Are you frustrated because nobody is buying your product? This episode will show you the secret to guaranteeing a success!
On today’s episode Russell talks about what to do if your funnel flops. He talks about how the average millionaire fails 11 times before they have success.
Here are some cool things to listen for on this episode:
So listen below to find out what to do if the funnel you have built flops.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to Marketing in Your Car.
All right everyone, today, the message for you guys today is all about publishing, about putting stuff out into the world. It’s been interesting as I’ve seen those in our high end coaching program who are successful versus those who aren’t. It’s almost one very common theme that happens over and over again.
Those who are having success are publishing a lot of things. They’re writing emails, sending out blog posts, making funnels, making videos. They’re doing stuff. They’re moving forward. The ones who aren’t making money, they’re focusing on one perfect funnel and not doing anything else except for making this thing just the most perfect thing in the world.
They’re spending months and months trying to do it. The nice thing about Click Funnel is it’s about the process we teach at Funnel Hacking. You should be able to build a funnel in a day, maybe two days if you’re slow but it shouldn’t be longer than that. If you get a video camera, the iPhone cameras nowadays are better than any expensive things.
Throw up a camera, record something, throw it out there. It’s all about just getting stuff out there and publishing. I remember Jeff Walker. I read an email from him a couple of years ago that really illustrated this for me really well. He talked about how the best thing you could do in business is start publishing stuff, putting things out there because you can find out what people are responding to.
So many people I know are putting all of their eggs in this one basket of a webinar or video sales letter, whatever that thing is. They’re putting so much effort on that that it may or may not work. A lot of times, they don’t work. I would say half the time, my stuff doesn’t work either.
Hopefully, each time, we get better and better at making things right but half the time, it’s not going to work. You’ve got to get good at just publishing and putting it out there, and seeing if people are responding to you.
Put up a funnel and direct some traffic. If people don’t respond to it, then do another one. Create something new. It’s not that hard. It doesn’t take that much time. If someone doesn’t buy your product, guess what? Maybe no one wants to buy your product.
I keep seeing people who have been spending six, eight, ten, 12 months trying to get somebody to buy their product when it turns out nobody wants their product. Marlon Sanders, one of the original Internet marketing guys, I heard him speak one time.
His presentation was called A Dead Duck Can’t Fly. He got up there saying, “Look, I don’t care how great you think your product is. A dead duck can’t fly. You can keep making new sales letters for it and new videos, do everything but sometimes, a dead duck won’t fly - or all the time.”
If you know your product is dead and nobody is buying it, or whatever the issue might be, you’ve got to understand, sometimes people aren’t going to buy it. Maybe the product, as much love, effort and stuff you’ve put into it, maybe people don’t want it. I had a friend when I first got started in this business, man, 12 years ago.
I met him and he was selling this ebook he had written. He was so passionate about this ebook. He kept trying to sell it and trying to sell it. He spent two or three years trying to sell this book and nobody would ever buy it.
I remember saying to him, “Ken, I don’t think anyone wants to buy this book. You need to create a new product. You need to try something different. You got the skill sets. You know how to write a book. You know how to put up a sales letter. You’ve done the whole process once but you need to create a new product because nobody is buying that one. Nobody wants it. As much as you love it, nobody wants it.”
I remember he told me, “Russell, I can’t. I’ve spent two years of my life on this. I can’t stop now. I can’t quit now.” I just got to tell you guys, sometimes it’s okay to be a quitter. You got to quit sometimes. You just have to.
You can’t just keep on. Eventually, the market will tell you if something is sellable or not. It’s really cool how that works. If people don’t want it, they’re not going to buy it. If nobody is buying it, it’s because nobody wants it. That’s a lot of times the issue.
Sometimes, obviously the issue is not getting traffic or your sales letters don’t sell well, things like that. But sometimes just people don’t want what you’re selling. You got to be okay with that. You got to detach yourself from the emotion of it and just focus on what do people want.
Awhile ago, when I got started, there was this really cool course called The Underachiever Formula. I later bought that company and renamed it Underachiever Secrets. As you can probably tell, all my stuff is “secrets.” But in that product, it was from Frank Kern and Ed Dale who initially published it.
What they talked about was brilliant. It said, “This is the process. This is how you are successful online. Step one, you got to find a hot market. If you’re not in a market that’s hot right now, you got to change your market. I don’t care how passionate you are about whatever, if it’s not a hot market, people aren’t going to buy it.”
Maybe they’ll buy it a little bit but if you want to make a lot of money, you got to find a hot market. Find a market that’s rabid, that people love buying things, people that are currently buying lots of other things. That’s step number one.
Step number two is after you find the hot market, then you have to ask them what they want. Never assume that the cool thing you want to create is what they actually want. My guess right now is if you’re selling something and nobody is buying it, it’s because you didn’t ask them what they wanted.
You thought about what you would want and you created that. It turns out you’re the only dude or dudette who wants that thing. Am I right? You got to ask them what they want. Survey them. Do teleseminars. Do webinars. Ask questions.
Call up your customers and find out what their pain points are. Find out what they actually want. Then after they tell you what they want, then you create that. You don’t create your own thing. Again, the way this whole process works, it’s by surveying -- surveys and finding out what your audience wants.
It’s by publishing, sending out emails, making Facebook posts, driving traffic to it, and seeing what people respond to. If no one is clicking on your posts, if you’re spending $20, $30, and nobody is sharing or clicking on your posts, then guess what? Nobody wants it, okay?
That’s fine. Move onto the next thing and keep moving until boom, eventually you’re going to hit a quarry. That’s what people want. I can’t tell you over the 12 years of me doing this how many products I’ve launched and they’ve flopped. I mean, flop after flop after flop.
It was kind of like Michael Jordan where he goes out there. They said he missed more shots than anybody else but he also made more shots than anybody else, right, or more game winning shots, whatever the thing is. You got to put a lot of stuff out there.
I cannot tell you - I have a road of hundreds of offers that we have published that have flopped, but we’ve got a handful, maybe a dozen that have blown up and become multimillion dollar projects but I would never have got to those dozen had I not flopped over and over again. You guys got to understand that this is a process.
You building out a sales funnel, think of it like school. You go to school for four, six, or eight years depending on what your major is. When you’re done, you go out there and then start trying to do it. It’s the same thing here.
Your first funnel, your second funnel, or your third funnel and your tenth funnel, this is your education. This is you learning the process, learning how to write copy, learning what people respond to, learning what they’re not responding to.
I’m sick and tired of people getting all upset, “Oh, my Web site’s not making any money,” and they want to quit. It drives me crazy. The first one didn’t work. Make a second one. If that one doesn’t work, make a third one and keep doing it until you’re successful.
When I was first getting started, I remember I was listening to this seminar from I think Brian Tracy actually. He was talking about there was this news show. They had 15 self-made millionaires up on stage.
I’m going to screw up the numbers but the concept, I understand. Basically he asked these guys, he said, “How many businesses did you fail in before you became a millionaire?” They were trying to add it up.
They cut to a commercial break and came back. Everyone added it up and they said that the average of all these 15 millionaires was they had launched and failed I think it was 11 times before they were successful - 11 times, 11 companies they’ve screwed up on before they made millions!
Okay, then Brian Tracy asked, “Do you think it’s because they all got lucky on the eleventh time?” Do you think Einstein got lucky on the whatever, 3000th time he tried to invent the light bulb? No! What happens is you try one thing and it doesn’t work, people don’t respond, so you try something else, and try something else.
Eventually, you’ve tried everything that doesn’t work. Eventually, the next thing has got to work. Eventually, you’ve figured out all the ways that people are not going to buy and one of these times, you’re going to hit one that people do buy.
The difference between me and the person listening to this who is not having success right now is not publishing enough. People are like, “Russell, you put out so much stuff.” Guess why? Half of my stuff flops, okay? I’m not sure which half is going to flop until I put it out there, so I got to keep putting it out there and keep putting it out there, and keep putting it out there.
When they respond to something, and you say, “Boom, this is the winner,” then you keep ringing that bell and keep pushing and keep pushing it. For example, when we launched Click Funnels the first time, guess what? It was a flop. I hate to admit it, it was a complete flop.
We launched it, we did a big huge launch with prizes, and it was a flop. Nobody bought it or very few people bought it. For me, I felt the product was still good but I had to figure out something else so we tried another thing and tried another thing.
I probably rewrote the sales letter, I don’t know, 10, 12, 15 times and none of those things works. I finally was so depressed I was going to give up and Mike Filsaime called me and said, “Hey, I need you to speak at my event about Click Funnels.” I’m like, “Dude, nobody is buying this thing.”
But he’s like, “You got to figure it out and you got to sell a $1000 version of it.” I created a new webinar pitch. We called it Funnel Hacks, launched it at the event, and the rest is history. Since then, we’ve sold over 3000 copies at $1000 apiece. That’s $3 million right there in the last six months.
Then on top of that, we’ve used at that as a tool to add over $4000 active customers to pay $97 a month so it works. But guess what? It didn’t work the first time or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth, or the sixth, okay?
You guys got to be comfortable with publishing. This is your education. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth funnel that you guys do, just plan on it not working and be okay with that. Quit complaining. It’s so funny, in every other business in the world, people understand that hey, you got to spend time, effort, and money.
My friend is a chiropractor. He had to go to 10 years of school. Then he had to go get a SBA loan to build his office. Then he had to go get clients. Five years later, he’s profitable. Somehow, for some reason, we think that the laws of business don’t function online.
There’s too many people out there teaching get rich overnight, get rich quick, all that stuff and you can, and people do but it usually comes with a lot of effort, a lot of work, a lot of you cutting your teeth trying thing after thing until you find out boom, that’s what works. When I got started, it was 18 months before I made my first dollar online - 18 months!
I don’t even know what I was doing for 18 months but I was trying, spinning my wheels before I realized how to actually sell things. Obviously the coaching, programs, tools, and everything we’re giving you, my goal is to shortcut that success. That’s why we teach the Funnel Hacking concepts.
You find someone who has already failed 1000 times. You look what they’ve gotten and you model it from there. Typically, if you do that, you’re going to be starting at a better spot. You’re going to be starting about where they left off.
Hopefully, you’re going to cut out tons of the trial and error but even with that, you got to understand that it’s okay if your first thing or your second thing, or your third thing doesn’t work. You are creating a business. You are trying to attract people.
You’re seeing what people respond to, and when you figure out what they respond to, then you ramp it up and scale it. One of the guys in our coaching group we’re working on is kind of in the survival market. He’s done three, four, or five versions and has this ad that just works like crazy but the different landing pages he’s got just haven’t been working.
He’s tried two or three or four. I actually created one for him. We have a couple versions. So far, none of these things are working but he’s getting traffic. Things are happening. He just hasn’t quite figured out what’s that thing that these guys are going to respond to.
As soon as he figures that thing out, boom, it’s game over for him. You got to try. You got to be patient with it. You can’t complain and whine because that’s how this game is played. Anyway, that’s my rant for today. I hope that for those of you guys who are publishing stuff, it inspired you to know you’re on the right track.
For those of you who have failed, I hope it inspires you to know that I fail all the time. For those of you guys who are getting started and you’re frustrated because you’re not making yet, I hope that paints a clear path of what to expect and how to get there.
The last thing I want to mention before I jump into the office here is, is it worth it? Is it worth it to fail five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times before you smash one out of the park? Yes, it is because one of these things that goes right, one of these things that connects with your audience, the right way when they respond they want to buy, you can make money in a month, two month period of time than most people make in a lifetime.
It’s worth it but you got to understand that it doesn’t always happen first try. You got to become okay with that and go on the second try and third try. Just keep doing this because you will keep learning and find out what people respond to. Eventually, you’re going to hit a grand slam.
It happens all the time to those who don’t quit after the first failure or the second, who keep going because they’ve got faith. They’ve got a vision. They’ve seen that it works for other people. They’ve seen that man, this guy named Russell, it works for him. This guy over here, this girl over here, if it works for other people, it can work for me.
I just got to figure out what my audience responds to and create exactly what they want. If I do that, like I said, you can make more in a month than most people make in a lifetime. It’s definitely worth it. Don’t get frustrated.
Stay the course. Have fun with it. This is your education period. This is your time to learn and to grow and to have fun with it. If you do that, I promise you guys it will be worth it. It’s worth it in the long run. All right, I’m at the office.
Today I’m going to have some fun. I got a lot of fun things I’m publishing and see what people will respond to, see what gets them to part with their hard earned money. I’ll find out. If it works, we’ll scale it. If not, we’ll check out something new tomorrow. Appreciate you guys, hope you have an awesome day and we’ll talk soon.