How to Build a Membership Site That Works

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Russell Brunson, Todd Brown, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, Jim Edwards, and Stu McLaren...

What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, for the next three episodes, I'm actually going to do ... This episode will be day one of Funnel Hacking Live, and I want to go through and show you the lessons I learned, and kind of what some of the speakers were doing and sharing with us. And then, obviously, next episode will be day two, and then day three.

So the next three episodes are going to be a bit of an overview of the things that I learned. Let's kick it off.

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.

All right guys, now the first thing you'll probably notice is that my voice is shot. I am completely humbled by the number of you that I met who listen to my podcast. It was so awesome. But I met so many of you. I was totally touched, also, by the number of you ... I mean, I was not expecting gifts, but a lot of you guys ... Anyways, I'm saying thank you to those of you did that.

That was very nice of you and I appreciate that a lot...

I pretty much talked for three straight days and my voice is totally gone. I was going to do these last night while it was all even more fresh in my brain, but I was like, "Gosh. I can't even ... I can't even ..." You know, anyway. I was like, "Maybe if I go to sleep, everything is going to be better, and I'll wake up in the morning, my voice will be better." It's not. It's actually worse. I'm probably going to lose my voice, 100%. Anyway, that's okay. Here it goes though, all right, so you just have to, I guess, deal with that.

I'm going to go ahead though, and I'm going to let you know the things that I learned, the big takeaways from Funnel Hacking Live. Now, understand that what I'm going to do here, it's not going to give justice at all for what really happened.

But, this is more the tactile stuff that I'm going to go over. The very first day that we had ... Gosh, it was such a good event. Oh my goodness. Everyone was going nuts, so crazy. Totally got my picture with Tony Robbins, which was crazy cool. That guy is huge. Anyway. I'm not a small guy either, but man, he was like a full two heads taller than I was.

Anyway, all right. So hey, the very first day we had Russell Brunson speak, obviously, then Todd Brown came in and spoke. Russell spoke again about something so good, and I could see everyone going like, "Crap. I need to redo how my whole product works now that I've heard Russell speak."

Brandon and Kaelin spoke. Jim Edwards spoke about copies. Stu McLaren came in and taught about membership sites and how to make millions of dollars with them, it was fantastic, it was amazing.

Then we had huge round table discussions, and honestly, that's ...

I really lost my voice from the majority of, really, two things. When people walked in the door for the very first day, I mean, music was bumping. I mean, it was so loud, it was awesome. The stage looked incredible; it was so much bigger than last time, which none of us could really believe. We were like, "Oh my gosh, this is just amazing." Melanie and our team did fantastic.

It really, really went well. Just, I can't even ... It's hard for me to describe everything that went on there. But I ...

As people walked in the door, I was screaming, "Yeah, what's up? It's game day baby," as loud as I could, slapping, giving hand-fives to everyone that came in. I'm pretty sure I started bruising my hand; it actually really started hurting. But it got everyone jazzed up and in state as they walked into the door, which is awesome.

We wanted the energy levels to go up, because it pulled them out of their comfort zones. I try and do that a lot of times when I'm learning things, even on my own.

All right, so Russell first spoke about creating a mass movement. These are really chapters that are hardcore in his new book. But the main point is that you really need ... You got to have three things in order to create a mass movement. The first one is, you need a charismatic leader. Second one, you got to be able to have ... There needs to be a cause.

Then the third thing, I think it was a following...

Crap, I should have brought all my notes with me as I was doing this. But, anyway, it was so good, because he started talking about ... This is way beyond product creation, right? Most of our audience speaks, and talks, and is focused solely on, "How do I create the funnel? How do I create the product?" Right? He's like, "Okay that's good, and you guys are getting really good at that as a community. But the next step is really, how do you get people to it." Right?

Joe Polish, this reminds me of one of Joe Polish's courses, but he's talking about how marketing ... You think about sales, sales is what happens face-to-face, in front of people. I think that I've mentioned that before in this podcast. Imagine standing in front of somebody, that's how you sell them, right?

But marketing is what gets them in front of your face, right? That's what turns their feet and gets them standing in front of you, and that's really what Russel talked about first. Very tactile, how to do that, how to construct the message, how to get it and put it all together. Really, really cool.

Then we had a quick break. Then Todd Brown came in and he talked more about the big idea, and this idea that you could latch, go back in history and look at other marketing messages that were killing it, and just tweak those messages, and he showed you how to ... Again, the whole thing was extremely tactile.

I saw someone post, and they were like, "I learned no actual hardcore strategy." I was like, "Man, you must not have been freaking in the room then, because you're the only person who said that. Ever." I don't even ... Everyone I've been talking to is like, "That was the best thing I've ever ... That's the best event I've ever been to, related to business, ever. Across all business, not just marketing, in general." I was like, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." We worked our butts off for it, so we're super glad that you guys liked it.

But Todd Brown talked more about how to actually get that big idea, right, the one thing, and how to construct it. The big takeaway I got from him is that the creativity that your business requires is not in you. It's not. He said, "You have got to be obsessed with the market that you're in. As you dive into the market, and as you figure out what pieces are missing, the creativity comes from the market, not from you."

If you're sitting there and you're not reading books, and you're not digesting things, and you're not there trying to get better and get your craft down, you cannot conjure the amount of creativity needed, that your business needs.

I was like, "That's so key. My gosh." I started thinking back, and I was like, "Holy crap. He's totally right." Any time I've ever made a product that really has done well, it's because I have been obsessed with that market. I found out exactly what the pain points were, which essentially told me what to build. It didn't come from me.

There was ... I actually wrote an e-book when I was in college, and I talked all about this, that man, essentially you don't need to be creative. That is the number one thing that entrepreneurs come out and they're like, "I got to create something totally new." It's like, "Ugh."

Anyway, I'll talk about that some time later...

But I wrote an e-book that talks about ... I call it "Product Big Bang Theory", which is where these new ideas ... I was like, "Oh, I got to create something totally new," and it's like, actually the market might not even be ready for that. Let's say you actually did pull that off, which is super rare, that something you just made was totally new, not influenced by anything else, that's rare.

That doesn't happen very often, right? It's more about product evolution. Right?

You look at current states of things and you make an improvement on the way things are, and sell the solution. Then the next person comes along, he's like, "Well that's cool. That brought me up to here. But, now let's go ahead and let's elevate it again."

Why are there so many freaking iPhones? Right? That's exactly what product evolution is. That's how huge money is made. Not by product big bang theory; half the time the market doesn't even accept it, you know what I mean? Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, but ...

Okay, that was the first half of the day. It was so good. Then Russell came back on and he gave a speech about how to sell pretty much anything, without selling anything. That was his headline. "How to sell almost anything without actually selling anything."

He talked about this concept of ... Okay, right now, you listening, right, think about the industry that you're in right now. Think about it, and think about what it took for you to become an expert in that industry. If you don't feel like you're an expert yet, just keep learning. Right? Keep learning, and the fastest way I know to learn is to teach. Right? This podcast also helps me, guys. It helps me sharpen my craft. Right?

Sharpen the saw and get better, and better, and better...

I always tell people to get a coach, because it accelerates your learning, and then be a coach, because it solidifies it. Get a coach, be a coach. Get a coach, be a coach.

Get a coach, be a coach...

That's what I gave my closing speech on at graduation, when I graduated. Anyway. He goes through and he starts saying, "Look, as you came into this industry, whatever it is that you're in, you loved it and you started learning all the vocab from that industry." Sales funnels, auto-responders, SMTP, right? All this crap, no one know what that is if they're not in here.

You go out, you get so excited, and the first person who you think is even remotely a good fit for a sales funnel, let's just use that as an example, you run up to them and you're like, "Sales funnel. Auto-responder. SMTP," and they're like, "Ah."

You know, we call it technobabble...

Technobabble's this thing that will kill the sale, always. The point of Russell's speech on that is that he said, "You need to go back to the time where you had the epiphany, personally. Right? That you needed a sales funnel, and you have to tell that story in a way that gets them in the same state, to have the same epiphany that you did. And then you don't have to be selling anything."

Suddenly they'll have the epiphany. They'll realize, "Oh my gosh. I got to have a sales funnel now." You know what I mean? For me, because of the origin story, right?

My origin story ... I've said this before, so I'm not going to go into it, because it's a big story. Right? I was in college, I was trying to make a lot of money on the side, and I was doing all right at it. I was getting hired by Paul Mitchell, the hair school. I was driving tons of traffic for them. We were building websites for some of their rising celebrities. Funny, because it was in the middle of my marketing class.

We walked up to the teacher and I was like, "Hey, I don't want to come back to your class ever again. I'm already doing this stuff." He's like, "Cool. Just show me a deliverable at the end."

So I went and I worked for Paul Mitchell during those hours, three hours a day, driving lots of internet traffic for them, and I could get huge volumes of traffic. I was getting all these people, all these ninja waves, white hat and gray hat stuff. We were getting lots of website visitors for Paul Mitchell there. I realized I could get tons of traffic.

But I kept looking at the numbers, and they're like, "Okay, we're spending extra money on this traffic that's coming in. We know we're targeting okay, but why aren't people converting? How do I actually know that these people are making me money?" Right? It's a brick-and-mortar story. That was the big challenge, bringing them from online to offline, and walking into their stores. Right?

That's when I realized, there was a skillset out there that I did not have, and that's what ultimately led me to getting all over the internet. I was like, "Oh my gosh. How do I do this? How do I do this?" That's when I ran into "DotCom Secrets" and Russell Brunson. That's how I did it.

Anyway, that was the whole point of that though, is that you need to go back to ... start categorizing, start ... Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Start indexing. I should say that, that's probably a better way to say it. Start indexing your stories. Okay? Russell told way over 40 stories in each one of his presentations. It's not because he's just sitting there telling stories, it's to help us.

Now that you know, okay, watch what he does, watch what he does in his Snapchat. That's a huge, long, slow story that's going on. You see behind the scenes of what he's really doing in his own personal life. Right?

That gets the attractive character up...

He tells stories in his podcasts. He tells stories, and it's to help people have the same epiphany of need for what he's selling. Right? That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what he's doing, because he doesn't like hard closing people. He's not even that good at that. I'm not either.

I'm not very good at hard selling...

It's like, when I was doing door-to-door sales, that was one of the things I sucked at. I was like, "Man, I could come up with a sweet offer, but the best way to sell without selling is story selling."

That's what we call it, instead of storytelling...

Anyway, so we're going to keep going on. Then Brandon and Kaelin Poulin came up and they talked about social webinars, and they talked about how they spend a thousand dollars getting Russell's Funnel Hacks class. I'm sure you guys have had the Funnel Hacks class, you've gone through it, you know what it is.

It's the, "My weird niche funnel that's currently making me 17 grand a day," which, that's very low compared to what it is now. But, anyway, they went through, though, and they started saying, "Hey, I got the thousand dollar thing, and all we did is we played Russell's thing for five seconds and then we stopped, and we implemented exactly what he was saying.

We paused the video." He's like, "Sometimes it would take us hours to get through this set that he just showed, and we'd play the video for five seconds, then stop."

Russell wanted them up there ... Sorry guys, my voice is shot. I'm trying to do the best I can here. Okay? But Russell wanted them up there to show you guys that you can go just follow Russell's path, and just pause the video. Just pause it, do what he said. Pause it, do what he said. The first year they did that, they turned that thousand dollar investment into 300 grand. The second year they did that, which was 2016, they turned it into 2.3 million. Right?

Every time they saw Russell do something on social media, they paused the video and immediately did it. Right? I mean that day, they got it done, and that's how they did it. They didn't know anything about tech stuff. I know way more about click funnels than them. Right? The point was implementation, was getting out there and just doing it. Right?

They used social webinars to do that. That was the name of their speech. They would stand up, and one of the cool takeaways I got from them was they said, "Hey look, if you can do it afraid, you'll be able to make it." Meaning, it's scary sometimes to do this stuff. You're like, "Oh, I don't want to do the webinar. I don't want to get out there. I don't want to be myself. I don't want to do a podcast when my voice sucks." You know what I mean, like right now?

They said, "If you can do it afraid, people will sense that, they'll bond with you even more, and you'll be able to just take action and just get it done." It works out for everybody.

Let me keep going here. Then there was a break, and then Jim Edwards came in and he taught about copy. Now, he is the creator of Funnel Scripts. If you guys have never used that software, fantastic software.

You go in, and he basically says, "Hey look. Look, copy is not written, it is assembled." All the top copywriters in the world understand that there are elements, there are fill-in-the-blanks, for whole sales letters. Right? Everything. If you need to change your sales letter a little bit, he's like, "Think of it like Legos. All right? You take one little Lego out, and you stick another one right there to complete the sentence." You know, how to blank without blank. You know, how to make a million dollars without leaving your house. You know, how to blank without blank. Over and over again. But that works for all copy, it's not just for headlines. It works for ...

He said, "I became a great copywriter when I realized that, that copy was assembled, it's not written. You are not a copywriter, you are a copy-assembler." You might think, "Okay, wow. That's not ... Is that a big enough golden nugget to actually make a speech on?" Well, then he started going through, and he started showing us how ... I mean, this is how Funnel Scripts works. If you ever used the software, it's these inputs that you toss in, and it spits out all your sales copy.

At the end, he said, "Hey. The best copywriter that I ever hired, ever, is me." He's like, "If you really want to get amazing at copies, Funnel Scripts is a great launch pad. It will get you there very quickly, but you have got to learn how to assemble it on your own." He gave all the funnels, and all the scripts, and all the fill-in-the-blanks that we would ever need for any type of copy, ever, while we were there. It was a really huge value. Most the speakers gave something ridiculous at the end. It was really nice. Just, tremendous value the whole way.

Okay, then Stu McLaren came in. Guys, if you don't know who Stu McLaren is, this guy's one of my heroes, second to Russell, okay? What Stu does with his time, is he goes out and he has something called World Teacher Aid, and any time you ... Some of you guys ... We were actually shocked at the number of people that did not know this. When you click 'Add New Funnel' in ClickFunnels, and you build the funnel, as soon as 100 visitors hit that funnel, a dollar automatically gets donated to World Teacher Aid.

Well, we presented him with a $76,000 check while he was here. Literally 100% of all the money that comes into World Teacher Aid is used for building schools in Kenya and Africa. They've built like 11 of them now. Anyway, it's really, really cool, really touching. But we were like, "Holy crap, 76,000 funnels with 100 people came in." That's what that means. Oh my gosh.

But he came in and he talked about membership funnels. What he does, is he goes through and he says, "Okay, I'm going to make a sweet membership site, but I'm only going to spend 2 weeks out of the whole year running it." You're like, "What the heck?" He goes in and he says, "Okay. I'm going to go in and I'm going to, on week one, let's have an expert come in and teach something. On week two, let's do a live Q&A about it.

On week three, let's do some kind of blog or post, or something like that, some other tangible item that they can go learn from. Then on week four, we'll do some other behind-the-scenes video. Like, 'Hey, this is how I really do it. These are the little hacks I learned.'" And that's what he does.

If you look at those, week one, two, three, four, the only two pieces that you have to do ahead of time are getting an expert to come in. He flies everybody in. In two days he interviews, back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, to back-to-back, 12 of them. Right? Pre-loads 12 months of content, gets it transcribed, puts it in the membership area, puts it on a drip thing so that it goes out for them after 30 days, after 60, 90, the whole way through the year.

Then he creates the blog post for it, same thing. He gets the whole thing set, and then he presses go.

The way that he makes $7 million a year off of membership sites, where he only runs them a couple weeks a year, is by the way he handles the cart. He does not leave it open cart all the time. He leaves it as seats. He's like, "Look. I treat you guys like students. I really do want you to know." So rather than these huge ups and downs in his membership sites, he will literally just ... It's like stairs, steps. It's a little up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up, because while the cart is closed, while people can't get in, there's a waiting list.

If there are times when he knows he wants a little boost in the revenue or he might lose some numbers, he just goes to the waiting list and says, "Hey. Look, a seat is going to open up. If you guys want to jump in, go for it," and he'll get a little boost in the sales. That's how he handles membership sites. I thought that was a really great takeaway, and I just wanted to share that over to you guys.

Anyways, after that, Russell is taking people to Kenya if they buy a school. We're just trying to raise money for charity. But we don't any of that, obviously. That's literally straight for charity. Then there were huge round tables at the end. It's like non-stop talking. It was awesome. It was really fun to talk to you guys, because half your questions are tactile, "Hey, how do I do this in ClickFunnels?" Then the other half are strategy like, "Hey, how would you sell this?" I got to sit down with so many of you and draw out funnels, and show you how I'd do this, and the ways we've seen it work.

You guys know I've built over 140 sales funnels with Russell in the last 11 months. Way more than half of them have been all on my own. You know what I mean? Right at the beginning it was like, "Hey, build this funnel," and then I'd go out and I'd build it, he'd destroy like 90% of it. Well the percent that he's destroying is going smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Until finally, the last six months has been like, "Okay, cool. Hey, just change the headline just a little."

That's it. I was like, "Holy crap. That's so cool." But it's really fun to sit down with you guys and just start showing all these cool things we've been doing. Hopefully next year we get a round table. That's what I'm hoping for. Don't tell Russell, but tell Russell if you want to. Be like, "Russell, Stephen, why aren't you speaking? Why aren't you at a round table?" I was like, "Well, it's not my company or my call, so I'm not ... " Maybe next time I will.

Anyways. Guys, that was the first day. We were there until midnight, and then we got back up. We had our meeting at 7:30, and then huge hand-slapping times the whole way, high-fives coming on in. It was awesome, again. Anyways, that was the first day. Hopefully something in there I said was of use and of value to you. Very, very awesome. I want to encourage you guys right now, if you want to ... I think we sold several hundred tickets for 2018.

We sold almost 100 for 2018 right before this event actually started. But then during this event, we sold another couple hundred tickets.

Anyway. There are 35 tickets, 35 seats, available for our next conference in 2018. It's going to be at Disney in Florida. We already got the resort, everything's done. The contracts are signed.

We are going to freaking Disney...

The early-bird price right now is 697. I think you can go to funnelhacking.com ... Well you can, I built it. Go to funnelhacking.com. You can only buy single tickets right now, not two. But, just so you guys know, a little inside track here, they are going to raise the price significantly higher for this one.

Half of it's just because of demand, and because we bring in people like Tony Robbins. You know what I mean? That is not cheap. I am legally not allowed to tell you how much money it was, but holy crap.

Get your ticket now, is what I'm telling you to go do. I'm not pushing an affiliate link, I'm not telling anything else, I just would love to meet more of you guys.

About 75% of the room raised their hand when they asked if this was their first event. I think it's because you guys were listening. Anyways guys, fantastic time, and again, next two episodes, I'm going to go through the next two days here. I think you guys are going to like this. It got even cooler. I can't even believe the first day was just so freaking awesome.

The first day, when Russell and I were talking about it and going through it, we were going through slides ... I made so many images for his slides. It was a lot of fun doing it with him. But, we realized that the first day is so foundational for the remainder of the event. All right?

It had less to do with, "Hey, make this tweak on your funnel here and get an increase in conversions." That's not what the event is about. The event is about how to sell. The event is about how to actually be the business owner. It's about how to outsource. It's how to craft your message. That's really what this was all about. Okay?

I saw a blog post from some guy, Billy Gene, and he was like, "This was the worst thing ever. Day one went by, and he didn't go through any tactics."

I was like, "Are you freaking kidding me? What he just laid down there means you don't have to strong sell anybody else ever again, ever. All right? I don't like doing that. I'd rather put that on autopilot through a funnel, and he just told you how to do it."

No tactics, my butt. Anyway. Okay, don't get me started on that, because what he put out there, there's nothing else from that event ... There's nothing else you could learn that was so valuable. It's pretty much more important than the offer.

I have watched Russell ... Just so you guys know, and then I'll end this podcast. I have watched Russell, many times, not know a thing about the person's product, but because he asked certain questions, he knew how to sell it.

Did you just have an epiphany? Because you should, about your own products. Some of you guys are so obsessed with your product, but you are not obsessing on how to sell it. They're different things. They're totally different things. Right? One, you've got, let's say ...

I was asking someone at the event, I was like, "Do you know what's in a Campbell's Soup soup? What are the ingredients?" He's like, "You mean like all of them on the back?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "I don't know." I was like, "Then why'd you buy it? You don't know everything that's in it? Oh my gosh. You're crazy. You're nuts." I was like, "Now is that really that crazy or nuts?" He's like, "No." I was like, "You are thinking that everyone is going to look at all the ingredients in your offer, and all the little pieces, and all these things.

That's true; the offer needs to deliver, it needs to be awesome. It's got to be amazing. But, just as important, if not more, in fact, I would say even more, you have got to obsess on how to sell it."

I say, "Okay now, can you tell me what a Campbell's Soup label looks like?" He's like, "Well, yeah," and he goes through. I was like, "Okay, now why is that?" He's like, "Because they spent so much more time ... Okay, the ingredients list is on the back of the can, even. Right? That's not the highlight."

However, it is the product; it's got to be there. But the message, what people see, the thing that pulls people in, right, the message they put on TV of you drinking this soup while you're sick ... Those are stories. That's how everything's sold.

Anyway, I was trying to tell some of this, "Understand what I'm saying to you, that the product is important, but you have been obsessing over your product for the last several years." I knew he was. I was like, "Stop. Okay? It's time to obsess on the message. It's time to obsess on your culture. It's time to obsess on all the little analogies you're going to tell, and inventory your personal stories so people get attracted to you.

Let's say your product got shut down, or you lost something, or whatever, that way people still know who you are." Does that make sense? That's the important of this, and that's really what day one was.

Anyway, it was a long podcast guys, but hopefully you guys liked that. Hey guys, seriously, again, I would go get the ticket if you haven't. I'm so excited to show you guys day two and three. Holy crap. All right guys, talk to you later. Bye.

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