BOOM! What's going on, everyone? It is Steve Larsen. Today, I'm gonna talk about how I actually set up Affiliate Outrage - I'm actually super excited it's launched.

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, so today, I just wanna share with you guys why I got started on Affiliate Outrage.

Some of you guys might know, I actually started this in college - not the program - but the first money I ever made online was affiliate money.

I had a ton of fun with it, but it was out of desperation.

I had been trying so many things. I was like, "Hey, I'm gonna go try this, I'm gonna try that," okay? Literally, it was like seventeen businesses that I tried - I was actively in them, you know what I mean? I was cutting things out, just doing that thing, whatever that business idea was for a solid three, three to six months.

So if you do the math on that, it took me a few years, right to figure this stuff out. And that's pretty normal, all right?  If you're gonna get really good at anything you're not gonna be amazing right off the bat.

So transitioning from an employee over to a business owner - an entrepreneur, creating value, a marketer - that's not an easy task. And it's not one that usually happens quickly for most people.

I wanted to make this program for many reasons:

One of them is because I have my need to give back. I wanna share with you guys the strategies that got me my first cash, okay? How I actually was able to go make money. It was through affiliate marketing, and I wanna teach you guys that kinda stuff.

But what I really want you to do is, I want you to notice what I'm doing. Watch from it from a 30 thousand foot view what I'm doing.

If you have launched something, one of the biggest questions that I get, (I've been emailing a lot about this lately, and it's been, been a lot of fun).

But one of the challenges that, (and when I hear this, guys, I cringe on the inside.) "Stephen, I've launched my thing, 'how do I get traffic to it'?"

Gah, right? Oh my gosh, that sucks! Oh man, I'm so sorry... Because there's a bunch of stuff that you should do... First of all, you should take it down, because what I wanna teach you real quick is how I've been able to launch.

The last six, seven funnels that I've built, that I've put out... every one of them has been successful.

Now, that means different things, in varying amounts, but a lot of money came in on each one of them. Lots of it. And I just wanna walk you guys through why they were successful.  It's all about this concept called The Prelaunch.

Now, I love movies, I love going to movie theaters. I don't really stop and watch movies in the evening here much. Sometimes, I like sitcoms, Seinfeld, still a big fan, definitely a big fan of The Office. Anyway, Psych, love that show, 'cause I'm a goofball, and so is he...

Anyway, so if you guys go to like a movie, I want you to imagine how successful would a movie be without a pre-launch? Hollywood, they dump a $100 million bucks into a movie.

You're going to see a movie, and let's say you don't know quite know what it is. And let's say that you get to the movie theater, and you walk on up, and the first time you have ever heard of a movie ever is on the day the movie gets released to the theaters.

What do you think the success rate of that movie is gonna be? Not that good! Not nearly as good as it could be, is if there was a lot of pressure built up beforehand.

Guys, that's what marketers do. They build up the pressure. They create events. For lack of a better term, it's a campaign.

Setting up a Facebook ad, they call it a campaign - they're destroying that term!

Campaigns are events that you orchestrate; you built pressure around product launches, certain things. You open and close access to the public, 'kay?

Now you watch what Hollywood does right? When you go in, and you're creating a product -  just as important as your product's ability to deliver on what you say it will, is your ability to think through the launch strategy.

What's the go-to-marketing strategy that you're actually gonna go say, "Hey, what's up, market? Here's my thing."

How do you go, and actually create and orchestrate all that pressure ahead of time, right?  The anticipation, "Oh my gosh, I've gotta have that. That is so crazy cool," right?

There's a study that said, the anticipation for vacation, the amount of excitement and joy in the mere anticipating of a vacation is just as exciting as the vacation itself!  Which is fascinating, right?

And so if you're gonna go on a trip, or there's something you're gonna go through... Let's say it's an event, or you're gonna come to my OfferMind, or whatever it is... if you orchestrate it correctly...

I got three kids; three amazing little girls, an incredible wife - we went to Disney in April. My family had never been there before, my wife had never been there before, and obviously, the kids hadn't.

I was very careful to make sure that I was talking about Disney a lot, well before we were ever gonna go. Well before we ever got in the car and went to the airport. Why? Because I'm building anticipation: "Oh, have you seen the maps that are over there?"

I know, and, you guys will be like, "Stephen, you need to use marketing principles on your own family?" Of course, I do - come on, right? You should too!

Marketing is just the act of shifting and affecting people's beliefs. Why on Earth would I not build anticipation for something that we're gonna do as a family? Of course, I'm gonna do that.  I'd be stupid not to.

So I was like, "Hey, check out this map. Oh, look at this. We could go eat here, we could do this. Check out these hotels. Did you know there's a monorail? We could ride the monorail... did you know we could do that? Holy crap!"

I'm talking about the cool things, and I'm future pacing. I'm not trying to manipulate. That's not what I'm talking about at all. But I am trying to lace in a whole bunch of things prior to the event happening, whether that event is an actual event - you going somewhere - or a product launch.

So what I want to do ultimately is talk to you about Affiliate Outreach, but I want you to know how I've been leasing this out. How I built up pressure ahead of time...

If you look at my very first product I launched at the beginning of this year, it was on January 4th.

January 1st, I did not even have the idea for what the offer was going to be. January 4th, I had cash in hand from the idea. Fascinating, right? A big lesson there.

There's like several plays that I run, one of the plays that I'll run has everything to do with publishing. I will publish, publish, publish - meaning off of a podcast, a blog, Facebook, whatever it is. I marry that platform, and then I just start talking about it. It's not even out yet. I might not even know what the thing is going to be. In fact, most of the time, I don't...

Most of the time, I have no idea what the thing is going to be. I have an idea - meaning like, "Okay, it's gonna probably sit in this part of the ecosystem of the market. I kinda want it to be like this over here, and let's toss in this." But I don't really know everything that's actually gonna be inside it.

What I'm doing, is I'm testing to see how people react to, to the idea, right?

#1: Did anticipation build when I said that idea? "Oh, it didn't... Huh, maybe that's a crappy idea?"

#2: I got a positive response. Awesome, maybe I should progress this idea a little bit more. Let's drop another little bit of pre-launch content.

If you've ever read the book, Launch, it's funny I'm talking about that right now... I didn't realize that's part of where I got some of this...

I first read the book, Launch, by Jeff Walker at our kitchen table when I was in college. It's freezing, and it was winter time. I was like, "That makes a lot of sense."

I literally just followed certain elements of that book, elements of like dozens of others I've read on this concept, and started doing it, and since then, I've kinda developed my own repertoire of how to get this done.

Every major product that I put out there, I always make sure there's a publishing engine behind it. What I do, is I make sure, and I know some of you guys are gonna be like, "Stephen, you talk about this it kinda a little in the past" I know I have,  but listen to this, I'm trying to point out the pattern of what I'm doing.

Funny enough, this is when a few people have been like, "Why on earth would you tell your market about the actual marketing that you're doing? Why would you tell the people that you hope to purchase?"

Well, guys, I teach marketing, so I'm trying to point it out in what I'm doing.

When you look at the product I launched at the beginning of the year, there's several things that I did to make it successful, you understand?

Hope is a terrible marketing strategy.

I do not hope for my products to be successful. I ensure that they will be. Hope is a terrible marketing strategy! Someone put that on a t-shirt! Staple that on my face - that's a good one.

Hope is a terrible marketing strategy. I don't wanna make a product, and be like, "I hope people buy it." Are you kidding me?

Or...

"Stephen I made this thing, I'm not getting any traffic, I hope we can get traffic." Like, oh, blah, ah gosh. It gives me anxiety, thinking about that.

That is like the most terrible strategy ever for getting something out the door. Don't hope your way into product sales.

It has everything to do with the prelaunch, 'kay?

So again, I'm kinda going all over the place, but just follow me for a second here…

One of my first moves is, I try to publish stories about it. I can tell that the idea of the product is insatiable enough, or interesting enough, or controversial enough, or I've thrown rocks in the red ocean enough that it's starting to create like a reaction...

I almost think of it like I'm standing in a blue ocean, and I'm hucking rocks in the middle of the red. Did that ripple really carry through the rest of the red? Or, was it boring? Huh...

That doesn't mean my product was bad - maybe the idea about the product was bad? Hm, okay, here's another one. Ready, there's another rock. Bam! All right, did that hit? Is that a ripple effect? Are people talking about it?

I'm not trying to create controversy for controversy's sake - I think that's not cool. But what I am trying to do, is I'm trying to point out the pain points in the red ocean that people have just may have gotten used to, right? That's what I'm really doing.

I'm trying to bring attention to things that people have become accustomed to dealing with in red oceans. That's one of the major keys to making a good pre-launch campaign.

So  I go in and start creating these ideas. I've got these whiteboards all over. I've got five whiteboards, one two, three four five. Yeah, I got five whiteboards in here, right? And I'll just start listing out storylines, I'll start listing out different controversial hooks, things that would take people in the red ocean, and shake 'em, right?

I'm not trying to be polite, I'm trying to create value, that's not the same thing, right?

So as a marketer, if you're like, "Well, people aren't gonna like it when I say that." You gotta like get over that, or find another profession.

One of my favorite books is, is a book called Trust Me I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday. That is a fantastic book - oh my gosh so good. Anyway, it'll help you get over the fear.

Some of the things he says in there are extreme, but you know, that's why it sells well.

#1: Publishing, and again, what I'm publishing about is this major core idea, this big idea Todd Brown talks about. It's this major core idea where, if I can drop it in there, does it cause people to get suddenly aware of the problem that was already there?

I don't need to create problems in a red ocean. There are already problems in a red ocean, that's why it's a red ocean.  I just need to bring attention to the fact that there is an issue that they've been comfortable with.

And when I know I have hit that idea, I can move forward and start lightly to design the product, and and the prelaunch campaign. Does that make sense? That is a prerequisite to everything.

I will not even create a product, I will not try to sell you anything, I will not do, unless, unless I've got this idea. And the idea is the thing that you're putting in their head, through a story.

I'm putting an idea in their head like, "Holy crap, why do, why do I put up with walking everywhere, or on a train, or in a boat? You know what, let's freakin' fly, yeah. What's up, Wright Brothers!’

If you read the book, Play Bigger,  it talks all about that. Talks about whoever can define the problem best is usually the one who owns the solution the best.

I'm trying to figure out what problem I can best define in the red ocean. When I do that, we're gonna roll forward into a pre-launch campaign.

I always create a publishing platform. I will start listing out all of the red ocean influencers who are also selling or providing something similar to what I am. I will go in, and I'll start looking to see who also is publishing, that's very key, right, who's publishing?

Because if I can listen to their podcasts, if I can read their blogs, or I can listen to their shows, and they're the major publishers in that red ocean, I now know what major beliefs are being shoved into the throats of the red ocean.

I know now exactly where their current beliefs are, 'cause story upholds belief, right?

I know what the stories are they're consuming. Therefore, I know what beliefs they are upholding, and now I know what to go change and shift to a blue ocean. Does that make sense?

I'm not trying to get too deep into this. Does that make sense? But I need to know what their current beliefs are, so I'll go in, and I'll look at the red ocean producers. What are the products? I look at the red ocean.

Guys, one of the easiest ways for you to start dominating a space, if you have not yet, get intimate, get incredibly knowledgeable on your red ocean.

A lot of guys just have no idea who the freak you're selling, and that's why your marketing doesn't work. Because it's not actually written for any person. It's not written for a market, it's not written with a single customer in mind.

Instead, you're like, "It could sell this person... this person could buy it...  this person could buy it..."That's crap! That's the fastest way to failure.

I'm not asking who COULD buy it, anybody COULD buy it - I'm looking at who SHOULD buy it. I'm looking at my dream customer. That's a very different question to answer than who COULD buy my thing.

Who do you want to buy it?

...And a lot of that has to do with getting intimate and understanding more about the red ocean itself:

#Who is in inside that red ocean?

#What are they believing?

#What are they reading?

#What are they consuming?

I design a blue ocean - it's been really fun, guys. I've been able to do that a couple times now.

I've accidentally become category king in a few places without realizing it, and then when I look back and realize, it's like, "Oh, my gosh, this is what I did."  

When I am designing a blue ocean, there is more fill in the blanks about the red ocean, rather than designing the blue ocean itself. Does that make sense?

There are more questions I have to answer to get to know the red ocean, than the blue ocean. Does that make sense?

There's far more for me to understand about where people currently are, and how they got there than where I'm taking them - that part's easy.

Most of the people skip the who are you selling?

If you're like, "Stephen, this is about Affiliate Outrage, what does this have to do with Affiliate Outrage?"

Well, what I started realizing, what I started doing was... there's a few things that I wanted inside of Affiliate Outrage. I wanted to teach more about the affiliate campaign.

If you guys saw, there's a book called 30 Days, and I was really honored,  that Russell asked if I would write a chapter in that book: "What would I do if I lost it all, and what would I do to get back on my feet in 30 days - day by day."

#Day one, what would you do?

#Day two, what'd you do?

#Day three, what'd you do?

I am absolutely murdering that campaign.  I have almost double the sales of affiliate number two. Out of everybody, I'm number one.  And you know, I'm excited, I'm gonna be pumped about it, it's cool to celebrate your wins, woo, I'm gonna celebrate that...

But I know why I'm, I'm number one.

This is a play, it's like a football play - I've practiced running it enough times now that 20 minutes before the affiliate contest started, I was like, "Alright, I'm just gonna run the play."

That's all I did, to think through what I was gonna do to make this successful, and be number one. 20 minutes, you guys, 20 minutes!

It was 11:40, and at noon the thing was launching. And all I was doing was working the framework.

This is what companies hire me to go do now, which is really fun. I fly in, work the framework with them for an entire day. It's an intense day - it's about 12 hours - it usually causes a complete restructure of their marketing, and what they deliver.

At the end of it, they're able to over deliver for the customers and over deliver to their wallet.

I don't believe in you bleeding for your thing anymore. Get paid what you're worth. If not, you gotta contact me.

(I've been talking a lot, my voice is kinda shot)

Anyway, back to Affiliate Outrage...

The point of this episode is to tell you that it's launched, it's live. You can go to Affiliate Outrage.com, and learn:

Number one, how do you create affiliate offers. Just because you didn't make the program... just because you didn't make the product, does not mean you do not need to make the marketing. Does that make sense?

That's like a huge fallacy with affiliate marketing. "Oh, somebody else made the product, so I'm able to go in and just toss out the affiliate link." Screw that, everyone does that!

You are literally doing a red ocean marketing activity with somebody else's product.

Just because it's not your thing, doesn't mean you don't need to create marketing for it, okay?

So, that's what you're gonna learn.

Lessons one and two, those are the first two days, I'm gonna teach you how to create affiliate offers. I'm super stoked about it. So if you guys go to affiliateoutrage.com, it'll take you straight into a spot where you can join.

I think it's like 26 days. Some of the lessons are a little bit longer, but most of them are short.

But what I asked myself was, "How can I make it an extra level of awesome? What if I created all the share funnels for all the things I'm building for you in the course - for free. sweet!" So that's in there.

I'm not a, not an expert in YouTube, I love YouTube, but what if I got my personal YouTube expert?  She's freakin awesome!

We just found out if you go type in Russell Brunson on YouTube, I'm video number three for that keyword in all of YouTube - she's really good.

What if I got my personal person for Facebook ads to come in and teach you guys why our Facebook ads do so well?  So I did, right.

What if I was gonna go get my personal writer, so I did.

I've got my phone right here. I'm gonna read you guys the list of the people that I'm super excited to introduce to you. If they're not on my team, then I at least just know that they're awesome. I super appreciate them and endorse them, so check this out:

#Chris Benetti - he's a great funnel designer. He's gonna come in and teach you how to make design awesome without getting distracted by it. 'Cause design is not what makes things sell, right?

#Dan Havey - he's the man.  He's a crazy good, I call him the ninja hacker.  He's gonna teach you guys more about strategies in numbers areas. Super awesome, so he hacked it all out, and you guys get the share funnel of this pre hacked.  He's a great coder - so you guys are gonna get that.

#Derek Wilson - he is the high ticket closer at ClickFunnels, literally. And he's gonna teach you guys how to make affiliate sales. A lot of you guys ask questions to me, like, "How would you do this if you were high-ticket?" Okay, no different, but here are the script that he talks about, it's really cool.

#Helen Henley -  she's fan, absolutely fantastic. In fact, if you're reading this from the blog, she's the one writing this right now. She is not just my incredible blog writer, she's also helping me create my first book which is coming out, which is all the lessons I learned sitting next to the desk of Russell. Crazy awesome! She's super cool.

#Josh Forty - Josh Forty is the man. If you don't know who Josh is, he's the absolute rock star at social media in general. Specifically, though, he's gonna come in and teach you guys more about the Facebook platform itself, and also do more on Instagram.

#Josh Ryan -   if you guys notice my Instagram, I now have 35 thousand followers, they are not bots, they are not fake people, how did we do it? He's the guy that has done that with me as well, which is crazy cool.

#Julia Taylor - she's my WordPress expert. She's the one who has completely redesigned and redone the sales funnel radio blog. If you guys go to blog.salesfunnelradio.com, we just barely launched and rolled out the new blog, it's freakin awesome, okay?

It's way better than the clunky one that was on there last time, the last one got it done, the last one, like it made it work. But anyway, blog.salesfunnelradio.com, boom, that one's in there for you.

#Kevin Anson - if you don't know who that is, he's one of my good buddies, he is the guy who films everything for funnel hacker TV. He's gonna teach you how promotion videos in the best way.

We have an amazing line up here! Anyway, I'm still going. Is that okay? Is it okay if I over deliver? Is that okay? Is it okay if these people over deliver?

Please go thank them for teaching you guys.

Each one of these guys has a day. Each one of these people has a day, and they are teaching you concepts.  I introduce them, then they're gonna teach you the inner workings of the platforms that they're experts on. All FREE - is that okay?

#Leslie Black - she is my crazy amazing accountant. She gonna actually teach you guys... Again, we are not legal advisors, *disclaimer, disclaimer* Does everybody feel disclaimed? Sweet!

She's gonna teach you guys how to set up enough legal structure to keep you protected while you're starting to make your affiliate cash.

#Marley Baird - absolutely incredible! She is my YouTube expert. Give all of these people all of your money, okay!

YouTube is one of my favorite platforms ever out of all social media. I think YouTube kind of is social media, right? But it's also a search engine, which is really cool.

Anyway, Marley is absolutely amazing. My cool video intro, for those of you guys watching my youtube, she's the one that made that. She's the one cutting all the video for everything - she's absolutely incredible.

#Nathan Sheer - he's one of my good buddies. He's a great funnel hacker. It's hard to find funnel builders who are also marketers. It's easy to find funnel builders. It's pretty easy, ish, to find marketers. It's very challenging to find a funnel building marketer, okay? There's not many out there. Nathan is one of those other people that is like that. He's got the crazy twitch in his left eye, and he's awesome!

There's a checklist he's gonna walk you guys through to make sure your funnel's ready to rock before you launch it.

Is it okay if I keep going? Cool.

#Nico Moreno - he's my chatbot expert. He's co-created some products with me, and he's helped me create some cool things with chatbots. Him as well as Josh Forty. So he's gonna teach you to use chatbots to get affiliate sales. "WHAT?"

#Semma Erzouki- is my absolutely incredible Facebook person. I call her the Facebook ads whisperer. She's the one who's been running all my Facebook ads - she's absolutely fantastic.

Each of these people, just so you know, they're not fair game to go and just promote your stuff to 'em automatically.

Just know that all of them charge a lot of money, and I'm not joking, okay. I'm talking like base fees of multi-thousand dollars just to even do like a normal consulting session with them.

The reason I'm telling you that is because I want you to go in, and at least thank them. They are grabbing a day where they're gonna teach you their skill set, and how to sell another person's product with their skill set. Regardless of platform, or regardless of whatever it is.

So I'm super excited to launch Affiliate Outrage. This has been a fun thing. This is one of the plays that I'm making - it's one of six, to take over a certain realm that I'm going for, that's kind of undisclosed yet. So for me, it's very strategic for me to teach a whole lot of people how to be affiliates.  I'm creating an affiliate army.

Affiliate Outrage is out, it's ready - you guys are ready to have it... But watch specifically what we'll be doing next, okay?

There's a lot of cool things!

We got a few more episodes coming out here - I had to do a lot of stuff in order for Affiliate Outrage to be done - which is probably why it took a little bit longer to get out than I expected... which is pretty normal for any entrepreneur. Any funnel hacker especially.

But anyways, I'm very excited for you guys to have this.

Hopefully, it's been helpful to you? And if you really want an awesome education of what marketers actually do, watch the prelaunch that I went through in order to launch this thing.

Even though it was free, I still had to sell it.

Look at how massive the sales page is for this free product. Look at it, watch it. I encourage you to consume this slowly, all right? You're not buying anything, so I was gonna say, buy slowly, but it's free.

But go through it, slowly. Watch what I'm doing. Why am I doing what I'm doing in this? Why would I introduce to you all the people in here? Why would I tell you about all the things?

If you notice, I have brought you through multiple epiphany bridge stories. I have published my face off about it. I've co-created it with a lot of people. We've done a lot of pressure ahead of time on this thing, right?

Even when I knew it wasn't quite ready yet, or going to be for a little bit, I'm like, "Hey, it's coming out soon.” I'm not telling you when, but it's coming out soon. "It's coming out soon, it's coming out soon."

If you guys go look at the group, you guys are like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. This is gonna be so cool." And I'm like, "Yes, it's working."

A lot of you have told me, this is way better than any paid one that's out there when you haven't even had it yet. Fascinating! Think about that, okay? "This is better than anyone's paid stuff." Are you sure? Because you haven't even gone through mine yet - you know what I mean?

I've assembled quite the team here to do this for you guys for free - so please go thank them. But watch what I did - it is as much of an education as the lessons themselves inside of Affiliate Outrage.

Anyways, I wanna thank you so much. I appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate you guys' support in this.

I am actively trying to help people not just make money, but call themselves on their own BS for not doing things that they know they should be, okay?

I'm trying to do it in a way where I never wanna yell at a person. I'm not yelling at an individual, but I will yell at your behavior, right? I will yell at my behavior. I will yell at my habits, right? I have false beliefs about my ability to go achieve things - just like a customer has false beliefs to go buy my product.

The better that I can get at calling my own false beliefs out, as I would for a customer, and shifting the stories in my head -  the faster I can approach the goals I'm actually looking for.

And so you're gonna see, inside of Affiliate Outrage, a combination... this is why I took awhile for me to get it out there...

It's not just like money money money money money money -that's a huge part of it - but... I hate the term mindset training, but that's part of what it is.

I've found that people suffer more, and do not take action more, because of mindset. It's not because they don't know what strategies to go for, it's because their brains can't handle actually go achieving and conquering the thing I'm telling 'em to do.

There's just as much  "Hey, this is the strategy, this is why it works, and here's a whole bunch of case studies."  There's a whole bunch of "Look, here's how to handle it when..." because a lot of you guys I know that follow me, you really haven't made any money on the internet yet... and I want you to call yourself out on that, and expect something different. Why have you not?

That's why I like affiliate stuff - because you have the ability to go in and practice marketing without the intense experience it is to create the product itself.

Some people get so wrapped up on the product, that they forget that this other thing, that is completely isolated called marketing exists, right? And you gotta go learn that. And that's why I love the training wheels that affiliate marketing really is.

So I encourage you, if you're like, "Oh, I don't know, I already have a product," or whatever, that's totally fine. Okay, but the strategies alone that you're gonna hear the team, all these people who are incredible that came in. It's like 16 people, okay. They came in, they're dropping out all this incredible stuff, you've gotta learn more strategies of marketing, not product creation.

Marketing is what pays you, not the product. The product just delivers the value that the sales message promised. Does that make sense?

The product just delivers the value that the sales message promised. It's the sales message that does the selling, right? It's the marketing that changes the mind, it's the marketing that sets up a new style of belief in the person's head. This is getting deep.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make this like this crazy thing, but I want you to know why Affiliate Outrage, for me, has been such an awesome, kind of near and dear project to my heart, and why I've spent so much time on it.

And what it really can do for an individual, if they let themselves do it.

Guys, so thank you so much, I hope you enjoy this, I hope you guys enjoy why I've done this. Hopefully, I've been able to explain a little bit more about why I am doing what I am.

Use affiliate marketing as training wheels to learn what marketing actually is.

It is not the act of setting up a freakin' ad. That can be part of it, but it's not marketing itself. I want you to learn how to do that, and I want you to use this program to do that.

If you so choose to promote my products, we give out fat commissions for doing so.

Guys, thank you so much. I hope you guys enjoy this. You guys can go to affiliateoutrage.com and go and get started on the free program. Thank you, guys, very much, and I'll see you guys in the program. Bye.

Woohoo! Hey, thanks for listening.

Hey, many 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 at affiliateoutrage.com.

Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel radio, and today I'm going to talk to you about how I found my VA's.

What's up, guys? Some people have asked, "Hey what's a VA?"  I'm talking about virtual assistance, I'm talking about how I found my team.

Now what's funny is, I remember sitting at a few events and I would watch these guys who had made 2 Commas through their sales funnels. And there was this interesting correlation that I saw as would watch these guys.

Someone would get up,  and they'd take the picture with the award "Yay!" (mine's over there.) And they'd take the 2 Comma Club picture and they'd be like, "Check it out! This is so cool!" And the next person would get up and they'd do it again. "Woo, what's up!" They'd take the picture; "I finally did it, yeah!" Which is really, really cool.

But I started noticing this very interesting thing about all of them - I can't help it, I'm kind of a pattern junkie.

I started looking and I was like, "What do each one of these people have? Like why is it that that guy can do that?" Right. "Why is it that that guy can do that?"

And I'm not trying to be like weird or whatever, but there's a lot of them that stand up and be like, "I think I can build a funnel better than that guy can in his own category, but he made a million bucks." Right. "Why didn't I?" You know what I mean. It's important to ask those questions.

And one of the things - amidst many of the things - one of the things I started realizing was that all these people had, (that I did not at the time), was a certain mentality. I was lacking in this area.

Growing up, I'll just tell you guys, this isn't to get all sad and sobby or whatever, but I didn't know what I was good at. And growing up, a lot of times entrepreneurs don't. They don't know what they're good at for a little while.

I always tease a few, but it's kind of like the X-men. Like you're still trying to figure out your powers. And I hate the mystic crap that people try to lace around entrepreneurship. It's not mystical, okay, it's business. It's giving value and getting paid for it.

Entrepreneurship is not mystic, you're not like a godsend to humanity to go bless, anyway. You know what I mean? You know the mentality I'm talking about? You see around a lot of times. That irks me a little bit, okay?

But anyway, right, I was young and I was like, "What am I good at? What am I good at?" And as I started getting a little bit older into my teens I started realizing that I had an ability to focus hard and go sell stuff.

I had a very intense fascination with the act of selling. And I started learning more, and there's a lot of self-discovery involved with entrepreneurship, I decided like, "Oh my gosh." I started learning how to learn and I got addicted to it.

I started saying things like, "Well I'm gonna learn that, and I'm gonna learn that, and I'm gonna learn that, I'm gonna learn that. And I'm gonna try and be the best at this, and the best at this, and the best at this, and the best at ..." And I like, "I'm gonna learn it all baby! Bring it on!"

And funnily enough, that's like the exact opposite of what each one of these entrepreneurs onstage were doing. And I was like, "Well what are they doing then? Like how does this actually work?"

And I remember I was sitting next to some extremely successful people and one guy he leaned back and he goes, "Yeah. I have no idea how to drive Facebook ads."

And I was like, "Are you serious?"  I didn't know either, but it shocked me that the guy didn't know because that's where I saw most of his stuff. I was like, "Yeah," he's like, "Yeah I just outsource it." I was like, "Huh. That makes sense. You really have never done one ever though? wow. Hmm."

Even I have massively failed at least getting one out the door. And I was like, "What's the issue? Huh."

And then the next guy was like, "Yeah, I didn't write my own book. I want to make sure I actually write my book, I'm writing it right now. But he's like, "Yeah I went through and I just dictate it over the phone or whatever and somebody writes it while I'm speaking."

And I start that way when I'm doing it, a lot of guys do. And then I like to go back again and rewrite again. I'm too much of, I do like the art of writing a little.

But anyway, so one thing that started fascinating me though is the incredible obsession each one of these guys had at having a team. That was it. The thing that they all had that I didn't.

I was focusing on being a Renaissance man. Being a Renaissance man has never made anybody a ton of money, okay? To a certain point, it's great to know how to do a little bit of everything, to a certain point, to a certain degree. Especially when you're brand new and you gotta wear a lot of hats, okay.

But there comes a point when you've gotta stop doing that right. And so the thing that all these guys had that I didn't was a team ...

And when I suddenly realized that, that's when I actually started getting into things like affiliate marketing. I started getting cash in and hiring out tasks that I could have done but should not be doing. Does that make sense?

So this episode's a little bit different - I took one of the lessons - well parts of it - from Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. This is towards the end of the program.

I wanted to go through and share with you guys my strategies for finding good people for the team - because I've wasted a lot of money on bad talent. There was no talent.

So anyway we're gonna cut over here, I hope you enjoy it.

There are several strategies that I walkthrough for how to find good people, and how to vet them out. Is this an actual employee that you're bringing in? I'll show you how to do that kind of stuff.

Specifically, I want to share with you guys how I found VAs. So these are people that you're not going to hire, but you need to have specific talents for things that you need to be done.

So anyways, I'm excited about this. Let's go cut over there. This might be a little bit of a longer episode, but I think that's okay.

Pay close attention to this. This could save you literally time and money with the wrong person.

So anyways I hope you guys enjoy this, thanks so much, let's cut over now.

What's up, guys? I thought it would be cool if we go through and do a lesson today on how to find good people for your team.

A team is something I like to ... it's so funny...

I know there's a lot of people who go back and forth on this like, "You're so stupid for doing it by yourself. Okay, well, if I don't have cash flow I'm not gonna go into debt to get a team, right?

So that's why I started doing affiliate marketing, and then when I had a little bit of cash from the affiliate sales, I would go and get good people.

But then this is super choice cash, I mean it's really protected special cash, so I don't wanna go just blow that.

So how do I find good people? I totally get that, right? Some of you guys might be feeling that like how do I get good people then?

In college, I wasted a lot of my own money on bad VA's - like just tons of 'em - just 'cause I wasn't a coder. Sometimes I needed a website, or I need this, or I need that ...

There was this one time I spent $500 on this guy who said that he could put together a very simple thing. It was garbage. I mean holy crap it was so bad. I wasted money. I wasted money on bad writers, bad image people, bad...

The issue was this. In pretty much every single platform,  you can find a good virtual assistant... Places like upwork.com or freelance.com or Fiverr. Don't try to hire talent on Fiverr.

I like Fiverr for really tiny stuff. Why? Because it's five bucks! Like how good a talent can you get for five bucks?

It was the way that I was  finding people that was not good.

So two things here:

I just wanna share you guys real quick how I find people. It's actually very, well, pretty much the same strategy.

When I need somebody for a specific job that has to do with a creative thing, you know what I mean? Like "Hey, what's up, creative person? I need you to go make this image, or make this video intro, or outro, or make this, this jingle or voice over..." Stuff like that. I will go in, and I will just try and get a someone real fast, pay $50, $100, $200, $300 to go and do this thing.

When it's somebody that I'm wanting to bring onto my team, (whether or not they're a 1099 or they're actually W2) - the process for it is actually very similar. But one's just more intense than the other.

So to get a creative, okay? If you're like "Hey, I'm building this funnel, I wanna find somebody for this, this and this."  Freelancer is the best. Freelancer.com is amazing. If you guys go over to bestmarketingresources.com and scroll down, you'll see my video on how to get good people.

This is a big topic, right? So you'll see my video on how to get good people, and then what I wanna show you...

If you use the link to get a freelancer account, I think they give you $15 credit or something like that.

It's my affiliate link of course, but anyways, you get a little goodie for that.

There's a really good book called... I remember the sub-headline... It's called A Whole New Mind. It's called Why right-brained thinkers will rule the future... or rule the world." It's something like that. It's a fantastic book.

If you think about where we are right now and you're like, "Stephen, what does this have to do with getting a team?" It has a lot to do with it.

Are you farming right now? Unless it's by choice, probably not.  Are you going to a Well every day to get your water? I doubt it, right?

There are so many things in life that are already taken care of for us.

In the past, fortunes were made by supplying the basics of life. Fortunes were made that way, right? Let's get power to you. Let's get internet to you. Let's get water, food, let's get shelter, let's get ...

You're not building your own house most likely, right? There are systems created around the basics of life.

It makes the argument that because of that those are very left-brained ideas. What's logical, "Why I should go and make a system to bring water to my house?" That's a logical thing.

And so it says, because so many of the logical things have been taken care of now, the future is ruled by those who can be right-brained thinkers - those who are the creatives. Those who can sit down and say, "Hey, you know what? I've got this idea."  That's why right-brained thinkers rule the future.

I know that's one of the reasons why I do so well with my stuff is because I try to be creative, right? I wouldn't say I necessarily was at the beginning of my life, but that too can be a learned trait.

In the book, it goes on to say, "You've gotta figure out to be creative." So the problem is that you wanna make sure that you get someone on your team who is creative, right? Who's actually good at what they do, right? I still believe in capitalism baby, woo. I want the best of the best in every area of life.

So how do you find a good virtual assistant? How do you find a good freelancer to come and do this task or that task for you?

Following the capitalist rule... I stopped just going and trying to find somebody who was awesome. Instead, I created contests. This is literally how and why I was able to do what I do. Because while I was working a job, I had these rock stars getting these things done for me - which was paid for by affiliate cash.

So that's why I'm trying to help you guys understand this thing. So one of the things I did though with this is I went, and I grabbed ... funny enough Upwork doesn't even do the same work. They may have added it in the past little bit but, anyway ... freelancer.com is my favorite because they are the only one that allows me to actually create a contest...Freelancer facilitates the contest.

So what I like to do, and I'm like "Man, I need somebody to create images for me." I still do this, guys. I've got a bank of people that I'll go back to because of this process. This is the process. I had somebody complain to me once, "But that sounds like it's gonna take a few days." I'm like, "You're not gonna spend a few days finding somebody who's really good. What's wrong with you? C'mon, right?"

So this is what I do. It's all automated, but freelancer is the only platform I know of that automates and facilitates this contest process.

So what I do is  I try to make sure to overpay a little bit in these contests. So these contests run like this: I don't have to pay you unless you are the contest winner.

So here's what I do. I say, "Hey, what's up everyone?" ...Let's say it's an image and I just need a simple cropping done and put on the background of something else.

Something really, really easy and photoshopped. Something I could probably take my own time to go do, but I'm not an expert at it so why would I do it? So I don't.

So instead, in Freelancer I can put a contest up that says, "Hey, I need this image." I usually do a little screen record. "I need this image placed on this background, with this stuff cut out. It's a contest, and if you win the contest, I'll give you $100." $100? What? That's part of the strategy. You understand?

I make sure to overpay a little bit for it. Why? Because it attracts a butt load of people to me, right? Lots of the freelancer people they start jumping on and jumping on and jumping on and jumping on. They start submitting this image.

I make the contest a week long, and then what I do after that is I make sure that in the contest, I've got my critiques set to public - so that everybody else can see all the other submissions, and everybody can see my critiques.

For the first five days is I am pretty harsh in my critiques. I'm not saying I'm rude, but I'm not mincing words:

"I hate this. I hate that. I love this. Change that. I hate this. This is terrible. No, nothing like this at all. Why did you do this?"

Frankly, I'm very forward about it, and I don't wanna say rude. I'm not rude about it, but I'm forward because I know hundreds of other freelancers are watching my comments. They're watching my critiques.

And what's funny is 'cause it always happens away. I always do it for a week. I  do a week long, and I'm publicly critiquing just once a day, hard, heavy. Public critique, public critique, public critique. I'm like, "Holy crap, this is terrible," or like, "No, whoa, not this at all. Are you kidding?"  I'm super forward, and I'm giving feedback back on the critique.

Well, everybody can see that in the contest. Everyone sees it. Everyone gets notified of it.  The funny part is that on the last two days, the real talent will swoop in. The real talent swoops in, they see the comments, they see my critiques, and then they'll make just this incredible stuff, and I'm like, "Where have you been? I've been trying to find you in all of Freelancer and all of the freelancing world, the entire VA world. Where have you been?"

During the last two days, I'm even more interactive, and I will farm out the top 10 people and keep interacting, keep interacting. "Yes, I hate this. No, I don't like that." Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Back and forth, back and forth, and then it's always within the last 12 hours just the most incredible work comes through, and I only have to pay the top one.

I did this once on a t-shirt and I had ... was it a t-shirt or an image? I can't remember. There was over 200 submissions. 200! It was cool 'cause the last little bit right, the last few hours, the real talent came in, the true designers. Just really gifted people, I could tell. They came in and I only had to pay the top person, but now the next time I needed a t-shirt done, I just went to those top three. I can go back to them afterward and just go straight to them, rather than a contest.

Does that make sense?

I literally filtered out hundreds of people that weren't good. I've done that whenever I need an image. I don't have to keep doing it because I found who they are, right?

That's literally how I created the graphic for Sales Funnel Radio - with me pointing at my shirt. It's through a contest. That's how I came up with that. The t-shirt that I have for "Hey, Steve." That was a contest.

A game, an actual coder. I found ... that actually was a "Help with freelancer" themselves. It's like an extra $10, and they helped me find out a good person. I love freelancer for that reason.

So number one, the biggest way to create and grow a team is you gotta understand, I use contests. I use 'em heavily. Not just when I need a freelancer position. I actually use it when I am hiring out for team members as well.

So when I found my incredible Facebook traffic driver, and you guys know that story if you're this far in the training. You guys know that story of me hiring Sema. You guys have learned it from Sema. It was literally a contest, and she won.

Then after that, I was like, "Holy crap, you're Dan Henry's traffic guy, too." That's crazy. She's very, very talented, but I found her because of contests.

I don't give a crap about resumes. It's what peaks my interest initially, but who I actually decide to have a long-term relationship with, it's based on contests. Who makes it rain? Who can make it happen? I want those kinds of people, and so I make sure I get people who can do that.

I use contests regardless of whether it's on the freelancer platform or not. Usually, I try and use though because there's great talent on there. You just gotta find 'em. Then in the future, you don't have to do it again.

A few caveats with this whole thing:

In college, I was taught to hire for the sake of building a business before creating revenue. That's backward. That's dumb. Don't do that. In my honest opinion, that is some seriously terrible advice. College taught me some great things. That was not one of them.

If you guys have ever watched my podcast, I've talked about the beginning of this year what really happened to me. There was like $200 grand almost that came in, just bam, real fast, but my business structure wasn't there to support the revenue coming in.

I had never considered that a funnel was not a business until like two or three years ago. I was like, "Yeah, well I built the funnel, so therefore I got the revenue," that's it. Like, "No, no, no, you still need a business to support the revenue." Support, itself. Fulfillment. Maybe you gotta get out there and actually do shipping stuff.

Maybe it's high ticket - like you're gonna fly out to them. What are the processes? If I handle every single customer complaint different. If I handle every single Dream 100 package totally different... I'm not saying you shouldn't customize.

If I handle every single purchase differently. If I handle every single aspect of every single thing I do, every time different. I don't have a business. I am the business. Does that make sense?

So I can have a funnel, but if there are no systems, there's no business. And so that's exactly what I'm trying to say here.

So I don't care about this whole like go build a team thing. Don't do it until you have freaking revenue. Otherwise, you're gonna go into debt. That's why they teach "Go get a loan, go get business loans. Go build a proposal to get a loan." Why? What does that money do? That was asked: "What are you gonna do with this money?"

The scary thing is when you find out that money that you've taken on is to build a business structure only. That's freaking scary because it means that you literally have no proof of concept. There's no proof of concept. There's nothing.

So what I'm trying to say is you guys gotta understand, don't go build teams for the sake of people saying you need one. Hire when it hurts. That's my whole thing. I hire when it hurts. Which means I gotta run hard. I'm totally fine putting a little sweat equity - which I'm totally known for doing. I'm cool with that.

I'm not telling you not to get help. I'm not telling you that you should be the one to do all the aspects inside of your company - but until you get revenue, man, I would not go out and hire people. I mean, for real, don't go hire people.

When it comes to team things though as far as like or creatives, I'm not gonna go take the time to learn some aspects of Photoshop that I know some other guy could just ... I could pay him $50 for and just have him do it, right? You see what I'm saying? Right.

You know Russell does all his doodle drawings? I went, and I found this awesome doodle drawing guy on freelancer to do some very similar things for a workbook I was putting out. It was a huge process to find him, but when I found him... I go back to him all the time now. He's awesome. He's super cool, and he does all my doodles for me now.

Anyways, I want you to know when it comes to creatives or when it comes to anything,  just 'cause I can do something...

There are several schools of thought with this. Yes, the business should not all be you eventually. It's fine if it is for a while -  in my opinion. If you're just standing up, you're just barely getting revenue coming in - I don't know why you'd ever go hire somebody? All your revenue should be back into putting into getting more sales, right? So eventually don't be the business. Don't be the business. Don't be the only one running the business. Get a team, get a system running. Totally, 100% love it.

In contrast to that,  I believe that you should hire when it hurts. That's something that Russell always told me when I was there with him. He said, "Hire when it hurts, hire when it hurts, hire when it hurts." Meaning if you can handle it, keep doing it.

A lot of companies died because they hire too quickly. Seriously, that's one of the major reasons why companies die quick is because they hire too fast.

To caveat that again with a third point,  just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should be doing it.

As I said, I'm not gonna go learn crazy things in Photoshop just to pull off this one image.  I'm just gonna go hire a dude. You know what I mean?

What I'm trying to help you guys understand, is that the trick is seeing what task needs to get done and asking yourself, "Is this a task that I can do?" Or "Is it a task I should do?" You know what I mean? You're trying to figure out what scenario to go for. "Am I just gonna pay $50 for someone to get it done for me in the next 24 hours, or should I just do it?"

Guys, entrepreneurs wear a lot of hats at the beginning, that's totally fine. It's the reason you love your company so much. It's the reason I love my company so much. It's the reason I'm very babyish of it. I have given much family time to the business instead of my family. You know what I mean? Because I'm wearing a lot of hats.

As things have grown, I've found other places,  people, and systems that take over aspects of it for me. But you gotta ask yourself....

The fourth point to think about is, "Is this a revenue-generating activity?" If it is, you should do it. If it's not, don't do it. Is the image you need to go get created, is there potential for it to bring revenue in? If the answer is yes, okay that's fine. But it doesn't mean you should do it. Maybe you could just go pay someone $50 to get it done, or run a contest and find out who that person is? You understand what I'm saying? I'm trying to teach several different schools of thought...

I run my entire process of this thing, I call  Red Dot, Green Dot.

I think entrepreneurs are really good at writing massive task lists, and that's cool. But the problem is that bogs you down, it stresses you out, and overloads you. Some things should be getting done, you never get done because they're important, but not that important. You know what I mean?

So I like to list out all the things I need to go do, and then I'll do a red dot, green dot. There are several planning systems that I use. This is the one I really a lot.

I just list out all the stuff and be like, "Oh, green dot. That's the one that makes me revenue, sweet." If it's a big green dot, I do it during the parts of the day that I know I'm most fresh. Usually, for me, that's like 7 am to 1pm.

I do the small green dots in the evening or the afternoon. They're still revenue generating - just not as big, right? A big green dot, that's like script writing, certain aspects of funnel building, or doing sales videos where I need to be fresh, I need to be awesome, I need to be hopping on. Does that make sense?

A red dot is something that needs to get done, but it's literally a cost on the business. I should never be doing those roles. An easy way to do it, and the way I did it for quite a while, was a red dot, green dot. Is it a green dot or a small green dot? What's the red dot? If it's a red dot, don't even worry about it. Most of the time, you really don't need to worry about those things. Unless it's like, set up an LLC or something that's truly foundational, but I guess technically that's revenue generating, that's why you're doing it.

So I hope that helps. I hope that helps with the whole team building thing. I just wanted to do a lesson real quick on how to actually find good virtual assistants, on how to find them and how to source things out.

I'll tell you, I just wanna finish with this real quick. I'll tell ya something that Dana Derricks told me:

He and I were chatting on Voxer one day, and he said one thing that's really helped me out is...

At the beginning you're probably the one doing support, that's fine. Especially when you're wearing a lot of hats. After a while, you don't wanna be doing that. It's not revenue generating, but you may not have the revenue to get rid of it and buy back your time. You know what I mean? So just keep going on it, that's totally fine.

....But one thing Dana told me, that I thought it was really cool, he said, "I always make sure whenever I'm about to go do a process, that I do it the hardest, most arduous way possible. Because when I do that, I make sure to document what I'm doing.  Then I literally have the system that I need to hire someone to do." He's like, "I make sure I do it the hardest way."

It's completely 180˚ of how most people react to pain or any kind of discomfort or growth. Like, "I don't wanna do the hardest way! Are you kidding me? Don't make me do it the hardest way." But he's the exact opposite, man.

He's like,  "Do the exact opposite, do something the hardest way the first time, do it a few times to document your system, document the process and now you have the system."  You'll know exactly what to hand off to somebody to buy back your time and replace you. I thought that was very, very key and really cool that he said that.

Anyways, guys, hopefully, that's helpful for ya. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about that.

So as you start to grow and start to get cash coming in. Honestly, strategically, what I would do, start thinking about what it is you really wanna go sell?

Affiliate products are incredible. A lot of people make a fortune just selling other people's products. It is a lot more fulfilling - both to your wallet, but also to you - to have your own product.

So as you're kinda beginning to stockpile cash, you're trying to figure out what you wanna go sell or whatever, it's just, it's important to think about that kinda stuff.

I've never seen a 2 Comma Club winner do it on their own - EVER! They might be the solopreneur, but they got a team. They at least got an assistant, a support guy, a high ticket seller, you know? Stuff like that. A fulfillment guy. You know what I mean? A sales guy. Does that make sense?

They're the ones still running it, but they got the team below them doing all the dirty work making sure the stuff gets done so they can keep selling. You know what I mean? I've never seen a 2 Comma Club winner EVER get it solely on their own. Where they're doing every function of the business, Yeah, right, Yeah right! That doesn't happen.

So just know as you start to get cash in...

I know a lot of you guys may not have money right now. That's totally fine, but as you start to get cash coming in, start thinking, "Where do I wanna drive the ship? Where do I wanna go? How do I wanna make this happen?"

And as you do that, hire smartly. Hire slow. Hire very slow. Be very careful of who you're bringing in. Be very careful what they do. Are you actually hiring a skill or just a heartbeat? Are you hiring a skill or just a heartbeat?

And with those few things in mind, use red dot, green dot,  so that you know you what you should be doing. Can someone else be doing it? Do you have the revenue to do it? Maybe you don't. Go sell something else then, right?

Anyway, super cool guys. And hopefully, this is a helpful lesson for you. I said that was the last thing, but this is the last thing here.

When Russell was getting Tony Robbins to speak at Funnel Hacking Live. He's not cheap, okay? I'm legally not allowed to tell you how much it was, but it was an absolute crap ton amount of money. It was a huge amount of money.

I know that Russell follows a principle called, "The question is not how do I do this? It's who already knows how to do it?" It's not what? it's who? It's not how? It's who. "Who knows how to do what I need?"

And what was interesting is instead of going like, *SHOCK* "Tony, you want that much money? What?" And freaking out about it, he said, "Okay, how can I afford that?" He could've paid out of his own pocket, but that's not the point. He's not gonna use his own cash. Instead, he asked, "How can the business pay for it?" So he added a few extra things to the event to pay for the thing he most wanted.

There was a guy who taught me once. He's the man actually. He's Don Hobbs. I was on a call with him, and he said, "Stephen, the question you need to start asking yourself as you're leaving ClickFunnels - this is a little bit after I had left. He said the thing you need to start asking yourself, "How can I hire people that I can't afford?"

When you can hire people that you can't afford it means that your vision of what you're trying to take down is big enough, but also realistic enough that it's attracting actual talent.

If you look at the list of people that I have had on this course so far for you guys, I could not pay all their fees together in a lump sum - there's no way, there's no way. I sold them on coming to do this because of the vision, and because of what I'm actually trying to get done.

When you actually go and start grabbing people in, when it's actual growth time, you need to make sure that you're hire slow, and you're hiring people that you actually cannot afford. Because when you do it that way, you're actually gonna be protecting your vision. You're gonna be hiring people who actually invested in what you're doing. What are they doing in the nighttime hours? What are they doing in the evening hours? What are they doing, right?

Man, I'm still building ClickFunnels dream even though I don't work there. I'm 100% invested in that. I know I am, right? I'm 100% invested in the products that I sell because I change people's lives. I know I am. And when I find people that are aligned like that, it's a huge deal.

So I make sure I go, and I grab... like that's why we hire slow. And you try and find people based off of talent, not how much they're gonna say like, "Oh, well, I'm this much money." Well if the vision is big enough, it's cool enough, and it not just like far-fetched, then you're gonna have a great time because you're gonna start attracting amazing talent to you that scratches your back and theirs. It might mean a partnership. It might mean that you just give them some revenue.

I hate it when somebody approaches me and says, "Hey, I got a great opportunity for ya, Stephen." You think I need another one? I got plenty. I'm trying to manage the opportunities I'm finding on my own. I don't need any more opportunities.

When someone walks up, they go, "Stephen, I got this great idea. Dude, here's the idea.  If you go build it, I'll give you like 50%!" And I'm like, "Huh. You know what's fascinating? I could just go do that on my own and keep 100% of it." Right? Ideas are nothing, guys. Ideas are not assets. "I got an idea." So? It's worth nothing. I don't even care what the idea is. Right?

That's why I was laughing at Shark Tank. They're like, "Well, I haven't actually sold anything yet." Then you have nothing. Even if you're holding the freaking product. You have nothing. Ideas are nothing. They're nothing. There's no value attached to an idea. Show me an idea that was sold for a whole bunch of money without some asset attached to it? It doesn't happen.

So when you're going out, and you start getting actual team people to start joining you, you need to make sure that what you're actually offering to somebody to come and join your thing, has everything to do with selling 'em on a vision.

Make sure that you've got assets. Are you gonna sell something? Ideas are nothing. So make sure, anyway ...

There's a podcast episode, I ranted about this a while ago.  I think it's like 100 episodes ago, but it just makes me laugh. So anyway, rant over. Rant's done.

But I just want you to know how I find VA's. How I find freelancers. How I find people to join my team. That's how I find 1099 versus W2 - it's because I'm trying to make sure that it's aligned with my vision, that they're people that will add constantly to the vision.

Guys, I worked way more than nine to five for Russell. Holy freaking crap, right? I'm totally cool with that. No contest. He spent zero time indoctrinating me into the culture of ClickFunnels. No time. I hit the ground running. No training. Tweaking? Sure. Stuff that he wanted me to change? Absolutely. But I was there to run. I produced day one.

So when it comes down to actually hiring people, there's no better way to do that than hiring from your own audience - 'cause they're sold on the vision, they know who you are.

If you're like, "Man I don't have an audience yet." That's totally fine. That's exactly my point. Then don't hire someone (like an actual W2) for a while, that's totally fine.

Hopefully, this hasn't felt like it's been all over the place! There's a lot of nuggets that I dropped.

I'm trying to help you see that when it comes to it, the sales funnel, the sales cycles are different from a business, and a business cycle. You're gonna be the one most likely doing both for a little while, and that's okay. Eventually, you shouldn't be doing both. You need to hire when it hurts. That's probably gonna be a little uncomfortable in the beginning. It is for everybody. That's okay.

Somebody told me this great quote: "It'll take longer than you think, but not as long as you fear."

So when you're jumping out you're gonna feel alone. You are alone. No one's around you. That's okay. But when you start to hire, man, it is methodical. It is not easy to work for you. It's not. It shouldn't be. You shouldn't just take anybody on. That's why I went ... that's why I still go the VA route forever -because it works.  I got my content team. None of them are W2's. They don't need to be. I still pay 'em a lot of money. But I sold them on the vision. They get crap done and problems solved I didn't even know were problems.

They're sold on the vision. They understand where I'm going. I'm trying to be a voice of clarity against a lot of gurus that are out there because I've actually done a lot of it. It's not just theory, you know what I mean?

Anyway, and when I find people who are not just willing to accept but also wanna protect and grow the same vision, it's like, "What do you want? Yes, come with me. What is it that motivates you? Okay, Tony Robbins, you want that much money? Okay,  I'm not gonna say no. Instead, let me figure out how to pay for that."

So this might feel like a little bit of rant, and maybe it is a bit, but I want you to understand when it comes down to the hiring thing, I'm very opinionated on this topic - because I wasted a lot of money for a lot of years until I made it hard to join my team -whether it was a $50 image or a big thing.

Guys, thanks so much. Hopefully, it's been helpful to ya. Again, please reach out. We got just a few more lessons that I wanna drop out to you as far as making it all work for you as an affiliate  - to make you money - and then we'll be done.

If you got value out of this, promote my stuff. This is my free stuff. You can imagine how good the paid stuff is. The products are good. I'll take care of your customers. I'll take care of any traffic you send over to me.  I really appreciate it. Guys, thanks so much and I'll talk to you later. See ya later, see ya in the next lesson. Bye.

Boom, what's up guys? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna talk to you guys a little about the book DotCom Secrets.

Now, before we cut over to intro which I love, I wanna share to you guys a little bit more about why this book is so important to me. That's what this episode is about.

I actually took the video that I filmed for bestmarketingresources.com. If you haven't checked that out yet, go do it.

Bestmarketingresources.com is the resource I created. It's the page I created to share with you guys all the things that I'm using to build my business.

There's only a few of us in my company and the reason why is because how a lot of these tools interact together back and forth with the way all the automation works.

Anyways, I wanted to share a little bit though about this book, DotCom Secrets. The reason why DotCom Secrets has been so powerful for me and the story behind it.

It is not just like I went and I just bought the book, okay? I actually wanna share with you guys the story behind it. How I read it... Where I read it... And what I did with it afterward - which I think is pretty unique. I know it's one of the reasons why I've been successful with this.

I really only read the book two times, okay? But it was such on a crazy depth that made it very very effective. So anyways, let's cut over the intro here

If you've not actually picked up this book... This book is better than my entire marketing degree. Just this one alone. Let alone, the rest of the education that ClickFunnels comes out with.

So anyways, let's cut over here and I'm excited to share with you guys the story behind my first time getting the book DotCom Secrets, thanks.

I 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.

So in college, we were really poor. We were crazy poor. I kept spinning up all these little companies trying to get them to make money. It took me about 17 tries to really get it off the ground. It's funny cuz when I look back... meaning 17 actual businesses.

And it wasn't like, I was just kinda half-heartedly doing the businesses, I was full in. It was not uncommon for me to walk streets and trying to sell people on the street. I mean, I wanted it real bad.

If you're like me, I mean you want it. You want it real bad, okay? I was the kind of mentality, still am, where I would go learn something and I wanted to make sure I understood it, but I also wanted to make sure I wanted to try to make money as fast as I could as well.

I remember once I pitched the owners of Vivint. Vivint Home Security. Not the head honchos, but very very similar, very close for that regional area.

Anyway, it was an insurance company. There's a bunch of people out there too. A lot of pest control, a lot of door to door people. A lot of... And I just pitched people guys.

I didn't know what I was doing. I was pretty much breaking every single rule that you could even imagine. But, whatever, I was just running, because we were living on loans, student loans. I was in college. I was in the army.

You know I went to basic training. We had a kid. I was married. I mean already right there I was in a very different demographic place in life than a lot of people my age.

I wanted to make cash. I wanted to be a provider for my family. And I found out that few weeks into marriage that my wife was just eating just one meal a day behind my back. She was doing that because we had such little cash, she didn't feel like she could eat.

And it's kinda like crap hits the fan. This was a true story.  It was a few weeks after we got married. And it was really hard. I was like crap, we gotta make some cash somehow. I've got to make money.

This was about six years ago, almost seven. What was interesting is she... She was sacrificing for me. The amount of love, It's pretty intense, okay? And it still kinda brings me to my knees a little bit. I've had a hard time talking about this story because if you were you know...

Men specifically get their identity a lot of times by what they do. And I wasn't doing anything, you know? I was trying to... but I wasn't making any money. So I was like, we gotta make money somehow. At least get a food on the table. It was literally a, "Hey, how can we get food on the table?" scenario.

She was still packing lunches for me because she'd already graduated from college. I was still going, I was still working to finish. So she would stay home all day in bed while she was packing me a lunch. She'd eat one meal in the evening with me and that was it.

She was super weak after days and days and days of doing this. Weeks and weeks of doing this. And when I found out, it wrecked me, guys. It destroyed me. My pride was gone, shot everything. I was like, "we gotta make money somehow".

And so I was like, "Hey, I found out that we can get student loans." The student loans that we could get (thankfully we could get them), but they weren't gonna be there for like four to six weeks.

There was a window for when it would show up. And I was like, "Four to six weeks, we're gonna be dead' in two". I was like, "We're not gonna make it. How're we gonna do this?"

And I went... and I did something that was culturally against the way I was raised. I called my dad and I asked him for money.

I had jobs, working like crazy my whole high school years. I had some cases multiple jobs. I worked a lot. I'm not a stranger to the hard work. I don't care if it's labor jobs. I'm glad I did labor jobs. I don't care if it was... anyway. I worked and I knew how to work.

So for me to call and ask for money was not an easy thing to do.  I was the oldest of six kids, I mean I'm still am. Oldest of six kids. And I called my dad.

We were not poor growing up at all. We were not like super wealthy, but we weren't poor. We weren't poor at all. We were middle class. My dad provided well, very well. So I mean, he certainly had cash and I knew that.

And I called him and said, "Hey dad, you know I found out my wife eating one meal a day. Could you float us like three grand and we'll pay you back as soon as these student loans come in?". You know, it made sense to me.

There's a long pause on the phone...

I was in this building, and I remember the sound of the AC above. It was hot and I took off my jacket. I was pacing around this classroom on campus, with the door closed. I think the light was either off or dimmed.

I was literally walking in a square around the room, fast. I was walking fast.  I was like "Whew." And the stress that started setting in was huge.  I remember I'd worked myself up to ask him this. I said, "Hey dad, would you give us some money?"

There's a long pause on the phone. I will never forget what he said. I remember how he said it and everything.

He said, I'm gonna try to do his voice. He said, "Son - ‘No,’ If I give you this money now. You will not exhaust the resources that you didn't know you had."  How cool of a dad! Seriously, that's what he said.

And it was quiet. And his answer was. "Buck up," you know? In a loving way. We cried, both of us, man tears of course. I think we're flexing while we're doing it. It was really hard, but I had this fire start in my gut that I think most entrepreneurs fail to ever learn.

I learned how to get resourceful in a way that I think most people never learn. And I started running and sprinting. I started trying stuff and trying stuff and...

Because I've always wanted to, and I love America, but also because of the money - I'll be honest, I joined the army. I went to basic training in the middle of college. I took a semester off and I went... I went to basic training and with all my training and all the things I was doing, I was gone for like six months.

A little while after I came home I went back out for another extended period of time. I have been running hard enough that I wanted to get... I started seeing...

How should I say this? I stopped JUST READING books of wealthy people. I was reading them, and I was listening to the podcast and their courses, and I was consuming like an animal.

I was learning way more, way more on my own than I ever was learning in my classes. Way more! Including all my entrepreneurship classes. All the classes where we had to go and start a business for that semester and literally nothing else to do that whole semester.

I was learning far more on my own than any student ever. To the point was I was getting in fights with professors over stuff because I knew that what they were saying was wrong on some things. That's not to say, like, "Everything's crap." That's not true.

But there were some things that I was, "That's not right." I know that's not right from experience now. We'd kinda getting little tiffs about it.

Anyway, so I was at one of this little army training things, right? It was a month long, but I was laying in the dirt for 10 days. I started watching WHAT entrepreneurs were doing. Not just what they SAY they were doing.

Coz' some of them were so good, they don't know how good they are. You know what I mean? So I was watching what they were doing.

One of the guys I came across was this guy named Russell Brunson. And you guys obviously know that I'm a fanatic of his.

I had consumed so many courses by that time, so many books. I was a fanatic, guys, fanatic. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to make money.

I wasn't like, "Hey, I wanna blow the roof off and make millions." I just wanted to like an extra grand a month.

In fact, you can go back and watch the YouTube videos of me declaring that goal. I was like, "Hey, I'm just gonna try to make an extra grand a month." And I didn't hit it, but I started making money.

The next year, next January, I was like, "I'm gonna try and do three." And I didn't hit it, but I got close.

The next January after that, I was like, "I'm gonna try and do...", I think I said "ten" and I hit it. You could watch me the progression of it, guys. A lot of that has to do with this book - DotCom Secrets.

I read this book for the first time on one of those army trainings. For ten days I was laying in the dirt, I had my M16 in my right hand.  I was lying in prone, and I would pull...

In army uniforms, there's a place for pens and pencils right here on the sleeve, which is really nice when you are like nighttime land navigation and stuff like note taking in general. It's nice to have it anyway...

So, I would lay down in the prone - that's part of the discipline of it, just sitting there. And maybe I didn't have the discipline enough for it. Coz' I would pull out this book from...

There were pockets in the uniform, and I kept this in a plastic bag. This isn't the same one. It was so loaded with dirt by the time I was done I gave it to some other soldier. I should probably follow up with him. But anyway and I had to get a new one. It was $7.95 free plus shipping. That was free, I just paid the shipping.

And even the $7.95, for me at the time, I really had to justify that. You know what I mean? I reached deep. When I was sitting there for like days and actually the first day realizing was like, I was gonna sit there for few more days before our next orders came in for our next mission, whatever. I was like, "I'm gonna read this book."

So, I would pull this book out of a plastic bag, trying to go as carefully as I could so that all the leaders and all these high ranking officers and stuff wouldn't see what I was doing.

I'd go choose these obscure places to lay in so no one would know where I am. I would just sit there with this book, and I would just hang out there. I would hang out there, and I would read. I got good at turning pages with one hand. And I read it like this. And then when I was like, "Oh, that's really freaking good! Oh my gosh!"

I would lay down my M16, mag wheel, this is the place it was. I'll go grab my pen and slowly, carefully write down the note and then slip it back inside my uniform and pick the M16 back up and just lay there and keep reading.

I was like, "This is so," kinda like to the side like this, "Wow, that's really good! Oh my gosh, this is freaking awesome. Why is no one talking about this stuff?"

In the evenings, if we ever did have a few minutes, I wouldn't be talking around. I would read. And I remember when I finished reading the book, It had rained the night before. Half my stuff was wet. I was sitting on my sleeping bag on a tarp. I finished reading the book.

I remember I closed it. I set it down just kind of on my lap but I kept my hand on it, and I just started thinking. I was like, "Dang, that's good. Man, that's good!. Holy Crap!".

I remember just like turning to the closest person next to me. I don't remember his name, I remember what he looked like. And I just started like, just like barfing on him all the stuff in here.

I remember I came back home, several weeks after that. I came back home, and I was like, "I gotta teach this to somebody. How can I solidify this in my head? How can I put it in there more? I gotta get this in, gotta get this in". So, I reread it.

I think I only read it two times, but I read it so slowly that I soaked up a ton. And what I did next really, really made it stick in my head. What I did is I went, and there was a professor of mine, a teacher of mine who was really...

She's more of like an assistant, but she was really trying to develop some assets as well in her life.

Anyhow, I started getting known for this stuff. I was starting to build funnels for people, actually successfully. It was cool! Word began to get passed around, and I started getting clients and referrals.

I was like, "This is the first time." It took 17 tries for me to make something work. Well, I was on maybe number 15 by the time I read this.

The number of tries that I needed to actually make something work got really really short because there were so much more successful from the get-go.

So I went and this lady, she's like, "Hey, would you swing over to my house I'll invite all of my family over, all of my kids and my kids, kids, and just teach us for three hours." I was like, "Cool."

I didn't know what I was doing, but I took this book. I went, and I stood in front of this group of strangers.

She's the only one of the whole room I knew, and I just taught for three straight hours to this group of random people... and that's a true story.

I never saw them again after that. I don't know what they did?

She said they were trying to figure out their value ladder. They were trying to figure it out I was like, "Alright, cool, cool, cool." And then now, I'd tell you not to worry about it as much just worry about one step on.

Anyway, but it's interesting guys coz' I went through, and I figured this out. And I started learning it, and I taught it to somebody else which made it stick on my head.

From that point on, my wallet got a lot fatter, okay?

I stopped having three to six months swings like, "This! This! This! This! This! This!This! This! This!". Instead, it was like, "THIS, just this business" and then a little bit few tweaks and then, "What? Check that out, it's working".

In fact, the business that I created off of this is the very business that I finished creating when I left Click Funnels, what? Isn't that funny.  This stuff works. This book is ridiculous, this book changed my life. This book has changed a lot of my friend's lives, a lot of my family member's lives, a lot of my student's lives, And I'm a fanatic over it!

This is one of the books that's always next to me by the shelf. I reference it like crazy.

If you haven't read this and you're an online business, I think you're a joke. It's true. If you're like, "Hey, I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna build something." I don't really care what's online or offline now. You gotta read this book, okay?

The book Expert Secrets, and a few others, they're probably... I mean there's a lot of books that are out there that I know I'll continue to read, but I also know that I could not read any other book the rest of my life and I'm still going to be more than well-off, because of what it's done. That's a bold statement.

Anyway, so go and DotCom Secrets. Do it with an open mind, and do it in a way where you're like, "Okay, whatever this guy says." Instead of saying, "Man, this isn't true" - act like, "What if it is true?" There's nothing that's far-fetched in here - and it's a very easy read.

I'm not a fast reader, I'm actually a very slow reader. Meaning, I can read quickly,  but I take so long coz' I'll read a paragraph, and I'm like, "Oh man, what about this and the connections here." I take all these notes and takes me forever to get from one page to the next. Takes me forever.

But anyway, literal scripts of how to sell stuff are in here. This is literally what I did when I launched the first funnel I made. The first one I made that was successful. It ended up doing a grand a week for over a year. That was more money that we've ever seen in our entire life. From going from, "Hey, we're eating one meal a day."  Feeling like “nothing” to even just that, right?

My goal was just a grand a month, and it went to a grand a week, and I was like, "Okay, that was not as hard as I thought it was gonna be. Where was this information a while ago?" It was life-changing for me.

Anyway, hey guys use the link down below, it's my affiliate link. If you like that story at all... I don't promote things to you that I don't stand behind. I stand behind this like crazy. This book was life changing for me.

There are several other books that are like that. This one though, you know like Rich Dad, Poor Dad from Robert Kiyosaki - that's most entrepreneurs gateway drug.

This book though was like the gateway drug to actually make money from what Rich Dad, Poor Dad was talking about.

This is like, How to actually do it.  I feel like the subheadings should be, "How to actually do what Robert Kiyosaki was talking about?"

Just coz' it says Dotcom Secrets, I don't want you to freak out. Everything that I do that's offline also comes from this book as well. You don't need to be techy for this.

Anyway, hey guys hopefully this is helpful. Use the link down below and go get your copy. It's free. If you feel inclined to get the upsells, they'll be worth more than the money he asks you for. A lot of the scripts, for the things that I create, are there.

In fact, the first time I bought this I didn't buy the upsells coz' I was like, "Those guys are trying to take my money!". All right! Coz' I don't know who he was. And when I read the book, I was like, "Holy crap!, I should give this guy my money".

Then I went back, and I funnel hacked that funnel. I've bought this book many times from that funnel just so I could dive through it.

So, I encourage you to buy slowly, right? Watch what he's doing. Not just the products he's talking about. Watch what he's doing. Watch why he's doing it. Try to understand why he's doing it. Watch, and it will show you a way to make money. Coz' it's not hard, okay?

It's like anything there's some work behind it, but it's shockingly less work than I thought it was going to be with the amount of money that comes off it.

I was like, "Huh!" I have built many of these now, and they've been very, very lucrative and fun -  and have helped more people than how I was trying to do stuff the old way.

What's better than getting impact and income?!

Anyway, guys hopefully again this was helpful to you. Use the link down below, get your copy of it.

This book is near and dear to my heart. It will be for the rest of my life. Frankly, it will be one of the books that I'll require my kids to read. They are only not even five years old yet, so...

But I almost felt like I'd just start read it to them bedtime stories or something like that coz' this is daddy doctrine right here. I will not NOT read this. I will not NOT pass this info on. I feel like that'd be selfish.

All right guys, thanks so much. Use the this link to go get your copy of DotCom Secrets, then let me know how it is. Bye.

Ahh yeah!

Hey, obviously a funnel is already dead if you can’t even get anyone to optin.

SO, I spent 4 hours teaching an audience how to get high optins - when they work and when they don’t work.

If you want access to the members area where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free member account now!

Whether your new or experienced, it’s freeoptincourse.com

Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today we're gonna talk about student stereotypes.

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, I've been excited for today. I wanna talk about a topic, you know it's...

Every evening my wife and I usually like to just sit and talk. And we'll sit and we'll talk, and talk, and talk.

Most of our dating, honestly, was talking. We would just talk for like three hours a night, every night for all of our dating and that was kind of it.

So anyways, we'll sit down and we'll just talk and we'll share with each other. We're good at that part of our relationship, which is a bunch of fun.

So anyway, we were sitting down the other day, we've got a little almost  three month old baby now, and we're playing with her and we're talking back and forth, and my wife says:

"Hey, what are, like, the biggest stereotypes you see in your students?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "What are the reasons that people do, or do not, go forward with the things that you're teaching them? Like, stereotypically though."

She's like, "Do baby boomers react differently to what you teach compared to millennials?" And I was like, "Yeah, actually they really do."

So I thought it'd be kinda cool to go through and share with you guys what I talked about with her because it was fascinating to see that.

#1: I freaking hate the millennial propaganda. Can we cut that crap out, alright?

Baby boomers, your parents complained about you too, alright?  Are we all good there? I'm just gotta get that off my chest. I hate that, I hate that: "Well you're a millennial, you can't focus." Alright, you can't use tech, so back atcha. Ya know what I mean?

Anyway, so I just wanna walk through this really quick, and just share with you guys a few of the things that I've seen stereotypically with my students.

Now, this is my own students - it's students I've had in the 2 Coma Coaching. My intent in sharing this... the only reason I want to share this is so that you can hedge yourself to not be one of these stereotypes.

So everyone raise your right hand right now, and be like, "Hey Steven, I, (state your name), will not get offended."

Don't get offended about what I wanna go through and share with you guys right now. I'm talking in massive generalities, 'kay? Cause I've seen a lot of things across the board.

And then, at the end of this episode, I want to share with you guys what I do to combat these stereotypes myself. I have my own routines. And some of my routines I didn't realize were my routines, you understand?

I didn't know, that I was literally creating my own solutions around some of these things. But I did and it's been working. And it's really awesome.

If you follow my Instagram, you already know what some of them are...

First of all, let's just set the stage here:

There has never been a time in the history of the entire world, where so much information and so many answers are prevalent and accessible with such a crossover with a lack of discipline. Mind-boggling.

There's so many answers out there. There's so many things out there that are already solved for you.  

Yet people don't know how to go and just look up stuff on their own on Google and YouTube and just learn something for 30 minutes. We're not a culture yet of self-teaching. And that's why those who can self-teach, just blow-up so much.

Number one, we've never been in a time period where so many, so much information is available, but there's such a lack in discipline personally with people.

There's lots of addiction out there now. There's lots, and that's not to say it wasn't there before but I mean, we live in a very stimulated society now. We live in a very stimulated community now, alright?

There's such a lack in discipline, daily routines. I'm not saying I'm perfect at it. But I try to have one. I try to live with intent day by day, by day.

There's such a lack in discipline, there's such a lack in just getting up and getting crap done regardless of how you feel about it. There's such a lack in people knowing that in order for me to get where I'm trying to go, there's work involved, right?

We get sold on this concept, "Oh yeah, I should get that, I deserve it." Man, that is bull crap. No one owes me anything. And I try and live like that.

I hate when people say, "Here get this product, you deserve it." It makes me wanna throw up and not buy their product, no matter how good it is.

When somebody says, "You deserve it," that's garbage. It is a lie. It's a lie of this generation. It is a lie of our communities now.

In my opinion, (which I believe is correct), no one owes you anything. You don't deserve anything.

And when I look at worlds that way, and when I look at my life that way...

The reason why I try and do that is if I think that "my customer owes me money, I deserve this success." That is freaking garbage. Try and do that. Try and leave. Try and do that and try and tell me how long you're in business. That's not true.

No one owes, nobody owes me anything. No one owes me a dime. No one owes me any kind of credit. No one owes me. I will tell you that you will relieve a lot of mental stress in your life.

And I'm stereotypically talking to the millennials right now when I say that. Cause I am one, okay? And I had to have a huge wake-up call with myself and say, "look, no one owes you anything. Nobody owes you anything. I am not deserving of anything. I need to work my tail off."  

Now I'm gonna walk around and I'm gonna try and work my face off.

It's kinda like what Will Smith says. He walked around, and he was, and he walked around like he was deserving of what this life had to offer. But he was not a ghost to knowing that he had to work for it. And I'm the exact same, guys.

Like man, I'm gonna run hard. I'm gonna run as hard as I can. I'm gonna try and do everything I can. I'm gonna try and live the best life I possibly can with the fullest, having the best of the best. Being the best of the best - and that's my mentality.

And, like, ya gotta fight to do that, right?

So nobody owes me anything, and when you think about that with like, "Hey there's so much information out there with such a lack of discipline in how to use it all.

Just follow me a little bit. I'm gonna start spinning a few ideas around and we'll bring 'em all full circle, alright?

When I look at how undisciplined as a society we really are. I'm not saying all of us, but man, if you're spending all your time watching Netflix in the evening and you don't have something up and running, like shame on you!

Work at it, right? And then complaining about it?

I'm not saying I don't take breaks. This is funny. What does Tim Ferris teach in the Four Hour Work week? Holy crap, he works four hours a week. He didn't start that way, but he ends that way, where he works four hours a week on his business. That's cool!

Now let's contrast that with what Gary Vee talks about. Hustle till your face falls off! Hustle ya die, right? And that's totally his message.

There's two conflicting messages. Right? I believe the answer is in between. Personally, that's how I run it.

I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna build that funnel and that funnel. I have massive projects on my plate right now. Absolutely gigantic. I am the sole funnel builder. And that's totally fine. I'm completely cool with that.

There's a huge, a vast, a ridiculous amount of hustle in my life right now. And I expect it, and I welcome it, and I smile at it. I'm like, "What's up, son? Bring it on! Come on get ya some, right? This is my time. You're on my turf, and I'm gonna tear you apart."

And I'm gonna hustle, hustle, hustle. But not till I die. I'm not here to just work.

I believe humans were built, especially men, were built to work, work hard, work hard at things, have resistance. That's good. That's healthy. I want that.

Again, follow me. There's a reason I'm talking about all this. We're gonna go full circle here in a second, 'kay? There's a reason why though, I know I am where I am. "I really wanted it!" Right? That was it!

And understanding, "oh my gosh, all the answers are already there." And if I have just have discipline to go find and apply them I can, I can literally just get what I want. I can create what I want. It's there.

That's why I talk about being a self-solver all the time, guys. You gotta be a self-solver. Solve your own problems, right? If your natural inclination when a new problem comes up, which is every freaking minute of entrepreneurship, a new problem pops up that wasn't here before, one that you weren't planning on, the one that wasn't in your plan or your scope how to get crap done...

You're not gonna go very far if you freak out and don't solve it 'kay? Every day is practicing going over and solving new problems.

The trick is learning to solve problems with speed. Learning to solve the problem adequately enough so that it's satiated enough, right?

Not that you gotta answer it 100%. Not that it has to be 1000% perfectionist brilliant. I went there too for a while. I'm a recovering perfectionist 100%. I had to get good at being, at being totally fine with answering and being awesome at it 80%. And then just moving on.

Go,go,go. Solve the problem. Move. Solve the problem. Move. New problem! Bam. Solve the problem. Move. New problem! Bam. Solve the problem. Move. Don't know it? Fine. Youtube. Sweet! That guy taught me. Solve the problem.Move, right? And that's how I run.

That's literally why, I know that's why I blow up. That's exactly the reason why. So if you think about that. Think about, think about, right?

So again, I'm just kinda like laying out the landscape here:

So you've got you've got millennials on this side who have vast amounts of information with the fingertip training in order to pull it off, right? You know how to text and tweet do all the things. You understand tech. You understand the platforms, 'kay?

You got millennials on that side, lots of info, stereotypically a  bit of lack in discipline. Not always, not always. I hate it when people try and categorize me, so I get it. I freaking hate that. So I get it. I'm being sensitive cause I don't wanna say anything like that cause I hate that myself.

On the other side, you got like, you got the baby boomers. Let's say, let's say 50 years old plus. Baby boomers did not have that kind of information always at their fingertips, but typically culturally, stereotypically, were really intense workers. You had to sacrifice, right? It's their generational upbringing.

1,800 people, I've brought through this process now. I see a lot of patterns, and I have people from all over the world, all different races, religions. Male, female, ages all over the place. I'm just painting the picture here, and I want you to see "this is where I am. I wanna make sure I don't fall prey to these lies." Or I'm over here, "Let me make sure I don't fall prey to these lies."

So again:

#Millennials, lots of info typically little bit less discipline.

#Baby boomers: They haven't known how to use a lot of these tools, but usually have a lot of discipline.

Also, a lot of times they operate from a scarcity standpoint, I've noticed. Meaning like a fearful standpoint. They think that businesses still require a briefcase, a suit, and a meeting to start the day. And it's not like that anymore.

I don't ever have to wear a shirt and tie except to church. You know what I mean? I don't wear shoes. In fact, when I go and  consult for people, they're like, "What other specifications do you have?" And I'm like, "First class if you want to. Uh, if you don't want to, totally cool with that to be completely honest, right now anyway."  I just don't care.

I try and listen to music as much as I possibly can and wear shoes as little as I can.

Business culture has changed. I find that there's a lot of professionalism that's unnecessary in the baby boomer expectations.

In the middle range, right? I'm 30, I'm barely a millennial. From the 30 to 50, I find that that, stereotypically, it's the category of person that takes the most action,  who know how to use the tools. Are not complainers. And are fine when the market punches them. It's kinda like the sweet spot I've noticed.

When I get somebody who's a millennial, I'm cool with that, I just also know they're gonna be a little bit sensitive. There's not typically a mental toughness, right? Because of social media, there's been this stereotype that's set across the mindset, where they look at everything that's gonna happen to them, and it's cool, they're dreamers. It's beautiful, I love it.

I'm a dreamer. I love that. Why would we ever try and change that, right?

I can tell my little, especially my first born. She's a dreamer. She's 100% entrepreneur, I can already tell. She's a problem solver. She solves problems like crazy and I didn't teach her a lot of the things she's doing. And I'm like "Holy crap! You're a really smart kid. You know how to solve problems." She's gonna turn five soon. She already has interest in the stuff I'm doing. Anyway, crazy.

Millennials are dreamers. They understand possibilities. And because of that, they have very little walls. Emotionally there's a lot of walls because there hasn't been as much time put on the mat for person to person communication.

There's not as much time put on the mat for how to deal with pitfalls in life, okay? And part of that just has to do with the fact that they're usually so young, right? They just haven't gone through that much.

# Baby boomers: I've noticed, they have a lot of barriers. Usually to take off and do. And it's not just because of the tech standpoint. It's because there's a barrier of believing that there's this professionalism that they need to fit into in order to be an entrepreneur, right?  Again, speaking in massive general terms, okay?

I think each generation has had these massive, massive gifts with all of these massive, massive hindrances - like any generation! It's not the freaking millennials fault!

The next generation's gonna have some weird derogatory term for them also with a whole bunch of things we're gonna complain about them too. It's the way it is. It's just how it goes, right? Get over this whole freaking millennial propaganda.

Anyway. So, the key is to see and be sensitive to where you are culturally. How is this generation raised? "Wow! Were we all supposed to be given trophies?" There's some serious freaking baggage that comes with that kind of culture, right?

Or, or, do we believe that we still need to be in suits and ties, and tech is hard to learn, right? There's some baggage that comes with that, right?

So these have been the things I've noticed as I coach people that it comes down to. I want you to understand something with this. This is the reason I wanted to walk through this with you guys. Is this making sense? Is it going full circle? See where you fit! Right? I'm trying to help you learn how to self identify.

There's a stage I was speaking on, and I said: "My goal here today is to teach you how to do to yourself what you are doing to your customers." Meaning, I want you to understand your customer's false beliefs. I want you to understand your customer's hiccups. I want you to understand your customers. Whatever things they're still struggling with.

This is what I told them on stage: I want you to learn how to self-identify those things in you. It will speed you up. "Your business grows to the extent that you do." Okay? Which is true! I don't know who said that, but anyway. It's a cool phrase though, right? "Your business grows to the extent that you do."

So I told him I want to teach you how to become introspective enough to see, "Like, oh my gosh, I got this mental belief that is wrong!" Right?

Remember, you guys all know my story.  Way back in the day I was really shy! It wasn't so much that I was shy, I just had no confidence. I had zero confidence, right? And some of it came with some of the generational upbringing that I came along with.

It wasn't my parent's fault. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. It's just the environment I was in. Right?

When I became self-conscious... when I became introspective enough over those things, then I could do something about it! That's what I'm trying to get across in this episode!

The stereotypical go-getters that I see across from the millennial side, all the way 30s and 40s, all the way to the baby boomers, is this: They have learned to become introspective, to identify what their own false beliefs are, and then the ones that matter. This is the key. They tackle the ones that matter...

If you try to tackle every single one of your false beliefs, every one of your little character flaws, that an amazing way to get depressed.  What you gotta see is what is it gonna take to be successful in today's environment? What does it take? What does it take? "Oh my gosh! I gotta learn how to speak on camera. I gotta learn how to present. I gotta learn how to talk. I gotta learn how to sell. I gotta learn how to market." They're not the same, right? "I gotta learn how to create offers. I gotta learn how to funnel build." Or maybe, right, "What's my tactical skill?"

When I was leaving college - about two years before I left, I was getting a marketing degree, and I literally had no technical skill that I was learning. I was literally a dime a dozen. There was nothing different for me compared to everybody else. And that is one of the reasons why I chose funnels in college - to learn a technical skill.

So I gotta have a technical skill. I gotta be able to speak. Whatever those things are, right? What does my personal character not let me do? The biggest one, the highest leverage one I can go tackle? Reach down inside of you, grab that, and break it! Realize it's wrong.

See the stories, and the experiences, and the beliefs that are upholding that false belief, and reach down and break them! Rebuild yourself! Make you! Right? Build you. Craft you. Pick out the blueprints you want and remake yourself.

When I started doing that, that's actually funny enough when I started making money.

I was the biggest issue in the business! Not the fact that the marketing ideas didn't work! Not the fact that the product didn't help people! I sucked at delivering it! Right? That was mine! You gotta figure out what yours is. So, anyways, does that make sense?

This podcast episode might feel like it's all over the place. I'm trying to convey something here that I've seen over,and over,and over again. 1,800 times.

I have done a lot of freaking Q&A. I have seen so many offers. Every Friday, the whole day for me is looking at people's offers, looking at people's funnels. Do you know how many? Anyway, for years, okay? I've seen a lot of them! A lot of them!

Funny enough, the pattern has always been, you know what... "Could the marketing be better? Yeah! It could. Could the funnel be better? Yeah, it could. But most of the time what I have found is that the battle is actually mental. The battle is mental.

The answers are on freaking YouTube already. If you're just learning, if you just listen to podcasts, if you're just studying, if you learn how to learn on your own. If you learn how to study. If you learn how to solve your own problems and answer your own questions. The answers are there, 'kay?

Never has there been a time when there's so many tools that are already done and available. It's no longer a question of, well, is there a tool that does this? Is there a tool that does that? What about this, what about that, right? That's not the issue anymore, right? It's not!

The issue is not is the marketing good? Where is the tool? Does that exist? For you to make vast amounts of cash, that's not the problem anymore. The problem is mental! And I fight with people's psyche way more than I ever thought that I would with my students!

Some of them are total rockstars, but most people, understandably, they got a background, and they don't understand that the market that they're trying to sell into, requires them to be a little bit different. And they're not willing to make the personal adjustment and the personal changes.

"Stephen, how long's this gonna take for me to go through?" I can already tell you're losing! "Stephen, how long's it gonna take me for me to go through your model builds?" I can already, that's a losing mentality!

You're already looking from a freaking scarcity standpoint when you ask stupid questions like that, alright!"

"Well, Stephen, how long's it gonna take for me to be successful at this?" Dumb, dumb question! That's a stupid question. "How long's it gonna take for me to be successful?" Man! That means you're weighing the cost of you getting in the course and not looking at the clock, against freaking Netflix that night, okay? It's true!

What I've learned, and if this hits home I'm not trying to offend anybody, I'm just being real and raw about this:

When I've coached many students, and the pattern has always been: Could the marketing be better? Yes. Could the storytelling be better? Of course, it could always be better Could the offer be better? Could the funnel...? Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! All that stuff! All the classic stuff that comes with running a company could all be better. All of it could.

But it's the freakin mentality that has, by far, without contest, been the thing that I've had to do the most coaching on! Which shocked me! I didn't expect that!

As a coach myself, I didn't expect to have to do that for so many, virtually every person. And I understand that there's a mentality that comes that you learn when you become an entrepreneur. You have to learn it, and I get it. There's a mindset that comes with it. I get it. I understand that. And if it's new, awesome, but sometimes they don't even have the tools to take on the mindset.

They might be a little bit weak mentally. Or they're really sensitive. Or they got a trophy all the time. "When am I gonna win?" Second place gets no reward in business.

Learn to be the best. Learn to be the first. Dominate. I'm here to crush. Second place gets no financial reward, okay? I'm here to crush. That's a hard mentality for some people to learn. It's an exact flip opposite. It's a hard mentality for people to learn.

Baby boomers, look, it's not about you being a professional. It's about being you, louder, in today's age. Just be you, louder, right? And that's hard for some people to drop the tie, get rid of the briefcase and be like, "Well this is what I would say,  and how I would say it." That's kinda hard for baby boomers to learn, usually.

Usually, for the millennials, they're a little sensitive sometimes. And again, I come from that category, I'm speaking like one, you understand?

I had to learn that. I was a mentally weak person, guys. I was not mentally tough. I didn't know how to handle anything that was negative in my life. I had to learn those things. That is literally one of the reasons I joined the Army. Seriously! I didn't do any of that stuff, which kinda sucks, but anyway.

The biggest thing I took from it was a mentality: "I'm taking the hill. Get out of my way." Right? And I took on those things. I know how to fight. When I need to, I know how to go to bat for myself.

My resting state is nice guy, but when I need to, I very much have the tools to open the can when I need to and do what I need to with it. Anyway, that's what I'm trying to do.

Let's go full circle with this, okay?

This episode's been going for a little while here and thank you so much for sticking with it. I'm trying to help you self identify, "Wait a second? Where has my brain been sucking it up?" Right? "My business could actually be totally fine and I'm the weakest link." More often than not. I'm not joking. Like, 80% of the time that has been the issue....

Not, let's look at the offer. Of course it could be better. Of course we could tweak it. Of course we could do all these things. It's been this mentality based thing. Whether or not they've already had success or not it's been more of that than anything else, shockingly.

So what I invite you to do, and I've been holding something here by my leg the whole time, okay? Cause I wanna share it with you guys. What I learned how to do, one of the patterns I started noticing when I was around ClickFunnels, I got to listen to Tony Robbins while he talked to Russell... and Robert Kiyosaki. I did a lot of projects for Marcus Lemonis. Huge guys. Massive, massive players... This is a funny thing that I always notice from them...

A lot of the time, before they actually officially hit record on the interview, it wasn't uncommon to see some of them, like, in the corner kinda jazzing up, getting the energy up. Cause they get it. They understand. They gotta be an attractive character, right? And even if it's not their natural character they learned the attractive character. That's what I did. You understand what I'm saying?

And there was this routine that a lot of these guys do to get themselves in that kind of state. Fighting state, winning state, right? "If I do this, awesome. If I don't my family's gonna suffer for it," right? Man, when I start taking those things on, it's a lot. You know what I mean? There's things that I do to get myself in state now. I wanna share a few of those things with you guys.

There's a really, really good talk I heard once by this guy... he was talking about how when you start walking through a forest for the first time, it's hard cause there's no path. There's no trail. And it's part of the issue that comes with doing new things.

People are in this unmarked path because there is no path. Their brains have never been in this area before. And they start walking down this path and they're walking through this thick forest and it's the first time they've been there so there is no path! You understand?

But the next day they walk that path again and maybe they see that like, "Hey, that stick broke a little bit. This tree right here, I can see the first time I passed through, that tree is kinda leaned to the side more this time."

And the more you walk the path, the path actually becomes a real path. The ground gets hard. Grass stops growing right there. Maybe the rocks start falling off the side, and pretty soon, because you've walked the path so many times you actually have a path.

It didn't start as one. It only happened because you walked it that many times. That's something I had to learn for myself.

I had to learn which characters sell online. I had to learn which characters were characters, the attractive character that actually made mass movements. That actually helped industries and affected industries.

And when I saw the pattern over and over again, I realized that,"You know what? I could do that." And I walked the path the first time, and I launched sales from the radio. That was the first real time that I did that. I was like, "Crap, this is hard!"

There was no path! It was just me and I was just bushwhacking. You know what I mean? Getting through all the foliage, all the rough, you know, weeds and stuff like that. Going through the bushes - it was challenging. It was very hard. And as I learned, it's become easier, and easier, and easier.

Now I can just turn the camera on. And now I can speak in front of a lot of people. I can speak on funnel hacking live. "What's up?" And I'm super stoked, and it doesn't make me nervous. It's 4,500 people. I'm really excited. I'm not nervous, I'm actually super stoked. I'm stoked to the core, okay?

So what I want you to do is I want you to,

#1: Identify the things that your generation is stereotypically pinned with. You might have those, you might not. Maybe you've already addressed them.

#2: I want you to understand which attractive character you need to become for your market to actually follow you? Where are you sucking it up? Then be totally fine walking that path the first time. That's just how it works, 'okay?

#3: You gotta know what gets you in state. Seven Nations Army - I have heard that song so many times it's ridiculous. Every time we were about to do something crazy, or there was some big event going on, or it was webinar day, or there's a big event going on, we played Seven Nations Army.

There's a lot of people, some people would just write to me and they'd be like, "Hey dude, you sitting next to Russell right now?" I'd be like, "Yeah." They'd be like, "You listening to Seven Nations Army?" I'd be like, "Yeah." They'd be like,"Are you singing that song?" And I'd be like, "Yeah," but that's not the point, right? The point is what it does for the head.

There's a few things that I do as far as state control goes. The state control that I do:

#1: Exercising in the morning, hard. I don't just mean going on a jog. I mean, it's gotta be hard. "Make it hard, coach!" You know what I mean? Make me close the bar, make me close to throwing up. Make it hard. And for me that's where I'm practicing getting in my war state before I actually get to my desk where I'm at war.

#2: Next thing I do, every Monday morning I yell. I go, "Woo! It's Monday, baby!" It'd be cool to cut in a few of those here. But anyway, and I yell like crazy.

I even go down to street corners and yell it in front of the 9am traffic. No joke! I do that! I'm weird like that! I don't care. It's not for them. It's for me.  Why? Because it kinda freaks me out a little bit. My adrenaline spikes up like crazy. And it's awesome.

#3: A lot of it has to do with my morning routine. I've noticed that that's the lever. When I turn that lever, that's the one that really sets the tone for the rest of the day.

What's my morning routine? I'm not perfect at it, but I'm getting more perfect at it. That's helped me a lot, okay?

#4: I've been holding this thing by my leg the entire time. This guy. Yeah, you like it? This guy is my mannequin. I call him poverty. His name's poverty. I beat up poverty every single morning. That's my warm-up.

I write down all the things that people have said about me that are negative! Cause I'm not trying to run from my freaking fear! I'm trying to confront the fear and do it anyway. That's a different mentality...

I'm trying to say "Yeah, I see you fear and I will." I don't care, right? This might be weird, guys, but it's what I do. I don't care. It's my thing. You make your own. Do it too, if you want to. Shame, right? Poverty. People call me "idiot." People just say, "Oh you're past, you're not qualified."  People might say "I'm lazy," right?

Some stupid lady today was like, "You're totally a scam! I was like, "I don't even know what that means. Please explain what you're talking about and go look at all the testimonials of all the people I've helped. I'm not a scam."

Aut anyway, "lies," right? There's a whole bunch. I have lots of stuff.

"You're too emotional. You're all over the place!" Fear itself. You got haters, right? "You're worthless, Stephen. You're worthless. This is ridiculous. This is all crap!" I've had people say to me.

Doubt. Tons of doubt. "You can't ........" Loser, Pathetic. "You're pathetic," right? I've had a lot of people say negative things to me about this. I don't freaking care. Instead, if I confront it and I put it on this thing, and I beat him up every day.

My life in this game got so much easier when  I came up with a system to medicate all of the negative things that were going on in my head.

If the game is mental, what are you doing to your head? Do you have a process? Is there something in place for you? This is what I do, okay? This is literally one of them. I listen to crazy rage music and beat up the doubt.

One of the first ones that ever have made me feel bad was when I was going to counseling. This guy was like, "So have you ever been tested for ADHD?" And I was offended. Which, now I'm embarrassed that I was offended by that... but I was offended.

I was like, "No! What are you talking about?" I didn't want anyone to think there was something wrong with me. "There's nothing wrong with me! There's nothing wrong with me!" I was offended by it. I was mad. Stupid, stupid of me. But I was offended by it, right?

He goes, "I'm gonna send you home with some tests and I need you to take these tests and we're gonna see if you have ADHD." I was pissed off. I went home, and I didn't wanna take the test, but I took the test and came back to the counselor.

He said, "You don't officially have ADHD, but you have a lot of symptoms of somebody who does."  And I flipped out because I was a perfectionist. I was like, "I don't want anything to be wrong with me. I don't want someone to categorize me. Don't tell me I'm not perfect." Which is stupid, first of all, okay? But that one rocked my world.

It wasn't later until I found out ADHD - it's a freaking super power. That's the reason I can out work 90% of the people out there. Thank you! Man, how many guys got that out there also? Awesome. Cool, cool, cool.

Did you know that most billionaires are dyslexic? Sweet! "What's up? Let's all communicate together. Let's all hang out together," right? Do you know what I mean?

Guys, whatever it is that's negative in your life...

When I start talking about the mental and start talking about the psyche. When I say like, "Look, yes, that funnel could be better. Yes, it could be better," but most of the time the thing that's holding somebody back is the way they think?

But half the time someone's like, "Well, that's easy for you to say, Stephen, but I've got ADHD, or I've got dyslexia, or I've got... " Man, those are superpowers. Can we get over that? Those are superpowers. You can do crap that nobody else can.

The game is about you learning to harness what those things are and do it anyway.

This is part of my way of doing that, okay? And I know it might be weird. You might be like, "Man, Stephen's a freak." I don't care. It's for me, not you.

And so I go in, and some of you guys have contributed to this from my Instagram stuff, okay? Some of you guys have put some of your own things on here, but I go in and I write down whatever it is that's negative that are going on in my head, and I confront it.

There's been emotional periods for me actually confronting each one of these things. And I beat the snot out of it. Forgive and grow.

I think I wanna make t-shirts with all this stuff on it and "forgive and grow" put out like that. I think it would be pretty cool to do that.

You guys, entrepreneurs are a special breed. You guys are epic. We're epic. This is not normal stuff for anyone to go do. It can be a lonely game.

And the thing I want you to go figure out, a lot of times when I've been going through and I've been checking out your funnels? Man, just had to put it down there. A lot of times your funnel is good enough to launch, it's more of the psyche that you haven't dealt with yet. Right? So I want you to go through, like I say...

And I know it's a long episode, and I apologize for it being a long episode but, but I hope you see what I'm trying to say here.

When I look at the students and I look at the people that I've done this for, when I look at the consulting, the clients I've done this with, it's a lot of people, guys. A lot of people I've done this with.

When it comes to the business side, you guys know, it's usually not an offer problem. It's usually a storytelling and marketing problem. That's the reason the stuff isn't going down. But even then, one more step back, when it comes to the entrepreneur themselves, it's usually a psyche problem.

They haven't quite learned the mentality yet. They're still scared of getting hurt. They're still scared of getting burned. They don't know quite how to deal with some kind of failure at it. They don't know what it means. "If this fails does that mean I failed?" And they start comparing themselves to other successful stories. Fastest way to depression right there. They compare themselves to other successful stories rather than to themselves.

Successful entrepreneurs are like, "Man, look at all the progress I've made. I can go wherever." That's the best way ever to get your self worth, your personal value out of this game. It lets you sit all this stuff off to the side.

If you're scared of talking, like I was. Come up with a plan of how to deal with that.

If you're not a fighter yet? If you're not willing to bat for your customers they're not gonna bat for your new industry. They're not! Until you're willing to go to bat for them, right? You're willing to help them out? You're willing to throw rocks at that red ocean while you create the blue one. If you're not willing to go to bat for them, they're not willing to go to bat for you, okay?

Anyway, figure out what that is and what it is for you? Is there some character flaw that you have? Don't beat yourself up, just identify it. Figure out a way around it. And figure out what your way is to get into state around that when you need to.

The way I do that is music, exercise in the morning, funny enough, a lot what I eat - that helps or hurts. And then, man, I beat the snot out of this mannequin thing, and it's kinda fun.

Anyways, guys. Hopefully this is helpful to you. If resonate with any of it, please comment. Please share this. It really means a lot to me.

I feel like we're in like, this fragile place of entrepreneurship right now. And it's really kinda fun. It's neat to watch it. But there's gonna be this explosion of wealth that happens to these people who have figured it out and really just figured out that, "Oh my gosh, it's just a formula." But I'm scared that some people who very well could have participated are actually not going to - simply because of ways that they think - because they don't know how to deal with certain things.

Anyways, I know I hit a lot of topics, and it was full spectrum - it went all over the place. But hopefully you got the concept of what I'm talking about:

#1: That you learn to be introspective.

#2: You come up with a plan of how to come around the things that need to get a way around the ones that matter.  

That way you can execute your marketing. That way you can execute the business and actually get things off the ground.

So anyways, guys, I appreciate it. I love you all. I appreciate it so much. And thanks so much for taking the time. I'll see you guys, later. Bye.

Oh, yeah, wasn't that awesome?

Hey, just real quick, a few months ago, Russell asked me to write a chapter for a secret project he was doing, and I had to write a chapter for a book, and this was the prompt, this was the letter I got from him:

"Hey Stephen,

Let me ask you a quick question.

You suddenly lose all your money along with your name and your reputation and only have your marketing know-how left.

You have bills piled high and people harassing you for money over the phone.

You have a guaranteed roof over your head, a phone line, an internet connection, and a ClickFunnels account for only one month.

You no longer have your big guru name, your following, your JV partners, other than your vast marketing experience, you're an unknown newbie.

What would you do from day one to day to save yourself?

-Russell Brunson."

If you wanna see my answer and the answers of a bunch of other amazing marketers, then just go to days.com/stephen.

You can see the entire summit, you can see the book, and each of our detailed plans. Just go to days.com/stephen, that's 30 as in three zero, days.com/stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Guys, enjoy.

Boom! What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today we're gonna talk about why entrepreneurs get paid so much.

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, I've been really excited for this episode actually I put up my little trello board, and I was taking notes on it. I've been really excited actually to dive through this with you guys.

I've got my whiteboard here, for those of you guys that are on iTunes, I'm actually drawing this out, but I'm sure it'll also be in the blog and other places anyways.

Guys, thanks so much, wherever you're tuning in, thanks so much. Sales Funnel Radio has been blowing up like crazy thanks to you guys, and I really just wanna say "Thank You."

When I left my job, actually let me go further, let me go further back...

A while ago, I don't even know how long ago it was, it was over a year ago. It was probably a year before I left ClickFunnels.

we were launching this program, and I was really excited because it was one of the first projects where I was able to get a little bit of cut of the action, and I was like, "Yeah, what's up? This is super cool!" Right?

I was just working my guts out for this thing. I worked so freakin' hard, I don't even know how many hours I put into this thing...  It was an ungodly amount of work. 'Cause I wanted to... You know, man, it's freakin' Russell Brunson... I wanted to make sure it was awesome stuff.

And we killed it. The sales were awesome, but when my cut came into my bank account, I was like, "What?!"

I had calculated all these sales, and I was like, "Holy crap! Check this out, we're gonna hit all these financial goals." All these financial goals my wife and I had, we were gonna hit 'em so fast, I was like, "Holy crap, this is so cool! Holy crap!"

And when the check came in it was about half of what I expected. I was like, "What the heck? Who? Where's all the cash?" I was like, "There has to be some mistake!"

And I start going, and I'm looking through the pay stub and everything, and sure enough, greedy, disgusting, nasty, filthy Uncle Sam had his just molded, gross, fleshy hand all over that check, and I got taxed 42% on that thing.

I was like, "Where did all the cash go?! Oh my gosh, what?! This is ridiculous!"

It was my first big encounter of getting paid a huge lump sum and only getting really about half of it. And I was like, "That sucks."  

And I can see where there's a lot of dilemma that goes back and forth, where entrepreneurs are like, "Well, should I not make more money because  I gotta pay more taxes?"

...Man, just pay the taxes,  and make more money. Make your wallet fatter.

I'm not a financial adviser, but that's what I do. Just pay the taxman, just move on forward.

And I was like, "That's crazy." And what was interesting to me is when I ended up leaving ClickFunnels, cash started coming on in, quite a bit right at the beginning, like "Bam! Huge flood of cash," 'cause I had built up this big campaign and the doors opened, and a big old flood came in. There was this big surge of cash, and we kept almost all of it, and I was like, "Hmm, why did that work that well that time?"

Alright, I'm a W-2 of my own business, that's how I set it up, a W-2, anyone, so I'm an employee of my company,  so we were still paying ourselves, we paid ourselves a small amount.

I didn't take a paycheck from my company for quite a while, alright? 'Cause I was just rolling cash on it, we were living on savings.

And what was funny is when we started paying ourselves, it ended up being about the same tax rate as when I was working at ClickFunnels. But suddenly I could expense things like the car.

So while we were still at the same tax rate, I could go in, and I could grab...

And this is not to be like a financial, you know, strategy session. I would not say I'm a guru of that at all. I hire other people out for that, kay?

But I started expensing out all this other stuff and now suddenly, with the same amount of cash coming in, we were keeping more of it, right? We had greater amounts of discretionary income because of the fact we run a business and had an actual company.

And I was like, "That's really fascinating, Why is this working so well?"And I went back, and I started looking at it, and sure enough, all these other guys kept telling me, "Man, if you are a W-2 employee you are getting eaten alive with taxes." And I was like, "Ah, what do you mean? "

I had no idea until I actually jumped ship how much a W-2 employee gets gouged. I mean straight up murdered with taxes. Holy crap, it was nuts!

It actually made me sick to my stomach to think about how much money I had given away to the taxman which I legally did not need to do if I was simply a 1099, right? Or something else like that.

So anyway, one of the first moves I ever made...

And again, I'm not a tax person, I'm not your financial adviser. *Disclaimer, Disclaimer* Does everyone feel disclaimed? Nice.  Alright, now that you're all disclaimed, I'm just gonna tell you what I did...

I went in, and I immediately took every exemption I could for my own company, the full nine, if that's the full amount, hopefully, it is, 'cause I took the full amount.

And then I started figuring out what other ways we could put more expenses back on the business - not that I'm gonna live off the business solely -I would not do that, but what made sense to make the business run we started doing that.

I was like, "Sweet, okay, this is super cool." And it was crazy to get paid the exact same amount, but we were keeping way more of it. So my wife and I could go hit these other goals we wanted to...

"Alright we got this much to put in our little emergency fund” - I call it the "oh craps," like if a water heater goes out, which it did a little while ago, right, "Oh crap!" That comes from the "oh craps." So we've got an "oh craps account," you know, a rainy day account.

And it was funny how fast we hit those because I paid myself the same amount as when I was at ClickFunnels, but I was keeping way more of it, right?

So anyway, I just wanna talk real quick about why entrepreneurs get paid so much more, 'kay? Again, those are some of things that I do. And there's way more that I do with that as well.

I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to become like a financial adviser, I'm not that at all. I will not ever try to be that. I'm a marketer, but real quick, I just wanted to walk through and share with you guys why, why an entrepreneur gets paid so much and why everyone should have their own LLC.

Again, *Disclaimer, Disclaimer*  - But it is ridiculous to me when someone doesn't, 'kay? It is insane, it is insane how much money you don't have to pay in taxes when you have revenue going to an LLC instead of you as freakin' W-2, oh my gosh. I Lost a lot of money. Okay, anyway. Whatever, it's over.

I'm still not totally over that emotionally, that was like crazy.

This is not just coming straight from me, someone taught this to me. I don't remember whether it was Russell, or someone in the circle, anyway... I wanna go through real quick, and I wanna talk about what I learned.

Now if you are W-2, I wanna be able to share with you guys the best places, in my opinion, to be in the company - because the entrepreneur gets paid a lot of cash, right?

In fact, that's something that Russell would always say, "Look, the business exists to serve people and to make the entrepreneur money. Take money from it. That's why it exists - to create income. Don't be afraid to get paid by your business."

So again, I'm not a financial adviser, I'm speaking in massive stereotypes here, got it? But this is why an entrepreneur gets paid so much money...

When you think about an entrepreneur, they're here at the top, I'm just making sure you guys can see this, yeah, okay cool. They're here at the top.

I always laugh when people are like, "Is this a pyramid scheme?" And everyone tries to backpedal out of that. "Man, you freakin' hope it is!" To be an entrepreneur, it means you're at the top! The pyramid's all below you, right?!

You might have this person here, they work for you, this person, this person. And then these people underneath there, they got their teams, right? What does that look like? Might just be the office. Anyway, right. It's funny... so this is the entrepreneur at the top, right?

Think about what the entrepreneur has...

The entrepreneur at the top has all of the risk. All of the risk!

When I left ClickFunnels, I'm the one who took all of the risk, right? The risk doesn't sit on anyone else's shoulders, just me, right? All risk is right there, risk. Huge amounts of risks directly on the entrepreneur's shoulder, no one else shoulders it, 'okay?

With risk also comes reward, right?

So there's risk, but that's the other reason why the entrepreneur gets rewarded so much, because they take on all of the risk, right? All of it. And they don't even know, a big old shot in the dark.

Doing something like I did was kinda ballsy, right? Leaving ClickFunnels without actually having a revenue stream set up...  It's only because I've been doing this a long time I felt comfortable doing that. I don't recommend that to anybody else, 'kay?

Somebody messaged me, and said, "I quit my job, just like you did!" I'm like, "Oh crap!" Like, let me just be clear, okay? Don't, don't, I'm not telling you to quit your job, 'kay?

What I wanna do is I wanna share with you why an entrepreneur gets paid so much money.  And the best places to be in a company when you work inside of it.

One thing that my dad always taught me growing up, and I'm so glad he taught me this. He said, "Stephen, always make sure you are in the revenue side of the company, not the cost side of the company." And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Meaning the role that you're in when you're an employee."

If you become an employee of somebody else always make sure that you are sitting on the revenue side of the business.

I talked about this like one of the earliest episodes of Sales Funnel Radio. But this is the reason why...

If you are in a position that makes it rain, it's really easy to justify:

#1: Paying you more

#2: It's hard to get rid of you.

If you need the job security, and if you don't have something else that's actually working on the side yet, man, don't leave the job. Just figure how to make it rain.

Everyone else, right underneath here in this pyramid - they are a cost to the business.

Someone who's in support, you're a cost to the company, you don't bring revenue in, you're a cost. I'm just being real with ya.

If you're support, or if you are...

I don't wanna say coders - 'cause sometimes it depends on the kind of coder, right? If the software you're coding makes money, then obviously you're on the revenue side of the business. Does that make sense?

What I want you to do is I want you to think through and be like, "Oh man, I'm right here, or I'm right here, or I'm right here," and get real with yourself- "Does my position in this business make money? Do I add to the bottom line of this business or do I take from it?"

Guys, WHEN crap hits the fan, not if, WHEN... the positions to go are the ones that are a cost on the business. Suddenly everyone learns more things, they put on an additional hat to cover that additional space.

The people they don't get rid of easily are the ones that make money for the business. Why would you get rid of rainmakers?  As a business owner, you just wouldn't do that.

So think about this:

All the risk is on the shoulders of the entrepreneur - which is also why there's so much upside for the entrepreneur.

There have been multiples times, I've heard a lot of other stories from a lot of other people...  

I've coached 1,800 people through this process now, at the time of recording this, 1,800 personally, I'm not saying just like through the course, like 1,800, that is a lot of freakin' offers, that's a lot of businesses.

...And I've heard a lot of stories where someone will get their first hire or first virtual assistant or something like that, and that person has no clue what risk the entrepreneur has taken on, and is trying to share in the revenue fruits, right?

(Stephen draws on the whiteboard)

The entrepreneur, at the top of the pyramid, takes all this risk - which means they also have this huge potential for reward, right? And then this new person, they're trying to share in the pie that the entrepreneur is getting, even though they're in a position down here in the pyramid.

That makes no sense, right? And you might look at that now and be like, "What?" Exactly, what?! That makes no sense.

Hopefully, you guys can see the green? I'm gonna switch to black. Although I wasn't before anyway... maybe I'm thinking green money? That must be it.

Anyway, alright. Don't do that if you're an employee of somebody. Eventually, I asked for a raise at ClickFunnels when I got higher, but not for like a solid freakin' year after I'd killed myself over there, right? And it was very evident. There was no challenge when I asked for a raise because they knew I was bleeding for this thing, right?

Morning and night, I was coming in early. I was staying in late, I was doing projects late at night. I was making sure I was on when I knew he was on, I was killing myself, right? And it's for this exact reason, I wanted to make sure that my position was in a spot where it was pulling cash into the company.

So when I decided, "Oh my gosh, you know what? I think it's NOT gonna be an awkward conversation when I ask for a raise." It's not gonna be just because of custom that they give me one. Right? I wanna actually have measurable revenue.

So one thing that I did is I would go in, and I'd look at all the funnels that I was building. All the ones I'd pressed go on. Everything that I was building out there, and I could tally up all the cash that I was helping to bring into the business. And it was not a small amount.  It was a huge amount. And so when I asked for a raise, it made sense logically, it made sense emotionally:

#1: I was easy to work with.

#2: I was bringing in revenue.

#3: I was a solution provider rather than just a problem bringer.

- so it was an easy, easy conversation.

The only reason why I'm bringing this up is that I know a lot of you are still in a job, and that's fine.

I know a lot of you guys are new entrepreneurs, some of you guys are experienced entrepreneurs which is awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in.

But a lot of you guys are new at hiring people, or you're still working for somebody else.  So you gotta ask yourself, "Does my position bring money in or do I require money to support my position?" I'm just gonna tell you, that's a freaky place to be. You are replaceable.

I got like 15 stories just zooming through my noggin right now:

All these people are like, "Well, I should be getting this, I should be getting this!" I'm like, “What are you freakin' talking about? I don't need to give you a dime, alright?” You're replaceable. You're replaceable. And I want you to know that.

And when I run my company like that, I'm replaceable to my business. Now, is that actually true? I don't know.

But when I have that mentality, and I keep that mentality, guys, I'm freakin' hungry. I'm seeking the cash flow. I'm hungry, I wanna kill it, I wanna destroy, I wanna take down walls, I wanna take the hill, I'm here to conquer, right? And that's my mentality when I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, man, I'm going to freakin' war.

If you're going to your job and you're not going to war, and you're on the revenue side -  you're starting to move to the cost side. That's a bold statement. I don't care. You understand what I'm saying though?

You gotta go to war, you gotta go to war in your head, you gotta be ready to step up to the plate and kill it and crush it and take down.

If you're like, "Man, I wanna be an entrepreneur someday," and you're not, you gotta understand, until the entrepreneur can see that you're ready to go to war for 'em, they're not gonna put you on the revenue side of the business, or give you the fruits that come with it.

There's one exception to this rule, and it is one of the fastest ways for you to scale inside of a company.

There's an exception to the rule. There's a person over here on this side, they're the cost side of the business, not the revenue side. They're not responsible for any kind of marketing, they're not responsible for any kind of innovation (those are the easiest ways to get out of the cost side).

Regardless of what the title is that you carry in the business, the easiest way to sidestep this structure is one role, it's this one right here.

Remember the reward and risk are very favored for the entrepreneur because of the amount of risk they take on - they take on all of it! The sales guy is the only position where there is hardly any risk, but there's still a huge potential for reward.

If you feel like, "Oh, I'm not a sales guy." Freakin' learn. That's not an excuse. It's not. You gotta learn how to be a salesperson, you gotta learn how to sell, you gotta learn how to make it rain.

The people who know how to sell - they have hardly any risk plus they have a huge potential for reward.

A lot of CEOs who were working in a company before they became the CEO, a lot of 'em were salespeople. You don't see the head of HR really becoming the guy who's the CEO in the future, that's not really like a standard play. It's the person who knows how to make it rain.

Who better to have the future of the company be rested on than the person who can continue to make it rain because they once made it rain? Does that make sense?

If you want to move up in a company, and you're like, "Hey, I wanna stay here." Or if you're like, "Man, my spin's not spinning up yet on the side, you know, I got this side hustle"- I guess it's what we all call them now, a side business, alright?

If you've got this side business running, you've got this thing going over on the side, and it's not quite spun up yet... Seek to become a salesperson.

You don't have to ask permission for that. You can go in, and you can start to, an example...

When I was, I was an employee at ClickFunnels, I was trying to demonstrate this very principle.

This was an active conversation in my head. I never talked about it over there. In fact, a lot of employees that I know listen to this over there, "You know, Russell, what's up?"

I never talked about this, but this was a theme that ran in my head all the time, "How can I make it rain? How can I make it rain? How can I make it rain? How can I provide solutions instead of provide problems?" You know what I mean by that?

Like, someone who walks up, "Oh, here's this problem." You should never walk up to a superior, you should never walk up to someone who's over you.

You should never walk up to your boss with, "We got this problem!" without a suggested solution. Does that make sense? That changes the way you're perceived in the eyes of the person.

So if you wanna be the go-to person for the new and upcoming opportunities inside of a company, you gotta be:

#1: A solutions provider, number one.

#2: Start finding ways to sell.

And you don't always have to ask for permission to do this.

One of the ways that I did that at ClickFunnels is I actually sought opportunities to sell ClickFunnels without being invited to do so.

For example, there was an opportunity that came my way from one of my good friends, Ben. Ben Wilson, "What's up?" Shout out to you, buddy. He's got Conversion Marketing Radio, that's his podcast.

Anyway, he's awesome, a good buddy of mine. He invited me, he had this really cool hookup with DECA.

If you don't know what DECA is, they help high school students figure out what they wanna go do to make money. Anyway, someone else can tell better than me than what they really do. But they're the group of kids though, growing up, you can tell they're trying to go places.

Anyway, the DECA national conference was going on - the regional conference, and I got invited to go speak because of connections that Ben had. So I was like, "Sweet, I'm gonna "sell ClickFunnels at that thing."

And so I go, and I start selling - I basically sold ClickFunnels from the stage in front of 2,000 kids, lots of advisors, lots of MBAs. 2,000 right, it's awesome! 2,000 people came to that event.

Why? Why did I do that? I could have sold my own thing, right? I was selling because I wanted to be a solution provider, I wanted to be the guy who was like, "Oh, man, that dude hustles when I'm not asking him to." You guys understand?

I had this weird tradition at ClickFunnels, and I know I'm talking about it a lot, but like, you gotta get over it, 'okay?

I'm trying to help you understand what my mentality was over there and why things went so well and why I was able to have such good relationships.

I have mad, intense, brotherly love for Russell Brunson and what he does over there - but how did I politically navigate that area as well?

Well, one of the ways I did it was I made sure that I was a solution provider. I made sure I was selling - that I'm bringing extra revenue into the business.

I also wanted to make sure that they knew that I was serious about it when I didn't need to be asked to be serious about it, you know?

I had this weird tradition over there that every time we would launch a funnel, I would go buy the product. I wanted to be one of the first people to buy the product through the funnel that I just helped launch. And they're like, "You could just log in "and make yourself an account." And I was like, "Yeah, I know."

When we were filming a lot of Funnel Hacker TV, and I think they're still doing it, I pulled the camera up, and I said, "What's up, everyone?" I just want you to know that "I'm really into this thing, it's because not only do I help make the Kool-Aid here at ClickFunnels, I drink it too!"  And it became like a phrase over there.

If your boss is like some guru, or if they're not, be your boss' best student! That's what I've actively tried to be for Russell! I am one of his best students, I know that. Russell knows that. The community knows that. I do what the man says!

That helps validate his principles, that helps validate the things he's doing, right? That scratches his back. It's one of the easiest ways for me to do that.

There are very few things I could go buy for him that he could not buy on his own, right?

So instead, drink the Kool-Aid that your guru boss is also drinking and making. Help it make, drink it, be a salesperson and figure out how to be a solutions provider.

That's the, basically the crux of the episode, guys. That's what I wanted to let you guys know.

Hopefully, that makes sense?

And so when you're hiring, you do the same thing. Who can make it rain? Those are the positions you're trying to make fill before you ever, ever, ever go hire someone who's a cost on the business.

Who can make it rain in that fragile, fragile beginning phase of that business when it's just barely spinning. It's like a little kid that can't survive on its own, right? You know what I mean? It's a really fragile period for the company.

That's why I didn't take a paycheck for a while, alright? Is there enough cash in the business to operate? If something massive hit, if I didn't get paid for a year, would it be okay? Those are all the questions I'm asking.

How do I make sure I stay hungry? I don't want too much cash in that business. I wanna make sure I stay hungry - which I have no problem doing.

So if you're hiring people, ask: "Who will make it rain?”

I love what Dana Derricks says in his Dream 100 book, he says that your first hire should be a dream 100 / affiliate manager. So that was my first hire, Colton sitting right over there, boom!

He's the affiliate manager, he's the dream 100 manager. If you wanna promote our products, you contact him. And that's the reason why that was my first hire.

I don't have a dedicated support person, we kinda tag team that. Those are the things I'm getting next. But why on earth would I get those without the other positions that make it rain?

Those are the only positions that matter. I can get rid of pretty much every single one of these positions.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I know someone's gonna fight me on this. I'm sure someone's gonna get mad about the fact that I'm saying this, but, man, besides me, a sales guy, a support person, an assistant, that's kind of it.

These funnel games are so freakin' cool because the actual business structure, when you gotta funnel the works right, the actual business structure, man, you only need like three to five people tops depending on what you're doing.

I know, some of you guys have massive call centers, okay cool, but I'm talking employees though.

I'm gonna go get an assistant soon, I'm gonna get an actual dedicated support person soon, but man, we haven't needed that for a long time, alright? I'm more obsessed about building the revenue machine, the actual funnel machine, the sales, right?

How does that happen? Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell! Right, how do I make that happen? How do I be obsessed over that?

I love something that Grant Cardone teaches, he says, the order of operations that you have as a business owner is this:

#1: My first order of business is to close the lead. The issue with that is that when you close a lead, you no longer have a lead. So you gotta refill that pipeline, right?

#2: The second order of business is to replace that lead.  Otherwise, the future of the business is gone.

#3: The third order of business after replace, is fulfill on this first lead.

That might sound backward to you, but that's the reason why I set it up the way I do. I'm closing the leads, I'm making sure we got more of 'em, and then I'm fulfilling on the sale.

And that's the reason why I always sell something before it's even made. If it doesn't sell consistently, who the freakin' cares what I'm making? It doesn't matter what product I'm making, right?

And when you find salespeople, and you find personnel in your company that can back that, oh man, cool, this guy's closing 'em, right? Oh, cool, I got another person over here, let's say you got another like, it's a setter, it's not a closer like a sales guy here, right?

Let's say this guy's a closer, you got a setter - he's the one who's going out and replacing leads, your funnels are doing that also. And then you're fulfilling, man, because of all that automation that goes on. You can do that automatically now anyway with a lot of things that are going out there. Does that make sense?

So anyway, that's why I'm trying to help you guys understand this. This whole game, the reason why it works, it works well for the people who know how to freakin' make it rain.

If you are an employee, figure out how to be a solution provider, drink the Kool-aid, don't just make it, right?

Be all in, then an entrepreneur is far more likely to give you a slice of this reward pie 'cause you're helping to remove some of his risk. But until then, why on earth would he ever do that?

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share with you guys today. It was a good episode, it was my favorite so far. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it.

If you have not thus far gone and checked out  days.com, it's a podcast interview I just did with Russell to promote a book, talking about what I would do to get this all back in  days. It's really cool.

You can see a lot of other millionaires and what their plans are. A lot of big guys, guys all know the names of. So anyway, it's really fun.

I got to write a chapter, go to days.com/stephen to check that out. Hopefully, this is helpful.

Thank you so much, please rate and review and share this if you liked it. Thanks, guys, I'll talk to you later, bye.

Oh, yeah, wasn't that awesome?

Hey, just real quick, a few months ago, Russell asked me to write a chapter for a secret project he was doing, and I had to write a chapter for a book, and this was the prompt, this was the letter I got from him:

"Hey Stephen,

Let me ask you a quick question.

You suddenly lose all your money along with your name and your reputation and only have your marketing know-how left.

You have bills piled high and people harassing you for money over the phone.

You have a guaranteed roof over your head, a phone line, an internet connection, and a ClickFunnels account for only one month.

You no longer have your big guru name, your following, your JV partners, other than your vast marketing experience, you're an unknown newbie.

What would you do from day one to day  to save yourself?

-Russell Brunson."

If you wanna see my answer and the answers of a bunch of other amazing marketers, then just go to days.com/stephen.

You can see the entire summit, you can see the book, and each of our detailed plans. Just go to days.com/stephen, that's  as in three zero, days.com/stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Guys, enjoy.

Boom! What's going on everyone. It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

And today I'm going to show you my 30-day plan for how I'd get everything back if I lost it all.

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, I am excited about this episode. Now, if you haven't seen the last episode, I talked to Russell Brunson - he was on the show which is super fun. I interviewed him specifically about this new book that he just came out with called 30 Days.

In the book, Russell asked all these marketers, "Hey look, you lose everything, you have nothing, except an internet connection and your  ClickFunnels account. Your bills are paid, but for one month only, "How would you get it back?"

Which is, it's a fascinating question. How would you get it all back? You have no list, you have no reputation, nothing. You start from scratch, all you know is your little, your marketing know-how, how would you restart?

I was kinda laughing when he asked me to write a chapter for the book, and give my take on how I would do the whole thing - because I just did it for real! At the beginning of this year left my job. I left ClickFunnels.

I didn't have a business, I didn't have a funnel, I didn't have a script, there was no product. What's funny is, I felt like my chapter was documenting what I actually did.

If you want to see what it is, go to 30days.com/stephen. 30 as in three zero. 30days.com/stephen. My name is S-T-E-P-H-E-N. You'll see my chapter, you'll see me, I'm on that page, that's my page, and you can see the plan that I detailed, that I outlined, for 30 straight days.

Look, on day one, this is what I do. Day two, this is what I do. Day three, this is what I do - it's literally laid out, piece by piece by piece.

But I wanted to give you at least a little bit of an overview of those things, and kind of describe why I did what I did there.

How many of you guys are in the 2 Comma Club X Coaching program? I'm one of the coaches. I was in San Diego, and in two days, I was about to get on stage. I showed up a little bit early, and the whole first night I was just finishing this chapter.

I was up 'til like two a.m., eyes bloodshot, you know, classic funnel hacker style right there.

The second night, I went in, and I had to finish the actual presentation. So, long story short, I finished in San Diego, and I was super proud of it. 'Cause I put a lot of time into writing that chapter.

I actually really like to write. I've got a few books coming, which I'm really excited about, woohoo! Draft is almost done. Anyway. So, I want to walk through and I just want to share with you guys why I did what I did. And funny enough, this is actually how I created a business...

Agh, sorry the freaking battery camera died again...

Anyway, I'm excited to walk through. I want to detail out what I did in this chapter, and why it worked. I'm not gonna go into huge amounts of detail, but I am gonna dive into the strategy for how I knew that this would be a good thing.

One thing that I want to point out is that you're gonna watch while I kinda walk through this... I launched when I didn't have a product. Okay, and that might be freaky.

And honestly, the first time I heard of entrepreneurs doing this, I was like, is this okay to do? You know what I mean?

The first time I launched an info product, it took me eight months to build, and nobody bought it. No one bought it. No one bought it for like another four months. And the reason why is because I thought success had to do with the product. Right? I thought sales had to do with the product.

There was a story I told on stage a while ago about this book, and I know a lot of you guys have heard this story, now, but it was about a book. I sold this book, and I was telling everyone how cool the book was.

I told this awesome story behind it, and it was all fake. I didn't tell 'em it was fake. It was an entirely made up story, okay.

I made up the story, - but it made people want the book so bad -that the people in the audience were buying it off Amazon.

I found out that one of the ladies who helped with the authorship of the book was in the audience, and she bought the book again.

It was a freaking good story. And then at the end of it, I let everyone know, "Look, I've actually never read this book. It's a random book off my shelf. I have no idea who this author is. I have no idea what the chapters are."

Then I asked, "Did I tell you what the chapters are?" They're like, "No." I was like, "Huh, so you bought this thing from me, and I didn't even tell you what was in it."

"Wait a second, wait a second. You bought this thing from me, and I didn't even tell you what was in it. I didn't tell you the names of the chapters. I didn't say the names of like the authors on the back."

So what does that tell you?

It tells you that sales has nothing to do with the product. This was the point I was trying to make - that's why I did it. To show you that sales have nothing to do with the product. Your product does not sell itself.

I hate it when somebody's like, "Well, this thing sells so well, all you gotta do is you gotta get it in front of people, and it sells itself." Bull crap! That's garbage! If you follow that path, you will do far less in sales.

A sales message is a different asset than a product. They're both assets, but they're not the same asset.

A sales message is an asset. A product is an asset. But again, they're not the same asset. They are separate things. And when you think the roles of both are the same, your sales suck, okay. That's what happens to it. I just want to be open with you and forward with you about that.

So let's just start walking though this here. You'll notice, now I don't remember off the top of my head what I said each day I would do - it was very meticulous though, very methodical. Go get the actual thing, and you can watch what I actually did - it's so good, oh my gosh - if I say so myself, okay.

But the first thing I had to go do was, I had to figure out...

So I'm just gonna break these up into weeks. Week one, week two, week three, and week four.

By week three, I had a webinar launched in my plan. Now the only difference is that I had done enough research the first while, when I actually left my job, that this is actually what I did the first week, not the third week. I was just trying to adapt it for someone who maybe hasn't done any research at all.

So I had already done quite a bit of research. I knew where I was gonna plant my foot. I knew what I was gonna put out there, I knew how to be controversial in a way that would make it so that I had eyeballs.

For me, when I personally did it, it was actually week one. I was like, "Let's go right to the sale." We gotta make sure we got cash. Are we gonna be okay?"

And so the first week I actually did the webinar. So each week after that there was another webinar. Webinar, webinar, does that make sense? Anyway, let's detail this out though.

So the first week, what I really had to figure out was not only what is the product that I can sell, but what's the idea that sells?

So I went, and I jumped into the MLM industry. Now, some of you guys know this stuff. Don't get weird on me, okay? The MLM industry drives me nuts, okay. Oh my gosh, talk about a, industry that's stuck in the 90's. BUT that's good. That's why I went there, okay!

'Cause like, "What's a place that I can make sure that I can help people? I want to make sure I can help - and we have helped. It's been really, really cool. We've had a lot of companies reach out to us about it.

If you're like, "Stephen, I don't want to learn about MLM." Alright, get over it. Let me just go through, and let me teach you from a marketer's perspective why I did what I did, and how I structured it in a way to make it exciting for people to give me money before I had the product done.

So the first thing, I was like, "What is an industry that's out there that's a good fit for what I'm doing here?"

Check this out. We know, we know from the book DotCom Secrets that the best way to create something is to model somebody else. And the book DotCom Secrets talks about that. It says, "Model."

Expert Secrets though, (we started drafting that book a little bit after I got two ClickFunnels) Expert Secrets goes in, and it says, "Why would you ever model somebody?" It says, create something brand new. Create a brand new opportunity that people haven't seen before.

Wait a second; Expert Secrets says make something new and Dot Com Secrets says model somebody. Those are conflicting messages!" They are, they're totally conflicting messages. And you're like, "Wait a second." "Huh?"

The answer is to use those in tandem. You're supposed to use them together. Okay, so check this out.

So this is exactly what I did. I practice what I preach. And this is exactly what I did. This is why I'm not working for somebody else still. Okay, I'm still on my own, doing really well, our margins are gigantic, okay. I'm not gonna work for anyone else the rest of my life, you know what I mean? And it's because of this. So get this. Understand this, okay. Understand this. This is what I'm trying to convey in my chapter, in my chapter of the 30 Days book.

If you guys are on iTunes, just know I'm kind of drawing this out, but I'll talk it out the same time.

If you think about this, I got health, wealth, or relationships. Those are the things that I can sell. I can sell health, wealth, or relationships. Now I know, that for me, selling wealth is one of the easiest pitches ever for me. It's more in my natural wheelhouse. Selling wealth is easier for me than selling health or relationships.

Personally, I'm just gonna tell you, it's my opinion: it's more lucrative,  it's faster money to go for something like wealth.

Man if I'm jumping ship, I'm gonna sell into wealth. Neither of the other two really interest me that much anyway as places to sell in, so I'm gonna always sell into wealth - because it's just what I naturally think about all the time.

I woke up this morning brainstorming podcast ideas, and I was like, "Oh, those are great ideas" - until I realized what I was doing. That's how I woke up. That's not abnormal...  So, selling into wealth, that's like, where I should stay. I'm in my lane, baby. So I'm gonna sell wealth.

Okay, now what areas, and what industries, promise the outcome of wealth? Internet marketing promises that. Affiliate marketing does. All sorts of internet businesses, and MLM.

And so I started listing out all these different industries that promise wealth. Who's promising wealth? And then, which one of those is wickedly broken? Which one of those has something in there that I can throw rocks at? That's a very key question.

'Cause again, it's not just the product that sells. In fact, the product is a thing that fulfills on the promises that your sales message made. Does that make sense? So, your product is the thing that fulfills on the promises that your sales message made. So, what is the message? That's really what I'm looking for...

I'm not necessarily looking for just a product idea. I call this market design - but the problem is that when I call it market design, someone thinks I'm talking about freaking logos. NO! not colors, or business cards. That's not marketing, okay. This is marketing; going in, and seeing where people's beliefs currently sit with the intent to change them to make a purchase happen. That's what marketing is. You're just changing beliefs.

I call it purple offer design now - because if I call it marketing design, people are like... "logos."

Okay, so for me, I chose to go into the MLM space. I'm gonna teach these people stuck in the 90's, how to freaking use the Internet. 'Cause no one else is doing what I'm doing over there. Which is awesome. It's totally blue ocean. So I was like, "Sweet, I'm gonna go sell into the MLM space.

What I'm really looking for, is several things that I can throw rocks at. So that I  can take a stand.

I'm not selling to somebody who's not already in MLM. 'Cause they ask stupid questions like, "Is this a pyramid scheme?" Stupid stuff like that. Like, oh my gosh, anyway. Every business is a pyramid scheme. You want to be at the freaking top, don't ya? Well that's a pyramid, okay. Everyone wants to be the boss. Anyway, stupid question, ugh, so dumb.

So I want to come out here, and I wanted to make a product and an idea, that would stem out of the current MLM space. So what I needed to go do, is I need to figure out several things with that:

I need to figure out, "Who are the die-hards for the old methods?" That's not my customer. Who are the die hards? You guys remember the episode I did, if you don't remember this, there's an episode I did talking about the three personas of the red ocean.

Well, who I don't want to sell, is the third personality type who is the die-hards. The die-hard personalities, man. I'm a ClickFunnels die hard. You can't convince me not to use ClickFunnels because for me it's a matter of identity, not price or value.

I'm not gonna go back into this, because there's a whole episode on it. Go back and listen to it, okay. It's called three personas of the red ocean.

The people I am going to sell to are the people who are still using the vehicle, but they freaking hate the vehicle. They just don't know of another option.

They still like the opportunities, they just hate how it's being done. That's a vehicle-based concern.

Right here are the people who are sold on it because of price and value, those are the ones who price shop out all these MLMs. They price shop all the vehicles that get them the outcome that they think they want. You know what I mean?

And then up here at the very, very top, these are the people who hate the vehicle. They just don't know what other vehicle exists. There's no allegiance to a company. There's no allegiance from them to a product. They're sold on the concept - that's very key. I'm not looking for somebody who's not sold on the concept already. 'Cause again, I've gotta go answer dumb questions. "Is this a pyramid scheme?"

Just look at how I'm trying to design this out: How can I write a message to capture the ones and the twos only? I don't want to try to convince the threes.

Most sales messages fail because they're trying to convince with features and benefits a die hard. They're not gonna change. Let 'em be. You're not trying to sell everyone in the red ocean, you're trying to call out a chunk of the red ocean that freaking hates what's going on there - easiest sales ever.

This is how I design it ahead of time. What can I say to these people? When I stand on the edge, and I'm like, "Your methods suck!" They're like, "I know!" That's what I want. I want them to say that back. So what's the message I can make?

So when I come back out here, and I say, does this make sense? These are the people that hate the vehicle, they hate what's being done. They're sold on the opportunity, but they hate how it's being done. They hate the vehicle that's used.

These guys are price and value shoppers, you can switch 'em by merely price and value - they are not die-hards. Anyway, there's a whole episode on that - so we're gonna keep going.

So what I wanted to do, is I wanted to start testing what messages would get people riled up, okay. "Oh crap, he's right!"  'Cause some people are just kinda sleeping there, and they're like, "I just don't know any different. "I'm gonna stay here. "I'm not willing to go look on my own. I'm just gonna stay here and swim in my red ocean filth." You know what I mean?

So,  it's a matter of me testing messages. That's all it is. Test messages. And when I test messages - that means I'm testing stories.

And so the first thing I do in my 30-day plan which you guys are gonna see...

I think I had heard, mine is the only 30-day plan, (I'm not bashing anyone else's) but it's the only one that includes publishing. No one else has it.

When I see these giants that are out there, who have killed it, and they're not publishing, I wonder how they've done it. It actually shocks me a little bit. There's no bash there, I'm just saying that's really impressive to me. I don't know how you did that without publishing. That's fascinating, especially in today's world. My plan heavily coincides with publishing...

So what you'll see in my chapter is, day number one, I'm like, well I want to test messages. So I go and do this kind of research.

Day number two I go in, and I start listing out all the stories, and the red ocean influences.

Day number three...

And then, what I'm doing, specifically, you'll see, by like day four - here are the actions that I'm doing to design the product and the marketing messages and the sales message.

But then, each day also includes what I would do on my publishing platform - which for me is podcasting. And you'll see that inside of my chapter.

When I go in, and I start saying, "Hey, check this out!"  I'm selling wealth - I'm selling MLM - so what I'm doing is I'm testing messages. I'm not gonna try and guess. This is where a lot of people botch it up. They just create the message - and then immediately try and go sell it.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that, you should try and sell it -that's one of the primary ways of testing your message. "Do you buy when I say this? Do you buy when I say this? Do you buy when I say this? What causes a reaction?  How do I get a reaction from you?"

The easiest way for me to test messages and warm up a market, (and this is literally what I did), is to publish. So the very beginning of this:

Week number one - The major goal that I have, (again, the actual detailed plan I'm not gonna write it out here) - but just from a macro level, what I'm trying to do is purple offer design. That's what I've coined it as.

If this is the red ocean, this is the blue ocean, I'm trying to be somewhere in the middle here. If I go too blue, it's risky, 'cause no one's ever done it before. If I stay red, it's risky because my only option is to compete on price.

So I like to pull in elements of red ocean and elements of blue ocean to make a purple ocean. That's what I do for people when I go and consult with them.

So I'm super excited, woo,  I'm lying to Texas on Monday to do another day of consulting.

But this is primarily what I do for people. I go in and design the actual marketing message, and design the actual offer behind it that over-delivers for the customer -  but also for the client's wallet.

You don't have to compete on price anymore when you use this strategy. This is very tested. This is a lot of stuff that I teach for the 2 Comma Club coaching. It's a lot of stuff that I teach for my own students as well.

So, purple offer design, and what I'm really doing is I am starting to podcast. And I'm podcasting with the intent, every episode is just a new story. Does that make sense?

If you guys want to see what I'm talking about, go listen to Secret MLM Hacks Radio.

If you're not into MLM, I don't care; I'm trying to show you how I designed a market for what I was selling before I sold it. This is awesome crap, guys!

When you figure that out, you're like, "Whoa!" This is not like a small feat. And the fact that I just jumped ship and just did it. Some mad cojones there, if I say so myself. Yeah, yeah! Alright, okay. However, first of all, I'm going in, and as much as I possibly can, I'm designing a purple offer. I'm designing a purple ocean.

But if it comes from my own precepts - my vision is flawed. There's no way my experiences and my vision, represent everyone in the red ocean. I don't represent all the ones and twos.

The order of operations is to follow the frameworks that I know work the best, and then toss it out there and see what sticks. Leave what sticks up there, take what doesn't down, and then try a new message.

So what I did for this podcast is, I figured out what the actual purple offer is - I figured out what the messages are, I figure out what the stories are, and then I go in, and I actually launch the podcast. I'm lacing together four stories.

So I got the first story. Second, third, fourth, right. And what I'm doing, is I'm actually dripping out the content.  I really wish I launched Sales Funnel Radio this way. It was so effective. Holy crap.

The very first episode is actually my origin story; "How did you get into this?" Which really is, all the issues I've experienced back up in here.

If you've ever experienced any issues in whatever red ocean you're pulling out of - talk about your origin story. What was it like getting into this? You're gonna paint a scene of the trials of what made it hard. 'Cause, you're gonna leave that - This is you setting up a platform, setting up an exodus.

The second story that I did, was the story where I tell people, "This is how I do that."

There's gonna be a whole bunch of false beliefs that pop out here. This is actually secret number one. The third episode that I did is actually secret number two. The fourth episode I did is actually secret number three. The fifth episode I did was a call to action.

I literally created a sideways webinar, and I dripped it out to 'em. What! Isn't that cool?

So I created a sideways webinar, and I dripped it out.  You can go check it out. The fifth episode is a call to action to go get a free download. And so what I do from that point on, is I make it a focus of mine, on week two, to interview red ocean influencers. Who are the ones and twos who are influencers in this red ocean that I can interview? Because they already have audiences. You understand? This is how I get a list so fast.

And so when I'm testing these messages - when I'm testing these stories... Does this story sell? Does this story sell?  What is it you want? Do you want this? do you want that? So a lot of what's in week two is Ask Campaigns.

...Ask Campaigns though, at the core of 'em, are primarily flawed. And you guys have heard me talk about that in the past. But these ask campaigns though, so I'll do some ask campaigns to the audience that starts listening to the show.

But I needed listeners fast - we're talking about like two weeks here. So the way to do that is, I focused on just getting whoever had a little more influence than I did. Just two levels up. And I get them on the show. It's like, "Oh, check it out, here's a red ocean influencer, "they're totally willing to be on the show, "and they have a following." Cool, here's a red ocean influencer, they're on the show, there's some freaking hustle behind this. We've got two weeks. But this is actually how I did it.

So  I'm gonna get a whole bunch of red ocean people on the show, they're gonna start following me, they're gonna start hearing my stories. 'Cause I'm just gonna keep telling stories. It's not just these four right here - I'm gonna keep telling stories. Story, story, story, story, story, story. And what I'm really doing is I'm testing which stories should be in my webinar script that's coming up in week three. Which is, what I actually did. That's what was so fun about this. This is what I actually did, okay.

So this ask campaign, I'm getting a lot of relationships with influencers. And you guys can see how I stepped it out and showed it out, and anyway.

Week three, I actually do the webinar and try and collect cash, right. For real. And I'm actually trying to sell it. Nothing's made yet though, and they know that. And when I did this for real, there's no bait-and-switch,  I told people. I was like, "Look, it's not made yet, you guys are gonna get "the early bird pricing though." Early bird pricing for coming on in at $997 - And that's my thank you for getting, guys.

I had so many people lined up to buy because of this strategy, it was ridiculous.

People were ticked when they missed the webinar. I wanted that reaction, that's good. That's good, right.

And, so in the first week, we did 37 grand. By the second week, we did, I think it was like another 11. In the first month, we did 60 grand. With no ad spend, nothing else.

But what I did, is, and this is what I talk about here too. I tell them, "ow I don't want any pressure of creating a product yet at this time. And I didn't either. I wanted proof of concept. Is my family going to eat? You know what I mean?

I left my job! This is like real for me, this is not hypothetical. I actually lived this, okay. And I knew it was ballsy, but I was like, I gotta focus on leaving ClickFunnels, I love these people. I respect them like crazy what goes on over there.

So I was like, "I've gotta leave ClickFunnels well, "I don't have time to focus, creating a product." But like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna make money? Right, you know what I mean? Like huh, it was stressful. Super stressful. So what I did is I told everybody, like, "Check it out. If you like this, and there are people just lined up to buy. People are like, as soon as I heard your podcast, I loved it, I knew exactly what you're doing, I knew what the issues were, I knew that you had the solutions for it. And I started saving for whatever it was you were gonna ask for. And I was like, "Sick." Alright, that means I'm hitting the message straight on the head.

Listening to what other people are publishing about in the red ocean, that's another great way to hijack and hack out what other people are selling their messages as.

Anyway. What I did here though, is I went in, and I started selling it, and I told people, check it out. I'm gonna launch module one in two weeks, so actually on week five. That lets me sell, that lets me do a follow-up series, that lets me do it right:

On Monday: I make the registration process. Tuesday, write the script. Wednesday, this is really what I did.

Monday, I did the registration process. This is the Monday right after I left. Tuesday I went and I wrote the script. I did not finish it, but I was doing this work.

Again, this is what I do for consulting, it takes a solid day, easily. If we're all engaged, for me to figure that stuff out with people.

Day three, I was like, well they should pay me somehow, so then I created the order page, I created the member's area.

Day four, last things I could figure out. And then, I put something in the member's area, so at least they could consume something and scratch the buyer itch, which is important. But then, day four, which was a Thursday, I launched the webinar and just did it.

Day five, replay sequence.

Day six, I went in and I started figuring out how to branch out and get more sales.

So the next week, I did it again, and I'm creating relationships with these red ocean podcasters who have audiences that they want to monetize.

And in this week, I'm starting to set up JV's. I didn't do this when I was doing it on my own. There was something else that went down with that.

If I was to go back though, that's what I would change - week four.

The first three weeks was awesome. I feel like I pulled that off real well. Week four, I would do the webinar and get, oh...

I did a lot of script rewriting, I was trying to match and feel what people actually wanted. And then, at the end of the week, when I did the webinar, I also started filming for module one, 'cause it was gonna release in week five.

And then I just released one module every week after that until it was all out, which took about six, seven weeks. Which is cool, 'cause it gave me an entire week. And I just kept doing the webinar live, every week. And then I went to twice a week, doing it live. Bam, bam, bam, bam. And I took that money that came in.

I did not pay us, we did not get paid, from my actual business for almost three months.  We were living on savings, and I was taking all of that cash that was coming in, and dumping it right back into ads. So literally my current customers were funding my future customers.

I still have never put a dollar of my own in my business, because of that reason, because of the way I launch stuff.

I just wanted to walk through this, guys, there's more to it, but I just wanted to share with you guys what I was doing, and why I was thinking what I was thinking and hopefully you guys see like why that was so cool. 'Cause it was pretty awesome if  I say so myself. It was pretty cool. That's pretty awesome.

My detailed plan, if you want to see how I left ClickFunnels. And as much as it pained me to leave - but I was so itching to do that, man.

When I was finally not employed by anybody else, I tore after it. I was just like, "Here I come, I've been waiting!" Just getting all this stuff done, getting it out the door, and it's been a bunch of fun.

So anyways. If you want to see the actual detailed step-by-step plan that I created, go to 30days.com/stephen. Alright, 30 days as in three zero, 30days.com/stephen. That's S-T-E-P-H-E-N. I think you guys are gonna enjoy.

 And if you do enjoy the chapter, please let me know. I spent a lot of time on that chapter, 'cause I wanted to be able to make sure I was documenting accurately, what I actually did - which I think makes my plan a little different. Then I glazed in, the adjustments I would make the next time as I walked through it.

I'm like, "Okay that was cool. That sucks, don't do that piece again." You know what I mean? Or, "That was great." Or, "My gosh, you can skip that whole thing." You know what I mean. It took a long time for me to write it. Because I actually documented everything as it happened - then added the adjustments along the way as well.

So, anyway. Hopefully, it's helpful to you. Please share this episode if you guys like this. And if you're like, "I want to leave my job one day..."

Someone messaged me once, and they're like, "Stephen, I left my job, just like you!" And I was like, "Oh my gosh." Like, I'm not asking you guys to leave your jobs. I only left with nothin, because I've built so many funnels. It was like a jump out of the plane, complete free-fall - only because I had built 500 parachutes in the past- a lot of funnels and a lot of offers, and put a lot of stuff together like that. I'm not telling you to go do that just so we're clear. But you could easily pull this stuff off though.

If you're like, "I don't know "if I could do that in a month." Cool, give yourself two or three. Stop watching the clock, and just execute. So you can use my 30-day plan as a checklist to get your crap off the ground, so you're not in an exposed position - that's very key.

I would not ever leave a job, I would not ever take a dive out, I would never do any of that stuff, without like, you know, get yourself a revenue source. Don't do it like I did. I'm pretty experienced on that piece of it.

Alright guys, hopefully, it's helpful to you? Again, please share it if you enjoyed this. Go to 30days.com/stephen and let me know if you guys like this.

Bye guys.

Oh yeah, wasn't that awesome!

Hey, just real quick, a few months ago Russell asked me to write a chapter for a secret project he was doing. I had to write a chapter for a book, and this was the letter I got from him. He said, "Hey Stephen, let me ask you a quick question:

"You suddenly lose all your money. Along with your name and your reputation. And only have your marketing know-how left. You have bills piled high, and people harassing you for money over the phone.

You have a guaranteed roof over your head, a phone line, an internet connection, and a ClickFunnels account for only one month. You no longer have your big guru name, your following,  or your JV partners. Other than your vast marketing experience, you're an unknown newbie.

What would you do from day one to day 30 to save yourself?  - Russell Brunson.

Hey, if you want to see my answer, and a bunch of other marketers that also answered that question in this amazing book and summit -  just go to 30days.com/stephen.

You can see the entire summit, you can see the book, and you can see what we wrote in there. All of our detailed plans. Just go to 30days.com/stephen. That's 30 as in three zero, 30days.com/stephen. S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Guys, enjoy.

Boom! What's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen and this is Sales Funnel Radio. And today you're going to hear my interview with the one and only, Mr. Russell Brunson.

Now, I've been wanting to get him on the podcast for quite some time, but I wanted to do it when I could actually promote something that he was interested in as well.

Russell is the guy that originally started teaching me offer creation, and I wanted to make sure that there was as an offer for him, but also for you guys.

What you're going to hear in this episode is behind the scenes of why he's come up with his latest book.

A lot of you probably don't even know that he has a new book?

It's not Traffic Secrets, it's not Expert Secrets, it's not Dot Com Secrets, it's another book.

It's literally 550 pages, and he had 30 gurus come in and contribute to this book.

You guys are going to hear why he set it up, where he got the inspiration from  for it. Why he rehashed the idea, and why he's gonna actually produce it for everyone now. This is really awesome.

This is obviously my favorite interview I've ever done for obvious reasons. He is my friend. He is my mentor. I look up to him like crazy, and love hanging out with him. Anyway, I am very honored, very thrilled.

Russell and I are just going to shoot the breeze for little while, and then we’re gonna dive deep into some reasons why people are NOT successful as funnel builders. We see these reasons all the time, and luckily we talk about them a lot in this episode.

You guys are going to learn from the CEO of ClickFunnels himself about what makes a funnel builder successful, and what makes them destined to not be.

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this. Let's cut to the intro and we'll get straight on to the interview.

Guys, thanks so much and if you enjoy this, please go thank Russell.

THE RUSSELL BRUNSON INTERVIEW:

Stephen Larsen:     What's up, guys? Hey, I am excited. You guys obviously see the video right here, and you see who I have on. I'm very, very excited about it, though.

I am, uh ... Frankly, I've had a hard time coming up with words to describe how I feel about this interview. I've been wanting to do this for a very, very long time, and, um, obviously ... It's Russell Brunson. He's the man. He's the CEO of Click Funnels obviously.

He has gone from icon of mine, to boss, to mentor, to friend, and I'd say brother now, and, uh, love him like crazy.

(Turns to Russell) Just really thank you for taking the time to be on here. So, obviously, just welcome to the show. Thanks for being on Sales Funnel Radio.

Russell Brunson:    Yeah, man. This is an honor. I was hoping you were gonna ask me eventually. I'm like, “Gosh, this is only funnel show I've never been on!" Anyway, I'm just kidding. I'm super excited and proud of you man.

It's funny 'cause I think the event that we first met at was where I was like, "Everybody's needs to be publishing! Everyone needs to do a podcast.”

And you were like, "NO!" And then you went and did what most people don't do. You did the thing that you knew you needed to do but didn't want to do. You just did it, and now it's been like …Yeah, that's such a good lesson there for everyone.

But that was the first day we met, it was probably the day or the day after that.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    And now look ...Fast forward two or three years later... it's amazing what you've accomplished, and where you've come. It's awesome.

Stephen Larsen:     I appreciate that thank you.  A week later I was sitting next to you, working there, and I was like, "I don't want to publish. I'm not going to publish." And you're, like ... taking your phone, "What's up everyone? It's Russell Brunson." And, you know, then you're on your podcast, "What's up? I'm Russell Brunson." On your blog, "What's up? It's Russell Brunson."

And I was like, "There's something to this." And I tried ... I don't think I am ... Hopefully I am, but I am trying to be your best student. I really appreciate it.

Hey, I just ... I wanted to ask a few questions. It really means a lot that you're here ... You're changing the world. You're changing people's lives. You changed my life; my family, my immediate family. And now my extended family are all soaking up your stuff.

We have our own little groups. They're like, "This guy's amazing. Who is he?" I was like, "I know. I told you I wasn't crazy." You know? Like, "Listen to him! He's awesome!"

Anyway, ClickFunnels has grown. When I first got there it was at like fifteen thousand members, and I left when it was about sixty-five-ish.

It's been interesting to watch how the audience has grown. Both in terms of being funnel builders and marketing skills.

What do you say for the audience as a whole, the ClickFunnels' audience? Because, guys, if you're listening to me and you don't know about Russell and ClickFunnels ... I think you're a liar.

Every episode I talk about Russell and ClickFunnels ...

What would you say is like the recurring holes that people keep missing? What would make them successful if they just did that one thing?

Russell Brunson:    Yeah, ... it's funny, 'cause ... And I almost feel like this has been part of my mission, 'cause I remember when I got started ... It's almost 15 years now ...  

I started learning this stuff. And I'm reading these books from these dudes who are all dead now, and I'm like, "What? What?" Like, “Freaking, right?”

I'm learning all this stuff, and I'm like, "This is the most amazing thing ever." And I’d go to all these conferences and these events. I show up and everyone's got a suit and tie, and they're all business-y and they're like boring as can be.

People are on stage talking about direct mail ... These things that are super exciting, and they talk about it. But they're so boring. Everyone's so boring. But I was excited by it.

So I'm listening to these boring people thinking, "Why is nobody freaking out here? This is so exciting." Like I can see the vision of it. And it was weird.

So, I had to go to all these events, and study from all these people that ... They were just like more traditional business people that didn't realize what they had.

I was learning it, and spitting it back out trying to like share it with everybody. And it's funny, if you read my books, and obviously you They're not like, "Here's the philosophy of Russell.” ...

It's like, “Okay, I learned a bunch of a lot of people. Let me show you. I learned this from this guy, and this guy,” and like I'm telling everybody all this stuff.

I feel like my job is just to make marketing exciting, because it is. Like it’s the most exciting topic on planet Earth. But when I came into this game it wasn't. The energy wasn't there. The excitement wasn't there.

And I think the biggest gap that people are missing is that they don't understand that the key to success is not in, "What's my product? I'm selling an iPhone. Or I'm selling Rhino Rush."  They think, “This is the key to business," and it's not. The product has nothing to do anything.

The only thing that matters is having a deep obsession with the marketing of the thing.

The people that are successful are the ones who become obsessed with the marketing - that's it. It's not  becoming that's the best product, da da da and all those kind of things. It’s those who actually fall in love with what we're talking about. Like what me and you geek out on all the time.

Like that's ... That's the biggest thing.

I told you the story earlier today, but I was talking to Garrett White and he was telling me ... He's like, "Yeah, I had my mom sign up for ClickFunnels account.”

Because Garrett obviously, you know, he's 2 Comma Club and 2 Comma Club X. His wife hit 2 Comma Club - they're doing it. So, people in his family are, like, "What are you doing?"

So, he said his mom ... She created a ClickFunnels account, and she used it for a couple days. And she messaged like, "ClickFunnels is hard." He's like, "Mom, you're wrong. It's not hard. You're just stupid."

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    I was like,"You told your mom, that?" He was like, "Yeah, she's dumb. She doesn't know it, but she's dumb.” She's looking at from like, “How do I use this software platform?” And not understanding that it's the marketing.

ClickFunnels is just the thing that you put pages ... Like, it's not that complicated, but it’s the obsession with the marketing that makes the engine run, right?  It's coming back the core fundamentals.

You are and I are working on a secret project and nobody knows about yet...

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    But a hint of it is,  ... It's this challenge where the goal is to take the fundamentals of direct response marketing and make it exciting and fun - and then pound it in people's heads over, and over, and over, and over again.

Because mastering the fundamentals will do more for you than learning how to use ClickFunnels.

Master the fundamentals; understand hooks, story, offer, epiphany bridge - all these things that we keep talking about - and try to make exciting for everybody. You master those, everything else becomes super easy. It's not difficult on the backside.

It's those core fundamentals of direct response marketing that people don't understand. If we can make that exciting, and light it up for people, then everything else becomes really, really easy. Right?

And when you get fundamentals, then okay, go slap some pages together and sell stuff. But that's what people are missing... The geeking out on the marketing part of it. 'Cause when you understand that...

I can plug any business into this now, it's not difficult.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah. You know, it's so funny, because I was like ... Someone's like, "Well, how do I make the page look? How 'bout this?" "It's not about the page!" ClickFunnels facilitates the page, but you're missing the whole point!

Anyway, you touched on something that I want, I've always wanted to ask you.

Russell Brunson:    Mm-hmm

Stephen Larsen:     Because this was like, uh ... I don't know how else to describe it, man. When I was first learning this stuff, right? And I'm laying there with my M16, and I'm reading "Dot Com Secrets."

I'm laying there, and I'm like, "This is amazing!" And I would l hide whenever someone would come around. 'Cause ... it was a training environment.

I was, "This is ridiculous." And I wouldn't shut up about it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, like, I've been looking and I finally feel like I'm finding the answers for why stuff has or has not worked.”

You just did a podcast episode about this; it was lonely. It was crazy lonely. And when I finally got to your Funnel Hacking live 2016, and I met you, and I met all these people.

It was the first time I totally felt like comfortable, you know, at home. How'd you deal with that before there was a Funnel Hacking live event for you to go to?

Russell Brunson:    (laughing) It's hard ... um ... I made a lot of bad decisions because of that feeling. I hired a lot of people who were friends who asked me a question about what I was doing. Like, "You care? ... um ... Do you want a job?"

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah, “You care?”

Russell Brunson:    Sure, and I hired everybody I knew. But that was a really bad decision. I've learned since then.

No, but I, I, totally get that I understand. It is super lonely - especially the beginning, right?

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    If you have success it's easier to get in the groups and connect with people. But initially, it's like, nobody cares, and nobody believes in you. The people you love the most don't believe. That's the hardest thing I think. It's just...

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    Man! Like, they believe in you, but they don't believe so much in the thing you’re doing, right?

Stephen Larsen:     Right.

Russell Brunson:    And you're trying convince them, "No, this is the thing." And they're like, "Are you sure? Because I'd love you to get a job, or I'd love for you to go to school." Or, you know, whatever the thing is. But it's, it's definitely it was lonely and painful.

I would go to these marketing events, back in the day, and try to connect to people, and I found friends there.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    But yeah, it was different because for most people it was their business, right? Like, "We're direct response marketers."

It's kind of like ...

There's another event that happened shortly after ours, I won't say the name of it, but there's two different letters that talk about what it is, right?

It's a great event, but the people that they attract the event are like the people in the company who do the traffic, they do the conversion and these things. That's their day job, and they go there in suits and ties and they're working on these things.

The people like us, who were like, "I am so tired and so annoyed that to go to bed, because I'm so excited about this thing, and it wasn't the fact, like, everything's fuzzy and I can't see the screen, I would just keep going. But I can't." Right?

The people who are obsessed like us - it took me a long time ... In fact, it was hard to find those kind of people.

I found pockets of them every once in a while, and I started become friends with them. That was my first kind of peer group. But it wasn't a lot of it.

As we launched ClickFunnels four years ago, we we're kind of creating this atmosphere ...  and I was like, “I want one of those to be a young hip exciting, fun thing where it's, like, we can, we can do that, right?” And the cool thing about ClickFunnels is the fact that we can ...

Like, before it was hard, 'cause like I'd geek out on something and I'd get the programmers, and then they'd be like, "Okay, I'll see you in a couple days." And you're like, "Arrgh !What do I do now?"

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    Well, now we can go in there and affect change, and it feels so good to be the one that like, “Oh, I’m going to put a logo there. Oh, I just moved it. Oh, it's back.” You know?

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    You can actually do that now.  But to start with, it was lonely for me, and so like I said ... I think part of the reason why the company was built the way it was, was because I was trying to build a platform for me and people I knew who were like me.

People who were, like, "I need to connect. I need to plug into other people, because, um" ... I don't know, there's something about 'em.”

And you can sit down and have a similar language pattern to other people, and...

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    Talk, and they get it instantly. It's just like, “Yeah!”

I remember the first time I met a couple people that were doing what I was doing, and I ... I remember telling my wife that I'm like, like...

Stephen Larsen:     “I found people.” (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    “I said stuff, and they were excited about it, too. Like, this is the coolest thing in the world,” you know?

Stephen Larsen:     “I'm not alone.”

What I love so much is that you have the Facebook group for ClickFunnels open. So, it's this safe haven for people who don't really know what it is yet, but like frankly need a home. And I love that.

So ... I asked, “What are the holes that these funnel builders often don't see?”

One of the biggest holes, obviously, you said “learning marketing.” How can somebody shortcut the learning of marketing? Cause it’s not like it’s a small topic. I certainly didn't learn it my “marketing degree.” (laughing) You know! It's not easy info to find.

Russell Brunson:    Yeah. Well, I think about how I learned marketing. Like, there's more stuff nowadays, right?

We're publishing and other people are publishing. When I got started, there wasn't podcasts, there wasn't Facebook lives. ... Sorry, I just lost my train of thought. Somebody texted me right when we were talking.

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing) It's good.

Russell Brunson:    My phone is turned over. So ... Sorry, my train of thought, I totally just lost it.

Stephen Larsen:     That's okay. Like, short-coding marketing. Like, how do I condense that?

Russell Brunson:    I apologize.

There weren't a lot of things you could learn it from initially. So the way I learned it is I picked four or five people I knew were doing good stuff. I was watching 'em. So, I would go and I would start just watching what they were doing. Like, intimately watching, right?

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    I think that's what most people miss ... They go and they see the email, and they go, "Oh!" They go and they buy the thing. They buy the course. They're going to the course. Then all the sudden it's just like, “You missed it.”

Like, did you even notice:

• Did you watch all the emails that came out prior to that?
• Did you watch the other people?
• Did you watch how they contacted JV partners?
• Did you watch how the Facebook ads started showing up?
• Did you notice, "Wow. Why is there an ad?
• Why is he talking about this thing where there's no, there's no call to action? Why would he do that?”
• Four or five of these different videos that came out and had nothing to do with anything.
• Then you see this thing, and there's some momentum, and stuff happens.
• Then people buy it.
• Then after they buy it, did you notice the second email sequence were they sold the secondary thing."Oh my gosh, like, nobody even saw it."
• They did the launch, but the money came from the secondary internal launch that happened to the existing buyers.

For me, it's like... I bought everything, but I rarely consumed the products. I was just buying to see the stuff. And I think you're similar-

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah. (laughing) I buy too much crap, man. I don't even go through half of it.

Russell Brunson:    It was probably like a month after you left as an employee, and you were in your home I was watching ... (Before your Instagram, though)...

Maybe it was Facebook live or something, you were like, "Oh my gosh, you guys! I just went through, like, every webinar that Russell's ever done. Check this out. Check this out."

You have on the floor.... It was like all the registration pages, then all the emails printed out. You were like, "Every time ... Email number one he talks about this. Then, email number two always goes to this. And email number three ..." And you're just, like,” find the patterns,” and like seeing all the things. And you're like “I downloaded the webinar. I listened to it, like, thirty times. I've got all your webinars. I’ve listened back-to-back-to-back  just to listen to your pitch over and over again."

And it makes me laugh, 'cause I guarantee you probably ... (I mean you probably did, but ... ) You didn't have to go through the course. I mean the value was going through the process of the course

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah!

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah, that's the funnel itself!

Russell Brunson:    I got a certified letter from somebody today, who, uh ... It must have been somebody old, because they were asking for a refund for, like, a thirty dollar product. And so they sent me a certified letter, because that was easier than contacting customer support. But, as I'm reading this thing, I was laughing, because they missed it.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson They came to my thing to buy a book to teach to them marketing, and then they're asking for a refund for this free book. And they missed the whole point of the exercise.

It blows my mind when people come and they want to learn funnels from me, and I'm like, "Oh, go get my book." And, then they're like, "What part of Amazon?" 'Cause they don't wanna get stuck in a funnel. I’m like, “IDIOT!”

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah, like, “You idiot! What are you doing?”

Russell Brunson:    You'll learn more from buying. Buy slowly. Take screenshots like I do, like you do.

That’s the fastest way to learn marketing - to observe it, to watch it, and to respect it. Don't be annoyed, like, "Oh, they sent out three emails this week." Like, “Why they'd send out three emails this week?”

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah, what'd say?

Russell Brunson:    

• What is the purpose?
• What was the strategy?
• What were they doing?
• Did it work?
• Did it not work?
• Did I open it?
• Did I not open it?
• What was feeling I felt I read this email?
• What was the feeling?
• Am I paying attention to that?

Because that's how I figured a lot of this stuff ... I was just paying attention to what people were doing, and, like, what affected me and what didn't.

There's a couple marketers who I think write really good emails. Every time I'm, like, doing an email, I'll go back old email account from like the 1990s, right, or whatever it was.

Stephen Larsen: Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    Whatever, the old email address I have. But I was subscribed to everybody back then. And, I'll go in there ...  

A lot of them aren't even still around, but I searched for their names, and, like, I'll see all the emails from that person.

I just read the subject lines, and I look at which ones were clicked, back in the day. I didn't click on all of them, but I clicked on some of them. You can see which ones have been opened and not opened in Gmail.

And I was like, “Okay, why did I click on that one? Why'd I click on that one? There's something that caused me to click on it, and the other ones didn't for some reasons. What was the reason?”

Go back to your old email, and just scan through, scroll through like 8000 pages in Gmail look at which ones you clicked, and then ask yourself, "Why did I click on that?"  Those are the things that help you to learn marketing.

Stephen Larsen:   I did that to yours the other day. I went in and searched ... I do that many, many times. "Russell Brunson." It shows me all your emails. I just start reading through them. I was, like, “That was awesome. Oh, my gosh. This is crazy cool. Like, that's super cool.”

Russell Brunson:    (laughing)

Stephen Larsen:     So, I wanted to ask... You got you got your book, “30 Days,” right? And, I'm super excited about it.

Having marketers come in and teach what it is they actually did, and, and watching you selling the thing. Like, it’s such an awesome education.

Everyone, I want you to know right now, I'm not bagging against education or whatever, but it is better than my marketing degree - and I got a 3.8 baby, all right?

I did really, really well, and I don't use any of it. Right? None of it. Everything’s from Russell,EVERYTHING.

I got in fights over what Russell was saying with some of my marketing professors. Right? Because I knew what he was saying was real and true.

I know the story, but just for people listening, where'd you get the idea for the 30 day book?

Russell Brunson:    Oh yeah ... I think have it right here in front of me. I may or may not? Let me check.

Stephen Larsen:     Oh is it…?

Russell Brunson:    It's somewhere ... Anyway, uh ...

Melanie (Russell’s Assistant):     Hey, is it …?

Russell Brunson:    Well, I'll tell the story even if I can't find it.

Back in the day, when I first got started this game, and I was looking for how to get started online? I was in college. I was at Boise State, and this kid came out with something, and I can say his name, because ... So-

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    Do you want the full story, or the part story? The full story's really good.

Stephen Larsen:   What’s gonna sell the book?

Russell Brunson:    I'll tell you the whole thing.

So, what happened. So, this guy named Joe Kumar. He's an 18-year-old kid, and he had this idea. It was called, back in the day, "30 Days to Internet Marketing Success." So, this is not a unique idea to me.

In fact, I hope that some of you guys clone this idea in whatever market you’re in because it's brilliant. Like, don't do my markets, because I will crush you.

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    But, like, any other market, like, "30 Days to Dental Success." You should do that if you’re a dentist guru, right? "30 Days to Weight Loss Success," or like or, "30, like, whatever.” It's the model, right? But he did this thing, and he emailed a whole bunch of these “big name gurus” the times. He's like:

"Hey, if you were to lose everything, lose your email list, your customers, your ... your name, your following, and all you had left was internet access and your marketing know how, and you had bill collectors on the phone trying to call you, you have 30 days to get back on top what would you do?"

And he got, like, I think he had sixty people who each wrote a chapter. Like, "Day one: I'd do this. Day two, day three, day four." Like a whole 30 day plan.

When I saw that. sitting in my Boise State computer lab, I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Like,, this, this is the key." And I'd been ... I'd been trying a year, year-and-a-half to figure stuff out.

Stephen Larsen:     Right.

Russell Brunson:    And, uh.

Stephen Larsen:     What were you building at that time? What business were you on?

Russell Brunson:    I don't think I even knew. I was ... Yeah, I didn't have anything yet. I was ... I was trying to stuff, but I didn't have anything back then. Maybe a couple affiliate things?

Stephen Larsen:     You're saying that it took you a year-and-a-half, and you still hadn't figured it out yet? What?!!?

Russell Brunson:    We didn’t have ClickFunnels back then ;-)

Stephen Larsen:     (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    Yeah, so, I remember reading the sales letter 10x, and I was like, "I have to buy it." It was a $97 ebook. I'm like, "Urrgh."

Stephen Larsen:     Right.

Russell Brunson:    "Hundred bucks for an ebook!" But I was like, "I have to have this." And so, I bought it.

My wife and I were celebrating one year anniversary, and my parents, because I didn't have money at the time, invited us to go to Hawaii with them. And so I was like, “Cool.” So, I was going to Hawaii.

So, I printed them out. It would have been like 60 of these things. It would have been, like, six, seven hundred pages.

So, instead I printed out eight to a page. And I had them spiral bound, (and that's what I was looking for. You know, I had it here somewhere, but anyway.)

Stephen Larsen:     Oh, yeah. I've seen that. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Russell Brunson:    Eight pages to a page, but it's two of these spiral-bound manuals.

And so I got on the plan, and from Boise all the way to Hawaii, I'm reading each of these little mini pages. And, I'm like, "What?"

When I read the first one, and it's this person's 30 day plan of how they'd get back on top. And was like, "Oh my gosh, that's brilliant." Then onto the next person's, then the next person's ...

And everybody's was different, right, but the core concepts of all of them were the same.

They all had their own little angle, and their twist, but what it all came down to was:

"I would create something amazing. I'd then send the sales letter to sell that amazing thing, and I would drive traffic to the sales letter."

I was like, "Oh, my gosh." I haven't had any success yet, because I don't:

1. Have a product.
2. Have a sales letter.
3. Driving Traffic.

I'm like, “That's all this businesses is, like, three things.” And I was, like, I need to:

• Sell the product.

• Drive traffic.

I saw the pattern after seeing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over ...

And everybody had a different traffic strategy, and everybody had a different strategy on how to create the product, how they would sell it ... Some were teleseminars. Some were, you know, pre webinars.

Everyone had their own different mechanisms to do it. But, when I saw the pattern 60 times in a row I was, like, "I know what to do now." And then I went back, and after that's when I created my ... my first product which is Zip Brander. It's a software product.

Stephen Larsen:     Oh, that's when Zip Brander came up? Really?

Russell Brunson:    Yes! The Brander

Stephen Larsen:     I was gonna ask you what happened after this. Okay, okay.

Russell Brunson:    Yeah, so I had the product created, and then I wrote a sales letter, and then I drove traffic, and that was it. That book was the thing that gave me the initial, like, the turn of, like, "I get it."

So, that was twelve years ago.

Fast-forward, like, three months later: Joe Kumar decided to sell, um ... Basically, for $500 you got the rights to his book, and you can sell it as many times as you want. I was like, "What?"

I literally had no $500. I went out and I earned the money, bought the rights from him.

He was only to sell to ten people, and I was like, "This is my future. It's gonna be me." So, I bought the rights from him.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    For 500 bucks. Me, and he said, “Ten people.” But he ended up selling to probably over 1000 people, and it was a big deal. Everyone's like...

Stephen Larsen:     THAT MARKETER.

Russell Brunson:    Yeah, it was a big deal, and he got in trouble, and ... Anyway, he ended up fleeing his country, and the feds came trying to arrest him, and and he disappeared.

The last email he sent to his list, crazy enough, was, “You all read everybody else's plans, if you want my 30 day plan, scan your passport, and your something and fax it to me, and ..."

And we're like, "What?” Because he was fleeing the government. Anyways, crazy story, crazy, and he disappeared off the face of the earth.

Now fast-forward, 13, 14 years later:

My whole goal, right now, (and I did a podcast about this) ... The only thing I, like, my whole focus everyday is, "How do I simplify this process, so that more people can be successful? How do I simplify the process? How do I simplify the process?"

All your best ideas will come from you trying to figure out simplify the process for your customers, right?

So, I'm thinking through, and then I was, like, "What was the thing that got me to have success?" And all the sudden I was, like, "Dude, it was the 30 day plans." I was, like, "We should do the same thing." And 30days.com, I went and bought the domain name.

Then I was like, "Let's go out to people we know in our community who've done this, and have them each contributor chapter." And we did that.

Now have a 550 page physical book that has everyone's 30 plans. It's insanely cool. It's exciting! And you are one of the plans in there - which I'm excited for everyone to see!

Stephen Larsen:     Oh, man. It's so good! If I say so, myself.

Russell Brunson:    That's the backstory on how 30 Days came about.

Stephen Larsen:     I appreciate that. I remember when you had the idea for it.

It came as all great ideas do come to you. We're all sitting there, we're working. Then you go, "Dude!" ...

Russell Brunson:    Woo!

Stephen Larsen:     ….And everyone stands up and runs to the whiteboard (laughing) barefoot. And I was like, "That's crazy."

I want you to know I was watching what you were doing, and I took a page from that lesson. And that's literally I how I created Affiliate Outrage.

I went and I crowd created it after watching you do that. And it works everybody, so you know. It's like crazy easy to crowd create great products that are super valuable.

Um ... Well, hey, thanks so much for your time, man. I know that you're super busy.  I want to keep geeking out, but I think Melanie's gonna yell at me. Sorry, Melanie, Bruno. I think I'm going over.

Russell:              She said, "You got one more question, if you want it."

Stephen Larsen:     Oh, cool. (laughing) Hey, so after ...

I wanted to ask…

So you go through, and your reading all these plans, right? And I'm hoping this is what my audience does, and that's why I wanted to ask you about this.  I hope everyone goes and gets it...

If someone's reading through all these plans ... There's obviously a lot of stuff, you know?

This is not a small book, but ... I mean, they're literally being handed the keys to the kingdom to go crush this. What would you suggest somebody does as they're reading this?

• Should they follow one person's plan?
• Should they literally do it in 30 days?

You know what I mean? How should they proceed after that?

Russell Brunson: Yeah, everyone learns differently.

Stephen Larsen:     Sure.

Russell Brunson:    What gets a lot of entrepreneurs stuck, and um ... I could share names that you, personally, (but I won't on a podcast)... of people that come through our world that have struggled is, like ...

They try to follow things to a "T."  Everything is like, “Uhhh? Uhhh?” And then someone says something, and they're like, " Uhhh? But how do I implement that to my thing?" They get so stuck on trying to figure things out, or try doing everything that they never get anything done.

I think the best thing for them to do is to get the book and try to read through it. No ... I mean, it might be hard to read through it all. I mean, it's literally a 550 page book. It's like ... It's insanely cool.

So pick the people that resonate with you. Some are talking about eCommerce. Some are internet and networking. Just find the ones that resonate with you. Read five, ten, fifteen of them. Read 'em through, and just get the flow. Because like it was for me, it was  basically seeing the pattern of, like, "Oh, I understand it."

So, after you get that, then just come back and say, "Okay, now I gotta figure out for my business ... And I can't do what everybody did-"

Stephen Larsen:     Right.

Russell Brunson:    So find out from all people, which one resonates best with me.

What I'm really good at doing is; I learned a lot of stuff from a lot of places, but a lot of things when they come to me, I'm not like, "Okay, how do I implement everything?" Because if you do that, like, you get overwhelmed, nothing will happen.

Just be like, “Oh, that's awesome, but I'm not ready for that yet. So, let me store it right here.”

If you know you don't have a product yet, you should just be consuming everything on how to create a product, and then do that.

Like “Cool! Storing it, storing it, storing it, storing it ... This is what I need now. Okay, now I'm ready for the next phase. Okay, I'm gonna grab these things.”

So when you get to the part where you're ready for traffic, go back and remember people's 30 days plan, like, “Okay Garrett talked about this, and Stephen talked about this ... Now I'm ready to start doing traffic,” and you start taking all those things off the shelf.

School teaches you to memorize everything and regurgitate it.

Stephen Larsen:     Urrrrgh.

Russell Brunson:    I don't think that’s the right method. Right? The method for entrepreneurs is to take all this information and understand, like, “Where does it fit in the picture? And cool. Well, I'm at this phase right now. So, I'm going to just place these here, and leave them there, and then we'll come back to them. But I gotta focus everything on the next the next piece of this puzzle, right? The next step. I think that's the biggest thing.

We have people in the 2 Comma Club Coaching, right now, who were trying to figure out Facebook ads, and they haven't figured out a product yet.

Stephen Larsen:     I know! Right? It doesn't make sense!

Russell Brunson:    You don't have an offer! You don't need to master ads yet. Master your offer first!

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    And I guess what people miss is just they're trying to learn it all at once.

Just don't try to learn it all at once. That's not going to serve you at all.

Stephen Larsen:     I still do not drive ads. I don't want to learn that. (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    Exactly.

Stephen Larsen:     Okay, that makes total sense.  So, you gonna do a deep dive with it. Go in and just figure out what you want, and table the rest of it. Totally makes sense.

Russell Brunson:    And then…. Can I ruin this for everybody?

Stephen Larsen:     Ruin it!

Russell Brunson:    Our surprise?

Stephen Larsen:     Do it!

Russell Brunson:    So, this is the surprise:

Stephen and I have been in the laboratory, working behind the scenes. So, what we're gonna be doing is, um ...

Well, you guys will see the funnel. Stephen hasn't seen the whole funnel. He's seen a little glimpse of it, but ... What he has coming ...

You'll actually be able to get everybody's 30 day plans initially for free. So, it's free. FREE. Like, just, you're going to go and you're going to get 'em, and I'm gonna be pumped for you, because you're going to have them ... I want to make the barrier entry, like, “You just show up and we'll give you the stuff.”

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    But then, the physical book, the 550 page physical book.  We're also gonna ship that you for free in exchange for you joining a challenge.

We're going to be doing a 30 Day Challenge, where Stephen and I will be tag teaming “the crap kicking out of you,” to make sure you actually implement the 30 days.

So, I would say is go through this thing. Geek out. Listen to everybody's thing and then sign up. It's a hundred bucks. Which is like the cheapest thing on planet earth.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    Literally a hundred bucks is not going to me. Whoever referred you to the thing gets a hundred bucks.

So, I make zero dollars and zero cents from you being part of this challenge.

The only thing it does is it gets me the ability to yell at you and Stephen yell you, to make sure you're successful and teach you the fundamentals and pound them through your mind.

So, that way you can actually implement your own 30 day plan.

So, I would say go to this ... Go to the virtual summit. Geek out. Listen to everything. Consume it all. Do your big immersion, and then our live thing will be starting 30 days later, and then just get prepared.

Show that up to that 30 day thing, with, like, all these ideas in your head, and we're gonna be going step one, step two, step three, and counting the fundamentals.

And after 30 days of that process you will have everything in place for your funnel. So, it's gonna be amazing.

Stephen Larsen:     Oh, my gosh! And don't get sensitive people when I tell you that you're wrong. (laughing) Just be teachable. Be coachable.

Russell Brunson:    I always joke that I'm kind of the coach that has a carrot in front of you, like, "Come over here, guys. It's awesome. Come over here." And you're the coach, from behind, with the stick, like, whacking them, like, "Come on!"

Stephen Larsen:     "Go! What do you want in life?" (laughing)

Russell Brunson:    So, you got someone pushing you and someone pulling. It's amazing! I think the combo of us tag teaming people is going to be exciting.

I'm just pumped, because it's gonna give people the accountability I think they need sometimes to move through things, and just get something out there and done.

Stephen Larsen:     Yeah.

Russell Brunson:    You can learn the whole process once. And after you learn it once it's easy to do it over, and over, and over again.

Stephen Larsen:     Totally! Same process. Which is the fun magic of it.

Hey, there's a, there's a quote I've got on my wall, reminds me of you like crazy,  it's by Ray Kurzweil ...

Just so everyone knows, I have an actual wall where I put quotes. I used to do it growing up.  It’s my actual wall ... and not like a Facebook wall … On that wall, I have written:

"The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work."

And man, your superpower is just that. It is ridiculous!

It's taking in all this stuff, and just spewing it out in this way where it's like, "Oh." Like, guru coming off the mountain with the two tablets, "Here they are." You know, like, "Wow! That's it! That's it! That's what I need."

I really appreciate what you're doing, man. Changing the world! I'd do anything for you. Love ya, and uh, thanks so much for taking the time.

Russell Brunson:    No worries, man. Super proud of you. I love what you're doing. You have a huge impact on people's lives. And the impact's gonna keep growing ... Anyway, I appreciate you. You're amazing. And your audience is lucky to have you all the time. So hope they all know that.

Stephen Larsen:     Thanks man. Appreciate it.

Boom! Keep Crushing It!

How would you go from ZERO To Hero In 30 Days with nothing more than a ClickFunnels account and the knowledge you currently have?

Find out how I would do it at 30days.com/stephen

Boom, what's up guys, this is Steve Larsen.

Today we are gonna talk about recycling stories.

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 guys, thanks so much for tuning into to Sales Funnel Radio.  I was on stage a little while ago, and I was teaching, and there was one question that comes up every single time when I'm teaching script building, when I'm teaching any kind of story-telling, anything like that.

One of the things that always comes across is, "Stephen I don't know what stories to tell that will break someone's belief patterns and make them want to cause a purchase to happen?".

And I say, "Okay cool cool cool, that makes total sense everyone goes through that first of all. So if you're feeling that, don't worry about that."

Second of all though, what you gotta understand is you don't always need to come up with new stories, right?

So this episode is called Recycling Stories because what I want to do is share with you guys how I do that. So what better way to actually teach you to do that than show you actually me doing that. Does that make sense?

So what I did is, a little while ago I actually decided, this is something I've never done before in front of a live group. I've done a lot of funnel building but live script building!

Guys script writing is hard. Just know that it's one of the hardest parts of funnel building overall.

Putting the pages together, that's some easy stuff man. That's easy stuff. You drag and drop, you're done. Script writing though, that's not easy. And so what I wanted to is...

I thought how cool would it be if I actually went and built a script live in front of an audience, and it made me a little bit nervous - I'm not gonna lie -because it's not an easy thing to do.

We'll spend days coming up with one headline, you know what I mean? And so to write a whole script, not just the headline? That was really challenging for me to do that. It was a lot of fun though.

It took me 12 hours. It was in front of an audience of about 75 people, and I built an entire webinar script from top to bottom. The whole thing, top to bottom. And what I was trying to teach them and share with them in this part, I just ripped it out, and I'm gonna share with you guys here.

I'm building the actual webinar slides live. I recorded my screen doing so and walking through and talking through each slide. So that's actually what we're gonna cut over to in here in just a moment.

But what I want you to understand, see and notice is that for a lot of what I'm doing for that webinar - this is for my product - it's called My Funnel Stash...

"Oh crap, wait just a second. Eh, there we go!" (Stephen goes to get something - he comes back with a fake mustache and some red and green sunglasses - He puts them on and continues to talk).

...I'm doing it for a product called "My Funnel Stash." It's a play on words. It's all the funnels that I've been building, and that I built over at ClickFunnels.

It's gonna sound a little conceited, kay? But no one really else is gonna have the opportunity to sit next to someone brilliant like Russell Brunson and learn right at the feet of a master for that amount of time.

When I left, one of the things that Clickfunnels did which is brilliant, is Russell was like, well I don't always wanna be just the one funnel builder, so they created an internal agency.

I don't know that ever anyone else ever is gonna have the opportunity to do the kind of thing I did. For that reason I feel a little bit of a mantel to share with you guys some of the things that I was doing over there.

Please note, that's one of the reason why I talk so much about Russell Brunson is because I feel a little bit of a responsibility to share with you some of the things that made funnel building successful. And why someone like me, I was building funnels ahead of that time, but the finer points of it that made it actually work and stick.

This is super cheesy I know, but I actually sent out Clickfunnels colored glasses and a funnel stache, stash with the actual stash of funnels that I used to build 500 funnels next to the guy.

What was interesting about this, after doing the amount of funnel builds that I did at Clickfunnels, I need you to know and hear me now: "Funnel building success has very little to do with the pages, okay?"

You can have a funnel that is limping along on one leg and be totally fine, very successful. Completely fine.

Now please go in and make your funnel tweaks, make them good, but if your funnel is only working because of little tiny tips and tricks inside the funnel, then your offer sucks. Right? Your script is terrible. That's just the fact. Take it from a guy who's made a lot of them. Understand what I'm saying here.

So what I need you to get, this is a longer episode, but I'm trying to share with you guys how I'm recycling my origin story in different products, and how that's totally okay to do.

Scriptwriting, that's really where the rubber meets the road. Before Clickfunnels existed, that was the always the most expensive part of building a funnel with a traditional team - because copy is what does the selling.

I can feel my stache starting to fall over here. I'm getting animated, it's like sweating. Anyway, so guys this a little bit of a longer episode, but we're gonna cut over to a segment that I've chopped out where you're gonna see me recycle the same story for different things, and that's totally fine.

My origin story is still my origin story. So if I'm gonna go sell a product over here, or sell product over there, or sell product over there - those are different products, but I still have the same origin story. I can't change my background.

So how do I recycle my story in a way that fits the other things that I'm selling without making it obvious? And so that's what I'm doing. I'm actually script building. I'm live script building, and I'm taking from a lot of other webinars that I've built to go in and rip out different things and elements to fill out the requirements to make a good origin story.

So again, what is that?

Let's wait again, one more moment. (Stephen goes to grab something)

Okay, a lot of chopping in this one. Sorry. I went and grabbed my copy of Expert Secrets. Anyway this one script inside of your origin story is incredibly powerful. And I know this is gonna be a long episode, but just bear with me.

If you guys a listening on iTunes, if you're listening on the podcast, that's awesome, just know that I'm gonna cut over, and you can still listen, but I'm gonna cut over and literally share my screen as I build out the intro section to my webinar script.

This script did 30 grand in the first week with no ads spend and just a few mentions. Isn't that awesome? That's crazy cool. How did I do that? A lot of it has to do with the script. A lot of it has to do with the way that I pre-framed it and how I built the pressure ahead of time.

You guys are like, "Stephen I can't you serious with this thing on." And honestly, I can't either! I'm trying not to look at the screen over here because I look like a freakin' goofball.

Anyway, check this out. Check this out.

The epiphany bridge script, you guys are gonna watch me us the epiphany bridge script in the wall I tell my origin story.

This is what sets the pace, this is what sets the foundation in the buyers minds so that when you tell the three stories, of secret one, two, three, they're actually in a state to receive them. And this is why it's so important, so powerful. Don't jack up your origin story.

So what I thought, how cool would it be if I rip out and just share with you guys. So it's gonna be like 20, it's like 30 minutes, okay? It's like 30 minutes, but you're gonna hear me explain each slide.

You're gonna watch me explain each one of the steps going through the actual epiphany bridge.

(Steve points to his fake "stache") This thing is actually falling off, but I want you to see how important this is. This is funnel building. The other stuff, I'm not saying...

I'm a funnel builder, I build funnels like crazy. I built two more of them yesterday - which is awesome. They're single page ones, but they're really intense, oh my gosh, they were hard.

But anyway I want you to know at the core of it, if you can't do the thing I'm about to share with you guys, man, choose a funnel style that requires very little copy and/or just learn how to do this.

I didn't know how to do this. I got like straight D's in English. Seriously in pretty much all of high school and a lot of college. I'm not an amazing writer. I'm not. I don't know amazing punctuation. I'm not good at that crap, okay? But I wanna teach you marketing writing. I wanna teach you marketing English, or whatever nationality you're from. There's marketing language.

I'm gonna teach you the language of marketing. It's its own language. It's its own vernacular. It's its own way to present. It's its own way to come across and actually give your people what they should hear in order to cause a buying decision to happen. That's the core.

That is why I can leave an amazing job at ClickFunnels (which did cut me to the soul.It cut me right down to the very core to do that), but it's the reason why three days after I left I had a converting funnel up which made 36 grand without any ads spent. It's because of what I'm gonna share with you in this clip.

So I know this is gonna be a long episode, just get over it. Get a piece of paper and see what I'm doing here.

For those of you guys who are on iTunes, I never normally ask you to do this but come over to the YouTube channel and watch me as I literally record my screen in front of a live audience, fielding their question. Watch me go in and actually build out the introduction section of my webinar   it's what I use no matter what product I am selling. Yes, even for a book.

One of my best funnels right now is this amazing high ticket funnel. Guess what script I freaking used to sell the high ticket thing? The webinar script, guys. I use it everywhere. It's not just for freaking webinars. It's not for something that's only a thousand dollars. I use it for everything.

So please understand that's where my passion comes from. When people read this a lot of times, they're like, "Oh this is about a webinar script" No, no no no! This is the most powerful sales script you've ever seen in your entire life.

I did two summers door-to-door sales, I was a telemarketer, I was good at both of them. This is the most powerful script I've ever seen in my entire life and I don't want you to jack up the intro of it. So again we're gonna cut over here - watch my screen as I do this, bear with me, I know it's a little long. It's not normally this long for these kinds of episodes, but I think you're really getting a lot of value from this, and if you do, please, please, I am begging you, share this.

I'm sick and tired of so much garbage information out there that misleads people. "Oh you're not converting because you don't have the right slogan, the right mission statement," that's bull crap, okay?

You don't know how to sell. That's the issue. And I wanna teach you how to sell. And you're gonna see how I do it inside this episode.

Guys, thanks so much. I know I'm fiery, but this is how I feel about it. This literally saved my family financially to learn how to do this.

And if you wanna do the same, if you're in that same kind of spot...

My stache is falling off.

Learn how to do what I'm gonna share with you. And if you like it, turn around, please share with other people and spread this around. I'd really appreciate that. It convinces iTunes that I'm actually worth my salt. It convinces iTunes that, "Hey, we should actually rank and push up even more." I appreciate you guys.

This is like a thousand downloads an episode now, and I really appreciate you guys checking this out. It really means the world to me to be honest. But man, we're just starting, okay?

And I'm so sick of how much noise is out there, and "little motivated papa Larsen's" coming out right now. Just know that.

But anyways, let's cut on over, you guys watch me actually go and record my screen and share with you guys how I do this. I care about you guys too much to not share this and get a little passionate over it.

Go over, grab a piece of paper, press pause for a sec if you need to. Please share this if you guys enjoy this. I've never shared this part before, and I've never live built what you're about to see in front of an audience ever. I always do it on my own.

Thanks so much and let's cut over now, bye.

I wanna answer the question. Now we dove into pretty deep in the last time I went through and I built this stuff.

I know some of you guys, this is the first time you've been in here, but some of the stuff I'm talking about I've already gone through, so I'm gonna move on....

There's two introductions. I have effectively introduced the webinar. There's two introductions in the introduction section. There's two sections of it, okay?

Section one is: "What is this webinar?" If I don't answer that question, that's a bad question to leave on a open loop. So some questions you can leave on an open loop. That's a bad one. That will cause confusion. Confusion is a no and they run away.

So I have to be able to introduce the webinar and then I've gotta introduce "Who the heck is talking to me and why does he have freaking stache on?"

So there's two sections in the intros.

Section one, intro the webinar.

Section two, intro the speaker.

Now for those of you guys who are pitching other people's products, that is where the issues kinda comes in a little bit. Not an issue, but that's where it gets challenging 'cause you're like do I introduce, for my case funnel building secrets, do I need to spend time introducing Russell, they still gotta know who he is or they're not gonna care what I did. What I used to do. And then I gotta introduce ClickFunnels, and the positioning gets a little bit weird.

That's why I always encourage you guys to do webinars for your own stuff, not that you have to do it but at first it's an easier pitch to go for.

So I like using this slide a lot. I use this slide multiple times." Yeah. Mr. Steve huge eyeball's Larsen, who are ya?" Why am I doing that? It's because I want them to feel like "oh, this guy's just kind of a fun guy." You know like moss. That's pretty funny. This is where you brag about yourself and if you're nervous to do that you kinda have to get over that.

So I say things like I say things like, "Hey what's up, my name's Steve Larsen, I was the lead funnel builder at ClickFunnels for two years, I built almost 500 funnels while I was there. I was Russell's right-hand guy. I helped create the original Two Comma Club Coaching Program which helped a lot of people get a million bucks and a lot of others also make six-figures which is also awesome, right? Anyway, I'm a Two Comma Club coach now and I've left that though to go and make my own Two Comma Club funnels."

And this is where I start, you gotta show off a little bit. I like to go in, now this is where that transition, I use the intro to me, they wanna know the credentials, what's the fast punch, here's the credentials, here's why you are awesome.

But the next thing though, this is why this guy's able to come speak about this stuff. Now the next thing I do though is I use this as an advantage to catapult me into the beginning of my origin story.

So the origin story here: For me, I'm gonna tell the story. Now let's go back, let's consult this real quick. Let's consult, bam. Now here's the origin story for me this is the story:

"Funnels saved my family financially after 17 business tries." This is true story, right? And I'm gonna go in and tell the story. Now I restructured just a few of the other stories in the layout, but I'm gonna use the second slide as far as who are ya as an intro to me. And I found that transition works quite well every time I do that. So this is the outline of it:

"Look, we had no money. Asked dad for money, said no, figure out how to use the resources that you have. It was out of love, he wasn't like no are you kidding, he's a rock star. And I was like crap, so I started studying different asset types and I ran into Rich Dad Poor Dad and he said there's three different asset types. I was like what if I try all of them. I chose business last." This is a true story.

"I chose business last because I thought it meant that I was greedy if I was gonna go do it. That's a real false belief I had. So I did paper assets first. That's one of the three asset types from Rich Dad Poor Dad. That's like the gateway drug for most entrepreneurs. Then next I went into real estate. I did a lot of real estate stuff. And it's not that I didn't have a little success with each one of those things but there were some things that made it challenging like in real estate, like truly, if you're gonna kill it it's best to have some money down.

Same with like paper assets, stocks and options in trading and I borrowed 15 grand. I borrowed 15 thousand dollars to go to some stock classes. I was freaking hustling.

17 tries later I ran into Russell Brunson. And I was like this guy looks like he's 13, I don't know if I'm even gonna trust him." Some of my initial reactions, kay? Just same thing as everyone else says and I was like, "Hey check it out, if you say these funnel things work let me try it. And so I did and started taking on clients and started bootstrapping my way to different things and that's how I bootstrapped my way to the event and became such a fanatic.

"Before I met Russell that they knew who I was when I got there because I was the guy always writing into support, pushing the bounds of their software. Literally their coders would go and try to keep up with some of the things I was begging for them to get done. And so when I got there I got five job offers." So I'm gonna tell that story quickly. And that's the origin story.

But I'm also gonna in and I'm gonna talk about one of the first funnels I built that was actually a good success. So that they see, right, it's a origin story.

The origin story is the backstory of why you are in the thing you are in. I'm talking about funnels so I gotta answer the question: "Why did you choose funnels?" And I gotta answer that question in a way that's slightly emotional - in a way where they can logically, although it's emotional, see how and justify: "oh it's reasonable, I see why he's doing what he's doing. That makes sense."

And when I do that, man the next three stories are really really easy to get good reactions from.

So the first thing I'm gonna do here is I'm going to introduce myself. Right? And I'm gonna talk about how I got a radio show, actually got on the radio, two times in the last few weeks. It was really fun. Oops.

There's the family and I'm like "Oh look, isn't that funny, I love that picture of my little girl putting her finger in her nose. She was supposed to be a flower girl and was walking down the aisle as a flower girl totally picking her nose." Funny picture. So I put that in there. I put that in, I'm trying to be raw. Guys, trying to be real. Why else would I wear a freaking stache right now?

Right, I'm trying to be very open like: "oh man, this dude is real." And I'm trying to help them see that. Bring your walls down, bring em down, bring em' down. That's really what I'm trying to do here. I'm gonna put the other radio show in too. 'Cause it fits the fits the audience here. Let's see. There we go. Bloop. Crazy how many downloads there are on both these now. So I'd probably put some animation in. Here I got a radio show. Gets over a thousand downloads an episode now. How cool is that? Thousand downloads an episode now.

I also have another show. It's not as old but it's already doing about 400 downloads an episode and I am obsessed.

What I want you to know is guys, I'm obsessed. I am obsessed with this game. I eat, drink, and sleep this stuff. My family's been there. They are my biggest support team ever. The whole thing starts with the family. Bam. And that's my intro into how I begin my origin story.

Cool, so it'll be like a little animation. First that one then I'll animate in the others.

Then this is where I'm gonna talk about origin story internal and external desires.

I need to go in and I need to paint a picture over my desires, right? And some conflict, the backstory. So the backstory for us and I like to use this one a lot, guys you might be noticing like, "Stephen you're using the same stuff from other webinars?" Yeah, okay? Your story can be repurposed into other things.

It doesn't need to be this brand new thing every single time.

It's still my origin story. It's not like it changed. All right? So I'm still gonna use it.

Look at that hottie (Stephen looks at a picture of his wife on their wedding day).

I can use the exact same stories. It doesn't need to be, right, and I can sell different products with it 'cause it's still the way I got into stuff. So I go in and, I tell the story:

"We got married, this is how small our apartment was."

So I'm gonna hit a wall here. I'm gonna hit a wall and this is the wall. I need to hit a wall and the wall is we got nothing. In fact look right here at this picture. You guys see this is literally a picture of our apartment. I didn't try to take it blurry on purpose, it just is blurry.

You know those lose weight commercials? Like the before pictures always like black and white suddenly no one can find a color camera anymore and they're like looking all weird at the camera. You know? And after pictures they're like shredded, suddenly the picture's in color. This looks like I tried to set it up. It's how it actually was. Any way. I was like: "Check it out, I actually drew a fireplace on the wall with a crayon. We had no money. We got married weeks before Christmas."

Suddenly it's like oh crap, it's hitting the fan, and it hit the fan. "We had no cash. I asked my dad for money I was like what if I go asked him for money." I have an epiphany. And so I like to use... So I went an I started asking, I was like "Man student loans are on the way."  

We use pictures to depict different aspects of the story, okay? The pictures are just guiding the major elements in the story. You know what I mean? Let me save this quick. The pictures are guiding the elements in the story, that's all.

"So I asked for money and that's the very room, that is the building where I asked my dad for money, and he said "no, can't do it." And I was like "Crap, all right, what's my plan?" So that's the next part.

Remember guys I'm just following this thing. We're right here. We're almost done with the intro, kay? Is this making sense? You guys with me? You guys seeing how this could apply in your business? Just keep going. A bunch of trial closes all at once.

We've got 74 of us on now, this is awesome guys. Appreciate you guys being on here. Hope you guys are liking the stache. Can't wait for you guys to get yours.

So right now I gotta go plan. Here's the plan. The plan is, this thing is like falling apart. "The plan is I gotta start studying how on Earth am I supposed to make money? I don't know how to make money? I've been studying business in school, but they're not actually teaching me how to make money. So I started studying. I started studying and started learning.

One of the guys I started studying was a guy named Robert Kiyosaki. And he told me about the three different asset types, and I still got his voice in my head: "Well, the first thing you gotta do is the three different asset types."

I don't know if you guys ever listened to him but his voice kinda sounds like that.

"The three different asset types and if you're wise you're gonna go and you're gonna get one of these kinds of assets and just stick with it." And he sounds like that. And I was like, "Well, I don't know what to do. What if I try all of them? But I don't wanna try business, that sounds way too hard, I'm not gonna do that." So I was like "Ah, so I started running, running, running, and I started acting." - meaning I started, I should clarify that 'cause in one of these I say I started acting, but that sounds like I actually was an actor.

I'm gonna hit some conflict here. Now you see I'm just following it. I just make a slide per epiphany bridge script. Or epiphany bridge step here.

Boom, first thing I did is I started taking action. I should change it to that. Started taking action. Whoops. Action. Started taking action. And I went through, and I borrowed 15 grand and went and started doing this and anyway...

I know all you guys are very focused entrepreneurs here, but none of you guys have ever had shiny object syndrome? Well yeah me either, so I went ahead, and after a while, I was like "This is hard!" I was whiny.

I was whiny and I went and I checked out real estate. And I got 300 phone calls in one month. I was putting those little paper signs up all over the place. Again this is all true, I'm not making any of this up. I put those paper signs up all over the place. Looking for buyers, looking for sellers.

I got 300 phone calls and started matching buyers with sellers and doing a double escrow. I'd up the price a little bit during close and take my money, anyway. And that's what I was doing. Until I realized there really are limited options when you really still are completely broke. Flipping in that way, it's not that you can't make cash... Anyway, right?

And I need one more conflict slide here. I'm almost done with the intro, and then I'll come over here to your guy's comments and your chat, okay? If you guys got anything come let me know.

And so you see how I came up with a plan, and I walked myself going through the plan, but there's an issue with the plan. The plan was to try these three asset types, and the reason why I'm doing that is because they can logically see how that is a logical thing to do. "Yeah, why wouldn't you try that?" It's because I'm trying to them as the protagonist in my story.

They're not even gonna experience the same things that I did, but the power of story is this:

"Right now I'm sitting in my office, downstairs my little girls are playing. I can hear them right now. I can actually smell the aroma of some good food. I think my wife is making some food and if I were to walk downstairs right now we'd have our kitchen table there, and the countertop and she usually likes to put food right on the countertop, and we go serve up and then go sit at the table together." Okay, stop! How many of you guys just imagined your own office? Wait a second, and you imagined your own house? Oh, baby! Wait a second, but I'm describing MY house. But you thought about your house? Did you think about your own kitchen? I was talking about my kitchen. My kitchen table is completely perfect square, and it's brown, it's made of wood, it's beautiful. I was talking about my kitchen though. But wait you thought about your kitchen? Huh. And the countertop, did you think about the aroma of food? Did I even describe what food it was? No, but you thought about food. And you thought about good food. You thought about little kids playing and hearing them squeal around and stuff. Right. Wait a second, but I'm talking about MY story! Isn't this fascinating?

This is the power of stories. The reason stories are so powerful. If I can logically, inside the epiphany bridge script, get them to get inside my story, they will effectively have experienced, on an emotional level, the very same story that I experienced.

Even though MY kitchen's different than their kitchen. Even though MY dad told me different things than your dad might of, or regardless. Does that make sense? The power of story is that it takes the backgrounds and the experiences of each listener and it combines them emotionally even though the scenes are different - the facts are the same. The emotions can be the same. That's the key, and that's why stories are so powerful.

So what's my plan? "Oh I'm gonna, I don't know, I gotta make money," and I guarantee everyone's thought that who's been on the webinar, right? "Oh man, I gotta make money too somehow." So I gotta come up with some kind of plan, so I'm gonna do what he said, "Business assets, real estate, paper assets." So I just started doing it, and I didn't wanna seem greedy so I actually purposely didn't go for business first. Guys, that was a really stupid thing that I did, but anyway. I went straight to paper assets, and I borrowed cash.

How many of you guys have borrowed cash to go to some person's course before? Right, I know, me too. That's crazy I found out that he's actually teaching stuff he knew was outdated. Now I call that dishonest. Right? They're walking through with me: I guarantee I'm not the first person they've spent money on and not been successful with.

So then I went off on my own I just started doing more real estate stuff. I finally turned to business. I went 17 tries over the next three or four years going for these different kinds of business. How many tries have you guys gone through? Right? Have you counted them? Anyways 17 tries later I was doing two summers door-to-door sales, telemarketing, ebooks, diamonds, that was an interesting one, websites, traffic driver for Paul Mitchell, right? Anyway, and I thought the issue has gotta be me.

And I want them to say that about themselves. That's why I bring this up. You guys liking this? I was the issue. So I'm gonna use some of these same slides from a few other webinars because they work and the origin stories, it doesn't matter.

I'm still gonna change some things in the notes here and customize it based on the audience that's listening. But I can lead them down the psychology and why things are the way they are there. Kay?

"The issue must be me. 17 tries later, still not enough money to actually support us, it's gotta be me. There's no other reason. I can't even think of another reason why I haven't been successful at this game yet." Why am I saying that? How many of you guys right now there's 75 of us on right now. How many of you guys right now have asked yourself that question? Kay?

This is me doing this old story, if I know what your false beliefs are when you see this new opportunity, I use what you're saying to yourself inside of the new story. Inside of the new story. That is what combines, that is the bridge when you join in the conversation inside the customers head that's what that means.

That's why if you don't know who your customer is it's really hard to know what stories they're telling themselves and it's really hard to tell effective new stories. Very challenging.

All of this game starts with the who. Who, who, who, who, who, kay?

Anyway, I'm sure, I know, I'm positive, 99% of people have asked that question. Anyone who's successful has asked themselves that question. How come this isn't working? And they start doing this self-defeating thing, and that's fine - it's a natural thing. Every one of us has done it. But when I say I've also been through it oxytocin hit. It's the chemical of connection. It's the hardest one to get. "Man, this guy gets me."

Man we're going freaking deep. Deep! So I think through, and one of the things I wanna ask myself is what are these top entrepreneurs right, so I'm gonna pose a question here and at this point emotionally I've got them in this place where they're very open to me. They're very open to me. They've come through very similar to what  I've gone through.

I've answered questions about who this is? I've stepped to the side with them. Side by side. The positioning I'm taking:

Look little testimonial of people who've actually done what I'm talking about here so you know I'm not crazy. "Now who am I" Cool, here I am. There's some credentials now, it's actually going to the origin story itself. "Oh man, this guys actually all right. I connect with this guy. I've had the same questions in my life." Yeah, that's why I freaking talk about the stuff I do. That I came up with a plan. Have you ever done any one of these things ever? I guarantee it, right? So I have them in a point right now when I ask a question, this is very key, very key moment inside of the origin story. Where I ask the next question, and the question that I ask myself is "So is there a new way?" New way. Now I haven't brought in much of the new way yet.

. Anyway, we're almost done with the origin story here. Section one here. I haven't brought in too much new way yet. Still kinda focused on the old way but I'm gonna describe the old way through another mini story:

"So I started asking myself, what are the top entrepreneurs actually doing to make cash? Are they doing the real estate thing? I know some of them are. They're doing paper trading, paper assets, I know they are. Right?" And so I ask this question because it means they are gonna ask the question to themselves. If I pose a question, that's like cool mind control. If I said," I wonder what's in this orange bottle?" You just asked the same question, kay? I just literally entered your head - 'cause the human brain can't stand open loops. We gotta close the loop. "Wow, what is inside of this?" Right?

"How does Stephen have so much energy?" It's me entering your brain. Oh yeah. All right. "What are the top entrepreneurs actually doing to make cash?" And I wanna guide them through the section called old way. If you don't know what I'm talking about, page 114 in Expert Secrets talks about this.

Long journey. I'm sorry, this is part of plan. Right there. It's part of the new plan. And especially in a webinars this is very key. When we compare: "Look how crazy it was compared to what's happened now. Do you wanna know how?" Awesome, the rest of the presentation's about that. Does that make sense?

This is one of the ways you hook them to the end. Right here:

"So I said, man, what they weren't doing as I started looking around what I started noticing is that every one of these guys, none of them, none of them had websites. None of them did. Right? Not ones that are cash flowing 'cause no one could get them to cash flow. They were doing VC funding. They didn't have business plans and this went against everything I had been studying and learning, went against all my marketing degree. Everything that I had been doing up until that point."

Now let's see where we are right now. Conflict, right? So for me, I'm trying to help them see logically where I'm coming up from. And "I started studying I realized what they did have was this thing called a sales funnel." Kay?

And we're not on new way yet I'm just duplicating the slides here and honestly by the time I get through origin story on a webinar I'm typically around like 30 minutes. "Guess what they did have? Sales funnel."

All right I'm leading them through this epiphany as I go through it, kay? I was like "What's a freaking sales funnel? What's a sales funnel? That looks like a website. I don't know, I got a website, I know what to do. But I started studying all these different guys, and I ran into this guy..."

Okay, and this is where we start getting into again plan. New plan again: "I ran into this guy that looked like he was 13 years old. Is he even old enough to shave? I don't know. Should I even trust what he's saying? And I started studying his stuff, and I became a fanatic."

I like to have these things pop out as I talk about it.

So I'm like, "I ran into this guy named Russell Brunson I didn't know who he was. Is this dude even? I wonder if he's legit? Does he shave?" You know what I mean? And again I'm entering the objection that's inside their head. Right? They might be like, "He looks really young..." so I'm gonna say that "He looks really young."

It's interesting how much you can control this stuff. I'm gonna ruin you guys, I'm gonna ruin you guys.

Last night my wife and I were talking late, we were just chatting, and she's been asking a lot about sales psychology stuff and it's been kinda fun and she's getting into a lot of real estate stuff. I actually truly love real estate still. It's something you use a lot of, anyway.

Funnels are a great way to get a ton of cash real quick. What do you do with it once you got it? So real estate is the way we're moving. So she's diving into real estate guru-ism, and I'm being the funnel guy. Dance like a monkey in front of the camera guy.

So anyway, and I make these each pop up. And I was like: "Man, let me show you, so you guys know what I'm talking about. I saw this guy and his name was Russell Brunson and I was looking at him and I was like there's no way this guy knows what he's talking about. So let me... Let's see if it works? Like, check this guy out. I saw this course he had called DotCom Secrets, and I got it. Remember I've gone through 17 tries here. Suddenly things started working. I was like what the heck and I became kind of a Russell fanatic. I got his book DotCom Secrets then I went through Dot Com Secrets Ignite. Then I actually went through 108 Split Tests. I carried it in my backpack for months. Then I got the Perfect Webinar, this guy's crazy. I'm actually making cash from this. And again I was keeping it small 'cause I kept testing with all these little clients I was getting, but lo and behold stuff started working."

Anyways, so that's kinda how I roll it out like that as I'm saying it.

"And the biggest thing I learned from him was exactly what he was talking about which is this..." And this is where I really dive into new way/case study.

Now in this scenario I've actually done new way and case study, I'm doing both. So for the first one here I'm actually gonna do here's the new way, then I'm gonna walk through a case study just to destroy any additional false beliefs that people might have, kay?

This mustache is starting to get a little itchy.

The biggest thing I realized is that, all right, you guys I'm gonna start right there, again I'm using things from other things I've already created before.

A lot of things, if you've already made something like it's an asset forever, not just for just that business you're selling or whatever: "The biggest thing I realized is that funnels make me money and websites make me broke" Later on, I talk about a website, one of my very first websites and I show it to you. It's very funny. Anyways that's coming up in the plans. It's terrible. It was completely awful. It was for an artist. And so what I'm gonna talk about in this next little bit here is I'm actually gonna walk them through a crappy funnel that I had at the very very beginning.

We are now in case study. We've just gone through new way so now we're gonna dive through case study. Let me just clone this a couple times here. And I'm the case study, that's fine. Again if you don't have a bunch of testimonials, it's okay to be the case study on your own. So I'm the case study in this case. Which I have been. And I'm walking them through my origin story. They're still logically following me:

"This is one of the first funnels I built that was actually quite profitable. This is my crappy CD funnel. And I went through and I actually creating these different funnels and literally funnel hacking Russell. This is, I made this, I don't know, I got a ClickFunnels account very shortly after ClickFunnels left beta like a month or two afterwards. And that's one of the first ones I built. So this is like three and a half years old. But this is what I did. I literally modeled what he did. And so I went through and I just modeling exactly what he did and I went in and I bought everything in his funnel. Everything. All right so you guys can see this. I bought everything in his funnel. Every little piece in there."

And remember what I'm going through right here is I'm going through origin story to break that down a little bit more:

"I had no money so then I starting studying assets then I started building funnels."

I'm gonna compare a then versus now and that's what's coming up. That's why I'm doing this. A then versus now which is very powerful:

"I bought everything inside of his funnel, and I saw exactly everything that was in there I was like 'crap,' this might as well be my business model, why would I do anything different?"

"This is the beginnings of one of my very first funnels ever, and next thing I did is I sketched out the funnel itself. I don't like the little, I like centering it. I sketched out the funnel itself. Sweet I did the 7.95 thing, a 97 dollar thing, a 297 thing, and that was it. I was like sweet. I did the exact same thing literally. So my funnel after I went and did it looked exactly like this. This was it. Looked exactly like this. Then I built the entire funnel. And that was it, that was the funnel."

And so remember this is a case study so now the results need to come on in. So let's talk about the results:

"And the results are in. I was like what the heck. I made 18 thousand dollars in student loans my first year of marriage. And this funnel in a year did 60 grand with no ads spend. What! Completely changed our life. Totally changed our life you guys. 100%. This completely changed our life. That make sense?"

Kay, now I got them in this really interesting spot, and I'm like what if... Let's go back here to our assets. Conflict:

My funnel sucked, and I'm gonna talk about that:

"Guys, it did not do that at first. It was terrible. It was only after I modeled what I saw that Russell guy doing."

So the old way, right, the old way I don't build the funnel first. So that's one thing I didn't talk about up here is I went:

"he first time I went, and I built this thing sucked! Sucked! Everyone say sucked! It was terrible. I lost so much money.  It was crazy kinds of money. Time, I lost a lot of time. I didn't know what I was doing and this did not sell well at all. And I'm like well I might as well go in and free plus shipping funnel, right? The results are in, and we made 60 grand from that but how cool is that?"

Now I'm gonna do a then versus now. That's what this is called in script building. I'm gonna do a then versus now. Let's go back over here. New way/case study. Then versus now, right here. I'm talking about results so we're right here so then versus now so I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna grab the results from and those are pretty good. Not bad, not bad. That was okay:

"But you've gotta understand I did way better  - in a years time I was doing about four grand a month:

"The funnel's success had everything to do with the way I built funnels after this."

Had nothing to do, meaning literally the order of the way I built things in and what I wanna go through for the remainder of this is to show you this, check this out:

"The first time I went, and I launched it we did 60 grand, not bad. I know you guys are like "oh" but check this out: "This is the first month of the new way launching the exact same product. Look at that. Almost exactly the same amount of money in one month with no ad spend. That was in one month. So you guys, isn't that interesting? So I wanna share with you guys, alright so here's old way..."

Again we're pulling old way verse new way. So let's grab a text box. This making sense? It's making dollars. Alright, this is the old way. What! Let's make that text white, we'll make shape fill that red. Bam old way. Here. And that's pretty good, awesome. What! I wanna talk about the new way, though. And I'm gonna have this automate in at the exact same time. (Stephen finishes working on the intro to the script.)

Oh yeah!

Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't even get anyone to opt in, right? So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins. When they work, and when they don't.

If you want access to that member's area where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.

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

Today we're gonna talk about why selling is emotional, and how you can take advantage of that ethically in your own 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. What's up guys?

Hey, I'm excited for this, okay. This episode comes to you today... Okay, the next two or three episodes that I've done are things that I've been ripping from other places, and I think you're really gonna enjoy it.

This one's a Facebook Live that I did. There are a few people - really, really sad... I don't know if they're sad or mad, or they're fighting me, for whatever reason, on the fact that selling is emotional.

What I want you to understand is that there are three different phases in the sale cycle. There's the marketing phase. There's the selling phase, and there is the closing phase.

If you are not getting the cash you want to, but you're still closing people, it's 'cause you don't know how to close.

I'm gonna walk through and share with you guys why selling is emotional and what you're doing in the brain.

I don't know how you can get good at marketing, selling, or being a salesman without learning about psychology - actually learning about the brain and what happens there.

We are all different people, yes, but we still have a brain that very much comes from the same kind of area -  we have the same kind of tendencies, okay?

And so, what's cool about that is as soon as you learn the patterns of how to actually go out and be influential to your people and your customers, prospective customers, you actually can get them to do a lot of great things that will benefit them, that will benefit you, and help you be more persuasive in life.

So, what this episode is specifically about is ... First of all, I gotta teach you what's happening in the brain. I've never taught this before, ever!

I'm in this area right now where I've kinda been lookin' back, and be like "Hey, why did that work? Why did that work? Why did that work? Holy crap, look at that pattern." And so, what I'm tryin' to do is I'm tryin' to teach you guys the patterns that I was going through, seeing and doing, not always on purpose, okay?

And so, I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna teach you about chemicals in the brain, and I'm gonna teach you about what's going on in the brain psychologically when people start to hear about your pitch.

I'm gonna teach you how to actually go in and get around those things. I'm gonna teach you what you're actually pitching when you actually pitch somebody. What part of the brain are you actually pitching, okay? All those answers are gonna be inside this Facebook Live.

Again, I think this was like a 15-minute thing, but anyway, I'm a little fiery in it - just so you know - which I know is hard to imagine. I'm a little intense. I'm excited to be able to do this and actually get this out to you guys.

So anyways guys, thank you so much for watching this.

Please, I actually encourage you to take notes on this one. I don't necessarily always go very tactical inside this podcast, but this one, THIS has had a direct influence on my wallet, and I mean that in all seriousness. It has had a direct influence on my wallet, meaning getting much fatter.

It was when I learned what was actually happening in the noggin', and this comes from me studying a lot of different books, listening to a lotta gurus, going through a lotta courses, and a lot of my own personal experience.

There's really like two or three things specifically I'm gonna walk you guys through in this episode. So, honestly, I would grab a piece of paper for this episode...  And if you like it, please share it.

All right guys, thanks so much and please enjoy the lessons in this. They have been life changing for me and I'm excited. If it changes your life also, please, please...

Or if there's any piece into it that makes you go you go, "My gosh, I had no idea!" Please, please reach out and tell me. It means a lot.

You could even consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks, guys, bye.

Oh, what's up? How's everyone doin'? Hey, guys, I just finished a webinar. I am all sorts of hopped up on Goof Balls. My left eye's got the twitch which means this is gonna be good, all right!

Hey, real quick, I just wanna do a drop this thing, oh, I actually dropped my phone while I dropped it in. I just wanna drop this in the group, okay. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna do some edumacation!

When I was in college, I wanted to make sure that I knew how to sell, so I explicitly went and started selling...

Steve Comments to the FB Audience: (I'm driving, the cars vibrating the steering wheel which is making this thing. I'm trying to make this thing stick and stay right there. Yeah, yeah, okay, all right. I know Facebook is still telling you guys that I'm live and I'm here, okay.)

...I went and I started selling door-to-door and started doing telemarketing for the explicit reason of learning how to sell. I wanted to learn how to sell. I had no idea how much went into it. It was nerve-racking.

I remember the first time I walked into my first door for door-to-door sales. It was one of the freakiest things I've ever done in my entire life.

I walked up and I knock on the door and I forgot the script, everything left my brain. I did not remember what I was saying and, it was an awkward conversation. I just was looking for reasons to get off the door. They didn't have to kick me off. I turned around, and I walked away. I got off the door.

It was a terrible experience, and I was like, "This sucks," and I immediately was like, "Why am I gonna do this? Why on earth am I doing this door-to-door sales thing?" And, it became a challenging thing for me.

So, what I did is I started trying to learn more about why sales psychology is the way that it is. I started learning about different chemicals in the brain. I don't know how you can get good at sales without learning a little bit about the brain?  You gotta learn a little bit about that noggin and what drives people, what drives human interaction.

Steve Comments to the FB Audience: (And, I was trying to get this thing to stay inside my steering wheel. It's not gonna do it, so I'm just gonna hold it.)

Okay, this is what's interesting. This is what was fascinating about the whole door-to-door thing and about selling:

There's an emotional part, and there's a logical part to selling. Funnily enough, we think it's logical, and it's actually still emotional.

I know that I've talked about this before, but I just wanna drop this in here real quick.

So think about this, just follow me here, okay, 'cause I wanna talk about why, I wanna talk about why selling is emotional, and I wanna talk about what to do about it, and how it actually plays to your advantage when you understand how it works.

So, if any new thing pops into your brain - bam, the brain starts sending all these little warning flags.  It's looking for reasons, it actively seeks reasons to throw a red flag. Is this a red flag? Is this a red flag?  It actively looks for reasons to throw red flags at you.

This all happens subconsciously, and this is where fight, flight, freeze comes from.

This is where we say, "Oh my gosh, am I gonna be bored?"If I'm gonna be bored - if this is boring - that's a threat to my brain. It's a threat to my enjoyment, and I am not going to be part of it - therefore I will run.

If I think this could hurt me, there's a whole bunch of things that start runnin' through the noggin to see if it's a threat. Maybe it's not even physical, maybe it's just a mental threat, "This might be boring," okay?

What you're actually pitching in the first half of a webinar, during the story section, you're actually pitching that part of the brain.

You are trying to get beyond, you're tryin' to get around, you're trying to get beside, you're trying to get above, you're trying to blast through that part of the brain so that when people see your actual offer, you have actually passed that part of the brain.

You are bypassin' the hippocampus. You're tryin' to get back to the part where the decision making of the noggin is logical. You gotta understand what's actually happening when you start pitching somebody.

I don't care if you are an actual salesman, I don't care if you're just learning how to do a webinar script, I don't care if you're just actually doing a script, and you're recording it and you're gonna put it inside of a phone...

That's what's happening in sales every time.

So, think about this with me, though.

The first part, the story based part of any script is the emotional part of the actual pitch. As we transition into the logical brain, we start getting more logical - that's where the actual sale is happening. There are three phases in the sales cycle.

The first phase is marketing, and that's the emotional part. That's the storytelling part.

The second phase is selling, and that's where you're actually presenting the offer. That's where we start to transition into more logical things.

The third phase in a sales cycle is actually closing. Closing is that last piece, and it's the piece that most people do not do. Guys, cash is in the close, right. Cash is for closers, right!

How many of you guys have sold something to somebody, and they're like "Man, I really wanna do that," but you never actually collect the cash? It means you did phase number one, phase number two, but not phase number three, the closing, okay?

So, there's the marketing which is the rebuild, I do not mean logos, I don't mean colors, I don't mean anything like that. I don't mean freakin' slogans or business cards.

When I say marketing I mean: "marketing's the act of changing people's beliefs with the intent of a purchase." It's my own definition, but hopefully, it's cool? I'm gonna change someone's beliefs with the intent of a purchase.

Phase number two, I'm gonna get him into the actual sale itself. It's me going through the offer. I'm gonna go through my stacks, okay? I'm gonna go through the actual offer, okay?

Phase number three, that's the close. The close is the logical reasons to act now. That's what closing is. Selling and closing are not the same thing. Just like marketing and selling are not the same thing. There are three different phases.

The first time I realized this I was riding my bike home from campus. We had no money, so I was riding a bike. We had one car, we couldn't afford another car, and I was like, "I feel like I'm studying like crazy, I'm learning a lot. Why am I learning so much? I know how I build my business in this scenario. I know what I would do in that guy's business. I know what I would do, but why am I still broke?" That was the question that I had in my head. "Why am I still broke if I feel like I'm learning so much?"

 Steve Comments to the FB Audience: Yeah right, Shawn exactly, cash is for closers, right.

But I still didn't understand the difference between marketing, selling, and closing. Those are the three things to study. Those are the three of the highest leverage activities you could ever marry. Those are three of the highest leverage skills you could ever go learn.

#1:Marketing - Storytelling for the sake of a purchase coming up.

#2: Selling - How do I create an offer, right? I call 'em purple offers. How do I create an offer for the intent to fill the promise that my story's made, right.

#3:  Closing - How do I actually get the cash now? "Is that debit or credit? Hey, when you purchase right now go get it right now, we're actually gonna throw in X, Y, and Z for free."

There are logical reasons to act now. It's still emotional, but people think it's logical.

It's called the theory of cognitive dissonance.  I don't wanna get too deep in this. I don't wanna dig too deep in it, but you need to understand 'cause you're doin' this to your customers.

I want you to understand why you may or may not be selling people well, okay? It's great to have success. It's freaky if you don't know WHY you had success.

And so, let's say you go into the grocery store and I'm sure no one's done this, I'm sure I'm the only one, but you go into the grocery store to get some eggs and you walk out with milk, bread, three movies from the $5 bin you weren't plannin' on buyin' and a whole bunch of other stuff, right, a t-shirt, right. How many of you guys have done that?

What's happened is all emotional. The 'threat' walls went down, I can see that I don't need to fight, flight or freeze. I don't need to do any of those things and, I went through marketing to make me desire those products. There's an emotional piece to me.

Secondly, I start seeing this offer, and I think "Oh, it's only $5 and I'm here." That's a close, though. I'm closing myself, okay? Those are logical reasons to actually get me to acting now.

Then what ends up happening is as I leave the store, after  I make the purchase the emotional part stops in my brain... (I think it's the right brain.) The right brain stops overriding the left which is the logical part of the brain.

The right brain starts to die down, and then the left brain logically starts turning on and asking, "Why did I buy that shirt?"

And this is where the theory of cognitive dissonance comes in.

The logical part of the brain doesn't want to think that it may have allowed you to spend too much money, or buy things that you don't need, so what ends up happening is that the left brain starts to take over and begins to logically see how what I purchased actually is my identity.

"I bought that shirt because it represents me. I bought those eggs because I'm a smart buyer. I was already here, so buying it was smart it saved me time. I'm gonna buy it because it saves me money."

Your brain tries to increase the attractiveness of what you've chosen - so that you feel that you've made a good decision.

When you think of buying a product, the right brain begins to override the left and emotion takes over. You start to get a rush of chemicals inside the brain which make you feel good causing you to want to buy.

After the purchase is made - when you've gone through stories. You've gone through presenting the offer. You've gone through actual closes - the reasons to act now - what ends up happening is the right brain starts to shut down again. Logic and reason start to turn back on, and you think, "CRAP!"

And this is  where buyer's remorse can step in:

"Crap. I just bought a shirt, I didn't even need it, and it's $50!" But the logical part of your brain doesn't like this feeling so it starts to counteract with reasons why you made a good choice.

You start to see the ways in which the shirt represents your identity: "That was a good choice. You are so smart. Look how much money you saved. You'll look great in that shirt. Cool people wear those shirts. I'm glad we didn't miss that deal - that would have been dumb."

That's how your customers start to justify buying products from you.

It's the reason you are a Funnel Hacker. Why'd you buy that product? "Because you are a Funnel Hacker." It's logically justified.

The emotional part of the brain turned down, the chemical rush that goes on in this side of the brain shuts off, and the logical side starts to say, "Holy crap, what just happened?".

Okay, check this out. What are the chemicals going on in this side of the brain? You have to understand this:

On the right side of the brain there are chemicals going on. You must know what these are. There's four of them. You all know what they are?

There's dopamine, there's endorphins, there's serotonin, and there's oxytocin. You can think DOSE = dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, okay?

Let's walk through 'em real quick, so you know what's going on and what you're doing to people. You must activate these chemicals in the brain in order if you want the emotional right side of the brain to override logic and desire your product.

Now be careful, 'cause what I am talking about right here you could easily go, and you could actually take advantage of people. Please don't do that.

What I am saying is that you can make more sales if you get people to have that buyer's rush. They want a rush, meaning they want the endorphins. They want to be able to feel the thrill of buying. People like to buy crap. So give 'em the rush, don't take away the rush.

Now, think about this:

D is for dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical of distraction. Every time your phone pings, ping, every time you look at a text, every time someone sends you a message or gives you a phone call, and every time that you go and you smoke a cigarette. Every time you go and you drink, you do drugs, look at porn, okay, anything like that...

What the brain is seeking is a distraction from current pain. That's what's happening. You wanna have more control in your life? See and figure out where you're seeking a dopamine hit, okay?

There's a reason why it's hard to get a hold of me. I am hard to get a hold of because I control technology, technology does not control me. I don't seek my dopamine hits from my phone. Does that make sense? I'm very purposeful on that, and that's the reason why, okay.

Dopamine is the chemical of distraction. Now, dopamine is also the easiest of the four chemicals to get.

When  I want a dopamine hit it's very easy to get it, right? You can get that hit in multiple places, homemade, directly from your own brain. Bam, feel good, right! It's the easiest one to get. It's also the most addictive.

I'm gonna go and do some behavior that may be good or may be bad, and it's what's gonna cause that addiction to happen. Now, you have to understand, your customers want a distraction. I'm not telling you to become addictive, but you can do this.

Be careful with what I'm telling you. This is real stuff, okay. This is why I sell so much. I know why I do. I know why I'm fun to watch on stage. I know why my podcasts get people "rrrrr," I know why. I know why. It's because I'm playing with four chemicals in your brain, and I know the levers to pull on each one of them.

So let's keep goin', okay.?

Let's go to endorphins. Endorphins and dopamine are the easiest two to get. Endorphins actually require a little bit of work on the individual's part...

I'm gonna feel endorphins after I work out, or in the middle of it. I'm workin' hard, my body releases endorphins - it's actually is a chemical that takes a little bit of work in order to get. It's literally, you know, a carrot and stick rewards system back and forth.

When I have a customer, for example, walk down a success path... Let's say they buy, and I'm like "Cool, the first thing I want you to do is today, just go set up your account and X, Y, and Z."

If they do it, BAM, they're probably gonna get an endorphin hit because they checked a box.

Those who got straight A's in school, they're very familiar with endorphins.

They put work in, they followed the system, they got the checks. People want that. They wanna check the box. I wanna check the box on life. I wanna check the box on the products. BAM.

How many of people have you sold who have never done anything with your product? That is a check the box driven individual. They love endorphins…

They solved the problem with the product emotionally - they checked the box with endorphins inside their head. BAM, they feel great, that's all they wanted. They wanted the hit.

Let's go to serotonin.

Serotonin is the chemical of status. Status. Status. Status is easy to give somebody when you're sellin' a product.  When you give them a new identity, that's one of the easiest ways to do it:

"Hey, what's up, Funnel Hackers? What's up, 2 Comma X people? What's up?” I call a lotta people “my mavericks,” and what I'm doing is I'm giving them a boost in status.

What are we doin' when we give a 3 Comma Club Award to somebody? Bam, serotonin! That is a status increase. "Look at me."

Why do we show pictures of ourselves with famous people? I took a picture with Tony. I took a picture with Russell. I took a picture with this guy... because it gives us a status increase and a serotonin boost. We literally are giving ourselves a hit of chemicals in our brain. Boom!

 "Ahhh, yes! You see, you see me, and you see you, yeah you see me, you see you, you see me" Right, that's what's goin' on -  we're givin' ourselves a hit, and that's very, very important to understand.

Now, weave that into your sales message.

That's why when I get on the web, and I just did a webinar for Funnel Builder Secrets for Russell, that's why I say, "Guys, I'm gonna invite you to BECOME, (keyword), I'm gonna invite you to BECOME (shed identity, claim new identity, serotonin) Funnel Hackers later today on this presentation."

I'm literally setting the stage so they can get serotonin when they purchase.

#New identity. #Dopamine hit, #∂istraction, "Thank you for the webinar, Stephen. I did a little bit of work, put my credit card in. I feel great, #endorphins, I did some work on my side. I've had three of the four chemical hits going on in my brain."

Let's talk about the last chemical. It's the hardest to get. It's oxytocin. Oxytocin's very, very powerful, and it is actually the one that we seek the most.

Without oxytocin a lotta these other chemicals, they feel like, you know, they're not all distractions, dopamine's the distraction one, but we're not totally satiated without the fourth one, #oxytocin.

Oxytocin is the chemical of connection. It is the one that we seek the most.

Oxytocin makes us do lots of crazy things. It's the one where we're madly in love,  or, the one where we are joining a community. We feel a lotta connection with an individual or a group.

Right now, if I were to tell you a story, I know I'd have you in a position where I could get you feeling oxytocin with me. It's the reason we have you tell an origin story.

It's the reason why Secret One has a story. Secret Two, Secret Three - they are developing oxytocin. It's a very hard to get chemical. The connection is with you, not your product. You understand?

To sell a product, you go in; you've broken and rebuilt belief patterns, you've given 'em four hits of chemicals in their brain.

Now I'm tellin' you there's a lotta ways to take advantage of people with this kind of information. Do you understand this stuff?

So, let's recap:

The first half of the webinar is highly emotional.

There are three phases of a sales cycle.

The first phase of the sales cycle is marketing. That's where I'm tellin' 'em all my stories. It's where I'm gettin' a whole bunch of oxytocin into their noggins. It's where I'm giving them a distraction, a lotta dopamine. I'm givin' 'em a lot of endorphins, if they do little things with me, "Come over to the chat box real quick. Tell me how you're doin? Where you're from?" That's gonna help them. "Whew, I did it!" - Little, tiny endorphin hit, bam!

Later on, I'm gonna invite you to BECOME, shed your old identity, BECOME a funnel hacker, #serotonin. I'm tryin' to weave these things inside each one of, each phase of the sales sequence.

Okay, so first phase right, in the sales cycle, marketing, the act of telling stories with the intent of changing beliefs for a purchase to happen. That's marketing.

Sales. When I'm sellin' somebody I'm presenting them an offer. I'm going through, and I'm showing 'em, "bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, here's my offer."

I'm still tryin' to lace in each one of those four drugs inside of the noggin, okay?

Third phase is closes. Cash is for closers. How many people have you sold where they actually didn't actually end up paying you? That happens all the time. It's because you're not good at closing yet.

You get good at closing, study closing! You gotta understand that, okay?

And again, to recap:

When we go in, and when that purchase happens we enter an emotional phase. I'm seeking four chemicals on the right side of my brain. I want the emotional part. I want the creative part. I wanna go feed the noggin. I want the hit. I want the distraction. I want the status. I want the connection.

The right side of the brain begins to hijack the left side, and you get into a phase of emotional buying: "I was just here for eggs, but I really want that shirt. I was just here for bread, but I really want this. Wow, I really like that balloon. Oh, it's attached to a car. Maybe we should get a new car."

Emotional, emotional, emotional, emotional, #dopamine hit, #dopamine hit, #dopamine hit. Does that make sense? Lots of hits.

As we leave the actual sales process, when a sale has actually happened, when you've closed, and there's effectively cash in your hand the theory of cognitive dissonance means that the emotional part of the brain starts to die down - those four chemicals start to go away, and the actual logical part of the brain comes back and says, "Crap, I just spent money I was not planning on spending," and it freaks out.

The only way to prevent your customer from having buyer's remorse is for you to get as many of those four chemicals, #dopamine, #oxytocin, #serotonin, #endorphins, fired inside of their noggin so that afterwards they literally apply the product to their identity:

" Well yeah, I bought the shirt because I'm a smart buyer."

Does that make sense? I am now basing my ability to be successful on me, and my actual worth, my actual self, my actual self worth, my actual identity, my essence. We all do this:

“I'm gonna go into the store and I'm gonna buy a bunch of crap I did not mean to buy.” Afterwards I'm gonna logically justify it, so I'm like, "Crap, wait, should I have bought that?" Logical, logical, logical. "Ahhh, here's all the other reasons. Here's all these pre-stoked reasons that Stephen gave me at the end of his presentation why I should have bought. Oh, because it was 50% off, so I'm smart. Oh, because if I bought now it included X, Y, and Z. Oh, because if I got this I also got one, two and three. Oh, because of this, this, this."

These start to hit all these logical part of the brains: "plus I'm a smart buyer, plus I'm a funnel hacker, plus..." Does that make sense? This is FREAKIN' HUGE!

You need understand what you're actually doing to your customers in the brain.

It's the reason we have you tell so many stories. It's the reason I beg you to become a storyteller.  And it's the reason why I have you guys focus so much on your offer.

It's the reason I have you guys go and say "Look, here's your closes."

It's not enough for you to just be a good storyteller. Sure you are gonna make more money than if you're not, but being a good storyteller, makin' a great offer, but not knowin' how to close.... You're NOT gonna get paid, right?

So, these parts of the noggin you have to understand:

We got those three phases happen. Next, the fear of cognitive dissonance happens when I leave the purchase. After that I begin to logically justify why the product represents my identity.

The right part of the brain after I've gotten the four drug hits, start to die out, and the logical part of the brain comes back and says, "This is me. That's why I did it, because I'm a smart buyer, because I'm a funnel hacker."

I have shifted their identity, okay.! Huge, massive, monstrous lesson.

So, anyway I started this just like seething and goin' nuts, but anyways, I just hope you're doin' well. I'm excited for every one of you guys. I'm excited for Q and A's tomorrow with you guys, but anyway, keep on the path.

Understand what you're doin'. Understand this is literally the power of mind control in the real sense.

Is it like telekinesis, aka X- Men crap? No, I'm not sayin' that at all. But, I am sayin' that when you understand the levers that cause humans to act  - this is super powerful stuff, man. This is like super intense.

Every time you're on with me, I’m tryin’ to give you a dopamine hit. It an easy one for me to give you. It's a chemical distraction.

An oxytocin hit, that's the hardest one to get - it's the chemical of connection - and so, I'm gonna tell a lotta personal stories to break your walls with me.

A serotonin hit, that's the one of status: "You are freakin' awesome. I think entrepreneurs changed the world," BAM,I just gave you a serotonin hit - especially if I attach that to a story.

I'm gonna try and give you an endorphin hit too. If I can get you to interact in this, "Right, go ahead right now and start giving me some hearts if you could. Give me some hearts if you guys have liked anything I said here at all.  It's been amazing, give me some hearts."  Okay, oh my gosh, that was crazy. I realize now why it's so powerful. Bam, I just gave you some freakin' endorphins.

That's the chemical that you have to actually participate in to get. When I weave all four of those chemicals in, I have a very strong chance of my customers being able to emotional sell themselves, and logically sell themselves - and once the four chemicals have died off, post purchase. “BAM. See you on the freakin' Two Comedy Club stage baby. Whew!”

Whoa, thanks for listening. Gang, please remember to a rate and subscribe.

Hey, you 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.