Boom! What's goin' on everyone?

It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna teach you guys about cash causing frameworks.

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.

Whazzup, guys? I'm excited for today. This is an episode I ripped from a Facebook live. I did it off the whim, but it ended up really, really awesome.

I was just doing it to the group, The Science of Selling Online - if you're not part of that group, it's a free group. It's where I just kind of can geek out a lot of times. If you like this stuff, there's more of that on that group.

So, anyway, I went live, I wanted people to understand...

A lot of people ask me things like, "Well, Stephen, how do you know this is gonna work?"

Or "Stephen, it seems you're able to know a little bit, (not that you can predict the future, and I'm never, you know) like  you understand what the numbers would mostly be and where kind of success will kind of come out of before you go do it?"

And I'm like, "Well, yea, it's 'cause I'm just following the framework."

And so, what I wanna do is just riff a little bit here, so you guys understand. I made the decision early on. I remember kind of where I was...

There was a lot of colleagues of mine in college that were studying different areas, you know, like, "I'm gonna study marketing or study this, or study that, or study supply chain or systems, or whatever." And I remember thinking to myself, I wrote this down guys, this was an actual goal of mine  five, six years ago. I wanted to learn how to be a consultant to small businesses.

I wanted to start businesses and sell businesses.

Guys, it is hilarious to be that I'm doing that now, which is crazy. And I realized though that the talent and the skill that I wanted to learn was I wanted to learn how to make it rain in a company. And that's what this episode is about. That's what this episode is gonna teach you.

There's a very specific method that I have used to do that, okay. And I know what it is. It has not been an accident, okay. I did a lot of making accidents and mistakes in areas - it's not that I don't anymore, but, man, I know why it's working. This episode will teach you why that is. It's one of the biggest gifts I can give you. Thank you so much for being a follower.

Let's cut over to that now. If you guys did like it, again, please rate and subscribe. That really means a lot to me. I love reading those ratings. It actually makes my day. It means a lot.

Anyways, guys, thanks so much.

Hopefully, you'll enjoy this episode. This is life-changing stuff right here, and I hope that you do what I did, take it seriously and write down what it is you wanna do.

I wanted to learn how to make it rain in a company. I wrote it down, and you have to do that part of it. Anyways, this is how it all happened. Thanks, let's cut over.

What's up, my friends, how you guys doin'? If you guys are just barely gettin' on, I haven't done Facebook live in the group here for a little bit. We have grown since I last went on from like 2,200 members, we're almost at 4,000. It's crazy.

So, welcome and real quick, I just wanna teach you guys some cool stuff on why my stuff works so well and why I can see other people's doesn't. I'm just gonna be honest about it, okay. That's cool? Give me a little hashtag replay though if you guys are brand new in here and you guys are just barely getting in.

If you guys are live though, welcome, welcome. What's up? Just chillin' to this song again, many I freakin' love it. Alright, here we go.

Hey guys so I just, I've been doing a lot of, been doing a lot of Facebook lives. I've been doing a lot of training in general. Yesterday I did two back to back webinars. It was two back to back webinars in ClickFunnels - which is a ton of energy...

If you've never done that; it's hard to just one, and if you do them right, I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna sound gross, but I'm like sweating, I'm exhausted, with just on one. Two of them back to back is murder. Absolute murder.

I was talkin' to one of my friends, Dave Lindenbaum. It's funny, he's like, "Yeah, two suck." He's like, "I've done three, but I would not wish that on my worst enemy. You are so wrecked by the end."

I did two back to back webinars yesterday, and the one Funnel Away challenge.  I was spent. I was absolutely spent by the time I went to sleep. It was like 1 a.m.

Anyway, so I, guys real quick I just wanted to walk through a principle here, and I know it's the reason why I'm succeeding in this stuff. And this might sound weird for me to say that, might sound weird for me to go ahead and teach it, but anyway...  

Is it cool if I go through that a little bit? We all got thick skin here. I can just say what needs to be said. Is that alright? You guys cool with that? Cause I, I wanna teach a few things here.

There's a few patterns for why I know my stuff is working and working very, very well. And I think there's a few ways,  a few reasons. Some of it comes from the internal, and the way I approach myself on this stuff.

First of all, can you guys hear me okay? You guys got me alright here? Yeah, okay, Dan said "Cool. Okay just say it."

Alright, there's a few things for how I approach things individually in my own mentality and my mindset with this stuff. However, there's a few things though that for the way I approach the business.

I look at myself, and I look at the business as two separate things. I mean really, we're very similar. Who's that rapper that said, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." Who? I can't remember who the rapper is that said that. But I look at myself that way a little bit. Like, I am the business, man, rather than a businessman. (It's gonna kill me. I can't remember who that was.)

In my business, I compete on a lot of differences. I compete on differences.
I compete with strengths. Personally, when it comes to me though, as the attractive character, I compete with mostly just differences, not so much strengths.

Someone's always better, faster, stronger, than me personally. Someone's always quicker. Someone's always a better writer. So I don't compete with strengths when it comes to my personality, I really compete with differences.

When it comes to the business though, it really is mostly just strengths. When it comes to offers, it's back to differences though. I don't know if that makes any sense at all what I'm saying there, but there's a relationship there though, you guys gotta get used to.

One of the reasons why my stuff does well and one of the reasons why my stuff has accelerated so quickly is because there's a few different principles that I follow:

Guys,  I'm the worst cook ever, but if I'm gonna bake a cake, how do you bake a cake? Just tell me right now, what are some of the things that you use to go bake a cake? How do you go do that? What are some of the things that I do? What's the process? How do I bake the actual cake? How do I put it together?

Someone said it's, someone said Jay-Z, someone said Kayne, so I don't know, it's one of those two.

Right, how do I bake a cake?   I'm gonna get flour, I'm gonna get sugar, I'm gonna get eggs, that's as far as I know. There's probably some chocolate in there somewhere... I really have no idea how to bake a cake, but there's a way to do it, right.

There's a process to baking a cake. There's a process of putting it in the oven for how long it's gonna be in there. There's a process behind that.

How am I gonna get good at a sport? I'm looking at Brazilian jiu-jitsu right now. I really wanna fight Russell. He and I wanna roll, and I'm stoked about it. So I'm gonna go take jiu-jitsu for the next year, and then  I'm gonna try and choke him out... and he's gonna try and choke me out. It'll be fun. But there's a process for that. There's a process to learn that kind of sport and discipline.

There's a process for me to go learn how to freakin' walk. There's a process for me to learn how to be on the internet. And when you understand that! People are like "Oh yeah, I get it." But that's not the way people act.

When I look on the internet, and I see what people are doing on the internet, most the time they're just doing stuff, and that's better than doing nothing, but they're not adhering to any kind of framework. There's no pattern in what they're following. There's not a frame, and there's no system, there's no format or formula. They're just kinda doing stuff.

Because of that, it's really easy for me to look at and be like, "Oh yeah, that's why you're failing."

I don't mean that in a negative way. That's not negative at all; it's just the truth. Frameworks are what save you in this game. Frameworks are what save you in anything in life.

Funny enough,  I call it art versus science - there's more science to this game then there is art - which should be very relieving for you to hear. There is more science than art. Which means I don't need to be as much of a creative genius as much as I do just learning some of the frameworks that make success happen. And I'm not just talking mentality stuff.

I have a hard time with that sometimes. When I say mindset training, that's such an overused term. It gets fluffy, and I don't like it. But like, learn the framework. Learn the process, learn how to go and actually...

If I'm gonna do a webinar, if I'm gonna make an eBook, if I'm gonna write something, if I'm gonna do that, if I'm gonna be an Olympic skier, if I'm gonna go and I'm gonna learn how to ride a bike... anything in life has a pattern for success. It's like 80% framework, 20% art - which is awesome. It was so relieving when I finally realized and understood that.

So what I'm looking for when I go funnel hack somebody, what I'm looking for when I go and I'm looking at an influencer and I'm seeing how they're behaving.

I can close my eyes and I see. This is why I can speak without notes, because in my mind, in my brain, I can close my eyes and I can follow a framework inside of my head, and I know the next step.

Which means the decision making power of "What do I say next?" is kind of gone. I just know that now I need to be talking about this next thing and now what's coming up. I know, "Now I need some testimonials, I've told enough stories.Let me just dig back into my bag of stories. Which story would fit as a testimonial for that scenario best? Bam, that one! Insert here.”

Now, what's next? "Okay, let's go call to action, let's go here." In my head, I'm just following frameworks. That's the secret.

When I'm building a funnel, it's the same process every freaking time regardless of product, price, industry. It doesn't matter, it's the same process, and that's what people get stuck up on.

I do a lot of coaching. I've already coached today for three hours I think. Yeah, I do a lot coaching, and I'm about to go on for another hour and a half here, soon. Probably about 20 minutes. And what's frustrating for me is when somebody thinks that they are an exception to that rule. YOU ARE NOT! You are not! Okay?

And what happens when somebody believes they're an exception to the rule, what I've noticed, is that they don't believe that it's 80% framework, 20% art. That's why this is the Science of Selling Online - I explicitly took out the term Art - because it's more science than art.

It's a little bit of creativity and your own flare but it's not the majority. And when somebody thinks it's the majority, that's when they fail.

'When I'm funnel hacking somebody, I'm not just funnel hacking what products are they selling and how are they selling them? I'm looking to see the framework that they introduced the product to the market with. I'm looking for the framework:

What's the pattern? What's the formula? What's the step by step by step? Do this, then this, then this, then this - then add a little bit of flare of your own at the end.

It's so relieving to understand that and it's so relieving to feel and know and understand that because it means I don't have to be what college was trying to teach me to be. It's the exact opposite. I don't need to be a creative genius to have a lifestyle and success off of the internet or any business in general.

I don't need to be a creative genius. I don't need to make something brand new, completely prolific, something that nobody's ever seen before to make money. That's not true. That's the biggest fallacy ever in the game, and that's been the weirdest thing for me to realize.


Hindsight's 20 20, right? But forever, as I looked backwards, I'd be like "Oh man, and I'm starting to see those patterns." Forever the issue was, I walked around for years, my friends, trying to answer the question, "What product should I sell?"  - When all along the market was trying to tell me what it wanted me to sell it. That's all I'm tryna figure out all the time.

So when I'm funnel hacking somebody and I'm lookin' at that red ocean,  I'm steppin' back and sayin' "Oh, interesting." What I'm doing is I'm trying to see what product the market wants me to give it. I don't even have to have that answer. I don't even have to know what the product is. I don't even have to know.

Guys, I was the number one affiliate for this book, and a lot of it was because of that offer that I gave you guys. I didn't know what the offer was gonna be when I started selling it. You all gave me the answer.

Did you just hear what I said?

I sold 375 books, you all gave me the answer. We decided together what it is that you wanted to include in the offer when you bought this book through my link. I just gave it back to you.

The same principle is true for your own products, not just affiliate stuff, not just for your coach, not just for your info products, I don't care.

There is such a smaller amount of art and creative genius in this game than people realize. So what you need to get good at is learning to be attentive and see the patterns.

The reason I got to be a good funnel builder and so fast at ClickFunnels is because I can close my eyes, and in my head, I see the framework for the perfect webinar funnel.

I see all the elements in a perfect webinar script. In my head, I can see the framework of an awesome, epic upsell video. I know the framework in that script. It's a framework. I don't have to come up with what to say, I just know I need to have elements that talk about that, that, that, that, that, that, that... Plug it in, play, bam, done!  You guys gettin' this? It's not just to trial close, I'm actually asking.

'Cause what I want you to understand is that it is the Science of Selling Online - which is the name of the group - and it's the name for a reason:

It was gonna be The Science and Art of Selling Online, but I took out Art because the game's easier than you might be thinking it is. It is easier than you think it is!

It took me like three years, and 17 business tries to understand that  - because everybody in college, all the books, all these gurus, and all the people around, a lot of them...

Not all of them, there were one or two particularly who were not, and they were teaching me the correct way to do it and when they were teaching me to use the market to gather the data on what to sell rather than tryin' to come up with it on my own...

There was nothing like, "No input, zero, zero, zero, zero." Like I could not come up with something. I was like "I'm not really a creative genius kinda guy." Which might shock a lot of you guys. Like "Hey Stephen, you totally are. You're this crazy creative guy." I'm not! I'm following a pattern, that's it.

So I know that there's a few products coming out here soon that I'm excited to get out to you guys. There's a few products coming out that I haven't announced yet that I'm really pumped about... but I am using the market and I'm asking things in a way to start slowly pulling out and harvesting, "that's what they want, that's what they want, that's what they want" and you are literally building the very offer that I hope to give back to you.

Now I'm gonna go make the product obviously, and the product's gonna be freaking epic, but as far as what it is, you should not be doing a lot of that deep dive work on your own. In fact, it's better if you don't. It's way better if you don't. It's far better if you don't.

And the reason is, is because you don't fill your own wallet. I've said that multiple times, but like your opinion doesn't matter. You're not the one buying your thing. So if you're like, "Oh Stephen I don't know if I like that product yet?" You're not the one buying it!  You don't fill your own wallet. So you gotta get outta your head and be like, "Alright, fine, what do they want? What does the market want? What is it that they're asking? Give that - learn what that is?  What are they asking? What are they telling me that they want?”

Guys, the game gets so easy when you realize that it's just about learning the frameworks.

So if there's some piece of advise I could give, besides that, it would be this:

Choose frameworks, choose models to go learn that result in cash as a rule not an exception.

Did you hear what I just said?

I am not interested in learning and this is the other reason why I've been doing so well with stuff is because I don't want to learn frameworks and rules and science of things where I am an exception to the rule and that's what causes money.

It's the reason why I don't go learn Facebook ads, guys. Because for me to learn the framework to make a successful Facebook ad, I could go learn it, I know I could, I know I could be really good at it, okay. But I don't go study that personally, and yeah it might be your thing, which is great, but I don't because there are sometimes these little tricks I feel like I have to go play in order to make it work super well, I don't wanna learn the tricks.

I wanna learn the rules that result in cash not exceptions to the rule that result in cash. So go learn frameworks.

That's the reason why I obsess over webinars so much.

As a rule, if I do this and I tell an origin story and I come up with a good hook and I got the origin story which is a great intro, then I got three secrets which attack your vehicle, internal and external related false beliefs and I go through and I have some testimonials there.

Then I go through stack slide where I present the actual offer. Then I go through closes where I tell reasons why you should act now and I go through and I put that in a thing called a webinar funnel...

As a rule, it typically results in cash and because of the numbers and because the way it works out, they're very easy to make profitable.

When I was working at ClickFunnels, I watched Russell, I was like, "Huh..." We launched things so quickly there. I started asking the question, "That wasn't even like done yet. How come that worked? Huh, that actually didn't look visually that good yet, why did he make a million dollars in three weeks on that? Interesting. Why is it that he had 8,000 options on that page, half of it's broken, how come it still worked and it was with Facebook ads and people who probably didn't even really know who he is that much. How did that work over there?"

It's because he has frameworks in his head that result in cash as a rule not an exception to a rule.

I do NOT learn frameworks where I have to have an exception to a rule in order to make money.

Too many times people are tryna look for the flash in the pan, the little thing that is cool... but it's fleeting and it leaves. And that's why it doesn't work ...cause you spend all this time... right. Those things work as like little tiny add-ons when you already know the base thing that causes money. Is this making sense?

When you learn that rule and that framework to the rule. When you learn the system; the formula that causes cash rather than the exception to the rule that causes cash.

Right, the only time where I can learn that is when I already have this base down. When I got that 80% down. Then I can go learn that little 20% real fast, right take fast and quick money off the top. Then I can take fast and quick money right off the top and then it gets super easy, super, super easy.

So anyways, I'm really stoked about this. I hope you guys understand what I'm tryna get across here:

Stop learning flash in the pan stuff.

Stop learning things where it doesn't result in cash as a rule.

I don't study things that are like, how should I say this? I study:

>Becoming an attractive character.
>Offer creation.
>Sales itself.
>The psychology of sales.

The internet could die tomorrow and I know I'm gonna be okay because of the framework about sales that I know that's in my head.

I know that someone could put me on a stage right now and I will over deliver and I will probably sell more than everybody else that's on there who's been selling for a long time but doesn't have a framework and hasn't been studying this.

Those are bold claims and I totally get it and I understand that. You have to understand the reason why is because of the framework I'm following in my head.

This One Funnel Away Challenge thing that I've been doing, right, funny enough looking back, I'm only supposed to be going like 20 to 30 minutes on them. I'm not trying to go a long time - that's not my goal...

But there's so many little pieces that I'm trying to help people understand when it comes to learning these frameworks and understanding that it's more about science then it is art... It's more about understanding formulas that cause cash then it is learning exceptions to rules that cause cash... So, I've been going for like 50 minutes in 'em.

I'm  literally just following a script in my head. I know where I'm leading it. I know where I'm able to actually follow a little bit of a rabbit tangent, but how to bring it back in. It's only come because of the insane sickening volume, right, the amount of time just doing it. Mat time. Time on the mat. How much time have I spent on that mat? How much, right!

Sometimes, I can't remember who told this story. They told a story about two different fighters or even people at the gym.  I can't remember what the story exactly was, I remember the principal and what he was using an example:

So take two people at the gym. Person A goes to the gym and they go to the water fountain they talk to somebody for a little while. Then they go over to the elliptical machine and they set up their settings for a while. Then they'll be on there for a few minutes kinda warming up. Then they'll go talk to somebody else for a while. Then maybe they'll go over to the restroom and the locker room for a little while. Then they'll come back over, and then they do one or two sets of this and they leave. That's person A.

Person B comes in, they actually spend a little bit less time but it's so hyper-focused it's ridiculous.  They're working hard, they're extremely sore. Every set they're almost dropping it. They're going to failure every single time.

Who's gonna be more successful? Obviously the person who's gonna be more successful is the person who's killing it.

I'm tryna get mat time. I want as many times on the mat as possible for me to just be actually swinging to hit the ball NOT prepping to hit the ball. So that's why I go do things. That's why I have these little mantras in my head. One of them is 'Mat Time.'

One of the people on a webinar yesterday, they did not get as many people on as they were supposed to, which kinda sucked.  I was like, I could call it off. But in my head, 'Mat time.' That's all I said to myself and no questions asked, I just stepped forward and just did it. 'Mat time' and I just did it because I need more time on the mat.

I need more time moving forward on it. I am perfecting my craft. It's hours and hours and hours of doing the thing.

Too many times people are like, "Well, I did it once and it didn't really work." Well, like yeah! It's 'cause you freaking did it once.

How many times did it take you to learn to ride a bike? You guys gettin' this? You have to study frameworks - which is awesome, it's debunking a lot of the mystic. I hate the whole mystic and mentality that people are promoting about entrepreneurship where it's people like lookin' off in the sunset and they believe, I don't know, they're like god's gift to humanity and that they're the change to the world.

Yeah, they can change the world, but frankly, they're just making value and people are paying them for that value.  Learn the framework behind it. Don't be allured by the art behind it. Don't be allured by trying to become this creative thing and adding your own flare and that's actually the way to failure. Just learn from people who are doing it and have done the thing. That's it.

Learn from the people who are doing it and have done the thing and have done the thing long enough that they've created their own frameworks.

My wife and I were talking about this two or three nights ago. It's kinda fun, she and I are just sittin' around the kitchen table and we were talking about it. And I said, “One of the things that’s made me successful with this is that I realized that I needed to follow the person that has the biggest cheese. Who actually has been doing the thing super, super long.”

When I go and I find that person and I see the people who have the biggest cheese, what I'm looking for is I'm looking for the person who has dived into yesteryear's experts... This is the reason I follow Russell...

Listen to what I'm about to say! This has been one of the biggest shortcuts ever, and it's the reason why I've only been playing the game for like four years and you all know who I am. This is it right here:

I became cognizant of this probably about a year and a half ago...

What I did is I went and I found and I started paying attention to people who consumed yesteryear's experts like an animal.  Straight up animal. Just a freaking beast and they consumed it and they learned yesteryear's experts, the frameworks that they were using.

And what happened is when they consumed them and they became an expert, they got so good at the yesteryear's experts and their frameworks, that they started creating their own versions of the framework. That's what you're looking for!

I'm not just looking for somebody who understands that 10 or 20 years ago this is how it was happening. I don't care if it's business or some skill you're learning or a hobby. I'm looking for somebody to go follow and learn from who has been in the game so long or has consumed the game so much that they are literally producing their own frameworks that have equaled success because it's a shortcut to having to learn yesteryear's experts and the frameworks that have come through.

I was talking to my wife about this and I was teaching her this. I was like, "That's where the big secret has been."

So,  I wanna go learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu,  I wanna go learn and fight. I wanna do that. And so what I did is I went and I found somebody, right. I talked to Russell. Russell's huge into that sphere. I talked to somebody who knows that area and my question to him is: "Who has the biggest cheese?” That's actually what I asked him and he knew what I was talking about 'cause he knows that's how I run.  And he goes, "There's a guy you need to go learn from and he said who ya lookin' at?" And I said "This person, this person, this person." He said, "They're good. That person's great over there too, but you need to go learn from this guy because he's been in the game so freaking long."  I understood immediately what he was talking about.

You're tryna find the freaking Yodas. You're trying to find the ninjas. You're trying to find the individuals and the people who are like, they've been in it so, so, so long that they've been producing their own frameworks successfully.

That's the reason why there's stick figures in Russell's books and that was the sign to me that I knew I needed to follow him like crazy. He has distilled down, literally dozens of experts, down to his own stuff and then is producing his own frameworks.

So now when it comes to marketing and funnel education, my coach, I only listen to Russell. That's it.

When it comes down to listening to, actual like hardcore like sales scripts and sales tactics, I only listen to Grant Cardone. Why? Cause that dudes got mat time, holy crap.

When it comes to building systems in my business that make things run on autopilot, I only listen to Alex Charfen. Why? Because that dude has got mat time and he has followed other experts and he has his own frameworks that he's developed.

The framework is what not only makes you cash but it's also a symbol that the individual typically knows what the heck they're talking about.

Why do you guys like following me? It's because I like to do those funnel drawings. A lot of you guys found me that way. I like to go in and distill down, listening to all these people and seeing it and coaching over 1,800 people personally in this process for two or three years.  That's a lot of mat time. And so I see the patterns that cause success. I see the patterns that cause failure.

The ones that routinely cause failure are the art ones and the ones that routinely cause success is the people who take their emotions out of it, realize that they are not are not their feelings, get past their feelings and they just do the science of it:

They're like, "You know I didn't wanna publish, but  I'm freaking doing it 'cause he said to." And they're just doing that. And they're just following the people who have their own frameworks. They're just doing the success and science-based ones. You guys gettin' this? Cool. Rock on. Go watch what I'm doing because that's how I execute.

We'll see you guys later, bye.

Boom! Just try to tell me you didn't like that.

Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Wanna interview me or get interviewed yourself? Grab a time now at SteveJLarsen.com

Boom! What's going on everyone?
It's Steve Larsen, this is Sales Funnel Radio... and today I'm going to teach you how to pull off a quiz funnel.

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

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

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

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

What's up, guys?

I've actually been super stoked about this episode. So recently I've been doing this inside of my own funnels, which I'm very excited about. Now if you think about this, actually I'll just tell you...

One of the first products I was a part of when I first started working over at ClickFunnels was a... it's so funny, I say that phrase all the time. It's because there were so many projects going on all the time! Anyway, this was one of them towards the beginning.

I went through, and I started doing a deep dive of the top converting quizzes that were going on in other people's funnels. It was cool because Russell already knew what a lot of them were so he gave me a whole bunch of lists.

At the end of the quiz, it asked for the individual's information to get the opt-in and start a free mini-course, or start a whatever... or send them to a free plus shipping something.

One of the most successful funnels, before I worked with Russell, was a medical quiz,  though it wasn't for medical stuff...

It was the funnel hacking of me doing that quiz that made my first big funnel successful. My big first success story which I used as a case study when I applied for ClickFunnels -  which is kinda cool.

It was a quiz, and after they'd answered all these questions, it said, "Hey do you want your results? Put your email in here." And basically, depending on what they'd said inside the quiz, they were sent a specific email to invite them to a free plus shipping offer... and then you know how it goes after that. Up sales, all kinds of cool stuff.

So they sent traffic to that quiz, and I knew they were making a ton of money. It was kinda cool because of those first ClickFunnels projects was all these quizzes.

What I did is, I copied all of the quizzes as I went through them, I took the questions, and all of the possible answers for every single quiz and I put them on this sweet Excel sheet. I compared side by side, all the question ones, all the question twos, and so forth — the questions, and then all the possible answers.

It was funny because I started noticing all of these trends. All these trends in all of the quizzes. I'm kind of a patterns guy, which you guys can probably imagine by now.  I started looking through, and there's patterns. I was like, "Holy crap! Check this out."

All of the question number ones and twos are kinda asking the same area of stuff.

Interesting, question three and four-ish, around that part of the quiz, it transitions, and they're all asking this kind of stuff.

Then I get down to question six and seven,(most of them did not have more than seven questions... sometimes eight, but it was usually no more than that), and it was all the same kind of question throughout.

I was like, this is fascinating. Why is this happening? And  I started deep diving. I ended up writing this outline seeing the patterns of what was going on inside of each one of these quizzes. I actually went through my computer, and I found it, Woohoo!

So I'm going to go through and read this thing. I want to walk through some of the highest converting quizzes.

The reason I'm doing this right now, is because, if you guys had a chance to come to my recent live funnel build, (some of you guys were able to be on, which was really fun), I was teaching about how when you get a funnel out the door, I always start by focusing on hot traffic first. That is the easiest way to get money off the table.

Then you take that money, and you dump it into ads. Now your customers have funded the rest of the entire business.

I've never put a dollar of my own into my business EVER because of that principle - that play. I think of them as football plays. By running that marketing play. I've done that multiple times.

Now, when the hot traffic starts to dry up a little, and I need to go from hot to warm and expand the pot, there's multiple ways for me to do that. I could change who I'm targeting... there's a little bit of that that goes on when you start to widen the pot when you go from a hot audience to a little bit more of a warm audience. That's one option...

I could change the ad.

I could change what's going on in the funnel.

I could change the sales message.

I could adapt or change some of the offer.

But that's a lot of stuff to go switch.

One of the easiest things that I could do, rather than change the ad, or change the audience, or part of the sales message, is to merely change what people see when they click on your ad.

So instead of them seeing an opt-in page, I put something in front of that that lets me warm up the audience before I ever ask for an opt-in. And that's exactly what I've done here, and that's exactly what I wanted to walk through with you guys. That's why I do these quizzes and these little baby quiz funnels.

It lets my audience get warmed up to me before I ask them to opt-in or even go towards my main thing. In this instance, I'm using it in front of a webinar funnel.

So, what ended up happening is I went in, and I found out this crazy formula, and I was like, "Holy crap!" and ended up writing this dummy quiz for ClickFunnels so that we could change what people are seeing when they went to clickfunnels.com. It was a bunch of fun.

This was years ago; I don't remember what happened to this, However, I dug it back up, and I was like, "Holy crap, this is good stuff!"

So, first of all, I want to walk through just a few of the actual quizzes. Just a few of them that are funnel hacks (or quiz hacks) that I went through so that you guys can see some of the format and some of the patterns inside of here...

This comes from Revolution Golf Quiz:

The first question they ask: #1: Aare you a man or a woman? The reason I'm asking is because men and women tend to suffer from different consistency killers.

This is a quiz in front of a golf product.

Q#1: Are you a man or woman?

Q#2: What is your age range?

A:
>I'm over 50.
>Between 30 to 50.
>Under 30.

Q#3: What's the length of your average drive?

A:
>Less than 150 yards.
>150 to 200.
>200 250.
>Over 250.

Q#4: What's your playing level?

A:
>I'm a beginner.
>I'm an expert.... whatever.

And you go through and you declare your skill level.

Q#5: In relation to your full swing, what are you having the biggest challenge with?

A:
>Poor contact.
>Directional control.
>Major consistency issues.

Q#6: People in your scenario usually suffer from one of these three things. Which of these do you suffer from the most?

A:
>Hitting thin shots.
>Fat shots.
>Bottom or low ones.
>I miss the center of the ball.
>Hitting weak shots.


And they go through and they answer this stuff. And what's interesting is by the end of it, it says, "Well based on your answers, you probably should have X! Put your email address in and we'd like to send you your results,  we'll also send you a free course, or a free report, or a free something."

It just literally forwards to the beginning of the funnel. So think about that for a second.

Okay, the next one, next one. This one's for tennis, it's called Fuzzy Yellow Balls:

Q#1: Are you male or female? (I was like, huh, where have I seen that before?)


Q#2: How old are you? (Where have I seen that before?)

Q#3: What's your current skill level rating?

Q#4: How hard do you typically hit your first serve?

Q#5: When you try and hit it harder, some of the most common issues are these, which one are you?

A:
>I hit into the net.
> I hit it long.
> I don't hit it cleanly.

Q #6: People in your scenario typically suffer from one of these three things, which one are you? Which of the following best describes you?

There were seven questions in this quiz, not six. But it's the same kind of theme.

I was like, "Huh, wait a second…”

And I go onto the next one. This one is about fat loss.

Q #1: Are you a man or woman? (I was like, what the heck?)

Q#2: What's your age range?

Q#3: When it comes to body shape people tend to suffer from one of these three things, which one are you?

Q#4: When it comes to food cravings, which food do you give into most?

A:
>I give into sweets.
> I give into chocolate.
> I give into carbs.
> None of the above.

Q#5: When it comes to eating habits, which one do you have?

Q #6: When it comes to stress, most people do this, which one are you?

(This quiz had ten questions, it was the biggest one... But most of them don't.)

And what I started realizing was that there was a pattern going on... a heavy pattern of the way you approach somebody inside of a quiz.

So I went through and I kind of formulated...

You guys know I'm kind of a geek when it comes to this stuff. Ok, not kind of! I'm a straight out freakin' nerd in this stuff, and I'm proud of that. It's what makes me good at this. I obsess...

A little while ago, I went and I printed out all of the follow-up sequences from the five most profitable webinars I've ever seen Russell do. There was paper all over my floors,80 sheets all over the place. I studied deeply the patterns between each one... Well, I did the exact same thing for the quizzes.

I started deep diving, I didn't have things printed out all over the floor, but I started diving deeply into the format, the formula and the pattern of what was making these quizzes successful.

Now there's some fluidity between these. Some of them were six questions, some were ten. But it's this pattern of questions. It's this pattern of thought. It's this pattern that I noticed these quizzes were pulling a customer through that made it most effective.

So I want to walk through this with you real quick and teach you exactly what I've been doing:

The first series of questions have to do with self-identifying - but with really low barriers.

Q#1: Are you a man or woman?

You don't have to study to answer that question. You don't have to go to a study hall to figure that out. Are you man or woman? Why would I ask somebody that? What does it have to do with anything when it comes to hitting my golf ball? When it comes to tennis? When it comes to fat loss? It might, and that's why it works.

And there's one of the reasons I love this so much is because I'm just getting people to make little micro commitments, little micro answers. They're not huge questions. Are you male or female?

Q#2: What age range are you?

I'm like, "Oh snap, this is not hard to answer." And that's part of the reason why it works so well.

The first few questions get somebody into the habit of clicking. This is huge. Get somebody into the habit of clicking.

Q #3:(or phase #3) they have them self-identify questions based on the subject: Are you a man or a woman? What's your age range? Have you ever built a funnel before?

It's self-identifying questions based on the subject itself. "Have you ever tried to lose weight? Are you a tennis player? How long have you been playing tennis for?" They're self-identifying, that's what is so key about this.

One of the biggest hurdles you have to overcome in a sales message...

If you heard one of my previous episodes, I talk about why it's important to cause an identity shift in an individual. The reason why these quizzes work so well is because you're are literally having them call out their own identity to you.

You are not saying, "Oh you look like this." You're having them declare it and say, "Check it out. This is who I am." This is very cool because it puts them in a place of vulnerability. Not like risky kind, not like where it feels like they're being threatened, they hit a phase of vulnerability, but they're the ones doing it. And you're gonna see this as we move forward.

So I have them answer, #1: Self-identifying questions; Male or female? Age?

Next thing: Self-identify questions based on the subject: "Well, I am a funnel builder." It's their current state, according to the subject. "I am a tennis player.  I do play golf. I am trying to lose weight. I am, whatever..."

The next category, you have them declare their level of skill, or achievement based on the subject:

"Well, this is what I usually hit in golf. This is my handicap." In tennis, I don't know tennis very well, but it said, "What's your current rating?" And it had you go through and list that what rating level you are. Does that really have that much to do with the fact that they probably know you could use their product anyway? No, the only reason they're doing that is so you can go in and self-identify and be like, "Hey check it out, this is where I am."

Ooh, cuz now what they're starting to do, is we move into questions where they are declaring where they are not.

So the third category is: Self-declare a level of skill, according to the topic. This is where I am:  “I have been trying to lose weight. These are the programs I've used." Or, "This is when I'm binge eating. These are the kinds of things I binge eat."

The next category is one of the biggest, and it's one of the reasons why I've noticed that quizzes work so well, or don't. And here it is: You start declaring the biggest challenge. They are self-declaring their biggest challenge pertaining to the subject:

"Oh man, when I hit the golf ball, I notice I top it."  Or "I hit it right on the center, but it's not consistent with direction." Or "I hit too far underneath it and the thing pops really high."  

"When I'm playing tennis, I notice I hit too much into the net." Or "I hit too far over." Or "I'm just not consistent when I'm doing a diet. I've noticed that in the evening time is when I get the cravings the most."

It asks about the cravings, and you go through and self-select your freakin' problem. That is so crazy! Because in classic marketing folklore, the way this is done, a lot of people they go create the freaking problem. That way they can sell you the solution. Well, in the quiz, they're self-declaring their problem. You don't have to create it.

They go through and click saying, "Check it out, I'm here. I'm right here, I declare this is who I am. This is where I am in the subject, and this is the thing that I'm sucking it up at."

Guys, this is massive! The psychology behind this is absolutely monstrous. I'm so glad I found this.

The next thing, okay, so now think about what we've done here.

#1: They've self-declared, "This is who I am. This is where I am. This is what I'm struggling with."

#2: The next category we go into is an educate and clarify section: "Oh man, those who are in your scenario, who are saying these kinds of responses, typically suffer from one of these three things." 'Suffer' is a keyword.

They're declaring their own issue, but now you're going to have them go in and declare,  "People in that scenario usually suffer from one of these three things, which one do you think you're at?" Oh man, now how many walls have they self-dropped by this point? They've dropped a lot.

These are normal things you're doing in any sales script, which is why I geeked out over this so much when I first did it. I was like "Holy crap, this is like a mini sales letter in a six-question quiz." It's crazy! It's amazing how effective these things are. It's the reason why I'm using them again.

The next thing, I've noticed in a lot of these quizzes, this is like the final thing, usually, there's one aspect that's crazy random. It's one of the final things, super, super ridiculously random - has nothing to do with anything:

Oh, thanks for taking the quiz; by the way...

Let's say you're talking about the golf quiz; they go through, and they click:

> I hit the ball.
> I top the ball.
> I top the ball way too many times.
>There's no consistency.

#Final Question: Were you wearing blue jeans when you did that?

"Oh man, is that the issue?"

A lot of times I've noticed is that one of the final questions in some of those effective quizzes is kind of a random one that's meant to be like, "Well, you wouldn't think this matters, but it actually does."

With the diet one: "Well, I don't know, was it a full moon last Thursday?" And you're like, "Crap, it was!" And it puts them in this state of curiosity.

You've brought them through in a very small amount of questions:

#1: Here's who I am.

#2: Here's where I am.

#3: Here's what I'm struggling with.

#4: Random Question: (yeah, I drank a liter of water before working out. Maybe that's the reason why I didn't lose any weight.)

You've gone through and produced this aspect of curiosity right before you say, "Could I email you your results? Put your email in right here."

Now it's logical. I can see why, it's logical, it's easy for me to justify giving you my contact, giving you my email address, giving you whatever. Going in and contributing to the marketing relationship at this point.

I'm really excited about this because what we've just made one of these quizzes. I'm super excited to see how it plays out.

So instead of sending traffic to the opt-in page, we're sending traffic to the quiz. Which is cool, because at the end of the quiz, I created a "Ta-da" an offer.

The offer that I've created is:

#1: Hey if you'd like to, I'd really like to be able to give you the results for your quiz.

#2: I want to give you a free mini-course that we've created to help people that are in your scenario. If you just put your email in, it'll send out to you over the next three to five days.

#3: We'd like to give you a free ticket to a web class, and if you just click right here and put your email in, it'll send you over to the ticket page to you can redeem your free ticket.

So go ahead and put your email in right now and that's what you'll get. It's all free. We just want to help you from where you are to where you want to be.

That's basically kind of the script that I'm doing.

This is what we're really doing.  I'm super excited. As soon as this ends, I'm going to finish the last two things I need to launch the quiz.

So anyway, I'm excited about it. I'm really pumped about it because all that stuff that I'm doing right before the opt-in, is to help create a relationship with a more warm style audience instead of the hot one that we've been selling to already.

It's allowed me to go and expand out. When I've done these kinds of things in the past, that's what the benefit has been. Without having to change the sales messaging and go in and adapt the offer, or even really change out much of the audience or really even switch out much of the ad, I can just add in, literally, a single page in front of the entire funnel, drip out a mini-course, (which, go figure, every single thing in that mini-course is reminding them to go redeem their free ticket to the web class).

I'm training them to open my stuff. I'm training them to go through and realize, "Oh man, this guy's eyes are massive, but I could probably trust him." And that's one of the reasons why I'm doing it. To create a relationship ahead of time. To create value ahead of time.

Now I've contributed so much to the relationship for free, the dialogue that I've noticed, and I've seen is: "Man, if this is his free stuff, I wonder what his paid stuff is like?" And then they go check it out. And that's been really helpful.

So I just wanted to dive in a little bit. I know it was kind of a long episode and a  bit of a deep dive and hopefully, you guys understood that as I walked through it. If not, I honestly, I would re-listen to this.

I'm really excited about this, though. This is one of the major keys, and one of the marketing plays that I'm running to drop in that next load of cash.

When we first started ads, we were putting a dollar in and getting three or four dollars back out and, as is expected with paid advertising, you start to get ad fatigue. So we're putting a dollar in now and then we get about two dollars back out, and I want that average to be a little bit higher. So this is one of the easy next plays I'm running to go get that back up and start talking to a broader audience. To get a relationship with people, and invite them to come back to the web class.


So I'm excited guys. Hopefully, you enjoyed that? If you did, please rate it in iTunes. I love watching those reviews. I appreciate it. It means a lot to me, and I love reading them. It's kind of a boost for me to be honest.

It's a lot of work putting these episodes out. We repurpose this thing to 22 platforms. It's nuts! So it means a lot to me.

I'll see you guys next episode. Bye.

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

Boom!

What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio. Today, I'm gonna teach you guys some of the most common mistakes when it comes to opt-in pages.

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

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

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

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

I'm excited for today. I'm excited for this. I actually, I've been looking forward to this one. I created recently a whole course about opt-ins - it's a free course! If you go to freeoptincourse.com, there you go. There's the golden nugget of the entire episode.  

Freeoptincourse.com takes you through a live funnel build that I did to teach people how to get an opt-in. Now you might laugh at that a little bit. You know, it's like, "Hey this is sales funnel radio." The whole thing starts with the opt-in though - this is a give and take relationship.

I remember in college I wrote an e-book, actually two of them. I was so excited. I went and got this e-book written. I got it back from the ghostwriter, and I didn't like it - so I rewrote the whole thing. I was so pumped about it.

This was pre-ClickFunnels, I was using WordPress to build essentially a funnel.  I didn't know how to do that though, so I was like hacking out (with the little coding knowledge that I know) WordPress. It was so finicky, it was terrible.

It was another one of those experiences for me where I was spending inordinate amounts of time putting together this funnel. It was crappy, and I kind of knew that. And I was like, "Ah, maybe it'll still work though." I patched together a payment processor. I patched together an email autoresponder. It was really hard. I was so stoked about this thing.

This was back in the day when I believed that a sale happens because of the product. If you guys have been following me at all, you know that's not true.

The sale happens because of a sales message, not the product. Those are two very different things.

No one buys because of the product. They buy because of the message.

Well, this was before I knew that. This was before I knew any of that stuff. I was so stoked. This e-book was targeted at students, which was first of all stupid because they're all broke.

I spent all this time putting this thing together. I think it took me two days just to create the sales letter to just to get people to opt-in or whatever. Guys, I launched this thing, and nobody even opted in.

I had so many failures with this stuff way back in the day.

I was excited guys. I was proud. I was like, "Yeah, check this out. This is my product". I knew it was really good - it was the reasons why I was doing so well in school. I was putting awesome knowledge in this thing. Honestly really really awesome.

But I was so convinced that the product is the reason you opt-in. I was so convinced that the product is the reason somebody buys.

So what I wanna do real quick is I wanna walk through the more common mistakes that I see when it comes to creating opt-ins.

If you can't get opt-ins, you're already dead in the water. Especially when it comes to putting a sales funnel on the internet - you're already dead in the water.

If you can't even get somebody to opt-into your free thing, how you're gonna get them to buy?

So what I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through... I wrote a little list here, so you'll see me look up and down here a few times, but I wrote a little list here just thinking through like, "Yeah, these are the most common things that I see as mishaps for why people opt-in or not opt-in."

A little while ago, somebody sent me a message, "Hey will you critique my funnel?"

So just so you guys know, I'm always willing to critique somebody's funnel. If you guys want me to do that, you can go to stevejlarsen.com. Stevejlarsen.com is where I can critique your funnel. I sell one-on-one hour coaching sessions. We can dive through whatever you want to.

...So there was a guy that I was doing it for, and it was a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it.  I love these guys. They were so cool. Mad, mad admiration for them. It was some guys over in Hollywood. And it was really really fun. And they worked with a lot of actors. Any, anyways it was really cool.

So they sent me out this squeeze page. And I start looking through this squeeze page and their funnel. And the very first thing that I noticed was how many places I could click. And I started looking through the page. (And, you know, I'm not gonna say who it was or whatever) I was looking through it, and there were so many places that I could click. There were so many places that  I could exit. That's one of the defining differences between what a funnel versus a website.

Let's think about this. If I have a squeeze page; the goal of the squeeze page is to get someone's contact information so that you can continue to market to them, upsell them, serve them, and add value.

If you're not adding value they're gonna unsubscribe anyway. So make sure you're always adding value. However, you're gonna go in, and you're gonna grab somebody's email.

Well, the thing is, if I go and I get on a page, and you can look at your squeeze pages now. You can look at your opt-in page. And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, a squeeze page, an opt-in page, landing page, those are all kind of synonymous terms. Reverse squeeze page/ landing page.

There are subtle differences between all of them, but the main premise, the main idea is you're going to get somebody to give you their email address, or some contact info to start the marketing relationship. That's really all it is.

Well, I was looking at this guy's squeeze page, and the problem was that it wasn't a squeeze page -  it was a classic website that happened to have an opt-in box on it, and they were treating it like a squeeze page.

They were driving a lot of traffic. These guys were spending a ton of money driving traffic to this page. Off the bat, I immediately knew what the problem was.

I was looking at their conversions rates, and I was looking at all this traffic coming in. I was looking at their numbers. And the numbers were telling the story.  I mean they were having like maybe 1%- 2%, of people opt-in for the free thing. That's like, "Something is wrong." You should be getting at least 30% in my mind for a good squeeze page.

I was looking at Affiliate Outrage. It's a free program. Is it a squeeze page? It is. You might be like, "Well Steven you have a full course you're offering on the back." Yeah, but it's still a squeeze page. I just looked, 71% opt-in rates just in the last week! It's been launched for a while - so it's very exciting to have those kinds of numbers.

A lot of my other squeeze pages right now are getting around 62% opt-in rate. I have another one right now; it's like a content funnel. Anyways, it's different. But it's got, it's got a 40 something percent opt-in rate. Which is crazy you guys. Super cool.

There are principles behind this. And the first principle I want you guys to know about is that one of the biggest mistakes people make, classic mistake, is: "It's not a squeeze page." They build a website page.

Meaning, I go on the page, and if you have links at the top, that's not a squeeze page. You just built a website with a funnel editor. You can totally build a website in something like ClickFunnels. I've done it, I've done it a couple times now.

If you have more than one exit from the page, meaning; they should either have to put in their email address, and press submit - or literally close the tab. That is a landing page. Squeeze page.  I'm gonna call them "squeeze pages." Kind of synonymous though. That's like the classic classic blunder though.

At the bottom, when it comes to all the legal terms and stuff, I literally put terms and privacy. That's it. And a copyright. That's it. You know. A business address.  I put the legal crap on there. But besides terms and privacy, I don't put anything else on the bottom. I definitely don't have anything on the top of the page.

The only way to move forward is to give their email, or whatever contact you're asking for. That's how a squeeze page works. It's the definition of it - it squeezes. Give me some info, and I'll give you some sweet value. That's like the classic number one blunder. Now if you've been a funnel builder at all, you're like, "Duh, Steven I get that."

Number two, the one that I see people mess up the most is there's literally just no curiosity. That's it. I look; there's no curiosity. The headline, you've not asked any open loops. The headline is not giving any kind of alluring promise. There's no alluring promise to it. The headline is like the most important aspect.

The first time I ever build a squeeze page was with my buddy in college. He and I were doing an affiliate marketing thing. We decided we were gonna leave a class and never come back 'cause it was so boring. We spent probably three hours just on the headline. It almost got to a frustrating pace. It was like, "Come on; we gotta move along faster." But like we really wanted this thing to work.

At ClickFunnels we spend two to three days just on the headline It's that important. So if you're just writing 'em on a whim, that's typically the biggest reason I see that people's squeeze pages don't work. They might just have one exit - which is great, it's what you should have - but there's no curiosity on the page.

You've literally have answered every one of the questions that you brought up on the same page, therefore why should I opt-in?

You wanna increase your conversions? You wanna double conversions? The easiest thing to do is to go in and make open looped statements where they're like, "Hey, what is the answer to that?" It calls out the right person, so they have to opt-in. It's like, "Yes, show me more!" Or "Yes, I wanna know." Or "Yes, give me that free report." Or "Yes, I want the free course." Does that make sense? It's the curiosity.

Curiosity drives the human brain nuts. We have to have closed loops. It drives us crazy. In western culture, everything down to our music and our melodic tones resolve - because we need that closure.  A lot of eastern music doesn't. It's totally western culture to have closure.

We need closure. Even if it's not real. Even if it's fake. In our lives, people seek closure. Man, that's human psychology. You can use that. So I create curiosity in my squeeze pages, primarily through the headline.

Open it up, and say like, "Are you getting the most out of blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank? Click down below for the free report. Click right here to take the quiz. Oh, here's your quiz results. Do you want the quiz results? Email/ button!"

As soon as I stop the camera right here that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to finish a sweet quiz we're putting in front of one of our funnels now.

And that's how I know it will work is because I ask an open-ended question and people can't handle but to actually try to pursue the answer. That lets me get their stuff. That lets me start pushing through the funnel and begin the marketing relationship.

Curiosity. Stop telling all of your stuff on the squeeze page. That's not the reason it exists. Remember the function that it exists for. A squeeze page only exists to start the relationship. Not for you to teach all your stuff or make you look like a rockstar.

Number three, this is a classic blunder, it kind of ties into the second one. Too much info. Just too much info. Way too much information. You're telling all kinds of stuff throughout it. You're literally bathing them in information. There's selling the opt-in, but then there's just like, telling stuff.

If you wanna go see some good examples, again, these are free courses, but if you go to affiliateoutrage.com, watch how hard I'm selling the opt-in. It's a big page. I know it's a big page. But you can see I'm selling, it's a squeeze page. I'm telling a little bit more information than I would normally ask somebody to do, but watch what I'm doing. I present an offer:

There's actually a full offer on that page - for something that's free.

There is social proof up the butt. There's so much!

There are testimonials.

There are video introductions to all of the course creators, and all of the people who are in there.

BUT... it's very open-ended. I'm not actually resolving any of the questions that I bring up in there. I'll ask questions like:

"Well, Steven, how much is this?" "It's free, click here to get it."

"Well, Steven, how long is this available?"  "Don't really know. Just kind of testing it out. People have really gotten a lot of results from this. Until then, make sure you get it, so I don't close it out."

And it goes back, goes back, goes back, goes back. Opt-in, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in.

Here's the issue; so many people instead of continuing to create open loops throughout the page, they start teaching on the squeeze page, and then they wonder nobody's opted in. I

t's all about scarcity and urgency. It's all about creating that curiosity. The easiest ways to do that? "Man, don't tell them too much. Don't tell them too much."

I had the incredible opportunity to go hang with Trey Lewellen for a little while. Trey, I and his awesome girlfriend were all hanging out. And we were working on his webinar funnel. And he had an incredible squeeze page. It was extremely short. It was literally a headline, an opt-in, and a button. That was it.

The headline, an input field, and a button. That's all he had on that front page. And it was cool to see how high his numbers were.

And that works really really well when you're talking to a hot audience. When people know who you are. And it works really well, it can work in general, like it depends on what you're doing. Like I don't wanna just say like this big blanket statement; "Oh, small squeeze pages that don't work very well." Or "They do work well." I'm not gonna make a blanket statement. Every scenario is different.

But by simply going in and adding in a few testimonials or adding in the Facebook comments element so people can comment straight on there and it stays on there for all the future users who will visit that page - that's all native in ClickFunnels. That's really really powerful.

He showed me some screenshots back, and they had like a 50% increase in opt-ins because of it. It was crazy. I can't remember the exact number but it was outrageous. It was a huge increase in the opt-ins.

And, anyway, so I want you to know like, there was hardly anything on the page. He opened the loop. There was an input field and a button. That's it. That's like the classic squeeze page.

The next thing I already alluded to it, is social proof.

Guys, there's been some very fascinating launches in history where somebody will go in, and they'll sell a course with this massive sales letter with all the sales material. And they'll make tons of money. And it's like, "Wow! cool." And they'll close out the cart. Then they just focus on the students that came in; getting them results and gathering testimonials.

Then they'll reopen the cart with no sales letter, just the huge sickening amount of testimonials and social proof. And they'll do just as much money with that page as they did with the sales page. Social proof is massive. Massive.

You guys wanna know the cool way to get social proof? Go do a free course. What I'm saying is, you could literally just go like on Facebook for two hours and teach something. Pull that video. Download that video. Boom! Now you got a course.

Go to your audience,  and say, "Hey, I'm gonna make that a $57 thing in the future. If you want though I could give it to you free now. I'll give you the recording. Give you also some other cool things,"  - make a little mini offer out of it.

"So it'll be $57 or literally, just take out your phone, flip it sideways, and just tell me what that's meant to you. Tell me what value you've gotten from me in the future, or in the past. Tell me, answer the question what's it like to work with Steve?"

I've done that multiple times now and gathered easily probably 50, 60 testimonials in a week. And then I just go and I'll liter 'em throughout my pages. I know my stuff is good.

One of my squeeze pages on a site right now, I've brought it from 45% opt-in rate up to 65%, and it's maintained at 62%. And one of the biggest things I did was I just added a huge amount of social proof. Huge amount of social proof. And that was it. That was really one of the only major changes I actually added to the page. That was it.

Social proof is massive. And it's a very easy thing to do. You don't need tons of it. But if you can get like two or three that's perfect.

So you got your headline, you got an input, you got a button, some social proof. Done. And that's it.

Lots of curiosity. Some scarcity and urgency. I recommend putting a countdown clock on there. Make it an evergreen countdown clock. Countdown clocks make people do crazy stuff. Just put it on there. You don't even have to explain it. You'll get more opt-ins. It's true.

So anyways, I recommend also with your guys' squeeze pages that what they're opting in for is so obviously valuable that giving you an opt-in seems like child's play. And what I've noticed is when I do that it starts to increase the reciprocity they feel for me in the future.

So anyways, just to run through the list again:

#Number one, classic example is somebody who doesn't really understand funnels yet will come in and there's just too many exits. Way too many exits.

I recommend using something like an exit pop. I don't care. "What Steven, you want exit pops?" Yeah, I don't care about bothering people one more time before they leave - I may never see them again. An exit pop. Works miracles.

I love exit pops. It definitely increases my conversions by a lot. Exit pops are awesome. Too many exits.

#No curiosity. You literally are telling everything. It's all about creating open loops. That's what gets them going.

#Too much information. If you are gonna put a lot of stuff in there and if it is gonna be a big one, like I was saying, you can go look at affiliateoutrage.com to see this format that I follow.

The more of those kinds of things I added in my conversions went up.

But everything I put on the page has to do with back to the opt-in. I'm not selling the thing down the road. I'm just selling the very next step I want them to take. opt-in, rather than, "Hey, there's a course down the future that's gonna be this amount" Or "Hey, why don't you get coaching from me?"

I'm not selling that crap. I'm only selling the very next step. Just like in an email. The email doesn't sell the product, it sells whatever link is in the email, and then they click on the link, and they go to the page. Then the page sells whatever the very next step is.

Too many people sell the thing that's down the road rather than the next step. Easiest way to kill your crap. Don't do that.

Same with the squeeze page. You're just selling the opt-in. That's it. The page sells the opt-in. The page sells getting their email address. The page sells getting and going and clicking to the very next step - not what's on the next step. It just that step.  So too much information.

#Having no social proof. Which is, I just let you know a cool way to go get it.

# Not having a countdown clock.

Those are classic very easy ways.

#Videos can help, but sometimes I see the way people create a video is an actual hinder to the opt-in. I don't recommend having a video for your opt-in. If your thing requires some explaining to do, maybe, but man it's gotta high pace. It's gotta be exciting to watch. I don't recommend having videos.

Affiliate Outrage is probably the only one where I have a video; it took me a while to craft it and make it feel the way it did. Anyway, it's not a normal thing for me to go do because most of the time I find that videos on squeeze pages slow down the rate of opting in. They slow down the rate of consuming, and so I'll put a video on the next page.

If I'm doing a reverse squeeze page, if you don't know what that is go look at The Funnel Hacker Cookbook, then maybe you'll put a video on there. But it's not a normal play for me. It's not a normal thing that I  do.

So, if you're like "Hey, I can't get more opt-ins" and if you have a video, just take the video off and just try it. You know do a little split test and see what happens? You most likely will get a higher opt-in rate 'cause it won't slow the momentum down so much.

Anyway, guys, hopefully, you found this list helpful? I know this was a little more of a tactical episode here, but just know that this is a pretty basic skill in the funnel building world.

If you wanna be a funnel builder, get good at creating squeeze pages and list building. That's really what it is. Lists are the only asset on the internet, not the funnel, not your product, not your sales message - it's the list.

The list is what will save you if the bottom falls out from under something.

The list is the real asset on the internet. Not the product, not the sales message, none of that. All that stuff is transferable. You can take those other places. The list though that's the real thing that you want.

So if you wanna be a funnel builder, you gotta get good at opting in. You gotta get good at getting people to opt-in. You gotta get good at delivering value up front. You gotta get good at pulling people and helping them realize, like, "Oh, logically I see what I should give you my email."  

Anyway, so I just hope this is helpful to you. Go back to your squeeze pages, and use the list I  went through to look at your squeeze page and play devil's advocate. Like, "Man, yeah, you're right, this does suck."

Make sure it's mobile-optimized.

A lot of times it's harder to create a converting opt-in page than the actual order page. It's such a delicate place. It's the first time a lot of people will even see you or hear about you or know who you are. That's why I spend so much time on them. Even though, a lot of times, there are not many words on it. It's such a delicate first encounter. You have to make sure that it's awesome.

So that's why I wanted to make this episode for you guys today.

Make sure you go back, check this stuff out.

The funnest thing to go do is start running through people's pages for them for free. Last story here, then I'll end...

I can't remember who it was; it was someone related to Harmon Brothers. In the same building that they work out of. And they had this, crap I can't remember, this was a long time ago. I decide, I just wanted to start building more relationships.

So I literally opened up my computer, and I started going to these different pages and funnels that I could tell were good, but not quite there yet.

They weren't funnel builders, but they had a good product, and I just started recording my screen critiquing people's pages. Then I would just send their support the critique and wait to see what happens.

It wasn't uncommon for me to start getting feedback from CTOs, saying "Wow, that was really helpful. Thanks so much." Like, "Oh, yeah, ain't nothin’. By the way, I'm Steven, how you doing?" And that was a really easy way for me to go in and actually create a lot of relationships. I did that a lot.

I don't think I've ever told you guys that. Anyway, it's fun. Just go practice. Do it to your own stuff, do it to other people's stuff.

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode. Talk to you guys later. Bye.

Aww, yeah! Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't get even get anyone to opt-in.

So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins when they work, when they don't work.

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 going on everyone?

It's Steve Larsen, this is Sales Funnel Radio, and today I'm gonna teach you guys how to use the sales letters to go find good interns.

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

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

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

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

What's up, guys? I'm excited for this!

Okay, so it's about a week, I don't know, a week and or two ago, we were looking at all the leads coming into our funnel.

Right now I've got anywhere from 500 to 1,500 opt-ins every week to see my webinar - that's where we are right now, that's where the numbers are shaking out.

What's interesting is the automation of the funnel itself is selling a percentage of those people, but there's a huge percentage of people who don't actually go buy because they have one last question. They need to talk to somebody.

And literally, the volume is just something I can't handle.

What was interesting is, we found out, we were looking at... I went to BYU Idaho...

They're not far away from here, they're like five and a half hours away from here...

We just found out that they added a sales program to their majors, right. You can actually go and get an emphasis in sales now, which is awesome, super cool - first undergrad I've ever heard to go do that.

So, turns out, they're having their career fair super fast, so we went to work. I opened up FunnelScripts, and I was like okay, a sale is a sale regardless if there's money involved, right?

I sell somebody on a movie I wanna to go see. I sell somebody on this is where I wanna go eat. I sell somebody, right? Sales is everywhere.

And honestly, if you're not getting what you want in life, it's because you're not a good salesman. It's true! I'm not talking about just for money. I'm talking about anything.

It's kind of funny, I went into FunnelScripts and I opened up the short sales letter script and I started filling it out all of the little pieces to sell a student to taking an internship with me.

I was like, “Hey, if we're getting 1,500 leads every single week, what can we do to get these people, if they just have one question left, how can we get them to come the rest of the way and actually purchase?"

So, what we did was, we went back to college. And we went to this career fair, and I decided, how cool would it be to use some direct response. You know, like the old school direct mail kind of principles, right?

I went through and I wrote a sales letter on yellow paper, right? And anyway, this is it.

So, I just wanna go through and I'm just gonna read this thing to you guys so you can see how persuasive this was - because the result was amazing. The result was incredible.

It was kinda funny at first to stand there. We actually brought this exact same set up that you see here if you guys are on YouTube:

We got the big Sales Funnel Radio paparazzi wall and that's what we put up.

We got this big banner made.

We made these Capitalist Pig T-shirts - that are going to be made available to anybody soon. I'm super excited about it.

People are PMing me like crazy. They say 'Capitalist Pig' on the front and its like a piggy bank and there's a dollar sign for the eyes. It says 'Capitalist Pig' and then on the back it says 'Sales Funnel Radio'. It's super cool!

Anyway, a lot of people were asking for 'em. So, we figured we might as well make 'em publicly available to all of you soon. It's not gonna be like a thing we have open forever, just gonna open and close kinda stuff just 'cause I'm not really in the T-shirt biz so, kinda when time permits, I'll sell that shirt and then not. Anyway, I'm excited though.

And we have an 'It's Monday Baby' shirt coming out soon.

Anyway, so we were wearing the Capitalist Pig shirts I should be wearing it now, that'd be kinda cool.

We had this setup, we had the high ticket sales banner here the Sales Funnel Radio thing, and the crown jewel of it all, in my opinion, was this script.

And what was cool about it is like this thing, I'm selling them to take an interview. I'm selling them to not just do the internship, but I just want them to go take the interview. I'm selling the next step in the process. Get on an interview. So this is what I did...

I went into FunnelScripts and literally an hour before it started, I was doing the One Funnel Away challenge stuff which, I know a lotta you guys are in... Anyway, that's over now. That first month, that's over now. I thank you guys so much for being a part of it, really appreciate it. But I was doing that...

And about thirty minutes prior to this career fair starting, I opened up Funnel Scripts and I was like, "Hey I'm gonna go and I'm gonna write a sales letter to get somebody to come fill these closer positions."

There's a lot of people out there that are already experts at it, but I thought it'd be kinda neat to go take some college students and do that. Which is super cool. Anyway, this is it:

"Attention graduating or interning BYUI students, get a paid internship, with on-the-go training which you'll actually use after you graduate."

'Cause like the headline right there, that's it right there. Just like I would in a webinar, right? "Attention audience, attention audience," and then a headline, "Get a paid internship with on-the-job training which you'll actually use after you graduate." Holy smokes, right? What do they want?

That's a promise of a paid internship with on-the-job training. And then what's the fear here? "Oh man, I'm not gonna actually use that when I graduate." No, you actually will use this if you graduate. If you know how to sell, you're gonna use that everywhere in your life, the rest of life.

And then I wrote it as if it was first person button lingo.

For buttons lotta times we'll use first person language. "Yes, give me Secret MLM Hacks. Yes, give me "insert product", whatever." So, I wrote it in that manner. "Yes," in quote marks:

"Yes, I'm ready to learn the one skill that makes me more valuable to the marketplace. A real skill that is transferable to any profession I end up in and keep control of my income." What? Thank you, FunnelScripts!

"I understand that when I act now I'll become a high-paid sales closer of the Sales Funnel Radio high-ticket closing position and get....," and here's my offer...I wrote an offer for the interns, it's an intern offer:

Number one: salary plus commission - We're paying 'em like eight bucks an hour just to keep them moving, right? And then we pay commission. We're the one paying for all the leads...

I'm the one serving up all the leads to 'em, so, anyway we give them 10% of whatever they close, at any price point.

Right now at the recording of this, I have products anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000, and then $30,000 to $150,000 products. I'll give them 10% of whatever they close, I don't care. So, "salary plus commission."

Number two: A choice of part or full time. A choice of your own hours. A chance for full-time hire. A chance to learn on the job. An amazing reward program which we have - which is really cool.

"I also understand that when I act now I also get the top converting sales scripts in today's market."  - I'm just gonna write a sales script. I'm gonna use the four question close from Expert Secrets. That's what I'm gonna teach 'em on.

“Pre-qualified leads to set up for you.”

"Remote work available" - I'm trying to think if I was a student again, what was super frustrating to me? Working with hours... They're my target market, right? I'm just laughing at this, and the whole reason for this entire episode is because I want you to understand it doesn't matter who you're selling or what you're selling or who you're trying to convince, sales are involved.

The concept of offer creation the concept of sales letter writing is something that pays you wherever you go. I don't care what you're selling, or if there's even money involved with it. It will "pay you" whatever you want.

Basically, I said they get everything for free instead of the public price of $15,000, which is what it normally would be to the public at like a two or three-day event.

I'm gonna teach them one-on-one with a lot of this stuff to make sure that they're awesome closers, right?

"To your professional success Stephen Larson - interview for one of the three positions now."

Wait, there are three positions? Wait, there's scarcity and urgency... Right, it's the same principles throughout.

Anyway, there are a few other things inside here which are pretty awesome. But it's the same principles as you would any kinda sales letter.

What I did is I went through and I starting thinking through how I would, so I designed this banner the day before, and funny enough we were able to get it actually printed, which is awesome. But I just want to walk through the banner really quick here. Check this out, so I'm actually gonna unhook the camera. First time in Sales Funnel Radio history! Check this out, so it says:

"Sales Funnel Radio. 200K+ downloads." - By the way, that's cool. That just happened. 200,000 downloads of Sales Funnel Radio. Thank you very much by the way.

Big ol' picture, why? 'Cause I'm trying to add a little bit of authority in it and most people, they looked at the banner, they looked back at me, look at the banner, look back at me. Like, "That's you!" Like, "Yeah!"

I specifically created the marketing to get an intern so that it would offend the right people and attract the right people.

It's very key, so many people are apologetic in their marketing. Saying, "High-Ticket Sales" right there, big across the front, "High-Ticket Sales", right there. Guys, it's fascinating how many people that repelled. Good! Good! This thing did most of the work for us.

And then I went through and I started lacing out all of the benefits: rOh,

"Salary + commission", "part or full-time," "remote work," "reward program," "choose your own hours," "chance of full-time hire", "on the job training," "pre-qualified leads," right? "We just need more closers," right? That's what I say at the bottom there.

I said, "Apply here. There are only four positions available." I think on the sales letter it said three, but anyway, I don't really care. I just need scarcity and urgency and need 'em to be hungry.

Hunger is the thing I can never teach anybody. So I'm trying to farm out those who are hungry. Then, just like we would with a progress bar on a landing page or an application, I needed to do some kind of a progress bar.

So check this out, there's already a sense of fulfillment. I'm trying to give them a dopamine hit because they've already completed step one.


Right here, check this out:

Step number one, go apply.

Step number two, get the script, which I'm going to teach them, it's really simple.

Step number three, close the lead.

That's it, that's all they gotta do.

At the very bottom, I added testimonials to people I've trained in the past. Super cool! "Orlando. What's up, dude? Shout out to you." He said, "My highest gratitude to Steve when I started two weeks ago, I did $30,000 at my first presentation yesterday." It's a true story, super epic.

Another one from Angela Florence! "What's up? Shout out to you." Said, "I'm a quiet person, but when I went to Stephen's training I closed over 50% of my leads the first time ever trying."


So I went through and I just wanted people to understand this is a real thing. So let me just secure the camera again here. Bam! There we go.

What I want people to understand is if you want to do this, it's a script I'm gonna teach you. They're not cold leads, they're coming in and...

Anyway, so I'm excited about this and it's been really cool. And as a result in just a few hour period that we were there, we ended up getting, I think, 24 people asking. Two of them were an obvious "Absolutely Not," so we went down to 22. And then we've been following up and closing back and I think we're gonna grab six or seven of them, which is awesome.

So what we've been doing to the business now, and this is why this is making Sales Funnel Radio...

If I'm looking at the funnel, and I got more leads coming in then I can handle, this is an obvious, easy position to add in the back, people just closing other people, just pulling them on in:

"Hey, what's up? Hey, how's it going? Hey, hey, hey, hey." It's an obvious, very, very easy position to go fill. It's commission, and even then, eight bucks an hour.

If my course is a $1,000 or $1,500 you only gotta sell one, like, a month to pay for themselves. If they can't sell one a month, I guarantee ya, I'm not keeping them. It's just how it works if they're that bad.

It's not like they're cold leads. They're just following up with people who have already opted-in to get the info, right? They're literally answering the last final questions before someone buys.

Anyway, so it's very hard for me to not justify doing this. So what we've been doing is we've been going in and setting up the back-end systems. So when somebody comes in and they buy, or when somebody comes in and they're like, "Yeah, I need one or few more, one or two last questions set up before I go buy." We got these back-end systems that are being set up there:

We got a phone system, which is awesome. It's tracking all the stuff.

We use Zoho, Zoho is the CRM that I like to use, and it's simple, it's awesome, it's powerful. That phone system updates Zoho, the contact in there, with any updates.

On the  ClickFunnel side, we have an internal form for the sales agent to fill out when they're on the phone with the person, which gives the sales agent credit and then takes the sale and opens up all the marketing automation for anybody as if they bought straight off of the webinar.

So super cool, with very few adjustments. I truly think this is going to double the revenue because we're gonna have people who are actually getting their questions answered.

Now the one thing that I know that will kill the sale is if I educate the salesmen too much. They'll start talking their way out of the sale. Literally, talk their way out of the purchase. And so I'm being careful to just teach a script, not the product.

The point for any backend sales closer is not to teach the product, it's to get the sale. It's super fun, guys, I'm literally going in and I'm using the four question close. That's right from Expert Secrets, and I will tell you firsthand that's the script that ClickFunnels uses. That's exactly what Russell's high-ticket salesmen use as well.

So if you want to see what that is, by the way, you can:

Number one, go look at it inside of Expert Secrets, it's toward the back.

Number two, go to Affiliate Outrage, and Derek Wilson, the high-ticket closer at ClickFunnels right now - he's the man. He's using that script and if you go to Affiliate Outrage, he did a whole little mini-course for Affiliate Outrage for the community for free, just to show people a little bit more of what he does, and he walks through the script.


So that's what we're doing. That's exactly what I've been plugging in and it's been a whole bunch of fun. It's interesting what's happening to the business because of the possible new revenue.

So we've been going in and we're creating these new things in the back and in the front to capture more leads, capture more phone numbers, make it so all the systems are talking to each other and it's just full automation and super seamless. It's exciting. It's really fun.

So I thought it'd be kinda cool just to share with you what happened and it was honestly on a whim. I went and I slept on a kitchen floor of my brother. He lives over there on campus.

Colton went and found an old relation over there as well. Right, an old friend and it was super haphazard. We just showed up and we just did it and it was super fun. And we got a bunch of people asking.

I was shocked at the level of talent. Man, when I was in college, not long ago, there were not many people trying to do sales, and it was interesting to see how many people had already, not just wanted it, but there were a few students who knew they wanted it so bad they dropped all their classes and they were just they were just trying to find someone's product to sell.

I was like, what the heck. And there's a lot of them. I thought we'd get like two or three rock stars. It was actually the opposite. There was two or three that weren't rock stars and I was shocked about that.

So don't be afraid to grab some interns. Don't be afraid to add in a closer system, phone system at the end of your funnels. A lot of times, all you gotta do is change the selling environment, meaning take them off the Internet, close them right there and then.onestly, a lot of times I've seen people do that, they'll double their company.

I've seen a lot of inner-circle members do that. Adding in a high-ticket thing or adding in a phone person to close leads. Does that make sense?

So anyway, that's all I'm trying to help you guys understand.

As far as Sales Funnels go, that's the next place that my funnel is reaching out. The funnel, we're extending it to a phone closer scenario. That's how we found the closers. Those are the script we're using. Those are the systems we're using to plug in back and forth. It's been really epic and super excited about it. So I will keep you updated on how it's going, but we've got to college interns now. How freaking cool is this?

So with the content team, with the rest of us all in there, it has the potential to be like 15 people working on this thing now, it's like freaking awesome. Like legit, I should probably wear shoes sometimes.

Alright, thanks so much, if you enjoyed this episode, please go share it, please like it, please subscribe if you haven't. It really means a lot to me and it means a lot to the community.

Thank you so much again for over 200,000 downloads by the way. I almost get as many downloads a day as I did my very first month of the show. It's humbling for me to see that. It's humbling for me to see how far this has all come.

Anyway, the value that it's been able to be to everybody and myself as well and really mean it and very much just want to thank everybody.

Thanks so much for all you guys who came to OfferMind as well, that is definitely something I'll do again in the future, so you guys can figure out exactly the sales message and offer that the market is asking you to sell them. That's very key, and I know that will pop out another time. Just make sure you stay tuned and guys.

Thanks so much. I'll see ya. Bye.

Whoo! Hey, there's more marketing resources than there is sand in the sea, am I right? Okay, maybe not, but there's a lot. How do you know if you're paying for good ones?

Recently I went to my business bank statement, and I counted 51 Internet tools and resources that I use to run my business every day and actually keep my team size small.

If you want to see the list, I actually filmed an individual video teaching you why I use each tool and the strategy behind it, and then I dropped the link straight to the source right below it.

If you want to see the list and see what you can use yourself, go to bestmarketingresources.com. That's bestmarketingresources.com.

Boom! What's going on everyone. It's Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio and today I'm gonna do Part Two of my Coaching Contract.

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 had to chop us into two different episodes because it was a little bit longer. So anyway, this is the second half. I'm gonna pick right up where I left off. I'm going through 14 different rules that I make somebody follow when I decide and agree to coach them, or consult for them. So you're gonna start hearing these rules.

If you've not heard Part One, I'd go back and listen to that before you listen to this. It'll make more sense.

This is a result of me watching, not only just the marketing patterns that make somebody successful but the attitudes that have made someone successful.

What it is that they've been willing to enter into when I say, "Hey, here's the marketing piece. Hey cool, check it out... " And they're like, "I don't know if I'm willing to do that?" And 'why' they say that... or 'why' they're willing to dive in? So these are cool!

These are rules that I've written off the top of my head.

So just sort of a recap; I go in, and  I make them agree to a few things. This is a relationship, okay? So they're gonna do some things and then when they do, I will do these other things as well, okay?

I don't just go 100% without them going a hundred also. I match and I lean into the level that they are willing to be leaning as well.

Alright, hope you guys enjoy this. Let's cut right over to this...

This next part. I'm gonna go a little faster here.

Number Seven: "If you earnestly attempt to answer all questions on your own, then I will coach you to the answer."

This is a big one.

You guys remember there was a podcast episode I did a little bit ago called, My Greatest Asset. If you've not watched it, it went nuts. There was like 700 views within the first two hours on that video before I ever released it as an episode. That was crazy. That episode was freakin' awesome.

And what's interesting is one of the biggest issues that I find with people's attitudes is that they're like, "Well, I don't know where to find the answer for that?" Man, freakin' Google exists, alright? "Well, Steven, I just don't know how to do this and this anymore." YouTube it!

Holy crap, there's never been a time when there's been so much information readily available for everybody with such a lack of discipline on how to get it.

It drives me nuts, okay? So they're never allowed to just ask me.

This comes from a specific person in my history...

There was a leader that I had over a whole group of us, and anytime we had a question, he wouldn't ever answer it.

We were like, "Um, so what do we do about this, this, and this?" He was like, "Yeah, what would you do about that?"  And it drove us nuts! We'd be like, "Whoa, we don't know that's why we were gonna ask you!"  It's frustrating.

We were all so mad at the dude forever. And  he's like, he's like, "Oh man, yeah I wonder where you can find that out?"

For like six months, the dude never answered a question of ours, and it drove me nuts. Eventually, he told us, "Guys, my goal is to make you self-sufficient, not give you all the answers."

That was a huge lesson that has served me ever since that experience. That was eight or nine years ago. He was awesome. He changed my life just with that one lesson.

So when people come to me, if it's like a super tactical thing, I might help answer the question for them, but when it's a dumb question...

Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question? That's a stupid quote, okay! There is such a thing as a stupid question. It's the question that someone took no thought to try and answer on their own before they asked somebody else! Does that make sense? That's stupid. Stupid questions exist. Earnestly attempt to answer.

Number Eight: "You gotta buy success with your own time."

Somebody complimented me once on something I had done, and I said, "Oh, thanks. I bought it with my time." And they're like, "What do you mean?" I'd have lost a bunch of weight, and somebody was like, "Oh man, you're looking great." I was like, "Oh thanks, I bought the results with my time."

It was a super weird response, and I knew it was. They're like, "What do you mean?” I was like, "Well, you know, while most people are doing this, this, and this, I was exercising, or not eating." Does that make sense?

I found out like some people who are in this course that I was doing they were spending like maybe 10 minutes a day on what we were teachin' 'em and then they were like, "This doesn't work!" I was like, "You're not working." It's so stupid.

Does 10 minutes a day sound like obsession? No, and if you can't get obsessed over what you're learning or you're trying to do? You're probably not in the right thing.

It's easy for me to dominate in this game because I'm obsessed about the game. No one needs to make me obsessed with the game, you know. I mean no one 's like, "Alright, today, item number one on today's agenda, obsession."  It's just there, alright, it's just there - it's inside.

Number NIne:  "Take imperfect action viciously. Just run man."

I'm not waiting to teach people the next step for when they have 100% perfection in the thing. I wait till I can see they're at like the 80% level. Meaning, in the level of understanding or the funnels.

If the funnels 80% good, just go! Like yeah, could we keep tweaking it, but let's just go. I go at 80%.

Number Ten: "Don't freak out at the clock."

This is a big one. When people freak out at the clock, this is what happens: The first time I was ever doing that 2 Comma Club Coaching thing, it's a year-long program... and two months in, there was this slew of people who started asking me, "Steven, how long do we have this for?" I was like "Why are you asking this right now? You've been in for two months, and you're killin' it. You have all these assets ready, and we're finally ready to go build funnels."

This happened the week we were supposed to start puttin' the funnel together, start writing a webinar script, or whatever - slightly bigger tasks. I was like, "Why are they asking this?"

What was funny about that is I started realizing that where we were in the course was where all the things started coming together and they had to start building crap - meaning they weren't just watching videos anymore. They weren't just answering something in a workbook - they were doing the thing. It was time to stop studying how to drive a car and get behind the wheel-  the engine's on, it's a stick shift, and that things in gear - they're ready to let off the clutch and start going.

I was like, "Why are you asking this?" and I realized, "Oh crap, it's because of where we are - the work is starting now.”

So I try to get people to take action imperfectly and not freak out over trying to make everything amazing. Don't freak out over the clock - if it's taking longer than what you expected it to be. "Yeah duh! It always does."

One of my favorite quotes is: It'll take you longer than you think, but not as long as you fear. That has stayed in my mind - it's been a motto of mine for a long time.

It's like an exponential curve; no progress/ no cash, no progress/ no cash, a little progress/ a little cash, lots of progress/ not much cash, lots of progress/ not much cash, lots of progress/ lots of cash! It's this exponential curve that just pops right out of the gate. Super exciting, very, very cool.

Number 11: “If you chose to be uncomfortable every day, then I will promise to help create environments for positive stress.”

This is a big one.

There's eustress, and there's distress - not all stress is the same.

When I'm looking at my three-year-old and my five-year-old, and I'm trying to craft a learning environment for them. If I can see they start exiting eustress and entering distress, I know I need to stop.

Meaning, I have a chore list for 'em, and I'll ask them to do this, this, this, and this... And to a three and a five-year-old, some of the things on that chore list might be kind of challenging, and I get that - I'm watching them.

Eustress comes from euphoria - it's positive stress. It's stress that is growth stress. It's sculpting, and it's shifting, it's good for the individual.

Distress, that's destructive - that's the negative kind. Bad anxiety, right? Really, bad. It's when someone feels overwhelmed, overloaded - they're gonna die. They start entering into destructive habits. That's destructive. That's distress.

I want eustress for my customers all the time. And that's one of the reasons why my stuff is awesome, but also why my stuff is sometimes hard for people to take in... Cause I know that they must grow as an individual, not just a funnel.

They must grow as an individual to even pull off the funnel, right? That's what it is to become an attractive character. There are things inside of you that you need to work on, overcome, focus on, expand, or contract.

I try and do something challenging and uncomfortable every single day. This morning I did not want to lift. I did not wanna exercise this morning. Holy crap, a lot of stuff going on for me right now. I was like, "I don't want to." I didn't really wanna lift, but I thought about this, and I was like, "Alright, let's do it!"

Number 12: "Be brutally honest about where you are. If you're brutally honest about where you are, then I will applaud your progress."

If anyone of you guys goes out and rents a freakin' Lamborghini, takes a picture in front of it and puts it on their Facebook profile page to become a "professional." I'm gonna slap ya - especially if you're a student, consultant, or client of mine - or something like that. Nope!

Be brutally honest about where you are. That's one of the fastest paths to progression I've ever seen in my entire life.

Every time I've done that and I've been honest about where I am, and where I am not - being okay with that when someone asks me, that's cool, that's awesome. People like to follow you more because of that than anything else - it's really fun.

Alright, next one, almost done here.

Number 13:  “If you will kill all parts of your old self or the elements of your old self you need to kill.”

There might be all of your old self you need to kill, or there may be pieces of you that you gotta leave behind when you move forward...  that's fine, that's part of the game.

I always laugh at songs... There are these popular songs out today, I hate listening to the radio 'cause the rhythm is the same. It's the same pattern for all their songs. I love music. I studied a lot of music theory in high school. I was a music theory guy for a while, and so I hate radio music most of the time 'cause it's all the same junk.

It's funny; there are songs making fun of the top label songs. They're all the exact same four chords, and they're all, anyway, anyway, whatever. I forgot where I was going with that I love the topic of music.

Anyway, anyway, yeah, there's parts of your old self you gotta go kill - and be okay with that. That's 100% okay.

It can be challenging for an individual to do that. It can be challenging for people to leave behind parts of themselves, right? One of the biggest mistakes I made when my wife and I got married is I thought like, "Well, I gotta be a husband now."  So I sold my full kit drum set. That was stupid. I sold my longboard. I sold all the crap that made me, me - thinking like, "Well, I'm an adult." And that's garbage. I'm not talking about that kind of crap. I'm talking about fears and things inside of you that you gotta get rid of. You might have to kill other parts of you, in general, to move on to the next phase - and that's totally fine.

I don't lean too hard into that one specifically because people know that answer themselves. I'm not gonna know that about them - only they will know that.

Number 14:  “If you will lean into my training/ coaching/ my consulting, (or whatever it is), then I will also lean in.”

I don't carry the ball. I teach you how to carry it.

I don't carry the player and the ball. If I can see you're running hard and you're actually doing stuff, and you drop the ball, I might pick it up, but I don't ever pick up the player and ball. Does that make sense?

So if you will lean in, I will as well. I will match your intensity.

So I just wanted to walk through the rules that I have (there's more, but those are the ones off the top of my head).

There are rules that I have whenever I coach somebody, or I enter into consulting.

A lot of it has to do with what I've seen in the past actually works when somebody makes a successful funnel.

When somebody says things like, "You know Stephen, I really need this to work. Is it gonna work this time? Are you gonna be there to help me?"

A lady reached out once and said, "Hey, I wanna buy your product, but will you be there to motivate me when I am feeling down?" And I said, "Absolutely not." And she goes, "Excuse me?" I said, "I am not here to motivate you. Motivation comes from within. You make your own motivation."

Motivation sucks, right? Discipline is greater than motivation. I'm not here to motivate you. I'm here to teach you how to do stuff.

If you can't bring motivation to the table the moment I leave, (or let's say I can't be on a call one week), you die internally. There's nothing inside of you to depend on. You've haven't created anything inside of you. You haven't callused the mind enough in your own way. You've not created enough of a relationship with you to move forward and do the crap on your own.

What the heck happens when the program ends, and you're left thinking, "Did I learn anything?" You did everything, but I had to motivate you to do it.

I do not believe in motivating people.

You might, you might get motivated by what I say, and that's great. I get motivated when I listen to a whole bunch of motivational videos on YouTube -  which I listen to frequently. But I know that motivation is like willpower, it dies. It's like a muscle - eventually, it gives out. Motivation is weak. Discipline is greater than motivation.

So as you go through and you start thinking about this and as I've kind of walked through these rules, the biggest thing I'd suggest to you is to figure out what disciplines you'd like to take on?

Don’t make a shopping list full of disciplines you wanna go take on at once - just do one. Like, "Hey, for the next six months, I'm going to perfect and be a master at this one area."

I like the Tim Ferriss method; he sits back, and he goes, "What's the one thing I could go do that would make everything else obsolete?" I like to sit back and think to myself, "What would that be?" So I'll give you a personal example real quick here, and then I'll end the episode:

I realized that I could die behind my computer, and that might sound weird to you. I'm not trying to be like a Debbie Downer on this, but crap man, like I work my face off. I work a lot.  I don't work a freakin' nine-to-five. Nine-to-five is when I'm at the desk, I'm working all the time though - and I don't always want to be.

And so I started thinking, "Oh man,  let's just start with self-care." So six months ago, I was like, you know what I'm gonna start with self-care. There was a specific where I decided, I'm gonna go focus in on this, and I'm gonna get better at this.

In high school, I lost 45 pounds. I lifted for nine months. I didn't like how I looked so I lifted every day. I lost 45 pounds, and got all the way down to 6% body fat -  one more percentage of weight is considered unhealthy. I started doing Sprint Triathlons like crazy... Well, I got married, went to college, financial pressures, and all those things created more stress, and I started putting that weight back on.

One day at ClickFunnels, I saw a picture of myself and I was like, "Oh crap,  well, I'm not gonna be embarrassed about it, but I'll just own the scenario that I'm in. Let's kill that side.” And so I went through, and I started looking at all these different things, and I've lost maybe 10 to 15 pounds which is awesome.  I've enjoyed it.

But what I had to do is find out what that one domino was that Tim Ferriss talks about that knocks down everything else? And so what I realized was it's the time that I go to sleep.

If I go to sleep at a responsible time - I get up early. I like when I get up early because I can have an hour or two for just workin' out. I love to work out - Do I need two hours? No, but I do like to go a solid hour, hour and a half - it's just fun. I enjoy it. It's one of my favorite things.

I built a full gym in our garage - that things awesome! Holy crap, I got all the toys - really fun in there. And when I lift and when I work out in the morning, then I go, and then I can eat better. I'm more motivated to eat well when I've worked out in the mornings. I'm like I don't wanna lose the results I just worked for in the morning. So then I eat better which makes me drink more water, which makes me... right?

And it all starts the one activity that I can control that easily makes it likely that I will do that schedule the next day is what time I go to sleep.

I don't believe in nighttime hustle anymore. There are very few times when I'm willing to do it anymore, but it's because I work better, have more clarity of mind, I get more crap down when I follow that. Does that make sense?

Does that have anything to do with funnels? Yes, everything to do with funnels. Does it have anything to do with building pages? No, but it has everything to do with the way I build pages.

And that's part of what I do that has made some people  feel a little bit uncomfortable with what I do, it's like, "I thought you were a funnel coach?" It's like, "Yeah I am, but for you to be good at it, we gotta work on you as well." So these are the rules. I do the same things myself.

There are times where I'll walk around and be like, "Man, Stephen, dude, Larsen, you are Betty Whiting right now. Man, you are complaining, you're a freakin' idiot, okay? You are whining, you're a complainer, you baby," and I'll self-talk like crazy and I coach me through the same process that I'm coaching my people through.  It's cool how effective it's been. And I've been doing it a lot (especially the past several months) and really, really enjoyed it.

So anyways guys, hopefully, you like this episode. Definitely a longer one. I wanted to be able to drop this out to you guys though. These rules are very, very helpful. There's many more - those are off the top of my head.

When you enter a relationship with somebody else in a coaching scenario be very cognizant of NOT just what they're teaching you, but where they're coming from - it'll help guard you so that you're are getting the coaching you should have.

A lot of you guys reach out to me and ask me if I can coach you. I'm not doing open coaching for anyone right now. I do fulfillment-style coaching for Russell for the One Funnel Away Challenge. I'm a 2 Comma Club Coach over there as well. I consulting, I fly out a lot and do that as well. If you're interested in that kind of thing, go to, stevejlarsen.com, and you can see that's how to get in contact with me for consulting.

Anyways guys, thank you so much, I appreciate it. And we'll talk to you later.

Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. If you liked this, number one, I would go back and re-listen to it and write the rules down. People will ask if I can give them the PDF or the doc I've been holding up? No, I think you need to write them down - it'll help you memorize 'em and learn 'em.

So I'm not gonna give it and release it to anybody. Go write them down though on your own, and then please share the episode. It really means a lot to me.

Guys, thanks so much we'll talk to you later, bye.

Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Got a question you want answered live on the show? Head over to SALESFUNNELRADIO.COM and ask your question now.

Boom, what's going on everyone?

It's Stephen Larsen. This is Sales Funnels Radio.

Today, I'm gonna teach you guys about my coaching contract.

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

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

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

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

What's up, guys? I'm super excited about this. I've actually been looking forward to this quite a bit...

So I am knees deep in the One Funnel Away Challenge at ClickFunnels right now. I have the complete honor and privilege of being the guy to literally daily basically go in and hold people's feet to the fire.

It was like two or three days before I actually started the challenge, I started thinking about every other scenario where I was coaching people.

I've coached well over 1,800 people through this process now.

Many have become millionaires, many have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a ton of people made money for the first time in their entire life ever as an entrepreneur. And I'm very proud of that when I say that.

And what's interesting, and what's been really cool about this is that I've been able to go through and figure out more about the patterns of why it worked, or why it didn't... And not just from a funnel perspective.

I've been really, I don't know if introspective is the right word? You guys know I'm a kinda introspective individual in general, but I've been able to go through and look, not just from a marketing standpoint...

Meaning not just from a sales message, or an offer, or this is what this guy did in this funnel that's why he made the million, but I've been able to step back and look more deeply into the individual, and look at some of the attitudes some of these people would of have about what I was teaching them.

So I thought it would be kinda neat in this episode to go through and teach you guys some of the rules that I've created as I continue to do more coaching. And if they don't abide by these rules, I don't wanna coach them. It's so cut and dry...

So, I just wanna teach you guys what those are, so you understand the mentality that I'm coming from, and why I have patience in some areas, and why I have absolutely zero, unapologetic, no patience at all in other areas. And so, I thought it would be kinda neat to go through and do this.

Now when I first started, this was like two or three years ago, that was the original 2 Comma Club Coaching program - which is coming up on two years. Holy crap! That's crazy.

Anyway, so I went, and I started looking at all the different patterns of how that got started. I remember when I first started as that coach we were coming up with the 2 Comma Club Coaching program, I was like, "This is so cool. Who's gonna do this?" And then I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm built for this man. Let me do this. This would be so cool".

And what was interesting, first of all, I was so excited, I was so stoked, I was so shocked to be the original 2 Comma Club Coach and get put in those roles, and it's just a bunch of fun. I really enjoyed it.

I guess it was an episode ago that  I talked about the way a customer comes into your product often determines if they're successful with it afterward.

It's not just a pre-frame. You can pre-frame somebody for a sales message, that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about pre-frame for your actual product success. So, it's almost the exact same kind of thing. So, this has become a pre-frame. I have them written down in front of me here... these are some of the pre frames.

Like I said a second ago, when I first was that 2 Comma Club Coach, I went in, I remember I was so stoked. I was very nervous. I remember the first coaching session came up. If you guys watch, it was a three-day launch that we did - it was called The Seven Day Launch - but it was three days on stage.

I got on stage with Russell doing a part of it, and it was really fun to go and drop out these different questions and back and forth, back and forth, and then suddenly realize there are 600 students, and I'm the only coach. Whoa, right?

I was like "Holy crap! How I'm gonna do this? Alright here we go!"

And I was starting to get all pumped up, and I was trying to get jazzed about it.

And what was fascinating about that is I remember that I went in with the belief and the expectation that I would be coaching simply on marketing. I thought that I was gonna go on and I was gonna teach funnels, sales messages:

"Here's how create the offer. Here's great places to get traffic. Here's how you create a publishing or content machine. Here's how you become the attractive character. Here's how you have a cause and a new opportunity." All of these pieces, I thought that that was what I would be mostly coaching on.

And it wasn't until a while later that I realized that that's not actually what happened.

A few weeks into the program somebody asked me a question that wasn't on one of these areas.  There are these live Q and A's that I do for four straight hours every Friday. Four straight hours, live Q and A with the person in front of the rest of the group. I would be diving into their stuff with them. Diving in, diving in, diving in, diving in.

And what was interesting was a few weeks in, I started getting questions about, "Well Stephen, I'm a little bit scared to do that?" And I was like, "Uh alright, that doesn't mean you still shouldn't, alright?" "Well, Stephen, I don't know what to say?" Or "I'm not actually that good on a camera yet?”... And what's funny is a lot of the questions... they weren't about marketing!

I think that's the thing that was most shocked me about what happened when I started doing this stuff.

Most of the questions had nothing to do with marketing. They had everything to do with beliefs. They had everything to do with mindset. (I hate the word mindset, we'll call it attitude.) It had everything to do with attitude. I think the term mindset is overused - people just make it fluffy.

Anyway, they had everything to do with the way the individual was approaching the task, rather than the task itself: Here's marketing, rather than here's how you actually how you attack it. Here's how to actually do it and pull off what it is I'm teaching.

And so what's interesting, what's been cool, is that I went in thinking and studying and geeking out and obsessing over the marketing because that's what was I was gonna go teach...

But in reality, about half the question that I still get today, have nothing to do with marketing. They had everything to do with the individual's beliefs.

So I've made it a goal in my coaching to teach people to do to themselves what I'm trying to teach them to do to their customers.

Meaning, if I can get an individual to look at their customer base and go, "You know what, these are like three or four or five or six or seven false beliefs that all these customers have about me and my product and what we're doing."  If I can get someone to identify that, the rest of that is cake.

Now, we can start structuring belief shifts. Basically, I'm gonna change the way the individual believes. (There's some serious freaking power in the marketing game you gotta be careful with it, okay?)

But, if they're doing that to the customer - what if I could teach them to do that to themselves? Now that's hard to do... Because let me ask you a question real quick. "Hey you, right now, listening or watching this. What are your false beliefs?" You don't have false beliefs! There's no such thing as a false belief? You believe it, right?

"Hey, what are your false beliefs?" "I don't have any. They're my beliefs!" Right? So, it's a little bit harder to do.

I teach how to find false beliefs. I teach them how to break and rebuild and shift belief patterns for their customers, but I also help the student identify their own belief patterns, false belief patterns. The objections and complaints of the student themselves.

I help them come to understand, "Look! Check it out. You have a false belief in this area about what I'm teaching. You don't think it's gonna work, you are fighting me on it. You're either complaining, or you've thrown up an objection. You don't wanna do it anymore... you're throwing in the towel."

If I get an individual to point out to themselves the false beliefs they have about the game that they're in... Guys, their progress goes through the freaking roof. It's insane.

They learn how to self-doctor. They learn how to self-medicate (not the right word). They learn how to self-assess... there we go. They learn how to self-assess,  "What's actually the barriers and the obstacles that have been keeping them where they are?"

This is huge to understand. This is a massive, massive concept.

So, some of the things that I do now... Like, part of the reason I have that mannequin... You guys have seen me bring in that mannequin? If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a few episodes ago...

But, I have a mannequin, and it's a punching bag in the shape of a guy. And on that mannequin, I started writing down things that people are afraid of. But it ended up being me writing the things that I'm afraid of or me writing down the things that freak me out, or me writing down the things that are telling me about me that aren't true.

I have things on there like: "Shame. Guilt. Not good enough. Fear. Imposter. Dummy." I got "Loser" on the front of it. I've got all these things that are negative that are constantly pushing in on me.

I don't want you to ever look at somebody who's on stage, somebody super successful, or an entrepreneur, and think,  "Man, they got it all together." No! If they look like that, they've just gone through a long disgusting road full of mud that has been through this incredible, massive, self-altering, self-discovery, that you haven't gone through yet. That's all it is.

Yes, they made a lot of cash on the way, but first, they had to qualify to make that cash. So that's what I've been learning how to do in the past especially year is go in and help a student identify their own crap.

"Look, let me help you call yourself out on your own BS here. You got some crappy beliefs. That's a false belief! That's a false belief! That's a false belief, and it's not right. It's not true. It's not real. What story have you been telling yourself that's been keeping that belief alive?"

We go through, and they'll write it down, and they're like, "Here's all my fears and here's how I'm gonna overcome it." That's actually the very first day on the One Funnel Way Challenge. They go in, and they write down all their fears, how they're gonna overcome the things... and don't make a big old laundry list that'll stress you out.

It's so funny guys, my business has grown to the extent that I have.

That's been my biggest realization in the past six months. Like, "Holy crap!" The game's been even more fun for me because I've noticed that as I get more discipline, as I add positive restraint, (positive constraint in my body, in my mind, in my behaviors, in my habits), I actually become more wealthy or I bring in more cash, or I can help more customers. It's the weirdest relationship ever.

And so, with all that preface in mind, I what to read my rules to you. That's why I take this so seriously. I am not a friend to my students. I let them know first, that that is the rule: "I am first your coach. I'm not your friend.”

I'm not here to make it fluffy. If you're wrong, I'm gonna tell you that you're wrong.

If I can see you can handle more, I will push you, and I will make it uncomfortable.

That's all about what I believe as a strategic hardship - because of what it crafts the person to be, and what it crafts the individual to become and do. And so that's why I'm going through this right now.

What I've noticed is that when somebody follows these rules, I'm allowed to come in with my side of what I will give to them. If they follow the rule I will award them with more of me. And so these are some of the rules that I created for the One Funnel Way Challenge as well. But, if they do this, then I will do this. I call it my coaching contract, and we released it to everybody.

I just want you guys to know what some of these things are so that you're able to go in and see like "Oh, my gosh, that's why it worked when I worked with Stephen. That's why it didn't work when I worked with Stephen." Or "That's why it's never worked yet in general regardless of who I've gone to."

And please know it comes from a place of love. I'm just a product of the product that I'm trying to teach you guys about. I had to get honest with myself. I had to look at myself and go, "Stephen, you're dumb." I had to get honest, I had to be open, I had to be real.

I was 35% body fat in high school, I was a big kid: "Stephen, you're fat," and be open about that and be honest. "Okay, I accept that. That's okay, my self-worth is not based on that." I own where I am and bask in the reality of where I am? That is one of the biggest keys.

So, as you go through here and you understand, I'm very intense as a coach, and it's because I believe this changes peoples lives. And that's part of what motivates me to do it, and it's part of why I don't care if I offend your attitude a little bit. If it's truth, it's truth okay? If it offends you, it means it's probably ultra true.

So anyways, guys, I'm just gonna walk you guys through this right here real fast okay?

This is the sub-headline: I am first your coach (like I was just saying), I am not your friend. Man, this is such a big one. People get offended by that, but I don't really care.

Rule Number One: "If you will do the work then I will show what work matters."

I hate fluffy work. I hate busy work, I will never give you any. I will show you the path. I will show you exactly what it is that you need to be doing and what you should not do.

Number Two: "If you will show up hungry, then I will match your hunger. I will NOT push harder than you do."

If you guys went to Funnel Hacking Live 2017, (I hope you guys are all coming this next year because it's going to be ridiculous. Oh my gosh.) Sean Stevenson gave a speech in 2017, and he talked about the motto of the Coast Guard.The Coast Guard has this interesting motto. Here's the scenario:

A helicopter goes up into the ocean, there's a sea full, there are fifty people in the ocean, and the helicopter can only save like 16. Who do you save? That's a tough question. That's a tough question.

And I'm not trying to be all Debbie Downer here when you think about this, but I just want you to know what do you do? So their motto, and what they do, part of their motto, is they say that they "Only save those that are swimming to them, who are actually making an attempt."

You can't save somebody, you are not a savior to your customer, you're not. You can only help those who are willing to help themselves.

The biggest thing that I cannot teach an individual, I have tried to find ways, I can't figure it out. I cannot teach somebody to be hungry. I can't. If they don't want it, there's nothing I can do. It's not about going 50/50, it's about goin’ 100/100. 50/50 sucks, that's a stupid rule! I need all of their devotion, and I will match the level of their devotion.

Part of the reason why some people will be like, "Well, I don't know, Stephen.. did he fulfill for me?" I'm like, "Well, you never did anything that I told you to do on day one." I'm just being open, I'm gonna be real and real honest with you. If it offends ya, okay! Does that make sense?

Someone's like, "Well, this ClickFunnels game... Sales... in general. I don't know if this really works?" Like "No! You're just not working, okay?"

Number two, the rule is, "If you just are willing to show up hungry, then I will match your hunger." Because I can't teach hunger, I cannot teach somebody to be hungry.

The difference for any employee, or any entrepreneur, the difference in attitude in any area of life, is if they show up hungry, more doors open for them. If they don't, doors close. And that's exactly how it happens in every opportunity in your life. Opportunities don't stick around. They get passed onto the next person. If you're not hungry, they don't stick around to you.

That's rule number two. Show up hungry, then I will match your hunger.

Rule Number Three: "If you will NOT use your current or past situation as an excuse...

This is a heavy one. You guys like these? These are not normal rules - every one of them has a lesson behind them...

"You are not allowed to use your current or your past situation as an excuse, and when you do, I will help you call you out on your BS."

I need you to understand this one - it's a huge one.

Too many times I've noticed people will be like, "Well, my situations a little different..." No, it freaking isn't. It's different to you, but it's not different than the hardships, or the level of intensity that somebody else is in who is doing it.

"Well, my situation is a little bit different now, I don't have the time." Bull Crap, okay! I don't believe that one EVER! That one drives me nuts.

"I don't have the time." Or "I don't have the money." Yeah? Garbage! Stupid! I don't believe you! Prove it?

Go in, show me a time study of what you're doing in your life? I don't believe you, and I will NOT believe you.

If you ever walk up to a mic and you ask a Q and A like that, "Well, I just don't have time to pull this off." I will publicly make fun of you. That one drives me up the wall. No one's even saying this to me right now, but it's clearly a nerve. That one drives me nuts!

I was in college, fourteen credits baby. Almost getting straight A's every semester. I was in the army - Holy crap, that is a huge time commitment. Married, kids, doing my own funnels on the side, that's where I freaking learned funnels with two to three hours a day. That's all I could squeeze out - that's it.

Those were the most productive, ferocious three hours of my day. I made sure to give my best self.

I'm not talking family, time or things like that. But, every other thing that I had to go do. My best self was given to me learning funnels. I knew it was the way out.

So anyway, you're not allowed to use your current or your past situation as an excuse. Drives me up the wall! Absolutely not. It is a catalyst, NOT a hindrance.

If you do that, then I will help you call you out on your own BS.

What's nice about that is that a second set of eyes can help you better. That's what my role is, to go in and help you see look, you got this belief pattern that I think is really hindering you.

And sometimes we're so close to our thing, I'm the same way. Guys I have spent $75,000 this year on coaching, okay? And it's for that reason. It's so that somebody else can help call me out on the BS I can't even see myself 'cause I'm so freaking close to it. That's the benefit of it.

So sometimes people are like, "Wait, if I don't use my current or past situations as an excuse, you will help me call me out on my own BS? How is that?" I was like "It's actually a blessing." Anyway, that's number three.

Number Four: "If you will NOT make someone else responsible for your results, then I will promise I will NOT do any of this for you."

Now, that one might sound a little weird. Let me just explain that one:

If you will not make someone else responsible for your results - which means you own every success and every failure. Every time you did not do what you were suppose to that day. Does that make sense? I need people to understand this one. You are responsible for everything that happens in your life - even if you actually weren't responsible for it. Even if it wasn't a responsibility of yours to bear.

I can't remember, there was some situation that happened here at our home. Was it my responsibility in the first place? No, but I took responsibility. I was trying to take responsibility for anything: "No, yeah, that's totally my bad." Yeah, oh we had to cancel pictures 'cause it was raining, that wasn't it, but I'm just thinking... "Oh man, that sucks. Yeah, I should have looked at the weather." Wasn't my fault freaking rain came out. But, it's extreme ownership.

There's a good book called Extreme Ownership, it talks about this kind of concept, and if you come in with extreme ownership, I promise to NOT do it for you. That's a huge one.

Most of the time I see a lot of the coaches just so that they can help get results for the individual, they will actually go and start doing the task for the student. And the problem with that is that when the coach leaves, the student has not learned how to go through that mental jog on their own.

So, anyways, Number four, it's actually a big blessing as well.

Number Five: "If you'll be polite to your naysayers, then I agree to make a safe house for you."

I'm not here to belittle people. I'm not here to just shove down, "Man, you suck, you suck." I hate that, that's not my style at all. I'm real. I'm honest, I'm open, but I'm also a safe haven.

And so that's part of what I come to people's relationships with when I start doing coaching for them (or any kind of consulting). I should say coaching/ consulting contract, not just coaching. Anyway...

Okay, naysayers are actually a catalyst for you, NOT a hindrance.

When they come in, they're a natural byproduct of anyone who's actually in motion. Naysayers are a natural byproduct of anybody who's in motion. And so WHEN they come to you... "WHEN," NOT "IF"...

When they come to you, and they start saying things like, "I don't think you can do that. Isn't that risky? Why don't you just get a job?"

I've heard that one a ton: "Why don't you just get a job?"

You just go to them, and you just pat their little heads, and you say "Ah, bless you, my small minded person." And just walk on.

It’s a test when somebody says that to you, and you do not go nuts on them.

I did that, and I made that mistake for a while. At the beginning of this game, too much of my personal value was hindered on what I thought other people thought of me - and that was not correct.

Number Six: "If you will only compare you to you, then I will only compare you to you."

This is a fascinating one.

One of the biggest reasons I see that people fail in any kind of game ever that they go play. Meaning, in business, entrepreneurship or anything, is that they start comparing themselves to somebody else.

Now, you can use the results of an individual to motivate you. But do NOT ever base your self-worth on the results of somebody else.

When you start to do that, you are actually basing your self-worth on a ideals. And the issue with that is that ideals change with every moment. Every blink of the eye, the ideal has changed.

So, it's like pop culture. You can't define what it is to be cool in pop culture, because it changes every single freaking minute. And then when someone says "Well, I'm not cool..."

The problem with it is that there's no way to measure progress because it changes all the time. So there's no way to measure progress.

Instead, if the person just measures themselves against themselves - their history - their past - and where they've come from - it's an accelerant. It's an accelerant and they go nuts. They sprint forward like crazy.

They can look up, they can look up, and they can see, "Oh crap! Check it out. Oh, that's so cool. That guy's done that. I wanna do that." And then they put their head down, and they only compare them to them - and where they were yesterday. That's the only competition you really have. It's YOU against YOU "yesterday."

It's YOU "today" versus YOU "yesterday" - that's the only competition that's really there.  

And when you base your sense of self-worth on that rather than where somebody else is, "Oh man," I've noticed that really speeds people along in the process in general.

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

Oh oh, wish granted...

Watch and learn funnel building as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free, just go to the scienceofsellingonline and join now.

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

Today I'm gonna tell you guys, and try and convince you that you should never hire a marketer.

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

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

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

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

What's up, guys? I'm excited for this episode, I've been thinking about this quite a bit here.

Recently, I had a guy reach out to me, it was over on.. I don't remember who..

I have tried to find it on my phone, actually, but he reached out, (and this has happened many times), and I just wanted to address it, because it seems to be something that happens often.

The guy reached out, and he said, "Hey, I appreciate what you're doing, I watch the show..." First of all, thanks for watching the show, and he said, "I watch the show, and I was just wondering, could I give you, maybe, 20, 30% of my business to come in and be the marketer for it?"

And when I see that, I cringe for many reasons.

#1: That's not an attractive opportunity for me at all, 'cause it means I'm gonna be the guy making it rain, and getting paid only 20% for what I bring in - so that's NOT a deal...

Why would I be attracted by that? I'm not going to be, right?

It's kind of like when people come up to me, and they say things like, "Hey, Stephen, look, I've got this great idea, will you do it? Will you come in, you build the funnel, I'll give you 50% of it."

And I'm like, "Why don't I just do the whole idea on my own, and keep 100%?"  You know what I mean?

An idea itself is not an asset. Ideas are not assets. Ideas are not value, right?

So, if you just have an idea, and you try and go bring somebody in like that, that's not attractive. They might as well just go and do it on their own.

So, number one, that's the first, like, "Ewww!" That I had when I saw it. I was like, "That's not a deal to me."

But the second thing that I notice is, 'cause this question actually comes to very frequently: "Stephen, will you take 20, 30% of my company, Stephen, can I give you 50% of my company? Stephen, will you do that?"

And what's funny, what's interesting about this topic, is that there's a fundamental issue that is actually going on when somebody asks that question. You should never ask that question - EVER - especially for the role of marketing.

One of my early one-on-one mentors said, that if you think about a business as a car:

Finance - is the guy sitting over in the passenger seat, planning how far you can get with what gas you've got? He's the guy on the side going, "This is what we can do. This is what we can project."  Finance, very future focused. This is gonna be the future.

Supply chain -  they're the ones hanging out the window. They're the ones who are testing to see how much gas is left in the actual tank? They're the ones seeing when the next gas station is coming up? How far can we actually get based on resources? Where do we get the next resources?

The supply chain is very past focused, "This is what we've needed in the past."

The marketer - is in the actual driver's seat. They're the ones goin', "You know what - let's go over there. I think that there's gold over there! Let's go that way." Marketers are the ones that drive the entire company.

I'm gonna get a lot of pushback when I say that, but it's very, very true. There's no cash... your business is dead! What brings in cash? Marketing!

Money is the byproduct of marketing.

When I see somebody come out, and they say things to me, like, "Hey Stephen, would you please be the marketer of my company?"

What that says to me, that is an individual who has been solely married to the fact that they think that their product is what gives them money. It is not! The product is not.

Now that might be the exchange of what actually pulls the money to you, but that's not how sales are done!

When I see somebody ask that kind of question, I know that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually is causing the cash to come in.

It is not about the product.  That is not what's actually bringing in cash.

So when somebody comes in, and they something like, "Hey, would you come and be the marketer?" That tells me they have no idea why their product is selling. They have no clue why they're actually being successful, or not successful.

They have no idea what levers are really going on inside the company... where if they just turn this lever, and push away that one, money would start coming in a little bit more, right?

I know when I consult for companies, I know that there are always, ALWAYS three or four levers that I could just go turn, and money is the result of it.

And it's mostly because us entrepreneurs, we get so focused on being the technician... we get so focused on, "Hey, I got a sweet product. This product right here is incredible, this product's amazing." And you're like, "Yeah, you're right, that's true, you know what, you're right, that's true. Not many of you have done that." But it's not the reason somebody goes and purchases, right?

Very few people will ever go buy something just because it's brand new and never been done, right? That's important, that's attractive, that's sexy... But the reason people buy has everything to do with the actual sales message, and the ability to tell stories.

When somebody comes to me and says, "Stephen, take a percentage of my company to be the marketer." What it's telling me, is that they actually have no idea what stories are selling. They have no idea why they're actually bringing in cash on their own. And it's scary. That's a freaky place to be in - and I understand it.

So, number one, "What do you do if you're in that kind of scenario right now?”

For the individual who reached out and asked that question, (which, first of all, "Thank you very much, I'm honored, but the answer's, No") -  I've got a few things here...

If you're in that scenario, and you're like, "Man, I just realized when listening to Stephen, I have no idea why my stuff sells."

The first thing you need to start doing is to go back to your existing customer base, and start asking 'em at what point they realized this would be a good decision for them?

And if they point to a feature, you keep digging until they point to a story - that's very key.

Go back to your existing customer base, if you have a business right now, and you go back to your existing customer base, and you ask them:

• "What made you purchase?"

• "Why was that feature important to you?"

• "Oh, interesting, so it was important to you because of this. Now, what was going on in your life at the time?"

• "Now, what was it that I said where you realized, 'Oh my gosh, this guy's not a scammer?"

And you just keep digging, and you keep digging, keep digging. Ask a lot of people. Man, I'm gonna ask like 50 of your customers.

Go in and ask 'em,  and what you'll start to see is a pattern around whatever story it was that you were telling. It might take some digging on your side.

Now, if you DON'T have a product, if you don't have anything selling, you might be in somewhat in this scenario, at a bit of an advantage, because you're gonna be able to go in and just start telling stories. Not about the product - it's storytelling, okay? That's what selling is. You're telling stories.

Every commercial, every ad, every infomercial, infographic, anything. Anything that persuades you is story-based.

So what I want you to do, is I want you to start going out and start telling stories to people. And when you're able to measure which stories cause the biggest "Whoa!" That's the story you should be using. And that's exactly how it works.

Whenever you start seeing a story - or start telling a story to somebody, and they're like, "Wait, what website was that? Wait, where did you get that? Wait, what tool was that? Wait, what product was that?" When they start asking questions like that, they're in heat. That's a person with a wallet, who wishes to be lighter.

They're walking around like, "How do I buy this thing, I really, really need it."

I can't remember what product it was I just did that too recently, but I was listening to somebody, and they're like, "Yeah, just do this, this, and this, and I got this cool product." I was like, "I need that too!" And it was a cool story, I wish I could remember the specific experience. I just remember that just happened to me recently...

When you start to see those stories having that kind of an effect on an individual, you make notes of 'em.  Earmark that story.

When I launch a product, one of my favorite strategies is just to just start telling stories on a podcast, or other people's podcasts, or a youtube channel, something like that. And what I'm doing, is I'm testing stories.

I'm trying to see like, "Okay, which of these stories is causing  a positive buying reaction?" I don't care if it's from me or not, yet, I'm just trying to see if the story sells. The story is what's selling.

I don't even have to have a product yet, and I can get people to start purchasing.

And again, there can be, obviously, a very ethical and moral bridge to cross there, and make sure you don't cross that. Stay ethical, stay moral with this stuff, okay? But that's truly what's causing the actual purchase to happen.

So, the first two things:

Number one, coming to me and saying, "Do you want 20 to 30% of my business to be a marketer?" No! No! Because that means you don't know what you're selling, and you don't know why it's selling.

You might know what, but you don't know why. You don't know why the thing is actually selling.

Number two, right? The point I was just making right there -  It means that the person whose business it is doesn't know stories that are selling. (And those are obviously very tied, those first two.)

But honestly, what I wanted to do real quick here, and I just wanted to give you guys a little piece of advice on who you should hire.

I'm not just saying like, "Don't hire a marketer." What I'm really doing is I'm trying to help you understand who you should hire. Don't hire a marketer!

Every time I've built a funnel for somebody, quick story...

One of the first roles I had at ClickFunnels was to build Russell's personal clients funnels - His personal clients who came to him, and these are hotshots, right?

You can imagine the kind of guys that Russell is willing to say yes to. They're hotshots, they're big guys, they're extremely successful, very well-known.

I was the guy on the side, just hammering these things out. Just pounding out tons, and page, after page, after page, funnel after funnel.

And what was super interesting about it is that, literally, just about every single time I was done building the funnel, and it was a success, and we got this huge influx of cash for them.  

We were like "Sweet. Well, hey, that was a great project, appreciate it, your funnel's done now, keep running traffic to it." Then we would just, like, walk away - and the funnel would die almost every single time.

I can think of one instance where that wasn't the case.

I remember at one time, though, I think was running eight different company's funnels. It was eight! It was ridiculous!

So I'd be going in, and I'd be like, "Alright, this over here, we're in the health industry. Over here, we're in the camping industry. Over here, we're in the this, we're in the that..." All these broad areas...

I’d be looking at numbers and tweaking. I was like, "Russell, they need this…. Russell, ah, ah!" And I was pulling my hair out.

It's hard enough just to get an individual to build one funnel in their life.

You literally are one funnel away from the life you'd like. That's why we say that all the time - it's not a cute saying. It's very true.

Imagine doing eight at the exact same time? My brain's already on fire, but it was like extra ablaze. It got really, really stressful.

What we realized was that we had done so much of the marketing for them, figuring out which stories do sell... and not just what the stories are, but how to tell them.

There were so many things we'd figured out for them, and they had not had the epiphany yet on why those things were working. So then, when we left, they didn't know the three levers they should just keep turning, and cash would pop out the bottom.

So we literally stopped working with companies where the CEO was not also the marketer. 'Cause there's a business owner, a marketer, and an entrepreneur. A lot of times, especially as the company grows, that they're not always the same people.

I don't like working with companies where the CEO is not also the entrepreneur and the marketer. There's a sweet spot for me where I like working with that kind of company.

We'd go in, and I'd start working with a CMO, and I'd build these funnels, and we'd put them out, and THEN, I'd have to re-sell the entire concept again from the ground up to the entrepreneur, the CEO, or the business owner.

So there's a combination there that I like to work with that is very, very attractive to me. I know that I can go blow those types of companies up.

It's not that I can't make it work for other companies. It's just that there's so many holes to jump through that it's ridiculous. Lots of red tape. Especially when the organization starts getting bigger. So I don't like to work with anybody who's not the ultimate decision-maker.

If I build funnels with people, it's so rough when that business owner is not also the marketer.

And it makes sense - because the marketer's the one driving the sales. They're the one figuring where the next vein of gold is, but if they're not also the entrepreneur, the CEO, or business owner - it's hard. You're constantly re-selling the organization on what you're doing, rather than having the leader/marketer be like, "Rawr - let's do this!"

Never outsource your marketing!

We always joke that outsourcing your marketing is like outsourcing your sex life... You're not gonna do that.

Selling is the sex of business. The relationship is the fulfillment afterward. That's the big joke with it - we say that a lot.

The whole key, that's what I'm trying to say, is that when you go in, and you're not working with somebody who's the ultimate decision-maker in some form or fashion - who cannot control, or influence, or maintain their organization, and you are re-selling everybody, that is a terrible funnel-building scenario to be in.

I've been in it enough times to know when it looks like that might be what's going on, okay? So, does that make sense? There are multiple reasons why I say no, okay?

I just want you to know, real quick, who you should hire.

My goal of Sales Funnel Radio is to turn you into a marketer. Marketers make cash.  Money is the byproduct of marketing. Marketing is the thing that gets you guys money coming in. Loving customers who continue to buy after they make that first purchase. I want to turn you into a marketer.

I'll probably do a podcast episode soon... in fact, I might do it after this one, where we'll just go over definitions so you guys can understand:

• What marketing actually is?

• What advertising actually is.

• Does that make sense?  

They are very different and unique scenarios.

• When I learned the difference between a product and an offer - my life changed.

• When learned the difference between selling and marketing - my life changed.

• When I learned the difference between selling and closing - my life changed.

• When I learned the difference between advertising and marketing - my life changed.

They are all very different. Do not think they're the same. They're completely different things.

So the person you should hire…?

You need to think of it almost like a web... That's how I think of it.

If you are the main marketer, especially if you're small. Especially if you're just starting out in this game. (Now, if you're big, this also applies to you as well.) But the issue is, "You are the marketer... now, WHAT is marketing?"

Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a purchase to happen.

That's all marketing is.

That's my own definition, but as I've just gone further and further in this game - that's what it is.

Marketing is not necessarily an ad. Marketing is not necessarily Facebook ads. It's not necessarily logos.

For a long time, I spent time asking myself the question, "What is marketing itself?" The essence of marketing itself, what is it? "It's Belief." It's the act of changing somebody's beliefs. It's the act of changing the way somebody sees the world.

You might do that through some kind of educational thing. It might be through some comedy ad. There are many ways to pull that off... but all you're doing at the core of marketing is shifting someone's paradigm. That's it.

You're changing the way they see the world.

That should be up to the main business owner/ CEO/ entrepreneur/ business owner/ the main decision maker. In my mind, that should be the same person as the marketer. I don't know why you would ever hire out the marketing department.

Everybody's in the marketing department. Everybody in your company should be in the marketing department! You're just changing beliefs. In my opinion, my very strong opinion, that mission should be down to every person in the company.

Anyway, so as got the main marketer, you go out and I start trying to figure out who you need to hire? That might mean a Facebook ads person. That might mean a creative individual, meaning like they create creatives like pictures, and logos, and stuff like that. That's not marketing, but it's a piece of it, right?

Honestly, a lot of the people that I hire for my content creation team, they aren't marketing, but they're part of my marketing engine. They're part of my engine that changes people's beliefs, their relationship with me, and my products. That's what marketing is.

So Facebook ads - that's not marketing - but it's a piece of it.

Creating logos, slogans, business cards - that's not marketing, but it can be a piece of it if you're tossin' in a little story.  

I think the biggest waste of space EVER, is when you go into those arenas...

I went to a basketball game with my siblings and my dad - it was a few years ago for Christmas. We went to a basketball game, and we walk into this huge, huge stadium.  I think it was in Phoenix. I can't remember who they were playing.

There's the people. There's the players. The stadium is all lit up and everything...  but what else is out there? Banners, right? You got people's names - that's it! "Chase." "Coca-Cola."

That's NOT marketing, that's advertising. Does that make sense? Very different. They're very different.

I live in a world called Direct Response Marketing; meaning that the marketing I create is intended for the person that I hope buys. It goes direct to the consumer - right to the individual. That's the world that I live in - because my dollars are measurable.

I know that when I spend this amount of money, like 99% of the time, I get a customer, right? It's measurable. I don't have to go get big dumps of cash coming on in...

So, when you think about yourself, when you think about your business - when you think the way it's structured... You've got your market, you are the marketer; meaning the stories are coming from you. You're the attractive character of your business.

If you're the attractive character of your business, you better freakin' be the marketer - because the marketing stories that you're gonna be telling will most likely be about the attractive character.

Then you might have a Facebook person,  an audio person (if you're doing something like a podcast)  a video person - all these are pieces of marketing, but not marketing itself!

That's the whole point I'm trying to get down to.

So when somebody reaches out to me, and they say something like, "Will you come out and be the marketer?" I'm like, "Yeah, but I'll probably bring a whole team with me and I'm just gonna be the storyteller." That's what it really means to be the marketer. Anyways, that's all I'm trying to say with this.

It's funny because I've been asked multiple times, "Do you know any good marketers that I could hire?" Guys, you can't find good marketers to hire. I was talking with... I think it was Trey Lewellen, when I was over with him, hangin' out, and he and I were laughing about this very concept. He and I were talking together and saying how funny it is.

He's like, I keep getting asked, "Do you know any good marketers to hire?" And he said the same thing. He goes, "I always laugh when someone asks me that. You can't hire good marketers because they've figured out how to make money so easily that they're just working for themselves."

There's no such thing as hiring a good marketer - which means you need to become one yourself! Does that make sense?

I could find a good copywriter, I could find a great ads person, I could find a great... BUT it's dang near impossible to find a good marketer - because they're not hireable.  Good marketers are not on the market. They're not looking for anything.

You can tell when somebody is a good marketer because usually, they're turning down every opportunity. They're so focused on what they're doing. they get the game - they understand it. There's are enough clicks that happen' "Oh my gosh, are you serious, that's how it works?" They're just doing it on their own anyway.

It's funny, 'cause I've had multiple requests for that in the past little bit. People have reached out, and they're like, "Okay, well, if you're not hireable, do you know any other good marketers I could hire?"  “No!” I know a lot of people that you could probably train up, but in reality, they're not gonna be as obsessed about your product as you are - so just learn how to be a marketer. Just learn how to do it. It's not something to outsource.

I can find someone in finance, I can find a supply chain, I can find someone in fulfillment. Marketing is that thing, you don't outsource.

You can't find a good marketer, they're not looking. They don't care how good your opportunity is, they're already knee-deep in their own.

I hope this episode was helpful to you, and I hope that what it did, is it helped re-create some of the relationships between what marketing really is, your company.

Money is the lifeblood of your business. Cashflow is the lifeblood of your business. What's tied to that directly? Marketing! You don't outsource that. You could outsource the ads, all these different pieces I was talking about, but don't think you're being attractive by giving away percentages of your company to good marketers.

A joint venture, something like that, maybe? But, they're not motivated by that, okay? They're just not out there on the job board. There's no such thing as a poor marketer. There isn't! Which is why it's hard to hire 'em! Because they've figured out the game. There's no such thing as a poor marketer.

If somebody is poor, they're either new, or they're not a marketer. That's it.

If you figure it out, there's just a few tweaks to make the game real easy. That's what this whole podcast is meant to try and help you learn and understand.

I know this one was a bit of a rant - I was kind of all over the place a little bit, but hopefully, you got the idea:

"Don't hire a marketer! You are the marketer."

You try and hire a marketer, it's not gonna work. Be the marketer, hire out specific roles in your campaigns. That's it. That's what you hire. Don't try and find a good marketer... or hold out on your own business because you're trying to find a good marketer. It doesn't work that way.

Alright guys, thanks so much.

Hopefully, you enjoyed the episode, if you guys liked it, please share it. It really means a lot to me, it really makes me excited and feels good when I see your reviews.

It means a lot to me when I see that you guys have shared it. This is something I've dumped a lot of my own money into, just to get some of these lessons out, 'cause I wanna help share, so it really means a lot to me when you kind of pay it back, pay it forward so to speak.

Anyways guys, thanks so much, hope you guys enjoyed it, and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.

Bye. Boom! Thanks for listening. Again, please remember to write 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.

Boom, what's goin' on everyone. It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sale Funnel Radio.

Today, I'm gonna teach you guys about my RSVP funnel.

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.

Alright guys, hey!

Now technically there's not really an RSVP funnel that exists. But what I wanted to do, is I wanna walk you guys through the process that I went through to actually grab all these people who are coming to my event, The OfferMind and actually get them to RSVP, get a ticket, and the process behind it.

So what I decided to do, when we were doing that 30-day book series or the 30-day book launch, alright, (you still can get it 30days.com/stephen)

During a certain amount of time, if you got the book I gave you a free ticket to my OfferMind which is coming up very soon. I'm super excited about all of it, holy crap.

I'm deep in the woods right now doing the 30-day challenge with Russell. It's been fun to see you guys in there, and I really appreciate you guys being inside of that.

But in the midst of everything that's going on I've also been preparing for OfferMind.

Right now we have over 150 people who are coming - which is very, very exciting. So we've been creating this event in the middle of me doing this stuff with Russell and the One Funnel Away Challenge, and it's been a bunch of fun.

So anyway, I wanna cut over to a Facebook Live where I showed the strategy behind creating this little RSVP funnel. Basically how I built it; so I draw it out and then actually show the actual pages and kinda go back and forth to the audience a little bit with some questions.

I think it'll be really helpful because this funnel doesn't exist. I'm not funnel hacking an RSVP funnel from somebody else. The game is far more malleable than people might think it is. As soon as you understand the big Lego blocks, as soon as you understand the pieces...

I've always imagined funnel building as like adult Legos. And I can take a piece out. I can move it and put it over there, and as long as these pieces are compatible, boom, I can sink it on and it'll be awesome. I kind of made up a funnel for the purpose that I needed it for and what I wanted to do.

What's kind of unique about this episode is, I wanted to show ya that I do this a lot, but I've never really shown that. I never really realized I've never shown that. So anyways, it's not a sales funnel. This is more of a fulfillment funnel, right. And so, there are still sales that are collected in there, but it's not the purpose of it.

And so I wanna show you guys how I kind of created the funnel for the purpose that I needed something for. So anyway, I think it'll be great, I think it'll be a lot of fun for you to see how I did that. We'll cut on over, I think the first thing in there, I'm being a goofball listening to music but anyway, watch how I draw it out.

First thing I do is a write down exactly what I'm trying to figure out. And then I put pages together to be able to map out a funnel and that's what I built and that's what you'll see.

So anyways, guys thanks so much.

If you guys go to OfferMind.com, it is not what you are about to see in this video - since then I’ve changed it into a sales funnel to sell event tickets.

So anyway, guys thanks so much. We'll cut on over there, I hope you enjoy it, bye.

♪ Bam-Ba-Lam Whoa, Black Betty ♪ ♪ Bam-Ba-Lam Whoa, Black Betty ♪ Alright, we were listening to a different song a second ago and it's the wrong song to go live to, you know what I'm sayin. So anyway, gotta look at the camera over here.

Hey, what's up guys, I'm super excited. I get to actually tell you guys a little bit about The OfferMind and how to make sure you get your ticket. This is good stuff right here.

(Answering FB Comments)“What's up, Amy Farmer, wow, how's it goin?” “Christopher Voss, which by the way, I just opened your package which is absolutely hilarious. Check this thing out everyone, this is hilarious. That thing is huge. It's massive. I have every shape and size I could ever hope for with it too. That's funny. I'm gonna save that. I'm gonna save that and. I don't know I think I might put that in the actual OfferMind room. I guess I'll put it on the doors. We're gonna put it on the doors, Christopher Voss, that's awesome.”

What's up! Okay, I am super excited for this, I was supposed to get this out yesterday. I worked on it the second half of the day, and then my wife came in and started knocking and she was like, “Hey, you're supposed to be at the dentist.” And I was like “Oh, crap!” So I ran to the dentist. The receptionist acted like she had to go check to see if there was space for me and then when the dental hygienist walked around the corner to take me back she was like, “Uh yeah, this is super slow, you coulda walked in at any time.” And basically, the receptionist was being kind of a jerk to my wife. Anyways kind of a funny story, anyway.

Hey, so it didn't get out yesterday. So I just finished it. Now one thing, I just wanna teach you guys somethin' real quick here, okay. Before I actually dive in and show you guys how to get your free ticket. For those of you guys who bought your book through my link. An absolute unanatomical butt ton of you have been reaching out, (that's a technical term), asking if you can buy a ticket and the answer is “No, not right now.”

Let me get my whiteboard. We went and we rented this room, We rented this room that was a 150 person space room and I was like, “This is super cool, I bet we'll have maybe 50, maybe 100 people.” Okay, I sold 375 books. That's a lot of tickets!

I was like, “We gotta double the size of the room.” And then 'cause I know some of you guys are International and you don't want to make the trip over (and I totally get it) I said I'd give you guys the recordings.

(Goes to Whiteboard) Okay, now the funnel that I just built is not in the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. The Funnel Hacker Cookbook is fantastic. This is a fantastic book. It’ll shortcut a lot of the learning time on what funnels work in what scenarios. However, you have to understand that when I say that I build 500 funnels when I worked at ClickFunnels, that's true - but only maybe 100 of those were actual revenue funnels. A lot of them were more what I call fulfillment funnels.

A fulfillment funnel is something that can be used internally. It's kind of like what I just created right now. So when I create a funnel that doesn't exist, there are not many people I can funnel hack. You have to think of this scenario that I'm in right now. I created an event funnel, but it's not actually a standard event funnel. This is the hard part.

Yesterday, I had to think through how to actually design this thing. When you think 'em through, you think through what the main objective is. In this case, I need people to RSVP. That's the main objective. I need people to RSVP because we are negotiating back and forth with the actual event person to extend the actual size of the room. Ya know what I'm sayin'? It's been a bunch of fun. Anyway, it's been a bunch of fun.

It's not necessarily to sell tickets, I just need people to RSVP. Holy crap guys, tons of people have been asking to buy tickets. Lot of people at ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels execs, which is really fun. There might be several surprise ClickFunnels people there which is very, very cool. They've been asking, “Hey maybe I could swing in.” I was like, “Absolutely!” I'm not gonna charge 'em, relationship-wise why would I? I'm just, “Yeah, dude, come on by.” Right, you know what I'm sayin’!

Anyway, there are two things I need to do here…

Some of you guys want extra time with me, so there's the option to do that. On the second night, there's gonna be a private VIP dinner where we can just hang out and network, and you guys can ask any question that you want, little more of an intimate setting - that'll be cool.

There is the, oh, did you guys see, I haven't shown you guys the shirts yet, the Capitalist Pig shirts I went and got created - super stoked for those. So many fun things are going on.

So   two things that I'm trying to get done here. There are two objectives.

#Number one if you got a ticket, if you got the book through my link, I need you to RSVP in general.

#Second thing though, is if you want to upgrade to a VIP, so you can sit close.

(Phone Rings:) “Stupid phone calls, I freakin' hate 'em.” I never answer my phone! Don't ever try and call me, I don't answer for anybody except my wife. Even then she and I Vox.

Anyway, so of course, I'm the offer creation guy. There's a specific offer around becoming a VIP in general. But think about what I'm trying to do with this. The funnel that I'm creating…

Good funnels have one objective, that's the reason a funnel works. Each page has its own specific focus. Each page, just one thing.

The thing that makes something turn from a funnel back into a website is when you have multiple exits from a page. A funnel works because it’s a funnel - there's only one way to progress forward. There's only one way to move on.

So what I created was kind of a hybrid between a website and a funnel at the same time. Does that make sense?

So think about this for a second... And this is one of the reasons why so many people whose funnel will not do well...  They will create too many exits inside of their funnels.

Here I have two objectives:

#Number one: I need everybody to come through and RSVP.

#Number two: Then some of you guys, if you want more of my time while you're here, you can upgrade to a VIP ticket. So there needs to be some kind of a breakout.

Does that make sense?

So when I go through this and I'm actually creating and designing something that hasn't existed before, what's I'll do is I'll take elements inside of the Funnel Hacker Cookbook - I helped to write a lot of this, but I don't open this up anymore... but what I'll do is I'll go through and I'll think through, “Okay I need a page to do this... I need a page to do that... I need a page for this…” and I will design and I will make up a funnel as I go. I've done this many times.

So the first page, what I did is I created a page that said, “Hey, check it out, you got two options here. Number one you could just straight up RSVP, or number two you can upgrade to VIP.”

There are two buttons below the video. The first button says, “Hey, Stephen I don't want to upgrade, just give me my RSVP ticket.” I'm like, it's totally fine, understand that you're not going to sit towards the front, that's okay....

When you RSVP through this funnel, I encourage you to RSVP slowly so you can see what I did with this. I did not just slap together a page. This is a full funnel that I've built in the last 36 hours.

So this is the first page, and I built it as a sales page. That means ClickFunnels is not looking for data on it. Does that make sense? If it's opt-in page, and there's not an email form on the page, sometimes that can trip out of the ClickFunnels editor.

So I build it as a sales page because there's no requirement. It's literally a shell. I can put whatever I want in there, and I can direct people wherever I want to. Does that make sense?

So this first page is just a “sales page” page type. It's a sales page.

I'm gonna walk you guys through the actual funnel here in just a second here. So stick with me for just a second.

The next page, here's the VIP upgrade - this is an order form page type. Now that means that ClickFunnels is gonna look for credit card details. It's gonna look for email contacts.

All profiles inside of ClickFunnels are email based. All contacts are email based inside of ClickFunnels. If there's not an email, the contact profile does not exist so I have to make sure that it has those kinds of things in there so it's like, “Sweet.”

Then after that, there's a thank you page, just merely to confirm the fact that the purchase has gone through. It always makes me a little nervous whenever it skips those pages. You can do it without it, but I always like to.

Anyway, right, here is the order confirmation page. And then after that is the RSVP page. So what I did is I said, “Check this out, if you want to upgrade to VIP, all you do is you click here” and it will shoot you straight over to this page right here. You'll just go right over.

If you click this button though, it’ll sidestep the actual payment step and shoot you right over here. When you do upgrade though, there's an email that gets sent out. Again pushes ya right back to the RSVP page. All roads lead to this RSVP form.

And then I was like, you know what, I could use a software like Eventbrite. I could integrate with that. Eventbrite or EventDay, they are great software for events - especially when they get kind of biggish like this one. But instead, let's just use Zapier. So what I did is I set up a Zap so that there are two different Zap inputs.

I'm just telling you guys the structure of how I built this so you can guys can see more of how I pulled it off.

So if this Google Sheets, there's two Sheets that are goin' on. The first Sheet is I need to be able to collect and separate out just those who upgraded to VIP. So there's a Zap, a Zapier. And whenever you upgrade on this page right here, it goes into a specific tab.

There are two different tabs - so it's the same Google Sheet, one tab is the VIP people, and one tab is the standard RSVP people. So one side, upgrades right there. And it shows all the data right there. That's awesome because I am making you guys t-shirts.

I'm making you swag. We're getting lots of crazy cool stuff. I hate crappy swag, I hate cheap swag.

That's one spot. So this one tab inside right here that's just VIP. That's comin' right over here from this upgrade piece.

There's a second tab though. I'll put it on this side of here just so you guys can, so you guys can see better. “All funnel building is with crappy drawings on a whiteboard. And very imperfect boxes.”

The second one though is from this - it's a Wufoo form. Honestly, I didn't need the Wufoo form. I could use something else. I just made it because it's super fast. You can use the standard input fields inside of ClickFunnels, but there are a few things that I really like about Woo-fu. It's so fast, so anyway.

So what I did is as soon as you fill out this RSVP form, and I tell you, “Look, I'm gonna ask your t-shirt size.” That also sends to the same Google Sheet, but just on a different tab. Does that make sense? That way I have gone Google Sheet where I can look up everybody's information, their name, their email, when they bought, what time they bought - meaning the book. Have they been verified? Meaning did I verify the fact that they actually did get a book through my 30-day link, or are they trying to be sneaky and get on in... We're gonna not allow that obviously.

This event is pretty packed already. So anyways, if somebody shows up without a ticket, we can't accept you. You'll get turned away at the door.

But anyway, it's exciting, very very exciting. She's like, “Well I think we can extend the room to maybe like 300.” I was like, “Lady, there are 386 confirmed tickets.” Alright, this is big, right, it's huge. I just barely got Russell's AV team, the same one that sets up the 2 Comma Club Coaching events and the Funnel Hacking Live events - you know like the stage.

Man, when you walk into a stage at an event room, you need to go to a different place. It should transport you mentally to a different state the moment you walk in. I hate crappy event setups.

So if you guys have been listening and paying attention to me at all, I always teach with affiliate cash that's straight affiliate cash. Never take profit from it. I take all affiliate cash and I dump it right into something else so the asset creates an asset.

So this is a lot of cash that this affiliate thing pulled in, which is awesome. It means I can afford to hire the really really expensive extremely nice stage setup, very nice AV, incredible videographers. And this is exactly what I'm goin' for. So I'm excited to have you guys.

So if you are interested in it at all, I'm excited, I'd love to have you guys if you wanna upgrade to VIP. I just want to show you guys how the whole thing works.

So now I'm actually gonna move over to my computer here…

And because we're at Funnel Hackers and I teach you guys how to funnel hack, I did take a piece of paper and tape it to the top of the URL so you don't try and sneak on there ;-)

Shortly, like immediately after this video ends, I'm gonna email all you guys who bought the books through my link. I'll send you guys this RSVP funnel. It's basically an RSVP funnel. It's not necessarily an event funnel, but I have all the details in there. It'll have all the pieces that you guys need. It'll have where it is, the times, the dates. At the bottom, there's always an FAQ section.

Anyway, what I wanna do real quick is let me flip the camera and I'm gonna walk you guys through the actual funnel so you guys can see it.

Now that you saw the layout, now you saw the draw out of it on that whiteboard of what it looks like and what's happening and what's going on. Now you guys actually can see the funnel. Check this out. Alright cool. This is the OfferMind.

You guys like that with a piece of paper on the top? I know you... Because you're like me! ;-)

(Replying to FB Comments)

“Alright. What does that weigh? The same as a crap ton? Yeah, an anatomical butt ton is about the same amount as a crap ton. Exactly right, Dan.”

Alright, so this first video is incredible. Anyways super cool. “Discover what offer and sales message your market has been asking to pay you for.” This is a different way to think about this whole game. This stuff I'm gonna share with you guys, no one teaches it. It's not in like, it's not in a book. Someone was asking me like, “Stephen where'd you learn all your stuff for your offer stuff?” I was like, “Well I've coached 18,000 people in the process, built 500 funnels and tons of millionaires have been created because of it.” You see what I'm sayin'? I'll just stand in front of a   anyway. I don't know a book. That's why I'm writing a book.

Anyway, this video is fantastic. I encourage you to watch it. (Video on the 1st page)

Reading The Copy: “Thank you for buying the 30 Days book through my link. You have a limited time to RSVP.”  

It's because we need time to get your swag. You have to RSVP by the end of Sunday at midnight or I can't keep your free ticket. You understand? Does that make sense?

Meaning I'm saying, I'll be forced to just send you the recordings. I encourage you to come to the event. There's something about being in a room that has changed my life. I love going to events.

Here's all the details, “who, what, where, when, why, how, where it is.”

Here's those two buttons I'm talkin' about. Look I don't wanna upgrade. You're like, alright. Or you're like hey yeah, I do wanna upgrade. I'll there in a second. What's your gonna get. Of course, I'm gonna make this. I am the Offer Creation guy. It's VIP has its own, anyway. It's got its own offer. What you get:

• The private networking dinner with me on the second night. Location, time to be determined. And I'll tell you guys exactly why that is (That's a strategic reason) in the future.

• You'll be the first to get the event recordings as well.

• The paparazzi wall picture with me.

Guys, there's gonna be like three or four hundred people there. And I want you to be there. I'm really excited to have you, anyway. I'm pumped to have you. If you're VIP though, I can guarantee that we'll be able to take pictures and spend some extra time together.

If you're not, I can't guarantee it. I'm not saying I won't, but it's just a lot, it's a lot of people.

It's only me on stage for two days. I'm used to doing them okay. The FHAT event was three days, pretty much just with me the entire time. I'm not nervous about the energy output - usually, the audience gets tired before I do.

But anyway, to upgrade it's 197. There are only 60 VIP places available. That's how the room is going to be set up. It's not a hoax. There are 60 spots.

And anyway, a little bit more on why I'm doing what I am.

And then I've got a whole bunch of testimonials in here.

Now people ask me a lot of times, they're like, “Stephen, what if I'm launching something that I've never done before and I don't have any testimonials.” I get it, have I done an OfferMind before? No, I haven't.

FB COMMENT: “Can I have the link to this funnel?” No, I will email those people who bought the book through my link. They are the ones who are getting this funnel. We're not opening up public purchases for tickets because there's literally no space.

It depends on how many people who bought the book don't RSVP. So that's why you have to RSVP by the end of this Sunday night because every messaging platform is exploding right now,  “Stephen, I didn't buy it, can I still get the ticket? Can I still come to the event, can I still come to the event?”  Like, “No, it's a spacing issue. Literally, it's a fire marshal issue at this point.” It's gonna be super fun, I'm so excited about it.

I'm naturally an introvert. Events for some reason with people like you guys, I get excited about. But anyway, this will be a bunch of fun, so anyways. So no I can't give you the link, I'm not gonna, that's why the paper's there so you can't find the link.

But some people have asked me like, “Stephen, what do you do when when you are selling something that you don't have specific testimonials for?” What you do is you switch the question. And the question is, “What is it like to work with Stephen?” Or “What is it like to learn from him on other courses?” And that, you can get testimonials around.

Check this out. Alright, so these are all videos, each one of these specifically, just super cool...

Hey, I need more women testimonials. Look these are all guys! That's why I put the one up here. She, this is amazing, oh my gosh, the one from Angela, this is absolutely incredible. I kinda have a lot of guys in here which is awesome. Fellas, you're looking great - but the women tend to sell that a little bit more.

FB COMMENT: “No. You're definitely not an introvert!” Not in front of you. In front of everyone else, I definitely am.

Still not convinced? So some of us like to go consume testimonials, not through video. This is awesome. “Highest gratitude, Steve Larsen.”

Check this out, this guy, he went and he got, anyway, this guy did 30 grand his first shot with it.

FB COMMENT: “I found the secret link, Steve. Sorry, but I'll keep the secret, not gonna give it away.” Cool. We're gonna verify everything because it's not fair that people actually did get my the book through my link if someone sneaks in, you know what I mean.

So anyway...  HEADLINE: “What Are You Most Excited For?” Then I pulled in other comments people are excited about.

And down at the bottom, I took a page from the lesson and the book of Funnel Hacking Live, and I went and I grabbed both FAQ topics from Funnel Hacking Live to make sure I hit all the topics that they use.

And then all the topics from Dana Derricks, tons of them, you know what I mean.

So anyway, cool. Sweet, so that's it. So that's the first page. So you're gonna come up here, and any one of these like, “Yeah I wanna upgrade” or whatever. Right, it shoots you back up here to the top, one of these.

So you say, “Hey, let me upgrade.” Right if you go, let me go upgrade, it will come right here. And you come in and like the 60 spots available. I'm gonna shut that off afterward.

Any way you fill it out, it's super simple, especially an event funnel guys, it's like the FAQ section is important to have on the bottom of literally every single page. That's a super, super key thing there.

Anyway, here's the next page afterward. “Boom! Welcome to OfferMind VIP.” Now, these are simple pages. The first page is always the hardest one to create. It's the one I spent literally an entire day on. Here's RSVP form, check that out. Yeah, there's the Capitalist Pig shirts!

When you guys show up, I will give you guys the Capitalist Pig shirt which I'm super stoked about it. I went and I got one created. It's actually Russell's designer that got it all set up which is super cool. He designed it and put it all together and I've got the same printer that ClickFunnels uses for their shirts as well which is awesome.

So anyway. It's cool! I bought capitalistpigshirts.com. In the future, I'll sell 'em like out there and stuff and we'll do swag drops and stuff like that. But for right now I'm not gonna be able to do that. And then if you're VIP I'm giving you guys an “It's Monday Baby!” shirt which we're designing right now which look so cool  - so anyway. That's just for VIPs though. Anyways, guys, there's a bunch of other stuff as well…

I just wanted to deep dive real fast, or shallow dive I guess, into what I'm doing on there.

So when you go in and start looking at the page, make sure you look at, I want you to see like what I did.

Does an RSVP funnel exist? Not really, but what I'm trying to say is that this game is far more fluid when you understand the marketing behind what makes things work.

I was very afraid to do anything outside the mold of funnel building when I first started funnels.

Three or four years ago I was like, “Well that's, this page here, didn't exist before. Or over here, this element is different than the one they had. It's not gonna work.” Like “No, No, No, No!” We need to understand what's really happening behind it. This game's far more fluid than you might expect.

Boom! f you're just starting out, you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies also, right. That's also good.

But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them. That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.

So I created a special mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it. Wanna come?

The small groups are on purpose so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days. You can hold your spot by going to offermind.com. Again that's offermind.com.

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

Today, I'm gonna teach you guys why branding comes second.

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.

Alright you guys, I know that I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers with this episode. I totally get that. I totally understand. I'm not trying to, but I  feel so strongly about this that if someone gets offended like, “Hmm... Okay! You know, alright... sounds good!”

So it was about six years ago, I had the unique opportunity of going and pitching some actual investors to invest in a business plan that I'd written. Now, this is before I ever had considered the fact that maybe VC funding wasn't always the best route... depending on what you were doing.

Maybe I didn't need to get funding. Maybe I didn't need to give up ownership in a company just to get it going, right?

And what was interesting is.... that was before I learned about any of this stuff.

I've always been very active in this sphere though... And so I was doing what I thought was best.

So what I did is... I remember we went and we wrote, I think it was like a 30-page business plan for the real estate space. It was with a buddy of mine, and he and I (as well as a few others), we came up with this plan.

It was this really cool real estate strategy. His dad was a kind of a real estate mogul, kind of. He was taking us under his wing a little bit, and he was showing us some cool, neat ways to (I think it was storage units) off-set costs with these clever strategies.

And it was cool - it was really cool.

Anyway, so we were excited about it; we're like, "Sweet! What if we just asked for the amount of investment that it would cost for us to go get a down payment on one of these properties? Let's just try it."

And cool enough, the professor we were doing this class with was facilitating the whole process. So the professor went and he actually grabbed these investors, so we did it in front of a live panel of investors.

We had a cool and unique opportunity of going in, and we did the exact process that you see on Shark Tank...without as much drama.

There was no slow motion, and there wasn't any slow-mo 'staring at each other looks' before anyone said anything - like on CNBC. But it was still awesome.

I remember we sat there, and we got to watch as each group would present their business plan; how much they believed their company was worth, give a percentage of the company away in exchange for an investment amount. Then watch them as they would defend why that was an awesome idea, and why they should get the cash, and why they had great numbers. You know, things like that.

It was really, really cool and I learned a lot and understood how all of that works. And it's really helped me even in my funnel building, funny enough. Even though I don't go that route.

So what was interesting is like, as I started doing that stuff they told us, "Hey, if somebody goes in and it truly is amazing - they will actually invest." And I was like, "Sweet, alright!"

Well, we get up there, and we start talking and stuff like that, and I remember that there were these different elements in creating this. It was like a 30-page business plan. It was very, very professional looking. We did everything from a SWOT analysis, (if you guys know what that is). All the standard stuff that you're supposed to do when creating a business plan and analyzing a market.  Which is 100% different than I do it now. Anyway, very fascinating...

I don't think any of us got any kind of investment. We did really well all of one of us. It was awesome in front of that board. Anyway, none of us got any kind of investment or anything like that. But we did that actually multiple times because of what I had studied.

I actually really do appreciate the college I went to on all this stuff. They did a great job for what they had, right? No one really teaches direct response marketing. That's kind of something you have to go learn on your own, you know what I mean? There's not like a major for that. No one's teaching that stuff, you know what I'm saying. For what they had it was awesome, I get it...

There were multiple occasions though where we pitched. I wrote a ton of business plans in college. And they were all very, very similar. We would go in and we would - there was a format we were following, and then we would go, and we would present it, whether it was just a professor or kinda like a dummy panel or a real panel. We did that many times, multiple times.

I started getting good at defending ideas back and forth for that. And when we actually started doing it for real... Colton and I, sitting over there, we actually went - we did it with a business that he and I were doing. We ended up winning the business competition in our college, and they sent us off to another college to go do it. We totally didn't win, but it was a good experience. It was a bunch of fun, and we learned a lot.

Now you say, "Stephen, what does that have to do with branding?" Well, there was always a moment in creating these business plans where you're like," Crap, I got this idea. What represents my idea? We need a logo. What's our slogan? What's our mission statement? What's this, what's that?" And we would spend so much time on those things that it actually ended up being a distraction of what actually caused value in that company. I see so much of the same pattern now...

The reason why I have such a war against branding is because it doesn't matter for a long time. It really doesn't.

Most of the time when I go, and I start creating something like a brand, man I go to a site, and I will buy a little logo that I think looks cool. I'll switch the colors around, so it looks somewhat okay, and in 15 minutes I have a logo! I do that all the time.

There's only like three or four logos I've ever had professionally created. But it's not until there's cash raining that I even think about that stuff.

What's interesting about that is that issue of branding comes up very frequently. In fact, you can see this on Shark Tank all the time. There was a lady I was watching, it was on Shark Tank. She came up, and she had the product there in front of her. I love watching Shark Tank. She had the product there in front of her.

She had a beautiful display... an amazing display with her stuff. There was the slogan; "This is what we're gonna do that's different." And cool, that was awesome... But then here comes the dreaded question they always ask, "Now, tell us what your numbers are." They go, "Well, we just started this three months ago." And you always see the faces.  You're like, "Oh, crap!" I'm sure they just add those in because of straight drama. They never invest in them. And it's because it's not worth anything.

And you hear the way entrepreneurs who are brand new defend their products. And they always, well not always, but a lot of times their defense comes back to things like branding: "Well we got a great logo. We got a great color scheme. We got a great..."

It's not uncommon to hear that kind of a phrase when somebody's defending their idea. "Well we got the logo done, we got the... " This has happened many times.

I told you guys it took me about 17 tries to really get a business right. Many of those early 17 tries before I knew what I was doing, I would spend literally two or three days looking through different logos trying to figure out which one was the best to represent the company, rather than, "How do we sell the thing?" Totally different question! It's so funny how different it is.

There's so many stories that are running through my head about this topic. Recently, somebody reached out, and they said, "You know what, Stephen? You could do a lot better if your personal branding was better. I'm a personal branding expert." I was like, "Cool. I REALLY don't care!" And they're like, "What are you talking about?" This like a year ago, and I was like, "I REALLY don't care. Personal branding doesn't mean a thing to me for a while." And they're like, "No, the personal branding is what represents you." I was like, "No, my products represent me. My stories represent me. My podcast represents me. My branding does not."

I just barely got this backdrop. We just barely got these sweet intros and outros.  Does branding matter? Yes. But not for a long time. Not for a while.

You can go back listen to Russell Brunson's courses. You can go back and see lots of guys courses that are out there, and they all say the same thing.

This is when branding actually matters. If you got hot traffic, warm traffic, cold traffic. Branding tends to matter more to hot traffic. Hot and warm, kind of in that realm. When you get to a warm/ cold - that kind of scenario -where people don't know who you are anyway, it really doesn't matter as much as we wish it did. It's the reason why I build the pages, and just kind of like, "Alright, let's ship it."

We went through, and we grabbed the top 100 funnels that are converting the most in ClickFunnels. For the most part, they're all pretty butt-ugly funnels. I mean like really! And almost all of them. It was like 95 of the 100 - absolutely not design pretty. Absolutely not. Does this make sense what I am saying? Does this make sense what I'm trying to say with this whole thing?

I've been geeking out on an author lately. He's become one of my favorite authors. His name is Christopher Lochhead. I think that's how you say his last name. Anyway, he talks about how, for a small 'e' entrepreneur, branding comes so far down the road. In fact, actually, let me grab the quote right here; it's super awesome. I read this on a plane. I like to either read or write on a plane.

Anyway, he says' "Quite bluntly, branding, in the absence of category creation is bs." He doesn't say "BS...", He says "Quite bluntly though, branding in the absence of category creation is bs." He says, "Categories make brands." Categories make brands.

Branding comes after category creation.

If you are like, "Hey, you know what, I'm gonna go into..." I don't know, think about anything where there's super high competitive. Let's say you're gonna go into the BizOp space. Let's say you're gonna sell wealth. And let's say you're gonna go sell real estate. And let's say in order for you to be successful in real estate, you're like, "I'm gonna become a real estate agent." Does that make sense?

You're gonna be wealthy because you're gonna go into real estate and you're gonna go into real estate by becoming a real estate agent - sweet.

Now, if you are doing literally the exact same thing as everybody else, why on earth are you going to make a brand? That's not going to set you apart very well. What sets you apart is figuring out how to be different than everyone else.

I'm not saying branding different. I'm saying what are you physically doing differently to collect leads than every other agent? What are you physically doing differently to close leads that's different than every other agent? What are you physically doing that's different to follow up, to up-sell... if you do up-sell? Does that make sense?

Then think about branding, right? You don't have a freaking business. Why would you spend money on something like a brand? Do you know what I mean?

There have been multiple times where I'll go in, and I'm not going to name names, but start looking, kay. And you go in, and these people have these beautiful personal brands... And I can't figure out what the heck they sell? Start diving in deeply, and you find out they don't even have a product yet. But man, they have spent five thousand dollars hiring the great people to make them look awesome. And I'm like, "Sweet! That is a lot of smoke and mirrors."

Again, I'm not trying to throw rocks, but I don't really care if you feel it because I'm so forward on this topic. Categories make brands.

It's kind of like in the book, Expert Secrets The idea is not to choose a niche. The idea is to create a niche. Another word for a niche is "market" or "category."

Go create a market that doesn't exist. Go create a category that's never existed before. Do something, come up with a category that truly is unique. And the way you move people into that category is by using what I've called the purple offer.

You use elements from the red - so there's a place of security for them (and you) 'cause it's like it's proven. But then you lace in these other things from this category that's never existed before... from things that have never existed before, and you start moving them this way.

There's a super cool... I think it was another Shark Tank thing. These guys were like mechanical engineers. They were extremely smart. I think they had gotten at their least Masters or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or something like that. I think the company's called Pop Cards.

I have one over there. I got one for my wife for her birthday. They're super cool.

What they figured out is that they could use cool machine lasering and stuff like that to create these 3D pop-up cards. And people are like, "Why did you get that much education to create a card company?" That's a good question, right? Why would you ask that? You look at these things and they're gorgeous. It's absolutely, it's breathtaking.

You open these things up, and it's extremely intricate. A lot of math involved in what they've done. Anyway, super, super cool what they've done. They created something that's never been done before. "NOW let's think about branding!" Does that make sense? So it's in that order that I like to do it.

First create the category that's never existed before, now the brand.

Music even, I was just talking about this with Russell yesterday. There is a band I really, really like. I've followed their music for years. I found out that he likes a song from them too. I was like, "What's up, that's really cool.” And I messaged him and said the reason why they're so big and so popular, (their name is Odezsa). The reason they are so popular, and they're such a big deal is because they kind of created a category of music that's never existed before - so they were the obvious owner of it. Then they made branding.

You look at all their branded stuff and it's amazing, it's incredible. But they didn't have any of that branding before they launched. It doesn't matter. What matters is figuring out which category, which niche, which market you can create to be the first in... and then next go to the branding.

So anyways, without saying the same thing over and over again, that's the main point of this podcast. That's the reason why when somebody's like, "What should my logo be?" I'm like, "I don't freakin’ care." I will never have a business card. I don't understand them. Why do I need a business card? Why do I need these little tiny things, unless it is part of a little marketing campaign - that I've done...

Last year at Funnel Hacking Live, I made my dad business cards... but with a QR code that was his bait. They scanned the QR code and got his cool free bait, and it started them into the funnel. That makes sense right? But just a freaking name and email... Man, they could get on my Facebook profile.

Anyway, so that's my whole beef with it. When someone's like, "Oh, man, this page, you could design it better. You could do this over here." I'm like, "You know what? This page gets 65% opt-in rate. I don't really care to touch it."  And I know it's NOT because of how it looks that it's converting. Guys,  I'm trying to clear the smoke on my opinions on this topic 'cause several people have reached in asking about it. It's not a personal attack or anything, but literally from a sales or marketing standpoint. Marketing is NOT branding. It's not.

Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the intent for a purchase to happen. That's all marketing is. I'm changing someone's beliefs with the intent for them to make a purchase. That's what marketing is. Branding is NOT marketing, it's not. Facebook ads are not marketing. They can be part of it, just like branding can be part of marketing, but it's NOT marketing.

I'm trying to get clear on these definitions with people. I actually might do a definitions podcast here soon - which I think would be really, really cool. Just so that you see where I operate from and why my stuff is working. I know the three or four terms that I focus on that make the money flow. And when I take my eye away from 'em, and I start looking at things like branding - that's when my money usually starts decreasing.

For all the hot traffic, for all the follow-up sales, for repeat purchases - branding can start to matter more for sure. Absolutely. People will want that kind of professional feel depending on what you are doing. They want to know that it was created with intent - that it's not haphazard. But when it comes down to a lot of my front-end stuff... That's why I didn't upgrade the podcast for a long time.  Do you know what I mean? It didn't matter, it didn't matter for a long time.

Recently, I've gone through, and we've done a pretty strong rebranding of a lot of my front end stuff. We've got chatbots in place now. Everything's tied together. A lot of value ladder steps, I'm getting them into place in both businesses, especially in one of them - where it's a lot more automation - I'm going in, and I'm creating systems and processes to remove me.

Now it's time to think about branding.

Now, it's time to think about creating more of that feeling and that experience as well. We're upgrading the package that we ship out to people when they buy products. The actual physical box, we've got logos we put on it rather than just a normal envelope. For a while, a normal envelope was fine.

People will act like branding is like this lock-gate for them to make money. It's not, and it's not the reason someone's not buying from you. It's not.

Go back to the sales message. Go back to the fundamentals. Do I have a sales message that's compelling? Do I have an offer that over-delivers both to the customer and my wallet? Because you don't have to compete on price when you have a good offer.

And then when those are all confirming that they're great and the cash is coming in... when you can go do all the tweaks you want to on the funnel  - and it's still working. You got cool sustainable traffic. Then think about a little rebrand and branding itself.

So anyway guys, I hope that's helpful to you. And hopefully, it clarifies a little bit about why I look at things that I do. When I'm building a page, I'll kind of make it, so the layout makes it easy to consume the text - so you can see more of the sales message. But that doesn't have anything to do really with colors. It really doesn't.

Thanks, guys so much. Hopefully, that makes sense to you, guys? Remember categories make brands. Branding in the absence of category creation and in the absence of niche or market creation is bs. It's a waste of time. It's not the reason why things convert.

All right guys thank you so much.

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed the episode and we'll see you in the next one, bye. Woohoo! Hey, thanks for listening.

Hey, many of you don't actually know that I made my first money online as an affiliate marketer. If you want to 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.