'm trying to teach you guys.

Anyways hopefully it's been helpful? My urge to you is to keep the training wheels on unless you feel like you can turn around and train somebody else.  Keep the training wheels on and find the person with the "biggest cheese." Go find the person with the process who's so good.

I have an offer creation process, so people come to learn offer creation process from me. I obsess over it, and it's become my thing. Offer creation - right, the actual sales message creation, the actual market message creation, that's my thing.  I think about that like 24/7 -I obsess.

If there's no capacity for you to obsess over the thing that you do , then you're probably in the wrong thing.

Alright guys hopefully this has been a helpful episode to you if you have liked this at all please go review it and rate it inside of iTunes - that means the world to me, and I do read them. I'll turn back around, "Oh check it out - a new review, and I go back, and I read it.  It means a lot to me, and I do see who does it. It means a lot.

Hey guys thanks so much and I'll see you in the next episode, bye. Oh yeah!

Hey wish you could geek out with other real funnel builders and even ask questions while I build funnels live? Wish granted, watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free just go to thescienceofselling.online and join now..

My focus is shifting from, "what should I have customers do post-purchase" to "what should they do pre-purchase?"

Cue drum roll, cue lights; it's time to grab that tux and dig out that little black dress because - TODAY, your product is about to get the Hollywood Treatment.

I'm about to drop some gold here - so settle down and take notes ;-)

WHEN OVER-DELIVERING IS A BAD MOVE

Recently I've been focusing on the small tweaks that you can make in your customer onboarding that create BIG effects.

There this time that I built  86 funnels (x2) for a promotion that Russell was doing for one of Stu McLaren’s products called Tribe.

When somebody purchases Tribe, they are given a step by step path to help them go through the program without overwhelm.

Let’s think about that for a moment…

Have you ever bought an online course and been so overwhelmed by the amount of content that you didn’t know where to start... or even worse, decided to ask for a refund?

Providing a massive amount of content often makes us feel great because we feel like we're over-delivering. However, bombarding a customer with too much information can actually freak them out - causing them to utter the dreaded “refund” word. (*gasp*)

Your customer is not looking to be overwhelmed; they're looking for a solution.

Since I launched my product, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of onboarding and success paths. I've been trying to figure out the most effective ways to hand-hold your customers into being successful.

There was a membership area that I built. It was by far the best members area I've ever created in my entire life. The problem was that it contained 200 hours of content.  It was packed with value, but it was just too much for most people to handle.

People were coming up to me saying: “I gotta quit my job to watch this! I'll never get through it." It was way too much stuff.

People felt so stressed that they started asking for refunds. If they didn't have time to consume all the content - they wouldn't get the result - so they asked for their money back. Not good, right?

So I started to create success paths that show customers exactly where they should start and what they should do if they want to achieve a certain result.

Your kind of giving your customer permission to focus on just one thing and holding their hand along the journey.

Creating a Success Path is a super effective way to increase customer satisfaction and reduce refund requests

We’ve just talked about the importance of a post-purchase success path for your customers… but what about before they purchase? What happens there?

Is it possible to create a pre-purchase success path to help you increase sales? The answer is a definite YES!

PRE-PURCHASE THE HOLLYWOOD WAY

Think about how Hollywood releases previews way before the movie gets released.

Can imagine what would happen if Hollywood didn't release previews? I mean, think about that. Our brains wouldn’t be pre-framed and loaded with anticipation. We wouldn’t look forward to the release dates and arrange to go to the movies with friends. A movie release would just slip out without much of an event.

It's like being really excited to go to a party or vacation. Sometimes, the most exciting bit is the anticipation and planning beforehand.

THE BEST PART OF YOUR VACATION ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK

A 2010 study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, found that planning or anticipating your holiday often makes you happier than actually taking it.

The happiest part of your vacation actually happens before you even begin your holiday

How does this work?

I have a favorite story that explains what’s going on in our brains when this happens, so let me share it with you quickly…

THE WARM/ COLD EXPERIMENT

There was a college class who were told that they would have a substitute teacher for the day.

Right before the substitute teacher came in to teach, the students were handed a biography of the teacher. However, there were two versions of the biography.

Both versions were completely identical except for one word.

One version said that, most students found the new teacher to be a very “warm” person,” The second version said that, most people him to be a very “cold” person.

The biographies where split equally between the students - Half the students were pre-framed to expect the teacher to be warm and friendly, while the other half expected him to be cold and aloof.

What happened next was fascinating...

At the end of  the class, they surveyed the students to see if the professor should continue teaching.

The students who were pre-framed with the “warm” biography said that he was incredible and that they enjoyed the class.

Conversely, the students who were given the “cold” biography  answered that they didn’t enjoy the class and didn’t want the professor to continue to teach.

It was exactly the same person teaching exactly the same lecture - but students the responses were wildly different depending on how they’d been pre-framed!

That’s nuts, right? It was exactly the same person teaching exactly the same lecture. On the surface, the students were in the same room having the exact same experience, but how positively they responded depended on the pre-frame that existed in their head.

Isn’t that fascinating?

As a marketer, I started to ask the question:

What can I put in place to pre-frame and  build positive anticipation for the purchase of my product?

I started to look for a way to boost levels of anticipation and to create “an event” around the purchase of my product?

So here’s what I’ve been doing…

CREATING A PRE-PURCHASE EVENT

• Before people attend my webinar, I have a product that they can purchase which helps me to recoup my ad cost.

As soon as somebody buys that mini product - I have a system set up that sends a message to my phone telling me who it is and I send them a quick personalized message.

Bloop. It sends straight back over to their email, and they get a personal message from me inviting them to come and watch the webinar. It's super effective.

2. We have a program on my funnel called “Deadline Funnel” and when somebody doesn't purchase within a certain window of time, it removes their ability to buy

Next we ask them if, “they want to join the waiting list?”

The people who join the waiting list are super pre-framed to buy the next time the purchase window opens because they don’t know when they’ll get another opportunity. BAM! It’s sooo effective.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the way a customer is pre-sold your product drastically affects the likelihood of them buying the program - and their success once they purchase.

So start focusing on the question:

How can I pre-frame my customers brain to create a purchase, and to make the purchasing experience better?

TAKING THE EASY PATH

There are a group of people who purchased one of my main products who did not go through a success path. It's the same product, and yet they are having a different experience.

Nothing has changed in the product. However, the way they were pre-framed and what happened after they purchased was different.

You guys know how to create  value, but if the lead up to the purchase doesn’t create enough anticipation and the post-purchase success path doesn’t do the right amount of hand-holding afterwards; then you are making your life (and the experience of your customers) harder than it needs to be.

With some great pre-framing and an effective success path - the same product can produce a vastly different experience for your customer.

Start thinking about, how you can create a positive pre-purchase experience and an supportive success path post-purchase.

For a long time, I was only thinking about post-purchase, but once I started thinking about pre-purchase too my results went wild.

Getting people excited to buy, then finding ways to reduce overwhelm post purchase is one of the keys things that you can do .

Most people spend too much time running around asking, “Is my product good enough?” The answer is “Yeah, it usually is.”

There’s just not enough of a pre-frame. You’re literally sending your potential customers straight to an order page or a sales message.

You need to put something in place that will actually get them in the mood to buy. Start thinking of how you can create an event for someone who is thinking of buying your product - think of it as a Hollywood preview that builds anticipation for your product.

Ask  yourself:

How can I create a Red Carpet experience for my customers?

Answering that question will pay you back tenfold.

Until next time - Keep Crushing It!

Got a question you want answered live on the show? Head over to salesfunnelradio.com and ask your question now.

A common funnel error is targeting the wrong persona in the red ocean…

Do you have a great product that you know could change someone's life, but you’re not getting the sales you want?  Well, stick with me, because you might just be selling to the wrong people.

In this blog, it's my mission to help you discover the customers who are ready, willing and able to buy your product. In fact, these people are so eager to buy - that you can even be a C-level copywriter - and still make loads of cash. Intrigued? You should be ;-)

MY PERFECT PITCH

A few years ago, I got a job as a door to door salesman. I'd walk around knocking doors, "What's up, pest control!"

As the summer went on, I developed a bit of a theory.

I started to notice that when I went to areas that were less affluent - smaller houses, not as much cash - I could get a ton of sales fast.  

I was killing it!   

Two to three sales a day was good in the pest control business, but I was regularly making six. I'd collect the cash, and we'd spray the houses... I thought everything was amazing. I felt like “The Man."

Every so often, we’d rotate our areas and visit different cities with more affluent neighborhoods where people had bigger houses and more money.

When I'd knocked doors in these wealthier neighborhoods and gave them my pitch, I was shocked to find that I got a lot of rejections.

It was rejection after rejection; I couldn't figure out what was going on. So I decided to go back to those old neighborhoods where the people didn't have as much money - 'cause I knew I could sell them.

Well, at the end of the summer, at least half of my accounts failed. Lots of my contracts refunded or didn’t renew because the people I’d pitched were not able to keep up the payment - even though they “wanted” the product.

I realized that I’d perfected my pitch to sell to people with less cash.

In the meantime, all my buddies who had spent time learning how to pitch to rich people made a lot of cash.

They had fewer cancellations and sold higher value contracts - so by the time the summer was over they were still getting paid on their accounts.

Not only were their customers not leaving, but they were also putting more money in their pockets.

I realized that even though I’d been making lots of sales, in reality, I’d been selling to people who didn't have the money for continuity -  which made them far more likely to refund or cancel; leaving me broke and fed up.

Sure, I'd get a lot of accounts, but none of them would stick very long.

I was like, “Crap! How can I NOT ever do that again?” It was  a huge lesson for me.

WHO ARE YOU SELLING TO?

Now it probably won't surprise you to you to learn that since my pest control days, one question I’ve obsessed over is “How do I sell expensive things to people who have cash?”

Most of the time when I consult with businesses they have a great product, it’s simply that they're  selling it to the wrong “type” of person.

We know that it's best go sell in places that are competitive (i.e, the red ocean) - because there's security there.

Personally, I combine elements of the red ocean with elements of the prolific and the blue ocean to create a purple ocean offer that’s extremely attractive to your customers.

If you want to learn how I create purple ocean offers, you can find out here.

However, If you want to avoid making the same mistakes that I made when I sold pest control, it’s vital that you understand the 3 personas inside of the red ocean…

So let me grab my whiteboard and show you what I’ve figured out!

 
YOUR “NO DUH” PROMISE

The first thing I look at on any funnel that I work on is its promise.

There are 3 “no duh” areas that people spend money in, and these are HEALTH, WEALTH & RELATIONSHIPS.

So the question that you need to answer is: “Does my product promise results in either Health, Wealth, or Relationships?”

These are the “no duh” places for people to spend money in. They are the basic that everyone wants - they’re like milk or eggs (or maybe tofu if you’re vegan).

There's no salesperson next to eggs, right? It's a “no duh” buying experience.

I'm not saying, “go get in the eggs business.” But it's best to choose industries where there’s a “no duh” purchasing experience because this will make selling your product so much easier.

People will spend money on:

• Improving Relationships

• Improving Health

• Growing businesses, investments, and wealth

THE 3 PERSONAS OF THE RED OCEAN

In every red ocean and every single industry, not all buyers are created equal - that probably goes without saying, right?

So let’s look at why I made such a big mistake as a door to door salesman.

Let’s look at the 3 types of buyer who exist in the red ocean (i.e.,the proven market) and what motivates the to buy.

THE “DIE-HARDS”

The “die-hards’ are deeply seated inside of their red ocean product.

If you come to a die-hard person and say, “Hey, I got this cool thing for you.”  There not going to be interested. They’ve had success with the product that they use - they’re a fan.

I'm wearing my funnel hacker shirt right now. I'm a die-hard. For me to move away from ClickFunnels - well, it isn’t going to happen.

For me to shift from using ClickFunnels, I would need an identity shift. I would literally need change how I see myself. It’s about so much more than price and value for a die-hard.

If someone starts bad-mouthing ClickFunnels, I get a little hot and bothered about it. I'm like, “Are you kidding me? ClickFunnels changed my life! I'm a product of that product! No. I will never change.”

If you ask a die-hard to switch products - it's a personal insult.

THE “BREAK-EVENS”

Let’s use a relationship example here:

Let's say someone goes to Tony Robbins kind of event and that person is someone who's considering suicide or divorce and then Tony flips them around - those people are the die-hards. They’re never not going to love Tony Robbins. They’re never not going to buy his next program coming out. For them to change to someone else would mean an identity shift. It is not likely.

However, a person who goes to a Tony Robbins type event, and as a result, they feel better about themselves - but they don’t experience a massive transformation - they’re a “break-even.”

They’ve not had a massive transformation like the die-hard. They’ve  had a little bit of a, “Oh my gosh, this is super super cool.’ They're probably gonna keep purchasing the products. They won’t be looking for anyone else for relationship advice.

They've had a taste of success, but they don't necessarily “love, love, love” the product like a die-hard would.

For the break-evens, it’s the pain of disconnect that they want to avoid.  They don’t want to go through the struggle of switching services or finding something new.  

However, for the break-evens, price and value do have a role to play. If they become aware of a better product that offers more value, if the incentive is enough they will be willing to shift their allegiance.

THE “NO OTHER OPTIONS”

Now, let's get to the number ones - the “no other options.”

I’m going to use a health example here:

Have you guys ever had pea protein powder? It’s like whey protein powder, but made from peas. It tastes terrible and the texture is horrible... oh my gosh! But I know it's the best one.

I was read loads of reviews and found out that pea protein is awesome for protein synthesis. I was excited to get some. When it arrived in the mail, I took a scoop, put it in water.

I have a strong stomach. I'm not the kind of guy who throws up or anything, but honestly, “That’s some nasty crap!” I’ve spent 6 months trying to find ways to mask the texture of that crap.

I’m a number one pea protein drinker. I drink that stuff simply because I know it's the best, but I HATE it. I hate that it's the vehicle. I have no customer loyalty that brand at all.

If you can offer me “a super sweet protein powder - that works as well as mine but tastes waaay better - How easy do you think it would be to sell me on that? Super easy, right?

On the other hand, if someone has a protein powder that they love and it’s helped them lose 50 lbs -  How likely is it that they are going to switch? They’re a die-hard - so your chance of getting them to switch is practically zero.

The break-even person who's had some success with that protein, but doesn’t “love it” - well, they may be willing to try it.

For number twos, it's all about price and value; it's not an identity shift.

IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET MARKET

Now let’s go back to my pest control fiasco!

When I was selling pest control, who was I selling to? I was selling to a lot of “break- even” and “no other option” people. There weren't that many die-hards.

I was selling to the people inside the red ocean who wanted to get rid of the bugs. I was selling to a lot of ones and twos, but it was the wrong kind of ones and twos because they didn’t have the resources.

So within the three different personas, you also have then you have levels of different resources. You need to identify “Who has money?” and as who, as Russell Brunson says, …“is willing and able?”

The reason why I want to talk about this issue is that 80% of the time, when I’m looking at somebody's headlines, or doing some consulting - I see that the people creating their messaging to try and convince with facts, figures, and features, and maybe with some benefits…

BUT they're trying to convince the die-hards to come and buy their product.

That's the wrong person to write your copy for... It's the wrong person to write your headlines for... It’s the wrong person to build your product for...

You are not trying to sell to the die-hards!

Your target market should be the people who are willing to hear your message… the people who have no customer loyalty to the brand that they already use.

You need to design your message to sell to the break-evens and the no other options; the guys that are just using a product 'cause they don't know of anything better.

These people just need to hear a new story. They need to hear a new sales message.

That’s the thing I didn't figure out when I was doing pest control until it was too late.

When I started building my first info product, I did the same thing again. I spent eight months building it, and when I tossed it out there, I was selling it to the die-hards.

The people who were like, “Don't you dare make fun of my products and the things I use.” It was an insult to their identity - I was offending them by merely suggesting an alternative.

Once I changed my messaging to hit the people who “hated the vehicle” and “hated the products they were using,” things changed. I made my messages for those people. I helped them throw rocks their old products and showed them a better way.

All they needed was an excuse to switch, and they bought my product.

So if your product is not selling the way you want it to, or you’re designing your sales message, remember to run it through the 3 personas I’ve talked about and check it for fit.

I'm trying to help you guys identify the people “no other option” people because it's not hard to sell to these people.

If they also have the resources, you can be a C- level copywriter, and still sell to these people easily.

They're just looking for something that’s that's different and better to save them from their current vehicle - which mean more money in your pocket.

Anyway. Hopefully, this has been helpful. You can check out the episode on  iTunes, please rate and review. If not, subscribe to my YouTube channel as well, that'd be very very helpful.

If you’d like to see some live funnel building, (a lot of times I'll build whatever project I'm doing, live), go to the science of selling.online, and it'll forward to my Facebook group, it's free.

You guys can join me there and watch as I document what I'm building and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Until next time - Keep Crushing It!

Hey, want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com and book my time now.

I have a FaceBook group called The Science of Selling Online -  I hang out there daily (it’s a FREE group).  I do live funnel builds - and walkthroughs of my latest projects where sharing the reasons for what I'm doing. You can ask me questions, and I’ll answer them live.

One of my latest projects is a program called Affiliate Outrage. It's an amazing course. The cherry on the top is that I’ve managed to pull together some outstanding experts to share their skills in each module.

Last week, during one of my live funnel builds in The Science of Selling Online, someone asked me, "Steve, how did you build a product and get so many experts to contribute to it...  How do you crowd-create a product?”

So in this blog, I'm going to answer that question and reveal a skill that I see many Entrepreneurs utilize - that you may not be aware of.

I'm also going to share some of the secret self-improvement skills that have influenced me profoundly over the last few years. Stay with me; this is going to be juicy!

DODGEBALL - AND BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR

There was this one time in my life, where every Monday for months; a group of us would show up turn tables over in a gym and hurl tennis balls at each other as hard as we could.

There was about 30 of us, all in our late teens and early twenties - playing dodgeball and using tables as barriers.

People got hurt -  this was hardcore.

I remember one particular time - I was super excited to play that week. I tried to get everyone to start.  Man, I wanted to play so bad. I kept trying to get people ready, but nobody was taking any notice of me.

After about 10 - 15 minutes, I got frustrated and went over to this other guy.  He goes, "Oh, you're trying to start?" Then he lifts his head, and says, "Hey, guys, we're getting ready to start."

With that one sentence, everyone turned their heads, stopped their conversations, and started listening.

I watched the room in dismay. I couldn’t believe it, "Are you kidding me? - I've been trying ‘forever’ to get these people to do what I want!"

I remember right there, at that moment, I realized that I didn't need to be good at everything - in fact, it was better if I wasn’t.  

I realized that it was better for me to be an orchestrator rather than try to learn how to play every instrument...

That an entrepreneur is someone who has a vision and brings is to life.  An entrepreneur is a maestro.

MY LITTLE BLACK BOOK

For years, I kept a little black book in my pocket. Every time I had a business idea or an insight, I would write it down in that black book. It was chock full ideas - some great, and some dumb - but I carried it around with me at all times.

When I realized that I didn’t need to be “good at everything” to be an entrepreneur, I wrote it down in that book.

Even though I was in my early 20’s when I wrote that thought down - it was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as an entrepreneur.

When I was at ClickFunnels, Russell drilled this lesson into me for eight solid months before it finally sunk in

Multiple times, I'd be, "Dude, I'm gonna go learn more CSS." Russell would look at me and say "Why? We have someone for that." He'd be dead serious.

I’d say, “Well, my major before marketing was CIT. I know I could understand it.” Again, Russell would look at me and say, "Oh, yeah, but who cares? We’ve got someone for that. Don't  learn that."

I struggled to take it on board because I’m curious and I like to know how thing work. However, when it finally sunk in, it was one of the best lessons EVER!

If you’re like me, it may not be an easy lesson to learn, but please learn it. Here it is:

Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you should do it

Sure, I can pop open Photoshop, use Illustrator, do my video editing, write copy, film videos, build funnels. However, to scale and get the highest leverage for my business - I need to concentrate on doing the things that only I can do. It's hard, I get it - but it’s soooo worth it

DON’T BE A RENAISSANCE (WO)MAN

The reason I started affiliate marketing was to get the cash so that I could hire people to do all the things that I shouldn't be doing. I also learned to develop another skill that I see many successful entrepreneurs use get stuff done.

About 3 months ago, I had a brilliant person tell me,"Figure out how to hire people you can't afford." It's changed everything in my business!

If you’re reading this, then you’re an A-player - a weird breed of person with both vision and ability

 You can bring your vision to life. However, the worst mistake you can make is to be a renaissance man or woman and do “all the things” yourself. It’ll slow you down and burn you out.

So what do you do instead?

SHARING YOUR VISION

There’s one skill that I alluded to at the start of this article. A skill that I see so many successful entrepreneurs use to their advantage. A skill that can help you stay focused on your highest value tasks and get results at the same time. That skill is Influence.

If you have a vision and the ability to share that vision in a way that connects with people on an emotional level, then people will follow you and support you - even when the path is rocky or unchartered.

Let’s face it, as an entrepreneur; it’s likely that you’ll be laying a path rather than following one. So it’s vital that you can communicate your vision and tell your story effectively so that people will follow you.

USING INFLUENCE

Influence is what I’ve used to help bring my incredible content machine together. The caliber of people on my team would normally cost me 40 or 50 grand a month, but because they believe in the vision of where I'm taking the ship, it's way less than that. It's only 30 grand a month!

Granted, it's still 30 grand a month - but in hindsight, I'm getting a huge discount because everyone involved believes in what I'm doing.

Yes, I know, 30 grand a month is still a shed load of money, but if you don't have the cash, don’t panic…

You still have a story.

A great story is one of your most valuable assets.

If you get good at telling stories, your vision will help you hire the people that you can't afford.

It’ll stop you from getting stuck trying to learn everything. It’ll help you bring in the experts you need to grow your business. I see way to many entrepreneurs stunting their growth because they try to do EVERYTHING.

The highest leverage thing you can ever to learn is marketing, and how to change belief

If you want to change someone's belief - tell them a great story. Get REAL good at telling stories that connect emotionally with people. If you can tell amazing stories, it will negate 99% of your need to learn scripts. Just tell a story and then make an offer.

When I started approaching all these experts - calling them in to help me, that's exactly what I was practicing - communicating my vision with a story.

Show people how coming along with your mission will benefit their business too, and you’re on to a winner.

I used this strategy to create my content machine - and to get all the amazing experts to contribute to Affiliate Outrage - which is where this blog post started…

However, before I round up this blog, I want to say a few words about “Vision and Purpose.” Along with trying to “learn all the things,” - the other place I see people getting stuck is on trying to find their “vision and purpose.”

THE PURPOSE QUESTION

Recently, I was hanging out at an Inner Circle member's house with Russell. We were chatting away when he asks me, "How's it going, man? What are you struggling with? Gimme the deets, brutha."

I thought for a minute, and then I replied, "Dude, I'm trying "to figure out what my purpose is."  Immediately Russell starts laughing. Myron Golden was standing next to us, and laughing, Russell interrupts Myron:

Dude, Stephen just asked the purpose question. He's trying to figure out what his purpose is."

Myron laughed, "Man, are you kiddin' me? I just found out my purpose 3 months ago."

Russell grinned and said, "Dude, I only found my purpose 3 years ago when I started ClickFunnels, and this whole thing blew up."

Right there I decided, "Alright, I'm not gonna freak out my purpose anymore."  Russell said, "Yeah, don't worry about it… Just  help people make money, it'll be great." So, that's my purpose for now.

You don’t need to have a grand vision or purpose for things to workout - Just make some money, solve problems for people and your purpose will develop in its own time

My vision right now is to develop something that's freakin' cool. I want to help a whole bunch of people who probably haven’t made their first dollar online yet. I want to teach people how to do what I've done.

TAKE ACTION

• If you want a following, publish. Get over the fear of it! I was scared to death. It took me 30 episodes before I was comfortable publishing

• You want people to come and follow you? Make a product. If you don't want to make a product (or don't know how to), sell someone else's. Join Affiliate Outrage, and I’ll show you how to do it

• Launching. Don't worry about the details. Just figure out all the things that you’ve got to do to get off the ground. Don’t wait… you’ll turn around and 3 months will have passed - and you’ll have no cash or results to show for your time.

• Figure out your BIG purpose as you go along. I've talked about my revenue outpacing my business, and that's true. However, the secondary thing that was going on was the psychological game I was playing with myself; “What's my purpose, what should I be doing? What do people want from me?”

THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY

I have this coin on my desk. It reminds me to lean into any challenge I have. I'm sending these coins out with a lot of my new products because I freakin' love this concept.

On one side it says: “The Obstacle is the Way.” On the other side it has the message:

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way"

At the last Funnel Hacking Live, the countdown clock for the Two Comma Club coaching program is dropping down. There are 4 minutes to go, and someone comes to me and says: Hey, we're gonna go get in the program, but we figured if we split the program, it'll be half the cost -  and we'll take turns going to the events."

My answer was, “ Well, you could do that… but I believe that if you seek a discount, you will find a discount. If you ask how can I afford this program, and you really believe you can do it, you will answer that question instead.”

Questions invite revelation - so it crucial to pick your questions carefully.

Don't worry if you don't have a solid vision yet. Be fine with the fact that you have unanswered questions. Just be careful of what your questions are.

For example:

When I asked the question, “How do I become a Russell Brunson?” One of the answers I got was,  “Publish your journey along the way.”

That's why I publish like an animal. It's because I'm NOT a Russell Brunson yet. Most people use their lack of status as an excuse not to publish.

Don't worry that you don't have any followers yet. No one's listening for a while.

As you start publishing, you’ll begin to create an attractive character, and you start gaining expertise. You’ll become a figure.

If you wait to begin publishing until you're “a figure,” no one's gonna believe you. People only believe you when they see the trail you’ve left - when they can see your history.

I asked a much more useful question than asking “How to get a discount.” That question has brought me to a much cooler place than finding out how to get a discount ever could.

ADVICE TO MY PAST SELF

If there's any advice I could give myself looking back, it would be to ask different questions

For a long time, until I became cognizant of the principle that “questions invite revelation,”  I asked some stupid questions, and it slowed me down - A LOT.

So if you take anything away from the blog, I hope it’s a commitment to ask better questions.

So let’s round up, and finish of with the steps I took to “crowd create” my products. They are so powerful, that you can use them to move forward with any project you’re working on… Here we go:

HOW TO CROWD CREATE A PRODUCT

These are the step I’d follow:

1. Have a Vision - it doesn’t have to be your grand life purpose

1. Don’t try and be a Renaissance man/ woman - don’t try do it all yourself - Find experts

1. Share your vision - master storytelling to help bring in experts from different fields to support you

1. Don’t be put off by challenges - remember, “the obstacle is the way.”

1. Ask better questions and get better solutions - questions invite revelation

Until next time - Go CRUSH IT -  and, Keep Upgrading Those Questions!

Hey, wish you could geek out with other real funnel builders and even ask questions while I build funnels live? Wish granted!

Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free! Just go to my FaceBook Group, The Science of Selling Online and join now.

What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larson, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

Today we are gonna talk about how to create your own affiliate army.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch.

This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys?

Hey, so one thing I wanna get out of the way real quick is in the last few episodes I know I've talked a lot about things that I was doing at Clickfunnels when I first started working there. And the reason why is because what you'll notice that I'm doing, is I'm actually modeling the very things that I was doing over there, in my own business. Why? Because they work.

I had a hand in creating a lot of those things, and I've done it before so, why not just do it again for my own company, right? And so to tell the story, real quick:

I was just starting at ClickFunnels; I'd been working there like three months, and I noticed Russell started doing this weird thing...

He grabbed an iPad, and he sat figuring out how to mirror his iPad to his computer. I was like that's kind of weird. He would record his computer. And he was sitting there, he was writing out the script…

I think I was working on Biohacking Secrets at the time, or something like that. Feels like about the right timeline I think.

Anyway, so he was writing those things out, and I would kinda notice him, you know just over my shoulder, just watching what he was doing. And I was building stuff, putting things together

He did this really cool presentation where he showed how to be an affiliate, and the power of being an affiliate. Right, and if you guys know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about when we created affiliatebootcamp.com.

And then something magical happened. This was one of the things that was a catalyst for me - that gave me confidence to actually teach the things that I was doing.

He turned around and he said “Hey, do you wanna make the videos for this?”  I was like, “Are you serious? Yeah!”

On the outside I was like, “Yeah,” but on the inside, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy, right? Holy crap. Oh it's Russell Brunson.” I was pretty sure lightning would strike me if I didn't do a good job.

Right, that's what was going through my head...  but I didn't want him to know that. So I sat there and we started going through the different topics, coming up with different topics and different ideas for what Affiliate Bootcamp training was going to be.

Now I knew affiliatebootcamp.com, he had used that in previous businesses, but the current version of it right now, at the recording of this video, I created.

I remember I stayed up super late multiple nights filming and re-filming. I don't know if he knows that I did that, but I did that so many time because I was so scared that it wasn't gonna be amazing.

And so I'd film, and I'd re-film, back and forth, back and forth…

They were only 15 minute videos teaching a single really cool strategy that was very powerful, but I wanted to deliver it well. So I stayed up super late.

I remember Russell went out of town once and the project was due soon. I was probably over obsessing, but just 'cause I wanted to do a really good job.

So I was there really, really late. This was well over two years ago now - I was there super late, telling my wife, “Babe I gotta finish this thing... I'm doing the videos.” And she's like, “Whoa, that's crazy!”  So anyway, I was super excited about it.

I filmed a bunch of these strategies and taught a lot of cool stuff. And then I showed some of my own stuff that I had be doing to get affiliates at that time too.

And that's what a... You know then Jon Parks came in with this amazing amazing job, right, teaching incredible Facebook strategies. Right, and it was really fascinating the way it all came about, and a lot of people joined Clickfunnels because of that.

So yesterday what I did... I was going through and I have a Facebook group, if you guys don't know…. It's where I dump a lot of my strategy sessions. It's where I bring up a lot of things that I'm thinking of throughout the day. These podcast episodes are a little bit more... I think through them heavily, and I make sure that they all are like... It feels a little bit more permanent, right?

The Facebook group though, that's what I'm doing on a daily basis. It's called The Science of Selling Online, go check it out - it's free.

Anyway, yesterday, I did a deep dive with my group about creating an affiliate army. It was funny because half the people on the Facebook live told me that they were in Clickfunnels because of those original videos I did for Russell…

They're were like, “It was after seeing that strategy, that I decided to come and join ClickFunnels.” I was like, “No way,” it was a ton of people. Lots of 'em on the Facebook live that said that.  It was crazy.

So, I wanna show you how to get your own affiliate army. I also wanna show you more of the strategy of why you should want your own affiliate army. It's a little bit like where to start…

My brain's all over the place on this one. I'm excited to go through this:

Number one, we need to talk about the Dream 100. And funny enough, I feel like there's this, almost like a... It's almost like when I mention the Dream 100, people are like, Oh yeah... the Dream 100....” There’s this attitude around  it... “Freakin' do it - it works!”

We shipped out a whole bunch of packages yesterday to our Dream 100 - AGAIN. It's gone really, really well. It's super fun... really neat stuff.

You have to know that I treat Dream 100 and affiliates different... While I might do a joint venture, I’m not necessarily looking to do a joint venture with an affiliate. However, I am seeking to do a joint venture with a Dream 100. Does that make sense? It's one of the major differences between the two.

People can go out and they can promote my product, but they might not have a much of a following yet. It's not worth me doing a specific webinar with that person,right?  

A Dream 100 person is an influencer. They're a ‘river owner,’ right? They own traffic. They own eyeballs. I can do a joint venture with them, but that's different to most affiliates. Does that make sense?

For example; when we were getting the Expert Secrets book out of the door, we spent a significant amount of time... Dave Woodward did an amazing job putting together this cool campaign inviting people to promote the Expert Secrets book.

Who made that list? Influencers. A and B list influencers, maybe even some C list. People who owned traffic, people who already had a list. That's Dream 100s style strategy.

All I wanna do with influencers is get them on a joint venture. Maybe a webinar we can do together, or something like that. Affiliates, though, are different…

What I do with affiliates is, I go and I create assets for the affiliates. I want to make it as painless as possible for them to promote my product. What do I mean?

If you guys log into your ClickFunnels account... If you don't have one, you're crazy…. You can get your free trial accounts at salesfunnelbroker.com - you get free funnels too. Yes, it's an affiliate link, okay? - go get it though. It’s awesome.

If you go inside the back area in your ClickFunnels account (when you get a Clickfunnels account, you're automatically an affiliate for Clickfunnels) … Let's say you want to promote the “Expert Secrets’ book; if you go into your CF account, there's a bunch of assets in there.

You’ll find a unique link that you can send people to - so you get an affiliate commission. Scroll down and you’ll see pre-written emails, image assets and pre-done videos that you can use. There’s lots and lots and lots of pre-done assets just to promote Expert Secrets.

That way, all the affiliate has to do is grab an asset, and put their affiliate link under it, and press go - or turn on the ad. It's super, super painless.

I don't wanna offend anybody when I say this, but stereotypically, affiliates are very lazy people... meaning they have their own projects going on, right?

For me to get them to actually promote my thing, I have to do a lot of work to remove the pain that they'll feel when they start to promote my product. Does that make sense?

So, just understand that I'm talking about how to create your own affiliate army - I'm not talking about the Dream 100. That's a different strategy. I'm gonna go different things with them. I'm gonna treat them differently, I'm gonna massage court and date them very differently than an affiliate.

For affiliates, it's a great way for them to make a whole bunch of cash quickly without a whole lotta fulfillment time. So just know that that there's the difference.

Now that we've established the difference - there's a huge difference in the way you treat them.

One has a following, one doesn't. One has an existing success that's happened, one usually doesn't, and that's fine.

Some people just wanna be full time affiliates, and that's great.

A little while ago, I was standing in front of Russell in his office there with him and I was talking about some cool things I wanna go toss together.

I was talking about campaigns, and I said one of the campaigns I wanna run is my own Affiliate Bootcamp. And he was smiling and he said, “yeah that's a super cool thing to do,”  because you train people how to sell for you.

Right, think with me real quick on this….

In Affiliate Bootcamp, when I'm going through and teaching how to promote and actually get cash as an affiliate, (which a lot of you have - which is amazing. Super cool)...  Every example that I'm giving is actually a ClickFunnels product. So it's free training showing you how to promote ClickFunnels.

Mine will be completely free as well. It will be what I drive ads to. I will definitely get money back and those ads are definitely gonna be profitable ads.

Every example that I give will be my own product. I'm pseudo teaching how to promote me, alright? And that's cool, it’s totally fine.

So I started thinking through, like okay right, Affiliate Bootcamp goes through things like YouTube, it goes through things like podcasts. It goes through things like how to use other people's content and blogs. And while I'll still go through some of those strategies, I wanna add in some of those new things as well.

So here's my plan, here's my strategy. This is me being completely open, completely vulnerable. I'm excited to invite you you guys - it's gonna be totally sick. It's amazing, oh my gosh.

In my affiliate training, I wanna to show you how to use Chatbots for affiliate commissions... 'Cause there's a way and there's a FREE way. How to use things like offerwalls. How do you use things like the strategy Todd Brown was talking about, along with Instagram and Facebook groups.

I want to show you how to use strategies that have come into play more heavily in the last two years. I mean obviously Facebook groups were there. But how do you use the most up to date strategies as well?

I have a habit of going really deep with stuff... sometimes it's kind of a negative... But this is gonna be amazing. I was thinking to myself, “Self, why don't I have other people who are already experts teach those things?”  

A lot of the people who are doing my YouTube, my Instagram, my Facebook groups, my blogs, my podcast stuff… The people I'm spending a lot of money for on a monthly basis to have around... What if I asked them to be the ones who do the training?

They'll just spend 10 -15 minutes teaching the strategy, how to promote, and how to actually be an affiliate. You could use it for any product, but we'll use our product strategically as the examples in there. It's teaching people how to be affiliates for me. Right, does that make sense?

Russell was really excited about it. It's gonna drip out to you over 30 days. You can obviously speed up and go a lot faster if you want... but we're putting together now. It's planned for the end of June. So I'm really, really, really, really excited about it.

There's a beta list and you can jump on the training and do it kind of live with us. That's the plan so far anyways. Go to affiliateoutrage.com and get on the waiting list.

There's a cool monkey there, it's like a gorilla, and he's got glasses on, and they're the Clickfunnels colors.

What I wanna do is, train my own affiliate army. Create my own affiliate strategy and teach people how to promote my stuff, 'cause it's freakin' awesome.

Right, and one of the campaigns I'm putting together is I wanna show people… I have watched multiple people become wealthy with just one campaign. One! When I say campaign, I don't mean Facebook ads. Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Google ads, those platforms are destroying the term campaign. They're destroying it. That term is being lost.

Campaigns are not ads. A campaign might include ads, but it's not a campaign. Does that make sense? I know it doesn't make sense yet, follow me…

Doing something like a seven day launch. That's a campaign. Ads are included as part of that. But an ad is not a campaign.

So what I started doing a little while ago, is I started thinking through all the strategies that I've either been a part of, or I've seen people pull off - where just the one campaign has made their product a lot of sales and cash.

So I thought well, what if I got a whole bunch of campaigns, and did all of them? Right? If one's not amazing - six are, right!

So what I did is I went through, and I started putting together six different very unique campaigns… (Watch what I'm doing closely from about June through the end of October.)

This has been in the works for quite a while... But it is campaign strategies, not just ads. We're gonna scale ads, ads are gonna go crazy. But there's six different campaign strategies that I'm using - that I've seen, been a part of, or done in other areas where it's made a lot of cash.

This 2 Comma Club award right there - that's the result of one campaign. That's one campaign!  So I wanna go through and show you guys how I've pulled all this stuff off. How I've actually done it.

Watch what I'm doing. I'm gonna make my own affiliate army, and then I'm gonna do an affiliate contest…

Then the top ten affiliates, I want you guys to fly out for a day or two. We'll just do whatever you want. We'll work on funnels together. I'll help build your businesses, I'll help you do whatever. That's part of the gift I'm gonna give.

But where I did I learn that? Ah, the Expert Secrets book, right? That was part of the campaign of that launch. There was a Dream 100 campaign, but there was also an affiliate campaign.

Campaigns are events, they're not ads. It drives me nuts, I'm starting to get all itchy about it.... Campaigns are not ads! Campaigns are EVENTS.

They're succinct events that are happening inside of a period of time. They're things that you're doing to create pressure, and then release pressure towards your sales page, or towards your order page, right?

Anyway, I am excited for all this stuff. So watch what I'm doing here…

I'm creating an affiliate army by teaching them how to be affiliates for anybody. I don't care if they don't promote my stuff. They're on my list, right, and I'm gonna show them why promoting my stuff is really freakin' profitable.

I give amazing affiliate commissions, and at the same time, I'm not gonna be the one to put it all together, I'm gonna crowd create it…

I'm gonna grab some of my most trusted people on my team, and have them go in these incredible skill sets that have taken them a long time to go master...  I'm gonna have them do little pieces of the training. What does that do? That scratches their back and mine at the same time, I'm totally cool with that... why would I not be?

I'm not a genius at YouTube. I love it, but I'm not a genius at it. Why would I teach that? Let's go have the person who is a genius teach that.

Right, why don't I teach Instagram? I love Instagram... Instagram's blowing up. And it's really, really cool. (We're at 11 and a half thousand followers now, which is really, really fun. And... Anyway, gosh, super cool.) But I'm not gonna teach Instagram because I’m not an expert.

There was a principle that I learned when I was 20. Actually I was 21... I remember where I was standing when I realized that successful people are not necessarily renaissance men. They don't act like a renaissance men. They act like an orchestrator.

They stand up  and they put the pieces together. That's it!  They're contractors basically. Just be better at it than most contractors are.

Anyway, I hope that that's helpful to you.

Remember to watch the campaigns that I'm going to start launching and putting out... use them, follow them, right.

We're gonna do a seven day launch. We're gonna do all sorts of stuff. We've got a really cool summit that we're gonna do that's coming up as well. It's to promote the same product, but from different angles - because some people are like’ “I don't wanna be an affiliate... but man, I'll check out that summit…”

“I don't wanna do this... but man, I'll come to a two day event.” You know, a little masterminding...

Does that make sense? I've laced these all together, so watch very closely what's gonna happen. It's one of the reasons why I know it's gonna do really well.... And 'cause the product is selling well, the offer's amazing, the story's incredible, the funnel's fantastic. So now it's just time to promote.

Let's scale those ads - we're doing right now. And it's working. Our SLO is selling, and it's liquidating ads costs. It's exciting guys.

Anyway, thanks for following the journey, and where I'm taking the ship. Again go to affiliateoutrage.com if you wanna be on that list, and watch that training - it's free. Watch how I'm unrolling it, it's very methodical.

Anyway, we're gonna talk about a lotta cool stuff with that, but if you have anything that you wish was in that training, man let me know, okay, let me know…

Comment on the YouTube version of this video. Put on there what you would love to have inside that training.

We're gonna go through Facebook ads, we're gonna go through different groups. We're gonna talk about Instagram. We'll talk about all tons of different traffic platforms and how to use that to gain affiliate commissions for whatever you're promoting.

My hope is that you choose to promote my stuff, 'cause it's really good. It's not all the plan, but it's a snapshot, okay. I’ll document even more along the way and you guys can follow it as we move forward.

So anyways, hope that's been helpful to you, as you start to think through  which campaigns you’re using to promote yourself?

If it's just ads...man, do a campaign. Do something big, right? Do something real big, make an event out of it. A seven day launch, that's another great version of it. I don't wanna give all the secrets away. Okay, I'm not going to…

Anyway, I'm excited about it though. I'm excited for what's gonna happen here with this. Watch what I'm doing, and feel free to follow along @ affiliateoutrage.com

I'm having a lot of really incredible experts come on - who are frankly really expensive to get - to teach some cool stuff to you guys.

So anyways, thanks so much and I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.

Many of you don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer. If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money ever, you can learn to do the same for free @ affiliateoutrage.com

- What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larson, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

Today I'm going to talk to you about why I chose the info business over the others.

I spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is, how will I do it, without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

I wanna deep dive into some of the reasons that I sell info now. I started and walked through several other models and markets over the years, but I've planted in Info for a few specific reasons. Here's why...

What's up guys, hey, first off please know that I know there are far more types of business than just the ones I have on the board right here. But generically I find that a lot of them fit kind of in this category as far as the way that we market them.

The four categories that I’m using are: Ecomm/ Agency/ Affiliate/ Info

Service is kind of the same way as Agency. We might market Ecomm in similar way to retail.

Anyway, so I went through and I started looking through different ways.

I did this a while ago and I was very methodical about the way that I entered the business space and which market I actually went into.

I'm not saying that one is not better than the other, and I'm not saying that these are all of them...  please know that I’m going to talk in massive stereotypes.

There are lots of different businesses out there. The kind of people that are solopreneurs, I typically see them going into one of these categorizes - until they get to a certain level, then they'll scale and blow it up and get to other places as well.

I might put supplements under Ecomm. They’re very similar - the funnels are different -  but there are some similar aspects to them.

Services and Agency are kind of the same.

Affiliate/ Salesman/ MLMers/ are all very similar

Then there’s Info products…

Anyway, what I want to do is I just want to show you guys real quick why I chose what I do and first of all I want you to know that this is, I actually sell info products now, right? I did not start that way at all though.

Info products is kind of interesting the way that it plays out because to sell info products, it helps to have a little bit of authority in the space that you're selling it to. Obviously, it helps, it's true for anything. But especially with info.

I didn't start with info. If you want to you can tackle it right away. Awesome, go for it.

I actually was just trying to prove that this whole internet game worked. I remember the first time I was sitting in college in a class and for this particular class, it was Quantitative Marketing Research. That was the name of the course. And we went through and we had a live client, and it was actually Paul Mitchell.

It was a Paul Mitchell school that was nearby. And what they were having us do was we would go collect a whole bunch of survey data and we were going to try and consult Paul Mitchell on what they should do with this actual real life scenario in business. And it was really really interesting.

Well the assignment was for us to go talk to 10 people each as a class, then collectively we have a whole bunch of, we have a lot of data to work from. Well, sitting there with one of my buddies, we were like, "I do not want to go ask people, even ten, "I don't wanna ask ten people how to do the survey."

And so what we did, we were like "What if we go, "and let's just actually put the survey on a Google form "and we will drive ads to it." Something very simple, but we did Facebook ads and we drove to it.

And what was interesting is we actually went and we had we collected more surveys than the rest of the class combined. And it went really really well.

Well that's how I started working for Paul Mitchell. Because Paul Mitchell came back like, "Hey, we don't have to do any of this internet stuff, "professors, like college teachers, do you guys "know how to do this stuff?" And they were like, "No, but these two psychos over here "seem to be doing something crazy, talk to them."

And we got a handoff from the professors and we started building funnels, we didn't know they were funnels.We were building sites, in WordPress, we were driving traffic, and it was really really interesting how that happened.

Well, right before all of that happened, I was like "Does this internet game even work? "Is it all a scam?" And so what I did was I started studying a lot of, if you guys know, High Traffic Academy from Vick Strizheus, I'm sorry I'm probably butchering your name man, Vick.

Anyway, I started studying that and I started learning, "What if I was to just put a squeeze page in front "of a clickbank product and drive traffic to it? "Oh my gosh, let's try that." It seemed so simple.

And I looked at my internet marketing teacher, and I said, "I don't want to come back." It was like the first or second day of that class. And I said, "I don't want to come back." And I drew a funnel, I didn't know that's what I was drawing, but I drew a funnel. I drew a funnel, and I drew an email follow up sequence, and I drew, and I said, "I want to go build this." And shockingly he looked at me and he goes, "Okay." And he left, he said, "You don't need to come back "the rest of the semester, but just give me some "kind of cool deliverable at the end of the semester." So I was like, "Cool."

So me, and this other guy, we went and we started, we started, trying to make and literally we held class everyday just trying to make as much money online as possible. That's what our task was. Today, let's make as much money as we physically can on the internet.

And so one of the very first products we did, was what I was just saying. We went and grabbed the squeeze page, it was a template software, we didn't know what we were doing. And we grabbed the template and we just changed the headlines and we grabbed a video from YouTube of someone else talking about that product, and then we put our affiliate link at the bottom.

When they clicked submit, the page collected their email and it redirected over to the Clickbank page, and I remember that night we put, it was a ton of money at that time, we put $50 in in ads, and we woke up the next morning, and I was anxious... this was like the 100th business I had tried. You know what I mean.

I opened up my computer and I was like, "Crap, "there's cash in here, what?" And I called my buddy real fast and we put $50 in, we got $50 back out, and we got 17 people on our list.

And one person was the buyer and bought the up sale and we liquidated. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy. "That sucks we only made 50 bucks."

And at the time, I didn't understand how cool a deal that was. On our very, that's the very very first real funnel that I ever built. And we liquidated because 17 people on the list, and I thought it was a failure because we didn't make any money. How stupid is that. I should have kept it going, would of got a massive list quickly with that. Anyway, lessons learned. And we kept doing stuff like that.

I started in the affiliate area, as far as the internet business goes, I started here. This is actually where I started. Like, I'm not joking, a few weeks later that's when we start doing these cool things and we start getting involved with Paul Mitchell. And I start building these, we start building these things, and at that time, my buddy graduated, and I was like, "There's something to, what's this funnel thing. "There's something about this funnel game. "What's with this funnel game thing?"

And I went and I decided that I would start studying the funnel game more. I was like, "Who is this Russell Brunson guy, he looks like he's 13." Alright, what? And I was like, "Who is this guy?"

And I started deep diving guys, I mean I obsessed, I still do, right hardcore on what he was teaching, I was like, "Yeah, that's totally how it works. "Yeah, he's right, it doesn't work that way. "Whoa, look at that." And I started learning all these lessons.

I took “Dot Com Secrets X”, and I filled an entire notebook, page by page, you know those Steno notebooks with the lines, the graph notebooks. I filled it from front to back from notes just from that one course.

I mean, it took me three months to go through that one course. because I played it for 15 seconds, and then I stopped and I thought about it and I wrote down what I had just learned. And then I would press play, and guys I did that for a year.

And when I say I hid in the box office seats in campus, I did. And that's what I was doing for a year and a half, was studying and learning, and I started applying and doing all those little things

And I got to a place here where I was like, "I'm gonna start proving that I know this stuff." And I started going out and I wrote down, I started building all these funnels, and I did it with a lot of startup companies for a while.

And the problem with startups was there business wasn't proven out and if the funnel didn't work they thought it was my fault, and I was like "No, you don't have like a product yet. "You don't have a business. "I have to train you on all this stuff before you even accept me."

Anyway, startups were really really hard to work with for many reasons. Then I was like, "Ah man, I should "change who I'm actually pitching." I was like, "Oh sweet, I'm gonna go for successful people "who already have a list, who already have a successful "product, who have testimonials, with a mid-range product."

And I shotgun blasted out this invite to tons of people and I said, "Hey, I know you don't know what a funnel is, I will build one for free "just to show you that it works. "If it works, let's talk about me getting paid. "If it doesn't work, no harm no foul, I'll walk."

And I had several people bite, like alright, bring it on. And I went and I kind of, I started building funnels for several different people. I kind of went Agency, it was service style. And this is really where I started making actual real money, on my own, in college, ever.

First was, I started doing a whole bunch of affiliate stuff. But number two though, I went over, I actually, oh you can barely see that , okay cool. Anyway, number two though I started doing a whole bunch of service stuff and just putting my name out there, being like, "Look, I understand how this works now. "Am I perfect? "No, I'm not. "But let me just learn under your business wing, right, "let me go build this funnel and I'll keep getting better "and if it's working then let's talk about me getting paid "Don't pay me before hand though." And that's what I did and started getting these huge success stories.

Well, around that time is when Funnel Hacking Live was coming up, and I was like, "I wanna go. I'm getting "successes for a lot of these guys yet, but still "didn't feel like enough cash to spend money "on a Funnel Hacking Life ticket." And I started trading even, building even more funnels for plane tickets, and hotel nights, and things like that.

And I was like, "Oh, what's up Russell. "Then I got hired by Russell, right?" And that's really where I started building a lot of Ecomm funnels. Right, some of the biggest projects we were doing together were like, Fiber Fix, and a lot of products for Marcus Lemonis, for that TV show, The Profit, on CNBC. It was a lot of Ecomm style funnels that was going on there.

And it went really really well, it was awesome. I mean, we were blowing these guys up, sometimes too fast and they'd be like, "Turn it off, you're going "to bankrupt us." And I was like, "Oh my gosh," that's the model for Ecomm does really really well.

Whenever Russell's like "Dude, we need an Ecomm funnel, kinda like this funnel this funnel, this backend versus that back." I was like, "Sweet, I got it," and I'd go build it real fast. So I got really good at that model.

However, I've always known that this is kind of one of the Holy Grails. Info products are, I wanna go through this real fast, and then I want to show you something and this is the only reason why, but info products, it's one of, it's one of the hard categories to get into, but it's also one of the Holy Grails.

If you look at what Dan Henry did, well, it's episode, it's one of the earlier episodes of Sales Funnel Radio, but I interviewed when he had only made 200 grand with his current offer, that he'd blow up with.

His Facebook ads for entrepreneurs He'd only done like barely $200,000 at that time. And he was talking about it and if you have listened to that episode, what he was saying, was for his info product, he spent a solid like five, six months taking a beta group through and seeing what they were doing and how they were reacting to what he was teaching.

Okay, I told you to build the Facebook ad this way, but turns out you all thought I meant this. Okay, let's clarify. Then okay, now do this step. Oh man, you're all screwed up here, let's do it right. And he was spot checking and he was making a system.

And he spent a lot of time proving out his info product before he ever sold it. I've done the exact same thing with mine.

Alex and Leila Hormozi, at Funnel Hacking Live, this last one, they were talking about for a full year, before they ever, they just got, they just made 10 million dollars since last April. But they didn't just start doing that.

For a full year before they ever started really scaling and selling hard, for a full year, they were living in crazy areas, doing crazy things, just so they could prove the process that they were going to bring people though.

That is really one of the gateways, it's one of the key gates of getting really good and awesome at Info. Your crap's gotta be amazing. It's gotta get results for people. And the best way to do it is to just spend a lot of time with your prospective customers. With people who represent your prospective customers. And make them successful, make them successful, and get, and when you do, it's in my mind, it's one of the Holy Grails.

I love selling info products, okay. I love it. And here's why, let's walk through this now real quick.

Here's a good reason why, just so you know, that's been kind of my journey I've gone through it, I kind of did a little more Ecomm stuff then I jumped over here to the Info side where I will reside as long as I can. I absolutely love it, and it's super cool. It takes a little finesse to get into a lot of times.

I'm not saying you can't go interview a bunch of people and toss out that interview series as an info product. You could totally do that. Now, I'm not saying you can't, there's a lot of ways to create an info product really quickly. But I'm saying, like you as a brand, you as an educator, you as an idea and a vehicle that has potential for two commas, like info wise, it's gotta be really good. It's gotta be really good, okay. So let's walk through this real quick here.

With Ecomm, let's say over here on this side, we're going to go through Ecomm and for each one of these we're going to look at the profit margin potential.

Again, massive stereotypes... I understand that there are people out there who have figured out how to game the system, but they are not typical.

I'm talking typical, stereotypical, kind of result in each one of these categories. How much profit, how much margin potential is there? How much money for you after all the expenses are done? How much earning potential is there for you, typically, in that category and how much time does it take to actually do the business, actually fulfill on the thing that you're selling? I'm gonna walkthrough really fast.

This is why I've chosen what I have and I've been methodical about it. I'm going to say that #1 equals a little, #2 equals kind of medium, and then #3 equals a lot.

Let's go with Ecomm. And I know that some of you guys want to reach out to me, and kind of fight me on these things. I understand. I'm talking just straight atypical general person that goes through this think, okay.

What is the earning, at the very end of the day, the profit potential of the Ecomm category? What is it? It's not, it's not actually that high.

A lot of people get in two comma clubs in Ecomm, but they don't actually keep that much money, they actually don't have that much cash to their name themselves.

I understand the coolness of the award, and you certainly can scream to it real fast by doing something like Ecomm really quickly. But there's not typically that much profit margin inside of Ecomm. Especially when people don't do my freaking offer creation strategy in this.

If they do, they can make a lot of cash. It's like, I don't know why, a lot of Ecomm people don't believe me. Like even though that's what we do, and it works. Anyway, but the actual earning potential, actual profit margin on the actual business itself, is a little bit tiny. I'm gonna say, we'll say a two here. A one to a two. It's kind of a little, especially if you're doing something like drop shipping, that's obviously a one.

If you own the product, you're going to get more of a 2. But let's talk about time to fulfill. Even if you got a shipping fulfillment house doing your work for you, or if it's in house, you're typically sourcing products like crazy. You're spending a lot of time finding the next product, testing the next thing. I'm not saying you gotta sell the Ecomm product for a couple bucks like a lot of Ecomm people do. You can sell really really expensive, but you're usually in a game of trying to figure out the next thing to go sell really really quickly.

Info, the way I write info, is a little bit different, ok? I'm gonna say a 2, because you can spend a butt load of time actually on the phone. Right, that's one of the things that Trey Lewellen was having a hard time with, with his, which you can't blame him, with his credit card knife. The dude's the man, absolutely amazing. Spent a lot of time though fulfilling, and it's easy to run into troubles that way.

Ecomm, I was like Ecomm's cool but like, ah man, I'm about that ROI. How can I get the highest leverage, ok? Which in Ecomm comes in later.

Remember this, ok? I'm going to come back to this and show you how I use this now. But you sell info. Wait, do I?

Agency's freaking awesome too, there's a lot of cash that usually comes in the business. The thing that I don't like about Agency is when you get paid, is when the work starts. I don't like that. It's where I proved that I knew what I was doing. It's services, services/Agency. It's where I, it's a really fast way as well. I love the path that I personally took. I learned how to sell other people's products, which is awesome, we'll get there in a second.

But then I went over to the service and Agency side and it was really cool because you get paid a lot of cash but you're also, even if you have an amazing team Agency wise, you're still managing the team, you're still closing deals typically. I'm not saying you're, anyway, there are exceptions to the rule, but usually, there's a lot of time to fulfill on Agency model.

After the sale is made, is usually, that's when it starts; I'm going to say a three and then a two here.

Let's talk here about affiliate. Now typically with affiliates, the profit margin, usually small, right? You got the crazies out there like Russell Brunson giving 40% every single month of his check to you for getting an affiliate person it. That's amazing, that's incredible. Usually not the case though. So I'm going to say a one. But what's interesting, but actually 1.5, let's say 1.5. Depending on the product, depending on the affiliate, there's a lot of variables with every one of these categories and I totally get that. But just generally, usually 1, 1.5.

How much time does it take for you to fulfill after the sales made. No time, no time at all. Oh my gosh, great place to go. And this is actually how I built my entire company and business without ever spending a dollar of my own. I've never spent a dollar of my own, I don't think so, in my own business. And it's because I started with affiliates.

That generated cash so I could do cool things like hire VAs in service/Agency and that brought in even more cash, and I was like, "Well this is awesome, but I want to free "up my time a little bit." Let's jump over to info, and that's what I went in to next.

Let's talk about info. What's the earning/profit margin potential on an info product? Guys, my margins right now on my main product is like 94%. Obviously there's a business margin, but I'm saying the actual product margin is like 94%, it's ridiculous. It's like no cost to fulfill on it at all. I think it's actually like 98.8. It's really, it's ridiculous. Three, definitely a three.

Time to fulfill, like virtually nothing. The cost of an email with access to a members area or something like that. Now, there's a caveat to this. If I go through and there's an info product, people know, there's this inherent understanding that the info product is already made. It's like the subconscious know, the little thing that they know that it's not going to take you anything to fulfill on that. Because of that, the perceived value, the perceived value, so it's a lot of value to me, but the perceived value of info, is usually kind of low. It is, right.

Let's take Ecomm for example, though. Ecomm something physical, something I'm gonna get in the mail. I got these stupid crows that are flying all over the place around the office and they just, they're messing with me, they'll like, so anyways, I've got a BB gun coming, you can guess what's happening, right, but the perceived value, perceived value of an Ecomm product is really high.

Perfect example, go think about Amazon. There's not sales copy on Amazon, there's like bullet point descriptions, this is what it is. Bam, here's the button, put it in your order and just go get it. The perceived value, perceived value, of Ecomm is high, but the value to the entrepreneur is typically a little lower. So what I do is I combine them.

In my offers with info, the reason why info does so well for me now, is yes, you get the info thing, but I also ship a lot of amazing, incredible things to the person when they purchase. I combine info with Ecomm and it's one of the reasons why my stuff does so well and one of the reasons why the perceived value of my offers is so high, cause the value is high.

They're getting something in the mail, they're getting, it's not just like something, they're crazy cool things, they're getting those and they're getting access to all this crazy stuff: funnel builds, incredible things. Things that people pay a lot of money for me to go do normally. They're getting those things in there and that's the reason why I chose and landed on info, and I will stay there, stay there, stay there.

The category that I want to move into eventually though is software. I think I don't know what it's going to be, but it's because it's almost like the benefits of Ecomm, high perceived value, software, right, software is high perceived value. With really high margins on the product itself, the business margin on software is a little bit hard, because you have a lot of support usually, that's a higher.

But the time to fulfill is like virtually nothing which means the entrepreneurs can spend, as long as they get great support, usually in software the entrepreneurs can spend little time doing any kind of fulfillment, instead they do a lot of time selling.

Russell stays in the act of selling like, 24/7. He can do that because of the software game, because he's in the info game, because he combines a lot of Ecomm inside of it. Does that make sense?

So he tosses off a lot of the benefits to his affiliates by giving them the ability, "Hey look, you don't have to fulfill anything, "I ain't going to pay you for it." Sweet. And he teaches a lot of people, look, if you need cash and a lot of it pretty quick, go service/Agency style.

You'll get a lot of cash quickly but eventually that's why I landed in what I do, and that's why I stay in info, and I will always stay info. I love it. The time to fulfill is tiny, which lets me stay in the zone, where I get to create more things for the same product. Toss in more cool things. Make the value of the offer even bigger. Create amazing things for people, and the profit margins are big enough that it allows me to do that.

I'm not having to sell thousands of little knick knacks. And take away a thousand dollars to go put that in something else from the source of knick knacks, that's really really rough in Ecomm.

But a thousand dollars, coming from the source of an info product? It's really really easy, it's not that crazy hard, at all. SO this is why I do what I do. This is the reason that I've structured it the way I have. So I hope that helps.

If you guys are thinking through how to actually sell the stuff that you are, and what you're trying to get into. I started as an affiliate and it's a great way to go.

And frankly, when I started Sales Funnel Radio, I kept this thing going by giving away share funnels. And now I've got a bunch of people on ClickFunnels accounts.

At the beginning when I was working at ClickFunnels, at a 9-5 job, I had this extra cash that was coming in, and because of that, while I was doing my 9-5, which was way more than that but while I was working over there, during the same day, there would be doing VAs in different places that were getting projects and cool things done for me. Not from my own pocket, because I was doing affiliate stuff like crazy. Really easy to fulfill, got some cash from it.

Still to this day, it's significant. I think we've passed, we're well passed thirty grand in affiliate commissions in the last like year-and-a-half, I mean that's good. It's been the cash that I've needed to do all the stuff on the side and prep the groundwork so I could launch into the info space.

So anyway, I just hope that that helps. It helps you guys work through and think through where you're heading.

If you're like "I'm trying to do info." Okay, does anyone know who you are? Have you proved out the process yet? Can you, if someone actually follows the process, can you virtually guarantee that people are going to be successful at it. If you can't, it can be to sell that at scale.

If someone follows my process, they get results, I know they do. I have the best product in the category I'm selling in in the entire market, and I know I do, and I'm fine with that, and I'm fine saying that because I know it's true.

Because that's what happens, when people do it, they get results. It's happening life, like right now. It took me like two years, honestly, to really get to a spot where my info product could do that for people, so if you're knowing that, if you're like, "I want to do info," Awesome. Or if you're like, "I want to stick in Ecomm." That's great, that's great. Just figure out the little tricks to make the margins huge and make that two into a three. That's super super cool.

Just be cognizant of what that industry is typically like and the cost associated with that. Like supplements, supplements takes a lot of cash to sell someone into the supplements.

Continuity, and software, take a lot of cash to sell. Continuity is expensive to sell. So don't sell continuity outright. Attach it to other things. Funnel Hacks, like Russel does. Isn't it amazing. When you do it that way, oh my gosh, so much easier.

Same thing with supplements over here, supplements cost a lot of cash to drop in, but if you have an info product that you're coupling it with, they buy the info product, that's what's self-liquidating, your ad cross and now in the backend go toss them to your supplements.

Awesome, or your Ecomm, or whatever. Does that make sense? This is one of the reasons I've structured the way I have - I'm very methodical about it. It's turned out really really well.

So I hope that it's helpful to you?

If you're stuck or you're like, "Oh gosh, I don't know "how this is going to work? I don't know if this is going "to be successful here or there?" Man, just go figure out how you can get cash now. And some of the easiest places to do it, Affiliate. Probably next, probably the Agency. I know a lot of Ecomm people will probably fight me on that and that's fine, that's totally fine. We all have our own opinions and that's perfect.

The model I'm following and I just wanted to walk you guys through why I do what I do. And what my logic has been behind each one of them is... profit margin potential out of the gate, not tricks, not little tips. Profit margin potential out of the gate - what is it?

I'll do the little tips and tricks and stuff like that, and I do and it goes even higher, but I don't want to bank on those. That's why I didn't run into Ecomm. I almost ran into Ecomm... I just about did Ecomm, but that's the reason I didn't right out the gate.

Again, not telling you not to, but that's the reason I didn't was ‘time to fulfill.’ I was like, "Man I just want to "do revenue generating activities, but what I'm constantly managing a product for someone else. I’d collected the cash already but I can't "actually do anything with it cause my hands "are tied, my time is tied because I can't actually "go do, I have to fulfill.

I don't know if I want to marry the Agency/service model. It was a great place for me to go for quite a while honestly, to vet out and prove who I was and what I was doing and that I could do it, which the market obviously needed to see, why would they not?

I got my testimonials from there, I got, that's what launched me in to being able to work next to Russell. In fact, that's one of the first things he asked when I sat down face to face with him.

Actually before I even got there, he's like, "Have you "been building funnels?" I said, "Yeah." He's like, "What are the URLs?" Boom, blasted over like 20 URLs over to him. Look at all these funnels I've done, look at all the stats here we go, boom, and when I sat down, he was like sick, okay, cool. He didn't say sick. He was like, "Okay, cool, awesome." You've actually done this. I didn't start from ground 0. But it's because I actively was trying to prove that I could do it. So anyway, that's the path I took, hopefully it helps?

Sit back, figure out where you're trying to go and those are some of the, when you're just talking about generating cash flow, I'm not talking about change the world products, I'm talking about you making money, for you. Change your own life before you go trying to change the world. It’s way easier, do it that way.

I want to change the world and I plan to. I don't know how yet. But first I'm changing my world so that I have the ability and power to change the world afterwards.

So this is the path I took with that intent in mind and it's been working really well. And we haven't had a negative month yet and I don't think we will. Anyway, things have been going great. I really appreciate it .

Thanks for listening, please rate and review the podcast. Please share it, we'd love to have more people on. For those of you guys who are on iTunes, I do film these now, if you want to see the graph I just drew, go to my YouTube channel if you want to see - it’s just ‘Steven Larson’, that's the name of my YouTube channel.

If you're on You Tube and you're like, "Hey, I would rather just listen to these," go to iTunes. A lot of you guys on Instagram, I know these get pushed to you as well.

Bloggers, what's up. You guys can come out to any of these platforms as well. We push out now to, it's over, it's like 25 different platforms. Just know that the others exist and excited to have you guys. Thanks so much, talk to you later. Bye!

Boom, what's goin' on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and this Sales Funnel Radio.

Today we are gonna talk about how to pay for expensive things with your business.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

All right, guys, hey, I'm excited for this episode. This has been kind of a long time in the making. This is gonna be one of those episodes that have kinda been on my mind for a long time as something that I wanna  share with you guys and teach you something really interesting.

I wanna tell you a story, okay? We were planning Funnel Hacking Live 2017. I remember being on cloud nine, I could not even believe that I was in the planning sessions for Funnel Hacking. I was freakin' out about it, I was super excited. I was with Melanie, Dave, and Brent. It was just fun to be in the room. Russell's like, “Dude, what if we ask Tony Robbins to come?”  We're like, “Oh my gosh, that's crazy.” So they started doing some research and reaching out to his team.

Tony's team reached back out and said, it's gonna cost about this much. I am not privy to say the amount... I'm not even gonna allude to it... but I will tell you that it was a lot of cash. It was a butt ton of money. It was so cool to watch how Russell handled it…There is a lesson that I picked up... I was watching him like a hawk. I always do.

First of all he goes, “Oh my gosh”, with this face. “Huh, oh my gosh, huh, oh god, I feel sick, huh.” What was interesting was what he did next...

There was a moment where he freaked out, and that's appropriate and everyone can feel free to do that when you wanna buy something expensive. But then, he just said “Yes.”

Then he was very careful to structure the FHL event in a way that would pay for Tony. Isn't that interesting? The event literally liquidated the cost of Tony Robbins.

If you go look at any time he's ever had someone really big on - that's how he structures it. That's really fascinating.

We started doin' some pretty interesting things that were very expensive. Things like the Harmon Brothers.The Harmon Brothers, they're the ones who did the viral video...

Hopefully you guys are cool with me telling all these stories? I wanna link it back to what I'm doin' right now and hopefully you'll take something cool from this.

The Harmon Brothers, it's public knowledge, so I'm just gonna say it... they charge half a million dollars to do a video. One video! A three, four, five minute video. Half a million bucks. They're expensive, but they get results. They're really cool, so they can charge that money.

Instead of Russell going, “Gah, are you kidding? Half a million dollars?” Which was appropriate (and we all did that at first)... what he did was start figuring out a way to liquidate the cost with some kind of campaign, event, or product.

So that at the end, he is left with both the asset and with his own cash in hand. Meaning he doesn't let his own cash out, he created something else to pay for the expense. Does that make sense? This is the smarter VC funding way.

You guys know I'm pretty against things like VC funding, but it's because of this very principle right here.

Think about a free plus shipping book funnel. A free plus shipping book funnel or even a webinar funnel... A lot of times in a webinar funnel there’s a self-liquidating offer before somebody even gets to the webinar.

There’s a product to purchase even before someone gets to the webinar - that way, an average of 10%  - 15% purchase the product, then it liquidates most of the ad cost. So everyone who comes and buys during the main product during webinar is actually pure profit. Does that make sense?

That's how it works in a funnel, and the same principle can apply your business and the way you run it. This is the principle that I’ve been  applying to my business.

I told you guys about the story at this last Funnel Hacking Live, someone was like, “oh man, maybe I can get a discount on the 2 Comma Club X Program. Maybe I can split it with a few other people!” and I was like, “No, wrong question!’  Questions invite revelation...  So you need to change the question.

Instead of asking “How do I get a discount?” ask the question: “How can I afford the most expensive things in life?”

Solve that problem, not the question: “How can I get a discount?” You'll solve either question... but most people don't ask questions with intent.

So what I said to him was: “Look, go figure out how to pay for the most impressive, most expensive things in life, and at the end of it, you'll be left with the thing that you wanted that's very expensive, and you'll be left with a paying asset.”

If  you just go out and say: “Oh man, I guess maybe we'll have to get someone cheaper” or “I guess we have to take this cheaper option over here.” What ends up happening is you get a much cheaper experience and there's no asset!

Usually you end up paying out of pocket. Does that make sense?

So start thinking about how to liquidate costs... this is something most entrepreneurs end up getting pretty good at as they go down the road.

I would watch Russell, and it's  an active theme. He goes and figures out what he wants to do and then figures out what he can create to pay for it.

And so I started applying this strategy too.

About two years ago I launched a funnel explicitly to do this. What eventually started happening was I started making more money off that funnel than I was getting paid at my job.

In essence, I replaced my income with this funnel that was running on the side while I was working at Clickfunnels. Isn't that interesting? I'm always looking for some kind of asset to do that.

When I finally left ClickFunnels, I didn't take a paycheck from my business for almost three months. We were living on savings through March. It wasn't until April that I got paid. It was fine - we had cash, it was just I wanted to make sure the funnel was awesome. I wanted to make sure the business had enough cash flow. So I was like, well, “How do I remove the cost of me?”

I launched my funnel, I got it off the ground. Things are doin' awesome. It did a lot of money.

Grant Cardone says “Cash is King.” But in reality CASH FLOW is king. Cash flow is king. Cash is NOT king, Cash Flow is King.

If you think through your business and you think about how much do you pay yourself right now?  Or do you have a business you're actually paying yourself from? I make it a consistent amount so I can count on it. And then I ask the question, “How can I replace that cost?”

I pay myself eight grand a month before taxes, before costs - and I have people that work for me, I have a team, then I need to liquidate those costs.

At the beginning I asked: “How do I remove eight grand a month?” Boom, I'm gonna start a coaching program. I went and launched the coaching program and that removed the cost of me taking money from my main product. Does that make sense?

All I want  is for my main product to scream it to a million bucks. Structurally, the way that I'm doing this is that instead of me getting paid out of the profits from my main product, I take money from this entirely separate thing over here - from coaching or something else.

Then the product can just roll on itself. We can spend a crap ton of money on ads and get a lot of people in there fast. Is this making sense so far? This is how I've structured it from a money standpoint. From a cash flow standpoint I can pay for expensive things like my content team this way.

In the last episode I talked about my content team which is 26 grand a month in hard costs before I even think about ad spend. “26 grand, oh my gosh,”  right?  

Back in the day, I made 18 grand during my first year of marriage... only $18,000.  And it was loans - so I wasn't even making it! We were living on students loans, guys.  

So I’ve gone from $18,000 my first year of marriage to 26 grand a month on hard costs that are not direct cash flowing things! It blows me up... that's a lot of money!  $26,000 a month on the team as an ongoing cost.

So I was like: “Okay, okay, how do I remove that cost from my main product?” My main product could pay that cost... but I don't want it to. So what I did is I upped my coaching. I increased my coaching availability. I increased my consulting.

A lot of people have reached out lately and asked: “Will you fly out for a day? Just come in and work through our offers with us, work through our funnels with us. We're not asking you to build 'em. We just want you to come double-check, look over the top of it...  How much is that?”

I'm like, “Sweet, well, 10 grand a day... Fly me out and we'll do that... I'll dive deeply through your stuff with you. I'll teach you. I'll show you what to do and how to put it together. I’ll critique and tweak, or build it straight from the ground up and design your marketing with you.”

So that's what I've been doing. I’ve been going through and figuring out different opportunities to remove the cost of the team, my salary, the hard costs that I have. I want to completely remove them and liquidate them from my main product.

With my main product, we've kept the ads tiny because I've been testing stuff.  As of yesterday... I'm actually really excited, it’s the first full day that our self-liquidating offer was up on the webinar. It's doin' well.

It has an 8% purchase rate right now, which is okay... I'll keep tweakin' it and making it better and better. But it's a good starting place, right? It tells me at least that there's need for it. That it’s actually working…

I'm liquidating my ad costs, so now everything in that webinar purchasing process is pure profit.

The whole principle of this entire episode, what I'm trying to say (and I know I've said a lot of things, and hopefully you've followed it), is that you need to find a way to liquidate ‘your costs’ from your main product so that you can keep enough cash flow to scale your product fast.

I was talkin' to somebody and they're like, “I'm gonna go get off the ground here, I'm just gonna quit my job immediately.” And I was like, “Duh, don't do that.”

I had active cash flowing funnels... I had active cash coming in from another source before I ever did that. We had savings and security - you know what I mean? The waters were well tested.

I'm a risk taker, but I'm a calculated risk taker. It took a lot of time to actually put that stuff together and get things rockin' off the ground.

I’ve got an SLO in my funnel. It’s liquidating the ad costs. Awesome! If it's not always break even at least it's always like nothin' now. So when it's all said and done, the cost is really, really tiny to acquire a paying customer.

Then the business side, I'm like, “Sweet, how do I remove myself from the books of that product specifically?” I don't wanna get paid from the profits of that product. So I remove myself from the books with coaching consulting and speaking.

I'm speaking in loads of different places recently. It's been a ton of fun and I’m liquidating all the costs of the business which means I can get a sweet content team together and publish way more.

I’ve liquidated the cost of my content team, my salary, the people workin' for me without taking any money out of my business.

Don’t ask, “Uh, how do I get a discount on stuff?” It's a bad question! You'll answer it… You just don't want to answer that question. It's the wrong question.

So the next thing I want is a super ninja support team.  If you guys didn't listen to my deep dive on webinars... it's in two parts…  it's a few episodes ago. It's probably 10 episodes ago... It's worth listening to.

One of the things that I've been seeing other guys do on webinars is have live support. So now I want to toss in support on my automated webinars too...  This represents a new cost coming in.

Watch how I'm gonna handle it. We already have awesome support, but I want 24/7 support. I want three people in eight hour shifts. Sheesh. A good support person, you can typically get good ones, maybe I won't say numbers, but it's not gonna be cheap. So how do I replace that cost?

So I thought, okay, what if I do this? If my webinar is what the main revenue generator is right now, it's like the big product that I'm pushin' out the door… how do I make it so that it further replaces the support person cost?

I wanna beef up support and I wanna get a full-time assistant. Those are the two positions that I'm looking at right now. So how do I remove that cost and not bankrupt the company, which we're not close to at all, but like, right? How do I make it so that I don't have a negative month?

I don't wanna have my first negative month - I wanna keep goin' up. How do I do that? So this is what I'm thinkin'... Follow me on this…

On the broadcast page for my webinars, the replay pages, right underneath, I have a cool chat box, but now I wanna have live support on the page while they’re watching.

If someone's has a question, who's gonna fulfill those support tickets? Support. Who's gonna fulfill that live chat when they're on the webinar? Support.

A lot of people just have a last question or two before they actually purchase something from you. If they don't get it answered they won't buy it. It's that important to them, even if, in hindsight, it's a really small question…

This is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna add in a live chat box element - so  that when they click it opens up Facebook Messenger right there. Then they can chat with one of my three support people tight there on their profile.

If a support person closes that person, number one, it brings in more cash... Number two, I'll give that support person some affiliate commission. That way they’re motivated to close people when they do write in. Isn't this interesting?

If support answer a few extra questions and bring in the cash, it will probably liquidate the cost of my support team. Will it actually make extra cash? Probably not, but it will probably remove the cost of the support person. Does that make sense?

Anyways, that's what I'm doin'. Maybe this is a little bit too crazy for me to go into on a actual podcast episode... but that's what I've been doin' lately, which is kinda interesting.

What if the question is not: “How do I do this?”... but: “Who knows how to do this?” Go listen to that podcast episode from Russell if you haven't…

Maybe the question is not, for example:“How do I build a funnel?” … but “Who knows how to build a funnel?”

If you don't know how to build funnels, you could go learn... or you could find someone who already knows how to do it. Go find the right “who” with the know how and your speed increases. And that's I've been focusing on lately.

Going from six to seven figures is not a matter of more hours in the day spent in the office, it is a matter of leverage. And so that's what I've been figuring out.

I've been getting this team, and I've been putting people together. I'm getting these support people, and it's been awesome, you guys. All of its been awesome. I've been able to liquidate the cost of my team through the coaching and other stuff.

Next episode, stay tuned, I wanna show you the other way that I'm gonna replace them again with more revenue. I'm very, very excited to go through and share that thing with you.

Anyways, I'm excited. Hopefully this episode made sense to you? It's just a recap. I know I kind of went deep with all this stuff…

Just the same as I would create an SLO or some kind of self-liquidating offer that pays for ads in a funnel… I’m doing the exact same thing in my business now.

I've removed “me” completely from the cost of my main funnel profits. I've removed my team completely from my main funnel profits. The more people I put in, instead of figuring out: “Can the business handle it?” (The answer's yes, but I don't wanna ever go negative on my revenue or my cash flow)... Instead, I ask: “How can I remove that cost from my business?”

I'm getting a few more support people and I'm just plugging them into the closing process. So I'm getting support people, a little bit more aggressive support people... People who know how to close a little bit.

Support people who know just even the smallest amount of closing techniques, so they can come in and answer and close people. People who can answer support questions and support tickets when they come in, but who can answer any kind of closing questions too.

That's kinda the thing I wanna go build team-wise. I wanna to put that together. I'm really, really pumped about it. I hope it makes sense.

What's funny is that when you start asking and answering these sort of  question, your speed's gonna increase like crazy.

I've never met anyone who made a ton of money just on their own. It always takes a team. Everyone benefits as the entrepreneur and the business move together.

So just start answering these questions: “How do I attract the right ‘who’?” - “How do I liquidate the cost of the right ‘who’?”

Russell was a  room with a lot of brilliant people... I think it was at the Genius Network, but I'm not sure. Anyway, someone said:

“Don't figure out how do I do this, how do I do that.. That route takes you forever... Yes, you'll become a renaissance man - which means you're really gettin' good at nothing.”

Instead of asking, “How do I do this?, ask, Who knows how to do this?”

I was on a coaching call, I'll end it with this…

I was on a coaching call with another amazing mentor of mine and he was telling me, the one question that I should start learning how to answer is: “How do I hire people that I can't afford?” And if I can answer that question, everything blows up.

He asked me to start thinking about that probably about six weeks, eight weeks ago, and I've been answering that question. It's the reason why my team and my business is accelerating is because I have learned how to hire people and bring people in that I can't afford.

How do I do it? I do it by creating a liquidating asset that covers that cost.

I still have one funnel. I still have one thing that I'm doing, that's it. My focus is there, is absolute. However, on the cost of the actual business itself, to start really leveraging the speed of the team, I need to go create something else that pulls in and liquidates the cost of that person.

That's the question I wanna pose to you: “How can you hire people that you can't afford?” And when you start doing that, oh my gosh, it's crazy. There's so much expertise that will get brought into your company and your business, it's ridiculous.

I don't even know all the stuff that my team do for me - it’s insane. It's really cool. Problems get solved that I didn't even know existed. And they get solved in an expert way rather than a just good enough way.

All right guys, hopefully this was helpful to you, and I will see you on the next episode.

Please get a chance to rate and subscribe and review this podcast. And please share it.

I would love to be able to share my message with people who are kinda just starting out and haven't quite made it yet. Or people who have made cash, and they're trying to figure out how to scale. That's where my expertise is - in offer creation and the storytelling.

Anyways guys, thanks so much. Have a good one, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.

Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Got a question you want answered live on the show? Head over to salesfunnelradio.com and ask your question now.