This is one of the reasons I pursue this game so hard. Check out the other options you have to this funnel game…
Today, I'm gonna teach you The Wealth Formula, and why I'm so jazzed about this Funnel Game.
I'm really pumped to share this with you.
I ran through The Wealth Formula at my exclusive OfferMind event, so you’re gonna get a sneak peek behind closed doors...
Right now, I'm doing the One Funnel Away Challenge which is specifically targeted at people who are people new to funnels.
The Wealth Formula is my answer when someone says, "Stephen, this is really cool, but it seems like a lotta work. There's gotta be another way? How long does it take the average person to be successful with this?"
...I hate that question, it drives me nuts. I’m like, “Well, how bad do you wanna make a million bucks?”
What Yield Will You Learn To Earn?
One of the benefits hanging out with the amazing people at ClickFunnels was that I got some cool insights into the books and courses they rated. I got to see who the gurus learned from...
If a guy who runs a hundred million dollar company thinks something’s cool… then I should probably think that's cool too, right!
Ya know what I mean?
If I hear, “Hey, I really learned a lot from this...” I'm like, "What was the name of that again?" I'm gonna look it up and buy it.
I bought so many books when I worked at ClickFunnels... because I was just like, “If Russell thinks that's amazing, I need to make sure I have that info for the future.”
I’d be sitting feet away from people like Tony Robbins or Robert Kiyosaki, and if they said, "I read this great book recently... " I’d be like, Boom! BUY IT.
The Wealth Formula was one of the things I heard about, for the first time, while I was at ClickFunnels... and it was life-changing for me.
I already believed in funnels, but this was amazing.
Capitalist Pig, Baby!
At OfferMind I did a presentation called: “What Yield Will You Learn To Earn?”
I walked through how much money you can typically expect to get from different kinds of investment vehicles…
I know there are people out there making MORE money from some of the ways that I talk about, but I'm talking about the 80 percent majority.
I don't wanna learn stuff where I have to learn exceptions to the rule in order to make cash. I'm interested in the rule.
… the cash causing models.
If I do X, Y, and Z, will I get this amount of money? I'm looking for the 80 percent rule. The default that makes the cash most of the time.
Let me show you how the Wealth Formula plays out…
THE WEALTH FORMULA
QUESTION #1: Figure out how much money you're willing to put away into an investment account every month for the rest of your life?
You don’t touch it, it’s just meant for investments. Write that amount down.
For this example, I'm gonna use $165...
Can you put $165 in an account every month?
If you're like "Hey, I can't do that right now." That's okay, you're solving the problem ahead of time... and that's cool.
QUESTION #2: How long will you leave it there?
Okay, let's say 25 years.
For 25 years, you're not gonna touch that money. It's not meant for income.
QUESTION #3: What yield will you get?
What yield you’ll get depends on the investment vehicle you choose?
… And that's one of the things I wanna talk about here.
QUESTION #4: What’s the total amount of money you want?
Let's say, a million dollars… that’s a nice round number ;-)
So now, I wanna run through a few examples with you… because if you knew how to earn a higher yield... what would that mean for you? CLUE: *IT’S HUGE*
RETURN ON INVESTMENT…
WEALTH SCENARIO #1:
So let's say you take $165 every single month at a yield of zero percent (and just put it under your mattress) for 25 years.
How much money would you have?
After 25 years, you’d have $49,500.
I know you mathematicians are freaking out over the fact that it's zero percent, just get past that... you’d have $49,500...
Could you live off of that if you retired? Probably not, right?
You’d get creative real fast…
WEALTH SCENARIO #2:
Let's say you take $165, and you want to learn to earn 3 percent for 25 years.
Q: Where can you guarantee to learn to earn 3 percent?
A: Some savings accounts… I'm talking guaranteed, you understand? There are some savings accounts out there right now, not many anymore, but there are some that'll give you 3 percent if you just leave it alone.
Q: What would the total be after 25 years?
After 25 years, the total would be $73,775 (I left out the cents).
Let’s keep going…
WEALTH SCENARIO #3:
$165 per month at 6 percent for 25 years…
Q: What's an investment vehicle that’ll guarantee you that return on your money for 25 years?
A: A Certificate of Deposit (CD) from a bank. You can totally get six percent from a CD. You loan the bank your money for 25 years, and you get back six percent back after that.
… 25 years at 6 percent equals $114,000.
WEALTH SCENARIO #4:
Let's say you learn to earn seven percent…
Q: What investment vehicle would allow you to earn 7 percent over 25 years?
A: Last year the average mutual fund made seven percent from a 401k... ain't that crazy? Yeugh. That sucks! How much is inflation?
Do you think the value of money's gonna go up or down? DOWN, right! It's on the way down…
Not only can China buy us now, I think Canada could too. The dollar's going down baby. They're the one that made the American flag for three dollars and sent it over.
So…
If you put $165 per month in a 401K at 7 percent, after 25 years you’d have…
...$134,000.
WEALTH SCENARIO #5:
Okay, let's say you take $165, and you want learn to earn ten percent...
Q: What’s a guaranteed way to earn ten percent for 25 years?
A: A Mutual Fund will do that. Again, NOT a lot of them offer that much anymore, but if you can find one, it’s pretty much a guaranteed return, right?
I'm looking for very sustainable, secure things that you can put your money into.
If put your $165 per month into a mutual fund offering 10 percent, after 25 years, that's gonna turn into $220,000.
Right next one…
WEALTH SCENARIO #6:
$165 per month at 16 percent for 25 years...
Q: What will get me a 16 percent return? Options start to get a little bit lower, right?
A:The empanada food franchise that we created at college came in at 16 percent.
At the end of that semester, we had to do a full financial P&L statement…
I was so embarrassed at my numbers. I stood up and said: "We only got 16 percent returns, but at least we learned a lot."
The professor said: You got 16 percent?" I was like, "Yeah, I'm sorry. I know... I tried really hard. It sucks! Fire me, please." He said: "That's amazing in the food business! That's not easy." He was the CMO of Denny's...
My knee jerk reaction was to yell out, "That Sucks! I'm never going into the food business, ever... “
...It's not like that returns guaranteed, and it's not nearly as passive as some of those other models we’ve talked about!
16 percent over 25 years would yield….
...$654,000.
WEALTH SCENARIO #7:
Q: What investment vehicle will yield 20 percent returns on your monthly investment of $165 over 25 years?
Q: Tax Lien Properties are hyper guaranteed by the government.
You could take $165 every single month, package it up, and once a year go down to the courthouse steps and buy as many tax lien properties as possible, and the government says, "I guarantee you 18 percent ... or even a 36 percent return."
Did you know you could do that? Interesting, right?
Over 25 years, that would turn into 1.4 million dollars.
Congratulations, I made you a millionaire! Is that cool?
...it's freaking pennies, let's keep going…
WEALTH SCENARIO #8:
$165 every single month for 25 years at a return of 25 percent.
Q: What vehicle would give you that kind of return?
A: Fix and Flips will definitely do that, right?
I've got great friends that do this. They'll try and flip hundreds of houses in a year. Obviously there are variants, but 25 percent is a totally realistic number. It's kinda low, but it’s a realistic...
Let's keep going...
WEALTH SCENARIO #9:
Let's say I put a dollar a month into something every month for 25 years, and I get a hundred percent return...
What would my return be after 25 years?
It's freaking huge = 375 million dollars!
Now I know you guys are gonna laugh at this... but it's to illustrate a point…
Q: What vehicle could give you that return on investment?
A: Sales Funnels!
I've never had such insane, consistent returns in anything like the funnel game...
Let me show you how this works …
HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
There was a guy who came to Russell for a funnel. He taught you how to kill people. He was teaching self defense. Not like karate, “I'm gonna use this move, that move…” It was the dirty foul play, let's just make you live kinda stuff.
We hung out in Russell's garage on his wrestling mat for two days. I had to mimic poking Russell's eye out with my thumb, and all this crazy crap.
These guys were amazing at what they did. They taught us all about biology and the way the body really is: “Hit that organ. Then boom! It's done.”
I was like, “Holy crap, I love you, Russell. This is really heavy. Oh man.”
We weren't allowed to talk to each other. We were each others test dummies for two days. It was effective, but it was heavy.
We built this awesome funnel for him, and John starts driving traffic and we’re putting $1 in and he was getting a $1.30 back out.
But he was pissed. He was so mad at us.
I was like, "What is wrong with you?"
It would go up to $1.40, $1.50, then back down to $1.30… back and forth… He was asking us, "What's going on? This is crazy."
We were like, “What is wrong with you? We’d be throwing a party right now!”
They were putting a dollar in, and getting $1.50 back out, plus some customers and people on their list.
Just upsell something... and that's a million dollar scenario.
Even if you’re just breaking even, you're getting customers for free. That’s a million dollar scenario... even if you suck.
INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
My whole goal is to put a dollar in and get two dollars back out… c'mon let’s keep em going.
When I launched ads for Secret MLM Hacks, I put $4,000 in ads. That week, $8,000 came back out.
Then I put that $8,000 back in, and $16,000 came back out. I was like, "This is sick, let's do it again."
The next week I grabbed that $16,000 and $32,000 came back out. I was like "Oh, my gosh! This is starting to get big. Phew!"
I didn't take profit (That’s very key, don't take profit for a while), then I took that $32,000, and put it back into ads, and that month, “Crap! Only $48,000 came back out.” Darn it!
$4,000 turned into $48,000… Does that sound good to you?
Find an investment vehicle that does anything like what funnels can do? *That's my point*
There’s no better investment opportunity, no better vehicle for making it rain in your life than learning this sales funnel game.
NO COUPONS!
When someone comes to me and says, "Oh, I could save you a couple of percentage points on your house." I don't freaking care!
I am focused on how to make money, not save it. I'm not a coupon cutter.
...And I want you to have that same mentality too!
My mom is amazing… she'd walk into a grocery stores and we'd get two grocery store, grocery carts full of food, and they'd give her $400 at the same time. It was like, “I dunno how you deal with coupons?” but she figured out a way to do it. It was nuts.
BUT…
If you take the same amount of effort and just figure out how to play a piece of this funnel game the return on investment can be huge.
It's not like school….
You don't need to get an A in funnel building to make a lot of money. You can get an F, and put a dollar in and still get a dollar fifty back out.
That’s a fifty percent return. You see what I'm saying with this? This is where Papa Larsen comes out a little bit…
Okay, check this out…
When I first launched I put a dollar in, and got four back out for a while.
...Then ad fatigue starts, and that's totally normal, and now, “Oh crap, I'm putting a dollar in and only getting two dollars back out. Oh dang it.”
That's awesome!
What's the move at that point?
You call your ads person and say, "TURN IT UP!" Borrow if you need to and dump that cash in! Does this make sense?
This is how I've done it.
Maybe you broke even, or lose money the first few times you do it. Sweet! Who cares?
I've never taken a loan. I've never put a dollar of my own into my ads...
This is what I do instead:
… those numbers start to get real big real fast after the fifth or sixth time.
How much did it cost me to build that audience? Nothing, because I'm publishing on a podcast. I've never put a dollar of my own into my business. Ever!
THAT is why you learn to be a funnel builder. Welcome to the greatest game ever!
The numbers are easy to work, and you can suck at it and still make a lot of money…
But too many people are like, “I can't launch yet it needs to be perfect.” Oh man!
If I put a dollar in, I get 50 percent return back out. That's super realistic returns right there... and that's how a lot of people do it.
All these people that make a million dollars in three or four months, and get the actual Two Comma Club Award, this is how they do it! They just know the numbers.
I'm NOT even thinking about the fact that I might have an upsell, I'm just thinking on that funnel...
You go and add another funnel, and “Bam!” Way more money.
Who was it that said, “A well-executed idea is worth ten lifetimes of hard work.”? I think it was J. Abraham... on a beach!
Anyway, $1.00 in, $1.50 back out for 25 years...
If you just did that... and you sucked... No upsells or anything else…
That's five million dollars.
Does it install hope in the noggin?
You can afford to suck at it the game for a while, but most people aren't willing to do that... or to get help when they need it.
...don’t let that be you!
You can be real bad at the game and still make it rain
Mmm…. Oh, that's good one. It's gonna be on a T-shirt soon ;-)
Boom! Until Next Time…
Hey, I know this game can take a few tries to get the money flowing, especially the first time, right? And that can suck.
I also know from experience how frustrating it can be to know your business is just a few tweaks away from your next big payday, but you don't know what tweaks to make. I've felt completely paralyzed by that in the past, and it sucks.
I've been blessed to work with thousands of new and successful businesses over the last three years, and two things have really shocked me.
#1: I began noticing the pattern to success is vastly the same, but everyone's spot on the path is obviously different.
#2: I've been shocked and overwhelmed by the number of people asking for my help, my systems, and funnels in their business.
Well, until now I've never had a system or product in my own business to help you build yours. Now, I'm finally able to be public about all this.
If you'd like my help to build your offer or sales message funnel and even your content machine, go to myofferlab.com.
The path to online and offline success is 80 percent the same regardless of the product, price point or industry, and it works if you're new, or are already a killer in business.
You can get more details on how to get my personal attention and frameworks in your own business by going to myofferlab.com
In-person classes are limited to 60 people each, and frankly, I can only do about two of these a year. Get more details, and even jump on the phone with us for free at myofferlab.com
This is one of the greatest skills I've ever learned. An incredible teacher taught this to me in college, and I taught everyone else at OfferMind...
One of the secret weapons I have in my arsenal of marketing skills (and life in general) is design thinking
Design thinking is one of the reasons why I'm able to step into the darkness without seeing the whole path in front of me.
I was taught design thinking when I was in college, and it’s one of the MOST valuable things I've ever been taught in my life.
When I shared the design thinking process at OfferMind, I got some amazing responses.
You can watch the whole process here, but if you’d rather keep reading, then carry on…
WHY DESIGN THINKING?
The process was invented by a company called IDEO. If you don't know who IDEO are, they’re the company who invented the mouse for Steve Jobs’ first version of the personal computer.
IDEO are the reason why your toothbrush is shaped the way it is. In fact, many of the things we use daily have actually been designed by IDEO.
IDEO has mastered the process of creativity. They’ve manufactured process that produces innovation almost on demand.
You’re gonna have to get your playful zone on to make the most of what I’m about to share with you, but just know that if you're boring as a person, your offers will be too.
I'm straight up telling you. If you suck to be around, no one's gonna wanna be in your tribe. If you have a Debbie Downer kind of mentality you're gonna be terrible at this process.
Those who are creative are typically more playful individuals.
It’s time to get back into your kindergarten brain and the enter the fun zone of your noggin if you want to get the MOST out of this process…
Almost everything I've created has been produced following this design thinking process.
When I was in college, I had a FANTASTIC professor who became one of my first ‘one on one’ mentors. He was the CMO of Denny's and Pizza Hut. He invented stuffed crust pizza. Yep, he's the man.
I used to hang out in his office after classes and just fire questions at him.
MY FAVORITE SEMESTER
There was one semester where our entire focus was to launch a business from scratch and make as much money as we could on our own.
Instead of being like, “Hey, do this and this and this and this…” they literally just threw us out the back door and said, “Build the parachute!” We were like, “Oh, Crap!”
We were together in different teams of about 15 and took us on a retreat to bond and brainstorm.
I got put in the food business. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I hate cooking.”
Each team spent several days up in the mountains talking about ideas, and trying to decide:
I don't know if you noticed, but I'm a little bit loud, and so I got voted CEO of the company. I was like, “Great…”
We decided to sell empanadas (I didn’t even know what they were at the time)
We had one class each day, and the rest of the time we were just supposed to make money.
THE TEACHER WENT CRAZY...
One day we walked into class to find all the tables piled with toys. There were Lincoln Logs, Lego, bouncy balls, and Play Dough all over the place. I mean literally, just tons of toys all over the table...
We just stood there look at the just looking the teacher standing there with a whiteboard, a squirt gun, and all this random crap all over the room, and thought, “What the heck is going on? He's lost his marbles, right?”
Then teacher looks at us and says: “I'm gonna teach you how to think.”
He said, “I want you to brainstorm different ideas. Let's talk about what you're gonna call your company?” Then he sat down, and kinda hid away at the back of the room.
One by one each of us got up and started writing down our ideas on the whiteboard...
We came up with all these crazy names and it was really funny. Someone would stand up and write something on the board, and we'd be like, “Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Then one time, after someone had written an idea on the board, a student in the corner of the room made a kinda disapproving sigh...
Quick as a flash, the teacher jumps up takes out a squirt bottle, shouts, "BAD KITTY!"
...and started shooting the student in the face with water.
We're like, “Who is this guy? Are you serious?” We were all afraid to “He's become unhinged, man!”
But we kept going, and eventually, we noticed that every time someone had any negative reaction to an idea, he would shoot them in the face with water and yell, “BAD KITTY!”
HOW TO THINK
RULE #1: You cannot be creative and serious at the same time. Half the reason I mess about is that I'm trying to stay in the creative zone.
If you’re playful it’s way easier to be more creative. Most ideas aren’t gonna come to somebody who’s NOT playful.
If you're kind of a stiff, this is not gonna be that effective. I'm just telling you, straight up. Some Papa Larsen love coming out here..
If you're boring your offer will be too
Just telling you... Okay?
Being an attractive character is a learnable trait, so that's the saving grace.
RULE #2: Get moving - I have a freaking trampoline and a balance board and I try to stay physically moving and active.
I guarantee that your change the world ideas are NOT gonna happen while you're sitting behind a desk. Get up!
When I need some sweet ideas. I put headphones on and jump on my the trampoline. or use my balance board with some Vitamin C in my veins. Then it’s like, *DING* “That would be sick. Yeah, that would be cool.” And then I go and test it.
RULE #3: You don’t have a lot of creative power on your own. It’s always amplified by doing it with one other person at least.
Another time we walked into class and there was construction paper, scissors, pens, Crayola crayons, popsicle sticks, and glue all over the place...
We had to come up with an idea and then make a prototype of it. Then we had to walk to another human being and hand it to them... and if we looked at the prototype instead of the other person: “BAD KITTY!”
MY PRODUCTS SUCK!
When you hand off your prototype to somebody you need to look into their eyes, so whatever reaction they have you can ask:
Then you go back to the drawing board and make another prototype and based on that feedback, and rinse and repeat!go put it in front of more people.
Stop falling in love with your product. Hand it off to somebody and just get a reaction.
In only three weeks, our Empanada business ended up doing $3000 a week selling to poor college students. They created the entire business with us.
We’d go in with an idea, watch the reaction and say, “Why’d you do that?” Give me a reason.” We’d deep dive until we started getting good at asking questions that caused amazing feedback.
Then we'd go back to the drawing board, and go through the same cycle again and again...
My offer creation is the exact same process. If you think I've developed these cool formulas that make my products great from the get-go. *WRONG*
I plan on failing at the gates. My product is gonna suck.
ITERATION STATION
Get your prototype out of the gate as fast as you can, show it to people and watch there response. ASK QUESTIONS. Stop harboring your product like it's your baby.
It was the exact same with the Secrets Masterclass. When Secrets Masterclass was created, I went through and created different pieces and put it out base on my perceptions. Then I start getting in the weeds with the customer.
Everything in the bonus section in the bottom bonus section in Secrets Masterclass was created post-launch to fill the holes.
I call this Iteration Station, baby, woo!
When I enter Iteration Station it means that I'm in a test phase. It’s a no judgment phase.
Stephen R Covey says:
This is huge! It’s a big piece of the puzzle.
PREPARE TO FAIL
When it comes to your core offer and offer creation itself, you’ve got to be willing to fail a ton of times as the market guides you, it's NOT gonna happen otherwise.
I've noticed that people’s identity gets hung up with:
It's all based on fears that are completely made up and haven't even happened yet.
You need to keep Iterating. Iteration is part of the process of innovation.
Design Thinking 101
This is the design thinking process as systematized by IDEO:
STEP #1: Empathize.
“What are the things that you need to understand about the red ocean before you can actually make it blue?”
You’re looking for signs to make sure that it’s even a good ocean to go into? Should you run? Should you go the other way?
You’re trying to empathize with the customer. You need to feel what they feel.
“Oh man, you're using that red ocean vehicle, I'm so sorry for you. That ocean sucks.”
They're like, “I know, I've been using this product and it's garbage.” Then you ask: “Why?”
Once you have the answers you can go in and start to design something awesome.
STEP #2: Define.
Next, you need to take all that data to fill in the gaps and design the framework. Once the framework is filled out, this next piece is super fun…
THE DESIGN CYCLE
STEP #3: Ideate
STEP #4: Prototype
STEP #5: Test
These three are stages that you cycle through forever. Don't fall in love with the product.
Ideate = You have an idea of what offer you’re gonna produce.
Prototype = You get ready for a test launch.
Their opinion doesn't matter, their wallet’s does.
Test = You actually try to sell your prototype to a potential customer. You don’t ask, “Hey, do you like it?” Then you ask, “Oh, what didn't you like about that?”
I've noticed that after three or four iterations... if you really do the process, you’ll have an offer that out values everything.
This is the BIG process laid out:
You're going: Ideate, prototype, test, over and over again.
Remember it's NOT about being a creative genius, it's about being a detective.
If can walk in front of somebody and ask, “Tell me what you like or don't like? If it sucks or if it's amazing?” If you look in their eyes... Man, you guys are gonna be great funnel builders. You're gonna make a lot of money.
Too many of you are like, “Oh it's my baby, I don't wanna put my product out there.” Yeah, that's why you're making money. You have to be prepared to fail.
Eventually, the market will guide you into discovering the core offer.
HOW RUSSELL BUILDS FUNNELS
When I built funnels with Russell, we fully expected that it wasn’t gonna be that amazing during round one.
Lots of funnels failed straight out of the gate.
If you saw the Experts Secrets book launch, we started that funnel two days before the launch. Woo! That was extremely stressful. I don't think I've had that much caffeine in such a short amount of time.
The Harmon brothers had this cabin where Russell, John, I and a few others went to help write the first script for the viral video. We were hanging out with these writers, and they're using this exact same process.
They’d come up to us and say, “We've got a script for you.” They'd read it out to us and we’d give feedback about any holes, and then they'd leave for four hours. Then they'd come back and read it again. Back forth, back forth, back forth, back forth.
This is the process of innovation.
During the Expert Secrets launch, we were still in the cabin. The writers were iterating, and so were we.
We looked at the stats for Expert Secrets Launch and saw that, for some reason, upsell number two, OT02 wasn’t working well.
So in the middle of the launch, at 1 AM (we tried to wait until there weren’t many people awake) ...Jamie Smith and I were busy changing the live funnel with all this traffic hitting it.
Then BOOM! One iteration hit and it brought the average cart value up a whole bunch.
You gotta understand that this is what Russell's doing with his team at ClickFunnels. We create all our stuff with the total expectation of failure.
You use the customer to help you innovate.
BAD KITTY COMES TO OFFERMIND
During OfferMInd , I used the same process I learned at college to teach design thinking.
STAGE #1: I split people into teams and gave them twenty minutes to design a prototype. These are some of the responses I got:
- Teamwork work helps.
- Craziness is creativity.
- Ask questions, lots of them.
It's about asking tons of questions back and forth, but using the market to do to help frees the Entrepreneur’s mental shelf space and give you room to think.
This is the process that actually causes creativity.
STAGE #2: Hand the prototype to a person in another team while looking into their eyes to gauge feedback. DO NOT, for the love of it, fall in love with your prototype.
Ask questions, and have someone write down everything. If they...
...write those things down.
This is the best market research you'll ever do in your life, it's amazing.
Did anyone feel how easy that was to gather information that way?
Audience Member: It's amazing how people see something completely opposite of what we thought. Like, “Whoa, we saw this as good. No that's bad cause of this.”
Steve: Isn't that crazy? It speeds up how cool something is, like how fast you can actually make it. Cool, thanks so much.
Audience Member: One thing that I thought was really great was when we showed our prototype to people, they’d say something different about it because they thought it was something else and really that helped us improve it more.
Steve: And you only did this for freaking 20 minutes, can you imagine if you actually did it? You know what I'm saying? With the actual product? It's very fast to make cool stuff.
Audience Member - Huge lesson for me. Our group flew right to prototype and test. we spent zero time getting data. So when we went to different people there were questions we didn't know. “Well, are you gonna do this? are you gonna provide this for me?
I was like I don't know, we didn't, we talked about where the steps should go. We didn't talk about the actual meat of what we're gonna do... we just talked about how pretty the cover was.
Stephen - Which is what happens for most entrepreneurs. they are like, “Hey I'm gonna go make this sweet thing, it's gonna be really awesome, it's amazing, why is it awesome? Because it's mine.” I don't know, right? You just gotta get it out the door. Launch.
Audience Member - Share all your craziest ideas with people because you might not be that crazy.
Steve: Yeah, absolutely.
Audience Member - We sold multiple products.
Audience Member - A lot of overwhelm at first. And then presenting it, in even more overwhelm and fear. Because I don't think we did a very good job honestly, but then getting feedback I was surprised at how much feedback people are willing to give us openly.
They'd be like “Hey, this is kind of like, this is what I see and this is good and this is bad.”
The one thing that Alex talks about is clarity getting you out of overwhelm.
And so as soon as we got some feedback from some people,I was like “Oh.” And then we wondered, “Is there gonna be a round two? Do we get to go play with Play Dough again and redo it? Cause we could totally nail it next time.”
Steve: Isn't that the fun part--
Audience Member - So having multiple people give us feedback, the creativity took a minute, it didn’t feel like we had to spark it at first, but when we brought in people, that's when the spark happened. I don't have any doubt that we would light a fire and then take off, after multiple revisions.
PLAYING THE GAME
Can you see how this game starts to get played? So, just to recap real fast. What we're doing is :
When people try to be the only creative one: “I'm gonna be making it out of my own mind.” Funny enough, they're the ones that get landlocked. Ain't that funny? It's like totally opposite of what you expect.
This is one of my offers in January when I launched it, by April it had changed dramatically because of this exact same process.
I make sure that I'm not falling in love with my offer. It's broken. It will always be broken. There will always be improvements. It will never be perfect and that’s good.
...because it means that I DON’T emotionally attach to my product, so then it’s easy to hand it off to other people and ask: “What would you change?”
I would launch back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the middle of the value ladder.
Do you see the star right there in that value ladder? I ALWAYS launch in the middle of the value ladder. At the mid-price points... that's how I get it off the ground.
Boom! If 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, right? 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?
There are small groups on purpose so I can are 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.
If you ever sat down to create a sales message, you’ve probably gone through a process to discover a few vital things about your target audience.
You’ll want to know:
...there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes in the pursuit of a message that sells.
All of which is great! HOWEVER, (all caps for emphasis) a lot of times marketers skip over one VITAL area along the way, and that is…
Who's already highly likely to give you money?
*THIS IS SO IMPORTANT*
If you ignore this question you’re going to create a customer who:
I'm not saying you're NOT in the right market, I'm saying, you're selling the wrong person in that market.
CHANGING MY TARGET AUDIENCE
I actually went through this situation at the beginning of this year... During January, February, and March of 2018, I was selling in the wrong zone. I was like, “Crap, I’m selling the wrong customer. I'm selling a more challenging customer.”
It's not that I'm NOT willing to help those people...
But I'm here to make a change in Steve Larsen's world before I make a change the world business, and you should be doing the same.
Before you focus on ‘changing the world’ you need to cash out hard and make a lot of money. Capitalist Pig, Baby!
So now before I even decide to start selling a product, I run through this brief checklist so I know if it's even worth pursuing… and that’s what I’m going to share with you today…
BUT FIRST, how’d you like to join me for a mud run?
MY MUD RUN FUNNEL
You may not know, but probably the third funnel I ever built was for a charity 5K warrior mud run.
We had fire pits, mud pits, and crazy obstacles where you put on armor to tackle them. All the money went to the charity for the Fisher House Foundation which helps support bring family members to the bedside of injured service members.
I was still in college, and it was my first event funnel. The funnel worked and the way we promoted it worked very well. We got on the news several times, and 650 people show up for the event. Then we used the funnel after the event to raffle off some cool items too. I enjoyed it a lot.
It was very validating for me to sit back and be like, “Oh crap. I knew this would work, but man this funnel stuff really works.”
Looking back, it's funny how long it took me to build a simple two-page event funnel. I remember finding random places on campus with fast, free internet. I think it took me 40 hours to build!
SELLING MUD RUNS TO COUCH POTATOES
I have a question for you:
Q: If I'm selling a mud run, who is the easiest person to sell?
A: Somebody who already does mud runs, right?
If you’re thinking, “Yeah, Stephen, No Duh!” You’re right, it is, “No Duh!” But a lot of the time, people don't have that approach with the products they sell.
Now let's flip this a little bit…
Q: Who would be the most challenging person to sell a 5K warrior mud run to?
A: Someone who’s never run a race in their life:
That person is gonna be a hard sell - they don’t even WANT to do a mud run.
Let's talk cookbooks:
Q: Who would be the best person for me to target if I'm going to sell cookbooks?
Yep, you’ve guessed it…
A: Somebody who already buys cookbooks.
...BUT there's a lot of marketers out there who create their product, and it's a freaking 5K warrior mud run, they're like, “I want to change the world.”
So they focus on selling to somebody who has literally lived their entire life on the couch... Because it means they’re changing the world while they do business.
I'm NOT saying you shouldn't try to change the world. I want to change the world too. BUT as far as a product goes, that's a sucky way to do your marketing.
I'm trying to get you to think about how you do your targeting.
There seems to be this theme going on, especially for a lot of new marketers, but even for experienced ones…
...They make all this cool stuff, but it's targeted at the person on the couch rather than the person who's already in motion doing the thing.
I see this often. I wouldn’t bring this up if it wasn’t true.
A CONFESSION…
Probably once every other week, I’ll start looking for NEW books to buy on Amazon. I’m looking for ways to spend money because I need a dopamine hit. I know that's what I'm doing...
Check out the episode where I talked about emotional buying and D.O.S.E. (it’ll change the way you market ;-) )
I'm like, “Huh, I haven't read those hundreds of books on my shelves... What if I go buy more books? Oh yeah, that makes sense.”
I love books, so I spend $200 on more books. and I do that routinely.
Here’s a couple of the latest books that I'm really excited to read I don't know these authors, I've not been asked to say this, I'm just stoked... I mean, look at these titles:
#1: Marketing to Mindstates: the practical guide to applying behavior design research in marketing.
“Oh, baby! Can you imagine the mental ecstasy? Woo! That's going to be a good one, right?”
#2: Changing Minds: the art and science of changing ours and other people's minds.
“Wow, that’s some tiny, tiny font, but that's really cool stuff, I'm excited about it.”
I'm excited to read the book Changing MInds, I'm not dropping on the book at all, but if you're focusing on changing the minds of your customers, it's highly likely that you're skipping over the easy buyers.
It’s NOT gonna be an easy sell.
If you wanna sell books, then your target audience should be book buyers
IN MOTION MARKET ANALYSIS
I know without a doubt, one of the reasons all my stuff has done so well this year, is because I'm targeting people who are already in motion, doing the things that I'm selling.
I'm NOT trying to convince somebody, “Hey, come do a mud run, I know you've never put on running shoes.”
I'm convincing the person who is running: “Hey, you like that run? Why don't you come over and do this run? Super cool! I'll give you X, Y, and Z.”
The length of the bridge to the sale is super tiny!
GETTING HOT?
Let’s talk about hot, warm or cold traffic… Check out Eugene Schwartz, baby...
When you hear people say, “Oh, you've got to create a bridge...” You need to remember that NOT all bridges are the same length.
I think of it as an education bridge and the education bridge required for hot traffic is very short. Why? Because they're already in motion.
The education bridge required for cold traffic is freaking huge.
In fact, there are NOT many products that ever really hit true cold mainstream traffic. It's usually the hot and the warm traffic that’s sold to... that's it!
If I'm going to sell anything, I'm looking to sell it to people who are already taking active steps in their life - because it means I don't have to work on rebuilding dumb false beliefs.
I'm still going to rebuild false beliefs, but it's way easier to knock down the false belief for HOT or WARM TRAFFIC.
COLD TRAFFIC; it's like freaking Fort Knox. It's super hard for me to break down those kinds of walls. Cold traffic doesn’t even want those walls broken, a lot of them don't care:
“You mean I didn't have a problem before and you're trying to educate me that a problem exists? Oh, I don't want MORE problems in my life!”
Cold traffic is really challenging.
WHY MLM?
When I left ClickFunnels, the product I started selling was an MLM product. Why did I choose that?
The reason I chose MLM was that I knew people in that space were already trying to do funnels, but there wasn't anybody who had stepped up and said: "Hey, here's where you can come learn about MLM funnels.”
That's partly what I mean when I say: listen to what the market's telling you. The market is telling you how it wants to be sold.
The market said, “Stephen, would you please make cool funnel education in the MLM space.” Well, it didn't actually say that… but I was looking, and I was like:
“Crap! Y'all are trying to do this stuff. Why don't I just set something up? Here's the training. Here's the pre-built stuff. Here’s Q&A sessions. Here's the bam, bam, bam, boom. Done!”
It was a big success out the gate because, metaphorically, I was selling people who were already doing mud runs.
I was selling people who already owned running shoes…
A lot of them were already trying to build MLM funnels - they were just sucky... Does that make sense?
COLLECTING CUSTOMERS
It's so much easier to do what I call customer collection.
I know I've talked about this before, but customer creation is really, really challenging. Not many markets ever survive that area.
Customer creation, that’s a different beast.
Y’all know I'm a ClickFunnels fanatic, and I will be forever... call me minion or whatever…
If you think about what Russell did, that man's a genius because when he first started ClickFunnels he sold to hot traffic.
He took ClickFunnels and put it into the website space; he threw rocks at websites. He said, "Hey, websites suck, why don't you come over here and start doing this funnel game?".
Q: Now who does that attract?
A: The people who are already likely customers.
ClickFunnels didn’t create customers, it collected customers.
Think about that... and think about how you're marketing right now.
When you think about the length of the education bridge you require your customers to cross before they're able to purchase... make sure you're not trying to build a MASSIVE educational bridge just for prestige.
THE WRONG SALES MESSAGE
I'm super psyched guys, I’m getting to do some really fun consulting soon. I can’t tell you yet because the contract's still going down, but it's a cool place that makes a lot of movies that you’d know.
However, I’d make a BIG mistake if I went in and said: "Hey, let's sell to the people who DON’T watch movies already".
That'd be stupid… don’t do that!
When I start building a marketing message...
BECAUSE it means I don't have to go in and say: "Hey, you should buy this thing.”
Super fast, easy way to sell.
Otherwise, you’ve gotta go through this massive convincing game and the convincing game sucks. I HATE it.
You get into a feature war...
If you feel that you've been in a feature war with your customers, you're selling the wrong person.
I'm not saying you're NOT in the right market, I'm saying you're selling the wrong person in the market.
THE SHORT BRIDGE TO A FAT WALLET
If you watch the way ClickFunnels is run and other successful companies that blow up fast, one of the things they're really good at is grabbing the super easy hot traffic who need a short education bridge, from other markets.
Then when they can feel that the market's starting to dry up, they DON’T turn to warm traffic, they just go grab the next market… and the next market.
Russell's like, “Let's go sell the B2B space. There's a group inside of that B2B space that would love to build funnels. Now let's go to the supplement space. Yeah, let's show them how it works for supplements. Let's build a few supplement funnels and do a few episodes about it.”
BOOM! Easy buyers to pick up.
That’s how a company without any VC funding, any of their own money, or any kind of debt, in general, gathers hundreds of millions of dollars!
They're NOT getting distracted by trying to create new customers... they didn't focus on Customer Creation for the first three or four years. It's only been in the last like six months when ClickFunnels started doing things like the One Funnel Way Challenge, which I help run…
ONE FUNNEL AWAY
My explicit role in the One Funnel Away Challenge is to help create a customer.
I'm there to groom, I'm there to sift and sort, I'm there to get people out who shouldn't be in there; the people who are going to be the most challenge customers.
Sure, they could buy but they're NOT dream customers.
Dream Customers:
If I'm going to sell a mud run, I'm NOT going to sell to people who've never run ever because they're going to ask me dumb questions like:
...You know what I mean?
I'm not making fun of anybody, but you gotta understand...
DUMB QUESTIONS?
If you want to see if you're selling the right person, look at your support tickets.
Look at the questions coming in after customers buy from you to see if they’re short education bridge style questions?
I'm not going to give you a parameter here, but you'll start to see, “Oh sweet, I'm getting a lot of good questions there…” or, “Oh man, I'm getting a lot of dumb questions.”
They’re not dumb questions in themselves, but they represent:
I did not create the right marketing. I created the wrong bridge. I'm selling a more challenging customer.
Millions and millions of dollars are created just by soaking up the easy buyers who are already in momentum and want to purchase things that you place in front of them.
Every time I see somebody on Facebook saying, “We just turned on ads for cold traffic.”
I want to reach through my screen, give them a hug and then slap them. I'm like, “No! why?” Don't ever create ads to cold traffic, especially out of the gate.
People create brand new products and the first thing they go do is create cold traffic massive bridge marketing. *Rough* That spells somebody who's gonna fail and call funnels a scam later on:
“I put all this money in and it didn't work!”
Yeah, duh! You're trying to sell a mud run to somebody who's never got off the couch. They're NOT gonna do a mud run for fun.
So, to help you avoid making this mistake, I want to walk you through my quick Target Audience Checklist.
THE TARGET AUDIENCE CHECKLIST
I'm part of a cool project that I can't tell you about yet, but I just spent three days writing an EPIC 25 page project. I've got legal pads and paper all over the place, filled with ideas...
One of the things created was a CHECKLIST to help people briefly identify if they're targeting the right person.
So before you even move on to creating a marketing message, finding false beliefs, and telling new stories. All that stuff that we do…
You need to ask the questions:
You want to be able to say, just, “Oh, hey, there's a mud run in your area. Here's the date, and the cool offer that comes with it.” AND Sweet! It’s sold.
Let’s think about this in terms of business-building...
If I'm going to sell a business building education program, business-building events, business-building information products, or coaching, whatever...
#1: I would expect to sell people who already have a business.
Okay, feel me when I'm saying that.
If I'm going to sell something called, "How to build your business” it’d be a drastic mistake for me to sell people who don't have a business yet.
This can feel counter-intuitive… but it’s true!
If I'm selling business building education, the best purchaser will be somebody who already has a business and who's just looking improve.
It's going to be a much larger bridge for someone if they're building a business for the first time. They’ve got to deal with all the mental crap besides all the strategy stuff.
The mental junk that goes down inside someone's brain the first time they build a business is huge.
I deal with that all the time; thousands of people saying things like:
"Well, I know you said to publish, Stephen, but what if someone reads what I’ve written?”
People have asked that! I'm like, “Isn't that the point? Yeah, hopefully, they do. Then you can ask them if they liked it?”
There's a lot of mental stuff that goes down…
So if we're going to sell business building education and programs, you should sell people who already have a business. *Easy Sale*
#2: I'm going to sell to somebody who's already been list building.
If they know enough to build lists, we're talking easy drop in the hat sale.
#3: I'm going to sell to somebody who has a product that's at a similar price point to mine.
It’s soooo easy that to sell a $15,000 product to a person who also sells something around 15 grand - in their mind, the can easily justify the purchase. They're like, “Oh man, that's one sale for me.”
BUT if I target somebody who's still at a nine to five, they're like, “15 grand! Holy crap, that's like two or three months of work.”
You know what I'm saying?
It’s gonna be really hard to get that individual to say, “yes!” So I'm going to target somebody who already has a business, and who sells an expensive product... because they can justify it:
“Oh yeah, you're right! Hey, that sale we just got let's just take that cash over to Stephen.”
#4: I'm going to sell to people who already have an internet presence.
They don't ask questions like, "But how do I build a social media profile?" They’ve already solved that problem.
The length of the education bridge needed is represented by the number of problems they've already solved in order to use your product.
If a bridge is super freaking long it means they have a lot of problems to solve.
They haven't walked through a lot of things that are required in order to be successful with your product. They’ve far more problems than the person who’s hot traffic.
I'm NOT saying you shouldn't help them, but gosh, just freaking sell somebody who’s already:
When I sell somebody that's hot traffic versus somebody who's cold traffic, my business and my personal happiness increase by leap and bounds. Personally and emotionally, I feel better.
#5: If I'm going to sell to people on how to publish, the easiest sale is to somebody who's already publishing.
Are there as many people? No, but they're fast sales.
There are still MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to be made before you have to throw in the towel and start selling warm traffic.
I'm super pumped, I just bought mycontentmachine.com…
Nothing is there yet, so you can’t check it out yet, but I'm super stoked because I want to teach you how I created my content publishing machine.
WARNING SIGNS
So, to wrap up; think about this…
If you have to defend your product like it's a dissertation for your Ph.D., it's highly likely that you’re NOT selling to, or haven’t figured out how to speak to, hot traffic.
Mega Hot Traffic is:
They just need to see your solution - which makes it really simple to sell to them.
Take a look at who you're selling to see if you’ve picked hot traffic; the easiest sale with the shortest education bridge?
If you're not selling anybody yet, when you build your product, (or if you do affiliate marketing), make sure that who you're targeting is already massively dispositioned to purchase.
This usually means your customer is already purchasing something similar to your product, and they just need something new to buy to scratch the itch.
Then all you have to do is…
*Just stand in front of them*
Until Next Time - Keep Crushing It!
Hey, just real quick:
A few months ago Russell asked me to write a chapter for a secret project he was doing. I had to write a chapter for a book, this was the letter I got from him.
He said:
"Hey Stephen, let me ask you a quick question...
You suddenly lose all your money, along with your name and your reputation, and only have your marketing know-how left.
You have bills piled high and people harassing you for money over the phone.
You have a guaranteed roof over your head, a phone line, an internet connection, and a ClickFunnels account for only one month.
You no longer have your big guru name, your following, your JV partners. Other than your vast marketing experience, you're an unknown newbie...
What would you do from day #1 to day #30 to save yourself?
Russell Brunson
Hey, if you want to see my answer and a bunch of other marketers who also answered that in this amazing book and summit, just go to 30days.com/stephen.
You can see the entire summit, you can see the book, you can see what we wrote in there and each of our detailed plans. Just go to 30days.com/stephen.
Boom, what's going on, everyone?
Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio, today I'm gonna teach you guys my event teaching template.
I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys? Hey, I'm excited for today. I wanna share with you guys kind of a cool little thing here.
I’ve been teaching at events for a number of years now. I’ve taught everyone, from people who are brand new to people who are extremely experienced and very wealthy, and there is a format that I teach in.
One of the things that I get asked, actually more and more frequently this has been happening, is, “Stephen, how can you get up and riff for two hours?”
The answer is, I'm not just like talking, I'm actually following a format in my head.
There's been a few people have reached out and said, “Stephen, I wish you'd just get straight to the principle.” But there's reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing with this.
Right after my OfferMind event in 20218, I had the opportunity to go in and teach Russell Brunson's new speaker team for about half a day. He's got a new traveling team and they travel around on small stages that he can't get to, 'cause of who he is - which totally makes sense.
This team pitches ClickFunnels and content around the world, which is awesome. It's super cool.
So I was asked to come in and teach some of my methods and how I do what I do. I walked up and there wasn't really much of a framework, I had an idea…
I was watching and observing like crazy before it was my turn to go up, 'cause I wanted to see where they were. So I had an idea of what to actually talk about…
But guys, I'll be honest with you, sometimes as I'm talking, especially on stage, (I'm always extremely prepared, especially when I get on stage), but there's always a little bit of playroom.
One of my favorite things to do when I'm talking and going through a principle or whatever is to watch, I don't know how else to describe it, other than watching the eyes of the people to see:
#: Do I have them?
If I'm losing them, I've got to tell a story. I've got to just do something that's high drama or drop some more gold, something a little more valuable. I've got to do something to get 'em back; whether that's an engagement, or sometimes I'll do a random Q&A.
Half of a being speaker is being able to deliver cool stuff; the other half is being able to read the audience.
I’ve done a lot of three-day events, tons of them and I have slides, but not every group that comes into the room is the exact same, so I've got to be able to adjust based on what they're doing.
So what I've done, especially over the last two years, I've been developing kind of my own pattern for how I do stage stuff. Those of you guys who are coming to Funnel Hacking Live, you’ll see me do this.
I'll be extremely prepared, however I'm also gonna leave a little bit of room. I'm gonna watch how people are reacting.
There's been some stages that I've spoken on and like every audience is different, there's nothing to really prepare you for it, other than just doing it.
There’ve been some audiences that I've spoken to that were just the driest, dry, most unfun group to talk to ever, I'm not gonna say who it was, but it was a few events in Vegas and Texas and these other areas. I just talked to them and like, “Man, are you guys dead?”
Anyway, before I say anything offensive, I'm gonna move on, but like, “MAN!”
Then some of the most fun stages are not necessarily always the most educated in what I do, so I've got to start at a different level. You've got to be really fluid as a stage talker.
Now there's a difference between stage teaching and stage pitching - huge difference, monumental difference.
So my wife and I, we're both geeks now and she and I were talking late about stage and we were talking about the different formats of being able to present on stage, and so I thought it'd be kind of cool to share with you guys some of what I do, and how I'm actually able to pull that off…
I'm not just riffing, although it may look like that.
Let me just pull this whiteboard in here. If you guys are on ITunes, no sweat, I'm gonna walk through, you guys won't miss anything out. Drawing just helps me explain, so that's half the reason I draw so much.
Okay, so the first thing that I do is I go in and I draw a big old framework picture. It's a massive framework picture right here up at the top and it's a picture that represents the all the content.
One of the major reasons that I do this is because it helps me stay focused on what I need to produce, but also it helps me stay focused on what I should NOT get distracted by. There are squirrels!
As a speaker, you're like, “Oh man, you, one person in the audience, you think that's cool? Why don't I go on a massive tangent and teach you some other cool things, 'cause you think that's cool?” No! I'm sticking to a framework.
There was an event I was speaking at early on, one of the first stages I ever spoke on, and it was really valuable, but I stopped teaching and started Q&A-ing.
Stage pitching, totally different than stage teaching, which is totally different than Q&A, which is totally different than workshop. They're not all the same thing. They're the little tools that I pull out of my pocket when I need to to keep:
... 'cause some of the principles I go through... man, they're freaking boring. I know they're boring! I hate listening to boring speakers. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
I don't really watch so much football. I like the Denver Broncos, they're my team, but I don't really watch that much of it, but when I do…
I'm not really an armchair quarterback, but I am TOTALLY an armchair quarterback when I am watching other people on stage. I’m nitpicking the crap out of 'em, I can't help it.
I'm like:
...you know, it's like I can't help it. This is my craft, this is what I do, I can't help but watch what people are doing on stage.
So anyway, there's different mechanisms and frameworks and patterns that I'm using throughout. Specifically for this episode, I'm gonna walk through how I handle teaching on stage in a way that’s:
If I just pop right out and say, “Here's the framework!”
The audience will:
I can't just walk up and be like, “Here's the framework.” So what I do first of all is I go in and I draw a framework picture, then what I do is I break up the picture into chunks, three, four, five, six, seven chunks.
...Does that make sense? There's a lot of what I do that comes from just this piece alone.
I got to hang out with Russell when he was drafting a lot of the Traffic Secrets book which he's been working on. He's writing it right now, but the actual ideation of the principles, he does the exact same thing... Where do you think I learned it? ;-)
When I first got to ClickFunnels and he started drafting the Expert Secrets Book, this is exactly what we did.
There was a picture that represented all of it and then the picture was broken up into four or five different pieces, and those are the major sections of the book.
So I do this the exact same way when I'm doing a teaching-based event. When I go into pitching, that's a different activity and a different pattern. But specifically this is how to teach at events. Okay, just making that clear, so that no one thinks that's how you pitch!
The first thing I do is I draw a picture…
If I can explain a complex principle with a doodle, it means it’s simple enough for the masses to understand. Most people are on a third grade reading level,and I can't stand up and use complex vocabulary.
The point is to not make me look smart, the point is to educate the audience.
It drives me nuts when you can tell someone wrote a speech to make 'em look smart, rather than to connect with the audience.
I'm not gonna name any names, but man, there was an event that I went to, (this happened like three times last year), where I got to speak at an event or I went to one that I just kind of wanted to go to… and there would be one or two speeches specifically you could just tell that were created to just remind everyone how cool the speaker was.
...That's awesome, but I believe that if you want credit, don't seek it. If you want stature, don't seek it. You're gonna look like you are and you distance yourself from the listeners, 'cause you're like:
“Will you remind me again of how awesome I am, please? Remind me how much of a pedestal I'm on. Raise me up, please, audience, following.”
...You distance yourself from the audience in that one move. Stupid, don't do it! okay.
So anyways,I draw a picture (for a lot of reasons), but it's so that I understand it in a simple way to teach it and so it's a simple to deliver the principle at the same time.
So I draw a smaller picture of a chunk of the major framework picture and I do it again, and then I do it again.
Let's say that there are four major principles, that are distinct from each other inside of this major picture. So then I draw another picture. Then there's a pattern inside each one of these that I'm pulling off.
When I'm doing a lot of Facebook Lives, or even sometimes in these episodes, I don't always do this in these episodes, but a lot of times I'll follow kind of a version of this a little bit.
There's really two phases to this:
#1: Is Preparing: so, first, I'm gonna walk through the preparing phase, which is what we're doing right now.
This is how I prepare all the content ahead of time to make sure that I am ready to over deliver on stage. Is it a brain jog? Yes, it’s mentally exhausting. It’s so challenging.
I'm going through the exact same process for my book right now. Ha, right! It's not easy, guys. It's NOT easy at all.
Realistically, if you're doing something that's gonna be a little more permanent like a book…
I don't write the book to make money, it's gonna make some, but I'm making the book to make sure it’s easily transferable information to the masses. It's a low ticket thing = low cost + high circulation product.
So these are the stages I’m gonna go through with you:
1. Preparation
2. Delivery
So the first thing I do is I come up a big picture represents all of it and then there's four major principles - they're like little breakouts of the major framework.
So now let's get down to each one of these levels. I draw the major, overarching principle pictures and I will usually use blue.
The next color I use for the actual content itself is typically green.I hope it shows up well on the camera here. Then I draw a smaller picture, yeah, that shows up alright, I draw a smaller picture and inside of that, I'm coming up with:
You’ll see Russell do this in several places as well, I do this in a lot of spots: “Oh, cool quote about this. By the way, here's a really cool story that's gonna set you up to understand the concept when I drop it.” Which is why I always tell a lot of stories on this show and anywhere.
Then, the “So what?” Meaning; “Who freaking cares?”
If I teach you something cool and you can't use it, then who cares? I'm not here to say, “Oh, look how cool I am. So what? Who cares?
I hate my time being wasted. I do my best NOT to waste you guy's time, so I do what's called a “So What?”
I this at OfferMind; meaning:
It's like the deliverables, the thing that they should be able to go do afterwards.
And frankly, this is a small picture... and then I do it again. We do a smaller picture, a quote.. and these are all little, tiny micro stories that teach the bigger concept. There'll be a bunch of 'em, boom, boom, small, small pictures. However many I need, in order to actually accurately show the BIG concept.
Does that make sense so far?
Then what I do is I typically, not always, it depends on how much time I have...
So then I grab a red pen and red to me is the “So whats?” If you don't have red, you're dead... meaning this is the applicable area of what I'm teaching here.
So then, I usually do somewhat of a workshop/Q&A, not always. One or the other, sometimes both, it’s very time dependent. These usually end out the principle that I’ve taught.
For those of you guys who have got tickets to the next OfferMind, you got the replays from last year, watch me doing this.
Each session is is usually about an hour and a half to two hours,and then we usually need a break, and that's fine, but I usually end with a workshop/Q&A section or session.
I do the exact same thing for every single one of those major pictures and frameworks moving forward. Does that kind of make sense?
That's how I prepare, but that's NOT actually how I teach it. That’s NOT how I teach it at all.
Now I'm gonna erase the bottom of this right here, just so that I can draw how I actually toss it out, okay.
So that's why I lace it all out on my floor. I just got another 12 legal pads from Amazon Basics, because I'm running out. I use a lot of legal pads because I'm literally drawing pictures and writing the quotes on all these sheets on my floor and stuff - because then I can visually see:
“Crap, I'm missing a story on picture number two, section one, right, oh, dang, I'm need to find a quote, that backs up what I've been saying, I know this is a true principle, who else talks about that?”
That's why I buy so many books, I don't necessarily read that many books from cover to cover, I don't. What I do is I hunt answers.
If I know I'm missing a quote from section one, picture number three, I'm like, “Crap, who talked about that again?”
Then what I do is I walk through my bookshelves and I grab out all the books,that look like they're about that topic and I will rifle through and speed read like crazy.
In fact, on the other side of this camera is where I usually put all that stuff. I had stacks of books next to each principle: “Oh man, this stack of books is really about that one principle. This stack of books is really about that principle.” And I rifle through them to make sure.
That's why OfferMind was so good, guys, I did my freaking homework.
Let me grab another color here. Yeah, let's grab black…
So that's how I prepare, but the way I actually deliver is, I always start with a story. A story at a place of high drama. Sometimes I will start also with a quote; sometimes those are interchangeable. It's not always in that order, but these are always at the beginning at least.
So it's a story at a place of high drama, and a quote. I never just present the picture. This is one of the reasons why so many of us use whiteboards on stage is we are drawing the picture in front of the audience.
If you have to go fast, that's fine, but it actually creates a deeper understanding for the audience if you draw and explain at the same time ...and then show them the finalized picture that you prepared ahead of time.
Russell does this at Traffic Secrets. I do this all the time like at the FHAT Events.I did this several times at OfferMind, time depending, based on where I was.
What I do is I draw a story to place high drama, then I go through a quote and then I'm drawing the picture in front of them on a clean whiteboard or a clean piece of paper.
I'm saying the steps that they need to take in order to to do that principle, but I'm also visually writing down those steps. That's why in my slides, a lot of times, you'll see I'm drawing the picture even though it's already done on the next slide.
This works so freaking good.
I've used this many times on a lot of stages, a lot of stages, okay. I've an abnormal amount of stage time for someone my age and I know that, and I'm just saying, okay.
So then I'm gonna number the steps out, audibly and written and then finally I press the slide button, 'cause I go make all these pictures. I have an artist go in and they will actually make a rendering of each one of these pictures. But if I just show it, it's not nearly as effective. Then I go through my “So Whats?” and then leave off with the Q&A/workshop. Does that make sense?
Sorry for the reflection there, guys, I'm trying to get that off there. Anyways, cool, that's how I do it.
First, I prepare it in the order I’ve shown you, but then I deliver it in this order.
I DON’T just:
BECAUSE… it's better if the audience discovers the picture with you as you're drawing it. Man, that's so much more effective. The learning's a lot deeper.
Anyways, I just wanna share that with you guys. Some of you have been asking about this and I'm stoked to be able to share it with you.
So if you guys are doing events - which are amazing. I believe everybody should do an event. Events are incredible whether it’s virtual or in person.
Marketers are event creators.
When you go in, especially in a teaching event. I'm speaking in a lot of places already in 2019, I'm really stoked about it.
I got a lot of offers, I'm going a lot of places and I'm excited about that. I'm saying no to most of 'em, 'cause I'm really focused on my goal for this year. Thank you, I don’t want to offend anyone.
If I’m gonna do any kind of stage speech at all, if I have an hour, if I have 30 minutes, if I have three days, this is how I do it.
You'll see a lot of times, when I'm trying to over deliver content, in my head, I'm following this format.
What's the story format I'm using? Epiphany Bridge Script.
What's the quote I'm using? Someone who's influential, that the audience all know about.
I'm drawing the picture in front of 'em. I suck at drawing, whatever!
Next I walk through and number the steps out: it's the same exact thing I would do in a webinar script, but in this format, it's a little different.
Then I go in and write the “So Whats?”
Finally; Q&A/workshop at the end, time dependent. I love that one, it helps 'em really feel like they've gotten a lot.
Anyway, that's the format that I use both in creating and in delivering.
What I want to do real fast is cut over to one other video real fast…
When I was at OfferMind, I ended the event. I was done, I was excited, I was like man, I knew that it had been awesome. A lot of money has been made from that event already; meaning the people in the audience applied everything and made a lot of cash, which is awesome and very validating…
But I was getting down and guys, I was tired, okay, I was about to go get in the car and continue to teach the speaker team. I was exhausted, man. I had really not slept in a while, and if you've ever been on stage, like you should be freaking tired.
The photographer came up to me afterwards and she goes, "You move more on stage than anybody I've ever seen ever," and I said “Yeah, well, number one, I hate bad speakers who are boring and number two, if I don't keep things interesting it's gonna suck.”
I don't know if you guys have heard the saying or the stat. I don’t know if it’s a stat or a saying, whatever... but I believe it's true, 'cause it seems true every time I do it…
90 minutes on stage is the equivalent in energy to a full eight-hour workday
...And so to go for two straight days, man, you're wrecked, you are so freaking tired.
Whenever I'm doing a webinar, it's an hour and a half, I'm acting like I'm on stage. I’m exhausted after I do a webinar. I’m putting out energy, I’m working hard. They will NOT exceed my energy level.
I set the pace, so I've got to come in high and hard, so that I can bring everybody up because that brings them in a better place to be engaged and learn,
I pre-bought caffeine for the tables.
Anyway, so I did all this stuff, and then the event ended, and as I was about to walk off, Colton runs up and he goes, "Hey, wait everyone, don't move, don't move, don't move."
I didn't know he had a mic in his hand and he invited John Ferguson up and they gave me the Statue of Responsibility Award which had a hard time not breaking down and kind of crying over, guys.
The only reason I'm showing you guys this, it's not to pat my back, it's to pat my wife's for what she does to support everything that I'm doing. It's pretty intense.
So I just wanna give a little shout out to my wife here.
We're gonna cut over here, so you guys can watch US get that award and the amazing compliment that he gave her at the end of this video.
So anyways, let's cut over real quick here:
Coulton: We have something pretty special planned for Steve right now.
He has no idea.
So you guys are gonna be part of this, but in order to, like, explain it a little bit more, we're gonna roll a video, so if you guys wanna kinda sit back and watch a quick video with us, that would be awesome.
VIDEO: Viktor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning and a Holocaust survivor, he firmly believed that if we don't act responsibly with our freedoms, we will lose those, and now we're able to create his vision. His vision was to create a Statue of Responsibility. Bookend the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast with a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
"Freedom threatens to degenerate into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsiveness. And that is why now it's for ten years that I've been teaching my American audiences they should see to it that the Statue of Liberty on the Atlantic Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the Pacific Coast." -Viktor Frankl
SCULPTOR OF THE STATUE: "Everyday we make decisions. We can think about what defines us. Is it our past, or is it where we're going? Is it what we want to do, or what's happened to us? We have the ability. We decide what we're going to create each and every day."
Coulton: I'm now gonna invite Mr. John Ferguson up to the stage real quick.
John Ferguson: So Stephen knows what this is, but a lot of you didn't, so we wanted to share the video.
On my way out here, I had an opportunity to talk to the sculptor of The Statue of Responsibility.
Two years ago, we were on a mission to find entrepreneurs, influencers, people who are looking to change other people's lives.
Viktor Frankl had in his study in Vienna, a sculpture with a man called The Suffering Man who reaches up to the sky looking for help. He always used to say, before he passed away, is "Where is the hand reaching down?"
Being a Holocaust survivor, he talked about responsibility on the West Coast to bookend liberty and freedom on the East Coast, and so we said:
"Look, we have to find individuals who are the hand reaching down to others in our world."
Don't you think Stephen is one of those people? Yeah, totally!
I think I've known Stephen about three years, first Funnel Hacking live event. We talked about that, and he is a different dude. He is awesome, right? I mean, phenomenal.
And so I talked to the sculptor, and I had him sign one of the statues, and it’s numbered, and we're only giving away a few of these to individuals in the country.
These individuals will have their names in a special place at the statue that will be built in Southern California, 305 feet tall, just like The Statue of Liberty. You'll be able to go inside and visit it.
Because of what he's done, not only for this community, but for all of your communities, do you understand that? Now you can get your message put in a way, you guys are all a part of this.
To Steve: so would you accept the Statue of Responsibility as a gift for what you've given all of us?
Steve: Absolutely, man. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that a lot. That's huge. Thanks, man, thank you.
John Ferguson: And one last thing here with Alyssa, the reason why I wanted her on the stage was she's the hand reaching down at home while Stephen's here with us.
So thank you for giving us Stephen while you're having to take care of the home. Appreciate it.
Steve: Thanks. It means a lot. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Well, you guys are, you guys are gonna see my tears flex in a second.
Hey, guys thank you so much for being here. We love you, we appreciate you a lot. This is totally a family endeavor. Hope you guys know that and feel that from us, and go change the world. We'll see you guys. Thank you, thank you very much.
Thanks for watching this episode, please rate and subscribe at ITunes, I would really appreciate it if you guys rated it. That means a lot.
Guys, thanks so much. Let's cut over to the video and see us getting that award. 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?
Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio and today I'm excited to teach you guys my list management strategy.
I spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left by nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business.
The real question is, how well I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best Internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
Hey guys, I'm excited to show you guys this.
This is probably a simple lesson, but I find more often than not there is a lot of people out there who don't really have a strategy for what I'm about to show you.
Which means for all the lists that are being built, (which are the true asset of the Internet), there’s no strategy - there’s no list management at all.
I remember the first funnel I ever built, it was a free plus shipping funnel, and it was selling this little CD.
For those of you guys listening on iTunes, just know I'm drawing this but you'll be fine just listening as well.
It was free plus shipping CD funnel and as soon as you bought the CD…
Let's say the CD was here on the very first page - there’s a list specifically of people who bought that CD. Now, that makes sense. there was a list just for the CD people.
Then there was a bump in there…
If this is the first time you've ever tuned into Sales Funnel Radio, just know we're talking about sales funnels obviously.
This is the way to sell things on the Internet, and this is one of the cool strategies to get a lot of low-end, low-ticket kind of things out the door through a free plus shipping funnel.
So anyways, there'd be this bump, like: “Hey, you want to add something else to your order?” So there'd be another list specifically for this bump.
...and it started getting messy quick. You're starting to see where I'm going with this, right?
...I mean, it was like a list upon list upon list.
Lists had gotten together and had babies. There were camps of lists all over the place. It was ridiculous. I had so many lists. It got convoluted very very quickly.
So literally every funnel that I'd build…
If it was just a standard kind of low ticket funnel like this; I would easily have one, two, three, four, five, five or more lists per funnel. That's just for this value ladder step two.
So if there were all these other value ladder pieces, for example, if there was five on this one, five on that one, five on that one…
That’s easily 15 lists for every single thing I was going and I was building...
And then I’d go build for other people!
I mean, it got so convoluted so fast. I would have to go in and re-remember where each person specifically. It was terrible guys.
And I know you're like “Oh, woe is you.” But like seriously, imagine how intense that gets very very quickly. It gets stressful.
Every time you want to send an email, you’re stuck selecting 100 lists: “This one but not that one, this one but not that one.” It takes a long time actually.
It took significant chunks of Russell's day every time he would do it.
One of the things Russell had me do when I first got there, (probably about five months in), is I had to condense and organize and sort all of the lists at ClickFunnels.
It's was a half a million people that were on that list at that time... just ClickFunnels' lists; now it's way more than that. It was a huge, massive list, but it was spread out across, I think well over 50, 60, 70. Don't quote me on that, but it was a lot of lists.
So what I had to go do is come up with some kind of procedure some I could sift through to say, “Okay, this is how we're going to handle all list management in the backend from here on.”
These funnels we built were so powerful, but there’s not really a nomenclature. If there’s not really a system for naming and organizing all the different lists that are inside someone's ClickFunnels account, value ladder, or inside of any business, it gets really convoluted.
I know this might sound kinda a trivial trial, but it's not though! I promise, go try this out, and you'll see how frustrating it gets when you want to send an email.
It's hard because your brain will be so consumed by the next thing you are building to have to go back and remember what you were doing in each one of these pieces. Man, that's why we have automation.
So there are a few more pieces of automation people can add inside of their funnels to just make the whole thing sing and make it really really simple.
That's the purpose of today's episode. I want to teach you guys, real quick, this list management strategy that I use still today.
I just barely went through and I started deleting a bunch of lists that are old. I realized I wasn't following my own strategy. I think I just deleted 40 email lists. I download all of them, combined them, and re-upload them to my Seinfeld list
If you don't know what I'm talking about here, guys, go get the book DotCom Secrets.
If you're on this podcast and you've been listening to this and you haven't read that Dot Com Secrets, you should probably follow a different podcast…
I say that jokingly, but not really ;-)
This is gonna help you tremendously in every single funnel. I'm trying to make this as simple as I possibly can. Let me just move this whiteboard a little more here… (I'm gonna draw a list here in red)
I'm never going to build a funnel and NOT collect an email or some kind of contact information. Whether it's some kind of Facebook opt-in or whatever, I'm always gonna be collecting a list. *ALWAYS*
There's no point for me to even make the funnel if I'm not going to somehow collect a list. It's NOT always page one, but somewhere I'm going to be collecting some kind of opt-in. There is a core list that I am always adding to.
...So if this is again my value ladder, I am always, always going to add people to what I call a Seinfeld list. That's what it is called. It’s called a Seinfeld list.
That Seinfeld list represents and is added to by every funnel in my value ladder.
So if I have this big old list right here, kind of like a bucket... that's how I kind of imagine a list... like hey here's a big bucket. That's my symbol, when I'm drawing funnels, for a list.
I have one Seinfeld list that represents the entirety of the value ladder.
If anybody opts in anywhere on any funnel, all rivers, all oceans lead to my Seinfeld list.
Every time I'm building a funnel or designing it; Seinfeld. Seinfeld list, meaning Seinfeld series. If you don't know what that is, you gotta read DotCom Secrets.
Just to recap real fast:
The Seinfeld list is the general list of all your people. We call it that because when we email them, we are following the Seinfeld (as in the Seinfeld show) format of talking to people.
There's gonna be a really small micro-story which doesn't necessarily need to relate with the topic about the email, but it's just to capture attention and edutain.
And then I'm gonna go in and have some call to action.
The Seinfeld is the list I'm consistently hitting. It's the list where I'm gonna go and be like, “Oh man, I should go promo my next thing.” It's the Seinfeld list that I'm emailing, NOT all of my list.
For Sales Funnel Radio, we blast out a general, “Hey, here's the next episode… this is what it's about. We choose specifically my Seinfeld list and my Sales Funnel Radio list inside of my ClickFunnels account - just those two.
All rivers lead to Seinfeld anyway.
Every single funnel though, I'm running it off of just a few lists. It’s the same for every single funnel, I'm just telling you.
I stopped collecting unique lists for people who just opted in for OTO 2, or who wanted a downsell - that sucks quick. It gets terrible real fast.
So the first thing that I do, whatever they opt to…
Let's say there's an opt-in form with a big old button and someone opts-in and gives their email. The first thing I'm gonna go do is add them to a general opt-in list for the specific funnel.
...so each value ladder funnel has its own opt-in list…
After about five, six, seven, sometimes 10 days, however long it takes for this specific campaign to end, I automatically add them to my Seinfeld list.
So let's say that there's an email soap opera series that's dropping out over five days. On day six, I would automatically tell ClickFunnels: Add that contact to my Seinfeld list, and on day seven remove them from my opt-in list.
I want to know exactly where people are inside of my funnel.
There are not many occurrences where I want someone to be on multiple lists at one time. At the same time, they could be on:
... that's it.
If they are on one list and they suddenly get on the list for the high-ticket thing, that's fine as long as they are actually experiencing the funnel still. I don't want them to be there 10 weeks later just sitting and chilling out in there.
That does not give me a good accurate description of where the flow is happening inside of my value ladder. Does that make sense?
Again, we're more techie on this episode, but just follow me on this. This is actually very simple once I just draw it out.
So I have the opt-in list, and after, let's say, day six, I'm going to have ClickFunnels automatically add that contact to a Seinfeld and then on day seven remove then from the first list. I don't want them on both.
Seinfeld or opt-in, NOT both at the same time.
If it's just a general opt-in with nothing to purchase, that's how I would do it.
If they opt-in in general, I'm still gonna add them to opt-ins. I'm NEVER not gonna just not collect the data. I'm gonna collect the data.
But let's say they purchase something here on the first page, I would add them to another list. Say it's a two-step order form, so they opt in, boom, I'm gonna add them to opt-ins, okay, but if they actually purchase I want to know who my specific buyers are.
I want to speak to my buyers in a very specific manner; so I'm gonna add these guys to their own list. I'm NOT going to create a specific buyer list for each individual product in my entire funnel - like I was saying before, that sucks quick. It's terrible.
That's pretty much it, guys! I mean, I wish there was more to this episode. I mean that really is it.
So let's walk through a few scenarios here…
Let's say someone opts in and they get added to the opt-in list where they experience an email sequence or some kind of follow-up sequence - something, an Actionetics.
Maybe they're hitting all my Facebook ads for a while, and then once the lead kinda dies down and I realize they're not very warm anymore, they're kinda cooled off and they’re NOT really in a buying state anymore, I want to get them off the list. I don't want them on the opt-in list.
I don't want them to be a representation of people who are in the funnel. They're not on the funnel. I don't want them in the list…
I've done this in series before that’s been a 21-day series or 30-day series…
So on day 31, or whatever, I will automatically have ClickFunnels add that contact to my Seinfeld list, and on the next day, remove them from the list they came from.
That way, everyone else who's left in the list, they are still in the list, they are still in the funnel. They are still experiencing the funnel. I'm still trying to sell them. That helps me, it's really cool guys.
I can look at my ClickFunnels account and see:
Does that make sense? It lets me see things more accurately.
I don't want lists all over the place. That's crappy, it’s literally a clog in my funnel. So that's one scenario... and every single value ladder step is that way.
All rivers continue to add to the Seinfeld list and remove from the original opt-in list of that value ladder step.
This is super easy, super key.
The buyer's list is the one list that they will NEVER get removed from. I want to speak specifically to my buyers sometimes.
When someone makes a purchase they are added to the buyer's list. If they buy the next OTO, they’re already on the buyer's list, I'm NOT adding them again. They’re already on the buyer's list.
...And that's literally how I run it.
They can stay in a buyers list forever and hopefully, they’ll never opt out.
So there's an opt-in list on each value ladder step, but eventually, that opt-in list expires for that session, and that person gets added to Seinfeld list
It’s literally with those three lists that I manage all of my stuff.
As I'm building the funnel, I walk through several scenarios to see where the dead ends are. I don't want leads to get stuck somewhere and stay there forever. They should not hit a dead end.
The only place that it should end is in a Seinfeld list or buyers list. That's it. It's flowing somewhere.
Now I'm able to sit back and go like, “Holy crap, look at this! They're going from here to here, but then NOT from here to there. What's wrong with this series?”
If the email series is first meant to sell whatever's going on in the funnel, and then let's say I have more emails that are meant to ascend somebody to the next piece in the value ladder, and the next value ladder. I want to be able to figure where things get stuck.
So I'm gonna go one level deeper on this here real quick…
There's one other piece to it that makes the whole thing sing and it's something that can really help you guys as you start to move forward on this stuff.
Check this out:
So if I've got a value ladder...
Man that sucks, I need like those big thick markers. I got them for my whiteboard for the OfferMind event, but they’re hard to find. I haven't found anybody with dry-erase versions. You know what I mean?
Anyway, so if I've got a value ladder: each value ladder has a list for opt-ins, and a list for buyers.
That opt-in list will auto dump people out to the Seinfeld list. I don't want them to stay there long term.
Eventually, all rivers lead here to the big old Seinfeld list. Now I can accurately see how people are moving inside of my actual value ladder, but there is one other piece here that is actually super cool.
If you go to ClickFunnels.com and you’re NOT logged in, you’ll see a new quiz.
Clickfunnels has created 10 unique onboarding sequences based on the industry you’re coming from; which is very very clever.
SoI click on Network Marketing, I'm gonna get onboarded to ClickFunnels in that specific industry's language. Massive project. Absolutely huge! Not a small feat to pull off. Amazing that Russell did that.
Let's say somebody comes into a specific funnel, then I need to create a sequence inside of each funnel to sell them on what’s in this funnel. That's the purpose of that opt-in, to sell them what's inside the funnel.
When somebody opts into my application based funnels (I get two to three applications per day asking people to join some things that I do, which is really cool), well, when they go opt-in, I have a 10-day series continually pitching them to join my thing.
So now, I'm making a series for each value ladder step, but I'm also making a series in between each value ladder step.
One of the things that I'm gonna be doing in 2019 which I'm really pumped about. On the floor, you guys can’t see it, there’s yellow paper all over the place.
I’ve started to design and put together an onboarding series so that regardless of where you come into my funnel, you’ll find easy ways to consume my entire value ladder, NOT just that one step, Does that make sense?
I want one of those big long email series, let's say it's 30 days or whatever, and what it's doing is:
... So there's a tie-in list between the steps which can be attached to the Seinfeld list.
I have the value ladder steps already built out, but the thing I'm stoked for 2019 is this piece:
When you get into my world, and I need you to go build an offer.
...That's part of the value ladder I've been designing, but what's the sequence?
So, if someone was to start at the very beginning of the value ladder, this BIG sequence would actually pull them through and showcase every single area of the value ladder and all the things that are in it.
So that's how I manage my lists.
Again, a bit of a long episode and more technical, but hopefully it spurts some ideas on how you can organize your lists more.
It's NOT just for organization sake. It’s literally to see the effectiveness of how well you're upselling people NOT just in the funnel, but from value ladder step to value ladder step.
That's the way we do it, and honestly, I'm super stoked for that.
I've watched a lot of people go in and build one of these big sequences and I'll be doing the same soon.
I just went back and rehashed all the stuff that I've been doing in my own ClickFunnels account to make sure that it was set up with this process.
There was a lot that I had, just for speed's sake, forgot to set up like that.
So I exported about 40 lists, combined them all, uploaded that new list to my Seinfeld list, and then deleted the old separate lists.
I went through every single funnel and added automation to add to Seinfeld and remove from opt-in. Which I’m psyched about
So the next piece, sometime this year I'm gonna be building out an awesome onboarding sequence, which is not aggressive, but it's showcasing: “Boom! Once you get this, did you know I have this? Did you know I have this?”
A lot of people have no idea what I even sell, or they have no idea of all the products I do sell or the things I do offer. That's a problem! Don't have it in your business.
One of the ways you can solve that is by having one of these cool onboarding sequences as well.
So, anyways, guys, that's kind of the list management stuff that I do.
You literally can run your entire thing: One funnel with three lists.
More often than not when I log into someone's ClickFunnels account, they have no set up for how to run it. I have no idea where people are getting stuck in their business, and it's hard for us to actually maneuver.
I don't know who to send emails to and who to not to. I don't want to send an email to the entire list when they're still inside a funnel. I want them to focus on that purchase.
I don't wanna come around with, “Hey, I know you're about to scratch the buyer's itch with a $15,000 thing. Why don't you come buy my book for $7.95?” Like, NO!
There are specific people you should NOT be talking to who are inside of your sequences right now.
That's exactly why I wanted to do this episode. So you guys can see from a top-level, each part of the funnel, each part of the value ladder is super similar.
It's the way that I'm able to go and send them from piece to piece and only talk to specific people - that's very very key, super key.
Anyways guys, thanks so much for joining me.
If you guys like this, please like, subscribe and review it in iTunes - that actually means a lot to me.
Guys, we'll see you in the next episode, bye.
Woo-hoo!
Hey, there's more marketing resources than there are sands of 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 used 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 a link straight to the source right below it.
If you want to see the list, then see what you can use yourself, go to bestmarketingresources.com. That's bestmarketingresources.com.
Boom, what's going on, everyone? Steve Larsen from Sales Funnel Radio.
I am excited for this episode. Well, to be honest, I'm actually freaked out. This is my 2019 goal.
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 everyone?
Hey, so every single year I do this, and it's the scariest thing I do every single year. This is my fifth year in a row of doing this.
If you wanna see the past goals I've made year by year, you actually can find them on the youtube channel. You go to salesfunnelradio.tv, and it'll take you to the actual youtube channel. If you want to check it out there - you can see the playlist of my previous years' goals.
Well, every single year I do this. And I remember the first time I ever did this. I was in this place of desperation. I was going into the army. In fact, you can see I have a shaved head. There's almost no fat on my body for some of those videos in there.
I remember sitting back and just thinking, “I'm tired.” guys. I'm tired of not having what I wanna have. I need to start doing things that are more drastic. And that's kind of what I was going through in my head at that time.
So I grabbed my computer, and I literally had traded funnels for the computer I was using. Actually no, not at that time. I don't even know that I really knew what a funnel was when I made that first video.
When I think back about it. I was taking a lot of traffic courses. Yeah, okay, that's what it was! Wait a second, so at the time what was going on, I was probably at business try, let's see, that was around number eight or nine, maybe ten.
I was a traffic driver for Paul Mitchell. I’d had my first thousand dollar day, and it blew my mind. I was like "Holy Crap!" I was working with another guy at the time, we split the check, but still, $500 in a single day for me, I had never done that. And I was super blown away, guys. That was nuts. Absolutely insane for me.
We were living on a grand a month, basically, I believe. Something like that, anyways. It was hardly any money. And I was tired of it.
We’d been married for three years by that time and I was sick of being poor.
You can actually hear me in the very first thing say that: "I'm tired of being poor. "I'm tired of not having the things I'd like to have. "I'm tired of not having a lifestyle."
And honestly the biggest internal reason? I was tired of feeling like I couldn't provide for my family. I was sick of all of it.
I was like, I need to start doing bigger things. I need to start doing big, drastic things in my life that are the big disruptive activities that literally catapult me to new levels.
So the new goal that I made, the huge big goal that I made that very first video, five years ago, again you can see it, and you can see the progression year by year, which is crazy. I never thought I was starting a thing by doing this. But you can see, the big goal, I wanted to just do an extra thousand dollars a month.
I was like, “If I could just do,” and I didn't know how. I was like , “If I could just do a thousand dollars a month that would radically transform our lives.”
...I mean, we would eat a little bit better. We would eat more. We could actually eat in general. I was just sick of it. I gotta be honest with you guys.
Looking back on what's happened in the last five years, first of all, is ridiculous. I didn't really figure out the game for the first two years doing these videos.
Then two years ago I was like, “Oh snap, the pattern's everywhere”... and then this last year, I decided to actually test the pattern, and I left my job. Scary, scary, scary stuff.
But when I think about it and the things that have propelled me, I actually wrote this on my window. It says Play Angry. I'm not an angry guy, but when I remember back to what life was like before I started doing this stuff…
I worked my face off, guys. I worked so freaking hard. I know the reason why stuff has happened really well in the last, especially two years. It's 'cause I worked really freakin' hard.
I only took two days for Christmas, and that's not necessarily a badge of honor. I actually wanna change that, and that's part of what I want to talk about for my goal for this upcoming year, but I work hard. I work really hard. I just get after it.
Nine times out of ten, I have no idea what the plan totally is. I'm just taking action. I'm just doing stuff.
So as I look back at the things that have really kept me moving forward, like, “Yes, there's this strategy, that strategy... Remember to do this before that...” That's great, and it's helpful.
But 80% of it is just me remembering the crap that I was going through and what life was like without having known or doing the things that I'm doing now - which sucked. I mean, “Oh my gosh, life was hard.”
...So I'm excited for this. I'm not gonna lie, I'm actually nervous about this. I hate posting these videos. It's one of the reasons I do it: I hate it. It freaks me out. I don't want to tell you all my goal.
I don't wanna account for every previous year every single January. I hate New Year's resolutions, I think they're stupid. Why am I gonna do that once a year?
At the end of every single month I think through the goal, what I'm doing next month, I make sure that all the things and activities I'm doing are heading me to that target more closely. I'm not doing that once a year, that's stupid.
So, anyway, I guess an effort for me to accept a little more of that resolution thing is to do this.
If you guys have never seen me do one of these episodes, or declare my goal publicly - what I do is I account for the last year.
It's not to throw mud in anyone's face. It literally is so you can go back and watch:
I'm trying to be super freakishly transparent in a way that’s not that popular anymore. It's not me saying, "Woe is me. Look how weak and vulnerable I am." No, no, no, no. Not at all. That’s NOT the point.
I'm trying to do is document everything I'm doing on the way so that you can see my journey.
Being broke was one of the most painful things I've ever been through in my life. And it almost had nothing to do with the money. It had everything to do with my feelings of inability. It wrecked my brain, guys.
It sucked, I don't want to feel like that. That's something that I'm really afraid of. I'm open to talk about that...
So I worked my face off, and after applying a few of these patterns, things really started to work. And then things really started working.
Anyway, so at the beginning of this I always go through and account for last year, and then tell you what my goal is going to be this next year, fiscally.
There's really only two, maybe three goals that I ever set. EVER. Anyway, so I'm gonna go through the fiscal goal for this upcoming year, and then my plan to get it. Which I'm really pumped about.
There's something that I, this episode is a little bit different than the previous ones that I've done where I just kind of say the goal. I want to tell you what I'm trying to do and... there's a gap, guys. There's a hole…
Literally two days ago, I realized that it was starting to appear in me. And I think I know how to fix it, but I'm freaked out about this one area, and I'm gonna solve it. It's just been really challenging.
So anyways, I'm excited about this though…
'Kay, so here it is, okay?
# January 1st, 2018, I left my job. And just to be clear, I had NO team. I had NO additional revenue at all. I had absolutely zero. I didn't have a product. I wasn't running any funnels, I didn't have a script.
Guys, I left with nothing.
I'm actually shocked how much hate mail I got by leaving ClickFunnels. Which is stupid, by the way. That's my choice, no one else's.
But when I left ClickFunnels, the reason I did it was because I had been coaching so many people in the Two Comma Club coaching program at ClickFunnels, that I started seeing these patterns of what was making somebody successful and what wasn't.
There were these holes and these gaps. And I was learning how to do is fill in those holes. Regardless of the product, the price point, or the industry that anyone was in, I was able to go through and figure out, "oh my gosh, this is how you fix it!"
I’d create my own framework and drop it in front of them, and BOOM!
I helped create a lot of millionaires in that program. Literally. A lot of hundred-thousandaires, which is still really good, and tons of people made money for the first time in their life on the internet.
I started getting better and better, and better, and better, better.
I'd already been doing the Two Comma Club coaching program for over a year at least, probably almost a year and a half by the time I left ClickFunnels.
So there were two reasons why I left ClickFunnels:
Number one: I just knew in my bones I'm an entrepreneur. I just know that, and I'm trying to be more true to myself. I'm trying to find me. And I know that I'm an entrepreneur.
So the longer I stayed at ClickFunnels, regardless of how amazing it is over there and regardless of how dumb it looked for me to leave, and how cushy and amazing and plush and secure that job was... it wasn't me. So I left.
I had to grow some balls and just do it.
So number one, I had to get out of there.
That was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life. Okay, literally. And it still hurts. It’s hard that I only live like three miles away from ClickFunnels, 'Cause I just wanna go in sometimes, and be like "What's up? You all are awesome! Hey, can I just hang out for a bit?"
I tried really hard not to be that kid that just won't leave. You know what I mean?
So I just didn't show up for the first three months. 'Cause I didn't want to be like "What's up guys, how you doing? Hey, remember I said I left, but I'm not leaving. How are ya? So I left... and really made sure I left.
Number Two: The second reason was that I’d become very confident in the frameworks I was producing. When I was coaching, I knew that if people just did it, they would make money - eventually.
There might be some in-between things that they need to fix, which usually had to do with their personality and NOT my framework. But eventually, it would work.
A lot of good marketers do this, guys. You gotta think about this, right? I started asking myself the question…
I remember this was June 2017, and I started asking myself the question: “What is something huge, like really big, like the biggest thing I can think to have to go through to prove that I know this stuff?”
Straight up, I don't know, what's the word, prowess. I was trying to, not as a "look at me," but it was to prove to myself and others that I wasn't just building funnels in the corner.
I knew there was more. I knew there was more. And I knew that my frameworks worked. So I started asking myself the question: “What's something that's so big that it would be hard for people to not notice me?” You know what I mean?
Again, it's not like an out of a "look at me!" mentality. But it represented so much - because of all the crap I had gone through. And all the stuff that had gone on in my life up until that point.
I was like, “I need a crucible.”There needs to be this big event. What's the craziest thing I could fathom going through to prove to myself that I could do it? Almost like going full circle and healing parts of me that weren't healed about what I had gone through. You know what I mean?
...And then especially, “How can I prove to myself that what I am teaching?” I know it works!
If I go to the gym and I'm like "Hey, I wanna lose weight," I will never hire someone who's overweight, right? I don't want to be a hypocrite and be the guy who's teaching stuff that he hasn't done…
And that really got in my head, and it started giving me a complex.
I knew that what I was teaching worked because I was seeing other people do it. But I hadn't done it. And to me that's freaking blasphemy. It's like, it's so stupid.
I'm never gonna hire somebody who's broke to teach me how to make money...
I follow the principle of the guy who has the biggest cheese. Sausage number one man. Right, who's the guy, who's the lady, who's the person out there who has done it so much, right, and they can teach it so well because they are speaking from experience?
I wanted to be that kind of person. I wanted to prove that my frameworks work.
So I thought to myself, "Self, what if you left your job with no assets, no income, no funnel?” Like, this is freaking extreme! I know it is. And I'm not recommending that anybody do that.
For me, and where I was, that was the right answer. I was like "That's insane." And I went back and forth for a few months like, "Are you kidding? That's stupid, dude! Why would you do that? You're gonna leave?" And like, “Yeah, but it's the ultimate, it does work."
How do I know?
Because I jumped out of a moving airplane with no parachute and built it on the way down.
Again, scary, risky, risky like crazy. That's risky.
And so anyways, I'm super proud. I obviously wish I had made more this year. Who doesn't wish that? But I'm really proud that it worked. And that I knew the frameworks and the models and the formulas to make the game work so well that I could do that.
And again, not like a beat on the chest, “Look how great I am!” But you see what I'm saying?
It was really important for me to prove to myself that I could do that, and for whatever reason, me and my personal development and growth needed that.
So anyways, what I'm gonna do really fast is I wanna walk through what happened last year, what I'm gonna do next year, and how I'm gonna do it.
...And then there's something that's kind of freaking me out a little bit and I'm trying to figure out how to solve it. And I think I have the answer but I'm not quite sure.
Anyways, let me pull in my whiteboard here. My trusty whiteboard. Okay, check this out. Here it is. Let me just make sure there's no glare. Let me look over here at the camera. Alright…
So last year from January 1st to December 29th at 9pm mountain time... (I held off a little bit to record this episode 'cause I was trying to flet December end out)... I did $850,000. Well, $850,353, and 87 cents - which is cool.
Last year, if you watched the video for 2018's goal, I was like "I'm gonna go make a million bucks." And like, I saw that and I was like, “Crap!” You know. I was like, “Yeah! No!” Like, “Yes! No!” Superbad. I was like, “NO!” … because of THAT.
So I'm super stoked, I did 850 grand out of the gate:
The only thing I had been doing was publishing = big lesson in that.
I had done 100 episodes of Sales Funnel Radio at the exact date that I left ClickFunnels, I believe. The show hadn't even done 100,000 downloads when I left ClickFunnels; we're now at 250,000 downloads of Sales Funnel Radio.
Last I checked, but it's growing by almost 2,000 a day now. Which is awesome. So that's cool, right? That's me accounting, being totally open and really vulnerable.
When I left ClickFunnels, I followed my own formula and made 200 grand really fast out of the gate. And then, I got freaked out, guys.
January and February what happened was, there was a lot of cash that came in. And I’d built funnels for revenue, but I hadn't built systems for a business. So I was the business. And it was hell, I'm not gonna lie, guys. It was so nuts.
March came around, which was Funnel Hacking Live, and I turned off pretty much every revenue stream because I was like, "Shut it down, shut it down! I need to go set up this stuff. I gotta go put these things together.”
So I started putting together all these systems and all this stuff like, support. And then Coulton moved down. And I started putting all these people together because I couldn't handle the speed that the revenue was coming in.
I couldn't fulfill fast enough which is scary because the people were like "Oh, it's a scam!" And “It's not a scam, I just can't keep up.”
Trey Lewellen went through a similar thing when he sold that many flashlights. You know what I mean? Crazy, crazy, crazy.
So I slowed everything down… and a lot of March and April was a lot of more biz building which was exciting, but it freaked me out, guys. I was trying to keep it cool but man, I was so scared because there wasn't a lot of revenue coming in.
At the beginning where it was like 40, 50, 60 grand a month, somewhere like that, it was like like 10, 15 grand, and I was like "We're gonna die in a gutter. Maybe this was a stupid mistake!" You know, "What have I done?"
So, I was so scared, but I knew the process and I just kept true to it and kept blocking out the noise. And when I turned everything back on, we were back up to 50 grand, 70 grand, and then, five months in a row of hundred, hundred, hundred. I was like, “Holy Crap!”
Last month in December we didn't hit the hundred. It's funny man, people go on holidays and everything just kind of shut down. It was totally a slow season, I didn't know that. But I'm so stoked though.
And then what also happened, is we were pulling in so much money there that again, I had to stop things and slow things down.
A lot of December for me has been business building and systems building. So I've been building these things that’ll make it so that I can move faster in 2019.
So here's the sting, guys. Here's the sting…
I did 850 grand, collected. Check this out. Man, I was so pissed off when I saw this.
I was just quickly running through my accounts receivable,and we're getting another big chunk of cash again either today or tomorrow. Okay.
Check this out:
Man, that's a million dollars!
That's six grand over a million bucks. No, no, no no no!
I was so mad when I saw that. I ran downstairs to my wife and I was like "Look, that + that = that’s over a million! What! Like why didn’t I set up more systems?”
Anyway, it was super cool, BUT like, a massive slap in the face.
When I tell you guys the market will always tell you what to do - it just did! I was like "No!"
The market's saying: “Stephen, you don't have the systems in place yet to collect enough of the money upfront in some areas of things that you provide.”
There's some really high-end stuff that I go and I do. I just get so excited about doing the thing I didn't have everything set up - which is stupid.
...but how would I have known unless I looked. Unless I listened to the market. Unless I was willing to fail... you know what I mean?
So was it a failure? “No, but Yeah.”
By the numbers, yeah. Was it really? No.
Did I do something really risky? Yeah. Did it work? Barely. You know what I mean?
So I'm excited guys, I can't describe to you the feeling of accomplishment that I have with this.
If you guys have been following me at all, I mean there's been many, many moments where, I'm not gonna lie, a little man-tear happened, okay. It flexed on the way out so it's still manly, it's cool.
...But there was a little bit of a tear there and I was like "Man, you're crazy, Stephen. In fact, you killed Stephen. You're Steve now."
A lot of you guys are asking me what you can call me; you can call me, whatever....
But anyway, this journey, this year has been of insane growth in many areas. I've learned:
...And I know, because of pain. I couldn't have foreseen some of the things that I need to go fix, which is why I needed to leave ClickFunnels. You see what I'm saying?
I would NOT have known, "Hey look, when you move into this area watch out for this and this and that."
I wanna be the ultimate litmus test for what I'm teaching people.
So, risky? Totally. oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. Not that risky though, because of what I do and what I did.
Don't compare yourself to me if you're like "I'm NOT willing to leave my job." Yeah, then don't. I'm not telling you to, okay? But what I'm so stoked about was, “That would've been a million dollars. No! Dang it!”
...Because I, technically, have two businesses, I didn't get a Two Comma Club award this year for my stuff, but both of them, we got the stuff to make 'em work really well, you know? It's freaking close.
Anyway, so I'm being open with you guys about what happened, and what didn't.
I’m trying to be the ultimate guinea pig on a lot of the stuff and test guru's material out.
And Russell Brunson's is the closest material that I've ever found where it's like ready out of the box, you know? It's not that way for other guru's stuff.
I want to be long-term. I want to have the reputation like that for my material. Not like, "Yeah, when you go to that person's stuff, it's great and it's really helpful, but you still need X, Y, and Z to actually use it."
I don't want that. I don't want that. That's why I made OfferMind and I made that event because it was me going through and showing the framework.
I have a very framework, systems-focused brain. And I love going in and pulling those things out and showing:
...and being that kind of person.
So anyways, going forward, my goal for next year - which is scaring the crap out of me. Which solves half my problem I'm gonna get to in just a moment here. My goal for next year, though?
If you watch the pattern, a lot of what I've done for these goals is the first year was $1,000 a month. Then it was $3,000 a month. Then I think is was $5,000 and then $10,000.
This last year was a million bucks - which is $82,000 a month.
This year, though…
Man, I'm telling you guys, I don't totally know all of the path on how to get there, but I see enough of it that I think it's gonna work. It’s scaring me to death.
Ready? Here we go. You can see that, right? Yeah, okay. Four million dollars.
I've tripled the goal almost every time.
And that's where I've gone from one to three, you know. Then this to that. Four million, though, that's the goal! Gosh dang it, that's really freaky to say to you guys.
I know the systems that are gonna be in place. I gotta have more of them. A lot of what I need to set up in order to actually make that happen.
I gotta have a better phone sales system. I'm noticing that that's a big issue of mine. I don't have that many closers. And there's not much of a system and a script set up for that stuff.
This year for me has been a lot about the methodology I use and I teach that you need to enter into and design a new ocean with a single product.
Once the idea has been proven then you go and you can develop all the things inside of the value ladder to go explode it and expand it and actually plant your stake there.
Okay, so for this year…
I’ve accidentally kind of become the category king in two different categories. One of them was purposeful; the other was completely accidental.
The business I lead with, my major, major passion, is Offer Creation. Just since OfferMind, collectively, those who attended, they've made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. A lot of money.
I know this stuff works.
It's NOT one person is just killing it, that's a lot of people. And a lot of people who have never made money ever.
I continually get a lot of people that are like, "Man, I made my first 10 grand ever. 10, 30, 30, 30!" And I'm like, "Yeah! What's up?”
Pretty sure you guys made more money collectively than I did - which is awesome and I've very proud about that, actually.
I made more money doing the thing than teaching the thing. That's also very important to me as well. I focused on that a lot of this year.
So what I'm pumped about, you guys, is that I have gone in and I've developed these two businesses.
I have a front end business and I have a back end business:
#1: I teach offers, and I help people create their offers. I build off a lot of 'em, and a lot of people are in need for that. That's one of the major missing loops I was seeing in what I was coaching in the Two Comma Club coaching program.
And so I was like, “I'm gonna go be the offer guy.” And because of Russell Brunson and Myron Golden and Alex Charfen, and a lot of guys that I was being super vulnerable and open with…
They were like "Stephen, dude, you geek out about offers more than anybody we've ever seen in our entire life; go be that guy. There isn't a guy for that. Go be that guy." I was like, sweet. So I'm the offer guy.
I've proved out the idea into that market.
How did I do that? By OfferMind.
Now that I've got that, I have a product up here. There's actually gonna be a second one up at the top. And then there's a whole bunch of cool front ends.
So on top of all these, proving the idea in front of the market, that's a lot of what this year was about. It's not so much about cashing out. It was about me proving out the systems and the things that I was teaching - that they work.
If you look at Alex Hormozi, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin. If you look at, a lot of those people that blew up and made 10 million really quick, it's because the year prior, they actually went in and proved out their systems. And then scaled hard with a sales closer team and a phone team, which is what I'm gonna do.
A lot more sales positions, a lot more money up front scenarios, so I don't have this happen again.
The very one at the bottom says: An Assistant. I don't even have an assistant. It's literally two of us that are full time. I have two content teams and now, we're building an internal funnel-building team. Which is really exciting.
For me to increase my speed, I cannot be the only one building my funnels anymore.
So anyways, guys whatwhat I'm trying to say when I'm teaching you guys right here is like, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that fail at this part of it. This is where they die.
They will remain the solopreneur; they cannot build the team.
They don't know how to scale, they don't know how to put the systems in place. I am excited to crack that code. I will will win at it, and I'm really, really pumped about that.
Now the thing that's freaking me out, just so you guys know: major growth in my life has come from scenarios that I don't know how to solve but walk forward anyway.
I didn't know how to build a funnel the first time I told someone I'd build one. Was it lying? No, because I knew it was possible, and I knew I'd figure it out. So I youtubed like crazy, you guys.
I remember the first time I asked ClickFunnel support how to change background color inside the editor. Okay, seriously, you guys are way further ahead than I was when I started, okay?
I got to the Funnel Hacking Live event the first time with no money. I had to bootstrap my way there. That's a crazy move. That's a big bold move.
I created the original Two Comma Coaching Program and ran the FHAT Event, which is crazy. A lot of successful people came from that event. For me to say yes to that was a scary thing.
I had to replace Russell Brunson on stage for three straight days, That freaked the crap out of me. Yeah, I was excited but I was scared to be totally honest with you.
Leaving my job! WHAT? Okay, that's nuts.
And so what I've noticed is that I suck at willingly manifesting personal growth. I'm not good at it. Almost no one really is. 'Cause when we start feeling pain the natural inclination and all of our justifications say "Back off, Stephen, why you gonna feel that pain?"
What propels me forward, and what I've been trying to figure out is what the next absolutely freaky goal is? What’s the experience?
I have a hard time willing those kind of experiences into my life, anyone does.
Like, basic training. Man, I couldn't get out of that. Right, I couldn't get out of, and I did those things for that reason.
I did door to door sales because it scared the crap out of me, and I knew I'd learn like crazy in the middle of that environment.
I'm trying to find the next environment. You see what I'm saying?
My goal is four million dollars. I know I'm gonna hit that. It's a goal, it's scary 'cause I've never hit it, but I know I'm going to. I know that this next year I'll probably have at least three Two Comma Club Awards.
...cause I got a lot of products that are in the hopper and they're all gonna tie together and reference each other, it's gonna be awesome.
BUT the thing that I'm trying to figure out is: How can I architect freaky big things and environments I can't get out of? And I don't know how else to do that except for a big goal that feels freaky to me that I've never done before.
And is it bigger than other people's? No. Some peoples are bigger than mine, I totally get that. But I'm on a journey and a comparison of me versus me. And to me, that scares the crap out of me.
I gotta build crap I've never built. I gotta build stuff I've never done. And I gotta push forward that way.
Anyways, what I'm saying is, the thing that I'm trying to figure out... Guys, this sounds so opposite. Completely opposite than what a rational individual would do.
I did not have an option when I left ClickFunnels, other than to make money work through funnels - because my back was against the wall, and I knew that. And that's one of the reasons I was doing it.
BUT, then, I don't know another way except burning the boats.I voluntarily try to find ways to put my back against the wall and cut all options out.
For the last five, six years there's been a lot of scenarios like that. Bam, bam, bam.
I'm 30 years old, I don't want there to be too much comfort in what I do. My goal could freak me out, but I know I'm gonna hit it. I know I'm gonna hit it. So, what can I orchestrate in my life to make it where I don't have an option but to move forward?
...And that's the thing I've been trying to solve and it's really been freaking me out. I don't know how to solve that right yet. Because I don't wanna get comfy.
I'm not saying I'm not gonna go experience and have fun times doing a few things, you know what I mean? I'm gonna enjoy life, and I am a happy guy, but when it comes to personal growth and business and moving forward, frankly, I want to be big. And I know that…
Hopefully you guys know what you want? Don't be apologetic about it.
...But how can I orchestrate the next ridiculous scenario in my life where I don't have an option? Where I will figure it out, out of desperation.
Which sounds crazy. Almost a masochist, I promise I'm not. But you see what I'm saying?
I have never learned more about myself than in those scenarios. I've never learned to love me more than in those scenarios. I've never learned to fill in the blanks faster, with more aggression, applied aggression, good aggression, right, than in those scenarios.
So like, man, I left the job, right? And everyone talks about that, and okay, done.
I'm trying to figure out what the next freaky thing is? And I can't.
I think there's a combination of some physical aspect, so I've been saying like, “Man, sometime I'm gonna try and choke out Russell Brunson in jiu jitsu.” Which is freaking scary 'cause that dude's like, all-American killer. That's cool, but my back's not against the wall.
There's no scenario yet where my back's against the wall. My back's not against the wall yet for this years goal, which freaks me out.
Most entrepreneurs just glide into the night when they hit some kind of a phase like this and I don't wanna be that way.
That's the real thing. That actually freaks me out more than the four million. I know how to hit that. I know the processes and the systems. I know exactly what I'm building.
I'm almost done with my high-ticket thing that I've been building and putting together, and it's so awesome and there's nothing like it, and it comes from this perspective that has been very unique for me - because not many people do the stupid move I did by leaving my job.
Which is ultimately awesome, but you know what I mean?
Anyway, I'm really pumped about it, but I know I'm gonna hit that goal. I know exactly what my products are gonna be in my value ladder. I've got people building that stuff for me now.
My internal funnel-building team that I dream-lined out; I've already approached them, and they already said yes. Now I'm just gonna run through the process of it.
I'm gonna treat it just like I do my content team, so I'm gonna babysit it the first few funnel-builds to really document the system, and then keep moving forward. You know what I mean?
But like besides that, where's my next level of: "Oh crap Stephen, can you do this” coming from? And that, my friends, has been one of the greatest accellerents to anything that I've done ever.
So I'm really pumped about it, but also scared to death 'cause I don't actually know the answers yet. I'll figure it out, and I'm gonna keep looking for it. It's exciting, exciting stuff.
So anyways guys, that's my goal.
Honestly ,I feel like I'll do four million this next year running at the pace that I am, but anyway. I know I think at least we'll do three; four is the stretch. Which again, freaks me out, but I see where to go for it. I'm pumped about it.
Watch how I'm launching my stuff moving forward to watch how I'm doing that. It's a balance between what I'm doing publicly and behind the scenes in my actual company. It's this next piece, though: How can I orchestrate a little bit more fear for me personally?
To be freaked out for the sake of: let's put your back against the wall and see what you're made of, Larsen? You know what I mean?
Anyway, so I'm psyched about this, guys. Thanks so much for sticking with me. It's a little bit of a longer episode, but I just want you to know that's my goal.
I challenge each one of you guys to post your goal publicly.
It’ll freak you out; it usually scares people. And a lot of the audience that is following you, that you might not even know about, even if you don't feel like you have a following, someone's watching you, they'll follow up with you. A lot of you guys did with me. They were like, "Stephen, you gotta hit the goal, man!" I'm like "I know, and I think I'm going to!" And I thought I was, and then I didn't freaking collect on some of it - “Dang it. Dang it man! Gosh!”
Anyway, whatever…
Thanks for following the journey. Appreciate it.
Again:
I challenge all of you guys to go in and post your goal, whether on the comments of this post or somewhere, but get open and real with what you want. Get unapologetic about it, and move forward. Because no one wants what you want more than you do. Stop waiting for permission.
Alright guys, see you later, bye!
Aw, yeah! Hey, obviously a funnel's already dead if you can't even get anyone to opt in, right?
So I spent four hours teaching an audience how to get high opt-ins; when they work, when they don't work.
If you want access to that members area where you can watch those replays, just go to freeoptincourse.com to create your free members account now.
Red ocean strategy" "how to succeed in business" "market research" traffic temperature
Do not choose an ocean that isn't red. Here's how to know if yours is...
Not all oceans are red, and not all red oceans are ready to birth a blue ocean. The Red Ocean is your market.
So how can you tell which Red Ocean is ripe to be picked… and how to position yourself in that ocean for success?
MY RED OCEAN STRATEGY
...Keep reading and you’ll discover the #1 biggest reason I see that people DON’T have a successful sales funnel that has nothing to do with your:
I’m gonna show you HOW to know if a Red Ocean is ready to have a Blue Ocean come out of it… and WHY it matters.
Let me tell you a story…
I watch a lot of people get up on stage to talk about their thing.
I remember this one guy who was making loads of money in real estate. He was showin' the numbers and all this cool stuff.
However, the sales letter that he was using was NOT that impressive. I don't mean that in a mean way. He just wasn’t an amazing sales message writer.
BUT he was making a lot of money because of WHAT he was in.
A little bit later, I was coaching somebody who was an amazing sales message writer. Their offer was so incredibly sexy. They had an amazing sales funnel and their traffic looked great…
BUT they were hardly making any money because of MARKET they were in.
WHAT they were in was the problem:
... nothing else.
It was WHAT they were in.
I went through this red ocean strategy at my OfferMInd Event. If you want to get tickets for next year you can go to offermind.com. It's gonna be awesome.
… but listen up, cause I’m going to be dropping some gold here for you too.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS
If you aren’t making money the problem is often, NOT that you don't have an amazing offer - it’s that you're literally in the wrong market.
So, ahead of time, there's a checklist I go through to make sure that what I create is gonna sell.
When I started in this game, I’d always start with a funnel. I'd be like, “Oh, sick. Here's this sweet funnel.” And I’d run into some serious snags and really big issues along the way.
So I started thinking, “Oh, crap. I can't start with the funnel anymore. I need to start crafting the sales message.” I was like, “Oh, sweet.”
BUT then I learned that that's not even true either...
Now, before I even start the sales message, I think about positioning. It's all about the WHO. I call it “The History of the Who.”
So I dive deep into the Who and the Opportunity to help me determine the likelihood of me building a successful sales funnel before I ever pursue writing a sales message.
I want to stack as many cards in my favor as I possibly can to make it a win. Why wouldn't I? And you should too!
TO BE THE CATEGORY KING?
A lot of people ask me:
Q: “Stephen, why on Earth are you not providing more sales funnel educational programs? Why are you not building more courses about sales funnels?”
A: ...Because there are SO MANY people doing that. It would be suicide for me to go do that. It'd be dumb.”
It would be a dumb move for me even though I was the lead funnel builder at ClickFunnels.
Why? Because Russell Brunson is the category king in that space.
I'm not gonna go fight over scraps in that area.
I'm not gonna compete with Russell. That'd be stupid. Does that make sense?
QUESTIONS INVITE REVELATION
So before I ever decided to start sellin' Offer Creation stuff or anything in the funnel world. The question I asked was: “Where do I fit in the ecosystem of all the markets that are out there?”
And that's what I'm gonna walk you through here.
This is super crucial stuff, but a lot of people don't ask this before they jump in and decide WHAT to sell… and that’s a HUGE mistake.
Here's the concept…
IS YOUR RED OCEAN PREGNANT?
Before I start building out a NEW value ladder, the first thing I want to do is identify a Red Ocean that’s ripe and ready give birth to a Blue Ocean baby because:
For example:
The market for Beanie Babies was massive 10 years ago, now, by comparison, it’s super tiny.
So if you're like, “Stephen, I'm sellin' Beanie Baby accessories…” *CRINGE*
Your market, your Red Ocean is TINY.
The likelihood of being successful is so small, you’d literally have to capture darn near 100% of your market for your Beanie Baby accessories business to be successful.
Likewise, who here wants to invest in KMart or Sears? No one. Why? Is there a market? Yeah, but it’s sooo wicked tiny - you don’t wanna go there.
STACKING THE CARDS
Now, I wanna walk through a few things that I look for to make sure that what I'm entering is a place of security... and that the chance my chosen market being lucrative is extremely high.
Remember, the real estate guy I told you about at the start of this blog?
He’s an example of someone who was NOT a good sales funnel creator. NOT good sales message writer. NOT amazing at creating offers, but just good enough...
Specifically, he chose a good enough market to come out of, which meant that he could make a lot of money.
It's more about picking your ripe market, than almost anything else.
The actual positioning of where you sit inside the market and what Ocean you're coming out of.
I'm not makin' fun of it, but man, if someone else comes to me and wonders why they're not making money as a “homeopathic life coach selling to college students.”
I don't care if you're the best, you're just not positioned to make a lot of money. The cards are not in your favor.
… so what do you look for when picking a ripe Ocean?
TIMING MATTERS
Often when a big company explodes, a lot of them will attribute it to timing.
So timing matters, and I want you to know that.
Markets are living, breathing things. They don't need to stick around and often they don't.
Don’t be surprised if your funnel doesn’t work, if you’ve chosen
I'm gonna tell you in a moment, why markets don't stick around…
There are specific signs I look for to let me know if I’ve found a market that’s safe to enter…
So if you’re cool with it, I'm goin' a little deeper...
IS MY RED OCEAN RIPE?
So, these are the things that I look for to know if this market is ready to birth a Blue Ocean.
#1: Conflicting Beliefs
If you have a tiny market which it starts to grow and expand. If money's being reinvested that market and customers are being created, sooner or later, those customers will bring in more customers and they'll sell each other.
...Eventually, you’ll get to a spot where the market/ red ocean starts to get so big and so many gurus start to appear that, (regardless of industry), conflicting beliefs will start to arise.
Conflicting Beliefs are a key sign to look for.
When that happens, “Oh, Baby! Blue Ocean”
So whenever there's conflict inside the Red Ocean, inside of a market, that's an amazing opportunity for you.
#2: Too Many Product Options
The theme of products inside of a Red Ocean is very much like, “Hey, we're better, no we're better, no we're better.”
There’s a lot of very similar products that are just slightly better than each other. There are not any products that are different.
Different is the theme of the Blue Ocean.
...And when you start to see tons of products competing on ‘better,’ that’s one way to know that the Red Ocean is ripe.
It's why, if you don't know your market/ Red Ocean, it's really risky.
#3: Customer Innovation
If customers are starting to innovate on the products in the Red Ocean, that's another big sign.
#4: The rise of C- level influencers
# 4: An Ugly Ocean
By this I mean, is your Ocean is contracting? If your Ocean is leaving don't pick it. I like avocados a lot. Avocados are good for like five to seven days, then they go bad.
It's very much that way with Red Oceans. The ship may have sailed… or the avocado may have gone rotten ;-)
Don’t try to make a dying or dead market work for you. It won't work.
I'm not sayin' that you can't make money, but the road is long. Stop doing that!
IS YOUR MARKET CONTRACTING?
You know your market is dying specifically when businesses are NOT reinvesting cash back into the Ocean.
If businesses are taking money out of a market and not putting it back in, that’s a contracting market.
If you don't see entrepreneurs:
… that’s a contracting market.
Grant Cardone’s last event was 9000 people. His next one is 35000 people. They’ve rented a whole baseball stadium.
What does that tell ya?
A: The dude is reinvesting cash back into that area. That's some freakin' security. That is an expanding market.
If you see A-level gurus reinvesting cash at that level - that's a big deal. It's not just cool, it’s a signal.
If I wanted to sell Grant Cardone's salespeople, that would be a sign to me that it is safe for me to go create a new opportunity. Does that make sense?
# 5: A Decrease in New Buyers Entering The Market
# 6: A Decrease in New Sellers
... Meaning:
You're lookin' for strength in numbers in both customers & successful businesses.
#6: Fad or Foundation?
When you can ask this next question, it’ll help you like crazy:
Is my Red Ocean a fad or a foundation?
Fad = Beanie Babies, POGs, KMart, Sears…
This is one of the MOST key things I can teach you right here... and it’s the main core of this entire episode.
Too often, people make a product and they come to me and ask, “Steve, who should I sell it to?” I'm like, “You have no idea who your market is, do you?”
The Red Ocean is your market. That's who you're pulling from and bringing over to your new thing.
But before you chose a market you need to answer the question,“Is my Red Ocean a fad or a foundation?”
How do you do that…
TRAFFIC TEMPERATURE
There's a key way to know if that's true, and it all comes down to the temperature of traffic.
I know this is more of a technical episode but stay with me. This is HUGE.
This is the difference between millions of dollars and nothing.
Seriously, this is the difference between a break-even business and a profitable business right here.
I do NOT ever have to ask, “Where's my customer?” - because of what I'm about to tell you right here.
It’s one of the major reasons why my stuff's blowin' up and I've only been away from ClickFunnels for a year, and it's gone this well.
Not tootin' my horn, just sayin'...
It comes down to the temperature of traffic.
And I think people skate past this idea too fast.
There are three kinds of traffic or three temperatures of traffic:
...And I know, as my audience, you’re like, “Yeah, duh Stephen I've heard that.” Follow me…
#Hot traffic takes the smallest amount of education to sell. The bridge that they need in order to actually make a purchase is very tiny. They're problem aware and they're solution aware.
#Warm traffic needs a little bit more education to sell. They're problem aware, but they're NOT solution aware.
#Cold traffic takes a freakin' gigantic bridge to sell. You have to educate them like crazy, lots of education. They’re NOT problem aware or solution aware. So you gotta educate them on the problem and the solution.
...and that's super challenging.
There are not many companies ever really build that cold traffic bridge. That’s the key.
If you’re struggling in your business right now, It's probably because:
This DOESN’T mean you have to abandon everything - just switch. CHANGE.
I had to do that in March. March of this year, I realized I was sellin' the wrong person. I had to switch whole markets.
I went back, and I changed all the vernacular in my:
...I changed everything.
Same product, but I changed the messaging because I realized that my Ocean was wrong.
HOW TO FIND YOUR OCEAN
There is a piece of this Red Ocean, right here, that would LOVE:
They’re in the current Ocean and they're the current products and the current vehicles. BUT they HATE them. That is the best person to sell.
Remember, The 3 personas of the Red Ocean? Go back to that episode again if you need to refresh your memory.
I'm NOT goin’ for everyone inside of the Red Ocean. I'm goin' for the person who's, like, “I love that I can get health/ wealth/ relationships, but I freakin' hate the vehicle. I hate this product. I hate using it. I just don't know what else to use?
My friend, that is the easiest person to sell to. That's who I sell to.
When someone calls me on social media, they're like, “Stephen, will you help me be successful with x, y, and z?” I already know they're NOT the right person just because of that one move.
... I'm like, “Probably not.” If you're not willing to go get the program off of the webinar that I put out there, you're not my customer. I'm not here to convince you...
BUT... the person who is in the Red Ocean, and they:
… that's who you want to talk to. That’s the easiest person to sell.
Stick with me. this is BIG. Millions of dollars, BIG.
Seriously, right here, this is it...
ENTER THE CUSTOMER COLLECTION ZONE
When you’re selling to hot traffic, (people who are problem aware and solution aware) you are in a zone, that I have come to call, “Customer Collection.”
There's not much you have to do except tell them a tiny story + very small levels of education, and you have collected the customer.
I'm looking for the market that has moved successfully from customer collection to customer creation.
Boom! That's the key, right there.
Can your market create a customer, not collect?
...And that's where you see ClickFunnels doin' a lot right now.
I'm the One Funnel Away coach. The One Funnel Away Challenge is built completely to create customers.
Russell Brunson has soaked up tons and tons and tons of these other people, right. Lots of other markets. He's grabbed, he's collected a lot of the customers that are out there.
ClickFunnels has moved from customer collection to customer creation.
They're selling more to cold kinds of traffic. MUCH HARDER! So hard that markets close because of it.
If a market cannot go from customer collection to customer creation, the market dies because they run outta customers; they run outta fresh blood to sell.
Sure they can continue to sell existing customers, but it’s NOT sustainable. It's only sustainable when you can move to customer collection successfully. Does that make sense?
I know it's getting deep here; you might have to read times, and that's okay. BUT I want you to understand what I'm looking for. I call it Red Ocean Analytics.
I spend waaay more time understanding the Red Ocean than I do building the Blue Ocean.
It's about me selecting the right market to come out of to write my sales message for, to adapt and create an offer for, a sales funnel for.
But before any of that, I want to know...
Customer Creation = Not many markets do that.
CUSTOMER CREATION IS HARD
Now, ClickFunnels knows how to create customers because you're talkin' about Russell Brunson.
Steve Jobs knew how to create customers too...
It took me forever to get an iPhone, but Apple created a customer out of me. I was, like, “I don't know, I have a computer, I don't need an iPhone.”
Facebook, okay. I hated Facebook for years. I had a love-hate relationship. I still kind of do...
But FB created a customer out of me. They literally built a customer. I was not a customer. I was kind of openly anti-Facebook. They created a customer out of me.
They were able to move from customer collection to customer creation. Very hard. Not easy to do. Not many markets do it.
And if you're like, “Oh, I gotta create customers.” No, you don't...
I never have to ask the question, “Where is my customer existing?” Because the Red Ocean is creating my customer.
Did you just get the “AHA”?
Let me repeat that… I never have to ask:
... I don't deal with any of that crap because I know exactly WHAT market I am coming out of.
I have been very careful to make sure that the market is creating the customers for me.
...Because if they are collecting them only, then yeah, I'm gonna have to answer the question, “Where's my next customer?” But I don't have to do that because I only pick markets that CREATE CUSTOMERS.
It's freakin' incredible!
Frankly, it's the reason why my stuff's been selling so well. It's the reason why I have made moves to very carefully become the Category King of Offer Creation - because nobody's in it.
Where am I coming out of? I'm stemming out of the sales funnel building world.
Why? Because they're moving from customer collection to customer creation with People like Russell Brunson, the One Funnel Away Challenge, and all the new education that's out there.
There's so much noise in the sales funnel market. It's a safe place for me to consistently find my customers. BOOM!
If you want MORE about this, I went way deeper during OfferMind.
There are at least eight points that I collect about every single market before I even start building a funnel.
Again, love to have you at the next OfferMind. I'm totally pitching you. You need to come.
Before I ever build a brand new opportunity, a brand new value ladder, or anything like that. I dive in and ask, “Is my Red Ocean ready for a Blue?”
I am gonna find a market to sell to that has:
...Timing matters!
The market, (the Red Ocean), is priming my dream customer for the Blue Ocean I want to create.
Do you understand how BIG this is?
Once I’ve found my ripe ocean, then I can go do all my other stuff for:
... all that other stuff that I do.
I'm publishing for the Red Ocean NOT the Blue. The Blue barely exists. The Red Ocean is your market, NOT the Blue.
I want you to feel what I'm takin' about when I say that. I didn't understand any of this stuff when I first started out.
And one of the reasons why everything failed was because I was fighting over the scraps because I didn't know my position in the market.
I know this is deep. This is a lot of theory... it’s not even theory. This is HOW it works.
I want you to understand why positioning and picking a ripe ocean matters so much.
Until Next Time - Keep Crushing It!
Boom. If 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 also 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?
They’re small groups 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.
"how to be productive" "growing business" "entrepreneurial skills, value ladder, team building
This is the one question I ask every quarter that always CHANGES my business...
Answering this question ALWAYS results in me growing my business. Each my business changes for the better... NOT my funnels, my business.
...if you’re wondering, “...but, Steve, aren’t your funnel and your business the same thing?” I totally get why you’re asking that. I used to think that it was too… until the strangest thing happened to me...
Here’s how it went down…
HOW TO BANKRUPT A BUSINESS
I was building cool funnels for a company:
Day #1: We launched the funnel, and the sales start pouring in. I get a call from the owner: "This is awesome, this is epic, this is incredible. Are you serious! I can't believe this."
Day #2: I get another call: "Wow! The sales are still coming in. This is really still cool... I think..." (This time they sound a little more unsure)
Day #3: The phone rings: They're like, Help! The sales are still coming in. Turn the funnel off. TURN IT OFF!"
The first time this happened, I was shocked that anyone would want less sales?
But the company was like, "You're gonna bankrupt us." I was like, “Oh, crap!”
Until that point, I didn’t realize that the funnel was different to the business.
It sounds silly to say that now, but I just didn't know that at the time.
A massive amount of sales sounds fantastic, right? But if your business doesn’t have the systems to cope with a massive amount of fulfillment, then you’re in trouble.
So what do you do about it? *ANSWER* You ask yourself the question:
How do I increase my speed?
ASKING A POWERFUL QUESTION
When I ask THIS question it ALWAYS provokes the most change and the most progress in my business.
It actually happened this way…
I was coming back from a speaking gig where I’d sold a ton of stuff. It felt awesome and I was excited about it.
...THEN I had to spend the entire night fulfilling on what I had sold. Which was great, but I’d only slept four hours the night before and I was exhausted!
So sitting on the plane on the way home the thought came to me, “Stephen, how can you increase your speed?” And I wrote it down in my notebook.
I started listing out all of the ways that I could possibly increase the speed of my business.
My funnels, do great, but the business needed some work so that I could leverage all the opportunities that were coming my way…
The BEST way for me to show you how I answered the question:
How do I increase my speed?
… is to let you in on a Q&A session I did with my OfferLab Group.
These are the high-level killers who work with me directly, one-on-one.
Each week, I do training sessions with them. Look at their stuff to help them design their:
I haven't officially launched OfferLab, so unless you came to OfferMind, this is probably the first time you’ve ever heard of it.
I'm not selling anything else. Offer Lab is not open to anybody else because we're fulfilling. We're putting in the processes and the systems in place.
… So this is kinda like a sneak peek behind the scenes of Steve Larsen.
HOW TO BE PRODUCTIVE & INCREASE SPEED
We had a cool chat with the CEO of Pruvit (the MLM I’m in). And, like a lot of people, he asked me to build funnels for Pruvit.
I was like, “Well…”
My first thought was, “Sure, that would be honoring, but I don't have the team in place to handle that.”
That's why I initially went back to Tony Robbins and told him, “No.” I didn't have the team in place to build the front revenue, or the team in place to support it after it was built.
After talking with CEO of Pruvit, Colton and I just stared off into eternity for a little bit. Our heads were spinning.
We had a tremendous opportunity in front of us. But first, we had to answer the question, (...and here it comes again): “How can we increase our speed?”
So we've been asking that question in TWO areas:
*NEWSFLASH* Answering those two questions, usually, does NOT involve MORE of YOU as the entrepreneur.
ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS & PLAYING BIGGER
Play Bigger teaches that in order for you to really make a lasting business that's awesome, you need to design a category, a product, and the business, at the exact same time.
Well, I've gotten really freakin' good at designing:
It's the reason why I’m able to create so much the content …
But what do we have in place on the fulfillment side?
I'm nervous to bring in all the money that we could because I wouldn't be able to fulfill on it very well.
… So the questions that I've been asking are:
We asked the question, “How could we increase speed?” And that question ALWAYS leads to growth and things that are, frankly, a little bit uncomfortable.
Let’s use my content machine as an example:
I have #1 Content Team for Sales Funnel Radio, but a while ago, I realized that I needed to spin up a second content team for Secret MLM Hacks. So that’s what we did.
There are a few people that are on both teams, but it's a separate team. It's really interesting, the process is different, even though they're both content. It's really fascinating.
We mapped out a high-level process and we found the people to fill all the positions. So I wanna walk you through this because this will change everything for YOU…
3 QUESTIONS THAT’LL SAVE YOUR LIFE
So glad you asked… ;-)
The 3 questions that will save your life are:
As part of answering those questions in my own business, I draw up value ladder and leave it somewhere visible to act as a roadmap and an anchor.
(A value ladder is for life, NOT just for Christmas)
Opportunities are so funny guys, it's like they show up as soon as you start the down a path, another opportunity pops up.
It's like opportunities have babies and multiply the moment you start moving and doing anything in life.
I'm sure you’ve have experienced that, right?
So to keep myself rooted and forward, I always draw a value ladder.
I have two value ladders because I have a front-end business and a back-end business.
The business that's in the back-end is the MLM stuff, you know about. The front-end stuff is all offer creation/ funnel stuff You’ve seen me building out.
I wanna walk you guys real quick through this value ladder, and then tell you guys what’s happened because we asked the question, “How can I increase my speed?”
That question usually, (in fact, I'm not even gonna say usually), it has ALWAYS made me grow. And sometimes, in ways that are NOT all that comfortable… in fact, pretty much every time.
Just beware, every time you ask that question, if you're truly willing to find the answer to the question, you're gonna have to grow.
So here’s what I do...
CREATING MY VALUE LADDER
Because I have my value ladder planned out, I can answer the question, “What model am I following?” In this instance, I'm following the Info Product Model.
Now the stuff that I'm doing has never been done, but the model that I'm following has totally been done.
Does that make sense?
That's where I get a combination of living on the edge and doing things that have never been done before - so I have security at the same time.
I don't need to run a risky business. There's no way. I'm not into risky business.
But the stuff that I'm doing though, the actual content and all those pieces; 100% is stuff that's never been done before.
It's how you get the combination of risk and security at the same time.
I draw out the value ladder. At the bottom, is all my free stuff:
The real reason Affiliate Outrage exists, is so I can teach people how to be affiliates for me. About a third of our sales last month for the MLM side came from affiliates. It's working - it's awesome.
I'm not just gonna give somebody an affiliate link. I'm gonna teach them how to use it, and how to make an offer so that they feel inclined to create content around that affiliate link. Does that make sense? That's the way I do it.
My value ladder has:
It's the exact same model on each side of the business.
It’s a lot of funnels! We have a hard time getting somebody to just build one funnel… We counted; there are 12 funnels we need to truly hit every single step that we have planned.
So what I do is I hack the value ladder in order of importance?
But the question that we started asking is, “How can I increase my speed?” That's the question I want you to start asking yourself:
“How can I increase my speed in…”
I ask that question multiple times, in multiple areas, for multiple things. Asking this question helps tweak out a lot of the processes that support revenue.
BE UNCOMMON AMONGST UNCOMMON PEOPLE
The first time I asked the question, “How can I increase my speed?”... I was working for Russell and had no time of my own. It led me to create a schedule, that I lived by for about a year, that was painful.
Went to sleep five hours a night, then I'd get up at five, be at work at six, work on my own there 'til nine.
It's always been that question because…
Money loves speed. Money sticks by speed. Money feels the thrill of speed.
...and so I have to adhere to that lesson at some point.
I can build everything in these value ladders, but if I’m the only one building them, it's gonna be slow. I want all that done next year. In just one single year. That's fast, man.
That's almost as fast as ClickFunnels builds their own funnels.
Seriously, they build one funnel and launch it, just about one every other week. That's crazy!
So what I've started asking the question about... and what I want you to start thinking about is:
So the questions that we’ve have been trying to answer, and I think that we have, are
...and the way that I'm doing that, is by building teams around both.
QUESTIONS INVITE REVELATION
I have two businesses:
These are revenue models, but what supports these?
So Colton and I asked the question several times last week:
What do we need to have in place in order to pull EVERYTHING off, in a year?
If questions invite revelation, which they do, you gotta be real careful of the question you're asking in business and everything else.
So we went back and forth:
“Well, here's all the stuff that we have and all the things that are forward facing. Do I have that on each side?” Like, “Crap, no, I don't.”
“Do we have a system set up where if I don't show up for a month, would things keep running on their own? Like, “Hmm... I gotta build more of the business side there.”
It's just about there - which is really fun.
For my content teams; I show up the first half of each Tuesday, and it keeps both machines alive.
I can keep speaking and be forward, in the front of everybody, because of the systems that I've built. The teams that I've built.
We have Content Team #1 and Content Team #2.
Then our NEW funnel-build team, they're gonna be the ones who actually go dive in and build out all the funnels.
Although I'm a funnel builder, I’m been my own bottleneck.
Which is what I realized when I was looking at this stuff. I was like, “The only way we can keep going as we are now and still make great money is to get another team.”
The parts of the business that I should be involved in are actually a lot narrower than I'm currently focused on.
A GROWING BUSINESS
I was talking to Al Hormozi this last week, and a few other of my good buddies who've made like 10 million in a year, and they validated exactly where I'm going with this. They said:
At this point, it’s NOT about you. It's all about the team.
Q: How do I sell faster? “Crap, I gotta speak more. Oh, I can't speak more…”
A: Content Team #1.” Boom! And I mapped out the content team, and then made it.
Q: How do sell faster on the MLM side? I'm either gotta speak a lot, or I’ve gotta go drive a lot of money with ads…
A: Content Team #2. Boom! that's the one that did it on the MLM side too.
...the next question I asked was...
Q: How do we increase the speed so we can build-out this value ladder with even more speed?
A: “I need an internal funnel-building team.” It came faster than I thought, but I realized I needed it.
I've built the majority of everything on the MLM side, and I've built a few things on this side, and lots of stuff on the bottom. And I'm good at it, but I'm just only one person.
So we've mapped out the process and the positions we need, in order to build an internal funnel-building agency.
We just got the last person on board and they're like, "Absolutely, heck yes."
Next, I'll tell you how we automate everything...
LEVERAGING ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS
If you’re already selling stuff, the next process is speed of sales - and has less to do with you, which is fun, but it can be terrifying.
When I left ClickFunnels, the position that I had ceased to exist. When I left, the position closed. So my final task was to replace me with a system.
That made me think about what I was doing in a different and advantageous way.
I had to document everything that I was doing for each funnel, find the similarities, and then start systemizing all the pieces and create a checklist.
It's was super complex and crazy.
If you’ve done like funnel-building on your own, you know that the checklist can be freakin' huge. Let alone:
...and all those things.
The actual act of putting a funnel up - it's easy because of ClickFunnels, but there's still a big checklist with it. There's a lot of things you can put inside of there. There's a lot of bells and whistles that you can get distracted with.
THE BAT SIGNAL
Anytime we built a funnel at ClickFunnels; they had what's called a bat line meeting. We grabbed a cool image. You know that like the Bat Signal that Batman shines up in the air.
When Russell sent that image out to his team, they all know that in 15 minutes everybody has to get on the same Zoom room.
Then Russell teaches for the new funnel for a straight hour. He draws it out, “First, we're gonna have this page, and then we'll have this page, and then we'll have this page, and then we'll have this page, and these down-sales, and then this automation.”
He draws all the pieces and puts it together.
What's cool is that it’s recorded. So afterwards, they take that recording, and some writers go and they'll make mini tasks for each individual. There's heads of each of department.
So they grab a writer to write out the to-do list of everything they were assigned during Russell's batline meeting. That's exactly what I'm doing.
I'm planning out not just the funnel, but also planning out podcast material and content that would be really cool to time with the launch of the funnel.
This year, you guys will see me do specific podcast episodes to build pressure around the launch of the whatever funnels we're building.
Then there’s the:
We're gonna need this package and this package - so we go to our fulfillment house (which is a few miles down the road), and let's make sure they package everything together, so that every time a sale happens, this thing gets shipped out.
That's all the stuff that I'm really good at and what I teach…
Then I know, I'm gonna create sales videos. Right from the get-go. The videos are gonna be on the pages - because I can just hand those videos to writers... and I know who all of these people are.
If you notice, most the styles that we do, pretty much all the time, if you look at the copy underneath all the videos in any page I create, it's pretty much the exact same thing that was said in the video.
Which is means I can hand videos off to a writer and they can write all the copy for the sales page.
Then the video and all the copy gets handed off to the designer, and they make it look incredible.
Design doesn't sell, but I'm not against making things look good.
The designers make things look awesome, and use the copy. You’ve seen sales copy, where certain words are bolded out. There's a certain style of writing for sales letters.
Now they have the writing, the designer can take one of my templates to build-out the initial funnel, put all the copy in there and put the videos in for the initial build.
From that point, the funnel will go to to a funnel finisher... that was actually my original role at ClickFunnels when I was hired.
I was the funnel finisher.
We didn't have extra writers or designers. We had a videographer, it was Brandon, but we didn't have writers, we didn't have designers… So I actually did all three of those roles for the first year.
It was the only the final eight months that I was there, that we actually started building out, actual teams and processes. Before that, it was just me - it was insane. It was freakin' insanity.
Funnel finishers are the ones that do all the stuff that's not fun to do in funnels:
It's all the stuff that sucks to do in a funnel, but it's super important.
Next, I try to break the funnel. That's my favorite part. I like to go in and try my hardest to just crush it!
Then, because we've gone through video stuff, we've had designers and all this stuff, then I start working with the traffic team and coordinate my podcast episodes with the launch of the actual funnel and the ads going out.
Then I just review and tweak it. So that's it.
It seems really complicated, it's actually not. This changed my life.
What I focus on, when I'm building these teams out, 'cause you guys all should all have teams, eventually. If you don't right now, that's okay. If you don't have a team, (or you're not in a position to have a team)...
What I found is that it means that you're still building this main core product inside of your new value ladder:
The first time, you being the one doing all that is totally appropriate - that's totally fine.
But building out, everything from above and down below it, after that, is really just a repackaging of that main idea in different ways that are more expensive or less expensive.
This initial build-out, that can take awhile. That's fine, that's fine. So if you're like, "I can't have a team yet." That's okay, usually, it means you don't have enough cash or you're still launching this main core product inside of your value ladder.
But from there, everything else, you should be able to do fast when you build a team.
But there's one thing that changed my life when I'm building out these teams...
TEAM SECRET SAUCE
...So when I'm building these content teams out, the things that have really made the BIG difference is:
I no longer hire individuals. I hire agencies.
That changed everything! When I hire an agency to do video, rather than a person, the speed is better, the quality is better.
If some reason, there's a holiday, or birthday or whatever, they got a replacement, usually.
When I hire an agency, it's usually a little bit more money - 100% worth it. 100% worth it! They're easier, they're faster, they can implement better.
They follow the processes better which I'm about to show you. I don't hire individuals anymore. I hire agencies.
So there is a specific agency for each one of these, almost. Like the funnel finisher one, that doesn't need to be an agency for that, that's a single person job.
Like I don't even know how you'd make an agency out of that. But I actually do think that that person has an agency, which is funny.
This person's the only person that hasn't is the writer, but he's had a massive writing company in the past, which is cool. So he still has that background and totally gets the project management side of fulfilling - which is really interesting.
I don't ever hire a person anymore, I only hire agencies.
That's true for every one of my content pieces.
It's funny, looking back, on the Sales Funnel Radio content team, and the Secret MLM Hacks Radio. In the Sales Funnel Radio content team, there's seven or eight, something like that.
But they're pretty much all full-blown agencies behind each individual person. It's the reason it costs so much, but it's also the reason it's so good. You know what I mean? And it's fast, and it's consistent.
I can pretty much set my watch to each time an episode drops. They're good, they get it, they move. And they got backups.
And what's cool, is that when I hire an agency, they've thought about their internal process. They've thought about how to fulfill. They've thought about how to do all the things the best possible way.
When I hire an individual, a lot of times they haven't, and they're just doing it. They know how to do the thing, but they haven't thought through how to actually write down the process for the thing. That's a very different mentality to be in.
In the Secret MLM Hacks Radio, we just barely spun that team up, probably about three weeks ago, cause I knew we needed it. I could just tell. There are a few people on both teams, but there's a lot that aren't.
The team has either eight or nine people now - which is pretty crazy.
I use this approach for even for one-offs stop kind of things that I do now.
There's a person that I've been hiring to revamp my LinkedIn profile, 'cause it sucks. I know it sucks.
But I'd rather hire a person, who owns and started their own agency, rather than an individual - because of what they've gone through mentally to prove-out the process. And the fact that they can bring revenue to keep a team going.
Man, it's night and day difference.
I'm not saying the individual can't be good, but holy crap, huge difference in insights. Oh my gosh! So, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency, agency. That’s saved a ton of stuff.
Oh yeah!
Hey, wish you could geek-out with other real funnel builders, and even ask questions, while I build funnels, live?
Oh, wish granted!
Watch and learn funnel-building, as I document my process in my funnel strategy group. It's free, just go to thescienceofselling.online and join now.
"sales letter" "then vs now" "get out of your own way" the attractive character
Ironically, the only real way to "know thyself", is to continually "sculpt thyself"...
...Don’t worry, I’m still here.
I did kinda die, but only in a metaphorical way so that I could birth my attractive character - and create a then vs now sales letter story to sell my upcoming Mastermind with James Smiley and Rachel Pederson.
Here’s how I announced my death on Facebook:
… it was an attention-grabbing way to tell my audience about the Mastermind that’s gonna be happening the day before Funnel Hacking Live on Feb,18th in Nashville, Tennessee.
I didn’t just blast an email out to everybody saying, “Hey, I’ve got this mastermind. You wanna come? Click the link."
...Because that's the easiest way to promote like an idiot. It’s annoying and not at all entertaining.
Selling is much show business as it is anything else.
When I see somebody promoting their stuff by saying; ”Here's the link, Just buy. Click, click, click, click, click!” I don't want to buy. I HATE that crap.
If I don't see that from somebody it makes me wanna buy without even knowing what it is - because they get it.
I get asked all the time, "Stephen, what's the one thing people can focus on to be a good funnel builder?" My answer is always: “TELL STORIES.”
Quite often it doesn’t sink in, and they ask again, "No, no, no. I mean funnel building. I'm talking about ClickFunnels editor stuff!" I'm like, "Yeah, storytelling..."
I'm telling you right now. the editor is so freaking easy. If you can't sort the editor out, you probably shouldn't be on the internet.
The ClickFunnels editor is so simple. That's NOT where people struggle. Take it from the dude who’s coached thousands of people in this.
People don't struggle with funnels because of ClickFunnels. People struggle with funnels because they have no idea how to sell and they have no idea what makes a sale happen...
HOW TO LOSE A SALE
The day after OfferMind, I had a cool opportunity to train the new speaker team for ClickFunnels.
The biggest thing I helped them realize was that the thing that will screw your chances of a sale up is believing that the sale depends on how well you know ClickFunnels; what it integrates with and all the features.
The quickest way to NO SALES.
If you’re mentioning your product a lot, my guess is that you're focusing on the features of your product. #You’re selling with the wrong script. In fact, you're probably not using a script.
People will fight you on features, so instead, you need to cause an emotional epiphany in your potential buyer's brain.
So now, I want you to start thinking about what you're doing when you sell... "Do you actually know what causes the sale? And can you craft a sales letter that helps you to close your sale instead of hindering it?"
One thing you’ll notice as I go through my sales letter is how little I actually mention the actual mastermind.
I don’t talk about:
....because the sale always happens without too much focus on the actual product.
GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY
If you guys are ever in a pinch and have to write a script fast, then the script that I followed was the "then vs now theme." It took me about two hours to write my story - which is pretty standard if you're gonna cover all the stuff...
Honestly, there are some things I would change, but it's good enough. And it's good enough because I used the Epiphany Bridge script.
I want you to understand that making money has nothing to do with how well you know the thing you're selling. It has everything to do with the script itself and the emotional connection it creates.
The sales message is where you make the money.
I love the webinar script... I use it for all kinds of selling.
There's a crucial part right at the beginning of the webinar script which I call the two introductions:
First of all, we need to introduce the subject, and then you need to introduce yourself as the speaker.
These introductions are NOT always:
But, at some point, you have to say:
Every once in a while I've seen scripts where people combine the two introductions - and that’s totally fine.
After you’ve done the two introductions, you can use the “then vs now” method. It's one of my favorite themes inside of any sales script, and it's one of my favorite ways to tell a story.
I used a similar strategy to the one I described when I revealed how I win affiliate contests - because, frankly, it works!
My strategy comes in two parts:
… So now, let me show you how I used the “then vs now script” to write that sales letter for my latest mastermind.
HOW TO WRITE A NON SUCKY SALES LETTER
So the first thing I need to do:
If you're scrolling through Facebook, you're trying to get a dopamine hit and distract yourself... So I'm gonna do a serious injustice to my cause if I don't let you be distracted. So I'm gonna do my best to grab your attention… (and this works for email subject lines too):
It's the first thing you're gonna see… and then there's skull and crossbones emoji right there, and it says;
...Right up at the top, it says, "Mastermind." So you click right there, it'll bring you straight there.
(We're capping the event at 100 people, just tellin' you. It was half full a few weeks ago - so I don't know if there’ll be any place let now. That's not a scarcity play I'm just lettin’ you know the score…)
...Now I’m gonna paint some ‘thens’:
I don't know if you know this about me, but this is all true stuff …
I'm just gonna be raw and tell you, I would go home and wonder, "What the heck am I good at?"
I've learned that a lot of entrepreneurs actually struggle this same question.
As entrepreneurs, we're often very good at putting teams together and leading and organizing people… but that's a hard talent to leverage in a fifth-grade playground...
It can be challenging growing up.. or even into early adulthood, trying to figure out what the heck you're good at? So just know, you're not alone.
Then, I put a whole bunch of stars in a row - so I can break the pattern:
This is literally a then vs now statement: "Stephen WAS all of those things, but Steve is NONE of them."
Next, I go FULL ON in the NOW:
BECOMING AN ATTRACTIVE CHARACTER
Steve is a freak of nature who is uncommon amongst uncommon people.
Some people reach out and ask, "Stephen, you're about to go speak on stage, are you nervous?"
Of course, I'm freaking nervous, come on. Yeah, I'll get nervous, of course, I do.
You have to understand, I've created Steve. It's a separate persona that I totally step into. I'm not always in that persona, but I've learned that persona.
The attractive character in my business is me - but it was not a natural attractive character.
I'm trying to help you understand that you can craft your own attractive character. The Attractive Character is not something you need to step into the business already knowing.
I almost never see that. I see entrepreneurs who:
I'm showing you how I wrote a then vs now script, but I'm also helping you to understand that you can develop a new you.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE HATERS?
Steve almost welcomes the haters and their mud so he can laugh in their face, stare in their eyes, and steal their soul.
... that line goes through my head a lot.
Haters used to bother me a lot. I was like like "Oh crap, another hater I gotta go deal." It's not true at all anymore though.
I love David Goggins. He swears like a freaking animal. If you're offended by swearing, Do not listen to him - but he talks about that concept a lot.
THE DAY THAT STEVE KILLED STEPHEN
I hate pop culture songs that sing about how life’s a pity party: ‘I loved you, and then you changed.’ I'm like that is the stupidest song I've ever heard in my entire life.
Of course, they changed after you fell in love. It's life. If that's not how it's supposed to be - we'd all still be wearing diapers and drinking out of a bottle.
Most of the time when someone feels a lack of progression in their life it's literally because they‘re doing everything they can to keep themselves from changing because they're afraid of what's gonna happen next. Life is change. Don't fight it.
...And what's cool is the person who wins is the person who leans into that change and steps forward and says, "You know, what, I'm totally cool. I don't know how to build a funnel. I don't know how to podcast. I don't know how to be the attractive character, but I'm willing to suck.”
...That’s the person I love to work with.
REAL TALK WITH STEVE LARSEN
These were the conversations going on in my head. I think it's stupid we make fun of people that talk to themselves. I talk to myself all the time.
Every time success has required their rebirth.
Let that sink in. It's a true statement, my friends. That's a huge deal. Read it again.
I always thought I'd be coaching people on marketing tactics. We all did when I started the Two Comma Club coaching program as the coach, but I don't get much of a chance to teach marketing because I need to help people rebuild their brain and their relationship with themselves.
MAKE IT HARD, COACH
I know 100% that one of the major reasons why I am standing in front of the camera right here filming this for you is because of my mentality. When I walked in to ClickFunnels, was very much like, "Dude, Russell, give me your hardest thing. Your hardest thing. What is your hardest thing today? Give it to me."
I remember the first few times, I think it was kind of awkward for him because it's not a normal mentality. Employees do not ask their employers that question.
I say, "No, I'm serious man. What's the thing you are least looking forward to today?" And he would look through his list of tasks, and hand me his hardest task that day.
...And that meant the possibility of failure - which that happened a few times. But man, it's like such a better way to approach life.
So if you're still working for somebody else, don't be, no pity party. Instead, start asking your employers, "Give me the hardest task you've got." Just for the sake of the growth.
Wanna here the awesome quote I came up with in the shower (total transparency here ;-))
Ironically the only way to know thyself is to sculpt thyself.
A lot of you just don't qualify yet to deliver the thing you're trying to do, meaning the market's not gonna believe you. You haven't sculpted enough. You haven't created yourself enough. You need to get real and raw.
...like I said, this is *Real Talk* with Steve Larsen ;-)
As soon as you get real, and you're willing to take on a new challenge that you don't quite understand how to do. There’s an emboldening that happens inside of your soul. Your mind expands and you become a new you. You become more of who you already are.
It's really cool, I love watching it. It's one of my reasons why I do what I do still.
Here’s what I wrote next…
Let me give you an example…
I just got asked to do another project. I'm not allowed to talk about it yet, but I have to admit, I'm a little bit stressed out about it. It's due in three weeks, and I don't actually know how I'm gonna pull it off. But I know I will. I just haven't wrapped my brain around it yet.
But when opportunities like that pop-up, I know that they’ll make me grow… so I say “Yes.”
Today, a multi-hundred millionaire reached out and asked me to do some stuff. I've been expecting the call, and I've been working the relationship. I knew it was coming up and I knew I needed to say yes.
But I'm not gonna lie; I'm not actually equipped to do some of the things that he was asking for - so I'm building an internal funnel agency to build my own projects.
I'm trying to answer the question, "How can I increase my speed right now?" I don't know the answer to that, and I'm okay with that.
Welcome to entrepreneurship. Welcome to growth. Welcome to growth that's so customized that it changes you. That's why I love the game so much.
I'm going back to the script here…
...And all these people commented #ANewMe. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
EMOTIONAL SELLING
...so did you notice how little I actually talked about the detail of the event itself?
I don’t talk about:
… I don’t talk about any of that stuff ...
That stuff matters like way down the road.
Instead, I got raw. I got real. I wrote this from the heart.
I really am the least likely success story.
If I’d come from another angle, and said, "Yeah, come learn from me." There’s an audience that appreciates and wants that…
But I’ve found that most people who are just starting out or who haven’t had success in the game yet - don't want that. It actually stresses the crap out of them, freaks them out. And frankly, that's not my personality…
So a 'then vs a now' script based around my personality is a great way to connect emotionally.
I build a story and craft an emotion to help you realize that I'm just a few steps ahead a lot of people on this journey. I understand where people are on the path, and I build that connection and rapport with the script.
There's a lot of angles you can use as stories, and Dot Com Secrets talks a lot about those different angles and stories you can use in your attractive character in your storylines. I am the crusader attractive character type.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you gotta go read Dot Com Secrets and ExpertSecrets to find out what I'm talking about as far as the script writing style.
I wouldn’t say I'm like a pro sales letter writer, but I know enough about what makes things sell to let me work quickly and seamlessly this past year.
Until Next Time - Remember, the only real way to know thyself is to continually sculpt thyself.
If 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, right? That's also 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?
They're small groups 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.co