Yeah... I'm a 7-year overnight success story:) Avoiding pain would've taken me longer to get where I am now...
Hey hey, how you guys doing? 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.
All right, so four years ago I was at basic training. It was winter time, which is a terrible time to go, and it was probably the second day. I mean, you know the quintessential Hollywood scene where the drill Sargent comes on the bus and he yells at you and has everyone get out, right?
I mean, that totally happened. We got on, they're screaming at us, you get on the ground, you're just doing endless pushups forever, you're sprinting back and forth in the dirt there, you're laying around all over the place, they're making you roll. I mean, they're doing everything they can to dehumanize you, right, and make you realize that you are now a number, you know?
It was interesting, you know, to go through that experience and to feel that, and to actually feel the shift inside of me, and that was really interesting.
But probably, honestly, the second or third day, you're scared out of your mind ... anyway. And they say, "All right, go grab your stuff," obviously with much different tone than that, but basically they start marching us over to ... which is more like a run, you know, you're basically running everywhere ... but they start getting us over to the spot and hand us all a gas mask, you know? And this thing looks like it's straight out of Call of Duty, you know what I mean, if you've ever played that game, or like the movies or whatever.
It's got the big knobs on the side, it's got the big, you know, the big circular glasses. I start getting fluttered, you know. We all do. We're about to go inside of a gas chamber, and it's no joke.
So, what we start doing, we start practicing basically how to put the mask on, right? One side you inhale really hard and it seals it around your face, the other side you blow out really hard and it ... you know what I mean? And it clears out any gas that might have been left in there while you're putting the mask on. We're standing outside of the gas chamber, we're in the middle of the forest and there's this gas chamber that's sitting there.
It's really, really, really interesting experience. They told us, "By the way guys, if you shaved today," which you're supposed to all time, "If you shaved today, just letting you know, it's going to burn your face, because it's going to get inside your pores really bad." And I was like, "Oh, all right. Sounds good. Crap."
So, we're helping each other, we're putting the stuff on, and putting these masks on and stuff like that, and then all the sudden they're like, "Okay," you know, "Next group," or whatever, and we're all going in as these groups. It's funny, because when you heard these guys go in as groups all you could hear in the ... like, as they started running in was just this ... I mean, like this coughing, a little screaming, you know? It was like you're going into a haunted house but it was real, you know?
Anyway, it was our turn, so we put these gas masks on outside and we start running inside of the gas chamber. You had to keep your head down and put one hand on the shoulder in front of you and just start running, following the guy in front of you.
I don't totally know why they had us do that, it might of just been part of the whole experience of sit down, shut up, and don't think at all, you know what I mean?
Anyway, but we get inside there and it was like ... I don't know if they purposely made the light like a misty green color, I mean, there's green ... it was green everywhere. The air was green, everything was green. And they take us and they shove us up against the wall, and they're like, "Okay, turn it on," and immediately I could tell that the gas was burning around the lining where the masks end and my face began to be exposed.
I just immediately could feel it, it was really, really weird. It's very interesting sensation. I could tell that it was trying to get around on my face, and you know, mentally you have to start ... you know, you kind of self talk a little bit, you're like, "All right, you know, you got this. Totally fine," you know? I was excited but nervous. I love that stuff, but it's also scary. It like scary stuff that puts me on the edge like that. It's really ... Oh man, you feel so alive, it's really interesting.
Very interesting sensation. I've had many experiences like that in my life...
Anyway, what they started doing is they started going person by person and they would go, "Raise your mask up, say the last four numbers of your social security," you know, which means scream it, "Scream the last four numbers of your social security, and your full name, and your birth date. And then what you're going to do is whatever air is left inside your lungs, hold it, put the mask back on. You're going to clear the mask with whatever air is left in your lungs, and then you'll reseal it.
And you'll know really fast whether or not you actually did it right." And you're like, "What the ... okay, all right." Now, this is just CS gas, but it was pretty high doses, you know what I mean? This is not normal stuff, you end up ... Anyway, I'll go into that in a second.
It was pretty interesting, though, because ... So, we cleared the mask, you know, and these guys and a few of the girls just start freaking out, like someone's trying to attack them kind of thing. They were jumping all over the place, the drill Sargent's shoving them back crazy hard up against the wall again, like, you know, "Shut up, get back there," you know?
And they get to me and I was like, "Man, like, what the heck is this crap? What did I do?" And I took the mask and I yell, "Larsen," last four of my social, you know, "April 22nd, 1988," and I start yelling all these things, I put it back on my face, and I clear the mask, and I reseal it, and I could tell I didn't totally reseal it correctly on the left side of my cheek, but I was trying to make it that way so it wouldn't get back in. I could tell instantly just the ... it was like insta lung burn, just ... like burn the lungs really bad, and you're like, "Holy crap."
They go through person by person and then what happened was they pull us over to the side and they said, "All right everyone, you're going to take off the mask completely and we're going to do PT inside of the gas chamber." Meaning we're going to start doing pushups and sit ups, and we're going to start jumping jacks and whatever.
Whatever it was, the point was to get the heart rate up, make us breathe really hard, and just start ingesting tons of it. And we're like, "Oh my gosh," so we just start doing it, and I take off the mask and my eyes start burning and watering like crazy, right?
Guys start breathing it in, we all start breathing it in, and what happens with that kind of gas is that it comes inside of you and it's actually, on a molecular level, your DNA's allergic to that type of gas.
So what happens is, it's one of the chromosomes, and so what happens is you just start ... It's not like a nerve agent at all, it's not that kind of gas, they wouldn't put us in that kind of situation. But that's what the training was for, to practice for those kind of contingencies and things like that.
So, the gas, though ... there's a point to this whole story, by the way, I'm just telling you ... the gas, though, it makes everything in your face defecate, okay? Anything on your skin that's exposed to it just burns like crazy. So, they finally are like, "Okay, get out of here. Run out, run out." And people are throwing up, you know, and it's like ... I can't even describe the scene, it was so crazy.
Now, why'd I tell you that story, all right, and ... Well, let me jump into something else, okay? All right, seven years ago I started a lawn business, okay?
That did okay, but I went into stocks and options after that and I totally failed in that, I wasn't that good at it. In real estate I really ... I got into real estate pretty heavily.
I would flip contracts in the closing period. So, I'd go get a house under contract and I'd get it under market value, then what I did is I'd go find someone who was looking for a house like that, and in the closing period, before I owed any money, I would flip the contract for like 10 grand more to the next guy, and his money would cover my costs and I'd take the spread, okay? That was pretty ninja, but it was cool, okay?
I eventually got into more hardcore real estate things, and we'd take peoples 401ks and they'd buy shares of huge pieces of future real estate. Then my buddy and I, we'd take that 401k money from them and we'd go invest it ... They knew all this, okay? There's tons of legalities with this stuff, it's obviously for the person who's far more intense in investing tolerance, you know?
So, obviously it was very different doing it with them for this thing. But we'd take that, and what would happen was we'd take that money and that would be the down payment on a big loan for a three million dollar commercial real estate property, right? And what would happen is those people invested would get shares in that property and the property value. It's super cool.
All right, that was pretty intense...
Then I got into MLM and I did all right. Then I got into telemarketing, and I was actually a hardcore telemarketer for a little bit. I was one of the team trainers, I was actually ... I competed with one other guy. Sometimes I was number one, sometimes I was number two.
Then I got into door to door sales and I'd grow my own teams, and put people together. Then I really got into writing e-books, and e-books, that was really cool. Actually, I never released the last one I did. Or it was actually the first one. But it was so good, holy crap. A lot of the things that I use now is still relevant in that e-book. I should probably pull that out some time.
Then I started this business with some other students for a college semester. We made $3,000 a week from a business we made from scratch selling things to other students in campus, that was pretty cool, but was not allowed to last. We had to take that one down, but it was cool.
I was the CEO of that one, that's fun. Then I started making landing pages for other businesses, because I realized that, during the student run thing, if I had actually started to drive traffic online I would of had more success. However, that's really how I started getting into more hardcore ... I mean, I had built sites with WordPress for other clients before, but that really is what started getting me into actually building ... I didn't know what was called funnels, and sales funnels.
All right, and then I got into traffic generation, and we had an investor who wanted to come put a whole bunch of money at us, because we had this awesome idea, and we had 15 businesses on a waiting list.
We were doing with all these other companies and it was working, it was really, really cool. But I was talking to the owners of Vivint, MLMs, was one of the client ... I had an insurance company I was doing it with. Then I started doing ... That's really around the time I started learning what Dot Com Secrets was, and I got into the launch method and ask campaigns like crazy.
I went and I built a insurance for phones after that, and we had customers, but, you know, we didn't really scale the thing.
Then I went and I built an actual MLM product, which is the one that still makes me the most money today. Then I went and I built a funnel for these guys over in Florida.
That was a big, long project, but that's the one that I knew that I knew what I was doing after that funnel. Because we made them a good chunk of money in a short amount of time using launch and ask methods on the click funnels platform, which is really cool.
Then I went into ... I build a charity funnel. It was really cool, we raised seven grand for wounded soldier's families to be able to fly out to wherever the hospital the solider was being kept at. It was really, really cool. I ran, it was a two page funnel using click funnels, in the middle of college.
We put together a five k mud run, and it was awesome, and we had the news there. We had several interviews, it was really, really fun, actually. That was really cool. Then I was about to go work back for that company in Florida, and then got scooped up by Russell.
We've built 170 funnels by now, including my own, Sales Funnel Broker and Sales Funnel Radio. Anyway, that's only seven years of my life, guys. I've been doing it way before that, too.
Any why do I ... okay, I got from as chambers to all these other things, and the whole point is holy crap, there are some people who've been reaching out. Okay, I can't name names, because ... you know. This just happened, okay? This guy came out and he was ticked, and he was like ... and he was swearing like crazy, and he's like, "I'm never going to make any effing money. I went and ... " He's like, "My laptop died. This sucks, and I'm not going ... "
You could just tell the whole tone of this big rant post. He was replying to a post of one of my last podcasts, I think it as a couple of them ago. And I was like, "Dude, you're not going to make any freaking money unless you change your dang mentality.
Like, stop, stop. You've got to take a breath, okay?...
Stand up, go to a 30,000 foot view, see what it is you're doing, okay?"
The point is to turn into the pain, okay? I made this lawn business, I didn't ... it didn't work. I'm not still doing it, but I learned about management, you know? The stocks and options, I'm not still doing it, but I learned how to get technical and strategies for making money. It was super crazy cool. In real estate I learned about contracts and legalities, and I learned how to not get sued, and I learn how to ... you know what I mean?
There was a lot of great things that came from that although I'm not still doing it, you know? When I was doing the hardcore big real estate strategy, you know, with the 401ks, I learned that there were secrets of each industry that are not spoken about, and if you can find somebody who knows those things, you're going to be more successful.
I was doing it with a mentor in real estate, I wasn't just taking peoples 401k. I got to say that and be careful and make sure I clarify that with you guys, like, I was not ... It was all legal, we were totally covered, everyone knew what was going on, there was nothing crazy going on.
But I learned that there were things going on, and I you just get someone who's taking you under his wing, like, shoot, man. Like, that's goof stuff, you know? You will move so much faster.
I started building sites for others, that's where I learned what funnels were, although I didn't know that's what I was doing...
When I was doing door to door I learned how to grow teams, I learned how to keep teams motivated. When I was doing telemarketing I learned how to talk. That really played in the door to door stuff. I learned how to write when I did all those e-books. I freelanced out this e-book, actually there's a couple of them, and I didn't like what she wrote, so I rewrote the whole thing two times because I didn't like it. I deleted and start over.
Kind of like what Russell did with the Expert Secrets book, I kind of laughed when I saw that...
Then we made that business making three gran a week? Man, I learned how to create offers in that business, that's really where I learned how to make offers, all right? Now, remember, this is all the time, I was in college during all this time. All of it. And I was in a business marketing degree. I don't know what I really learned in that degree.
This is all stuff I was doing in the middle of college because I realized that I was not going to get cutting edge material, and I was not going to be cutting edge when I graduated if I stayed on that track, right?
Then I started building landing paged for business. You know, all that really did for me is it taught me how to get an opt in, it taught me how to work with other companies, it taught me how to ... We had 15 business on a waiting list, they were begging for us. I mean, these strategies that I had been learning, they were, again, they were not like mainstream things you can read in a book, right?
There's some things you can not learn from a ... you've got to be in the weeds doing it, right?
With the insurance one that I built I learned how to work with a partner. Most of that stuff was solo beforehand. With my secret MLM hacks I learned about course creation. That was my first info product, and it's still doing really well, but it was ... That was really where I learned how to funnel hack itself, all right?
The water company, that was a big win, the charity one, that one helped me realize, okay, I got this, you know? Not that I'm going to win every time, but I get it.
I see how to actually make money, I'm turning thousands of dollars now and that's awesome, right?
Then obviously with Russell, I mean, I've built so many funnels there, I don't even know how many it truly is. I just guess 170, because a singe project can be 15 of them, right? And that's, I've been there over a year now.
That's the point though, okay? It's to turn in to the pain. A lot of times what happens is we will skirt along, right, and that's why I brought up the gas chamber story, to be honest. Because what was happening is I was sitting outside ... You guys remember my story of me laying in the water and I was so ... it was like 35 degrees and we start shaking because the body's trying to stay warm, but eventually the blood sucks back into your organs to keep it warm, so you stop shaking and it gets kind of freaky and your lips go blue, and you get little bit of hypothermia and things like that. You remember that story, I told that story?
And remember, I had that mentality shift like, "Okay, like, I got this. It sucks right now, but it's going to be an amazing story later on." So I changed my mentality and I was like, "All right, we got this."
I did the same thing with this gas chambers. I was watching other guys coming out the other side just barfing like crazy right before we went in. They throw up all over the place, their nose be running uncontrollably, their eyes are blood, blood, bloodshot red, I mean, it looked like a horror movie. You know, their skin's burning, they come out, they're not trying to breath, I mean, it was really ... like, that's kind of freaky, you know, to watch that. I
was like, "All right, I got this. I'm going to turn in to the pain," right? Turn in to the pain. Pleasure's always closer on the other side if you turn in to the pain. Pleasure doesn't come very quickly if you don't turn in to the pain, it gets prolonged. It gets prolonged. You won't know what it's like to go do all these things if you just keep skirting it.
I remember this time I went and I did a business ... I did a presentation of the city of ... It was a city competition for entrepreneurship and my buddy and I went in and we put our insurance business in it, and we didn't know what we were doing. There's all these guys making tons of money, making millions, and we just ... I started presenting.
I was presenting on stage like crazy, pitching our business. I won the business competition in my college, they sent me to another one to compete. I did not win. That's okay. I learned how to stage pitch, even way before I got to work with Russell. Way before, all right? That's the whole point of it, is that I know that a lot of you guys have these massive dockets of, "Hey, I tried this, that sucked. Hey, I tried this, that sucked."
And it doesn't matter...
Funny enough, the lawn business that I did seven years ago, and had ... you know, had all these people I was doing stuff with, had a customer base, thing like that, that actually plays into me building funnels in a weird way. There's more skills than just hey, what color looks good and where should the button go, you know what I mean?
So, these things you guys are doing, these guys that are going up and saying, "I'm not going to make any money," that, raise your mentality, all right, get your ... elevate where you are, and what's going to happen is you'll actually start seeing the bigger picture of what's going on.
For some of you guys it may not exactly be where you want it to be right now. It may not, and that's okay. That's all right. Take the lesson, learn, move on, do not sit and sulk. If you do that you're not going to move anywhere. "Uh, that didn't work. Uh, that didn't work." I made the mistake of personally doing that with one of the real estate things that I was doing with a buddy, and I sat and I sulked about it.
It wasn't fair to myself, it wasn't fair to my wife, wasn't fair to anybody, because things happened and sometimes crap just happens, you know, and you just move on. So take the lesson.
I dare you to sit down and write all of the failures you've had...
Do it...
But then next to it make a column and write down the thing you learned from it, because it is way faster, much more hardcore of a lesson than if you were to go to a class, because doing is completely different than reading. You know what I mean?
That's one of the points I've been trying to make with this thing. There's a really good guy, he's one of the first podcasters I ever listened to, his name was Sean Terry. And I learned a lot from that guy, and it's mostly because he's in the real estate world and that's what I had been doing, and I studied that world a lot. A ton.
And various reasons, things worked and then a lot of things didn't, you know, and again, that's fine.
But he had this really cool analogy, he said some of us want success so badly, which is awesome, but you want it so badly you need to imagine it like this. Imagine that there's this pool, all right, there's a swimming pool, and the pool is sitting there, it's pristine, it's nice, and in the middle of the pool is a bach ball.
And the beach ball's sitting in the pool and you are on the side. And you start swimming as hard as you can after this beach ball. You're swimming, you're swimming super hard, hard, hard. You're swimming as fast and hard as you can. You're doing everything you can to et to that beach ball. You're getting at that beach ball like it will either kill you or you have to kill it, all right? This is fight or flight constantly for you, right?
And you are swimming as fast as can toward this beach ball. Well what happens? The freaking beach ball goes away from you, right?
Ripples get created, things get pushed away from you, and the actual beach ball gets ... it starts pushing away from you. You're pushing so hard that you are pushing the people out. You're pushing the reason you actually do it out. You're pushing the emotions and the feelings of others, you're pushing out other things that are important in your life just to get that beach ball. You will kill yourself to get the beach ball, right?
Well then you're missing the point...
That was his whole point, too, he kept saying that. He gave that analogy a lot. I realized that there were, probably about half these businesses that I was doing that I just listed off to you guys, just in the last seven years, I mean, so, so, so very similar to that. T
here was times I just was killing myself. Sleeping literally a few hours a night, getting up, doing it again. Getting up, doing it again. Getting up. I don't know if you've ever read the book Rework, but they're like, "Oh, no great creativity happens when you do stuff like that." Like, that's stupid, you can't do that. There's an element of hustle, but there's an element of life balance, as well, which is mostly true.
I still think you have to be a bit of a monomaniac to actually be successful with some things. You got to be obsessed with what you do, all right? You have to, that's not an option.
Anyway, so that was the whole point, though, is ... There's been several people who've been reaching out, especially lately. Like, "I just wish I could do this. I wish I could do what you've done. I wish that it was this way. I wish I did this." It's like, man, stop freaking wishing, just do something. If you just do something you'll start to learn the things that have not been making you successful. Does that make sense? Like, I was not that good at talking with people, I still don't like talking on the phone, I hate it. So, I went and I did telemarketing, okay? I don't like going and trying to pitch someone face to face, and so I purposefully went and did door to door sales. That was on purpose for that reason, okay? I'm not amazing at writing, but I felt I needed to get this message out that I had been learning, like, "Oh my gosh, did you know you don't have to be creative ever until a certain period? The market will tell you everything you need to do?" That's when I started writing that e-book, that was like five years ago. I should probably launch that thing, it's a really good e-book.
Anyway, does that makes sense? That's the whole point I'm saying. The point of this is not ... You are not supposed to avoid pain. You're not. But so much of society tells you, like, "If it hurts don't do it." That's bull crap, all right? I wouldn't go to the gym if that was the case, all right? That's so true, anyway.
There was this time where, oh man, it as so hard. It was harder than when I went to basic. I know ROTC sometimes kind of gets made fun of, but it's super awesome. These guys, what they would have us do is they'd have us ... We'd run a mile in six minutes, which is fast, it's not crazy fast. So, we'd run a mile in six minutes and then we'd have a four minute break, and then we'd run another mile in six minutes, and four minute break. Mile in six minutes, four minute break. Mile in six minutes, four minute break.
And we would do that for an hour. You're just, you're completely spent after something like that, right? And then we'd do these things called 60 120s, meaning we would do dead sprint as hard as you can like a bear was chasing you. You'd dead sprint for 60 seconds as hard as you could, and then 120 seconds of walking, and then 60 seconds of dead hardcore sprint. We'd do that usually for about 20 to 45 minutes.
It sucks, you know, and we'd always try and make the new guys barf. Like, totally, you know?
But there's this mentality that I gained from that where it's just like, "Man, make it hard, coach." And I've told that to Russell several times, which by the way, I know he listens to these now. How's it going, man? But that's the point of it, like, make it hard, coach.
The reason why is, not that I'm a pain loving freak, it's because if I turn in to the pain I learn things that I would not have otherwise learned. You can not learn some of this stuff in a book.
Anyway, that's the challenge. Guys, this is the challenge I have for you for this podcast. You've got to sit down and write out all the things that you think you failed at. Make a huge list, all right?
That was just a very brief list I made right before this podcast, about 10 minutes before just brainstorming. And then right next to it a column of all the lessons I learned from it that I would not have learned otherwise. I don't think I would have learned them in the way I learned them, all right, with the power I learned them.
"Steven, how come you sit next to Russell? How came you lead Funnel Builder? How come you do these things? How come you're able to be successful at these XYZ?" Because, well I've made like ... that's freaking like 15 attempts in the last seven years.
They were honest attempts I was trying to have a cool product or service out there where people gave me money for it. Every time, okay? And now it's finally hitting. I have worked my butt off for it, that's why. I turned in to the pain. Make it hard, coach. Make it hard, make it challenging, make it rough, all right? That's where the best lessons come in.
Anyway, it does not come from a point of comfort...
Anyway, guys, sorry for the rant. I know that's 25 minutes long, but that's the whole point of this whole thing. Gas chambers, all right? Run in. Don't run into an actual gas chamber, okay?
Anyway, guys. Super stoked about the ... I've really enjoyed this one, to be honest. It's been on my mind a lot. Sorry it was a little bit of a rant, I haven't done a really
good rant lately, so I thought I'd hit quota there. All right, guys, talk to you later. Bye.
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