This is the part of business that I honestly hate the most.
On today’s episode Russell shares what he feels are the worst parts of being a business owner including having to fire people. He talks about feeling horrible whenever he has to let someone go, even if they needed to be let go.
Some of the other things you’ll hear in this episode are:
So listen below to find out the parts of being a business owner that suck.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, good morning. Today is a beautiful day, and I’m grateful. Yesterday was a tough day, but today is beautiful. I’m out here, riding my bike again, it’s a little chilly and I wore shorts today. Probably a little too early to be in shorts. I think I could do shorts or I could do bike, but doing both this early in the morning is probably not a good idea. I’m feeling it already.
Anyway, I hope… I gotta go back and listen to the last podcast I did on my bike and see if you guys can hear what I’m talking about. Hopefully the wind is not too bad. I’m heading into the office today, we’ve got a webinar for Funnel Scripts 2.0. It’s actually Funnel Scripts, but Jim’s at a lot more and we’re doing it. It’s been a year since we launched it, so we’re re-launching it and raising the price and it’s going to be fun. So that’s what’s happening today in about 90 minutes, less than that. It’s happening here, pretty soon.
I’ve been thinking a lot, most of the podcast I just talk about happy-go-lucky stuff and cool things we’re doing and stuff like that. But sometimes business sucks. Sometimes it’s hard and something I want to talk about today, and I have another idea for a podcast that I might share in the future. I’m nervous about sharing that one but I’m just going over my regrets of the past ten years. Because I do have regrets.
I almost did a podcast a little while ago, but then I wimped out. I have it in my head and I think I will soon, but not today. Today is not so much about regrets as much as just the sad side of business. It’s tough because when you get started as an entrepreneur, I don’t know about you but I just wanted to sell stuff. I just wanted to create and sell, create and sell, that’s the fun part. That’s the part of business that’s so much fun. Initially when you start it, it’s just you in your basement or closet or on your laptop in your bedroom. Whatever it is, maybe one day you get a partner and you’re starting and you’re starting the creative process and doing stuff and having fun and selling, trying to sell………dang it’s cold. My fingers are numb.
But what’s interesting, at first you have all these problems. “I can’t figure out how to sell, I can’t figure out how to do this. No one’s buying. I can’t get traffic…” all the problems that happen at the first of your business, right. And I understand those, I remember those. I worked with a lot of people going through those. That part of business kind of sucks too. But after a while you figure out what are you selling? What do people actually want? What are they excited for? You figure out how to get traffic and eyeballs consistently. You start doing some cool stuff there. And that part becomes really, really fun.
Everything is working and you’re like, “Sweet, all my problems are solved. Making sales, making money, things are good.” But then what happens? You start getting a lot of customers, they start emailing you, and you get more of them, and then eventually you start drowning in supporting all the customers that come in. I remember for a long time I prided myself, “I answer all my own emails.” And then after a couple of years of that I couldn’t do it anymore. I went crazy. I couldn’t go on vacation, if I was on vacation I was stressing out.
I couldn’t create anymore because I was so busy. So finally I had to hire someone to help support. And that freed me. As soon as you hire your first support person you’ve got people. There’s payroll and taxes and all these new problems introduced. And as you keep growing, you try to figure out ways to maximize your time and figure out things you like the most and do that and start outsourcing and hiring people to do the other parts. And you go from one person to two to five to ten.
Now in Clickfunnels, we have just shy of 100 people now. Crazy. I swore I would never get back to this spot. But we’ve been a lot smarter this time around. With 100 people there’s all sorts of new challenges and issues. Especially in my business where 90% of your employees are entrepreneurs and they all want to be selling stuff and it’s hard to keep them focused. That’s a constant struggle on my side. There’s other things, tax issues, trademarking, now we’ve got all sorts of people out there using Clickfunnels, so now we’re hiring a full-time legal person just to scour the internet for compliance. It’s like, ugh. Success breeds a whole new level of challenges and hard things that you don’t think about when you’re trying to figure out how to sell something at the beginning.
But they come and there’s just different, what do they call it? There’s different Swont Analysis. Strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. There’s different opportunities at each level. But of everything the thing that I think sucks the worst in this whole business is when the people you love and care about and people who have done great work for you that for whatever reason you have to let them go. I still can’t get over that.
I remember the first time I fired someone I cried for the next hour. The person was a horrible person, looking back now, not only should I have fired them, I should have called the cops and locked him up. But I still cried like a little baby. Yesterday we had to let go a couple people that I’ve known a long time, that I care about. It didn’t, it wasn’t the right fit anymore. Man, for me it destroys me. All day yesterday I couldn’t even function or think or eat.
I hate it because I know what our business means to me and if someone took that away from me, how I would feel. I think I’d place all those things on them. It’s horrible. But it’s one of those things that has to happen and doesn’t always make logical sense but sometimes you…..I don’t know.
So I just wanted to share with you guys today because I know, depending where you’re at there’s different pains you are all going through. There’s different pains every step in this process, but the ones for me that are always the worst, is parting with people that are amazing, that you care about and you want to succeed. This is what the one thing that has given me comfort. I feel like if someone’s not completely happy in a spot or doesn’t fit, doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, us, as business owners, try really hard to make it work and try to, what do they say? Put a round peg in a square hole, or vice versa.
We can do that but I think not only does it hurt the business, but I think it hurts them more often than not. So usually there’s this huge pain of being able to let somebody go. But looking back now at the last almost 14 years now of having employees and seeing some of their journeys afterwards is like, it was so much pain letting that person go. But I look at what came from that, and it was the best thing. If that, if we hadn’t ever done this, that new door in their life wouldn’t have opened.
For example, I can’t give the details, but someone we had to let go about 6 months ago, probably 8 months ago now, it was really painful. I care about them, their family, their kids. It was, I bawled my eyes out. But I look now 8 months later and where that person went to at their next job, opened up the door, which radically changed that person’s life. Had we have selfishly kept them, it wouldn’t have served us or them.
Anyway, so that’s the only thing that kind of gives me solace. Is that the right word? Solitude? Solace? I think solace. Anyway, it makes me feel a little bit better at times like this. Anyway I just wanted to give you that podcast and let you know, wherever you’re at, whatever the challenges are you are struggling with, I get it. I’ve felt it at different levels. I think the biggest thing is just understanding that and being okay with it and just keep moving forward. Don’t lose sight of your vision of what you’re trying to create and who you’re trying to serve.
At the end of the day that’s the most important thing. There will be people who come and go and help you on your mission in different stages and I think those people are brought into your life and out of your life on purpose for different reasons. When you look at it that way, hopefully it makes some of the challenges a little bit easier. With that said, it’s a beautiful day today. It’s webinar day, it can’t get better than webinar day. We just sell some amazing stuff and change people’s lives, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m grateful for the sun shining this morning, and grateful for all of you guys. With that said, I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
Your real mission is to gather people and serve them at your highest level.
On today’s episode Russell talks about having a gathering and how you build one. He shares the kinds of gatherings he already has, and how gathering gatherers can help build your business.
Here are some of the cool things in today’s episode:
So listen below to find out how to gather and impact more people than you ever thought possible.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, good morning. This is Russell and I am heading to, not the worst place I can go in the morning. The worst place would be probably the accountants, they’re definitely the worst. Number two used to be lawyers, but my lawyer now is super awesome, so that’s cool. Number three is the dentist, so I’m heading to the dentist right now, which is not my favorite thing, but it’s that time. I got some weird thing on the left side of my mouth when I bite down. It really hurts, so hopefully they can fix that and I hope I don’t have any cavities, but I’ll let you guys know.
But this morning, I woke up and had a coaching session with one of my coaches, Tara Williams, which was really, really cool. She said something that I thought was cool and it got my mind thinking and then more and more cool stuff started happening. But we’re talking about the new book, and if I’m being completely honest there’s a lot of stress and pressure on me right now. Even though the book’s finally done, there’s…of course I can’t just sell a book you guys. I got all excited and had this idea for this Funnel Hacker Blackbox, which then meant I had a whole bunch of other stuff. And then there’s a bunch of….anyway, a lot of stuff going together to make this, I want to make this buying experience when you guys buy the book, the most fun thing ever. I want you to be like, “that was so fun we should buy it again.” That’s the goal.
So with that we’re just making a really cool funnel that would be really cool for you guys to funnel hack and then watch and learn and really hopefully model and use in your world. But we’re talking, oh I almost turned left and I’m glad I didn’t because there is insane traffic, and I’m already late for the dentist, so that was close.
But what we were talking about is gathering. What we do is we’re gathering people. So I think about each of your businesses, we talked about this from a list building standpoint, or from getting customers or things like that. Or I’d be putting products and services out there in the world. And you’re doing that to gather certain types of people to you. That’s the whole point of what we’re all doing. We create some amazing things that cause value in the world and in people’s lives. They get those things and then they gather to you.
Ten year ago those gatherings were like, “Okay, well people are on my email list.” But there was no physical gathering. Then we started doing events and there was kind of a physical gathering of people. Now, I look at facebook groups and it’s become kind of like the gathering spot. Most programs have a facebook group. We have that, we have our Funnel Hacker Group, which is all of you all. If you’re not in that by the way, you should come. We’ve got 50,000 people in that now. 50,000, if you go to projectclickfunnels.com it redirects you to our facebook group. Because I couldn’t remember how to get people there, so I bought projectclickfunnels.com.
But there’s 50,000 people gathered there together talking about what we’re all talking about. And then there’s, for different products we sell, like Inner Circle’s got a different group. People are gathered together. We communicate and hang out in this group. So we’re gathering. So for each of you guys, that’s kind of big piece of this pie. How are you gathering people together so that then when they’re together and they’re congregated together, you can serve them in the highest way that you are able to. Those are your products and services and training and podcasts, and coaching and blah. Supplements, whatever it is you’re selling, that’s really the goal.
Businesses become less transactional and is now more gathering people and figuring out how to serve them. That mindset shift is pretty big. There’s these gatherings and what was kind of cool. We were talking about, with the Expert Secrets book we’re gathering. That’s, I didn’t know this was my goal, but what’s interesting, and even with the Funnel Hackers and Clickfunnels and stuff, I am gathering gatherers, which is super cool when you think about it.
My goal is to gather all these people together and get them to start mass movements. That’s the whole point of the new book. How to build your own movement of people you can change and inspire and help and serve. So that’s my goal, is to gather all the gatherers, which is insanely cool and a huge honor. As I’m just thinking about that as a calling or a mission or whatever you want to call it. It’s a pretty cool thing. My job is to serve you guys so that you can gather more people and serve them. And hopefully during this whole process we have a little bit of impact on the world and we change people’s lives and we make things better and give people hope and faith in the future and what’s possible and make everyone’s journey’s here on the world a little bit better.
It was interesting, I heard someone talk about this before. Tony Robbins at our event was talking about why we all do what we do. He said, “When it all comes down to it. We’re doing it for feeling.” I was like, huh. How weird is that? We read books because the feeling, we watch a movie because of the feeling, we hang out with people because of the feeling we get. Feelings is what drives everything. It’s the feeling that we’re seeking, that we’re trying to get. A certain feeling we liked in the past, or that we didn’t like, we’re trying to stay away from that feeling.
And I’m not sure how this whole thing ties together, but when all is said and done, our goal is to gather people together so we can help them to feel good. I know that’s simplifying, way over simplifying the whole thing. Or is it? That’s kind of the thing. Why do I gather all of you guys together? I’ll say guys and gals. Why do I gather you guys together? Obviously there’s something I’m excited about and I’m sharing it. And it’s a tool and a theology and thought process that helps you be able to share your messages.
By me sharing it, I feel better. I feel happy. It makes me, it gets me excited, being able to share these things and seeing the light bulb go off in your heads. But then you gather people and you’re not necessarily teaching what I’m teaching. But you’re teaching your own thing. Maybe it’s weight loss or fitness, I guess weight loss and fitness are similar. But whatever it is that you do, you’re gathering people together and selling them products and services that make them feel good. And that’s kind of it. If you really boil it down.
Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I just started thinking about that. How do we give people those good feelings? How do we make support better so that people have good feelings when they deal with it? How do make the product better so they have better feelings? It’s all about feelings, that’s what we’re all looking for. That’s why people fall in love, that’s why they do drugs, on the positive and negative side, they’re all looking to get a special feeling or to stay away from a feeling they don’t like.
Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I don’t really know the point of my ramblings today other than I thought it was really cool to kind of look at this as each of us are gatherers. You’re gathering people. You’re gathering your tribe. You’re gathering your people that resonate with you and your message and who you are. And then after you’ve gathered them, you can serve them, help them and you can try to effect their lives by making them have better feelings. Feeling better about themselves and things around them, about the future and all those things.
What’s interesting is that when people are happy they treat other people better, it’s this huge compounding thing. It’s like a ripple, I hate using that because if you guys listened to the podcast back from day one, back when we were working on the project Rippln, but it never went. That was the whole concept. Throw a rock into the middle of a pond, what happens? There’s a ripple and it keeps going all the way out to the edge of the pond. And that’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re gathering people together, give them this ripple in their lives and it goes out.
It’s kind of corny when you say, “We’re going to change the world.” But we kind of are. Isn’t that cool when you think about it that way? The thing you’re doing has an impact and it changes somebody else’s life and it changes somebody else’s and it kind of ripples out.
So anyway, with that said, I just wanted to state that everyone keep on doing what you’re doing despite some of the pressure and stress and things that go into it. The ups and downs and failures and successes. All of those things are all wrapped into it. When all is said and done, what’s the real purpose? We’re gathering our people. Gather your people, they will come to you, the right people. And not everyone’s going to come to you or me or anyone, there’s people who can’t stand me. Especially after some of my fun jokes and stuff recently. There’s a lot of people who don’t like me. That’s cool. I don’t mind. It used to bug me, but it’s okay now. Because what is important, is my people, the people I am congregating will hear my voice, come to me and listen and I’ll be able to have impact and hopefully cause a change and make their lives better.
Like I said, my goal is to gather gatherers, and I think what fires me up more than anything is knowing that if I can affect you and help you gather more people, or serve more people at a higher level, if I can affect you and again, I’m not talking to everyone listening to this podcast, I’m talking to you. Yes, you the one listening right now. If I can affect you, to help people and to cause that gathering amongst your people, how cool is that? There’s thousands or millions of people that you can affect, that I never could. Because my gifts aren’t what yours are. But your gifts are special.
And I don’t want to, I think I might have bragged them yesterday because I’m so excited about it. But Brandon and Kaelin from Inner Circle, their numbers are insane right now. They’re getting 500 people a day joining their program. 500 women a day are coming and they’re helping these women look at themselves differently and lose weight and feel better. And usually what happens, I don’t know about you, but when I get on a weight loss kick, what do I do? I tell my friends and family and spouse and kids and we all, it’s a ripple effect that goes out there.
And I can’t do what Kaelin does. I can’t do what Tara does. I can’t do what….I’m trying to think of everyone in my inner circle. All the people we effect in the work, I can’t do what you do. But if I can help you gather more people and serve them at a higher level, that’s the key. That’s my mission.
Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. I hope it helps you think about what you do a little bit. And understand that that’s the goal, gather your people and that could be through building a list, podcasts, groups, whatever it is, you’re gathering people together and you’re trying to serve them at the highest level possible. That’s it, that’s the game. When you do that, they’re going to feel good. And when they feel good, people around them will feel good and it’ll trickle down. Kind of cool.
Anyway, I’m getting close to the dentist, but I’m still stuck in a lot of traffic, but I’m going to bounce, cause I am behind on my Voxers and my inner circle members need some responses, dang it. So I’m going to go catch up with them. Appreciate you all and we will talk soon.
An observation on people’s webinars who aren’t having the success that they want.
On this episode Russell talks about The Perfect Webinar and how people get confused about not teaching and goes over what you need to do.
Here are some interesting things in this episode:
So listen below if you are struggling with The Perfect Webinar, this might be why.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell. I’m out riding my bike to the office because today is a beautiful day. I hope the wind’s not too loud. Anyway, there’s a huge hot air balloon out in the sky. This is a sign that it’s going to be an amazing day, it’s gotta be.
And then this morning I woke up at 5:00, which was awesome, I got three hours worth of stuff done, well probably two and a half hours before the kids were up. I’m feeling good and excited for today. This whole week is going to be amazing. This weekend I’m flying out to speak to Grant Cardone’s audience, teach those guys about some funnels, which is going to be so much fun. In fact, I’m going to fly for forever, by I fly Friday all day, I land and speak Saturday morning and fly home Saturday night. So twenty four hours, less than twenty four hours and hopefully we’ll go and you it’s kind of funny, I used to be a public speaker. I was doing that and that was my job, my gig, my thing.
I would figure out how much money I would make per attendee, then I’d be like okay, so based on this means I’m going to make x. For example this weekend Grant said there’s 2100 people in the room, if that’s true and his people, how do I say this nicely? They are funnel beginners, I’ll say funnel beginners for recorded history. My guess is if I screw it up, I should close 30% of the room. If I do awesome, it should be 50%. So let’s say 30%, let’s say there’s 2000, I’m not that good at numbers, especially while riding a bike.
So that means 30% would be 600 people, what I sell from the stage is 2 grand, so 600 would be 1.2 million and then I get to keep half of that. So I would bring home 600k. So basically I’m flying across the country to go pick up a check for $600k and I’ll be back in 24 hours. Isn’t that exciting? I’m excited for it, and hopefully I’ll close more than 30%. I’m hoping 50%, so we will see, but I’m excited.
It’s funny, because I’m not allowed to share how much we spent to get Tony Robbins to come, Marcus, all those guys out it in their contract and I’m not allowed to say, but it’s a lot. Somewhere between, on the low end 70-80 thousand, to the high end, over a quarter of a million bucks and beyond. Those guys are like famous people, so I’m not famous, but I know how to sell, so my check is actually bigger than them.
It’s funny, one of my first speaking mentors is John Childers, he used to talk about that, “I’m not famous but I make 10x of what Norm Schwartzkopf makes on a speech because I know how to sell from the stage.” I always thought that was cool. It’s really cool now, looking and being like dang, that actually happens now.
I wanted to share something with you guys today because I think it’s so tough and you learn this as you keep doing it. So Perfect Webinar, dang I’m out of shape. I’m just moving my feet barely. I should not be this tired, but it is freezing cold out here. My fingers are red and numb. Anyway, what was I going to say? Oh yeah.
So as I’ve been teaching this, the biggest thing how to get people to break, everyone was in teaching mode, and so they teach for the whole webinar and they’re not making any sales or very few sales. I was like no, the content of the webinar is not about teaching, it’s about using stories to break false belief patterns and rebuild them. So people are shifting that singular, and crushing it. For example, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to brag about this, I’ll do it anyway. So Brandon and Kaelin in the Inner Circle, who are amazing, I’ve talked about them a bunch. They joined Inner Circle a year ago. They did 80,000 dollars that month. It’s been now, almost a year, and this month they did a million dollars in a month. Which is nuts and insane and amazing. They’re amazing. So fun to watch them.
So some of you will get it and just crush it. Someone will get it sometimes and forget other times, but one of the big things, mistakes people are making is they shift all 100% to belief breaking and they tell a story but they’re not teaching anything. They’re like, “Well you said not to teach.” I’m like, “I said not to teach, but if you look at the epiphany bridge script, which you guys get more access when the Expert Secrets book comes out, but I’m walking through my epiphany, you hear the back story, the internal and external fears, and from there, you go on this journey and you have an epiphany, and from there you create a plan. So what is the plan? The plan is this what. What am I going to do? So first I’m going to try this and then this, and you walk people through what the plan was. Then in the plan you hit conflict, which causes emotions. You talk about the conflict, the issues that came up. Then you got the resolution and you have the resolution of the external and the internal.” So that’s like the process. But when I’m talking about the plan, I’m talking about, I’m going through it step by step. This is me teaching. I’m showing this is my plan. This is what I did. Step one I did this, step two…..so you’re showing the “what”. You’re not going into the “how”, but you’re showing the “what” when you’re showing the plan.
I can get people a plan, “Here’s the plan. You gotta build the funnel.” But they still gotta invest because they gotta understand the “How”. But I gotta give them the what. That gets them inspired, they see, “Oh my gosh, that’s going to make people feel like they’re learning” When they see the “what”, and then when you sell, it’s the how.
So I just wanted to kind of throw it out there in case anyone’s like, “I’m doing what Russell said, I’m not teaching anything.” I’m like, “No, it’s not that you’re not teaching anything. You’re doing it through story, with the goal of breaking the belief pattern and then when you’re walking people through the plan, that’s where you’re doing the teaching of the “What” not the “how”. When you understand that part, that’s what makes it crush it.
So I hope that helps, but I’m at the office. Not too bad, about a 5 minute bike ride from my house. Good to know now. Anyway, appreciate you all for listening. Have a great day, great week. And if any of you guys are going to be at Grant Cardone’s seminar, come say hi and please, please wear one of your funnel hacker t-shirts. Funnel Hacker, It’s a cult, we’re not confusion soft, any one you got, make sure to wear it. With that said, I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Behind the scenes on what I’m recording today.
On this episode Russell talks about the new survey element now available for free on Clickfunnels. He also shares his plans for what his team is calling Superfunnels.
Here are some of the interesting things in this episode:
So listen below if you want to know how Superfunnels is going to work and what it will do for you.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I’m heading out and I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of tired. It’s funny, people always ask me, “Russell, how do you stay so positive all the time? How do you keep moving? How do you get so much stuff done?” and the honest truth is sometimes I’m tired and sometimes I don’t want to move forward. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to get stuff done. But I do anyway. So I don’t know. There’s your personal development lesson for toward. Just keep moving forward.
There’s a really cool cartoon called Meet The Robinsons, it’s one of my favorites. When my kids were younger, the twins were younger, we used to watch it every day. But the whole message in it is “Keep moving forward. Keep moving forward.” That’s how it is.
Today I’m a little later than normal, it took me a little longer, but I’m done. I’m moving forward, and I actually am excited for today. This is why, last summer, it’s been a long time, we decided that we needed to figure out who was using Clickfunnels and speak to them differently. Because right now we kind of have one message that we shove down everyone’s throat, which has worked but I know there’s a lot of people who haven’t bought or been alienated or whatever because they’re like, “How does Clickfunnels work for me?”
So we messaged a guy on Ryan Levesque’s team. We’ve nicknamed him Survey Steve, he’s awesome. So we had him do a deep dive survey, which if you know much about me, it’s hard for me to go deep on things. Deep dive survey is so stressful for me. I always run really simple ask campaigns. “What’s your number one question about blank?” and that’s it. Whereas Survey Steve, he wanted to go intense and run the ones that Ryan talks about in his book. I was like, “Sweet man.”
So we paid him and ran this intense, crazy thing and came back with all sorts of awesome, juicy data and we were really excited. We were going to try to get this huge new, we’re calling it Superfunnel inside of our office. That’s the code name. The code name is Superfunnel. We were trying to get it done before the Marcus Lemonis thing, then we didn’t. So I kind of put in on the backburner because I have a few things going on in my life, if you haven’t noticed.
So Superfunnel’s been on pause, but it’s in the back of my mind. This is what we have to do. The book launch is coming up in about six weeks and I know that Superfunnel’s got to be done by book launch because people, we’ll get a whole new herd of people coming into Clickfunnels. At that time we just want to make sure this new Superfunnel is done.
So what is aSsuperfunnel. Basically the results from Survey Steve, was we had basically five different, well I think there were seven, but we were able to combine a couple, because they made a lot of sense, but into five markets in Clickfunnels. Each of those markets uses it differently and we needed to speak to those guys differently. And as you know last week we launched the new survey element inside of Clickfunnels, which is the most ninja, amazing thing on planet earth. If you haven’t used it yet, we haven’t talked about it a ton yet, because we’re just letting people use it first and then we’ll start bragging about it in a week or two, but it’s legitimately amazing.
So we’re using that. When the Superfunnels is done you go to Clickfunnels.com, there’ll be a video of me basically saying, “Hey, this is Russell. Welcome to Clickfunnels.” I’ll say something about, “you’ve probably heard about funnels, that’s why you’re here. You’re probably wondering if a funnel is right for me, if so which funnel should I use. Well I don’t know the answer yet either. There’s hundreds of potential funnels. But if you take this quick quiz down below, we’ll find out what funnel is right for you.”
And then I’ll have a training video show you exactly the funnel, how to use it in your business. So they take this survey, click the button, it pops up, the survey element goes through, they take the survey and we identify which of the five markets they are. And then there’s a video. Basically for each of the five submarkets, we’ve found three core funnels that would work out best for them. There’s going to be a video that I’m recording today, of me showing, “If you’re an author, speaker or whatever, these are the funnels I would use, here’s how they work.” Boom, we make a special offer.
“Oh, you’re in retail. These are the funnels I’d use. Here’s your special offer.” “Oh, you’re a ecommerce, here’s the funnels I’d use, here’s your special offer.” And kind of go through them, boom, boom, boom. Thing by thing.
Anyway, that’s kind of the plan. Somebody just pulled in behind me, but awkwardly blocking me, so I couldn’t back out now. Anyway, if I get shot I’ll tell you to….if something weird happens. We had someone the other day……This lady is literally taking a picture of our office, she’s probably listening to the podcast right now. You can come say hi if you want.
We had someone the other day Facebook live outside the office like, “I’m outside Clickfunnels headquarters.” It’s kind of funny for us to see people excited about our office. Anyway, that’s happening today. So hopefully soon you guys will see Superfunnel, and we call it Superfunnel because it’s not just a survey and five videos, that’s the beginning. There’s a survey and five videos and based on that there’s five different follow-up funnels, there’s five different…..a whole bunch of stuff on the back end. It’s pretty awesome, but that’s kind of what’s happening.
Anyway, I’m getting these done today and then what’s fun, if I get these done today then next week I can spend time actually building funnels, which I haven’t done in a while. I’m so excited. So excited. Anyway, that’s all I got you guys. I’m going to bounce and let you guys go. Think about that in your market, I recommend and encourage you guys to play with the survey element inside of Clickfunnels, it’s free you just gotta go and use the version 2 editor. Click on survey and it’ll work. It’s intense.
It does as much, if not more, than a lot of the software products out there charging two or three hundred bucks a month. You get it for free. Is it okay if we over deliver? Are you guys okay if we over deliver? I just want to make sure you guys are okay with that, if not I can quit, we can quit making features and doing awesome stuff. Alright, thanks you guys. Talk to you soon.
Let me show you behind the scenes of what I’m doing on my birthday launch.
On this episode Russell talks about doing a Facebook Live presentation of the Follow-up Funnel presentation he did at Funnel Hacking Live for his birthday. He explains why they are doing the Facebook Live presentation and what it means to go all in.
Here are some of the cool things in this episode:
So listen below to find out how you can be all in, it makes a great birthday present for Russell!
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell and guess what today is? Today is my birthday. I’m an old man. Everyone’s like, “Take the day for yourself.” And I will be, but first, what good is a birthday if you can’t use it as a way to sell a whole bunch of stuff. Come on now.
So I’m heading to the office for the next two hours because we got a cool promotion happening and I want to explain the what, the why to you guys so you can see what’s happening.
Alright, so how do I start this? Let’s see….When I was first learning marketing and all this exciting-ness, almost 14 years ago now, it’s fun because I’m learning all these things and I thought they were so cool but I didn’t have a chance to use it. Now I have this cool chance to start using everything.
So Jay Abraham said there’s only 3 ways to grow a business. Way number one, get more customers. Way number two, get those customers to buy more. Way number three, get those customers to buy more often. For me, the first two or three years of my business was all about number one, get more customers and it still is, I’m not, not trying to get more customers. In fact, I’m trying to get a lot more customers. But the primary focus of our business for a long time was way number one, get more customers.
So now, as we’re moving into two and a half years, moving on three, one of our big conscious decisions is, everything’s working well, we’re still getting a lot of new customers, that’s under control, it’s working, it’s growing. So the way number two now is to get these customers to buy more. More customers, get them to buy, then get them to buy more often. Those are the three ways.
I’m driving to my office and the school bus is coming and all these kids are running out into the street. Sorry, I just gotta make sure I don’t hit any little kids. Oh, they’re so cute.
Alright, that’s our focus. For us, how do we get our customers to spend more on everything we’re doing? Obviously more often, that’s creating more courses and products and things getting them to buy more often. So that’s always kind of in the mix as well, but its not the core thing. The core thing is number two, getting them to spend more. So for us it’s all about ascension now.
So for those of you guys at Funnel Hacking Live, you saw when I did the Follow-up Funnel presentation, what was the strategy behind that, do you think, outside of just it was really fun and we got to make fun of Infusionsoft, or Confusionsoft and Lowkey pages, we got to take some swings to try to topple the dictator, which I talked about yesterday, which was really fun.
But the main thing was we’re trying to, there’s a lot of things, watch the presentation, there were a lot of subtle importance. Number one is to cause a seed of doubt in any other system besides ours. Number two is show people that email auto-responders are the past. And the new opportunity is Follow-up Funnels, to show them that we are the only people that control the funnels, so that all the stuff we’re doing, that Actionetics is doing. We’re the only company that can do that.
We’re trying to do a whole bunch of things, but when all is said and done the real major goal of that entire presentation was to get people to start spending more, to ascend. To move from a $97 a month plan to a $297 a month plan. And if you look at the last 2 ½ years $97 a month plan is way more money just because the volume of people. I think we’re at 33 thousand active members, we passed this week. So the majority of them, obviously are paying $97. In fact I think 10% are at the $297 level.
So the goal is getting that 10% to 20 and then 20 to 30 and getting people to spend more, Jay Abraham 101. Rule number two, get them to spend more. So that what’s this presentation was about. We did it at Funnel Hacking Live. I think most of you guys were there, saw it. It went crazy and we made a special offer for if you went all in. You can go over there and upgrade. They get a shirt that says, “We are not confusionsoft”, they get stickers that say, “I build funnels.” They got temporary tattoos, they got funnel hacker stickers, they got 15 follow-up funnels, share funnels with their account. A really good offer. And all they do is upgrade.
But what is cool. We did it all on their phones, we had someone at the very beginning of my presentation had everyone hold up their phones, and login into their Clickfrunnels account on the phone. And then when they got to the end pitch, it said, “Hold up your phone again and go to imallin.com” and they go to imallin.com and what happens is there’s a button that says, “Here, see if you’re all in.” and if they’re not all in they saw a picture of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone slapping his face, saying, “Ahh, you’re not in. Click here to upgrade.” They click the upgrade and it automatically upgraded them from $97 to $297.
If they were all in it took them to a page that said, “You are all in.” and they get a bunch of really cool stuff. So that was basically the offer. And we got the majority of the room to go all in, into upgrading and to become full members of our cult-ure. And it was awesome.
So today for my birthday, what we’re doing, we’re streaming that live for the entire world. That presentation, we’re going to try to get everybody to go all in. In fact, this month, even without this promotion I think this month will be the first month that our 297 dollar a month members are worth more to us than the $97 a month. And still it’s a fraction of a percentage, but each member is worth three times as much to us. Maybe it’s after this promotion, anyway, we’re getting close to crossing that, which is one of our big goals, obviously.
So today what we’re doing, we scheduled a Facebook Live on my birthday, starting in 25 minutes, from right now. And in fact, I’m in the office sitting in the car telling you guys this because I’m getting excited to go in there and get all this kicked off. Basically we’ve been promoting, Facebook Live let’s you schedule events now. So you schedule it and promote it and people can subscribe to the event. And I don’t know what happens, I’m assuming Facebook texts you or messages you or something to let you know it’s going live, I hope. So that’s the plan. We promoted hard yesterday, I did a Facebook Live pushing, a pre-facebook Live. I sent emails. Everything trying to get people to subscribe.
The only thing, it doesn’t show you how many people have subscribed unfortunately. Anyway, we’ll figure that out. So we’re going live, and he’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to go on first and we’re using OBS, some new Facebook Live software. It’s basically, hold up a camera and I’ll be talking for 10-15 minutes first, and then I’m going to click play and we’ll play the actual video from the live event so you’ll get the same energy and emotion and everything of us on stage, and then at the end I’ll come back on and make a special offer and push everyone to go all in.
In fact, if you’re listening to this and you want to go in, go to imallin.com. Isn’t that a cool domain name? We had to pay a pretty penny for it. Imallin.com, pretty cool. And then everyone can ascend and upgrade. But I recommend watching the Follow-up Funnel presentation, in fact if you want to just see the presentation I posted it on Followupfunnels.com, you can go there and actually watch it if you miss this, if you want to watch it in the future. Watch the presentation, see how I did, see all the subtleties of what I did and how I did. Why we’re creating an us versus them, how we’re getting people to want to upgrade. We’re causing seeded doubts in all other options beside us. We’re showing, again, it’s not an improvement offer. Notice how we structured it, it’s not improvement, it’s all about new opportunity.
Anyway, there’s a lot of cool things we did, and we’re really proud of the presentation. Even if you don’t go all, which you’d be insane not to. But even if you don’t you’ll learn a lot from watching the presentation and seeing what’s possible. So that’s the game plan. I’m going to go in there and test it out. And hopefully we get half of our members to go all in today and to ascend up and I’m excited. I’s going to be a lot of fun.
And that’s all I got. I appreciate you guys, I’m going to jump in here and go live for my birthday. Then when I’m done, my wife and I are going on a hot date and I’m done for the rest of the day. Then I’m going to pick my kids up from school and we’re going to goof off and eat junk food and it’s going to be amazing. Then I gotta do scouts tonight. Oh, scout leader. Anyway, it’ll still be fun. So that’s my plan today. All of you guys have a good, celebrate my birthday fun, come hang out with us, come watch our stuff, and we’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
One of the steps in starting your revolution.
In this episode Russell talks about what it means to topple the dictator. He also talks about not being afraid of taking risks and why it’s like jumping off a cliff and making your parachute on the way down.
Here are some fun things in today’s episode:
So listen below to find out who the dictator is and how Russell is going to topple them.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I want to welcome you to Marketing In Your Car. I hope that everyone is doing amazing today. Tomorrow is my birthday, which I’m really excited about and at the same time I’m a little nervous, in a good way. For those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, well let me step back.
I talk a lot about this, I’m a big believer in first off, competition, which I did a whole podcast on that a little while ago. Most of you guys liked, I had one or two of you who were a little offended, but you know, whatever. But I like to compete. If there’s not something to compete against, then it’s not even fun for me. So it’s like, I gotta find somebody and go and compete towards that, right.
We also talk a lot about the attractive character and creating an us versus them and creating things like that, and it’s funny, last week I was at Dean Graziosi’s affiliate mastermind so everyone who sold his book got to go to this mastermind. Ryan Levesque and I were talking about building mass movements and cult-ure and those things we talk about and he was asking me if I had heard about, I don’t remember the guys name, I’ll have to go back and look at it. I was like, “no.” and he’s like, “you should go study his stuff on that. He talks all about 12 phases in a revolution.” One of them was topple the dictator, that’s a big part of it.
For us it’s like, alright so we can either be nice and just you know, not compete, or compete secretly, or we can bring our entire community in on this and make it a big deal. So of course, I decided to make it a big deal, because that’d be more fun. So the goal in the step here in us building this revolution, the Clickfunnels revolution is toppling the dictator. Who’s the dictator? For us, we had to find a common enemy and it really, right now, which it won’t be after we pass them, but for now it’s Infusionsoft was the common enemy.
At the Funnel Hacking Live event we did, I did a presentation called Follow-up Funnels and we talked about trying to get everyone to be all in. In fact, we bought imallin.com as the domain name that everyone goes to, to say “I’m all in.” And when they’re all in, it means using Clickfunnels and Actionetics, and you’re getting rid of Confusionsoft and Lowkey Pages and all these other things, which is kind of a joke for those who were at the event.
So it’s been fun. What was interesting is that most of the people at the event, most of you guys know, you ran in the back and said you’re all in. You got the t-shirt that said, “We’re not Confusionsoft”, you got the temporary tattoos, you got the “I build funnels” stickers, all these amazing cool things. So while that’s awesome, we wanted to keep that going so tomorrow, on my birthday, we’re going to be doing, we’re going to actually take the presentation from the event and we’re going to Facebook Live it. So not just the 1500 people who were in the room, but potentially hundreds, hopefully at least a hundred thousand people or more are going to see that presentation in the next week or so, which will hopefully get a whole bunch of people to go all in, in Clickfunnels, upgrade to Actionetics and stop dinking around with all these other crappy tools and just using what we’ve built for them.
I’m excited for that, but at the same time it kind of makes you nervous because you’re like, “We’re putting it out there, we’re putting Lowkey Pages and ConfusionSoft out there and I know…..” well, I’m interested, I know I’ll get some annoyed people, especially some of my friends that own these other businesses, and I’m curious what will happen, if they’ll leave and blow it off or if they’ll contact me. Who knows.
The reality is that’s, if you’re going to build a revolution and a cult-ure and all these kind of things, you can hide behind it and not talk about it, or you can make it a big deal and bring your community in on it, and I think it’s more fun to do that.
So anyway, I’m excited for tomorrow. If you haven’t seen that yet, stay tuned and I’m pretty sure I’ll put it on followupfunnels.com or imallin.com, somewhere that presentation will be in case you want to go see it, in case you missed it. You’ll have a chance to see what follow-up funnels are, how it’s the future, we’re no longer talking about email funnels, that was an old opportunity. The new opportunity is follow-up funnels and what’s possible inside of Actionetics, is second to none. So that’s what we’re really excited about.
I’m excited to show it to everybody. With that said, I’m at the office but the other cool thing today is I’m filming. We sold Fill Your Funnel, and I wanted to comment one thing because the podcast I kind of did to recap the event, the one for 40 minutes or something, I talked about how some of the things, follow-up funnels did better than I thought, but Fill Your Funnel didn’t do as well as I thought, it didn’t do bad, for all intents and purposes, it did really, really good. But obviously I always have big goals for myself and what I’m expecting and things like that, and I don’t think it was executed perfectly on my side, which I take total, it’s totally my fault and I’m okay with that. But what’s cool about it is that we still sold over 100 people that got into Fill Your Funnel, which is our new traffic course.
Today I’m actually all dressed up. I’m about to go into the studio and start recording a lot of the products and stuff for that, which is going to be pretty cool. Anyway, I got an email yesterday because I notified everybody that we had a Facebook group and let everybody in and somebody messaged me and said, “Hey Russell, I’m excited for Follow-up, or follow-up…..” Too many funnels, fill your funnel, follow-up funnels, funnel hacks, funnel hacking, funnel hacking live. I gotta get different names. Anyway, they said how excited they were. “Sorry you didn’t sell as many as you hoped for, but we’re really excited to be part of this.”
And I kind of thought for a second, I didn’t want anyone to take what I said as that. That I didn’t sell as many as I hoped for, because that wasn’t what I was frustrated about. I was frustrated about myself and the fact that the presentation was good, but it wasn’t great yet. The cool thing about this, this is why I preach this all the time to everyone. We do our presentations over and over again. That was my first time ever doing that presentation and from it I intimately, when you’re standing in front of 1500 people doing a presentation, you feel the energy of the room really fast.
So I know what parts were slower and sticking points that didn’t get people to move. I know what things did really, really well. And from that I know what tweaks and changes I need to make. So for me, it’s actually a really good thing. I did it and now it’s like, now I did it, now I know what changes and tweaks I need to make and then that presentation, after I perfect it, that’ll be something we use for forever. It’ll bring hundreds of people a month for hopefully the next ten years or more.
So don’t feel bad, it was a learning experience, I was just frustrated at myself. But now that I’ve done it, now I can perfect it and I can change it. So for a lot of you guys who, I think a lot of us get stuck in the fear mode. I’ve gotta bad habit that has helped me, luckily, serve you well. I’m not that good at planning and preparing something like that, so usually I set a deadline and then all the sudden it’s like, “Oh crap, the deadlines here, we gotta go.” And then I’ll pull an all-nighter and we just do it. And half the time it doesn’t do well and half the time it does awesome. I say it’s more than half the time. The majority of the time it doesn’t do well the first time.
But what’s cool, I just did it. It’s like I just jumped off the cliff and then on the way I’m building the parachute trying to figure it out and then we land and we’re like, “huh, that hurt. I broke my leg, but now that the parachutes built I can go do it again.” Then you jump off and you perfect the parachute every single time. Does that analogy make any sense? I don’t even know if it does.
So that’s kind of the concept as a whole. Hopefully, don’t anyone feel bad for me, but hopefully it motivates you to be like sweet, I can do that. I’m going to jump off a cliff and my first webinar is going to crash and burn or it’s going to do okay. But I can’t fix it until I know what’s wrong. So I have to get rid of that fear that’s holding me back and just run off the cliff and jump. The better you get at that, the better you’ll be in life. The better your business. If you look at everything that’s been meaningful in life.
I think about my marriage, yeah that was scary to get married. But I was like, I love her so, alright let’s go. And we ran and jumped off the cliff. Maybe this is, in Mormon time it’s a little different, but I met my wife on Halloween, so October. We hung out at the house a few times, and then in January we went on our first date. April we were engaged, and August we were married. So it was less than a year from meeting.
And I was so annoyed, the timeline. Because I was like, I went on a date in January, by March we should be engaged or something, what’s taking so long? It wasn’t until April until it was like definitely. On my side it was like, “I’m ready to jump off the cliff.” And she’s like “I don’t know. You’re a kid.” It’s funny, she asked some of my friends, “Do you think Russell will be able to support me if we get married?” It’s kind of funny looking back now.
But there’s fear right? So most of have so much fear, we wait and wait and wait and miss out on these amazing things and it’s like, I think I’ve become really good at like, “I want that thing. I’m scared, but I want it more.” So I just run and jump. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever cliff jumped or whatever. It’s like the longer you stand up there the harder it is. It’s easiest to get up there and be like, “I’m scared…” and you just jump. I think in most things in life, that’s what we gotta become better at. Just letting fear go away and just looking at what we want and then running and jumping.
And typically you’re going to get beat up and bruised from the fall, but after you made that jump you’re like, “That wasn’t that bad. My parachute’s half built now. I’m going to do it. This time I’ll actually be done by the time I’m finished.” And then it just gets better and better and better.
So that’s what I got today. Hope that helps you guys. I’m going to go in and film some stuff for our Fill Your Funnel members. We’re going to start filling our funnels with amazing prospects of people who want to give you money, who you can serve and it’s going to be awesome. Thanks everybody, we’ll talk to you soon.
This is the reason why many of us, including me, often fall short of truly changing people’s lives.
On today’s episode Russell talks about struggling with his need to perfect his book as he’s reading it for the audiobook version. He remembers struggling with it 2 1/2 years ago when doing the same thing with Dotcom Secrets book and how that has helped work through it this time.
Here are some of the cool things you’ll hear in this episode;
So listen below to find out why Russell struggles so much doing the audiobook versions of his books.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, it’s Monday, well at least for me. Who knows when you’ll listen to this. But even if it’s not Monday, treat it like it’s Monday because it’s going to be amazing today. I am actually on my way to go record the last half of the Expert Secrets book for audiobook format.
It’s interesting, I don’t know how many of you guys have done it before, but I remember the Dotcom Secrets book, when it was done we were planning the launch, everything was happening. And all the sudden the week before I was like, “Wait a minute, what if we did an order form bump that was the audiobook? That’d be the coolest thing in the world.” So then I was like, how do you make an audiobook? So I tried to start recording it myself, and that didn’t work. So I’m like, there’s gotta be recording studios that do this kind of thing.
So I search around, there’s this dude in Boise who has a recording studio for bands, but I don’t think we’re in the era where bands record a lot of stuff anymore or whatever. So anyway, I hired him to do the book and it was awesome, kind of. Well, it turned out awesome for those that got the audiobook version. But a couple of things, because I forgot the mental turmoil that I went through. So the problem is he said normally people spend a week recording an audiobook but I had to do it all in one day because I was in a huge time crunch.
So I started trying to do the whole book in a day, which had a lot of pain associated with it because it just took so long. And it was tiring and it was, I was trying to keep my energy level up because I didn’t want people listening and each chapter getting tired-er and tired-er with me. So I was doing all sorts of stuff to keep me awake and alert, which was really hard. Honestly, there’s a lot of pain associated with that first book.
And the other thing that is interesting, first half of the Dotcom Secrets book is written like a story so it sounds really well. Then the last half it’s like examples and things that don’t make sense as an audiobook. So I recorded it and I remember as I’m doing that whole thing, it made me really self conscious about the book because I was like, these don’t sound awesome. The first half of the book sounded cool, but these parts, me telling the script and plugging in examples, it just doesn’t work unless you’re reading it.
So I did it, but what’s interesting is when it was done, I was, and I forgot about this until Friday when I started recording this version, but I forgot how self conscious when it came to the book while I was recording the audiobook version. It was this weird mind thing where I was like, this book is not very good. Because I don’t think it’s that good as an audiobook. But because of that, I never, after that was the last time I read the book, was when I did the audiobook. I put it on a shelf and I never read it.
Then we launched it, literally a week later and sold, I think last we checked it was like 79 thousand copies, so we’re getting close to one hundred thousand copies, which is awesome. And I’ve had insane amounts of people tell me that the book changed their life and changed their perspective on things and helped them understand marketing and sales and funnels. It did it’s job and I’m really proud of it. Really, really proud of it.
What’s funny is that I know that as we’re approaching our next book launch, there was things I wanted to clean up in the book, and most of them are things that I remember came to my head during the audiobook version, things that bugged me back then. So last week when I was flying to Arizona on Wednesday I got the old book out and I was highlighting all the stuff I wanted to change. And as I was reading it I was like, “Man, this book…” I probably shouldn’t say this about your book, it’s not very humble, “This book is really good.” I was really proud of it, even though there’s things I want to change and tweak or whatever, but I was really proud of it.
And I forgot. I was like, “Man, I haven’t read this in a long time, I forgot about it.” And then Friday I went in to read the Expert Secrets book I started getting this, I was sitting in the exact same chair, in the exact same room, exact same everything as the Dotcom Secrets book. And the first part of the book is similar. It reads like a story, so it, I was liking it. But then I got to the parts that are similar, where it’s like I’m taking the power point slides and I’m plugging in all the stuff. And it doesn’t read good as an audiobook that way. So I started becoming more and more self conscious as I was reading it.
I spent probably 6 or 7 hours in the studio recording the book and by the time I left, I was a wreck, my whole brain was just second guessing the book, is it any good? Maybe it’s not any good? What if people don’t like this because it doesn’t make sense this way? And all the sudden as I was sitting at home I was laying there, after I think my wife went to bed. I think I was watching Shark Tank or something because I was hopped up on enough caffeine to give me energy to read the book and I couldn’t fall asleep.
I was sitting there and stressing out and then I was just like “Huh, I kind of remember this from 2 ½ years ago when I did it with the Dotcom Secrets book, and I remember how much I second guessed the book and I didn’t even want to sell it after I finished the audiobook. But we did it anyway because I was like I can’t do anything, I just have to put it out there. I kind of feel the same way about the Expert Secrets book. And this time luckily it broke up into two days, otherwise it would have been even worse. That’s why I’m going back to do the last. I probably got 68 percent of it done on Friday and I’m going to do the last 40 today.
It’s just funny how much you second guess yourself. And I started thinking about all the products I’ve created in the last 14 years, and the interesting thing is I’ve never gone back and watched any of the products ever. And I think that the problem that some of us have, is that we do. You put your heart and your soul into something and when you’re creating it, you know it’s right. When I was working on the book I was like, “I know this is right. I know.” I felt right about it and then when I went back for the book version, its me doing the audiobook, you start second guessing yourself because you’re like, “Ah, I didn’t say that right. I should have said it this way. “ So much of this stuff floods into your mind that if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s being published, it’s being printed, the launch date’s happening, all these things, I probably would just pull the plug.
“You know what? Screw it, I hate this book.” Just running away. Luckily the wheels are in motion just like the Dotcom Secrets book, I couldn’t do anything about it. The Dotcom Secrets book we were giving away a Ferrari, there were no if, ands, or buts. This is happening whether I liked it or not. The same thing with this and I’m grateful for that because I think a lot of us, we record something and we go back and listen to it, and then you second guess yourself and you cancel this thing that could have been life changing for somebody else.
So I would recommend for a lot of you guys, first off, if you’re editing your own videos or audio, I bet that’s hard. I luckily have no skills or talents, so I’m not able to do that, but if I could I can imagine how I would be stressing out and trying to cut our every cough or hiccup and everything. I would be trying to make it perfect, whereas the perfection is often times what kills the project or what takes the soul out of it.
You know Marketing In Your Car, you’ve guys have heard me sneeze, you’ve heard me almost kill squirrels, I even got pulled over once, or at least almost pulled over multiple times. But that rawness of it is what makes it intriguing. I think sometimes we try to perfect it so much that it loses it. I remember I was listening to a Jay Abraham course back in the day and it’s the first time I remember hearing Brian Tracey and I was listening to this presentation of him on stage and I was like, “Dude, this guy is captivating.” Everything was amazing about it. I was like I want to learn everything Brian Tracey. So I went online and to Ebay and bought every Brian Tracey course known to man, and the first one I plug in and it’s Brian in the studio reading a book and I was like, I listened for probably an hour and I was like, this is horrible. I just turned it off and I’ve never listened to Brian Tracey since, which is sad because the first experience with him live in front of people, there are flaws and things and it was amazing.
In fact, it’s interesting, everyone is obsessed with audiobooks, and I like audiobooks, but if you look at what I listen to, this morning while I was working out I was not listening to a course of Dan Kennedy onstage. Because there’s something, I like people’s energy on Stage much better than their energy reading a book in a studio, typically. That’s why I’ve tried to keep, in fact that’s one big reason why I read my own audiobook, as opposed to everyone else was like, “Don’t read your own audiobook, hire someone else to do it for you.” because of the pain I’m going through now, but I was like “Then you’ve got some dude reading a book to you. At lease when I’m doing it I’m able to use my own voice inflections and talk the way I would speak to somebody more personally and have a little more fun with it.
But there’s something about live, so I would just say, the reason why I’m sharing any of this, in fact, I think sharing my mental battles I have with myself over my own content is the same thing all of you guys are dealing with. And I would just recommend to, if I was most of you, don’t ever go watch your course after you do it. Let the people speak. Because you’re going to be so, at least for me, I’m so critical of myself, I would hat everything.
I literally, if I went back to every podcast I would edit out every stutter, which I just did three of them right there in a row. I would edit out every cough, every sneeze, edit everything and then it would become this perfect thing and you guys wouldn’t connect to it. I just think it’s important to pull yourself out of the editing of the content if you are the content creator, because I think sometimes because of our perfectionism, that we like and we expect of our own stuff, it will actually keep you from creating what will give people the lasting change that they had made.
So I hope that helps somebody who’s stuck in that part of it right now like I was and have been and am in often. With that said, I’m going to wrap this, for a couple of reasons. One, it’s kind of the end of the thought. Two, I’m about to get on the freeway and I have no idea exactly where I’m going, I’m really bad at directions, so I gotta turn GPS on my phone. I should have just done the episode with GPS on and you guys could have heard every two minutes, “Turn left here. In one quarter mile, turn right.” But anyway, I didn’t do that, so you guys missed out.
Anyway, I’m going to bounce, appreciate you guys all, have an amazing day and don’t be perfection, don’t try to be perfect in your content. Just create stuff and put it out there because I think perfection is the number one thing that’ll kill your ability to change your customer’s lives. With that said, appreciate you guys and I’ll talk to you soon.
Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics can mean everything in your business.
On today’s episode Russell shares the difference between tactics and strategy after an attendee at Funnel Hacking Live complained about the content of day one. He tells why strategy is the key and tactic is just an element.
Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to hear what someone else had to say about Funnel Hacking Live, and why Russell thinks he’s wrong.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I am out taking the garbage out, Sunday night. And it’s a beautiful night, a little chilly, but looking out there’s a really cool ski hill called Bogus Basin here in Idaho. Anyway, where my house is at and I’m taking garbage out, I go out and I can see the mountain and the mountain is all dark and where the ski hill is, is all lit up and looks insanely cool. So that’s kind of fun right now.
But I had a quick message for you guys because I just wanted to make sure everyone’s paying attention. Because I feel like sometimes you can show people gold. Be like, “Hey, here’s gold. You want some?” and the smart people see that and they’re like, “Oh sweet.” And they take it. And there’s other people who say, “That’s not real gold. I didn’t want gold. I wanted platinum. I came for diamonds, why are you trying to give me gold.” I’m like, “Dude, there’s gold. You can sell it and buy diamonds.”
So let me explain this metaphor. Funnel Hacking Live last week, insane. Those of you there, you know, you experienced it. It was just amazing. And we’re starting planning next year’s and I think I finally figured out a way, took me three days, but I think I figured out a way to make it better than last time. I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to try. That’s going to be in time, I got a year to plan it, so that’s going to be sweet.
But it was an awesome event and of the three days, day one was probably my favorite day because I think what I got to share got me most excited. I shared the first section of the book, which is how to build a mass movement. Went into all the strategy and the tactics behind how to do that. I wanted to break those out, because there’s two different things, strategy and tactics. Then I had a chance to go into the story. We talked about epiphany bridge stories. I showed the strategy and tactics behind that. Then Brandon and Kaelin spoke the first day. Jim Edwards spoke the first day, it was awesome. All the days were good, but the first day was, I was most excited about what I taught the first day.
Anyway, that was good, I thought. For those who were there, it was good right? Pretty amazing? It’s basically a year, more than a year, deep year of my thought, what I’ve been trying to really show and teach and coach everybody through. And what the new book’s going to be really going deep into. So it was also a big preface for the Expert Secrets book which is coming out April 18th. So anyway, most people were there and they got that and went and ran away with it. But then one of my buddies, one of my friends showed me the other day some post that one of the guys at the event posted in his private members area.
I know who this guy is, I’ve been watching him for a while, he’s been doing some cool things. But his business isn’t that big yet, he’s kind of……I won’t make fun of him publicly, I might later. We’ll stop for now. In his members group he posted, he said, “Day one of Funnel Hacking Live was stupid. Not a single tactic was taught. Blah, blah, blah.” Dropped like 5 or 6 F-bombs in this thing. I was just like, I’m glad it was after the event, because I would have called the dude out on stage and embarrassed him in front of everyone, which would have been amazing. I kind of wish I had that now.
But instead I saw it like two days ago. I was like, “What? Day one?” It’s funny, day two he came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m joining your Inner Circle, man. This has changed my life.” Did the whole thing. By the afternoon day two he had a change of heart, but after day one he was frustrated apparently because I didn’t teach enough tactics.
So a couple of things. First off, what you must understand is that tactics are good. Tactics are like the tricks you use to do things. But tactics in and of themselves are not that powerful. In fact, I think, when I first met Jay Abraham and Rick Shephard and the guys, they used to talk about this. Talk about how strategy is more important than tactics, and I used to think that were not smart. Because I’m like, “No, these tactics, these tricks, these tools, these things are the secret.” And as I’ve gotten older, in my old age, and I’ve shifted from being stuck at 2 or 3 million dollars a year, to shifting to 30 million dollars a year and beyond. Hopefully this year we’ll hit 80 or 90 million, and mass growth. Bigger than anyone I know of in our industry.
The big differentiation that took me from 2 or 3 million dollars a year to ten time that, it wasn’t the next tactic. It was the strategy, the strategy behind it. As I’m on stage teaching how to build a mass movement, I’m talking about the strategy of how you build a mass movement. This is how you get people to follow you, this is how I went from 3 million dollars, to two years later 30 million dollars in a year. The difference was not a magic tactic. And I showed tactics, I showed the different tactics, but it was the core strategy. When you understand the strategy there’s a lot of tactics inside of it, but understand the strategy is the key.
So we’re showing the strategy to everybody and I’m just hoping that you guys weren’t like this dude looking at this gold and being like, “but I came here for diamonds.” Dude, are you kidding me, take the gold I give you and go sell it and buy some diamonds if that’s what you really want. Don’t miss out on the lesson because you came thinking you were looking for something else. If there’s someone that’s showing you something, don’t be like….I was the same way. So I’m throwing myself as being guilty of this too. When I first talked to Shephard and Abraham, those guys who were way ahead of me strategically thinking, I used to make fun of them thinking they were dumb. Just like this guy was doing for me. I’m like, no when I understood it; I respected and understood that I gotta figure out the strategy.
The tactics are always there, the tactics will fit inside of any strategy, but the strategy is the key. That’s what expands your growth. And then, come on now, epiphany bridge story, the hero’s two journeys, that’s all tactical. Come on now. I’ll leave that there.
What I wanted to talk about is, as I was thinking through this, is I want to kind of tie in the tactic and strategy and all that kind of stuff. When I got started, whenever it was, 14 years ago, my first mentor was Mark Joyner, he always told me, “You gotta build a list, you gotta build a list.” Which is a strategy right. At the time there were a whole bunch of different strategies people were chasing. There was AdSense stuff, The was Google AdWords, there was Arbitros, there were all these different ways to make money. And Mark was my first mentor and luckily I listened to him by the shiny objects flying around me like crazy. So I started building a list, building a list, like he told me to.
And I did that and it was funny, a couple years later Mike Filsaime came out with, he kind of coined this originally, a lot of people say it since, but the first time I heard it, it was from Mike. He said, “You should average one dollar per month, per name on your email list.” I was like, okay, that’s a cool metric. I started looking back at what I was doing and it was interesting how close my business at that point had followed that. I had a thousand people on my list, I was making about a thousand a month, when I had ten thousand on my list I made ten thousand a month, when I had a hundred thousand on my list I was making a hundred thousand a month. It was eerie. Is that a word? How close that number stayed.
For me, I started focusing on the strategy is building a list. What are the tactics to build a list? I kept focusing on tactic, tactic, tactic to build a list. My list kept growing and my income would grow with it, but I didn’t have the huge shift. When we started shifting, I was telling this, last week, I can’t remember if I told you guys this or not. Dean Graziosi did this big book launch and he invited the top ten or fifteen affiliates to his office. So I flew down there Thursday and hung out, it was amazing. It was an amazing group. I could go on for days about all the people and what I learned. I got some amazing stuff that I will show you guys in the next few months. If you watch, you’ll see some of the stuff I learned from that group.
But what was interesting is, when I got there to talk, they wanted me to talk 30 minutes on whatever I thought was the biggest, most impactful thing in my business over the last few months. What did I share with them? I shared building a cult-ure. I talked about the three things. The thing I talked about first session of our group, we talked about charismatic leader, future based cause, and then new opportunity, which is the key. That’s the core strategy. What’s interesting is, I wasn’t planning on talking but when I got up on stage, I don’t know if you’ve done this when you’ve gotten on stage. Things pop into your head sometimes, so I got up in front of this group and the first thing that popped into my head was the Send out Cards event I went to 7, 8 or 9 years ago.
I remember going to this event all excited to learn network marketing and see how these guys do everything. And I was confused when I got there, to be honest. Nobody taught anything. I remember, the first day they gave awards to almost everyone in the group and they had people win cars, they had recognition, told stories, people crying about how sending cards changed their lives. And it was so confusing to me. I remember afterwards sitting there talking to David Frey, he probably doesn’t even remember this, but it had a huge impact on me. I was like, “Dude, nobody taught anything.” And he said, “You know what the craziest thing is Russell? They’re a software company. That’s it. They’re a software, but what have they done different? What was the strategy?” The tactic is how to build a software company, but what is the strategy? He didn’t say that, but I was thinking what is the strategy?
And we started talking and he said, “They’re a software company, but look what they built around it, it’s a movement. There’s people, this is a way of life for people now.” And I was thinking about it, send out cards, I love the guys who own that, it’s a cool company, but their software is not that good. There are thousands of better card editors out there. But they built a movement of people and that’s why that company did so well.
So when I was launching Clickfunnels that kept ringing in my head from David Frey. They’re just a software company. I’m like, “I’m building a software company.” I could have gone, what’s the tactic to build a software company. No, step back. What’s the strategy? How do these guys do it? They didn’t say, let’s build a software company. That wasn’t what they were doing; they were looking at the strategy of it. So as we launched Clickfunnels, I knew we were going to compete against, Infusionsoft, Leadpages, and all these crappy software products, and I was like, I don’t want this to become a battle of who’s got what feature. I want to build a movement. I want people, I want to build the best software in the world, and luckily I’ve got the partners that are able to do that, which is insanely cool.
But I was like. Even if our software sucked, I still gotta out market everyone else. Because I want them to follow us because we’re a movement, not because we’re a software company. If you were at Funnel Hacking Live, you remember Ryan
Montgomery, our CTO, he got up there and said, “hey guys, we’re not a technology company, we’re a marketing company. We’re building technology, the technology behind it to make us be able to market, which gives you the ability to market.”
That’s the big differentiator, that’s why we’re taking on the SASS companies that are fighting us on features and we’re thrashing them because we’re building a movement. And that’s the strategy. So I started looking at that, and I looked at our numbers over the last two years, and what’s funny, is for 8 years in my business, our metrics were one dollar per name per month on our list. And I look at our numbers now and I gotta do the math real quick in my head. But we are closer to probably 14 or 15 dollars per name per month on our email list. So we 15x’d it. Same people, same list building tactics to get people in, but the strategy shifted. What happened when we shifted the strategy? 15x, instead of one dollar per name per month on our email list, we make $15 per name per month on our email address, by shifting the strategy and the strategy was how do we build a movement? We’re not a software company, we’re building a movement.
I wanted people coming to Clickfunnels like they came to Send out Cards on stage crying because they send a card and it changed someone’s life. I don’t want them coming and talking about how much money they made. That’s the difference.
I just wanted to share that because I know sometimes we get caught up in what’s the new tactic. Some of my close friends are running an event this weekend coming up, and the difference, you go to that event and what do they do. There’s all these people on stage sharing tactics, and some people love that, but that’s not what wins wars. Tactics are the gun and the shot gun and rifle that you go out there, but if you got a bad strategy you’re going to lose.
So take a step back, look at the strategy and understand that, and hopefully this helps you understand the difference between strategy and tactics. How the tactics are good, but you switch to strategy and get that correct, 15x growth, going from 3 million to 30 million in 24 months. What’s the difference? It’s not changing my tactics, the tactics were all the same, it was the strategy behind it.
I hope that you guys get that. With that said, my fingers are freezing. I should have worn gloves out here. I’m going back inside. Appreciate you all, tomorrow I’m going to go finish…..Friday I spent the whole day recording the audio version of the Expert Secrets book and tomorrow I’m going to finish the last third. I drive out there, I have a message I want to share with you guys, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. Thanks everybody, have a great night and we’ll talk to you guys soon.
The rest of the story…
On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event.
Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode:
So listen below for the conclusion of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017.
---Transcript---
Day number two now, Devon got on stage he intro to government estate. Then we came up and did a section on follow-up funnels. Which was Todd and Dylan and Ryan and me and we talked about how email funnels are from 1998 and the future is follow up funnels. And we did a presentation and during the presentation we ripped our shirts off and we had these shirts. I’m actually wearing the shirt today. It says, “We are not confusion soft, we’re Clickfunnels” and then we challenged everybody to go all in and be all in, in Clickfunnels. And we gave them these t-shirts and temporary tattoos and a whole bunch of stuff for anyone who went all in.
Basically they had to open up their phone and go to imallin.com and if you’re not all in it had Macauley Culkin slapping his face saying, “ahh, you’re not in.” and there was a big button where you could upgrade. And if you were all in, it showed you were all in and basically you’d run to the back of the room, show them the funnel and then we’d give you a huge packet of swag, which was cool.
So if any of you guys are listening to this. Don’t do that right now. We’re updating it to make it work online, I think by next week. Actually my birthday, March 8th. So on my birthday we’re going to be doing that presentation live to Facebook Live and it’ll be live so you can all go all in and get the same swag shipped out to you, which will be fun. But it was cool to show people what’s possible in Actionetics. Most people don’t know, they assume it’s an email auto-responder, and that’s like saying that Clickfunnels builds websites. Come on now, that’s 1998.
I had a slide, I wanted to use Urkel, Steve urkel in my slides, and I was able to use him twice. I was like, “You know what else was cool in 1998, Steve Urkel. Actually no, Steve Urkel’s show was cancelled in 1998. So even in 98 Urkel wasn’t cool anymore. But that’s what you’re using if you’re doing email funnels. We’re talking about follow-up funnels and all the stuff that’s possible.” So we showed people what’s possible in Actionetics, and most people didn’t even know. And everyone is shifting everything over to Clickfunnels, which is the goal. We want everybody all in, I want you all in.
So that was what Follow-up Funnels is about. It was probably the coolest presentation. So much energy, it was awesome. Then we had a break after that. And then Justin and Tara Williams came on and did a whole section on podcast funnels, which was awesome. They told their story, which was cool. And basically showed how these three podcasts they had done, how these three podcasts had each launched three entire businesses for them and it was just cool to see.
Anyway, that part was awesome. So podcast funnels, Justin and Tara were amazing. They killed it. After that we had Emily Shay come up and she is 11 years old and she stood up there on a huge stage where most people would be so scared and so intimidated and she crushed it. She was so awesome. She had about 15 or 20 minutes up there and she told her story and did it in a really fun way that tied it to the audience. She’s just a superstar. Some people would say the youth speakers were the best one’s of the whole thing, and I was like, “Yes.”
So Emily crushed it. Caleb Maddix came on, I talked about him yesterday on the podcast. He came on and just did an amazing job as well. And it was just so cool to see Emily and Caleb, two young entrepreneurs who were able to stand in front of a room and control the audience like that. For me, it took me honestly, it took me ten plus years to get a spot that they were in already and it was just so cool to see them. They’re the future.
So exciting, so they both crushed it and did such an amazing job. Then we had a lunch break. Again, the annoying thing where our stomachs were hungry and we had to go eat. So everyone went to lunch. We came back and Trey Lewellen stood up on stage and Trey is really, Trey spoke at the very first Funnel Hacking Event and he did a great job then. But it’s fun seeing him transition, him owning the stage now, he just, he did awesome. He went into deep funnelytics, like here’s the metrics you’ve got to figure out to make your funnels works. And he showed this stuff where it’s just like, well I didn’t understand that. Most people who set up a funnel that doesn’t make a million bucks day one they’re like, “This didn’t work.” No, you gotta understand the math behind it. And Trey showed how he’s built these huge companies. 20-30 million dollar companies off of a funnel that was not profitable upfront.
But when you understand the funnelytics, the math behind the funnels, how it worked. It was so cool for him to document and show it all off, it was just amazing.
Then from there, we’re only halfway through, it just keeps getting, the whole thing was amazing. Then Jason Fladlien, who is someone I’ve learned, in fact in the Expert Secrets book, I dedicated a lot to him as well. Because there’s so much I learned from him about breaking belief patterns and rebuilding and reframing and he’s just brilliant. He got on stage and talked about Amazon Funnels. And even though a lot of people know him as the guy who’s the best in the world at selling from webinars, he happens to also be good at Amazon as well.
So he showed 7 different Amazon funnels that he uses in his company and then he gave everybody at the event. “Here’s the Amazon funnels, there’s 7 of them. You guys can knock them off and use them in your business.” Which was so cool. So if you’re using any Amazon or ecommerce stuff, Jason’s stuff was amazing.
From there Darrin Stevens got on stage. A lot of you guys probably don’t know Darrin Stevens but he is a legend. He was one of the, he did the marketing behind Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Brilliant book launch and stuff like that. But he also runs events. He does these events that have 80 people in the room who make 2-3million dollars in a weekend, for a room of less than 100 people. And it’s all about how he structures his events and event funnels. So he walked us through the whole process and he had 18 or 19 things that he does at events to build rapport and get people buying. If I was able to close what Darrin does, again he did what did I say, 2.5 million dollars from 80 people. I would have done like 60 million dollars from this event, but I didn’t so Darrin is still the king. He’s amazing.
So he shared event funnel stuff, which was awesome. Then we had another break, then Setema got on stage, and Setema is the Super Bowl winner who had to sell his ring because after he won the Super Bowl his life kind of fell apart and talks about how you win again. How do you get that stuff back? How do you implement all the stuff you’ve learned? It was amazing. He’s nicknamed himself the reverend of the revolution. I feel like he was the reverend preaching to us about how to take this stuff and have success with imperfect action and just going through and doing it. It was so cool, Setema is the man. That was awesome.
After that we came onstage and we awarded the Two Comma Club awards, which was amazing. We had, I think right now, we have over 100 people who have qualified for the Two Comma Club. Which means they have a funnel that made at least a million dollars. 100 people! So we gave away I think 80 something Two Comma Club trophy’s. These huge trophy’s with a gold record on it with two commas etched into it. It was cool for everyone else to see that and be like, “Wow, these are my peers. And they’re all making a million dollars in a funnel.”
I was trying to make it so real. If they can do it, you can do it. So we did that, and afterwards I did a presentation called “You’re one Funnel Away.” Which basically I had no power point slides, I just told the story of all the ups and downs in my business and the funnels that have saved me. I talked about the two or three times I’ve almost gone bankrupt. I talked about the fears, the pain, all that kind of stuff. What were the funnels we created that saved us from that.
It was emotional, I started crying, which is really embarrassing, especially on stage. Other people were crying and it was cool. I hope people enjoyed that. It was a scary thing for me to get vulnerable like that, but I think it was important so that everyone understands, whatever you’re struggling at, it happens to all of us. It happens to me, it happens to everyone. So understanding that and being okay with it and giving yourself permission through that to be able to succeed.
That was really cool. After that we had a hack-a-thon at night. I was super tired. I went to the hack-a-thon, talked for a few minutes, then I went back up, ate some dinner and then passed out because I was so tired. But then I hadn’t finished my next presentation for the next night. So I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning, the next morning to get started.
Hack-a-thon was awesome, people were up til midnight building funnels. We had a whole bunch of people who built, launched and made money on funnels that night, which was cool. We catered dinner again, which was cool. Then the next day, the last day, which was Thursday.
So the last day we came in, Devon brought everyone in, brought the energy high. Then Garrett White and his wife, Danielle and their kids were going to come to the stage and when the event started we couldn’t find them anywhere. I was like, “Where’s Garrett? Where’s Danielle?” We started freaking out. I was totally stressing out and we’re trying to Vox them and text them and call them and nothing. And finally Melanie found out what room number they were in, so Dave ran up and knocked on the door like, “Ahhh, we’re on stage trying to announce you, where are you guys.” It was a miscommunication, we had told them the wrong, we messed up on our side.
But they came down and during that time it was fun because Devon was able to invent a new secret handshake for all funnel hackers, out of necessity. He bought ten minutes time by inventing a new secret handshake, which all of you who have been to Funnel Hacking Live know the secret handshake. Don’t show to those who were not there. They’ll have to learn it at next year’s event. But we’ve got a secret handshake now that is so cool. In fact, I should add a chapter to the Expert Secrets book about secret handshakes, that would be cool.
Anyway, we got a secret handshake and then Garrett, Danielle and their two kids came on stage and gave a presentation that was, I don’t even know what to say, it was so amazing. It was so cool. I’m just going to leave it at that. It was something where if you were in the room you felt it and you heard it and it moved you. It was amazing. So there you go.
Maybe someday we’ll do a launch like warrior funnels .com and share all the presentations of Garrett throughout the Funnel Hacking Live events because they have just been amazing Anyway, who knows, but we’ll look at that. So then we had after they got done. I came up and did a presentation called fill your funnel, which is how to make it rain. How to get people into your funnels. And this was the only presentation where I actually sold-sold. We were selling things throughout the event and I’ll talk about this at the end, but this is the only one where I did the actual presentation.
It went good, but a couple of weird things. When I got on stage after Garrett, there was so much energy from Garrett and Danielle and it was amazing. I came on immediately afterwards and the audio/video guys didn’t turn the music on, so I got up there and it was just kind of a weird transition. And then we awarded Stu and Amy their checks for World Teacher Aide, which was the quarter of a million bucks, which was awesome. Then it was my chance to get up there and teach affiliate funnel and we sold a course called fill your funnels. And just something about that, I don’t know what it was. Something about the presentation was kind of off. I’m just going to be completely honest. I had numbers in my head of what I thought I was going to do and I didn’t do that. It did well, if I told you guys how many we sold, everyone else would think I was a selfish kid and rude.
It did well, but what I expected, and there was this, I was doing it, I couldn’t get the flow right. I don’t know if it was, part of it I think was because I worked on the presentation the week earlier, then that morning I woke up at 4:30 trying to get it done and I was tired and worn out. There was something about the energy that wasn’t quite right. I think it was good, but it wasn’t great, like I wanted it to be. But at the end of it we sold, and it was awkward. I’m like, in the pitch, “This is hard selling you guys through my perfect webinar, even though I’ve trained all you guys on it and most of you guys are doing it now. It’s like, I’m doing it onstage live. It’s funny how that works.”
But it did well, that was when had breaks, we had snack breaks. And then basically we had to clear the whole audience out, secret service came through for Tony Robbins group, swept the whole thing and then Tony was onstage and I was in the back super nervous and awkward and worried. It’s so different, because with Marcus when he came, he just showed up in his own Uber, it was laid back, he hung out with the crowd, it was really easy and laid back. And Tony was the opposite of that. He had his security detail of 10 or 15 people there who were like, swept all the chairs making sure there were no bombs or guns and we had check people as they came through.
I was in the back and they had to pull us all out so he could come in. Very intense and caused anxiety and nerves and all this stuff, that was nervous. Plus, I found out Tony was throwing up before he came. So he wasn’t feeling good. So much stress. He brought Tony into this little green room and they let us come in and he came out. It went from this nerve, all the nerves, it was like an hour of this, while we were waiting for him to get here. All the nerves and fear and anxiety. What if he’s sick and he can’t speak? What if people don’t get what, they were so excited for him to be there. Secret service security was honestly kind of frustrating because it just. You know how I am, I’m so laid back, it was beyond corporatey, it was secret service, military. Which is good, he needs that, I understand that. But it was just kind of, at first we were trying to make this cool experience and it was so hard.
And then again, Tony came in and did his thing in the green room and came out and came to us and we had moment before he got on stage where he just kind of came in and gave me a hug, and gave my wife, Collette, a hug. And Dylan and Todd and their wives, he just connected personally with us at a level. I was so grateful for that, because it just made all the stress and everything go away. It was like, it’s going to be okay. Tony’s here, he’s going to do what he does, and he’s the best in the world and everyone’s going to love it. I’m not going to stress and I’m going to let it happen and it was cool.
Normally, I guess they don’t let people introduce him, but I was like, “I would love to introduce Tony, there is a reason why I wanted him here and I want everyone to know that reason.” So they let me introduce Tony and I got all choked up during the introduction. But I was talking about how in his bio it talks about how he’s helped 50 million people around the world. I was like, well that’s cool. Tony helped me. He helped my wife. He helped our family. If it wasn’t for Tony, my wife and I were at a rough spot before I met Tony, before I went to his event.
It was honestly, it was what healed us. And I’m just so grateful for him and after I went to Tony’s stuff, I went to all of his events in a year period of time, and then right after that my company collapsed. Had I not been equipped by the tools he gave me, I don’t know if I could have handled that. I was just talking about how grateful I am and how excited I was to share him with my world and my people, my funnel hackers. Then we played a video of him and we all went crazy and Tony came up on stage, gave me a hug and took over.
And he was supposed to go for three hours. And again, he was puking five minutes before he got on the stage and I was nervous. And he stood there and he went not for three hours, not for four hours, but for five hours with everybody. It was just cool. Everyone’s jumping and screaming and having fun. It was awesome. It just made the event, it was already amazing, just that much more amazing.
And when it was done, all of the Inner Circle members had a chance to get pictures with Tony, which was cool. Then we went up and ate real quick, and then I had a chance to go up to his hotel room afterwards and interview him for his new book, which hopefully you guys saw him on Facebook live. We showed that. And it was just awesome. That night we passed out, woke up in the morning. We had late checkout, so we hung out for a while and it was just cool to sit there and reflect with my wife. And the coolest thing for me is that this is the first time that Collette has ever been to, I mean she’s come to my events and poked her head in and then had to leave to watch the kids or all these different things, that time the kids didn’t come. So she had a chance to be there and be present and sit in the audience for almost the entire thing. For me, that was special.
It was cool and it was I think the first time she’d ever seen me doing what we do. And you guys have a chance to see it through the podcast and through all the stuff I’m doing, but she’s not connected to that. She’s not connected to the business very much, she’s very much supporting from home, but not part of everything that’s happening. So for her to be able to see that and experience it with people in the audience, it was special for me. So I just loved that. It was awesome.
That was kind of Funnel Hacking Live. And then as we’re, that day we’re leaving, flying home and I look at the Facebook group, and everyday I’m looking, kind of scrolling through, and if any of you guys are in our Facebook group you’re probably bombarded by millions and millions, everyone talking about it. I was like, alright, ready fire aim. Everybody is excited right now. Why don’t we sell tickets for next year’s event right now? So from the airport I did a Facebook Live.
“Okay, we’re selling tickets. There’s a discount and Sunday at midnight we’re pulling the page down. So you gotta buy them now if you want them. Otherwise you gotta wait six months and who knows what the price will be then?” Did a Facebook Live, emailed the list and over the next three days we sold almost a thousand tickets to next year’s event. We almost sold as many tickets as last year, just from that. Hopefully won’t lessen the momentum. If the momentum is there, capitalize on it. Don’t wait six months, “Hey you guys remember the event we talked about six months ago? Who wants to come again?” When people’s energy and emotion and excitement are high, that’s the best time to sell.
So we sold a lot of tickets, which was cool. It’s funny, I had some of the Inner Circle members freaking out, “Do we get discount tickets or not?” I was like, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought through this.” This is the lesson for everyone. I’m a big believer in “Ready Fire Aim” We just fired and I have no idea. We’ll figure it out way later, but we don’t have time right now. We just fired. Sorry, but that’s how it works over here. Everything’s not scripted out and planned second by second. Some things are, but most things aren’t.
Hopefully that’s inspiration for you guys to. To know, “Look, figure things out and just do it.” So that was kind of the event in a nutshell. For those who were there, hopefully that was a good breakdown. I wish I could spend the hour or two hours on each presentation that people did, so you can experience it. But hopefully those that weren’t there, this will give you desire to come next year. I want you guys to be there. Yeah, I will probably sell recordings, and you will probably have some of these videos that are easy to see, but there’s something different about being in the room and being surrounded by 1500 of your peers who are doing the same thing. Seeing 100 of your peers on stage with a big trophy saying I made a million dollars with a funnel this year. There’s something different about that. So I recommend for all of you guys to make that break and come to the event.
One last thing I want to share, because I kind of hinted to this earlier. And I think it’ll be cool for you guys to know. This is actually not a victory, this is a failure. A failure in my eyes. But I want to share with you guys, just so you understand that I mess things up too.
So one of the cool things that I wanted to do is, usually at each Funnel Hacking Live we sell one thing. We did certification at the first event and second event. This year, I didn’t want to sell, I don’t want this to be a selling event, but there’s things we want to offer people. So we had this big trip to Kenya, which was awesome and people jumped on that. We had the Follow-up Funnels which was awesome and people jumped on that. Then I was trying to, we had this new event called the FHAT event that I was excited about and want people to come to that. Then we also had Fill Your Funnel and I think I tried to offer too many things. Not that we, it wasn’t like I was selling each thing, but we had them available.
At the Hack-a-thon, I was like “Hey if you want to come to the FHAT event, here’s one more thing on it.” And I think it almost caused confusion. People didn’t know what to do. I think moving forward next year, we’ll probably just pick one thing and focus on that again, just to not cause confusion. But one of my big things, again I only want one session when we sold, and that was Fill Your Funnel. That one went well, but it was just, the energy wasn’t quite right when I did it. So that was one thing.
But the other cool thing is that the entire Funnel Hacking Live event, if you look at it from the outside, it was a big perfect webinar. Session number one, if you’ve gone through the perfect webinar in detail and as you read the Expert Secrets book, you’ll understand it at a level I’ve never really shared it before. But the first thing we do is talk about the vehicle putting people in. So my first presentation was about creating a mass movement, becoming an expert. So that was the first vehicle. Session number one, would have been secret number one if this was a webinar.
Session number two is about the internal beliefs and that’s how I walked into, I shared the story, showing “Look, you can create a mass movement.” And they’re like, “Well I don’t know if I can.” I’m like, “If you can master stories you can.” Belief number two was all about can they internally do it? So the second presentation for me was all about that. The internal.
Then the third presentation, which was the One Funnel Away, was the external. I believe I can do it, I can tell stories, but I don’t know how to do this whole funnel thing. So I shared at the One Funnel Away presentation to help people understand the external fears. So if you look at, again if you break down the perfect webinar, you’ve got the belief pattern is tied to the vehicle, which is the new opportunity we’re putting people into. That was session number one, number two is their internal beliefs, false beliefs about themselves, and number three is the external false beliefs about themselves.
So that’s how we structure those three presentations, and what we do at the hack-a-thon is offer people to come to the FHAT event, because that was kind of the natural continuation of that. The problem I have is that, if you look at the perfect webinar, what’s the last step? It’s stack and close and we didn’t stack and close anymore. We just basically said, “hey you should come to the FHAT event because it’s awesome.” And we had a lot of people who did, but not what I expected or hoped.
My two big lessons, number one when you’re doing a webinar you can’t forget the stack and the close. It’s important even if you break their beliefs, if you don’t offer them the opportunity to buy and do it in a way that’s going to convince them to buy, a lot of people that you could have served, won’t be served.
I honestly think that everybody should be at the FHAT event. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to serve anybody at a higher level than that. And because I kind of shied away and didn’t sell it and skipped the last step, I’m not able to affect as many people’s lives’ because of that. For me that looks like a failure. IT’s not the money. Money’s a cool way to keep score, but for me, I should have had 100 people from that room coming to Boise so I could help them create the perfect webinar. And I don’t. I have a lot but not that many because I…..I don’t know the exact reason, but I didn’t do it right. It came down to me having fears of trying to make it an official offer to people. It’s funny, even after this long I still make the same fears that other people make as well. That was one big thing.
And then the other thing, is again, shipping the focus of the event to being focusing on core thing we want people to do. Because I think people were confused, “I’m coming to Kenya, I upgraded and I’m all in, there’s this FHAT event Russell’s talking about and I don’t know what that is because he didn’t tell me about it. Sounds cool, but I have no idea. Then there’s Fill Your Funnel.” So I think that that was my other mistake. There was confusion in where I wanted people to go from here.
So those are the things I learned, and again, that’s something you always learn as you do them. So it’ll be fun, next year my goal is to make the event even better. It’s shifting the focus, well I don’t know what the focus is going to be yet. But it’s making sure that everyone has an amazing experience, both from a marketing standpoint and also a personal development standpoint. I think that’s one neat thing we bring that nobody else does, which is cool.
And then the third thing is really figuring out for people who come through the experience, what’s the next step for them. And focusing everything on that and not having two or three next steps, but one. And saying, “This is what you guys should be doing next. Those who are interested.”
So that’s what I learned at Funnel Hacking Live as well. Anyway, I appreciate everyone who was there, I had a great time. With that said, this is probably the longest marketing in your car of all time, but it’s a recap for those who missed it. And hopefully you guys will come next year, because it’s going to be amazing. Tickets are not for sale right now, but in four or five months we’ll open it and we have probably 1500 more tickets or so I believe. When we do open it up, the price has gone up, I apologize for those that didn’t get my emails and everything else. I tried to warn you. With that said, thank you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.
What happened at this year’s event.
On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event.
Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode:
So listen below for the first half of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017, and don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for the conclusion.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to Marketing In Your Car. But today’s actually a special episode because first off, I’m not in my car, I’m in the conference room and second off, I got this brand new little microphone that plugs into the bottom of my phone. People have been asking me ever since I started this podcast, “What microphone do you use on your phone?” I always just tell them that Iuse the microphone on my phone, which is true until today. There’s this really cool thing, I don’t know what brand or style, I have no idea but I’m testing it out. So if it seems to be good, I’ll let you guys know.
It’s so cool, it plugs into the bottom of your iPhone and it’s got this big huge thing on it. I’m excited, I’m trying it out. Hopefully this episode goes well enough and I’ll let you guys know more about this thing, because it’s pretty awesome.
So what I wanted to do, I wanted to give a recap of Funnel Hacking Live. I know 1500 of you guys were already there and experienced it and went crazy with us, and for everyone else who wasn’t, I wanted to catch you up on what’s happening and why it was amazing and why you should be at next year’s event. If you missed this one for some insane reason, because there’s no logical reason to have missed it, only insane ones. So if you had an insane reason, I want to give you guys some cool behind the scenes of what was happening.
So this year’s event, this is the third year we’ve done it. The first year was in Vegas, we had about 600 people come. The second year, last year was in San Diego and we had 1300 people come and it’s funny because you have to sign a contract for next year’s event before the event, because you have to, because if you’re going to sell tickets for the event you have to know, here’s the venue and dates, blah, blah, blah. So last year we’re like, let’s make it a little bit bigger, let’s do 1500 people. And then we ended up selling out three months early.
We probably should have done bigger. So next year’s event we’ve got a little bit bigger place. Hoping that we’re able to fill it. Just so you guys are fully aware, nothing on Earth stresses me out more than events. Filling events is the hardest sell. You’re not just selling, “Hey, you should come to an event.” Because that’s an easy sell. The hard sells are all the other sells someone has to make in their mind. “I gotta ask for work off, I gotta talk to my spouse, I gotta fly, pay for flights, pay for hotels.” All these other things, so it’s not just a simple sell, I want to….usually when you sell something you create desire and people want it and you sell it.
This is harder, even if I create desire for it, you still have to go and close yourself on all the other logistics that are a pain. Event’s are scary. In fact, the last time I did an event before Funnel Hacking Live, which I swore I would never do another event after. I think we sold 3 or 400 tickets, and when we got there only…and it was $100 tickets, so I assumed that $100 commitment was enough to get people to show up. I was wrong. We ended up only having 100 that showed up.
It was so embarrassing for me. I remember having all these empty seats. I was like, “I will never do another event again.” Then fast forward a couple of years, about the time this podcast was starting, I probably talked about it. There was this new company we were working on called Rippln, and they did their initial kickoff and there was 1200 people, and we ended up getting 1.5 million people to sign up over the 60 days or so. And then there was an event on the backside of it.
So I thought there was going to be 30,000 people at this event, I was all excited for it. But at the time, the company hadn’t launched the actual thing that we’d built the hype for. There was a huge loss of momentum, at the event we had 1000 tickets sold. I showed up and we were getting ready to open the doors and went in the hallway and there was only about 200 people out there. We were like, “oh crap.”
The guy, Brian, who ran the company was like, “Oh crap. Let’s pull chairs out.” So we sat there, right before the event and pulled 800 chairs out of the room and then we had this huge empty room and then 200 seats in the front and brought people in and did this event over three days. And it was, for me, I was emotionally scarred. I was like, “I don’t know what’s happening, but this is not a good sign.” And sure enough the company crashed afterwards. A lot of wasted energy, time and money on my side that never materialized, but learned a lot of good lessons.
That’s the point, right? So because of those experiences, I had this fear of events. I never wanted to do one. So when the first Funnel Hacking Live, after we launched Clickfunnels, people were saying, people started doing meet ups. I was like, “We should facilitate this.” So we decided to do the first one. We were going to sell 600 seats, and I was so scared, panicking about what if we only sell 100 and we have this room for 600? S
o finally we did it. We launched it, and we sold out, I think we sold out 2 weeks early, so it wasn’t huge, but we did. We did the event and I remember even the day of the show I had so much fear and anxiety. What if people don’t show up? And I remember even before the event started hiding in the back and peaking through and I was like, “Oh good, the seats are full. Thank heavens.” And then I was able to, we did the event and it turned out amazing.
And then last year, same thing. We had 1300 seats sold and I remember the night before we have pre-registration, we only had 200 people pre-register. I was like, “Oh my gosh, nobody’s coming. This is it. This is my greatest fear recognized once again.” And I’m freaking out and went out there and the next morning tons of people registered and we ended up having the entire thing filled, all 1300 seats and then we did the event, it was awesome.
So this time, I had the same thing. I wasn’t quite as, I had two successful events now, I wasn’t quite as scared, but I still get nervous. So the event happened and this time we, usually the event’s on a weekend, but to get the hotel space we had to do it on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so we all flew in Sunday night, which was nice. We all flew in there and had time to just relax. Then Monday, my wife and I got up and went shopping to go buy clothes, and my team was doing everything, my team is amazing. They’re stuffing binders and getting things ready and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of nice, they were taking care of that.
I was able to go and spend time with Collette, and just get ready for the event and shop. Just kind of mentally get prepared for this thing. And then that night, we had a big VIP dinner for our Inner Circle Members, as well as our certified partners who have actually finished certification. We had a big dinner with them and it was really, really cool.
Now a couple things, this will be one of my themes of this podcast. It’s interesting, and I’m going to be vulnerable and let you guys know all my fears and my things in hopes, not that you judge me, “Man, Russell’s a wuss.” I want you to be like, “Wow, if Russell can do it, I can do it.” That’s more of the goal with this. I love being on stage. I feel comfortable in front of 1500 people talking, and I feel really good there. I get really, really scared one on one or even in groups.
So even at our Inner Circle dinner, there’s 150 or so people, maybe 200 people, I can’t remember, it was kind of a smaller thing, but tons of anxiety being in that room talking to people. Throughout the event people come talk to you one on one, I really struggle. I feel bad. I had my coaching call with Tara Williams this morning and we were kind of talking about this. I was just like, “Man, it’s funny how comfortable I feel up in front of the stage and how scared and nervous and awkward I feel one on one.” And I feel bad about it.
I think a lot of times, for anyone who did have one on one interactions with me. I apologize if I’m super awkward. I don’t know why, I feel nervous. I get really nervous there and I struggle. Which is why I try to hide as much as I can. I try to be out there to take pictures with everyone as well, but it’s really, I struggle with that part of it.
Anyway, we did the dinner that night, it was really fun. Bart Miller, who is one of our Inner Circle members who’s transitioning into becoming a fashion coordinator, he designed all my clothes for the week. And he did the same for Alex Harmosian and a bunch of the Inner Circle members. So he was there and had me dressing up all nice. So I was nervous because I wasn’t comfortable in my clothes, completely. And then in this room with these people that I admire. I wanted to make sure they had such a good experience, it gets you nervous. At least for me.
But what’s cool, at the end I had a chance to give a quick speech, it was amazing looking out at that room. And I knew most of the people in that room. All the Inner Circle members I know really intimately. I know their businesses, and often times I know their fears, hopes, desires, dreams, passion, all those things. I’m aware of those things, so it’s kind of cool to look out there and realize and look at those guys like, “Man, the ripple effect” That’s funny, because of Rippln, that was our pitch there, but the ripple effect of these people is amazing.
And I kind of talked about that like, how cool it is for me and for us as a company that we get to be a little piece in that journey. For me, it’s such an honor. I get a lot of credit for those things and it’s like, no it’s not me, it’s you guys. We provided a tool, some training, but it’s you guys taking that leap of faith to go and do it. Because the tools and training is out there for everybody, but most people don’t do it, and the reason why is there’s so much fear and anxiety and things that happen. Just seeing this room of people who are taking those leaps, it was awesome.
That was the first night. We went to bed that night and I could not sleep. I really needed to because I hadn’t slept much earlier, and I ended up being up until 2 or 2:30 before I passed out. The next day started and it was insane. We got there and people were packed. Devon Brown, who is the best MC on earth was MC-ing it, getting people’s energy, he had everyone dancing and it was so exciting. And then we brought the certified partners on stage so everyone could see, “Here are the people who are certified. Here are the people you could hire if you need help with funnels. And if you want to become certified, you want this to be your career, go ask someone from our team because you could be certified. This could be your new career, just like these guys.”
We had most of our Clickfunnels team come on stage, so people could see who was actually behind the event. Then after that, I had a chance to get up and it was cool because these events are always fun for because I get to share what I’m thinking about, I’m geeking out about at the time. And it’s usually stuff I’ve shared in the Inner Circle, I’ve shared some of on the podcast, but it’s never been formally presented. So this is the first time I had a chance to formally present the first section of the new Expert Secrets book, which is creating a mass movement. And it was so much fun to share that and walk through the models and show people that.
And I think a lot of, I don’t know, I felt like it was for a lot of people, just such a new, exciting thing to see and realize that we’re not just selling things. You are creating a movement. What’s interesting, one thing that kind of made me sad about the event, I know it frustrated some people, in the initial sales letter we had a little section saying I was going to talk about supplement funnels, and I didn’t because of just how things shift as you start growing the event and speakers and some things have to get cut and some things don’t. And that was one that got cut.
Someone came up to me afterwards and was like, “I came all the way from Australia because I wanted to learn about supplement funnels.” I was like, “Well I’m not specifically talking about supplement funnels, but this stuff is the same. It doesn’t matter. We are building the supplement line right now and the difference between the first supplement funnel was all a media based thing where we had a really good funnel and drove traffic. But we didn’t build a culture, we didn’t build a following and that’s why it grew and then it went away. It was kind of over.
I was like, “With the new supplement stuff we’re doing, this building a mass movement, is the same. All these principals we’re talking about are the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling supplements.” I was trying to explain to her and I don’t think she believed me and she was frustrated and walked away.
This is the key to all business. This is the key to everything you’re doing. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, this is still the foundation of how you position an offer and how you treat your customers and how you get them to buy over and over and over again. So I was excited to finally share that and it was just so cool.
Then we had a break and after that Todd Brown came up. And Todd is, I always say if you look who are the two guys out there in the market teaching funnels the most it’s me and Todd. Todd’s a lot smarter than me. A lot more analytical I think at stuff and he has a chance to hang out with some amazing marketers. So I love his perspective, he came in and we were talking about the big idea. How do you create the idea behind the marketing campaign’s to get people to buy your thing? And it was fun just to see how he breaks things down and how he looks at things.
He’s definitely different than how I look at things, but I appreciate it so much. The way that he views things, I respect him a lot. And it was awesome having him up there sharing his perspective on that. Because I think a lot of people are getting good at building funnels, but they’re missing my first presentation which is creating a mass movement, and the positioning of things, and that kind of stuff. And then Todd is figuring out the big idea. So that was the next cool thing and people loved that.
From there we broke to lunch, which I feel like eating is such a waste at these event. We’ve got two hours we gotta block out for lunch so people can go and eat. But nobody needs that. We need to be sitting in a room talking. We let people eat, because I think people need that. Humans have to eat every once in a while. But yeah, we went to lunch. For most of these meals, we bought lunches and dinners and stuff like that for most of the stuff. Because I didn’t want people to have to leave, it’s just kind of a nice touch I think, to help provide those for people.
So we fed a lot of people. I can’t remember if we fed people that lunch or not, but whatever. But then after I came back, this is where I had a chance to go into story, which is the next thing. The epiphany bridge, I shared a lot of pieces of that with you. But another cool thing for me, Daegan Smith, who is one of my favorite people in the world, one of my mentors, peers, friends, whatever you want to say. I actually had him come to the event because I wanted him to see a lot of this stuff that I was talking about, a lot of stuff I initially learned from him and then stuff that we talked about what inspired ideas that made me test things and try things.
So I had him there, and it was cool because I had to give this cool presentation on story and I got to give him credit for being there. In fact, the Expert Secrets book, most of it is dedicated to him, because it was the foundation for so much of this cool thing that became. It was fun having him in the room to hear that. I was a little nervous, honestly, I was like, “Daegan, I learned tons of this stuff from you and this is where I’ve kind of taken it.” And it was fun to share that.
So I shared the story and epiphany bridges and how all those things work together. We talked about the hero’s two journeys, all the stuff that’s from the Expert Secrets book, which you guys are going to love. Then I got done and I was able to bring up Brandon and Kaylin Polland, who last year, they were at last year’s Funnel Hacking event and I met them in person there. Then they joined the Inner Circle and I’ve had a chance to be around them and experience them and their business over the last year. And I wanted them to be at the event, so they spoke. They talked about social webinars and telling their story, which is super cool. Their whole thing is #dowhateverrussellsays, and I think their end thing was give Russell all your money and he’ll turn it into more money, or something, which I appreciate.
But it was cool to hear their whole story. What I think what Brandon and Kaylin, outside of they’re crazy talented as a whole anyway, but showing when they got in a year ago or two years ago when they first got started, they didn’t have a ton of money, and they invested in the Funnel Hacks course, a thousand dollar course a lot of you guys already have. They said, “We went through and pushed play and watched thirty seconds and we paused it and implemented that. And pushed play again….and for three weeks we went through the entire course in thirty second chunks.” They heard it, stopped an implemented it.
And what’s funny is he told me afterwards, that a bunch of people came up and were like, “What was the course you went through with Russell. I want to go through the same thing the same way.” And he told them and they were like, “Oh. I’ve owned that for a year and a half.” And he’s like, “Yeah.” The difference is that they implemented. That’s the key, they’re the most amazing implementers in the world. They’re presentation was amazing.
Then we had a break and after that, Jim Edwards came up, my co-host with Funnelfridays.com. And he gave a presentation on Copy Blocks, which was amazing. I think that hopefully for most people it was liberating. Showing wow, this is, I don’t have to be a creative writer. I just have to understand how blocks work and copy and how Funnel Scripts works and all that kind of stuff. And Jim made it really fun. He did a great job. He made the whole session really fun and exciting and people loved it.
Then when Jim got done, then Stu McLarin came up. Stu is one of the greatest human beings, literally, to be birthed on this earth. I don’t know if I can say it strongly enough. Just an amazing human being. He came and talked about membership funnels, which was awesome. And showing the pre-launch process and how he launched his programs, and it was cool seeing his pre-launch stuff. How he launches, 90% is pre-launch stuff that most people, like me, don’t even think about. It was like, “Here’s a video we launched ahead of time on Facebook and Youtube that got viewed. From here we moved to here…” it showed the whole process which was cool. And From here we launched this funnel and it made 3.3 million dollars and it was cool to show that.
Then afterwards I had a chance to come up with Todd and Dylan and we did a special presentation about World Teacher Aide and we talked about coming to Kenya and we showed a video of me in Kenya from last year. And then this time we said, “Look, if you guys want, we’re going, if you guys will pay for a classroom you can actually come to Kenya with us and do a special Mastermind.” We had 11 spots that were open and that night we sold all 11 of those spots and I think we had 7 or 8 people on the waiting list, which is crazy. When all is said and done, by the last day we had raised between the money, it was almost, just shy of a quarter of a million dollars, that we had raised for World Teacher Aide from the event, which was insane.
What a quarter of a million dollars will do in Kenya, is the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars here in America. There’s so many people and kids and communities, lives will be effected because of that. I just, everyone was gracious and giving, which is awesome.
After that, we ran down and did our round tables. Which had a bunch of people at round tables and anyone could come and ask questions and it went really, really well. We had a big buffet down there and everyone was eating and partying, asking questions. It was good. I think next year we’re going to tweak that a little though. There were pros and cons. The pros were everyone who got at a round table it was really, really powerful. Those who didn’t though, they were kind of like, it was hard. And I don’t know if we need to get microphones or something. Have people rotate from table to table. Some people purchase a table and sit there for the entire two or three hours and other people can get it.
We’re going to figure out how to make the round tables a little better. But it was really cool for everyone come out and have a chance to talk directly to the speakers and the Inner Circle members and things like that. It was awesome. That was day number one. I slept really good that night, which was awesome.
A quick little rant after I woke up this morning.
On today’s episode Russell talks about standing up for Caleb Maddix in a marketing Facebook group after people twice his age begin making fun of him. He also talks about having good character no matter what.
Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to hear how you can still build the tallest building without having to knock other buildings down.
---Transcript---
Good morning Funnel Hackers. So today we’re home with my little Norah here. She’s holding me. She’s a little sad because she wanted to go and say bye to the kids at the bus stop, but instead we’re hanging out and we’re going to do a podcast because, in fact, I’m going to do a big update on Funnel Hacking Live because I know a lot of you guys want to know what happened behind the scenes, all the cool stuff. Conversions, numbers, metrics, all the nerdy stuff we all care about.
But today, I’ve wanted to do a podcast this morning on something, a little something I like to call character. I’m sitting here because I’m a little upset this morning. Upset as I can be because I’m usually pretty happy, but definitely just kind of annoyed and wanted to share this with you.
Yesterday was Sunday, I was home, I went to church, hung out with the kids, having a good time. Then I jumped on the inter-webs because, honestly because we were selling Funnel Hacking Live tickets for next year, and we were looking at numbers and stats and went to Facebook to see if people were talking about it and what was happening. And then in the middle of my news Facebook feed I see a big old video from my buddy Caleb Maddix, now Caleb, if you don’t know him yet, he’s 14 or 15 now, amazing kid. He spoke at Funnel Hacking Live on stage and crushed it. One of the best presenters we had by far and he’s a 15 year old kid and just one of the most talented, amazing humans, individuals I’ve ever met in my entire life so far on this earth. And Caleb is so cool, him and also Emily Shay, we had both of them speaking at Funnel Hacking Live.
Both of them actually came out here to my home in Boise and helped share with my kids. Right now, my kids are part of the Maddix book club, maddixbookclub.com, where every morning they get a text message from Caleb with the video, he’s got them reading books and all sorts of cool stuff. It’s the coolest thing in the world. He’s inspiring kids, changing the world, he’s able, as a 15 year old kid, he’s able to stand up in front of 1500 people and control the audience like no one I’ve ever seen. Just one of the most amazing humans I’ve....on earth.
Anyway, he’s got so many talents and so much drive and he’s a hard worker and just awesome. And his dad who is an amazing human as well. Just can’t …..there’s no way I could think more of them. They’re just so amazing. Everyday I’ve actually had with Caleb has been super professional, super polite, just love that kid.
So I’m on Facebook, I’m scrolling and I see this big video of Caleb. I’m like, oh it’s Caleb’s video. And above it I see some moron posting something about why…something about this kid and blah blah blah, making fun of him. And it was in a marketing group that I’m part of. And this marketing group……It’s one of those groups that they got in there because they’re all marketers and then they all like to make fun of everybody. They make fun of Gary V. they make fun of, they probably make fun of me. If I wasn’t in that group, I’m pretty sure that I’ll get kicked out eventually and then they can all make fun of me. Whatever.
And I don’t really, whatever. It doesn’t really bother me that much. But I saw Caleb sitting there and they all started making fun of him and they all started going and at first I just read them and I was like, whatever these guys, that’s what they do to whatever. So I just kind of ignored it and then for the next hour it just bugged me. I was so visually bugged. I’m playing with my kids and I just had this annoyed feeling. I was like I gotta go, if I was at an event or sitting somewhere and a bunch of people were saying things like that about someone I love and respect and is a friend, I would stand up and be like, I’m going to go and just…
So I go back to the group, find the post, I just posted some really simple, I don’t remember exactly what it was but it was like, “Hey, Caleb’s awesome. He came out to Boise and trained my kids, he’s got my kids off video games. Right now they’re reading and they’re writing and they’re learning. He’s amazing. It’s interesting to me how many haters….” It drives me nuts because Caleb has tons of, you see his videos, tons of comments from jerks. People who just have to put in their two cents because they feel like they’re tough because they’re behind the computer.
So I said, “Caleb has tons of haters, but it’s typically from people who are double his age and making half as much money as him. There’s two ways to build the biggest building in town. One’s to actually work hard and become better yourself, and the other is trying to knock down the other buildings around you.” I just posted that and left it there.
So they get some people coming in like, “oh yeah, Caleb’s cool.” So at the playground, someone’s getting bullied until one cool kids stands up and says, “Oh yeah, he’s cool.” So all the sudden all the people who were too afraid to say anything come out, “Oh yeah, Caleb’s cool.” That kind of made me happy.
So this morning I woke up, and this one drove me nuts. This morning I woke up, in this thread where they’re all picking on a 15 year old kid, who is a thousand times more talented than any of them, by far. Some guy comments to me and says, “Hey Russell, don’t you think you were kind of harsh on so and so? Especially considering the room that you’re in.” I was like, “Okay. You guys are bullying a kid behind his back in a Facebook group and then one guy comes and sticks up for that person and teases there person who makes the post because he’s half as successful as this 15 year old kid and now you’re mad that I’m bullying that guy that made the initial post?” I was like, “Are you kidding me?”
So I wrote a comment back, I just said, “You know I try to treat all people the same no matter what room I’m in #character” and I left it there. Anyway, that was how my morning started this morning, and I thought it was interesting and funny and I just wanted to leave a message for you guys.
First off, a couple of things. So number one, if someone is a thousand times more successful than you and doing their thing and having fun with it, it doesn’t help you to cut them down. If you’re feeling insecure because they’re doing that. That means it’s a problem about you. And posting trash about it is not going to help you. Looking at that and inspired will. That’s number one.
Number two, I don’t know about you, but what my parents taught me and what I teach my kids and I hope that you will learn as well is that you should treat people the same no matter what room you’re in. That’s ridiculous that, oh we’re in this room so we’re okay picking on a 15 year kid behind his back. No. What kind of character do you have? If you think that’s okay, that is ridiculous. That is insane.
If you’re in a room and everyone is making fun of people behind your back, I don’t care if it’s the internet or offline or whatever, just know when you’re not in that room those same people are making fun of you. That’s called lack of character. If you have character you treat people the same no matter where you are. I don’t care if you’re…….it’s just ridiculous. I feel like I’m working with my 11 year old twins. This is not something that an adult should still be struggling with. If you have any character at all, that’s how you treat people the same. Especially people……just ridiculous. #character, my new slogan for today.
That’s kind of all I wanted to share with you guys. Seriously, what’s that thing they say, if you’re pointing outward at somebody, there’s 4 fingers pointed back at you. That’s the reality you’re in. That’s what you need to feel good about yourself. Then there’s other issues.
Alright, that’s all I got. Me and Norah are going to go eat and later on today I’ll do a podcast recapping the whole event. Let you guys in on the behind the scenes of it all. But I just wanted to drop that really quick because I think it’s important and says a lot about who we are as human beings. I don’t know about you but I’d rather be friends with Caleb Maddix than any of those people talking trash about a kid in a Facebook group. Grow up and have some character. With that said, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for being funnel hackers. Thanks for doing the right thing. Thanks for being people that I would like to hang out with. With that said, I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
The one little shift that transformed everything.
In today’s episode Russell mentions some of his preparations for Funnel Hacking Live. He also talks about changing the way he sees and talks about Actionetics.
Here are some cool things in this episode:
So listen below to get a sneak peak about some of the stuff Russell will be talking about at Funnel Hacking Live.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome back to Marketing In Your…actually it’s Marketing In Your Closet. I would do it in my car but, I tell you what, things are going so crazy right now getting ready for the event. I don’t even…..I’m heading into the office in a little bit here.
But I’m getting dressed in the closet. So you can hear me talk in here, which I hope is okay. I have something cool to share with you. If you’ve been following along for a long time, or most of you guys haven’t read the book yet, because it’s not actually out. Yesterday from the publisher we got back the guts of the book. The finalized design guts. We had to go through it last night. So Dave was up, we were at the office until 3. I can’t remember 3 or 3:30 or something like that. He went through the whole thing, there was like 10 or 11 little edits and I sent it back in, which means now we can get the books printed. Which means we’re going to be able to sell these things on time, which is insane.
So that’s all happening which I am excited about. And in the book I was talking a lot about this earlier while I was writing, in the podcast, for those who are listening along as we go. I talked about the foundation and building a big mass movement, or culture. There’s three things, there’s charismatic leader or attractive character, number one. Number two is a future based cause and then number three is a new opportunity.
We talked about how you can’t create improvement, but if you created something that’s an improvement, teaching people how to become better then you automatically dis-include 98% of the world’s population, which makes it really hard to sell. So if you struggled selling, it may be you’re selling improvement. People don’t want improvement, the masses don’t. They want a new opportunity, so you could always create a new opportunity.
So last night, the presentation I was working on was to show Actionetics, and if I ask 99% of people who have ever heard of Actionetics, what it is they say, “It’s an email auto-responder.” So as I’m working on my presentation yesterday I was like, “If I call this an email auto-responder, what leverage do I have?” The only leverage is to say this is a better E-R, a better auto-responder. By saying better, it is now an improvement offer. Which means 98 % of the world’s population will no longer care about it. Including people in my market. The only people who care are the 2% who are actually looking for improvement.
So if I pitch that way, I’m going against my own rules. So because I try to practice what I preach at all times, in all situations, I spent the last almost two days now trying to figure out how we position this presentation and the tool, Actionetics as a new opportunity? Because it is. We were here forever trying to figure out the title of the presentation and the hook and angle and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it’s kind of cool. Literally I spent, I think I told you yesterday, 8 hours figuring out the headline and title. Steve Larsen had a burst of inspiration after all of us were sitting there trying to figure it out.
I had email funnel secrets and I had email funnels and I had all these things. He came up with this idea, this name which was follow-up funnels. And I heard the angels in heaven singing. That is it. That’s it. Actionetics is not an email auto-responder. If I was the Actionetics guy, “Hey here’s an email auto-responder.” I would beat him up. No, I’m so much more than that. But that’s how you classified me because you are trying to make it an improvement, you’re better version of an auto-responder, which is true, but it’s different. It’s a new opportunity. It’s a follow-up auto-responder. All sorts of follow-ups.
So after we got the hook we started looking in December and found out, we went through all of our front end funnels, for every one dollar we made in front end funnels, we made $16.73, something like that, in the follow-up funnel, which is insane. $16 to $1 more than that. I thought it was a typo. I thought we did the stats wrong. We did it ten times. We did 16 times more from the follow-up funnels, than we did from any of the front end funnels, which is crazy.
The front end funnels, I think we spent $85,000 in front end funnels. We made $96, we made $11,000. That was it. Anyway, it’s crazy. So I started going over the follow-up funnels when I started doing this presentation and showing how this is not an improvement, this is a new opportunity. How auto-responders, that’s an old, dead idea, concept. It’s from 1998. The future is follow-up funnels and Actionetics is the tool, the only tool that can do that. Because it’s legitimately a new opportunity. It’s a blue ocean, it’s all these things. There’s no other service that can do what Actionetics does.
Some people compare head to head with the email auto-responders. These ones might have more features, from an email auto-responder standpoint they may be a little bit better. Any time I’m talking about E-R, it’s an improvement offer. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a whole new opportunity. Emails or only 1/10th of the equation. It’s actually the rest of the stuff. I’m going to be showing in the presentation everything. When someone comes in how with Actionetics you can do Facebook follow-up auto-responders, changing the pixels, changing the traffic, the images based on where the funnels are hitting.
We’ll show you how you can change the message based on who they are, how the funnel they have changes. How somebody leaves, they can come back because of sticky cookies and buy 6 months, a year, 5 years, or ten years later and not even have to put their credit card in. There’s so many insanely cool things that Actionetics does. Because it’s not an email auto-responder, it is a new opportunity, it is a follow-up funnel. And that’s the magic.
I just wanted to share that with you because it was a big…..when I got that I was going crazy. But you gotta look at everything you’re selling you guys. If you looked at me, if I looked at myself two days ago, I was selling a better email auto-responder. I look at myself today, I’ve created a new opportunity and it is….that’s what Actionetics is.
So those of you guys who are going to be at the Funnel Hacking Live event, Day two, which is what? Wednesday morning, I’ll be giving that presentation. I spent almost 40 hours straight on this stupid thing and it’s still not done. So I’m going in right now to go finish it off. Then I got two more presentations after that, so we’re getting down to the wire, but what’s coming from it is legitimately amazing. I can’t wait to share with you guys.
With that said, I’m done, I’m getting out of the closet. Coming out of the closet. No, not like that. I’m literally walking out of the closet and into the bathroom and I’m going to go get my hair and head out because I got a call with Caleb Maddix and Emily Shai, I always say her name wrong, Emily Shay in 15 minutes. So if you’re watching Facebook Live’s come check it out, we’re doing Facebook Live’s with all the different speakers, telling out stories and it’s been so much fun. I’m having so much fun with this so far. Come hang out with us and I’ll see most of you guys at Funnel Hacking Lives. Thanks everybody and talk to you soon.
Some behind the scene thoughts, as I’m choreographing Funnel Hacking Live.
On today’s episode Russell talks about some of his preparations for the Funnel Hacking Live event next week. He talks about spending hours on the headline and sub headline for a particular presentation and why it’s important.
Here are some of the enlightening things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out why the choreography of a big event is so important.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I hope you guys are doing fantastic, wherever you are listening in. So today a couple of things. First off, we are 5 days away from Funnel Hacking Live and so much crazy, insanely coo, amazing stuff is all happening that I wish I could share all or just a piece of. But I’m on my way to get a haircut and I’ve got 8 minutes so I thought this would be the perfect time to hang out with you guys. And I’m actually in my car, which is strange, seeing how that’s the name of the podcast.
And also, a couple of people told me that two episodes ago where I talked about the sport we call business, talking about the playground with the athletes and the drama and the skaters, all those things. A couple of people said they were kind of offended by that. I didn’t mean it to be offensive, I meant it to be, in fact I said at the beginning there the things I learned from those guys was awesome. The collaboration I….I wouldn’t have collaborated well had I not learned that from those other groups. I’m just saying you have to understand that when you’re in a group with a melting pot of a whole bunch of different personalities that there are people who are like me, who are aggressively competing and just being aware of that, hopefully to bring some competition to you.
So if you were offended that means that it’s time to build some aggression, instead of on me do it on your competitors. Anyway, I’ll leave that there. Let’s see, I just wanted to kind of walk you guys behind the scenes of what’s happening, because it’s insane.
So the event’s happening, which means we are creating order forms to print and signs and bags and backpacks and things and then presentations and speakers slides. It’s just, it’s crazy how many things go into this. Then we had this great idea, thanks to Trey Lewellen to do Facebook Live’s with all the speakers before the event to get excited. So we’ve been doing that twice a day which has been so fun. You’re going to be so excited to come and hang out with everybody, which is cool.
And then a big part of events, I’m going to bring you in on a little secret, don’t tell everybody this. I don’t know if you guys knew this, but we actually make money at the events. So there’s the big secret, it’s out, the pink elephant is out of the room. So now that that’s out there, the event, there’s a couple of focus, one is to get everyone together and build community and culture and myths and stuff like that. That’s one thing, obviously. And another is for us to make money as a company. So that’s one of the benefits, but there’s a fine line between having an event that…..When I first got started the way that events were is you had 15 speakers, every speaker is up for 90 minutes pitching something and that’s how the event was. People didn’t mind for a while. Then they started really minding and people stopped going to events.
I’m like, if I want people to come to my events, it’s not pitch fest where everyone’s selling. But at the same time we need to sell. So how do you do it in a cool way where it’s not distracting but it adds a benefit and those kind of things. You know, a big, big, big piece of this whole pie is choreographing the event. It’d be fun to talk about the event choreography for a long time with you guys because there’s so many cool things. I think after the event, depending on what happens, I’ll share with you guys some of this stuff that’s actually happening. Because there’s the surface level, what everyone will see, but there’s stuff happening at a subconscious level that’s so cool. I wish I could share with you guys right now. But I don’t want to ruin the surprise for those that are going to be there.
But there’s stuff happening that there’s patterns that I’m using in really interesting ways that are very, very thought through. If you guys watch who’s speaking, when. How they’re speaking, what the topics are, the length of time. All those things are choreographed for a purpose. It’s not just to put a speaker in here on this day, kind of stuff. There’s a storyline that we’re telling through the event, which is why I try to make it all so engaging, so people are not sitting in the halls, because if they do they miss the storyline. There’s a very key storyline that’s happening throughout the whole thing.
Even the pace of the speakers and where they’re at has a lot to do with it. The order of my presentations is very specific. There’s hint that I’ll drop right now and share with you guys post event, maybe. Hopefully, we will.
Anyway, it’s so exciting. And it’s really fun. I wish I could explain everything. But I mean everything from how do you build a rapport quickly with the audience? How do you get rapport with the speakers and with the MC ahead of time. That’s what these Facebook Lives, it’s a big part of it because rapport is huge. How do you teach in a way that doesn’t just overwhelm people, but brings epiphany bridges, or breaks belief patterns and helps people to learn and grow and have not just like, “Oh I learned really cool tactics.” But emotional shifts that change things.
Because that’s the experience we’re trying to deliver and there’s so much that goes into that. Again, it’s being impactful and making an amazing networking content, belief transformation event that also setting us up to make money. So it’s kind of cool how things will be weaved in. And we’re making a couple of really special offers at the event that aren’t going to be available to the general public for a long time. But will be available to those who were there. And it’s going to be cool. So I’m excited.
Those who are coming and watching, pay attention. I would say, if you buy stuff from me, buy slowly because everything that we’re doing is thought through. It’s not just, oh let’s blah. It’s all very, very well thought through. But one kind of cool thing, doing a presentation of the morning of day two, which in our past events we always called the Clickfunnels state of the union. We talk about all the new features and stuff like that. It was really good, but also was…the energy on that session always felt wrong. It wasn’t …..I wanted it to be like Steve Jobs thing, where he’s up there and everyone goes crazy. And it’s never quite been that.
So I wanted, how do we choreograph this in the right way? And I’m really proud of what’s happening. I started on this presentation yesterday, about twenty four hours ago. I spent the entire first 24 hours on two things. One is choreographing the presentation, number two is figuring out the title and headline, which is crazy. I’m not going to share with you guys here, because it’s cool but I literally at ten o’clock last night is when everybody else left the office and I was trying to figure out a name for the presentation.
Because I had a name initially and I was just like, it’s good but it’s not great. Most people would have done it, and it would have been fine. If we used it, it would have been fine. But I was like, I need something that has enough emotional impact that it makes you be like, “what? What is that?” So I literally sat there going through books and books and books of swipe files, trying to find a word.
From 10 at night until about 2-2:30 in the morning, so four and a half hours. And I didn’t find it. Then in the morning I woke up and I was stressed out, so I voxed everyone on our marketing group like, “Hey everyone, this is my dilemma. Give me your thoughts.” So everyone was giving their thoughts back. And then I came back and spent another two or three hours and then finally Stephen actually had the epiphany. He was like, “What about this?” I was like AHH! Angels from heaven singing. That is it, that’s the one. Yes. And we were freaking out and we got it.
Then I spent the next 7 hours trying to come up with the sub headline, which is crazy because all my slides have to be done tomorrow if they’re going to be in the booklet. So I’m on this huge time crunch but I still spent 7 hours on the sub headline. And then we got it. And it’s perfect. And it’s, it will cause the emotional response, number one. But it’ll cause the belief pattern to shift in people’s minds.
Because I look at people that are succeeding with funnels and those who aren’t. The difference between two comma members, who are making a million dollars in funnels and those who aren’t. And it’s a belief pattern in one thing, and if I can smash that belief pattern it’ll shift everything for them. That’s the key of this whole thing. I’m so excited to give this presentation now. Except now it’s 5 o’clock and I’m getting my haircut and then I’ve got scouts tonight, so I’m doing scouts.
Then after scouts, I’m coming back in the office after 9. So from 9 until 2 or 3 tonight I’ll be getting slides done because I have to get this presentation done tonight. And there’s a lot that goes into that. Because its, again, it’s us showing all the new features within the context of this presentation and the choreographing of it.
So the things I wanted to share with you guys because I know it’s kind of vague today, but I want you to understand the concept of choreographing things. The perfect webinar is a choreographed presentation that does a very specific thing. Those who were at the FHAT event last week saw it in very intense detail, more than I’ve ever done before. What I’m choreographing, what stories are where and why? What belief patterns are supposed to break at each point? The Expert Secrets book will go deep into that as well, but it’s the choreographing of the sales message.
Same thing is on this event. The choreographing of it, when I give presentations it’s the choreographing of that. How do we, what are the beliefs they may have and what order and how do we structure this stuff to fit within that? So I spend insane amounts of time. I spent probably 12, actual thinking time, probably 6 hours to get the title of the presentation. And then another, what did I say? Another 8 hours or so, 7 hours getting the subtitle. It was just insane. I gotta get 5 hours to get the rest of the slides done. But that’s how much thought goes into it sometimes.
So if you’re working on a presentation or a sales pitch or something, you spend 30 minutes on a headline, and you’re like, “ugh I can’t get it” and you’re frustrated and walk away. Know that it happens to everybody. It happens to the best of us. But the one’s when you get it right, that’s the difference between, again, a 5 or 6 figure campaign and a 7 or 8 figure campaign is getting that right. So don’t be afraid to put the time and energy and effort into that because it’s worth it in the end and hopefully it’ll be worth it for the attendees. You guys will have to let me know afterwards.
Again, I will share with you. After the event is done I will walk you guys through the choreography, the what and why and how it all worked. What worked and what didn’t work. So that’s all I got today. I’m at the haircut place, two minutes late. I’m going to bounce. Thanks you guys for everything. I can’t wait to see you guys at Funnel Hacking Live, those who are going to be there. Those who can’t make it there, please come next year. I don’t put out half a million dollars or more in cash from my pocket just for my health. It’s to serve you guys.
So take advantage of that, it’s worth the $1000 bucks and the couple grand for tickets and hotels. Because I’m spending 50 times that much on investing into you guys. So make sure you invest that back into yourself as well, because we do care and I do know that this stuff works and it can change your life. So if you’re on the fence thinking about next year if you’re going to come or whatever. Just remember you guys, you’re just one funnel away. I cannot wait to help you implement and create that funnel. Alright guys, talk to you soon. Bye everybody.
This goes against all logic, but it’s the only way to actually do it.
On this episode Russell talks about procrastinating getting presentations for Funnel Hacking Live done and why procrastination works for him. He also talks about why he sells stuff before it’s even been created.
Here are some of the other exciting things in this episode:
So listen below to find out why procrastination works so well for Russell.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Guess what? Today, I’m actually in my car, which is kind of awesome because there’s been less of that lately.
I’m backing out right now and I’m driving the Corvette that is the one we showed everyone when we launched the dream car contest. I’m about a week or two away til I get rid of this thing. Getting rid of the Corvette, and my Lexus is now smashed because I backed into it with my other car. Yes, I’m a genius.
I’m going to be finally getting my dream car. It’s funny, I’ve been, my whole life my dream car’s been a Jeep. Ever since I was a little kid I always wanted a Jeep, but for some reason I never had one. I’ve had a Ferrari, I’ve had a Corvette, all those things. But I don’t even like those cars, I’ve always wanted a Jeep. So all the guys at the office are making fun of me, “Dude, you realize Jeeps aren’t that expensive right?” I’m like, “yeah.” They’re like, “Why don’t you get one?” I’m like, “Because I have a Corvette now.” And they’re like, “Well, get rid of it.” I’m like, “I guess I could. Why don’t I just do that?”
So I’m getting a Jeep. I’m down grading in the eyes of some people, but I’m upgrading in my eyes, which is all that really matters when all is said and done. So I’m pretty excited for that.
But I’m heading to the office right now. Yesterday was planning out all the presentations, the offers, getting order forms, process flows, speaker lineup, all that kind of stuff was yesterday. Today is working on presentations. I got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to get all my presentations done. And then after that I’m heading to the event. So it’s like do or die.
But I want to talk about, because I know some people have voiced concern that my presentations aren’t done and the event is happening. So I want to talk to you guys. I did a podcast a year ago called the Fine Art of Procrastination, which is worth listening to. So this probably part two of that. It just kind of a understanding that most people, we spend so much time planning stuff. And there’s some law, I think its, I can’t remember, Fredo’s law, one of those dudes. But there’s a law that basically however much time you have to get something done, you will fill that time completely up. It always happens.
So if I were to start planning these things six months ago and started working on presentations I would still be not getting it done until right now anyway. So in my philosophy, just why not just get them done right now and it’s better? The other thing, I don’t know about you guys when you do presentations, I’ve had presentations, where I’ve created presentations and I’ve done the presentations a bunch of times and it worked, and then I don’t do it for six months and I come back and do it and even though I’ve done the presentation and I know it, for some reason my mind can’t remember the process and some of the stories, all that kind of stuff gets messed up.
Where if I’m doing the presentations right before it actually happens, then I have better recall and clarity of what I was I doing and why I was doing it and how all the pieces fit together and all that kind of fun stuff. In fact, the FHAT event we did last week, I was up until 1:00 the night before doing my presentations. I was all nervous and all those things, but what’s nice, I’d gone through it so many times, I knew the process and what I was trying to cover, when and why and how they all fit together. So when I gave it, it was all top of mind. If I was to give the FHAT event today, I would struggle because it’s been a week since I did it. I would be like, “Oh wait, why did I do that in that order?” It would probably be hard.
So that’s another reason why I like to wait til the end. Because it gives me the ability to have it top of my mind. What I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and the order and structure and all those things. Anyway, that’s kind of what’s happening today.
So I’m giving you guys all permission, those of you guys who procrastinate. But it comes back to is having a firm, hard deadline. I don’t know about you guys, but if I don’t have the deadline of this is when this has to happen or else it’s never going to happen. If I don’t have those deadlines then nothing ever happens. So that’s why I always schedule things like, “Okay FHAT event happens this day, Funnel Hacking Live starts this day. Product launch is this day. Roll out of MP3 players is this day.” So I set these hard deadlines and that way my, I don’t know, my mind does not have the ability to keep pushing deadline further and further away.
Because it’s like, if we don’t make this one then we miss the next one and the next one. In fact, in our office I went and bought this huge calendar. It takes up an entire wall for the whole year. And what we’d be doing is basically blocking out almost every single week and in most cases every day of every single week for the next twelve months. Everything is so tightly fitted in there it’s like, okay here’s all the stuff that’s happening and there’s no room for deviation.
It’s like, okay this is when things are happening and if I miss something then it throws the rest of the year off. So we have to get things done. That’s kind of how I function. Is setting hard deadlines that are immovable and then reverse engineering to get that done. Like, when do I need to start the core tasks, and then starting those just in time.
I remember I took a class in college, it was a project management class. But I did really bad on it, but the teacher was awesome. I remember it was my senior year, last semester. I was either failing or I was close to failing, but probably closer on the failing side, and I was not going to graduate if I didn’t pass this annoying class. My teacher was super cool, he came up to me after class. He’s like, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “So what are you doing? What’s your…what are your plans after you graduate?” I was like, “Oh well, I already launched this business, selling stuff online. I already have two employees, just going to keep growing that.” And he’s like, “So you don’t really need this engineering stuff right?” I’m like, “Not even a little bit.” He’s like, “Cool, how about this? I’ll give you a C.” I’m like, “Are you serious?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Dude, I love you. Thank you.”
And so he gave me a C, and it was the greatest gift that someone could have ever given me. I don’t remember the teacher’s name or anything, but if I ever see him again I’ll be like, “Dude, thank you for that C.” Anyway, I did learn something from that class, which is why I deserve that C, because I have retention to this day.
In that class he talked about, probably a lot of stuff, the only thing I remember was the concept of just in time production. Where people get things done just in time. I guess that doesn’t really warrant me getting a C, I don’t really know what that means other than in my mind it means I’m going to get things done just in time. I’m not going to try to have things done a month or a week or six months early, because if I do I’m going to stress about it, it’s not going to be right, I’m going to keep pushing it, and I’ll waste so much time.
For me if I can press those timelines I get ten times as much stuff done and sometimes things aren’t perfect when I roll them out, but that’s okay because I have time to perfect them over time. But I do not have time to over time to launch it, get it out the door. Because then it’ll just never actually get done.
For those of you guys who get stuck in that, what do they call it, analysis paralysis, in that mode of trying to make things perfect before you roll it out. What I highly recommend doing for you is finding a business partner who just likes to sell stuff. There’s something magic about sales people.
Like me, for example, not that I’m that cool but I love to sell stuff. And I want to sell stuff fast, before it’s even ready. In fact, Steven Larsen yesterday was like, “Dude, you sell all this stuff before you ever create it.” I was like, “Yes.” And he’s like, “How do you…why do you do that?” I was like, “well, first off, if I sell it and nobody buys it, I don’t want to create it. And second off, by me selling it, I say things about what it’s going to be and I then hold myself accountable to that when I create the products I have to fulfill on these different promises.”
A lot of people create the product first. I remember when I first learned copywriting, they told me that before I create the product, write the sales letter. Otherwise, you’re going to be like, “Oh my product doesn’t do that or that.” And your sales letter gets worse and worse. Instead write the sales letter first and write all the promises you want and say how do I make my product fulfill these promises.
And that’s a better way to sell. The other way around is backwards and doesn’t really work. The key is going up there and selling. So find a good sales person and go and take it. I’ve got, by far, the most amazing partners on planet earth with Clickfunnels. And we’ve joked about this before. If it wasn’t for me, I want to sell this, they would probably still be programming it because there’s so much they want to do. But I’m like, no we gotta sell it.
So I’m selling and they’re developing. So we sold it and the first version of Clickfunnels, guess what? It wasn’t that good. But it got better. The next version wasn’t quite as good, but it got better and better. IT’s continual progression, but the progression is much easier to do when you got cash in the bank from you selling the thing. So that’s kind of the moral of today’s story I think.
In this situation, if you’re that person, find somebody who can just go and sell for you. I was talking to Dean Graziosi yesterday and he was doing an infomercial, so he filmed the infomercial, got a book that had the cover on it, with blank pages inside. Did the whole infomercial, showing the book. And he launched the infomercial and saw what the numbers were. The numbers came back really good, and he said, cool the numbers are good. Now I’m going to go back and actually write the book. So he sent the next six months writing the book.
And then the infomercial knew worked, so he went and tweaked it. This time he brought Larry King on the infomercial, launched it there, it did good but the book still wasn’t finished. He tested it, refunded everyone who bought. He just wanted to see the numbers and now he’s getting ready to finalize it. And what’s cool, this is cool and a huge honor for me. He did the first version with Larry King, test it, worked good. Then a month or two months later I was out at the 100k meeting, and if you guys listen to episodes 300-302 I shared my presentation from the 100k meeting. We talked about epiphany bridges, belief and story and all that really cool stuff.
And Dean, it’s his event so he was there. He was like, this is awesome. So he messaged me yesterday, “Hey just so you know, after your thing I had some big aha’s that I forgot about. Things I used to do in my old shows that I didn’t do. I actually hired Larry King, flew him back out here and we re-filmed the intro.” I’m like, ‘’Really, can I see it?”
So he sent me the link yesterday to the infomercial. So I was watching it and at minute 2:20 he actually said the word, epiphany. And I stood up, clapped my hands. Not only is he using epiphany bridge, he actually used the word epiphany. I was freaking out and so excited, it was insane.
And then I asked him, “Hey man, when in your schedule can we block out to do my infomercial for my book?” and he was like, “Hey, we could do it blah.” And gave me a date, which is insane and way sooner than I thought.
So I may have an Expert Secrets infomercial in my near future. I’m so excited. So we’ll see. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as that goes forward. But how cool would that be. With that said, I’m going to go inside and get some power point presentations done. Appreciate you all; see most of you all at Funnel Hacking Live. And remember you guys, you’re just one funnel away. Thanks everybody.
Understand who you’re competing against in this game, or else you’re going to lose.
On today’s episode Russell talks about looking at competing in business the same way he would compete during his wrestling days. He views business as a sport and he has figured out how he’s going to beat the competition.
Here are some of the fun things in this episode:
So listen below to find out why Russell is in it to win it when it comes to business.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, I hope you guys are doing good. I’m actually taking the trash out right now. That’s what that wheeling sound, that’s the trashcan being wheeled. But this is going to be a crazy week. I thought I’d hang out with you guys before I get started on it.
Tomorrow is Monday morning, and Monday is basically the week before Funnel Hacking Live starts. Technically it starts on Tuesday, but Pre-registration starts a week from tomorrow. So Tomorrow is when I get to start doing all my presentations. Yes, I wait til the last week to do my presentations. You want to know why? Because the stuff we were doing six months ago, even a month ago has changed. So I want to make sure I have the most up to date content of all time at any given moment. That’s the reason why. That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is I just haven’t had time.
But that’s plenty of time to get everything done and make it amazing. I know what I’m going to talk about, I just gotta get all the slides and examples and case studies and all that kind of stuff and put it together in a really cool way. Hopefully you guys can hear me. It’s kind of loud, the trashcan. But I am….hold on a second I’m going to…
Alright, this might be the only episode of Marketing while you’re taking the trashcan out. I’m out here and it’s cool, it’s super dark, we just got new neighbors that built a house across the street. We’re on a really dark street where there’s not lights at all. Their house is lit up really cool and the moon is….I wish you could see it. It’s pitch black, it’s way off in the distance, right above the mountains there’s this glowing thing that looks misty and foggy over it. It’s pretty amazing.
Anyway, I’m excited because all the snow has been melting that we’ve had. We’ve had so much snow this winter. Then it rained three days last week and it all melted. And we’re back to where I can see the grass everywhere and it’s so exciting.
Anyway, tonight was really fun, we went to church and then had meetings after church and then went out with the kids, went and played in the wrestling room, jumped on the tramp which is freezing cold, then jumped in the hot tub which is super warm and now we put them to bed. My wife’s actually in there putting them to bed. I snuck out to put out the trash because they wear me out those little buggars. I love them, but they wear me out.
Anyway, Funnel Hacking Live is a week away, which is crazy. It’s interesting, last week we had our FHAT event, here in Boise in our new office, which is super fun and I just have this bad habit of booking way too many things all at the same time. But it’s been fun. There’s something with finishing the book and creating everything for the FHAT event, and everything for the Funnel Hacking Live event, where all these concepts and things we’re talking about right now are becoming so clear.
I don’t know if you guys have done that where you’ve had the chance to go through a really deep immersion. It’s weird all these connections get made that don’t when you’re dabbling and goofing around. That’s why I think people should go really deep when they’re becoming a master at what they’re trying to do. You know, become unbalanced for a while, spending insane amounts of time.
But it’s been interesting, one of the fun things I’ve been thinking about. My dad came to town last weekend as well, which is awesome. I was thinking about business as a whole, it’s such a weird I don’t know, playground is the word that pops in my head, I don’t know if that’s the right word. It’s this weird playground where you go to school, and there’s all these different types of kids. There’s the athletes over here, then there’s the people that are in band, and then there’s the drama kids, and then there’s the skaters, and then there’s…..there’s all these different groups at the playground.
When you typically go out there, you go and play with the people that fit in your mold. So I go play with the athletes. We play basketball, football. Competing against each other, trying to win. That’s what drove us at recess, but I’m guessing the other groups probably didn’t do that. They were, I don’t know what the other groups were doing. But I’m assuming, because we would play games with all the kids, but as I got older, I focused on wrestling and that became my thing and it was a deep passion of how do I become the best.
At first I wanted to be the best in the state. After I was State Champ I was like, I want to be best in the country. And my senior year of high school I took second place in the country. Then I was like, I want to be the best in college, in the country. And I never hit that goal. I guess technically I didn’t hit the best in the country in high school either, I almost, I was two points away from that. College I was like, I want to be an all American, I want to be a national champ, and I didn’t get those goals, but I always knew that’s the person I have to beat. I was aware of them, I looked at them and I watched their matches and I studied them and looked what they were doing and I understood them. I understood their moves and what drove them so that I could beat them.
And I was always aware of the people I had to beat. And that was just like, as an athlete, how I viewed the world and business, not business but things. I mean, for almost two decades of my life, that’s what it was. Here’s where I’m at, who’s above me, I gotta find those people, figure them out, and beat them. And that’s what I understood. And I always assume that that’s how everybody thought. But I guess, back at the playground, I’m guessing the band kids didn’t do that. They hung out and played music together, they had a good time.
The drama kids, they made plays together and had a good time. And then the skaters, they skated. You know, I don’t know all the different cliques and stuff, but everybody did their thing. I always assumed that everyone thought the way that I did. Because that was the only world I knew. And it’s been interesting as I’ve come into business, because for me business was the next sport. I got into business, I mean I was learning about it in college when I was wrestling. My senior year, I didn’t hit my goals. I fell short, and in fact I didn’t even qualify for the national tournament, which destroyed me. And it would have destroyed me if I didn’t have the next thing. For me, business I was dabbling in and that became my next sport.
It was like, here’s the sport, I got to figure out. And it’s interesting, the concepts of funnel hacking and the stuff that I share with people, you know how I always talk about I look at people successful and I model them, and I did, but it was different from that. For me it was a sport, I came in and this is the….I’m on a new playground looking around. Who are the kids that are winning? And the people I saw at the time were Armand Morin, Alex Mandossian, Mark Joyner, David Frey, these are all the guys I saw who were successful. So for me it was like, okay what are those guys doing? It was just like wrestling. I would look at them, scout them, watch them, study and learn and figure out what makes them tick. And then when I understand that, then I go and compete against them.
In wrestling I have a match, and someday I’m going to come face to face, we’re going to walk out on the mat under the lights. I’m going to put my shoes on and it’s going to be me and them and that’s it. And if I haven’t done my homework, I’m going to look like an idiot. But in business it was weird because I would study these guys and try to figure out how to compete with them and be successful like they were and that was my whole thing, and I was racing towards that. But what’s weird in business, we never got that moment where we step on the mat and shake hands and go and find out who prepared more.
It was weird, I became friends with people and our businesses were together and I learned this cooperation stuff that I’m guessing they probably taught at the playground with the kids in the band, and the kids, the other groups that all played together. For business it was fun because I collaborated and I had that, but in my mind, I don’t know about you, but I always had from day one….I remember actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly said this out loud, but for me, I’ve always been very aware of where I visualize myself in the totem pole in my market, where are people at? Where up and down, that’s just how my brain works.
And when I pass somebody, I’m aware of that. And when I know who’s ahead of me, I’m aware of that. When I know that, I study those people, I figure them out and I try to beat them. That’s just how I’m wired. It’s been interesting, as I’ve gotten into, as our business has been growing, I would say in our market, I don’t think there’s any businesses that are really bigger than us right now. Outside of a couple of companies that have taken on venture capitalists. They’ve got millions of dollars dumped into them, which is the equivalent of steroids. Honestly, in sports that cheating, but business it’s like, “Aww yes, someone gave us 14 million dollars, now we can cheat.” It’s just ridiculous.
For me, I’m looking out and we’ve got these dudes that got steroids, they’re cheating, but I got to compete against the, but I’m very aware. In my mind it’s very clear, the companies I’m going after. And it shouldn’t be too hard for you guys that follow me to know, because we make fun of them a lot. But I’m aware of it, I study and figure out what they’re doing right and wrong, what the weaknesses are and then we’re attacking them.
It’s been interesting because as I’ve been doing that, the kids at the playground who grew up in band class, and that grew up in drama and as skaters and all these other things, they’re not used to it. And those are the guys I’m competing against. And it’s interesting because they don’t handle the heat well. We got in a……
For me this is a sport. Business is nothing but a sport for me. It’s like, who do I need to beat? We’re going and attacking and we’re going to beat them. Otherwise, what’s the point of this whole thing? Yes, we’re helping people and that part is amazing on this journey. But there’s not, that’s who I need to beat, what’s the point of it? It’s hard for me otherwise.
Anyway, someone that I kind of ruffled their feathers, I actually thought through this podcast, interestingly enough. But they messaged me and kind of told me off, because they didn’t like what I’m doing. Because I’m aggressive and I’m not playing like they’re used to playing. What they told me, they said my dad taught me never to burn bridges. And I didn’t send this back, but I wanted to. I thought, that’s interesting because my dad taught me how to win and that’s all that matters to me, is winning.
Anyway, I told that story at the FHAT event, and people thought I was pretty, everyone was laughing. But that’s how I feel. I’m very aware of who I am going after. And I don’t publicly. In fact, Dan Usher is here making some videos for us and I was showing the offer we’re creating, there’s one other person who’s had more success in this, I’m not going to say their name. But there’s one person who’s had more success than me in this field where this book is. And I was showing Dan those videos and I was like, “That’s who I’m going against. That’s who I’m competing against. That’s who we have to beat.” He’s like, “I thought you guys were friends.” And I’m like, “We are friends, but it doesn’t matter.” I was friends with people on the wrestling mat, but when it comes to sports I have to win. I’m going after them. I’m not sitting around and trying to be nice. My goal is to win. Flat out. And I want to make sure that everybody understands that.
What’s cool, is during this process I’m making friends and all these kinds of things, but it’s a sport for me. Very clear cut. This is a sport. And I have people I’m competing against and I’m going to win. And it’s interesting, because these other people aren’t used to that, and they are used to that, they’ve never been under the lights, with your shoes tied up and it’s you and them and no one else going head to head. And I am, I’m used to it. I love it, I thrive off it. I need it, I desire it. I crave for that.
So it makes this game interesting because the way that people are beating us right now is through the most part, venture capitalists, steroids. So it just drives me more. Yes, okay. You’re going to cheat with steroids, that’s fine. I’m still going to win, I’m going to take you down and we’re going to choke you out and we’re going to turn you to your back and you’re going to get pinned. And that’s how I view business.
I just want, I don’t know, I want to instill that into you guys. A lot of you guys out there were athletes, you were the kids on the playground who went through that and experienced it, and that’s your drive. For some of you guys it’s not. You have to understand when you step in the business world, that’s who you’re playing against. You’re playing against athletes. People who that’s their goal.
So when I come, when you come into your business and look at your market, you need to be fully aware. Where do you sit on the totem pole? Are you JV or Varsity? First team or second team? Where in the state or country? Because if you’re not aware of that, how do you win if you don’t know who you’re playing against? Somebody told me the other day, after the FHAT event, “One thing I discovered after being around you for the last three days is how aware you are of all the competitors in your market.” And I thought it was interesting, because I am very, very aware. I know what they’re all doing. I’m watching them.
And the things that I like, we use. And the things we don’t, we counter attack against them. You’ll see more and more of that throughout this year as we are aggressively going after our competitors and we’re going to surpass them through raw talent and skill instead of venture capitalists cash, which is amazing.
You know, I wrestled kids that were on steroids before and it’s interesting, they come out and have big muscles. They huff and puff and usually the first 30 seconds to a minute they are really strong, but what I’ve found with the big dudes on steroids, when you choke them, you snap their head down and block the blood, there’s a carotid artery in their neck, if you squeeze that and block the blood to their carotid artery, instantly in the second they go down. Their muscles become weak and they become soft like jelly. And the stronger they were, the weaker they become. That’s what I’ve found.
Not that you guys care, but when I wrestled big people. I count out muscles first, and if I can’t take them down, I have to get their head below me and do a front headlock; we’re going for a choke, cut the blood off from the brain, not long term but just for a second or two. But as soon as you do that, all your muscles lose energy, they stop, you fall and then we attack and we win. It’s similar.
Anyway, that’s just….there’s some…what’s the book, The Art of War? This is the Art of War by Russell Brunson. That’s the strategy, how it works. We’ve talked before in a podcast, how you know when your opponents break. When you’re out there wrestling someone, you push them and you feel, physically feel them break. Their energy stops, their posture, their whole body stops. That’s when you attack harder and faster and bigger, that’s how you beat people that are bigger and stronger than you.
That’s what happening and I hope you guys are enjoying watching it. I’m having so much fun competing. I don’t know about you but I love seeing the underdogs win. I love seeing the dude who’s got better technique beat out the guy on steroids, every single time. I’m calling my shot, that’s the plan, that’s what’s happening. I hope you guys do the same thing. Become aware of who your competitors are. You don’t have to be jerks about it, I’m probably too jerky sometimes, I apologize for that in advance. But be aware of it and understand that, and run this like a sport. If you do that, that’s how you’re going to win.
Because this playground, nobody cares. Nobody cares, I grew up in band, I grew up in drama, I grew up in whatever. Okay, well you’re still competing against the athletes. And if the athletes want to win, they’re going to win. So be very aware of that, going into it. When you’re inside of it, start shifting your mindset to understand that and it’ll become fun. It becomes a game, becomes a sport.
I always tell people, this is one of the greatest sports ever. It’s exciting. That’s all I got for tonight. With that said, I’m done. It’s freezing cold out here, I’m going to go inside and get warm. And for those of you guys going to Funnel Hacking Live in a week, I will see you soon. I cannot wait. Appreciate you all, and I will talk to you soon.
A glimpse behind the scenes at what happened at this week’s FHAT event.
On this episode Russell tells his epiphany bridge story during a Facebook Live video at the FHAT (Funnel Hack-A-Thon) event.
During his epiphany bridge story you will hear:
So listen below to hear Russell’s epiphany bridge story and let it inspire you.
---Transcript---
Hey Everyone, this is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I’m at the office right now and it’s been a crazy week. We had our first ever FHAT event here in our office the last 3 days. We were here all night every night and it was amazing. But I also haven’t talked to you guys in a while, and I want to do something really quick because one of the big things we talked about at the FHAT event, well it was kind of 3 things.
Day number one was cult building, I mean culture building. Day number two was story. And then Day three was webinars and webinar hacks and product launch sequences and Actionetics sequences and a whole bunch of other ninja, amazing stuff.
But day two was story day, so we did this cool thing where we talked about the hero’s two journeys and a bunch of other things. And I can’t give you everything right now, but I want to give you one cool. So it’s in the book that’s coming out soon, to a funnel near you. After I talked about the Hero’s two journeys, I showed them how we transition that script into the epiphany bridge script, and if you look at it, I wish I could show you, I wish the podcast could show pictures. Looking at it right now, the way this script works is basically, there’s 8 sections.
There’s the back story, your desires, the wall, the epiphany, the plan, the conflict, achievement and transformation. So the back story, what is your back story that give us a vested interest in your journey? Number two is your desires, what is it that you want to accomplish? And inside of that, what are the external struggles you are dealing with and what are the internal struggles you are dealing with.
From there you hit a wall. The wall is the problem or the…what is the wall or problem that you hit within your current opportunity that started you on this new journey. Then you have the epiphany. So what was the epiphany experience and the new opportunity you discovered. Then the plan, what was the plan you created to achieve your desire? Then there’s conflict. What was the conflict you experienced along the way? Then there’s achievement, what was the end result you achieved. Then there’s transformation. What was the transformation you experienced?
So those are the process of telling a good epiphany bridge story. So anyway, I know it’s hard to visualize that, but when you get the Expert Secrets book you’ll see the graphs and images and it’ll be all explained and you’ll love it, I promise.
But when we were here yesterday, or two days ago, whenever it was, the event. I did an epiphany bridge story on Facebook Live, telling my Clickfunnels story. So I wanted you guys to hear that story because it’ll…..going through all these aspects, you’ll see them all weaved in. Everything from the back story, the desire, the wall, the epiphany, the plan, the conflict, the achievement and the transformation.
So I’m going to get the audio and I’ll plug it in here so you can listen to the audio of my epiphany bridge story, which is my Clickfunnels story, the origin story. The origin story of how I got excited about funnels and how Clickfunnels came to be. So I’m going to play that audio for you right now, and you guys will hear my epiphany bridge story. So let me connect to that right now.
Hey everyone, this is Russell, I hope you guys are all doing awesome. So I’m here right now in the room of 48 or 49 amazing entrepreneurs, and we’ve been talking about storytelling and how to tell your story, the origin story of wehre you got started and what got you into what you’re doing. So I’ve been challenging all of them to go and do that, and I thought it would be kind of cool if I just told you guys my story. Some of you guys have heard pieces or parts of this, but probably not the whole thing.
So what I wanted to do is share with you guys the story about Clickfunnels and why this, for me, became my new opportunity, the thing that I’m so excited about and why I have so much passion. Some of you will say, “Russell you’ve been talking about Clickfunnels everyday for the last two years.” And I’m like, “I know, because I’m so excited every day.”
So some of the back story, if you don’t know, I got started in this business, I guess it’s almost 13 or 14 years ago now, and when I did, I was a college kid, I was going to Boise State University, which is just down the road from where I’m at right now. I was a wrestler which means I wrestled and I had to go to school. So I barely graduated. It was barely. I think my accumulative was a 2.1, which means I got a whole bunch of C’s and one B over 5 years, so it’s kind of painful. But I graduated which made my mom happy, which is pretty cool.
But during school, while I was wrestling I started learning about that internet marketing stuff. And you guys remember this is 12 years ago, before Facebook, before Instagram and all these kind of things. We had Google, kind of. In fact, I don’t even remember how we were driving traffic. We didn’t have a website, or anything. I was using Front Page, some of the old timers remember Front Page. I would create these things in Front Page and it was pretty bad. So I was doing that, but I believed that it was possible. I saw people, some of my mentors, like Arman Morin, Alex Mandossian and some of these guys who were making money online.
I was like, if these guys can do it, I’m pretty sure I could do it. So that was my goal that I wanted to accomplish. The other side of that that I don’t share a lot of times, it wasn’t just that I wanted to make money, that was just a desire I had. The bigger desire, I had just gotten married to my beautiful wife, we’re still married today. It’s been almost 15 years this year, which is amazing. I married here, she was working full time to support me, her jobless wrestling husband and I don’t know about you, but I always envisioned that when I got married, I would be the man, the supporter, but it was honestly pretty tough for me. That she was supporting me and I didn’t have anything to contribute other than going to school and wrestling, and it was hard for me.
I remember I was like I got to figure out a way to contribute. I don’t want her doing everything. So that was the real driving factor. In fact, my goal was, if I can make $1000 a month, that would match what she was making, we weren’t making very much money at the time. Then I’ll feel like I’m contributing as well. So that was my goal, to figure out a way to do this. I tried all sorts of stuff.
I was trying Ebay, I was trying Craigslist, I was doing this stuff. I had a $20 a month, which was a big deal for me, I was excited, but none of the things really hit big. About that time I started learning about information marketing. In fact, I was at a post office mailing something I had bought from Ebay in this huge awkward box, I thought it was going to sell huge, and it ended up selling for $1.50 and I lost a ton of money. Then postage, it was a nightmare. I’m sitting in the line at the post office next to this dude, who had a big box full of CD’s, thousands of them. I was like, “Dude, what are you selling?” and he was like, “I have one CD that I sell and I burn it.” And I’m like, “These are your orders for the month.” And he’s like, “These are my orders for this week.” I was doing the math, “how much do you sell them for?” He’s like, “$67” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” And I had this…..I need to sell information, that is the future.
So I started to try to figure out information. I started doing stuff and my very first product I ever created was a DVD on how to create potato guns, I’m sure some of you guys have heard this story before. So I started making potato guns and it was working really good, but then what I was doing was going to Google and buying ads on Google and making some money back and forth, but eventually I probably had 4 or 5 months of success and then Google changed their algorithm and it got really hard.
And the hardest thing for me during this time, it was me building things in Front Page, and I had to figure out how to FTP pages and images and how to go to Paypal to get the order, it was super techy and I’m not a techy person at all. But after Google changed their algorithm we tried some stuff. I remember one of my friends called me, it was Mike Filsaime, some of you may know Mike, he said, “Russell, I figured out how to make this whole internet marketing game work again.” I’m like “What do you mean?” he’s like, “Is your potato gun thing still making money?” I’m like, “No, I can’t break even, I can’t make a profit.”
And he’s like, “well I went back to all my sites and added these things.” He called them OTO’s and I’m like, “What’s an OTO” and he’s like, “It’s an upsell, a onetime offer.” I’m like, “Oh.” And he’s like, “I added these upsells and people started buying the upsells and suddenly I’m making two or three times as much money from everything I sold. And I was like, “I could actually do that.”
So I remember jumping online I was Googling potato guns, trying to figure out what my upsell would be, I don’t know. All I had was a potato gun DVD, and I met this dude up in northern Idaho who actually made potato guns and drop shipped them. I was like, “Dude, if I sell those, would you drop ship them for me?” and he was like, “Yeah, I’d love to not have to sell these things.” So I partnered with him and I started selling the DVD’s and people started buying this upsell. And it was the first thing I’d made a funnel. I was like, this is a funnel.
And that was this new thing and I was so excited. So I had this epiphany, this is the future. If I can make more funnels, this funnels been making me 20-30 bucks a day, but what if I had 2 funnels, or 3 or 5 or 10? So I started going a little bit crazy and I created funnels in the couponing market, which by the way, is a horrible market. People in that market do not like to spend money. Don’t do that. We did couponing, we did dating, we did weight loss, we did network marketing, I’ve done diabetic supplements. That’s the ones on the top of my head, there’s…..I could show you guys, there’s a trail of thousands of offers, some that worked, a lot more that didn’t work.
But we were doing these things over and over and my plan was if I had ten of them that are each making a hundred bucks a day, or 20 or 30. So I was doing this, and at first it was working but the problem I kept running into was, Front page isn’t…. for people like me it was hard. I would do these pages and mine looked ugly and other people’s looked awesome. So then I had a designer and he would design these things. I would make a front page ugly, send it to him and he would design it and make it look cool. I’m like, put it up.
But then it was up and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t touch it again. I had one shot. Then I had to bug him. Then I hired a web guy to do edits for me. Then I was using Paypal and I couldn’t do anything else. So then someone invented a one click upsell. I was like, “Dude, I need that.” So I hired a programmer to connect that into the next….it kept getting more and more complicated to the point where soon I wasn’t able to do anything.
I would look at it and be like, “Change that.” And they’d try to change it, but they didn’t. I’d be like, “Move it over here.” And they’d put it in the wrong spot. It would take days, sometimes weeks of going back and forth with the guys in Romania and India and everywhere to try to get them to move an image or make it a little bit bigger. Things that were so common sense and I couldn’t actually do it, and it drove me nuts.
About that time, one of my friends and partners, in fact, he might be in the room right now. Is Todd in here still? He’s already eating lunch, he’s already gone. Todd was one of my partners doing these things with me. He saw my frustration and he’s like, “What if we build something that…” and the joke was, “Russell could edit the website and actually move things and quit bugging us all the time.” I was like, “That would be awesome.” And he’s like, “That’s what we’re going to create.”
And that day we sat in front of a whiteboard and started mapping out what it would look like and how it would work. So we mapped out this vision of what became Clickfunnels, and he went home and actually built it. It was funny, him and another partner we brought in, Dylan Jones were working, he did the editor. They would build part of it and be like, “We need to make this so simple that Russell could do it.” So they’d do it and be like, “Russell, test this.” And I‘d login and be like, “How do I do it?” And they’d be like, “We’re not going to tell you. You gotta figure it out on your own.” I’m like, “Okay.”
So I’d do some stuff, and if I could figure it out, then good. We got it. If I got stuck, I’m like, I don’t know what to do. So they’re like, we didn’t do it intuitively enough. We went back and forth and back and forth for 6 or 7 months and finally I got it. I was like, if I can do this, anyone can. At first it was a tool for me, that was the initial goal of Clickfunnels. I think it was Todd and Dylan like, “This way Russell will quit bugging and I don’t have to design his sites anymore or redo his headers.” All this stuff that was happening. And then after I started using it and I was having success, I was like, “We have to make this a tool for everyone, it will free all entrepreneurs like it freed me.”
So because of that I was able to create funnels quickly. I went from having 5 or 6 guys, and it would take on average almost 2-3 months every time to create a funnel to where I was able to do it by myself in an hour, hour and a half. Sometimes less, which was cool. The cool thing was I was able to achieve that and have success. We started rolling out funnels like crazy. Some of you probably remember seeing a lot of them.
I still do a lot of them because they’re so much fun to do. But the cooler thing for me was the other side. I was able to make money to support my wife and support my kids because I didn’t no longer have to spend three months doing something, my time to be with my kids completely freed up. I have a chance, I go home everyday and play with my kids. I’m not stressing out trying to talk to programmers in India at 3 in the morning and stressing all this stuff. It just works.
That was really the biggest thing for me. And it’s been an amazing thing. In fact, now my kids are using Clickfunnels, they’re building stuff with Clickfunnels. It’s not just, for me it’s not just a product. It’s a mission. I’m seeing people’s lives change. I’m seeing other people who had messages but they couldn’t get them out because they couldn’t move things around on the stupid page, but now the power is back in their hand. And that’s the power of it. That’s what fires me up, to be able to help entrepreneurs with that kind of thing.
So that’s my Clickfunnels Story. So if you guys haven’t heard it before, I wanted to share that with you guys and share why I’m so passionate about this. For me, it’s not just, I talk about this all the time, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to become a Clickfunnels member, it’s when. Because it’s the only way to do what we’re talking about. The only alternative is to do what I used to do ten years ago. Hire guys in Romania and India and the Philippians and have teams of 30 people to move an image. Or you can just use Clickfunnels. It gives you and me, the entrepreneurs the power back, which is awesome.
I hope that helps you guys. I hope you guys see why I’m so passionate about Clickfunnels. With that said, I’m going to check out. If you like this, comment down below. If you have any friends that are like, “What is that Clickfunnels thing.” Share this with them. Tag them down below so they can see why me and why I’m so passionate and probably why you’re so passionate too. Thanks you guys. Talk to you all soon. Bye.
Alright so there’s the example of an epiphany bridge origin story. I hope that was cool for you guys. Again, I wish I could show you the book today, but it’s coming soon. So look for that in the very, very near future and that’s about it for today you guys. Thanks everybody. I’ll talk to you all again soon.
The only thing you can change about the situation is your attitude.
On today’s episode Russell talks about his crazy busy week and taking a moment between storms to get a haircut. He also shares a story from his wrestling days that taught him to have a positive attitude.
Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out why even if you can’t change your circumstances, changing your attitude will make it better.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson again. I hope you guys are doing awesome. I’m driving to go get my hair cut and this is kind of like the climax, well it’s the end when you slide down. Almost the end, I guess it’s not even though. Anyway, the end of a very crazy week. It’s now Friday. In about an hour we have Boise State does a really cool thing once a year called the Beauty and the Beast tournament. Where they have the wrestlers and the gymnasts all competing on the same floor. And it’s the one time of the year that people actually show up to wrestling matches, which is cool.
I convinced my wife and kids to come and some of my friends and all that kind of stuff, so we’re heading to that tonight. I competed in it for four years and it’s just a super fun thing to do. So I’m going to that tonight which is exciting. I’m getting my hair cut because this is the little calm, that’s what it is, it’s not the climax or apex, it’s the calm before the storm. Because for the second storm. There was a big storm first. This last week has been insane.
Let me explain to you, lest you think you had a busy week. Maybe it was busier than mine, but I’m game for comparing and seeing because this week was crazy. Monday we moved into a new office and then Tuesday I had to submit my book to the publishers, which sounds like you just email your book to the publisher. But no, you have to freaking write a book first and then edit it and edit it, change things, tweak things, and then you submit it and its final, can never change it’s the end. So you can never tweak it, ever. So that was stressful.
And then Steven Larsen, who is working with this even starting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday called the FHAT Event. Funnel Hack A Thon, FHAT Event. We needed a manual for that, which the manual is based on the book. So he was home sick, puking in bed while he’s helping me create this whole manual. Bless him for doing that while he’s puking his guts out. Making the manual and puking and making the manual because we had these printing deadlines to get it done. So we’re racing on that, got that all figured out as good as we possibly could.
Now I’m going through getting my power point slides and then I walked into the conference room that we’re doing the conference, and the echo is so loud, it’s going to destroy all the films, it won’t even be good. So I’m freaking out there, so we have to go and I’m searching all night until 2 or 3 in the morning trying to find sound things you can put up to make echoes disappear. The only place I can find, the fastest I can get them here is 2 to 4 weeks. I’m not going to have them for Monday and I’m stressing out. Then Brandon Fisher on our team, he’s like, “I got a buddy who does events and stuff and he’s got these sound dampering curtains, we should use those.” So I’m like, “Alright.” So he comes and shows up and wraps our entire room in these huge curtains, throws these lights on them, brings a stage and a pulpit, and it becomes the coolest event center on planet earth.
And then they’re trying to rent us stuff, it will look so cool. I’m begging them to let me buy it all. I never want this to change ever because it’s so cool now. It turned into a good thing. I was stressing out about that. This whole week they’ve been working on that and getting the lighting and the systems and things, and I’m just trying to get my power points done. Then on top of that, there’s other business things, it’s been nuts.
So today I got my power points probably half way done for the event that starts on Monday. I’m just out today, going to get my haircut and then Beauty and the Beast and then tonight keep working on power points, I’m guessing if I’m going to get done in time, which is crazy. Steven had drill so he’s out driving to go do Army drill stuff, and he’s got to work on stuff for the presentation as well. So he’s going to be working on those tonight form the hotel and sending those to me.
And then, I didn’t realize, stupid me, that the Funnel Hack A Thon was the day after the Superbowl, so everyone that’s coming, we have 48 people that are coming. Everyone’s like, “Do you know it’s the Superbowl? Why did you book it on Superbowl Sunday?” I’m like, “I don’t watch the Superbowl.” And they’re like, “We need a party.” And I’m like, “Okay fine, we’ll throw a party.” So now I’m throwing a party at the office Sunday for the Superbowl, which means to get TV in the office, I say yes and then I’m like, “Okay we’re going to watch the Superbowl on this screen and they’re like, “that’s not easy, you have to have cable.” So now they’re scrambling to get cable in our office to be able to show the game.
And then, it’s just thing after thing. We had this nice fridge and we’ve stacked it full of waters and Redbulls and drinks and all sorts of stuff, and then the whole thing collapsed this fridge because the bolts weren’t strong enough and we had to buy new bolts and string them in to get the water to stay. It’s seriously been insane. I just wanted to thank, if anyone on my team is listening, everyone with everything that’s gone into this, because it’s been nuts. But somehow, not only are we surviving, it’s been fun and everyone’s happy. We’re excited and energy levels are really high.
It’s one of those things where maybe it’s me and I know people have ADD like me, the more things that are happening, the better we function. A lot of times if you have one thing going on, you stress out like crazy. So maybe it’s that and that’s why I’m enjoying it and thriving in this. Because there’s so much chaos I can’t not do it. But maybe it’s just a fact that just smiling, keep moving forward, maybe that’s the message for today is, if you keep moving forward, you can’t change anything. I can’t change the fact that the event is happening in two days. I made that decision and it was probably a dumb decision. Especially since we have Funnel Hacking Live two weeks later and I haven’t started on my presentations for that yet.
But besides the point of stupidly planning like I often do, things can’t change. You’re going to do it anyway. I think I’ve shared this story with you before. I had a wrestling coach named Mark James when I was growing up. I remember this one practice, it was tough. At the time I was cutting about 30 pounds a week, it was painful, horrible and hard. We’re all cutting weight and I remember one day after practice, I was dead. Imagine wrestling in plastics and sweats and not eating for three or four days and not drinking for three or four and just being to the point where you felt like you wished you could die.
And I remember we finished practice and he pulls us all into this, our wrestling room, we called it the rubber room. It was underneath the basketball court. It was dark and damp and stinky and it was kind of nasty. So he pulled us out of the rubber room into this hallway, that was again underneath the building. It was dark. And he sat on the stairs and we all sat around and talked. And I remember him saying, “You know what, we have a match and you have to lose weight.” And he’s telling everyone this, and he’s like, “You can’t change that, the only thing you can change is your attitude about it. You’re going to miserable going through this experience or you can be happy going through this experience, but you can’t change it. The experience is happening.”
“The only thing we can effect is the attitude we have going through it. So you might as well have a good attitude, because you’re going to do it anyway.” And it really, I was like, “Dang.” So I remember the next day I came down and I put on my plastics and sweats on and came out and started jumping ropes. And I started smiling.
And one of the other guys on my team came down and was like, “Why are you smiling?” And I was like, “Have you ever seen someone lose with a smile on their face?” and he was like, “No.” And I’m like, “Neither have I.” and I kept smiling. And then I smiled the whole practice while I was cutting weight, I smiled while I was doing it. And it was weird because this process that legitimately painful. If you’ve ever tried to not drink for three days while sucking water weight out in plastic suits. Where you’re losing, on average, 25 to 30 pounds a week in water weight. That’s painful. That’s probably some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. But I did it with a smile on my face and it became a thing, and it became fun and it became a part of the experience I actually enjoyed.
In fact, tonight going to the wrestling match, I can feel myself right now, feeling guilty. I always feel guilty sitting there drinking something. I shouldn’t be watching wrestling with liquid. This is a really awkward feeling, you know what I mean? But that’s the reality. I’m not wrestling, I’m not competing so I can. Take that wrestlers that are cutting weight. But going through the experience, it became fun.
So I think for you guys, there’s a lot of stress out there, I get it. But as you approach it, do it with a smile on your face. Because you can’t lose with a smile on your face. No one can, it’s impossible. So you might as well smile as you go through it. Remember, you’re going to go through it anyway, so the only thing you can change is your attitude, so have a good attitude and make it more fun and pleasant for you and for everyone.
So that’s what I got today you guys. I’m here, getting my haircut, my head will shrink by about half, which is a good sign. Because I got a huge fat head, if you’ve ever noticed. I can’t wear hats, because my head is so…….if you guys remember the movie so I married an Axe Murderer. And that kid’s sitting in front of the TV with his dad, Michael Meyers. He’s like, “Hey, get out of the way. Man, did you see that kid’s head? It’s like an orange on a toothpick.” That’s totally how I am right now. So if you’re envisioning what I look like, I got an orange on a toothpick, so they’re going to shave this thing down to be normal size, which I’m really looking forward to.
Alright guys, before I tell you anymore random weird things about me, I’m going to leave. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day. Keep a smile on, and remember you can only change your attitude. Thanks everybody, talk to you soon.
Ps…Don’t forget, you’re just one funnel away, thanks everybody.
My cliffnotes from Earl Nightengale’s speech, The Strangest Secret.
On this episode Russell talks about the book, The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightengale. He goes into detail what the book is about and what it means to him.
Here are some of the strange things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out what the Strangest Secret is and why.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing Behind Your Desk. My commute from my house to my office is like 10 seconds now so I don’t know how to keep Marketing In Your Car, we may have to change the title or something. But I’m here and I’ve got something cool for you guys.
So when we moved from the office, we moved our books all onto one really cool bookshelf. As I was putting up all the books I was like, “I want to read this book and this book.” So as I’ve been coming in I’ve been grabbing different books. So today I grabbed, The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightengale. And I don’t know if you guys have ever heard of this book but it’s the beginning, the foundation of the personal development industry. I’m pretty sure he wrote this book, I think it was a record back in the day, and then that’s what sprouted out all personal development. So it’s kind of like the beginning.
I just heard a beep in the office, do you think it’s the fire alarm. Oh crap, good thing Steven is packing heat, my body guards here packing heat. He’s literally on his elbows crawling out to go kill somebody and protect us from imminent danger and doom.
Anyway, while he’s trying to kill these people I’m going to give you guys a message about the Strangest Secret. First off, if you haven’t read this, the book is like 15 pages, so you can read it in a very short period of time or you can try to find the record. I wonder if I can find the record on Ebay, that’d be cool.
Anyway, in this book he’s talking about the fact that….well he’s talking about, and this is written way back in the day, this is a long time ago. But he’s talking about how if you look at people that are over 65 that at the time, there were 14 million people. Of that 14 million, 13 million were broke and relying on other people. He said it’s amazing that by the time that you’re seven you learn how to read, you can make a living by the time you’re 25, but the majority of people by the age of 65 had not learned to be financially independent.
That’s crazy, how is that not happening? And then he talked about what’s the definition of success? And he said the definition of success is not that you achieve something, but the definition is the pursuit of that. So the pursuit of something is success. So it says the only man who succeeds is the man who is progressing, realizing a worthy ideal. So if you’re pursuing something, that’s the definition of success. It’s not so much that you have it, it’s that you’re going forward.
I should almost just read you guys the whole book, it’d only take 15 minutes. Probably less than that actually. But I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I want you guys to go and find it on Ebay or Amazon or whatever and get it. It’ll be worth it.
Anyway, he’s talking about, the next chapter is all about goals. He says, the key here is goals, setting goals and moving towards those goals. He talked about how if you take a boat with the crew and captain and they say, this is where we’re going, 99.99% of the time, they get there. If you took a boat, took the crew off and the captain and just set it on the harbor and pushed it out, 0% of the time, would it ever get there. Yet, that’s how most people function their life.
They wake up and they’re walking and stumbling and things like that. One thing, I don’t know if I can find it real quick in here. He said, it was super cool….This is what he said, that society was not set up to keep people from winning. Society was set up to keep people from losing. It’s like, if you look at the American society it doesn’t really care if people are winning or whatever, it’s trying to set it up so people don’t lose. So it becomes super simple. It’s easy to get a job. It’s easy to make enough money to survive.
And he says why do people not succeed? The reason why people don’t succeed is because they conform. The conforming is the opposite of success, which is so interesting. So it’s not, I wonder if I can find the quote right here where he said it? “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, a lot of people think that the opposite of being encouraging and going forward is being a coward. No, it’s not. The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, its conformity.”
So it’s conforming to the world around us. Conforming to that and then, he said, the government, the world way it’s structured is to protect people from failing, that’s why everything is so easy. Because of that we have to conform to do that. So then 99% of the population conforms. People get jobs so they cannot fail, so they can get a steady paycheck or whatever that means. It’s not just for money, but for anything in life.
I think about wrestling, let’s say you’re doing sports. It’s way easier to kind of go through the motions than it is to try and win. So there’s conforming and doing the normal whatever anyone is doing is the lowest thing. Anyway, it’s hard to tell a book that you just barely read.
Anyway, it kind of goes on from there. Success and goals and he said this is the key to success. The key to success, we become what we think about. Let me say that again, we become what we think about. And then he goes through and starts talking about all these different quotes from different people. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.” William James “A great discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their life by altering the attitudes of their mind.”
He’s got quote after quote after quote all these people. Shakespeare, “Our doubts are traitors that make us lose the good we oft win by fearing to attempt.” On and on. All these things come down to, we are what we think about all day long. And that is the Strangest Secret. That’s kind of the key.
So at the very end it says, “We become what we think about. That is the strangest secret in the world. Now why do I say it’s strange and why do I say it’s a secret? Actually it isn’t a secret at all, it the first..” there’s a big word that not in our vocabulary now a days, “ the first ‘something’ by some of the earliest wise men and it appears again and again throughout the bible, but every few people who have learned it, understand it and that’s why it’s a secret and for some equally strange reason, it virtually remains a secret.”
So kind of the message of this book and hopefully this podcast for today, is a couple of things. First off, it’s what are you thinking about? What’s the goal? What’s the thing you’re driving towards every single day? And if you don’t have that you’re just like the boat that’s wandering and going to crash.
And the second part of this is understanding that just conforming to the standard is the reason why the majority of the population by the time they’re 65 have not learned financial independence. 65 years is not how long, it shouldn’t take that long to learn and master financial independence. You should learn that earlier in life, but because it’s easier just to conform and just to slip back to doing the status quo. And just doing what it takes to not lose, which is what our whole society is built upon. Most people go that way.
So for you guys here listening to this podcast, I know that’s not what any of you guys want. So it comes back down to setting a goal. What do you want? Where are you going? Having a very clear path and thinking about it, visualizing and figuring out how to get there. If you, man, low and behold you get there.
Like I said, it’s weird that 99.99% of the boats that set a destination get there, same with airplanes. There’s a tiny fraction that crash and burn, but mostly if they’ve got a direction and a destination they’re going, they get there. And I think it’s the same thing for you guys, if you’ve got that.
What’s your destination? Where are you going? If you’ve got that and you’re thinking about it and it becomes the thing you’re looking for, you’ll get there. And it’s not that hard, you just gotta think about it and then work to make that thing become a reality. So that’s what I got for today you guys.
The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightengale, I think they said that this where the secret, the movie The Secret, came from. Which, that movie is a little cheesy, not going to lie. Conceptually it’s pretty cool. But then it’s like, I just remember the one scene when the guys like, “Yeah, I thought about, I wanted a coffee and someone brought me some coffee.” That’s not what this is talking about, that’s stupid.
This is talking about what do I want in my life? And I want to be able to see it visually and then I go and chase it. For me, I remember when I got started in this business, 13, 14 years ago now, I saw people ahead of me. For me, my first mentors were like, Armand Morin and John Reese, Marlon Sanders, Jonathon Mizel. These are the guys that I saw initially and I saw what they were doing and I was like, that’s what I want. I need that. I gotta figure that out.
And it wasn’t easy. Conformity is easy. And it’s not what they say. I mean it’s not easy, but it’s worth it. That’s definitely the thing. Same thing, that was my goal. So I started looking what Armand was doing. I was modeling him. If you look at my first 3 or 4 sites, they were identical to Armand’s. I funnel hacked him as close as humanly possible. My sites, Armand always had a picture of his head on the header, so I always had a picture of my head on the header. I just modeled him identical because it was Armand. That’s who I wanted to be like.
I had a vision and that’s where I was going. And then at my very first big seminar, that’s the first time I saw people speak and sell from stage and I was like, “holy crap.” I remember seeing this dude get on stage and he does his pitch and people run to the back of the room and I was doing the math, he made 50 thousand dollars in 90 minutes. I saw the next guy and the next guy. They did 130 thousand dollars in sales. Thing after thing after thing. I was like, “I don’t know how to speak. I’m scared to death of people and getting on stage. But that thing, that skill, I gotta learn that.” So that became the destination. For the next three years of my life I learned how to speak and sell from stage.
It was hard. It was not easy. It was embarrassing. The first ten or fifteen times I got on stage I did my pitch and nobody would move. That’s humiliating. It sucked, it was so embarrassing. But I knew where I was going, so I’m like, “I gotta get there because that skill, if I can get that skill, holy crap that’d be cool.” So I stood up in front of 100 people, 500 people, 600 people and I did the thing. And then I crashed and burned. I was so embarrassed.
I remember, I think I told you this before. The first time I was so embarrassed because usually when you speak all the other speakers that are selling from the stage will be like, “Hey, how did you do? What were your numbers? How many did you close?” So I did my pitch and nobody bought. It was like the walk of shame to the back of the room. Everyone was waiting, just not running to the back and buying. I was so embarrassed and I didn’t want to talk to the other speakers, the promoter, the other attendees, I was humiliated.
So I went to my room and I still remember, I had never before rented a movie on TV in a hotel room before, so I went to the movie section and I started movies. And I watched movies for 3 days. Every movie that was there that I felt comfortable watching, I watched. I remember ordering coconut shrimp and Haagan Dazs ice cream every hour on the hour. I was like, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving this place. I want to eat.” Because it was so humiliating. But I knew where I wanted to go. I knew the destiny. I gotta figure this thing out because people are doing it and they can’t be that much smarter than me. I’m sure they’re more talented than me, but they can’t be that much smarter than me. I just gotta figure it out. So I kept doing it and doing it and eventually I got to that destination.
So for you guys, find the destination, set the goals, think about it all the time, go read the Strangest Secret. It’s literally a 5 minute read. It’ll take you less time to read than it was to listen to this podcast. That’s all I got you guys. With that said, I appreciate you all, have a great day and we’ll talk soon.
A quick glimpse behind the WHY of this funnel…
On today’s episode Russell goes on a mini tour of his new office and podcasts from two conference rooms and the kitchen. He talks about how you need to watch a magician’s hands to figure out what he’s doing, and how that relates to being a marketer.
Here are some of the cool things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to find out why you need to be looking at a magicians hands instead of getting distracted by what he wants you to see.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Now this is a special episode because I’m not in my car. In fact, I’m at the brand new office. We moved in this week and it’s insanely cool and I’m not only in the office, I’m in an actual conference room, which is the first thing I’ve done in this conference room is actually talk on this podcast. I’m looking out and everybody is working. We all have standing and sitting desks. So everybody out here working standing and sitting. So exciting.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen yet, I’ve been Snapchatting and I’ll probably Facebook Live Friday. Friday we get the big Clickfunnels sign in the office, which looks so cool. So as soon as that’s here I’ll Facebook Live this whole place so you guys can see it. You can see the bookshelf and everything.
What’s cool, Monday and Tuesday we had a certification event here in Boise. We were supposed to do it here in the office initially, but we didn’t think we were going to get the office done in time, so we moved it back to a hotel. Then Tuesday, at certification I make everyone do a hack-a-thon, which they stay up all night building funnels. Part of the cult-ture that we’re trying to do is you need to get crap done, you just pull an all nighter and just get it done. So we taught them that and they did it.
And then on Tuesday they went and presented all their funnels and everything and we gave away awards and it was cool. Tuesday morning I woke up like, man these guys have been killing themselves. How cool would be if they actually got to come to the office. So we chartered a bus, had the bus drive to downtown Boise, pick them up and bring them back. And now they’re…….
Anyway, they came to the office last night and it was so much fun to have everyone here and showing off the new stuff. People were like, “Is that really your bookshelf? Are those all your books?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m kind of a nerd. Sorry about that.”
Anyway, it was so much fun. So now, today we’re here. This is the first day we’ll actually work the whole day. Everybody’s here and it’s exciting. One big fear I have is we have our FHAT event coming up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week in the big conference room which is amazing. But it’s got echo. I don’t know if you hear echo in here. This is the conference room and it’s kind of echo in here as well. We have a sound engineer coming to try to figure out how to put up paneling and stuff so we won’t have those issues. But the problem is it’s like 2 to 4 weeks to get those things fixed. So that kind of stresses me out a little bit on that side. Hopefully we get some of it figured out. We’ve got people coming and they’re going to be hanging up sound panels and things like that in the conference room.
Anyway, someone just came in the conference room so I’m going to walk out here. Now I’m going into the kitchen. The kitchen also has got a lot of echo in here as well. But we designed this because we do a lot of videos in the kitchen, so we made it a really nice kitchen so we can do videos and stuff in here. So it should be pretty office.
So now I’m wandering. So fun to wander around the office, now I’m in the conference room. So anyway, I wish you guys could see what I’m doing, probably more interesting than hearing me talk about it. But it’s so exciting.
So what I want to talk about today, yesterday the Marketing In Your Car free MP3 player offer, we were paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player, and I think it ended last night at midnight. It’s been fun watching a lot of our affiliates promote it and then seeing people’s feedback. Tim Castleman, one of my buddies, he’s been promoting it. He’s like, “Just go buy it, you guys. Why are you not buying it?” and people are commenting why they’re not buying it. It made me laugh so hard. These are all people trying to learn marketing. And they’re trying to figure this whole thing out. They’re studying, learning, following Tim, following me, following people and they’re like, “that offer didn’t make sense to me. I don’t really want an MP3 player. I need to subscribe for free on iTunes.” All these things, all these reasons why they wouldn’t buy.
It made me laugh because we’ve sold a lot of them. I think we’ve sold, we’re almost at 4 thousand sold, which is cool. What we’re finding is for every single person who’s buying an MP3 player, probably 5 or 6 people are subscribing to the podcast, even if they’re not buying. So if you watch, I don’t know if you guys are watching, but if you go to iTunes right now, and you go to the business section, we’ve been in the top ten ever since this thing has launched. The business section is hard to get in the top ten.
Tony Robins is not in the top ten. Eric Ward is not in the top ten. All these legends are not in the top ten. Neil Patel is not in the top ten, we’ve been in the top ten for the last 2 or 3 weeks now. And it’s like, I want, since you guys are my best people. You’re hanging out, you’re here listening, I want to reveal, show the curtain, behind the scenes of what’s happening.
You know how they say, magicians are doing a trick, but he’s distracting you with stuff so you don’t see what’s actually happening, so you don’t see his hands move when he’s doing whatever that thing is that makes the trick possible. So he’s doing misdirection stuff and leading you places and stuff like that. With marketing, it’s kind of fun, my job. Most businesses is, it’s like you’re doing marketing, selling your product. Whereas, I’m doing marketing, selling my stuff. But for those who are watching, I’m hoping you are watching. Watching my hands, watching what the magician is actually doing because that’s the most valuable lesson.
Me giving my MP3 player, pre-loaded episodes is kind of a cool little thing, but why did I do that. Why am I doing that? What’s the magician actually doing and watching that. I always tell people, I buy everybody’s products. Usually I do not go through most of the products, but I’m buying because I want to see what the magicians are doing. What do they learn? If you saw the stuff I’m buying. You’d be like, “Russell, why are you buying another weight loss course?” and I’m like, “Because the weight loss dudes are really good at funnels.”
“Why are you buying a thing on stocks? You don’t even know what the stock market is?” I’m like, “I know, I have no idea how to do stocks. I don’t even want to know how to do stocks. But the stock guys are really good at funnels, so I want to watch what they’re doing.” I want to see what the magician is doing. So for those who are listening and those who are paying attention, and I hope you guys are paying attention, is watch these processes. Don’t say, “I didn’t buy Russell’s MP3 player because I don’t want an MP3 player. I’d never listen to it anyway.” Dude there’s a lesson here.
I’m not just doing these things for fun. I’m creating things and testing things and if they’re working, you’ll see me keep pushing them and keep pushing them. I look at right now, our podcast has grown insanely over the last little bit. We’re in the top ten, we’re consistently in the top ten, which is amazing. We’re getting tons of, I mean tens of thousands of downloads a day, which is amazing. And it’s because these things we’re doing, if you’re not watching, if you’re not looking you will miss it.
It was kind of cool, I did a podcast interview last week with Paul Colligan, who’s the podcasting guy and he’ll be, I think it goes live to day. And Paul is someone who’s watching the magician. He messaged me like, “Dude, I’ve seen your podcast funnel, I gotta know what and why.” It was really cool. A really cool podcast with him, kind of explaining. All of his followers are podcasters. Podcasters are out there and they’re trying to create good content to organically grow.
And I’m like, “Organic growth is good, but it’s hard.” I did a podcast every day for 3 years. We had 300+ episodes while I was organically growing it, it was good, we got followers, we got traction, but it wasn’t until I created something that I could stimulate with paid ads that it grew dramatically.
So for you guys, looking at that, look I can go on a blog all day long, but if I can’t stimulate with paid ads, man that’s a long time. Same with podcasting or whatever it is for you. But for this funnel, for the one you guys went through, a lot of you guys to get here. That was the vehicle, was the podcasting funnel. And it was a way for me to be able to pay for ads. And he, Paul basically was like, “There’s nobody that can do this. You’re the only person that can pay for subscribers profitably.”
I’m like, “Yeah, because of the model.” Anyway, I hoping you guys again, are watching the magician’s hand. Because prior to that we’d try to grow Marketing In Your Car and what we were doing is we were buying Facebook ads, trying to get people to subscribe. I’d ask John, “How many subscribers did we get from the Facebook ads?” And he’s like, “I have no idea. There’s no way to track it through iTunes.” He was like, “I’m basically just crossing my fingers and hoping that somebody subscribes.” We have no way to track it and test it. We’re just dumping money at it and crossing our fingers. That’s a horrible way to do business, stupidest thing in the world. That’s what branding guys do. That’s what companies that are backed by VC cash do. They just burn cash and they’re stupid.
Funnel hackers like us, we’re smarter. We’re looking at the ROI and it’s like, I had to create this thing to be able to create the ROI. So what’s cool about it, right now we’re driving traffic through these funnels. We’re paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player. But we know our metrics and we’re profitable on the front end. I think we’re close to about $30, might be a little lower than that. Somewhere around $30 we’re making. And we’re spending $20 to affiliates, but our ads are making about $10 – 15 to sell an MP3 player.
If you look at that, we pay for the ads, we pay affiliates, get the MP3 player, we’re profitable so we actually make a little money there. Not a lot, but enough to cover our costs. Then after we’ve covered those costs, like I said, a big percentage of people come to the page, never buy the MP3 player, but then subscribe to the podcast.
And everyone who’s, again iTunes doesn’t give us the best numbers possible. But based on my guestimations, for every single person that’s subscribing to, or that’s buying the MP3 player, we’re getting 4 or 5 people that are subscribing to the podcast as well. So I’m paying for that growth profitably. It doesn’t cost me anything.
So anyway, I just wanted to kind of lay that out for the guys who are paying attention and just thinking through that. Because organic is good, but if I could stimulate that with paid and be profitable with it, that’s great. That’s how I build a company fast. That’s how I do it without VC cash and all the other crap we’ve been told you need to do to build a company. You don’t if you’re smart, the market will back you. They’ll cover for you. That’s the magic of funnel hacking, what we all do.
With that said, you guys. I appreciate you. I’m going to bounce. Get back to work and probably do some more podcasts from the office, find different cool locations and go from there. Thanks everybody. Talk to you guys soon.
When you master this piece, it actually becomes really simple.
On today’s episode Russell talks about moving into his new office, and finishing up his book. He also goes into great detail of his backwards strategy for understanding if a funnel is going to work.
Here are some interesting things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out how you can know what kind of funnel will work for your business.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody. Guess what today is? Today is moving day. I am so excited. Today is the day we are finally moving into our new office, which there’s probably a few of you guys like, “Who cares, Russell. It’s not a big deal.” But this is a big deal for a lot of reasons.
Number one, we’re moving to a new office and every times there’s change, a pattern interrupt from your day is a good opportunity, a good chance to radically shift everything about yourself. So I’m excited because this is like a new beginning, a new birth, I don’t even know, but it’s pretty cool. Number one.
Number two, I’ve been in a lot of offices in my days since we started this whole internet marketing game, and all of them have been rented from people. This office I bought, so I own it. Well not yet, I guess I got like a thousand more payments, but someday I will own it. But what’s about it is it’s our own. And then we bought this building and it was horrible inside so we gutted the whole thing and rebuilt it to be exactly what we want and how we want it.
I’m sure you guys will see if you follow me on Facebook or anywhere else. We’ll do some videos and kind of show the whole thing, but it’s so cool. On the outside we got this big old sign that says Clickfunnels. The inside, you walk in, the sign’s not there yet, the sign should be there by tomorrow, I think. But a big old sign that says Clickfunnels. And then there’s the TV, when we’re doing events and stuff we’re going to play video or audio, looping what’s happening. And then on the right hand side you walk in, there’s this huge seminar room that will hold up to, I mean we could have about 100 people in there, but comfortably it’s about 70 or so people that it’s set up.
It’s big. And basically we’re going to be able to do workshops there. What we’re trying to do….actually, let me step back. I’m driving right now to downtown Boise because we got a certified partner event. So I’m going to be hanging out with 40 or 50 of our certified partners today while everybody else is moving stuff.
So our goal was to get it done last weekend, so we could do the first certified partner event in there, but we didn’t quite make it. I guess technically we could’ve but it would have been weird today because everyone would’ve been moving and they would have all been there and it would have been just, you know. You know when you first move into your house and you don’t want guests coming right away, because you don’t even know where you’re going to sleep yet. So that’s kind of how it is.
So anyway, next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we have our first ever FHAT event. It stands for Funnel Hack A Thon. Funnel hack a thon, I think I mentioned this before, but it a new, I’m really excited, it’s a new type of event we’re going to do in our office. If it works, we’re going to start doing them throughout the year and start bringing people to them. But I’m doing a test run with our inner circle members. So that’s happening next week.
So we’re getting everything set up and ready and prepared for the first ever FHAT event, which is exciting. So that’s going to be happening at the workshop room in there. Then we’ve got a big old kitchen. I think the kitchen will hold like 38 chairs. 38 people can eat at the same time, which is crazy. I guess that’s a lot for normal days, but I guess when we have events there, we’ll probably need a little more. People can eat in the conference room as well. So we got places for people to eat, which is cool.
Also, we always rent these kitchens and stuff, to film different products, when we did the weight shake video we’d rent this person’s kitchen. We’ve done that once. So I wanted a kitchen that was nice, so we could actually film in it. We’ve got a nice backdrop a nice countertop. So it’s set up so we can actually film in it.
That’s one of the cool things about this office. Our old office, if you ever saw it on the videos, it’s totally embarrassing. It was so trashy and I’m not the cleanest person ever, especially when I’m in the zone working and creating, I’ve got stuff everywhere. But it always looked ugly, it’s kind of embarrassing. There was no where to film videos, so we always had to go somewhere. But in the new offices, we’ve got probably 15 or 20 spots that we created specifically to look cool, to be awesome on video, which is going to be really, really cool.
You should see a lot more new cool video stuff coming from us. When we’re streaming stuff it won’t look lame, it’ll actually look awesome. So I’m excited for that on top of everything else. We have our own little recording studio, it’s going to have all sound proofing, that foam stuff so there’s no echoes or revirb so you can record webinars or audiobooks or whatever in there, podcasts. It’s going to be really, really cool. I don’t know, just ton’s of cool stuff is happening.
So I, as you can tell, am very excited for today. The move is happening, but first I got to get to downtown Boise, through all of this traffic and go give a presentation to our certified partners, then get back to have some fun.
Also, the new office has got a lot of book shelf space, but not as much as the old office. So some of you guys knew this, if you watched me on Snapchat, it was kind of a sad day in my life. But we went through and threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of marketing courses, things that were no longer relevant, or I knew I’d never listen to, things like that. So because of that I threw away most of my courses. And I put the courses that are still relevant, we burned them all onto audiobook files, so now they’re all in my phone and laptop and everywhere else. But they’re no longer on the bookshelf.
Now it’s just going to be books there. So today we’re bringing all the books over. I’m going to organize all those, get them on the wall and hopefully there’ll be some room for new books. Because I love books, books are the coolest.
And speaking of books, Saturday I finished it. I finished the last edit, the last everything. I sent it to…… I printed, actually printed out 6 physically copies of the book and handed them out to 5 of my friends and one for me. And they’re all doing a really quick read through to see any last misspellings or typos or anything, but after that It’s done. And it was the weirdest thing. Saturday I went in and spent about two hours just doing the last, last thing. Making sure everything was in there. Making sure all the images were correct, making sure all that stuff. And I remember, when I got done I was like, “I’m done.” I think I snapchatted, “I’m done.”
But it was the weirdest, I literally felt like I had this 300 pound kid sitting on my shoulders, and then he fell off. And I was like, “I feel so light.” It was really interesting. I felt so light and fluffy and good and So it’s nice to have that big old gorilla off my back, because that’s been one of those things that needed to be done.
In fact, my initial due date from the publisher was December 1st, and then I missed that date. Then it was December 31st, I missed that date. Then we had to move our launch date, so we moved our launch date for the book to April 18th. I was basically like, “Okay, you have this done by the end of January, it’s physically impossible to have it done by your launch date. I was like, “Okay.” So that’s where we’re at. So the last two months, was like a nightmare. But now it’s done and books, I don’t know if you ever written a book, it’s so much more permanent. I can, I’m not, what’s the right word, I was going to say cheat my way through.
I can freestyle my way through power point slides, presentations and sales videos and all those other things. They don’t have to be perfect or finite, there’s, I’ve done them enough that I don’t need them to be perfect. But a book has to be perfect. Because they don’t have you being able to cover up the mistakes through a good story or through whatever. It is what it is. It has to stand alone. You can’t touch it when it’s done. So there you go. I’m excited, the book’s going to be so, so cool.
Alright, with that said, I’m driving down to the certified partner’s event so I thought a good thing to talk about would be the other side of the funnel business. So I know we talk a lot about our own funnels. How you’re one funnel away and that part of it, but I thought it would be fun to talk about what our certified partners talk about. And if you’re not a certified partner yet, but you’d like to be, you should become one. I think everybody, whether you want to sell funnels or not, should go through a certified partner training. It’ll help you become a better funnel builder for yourself or if you did have clients. Whatever that is. But I think it’s good.
So if you’re interested in going, go to cfcertified.com, and there’s a webinar there explaining how the whole thing works. I just think everybody should go through it. It’s worth it. A few groups are coming in today. So the way it works, you sign up for it and it’s like, I think it’s 12 modules, but you have to complete the first 8 before you’re able to come to the certification events. The certification events, we do every quarter here in Boise. So everyone who’s got the first 8 modules done is allowed to come to it.
At the certified events we actually bring in a bunch of business owners and you have a chance to go and build funnels for them. There’s a contest at the end, whoever builds the best funnel wins the prize, it’s really cool. But it kind of gives you the ability to do the whole thing for a client, which is like taking the intake and finding what they want, from there figuring out the strategy, figuring out how to build it and going through the whole process. I would typically make people stay up all night, this is an all nighter type of thing, to work hard and get these things done. It trains you and teaches you how to actually get the project done, which is cool.
It’s interesting that even if you’re not doing these for other clients, you’re doing them for yourself, the process is still the same. A lot of people start with the funnel by jumping into Clickfunnels and start building, which is cool. But there’s stuff you gotta be thinking through ahead of time. And if you were working for a client, you would. What’s the goal, what’s the strategy? Here’s all the funnel types we have, what should I do? What should I not do? And it gives you a chance to really think through it at a different level.
So it’s kind of cool, but it’s been fun watching our certified partners, some of these guys are making crazy, crazy amounts of money and it’s interesting what it comes down to. What you’re doing is taking your business owner off the street. And the business in the past probably had a website, they’ve probably got all these things they’ve been doing, but none of them are making them any money.
You’re saying, “Look, the old things you have don’t work. There’s a new way, a better way to do it and it’s through this process with what we call a funnel.” And if you think about funnels, this was so interesting to me, most businesses have a funnel. Yesterday at church I was talking to a guy who’s a chiropractor and he was asking me about what I do with funnels. And he’s like, “So it’s kind of like a website?” I was like, “Well, I guess.” That’s like if I’m like a basketball player, saying “Oh, so you’re kind of like Michael Jordan?” it’s like, “Well, technically. He’s a lot better than me, but I’ll take that I guess.”
I’m like, “Yeah, it’s kind of like a website, but it’s a process we take someone through. A website is kind of dead thing that’s like, bleh.” And I’m like, “How much money did you’re website make you last year?” and he’s like, ”We don’t know.” I’m like, “Exactly. Nobody knows because it doesn’t do anything, you guys think it’s useful and it’s not. But if you shift it a little bit, you shift your thinking, and you’re like ‘websites are dead, this is the new future, the new opportunity is these things called funnels.”
And you start looking; in fact, this is what I do with any client I’m working with, especially offline clients. “What’s the funnel you’re taking people through right now?” And they’re like, “I don’t know what that means.” I’m like, “How do you get clients right now?” They’re like, “okay, well first thing I do is this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this.”
So I’ll draw out a picture of a funnel, like, “That’s what you did.” So we know that model, and I’m not going to try to re-invent the wheel. How do we replicate that? If you’re doing this, this and this. How do we replicate that online. Let’s look at that because the funnel you have is working now. My chiropractic buddy, when we first started, when he started his practice, he struggled forever to get leads. And the first thing I think that really took off for him was, he put a, what do they call them, fish bowls in a restaurant. So people put their business cards in for a free lunch. Then he’d call them up and be like “Congratulations, you won a free lunch.” To everybody who dropped a card in.
The way it works is I’m going to come to your office for free, I’ll bring lunch but I get to give you a thirty minute presentation. So he’d show up with lunch, feed everyone, do a thirty minute presentation, close a bunch of people and rinse and repeat. That was his funnel that he was bringing people in. And it’s like, hey that works. So now we know that model works, how do we replicate that online. You need to get lunch appointments for people locally that you can give them free lunch or whatever. Let’s make that same offer, let’s make a fishbowl funnel. “Put your name and email address in here and you can win a chance to get me to bring lunch.” And then go buy Facebook ads that go to that fishbowl funnel, get their contact, call them up and be like, “congratulation, you won.” And then go do the same thing.
People seem to think it’s this magic trick, it’s not. It’s just looking at the customer process. I’ve talked about this before with you guys. But I don’t know if it was episode 1 or 250 so I apologize, they kind of blur together. But I remember reading the book the Emyth, for the first time and he talking about how every business has a system and if you don’t have a system, it means you do but it’s a really bad system probably. And he was talking about how what’s a system for a retail business, when a customer comes through the door. What do they say first? What do they say second? And looking at that process.
I remember reading that book ten years ago and thinking about the stores I go into. How am I being, what’s the funnel people are taking when they walk into the store? It’s funny, my favorite store to this day is GNC. But I rarely go, even when I see a GNC, I’ll avoid it like the plague, because I know their system sucks when people walk in. I walk in, the first thing is, “Hey what can I help you with?” and I’m like, “Gah, I just walked in. I want to look at the bottle and read the back.” And they always ask me that, and so I always say what everybody says, “Oh no thanks. I’m just looking.” And then they, and then it ruins that first interaction.
It’s like having a sales funnel where the headline is, “Hey what can I help you with today?” and you’re like, “I don’t know, I just landed on your landing page. I don’t know. I’m going to leave. You’re freaking me out.” And then they leave. That’s the equivalent of it.
So it’s like, okay how do we make this process right? If I were the GNC dude, I’d come in and be like, “Welcome to GNC, looks like you’re looking for some cool supplements. Have you tried the new whatever power bars? I can give you free sample if you want to try them because they are freaking amazing.” I’d be like, “Heck yeah, I’ll try a power bar.” I eat and I’d be like, “Dude that is amazing. What’s the secret?” and they’d be like, “Oh there’s this kind of protein instead of this. This is the big thing behind.” Maybe he’d be like, “Are you looking for proteins or what kind of supplements are you typically looking for?”
Boom, he’s opened his question. First off, he built rapport, second off, he opened up a question. I’d be like, “I like all sorts of supplements.” And be like, “Sweet, let’s get a cart and let’s make a shopping list.” I’d be like, “Alright.” And I’d spend like $800 instead of the opposite when I’m like, “I’m just looking.” And awkwardly looking around and you can tell they’re looking at you.
Every time you’re looking at something, “Hey so do you have any questions about supplements?” and I’m like, “No I’m just looking.” And then walk to the next section, “Oh do you have a question about those?” “No! GAH! I’ll kill you.” That’s what normally happens when I go to GNC. So if I was the consultant for GNC, I’d be looking at the funnel, that process, every single interaction. What’s weird, what’s not weird? What’s awesome? And I’d be looking at those kinds of things and figure out how to tweak it and make it smoother.
And the same thing is true with websites and funnels. For five years I used to do all the Glazier Kennedy website reviews. Go to this website and every single time it was this brick wall, “Can I help you with that?” and there’d be 8 thousand links on their page. I’d be like, “I’ve been reviewing these things for 5 years, how are all your pages still horrific?”
When someone comes to your page, that’s why you have a headline. What am I going to say in my headline that gets them to want to give me their email. You have to think through the process, that’s the key. It’s not, “okay I’m going to use the book funnel for this one. I’m going to use….” No, think through the process. If you were coming here for the first time. What would be the path? What would they say to you that would not shut you down but would open you up? And that’s what I’m thinking. When I’m building my own funnels, that’s all I’m thinking about.
Someone’s coming here, what’s happening? Where am I feeling resistance? Where am I feeling good? What’s creating curiosity so I can proceed through this process? What’s giving me too much so I want to step back? Where am I being annoying? Where am I helping? That’s what I’m looking at when I’m building a funnel. That’s what you should be doing if you’re working for other people. Is looking at that process. And that’s what you’re thinking through and if it’s for yourself, it’s the same thing.
I have a friend that said that every month you should secret shop yourself. I haven’t really done that, but I think it’s smart. Secret shop yourself and see what resistance you’re hitting into. In fact, Dean Graziosi, I think it was, told me that when he had his big seminar business they were 200 million dollars a year and he hired a bunch of people whose full time job was to go and consume everything.
They went to the live event, they signed up, they went to the next thing, just do the whole thing and spend all the money to go through everything in the process and then come back and be like, what things were awesome? What things were horrible? He said what he found from secret shopping himself, was that people signed up they’re all excited and then they didn’t hear from people on average, about 6 days after the event. He said that was what bothered him. It took six days to hear back. They’re like, “Wow, we need to get back to people immediately.”
So they shifted the whole business to where as soon as someone would sign up for an event, the next day they got an email. When they did that their cancelation rate dropped by half, like crazy. So it’s like, coming back to the process, the funnel is just the process. The system that your taking somebody through. The magic of online funnels is the fact that we can perfect that.
You know, with offline funnels, you gotta train the sales dude, you gotta train the person in every single store, in every single GNC to not be an idiot and ask a good question instead of a bad question. And then when they want to slip back to their bad questions, it’s hard. It’s hard, right?
The cool thing about funnels is you can tweak that, perfect that and everybody comes through the same path. What’s cool, just think about GNC, if they were to go to every one of their stores around the whole country and make that one shift, what would that do for their revenue? If they were able to instantly get every single person to follow the same script, I mean, I would not be shocked if it doubled their revenue. That may seem crazy, but let’s just, I don’t think that’s that hard.
But the hard part is getting ten thousand reps to actually do it and do it right and do it correctly. That’s the opportunity that they’ve got to figure out, which is not that easy. Whereas with a funnel, there’s one point that everybody’s coming through, therefore you tweak it in one spot and it works across everything.
It’s not hard to double companies business when you fix that piece. And that’s the opportunity you guys. That’s what certified partner program is all about. That’s what these funnels are all about for yourself and for other people. That you’re just perfecting the message and each step along the funnel. And when you do that, it’s what do they say? Small hinges swing big doors. Or the butterfly effect. Wjatever you want to call it. Those teeny tiny tweaks have dramatic impact on everything else you do on your business.
I think it’s pretty exciting. I geek out on this stuff, as you can probably tell. But it’s all about thinking through it. How would you feel if you’re going through this process? Where would your resistance come from? What would you be excited by? And the more you think about, and then watch as other people go through it, and watch what they’re doing and make tweaks and changes based on that, the more success you’ll have in your funnels.
So, I hope that helps everybody. I’m almost to the certified partner event, so if you’re there today I’ll see you guys. If you’re not there yet, it means it’s time to get certified. You or someone on your team should be certified. Everyone should have one in their office. Go to cfcertified.com and go get certified. And I will see you guys here in a little bit. Thanks everybody.
After finishing book #2, these are my thoughts on weather or not you should actually write a book.
On this episode Russell talks about finally completing his Expert Secrets book as he’s about to send it off to the publisher. He also gives some advice on whether or not others who have asked him, should write a book as well.
Here is some of the gold you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to hear Russell’s advice and find out why it’s worth it to write a book.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell again. I hope you guys are doing awesome today. So I apologize that I have not been here for you guys the last three days. I’ve been here in spirit. Hopefully you had a chance to listen to the last 3 episodes. I’ve got some of you guys freaking out in the Facebook group about the last 3 episodes. They’re like, “I cannot believe you actually gave this.” In fact, if you guys aren’t on the Facebook group yet, if you go to projectclickfunnels.com it’ll redirect you to the Facebook group. But we’ve got 40,000 funnel hackers like you hanging out, talking about stuff all day long. So go to projectclickfunnels.com and come join us.
But some of you guys are freaking out there like, “Dude, I can’t believe Russell shared that.” So for those of you guys who are paying attention, I’m trying to drop gold bombs all the time. Hopefully the last 3 days have been inspiring for you. If that did anything for you, you’re going to love the Expert Secrets book. Because it’s taking that and going into a lot of depth and it’s so exciting.
Anyway, I wanted to let you guys know that I’m pretty much done with the book. What? It’s been every night, so Monday night I was up til 4:30 and then I had to get up at 7, and then Tuesday night I was up til I think about 3, and that night I remember Dylan Jones, we’re racing, I’m trying to get the book done and he’s trying to get the survey element done, which I think it’s done. I think he’s going live today, which is amazing. But we’ve been racing and I told him, “I have this weird feeling, I’ve been drinking a lot of caffeine so I can stay awake. I have this thing where I’m wide awake, but I feel like I don’t have a soul, because I think my body is a asleep, but my brain and my eyes are awake. It’s this weird zombie feeling.”
Anyway, I told him that at 2:30 Tuesday night, and at 3 o’clock I hit a wall. So I had to be done after that. And then Wednesday was the next day. Each night I’m getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep, so Wednesday started, luckily I had the day pretty much open so I worked on the book all day, and came home at night and I think I done about, all the days are blending together, I think it was about 2:30 when I went to bed on Wednesday. I pretty much got it for the most part done.
And then yesterday I had a bunch of stuff happening. And today’s Friday and I’ve got 2 of these Funnel Fridays which is starting in 15 minutes. If you’re not watching Funnel Fridays go to funnelfriday.com we archive them there, but again, I’m dropping these little gold bombs, gold nuggets for you guys in different places, and if you’re not watching you’re missing out on cool stuff.
Each week we build a funnel. We’re building one in 15 minutes from now, which is cool. And then I’ve got decade in a day, so those who join my inner circle, when they first come in we do a thing called Decade in a Day. Basically I spend an hour with you on the phone and we look at your model, figure out what you need to do and point you in the right direction. So I’ve got 5 or 6 of those today in a row, we let everyone who’s in it, listen in. So they listen and hear what everyone else is saying, which is kind of fun.
So that’s what’s happening. So today is a full day too. I’ve got probably, I would say 2 hours left on the book just ot put all the final images in and I’ve got two new chapters I added that are just mini chapters. They’re two pages just to show how this stuff works in different funnels, so I have to write those as well. Then at that point, I have my editor do one last run and my goal is Monday to submit it to the publisher. So Monday I submit it to the publisher, then I’m done. I can’t touch it. I’m not allowed to ever touch it again, which is stressing me out.
Then I have to record the audiobook version, which will be happening in a couple of weeks. And then Monday we have our certification event. So we have Certified people coming out Monday. So I’ll be speaking at that. And Monday we’re actually moving to the new office. It’s crazy. The next thirty days are insane. I have three events in the next thirty days.
So Monday we move in the office, plus certification, that’s Monday, Tuesday. Then I got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to plan for the FHAT event, which then we have our FHAT event. Which FHAT is F H A T which stands for Funnel Hack A Thon. So this is a new event we’re going to rolling out, and hopefully it goes well. But we’re taking 30 of our inner circle members through that. So that’s happening the next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday I’m supposed to have the 100k meeting, but I’m going to have to miss it because I can’t get it all done.
So I’m missing the 100k meeting, during those two days we’ll be filming the book launch video’s and also the FHAT event videos, to launch those two projects. Then I’ve got a week where I’m trying to do all my presentations for Funnel Hacking Live, and after that we go to Funnel Hacking Live. It’s crazy. And then I have a break for a couple of weeks, then we launch the book. So It’s insane. If I survive the next thirty days it’s going to be pretty amazing.
It’s funny because I have people that are like, “Oh, I wrote a book.” I had a guy I was talking to the other day and he’s like, “I have a presentation in March I’m preparing for.” I’m like, a presentation. I was like, “In the next 30 days, I have 17 or 18 presentations that I haven’t started on yet.” I have to get that done in the next 30 days, plus I’m writing a book, plus moving offices, plus there’s a lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes of well.
Next week, we’re launching, obviously we launched the podcast funnel last week, which was cool and brought a lot of you guys to our podcast. Next week we’re launching Funnel Graffiti, the week after that we’re launching Funnel Manifesto, and we have all these cool things we’re rolling out. There’s so many fun things happening, I love it. I love Clickfunnels, it makes it so fun and cool to do cool stuff.
Anyway, all those things are happening. On top of that trying to be a scout master and a parent and husband and everything else. It’s crazy, but it’s so fun. I’m having the time of my life. This is, I love it.
Alright, today I wanted to share one thing, because people keep asking me about the book. “Russell, should I write a book? Should I not write a book?” So what I wanted to share with you guys is my thoughts on that because this is now book number two. I’ve written others, I mean this is my second published book. We’ve got 108 Split tests, which is an awesome book. We’ve got Funnel Stacking, which is an awesome book we’ve done. But this is the second real book. And for me it’s been stressful. The Dotcom Secrets book took me a year and a half to write. And Expert Secrets book turned into that as well, I thought it was gonna be faster. I was like, I will prepare better this time. But no, it still took almost 18 months from beginning to end.
It’s funny, my accountant was, which I finally have a good accountant. It’s awesome to have someone who’s awesome. So he’s going through all our stuff and numbers and the end of the year he sent us this report and it’s funny because if you look at the book funnel, we’ve sold almost 100 thousand copies of the Dotcom Secrets book last year. Or maybe since it started, I don’t know, whatever it is.
But you look at that and it’s like how much money we make on those funnels. And it’s not a lot. If you look at it, if that was my business was the book, you’d be like, “Oh, wow you made….” I think we netted maybe 100 grand from book sales last year, which depending on who you are could be good or bad. But we sold a lot of books. I averaged a dollar a book, which is horrible. But you look at that, and what was the, from looking at it, was that profitable? No it probably wasn’t. But if you look at it like because of that book, what was created? It became the guidebook, the playbook for people to understand funnels, which got people into Clickfunnels, which got people building, which got people into the certification, which got people to go to live events. It became this tool for so many other things.
And the Expert Secrets book is the same thing. My goal is to sell 100 thousand copies during the launch month. I want to sell a million copies. In fact, I’m launching a blog documenting how we sold a million copies of this book because I want to show the process and share with everybody. So the question is, is writing a book worth it?
A couple of things, first off I’d say at first it’s not. But there’s a transition point. In fact, I still remember when I actually wrote the book, or decided to write the book, I’d always wanted to. In fact, the reason I bought the domain name Dotcomsecrets originally was because I wanted to buy a book called that. So that was 10 years ago. But I didn’t write a book for 10 years. I think you have to earn a book. Some people write a book really quick. And I don’t think it’s the right timing.
But for me, I was sitting at a Carl’s Jr with Chad Woolner, my buddy. We were watching our kids play in a playground and he said to me, “Do you know the difference between you and Brendan Burchard and Tony Robins? There’s only one thing that I really noticed. I feel like your content is as good, if not better. I feel like all these things, the one thing that they have that you don’t have is a book. That’s it.” And I was like, huh. That’s weird because I don’t feel like, there’s some weird perception about a book, whatever that is.
So that night I was like, I don’t know how you are, but I financially commit if I’m going to do something. So I went out there and I was like, I need to find someone to help me with this book. So I found a whole bunch of people and I interviewed a bunch, and spent a whole bunch of money the next day for somebody to be the person. It was Julie Easton, who’s my…..helps me write the book. So I gave her a whole bunch of the money and she became….Now I had, I paid someone, this has to happen. And she was writing every single day. It was like “What’s next? What’s next?” and a year and a half later we had a book.
But it was just one of those things. So people always ask me, “Should I write a book? Should I not write a book?” And when all is said and done, I think that you should. I don’t think it should, it shouldn’t be the first thing you do. But it’s something you should do because it is dramatically transformed our positioning, our business, our brand. So I do think it’s worth doing, but not at first, but there’s a time.
So I would say to all you guys to do what I did. 10 years before I wrote my book, “I’m going to write a book.” Just declare, “I’m going to write a book. And this is what the title’s going to be and I don’t know what it’s going to be yet.” Because as soon as I had this, I knew the book, I knew….it’s weird because my mind started doing stuff that became the book later. I had to become something to write the book. We had to have stories and stuff. I don’t know if subconsciously I declared, “I’m going to write a book.” In fact, I even paid Morgan James who did our publishing; I paid him for the book 10 years ago. You could ask him. Every time I saw him for the next year he was like, “So when’s the book coming?” I was like, “It’s coming soon.”
But I paid it 10 years prior, I paid the bill for the book. So when the book came out he was li,,e “I never thought you were actually going to write this.” But I had put it out there. I paid money to start it, and then I was doing life but because of that it made me create the book. It made me create the stuff to have that I think that it should be the goal for all you guys to write a book. Because I think it’s important. I think if I was you guys, I would make sure you write a good book. I’ve had some friends write books that were like, they did this thing where they busted out a book in a weekend and it became a bad book and it didn’t help them, it actually hurt them a lot of times.
In fact, I had a guy who I respected a lot, and then I read his book and I lost all respect for him because I was like, “That book made me think you have no idea what you’re talking about.” So I think it’s worth writing a good book. So I’d say if I was you guys, depending on where you’re at in your path say, “I’m going to write a book.” Just make that a thing and even buy a domain name, get the e-cover designed. Be like, “I have a book now, I’m an author. I’m writing a book.” Tell people that, “I’m writing a book.” “What’s it about?” “I don’t know yet, but I’m writing it.” Just to kind of put it out there. And then start becoming who you gotta become to write the book. You have to earn the book.
Go out there and if you’re writing a book on weight loss, go get a hundred clients and help them lose a lot of weight so you can understand intimately the process so you when you do write the book, you will a different perspective. When I had the idea for Dotcom Secrets, I had like 4 funnels in the internet marketing niche and the potato gun niche and a couple little things, but I didn’t, I wasn’t worthy of writing that book yet. But because I did that, I started coaching people and started learning and I started to launch my own.
We did supplement funnels and weight loss funnels and from that learning and education I learned all the stuff and then I was able to write this book. But if I didn’t have that, this thing out there, who knows if I would have ever written it. And now, the Expert Secrets book is out there and it’s been written out and it’s the next piece. What we’re trying to do with our company and our mission and how we’re trying to effect people, it is a book, it is the thing if I do it right, if I execute it correctly, which I hope I will, it’s going to expand our market and bring us out to the masses and get this main stream. That’s why I feel called to write this book and I’m so proud of it.
I said on Snapchat the other day, “After writing this book I almost hate the Dotcom Secrets book.” It was an amazing book, I’m proud of it. But compared to what’s been created here….I’m so excited for people to have this. It’s going to change people and it’s going to cause movements and it’s going to be awesome.
With that said, I’ve got Funnel Fridays in 7 minutes. I’ve got to get in here and get started. That’s my thoughts on writing a book. It’s worth the journey and when you’re ready for it, you’ll know and then it will become a transforming piece in your positioning and in your brand and in you as person. That’s what I got for you. Alright guys, I’m out of here. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.
The real secret to converting with funnels…
Today’s episode is part 3 of a 3 part series of Russell speaking at a $100k event where he taught about the psychology of funnels.
Here are some of the things you will hear in part 3:
So listen below to find out how to make your funnels awesome and successful.
---Transcript---
Russell Brunson: All right, so now we're going to ... Cause now, like everyone ... I'm the funnel guy, so let's talk about funnels, right? Now that we've got the foundation stuff out of the way, so then it comes to how do we build the funnel? I lost ... There's the lid. For me, the funnel ... Everyone thinks there's some magic. I have people all the time like, "Hey Russell. Do you have an MLM funnel you can give me, so I can grow my MLM?" I have a funnel that's worked for someone I can give you. "Hey, I'm doing this." I give them the book funnel. I was snickering yesterday. Everyone's like, "I need your book funnel. [inaudible 00:46:27] book funnel to work." It's like, well kind of. Y'all have the funnel now. That's the framework. What makes it work is this stuff we talked about, right? The pieces don't change.
My funnels are not complicated If you look at my funnels versus, I have friends who like to brag about the complexity of their funnels. They're insane. My funnels are so simple. They're usually four or five pages and that's it. It's, very simple. My thing, I think ... In fact, I was at a Infusion Soft thingy and I was watching these guys and they had all of their ... These guys were building all of these funnels that had like a billion different segments and all this stuff. You know those Infusion Soft charts, that show all the thing ... I was just sick to my stomach. I'm like, "Guh."
They're like, "Yeah, well if they click here, then it takes them this sequence. If they don't, they take them to here and then if they've done this thing for three days and they haven't done this and then they go here and ..." All this stuff and I was just like ... They have a billion different branches. I'm looking at that, I'm like, "You know the problem with that, is I have no idea what the crap to fix if something's broken. There's so may things. I want five or six variables max I want my cost per ad, I want my landing page conversion, I want my sales thingy. I want four or five things and I'm going to go and spend a thousand bucks driving ads. I'm going to stop and look at it and be like, "Okay, cool. It's one of these five things that's broken. Maybe two of them. Let's fix just those." You've got a thing that's got 8,000 sequences. I can not make it better.
What's more important, is become better at selling. Me getting better at telling a story is better than 8.000 segmentations of lists. I'll make way more money by becoming better at telling my story, than I ever will from the third, the guy that didn't click on email 13, send him this one instead and then send this one at two in the morning and then. Holy crap. Just sell yourself better and that's worth a million times more than that, right? I make them simple. All my ... Everyone's cheering back here, "Yay, simple funnels." My stuff's all very, very, very simple, but I've become a master at understanding this. The opportunity switch to the opportunity stack.
I'm just going to talk about a book funnel, but this could be any funnel. Does not matter. The first thing I'm looking at is that is, what is the opportunity switch. There's going to be a video of me telling a story about the opportunity switch. With my book funnel, I'm telling a story about my book, my epiphany story about how I had an opportunity switch and how this book is going to give you that same thing as well. Right? That's the key. That's the magic. If I'm doing a webinar, what am I doing? Telling a story about my opportunity switch, tell the epiphany story. They have the same epiphany, they're sold. I don't have to sell them anymore. If I'm selling supplements, same thing. Tell them the story, how did my epiphany pitch. It doesn't matter what it is. That's the key, is I'm telling a really good story about how I had my epiphany, and if I do the job right, they'll have the same epiphany and then they'll buy the first product.
From there, it's coming and the biggest thing most marketers do, when they start creating their upsale, downsale sequences is like, "Okay, what else do we have on the shelf we can sell them? Okay, they bought my book. Let's sell them, I don't know, some other random thing." Or, they bought the book. Let me sell them more of that same kind of thing. Now, in supplement world, this is like the default. E-commerce/supplements, it's kind of like remember A-E-I-O-U and sometimes I and W, or E and W or whatever that is. There's two times this rule breaks.
In supplements and e-commerce, whatever I sell on the first phase, if I sell supplements, I sell three bottles, my upsell's always six bottles of the exact same crap. If I sell e-commerce, we just did a campaign for Fiber Fix. Three Fiber Fix, I'm upselling a crap ton more Fiber Fix. It's e-commerce and supplements, you sell more of the same thing on the next page. Only time you do that. In information products, that will kill you. First time I really got this, it was when we launched our 108 Split Test book, which was kind of ironic, because the whole book's about split test. We launched this book and the landing page converted and non of the upsells did and I was so pissed. I'm like. "Why is this not working?" I retweaked this offer probably 12 times. I changed the video, changed the pitch, changed the offer, changed the thing, the thing, the thing. I'm like, "Why is nobody buying this crap?"
The main thing I was selling was, they bought a book on split tests, and my upsell was this whole course on split testing. I'm like, "This is all the cool stuff you need. You told me you wanted split testing. I'm selling you more split testing. Why are you not buying that?" I had one of my friends, who went to my funnel and bought it and he texted me. He's like, he said, "Hey man. Cool book. Thanks for the book." Then he's like, "I bet your upsell is not converting." I was like ... I didn't tell anyone, cause the conversion, that's my thing. Like, "Why would you say that?" He's like, "Ah, I can just tell." I'm like, "Well, I'm just curious. Why would you assume that?" Anyway, he shot ... it's Tim Erway, if any of you guys who know him.
He shot me this message, he's like, "Dude, cause you did the cardinal fail of upsales." I was like, "All right. Yeah. What was the cardinal rule again?" He told me, he said, "When somebody buys your first product ..." Think about it. Let's say it's My Gear, The Truth About Abs, right? I want abs so bad, right. I buy Truth About Abs. My mind, as a consumer, I'm like, "I've got abs. That itch has been scratched." And I'm like, "Ah sweet, I got abs. Whew." Then here it's like, "Hey, I'm going to give you workout videos, so you can get abs." Like, "Dude, I already got abs. I just bought them. They're ... It's done. My itch has been scratched." He's like, "When people buy your split test book, in their mind, that itch has been scratched. It's done. Nothing you do will get people to buy more of that." I was like, "But they raised their hand as people interested in split tests." Nope, that itch has been scratched.
He's like, "You've got to look at, you just did an opportunity switch. What is the next thing they need to be more successful with that? What's the stack? What's the next logical thing?" I was like, for me I was like, "Well, if they scratched their itch on conversion, conversion's awesome, but they're only coming to the website and then they're kind of screwed, right?' For me, it was traffic was the next thing. We shifted that to a what's the opportunity stack. Now you know how to make your pages convert, now let's get people to actually show up. Switched it and stacked the next opportunity. Boom. I was like, "Crap, that was so easy." Now everyone in my funnel's [inaudible 00:52:17] the psychology of, okay. First lead is the switch.
Now we've got them believing ... This is why I love free book offers. Why I like low end things, because the lower the barriers initially ... All I have to get them to do is to raise their hand and say, "Yes, I'm going to buy your book." By saying that, they've subconsciously sold themselves on like, "I have now switched off on the opportunity. This is now my future. I'm a guy who has six pack abs." They've made that switch. You know, as soon as you pull a credit card out of your wallet, you are voting. That's why, we don't do customer service and crap, cause I don't care. We get people to vote with their credit card, cause that's the only thing I actually believe.
Every time we do focus groups and all that kind of crap, people give you whatever ... I only care about people voting with their credit card. As soon as they pull a credit card out of their wallet, they have voted that this is the opportunity that they are buying in to. They're done. The next thing is just like, "Okay, you've already bought in to this now." That's why I like making this first opportunity as low barrier, as easy, because as soon as I get them to sell, subconsciously they're 100% in. Now the stacks become easy. Like, "Hey, you got this. Now you need this."
People always ask me, "Well how many upsells should I have? What should be the price points on it? Duh, duh, duh, duh." It has nothing to do with price points, it has nothing to do ... None of that crap matters. People are like, "Well, should I go from free to 97 to 290. What's the ..." Everyone worries about that. It has nothing to do with that. It has 100% to do with, what's the next logical thing this customer needs to have success in the new opportunity I just gave them? This might be a $25,000 offer, if it makes sense. If that's the next logical thing that they need, or it might be $37. Price point does not matter. It's the logical sequencing of the offers that is the key. That's what makes any funnel work, is the logical sequencing of offers.
Speaker 10: May I ask a question?
Russell Brunson: Yes.
Speaker 10: With the opportunity switch, is that more emotional and then the opportunity stack is more logical?
Russell Brunson: I don't think anything logical sells. [inaudible 00:54:11] why I think logically, there's still emotion.
Speaker 10: Well you know, you've got this ... You've got emotion and logic here. Is that [inaudible 00:54:18] the epiphany bridge?
Russell Brunson: Yes. Yes, sorry. Yeah, so the emotional part's the [inaudible 00:54:28], the logical part ... Logical's like that how they explain to their wife [inaudible 00:54:33] buy something for 25,000, $100,000. How do I explain to my wife like, "Yeah. I spent a hundred grand to go on this thing, because it's going to be really good for my ... No, I just want to hang out with me and Joe and everyone." Right? We emotionally get bought in, but I'm still always selling from emotion. I'll talk about logical, the logical justifications in the videos and stuff like that. It's still emotional.
Speaker 10: [inaudible 00:54:54] emotional [inaudible 00:54:55] stack.
Russell Brunson: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 10: How do you extend that story, that epiphany story [crosstalk 00:54:59].
Russell Brunson: New story. New story.
Speaker 10: It's a new story?
Russell Brunson: Yeah, so it's like here's split testing. Like, cool. Let me tell you a story. After I got ... I'm sending this book out to you in the mail. You guys are going to go crazy for it, cause it's going to show you split testing. For me, when I started to get in to split testing, I was really excited, but the problem was, I didn't really have traffic coming to my website. I was doing a split test, like three people come. You can't actually ... It doesn't help." I start going in to the whole story.
Speaker 10: A new epiphany.
Russell Brunson: Yes.
Speaker 10: You're sharing.
Russell Brunson: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Okay. Gotcha.
Russell Brunson: Sometimes multiple epiphanies. I'm telling as many stories as I need, to get that idea across.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Russell Brunson: How many stories do you think I've told in the last hour, so far?
Speaker 10: A lot.
Russell Brunson: Anyway. The more, the merrier. It's not like, what's my one epiphany bridge story. Usually, it can be multiple. Any time I explain something that's confusing, I've got to step back again, "Well, it's kind of like millions of motivational speakers running through your blood. That's what ketones are." Okay, and I keep moving forward. Okay, so like I said, some upsells, there's one thing, cause that's the only logical thing they have. Some upsells, there's two. Some upsells, I have one thing and I have a downsell. It matters less to me what it is and more tome just, what makes sense for this customer that's on this path?
I remember reading the Emyth 12 years ago, and one of the initial things he talked about is the process of somebody walks in to a store. Last week, my wife wanted to go to the mall, cause we were going on a cruise in two days and she wanted to get some new clothes. I hate going to the mall, but I love GNC. That's my ... I love supplements. I take more supplements than I should, every day. I love it, right? I go to GNC and, the thing I hate about GNC though ... How many of you has been in to a GNC? What happens as soon as you walk in? They just pounce on you, it's like, "Ahh [inaudible 00:56:30]"
I hate it, so I take a breath like, "Okay." I walk through the door and within like one step, the girl comes out, "oh, blah blah." I'm just like going through this pain like, "What are you looking for? What do you want? What do you need?" I'm like, "I just want to look at supplements. Leave me alone." Then it's like finally, that horrible pain's gone and she leaves me. Okay. I can start looking, right? I'm remembering the E-myth and thinking about, I love GNC but I always have this pain going in, because the process is so weird.
I start looking at ... I became obsessed with this. Everywhere I go, it drives my wife nuts. We're going through anything and the way a waiter pitches me, depends on what I'll buy and what I'll tip them. I want to get sold. I'm obsessed with the process of everything, from offline funnels to online funnels to everything that's happening. For me, I'm just looking at that like, "Imagine that you're your customer, okay, and they come here. What's going to capture them, like a really good video. You're going to cut out the techno babble. You're going to tell a really good story, that's going to be exciting, it's going to be visually good, it's not going to be me against a white wall, trying to be boring. I'm going to find a good background and make it look visually stimulating, so it's cool. I'm going to tell a story that captivates them and make then=m an offer that's so irresistible. It's a new opportunity that's going to change their life, and that's what we do here."
Then I'm like, "Okay, they bought the book." How can I serve them the best? What's the next thing I can do to serve this person the most? It should be this. Do I have a product that does that? No, and that's what I need to make them. I need to make a product that does that, cause it's all about, how do we serve our people at the highest level. That's more important than "I've got a whole bunch of products. What do I plug in and where do they go and should this be the upsell?" No, think about the process.
If you're walking in to GNC, if was walking in to GNC, I would change the whole process to like, "Hey, welcome to GNC. Here's a free power bar. Let me know if you need anything." I'd have been like "Huh." Eating a power bar, I'd buy four times as much stuff. I'd be going through things. I would just be focusing on that customer journey, what's happening through the process. For you guys, that's the way to think through this. Think like, someone buys this like, "Oh man. It's kind of expensive and we ship them out DVDs and all this stuff." Maybe some people don't want DVDs. Maybe they don't have a DVD player. Maybe I'll downsell them. Maybe they just want a digital version. Maybe that would be my downsell, is a digital version, cause that's probably what they'd want.
I'm looking logically, like what makes the most sense to them. If you can craft that, that's the magic. That's how you get a funnel that converts and how you make it work awesome.
Speaker 10: On that first page, how long generally ... Do you have a time frame of the ideal video length? Three minutes, 45 minutes.
Russell Brunson: This is what ...
Speaker 10: Or does size really matter?
Russell Brunson: One of my professors told me one time, he's like, "It needs to be ... it's like a girl's skirt. It needs to be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to still be interesting." That's my gauge I my mind, always. If it's getting boring and long, then I ... But I don't have a timeline. How long does it take me, take the story, where it's still engaging? It might be three minutes, it might be 20 minutes. If I tell a good story, people will sit there. That's more important. Yeah. There is a duration to the price of the thing I'm selling and how long it is. If it's a free book offer, I don't have to do a lot to get people to take that, but still need to get them to buy in to this, or else the upsells won't convert. A lot of times you see people book offers, "Get my free book. It's amazing. You're going to love it. It's free. Ahh." That may work good for getting people to buy initially, but it kills you everything back here, cause they're not bought in to the opportunity switch. If you can get them to buy the opportunity switch, then everything else increases, from the rest of it on. Any other questions about that stuff at all?
Cool. Then the last piece of this ... Oh yeah.
Speaker 11: Where does the traffic primarily come from?
Russell Brunson: Cool. All right. The last piece of this. Traffic all over the place, but I want to show you guys what's working the best for us right now. On the last page right here. This is Anthony DeClemente. He is one of my buddies. He owns this company, biohacking stuff. We started, we're starting an online reality show called Funnel Hacker TV, just cause we want to ... Without people ... I wish we had like five hours, I could talk about more of this. For our customers, to build the whole culture, the biggest thing that we got to do is believe. Get these guys to believe in this right here. What I do, I do a lot of stuff to show belief. Friday we do a show called the Friday Funnel show, where I'm building an entire funnel in 30 minutes and I show them over and over and over again that I drink my own Kool-Aid. That I'm actually doing this. It's like the biggest thing for sales we've ever done.
We do, we built this reality show, where basically each week, we pick an entrepreneur that's got a really cool product and we take them, figure out the product, the offers, build the thing and launch it. He's episode number one that's coming out. He had no list, no following, switching markets to a whole completely different thing, but he's just really good at what he did. We had him write a book. This whole campaign went from zero. I'm saying, you don't have to have a big following for this to work. This went from zero. In the last six weeks, we sold 8,000 copies of his book. He just finished his very first biohacking week in Chicago, had a whole bunch of people pay a crap ton of money to come out there and go through the experience and this whole business went from zero to it'll do a couple million bucks, yeah number one. All just from this. No other traffic source except for this.
As you start going further down the cold, it's different, but for most people, you can build really good off of this. Facebook live, Facebook loves us right now. They are wanting all of us to do it, so what we do, and I'll kind of give you Anthony for example. He's got a book funnel. Some questions like what's the message? What's the best Facebook ad? I don't know. I have no idea what message is going to be right. Everyone responds to different things. What, Anthony I said, "First thing he has to do is, every single day you have to do a Facebook live video on a different topic. Every single day, for the rest of your life." He's like, "But I don't know if I have enough ideas." I don't care. Every single day for the rest of your life. That's your only job, is to make a Facebook live video. What he did was he made a first Facebook live video and I was like, "It's biohacking. Do the weird crap. Get things with lasers up your nose and all sorts of weird stuff and that'll be your Facebook live."
Then he did that and nobody cared. We did another one, and nobody cared. Then we did another one. We found out that about one out of 10 does what we call force virals. One out of 10, and what's weird is, it's usually the message that I think is the stupidest message ever. The first video we had that went force viral, the title of it was How to Biohack Your Vegetables. It was like, "Hey." He's cooking, he's like, "What you do is you put butter in your vegetables and it's biohacked now." It got like two or three million views and sold hundreds and hundreds of copies of the book. I was like, I thought the cools ones with the lasers in his eyes and ears would be the cool thing, but no. It's never what you think. We build a marketing campaign, we focus on one thing and it's the wrong one, it's like no. Do a Facebook live every single day for the rest of your life, on a different message and you'll find what the market actually cares about. What things they do. It's a consistency thing. Over and over and over again.
Here's a couple things on Anthony's, just printed out a guide to help you guys, cause there was a lot of questions on it yesterday. The main thing is again, profile picture has a huge thing to do with people actually being part of it. The name should not be a company. People do not want to engage in companies and they do not want to share things from companies, they want to engage with you, the attractive character. The ult leader. All the headlines are super easy. They're things that are shareable, so it's not too complex. It's like, ,"Hey cool, how to biohack your vegetable. How to ..." What was this one? "How to biohack, detox and get a flatter midsection." There's a simple call to action with the URL that's not clickfunnels.com/1234/ ... It's something that's also benefit driven, like biohackers guide. It's like, "Oh cool. There's the guide.
Speaker 12: Do you boost these or no?
Russell Brunson: Yeah, I'll talk about that in a sec.
Speaker 12: And you can boost with a URL? You can do that? Okay
Russell Brunson: Yep. I'll talk about kind of that strategy here in a second. Can the video structure, typically this is the structure. They're usually three to five minute videos. The first 15 seconds is like, "Hey. I'm Anthony DeClemente." Then, if you have a cold like me, so I'm, "Hey, I'm Russell Brunson. My fellow funnel hackers, I want to talk to you about whatever." Calling them out. Then the next thing is, this is ... We ask people to share like, "Hey, if you like this video, at the end of it if you can please share it, that way I know if you like this content, and I'll make more like this. If you don't like it, don't share it and I just won't make any more like this." Some people are like, that's how they're voting if they like it, by sharing. Which is huge. The first 15 seconds, we tell them to share it if they like it, we ask them to do a favor like, "Hey, if you thought this was awesome, share it. That way I know." Huge thing. Then, four minutes of teaching. I would say teaching/telling epiphany bridge stories is more important. Telling a good story. The end of it, a call to action to whatever it is your front end things is. "Go get my free books." Anthony, every single day, he's showing one biohack, and then "Hey, go get my book Biohackersguide. Com."
Then down here, the very first post ... As soon as he starts a video ... When you first do a video , first it goes out to your fan page, right? Anthony has zero people on his fan page, the first probably hundred videos, right? Nobody was there. He just did it, and then as soon as it's done, then what our guys will do, they'll come in the very first post. We try to post the link to the actual offer, so that everyone sees that initially. It's pulls in a picture of the product, stuff like that. Somebody manually is adding that in. Now, because he's got more of a following, as soon as he starts a thing, someone goes in and posts it really quick as the first comment, so it sticks there, then it goes live.
What we do is typically, for each of these videos it goes live, we put about five bucks behind it, just to see what's going to happen. If you've got more of an audience initially, you don't put money behind it. If you have zero audience initially, you put about five to 10 bucks behind it, just to see which ones get some traction. Then as soon as one thing gets traction, the way that we judge traction is right here, is the ration. It's the 1% share to view ratio. How many people viewed it and how many people shared it? As soon as you get 1% share/view, we call that internally it's a force to viral video, which means I can spend as much money as I want and it's going to go viral and it's going to make us a bunch of money.
About one out of 10 hit that number, and then we dump as much money as we want or can or need to behind that and it'll just kind of blow up. For me, this is ... the biggest thing I can give you guys is this.
Speaker 12: Is the 1% based off of views?
Russell Brunson: It's the ratio of views to shares.
Speaker 12: Views to shares.
Russell Brunson: This video's got 1.4 million views. Its got 10,000 shares, so it's 1%.
Speaker 12: [inaudible 01:06:19]
Russell Brunson: Huh?
Speaker 12: [inaudible 01:06:23]
Russell Brunson: We're not mathematicians, we're marketers. You are definitely way smarter than me. It looks like one to me. It's a ball park. If it's close, we're going to blow it up. That's kind of about what we're looking at. Then we can promote it. What's cool about this, if you think about everything we talked about earlier, right? We talked about traffic temperature up here, right? What's cool about these videos is that, every video, you're learning what people respond to and what they don't respond to. We realize like, "Wow, they actually care about biohacking vegetables. Let's do more things like that, cause they shared it." You're able to speak to different times. You can speak sometimes in techno babble and you're going to boost ... It may not do as good, but you're going to boost it to different audience. For me, I might do a Facebook live talking about funnels for network marketers and I do it and nobody on my page cares, but now that video, that ad's done and my guy will blow up all the network marketing companies, and then boom. We get all the network marketers to come underneath us.
I might do one, funnels for real estate agents. Funnels for ... I'm just, it's like carving out little pieces of the market you can then target differently. It also helps you figure out what people actually care about, what they're listening to, what they click on, what they share. As of right now, this is such a big piece of our strategies, because we're learning so much so fast. I mean, I could write a thousand surveys and not get the same data we get from just doing a daily video, every single day, consistently, consistently, consistently doing it.
Russell Brunson: From the funnel side, those are the keys you guys, and hopefully that helps a lot.
Speaker 16: [inaudible 01:10:05]
Russell Brunson: Am I allowed to celebrate something? Just kidding. We do an event once a year, that's ... Tony Robbins is our key note this year and it's basically me on stage, with a bunch of our ... [inaudible 01:10:18] difference. Me on stage and then we've got people that are click funnels members who are doing it in different markets. We got a really cool couple, Brandon and Kayla. They're in the fitness industry. They sell $149 product. All they do is Facebook lives. In fact, they do an entire webinar pitch on Facebook live and they'll do ... During a live Facebook live, they do 150,000, 200,000 dollars live on it, and they boost it afterwards and do five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars. I've done ... Jason talks about webinars later today.
Speaker 17: That's incredible.
Russell Brunson: Doing, if you do a whole bunch of these viral videos like this on your Facebook live, and you're building an audience and stuff's coming that's really, really good, then you come in and you do your entire webinar. I've done three Facebook lives that were me doing my entire webinar live and in front of everyone, just talking. Al of it over a quarter million dollars in sales, cause it's just engagement and live and it's really fun. A lot of cool ways you can use that. Anyway. I hope that helps you guys and ...
Speaker 18: That's awesome. That was good. Thank you.
The 3 steps to build a cult…
Today’s episode is part 2 of a 3 part series of Russell speaking at a $100k event where he taught about the psychology of funnels.
Here are some of the things you will hear in part 2:
So listen below to find out how to build a cult following.
---Transcript---
Russell Brunson: My next book I'm working on now, it's called Expert Secrets and it's really about building a cult, to be completely honest. I don't ... Well, we call it cult-ure. If you get through my inner circle [inaudible 00:29:13], we have big things about, "Hey, we've got to build a cult." Sure. As I was preparing for this book, I started studying, I got super deep in to cults. I wanted to understand how they work and why they work and so I was reading all the amazing books on cult dynamics and you know, just totally geeked out on it. After looking at a whole bunch of things, I'm like, "What's the pattern?" The pattern I found for every single cult is this. Three things. Number one, every single cult has an attractive character. A charismatic leader. Whatever you want to call it, right? Typically, for most of you guys, that's you in the business. There's somebody who's like leading the march, right?
What's interesting is, I'll go through these ... This is true for negative cults and positive cults. It's the exact same for Hitler as it was for Christ. It's the exact same for Hillary as Trump. It's fascinating, you start looking at it. Every mass movement across time, follows this exact same pattern. One is the attractive character. Number two, in to bring their people in to a future cause mission. This is where we're going. This is the plan. This is what's happening. That's number two.
The thing I want to spend the most time on, because this is the key to everything, is they always offer people a new opportunity. Okay? When Christ came, what was the new opportunity he offered? He said, "Look, we've been doing a lot. Moses is doing all these kind of things. That's gone away. No longer do you have to do animal sacrifices. Now we're switching over to, you come to me with a broken heart and contrite spirit. It's different." Hitler came. World War One, Germany got all this oppression, all these kind of things and said, "Look, we're not going to try that. I'm not going to help you guys to solve this issue and pay our debts off. We're going to freaking take this thing over and we're going to get this new opportunity, new Germany. It is a new opportunity."
What most of us are doing, is we create products, we call these in our, in my world they call them urb products. Products that will make you better, smarter, happier, faster. That's the worst possible thing you could do. Okay? We also have these improvement offers. Improvement. Same thing. Improvement offers or ER offers. If you were selling an improvement offer to somebody, I'm going to help you to improve. What are the things that they have to admit before they give you money?
[inaudible 00:31:31]
Speaker 4: That they suck at what they're doing. For me to give you money, I have to admit that I failed. That's it, okay? Improvement offers are the worst possible things on earth and if your product's like, "Yeah, my product makes you smarter, it makes you stronger, it makes you faster, it makes you better, it makes you happier, it makes you sadder, it makes you ..." If you can tie an er to it, that's why your business sucks. To be completely honest. Okay? This is the biggest problem most people have, is that ... How many of you guys are looking and you're like, "Crap, I have an improvement offer, to help you become better,"? Right?
Russell Brunson: That's the biggest problem. People do not want to get better. Perry [Beltzer 00:32:03] was telling me this. He said, "2% of the world has ambition." 2% of the world wants to become better. 98% of the world do not want to become better. As soon as you position what you're selling as an improvement offer, 98% of the world just left. You've lost 98% of your market instantly. Now you're selling to 2% who actually want to become better. Way harder to do. Okay? If you want to get a mass movement and you want to build a cult share of people that give you money, it comes down to this. It's creating a new opportunity. That's what people want. Everyone wants a new opportunity.
The question comes back, how do I create a new opportunity. I was looking at all the different opportunities that we looked at. New opportunity. They are basically all new opportunities can be broken down in to one of two things. Number one, we call it opportunity switch. Number two is an opportunity stack. Most of your offers ... The good news is, typically you don't have to change your whole product, you have to change the positioning of that product. If I come to people and say, "Look, this is the current opportunity that you are living your world under. I'm not going to help you make that better, because it sucks and it's painful."
The other thing about improvement offers is, most people have been doing that their whole life and they've tried to get better, they've tried to get better, tried to get better. In their mind, they associate pain with becoming better at that thing. As soon as I offer a new opportunity, they have no idea what that means. There's no preconceived notions, there's no idea of pain It's just like, "Wow, this is a new thing." It's the reason why this did so well. I didn't say, "Hey, this is a way to lose more weight." I said, "Look, this is a whole new opportunity. No longer do you have to work out hard to get your body in the state to burn fat. You take this thing, it tastes like candy. You mix it in water, you stir it up, you drink it, and your body is in a fat burning state instantly. This is a whole new opportunity." Boom, a hundred million bucks, right?
It's all about that opportunity switching, or opportunity stacking. Some people ... I always look at this as like, an opportunity switch is like, "Hey, you're driving a Volvo. I'm going to put you in a Ferrari." I'm switching your opportunity. Here is like, "Okay, you've got a Volvo. You love it, but on the weekends you need a nice car, so I'm going to stack ... It's an opportunity stack, I'm going to sell you a Ferrari, so now you've got both of those." Then the opposite of all these is obviously the improvement offer. This is ... Do you guys know Perry Beltzer? If you want to hear how Perry explains this ... Perry was explaining, the first time I heard him talk about this was, he was talking about from like a marriage standpoint, right?
You're in your marriage, you're not happy, you've got three options. Number one, you can improve, you can go to counseling. Yay, that would be so much fun, right? So much pain, right? Number two, you get a new wife. Number three, you sleep with the secretary and you just have an opportunity, right? That's like, these are easy things for people to go to. This is pain, this is hard, this is why people do not want this. If you're structuring like this, you've got to say, "Look, let me step back. How do I change what I'm selling to this?" If I can figure out how am I taking ... What's the opportunity they're currently in, that I'm trying to move them to? If you look at the good offers, if you look at ... I was in weight loss, now I eat probiotics. This is a whole new opportunity. You didn't even understand this, but as your gut's all jacked up. This is the new opportunity. Holy crap, I don't have to run and lose weight. All these things I've tried in the past, I could try this new thing. That's the key.
How do you structure what you sell as a new opportunity? That's the key. To really understand that, is to really get clear. What are they currently doing, cause people have this desire, that's why they came to you, right? They have something they're currently doing and that, to get that need met. You're looking at, here's the need they're trying to get met through some vehicle. What's the vehicle they're currently using. I need to get them out of that vehicle, in to my vehicle that's going to help them meet that same desire. I've got to become crystal clear like, this is how they're trying to meet their desire, this is the vehicle or the option they're currently in. I'm getting them to switch out of that to this one. That's what we have to rethink through your brain, of how to structure what you're doing. Does that make sense?
You see that there's going to be an opportunity switch, like you're getting out of this vehicle, moving to this one, or "Hey, you're currently doing something that's good, I'm not going to make it better, but I'm going to stack a different opportunity on top of it. This might be, you've got a gym right now. I've got a buddy that does, he comes in to gyms and adds on a whole new [inaudible 00:36:31] and he says, "You already have a gym, you're already doing [inaudible 00:36:33], you're already doing your stuff. I'm going to come in and I'm going to stack a whole new opportunity on top of it, maybe it's a yoga studio inside your gym, or it's going be a different marketing business stack as opposed to an improvement." Okay?
I'm curious if you guys, you're looking at this within what you offer right now, how many of you guys think that what you're offering is probably an, is How going to be an opportunity stack to your market? How many is it going to be an opportunity switch?
[inaudible 00:37:02]
Speaker 5: Many of you guys, it's going to be both, yes.
Russell Brunson: You know what I think that opportunity stack by doing 100k.
Speaker 6: Stack it. Stack it. Thank you for setting this up. If you think about this, typically when somebody is first coming in to my universe, the first time they meet me, my first job typically is an opportunity switch. How many of you guys, when you came in to 25k, it was an opportunity switch? Like, "I've been trying to get these things met in NEO or YEO or through this or that." It's like, "Crap, none of that stuff works. I'm going to try this." How many of you guys it was an opportunity switch, when you came in to that? Now you switched to get in there, and then typically, the back end stuff are more stacks. Now you're sold on this opportunity, now how do we stack things? Okay? Any questions about that?
Russell Brunson: [inaudible 00:37:45] Improvement off of this. I mean, he's offering basically like [inaudible 00:37:54].
Speaker 7: It's how you sell it. You do it that way. I got in to Bulletproof, and I don't drink coffee, but I was like, he was like, "Hey man. I was hiking this Himalayan mountain and I met some dudes with yaks and they gave me some hot chocolate, some coffee, with yak butter in it. I drank it and I felt amazing, and it turns out I lost a whole bunch of weight, and I have way more energy after drinking yak butter. Have you guys read that story? That's his initial opportunity switch, should I wait? I'm going to put butter in my coffee, to lose weight? That's a switch. Then you're going to feel better and healthier, you're going to get those things they want, but ... It's like, even ...
Russell Brunson: I remember when Biggest Loser, the last Biggest Loser episode was on and I watched. Dave posted something, it cracked me up. He was like, making fun of this, right? Like, "Here's Biggest Loser. They're going to eat healthy, they're going to lose weight, they're going to do all of these kind of things." He's like, "I want to make my own version of Biggest Loser, but it'd be really boring. It would be a bunch of guys, sitting around drinking coffee, working our computers, losing weight doing nothing." That's an opportunity. That sounds way better than this, right? I want to switch ... I need to switch opportunities. He could've positioned it as something different, the positioning is how you get the switch. [inaudible 00:39:01], most of these, you don't have to change your offer. You just change how you're positioning that offer. Did you have something D?
Yeah, I was just going ... I was just telling him to turn my mic on for a second. It's funny. Dude, I hope everybody knows the value of how he's breaking this down, because this is stuff ... What you've done better than me is, you articulate what you do in a better way than I know how to. What I had internally for years, and I would teach my team too, in the same opportunity switch or stack, compared to improvement is, I'd watch people and the difference of, when it's somebody new, in my head, the way I was ... I like this better. This analogy's better, but I used to look at opportunities, like the switch was, when you're going to a new prospect, you have to prove there's gold in those hills. You have to tell them that there's gold in California, and you should get your ass on a ricking horse or car and get to California, cause there's gold in those hills.
D: It's a switch. It's like, I'm working my ass off. I don't know what I'm doing, but there's gold, where you can just dig and you find it. Then once they get there and you prove that there's gold in those hills, then you got to sell them sharper picks, shovels and tools and better maps. That's the opportunity stack. I see so many people flop it. They'll be on a front end offer, offering improvements. "Here's a better pick, here's a better shovel." You didn't prove that there's gold in the hills yet. They're not digging yet. When you think about, I first have to prove that probiotics are the fucking answer, not a better probiotic or an improved probiotic. Anyway. This is so brilliant, the way you explain this dude. I love it.
Thank you.
Russell Brunson: Really impressed. I mean, I always love what you do, but I love the science behind your art.[crosstalk 00:40:41] I like the science behind your art.
D: I'm totally geeking out on this right now, cause it's like, my new book's all on this stuff. It's so fun. One thing cool, how many of you guys have read the book Red Ocean, Blue Ocean?
Russell Brunson: Yes.
Speaker 9: I never read it, but I saw the cover. I was like, "Oh, that's cool." I got the gist, right. I think, I haven't read the book, but I think the gist was this. It's like there's this red ocean over here of improvement offers, where we're all fighting over trying to like, "Oh, mine's better. I have a little better mouse trap. Mines a little. No mine." You're fighting over features and benefits and all this crap. Everyone's over here and there's all these sharks and there's blood in the water. If you have an improvement offer, you are in a red ocean and you are fighting against every single other person out there. It sucks. You become a blue ocean, make an opportunity switch, now you're the only ones there. Price goes out the door, resistance goes out the door. All those things magically disappear, because you're a new opportunity. What do you have to compare it to? It's different. It's a whole different thing.
Russell Brunson: Eventually after you, like Bulletproof, right. Dave's done that, now there's people coming in to that ocean, but he created this blue ocean. That's why that's such a huge influx initially, cause it's such a different conversation. It's a whole different opportunity, went crazy, now everyone's jumping in to that pool and it'll get more and more bloody. I think for Dave to keep reinventing himself, it's going to be that. Like, what's the new opportunity? What's the next opportunity switch. I need to give them to you. That's what I'm always thinking in my business. What's the next thing and where am I coming back at it?
If you look at the [inaudible 00:42:01], any mass movements, that's the key. For me, it's like, I'm not trying to sell products. Selling products is like transactional. It's one offer. I'm trying o build a cult. If you come to my event, you will see it's a cult. People are insane. We all wear the same tshirts. If you go to any marketing even in the country right now, half the audience is wearing my tshirts. We are a tribe, we are a cult, we are people who have a vision. My people know where we're going. We know what we're doing. People are bought in to it. It's insane. Now, when I'm stacking opportunities, I don't have to even try and they just buy the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, because it's like, they're bought in to this mission.
If you start looking at your businesses and your companies less like, "What's my transactional thing and I'm going to get a lead and I'm going to sell them." All those kind of things. "How do I build an experience, where they come in and they get these things. They're attached to a charismatic leader. Okay, we've got something bigger than, that we're going towards collectively as a whole, and we offer new opportunity to them, that they can't get anywhere else." That's how you build this thing, that's so much bigger than what you could do. Right now it's crazy. We get between five and six hundred people a day that sign up for click funnels and everyone's like, "Where do those people come from?" I have no idea. No idea. No idea. My colt's talking about it, everywhere.
Where ... Where'd you go? Oh, he was telling me yesterday, he was in an airplane. Some kid from South Africa sitting next to him was like, "You've got to read this book. It's the greatest thing in the world." That's what we're doing. We're trying to get people who are like, your person at the thing, right? Your hairdresser or ...
Florist.
Speaker 9: Florist, yeah. That's what we're trying to do, and I think that, f we're looking at things more like that, that's the key. I wanted to get in to that first, before we get in to kind of some funnel stuff, because that's the key to it, right? Understanding the strategy, understanding like, "Look. If you're selling from here, nobody's buying your stuff." Your warm audience is buying it, they'll give you money, but you can not grow beyond that, because of your own language patterns. Language is the key, right? You've got to step back here, and this is the key, is mastering this.
Russell Brunson: Stay in control of the epiphany bridge is like, what is the story that brings people in to the new opportunity. For me, I'm thinking ... The one thing I'm thinking about is, what's the story that got me in to this opportunity? If I was Dave Ashbury, I'd be telling his yak butter story way more often than he does. I had to find it on his blog and I was like, "Holy crap." If I was him, I'd be telling that story every single day, three or four times. Over and over and over again, cause that epiphany story is what got people in to the new opportunity. Have any of you here ever heard my potato gun story? I am so sick of that story, I've probably told it a thousand or more times, but it's my story about how I understood funnels. That was it, so I tell that story over and over and over and over again. That's what gets people in to the opportunity.
Mastering the story, because I think, for most businesses, most of us aren't going to have someone amazing like Craig, who can write copy. It's going to be hard, it's expensive to outsource something, but you as the ... Like you said earlier. I can sell the crap out of my own stuff, right? You don't need a copywriter then. You need to get super good at telling your story from here, that's your VSL. That's your upsell. Everything is tied to that. It's not going to be as efficient as what Craig, or a really good copywriter can do, but it's faster, it's better.
We put out so much stuff so quickly, because I don't have to sit down and a pad of paper every single time. I get myself in front of a video, I click record and I'm doing this. What's the story I've got tell people to give them the epiphany, so they understand that this is the new opportunity. What's the story I've got to tell people to get them the epiphany, so they want to stack on this opportunity to what they're currently doing. If I just get good at story telling, that process, it gives you the ability to do things very, very quickly, without having to guess and tweak and [inaudible 00:45:29], all those kind of things.
The Epiphany Bridge, State Control, Kinda Like Bridges
Today’s episode is part 1 of a 3 part series of Russell speaking at a $100k event where he taught about the psychology of funnels.
Here are some of the things you will hear in part 1:
So listen below to hear the first part of Russell’s presentation about the epiphany bridge.
---Transcript---
Speaker 1: How many of you have this thing called a website? Okay.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Now, yeah it's this thing on this thing called the internet, that came out a couple decades ago. I look at anything online as real estate. Back in my direct mail days, when there was no internet, I always loved the line, "The difference between a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill is the message on the paper." Same paper, same ink, different message. One change in the message could make that same piece of paper worth a hundred times more. The same thing goes with any of the virtual space. It's what you say, how you say it, how you compel people. Someone that actually knows how to print virtual money, would be Russell Brunson, and he has a whole process and a whole company and a whole software that can do this for you, and so he's going to take you through something that I'm sure could be potentially worth millions, if not tens of millions of dollars to all of you. Give it up for Mr. Russell Brunson.
Russell Brunson: Well, I'm excited to be here. Excited to share some cool stuff. I didn't do my presentation until last night, cause I wanted to see what you guys, what I think would be the most help for everyone. That's kind of where I came up with some handouts. Do you guys all have these?
Okay, so what I want to do is, I'm not going to show you guys anything about click funnels, cause that doesn't matter. I want to bridge some gaps, hopefully help you guys understand the psychology of funnels, cause if you understand that, then everything else becomes easier. I think that's the most essential part for us as the entrepreneurs in the business, to really understand. Hopefully this will kind of bridge some of the things from the copywriting and other things we've been talking about.
Okay, a couple things. Craig yesterday was talking about Maslov's hierarchy of needs, which was like, I was totally geeking out and loving it. I look at things very similar. I just flip it on the side kind of. I want to kind of reshow this, cause it'll help my next thing I'm going to explain make more sense. I look at the world where there's like, there's cold traffic, there's warm traffic and then there's hot traffic, right? I got the picture there in my little handouts. If you've ever read my book, Dot Com Secrets, I sketch out everything I do, cause I'm a visual person, so this is the sketch.
I learned this originally from Jean Schwartz. He talked about, if you look at any market, there's this awareness, this cycle of awareness, right? Where we hear people are unaware of what's happening. After they're unaware, eventually they become problem aware. From problem, they become solution aware. From solution, they become product aware. Then they're most aware. Just kind of noticing, the peoples companies here who are doing well, but not where they want to be, it's almost ... The biggest thing I see everyone doing, is that you've become masters at selling here. This is the warm market, right? You become really good at that, but to scale, you've got to step back. You've got to come back to here. This is like your existing audience, who loves you. This is like Facebook, they love the market, but they don't understand you. This is like the cold, hard masses and in my mind, the only way to drill past 10 million or so ... I think most businesses can be really successful here, you have to master this to get to about 10 and beyond 10, you've got to become a master of this.
This is like, how do you create your offer in a way that it goes to the masses, which is very similar to what Craig was talking about. That's kind of how I look at things, and it kind of leads me to the first important thing I want to talk about here. It's called the Epiphany Bridge. Anybody here ever done network marketing?
Speaker 1: We're very [inaudible 00:07:36]
Russell Brunson: [inaudible 00:07:36], they've done network marketing. Okay, so I'm going to grab something real quick, cause it'll help illustrate this. I have a buddy who started a network marketing company and he wanted me to join in and to market. I said no a million times, but eventually he sent me some of the product. I loved it, it was really, really good. This is a company called Prove It. Anybody here ever heard of Prove It? No one here? Okay. If you've studied Dave Ashbury's stuff about high fat diet, skinnier body [inaudible 00:08:03], this is the product they made. You drink it, outs your body immediately in ketosis. Tastes like candy, and it's awesome.
I helped them write a pitch and wrote this pitch for them. They took it out and in the first six months, the company had $20 million dollars this pitch. This year'll be over a hundred million dollars, and it's just growing like crazy, because of the pitch. Now, I want to explain. After the pitch, they wanted me to come out to the leadership team and explain to these network marketers how to use this [inaudible 00:08:30] that I created for them, right? I'm like, I love network marketers, but I'm also scared to death of them, cause they're like ... They just pounce on you. You know, that feeling where you're just like, I was getting pounced by everyone. I come in this room, and I walk in, it's this room, probably about three times as many people as this, and they want me to show them how to use this new message to sell more stuff.
I'm looking out in the audience, and I'm trying to think, "What am I going to talk about to these guys. They don't understand funnels or marketing. They're a bunch of people who are selling stuff. As I'm looking out at this audience, of these network marketers, and prior to me coming in the room, I was watching them as they were pouncing on hotel employees and other people, and I had this thing just popped in to my head. I want to share this, cause it's the key now to everything we do. This is a typical person, right? I'm going to make fun of network marketers, but this is you, right? In your business. We were born, we went to school, things were going well, and all of a sudden, something happened in your life that got you excited about what you're excited about, right? Dean probably, initially he sold a car and was like, "Holy crap. I can sell cars and make money." Right? Then he sold a house.
Every one of you guys, something happened. You were just normal humans. Something happened and all of a sudden, you had an epiphany, where you were like, "Holy crap, real estate's the greatest thing in the world. Holy crap, financial stuff." Something happened, where you had this big epiphany, and it changed your whole life, right? Do you guys all remember that moment, when it happened for you? He got his epiphany and then he went over here and then all of a sudden, the worst thing possible happened. You started like, "This is the coolest thing in the world." You start geeking out on it, right? I'll draw this dude with glasses. You start geeking out, and you're like, "Oh this is so cool." You start studying, and you just start doing the research, and you start going deep. I was looking at these network marketers, and I was like, "This product ..."
I was watching these guys in the hallway and people walking by, and they're pouncing on people, and they're like, "Dude, you've got to quit burning glucose. That's why you're so fat. You got to switch your fuel from glucose to ketones. If you do that, you won't be fat anymore." It's like, "Man, if you had beta hydroxy blueberry salt in your drinks and in your coffee ..." All this stuff. I'm watching this, right? What happens is we come in to this world, we get excited, and we start geeking out, and the worst thing possible happens to us. We learn this thing we call techno babble. In every one of your businesses, you've got a crap ton of techno babble, right? IT's these words that you use to describe things.
What happens is, you meet this prospect, and they're so cool, and you grab them, and you're like, "Okay, this is my prospect. I've got my shot at him." You're about to, like, "I'm going to tell him everything I know, and they're going to buy my crap, and it's going to be amazing." Then it's "blugh," and you spew out all this techno babble on the person, right? I'm watching these network marketers just spew out this stuff out at people and they're freaking out and they run away. For most of your businesses, how many of you guys know that you use techno babble? There's words for your industry that you use, that you shouldn't probably be using, okay? The reason why ... What happens, this warm market understands your techno babble. They're excited and they'll buy your crap over and over and over and over again. Okay? Everybody else? They haven't geeked out yet.
They key, this is what I found, the key for me to sell anything, is I have to stop this right here. I've got to cross out techno babble and I've got to stop this, cause this is what kills sales. I've got to figure out what was it that gave me the experience that caused me to go on this journey? If I can figure out what gave me this epiphany, and if I can give somebody else that epiphany, I do not have to sell them anything, ever. They'll have that epiphany in their mind and they're going to geek out and then they will cause a revolution. They will go so crazy on it. I've got to step back here.
When I was talking to this network marketing group, and the pitch I wrote ... I was telling Craig this yesterday. I got equity for the company for writing a pitch. It took me less than an hour to write the entire thing. The reason why, the [inaudible 00:12:11] wrote this pitch he sent to me, it was like the worst thing ever. I was dry heaving in my mouth, like "Ugh, that was such a bad ..." It was all this. Thousands of pounds of techno babble, just spewing forth and I couldn't even read the whole thing. I was like, "This is so bad." He's a friend, it was like two o'clock in the morning, I was sitting in bed. I was like, "I know he's going to call me, wanting me to critique it and give him feedback, but it just sucks, the whole thing." I just deleted the whole thing and I was like, "I'm just going to rewrite this for him."
The first thing I did, is I was like ... Cause I believe in this product. I believe in the concept. I was like, "This is really, really cool." I was like, "What was it that gave me the epiphany, that got me excited? Why do I drink this crap every day now? What was it that gave me that epiphany?" I was thinking back and it took me a while to realize. I was thinking like, "When was it? Some time in my life, something happened where I was sold on that." Then I was going back here, and all of a sudden, I remembered. I remembered the moment that I had the epiphany. I was at a seminar. I went out to eat with my buddy, his name's Aaron Lily. Do you guys ever remember in Skymall Magazine, the cream that they would sell that you put on your mole and your mole would fall off? Have you ever seen that? He's the inventor of that.
I'm out to dinner with the guy. Super cool, doing insane amounts of money with that business. We sit down to eat and he's super ripped and healthy and everything and he ... I order this amazing dinner, and he's ordering chicken with a side of butter. I thought it was weird. Then he's eating it, and he's dipping his chicken in butter and eating it and I'm like, "Dude, you are a freak. What's wrong?" He was like, "Oh, it's this whole thing." All of a sudden, he started giving me techno babble and so I started making fun of him more, cause it just that gave me fuel for my teasing, right? I'm making fun of him and he's like, "No, no," He said, "Okay, let me explain it like this." He's like, "Your body ... " Wow.
"Your body's kind of like a campfire, right?" He said, "If you think about it, you have a campfire, you feed it kindling, right? You throw a bunch of kindling on it, what happens?" I was like, "It burns really fast, then it goes away." He's like, "Okay, cool. That's like carbs. That's why you wake up in the morning, you eat Cheerios and you get like Ahh and then like 10 minutes later, you're starving. Your kids have ADD and they're bouncing off the walls, cause it's carbs. You just keep putting more carbs in, your body gets more hungry. That's how that world works."
I was like, "Okay, cool." He's like, "Proteins are kind of like getting a log and you throw a log on the fire and it'll burn a little bit longer, but same thing. It burns up and then it eventually goes away." He's like, "Fats are like coal. It's like throwing coal on. It's harder to get the fats to catch on fire, but once they're on fire, they burn warm and hard and dark. That's the best energy source, cause as soon as they're lit up, they'll burn all through the night." He said, "That's like eating fat. If you can transition your body from needing carbs and proteins, to processing fat, then you've got this amazing thing where you lose weight, you feel more energy and everything."
I was like, "Oh, so that's why you're dipping your chicken in butter. I get it." It made sense to me, right? [inaudible 00:14:48] this pitch, I just wrote a little, it's a three minute explainer video, about a dude and a campfire. I tell my epiphany and why it's important to be in ketosis and how this product puts you in ketosis instantly and that was the pitch. Three minute video, took the company from zero to a hundred million dollars in 18 months. It's because I figured that out, cause that speaks to everyone. I'm not dropping techno babble and all this other stuff. Does that make sense?
The biggest thing that I think I can share with all you guys, is this. Is figuring out how to get out of this state, cause this is where all you guys are stuck at. I've heard you guys talking about your business and you're always throwing techno babble, assuming that any of us have any idea what you're talking about and most of the times, I have no idea what any of you guys are talking about. It's because this is so second nature, so you're super power, this is what you're good at and you understand. This is where you lead from. If you get rid of that and figure out this piece, this is the key.
I'm going to share some other things, because I have so much respect for what Craig does. I don't think anyone's ever studied him. It's probably creepy for him to know how much I watch what he does, cause I have so much respect. What he does is like a sniper rifle, right? He spends so much time to craft his message, he's just flawless. When he gets it right, it's like a sniper rifle and blows up a company. I'm not nearly as skilled as him. What I've become a master at is this process, at telling these stories. I watch good copy like his, so I can get good at incorporating it in to my speech patterns. I think I'm kind of like a blend between these two. I'm kind of in the middle there, and I'm doing a lot of stuff to be able to figure out messaging. I'll kind of show you guys that here in a minute.
This is the best copywriting, I think, is mastering this piece. Mastering the telling of stories, because the process that I'm going to show you guys here, you can do a lot of them, every single day you're doing them, and you're finding the ones that work and you're pushing away the ones that don't. You can move through things really, really quick. Okay? Any questions about epiphany bridge? One other thing, I had a big realization the other day, as I was kind of going through this. How many of you guys have ever had something amazing happen to you, and you go to tell your friend, like, "This cool thing happened." You're telling this whole story and they're like, "Oh." You're like, "No, no, no, no." You tell it to them again and they're like, "No, that sounds really cool man." You're like, "No, dude. God, you had to be there. If you were there, you would have felt what I felt." How many of you guys have ever done that before? Right?
That's the biggest problem we have, is a lot of times when we tell these stories, this is why it's so important to become good at this, is we just, we suck at telling the story and then they don't have the epiphany. My job is not to tell them what epiphany they're supposed to have. My job is to set up an environment and a story that causes them to have this epiphany. When Marcus Lemonis spoke at our last funnel hacking live event, I had a 30 minute window before the event started, where we could sit down and just kind of talk, right? First time I'd ever met him and he gets there and he walks in and he's got this really confused look on his face.
He's like, "I thought you guys were a website builder." I'm like, "Yeah, we are." He's like, "Why is everyone so crazy outside?" You come to our events, it's more like a Tony Robbins event than anything. People are going nuts and going crazy and I was like, "Well, it's more than that. We're building a culture of people that love what we do [inaudible 00:17:57]" He's like, "What's a funnel?" First thing I do, stupid me, I start trying to explain from here, and he's like, "All right, so why's everyone so excited? I don't get why everyone's excited. You build websites." I was like, "Ugh." All of a sudden I was like, "Okay, I've got to tell my story."
I came back and I told him a story, the story that got me excited about funnels, and I explained that story to him and he was like, "Wait. You're telling me that these can work for anyone, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Well, how would it work for Camping World?" I was like, "Well, this is what I would do." He's like, "Okay, well how would this work for Sweet Peas?" I'm like, "I would do this." "How would this work for ..." He starts going through his businesses and after three or four of me telling these stories, he stops and he goes, "Man, every business needs a funnel, right?" It's like, "Yeah." He goes, "I got to get you on the show, okay?" I didn't tell him, "Hey man, Marcus, every business needs a funnel. You should have me on the show." I took him on a journey, told him a story, then I put it up in the air and let him have the epiphany, right?
That's the key. I want them to have the epiphany. I don't want to tell it to them. You get them to that state by telling them about the epiphany you had. A couple things about the story telling process, that I've learned that work so good. How many of you guys have ever seen the movie, the X-men movie, where they were little kids, before they became the big X-men? You guys remember that? I can't remember which one it was. There's this scene when Magneto before he ... He was a little kid and they're taking him to a Nazi concentration camp and they start taking him in, he's freaking out and they see the fences start kind of bending and they're like, "There's something with this kid. He's got some magic powers."
They pull him in this room and it's this really tiny room, it's got Magneto sitting here, it's got the head of the Nazi party there and it's got Magneto's mom. She's sitting there crying, standing there. The Nazi guy is telling him to move this coin, there's a coin on the desk and little Magneto's trying to move it and trying to move it and he can't get the power to do it. He's trying and he's trying and he's trying, nothing's moving. Then the Nazi guy gets kind of frustrated and looks over, pulls out a gun, shoots his mom in the head, boom and the mom falls dead on the ground. Then you see this scene that's like so powerful. You see this little kid's face and you see the pain and the agony. You see his whole body convulse down, like "My mom just died." Then it transforms from this pain, to this anger and then he comes back up with this just pure anger in his eyes and everything. You see him and he shoves the coin across, he starts crushing all the metal , crushing and everything starts falling around him and he just destroys this whole room. That's how he found his power, right?
Now, when watching film, you see that, right? Now words were said, but you see all these things that were happening. You see the pain, you see the frustration, you see the anger, you see ... Us, as an audience, as we're watching that, we feel it. [inaudible 00:20:31] I was just explaining it, you kind of felt some of that. You felt that stuff, right? That's the magic of film. We don't ... Most of us aren't producing films to sell our stuff, and so we have to do that through our words. Imagine if Magneto came and he's like, "Yeah, so when I was a kid, I was in a Nazi concentration camp. They wanted me to move a coin and I couldn't do it, so they killed my mom. I was pissed, so I blew the whole thing up." You're like, "All right." You wouldn't have had the experience, right? Magneto came and he started talking about how he felt.
When I'm telling my stories, I go in to how I feel. I talk about, "Man, I was sitting there, I was so freaked out because my bills were due and I had this stuff and I had this pain in my stomach and it was almost like a heart attack, but it was lower, and I felt this pressure coming down and I literally felt like someone was sitting on my back. Everything was coming down on my. I looked down at hands and they were sweating, yet I was freezing cold. My whole body was shaking and shivering, because I was in so much pain and frustration, so much fear." You notice as I'm telling that story, I'm walking you guys through what I'm feeling and you start feeling it your audience starts feeling those things as well, right? My goal, for me telling the story, is I have to get you in the exact same state that I was in when I had the epiphany, or else you will not have that epiphany.
If you look at a good author, I mean you'll read books where an author will come in to the room and they'll spend 30 pages explaining the room and the lights and the look and the feel and everything, to set up a scene. Deliver some line, cause they need you to feel that line, but you won't feel it if they haven't set it up correctly. If I want you to have this epiphany, I have to get you in the exact same state that I was in when I had it. Okay? Tony Robbins 101, stay in control. I have to control their state and I do that by telling the story in a way to get you to feel what I felt, so that when I explain how I had my epiphany, you have the exact same epiphany. Does that make sense? Is that the coolest thing? I realized that, I was just like, "This is like a whole nother level." It's so easy when you start understanding, this is how the pieces work and how they all kind of flow together. Any questions about that at all?
All right, so if you flip over to the next page. In my inner circle group, people always ask me, "Okay, I got that [inaudible 00:22:44]. What's the process now?" I'm a big ... What I do a lot of times, I go through and I look at patterns. I go through and dissect like a hundred sales videos like, "What's the pattern?" Then I like sketching out patterns, based on that, so I can replicate it over and over again. I started going through all the stories I tell and I was looking at commonalities. Also, we had an event where we hired ... Any of you guys know Michael Hauge? Michael Hauge, I write his name down, Michael Hauge, H-A-U-G-E? There's an audio with him and, I think, Chris Volgler, on Itunes. It's like a six hour story telling workshop they gave. It's like the best thing in the world.
Michael Hauge is, he works in Hollywood and he ... We had him come to one of our events and he was showing everybody, he was like, "Look at any movie that's ever been successful from the beginning of time, like Batman, Spider man, Titanic, anything. They all follow the exact same script." He's like, "If you look at the screenplay that you get," He's like, "On page number three is when the hero does this. On page 13, they always do this. On page 26 ... Every movie, it's exactly the same." He came and talked, but if you listen to that class, it's a college class he's teaching on story telling. It's insane. In fact, have you guys ever seen the movie Hitch? When Will Smith wrote that movie, it was before him and Michael Hauge were like best friends. Will Smith said, "I was studying Michael Hauge's stuff and I was writing Hitch, 100% trying to follow the keys that Michael Hauge taught." Then when it was done, he met Michael Hauge and they became best friends, like super good friends. Now Will Smith, all these guys, Michael's the dude they go to help map out the screenplay. Super fascinating stuff.
This became, as I started looking at it, the outlines for most of my stories, but also the outlines, very similar to what they teach in Hollywood. It's kind of interesting, if you go in to it. If you're looking at how I typically teach things, or how I tell my stories, they all start with the backstory. The big reason why is because it's this, right? Coming back to here, people see you over here as this guru on the mountain, if you start your presentation from there. They have no faith r trust or hope in you, right? It's like, "Ugh. That's Dean. He can get there, but I can't." You've got to come down the mountain, come back to where they're at and be like, "Hey man, this is where you're at. I was here too. Come on, let's go on a journey. I'm going to take you where we're going." You start with the backstory.
The backstory usually leads you to some kind of wall, which typically is the same wall that your audience is in right now, that's listening to you. Then the first thing you talk about is the external struggle, cause this is what your audience is willing to admit. "Yeah, I needed more money," or "Yeah, I needed to get in shape." You talk about, that's the first struggle. Then the second thing's, you've got to get to the internal struggle, cause this is the only thing that actually matters. This is what Dean was talking about yesterday. Seven why's. This is how I get to my internal struggle. External, I need more money. I ask five or six or seven why's. Why, why, why, why, why? That's the real reason why they care.
In your story, you don't talk about ... You mention the external, cause that's where they're at. Then you go in to the internal. You talk about the internal thing that you were struggling with, cause that's where it gets them. You're controlling state, right? That's where you get in to the same state you were in, cause you're actually talking to them on a level that they don't ever share. When you're willing and able to share that, then it causes the empathy you need. From there something happens, you had this epiphany. "Whoa, check out how cool this thing was." Then, after the epiphany, you're like, "Here's the plan, what I'm going to do." After you have the plan, usually you still freak out like, "Ugh, is it going to work? What if it fails?" We talk about the painted picture of failure. Then we have the call to action, and then, at the end of it, we have the result.
This is kind of an example. I have this on my desk, when I'm doing videos, doing stuff, I just look at this all the time. I make sure I don't miss pieces of it. I probably tell, I don't know, 40 or 50 stories a day. If you look at how much we're publishing stuff, I'm just telling stories all day long, and I want to make sure that I'm following a process. This is there, and this little thing will help, these questions will help walk you through what's your back story and what did you want? There's a problem you encounter, how'd you make it feel? What was the external struggle? What was the internal struggle? What was the epiphany you had? What plan did you come up with after the epiphany? What would happen if you failed? How'd you take action? What was the end experience?
Some epiphany bridge stories I tell are a minute to two minutes. Some of them are 30 to 40 minutes. I tell a lot of them. Every one of my presentations ... One of the presentations I did, one of the guys on my team was counting things and in a 56 minute presentation, I told like 30 something stories. I'm telling them a lot, consistently, over. If you guys ever watch my stuff, I can tell story after story after story after story, because that's what gets people here. If you notice, any time I get to something where I come to some kind of technical thing, like when I did the pitch for this. I had to explain ketones, causes there's a word called ketones. Ketones is techno babble, right?
As soon as I get to the word ketone, I say, "Ketone." Then I stop and I say, "Ketones kind of like," I step back, "It's kind of like a million motivational speakers, running through your body." Like, "Oh, cool." Now they've got what ketones are and I keep moving on. Any time I introduce any kind of techno babble, I stop instantly, take a step back, I tell a really quick story to make it so that that word means something to them, and then I can keep moving on. Anyway, I'm doing that over and over. Does that help for like a tool for you guys, how to ... People always say "How do you do your sales videos now?" It's Really this. These are how, mostly everything we create is from that.
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited that I survived the drive to the office today.
On this episode Russell talks about why he always gets excited about everything. He also talks about a friend of his using funnels in an offline business, and how it still works.
Here are some of the cool things you should listen for in this episode:
So listen below to get excited about life and find out how you can use funnels in every business, even offline ones.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, good morning. I hope you guys are doing awesome. I’m stuck in the snow right now and most people would be complaining, but guess what. I’m crazy effective right now. I can barely move, apparently in Boise when there’s a half a centimeter of snow it shuts the whole city down. So I’m stuck in the snow.
But while I’ve been stuck in the snow, listen to everything I’ve accomplished already. We’re sending out a letter to our Dream100, letting them know about the book launch on April 18th. By the way if you guys want to participate in that, mark it on your calendars today. April 18th is when the Expert Secrets book is going live. So I was going to write that today, but I was like I don’t have time to write it. So I have a guy on my team, and I think everyone needs a guy on their team that does this. His name is Levi and what he does is, I vox him stuff and he writes it out and cleans it up.
So when I want to send emails, I just vox him and then he puts the emails in Clickfunnels and Actionetics and types them all out. Then I look in there, tweak it and then send it out, which has been so great. And then today, for the sales letter I just voxed him, “Hey man, I’m stuck in the snow. Here’s the sales letter I want to send out.” So I sent it to him, he’s going to write it out, give it to me, I’ll edit it and then we’ll send out an actual physical sales letter from there.
The cool thing about that, I don’t know about most of you guys, but this is the hard thing about writing. This is why I think copywriting is typically so hard and everyone struggles with it. It’s because most of us are really good selling face to face. I can sell you on why you should go see this movie or why you should whatever. Those things are easy to do. But it’s like, if I have to write that to you, it’s so much harder and then you start writing, you’re creative brain that’s really good at selling, starts getting out and your analytical editing brain is like, “Wait, you have a typo there. You need a period. You forgot the comma. What about capitalization.” So you’re going back and forth and it’s painful.
I know for me, when I start writing emails, I log into Actionetics and start typing it out, I start stressing out because it doesn’t look good. I spend half the time editing and half the time to write. I’m going back and forth, and I know the story is really good, but it takes so long to type it out that I just shorten the story. I don’t even tell it. I don’t know, it’s just not as good as it could be. So what I do now is vox him the stuff, tell him the story and vox it and he writes it out. I’m like, “Dang, that looks actually really good.” He knows the format I like my emails in, so he puts it in 99% the way there and I go and clean it up and send it out.
Anyway, I think that’s cool. So I hope you guys think it’s cool too. Because it’ll be a shortcut. But it works for sales letters, works with emails, works with anything you’ve got to write. Even my book, that’s how I wrote my book initially. The first draft came from me dictating through my phone and then Julie on my team re-writing it and then me going back and doing deep edits from there. I think its magic because it pulls the editing side out of your body, or out of your brain and gets you to be creative when you’re just writing. So don’t actually write, just talk.
So I got that done, and then I thought that was going to take my whole drive to the office, but I’m halfway there. I’m stuck behind a big old, what’s it called? A tow truck. I guess it’s probably more efficient to have a tow truck behind you, so if you wreck he can pull you out. If I wreck, he’s going to be gone by the time anyone notices.
But yeah, I’m stuck. We’re going 1 mile an hour. I got my meeting in 4 minutes. Not going to make it in time. But I got time to hang out with you guys, which is even better. So thank the snow because that’s awesome.
So today’s message, what I wanted to talk about, is all about being excited. I think that the worst thing about most people nowadays, nobody is excited about anything. I’ll have the coolest thing and I share it with somebody and they’re like, “Wow.” I’m like, “What? Wow? That’s all I got from that. Dude, you should be going crazy.” If you notice one thing about me, I get so excited about everything. Even the little dumb things that shouldn’t matter. I just get excited by it.
It’s interesting what happens when you do this. So a couple of things, when you start getting excited by every single thing that happens, even things that normally aren’t that cool, but you’re like, “That was awesome.” First off, your brain starts going, “Wow that actually was awesome.” Right now I’m out in the snow and this is awesome. I have a chance to share with you guys and get a sales letter. I got two things done today in the snow. How awesome is that? Most people would be like, “I’m in the snow, I’m miserable. Life is crappy.” And that’s the reality most people live in. Where because I’m excited I’m like, “That is pretty cool. I could do this. What else can I do?” In fact, I was on slack. I downloaded the slack app, which we started using in our office. I’m messaging people and getting crap done while I’m sitting here doing nothing.
I also snapchatted a story about the new office. I’m getting a lot of crap done in the snow. And then when cool things do happen, again someone goes to see a movie, I’m like, “How was the movie?” and they’re like, “It was alright.” I’m like, “What? How was that alright? You just saw….”It could be anything, “You just saw Batman and Superman fight to the death. It was alright? Are you serious? That was awesome. I don’t care who you are or what you think, that was amazing.”
This weekend I saw Rogue One again for the second time. And what was cool was Chad Woolner, one of my buddies/chiropractor, he put this thing on, so this is cool. He, and you may think this is impossible, but he’s an offline business and guess what he did, he used a funnel to make a bunch of money this weekend. So this is what he did. He built a page in Clickfunnels, he recorded a video of him telling a story. He told his origin story about why he got into chiropractic, and at the end he invited people as a guest. He said, “Even if you’re a member of our clinic or not. I don’t really care if your part of a community. But we rented out a whole theater, we’re going to be showing Rogue One, if you want to come. If you want to bring your friends and family, bring them all. It’s my treat because I’m a chiropractor who cares.” And then he sent it out to his list of clients and friends, posted it on Facebook, drew up some ads and everything.
And from that he filled up a theater of 300 people, and so my kids and I all went and saw Rogue One with him. So he shows up to Rogue One and he had recorded a whole bunch of video testimonials of all his patients, so everyone is sitting in this movie before the movie starts, a captive audience of 300 people. And he’s playing on the huge screen all these testimonials talking about why he’s amazing, why his clinic is amazing, which is awesome.
Then after the movie’s done, as soon as the credits come in, boom he cuts the credits, the lights come up and he’s like, “Hey everyone, before you leave, we’ve got some prizes.” So he does a drawing and gives out Star Wars things and everyone’s excited and everyone’s sitting there listening to him, again captivated. He’s got 300 people sitting in the room and then he keeps talking about a special offer, “Hey if you guys want to come in and get adjusted by the chiropractor that everyone is talking about in the videos, and the one’s that served you and let you come to this cool movie. If you want this law of reciprocity to work both ways, we’re even going to do something better. We’re going to make a special offer.” What, are you kidding me? You can’t make a special offer if you’re a chiropractor. Everyone charges $40 for an adjustment. “No, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to make a special offer. If you come in for an initial exam, we’re going to give you a free massage and on top of your massage, we’ll give you a $50 amazon gift card, just for coming in and letting us check you out.”
So people are like, “Dude, that’s a good offer. I want a free massage and a $50 gift card. It’s worth it to come in. And my neck has been kind of hurt, my back, have him look at it. My insurance is going to pay the bill. I’m in for that.” Boom, all the sudden he gets this table rush, there’s a huge line of people outside, signing up for free chiropractic care. All because of a movie.
So first off, I’m sitting there as the marketer in the room freaking out, snapchatting the whole thing. “This is amazing. I’ll find funnels. Funnels work for offline business, are you kidding me?” How many chiropractors do you know that closed 50 people yesterday? He had a captive audience with 300 people and closed 50 of them on chiropractic care. Yeah, one. The only dude that’s actually using funnels. So there’s number one.
Number two is I’m watching this movie for the second time and I’m with my kids. I’m like, “This is so amazing.” And I’m looking at people, all my Facebook group are writing these reviews, “The movie is okay, wasn’t’ that funny.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Did you not see that scene with Darth Vader at the end? He’s thrashing everybody. It was amazing.”
Anyway, I’m just saying, you guys need to be more excited. Everyone needs to be more excited. There are some amazing things, we live in this day and era and time when all this amazing stuff is happening around us and we’re missing it because we’re so bored. We’re so unimpressed with the remarkable that’s happening around us. There are literally miracles happening every single day all around us and we’ll look at it like, “Meh.” What? Dude, did you see what just happened? How are you guys just ‘meh-ing’ that? That’s a big freaking deal. That’s something we should all stop and be like, ‘wow.’
So anyway, I try to be excited all the time. I’m sure it drives some of you guys crazy. I’m sure I’ve got a lot of people who can’t stand me because of it, but the people I want to surround myself with are those who are seeing the miracles happening around us. Realizing that this stuff that kings would have paid everything they had, given up their entire fortune to watch the movies we get to watch for $10. And the fact that I’m in a car right now, it’s snowing outside, it’s freezing cold, and I’m able to say I want this to be 70 degrees and I want my seat to be warm. It is. I’m sitting in comfort right now.
This is better than having…..the Pharaoh’s back in the day would sit in one of those carts people would carry them around. I bet it was still hot. This is the miracle, I click a button, I push my foot down and it moves forward and it’s heated. This is exciting. Are you guys missing this? I may be going to the extreme here, but I want you guys to stop today and I want you to look around and start acknowledging this amazingness that’s happening and be like, “Dude, that was awesome. That, right there, that was amazing. That right there, that was amazing.” The fact that I walked, I just drove by a Jack in the Box, I could drive in there right now and for $5 have somebody make me the most amazing meal on earth. That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s not healthy, but it’s pretty amazing, you have to admit.
Anyway, there you go you guys. With that said, life is good. Sure, there’s some bad things happening around us, but look around at the miracles. We have it pretty dang, freaking amazing and I hope you’re all grateful for that, because I am and I hope you are as well. So count your many blessings, because they are there. You just gotta look for them.
With that said, I’m at the office. I haven’t died, which is like, I’m freaking out excited about that too. I could have wrecked multiple times. I’m a horrible driver right now. I’ve been snapchatting, writing sales letters, and voxing, and podcasting all on this ride and I’ve survived. That’s amazing. I’m pretty stoked about that. I don’t know about you guys, but I hope you are. Some of you are like, “Man, I wish he would have died and it would have ended the torture.” But for the rest of you guys, we survived it, that’s exciting. We should all have a party today or something. I don’t know. I think it calls for a party.
So alright, there you go you guys. I’m excited, hope you are as well. And for any of you guys wondering if offline funnels work. They do. You gotta think a little bit, you gotta be a little creative, but the key message is the same. Capture results, push people into a funnel, after you’ve done that, try to get a captive audience, create an irresistible offer. The game is the same. Doesn’t matter where you’re at, you’ve just gotta think through it.
I had someone the other day, “Yeah, that works for B to C, but it doesn’t work for B to B?” I’m like, “It depends, is the B to B, are they people? Because it only works on people.” So yeah, if they’re people that you’re going to be communicating with, this stuff works. If they’re not humans and you’re dealing with robots, I guess…..but b to b, B to C, as long as it’s not B to R, B to robot, business to robot, you’re screwed because robot’s have no emotion. But for everybody else, this crap works.
So there you go. We should get t-shirts, that say something about B to R. Okay, I’m pulling into a snow filled thing, and I have my flip……..oh I’m sliding, I’m sliding, but I’m stopped. And I’m officially at the office and we’re alive. I’m pretty stoked about that too. Alright you guys, talk to you soon. Have a great day and unless you sell B to R you should be smiling because funnels work. Talk to you soon, bye everybody.