After our latest startup, I realized that almost everything people are teaching online about startups online are DEAD wrong.

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Marketing in Your Car. My name is Russell Brunson, and I am excited to be here with you today. Hey everyone. I am actually taking my wife’s car on a 25 minute drive to go get some stuff fixed. I have nothing else to do so you guys get to be entertained. I hope that’s alright. I am excited for this podcast. I have been thinking a lot. I have known for a little while, Stu McClaren, one of my favorite people on Earth, called me out yesterday, and said, “Dude, when are you going to do another podcast?” I just wanted to do this one. This one may be a little longer since I have a little more of a drive.

I just wanted to talk to everybody at a different level than normal. Normally I am trying to share different tips and tricks and techniques to take whatever you are doing and make it a little better and make you start thinking different ways. I wanted to talk about what has been happening with some of my businesses over the last little bit. It is interesting. There are so many people that are teaching internet marketing. There’s very few people that I really trust anymore. The biggest reason is because, and I outgrew myself in this same category, a lot of times we assume that whatever worked for us, is what is going to work for everyone.

I’ve built my internet marketing business. We have launched product after product and I know a good formula that works. I know that market really well. Over the last year or so, we have been putting out all these different products and different niches. Every time it surprises me how much new stuff I have to learn to make each of those businesses actually work. It is frustrating for me because I know all this stuff. I should be able to make it work right away.

It always takes time. It takes more time than I ever think. I’ve definitely changed the way that I think about business, and the way I teach business because of that. I understand that it’s not all cookie cutter. It’s not 100%. There’s a lot  you have to do, to figure out different markets. We are in the couponing niche. We have been doing well with it. Recently I brought on some of our friends. Initially they were students. They become really good friends. You guys probably heard of them if you have been following me for any amount of me, Xan and Jen Spencer.

We have this couponing site, and I didn’t have time to focus on it. I love the concept and the idea behind it. They just sold their hair bow site and made a ton of money selling it. They are looking for their next project. We brought them in to come work with us on this one. It has been  interesting watching what they have been doing and how they are getting into the market and understanding what it is, and really trying to figure out that path and what we can do to make it successful.

Holy crap. Sorry guys. You are getting this live. I am at an intersection, and the light is red and I am stuck in the middle. Holy cow. That was embarrassing. Let me pause this for one second.

That disaster was averted. I was at a green light, and I was turning left and I was half way in the intersection turning left and all of a sudden all the cars stopped. I looked up and we were all stopped turning left. The street we were turning left onto was completely backed up probably about a mile and a half. Then, the light turned red and I was stuck in the middle of the intersection with two cars in front of me in the middle of the intersection and a car behind me in the middle of the intersection.

I am back, and I am alive. Things are good. I was talking about how different it is. Same with our supplement. We have been doing really well with our supplement. Almost a year now. It is doing well. It is exciting. It inspires me just how we put out a little business like that, and by traffic and it works. It just keeps working and working. Because of that we decided to put a lot more energy and effort into it. We actually spent time to write a really good sales video.

We are going back now and diving back into that business, which is a whole different market. It’s interesting to me to start looking at. Obviously I could talk a lot about the differences in the market. That’s not the point. The point is that there are differences. Used to be back in the day you could find a niche, put up a product, drive some traffic and make some money. I think those days are a lot different now. You have to understand there is a culture.

There’s stuff that is happening, and these markets. It’s important to find those things. What I want to talk about today is more like the path that I am seeing a lot of commonalities among all the niches that we’re in, and a lot of what I am going to be shifting dotcomsecrets over to in the new year. I wanted to throw some of this out to get you guys thinking and you can get some ideas for your business as well. We used to always think that we lead with a product, create a good product, drive some traffic and that’s how you lead.

I don’t think that’s the smartest way to lead anymore. I look at that with our weight loss offer. That is what we did. The problem was that we didn’t know the market well enough. We created what we thought was the best offer possible. We launched it and it didn’t do well. We are going back and doing the stuff we should have done first to really understand the market. I think we will do well this time around.

We could have saved almost a year worth of time had we gone this direction the first time. If I, and any business I am in, or getting in like dotcomsecrets, like the relaunch for the entire brand and company and really starting from the beginning where the goal is how much value can you provide. I think that the smartest way to begin in any niche, this is even ecommerce. I am not just talking infoproducts, but anything, is start with value can you give people.

The simplest way to do that is blogging. Set up a blog and start sharing really cool stuff. That’s the first step. After your blog is set up I think you should start up a fan page. I have been fighting social media forever, but one of the other episodes you saw, you see I am starting to see the value of it. You can set up ads for five or ten dollars a day. It will add people to your page. Just set that up and let it run and get people adding to your fan page and watch this community grow from two people to 10 to 50 to 100 to 500 to1,000.

Consistently be doing that. When you are blogging, after you blog, the biggest thing you have to do is how do I promote this blog post now? There’s a lot of things you can do to promote it, but the best I think is Facebook. As soon as you make a post, you go to your fan page and boost that post and push it out there. You spend maybe five or ten dollars doing that.

The next day you make another blog post. You go to Facebook and post it and boost it. Just following that pattern. At first it will be super slow and aggravating and you probably won’t get a lot of traction from it. You will have the ads on there, and people are being added and just consistent. Months from now, three months from now, six months from now you are going to have five, six, ten, fifteen thousand people and it will start growing very quickly from there.

It is all about putting this value out first. Then, you start seeing what people are responding to. A little while ago I was watching a video that Jeff Walker put out there. I don’t typically watch Jeff’s stuff. I like him as a person, but I not particularly interested in product launches. The last thing I want to do is a product launch. I don’t look at that anymore. I was watching one of his videos, and one thing he said that really struck out to me, he was talking about how he said that the biggest thing for him is when he first got the publishing thing. He said, “I recommend all you guys just go publish something.” Put stuff out there. It wasn’t until I put stuff out there that I saw what people responded to.

What things do people like? What things do they share? What things do they talk about? What things do they not care about? What things cause no emotional response what so ever? For example, we know that on our couponing site the last two weeks, we have been posting the model in that market is different. It is how many offers can you get in front of people. We are posting tons over and over, 20, 30 offers a day.

Supposed to put those out there. Some of those get nothing. Other ones get some shares, some get tons of shares. This week had something interesting where Jessica posted on her blog this picture of these homemade dryer sheets that she makes. Unfortunately we didn’t put it on our Facebook page. We put it on our blog. Somebody came to our blog and saw it. The took the picture, they posted on their Facebook page and luckily they linked back to her site saying, “Check out this picture I found on livingonacoupon.com.” They posted it out there. Within four days that image had been shared 350,000 times.

Not liked, shared. 350,000 times. We found out about it from one of her friends. She said, “Look at this sharing your picture.” She saw it, and we missed it. We went back and over that two day period of time, the 350,000 shares, we had 50,000 people that came to our blog per day. Our revenue was over $400 each day, which is awesome.

We found out that was what something responded to. They wanted homemade stuff, like how to make homemade dryer sheets. I never would have launched a course on how to make homemade dryer sheets. Now we know that people are interested in that market and that type of a thing. Instantly now we know.

That is the thing Jeff was talking about. You need to start publishing something. Until you do, you have no idea what people are going to respond to. If you want to start leading with your sales message first then you spend so much time and energy before you know what people actually want, what they are listening to. I would start with that. Making cool blog posts, put it on Facebook page, boost them. Rinse and repeat over and over again. Have something in place where your fan base is growing, growing through paid ads. You are talking five bucks a day, ten bucks a day maybe to implement that strategy. That’s the first step. You are putting this stuff out there. Again, there are a lot of other things you can do to promote your blog posts.

For simplicity sake that is where I would start at.

The second thing I would do, and it makes me laugh. This is my belief now. Six years ago podcasts were brought to my attention, maybe even seven or eight years ago, and I thought they were the dorkiest, nerdiest things in the world and they would never catch on, kind of like RSS feeds, and I was right.

Podcasts I was wrong. They are the thing right now. I keep hearing it. It’s funny because I used to be a faster adapter of things. Now I am more stubborn. I am an old man now. I am a little more stubborn in adapting things. I didn’t want to adapt this for a long time. Recently, one of my friends had a podcast that he wanted me to listen to. I downloaded the podcast app, and I downloaded the podcast and started listening to it, and I got hooked. I suddenly realized that podcasts are the radio of the future.

You can subscribe to the people’s stuff that you want, and you have a chance to listen to it. One of my friends, Stu, I mentioned him earlier. He was telling me one of his clients who works for him said that each podcast listener is worth more to them than an email subscriber, which is crazy to me, but instead of fighting that, let’s go with it, right? Who knows how long email is going to keep working efficiently.

Let’s have distribution channels…as many as we can. I started thinking more about that. This is a distribution channel, these podcasts. I remember about two years ago I had a guy that wanted to interview me for a radio show. We went down to the radio station, and it was the coolest thing in the world. I felt like Frasier Crane. I had a big microphone. He had a producer. I asked the producer if I could call her Roz. She said no.

I felt like Frasier Crane. After I did that, I wanted my own radio show. That was my entire goal for the next 6 months was my own radio show. If I do a radio show locally and it goes good then we could try to pitch it and get syndicated nationally. I had this whole strategy. You got a big, famous radio show. You can sell ads, you can make money, you can push your products, books and make a fortune. For years I kept thinking about that and wanting to do it. After I got the podcast thing, I was like, “This is the radio of the future.” Radio will be dead soon if it’s not already. I don’t listen to radio. I hook up my podcasts that I want, and I am driving and I listen to them. I think again, that’s the direction that we are all going. I have been studying a lot. I am going to keep doing the Marketing in Your Car Podcast because I love it, and it’s fun. It is low maintenance for me to fulfill on. I am going to keep doing that. I am also going to launch another podcast underneath the dotcomsecrets brand.

It is more of an actual radio show where I have people that I interview and I am sharing things. I have to do my first interview for my first one this coming Tuesday. Mark Joiner is my first mentor and Mark is going to come on and be my first guest so I am kind of excited for that. Because I have been setting podcasts to what people are doing and it’s really intriguing. I was listening to the guy who runs the entrepreneur on fire podcast.

He basically interviews an entrepreneur every single day, seven days a week. He was sharing some of his stats, and what I didn’t get it until he went to this. He said, “I ran the show for free for a long time and got a big following.” Now he gets 10 or 20 or 30 thousand downloads each episode. You basically get paid on CPM so every download, every 1,000 downloads, you make whatever. Ten bucks or thirty bucks. Showing the math, each of my episodes, I have three sponsors. This guy, this guy and this guy. He is paying this. He is paying this.

That means, every single day that I do my podcast, because I know I’ll get 20,000 downloads because people are subscribed to it and they are waiting for it, because of that, every single day just to do my podcast, I make $1,200 in advertising revenue, $1,200 just by the fact that he is podcasting. I was doing the math, and $1,200 a day times 30 days, I can’t do right now in my head, but $1,000 a day times 30 days is 30 grand a month, 30 grand a month, and all he is doing is interviewing awesome people.

He launched this less than a year ago. Okay? Start thinking the blog obviously is a great platform. The blog is a great platform to get people who are on Facebook and reading and those types of things, but there is also this huge, untapped market of podcasting. You get these people to download and you are sharing content and ideas. You are building a following and you have your own radio show. People actually pay to sponsor the radio show when you get a following.

You start just like we talked about before. You start out by giving content, putting stuff out there and seeing what things people attach to. What concepts, what ideas you share, what things get other people interested. Only way to know that is to publish stuff. Put it out there like Jeff Walker was saying, seeing what gets people to respond.

That’s the first step, and trying to build your audience like that. I think any market I get in the future, that will be my first two steps before we ever create an offer and see if we can get enough of an audience based on that, then we can go and start getting sponsors for our podcasts and promote products as an affiliate on our blog and get sponsors for our blog.

You know over the last three, six, nine months, what people have been responding to, what things they are interested in, what things get shared, what things get passed around. You find out what doesn’t. As soon as you know that, now you can go back and create the right offer. The offer than people actually want. The thing they want to give you money for. I think that’s the right way to make a business. That’s the right way to start a business. Again, because every market is different, you won’t know what that is until you are in there.

You see the responses. The flip is people will love you because you are giving your best stuff every single day and when you come back and decide to monetize it, there’s different relationship level there. They are going to trust you over someone else because they have been listening to, they have been reading you or seeing you on Facebook. You have established yourself as someone who is credible and cares and someone who is trying to provide value in the world.

That is what I have for you guys today. I hope that gives you some things to think about. Those are things that I have been thinking about a lot. We are relaunching dotcomsecrets. The podcast, we are also launching, a new blog. A new blog you guys will be shocked. My goal is every blog post is for every post to be more valuable than a $97 product. We are going to change some stuff. It will be good.

That is our game plan. I am at the car dealership. I am getting my wife’s car fixed. I have to jump off. I hope you enjoy this podcast. If you like it, please come and comment, but also please share it. If you like it, go on your Facebook account and check out Russell’s latest podcast. It was awesome. I would appreciate getting it in the hands of more people. That’s about all I ask for. Appreciate you guys. Thanks everyone who is listening and paying attention. Good luck with your business and we will talk to you guys all soon.

An idea that sparked when I heard Tim Ferris speak in New York has dramatically changed the structure of our business.

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Hello everybody who is listening to our podcast today. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to the marketing in your car podcast.

I am having the most fun week I think I have had in a long time with business. Awesome stuff is happening. We just signed a deal Kevin Harrington and Click Bank and Traffic and Conversion summit that was amazing. A bunch of cool stuff is happening. Our living on a coupon site, we relaunched it using a bunch of social media, and we have gone from…it has gone from…it was making about $10 a day to now, $200 a day in two weeks period of time.

It is scaling rapidly, which is fun. Tons of fun stuff is happening. I want to talk about one little thing that I have been doing that we are doing right now that I think is, it is probably one of the smallest, yet the biggest breakthroughs I have had in a long time. Some of you probably remember I signed up for Joe Polish’s, 25k group. I didn’t join the group. I just went to the $10,000 thing out in New York. My wife and I went out there.

I had a couple of podcasts when I was out there. When I was out there, one of the speakers was Tim Ferris. One thing that Time Ferris said that has been resonating in my brain for the last couple months since then was someone asked him, “Should I be on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube? Where should I be at?” He said, you need to pick one. Pick one that is going to be your home. That is going to be your desired way to share stuff with your audience. Forget about the rest. People try to do things on 30 platforms, but they are never successful. Pick one that is going to be your thing that you know you can go to and focus on and go to over and over again.

If you do that then you are going to be successful. Again, that’s just a little thing that makes a lot of sense, but I have been thinking about it. I have been looking at my own business, and my business is all over the place. Some of you guys probably know. I hate going into Facebook, yet I have eight Facebook groups. I have a Facebook group for our local group, for dotcomsecretsx, for Russell Brunson fans, things like that.

I think we have five or six different continuity programs that are all separate. We have multiple blogs. All of this stuff out there. It’s confusing for me because of that, I never, I get overwhelmed logging into Facebook because I had 12 groups I needed to look in and check and communicate with.

Because of that I don’t log in and talk to anybody. I have a blog except I never blog because I know that I should blog. Twitter and tweet, and I never do anything. Because of that, because there are so many thing to do, I just don’t do any of them. I started thinking, I need to centralize everything and make everything simpler and easier for me and for our customers. That way they have a very clear path. Because of that we have been shifting a lot of things.

We decided what social media platform we are going to focus on. We are taking all of our eight or 10 or how many groups we have, we are deleting them all and create one group. It is going to be like the dotcomsecrets group. We are going to push everybody to that. As far as all of our products, we are merging multiple continuity programs into one.

If you join one, you get access to all of them that way people aren’t like, “Should I join this one or this one?” I don’t want to make my customer confused and feel like they have to sign up for multiple things. I want everything into one, singular focus. We have been doing that. From that idea we decided instead of right now we have tons of products all over the place. What if we created one customer center?

Somebody bought something and logged into any of our sites, and it takes you to this one, centralized customer center that has all of our products that they purchased. They can see, click on it and boom, get the information. Again, we had this idea and it seems so simple now. I am like, why didn’t we think of this years ago. It is brilliant.

People come in and see all the products they have access to and also the ones they don’t have access to. Click on them and buy them right there inside of our customer center. We already have the credit card on file, yes I want this product, and boom we ding their card and it unlocks it for them.

These are some of things we are doing all from that one little idea of communicating it to one platform. How can we shift all these things and move them into one platform? It’s been a fun process. Anyway, you guys will start seeing this come out soon.

We are probably two or three away from having the customer center done. We also have merged the customer affiliate center together. Those two accounts are basically one account. You log in, and you have your customer stuff and you have your affiliate stuff all tied there together.

It’s pretty fun and pretty exciting. I am excited for it. For you guys, think about for your business. Same kind of thing. What platform are you going to publish on? Just pick one. Is it going to be your blog? Facebook? I think blog and Facebook you can tie those two together because I look at Facebook more as like a way to amplify a blog, but what ‘s your home base? Some people, Facebook is their home base. Some people it is YouTube. They post videos all day. They use Facebook to promote it.

Where is your home place that you are publishing stuff all the time so people can find it, see it. They know if they are on here for Russell it is all right here. Same thing for you. Where are you going to publish at? If you looked by our products where can they find them at? Are they consolidated in one spot where they can find them easily? Can they upgrade and buy other things very quickly? That’s what we are doing. I am excited. It is going to be fun to see this whole thing roll out.

Before the end of the year you guys will see a new blog, new customer center, new affiliate center, a whole new strategy, a consolidation of our continuity programs into one continuity program, which we are lowering the price on.

I think it is crazy, but I think it is going to be really good too. I am excited. Hope you guys are excited about your business as well. If you are not excited then listen to these podcasts again and get refired up and reenergized. One of the times I was not excited was when I was not learning and growing. Get back into learning mode, the education mode. Learn some stuff. Get excited. Go apply it, and have fun with your businesses you guys.

I am at the office now. I am going to get some work done, get this stuff all consolidated so soon I will have a cool blog that you can actually read all the stuff I have to share with you guys. Thanks you guys, and I will talk to you soon.

As we transition from a YouTube generation to a Pinterest generation, this new type of sales letter is going to win.

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Good morning. This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey guys and gals and anyone who is out there in podcast land and listening today. I am excited today because today I am going to be working on our supplement. A lot of you guys know if you have been listening to this or following me, we have a supplement. I have been wanting to do a supplement for 10 years now, and finally about a year ago we put one together and launched it and it’s been great. We are having a ton of fun with it.

We have been testing a lot of different things. Initially what we started doing with it, we started with a free plus shipping type thing where they would get the first bottle for free. We would charge them shipping, and after 14 days we would start billing their card and ship them out a new supplement, which has been working good.

We are at point now where our recurring is around $50,000 a month from it. Not too bad for a little side project. Right? We should do half a million bucks or so this year from that supplement. So that is kind of cool. I want to grow it big. I have been people who got supplements who are doing half a million dollars a month or more.

I am on this eternal mission to figure out how in the world do I scale it. I think it is how it goes. The weight is really hard to scale immediately. We are spending $80 or so to get a free customer. In some cases we are able to break even by day 14, which is awesome. Sometimes it takes to day 45 or beyond to break even. I don’t know about you, but I have a risk. I am pretty into taking risks and stuff, but I am risk intolerant with my money.

Day 45, if we haven’t broke even by that point it kind of scares me. How do we create something where we can break even at day one or make a profit at day one and go from there? That has been the mission that we have trying to look at. We are looking at all the other people that are doing really well with supplements right now.

Ed O’Keefe has a really good supplement that I take now. I bought it to go through the sales process, and I am actually addicted to it. There are bunch of really good supplements as well. I have been watching their funnels. What has been interesting is that most of the guys that killing it right now aren’t doing free plus shipping type things anymore. They are selling one, three or four bottles off their order page and upsales for other things.

We are working on that. What I really want to talk about today is an interesting thing that I have been looking at. The shift from the sales video back to the sales letter. For the last two year, sales videos have been the thing that has been crushing it. I don’t think it is going to go away at all, but it is interesting. For a while it felt like the market was in this YouTube generation where everyone is watching videos.

Over the last year or so it seemed like it shifted more to the Pinterest generation where we are looking at images and text, if that makes sense. For example, if you post a video on YouTube or you post an image on YouTube, traditionally you are going to get way more comments, shares, likes, things like that from an image than you ever would from a video.

Isn’t that interesting? Where forever it was video, video, video. With our supplement we created a sales video version and sales letter version. The sales letter, we also did it a lot different than we normally do. We are trying to test some things that go against what I have always believed as the norms. I am testing to see if maybe I am wrong. If I am wrong, that is cool.

I would rather be wrong and rich than right and broke. We are testing this out, and I have been looking at, if you guys know Miconi, he owns Mind Valley, and if you look at them, they are crushing it right now in the personal development space. If you look at the way they design their websites and sales letters, they are very different. They are not a traditional sales letter, or even the sales letter way that I have done them and I have taught them where you are starting with a star story and a solution and you are going through this process.

They are more like these blocks of stuff. That’s the best way to explain it. If you look at one of Mind Valley’s sales letters, go to MindValley.com, and look at their sales letters, he sells theirs 10 or 12 blocks. Each block is its own little message. People can scan it. It almost looks like infographics. You scan it and see the things. Each block has a topic. They have bullet points. They have pictures and the next block and the next block and the next block. There is not a logical story progression throughout. It is just like we are talking about the benefits. This block we are talking about the guarantee. This block we are talking about what other people have said about it. This is the ingredient block and stuff like that. We design this sales letter to go that way.

We are going to be doing tons of testing and video versus sales letter versus video with sales letter versus tons of different things we are going to try out. It is really interesting to me right now that I feel like, I look at different markets. If you look at the warriors for example, all of the offers that are in there, none of them are video, very few of them are video.

The majority are all text. I am wondering if we are going to start transitioning back to a spot where people prefer more text based sales letter so they can scan more. They can get their information. If so, I am curious and I am interested to see if it will change the way the sales letters are built because the old school, traditional sales letter is a long story.

You can’t just scan because you are going to miss the point of the story. Whereas the way that Mind Valley is doing theirs and the way  we are doing this one, is it very scannable. Each block is independent of itself. If you are looking at that chunk, that block whatever you want to call it. It has one message. Each block has its own core message.

Anyway, it is just very interesting. I am excited to test this and see what is happening. I definitely think that we are transitioning away from the YouTube generation and transitioning towards the Pinterest image, text generation. Beware of that in your marketing. Look at how else can you add more text elements. At least, if you don’t have, you don’t want to make text sales letters, at least have an option that has a text version of your sales video.

I think people are getting now where they don’t want to watch videos as much. It was intriguing for years, but now it’s like, “Oh crap. A video.” Whereas you have text, they can scan, they can find what they want. It is interesting. I don’t know if I am right or wrong, but I am predicting the rebirth of the sales letter. The rebirth will be much different from the old sales letter. I don’t think it is going to be story based. I think it is going to be block based.

That is what I have for today. I am at the office. I am going to go play with my new sales letter. The smackdown will begin. Video versus sales letter. Maybe it will be a combination of both that wins. I don’t know, but we are going to find out. We are going to put it to the test because I want to see where people minds are at right now. It will be interesting. I am here at the laboratory. I am going to step in, and I will report my results back to you guys in the next week or two or three when we get some testing done, drive some traffic and see what people are responding best to.

Thanks so much everybody, and we will talk to you all again soon.

How to finally get past your sticking points and finish your projects once and for all.

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Hey everyone. This is Russell, and I am actually driving to the office, and I wanted to do a really quick Marketing in Your Car Podcast so here we are.

Today’s podcast is because, this is something probably a lot of us deal with. I just dealt with it, and it was very painful and it is over now. I want to talk about it because it will make some of you guys get some crap done that you have been waiting on doing forever.

We’ve been working on a relaunch of our dotcomsecretsx site for probably three or four months now. It has gone way too long. The biggest reason why is because instead of things that everyone is waiting on me to get done. It is stuff I really, really, really hate doing. I realize I associate so much pain with this one piece of the process that I just avoid it at all costs.

No matter what is happening I block out time. I will come in super early in the morning, a million different things that I try to do to get it done, and I can’t figure out ways to not do it. I have so much pain associated with it that I don’t get it done. I think, and I bet that a lot of you guys are probably the same way. There’s things in your marketing journey or your entrepreneur journey that you know that you have to do, but there’s one or two things that you associate so much pain with that you never do it.

Probably the biggest one that I have seen people do, and it blows my mind. Honestly, it has been good for me and my business, but it’s not so good for you and your business. A lot of people are willing to spend money on training, information programs and seminars and things like that where they are learning, they feel like they are getting value. They are scared to death. They have so much pain associated with spending money in advertising. What if the ad doesn’t work?

What if whatever we click on, nobody buys? There is so much pain they never do it. We just finished a group of coaching students. One of the students came back and was like, “How come I haven’t made any money yet?” I asked if he finished anything, and he asked why he wasn’t making money. The last step was I showed you how to buy ads, and I asked if he bought any ads yet. He said no. That’s the reason you aren’t making money yet. It is up to you at this point.

I think about the things in my life that cause me pain that I avoid them at all costs even if they are things that I need to do to be happy or more successful, whatever it might be. I have been trying to isolate those things, write them out. Look at what they are and why my  brain subconsciously creates so much pain associated with them. Then, I start thinking about, I learned this originally from Tony Robbins and since then I study it through NLP and a bunch of other things, was just the concept of pleasure versus pain.

Our brains will always either move away from pain or towards pleasure, towards pleasure, away from pain. When we have a task like that, that is holding us up, the problem is that our brain sees that as pain. It moves away from pain and towards pleasure, tries to find what I can do? I can go to Facebook. I can find pleasure there. I can go eat. I can find pleasure. I can go talk to my friends. I can find pleasure there.

Our brain tries to shift us to pleasure as fast as they can because it doesn’t want to have to deal with pain. For me, I realize forever this has been looming. What I tried to do, and it worked effectively, because I just finished my big painful task that I have been dreading for six weeks now. Six weeks I have been delaying this task that took me 20 minutes to do because I associated so much pain with it.

What I had to do, is I had to go find out, I had to create something that had so much pleasure, so much more exciting that my brain was like, “I want that. I want that more than I am scared of the pain.” I created this thing that I wanted. I am not going to tell you what it is because it stupid and childish, but it’s a pleasure thing for me. It was something that I actually wanted. I created that thing, and I said, “You cannot have that until this task is done.”

It made that pleasure so big and so exciting and so big that the pain of that task just got smaller and smaller and smaller, and I finished it. I just did it you guys. I am excited. I just want to throw that out there for you guys because I am sure that you have, each of us, all of us. I have this in a lot of other areas of my life, and I am sure you guys do too. You have this thing that is causing you so much pain, and you are avoiding it like the plague, even though it is the thing you need to do to get to the real pleasure, the true pleasure, the real happiness.

What I want you guys to do is think about that and figure out how can I create something so pleasurable and so great as a reward for myself that I will go through anything to get it. Think about wrestling. I used to go three, four days in a row without eating any food, two days without drinking any water, going through this horrible, physical pain. I would do this while I wearing plastic suits in wrestling, trying to lose 20 pounds in a three day period of time. I would do that every single week for 10 years.

Why would I do that? I had so much pleasure in winning a wrestling match. That pleasure, that high whatever you want to call it, was so big, I was willing to sacrifice food and water and social life and everything. Everything I had just because I wanted my hand raised after a match. That’s how much pleasure that created for me.

If you can start doing that in your life and look at and find those pain points that are keeping you from what you want to and create pleasure to help burst you through it, I promise you guys will see a ton of success, just like I just did. I feel great right now. Now, I am at the gym and I am excited. That is it for today. I am at the gym, and I am going to go work out. All you guys find out what your sticking points are and smash through them this weekend and have some fun. Thanks everybody. I will talk to you soon.

How a tiny shift in your packaging can dramatically increase your sales.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody! It is rainy here in Boise today. This is the Marketing in Your Car, Podcast. Alright, so my wife had a really cool experience that has some definite marketing benefits, so I want to talk to you guys today. A couple years ago I was at the Tony Robbins event, and he talked about the evils of cow milk. Not really, but he did talk about how he isn’t a really big believer in cow milk, and gave some good compelling arguments why.

I am not saying he is right or wrong, but we decided at that point to try and wean off of milk. We shifted from milk. We initially tried soy milk which was nasty. Then, we tried the rice milk. Then, we fell in love with almond milk. We have been drinking almond milk probably two and a half, three years or so. Took us a little while to get our kids weaned off regular milk. Finally got it. Tried different brands, and finally my kids and my wife and everyone settled in on this one brand, which I think is Blue something.

Anyway, so yesterday my wife went shopping at the grocery store. When she’s there, she walks in and there’s these three dudes in big suits, like tall guys in suits. My wife is shorter anyway. These guys are walking around, and she is going around shopping. She gets back to the milk section, and she is going to buy some almond milk. These three guys are standing right in front of the milk and staring at the milk.

She’s like, how am I going to get in there? She said excuse me, excuse me and squeezes through the guys and goes in and opens it up, and grabs four or five of these big cartons of almond milk, and puts them in her cart. The guys turn around and says, “Excuse me m’am. Do you mind if we ask you a question?” She says, “What?” “How come you bought the Blue Diamond brand as opposed to Silk?” She picks up the Blue Diamond brand, and she shows the picture on the outside and says, “There’s raspberries on the picture on the front of this box.” They said, “What do you mean?” She said, “We tried to buy Silk, but my kids wouldn’t drink it because there’s no raspberries on the box. This one has raspberries, and they thought it looked good, so that’s the one that they will drink.”

The guy said, “Seriously? That’s the reason you bought that over the other one?” She said, “Yeah. The only reason why is because it has raspberries on the box.” The guy says, “It’s a dollar cheaper than Silk.” She said, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay a dollar more for it. It is the fact it has raspberries on the box.”

He said, “Whatever. I don’t believe you. How about this? I will pay you a dollar for each bottle of Silk you buy or each box of Silk milk you buy right now.” She said, “If I was to do that I would be out 10 bucks because my kids wouldn’t drink this milk, and it would sit in my fridge and go bad.”

He said, “That’s so interesting. We are actually representatives of Silk. We work for Silk, and we are here just trying to figure how to increase sales and placement, and stuff like that. That’s just very interesting. That’s the reason why. It wasn’t because it was cheaper. It was because the picture on the box had raspberries on it.”

I just wanted you guys to think about that, the power of perception. Isn’t it strange that my wife, we buy four or five boxes of almond milk a week, probably spend three or four grand a year on this almond milk. We buy one brand over the other is not because of the cost. It is because of the packaging, what it looks like on the outside. It is just really interesting.

I have seen people who have products who just change the cover of the product, and they see sales change. For example, Matt Furey. He created a product. It was actually the very first product I bought of his. It was called the Martial Art of Wrestling. I bought it, and it was this glossy book, and it looked really nice and exciting. I read it, and loved it and everything.

Five years later when I found out what he was doing, and I was learning about internet marketing and all this stuff I went  listened to an interview. He was talking about his first product failure. He said it was this book he created called The Martial Art of Wrestling. He was like, “I spent all this money. It was nice and glossy. It was great, and nobody bought it. I had a huge bedroom filled with thousands of these books that nobody bought.”

It turns out I was the only person that actually bought it. Anyway, he was like, “Later on, I knew the content was amazing. Anyone who did read it, loved it. My next run of it, before the other one ever ran out, I decided to change the packaging, and made it more secretive and underground, and less like a book.

I made the cover black and white, non-glossy. Just paper. Instead of the Martial Art of Wrestling book, The Martial Art of Wrestling. Just made it more secretive and underground, just tweak the packaging dramatically increased sales.

If you have a product you are selling, and it’s not doing well maybe you just have to put some raspberries on the outside of the box. Maybe it’s not so much the product or the marketing or the sales funnel. Maybe it’s just you have to wrap it a little different, and make it so it’s a little more appealing to people.

I spend a lot of time in our businesses, I try to figure out the right hook and the right angle and the right thing. That stuff is very important. I can start working with somebody, and they have a product or business and they are struggling. We come in and not touch anything, just tweak their angle and hook a little bit and blow it up overnight. It is important. Think about that. Think about the raspberries on the outside of your box, what you can tweak and change to make it more appealing to your customers. That is it for the day. I am at the office. I am a little nervous to get out of the car because it is raining. I have a two foot step into the office.

Going to have a good day today, hope you guys will as well. We will talk to you all soon.

You are listening to Marketing in Your Car with Russell Brunson, the best podcast to help you easily launch and grow your own online business. Grab the wheel. Get in gear, and market in your car.

Lessons in entrepreneurship Russell learned last night while shooting zombies in the head.

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Hey guys and gals! This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast.

Hey guys, so last night I had a chance to do something really fun. My wife and I went to this thing called the “zombie apocalypse.” Actually, it’s called Zombie Acres, where basically [laughter] I’m sure some of you guys, hopefully, have had a chance to do paintballing, which is very fun.

Where you go out in a field, and you have teams, and you shoot each other and try to kill each other, right? So what Zombie Acres was, was kind of like that except for backwards.

Instead of us going and shooting our friends, there’s a whole bunch of zombies attacking us, and we get to shoot them with paintballs, and it was a really fun thing, so we showed up there.

They had this huge bus, the Zombie Acres bus. And we get inside, and the windows are all busted out of the bus, and there’s a paintball gun out of every single window.

And so you go and you sit in the bus, and they drive around this haunted cornfield, and you get to shoot zombies.

The zombies are attacking you and jumping on the bus and coming in the doors and the windows, and you’re just pounding them in the face with paintballs, as fast as you can go.

And anyway, it was like, seriously, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. You know, I’ve been to a lot of haunted houses and stuff, and this trumped that by ten times.

So that was kind of what we did last night, it was super fun, and the reason why we did it, one of the guys who lives by me, he actually just started that as a company this year.

And I’m not sure how he got the whole idea behind it or anything, but they put the concept together and they found -- first, they were trying to buy a lot, but it was too expensive to buy someplace to do it.

So they partnered with some people, and they found some land to do it at, and they started doing it, and they promoted on Facebook and did a bunch of cool things. And it was just fun watching this little startup growing, and them using Internet marketing and all these things to kind of grow their business.

What was interesting is, I’ve been watching these guys. This was their first season doing it, and last night was actually the last night. So I’m watching them, externally, kind of seeing what they’re doing from the marketing.

And before it launched, they did a big pre-launch through Facebook, just locally here, and they were getting people to guess where it was going to be at, and it’s caused all this hype in pre-launch, which was awesome, and then boom!

They announced where it was going to be at, and then they did their first day, and then from there they posted pictures and videos and got people excited and more people started coming.

And then about half way through the season, they hit an obstacle -- and as most entrepreneurs, we know we hit obstacles a lot, right?

Yesterday, I hit like four new obstacles in my business that all are seemingly insurmountable. But we’ll figure out a way to break through them, right?

That’s kind of what happened to them. The city they were doing it is called Meridian, which is right next to Boise, and the Meridian City Council or whatever it was, came down and basically said, hey, you can't shoot paintballs outdoors in Meridian or whatever.

So they had to basically shut down, and they were shut down for about a week or so, and I felt really bad for them. But I just kind of watched it just to see how… I don’t know. I like seeing how entrepreneurs react.

You know, it’s interesting. You go to a store, if the employee behind the counter has a little issue, they just give up, right? But the entrepreneur in a business is always a lot more stubborn and pigheaded, and they figure out ways to get crap done, right?

So I just kind of watched them, and I just assumed that they were going to be done for the season, and then boom! About a week later, they’re back up and running.

And sure enough, he didn’t let that obstacle stop him, and went and they found another place in another city, set up shop over there, partnered with this farm.

That’s a farm called Linder Farms, and they already a ton of people coming for their corn maize and things like that -- and they set up shop right out there in the corn maize and kept going and finished through the season.

I just was impressed with their perseverance to kind of break through those sticking points.

And then, last night, again the first time that I had a chance to actually go. I had meant to go throughout the whole season, and things came up and then boom! They got shut down, and then it got re-opened, and just things keep happening, and we never got to make it.

Finally last night, we had a chance to go on the closing night, and we were on the very last bus. And it was awesome because when I was going there, I remember sitting there at first, and I showed up and I saw these two huge buses they had, like school bus style buses.

They’re all painted. The windows had been busted out. They basically had a paintball in every single window, and I was just looking at it.

And then, I saw like the staff that was, you know, doing tickets, and I saw the staff inside the buses, keeping people’s guns loaded and enough ammo, and I saw like all the zombies, and I was like, “there are a lot of costs involved with this little business that they’ve got.”

I was kind of doing the math, and I was, you know, looking at it. It was $30 a seat to be on the bus. Look how many windows there are, you know, and I’m looking.

They were making $600 -- $500 to $600 per busload -- and I was like, you know, that’s not bad money. But they’ve got a lot of costs, and I’m like, “I wonder how this is doing?

And I was noticing some things, you know, like when we went there. Like it was cold and I think they could have had some profit opportunities, if they would have sold hot chocolate or hand warmers or a bunch of things like that.

At the end, you know, they could take a picture, a lot of little things like that they could come back and really monetize.

But the brilliance came when I got on the thing, so I think it was, like I said, $30 per person to get on the bus, and then they give you 150 paintballs, which I assume 150 paintballs would last a pretty good amount of time.

I found out later, 150 paintballs lasts about three seconds, and so I’m at the brrrp boom! Balls gone! And they’re like, “Hey, if you want more paintballs, you know, the next 100 paintballs is five bucks.”

I’m like, “Yeah! Give me some more paintballs.” Pull out five bucks. Boom! Give me more paintballs. And about 10 seconds later, those are gone. So I paid another five bucks, boom!

Anyway, we ended up spending every penny that was in my wallet in paintballs, and by the end we were completely like… we were still not finished, and I was completely out of money, and I couldn’t buy any more paintballs.

And next to me there was a kid that was, man, probably 14, 15 years old, and he went and bought four refills of paintballs, so he spent an extra $20 on paintballs.

Again, everyone on the bus was doing this, and I started doing the math and that’s when I saw the brilliance of their business model: You’re getting in $30 is basically kind of covering their costs, and then when you’re in the bus, just keep buying more and more paintballs, is where they’re making money.

I mean, off of me they probably made an extra $80. They got us in and made $20, so there’s $100 between two of us, then there are 20 other people on the bus.

I was really impressed to see like how they were monetizing internally with the selling of additional paintballs, and I probably would have spent $200 or more if I wouldn’t have of ran out of cash.

They only take cash when your on the bus. I thought, you know, if they would figure out a way to do more, like a bar tab, where I’m like “another one, another one!” At the end bill me, I mean, I probably would have spent and extra… Goll, who knows, hundreds of dollars? I was having so much fun.

Anyway, it was really, really cool, and I started looking at that business model, and I started thinking like it’s kind of like the razor blade business.

You know, like if you go to the store, you buy razor blades, like the actual thing, the actual shaver thing isn’t that expensive, right? You can get those for like a dollar or two.

A lot of times they just give them away, you know, kind of like the bus ride. Then after you’ve got it, you got to buy razors, and you run a razor for a week or two weeks, and then it starts getting dull, and starts hurting, so boom!

You get a new one, a new one, and these keep replacing these razor blades, and that’s how that business makes a ton of money, and razor blades happen to be expensive.

Just like the printer business, right? They give away printers for free, and they sell ink over and over and over again. And that’s kind of the concept, and I thought it was brilliant, and executed perfectly.

Like I said, a couple things they could do, I think, to extract more money from me and the other customers.

At the end, I wish they’d had a professional photographer for taking pictures of us and the zombies; like that would have been something I would have definitely paid for, and I think most people there would have paid for.

Plus you could have used those pictures on Facebook, to help spread the message even further.

But as a whole, it was a fun night. An awesome to see entrepreneurship thriving and just see some people, who, obviously, went through a lot of trails and headaches to accomplish what they did, but to see them succeed last night.

And like I said, we were the very last bus, the last thing of the season, and afterwards they were out there taking pictures of all the zombies by the bus, and it was just cool -- and I was proud of them, to see them succeed with their new little business.

So that’s kind of what I wanted to just talk about today. Just to share a really fun experience that we had here, and then to share some of the outward entrepreneur things that they were able to do to succeed.

I hope that gives you guys some motivation in whatever business you’re in because you’re going to come into all sorts of troubles and issues.

You know, you may not be kicked out of your city because of your business, but you’re probably going to lose your Internet or you’re going to get your autoresponder shut down.

I can't tell you how many issues I’ve run into in my business every single day, and the entrepreneurs are the ones who figure out ways around it and figure out how to succeed.

And, man, that was a lot of fun! So if any of you guys are in Boise next October time, let me know and I’ll take you guys to Zombie Acres, and we will shoot some zombies and have some fun. It’s a good time.

So with that, I appreciate you guys. I’m at the office now. I’m getting back to work, and I’ll talk to you guys again soon.

Is it possible to find a happy medium?

---Transcript---

Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to the Marketing In You Car podcast.

Today, I’m not in my Ferrari because it’s freezing! But we’re here and we’re having some fun.

Hey guy and gals! So I appreciate you guys all being here today on the podcast and listening in. We have a very fun and exciting day today happening. It starts off, actually, yesterday. Well, maybe like even a month ago.

A month ago, for those of you who know me, I’m not like a very big video game guy. But I love like the old-school video games, and so I found this Nintendo controller, like one of the original ones, but it’s a USB based one.

So I bought it, and I really didn’t know what to do with it, and then last night with my kids I went and I found how to download an emulator, and I downloaded all of the original games that we used to play.

So I had “Mario 1, 2, 3.” We had “Double-Dribble,” “Contra,” “Milon’s Secret Castle,” “Legacy Of The Wizard,” anyway all the fun games, and we started playing it last night, and I was up till forever playing it.

And it’s Daylight Savings, and so I was actually up even… I was up to like 2:00 or 3:00, technically. I think it was like 1:00 or 2:00 I went to bed, but it was like 2:00 or 3:00 in my brain because of Daylight Savings.

So anyway, that was fun and I’m excited to get back tonight. I have to get home from the office and keep playing. I got to beat some of my old games again. Oh, “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out,” I have that one too.

Anyway, so it’s been a lot of fun. But I want to talk to you guys about what I’ve been thinking about this whole weekend. Because I’m kind of having a big shift, and it goes against everything that I thought I believed about marketing, and I think that I just sold myself on it.

For those who have been following me for any amount of time, you know that I’m kind of like a hard-core like Dad Kennedy style, outbound marketer, right? We’re very aggressive with our emails and our banners and our direct mail and our -- everything that we’re doing.

And it works! Okay, like we’ve been very successful with it, but I keep watching like all these newer type companies that are coming out, and watching their huge growth they’re having. And what’s interesting, as I watch what they’re doing, and it’s very… kind of the opposite of what I’m doing.

In fact, they all kind of call like, what I do and what we focus on, the “outbound marketing,” what they do “inbound marketing.” And I’ve seen infographic about like how outbound marketing, you’re like “spammers” and “the email marketers,” and, you know, all these guys.

And the inbound marketers, the ones who “create good content” and “people come and listen to them,” and bla, bla, bla, and while I don’t completely agree with them, there are some valid, really, really, really good things that I have been getting from them that I enjoy.

I think there’s a blend of the two that you can really find a happy medium, and I think that using, you know, they would call outbound marketing techniques --- promote your inbound marketing -- is really where the magic is if you can find that sweet spot.

And so, I’ve been looking for the last month or so, for those of you guys who know, we’ve been publishing the DotComSecrets Labs print newsletter for, man, for a long time!

I think it’s been seven years we’ve been publishing a print newsletter. In the last five or six months, it’s been the DotComSecrets Labs Newsletter, and people will have loved the Labs newsletter.

They’ve been going crazy for it. Anyone who gets their hands on it, it’s just like “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” And the problem is, though, it’s really a hard product to sell. It’s kind of like insurance, right? Like everybody needs insurance, but nobody really wants insurance.

Now if they get it, they’re grateful for it. It’s kind of like this: like we just really have a hard time getting mass appeal, and then about a month ago the girl that’s been doing our newsletter, she’s had her second baby and she just said, “Hey, I don’t have time now to keep dedicating to this.”

And so, I’m kind of at this crossroad, and what do we do? Do we find a new publisher? Do we just cancel it altogether, or what do we do? I kind of have this weekend, what I’m leaning towards, and I may not do it, so don’t hold me accountable to this if I don’t.

But I was like what if -- like anyone who gets the newsletter in their hands and sees the split tests and the results and all this stuff, I get -- it instantly makes them raving fans.

Mark Call said, “By far, it was the best Internet marketing product he’s ever purchased in his history online.” You know, everybody else that sees it, loves it. Like our Facebook reviews are just raving, from David Frey, from just everybody, right?

And so, I was like, “What if we just stopped selling that and just started giving it away? Like what if I made like a real blog, like people do in the blogging world, and I just every day blogged split test results? It showed cool thing, after cool thing, after cool, after cool thing?”

I’m always just like have a kind of fear. I’m like, “Well, why should I actually give all this stuff away? Like people will pay for it.” But I’m like, what if I did, though? If I give that away, it would create these raving fans who then come back and purchase everything else we have.

That’s been kind of my thought process over the weekend. I’ve got to talk to my guys and see what they think about it. They may think I’m crazy.

But I really think that, you know, one of the big shifts in my business over the last month or so is, bringing in all the social media and bringing in all these things that we haven’t been doing.

And I think that the reason why it’s so powerful is because, first off, it makes you relevant. Second off, it’s really rebuilding our platform.

You know, like I said, we’ve been building our platform for the last 10 years, but the platform shifted. And I’ve got to be honest: I’ve been slower to change over than I probably should have been.

So these are all the things that we’re trying to do to really rebuild our platform from the social media standpoint, and just doing cool stuff to get everybody raving fans where they just spend more time with us, and, in return, hopefully, spend some more money with us.

So that’s the kind of the game plot. I don’t know. We’re excited, and anyway I appreciate you guys listening. I just got to the office. I’ve got a fun-filled day of stuff I’m going to be doing. I’m fired up, excited. I found this company that does infographics.

You know, I’ve got tons of processes that we teach in our company, and I was like whiteboarding out. But I was like wouldn’t that be cool if we have an infographic for each one of them? So like the DotComSecrets X process, we take someone through it. You make an infographic of that.

Our DotComSecrets Local, our Micro-Continuity, our Underachiever, like making infographics of each of these different topics. The people can print them out. You know, put them on the wall, whatever. Pass them around.

Anyway, I’m excited about that too. I’m going to be having them do a DotComSecrets X infographic today, so I’m fired up! I’m excited for today. It’s going to be good.

I hope you guys are excited as well. If you’re liking this podcast, please go to iTunes and let me know. I love reading the reviews. It gets me excited, and other than that, you guys, I will talk to you all again very, very soon.

Thanks, you guys, and this is Russell signing off.