There’s no school like the old school…
On today’s episode Russell talks about plans to use what he has learned from TJ Rholeder while on an anniversary trip in Hawaii, in his business once he arrives home. Here are a few interesting things you will learn in this episode:
So listen here to hear Russell’s upcoming plans for his business, or watch the video version so you don’t miss out on the beautiful scenery of Kauai.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, that is in the rain here in Kauai.
Alright everybody, I want to welcome to today’s episode of Marketing Secrets, it is raining on me right now. I don’t know if you can see that over here, if you’re watching the video version. But it’s beautiful here and I wanted to do an episode, this is going to be really good, I’m going to come and hide under the bush or something. I’m just going to sit here and get wet, it’ll be more fun this way.
Anyway, we’ve been in Hawaii almost a week now on my 15th anniversary, which is amazing being married to my beautiful wife, Collette for this long. I’m trying to get to do an episode with you guys, hopefully on the flight home or something, on what it’s like living with and being married to an entrepreneur. We’re trying to pick our keynote speaker for this year’s Funnel Hacking Live, and it’s funny because we got tons of people voting for everybody. Somebody posted Oprah, and someone put Russell’s wife and my wife got more votes than Oprah, which is pretty exciting. So we’re trying to get her at least to jump on the podcast. So that’s the goal and the game plan.
What I want to share with you guys today, the rain’s gone that fast, but there’s birds right behind me. Let me clean my phone off real quick. So what I wanted to share with you guys, I’ve been listening to a whole bunch of cool marketing stuff between the long drives around the island, all the cool stuff we’re doing. The course I was listening to was TJ Rohleder and if you don’t know TJ, he’s one of the legends in our business. He is one of the direct mail kings in the Bizop world, and he’s become a friend. We had him speak at one of our events a while ago, which was amazing.
What’s interesting, the course I was listening to was How To Become Super Rich in the Opportunity Market. He teaches people how to make money in the teach people how to get rich market. What’s interesting, as I was listening to it, if you read the Expert Secrets book, I talked about three core things you gotta do to build a mass movement. Number one you gotta have the attractive character, the attractive leader. Number two you have to have a future based cause. Number three you have to have a new opportunity.
What’s interesting is as I was listening to this, he’s talking about how to sell opportunities but basically if you’re doing a mass movement the way we’re talking about, it’s always a new opportunity. Everything he’s talking about, the opportunity is the way he positions it is how to get rich, how to make money, here’s the opportunity market as he calls it. But in my mind every market is the opportunity market. So I’m going to see if I can interview TJ and dig deeper in that because his stuff was brilliant, it was all targeted towards selling people stuff, how to make money. But if you look at it from the lens of the Expert Secrets book then it kind of works for all of them. Because every single opportunity, everything you’re selling should be a new opportunity. So I’m going to try to see if I can do that.
Plus, TJ launched his company, he lives out in Kansas and he actually bought a hospital and renovated the whole thing and that’s where he runs his company out of, an old hospital, which is kind of cool. I kind of want to go down there and see his whole operation. It may come to an episode of Funnel Hacker TV soon. Where I go down there and tour his hospital and see his whole organization. In the last ten years they’ve sent out 9500 different direct mail campaigns, which is crazy.
Some people will get on his list and they might get between 2 or 300 letters in the mail per year, depending on what sequence they take, what offers they say yes to and no to and all sorts of stuff. Super inspiring.
But what I want to talk about is a couple of core things I learned from him that I think are really good for all of you guys. The first one is not from TJ it’s actually from a Bill Glazier thing I was listening to. So Bill was partners with Dan Kennedy at Glazier Kennedy and he was my marketing dad for five or six year that I was in his inner circle. And one of the things that was cool that I was studying from Bill this week, he was talking about how at the very beginning of the year they have their big thing. So they do two events a year, they did InfoSummit and Super Conference. For me, I do Funnel Hacking Live, that’s my big thing.
They said they categorized all their promotions based on the importance. So number were their two events, number two was this, number three…they had it all mapped out and mapped out the entire year, the promotional schedule at the beginning of the year to make sure they fill the events and all these other things fit in there.
I was thinking about that, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not super good at mapping out my promotional calendar and schedule and things like that. I kind of just go week by week, month by month and do stuff. And what Bill does in this course, and it’s an old course, but he maps it out and then they do everything. So It started thinking about this and at one of our inner circle meetings, Justin Williams was talking about with his stuff now, as you guys know if you’ve been listening to our podcast for any length of time, the two magic things that marketers have are urgency and scarcity.
So he started doing with his is, he re-launched courses throughout the year and he’d open and close them. So he’d have the urgency and scarcity close. That’s where most of the sales always come in, during the closing of the thing. Also if you listened to when Stu launched Tribe, he’s talking about Michael Hyatt when he launched his membership site, the big secret they had was opening and closing. So twice a year they’d open up the membership site and then it was closed. I started thinking about that and I’m like, right now most of our programs are open all the time, which is good. But the urgency and scarcity is not there. So I think what I’m going to do is start calendaring it out where twice a year our things are available.
So twice a year people can buy our certification program, twice a year people can join Funnel University, twice a year they can get Fill Your Funnel, twice a year….all of our core offers are only open twice during the year, and they’re closed down other than that, which is kind of fun. It gives us the ability to have urgency and scarcity and build up the hype and the buzz, and it gives me each month, something to focus on. This month is Funnel U month and we’re going to open and close it. The next month is this, we’re going to open it and close it and all content and all things can be related back to that one thing.
So that was the first thing I kind of started re –thinking through when I was listening to Bill Glazier talk about how they structured their promotions around their events. That’s the first cool thing. Now with TJ, a couple of cool things that he does, I think it was good for me to hear again, it’s good for all of you guys to hear again.
So TJ is in the business opportunity market, mostly through direct mail. He has 50,000 letters he mails every single week. Week in and week out consistently, they know 50,000 letters will go out every single week all for new customer acquisition. New customer acquisition, 50,000 letters every single week. And that’s just the schedule. I think for a lot of us we get in this thing where we have these front end funnels, these break even funnels where we bring people in, then we have our monetization funnel. So I think a lot of us, we create a really good webinar funnel let’s say, and then that becomes our focus. And then that’s it, we’re driving traffic and that’s the business.
TJ if you look at this again, he’s got his frontend lead gen offers and he’s mailing 50,000 pieces a week. He said at his peak, he was selling a $50 course from his frontend lead gen stuff, and he said he would spend up to $500 to sell a $50 course. From there you go into all the backend funnels and the backend things he was selling. But he had this consistency of 50,000 pieces every single week.
I started thinking about that. He’s mailing 50,000 new names every single week, what’s the equivalent of that for my business? I need to make sure I have something consistently doing that every single week to one frontend offer. He talked about one of the big things also is he’s not mailing 2 things or 3 things to that 50,000. They have one offer, the hottest converting one and that’s where they drive all their energy, all their money, everything.
And for us, I think all of us, we have our hot offer, we need to be spending as much as we can to get people into that thing consistently every single week. Just knowing I spend 50 grand a week, or 10 grand a week or a thousand bucks a week, whatever it is for you, into that frontend thing. If you break, if you think about this, break it down, there’s kind of two sides to this, or three sides depending on how deep you want to get. We talk about this at this upcoming Funnel Hacking Live, but there’s a process.
There’s basically three types of funnels. There’s acquisition funnels, getting people in. There’s ascension funnels, ascending up within your membership. Then there’s monetization funnels. But for this argument today, I’m just going to talk about the two. So there’s an acquisition funnels, so what is your one acquisition funnel that you can consistently do X with? For me it might be I need to sell at least a thousand books a week, or I need to spend 10 grand a week, or whatever that thing is for you. You just know that and you have to do it consistently. We have to sell a thousand books a week and we should build a whole team of people whose entire goal is to sell a thousand books a week, or 5 thousand, or whatever that number is for you.
Back when I had a call center, that’s how it was. We had free plus shipping leads and we had to get 8 thousand leads a month to get enough leads for our sales floor and that became the focus of the business. For you it’s like, think about TJ, what is the frontend offer that’s consistently bring people in? And then from TJ, it’s so crazy. I’m hoping I can go down there and film his whole operation for you guys because I want to see it to. But like I said, as soon as someone gets through the frontend then he’s got all these direct mail campaigns that go out offering these two step things.
So he’ll send out a letter for a free cd about whatever to the existing customers. So he’s only sending it to people that already bought his $50 thing, then he’ll put them onto a sequence that gets a free cd. Then if they respond to the free cd he puts them in a sequence to sell the thing that that cd upsells to. Then he puts out the next offer and the next offer and he keeps putting out all these frontend lead gen, I guess their acquisition and monetization letters to the buyers of his 50,000 a week thing. So 50,000 a week bringing people in. And after they come in and bought the $50 thing, then he starts sending them letters trying to get them to raise their hand about specific opportunities that he’s going to sell them. If they respond to those then they go into a whole other sequence. They might get 10, 15, 20 letters to sell a 2 or 3 or 5 thousand dollar course on the backend.
And that’s kind of the process that he does over and over and over again. So for me, what I’m looking at, what I want my focus to be, is somebody comes into my world, and again I’m focusing way more effort consistently on this, I’m going to call it 50,000 letters a week, but for us we’re not doing direct mail right now, so it’s not that, but that’s the concept. The frontend lead acquisition. Then if they come in, we’re taking our core courses and we’re opening them and closing them, opening them and closing, opening and closing them, opening and closing them throughout the year. So those are our monetization funnels after people come in.
So that’s kind of the game, and I’m really excited for it. So that’s the game I’m going to be playing and I hope you guys model that. The other cool thing I’m going to be doing, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this for probably two weeks. It started at Scout camp and it’s been in my mind even here as we’ve been in this beach house. Having one really good follow up funnel sequence that takes people through my offers in a very strategic way. So we have igniteyourfunnel.com, which is right now, we’re using it for something completely different, but I’m going to be changing that to where this is an opt in form where we get people to opt into and then it’s going to take them through a sequence. I haven’t quite mapped the whole thing out, but first thing I want someone to buy is what?
For my business the first thing I want someone to buy is Expert Secrets, so I’m going to be like, have a video of me explaining why they need Expert Secrets and why it’s step number one. Actually, let me step back, step number one is not going to be the book. Step number one is going to be, on the podcast you guys heard a little while ago, the two episodes on You’re one Funnel Away, I’m going to show that video to build connection with people immediately after they opt in, from there I’ll tell them to get the Expert Secrets book and then from there, what do they need next? I’ll logically build out a really long sequence that’s going to be this ascension funnel that takes them up through our core offers in the middle.
And then the big thing that our team is going to be focusing on is RKPI’s how many opt in’s a day are we getting inside the Ignite Your Funnel funnel, the Ignite your Funnel ascension funnel, ascending them through all of our offers. I’m trying to think how this whole thing works together. It might be when someone opt’s in the first time they go through this ascension funnel, that all those offers will be open to them, open and close, like in Evergreen format. And after that they’ll bump over to a monetization funnel. Our longer term email sequences that then they’ll be on when we open and close them each month. I’m not positive on that, still figuring out the details. But it’s fun to think through it. Anyway, that’s the game plan.
So those are some of the fun things I’ve learned and been thinking about while I’ve been here having some fun in Kauai on my 15 year anniversary. I hope that gives you guys some ideas and things to think about. So kind of to recap the important things.
Number one is focusing on consistently bringing new blood into your business. 50,000 letters a week rule, should we call it that? 50,000 letters a week rule, consistently bringing new blood in. I remember Garret White at the last Funnel Hacking Live talked about people that make it rain, the rainmakers are the ones who dominate this world and this business. You gotta be focusing on making it rain. If you want to learn how to make it rain, right now the program is closed, but depending on when you’re listening it might be open, is our Fill Your Funnel course. Fill Your Funnel is all about how to make it rain, how to get new customers into your funnels. So that’s number one.
Number is then after they come in, what’s the monetization? So maybe number two is the ascension funnel, which is for me it’s ignite your funnel, which takes them through our offers in chronological order of when I want them to see things, opening and closing them in Evergreen format. And at the end of that, then put them into our monetization team, monetization funnels, which then would be taking our core six offers and opening and closing them twice a year. That’s going to be the business. That gets me really excited. Really, really excited.
So anyway, that’s the game plan guys. I’m glad I had a chance to talk this out with you guys, it’s making it clearer and clearer in my mind. I hope you guys something of value out of that too. But like I said, I don’t just talk about this stuff, I practice what I preach so you will see me implementing these things in the very near future. Hopefully you guys will see them and enjoy them and model and funnel hack them for what you guys are doing because I know this stuff is going to be amazing.
So that’s all I got you guys. Anyway, here’s one last view. Here’s the beach house we’ve been staying in. It’s an AirBNB, we were going to get a hotel and we looked at AirBNB and we found this. AirBNB or BRB, I can’t remember which one. It’s like 5000 square feet, my wife and I are up here and Brent and Amber are over here. There’s all this open space and there’s even like huge guest house over here that we got massages in the other day. It’s crazy.
We’re literally, this is our beach. It’s just ours. And it’s crazy. I was flying the quad copter today, I learned how to finally fly the quad copter. I took it out over everything. So if you’re watching Funnel Hacker TV, which hopefully you are, you’ll have a chance to see above this place and beyond, it’s insane. It’s probably a little expensive, but for your 15th anniversary you go all out. Look at that, that’s our beach. We rented these paddle boards too, I guess if you’re listening on the podcast you can’t see this.
But a couple of cool things also, just so you guys know. This is obviously on the audio podcast, which right now as of today, we’re number 5 in the business category, which is awesome. We’re still killing it there, we just also released this as a video podcast, if you go to iTunes at the very top there’s audio podcasts, you can switch to video podcast. We also have Marketing Secrets as a video podcast now too. So if you want to watch the videos, or if you want to watch the videos you can go to marketingsecrets.com and they’re all listed there along with the transcripts, see if you want to listen to what I’m saying and read along. The transcripts are at marketingsecrets.com as well.
With that said, I would love it if you guys would give me a review and a rating over on iTunes. Like I said, we’re number 5 in the business category, the other guys above me still have more ratings, it’s not fair. I’m killing myself giving you guys the best stuff I got, I need some more ratings. So if you can take 5 seconds out of your busy day, stop everything, go over there, leave a rating and review, tell me what you think about Marketing Secrets, let the world know, that’d be awesome.
And then the other thing is please subscribe to the video podcast as well. Feel free to watch the videos there if you want, that way you can see some of the beautiful scenery behind me. Yeah, that’s all I got you guys. Thanks again for listening, have an amazing day and we’ll see you guys soon. We’ll be back in Boise next week, back to a normal schedule. I got some cool stuff I want to publish and share with you guys. I gotta finish my anniversary and then get back to you guys soon. Appreciate you all, see you guys soon. Bye.
These two things are probably keeping you from charging what you want and selling what you want.
On this episode Russell talks about people pushing their own purchasing decisions on you, and why you shouldn’t do that. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to why you gotta spend money to make money and why you should never force others to spend money the same way you do.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to a special Hawaii edition of Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, my wife and I are in Hawaii right now, Kauai, actually, on our 15 year wedding anniversary. Well next week is technically our anniversary, but it’s been 15 years so we’re here with some of our friends who it’s also their 15 year. It’s been really great. We didn’t do a hotel this time, we actually AirBNB’d it, so I don’t know if you can see back here. I’ll show the AirBNB for those who are watching on Marketingsecrets.com you can see the video. If you’re on the podcast you can’t see this, but it’s crazy. This is the AirBNB we rented. It’s 5 or 6 thousand square feet on this private beach.
We have our own beach and we’re here right now hanging out. My wife just got soaked by a wave, we just got done getting massages. I’ve been kind of MIA for a little bit. I’ve got some content going out while I’m gone. Last week I had scout camp so I was gone for scout camp all week and little access to anything. And then this week I’ve been in Hawaii. I should have done, I was going to do some more stuff but you know, trips, it’s really difficult for me to unplug, and now that I’m unplugged it’s really difficult for me to plug back in, to be completely honest.
Anyway, it’s definitely interesting, but having a good time here. There’s dudes out kite boarding, I don’t know if you guys ever kite boarded before, but I’ve always wanted to kite board, so I may try that. It would be kind of fun actually.
I hope it’s not too windy for you guys to hear me. I was trying to figure out what I should share with you guys here to kind of give some inspiration or some thought or an idea for how you can better market your business with the things you’re doing. So I was thinking about that, what’s something that would be the biggest value for you guys and I think one of the biggest problems we have, and I’ve seen this ten times since we’ve been here in Hawaii, is that they place their own ability, the way they make their purchasing decisions on other people.
For example one of the things, I had a GoPro here, and I brought the GoPro and I had the little handle, but I forgot the little screw thing that screws the GoPro to the handle, so we go to the store. I was like, “Hey, I need to buy one of those screws.” And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t sell the screws.” I was like, “You have those handles right? Give me a handle then.” And he’s like, “But you just need a screw?” I’m like, “Yeah, but just give me the handle, I’ll just do that.” And he’s like, “Dude, it’s $47 for the handle, if you go down the road, two or three streets down there’s a place and they might sell screws there.” and I’m like, “No dude, just give me the handle.” And he’s like, “But it’s $47.” I was like, “I don’t care, I don’t want to drive two or three streets down the road to find a place that might sell a screw.” For me, the $47 is so much cheaper than the opportunity cost for me to go do that thing.
It was kind of funny and so many things happened like that. We tried to buy something, or do something and people are putting their purchasing decisions on, they would never do that, they’d never spend an extra $47 just to get a screw, because for them they’d do all these other things. I think a lot of times we get caught up that way with our customers. In fact, I’ve had people before be like, “They’ll never buy that.” I teach them in Expert Secrets and they’re creating the course and they’re like, “No one would ever pay $997 for that. No one would ever pay $400 for that or $500 for that.” Don’t put your purchasing decisions, the way you’d logically do things on somebody else. It has nothing to do with it.
You have to look at what your customer wants. If you create something they really, really want where what you’re creating is worth more than what it is you’re getting in return, the money, then they’ll buy it. If you create something that sucks, it’s not going to happen. It’s got to be something that’s amazing.
So many I think that people don’t sell stuff, or they don’t sell stuff for what it’s worth because in their mind they’re like, “I don’t think I would want to pay for that.” Which is another problem, it’s a mental thing you gotta get over as well. You’ve got to be willing to buy stuff too. But it’s just interesting how that’s such a barrier.
I remember when Justin and Tara, in our inner circle and Two Comma Club winners, when they came to inner circle, they had their real estate program, they were selling for $2000 and they paid $25 grand to join my inner circle and the first meeting all I basically told them is they should sell a $25,000 thing and they’re like, “My people won’t pay that.” And I’m like, “you paid it.” And they’re like, “Huh, we did pay you $25,000.” They valued that, they didn’t value the real estate education much because they already know it, they already do it. But the education they wanted they were willing to pay for that. And because they were willing to pay for it, they were able to ask for it. So they sent an email off to their list and sold 18 people at $25k the next week, it was crazy.
But it was just a little mindset shift. It’s interesting, I have a lot of people I know who will try to sell a thousand or a ten thousand, or a twenty five thousand dollar thing, but then they’re not willing to buy that from somebody else, and I think there’s a lot of incongruency. It’s really difficult to sell a $25,000 thing unless you’ve bought one before.
A big reason why I joined Dean Graziosi’s and Joe Polish’s group is because I know in the future I’m going to have a 100k group and I wanted to make sure I’d be willing to invest in myself that much before I ever asked somebody else to. It’s the same for you. It’s this weird karma thing, if you’re not willing to invest in yourself and your business, it makes it a lot harder for people to invest in your business. I think the reason why it’s easy for me to sell books is because I buy a lot of books. I love buying books, so it’s easy selling books. People who struggle with that, they’re like, “I never bought that in the past.” Well if you’re not going to buy it, then you’re not going to love it.
I buy, I probably shouldn’t say this on camera, but I spend 2 or 3 thousand dollars a month on supplements, depending on the month and if I’m refilling and stuff. So for me it’s easy to sell supplements because I buy a lot of supplements. There’s congruency and a lot of things that people don’t have.
So make sure that you’re buying stuff. Make sure that you’re not putting your buying beliefs on other people. These are all such important things. Check out this little swing from our tree here. But, these are just things that I think are important. There were probably 5 times while I’m here in Hawaii, where I just wanted to strangle people who are trying to place their buying decisions on me and I’m like, “Let me give you money. I just want this thing. Quit trying to talk me out of it.” It’s crazy.
So that’s what’s happening here in Kauai, Hawaii on our anniversary. We’ll be heading home next week, so by the time you watch this I’ll probably be home and back at it, which is exciting. We’ve got a lot of things coming up. The viral video we created with the Harmon Brothers is launching on September 15th. We are throwing an epic party which we are streaming everywhere, so you guys will be able to go see it. But we’re really going to try to set the Guinness world record at the launch party, with a whole bunch of influencers and other stuff. It’s going to be so crazy.
It was funny, we were planning this and Dave Woodward had all these crazy ideas that we’re really logical or possible, and that’s where greatness usually starts from, an idea that’s not logical or possible. And then he went and figured out a way to get it done and now we’re going to be doing it. So it’s crazy. I’ll share more details as it gets closer. But that’s kind of what I got for you guys today. So beware of putting your purchasing decisions on other people. Number two is beware of asking people to purchase things that you aren’t willing to purchase.
And again, if you’re a real estate coach you’re probably not going to buy real estate coaching, you might if you’re like me, I buy every marketing coaching program on earth. I’m obsessed with it. But I also invest in other things with those types of dollar amounts, it’s not incongruent for me to ask people for those things as well. Because not investing yourself is really painful and hard and annoying to try to get people to invest in your stuff. The money universe doesn’t work that way very well for whatever reason. So anyway, that’s what I got you guys. I hope you’re enjoying your day as much as I am, and we’ll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye everybody.
I got a whole bunch of questions this weekend about this topic and I want to give you my two cents.
On this episode Russell talks about listening to John Reese’s new podcast and people thinking he was talking trash about Expert Secrets. Here are some things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out why Russell doesn’t believe that John was talking trash, and how can both be right.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast, this is a short one you’re going to get in the jeep while I’m going to grab my kids from the last day of scout camp.
Alright everyone, I wanted to shoot you guys a quick message because I have been up in the mountains for the last almost week now. I got a sweet beard. So those that can see my beard line, this is why I can’t invest in a beard oil company, or grow a beard for that matter. I don’t know why, I’ve never been able to. My brother’s got a beard that’s thicker than the hair on my head, so this is the best beard you are getting from Russell.
I wonder if I were to buy Rogaine and rub it on my beard parts. Sorry, I’m going back and forth in this little cab in the road with cars everywhere. Anyway, if it would actually grow in thick, I should try it someday, but I won’t because I don’t really want a beard to be completely honest.
So my message for you today, I’ve wanted to throw this in. So I was just in my buddy’s cabin and I tapped in the internet for a few minutes and got all these messages flying in and seeing what I missed in the last week. It’s funny, I got a bunch of people who messaged me about my man, John Reese’s podcast. So hopefully you guys are listening to it, if not go to iTunes and search the Wacky Minded John Reese. He is the dude who is the first guy to make a million dollars in our market. He is the one that inspired the Two Comma Club Award, and he has inspired so much of what I do and is someone who I appreciate. He has become a friend and he’s been a mentor and he’s just pretty much the man, so it’s worth it. Go search the Wacky Minded John Reese and plug in. He’s posted two podcasts as of today. I listened to both of them yesterday and they’re awesome, I love it.
But I got a bunch of people messaging me saying, “Did you listen to John’s podcast, at the very end he was totally talking trash about Expert Secrets.” I was laughing because I listened to the whole thing and at the end I was listening how he was talking about how he doesn’t believe people should need to be a personality and things like that to be successful in their business.
It’s funny because at that same moment, I Facebooked John and said how much I appreciate him and his podcast is amazing and stuff. Obviously, I look at things from a different angle than John does, it doesn’t mean anyone is right or wrong. That is what is so cool aobut this business. Marketing is, I always tell people this, it’s an art and a science. The science is the structure, like pages and all that kind of stuff that we talk about and geek out in our funnel world. And then the art is the stuff on top and people do it different ways and different business models require more or less of those types of things. So it kind of depends on what you’re trying to do and what you’re creating and things like that.
So the reason why I wrote Expert Secrets and why I’m so obsessed with the Market is because I believe in it so much. I believe that personality and connection with the audience are what people are craving. I think you can add an expert front end to any business and dramatically scale it, and we’ve proven it over and over and over again. And it’s awesome.
John was basically saying you don’t have to have that, and I think his message is right because a lot of people struggle because they’re not that person, they don’t want to be the personality, they don’t want to blog and Facebook and podcast and do the dog and pony show that I do every day. And I totally understand that and respect that. But what I am saying and proposing from an Expert Secrets standpoint is that if you do, you will take what you have and blow it up and catch it on fire.
I believe that I can go into any company that is a product based company focusing on traditional stuff and add an expert front end and at least 10x those companies. In fact, that’s a challenge, I want somebody to take me up on that. So I would say first off, John is right. Second off, I’m also right. So it’s just different ways to look at it.
John’s background is not, he talked about the podcast, he didn’t like being in the front and being all those kind of things, which I totally respect that. But when he did, he made a million dollars in a day, just saying. So there’s something to that, there’s power, the connection you can get with somebody blows things up, right. The connection is what gets people to share videos and gets people to talk about it, gets things to grow and all those things. Without that connection it’s harder to get, not impossible. In fact, I told someone, a peer wanted to start a business and asked me what I would recommend for them and just because of their personality, I told them they should start an Amazon business, that makes more sense for them in this spot in their life and personality. In an Amazon business you don’t have to have all those personality things, right. Just get a good product, a good price, a good description, images and doing the stuff to get it ranked.
If you want to take that and blow it up then I would find someone, if you’re not that person partner with somebody who could become the personality and use that person’s personality to blow it up. Because I could take any Amazon product off the shelf, tie it to a personality and 10x it overnight. That’s the power, so we’re both right.
I just wanted you guys to know that I still love John, even though he probably wasn’t talking about me specifically but people as a whole. So with that said, these guys all think I’m weird because I’m the one guy out here podcasting while they’re all scouting it up. Anyway, take that for what it’s worth. Alright, so I love John, love his advice and those of you guys who are nervous about the expert stuff, you can start a business that way, just know that this is how you amplify and scale and build a mass movement of people who buy over and over and over again. People connect more with people than brands.
I hope that helps and that’s all I got for today guys. See you all later, bye everybody.
You’re just one funnel away…
On this special two part episode you will hear the second part of Russell’s “One Funnel Away” presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you’ll hear:
So listen here to find out how Russell went from nearly bankrupt to amazing success with Clickfunnels within just a few years.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone this is Russell again. Welcome to the next episode of Marketing Secrets. This is part two of the One Funnel Away presentation.
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s episode. If you did like it I hope you have shared it and told people to go listen to it. Today is going to be the exciting conclusion of Russell’s bankruptcy and failure stories. I hope you enjoy it, it should be a lot of fun. Listen to it online at marketingsecrets.com, you can watch it, there’s a video there, you can share and see the actual presentation there as well. I hope this helps you, hope it gives you faith and hope in what you’re doing, what you’re creating and where you are trying to go with your business and people’s lives you are going to serve. With that said, enjoy my failures, I hope you guys have a good time with it, see you guys soon. Bye.
Now the pros and the cons of this. The pros, this is really, really awesome. As a beginning entrepreneur I was like, we nailed, lets scale this thing. I probably shouldn’t have done some of this stuff, but we got excited. If this worked here, we should hire more people. We started this and we went from this little thing with 5 or 6 of us to 2 years later we had about a 100 people operation, where this is the model we were doing. Cd’s calling them on the phone, selling coaching, having continuity and it grew really big.
During that time there were some really positive things that came from it, some negative things, some ups and downs, and I’ll share a lot of those things. One cool thing is that while this was happening and it was going really well, my name got out there, so I got a chance to go speak a lot, which is cool. I’d seen a lot of other people speak from stage, and this is where I’ve told you guys this story, anyone who’s gone from Perfect Webinar, I spent about 2 1/2 , 3 years on the road going to seminars, standing in front of a bunch of people like this, talking and trying to sell something and nothing happening, it’s a really horrible feeling. Has anyone done that before?
My first presentation was on a stage like this, probably had 300 people in the room. I did the presentation and tried to do what speakers do and close, hope everyone runs to the back. Nobody budged and then the guy forgot to turn the music on and it was crickets and I was just awkwardly walking off the stage, and then running. I was so embarrassed, when you have those events that are multi-speaker events and all the speakers are selling and everyone is bragging about their numbers, I knew that I didn’t want them to ask me my numbers, because not one person signed up, so I hid in my hotel room. I remember ordering coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs Ice cream for every meal for the next two days, while I hid in the room eating it and watching movies because I didn’t want to go back downstairs. It was really bad and awesome at the same time, because coconut shrimp and Haagen Dazs is awesome.
But I did that and learned how not to sell and then I started learning from some amazing speakers and people, learning the process and how it works. All the stuff we talk about in the Perfect webinar, all the stuff we talked about day one, about creating belief and breaking belief patterns. All those things I learned on the road in front of people on stage. It was scary, but it was such a good time for me to learn it and understand that part of the process.
As we started to grow, I wanna make sure I cover all the cool things, we had a bunch of different offers we came out with. One of the ones that was more successful for us was a front end offer like this, called Micro Continuity. How many of you guys remember Micro Continuity? This is awesome. So this is the one, it’s probably 8 years ago now. We put it on an MP3 player from Hong Kong, it had 6 hours of this training and that was the funnel we put through.
We kept creating front end funnels to get people into this program and it worked awesome. We grew the company from nothing to 3 or 4 million dollars a year and it was doing awesome. At the time I started looking at other people in my industry. Hopefully one of you guys will get a good idea from this one. I had this funnel, we talk about the value ladder, I had this really cool value ladder here and I was ascending people up and I realized that I was the only person in the market that had a real value ladder. Everyone else was kind of doing stuff down here and that was it. I was the only person selling really expensive stuff.
So I started calling my friends. I called Mike Filsame, “Hey man, all of our customers, we call them and sell them these $5000 things, and lots of people buy that. You should do that.” And he’s like, “I don’t want a call center.” And I was like, “Do you want us to call your customers and sell it?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” So we hooked up with Mike and became his backend. I called up Frank Kern and same thing, we became his backend for a little while. We started calling up a whole bunch of people and then we started becoming the backend. So all these people had frontend funnels and we became the backend for a lot of them. That’s how we took the company from 3 or 4 million dollars to 10 million dollars and it became really big.
I was going to say big and fun, but I don’t think it became that at all. It became really big. We had 100 employees, we had 60 people on phones in a big, huge call center. We had 20 people doing coaching for all the things we were selling and then had about 20 people driving leads and customers and stuff like that. It got really big, and I don’t know if you guys notice this, but I’m really good and selling and stuff, but really bad at the management of stuff. I was not good at managing all these people and it kind of started getting too big.
This is about the time, I was telling you guys, if you read the Dotcom Secrets book, I started waking up and was like, “I do not like what I created.” I got so excited that I started building this thing and then one day I woke up and was like, huh, do I really want to do this?
I think half the conversations I have with inner circle members when they first come in is this, “Do you really want to build this business? Yes, that would work, but sometimes it’s horrible when you get there. Think it through. What do I actually want to do? Who do I want to become? Who do I want to be when I grow up?”
Luckily during that time, it was probably one of the most painful times in my life, but looking back now, it was probably one of the most important times in my life. We had this huge operation and everything was working and then one day in January, literally 11:30 in the morning, one of my sales guys came in and said, “I’m trying to run a credit card and it’s not working. I’m not sure what’s wrong.” I’m like, “That’s weird. Try one of the other merchant accounts, maybe there’s something there.” then someone else came in, “Hey all the continuity orders are failing, I’m not sure why.” Three or four people came in and I’m like, “What’s happening?” I logged into the backend system and not….at 11:37 or something like that, every sale stopped. No sales.
I was like, what is happening. I was freaking out so I called our merchant account company and there’s a busy signal. I call again, busy. Call again, busy. I can’t get a hold of anybody and all the sudden I start hearing from friends. “Dude, everything got shut down. Are you still able to process?” I’m like, “No, what’s happening.” “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
And soon I found out that it wasn’t me, I eventually found out that it was 3 or 400 people at the same time. Anyone who was doing any kind of continuity stuff, the merchant accounts basically came in and said, “Look, we think what you guys are doing might be illegal and we’re shutting all of you guys down and you’re guilty until proven innocent.” I was like, “What? I’ve got 100 people that I’m feeding. 100 people and their families, it turns into 100’s of people. You can’t just stop processing.” Finally after an hour I get through to somebody and the lady on the phone says, “Yep, we shut you down. Good luck ever getting another merchant account ever again. I gotta go.” Boom and hung up on me.
I was like, “What?” at the time I thought I had diversity. We had 9 merchant accounts, all through one company, different merchant accounts but all through one bank. I found out that is the equivalent of having one. Which is why I’m a big believer now in having multiple merchant accounts in multiple different banks, which is a lesson hopefully for everybody. If you don’t know Alex Rowe yet, I don’t know if Alex is in here. But meet Alex, he’s the man who can get you hooked up with lots of merchant accounts. He’s done that for us, he’s amazing.
But it was bad, finally we got a hold of these guys and I’m trying to figure some things out. Basically they said, “You’ve got to prove that you are a good guy.” So we went through, it took us two weeks for them to go through all our stuff, look at our documentation, look at all of our stuff. Two weeks, and they came back and said, “You’re right. You’re doing everything clean, everything is above board. We’ll turn your merchant accounts back on and you’re good to go.” I’m like, “Sweet.” And during that time, when there’s that kind of instability, sales guys are freaking out, they can’t handle any kind of instability, they’re leaving like crazy. People are walking out the door.
I was freaking out, we had all this payroll and no money coming in, so I’m paying it out of my own pocket, everything to just keep things afloat. Going through this process it’s getting scarier and scarier and finally the merchant accounts are back on, you’re a good guy. So you guys, we gotta do a launch really quick to make a bunch of money. So we put together this huge launch and push it out to our customer list and in a weekend we made $250,000, and I was like, “Thank you.” That’s so great. Monday we should get the money, we can pay payroll, I’m telling everyone, “Tell your wives and kids we’ll have money soon. It’s coming I promise. It’s in the bank, going to be here any day now.” And the money didn’t come. Monday it didn’t come, Tuesday it didn’t come, Wednesday it didn’t come. By Thursday I’m calling, “Where’s our money? We need this money.”
The guy looks at the account, “It’s definitely in there.” I’m like, “When’s it coming to our bank?” He’s like, “Well it’s not going to come to your bank.” And I’m like, “Why not?” and he’s like, “You’re on 100% reserve so we keep 100% of your money.” I was like, “What? That’s not good for me or for anybody. How am I supposed to be in business? I got people to pay.” He’s like, “That’s just how it works. The good news is that it looks like you are a legitimate company. No one’s charging back or refunding this money that we’ve collected so far, so what we’ll do is drop you down to 10% reserve.” I’m like, “Ah, thank heavens.” He’s like, “But the $250,000 you collected in the last week, we’re keeping that for the next 6 months as collateral to make sure nothing bad happens.”
I’m like, are you kidding me. We gotta create another funnel. So we make another thing, push it out there, make some money. We start paying payroll for whatever we can but everything’s collapsing around me. That started in January and that started happening at the same time we’re trying to find other merchant accounts at other banks. And all these other banks are like, “Oh yeah, we’re cool. Come in, we’ll give you a merchant account. This is how it works, you gotta make $100,000 a month.” I’m like, “Cool, we’re going to do that in like 2 days. I’m going to need 4 merchant accounts. We can make money. We just need you to give it to us after we make it.”
They’re like, “We’re cool, we’re good at that, don’t worry.” So okay, cool. We get a merchant account, get it all setup, drove a bunch of traffic, and twice we made over the $100,000 a month we were allowed within a day, day and a half, and they froze our accounts and said, “You made too much money too fast. We’re freezing your accounts. We’ll give this money back to you in 6 months.” I’m like, “6 months? Please stop doing this to me.” We ended up with 4 or 500,000 dollars locked up in merchant accounts and it kept getting worse and worse throughout this whole year. It was the hardest year of my life. It kept going down.
Every single day I’m laying off friends and family members and people who I loved and cared about and I’m coming in, “I don’t know what to do man. I’m so sorry. I gotta let you go.” It was such a dark time in my life with thing after thing after thing. I wish I could say from there it got better. That was an entire year, the next January started and one of our friends was doing an event in Vegas, I’m like, “I’m going to go out there and see what everyone…. I gotta re figure out my whole business. Everything’s completely collapsed.”
At the time, by the way, we were in this big, huge office we had rented, that we were leasing. I think it was 20,000 square feet because we all the call center and stuff. I went to the landlord and I’m like, “Hey man, I can’t afford to pay you anymore.” And he’s like, “Okay, well we’ve got a 3 year contract. If you don’t pay me, I’m going to sue you and you’re probably going to end up in jail.” Are you kidding me dude, I’m trying. He would not work with me at all, I had all this fear behind that.
So I’m in Vegas a year later, trying to ask friends what’s happening, what they’re doing in their business, and they’re trying to tell me their stories. I’m like, this is, I don’t even know what to do. That night I got an email on my phone from my dad, I opened the email and it was a shot in a gut. Probably the worst second in my life, that I read that. The email said, “Hey Russell. I’m so sorry.” My dad was doing my books at the time, but we had a bookkeeper in the office, and the bookkeeper was trying her best, but she didn’t know. She knew we were struggling and she didn’t want to stress me out, so she didn’t tell me how much we were struggling. It turns out what she had been doing is she had been paying the bills she could, and the one’s she couldn’t she was trying to not pay them and delay them. And to hide it from my dad and everyone else she was saying in Quickbooks that she paid bills, but then not actually paying them. So it looked like it was clear.
But he had gone through and audited it and found out that she hadn’t paid payroll taxes in almost a year. In the email my dad said, “Just so you know payroll taxes aren’t something where they fine you. If you don’t pay payroll taxes you’re going to go to jail. It’s over $150,000 you owe in payroll taxes.” I was like, that’s the end. It had been an entire year. Every penny I had ever earned was gone. All my people in my teams, it had all fallen apart. I’m sitting there like, “I don’t know what to do.”
The next morning I got on a flight from Vegas back to Boise. I get there and walk in and the call center is empty, all the guys are gone. There’s two people that are left and they said, “Just so you know, the call center across the road just recruited us and we all left. We’re out, see ya.” They walked out. I was like, “I owe the government $150,000, I have no one to help me sell. I don’t know what to do.” I want to quit, so bad I want to quit. But if I quit I go to jail. I also sold coaching to a lot of people I cared about, if I quit all these people that bought coaching from me, I can’t help them. That’s not right. That’s not the right thing to do. I don’t know what to do.
So I went to a bankruptcy lawyer, “How does this work man? I don’t know what to do. I gotta figure this out.” I kind of explained the whole process, told him about my lease. “The landlord says he’ll come after me, the government’s going to come after me. I don’t know what to do.” And he’s like, “The best thing to do is, I should come with you to your landlord and explain that you’re going into bankruptcy and maybe they’ll be nice to you.” So I’m like, “Alright.” He’s like, “Do you have any money?” I’m like, “No.” and he’s like, “What do you got in your pocket?” I was like, “100 bucks.” And he’s like, “Cool, give me $100 and I’ll come and I’ll tell the landlord you’re going bankrupt.” I’m like, “Alright man, here you go.”
So he comes with me, which is actually the best $100 I ever spent. He comes with me to the landlord and he’s like, “Russell’s screwed man, he’s going through bankruptcy. He just hired me. He can’t pay you. You can come after him, but he’s done.” It was this old man, he’s like, “He’s done. The Government’s coming after him. You’re screwed, don’t even try.” And basically convinced our landlord that it was a useless cause. So the landlord was like, “Alright, be out by Friday.”
And we had a big space with office cubicles and phones and craziness. So I’m like, “Okay, we’ll be out by Friday.” But 90% of my team was gone at this point. From 100 employees down to about 7 or 8. The few people that stuck by me, people like Brent Coppieters, love that guy to death. Brent and John and some of the people back then, Brent had taken a pay cut, a 50% pay cut and never…..amazing people.
So the few of us that were left, we were packing up stuff, we put up ads on Craiglist, we got tons of computer and crap, things we’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for, we were selling for hundreds of dollars just to get out of it. We made I don’t know, maybe 5 or 6 grand on all of our crap, getting rid of it. We had a huge dumpster, just throwing away everything we had ever created because we had to downsize. Trying to figure out how to get into a smaller building and how do we keep the people we have to have to be able to fulfill on coaching. We have to cut everything else that we have.
So we were downsizing everything, going out and the night we were moving, that Friday we were supposed to be out at midnight or whatever it was, I was sitting in the office, the desks were gone, everything was gone, all I had left was my laptop. I was sitting there, I had my socks on, I had some levi’s and I had no money. I was like, “We have to make some money or else we can’t even move into…I don’t know how to do anything.”
So I sent out an email to my list I had at the time, got a bunch of people to register for a webinar. I was sitting there in a chair with my laptop on my lap, doing a webinar, praying that something would happen. And that webinar saved us. That webinar made $150,000 in sales over the next 3 or 4 days, which gave me the money I needed to pay everyone to not leave, get a new office, get us moved in and get us stability so we could actually breath for a few minutes and figure out the next step, what do we want to be when we grow up.
So we downsized from 20,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet. And we had this really cool moment where we’re like, “What do we want to do when we grow up? What do we want to be?” And as painful as that process was, it was one of the coolest things ever because we didn’t have to keep going on this path. We could pick anything. That’s when I started thinking about, who’s our dream customer? Who do we really want to serve? What fires us up? What gets us excited?
And we started thinking through that and during this process, we started creating again and having fun. What should we do? I had a friend at the time who he had this website that was making him 2 or 3 thousand dollars a month and he got in some trouble, and I had a couple things making a little money at the time and he’s like, “I need to get rid of this site. Can you pay me some money?” So I paid him $20,000, he gave me this little website. This little machine that you zap and it gets rid of cold sores, and on autopilot it was making 2 or 4 thousand dollars a month and I was like, “Oh this is so cool.” So we had this little thing and I was like, “That little business just kind of runs. What if we had another one.”
So we started creating other ones. We had one in the couponing market, we set it up and had a guru in there, it started running and making money. Then we’re like, “What’s another one?” we did one with weight loss, and another. And in a year’s time we launched 12 different companies, each making different amounts of money. During that time is when we launched Neurocel, our supplement company, all these things were happening and it was starting to get exciting again. We were creating we were doing, doing the business instead of teaching the business, which was so much fun for us to do, to learn and see why this stuff works in this market, but not this market.
One of the things that would drive me crazy about teachers in my industry is that they come in and act like the marketing techniques that work in one space work everywhere. And I learned during that two or three period of time that that’s not true. Everything’s different. There’s intricacies in couponing versus business versus weight loss versus diet versus supplements. There’s differences and I came to respect that because we had a chance to do it in so many different businesses and different things.
We spent the next two or three years creating stuff and during that process, one of the really cool things is I go to Flipa.com all the time and try to find cool websites we could buy and turn to businesses. And there’s a website called championsound.com that was for sale. And it was this cool little email, text message auto responder for bands. I was like, “I’m going to buy that and we’re going to take it and niche it for every market. We’ll make email auto responders and text message auto responders for dentists, or chiropractors.” I was so excited.
It was 20 grand, we didn’t have that much money but I was like this is the future of our company. We have to do it. So we ended up buying this website from these guys off Flipa. We get the website and we’re trying to transfer it to our servers after we paid them the 20 thousand dollars. And as they’re trying to transfer it, they’re like, “You can’t have the Linux server, you need the Ruby server.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” They’re like, “It means that this is not coded in PHP, it’s coded in Ruby on Rails. You have to have a different kind of server.”I’m like, “What does that mean?” “It means you have to go over here and pay $800 a month for a new server.”
Are you kidding me, I don’t have $800 a month for a server. But we bought this thing, so we did and they installed it. Then it didn’t really work. I didn’t know what to do. None of my tech guys had ever used Ruby on Rails so I went to Odesk to hire some guys and they couldn’t fix it. I tried 5 or 6 guys and finally I was like, I wasted 20 grand. I was so upset and frustrated because I didn’t have that money.
On the way out of the office one day I was like, “I wonder if anyone on my list knows Ruby on Rails?” shot in the dark, I have no idea. So I send the email out to my little list at the time. Subject line was like, “Ruby on Rails, looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, I’m looking for a partner.” I said basically the story I just told you guys, “bought this thing, can’t make it work, if you know Ruby on Rails, become my partner, we’ll make a bunch of money with this thing together.” Sent the email out.
About an hour later I get an email from this guy in Georgia named Todd Dickerson, and Todd’s like, “Hey man, I know Ruby.” I’m like, “You do?” I looked at his picture and I was like, “You don’t look like a nerd. I don’t think you do.” And then I went to Facebook and I Facebook friended him, it was actually six years ago last week. I Facebook Friended him and he’s got a beautiful wife, he’s got a daughter. I’m like I don’t think he’s a coder. I don’t know if I believe that. He’s like, “Yeah man, shoot me the login, I’ll fix it.” I was like, “Whatever I have had 8 guys try to fix it for the last 4 or 5 months and nobody can do it. Whatever, here’s the login.” So he logs in and an hour later he’s like, “Okay, done. It’s fixed.” I was like, “What?” and he’s like, “Yeah, I got it fixed. I just did blah blah blah. And it worked.”
I’m like, “Dude, how did you do that?” and he’s like, “I just love Ruby on Rails. I’m amazing.” He didn’t say that, he’s super humble. But I was like, this guy’s amazing. I’m like, “I have all these other things. Want to help me with these other things?” So Todd came and we started working on this other project. We had an idea for an auto webinar, Todd built out the software behind the scenes, which was Clickfunnels verson 0.0, pre-everything. He built this auto webinar software because Mike Filsame had been talking about auto webinars. Rick Shephard had put in a webinar report. A couple of guys had started talking about auto webinars but nobody had done one. No one was really doing them.
So Todd custom built this whole platform so we could do them, we launched an auto webinar through that and in that auto webinar we made a million dollars in 90 days. The first thing I did from that million dollars is took the money and paid off the IRS and I was like, I’m free. I’m not going to jail. The IRS is paid off, the fines are paid off. That auto webinar literally saved me, literally gave me freedom. Up to that point every night when I went to bed at night I was like they could come knock on my door. I have not paid payroll tax in that long. And that webinar freed us.
We kept doing thing after thing, and what’s funny with Todd and Dylan used to design half of these things, just the contract, he’d design these pages and Todd would take them and code them up and make these funnels. He did funnel after funnel after funnel. We probably had 15 different companies, within those company 2 or 3 funnels. We probably had 40 funnels we built over, thing after thing after thing. And the last funnel we actually built the old school way was the Neurocel funnel. That’s one of the ones that blew up big and made tons of sales, we were having a bunch of fun with it and about that time is when Todd was like, “We should really create something so I don’t have to keep creating websites for you every single day.”
And that was where the idea came for Clickfunnels. So we started that project in front of a whiteboard, like we talked about yesterday. We mapped this whole thing, and Todd went to work to build Clickfunnels and we partnered with Dylan to build the editor and the UI. And then fast forward 7 or 8 months later, we came and we were like this thing is going to change the world. I was so excited. I was like, “We’re going to do a free trial.” And I think the very first month our goal was to get 10,000 members the first month. I’m like, this is going to be the greatest thing in the world.
So we put it out there we created the first funnel, had all the stuff in there, there was a free trial, we had a bunch of people lined up to promote it, we launched it, there were crickets. People came and then left. I was like, “Dude, do you not understand what I’m giving you? I made that page you’re looking at, it’s really good.” Nobody got it, why don’t they get it? There’s something wrong with my messaging. So we changed the funnel again, launched it again, a few of you guys signed up and that was it. They hit it and then they left. We tried again and again. We rebuilt that funnel not once or twice or three times or four times or five times. It was six times it took us before the Clickfunnels funnel worked.
The sixth time was because one of my friends, Mike Filsame invited me out to his event and he’s like, “Hey Russell, I want you to come and sell Clickfunnels, I think it’s awesome.” I was like, “Dude, Mike, nobody’s buying Clickfunnels. We gotta figure out our next deal or figure out something because it’s not working.” He’s like, “No, my people need it, you need to come speak on it. You gotta sell it for $1000.” I’m like, “It’s a free trial and nobody even wants it.”
So Mike’s event was happening that weekend, I was literally sitting in my office watching the event streaming and as I was sitting there I started writing my webinar and I had my slides open, I was following the Perfect Webinar script that I had been working on for ten years. I started filling in the blanks, started making this webinar, true to the Perfect Webinar Script. I literally was watching it, adding the things in while watching Mike’s event happen. That day I finished the slides, next morning I jumped in a plane and flew there. Got to California, put the slides up on the thing, okay here we go.
I started it and the title slide was “My weirdness funnel is currently make $17,947 per day”, talking about the Neurocel funnel and how you can knock it off in less than ten minutes. Showed the first slide, started going through and when we got to the end, got to the stack and the close, we did it and 30% of the room jumped up and ran to the back, jumping over the tables, fighting to get back there. I was like, we did it. That was the message, that was the key. Now I know how to sell Clickfunnels.
We took that message, went back and as a lot of you guys know, especially inner circle members, we started doing webinars every single day, sometimes two a day. One time I did three in a day, which was really hard. Over and over again, I did that webinar live over 70 times over the next year and a half and we went from being a startup with no members to after the end of last year we had over 10,000 members, after this year we have over 30,000 members and it’s continued to grow and grow and grow. And it was that one funnel that changed everything for me.
So this process, for all of us you guys, is an up and a down. It’s always happening and all of you guys are somewhere in this wave right now. Some of you guys are at the top riding it, some of you guys are at the bottom going to crash. Some of you guys are somewhere in between. Always going up and down, but if nothing else at this event, I want you guys to all understand that no matter where you are, there’s hope. It might not be this funnel. I can’t tell you how many funnels flopped. I guarantee I have failed at more funnels than anyone else in this room because we tried over and over and over again. Because of that we found out what worked. The only way to do that is to do it over and over and over again.
It’s a lot easier now, I promise you it’s a lot easier than what we used to do. Poor Todd and Dylan had to custom code every single thing, every single time. Now you can test things really fast. The first time I met Trey, first call he said, “Russell, I’m going to launch a funnel a week, every single week.” And I watched as he launched a funnel, and another funnel and another funnel, he had some marginal success, a little success, more success, more success. I saw him launch a funnel last year, one funnel and within 90 days became the biggest selling funnel in the history of the world.
I was talking to some of the guys at affiliate summit. They said there’s never been a funnel that’s made more money in a shorter period of time than one of Trey’s funnels. I’m not privy to share all his numbers and stats, but it was insane. And it came from doing a funnel a week until he hits the one that just explodes. You don’t know what that’s going to be. It’s important, that’s why this tool is so important. Because you can do that, you can test and try over and over and over again.
You’re just one funnel away…
On this special two part episode you will hear the first part of Russell’s “One Funnel Away” presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you’ll hear:
So listen to this first portion of Russell’s story, and don’t forget to come back for the second half.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone this is Russell Brunson, welcome to a special Marketing Secrets episode where I’m going to let you guys see behind the scenes at one of our presentations at last year’s Funnel Hacking Live.
So this presentation is one that I was really nervous at giving, it was called “One Funnel Away” which is the whole theme of the last Funnel Hacking Live event. It’s something that I wanted to share my failures, my bankruptcy stories, the ups and the downs. Everyone here talks about the highlight reel; I wanted to share the other side of it. I don’t typically release sessions from Funnel Hacking anywhere but this one had such a big impact on our audience and let people know that everyone, including me, especially me, has big ups and big downs, yet we’re just one funnel away from success each time. So as we’re preparing for the next Funnel Hacking Live, which will be coming live soon at Funnelhackinglive.com, I was re-watching some of the presentations and saw this one and wanted more people to have this.
So I’m going to break this up into two episodes. This is episode number one, go check it out. Leave me a comment if you like it, subscribe, tell other people about it and hopefully it will give you some hope and faith that the path you are on is right and this process is going to get you what you want and desire and let you serve other people. So that’s the game plan, check out this episode and I will see you on part two tomorrow.
Okay, so what I want to do is go on a journey with you guys, my journey, which started way back over here on my timeline, in my back story. So those who know me or have heard about me or know anything about this, initially I started learning about business when I was a 12 or 13 year old kid, sitting there with my dad watching the news and I was like, “I can’t believe he hasn’t told me to go to bed yet. This is the coolest thing in world.” And the news was on and when it ended Mash came on and I was like, “He must think I’m asleep or something. He hasn’t told me to go to bed.” I’m sitting there trying not to move, I didn’t want to let him know. I’m sitting there watching Mash with my dad, I thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world.
Then when Mash got done, he still didn’t say anything, I was like, “He’s gotta be convinced I’m asleep, this is whole cool.” Then the next thing came one and it was an infomercial, a late night infomercial with Don Lepre. How many of you guys remember Don Lepre? Yes, just an amazing person, he had an infomercial and I was so grateful for his passion and excitement, talking about what he was doing. The infomercial was about how to place tiny little classified ads and you can make a fortune. And it was it was the coolest thing. I remember sitting there listening to him and I was like, “This makes so much sense.” I’m looking at my dad like, are you paying attention to what’s happening? The whole thing made so much sense to me.
He said, “I took a classified ad, put it in the newspaper and I made 30 dollars and told my friends and family, ‘I made $30. I started a business this weekend,’ and they all laughed at me. So then I took that same ad and ran it in a thousand newspapers the next month and made 30 thousand dollars.” And I was like, mind blown. I’ve been ruined from that day on when it comes to the world. I can’t not do something like this. I was so excited, saved a bunch of money mowing lawns and everything and eventually I bought Don Lepre’s kit on the infomercial and I read it all and learned it and wasn’t able to actually do anything though because I didn’t have the money to direct mail and things like that.
But that’s how I first heard about the direct response market. I remember after I got Don Lepre’s kit I was so excited I was at the grocery store with my mom and after we were walking out, on the checkout stand there was a magazine called “Small Business Opportunity Magazine” that a whole bunch of cartoon people on the front of it. How many of you guys have seen that magazine before? That’s it? This is the greatest swipe file of direct response ads ever.
So I didn’t know it at the time, but there were thirty things, how to get rich quick. I’m like, sweet, I want to get rich quick. That’d be awesome. So I had my mom buy this magazine and I went home. If you look at it, it’s 140 pages of ads and four pages of articles, it’s pretty awesome. I was looking at every single ad, “Oh my gosh. I can sell gold chains at the mall and make money.” So I called this number for a free info kit. Free info kit gets sent to my house. And the next page it’s like something else. Page after page, all 140 pages I called every single 800 number to request the free info kit.
And about a week later, I started getting these gifts in the mail. At first it was 2 or 3 letters, then it was 10 or 15, then it was 60 or 70 letters. And I think those companies started selling my name to other mailing lists, because soon it was hundreds of letters. And the mailman could not physically shove the junk mail in the mailbox anymore because there was so much coming in. So I get home from junior high. I’d come home and walk in the house and see it on the bar. I’d see two or three letters for my parents and Russell’s stack of junk mail. They’re like, “There’s your junk mail.” And I’d take it my room and open it and read these things like, this is so cool. And all these money making ideas.
So that happened at a young age. Unfortunately I couldn’t do anything, well I tried once. This one person convinced me that direct mail was the key and all you do is get a list of buyers who bought similar products and write a sales letter and you mail it to those people and a percentage will buy. I’m like, “Awesome.” The only problem is I can’t afford a mailing list, I don’t have any stamps or envelopes or anything. So I’d done something, I made a little money doing some chores. So I asked my mom to take that money and instead buy stamps and bring me home stamps. So she brought me home 38 stamps. That’s how much money I’d made.
I had 38 stamps and I’m like, “This is so awesome.” I used to tell my brothers and sister and parents, my parents didn’t tease me, but my brothers and sisters did. I was like, “I’m going to be a millionaire any minute now. This is going to work.” And they’d be like, “Oh, are you a millionaire yet?” and totally make fun of me. So I had these 38 stamps and I’m like, “If I can get 10% of these people to buy, that’s 3 people. If I sell a $50 product that’s $150. I’ll be rich.” I didn’t know what to do, they talked about sales letters so I was like, “I’ll write a sales letter.” So I printed it out on blue paper because blue paper they’d be more likely to read. So I put it on my parents computer, wrote a sales letter, printed out 38 copies of it. I couldn’t afford an envelope so I just folded it and stapled it.
I didn’t actually have a mailing list, so I opened up the white pages and flipped through and randomly picked 38 names, I’m like, “This is going to be huge.” So I wrote it, put my stamp on it, and all my savings and put it in the mailbox and I was like, “I’m going to be rich. This is going to be amazing.” I sent it out, told everybody, “When this gets out, it’ll be over. I’ll be able to move out, get my own house. It’s going to be amazing.” Unfortunately nobody responded. That was the only time I was able to invest. I didn’t have the money to buy a classified ad in the newspaper so I just kind of kept reading all this junk mail and learning from all these people.
A couple of years later I got into wrestling and forgot about making money. But there was this seed that had been planted. I wrestled through high school, had a lot of fun, got a college scholarship, wrestled through college. When I was going to college I met my insanely beautiful wife, that most of you guys….if not she’s here hiding. I met her and fell in love really quick and spent the next 3 or 4 months trying to convince her, in fact that was probably the hardest sale I ever had, to convince her I was the right one. Did you see that picture? I was kind of a geek, not going to lie. Anyway, I convinced her to marry me and it was amazing. About the time we got engaged, I realized my dad said, “When you get married, I’m not going to keep supporting you. That’s when you become a real man.”
I’m like, “What? But dad I’m wrestling.” And he’d always send me money to pay for food and stuff but he’s like, “No, if you get married, you’re on your own.” I was like, “Crap, I want to get married but I don’t want to grow up yet.” And my wife, fiancé at the time, she was working and making money and got a second job to support us and I was wrestling and didn’t have any money. I’m like, “I gotta do something.” And luckily the greatest thing in the world happened, that happens to a lot of us. I was up late at night stressing out about this and then this little thing popped up on TV, it was an infomercial.
It was this guy talking about how people are making money with these little websites and that they were doing an event at Holiday Inn the next day and you come and get tickets. I’m like, “Oh! This is it.” So I called the number and get my tickets to Holiday Inn and show up and it’s a little, tiny room with 50 really desperate people sitting there. I get there and there’s a dude onstage all in a suit and tie and I’m like, “Whoa, that guy looks rich.” And then he started doing this thing and within 5 minutes he closed me on this $50 thing. I ran in the back and had my one credit card with a $300 credit limit, that’s all I had earned so far. So I bought my $50 dollar thing and I’m like, “I’m going to make so much money with this.”
And then he pitched on a website and it was $3 grand and everybody’s running back buying websites and I’m like, “I can’t afford a website. Dangit.” And then he pitched website hosting at $80 a month and all these things. They’re teaching, “If you call your bank you can get your credit extended.” I’m like, “Oh, sweet. I didn’t know that.” So I’m calling the bank like, “Hey can you make my credit line a thousand dollars.” I’m learning all these things, getting my credit card bigger, which was kind of cool. The I bought everything he told me. I needed the whole thing, so I buy it all. He convinced me, he’s like, “Paypal is evil. You have to have a merchant account. And it’s $6000 for a merchant account.” I’m like, “I don’t have $6000 yet.” And he’s like, “Well you can’t make money online without a merchant account. $6 grand.”
But I couldn’t afford that, but I had everything else. I went home and I was like, “cool, I have a domain name, I got hosting, a thousand dollars worth of internet web stuff.” I jumped online and I’m like, “I’m going to have a website.” I was getting excited. I started Googling things and eventually within 15 minutes I realized website hosting is not $80 a month, I realized a domain name is not $1000. I was like, crap I got taken. I was freaked out.
So I ended up calling the next day, I was like, “My son is a minor and he was at your event last night and he charged all his credit cards and he needs to be out of this contract.” And they got me out of the contract and gave me my money back. That’s one trick, if you ever need to get out of a contract, it’s worked almost every time. So those are the real Dotcom Secrets.
So at that point I was in, I was like, “Oh my gosh. I need to sell stuff on the internet. That started this thing about the time my wife and I were getting married and I was trying to sell stuff. I was selling all sorts of things. I remember initially thought it was eBay. Maybe people make money on eBay. I remember driving to the thrift store buying everything I could find that I thought was worth value. On my bike, with grocery sacks full of crap, riding my bike back home. I bought a Michael Jackson record. I was like, “Records are so old, this has got to be worth hundreds of dollars.” I ended up selling it for 13 cents on eBay. I was so depressed. I was boxing and shipping things out and when all was said and done I made $40 or $50 but my costs were $150-200. I was going and trying to find boxes for all of these weird things I had bought. It was just horrible.
I was sitting at the post office with 18 different boxes of weird things, records and all these things. And there’s this dude standing there with a big box full of cd’s. hundreds and hundreds of cd’s, and I’m here with a wheel barrel full of odd boxes and I’m like, “Dude, what are you selling?” and he’s like, “Oh I sell information products.” I was like, “What does that mean?” and he’s like, “All these cd’s have info burned on them and people pay me and I ship them a cd.” I’m like, “Is it the same cd?” and he’s like, “Yeah, I have a cd burner. I just burn them. Then I put them in these things and send them out.”
I was like, “Are you kidding me?” They’re all the same size. I could just buy one box, it would be so much easier. So that’s when we started talking about information products. I was like, “I didn’t know that was even a thing.” I got all excited about information products and started Googling stuff and started learning about information products.
I ended up buying this cd and it was a cd that 8000 coloring book pages for kids and the guy was selling it, I emailed him and said, “This cd is cool. Can I buy the rights to this cd, I want to sell it?” and he was like, “I’ve never done that before, but sure for $200 I’ll sell you the rights and you can sell it too.” I’m like, “Sweet.” So I gave him $200 that I didn’t have and he gave me the rights and I had the cd and basically all I had to do was burn it on a cd burner and I could mail it out as many times as I wanted. And he had a big long sales letter he let me use, so I put his sales letter up and started trying things.
What was cool, I started making sales. Not a lot, every other week it would make a sale for $20. I would burn the cd and ship it out and I was like, “This is so cool.” Information products became the thing and I was trying to figure out how that whole thing worked and I started bumping into people like Yanik Silver and all these different internet marketing guru’s and watching what they were doing, selling information products and I was just hooked at that point.
About that time I started watching what they were doing and I started learning and creating different things. In fact, one of my very first products ever, does anybody in this room remember the product Zip Brander? Three people. I had all these info products and I was buying resell rights to other people’s products and I’m selling these things. And I was like, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way if when I sent this digital file to somebody, when they first opened it, instead of just getting the file they see an ad for my product and then they see the file? That was my first light bulb. It’s like zipping a file, but when you zip it would be branded and when they open it, they see your ad first. I was like this is it. I thought this was it. That was my idea, I thought it was going to change the world as we know it.
So I bought zipbrander.com and I remember Arman Morin at the time was one of the guys I was studying. I was like Arman is so cool. Every one of his sites were so similar and I’m looking and Arman always had a big header graphic with his picture with his arms folded with a suit coat on. I was like, that’s what I need. So I got a picture of me folding my arms in a suit coat. And he had a header, so I had a header that looked just like his. His were always Ecover Generator so I was like Zipbrander, looked identical. This is where my funnel hacking started. He had this big long sales letter. I was like, this looks weird, but Arman’s doing it so I’m going to do it.
So I looked at his sales letter and wrote my own based on that. Then I was like how do I create this, I didn’t know that. My first thought is I should just become a computer engineer. That would be the coolest thing. I want to make software. So I switched my major to Computer Information Systems so I could learn how to code. It was about the time the semester was changing. So I get to class the first day and the teacher gets up there and starts talking about code and databases and all these things and structures and I was sitting there like, “oh crap. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Not even a little bit.” Within about 15 seconds I realized I am not a coder and never will be a coder. I couldn’t even understand. I thought it was a Spanish class or something. I was like I don’t even know what he’s saying.
But I didn’t know how to change my major again, so I just kind of stayed in it. I kind of got depressed, that was my one idea. I guess I can’t do it. And then I remember I was listening to a tele-seminar. I was at a wrestling tournament and we were driving to California, it was a 16 hour drive. I downloaded on my, it was pre-iPod’s, it was this tape player thing, a whole bunch of tele-seminar’s that Arman had done. I’m listening to these things in the back of the car where all these other wrestlers are partying and having fun and listening to music and I’m listening to these seminars. They were totally making fun of me the whole time, if you meet any of my wrestling buddies, they relentlessly made fun of me the entire trip. “You’re such a nerd. You’re never going to be able make money.” I’m like, “I swear I will.”
So I’m listening to these the whole way and on one of these things like 22 hours into this thing Arman says, “I don’t code software. I go to Scriptlance and I pay guys in Romania and India hardly anything to build stuff.” And I was like, Arman’s not a programmer? I thought he was a programmer. There are people in India who can do this? So literally that night I jumped on Scriptlance and actually prior to that I had tried to hire a company to do it and they had quoted me $5 thousand. I was like, “Okay, I don’t have that.”
So I took the same description I had given these guys and posted it on Scriptlance and instantly I got, all these people started bidding on it. One guy was like, “I’ll do it for $5000.” “I’ll do it for $2000.” “For $1000.” “For $500” and it came all the way down to this guy in India who was like, “I’ll do it for $20” I was like, “I got $20” So I picked him.
He was like, “So this is how I’m going to do it.” I was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just do it.” He spent 2 or 3 days and sent it back, “Here it is.” I tried it. Zipped a file and opened it and my ad showed up and I was like, “you did it. Oh my gosh.” And he’s like, “yeah, thanks for the $20.” And I was like, “No, this is going to be huge. I’m going to make millions of dollars and I feel guilty giving you $20, can I give you an extra hundred?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” So I gave him $100 and I felt good about it.
That was my very first software product that I ever did and it didn’t make me millions. I probably made 10-20 grand with that product. But it was the first one that I had a sales letter, started driving traffic, doing Google ads, I was finding JV, all these things and I started selling it and that was the first thing that made me any money. Isn’t that exciting? How many of you guys want Zipbrander? The first 30 people in the back….just kidding. It doesn’t work anymore. The coding stopped working 10 internets ago. So it’s done.
But that was my first software product, it was so cool. About that time was when I started learning more about info products. That when the Potato gun came out, the potato gun DVD. All these things, doing all these little businesses and none of them were huge smashing, million dollar successes. I didn’t pull a Dan Henrie and read a book and 5 months later made a million bucks. I was like, “Hey I made 5 grand here. Oh I made 200 dollars here.”
These little things kept happening, it was so cool. And every project did a little better. It was like slow momentum, every one did a little better than the last one because I got more customers coming in and more people. I kept making things in different markets, potato guns and all these sorts of different things and every one of them got a little better and it was fun. I remember back then I started doing tele-seminars and I’d get 30 people online and I’d talk about something and sell it at the end and some people would buy it and it was so exciting. That was the start of this whole thing for me.
Then one of my friends, BJ, he’s sitting over here. He was a wrestler in Nebraska, I wrestled at Boise State, it was my senior year, I’d made pretty good money. Probably $150-200,000, somewhere in there my senior year. He’d heard about and Boise State was wrestling Nebraska and we’re sitting there wrestling and we’re glaring at each other because we’re opposite teams and afterwards he’s like, “Hey man, someone told me you’re making money. Is that true?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “How are you doing it?” So we talked about it a little bit.
We flew back to our places to finish out college and we kind of talked back and forth for a little while. Then after college got done he’s like, “Hey man, I want to do what you’re doing. Can I get a job?” I was like, “You want a job?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “What would you do all day?” and he’s like, “I don’t know. I’ll do what you’re doing.” I’m like, “okay, can we talk about marketing stuff.” He’s like, “I love talking about that.” I’m like, “This will be so cool. I have no one to talk about this stuff.” I thought it was just me.
I’m like, “So you’re actually into this stuff.” He’s like, “Yeah man.” I’m like, “Okay, yeah I’ll give you a job. Come on out.” So he jumps on a plane, flies to Boise and literally moves into our office. Slept in our office for 6 months. He’s like, “so how does this work?” I’d never had an employee before. “I don’t really know either. I’ll pay you, we can talk about marketing and sell stuff and it’ll be awesome.” Me as an entrepreneur, I was in this mode of eat what you kill. I’d sell something, make a bunch of money and I was like, sweet. Then we wouldn’t do anything for 4 or 5 months, then create something, sell it, make a bunch of money and that’s the model I was on for a long time.
Then BJ came and wanted to be an employee and I was so excited. I’m like, “sure.” He’s an employee and the weirdest thing happened. Every two weeks he wanted to get paid whether we made money or not. I had never heard that. I was like, “Okay, here’s some more money.” And then two weeks later, more money. I was like, oh crap we haven’t sold anything for a long time. Then he had some other friends who came along like, “This is cool. I want to work for you too.” I’m like, “Alright come on over. Let’s get jobs.” So I gave them jobs, his buddies and his wife and some other people. I got all these friends that want to talk about marketing with me, this is so fun.
So we had all these people coming over but the problem was that every two weeks they wanted to get paid, but we weren’t selling anything. So I’d go lock myself in the back room and be like, “Don’t bug me guys, I gotta make money so we can all hang out again.” So I’d close the door and start working and selling stuff. They’d be like, “Dude can we help you?” I’d be like, “Shut up! If you talk to me I can’t make money to pay you, so go away.” They’re like, “We feel bad, we want to help you Russell.” So I’m like, “I don’t have time to train you, otherwise we can’t make money to pay payroll.” That was this thing.
What’s interesting is, this is one of my first lessons as an entrepreneur, that was tough. We had 5 or 6 people at the time. We hired this video guy that was….there’s so many side stories, I can’t tell you all of them. He was an Indian guy who had shorts up to here and had a braid that went past his shorts. Because he told me in the interview, “Yeah, I’m a video guy.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? We could do videos!” and he’s like, “Yeah, I got all sorts of video stuff.” So we hired him and it turned out he didn’t know anything about video at all.
But I didn’t dare to fire him because I had never fired anyone and I was so scared. Everyday we’re like, “I wish he would just quit. I don’t dare to fire him.” I don’t know what to do. All these weird learning things. This went on for a while. I was launching something every week trying to make money to cover payroll and it was this huge thing and became horribly not fun for a long time. It kept getting worse and worse to the point where it was December, it was the beginning of December, it was freezing cold and I was looking at everything and every penny I’d ever made was gone. Every idea I had how I could hustle and sell to different markets was gone. I was just drained, I didn’t know what to do.
It was Christmas time, I was outside and I went to go hang up lights around my house, and someone had sent me an iPod Nano and Stu MacLarin had done an event, I don’t even know if he knows this, he sent me the links, so I downloaded the links to his event on this iPod, plug it into my ears and start hanging up Christmas lights, which I had never done before, it was a horrible job. Turns out you can hire people for really cheap to do that and the lights look really straight. Mine were like, they looked really bad. I kept stapling through the wires and kill the lights. It was bad. And my fingers were so numb. I had this little light coat on and my fingers were so numb and I had to have my gloves off to squeeze the thing and I’d put them back in to get warm and I’d go back and I didn’t want to go back inside and get warm because I was so depressed.
I knew that the next payroll was coming up in a week or so and I was like, I don’t have money. I don’t know what to do. Tomorrow I need to go in and tell these guys or it’s going to be really awkward when payroll does come and I’m like sorry guys. So I have to tell everyone this. So I stayed outside in the cold because I didn’t want to go in and I was trying to think. So I’m stapling these Christmas lights around the house as I’m listening to this audio. In the audio there’s two different speakers talking about different business models. Back then no one was calling these things funnels, but they talked about these different business models that they were doing.
One of them was an offline guy, his name is John Olmos, some of you guys have heard about him, he’s the guy that taught me about the attractive character. He said, “I have this thing I’ve been doing where I create these cd’s and tell everyone it’s so controversial that I can’t put it on the internet.” Which is the funniest thing ever. “Because of that you have to pay me $5 and I’ll ship you this cd.” He said, “What happens is I ship them this cd but then that customer financed me sending them a sales letter.” I was like, that is brilliant, we gotta do that. I remember I filmed this cd like two years earlier, or a DVD. I was like, we could do that. We could burn that DVD and we could start sending that out.
So that was the first presentation, John Olmos. The next presentation was this guy named Matt Bacak, who’s become a close friend since then. Matt was talking about his business model, he said, “What I do is send out cd’s and people who bought cd’s, I call them on the phone and we sell them coaching.” And I was like, “You can call people on the phone.” I’m an internet nerd but I was like, “Wait..” and I was super scared but I knew there was a guy that worked for me at the time, one of my 5 or 6 friends, who had sold things on the phone before
All the sudden I was like, “Oh my gosh. What if we figured out something we could do where we could save this thing. It might actually be possible.” I’m started getting more excited. I’m hanging up Christmas lights and I’m just like, this funnel was going through my head and I’m like okay I think I’ve figured out a blend of what these two guys are saying, it could actually work.
So by the time I got done hanging up Christmas lights I texted all of them, “Guys, you don’t know this yet, we’re about to go bankrupt, but I got an idea that I think can save it. Let’s meet tomorrow morning early, I’m going to walk you guys through what I think could actually save this business.” Send.
They’re all texting back, “What? We’re going through bankruptcy.” And I’m like, “Yeah, we’re about to.” Luckily they all came in the next day and I’m like, “Okay you guys, I got a model. This is what we’re going to do. Remember that DVD I did like two years ago? We’re going to take that, it’s going to be a free DVD, it’s going to be so controversial we can’t sell it on the internet. We’ll charge $4.95 shipping and handling. We’ll send this DVD out to them and inside the DVD we’re going to have a sales letter where we’re going to sell $5500.” I don’t know why we said that price, but they’re like, “cool, what are we going to sell for $5500?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. What do you guys want to sell?”
So we had our white board and we’re like, “If someone is going to give us $5500, it would have to be something amazing.” And we made this huge list for 2 hours of all the amazingness. I was like, “That would be awesome, but I’m not willing to do half of that stuff.” We’re not going to have them sleep at my house, we’re not going to…we crossed out all these things. I’m like, “I’m actually willing to sell this. I think people would actually buy that. That would be insane.”
So we took that and at the same time we added a newsletter. So if somebody bought the cd they joined a newsletter that was $37 a month. So they came here, joined the newsletter, $37 a month. And that was the funnel. Back then we didn’t have Clickfunnels so luckily we had one or two nerds still working for us that were able to put these pieces together and we had this really rudimentary, horrible looking funnel and it was live within a day and we’re like, “Okay let’s try it.” At the time I had a little tiny email list, this is pre-Facebook, this is Myspace days. So we push some traffic to this and we end up selling a couple hundred of these cd’s. In the cd we shipped out to them came a sales letter talking about this and it put people in a continuity program and then we called everybody about the cd, “Hey you bought the cd, how would you like to come to Boise and we’re going to give you this.” This was our hail mary pass. Please let this work.
We did that, we focused on it. We drove traffic to it, and when all was said and done, over the next two week period of time we got 800 people to get our free cd. From that, the way we used to do it is everybody was on continuity. So we had 800 people that were on this $37 continuity, but it was free for a month, so we weren’t making any money here. But we had 800 people’s phone numbers who we were able to call.
So we started calling them, and we didn’t know anything about phone sales or anything. We were like, “Hey man, you bought this cd, you want to come hang out with Russell?” They were like, “Yeah.” And in that two week period of time we sold 10 people at $5500 a piece, which ended up being $55k and that funnel saved Christmas. Is that awesome? It’s awesome.
I was able to pay all of our payroll. We had some money left over, it was awesome. And the cool thing is 30 days later, this thing started and all these people were on continuity and suddenly we had a business. This is when I learned the power of continuity. David Frye, who’s one of my favorite people in the whole world, he’s here in the audience I think, he used to always say, “Until you have continuity you don’t have a business.” And I never understood that until this. There’s David smiling over there. I love that guy. Now I found out, I had all these people.
So what happened, I don’t know the math, 800 times $37 a month, it’s like $25 k a month and we knew we have continuity now. Every single month we have $25k, that means I can pay for employees. I realized, you don’t hire employees before you have continuity. Now we had continuity. Now we actually had people covered and we could actually focus and think and that was the first funnel that saved things and turned it around for us.
Pretend this message was for you and take it to heart.
On today’s episode Russell and Steven talk about how they and others have been able to find their voice, figure out what they’re good at and be successful. Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this episode:
So listen hear to find out what you need to do to make your business successful.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to the camping edition of Marketing Secrets Podcast. Hey you guys, I wanted to do a really special podcast today because I think for some reason that a lot of people thought this whole entrepreneurship business was going to be easy and they’re going to get rich quick and all these types of things and the reality is, it’s hard. It’s really hard, especially the first two or three years.
You’ve got to find your voice, create your brand, build a movement, create products people actually want, figure out what you’re selling and how you’re selling it. There’s a lot that goes into it initially and I think that sometimes we get seduced by how quick and easy it is. Because overnight success stories of people making a million dollars in five months, come on the back of three or four years of work and effort and time.
Recently one of our coaching clients, they’d been struggling, and I saw they were doing the motions and weren’t having success and I realized that the reason was they hadn’t put the time in ahead of time. I sent them a voxer, about a 15 minute vox message that went over this. I edited out from that message all the stuff that related to them, because it doesn’t matter who they are, but it was a message that I think everybody needs to hear and should hear. Because you have to realize there’s a lot that goes into it. Maybe there’s another business you can start, maybe you can go start an Amazon business or things like that where you just need to buy a product and post it and that’s how it is, but if you want to be a leader, expert, change the world, it takes time.
People go to school for 12 years to try to get a job that pays them 50-100 grand a year. If you’re trying to become a multi-millionaire, you think that’s going to happen overnight. It takes energy. So I want you guys to listen to this voxer, hopefully it’s a coaching call for you. Think about the effort you’ve got to put into it, the team you need to build, who you need to become to have those huge successes. Another thing I talk about, a couple of people I mention. Anthony, I’m talking about Anthony DiClementi from Biohacking Secrets. I talk about Kaelin, if you look up lady boss weight loss, you’ll see Kaelin. I mention a couple of other inner circle members by name, I may not have said their full name, but that’s who they are, so you have some context. But listen to this voxer, use it as a personal coaching call for yourself and I hope that it gets you excited and fired up to put in the effort you need to take over the world and change people’s lives, so there you go, talk to you soon.
Steve Larsen: Hey what’s going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and I work for Russell, I am his assistant and he’s asked me to go and clean up a lot of this podcast. So as you listen to this episode, just know that Russell is answering the question, “Really, if I’m just one funnel away, then how much farther away is that funnel?”
Russell: Yeah, I don’t know all the answers ever, but from my experience, I think you’re seeing people’s highlight reels and you’re not seeing the rest of it. Things can be short-cutted, they can speed up, but Anthony for example, if you knew Anthony’s whole story, it wasn’t like he became this Biohacking kid. Anthony was my coaching partner for three years and he was barely scraping by for three years in the weight loss market going hard and heavy targeting weight loss and women.
Weight loss is by far the most competitive market on planet earth. So it’s like to be successful there you have to be super, a very unique angle, or have an amazing story, or deal with the best sales people, or best copywriters, or whatever to dominate. Anthony tried weight loss for the 3 ½ , 4 years that I knew him and struggled, struggled and for him to have success we had to shift from weight loss into a completely different angle, blue ocean, biohacking thing, and that’s where he’s finding success.
But in that time, if you look at his story, he came down with Lyme disease. He spent two years biohacking himself on his deathbed trying to figure out how to survive. After he figured it out he went on this mission where he literally, I love Anthony because his heart is so big, I would say conservatively he probably coached a thousand people in three years, most of them for free because he couldn’t afford it because he just loved people so much and cared so much about them. And that’s how he found his voice, how he has so much certainty. When you talk to Anthony, it’s just absolute certainty. So people plug into that. Abosolute certainty.
When people follow me, with this thing that I’m good at, I have absolute certainty. I have no wavering doubt. They plug in because Russell is certain, so I need to follow that. But that certainty doesn’t come by positioning or posturing it, it’s by putting in that work ahead of time and just mastering it to the point where you just know. That’s Anthony’s journey.
Kaelin’s is different. Kaelin has such an amazing story, how much weight she gained, lost, and she happened to become one of the best sales people ever. I don’t think there’s any, there’s very few humans on earth that have become a better sales person than Kaelin, which is why they’re dominating that market. She’s so good, clear on her messaging. She’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, she’s dominating there.
Caleb’s got, he’s not an overnight success story either, he’s young but that dude grinds more than anyone I’ve ever met. Insane amounts of hours and time and effort and by the time he was 13 years old he’d read more books than I had. He had done hundreds and hundreds of Facebook Lives before anything started hitting. That kid’s put in 10,000 hours plus before he’s 15 years old. That’s not what you’re seeing. You’re seeing, he’s a 13 year old kid, he’s successful. He didn’t just step into that. Some people do, some people are insanely talented, it doesn’t make any sense. It does happen, but for most of us, it’s not that way.
I didn’t make a penny online for 2 plus years, and the next 5 years were hardly anything, it took 7 or 8 years before I found my voice to be able to be in this market and have certainty where I felt that. So how do you get that absolute certainty? It’s by putting in the time, by doing that.
Steven: I actually am the coach for the Two Comma Club Coaching program, and I love it, it’s so much fun. It’s fun to see because I’ve been doing this game now for about 4 years now, and for the first several years, I actually made no money with it at all. I was with anything about funnels, business entrepreneurship in general, and all I knew was I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I started putting my head down and working and did everything from stalks and options, real estate, commercial and residential, I went and did ebooks, door to door sales, I did telemarketing. I did everything and it was all with the back drop of wanting to be an entrepreneur and provide value in the marketplace and go do this stuff.
And I failed my face off. It was one of the most humiliating things in my entire life. My wife and I were living on loans and college. And because my wife was basically the spouse of the suffering entrepreneur, and I didn’t want to be that story and it turned into this really painful experience. But I literally was listening to Russell’s podcast, I was listening to these other entrepreneurs and their podcast. It was honestly them and YouTube motivation videos and all this stuff that just kept me going with it. And just the sheer belief that it would work and mad obsession over the topic.
If I could turn around and tell myself some things now, it would certainly be that I really wish I would have spent more time crafting my voice early on. I like what Russell’s mentioning inside of this podcast right here, telling that you’ve got to figure out the voice. And the way I did early on was by regularly publishing. I would get out there and I would just speak. There was a time, after I read Dotcom Secrets, I went and I was like, “Hey I know enough to at least teach someone else.” And I literally held a 3 hour, free class inside of a stranger’s home. They had all these people there, friends and family, and I recorded the whole thing and that became my first info product.
I didn’t know that’s what it would become. It was just pure obsession over the task, over the topic that kept me going with it. So number one, one of the biggest things everyone struggles with when they start doing this thing is they have to find their voice and if they can’t find the voice, where do they draw the line in the sand? Where does the polarity come from? Where’s the passion? Where’s the stories and the background? And if you’ve never spoken before or put yourself out there before, you’re never going to know how those things actually fit together. It’s awkward for a lot of people who are just starting out inside Two Comma Club Coaching because they have never figured those things out, they don’t know what that’s like.
So not only are they trying to create a brand new product, number one. Not only are they trying to create the sales message, which they’ve never done before either. Number three, they’re trying to find their voice. They’re trying to do three things at the exact same time. And you can do it, but when people are going out and expecting, “I’ve been doing it for two months.” But they’ve never actually been successful with it, when you look at it from that angle it’s humorous. Of course you’re not successful right off the bat. You’re trying to figure out your voice, your product and your message all at the exact same time and it’s been two months and you’re not happy with it.
So you’ve got to think of it from the other side. These guys that have been publishing for a super long time are people who have been giants inside the marketplace. You look behind every one of the success stories, and every single one of them has got these amazing stories, usually they’re rags to riches stories, or stories where there was so much failure at the beginning, but they kept their heads down and kept pushing forward on the whole thing.
So those are the three things. As you start moving forward, you’ll learn more about this in Two Comma Club Coaching, really that piece right there will put so many of the things in place for you to keep going forward. Find your voice, find your voice. And I was really against finding my voice. It sounds stupid. I didn’t want to listen to Russell, I didn’t want to listen to what he was saying. It was before I worked for him, or before anything else. But I’d be listening to his podcast and he kept saying, “Hey, you gotta get out there and you gotta find your voice, start publishing.
I was actively against that. I was like, “There’s no way I’m going to podcast, there’s no way I’m going to start Youtubing. There’s no way I want to do any of that crap. I don’t want to do any of that.” And it was at his event in 2016, I had no money and was literally building funnels and trading funnels for a ticket. And trading funnels for a plane ticket, and a hotel nights stay. I had no money, I just knew I had to be there. I’d been hustling for several years by that point.
I got there and sat down and listened to Russell and I was like, “Okay, I’ve worked my butt off to get here, I have no money, I don’t know how I’m going to make it. But what I’m going to do, is whatever he says, I’m just going to do it. Because I’ve put in the time, I just want to make this work and I know it will. I just need to keep working it and working it.”
So what I did is went and I sat down and started taking notes and all the sudden Russell stands up and goes, “Every single one of you guys needs to get up there and you gotta start publishing.” And I was like, “Crap he said it. I gotta do it.” And I went out and started publishing regularly and the first 20 episodes that I did were really awkward, they were bad. But something happened, something clicked. My voice changed, something happened, my confidence changed. I got stronger polarity. What I believed started coming out stronger.
As I went out and started interviewing the people and started talking to those in the industry, I figured out the place for me to exist in the ecosystem without being competitive with everyone else. That way I could collaborate and not compete as hard in my own little blue ocean niche. Amazingly, when I started doing that, just like those in Two Comma Club, I know a lot of you guys listen to this podcast, so that’s a little shout out to you guys. But I know a lot of you guys, what I say to you is if you go and start regularly publishing, you’ll number one, find your voice. But number two, the place for your offer to exist, where you need to create your new opportunity, your new niche, that place will bubble up and emerge out of the red ocean, the red submarket ocean.
It’s amazing what will start to happen. You’ll start to figure out the message. The market will start to tell you everything that you need to know. You don’t know enough to actually be successful on your own, you don’t. The market will tell you everything always. Don’t try to come up with it on your own. If you do that, fantastic way to fail, fantastic way to lose money. I did it for years, I could tell you all about it. Really, what this game is, is go funnel hack, which does not mean pages. If the offer is online, yes that means pages. But go funnel hack an individual. Funnel hack their voice, their offer, their message.
What you do, you start to see this picture that emerges out of the sand. “Oh my gosh. That’s what I have to go make.” Here’s the formula, here it is. That’s your best shot, you take your best shot at launching that thing and then you step back and wait. And what ends up happening is all these people will start to give you feedback. “I wish it had this.” They’ll come in the form of complaints. “I wish it had this. Your product sucks at this.” Don’t push that stuff away. Those are the things that let you know you’re doing well. They let you know what to create and do next. You take the aggregate voice, aggregate complaint about your product, the aggregate feedback and those are the things, that’s the market telling you what to go make. Then you go make that thing.
And what’s nice, when you do that, take those pieces of feedback, you number one, take your best shot. Number two get feedback. Number three you turn around and tweak it and relaunch it. Now you’re in this cool adoration cycle, but the pressure is not on you anymore. You’ve already launched the thing, it’s already up, it’s already rocking and you’re getting feedback. That’s what I’d say. That’s just my commentary on this piece right now. I completely stand by and behind everything that he’s saying with this. In order to gain confidence, you gotta live it and you gotta live in it every day. You gotta be the expert, the go-to person inside the industry itself.
Russell: It’s harder when you don’t have a story. Even the one that I’ve watched, and I know a lot about the weight loss market, I’ve struggled with weight throughout my life and coached a lot of people in that market. So I was watching it, not to critique certain things, but the one thing I know from the weight loss market, and people I worked through it is that people and weight loss are very skeptical. If somebody doesn’t have a story where they were overweight, they don’t understand what it’s like to be me. That’s their belief.
In the video you talked about how to target certain areas, how to reduce fat. I was like, cool this is a good topic. It’s something people are concerned about because people have love handles, they have this and they do want to target spots. And then the advice is kind of like, “Don’t target a spot, lose all your weight.” And I felt like that message was not, most overweight people that I know would have, that message was not sharable, but the opposite. Would have pushed them away like, “You have no idea, you’ve never had love handles.” That’s how they would have reacted.
I know that because I’ve worked with so many overweight people. And you guys should know that, you should know if you told somebody that, “Don’t worry about your love handles, you gotta lose this.” Because you told someone that face to face, you should have known that, that this was your market. You should know that would have repelled those people, because the number one concern that people in the market has when they start working with a trainer is this person has no idea how I feel because they’re not overweight.
That’s why Kaelin’s story is so central to her success, because that’s their biggest belief. That is the biggest limiting belief in that market that people have. In my market it’s different. In my market it’s like, “If this stuff works so good, why don’t you give it me for free?” That’s my market of beliefs. That’s what I’m fighting all the time. You gotta know that in your market. And that comes from doing this over and over again. Doing it, getting people offended and then doing it again, the next time they don’t get as offended. It’s kind of like the movie Groundhog Day. Every time Bill Murray comes back he relives the life, he does it wrong, tweaks it, comes back, does it again, does it wrong. Tweaks it, comes back, does it again, does it wrong. Eventually he has a good life. But how many years he was in that Groundhog Day experience.
When you do that in volume, a lot, but I also thing, defining your message better. Because where can the money be made right now? It’s not in traditional weight loss, it’s in the fads, or blue oceans, keto diets. That’s the hot thing. When we launched ProveIt we were kind of the first people coming out there and now there’s been this huge swell of thousands of different keto brands, products, things like that. Some are succeeding, some are failing but it’s the ones that are diving into this market that’s hot.
If you look at, again Expert Secrets 101, find a hot market, ask them what they want and give it to them. What they want and what they need. You gotta find out exactly what they want and sell them that and then fulfill and give them what they need. That’s the big thing, you gotta understand the market super well and the only way you do that is by putting in the time and effort. So that’s being completely honest. You have to differentiate completely how this sub-market that you’re in right now, Dave Woodwork works for us and his wife is in that market, she tried for four or five years to succeed in the weight loss market, and she’s got amazing stories.
She’s been a personal trainer forever. She’s struggled because she’s stepping to play against the best of the best. So finally she’s made the shift, her program is called Have It All Moms, it’s focusing on moms and how weight loss helps moms. It’s not just weight loss but these other parts of personal development. She’s carved out this ocean and now she’s finally getting traction, but it’s four or five years in the big leagues and she’s a great sales person, she’s all these things and she’s struggled.
So again, for you guys, you gotta find your market, you gotta find the market of what people actually want, what they’re looking for, not what they need, we fulfill what they need, but we’ve got to sell them what they want. So that’s that. There’s the art and science of this game, hopefully you’ve heard me talk about that. And I think most people that struggle as entrepreneurs are typically the A students. I’m guessing you’re an A student, by default. Because they’re really good at the science, but the art is something you feel. It’s different.
So people who are really good students struggle with that because it doesn’t come naturally. When the C students are the ones really good at the art of it, but they struggle with the science. So for most businesses I recommend for people, if you’re in that spot, figure out who you are. When I got started in this business, one of my mentors told me, “Look, in every business there needs to be a starter and a finisher. You gotta figure out who you are, then surround yourself with the other people.” And at that time in my business I was like, “I’m a starter, really good at starting, really bad at finishing.” I needed to surround myself with finishers, so I started hiring people that were really good finishers.
That’s why people always ask me, “Russell, how do you get so much stuff done?” its because I have the ability to start a thousand things, but I have a team behind me who finishes them all. But I know what my strengths are, I know what my weaknesses are. If you go to Tony Robins Business Master, he talks about every company has three types of personality types. You gotta have, an artist, an entrepreneur and a manager. The artist is the person obsessed with that thing. One of them has got to be obsessed. That’s the artist.
The next person is the entrepreneur, the person out there risking and going crazy. Going out there and doing stuff. Then there’s the manager who’s in the management roles. So I’m looking at that, inherently what are you best at? Are you best at managing? Are you obsessed with the art of this thing? Or are you the entrepreneur who wants to go out and sell the crap out of it? I think at Funnel Hacking Live, one of the presentations they talked about that concept, they called it a hustler, a hacker and a designer. In Clickfunnels, I was the hustler, Todd was the hacker, and Dylan was the designer, that was the three pieces.
And not that you can’t learn the other stuff, you can, but that’s not how businesses grow, by us figuring out our weaknesses and focusing on it. In business it’s the opposite. Find your strengths and quadruple down on them and abandon your weaknesses and plugging other people into those spots. So it’s backwards. Yes, you’re capable of learning those things, but don’t because it’s so much better to find those people and plug them in.
Even Brandon and Kaelin, you look at them and the reason they are successful is you have Kaelin who is the artist, she’s obsessed with her art and she’s also one of the best sales people ever. So you have that, but her by herself would fail. She has her husband who is the manager, entrepreneur, risking, that kind of thing. Because they have both halves, is why they’ve blown up. For me, I don’t have a spouse that’s out of the house so I brought in team members and partners and that’s why we were able to blow up.
Let’s take our strengths, I know what they are. I’m really good at this piece, let’s find somebody that that’s their strength, let’s team up and now it’s like you can have way more impact with people. Whatever that is, really understanding the market, and being obsessed with that. Whoever it is that’s the artist in your business needs to be obsessed with that. Reading 400 blog posts a day, listening…I listened today, I’m a marketing guy and there’s probably few people on earth that know more about marketing right now, than me. Not to be cocky, but I’m kind of obsessed with it. Today I think I’ve listened to 8 or 9 marketing podcasts, I bought three products, I recorded 23 videos, actually 29 videos recorded on the topic, I got done at 6, came home to eat dinner with my kids and I’m actually going back in because I’m so excited about this thing that I gotta keep going back in.
So that was today for me, because I’m obsessed with the art of it. There’s got to be someone there that’s that obsessed with it, or else it’s going to be really hard to drive it. I got the messages back, the first message was like, “Oh hey, I just did some Facebook Lives and nobody showed up. It was just crickets.” That shouldn’t bug you, if you’re an artist you should not care. You love to hear your voice and you just want to talk, study, share and learn and give and share and talk. Whether people are listening or not, it should not matter.
Whoever the artist is in the business, that’s the level of obsession they need to have to be able to succeed. So it’s understanding that, and if that’s not you it’s cool, find someone that that’s how obsessed there are and then plug in yourself where you’re obsessed, put those two things together and now you’ve got a force of nature to be reckoned with. But there’s got to be….that’s the pieces. Any business, you have to get it into orbit and you can’t do that by being a normal human, and just waking up and doing your thing. It takes raw obsession. That’s why it takes an entrepreneur to launch a business and get it into the stratosphere. Hire a bunch of MBA’s and people to plug it in and just keep it moving, but it’s obsession that get it into orbit. A rocket can’t get into orbit unless it’s got these huge boosters that just blow the crap out of it and push it off the ground.
But again, it’s tripling, quadrupling down on your strengths and backing off your weaknesses and finding people who your weakness is their strengths, that’s how you build a company and blow it up fast.
If you missed Russell’s LIVE Q&A from www.dropthemicshow.com, you can hear this weeks questions on this episode.
Today we have another bonus episode of Marketing Secrets where Russell answers questions about marketing from other funnel hackers, including:
So listen to Russell answer these questions and drop the mic.
If you missed Russell’s LIVE Q&A from www.dropthemicshow.com, you can hear this weeks questions on this episode.
Today we have another bonus episode of Marketing Secrets where Russell answers questions about marketing from other funnel hackers, including:
So listen to Russell drop the mic as he answers these questions.
A personal message to a friend who is struggling.
On this extra long episode Russell talks to a friend from elementary school about how to go from being a technician and having a cap on his income to being a rainmaker and having an unlimited ceiling on his income. Here are some cool things you will hear on this episode:
So listen to Russell explain how to go from being technician to making it rain!
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to an insanely late night Marketing Secrets podcast. I am here, for those watching on tv, I’m in the car. Over there you can see Norah. It is late, insanely late. In one minute it will be midnight here and we’re about to take you guys on a very special Marketing Secrets Podcast.
Alright, I hope you guys are doing amazing. Right now my little baby Norah and I are on a mission. It’s a secret mission to get her to hopefully fall asleep. We started weaning her off the bottle about a week ago before our family vacation because we thought it would be so much nicer to not have bottles on this trip. That was a good idea, huh Norah.
But what we didn’t think about was the fact that she’s insane and now she won’t go to bed at all. She won’t take naps, since her naps happen when she finally passes on. We got back from the lake, we’re on a family vacation, we went to the lake and had a really good time, and then she wouldn’t fall asleep and we were driving back and forth and finally when I went to the store to buy something for dinner tonight. When we were coming back she passed out and she slept for 3 hours. She was so beat. Then she woke up and now she won’t go back to bed.
So this is the second night in a row. Last night I was also out driving until about midnight, 12:30 she fell asleep last night. It’s 12:00 right now, hopefully in less than 30 minutes she will be asleep. But I am on vacation having a good time. If you listen to my last Marketing Secrets podcast it talked about how vacations can be really tough for entrepreneurs. I feel like we’re not moving, there’s no momentum. We’re stuck in a spot. That’s somewhere that I definitely feel.
As much fun as vacation is it’s also hard for me, I got stuff to do, people to see, places to go. Actually, it’s interesting as I was packing the car up as I was about to leave, between hiking stuff in and out to the car and everything I was checking Facebook and it’s interesting. There was a friend who I don’t think I’ve seen him, I think the last time we talked was in elementary school. I remember 6th grade, it’s kind of a funny story. In 6th grade we were moving these big boxes and he had this big box and he dropped it. I don’t know why I remember this, but I remember him saying it was super embarrassing to drop this box of stuff and he was saying, “Someday this is going to be one of those things that people remember me by. Remember that day you dropped this huge box.” I remember thinking that was really interesting.
And now, it’s 30 years later and I remember that day, it’s kind of funny. But anyway, I remember he was in junior high and high school with me but he was a basketball player and I was a wrestler so we didn’t really cross paths a lot. But I knew who he was and grew up in elementary school and I always had respect for him. When the book of faces came out, Zuckerberg, it was kind of fun because you can go back and remember high school, junior high, and elementary school friends. And people from wrestling and different aspects of your life and you start adding them on Facebook. So he was one of the names that popped up years ago, I added him and hadn’t thought much more about it.
Every once in a while I saw posts from him, so I kind of knew what he was doing, but not a lot. He shifted his job or his business or career a couple of times and didn’t seem like he was having a lot of success. I remember it seems like last Christmas or something, he posted something really negative and I felt bad for him. But it’s also one of those things that when I first started my business and started learning about entrepreneurship and learning how to sell things and all this world became open to me, I remember at first I wanted to share with everybody. I tried to share with friends, family members, people at church, everyone I bumped into.
I was so excited to tell this thing that I had learned. I was so excited I would share with every single person. It was so mind blowing to me that most people just “Oh, cool. Nice.” I’m like you don’t understand it’s not just nice. It was so frustrating to me. But it’s funny because that was, I always tried to change everybody and save them and help them because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. After a couple of years of that I realized that none of the people I tried to help ever did anything with it. It was really depressing me, so that’s when I shifted back and started doing the business for a long time.
I think I got into coaching because I wanted to share it, and it was cool when I started coaching. It was people who would come, people who it was their idea first and came to me to learn how to do it. Those people I could mold, help and change because they had the desire first. It’s because of that I’ve been very cautious the last decade of my life going out of my way to talk to people about this stuff unless they raised their hand first.
So I saw him last December say something and I didn’t see my spot to say something, so I didn’t say anything. Then as I was leaving, I was going through Facebook, again we’re packing the cars and I’m sneaking out to do what you do with the phones. So I see this post, this long post and it was again a negative thing and he was talking about how much he was struggling and trying to make money and all these things, and I think he said that this last year he made $25,000, and that was what he made in an entire year. He was really struggling and trying to make things better for his family, life and wife and he couldn’t figure it out and was just frustrating and was just kind of venting.
How you doing Norah? She’s so cute back there. I hope she falls asleep soon.
Anyway, I felt for him. I was just like, do I say something or not. For whatever reason I decided to just reach out to him. I was like “Hey man, the problem..We haven’t talked in 20+ years, I don’t know if you know who I am. The problem is you’re not focusing on the right thing. I can help you but I don’t want to intrude, it’s not my business. I can help you, I know what’s wrong, it’s an easy fix. In the last year and a half, few years we’ve helped. I’ve been a coach to almost 200 people now to become a millionaire. Tens of thousands of people to make 100 thousand or more in year. I know the game, I know what it takes and what it doesn’t take.” I said something like that and my next post was, I wish I could read it right now. “I’m not trying to pitch you on some MLM. I honestly, if you want help I can help you because I know what’s wrong.”
He was like, “Really? Yeah, I want to know.” So I told him a couple of things and I said, “If you do those things, I’ll record a podcast for you while I’m on my trip and kind of go into more detail.” So this last 3 days I keep thinking about that and I’m excited so that’s what I’m actually doing right now and I hope it benefits all of you guys. Because I think for most people who are stuck, it’s not something that unique to you, it’s not. A lot of times we think our situation’s unique, but it’s not. It’s a pattern that happens over and over again. The key to breaking patterns is recognizing it and realizing what the correct pattern is and replacing it. It’s not hard, it’s just hard because it’s the first time most people have gone through it personally.
So that’s kind of the context. I just wanted to share this message, it’s really for him, I’m not going to go super specific, but I think it’ll be helpful for everybody. I know that typical people I talk to in this podcast are people who are entrepreneurs already and this is kind of I guess for someone who’s on that line between the job maybe and the entrepreneur. That line where it’s like, you’re not fully an entrepreneur running this way, but you’re struggling at the job thing and you’re in between. That’s what this podcast is for and I hope it kind of helps.
With that said, I’m going to jump into this. So the first thing that I kind of told him in the message, the first thing is you’re focusing on the wrong thing. And he’s like, “I’ve been focusing on perfecting my craft.” And just kind of some perspective, the industry he’s going into is film. So he’s trying to do movies and videos and all that kind of stuff. So he’s like, “I’m focusing on getting better at my craft and I’m also doing a lot of networking.” So I go, “okay, yes. You are completely focusing on the wrong two things. You are focusing on things to help you get better at your thing, but you have to shift your focus to making money.” That’s a weird concept because it’s something that I remember the first time I had that epiphany. I need to learn how to make money. I was in school learning all this crap and I’m looking at this stuff and studying and I was like, I’m not actually learning how to make money. I still remember one of my biggest gripes with college is I took two semesters of accounting and two semesters of finance and they never once taught you how to do your own taxes, which is insane. School sucks.
Just throwing that out there for those who are wondering my thoughts on the whole thing. But it’s crazy the fact that they don’t teach you that thing. And I realized I’m not learning how to make money here in school. And I started studying how to make money. It was interesting how different it was. It’s not what you’re learning in school. And now fast forward, I think it’s been, let’s see…it’ll be my 15th anniversary in a month from now and we got married with a year left in school. So 14 years I’ve been graduated from school. Looking back on it now from this sign. Sorry I’m waiting for a stop light, but there’s no stop light, there’s a stop sign. Little Norah’s still awake.
Anyway, as I look at it now from this lens looking back, it’s interesting, a lot of times we want something. I remember growing up, you always hear your parents and people say you gotta go to school to get a good education so you can make good money. We all heard that. That’s a thing that parents say a lot. So we assume that those two things coincide. Good job, good education equals more money. But not necessarily. Now I look at again from my perspective, 14 years later, it’s interesting.
I was thinking about this a lot over the last two or three days especially. If you want to look at the structure of how people make money, because there’s definitely, there’s you make money and there’s places you don’t. And most places you’re focusing on, like when he said he was focusing on getting better at his skills in networking. He’s focusing on something that’s good, but it’s not making money. So I’m going to start at the top.
The top is a pure entrepreneur, so the top of a business, the hierarchy chart, so the top is the entrepreneur who starts the business. Typically, at least the entrepreneurs that I like to work with, the entrepreneurs are passionate about something, but their mostly passionate, not just about that thing, but getting that thing out to people. That’s what defines an entrepreneur. If any of you guys have read the Emyth, by Michael Gerber, he talks about what happens with a lot people is they think they’re entrepreneurs, and they get a job at the bakery shop and start baking cakes. They see the owner of a bakery shop and they’re like, “This guy is an idiot and I could do better than him.” And then what Michael Gerber says is that they have an entrepreneurial seizure.
They think they’re smarter so they start their own bakery. The problem is that they’re not an actual entrepreneur, they’re a technician. They’re somebody who is in the business who is doing it. They’re making the bread, the cakes, the stuff but they look at the entrepreneur who they think is an idiot, so they have the entrepreneurial seizure and say they want be the entrepreneur and start their own business and say, “I can make bread better than anyone else. I can make cakes.” And they’re passionate about the thing and create the business and what happens to the business? It fails.
It has a 90+% failure rate. Because it’s technicians, it’s people who think that the key is the thing. They think that the cake is what runs the business. It’s their passion about the cake, the creation of the cake, they don’t understand that that’s not the business. In the business the entrepreneur’s job is being passionate about getting the cake out to as many people as possible. That’s where the money’s at. That’s why most businesses fail. Because it’s not the entrepreneur running it, it’s someone who had an entrepreneurial seizure and is a technician and is trying to do that thing and thinks they should start a business because of it.
My first question for everyone listening to this, are you the entrepreneur? The good news is we go deeper into this…….holy cow, a deer just crossed the path……There are ways to make money, not as an entrepreneur in a business. But it’s not where you probably think that they are. I’m just thinking for example, a doctor. Doctors make good money. How many times did you hear that you have to become a doctor to make good money, or a dentist to make good money. So those people make good money, but not there’s no limit to your income money. Because a doctor is a technician. They are just highly paid technician because a lot of school goes into it. But they’re still a technician. They’re not an entrepreneur, they have a definite cap on their income growth, always.
So just depending on what technician you pick. Let’s say you’re going into a company to get a job, you’re capped by the earning potential of that role you take on. If you’re a doctor, a dentist, a baker, support person. You’re capped at whatever that thing is, which is fine, it’s just knowing that’s where you’re capped at.
If you want no cap, the first spot you have to look at is entrepreneur. But to be an entrepreneur you have to understand that it’s not being passionate about the creation of the thing, it’s being passionate about the selling of the thing. There’s a big reason why I wrote the Expert Secrets book. It’s because typically Experts who are really passionate about their topic are also passionate about getting their topic out. By definition they are entrepreneur’s because they are trying to get the message out about that thing. They own the bakery, they make the cake, but they’re more excited aobut telling people about the cake. That’s what makes them successful about entrepreneurs. That’s why I love working with entrepreneurs.
So there’s the top of the….let me flip the car around, I’m getting out to no man’s land now. So that’s the top of this pyramid scheme of business. I don’t know if you want to call it that. But the entrepreneurs are at the top. And that’s what most people look at. The entrepreneur is the person that makes all the money. But they’re all the person who risk everything. Entrepreneurship is a scary thing because you have no earning potential at the top, but you’re also the one with all the risk on your back. For a lot of people you can’t just go out and become an entrepreneur immediately, especially if you have a wife and kids. Because you have to have security. There’s this huge draw with people who have entrepreneurial desires, but they also have security needs between your family.
So that’s a hard thing to just gamble and jump and say “I’m going to become an entrepreneur.” And I understand that. So a lot of times the entrepreneur is not the first place for people. I feel super blessed. I started my entrepreneurial journey about the time I met my wife and I was able to do a lot of things because she supported me, I was going to school and we didn’t have kids. We didn’t have this need for security at this point when I was getting started, which I’m so grateful for. I have so much respect for those that step into the entrepreneurial role when they have those things because it’s so much harder.
So it’s always easier to start being an entrepreneur and risking everything when you don’t have a wife and kids and things. So that’s kind of one thing. That’s one spot. Again, there’s different places to make money in companies, so there’s the best spot, maybe not the best spot, but one spot. The entrepreneur at the top, that’s number one.
Then underneath the entrepreneur inside the organization there’s gotta be technicians, doing the things, baking the cakes, cleaning the teeth, cutting people open, the technicians. This is what schooling is actually…the only reason school is actually good is because it creates technicians. If you want to be a doctor you have to go to school. If you want to be able to drill teeth, you gotta go to school. If you want to become a baker or a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, any profession.
Another deer just ran by. I don’t want to hit a deer. That would be scary.
But any profession, that’s what schooling is for. So when you’re going into school you are thinking about that. Any major you decide to go after, there’s a kind of associated salary range you’re going to fit into. Sometimes it’s big, like doctors make good money. But you’re always capped. A technician will always be capped, by definition of what they are. You just are. If you’re coming into a business and You’re a technician looking at this, you’re capped. Your salary is capped.
So my friend who is doing video stuff, he’s looking for jobs in a business where he’s the technician. Again, he was saying in his post that he made $25,000 last year, because the need you are filling inside whatever company you are trying to plug into. That’s what they have budgeted for that. That’s what you’re able to make. You’re capped. You can’t go above that, unless you work more hours, more days. Sometimes you find another company that has a bigger budget. That’s another thing, and again there’s nothing wrong with a technician, it’s understanding that there’s a salary that’s set for that thing. There’s a budget set and that’s what happens.
The goal of a business is not to make the technician rich. I had a finance teacher at Boise State, tell you what, most teachers I had at school were always like, “What’s the job of a business?” “To create jobs, stimulate the economy.” They always had this happy go lucky, tree hugging attitude about business. I had this one finance teacher that said the only goal of a business is to make the owners money. That’s it. If the entrepreneur, the owner is not making money, the board of directors, whoever is running it, if they’re not making money, the business dies. That’s the only purpose and only point of a business is to make the entrepreneur money. Everybody’s got to understand that.
If you’re a technician there is no desire for anybody for you to make more money than what your set salary is. You’re going to find entrepreneurs, in my company I’m very compassionate towards people and I love what they do. I love creating things for people and having incentive plans, but for the most part, as a technician you’re in that range. You have to understand if you’re going to school, that’s the earning range you’re going to be in. Are you okay with that? If you are, cool. Go for it. That’s awesome.
But don’t complain later when you come back and say I’m not making what I want. You picked a profession, you picked being a technician, you picked this piece and that’s all it’s worth. It doesn’t matter how much school you went to or how much time and effort you put into it, that’s what that task is worth to the entrepreneur. You have to understand that, technicians are essential to a business, they need to be there. That’s what colleges, universities, programs were all created for, to create those people. Those people are important. But again, that’s the pros and cons of that.
Check it out guys, look at this. Pan over. She’s asleep. 12:19, it’s a good sign. This podcast might not be three hours long now that she’s asleep. Otherwise, it could have been a really long one.
Alright, there you go. Entrepreneur, unlimited potential, tons of risk and the role, the reason why an entrepreneur’s successful is because they’re passionate about the selling of the thing. Getting the message out, not just the message. Not just passionate about making cakes, but passionate about getting the cakes in as many people’s mouths as possible because they’re obsessed with the end product. That’s the difference. There’s entrepreneurs.
Number two level down in this pyramid is the technicians, who are the one’s doing the jobs to make this whole thing happen. Super essential but have huge earning caps, depending on what technician role you picked makes your earning cap. There’s one spot, and this is the spot that I want everybody to understand because this is the other spot inside of a company where you have no earning potential. Excuse me, I said it wrong. You have no earning ceiling, you have unlimited earning potential. Scratch that, that could have been really bad and messed up the whole thing. You have unlimited earning potential, literally the sky is the limit.
That last piece, so we have entrepreneurs, we have technicians, and the third are the rain makers. They’re people that make it rain. They’re people that bring leads and money into the business. They’re the rain makers. Now entrepreneurs love rain makers, why? Because they make it rain. Do you guys understand that? That’s the secret sauce. Most technicians don’t understand that. Because all they know is I went to school to learn this thing to do this task, so they do it and do it. But the person that gets rewarded the most, outside the entrepreneur of the company, are the rain makers.
Typically in most, not most, but a lot of businesses that I own, that I’m involved with, the rain makers a lot of times are entrepreneurs who maybe if they would have started their entrepreneur journey ten years earlier, they would be the entrepreneur of the business. But for whatever reason they’re not. So they came, they can have, a lot of times we call them intrapreneurs. In their role in the company, they have the ability to grow and expand as much as they want. They’re rain makers. What do they do? They make it rain. They bring in customers and make money. They bring money into the company.
So if you look at this from an outside perspective, if you selling this stuff in college terms. It’s marketing and sales. Marketing brings people in, sales takes their money. That’s kind of what it is. And it’s funny because, I don’t know what it was, even like most technicians, if you go to school and you tell someone you want to be a sales person, the viewpoint, or even marketing, I’m in marketing, or I’m in sales, the technicians are the ones who are always looking down on you. “oh, I’m a doctor.” They look down on the rain makers because they think it’s a sub….I don’t know. They think it’s not as good, not as dignified.
What they don’t understand is that the rainmakers make the money. It is the most dignified, most important position in the entire company. Without the rain maker’s the technician has no job. Without someone bringing people into your business and then getting the money from those people, there’s nobody to be a technician to. You make as many cakes as you want, but if some dude didn’t bring those people into the store and take their money, they’re not going to buy a cake. It’s the most important role in the business, outside the entrepreneur who sets the initial risk to get it going.
So even though the technicians talk down on us marketing and sales people, it happens to be the most important role in every single business. You can tell when businesses are stupid, when recessions come and they cut their marketing teams and they cut their sales teams. It’s insane to me. I had a chance in my life to live through one of the recessions, 2008. I had a bunch of friends who were in marketing jobs and they were making it rain for the company and the company started struggling so they cut the marketing. I’m like, you’re insane. Cut the technicians, they don’t do anything. Don’t cut the blood coming into your company. Marketing and sales is the blood, it is the rain. The rain makers are the key.
So rain makers. They don’t have a ceiling, in most businesses now days. Especially if you become good at it and not a little bit good, but really good. You can come to a company and say, “I can bring in unlimited leads for you.” Guess what they will do? They will give you anything you want. All company need leads. The other thing they need, sales. They take those leads and turn them into cash, turn them into money. That’s how the entrepreneur gets paid, that’s how the technicians get paid. It’s by the rain makers. Bringing people in and taking their money. That’s it. We can try to be romantic about it, but that is it.
You have to understand, if you want to be wealthy, and I’m not talking about making good money as a technician, because you can do that. You gotta go to school, that sucks. If you want to become wealthy, become rich, make a lot of money. You have to shift your focus from becoming good at being a technician, to understanding how to make it rain. If you can make it rain in a business, you are infinitely valuable. As a technician you are only valuable as that task is to the person, to the company. They know, they got a budget for it. There you go.
So if you’re working for a company saying, I do video. Guess what? They have a budget for that. We pay video guys $3 an hour, $12 an hour, whatever that is, $20 an hour.
For my friend, the company you are working for, they budget $25 grand so that’s all the money you are able to get. Because you’re a video person, you’re a commodity. That’s the other thing about technicians is they’re commodities. It’s funny, I was talking to my sister the other day here at our family vacation or whatever, and she teaches piano lessons. I love my sister, she’s honestly in my top 3 favorite people on planet earth. She’s teaches piano and she’s like, “I’m so busy, I can’t keep up with anything.” And I said, “you should double your prices.” And she’s like, “I can’t double my prices.” And I’m like, “Why not?” and she’s like, “If I double my prices I will lose half my people.” I’m like, “okay, well you lose half your people but you double the money, that means you get double the free time for the same amount of money.” And she’s like, “I can’t do that because that’s the set price for what people charge for piano lessons where I live. So if I raise my prices, they’ll just go to somebody else.” I’m like, “Because you’re a commodity. Guess how much people pay for marketing consulting advice?” She’s like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Neither do I, but I don’t look what everybody else charges and charge the same thing, I charge the most I possibly can.”
For example we had somebody contact our office and they wanted to do a one day consult with me and I was like, “I don’t have time for a one day consult.” And they’re like, “Well, how much would it cost?” and I told Brent to tell them it’s $100 grand and they can do 8 hours and they have to come to Boise and I’m going home at 5:00 to be with my kids. He kind of laughed because he knew they wouldn’t say yes to that. He went and pitched it to them and came back 5 minutes later. He’s like, “They said yes.” And I was like, “There you go.”
Want to know why? Because I’m not a commodity. When you’re a video person you’re a commodity. When you are any kind of technician you are a commodity. When you’re a doctor, you’re still a commodity because guess why? Another doctor comes along and he’s better than you or less expensive than you, whatever. They can replace you with the other person because you are a commodity. The rain makers are not commodities. That’s what you have to understand.
The rain makers are unique. They understand something that they can’t just learn in school. They know how to get, especially in school because there’s no school that I know of yet, that teaches a marketing program that is actually good. So there you go. So if you’re in school trying to become a rain maker, you should drop out today. If you want to be a technician stick to school. If you want to be a rain maker, it’s time to leave.
If you’re in school, honestly if you’re trying to do a sport. That’s why I was in school. Do that. If you’re trying to find a beautiful spouse, school is agreat place to meet great looking women and probably good looking men, I have no idea. But that’s a great spot to be in school, but just til you find your spouse and then leave. It’s time to go. If you want to make it rain, it’s time to go.
The rain makers are the ones that are not a commodity. There’s no cost associated, people don’t budget that out. Because they are like, I don’t know. If I came to a company and was like, “I’m going to build you guys a sales funnel and this funnel has potential to bring you unlimited leads for forever and make you unlimited amounts of money.” They’re like, “How much does that cost?” I’m like, “However much I want to charge you for it.” They can’t price shop. How are you going to price that? Russell Brunson charges 100 grand for a day. How do you price shop that? Go to somebody else? Ask Gary V. “What do you cost?” and he’ll give you his price but he’s going to teach way differently than I would. If you want what I got, I’m the only one that’s got it. You gotta pay me what I want to charge you for it. I’m not a commodity.
If you’re a great sales person, you’re not a commodity. Great sales people are rare. If you’re an amazing sales person you can walk into any organization and say, “hand me your leads. I just want 20% of everything. I eat what I kill. I’m going to 20% of what I kill.” There’s no business on earth that I know of, that if you walked in and said “Look don’t pay me, just give me all your leads. I want 20% of what I kill.” Almost all of them will say yes to that. Because you’re a rain maker. You have no ceiling. Just kill a whole bunch of stuff and you get your cut.
Same thing with the person who is making it rain, bringing the leads in the door. A lot of times you’re like, “Russell, I’m a video guy, I’m whatever. I don’t know how to make it rain. Right now I’m basically a technician. I’m plugged into this technician thing.” You gotta start studying, not how to become a technician, you’ve got to become good at your craft, I agree with that. You have to become obsessed with it, but you have to become good at understanding how to make money.
The study of making money is the key. So how do I make money? It’s understanding if you’re a video person, doing video is a commodity. But if I can understand how to use video to bring in the leads, it changes things because now I’m not a commodity. I’ve got a friend who charges 100,000 to make you a video, plus 10% of any money that video ever makes you. Technically he’s no better than anybody else. In fact, some would argue he’s a lot worse at video than most people, but he knows how to take that video and have it turned into cash and bring in customers. He knows how to use it to make it rain.
So for those of you guys who are in my world, I’ve got some tools to help you learn how to take whatever technicians skills you have and learn how to make it rain. So I told my friend, I gave him some advice, “I’ll record this podcast but you have to do some things for me first. First thing you need to do is go back to this podcast, Marketing In Your Car, first hundred episodes there’s a cheesy jingle. Next 200 episodes there’s a less cheesy jingle, still cheesy. And then recently we transformed it into the Marketing Secrets podcast, which I really like the name and the new jingle is freaking amazing.” Don’t you guys agree? So we’ve got that.
I said, “Go and listen to every episode, start at episode one and go through all of them. What’s going to happen is you’re going to immerse yourself in how to become a rain maker. You’ll learn a bunch of random crap and none of it’s going to tie together, but it’s going to get your mind immersed in this mindset. And if you don’t like me or my voice, you can go find someone else. But find someone who is obsessed with marketing and sales. And he ranks the stuff that people pay unlimited money for and start immersing yourself. Listening to it all day every single day so your mind is just wrapped into the concepts. With geeking out and going deep with my podcast, your mind is going to get into it but you’re not going to have a blueprint, but you’re going to have all these thoughts going through your head all over the place. It won’t be a path, but it will be immersion. Immersion is the key.”
Tony Robins talks about this a lot and I’m a big believer in pretty much everything tony says because he’s a giant and he’s got stage presence like nobody else and he’s amazing and a billion other reasons. Tony’s the man. He taught me about immersion. If you want to learn something, don’t dabble. There’s dabblers out there all over the place, who dabble. My guess is things in your life that you struggle with are things you have dabbled in and things you excel at are things you immersed yourself in. That’s just how it works.
If you want to learn how to make it rain, you’ve got to immerse yourself in the concepts of people who are making it rain. So number two what I told my friend. I said, “There’s two books you’ve got to read.” And I shipped them out to him. First book is Expert Secrets. In this business there’s two sides of the business, there’s the art and the science. The art really is the selling and messaging and positioning, all those kind of things. Storytelling and that kind of thing, that’s the art. So I said, “Read the Expert Secrets book first because that’s the art. Second read the DotCom Secrets book, because that’s the science. It’s the art and the science to making it rain.”
When you read both those books, there’s two different perspectives that you’ll feel in the books. One is very much like the structure, the science, the Dotcom Secrets, the science to how the game is played and the Expert Secrets is the art. A lot of people think they have to master all of this, and you don’t. Especially if you are someone who would love to be an entrepreneur, but for whatever reason you’re not able to. You want to be an intrapreneur in a company. Go into a company and be an intrapreneur for a company. Look at that and say, “I don’t need to know all this stuff. But I gotta understand it all. I need to understand the art and science and figure out where my skill set fits into that.”
So my friend that’s doing video stuff, you have a skill set that in the right hands is worth a lot of money. In the wrong hands its worth 25 grand a year. If you find a company that’s growing, the right company, the right person to plug into and come and say, “I want to make it rain for you.” Brandon Fischer who started doing video stuff for us 2 ½, 3 years ago. He came in and I met him and my brother does video stuff for me, we didn’t really need another video person, but he came to me and was like, “Hey, I want to learn what you’re doing. I’ll do video stuff for free for you.” I was like, alright and he started doing it for free. He did some amazing stuff and started capturing stories for me. He captured Liz Benney’s story of her telling her experience with Inner Circle.
Basically he didn’t come to me as a video guy, he came to me as, “I can capture the story that will make your company look a million times better to make it rain.” So he captured the story of Liz Benney, so we took that video and put it on a website, started driving traffic to it. That Liz Benney video, I couldn’t track it today, but that video has probably made me at least 2 million dollars if not more. That video helped me make it rain. That video asset to me wasn’t worth 25 k a year, it was worth a heck of a lot more. Because it helped me make customers, convert those customers, and get money from those customers.
But he didn’t come to me as “I’m going to be a video guy.” He came to me like, “Let me serve you first.” The best thing about rain makers, if you’re good at what you do, which is why it’s important to be really good at your craft. That is important. Become obsessed, literally become so obsessed with what you do you become the best in the world at it. Or at least the best that person’s ever met. Become obsessed with it. That’s important.
The second thing is figuring out how to use your skill to make it rain and becoming obsessed with that. That’s the missing key. Because then you become an intrapraneur, you come into a company….Don’t come in and try to negotiate a huge fee, because number one if you negotiate a huge fee, the first thing you’re going to do is lock yourself in as a technician. Technicians get paid a salary. As soon as you negotiate you lock yourself in and then you’re there.
If you come in the other way and say, “I’m going to work for free and make it rain and then I just want a piece of what I bring to you.” If you bring it that way and come in and help make it rain, it’s completely different. Jay Abraham, one of the great marketing, strategic minds of all time, his whole thing is he would come to a company and say, “I’m going to come and work for free I just want 20% of the increase.” He’d come to a company and add 40, 50, 60, 100 million dollars to a company and just took 20% of the increase. That’s what rain makers do. That’s what sales people do. You are creating opportunity. You’re creating money for them and taking a percentage of what you create. That’s the key you guys. That’s the key how to be an entrepreneur inside of an organization and have no limit.
Guess who they don’t fire in a company? The person who makes it rain. If you go into a company and you make it rain, that’s it. You write your own paycheck from that point forward. So how do you do that? Number one, immerse yourself in this stuff, in the marketing and sales. Immerse yourself. I would recommend doing it with the podcast. Because I think I’m obsessed with podcasts. It’s the best way to have it ring through your mind all the time. Start at episode one of my podcast, click play and go until you’re done. A lot of you guys, start over.
This is not for my own ego, partially for my own ego, but mostly for you guys. And again, if for some reason I talk to fast or I’m annoying or whatever, I don’t care. Plug into somebody, plug into Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, or plug into John Lee Dumas, I don’t care. Whoever you resonate with, plug in and go. Don’t unplug. Every single day, all of your free time, you’re driving, you’re walking, your bathroom breaks, be listening to podcasts constantly. That’s going to give you the immersion, because immersion is the only way for you to get the connections. This connects to this; you’re going to start seeing the big picture.
Number two is you need a strategy and a blueprint. For each of you guys, there’s two books that I’ve written. I’ve put my heart and my soul. I’ve read thousands of books, sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff, to be able to figure out what actually works and put it into a book you could read in a day. So read the Expert Secrets book, number one, and then read the Dotcom Secrets book. Expert Secrets will teach you the art, Dotcom Secrets will teach you the science.
Then you’ve got to look at what your skill set is and where does that plug into the art and science. Again, you don’t have to do everything, but figure out what you are good at. What I would recommend doing, this is kind of the next step, is those who have gone through my certified partner program, we certify people to build sales funnels, the ones that are the most successful, the ones that bit, realize they’re not the best at everything. Henry Kaminski, one of my buddies was in the inner circle for last year, he talked about when he first came in, he was a graphic designer. He’s like, he didn’t say it this way, but similar. He understood the art and the science. “I’m really good at graphic design but I don’t know this other stuff.” So he started studying and learning it. He realized there’s pieces to this.
If you read Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets you will realize there’s pieces and you become an expert in all of it or what he said he did, “I built a voltron team.” Some of you guys, if you’re and you don’t know who Voltron is you can go Google it. Or you might remember Power Rangers, might be a better one for you guys. There are different versions. But Voltron is basically, there were these five, same with Power Rangers, same story, probably the same everything. But there’s five people who had their own super power, they went out there and they were really good. But there was a big bad guy who would always come and they couldn’t defeat him individually. They had to group together and become Voltron and all five pieces came together and they’d fight and they could win.
So Henry said, “I realized I was a good designer, but I’m bad at strategy so I had to find this strategy person to partner with.” So he partnered with his strategy guy, Dave Arsonal. Then he’s like, “I need someone good at selling.” So he partnered with a salesman. He partnered with three or four people and built this Voltron team and he went out there and in less than a year he made a million dollars with his little company.
Because he understood, “We’re rainmakers and I’m good at this piece but I need a couple of people together and we can make it rain. We need someone who can drive traffic, someone to do sales, and I’ll do the art.” He did that.
So for you guys and for my friend, after you understand the art and science, you’ve immersed yourselves, you’re learning all these kind of things, you buy the expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets book, read both of those and understand the art and science of how to make it rain. Now you’re looking back to say, “How do I fit in this? What am I passionate about? Am I good at the story telling part, am I good at funnels?” Figure out those pieces and then you can go to companies and look at that and say, “I’m really good at this piece. I can bring this thing to you.” Or find a partner, find people and come in and say, “We can do this thing.”
A good example of this you guys, I don’t normally share these kind of numbers, but I wanted to just kind of help. Some of you guys have seen the Harmon Brother’s videos, some of you guys know that we are about to launch our Harmon Brother’s video, which I’m really excited for. They did Squatty Potty, Poo-Pourri, Chatbooks, Fiber Fix, a whole bunch of great videos. They make these videos and they’re good, really good. They go viral and they’re amazing.
I wanted to hire them to do a video for me so I messaged them two days after they’d actually messaged me, which is kind of funnel. They had this funnel, the Fiber Fix funnel, they said the video went viral but the funnel isn’t converting and they wanted my help. I was like, “Funny. I just wanted to email you to see if you’d do a video for us.” We got on the phone and tried to talk through it and both of us are rain makers. Our videos make it rain, we know what they’re worth. I was like, “How much does it cost to create a video?” I was thinking maybe $50, 60 grand or whatever. With a very straight face he was like, “We charge $500 thousand up front plus 20% of ads spent.” I was like, “What?!” and he looks at me straight, he didn’t say this in so many words but, in the words of this episode he said, “We know how to make it rain, so that’s what we’re worth and that’s what we charge.” A few months later I wrote them a check and now they’re going to make it rain for us.
Same thing, they came to me with the Fiber Fix funnel, “We want you to fix this funnel, how much does it cost?” I’m like, “you can hire someone fix the funnel it will be 10 grand, but for me it will be a quarter of a million bucks.” And he’s like, “Whoa, why are you so expensive?” and I was like, “Because I know how to make it rain.” So then they did their deal, because it worked.
As I went with the Harmon Brothers and we did the video, it’s been the most amazing experience, I can’t wait to show you the whole behind the scenes video. There’s some on Funnel Hacker TV, you see bits here and there. But it’s amazing, it’s not 2 brothers who do this whole thing. It’s these guys who started a business and then their process is really cool. When we hired them, basically they said, “We’re going to do a writing retreat.” And they found three amzing writers to write three different scripts for us. So we go to this cabin and they have three writers come and read their script. Each script was insanely amazing, but three different comedic scripts.
And these guys again, are writers that they hired, they’re sketch comedy writers. They each wrote three and came back and said, “Which of the three do you like the best?” we picked what we liked the best and then all three guys took those, in this cabin, we went back and all three of them went and took the best script and they took all the jokes, the best jokes, wrote a new script and came back and showed it to us again. It was even more funny. We went back and forth for two days until we had the script.
Then after we had the script, they went and said, “Okay, for this script to happen we have to have props.” So they hired someone to build stages, and they needed videos and hired video people. They hired all these people to make this amazing thing. Last weekend we went and filmed it and hopefully we’re about a little ways away from launching it.
Again, with them, it wasn’t just them. They had built a Voltron team of people that could go and execute to make it rain. You have to start understanding that. Come back to where we started, the hierarchy of business. There’s the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is there and they are obsessed with getting the message out about their thing. Not about the thing, about getting the thing into other people’s hands. That’s why I love entrepreneurs, because they’re tied into this whole marketing thing. Good entrepreneurs are obsessed with the marketing and selling of the thing. They are the ultimate rain maker.
Number two is the technician who do the thing, which are essential to the business, but again you’ve got a cap, you’re a commodity. Understand that there’s a cap and you’re a commodity, but you’re in there. You’re going to have a good, typically secure financial thing, all those kind of things. You get security but you’re not going to have unlimited income.
Then you’ve got the rain makers. So for you guys looking at understanding what a rain maker does and what it is and how the process works. Figuring out how to take your skill, your super power and uncommoditize yourself and make you unique, make yourself rare. Make it so people pay you half a million dollars if you make them a 3 minute video. Is that crazy?
Someone pays me a quarter of a million bucks right now to make them a funnel. For me, not that it takes me that long, I just know what order the pages need to go and what message in each page. I know how to make it rain. I’ve been obsessed with this thing for over a decade.
For you guys, it’s time to become obsessed. Become obsessed in your own company. And if you’re the entrepreneur in your company listening to this, become obsessed. You’ve got to be the lead rain maker. Find the technicians, plug in the right people, and like I always say, find A players, not B players. A players are 32 times more effective than B players. Find A player technicians and pay them well. Because you don’t want to go find other technicians. Plug in the best technicians you can find, then go find rain makers. And if you try to cap rain makers, they will leave you. Understand that. You, as an entrepreneur, find rain makers and give them the ability to have unlimited ceilings in their income. Because if they do that, again, a rain maker is just an entrepreneur who for whatever reason, life circumstances isn’t able to go out on their own to do it, which is totally cool. There’s nothing wrong with that.
If it weren’t for all the intrapreneurs in our business, our company is 99.9% intrapreneurs. If it was not for my intrapreneurs we would not be where we are today. I try to create our businesses in a way where people can grow and have unlimited earning potential. That’s the key.
For you guys listening who, that’s you and you’re stuck in the technician role or you want more, or you’re in this thing where you want to be an entrepreneur but you can’t or whatever. This is where to focus on. Learning how to make it rain and then building a team around you. Finding people, other pieces and networking, not so much finding jobs, networking to find people to help you to be able to make it rain. As soon as you have a team, as soon as you personally or your team can do that, you can go to any business on planet earth and write your own paycheck.
Then it comes down to picking the right businesses, and that’s a whole other lecture for a whole other day. Because I’ve seen some funnel consultants who go and they get paid ten thousand dollars to build a funnel, other guys get a hundred grand, the only difference is who they are pitching to. It’s interesting, I’m privy to share the details, but the Harmon Brother campaigns, if you look at the Purple Mattress, its $1000 mattress. Because every sales makes $1000, it’s been one of their most successful campaigns. Chatbooks has been amazing, probably the most viral video they’ve had, but each sale doesn’t bring in, the value of each customer is a lot less, so it’s harder to continue to make that one rain.
Same thing with all you guys, if the customer or the client that you’re working for, if they’re average customer value is $30, if you’re working for a restaurant, making $30 it’s not good. But if you’re working for a customer where each customer is worth 25 thousand dollars, it’s a lot easier to justify what you want to charge people. Stuff like that.
Alright, well it’s late. It’s almost 1:00. I gotta get my 6 hours to go to the water park. I’m going to end today’s podcast, but I hope that helps you look at how business works and understanding that for you to be successful and make money, you have to understand how to make money. You gotta learn how to make money. Don’t just learn your skill because if you do that you’ll become a technician, which is fine if that’s where you’re happy. But if you really want financial freedom and wealth and no limits and no ceiling, you want to be able to grow, it comes down to studying money and understanding how it works and understanding the marketing and the sales, getting people in the door and getting their money from them. It’s the most valuable part of any business. I don’t care what the hoity-toity doctors tell you. I don’t care what all the people in school and colleges, it’s the most dignified, most important role in business.
If it wasn’t for it, business would stop. The economy would stop. So it’s figuring out how to plug in your skill set into that piece of business. Because that’s where the money’s made. When you’re part of people making the money it gives you the ability to have percentage of that. So I hope that helps. So for my friend who’s listening and everyone else listening, once again, immersion. Get the blueprint. Figure out what your unique abilities and talents can plug into that blueprint to make it rain for a company. When you do that, you got what you need and a whole bunch more.
So I hope that helps you guys. I hope that helps my buddy. I won’t say your name because, you know. I appreciate you and hope to hang out with you someday again. Everybody else, have a good night, talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.
Here is a bonus interview with Russell Brunson and Dr. Accurso.
I think I figured out why it's so hard for all of us to go on vacations.
On today's episode of Marketing Secrets Russell talks about why, as an entrepreneur, it is so hard to go on vacation, and how he gets through it. Here are some of the cool things to listen for in this episode:
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I hope you’re excited for today. I’ve got this weird thing; I think a lot of entrepreneurs suffer from this. Maybe it’s just me. But today I’m going on vacation for a week. I’m actually looking forward to it, but at the same time it really stresses me out. It’s one of those things that’s funny because everyone always tells me, “Russell, you need to go on vacation. You’re going to burn out if you keep doing the stuff you’re doing at the pace you’re doing it.” All sorts of stuff.
But it’s weird because…..sorry I’m trying to do it with the new camera tripod while I’m driving.
Anyway, it’s weird because when I’m at the office and working and doing my thing I never feel stressed. Everyone’s like, “Are you stressed? Are you overwhelmed?” I’m like, not really. I feel like I’m kind of in my flow, my motion or whatever you want to call it. But then I go on vacation, I get super stressed and anxiety and sitting there and not doing stuff is really hard for me. That’s why reading on vacations, at least I feel like something’s progressing.
It’s interesting, at Pirates Cove mastermind we had Alex Charfen come and help him to kind of figure out how to monetize his entrepreneurial personality type content, which I’m excited for. It’s funny because I told him I first heard him speak 2 or 3 years ago on the entrepreneurial personality type and it was amazing. I felt like I connected with him and I was like, now when I hear something like that I want to give somebody money for something. There’s no way for me to give him money. It’s funny, I asked him if I could buy the entrepreneurial personality type from him and he’s like, “No.” and then he’s like, “Why?” and I’m like, “Because I don’t know exactly what I’d do if I had it, but I could make a crap ton of money with it.” And so he joined the coaching program right afterwards, so I could help him do it.
So it’s kind of fun. We’re helping him go through the process now and he’s going to kill it, it’s exciting. But one thing he talked about that was interesting about entrepreneurs and if you haven’t studied Alex’s stuff, it’s worth it. And it’ll be soon in a format, it’s going to be a podcast, it’s going be a training program, a bunch of stuff. He’s kind of going through the whole Expert Secrets process now to figure out how to take it to something. I’m excited, when it’s done, I’ll be the first customer. And I think that all of you, because you’re all like me, should as well.
But it’s the entrepreneurial personality type, but he’s talking about personality traits of entrepreneurs. And one thing that’s kind of weird, I think I’ve heard him give the presentation three times in his core, main presentation and all three times there’s this one part where he talks about how entrepreneurs don’t identify with happy or sad. I was like, “Whatever, I identify with that.” And then the more he started talking about it, the more I was thinking, when am I happy or sad? People always say I look happy. But I’m just kind of a happy person.
It’s funny, this is probably more personal than you guys want to know, but I went and got my testosterone taken, actually three years ago when we were launching Clickfunnels and it came back at 160. The doctor literally told me, “Your grandma’s got higher testosterone than you right now.” And 6 – 8 months later I did it again and it was like 350. And then I got it done this week and I was 450. But every time I’ve gotten it done, the doctors always told me, “How are you standing here? You should have no energy, no motivation.” And I was like, “No, it’s the opposite. I have so much motivation, so much energy.” He asked me all the symptoms, “Do you feel tired.” And I was like, “Sometimes.” And he’s like, “Do you have memory?” I’m like, “No.” He’s like, “Do you feel depressed.” I’m like, “No.” all these things and at the end of it he’s like, “So why are you here?” I’m like, “My testosterone is really low.” And he’s like, “You have no symptoms of it.” And I’m like, “It’s just because everything’s so exciting right now.”
And I started thinking more about his with Alex’s stuff, that entrepreneurs don’t relate with happy or sad. I started thinking, there’s sadness obviously, when someone dies or things like that. But as a whole, you wake up in the morning and it’s not like I’m happy or sad. So when he was telling me that, I was kind of confused. I wonder how most people view happy and sad, it didn’t really make sense to me, and then the next slide, the next portion he said a word and I got chills. I was like, “Whoa. That’s what I do.” And he said, “Entrepreneurs don’t feel happy or sad, what they feel is either momentum or a lack of momentum. They’re moving towards something or they’re not. They’re moving away from something.”
That’s what we relate to. What we relate happiness to is motion forward. And what we relate sadness to is not progressing, not moving forward. I think it’s just fascinating. Momentum, movement, that’s what drives entrepreneurs. It’s not happy or sad, it’s movement, momentum. I was thinking about that today, I’m going on this vacation. It’s funny because I’m leaving today, I was up late last night. I was up early this morning. I’m trying to get stuff done, and I almost enjoy the process right before vacation, getting so much stuff done because I’m freaking out because I gotta leave at this time. I’m running and running, I’m moving, momentum. And then you go on this vacation and you stop.
Everyone wants to just chill out. They want to sit, they want to just sit at the beach. I don’t know what it is, sitting at the beach it doesn’t do anything for me. It’s just weird. For me, I have to have momentum in this experience, this vacation or else I’m going to drive the rest of my family and friends and everyone that’s with us, nuts. They probably don’t even know, they’re like, “Why is Russell twitching over on the side?” And it’s because I need momentum, I need something.
So that’s when I’ll sneak away and I’ll read. Or I’ll be sitting there, they’re all talking and I’m thinking about something. “Oh my gosh, I could do this.” And I’m creating while I’m sitting there thinking because I’m nervous. It’s just funny, my wife will be like, “You’re on vacation, you’re not allowed to talk about business.” And I’m like, “If I don’t talk about business, everything halts and stops progressing in my life.” And the lack of momentum, the lack of movement, the lack of direction is what will then make me depressed and sad and stuck.
It’s a funny line that we have to deal with, especially all of you entrepreneurs who are out there. Because we just see the world a little differently and I think a lot of people think we’re freaks because of it. There’s nothing bad with it. I don’t think it’s something bad. It’s why businesses are created, why there’s momentum in the world. I think it’s because of entrepreneurs who’s entire soul drive is momentum towards moving. We have to have that.
So while we go on vacation because we love our wives and kids and family members, it’s probably the hardest, most stressful part, which is so weird because it’s like, “Go relax. Take some time, you’re going to burn out.” And it’s a little different. Anyway, I’m excited. I’ve been plotting, I have 3 big vacation this summer, I’ve been plotting all of them, what books to read, which order. What courses I’m going to study, what things I’m going to be moving. It’s just funny how that’s been the most exciting thing for me, planning what I’m going to do when I’m not doing anything. I’m such a nerd.
Anyway, there you go, that’s us entrepreneurs. So if you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t relate to happy or sad, and you do relate to momentum and movement and you stress out about vacations, that’s where I’m at and I relate with you. Nothing else on your family vacations is somewhere you’re stressing out because you do nothing, I get you. So while that’s happening think, ponder, vision, dream. At least for me, that’s what keeps me going and lets me function like a normal human being with everybody else. So that’s all I got you guys. Have an amazing day and have a good vacation if you’re going on one too. Talk to you guys soon, bye.
The secret to get people through the failure gap.
On today's episode Russell talks about disagreeing with a designer on what a customer needs from Clickfunnels and how they were basically saying the complete opposite of each other. Here are some of the interesting things you'll hear in the this episode:
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets. I’m here today in the Clickfunnels kitchen, the first time I’ve ever filmed in here. I’m excited. You guys want to see a quick view of what the kitchen looks like? Oh, there’s Dave. We’ve got a whole bunch of cool stuff. We actually built this kitchen because for a lot of the products we work with, for some reason we always need kitchen scenes, so we always rented different kitchens. And then we’re like, if we build a kitchen make sure we have a good scene so we can actually film stuff. So we do, but since we’ve had it we’ve never used it for filming.
For today, I want to share with you guys something kind of interesting. And I want to make sure when I say this that it doesn’t come off bad. Because it has a good purpose, but it’s important for you guys to understand. Some of the background behind this, to set it up so it all makes sense to you guys. We had a designer that worked for us for a while to come on and help with user interface, UIUX, those type of things in Clickfunnels, a really smart guy. What he liked to do is call and interview customers.
At first I was really excited. So he’d go and call 40 or 50 customers and interview them, finding out what they want, what they didn’t want. All those kind of things, which I thought was cool. We’ve never done that before. Some of you guys might have actually talked to him, which is cool. Based on that he was trying to build UI and structure based on customer’s feedback.
A couple of things I found with it. One is it was kind of almost a frustration, because I came to him saying, “This is what I want to have done.” And he treated me kind of like if I was a customer, “Hey, cool. These are good ideas.” I’m like, “No, you need to do this because I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I’m not a survey.” We always kind of went back and forth and in his mind it’s like, we need to find out what the customers want, which I agree with. But also this comes back to Henry Ford’s quote about if I were to ask my customers what they wanted; they would have said they wanted a faster horse. You have to also understand that customers don’t always know the vision where we’re going. That’s why we’re creating stuff, we’re visionaries. We know where we’re trying to go.
So it’s kind of interesting, so he no longer works with the company, still an awesome guy, but that was kind of this frustration I had. I remember for a long time we’ve wanted to update our on-boarding in Clickfunnels, and we wanted to do a whole bunch of cool things we haven’t been able to do. This week is actually fun for me because we’re focusing on that.
Another side story, I was listening to Growth Hacker TV, there was an interview with a guy who bought the Warrior Forum. He also owned Freelancer.com and a bunch of other companies. He was talking about how they grew to a billion dollar evaluation. And one interesting thing he said is that they buy these companies and then they look at the traffic coming through and spend a lot of time optimizing the processes inside the processes to make more money from all the traffic coming, which is kind of the phase we’re in right now.
We have anywhere from 800 – 1000 new people a day that sign up for Clickfunnels, just organically. They’re coming from who knows where. And thank you for coming, I don’t even know where you came from but I’m grateful to have you here. And they’re coming in and we lose a bunch of them the first month, there’s a big drop off. After that it stays really steady, but there’s a big drop immediately. So we’re trying to figure out that process. How do we capture people and keep them in?
There’s a lot of cool stuff we’ve done that decreased our churn rate, which is the number metric we look at. It increased our retention. But right now we’re in a big overhaul, how do we simplify the sign up process? How do we make everything easier? It’s fun, you guys will see some new stuff coming to Clickfunnels here in the next 60 days. A lot of new stuff will be coming live, which just simplifies the process and makes Clickfunnels easier to use. So we’re excited for that.
But I was listening to this guy, and he talked about that’s what he was doing. They just worked on the optimization of the sign up flow and that’s how the companies blew up. They didn’t really focus on the traffic and these other things. And we’re always focused on the traffic. But it’s like, how do we make sure the funnel’s right so we’re not losing people out of the holes in the bucket?
So with that said, there’s a bunch of on-boarding stuff that I wanted to do and I know Todd wanted to do, so we kept trying to get this guy to do that. We want prize, we want to do free t-shirts, we want badges, we want to gamify the process. And he kept coming back saying, “How does gamifying the process help the people get the end result? We need to get people to the end result and this is just keeping people busy in the middle.” And it’s funny, Todd mentioned that this morning to me and I Voxed him back, there’s this quote from Dan Kennedy that I heard back in the day that actually ties this in, but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. So I ended the Vox and said, “I’m going to go find the quote and come back to you.”
So I ended up finding the quote and I posted it there in Voxer and the quote said, “You’ve got to confuse activity with accomplishment.” Now I’m going to be careful when I say this because some of you guys are going to look at that and it might be frustrating or confusing or whatever. So I posted that and in the thing it said, Dan Kennedy, “You have to get your customers to confuse activity with achievement.” So Todd read that first before my Vox, and he thought I was saying, “Oh the designer was right. That’s just going to get people confused. Focusing on activity as opposed to achievement.” But if you listen to my Voxer, it was actually the exact opposite.
So what’s kind of funny, me and this UI designer both said the identical thing but for the exact opposite side of the argument. He was saying you don’t want to give people activities that keep them from the achievement. And I was saying, you want to give them activities so that they feel achievement, so someday they get to achievement. You want to confuse activity with achievement. Does that make sense?
So Kennedy said that, basically, as a retention strategy. People come in and are going to leave. He said, no you need to give them things to do, so they have activity that’s happening. Because the activity is what keeps them engaged. If we look at our Clickfunnels stats right now and numbers and things like that, the interesting parts are people that stick are people that have a custom domain, they log in at least 2 ½ times per week. There’s all these stats. People that stick are people that are going in and doing stuff consistently. So we know that’s the metric. People logging in and using it are the key. So how do get them to log in and use it?
Well just telling them to build a funnel, you’re going to have achievement, you’re going to achieve a funnel. People will try for a little bit and then they’re going to leave because they didn’t achieve anything. Because the goal is this huge thing. The goal is you’ve got to eat the whole entire cow. That’s the goal. If you’re giving your customer the goal to eat the cow, the problem is they’re going to come in and if they don’t eat the cow really quick, they’re going to leave.
So what you have to do is confuse achievement with activity. Give them activities to do that make them feel like they’re achieving something along the way. So they come in and you set the table, you give them their appetizers, they eat that and they achieve something. For us we’re gamifying the process. You come in, watch the video, build your hero funnel, we send you a t-shirt. So you had activity, so you felt you achievement, even though you didn’t achieve the thing you want yet. You felt achievement, which then drives you forward to do the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing.
All of us want our customers to have the achievement at the end, the problem is that they sign up and then there’s the achievement, there’s this huge gap in the middle that they’re going to fall into, disappear and die. So because of that we have to confuse activity with achievement, because that activity will make them feel micro-achievement which will get them to the big achievement at the end. That’s the goal, that’s the message for you guys.
As you’re creating your training programs, software, ideas, products, services, whatever it is you’re creating and doing, I want you thinking about that. You have to go and create activities that get people to feel small wins, small achievements so that it will drive them through this chasm, this gap, to get to the big goal, the big achievement that you want them to have. If you don’t have those, if you’re not confusing activity with achievement initially, they’re never going to get to the achievement.
So that’s kind of the message for today. I thought it was kind of interesting. I thought it was funny that we both we had the same argument for why we wanted to do this on-boarding process. But he was saying it was a negative thing, but I was saying it was a positive thing. I think it’s very positive, and I think we all can and should be visiting it. So I hope that helps you guys, and with that said, have an amazing day. Go back through your programs, products, services, member’s area and figure out how you can weave those things in, because as you give people little wins along the way, it will give them the momentum they need to get the big wins. That’s all I got for you guys today. Thanks so much for everything, see you guys soon. Bye.
In our 30th episode of Funnel Friday's Russell and Jim take some time out from building funnels to chat about the Expert Secrets Book Launch and Russell getting his message out to the world.
If you missed Russell’s LIVE Q&A from www.dropthemicshow.com, you can hear this weeks questions on this episode.
Today we have another bonus episode of Marketing Secrets where Russell answers questions about marketing from other funnel hackers, including:
Who know doughnuts could be so helpful…
On today’s episode Russell and his kids talk about why they like to go to Krispie Kreme doughnuts instead of some of the other doughnut shops. He also shares a story to relate why its good to show your customers behind the scenes of what you do. Here are some of the fun things you will hear in this episode:
So listen to Russell and his kids talk about this cool way to market your business.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, today we got a special episode. We just got done cleaning the church and then we went and got a prize for the kids. What was the prize we got guys?
Kids: Krispie Kreme Donuts and the hats.
Russell: Krispie Kreme Donuts, and the hats. We’re driving the new Funnel Hacker Jeep, which we have a camera mount in here. So now I can do Marketing In Your Car and Marketing Secrets while we’re driving and not have to worry about getting hit and dying.
Kids: Marketing in Your Jeep.
Russell: Marketing In the Jeep. I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, if you haven’t go look on Snapchat or Facebook or whatever. It says Funnel Hacker on the side of it, it’s kind of fun. And we had Norah in here yesterday so that’s why Bowen’s sitting in Norah’s baby seat, because that’s the last seatbelt we had. So what should we tell those guys about today? We gotta tell them a marketing principle.
So let’s do this, I want to talk to you about why you like going to Krispie Kreme versus the other place?
Kids: Because they got good donuts.
Russell: Because they got good donuts. Why else?
Kids: It’s not very far away.
Russell: Okay, it’s close proximity. Why else?
Kids: We haven’t had breakfast.
Russell: You haven’t had breakfast yet. Are they healthy?
Kids: They have a good price. No, they’re not healthy. They have a good price, they’re not far away, and when you go in you see them make the donuts.
Russell: Oh, this is the key. This is the key, Ellie, that I want to talk about. So when you go into Krispie Kreme they let you, say it loud so they can hear you. Aiden said it too. So there’s a glass window and you can actually watch them make the donuts. The donuts come through on a conveyer belt, you see the frosting put on them, you see them dunk under the thing. First the dough right, drops them into the cooker thing that cooks them, then the frosting comes on top and they put the sprinkles. You get to watch the process.
Kids: They sometimes, rarely, give you free samples.
Russell: And sometimes they give you free samples for hanging out.
Alright so here’s the marketing lesson for all of you who are listening today. So Krispie Kreme does a really cool thing to make kids want to go to Krispie Kreme versus DK Donuts, Dunkin Donuts, all the donut places.
Kids: Dunkin Donuts is DK Donuts.
Russell: No DK is a small brand, Dunkin is a huge chain. Anyway, what Krispie Kreme does is allow you to watch the process, which is really interesting. Because my guess is most donut shops have the same process, yet……..You guys we gotta stay on point for the show. They’re right, DK has bunch of other options, sizes and varieties and Krispie Kremes are all the same thing. But the moral of this is that they let you watch the process of how it works.
I know I’m going to forget the story because I’m in the car with four kids going crazy. I’m going to forget it right now, but the message I know all my old school marketing buddies are making fun of me because I can’t remember the name and people or which book it was from. But there was a guy, who was actually a beer company and they were selling beer and this marketing guy came in to, I can’t remember now, this is blasphemy. I can’t remember the name of it.
I just hit a squirrel. I missed it. A squirrel went underneath the car. That was close.
Anyway, there was a marketing dude, he comes into the beer company and he’s trying to figure out the hook and angle and big idea of why everyone should give them money versus the other beer companies. And the marketing guy comes in and wants to see the process and how it all works and he goes in and watches these guys. He sees how they make the beer, I don’t know, I’m not a beer drinker. I’ve never drank so I have no idea how it actually works. But they showed how they made it. And the marketing guy was so fascinated. They’re like, “That’s how everybody makes beer.” And he’s like, “Yeah, but nobody else has seen this. Nobody else even knows this is how it all works. So I want to show that process.”
So he made a commercial and he actually showed the process of them making the beer and that became this huge campaign that blew up the company. So Krispie Kreme is the same way, they show the process. There’s a reason I do Funnel Friday every Friday, because I’m showing the process.
Kids: You didn’t do it this Friday.
Russell: I didn’t do it this Friday. Good point. And Funnel Hacker TV and all these things, why am I doing that? Because I’m showing the process, I’m letting people see how I do it, how I consume the product. And the more they do, the more they see me drinking my own Kool Aid, the more likely they are to also drink said Kool Aid.
So the moral of the story from this Krispie Kreme episode for you guys is to let your audience see the process of how you do whatever you do. We are in the reality show era of the world and your audience wants to view what’s happening. That’s why I’m showing this right now, me and my beard in my car with my kids in their Krispie Kreme hats, and being annoyed at me. Bowen was telling me, “Your mustache is ugly dad, but your beard is cool.” He wants me to shave this.
Dallin: You have a mustache.
Russell: It’s kind of weird huh. I need to shave.
Dallin: I don’t know everything, never mind.
Aiden: I’m free ladies.
Russell: Aiden just said, “I’m free ladies.” You’re the coolest!
Dallin: What did he say?
Russell: He said, “I’m free ladies.” And jumped out of the car.
Dallin: You need to send this to me.
Russell: That was amazing. I love Aiden, that our little six year old, if you’re listening and not watching. If you’re watching on Marketingsecrets.com you just saw Aiden in his Krispie Kreme hat tell you….that was hilarious.
Dallin: Send this to me please.
Russell: The moral of the story, the reason why I’m doing this with my hair messed up and my beard, with my kids and our donuts….
Ellie: You have a beard?
Russell: Isn’t it sweet? You want to feel it, it’s really scruffy. It kind of hurts, I gotta shave it. The reason I’m showing you this stuff behind the scenes because I’m showing you my life. I’m showing you how we do what we do and that’s what draws people. If you read Expert Secrets, you know the goal is to draw people into you and your personality and all those kind of things. So draw them in you guys. Do it, open up your life a little. I know it’s scary sometimes. That’s what Instagram is for, your stories. Facebook Lives, podcasts, etc.
Dallin: The real moral of the story is that Aiden is a ladies’ man.
Russell: Aiden is the ladies man. Anyway, that’s the moral of today’s story. Does that sound good to you guys? With that said, thanks so much for tuning into marketing Secrets. If you have not read the Expert Secrets book go to expertsecrets.com. You should go there and read it because this is just one of those secrets that’s going to help you blow up your message.
Dallin: And if you haven’t read the first book too, read it.
Russell: What’s the first book called?
Dallin: Dot, I forgot what it’s called.
Russell: You’re close, Dotcom…
Dallin: Dotcom Secrets?
Russell: Yes, Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets. They should read them both right?
Dallin: Yeah.
Russell: Which one’s your favorite.
Dallin: I didn’t read it.
Russell: Anyway, appreciate you guys, thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
What was going through my mind when tipping at IHOP.
On today’s episode Russell talks about going out to breakfast with his daughter for her birthday and how watching the server work so hard to make a small wage made Russell wonder why he didn’t work somewhere that he could make more money, and how that relates to being an entrepreneur. Here are a few interesting things in this episode:
So listen to Russell’s awesome advice on how to increase your ticket sales and make more profit for yourself.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing Secrets while I’m in my car. This is a flashback from a podcast earlier. I’m doing this right now because, first off, I hung out with Justin Williams last weekend and he yelled at me, “you used to do podcasts every single week, three or four times a week. But now that you’re not in your car, you’re not doing them very often.” I’m like, crap he’s right.
I’m driving to get my haircut today because it’s huge. I figured out how to mount this thing in my car so I can do it while driving, so nobody yells at me. That’s what actually happened, I was doing the podcast with the camera, when I did marketing in your car with my phone nobody ever yelled at me. But when they saw me on video I got yelled at by everybody, so I stopped doing it that way. But now that it’s mounted up I can drive and talk and not even pay attention to you guys. No yelling at me, alright. That’s the deal.
Alright, so with that said, today is a cool day for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s my daughter’s ten year old birthday, which is insanely cool. So this morning, I’m actually flying out today, so this morning I had a chance to go and take her out to breakfast. Her breakfast of choice was IHop, and I was like, “Come on, we can take you to Waffle Me Up or any of these cool places.” and she was like, “No, I want IHop.” As we’re driving there I’m like, “There’s only two kinds of people that like IHop, Ellie.” And she’s like, “Who are they?” and I was like, “Grandma’s and little kids. Watch when we get there how many grandma’s are there.” So we got in there and we counted and there was 13 or 14 grandmas in there and then me and her. So I was like, that’s it. It was kind of funny.
Anyway, that was really fun, and then she had a birthday party. So I went and raced and got her a bike this morning and took it to the birthday party, and I’m actually heading to get my haircut because I’m flying out to Utah today, two cool things happening in Utah. Number one is the Harmon Brothers are making our viral video. They actually started filming it today, and to be completely honest, it’s kind of killing me. I wish I was there, I want to be watching it. But I couldn’t today, so I’m flying down there tomorrow to catch some behind the scenes footage and all that kind of stuff for our Funnel Hacker TV show. So I’ll be flying down there, it’s gonna be really cool.
And the second cool thing, is I’m actually going to a meeting with Timothy Ballard, who is the dude who runs Operation Underground Railroad, which is a charity or organization, I don’t know exactly what it is, but they help save kids who have been abducted and put into sex laboring. So we’re going to be helping build funnels and helping build that whole mission. It’s a passion project I’m really excited for. That’s what’s happening on this trip. So if you’re watching Funnel Hacker TV you’ll see the behind the scenes of that stuff. If not, go to funnelhacker.tv and go hang out with us over there too. There’s a lot of fun stuff happening.
Alright my message for you guys today, and this is something that I don’t know why more people don’t think about this, but it’s important. We went to IHop today, as you know. My daughter ordered the pancake with the fluffies and the sprinkles, there were sprinkles on it, and then bacon and an egg. Her cost is like $3 or something like that, then I go and order scrambled eggs, a side of bacon, a side of avocado, because that fits in my macros for all you healthy nerds. So our bill was like $12. And I look at the server and the server is running around, grabbing our stuff and his and grabbing waters and grabbing A1, because I love putting A1 on eggs, if you haven’t tried it, it’s insanely good. I did it one time because I had steak and eggs, and I put A1 on the steak and some of it spilled on the eggs and I ate it that way. I was like, this is an egg topping, not for steaks. So if you haven’t had A1 on your scrambled eggs yet, you should totally try it. It’s amazing.
Anyway, I digress. Where was I going with this whole thing? So the server is running around frantic, I get the bill at the end of it and I look at it, and it’s like $12.43 or something. As someone who tips, and I’m a good tipper, so I didn’t tip him that much, I left a lot more money than that. So if I were to say, we’ll give him 10% of that, means he earned $1.25. That’s what he made from me, for all his efforts. Or if I do 15% it’s like what $2, if I do 30% it’s $3. So that’s what most people do. Especially, the grandmas at IHop, they have their little calculators out and figuring out, “Okay, I owe him $1.13.” and give exactly the tip, but if you’re bad they’re going to give you 5%, if you’re okay you get 10, if you’re great you get 15. That’s how it works.
I’m looking at this, and the server was a young dude, and I’m like, “Man, he’s killing himself for this little thing.” And I was just in the office before I headed to get my haircut, which now I’m stuck in traffic and my haircuts in 3 minutes and if I miss it I’m going to go crazy. So I was talking to them, “Look, if that dude instead of getting a job at IHop where the average ticket is $12. If you’re doing the same work but got a job at a steakhouse or a sushi place where the average ticket is like $50-$100, he’d do the exact same amount of work and get way more money.” Because people tip off a percentage. So if my bill is $12, you’re getting 1.20, that’s 10%. If it’s $112, you’re getting $10, or whatever the math is, for the exact same amount of effort.
So the moral of the story is if you’re serving tables, go and sell more expensive stuff, because you are getting paid a percentage of the ticket price. So you gotta sell the most expensive thing. That’s why as a Mormon when I go and I go to restaurants and they always try to sell you alcohol because alcohol has a huge profit margin, it’s big ticket. And they can get you to buy a lot more stuff. So we never buy the alcohol and those other Mormons who are out there know, if you’re at a nice restaurant, and you don’t order alcohol, they don’t treat you as good, because they’re like, “Crap.”
So I always tell people when they ask me, “What do you want to drink?” I’m like, “Oh we don’t drink, but don’t worry, we tip really, really good.” Because I want them to know, I don’t want them to treat me like crap because I didn’t drink because my ticket price is going to be smaller. Good server’s understand that. I warn them ahead of time, I’m a really, really good tipper. I tip 30, 40, 50% sometimes 100%. I’m a really good tipper as long as you treat me good. If you treat me bad, I’m still a good tipper, but I’m a great tipper if you treat me good.
So kind of the thought, if you’re serving tables, you gotta be selling the highest ticket thing, and if I was serving tables again, which is the only job I had for real is serving tables, and I really liked it. It’s all about that, ticket price. If I were a server today, I would have people order dessert first because most of the time at the end of the meal you’re not hungry anymore. If you’re not hungry anymore you’re not going to buy dessert. So then my ticket price went down, so my tip just shrunk.
So I’d be going ahead of time like, “Look, a lot of people at the end of the meal are full, I’m going to give you a 10% discount if you order dessert first.” I would do that because it would increase the ticket price. Everyone wants dessert when you go in, but when you’re offered it, it’s hard to eat it because you’re so full.
Number two, think about Olive Garden. They started doing this a little while ago and it was brilliant. After you’re done eating they say, “Hey, what would you like to order for tomorrow?” And they had a second meal. So you’d order a second meal to take home and eat the next day. Now you just doubled your ticket price because you sold them two meals instead of one. IF I were serving tables today, the first thing I would be doing is offering dessert, take them their meal and at the end of the meal be like, “That was good, huh? I know you guys aren’t going to be coming back tomorrow, but if you want you can order off the menu right now and I’ll go package it up and you can have it tomorrow as well.” And I don’t know what percentage take it, but I know there’s a big percentage that take the second meal and now I just doubled my ticket price. And the tip will be based on the ticket price, not based on what they ate while they were sitting there.
So I’d be thinking, increased value, how can I increase my ticket? So that’s if I was serving tables again. Obviously I’m not serving tables, I’m serving entrepreneurs and a lot of them. But guess what I’m thinking, the same thing. It’s the same stuff. I know I get paid based on a percentage of what our growth is. As the entrepreneur in the company the way that I make my money, I do have a salary, because I think you legally have to do that, however that works, you can do all the W2’s and all that techie, nerdy tax stuff. But then the rest of my payment comes from a percentage of profit share. The more profit, the more I get to share. So I’m always thinking how can I increase my profit share? How can decrease costs? How can I increase the ticket value? How can I sell more expensive stuff? How can I sell more things?
And that’s what my mind said, because I know I get paid a certain percentage of what I get people to consume. So I need to get people to consume. Same way you do it if you’re at a restaurant. And what’s interesting is, a lot of time, speaking to you right now, most of us we undervalue what we do. We try to be the discount leader because that’s what we’re used to doing.
So a lot of times we put our own pricing values on other people. Like I wouldn’t may $1000 for this, so you won’t sell it for $1000. You don’t understand, that’s worth it for somebody else. So don’t try to discount your prices. So a lot of times that’s what we do, we try to discount our prices, lower ticket. We’re trying to go back to IHop and sell even though the money we make as entrepreneurs is based on the ticket price. So the bigger the ticket price, the bigger money you make. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, Dan Kennedy told me this.
“There’s no strategic advantage to being the second lowest price leader in your market.” So if you can’t be Walmart, there’s no strategic advantage of being like, “Walmart’s the cheapest, and we’re the second cheapest.” Because then you look like an idiot. There’s not strategic advantage whatsoever. But there is a huge strategic advantage of being like, “I am the most expensive guy in my market.” So if you can’t be the lowest, then be the most. Don’t be the dude’s in the middle. Because there’s no, it just doesn’t work that way.
So I want you guys to think about that. Because as entrepreneurs, you’re just like the server. You’re serving customers, serving audiences, and you get paid based on the ticket price of what people are spending. That’s why funnels are important. If I just sold people my free book and that was it, guess where I would be right now. I’d be broke. I did a Facebook Live yesterday showing 3 funnels we had inside of our book launch. Now, when all is said and done, when our book launch was over, we did over $3 million dollars in collected revenue. Obviously, that wasn’t net, that was collected gross.
What’s funny, I look at all these people who do these big product launches. $2, $3, $5,000 product launches, most of them are happing making a million to three million dollars. We did the same thing and we were giving away a free book. How? It’s because I’m just like the server. I offer dessert first and I had upsells and I offered a second meal. I did all these kind of things because I’m trying to increase the ticket price. Because that’s how I get fed as an entrepreneur. Plus it gives me the ability to serve that audience better.
The waiter that lets you order dessert ahead of time, so you still get it. The server who lets you order food and take it home, he’s serving you at a higher level. That’s why he gets paid more. He knows how to increase the ticket price, but he’s able to make the restaurant more revenue, but second off gives you a better experience. You get to have a great meal twice. Your wife doesn’t cook tomorrow, or whatever that might be. Maybe it’s you cooking, or whatever. But it all comes down to that.
That’s the moral of today’s story. I hope that helps some of you guys. I’m sure some of you guys are freaking out trying to be the cheapest possible person. And it doesn’t always work that way. Obviously you gotta look at what the market will bear, but like I said, it’s way better to be the most expensive than the cheapest.
So there you go. I’m here, I’m going to get my haircut. I’m only 4 minutes late, hopefully she didn’t cancel my appointment because I gotta get rid of this thing before I hop on a plane or I’m going to be super embarrassed. Thanks everybody for listening. If you would like to see the video version of this, go to marketingsecrets.com and you can watch the video there. Or if you’re watching the video version, go over to iTunes and subscribe to the podcast, we’re at 360 or 70 episodes now. So come hang out with us there. A lot of fun stuff happened and a lot of things you’ve missed that I want to make sure you get. With that said, thanks everybody, we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.
Why having resources will actually hurt you as an entrepreneur and how to become more resourceful.
On today’s episode Russell comes to you from his favorite place on Earth, Pirates Cove. He gives a mini tour of the premises and talks about how he was able to afford the $100,000 that it took to rent it by being resourceful. Here are some of the cool things in this episode:
So listen up and enjoy as Russell talks about how he was able to be resourceful enough to be at Pirates Cove without spending a single penny.
---Transcript---
Hey Everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast happening today from Pirates Cove.
Alright everyone, if you’re watching the video of this, you can see I’m at the most ridiculous place on earth. If you’re listening to this, go to marketingsecrets.com and actually watch the video. I’m right now at a place called Pirates Cove, at a mastermind group. It’s insane.
See behind me, these are my kids swinging on the ropes and having fun in the water and a bunch of other amazing things. This is pretty much the craziest place I’ve ever been. It’s my favorite place on earth. Some of the back story about Pirates Cove. Again, those of you watching can see some of the scenery of this place, but basically, the back story when my twins, which this is Bowen, one of my twins right here, when they were about 6 months old, we were speaking at an event here in Las Vegas, which is where Pirates Cove is at. One of my friends had come to this place and kind of told stories about how amazing it was. He started explaining, and no matter how cool he made it sound, you’re like, “That sounds cool.” He’s like, “No you guys, you have to see it. I’m going to take you and we’re going to try to find it.”
So we started driving around, all over Las Vegas, all over Boulder City, trying to find this place called Pirates Cove, and we couldn’t find it anywhere. So we gave up and went out to eat in Boulder City, and we’re sitting there and all the sudden the owner of Pirates Cove walked out and my buddy’s like, “That’s the owner.” So we walked up to him, “hey you don’t know us, but I’ve been to Pirates Cove, it would be super cool if you could let us see it.” The guy was so cool and was like, “come on up.” And he gave us swimming suits and we swam the entire day. Like I said, Bowen here was only 6 months old, he was in diapers, we had the most amazing time ever.
And if you see this place, it’s basically on the side of this mountain, it’s a private residence, there’s 5 houses on it, there’s waterslides, in fact, I’ll take you guys up on the video so you can see the top. There’s a kid waterslide and a really cool kid pool, and then up at the top there is this huge waterslide that’s for adults, that is crazy. You go down this huge slide and then it enters into the middle of the part, there’s a huge boat, and a pirate mast, you actually jump off it. In fact, on Funnel Hacker TV you can see some video of me jumping off it. It’s pretty crazy.
So I’ll keep showing you as I’m walking around. I want to teach you guys a really cool lesson. So after we came I was like, “I want to rent this.” I want to take my family here and show everybody. So the next year we called the guy up and we were like, “We want to rent Pirates Cove, how much would that cost.” And he was like, “Oh it’s $10,000 a day with a weeklong minimum.” It was $70 or 80 thousand dollars. I was like, what? I didn’t have that kind of money at the time. I was like, “gah. But I really want to rent pirates cove, there’s gotta be a way I can rent this and show my family and my kids and experience this again.”
So the wheels in my head started spinning. And again, this comes down to Robert Kiyosaki 101. Poor people say, “I can’t afford that.” Rich people think, “How can I afford that? What can I do to be able to afford that?” So I’m thinking what do I gotta do to make $70,000 to rent this place, but obviously catering and everything else. I was like for me to do that, it’s going to cost a lot of money. I’m going to need almost a hundred grand to do it. So I was like, okay what if I found a whole bunch of cool people and invited them to come to this thing and I sold tickets to it?
So that was the idea, so what we did is basically. We went and I put out a little page and said, “10 people pay $10,000, and that’s $100,000 and covers the cost of the entire mastermind group and then we can rent it. We’ll just have a really good time.” We’ll have for it half the week for all the mastermind and when the mastermind is over, we’ll still have it for 2 or 3 days at the end, then we’ll invite my family members, at the time a bunch of employees, things like that. And that was kind of the game plan. We did it and it worked and it was amazing.
So that was the first time I had a chance to experience Pirates Cove for a whole week. Since then we’ve done it, I think this is the fourth time we’ve done it. We did it 3 years in a row then we took off 4 or 5 years, because it’s a lot of work as well. And then this year we decided to do it again. So I’m here right now with 10 entrepreneurs and we’re just having the most amazing mastermind meetings during the day when it’s 116 degrees out here. Then at night we’re playing and having fun. Our kids are here and it’s insanely cool. So that’s happening right now at Pirates Cove. Again, if you want to see some visuals of this place, go to Marketingsecrets.com and watch the video.
But the lesson I want to tell you guys is this, and hopefully you kind of got a little piece of the lesson. It comes back to what Robert Kiyosaki said, poor people say, “I can’t afford that.” Where rich people think, “How can I afford that?” So I couldn’t afford this place, I couldn’t afford to rent it, but I wanted to experience it and I wanted other people to experience it. So I had to starts thinking outside the box. What do I need to do to be able to afford that? How do I get other people to help chip in so we can actually experience this and make it an amazing thing?
In fact, a lot of my early joint venture partnerships came from people I invited to Pirates Cove. I say, you take someone to Pirates Cove, they think you’re pretty cool afterwards, which helped. I was trying to build relationships and grow companies and things like that. But for you, what I want you thinking about, a lot of times, as an entrepreneur, I’m not telling you to go rent Pirates Cove and do something crazy like that. But a lot of times the reason why entrepreneurs aren’t successful in business is because they have this weird resource problem. “Ah, Russell I don’t have the resources, the time, the talents.” It’s all I have don’t the resources. You have to understand that entrepreneurship is not about having resources. That’s a fallacy, it’s incorrect.
Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs not because they have resources, but because they’re resourceful. Sounds very similar, but it’s different. They’re resourceful. I was resourceful, I had to think outside the box. How can I create this thing? A bunch of you guys have heard my rant many time about venture capitalists. I don’t feel real entrepreneurs take VC, because they’re coming in saying, “ I don’t have the resources, let me go ask somebody to give me money, then I’ll have resources to go and build something.” By definition you doing that, you’re not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are resourceful, they look at things and say, “how can I afford that?” They look at something and say, “I don’t have the resources, I have to be resourceful, I have to think of other ways to do it.”
My very first thing I ever created, Mark Joyner, who is my first mentor and one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Here’s my Ellie, she’s here hanging out too. You want to say hi? You having fun? I’m almost done, babe.
Okay, so when he kind of retired from the internet marketing, coaching business, he put out a thing called The Farewell Package, and he sold it and I bought it. And at the time I had no resources, I paid a thousand bucks for this course and it was all the money we had and my credit card was maxed out afterwards, and I had no resources. I was like, okay everything I bought from Mark Joyner, I needed to hire programmers and developers to be able to execute and actually create that thing, but I didn’t have the resources. I’m like, “Crap, what am I going to do? I don’t have the resources to create it.” I’m like, I’m an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are resourceful. So I gotta be resourceful, what should I do?
I was like, okay, I have ideas. I know if I did have money, what I would do. So I was like, this is what I would create if I did have money. I wrote it out and went, at the time we had this little forum with everyone who had purchased his product. I was like, “Look guys, I bought this thing with the last of my money, I’m completely broke. But I know what I would do if I had the money I would create this thing.” And I pitched everyone on this thing. I was like, “The deal is, I’m broke. I have no resources, but I am very resourceful. And I know a lot of you guys are in the same situation, so my question for you is how many of you guys would like to partner up together and we pool our resources and become resourceful and work together.” And I posted that and said, “I gotta a quote and it costs about $5000 to build this idea I have. I got 0 dollars, so I need 50 of you guys to give me $100 and we can create something from our resources, become resources.”
And I had 120-130 people like, “I’ll do it, I’m in.” all these people saying, “I’ll donate $100 to this thing, to be a part of it.” And I was like, “cool.” So I collected all my, I ended up, I had 120 people say they would and then as it often happens, only 55 or something actually gave the hundred bucks. So it was $5,500 that I suddenly had in my paypal account and everyone bought together this package and then I went and took the money and hired the development team and they started creating it and that’s how I launched my first viral website. A lot of you guys don’t know that story. I don’t tell it very often.
But it was about not the resource, I had 0 resources. All I had was a credit card with a $1000 bill on it, because that’s what I paid to buy his course and 0 dollars. I didn’t have a job, I was wrestling. So I was making exactly 0 dollars a month, 0 dollars a year. And my wife was making $9.50 an hour, so that was our resources and now I have a thousand dollars on my credit card and I was freaking out because I don’t know how to pay a thousand dollars.
So luckily I was resourceful and I found people that allowed the funding from other people who wanted to be a part of this project, we launched it and started building a list, used that to launch the next product and on and on and on and here we are 15 years later at Pirates Cove with 10 of the most amazing entrepreneurs in the world, and I’m here with my family and my friends, a bunch of my employees and my partners are coming and I didn’t pay a penny to be here. Because I was resourceful.
So for you, I want you guys to understand that’s why we’re entrepreneurs, we are resourceful. You are resourceful. All you gotta do is stop trying to ask people for money to fund your idea, and just start creating, being resourceful. What can I do? How can I get other people involved and get other people to believe in my vision. When you start learning how to sell, people will come to you and you can create cool things. So there is my message for tonight. Those of you guys who guys who are watching the visuals behind me, hopefully you had a cool little glimpse of Pirates Cove. We’ve got a couple of Funnel Hacker TV episodes coming out that will show the craziness. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this and you start thinking about that in your business and your life. It’s not just business, it’s all aspects of life. How do you be resourceful? You rarely will have the resources you need to get started. IF you’re resourceful you can do it. So that’s what I got. I’m out of here you guys. I’m going to go get my swimsuit on and I’m going to jump in the water, bye everybody.
Segment recorded from the “Drop The Mic Show” where Russell takes 10 questions from funnel hackers and answers them live.
On this bonus episode of Marketing Secrets Russell answers questions about marketing from other funnel hackers, including:
After working with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, there is one common thing I’ve found that will instantly let me know if you’ll succeed or fail.
On today’s episode Russell talks about how he could tell with 100% certainty within seconds of meeting an entrepreneur if they would be successful. Here are some of the interesting things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to find out if you possess the quality that equals success or if you need to switch your focus in order to become successful.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Tonight I’m going to show you guys the one tell-tell sign to know if you’re going to be successful in business or not. And it works 100% of the time.
Hey everyone this is Russell. We’re on day 4 or 5 of binge all nighters while my wife and kids are away out of town. My wife doesn’t get back until a couple more days, but of my kids are coming back tomorrow, which I’m so excited. They were supposed to come back today, then they didn’t.
So now another day to pull an all-nighter. So it’s about 1:00 now. Today we have built and launched one, two, three, four funnels. And what’s funny is that none of them are new funnels, they’re all just re-builds of existing funnels. And this is hopefully a lesson for you all. Because I hate all my funnels. Even though they work pretty good, but they’re still not done. But guess what I did? I launched them and made a bunch of money with them and now I’m fixing them again. I’ll probably be fixing them again later, and they keep getting better and better, but they’re never done. So don’t be like, “My funnel’s not ready yet, I can’t make money.” Just do it. Just launch it and make money and then fix it along the way and keep fixing it. Ready, fire, aim. CLickfunnels gives you that ability to change things and make them better and better. That’s what I do, and you should too.
Alright, before I pass out, because I’m kind of getting a little loopy. It was fun, Steven and I spent like 30 minutes, I think we were getting tired and I gave him my internet marketing history lesson according to Russell Brunson. I showed him all my old sites on the way back machine. My first product, my first three software products, it was fun. We filmed most of it so hopefully it will show up on Funnel Hacker TV. Who knows, but we’ll see.
While we were talking, it was funny he was talking about how in the past he’s had a lot of business partners and things and how some people basically, all the business partners he’s had, none of them ever became successful and he was the only one that came out the end that was. He and his wife were discussing why did that happen and why didn’t it. As he’s saying that, I remembered something. I told him, and obviously nowadays it’s different, people come to our events now it’s different because we’ve raised the prices and we’ve attracted real entrepreneurs and things like that. But first 5 or 6 years of my company we were selling to beginners. And we were breaking my cardinal rule, which is don’t sell to broke people. But we were and we had these events and people would come and not that they were all broke or anything, there were some amazing people that came through, but it was definitely a different audience, different crowd.
I was telling myself, I would walk into our events, we had smaller events, about 40or 50 people, and I would welcome everybody and have them introduce themselves and within 5 seconds of them introducing themselves I knew with 100% certainty and accuracy who was going to succeed and who wasn’t. It was crazy. I always felt guilty. After they introduce themselves should I tell them, “Hey there’s no way you could ever be successful in this business. You should leave.” Or should I let them go through.
Part of its like, some people buy because success. Some people buy because they want entertainment, the excitement. They like chasing the dream, the idea of the dream. So I feel like that’s sometimes as valuable, if not more valuable, than what you give them, if that makes sense. I can’t remember where I learned this from or where I heard it. It was really good, but the concept was basically that, it was from a TV show, someone shared it. But basically, a lot of people don’t want to take the leap and actually do the work. Doesn’t make sense because those of you who are producers, that’s what you thrive off, producing, doing and moving forward.
But a lot of people don’t want to take that leap. Because they have this dream, vision of what’s going to happen and if they do take a leap and it fails, then they lose their dream. So for me, I know that this life is short and for a lot of us, there’s a lot of things that I do that I spend money on that are never going to be real, but I enjoy it and it gets me dreaming, it lets me dream and to think about something. It gets me excited. So that’s part of it.
So I never told those people when they introduced themselves, “There’s no way you’ll be successful, you should leave.” Because again, I feel like there were other things. I don’t try to impress……sometimes for us, and everyone here listening is different. Some of you guys, success is the reason you do this. And that’s your value, that’s what you’re looking for and sometimes we try to force our values on other people. I have my mastermind group, my inner circle that you guys know about. People pay 25 grand a year and some people come because they want to learn and execute. Other people come because they want to hang out. And if I try to push them to execute, it bothers them and they leave. They say they want success, but they don’t really want success. They want the networking, people, friendship, connection with other people like them. And I totally respect that now. I used to struggle with that when I was first getting started. But people give you money for different reasons, and most of the time it’s not for why you think. So don’t push your own beliefs on them because it’ll screw things up.
So anyway, people would come in and I would know that. I asked Steven, “Do you know how I could tell? I’m curious if you could know.” So my question for you is that. How did I know, what is the tell-tell sign with 100% certainty and accuracy, I knew within a second if people were going to be successful or not, in this business? Not in life, they can be successful in other things, but in this business. I’m curious of what your thoughts are, so think about it for a second. Because I’m going to tell you what the answer is and I’m a little nervous to tell you because some of you guys are going to be like, “Crap, does that mean I’m not going to be successful.” And I don’t think that that means you’re not going to be successful, but it does if you don’t shift what you’re chasing and what you’re thinking about. Because everyone I know who has been successful, it’s been the opposite side.
So again, we would come in and after the first session I would be like, “Okay, here’s the three people that are going to be successful.” and everyone else in the room would be like, “Yeah, I don’t know how but I feel that too.” And I kind of identified. This was the difference. Those who never had success, when they introduced themselves, or when they talked about it or thought about it, or presented anything, they were in the business because they wanted to make money. Those are the people that failed. You listen to that, what, Russell we all want to make money. That’s why we got in this business right. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m studying you, Russell. You teach people how to make money, and I want some of that.
Do you guys remember Wedding Singer, one of my favorite movies of all time? When Drew Barrymore goes to marry or whatever, he’s all mad so he goes to the bank and he’s trying to get a loan or trying to get a job at the bank to make money so she’ll like him. And Norm McDonald, not Norm McDonald…what’s his name? He’s the banker, and he’s like, he asks him his qualifications and Adam Sandler’s like, “Well, I like money. I’d like some more of it. You’ve got some money.” And it’s just this funny thing. I totally slaughtered it, but it’s really funny. Go watch Wedding Singer.
It’s really late. Alright, so where did I leave off. The people that were not successful were the people that wanted to make money. The people that were successful are people that were passionate and excited about the marketing. That’s the key. Isn’t that weird? Those who are excited by the marketing are the ones who were successful. It was weird.
I remember hanging out with Daegan Smith one time and he told me when he shifted from not being successful to being successful was when he got excited and passionate about the marketing. He became obsessed with it. It’s interesting because the business owners that I like to work with, the entrepreneurs, are the entrepreneurs running the business. Why? Because they become passionate about the marketing of the thing. Whereas bigger businesses that think they’re in the business of selling the thing. Apple you are not in the business of selling iPhones. You are in the business of ….. Excuse me, you’re not in the iPhone business, you’re in the business of selling iPhones. That’s what Steve Jobs understood. That’s why he was a big deal. That’s why he gave key note speeches. That’s why all those things happened. Because he knew he was in the business of selling the thing. Not of the thing.
That’s what I’ve found. When people introduced themselves, “I’ve been studying Russell. I’ve been geeking out, reading books. I love the market, I’m so excited. I’ve got this passion and I want to sell it.” I’m like boom, that guy’s goingto be successful. Or that girl’s going to be successful. If they come in like, “Hey yeah, I have a job, I really want to make some extra money.” And whatever or “Hey, I’m just not happy with where I’m at, I want to make extra money.” Every time it was money focused they failed. Every time it was “I’ve been reading this stuff and I’m excited.”
Hopefully, because unfortunately most educators make things really boring. I feel bad. Through my college and high school careers, most teachers were really boring. I tried my best to make marketing exciting. Because it is exciting. It’s exciting for me. I actually started, on Sunday I recorded, I decided I wanted to start a religious podcast and I recorded the first two episodes. It’s hard because I listen to other religious podcasts and they bore me and I’m like, “How are you guys boring? Do you not understand? What is happening? I love religion because the greatest act in the history of the world happened. There was this guy in Jerusalem, it wasn’t just a guy….This thing happened and it is so exciting when you understand it, what it means.” So I’m trying to make my podcast exciting. Because I’m as excited about that as I am about marketing.
My goal is to try to make the marketing exciting for you because I know that that’s what gets people into it. It’s not the thing, it’s being excited about the marketing thing. And that’s the moral of today’s lesson. So for you, if you’re struggling, I think better than…..the best advice I can give you is become obsessed with the marketing. Become obsessed from reading the books and understanding the stuff and how it works. You become obsessed with the marketing, that’s how you’ll be successful.
So don’t dabble, go deep. Get excited, get obsessed. Hopefully my books do that, hopefully my podcast, Funnel Hacker TV….that’s why we’re putting out so much content because I want you guys to see how fun this can be. It’s exciting. It’s the most exciting thing in the world. The most exciting business in the world, the most exciting time. You literally could have your own TV channel on a phone. That’s insane. We’re in such an exciting time, and I want all of you to be excited. Hopefully I’m exciting enough.
With that said, I really need to go to bed. Steven needs to go to bed, it’s 1:08. And being 1:08 is not that big of deal except for the fact that it’s like 5 nights in a row, or more. Anyway, I’m going to go. But I appreciate you guys. Get excited by the marketing. And if you do that, it’ll all work out. It always does. But you gotta be passionate about the marketing. It’s true of anything in life. If you read Expert Secrets, you know what we’re talking about, the external and internal journeys. Those who focus on the external journeys are the ones that typically fail. Seek an internal journey. Making money is external. Understanding marketing, changing people’s lives, serving, telling stories, that’s the internal. So those who have read the book, that’s the clue.
But it’s true with everything. Weight loss, losing weight, if you’re goal is to just lose weight you’re probably not going to do it, just so you know. It’s a hint. What’s the opposite? What’s the internal thing? If you become passionate about that, get excited about that then you’ll lose the weight. If your goal is to, pick any market. Whatever the external goal is, if that’s your real driving passion, you’re not going to succeed. Sorry. Sorry to break it to you. Because I wanted to lose weight for a long time and I didn’t, guess why? Because I was excited about losing weight. Anyway, there’s a hint. Hopefully that helps. No more hints, I gotta go to be. Appreciate you guys, talk to you soon. Bye.
How I got more done today then most people will get done in the next three months, and I did it by leveraging this one simple concept.
On today’s episode Russell is hanging out in a tent in the office because his family is out of town. He talks about how he gets stuff done quickly. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out how over the last 14 years Russell was able to build up a good enough team to get tasks completed in a day that might take another company an entire quarter to complete.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing Secrets. If you’re watching this on marketingsecrets.com, watching the video, I’m actually right now inside of a tent in the office. The reason why is because my wife and kids are out of town and I told everyone I was going to camp out at the office. Everyone’s like, “Oh cool. Yeah.” But I was like, “I’m literally going to camp out at the office.” So I brought a tent in and I brought a cot that I almost broke and then Dave brought in a real cot and this is actually incredibly comfortable, so I’m probably going to sleep here tonight. People will show up in the morning and be like, you are so weird.
The reality is, my house right now is under construction and my entire kitchen is gutted, so I can’t even go to my house, I’m living in the pool house and it’s just like, I know it’s first world problems, but anyway. So now I want to talk to you about one thing before I crash because we got a lot of stuff done today. A lot. This is my to-do list and it’s crazy how many things we got done. And tomorrow is another big day as well. And two of my kids come home tomorrow, which I’m insanely excited for.
But what’s kind of cool, let me sit up a little bit, is people always ask me, “Russell how do you always get so much stuff done in the day?” And I really think it’s a couple of things. First off, I do to-do lists like this on pieces of paper with big old marker. Because something about markers, something about crossing things out that is so therapeutic. Because working today, it was like 2:35 or so in the afternoon and I had only crossed off two things so I was like, angry. So I called over my team and I’m like, “Okay, lets cross stuff out.” Everyone’s like, “How can I help? How can I help?” and I’m like, “Steven do this. Dave do this. Melanie do this.”
Everyone was kind of doing things to help us get stuff busted out. And then I’m looking at this and I’m like, what are the things I have to do? What are the, Dan Sullivan called them unique abilities? What are your unique abilities that you have to focus on? It’s funny because I was dinking around doing stuff that wasn’t necessarily my unique ability, I was doing stuff that was, I don’t know, just stuff. I was like okay, a lot of things I could get other people to do, but there are some things that I have to do. So I knew one of them was, we had this new, we’re going after Instagram so we’re starting this drop the mic show that’s going to be our Instagram play to kind of build up our audience there.
But I needed a cool intro video to pitch the concept and stuff like that. I had to write the script for that, so I did that. And I had to figure out a really cool way to demo this stuff on Instagram, on the computer, which was cool. So I went and recorded the voice over and Steven went and edited it and made it the coolest audio intro ever. So that was awesome.
And then we’re a couple of months away from doing our big re-launch of Clickfunnels, at about our 3 year mark. And I don’t know if you guys have seen our old explainer videos, but I needed to update these. So I had to re-write the copy for the first one and I wrote a new explainer video for the Etison editor, which is the web editor. It’s kind of fun, I’ve been like, how do you write an exciting explainer video for a website editor? It’s not, it wasn’t a funnel, just the editor alone.
I actually had somebody today message me on Facebook and ask me, “What’s the script you write for explainer videos?” and I’m like, “I don’t know what the script is. You just have to find the right hook.” So I was sitting there probably 30 minutes. What’s the hook? Why does somebody care about this? I was stuck at what’s the hook? What’s the hook? And then finally I got the hook and I was like, oh my gosh this is it. And then I started writing. As soon as I got the hook everything just started flowing. It was really, really cool. In fact, do you guys want to hear it? Would that be of value?
I’m going to jump off the cot, like I said I am literally camping in the office. So let me jump off the cot. I’m going to read you guys the script so you can see. So the hook that I came up with is I just remember back, what’s a good hook for the editor in Clickfunnels and things like that and I remember that somebody while I was at Joe Polish’s event, I remember we had to write these cards. Like what you do for a company and my card I wrote , we helped take the power back from the tech guys, because there was some InfusionSoft guys there and I wanted to talk about that.
So I remembered that and found the quote “Take the power back from the tech guys.” So I’m like, that’s the hook. Okay, now I know the hook. I was trying to remember a story that ties to that. So I’m like, okay, the hook is the tech guys having the control. So it’s almost like you’re handcuffed. So then I start typing and got into the flow state. So I’ll read this to you.
“Have you ever felt handcuffed as an entrepreneur? Tell me if this sounds like you. You’ve got an idea, it comes to you in the shower or when you’re trying to sleep or often times it’s in the middle of a boring conversation when someone is trying to talk to you about who knows what. When you’re trying to nod and act like you’re actually paying attention, what is really happening is you’re looking and searching for your next big idea. Then, boom, it hits you. You have the idea, you see the vision, you know what you need to do and you know how this thing will change the world.”
And then all the sudden it’ll zoom on the hands and they’ll be handcuffed and it’ll pan back and see a bunch of tech nerds sitting around in a room.
And it says, “And then they got you. You don’t know how to code, you don’t know how to design. You’re being held hostage by the tech nerds that you used to tease in school. Yet somehow things you think should be so simple, things that should only take a few minutes, somehow become hours and then days and then weeks. With each passing day the excitement for your big idea gets dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until one day it’s gone.”
And then we’ll show the idea in a graveyard, with an entrepreneur standing next to it having a funeral. “There’s money wasted, there’s time wasted with little or nothing to show for it.” They’re still handcuffed and the tech guys walk away with all the cash. “Then when all seems lost it hits you again. Yes! Another idea, another million dollar problem that you want to solve. But the problem is you know the pain that would go into getting the tech guys to actually build out what you know needs to be done. And this is where most entrepreneurial dreams die. Somewhere between the idea and your tech guys ability to create the pages you need to sell your big idea.”
Alright so that was this hook. It is that we’re handcuffed as entrepreneurs. So I start telling the story and thinking about that. That all just started flowing, it’s kind of cool. So I’m going to keep going.
“What happened to the good old days where the person who was excited to sell and able to sell, could just stand in front of people and actually sell? Well here I am telling you that those days are officially back. I want to introduce you to the Etison Editor inside of Clickfunnels to let you take the power back from the tech guys.” Then the guy will break the handcuffs and stand there like a free man.
“Yes, the Etison Editor was created so that entrepreneurs like you, who aren’t programmers, who don’t know how to design can easily build pages inside of a funnel that are proven to convert. Let me show you how it works. First pick the type of sales funnel that is scientifically pre-designed to sell your type of product, choose the style of page design that you like best. Click a button and the entire funnel is built in less than 10 seconds. Every page, every step, everything. You can change headlines and your images, add a video, countdown clocks and more. And if you really want to customize a page, we have dozens of amazing elements you can choose from. Just like a painter would pick a color from a pallet, and then drag and drop it onto the page. Move them around to your heart’s content and then send the funnel to go live. In less than 10 minutes you can create what would have taken those tech nerds weeks to do.”
I make fun of them over and over again. “And now the webpage inside your funnel sells as well as you do. Yes, the Etison Editor inside of Clickfunnels lets you take the power back from your tech guys. No longer be handcuffed and held hostage by tech people. You can take control of your marketing and start making sales today. With Clickfunnels we believe that that’s how it should be. So try the Etison Editor today and be free from your tech guys forever.”
So that was the script. That was something I had to write. I’m the one who’s in that pain, who had gone through that experience over and over again. I had to do that, I can’t be focusing on these other things. So that’s what I went and focused on and worked on. Was writing this script. And then I actually wrote another script for another thing. So I ended up writing four scripts today. And then went into our padded room back here and recorded the voice over’s and I got my brother doing the audio editing. Steven did some audio editing. It’s just all these other people.
So the way I’m able to get so much stuff done is, it doesn’t come overnight, so don’t think it’s going to or it has to, but over the last 14 years of me doing this, I’ve built up my team of people who can do all the pieces. And everyone on the team has a unique ability that they’re good at that I’m not. So I know when I have a project, okay there’s people on my team and they each have their unique abilities and I have mine and to get this thing done it takes all of them. So instead of me trying to do Steven’s job or Jake’s job, or Dave’s or Scott’s or any of these other people’s jobs, I just gotta focus on mine. And then everyone do their kind of thing.
Because any one of these projects, I didn’t do all the pieces of it, I did just my piece of it. And because we have a team, it’s able to go fast. So I recommend for you, start building your team. For some reason as entrepreneurs, we think that we have, I don’t know why these, most entrepreneurs don’t think this, but for some reason internet entrepreneurs do, we think we have to do everything. We have to be good at copy and design and pages and everything. But you don’t. You just have to find people and build a team.
I think that for all of us, think about where you’re at right now and look at where you’re weak and where you’re strong. It’s funny because for a long time I always fought, I wanted to be in control and owner, that was my thing. I always wanted to be in control of the business. And now, looking back, it’s the stupidest thing ever. When I gave up control I found good partners and people and connected them and built a team. That’s when things took off.
So for you, I want you guys, the moral of today’s story I guess if you want to call it, is, obviously I’ve been listening to Dan Sullivan, so those of you who have listened to Dan Sullivan recently, he talks a lot about unique abilities. So my moral of the story for you guys is to really identify what’s your unique ability that nobody else can bring to the table. Figure out that thing and look at what are the unique abilities you need to get this thing off the ground. Or get this thing into orbit, or wherever it’s at to get it where you want it to be. If you’re happy with things, then don’t stress about it. You’re good. Just keep doing what you’re doing. But if you want to grow or change or whatever that shift is that you want to make, then look and say what unique abilities do I need on my team to make this happen. And then go start finding those people, start looking for them. Start going out there.
I guess that’s the message for today. Using your unique abilities and others to get crap done fast. Maybe that’s the title. Because that’s the secret. We got a lot done today, its insane. Honestly, almost any one of these little check marks on this list, is something that a normal company does in, I don’t know, a quarter. We did a lot of it today. And tomorrow we’re going to finish these things up. And tomorrow we’re re-launching one, two, three, four, five funnels. That’s awesome. They’re all mostly done, so it’s just going to be busting them out. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Get them all live.
And then what’s going to be cool, if I have time at the end of the day I’m going to be working on a Funnel Hacker App, which is insane. We have this new app coming out, which is going to be cool. Then if I get all that stuff done, then by the time my kids get here it’ll be nice. Then the next set of fun projects happen. I’ll be pretty proud of us if we get these things done. Hopefully that helps you guys.
Identify your unique ability and bring others to your team that have other unique abilities that complement yours. That’s how you’re going to take over the world the fastest. With that said, have fun. I’m going to go to bed in my tent here in the office. And they say it’s not good for man to be alone and I agree, that’s why I’m literally sleeping at the office tonight inside of a tent on a cot. Such a nerd. I love it. Anyway, thanks everybody. We’ll see you guys soon. Bye.
People who read blogs… read blogs, people who watch videos… watch videos, etc…
On today’s episode Russell talks about figuring out a new formula for conversation domination on every platform. He also mentions the cool new way he’s doing coaching. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out why its important to realize that podcast listeners listen to podcasts.
---Transcript---
Hey this is Russell, welcome to Marketing Secrets. Today’s show is about conversation domination.
Hey everyone this is Russell and I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I have a really cool thing I wanted to share with you guys, and if I’m being completely honest, I am completely fried right now. It’s Friday, my wife just left out of town with three of my kids and left me with two. So she was up packing until 3 in the morning, I fell asleep at 1 and at 3 she left, so I woke up to say goodbye to them and the kids. And then at the same time my little 2 year old, Norah woke up and so I brought her down in bed with me, but she went crazy for the next two hours. Screaming, jumping, and kicking. She knew mom wasn’t around, anyway it got kind of hard.
Finally at about 5 or 5:30 I put her back to bed and then I came down and fell asleep for 2 hours and woke up and so it was like a 2 or 3 hour night. Then I raced to the office because we had funnel Friday today, but luckily Jim forgot. I was like thank heavens, because it gave me a chance to get stuff done. Then I had what we call Decade in a Day. So those who are in my inner circle, we do this cool thing called Decade in a Day, which is a coaching program part. When the first come into the program they get to be part of Decade in a Day and then every time they renew they get Decade in a Day.
What it is, is me taking a decade of my experience and jamming it into one day for them. The way it works, we actually changed it, in the past we used to do it different but I figured out a new format and today was the first day and it’s so cool. If any of you guys are doing coaching programs, this is the way to do it. So we have 100 people in the inner circle at any given time. So what we did is we went and took each of their, basically each person got thirty minutes and instead of me just coaching them one on one, when they get the value and that’s kind of it. What it is we coach them and I use Zoom, which is a new webinar platform that is becoming the coolest thing ever. And then we Zoomed each person in the inner circle Facebook group.
So I had person number one, brought them on, to ask questions, then I click record and stream to Facebook and then it streamed the presentation. So for thirty minutes, I had them introduce themselves really quick. And then we talked about business and I coached them for thirty minutes. And while it’s happening its streaming live to the other 99 inner circle members. And everyone in there is giving feedback and dropping recourses and all these amazing things are happening in there. And the call ended, and I ended it and zoom lets you just end Facebook live. I started the next one and pulled the next person in and go. Boom. We do that for thirty minutes. And then it ends.
So everyone watches the new one starts and then it’s archived in the inner circle members area, that person’s story for thirty minutes with me coaching them. Everyone else starts dropping feedback and comments. We did that, I think 8 times today. So it was kind of crazy. But it was amazing because it was me coaching and then also 99 other fellow inner circle members all coaching as well, dropping resources, links, ideas, resources. It was amazing. So I’m really excited about the new addition to the inner circle, which is awesome.
And Steven who is behind me over here, he just got done with the Two Comma Club coaching, which is the tier before the inner circle, the Two Comma Club coaching and he spent 4 hours doing Q and A today. It’s insane, people. I’ve been doing this now for a long time and our coaching programs have become second to none. It’s exciting.
Steven: It’s a lot of fun. Changing the world, you know. It’s a cool feeling seeing people’s lives like, “I got it.” And then they go out and do it and get results and it’s just fun.
Russell: So fun. So that’s what we’ve been doing today. I[‘m about to take my kids to Studio C, which is really, really fun. Studio C is, if you haven’t, go to YouTube and search Studio C and you’ll see who they are, it’s amazing. Anyway, we’re taking Aiden, who is one of two kids left at home with me tonight to that. So we’re heading out here in a few minutes. But I was just having a conversation with some of the marketing team here and I wanted to share some of it as Iw as thinking about it Because I thought it was really interesting.
So the conversation we had comes back to there was a guy named Howie Schwartz when I first got started who was big online. He had a course called Conversation Domination and it was about getting in Google and as soon as you typed your name into Google all 10 spots would be you, you would dominate the conversation. Anyway, I don’t know what, I haven’t heard from Howie for forever, I don’t know what he’s up to nowadays.
Anyway, the concept of conversation domination I thought was awesome. You type in your key word and you’re all 10 spots and all the paid ads are all you. You dominate the conversation, you’re the only person there. So as I’ve been doing this whole new social media thing, which you guys are watching me do, and hopefully learning and following and modeling and funnel hacking. That’s my thoughts, conversation domination. I want when you open up any platform, that I’m dominating the conversation. I’m in your podcast feed. I’m in your YouTube feed. I’m in your blog RSS feed. I want to dominate the conversation on every single platform so everywhere you look, I am the only alternative. I think it’s important.
But what’s interesting, this is the, I think I know now why. I will always wonder why nobody else is doing this, outside of Gary Vaynerchuk in our market. In my entrepreneurial business market, there’s people probably in other markets, but in ours the only person is Gary V. I think I finally realized why. Because my business is built off email. So we built a big email list. We’ve had over a million entrepreneurs that have been on that list. Active, probably have a million or so. But what’s interesting is, I assumed okay I’m going to launch in Instagram. I’ll send an email and all the sudden I’ll have a million people on Instagram. Then I’ll go to my blog and push there and I’ll have a million people there.
But the reality of what I’ve found is that’s not true. Think about this for yourself. How do you like to consume content? What’s your platform? Because everyone’s got one or two that’s their favorites. Do you like reading blogs? Maybe you’re a blog reader. Or do you like listening to podcast? You’re a podcast person. Or do you like watching video, do you go to YouTube? Or do you check your email? DO you go to Instagram, Facebook? What’s your platform of choice?
And I thought that everyone was on every platform but that’s not the case. There’s a small percentage that are, but if we take our Facebook list and we run next to our email list, and look at those side by side, our Facebook and email list, the crossover in the middle is shockingly small. I assumed they were the same people, but they’re not. It’s just fascinating. When you understand that, a big shift that we’re having, I thought we’ll try Facebook ads to build Instagram, and that kind of works, but not really.
Because Facebook people are on Facebook because they like Facebook. Instagram people are on Instagram. So the more I started thinking about this, the conversation we just had with our team, we’re like, we have to realize that people that read blogs like to read blogs. People who listen to podcasts like to listen to podcasts. Does that make sense. People that watch YouTube videos like watching YouTube videos. People that are Instagram, are on Instagram. That seems stupid right?
Think about that. So what we’re talking about, and I’ve been talking a lot with you guys. Maybe not with you guys, but internally with our team, about the Dream 100. The Dream 100 for us has always been email focused, up until this point. Finding all the people on the list and Dream 100 the crap out of them and get them to promote our products and services. It’s worked, we’ve built a huge company off the back of that. Recently I did an episode a few weeks ago talking about how are you using Dream 100 for SEO? And by the way, we are executing it and it’s working awesome. So listen to that episode and do it.
But think about this, if I want people to read my blog I don’t need to go and become really good at Facebook ads to get people to read my blog. You can, there’s crossover, but what’s better, whoever are the people who read blogs, read blogs. So if I want to launch my blog and make it successful, who are the other people that have successful blogs that my people are already reading. My dream clients are already reading. Because people who read blogs, read blogs.
So I needed to find those people and Dream 100 them, and pay them or partner with them or whatever to get them to write a blog article about me because blog people like to read blogs. So if I’m reading a blog and I read a blog about someone and I go over to their blog, someone’s blog needs to promote my blog. Someone’s podcast needs to promote my podcast. Somebody’s YouTube channel needs to promote my YouTube channel because people who watch YouTube, watch YouTube.
So it’s kind of shift in my thinking. That’s how the Dream 100, as I’m getting more granular with it, it’s fascinating. If you hear me on podcasts, you will know to hear, normally I do podcasts peoplr are like, “Where can I get to know more about you Russell.” And I’m like, “go to Russellbrunson.com, there’s a bunch of stuff there.” But no! If I went on a podcast, be like, “hey, you like listening to podcasts, go to marketingsecrets.com, there’s my podcast, you can subscribe. It’s awesome.” Because podcast people listen to podcasts.
If I’m on a blog, I’m going to talk about my blog. If I’m on a YouTube channel I’m going to talk about my YouTube channel. If I’m on a Facebook feed, I’m going to talk about my Facebook feed. Understanding that, that’s number one. And again, there will be a little bit of crossover, but the majority of your blog readers will come from other blogs. Because blog readers read blogs. The majority of YouTube Subscribers will come from other YouTube channels because YouTube people watch YouTube.
I never watched YouTube videos until 3 months ago when we launched our YouTube channel. I didn’t care about it, I didn’t watch, I never went there. I didn’t understand, it was so foreign to me. Now I get there and I’m in this world and I’m like, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening here. And people that like YouTube, they’re on YouTube all day long, all the time. People who like Facebook are….
So you start understanding that as you’re doing your Dream 100. You become more granular with your focus and your traffic and all those kind of things. I want you to remember that. You wanna have conversation domination. The key to that is the Dream 100. Going back, Dream 100-ing people and getting people who are bloggers to read your blog. And people who are podcast listeners to listen to your podcast, so on and so forth across all the platforms. That’s awesome.
Do you think that’s awesome Steven?
Steven: It’s amazing.
Russell: For those of you guys who are not watching this on a YouTube, if you’re listening to the podcast, Steven is behind me and he’s screaming excited too. So I hope it makes sense to you guys. I’m dropping gold bombs. Some of you guys will not be prepared for it yet. If you’re not go search fro the Dream 100, I think I’ve done podcasts or videos. I’ve talked a lot about that.
So if you’r enot familiar with the Dream 100 yet, go and study it and then come back to this. There will be a point in your business when this concept will be the biggest way for you to scale from wherever you are to the next level. Its huge for us, what we’re focusing on while we’re trying to go from 8 to 9 figures a year. We got a good shot of maybe hitting it this year. It’s going to be a stretch this year. Next year it’s going to be easy. But this year we might make it. We got a couple of things happening that are going to give us the ability to potentially hit that. It’s going to be fun.
Anyway, that’s what I wanted to mention to you guys. Hopefully you have enjoyed this podcast, please go to iTunes and rate, give me stars. Even one or two stars if you want, but if you really had a good time give me 5 and tell people what you think. Also, if you have your own podcast please tell your podcast listeners to listen to my podcast, I would really appreciate it. If you have a YouTube channel, please tell your people to listen to my YouTube videos. And if you’re a blogger, please blog about my blog, that would be very amazing. I hope that helps you guys. Appreciate you all. I’m going to go home and play with my son. We’re going to go to Studio C and have a blast. Peace, have a good night. See you all again soon. Bye everybody.
Why these things can and should move you forward as opposed to pulling you backwards.
On this episode Russell talks about having entrepreneurial scars and why you should embrace them rather than be embarrassed of them. Here are some of the insightful things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen below to find out why it’s okay to fail, as long as you are able to learn from your mistakes.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets. Today’s episode is called entrepreneurial scars.
Hey everyone, so I wanted to, honestly, this podcast I just wanted to hang out with you guys and talk because it’s been interesting. I’ve been working with so many entrepreneurs and recently just as I’ve been working with some people and watching people who had insane amounts of success at one time and then who had something happen. A failure, a bankruptcy, whatever, just fill in the blank. The second time around, a lot of times, they really, really struggle.
I start looking and I’m like, why are they struggling? They had this huge success and it’s almost like they have fear and embarrassment like, “I failed in the past.” As I kept talking about this with some of the guys on our team it was like, it’s almost like they have entrepreneurial scars. It’s interesting, us as a person who went through the process, a failure, a lot of times there’s ups and the downs it hard. We have scars, emotional scars, but I think sometimes we feel like those scars are on our faces and other people can see them.
What’s interesting is that people don’t. Those are just things that are inside of yourself. But because they’re there and you feel like they’re there and other people can see it, it keeps you from having success the next time. Because there’s so much fear around these scars, these things. And as I was talking about this, this morning, I shared a story and this will hopefully kind of tie these things together a little bit better for you. I’m not going to name names or anything.
But there was a guy I know and he was a successful politician. At the top of his game, doing everything amazing and people loved him. And when you saw him in that spot, and it’s not like national politics, I don’t know anybody in national politics. I don’t follow politics at all. But it was a local person. And you saw him on the news and all this other stuff and he was dynamic, charismatic and everything was awesome. And then he got caught up in this political scandal or whatever and it’s funny because, again, I don’t follow politics, and I don’t care that much. But I was aware of the things that happened, and he’s no longer in there and there was someone else.
Then fast forward 3 or 4 years later, I met him. What’s funny, it was in a different situation, and he wanted to talk about business stuff. And I was really excited because I was like, “I know who this person is. How cool. I want to meet him and talk to him.” And as I talked to him, it was funny, not funny I shouldn’t say that, it was interesting to see the scars that he’d gotten from this thing were so deep, he was struggling to progress in other parts of his life. Business and all these other things because of the scars he got from this thing that didn’t work out right.
You look at the thing, it wasn’t good, but 3 years later, I’m almost surprised that I knew about it, but I did. But he was carrying those scars in his conversations with you. If he would have come in the way that I’d seen him before, confident and all sorts of things, I probably would have done the business deal with him, but because he had these scars and just the way he approached me, he didn’t have the certainty or all these things. They were gone and I could feel it. And that uncertainty kept me from doing the deal with him.
And I remember thinking after I finished, I could tell he was still carrying around the fear and embarrassment and shame of that thing. I don’t care about that thing. I couldn’t care less. Move on with your life and come back. That person I saw on TV, if you would have approached me that way, I would have done this deal.
The same thing is true with entrepreneurs, there’s someone I know who is super successful, knew how to funnel, blew up and made a ton of money and then it went away and now they’re kind of struggling. And what’s interesting is I know that back story because I know the person and things like that. Even with that, I look at the person like, this person is a rock star. They’re awesome. They’re amazing. But as I see them interact with other people, I see these scars that this person has are keeping them from taking over the next thing.
And it’s funny because I don’t think 99,9% of every single person in the world has any idea, their little scars are there for this person, but because he knows that they’re there, because he knows he failed. He knows that things disappear and didn’t work out the way he wanted. He has this fear and has these approaching the next situations, he’s struggling because of that. Because of these scars.
And I think it’s interesting that these entrepreneurial scars that we have, first off they’re invisible. Nobody sees them. Some people may be aware of them, but nobody sees them except for you. So because you are so aware of these things, it keeps you from having the confidence and success you need to move forward.
It’s funny, I was talking to an entrepreneur who was about to go through bankruptcy and they were freaking out and so scared. And I kind of asked them why and they didn’t say, “Because I don’t want those scars.” But what they said afterwards was, If I get out of bankruptcy, what’s my wife going to think and my in-laws and family?” all these things and I was like, “You have to understand, bankruptcy, think about this, failure for entrepreneurs, the founding fathers of this country gave us bankruptcy as a gift, so that entrepreneurs like us would risk and try and move forward and roll the dice and hope for something. And if it wasn’t for that gift, and you may think it’s a gift for the founding fathers, but I think it’s a gift from god. But if it wasn’t for that thing, America wouldn’t have succeeded as a nation. Everything that’s amazing wouldn’t have happened if entrepreneurs didn’t have that risk.
If it was like, if you go bankrupt you go to jail until you pay off all your debts. Not a lot of people would have taken the risk, I don’t know if I would have taken the risks. But because the worst case scenario is bankruptcy, you clear off your balance sheets and start over. That’s the worst case scenario and that’s the greatest gift we have.
So if we hit that and we go through it and all the sudden we have these scars, I went through bankruptcy and have all this fear. Then you go through the next thing, it’s like, no, that shouldn’t be a negative thing. That means you tried, you attempted. Even after you attempted and had success and it went away, you had success.
I remember I was doing a deal with this guy who was super successful. In fact, he did these consulting things where it was 500 grand a day with a minimum of ten sessions, so it’s like half a million bucks to get this guy to work with you. And I had a chance to hang out with him and I was talking to him and talking strategy and he was asking about my story. I tell him my story and I’m pretty open with things now. I have realized that my scars are what actually draws people to me. That’s why at Funnel Hacking Live I spend an hour and a half on stage talking about all my failures, it draws people toward me, which is kind of making the point at the end of this podcast.
But I’ve had my share of ups and downs. And as I told him the whole thing he’s like, “Oh good.” And I’m like, “What do you mean, good?’. And he’s like, “you cycled.” I’m like, “what do you mean cycled?” And he’s like, “Entrepreneurs who haven’t cycled at least once, I refuse to work with them.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” “Cycled means you build something up and then you crash. If you haven’t cycled yet, then guess what? You’re still drinking your own kool-aid. You still believe that you are the most amazing human being on Earth. You don’t realize until after you cycled, that it’s not just you. You aren’t the greatest thing to walk this planet. There’s market conditions, there’s people, opportunities, luck and all these amazing things that happen that make you possible. That make you as an entrepreneur successful.”
And as he said that, first off I was like, that feels better. Cycling sounds way better than failure, than bankruptcy. But I thought it was interesting that he wouldn’t work with entrepreneur unless they’d cycled once. And I was like, Man, how many people go out there and do their big risk and have some success which gives you all t his pride and confidence and stuff. And then you lose it and because of that failure you never try again. Or you try it but halfway because you feel like you have these scars and you feel like other people are judging you or you are judging yourself for all these kind of things. Where the reality is that we don’t se those things.
Nobody knows about the failures until you tell them about it. But if they do know about it, it doesn’t really matter. In fact, as I found as I share my scars, it’s draws people closer, like I mentioned earlier. I think the reason people will do business with me a lot of times is because I’m vulnerable, I share those things.
So for you guys, I wanted to talk about it today because first off, it’s okay to have those scars, but don’t hide them. Share those things. When my kids get injured and they’re super cute and do it all the time, I tell my boys, “Chicks dig scars. That’s a good thing. That’s awesome. Black eyes are awesome.” I remember one of my black eyes I got in wrestling; I don’t know if you guys are watching the video, you can still see the scars over both of my eyes. I had this one where I hit my buddies knee and my eye had swollen shut and I had 15 stitches and couldn’t see out of my eye for 4 or 5 days. I was at school and I was all embarrassed because of the scar and as I was walking around people were like, “Dude your eye looks awesome. You’re a wrestler.” People connected with that more than me looking good and my hair being, worrying about what I look like.
So I think the moral of this podcast and I want you guys to understand, is that we all have entrepreneurial scars. If you don’t have them yet, you’re going to have them. But don’t let those keep you from the next success. My friend who is a politician, I don’t care what happened. He could go and do and be successful, but because he’s carrying these scars, he’s not. You have to be willing to get rid of those, or not get rid of them, embrace them and share those things. Look, I screwed up, this is what happened. But this is what I’m doing now and this is what I learned from it, how I’m changing.
If I look back on my career, there’s a lot of things I’m embarrassed about. Things I messed up on big time. Maybe I should do a podcast someday about my biggest regrets. I have regrets in my business. There’s things I did that I’m embarrassed about, I wish I wouldn’t have done. Looking back now, I would have consulted myself, “Do not do that.” But I wouldn’t have known the path unless I’d gone down some of these paths and realized what things weren’t right.
I’ve always tried to be fair to my customers and my employees and stuff, but I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve sold things that I thought were really good and found out later they weren’t. There’s things I’m not proud of, but if I let those scars keep me, how many people’s lives that we’re touching and effecting now that wouldn’t have been touched had I not embraced those scars and told people, “Look I messed up in the past.” And I have, and we all do and it’s okay. But I don’t want you guys to not progress because of that.
Hopefully this gives you some comfort. Look, if you’ve gone through bankruptcy that’s okay. If you messed up and did something stupid, that’s okay. That’s what this life is about. About making those mistakes and owning it, and if you do it’s almost like plastic surgery. It makes these scars disappear. But they don’t need to disappear. Like I said, embrace it. Because that’s what’s going to draw people to you.
So I hope that helps. It was on my mind today, I though it just want to share it. I hope that that was good for you guys. Again, as entrepreneurs, we’re risking stuff every day. We’re risking our name, money, other people. I wake up in the morning scared with 119 employees as of today. If I screw up, how many people lives have I let down because of that. Those things are real to me and I understand that. But I’ve got to risk those things because how many people’s lives can we effect because of those things.
And if you’ve gone through bankruptcy, don’t let that stress you out. It’s a gift from the founding fathers, from God. It’s given us the ability so that we can risk and not lose everything. We can risk……..and if it wasn’t for that, again, progress would stop if entrepreneurs weren’t risking. So it’s not a bad thing. If you….
Anyway, I just wanted to give you guys that as a gift. And if you any of you guys are struggling, some of you probably are. Some of you guys are going through bankruptcy or gone through bankruptcy. Maybe it’s not bankruptcy but you failed. You launched something that didn’t work. You built a team of people and the product didn’t work and you had to fire people or let them go. All the ups and downs and disappointment. As entrepreneurs you have so many things on your shoulders and I get that.
I hope this message helps relieve some of that pressure for some of you guys. Because if you don’t keep risking, trying, keep getting those scars, where is the world going to be? Where are you going to be? Where’s your family going to be? Where are the people you’re serving going to be? They need you and it’s worth the risk, worth the sacrifice, worth the fears. Because if you’re going to affect those people, when you deliver on what you know you have and you change their lives, it makes it all worth it.
It’s interesting, just to kind of close this down. I looked at where our company has come to where we are today. And I looked back during my last cycle. 7 years ago when everything collapsed around me and I thought the world was coming to an end and I was depressed and sad and scared and all those kind of things happened. Looking at it now, if I didn’t go through that, Clickfunnels and this process never would have happened. I never would have met Todd, I never would have met who built Clickfunnels. I never would have built this team. I never would have had the opportunity. I wouldn’t have known the things I know to be able to execute on this. A lot of things we’re steering clear from today are because of the mistakes that happened back then. And if I would have made those mistakes today, some of them would have been catastrophic. Way more people’s lives would have been effected.
Whereas, I had a chance to suffer those things, get those scars on a smaller scale, so I don’t have to have those things now. Hopefully, if I learned my lesson which I’m trying to do. So look at those things as gifts, embrace them, share them, and don’t hide from them. Because those scars will draw people to you and we all have them. Don’t let that keep you from your mission.
Hope that helps. Appreciate you guys and see you guys all on the next episode of Funnel Hacker, no that’s wrong. What is this episode? Marketingsecrets.com. So sorry, I was recording Funnel Hacker TV earlier today. So marketingsecrets.com podcast. That’s what this is. By the way, if you want to go see our tv show, go to funnelhacker.tv, we have a whole bunch of behind the scenes episodes, a couple of new episodes as well of different stories. In fact, by the time this is live, the same day, we have our next show going live. So go to Funnel Hacker TV as well, check out the shows.
If you like the podcast, please share it. Please go to iTunes and leave me a review. I don’t care if you give me one stars, two stars. If you give me five that will be way cooler. Please do that. Thanks again for everything guys and I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
Who was J. Peterman and why should you care?
On this episode Russell talks about taking inspiration for writing good copy from the J. Peterman catalog (of Seinfeld fame). Here are some of the fascinating things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to learn something new about Seinfeld that you can tell all your friends the next time you watch the show, while also being inspired by the amazing copy contained in the real catalog.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. I just wanted to jump on real quick, spur of the moment. Because I wanted to share something with you that is important. It has to do with the show Seinfeld, but I knew as soon as I said Seinfeld some of you would be like, “I read your book, Russell. It’s the Seinfeld email sequences.” But it’s not, I got something completely different that you guys probably didn’t even know about yet.
I don’t know about a lot of you guys, a lot of you guys are into marketing now and you’re loving it because we’re talking about it and making it exciting and sexy, but I want you to understand. Marketing has been the old timers, most of them are dead now, they’re no longer alive. The legends, this is where the coolest stuff comes from. So people ask me what I do for fun. I spent $4000 buying these right here. These are a whole bunch of swipe files of ads from dead people, because they’re so amazing.
Anywhere, where do I get weird stuff like this? Someone’s already asking. I get stuff like this on eBay. I just recently got a purchase that showed up today that I wanted to show you guys. It’s marketing, for someone like me, it’s the greatest marketing thing on planet Earth. Here’s a snapshot of what it is. That’s all you get.
Based on that, who can tell me what this is? It has to do with Seinfeld, it’s a pop quiz. I want to know your answer down below. Anyone who gets the answer to this quiz, I will have so much respect for you as a marketing person. There’s something that has to do with this and Seinfeld. Anyone who knows what it is, post it down below. I want to see if any of you guys know. There’s hints, it’s an old catalog from 1994. What does that have to do with Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine, and the crew? Any one of you guys know.
I’ll give you guys another hint. I’ll give you the title of the top. It’s going to be backwards on Facebook live, but this is one of the official J. Peterman catalogs from 1994. Anyone getting close to knowing what I’m talking about. Okay. Alright, Kramer’s roommate?
Okay, for those that don’t know, I’m going to explain what’s happening. Most of you guys, hopefully everybody has watched the show Seinfeld. Do you guys remember that Elaine got a job at the J. Peterman Catalog. Do you remember J. Peterman was this eccentric person and he’d go on vacations and go buy hats and then he’d write all this amazing copy in these catalogs and Elaine became one of the copywriters and had all these people and it became this huge spoof on multiple different seasons. What most of you guys probably don’t know is that the J. Peterman catalog is a real thing. It was a real thing and any old school direct response copywriters know and you study stuff like this.
The other day I was doing an interview, a podcast interview with some Ecom sellers and they’re asking, “How does this funnel stuff work for ecommerce people?” I was like, “You guys! Do you not know who J. Peterman is?” and they’re like, “That guy from Seinfeld?” and I’m like, “No! Are you serious?” You need to understand your roots, where did you come from? You are marketing and selling and you need to understand your roots. Understanding these roots, there’s so much gold just waiting there for you to take it.”
So anyone selling ecommerce or anyone selling anything. You need to understand who J. Peterman was. J. Peterman was a visionary, a genius, an amazing copywriter who built a huge company based on these catalogs. I went to eBay and searched for J. Peterman catalogs after that interview because I wanted to get some to show all you guys the foundation and history where this whole thing is coming from. And if you have a ecommerce site, this is a hint.
So here’s 4 J. Peterman catalogs, I got Dave and Steven here geeking out on them.
Dave: Geeking out big time, awesome stories.
Russell: So he doesn’t just say, give us an example of one real quick. Hold on. “Here is a blue shirt to sell” or “Here is …..” This is the best one? Do you want to read it in your marketing voice? This is, what is it? Slinky cord….a lot of you guys will have this on your ecom story, ecom funnel, “it’s ugly green pants and a white shirt.” So listen to the copy. On every single page in the Peterman catalog, just see why this company grew so big and what you guys should be doing to the copy on your ecom and Amazon lists and all sorts of stuff. So ready to read our order?
Dave: Absolutely. “A bedouin horseman chased you half way across the desert. (A beautiful woman on a camel in the desert alone is too ripe a target to dismiss.)
Your heart leaps in your throat again and again, an exquisite torment the Arabs, katu’l-kalb, or “heart cutting.”
Delirious, half dead you reach the emir’s palace. A Galla slave rears his horse in your path….you notice he is speaking in Peter O’Toole’s voice. Just then you awaken in the Royal Suite of the Lanesborough in London, “Lawrence of Arabia” blaring from the television set.
You rush back to sleep, Slinky Silk Cord Tank Top. And Slinky Silk Cord Pants. Not harem pants, but close. 100% flowing, loose silk. More romantic, more interesting than you remembered.”
Russell: Now that is how you sell something. That’s called good copy. You don’t put like brown, orange or yellow, add to cart. You sell your stuff. Every page of this catalog, they’re selling…they don’t even have pictures. It’s like painting of the pictures because this is pre-pictures, apparently. But every single one has amazing cpy to sell it. It would behoove most of you to go to eBay, I don’t know how many are still available, or even Google it. I’m sure you can find it online as well. But search for the J. Peterman catalog, the original ones. These one’s I bought here on eBay are from 1994. The older the better because stuff like this gets better with time.
Steven: The whole thing is a story in one line of description. Look at this.
Russell: So this is….Steven’s going to order this one. This is the Famous Miss Blue. The famous Miss Blue Hat. So if this was on the Shopify site, this would be one button, add to cart and this would be all they would get.
Steven: Yeah, basically. And a picture of it.
Russell: So what would J. Peterman do?
Steven: J. Peterman would say something like this, “You know who I mean. It could have been you. One day you arrived by train, but from where? Nobody knew.
You carved a plantation out of 1,000 acres of dry land which the smart money called worthless.
You diverted a stream and proved them wrong. You wore a big Panama hat, big like a man’s. but you didn’t look like a man. Sometimes you wore it held on with a chin strap, sometimes you wore it down your back.
You became rich, I guess. Anyway, you had a piano, I heard it. I saw you and those……” Anyway, it’s really cool. And at the end it goes, “I remember all that.” And it all kind of rhymes as you go through it. And it’s literally one line…”Made in Ecuador. Leather chin strap. Approx. 4-inch brim. Memorable. $40”
What? I want this hat now. It’s for a woman.
Russell: Alright so, what the lesson and moral for today that I want you to understand, is that copy is the king. It’s the key to everything. I told this on the Marketing Secrets podcast, a lot of you may not have heard this. But copywriting is not sexy, it’s not exciting. So when I wanted to teach copy…..in fact, if I call it copywriting guess what all of us do? We all fall asleep, our eyes glaze over. But if you read the expert secrets book, guess what that book is? It’s my contribution to copywriting. Teaching you how to tell stories, how to do it the right way. How to do epiphany bridges, how to tell kind of like bridges, how to position the offer. All those kind of things. It’s copy, it’s copywriting.
So that is the study that you guys gotta understand. Understand, wherever you’re coming at, some of you guys have been doing this business for years. 6 months, 5 years, 10 years. But there is people that have gone before us that have mastered this stuff. So the reason why I do good today is because I study the old timers. The old timers are the key, you guys. There’s so much of this stuff. If you have an ecommerce site and you want to do well, master J. Peterman. Buy his catalogs, read the copy, understand that.
If you want to understand how to do newletters, go read Gary Halvert letter. Go read, you know go back to the foundation where this stuff all began because that’s the key.
So anyway, there you go you guys. There’s our sneak attack episode of the J. Peterman catalog. If you liked this please share as much as you can. I’d like for more people to hear about it. But now you guys are all in on the secret. So understand that you guys. Copy is the key,it’s the secret. Next time you watch Seinfeld working at the J. Peterman catalog, now you’ll know the joke behind the joke. What she’s talking about and why it’s cool. All sorts of stuff like that.
So that’s all I got you guys. And if for some reason you’ve been living under a rock and you don’t have the Expert Secrets book yet, just go to expertsecrets.com because it is my contribution to copywriting. You know I always said I would never write a copywriting course or product because it’s not sexy or exciting and just not that cool. So I called it something different, but it’s copywriting, that’s what that message, that book is all about. Helping you understand how to write good copy, tell good stories, all those things tied together. So that’s what I got you guys, have an amazing day. I hope you guys had a good job. We will talk soon. Bye everybody.
Here is a recap of a 7 day internal launch that made over a million dollars and what we learned along the way.
On today's episode Russell gives the details of the 7 day launch strategy and what worked and what didn't. Here are some insightful things you will here on this episode:
So listen below to get a cool step by step guide into the 7 day launch.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about the 7 day launch.
Hey everyone, this is Russell and welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. So today I’m going to be talking to you guys about this launch right here and the reason why, is my inner circle members keep asking me, “Hey Russell, can you please show us what happened behind the scenes of the 7 day launch?” They want the stats, numbers and details. So I thought I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. Because I wanted to talk about this on the podcast anyway. So this is for the inner circle members and for those of you who listen to the podcast, I hope you love it.
I’m not going to go deep into the numbers, I will just tell you that this launch in 7 days did over a million dollars in coaching sales, which is exciting, so it worked. I initially learned about this concept from one of my friends, Brendon Burchard. If you watch Funnel Hacker TV, the behind the scenes show, you will see some of the behind the scenes of us kind of going through this. He was in Las Vegas and I flew out there and there’s a whole episode on funnelhacker.tv where you’ll see me flying to Vegas, hanging out with Brendon and getting ideas on how he did this.
So I’m not going to go too deep into all the strategies, just because I know he is launching a course later on this year. I’m going to buy it, you should all buy it, we should all buy it, it’s going to be amazing. Going deep into the deep in the details and giving the swipe files and stuff like that, but if you were watching you probably saw it, first off. Second off, you probably got the swipe files just by getting my emails and stuff. So you’ve got some feedback, if you’ve been funnel hacking and watching, you’ve had a chance to see it.
Basically the way it worked is we did the book launch for the first 30 days, which built up a lot of pressure and excitement and we made a lot of book sales and upsells and everything else. At the end of it I wanted to do something cool. I wanted to figure out how, those who wanted to go deeper, how do I offer a coaching program that’s not me being, I didn’t want to feel like I was selling again because it’s just…..You know how it is, after a while people don’t want to keep being sold. I’d say it’s not like I wanted to sell a coaching program, to help people want to go to the next level with it, which is exciting. But then second off, I wanted to give and serve.
So when Brendon gave me this idea I loved it. So basically how 7 day launch works is, and those who saw it, basically what happened is Monday I started promoting it, Tuesday I did this long training. So if you’re watching the video you can see day 1 I basically did an episode from 11 until noon-ish, I can’t remember exactly how it all went. And module one was you becoming an expert.
What’s interesting is the book promo is all about Expert Secrets, but there was stuff like as soon as you read the book there’s this weird finality where it’s written and done and you can’t edit it or touch it again. And there were things as we’re selling it that I was like, “Oh…” during my interviews all these things kept coming up. There was stuff I wished I could share and there was pieces I wanted to just do.
So what’s cool, is giving the ability, because I don’t have to re-teach the book, because people have the book, but here’s a master class of what’s next. If you read the book and you’re like, “What’s the next piece? What is it?” So this one here I went really deep with you becoming an expert and finding your voice and it was just training and it was awesome.
So what we did is we emailed, so on Expertsecretsmasterclass.com, by the time there was a video, they embedded the live video from YouTube, people could watch and promote that through email. But then we also setup Facebook Live, I think there’s just those two platforms. So when we started this and clicked record, I came on and said, “Hey guys, we’re recording a course, it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to jump up here and start recording, be back in a minute.” Then we clicked go and it was like life. So I taught this entire thing, training. It was awesome.
Then during the breaks we had testimonial videos streaming of our coaching program of the FHAT event, The Funnel Hack A Thon event so people could keep seeing success stories. I took a break so I could go to the bathroom and reset. We came back and taught number two, which is creating an irresistible offer. And that was it for day. I think I was up there for 3 hours, it was awesome. When all was said and done, I think we had 20 or 30 thousand people watch it between YouTube and Facebook. Gave tons of good will and it was really, really cool.
A lot of people who, they’ve been stuck on these two pieces, I had a chance to go deeper on that and give them everything. So that was day number one. And then this is where it replayed for 24 hours and then it disappeared. People had the chance to watch it for 24 hours, and some did, and then it disappeared.
Then day two started. Day two I wanted to do the big domino, it went really deep to help people understand that. Then we had a break again, and then what I did at the latest session, actually did a webinar. Now, it’s a little different from Brendon, when he did his, basically at the end of day two is when he pushed people to a video sales letter, which sold a product. Me, I just did a webinar. One of the big things that was kind of interesting. When we created this offer, part of this training is really cool and desirable. A lot of people aren’t going to be able to watch it live, and you pull it down and you stage, because people actually want the content and the training.
At the end of this I’m not selling this as a course because it’d be hard to sell because people are like, “I missed part of it, I should have watched it!” and all these kind of things. So instead it’s like, if you join the coaching program you get all this course for free, and notice I didn’t say the recordings of this product. Because recordings seem really cheap. Getting this course, the Expert Secrets Master Class, the perceived value is way higher, it’s the course not the recordings.
If you watch the videos back I tried to say that, I think a couple of times I messed up and said recordings. I was trying to get it perfect. So that was here, and then what’s cool is that happened and sales started coming in for the coaching program. Because there was a webinar and they got to watch me do the webinar but then I was actually selling the coaching program on the webinar.
Now what’s happening, as soon as it was done, it’s funny because it’s the first time I’d ever done this webinar. We created it the night before, it was perfect webinar, hacked style. So it was one headline, three secrets, a board with things. I pitched two offers, which is usually a wrong thing to do and it was in this case too. We had 2,000 or 15,000, it was just complicated when you get to the stack. So sales did okay, but I was kind of honestly, when the camera shut off, I was sitting there kind of depressed. Dang, that did not feel right. They didn’t convert right. Some people bought but it wasn’t right. I was just like, dangit.
I was frustrated and that night I was kind of stressing out about it and realizing that. So then we made some tweaks and changes. And the cool thing is day three, I came back and broke down the campaign and showed them and went through the webinar again. And what’s cool about the second webinar, or the second training is because I was going through what I did and what worked and what didn’t work. I knew what hadn’t worked the first time. So I had this really cool opportunity to weave in different close, different stack, different things, to close the deal from the day before.
I’m going to talk about why this is so key here. Because I think I figured out something amazing. But after that section, sales started coming in like crazy. The second webinar where I broke down what I did here, but then use that, and hopefully you guys watched that, if not you missed it. But I was weaving in all these closes throughout it, it was kind of a cool thing. But I was just breaking down what we were actually doing.
Then we had a break and at the end I did a virtual book tour, which is kind of a bonus training of how we got traffic and then that was it. When that one ended, sales were coming in better than the day before. I was able to fix some of the things I had done wrong back here, which was good. But there was something wrong with the, there was something….it still wasn’t quite big so I was sitting there and I was kind of… I don’t know about you guys, but when you nail it I have all this energy afterwards. When I don’t I just feel this lack of energy. When we got done afterwards I was like, it was good but I still felt this lack of energy.
I felt this weirdness around this pricing strategy and if you look at pricing it was $2000 to do the online version, or $15000 to do the online plus come to Boise, plus get Fill Your Funnel and a bunch of other really cool things. And it was kind of, there was complexity in it. So we were talking about it, “Maybe we’ll open up a payment plan.” I hate payment plans and all those other sorts of stuff. Then I had this idea and I was like, “Wait a minute, what if instead of a payment plan, what if…” So this is the pricing strategy that turned this campaign from….at the end of day two we probably had $150,000 in sales to two days later we did over a million dollars in sales. What was the difference? This was the piece that was key, it was pricing.
So we shifted this, if you guys watched it, I came out and said, “Hey a lot of people are asking for a payment plan, unfortunately we don’t have a payment plan. But I did decide to turn this coaching program into a $300 a month one. So you come here, it’s $297 a month, or you can get lifetime access for $2000 or you can upgrade to the $15000 and com to Boise and get all this other stuff as well.
So what’s interesting, I know some of the guys on my team were nervous, “Oh no. If it goes $300 a month, everyone’s going to take that and it’s going to draw whatever…” What’s interesting is that we had people take that, but what it did was become almost like a decoy offer where it made everybody buy the $2000 offer, it’s crazy.
Tons of people bought, suddenly $2000 seemed cheap versus $300 a month and it was cool for 2 reasons. One, it got people to buy that. Number two it was cool because it got a whole bunch of people on a $300 a month coaching program as well, which is one of my goals this year. How do I create a $300 a month? To be honest Frank Kern has a $300 a month thing. Ryan STewman has a $300 a month thing. I was like, “I want a $300 a month training program.” So it kind of forced us to do that, but the cool side effect, it created this really cool thing where now $300 a month or lifetime access for $2000. So it was a huge discount there, which pushed everyone to the $2 grand.
When we had Neurocell, our supplement, it was kind of similar the way pricing was. We had one bottle, three bottles or four bottles. We had a pricing strategy where basically you had to be a moron to buy one bottle. Where if you had any brains at all you’d buy the four bottles. It was $80 a bottle, or it was $40 a bottle if you get three. It was crazy and it pushed everybody to where we actually wanted them. And by doing this it did that as well. It helped me do two goals.
One was to help me build up a $300 a month coaching program, number two it pushed people to what I actually wanted them to do, which was the $2000, which was really cool.
Now it’s been fun because people are going through there and the training for those who are going through it, it’s super in depth and intense and crazy and amazing. It’s getting me excited to watch what people are doing. So that was some of the break down. Basically the last 3 days were urgency and scarcity and that’s what pushed it over the million dollar mark.
That’s, by the way, a million dollars collected. A lot of people use, can I say this publicly? The company basically went bankrupt, so I can. There’s a thing we in the industry call stomper math. In stomper math, there’s a company called stomper net and they used to do launched and they’d be like, “We did 18 million dollars.” But it was not collected, it was if all the payment plans go through for the next 5 years then they would have made 18 million or something like that. I hate that. Stomper math, this was like a 10 million dollar launch. But in real math, not common core, but real math, we collected a million dollars. So after we rebuild stuff we’ll be higher. Anyway, I thought it was cool.
Urgency and scarcity from this point forward, and again, the offer was basically the thing that I wanted to sell wrapped in with the recordings of this, excuse me not the recordings. I said a curse word. You get the Expert Secrets Master Class course for free as well.
So that’s kind of it. So those who were in the Two Comma Club coaching program, all the recordings of this are in the members area. So you can go back and watch them. I highly recommend at least watching these first three. These first three were probably some of the best presentations I’ve ever given, ever. I’m really proud of them and it will help you implement. The first three for those of you who are listening are The You in Expert, Create Your Digital Offer, and The Big Domino. There was something about the training, the way it worked. This training is just, I’m really proud of them, they turned out amazing.
Anyway, we probably will be trying to evergreen this funnel in the near future, I’m not sure exactly how to do it yet. But in the future if you go to expertsecretsmasterclass.com, it may be there, the evergreen version where basically you opt in and we have a 24 hour countdown and it disappears after 24 hours. I don’t know, I haven’t figured that part out yet. We may or may not try that in the future. But yeah, that was kind of a breakdown of how the campaign worked and it was a lot of fun.
Tons of reciprocity, tons of goodwill, a lot of people weren’t able to buy, they still got tons of stuff from that. And what’s been interesting in my business, as I’ve been watching this, the more I give away, it’s people have success with the free stuff, in fact Dan Henry is one person who said this specifically. A bunch of other people said, I feel like I owe you because I’ve made so much money from all the free stuff. Dan, I remember when he joined the inner circle, he’s like, “I feel like I owe you $25 grand for all you already gave me. So I’m just going to give it to you so I can be in your inner circle, but I feel like I owe it to you anyway.”
And that’s what I want to do. I want to give people such good stuff, they can run with it and have success. So much so that in the future they’re like, “Man, I need to buy all Russell’s stuff, because I feel like I owe it to him.” So it’s kind of a good spot to be in. That’s what I’m trying to focus a lot more on.
That’s kind of how the whole thing worked, it was really fun and enjoyable. The big key takeaways are number one, just giving and building this huge reciprocity streaming this huge, live streaming to YouTube and to Facebook. I think when all was said and done it was like a quarter of a million people that had seen parts of this training. It might have been more than that. It was amazing.
Having an offer, a really good offer with a really good pricing strategy behind it, when Brendon comes out with his course later this year, hopefully he’ll….he’ll probably use this process to launch it. But watch how he structures his offers. I think that’s the key of it. What he does, he’ll do this whole training and be like, “Hey expert academy, my $1000 course, I’ll give you a 50% discount, so you get $500, plus you get this for free.” It’s all about creating an irresistible, amazing offer. It took us a couple of tries and while this thing was happening, tweaking our offer before it got right.
That’s another thing you’ve got to understand is that we’re tweaking offers in the, as they’re happening. In the middle we’ll be like, “Ah, it’s not working. It’s not converting. Change it, tweak it.” If your thing’s not converting, change the offer, don’t like, “Ah it didn’t work.” If you would have seen the behind the scenes, and I think we probably filmed some behind the scenes of that from the behind the scenes Funnel Hacker TV show.
But we’re shifting and changing and modifying things on the fly because it’s happening in real time and it’s kind of crazy. Anyway, this was a really cool thing to kind of end the launch with. You know it added an extra million dollars to the bottom line, which was cool. It helped us figure out the pricing strategy for long term when we do evergreen-ness. How to actually sell the coaching, what the right messaging…Forcing myself to do a webinar live, helped me figure out what was wrong with my webinar hook. Then having me do a webinar where I recap the whole thing gave me another deep ability to fix the things and know what to do when I make this thing an auto webinar and sell it as a coaching program in the future.
And this is the other thing I learned that was awesome. When you do a webinar, and maybe this only works in my market, I’m not sure. Or like a business market. But doing a webinar and then the next day showing them what you did. The second webinar made us more money than the first. So one cool thing I’m going to start doing is, I think with some of my webinars is if somebody registers be like, “Hey, if you watch to the end, what I’m going to do is send an email with a break down where I’m going to show you behind the scenes. I’m going to show you the webinar funnel, what we did. I’m going to let you funnel hack what I just did. I’ll give you the share funnels, the emails. But you have to watch the webinar to be able to get access to that.” And it should force people to consume the webinar, which will create sales and things like that.
That was a cool thing, doing a double webinar. We did that back in the day. 8 or 9 years ago we used to double things like that. We’d do one and one right after. I forgot about them and it was, I think there’s a correlation here, doing a double webinar and the second webinar is showing something, but just keeps closing sales. But it’s a different presentation. I’ll test with that and let you guys know what we figure out.
Figuring out your pricing strategy was big. There’s so many cool lessons from it. Hopefully you guys watched it and experienced it. You had a chance to see behind the scenes of the numbers and metrics, the big takeaways and aha’s we learned along the way. Anyway, it was pretty awesome.
Hopefully I’ll see you guys. Thank you again for listening to Marketing Secrets podcast. If you are not on iTunes, please search on iTunes, leave me some feedback and listen to it there. Because on iTunes, it’s cool because it’s not just, I think this is episode 5 or 6 or whatever we’re on Marketing Secrets, but on iTunes you get access to all of the back episodes, like 350 episodes from when I was running the Marketing Secrets show under a different name. It was called Marketing In Your Car. I highly, highly recommend you guys going back and binge listening to all of those because they are good and they are worth it.
A lot of our biggest success stories people have a chance to binge through everything. Watch the video here if you’re watching on YouTube, but go to iTunes and subscribe go binge listen to everything. Catch up with us. You can be hanging out with all these things and all this stuff will make a lot more sense to you. Anyway, that was it for the 7 day launch. I hope you guys enjoyed that and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.
The dream 100 isn’t just for JV partners… it’s the key to ALL traffic.
On this episode of Marketing Secrets Russell talks about immersing himself in SEO stuff over the weekend and how that has got him thinking about getting creative about getting traffic. Here are some of the cool things he mentions in this episode:
So listen below to hear how to do SEO the right way using the Dream 100.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets. I’m here in my house today about to head out to my son’s kindergarten graduation which is pretty excited. It was cute, we were talking about it last night and he was like, “What’s graduation mean?” so we had to kind of explain that.
But I’m super excited. We’re heading out and so many cool things, but the one downside to doing a podcast where it’s also a video, so those who are listening on iTunes, you go to marketingsecrets.com there’s also a video version of these. I used to do them on my phone all the time, which is a lot easier and I could do it more often. So I had a bunch of things on my mind that I wanted to share with you guys, that I have had a chance to til right now. So I had a few minutes and wanted to kind of just hang out with all my marketing secrets people.
So a couple things, one is if you listened to last week’s episode, or the last episode I did, it talked about faith. You have to have faith first in a mentor, business, products, all those kind of things. Because otherwise everyone would do it, it takes away all the joy and excitement and the fun and all those things disappear. There’s a book, a lot of my Mormon friends know. It’s called Faith Proceeds a Miracle. Without getting into the content of the book, just the title was right. Think about that. Faith proceeds a miracle, you want a miracle, launch a business, change the world, whatever. It starts with faith. Faith in yourself, the process, in it all. I’ll leave that there.
So today what I want to talk about, if you listened to me talk recently I’ve been talking about how transitions going from zero to a million dollars a year, a million to ten, and ten to a hundred and it’s interesting, the different mindset tweaks and the creativity switch. To go from zero to a million is all about figuring out your what and how. What is it you’re selling and how are you going to sell it. Once you figure that out it’s easy to get to a million bucks.
Then a million to ten is all about figuring out acquisition funnels to get people in, ascension funnels to ascend people up and monetization funnels, and that’s the next phase in the process. The third phase is traffic, like how to convert cold traffic and more traffic, things like that. And our job as entrepreneurs is to shift our creativity from figuring out the what and how, as soon as you figure that out it’s transitioning our creativity to the front end and back in ascension funnels. After you figure that out and get those in place, it’s transitioning to our creativity in traffic and lead generation.
So what’s cool is that in our company, the first two phases are done, and it’s fun because the Two Comma Club coaching, which we launched a couple of months ago, is all about focus and getting people from zero to a million, the what and the how. And then the inner circle is about the second phase, which is going from 7 to 8 figures, which is all about figuring out the acquisition, ascension and monetization funnels.
And the next phase is where my next group of people, I’m thinking about opening another group, called the inner, inner circle. I don’t know what it is. It will be really, really, obviously a lot more expensive, but the goal of that one is going to be traffic, and creativity in traffic, because that’s what we’re doing right now, it’s my focus. Thinking about this. All weekend long, I started geeking out on SEO again, which I swore I would never do, I hated SEO. But as I started thinking about this, SEO, I’ve had times in our company where we were ranked number one for work at home, and internet marketing, internet marketing strategy and all these other cool key words.
But we did it the gray hat way, shades of gray…I don’t know. There’s black hat stuff that we didn’t really do, there’s gray hat that we definitely did, and then there’s white hat that’s too annoying and takes too long. But this weekend I started re geeking out on it and thinking about it. And looking at the white hat strategies, I always hate them because they seem so slow and organic, like SEO is supposed to be. But then I realized that it doesn’t have to be slow and organic, it just has to, you get the right things to the right people.
And it’s funny because I was geeking out and studying and learning and all this stuff, and I had this weird impression that I was just, the way to rank in SEO, it’s the same principle. We talk about this inside the Fill Your Funnel Course, I talk about it in Expert Secrets. I talk about it over and over again, it’s the concept of the Dream 100. The Dream 100 is key. Chet Holmes, who I learned it for, used that to sell advertizing in magazines. And also he used it to get his screen play written and published by Hollywood.
I’ve used it to generate affiliates. But the Dream 100 is also the key to SEO ranking, it’s also the key to Instagram influencers and it’s the key to YouTube, all these traffic strategies in Dream 100 are the key. Some of you guys are like, “Russell, no it’s not. It’s all about whatever….back linking, keywords.” But think about it. We hired Neil Patel to come do a training with us. We paid him $20 grand to come hang out for the day and kind of just look at our stuff and give us feedback on the SEO side. He said basically, “Blog every single day, you need to get links from the best sites, like Forbes and Ink and things like that.”
And the data service was $20-30 grand a month, but they get you some links from these high quality sites. And at first it was magic to me. I don’t know how to get a link from Forbes, that doesn’t make sense. Then we started working with Andrew O’Brien, who does our PR stuff, and that’s what he was doing. Getting links from all these sites. We’ve been written in Forbes a couple times now, and Entrepreneur and Ink and we’re getting these links back and we’re seeing rankings.
And what’s interesting though, I’ve been interviewed by all these different writers and sites, and I realized, they’re just people, just like all of us. And the Dream 100 works on people. So let’s just say I wanted to get ranked for whatever, instead of me going back and doing it all black hat link building and all that crap we used to back in the day that was really fun and automated, it was really fun. Not going to lie. But instead of that, what if you just build. Here’s the Dream 100 list on people’s site, that I want to write an article about me or let’s say you go to Huffington Post, here’s the Dream 100.
Because Huffington Post, Fox news, all these have tons of writers, so make your Dream 100 list of the writers who write those sites, and we focus on the Dream 100 towards them. To get them to write about us. Let’s say there’s a hundred writers, I do the Dream 100 strategy to the top 10, or 20. Doesn’t have to be 100 people. But the top 20 writers on Huffington Post or Forbes or whatever and we market to those people and those relationships with those people and all the stuff we talk about in the Dream 100 and I get those people to write articles. Now let’s say I get 10, 20, 30 articles written from Forbes, Ink, Entrepreneur, that will rank me for most major keywords. Who are the sites that are already ranking for our key words. Dream 100 those people and figure out how to get on those pages.
I don’t know what It’s called, but let’s say you type in internet marketing, I might not be able to get ranked number one in internet marketing, but who are those top 10 people, but let’s Dream 100 those people and become friends with them and maybe I can get a banner up on their site or a pop up, or email number one in their email sequence. You know a million other things. There’s so many ways to do it. The dream 100 is the key. It’s interesting.
It’s key there, in YouTube, let’s say you want to dominate YouTube. Okay, who’s my dream 100 there that already have visitors and eyeballs and what can I do to get to them. A good example, JP Sears, who I love his videos. He’s one of our Dream 100. We met him and paid him a little money to come to our event, made a video with him, and he shared that video we made of him telling his thing on his page and got a half a million views. Half a million people from one person on my Dream 100. On a Facebook and YouTube channel, that’s it.
It makes you think, it works everywhere. Instagram, I want to dominate Istagram, Twitter, wherever you’re at, who are the people that are already dominating? Dream 100 them, build relationships, rapport, buy ads, all those things. So we have a traffic meeting a little later on today and this is the topic of the traffic meeting, within my internal team, Dream 100. And we’re going to be doing SEO and YouTube are our two biggest. And basically YouTube is because we’re trying to….SEO started because we were trying to do better on SEO on our videos and then I kind of geeked out all weekend on it.
I don’t know about you but I’m a big fan of immersion. This is kind of my learning style. I’ll get excited about learning something and I’ll go deep really fast and don’t sleep for 3 or 4 days, which is what I did this week on SEO. I studied all the best people, going deep and trying to figure out what’s relevant, what’s not, how it changed, what’s the game, what are the tools, trying to get really cool pitch. That’s number one, immersion, number two for me is finding a mentor, so I found 2 or 3 people that are really good at SEO that are going to be mentoring me. That’s the game. Immersion, mentorship, domination, Dream 100.
So for you guys, some of you guys aren’t going to care about SEO or Instagram or whatever it is, but think about the channel you want to dominate and that’s the plan. Build a Dream 100 list, immerse yourself for a weekend and just geek out and figure out the strategy, get the lay of the land, find a mentor or two, and go deep.
So those who are in our Fill Your Funnel course, by the way, this is what you’re getting access to. This first month, we already know Facebook, I think as good if not better than anybody, so John who is my partner on, he’s going to be, he’s doing all the Facebook training, so that’s this first module. Then module two we’re going deep into YouTube, which will be next month. We’ll go and geek out on it. Then the next, my guess the month after, will be SEO because I’m kind of geeking out on it. Whatever I’m geeking out on at the time is what we’ll be bringing all the Fill Your Funnel people in on too. So it’s exciting.
So those that got on Fill Your Funnel at the Funnel Hacking Live event, you’re welcome. It’s going to be so much fun. Those who aren’t, we’ll probably open that up in the next month or two for those who haven’t. I want you guys all thinking about this. Get your creativity, how can we get creative to get traffic? What are the different ways? You will notice over the next three months, three months there’s two big focuses that I have in my company. Number one is acquisition and number two is retention. So we have a really cool retention strategy we’re building out that has to do with nude squirrels. That’s all you get right now, it’s awesome.
And then acquisition, you’re going to see a whole bunch of stuff from infomercials to viral websites, to viral videos, to social. I hope you guys are watching what I’m doing, because there’s a lot of cool stuff happening. It’s interesting, I was telling my team this yesterday, a lot of the strategy we’re doing now are things we did ten years ago that nobody does anymore. Since I’ve been around that long, I remember it. I remember we had success with it. These viral sites we used to do back in the day. I could get 100 thousand, 200 thousand members in 2 or 3 weeks and they’re amazing. And we’re going to do it again. You guys are going to love. So you will see it, but watch it, model it. Because this is Russell focusing my creativity on traffic and what’s going to happen.
So if you’re watching close and taking notes you’ll see what’s happening. Because right now Clickfunnels is 750th most business website in the world, and it’s actually way more than that, but if you’re using custom domains then obviously it doesn’t count towards traffic. That’s just people, it’s us driving traffic with Clickfunnels and people using Clickfunnels in their sub domain. I would say if we were to take all traffic coming through Clickfunnels, we’re probably in the top 300 most business websites in the world.
We’re about to turn up the heat a lot. It’s exciting. That’s all I got for you guys today. I just want you guys thinking about this traffic creativity. How do you focus your creativity on traffic. If you don’t know how to do that, just watch me and model what I’m doing over the next few months. You’ll see a lot of it hitting hard in the next three months, that’s my next phase. Anyway, that’s what I got you guys, appreciate you all. If you are listening on iTunes, please leave me a review, I would appreciate it. Even if your review is Russell talks too fast, that’s cool. But please leave a review. If you are on marketingsecrets.com watching this video anywhere else, please share the video it helps me to keep wanting to do these and spending time with you guys. Appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything, and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.