Good questions get good answers. Yet, the opposite is true as well. Solving marketing problems starts with checking that your asking the right questions...

I'm Steve Larsen. This is Sales Funnel Radio, and this episode is gonna just totally rock. It's pretty freaking awesome.

I spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC Funding or debt, completely from scratch. This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys. Hey, I'm very excited for this episode to be honest though. It's funny as I look back I officially got hired by ClickFunnels two years ago almost to the day of me recording this. Which is awesome. Super, super cool. And essentially when I look back and realize everything that's happened, and a lot of you guys come up and congratulate and stuff like that and that means a lot and I appreciate it. But what's been more powerful for me is to look back and see what I had to do personally to really start winning at the game.

You know what I mean? One of my favorite things that were said in this last Funnel Hacking Live is by Myron Golden, which he just said he'd get on the show, which I'm very excited about.

So when that happens obviously, anyway, super stoked about that. But he said that one of the things that he did to win is he just stayed in the game long enough to just know what the game was, you know what I mean?

He stayed in the game long enough to be able to actually win at the game. And sometimes people jump in like, "This is a scam." Right?

But they were in there for like three months. I've been going at it for like five, six years there, guys and been a ton of fun, really enjoyed it, specifically the Internet game anyway. Anyway, as I was kind of looking back, I've been thinking heavily along the time when we were broke. I mean we were just living paycheck to paycheck.

We're literally living on loans, you know what I mean?...

A lot of guys know my story, the way it started. We were getting these student loans because it was the way we were eating.

And then finally I was like, "Man, I gotta make some money...."

And so I started flipping real estate And there were some complexities with where I was living that weren't allowing how I was doing it. I was doing some double escrows and flipping it that way, it's tons of fun. Put out those street signs all over the place, had 300 people call me in a month and anyways, I was working my butt off. I've never really not.

I just keep moving and make mistakes of commission instead of omission, you know what I mean? so I was sitting back and I was thinking through and there are these times, I guess multiple times and I'm sure that if you really have been wanting this, you've had the same thought. And I guess I'm religious and I'd be kneeling down at night praying and I'm asking God like, "Why am I struggling so much? Like, why? Why am I struggling so much? How come I haven't made it yet? Right? How come I ...?"

Those are the questions I was asking and it took some internal maturing for me to sit back and realize that number one, that's a stupid question to ask. And number two, what was I doing about it? And I was active, I was in motion, I was learning like crazy. I hustled my butt off, went and joined the army so we could eat, you know.

And I had a ton of fun there and learned like crazy and a lot of self discovery for sure. I certainly enjoyed my time there. Glad to finally be out of it, but glad that I did it though. Anyway, I had this guy tell me about 10 years ago, I went on a mission for my church for about two years and you know, he's a guy, we call him the mission president and he's the guy over all of us and he always taught us this one thing.

And I had this come to my mind couple of weeks ago as somebody asked me, they were considering joining the Two Comma Club ex coaching program and it was at the Funnel Hacking Live event, if you know what I'm talking about, go buy your ticket for next year. Okay?

It's, it's one of the best investments you'll ever make...

That event solely has changed my life...

There's not a doubt in my mind. I've a marketing degree and four Funnel Hacking Live events, I can tell you I've learned way more doing that, than I have in the marketing degree.

Not that I'm not thankful for that either, but anyway. But I had this idea, this mission president, he reached out when I did a two year mission for my church. Because I'm talking about those guys were in the white tee shirt and ties with the name badges on bikes. I did that for two years when I was 20 years old. He always taught us that the questions invite revelation.

Now I understand that from a religious context, you can understand what he's teaching there, but I want to take that out of the religious context and let you know that that's still true regardless of any area of your life.

And so when I was sitting down and I was thinking the question, "Gosh, oh, why? Why is this not working?" You know, like, "Please God, how come I'm not making money here? Why are we struggling so bad? Why am I not making the cash? How come it's not coming in? I'm serving? I'm working hard?" It's funny, it's interesting, you know, hindsight 2020 And I look back and I'm like,

"Oh, it's because I wasn't doing this. I wasn't doing that. I wasn't doing this, I wasn't doing that." But one of the things that I realized though is that the questions invite revelation. And that is so true for every area of my life. And rather than sit back and think the question, "How come I'm not making it?"
Instead, I should totally have been asking the question,

"How do I sell this better?"...

You see what I'm saying? Totally different question, and the question affects the outcome. So you guys know why I like putting some dubstep on, taking some caffeine and stand in front of a whiteboard? It's because I'm standing up and most of my ideas will come during that because I'm asking a question....

But the quality of the question affects the quality of the answer and instead of me standing back, start asking yourself the questions that you're asking yourself. Become cognizant of what they are and step back and start saying to yourself, "What questions have I been asking myself?" And if you're like,

"Ah, I don't know why I haven't been effective in this game. How come I'm not making money here or there?"...

Those are valid questions, but is it the right one? You know what I mean? And so there was somebody I was chatting with right at the Funnel Hacking Live Event and there were like, one of the questions that they started asking was ...

I'm sure some other people do this. I know that they did. Right. And I'm not making fun of the individual at all. I just think it's an important lesson. And as I looked back, it's one of the soul things that I have focused on kind of almost subconsciously. Certain times consciously and other times subconsciously.

If I ask the right question, it exposes my brain to that kind of answer. Meaning, how do I sell this product better? How do I make my offer better?
How do i market this in a better way? How do I get it right? And when I start asking those kinds of questions, I will get different answers. Like Steven, look at what you're asking yourself and sit back and be like, "Am I asking a question of ...

Anyway, let me go back. I've already jumped around enough times. Let me go back to Funnel Hacking Live. Somebody is asking the question, "Oh man, Russell, it's $18,000 or $1,800 a month either or for this program." How many people sat back and thought, "Huh, I wonder if they would offer a discount." I had somebody reach out to me and ask me that about my program just a little bit ago. Many people do. "There's no payment plan?"

No, no there's not.

And here's the reason why, and this is exactly what I was trying to teach this person at Funnel Hacking Live. I was just trying to teach. Look, if I asked the question, "How do I get a discount on this? Or maybe I can collaborate with three or four other people and we'll all split the cost."

What are you immediately doing? You're sitting back and you're asking yourself how can I stay in a place of poverty instead of paying for premium. That's what you're doing. And one of the things that has changed my life, and I know I've said it like a billion times, but was changing the question. And instead of me asking the question, because I've always wanted to be part of Russel's inner circle and I'm so thankful to be part of it now.

I am honored to the hilt to be a part of it. But I asked myself the question, how can I afford this? Rather than, "I wonder if you would give me a discount on inner circle."

No, I even worked with him, next to him. I still vox him all the time, but it's not what I am doing. I'm not sitting back asking the question. Maybe he'll just let me in. Maybe he'll just let me get inside. Maybe I can get just this little, you know, this brotherly side, open door, straight into the inner circle. Maybe I can find some kind of discount. No. Are you freaking kidding me? No. What you do is you ask the question, instead of asking, "How can I get a discount?" First of all, take that question and burn it.

Second of all, ask the question, "How can I afford the most premium services on this planet?" Answer that question.

Change it up...

Do whatever it is that gets you in flow, a little Caffeine and dub step for me, right? Whatever gets you in flow. Go to a whiteboard or however it is you brainstorm.

I encourage you to write though, there's something to that. And write out the question, "How can I afford the most premium price ever? How can I afford that?" And when you answer that question, you will be surprised.

First off, nothing will come to your head for awhile, but do not move on. Let your head sit on the problem. Most people will not sit on the problem long enough to hear an answer. They won't, they won't. And instead they turn around and they start walking and go, "Oh, well I can't afford that. He didn't offer a discount. There was no payment plan."

If questions invite revelation I have used this countless times in my business you guys, it's not just over in the place of religion where I was taught, it applies to everything. And so I asked myself specific questions and I do not move on when it is uncomfortable because I don't know the answer. I let my head stay there and

I start asking instead and I start brainstorming, "Well maybe I could do this. No. Dang, that's not going to work. Maybe I could do this. No." And it's usually as I start to brainstorm, little ideas will come to my head like, "Wait a second, what if I did this?" And I follow that thread for a while and I follow it.

"No. This part won't work with that. But you know what? This first half does. Let me take that first half, now we're working with this first half of that answer. Okay now from this point, let me ask the question again. "How do I afford the most premium services on the planet?" Okay, now I got this far, cool. Let's brainstorm, let my head sit on the problem. It's uncomfortable. I don't know the answer. Gosh, I don't know the answer. What is this answer, God?"

And I'll sit there and I start thinking, and my head's going a million miles a minute. I'm finding the spot and then all of a sudden I start finding more the answer.

So people are asking too many questions that are the wrong questions. Just get cognizant of what those things are. So stop asking, how do I get a discount? How do I get a payment plan? How do I do this? And here's the reason why you ask the other question, how do I afford the most premium prices on this planet?

When you do that, what it forces you to do is you end up creating an asset that pays for the most premium services on this planet. So then when you actually are through experiencing that most premium experience, you are left with both the experience and the asset.

If I go the other way and I start asking the question, how do I get a discount? How do we get a discount? How do I get a discount? You find a way to get a discount because that's what you're asking.

You were looking for that answer, so you find it, but then when you're done with it, usually you experience a discounted experience. You have a discounted experience with the thing that you pay for and you're not left with an asset at the end of it. Change the way you're asking this. Look at a different direction.

Anyway, so that's exactly what I asked myself about a month ago.

I was like, "Hey, we've got this cash coming in. My funnels are doing well. I know what's wrong with them, I know I need to tweak certain things on them. How can I make the funnel better? How can I sell it better? How can I over-deliver? How can I get this in front of more people?"

Those are the questions that I asked myself, but then I started asking myself the question, "How do I get in Russell's inner circle like that?" And I told you guys a few episodes ago, I told you about this, right? And I ended up walking into this hotel room and this was the biggest thing on my mind, I was just, how can I give myself a raise today? And that was the question on my mind, and guess what? I answered the question because it was the question I have in my head, not "Will Russell just let me get grandfathered into the inner circle because I sat next to him?"

Stupid question.

Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question, got Straight A's in school. That's a stupid statement. That's not true at all.

There are stupid questions...

That's the question that you've taken no time to try and get the answer on your own. That's a stupid question. That's the definition of it. Understand and call yourself out if you've been asking stupid questions, change the question and you will get a different answer.

And it will be uncomfortable, especially if you've never done this before. And if you've been living your life in a way where it's following the patterns of poverty and you're sitting back and instead, how you know you're asking the question, "Why are things so expensive? People would spend that much money on a shirt, a pair of pants at the store?"

Oh my gosh, whatever it is, whatever your thing is, people would do this instead of asking that.I'm not saying you change your personality. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying change the freaking question.

Start asking questions of wealth and start asking questions of good business and offer creation and delivering for the customer. And speed of cash. So that is the question I'm asking myself now. When I was standing ... And this is the whole reason I'm doing this episode, when I was standing on stage at Funnel Hacking

Live and I was teaching and I'm in my zone. I love that. If there's nothing else I could do the rest of my life it would be to teach on stage is super fun. I feel like I'm really good at it and I practice it a lot and I get my flow and I help people in a way.

It's a lot of fun for me anyways, and had a lot of good results for other people with it too. And so I'm sitting there and I'm teaching on stage and before I got on there, Russell said, he told me that I should stand up and I should call my shot.

He said, "Dude, stand up and call your shot and say when you think this funnel that you built at the beginning of the year is actually going to get in the Two Comma Club." I was like, "You want to put a date on it?" And he's like, "Yeah, it's going to be awesome." And I was like, "Holy crap! Yes coach make it hard." So okay, "Publicly you want me to state this?" And he's like, "Yeah." I said, "Okay, all right." So what I did was I stood up and I taught my portion and you know, I loved it. Anyway, I am extremely proud of the way it went and I delivered it and it was awesome.

And I knew I had connected pieces for people. And then at the end of it, he wanted me to tell everyone what kind of the results were that I've been getting. And for the last month, I'm just being totally honest with you, I've been too obsessed with the question, "How do I develop these other assets?"

And so I haven't really been focusing as much on the Webinar. I'll call myself out and pull myself to the carpet there, call us up to the carpet...

But, I went in, as soon as I stood on stage and without realizing what month it is I publicly told everybody that I'm going to get my funnel into the two comma club for my second ward. I got a spot already on my wall for it that I was going to do by August 1st. I was like, "Oh my gosh."

After the event, I mean, literally just like a fewdays ago I was home, I didn't even think about it. Like, "Wait, August 1st, I told everyone that. What month is it? Oh my gosh. It's freaking April." Okay, April, May, June, July. I got four months.

And I started thinking through backwards, like, "Hey, okay, it's here where I am for that. From here we really are like another 800 grand on this thing, ish. That's like eight, nine grand a day. I was like ... Okay, that's a lot. I've never done that before. I've made eight grand in a day several times, many times. I made nine grand, 10 grand a day, 11 grand day. So, I've done that but consistently, that's a lot, you know, and I'm excited for it. And so that is the question I'm asking myself.

It is uncomfortable and I'm brainstorming. I brainstormed out four different ways that I'm going to be able to do that over the next four months and I only need one of them to hit to really get it. There are four Hail Marys. I'm super excited about it but I got to pull nine grand a freaking day in four months. I mean every day for the next four months to hit it.

So I'm going to kill myself trying to get it. I think I can. And in my head is asking that question, how do I make nine grand a day, which basically for me means I need to be pitching anywhere from, you know, 80 to 90 people a day, which means they need to be getting about 300 registrants per day, I spend about $1,500 a day in ads, which is totally do-able.

So that's just one method. I was thinking back like, just reversing, doing all the numbers. The problem is that when people ask the question, they don't do enough to try and answer the question on their own, out of their own head.

New ideas don't come until you have literally exhausted all the current ideas you have. So as you're sitting there and you're on your whiteboard or whatever, I drastically encourage y'all have one, and write stuff by hand not just on digitally. That's something.

Anyway, I don't know why, but I'm very convinced that, that is far more effective than just doing things digitally all the time for everything. I got legal pads all over the place here, but anyway, I feel like the reason people will screw this up and this method up is because they'll sit back and they'll ask the question and then do nothing to try and solve it on their own. I got books all over the place. I'm reading, I'm grabbing it. "Oh, this looks like I might have some answers for that."
"Boom. I just did that this morning I'm reading some pieces of books for that." Oh, cool.

Okay. Next one, boom, and I'm reading for purpose. I'm reading with the intent. I'm studying, I'm listening, I'm learning for the intent of answering the question. How do I do nine K a day? And that is what I have been focusing on. So, that's the question on my head. It is uncomfortable.

I'm excited. It is a growing one...

Regardless if I hit it, I know that the outcome will be better processes, better performance for myself, discovering new ways to sell things that probably people in the market aren't doing. Cash. The byproduct is that I can't think of a thing that's going to be negative as I try and solve this problem. So that's what I'm trying to say.

Upgrade your problem, upgrade your question and ask the right ones. Make sure the questions you're asking are questions of wealth, not poverty. Make sure that you're trying to find ways like literally, that's what I'm saying before.

I was like, "How can I afford Russell's inner circle stuff? Guys, now I went and I created an asset in the last month. It pays me like at least 15 to $30,000 a month from now besides my funnel. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? Crazy. Crazy. I'm so excited.

That's nuts...

I removed my cost of goods for this funnel there. I don't take cash. And anyway, that's a whole different thing. And I went and I have already talked about that, but that's what I asked myself. So that's what I answered. And so now it's time for me to change the question and go focus on that and I'm excited to do so.

So anyway, that was an intense episode. Hey guys, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Again, this is my ... I would love again to get some reviews from you guys on iTunes. That would be super helpful and if you've had any piece of nuggets or any nugget or whatever or something like that, that's really helped you, I would love to hear about it.

Whether if it's a personally or that's what you put in the review on iTunes. Or, if you just tell someone else even. I really appreciate that. I am very serious about what I'm doing here, but it's a ton of fun and really been enjoying this ride with you guys. So, anyways, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. I will continue to document both my processes and methods and why I'm doing what I'm doing as I move down this path. So anyways guys, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I will talk to you later.

Thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share. It will be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com and book my time now.

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I get asked a lot, "Steve, how do I choose what market to sell into?" Well, here's some of the basic criteria I put an audience through to see if I should sell to them...

Hey. What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys? Hey. I'm super excited for this. I know I'm publishing a lot right now. It's because I have a lot of thoughts, especially after Funnel Hacking Live. That is like throwing gas on the fire for my brain, and I love it. Hey. I am very, very excited for what I want to share with you. I sat back a while ago, and I was sitting down. I was thinking through how many businesses I had tried before ever actually getting one that really started going off the ground. As I looked back and I started realizing it's like, I don't know, 14, 15, 16, 17. I mean, it's a lot. I was going through and I was numbering all the products I had created. I was like, wow, okay, I kind of first started with this one. Then I went to this one. I was like, wow, it's really fascinating.

To look back. I encourage you all to do this. I seriously, seriously doubt, and almost bet on my life that I am not the only one who's tried a billion different products, lots of different businesses and failed at a ton of them, meaning of this audience who listens to this. I encourage you to go sit down and start writing those down. It's kind of a neat thing to look back and realize, like why did that fail? Why did that fail? Why did that fail? One of the lessons that I've learned was tossed back into my head.

I've had a few people asking me a few questions lately, especially with the recent program, Two-Comma Club X Coaching, that I'm one of the coaches for and that ClickFunnel has just released. A lot of people have been coming to me saying, "Hey, Steven, is this a good idea? Is this a good market? Is this a good product?" Well, first off, I'm not going to know your industry like you are, okay, but I do know the models and patterns that show if it is something typically good to go into usually. Okay, okay.

When it comes down to it, like we can teach the models, we can teach the patterns and then after awhile it's guessing. You know, you just have to launch it after awhile and just see if it actually sticks. There's a lot of patterns and stuff that we can walk through to help shave off bad ideas. Anyway, I was recently talking with someone and I had this memory come to my head. Back before I started using ClickFunnels and I was building funnels inside of GetResponse, literally, like the email provider, right, GetResponse autoresponder.

They have a landing page software, and I was building essentially funnels on their landing page software. It was terrible. It was so jenky. Anyway, I would like sneeze and half of it would get scrambled. It was the weirdest thing. Anyway, but it's all I had, so I was trying to do that. It's very much part of my character that as soon as I start selling something or as soon as I've learned something and I know it can help other people, I want to go tell them about it. Say, did you know you can do this? Oh my gosh! Check it out? Right? Which is why I think I podcast the way I do.

Anyway, one of the people that I wanted to go present this to was a door-to-door company, okay, a door-to-door selling company. I had already done one summer of door-to-door sales at that time, and Vivint, like Vivint Home Security. They had a huge office near the place where I was living at the time. This was six years ago. It was quite a while ago. Five years ago, six years ago, something like that. Anyway, so I walked on in to Vivint and I sat down with some of the owners. It wasn't the "owners" of Vivint, but it was before their massive buyout.

They got bought for like $2.4 billion or something for only like 75% of their company. They still maintained 25%, which is crazy. Crazy! Oh my gosh! Can you imagine that? Anyways, it very well may have been some of the top guys because that buyout had not happened yet at the time.

Anyway, so I was chatting with them and I was telling them, hey, did you know, you've got these sales agents that are out there doing this and that, right, these reps that are going around. Think about the cost of supporting a rep. Think about this. I could build you this thing that I'm doing called a funnel and we could like totally ... and I started giving them my ideas of basically and front-end funnel, super awesome. I ended up buying like doortodoorsellingsecrets.com or something like that and a whole bunch of other tons of URLs for that.

I really like the door-to-door sales game. I think sales is one of the most prestigious, I don't know, careers ever. Call me bias, but I think it's true...

Anyway, so I was sitting there and I was telling them about it, and I was like, hey! To be completely honest, I know it would work. I know it would work. Right? It fits all the models. It fits all the patterns. I was like, think about that. This is like having tons of sales agents in lots of cities that you don't have to pay to support. It's all on a website. They were like, "Whoa. That's crazy." It turned out that like they just didn't want it. They just did not want it. Okay. I was like, okay. I was a little bit frustrated. I spent like a couple hours in there teaching them, pitching them, helping them realize. They were like, "Wow, that's amazing. Okay. Let us work this up the chain a little bit and we'll get back to you on that." If you guys have ever done any sales that basically means no. I was like, crap.

I walked out and I was like, why didn't they see it? How come they didn't get the value? Right? I guarantee every one of us has had that experience before in some fashion. Okay? You're looking at a customer. You're looking at somebody you know you could help. You can't help them for free because that negates progress rules and laws, okay, right, for the most part. You couldn't do it for free.

Anyway, you could not, however, sell them on the fact that this was something that they need, right, that it would drastically improve their life or their business. That's a frustrating thing to sit back and go through. I've been through that tons of times, tons of times, and you guys probably have as well. I recently had someone reach out and ask the question, hey, I've been trying to sell in this area to these people and I just can't sell to them. I don't get it.

Why isn't this happening? I had all those memories rush back into my head. You know, I've had the unique experience over the last year and a half-ish, over a year, to coach. I was putting the numbers together. It's almost 900 people that I've had the honor to coach in this process, 900. Okay. You know how many offers I've gotten a chance to see, how many funnels, how many industries? It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay.

Before we ever launched Two-Comma Club X Coaching, I was the main coach. I was the only coach, okay, for well over 700 people, and then there's a ton of other people on my own as well. I was thinking through all the lessons and I was looking at the patterns and I was like, man, this is really fascinating. It is a unique perspective to be in. How can I share some of these lessons? Like I said, someone reached out and they asked, like, how come people aren't buying this?

I immediately in my head was, this came to my mind, well, you did not choose a money market. That's exactly what popped in my head. You did not choose a money market. They don't want what you're trying to sell. You know they need it, but they don't want it. Right?

What I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through real quick some of the criteria, the major foundational criteria that I go through before I ever start putting together an offer, before I ever start putting together a sales message.

You guys know, like in the past little bit here I've gone over the core of what a funnel actually is, right, but before I even get to that stuff, man, you have got to turn around and you have got to figure out if the people you're selling to even want your stuff.

Let's go through a few of these items. Sound good? Okay, that's what this episode specifically is about, is I want to help you understand, like I'm not telling you that you can't make money if you don't fit these criteria. I am telling you it is a lot easier and faster to choose a market industry, a money market. That's what I meant. Money market, not market industry.

Choose a money market, okay. Oh my gosh, it helps so much. I was drawing out and I was doodling this stuff out and I was like, yeah, these are the lessons and you have to have this here and like this part over here. We're talking about speed because you can make money in a lot of different ways and places where people don't want your stuff.

I want to tell you from my own perspective, from my own experience, selling my own stuff, helping other people sell a lot of their stuff, helping the people get in the Two-Comma Club. What I have seen these patterns be as to the speed aspect to this, when we talk about the only two numbers we care about in a funnel is average cart value and cost to acquire, but cost to acquire is not just about money. It's also about time. If your cost to acquire, time wise, is huge, I'm not saying that you can't make a whole bunch of money.

I am saying that your cost to acquire is gigantic. It's huge. This episode specifically, I've spent quite a bit of time, more than I usually do, brainstorming out this topic and fleshing it out and trying to distill down for us all more of these elements that help drastically decrease your cost to acquire, time wise. Okay, speed, to get the speed up. Are you sufficiently pre framed? Okay, cool. Let's go on.

Number one, when we talk about health, wealth and relationships, the reason why, again, that we go back to those health, wealth and relationships, those three markets, are there other markets I'm sure, but those are the three no-duh buying markets. Just like we've talked about before, a no-duh product, a no-duh, like an obvious thing you would go purchase. There's not a salesman next to a gas station. You're going to buy gas. Right? There's not a salesman next to eggs or bread or milk in the grocery store, right? There's not. It's a no-duh buying experience. People are just going to go buy it. They're going to.

They expect to buy it. There's not a salesman for your utility bills. They expect to purchase there. Does that make sense? The reason why health, wealth and relationships are such powerful things is because they are areas where people expect to spend money. They expect it, right. I expect to spend money going to the gym for health. I expect to spend money. Everyone says, like, it takes money to make money, which is total crap, meaning it's an expectation, though, right? Relationships. People are willing. They expect to spend cash if they were ever going to go to a therapist or spend money going to a conference or even a date, right? It's going to take some money, typically, right? Those three areas, that's why.

Like I've said in the past, while your product itself does not need to naturally fit inside those, your sales message must, okay, but it is way easier if you choose one of those three money markets. Health, wealth and relationships are three money markets. That's the first filter. Does my product fit in health, wealth and relationships? If it does not, can I make the offer. If it does not I at least, at bare minimum, have got to make this sales message fit in one of those three. That's the first criteria. Choose a freakin' money market. It's so much easier.

All right. One of the next things. Was Vivint able to spend money to hire me to build a suite funnel for them? I was not nearly as experienced six years ago. I think that was six years ago. If not, it was at least five. Anyway, are they able? Oh, yeah. They've got cash. Oh, yeah. Are they willing? No, or they weren't at the time. Maybe someone hears this, they'll come back to me and hire me. I'd love that, by the way, if someone wants to reach out. That would be a lot of fun. I've got some sweet ideas for you guys. Anyway, there's a ton of people that are able to spend money. They're just not willing.

You've got to find this magic combination of the two. If you find people who are able to spend money, meaning they have it, but they're not willing, it means you're selling a need, not a want. If you're selling a need and not a want you automatically are getting inside of an improvement-based offer. In your head you're at least categorized that way, okay, in their head, even if you really are in a new opportunity.

Anyway, if I'm talking like straight techno babble here guys, go read Expert Secrets again, okay, and Innovator's Dilemma and Dot Com Secrets and Growth Hacking by Ryan Holiday. In fact, it's funny. As I started doodling all this stuff out and I was like, oh, yeah, Growth Hacker, and I went and picked it up and it literally says, Step Number One. I was like, oh, Ryan and I need to hang out. He says "Step number one, it begins with a product market fit," okay. Paul Graham says, "Make something people want." That was the first thing in the whole book and I was like, yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Stop selling freakin' needs and the way that you sell them is by selling the people that are both willing and able by choosing a money market and selling, which is the third thing here, to irrational buyers. They have to be irrational about it. They have to be like the psycho people, the people that go and they hang out in front of

The Apple Store before the new iPhone comes out, when they very well could go purchase one the very next week without spending the night in a tent in front of the store, right? You've got to find the irrational purchasers, and if you are not selling to a category that is irrational about what they are doing, right, a cult, basically, if you're not selling to those, it's very hard. You start selling more into the need category.

Needs, needs. Improvement-based offer. If I'm going to go sell a need, that's an improvement-based offer, and what's happening is by default you must start selling by competing on price. Since they don't necessarily want it, they at least don't want to feel like they're getting taken, so they start nickling and diming you down. I don't know if it's worth this much. Bleed for me more. Bleed. Right?

No, no. Sacrifice for me more. You end up getting clients and you end up getting customers and you end up getting a following that is not ... They're there because they feel like, yeah, okay, yeah, because of all these logical reasons I do need it rather than, I've to have this! Oh, my gosh, get out of my way. You've got to find people.

Anyway, so, number one, choose a money market. Number two, sell to people that are both willing and able and then, number three, sell to people who are irrational. They are ridiculous about the thing you're actually selling. What's cool about this is one of the other categories that I start looking at is, now that like, you guys know that I sell in the MLM space a lot, right. Right now, that's what I'm doing. I love it, and the reason I chose it is because, number one, it's in a money market, wealth.

They believe they'll get wealth through the vehicle of MLM, right. Number two, they're willing. A lot of people are not able, though. Stereotypically, a lot of MLMers don't have a lot of money, stereotypically, right. A lot of them, it's the first thing they ever get into. Don't lie to me. You've probably been in a few MLMs yourself. We all have, right. The category of person that I'm selling to inside of that market definitely is willing and able.

And then, number three, they are definitely irrational purchasers, okay. Those are some of the categories that I went to to choose that market specifically. Okay.

The next thing I go through, and I do this all the time, I look through and you don't necessarily need this part, but it makes it way easier if you can get this part, I like to choose a market, a customer base, that expects to pay higher ticket, right, right. You could be in the business of selling, eggs, bread and milk. Is that high ticket? No. The volume is going to be insane that you have to sell in order to make a lot of cash, right?

I like to sell in areas where it's expected to spend a lot of money, right. You don't go to a car shop, even a used car shop, without the expectation of spending at least several grand if it's a bad used car shop, right, but like if it's a nice or even like, let's say, house, right, it's expected that a lot of money flows in those areas. I like to choose where they expect, yes, you know what, I will be spending a whole bunch of cash in this. If you're like in eCommerce or you're in retail ...

I was speaking once in Vegas. It was definitely over a year ago now, I think, and I was speaking at an event. I was speaking and Anton Crowley, if you guys know who he is, he's the man who runs a company called Drop Ship Lifestyle that he put together. He spoke right before I did, and what was cool is he got up and he said that he drop ships, but he only drop ships things that are like at least a grand for this exact principal, that because people expect to pay a lot of cash in it, there's a lot of margin in there left over after he pays business costs and product costs and things like that. It's the same kind of thing. Again, it's not that you have to. Okay. It's not that you have to. I'm talking about the core of your business.

I don't expect to charge $5,000 for a free plus shipping book offer, right. It's free. You just pay $5,000 for shipping. Right? That's not what I'm talking about all. I'm talking about the core of the business, the middle of the area, the actual thing that keeps our doors open, that slightly more mid to higher ticket area, around $1,000, $500, $2,500, $3,000 around that area, selling stuff like that.

If I know that it's already an expectation, oh my gosh, it's so much easier because I don't need to go break that belief. The reason it's this value is because X, Y and Z, right. Then I've got to go start selling logical and I've got to tell even more stories, break even more false beliefs. It's not that you can't. It's just, I'm talking about the low-cost proposition time wise, right.

Time wise, it's going to be a lot faster for me to actually go sell when they already expect to pay higher dollar. Anyways, I think I talked about that one maybe too much...

I like to ask the question, also, how easy does this sell, not how good is the product or how good is the offer? That's good. The offer's got to be amazing as I've talked about many times, but if I could ask the question, how easy is this for them to purchase.

This fits back into the category. It's almost like the question you ask if you, the kind of checks, is it one of the three money markets, is it irrational buyers, are they willing and able? If it sells easily, right. Once you show the house, the actual sale part of it doesn't take, I mean, sometimes it can take a while to close, but you know what I mean. Like, emotionally on their side there's not tons of stuff that has to go. They expect to spend a lot of money. It sells slightly quickly. It's an expectation that it's a lot of cash they're going to have to put out. Does that make sense?

Anyway. Here's one other thing I wanted to bring up with this is that I think I was at a FAT event. One of the things that I started noticing was some people would show up to the FAT event and they'd sit in the back and they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do still. I completely get that, and I'm actually going through that a little bit right now. I'm trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Okay.

What's the contribution to the world that I'm going to try to make, not just the marketing world, but the world in general. Russell is starting to ask those questions. He's doing Operation Underground Railroad stuff. Does that make sense? Okay. He's in that phase.

The first thing that he did, if you look at anybody who's really been quite successful, even 2017 Funnel Hacking Live, Jim Edwards talked about this. Okay. He talked about this. He said, "Look. The first funnel that you build is the funnel that gets you your bills paid." Right. It's just the one that matches the amount of money you were making at your job. It helps buy back some of your time. The second funnel that you're billing is really the one like, hey, man, you pay off all of your debts. You get the house that you really wanted to.

You go get the toys that you want to. And then the third, I can't remember them. He had categories for them and names for them...

The third funnel you really go build typically expect that one to be the one where like you don't need the money, but it's like the ludicrous money that frees you for the rest of your life where you go change the world and stuff like that. I think one of the things that people get stuck up on, and Simon Sinek talks about this a lot with Millennials. I'm namedropping like crazy in this episode. Simon Sinek, if you've never heard his stuff, go look him up on YouTube.

He's awesome. He talks about this with millennials a lot that one of the things that they'll get stumbled up on is this idea that you must have impact immediately. Yes, it's great if you can, but it's not the thing to get stuck on. Rather than focusing on changing the world first, focus on changing your world first. Does that makes sense?

I'm going and it was like a year and a half ago, two years ago, I launched this funnel and it totally changed my world meaning we were able to start chomping away student debt. We were able to ... I mean, it's more cash than we'd ever had. Does that make sense? It did a lot of stuff for our own finances to free us so that now I'm able to do more change-the-world style projects.

I think sometimes people will step back and they'll go, and this is a pattern I see, you know, almost 900 people coming through coaching with me now, like the thing that I'll see them doing is they're like, I need to change the world! Ahhh! Then, they've got this complex over it, and yes, that's great, but don't do that first. You know what I mean? If you can, more power to you, but if you can't don't stumble on it.

Don't make that as a reason to not get going, to get your butt off the ground and doing stuff. I feel like it's one of the areas that people will step back and be like, I'm not having an impact yet. I'm not changing the world. It's like, you're still working 9 to 5. Focus on getting your funnel out of the ground that actually gets you out of that first, right, that empowers you, that buys back your time so that you can later on, your second funnel, your third funnel, whatever, then you can go do the crazy massive personal freedom funnel, the massive change-the-world project.

Anyway, maybe I should have put that in a different episode. That could be a whole episode of itself, but it's already been a long one. I can't believe it. Anyways, I just wanted to bring that up. When I'm choosing a, especially if this is your first one out of the gate and you like haven't totally like blown something up yet, that's fine to not have this massive impact thing. First, funnel hack. See what's out there, right. Follow that yellow brick road as far as you can. Number two, then you're going out and you're adding onto where the road stopped. Right? You're in a new opportunity...

Then, when you're actually making the cash, then you're able to be more nimble anyways because you're not so concerned about getting a sale. I'm not going to eat if I don't make this sale. You're not in that area. You can actually step back and make decisions that will change the world rather than, I want to change the world, but, man, I've got to eat.

Anyway, I feel like I blended two topics in this episode, but the way I choose a market, right, market, not product, not offer, not even sales message, is I need to find an audience first. This is how I choose an audience. Maybe I'll call this episode that. This is how I choose an audience. Number one, do they fit naturally inside one of the three money markets, health, wealth and relationships. Number two, are they both willing and able? Do they freakin' want it, or are you selling a need? If not, that's fine. Rinse and repeat. Don't be afraid.

Money loves speed, right. Be fast. If you realize, oh my gosh. There's just no way I'm going to get enough volume to really make it. I'm selling something you'll need. I know it's a legitimate problem that I'm solving. Yes. Congrats. That's awesome. If they don't want it, you're already, that's rough.

Anyway, number three, are they irrational about the way that they purchase? Are they fanatics? Usually, it has to do with having a lot of culture around the market that you're selling into. Do they expect more high-ticket stuff and is it easy to sell? When it comes to you personally, that's how to choose more and more of the audience, but then you personally, as far as expectations in it, make sure the person understands that you may not be in like the massive-level impact-the-world stuff. Maybe you're just changing and impacting your own life, finances and stuff like that in your own family.

That's great. That's fine. I find a lot of people lately have like almost a complex about that. I'm not having an impact. It's like, wait a second. You just changed your world and your family's world. That's a huge impact. Are you kidding? Don't focus yet.

Anyway. All right. Hey, guys, hopefully it's helpful. Those are some of the base criteria that I run things through and then I go out and I start choosing the sales message, then I go out and I start creating the offer and then building the funnel and then rinse and repeat and going back forth. Anyway, I hope that that helped. I hope that that clarified some stuff. My real hope is that when it comes down to your expectations on this is that you give yourself a license to just change your own world first before you try to change "the world." It'll do a lot for you emotionally as you do that.

Anyway. Hey, guys. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Hopefully you guys enjoy this episode. I would love it. I love going, I don't know, call it ego, call it motivation for me to keep doing this. I probably will anyway, but I love, love seeing the reviews. If you guys wouldn't mind I would love to have you guys go over and leave a review for me in iTunes. It means the world to me to see that.

IT helps like crazy. We're getting about 500 downloads a day right now. It's been a ton of fun. Thank you guys so much. Thanks for being a listener, and I'll talk with you later.

Hey. Thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, Steve, will you look at my funnel. Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some handholding and guidance during your funnel build or simply review the one you have, head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now.

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I LOVE 'Ask Campaigns'! But there's a build-in flaw...

What's going on, everyone? It's Steve Larsen and you're listening to a very energetic, high speed, fast-paced episode of Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up, everyone? Hey, I'm super excited to dive into this episode today with you. I just wanted to go through real quick and help you understand one of the reasons ... I get a lot of people who reach out to me and they'll be like ... Well, here's an example. I brought 700 people so far, 700 about, it's like 680 or something like that, through the current Two Comma Club Coaching Program and, if you guys are part of Funnel Hacking Live, you know that there is a new program that is out, which is awesome, and there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are jumping in as well.

Very, very excited to have you guys, by the way. I can help you guys set up your offers, things like that. Anyways, I'm excited to have you here, it'll be awesome.

And then I have my own students. Here's the scenario, you spend a ton of time, you build a funnel, you're spending time in the editor. You put together this copy and these videos and you're getting together the traffic, you're building up some buzz for it, and you go and you launch this funnel. You're running ask campaigns and you're reacting to what the market is telling you to do, and then suddenly you realize that, oh my gosh, the funnel's not actually gonna work. It's a scam.

Steve, one of those massive eyeballs. He's not delivering. You're like, what? I wanna tell you why that easily is. I don't wanna tell you why it typically is that even when ... When I was working at Click Funnels, when Russel and I would launch a funnel it wouldn't work the first time. Here's one of the reasons why. It has to do with the way that the offer came about. It has to do with the way, especially if you're creating an opportunity switch.

I had the honor and privilege to do a round table at Funnel Hacking Live and this topic came up, and I realized that I don't know if I've really talked or discussed about this with you guys and somebody asked, what do you do when your funnel doesn't work? I was sitting there and I was pretty much yelling for three hours. It was the fastest three hours of my life, by the way.

I love coaching. I just had no idea three hours went by. I had people around me the whole time and it was so loud in there I was yelling so that everyone could hear. My throat was killing me at the end but it was a ton of fun.

Anyway, it pretty much goes like this. When my wife and I were expecting our first child, meaning literally we went to the hospital and she was about to have the kid, we were in the delivery room, and I first of all want to give the caveat that I recommend you never do this, ever, men. We were in there and she needed to be induced. Nothing had started yet. We had already been in there, we'd spent the night in there, and nothing had started yet. We were just kinda hanging out. Sometimes it's kinda long waits inside those rooms before the delivery action actually happens. Super special and a great experience.

Anyway, I was sitting there and ... at the time, I can't remember what I was trying to sell, but I was trying to sell something or I was gonna go make a product. I didn't know about offers yet. I was gonna go make this product and at the time, Noah Kagan, if you know who Noah Kagan is, Noah Kagan had this thing at that time where he would help you make your first $1000 on the internet, but you could text him personally before you actually bought, with any final questions.
I was like, hey that's kinda cool. So I decided I would text him.

I'm sitting there in the delivery room. Nothing's happening yet, there's nothing going on. I'm not that kind of schmuck, but don't do this guys. I was sitting there and I decided that I would text Noah Kagan. I'm texting Noah Kagan and I'm like, hey man, I got this sweet idea and I would love to be able to go and build it.

Do you think it's a good idea? He goes, I don't know. I was like, what do you mean? Is this a good idea? He's like, look man, I let people vote with their wallets. I don't care what they say with their mouths.

I was like, huh. That makes so much sense. How come I never thought of that before? This is like four and a half years ago now. I was like, oh yeah, that makes complete sense. Why would I care about anything? You know?

Now, think about it. What's the thing we teach you to go do to start uncovering the false beliefs? We tell you to do an ask campaign. An ask campaign. That's people telling you, oh yeah. Right? How many times have you guys said ... We've all done it. Classic example is January 1st. We all make our New Year's goals, our New Year's resolutions. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna do x, y, and z better.

Three weeks in, 99% of people aren't doing their thing anymore. So, same thing is true when you're asking people, ask campaigns and stuff, what's your number one question or challenge with x, y, and z? It helps you like crazy get a good baseline of what it is that you should be go creating. But you gotta understand that when you're creating it, you actually, by nature, have a gap in what people said they're actually starting with versus what they'll actually pay for to have a solution for. There's a gap there.

So, that's why you have to be reactionary so quickly. So that when you go out and you're actually building your funnel and you go out and you launch that thing, you've gotta understand that you are doing so with a sales message, an offer. You're doing so with a funnel that is based off of what people said they're interested in versus what they're actually interested in.

So, by nature, there's a gap. That's why you do and run what Russel calls an audible. A funnel audible. The moment you launch the thing, you do it with the expectation that it will fail because you've created it from this ask campaign based off of the ideas of what people said that they're struggling with. Do you think that people even know 100% of what they're struggling with? No. I can even tell you from when I coach people, most people have no idea what they're struggling with on their own phone.

They're like, I don't know what the problem is Steven, you gotta tell me. And I gotta look in and be like, this is the issue. I love ask campaigns, but it's the reason why I don't just do them once. I don't ever really stop them. I do them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It's not always the same way that Expert Secrets talks about.

It's not always me legitimately or forwardly ever saying, what's your number one question or challenge with x, y, and z? But I'm usually always doing some kind of ask campaign. I'm gleaning from the market what it is that they said that they'd like. What it is they said that they don't like.

How many times do you change what you do and don't like? You do it all the time. So when you launch the funnel, you've gotta go through and understand that there's this gap that's created by the very nature that you created the data. The very nature. Human nature. Yes Steven, I'm struggling x, y, and z. My number one question or challenge is this. Oh, you want me to pay for that? Well, I don't know about that. You gotta understand that it's the same thing that ... I've told the example before on this podcast about when we launched the Expert Secrets book. Within a day and a half, we realized that something was wrong with the funnel, the Expert Secrets book funnel.

It was Russel, John Parks, Brandon Fisher. We were all in a cabin hanging out with the Harmon brothers, creating the script for the viral video for click funnels, and that's when we realized that, oh crap, we gotta go through and fix this thing. So what we did was we called an audible, within a few days.

What I'm trying to tell you is that you've gotta understand that when you launch it, do it with the expectation that it will fail. It even fails every single time that we put it out there. But the speed of success is gonna be greatly dependent on the speed at which you call your audible. So do it. Don't plan something else after you launch your funnel. The only thing you should have planned after you launch your funnel is to sit and watch, for there to be enough data for you to look back and go, crap. This OTO isn't working.

Crap, this opt-in page isn't working. Crap, looks like this ... You know what I mean? You go in and you do macro level, huge level changes, huge level split tests. Not little tiny stuff like, let's go change the button colors. No, no, no. Nothing like that. I'm saying you switch up the whole freaking offer. I'm saying you adapt the whole sales message. Big stuff. We hardly ever get down to the micro levels of split testing stuff. Hardly ever. It's usually at these macro, macro, big, big levels.

We're like, man, we could change this whole thing and try and get a 15% boost in conversion, versus us trying to get a micro two to three percent boost in conversion based on button color and positioning and stuff like that.

Go macro before you ever go micro. I wouldn't even think about micro for a long time. Stay high level with it. But that's the reason why a funnel will not work, typically for quite some time, because it's the nature of the way you collect the data. It still is better than you doing it off of your own head. So still do the ask campaign, but just understand that this is you literally creating your product with the market when you do it this way, when you do it with the understanding that when you launch it, it will not do well.

Usually not. Because you're doing the ask campaigns. You're getting it from people who are saying what they want, but they're not actually putting their wallet forward and voting with it. When you actually get to a spot where you're like, hey people are actually gonna vote with their wallet. Sweet.

There you go. You bridged the gap. You gotta figure out that gap. That gap is the reason the audible is needed. It's the gap that's created when you're actually collecting the data for your message, for your offer, for your products, for your funnels. Does that make sense? I don't know another way around that. I still think you should do the ask campaigns. It helps you understand, if anything, the excuses of your market, which is great. It's gonna help you put all those things together. But in terms of what people actually get their wallet out for, that's a little different there.

There's a bit of a chasm there. There's a bit of a valley there, there's a bit of a canyon there. So you gotta figure that out and be ready to build a bridge so that you can cross that gap, because you'll get a lot of traffic. They'll just buy it from you anyway. But, when you can cross the gap into what mass market is willing to pay for it, that's you crossing that gap, and you gotta do it with some speed. The faster you do it, the better.

I feel like most of the time when I see a funnel, they've not called any audible on their own yet and it's one of the reasons why their funnel still stayed bad. It's because they come to me and they're like, hey Steven, how come it didn't work? I'm like, well what did you change after you launched it? We don't know. We just know this one page didn't work.

Okay, if you know that one page didn't work, why have you not changed anything on it? Switch it at a high, high level. Big, macro level changes. Switch out the entire product in that OTO. Maybe you're telling the wrong story all together. When you launch the funnel, you're not done. You're kinda starting. And you're starting on this phase, this period, where you're reacting to what the market said, and you're being very reactionary, which is good. Then it's react, relaunch, react, relaunch, react, relaunch till you get it to the spot where you realize, holy crap, we've bridged the gap.

Hopefully that's helpful. Bit of a shorter episode, but it's the reason that the audible is needed. I love Russel's presentation at Funnel Hacking Live about funnel audibles. That's the reason why the audible happens. That's the reason why the audible is needed. Many times, multiple audibles.

Especially if you're doing an opportunity switch. That gap is pretty wide if you're doing an opportunity switch. When you're doing an opportunity stack, the gap is a little bit smaller because you've already crossed it once before. You kind of already know what people will pay for versus just say that they'll pay for. If that makes no sense to you, you've gotta go read the book Expert Secrets. Huge fan of it, obviously. If you guys have not figured that out by now, you don't know who I am. Hopefully that's helpful guys. Be ready for the audible.

The speed that you call the audible, the speed that you react, this is the correct moment to be extremely reactionary inside your funnel. All right guys, thanks so much, and I'll talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening. Please remember to write and subscribe. You want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com and book my time now.

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Jumping straight into ClickFunnels after having an idea is actually the wrong order to go...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is, how will I do it without VC Funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business. Using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up everyone? Hey, I wanted to ... This is a bit of a special episode, I did a Facebook live recently, it was crazy within like a few hours there was like over 600 views on it and it got shared and tons of comments.

Anyway, what I was doing is I wanted people to understand more about the order that I go through to launch my funnels, and this is important for you to understand because I feel like people do it backwards like crazy and it drives me nuts and this is one of those areas where I recently have had a lot of clarity and really has helped me to know when to suggest to people that they're ready to start the funnel building stage, okay.

Because I feel like one of the major errors people make is that the first thing they do is they jump into Click Funnels and start building something, but they don't even know what they're building and then when they build it they don't have the sales and so I'm trying to ...

What I want you to do is ... I would take notes on this. It's really just three steps, three phases that you'll be able to see clearly in this or here. So, what I did is, I did a Facebook live kind of deep diving into it, it's only like 10 minutes long or whatever. But, I feel like it's gonna help bring some clarity on when to build the funnel, and when to not build the funnel, when you're not ready to go to that stage yet.

If you wanna know how, "Stephen, how did you build so many funnels so fast?" Well, it's because ... Building a funnel was really step three every time, step ones and twos were already done and so I could just do step three build, build, build, build, build, build, build, build, Right, does that make sense?

Anyway, so, I hope that you will be able to enjoy this. Let me queue it over here right now and I hope that you enjoy more of ... I just hope that it helps you understand more of the order that I funnel build in. I know I've already said that but this will be powerful because the first time I every did this it did not go well on my own and it's because I did not understand these core pieces and elements of funnel building itself.
This is the order that I get my funnels off the ground, okay?

The first time I ever built a funnel that actually went really well, it was probably like my fifth funnel. And I went through and ... This was like four, five years ago and I went and I was building these funnels right? And I was putting this stuff out there and I originally was doing it in WordPress. Terrible, right? Terrible experience, it was awful.

I was building it all in WordPress and I was building funnels for ... Actually, I built this funnel for this artist and it actually went really, really well. It was technically an eCom site but the way we were trying to sell it was a little bit funnel-ish. It was before Click Funnels ever existed. And then I went through and I was building funnels for people with Get Response, their landing page software, okay?

It was ... It's rough, oh my gosh, like actually using Get Response landing page software in a funnel scenario. It was like, "Oh my gosh, it was nuts." So, when I saw Click Funnels like a few months after it came out, I was like, "This is freaking awesome, are you kidding me I've been trying to do all this stuff by hand and these other scenarios are super, super hard." I was like, "This is crazy."

So, we went out and my buddy and I Coulton, who's now my assistant, high-ticket salesperson. We're trying to come up with all the crazy names, part-time sushi chef, snake enchanter. I don't know. He's one of my best friends and he's in this game with me now, which is funny, full-circle it's been this way. But like years ago we built this funnel using Click Funnels, right?

And we didn't have money to get something like Click Funnels. $97 a month felt like this insurmountable amount of money and we're like, "Oh my gosh that's, are you kidding? $97? I see the value. I see, but I don't have $97 a month." You know? And I was like, "How do I do this?" And so what we did was we decided that we would, and I was like, "Grrr." I was reading a lot of Robert Kiyosaki at the time and I was like, "Robert Kiyosaki always says that poor people say, 'I can't afford it', and rich people say, 'how can I afford it?'" And I was like, "I'm gonna try and practice this." Right?

This was five years ago and I was like, we were super poor. We were living paycheck to paycheck mostly on student loans. You know what I mean?

I was just trying to figure the game out. I was hustling as hard as I could. I'd get all my homework done in a few hours and then I'd go hide in these box office seats in the basketball stadium and I'd wait for the security guards to not look at me and I would throw my bag through the front window of the box office, or sorry the box seats and then I would wait for the security guards to look away again then I would jump through the front window. And I did that for a year and a half and up there was it was quiet, the internet was fast, I could stay and hide up there, way past building closed and I did that every day for a solid year and a half.

What we did was, when Click Funnels came out, right? We were like, "We gotta have this tool. I want to build this funnel." This was the first real successful funnel that I'd built. We decided, it was really two funnels we built. The first one was we were like, "Okay, what we're gonna do is plan out the whole business.

Let's plan out the entire thing. Let's plan it all out and then we'll press go on our trial and when we press go on the trial we have two weeks to build the funnel, bring customers in and get them paying for Click Funnels so that we can have it and our customers would pay for it." And that's totally what we did.

And it worked. We both said goodbye to our wives for like two weeks, and we planned out the business and we pressed go. Boom and we just ran. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to like ... I didn't even know how to change colors of a column, like I was so new in Click Funnels that I quickly became 'that guy' to the support people, because I asked at least two questions a day, every day for like a year.

I was like, question, question, question, question, question, question, question, and I was like, "Crap, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, hook this up, here the, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I was like trying to go as fast as I could because the timer was going, right?

That kind of good pressure is fantastic for the soul and for your progression. And so I .... But you gotta be willing to experience it, know what I mean. You gotta say yes to it. And that's what we did. And I'll tell you that we built the funnel, we got it out there, and it was for this insurance, smart phone insurance funnel. And we didn't make money but we didn't really lose money either. We both kind of broke even. And it paid for Click Funnels, it paid for our stuff and that's really what got us going. And it's really what got me the tool.

Now that I have the tool, I was like, "What do I want to go build?" And what I did was I went through and I launched out and I created this funnel for the MLM space, right. A lot of you guys know that. A lot of you guys know the story.

But I was like, "Oh my gosh. I got this idea for this sweet product no one's ever pulled off before, it's going to be freaking awesome. Aahh!" And so I build this product and I'm spending ... because I was in the army ... I was in school. We had a kid. You know what I mean? Life was busy. It took me about eight months to build the actual info-product, okay, and put it together. And write the scripts and Funnel Hack the crap out of people, you know what I mean, put all the pieces together.

And then what I did is I went through and I launched it and then put it out there. Nobody bought it. I was like, "What's wrong with you guys? This product is freaking incredible! Are you serious?" I just spent tons of time making the funnel. Lots of time putting the product together and then when it was all said and done, after eight months. No one was buying it. I said, "What's wrong with this?"

This was now four years ago. That's the amount of time that's gone ... And I was like, "Oh my gosh, are you serious? What's going on with this thing?"

One of the issues that I learned over the last few years, I've now coached over 700 people through the 2 Comma Club coaching program. I've coached a whole bunch of people through my own and the pattern is always this. Is that people will start by jumping in and they're like, "What funnel should I build?" Right? And then when they get in, they get into to create funnels they're like, "This is freaking awesome. Oh my gosh", right? What funnel am I going to build?

And then they build this funnel of what they think it should look like, because they've seen other peoples, and that's great. They're funnel hacking. But then, they're like, "Crap! What should I sell?" And they get like, oh man you know what, maybe on this page we'll sell this. Maybe on this page we'll sell this. How 'bout this page we'll sell that. Right? And then they're like, "Crap! Now the products are in there, how do we even make this thing sell?"

Now I know I have a funnel. I've got the products. How does it sell? And I will tell you, that's exactly what I did and it took another solid 3-4 months for the thing to actually even sell well. When I finally figured out that last piece it was $1,000 a week, no ad spend, for a year. About 50 grand then. Right, crazy cool.

But looking back on how that whole thing went, it's exactly the opposite of what you should. It's unfortunately the natural tendency of everybody that comes into the funnel world. They start over here at the funnel side. Then they figure out what they should sell. Then they figure out how to sell it. Wrong order entirely. Start the other way.

So when I launched, and one of the reasons why I felt like I could leave my job, which I was super sad to do but I realized I needed to. You gotta go the other direction. And this is one of the reasons why I knew I could leave the security of a 9-5. My very cushy, plush, amazing job next to the Russell Brunson, you know what I mean?

I just love the guy like a brother. It hurt me personally to leave, I didn't want to leave. But I felt like my own personal progression I needed to, so I did.

But this is why I felt like I could, one of the reasons why. There's a few things that I was looking at that I knew was going to be the reason I would be okay. Because I left with no product, no funnel, no script, there was nothing. I had nothing created.

And within four days, I had already cash-flowed $3,700 and then within another three weeks we were at $6,000. But the product wasn't even made....

And this is what I did first. This is what we're going to go through with all of you students as well, super excited to have you guys. We're going to dive through. I think we have eight of you today, eight, nine of you today. Something like that.

Number one you've gotta start instead with the message. The sales message. What gets people off of their butt and they're wallet is like flying through the air. Whoosh! Take my money! Right? That's all you should care about. What is the sales message that breaks and rebuilds the beliefs, and gets them to you and saying, "Yes, I am willing to buy. Take my cash."

The issue is that people, instead they'll start over on the funnel side. And when you start on the funnel side, you end up creating an offer tethered by the funnel that you created. Does that make sense? And then you come over here to offering, you're like, "Cool. I made this sweet thing. I made this cool product. This awesome offer." And then you end up creating a sales message tethered by the offer that you put together. You immediately are going into an improvement based offer when you do it that way.

Instead you do it the other direction. Figure out, and actually figure out the sales message and actually be collecting cash. And when you are actually collecting cash, then you create the offer that fulfills whatever promise your sales message made. Does that make sense?
When you do it in that direction, oh my gosh, it's so much easier. Your customer is creating the offer with you.

The book, Innovators Dilemma. Innovators Dilemma talks about that. Since you're creating a new niche, the problem with markets that don't exist is that since they don't exist they can't be analyzed. And since they can't be analyzed, right, you're not going to be able to go ... You're going to make it based off of your own precepts. The issue with that is you are immediately going into an approved base offered.

So let's fix, the fix, the way to fix all of it is to sell. Figure out what message sells. What message gets people off their butt, because people are inherently lazy, and money in your hand. Then you create the offer with them. You create the product with them. So that they are helping you discover at the same time, in tandem, it has to happen at the same time.

They're helping you create this new niche, together. It's not made off of your own precepts. It's not made off the precepts of just a single customer. You're doing it with the people that you've been selling. And when you do that, oh my gosh, it's so much easier. Number one, because you're not going to over shoot the bounds of what they need to feel fulfilled. Number two there, you're going to be able to go in and they will literally help figure out ... You're going to get cash in your pocket before you ever start doing it.

And when I did they said ... I didn't get out there and say like, "Hey, here's a bait and switch on you. Oh, gotcha it's not made yet." No. I was very clear and open. Look, it's not done yet. Because of that, I'm going to give you early bird pricing. Ezra Firestone just talked about this in an interview with Ryan Moran. He does the exact same thing.

He goes out and he sells a little bit cheaper to his beta group. I didn't. And then they help him create the product. Then when you know what offer sells and fulfills the message that you promised in your sales message, then you're going back and you're doing all the ninja crazy stuff with the funnel.

My funnel right now is limping along. I know it is so broken. I know it is. I don't care. For the first three months of me doing this, I have not cared. I don't even have a consumption, I don't have all the ... I don't have the bells and whistles in my funnel, because I know it is not what makes the sale.

The sales message makes the sale. Your product never is good enough to sell it by itself. So stop caring about it. It's not what puts cash in your pocket. Figure out what the sales message is. Then go out and then fulfill whatever that promise was in the sales message, fulfill that with the customer. Help them, have them help you make it. And then you go out and then you start doing all the funnel stuff.

I'm finally at a spot now where I just proved after the funnel works and now I'm going back, I'm circling back to the actual sales message itself. I'm fixing my script. A lot of stuff's wrong with my script. It's still the original script that I wrote, pretty much, three months ago. A lot of stuff I'm going to fix there. Then I'll go back to the offer, sexify that out, make that even more attractive. Really, really cool.

Then I'll go back to the funnel. Add more cool stuff, more ninja stuff and I'll go back to the script, back to the offer, back to the funnel, back to the script, back to the offer ... does that make sense? That's how I do that and that's the way you do it where you're not waiting like over a year to get paid like I had done the first time.

Anyways, I am ... We're going to drive through some sweet peoples' funnels today. Make sure you got a solid plan and then help you implement that and then we're going to ... Then we're going to go ahead and help you get a plan.

So month one for you guys, just so you know, is all about getting that thing off the ground. Month number two, and you can do it faster but this is generally how I focus on it, month number two's all about traffic. And reacting based on what the market is telling you. The reaction area. Like I said before, this game's about you becoming a good detective rather than this brilliant innovator. That's not true. That's not how that works at all. People stress out like, "I'm going to be this big creative", no you don't. You gotta funnel hack first and then create something new and you do them in tandem. Funnel hack and be creative second, not first.

I was taught very wrongly in college about that. That I gotta make something that's brand new, something totally prolific, oh my gosh it's gotta be something amazing, something nobody's ever seen before. Are you kidding me? That's the most risky crap on the planet and you will lose cash.

Anyways, do it this way it works out. I don't care if you're selling eCom, info products, retail, B2B, doesn't matter. That's the model that I use that I go through it.

First sales message, what actually gets cash flowing. What are you going to do to fulfill on the promise that your message made? And then you obsess over the funnel and then I repeat it several times until it's amazing and then, then I feel like I can automate it, walk away and be like, "Sweet! Boom! Done. This is awesome. That's epic."

Anyways, that was a rant. I should've podcasted that, maybe I'll rip it out and toss it in a ... Alright guys, super excited for this. Thanks so much and let's dive into you students. Boom.

Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, "Steve, will you look at my funnel?" Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some hand holding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have; head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

This is the extended version of what I taught at Funnel Hacking Live 2018. There are TWO parts to a funnel's core...

What’s going on everyone? It’s Steve Larsen and you’re listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

I’ve spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I’ve left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how would I do it, without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learned, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's Internet best sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. I am so excited for this episode. I've been dying to record it. I feel like it's going to be one of the episodes that I look back on and I'm like, “man that was one of the Hallmark, amazing episodes of sales Funnel Radio.” You know what I mean? 10 years from now, hopefully this show is still going, but I feel like I look back and be like, “man, that was one of them. That was one of the ones that made it click for a lot of people.”

It's one of the things that made a click for me, and anyway, I'm excited to share with you. It all kind of started honestly, well, how should I say this? How far back you want to go?

Lets see, I was born in 1988. No. So, it's been it’s been a lot of fun working with Russell because, what is fun about it is, I feel like he and I are probably some of the only people on planet earth that geek out at the level that we do. And so, every time we see each other it's like a show and tell, like, “hey dude, check this out.” And he shows me, and we go through all the cool stuff he's doing.

And I'm like, “yeah, check this out.” I tell him all the stuff I'm going through and doing, and the epiphanies that either or of us have had. And so anyway, I was chatting with him a little while ago, and that is when he was saying, “Hey, we want to get you on the funnel hacking live stage”, and I was like, “sweet.” Are you serious? Okay. That’d be awesome. And, which just ended, and I'm kind of backtracking a little, okay? I'm a little bit behind on recording these episodes. But I went and he said, “We want you to teach new offer creation in 10 minutes.” I was like, 10 minutes?!

What? Oh my gosh! That's what I teach in 3 days at the fan event.” You know what I mean? Are you serious? Okay. Oh my gosh.

So, I was sitting there in and the magic formula happened, which is caffeine and dubstep. I was pacing around my own office here and I remember. My head was just kind of subconsciously on this problem, and I love that. Because I will be in random places around the house, around wherever, and I'll have these epiphanies like, “oh my gosh!

It's easier like that...

Holy crap!” My head is constantly on these problems, you guys. I rarely think about anything else, which sounds like obsession, and it is, and I'm glad it is, okay. I sit and just kind of think. I told you guys a little while ago how I kind of brainstorm and come up with these ideas. I imagine them as these little threads and I kind of tug on them, see where they lead, and if it's like good then I just drop it and I go on to the next thing and try and find different possibilities for solving different problems.

Anyway, I was thinking through. I was trying to distill down the 3 days into minutes. It was rough, it was rough. I was trying to work the problem, and figure out the different angles to teach it. I went into click funnels at like 10:00 at night the week before Funnel Live happened. I sat there and I was trying to do it for about 2 hours. I was doodling. For some reason if I can doodle it I know that I can teach it, and I know that it's a clear thing. And so that's the reason why I draw so many pictures. So, I was doodling and I was like, “oh my gosh.” I started having these epiphanies and they start coming faster, and faster, and faster, on the way to teach this.

Well, next morning I'm back in the home office here, which is where I'm now, and I was standing in front of my white board and all of a sudden I had this, guys I don't know really how this happens but I will forget where I am. It actually makes me a little bit nervous because it's happening more frequently.

Whatever I'm thinking of, that's where I physically feel like I am at that time. I will forget where I'm standing and I get kind of lost, in my head. 20 minutes will go by and I'll suddenly come to and realize that I've been standing in the corner of the room for a while. But I’ve been deep meditation and thought. It's a little bit weird and it's kind of happening more frequently. I'm kind of trying to get used it.

So, I was in one of those little, I don't know what I'm going to call it, weirdness things. I was kind of zoning out a little bit. All of a sudden, I had this realization. One of the things that people struggle with the most when it comes to building funnels is, they think that the funnel is a series of pages, and we have had the hardest time trying to describe in this very small amount of words, the shortest amount of words, what a funnel actually is. Right?

My mom used to think that funnels, I was selling literally kitchen hardware. “You’re selling funnels, kitchen stuff. You don’t even know how to cook.” I’d be like, “yeah I know I should not be in that space.” Anyway, we’ve had a hard time getting people to understand what a funnel is without people seeing it, right? We've tried literally for years. We’ve tried to figure out how to explain what a funnel is in the shortest amount of time, where people are like, and “oh.”

A couple of years ago, that's honestly where this whole conversation started. We were trying to figure it out. It's a series of pages linked together to turn prospective customers into buying customers. Oh man, that's just a lot of a lot of, how do we shrink it down? What’s the core of funnel building? Suddenly, it hit me! That’s what I'm so excited about, you guys! Holy crap! What is it?! I figured out.

I was sitting I realized, I was standing in front of the white board and I realized, that at the core funnel building is the offer. For a long time I was saying that. It's the offer, it's the offer, and the core funnel building is the offer. But it's not. It's actually only half of it.

The other half of it is story. It's the sales message. It's the belief that carries the offer, and those two things is what makes a funnel. It's the reason why whether or not you decided to make a funnel, you have a funnel. If you're in business and you've made a sale, you brought them through a funnel.

Whether online or offline, intentional or not, you have a funnel. It's just better if it was intentional. It's the reason why people can go, it doesn't matter if it's online, offline. Doesn't matter what you're selling. If there was a sale that was made, there was some kind of offer. Most times people don't make an intentional offer, they have a product, but there's also a message, a belief that carried that into the heart and mind of that person when they purchased it. I was like, holy crap! Maybe I should find that box, because I sent Russell.

I was like freaking out like, “holy crap.” And he was like, “oh my gosh that’s crazy. Should we change the drawings, change sketches?” So, this whole concept, it's not leaving me, and it's been staying for a long time, guys.

So, what I wanted to do real quick is go down and kind of teach you guys the same thing that I taught at Funnel Hiking Live. It took me a solid, see I had this major realization. It was like three o'clock in the afternoon and I started yelling. No one else was in the house at all and I would start yelling. “Oh my gosh! This is so cool! Are you serious?!” I was just yelling. Legitimate yelling and screaming. “This is crazy!” Yeah, I'm that guy but whatever. I'm proud to be that guy.

And I was like, “sweet.” I had to get my slides to them by the next morning. And so I didn't go to sleep. Had dinner, said goodnight to the kiddos, and then from that moment on, I stayed up until 4:45 in the morning distilling down to ten slides. It was so hard, guys, was crazy. So I worked a lot on this, not just at night but this has been a problem that's been on my head for years.

I’ve had the privilege of teaching a lot of times. But the quest to make things more simple is extremely important and making things complex does not make you smarter. In fact, usually means you don't bring as many people along with you, because they think you've got to be like techno babbly, loaded up. It’s better to just keep it simple.

So, what I want to do real quick is, I want to teach this in the way that I experienced it and I want it to be, how should I explain this, gosh guys, I would take notes. Because when you realize at the core of this, and you realize really, there’s three forces that were fighting with, that I was fighting with, to try to figure out what this is. When you realize what these are, where they come from.

I feel like it’ll make people’s lives better because you'll be more intentional on both funnel hacking and creating your offers, your funnels in general. Then I see episodes here, I can dive into this to teach you what I am looking at when I look at someone's funnel. It's not so much about pages anyway. So, let's get into here.

So, let's start with the plot to a woman's story. If you don’t know what I'm talking about, go to Funnel Hacking Live. So, I started with this question, how do you make money online? It really happened when my wife and I found out that we were going to have a kid. Our first child. We were super excited.

This is over four years ago now, which is crazy. I was reading dotcom secrets. Read for the first time, you guys all now this. I was in the prune, I was in an Army exercise. Laying down, with my M-16 for about 10 days in the dirt. With my weapon in my right hand, and dotcom secrets in my left hand. That's how I read the book the first time. I read the book it was like, “this is crazy.”

What I realized was that it was saying, funnel hack somebody.” Model someone to the T and then just do what they did. And there's safety in that. And it makes sense to do that. Students that get hired to click funnels, we start putting together expert secrets, but the message of that one is, create something new. So the first one says, model someone to the T, don’t deviate, the second one says, make something completely new. Do not do something like what someone else did.

And then I'm reading another book, read the book Innovator's Dilemma, which says that if a new market does not exist it cannot be analyzed. It cannot be analyzed. It's unknowable because it doesn't exist. It's your turn to create a new niche. Your turn to create a new market. You're going to have a hard time doing that out of your own precepts, out of your own head because you don't know you.

So, by the law of the way this happens you must create the new niche with the customer. It cannot be from your own head. Right. So you take those 3 concepts and think about them. Number 1, you've got to model hack, model someone to the T. Number 2, and create something brand new. Don't bottle anybody. Number 3, it must be created with the customer or it'll be an approval based offer by defaulting. What?

How does this all 3 go together? This question has been on my head for a long time. So, to answer this we've got to understand more of the core of the funnel I was talking about, because the answer is actually to do all 3 of those in tandem, to a point.

First of all, we're going to funnel hack. Second, this is like Dorothy in The Yellow Brick Road. We're going to follow the yellow brick road as far as the yellow brick road goes. When it ends, I'm going to teach you how to make a new brick, lay down there, but do it with people so that it gets laid perfectly, with directional customer.

Does that make sense? That's the answer. That's how you do it....

So, to understand more how to do this, let’s understand the core funnel building. First of all there is an offer and a belief, that’s. That’s at the core of a funnel. That's why it can be offline, online. Whether or not you made one on purpose, you have one. If you made a sale, you made a funnel. So, there is an offer and a belief, and the belief carries the offer. This is like those little red wagons.

That's a like story, whatever is in the red wagon is belief, that’s like the offer. The story carries the offer. That's how it works.

Without the belief, we would have the story part, the offer part does not get delivered. Because they’re going to look at it and go, I don’t understand that.” But if you understand that story it's what changes beliefs, it’s what changes paradigms, that people are like, “oh my gosh, I need that offer.”

Yes you do, comes with it. So, the story delivers the offer. Is this making sense so far? I don’t know if it is. I know I'm going kind of deep in this. It’s a little more techno babbly. I have graphics, and pictures, and drawings to display this but I need you to understand how this works.

Since that is the core of a funnel, you've got to understand that dream customer, the people that you would love to be buying from you, they're already consuming both. They're already consuming both and here's why. I don't want you to think of health, wealth, and relationships as 3 markets. The health, wealth and relationships, those are like the 3 moneymaking markets.

Those are the three no-duh buying experiences. Those are the 3 markets we try and fit every single thing into. Health, wealth, relationships. If you got health, wealth, relationships, one of those, your offer might not fit into it. You're like, “Steven, I'm selling Rubik's Cube. How does that work for health, wealth, relationships?” The actual product does not need to fit in it but the sales message, at least, must. I usually use the example of Gillette. Gillette razors. Right. What market are they in? Health, wealth, relationships? They’re in relationships. Why?

Because, I'm thinking of the commercial, some guy is shaving in the mirror, and he's like, “oh yeah, I'm the freaking man,” and a woman comes up afterwards and feels his face up. You've seen the commercials, right. That's what's happening. They're selling relationships through the commodity of razors. Dudes, you want the woman, you use this razor. Right. That's what they're doing.

You got to understand that your dream customer is already consuming both an offer and a belief, with hopes that it delivers to them either health, wealth, or relationships. That's another way to think of this. Because they're already consuming an offer and a belief, your opinions don't matter.

You're not the one who fills your own wallet, right. You don't fill your own wallet. Stop caring so much about what you think. Step number 1 is all about hacking, which is really answering these two questions. The two question is number 1, what is my customer’s current vehicle, or offer that they're consuming? And number 2, what’s the current belief of how they're buying it? It’s the and how what. What is it? You guys have heard that before.

I'm just trying to tie all these pieces together so it becomes clear. That's the core of funnel hacking. Funnel hacking not so much, “hey there's a green button on the right, there’s a picture of someone on the left.” Yes, that's like the micro level. At the macro level, what you really looking at, is you're trying to answer the question, what is the current offer and current story that my dream customer is consuming. That's my starting place, that's funnel hacking.

That’s the core of funnel hacking. So, what you're going to do is, like I said, you're going to fit your business into one of the 3 markets, right. Health, wealth, and relationships. And when you funnel hack, you're looking for those two things right. The offer the belief, from the red ocean.

Now that you know what the offer and the belief are, the second step is start applying more of the expert secret's model. Expert secret’s model is taking it into a place where you're selling a new opportunity, a new niche a new market that you're creating. And by the law of creating something new that does not exist, you cannot analyze it, therefore you must make your with the customer. And there's various ways to do that. Get clever. That's how it launched my product back in January.

So, please understand the offer equals the result, the offer delivers the result. When you create an offer, not product, it means you no longer have to compete on price. Rather than selling back to this red ocean where everyone’s competing on price and someone’s like, “no, I'm going to bleed for the customer more. No I'm going to bleed for the customer. No I'll take less margin.

No, I'll take less margin.” It’s this race to the bottom. If you don’t do that crap the way to get around it is by selling it offer. Because it over delivers on value, which lets you sell sell it at the actual price you'd like to. So, just structure an offer, this is super hard to do for podcasts.

I hope this is making sense, guys. I hope this is good stuff. Please understand that every single one of these concepts I'm talking about are all things that I realized over the last two years, especially, as my head has just not really ever left the topic. But when you're going to structure an offer, you actually don't structure the offer based off of the offer in the red ocean. You structure the offer based off of the belief in the red ocean.
Does make sense? Let me say that again.

To create a new opportunity to create a new vehicle, right, that will deliver health, wealth, or relationships, one of those three, you actually don't create it off of what the current vehicle and offer is. Actually created off of the current belief is, and from that we gain the vehicle internal and external related beliefs. This is complete technobabble and I am way the weeds here. Please stick with me, okay?

We're going to find vehicle based beliefs that people have inside the red ocean. internal and external. The internal beliefs, I like to think of them as insecurities. These are these are beliefs people how about themselves and their capacity to actually achieve something. I can't speak I'm not good enough. I could get on stage. I can't talk. I would know how to do this. I, I, I, I, and it's their internal struggles that they have when they see this new vehicle that you're going to present. Here's how you get health, wealth, or relationships. They look at it like, “that's so cool.”

“You know what. I actually believe you a little bit, but I'm not good enough.” And that's where the internal belief comes from. Or internal false belief.

The external false belief is usually more about excuses, then they blame their ability to be successful with that vehicle based on things that are away from them. They are pointing away from their own body. I don't have enough money. There’s not enough, I don't have time, my spouse doesn't want to support me in this. Does that make sense?

And they're pointing away, so as soon as you get them to acknowledge the fact that that vehicle is the way to get them health, wealth, relationships right that old vehicles not good any more, and you can offer this brand new one. As soon as you get them to accept that that vehicle, the next two places they go, is usually in this order.

It's usually internal for insecurities, and external for the type of excuses that they're that they're running through. Their excuses running away from them. Time, money, resources, spouse. That’s how it’s working. From those very three believes, vehicle interlocks to all, that is everything that I need to create a new opportunity.

Both offer and story. This is literally how I did it, guys, when I launched back in January.

I launched click funnels December 31st. No offer. I didn’t have an offer, I didn't have a sales message, I didn’t have a funnel, and I had nothing. The funnel wasn’t even built. That's it. I had nothing. All I knew is what the current vehicle internal and external beliefs were. That was all. And from that, I was able to go and develop the product, the message, the offer, and the funnel, the script all of it.

This part is so powerful and I feel like people just will skip over it like, “I know what the false beliefs are.” If you really know what those false beliefs are, you also know what stories the people are telling themselves in their heads that are sustaining those false beliefs.

You know the experiences they went through that created the story. You know what they're telling, that is the place in my mind where you intimately learn and understand your customer. And when you do so, it is everything you need to actually be successful in your funnel.

Because it creates the core in the funnel, a sales message, and an offer. Those two things. So, what we do is we take those vehicle internal and external beliefs, and we make a product for each one of them, a product. And we bundle them together with the main thing you originally wanted to sell, and that is the offer. Does that make sense?

Man, this is so much easier to see, drawing stuff. I've it all drawn out here. I wish you guys could see it. So, the offer and the simplest form that I can explain it, if you take the main thing that you actually want them to be buying and you bundle in a few other products that are directly addressing the vehicle internal and external beliefs.

For example, “Russell, I would get click funnels but I don't know what to write.” And Russell comes out like, “Don't worry about it. We've got this thing called funnel scripts, you need to write.” Does that to make sense? It’s a bonus that he's giving away when you buy the main thing, funnel hacks? Does that make sense? So, you're trying to sell the main thing, then you have several the products underneath. This is super super techno babbly.

A new niche is created when you deliver a new vehicle, a new offer. The offer the vehicle. And second, when you deliver a new story new belief that supports the vehicle. Does that make sense? A new niche, a new market is created, when you deliver a new offer and belief. It's the core of funnels. You're just creating a new funnel, selling it back to the red ocean that you stemmed out of.

There was a guy who walked up to me once at an event. He walked up to me and he goes, I don't know remember who it was, he walks up then he goes, “hey Steven, I got this sweet idea.” And he told me the idea. He's on like, first I'm going to do this. And then second, I'm going to do this, and then third.” This is my stack, this is my offer. These are all products that I'm going to deliver, these are the bonuses. And at the end of it he's like, do you think that's a good idea?”

And I said, “Well, who's going to be seeing it? What's the sub market that you're stemming out of? What's the red ocean that you're actually stemming out of? And he goes, I don't know.” And I said, “That’s the riskiest crap I've ever heard of in my life.” You have to know what sub market you're stemming out of, otherwise you're creating things out of your own head, your own imagination. Scary. Be creative guys, just be creative. Second, not first.

There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. However, there’s a huge relationship between being good at marketing and getting paid. What I'm trying to teach you and show you guys, is that this whole thing, the core of funnel building, is a belief. That’s marketing. It's a story. You're telling a story, you're changing beliefs. It's the sales message itself. And above it, it's carrying the offer. And that's all it is. That's all it is. It was 25 minutes for me to spit all that out.

But I'm trying to tell the stories associated with all the graphs, so that it helps break and rebuild your beliefs. But I hope that that makes sense. I hope that that's helpful as I say it. Because I want you guys understand why this matters so much. If you're going out and you’re like, “Hey Stephen. I went out and I created this sweet funnel. It’s not converting. Right. And he took no thought at all of the actual sales message, the offer, and stuff like that. It's going to be it's going to be rough ride.

It's the reason why a lot of times I’ll make up a design that I think looks kind of cool, but I don't spend that much time on it. But my stuff converts well. Why? Because I got a sick offer that fulfills the actual sales message. That fulfills the actual belief that I'm breaking and rebuilding for them. That's why.

That's why design doesn't matter as much as what you did. That's why. I want you to understand that. Anyway, I'm blabbering now. But I hope that makes sense. Just remember that at the core funnel building, at the core of a funnel general, is a belief, which is carrying an offer. All you got to remember from this episode. And you start to think through that, those are the things your funnel hacking. Those are the things you're creating in the new niche. Those are the things that will deliver a customer to you.

So, I'm super excited by that. I am seriously considering, in fact Russell's suggesting I do it too, make a book about offer creation. This is a topic that I obsess over and I love the science, and art piece of offer creation. So, hopefully that was helpful. I know a lot of stuff and it’s a bit of long episode there. Good thing you guys are used to it by now. Alright, talk to you later. Bye.

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Yup, I just changed up the whole funnel. Here’s what happened

What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I've left my 9-5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, "How will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch?"

This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys? I hope you like my new intro. Just had several of you guys reach out actually and say that you like it. And so, it means a lot. I take a long time to write those kinds of scripts when I know that I'm gonna hear them a billion times probably. But, I wanted to create more of a journey. More of a ... Anyway, I've talked about that a little bit in the past.

I wanted to share with you a little bit more about my webinar and what I've been doing to it. I did a lot of stuff this week. It's been a crazy week. There were two days this week where I almost stayed up a full 24 hours just getting stuff done and working on it and the different aspects that I needed to crank out. It was ridiculous. And, I do not recommend that.

In fact, I always think it's kind of weird when people are like, "Yeah, hashtag the hustle." You know? And, they stay up 24 hours all the time. But, it just wrecks your next day anyway. So, that never makes sense to me. Be smart with your health. Don't do that too often.

Hey, what I want to share with you though is more about the webinar and the actual stats. I automated it. I already automated it. I know that a lot of people will probably ask me, "Steven, you always say to do it for seven months." Well, here's the thing. Before I actually launched the webinar, I tested it like crazy. I knew the messages were gonna work. I knew the offer was gonna work. It was all already tested before I actually pushed the button. You know what I mean?

And so, I didn't start from complete scratch when I started to do my live webinars. I did it maybe 12 times and I still, that final time, I was still using the original script. And so, here's the thing guys. You gotta understand this. This is how I look at the webinar.

This is the three phases of launching any product. The three phases...

And, I didn't realize that this is what I do or even that Russell, that this is what he does, but this is what it is. We first ... This is three spots. We first figure out a sales message. Understand that I said, "Sales Message". I did not say, "Offer". I did not say, "Funnel".

Now, 99% of the time Russell already knows what the sales message is going to be. He's done it so well. He's done it for so long. But, he understands right from the get go without really even thinking about it. He kind of starts from this place of sales message. Meaning, if he can sell it then we'll go make the offer. And, he already starts from those places ...

So, this is how I did my webinar. My webinar. Phase number one is all about creating the sales message. I don't give a crap about the actual product or the offer until I know that I can sell the thing. Right? Does that make sense? And, I know a lot of people say, "Well, duh, Steven."

Well, most of us don't do that though. We actually turn around and we're like, "Hey, what am I gonna sell?" Wrong question. The question is, "How will I sell it?" And, the problem is that when you start with an offer, when you actually start with the offer, the problem is that you become tethered by the offer when you're creating the sales message. Does that make sense?

You create restrictions. You're not free. You're not liquid...

You're not fluid to create whatever sales message you want...

So, what I have been doing for a solid probably year before I actually launched my webinar, what I did is I actually went and I started testing the sales message. I created an entire second podcast show about it. And, I just started dropping out the stories. And, the ones that really resonated, I kind of took note of that.
And, I was like, "Huh. That's the one that did it over here. Huh.

Oh, that's interesting. That's the story that did it over here. Interesting. Oh, wow. They really like this one and they hated that one." And, I started testing sales message. Also, my story.

And, when we actually get the story down, when we get the sales message down, whatever it is that gets people's butts out of their chairs and their wallets, and credit card in your hand, then you create an offer that fulfills the promises that you made in the sales message. Does that make sense?

When you actually find the sales message that gets somebody off their butt and gets their wallet in your hand then you create the offer that fulfills whatever that sales message promised...

When you do it the other way and you create an offer, and then the sales message, and then the sales thing, you are tethered in your mind. And, you have this thing where, "Well, my product doesn't do this." Okay, well stop thinking about that. Figure out what it is that gets people into action.

People are inherently lazy. What is the thing? And, if you found out, "Oh my gosh. This is the thing that gets people into action, sweet. Then you create. Does that make sense? So, step number one, sales message.

Step number two is then the offer. And, both of them stem off of belief. Both of them stem off of belief. At the very, very bottom. Or, sorry. The very, very last one, that's when I start building a funnel. And, that's when I build the delivery mechanism that will serve up those two things. Funny enough though, people usually do the exact opposite. They build a funnel and be like, "Hey, I want an... funnel."

And, they think of it in terms of funnels. That's not how it works. You think of it in terms of what are you trying to deliver? And, you go and you put together a funnel. If you do that first, then you build them out an offer, then you figure out how to actually sell the thing, super scary.

Super scary. Right?...

And, so you guys know I'm already automating it, but it's because of the three steps that I take.

You do it the other way around and you say, "Hey, what's the sales message?" And, as part of that, you're figuring out where the traffic is. With step number one, what's the sales message? What gets people off the butt? It's like ...

I know I bring up this example a lot, but it's because it's true. Before Tim Ferriss even finished writing a book he was out there testing headlines and titles for the book. And, he would test tons of headlines and he would spend a little money, like 20 bucks on tons of different ... Like, "Hey, 20 bucks for this headline. 20 bucks for this title. 20 bucks for this title." And, he would go test it. And, whatever one they liked, that's what he named it.

And, there wasn't even a book written half the time. He was just seeing what people clicked on.

And, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You figure out the sales message. What is it that gets people off the butt? They are so insatiably connected to what it is that you have promised. You've broken and rebuilt the belief patterns. You've helped them see the world in a brand new way and you are now served up to give them an offer. Aww. And, it's not there yet. That's okay because now you know it's safe. It's worth you time to go create that actual offer. Does that makes sense?

Sales message number one. Offer number two. And then, you create the funnel. And then, as soon as I've done that, I go back to sales message. Then I go back to offer, tweak that. And then, I go back to funnel and I tweak that. Then I start all the way back over again, a sales message.

So, the reason why guys is because I've been following my process. And, my process is first figure out the sales message, which I did. And, since the beginning of the year, we had like 50 grand and hot traffic sales. People were just super hungry for it. So, the first month, we did 100 grand. The second month we did like 25. And, it was mostly because I didn't focus on selling it that much. I was just building the offer that I knew was selling.

My numbers were looking great. Everything was looking fantastic. And then, the first two weeks here, I actually haven't really been selling it that much and the reason is because I had it down for like two weeks 'cause I was going and automating everything.

First, I was talking about the sales message. Then I built the offer. Now, I've been tweaking the funnel. And, it's almost been like month, by month, by month.
Like, since Funnel Hacking Live is ... I'm been getting on my plane here in an hour? I gotta get out of here. I was like, I just gotta podcast one time though. I'm excited to talk to you guys.

I woke up at 2:30 hardly being able to sleep. I'm so excited. I'm that much of a nerd, yes. And, I will admit it. But, anyway. It will probably be really April before we actually start to get real traffic turned on towards it. But, what I'm excited about is this guys. I'm so pumped.

I went and I actually turned on a little bit of traffic and my numbers are holding true...

Meaning, I was nervous that automating the webinar would drop some numbers. 'Cause people can sense that it's not live. The products are freaking awesome. That's never usually the issue. It's usually not that, "Hey, can we make something that's sexy?"

It usually does not have anything to do with the actual offer. It's a formula. The way you get to the offer is a formula. And, you follow that formula, you get to the offer, great. You might tweak it a little bit here and there, but the real thing that you are trying to figure out and the real place that people will struggle and suck it up on is the actual message part. It's the belief part. It's the part that ...

And, how to not number one just create it, but how to glean it from the sub-market they're trying to sell to. And so, when I figured out, "Oh, my gosh. I've nailed the beliefs. I know I've nailed the beliefs." That's one of the reasons I've sold so well. And, I was selling that puppy before it was actually even ready. And, they knew that. There was no slight of hand thing going on there.

They knew that. They were getting beta access to certain other bonuses that I had in there.

And then, when I created the actual offer, now the offer is actually done, then I went and I ... Now, I'm focusing on the funnel. Okay, what's the funnel that gives me back a little bit more of my time? I'm telling you, running three webinars a week, holy smokes. That is so much work as a solo one man guy. You know? One man show going on right now. Oh, my gosh. I tried that three webinar a week thing I was talking about for just a little bit and I was like, "There's no way. There's no way."

I could do it if everything else in my business was set up, but it's not and I'm the only guy running it. I'm excited just to barely have my first employee to come on over. He's swinging on over and he's handling support. And, he's kind of my assistant. He's also handling a lot of front line relationships. And, he's wearing a lot of hats, which he's pumped about and I'm pumped about. But, he's not gonna be over for another month. I was like, "I gotta automate this thing."

So, anyways. The reason I automated it was because my registration rates were about 52%, which is really, really awesome. And, even went to up to probably 62% for a while. 62% opt-in rate on a webinar page. And, I think on how I did it. It was really, really cool. I had many engagement things all over. My show up rates were 7-13%. Really low. Right? Really low.

And, I've talked about in previous episodes how I believe it's because the time in front of my webinar was way too long. Meaning, I did a webinar ... Especially, for who I was selling to, I can barely remember three days out what ... I don't remember what I did three days ago. And, if I'm asking someone to register for a webinar three days ago and it's not till tomorrow, I'm gonna forget. You know what I mean?

It needs to be sooner than that. So, I'm shrinking the time from when they register to the time the webinar actually happens. Right? I did that for a while and it really helped. And, I was like, "Whoa." And then, on that backend, my cart close sequence it was usually three days. I was like, that seems way too long. So, I went down to 24 hours. And, there was a big spike in sales. I didn't change anything else. I was like, "What the heck?"

Just because there was a little bit more pressure. But, it was almost a little bit too fast. Some people didn't really have a chance to go watch the replay that they wanted to, so then I'm out to a 36 hour replay sequence now...

That part I could keep. But, what I decided to do ... So, I was getting anywhere from 15-25% close rate, which is freaking huge, guys. That's awesome. Freaking huge. 15-25% close rate is a multi-million dollar webinar, which I know it will be. And, it's already shown signs that it's going to be, which is awesome.

So, the one number that I needed to chance, which I know I've gone through before is that show up rate. Well, when we automate webinars, the average show up rate is like 85%. It's like 90% because it's happening in the next few minutes. That's how they work. That's why they work.

You know? Next webinar happening in the next 15 minutes. What? So, I made a top of the every 15 minute webinar. So, every 15 minutes, that webinar starts over again and it's really, really awesome. So, I'm super pumped guys 'cause yesterday I really had the first time to really turn it on.

Got traffic sent to it...

And, my registration rate, I'm so pumped, was 46%. So, it only dropped like 10%. But, the show up rate was like, it was almost 100%. It was freaking huge. And, I was like, "Oh, my gosh." And, I was so stoked. And then, we made sales at a close rate of 14.62%. Guys, that's huge.

That means I can now drive tons of traffic. It means the rest of the numbers are working. It means that I can celebrate as if I've made a million bucks already 'cause it means it will. You know? Unless I really, really jack it up and I've got some awesome silver bolts up my sleeve that I actually can't tell you about. Some cool things for traffic that I'm very, very pumped about. Getting hooked up in several ways. Working that Dream 100, which I am, which we are, which we do. I will never stop doing that system. And, that's what's been going on.

So, anyway, I just wanted to give you guys a little bit of accounting before I see a lot of you guys. There's so many things in my mind I want to share with you guys that have happened this last little bit. Things that I'm learning. More clarity, the things that I've been understanding. And, teach you how I've been ... Why did I feel comfortable leaving a job when I really had no business set up? You know what I mean?

Like, that was ridiculous. That sounds so crazy. I don't ... That's mere madness almost, honestly. To go out and do that. But, it's because of these certain things that I knew, and I learned, and I saw the patterns that saved my emotional sanity and said, "Yes, you can go ahead and leave your job and it's gonna be fine because of these signals and signs."

Number one, it was testing the sales message because people were knocking my door down. I mean, I think I have probably close to ... It's several hundred Facebook message requests asking about my MLM product. And, I barely have gotten to a spot where I can even respond to them and say, "Hey, let's get over here and you can check it out here."

When I saw that. When I saw the ... Frankly, the other podcast audience is far more interactive with me than this one is. When I saw that ... When I saw ... When I even just talked about ... There were certain buzz phrases I learned that they liked. And, when I would say it, they would go nuts, and they'd look for a product that was the one I was saying and there wasn't one out there.

And, I was like, "Sweet. I can totally do that." Does that makes sense? So, all these little signals and signs. And, I had a beta group that I brought through. I didn't even have the actual product. I was just teaching them the concepts. And, they were going nuts. I had a beta product overall. Not just group. Like, that I launched about a year prior to. And, I saw the ridiculous response from it. It was insane.

And, I took that off once I saw all the issues with it, which is great. So then, I knew more of actually what to ... You know what I mean? There was a lot of stuff that I did. A lot of ground work. It was not just like I pulled the ... I jumped out the airplane and build the parachute while I was falling, but I still had all the materials laid out before I jumped. You know? Does that make sense?

The groundwork was still there. And, funny enough, the ground never really comes when you jump out of the plane. Usually not. When you jump out of the plane without a parachute in that metaphor. Please don't do that in real life.
Anyways guys. I'm really, really excited.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning, like I said, just super excited. I had a hard time going back to sleep. I got a mastermind that we're running tomorrow with a bunch of you. Very excited. I still gotta figure out more of what I'm gonna teach there. But, at those, I feel like highest level stuff is too ... I'll teach my cool stuff, but I love doing one on one Q&A and taking people's businesses a little bit further.

If I could do that the rest of my career I would do that, I think, mixed with one or two other product styles that I know I want to go after. So, anyways guys. Gosh. I'm so excited.

When you get to Funnel Hacking Live, take notes. I could not believe the first time I went. I bootstrapped my whole way there. I gave more to get there than the majority of the people who were there. And, I sacrificed my face off. I took 52 pages of notes. Very detailed notes. I still have them. They're right next to me.

And, that last night when I didn't have a place to stay, I stayed up. After I applied to Click Funnels, I stayed up and I started going piece by piece through the entire, all the notes that I took, because I wanted to solidify them in my brain. I should go through those. There's some good stuff in there.

Take notes. I was appalled how many people left their notebooks that they gave them on the chairs. I was like, "What? Do you know what I just learned? Did you just sleep through all of that? That was ridiculous. I just finished my marketing degree." That's where I was at the time. I'm finishing my marketing degree and that was better than all of it. The first day. The first session. I was like, "What? Take notes." Anyway. Something that happens when you write it.

Guys, I'm very, very excited. Please come with an open mind. And, if you're hearing this after the fact, that's totally fine. Anything you learn from any guru that you've realized that you need to study from, take notes from them. One of the things I've learned recently as well is that it's good to read deeply on a broad spectrum.

Or, I should say, it's good to read it on a broad spectrum from lots of different ... And, learn from lots of different gurus, lots of different people that are out there...

However, I found that just really deep diving with only one or two people and you study what they done deeply, very successful individuals. Obviously, the one that I'm going after is Russell. Obviously. I go through, I study him very deeply. And, all of the study, all of the strategies, all of the pitch strategies, all the things that ... And, figure out who that is for you. Study that person and their work very deeply. And, stick with them.

Don't just go so broad. Broad is good, but choose a few characters particularly and go deep with them. And, when you do that you, you learn a lot more of the patterns inside that's ... I mean, it's just like I share on this podcast. The only reason I can do that is because I've studied the heck out of the scripts. I know his scripts. So, when I see him change it up, I'm like wait, what did he do? And then, I see the connection and I see the pieces. And, I'm like, "Oh. Did anyone else see it?" And, lots of times, no. Because we're all studying this guy and this guy, and this guy ...

Okay, that's great, but especially at first. Like, to really super advance your progression in this game, just go deep with one or two people. You know what I mean? And, really get to know them. Really get to know their mind. Not just their works. And, their materials that they've put out.

Anyway. Great stuff guys. Super excited. I'm writing a book. That's awesome. We made the outline already and it's freaking incredible. If I say so myself. We just barely launched the affiliate program, which by the way, if you are interested at all, would love to have you. We're gonna have a lot of sweet affiliate contests here in about two weeks. It's so cool. Basically, I figured out the math to basically buy anyone a new iMac. And, a new iPhone. And, a new ... Basically all the Apple products 'cause I like Steve Jobs. Rest his soul.

And, anyway, there's a lot of stuff that's been going on guys that I've just had a ton of fun with it. And, anyway, excited to see you guys. Remember the secret phrase. I filmed the special stuff yesterday for those of you guys who remember the secret phrase and walk up to me.

Anyways, you guys. Thanks so much. That's kind of been a counting of the last two months of my webinar and me automating it and why. And, I will certainly continue to do live webinars for sure, but as I finish this funnel side ... Now, I'm now gonna go back step number one and it's time for me to tweak my slides. And, I know what to change. And, I've got some cool other things that I'm doingthat I can tell you about a little later.

Anyways, guys, thank you so much. And, go crush it. Bye.

Whoa, thanks for listening. Please remember to write and subscribe. Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to SteveJLarsen.com and book my time now.

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Why learning from my podcast is LESSER than learning from ME…

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys? I got a really cool episode for you guys here today. It is a crazy week, which means it's a normal week. There's a lot going on though. I mean we are in the pre-funnel hacking live stage and there's a lot to prepare for and a lot to go through. This week I am automating pieces of my webinar still, there's a whole bunch of assets I got to get to my traffic driver who I will interview here shortly for you guys so you can learn from her because she's amazing.

All the flash drives I told you guys if you run up to me and say the magic word, which you have no idea what I'm talking about go back and listen to a few episodes ago, or actually I think it was last episode. Anyway, there's paying bills, I got to build an affiliate program, which I'm very pumped about for my program. I figured out a cool model where I can buy people an iMac, like those brand new ones that are $5,000...

Anyway, we've got a cool affiliate program we put together, which is very, very awesome. Maybe I should tell you how I did that as well. Then I'm actually building out this really cool members area. I've been building out a lot of live funnels lately. One of the reasons why is because I was the lead funnel of their click funnels guys. I built almost one funnel a day. Literally that's what the numbers were.

Almost one funnel a day was the average, which is crazy. The last few months of me being solo I have build one funnel, you know what I mean, there's only been one, I guess two, there's been two revenue funnels. There's been a few management funnels, but my entire focus is just on one single sales funnel, my webinar one. It's been a little bit weird to go back and think through oh my gosh, I almost have the itch. I got to build something oh my gosh. It's been weird, I've shaved my focus down to just having this one funnel, and really, really enjoyed it though.

I'm really, really excited though for this. There's a lot going on and I'm excited to get you guys in the loop. I got one really, really cool announcement and I want to tell you why I'm excited about it.

Gosh, I'm joining Inner Circle, Russell's Inner Circle, and some of you guys might be like, "Oh my gosh, Steven you vox him almost daily, why, why would you do that?" The reason why is because I'm coaching now. Does that make sense? I'm coaching now. When you have a coach and if they're not being coached also you're getting cut short. Does that make sense? I'm getting coached, which means I will continue to be a good coach. Does that make sense?

That's the reason why I'm so excited guys.
I've told this story before, but I remember I wanted so badly, so badly to join Russell's Inner Circle. This was like three years ago, yes about three years ago now, and click funnels had just barely been out for just a little bit here and Russell sends this email out, and he says, "Hey, just wanted you to know that there's only a few spots left in my coaching program," and I remember I stopped dead in my tracks. I was on campus, I was in college and I stopped dead in my tracks. I was in the basketball stadium and I was walking through, passing through, going through some class I had or to the gym or something like that, I can't remember.

Anyway, I remember I stopped right there and I replied to the email. I don't think he read it of course, that's fine, but I replied to the email and I was like, "Hey, crap, no, don't shut it down, I want to get in this. I don't have the cash for that kind of thing yet."

The first year of marriage together my wife and I we only made $18,000 our first year of marriage. That's is $18,000, and most of it I think was loans. We were poor, poor. Guys I've been there, which is why I get so passionate about this when I see someone. I'm like, "I know you're close, I see you. I see your scenario. You are so close to this, just do it." I went through and I replied to the email. I said, "No, stop, wait."

I was like some day I'm going to join that. I had no idea that four months later I was going to be working for him in the capacity that I was. I was already moving, I was already in motion. I already had a little funnel building agency. I was building funnels for other people, other businesses, and it went really, really well. I've told that before, but the reason why is because here's what happened.

This is one of the most powerful lessons I feel like I could ever teach somebody is this right here. Is that there is a huge difference between personal and impersonal knowledge. Impersonal knowledge and personal knowledge are very, very different. They come at different values, they come at different weights, they hit harder. It was like Stephen, what's the difference between personal and impersonal knowledge? Well here you go. I get hired. I go and I'm sitting next to the man and I'm freaking out. I think I was mute. I literally did not say anything for the first two months I worked there because I was like I'm literally an arms length away from this guy who's already changed my life and now it's going to keep changing because my proximity is literally two feet from him. I could put my arm back and scratch his back, literally right there.

I was like oh my gosh. I had clearly understood the extremely rare opportunity that that was to do that...

I was sitting there next to him and for the first little while I would just sit and I was building funnels like crazy obviously, building whatever you needed to and just cranking stuff out. The deadline for getting things done was always that it needed to be done a day before whatever the day currently was. We were just hauling balls, we're just getting stuff done, it was tons of fun. As time went on and I started telling him like, "Hey, I got this podcast that I've started called Sales Funnel Radio." He'd be like, "Oh cool." Then he'd start giving some advice. I was like oh cool, "I'll totally go do it that way." Then I'd be, "Hey, I built this funnel" just kind of in passing and talk to him and he'd be like, "Oh that's awesome. Make sure you do this, this, and this." I'm like, "All right, cool. Yes I already done the X, Y, and Z. I added these things in." He's like, "Whoa, that's pretty cool."

Then in passing or sitting next to him again and building stuff out. He'd be like, "Hey, how about one, two, and three?" I'm like, "Whoa, how about A, B, and C?" Was I learning that from a book? No, no I wasn't. It was extremely tailored knowledge to whatever scenario I was currently in. There's a huge difference between person and impersonal knowledge, it is a very common thing now for me when I go to an event for someone to walk up and be like ... So many people have said this to me now.

"Stephen I've listened to all of your podcasts, I feel like I know you. I've spent tons of hours just listening to the stuff you said, your stories." I'll be like, "Wow." I forget I've told literally every aspect of my life on this podcast.

I remember the same feeling. I saw Russell and I was like, "Man, I feel like I know you. I've consumed all of your stuff." The first time I ever met him, at that first Funnel Hacking Live that I ever went to. "I feel like I know you." You still don't though, you know what I mean. That's impersonal knowledge, and the difference is massive. Personal knowledge, in order for something to be qualified as personal knowledge I must get personal with you. Does that make sense?

Meaning one on one. Russell shared a lot of personal knowledge with me. I'm not saying private stuff. What I'm saying is he would get ... It's personal knowledge to me. Where he would sit down and he would say something or disclose something or something about his life and now we're in the personal knowledge zone.
When you get into that zone the knowledge is deeper, the knowledge sticks harder, and it is far, far, far faster.

My progression is far faster when you get into that zone. It's one of the major reasons why the guru on the mountain is such an important principle. If you don't know what I'm talking about the guru on the mountain is the principle that as someone becomes more of an expert in their field they must charge more for people to get closer to them.

Which is weird, it feels weird, especially for the expert. A lot of times that's a weird phase to start getting into, but the reason why is because it there ends up being so many questions and so many people asking questions, there has to be some kind of system to sort out who gets the guru's attention, who gets the experts attention.

It's very, very fascinating. Understanding what this whole personal knowledge and impersonal knowledge thing. Impersonal knowledge yes, while it is fantastic, yes it is the starting place. You get it from the books, you get it from the podcast, whoever you're listening to, you're consuming from, it's still impersonal. You are seeking personal knowledge because of the speed that it gives you, the progression that it gives you. I was already hauling, I was going so fast, barely sleeping for years before I met Russell personally.

I felt like I knew him beforehand, however I didn't, not personally. Then when I sit down and I start talking with him and he and I start sharing aspects about our life, in order for something to get personal I must share something, I must deliver and expose myself in some aspect of my life to the other individual. When that happens there is a bond that happens between whoever it is that you're doing that with. What's cool about that is that knowledge transfers very, very, very intimately where you can take it and run at a much faster pace.

Is this making sense? This is a very, very, very big deal. You should seek to get that kind of knowledge and that's the reason why you should pay to get closer to the guru on the mountain. It's the reason why I'm joining Russell's Inner Circle, it's the reason that I am coaching now also right, which I told you guys about that. I'm not pitching you, I'm telling you that this is the reason, one of the reasons why I'm doing it is because those people who join, which thank you, what's up guys? I'm very, very excited.

Those people who joined, those people that joined they're going to get from me personal knowledge. Because of that I know that I can help them be successful with it. It's like when somebody comes up and they're like, well what's the package you're going to get? What about this?

What about this? What about this? Where are you going to get this, this, this, this? They start checking the boxes, things like that. It's not a check the box thing.
One of the talents, one of the coolest talents you can ever develop is the ability to sit and listen to another individual and be actually listening. Don't be thinking about the next thing you're going to say. Sit and actually listening, and when they're done speaking be like, "You know what, I would do this."

You give a piece of advice to another individual. That takes a certain kind of talent and you must have a certain amount of finesse and experience inside of your field in order to actually be able to pull that off. That's all I've done for the last year, over a year now as a Two Comma Club coach every Friday for hours. Then on stage, and then on the podcast, and all the other places, and that's the reason I do it is because I'm trying to develop that skill on purpose.

Finally when I feel like I got to a point where yes, I've done this enough times, I can have my own little coaching thing. I want to deliver personal knowledge. Have you ever noticed how interesting it is when someone actually gets inside of an inner circle program or they get close to a guru or whatever, they seem to accelerate like crazy. You know what's fascinating? At the core of it they're getting the same information that you are impersonally. What's the difference? It's personal knowledge. It's personal knowledge, that's the difference.

I hope that I'm hitting this on the head and that it's not weird or confusing. I hope that what I'm trying to say ... There's an X factor. I love the book Leadership and Self-Deception. This is another reason why impersonal knowledge either does or does not get transferred when you're with individuals. Have you ever hung around somebody and at the end of them, when they walk away you're like oh man, that conversation was a little bit fake?

You know what I mean? I had an experience very recently, it was actually last week. I was speaking to somebody and the person was just fake, very not themselves, and people can see that. They can see straight through it. If you're being true to yourself, if you're being true to your own ... You have to be true to yourself to actually transfer personal knowledge. You should seek to be able to get that intimate as far as being able to help another individual in the form of knowledge transfer. Not all knowledge is created equal, it's not, the faster knowledge.

Classic story, classic story right. One of Russell's Inner Circle people they didn't have the cash, well they had the cash but it was their last $25,000 and he went and he paid this $25,000 and kind of gave everything to get in there. He immediately was able to have very, very fast success because of the proximity to the other people that he's around, be able to take on that form on knowledge. What is it? You can either buy your way in or you can work your way in. What am I trying to say here? I'm trying to say that when you decide to actually go get coaching from somebody number one, make sure they know what they're freaking talking about.

Don't just go get it from someone who's just a little bit further down the path. For products I feel like that works really, really well, but you should seek to learn from the people who know what they're doing and have a crap ton of experience doing it, which is why I offer the funnel coaching.

Besides Russell I don't know another person who's built as many funnels as I have. That's not conceited, that's true. I just don't, you know what I mean? That's the reason why I'm like, "Hey, if you want to learn how to build some sweet funnels I got you." You know what I mean? At the core of it a funnel is an offer. We got to build offers. Funnels are just manifestations of the offer. That's all it is. Anyway, so what I want to do is that this great book, Leadership and Self-Deception. Really, really enjoyed this book. If you never read it it's absolutely fantastic. The first third of the book alone I feel like is the major core lesson.

Anyway, there's a realness that the guru must have to be able to transfer that kind of knowledge to another person. It starts with this whole notion of being able to be true to themselves, like I was just saying. What I want to do real quick is I wanted to read a few different passages here from this book.

This is a fantastic book. I actually really, really enjoy this book. I have marked it to death. My style for reading books guys, just so you know, is every time I read a book if there's a page where it's like man, that was really, really good I will fold the bottom corner of it so that I can pick the book back up later. I read this book I don't know how many years ago, but I've got all these corners folded down in the bottom of the book and that's when I can go look at the highlights again and be like oh yeah, that's what that was.

The scenario that this book is talking about, the first little bit. This is a scenario I've been in and I can't tell that I've actually made the right decision every time. Where the scenario of the story, the book is telling a story and the story is that there's a young couple and the couple they have a kid, and the kid in the middle of the night, everyone is sleeping in the middle of the night, the kid starts crying.

The dad kind of wakes up and acts like he doesn't hear it. Other dads what's up? How are you doing? I've done it too and he acts like he hasn't heard it. It's a brand new infant. I can't even feed the kid, I'll let her take care of it. I regret to say that I've done that before, we've all done things like that before.

If I was face to face with you right now and I just said that that would be personal knowledge, but because it is a one to many styled messaged, sales message that's good to get to a one to many sales message. One to many as far as knowledge transfer that's not personal knowledge. If I said that to you one on one and I went into a little more detail we would now be in the personal zone and anything I said about funnels, or helping you later on, or whatever, that actually will affect your actual life.

That's why you seek to get into the personal knowledge zone with your guru, with whoever the expert is that you're following. Pay them whatever they're asking. There was somebody who was trying to negotiate. Guys negotiating price, price is not real. There's no such thing as price.

As far as getting close to somebody else when they're like, "Hey, why don't you come along," and why don't you come in and be like, "Hey, why don't you come along and do my coaching program?" "Hey, would you do it for this amount?" It's like, "No, you're missing the whole point." It's not about price, it's about value, it's completely different. Anyway, different side rant there.

In the story of this book, in this book itself ... I'm kind of all over the place right now but hopefully that's okay. Just follow along with me. In this book this young couple no one's gotten the kid yet. The other one is sitting there thinking, "Hey maybe they'll get it. Maybe they'll get the kid. Maybe they'll get the kid." When you do not act true to yourself what you do is commit self-betrayal. Here's self-betrayal, this is what self-betrayal is. It actually defines it in the book Leadership and Self-Deception, self-deception. The first thing you should do is self-betrayal, it's one of the first things that you learn in this book. When you see your ability to help another individual and the opportunity to do so, and you do not it is an act of self-betrayal. It literally says an act contrary to what I feel I should do for another. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another.

What ends up happening when you commit acts of self-betrayal is this. He says, "When I betray myself I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal." That make sense? This is the theory of cognitive dissonance applied to self-betrayal. I'm getting way too deep on this episode. I hope that's okay, but let me wrap it all up here. I'm going to come full circle so that you guys understand what I'm trying to say here. When I betray myself I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.

Then when I see the world in a self-justifying way my view of reality becomes distorted. Does that make sense? If you are learning from somebody who cannot get to the personal stage with you, who cannot share of themselves, you will not get to the personal knowledge zone, which is the knowledge speedway. It's like the knowledge fast track. It's one of the major reasons why Russell's fun to learn from.

How many stories does he tell about himself? How many stories do I tell about myself? When you are not willing to tell stories about yourself, whether it be slightly embarrassing or not, it doesn't matter. Are they true? Is the story true? I told you guys that story about me dancing around on stage for a little bit and I squatted down, I totally ripped my pants straight down my butt. I told you that. I told you that story for a reason. I am trying to practice being completely bare with the world. I'm trying to practice being completely open because when we speak face to face we will have gotten past all the pleasantries of society. How you doing? Good. How's your day? Awesome. What you been doing? This. Want to get past that crap. Let's get to the real stuff.

What is it you actually want to get to? When you get to the personal knowledge zone with an individual and you cannot do it with somebody who is in the act of self-betrayal, which means when they see that they are able to help you they must ... I'm very excited here guys because in two hours I go live with my new coaching students. In two hours I go live with them. I love doing this. I do this every Friday.

I've been doing it every Friday, 52 times. I went for four straight hours every single week for six months non-stop, no break with hundreds of students, diving deep with them into their business, getting personal, trying to transfer as much of the how-to knowledge as I can. That's the whole point of this episode I'm trying to make guys is that you must seek to get into the personal knowledge zone with the expert. Number two, that person and you cannot get to that if they are in the act of self-betrayal. You get to an act of self-betrayal by not helping somebody when you know you could.'

For that reason in two hours when I go live with these new students that I've just taken on, I must first of all I must get vulnerable. I'm going to teach a little while before I actually start talking to any of them and actually coaching them on their businesses. I must get vulnerable, and as I get to that vulnerable stage they will do the same with me, and when they get vulnerable and not try and posture themselves and act like they're farther than they are, or act like I'm farther than I am, and when we get vulnerable we get to this spot where we can help each other as we are, not as we want to be seen. When that happens we will get to that personal knowledge zone which is the information fast track. I am completely aware that I had this massive catalyst and giant caffeine boost to my progression by sitting next to Russell. I know that. I'm not naïve of it, I know it. I'm completely aware of it.
Someone once was like, "Well you had this completely massive advantage by sitting next to him." Yes, I worked my butt off to get there, I know that. I'm completely aware of it. I'm not going to act like that's not true, but it's because of my willingness to be vulnerable and his willingness to be vulnerable as well about where we are and our ability to actually help other people. The other individual will not allow themselves to be helped if they will not be vulnerable. Does that make sense?

This is like a deep episode guys. I just hope that you understand that. That's one of those frustrating aspects for me. It's like the weirdest sixth sense and sad thing, talent development to see when people are not in that.

There's a lot of times I've been on stage and I'll be standing there and I can tell the person's trying to posture. I understand there is an element to that. This is show business. There is an element, but you have got to not posture. I am begging you. When you get to Funnel Hacking Live that you be you, you do not posture, you do not act like you are farther than you are, but you are so charged, bright eyed and bushy tailed, just ready to take on the world. That attitude alone will get you father along than not knowing the next step. Does that make sense? I hope this is making sense. It's kind of a different kind of episode and I just wanted to get a little bit, I don't know if philosophical is the word for it, but it's just the pattern that I've noticed.

Impersonal knowledge is good. Impersonal knowledge is good. It kind of sets the foundation and ground works so that when you actually get to meeting face to face with whoever the expert is you're trying to follow, you can get to the vulnerable stage because there's a ground work already. It does speed up the progression a lot. Then when you actually get to face to face and you actually start talking ... Anyway, it's very, very fascinating when you allow yourselves ... This is the definition of allowing yourself to be coachable. Does that make sense? When you are not in the act of self-betrayal.

It's always funny, there was several masterminds that I've participated in. There's one or two masterminds I've been in though where I can tell some of the people in the room they really, really, really, really, really want everyone else to know that they're cool. It's like we get it, all right you're cool, I get it.

If you just check your freaking pride at the door and be like, "Look, here are where my weaknesses are." You enter this zone, especially when the guru is also in a personal knowledge scenario and everyone has said I'm going to come as I am, let's all come as we are, and we get to this certain spot, oh my gosh there's magic that happens in those rooms guys. I mean that's what I crave. I've been a part of that many, many times. That's the reason I'm joining Russell's Inner Circle for real.

I told him, I was like, "Dude, if you're cool with it man," I hope he's okay I'm sharing this. This is me getting personal. I said, "Dude, if you're cool with it don't give me any kudos, don't give me any handouts. I want to pay full price. I want to pay full price to join your Inner Circle." I'm already talking to him like crazy still, so why would you do that Stephen? I am honoring the system. I am not asking for a discount.

I am respecting the zone that he has always lived in, the personal zone, he is that way with all of us. If you watch really what an attractive character is, if you look at the book Expert Secrets and it says develop an attractive character, a charismatic leader, you must get good at this if that's his thing. You must get good at being vulnerable. Stop caring how people see you. They're already seeing you as you are.

If you're real with yourself about it, you stop the acts of self-betrayal and you get to these cool zones, it's like magic in those rooms. I absolutely love it and I crave it. It's very hard to get to those zones with people. The Army is the only place I've ever had the kind of brotherhood with another group that I've ever had ever. You know what I mean? The amount of trust and the reason why, one of the reasons why is because we get personal with each other. Meaning we get to the personal knowledge zone. You're sitting around, you've been through some crap for the past little bit, whatever it is.

Doesn't mean you have to be suiting around or whatever. You know what I mean? There was a time we ran out of food for a while. We're all just sitting there like I lost 15 pounds I did not have to lose. When you're crawling around with those people and it's physically very challenging and demanding, there's a bomb that happens, and a trust that happens when you're shooting live rounds over each other's heads with the trust that the other person's not going to hit you. You know what I mean?

It's a huge deal. That kind of brotherhood, the only other time, the only other time I have felt that close to a group of people is inside masterminds where everyone drops the crap, is real where they are, they get to the personal knowledge zone, they're not in acts of self-betrayal, everyone is giving without the intent to receive back, they're giving answers, they're giving their networks, they're giving their resources, they're giving their advice, they're giving their experiences, the lessons, the shortcuts. It's funny guys, the people who say the more in coaching programs are the ones who always make more, they always do. For whatever reason it's honoring the system, whatever that is.

Anyway, it's a long episode guys and I hope that it makes sense and I know I kind of ranted and kind of rambled just a little bit, but I hope that you get kind of the picture of what I'm trying to paint here. If you are willing to get to one of those zones you, first of all will actually become coachable. I'm so excited you guys. I'm starting to get really, really pumped for the group that I've got coming in in two hours here. I've tried to preface the group.

I'm going to dive deep with them in each one of their businesses, whether or not they have a funnel. If they have a funnel we'll critique it, if they don't we'll figure out the plan they need to go build. Then I'll give them a whole bunch of assets, whatever ones that are applicable to the scenario to help jump start them, but it's not going to work unless I come to them as I am and as long as they also show up as they are as well, and we're all just teachable, trainable, and honest with our scenarios.

Doesn't mean don't be confident. Doesn't mean you got to crawl into the room on your hands and knees and be like, "Oh Mr. Humble," that's not what I'm saying at all. Just in your attitude of being able to be teachable and coachable. All right guys, that's it. Sorry for the long episode there but I hope that made sense and I will see you guys at Funnel Hacking Live. Please arrive coachable. Talk to you later.

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Here's what I learned while watching Russell in his $3 Million Dollar HOUR...

What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now here's you host Steve Larsen.

Steve Larsen: Hey, what's going on, everyone? Hey, so I just barely left ... Where was I? I was in Vegas. I forget where I go now. I'm traveling a lot right now. I'm going all over the place. I was home for a few days, went over and traveled. I'm only home for a few days again. I'm going to go travel again. I'm home for just a little bit, then I'll go travel again. It's all over the place right now. It's been fun. I really, really do enjoy it. Missing the family though a lot actually, but it's been really interesting. I had the very rare opportunity of watching Russell pitch. I was at Grant Cardone's 10X event and it was a great experience.

I got to go sit down and watch. Honestly my favorite speaker was Grant himself. Okay? Besides Russell. I'm going to talk about that in a second. If you've not heard the huge news with that, which is pretty amazing, but I was sitting there and I was listening to Grant Cardone and he was teaching amazing stuff. Absolutely love listening to him. Super dynamic speaker. Great guy to listen to. I got a lot of great things from other speakers as well. Frankly the whole reason I went down to this event, okay, I was not planning on going to this event for quite some time. It was about a month ago. I remember I woke up one morning and I started thinking ...

I don't know why guys, but I started thinking you know what? I've spoken on a lot of smaller stages now. I've spoken on a lot of smaller stages and smaller events, anywhere from 1 to 200 people, many times now, right, and several other events when there's supposed to be more people and there wasn't and there's a smaller amount. You roll the punches. A lot of fun, but I started to think. I'm like, "I want to see big people. Really huge influencers. I've got to see them go speak on huge stages with massive audiences and see what they do with their energy." The entire reason that I went to Grant Cardone's Growth event, right? 10X Growth event.

I actually did not realize how big of a deal it was. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I didn't realize how many people were going to be there until I think the day before ... Not even. No, no. Yeah, okay, the day before I went down there, there was 8,500 people. 8,500. I didn't know. I have never been in an event that has been that big, that huge. I had no idea it was going to be that big, which there was pros and cons to it. Obviously I'm a huge fan of ... Obviously the pro of a smaller venue is you get a little more of the personal touch. However, the con is you may not get to network quite as much. I mean there's no way I'm going to meet 8,500 people anyway.

Anyway, literally the entire reason I went to this event was to go watch massive, massive influencers speak to massive, massive audiences. I've spoken enough on other stages. I've taught a lot on other stages. Obviously not just on Russell's, but a lot of others. There is this vibe. Okay? Each presenter pulls different energies and relationships out of the audience, and it's fun to watch.

They will match and they will mirror to the personality of the one speaking. It was fun to watch. It's always fun to watch. If you have ever listened to Darren Stevens, he talks about universals and truisms, things like that, to bring the audience together to get them to do things that you want.

I love studying stage and I love studying stage presenters and what they do to actually control the audience. They have no idea most of the time that that's what's going on. Anything from small and OP things, down to the words you say, the gesture you use, the stories you tell. Stage to me is an amazing performance. I have a lot of respect for it because of ... If you go watch a movie, they can do a million takes, but like on a stage, you got to be an A game the entire time. It's all in one take. It's super, super amazing to watch what these guys do. It's honestly what I aspire to do. I want to go do that really bad. I'm really pumped.

In a few days, I get to go speak in front of 2,500 people and I'm so excited. It's going to be over in Dallas. That's the biggest group I've ever spoken to. I didn't realize that that actually is a lot of people until Dave Woodward told me it was. I was like, "Oh, I didn't realize that ... I thought everyone's ..." Anyway, I'm excited about that and that's awesome, but knowing that, knowing that that was going to come up, I wanted to go watch this event and it is the reason that I went. I don't know what I was expecting or what I was even thinking, but I wanted to show up and I wanted to go, like I said, to watch how these guys interact.

For some reason I had it in my mind, I knew that Russell was going to go and I knew he was going to pitch, and I knew that he was pulling off some very special things to be able to pitch to that many people. That is a skillset of its own, but I watched. I was like, "Yeah. I'm going to go." I didn't tell him I was going to show up for a while and I went and I showed up and got to listen. The shocking thing right from the beginning, I don't know why I was expecting anything different. I thought well, there's got to be some extra thing that he's doing for that many people. What is it? There's got to be some extra ... I knew he was going to use the perfect webinar script.

I knew he was going to go through it. That's what I teach guys in Two Comma Club Coaching. I go through and teach you how to actually set up a webinar and get it going, which is ... Frankly, it's one of the major reasons I left my job. I wanted to go prove out and who that that's actually something I knew how to do as well, not just teach it. I'm actually doing it, which I am. It's great. I'll keep accounting for what's been going on there in future episodes here. I don't know why I expected anything to be different. I sat down and I can tell you that he used the perfect webinar script just like he would anywhere else. What was fun for me because I love that script.

That script has made millions of dollars. I can think of very few of activities in my life that are worth studying that are that high leverage of an activity to go study than to learn how to pitch one to many, right? Instead of one to one, one to many like that. What I did is I started taking these notes and Russell got up and I was so excited. I know. I want to watch a master in his game, right? I got to watch him do that a lot of times sitting next to him face to face or right at his side or whatever in his office, but it was always over a computer, right or it was always over ... There'd be these smaller stages I go see him present of, but never one that big.

For some reason I kept thinking that there would be this extra X factor. I can tell you, I even wrote down, I wrote small audience versus large audience equals the same. I don't know why I thought it'd be any different. There was a few things though, little extra flares, right? Little extra things. I mean he's been doing it so long. How can you do it truly 100% the same every single time? There was little tiny things that he did along the way that I thought were just brilliant, little shows of mastery all throughout, right? I took notes of them. I wanted to go through a few of what they are. There's one massive big one. I'm going to save it to the end.

There's my little hook to stay to the end, okay? One massive one. There was a huge shift in what he normally does. It was brilliant to watch it guys. Absolutely amazing to watch it. I knew it was coming. I was excited for it. We had studied this stuff before we've gone ... Anyway, it was right before I left actually. He had this huge memory hit. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. There's a guy who used to ... He did a pitch this way. Let me go find it." Like 15 minutes later he had dug up all the pages from years ago and all the emails and he was like, "This is it." When he found it, it was amazing. He's got an elephant brain for marketing stuff. Absolutely incredible.

It was one major thing that he switched. There was little funny phrases along the way that I keep continuing to pick up on and put it on my own webinar. Every time I do, I swear my wallet just gets a little bit fatter, which is fun. I hope you guys are doing those things as well. Anyway, this is a skillset to just study and learn and obsess over.

I don't know that I've actually told you guys this yet, I recently went and I took everyone of Russell's webinar pitches, anything from Funnel Scripts, DotComSecrets X, obviously Funnel Hacks, Funnel Builder Secrets, any of the software secrets when he did that pitch, I grabbed everyone of the pitches that I've ever seen him do.

I ripped the audio from every single one of them and I put them in this ... It's literally 11 hours of me listening to Russell pitch back to back to back to back to back. I will just listen to it, right? I've got it all together and I will just listen to it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. One after another listen to ... There's all that education that matters that much in my opinion than learning that skillset. Have no mistake that I'm obsessed over this process. I absolutely love it. I love doing it. This is the thing for me to get better at. It's where I've dropped my anchor. You know what I mean? For a long time I just kind of ran around looking for different things to go do.
Anyway, what I wanted to do is I've got Russell's Funnel Hacks webinar presentation that we use in Two Comma Club Coaching on one screen right now.

Then in front of me, I've got also a whole bunch of notes. What I wanted to do is real quick just run through just a few little things. Some of them might seem tiny. Okay? Some of them might seem tiny. There's one major one though and I want to go through what that is. I want to document it. He certainly will I'm sure because it's just freaking incredible. If you don't know, he did over $3 million in an hour and a half. $3 million dollars in 90 minutes. He had a 90 minute slot. $3 million.

His goal awhile ago was just to do a million dollars in a day or even in just a year, right? I think it took four years to hit that million dollars in a year, which is awesome to hit that. That's huge. That's so cool to do that, and then he did again and again and again and again and again and faster and faster. The time getting shorter and shorter and shorter, right? Even the Two Comma Club Coaching program, we did that in three and a half weeks for a million dollars.
We did that several times in a few weeks for like Expert Secrets Book, things like that, and the timeline was getting just shorter and shorter, more and more compressed.

Finally, building up to this thing, this scenario where he did $3 million in an hour and a half, which is ridiculous. It's so cool. It's so cool. I'm so excited for him, so pumped for him. I went nuts on Voxer just screaming. Oh man. I'm so excited for him. Anyway, I want to go side by side real quick here.

If you study the Funnel Hacks webinar, the Funnel Hacks presentation, like I said, this is like the highest leverage stuff I believe you could ever go study that will pay you and pay you and pay you and pay you to learn how to do this stuff. Now I understand. I know there are other ways to pitch. I know there are other scripts. I know there are other formats, but this one is doing amazing.

Why change what works? I've been going back through ... I'm sorry. I've not actually gone to the actual content here yet. I promise I will here in just a moment, but what I've been doing also for my own webinar is I've been going through and I've been studying a lot of the big webinar people today, right?

I've been funnel hacking Liz Benny and watching her stuff. Dan Henry, right? Obviously Russell. Been going looking at Akbar Sheikh. I've been going and looking at each one of their pieces. Not just the pages, but inside each one of their scripts. How are they saying what they're saying? How does their slide say it? How are certain things here and there that are changing? It's been cool to go through and do that. The major foundation piece of my offer, that came from the market, right? I funnel hacked to a certain extent. I funnel hacked to a certain area and then after that, I went and I made my offer.

The actual changes to the funnel, now that the product's done, now the product that I've been selling is totally done, now I'm just focused on two things: the funnel, how can I improve the funnel, the actual buying experience and selling experience, number two, promoting it. That's it. Those are my two activities until I die basically, right? Well, number one, I'm really focusing right now especially on the funnel. I know there are things that are broken.

I'm fixing them right now. We're getting those done. I'm very excited for that. Then I'm going and I'm focusing on how to sell this stuff obviously. I've been going through that and I've been changing all these things.

My head has already been very much in the spot. That's the whole reason why I'm trying to pre-frame what I'm going to tell you that it's not like just random things I wrote down. This is stuff that I looked at very specifically that what he was doing that I'm going to go through and I'm going to add. Anyway, at the very beginning, like in the Funnel Hacks presentation, one of the things that you do is ... There's really two introductions inside of the perfect webinar and I don't think people realize that. There are two introductions. Number one, you introduce the webinar. Okay? Why the heck are they there, right? Why are they there?

If you've ever read the book Pitch Anything, it's one of my favorite books ever, it is definitely probably in the top probably 5 or 10 books I've ever read ever, and what it teaches and goes through is it talks about every time there's something new that comes up inside of the brain or in your life, your head runs through all these filters, right? It's always funny. My wife and I went ... I can't remember what movie we went to go see, but we went to a movie theater.

We were sitting down in the movie and the movie preview started showing up, right?

The movie previews are showing and they're these little basically little mini stories that are supposed to get you excited about the real thing. It's always funny. Everybody becomes a movie critic at the end of a movie preview, right? You always see everyone's heads turn to each other and go, "Oh yeah. We should see that. It looks great," or you'll see everyone's heads go, "That looks weird. That looks stupid. Dumb. Weird." Everyone becomes this movie critic. Why are you bringing this up, Steven? Because every time something new pops up in front of us, our heads starts to run through a filter, much like a movie preview. We run it through a filter, right?

Number one, am I in danger? Needs of the body. Am I in physical danger? Can I eat it? Should I run? Fight or flight? Should I meet with it? Random stuff like that, but there's these criteria that your head runs through whether or not you're trying to to keep you safe and keep you alive and keep you breathing, right? It's the same for every piece of marketing. It's the same for every piece. Unless you can get past the first part of that brain, you will not pitch that person. They will not make a buying decision, right? There are two introductions to a webinar. The first introduction is introducing the webinar itself, right?

That's where Russell says, "Hey, look, you're in the right place. This is where I'm going to show you how to do this without this. Here's my earnings disclaimer. Here is a testimonial of somebody else doing this thing." He doesn't even talk about what it is yet or who he is. The second introduction is introducing him or me, right? Because I'm doing the same thing, right? The first I'm introducing the webinar very methodically. Number two, I introduce myself. They got to fall in love with me now, right?

The whole reason for those two, especially the first introduction, is to get past that first part of the brain so that they know, "Oh, I'm in a safe place. Oh, I can let the guard down." I literally have been saying that in my webinars lately. "Guys, feel free to just let the guard down. It's okay. Let the walls down. This is a safe place and safe environment for us to all learn." I can't remember everything I say without my slides here yet. I don't have it totally memorize slide by slide yet like Russell does, but it's going in that direction. There's two introductions.

The story, Russell use the story at the beginning talking about the Four Minute Mile and he's using it right off the bat. The story is breaking and rebuilding beliefs. It's getting everyone the same plain. That's actually a form of NLP. Especially from stage, it's very, very clever for him to do that from the very beginning, to begin with a story like that. Most people know that story, which brings a sense of community and bringing together, right? All those little things. If you read the book Launch, the nine mental triggers, he is using those like crazy at the very beginning of that pitch. It's very crafted very, very well.

He's going through and that's what he's doing. He's going through and he gave the story about the Four Minute Mile. It was absolutely incredible. He tells his own story. He's using an epiphany bridge. "Oh, how cool to be if I made a million dollars? This guy made a million dollars in a day. My Four Minute Mile is what if I just made a million dollars in a year?" He's talking about these internal and external desires, using epiphany bridge script, right?

Now what we need to do is we need to see that this guy is not the only nutcase who actually had these results. He goes through and he's showing ... Because that's what the brain is thinking.

He goes through and he's showing success stories of others, showing some video testimonials, right? He's using the same exact format and formula. He very, very closely to the point ... It was right after he introduced the webinar, right after he kind of introduced himself as well, he goes into what he calls a price marinade. This is the major difference for fear of talking forever and talking your face off guys and getting to an actual point of this podcast. I'm going to go straight to the main idea. Okay? We've been going for a little bit. I'm just going to talk about it. He does what he calls a price marinade. He's talked about his before so I feel totally fine talking about it as well.

A price marinade. Now what's a price marinade? Now in a normal sales environment, it's very common for a lot of times to withhold the actual price until the end, right? What is that in Funnel Hacks? His stack, his value and his stack is $11,552. $11,552. Is this worth $11,552? Of course, it is. If all I said was this, is it $11,552? Of course, it is. Right? That's what he does. He goes through and that's what he teaches. His stack has a total value of $11,552. What typically happens is you withhold that information until the ever end. Then there's a big price drop, a public price, and then another kind of final price drop because you're special and you're on the webinar today.

In this scenario, he took that first part and he made it known in the very beginning. This is very key. This is very, very key. This is a huge deal you guys. You don't pull this off without a lot of finesse, which obviously he has and he could do very, very well. What he did is he went and he said, "Here is the price. Before I sell you, before I have anytime to break and rebuild your belief patterns, which is the rest of the webinar, to do the stack and to tell three more stories, before I get a chance to do that, I'm going to tell you the price of this." It's a very interesting play. I feel like I'm going through and I'm talking about and commenting on football plays from the Super Bowl right.

It's a very interesting play though to go through and watch a pitch man go and pull part of the price, the most expensive aspect of the price, and bring it at the beginning of the pitch, of an hour and a half pitch. That's a lot of time for someone to get out of their seat and walk away. It's how he did it that was very, very clever. It's called a price marinade because you bring that price forward and you talk about it at the beginning and you bring it up first so that it marinates. The brain has time to get used to that price point except that the price point that you said is actually real and say yes to it along the way. Is this making sense?

I know I'm like going deep into the weeds right now and it's not normal on my podcast to do this. Usually when I do this, people are like, "Oh, that's an okay episode." I'm like, "No. That was like the most gold I could have given." It's because it's not wrapped in terms of the story right now. That's why people might feel like that. Understand what I'm saying. He brought the most expensive, the total value of a stack, and he brought it first. This is what he said, "My goal is to show you that everything that I'm doing here for you to be successful you need to invest $11,552." That's about how he worded it. Is that okay? He made everyone raise their hand.

I think we raised our hand or we did something physical to attach to that verbal thing where we said, "Yes. Yes, Russell. I agree. If you can give me 10 times the results of my business right now," we're talking about 10X even he tied it right into it, which is awesome, "if you can give 10 times what my business is doing now, of course, I'll pay you $11,552." This was masterful. This was masterful because he charges $3,000 for the product, but they've already said yes to a much higher price point. Now he has the entire rest of the "webinar" live from stage, though in front of 9,000 people ... How many people were there? I think it was 8,500.

He's got the rest of the time to break and rebuild the beliefs that are saying no to $11,552. He went through and guys, the way he crafted it was just incredible. Just incredible. What's interesting is Russell's following the path with ClickFunnels that all of us would be expected to follow as well. First, you write a sales message. You make sure it sells. Then you actually built the product to make sure it fulfills what you sold, right?

Then you kind of go on the road selling it like crazy, and you're doing the same webinar to tons of people for a long extended period of time. That's kind of the road that I'm getting on right now and I'm feeling that shift...

In fact, I was talking to Cole. You guys know, he's my buddy and he's my first full-time employee, which I'm very excited about to be happening here in a month or two, which I'm very excited about. He was already keeping me on track saying like, "Dude, stay focused man. Don't go getting on anything else," but I'm willing that shift right now. I'm feeling the shift and Russell was in the shift. The shift is don't go build anything else. Just sell the crap out of the thing that you've proven, right? You go and you go and you start selling and selling and selling and selling and selling and selling and selling.

Russell for the last little while has done nothing, but the Funnel Hacks webinar...

Very few other webinars here and there that he's built from scratch. This one though, I think he built the majority of this one from scratch. It was amazing to watch the template and the way he used the template of the perfect webinar script and he took certain parts here and he moved other parts there. You need to see what parts are malleable and what parts are not. What's interesting is it's no surprise what's not malleable. Storytelling? That's not malleable. You tell your stories. You get good at telling stories. You want to know how you sell? Tell stories. You want to know how to market? Tell stories.

At the very based bottom line of it without going to any other detail, marketing to storytelling. You know what I mean? You're building and rebuilding the way someone sees the world through storytelling. That's exactly what he did. He's followed that exact same thing, but this idea of the price marinade is how he was able to get everyone pre-framed for a lot of money. Then it was this insatiable deal when it was only three grand. Does that make sense? He's introducing a constraint. He's introducing a constraint at the beginning of the webinar. The constraint being, "It's 11 grand. Oh my gosh. I've got to come up with $11,000. Holy crap."

Then he's releasing it at the end. Same thing with the Funnel Hacks webinar. He introduces the constraint. Hey, this is what ClickFunnels is. It's $297. For $297 you get this and this and this and this and this and this. He's saying that because that creates limits, that creates barriers, right? You get this many contacts. You get this many funnels. You get this many this and that. He's saying that so that at the end of the webinar he can release the constraint for his fast acting bonus and get people to get it. This was like loaded with tons of constraints at the beginning with tons of constraint releasing at the end.

That's why I was so freaking nuts and excited about the pitch that I was seeing. I was like dude, you usually just put like one limiting thing at the beginning and then you release that constraint at the end. You put like a hundred and price marinade. Oh my gosh. $3,000 price point. Thee million bucks in an hour and a half. Oh my gosh. Huge guys. Hall of frame right there in my mind. Should be in yours as well. I know that he's got this Two Comma Club Coach trophy, but they better come up for another way for what he just did. $3 million in an hour? That should be its own award. Most of us is just trying to hit that in much longer period of time. It's pretty funny.

Walk inside ClickFunnels and he's got I think 17 or 18 Two Comma Club awards of his own, and three of them are $10 million products besides ClickFunnels. The dude knows how to sell. Mad, mad, mad props, my friend. Absolutely incredible. Very fun to watch that. I encourage everyone of you guys to obsess like you would over sports or obsess like you would like a hobby over the act of pitching. You've got to sell. Everything depends on sales. Don't think that you can be in marketing and neglect sales. They are different. They are different. The better marketer you are, the less hard sales we have to do, but you still have to learn how to sell.

You still got to learn how to pitch. You still got to learn how to present an offer. Obsess over these elements. These are the things, these are the dials to turn. These are the most high leverage activities for you to go obsess and absolutely love. Anyway, that's all I got for you guys. I'm sorry if it was a little bit in the weeds. It's a little bit of a different styled episode than normally I would do, but I just wanted to talk about that and help you guys understand like why that was such a big deal. It was a huge deal on a lot of accounts. My brain, my little marketing serious brain is going nuts.

I literally was just about to end the episode, but I forget one other thing that you guys should all know about. One of the things I've struggled with ... Struggling is the wrong word for it, but like is a challenge when you're face to face with people in an event to get people when it's time to go buy to actually stand up, the physical action of them to stand up and go buy at the back table or back of the room or whatever. The reason why is because they will sit there and they just kind of look at you and they don't want to be rude because you're talking.

You have to give them permission to stand up even though you just said, "Go to the back right now. There's order forms on the back. When they're gone, they're gone," or whatever, right? You have to actually say it. It's interesting to watch Russell ... Two of the things here that I've just learned from those are huge, huge, huge guys. I hope that you are soaking this in. This is annoying that I'm going this long, but it was cool to watch him. Several times when he got to the part where the actual call to action came, he would be like, "Guys, if you can tell this is already going to fit you already, like stand up and go to the back. Stand up and go to the back. Seriously right now.

Stand up and go to the back. Get up. Stand. Right now. Just get up and go to the back." He kept saying it like that way. Then he would stop like in the middle of the stack. I stood up. He was super nice. He talked about my MLM Funnel in his presentation. All this people around me were asking about it. I stood up to go down to the table and they were like, "You bought already." I was like, "This is something to buy again." I started walking down. He still went for another like 15-20 minutes it felt like. It was funny at least. About 15 minutes. He wasn't even done with the presentation and there was probably a thousand people.

He wasn't even done. That's what I want to come say. He was not done and he kept going and going. He was finishing the whole presentation, but there was already this huge massive people at the tables turning their order forms like hotcakes. That's what I want you to understand and know is that ... He continued to throughout, continued to say, "Stand up and go to the back. If you know this is a good for you already, oh look at that. Those are the smart people who are already in the back right now just standing up and go to the back." He kept giving permission because people don't want to get rude. They're sitting there.

They're listening to you. They're in this docile state. You got to break that. He'll continue to say it over and over and over and over, getting them permission to come up. I've used that tactic in the past and I made the stupid mistake of not continuing to say it. I kept talking afterwards and some dude sat down after he saw that I kept speaking. It pissed me off. He didn't go buy because he was trying not to be rude to me. That dude should have just went and bought. I did not continue to say stand up. Stand up. When you're doing live events like that, continue to say, "Get up if you know this fits for you. Get up. Keep going. This would be helpful for you. Get up."

Then the next day what he had was a ... He was able to stand back up and give a ... It was basically a re-offer. He like did a double close. It was really interesting. He gave away some really cool ... He basically stood up and said, "Look guys, I pulled $3 million out of the room. If you guys want to know how I did it, I've decided that I'm going to add my presentation and all the stuff that I did inside what you bought. If you're like on the fence relieving like in the next little bit, you have got to stand up right now and go to the back and purchase right now because I'll give you ..." He's adding his extra bonuses in.

I thought like how interesting is that? The guy is offer creating off the fly. This is incredible. Just making it even better and better and better and better. Anyways, he did this cool follow up thing. I was thinking like how would I apply it to a webinar? I'm thinking if I can, that's going to be a cool thing where I do some cool unadvertised bonus. Hey look, if you're still on the fence, I decided to add X, Y and X in. I think it'd be awesome.

Anyway, I'm excited to go apply some of the things that I saw to the online webinar. This certainly apply. Man, guys, I get more excited about Funnel Hacking Live than Christmas and this was like the most exciting thing I've ever seen in my life.

It was so cool. You guys can call me nerd. I don't care. It was awesome. All right guys. Talk to you later. Obsess over your thing. Don't let anyone else talk you out of working hard. Talk to you later.

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WHY I get so excited for Funnel Hacking Live...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Oh yeah.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, "How will I do it without VC funding or debt? Completely from scratch?" This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys? I am so freaking excited for Funnel Hacking LIVE. It is coming up. Just to be clear, I've had a lot of people reach out and say, "Oh, Steve, now that you're leaving ClickFunnels, are you gonna keep podcasting and publishing and doing their podcast?" Please understand that this is my own show and it's not affiliated at all with ClickFunnels. I just happen to be a ridiculous fanboy of everyone over there, what they do. They're changing the world, and so that's why I talk about it so much.

Also, besides the fact that I've worked there. It's just a lot of part of my history, and I have massive, ridiculous respect and love for Russell and what he does. And, frankly, when you've made the kind of money he has, he obviously very easily could kind of drift off into the night, and he doesn't choose to do that. He decides to continue to go out and change stuff.

So, anyways, I'm excited for Funnel Hacking LIVE. If you are not going, please find a way to get there, okay? I'm not being paid to say that. I am trying to help you understand and get to the spot that changed my life. It changed my life for me when I got there, and it was amazing. It changed everything. To be around the right people, to be around the right information, to be around the most cutting-edge stuff ...

Anyways, there's my pitch for you.

Hey, I have for the last several episodes been teasing you guys with this idea that I've got something special for you who are coming, and I do. I'm sure we're gonna meet anyways, but I really want to meet you guys if you're listening to this, okay? And so, I've got something special for you. I went out and I grabbed these sweet little flash drives and these flash drives ... What I'm gonna put on them is pretty incredible. I have been going out ... And if you haven't been noticing, I've been building a bunch of funnels live lately. It's been a lot of fun. I've built, maybe, nine of them and each one of them is about five hours long. I build them from scratch and I record myself doing it, and I do it in front of a live audience.

And I've been doing that for the last, I don't know, four months, five months, something like that. And it's been fun. I've really, really enjoyed going through and doing that. It's a ton of work, oh my gosh. But I teach for the first fourth, the first third, something like that, and then I build from the ground up and everyone asks questions while I go. So it's extremely in-depth. Every single thing I place on there is on purpose. Everything has a purpose, and it's all part of the strategy.

Anyways, I hope if you've been able to watch those, it's been kind of awesome...

Well, when ... It's probably, like, what, three years ago? I built this funnel. It was probably the fourth or fifth funnel I'd ever built. The first funnel I'd ever built was, I told you guys, it was a smartphone insurance funnel. It went well. It was kind of a break-even business. If I had known more at that time, I would've kept it going and sold something more expensive on the back end because we were getting customers. Break even, which is awesome. That was our first funnel, first attempt, which is pretty cool when you think about it. It's awesome.

But, shortly after I started building all these funnels for all these other companies. I was ... A lot of you guys know, I am actually just barely leaving the Army right now. Paperwork in the government takes a long time to do what it's supposed to, I guess, and get the final signature. I don't know what it does. It must just sit somewhere and have a four or five month timer on it, and then someone walks up, signs the last thing, and hands it back. I don't know, but everything's out of my hands. I'm in the middle of leaving the Army right now. As soon as the last signature happens, I am completely out of the military.

Anyways, so I enlisted first, and I went through basic training and I loved it. It was hard. It wasn't impossible, though. I was actually hoping it'd be a little bit harder, but there were some challenging moments. There was some challenging aspects to it. I didn't eat that much. I still actually slept pretty well for the most part. We didn't really eat, though, that much, which was ... I lost 15 pounds, and I went in weighing, like, 170. I was really skinny when I came out of basic. It was crazy.

So that part was challenging, and there were some challenging aspects along the way. So I get out, and I was officially in the military at that time, and when I get in college and start building these funnels, build the smartphone insurance funnel, build all these other things. And what ends up happening is ... I was in a program called ROTC, and I became an officer when I graduated.

However, we wanted to put on a fundraiser. We wanted to put on a mud run. So what we did, was we put together this track. It was a 5K mud run, you know what I mean? Like, there was mud everywhere, obstacle courses all over the place. We had cool fire pits you had to jump over. We had spots where ... We made it military style, you know what I mean? You ran with M16s through all the stuff while we had simulated explosions going on around them. It was really, really cool.

And we put this awesome course together and they're like, "Hey, how are we gonna get people?" I was like, "I've got it. I've been learning about this thing called ClickFunnels. I know none of you know what it is. I'm gonna go build it, I'll be right back." And I spent probably 40 hours. I didn't totally know what I was doing at the time. I was just kind of figuring it out as I went, and I was talking to Support pretty much every single day. A couple times, actually. I became "that guy," you know what I mean, to Support, probably. Which is fine. I was learning.
And I went through and I was building all this stuff and I put together this event funnel. And it was the first time I ever did anything like that.

Well, from that event funnel, I went out and we started promoting it, and we got it on the news. We got it in newspapers. We got it on our school ... And we went, basically, the equivalent of what a Dream 100 would be. We ended up getting 650 people to my first time ever building a live event funnel. 650 people to a live event. We ended up raising ... We collected $7,000. We raffled off an AR-15. If you don't know what that is, it's like an M16, but the civilian version.

And we went out and we raised all this money and donated it to the Fisher House Foundation. Which, the Fisher House Foundation is the ... It's pretty awesome. When a soldier gets wounded and they get flown to a hospital, the Fisher House Foundation funds the expenses for the family to fly out to whatever hospital the soldier is being taken care of in. So they can actually go see their loved ones while they're in the hospital getting better. So we were able to make a good donation there, which is awesome. It was a really, really cool experience.
So, it's very fascinating, though, because very shortly after that funnel ... No joke, meaning, the event happened ...

A lot of people don't know this. The event happened and the next week I was at my first Funnel Hacking LIVE event. When I bootstrapped my way to that event. That was all literally a week after we ran that mud run, which was the funnel that I built to get people to it. I was like, "This is working. Holy crap!" And I was building it for other people. And I was like, "What if I did this for this event and it worked?" And we ended up straight cash, and I bootstrapped my way building more funnels for other businesses to get to that Funnel Hacking LIVE event.
Well, lo and behold when I got hired, time came for Funnel Hacking LIVE again, 2017. And I had the complete, ridiculous, insane honor of helping build, obviously, like every other funnel that I was there for ... Helping build the funnel for Funnel Hacking LIVE 2017. Guess what? Same process, okay?

I literally funnel hacked, basically, Russell's 2015 event funnel for my mud run funnel, and then I went through, and I was at the 2016 one. And when the 2017 event came along, I was like, "Sweet. We're gonna build this funnel." And guess what? Obviously, the page looked different. Obviously there was better sales copy than I ever wrote, that first time I ever built that mud run event funnel, that 5K ... We called it the 5K Warrior Mud Run. Obviously, it was to a higher quality, but it was the same funnel.

And I went through, and I was like, "This is so sweet. Holy crap!" And I went through and I got the extreme, ridiculous honor of building this thing and putting it altogether for the 2017 Funnel Hacking LIVE.

Well, I am extremely ecstatic. In just a few weeks here, like, one week to be exact. I get the honor of going again to Funnel Hacking LIVE and meeting those of you guys who are also coming, and guess what I want to give you? I went through, and I've been building these funnels live. Let me go full circle with this, okay? You're like, "Man, Steve, you're going all over the place." Just follow me for a second, okay?

I've been building ... When I left working there, which crushed my insides. I just felt like it's something I had to do. It crushed my insides when I left that job. I was like, "I've gotta go put in stone a lot of these very specific lessons and tactics and tricks that are very funnel-specific. I've gotta go put those down in stone." So that's why I've been building live a lot of funnels. There's been a group of about 40-50 people that have been joining me for the majority of these funnel builds for the last five months, and I have the recordings of all of them. I have the share funnels. I have the email sequences.

I have how it works in each industry. I have other ridiculous stuff that I put inside of it...

And my plan is to sell those ... A lot of people have asked me, "What are you doing with these, Steven?" Well, number one, I've been putting them in my product for my webinar. A lot of you guys have been going out and buying that product just so you can get the funnels, which is awesome. There's like, eight, of those recordings in there.

Almost literally every single one of them's in that product...

But a lot of you guys, though ... Like, the ones that ... There are others that I've been obviously not including that did not apply to the product that I've been selling. So, anyways, my plan is to be able to give you some of those funnels, as well as the five hour recording of me, first of all training you on that funnel. When to use it, when not to use it, the order in which to use it, the best scenarios to use it in. And then me actually building it.

But then also, the share funnel itself. The email sequences with it. The pdf map that shows you how the whole thing works from a top level view, 50,000-foot view. And I want to give the event funnel to you.

Now, obviously it's not the Funnel Hacking LIVE event funnel; however, it is the same funnel. Does that make sense? I went through and I built it ... I don't know when that was. It was recent, and that was one of my favorite ones ever. I want to give it to you guys for free. It's my future plan, though, to sell them individually anywhere for $400-$500 a piece because they're freaking awesome and they're worth more than that. I don't start building funnels for somebody until the $50,000-$100,000 range with royalties in the back. They're definitely worth $500, okay?

Anyways, I want to make them $1,000 each, but I wanted to make them more available. So, it's the training, it's the funnel, it's the email sequences/other sequences that come along with it. It's the pdf map, and it's when I went and did a full training on the event funnel itself. It's like five hours. It's a live Q and A in front of a huge group, which is awesome.

Anyways, so I wanted to give that to you. I'm gonna put that on the flash drives, and I've got like 60-70 flash drives, and it says Steve Larsen on them. And I want to be able to give them to you, though, at the event.

Here's what I'm asking for in return. Yes, I am a marketer, so what I'm gonna ask is that when you come up to me, you say a little magic phrase so that I know that you are one of the people who are listening to this show. And here's what I ask from you. That we take a picture together, and you post it on your Facebook profile. That's it. Say, "Hey, I'm with this good looking champ right here," of whatever. Does that sound good? That's all I'm asking for in return. This is me pitching. Sounds good?

I told a story to break and rebuild your belief about the importance of an event funnel and what it can do. And then what I do, is now this is me putting the offer out. Sound good? And what I'm doing, is this is call to action. You're gonna walk up to me, and this is what you're gonna say. First of all I'm gonna say it. Actually, you know what? I'm not gonna say it. I need to tell a story to help explain it.
So what I'm gonna do, is ... When I was in the Army in basic training, I went in the middle of winter.

And winter was rough, guys. Winter was rough. It was a stupid decision to go to basic training in the winter because the drill sergeants totally took advantage of it. There were ice storms all the time, and just out of a mental toughening factor, they'd leave us out in the ice storms in shorts and a t-shirt for hours. And you'd just be sitting there at the position of attention, which means you can't move. The only thing you can do is move your eyes, but even then you're just supposed to look straight forward.

So you're staying completely still, just freezing your butt off, and there's these ice storms going off. And you're just, "Ah!" And one day, we were practicing taking over areas. Like, "How do we enter in an area and take over that position?" There's 200 of us. Can you imagine handing over a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds M16s? There's gonna be some coordination. There's gonna be a plan.
So we were practicing taking over, and I was significantly older than most of the rest of the people there. I was in college. That made me very different. I was married. That made me very different. I had a kid. That made me very different. I was a very different scenario.

I was running side businesses. That made me very different. I was a very different kid than the person that was already there.

But anyways, we were practicing taking over these areas, and we get to this field, and the field is flooded. It had been raining/ice falling. Not snowing, it was either ice or rain. It was sleeting for the last several days. And I went and they were like, "Hey, we're gonna practice taking over these areas." And we were kind of walking through the scenario, so it wasn't run at full speed. We're all doing it half-speed. And they're like, "Okay, Larsen. You're gonna run out here, and you and this guy, you're gonna dive on the ground and you're gonna interlock your feet. And you wiggle your foot, and that's how you would talk back and forth to each other.

So you don't have to actually speak with your mouth. Your feet are interlocked. Just one of the foots of the guy next to you. Does that make sense?

So I went out and I go out there and they're like, "Okay, get down right here." And where they pointed was this, probably, like, six inches of water. It was a lot of water. It was a full out puddle, and the drill sergeant knew that, and they were smiling at me. And they wanted to make it crappy, and I was like, "Okay." And if you've ever seen the movie Unbroken, this is nothing like that intensity, but please understand that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to say, "Alright. Bring it. I can take it."

So I laid down, and what happens when you get in cold ... It's 33 degrees outside. It was not quite cold enough yet to freeze, but it was so cold that ... It was almost ice. Guys, I'm laying in six inches of water, 33 degrees. Freezing. Massive wind coming in. Nonstop wind. And I'm laying in water. It's now almost completely covering my entire body, and I'm laying in it completely still in the prone holding my weapon with our feet interlocked.

And my first thought was, "Oh my gosh." What happens when you get in water that's that cold ... If anyone's ever taken an ice bath before or if you've ever had the luxury of Russell throwing you in the middle of his Cryosauna, your body starts to shake. And what's happening is, when you start shaking, the capillaries are cinching up and the blood is sucking out of your capillaries and rushing to your organs.

And that shaking feeling is kind of your body trying to get warm, but also after a while your body just kind of sucks the blood out of it. That's why your fingers start to turn a little bit blue, it's because the blood's taking out of your extremities towards your organs to keep them warm.

And when you stop shaking, you know that you are starting to head towards a dangerous area...

So, I was shaking. I was like, "Oh my gosh," and I just started yelling. I was like, "Whoa, yeah." I'm gonna react to this well. I'm gonna react to the scenario well. I cannot control what is happening to me. I can control my reaction to it. So I'm going to change the way I view this. And I'm going to start yelling, and I'm going to get excited. And I'm gonna be bigger than this situation because we did not go back for a long time. I stayed wet for a long time. My feet were gray, I don't think they're supposed to be that color, when I finally took my boots off. But I was like, "I'm gonna react well. I am going to choose how this happens. I'm gonna choose the outcome of this scenario."

And it was the first time ... It's not the first time, but that was a very vivid time that I was like, "You know what? This is an important opportunity for me to learn something if I choose to." So this is what I did. I stood up when the drill sergeants weren't looking. I stood up and I started running. I started running and I started jumping in the puddles of water next to all the other soldiers. And I started playing with them. Does that make sense? I started making it this thing ... We were in a slow speed, kind of, environment. This was not like ... We weren't running this at full space. We weren't being ...

Anyway, we're all holding real weapons, but we were jumping around. We were being safe, but we were jumping around, we're splashing water. And I was like, "Woo! Yeah!" Jumping around. And people were like, "Larsen! Shut up! Shut up! I hate you!" And they're swearing on my unborn, future children at the time. They're like yelling at you. They're like, "Oh, I'm gonna kill you. You're dead tonight. You're dead. We're putting soaps in our socks and hitting you." They're threatening me with all this stuff, and I'm jumping around, and I was just doing what I could to react appropriately to the crappy scenario I had no control over.
And I started saying this phrase, and it sounds stupid, but it's what I want you to say to get the flash drive. Okay? Don't mess it up.

There is a vernacular to it. It sounds very simple, okay? I started going ... And what I would do is I would start saying in my mind, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" and I would start yelling that. I would start yelling it. "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" Don't jack it up. This is how you do it.

This is how it's spelled. It's h ... This is all in caps. If you're writing it, it's all in caps. Massive 72-point font. Bold. It's H!H! OO BAYBAY. It's baybay. Not baby. You're not, "Oh baby." No. None of that weak crap. You're gonna reach down. You're gonna grab your boot strings, and you're gonna go "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And you're gonna scream it. And when I see you, that's the phrase.

Because you're probably gonna be tired at Funnel Hacking LIVE. You are probably ... There's probably so many things gonna be lodging into your brain that you've never considered. New connections, new ideas, new things to take your business to the next level, that often a lot of times what will happen is if you are not in the correct state of mind, you will miss it. And I don't want you to. This is all about self-state control, and you've gotta get good at it. I believe in it, and it's the reason Russell and I were able to build funnels at the speed we were.

We didn't always feel like it. We're tired most of the time. But by choosing my state ...

Yes, even on the internet when I'm sitting in my office by myself and there's no other person around me to cultivate that energy, I choose the outcome. I choose the scenario. I'm sorry, I don't choose the scenario. I choose the way I react to it. Which, that is what determines the outcome, funny enough. Not the scenario.
How many people have you ever heard of who were super poor, terrible with life scenarios, and then they turn it all around? Why? Life didn't dish them up this amazing card deck. It's the way they reacted to it that determines the outcome. I use that phrase in so many ... Guys, when we were ...

Later on, just to keep the military thing going on ... Honestly, I use it in so many areas. I still do today.

We were doing gas chamber ... I don't know if I've told this story before, but we were doing gas chamber training, and I put my gas mask on. I put my gas mask on, and it's CS gas. If you don't know what CS gas is, it's not fun. It gets inside of your ... As soon as you breathe it or it starts to seep into your skin, it literally makes all of your glands and your pores start to ... The equivalent of defecate, okay? You have no control over your nose and you start to get these disgusting runny noses. Your eyes start to get all red and watery. It's pretty nasty stuff.
And it's basically riot control gas.

But, they really increased the dosage for my group. Because they want to teach you how to use gas masks. So we're all lining up there, and people start kind of freaking out and kind of hyperventilating. We're all standing outside of this gas chamber, and we all got these gas masks, and they all start practicing. "Gas! Gas! Gas!" And we all put our gas masks on. We have to do it within seven seconds, seal it, clear the mask of any gas that actually might have gotten in while we were putting the mask on.

So, you blow air in and then you grab another valve, seal that one off, and then suck in really hard, and it seals it to your face. It's not comfortable.

And they're like, "Okay, we're gonna go in," and we start going into this gas chamber, and it was a little bit freaky, I'm not gonna lie. You get in there, and it's thick, green smoke all over the place. You're like, "Crap, I really don't want to breathe this garbage. Oh my gosh, I hope I sealed my mask correctly. H!H! OO BAYBAY!" Does that make sense? All these fears, "Scared! H!H! OO BAYBAY! Let's just do it, baby, and you just jump out the plane, build the parachute while you fall." That's why I say that phrase. Does that make sense?

It's crazy, though. Some girls in there started freaking out, and they had to physically grab this girl and shove her against the wall and tell her to settle down. It was a little bit ... Anyway, and then you take the mask off and you start doing exercises in there, and it was not fun. People were throwing up. That was a terrible experience. That was not fun.

But that's what I'm saying, though. You don't always have control. In fact, you almost never have control over the scenarios in your life. And when you're given a little bit of rope to have control, you take that rope and you run 15 miles with it and you go as far as you can with it.

Most of the time, it's about reacting appropriately to the actions that are handed to you. That's, like, 90% of why I do what I do, guys. That's, like, 90% of the reason I've been able to do what I do. It is a mentality.

I hate the phrase, "Oh, it's all about ... I do mindset coaching." Like, okay, what does that mean? I don't understand that. To me, though, that is what that means. State control. That means something more important to me than mindset training. That's what I do, though. It's about how I react to the scenarios given to me. Very rarely do I ever have a great deck that is just given to me. I believe in luck, I just don't believe in chance. Does that make sense?

Luck. Have you ever heard the quote, "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity?" I think that's how the phrase goes. I can't remember. "Luck is where preparations meets opportunity," or something like that. I believe in luck, I just don't believe in chance. I believe that if I work my absolute guts out, I will be ready for the opportunity that just kind of comes my way. And it will be handed to me because I've been running. I'm already in motion. Opportunity goes to those who are already in motion.

It is so frustrating to try and coach individuals who are not in motion yet, and their main hurdle is for me to help them get in motion. Oh my gosh, that is a rough scenario. Oh, just be in motion. I don't even care if you're running the wrong direction. Just be moving, and you will find guidance as you move.

It is so much easier to steer a moving canoe...

Have you ever sat in a canoe before? I was in scouts. I got my Eagle Scout award. I went and did all this other stuff. It's a lot of fun, right? But paddling ... I've been in many canoes before where you're paddling, and if you're trying to just coast along with the river, it could be a little challenging, if you're moving at the speed of a very still river, to actually steer. It's way easier to steer when you're going somewhere.

You control the speed, rather than try and drift. Drifting with the paddle is, like, worse than not having a paddle at all. You don't have a paddle. You've got ClickFunnels. You've got the best marketing out there. You've got the best of the best of the best. The only thing that's up to you is to start rowing. I don't care if you're going the wrong direction.

So, the phrase is, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And you've got to say it like that, or I'm not handing you a flash drive. I'm excited for you to get there. I'm excited for you guys to feel the change if you want it to be there. You guys, understand that I had so much belief that if I just got in the room ... If I just got in the room, my life would change. That was my belief. It was that strong. That first event I ever got to when I did not have the discretionary income to actually pay for something like an event and I bootstrapped my way there.

And because of that, it did change. And when I got hired at ClickFunnels, 20 minutes after my interview, they give a call, and they said, "Hey, you're hired. We want you to sit next to Russell," and I was like, "What?" I was trying to go for a sSupport position. I just wanted to be near where the action was. I was like, "Are you serious? Of course. You're gonna pay me to do that?" And I called my wife, and ... Years of struggling ... I was in motion. I was in motion, and that's why I feel like it came my way. I did not have all the answers, but I had enough to see the three steps in front of me. I knew where the peak was. I could not see anything in-between.

And I called my wife, and I said, "Babe ..." I was trying not to cry, but I was also losing my voice because I was just yelling I was so excited. I was like, "Babe, our life just changed." I was driving the five hours back to where my family was. Less than a week later, we were living in Boise, Idaho.

What I'm trying to say is ... I said, "Babe, the course of our life just changed. The outcome of where we were going to go, it's different now." If you choose it to be ... It's the reason I get so freaking pumped about Funnel Hacking LIVE. If you choose it to be, Funnel Hacking LIVE is that for you. It was for me. It is not a trite thing. It's not just another event.

I will tell you from working there from my own experience that every individual who works at ClickFunnels is there to change the world. It's an active conversation. Unfortunately, that's an awkward conversation for most other places in the world. It is an active ... "How can we change the world?" Like, "What? Who talks like that?" Those in the ... Just like Steve Jobs said, "Those who are actually gonna try and change the world are the ones that actually do." And they are. It's the reason I get so pumped about it. They changed my world. They're changing everyone else's world. They're changing industries.

That's why I get so pumped about it. People are like, "Man, you're a freak show about Funnel Hacking LIVE." Yeah I am. I get more pumped about it than Christmas, every other holiday. It literally is ... And it's because of what it can do for you. To be in a room with that many other millionaires, to be in a room with that amount of mental ... Top of the line stuff, you guys.

And software. How often do you get the marketing education and technology blend in the same sitting? That's so freakishly rare it's ridiculous. You get both at Funnel Hacking LIVE. The top of the top, the best of the best. The who's who are all there. And if you're like, "Steve, I still don't have my ticket." Well, you've got, like, a week. Find a way and get there, and know that it has the power to change your life and put the course of your life on a different outcome based on how you react.

So you come up to me. I've got ... There's two things on them. Number one, I'm gonna give you guys the event funnel. Some sweet training on there. I'm gonna give you guys ... There's a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm not gonna advertise, okay, that's really, really cool. I've got some extra little Easter eggs in there for you. But you walk up to me, and you give me the most interactive, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!," I will give one right back, so long as my voice is not completely gone, and let's take a picture. You post that up there. I will give you a flash drive. On your Facebook profile, and I will hand it off to you. Sound good?

Alright guys, that is the prepare for Funnel Hacking LIVE plan. I would start going through. I would re-listen to any ... If you've got a Funnel Hacking LIVE ticket ... I know because I built the Members' Area, okay? When you got a Funnel Hacking LIVE ticket, you also got access to the 2015, 2016, and 2017 replays. I have been ... I'm almost done listening to all the replays again. Yes, I do listen to them all the time. I just reread 108 Split Tests. I am re-listening to tons of stuff. That's how I'm preparing, guys. Prepare. Put yourself in a state-control. Choose. Decide the outcome. Decide the outcome before you actually start the event. How crazy of an idea is that? That's what you can do with this.

So, go out and start preparing. Re-listen to the past episodes. They came with your ticket this year, which is awesome. Go and actually start re-reading Expert Secrets. Re-read [inaudible 00:30:00] Secrets. Re-read 108 Split Tests. Go through the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. Go through those things, and start consuming that stuff. Get yourself in a state to receive. Most of you guys are coming to my Mastermind the day before. I'm very excited to have you guys. It's gonna be great. It's a small group. I'm excited it is.

So, very, very excited to have you, though, and I am excited to meet you. Excited to meet you guys over there. Give a high five, brotherly hug, whatever. Give me a little state-controlled shout out. A little, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And we'll take a picture. You post it up there, and my thank you is a flash drive with the event funnel. The event funnel, as well as a whole bunch of other goodies that I'm just gonna toss on there for fun.

I've only got, like 60 or 70 of them, so ... Anyways, thanks guys. I appreciate it. I know this was kind of a different styled episode, but you need to know why I get so pumped about it. Someone was laughing at me. They were like, "You get that excited about it?" I'm like, "Okay, let me tell you why. It's because I chose it to be and it's because I knew ... I believed that Russell knew how to get me to the next spot."

Half of you guys are still trying to decide if this stuff works. Get past that freakishly stupid doubt, and go and just believe it. Take a chance. They're not paying me for this. They don't even know I'm doing it. I just know it works. Before I knew it worked, I had to believe that it worked. There's nothing that's gonna happen. I'm not gonna actually act unless there's just this little inkling that it could possibly actually work.

You've gotta get there. Drop the other doubts. Choose the outcome before the event starts by your state-controlling self. Prepare like crazy. I've got some cool goodies for you. Come give a little state-controlled shout out, "H!H! OO BAYBAY!" And come on out and say hi. Let's take a picture, and I'll give you guys some sweet stuff as a thank you. And hopefully you guys can get out there and start crushing, as well.

Alright guys, thanks so much. And I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I certainly did. We'll talk to you later.

Thanks for listening. Please remember to write and subscribe...

Hey, you want me to speak at your next event or Mastermind? Let me know what I can share that would be most valuable by going to stevejlarsen.com and book my time now.

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How can I "remove" my own salary from the biz expenses...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've got a sweet lesson for you today.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business. The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up everyone? I am loving that new intro. Hopefully you're loving the purpose of this show and what I'm doing and what I'm trying to help you guys understand and see. I had a guy reach out to me once and said, "Stephen, I like listening to your stuff because," actually I've had a lot of people say this to me, "because you're not like massive, massive yet." I was like, "Yeah, I plan to be. I appreciate what you're saying."

He's like, "Hopefully it's not offensive." I was like, "No, it's not offensive at all. I totally get it. I know exactly where I am. I'm not lying where I am. I know where I am and I'm owning it and that's fine." He's like, "You're not massive, massive, massive, massive." I was like, "Yeah, awesome, cool." He's like, "But it's cool about that, because I can relate more." I was like, "That's interesting. That's very interesting."

Anyways, hopefully you guys are getting the same kind of value as that guy was saying. I'm trying to be very, very painfully transparent about what it is that I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Hey, I told you guys I've been traveling quite a lot lately. There's an experience that happened as we got to one of the hotels we were staying at. I say we, I'm with my buddy Colton Woods. What's up buddy? Colton and I built, he and I built our first successful sales funnel together.

My very first one in ClickFunnels was with Colton. We built a smartphone insurance funnel back in college and that story, if you guys ever heard the story about me hiding in the box office seats in the basketball stadium on campus, that was with him. I would sit and we'd look and we'd wait for all the security guards to look away and I'd toss my backpack through the window and then I would wait for them to turn again and then I would jump through the window. I would stay up there for literally all day and get homework done within a couple hours, but then spend literally the entire day studying marketing, building the business, building a small little agency, building the funnels for other companies while we were in the middle of college.

First of all for ourselves, and a whole bunch of other people. It was a ton of fun and frankly I did that for about a year and a half, hiding up there.

Anyway, so I was with Colton. Colton, he is taking the role, I'm super excited, the moons aligned, the suns came into align with each other and he and I are, he's moving out here actually and he's going to work with me full time, which I'm super stoked, guys. My little business officially has two employees now. What? We've got a bunch of freelancers, a lot of other people on the side, but as far as in here, with me in my office, I'm sure you guys will all get a chance to see him and meet with him. He's the man. I'm excited to have him.

Anyway, so I was with him. That's why I'm saying we. Colton and I were out and we were walking into the next hotel, we've been traveling like crazy going all over the place, and I walked in and I turned around and I was like, you know, he and I were just, we were sharing a hotel room and keeping cost low as much as we can. There was this ... We walk into the hotel room and I turned around and I was like, "Dude, what can we do to give ourselves a raise right now?" The webinar's going great, we're fixing out the final tweaks.

It's always probably going to be in that stage regardless. It's going well though, okay? We're doing some massive plays on it coming up here soon, and Colton's kind of handling the assistant/support/lots of different hats, running a lot of the business side while I go continue to build stuff and sell stuff. Which is awesome, because I can do the thing that I'm good at and he's extremely good at the other side, which is awesome, and I'm not good at that part.

We complement each other well. I'll tell you guys more about him as we continue to go, but he's the man.

Anyway, so I was like, "Dude, what can we do to give ourselves a raise right now?" He's like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "Well ..." I told him, we were sitting there and I was like, I remember listening to Russell once, I was talking to Russell once and I was like, "How can we do the Inner Circle?"

One of the reasons why is just because the way it helps with the structure of his revenue of where things come in. I'm sure he's okay if I share this. He shares this all over the place. It's not the reason, okay, but one of the benefits for him having an Inner Circle and doing coaching was that he does not have to take ... It pays for his living expenses. I was like, that's clever.

I started looking around at all these other gurus where their coaching platform is what pays for their living expenses while whatever the product makes, they can roll that money directly back on itself, which means they can spend a butt load of money in ads. They don't have to take profit from the product sales for quite some time. I was like, ah, that's very fascinating.

What I've been doing is I was like, and I was telling Colton that story and I was like, "I want to do that. What is it that everyone wants from me right now? What is it that everyone wants from us?" He's like, "Dude, everyone wants you to coach them. Everyone wants you to look at their funnel. Everyone wants you to build them a funnel if you can." I was like, "Yeah. I can't build funnels for people right now. Focus on my own stuff, but coaching." Gosh, I love coaching. I love looking at people's funnels.

What we decided to do, I was like, "What if we built the coaching?" I was speaking in 24 hours and I was like 90% ready. I was like, "What if we built an entire coaching program right now?" What we did, the only reason I'm trying to tell you guys this story is please observe the speed at which we did this. Okay? I went through and we decided like okay, how are we going to do it?

I was like, "You know, I love Voxer Coaching because I'm not always available to talk on the phone, and we're not always going to match up. We might be on different sides of the world or whatever, but people are going to ask me questions over Voxer, and I love it." That's a sweet way to coach, and I love having a cool introductory session with people where I get to dive deep with them with the funnel.

Anyway, so what I did is I said, "I would want like 10." He and I started crafting it together, like how many people are we going to have? I was like, "I only want like 10." I want to keep it small, especially while we kind of figure out the first pieces with it, stuff like that. I was like, cool, this is going to be awesome. I was like, cool, so what's the URL? We found a cool URL.

Then we started planning it all out, and I was like, "I want to gauge some interest." Even though we're going to launch this thing in the next 24 hours, I was like, "What if I tried to treat this," okay, understand what I'm doing here, okay? I'm trying to pre-frame the market for what I'm about to drop on them so it doesn't feel like a cold drop, so it doesn't feel like this massive bludgeoning across the face like, "Oh, I was not expecting this at all."

What I did is I put a post out there. I put the post out there and I put a post just on my major Facebook profile page, my main one, and a lot of you guys who are listening to this probably saw it. There's 144 comments on the thing within like 12 hours. It was ridiculous.

It got shared. Anyways, a lot of likes and stuff like that, but what I asked was, I didn't want to say, "Hey, let me get you guys in a coaching program, because I know I can help." What I wanted to do though is I wanted to salt the oats a little. I wanted people to tell me that they wanted to get in. Does that make sense? I was trying to actively flip the sale. Right? Does that make sense?

What I did is I kept it very, very light. In fact, I'm actually going to click over here. I'm in front of my computer right now. I'm actually going to go to Facebook and grab the exact words I said, because it was amazing at how well it worked. This is what I said. I said, "Sitting thinking, what do people wish I was delivering to them? Funnel coaching, anyone?"

It was a question mark. That was it. It was all over the place. Guys, I've never had ... I was like, huh. There's something to be said about like, okay, you have to understand, this is me just being open about where I am in my business right now. There's a lot of people that want me to build the funnels for them right now. A lot of people. I'm honored and I would love to, it's super cool, but it's not what I'm focusing on right now. Right?

My whole focus is to say no to everything else except for me making this webinar even more awesome. When it gets to a certain spot, I don't exactly know the certain spot, but I know I'll feel when it's time to take on something different. It can be automated and everything ... Does that make sense? I will feel it.

I'm not feeling that yet. I don't know totally why. Probably because I feel like if I walk away, it will start to crumble. You know what I mean? It's not at a spot where it's completely self-sustaining yet, and so I'm not going to walk from that. Why would I bring on a different focus? Does that make sense?

I'm like okay, well I can't do that. I was like, what do people want from me? Not need. I know what they need. What do they want from me, and is there a place where it fills the need at the same time? Colton and I, we were kind of like pacing around. I pace a lot when I think and talk a lot out loud. I swear if I was not sitting in front of my mic right now, I'd be pacing around the office over here.

We were walking around and I was walking around just kind of feverishly, that's kind of how I work out ideas a lot of times. I was kind of feverishly just kind of walking around the hotel room and I was like, "Dude, what is it that people want? What do they want from me? What is it that everybody is asking?" Inadvertently, what are people saying as if I asked an ask campaign? I was like, it's coaching, man. Everyone's asking for the coaching piece. They want me to look at their funnels before they launch or right after they launch. I was like, huh.

Do the same though. That's what I'm trying to get at. This is not me, me, me hour. I'm trying to help you. What is it that people are asking you for? You guys have heard me talk about the theory of, it's not a theory. It's called Duct Tape Marketing, I think it was called. I believe the phrase came from Duct Tape Marketing. I believe the phrase came from when people would buy a car off of the lot, this is before there were mirrors, you know what I mean? When people would buy a, meaning like a rear view mirror.

When people would buy a car off the lot, salespeople and car dealerships would see people drive off the lot, pull the car over, and duct tape a mirror to the middle of their windshield facing backwards. Okay? Duct tape marketing. That was the market telling the dealerships what to make next. The user was literally telling them the next evolution of their product. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.

What I was trying to do is trying to see where the duct tape marketing was, meaning, what are people asking me to do for them right now? What it is, I was like, funnels. They want me to see their funnels obviously, which for obvious reasons, okay? They want me to see what they've been building. They want me to double check it. They want a second pair of eyes. They want the emotional validation that yes, run some traffic, come back and let's talk again. What he and I decided to do is we would, like hey, let's build it. If that's what they're asking, let's build it.

I was speaking to, it was the CEO of this company, I'm not going to say the name of it. I was speaking to the CEO of this company and I didn't know he was the CEO of this extremely successful company, and extremely wealthy individual, and I was sitting in a room with him. This was not long ago. I was sitting in a room with him and a bunch of other people and they said, and I was like, "Well yeah, I got to build it. I got to get X, Y and Z done."

I can't remember exactly what I was talking about, but like unanimously around the room they were like, "If you build it, they will come." I started laughing. I was like, "Oh, man." I thought they were joking. I was like, "Yeah, that is the most false crap on the planet." I said that to the CEO. I was making fun of it, and then later I find out that that's actually the motto on some of their Facebook pages. I was like, are you serious?

Anyway, so I was sitting there and it was like, "If you build it, they will come." You guys, funnel stacking is the only scenario where that's kind of true. The opportunities stack. Not funnel stacking. The opportunities stack. Opportunity switches. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read Expert Secrets, okay? Opportunity switches, if you build it they will come, is not true at all. Okay? Opportunity stacks though is one of the only scenarios where if you build it they will come, kind of works. Not even really that much, but it kind of works. You'll get a little bit of windfall. You know what I mean?

I was thinking through if you build it they will come. I was like, that's so not true, but there's enough people that are already asking, that if I build it, they might actually just come. Meaning there might actually be a little bit of people jumping into the coaching program. That was kind of the logic I was going through, and he and I were talking this through. I was like, "Okay, cool."

What we did is first of all, I salted the oats by dropping something out on my Facebook page. I don't really post that much on Facebook. I probably should do it more. I've had a love/hate relationship with Facebook. It's not for any particular reason, it's just, I don't know. I like Facebook, guys. Sometimes I just can't get into it, okay? Like with the frequency that I need to, which is why a lot of stuff is auto-posted and things like that.

Anyway I was like, I'm just going to go post something out there and just say like, "Hey, sitting, thinking, what do people wish I was delivering to them?" I knew, but I just wanted to see if anyone resonated with this. I was like, "Funnel coaching, anyone?" Lots of comments. Holy crap. Lots and lots and lots of comments. I had over 145 comments on this thing. All over the place. Shares and people liking it, and I was like, I guess it didn't get shared too much, but anyway.
What was cool about it was then I had the opportunity to treat it like an ask campaign.

When people said, "Oh my gosh, yeah." I responded to every person who commented. Literally every person. I said, "Cool, what do you have in mind?" Or, "Cool, what would be most helpful?" Or, "Hey, awesome. Is there something that you wish I was delivering/helping with?" I kind of already had an idea, but everybody else came up with the offer for me. Does that make sense? I kind of already had an idea of what I wanted, but there were some particular very good, a few ideas that a few people said I was like, "Oh, that's a great idea. Let me toss that in."

I basically created a stack. It was an unofficial stack. Maybe I should go create a more official stack with it, but it was basically a stack, meaning there was an offer with it. You get this main piece but what happens is you get this and you also get this and you also get this. I ended up creating somewhat of a stack, and spent the next couple hours putting the funnel together, tweaking stuff, putting a few things together, putting a few little ninja things in there. Building out the business side so that Colton could manage it while I continued to be the coach. Does that make sense?

We built a little coaching funnel...

With just that little post, we closed $15,000, which was awesome. And I know I can help them. Obviously they could too. This is like hot, hot, hot, hot, hot market. Okay? And we were at an event. I was speaking at an event. It was funny because there was a guy who ran up to me after I spoke and he's like, "How do I get your help with X, Y, and Z?" I closed him right there on it too.

What I'm doing, there's really two things I wanted to bring out here with us. Ask like, okay, if you've been selling consistently inside of your market, is there an area that people are just begging you to be in, and you're like, "I don't know." Is there some kind of way that you could still kind of fulfill and deliver in there?

Like I can't do funnel builds for people yet. I'm sure that time will come. It's my plan to, it's later on in the year. 2018, later on in the fall to kind of offer that kind of stuff. But for right now, I don't want to do that stuff. I'm staying totally focused. I don't want to do anything else but what I'm doing. Does that make sense? But I love coaching. Every Friday is already spent coaching. I've got no problem adding in another 10 of my own students. Anyway, so that was the thing.

Then what I did is a little tiny mini ask campaign, after salting the oats with that Facebook post. Then I got a whole bunch of people who came on in and said, "Oh, that's awesome." Then really, really quickly we closed out ... Anyway. We closed out $15,000 with it, which was awesome. I was like, "I don't know if we'll take more. I don't know."

Anyways. This is not me pitching. If you are interested, that's awesome. I made a whole bunch of cool outros for my new podcast intros and outros. You guys will hear about it. Awesome. That's be great, love to have you. This is not me pitching. I'm just trying to help you understand, sometimes there's just cash that's just in front of you and you just have to reach out and grab it.

For your expertise, the thing that feels so easy to you it feels like you're breathing. Does that make sense? It's massive value to others and other people will pay for that. Does that make sense?

I was talking to Jamie Smith, shout out to you, buddy. I'm like, "Hey man, how do I do X, Y, and Z?" In three seconds he's coded out some cool thing. I'm like, "Man, that is your expertise, bro." Good grief. Man, you're so good at that. That is clearly your thing. I don't even know where to start. Whatever their expertise is, is there some other aspect that people wish they could just give to you?

The reason I chose coaching is because I wanted to move up on the value ladder first before going down on the value ladder. Before doing other cool low-end things, which is in the works, by the way. There's a really cool thing coming out, which should be done in probably like a month. Month or two, and very, very excited for that. It's freaking awesome. Anyway, I can't say any more.

What I'm trying to do is I want to pay for living expenses so that I don't take cash away from the product. I want the product to be completely self-sustaining and then next I'm putting out little self-liquidating offer and I'm removing costs to the business. I'm removing costs to the product, right? The product has a margin, but the business has a margin too, obviously. I'm trying to remove my cost, my own employee status. I pay myself as an employee of my own business.

How do I remove that cost from the business? Well I offer coaching, and I'm going to go through and now I easily pay for my salary and then as well as Colton's off of the coaching. I'm still able to deliver great ridiculous value, but keep all the cash from the product in the product and keep the ads rolling and spin faster.

In my opinion, doing what I just did will speed this product off to making its own award much, much faster because of that one move because I'm going to be able to re-dump ads, all the profits directly back into ads again and just explode the thing. When I do add an SLO, when I do add a front-end offer, when I do add something a little bit in the back-end, the whole thing is completely self-sustaining and I can just crush it with that.

Anyway, does this make sense? That's my new coaching program, and I was super stoked about it. Anyway, yeah. If you guys want to hear about it, it's in the outro that I'm going to toss out here. Feel free to dance a little bit. It's sweet music. Anyways guys, thanks so much for listening. Start looking too ... One of the things I'm nervous about saying all this stuff, I hope you don't take your eye off the balls and just build one funnel at a time.

Don't take your eye off the ball, but when you get to a certain spot and you know that your offer's converting, you know your message is converting, you know you're finding the right individuals that you're actually pitching to, one of the easiest next steps is to start doing something a little more high ticket that can remove your payout from the cost of the business. That way the whole thing rolls on top of itself, and that's exactly what was screaming through my brain. All those thoughts, like boom, boom, wait I can do this, I can do this, and because of this, this could happen.

Because of that, this can happen. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I was like, "Oh, let's do it. Boom." Within 24 hours we launched the program, and it's freaking awesome...

Anyway. Hey guys, thanks so much for listening. Hopefully you got some stuff out of that, some value out of that, and you can go out and apply that and get more ad spend out there. You should want to spend as much money as you possibly can to acquire customer so you will crush it. Alright guys, thanks so much. Talk to you later, and woo, Funnel Hacking Live, baby. That is coming up. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Oh, man. If you have any sway at all, you get yourself to Funnel Hacking Live. Even if you don't have a ticket yet, man, just find a way. Find a way. Alright guys, talk to you later. Bye.

Hey, thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, "Steve, will you look at my funnel?" Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some hand-holding and guidance during your funnel build, or simply review the one you have, head over to CoachMeSteve.com and book your session now.

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