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Untold ideas are already dying....

Hey, guys. I am very excited for this episode...

I've actually had this episode on my mind for, I don't know, it's been a while. I've had a hard time trying to figure out how to actually present it. I want to walk you through a little bit of, I don't know.

About four years ago I decided that I would create, every January 1st, I would go and I would create a video that would basically publicly declare my financial goal for the next year, and it's the scariest thing that I do pretty much every single year.

It's interesting what has happened though because of those videos. They're on YouTube. If you go to my YouTube channel, you can check it out.

About four years ago, it's me, I'm in the army, I've got a shaved head, and I'm like, gosh, you know what guys, if I could just make an extra $1,000 a month that would change my life. That's where I was.

I was like, hey, and here's my plan. That was the video for that year.

Then three years ago I was like, "Hey, if I could just do $3,000 a month that would be crazy. Oh my gosh, that would change my life." It's crazy, because what I do then as I go through each one of the months and I say, hey, here's what I did, here's how I did.

Then the year before this one, I was like, "hey, I just want to do $30,000 a month". That's excluding salary income, excluding any other income on the side. Just my own stuff.

I'm pleased that I hit that several times this last year, which is awesome. I want you to know that that's on the side, working for somebody else more than full-time doing ... Still have a family, two kids, a wife. You know what I mean?

This is not meant to be that video, but about four-ish years ago. Let me check actually. About three-ish years ago, I so badly wanted to be able to just start being around other people who shared my common interests. I was in college at the time.

It was 2015. It was wrapping up the year, and I just wanted to be around other people. I felt like I was very alone, funny enough, even in my marketing degree, my marketing classes, which I love school for the environment it gave me to learn, but I didn't actually learn that much stuff that I use now, hardly at all, which is true for pretty much any education now.

That's fine.

I had been following Russell for quite some time at that time, and I knew that Russell was really into things like masterminds, and he had this Inner Circle and stuff like that.

Honestly, before Russell, before I ever knew who Russell Brunson was, I thought masterminds ... I'm just going to be open and honest with you. Because I had no other expectations at all, I thought masterminds were a way to get more money from people.

I didn't know what they were.

I had no idea if there was any kind of value or anything like that. My perception was just that it was a high-ticket experience to hang ... It was a reason to hang out with people who paid you a whole bunch of money to hang out with them. You know what I mean? That's what I thought it was.

Then when I saw that Russell was doing masterminds and he came out with his Inner Circle, I was like, huh, that's kind of ... Pre-Russell my attitude towards masterminds was very like, "Meh. You're just trying to take my money," or something like that. You know what I mean? That was my attitude. It's more of a scarcity mentality as well by then. This is like three, four years ago now. A lot's changed since then.

After figuring out who Russell was though, and after seeing more of what he was doing with his Inner Circle and more what he was doing with that, it became very apparent to me very quickly that this was not a normal thing, that this was an extremely rare opportunity to learn in some really, really high-speed ways.

I was seeing the results that some of these people were coming out and saying like, "Hey, I've got these results, X, Y, and Z." And be like, "Holy crap. That's awesome. You get that from the mastermind?" I had to change my mentality. I had to change the way I was looking at it. I found myself really wanting to go attend one of these masterminds. Granted, they're not all the same. The only thing I knew of Russell at the time was his DotComSecrets X product, DotComSecrets book was out, and I had read that definitely by this time. I believe so, anyway. I really just wanted to learn more from him, and I really, really wanted to get into his Inner Circle.

I knew I did not have 25 grand though at the time to be able to do something like that.

Fascinating, right? Fascinating experience. Fascinating predicament. I know if you're listening to this podcast right now, you've probably been in the same boat before. You've probably experienced it before, be like, "Hey, I wish I could be a part of this program. I wish I could do this or that." The FAT event and funnel hackathon event, secrets masterclass, 2 Comma Club Coaching, he has few different names for it. That's 15 to 25 grand, and for very, very specific reasons.

I understood the reasons. I understood why he was charging that much, but I was in college and I still wanted to be a part of that. One day Russell sent out this email, and in fact I can tell you it was December 14th, 2015 at 5:44 p.m. I remember it.

I remember this moment. This was a huge moment for me. I went and I actually found the email. I found the email, and Russell said, "Hey, look, there's 74 out of 100 spots taken. As you probably know, I have a small group of entrepreneurs that I personally coach and I call them my Inner Circle. For the past two years, I've had dozens, and dozens of success stories come from this group, in fact."

Anyway, he went through and he started talking about it, saying, "Look, this is a new development. I'm going to say that when we're at 100 spots I'm going to end it." I was devastated. I was so devastated. I remember exactly where I was. I was in the campus basically rec center. There was a pool in that room or in that building.

I was standing in the hallway and I was walking down in the stadium steps, the basketball stadium steps. Smell of chlorine from the pool from several rooms over was in the air. It was quiet. I was one of the only ones in that room standing in the middle or almost in the middle of the basketball stadium. It was quiet, and I remember reading this email, and I remember out loud actually saying, "No! No! Crap. No!"

I was pissed that he was closing down his Inner Circle at 100 people because I knew I would make it somehow, but I knew I couldn't make it at the speed he was filling it. I just knew that I couldn't make it. I was like, "Oh my gosh. No." I remember I sent a message to my wife, and I was like, "He's closing it down."

She didn't really know what it was at the time still, or what I was really doing or what I was into and stuff like that. She said like, "Oh, that's too bad." I was like, "No." I remember at that exact moment though, I mean I was crushed. I was shattered over it. I so bad wanted to be a part of that group. Again, this is December 14th, 2015, three years ago. That's crazy. Is that two years ago? What's the year? What's the year? '16, '17. Wait, this was only four months before I got hired. Holy crap. I thought this was longer ago. That wasn't actually. This is only two years ago. Never mind. It's December 28th right now. This is only two years ago.

I remember I was pissed. I was so sad that I wasn't going to be able to be in that group, because he had already been changing my life so much, and I had a successful funnel building agency at the time and I was making money for other people, and I was making money for myself finally. Now that I know more of the timeline of where all this was happening. I remember standing in that room. It was silent, but you know like when you're in a huge room and there's really, really high fans, so you can hear the light hum in the air, and there was a little bit of the smell of the chlorine in the air from the sport unit, from the lap pool that was over. The racketball courts were near, and I could hear them ping ponging around. For the most part it was pretty silent.

I was standing there, and it was one of those moments that was just like, "I'm going to get in that group. I don't know how, but I'm going to get in it." I stood right there, as soon as I read Russell's email, and I actually wrote him one back. I just clicked reply. I was right on my phone, and I wrote an email back to him immediately on the spot. This is what I said. I know, because I found it.

I said, "Dang it. This just breaks me apart. I'm in college and working to get in, and I'm trying to become your dream client, because I know I'm not yet.

Thank you for everything you've given me. I can't express how much you've changed my life, but you don't even know me. I feel like I know you because I've gone through so much of your material for years. You're a blessing to me and my family, and I sincerely thank you for all you've sacrificed and given to make sure others are successful. You're one of my very real inspirations and I thank you, Steven Larsen."
Then I put in parentheses: "See you at Funnel Hacking live event. Woo!"

 

At that time, that's when I was bootstrapping my way to the funnel hacking live event, because I still didn't have any money, so I was exchanging funnels for the event tickets, funnel for the flight, funnels for the hotel nights, and that's how I got there. Which was literally what, like three months later?

Then I sent this email over. No one replied. I didn't expect them to, but I kept sending stuff like this. I sent tons of stuff like this, and what was funny, what was interesting is three months later I was at his event. I applied on a Saturday. I think it was a Saturday, because that's when the event was over. I think that's when it was, on a Saturday.

I got a call on Monday to come get an interview, so two days later, two days later. The next day, Tuesday, so this is three days after the event was over, I was in Boise doing the interview. Actually, I think it was on Wednesday, so four days later. I was in Boise in the middle of my finals week and I got the job. I was in Russell's office working full-time within, I think, eight days after funnel hacking live 2016 ended, within like eight days. What was crazy is within a month he had his first Inner Circle, not first, but first since I had been there working for him, a mastermind come up for his Inner Circle.

Guys, before I recorded this episode I was trying to find the Voxer that Russell sent me inviting me to come to the Inner Circle meetings. I was blown away. I was like, "Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh."

I went berserk. I think I almost killed Voxer, which seems like it's dying anyway. I literally spent, because it took so long for everything to load, plus I was reading all of our old conversations over the last two years. Anyway, it took 30 minutes, and I was one month away from going back to where the messages were, where he invited me and then my response. I was going to take those excerpts of him inviting me and then my response back and put them in the episode.

Voxer wouldn't load anymore messages. Said there was no more messages left. There was messages left. I think I just broke it. Super-sad, honestly, that I didn't do that. I went nuts though, I went crazy. I got into the mastermind. I was freaking out.

I got there early. I sat down. I was like didn't know if I should talk to anybody. I was like, "Oh my gosh. This is Russell's Inner Circle." I was like, "Oh my gosh." I was kind of slinking around the sides of the room, because I didn't feel like I was qualified to be in there. Just four months, five months earlier I was telling Russell how much I wanted to be a part of it, didn't know how I would, and I ended up now working for him in the same room with him. Like crazy. It's ridiculous. The turn of events, that's insane. That's pure insanity how that all worked out. I sat in there, and holy crap, it was fantastic. Everyone was following the same format in this mastermind, and it was better than I thought it would be.

Everyone stood up and they shared something amazing. We're not talking about like little tiny tips and tricks. I got almost straight A's in college in my marketing degree, and I was also that kid who was like fighting with the teachers actively and didn't really get along with a lot of the other students in there, because none of them were doing it. They were all freaking studying about it. No one was actually starting businesses.

No one had been doing it. I had been doing it for years by the time I got there. You know what I mean? I was that weird kid who was kind of on the side fighting what everyone thought, or was just taking as face-value truth. I was like, "No, that's no. No, and it's not true because of X, Y, and Z."

With that backdrop, the stuff that people were just getting up and openly sharing was ridiculous. What I did is I actually opened up Trello while I was in that mastermind, and just sitting on the side listening and taking notes, I mean ferocious notes. I was going back through reading some of these, and I was like, "Holy crap." It's not like some of the stuff was like, "It only works right now. You got to do it now, because the trick is going to end soon." It's like, no, like the stuff that I'm reading that I learned from that mastermind is still stuff that I both teach and use and apply to this day. That was a year and a half ago, which is crazy, which is crazy. I can't believe, I cannot believe that I got to go do that. Then I got invited to the next one, and to the next one, and to the next one.

It was like over and over and over, and drinking deeply with that group, just listening, taking notes. Very super-observant, like just writing it all down. It's nuts to me, absolutely nuts to me the amount of personal progress that came to me because of those masterminds. I'm frankly a little bit ashamed that I ever thought something like a mastermind wouldn't be valuable. Then as time progressed and I started getting invited to go speak places and present in different masterminds, several of them, which has been so much fun, and come be a keynote in some masterminds, and things like that. It's been interesting to see how much I've learned to just flat-out adore them, and not even learn to. It's really easy to love them because they're amazing.

I'm very anti-meeting. Meetings freak me out. My first perception was that, hey, I'm going to have to go sit in this meeting and it's going to be boring. I'm going to sit there all day. It's like no, like it is fun. They are high-paced. They are high-energy, and if you've never been a part of one, I want you to have that experience. Want you to be able to know that is. Since I'm leaving ClickFunnels, there are two questions that have been popping up very, very frequently. Very frequently. The first one is, "Steven, will you coach me?" That question has been asked to me like crazy. Is there any kind of coaching package? No. Not yet. I'm sure there will be at some point, and when I decide to do that. I'll tell you why I'm not doing it right now, also. For right now, no.

I do 30 minute consultations on people's phones before they go launch them. That's fun. That's awesome, but I don't do active coaching yet. Then the second question that people have been asking me like crazy, I finally have a support team, awesome support system, a ticketing system finally. I finally have structure underneath me that I've been building ferociously in the evenings; it's 1:30 in the morning right now, as I am literally in two days going to be unemployed. What would you do if you knew you were going to be out of a job with like four or five months advance notice?

Russell and I both knew way before I ever told anybody. You know what I mean? What would you do? You'd do the same thing I'm doing. It's not exactly relaxing. I almost feel like it might have been easier to just have the whole two weeks notice thing, but instead ... Anyway.

The second question I get like crazy is, hey Steven, is there any kind of mastermind or event you're going to be doing? The answer to that one is yes, because I am such a proponent of them. I cannot believe how much growth has come to me because of them. There's 100 people in Russell's Inner Circle. That's four different mastermind sessions twice a year. That's eight mastermind sessions per year, and I've got to sit in a huge portion of them and learn like crazy, I mean from ... Just brilliant. Brilliant. Even the ones that aren't Russell's that I've been able to go like, people are like, "Have you really done much? Have you accomplished much?" Sometimes one of the fears people will have, I've noticed, is they'll be like, "Well, I haven't accomplished these great things, therefore I can't attend because there's nothing to contribute."

No. That's not how it works at all. This is very much like a huge synergy situation, where you just put multiple minds together who are trying to go towards a common goal, and it is ridiculous. I don't care what kind of background you have. It's fun to watch just different experiences and backgrounds and stories that people bring to a room and go like, "Oh, yeah. Do this, or X, Y, and Z, or this is my feedback for this." The amount of decision making, the time that it takes to make the kinds of decisions that people need to make in order to be successful, the timeline decreases. The clarity of the path that people go down afterwards is amazing. Clarity not just on the marketing, or clarity on the offer, or clarity on this, but how they actually operate and conduct themselves outside of the mastermind in order to get their goal.

I wish I could just dive in and start telling you all of them. I am shamed to say that I have not taken notes in every single one of them. I should have. I don't know why I didn't for a lot of them. Some of it was because I was building funnels on the side. Actually, a lot of it was because I was building funnels on the side, so I'd be listening and when there'd be some massive thing, I'd come over and write it down.

I've got this huge, massive, Trello column of just huge. On one side it's direct quotes from Russell from all the lessons of me sitting next to him and hearing him as he's talking to other people on those podcasts. The other one has all these ones that he hasn't actually explicitly told me, but I've learned from him, or gleaned from him either in a mastermind or directly from his desk, or whatever it is.

I mean it just blows my mind. I couldn't have gone and got a master's degree, even PhD in marketing or internet marketing or whatever it is, and I still would not have learned even a fraction of this stuff. I know that. I know that, because these are the people who are doing it. These are the people who are out actually proving what's actually happening, what's actually working right now. You know what's funny, like I was saying before, of course it matters who all is in the mastermind.

Obviously, if you're more experienced, overall it's going to be awesome, even more awesome. Even if you're not crazy-experienced and you have the chance to go to one, you should do it because it's crazy to see how much actually comes from it. Anyway.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again now, and I apologize for doing so. It's just if there was one thing that I could do the rest of my life, if there was one activity that I would go do the rest of my life and never read another book again, and never take another course again, if there was one thing that would replace it all and I would still feel like I would be able to stay on the edge, the peak, the cutting edge place of the markets, whatever I'm trying to do, it would be masterminds. The mastermind would replace. Now, that's personal preference.

Obviously, I've quite a bit of experience in the funnel building world, a lot of it. It's true though. I would put down all these books. I've tons of books all around me. Lots of bookshelves, bookcases and stuff. I love them and they're awesome. It's gold, amazing stuff.

The one thing in my mind that has actual potential to replace the huge amount of knowledge in books that's sitting around me or on courses, or whatever it is, is masterminds. It's masterminds. For whatever reason that kind of synergy that comes from people who are truly trying to dive into and dump amazing information in and get amazing things back out, I mean it's amazing what happens. There's this really interesting study that happened actually, and I'll end this episode soon, because I know I've been going for a bit here. There's a really interesting study that happened, I heard the results from anyways, where some people went through and they watched those who contributed the most. Here was the rule. This is what they found out.

Those who contribute the most in masterminds, those who contribute the most in masterminds almost always are also the top earners in the room. That wouldn't shock you. That wouldn't shock you at all.

Think about that. When you get into a mastermind, and you see people who are just giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and giving, it is very much the antithesis of what most people treat wealth creation and secrets and, "I got to keep all my products to myself, and no one's going to know what they are. If I say anything, someone's going to steal it." It doesn't really happen that way. Guys, I tell you everything that I do and there's maybe like one or two people who have attempted and kind of done the stuff that I say, kind of done. Why?

It's because I'm a different person with a different background, different frame of mind. Even if they did take the same idea and they did try and go, they still would execute it differently than I did.

Ideas when they are shared grow. Ideas when they are shared actually turn into better ideas. You get up, and you stand up, and you actually start sharing all of your best stuff with the room, and you'll be shocked, shocked, completely floored, completely floored at what ends up happening to your idea, things you would never, ever, ever have thought of or it would have taken you a very long time to think of. Time is money.

Anyways, I have a mastermind. It's not necessarily a Steve Larsen mastermind yet. I am having fun partnering with a lot of my friends at the moment, but no matter what, you can always find whatever mastermind I'm doing or running or pulling off, or whatever, at SteveJLarsen.com, and just click mastermind up at the top. It's in the top header. Click mastermind up at the top, and you'll be able to go to whatever mastermind is currently going on that I'm doing.

Would love to have you guys. There are different prices, different price points, different things that you can go check out, whatever it is. I just got to bring up one other thing, one other thing. As I've been preparing to leave my job, as I've been preparing to leave ClickFunnels, I've surrounded myself with a lot of coaches, just to make sure that I keep the edge.

One of the pieces of feedback that I've received is actually from Mandy Keene who's actually the Inner Circle coach who's amazing and has totally changed my life in ways that I still have a hard time expressing to her. I'm very thankful for her.

What she taught me and actually what Russell personally taught me also, he and I were chatting and we were talking, and we were talking about the purpose of Inner Circle and the purpose of masterminds. Mandy separately was also talking about this, also. Russell has his own mastermind for many purposes. One of them is so that he can stay up to date with all the other industries and what's going on and all those things, so he knows how funnels will work in those different areas, things like that. That totally makes sense.

The money, yeah, I mean the money's nice, but that's not really the real, real reason. The real, real reason is to keep him sharp. Then he'll attend these extremely high-ticket masterminds, these 100K masterminds in order to attend. $100,000 just to go to the mastermind, with these extremely high, A players. You can imagine the kind of goodies that go into there.

The only thing I'm bringing this up for is so that you understand that if you're not collaborating actively and you're not actively your ideas, the idea is already on the way to dying. In my opinion, going to masterminds and being active in them and contributing your face off, it's one of the fastest, best accelerants I have ever, ever, ever seen, or ever witness ever.

I think I could say ever a few more times. Ever, ever, ever, ever...

It's because of all those things, not just the personal growth of the person explodes. Obviously the business does. The connections do. Hey, I know a guy who can hook you up with X, Y, and Z over here. The connections in the room, the ideas in the room for both your offer, or the marketing message, or the litmus test of the people who are sitting in there.

People who are offering their connections. People are offering things that they've taken time and money to build on their own in order to contribute because they all understand the law. The law is if you give the ideas away, yours explode and expand in ways you could have never done on your own. People know that when they're regular, habitual mastermind attenders.

I invite you to come. If it's not mine, I don't care. Choose one.

I would love it if you came to mine, but my gosh, choose. Just attend. Go to one. You will be shocked by what happens. If you're like, "I don't know which ones exist out there."

Just start looking around or come to mine, or go to someone's. I guarantee if you go to Google and start looking around, or any guru, gosh, just start asking around, and you'll find one.

Anyway, hey, so if you want to do whatever one I'm currently running or putting on or about to go to or whatever it is, I'm just going to be putting at SteveJLarsen.com, and you can click mastermind up on the top. The next one is actually here in just a few weeks, which I'm very excited about. Anyways, guys, appreciate it. Go collaborate like crazy. Share, share, share, and give your ideas away, and you'll be shocked at how much, A, they grow but B, no one steals them, because no one can truly replicate you. Anyway, talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

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WHO Is The Best At XYZ?...

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and I've got a bit of a treat for you guys today. I think you're gonna like it a lot, here on 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 your host Steve Larsen.

All right, you guys. Hey, so as I have been moving along the entrepreneurial path, as I've been putting things today. One of the things that I've noticed that I need more, and more, and more is people; like just straight up talent.
The longer I've been doing this stuff I've realized ... Here's an example, okay, I'm sitting at my desk and I was working, I was getting some things done, and I sat up and I looked across the room and I was like "Man, Russell dude, I want to go ... I would be so nice if I understood more Java Script. I'd love to be able to code out a few pieces just here and there, things that I wish that I knew how to do."

He looked at me, he goes, "Why would you want to know how to do that?" And I was like, "'cause it would be so cool, like, look at all the things I could go do." And he goes, "Dude, you don't need to know how to do that, we have people for that."

And I was like, "yeah, but like I ... It might be faster if I go learn."
He's like, "No. It would be faster at first, it might ... It's gonna take you all to go learn it, you get distracted, and now you become like slightly renaissance man." He said something like that, I can't remember what exactly. But, that was the point, is don't be a renaissance man. And I was like, "Huh, all right that makes sense. That make sense."

You sitting there listening might be like, "Well, yeah, it does Stephen." But, to me from where I sit, most people are like, "I got to learn this next thing in order to be successful. I can learn this next piece, I can learn this next piece."

Over the last 18 months working there ... Guess it's been 20 now, but he ... There's been repeated times ... It's funny how it's been like a topic, and it finally ... It sunk in now enough that it's not just something I know, it's something I'm applying that you don't ... You don't just go learn crap for the sake of learning it, you learn it because you need it in the exact moment.

It's kind of what I call that Learning Cycle. The Learning Cycle for me is very heavy as soon as I'm about to enter an industry, 'cause I go learn as much as I can then I stop. Actually, I put the books down, I stop learning on purpose.
Then, I only learn for the problem that sit directly in front of me. How do I solve the exact problem that's in front of me? What he was telling me though, and what he's told me repeatedly over and over again is like, "Stop obsessing over learning all the little nitty gritties."

He's like, "Dude, no, we got a guy for that." I was like, "[Cabe 00:02:38], it'd be fun to go learn that." He's like, "No, go ... Dude, we have a guy for that too." He's like, "Dude, just because you can learn something doesn't mean you should." I was like, "Aah man, that's massive, that's a huge ... Wow, okay. Yeah, that's right. That's right."

Conceptually I understood that, I understood it before but I hadn't been applying that at the time. So, I've got a bit of a gift for you guys, I was looking at some people's websites, and I was looking at some of their funnels and things like that. I came across a persons' site and ... I know a lot of people do this, but it was a directory of all the valuable internet marketing apps.

All the valuable internet marketing software, and I was thinking like, "This is kinda cool. It's kinda cool." I mean, I visited the page once, maybe twice but that's about it. The problem I had with it is that most of those apps, most of those pieces of software, I'm like, "Hey, I got to find an email platform." Or like, "Hey ..."
I mean, these [inaudible 00:03:27] but ... Or "Hey, I wanna find ... Where can I find anything, any piece of tool that I'm looking for, the first place I'd go is Google. Or I'd ask a few buddies and see what they're using, and then I'd go to Google.

Honestly, YouTube see what the best reviews are, maybe a blog or two see what the best reviews are there.

Those are kind of easy to find, so I was like ... I was thinking through I was like, "Okay, I wanna ... How do I combine this concept that Russell just talked to me about versus ... And combine it with this whole directory kind of model?"
So, I've got kind of a gift for you guys. So, I wanna take a step back and I realized that the first four minutes of this episode might feel like it's all over the place; let me kind of bring it all together.

I want you to know what's going on inside my head. So, let me take a step back from the episode and where we're currently are right now. I am in a place right now where I am realizing ... Not realizing, but I'm applying all the stuff that I have been learning from the man himself.

Honestly, I've been ... I started honestly doing that at least two years ago, and I was hiring out tons of people, and I was ... I'm a huge fan of freelancer.com, I'm all about getting things done through other people who would rather do them.
I could go figure out how to code stuff, but frankly, the guy over there is begging to do, and he wants to do, and he loves doing it. He loves doing it more ... as much as I love building funnels, so let's let that guy do it 'cause he's gonna be ... He's gonna throw passion behind it, whereas I'll just throw an objective behind it.
So, I like hiring people to go do these things, I don't want to be a Solopreneur.

Most of the time when I see a Solopreneur usually they don't go very far, because you can't do it on your own for very long. Or you can't do very long and you actually go that far. It requires other people, it requires a team.

So, I was think like, "Where do I find like the best of the best of everything. Where do I find the best of this topic over here? The best of this topic over here? The best of these different skill sets around?

I was thinking, "How cool ..." I don't actually remember where I got the idea, I think it was a couple mon ... Maybe two months ago-ish almost, and I was sitting there I was like, "What if I made a Talent Directory."

A Talent Directory, so, it's not so much about like ... It's not so much about like, "Hey, here's the best softwares if you're trying to this. Or here's the best companies if you're trying to do that." People, who is the best individual that does JavaScript? Who's the best individual to get for this? Who's the best individual for this?

So, what I was thinking was like, "How can I ..." 'cause I believe I'm a huge proponent you guys of pumping as much value into the marketplace as I possibly can, so that when it comes time, anytime I come ... Excuse me, anytime I come back and I'm like, "Hey, market please pay me for said product."

There's so much reciprocity that I've created, and there's such a relationship that I've gone through and actually put together. That the market is like, "Sure, here you go." You know what I mean? It's easy for me to sell that way, obviously it takes a little time.

I've had this entire podcast, and I've been doing this stuff for ... I've be doing this podcast now for 18 months and then the ... I've been doing funnel building for 5 years 'cause I was doing a word press before, which is ... Was terrible and I didn't know honestly it was a funnel, but that's what I was doing.

So, anyway, guys I've created a Talent Directory and anyone can apply to put their name on it. Anyone can ... And their talent, so, I'm gonna ... On stevejlarsen.com, stevejlarsen.com, I'm gonna go rebuild the whole thing I don't really like what it is right now.

But stevejlarsen.com, I'm gonna go rebuild it and if on the tab on the top I'm gonna put something in there that says Talent Directory; top or bottom okay. There's a part ... Anyway, it's in the top and I wanna make sure I probably add it to the bottom too for the footer.

But, if you go there it's in the header/footer, click on Talent Directory. What it is, it's a page of all the different things that I see are needed in order to get a successful funnel off the ground; images, video, funnel building, this, that, copyrighting. You see what I'm saying, design, traffic, fulfillment, all the stuff in the backend; a coder front end developer, a back end developer.

I want ... All those things I want to have, I want a big bank of those kinds of talents. I want to know who those people are, I want to know ... So, again, let's take a step back and I want you to know why I'm doing this, because I want a huge list of that.

I know if I ... As a marketer if I increase the status of the individual who's willing to put their name on that list, I can in turn put it out there into the market and use it of my own benefit at the same time. Does that make sense?

That's why I'm doing it. So, I'm putting ... It's a living document, it's a Talent Directory but it's a living document. Meaning if you get on the list, for the people that are on the list or whatever, I want to be able to showcase each person.

I want to be able to showcase each individual and show like, "Hey, look this person is awesome at this and here's their contact information." It's all gonna be free.

I will probably require an opt-in of you to see it, why? Because I'm a marketer you guys of course I'm gonna ask you to opt-in; Duh, that's what I'm gonna do. But, how cool to be able to show and showcase tons and tons of people for free. All the individuals, and all the Talent Directory like, "Who's the best of this? Who's the best of that."

Guys, I have sat in an amazing place for the last two years, I know who a lot of the best people are, and I know exactly the people to hook others up with. I can't by name actually suggest certain things to you. So, if I can't ... If I can't tell you, "Hey this is the one to do this. Hey, this is the one to do this." I can at least make it user generated. Does that make sense?

In some things my hands are tied simply because it's a need-to-know basis, and that's a trade secrets' kinda thing. Anyway ... You know what I mean, but ... So, if you wanna know who like the best ...

So, it's gonna be by application basis where someone comes in and they're like, "Hey, I wanna get on the directory."

Well, if you go to ... If you click on the Talent; I'm gonna call it The Talent. It's Talent Directory currently but I think that's too long, so it'll be like The Talent, or Finding Talent, or Find Talent. Maybe that's what ... Find Talent. So, it's Find Talent, I'll change it to that.

Find Talent, you click on that up in the top and it'll ask you to opt-in. But, it's gonna push you over to the list that I've got where it's like, "Hey, here's the best writer, here's the best this, here's the best that, here's the best sales guy, here's the best ..."

I don't wanna say The Best, but I'll give a list, I'll give several different option. Why? It'll showcase like crazy all these amazing people, but it also let me get a relationship with those individuals so that when I want to go higher the best fulfillment guy, or the best this, or the best that. I also have places to go to, okay.
So, that's what I'm trying to tell you guys is that I had this problem. I've got a current team they kick butt, they take names, I want to be able to interview all of them so you know who they are, and what their roles really are.

Some went here shortly, and I wanna showcase each one of them also on https://stevejlarsen.com/download

However, I don't feel like it's time yet for that, I think in the next two or three months it will be for a few specific reasons, which I'm not ready to put out yet. But, I wanna showcase each one of them, which would be really cool 'cause I'm fully aware that this is not just ... I know I'm not a one band stand, I do not drink my own Kool-Aid, and hopefully ... Why? Because usually ... Number one, I think that it's kind of wrong.

Not wrong but, I mean, come on it's not really that ethical sometimes and whatever. I'm sure I offended some people but whatever.

But, B) It's bad juju like, "Holy crap, anytime I ever seen any marketer started to drink their own Kool-Aid, and think they're all that they literally separate themselves from their own market, which is stupid. Why would you ever do that?"

Anyway, I don't drink my own Kool-Aid and I know that it's more than just me. So, I'm constantly looking for the coolest, awesome, most kick butt people to be able to hire. So, the Talent Directory that I'm gonna go put up or that is there ... I got to edit it, I got to change stuff, it's in ... By the time this episode is up it will be done, just so you know that's how I launch stuff. Just like I talked about in the last episode.

So, by the time this episode is up it will be ready to rock. But, you can go in and if you want to get on the directory, there will be a button there too you can click, and it'll have you go through and tell me why you should get on it. Believe me you are selling me, you are trying to tell me why you're a kick butt and should be able to be on there.

What I want it to be though is for the rest of the community, so they can jump on and be like, "Holy crap, this is freaking awesome." This would be a huge Lead Gen for tons of people that I want to think that ... I want them to think that I'm cool, that's why. As a marketer I'm trying to figure that out, I'm trying to make sure that I'm staying in the forefront of what is awesome, of what's good, of what's ... Does that make sense?

So, I want you ... Start thinking like that when you're like, "aah gosh, I wish I knew who the best person for this was. I wish I knew who the best person ... Or I've got this problem in my business." Instead of ... don't let it ... I'm not saying it does bring you down but don't ... Instead of letting it be too big of a barrier, think through how you could answer that and put value into the market.

If you treat every single problem in your business that way what's gonna end up happening is, you will put tons of value into the market in a way that lets you create a relationship with everybody. People will know who you are because you scratch their back without you asking anything in return.

Does that make sense?

So, I'm being open and honest, and I'm being completely transparent to show you that is the reason why I'm doing it. I want to be able to help everyone be able to progress, be able to go forward, and push forward, and it's gonna be awesome.
But, at the same time I wanna know who those people are too so that I can hire them. So I can use them so I know the best person who that is.

Or here's three options for that problem or three option for this skillset. Does that make sense? So, that's why I'm doing it.

So, if you want to; number one, see who that is. Go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent up in the top header; Find Talent. It'll ask you to opt-in, duh, just know that. I was getting nervous if somebody's gonna be like, "Well, you ask me to opt-in." Like, "Yeah, I'm putting the list together, it's the value that I'm giving. But, of course I'm gonna ask you to opt-in. Why would I not Lead Gen from it, right?"

So, you think through like, "How would you do it?" Find out maybe there's some other kind of directory that would work well for your industry. It doesn't need to be a Talent Directory, or a directory of all the software, or a directory of this, or that, or whatever.

But, this is a huge opportunity. You guys, you know this episode ... I'm sorry, you this podcast like I'm only pumping out usually two, sometimes three a week of these things usually. They get three to 500 downloads a day, which I know isn't massive, massive but it felt completely organic you guys.

I think you'll spend ads on it maybe one time a year ago and that's it. I understand that and I get it, but we just screened pass 80,000 downloads and it's doing awesome guys really, really exciting. There's a lot of you out there that are listening to this just so you know, the community is big, and it's growing, and it's actually growing really quickly.

Anyway, so, number one; if you wanna know who those people are go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent up at the top [inaudible 00:14:53] 'cause the guy that wanted Stevelarsen.com, the guy wanted 40 grand, I talked him down to 20, and I was like "It's not worth it, come on. I'm not gonna do it." Anyways, it's Steve J. Larsen, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen.

So, stevejlarsen.com....

Then, number two though, if you want to get on the directory please do not PM me on Facebook.

I get way too many messages it will get lost. I know notice a lot of people sometimes they get frustrating with me like, "You haven't answered yet." I was like, "You got to get in my shoes and understand that logistically I will spend the entire day answering messages, if I go answer every single message." It's not to be rude it's to protect, and sustain my own momentum. You know what I mean?

So, number two, if you want to get on the directory go to, again, stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent. Then there's gonna be a button there that says ... probably like the top right or something like that, probably make a subheader menu bar where it's like, "Get on the directory, or apply to get on it." It is an application funnel.

On the backend I'll put an application funnel; a watered down version of one. But, you are definitely selling me on why you should get on it, because I wanna make sure that it's awesome people. I don't mind to have several people in a certain topic that's totally fine with me. I just want to make sure that you're awesome because you are on my ... Literally my page.

I mean, I'm gonna manage the thing, if I find out someones being shady, or dumb, or whatever I'm gonna delete you. It's not worth it to me and everything I've worked hard to build. Anyway, so just know that it is being watched like a hawk and because those are the people that I wanna go to, I wanna hire, I wanna get relationships with.

So, I don't care what it is that you do as long as you're good. I don't care if it's fulfillment, I don't care if you are good at like back office style management, a phone sales guy. I don't care if it has to do with sales, or if its more about management, or if you're like HR, I don't care what it is.

Whatever you are if you're great at it I wanna know, I would love to be able to meet you, and say hi to you, and start pulling together rock stars like that.
Then, be able to help showcase you so that everyone else can also benefit. I think it's gonna help the community as a whole because one of the biggest questions I get over, and over, and over again, which is why I'm responding to the market That's the other reason why I got the idea 'cause I was like, "Man, everyone's asking me, like, who do you hire to do this? Who do you hire to do that?" And I was like, "Ugh, I don't wanna ..."

In some cases, I can't tell you because my hands are tied because I work at ClickFunnels and it's a conflict of interest, and we got to protect ourselves too. And I was like, "Ugh ..." But, if it's user generated, if it's user created that's totally different. You know what I mean?

So, I was getting the question all the time like, "Dude, who'd you hire for this? Who'd ..." And it's like I can't tell you that. Literally, that's me showing favoritism and I work ClickFunnels not for too much longer obviously but ... Anyway, so, if there's not a ton of people on there right now when you go to it, just know that it's a living, breathing thing and you should be able to get on their quickly.
So, here's how the funnels gonna go though. Funnel, what? You use funnels for managing things, what? Yes, they're not just for selling things, I use them to manage all the time. There's more to come of that, which is why I'm podcasting this so you know about it.

So, first if you go to that page it'll have you opt-in, now, think through the funnel. Number two, you're gonna see the page. Number three though, if you wanna get on the list, people will go through and they'll apply.

Well, one of the last steps of the first page will say, "Hey, let me know why you should be on here?" If you have a one sentence bio of what you've done, and a one sentence credentials thing of what you are good at, or something like that; what are those things? Write them down. This is almost like a resume, I feel like resumes are crap but the traditional sense resume.

This is a way better form to have a resume though, you know what I mean. But, anyway, so you'll be able to go through and you actually toss in stuff that I'll put directly on the page; probably not a picture I'm just thinking space wise. 'cause it's gonna be like a phone book, the text is gonna be slightly tiny eventually maybe not first. 'cause I wanna keep adding to it or removing from it if something happens, you know what I mean?

Then, the next page it's gonna say, "Awesome, thanks so much ... Appreciate the application we'll reach out if we put you on there." Then, what I want each person to go do ... Okay, think about this. Think about what I'm doing, what I want you to go do if you wanna get on the directory and get all these sweet leads is, we got the make sure that there's eyeballs that get to it.

Please share this link and post about it to your profile. Some people are gonna be like, Stephen, I can't believe you just publish that that's what you're asking people to do. That's really what you're going on. Oh my gosh, what ..."
Guys, it's Lead Gen that's why I'm doing it, I'm amassing a list. I'm amassing huge ... Oh my gosh, huge value. You know what I eventually wanna do is I wanna interview on the podcast each one of the people who truly are rock stars in each one of those areas.

I don't care if you're not involved directly at Sales Funnels, it's all part of the sales process and management in the back end in order to get the sale. Does that make sense?

This is like ... So, I'm to farm out the best, of the best, of the best, of the best, and of course I'm gonna interview them I wanna be ... If I can, I probably can't get anybody but like The A player, The Rock Star for each thing. I wanna interview them on the podcast.

Then, I'd love to be able to go and have them drop the link for that same directory to their own people. This is how a marketer thinks through this kind of stuff. How can I solve the problem but leverage it? In a positive way that scratches everyone's back, that solves legitimate problems, this is solving a legitimate issue.

There's a lot of people that ask me who to hire for X, Y, and Z and I can't answer them. But, if it's user generated, if I know you're awesome, if you're a rock star holy crap, why wouldn't I do that? Why would I not create a directory?

Anyways, I felt like it's more valuable than the software directories that are out there because you can't Google that stuff.

I mean, it's not ... But, it's harder to find good people, it's harder to find individuals. I have wasted thousands and thousands of dollars on really bad VA's, really, really bad freelancers. Really, really bad people who said that they can do the did, and technically they did it but it was so crappy. You know what I mean?

I wanna know who the actual A players, and rock stars are out there so that's why I'm making this. Again, if you want to; A) see it. Go to stevejlarsen.com, click on Find Talent. If you wanna be on the list, same thing, go there click on Find Talent and I wanna showcase rock stars.

You can apply to be on there and yeah that's pretty much it guys. I'm super excited for this. I've actually been planning this for a long time because it's just a serious issue that's out there. Anyways, if you ... I invite you to apply regard ... How should I say this? If you're like, "I'm pretty good a what I do but I don't know." Just do it anyway, you know what I mean.

Gives us a chance to say hi and pull on in. So, anyway, there's a funnel for this and that's the funnel ... If you wanna see the funnel, if you wanna go through the process anything like that, that's how you do that.

Anyway, so, I gotta do some tricky stuff on stevejlarsen.com, the homepage in order to pull this off because there's gonna be multiple exits. It's not actually a funnel, that first page is more like a website. By definition if there was more than one exit then it's no longer a squeeze page, so, there's gonna be multiple exits and multiple things all over the place.

Anyway, it will be fun, I'm excited. I got to think through some stuff for the ... Okay. Yeah, that'll be cool though I got to go map it out and draw it out. I got another white board I'm super pumped about it, so I'm gonna go draw out the whole thing and I'll go build it. By the time this thing is launched you guys it will be ready.

So, anyways, you're all awesome and this is a chance to show others that you are too. There's a cool quote I saw it said, "You're already a rock star, we're just here to help others know it." So, I guess this maybe the title of this or something. All right, guys talk to you later. Bye.

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There Are Two Things On MY Calendar. Events, And Product Launches...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to an early morning 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 your host, Steve Larsen.

I am literally about to go downstairs into my garage. In my third car garage, I've got a full gym, got the squat rack, the dumbbells, the barbells, the bench, the pull-up bars. I love it, I love it. That's always been a part of my life. When I first graduated from college, it's only been about two years ago, I actually stopped all those things and I have missed them greatly. So I've loved diving back into it all in the last month and a half, two months here. I'm excited.

I was about to go downstairs and get going. The hard part is that I know that outside right now it is 29°, so I was bundled up. I was like, "Uh. Right now it sounds more fun for me to do a podcast," actually for something that's been on my mind for quite a while. It’s cool that ... Okay. I'll tell you the story.

Two or three days ago, I was standing next to Russell and he said something that summed up something that I have been wanting to say for a while. I was standing there, I was in his office, and he goes, "Yeah, check out my calendar. My life is run by deadlines."

I was like, "Hm, That’s a good phrase right there. My life is run by deadlines." It's true. If you look at his calendar, and mine actually, the one that's right next to me on my left right here on that wall, it’s run by deadlines. I have a huge full calendar. I'm sorry, massive calendar on my wall, and I circle dates.

Now, some of the dates are events that I’m going to, that I'm going to speak to, or I've already been asked to speak at like eight different events next year, which I'm very excited about. Then, so one category is an event. The other category, though, that’s on here though is a product launch, something that I’m actually going to be putting out into the market.

You know what’s funny about that, and what’s funny about the pattern that we would work by, you guys have got to know that since I'm leaving ClickFunnels, what I've been trying to do is I'm trying to extract every lesson that I can that I learned there and I’m trying to publish it, not just so that you guys can know what it is but also that it sticks in my head. What I've been doing is I'm going and just trying to nitpick and pull out all the little things here.

So some of these last episodes, especially episodes 90 to 100, know that that's what the goal really is. I've got more and more of those coming...

I did that episode called 11 Brunsonisms, but I keep trying to pull out some of the best and biggest lessons, and you need to know how we operated there and how I'm going to continue to attempt to operate on my own come January 1st when I’m totally solo. Just know this is how we did it, is we would set a ... Okay. Please note that the reason I want to go through this is because I see people launching stuff really slowly. I understand there's a full team at ClickFunnels, Russell and I working in tandem, but a designer, traffic guy. There’s all these different elements, videographers, copywriters, email person, this person, and I get that. I understand that.

There's a full team there, but still, I think it goes to say, I think you need to know why we launch so fast, why and how. I want to go through both of those things real quick, so if you look at his calendar, like I said, there's really two different types of things on his calendar. One is product launches and the other one is events that he’s traveling and speaking at, and things like that. It gets full really fast for the full year every single time, and we never want to erase it because it’s almost like a ... I don't even know what to call it. It’s cool, it's awesome to look at it.

You're like, "This is what I did this year," and that's what we call them, funnel years. Anyway, so the way we launch stuff and the way I launch stuff is, the way I'm going to keep doing it, is we will set the date for when we want to put something out. Too often ... I'm sorry, it's like five 5 AM right now and I'm trying to wake up still so let me get this out there. Too often, what I’ve noticed is that somebody will ... In fact, here’s a good example. The other day I was on a coaching call and I was coaching somebody. I said, "Hey. When are you going to launch this thing?"

The individual was like, "Oh, you know what? I think I'll launch it on, maybe I'll do it on Thursday." I was like, "No, no, no. When are you going to launch it?" The person goes, "You know what? Maybe I'll launch it on ... Maybe I'll do like Thursday or Friday or Saturday." I said, "No. When are you going to launch it?" I had to get forward about it, and the person was like, "You know what? Maybe Saturday." I was like, "You're not understanding what I'm telling you. When are you going to launch it? Choose the freaking date. Choose the time and the date right now and you hold your own feet to the fire on it."

The person was like, "Okay. I'm going to do it this day." I was like, "Cool, what time?" The person was like, "I'm going to do it at this time," and I was like, "Cool. Awesome. Now you have the time. Now the trick is to hold your own feet to the fire. What mechanism can you put in place to hold your own feet to the fire?" Guys, that’s one of the keys of what I’m trying to teach you right here. When you set a launch date for product or a funnel that you're putting out, or anything at all, one the biggest keys is to ask yourself, "What is the mechanism, to hold your own feet to the fire."

One of the easiest ways to do it, one of the ways that we do it, one of the ways I’ve done it is to be public about the launch date. It’s real easy to let that launch date come and pass if you’ve told nobody. It’s one of the reasons why I've told a ton of people about a product that I’ve been ... I'm putting out on January 4th. It’s not totally done yet, and the reason why is because it’s public so I have to finish it. Does that make sense? That’s how we ran everything at ClickFunnels. That's why we put everything out there. We literally ... You know the Expert Secrets book funnel, guys we started that funnel two days before the actual launch. That was the freakiest thing.

I don't recommend that. That's a full team of fanatic experts to pull off in two days. We did not sleep for ... Oh my gosh, that was ridiculous, but you get the point though? You get the point. I hope you get the point. What’s the mechanism of you being able to just ... That’s one of the reasons you launch as fast as you can. Just set the date, set the date, set the date, and get as much stuff as you can done before the actual launch.

You're being public about what isn’t done. In the sales picture, telling people, "Look, you're part of this first group. I'm going to take you through it personally, and we're going to finish building out this thing together," or "Look, this first time I want to take a big group of people through it together and you’re going to get more one-on-one help from me than anybody else."

This first group, does that make sense? Module one is going to launch in two weeks, module two is going to launch in three weeks. That make sense? You're being open about it, and this is the way you're releasing. You're unraveling it, rather than having it be done all in one big package and you waste a ton of time and not get paid for it. What you’re doing is like the snowball unraveling, unrolling kind of a thing. Does that make sense? It's like you're unraveling a map that's rolled up like a scroll. You know what I mean?

That’s how you do it. Otherwise, what ends up happening is you never launch anything because you think it has to be perfect when you launch it, and that’s not how things work. You don’t know, we don’t know what people want all the time. What’s funny is if I go create a course or if I go create a product or if I go create something to my own specs, I usually overshoot the ball way past what the market actually wanted. Does that make sense?

Or needed or is expecting, or would be good enough, and so I would go and I'd create ... I've done that so many times personally where I'll go create something and it’s good and it’s so beyond what the person was wanting or expecting or beyond the current spot where they were needing, or whatever it was, that it almost overshoots expectations and creates overwhelm.

So you create it with then the first round out, which should take pressure off of your back because the market is helping you make the product. You are not there doing it on your own. Does that make sense? Okay. So you unscroll it. You unravel it. Unravel the product, and that's how you put it out there. The first thing I'm trying to put across here is, number one, what's the mechanism that you use to hold your own feet to the fire once you set a launch date? Really, if you think about that, what you’re doing this first round, the first thing, because the market will be making the product with you, what you’re really doing before the launch is trying to perfect the sales message itself.

You've got to think about the product and the sales message as two separate things. They’re not the same thing at all, and when people screw up, most of the time I see that they think the product is a thing that sells. If they've never sold anything before, you're like, "No. The product never sells itself." Rarely does a product ever sell itself, like the iPhone. The iPhone sold itself. As soon as people saw it, they're like, "Holy crap. I gotta have that." It sold itself a little bit, but that kind of product is not very often, and I wouldn't hold your breath for it.

Instead, go perfect this awesome sales message that breaks and rebuilds the belief patterns around a single big idea...

That’s what ... The product is facilitating the big idea. I’m going off on the side, though. The first thing, though, create the launch date and then a mechanism to hold your own feet to the fire. Yes, even Russell has to do that. The way that we did it was to be public. That’s one of the ways, be public about the actual launch date. When you’re public about the actual launch date, now you have to make it because hundreds and thousands of people are watching you now. They’re watching you, and it puts you in this area where you know what?

There’s potential to be really uncomfortable. You might have to stay up really late. You might have to get things done, whatever it is, but it’s cool because 99% of time it gets done because now it’s public. It’s public knowledge.

If you never told anybody your idea, that’s the wrong approach. That’s it. That’s a really bad approach. Anyway, terrible. That's a bad approach. Tell everybody about your idea. I’ve never had anybody steal an idea from me ever, and I try to tell ... Guys, this podcast for me, I try to tell all of my ideas on it, all of it. There's some products I haven't told you guys about because they're slightly in a different market, but anyway, I've got a few episodes coming up where I tell everything though. I'm trying to put all ... and you should too. One of the reasons why is because it holds my feet to the fire. I no longer have a choice. I've got to get it done. I’ve got to get these things done.

It’s one of those letter gold moments that Russell always talks about too. It’s the plot to a [inaudible 00:12:25]. Am I going to actually pull off and do this thing that now others are also holding me accountable to? So what’s the mechanism? One of the mechanisms, like I said, is to go and be public about it. It takes the pressure off of you knowing that the first group is going to create it with you. Follow me as ... These are all, they're all intertwined. All these reasons are intertwined.

Another mechanism, though, that you can use is like an accountability partner.
So what I’ve been doing, what one of my buddies and I are doing is we are doing ... Have you guys ever heard the thousand dollar check thing? I don't know if you guys have before, but anyway, this is what it is. I messaged my buddy and I said, "Look, dude. I'm about to go solo. I’m excited about it, but I want to make sure that I hold my feet to the fire as far as being ferocious in the business place," being ferocious. You know what I mean. That’s how we are every single day. That's how Russell is every day at ClickFunnels, because we got accountability from the public where we've got all these launch dates going on, but one of the methods that I love, so awesome, from one of his earlier podcasts was that he would write $1000 check to somebody else.

They wouldn’t cash it. The other person would write $1000 check back to him also, and what you do is at the beginning of the week, you tell each other, "Hey. This is what I'm going to get done this week," and at the end of the week you report. Real fast. This doesn’t take long. These are not full, massive, huge meetings. You're just reporting. If you do not get all those things done in that week, the other person cashes your check. Does that make sense? That’s what I'm doing. So my buddy Ben and I, I've talked about him many times on here, Ben's the man, but what I’ve been doing, what we’re doing is this thousand dollar check swap.

Right now, he and I are rigging our checks together and I'm sending mine, $1000 to him. He sent $1000 to me, and if we don’t get those things done, we get to cash each other's checks, which is awesome. That's another mechanism. Does that make sense? That's another way. There's a lot of ways to do it, as you go back and do it. So hold yourself accountable. Run your life by deadlines, not by, "For a while, I'm just going to focus on the product. I'm just going to get the product done." No. It sucks so bad to actually have created an entire amazing product that (a) the market may not have wanted and was overshooting it, and (b) quite honestly you didn’t get paid to create it.

You know what I mean? In fact, okay, my brain ... There's another squirrel that just popped up in my head. I'm going to follow it for a second here. I was just reading this morning from a book called, The Innovator’s Dilemma, and it is fantastic. It’s by Clayton Christensen. This guy is a genius. He teaches at Harvard Business School. Absolutely amazing hero. Another book called How We Measure Life. Anyway, he's the man. If you've never studied any of his stuff before, it’s like deep stuff though. I have to read it ... It's the kind of book where I've got to read the paragraph two or three times to get it. I'm like, "Holy crap, that was so deep. That was so good." Anyway, it’s awesome stuff, but here’s one of the reasons why you want to create the product with your people that first round.

As you are unraveling a product, as you’re putting it out there, and this goes to support the fact that I was saying before that many times you’ll create something that’s overshooting what the market even wanted. Let me read this. It's from a chapter called Discovering New and Emerging Markets. In Expert Secrets, the book tells you to create a market, so I was like, "That's a cool supporting chapter for this entire thing." I actually immediately flipped to that and this is the first paragraph that I read. I was like, "Holy crap. This sums up the entire thing that I’m saying right here."

What Expert Secrets tells you to do, don’t choose the freaking niche. You go create it, but with this in the backdrop. This is it. Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed. Suppliers and customers must discover them together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, they are unknowable. Let me say that one more time. Think about this. Think about this. Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed. Suppliers and customers must discover them together.

How can you analyze? How can you go create a market that is not even created? If it's not created, you can't analyze it. It’s the same thing with the new niche that you’re trying to create. You have to take your best guess through the formulas of books like Expert Secrets and throw it against the wall. Then that first group that you’re selling to unravels it with you as you sell it to them.

Funny, it's a different way to think about it guys, but funny enough, it actually is a huge alleviating thing to realize. Whether it’s an info product, a piece of technology, I don't care if you've got to code something, I don't care if it’s this first group, and if you can’t sell it to make money with, then you go get a beta group...

Those are the two different launch strategies that I personally. Either I set the ... I always set the date so everyone knows about it, but I’ll sell it, get paid to create it and make it with them, or I will go get a beta group and I will unravel it with them as well.

I never ... Guys, don’t do it on your own...

Do not create the product on your own. That’s what I’m trying to say here, and you use launch dates as a tool and all these mechanisms to hold your feet to the fire. You're like, "Launch, launch, launch, launch, launch." Launch this product. A couple weeks to sustain it and get on its feet. Then you have your next product launch, then the next product launch and the next product launch.

Now, I know I say focus on one funnel at a time, and it’s so true, but also know that sometimes one funnel has a whole bunch of different products in it. They don't all have to be created in order to launch it in the funnel. "Stephen, that’s going to be crazy. There's all these things to juggle the first round." Yeah, I know. There's a lot of stuff, but it helps you get it up so quickly. You don’t have to actually have it done before you launch it, and I beg you to not have it done before you launch it because of this principle.

Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, you're trying to create a disruptive technology, a brand-new opportunity...

It's something like that. It's something disruptive in general. A brand-new opportunity, what you’re trying ... You’re trying to go in with the brand, the niche that you're trying to create and you’re trying to say to every other person in the sub-market, "Look guys, the old vehicle is wrong." That’s the reason why you don't have to sell it as hard. That's why you don't need all these hard-core sales tactics or anything because it’s a brand-new opportunity. "Hey, check this out. Instead of painting your car, I've got this brand-new one over here for you, and it does all these things that have never been done before." Cool. It doesn’t take much of a sales pitch. You know what I'm saying?

Not only are the market applications for the disruptive technologies unknown at the time their development, they are unknowable. You take the best guess you can, you throw it against the wall. Using the formulas of Expert Secrets and how to create that niche, you throw it up against the wall and then you say, "Okay market, now it's your time to come help me create the rest of it," and that’s how literally ... That’s how we launch stuff. Anyway, oh man. Quite honestly, I was just looking for a cool paragraph that would help support what I’m saying, and now that I've picked this book, I'm like, "Crap, that was freaking awesome." That was one paragraph. I should probably finish reading that book.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense though. So my buddy and I, Ben and I, he lives in Utah, I’m here in Idaho, and we chat pretty much every day, almost every day, but we're doing that now. He’s solo, he’s been running solo for a while. I'm about to go solo, and I want to make sure that I still stick to this style of launch because it's very different than any other kind of business I've ever worked in. When I saw the way my dad worked and stuff like that, I know that those companies don’t work like this either. It’s a very fascinating way to approach your business, to launch in this kind of way, to have your calendar be full of events and the stuff that you ...

Guys, it’s like, there's good and bad to literally everything in life and this is using the positive parts of procrastination.

That’s what people would call it. With that, when you set the date and you're starting to create the message, just like a few weeks before or if you’re starting to be really good at this, maybe a few days before, I wouldn't recommend that though until you have really done this several times a lot, but it’s the good parts of procrastination. You’re going and you’re creating a scenario where you have to come up with something awesome because you don't have time to mess around. You get it out there, you sling it together, and in a way where you’re focusing on what sells it, not the product itself.

Then with the market, with the market, with the people you've sold or with a beta group or with the ... Whatever the point ... Whoever it is, the point is it's not by yourself. They are creating it with you, and then they go through, and what's nice about that is, like I said before, it takes that pressure off as the public is doing it with you.

That's one of the ... They're unraveling what this new opportunity is with you, because you’re not going to be able to guess what that is, which is what that book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, was saying. It’s like, "Look, it's unknowable. You can’t know what it is because no one’s been there before. You can’t analyze that market because it doesn’t exist yet. You're trying to create a new opportunity that has never been there before. You’re creating a niche."
If you're like, "I'm going to do what this guy does because it’s already out there," then you’re not creating a niche.

Anyway, think about that though...

Has ClickFunnels had all these products ready to launch at the time that they actually went to market? No. They're still creating tons of stuff all the time, and it’s awesome. That’s how fast they move with it. You're like, "Oh man, that’s really intense." It is intense, but it is so much less risky. Funny enough, then trying to make all those things before they're ready to launch, anyway. So I'm doing that, holding my feet to the fire. I'm trying to have an accountability partner, which I'm super stoked about to help hold my feet to the fire, and hold true to the launch date or hold to my calendar that I’m creating.

My calendar is full of events and launch deadlines. That’s really it, and then I backwards plan on getting each of those things done a couple weeks in advance. I start putting together the sales script. I put together the funnel to sell the thing. I'll create the first model that I think is the coolest one but then really after that, the rest of them, it’s all ask campaigns inside of each individual module, or if it's a software, each feature has its own little ask campaign. You know what I mean? You can use it any way you want, but this style, get used to it and let it sink in and be like, "Huh. When is my launch date?"

That's the first thing to figure out. When is the date? Set the date and the time that you're going to launch it.

Now start telling people about it and you're going to start crating these cool mechanisms where people create it with you, which takes the pressure off your head, and number two, find someone else to be accountable to with it. So anyways, I feel like I said the same thing over and over again, and I’m actually trying to. I'm trying to say the same thing in several different ways so that it clicks. I hope you get it and you're like, "Oh my gosh. That's how. That’s how the launch is done. That’s how you put it out there and be successful on such a regular recurring basis and launch things as quickly as you're able to."

What’s fun is that when you actually have the thing up and ready and done, you have that first round of people that have gone through and you’ve created the product with them, oh my gosh that’s such a good feeling because then you just focus on selling it, which is the funnest part in my opinion. Maybe people come back after a while and say, "You know what? We should have added an extra training here," or "I wish there was an extra feature in the software here," or "I wish that there was some other ... " and that’s great.

Then you go do a little spot check module there, a spot check training here, a spot check feature there, but besides that, guys the core of it's done and you’ve created something that’s amazing that’s tailored to what the people wanted and you've thrown in some extra things that the market has never seen before.

Then you've got yourself a sweet product that you got paid to create, and something that they wanted. Does that make sense? Too many times I've created something and it's like an overshoot of what people are expecting. They're like, "Oh my gosh. That was way too deep." That was a problem with my first MLM product that I put out there to the market a year and a half ago. It was too intense. You had to be a funnel freak like myself in order to actually pull it off. I was like, "Uh, crap. I did the overshoot thing." I had to pull it down, and rework the entire thing.

I was like, "Gosh dang it." It took me eight months to put it all together, and I was like, "Man, I did it wrong. I shouldn't have done it that way," so this time it’s totally different and it’s awesome. Oh my gosh, it’s so cool. It's a billion times better, which I didn't think was possible at the time, but the market is making it with me and that’s why. There's been a beta group for months and it’s been awesome. So anyways, I’m practicing what I'm preaching. I hope you guys are getting out there. Choose an accountability partner if you want to.

I’m excited to do the thousand dollar check thing. We're setting that stuff up right now and I’m getting ready to sprint again, which quite honestly I'm kind of addicted to.

If you don't have a massive wall calendar, I do suggest it also.

It gives a cool macro view of your day, and then usually the day before each day, the day before I do my micro planning to pull off and do my backwards planning to actually pull off what’s going on there. Anyways, that's more about how launching is done in the ClickFunnels and guru world. Pretty much anyone I've ever seen actually is launching stuff, and especially the internet marketing space, and honestly any space in general where there’s actually hustlers and things like that, that’s how I watch them do it, sitting in the seat that I did at ClickFunnels. All right, guys. Hope you're doing great. I will talk to you later. Go launch stuff.

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I'm A Huge Fan of Learning From Those WhoAre DOING, Rather Than Just Talking....

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. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

How are you guys doing? Hope everyone's doing great. It is barely 5:00 AM here. I set the alarm for 4:00 AM, but I slept in a little bit. Anyway, it's a Saturday, though, and a lot of you guys will be like, "What the heck are you doing up so early, Steven?" Well, number one, my brain works too fast. Sometimes I can't sleep, so I just get up. Number two, the real reason is because today, I'm not sure totally if I'm supposed to talk about this, but I'm actually really, really excited. Today, what's going to happen is one of my buddies ... You guys all know him.

I actually interviewed him probably several dozen episodes ago. His name's James Smiley. He's the man.

James Smiley was kind enough to send his own videographer, who's totally awesome, up to Boise, and today, Saturday, we are spending the entire day filming Gary V. styled videos, which is kind of cool. I'm getting up early so I can lift, honestly, and so that I can start prepping the different storylines.

They want to film at least 12 different storylines, 12 different videos, that they can turn into those fast-paced, cool, Gary V. styled little snippets, those little vignettes that he puts out all the time on Instagram.

Quite honestly, I don't really get on Instagram too much, but I am excited to get my own series of videos filmed like that. It's kind of cool. It's very exciting. I'm going through my podcast, and guess what I'm doing? I'm hacking my own self. Which means I'm going through my podcast, looking at all the stats, seeing which ones resonated with people the most. Those are the ones that will be turned into awesome videos. Just so you know, that's the process. They're like, "What's 12 cool things you could talk about?" I think everything that I put out is cool, and that's why I talked about it, but what did everyone else think was cool?

So let's go look at the stats. Let's look at what people liked and shared and things like that.

So I'm going through my show. I use a software called Libsyn, which I talked about in episode 1661, if you want to learn more about how I podcast. I'm going through all the stats, and I'm looking at basically seeing which 12 are the coolest ones. Then, I've got a whole bunch of thoughts on my own that I'll have to go add, as well. I'm excited, though.

I'm supposed to bring a whole bunch of different changes of clothes as we continue to move around Boise to different locations that are undisclosed. I have no idea where we're going today. I have no idea, really, what we're doing. I'm just pumped. I'm excited about it. I'm extremely honored to be able to do it. It's going to be fun. It'll be cool. I'm just kind of swinging with it, honestly. To have 12 different videos and stuff like that ... The thing that I have a hard time with is I am so anti ... Not professionalism.

There's certainly an awesome thing that comes with trying to be professional. It's when it makes you put so much starch in your shirt that you can't be your own personality. You know what I mean? Like I'm trying to wake up right now. I'm not going to lie. I probably should not have started podcasting. I don't want to come across in these videos in a way that it's like, "Hey, Steven is getting pre-framed and pitched and framed as if he's this pro guy." I don't look at myself like that. I don't look at myself like that. I don't look at myself as this ... I don't know. It's weird.

I feel like drinking your own Kool-Aid can really kill you. You know what I mean? It's something that I've seen many times, especially with where my job has been over the last two years, sitting next to Russell Brunson. It's something that we'll see, not from him, ever, but we'll see other people in different communities and things like that start to drink their own Kool-Aid. The moment you start doing that, you start to try to distance yourself from your own audience. When you start to distance yourself from your own audience, guess what happens?

They leave you. Why would I try and act like I'm someone I'm not? Anyway, that's actually my biggest fear with this. I'm excited. It'll be awesome.

Hey, the whole purpose of this podcast today, though, is something interesting that was brought up. I was at ClickFunnels' HQ. I don't think anyone really touches the ground there. Everyone just kind of floats and glides around. I can't remember what I was doing. I think I was grabbing a drink from the conference room or something like that or the event room. I was walking back in, and Russell was talking to someone else, too, and he and I ended up walking at the same time back to his office.

He goes, "Everyone needs to be more like Steven." I was like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "You follow ... " What did he say? You follow the biggest pile of cash rule, biggest pile of gold rule. I was like, "What's that, man?" He goes, "It's the biggest pile of gold rule. Whoever has the biggest pile of cash, that's the person you go and follow." I was like, "That's kind of interesting." He was like, "Everyone should be more like that." He's like, "That's super cool that you're ... " He's like, "You're naturally like that, man."

It felt a little bit from left field, the comment did, but he must have been talking about it from somebody else. What I did is I went online and ... You guys got to understand that when I met my wife, i was 6% body fat. I was working out at least once a day, a lot of times twice a did. I did a couple three days. It was all self-driven. I really like it. I'm very aggressive as an individual physically. I like to push my body. As I have been married and in school and college and the pressures of everything, I'm not going to lie, I gained a little weight.

I want to change that. About six weeks ago, I got on YouTube with the intent of finding a buff dude that I could hire. What I did is I went on YouTube and literally found the most shredded guy I could, the guy who has to walk sideways through doors. You know what I mean? I wanted to find the guy that could kill me in a single flex. Not punch, flex. So I went and I found this guy. He's massive. He won all these fitness competitions.

I just messaged him totally out of the blue. I didn't know if he did any coaching at all. I was like, "Hey, man, I really want to get ripped. How can I hire you?" I was like, "I've been disciplined to do it before on my own. I want help with the meal plan. I'd like help with the X, Y, and Z. The lifting part is easy. I want help with the meal plan. Please help me with that." He was like, "Sure, man, sounds good." He's been working with me for the last six weeks. I have no idea where he lives. It's all been remote. I am not, by any means, shredded yet, but my whole goal is to be more buff looking than Russell is by Funnel Hacking Live.

So a lot of the office right now is in this competition, trying to get swol. Swol patrol, baby, woo! Anyway, Russell, he was laughing. He was like, "You follow the biggest cash rule. This dude's ripped, so that's why you hired him. You came here, you learned marketing. Biggest pile of cash rule. You follow that all the time. I wish that more people learned that."

I was like, that's interesting. I was thinking through just my life. Kind of subconsciously, that's kind of how I've done it for a long time. I explicitly did door-to-door sales because I knew it would be one of the most emotionally challenging sales environments that I could conjure up. That's why I did door-to-door sales.

Honestly, I did door-to-door sales voluntarily, knowing that it was going to suck. That's why. I did it for two summers. Then, after that, I guess I didn't get enough of it. I went and did telemarketing, because I knew that I hated talking on the phone. I knew that I would learn how to sell. Those are the reasons why I did it, so that I could get better and put myself in an uncomfortable scenario. Fascinating. I took two or three minutes just to think through the list. I was like, that was kind of like a biggest pile of cash rule.

Then, I went to the next one, the next one, the next one. I was trying to speak at different events and things like that, years ago.

A lot of you guys may not know this, but I sang for a long time, since fourth grade. I had a lead role in several musicals. I was in the top choirs. I sang in a band. I played drums for, like, six years. What was funny is that when I was doing singing, at first, I was so shy that no one could ever hear me, so I just kept practicing, practicing, practicing until finally ... I mean, I got a lot better. I put myself in really challenging scenarios on purpose. You know what I mean? Stage scenarios. What's funny is how much I'm on stage now, and I had no idea those two should coincide. Army.

I legitimately went into the Army because I wanted to get my butt kicked. I didn't need to go into the ... There were other ways, okay? I wanted to do it because I wanted to go into those extreme stressful environments where it's physically demanding, where it's all you can do to just keep it together. You know what I mean? I wanted that, which was so funny.

It sounds like a problem, but when Russell pointed it out just a few weeks ago, I was like, huh, maybe he's right. Is this a problem? You know what I mean? He's like, "Think about that. You came to learn marketing here. The buff guy, you went and you hired that guy." I'm leaving my job, not because I have a bigger pile of cash than Russell. Please never think that. I think that everyone already knows that. That goes without saying, probably. Because I think that there's things I need to learn that a job can't teach me. You know what I mean? There's some stress that comes with it. Good stress.

I'm not freaking out or anything. I'm actually really, really pumped. It'll be awesome. All I wanted to do is I wanted to help you understand the biggest pile of cash rule, as coined and termed by Mr. Russell Brunson himself. Trademarked, register mark. Put a huge thing of disclaimers in right there.

Honestly, I don't know where it stems back from, but definitely early on in my childhood, some things that I started doing ... I think, honestly, in my early teens or mid-teens. I don't know what clicked or what it was, but I kind of liked putting myself in stressful environments on purpose, because of what would happen to myself after I was done with them.

Honestly, I may not have even understood that consciously, that that's what I was doing, but I did seek out slightly stressful environments kind of on purpose. Probably first as just kind of an adrenaline high. I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie growing up. I would go long board down ... I was a big long boarder guy. I loved to long board. It's like a skateboard, but it's long. It's long board. I had a speed board, and I would go 45 miles an hour. My brother would clock my in a car behind, barefoot down hills. That's stupid. Who does that crap? That's stupid. I've always been a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, so I don't know if I can blame it on, yeah, I consciously knew that was the biggest pile of cash rule as coined by Russell.

That's slightly been the outcome from it, though, is that putting myself in scenarios where not all the pieces are quite figured out, where not everything is quite laid out in front of me, where I can't really see the middle, I just kind of know where the end is and where I'm trying to get. I know that it'll work out on the other side. Long boarding barefoot, that's stupid, okay? Don't do that. That was a dumb example.

That was an example of what not to do. I think it comes down to some lessons that Perry Belcher talked about. There's a great course. I just heard that DigitalMarketer ... This is, honestly, the best course that I think DigitalMarketer's come out with. It's a course called secret selling system. It's like 18 hours long, by Perry Belcher. It is fantastic. It is one of the best funnel training courses I've ever listened to ever. A fair warning, though, there's a fair amount of swearing in it. Anyway, I wouldn't listen to it around kids, just to let you know. Perry Belcher's a bit vulgar, if you know anything about him.

There's a few different levels. I think he named seven. I'm just going to go through three of them here. Seven different belief phases. These are different phases that an individual has to go through in order to make a sale. You think about what you're doing to yourself, too, as you start to follow, if you want to, the biggest pile of cash rule. I was thinking through that's interesting, because it really is following that same thing.

Instead, I'm just selling myself, which is why I go through those scenarios on purpose. Pre-thought out, whatever that term is. One of the very first phases of this is that a person needs to go through and ask themselves, okay, this guy's got this cool product. Is this possible at all? Meaning not for anybody, but can I see this product working at all, for anybody? If the answer to that question is yes, they can kind of move on to the next question, which is if it's possible for other people, in general, is it possible for me?

There's a whole bunch of in-between steps. I cannot remember all of them. This is the basic premise, though, and honestly, the same effect comes from these three, in my opinion. These are the three, also.

Number one, is this possible at all? Is it possible in general that this product could get the change that this guy says it is? That's the first phase of belief. The second one is is it possible for me? Can I pull this off? Is this something where I could actually go off and be successful with it?

Which kind of leads me, honestly, to the third thing. Honestly, the place that you want to stay if you're going to follow the biggest pile of cash rule, meaning whoever has the biggest pile of cash, whether that's money or some kind of result or whatever it is, those are the people you go learn from. If you're going to try and learn funnel building, go find a freaking awesome funnel builder who's built a ton of them. Right? This is Sales Funnel Radio.

That's why you're listening to me...

I've built a lot of funnels for a lot of people in a lot of scenarios. You're following the biggest pile of cash rule already right now. I've had a ton of you guys reach out and ask me if I'm going to have a mastermind after I leave ClickFunnels or coaching or something like that. I was like, hm, that's interesting. That's probably the market telling me that that's what it wants. I haven't thought of that. Maybe I should do that.

Anyway, you want to stay kind of in this third phase if you're going to follow the biggest pile of cash rule. This is something I identified for me, anyways, where if I can get past a belief that ... Let's take this lifting example, this example of me trying to ... I want to go get buff again. I was doing sprint triathlons. Guys, I was killing it. I was the fastest dude out of, like, 50 guys that I would run with. Oh, man, I so miss that. It's such a huge physical rush. I like pushing my body to those uncomfortable places. That's awesome. Maybe it's a little bit of an issue. It goes back to the adrenaline long board barefoot issue, maybe.

Let's take this as an example. Is it possible at all? Is there any belief that I have that it is possible for anyone in all of humanity to get ripped and buff? Yeah, I do believe that it's possible. Okay, that lets me go on to the second phase.

Obviously, in tandem, think through this, also, with money making. So let's go to the second phase. Is it possible, then, for me? Do I believe that I have the capacity to be able to do this? Yeah. Yeah, I have. Not just because I've done it before and was that way for a while, until I kind of focused on making money, which makes sense. I was trying to follow my fatherly roles and husbandly roles of providing. That leads me to my third phase, the third one here, and this is honestly kind of a personal one.

The third one is since it's possible, if this is possible ... How should I say this? Since it's possible, I'll just figure it out and start walking. That's kind of what I'm going to name the phase. Meaning I never, hardly ever, have all of the steps planned out. I have a very rough, 30,000-foot view plan of what I'm actually trying to do. I've noticed that it's the same way with how I build funnels. That's always that way. We never have all the details, all the plan.

This is what it's going to look like. This is what it's going to be like. This is what this page is going to say. This is what this email's going to pop ... No.

What we do is we set a very rough flag out on a hill. We say, "That's where we're going. Take the hill." We just start walking towards it. As we encounter the hill, there's a random boulder that comes up or there's a cliff that appears and we didn't know it was there. Or there's a huge chasm or a massive river or a rope bridge where it's barely working. You know what I mean? Then, we just deal with that problem at that time only. I think sometimes one of the reasons people will not progress, and something that I see ... There's hundreds of people I've coached through the coaching program now, hundreds that have come to the FAT event, the Funnel Hackathon event.

There's hundreds, you guys. One of the things I think people ... There's really two different personality types that I see, as far as it comes to action-taking, happens all the time.

The first one is the one where it's like I have got to have everything planned out in front of me so that I know it's safe for me to jump, so that I can handle every single contingency that's ever possible. I'm like, gosh, that contingency right there rue asking me about, the probably of it is so tiny.

Are you kidding me? Deal with it when it comes, which is the second personality. The second personality that I see comes through ... It's funny, because when I'm saying it on stage and I'm seeing all these people ask questions and I see them progressing, I can see who's getting it. I can also see who's already implementing it in the event. They haven't waited to leave or go home. They're doing it there. The second personality is the one who goes, "Ah, I get it. I see the vision. Not all the steps. I see the vision. I see where you're trying to take us.

Therefore, I will fill in all the gaps that I personally can, because I know that my success is not on your shoulders, Steven." Does that make sense?

What I've seen, too, is when someone hasn't taken action but they've got everything filled out ... They've got all the pieces. They've got all these pieces together. They've got all the little parts. A lot of times, what ends up happening is they're looking for another thing that they think they need in order to distract themselves from getting started.

They're looking for excuses to not buy into the process. I am begging you to not fall into that trap. If you're going to follow the biggest pile of cash rule, you can't fall into that trap, because you will not have all the answers, and you never will.

Entrepreneurship is one big answering game after another. Another question, another question, every day you wake up.

Guys, I cannot tell you how many times I sit down for my own personal business, and I'm like, crap, I don't even know what to build next. Or I don't even know what to build next or what's the next step here. No one's giving me a to-do list. No one's giving Russell a to-do list.

No one's sitting down and going, "Okay, what do I got to do today? All right, who's got that list for me?" He's sitting down and saying, "Huh, what's hurting right now? Is there something I need to go fix? Is there something we should go increase revenue on or optimize?" Does that make sense? There's no such thing as entrepreneurship where all the answers are given to you, and I am all about entrepreneurship. I know you guys are all in here, too, who are.

If you are trying to become one, please understand that it is a biggest pile of cash game. Go learn from the best people.

There's a reason Russell has his own inner circle. 100 people come in from pretty much every industry you can imagine, and then he has his own personal growth-styled masterminds, also. Then he goes and he hangs out with these massive guys that are also on his level and even higher so that he can continue to grow. Does that make sense? It's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. You will not have all the answers. You sit there and go, "Yeah, I know. No duh." If you've been waiting to launch something for quite a while, you're not following the rule, then. Does that make sense?

It is a game of jumping out of the plane and building the parachute while you fall, not before you jump. Funny enough, the first time I ever built an info product, I did it wrong. I did it so wrong. I did it terribly. I spent eight months building it, building the product. I was convinced that the product was the thing that made the sale. Products rarely make sales. A sales message makes sales. They're not the same thing. It's the whole reason why we'll go out and we sell stuff before we ever make it.

Anyway, I'm totally getting on a soap box here, because I'm noticing that a lot of people haven't started because they think that the product needs to be done or has to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. It's coming from your own head, when the market is the thing that needs to tell you what you should be building. You don't have the creativity inside of you to be successful and make a million dollars.

That's why this game is more like a game of detective. It's like a detective game, where you're going to go through and you're going to discover what the market wants. You're going to toss things out there. Nope, that wasn't it. Let's take these three things out. Let's adjust that. Now, let's relaunch. Oh, cool, all but one of them stuck. Okay, let's go back. Relaunch, relaunch, relaunch, relaunch.

Interaction, iteration, iteration, iteration. It's part of this biggest pile of cash rule, too, where what you're really trying to do is you're trying to help just get your own self in motion. Action creates action. Motion creates motion. Success creates success. One of the easiest ways to follow the biggest pile of cash rule that I've noticed in my own life is that I try to have personal, small wins every single day. I try to get at least ... Guys, I work full-time for somebody else, and it's way more than full-time. Way more than a 9:00 to 5:00 job. It's fun, because in the last two months here, Russell's like, "Dude, can we just do a normal 9:00 to 5:00 schedule?"

I was like, "Yeah, we've never done that. That actually sounds really nice. It's the holidays coming up." I mean, we're just killing ourselves. You know what I mean?

You're not going to have any success at all if you have to have all the pieces together. That's basically what I'm trying to say. If you're trying to follow the biggest pile of cash rule, one of the easiest things that you can do is go just try and do three ... That's what I was trying to say before. Sorry, I totally lost my train of thought, because I was thinking through ... I totally have the squirrel brain. Squirrel! Squirrel! Which is nice for brainstorming scenarios, and I'm totally doing it right now. I was trying to wrap up with this, and I got distracted. I'm sorry. This is me being vulnerable and just real.

What I was trying to say, though, is one of the easiest ways to follow the biggest pile of cash rule is just try and make three moves a day if you're working for somebody else. It's going to be way more than that for me when I am completely solo January 1st, which I'm very excited about. Just make three moves a day, and that's all I try and do. Sometimes I don't get a full three, and sometimes I just get two.

Meaning I try and get two to three big things done ... What's three? I try and get three things done each day that just move the ball forward. I don't even know always where the ball is going. I just try to move the thing. Motion creates motion. Action creates action. I kind of thought that was a cliché, okay, that's nice kind of thing five years ago, and it is so true, though. Just be in motion. Guys, I got an email from someone this morning that was ridiculous. It was so cool. It was an invitation to go hang out with some incredibly huge people that have helped massive celebrities we all know become very successful.

I was like, what? What? That's crazy. Why? Motion. Moving. I hate coaching people who are not already in motion. It's one of my things. If I can tell an individual is not already moving, looking for their pile of cash, just moving towards that ... If they're not already actively learning, I hate coaching those individuals. Or they're not actively already trying to make money. Not thinking about it. Not thinking about how nice of a goal it is. Not planning it out. Actually trying to make sales.

I hate coaching those kinds of people, because I've got to teach them the biggest pile of cash rule. They've had no practice following it, where you're going out and you're learning from the best people. You're trying. You're already doing it. Nobody's motivating you. You're motivating yourself. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I try not to put too many ideas in a single podcast, and I tend to string them all together, so I should probably stop this here, just so you guys know. What I'm trying to say here is now that Russell brought it out and I realize, oh my gosh, I do follow that rule.

That is why I'm actually leaving my job. Huh, that's why I called that dude and said, "Hey, make me buff," and why I've been reaching out to all these ... That's fascinating. So follow the pile of biggest cash rule. Who is it that has actually done it? Not talked about it. Not written books about it. Who's actually done it? Who's actually done the thing? Who's actually doing the thing? Who can you follow? Follow those people. Those are the people to go follow, okay?

A lot of times, what's funny is the people who have the biggest pile of cash are not the ones that are talking. Sometimes they're the ones who don't want to talk. They don't want to let out their secrets. It's been funny to watch this whole fill your funnel process, because sometimes people don't want to reveal the traffic secrets that they're using, because they're proprietary. They're the ones that are the cutting edge.

Usually, the ones that you're hearing in courses are not the ones that are the most cutting edge ones. You know what I mean?

That's like hearing the news say, "Hey, this is the best stock to go get right now." It's like, yeah, well, like yesterday. The opportunity's already passed. You know what I mean? Same kind of thing. Sometimes when those biggest pile of cash people come into your life, you've got to find ways to convince them that you are coaching worthy. Just like I just said, I've got things that turn me off as far as someone when they want me to coach them. It's the same thing.

You've got to go convince those people that you're coachable, that you're worthy to be coached. It is the most unattractive thing on the planet when someone's asking me to coach them and I can tell they haven't even started. They're waiting for permission to start. Cut that crap out. Just start. No one's going to give you permission or a to-do list, and it's going to be all one massive, big, continuous problem-solving exercise. It's very fun. It's kind of a liberating thing, actually. It's fun to have that kind of control. Anyways, guys, probably said too much there. Just think through that, though. What is the thing you're trying to go for? Find the person with the biggest pile of cash, and keep yourself in the phase where all you need to know is enough, not all of it. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.

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Here's the Pattern I've Noticed 'the Greats' Following...

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

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

Steve Larsen: Hey, you guys, super excited for this episode here. I've got somewhat of a treat here. This is a little bit different. One of my buddies, Ben Willson, totally the man, been friends forever with him, actually made my first dollar online with him, while I was in college. He's the man. Anyway, he and I chat all the time, super good friends, and he had a question about content creation strategies and how to go about doing it in a way where it doesn't suck up your entire life. What I wanted to do is drop in a Vox conversation that we had about that very topic.

So what I'm going to do is I'm actually ... I have the Voxers right here, and I'm just going to drop them in right here, so you guys can hear them. It is a little bit long, but I think the strategies that I say in here should connect a lot of dots for people and help people understand more about how we can produce so much content in such a little amount of time. This is literally how I am doing it. There's more of this that I'm implementing personally, as well, my own processes.

Honestly, when you start looking at about how all the gurus actually create so much stuff, most of them are doing variations of this, if not this exact same thing. So let me go ahead and go over to the episode here, and please let me know if you enjoyed this, and give a shout out to Ben Willson for asking the question and sucking this information out of me, because sometimes I don't realize some of the things I'm doing. I'm just doing them. You know what I mean? So this was helpful.

Ben Wilson: What am I doing? What am I doing? How should I say this. I spent eight months creating my first info product before I ever sold any of it. You know that I mean? Eight months, and it sucked, and I thought I was doing it the right way, but it was the total wrong way, because I still had not hung around Russell to realize what he actually was doing. Now, though, I know exactly how he does it, which is awesome.

The way he pumps out so many freaking products ... because he has a hold. I mean, granted he's got a graphics guy. He's got a video guy. He's got a Facebook guy. He's got this. He's got this, whatever, but he's still the main creative, you know? He is. He's still the main innovator of products there.

What I've noticed, watching him, is that ... so I spent eight months creating that first product, and no one bought it for months after it was done. Instead, and this is the scariest thing on the planet, but it is ... How should I say this? Dude, he sells stuff before he ever, ever starts creating it, and it's the way he rolls it out, and he pre-frames it with everybody, so they know that it's not ready.

He says, "Hey, look," two weeks from the time that it starts ... I'm sure that, I've talked about this on my podcast before, so you're probably like... That's how, though, like "Hey, it starts in two weeks. Part of the early bird pricing is we're going to give a little price drop as a thank you. It's $9.97 to join."

Then one week out, "Hey, it's one week away, $9.97 to join, early bird pricing." Then on the actual day, "Hey, guess what? It's actually, opened today, but we're still accepting the early bird pricing deal," right? Then a week after you've opened the cart. "Hey, good news. You guys don't have to wait like everyone else did. You can get started right now, for just $9.97."

Same thing two weeks in. "You don't need to start. There's already two modules that are already done in there for you." But really, what you're doing is, so that's the surface level that everybody sees but what you're actually doing and this is how I build Secrets Masterclass what you're actually doing is you put an ask campaign onto every single module, so you know at least what the models are gonna be but they're not created yet.

So on every single module you have an ask campaign. So let's say the first module was about how to drive Facebook ads and module number two is about how to talk to people on the phone, I don't know I'm just making stuff up. Let's say module number three is about whatever. You would go and you would say, "Okay, I'm so excited for this module with you guys." Sorry, "So excited for this module with you guys." Module number one's going to be all about Facebook ads just so I make sure I've got the content correctly, addressing your needs. What is your number one question or challenge about Facebook ads right now?

And they're, when they go through and answer it they're giving the freaking content that they're asking you to create. It's funny because I usually go way past what they're expecting, way overboard. I have totally done that on this [inaudible 00:05:17] products thing. 100%, you know what I mean? Because I'm building stuff that they didn't even know existed, which is fine 'cause I'm going to use it in other areas, but I won't probably sell it like this in the future. Anyway, so that's one way as far as rolling out courses and you probably, I mean you probably know that, I'm sure.

Here's another way, I'm just going off the top of my head, like here's several ways of repurposing content like an absolute beast. So we'll have, do you know the difference between, this is also one of the major keys, it's the difference between an opportunity switch and an opportunity stack. If you, I know you've read "Extra Secrets" but, when it's an opportunity stack, those are way easier than opportunity switches, with an opportunity stack and we're just doing like one off sales when they're, "Hey we should sell this," but it's not like a continuity, it's not like easily continuity based thing like, Funnel Immersion, do you remember that?
I don't know if you ever saw that but Funnel Immersion was like the back archives of all the treatings he had done for his inner circle. So like 300 bucks. It was amazing.

And on day two it was like $400 for the same content. On the third day it was $500 for the exact same content because on the fourth day it closed out and you still can't buy it. If you go to Funnelimmersion.com you still can't buy it but what it did is it let us create a product. Sorry. It let us create a product and get paid for the creation of the product. Okay he doesn't like to create content without getting paid for it.

So he always sells it first and then he goes out and he creates the content second. So it's the same kind of thing so all he did was he had these pre-created things and all I did was I aggregated them and we sold it, it made 300 grand in like three days it was ridiculous and we closed it out but now what we know is that that offers awesome. So it becomes a very easy upsell in other funnels. So, I can't remember which funnels I'm part of right now, but you can't buy it on the open web, which is awesome because it's let us say in the pitch now, on the first OTO, "Hey this is literally not available on the internet."

You know the back archives of X, Y, and Z is $300 and we know it converts well because it sold so well so he'll take these one off products and make them the upsells inside other funnels where it makes sense to have that thing. And I'm trying to think what other ninja strategies or content tips.

The repurposing thing that is totally, I'm sure that's kind of self, I'm sure you've done that before too. That's why I like [inaudible 00:08:20] so freaking much, oh my gosh, I just create one podcast episode and it blasts all over the place on youtube and video platforms and also, tons of social medias and the blog and, it just gets repurposed like a beast.

It's kind of cool because if you can get your own content strategy down it lets you feel to the rest of the world your like, a hundred guys. When your just like one or two.

Here's another cool strategy that I'm actually gonna start implementing it, especially as I go solo. Dude, I know you've noticed content creation takes for freaking ever and it's a huge pain in the butt so I'm gonna start doing what I've seen a lot of other inner circle people do and actually I've actually already been doing it to a smaller degree. And that is a lot of these guys will bash their content in a serious way. Sorry, dude I'm yawning like crazy, I gotta go to sleep soon. [inaudible 00:09:24]at like 2 AM I gotta go to bed now but anyways so what they'll do is this. They will find themselves a graphics guy and like a general social media manager person. Kay, and what they do is and this is what [John Lee Dumas 00:09:44] does, JLD, entrepreneur on fire, I got to listen to him, got to talk with him, he's a cool guy.

They will schedule all of their interviews for their podcasts for all of their content creation or every video they're gonna shoot for that, for the next while, you know, three months even and his team gets it transcribed, takes a picture from it to turn it into a meme, they turn it into a podcast, they turn it into a blog post, into an Instagram thing.

Anyway they repurpose it into every platform that you can even conceive in a week's time. So first of all it gets passed to this person and they create a meme out of it. And then they hand it off to the next person and they get the next one and they create it out of the meme out of that one and they hand it off to the next person and this next person what they do is, and this is these ridiculous content generating machines that they put together. Yeah, they don't have to spend all the time creating all this stuff. They spend several days at the beginning of each month.

John Lee Dumas, I know he does, he told us that he does his interviews the first two days of every month. So they'll only be one hour interviews but they'll be back to back to back to back. He's like they're killer days. They're good days but they're killer. He's like, "I'm totally rocked by the end of it, but then I hand it off to my team they do the editing, then they put it all together, and then they drip it out. Every single day for the next ever." I mean he podcasts literally every day that's like JLD's thing but that's how though, that's how he does it.
Stu McLaren, for his membership sites. Dude that dude makes $627,000,000 a year on membership sites that he only actually spends two weeks a year creating. Most people don't know that. Isn't that crazy?

So what he does is his membership sites are heavily based on interviewing experts and each month they get a new expert interview, they get a blog post, they get a behind the scenes thing. A lot of cool stuff and the persons paying them $27 a month or something like that and it could be about recipes. Whatever. What he does is he'll fly in twelve different experts and he interviews them all in a single day and he creates all the content and all the models, all the courses, everything over the next week or two and then it's constantly, it's dripped out, so it's evergreen for each person that comes in and he's set for literally a full freaking year and ... it's behind the scenes of all these guys doing all their content in course generating that has been, it really opened my eyes.

To think through, like so I'm gonna start doing that because I got a business to freaking run man. But I got to talk to my audience. I try to podcast at least twice a week that's what I want to do though. Dude publishing has changed my life for that one so I can't not publish.

Ben Wilson: Not publishing feels like I'm taking away future of thousands of thousands of dollar per day for my self. Because if I publish and I just make a-

Steve Larsen: I'll text her to...

Ben Wilson: A following out of it like, I think publishing is as powerful of a skill as... because if you can get publishing down, dude some of the worst YouTubers out there have no idea what they're doing at all but they have these gigantic followings. They don't know how to build funnels, they have no idea how to monetize anything, but they get these massive, massive followings, really, really quickly because they figured out how to publish and be an attractive character and tell stories, which is mostly what it is, it's just story telling. And ... anyway that's seriously what that is though.

But that's what I've, anyways that's what I've learned.
Here's another cool little tidbit, when these guys go and create courses, so they'll go, they'll go usually whatever easiest to create the actual content that's the medium that they'll go for so like, I do podcasting cause it's really freakin' easy for me to repurpose that stuff and... and turns it into a video for me as it's getting publish, which is awesome so I don't have to make a video.

So Russel will film an entire module or even an entire course in a single sitting sometimes. He's got so much backlogged content that he doesn't totally need to do that anymore so well I'll just take and pick and grab different things and repurpose from other courses and, you know what I mean like, I do that all the time. That's what Secrets Masterclass is. And then we filmed a single intro video for each module in just a single shot but what these guys will do though for their courses, they call it thud factor.

Okay thud factor is if you were to take a book and drop it on a table from a foot high, like what kind of thud does it get so this is an actual thing called thud factor. I think this comes from Danny Kennedy or something like that. But what they do is this, is when they go and create these courses that put things together, it's the same reason ... Anyway let me tell you the thing and then tell you how I'm doing it. Cause I totally have been, which is awesome.

But what they'll do is, they'll go film the whole course, they'll take that, they'll get it transcribed and turn it into a workbook, or a news letter or transcriptions, they'll take the videos, they'll put it into a member's area but they'll also take the videos and put 'em into, they'll put it into 12 thumb drives, it could easily fit on one thumb drive but that takes away thud factor. Kay, in the workbook it would make fiscal sense to print double-sided. They don't. They print single-sided because it's thicker and you have more thud factor.

So when you get these boxed sets from these people. You open it up and we all consume content in different ways. I never read blogs, I'm shocked when people read mine, I know it's good to have so I do it. Right? Cause there are people that will read it so someone will each out and say, "Hey, I was reading your blog," and I was like, "Wow I forgot I had one." It's all part of the system I put up. And, "This sounds awesome, X, Y, and Z," but like they've never heard my podcast. They're just reading transcriptions from it.

Anyways it's fascinating stuff. Russel has all these box sets, all over his book shelves and what they are is their swipe files to him, meaning it's some guy who had awesome thud factor so they went out and it's this right there's a, first there's an actual iPad that has the course pre-loaded on it or you could listen to it on your computer and there's twelve thumb drives with all the courses spread throughout there. Or if you want there's a notepad where all of it has been transcribed and you get a huge massive, three ring binder and it honestly it could have fit on a two inch three-ring binder but it looks so much better it's on a four to six inch reading binder, you know what I mean?

And so you get this box that's huge because what they're trying to create inside the person's mind is finality. If there's finality in the brain, right that gives the warm fuzzies to a buyer that they have found a solution, that they've arrived, they come home, that there's no more reason to look anymore cause I found home. So that's how they're doing that. That's just a whole bunch of different content generating strategies man, when it's all said and done it's all about batching it and especially if you're regularly publishing, it's about batching it. If you're course creating it's usually about selling it first so you know it actually sells and then creating one module at a time with them.

So that first group that comes in with you is creating a content with you so that everyone that follows up afterwards and is buying afterwards you know that its awesome content because it was basically user created, they just don't know that.

Anyways that's pretty much it though. And then they look for ways to duplicate themselves so live QnA calls are amazing, group QnA not one on one. One on one QnA calls to be sold at for a higher ticket price, higher up in the valley ladder. The group coaching QNA calls are awesome because you can record those, get them transcribed, you can give the audio, you can turn it into a video and make a youtube series out of it. You can take that and get it transcribed and put it into a monthly news letter with, "Hey this is the groups'-" dude, tons of people do that kind of stuff and I used to think it was kind of a joke honestly but it is ridiculous how powerful it is. And like there's tons of people who won't ever get on the QnA calls but they will listen to every single replay.

You know what I mean?

'Cause that's how they consume content. I don't ever read blogs, I watch youtube videos and I listen to podcasts. That's how I consume content.

I don't ever answer my phone and that's ... it's all about this concept that Russel talking long a Vox man sorry about this. I hope this is okay but it all revolves around a concept called conversation domination, I can't remember who first said that but, we wanna dominate every single channel, dominate every single conversation. Gary V taught that back in the 1950s there were like three different channels. NBC, ABC, and whatever alright there weren't that many and the reason Tony Robbins is Tony Robbins is because back when there was only three channels in the TV, he had ads on every single one of them. That's like how he blew up. Right, I mean that's why he's so big.

He dominate, I know it wasn't the 50s but 60s or 70s or something like that. That's why he's Tony Robbins because he dominated those channels and so Gary V teaches that the phone is like the TV of the 70s.

There's only three or four channels you got YouTube, there's Facebook, Periscope, you know, if anyone gets on it anymore, Instagram. Those are the channels. It's all about conversation domination so you make sure you are auto publishing to every single one of those platforms as frequently as you can because you'll dominate conversation, there's no other room for someone to even think about something else because you are literally dominating all conversation inside of it so that's why Russel publishes so freaking much. It's way more than a single person or follower or lover of ClickFunnels can ever consume and it's actually on purpose.

Anyway, I'm probably preaching to the choir on a lot of stuff. I just, I love this topic because, it's a huge deal. It's a big deal. And it blows my freaking mind when somebody does not take publishing seriously because if they actually want to have a successful business, especially in the social media world, and they're not publishing, they're kidding themselves. I kind of scoff at it honestly, it's like okay. Like cool, this is just a wish for you then, it's not a real thing yet. You know what I mean like that's why I wanna, that's the kind of attitude I have towards people when they're like, "Well I don't know that I wanna be publishing," I was like, "Well, get ready to not make money then."

You have to and anyway doesn't have to be crazy either, those are, a lot of those are extreme ways, the way I do it is I literally batch, I'll usually record three episodes at a time in my podcast of each one. I go send it, I get it all transcribed on one shot and I send it over to somebody and she turned it into a blog post and she uses this cool tool called SE Oppressor, which mimics Google algorithm so she can see how my blog will rank before we actually publish it, which is kind of cool. It fully works too, it's why Google Click Funnel my stuff starts popping up all over the place. It's totally worked. Just good, that was what I was going for.
And then I give her a schedule to release it all on.

That's kind of it. But because of... and how she's pushing it out it blasts to like 18 channels or something so. Anyway those are some long freaking Voxes man but anyway helpfully.

Steve Larsen: It's Steven holy crap you that, just pieced it together. You just straight pieced it together. So I've heard a lot of the stuff before but in snippets and in little bits and everything like that. What you just packaged in the, those two boxes, that was mind blowing ... I feel like I owe you lots of money for those two Voxes because that was nuts.

I actually, I legitimately I think I'm gonna transcribe what you just said and dude straight up, I would, you should easily just make that a podcast, I wouldn't even change it. Dude thank you for seriously taking the time to answer that question. I was literally what I was looking for and to the depth that I needed it 'cause like I said there's a lot of the information that's been said before but you connected the dots to a lot of things as to how you repurpose the contents and then how you go about creating the content and then repurposing it and dude you're a freaking rock star.

That was a lot I literally have to listen to 'em again.

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I STOLE from Russell Brunson when I was poor (one of his favorite stories), but here is what I learned from it....

What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen, 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, and now here's your host, Steve Larsen.

Steve Larsen: Alright guys hey, real quick I just want to let you know about the time that I stole. Okay, I do not condone this behavior, I have since gone to these people and said sorry, and actually this is one of Russell's favorite stories, 'cause I actually stole from Russell.

I stole from Russell when I was in college and we had nothing, we had like hardly any money, and I knew that if I just could get my hands on one of his courses that I would be able to be successful with the thing that I was going forward with. It was true, and I was, and it was great, but I got a copy of his course from a bootlegger and I don't totally know how, I think I was poking around on YouTube trying to find versions of it and things like that. I was like I've just got to, if I could just do this one piece I know I'd be successful with it.

I went and I, there was some guy in the description who was telling everybody, hey if you need copies of X, Y and Z go ahead and reach out to me. So I was like sweet, oh awesome, and I feel bad, like don't do this okay. This was a stupid thing, it was a very bad decision and I don't know what else I can say because I mean it's not right and I do take that seriously. You know what's funny is so I got the course and I learned a lot from it, it was great, it was awesome. It was actually Dot Com Secrets X, you know one of the earlier courses.

I shouldn't say earlier, I mean he had been having lots of courses out there and stuff. But this one was a three month course, it was awesome, I went through it. It was fantastic, it actually was very life changing for me, it was very life changing. Changed what I was doing, and I mean it was awesome. I was laughing that I ended up getting hired by Russell, and one day I was like I've got to tell Russell this story.

For the sake of number one apologizing and you know I obviously offered to pay for it, I offered to pay the price for the course and everything, you know I felt bad. I mean it's wrong, and it's not something that I'm honestly proud of that I did, but I often would sit back ... The reason I bring this up is because I would often sit back and I would think to myself, like why would this marketer, why would this guru, why would this individual not give his course away to me for cheaper? It was a question that would go through my head a lot, not that I was mad, I wasn't mad at all, but I was just like gosh like why can't I get this?

I would love to go through this course, I would love to learn what this guys teaching, maybe it could change my life. I knew that I would take it seriously, if I could just have the content, if I could just have the stuff, right?

What's funny about the whole thing is that, okay so I ended up going and I got the course and I went through it and I applied it and it was great. A lot of times what would happen was there were these pieces of jealousy that I would kind of go through, this is kind of early on in my endeavors on the Internet anyway. I'd kind of get jealous and a little bit mad and be like come on, like give this to me cheaper, I would love to have this thing. I was excited when I finally got Russell's, but I was ... I just wanted the discount, you know, and you may have gone through this before, I just wanted to know. I just wanted the discount, I just wanted to be able to go through the content.

There was, I think I was in the gym, I think so anyways, I'm recalling a lot of memories right here. But I was listening to a podcast of Russell's, okay keep in mind I had just stolen a course from him.

I had stolen the course and what I learned from the whole thing was that he basically said that like look I don't discount prices, pretty much ever, because if you can't afford this thing it means you actually need it even more. I know it's kind of a weird way to say that, but think about it this way, if I ... Let's say I was in like high school okay, in a high school when I was going through these different classes, or even in college when I was going through these different classes. Actually college is probably a better example, you don't start at the senior level classes, right? You don't, what happens?

You'd go into the senior level classes, obviously there's like some crazy person out there who probably did, and did great at it or whatever. But you don't start at the senior level classes, you start at freshman level, and you start with basic stuff, and you start with foundational things and you hustle through a little bit of Mr Miyagi type of things out there. Like why am I doing this? Paint the fence and the floor, you know stuff like that.

It's good that an individual wants to be able to go and get the course, that they'll go and they want to pay coaching, to get coaching from the guy. They want to be able to spend time doing the thing, you know what I mean? What I realized though is that a lot of personal development happens inside of business because prices are set as they are.

Meaning, when I couldn't get to Funnel Hacking live, I had to do a ton of stuff, a lot of experimenting, a lot of soul searching. A lot of grinding, a lot of problem solving on my own that I would not have had to have gone through if I had just been able to just buy the tickets outright. I had to get creative, I was trading tickets for funnels. Back and forth, and back and forth. What's funny is when I learned that, when I realized that, that's what was going on, and that was the lesson I realized that I actually fell in love with the fact that I didn't have money for it.

Now not the fact that I didn't have money, but I started learning to love the problem. The problem being that I did not have money to get the thing. When I knew that what a guru was offering was a good thing, when I knew that the product they were offering was amazing, when I knew that it would change my life. If I had to work that much harder than the other guy just to have the money to buy it, I knew that I would actually do it, I knew I'd actually apply it.

How many times have you bought a course and you've never actually done anything with it? Okay, how many books are sitting on your bookshelf that you've actually never read? It's the exact same thing, and obviously I believe in learning with purpose and you guys all know that. I don't just learn anything for the sake of it, if I need to solve the problem in front of me then I'll go read the related books and take the related courses, but I don't just read just willy-nilly. I don't go anywhere, like whatever.

But what I'm saying is I don't discount prices, and it's for that exact same reason, I don't discount prices. Russell didn't discount prices, when I finally left college and I had learned that lesson, and I fell in love with the purification that comes with trying to just solve the problem. I was so enamored by it, I wanted all the other students, and all my friends, and all the teachers I was with to learn the stuff that I had been learning. So I left college and I went and I grabbed basically 30 books, and 30 Dot com Secrets books, 'cause I was not working at ClickFunnels.

I started shipping out all these books all over the place, tons of them. I'd ship out books to these friends and all these people kept asking me, like how are you doing what you're doing? Dude are you kidding me that's crazy, how are you doing this? How you are doing this? I kept telling them like, just wait dude I'm sending you something, you got to read it. Okay. What's funny is I sent out 30 of these books and you know how many people actually read the book?

None of them. Not a single person. Why? It's 'cause they didn't, there was no actual sacrifice that they gave on their part to actually take part in the course. To take part in the learning, to take part in the development that they were looking for. They had done nothing except think about it, one time. Oh it'd be so nice to have that, they're not in love with the thing, they're in love with the idea of the thing. Does that make sense?

So I don't discount prices. Any time anyone of my buddies, or anyone in my past, or even any current customers or people who listen to this podcast, whatever it is. Anytime anyone comes to me and they say, Steven please will you look at my funnel? My answer is yes, here is my coaching link where you can buy my time. Why? It's not to throw the finger at the people who are asking that, it's not to go and rub it in peoples faces. It's because if I actually do it for free I rob them, they won't do anything with it. You know how many times I've done stuff for free for people, I have built so many funnels for free on the hopes and the promises that it would be worth tons in the future. Hey Steven please build this funnel, we got this great opportunity, if you build the funnel we'll give you 50% of the revenue for the rest of your life.

That's a dumb deal, that's a bad deal, very stupid deal, right? I'm going go do all the work and then they take half the money for it.

First of all it's crazy, second of all when I learned, when I figured out that nobody that I was building these funnels for were actually doing anything with them afterwards, I got ticked. I got so mad, I realized that, that was honestly only like a year and a half ago, a year ago.

So I stopped building funnels for free for people, and I stopped giving my products for free, unless it was strategic, like a front end or something like that. I stopped giving me, I stopped giving my stuff for free. I'm unapologetic about it now, and it's like it is this price, number one because it's worth that much, I make great offers. I know there's amazing value in them, but number two I literally know that you will not do a darn thing with it unless I have you give a little sacrifice and put a little skin in the game.

You know what's funny about sales funnel broker coaching, it's no different than anything else, right? 80/20 rules still applies, 20% of them do anything, it's true for any event. It's true for ... I had worked so hard to get to Russell's first Funnel Hacking live event, by boot strapping my way there. I took 52 pages of notes at that event, I stayed up, I did everything that I could. I was drinking deeply, if they said we're doing this, I participated, full in both feet in the whole time. I was baffled at how many people didn't even bring their note books home with them. That they had left out on the chairs for all of us, with all the slides and all the speaker notes. Like are you kidding me?

Do you not know what they just gave us? But it didn't mean the same thing to those people, they hadn't actually given anything of their self away.

What I'm trying to tell you is number one I don't discount on price and you shouldn't either. Unless there's something in there, but usually the first thing people go to, okay lets say that you're going to sell something to me or to a buddy. You go to the buddy and you say, hey here's a thing, and it's a $1000, and someone goes oh will it do this?

A lot of times the knee jerk reaction to any rejection is a price decrease. I mean that happens all the time. A price decrease, someone literally decreases the price, immediately as soon as there is an objection to your product. Oh don't worry it's 30% off today. If you're doing that it means your offer isn't good enough yet. If the offer is amazing you don't have to compete on price, it's the exact same thing for what I build, for what Russell builds, for all the things that I put out, for what Russell puts out. I know their good, I know their good and I do not, I am not apologetic and I'm not embarrassed. I had a hard time ... I'm just being open with you guys.

I had a hard time charging money for my stuff for a while, and I know it's actually quite a common concern. Where conceptually you understand the marketing stuff, you understand the business, you know the automation pieces but you're not actually doing it 'cause you don't have a product because you're too afraid to charge something. You're too afraid to ask for someones credit card number. I know in a lot of cases I'm preaching to the choir here, like you guys get that, but there's a lot more cases out there than I ever realized until I started coaching people how to do this stuff inside sales funnel broker coaching. I did not realize how big of an issue it was mentally for people to have to overcome that.
I know I've talked a little bit in the past about ways to get around that, you know go buy a product for $1000 to give yourself emotional permission to go sell stuff for $1000. If you feel like you can't charge $10,000 for something, you should probably go pay $10,000 for something.

There's a lot of ways to get around that emotionally, and get through that barrier but what I'm trying to tell you is like stop, don't apologize for charging people. You actually do a disservice when you give it for free. You do a disservice if you deliver in any other way.

Don't be afraid to charge money, and don't be afraid to charge more money than the competitor. Don't be afraid to charge more money than other people around you. If you walk out to ...

Let's say you go to a car lot, okay a brand new car lot, brand new Lamborghini car lot and you walk out to the car lot and you say, hey I would like to look at this Lamborghini and they say great come on with me sir. You're walking, and let's say you even wore a suit, because you might go buy a Lamborghini, and you have the cash for it and you're super stoked. You've saved up and it's been on your dream wall, and you know the exact model and color.

You know everything about it and you walk up and you see the car and you know it is. It's beautiful, I'm not even that much of a car guy, I'm just saying. You walk up to this car and it's beautiful and you're like, this is the one, I have waited so long for this car, how much is this? The sales guy looks over at you, and the sales guy looks right at you and he starts to smile and he goes, you know what I can tell you really like this car, just for you this brand new Lamborghini, it's only five grand.

What would you do? You would sit back and be like, what's the first knee jerk reaction that you would have to that? You would ask what's wrong with it. What's wrong with the car? Why is it only five grand? I'm expecting to pay like a hundred times more than that, I don't know how much a Lamborghini is, I'm not really a car guy like I said. But you'd expect to pay a lot more money, right?

A lot more money, it's the same thing with your offers, what ends up happening when somebody goes out and you start price decreasing right out of the gate, it immediately starts to plant these little seeds of doubt inside of the perspective customer. It starts to put inside their head questions like, what's wrong with it? Oh so it is okay, and you need to keep reassuring them. Well does it have these other features? They may not even care, they might not even use them, like the billion settings on your car stereo, how many of them you actually use? Like three, the on button and a few others, you know what I mean?

I'm like features don't really sell very well, it's all about benefits, you know what I mean? But that's what I'm trying to say, so I am unapologetic about the pricing that I place there. You know what's funny about that is I typically get a higher quality customer with higher prices. When I was selling a lot of $100 funnels and $100 products and things like that, and since I've taken a lot of them off the market, I don't want to sell that. I know this is stereotypical and it was not true in every case, but $100 product brought a very different customer to me than I wanted to work with.

Again it's not at all me being selfish, it is very much me deciding who I want to work with, and realizing that the individual who is scraping to get $100 probably is working on a different problem set in their life than let me start a business. They might be still solving the problems of hey how do I pay bills every month? Or how do I keep a steady job?

I'm not trying to judge, I'm not trying, like I get it, it's totally fine. I've been there. You all know I've been there. There was a time like I couldn't afford that stuff, sadly I stole over it, but what I'm trying to tell you though is like there are a hundred reasons. There's tons of reasons why you should never discount price and in fact let the price bring the right customer to you. I'm not telling you not to do this either, but like this is such a powerful concept guys, you could literally take two of the exact same product, charge more, double for one of them and you'll get a higher quality customer, someone who's more status driven. Again, use that for good or bad, you know what I mean?

Like use, it for good, but what I'm saying just know that, that's the power of this thing, that status is very much involved in an element of this.

Working with someone who's figured out a lot of the basic problem sets of life, self care and things like that. They're going to be more attracted to higher prices, or I'm sorry, they're going to be more attracted to the lower prices. Again, I'm not telling you not to sell low, I'm not telling you not to sell high, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to tell you that you don't need to compete on price. That it is okay to charge higher, that it's okay to unapologetic about it and that you are doing a disservice to somebody else when you do not charge enough money or when you give it to them for free.

Just going to wrap the whole thing up here, I ended up telling Russell this whole story of me stealing the thing. He was laughing so hard, he's like, are you kidding me? I was like, I'm sorry man, like I will pay you right now, I have the money obviously and I will. He just started laughing, he's like, nah, that course brought you to me so whatever. So it's all good. I was like alright, as long as you feel like that's okay, but I just need my conscience clear about it 'cause it was wrong and I feel bad and I'm not a thief.

Anyway yeah, so charge money and charge good money, and understand that if you feel like you can't charge money it really might be that your offer might not be good enough yet. So go back and look at it, keep tweaking it, keep tweaking it. But have price dropping be like your very last go to thing, when you're actually selling it. Don't decrease price, you decrease bonuses okay?

You remove bonuses, you remove certain elements, little goodies and things like that, that you're going to go with it. That way the value that they're getting is less for the money you're charging. It's still worth it, they're just getting less stuff, does that make sense? You'll still get a better customer by keeping the price high and then just tweaking, and removing and playing around with it, and doing scarcity and urgency with bonuses rather than dropping price.

Anyway that's it guys, be unapologetic about the price, hope you guys are doing great and I'll talk to you later.

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Here is how I have mitigated risk as I prepare to leave my job...

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 your host Steve Larsen.

 Hey, so the last few days have been pretty intense, not in a bad way. There's good intense and bad intense. You know what I mean? But the pressure has been increasing. My wife came to me the other day. I think it was yesterday or two days ago. She walked up to me. It was morning time. You know, everyone's kind of getting up. She walks in and she's like, "I had a really bad dream last night." I was like, "Really? What was it?"

She goes, "I had a dream that you were upstairs ..." I have a home office here upstairs, kind of in the corner of the house, which is kind of nice to have. I've got sound panels all over the place. I totally made a man cave. I love sitting in this room and creating stuff. I got whiteboards all over the place. Quotes on the wall. Three bookshelves totally full.

Anyway, I love it. Sound equipment all over the place. Film stuff. I've got a sheet over on the wall over here, top to bottom. It's a black sheet that I stand in front of and film a bunch of 4K videos with, which looks awesome, super cool, and actually pretty pro. It looks pretty awesome. Anyway, I like video a lot.
Anyway, back to the story. She goes, "I had a dream that you came down from the office. That you had left ClickFunnels. This was later on in the future, in January. You came down and you just said, 'Alyssa, is there a check in the mail?'" She was like, "I said back to you, 'No. Why would there be a check in the mail?'"

I'm like, "I don't know," or, "Who it'd be from?" "I don't know. I'm just wondering if there's a check in the mail. We only have a thousand dollars in our bank account." This is all in the dream. My wife was like, "What? Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? There's no money in the bank account?" Like, "What have you been doing?" I was like, "Ah, I haven't started selling anything yet." She's like, "Well, go start selling crap." Like, "What are you waiting for?"

Anyway, the pressure is here, okay? The pressure is turned up. I'm excited. It was never my intention to be an employee. But I am super thankful that I've had this experience. I would never regret the fact that I've gone through this and that I've worked for somebody else and that it's Russell Brunson. I mean, come on. Holy crap. This is like a dream job which seems all the more ludicrous that I would leave ClickFunnels. What's funny about it is that there's a lot of people ... I don't know if some of you guys who listen to this that still think that I'm crazy about them. It's hilarious to me how many people have reached out, giving me their opinion on the fact that I should not leave. I go, "Okay. You have no idea what I'm going to go do."

Some person messaged me and they're like, "Hey. Awesome. You're going to go do ..." I'm won't say exactly what they said, but it's just hilarious like ... It reminds me of the quote like if you're not marketing hard enough or if you don't offend someone by noon, you're not marketing hard enough.

It's funny, guys. As you develop your own attractive character, be prepared to have a lot of naysayers that pop out. I actually kind of look forward to it now. If I don't get enough naysayers, I feel like I'm not taking as aggressive of moves as I should be, so bring it on. I like hearing the other side too, but man, every once in a while it's like, "Gosh." I wrote something back to a certain individual like three times, and I just ended up deleting it. I was like, "It's not even worth it. Just, ugh, whatever." It's funny. It's funny, but the pressure is on. So what do you do ... I know a lot of you guys are thinking like what do you do when you know that you're about to lose your job? I shouldn't say lose my job, I'm leaving. But most people they either lose their immediately because they got fired or they're leaving this other job with a two weeks notice.

I've known for a very long time you guys, way before it was ever announced. Way before Russell every announced it before, everybody start talking about it. We have both known that I was going to leave ClickFunnels for a long time. What's funny about it is it's almost like ... I'm trying to think of an example, but you know like when you put something off and there's more ... I forgot the name of it. There's an actual theory behind this.

It's when there's an ... Like if you have three months to get something done, because you have three months, there is added stress and pressure because you have three months of stress and pressure rather than it being needed to be done in three days because you know that it's three days.

You know what I mean? It's been fumy because that's exactly what's happened. I've totally had sleepless nights. I've thought through ... I'm just being open about this, okay? I'm being open and I'm being real. I'm letting you guys know where I am.

What's funny is I'm not nervous about creating revenue on my own. Obviously, I would not leave ClickFunnels without that being a very solid plan, which it is. I'm grabbing a little ownership and a few other things that I haven't quite announced yet.

There's a lot going on behind the scenes in the world of Steve Larsen. But what I wanted to talk about real quick today was if you ... Okay, quick story. Russell has got this cool story he was telling me about the other day. I can't remember who, but he had this thing called like the 30 day challenge or something like that. I actually can't remember what it was called. But basically, the premise was this guy went around to all these gurus and he started saying things like, "Hey, let's say you lost everything. You lost your reputation or you don't have one. You're starting literally from scratch.

What would you do to be back on your feet in 30 days?" It's a pretty powerful question when you think about that.

Think about where you are right now and go ground zero in your own head, ground zero. No assets, nothing. No money, no reputation, no following, nothing. No list, anything, nothing at all. You have a ClickFunnels account and your rent on your internet has been pre paid for a month or something like that. What would you do? Right? What would you do? Someone messaged me the other day. They're like, "How can we not sleep anymore?" and stuff like that. What would you do if you knew you don't have a job in a few weeks? Come on. Tell me how would you handle it.

I worked my butt off which I've been doing.

We are more than fine. I made like 10 grand last week on this one event funnel, I'm sorry, application funnel. That's not to be cocky. I'm letting you guys know I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to just jump ship from something without any plan. It's a very solid plan. It's been there for a long time. It's amazing and extremely lucrative, and it's awesome. I'm excited to talk more about it once I'm no longer part of ClickFunnels, anyway, and tell you guys a little bit more about those things you guys can follow and totally funnel hack, which is awesome.

Anyway, but what would you do? What would you think about? So I want you to know the process that I've gone through in my head to make sure that I'm ready to make the leap because I know a lot of you guys are trying to do that because you message me about it. A lot of you message me. I don't think you guys realize how many of the rest of you are also messaging me besides a lot of the rest of you also. There's a lot of messages that I get. It's fun and it's awesome. Please don't get offended if I can't answer every single one of them. It's logistically impossible now. But anyway, what would you do though? You think about that. What would you actually do? Then what I invite you to do is as I go through like two or three things here to let you know what I've done. I've already tested it.

It's already making great money. It's already like this, you know, which is why I can leave, which is why I can go jump off and do that stuff. I want you to think through in your head your own checklist. What is it that you would do? Then I invite you to actually do it. Create that actual environment in your head and just get it done.

You know what's funny about building funnels? It's really easy. I know some of you guys are laughing when I say that, but it is. Click drag, drop, click buttons, choose some colors, right? I mean, if you can send email, you can use the ClickFunnels editor, right? What most people screw up on and the reason why it gets hard for them is because they suck at making offers, okay? Funnel building is more about offer creation than it is putting a few pages together, okay?

Any monkey can put a few pages together. They're even pre-done for you in templates where you literally would just have to change the copy on the page, okay? There's templates over the place. So then what is it really? Let's think about it. What actually is the reason why the funnel isn't working? It's because you suck at offer creation. If that stings a little, that's okay. It's medicine.

Think through, "Wow. Do I actually know how to create offers?" Wherever you are in the world right now, I want you to raise your hand. I'm not trying to get on a side tangent here, but I want you to realize how I've been able to secure my landing as I jump from ClickFunnels, because I know how. I know exactly why. I want you to be the same.

You've got to know why your stuff's working or why it isn't. If you don't know, that's the scariest thing ever. So I'm trying to shed some light on usually the number one reason why a funnel doesn't convert. Raise your hand right now and say, "I will not sell products anymore." What? "Oh, Mylanta. Steve Larsen, what are you telling me to do?" Okay, "I will not sell products or services anymore." Now you raise your other hand and you say, "I will now sell offers. I only sell offers now."

Now think about that. The point ... I was getting kind of ticked off when someone's like, "The book Expert Secrets is only about info products." Bullcrap. It's not true at all. "The book Expert Secrets is only about webinars." No, you missed the whole point if you think that. Go back and read it again, okay? Webinars is just an example of what to do. It's an example of how to pull off what the book teaches. Expert Secrets is such a good book because it's about offer creation. It's not about webinars. It's not about info products.

Those are just two examples of how to pull off what's it's really teaching you to do. If you missed it, go back, especially to the third section there what's called your moral obligation to sell. But honestly, the whole thing though, okay.

The reason why I am totally at peace about this decision, there's some few butterflies here and there, but honestly, I'm very excited and I'm totally at peace about it. There's some freakout moments. I'm not going to lie, okay? It has nothing to do with whether or not my ability to make money. It has everything to do ... My biggest freakout has everything to do with not being around other marketers, okay? Sitting in isolation in my home office, that freaks the crap out of me. Not because I'm a chatty guy, I'm actually not.

In public, I'm actually kind of shy. I am. I don't know what to say a lot of times. Whenever like after I finish speaking at an event or something like that, whatever it is, I'm actually pretty shy about it, okay?

Anyway, it actually scares me more to just be alone and not be connected to the marketing nucleus that ClickFunnels is. You know what I mean? That actually scares me to death. So I have a few things coming out, a few things to help mitigate that. Things that I've watched and things that Russell has taught me one on one. As I sat back and I asked specific questions and realized like, "Oh, that's why you do this. That has nothing to do with you needing money over there is it?" He's like, "No. No, no, no, no."

I was like, "That has everything to do with you staying connected and making sure that you've got the best of the best of the best." He's like, "Yeah." "Oh, man. Well, I'm going to do that." So just watch closely over the next few months because I am a funnel hacker. Anyway, so here's the reason why. It's because of offer creation. I've learned how to create offers.

I'm actually using the same process that I teach as the Two Comma Club coach, the Secrets Master Class coach. This is not something where it's like I've read about it and now I feel like I can teach it. It's actually not that at all.

I've been doing this for a long time and on my own before I worked at ClickFunnels, doing it for other people, doing it for their clients, doing it for their businesses, their customers, their product lines, and doing it for my own, right? Took a total hiatus, dropped pretty much everything except this podcast and a few other things as I started working for ClickFunnels.

I will tell you that the two things that really made the jump, that it is making the jump more easy for me is that I've gotten much better at selling products. I'm sorry, selling offers rather than products. Then number two, I am far better at marketing and not just selling, okay? Those are the two major differences there.

It's about two and a half, three years ago when I really learned the difference between marketing and selling, and then selling products versus offers, okay? When I sell offers, awesome. When I sell products, bad. I have to compete in price. When I do marketing, awesome. When I just do sales and no marketing, it's like starving leads kind of salesmen. It's not a fun place to be in at all. It's a terrible spot to be in.

Anyway, so here's what I've done though, so I want you to know ... That's a long freaking intro. I'm so sorry. But anyway, here's what I've done, okay? What I did is I sat back and I thought, "What is the core of my business?" Now you think about what the core of your business is. Let's think about it. I think it's a ... Gosh, what book is it? I think it's Rework. Yeah, Rework. At a hotdog stand, can you sell hotdogs without relish? Yeah, you could, right? You could do that. Could you sell hotdogs, I mean, could you have a successful hotdog stand without having mustard? Yeah. What about buns? Technically, yeah, sure, you could.

Could you have a successful hotdog stand without hotdogs?

No, okay. At every single business and in every single value letter, there is a core aspect to the business. You got to figure out what that is, okay? If you don't know what that is, it's scary because you treat every product like the core and you shouldn't. That's where a lot of you will start getting in trouble and they start to ... they confuse offers and it causes a little schizophrenia inside of their customers because they don't know what the core of the offer is. They don't know what the core of the business is and what it's actually offering, okay?

What I did is I figured out what the core of my business is and I placed it inside of a thousand dollar webinar which just kind of fits in the middle of the Value Ladder, okay? When I knew what the core was, I now could start testing it. First though, I wanted to make sure there would be traffic, ample traffic, ridiculous traffic, traffic in a way that I knew I would never have to worry about it again. So I started creating cool little free front-end products, and then I put them out there for free or I just put places over here or small little free plus shipping things or things ... You know what's funny? It exploded. It exploded. It made so much money on just this little dinky free crap where like barely any money kind of stuff. I was like, "What the heck?" We went on a cruise.

We did all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it made almost matching my beginning salary with ClickFunnels for a very long time, which is hilarious. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. There's something to this." It took me a solid two and a half, three years to really clarify the core and the niche, and find the niche and create it.

Then what I did is I wanted to make sure that I would have an easy ascension. I know in past episodes I've said, "Hey, start at the core of the business and only sell that," which I did and I've done, but I have gone out and I've made sure there is an easy ascension. I've made sure that there's easy traffic in the front-end. I've made sure ... There's different strategies and ways to pull this thing off, okay? I've tested the core offer like crazy. It's not like I was skipping that step. I did not skip it at all.

But anyway, so if you're going to jump ship, or if you're just trying to get your first thing off the ground, or if you're just trying to make a little extra money, I remember like my first goal was just to make an extra thousand dollars a month. If I could do that, I thought that I would die and be in heaven because I would be able to cover some bills.

That was my goal four years ago, okay? It's crazy that how tiny that is. You can do that, okay? If you're trying to figure that out, number one, you've got to figure out your Value Ladder, okay? What I mean is figure out the core of the business, figure out a price point around a thousand dollars. Do not go cheaper, okay? And go start testing it. Go sell it like crazy. That's what I did.

Then when I knew it could sell, I went in and found an additional traffic source, I proved out that traffic source, and that was a really easy very soft landing for me to land on as I jumped from ClickFunnels, okay?

That Value Ladder, guys, is stronger than the majority of the business models I learned in my marketing degree. I feel like it gets misunderstood a lot of times. I'd go back and I read DotCom Secrets again if you don't quite understand that or whatever. Anyway, but that's how, that's why. I've got at least jitters. I've got all these, I mean, guys, I'm nervous. I am nervous, but there's complete safety in my head. Not just in my head, I've tested it.

The fact that I've tested these things, there's a Value Ladder and I only am focusing on one step of the Value Ladder at a time. I've built up the front-ends. I've built up the back ends. I'm finishing up the core right now, and then I just got to turn the machine on. Everything else has been tested. I know it's literally about me just clicking a few buttons now which is great.

If you're trying to figure out what to do next or if you're waking up and you're like, "Oh my gosh. Steven, there's so much data out there. There's so many things out there that I could go be doing right now. There's so much noise." What I'm telling you to do is go nail that Value Ladder. Figure out a core thousand dollar product or at least 500 bucks to two grand. Somewhere in there because then you don't need that many to actually change your life. Figure that out. If you don't know what it is yet, fine, don't let your brain leave that problem sitting still.

That's where your head needs to settle. Be okay with the fact that it's unanswered still and just let it sit there, let it marinate, let it marinate, let it marinate. You sit there and you figure it out. Then you just focus on that one thing, go test it. It could be life changing. It was life changing for us.

How crazy that that little tiny test that I did, guys, that had the complete ability to pay for the down payment on our house. We don't have a huge house, but it's not a tiny house. You know what I mean? It's because of that. Again, not showboating, I'm just telling you. I'm trying to illustrate the power of what it is that ... Anyway, so I totally have the jitters, okay? I'm nervous. I'm scared. There's a solid plan. I have I think eight different revenue sources identified. I'm just turning them on one by one now. They've been working great.

Anyway, it's exciting...

So what's cool about this, guys, is that from the ... This podcast is going to continue as I move past ClickFunnels, but what I really want to do is I'm trying to continue to podcast. I want to get to episode 100 before the end of the year. I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm not sure yet. But the reason why is because I want zero to 100 to be my journey with ClickFunnels. Then I want 101 beyond, I want to document my journey.

I want to document what's going on, the process that I'm going through, being super transparent, letting you know like, "Hey, this Value Ladder worked really well over here. This one did terrible over here. This one and this one ..." You know what I mean? And just being super open so you guys can see like, "Look, Steven is hitting the freaking ground running, and he's on his own. This is how he's doing, and this is how he's doing it." You know what I mean?

I feel like that would be crazy valuable, so I'm excited. I'm excited to keep doing these things, and I'm excited to keep pushing out. But I mean, there's totally been fear with it. I'm just trying to be true to myself so and it's going to be awesome so ...
Anyway, I'd still be contracted as the Two Comma Club coach for Secrets Master Class which I'm very excited about. I'll still be very involved at ClickFunnels, actually, from that aspect. But I probably will never be an employee again in my life which is crazy. If you want that and you're still an employee or even if you're not, like get more clear in that Value Ladder, it's totally the key to blowing this thing up.

We've noticed, especially people inside the inner circle, I've noticed other people ... Anyway, when someone has a clear Value Ladder, when they know what the core of their business is, when they know how they're actually making money ... What's funny is a lot of people don't know how they're making money, or it's haphazard, or they're like they think that the value is over here but really the market's giving them all the money in this area over here or whatever it is.

What's funny about that whole thing is every time someone gets super clear on their Value Ladder, I'm going to give this free thing. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read the book DotCom Secrets, okay? That would give you context for the whole thing, of everything I'm talking about right now, but it is. When I read that and I was laying in the dirt with my M16 in my right hand and DotCom Secrets in my left hand, no kidding, when I read that and I was laying on the security line reading that book, my brain was exploding because now I had a map. I wasn't making it up anymore.

Suddenly, there was this logical progression that went from this product to that product to that product. Oh, sorry. That product doesn't fit, so I can't do it. There was so much clarity in my head. It made so much more sense. It actually was calming to me on what the path was that my business needed to take.

So it's the same thing. If you got noise just like screaming in your head right now, you probably don't know where you're going, okay? That's probably it. You probably have no idea where you're going. I know exactly where I'm going as I leave ClickFunnels. I have known for a long time, okay? At least six months, very, very clearly. About a year and a half, kind of fuzzy.

But especially in the last month, the clarity is ridiculous. So if you got the noise in your head, you have no idea where you're going, it's time to get back to the Value Ladder and think through what am I actually trying to sell, what is my offer, and then what funnel matches that offer

. Go build that funnel type, okay? You stay on that funnel till it's profitable, and the whole game will get so much more clear in your head. You might actually have fun with that again, okay?

Hopefully, you still are, but that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you is that this is it's a very fun game.

It is a game. I look at it as a game. I have a lot of fun with it, but it doesn't need to be this super confusing thing. I was confused out of my butt in my entrepreneurship classes in college. I took a lot of them because I really wanted to be one. All except one that they offered. I did really well in every one of them. I was always that weird kid that has actually doing entrepreneurial things, and actually had businesses, and was actually making money versus all the other students that were just trying to get A's reading books and writing reports.

What I can tell you is that there's a lot of information out there, but it's as vital as for you to learn a ton of stuff as it is for you to shield yourself from a lot of crap and noise out there...

The way I've done it is through the Value Ladder. That's the entire way that I'm able to go do what I'm about to do in January. So anyways, guys, excited for the journey to continue. I'm excited to have you guys with me as I keep doing it. I'm excited to keep pushing forward as I take this huge next step, it's a big step. All right, guys. Talk to you later, bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

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This is one of the biggest lessons I've taken right from the desk of Russell Brunson

Hey, 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 your host Steve Larsen.

Steve Larsen: What's up, guys? Hey, I'm thinking here that I'm going to change up the intro music to this thing at some point. I'm excited. I can't believe that we're going to hit episode 100 in a few episodes here. That's ridiculous to me. I can't believe how fast that time has gone first of all or that I've had a hundred things to say. I just hope that you guys look back at each one of these episodes and you might think, "Hey, those were great episodes." I'm sure there's one or two where maybe something was weird or whatever, but I just appreciate the loyal following this show has. Just a big shout out to all of you guys.

It's Christmas time and I'm not sure what faith you are and that's obviously not the purpose of this podcast, but we celebrate Christmas.

We're putting up Christmas lights. It's getting cold outside. Been with my little girls and my little one just turned four and I have another two year old, and then my wife is three months pregnant as well.

Super excited for the new arrival...

Anyways, I always love this time of year. It's been a lot of fun. A little more focused on family time and things like that. It's been a whole lot of fun. Tonight we're putting together a gingerbread house and it was just one of those like cheap kits from Walmart. The thing totally collapsed like five minutes in. We ended up just trying to make this massive pile of sugar and candy and nastiness. It's actually a whole lot of fun. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

My little ones just whenever my back was turned kept like sneaking over and grabbing like big old handfuls of icing and like just stuffing it in their face. That is so nasty. Oh man. Anyway, it's a lot of fun. Hey, this has been an awesome last few days. Obviously not just family wise, but also with you guys. Big shout out to those of you who joined me on my last live funnel build. I've been doing those pretty regularly. For the next while, it's going to be pretty much every Saturday.

As I build out whatever funnels I actually need, I just might as well flip the camera on and you guys can watch and ask questions while I'm actually building it. It's been a lot of fun. The last funnel that I just built was an application funnel.
Honestly, the application funnel is probably one of my favorite ones to build besides the webinar funnel, free plus shopping funnel, eCom funnel. I like them all. Membership areas. I like them all.

Honestly, what's cool about the application style funnel is how much it actually has an effect on your business. I think it was Frank Kern that said that there's really three things that every business needs ... Actually I think I've sent this list before as well, but whatever. He said, "Number one, you need to be having ... Just charge higher prices." He said, "Number one, you need to have higher prices. Just charge higher prices." If you just raised your prices by 10%, I doubt that anyone's going to leave just because of that.

If they do, so what? You lose one or two, but the raised price of everybody else more than covers what they left with. You know what I mean? Most people are not going to bat an eye at all. You know what I mean? Prices go up. Everyone kind of expects that. Same thing with yours. They should go up.

You should just charge more money. Figure out how to charge more money...

That was his number one. Number two what he said was that you've got to have somebody in the backend calling all of your current customers to sell them a high ticket thing in the back, whatever that is, a five grand, 10 grand, 15, 25 grand thing, whatever it is in the backend.

Whatever you're selling on the front, all those customer who are buying, just have somebody calling and selling those big things in the backend. A lot of the Inner Circle from Russell Brunson is always shocked at how fast that doubles their business. It's fun for me to read and hear about a lot of the comments because they'll be sending messages to Russell and whatever and be like, "Oh my gosh. Why aren't more people just selling something high ticket on the backend? It will double everything." I know. Those messages come pretty frequently as we tell people to do that kind of stuff. Figure out what you can sell that's high ticket in the backend and then the third thing he says is that figure out how you can sell things not on the internet.

In reality, I mean the internet is fantastic. It's really, really cool, but when it comes to big sales, the internet's really not that effective for it. You got to change the selling environment, whether that's on the phone with those high tickets sales in the backend or direct mail or whatever it is. Somehow figure out how to sell not just online. It's funny because a lot of the data that's out there that we've seen shows that. That those who have both online elements and offline elements to their funnels actually make more money, rather than those who just stay online.

Anyway, kind of fascinating. It was probably about two and a half years ago. I was getting ready to become an officer in the Army.

I was in the ROTC program. I had already gone through basic training and gone to that fondness and actually really enjoyed that. Well, we wanted to do like a cool little charity run. What we did is we got together and we decided that we would do this 5K warrior mud run. This mud run was ... I mean it was awesome. It was totally legit. Anyway, it was awesome. We had literally like flame throwers actually. We had all sorts of like these dummy M16s laying all over the place. They had to run and sprint around with this stuff and climb these massive walls and jump through stuff. I mean it was really fun. It was legitimately quite a massive operation to pull off.

Well, I was getting good enough with ClickFunnels at the time and ClickFunnels had been out for a little while at that time now. I guess this was ... No, this was about ... Holy crap. Yeah, that was about two and a half years ago. That's crazy. ClickFunnels had been out for a little bit at that time. I was getting good enough with it and I already had paying clients and I was traveling all over the place filming gurus in their events. Then I would go edit the video and then make a funnel for the video. That's kind of what I was doing at that time. It was before working for ClickFunnels or anything. I decided like how cool would it be if I built an event funnel for this mud run?

What I did is I went and I put together this funnel and I kind of thought okay, on this very first page, there's a point to all this of course, on this very first page, we'll sell the ticket. We'll them what it's about. It was for a charity cause that would connect wounded soldiers. It would reconnect wounded soldiers with their families whatever hospital they were being kept in. It was a really awesome charity that we did it for. I mean it was so fun. It was so fun.

The first page is sold the ticket. The second page told them more about information, things like that. When it was all said and done, I flipped basically the entire event funnel and we raffled off like rifles, like M16s and stuff, right, or 15s.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Really, really enjoyed the whole thing. You know what's interesting is we had 650 people, 650 people show up. Three new stations. I got on TV because I was one of the main guys running it. I was in charge of huge portions of the program. It was over like 70 people and then another like 50, 60 over my actual unit. I mean I was super busy at the time, but it took me 30 hours, 40 hours to really polish it up, make it look awesome, but I built this sweet event funnel. 650 people. We raised a lot of money. We gave a lot to charity and it was just an awesome time.

It would not have been possible without ClickFunnels. Now again that was before I worked for ClickFunnels and that was before all of that happened.

What's funny is when the mud run ended, a lot of you guys know that story that I was really poor. I didn't have money to go to events. I didn't have money to do that stuff. I was trading tickets for funnels, right? I was trading airline tickets. I was trading event tickets for funnels. I was just bootstrapping. I was just finding a way. I knew that I needed to get there.

What's funny because like two days after that whole event funnel ended, after that mud run ended, I went to San Diego on another person's dime because I was building funnels for him, and I went to the first funnels hacking live event. It was literally five days ... From the time that event was over, the mud run was over, I was hired at ClickFunnels like a week and a half later.

I mean it was really, really fast. The whole thing was crazy fast. Maybe two weeks later, maybe. Anyway, it all went really, really quick. What's been interesting is I have always had ... What I'm trying to get to here is I'm trying to portray a lesson that has always been ... It's never been illicitly stated while sitting next to Russell, but is certainly a strong lesson. He might have said it once or twice. I can't remember, but like I had always thought ... Now think about the Frank Kern quote, right? Number three, how can you sell besides online, right? I went to Russell's event and he gets on stage and he's got the sweet event funnel obviously that he sold Funnel Hacking Live 2016 with.

I go and I stand and I'm watching this stuff and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. This is so cool." I see him pitch certification and I was like, "I've got to get in this." I didn't know how, but I was like calling my bank. I was trying to get loans. I knew I would be better off ... Again this was like a few days before I got hired, certainly a day or two before I put the application in. Anyway, it all happened so quick. It's crazy, crazy fast. All of it. Anyway, Russell was selling at his event. Lo and behold, right? Not online. He found another way to sell besides online that he was selling at his own event obviously. Of course, he would.

As I've progressed sitting next to him, what I have learned and noticed and we have implemented and put in place and I've done myself in many other places and especially in another industry really strongly, even in this one, is I have learned that everything you do as a marketer revolves around events. Your ability to create events. What is a webinar funnel, right? You're creating an event online through a webinar funnel, right? You're putting together an event online, right? It's the same thing. Auto webinar funnel.

Now you're mimicking one. You're trying to make them feel like it's a live event, right? Now anytime that you are putting anything out online ... Russell's book launch. That was certainly an event, right?

We built an event around it. When we had the Viral Video launch, we literally said, "Okay. We could just make this video and we'll just put it out there." We're like, "How can we make this more awesome. Oh my gosh. What if we actually rented the Boise State Stadium? Yeah. All right. Cool. What else can we do? Let's get Gary V. there. Oh my gosh." They're like, "Oh, let's get all these influencers there. Let's send out these really, really cool invites to get them there also. Oh, let's do bubble soccer." You know what I mean? We created an event around the launch. Okay? Every single time we have ever launched anything big or one of those big players like that, every time we've always put an event around it.

What I've learned and what I've implemented on my own and a lot of you guys know I'm heavy in MLM, in the MLM industry and in other places as well, I have done that very thing and it's ridiculous what it does when you start putting all those kinds of events.

Literally the only reason for this episode is what I'm trying to tell you to do is like figure out ways to create events around your marketing. Put these events around your marketing, whatever you're launching, any funnel you're putting out there. If you've already launched something, it's not that you can't create an event either.

Again even though it's already launched or put out there, toss another bonus or two in there and call it something special as they buy the original product that get the other two with it. You know what I mean?

You can figure out how to do that, but just have an eye for it...

The whole thing is about you creating events. Okay? Sorry. There's two other places I'm trying to take this here. I was in Dallas two or three weeks ago. Holy crap. That was like three weeks ago. Time's moving. Oh my gosh. Anyway, I was in Dallas a few weeks ago and I was sitting down with ... He's the guy who created I believe ... Don't quote me on this, but I believe he created the company Travelocity. Huge guy, right? I mean extremely successful, right?

Another guy who had done half of a billion dollars in sales. Another guy that runs all of the events for The ONE Thing. I can't tell anymore than that. [inaudible 00:13:29] Crap. Whatever. Anyway, but it's interesting. I was sitting there will all these guys and it was interesting listening to all of them. I could not believe how fortunate I was to spend an entire day with these individuals. I was sitting in Dallas. It was the day after I spoke. I happened to be there and I thought I might as well stay there and listen to what they had to say.

I was sitting there and I was listening. There was this basically the equivalent of an event funnel that they had put together to help launch a certain product that they have coming out.

They showed me the video and I'm being tender with this, okay, as I say that. I'm not trying to make fun of it or anything like that, but I lost so much interest after 30 seconds. I couldn't believe it. I could not believe how bored I got. It was like an awkward kind where I was uncomfortable to be sitting there continuing to watch this six minute video or whatever it was. I was like, "Ah-ah." It was the kind of video where I was like, "Oh man."

There was like a billion things in red flags screaming through my head on what is wrong with this event video. Again not trying to throw rocks here. I'm just going by comparison. Okay? Here's another example. Have you ever seen the event funnel video that T&C puts out for their event?

It is so boring. Oh my gosh. Again I'm not throwing rocks to the dude, but there's an art to this thing. Okay? All it is is Ryan Deiss standing up saying, "All right, guys. It's that time of the year again. We're going to have T&C and there's going to be this many people and this is what we're going to talk about." Okay. Now contrast that experience with the videos that Russell puts out about his event. Okay? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to funnelhackinglive.com and watch the video from this last year and you can even watch the previous two years also on that very first page up on the header. I know because I was heavily involved in the construction of it. Up in the header, up at the top there.

You can watch it and just pay attention to your emotions. How do you feel as you're watching those videos? I'm filled with hope when I watch them. Huge hope. I'm filled with this enabling power. I feel like I can go take on the world when I watch those videos. I am not kidding. You guys will laugh at it, but Russell and I literally will play that video on ... We have listened to that over and over and over and over while we're sitting in the office working. We love the video that much, which might sound kind of weird.

Anyway, that's what I'm trying to say with this whole thing is that think and feel your emotions while you're watching your own sales videos, while you're watching your own event funnel videos, while you're watching any of the videos that you put out there. It's all about emotion.

You know what's funny about this podcast and what I've noticed about it, when I first started this podcast, the structure for each episode was very different than it is now. Well, not very different, but it's evolved. I would tell story for like 60% of the time and then I would give like some kind of tip or content piece the other 40%. What was funny about the whole thing is people kept saying, "Please give us more tips."

I think people kept trying to tell me like, "Stop doing 60-40. Do like 20% story, 80% tips and tricks." I think I did that for an episode or two and it just felt weird. There was no story behind it to help it actually sink in. Funny enough, whenever I would do the heavy tips and tricks type of episodes, everyone forgot that crap anyway. Unless you wrap your marketing messages in stories, unless you wrap your events in stories, unless you are publishing stories, no one's going to remember what you're saying anyway.

Story is what drives emotion straight into the heart where we remember the tip or the fact or whatever it is. Just that one little golden nugget.
What I did when I was in Dallas is I said, "Okay." I'll try to say it nicely. I was like," Hey, great job on the video. Can I just show you this other one by contrast?" I pulled up Russell's video and we watched it. At the end of it, they were like, "Oh my gosh." I was like, "I know. What did you notice?" He's like, "Well, Russell's not talking about the event himself." Right?

He's not talking about the event itself. It's a ton of testimonials. It's a ton of people talking about how much ClickFunnels has changed their life. It's a ton of people telling many stories and many epiphany bridges all over the place for this one overarching epiphany bridge story. That's it.

What I'm trying to say here and what I'm trying to invite you guys to do is that I'm going to be building an event funnel this next Saturday. You guys should get this episode by the end. If not, that's totally fine too.

Just know that I'm building a lot of funnels over the next two Saturdays especially as I prepare to leave ClickFunnels, which I'm super sad about still, which might confuse a lot of people for me to say that. I am quite sad about it.

I've had many freak out moments. If you want to watch me build my next event funnel, go ahead and you can to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. Salesfunnelbroker.com/live. That's going to be kind of my HubSpot place for any funnels that I'm building live in the future.

You can keep checking back there. If something's already gone through, there might be bit and pieces of replays, things like that. Anyway, there'll be stuff on there for you to go check out.

Anyway, that's all I was trying to say with this is that when you think about the three things that Frank Kern says, right, just charge more money, have someone calling people in the backend and find a way to sell in other environments, well, one of those ways is events. I can tell you from personal experience, I've got a lot of people, 650 people, to my first event ever doing that. That's crazy. Now granted obviously I didn't do it on my own. I had a team. I can't take full credit for that, nor would I try to. However, we've built a lot of event funnels and events is marketing.

Events is marketing. All right. Go think through the next event that you're going to put out. It doesn't have to necessarily be something physical. It can be totally virtual. It could be online. It could be whatever, but create events. Events naturally create urgency. They naturally create scarcity because it'll never happen again, which is like the biggest two tools that you have as a marketer. All right? If you want to come join me on the next funnel build that I do, go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. Guys, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Appreciate the involvement. I batch record pretty much all these episodes. For me, I feel like I haven't put an episode for a while, but I know they've been dripping out to you pretty consistently, which is great.

I have an awesome assistant for that and I will be interviewing her shortly, so that you guys can find out who she is. She does an awesome job with my podcast. Anyways, guys, you're all awesome. Appreciate you and get out there and crush it.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

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

Routinely, these are the most common ways we'll increase the perceived value of our offers...

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

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you will learn marketing strategies to grow your on-line business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larson.

What's going on everyone? I am a kid at heart. What can I say? I'm going to be that way on purpose till I die. Do not make me into an adult. Hey, all right it's like 10:00. I've got three nights left before I'm going to go fly to Dallas, which I am super excited about. I am going to speak at Danny Vega's and James Smiley's B2B Mastermind, which, I am super excited about. It will be awesome.

But I am up tonight and I am thinking through like the different things I am going to give and offer there and I am pumped about it. Ultimately I am going to do the same to you guys ... You know, if you want it. It's almost sad, I am putting the slides together, I'm putting together what I am going to deliver and put up there. It will be a three hour presentation, which I am really excited about, be fun.

Anyway, I am thinking through a lot of the different funnels that I have built over the last little while. I am way past 300 funnels built in the last year and half. I have no idea how many it is now. I mean, it's huge. Anyway, I lost count.

I know that, like there is one project once that was 82 funnels alone. I mean so honestly it could be in the 400's. I have no idea. I know that it is a crap ton. I was thinking through all the funnels. It was actually a lot of fun. Anyway, I think it was two weeks ago, I built a membership funnel live.

A lot of people don't know you can build member areas inside Click Funnels that are amazing and frankly I still think that it's the best even out of Kajabi even out of all the other member area places, I still think that the Click Funnels ones are the best because it is still geared toward you continuing to be able to sell more and more and more. There is a lot of stuff that you can do inside member areas to increase your revenue even inside the member area that I don't know that you can do inside of other places.

Anyway, lot of fun stuff. Went great. So I build the member's area live. It was, we had about 35-ish people watch the entire four and half hours while I built it live. And it was really fun because they could get there and they could interact with me. I did that for a live webinar funnel probably about a month ago and I just built out the entire thing live again, which, is a lot of fun.

And I am going to do it again. I thought I would invite you guys to come along and join if you want to. It's one of the things that I will be giving and offering over to this mastermind too, in Dallas, which I am really pumped about. The pressure is on though. Man, got three days. It will be awesome. Just want to make it awesome, so ...

December 2nd, what I am going to be doing is I am going to be building an application funnel. A high ticket coaching application funnel. Could be a coaching funnel. Could be some kind of application funnel. Could be high ticket product funnel. Could be whatever, whatever it is where someone has got to send or submit in an application.

I am going to be building that funnel type. I'll show you three different strategies I have used as well. It has been kind of fun. I launched one of these of my own about a week ago in a different industry and it's going really, really well. I was able to pioneer a few different things that I am going to show you guys and it's working. It's been so cool to see it work. Oh, my gosh. Stuff I've never seen and even know what to do before.

Anyway, if you guys want to go and watch it live and participate and things like that. It'll be at SalesFunnelBroker.com/live.

SalesFunnelBroker.com/live...

That is where you can register. I set it up just like a webinar on Zoom, but you guys can be on there, live with me and actually ask questions as we go through the whole thing and it's a lot of fun.

Last group, anyway I know they learned a lot. I learned a lot. It was a lot of fun. I build from literally the ground up. Start from absolutely scratch and just show a lot of my different design principles and strategies. Things that are really fast. I build the whole thing together usually ahead of time. Try to have some assets together so that I'm not just filling in the blanks with dummy texts and things like that. It's great.

Anyway, so plan on about four hours if you guys want to come watch, it's Saturday morning usually starting about 8:00 in the morning. 8:00 or 9:00 something like that Mountain Standard Time. You guys can jump on and watch.

If you are listening to this episode and it is past December 2nd, for you and I guess for everyone else. I am going to be restructuring Sales Funnel Broker as I've, as I've ... It's great. I've tried to make it as a cool resource, a place that people could just download cool funnels. Some of them for free, some of them for paid. Show some of my other resources I use as I, you know that I used to funnel build with, but I need to revamp it.

You know. I launched that before I even started podcasting so, I mean it's been out there for like a year and half. There is a lot of stuff I got to go update. I've got some cool ideas for it. I'm going to be selling some more ... Okay, just think about this for a second.

I have built a ton of sales funnels in the last year and a half alright and I built funnels well before working for Russell on WordPress, which is terrible in different ways. On my own with Click Funnels during and it's been awesome.

But, there are repeatedly the same funnels that I build over and over and over again that just kill it. Some of them in no matter what industry and some of them in very specific industries. What I was thinking is I've been listing out this huge list of funnels that I build over and over and over again.

Why would I not build them from ground up with you guys so you can see how to do it and then at the end I will sell the share funnels as well as the recording with it. As well as, I always make these really in depth PDF maps so you can see what is going on, on each page. Why I do what I do, where it's hooking into.

The automation behind it. Is there any third party stuff. Am I hooking stuff up with Zappy or how do I? I mean all the stuff that I am doing. And I want to be able to do and deep dive those things with you guys so that you've got even more power behind you on building these things.

Anyway that's what's been going on this last little bit. It's been a whole lot of fun. I have been building. I just built an application style funnel. That one took me a couple of weeks 'cause I had to go film stuff and anyway it's been, but it was a lot of fun. There is a new take on the application itself funnel that I haven't really put out there before and it's been awesome. I kind of made it up. It's been working and it's in a different industry. It's been awesome but, anyway, been cool.

Anyway, bit of a plug there...

Whatever it's blatant and I hope you guys join.

Hey, so, what I want to talk through real quick is the application style funnel. All right and real quick, so I don't know wherever you are or whatever but if you want to draw a value ladder. Right. At the bottom of a value ladder, and if you guys have never drawn before or this is your first time on the episode, or whatever it is at the very bottom of, like, lets, so the very lowest step.

Let's say if you drew three steps of some stairs. On the very first step there that's typically where we have like a lot of free shipping stuff there. Free stuff in general. Free, free, free, free, free. Like lots of free stuff. Somewhere, usually between the first and the second stair step, personally that's where I draw. Like I call it the money barrier. When you break the money barrier, that's when you actually start to sift out actual customers versus freeloaders. Okay? It's super important.

Something you always want to do. I put out lots of content for free. But eventually I sift you guys out. Who is it that is actually willing to pay to play? Who is actually willing to pay to learn and actually run fast with the people who are sprinting into certain industries. You know what I mean?

Like, you've got to do the same thing. Pump tons of free content out there or whatever it is and then eventually you've got to have this barrier where you charge someone some money. Right? Then typically in the middle of the value ladder what I do is have a $1000 to $2000 product. Somewhere in that area. Right? That kind of becomes the core of the business.

That's actually where I start. I start. When I start at, I only have you know. I'm doing my best to have one value ladder at a time. I know I did an episode a little while ago on that, but I try and do one value ladder where I start in the middle of the value ladder. I actually don't start at the bottom. I don't start by giving away free plus shipping things or the little tiny front end products or the little tiny.

I'll start by giving out free lots of content and publishing. But I actually don't start selling stuff, you know, I start with the $1000 to $2000 range in any business. Because, you know when I am consulting or my own self or whatever it is, because it does not take many $1000 to $2000 sales to make a dent in the wall. It does not take many $1000 to $2000 sales to give you awesome profit to dump back into ads.

How many $7 products do you got to sale to actually make a profit? A ton. Right? I would rather the market tell me what to create on those front end products. I don't want to guess. That's super risky. Seen a lot of people waste a lot of time on lower front end products. They don't work. It's a huge shame. I mean cause you just wasted all that time.

You know so, what I do is start with the middle of the value ladder and then what I do is I typically also. Number one, start in the middle. Number two I go to a high ticket product in the back end. I don't go to the front end yet. This is the order in which, what should I call it. This is the order to create products on the value ladder. This is the order to do it.

That I've seen work the best that I've done many times. Number one I start in the middle. Number two, I go back to the high end stuff. At least $5000. Right? $10,000, $15,000, 25 grand, in that range. You know, at least 5k though. Okay I guarantee, I mean if you've got any value at all you've pumped into the market place you could charge five grand for an event and get a few people to come in.

That's actually how Russell started by selling those events. It actually started in events. He did that. He sold an event for $5000 and got two people to pay and was like, "What the heck? That's so cool."

Number one, start with the core, number two you do kind of the back end. Number three, that's when I start creating front end products. That's when you start creating your little $7 things. Your $27 things, your $50 your $100 things, maybe even up to $300 things.

If you start by, you know it's funny when you read the book Dotcom Secrets a lot of times what it makes you think is that you need to start the creation for your business the order is to create them is that you start with those front end things and that's just not how you do it.

If you do it that way you are guessing. It's a lot of volume you've got to go through to actually make that thing convert before you've got to keep tweaking it before it actually. I mean even Russell himself when we launched those when we launched our own funnels. Most of the time round one they are not usually not successful out of the gate.

Okay. It's usually when we make the second tweak. The first tweak the second tweak that's when they get wildly profitable. And Russell is Russell Brunson. He's I ... Second to him I have probably built more funnels than anyone I know. Any guru I know. Anyone. Like period, but he's number one though.

He's done it, way, more than I have. Does that make sense? Like that's crazy. Even for him. Okay. If you look at how click funnels did stuff as well. Click funnels started by selling $1000 product called Funnel Hacks. Then it went into events and higher ticket things in the background. And then started creating things like Dotcom Secrets and front end things and Funnel Swag and Frontal U and Frontal Graffiti and all these front end products that all lead into the same thing. Does that make sense?

For whatever reason it gets like it's sexy in someones head to do it the other way around or we start there. Don't start there. Do that last. Do that last when, when ... 'Cause here's what is going to happen. When, you start selling $1000 product, when, you start selling something that is thousand bucks, right? Or $2000 or whatever it is. The core of your business. I'm not saying it has to be that. But it's got to be enough money where it doesn't take many of them to really make a dent. Right? ... Where, you can dump huge profits back into ads. Right?

When you start doing that you are going to get feedback in the form of complaints. It's just part of it. I remember the first time that ever happened for me. I was like why the heck are you complaining about this? "I wish you did X, Y, and Z. I wish you did this. Blah. Wipe my butt." You know and I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Are you serious?"

What's going to happen is you are going to start to get feedback in the form of complaints.

Now it is your job as the entrepreneur to sift the complaints and you want to sift them into two different groups. You are going to sift the complaints number one into feedback for how to tweak your existing offer. Okay. You might be getting these complaints and you're like, "Crap".

Wait they are right. I should change X, Y, and Z. I need to tweak this thing. All right. That is what Russell is doing. That is what he and I are doing.

Typically, when we launch something and we've got to tweak it the first round or two we are listening to our customer feedback and we're like "Crap. Let's sift these things. Okay? Let's go and et's tweak the offer. Let's make it even better." Right? The second thing though.

The second category you gotta look for is, is when you can sift these customer feedback items and their telling you what to go and create on the front or back end of your value ladder.

They are letting you know. The market is telling what it is that you need to go and create. Okay? These front end products are being created by the customer who bought your middle tier product. That make sense? Let me say it again. Your front end products, typically the most successful ones I've ever seen.

Typically, the ones, their being created third. The customer is telling you what they want you to create. They don't know they are doing that but that is what their doing. We're taking all those pieces of feedback and we're saying you know what? People wish they had shirts with our logo on it. Let's make Frontal Swag.

You know what? People are telling us that they wish that they had something to help them write their copy. Front End Scripts. Right? We didn't start with front end products like that. We started with the mid and I personally do that as well. I start with the middle area of the value ladder at least $1000. When I get that core down when I get it converting. "Psssh."

You've got yourself an ATM machine. You've got a cash machine...

Then you make an application style form on the back end selling your one-on-one coaching, you're done for your stuff, your implementation styled products. Right? Don't put implementation styled products. Don't put coaching. Don't put one-on-one stuff in the core area. Don't put yourself in the fulfillment of the core of the value area. You put that in the back end. That is why I am going to build an application stype funnel with you guys. That's why I am doing that.

If you want to come join me and watch me do it. Right. Get your questions answered then come watch. SalesFunnelBroker.com/live. You can watch the whole thing. I'll do the whole thing. You can watch for free. You know and follow along. You can do whatever you want anyway, but then I am also going to have for sale the actual funnel themselves as well as the training as well as a whole bunch of other stuff. It's just going to be awesome. Action sequences, a whole of bunch of other cool things I am going to toss in there for you.

Then what I do is I build front end products. Front end funnels. Front end things that can with the only intent. You're not trying to make money on them. The only intent is to recoup ad costs and get customers for free so that anything they do on the middle of the value ladder and on the back of the value ladder is pure profit.

Does that make sense?

This is like value ladder strategy and it always irks me just a little bit when I see someone. I'm like no. Don't start with the front end product. I'm not telling you, you can't make money but, you gotta sale a crap load of those things to make a difference in your wallet. I got so animated I just threw my pen. Oh, almost landed in the trash can.

Anyway, so hopefully that helps. That is all I am trying to say with this whole thing. I've built a live webinar funnel, live. I built the membership area funnel, live and a lot of cool strategies that showed how to use them in affiliate areas too, which is crazy cool. Then I am going to do an application style funnel as well. All of these are going to be available shortly on SalesFunnelBroker.com. If you want it, go check it out.

I've got three requests in a single hour to build someones funnel. There is no way I can handle it out. There is no way I am going to try to. Honestly, it would be a disservice if I did try to. It'd be a disservice to all the people that I said. You know that I would say yes to.

The way that I am getting around it is still building the kick butt totally rockin' funnels that I do know how to build but do it live with you guys in a template where can go do the same thing you are trying to do with it. You know what I mean? That's why I am trying to do these things live.

For a while, I've got a huge list of funnels guys. You guys have join me for a while. I'm. If you want to keep going back to SalesFunnelBroker.com/live periodically, I'm just going to be building funnels live for quite a while. You guys can still come in. You can still grab them. I am going to be updating a lot of cool stuff and sharing things. It's the latest and greatest. Things that.

Stuff that I know no one else is doing. Because we either pioneered it or I made it up or I figured it out or we made it up. Or whatever it is.

Anyway, I'm excited. If you want to join you can. Please adhere to funnel strategy that we know works the best. Or I should say value ladder strategy. This is the order to build products on a value ladder. Number one mid tier, not front end. Mid tier, mid product, mid priced at least thousand bucks.

Number two, go towards the back of the value ladder. Go at least $5000 on something. Coaching and event. Some kind of done for you application. Some kind of implementation. That is where we do that, higher up on the value ladder not towards the bottom. Number three, then we do the actual market driven front end products. Not from us with the sole intent to recoup ad costs.

Anyway, I feel like the last few episodes for me have been a lot of techno babbled styled stuff. But I feel like ... Anyway, I hope you guys feel and sense that I am just trying to drop gold. These are the things that I do.

Things that we know. Things that I have been doing for a long time and I just. Anyway, it blows me away when someones like "Oh yeah, I've got all these front end products and they are doing well, but, I'm not making any money." It's like, "Duh."

'Cause you're not supposed to make money with that stuff. That's supposed to give your customers for free. What's your actual business? What's the core? What's the mid tier product? What's the back end?

Anyway, so hopefully this has been helpful. Hopefully these episodes have been great. I've kind of done some funnel deep dives lately. I've got some cool plans for this podcast coming as well. I am excited for you guys to be part of it and. Anyway if you've gotten any value at all. I love hearing that. It kind of keeps me going. Keeps me juiced.

Because each one of these episodes honestly takes me in full after creating it, after putting it all together about an hour and half to two hours per episode. It's nice to hear ever once in a while, like a little shout out. I love it. Super nice. If you guys want to go to iTunes. Please rate the podcast. Give a rating. A love the written reviews. That helps me like crazy. That helps everyone else trying to find this kind of information as well. Anyway, it has been great. Last little shout out.

If you guys want to join with me and dive into this whole thing. Even if you don't have a Click Funnels account, you can still watch. It's just a Zoom link so you can do live Q & A with me with everyone else and we'll build this whole thing together.

And it's going to be awesome and I'm going to keep doing that for a while. Mostly 'cause I love building funnels. Some of them are funnels I need to build anyway, personally. I just thought I would include you in the journey. Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/live and you can check that on out. Anyway you guys are all awesome and I will talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get on of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.

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Heres some of the best business lessons I've learned while sitting next to Russell Brunson for 20 months...

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

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 your host, Steve Larsen.

I'm still such a dork. Hey, I want to, so just real quick, I know I talked about in an episode ago, my voice is just rocked right now. I want you guys to know a really cool success I just had. It's good that we all ... Your successes, too. I want to hear about them. Don't shun your successes.

Everyone, you got to go embrace your successes. Here's one of mine. I used to call them brag moments. When I was in the army, we'd be doing push ups. There was a time when I was commanding 150 people, and I was pretty good at push ups. I've got, honestly, longer arms than most people so they were a little bit harder for me, but I wanted to be good at them.

I'd be doing these push ups, and I'd look up in the eyes of all the guys looking at me while I was doing it, and I'd be like yelling at them, getting them going. We were all fired up. You know, we were trying to keep each other motivated. It was a lot of fun.

I used to have these brag moments to distract them while we were in those painful episodes, right? I would say, "Hey, Johnson. Brag to me, man? What's sweet in your life? What are you doing right now that's just kicking butt? Don't be humble. You tell me what's awesome in your life. What are you doing awesome at?" He would tell me. "Well, I did great at this," or, "There's a test I killed it at at this," or, "I did this over here. I did this." He would tell me that stuff, and it was cool how much confidence that brought the individual.

I wasn't planning on saying this at all, but be cognizant of those things. Whenever you have a win, take time to win. You know, I'm not saying you've got to stop your whole operation and throw a party every time, but take time to acknowledge it, and be like, "Yeah, I'm the freaking man."

Not in a cocky way, you know, but take pride in what it is your own personal progression. Be in competition with you, and get excited about those successes. Those are the successes to get braggy about. The ones where you're in competition with yourself and go kill it.

Anyways, here's a cool one for me. I was asked to speak at a B2B Mastermind last weekend. It was a ton of fun. There was a FHAT event, though, two weeks ago, and I was solely focused on that. By the time the Funnel Hack-a-thon, the FHAT event, was done, I only had one week ... Actually, it was like five days. Only like five days to create an entire three hour presentation.

Okay, I've done a lot of four hour presentations without stopping. I've done a lot of 15 hour ones at the FHAT event, too, but three hours, that's still a long time to prepare for, when it's a new material the whole time. You know what I mean? Meaning I had to reorganize and restructure it.

I was spending all the evenings, I was thinking through strategy, I was talking to all my buddies, I was trying to figure out all the pieces in place. I was like, "You know, let me know what you think." I was trying to get a heartbeat on the industry, trying to figure out where people are.

You know, what are the false beliefs of all the people who are going to be in the room? Literally doing the same strategy of creating a new product that I would anywhere else. I went through, I was like, "What are the false beliefs of the people in the room? What are they going to be thinking? What are they going to falsely believe about my ..."

It was cool because I got to pitch. This was my first time ever pitching from stage, so I wanted to do a good job.

I went, and I was flying over there, and I've got longer arms than the average bear, like I said before, so anytime I'm trying to do work on a computer in an airplane, it is not easy. My hand is contorted into the weirdest positions just for me to ... It doesn't work. Anyways, it's like a five hour flight with one stop and all that stuff over there. I'm getting stuff done, and it's like 10 o'clock in the evening. Wait, no. When did I land?

It was 11. I landed at 11, got to the hotel at midnight, and I'm presenting this thing in eight hours. I was like, "I have barely even started the slides on this thing. I've barely made a dent in them. Oh my gosh. Okay, well, buckle up. When in Rome. Let's just get this done."

I sat down in the hotel room, and I just put on tons of awesome music. I was listening to the Foo Fighters, and Muse, and Incubus, and all my favorite bands, and I was jamming out. I was just cranking out these slides, and I was working the formula, and I was putting the pieces together. All the things that we know, do the best. I put those pieces together, and I look up, and it's 3:30 in the morning. I was like, "Crap. I'm only going to sleep a few hours.

Ah, whatever, let's make this sweet." Then I went back through, and I was making things, and I was fixing it. I was like, "When in Rome, baby. Let's go, get this done."

I went through and I was writing the script, and putting all the pieces together, and about four o'clock ... I only lasted another half hour after that, but about four o'clock, I fell asleep, and I finished, and it reminded me of all these other hack-a-thons that I'd done with Russel, where we're like just dying, but we have a deadline, you know? It's letter gold. Are you going to get it done, or are you not? You know, just do it. Time's not going to wait for you, just get it done. I was like, "All right, well, I'm going to get it done."

Anyways, I went to bed at four a.m., and I was on stage talking and teaching at 8:30 a.m. I only slept four hours, got up, didn't eat, didn't nothing else, I just dressed and showered real quick, and I got downstairs, and I started teaching. It was a lot of fun. There is a rush. If you guys have never done a webinar, I beg you to, because it's like the fastest way to cash we've ever seen. Myself, personally, as well as with Russell, and all the two comma club coaching students that I have, but especially though from stage.

There is a huge endorphin rush from stage. I love it. I didn't feel like I only slept four hours. I felt like I had a full night's rest. I was on fire. It was awesome. I actually got the recordings back, which is awesome. I was teaching B2B people how to make new opportunities from their offers, and a whole bunch of other stuff, which is really a whole lot of fun.

My first session ended, there was a bit of a break, and I hadn't even made order forms yet, so I run to the back with my buddy James Smiley, shout out to you, buddy. Hey, a little side note, actually.

You guys know when I did that six part series where I interviewed someone from the six different industries that we know are using click funnels? James Smiley is still the guy who represents the B2B industry for me. He is killing it. He's doing awesome. From that one podcast episode, and the things that he's created from that, only two, three months ago, they've done huge numbers. I'm not allowed to say how much, but a lot of money, and it's been awesome.

Very, very proud of what he's created. Super pumped for him. Anyway, he's been a friend to me for a long time.

Anyways, he was there. It's his Mastermind. Him and Danny Veiga. They were both there, obviously. I was there with them, and after my first session, I realized that we didn't have order forms done, so James Smiley's running over to the back, and he's writing these order forms, and he's putting those things together.

I don't think anyone in there knew. I started feeling like crap, so I took some more caffeine. "Let's take some vitamin C, baby, some caffeine. Let's get this thing rocking."

I did my first ever stage pitch. I've taught in the whole perfect webinar format many times, but I take out the last part where there's the actual offer, and this time I didn't stop it. I'm really excited, you guys. I closed 28% of the room on my very first time ever pitching from stage.

By comparison to other stage presenters, that's actually quite good. I'm very excited, you guys. That's my brag moment for this episode, and I'm super, super stoked about it.

Well, what I wanted to go through real quick with you guys is, there's two different directions I could take this episode. I've pre-written out a lot of stuff, a lot of ideas. There's two different things, okay? Anyway, so what I was going to tell you, though, is that was Friday, and I went to bed at like midnight, and got up early again, and I had a full day of meetings with another group of people that was over there in Dallas, and then I went to bed again at four a.m. that next night.

It's Monday, and my throat is on fire. I'm actually going to stop here, shortly.

Principle number one, just get it done, just do it, okay? You set the goal. It's like when I would buy tickets to triathlons. The first triathlon I did, I just bought the ticket before I was in shape, because I knew now I had to get in shape. You know, same thing. All right, set the date, start sending traffic to your registration page. Just get it out there, and you will figure out a way because you have to. You hold your own feet to the fire, feel a little pain over it.

I dare you to feel a little pain over it, but you'll find out actually really quickly that it's the secret to getting a crap ton of stuff done and actually your goals much faster.

I've got to get some water. Just a second. There you go. This is live. Unedited. Raw. Steve Larsen, raw. That means different things in different places.

All right. Hey, so what I wanted to go through really quick was, it reminded me of this, is I was thinking through a lot of the lessons I've learned, because I was teaching a lot of cool stuff at the B2B Mastermind, and super stoked I get to speak again in January, probably in February. In March, I will be, as well. I'm kind of off to the races. I'm going to speak a lot next year, so I'm kind of warming up baby.

I'm excited. Hopefully I'll sleep more next time...

Anyway, guys, as I was starting thinking through the different lessons that I've learned while at ClickFunnels, things that I could share at the B2B Mastermind, I was reminded of a list that I kept for a long time when I first got hired at ClickFunnels.

I first thought to myself, "Oh my gosh. I get to sit next to, in my opinion, the most brilliant marketer that is alive, Russell Bronson." I was like, "How on Earth am I going to be able to capitalize on this? You know, how am I going to learn the most? How am I going to take away the most I can from this?" What I did is I keep a list of "Brunson-isms", okay? These are "Brunson-isms." These are 12 "Brunson-isms" that I've kept over the years. Well, I shouldn't say years.

It's been almost two years. It feels like years, though, guys. We've been hauling cojones for a long time. I feel like I just have not stopped. I'm in a whirlwind.

Anyway, but I call them "Brunson-isms." These are the things that I have written down while sitting next to him. When I say that I don't mean in like the same building, I literally mean arm's length away. As he'll be on coaching calls, as he'll be coaching in a circle, as he'll be talking to someone on a podcast interview, as he'll be launching this or that, or creating this video, or making this podcast episode of this own. You know what I mean? This is just 12, okay?

I sifted out a lot of stuff. I didn't want to talk specifically about funnel building strategy. I wanted to talk more about how you act as an individual, as an entrepreneur.

Anyways, these are 12 "Brunson-isms." I won't dive too deeply into these, simply because some of these, the lesson just kind of speaks for itself, but guys, one of these lessons alone has changed my life, in my personal business, I mean. Anyways, I'm excited to go through these. I realize it's 12 of them.

Usually, it's easier if I say like, the three things, the two things, the one thing, maybe five, but there's 12, okay? I wanted to get them all done in one episode, so that you guys could hear what they are. These are the 12 "Brunson-isms" that have had probably the most impact on my life. My life, not just my business. I sifted out those. This is my life, okay?

Number one "Brunson-ism," and these aren't ranked. They're not ranked. I wrote them down. I was actually in a Trello card, and this is just a running thing that I've had for a long time. Number one is don't create stuff. Document and sell instead, okay? Huge lesson. I did a whole episode about this a few episodes ago. It changed everything, okay? Anyway, it's crazy you guys.

Review, document, and sell what you're doing instead of take the time to create it...

I spent eight months making my first info product, and no one bought it for the first few months because I hadn't spent any time creating any market pressure, creating any interest. I didn't know what I was doing, okay? You can go spend a ton of time figuring out the actual like, "Let me go make the whole thing first." No, no, no. Flip it. Sell it first, then document it and create it as you go. Sorry, document and sell as you go. All right. That's number one.

Number two, and I'll do like a review, just I'll read all of them real fast at the end, too. All right, so that's number one. Number two, design doesn't sell stuff. Okay, design doesn't sell stuff. As sad as that is to a lot of designers that are out there. If you look at Frank Kern's funnels, he's got a completely white background, and all he has is a headline, a video, and a button.

That's pretty much it...

The more I've been doing this game, the more subtle my design's become. I do think that design will help with follow-up sales, but it's still not the thing that sells. If you're getting hung up, like, "What should my funnel look like? What should this look like?"

Scrap that attitude...

Scrap that mindset, and know instead that it's the copy that sells, it's your offer that sells. Okay, that's it.

If you're going to spend a lot of time on the funnel, the place to spend the time most on, after an offer, after all that stuff, is on your video. I don't mean like making it all professional, and stuff like that. I mean the script. I mean actually what are you going to say in that thing, and how are you going to come across as human rather than it being scripted? The actual words on the page, that's what does the converting.

As much as we sometimes want to trick ourselves and think that it's the colors, and how good it looks, and things like that. That'll help you for a little bit, but there's no longevity with it. Anyways, that's number two. Design does not sell stuff, copy does.

All right, number three. This is a big one. A little bit ago, Russell talked about, we realized that one of the reasons why Russell is where he is is because ... and honestly a lot of the other people that I know who are wealthy that have become wealthy quickly on the internet, is because they stopped selling one to one, okay? Bear with me a little bit, okay?

Understand where I'm taking this...

I'm not saying not to have call centers or people doing outbound or inbound calls, or taking inbound calls. I'm not saying not to do that stuff. What Russell, as the main entrepreneur, the entrepreneur of the company, has learned to do is sell not one to one, he's learned to sell one to many. Think of the scenarios where that applies most, okay? One to many.

One to one, that's when I was like doing door to door sells, right? That's when I was a telemarketer, right? I was good at those things, but it's still only one person hearing the pitch, right? 28% of the people I closed in that room before, let's think through that, though. 28% of the people.

That means I've got to talk to a lot of people one on one conversations. I've got to do that pitch a ton of times to really make a dent in my wallet. Well, what Russell's learned to do is get a lot of people in a room, or a lot of people in a webinar, or whatever it is, and pitch one to many. If you can learn to do that, wealth is easier to be yours, okay?

All right, that's number three...

Number four, this whole thing has been all about movement. There have been many times both personally and with Russell in the office there, where we'll look around, and we'll be like, "I don't know what to do next." Personally, in my own business, I've run into this many times, and you probably have, too, where you're like, "I don't know what to do next. What am I supposed to do next to actually be successful with whatever I'm trying to do?"

You've got to come up with that plan. One of the biggest lessons I've learned from Russell is that this is all about movement, all of it. All about movement. Just move, okay?

Think about a river, okay? There was this river I was rafting down once. We went on this 36 mile kayak trip, and it was a lot of fun. 36 miles, that's long, it's not like crazy long, but it's pretty long. It wasn't supposed to be that long, because the river was supposed to be moving, but what's funny is like the first 12 miles it was moving. It was fast. It was a lot of fun.

Going through, I'm an adventuresome kind of guy. The last 24 miles, though, the river stopped moving. We literally paddled 24 freaking miles. We were so sunburnt, because we were planning to be out there like four hours. We were out there 12 hours. 12 hours, no sunscreen, like none of that stuff. Barely enough water. Actually, we pretty much were all incredibly dehydrated.

We were so sunburnt that we couldn't stand for like two weeks. We actually got hurt over it, okay?

Eventually, you've got to steer the ship in the right direction, but if the thing isn't moving in the first place, then who cares? If you don't know what to do, just move. Think to yourself, "I don't know. What should I do next? I think that." Like, cool. Move forward. If you really have no idea, just do something, okay? Don't worry about placing your foot in the most perfect place before you start going, or having all the steps planned out. It doesn't work like that. Hardly ever does. Never has for us. Never has for me personally either.

Just about movement. Some people are like, "Well, that means you're going to do like 13 things you didn't need to do." It's like, yeah, but I found the three that made a ton of money, and you still haven't done anything yet.

Anyway, this is number five. Number five is a big one. One of the first things Russell said to me when I sat down next to him, is he turned around and he looked over at me, and he goes, "Hey Steven, I want you to know why you're here." I was like, "Cool, I would love to know that, too, because you chose me out of a bunch of people. Why am I sitting next to you?" He's like, "Someone told me early on," I don't remember who told him this. He's like, "Someone told me early on, though, that there are starters and there are finishers."

He goes, "Steven, I think that you are a finisher. I'm a starter." What's funny is that's true for me as far as funnels go, but it's part of the reasons I'm leaving ClickFunnels, is because I'm actually a starter. I know how to finish, but I'm actually a starter, and I can't not start stuff, and I've been doing that the whole time since I've been there.

Anyway, just know, though. Usually, most of us have a predominate side. Are you a starter or are you a finisher? Sometimes one of the reasons people aren't being successful is because they're a finisher and they're trying to do all these starting things. Go find a starter. Attach yourself. Same thing as the opposite.

If you know you can start a ton of stuff, but you take forever to finish things, find a finisher and connect yourself to them. Russell told me early on that's one of the reasons he's hired who he has, is because he's like, "I'm a huge ridiculous starter," which is true. You guys will see all the things that he does. He moves fast. He goes to sprints quickly, but he said, "I have tried to hire as many finishers as I possibly can." Anyways, huge sage advice.

All right, number six. Russell's a delegation master. One of the "Brunson-isms" that I've learned probably most from him is, I'll make comments like, "Oh man, I wish I knew JavaScript better." Or, "Oh man, I wish I knew CSS better." He'll be like, "Why? We've got a guy for that." I was like, "Yeah, but then I'll be able to do X, Y, Z." He's like, "No, no, no. We have a guy for that." I

was like, "Yeah, but I'm interested. It would be cool to know that." He was like, "That doesn't matter, dude. It's not what makes the money." He's done that to me many times. I like video editing. I like sound editing. I geek out over the process. I like geek out over the process of doing the thing that I do. It's a lot of fun. All of the pieces of it, all of the aspects of it, but one of the things he's helped me realize is like, "Man, you just delegate like a beast."

That's exactly what he does. He's a visionary, he moves forward, he's a mover, he's a shaker, he figures those things out, and what he's very good at doing is figuring out what he shouldn't be doing. Not what he can't do, but what he shouldn't do.

There are many things that he could do that he's not, because he shouldn't be doing those things...

He should be focusing on the other parts of the business. Does that make sense? One of the biggest lessons I learned from him. It's not that I didn't know it before, but seeing it in action. It's insane, you guys. It's how he gets so much done. He doesn't do it all on his own. He doesn't try to.

Sometimes, a lot of us, especially for brand new, for kind of a solopreneur, I actually have a team. I haven't told you guys much about them. I will interview them shortly. I want you guys to know who they are and how I found them. Specifically how I found them, so that you guys can do and start to replicate yourself as well, but I have my own team for my own stuff. I have for a long time, for this exact same reason.

I delegate like a beast...

I've got all sorts of stuff going on. I've got software being created, I've got an app being made right now, I've got tons of stuff that I do that I juggle on the side of working at ClickFunnels, which is kind of ridiculous, but it's because of this principle that I can do that. I'm not doing it all on my own, and neither is Russell. Anyways, delegate like a beast, you guys.

Okay, next one. Moving on. Selling is all about status. Okay, if I'm trying to sell stuff, you guys got to understand that if you're selling things to people, in the person's mind, this is what's really happening. "If I buy this dude's thing and I fail at it, I'm going to look like an idiot." That's one of the biggest hang ups. That's one of the biggest reasons people don't buy from you. One of the things that he's taught me a lot of is that, "Look, selling's all about status."

Okay, that's why there's a guarantee. It has less to do with them being able to recoup their money. It has more to do with them being able to protect their status, so that when they go to their spouse who didn't know they bought the thing, and they go and something breaks, they can say, you're giving them the excuse, you're giving them an out, you're giving them the ability to say something like, "Oh, don't worry. It's under warranty. Total crap. I shouldn't have done that, but I got the money back."

It protects their status. It's all about status. You're trying to increase their status and protect them from losing it at the exact same time.

Anyway, next thing. Biggest thing I see from Russell, also, he's a huge planner. Big massive wall calendar. Since seeing that, I got one last year, and I just got my one for next year, also. It's for macro level planning.

We really don't do that much micro level planning, but we almost always have what we're going to do the next day totally planned out before we get there. Meaning, I know what I'm doing tomorrow. I know what I'm doing the next day. I know what those things are, but we've got a macro level view on these big massive wall calendars. "Okay, we've got this event this day. We've got these things this day. We've got that that day. We've got these pieces here. We've got that there."

What's cool about it is that it actually really ... In my juvenile years, I used to think that planning would cause some kind of stress, because I had to think through details that I didn't need to know yet, and there's an element to that, but if I keep it macro, it actually takes more off my head. I actually increase my shelf space, my mental shelf space, when I use a macro level planner. Then I'll have a micro level one on just a legal pad. Russell does the same thing.

He actually types it, he prints it, but I like to write mine on a legal pad. Anyway, plan the day the day before.

All right, there's a few other delegation points here, so I guess some of these could have been combined.

When you hire people, your only focus is to hire those people to do business stuff, to tend to the actual business, so that you can do what your role is. As the entrepreneur, your only role, the only thing you need to worry about is selling. That's it. Stop worrying about your dang logo, okay? I know it's cliché, I say it all the time, but it's true. Stop worrying about your logo. It doesn't matter, okay? For a long time, it does not matter.

What you're trying to do, is it's proof of concept that you're looking for. Just sell it. Sell stuff, and know that at the beginning, you know what? You'll probably have some refunds because you didn't sell it right. So what? You're moving.

Anyway, so when you hire people, you hire people explicitly to handle business stuff, right, so that you can do your job, which is to sell, sell, sell. Basically, if something doesn't make you money, you shouldn't be doing it, okay? Yeah.

Okay, another huge thing that I see Russell do, which you guys actually have also been a part of, you may not have known it though, is that do your best to include your customers in the creation of your business, or at least your product. I mean, how many things does Russell publish?

A lot of stuff...

How many secrets does he keep? He doesn't keep any secrets. Everything that he tells you is everything that I get, too. Everything that he publishes, all the pieces that are out there, he tells it all. What's funny, is it's contrary to what most people think. "I've got this idea, and if I tell anyone my idea, they're going to steal it."

Okay, I've told everyone my ideas for such a long time. I can tell you that's not true. You'll have one percent of people who try to pull it off, but even if they do, they're not going to pull it off the same way you will, so stop hiding your ideas. Start telling them. Get feedback, okay? Include your customers in the creation of your thing.

All right, next one is whenever we're about to go on stage ... He taught me this early on, also. I thought I'd pass this on, because this has been a huge piece. Whenever we're about to go on stage ... What's funny is that at first it was just him, and then I've started doing it, too, but now we do it together, especially when we're about to collaborate on stage together.

Like at the last FHAT event, I was on stage for a while, he was on stage for a while, and then back and forth, and then for a while also, we were on stage together, which was really awesome. Actually, it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, he taught me this. My voice is going, guys. I've got to end this thing quickly. I've been going for 26 minutes, too. I've got to end it soon, anyways. You guys are probably like, "Shut up, Steven." Here's the last one, and then I'll recap real fast. All right, the frame work is what saves you. That's what it is. Now let me explain it. Whenever we're about to go on stage, we drop pictures, okay?

You know all those little graphs inside Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets book? Those were once stage presentation images. Okay, so when we're trying to figure out what to teach, a lot of times what we'll do is we'll use that opportunity to test stuff, to test concepts, to test things that we know we're on the brink of that we haven't quite been able to formulate yet, though.

It's not that when we get on stage it's always polished. We obviously present it very polishedly, but if there's a concept, or there's this technique, or there's something like that that we want to make sure that we can test or whatever, we actually will draw it in pictures, which is why we have so many pictures. We draw it on a legal pad or a piece of paper.

That's the thing that we take on stage with us. I do the same thing, and then when I'm teaching, and when Russell's teaching, we can just look real fast at that picture, and it represents that entire idea, okay? Rather than write out all these bullet points, which we'll do sometimes, which I'll do sometimes also, but mostly it's just this big, big thing of pictures, because if you can explain something in a hand drawn picture with a stick figure, it means you've probably dumbed itdown enough that anyone can understand it.

Not that the people are dumb, but that you've put it and an area, and in a concept, and in a way that can be grasped and digested quickly. Hence lots of pictures formulate cool book, okay, that's the formula.

Anyway, so that's actually 11. I thought there were 12. It's actually 11. 11 "Brunson-isms".

Number one, document and sell. Document and sell rather than create.

Number two, design doesn't sell stuff.

Number three, learn to sell one to many instead of one to one.

Number four, it's all about movement. Just move. Just do stuff.

Number five, are you a starter or a finisher? Whatever your answer is, hire the other.

Number six, be a delegation master, okay? Just delegate like crazy, you guys. It's funny because there's a lot of personalities out there that are begging for that kind of thing. They want to be led. They want to know what they're supposed to be doing. So tell them.All right, what is this?

Number seven? Selling is all about status.

Number eight, plan your day the day before.

Number nine, hire people to do the business stuff so you can focus on just selling. If something doesn't have to do with selling, you should not be doing it. What is this?

Number 10? Hold on. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Yeah, 10. Include customers in the creation of your thing.

Number 11, the frame work of what you create is what saves you. That's what saves you on stage. That's what saves you in tons of areas. Guys, my voice is going like crazy, and it actually is killing, but I hope that that helps.

There's an episode I did a little while ago called My Black Book of Business. All I would do is write down business ideas and lessons. I beg you to start tracking those things for yourself. If you keep track ... Just something to writing stuff down that frankly drives me nuts, because sometimes I don't like to write stuff down, but I know if I do, it'll be there. Just write down the thing. Keep a list.

I don't care if it's on Trello or whatever it is, but start writing down the lessons you're learning, and they'll stick longer, you can teach them, you'll actually end up doing them, you'll remember them, you'll actually get them digested and start applying this stuff.

Anyway, so that's kind of what I've been doing this last little bit, and I just wanted to share that list with you. That's my 11 "Brunson-isms." Remember to have your brag moments. Remember to have your lessons written down. This is a long episode, guys. Sorry about that, but I thought it'd be worth it to go through some of the biggest lessons I've learned from Russell Brunson. Thank you guys.

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