This is how to remove noise in your head and keep high momentum in your business…
A few days before Funnel Hacking Live, Russell reached out and said, "Hey do you wanna speak for another 5- 10 minutes on one of the last days?”
He said, “I want you to talk about your concept, what do you call it, where you just learn a just little bit at a time?" I was like, “Oh, I know what you're talkin' about…”
So I'm gonna walk you through my 5 STEP PROCESS that I use to stay focused and achieve my goals.
HOW TO STAY FOCUSED WHEN YOUR HEAD HAS OTHER IDEAS
First of all, you have to understand that my head moves very quickly and I have a hard time turning it off to go to sleep.
Sometimes, I have a hard time focusing on things, and when I do focus it’s a hyper-insane focus.
A lot the time, I pop music on 'cause it quiets my head, and then I get crazy focused with a magnifying glass kind of energy on the one task I'm doing.
About six-seven years ago, when I started trying to be an entrepreneur, one of the things that I had a really hard time with head noise.
You get noise coming from all different angles:
But then, there's all this external noise too:
Even if it’s only a handful of people, that noise can cause more head noise than everything else.
So there's noise, noise, noise, noise, noise all over the place, and it’s frustrating sometimes... and sometimes it's hard to move forward.
So to deal with my frustration and all the head noise, I developed 5 questions that I use to keep me on track.
I wanna teach you the process that I go through on a regular basis to reduce the noise in my head, gain insane clarity, and keep momentum high inside of my business.
It's an exercise that I encourage you to run through at least once every three to six months.
Some of it I do pretty much every day... but part of it, I make sure I come back to it every three to six months.
LEARNING LOOPS
This whole process actually started when I started beating myself up for still being broke
I remember I was riding my bike home from college one day. I still had a lot to learn, but I was saying things in my head like:
… but, I was the guy who's broke; how hilarious is that!
So…
I started asking myself:
I spent a long time trying to answer these questions... and a few things happened.
Number one, what I realized (right there on that bike) was that I was stuck in these learning loops.
I was actively learning, seeking and studying. I was learning A LOT, and I truly did feel like I knew what to go do in ‘someone else's business’ to increase their sales…
But I was still broke because...
I was learning, reading, and studying for the sake of feeling the semblance of motion, but NOT actually moving.
I was stuck in learning loops.
TIME TO BREAK FREE
I want to teach you something that I think will really help you dramatically get clarity on what you're trying to gain in your life.
The questions that scared me the MOST when I first started were:
It was scary when people asked me that question, 'cause it felt so final.
I didn't want to say what I wanted... and only have stick to that! I wanted to have some flexibility. I wanted to be able to develop different things that I had interests in… Do you know what I mean?
... and so it scared me. It was a false belief, I had to overcome... and it was challenging.
I didn’t just have a whole bunch of false beliefs about money; I had to recreate my relationship with money.
The fact that you're an entrepreneur means that you CAN do different things. There's something to focus and getting something done, but that doesn't mean that you can't go build other things as well.
(And we'll talk about that in just a little bit…)
I’ve got MORE done in the last six, seven, eight months... far more than in the first three, four, five months that I was out on my own.
Even though I was hustlin' like crazy...
I was barely sleeping. I was just getting the product out the door. I was selling to make sure that we weren't gonna die in a gutter.
It was SCARY for a while.
We were like, “Crap no one really bought off the webinar that time. Is this gonna work? Crap, crap, crap!”
So these where are 5 Steps I used to reduce the noise in your head and massively increase the momentum in my business (and these are in order ):
STEP #1: DECLARE YOUR GOAL
You have to declare what you want. If you don't know what you want nobody else knows how to support you.
It’s funny how the moment you start declaring what you want in your life things begin to conspire for your sake.
People finally know what it is that you're doing, and they start coming to your aid to help you build your stuff.
However, nobody can do that if they don't know what you're going to build in the first place.
The scary question people have about this is: “Stephen, does that mean, that everything I do is final and I can't change ever?”
No, it doesn’t mean that at all.
In fact, the next blog will be about focus and when it's okay to bring on something else.
So anyway, back to Step #1...
You have to be able to declare what is it you want.
Every year, I declare my public goal. Every January I drop out a podcast episode declaring my goal, and it's one of the scariest things I do.
BUT…
You have to declare what you want and where you're going if you want to get there!
STEP #2: BRUTAL HONESTY ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE
You have to have brutal honesty about where you are in relation to where you want to go.
That's why I get so fiery when someone goes to rent a Lamborghini to take a picture in front of so they can increase their status because of a picture.
That’s NOT what causes success in business. That crap drives me nuts. It’s not helpful at all.
I'm not saying that having a Lambo’s a bad thing. I'm sayin' when you feel like you need to be somebody else, that's a BAD thing.
The internet lets you be *YOU* louder. That's what's so awesome and beautiful about this space.
You need clarity and MASSIVE honesty about your current position. Honesty in your current spot…
...which also means where you are NOT.
When I realized: “Oh my gosh, Stephen you're broke.”
I didn't say to myself: “You're not that broke.”
When I got kicked out of my first semester at college because I failed out. I got honest with myself: “Larsen, you're dumb.” I didn’t say: “Well, you're not that dumb…” No, man... I was stupid. I didn't know how to learn.
I was 35% body fat in high school. I had a double chin and I was working on a triple (a very obvious one)... I was only 5'6"... (I grew six inches later on that year, I sprouted like crazy)...
But when I realized that I needed to lose some weight, I didn't sit back and say: “Oh yeah, you're not that fat.”
NO!
I was like:
Be honest about it. Stop trying to sugarcoat it.
If you’re bad at building funnels or you suck at traffic own it. I suck at traffic. That's why I say that. It's Truth. I don't try to get good at it.
Somethings you have to address in your life in order to move forward and other things you can outsource.
After I got kicked out of college, I went back four years later and had to reapply... I almost got straight A’s for the rest of college…. BUT I worked my face off to try and learn how to learn.
It was an active pursuit of mine. That's not gonna happen by accident.
I had to learn how to learn, and it was challenging. It was one of the hardest periods of my entire life. It was really rough.
It NOT a pity party where you constantly beat yourself up for the sake of honesty. I'm not sayin' that at all…
YOU JUST NEED TO GET HONEST!
If you’re NOT brutally honest about where you are you won’t be able to move onto the next step.
STEP #3 JUST IN TIME LEARNING
Just-In-Time Learning is when you learn only what you need just in time for when you need it.
If I don't need to know anything about SEO, I am NOT going to learn it.
Imagine this on a graph:
#1: The goals at the top.
#2: I've gotten brutally honest in where I am, and I'm like, “Oh crap, I'm actually down here at the bottom…”
#3: I'm NOT gonna solve problems that are halfway up the graph. I solve the next problem that's directly in front of me.
*SOLVE THE PROBLEM THAT’S DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU*
I'm gonna be annoying here so you remember it. This is the way entrepreneurship works; it’s a faith-based game:
I see the peak, I do not see the path.
The path doesn't really matter because you CAN’T see it anyway.
The ONLY thing you can see is the first one, two, three steps in front of you. Everything in the middle is dark; you can't see it. It's NOT even existent yet. You just know it's kind of there.
So one someone says to me:
I'm like, “You're not gonna win!”
A little papa bear moment here:
You're not gonna win. You will not make it in this game if you need to know ALL the pieces before you get started. Welcome to entrepreneurship. You are in the business of solving problems.
I’m so tired of the saying that: “A CEO reads a book a week." Great! You aren't a CEO! So cut that crap out.
A CEO is NOT in the same business that an entrepreneur is in. A CEO is in the business of systems.
A CEO is in the business of building and tweaking systems. An entrepreneur is in the business of problem-solving. Which means you shouldn't be all over the place just studying for the sake of it.
Here’s another saying that sucks: “Knowledge is power.”
NO, IT’S NOT! Doing something with knowledge is power.
...and so what you do is you learn for the one step in front of you:
You won’t know EVERYTHING, but you will know just enough to place your foot on the ground Boom! Then the next step will appear…
If you’re like, “CRAP, I don't know how to take this next step!”
Now it’s time to:
...because you need to hunt an answer.
Don’t learn for the sake of it. I'm not learning just because it's interesting. I'm learning to place my foot in the next step.
This is 100% how it's done.
You gotta stop learning for the sake of it.
I'm not making fun of SEO. I'm not making fun of traffic. But I'm telling you it is NOT on the path that I need to know. It's not on the path! It's NOT my role.
I'm in the business of solving problems, and the problem that I'm solving has nothing to do with SEO. The problem that I'm solving has nothing to do with a logo... in order to create cash.
I'm sorry, it's just not on the path. I don't need it.
I made a ton of money without having a logo.
An official color scheme and palette. No, I don't need any of that stuff.
At any time, any time, anybody can ask me, "Stephen, what's the problem "you're trying to solve right now?" And I can tell you what it is.
I can tell you exactly what it is... because it's the next thing that's always on my mind. I'm not looking any further.
I might spot check every once in a while to look at the model of the industry that I'm following:
“Okay, yeah, I'm doin' the right thing. Okay next, okay boom. Boom, then head back down. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
..and then doing the work.
My speed is dictated a lot of times by how well I can quantify the next question that I'm tryin' to solve.
It's not to offend anybody, but so many people are just studying and learning, reading and consuming.
No wonder you feel like your wheels are spinning.
If you don't know these first two anchor points, you can’t know the next step! You can't!
STEP #4: KNOW THE MODEL
I'm talking about the industry model that you’re following.
For Example:
If you're selling E-com, you have to ask yourself:
“Are there other people largely selling what I'm selling?”
The answer for every person reading this is, yes. Yes, there are.
If you're shipping a product, other people have proved how to ship products and create a business model.
I’m NOT just talking about funnels...I’m talking BUSINESS MODELS around how to ship stuff successfully, etc
Other people have already done that successfully before you.
If you're selling supplements, ( and I don't care if you're selling a brand new supplement), other people are also selling supplements. So take one step back and look to see what the industry has proven to sell.
I'm in the info-product model space, so I follow the info-product model... which means a lot of my decisions are already made for me.
Funnily enough, in the last month, there's been many people who've reached out and said, "Stephen I'm concerned that it looks like you're working maybe a bit too hard."
...and first of all, I wanna slap 'em...
Secondly, though, the ghost’s in the machine, man. There are so many decisions that are already made because I’m following a proven model.
That's why my speed is so fast.
Another way to think of it is the value ladder.
What's the info-product traditional value ladder that exists out there?
Sweet!
Well, I'm gonna go start here in the course area, and once I prove out that concept, I don't have to ask myself the question of what product should I launch next? No!
Everyone in the info-product space makes a book next. So guess what I'm doing, I’m writing a book.
Everyone in the info-product space is publishing, 'cause it's info. So guess what, I've got a podcast.
Watch what's coming next…
I'm just following the freakin' model that's been proven forever in that space.
This is HOW you navigate that dark middle space where there’s no path!
I can hear people saying, "Well I'm different." No, you're not.
What you need to do is go back to see how people in your space have proved the best way to sell the thing that you’re selling.
Whether it’s:
...there's a model that tells you how to best to make sales happen on the internet …
Do you know it?
No wonder you feel like you're spinning!
Do you know what it is?
No wonder you feel like you don't know the next step.
I'm like, “Dang man, I'm NOT in your industry. So I'm NOT gonna know the answer to that... And I'm NOT even the one buying your thing.”
Stop asking me. Go drop it out to your dream customers.
...which leads to STEP #5
STEP #5: HOW CAN I INCREASE MY SPEED?
Once every three to six months I like to ask myself the question: “How can I increase my speed?”
Money loves speed. Money likes speed A LOT. I'm just one guy, so how can I increase my speed?
Shortly after I left my employment, I was on a flight back from pitching an audience. I sold 20% of the room which was great. I was a celebrating for sure.
But on the flight back, I started panicking a little bit because I realized that I could not even fulfill on the 20% orders to a level that I wanted to and it freaked me. I got nervous.
How on earth could I scale to a business where I'm selling millions of dollars?
So I had to ask what systems from the info product model that I was following would be required in my business in order for me to pull that off?
I asked: How can I increase my speed?
...and we're still doing that.
We go back and forth between the marketing and the systems dance. Marketing, systems, marketing, systems, marketing, systems.
But I need you to understand this, this is a huge principle:
Every time I ask the question, ‘How can I increase my speed?,’ typically, (and maybe it's just 'cause I'm a funnel builder), the answer has little to do with me getting more sales.
Typically, it has a lot for me to do with building out systems to handle more sales.
Getting more sales isn’t the hard part, (especially if you do what I'm talkin' about and you actually publishing and do all the things).
Systems are, (usually for me), the thing that can increase my speed the most.
I recently asked myself this question on the way back from Funnel Hacking LIVE, and as a result of that, we hired another person to increase my speed with a product.
Every time I ask myself that question, it's ALWAYS uncomfortable because something in my business structure usually has to change, and I have to be more malleable.
THE 5 QUESTIONS
Answering these 5 Questions will drastically reduce the noise in your head, because when :
It gets really easy to figure out the next single greatest problem that you should be solving in your business.
Does that make sense?
You might already know the answer. It's not that it has to take three, four, five, ten months, whatever... it could be an afternoon or an hour just to set up a system and then move onto the next step.
It's easy when you have a blueprint. It's a loose guide along the path. You’re not gonna know all the details, but you’ll know enough to move forward. It's kind of a 30,000-foot view.
I don't really believe in shortcuts. I do believe though you can increase your speed on the path.
I feel like people look for shortcuts too long, and instead, they could have just done the actual work. It would have been faster.
That's it, my friends!
Gain clarity on where you're going because your audience can't follow you if you don't know the answers to these questions.
It's hard for you to raise a banner and to know what you stand for, and for people to come and support you.
It's hard for everything around you to start to conspire for your sake if you don't know the answer to these five simple questions.
I challenge you to write these questions down and put them on your wall:
Hopefully, that's helpful my friends... and to finish, I want to share my new tagline and the theme for OfferMind which is:
Get Rich & Do Good.
Alright, my friend. See you later.
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, 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 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.
FunnelHub is kind of a new term, and it’s something that Mike and AJ Rivera are experts in.
A funnel is not a website… but sometimes people still get confused...
About a year ago, somebody reached out to me, and said, “Hey would you please take a look at our funnel it's not converting very well?”
They hired me to come in workout what was going on. I went to look at their funnel… I opened up all their URLs, and I immediately, off the bat, I could tell:
This is NOT a funnel. This is a website.
When I told them they were like, “No no, no, no, no, no. This is one hundred percent a funnel.”
I said: “No, one hundred percent, without a doubt, I swear on my life, this is NOT a funnel... because for starters, you’ve got exits all over the page.”
A funnel is a funnel because there's only one way to progress. You either have to purchase or opt-in. If you can exit in any other way, besides the one way forward, that's NOT a funnel. That by definition is a website.
I was like, “Guys!”
So we switched a few things up to make it a legitimate funnel, and just that one switch alone, BOOM!
WHAT THE FUNNELHUB???
This is the 228th episode of Sales Funnel Radio, and it's funny to me that a lot of people still have no idea about EVERYTHING that I offer…
And I get it…
It's for a lot of reasons:
… there's a lot of moving pieces.
However, there's gotta be a way to help everybody understand what it is you're selling at all times…
And that’s what I'm excited about what I’m gonna share with you next.
I have two very special guests today and they’ve created what they call a FunnelHub. It's NOT a website. It's almost like a directory.
A FunneHub looks very similar to a website but it has a different intent.
This is the official launch of my FunnelHub.
The old Steve J Larsen site is completely gone and SteveJLarsen.com has been TOTALLY REDESIGNED.
It's very exciting!
So now you're going to read an interview I did with my AMAZING FUNNELHUB creators so you can learn MORE about FunnelHubs and why your business needs one.
So let me introduce, Mike Schmidt and AJ Rivera...
WEBSITES ARE DEAD…?
Mike and AJ are members of the Inner Circle and they own an agency called they’re from AnchorWave…
Mike: Awesome, thanks so much Stephen for having us.
AJ: Super stoked, man.
Steve: Oh it's gonna be awesome. You guys approached me... when was this? It was a while ago.
Mike: It was in October, we were at the Traffic Seekers Events in Scottsdale.
Steve: That's right, yeah, yeah. And basically, they came to me and said something that would be very dumb for me to say no to: “Stephen can we build you something for free?” I said, sure!
… and as kind of a case study, we want to walk through what they built. because I believe that what they've got will revolutionize websites.
A lot of us make fun of websites. I make fun of websites. We all know that Russell in ClickFunnels' world definitely makes fun of websites.
Mike: Totally.
Steve: But you haven't built a website, you’ve built what you call a FunnelHub. We're definitely gonna get into that... but beforehand, we'd like to know about you guys.
What do you guys do?
Mike: So we have a web design digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. We have about a team of 20 people here. We started in 2003, so celebrated 16 years in business this year.
We've built A LOT of websites. More than 1300 by our closest count at this point.
Steve: Oh my gosh.
Mike: What's funny is we heard Russell recently renew his efforts around the death of a website.
Steve: He did.
Mike: And for those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, he enrolled us in the promotion of that message. I had to turn to Anthony here and say:
“I don't think that we can share that video for Russell, given what our company does.”
We have a lot of experience helping a lot of different types of clients build websites in order to build credibility and help them serve a local market.
We joined Russell's inner circle about four and a half, five years ago, before it was cool to be in the Inner Circle.
It was just a bunch of nerds in a room giving Russell a lot of money to geek out on stuff.
And now, thanks to what he's done, and what you've done, it’s kind of elevated that status quite a bit… but originally, we joined in order to start our expert business.
Given our experience of running a sizable team, building websites, and doing digital marketing for a local type client, we just kind of understood inherently that there was something we needed to get out there and teach to:
So about three years ago, we started something we call Agency Mastermind - which is a group that's all about teaching the things that have helped us be successful in our world, to people out there.
We've just crossed the threshold, at the end of last year, to achieve our Two Comma Club Award.
Steve: Whoo! Nice!
Mike: We got to officially hang that on the wall not too long ago. So it's cool.
HOW TO INCREASE SALES
We live in a world where we are:
So things started to kind of collide for us, and especially with our proximity to a lot the people who are just doing some really, really amazing things with funnels, (yourself being one of them)...
We started to see this picture of how we could really redefine and bring our 16 years and 1300 websites of experience to something that Russell's currently saying is totally dead.
Steve: If Russell sees this, we still love ya. “Viva la funnels!”
Mike: Totally, and we get where that's coming from. There's parts of our bodies that feel that websites are dead for certain things and where the funnel makes more sense... and there's a lot of places it does. It’s the most amazing tool we've ever implemented for our expert business.
Steve: That's awesome, that's awesome.
So, obviously, we throw so many rocks at websites from a direct response marketers viewpoint.
I was looking at some stats just off Shopify; with like a single product on there, or multiple products... I mean they don't convert except for like maybe one to three percent (if you're good), you know.
From that standpoint, I can certainly see why Russell throws rocks at websites.
Mike: Totally.
Steve: But you guys, I mean, you're like scrapping that whole thing, and while it kind of looks like a website, you're calling this thing a FunnelHub...
Could you talk about that a little bit?
Mike: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah, so sure…
VIVA LA FUNNELHUB
The idea behind the FunnelHub is really that, you know... Russell's right; the funnel's where the sales are going to happen.
We know that there's a lot of hot buyers that go through that process. When you're driving paid traffic, you're going to get them to a landing page, you're going to end up getting them to a webinar, or sell them something.
All your hot buyers are going to raise their hand and give you money. But what happens to everybody else that isn't in that bucket? They're gonna go, typically, and research your brand.
They're gonna do a search for you just to see if you're legit and they end up in the middle of nowhere. They're not sure what the message is.
Once you reach a certain level of status in doing this, (like yourself), a lot of people are coming to you and searching for your name because they have heard you on a podcast…
Or because someone told them, “Hey you gotta check out Stephen Larsen.”
So, of course, they're gonna Google that, and now they're kind of lost.
...they're having to piece all this together on their own.
So the FunnelHub is a spot where we can still guide them through that process.
We can still let them know everything that Stephen's about... and then get them right back into the sales funnel where we know that conversions are gonna happen.
That's the goal.
We want to communicate the movement, communicate the message, and then get them right back to where we know they're gonna actually give you some money.
Mike: Yeah, I think what's important…
If you figure that we're all high-fiving and celebrating the fact that we got three or five percent of the people that made it into our funnel to hand over cash...
Or three or five percent of the people who made it to a webinar to sign up for a course…
We're all really excited about that three-five percent who convert... but what about that other 95 percent?
What do they do? There's kind of a thought process that goes:
Those 95 percent of people, they're gonna buy sometime between three months and three years of interacting with you. The question is, are they going to buy from you? Or are they going to buy from somebody else?
CATCHING THE 95 PERCENT
The FunnelHub is about making sure there is a safe landing for that 95 percent of people, (by the way you probably paid for or earned them through your efforts)...
Giving them a place to get back into those funnels and really even cross-pollinate into things that they may not be ready for.
Steve: It's almost like a way to kind of turn them from warm and cold traffic to a little more hot before they re-enter your funnel.
Mike: And to think of it from a strategy that a lot of us look at in terms of our emails…
We hear about soap opera and Seinfeld emails that go out. For a lot of people, these may be the only other way that they're nurturing somebody along to build that relationship.
The FunnelHub is the only other platform, aside from email, that you can truly own.
At the end of the day, you're renting space on Facebook, you're renting time on YouTube.
Instagram is making it, (at the current moment), pretty easy for you to reach out to people... but those things change.
… but what won't change is:
You're going to own your customer database, and you're going to own your FunnelHub. And those are the two places that you can truly use in order to really nurture that 95 percent along.
Steve: Totally, and you know what's funny, everyone watching and listening to this, the thing that has made it so starkly real for me that I need this, is I actually have a lot of products that I sell…
But I know the majority of my audience has no idea what it is that I actually sell because they came in on one thing that was attractive to them…but I've been testing products and processes and things like that.
So, there isn't anything that's pushing them to the next thing... or saying, “By the way, I also have *these* things.”
Mike: Right.
Steve: So when you guys first started talking about this, I was like:
“Oh my gosh, yes, it is the death of a website... but the birth of a FunnelHub.”
THE BIRTH OF A FUNNELHUB
When should somebody start looking to build a FunnelHub?
Mike: What we look at is if you're currently running a successful funnel that's getting you leads and sales every day, that means that you are building a mass of people who are going to be looking for you and going to be needing something like this.
So it's a wide spectrum because you could have just one funnel doing that, but many of us have built several funnels that are producing leads and opportunities.
Signs that I look for:
How you organize that in a FunnelHub is a really, really key place for that.
AJ: - Yeah, I think I'd add to that:
If you're spending a lot of time getting some earned traffic, (appearing in a lot of podcasts, different publications or articles online where people are just being introduced to you)...
...those are other indicators that you probably got the shadow traffic that's looking for your brand online.
Mike: And tell me if you think this sounds familiar?
You get introduced to someone, maybe through a Facebook ad or some kind of social post, and maybe you follow them a bit.
Maybe you opt into their funnel…
And then, one day you decide to look up something you saw them advertise…. you do a search for their name and their product…
And what comes up is their 25,000 dollar high ticket coaching application.
You're kind of brand new into this world, yet the thing they're leading with, (or Google's helping them lead with), is the funnel that's NOT appropriate for you at that point in time.
Steve: Straight to the 25 grand market.
Mike: If we could get those all day long without anything else
Steve: No one would build anything else!
Mike: Totally, but I think we can all relate to that scenario where it's like, this person has this really deep thing, but all I'm looking for is that thing, lead magnet, this thing they promised they could help me do…
... and I can't find it anywhere! Right?
I'm ready to start dipping my toe in the water with you... and work my way towards that one-on-one 25,000 dollar Hawaiian vacation that we're gonna go on.
That's a scenario that I think a lot of us can relate to…
Where the FunnelHub comes in play to make sure it's very clear how your world and business works.
I think we see that happening more and more with a lot of people in this space.
PUBLISH YOUR VALUE LADDER
Russell, being a trailblazer that he is, at Funnel Hacking Live, what did he do? He did two things:
#1: He published his value ladder. First time ever.
Being in the inner circle, he had shared with us a number of months back…
About a year ago, he's like, “Guys, I'm working on my value ladder. I've promised the team that I will never change it for the foreseeable future.”
...'Cause he's one of those guys, (just like a lot of us), that has a lot of good ideas... and he's constantly reorganizing what this means and looks like.
Steve: It took him like four months to get serious on that value ladder too. He changed it a million times.
Mike: Totally.
AJ:- All of us do, right?
Mike: It's a living breathing thing and that's a totally natural thing.
So the lesson isn't that you gotta lock it in place, but you do need to publish it... and you do need to help your people understand how they can move through your world.
They wanna know, they wanna buy, they want an offer, so making that clear is really key.
So we saw him put it on the screens and he published it. He printed 5000 plus versions of this thing, then distributed that to all of us so we could understand:
...and that's really important for a lot of funnel hackers to pay attention to.
If you're not clearly communicating how to buy, people are going to make up their own story about what it is you do.
CLARITY EQUAL CASH
So the FunnelHub steps in place to really clarify what that is for people. So that way, they know how to move through your world.
Steve: Definitely! You know, there's a podcast episode I did a little while called Branding Comes Second. And I think when I said that, people heard, branding doesn't matter.
I was like, no, that's not what I said. It comes second. It comes way down the road…
In fact, there's a great book called Niche Down...
Once you have something that sells, once you have an amazing thing, you really should start looking at branding things.
I'm not throwing branding to the wind and saying it doesn't matter. I'm saying it's NOT what makes the sale…
But after the sale, it starts to matter for second and third sales.
One of the things that Russell taught me was that when people start saying cool things about you on Facebook or other places, start screenshotting it and keep a folder for it.
Start collecting those kinds of things for in the future, so you can go back and already have assets ready for essentially a FunnelHub.
What assets should somebody start collecting if they're not quite ready FunnelHub yet?
What should people be collecting along the way that makes it attractive and easy to build one?
Mike: Well the cool thing is that Russell's kind of outlined a lot of that in Expert Secrets.
AJ: Yeah, absolutely, that plan's already out there about establishing the attractive character, about creating the future-based cause, about creating new opportunities.
So what we find is a lot of people are aware of that, (and they might be communicating a lot that through their funnels), but for somebody that comes to their website... they're not seeing any of that.
They don't get that full picture.
So this is also helping people just do what Russell says and making sure that all of that stuff that they've worked hard on is put in a spot where people can actually see it, feel something for that movement... feel like they're part of that movement... and want to be part of it.
Mike: As you're working through those things and coming up with your:
… these are ALL the pieces that need to be represented there.
That's why this isn't just some fancy, “Oh, Russell killed websites, so let's call it something else,” type move.
Steve: No not at all.
Mike: This is very much about how do you align the important lessons from what we've learned in Expert Secrets and what we do as building an expert business and having that place where all this belongs.
This isn't just for the people who might land on that page and your audience.
It's for you as the expert to really have something to point at.
I know that there have been times where I've written my manifesto and re-wrote it. And I’d have like four or eight versions of it in my Google Drive…
Which one of them is the right one?
Being able to point to my FunnelHub and say:
… that's what takes that nebulous thing and really solidifies it … for not just the audience, but for the expert too.
Steve: Totally! So you're collecting those things along the way.
Again, a value ladder is a marketing idea and there are different products that represent that idea along this FunnelHub...
The FunnelHub is a representation of all the marketing idea that you have that's not just a value ladder... it's a manifesto and the title of liberty that you hold up and wave the flag around with. It's really such an awesome platform to do that on.
This is the unveiling of SteveJLarsen.com!
STEVE J LARSEN: THE ORIGIN STORY
The guy who owned SteveLarsen.com wanted like 30 grand, or whatever... and I was like, ‘There's no way!”
So Stephen Joseph Larsen was available, so I bought it and I built it … and it was terrible!
It's always poorly represented of what I do, and now it’s rebuilt. So do you want to walk us through it?
Mike: Yeah, we'd love to.
AJ: We're super proud of this, man.
Steve: It's incredible! I think I ran around the house a few times when I saw it the first time. Look at that!
Mike: Here we go. First things first, is I think we're going to have to get a picture of you with a proper beard here now.
AJ: Photoshop that in or something.
Steve: Yeah.
Mike: This FunnelHub is really designed to help guide people through the journey that they have with you.
A big part of that is helping them understand the programs and offerings that you have and really providing that piece.
So we've obviously got the events…
These are the things that people want to know about you:
Steve: I'm so excited for people to see this. I guarantee most of them don't even know half that exists.
Mike: How many people listening to this knew you had, how many people knew about FunnelStache? They may have come in another funnel…
Obviously, a hundred percent of the people reading this right now know about Sales Funnel Radio, but there is an opportunity to ascend those people through the other things that you offer.
If you didn't know, Stephen is the offer creation king.
Clarify in your mind that he's the category king of helping someone clarify and launch an offer to the world…. And that's what this FunnelHub is really driving at.
As cool and as amazing as the podcast is, (and the stories that are told), at the end of the day, they're all in service to really building Stephen as the king of the offer creation.
It's NOT about funnels.
We use funnels, yes, but it's about, “How do we leverage the offer?” And that's really what this is doing.
AJ: Yeah, one thing I'd mention on this page is that this is a living breathing thing.
I feel like a lot of people feel like they can't get started with this unless they've got this all planned out and they know everything about their value ladder…
But this can change…
This is electronic. Unlike Russell printed 5,000 copies of his value ladder... this is just a graphic that we can update.
So if you have a smaller value ladder right now, and you know it's going to get bigger, give us what you've got and we can communicate that, and as it grows we can continue to add that later as well.
Steve: Yeah I'll say the thing that I was really kind of relieving to me was when you guys said that it could change. When we first started working together, I was feelin’ I can't ever change it! It's permanent. It's like a book, it will be printed... it cannot stop ever.
AJ: It's NOT a tattoo.
Mike: Absolutely, so one thing that we haven't touched much on is the media and speaking opportunities…
DO YOU HAVE A BLOG?
One thing that I keep on hearing people say as it relates to their own website is they just call it a blog.
A blog is one component of a FunnelHub. It's one piece of that.
And so when you just reduce your web presence to just, “Hey it's where I publish my blog,” ...there's so much more that should be there.
We're not putting that there just for the just for fun, it's actually to help people understand:
So our mission here with the FunnelHub is to help people understand that it's much more...
A FunnelHub is much more than a blog. It's much more than a website. It's really helping to help paint that entire picture that needs to be shown.
It’s even a big part of a traffic strategy and it's a big part of a Dream 100 Strategy. That it's NOT something that just kind of gets left off to the side.
AJ: - Yeah, I have an example of somebody in the Inner Circle, I'm not gonna mention her name, but she had an opportunity to appear on a pretty big podcast... and they went and searched for her name online, and they didn't like what came up. So they pulled that opportunity away from her.
So if she’d have had a FunnelHub that clearly outlined her movement, who she was, had all the credibility indicators that they were looking for to feel comfortable to welcome her on their show... then she would've been able to take advantage of the earned traffic there.
Steve: So awesome. I love that you guys asked me, “What are all the questions that people ask you over and over and over again?”
You put that in there…
There's a FAQ…it's awesome. It helps support everything that I'm doing. Anyway, I'm excited.
Everything is going to have Steve J Larsen in it.
Mike: And kind of like to bring it full circle, what's cool about helping this audience, and coming from the point of view where we have our own expert business, is that we get that the experts are really busy and have a lot on their plate….
The fact that we got Stephen J. Larsen to dedicate some time to work on this project among all the other things you do, is amazing... But really, what we asked you to do is pretty minimal.
Steve: Oh, that's what was shocking to me. There's people who have asked stuff like that, and I'm like, “Ahhhh!”
I was excited to do this, but I think we had like three meetings and you just caught the vision and went and did it. It's rare.
Everybody listening and watching... it's rare to have somebody who clearly understands like FunnelHub/ websites, but then, also funnels and the funnel world and the roles between the two.
That’s rare. I don't see that often. So it was neat. You guys just took it and ran. It was really cool.
Mike: That's something we see as a unique aspect we provide:
It's kind of an “Ah-ha,” and I almost feel guilty... or dumb, for not really thinking of this sooner.
They say there's a reason for everything... you know, some kids take the slow path through school, and that would be me.
Being in the inner circle as long as we have, the timing was just right around this.
AJ: For a long time, we never even talked about that side of the business. We just went to the inner circle asking for advice on our expert business and getting a lot of tips with that.
They didn't even know we had this agency.
So this is like a coming out for us, not only in the inner circle but everybody else in the Funnel Hacking community... like, “Hey, we've got an agency that can help you with all this stuff.”
Steve: Totally awesome. Where can people get information?
I know about half of my audience is already killin' it... and this actually would very much apply to them.
The other half, they're kind of brand new, which is great and “Welcomed,” just know this is also what's in store.
...where should people reach out?
Mike: Absolutely, so the best place to connect with us regarding this is FunnelHub.xyz. Yes, you can get an XYZ domain name!
Steve: I didn't know that.
Mike: And now we know that too…
But on that page, you'll find a lot of information about what we're talking about here today, also a little bit of video preview of Stephen's website.
You guys who are not watching the video, just head over to FunnelHub.xyz ...and you can kind of get the whole story there, as well.
Steve: Yeah, it's cool too, because they took the reins, they went and built it all out, and then I just did a critique... like, “Hey change this vernacular or whatever.”
They're always there, even on a monthly basis, for when I reach back out and say, “Hey, my product's changed... this has changed,” so nothing is cemented. That very much was like, “Ahh…” That helped me a lot.
Mike: As much as I would love to credit for the design or putting this whole thing together, it was absolutely our team here that helped out with that.
Jill one of our project coordinators played a major role in jockeying that. So, what's cool is, even though we're busy running our own expert business, you have access to the team that can make that happen.
Steve: You have a pretty big team too.
Mike: We have a team of 20 people here in Tucson, Arizona. So right outside this door right here, Jill's office is right there.
We've got the team that shows up to work every day to do this kind of stuff. That's something we're really proud of that and really proud of our team.
I hope that you guys can see the labor of love through the FunnelHub that was created for Stephen.
Steve: Totally! You all know that we focus heavily on hiring the who that knows the how.
Entrepreneurship is NOT about you learning how to play EVERY instrument in the orchestra. It's about you being the orchestrator. You're the conductor.
I want you to understand clearly that the who to FunnelHubs is definitely Mike and AJ.
Go to FunnelHub.xyz and check them out. They are the experts, they birthed a lot of this concept. You're getting it right from the horse's mouth.
Guys, thanks so much for being on with this. This was awesome.
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, 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 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.
There are specific differences in value between physical versus digital products...
I want to show you the benefits of both and how I combine physical and digital products to increase my average cart value significantly.
This teaching comes directly from my Live Event, OfferMind
Over the years, I’ve coached thousands of people and gradually, I’ve discovered holes in the status quo of what’s delivered... versus what it actually takes to be successful.
I created OfferMind to fill in all the holes that I've seen from my (kinda unique) position.
The next OfferMind is coming up this fall on September 2nd - 3rd.
Russell is keynoting (which is very very exciting). He’ll be speaking on the last day. I'm gonna try to get a few other heavy hitters as well. It's gonna be awesome!
To join me and Russell, go to OfferMind.com to get your ticket.
HACKING VALUE
I want to show you one of the easiest ways to increase:
...sound good? Let’s do this!
If you look at a lot of the funnels that we create around low-end free plus shipping products…
For example, A BOOK.
A lot of times, a funnel starts with a physical product and then progresses to digital products as the funnel continues.
There's a VERY good reason for this strategy, and that's what I wanna teach you about here because...
It's one of the easiest ways to:
PHYSICAL PRODUCT VS DIGITAL PRODUCTS
There’s a beneficial relationship between physical and digital products, (and to state the obvious) they're not the same and they don't serve the same purpose.
My point is that whether you're in the e-com or the info product space, adding some products from the other side of the fence is one of the fastest ways to get A LOT of extra cash in your pocket…
I’m gonna ask you a few questions here:
Q: What's the benefit of an info product?
A: We did the numbers on my info products, and they have like a 98% margin. The margin is huge. *HUGE* (all caps)
Q: What's the benefit of a physical product?
A: It's tangible. It can be touched. The Perceived Value is High.
Your customer’s mind will be getting the anticipaton of a dopamine hit as soon as they place their order.
Physical products have a gigantic emotional advantage over digital. However, it's the exact opposite when it comes to the margins.
Info Products = very low perceived value.
Why?
The perceived value of an info product is typically low because the customer knows that it just takes an email to fulfill it...and it's probably already made.
So while the perceived value of your info products is inherently low, the margins are huge.
BUNDLE YOUR PRODUCTS
On all of my webinars, I ALWAYS ship an awesome physical product EVEN THOUGH it's mostly a digital thing. When people show up they get a t-shirt. I do the exact same thing at my live event too.
There's a physical thing that they're gonna be able to:
…(whatever it is), actually in existence.
BUT...
My actual profit comes from INFO… because it cost almost nothing to fulfill on.
A lot of times, on free plus shipping offers, we lead with a physical product…
For Example, A Book:
Here’s another question for you…
Q: With all the upsells, what have you noticed?
A: They're mostly all info!
Sometimes we’ll do MP3 players and things like that, but usually NOT. It's usually straight info.
We know that a percentage of people will buy.
After the first “Yes,” the second “Yes” is so easy... waaay easier.
So don't mess around with the first “Yes.”
Get the first “Yes” quickly by selling the high perceived value product that's (a lot of times) physical.
ADDING PERCEIVED VALUE
So a lot of times, in my offers, I’ll add a physical product to increase perceived value.
My Funnel Stash, I ship out a whole bunch of stuff; even though most of it's digital.
For Secret MLM Hacks, I ship out a lot of stuff when people buy … even though it's mostly digital.
That’s a huge hack to the game right there. It’s MASSIVE.
So with your info product, I would bundle up a whole bunch of physical stuff to increase perceived value.
Q: But how do you use info products to increase the perceived value of a physical product?
A: By answering the questions the arise from the purchase of your product.
For Example:
What questions would you have if you bought a whole lot of healthy chocolate? (Besides, Am I kidding myself?”) ;-)
So what if you had a whole bunch of info products that explained that?
And guess what?
You don’t even have to make the info products yourself!
Instead, just interview people who love making fake chocolate recipes and have them create a video for you. It scratches their back and it scratches yours.
You could go interview a few health coaches, and have them add in their stuff... and BAM! $197 upsell that’s just boosted your average cart value like crazy!
You’ve created a high perceived value thing, (not as high as physical), but MASSIVE margins on the backend.
I do that a lot now for that exact reason.
ADDING MORE VALUE
The relationship between physical and digital is something that I'm always looking at when I'm creating offers.
There wasn't a lot of stuff I had to add to my 30 Days offer to make the perceived value go sky high after I added in my OfferMind Event. Why?
A physical event created HUGE perceived value! Waaay more than a 100 bucks the offer cost…
I didn't have to go add in all this other stuff…
...just to boost the perceived value!
I could tell from the comments. People were like; “Oh my gosh, a two-day event!” I couldn't even read them fast enough.
In an hour there were 700 views that had been shared like all over the place. I was like, “Sweet, you all just marketed for me!” Dunso, right!
The product wasn’t made at the time, but it still increased the perceived value.
I'm ALWAYS looking to see what perceived value/ perceived relationships I can leverage.
SELLING WITH BULLET POINTS
Q: How much sales copy is on Amazon?
A: Like, NONE!
There are bullet points, but there's no sales letter on Amazon. Why? Because Perceived value is huge: “I'm gonna hold it. It’s gonna show up in the mail.”
Anticipation is a huge tool.
That two-day free shipping! It’s just short enough to increase anticipation and just long to bother you…. You know it's coming and that ten bucks for the jump rope starts to play with your mind...
You're like, “I can imagine myself. Mm-hmm, I'm Rocky, baby!” And you totally mess with your identity.
You start justifying the purchase to yourself because of who you want to be…
“I'm Steve Larson. I've got a beard, baby. I'm tough!”
We all do that with every product we buy...
And your customer wants that experience when they buy your product too.
So when you look at the relationship between perceived value, price, and actually holding, tasting, and anticipation that it will show up.
Your customer wants the excitement.*GIVE IT TO THEM*
PRODUCT MARKETING JCPENNEY STYLE
JCPenney is one of my favorite case studies ever. It's one of my favorites from College.
The guy who created the Apple store and the genius lab was hired by JCPenney’s.
The Apple store was such a huge hit, and JCPenney’s were like, “Holy crap! What if our store experience was more like what Apple’s got going on?”
So they hired the Apple guy, and said: “Do the same thing over at JCPenney.”
The first thing the guy did was start gutting stuff. He made it look like an Apple store. It didn't look like a JCPenney anymore; it looked like an Apple store.
He said to the customers:
Q: What happened?
A: A fourth of JCPenney's’ stock price plummeted the next quarter. Just, BOOM! SLAM!
Now let me ask you a question…
Q: What did the Apple guy kill?
A: The fun of buying. He got rid of it.
People want the anticipation. They wanna play with the perceived value.
We all do that stuff though...
I buy the products because it represents me... NOT because of the price. We ALL do it... whether or not we wanna admit it or not.
So look at the relationship between:
... these are all mechanisms you can play with and leverage.
You need to ask: “How can I increase the potential average cart value of my funnel by increasing the perceived value?”
THE FIBERFIX FUNNEL
FibreFix and The Harmon Brothers came to Russell and asked for help.
I was like, “No way! Dude that's awesome!” Russell goes: “Yeah, they said if we help them they'll help us, and maybe we can do a viral video.”
… and that’s how the viral video idea started and we got to do a cool project with FiberFix.
FiberFix was selling all of their stuff on Shopify…
So... here’s another question for you…
Q: What's the potential cart value of something on Shopify if it's $7.95?
A: Yeah, $7.95. You can't go up anymore. There's no upsells. Potential cart value is capped at $7.95. It's not a funnel, it's a website. That's why websites suck.
Shopify even says on their own blog that you need a sales funnel if you want to sell a lot. They even name ClickFunnels. It's crazy.
So we left FibreFix on Shopify, but we needed to increase the potential average cart value... A LOT!
So instead of just being able to buy one product…
We increased the potential average cart value up to like $900!
AVERAGE CART VALUE & HUMAN NATURE
Q: Do you know what happens when the option to by more is is there?
A: Some people start to take it!
We started to look at the stats; money coming in, average cart value, cost to acquire, (all that stuff) to see the difference between what was coming in from:
(It think it was a $25 product actually... anyway, the principle is the same.)
Shopify and Amazon couldn't go any higher, but on ClickFunnels the potential cart value was huge.
We looked at the numbers, and, yeah, most people bought 1 product, but there a percentage who bought more:
Wow!
Q: Do you have to pay for and purchase that customer again?
A: No… it’s Pure profit!
That's how you wreck the game!
The same principle is true when you create a core offer:
Adding physical products will drastically increase the perceived value… when you bundle in info products that are easy to fulfill on.
Info products are still huge value... it's just hard for people to imagine it.
That's why we'll put things into a CD... or a massive spread of CDs and product boxes… even if it's not coming packaged like that…. it people start to experience the product in their head.
CHANGE YOUR LIFE… THEN THE WORLD
When you pick which products you’re going to sell be methodical about what you choose... we're talking lifestyle business…
I'm NOT talking change the world business, yet.
I fully intend on changing the world. It took me a long time to say that comfortably. I want to change the world.
In the beginning, it was me figuring out something with enough zeros behind it... where the market expected to spend a lot of money.
So that I didn't have to stand up and say, “Hey, this is gonna be challenging for you to get this. You gotta spend $100 000 for this little supplement pill.”
Internally people are like: “What?”
I don't wanna have to battle that…(and neither should you).
So instead, chose markets where there’s capacity for:
… you’ll make your life easier and your wallet fatter!
BOOM!
Until Next Time - CAPITALIST PIG, BABY!
If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, 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 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.
Not all resources are created equal. What I'll teach today will show you why I don't do certain roles in my business…
When I left my job at ClickFunnels on January 1st, 2018, my goal was a million dollars.
On February 1st, 2019 I hit a million. It took me 13 months straight outta the gate, and I'm really psyched about it.
My goal this year is four million. Holy Crap!
I haven't actively been selling on some of my core products during this past little bit... but the systems I've built have enough pressure in them that we're still doing just about six figures a month.
Right now, you may be thinking, “Steve, you’re crazy, man… why haven’t you been selling?”
However, there’s method in my madness... and it’s because of what I'm gonna talk about now.
LIGHTING A FIRE
I wanna walk through the 4 different costs and the benefits and cons of each of them. There are some costs that I'm willing to pay and ones that I'm not.
When I first started this game, and this is an epic failure... I couldn't feed my wife, (a lot of you guys know the story), so I asked my Dad for cash and thankfully, he said, NO.
I'm glad he said, no... because it put a fire in me to provide. I started running and trying tons of different kinds of businesses, (and trying is the wrong word).
I was actively selling but it wasn't working for me.
Looking back, I’m thankful because otherwise I'd be stuck in businesses that I didn’t love you know. This might sound bit weird, but sometimes you're meant to fail.
Hindsight's 20 20, but it’s hard to feel that way in the middle of it though.
I BORROWED $15,000
One of my first businesses was trading stocks and auctions. I studied the financial markets. I had a ton of fun learning about it…
BUT…
About five-six months in, we found out that the guy teaching us knew that he was teaching was old, outdated strategies.
In my mind, that's very unethical, and so I was like, “Crap! Is this gonna work? Are you serious?”
I borrowed 15 grand I didn't have at the time to join the course.
One of the major strategies we were taught was OPM … or how to leverage other people's money.
That's very sexy as a sales message, but it's also incredibly stressful.
Using other people’s money comes with handcuffs… and you need to be aware of that!
OPM was the BIG thing I was taught in college too.
At college, we were taught that when you get into business it's all about how to write a business plan so that you can get VC funding aka OPM.
The emphasis was on how to actually acquire funding MORE than how to actually make a product that sells... or how to make a sales message that sells.
It's mind-blowing to me. I don't understand why that message is there!
There are several ways to acquire the firepower you need without OPM, and I wanna walk you through the four of them so you can see what your options really are.
You don't have to borrow. You don't have to do a lot of the stuff that's taught out there.
If you don't wanna be handcuffed my friends, this is how you do it!
THE FOUR COSTS
In the funnel game, there are two specific metrics that matter a lot.
Average Cart Value = Meaning how much money comes in with each new customer… (Because of upsells it's usually higher than the price that you're selling your first product at).
Cost To Acquire = When we say average cart value, cost to acquire, or cost per acquisition, we're specifically talking about ad or dollar cost, i.e., “How much money can I spend in orders to go acquire a customer?”
As I've done more of this game, I've realized that on a macro level, there's MORE cost to acquire than just money.
There are actually multiple costs and multiple ways I can spend resources to get what I want.
COST #1: YOUR OWN MONEY
The huge benefit of your own money is speed. Lots and lots of speed. Money is faster than time.
Money is faster than time and I wanna spend money rather than time... so the benefit here is SPEED.
COST #2: OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
This is what I was taught in a lot of these early courses and stuff that I did: “Use and leverage other people's cash.” i.e, OPM
That's a sexy sales message, but it comes with the most ridiculously insane handcuffs. I hate using other people's money.
I can use other people's money if it’s the money that comes from my customers. I can make sales and create a self-liquidating offer that allows my customers to pay for my ads...
But I'm not gonna go borrow money.
The benefit of this of OPM is….
I actually can't think of what the benefit of using other people's money is.
There are very few scenarios, in my mind, where you actually truly need VC funding.
If I'm going to build a stadium or a factory, that makes sense... that kind of stuff, something that has to do with infrastructure, but even then…
I'm gonna buy an office soon, (which I'm really excited about), but I'd rather create the cash flow than use OPM.
I'm sure there are other scenarios out there... but in internet direct response marketing (which is what I’m in and what you do, I'm assuming, if you're reading this)...
I can't think of many scenarios where you even need OPM.
COST #3: YOUR TIME
Time is what most people spend when they don't have any cash flow for a while... and that's okay.
In fact, I was just talking to my wife about this last night.
When I first got hired at ClickFunnels, I wore so many hats.
We didn't have a full-time designer, copywriter, photographer or email writer; there was none of that. It just was Russell and I.
Occasionally, we’d outsource to a few design guys once in a while, but that was it.
It's one of the reasons I got so good.
We did the whole shebang:
A lot of the time, we’d just take our phone out and make the sales videos.
We'd run all the email sequences, create the launch campaign, and the evergreen campaign...
It was a huge amount of work.
Then I’d go and work with the fulfillment houses to set up fulfillment and make that link happen.
Next, I'd work with the person who sourced the physical product. It was insane.
We worked like this for the first year, and then we started bringing on other people and learning how to outsource.
The benefit of spending your time is that you learn like crazy. You kinda become a jack of all trades = A JOAT.
The problem is that jack of all trades don't scale. You just can't.
Right now, there's a lot of people who are building funnels for me so that I can scale my business. Which leads me to the next (and my favorite) kind of cost…
COST #4: YOUR DUPLICATABLE TIME
I don't know of another word to say this other than... OUTSOURCING!
I'm NOT the one building a lot of things for my funnels anymore. It's still my time... but let’s think about it in terms of sales...
For Example:
When I was doing door to door sales, the cost was my time. I was the cost.
I'd walk around, and every single door, I'd say the same script... but one on one. You can't scale that!
It was a fantastic learning environment. I learned a ton of stuff that catapulted me, that I wouldn’t have learned anywhere else..
I really appreciate my door to door and telemarketing experience a lot. BUT I was using my time as the cost.
There's no way to make it bigger.
When I did door to door, I started seeing all these ads on billboards as we drove to our area.
I was going through a bad phase. I was in the back seat of the car on beautiful blue sky day with a few clouds... but I was in a bad mood.
I was looking at these all these billboards, and I remember thinking to myself:
“Man, I going to try to sell people things who are NOT planning on spending money... BUT the people calling these billboards are asking to be sold.”
...that was the first time I ever put an ad on the internet.
I went back to our apartment that day, made an ad and put it on all these free classified ad platforms.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was totally breaking all these laws because with pesticides you have to display your certificate.
I didn't know this, so within a month all these government places are calling, “You gotta turn that off!”
But in the meantime, I made a ton of sales! My phone blew up. People were calling begging to buy:
I'm like, “Well, you should probably get our top package.” They're like, “Okay just come.”
It was very very interesting. I flipped the game, and it was part of me learning how to pitch one to many through ads on the internet. It’s why I stopped doing door to door.
I created duplicatable time where I was pitching multiple people... but I wasn't the one doing it.
MY FAVORITE COSTS
My main role in my business it is NOT to be a type 3 cost individual who swaps their time for money.
Which is why I focus on:
That’s why I’m NOT a closer on the phone. I'm NEVER gonna do that because my times MORE valuable.
I'm not down putting anyone who is in sales, I think it's awesome. You make just a crap ton of money.
Sales are the one area where there's not really much of a ceiling in a company, but no risk either because you're not the entrepreneur.
Sales is the most prestigious thing on the planet in my opinion…
BUT…
As far as being the CEO, it doesn't make sense for me to be the closer at my own company.
It makes more sense for me to do activities that are duplicate to my time.
So I'm gonna make content because I make it once, and guess what:
A lot more work hours are being put into my projects than I have hours in the week.
I expanded my time, my creative systems, created content and things that are evergreen.
You’ll notice that, in a lot of ways, I live my life is that way too.
If I wanna spend time, just shooting the breeze and blowing time just a little bit, I wanna do that outta pure relaxation... NOT on a business task.
GOING EVERGREEN
I love Facebook ads... but it's NOT my role to go learn them because, when I put a Facebook ad up, and after a while, it dies.
I don't like to learn strategies that are NOT a little bit more evergreen in style… meaning they’ll stick around forever.
I'm not willing to spend my time on one-off things.
I don't do SEO stuff. I know a lot of that stuff stays on the internet long term, but man, in a Thanos’ snap... whatever his name is, (that guy off the Avengers)...
BOOM!
The algorithms could change, and all that work I did for SEO has gone.
Here's the main point though…
When I combine duplicatable time with my own money, that's where the magic happens.
My money and Duplicatable Time are the two costs I'm willing to accept in my business. I'm never gonna take on VC funding.
COST #1 + COST #4 = FREEDOM
I've got an idea for a sick show that I'm really excited about. We're gonna try and build the studio, but first, I'm gonna do projects that raise the cash.
I'm NOT gonna borrow money, that would be stupid in my opinion...
...because it comes with the MOST insane handcuffs.
My favorite costs are:
My Money + Duplicatable Time
i.e., Systems, content, and things that live on the internet forever.
I repurpose my content to so many platforms so that if one goes down, there are 21 other platforms with my content is on all over the place.
...that's why I've run the way I have.
UNTIL NEXT TIME - CAPITALIST PIG, BABY!
I left my job in January 2018 to build my million dollar business completely from scratch without any funding or any help... AND I HIT IT, right on February 1, 2019...
Just 13 months later, we actually grossed a million dollars, which is pretty awesome.
Better yet, I got to keep a lot of the cash, just 'cause my costs are honestly NOT very high.
That said, there are several tools, though, I use to automate vital pieces of my business and ClickFunnels is one of them.
ClickFunnels lets me build automated sales machines all over the internet that are non-stop pitching people for me. It's ONLY $97 a month.
Better yet, I don't need to be a coder.
If you're asking yourself, “Stephen, are you giving me a blatant pitch for ClickFunnels right now?” YES, 100%!
I think it's dumb when people don't use ClickFunnels. It makes you MORE and saves you MORE.
Basically, I have the power of an entire tech team in my hand and I want you to have it.
Go grab a free trial of ClickFunnels by going to freecftrial.com.
I want EVERYONE to experience the power of ClickFunnels in their business, so they're letting me hook you up at freecftrial.com.
It wasn't on purpose, but there's a certain style of coaching that I like to live by. It’s certainly effective, but can make some people... not like me, ha!
I've never seen anyone make a million dollars who wasn't trying to.
After coaching thousands of people I’d be an idiot to not see patterns…
When I first started coaching at ClickFunnels everyone thought that I’d be teaching strategy. However, the truth is that getting MOST people to move forward with strategy takes a MASSIVE amount of work on their mindset.
PERSONAL GROWTH MAT TIME
In One Funnel Away Challenge, I'm the guy who yells every day. BOOM! I yell a lot. I’m kinda NO BS. So I want to explain to you the difference between sympathy versus empathy, as it relates to my coaching.
Here are a couple of observations I’ve made from all my hours of coaching:
You have to go through a shift. You have to uninstall crap in your head and reinstall NEW beliefs.
A lot of it comes down to shedding beliefs that we’ve been taught about money either from parents or other authority figures.
Success has MORE to do with your beliefs around money than the patterns or strategies I'm teaching.
I'm trying to prep your brain so when you hear me speak you don’t put up a wall ...or think, “Well that works for Steve ‘cause he's Steve.”
Man, I was NOT Steve three years ago.
Sales Funnel Radio has only been out for three years.
When I started publishing my acceleration just went through the roof. It was NUTS! That's why I keep telling all of you guys to freakin’ publish. It'll change your life.
If you feel yourself having a little negative knee-jerk reaction that you're not quite controlling to anything I say, then check yourself!
Sit back and ask, “Why am I having this reaction?”
FOR EXAMPLE:
If I say, “Hey, please be a capitalist pig and get as rich as possible because it gives you more ability to help people in this world...”
… I know that as I'm saying that I know people often feel this little knee-jerk reaction.
( I know just because I work with tens of thousands of people )
I'm NOT making fun of you. I just want you to be wary of the things that you're telling yourself.
That's the stuff that's keeping you back. That’s the stuff that you have to self-identify and be prepared to question:
“Oh my gosh, I have some false beliefs I didn't realize they were there.”
That's NOT easy to do. I know it's NOT easy.
GET OUTTA YOUR OWN WAY
One of the major reasons why someone will stop their progress in a programs I'm teaching isn’t because what I'm teaching is hard…
*IT’S JUST NEW*
People stop because they hit a personal growth zone that their NOT expecting and it's uncomfortable.
So people start looking around for excuses, “Hey Stephen, this is really good... but it's just a lot of material!”
I'm like:
That's some fiery crap, but I say that stuff in my programs because people need to understand what's going on.
TRUTH
The NEW ways and methods that I teach are NOT any less true because you won’t find them in college textbooks or mainstream books and media.
Truth does not require consensus.
I heard Myron Golden say that recently. It's a great quote.
Truth does not require consensus!
… which is awesome. It's really good news! But it's also really sucky because most of us feel like we're running alone in the game for a while.
It's NOT that what I'm teaching you is not true, but rather it’s a question of how well you’re adhering to it?”
No! Adhering is the wrong word.
I hate constriction. I don't do well with someone trying to constrict or confine me. I'm bad at that.
Adhering is the wrong word, my bad…
How well are you growing? If you measure you against you... NOT somebody else.
Half of getting over false beliefs is just understanding WHAT false beliefs you have. As soon as *YOU* understand that you have a false belief, you can just kind of uninstall it.
Like, “Oh crap that's NOT true! Where did I learn that?
Maybe you’ve always believed that, but is it true? For that person, in that time, in that scenario, it may have been true...
But that blueprint doesn’t have to be YOUR blueprint.
INSTALLING PERSONAL GROWTH
I know what I'm talking about because I've gone through the same process to uninstall my own false beliefs ... AND it’s still going on.
I know which false beliefs I'm hitting now and I'm trying to overcome them. It’s Me Against Me.
Most people are looking to have some kind of logical release from the pressure of moving forward. The positive pressure, growth pressure... the type of pressure you get in the gym.
People make an excuse and they pick it up like a flag. They use it as a banner. That's the theme they use to run out of my world. I see it all the time:
We are all individuals, but our brains still tend to work logically and emotionally in the same kind of way.
So when I say it’s time is build a funnel… all the excuses appear:
Q: But how do I build a funnel?
A: Click Add Funnel!
Q: Where’s the button?
A: It's the BIG orange button in the center at the top of the screen.
Q: But how do I do it?
A: Are you freaking kidding me?
You just want me to tell you that you're NOT a good fit. So you can release yourself from taking action. I will NEVER do that!
In fact, I was telling a good friend last night, I have empathy because I've been through that personal growth. That doesn't stop.
Your personal growth just increases and the problems you're trying to solve change.
EMPATHY VERSUS SYMPATHY
I have empathy for the person who is poor right now and who’s trying to make it work…
Because I've been there.
That was three or four years of my life. It was so hard. It was hard emotionally and hard on my self-esteem.
However, I don't have sympathy for the scenario or that person who is trying to get me to say, “You're probably not a good fit.” So that they can go back to their friends and family and save face by saying:
“Steve said I wasn’t a good fit because of x, y, and z.”
Without the courage to change belief and take action the model work for them … so they're trying to save face. They're trying to save status…
I'm NOT gonna give you that card EVER because I believe you are better than you think you are.
We're all trying to progress and trying to grow, but you’ll only do that if you recognize your false beliefs.
EXCUSES
There are over 500 Two Comma Club Award winners. 500!
How much more social proof does someone need to start taking some freaking action in their life? BUT that's not the problem…
The problem is when someone says:
AThey get into one my programs and pay me for it...
I tell them exactly what to do...
Because it's just a freaking pattern.
It's all a framework. It's all a model. It's all a pattern.
Then I say, “Did you do what I assigned you last week?” They say, “Well, no, I haven't quite done it yet, but I went through the videos.”
So, you're telling me that you:
...but you didn't take action on it?
That screams internal hangup. That screams massive, massive voice going on inside the head.
I'm NOT throwing rocks at the fact that you're having those challenges. EVERYONE experiences these challenges with every new opportunity that we take.
It's part of the demons-in-the-head game that we all get. Not just in entrepreneurship, but in every single thing we do in our lives. I'm NOT throwing rocks at the fact that it happens.
I'm throwing rocks at the fact that people use it as a banner to give up.
Rather than take the opportunity to grow, people step back and say, “Well, Stephen, I really want to be able to do this, but it's not a good time for me.” *BULLCRAP*
No time is a good time. That's freaking garbage. I'm gonna call BS on that.
I have empathy. No sympathy though. I have NO sympathy. I'm not gonna sit back and say, “Oh, you're probably right.” That's NOT a good coach.
I'm not here to make you feel good. I'm not here to make you feel better. I'm here to make YOU better. That's the role that I serve.
It's not for me to be like this, “Oh, it's okay. Let me care about your emotions more than your output.”
I don't care about effort. I care about outcomes.
OUTCOME MODE
My Content Team is so freaking awesome. Not one of them will step back and say,
“Well, Stephen, I tried to get the episode out on time, but I tried but just didn't cause Glee was on.”
You gotta treat this as a business.
I don't pay for effort. No one does. That's just freaking capitalism, baby.
My content team is so freaking awesome because they all know that.
The funnel building team that I've built all know that I'm paying for outcomes, NOT effort.
The same is true for you and your growth, but most people don't go there.
I'm trying to help people self-identify when they are in effort mode, which is like pansy-zone... and when they are in outcome mode, which is like:
“I know it might hurt because I need to grow, but I'm willing to feel a little pain in order to get the outcome in myself, and the change that myself requires to have a successful business.”
Sometimes people get on my coaching calls because they want to feel the semblance of growth and progression.
They keep getting on the calls and they say, “I got on the call today. I feel momentum. I'm doing it.”
*Even though they haven't done ANYTHING*
You getting this? … just trial closing ya ;-)
GETTING HONEST
People have a hard time until they get a little tough with themselves. Not that you have to be tough... just HONEST.
When people get honest with themselves about:
Until someone actually sees and identifies their own false beliefs and BS, it’s tough.
“Stephen, I don't have my first follow-up yet. I just don't have any time.”
I ask them to do a time study and it turns out they’re watching freakin’ four hours of Netflix a day! Are you kidding me?
I’ve got no sympathy. I won't grant you any. I got empathy because I've been there. No sympathy though, I'm never going to give someone that privilege.
I'm never going to give someone the release or the license of this is what you need to be doing.
EXCUSES
If you’re feeling kinda twingy in the brain or the heart... and you're like,“GAH!”
I'm NOT trying to make anyone mad.
I'm trying to help you self-identify where your false beliefs about this game are?
Don't you dare throw the ‘right now’ and ‘time thing’ at me! I hate that one. It drives me up the freaking wall.
Are you serious? Are you kidding me? I was full-time in the army. Full-time college. Married. Kids...
I had to learn how to learn faster in college so I could squeeze out two-three hours of funnel building time a day.
I hardly slept for a little while. Was it worth it? You better freakin’ believe it. Yes!
I don't do that now. I believe in hustle but not like 24/7 hustle. Sorry, Gary V.
HUSTLE AND HARVEST
There's a time and season for everything. I call it the hustle and harvest phase
I'm gonna hustle and build the thing… because time is valuable. I'm gonna build my thing quickly, and I'm gonna hustle.
I'm going to be willing and open to experience pain in order to get it done, personally, on an internal believe level…
I’m just NOT gonna wear not sleeping for three days as a badge of honor, #funnelhacker. I think that's crap.
There are times and seasons for funnel hacking at massive hustle speed where you don't sleep. I get that, but…
I Hustle and then I Harvest.
In the harvest phase, I'm building a lot of systems. I used to call it Build and Harvest, but there’s nice alliteration to Hustle and Harvest...
So now it's Hustle and Harvest. Hustle, Harvest, Hustle, Harvest.
I don't always run hard.
Man, sometimes I'll sit back and watch The Office for the fourth time... and that’s ok.
I'm NOT trying to ALWAYS be on 100% output.
EFFORT & RELAXATION
I've had multiple people ask me, “Stephen, do you ever take a break?” I'm like, “Yeah.”
I took a huge break last night. It was awesome. It was so nice. It was so cool. I didn't do anything. I was so lazy.
When I prepared my speech and slides for Funnel Hacking Live I did a combination of massive concentrated effort mixed with massive, aggressive relaxation.
BUT it's the hustle phase that I'm trying to get people into with the One Funnel Away , the Two Comma Club X, and all of my programs.
I'm trying to get people to identify in themselves what they are deciding to hold themselves back with because they don't want to experience growth.
Empathy. Not Sympathy.
I CHALLENGE YOU
Know before you go I want to challenge you, (don’t just read this and take no action)...
I challenge you to write just the one false belief you know you've been using a banner to not move forward in your life. I challenge you to do that.
You get bonus points for this one if you decide to post about it. Do some kind of publishing about it. Like, “Hey, look, I realized I've identified I want this but….”
It's not vulnerability. It's not weakness. It's Truth.
Tell the truth... and tell everybody:
“I've been wanting to go do this, but I haven’t done it in my life because I've had a hard time with these beliefs and overcoming them... but I know they're false.”
Let everyone know that's what you’re working on and your plan to get over it. I promise you're gonna have an army of people who are excited for you and want to help you overcome.
I challenge you to identify what's been holding you back.
BOOM! 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 Day1 - 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.
Everything you see in me now is PRACTICED…
I want to tell you a little bit about my mindset... and how I installed some of the habits of successful people that I WASN’T born with myself…
I’m gonna tell you why I really am the most UNLIKELY SUCCESS… and how YOU can literally change YOUR brain and rewire yourself for success!
ANNIE GRACE
I recently went on yacht trip to a little island called Bimini...
I've never seen water so clear and still. There were no waves and the ocean was like glass.
One of the things that I wanted to share with you today is something that I learned during that trip from an amazing lady called Annie Grace.
If you don't know who Annie Grace is, she has an entire business teaching people how to break the habits of being an alcoholic.
The level and depth that she’s studied the way the brain works to truly be effective in helping people is incredible.
She has a MASSIVE following. Annie Grace is truly impressive.
I want to walk you through some of the things that she taught while we were on the island because there are a lot of ties with how I've tried to behave…
It’s fascinating to know WHY thing worked as well as they have, and how you can build a new brain that supports your success.
I'm gonna to go over what I learned from Annie, and then tell you why I want to share this with you…
THOUGHTS ARE LIGHT.
#1: Thoughts are things.
The source of thought and thoughts are things.
#2: Thoughts are literally electricity with protein.
The thought itself is like a blast of electricity in the brain that travels really, really fast. Thoughts are literally light (which is fascinating in itself).
#3: Proteins build structures around your brain to guide the light.
So when you have thoughts... and when you’re experiencing a new “A-ha,” or whatever... there are little lightning bolts shooting around in your head.
#4: The reason we keep having the same thought is that proteins build pathways in our brain that channel the light.
#5: 80% of what we thought about yesterday will be what we think about today.
#6: Repeated thoughts build protein on protein on protein… and this is literally what establishes habit.
So if you have a habit or reoccurring thought… if you're thinking the same way over and over again, the reason is that you have a build up of protein that’s occurred over time which guides the light (meaning your thoughts) in your head.
#7: These proteins actually guide your thoughts inside of your head.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to this…
For Example:
If you’ve grown up in a family or culture were those you're hanging around continually spur the same negative thought.. or continually tell you, “No, you're never going to do this,” then you’ll have a negative reoccurring thought pattern to deal with.
*THIS* is the reason why you really are the average of the top five people that you hang around with.
If I want different thoughts, I need a different environment to help you build protein on protein to help you channel the new thoughts in your head.
#8: The MORE protein that’s have built up in certain areas the easier those thoughts are to have and keep.
(Seriously, how interesting is this! This is really fascinating.)
#9: Habits are literally lots of proteins paths that make it easy for the light to travel.
So if you want different habits of thought… you need to build up different parts of your brain to make it easy for the light to easily travel.
Here’s an example Annie used (this made me laugh), she said:
“If you keep having the same thoughts, or you develop a skill set... the amount of time the light has spent spinning around in your head means that you’ll have MORE proteins built on top of each other.
You physically have a larger part of the brain for those thoughts…
For example, The part of Stephen Larsen's brain on offer creation is huge... it’s massive!
He has a huge bulging area where offer creation exists in his brain.”
I was like, "Oh!"
I thought it was funny.
#10: What part of your brain is biggest indicate your biggest habits.
(How cool is that?!)
#11: Whatever you think about MOST will grow.
This was one of the major things that Annie taught about... You can physically change your brain.
Your brain is like a stamp of what you actually thinking about.
Her argument was being happy, being unhappy... different things in our life are a result of patterned thinking.
#12: You can completely rewire the brain starting in four days, and be completely rewired in as fast as 21 days.
The first step to break and rebuild the thoughts inside of our head is to gain awareness of the fact that we have a thought that we don't want.
#13: To start rewiring your brain you need to get clarity on why that thought may be wrong and then flip it. Annie calls this THE A.C.T:
STEPHEN, HOW DO YOU…?
Anytime somebody asks me what I do I just say, "Oh, I sell stuff on the internet," because I don't want to explain. (I should probably come up with another way to say that.)
But when I'm hanging around people who know what I do and geek out with me, a recurring theme I'm beginning to be asked is:
"Stephen you seem to move with such ease. You set a goal, you see where you want to go, and then you just do it. You just go for it."
This has been commented on multiple times, especially in the last little bit. And I'm like, "Well, yeah."
That's my answer.
Why, if I know what I want, would I sit back and NOT move towards it?
But that question is becoming a recurring theme, so I want to peel back the curtain a little bit to help you understand why I’m able to move that way.
EVERYTHING IS PRACTICED
I've been in this game now for almost eight years. I didn't start publishing until about four years ago...
And when I started, I sucked at it super bad. I was absolutely terrible at it (like, seriously).
On the Sales Funnel Radio YouTube channel you can go back and watch some of the earlier videos. I haven’t deleted them, but I want to. They're that bad.
I’d try to go live on Periscope…
I’d wait for people to show up, but I felt I had to fill the time, so I would just start talking. I didn't even know what the hell I was talking about.
I’m 100% the least likely success story.
I am the exact opposite person today than I was back then. And I didn't start changing without a lot of just freakin' grit.
What I'm trying to help you understand is that EVERYTHING that you see and EVERYTHING that I've done has been a result of will.
It has not been an accident.
There are little hacks and little tiny, I don't want to say tricks, but there are ways to speed up the process...
BUT… there are very few real shortcuts.
Publishing consistently is a shortcut for making up for funnel building skills or lack thereof... but there are NOT many other real shortcuts to development.
BUSINESS GROWTH & PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
While we were driving back from the yacht trip, (we came back into the port of Miami) … I was in the same Uber with Brent Coppieters and Natalie Hodson.
Natalie and I were talking, (and it was really nice of her), she said, “Stephen, it's crazy how much you've just blown up in the last year and a half.”
I can't remember exactly what she asked, but I told her that I’d realized that:
My business does not grow beyond my personal level.
I've danced between marketing and systems, marketing and systems.
I have these spurts where just tons of a lot of cash comes in, but then it’ll out-do my systems, and I'm like, “Crap! I've got to pull back and go build more systems.”
This has been true for my business overall and my own personality/ capacity.
There’s NOT a chance I could actually be performing the way I am even four years ago.
*I DIDN’T QUALIFY* My mindset wasn’t up to the challenge.
One of the things that I've really been careful to do in this last little bit is to become conscious of how I'm thinking…
So I just want to give you a few little tips, or pieces of advice (hope that's okay)... on the things that I've done that have made a lot of difference to how I think.
...Because (going back to Annie Grace), if your brain’s literally getting fatter in the areas you think about most... that's something to be conscious about!
That’s great news! but there’s also some bad news...
BREAKING PATTERNS
# The bad news might be that you have some really fat parts of your brain filled with unhelpful patterns that you'll have to break:
(We've all done that stuff, right!)
So we need to become cognizant of the beliefs inside of our head.
The negative could be that we have learned things in our lives that are NOT actually true.
We believe them because we’ve got a crap ton of proteins built up that make it easy for the thought to spin that story inside your head over and over again.
# The Positive of all of this (and Annie taught this), is that you can have a complete rewiring in 21 days. That's insane!
REGENERATE YOUR BRAIN
The body regenerates every cell every three months, (or something like that…)
You physically can become an entirely new human being every three months.
So if you're like, “Oh, my gosh, I'm so tired of this in my life,” or being broke... or having scarcity mentality... or being freakishly negative all the time.
(That is draining to me. I hate being around people like that.)
BUT…
if you're tired of being, whatever it is…. You can change it!
That's the point of this episode.
So my answer to all these people keep walking up saying, "Stephen, how do you move so freely?"
*IT’S PRACTICED*
There's the answer…
There's plenty of times, I wake up and I'm like:
“I don't freakin’ want to do what I'm supposed to do today.”
That happens a lot. A lot. A lot. But I get up.
I use my environment as a place to get me in state. There's no person out there who wants to be doing what they are 24/7.
A CALLOUSED MIND
One of my favorite guys I'm listening to a lot is David Goggins. If you’re offended by swearing don't listen to him. He swears a ton, but I'm a huge fan of his mentality.
He runs these crazy ultra marathons.
I was listening to an interview when someone said to him, "Why do you run if you hate it so much?" And he's said something like:
"What are you talking about? I run because I'm preparing for life. I'm not running to run. I'm running because it's hard and I hate it. I'm running because I'm developing a calloused mind."
I believe everything single thing he's saying about that. That's exactly how I've done it. There's no other way.
MINDSET
When I started doing the Two Comma Club X Program, the Original 2 Comma Club Program, the One Funnel Away... all my other programs, I thought I would be teaching marketing principles…
More often than not, I don't even get to the marketing principles, strategies and cool tactics... because people can't handle them. I can't even get inside someone's business and do what I know will work... because I'm fighting their brains.
I've got to break those proteins down... and I've got to do it faster than 4 - 21 days.
So I've gotten really good at breaking and rebuilding people's beliefs *QUICKLY* ...or at least satiating them enough to try and install a new belief in their brain.
So I'm trying to give you a few little tips and tricks on how I've done this. Tricks is a stupid phrase. I shouldn’t say tricks. There are no tricks…
There's the path and your speed on it. That's it. There are NOT really any shortcuts.
BORROW THE LIGHT
You've got a few options:
Understand that…
#1: If you're having a hard time believing that any of this works... or believing you could do it… or you don't make any money with it, or whatever...
Understand that you DON’T have to be your own source of light for a while.
If you're like, “I have a hard time even thinking like that…” Don't try and conjure it from your own head then. Borrow it.
I've borrowed light and motivation from other people when:
I listen to a ton of motivational videos. I listen to a ton of comedy. I'm trying to isolate my brain and borrow light, ideas, thoughts, and positivity.
“I really could do this because that person has and that person has, and that person has... If I haven't achieved my goal it means I'm the variable, NOT the idea.”
You understand?
BUILDING MIND MUSCLE
I have a playlist on YouTube. I think it's public. Anyone can listen to it. It's called Mind Muscle.
When Annie Grace started talking about this, I was like, “That's how I think about it.” It's so true.
Mind Muscle: I'm literally trying to build up areas of my brain to have consistent thoughts about... whatever. Positive thoughts, new ideas, new things…
That's how I can look at a funnel, or at a business, and just have tons of ideas on how to could solve any problem…
I have a lot of logged hours.
Waaay more than 21 days where I've constantly repeated thoughts trying to build up (now I know) those proteins in my head.
So #1: What I'm trying to help you understand is that if you have a hard time being positive...
(Not that you have to be this freakin' cheery fairy all the time, you know what I mean? I'm NOT positive all the time. I'm not.)
BUT… if you have a hard time believing:
STOP acting like you're the ONLY source of the light and the ideas that can install those new beliefs in your head. *YOU’RE NOT*
INSTALLING NEW BELIEFS
Go find a ton of playlists or videos (or whatever) on YouTube. Motivational stuff that’s really inspiring to you.
Inspiration that makes you feel like:
“Man, I wanna take over the world, baby. What's up? Yeah!”
Save that, and then listen to it A LOT
Multiple times I’ve laid on the very floor with my phone above my head thinking about and listening to motivational stuff when I can't conjure it on my own.
Every single influencer, every single leader has a support system, and they’ll lean back on it when they're NOT feeling strong enough.
Just understand that.
I think there's this mentality sometimes like, “Stephen's got it all together. Russell's got it all together. All these people who are big, they've got it all together.”
That’s so freaking NOT true. That is terrible crap. That is a HUGE LIE. I'm begging you NOT to believe it.
What we've all gotten good at is knowing how to get into state.
WHEN LIFE’S NOT PERFECT
I'll tell you, this morning I'm tired, man. I'm tired. There's a huge to-do list on my desk. It's MASSIVE. In the past, that would stress me out and I would seek dopamine releases and distractions.
I’d watch excessive TV, play video games, or seek the feel-good of dopamine, the chemical distraction.
I’d try and get myself distracted and feeling good instead of focusing on that massive list.
This is something I've fought. I had to get over that. There's a huge to-do list on my desk. I mean it's absolutely massive.
There's a lot of stuff on my plate right now; there's a lot and it's big, big projects.
...And when I have a lot of creativity-based things on my head, that's a heavy weight.
However, I've got good at taking those things, breaking them down and belittling the weight. I think, “Ah, it's not that big of a deal.”
Really it’s a HUGE. Freaking huge. It's a big deal.
I have a lot of pressure on my noggin right now, but the way I handle it is practiced, my friends.
I could not have handled this amount of pressure even two years ago... even a year ago. It is practiced. It is practiced.
There are protein build up in my head that shows me how to act in my various roles:
I'm just trying to help you guys understand that there is NOT a freaking soul on this planet that wakes up one day and says, "I got it all together!"
“Stephen, how do you have all these pieces together?” I don't! I just have more of it together than you do (if you're asking me that question).
So what I do is I build up a support system…
Find your inspiration outside of you. Know what inspires you. So that when you're NOT feeling it, you can plug into that. Get your little solar charge... and move on.
So, there are a few things that I do to do that:
I think it was Abraham Lincoln that said, "With all the pressures of my life, if I did not laugh, I would surely die."
I listen to A LOT of comedy, I don't think I've told you that before... because if I didn’t laugh I would surely die.
I'm trying to change the world, but you don't get it without really wanting it.
I'm trying to take something that I have that's very unique. That no one else has ever done, and go and change lives with it. And it’s working!
But you're not going to be successful without really, really wanting it. And I do, and so I'm gonna get it.
So what I want you to understand is:
Something that I learned from the army:
Fake motivation is still REAL motivation.
And so when I step out and I'm like, “Man, I'm ready to rock the day,” I'm not lying to myself.
I'll have a little Debbie Downer moment where I'm going to experience my true emotions as it is:
“I don't want to do what I'm doing right now.”
I'll have a little pity party for two-three minutes, and then I'll go through the things that help me get back in state.
It's a practiced system that I've developed over the past eight years.
I wasn't really cognizant of it until about four years ago. I really wish I had someone to guide me back in the day. I just didn't.
I hope that you understand what I'm talking about here...
You can literally change the makeup of your brain, but it doesn't start without your recognition of what you don't like about how you think.
HOW TO TALK YOURSELF INTO FALSE BELIEFS
One of the biggest beliefs I hear from people is, "Stephen, I have shiny object syndrome."
Believing that you have that problem is literally self-manifesting the fact that you have it.
I don't have shiny object syndrome, but I do suffer from insatiable curiosity… and I know that about myself. I'm not going to try and change that…
So I go into the playground zone... and then I get hyper-focused. I say, “NO” to pretty much everything that's out there. That is practiced. I used to say,“YES” to everything.
I equated the number of opportunities on my desk with success and I got nothing done.
That was a very painful period of me.
I knew I had the power to make money, but I wasn't because I couldn't focus.
I'm just trying to help you guys understand that there's no guru out there, no influencer, no one who has it all together... Each successful person you see had to build these habits in their brain.
Marketing itself is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a sale. I'm literally rewiring brains with what I do... and I've gotten good at it. But the same is true for our own brains as we move forward.
A NEW YOU?
If you're willing to shift up, change, break yourself a little bit, and go through some pain by thinking differently... literally, in a very short amount of time, you can be a new you.
A new life requires a new you!
If you're like, "I want that... but I've never had it before," prepare to change, my friend.
Get real about it.
Be open about the fact that you're freaked out. Name it. There's nothing wrong with that. You should be honest with yourself. Don't act like your pains NOT there...
Don't wallow in the pain. Come up with an attack plan. Figure out a way.
Understand that a lot of successful people, just know how to recharge and replug when things get though... and that's it. That's the secret.
I keep things simple with the thought that:
What I get done today will determine where I am tomorrow.
If I don't get the things I need to get done, then it’s like I’ve done nothing that day.
If I'm building a project, what I get done today will determine where I am tomorrow...
So, I better freaking build and do the things that create a real foundation... and not just fluffy dumb work.
I only work on those things that I can build upon and progress day by day.
So understand:
There are over 500 2 Comma Club Awards now. 500 people have made a million dollars. What other proof do you freaking need, right?
For most of them, this is the first time they’ve ever done anything really successful. It's not like they all came these successful backgrounds.
I just laugh every time someones like, "You always have it together." Yeah, that's not true. That's not true for anybody.
BOOM!
Just try to tell me you didn't like that.
Hey, whoever controls content controls the game. Want to interview me, or get interviewed yourself?
Grab a time now at stevejlarsen.com.
HOW NOT TO DIE BEHIND A DESK
Being an entrepreneur is amazing. It's very sexy and really cool... but it's also the place where you're gonna feel MOST exhausted!
I have been hustling my face off for years, and I don't want to die behind a desk.
So, I want to show you how being able to do a dance between the entrepreneurial mindset and that of a CEO, is the ONLY way I've seen to enable you to create the freedom that most of us crave when we start the entrepreneur’s journey.
The CEO and entrepreneur are NOT the same thing. Just like a business owner is NOT the same thing as the CEO.
There's a time and a place for both roles, but they're very different.
And I wanna talk to you a little bit more about what I mean by that…
LOOKING FOR PATTERNS
I was on a yacht heading towards the Bahamas with some of the ClickFunnels crew (two weeks before Funnel Hacking Live) when I decided to share this concept with you…
I'd NEVER been on a yacht in my entire life.
In fact, in the last six months, I've done more things than my previous thirty years combined...
And I was able to sit back and think about what’s made all the difference in the last little bit of my journey...
I used to squeeze every second out of every day to build my product. I woke up super freaking early for years.
I'm the eight-year overnight success story. I've pushed hard. I've been hustling my face off for years.
I'm the capitalist pig, baby, but I didn't start that way.
I had my own money barriers to overcome. I had a lot of ideas that were just not correct.
I'm very introspective. I love watching patterns and I wanted to see what patterns made all the difference… and one thing that I realized was…
A lot of what causes wealth is NOT taught.
To become successful, I had to uninstall crap in my head and reinstall different software than what I was raised with.
That's no knock against my parents, my heritage, or the way I was raised.
HOWEVER…
If you wanna learn how to make money make sure the person you're taking advice from is rich. You know what I'm saying?
If someone tells you, "You'll make more money doing this..."
If they're poor... DON’T LISTEN!
STOP listening to advice from other people who aren't rich or, who haven’t already attained what you're going for.
I'm not gonna let someone who's overweight tell me how to lose weight.
I've been very careful on who to listen to and who to purposefully block out of my mind.
I attribute more of my success to this one act than a lot of the other strategies I teach you guys on Sales Funnel Radio. Which is weird, man.
But I gotta be honest with you, I would NOT have believed that myself if someone else said that to me even three or four years ago.
I'd have thought, “Oh, it's because he's had exposure with Russell...”
Looking back, I realize, crap!
If someone's a really good cook, but I'm not trying to be, I'm not gonna listen when they tell me how to make money...
MAKING A MILLION
I’ve recently hit a million dollars.
Not in a single funnel so it's NOT officially the Two Comma Club.
But my business has only been around officially for 14 months. So to make a million bucks out the gate. That's NOT normal.
In my mind, a million dollars is NOT wealthy. 10 million dollars, (in my opinion), is NOT wealthy...
But it's not a bad shot coming out of the gate.
One of the things that’s helped me like crazy is that once I have a product that sells, I STOP trying to be an entrepreneur, and I start, as fast as possible, to become a CEO.
Understanding the massive difference between a business owner, a CEO, and an entrepreneur has helped.
I didn't that would be a defining concept for me... (and it doesn't mean it will be for you), but for me, it’s been MASSIVE.
WHAT’S AN ENTREPRENEUR?
Q: Would you consider a McDonald's franchise owner an entrepreneur?
A: I don't.
Q: What are they entrepreneuring? #madeupword
A: They're NOT entrepreneuring ANYTHING!
They're a business owner.
Q: So what is a business?
A: A business is a series of systems that:
A business is just a set of systems, that's all it is. And if you don't have any systems, YOU ’RE the business.
SPINNING YOUR WHEELS
When you're an entrepreneur, typically you DON’T have a lot of systems in place... and it's one of the reasons why you might sometimes feel like you’re spinning your wheels.
I'm very good at being an entrepreneur...
BUT what I'm being tested on right now, is my ability to be a CEO.
A CEO is a business owner who's got a little bit of flexibility in how he moves.
I'm on my second product in the last 13 months and it’s working very well...
So I want to see how fast I can:
I want to go from entrepreneur to CEO as fast as possible.
....And it's going really, really well, but it's A LOT of work.
AVOID THIS PITFALL!
One of the major things that I've noticed that’ll screw people up is making new products one after the other. This works really well if you already have a business...
If you already have the systems in place.
If you DON’T, my friends, that is very challenging because YOU are the business.
If you're treating fulfillment, each customer inquiry, each support ticket, if each sale, each lead, differently…
YOU DON’T HAVE A BUSINESS (but you do have a bucket load of stress)!
So here’s what I do to avoid this problem:
It's all the things that the business needs to make sure I'm NOT the one fulfilling on it.
For Example:
My first product that I left my job to create, I honestly haven't touched that side of the business for, like, seven months. It's been a long time…
But it's still making a lot of money!
Check this out…
We put two thousand dollars in ads just on a test a little bit ago. We brought in 18 grand from it.
We're putting a dollar in and getting nine dollars out.
So crazy! Absolutely nuts.
I'm excited just to scale, scale, scale, scale, scale as that adds up.
But the point is…
If you don't have systems, you don't have a business.
If you’re making new products consistently, it's gonna be very challenging for you to stop for a moment and build systems… and things will probably break!
It's a dance between marketing and systems. That's all it is...
I do a whole bunch of marketing and break a lot of beliefs, get a lot of people to me, and start selling like crazy…
But then, when I notice that my revenue starts to outdo my systems (this kinda sucks, but I haven't found another way around it yet)...
I voluntarily pull back my revenue just a little bit so that I can go turn up my systems to allow my marketing to go further the next time.
It's like this teeter-totter back and forth going higher and higher and higher.
I haven't found another way besides that.
DROPPING GOLDEN NUGGETS
The things that have made all the difference for me are:
My gosh, it takes so much time, so much effort to create a following. It takes a lot of time to create a following.
Leveraging existing followings is the easiest.
Every time I see Russell Brunson, myself or Dana Derricks talk about the Dream 100, sometimes I will see people’s eyes roll.
You are missing the greatest hack of the game ever.
You could spend years, tons of money, lots of time, lots of effort, energy, mental cognitive shelf space, to build your own following (and you should!)
...But if that's your ONLY strategy... it takes so freakin' long!
I wish someone had walked up to me and said, "Stephen, what if you just ask all of the people who have a little bit more influence than you do to be joint on a product together with you...What if that's what you did?”
That would have been super cool!
A huge percentage of them would probably have said, YES!
I would have leveraged all their existing following, and I would have crowd created a product with people who already had a following... catapulting me to their level.
I wish that someone had said that... but that's ALL I do now.
Watch what I'm doing in the next, especially like six months. I am doing very much that.
I am leveraging the followings of other people.
Not in a negative way, but in a way that gives a lot of tons of kudos, lots of value back to the actual big person.
Holy crap, that's so much easier. I wish all my products had started that way.
Anyway, hopefully, that makes sense to you.
As FAST as possible:
If you’re constantly having to build new products just to keep the cash flow coming in. That sucks!
I’m realizing that getting to 10 million dollars is actually NOT that crazy.
I think it's gonna happen way faster than even I'm thinking because that's what I'm focusing on.
I've got something that's awesome, it's extremely unique, no one else is doing it. Which is super cool. I can go on and leverage the followings of other people and create mine at the same time. Makes the game way easier.
I know I spat it out a lot there, but my brain has been spinning on:
It's NOT just that I have a following.
There’s something that I'm doing here because I'm launching things in areas where I DON’T have a following.
Those are the questions I've been asking myself recently. So I'm gonna be spouting off a few of those answers and observations here as I keep going forward.
I just need you to understand…
Do NOT listen to the money advice of those who are poor!
Capitalist Pig, Baby, okay!
There's a transition back and forth that you need to have, otherwise, you're gonna stay in a launch style business where you’re exhausted and you're dead.
Building a product, building offer, all that stuff matters, but understanding your role in the game, and staying clear on that helps like crazy.
After you have built a product, you move from entrepreneur to CEO:
And therein, my friends, lies the very fast cash, and that's the thing that I've realized in the past little bit here.
I’ve made way more money on this trip than if I was staying behind my desk because of systems because I treat myself like a CEO now.
I have 20 people who are working for me now.
One full-time employee, (well, two including myself)... and then 18 other people and contractors who are filling roles who are a part of existing systems that I’ve built so I DON’T have to be an entrepreneur with a launch business.
I'm not in the launch business. I'm in a real business. A real company that I'm building.
Don't just build products, build companies. Build systems. Be a CEO.
That's the biggest thing I realized in the past little bit here watching all these people, especially at the 10X Growth Con.
So…
And that, my friends, is what's gonna be the major game changer for YOU.
I'm very good at is building sales messages, offers, and funnels, that go crush it.
What I'm learning now is how to build systems and that's where my weakness is.
I've been building systems which let me:
...We've systemized like crazy.
Dude, my content machine is so awesome. It's so tight...
I know the quality of my content and what it's gonna be. I'm just super stoked about it.
LIFE WAS LOOK ROSEY UNTIL…
I found that I’d forgot to pack shorts for my trip to the Bahamas. *That Sucks* I'm sweating my face off, man. Anyway, whatever…
Build actual companies, NOT just cool products.
BOOM!
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.
I frequently get interviewed by new content creators. The purpose of this episode is that EVERYTHING I show you is completely learnable and doable by YOU…
Every Tuesday, I leave my morning open to go on anyone's show.
So, once a week, I just wake up, get ready, and check my calendar to see who's scheduled time for me to get on their show.
I typically do two-three interviews every Tuesday, and I don't even care who with.
It helps me:
My calendar is pretty packed up, but if you want to book a slot, then go to interviewsteve.com.
Recently, I had an amazing person set up a time with me. It was her first EVER show… and she just jumped in and asked me the MOST amazing questions.
THE POWER OF PUBLISHING
If you've listened to my podcasts at all and you've NEVER heard me say, “Everyone should publish!” I think you're probably lying.
I say that all the time, and it's something that’s changed my life.
I am massively convinced that if you want to increase your income, especially on the internet...
The checklist is very simple:
Step number one: Create some content
Step number two: Keep offering people stuff
Step number three: Keep getting attention
Step number four: ...I really don't know whatever the steps are beyond that…. It's super simple, okay?
Step number five: Just go back to number one.
Truly, that's it!
On a daily basis:
The thing that always makes me MOST pumped is when somebody who’s just starting out sets up a time for me to get on their show.
Currently, I’m a 2 Comma Club X Coach and a One Funnel Away Coach; I'm the guy that yells at everybody every day!
I also have my own program, Offer Lab, I have another program in the MLM space. I spend a lot of time coaching...
A constant theme that I push in EVERYTHING I do is that EVERYONE NEEDS TO PUBLISH.
I can tell who’s MOST likely to have a successful funnel by whether or not they start publishing.
Publishing is the safety net. It's the parachute for all the stuff.
Frankly, you can stop listening to 80% of the tactics I teach you and just publish consistently, then come back to me in a year... and tell me that your life's not different! Seriously, it's that powerful.
HOW TO START PUBLISHING
I’m ALWAYS really pumped whenever somebody who's brand new comes on to interview me....
Because they’re just doin’ it! #success
Recently, an amazing lady called Angela Clark jumped in and booked me for the first episode of her show.
She’s created a podcast called Side Hustle Strategies, (which I think is a great name).
Now, I wanna turn your attention to two things.
Not all interviewers are good, and she was very, very good. It’s one of my favorites interviews that I've done recently.
When we were done, I asked, “Do you mind if share this on Sales Funnel Radio?” She said, “Yes, absolutely. Go for it.”
I want you to see how awesome it is that Angela is just doin' it. I want to show you that YOU can do it too!
About half the time, the person interviewing me is a newbie. Whether it’s for a new show, a blog, or whatever... I thought it'd be kinda cool capture one of 'em, toss it out here.
MY PUBLISHING STRATEGY
Now, I wouldn’t be Steve Larsen if there wasn’t a strategy underneath my Tuesday morning interview sessions ;-)
Here's what I'm getting at…
If you have a hard time creating content or teaching what you do, stop asking yourself for answers.
Don't let EVERYTHING come from your own head. Instead, get someone to ask YOU a whole bunch of questions. Let them pull the answers out of you…
Then all you have to do is delete all their questions and BOOM! You have a course… Or BOOM! You got the podcast.
It's one of the reasons why I ask so many questions in my group, The Science of Selling Online; I'm trying to see where the holes are.
In my head, there's a model, there's a picture, and a framework, but I need to know where the questions are.
DUPLICATE YOUR TIME
I'm super proud to just have a whole bunch of people who’ve actually started their shows.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re publishing on a:
Whatever platform you publish on, I don't care, as long as you’re actively talking, because...
If you're NOT speaking, no one knows you exist.
You WILL BUY your customer, whether it's with your time or your money.
If you're like, “Stephen, I don't have money for ads.” Well, then you better be willing to spend some time!
One of the best ways I know to duplicate time is to create content. I have to do it once, and it lives on the internet forever.
Between my two shows, I’ve got almost 400 episodes now... which is crazy!
That's a lot of hooks pulling people into my world and adding value for my entire life.
If you're NOT willing to spend money, BE willing to spend time.
It would suck to walk around the street and be like, “Hey, can I tell you my recent podcast episode?”
I'd rather duplicate my time by creating content.
One of the biggest hacks of the game, create content, make offers to people consistently, and that's kind of it. Gain attention, there you go, there's the hack, there's the BIG SECRET... and that's what I'm doing.
One of the easiest ways to buy your customers and make a real asset on the internet is by consistently publishing.
Now, let's cut over to Angela's interview with Side Hustle Strategies.
If you like what she's asking, go say hi to her, and thank her as well.
AND REMEMBER… you don’t need credentials to get started... Just a willingness to jump!
SIDE HUSTLE STRATEGIES
Angela: Alright, so I know you from ClickFunnels fame, Sales Funnel Radio, Secret MLM Hacks. So, for those who don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about your story?
Steve: Yeah, totally. I was newly married... seven years ago. I call myself the seven-year overnight success story.
I failed my face off in tons of business attempts.
My wife and I could barely feed ourselves, and life was really intense for a while.
I know a lot of people are still in that sort of scenario.
It was a college town, so no one was getting jobs for more than like three dollars an hour. It was a new town we moved to, we didn't know many people. She didn't have a job, and I couldn't get a job.
It was crazy.
There were more students than there were jobs. I was like, “We're gonna die. I gotta figure out a way to make money.”
I asked my dad to float us some cash while we waited for some student loans to come in... just so we could just have like a base, right?
Then I was gonna go run hard and try and make some more money some other way and thankfully, he's on the phone and he goes, “Son, No. If I give you this money you will not exhaust the resources you didn't know you had.”
It was really intense.
It was very wise of him to say that to me, though.
I had the fire in the gut to provide that I think most people just fail to ever light. And when you have that fire, little details that you otherwise get stuck on, they don't really matter as much.
How am I gonna figure this out? Doesn't matter! Do I need to know that? No, run! And so, it gave me this lens of action of just move versus getting focused and distracted by all these other things.
So, I started trying all these businesses and none of them were working. I was spending money, that frankly, we really didn't have trying to make something just kick off.
Over three and a half years, four years, I went through 12 business attempts and they all failed or kinda broke even.
Each time, though, I was learning some stuff. It was very valuable stuff.
I was in college for marketing, business, and entrepreneurship... and I started learning MORE in these attempts than what I was learning in my classes.
Because of this, I started getting into fights with my teachers over different principles. It was like, “No, I've tried what you just said and it doesn't work very well that way. I'm doing it right now. It doesn't work!”
I'd be praying to God in the evenings, like, “Please, help me find a way. It's not that I'm not willing to go through pain, I am, I'm in it right now.”
I believe he totally guided me through failures that were needed for my future success.
That's really interesting to think about it that way.
I started blowing up these different businesses, trying these different things, and running into ClickFunnels.
If you guys don't know what ClickFunnels is, it's basically a way to sell things online or offline... but it allows you to have higher average cart values. Basically, meaning:
People spend more money buying more of your things that they probably wouldn't have otherwise because you just didn't ask 'em... so you make more money.
It's really cool!
...And you don't have to be a coder to put these things out on the internet. And I'm not, I don't know how to code. I have no idea how to do that stuff.
I started making all these sales funnels. I still didn't have much money. And I was like, “Who made this software? Russell Brunson! Does he even shave? This guy looks freakin' young, should I even trust him?”
You know what I mean?
I was like, “Who is this guy?” And I had my own reservations because the first time I saw him, I was like, “This guy's 12.” You know?
He's just a very young-looking guy. If you don't know who he is, we're good friends, so I can say that, and I don't think he'll get mad.
Anyway, so I was like, “I gotta go to his event.”
I was in college still, I was about to graduate. It's like, “I can't get to his event.”
So, I started changing the question in my mind.
This was towards the end of college for me. It was like, “What if I just get resourceful... 'cause I don't have resources?” And I was like, “Well, I could learn how to build one of these funnel things.”
And I went and I started trading funnels for tickets to his next event; funnels for plane tickets and funnels for hotel nights.
I bootstrapped my way to the event
I was nerdy enough in their software that they knew who I was when I walked up to their event.
They said, “What's your name?” I said, “Steve Larsen.” And the guy looked up and he goes, “You're the guy pulling off all that Star Wars ninja crap in our software, right?”
That's exactly what he said.
And I said, “I dunno.” He's like, “You are! I need you to apply to ClickFunnels.”
...And I ended up getting five job offers at their event, and one week later, I graduated, and three days later, I was sitting next to Russell as his funnel builder. It was just super fast. Really fast pace.
Angela: Wow, great.
Steve: That's kind of the quick and dirty.
Angela: Alright, so now, today, what drives you to do the work that you do?
Steve: Honestly, I felt so much shame, which is stupid. Maybe I shouldn't have, but the fact that I couldn't provide just destroyed all semblance of self-esteem for me.
I started coming home right after we got married, and I'd walk into our little apartment...
It was overpriced, we barely had any money, neither of us could get jobs, we really had no income, but I wasn't thinking about that. It was honeymoon phase, and I was mad in love…
Anyway, I started coming home, my wife would still be in bed. She'd already graduated college and I was like, “Are you okay? We alright? You okay?” She's like, “Oh yeah.”
So, I'd go back the next day to school, and come back home... *same thing* “You okay?” She's like, “Oh yeah, no, it's nothing, it's fine.” Same thing, same thing, day after day after day after day…
I finally got her to admit to me, (and she didn't wanna tell me, 'cause she didn't wanna hurt my feelings), she’d only been eating one meal a day ‘cause we didn’t have money.
Angela: Wow!
Steve: She’d been doing that so long that she was physically weak. I had no idea.
She was literally eating like, some beans…
And all the while, still making my lunches so I could have energy in school, and she would just eat a scant meal of dinner with me in the evenings... and that was all she was eating.
I am telling you, it destroyed me.
A lot of men get their identity based on how well they provide or what they do, and I couldn't do it... and it rocked my world. Rocked everything. I can't describe the pain, and it didn't leave.
That's when I called my dad and said, “Hey, will you give me some cash?” And he said “NO,” which is great, I'm glad he did.
I went and just started running, just trying stuff.
The pain, the level of shame I felt, I had to hide that from people. I was in classes trying to focus but knew my wife was starving at home.
It was nuts. It was super nuts. That went on for a really long time…
So what drives me today is, I'm a capitalist pig, right?
I intend to make a lot of money, but do it in a way that provides a lot of value for the world. There's nothing wrong with that.
What drives me is to help install that belief in people's brains, rather than this weird belief a lot of people have around cash.
Make money, make a lot of it... because that lets you go help people at a faster pace than you could if you didn't have money.
What drives me is that... and when I see people who are still in that zone I was at the beginning of our marriage, like that... Oh, my gosh. You can tell, even now, I'm NOT over it.
That was very, very challenging. It was hard on me and I don't want people there either...
Angela: What advice would you give to someone who's stuck, who's in that place, who maybe is discouraged, and not able to see the light at the end of the tunnel?
What advice would you give to someone to kind of muster that energy to move on?
Steve: Few things. It's a great question. The first thing I would tell you to do is, and I was doing this…
A lot of these lessons I know because I was doing the exact opposite of it and that's why I learned the lesson.
You want depression, here's how you get it...
You CANNOT compare yourself to another person's success or the speed that they gained it.
It was the fastest way for an entrepreneur (or somebody who's trying to make it) in this game to die. The only way.
If you start comparing yourself to these ideals, “Oh, that guy did it at that speed,” I guarantee that's NOT true. Nor is it the first thing they tried…
That's the visible side.
All of us have years of just trying and trying and trying and beating and beating on our craft.
What's interesting is ideals aren't measurable.
Pop culture changes every second, and if I measure myself to an ideal, I will never hit it because I can't measure it. Therefore unattainable.
You end up measuring your self-esteem, your self-worth, your value to yourself and others on something that is constantly shifting and fictitious.
That's totally a huge thing in the entrepreneur world today.
Entrepreneurship finally, thankfully, is cool now. It's awesome, it's super cool. It's like this big fad, it’s awesome.
But what's funny is, if I go in and rent a freakin' Lambo to take a picture in front of and make on my Facebook profile picture, 'cause that's what I think causes success.
That's the most jacked-up crap on the planet. It's NOT true.
I've noticed that those types of people will ride this little high, but because it's based on things that are fake, they crash real hard.
All of their worth, all their business worth, all their sense of self is based on something that is constantly shifting.
Sit around and be like, “Oh man, I'm a bad mamma jamma! Look what I did yesterday that I could not have done six months ago!”
My level of opportunities changed based on how I changed. The whole game's a game of progression.
Man, I got the nicest kid award in high school. It's not 'cause I was nice, it's because I was shy. No one knew that, and I had to overcome the fear of speaking. I had to overcome a fear of adults that was near clinical. I had to overcome a lot of stuff.
I was dumb, I was kicked out of my first semester of college; I didn't know how to study.
I am the least likely success story. The only way I got around it was by comparing me to me yesterday.
In that way, I stopped comparing myself to others.
I stopped looking at the clock of others, and I know totally ranting right now, but this is a HUGE thing I achieved in my life.
Angela: No, but you touched on something important.
I've seen lots of your videos and I've heard you tell a little bit of this story before about being very shy, so in my head... I've got two kids and I've got one that's really reserved with most people, but at home, she's a wild woman.
Steve: Yes, exactly, at home, you would have no idea.
Angela: Right, so my question for you is, ('cause I think that that's pretty important), there may be a lot of people out there who have a hard time putting themselves out there.
Russell Brunson has said that he considers himself a more introverted person, but when you see him, he's like, “Wah!” So, where do you get that from?
Where do you muster that energy to be on, like on demand?
Steve: I think the biggest thing someone can do that will destroy them is starting to self-hate. That'll just wreck 'em.
Instead, everything that I know that is NOT gonna be an aid in my business, his name is Stephen, and he's shy... and he's a little bit more reserved.
I wouldn't say I'm shy, but I'm a little more reserved.
Anyway, I would not be wearing shirts like this or like, “Bleh, Rah!”
People ask all the time, “Stephen, how do you have so much energy all the time?”
I have a lot of energy when I need to become Steve.
Steve is a second person I created... and I know it's stupid, and this sounds really weird, but even Tony Robbins teaches that we all have multiple personalities inside of us.
And so... there's Stephen... And Stephen, he's cool, he's the man. He's everything that I needed to be in order to learn the painful lessons I needed to create Steve.
And most of the time, I'm Stephen.
Steve, that dude's nuts. He is a killer on stage, oh my gosh. He is the one talking to you right now. He destroys the microphone.
He tells Russell Brunson to get stage insurance, 'cause he's gonna try and crack it. He’s a deliverer.
I love Steve.
So, every time I'm about to go on a video, do an interview, or record a podcast, I take a moment to become Steve.
... And it sounds weird, but I had to do it that way... because otherwise, I would've just stayed reserved... kinda just like, “There's no way I'm gonna get on video.”
I would NOT be doing this at all if I stayed Stephen 100% of the time.
Angela: So, what does that transition look like? I mean, are you like amped up on music? Is there caffeine?
Steve: It's a little bit. It's not much. When I do take a lot of caffeine, it jacks me up. But it's a little bit of caffeine.
A lot of times though, it's the mentality that I'm taking on.
This sounds kinda dark, but one of the things that I try to do is... Man, it's so funny…
The moment you start trying to level up your game, you get a lot of lovers and haters. It's like you are the Red Sea. It's like the split, that's what you're walkin'. Both voices get louder.
For quite a while, I cared too much about what people thought about me and so, what I decided to do, (and I didn't mean to make this a public thing, it was actually just for me.)
I went and bought this heavy punching bag that's shaped like a human, and I wrote Poverty on it... and I beat the crap out of that thing on a regular basis.
It's like this little self-therapy that I will walk through if I need to become Steve.
If that thing's not around, I'll imagine beating the snot out of it.
But what I do is I write every single thing that's negative that I'm hearing from my audience, another audience, or online, I write it on the freakin' dummy.
Most of the time, what I realize what I was trying to do is act like the negativity wasn't there. I would try to shield and shelter, and be like, “It's NOT there, No, no, no! I should just move forward.”
Everyone says just to move forward. For me, that was cool, but it was like this weight.
For me, in business, I compete on strengths. In my personal development though, I kinda have to work on my weaknesses in order to qualify for more business opportunities.
So I write down all the negativity that I hear from the world... and people are really tough behind their computer screens. Some are just straight-up jerks…
So, now, there are just tons of words all over it:
...Anything that's negative.
They're just freakin' jerks!
I write it down, I face it, and I consume it. I allow myself to feel it, and I accept it's there. Then I beat it up.
Despite knowing the negativity is there, despite all that stuff, I just move forward.
So, when I sit down in this chair, I am in a state of war. I am ready to deliver. I will provide and go to war for my family. I will make a lot of value out there, and I will make money while I do so... and that's totally awesome.
But that transition zone was very practiced at first. I had to really work on that and meditate over it, and try to...
Not that I'm downplaying who I am or who I was, but realizing that my business most likely needs somebody else besides me.
A new me in order to actually run in the first place, am I willing to become that person? Not a fake me, but somebody else!
So, anyways, music is definitely part of it.
Angela: So, let me ask you this...
I know a lot of entrepreneurs don't have the support of family and friends.
Was that something you had and how did you find your tribe to sort of have those people that you could bounce ideas off or just be a sounding board for whatever your challenges were?
Steve: Yeah, there's a lot of family and friends that are out there who, for all of us, it's not that they're trying to be negative, they just DON’T understand what we do and they don't get it at all.
...And frankly, the entrepreneur, for a long time, sucks at explaining what they do.
So, you have these two differing angles, and most of the time, I found...
What was that book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Angela: Yeah, great one.
Steve: Yeah, a super good book, right?
He's like, most fights or little tiffs are a result of a misunderstanding of roles and goal. So, if you start working under a different framework, your blueprint starts to change a little bit. That can be threatening to people.
A lot of times, I remind people of the things that they didn't take risks on… they're not telling me I'm bad, or they're being mean…
What they're doing is reacting to things they've tried to hide in themselves. That's a big thing that I noticed.
I was the only person that I physically knew who was doing what I was trying to in my physical sphere. You know what I mean? No one else was building funnels. For years, it was that way.
The reason I wanted to go to Russell Brunson's event so bad is that I wanted to be around, for the first time in my life, other people who knew what a sales funnel even was.
Even though I was in sales. I was in my sales classes, I was in entrepreneurship classes, in marketing classes… we still weren't talking about how to actually make money. I
I'd say, if any entrepreneur's experiencing kind of negativity with family, friends, or even just in general, don't act like it's not there, but just be patient with it... and understand that they're operating from a completely different mindset, and have no idea.
They didn't have the same epiphanies you had in order to be doing the logical things that you’re doing, the things that you think are logical.
Most of it's just a misunderstanding.
Angela: Well, great, thanks. I think you've given some great nuggets for folks who are in the trenches or considering getting in the trenches.
So, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
Is there anything you wanna share about what you're working on or where people can go to find out more information about you or maybe some of your projects or products?
Steve: Yeah, I think it was business 17 that actually worked. 17, right!
That’s a crazy, crazy amount of failure.
It was around business try number 12 though, where…
Everything I was launching, I didn't get it. I thought I had to have a better product. I thought it was all about the product.
I've realized, though, that's actually not true. I could sell any piece of junk.
Most people believe that they need to have so much belief in their product.
...But I can sell things I don't believe in.
I'm NOT telling anyone to go do that, but it's because of the principles I've learned about marketing and sales... and understanding that they're different. Understanding that closing and sales are different.
Those are the things that have made all the difference in the world for me.
So, it was around business try number 12 when I started learning what funnels even were, how to do them, how to use them. That's when things started shifting up for me.
I’ve found that most people get distracted by the creation of the product.
They have no idea how to:
So, if you don't have a product and you're trying to learn this game, I would actually tell you NOT to learn how to make a product. I would go do affiliate marketing.
I created a program for this exact reason called Affiliate Outrage, affiliateoutrage.com. It's completely FREE, and it walks you through how to market other people’s products, and get paid for it.
It's 30 days long, and I brought in all these other experts to teach all the stuff inside of it.
What I like about affiliate marketing is that it lets you practice. Just because somebody else made the product, doesn't mean you don't need to make marketing.
So it's like marketing training wheels.
That's why I like it. So, I would go there.
Angela: Okay, so affiliateoutrage.com, that's where we can get more info and step-by-step instructions from you.
Steve: Yeah, definitely.
Angela: Alright.
Steve: Hey, thanks for listening.
As you likely have heard in my podcast, I left my job in January 2018 to build my million dollar business completely from scratch without any funding or any help... AND I HIT IT, right on February 1, 2019...
Just 13 months later, we actually grossed a million dollars, which is pretty awesome.
Better yet, I got to keep a lot of the cash, just 'cause my costs are honestly NOT very high.
That said, there are several tools, though, I use to automate vital pieces of my business and ClickFunnels is one of them.
ClickFunnels lets me build automated sales machines all over the internet that are non-stop pitching people for me. It's ONLY $97 a month.
Better yet, I don't need to be a coder.
If you're asking yourself, “Stephen, are you giving me a blatant pitch for ClickFunnels right now?” YES, 100%!
I think it's dumb when people don't use ClickFunnels. It makes you MORE and saves you MORE.
Basically, I have the power of an entire tech team in my hand and I want you to have it.
Go grab a free trial of ClickFunnels by going to freecftrial.com.
I want EVERYONE to experience the power of ClickFunnels in their business, so they're letting me hook you up at freecftrial.com.
These are two of the ways I stay so productive. Warning: it's not exactly for the faint of heart, and is likely to get stressful. Yet, you'll get your crap done…
Today, I wanna share some NINJA productivity hacks that help me to get sooo much done.
Join me, as I draw back the curtain, and give you a sneak peek behind the scenes, at Larsen Productivity 10.
WARNING: These productivity hacks are NOT for the faint hearted!
No whiners and whingers beyond this point…
You’ve been warned ;-)
MY PRODUCTIVITY HACKS 101
Before I go to sleep, I ALWAYS know what I'm gonna do the next day. It's NOT always the specific details, but I have an idea of what I need to focus on in the morning…
So when I wake up, I don't have to answer the question of “WHAT?”
I can just get on with things.
If someone's like, “Stephen, I’ worried about becoming an entrepreneur because I don't know all the steps…”
I’m like *NEWS FLASH* “Welcome to Freakin’ Entrepreneurship!”
Some days, you ’ll wake up, and you WON’T know exactly how your day will go. There’s ALWAYS gonna a new challenge to meet or problem to overcome.
That’s entrepreneurship, my friend.
So, if you can get over that hurdle by knowing the CORE PROJECTS that you'll be working on before you even go to bed, that’s one of the BIGGEST productivity hacks I can give you.
I know it sounds super simple, but Tim Ferriss talks about doing this in the Four Hour Work Week.
You should never go to sleep without knowing WHAT you're gonna be doing the next day, at least for your major core projects.
GETTING THINGS DONE!
If you don't have a list, you should have a list of the BIG, major core projects you're trying to get done in the next month.
Let me show you mine…
*This* is exactly how I do it all.
It’s something I learned from Alex Charfen, and I've kind of adapted it...
I think through ALL of the top things that I wanna get done in the next three months.
It's not like a giant list, we're talking major projects.
Then each month, I think through each project, and ask; “What’s a huge thing I could get done?”
For Example:
So I start thinking through these massive, high-level things and start to make some lists
This is the way I plan everything and stay super productive.
Check this out…
SETTING TARGETS
I start with some 90-Day Targets:
Then I think through:
Does that make sense?
When I launched my new content machine for Secret MLM Hacks, I used a similar system:
I have a lot of stuff on here because I have teams... and I'm kind of a psycho anyway.
Then I go through and I mark each one of these things, where I am and who owns that task, and who's getting it done.
I don't see any issue showing you guys this stuff, this is how I run things.
I run it in three-month swings.
Every 90 Days, I redo my whole targets again.
I've been using this system for the last five months now, and it shows ALL the tasks that I’ll focus on.
That's why when people reach out to ask, “Stephen will you build a funnel for me?”
If it’s NOT on my Target List, the answer is ALWAYS, NO!
That thing is The Bible to me.
I do NOT do ANYTHING that’s outside of my target list.
It works really well. I know exactly which team members are doing what. I don't have to sit back and be like, “Well, who….?”
Next, we’re going to create Trello boards that use the systems like we used to use at ClickFunnels.
It's a specific project management style; it's 90-day targets of what I could do, what I will, and then 30-day runs.
I think of them in 30 day runs: “What will I do in the next 30 days to hit that 90-day target... we're talking big major projects:
... you know like, BIG things!
At the beginning of each day, I just update the list.
Each month, I just copy that board/ that sheet so that I can see where the projects left off, then roll them forward and delete the ones that don't matter.
I think through:
As far as getting crap done, this one of the biggest hacks I have.
SET YOUR TARGETS
Setting your own targets is simple. You can either create your own doc or just write them down on some paper or a whiteboard.
Then it’s 100% up to you to decide what you need to focus on.
Remember, a huge long list of to-dos will do nothing but stress the crap out of you.
Here’s how I do it…
Before I go to bed each night, I choose only three moves to make the next day.
I make three moves a day, and the ones I choose are ALWAYS the revenue generating ones.
Then I do the highest revenue generating move in the morning time ... cause I know my brain's most fresh.
If you’re NOT that way, whatever... find a way that works for you!
But for me:
Just three moves a day…
Charfen calls it The Waterfall Method, and it’s worked extremely well for how I organize stuff.
I'm gonna use some of the tactics from James Friel too and create a board in Trello… because I have at least 11 agencies working for me now, and we're all remote…
So I'm NOT gonna send an Excel sheet out to everybody.
This is how I run it:
As far as project planning goes, this one of the ways I stay so productive.
… but that’s NOT really what I wanted to show you!
MY NINJA PRODUCTIVITY HACK!
So check this out...
Every Tuesday for me is content creation day. Which means Tuesday morning. I go do a whole bunch of interviews with people.
If you guys want me to get on your show, I’m totally willing to do that every Tuesday morning, just go to interviewsteve.com which will forward you to my Calendly link to book a time
As soon as I'm done with interviews:
This might NOT seem like it's related to productivity, but it totally is!
It's one of the reasons. In fact, it’s one of the biggest productivity hacks!
And I wanna share with you, why that is…
BREAKING BELIEFS
So, let’s hop on over to my Sales Funnel Radio Trello Board…
Here’s where I keep all my ideas for future podcast episodes. I drop them in Trello, and then I number them.
I say, “Hey, I'm gonna do this one cause it launches on this date. I'm gonna do this one cause it launches on this date.”
Then I stream them in an order that’s designed to breaking your beliefs before you even know I'm doing that.
What I'm doing is crafting content... that’ll launch certain things extremely effectively.
I ALWAYS have my value ladders written out on my whiteboard, and so…
If a project does not match up with or launch something on the value ladder. I DON’T do it!
I craft the content that you’re hearing with a specific call to action to break and rebuild belief patterns.
So when you hear the call to action, you're like, “Oh crap, I should really go do that.”
CREATING CONTENT
Okay, check this out, this is how I run all of the episodes for Sales Funnel Radio …
I want two episodes a week, so I try to film the content three weeks ahead.
We have a card in Trello for each episode.
There’s:
We also have cards for:
All of it links over to a Google Drive where we tussle it out.
THE SFR TEMPLATE
There’s a Sales Funnel Radio Episode Template that ensures each episode gets launched on time.
My role is to come in here and to fill this all out with.
As soon as I'm done, I tag the next person…
DANIELS CHECKLIST
Then he tags the next person…
MARLEY’S CHECKLIST
Then the episode card gets passed off to the next person…
HELEN’S CHECKLIST
Then she passes the card to the next person…
JULIA’S CHECKLIST
Every time someone finishes an asset they go and re-upload it back to that Google Drive folder. There's a different folder for each episode.
Next...
COULTON’S CHECKLIST
Next person comes in…
EMELY’S CHECKLIST
Next, it goes to a Pinterest person and an ads agency….
There's a lot to it, and it’s really powerful and really really potent.
It works very very well!
The content machine I've built is Freakin’ Big. It costs 20 -30 grand a month, EVERY MONTH just to run it!
You don't have to start out that big, I certainly didn't. I started with a five dollar a month Libsyn account.
Now you’re probably wondering two things:
#1: “Stephen, how long does it take you to set all that up?”
My answer is, Just do it! Who cares about the timeline...
#2: “What has this got to do with a productivity hack?”
Let me explain…
MY FAST ACTION HACK
So productivity hack, here we go…
If I wait for the funnel to be done BEFORE I launch it and start talking about it, I will NOT get it done very quickly.
The first I experienced this hack, I was sitting across from Russell in our first office. He didn't tell me what he was doing. He grabbed his phone and he went live on Facebook:
“What's up, everybody? We've got this cool thing going on... (you can hear his voice, right!)...
We've got this cool thing going on, and it's going to launch today at two o'clock! Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited about it. Woo!”
Then he turned around, and said, “Dude, we've got this thing that's gonna be launching at two o'clock today!”
I was like, “Yeah, I know. I just heard you tell everybody.”
He's like, “Dude, you gotta go build it!”
And… that's the way we launched everything!
HOW TO GET CRAP DONE
You’ll get crap done if you just start telling people about it... and then build it based on the reactions that you see them giving.
That's how I launch pretty much everything.
If I sit back and I'm like, “Well, it's not quite done yet, so I'm not gonna start telling people about it...” *Wrong Move*
A Real Marketer would NOT wanna do that!
You want as much noise as possible... so start making noise, and build it as you need to.
MY 3 HOUR FUNNEL
When I launched my latest OfferMind Funnel, I recorded a podcast talking about the HUGE list of the speakers that it’d be cool to have at my next event
A lot of these guys I could actually get a hold of and pull out! Like, how cool would it be to have them at OfferMind.
I'm not promising, but I'm gonna start reaching out and running Dream 100 Campaigns to these guys.
(They'd also be great ones to promote my book when it comes out.)
So I'm crafting out, and timing the launch of the funnel with the launch of content that supports what I’m doing...
Why wouldn’t I teach you guys how I launched my first OfferMind... and why my very first event went so well.
You don't see a lot of other events running that hard that awesome from round one... how did I do it?
However, 3-hours before that podcast was launched… there was NO FUNNEL to go with the outro. I had 3-hours to build an entire funnel.
I had the bare bones already there, and I've built a lot of funnels... I'm NOT telling you guys to make it that tight, but start telling people WHAT you're doing.
Let them follow the journey. Give them something to follow!
That's what I'm doing!
All my episodes break and rebuild belief patterns…
After you learn exactly how I launched my first event so successfully, the call to action is gonna say, “Hey, why don't you go to OfferMind.com and get your ticket.”...
BUT THE FUNNEL WASN’T BUILT BEFORE I TOLD EVERYONE ABOUT IT!
The Ultimate Productivity Hack is to just launch... and build it before everyone shows up.
Start telling people, and then go build once you see their reactions to it.
The worse thing ever is to build something completely, then go tell people about it, and they're like, “Meh....”
Does that make sense?
I've got these cool ways to get crap done... like the Trello board I showed you earlier...
BUT….
My productivity is tied to my content machine.
I don't think people understand that.
It’s how I'm able to just get crap done without stressing over stuff or overthinking things.
PRODUCTIVITY HACKS & GETTING THINGS DONE
These are the ways I stay productive:
I know it sounds intense...
People are like, “You're Crazy!” Yeah, okay... whatever, but it works! It’s how I get A LOT of crap done.
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, 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 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.