Important insights on developing your future based mission.
In this episode Russell talks about starting a supplement business with a friend and some of the challenges he faced with naming it. He also talks about what inspired him to name it what he did and how he will achieve a cult following.
Here are some cool things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to hear how Russell plans to build a community with his new supplement business.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, good morning and welcome back to Marketing In Your Car, I’m so glad to have you guys here today. It’s been a little while. We just got done with our Thanksgiving vacation, instead of doing what normal, sane people do and stay home and make turkey we decided to take our kids on a Disney Cruise, which was a lot of fun. other than more than half of my kids throwing up on the boat, which is a story for another day. But it was awesome, we had a good time. Glad to be back now, getting back to work.
Pretty much, last night after spending a week off, I plotted out world domination and I have a blueprint and game plan and it is insanely exciting, so I’m excited to get to the office and executing on said blueprint. Because it’s going to be amazing. And my goal is to get all of them before the live event, which is 3 months away. By the way, last year we were pushing tickets all the way to the last week or two. I think we’re going to sell out today. Today we raise the price, because it’s black Friday today, and so we’re raising the price at midnight and I do not think we’ll have enough tickets to keep selling after the price raise, so it may just sell out today, which is insane because it’s getting bigger every year. So I’m excited for that.
But today, what I want to talk to you guys about, excuse me. I almost did a podcast on the boat two or three times but between puking kids and everything else it just never happened. Been working on my book as you know, we’ve talked a lot about this, I cannot wait for you guys to read this, it’s going to be awesome. But in the book, one of the things I mention a lot is how to build a mass following, and there’s three things. The charismatic leader or attractive character, then there’s the future based vision of where things are going, and then there is the new opportunity. I’ve talked a lot about new opportunity, but today I want to talk about the second piece there which is the future vision and stuff like that.
Because, this is one of the things….I didn’t craft any of things for me initially, but they’ve been crafted as we’ve been growing and it’s been fuel for the fire. So the big part I want to talk about today is, first off, identifying exactly who your market is and from there creating something that calls them out When we first launched Clickfunnels, funnel hackers is what we became. The community became funnel hackers, they identified with that. They got t-shirts that say, “I am a funnel hacker, I funnel hack.” And it became a part of this mass movement, which is kind of cool.
As we launched the funnel hacking event this year we came up with the headline, and not a headline, it’s more like a rallying call that became the headline. It’s funny because the headline initially, I don’t know if I told you this story or not. It was like, “You’re one funnel away from becoming rich.” “You’re one funnel away from quitting your job.” “You’re one funnel away from growing your business to the next level.” And every time we…..every variation of that headline was lame because that’s true for a small percentage of people, but everyone’s different. Then finally I deleted everything, I was about to start writing again, so I deleted everything. It just said, “You’re one funnel away” I looked at it like, that’s it. That’s the rallying call. That’s it.
So I shifted my emails, every email comes now says, “Ps, don’t forget you’re just one funnel away.” The headline from the event, “You’re one funnel away.” I started doing these Facebook Live’s where it’s like the state of the union address and I sign off all of those, “Don’t forget you’re just one funnel away.” Drew Canoli, my buddy who owns Oganify and Life TV, I initially saw him do this with his movement and I thought it was so cool and I was jealous that I didn’t have one, so I got one and I want you all to have one too.
So his was, he always says, “Don’t forget guys, we’re all in this together.” So he gets everyone to be like, we’re all in this together. We’re all losing weight together. We’re all juicing together. We’re all…….it becomes more of a community. We’re all part of this thing. That’s how Drew did his.
So mine now, with the whole, “Don’t forget you’re just one funnel away.” It gives hope and vision. It’s so inspiring, because you hear that and you’re like, even if you failed ten times, “Man, I may have failed ten times, but I’m one funnel away. The next funnel’s going to be the one.” It gives you a reason to keep moving forward and keep driving.
In Clickfunnels side, it’s been fun but recently, one of my buddies, Darin Stevens, who will be speaking at Funnel Hacking Live. A year ago actually, he came to me, “I want to start to do this supplement company.” I was like,” I sold my supplement company. I’m not really interested. Unless it’s a new tropic company, I’m totally obsessed with new tropics, and it would be cool to make supplements for entrepreneurs. I would be totally interested in that.” And I did have some other stipulations like, I don’t actually want to own the company. But I do want royalties on it and stuff like that. He was cool enough to work, it worked out good. We’re basically, I do the cool parts that I like to do, but he gets to do the cool stuff he likes to do. We’re working through some stuff.
One of the very first supplements we’re going to do is, it’s interesting, a supplement I created in the past called Ignite, it was actually based on a supplement one of my buddies did a while ago called Fighter Fuel. It was energy for MMA fighters, which is kind of cool. We found out Fighter Fuel, after he had sold a whole bunch of them, was trademarked, as good entrepreneurs do, we don’t check that out ahead of time, so we had to change the whole thing. So we changed it to Ignite. It was called MMA Ignite. So we went off in the MMA world, but we found out that, I thought MMA would Ignite all the different martial arts, but turns out it pushes all your markets away. So I’m like, crap.
So then we were going to do, maybe we’ll call it Gamer Ignite and go after gamers. Or call it CrossFit Ignite, go after CrossFitters. So we re-branded again, called it just Ignite, so we could leave it kind of open. But then it was kind of this vague thing. We never sold any. I have a whole warehouse of it. But Clickfunnels was literally built on Ignite. Everyone, that’s how we pulled as many all nighters as we did. If you go back about two years in the podcast when we were launching this puppy, you’ll remember my late nights coming home at 4 in the morning every single night. Ignite is what we used to get through.
So with Darin, I said, “How about Ignite. I love that supplement. It tastes good, people love it, we just never sold it.” At my live events I give it to people all the time, people are trying to order it. I’m like, “We don’t sell it.” They’re like, “But I need it. I’m addicted.” So it’s always a good problem when people are trying to buy something you’re not selling.
So anyway, we decided for the first supplement for our new company we were going to sell Ignite. What’s kind of cool about it, we were trying to go for a long time with a name. I wanted a cool name that would be cool. We couldn’t name, we tried a whole bunch of names that were good names, but nothing that was amazing. Then one night, I was watching Limitless, the TV show. It was actually the pilot and on there he talked about how “when you take NZT it unlocks your mind and you have unlimited potential.” I was like what? Unlimited potential, U P, Up. I was like we should call it UP Brain. So I ran upstairs and bought Up Brain, bought every variation of that domain. So the supplement company is going to be called UP Brain, unlocking the limited potential of your mind, which is kind of cool.
So that’s like the overarching theme of the company but then each supplement is kind of different. We had this Ignite thing, before the cruise we were kind of finishing the boxing. It’s called ignite, but I’m like, “What is this, an energy drink. Who’s it for? Everyone?” That’s the problem with most energy drinks, they’re for everyone. Pre-workouts are for body builders, there’s all sorts of energy drinks, but they’re kind of for everybody. I was like, if we need to carve out our segment, we need to call out our people. This comes back to the cult building 101. We need to call out our people and get them to come to us.
So we’re like, who are our people? Initially I was like, its entrepreneurs. Let’s call it Ignite: Energy for Entrepreneurs. But it’s not entrepreneurs that take this, in my world it’s the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. The people inside the company who are helping us drive this vision and mission. I’m like, who are our people? If I can’t call them out, then how am I supposed to advertise to them?
All the sudden, like a bolt of lightning, I had this inspiration. It was a quote from Steve Jobs popped into my head. I’m going to try to read this quote while I’m driving. I’m at a stop sign right now, hopefully this won’t kill my recording. Let me see if I can record this. Hopefully it will work.
The quote says, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
I think that was Steve Jobs. It said Steve Jobs before but I was searching for it when I was driving and some other guy’s name came up. But I think it’s Steve Jobs, so I’m quoting Steve Jobs. I said, that’s my rally call. That’s my people. That’s people I want to market to, it’s not body builders or fitness anything, it’s the people who are……what we came up with was people who see things differently. So the supplement is Ignite: Energy for people who see things differently. Then we’ve got Steve Jobs quote on the side. Boom. And then every single packet has Steve Jobs quote on it.
People say, yes that’s me. I see things differently, I’m the rebel. Or whatever, that’s my people. It’s the entrepreneurs, the intrepraneurs, the people who are trying to change the world. That’s who this supplement is going for. So that’s what we came up with. Then it comes back to, how can I make a t-shirt out of this? I need them to be able to self identify with the movement. So the t-shirt says, “ I see things differently.” Boom. How cool is that? I cannot wait to have that shirt and wear it and drink the supplement and have all those pieces come together.
We still want to have the rallying call, the “You’re one funnel away” or “We’re all in this together”. That’s the next step here in the building of a future vision of this new supplement company. I’m excited by it. I hope that you guys are excited to. Just thinking about the things in your business, because they’re the same right. How do we build a movement that’s bigger than us? If you’re thinking your business is a product, you’re going to become transactional and it’s tough. It’s something where you’re constantly looking for the next kill, the next thing.
I have a lot of friends who, that’s their businesses and I love them, but man they’re going……Eat what you kill. And they live off of that and they die off of that. I’ve seen businesses grow and collapse because of that. You really shift your thinking from I’m selling products, transactional things to I’m building a community, a culture, whatever you want to call it. These are some of these elements that come into it, where people self identify with the brand.
I told people with Clickfunnels, I don’t want people thinking Clickfunnels is Russell’s business. I want people thinking Clickfunnels is our company. This is us. I want them to be part of it. And that’s what makes it cool. I want the same thing with the supplements. Yes, I see things differently, that’s why I take these supplements. Because I’m different. I want people to identify with that.
Sorry I’m at four-way stop with tons of construction. That’s why I was able to sit there for so long and read my stuff because…Now I’m going and trying to figure out the route I’m taking a bunch of weird streets.
Anyway, hope that helps you kind of start thinking through those things for your business because with Clickfunnels a lot of things I didn’t think of, luckily we stumbled upon them and as they happened we saw the impact of them, so we tried to engineer those more now that we’re thinking through it. And now, especially with new companies to work with, and people in my inner circle, those are the things we’re talking about. How do we create those things? Because the better you create those things, the more powerful it will be for you and your community. It will take your business from a transactional thing, where you’re hustling for each deal to something where it’s more than that and it become part of people’s lives.
When that happens, that’s when life gets really fun. Think about the products and services that you interact with every single day, they’re not a product to you, they’re part of your life. For me, Clickfunnels is definitely a part of my life. There’s supplements I take that are part of my life. My phone is part of my life. There’s those things that aren’t products for you anymore. My iPhone, and I don’t know if you have this same issue, iPhones have been crapping out lately. I thought it was just mine. Mine would hit 30% and then it just dies. I’m like, Oh, my phone’s dead.
Then someone on Facebook posted and 800 other people were like, it’s happened to me too. So apparently its global. I was telling my wife, “Man, I’m so pissed, my phone keeps collapsing, every time it’s 30% it dies and I have to reboot and recharge it. It’s a huge nightmare.” She’s like, “Oh, we should get Samsung’s.” I’m like, “No. That doesn’t make any sense.” She’s like, “But your phone doesn’t work.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I’m part of this really cool cult. And we all have these phones and it’s cool. I don’t know, it’s different. It’s not transactional at this point.”
So there you go. Hope you guys get some benefit from this, I’m almost to the office, I’m going to bounce. I will talk to you all again soon. Have a great day and remember you’re just one funnel away. Thanks everybody.