SFR 137: Noah Lenz Shares His Funnel Building Process...

Noah Lenz: I'm doing great. Awesome to be here today on Sales Funnel Radio.

Steve Larsen: It's good to have you. It's very good to have you. That time when you were dancing circles around me while I was building these funnels live. I was like man, who is this guy? This is awesome. I was like whoa. That's incredible.

Noah Lenz: Yeah, I listen to the show all the time. I'm at school and it's like new Sales Funnel Radio episode. I'm going to listen to this at lunch. Okay, good, good, good. I don't need to wait until I get home. And it's so awesome to actually be on the show right now. I always listen to it but to be on the show, it's just amazing.

Steve Larsen: You're an inspiration. And I know that every person is going to be ... will kill me if I don't ask the question, how on earth did you get started doing this? This is not a normal thing for a 12 year old to do? It's amazing.

Noah Lenz: That is literally the most common question I get asked.

Steve Larsen: I'm sure.

Noah Lenz: In terms of the whole entrepreneurship game, I'm not really sure what drew me to it entirely. But when I was about eight-ish, I really got into the business of making websites using WordPress and all that.

...And I eventually, my dad's like you need to start making some money off this, start doing it for some other people. My first one was actually for a political candidate in the local area. And I made a website for him and all that.

And then, about a year ago I saw video from who is now my good friend and mentor, and I actually build funnels for him, Caleb Maddix. And everybody needs to read the book Dot Com Secrets. And like okay, I'll go do it. And it turns out we already had the book on our bookshelf so that night I literally ... I could not put the thing down...

It's like oh my gosh. You can have a one click upsell. You don't even need to type in their credit card. Oh my gosh. And I just got so, so into it. And eventually, I'm like how can I do this? Hmm.

And I had ideas going in my mind about what different funnels I could build. But I was never crazy about it for a while. And then, eventually I remembered that a while back I had done a website for this political candidate. And I'm like I really liked doing websites for political candidates. It's things that were kind of easy to deal with. It's the same type thing.

I need to get serious about this...

So I was thinking how could I do this? I could send out stuff in the mail. I could maybe hire somebody to code comp. And then, I remembered Dot Com Secrets. And I'm like, whoa, I can make a funnel for this. So that's how I basically got started with the funnel game and ever since I've just been obsessed with it.

Steve Larsen: That's incredible. That's incredible. So you go through and you read Dot Com Secrets. That is so interesting to me that you did that. As you've been going through and building this stuff and putting all these things together, first of all, you said something that I thought was really, really interesting. You said that your dad eventually said hey, it's time to go try and make money with this.

...That's very wise for a parent to do that. What was your reaction when he said that?

Noah Lenz: Well, it wasn't like full intensity but just one day I remember this vividly. My brother and my mom were at some sort of play or something. And I was at my dad's office. And he was like so you make these websites for other people.

...Are you doing it for fun? How about you think maybe you could get something going here. And I'm like oh wow. And I just was like you know, rather than sitting around all day and playing video games, I just got it going.

Steve Larsen: That's awesome. That's awesome. And did he ... Was he able to help you on certain things? You seem like you're just full steam ahead on your own and don't really need ... No one's pushing you along to do this.

Noah Lenz: Well, he gave me the resources.

Steve Larsen: Sure.

Noah Lenz: We always joke around about he taught me how to use cPanel wrong or something. But he gave me the resources. He gave me all the resources that I needed. And then, he taught me a little about what to do here, here, and there. But after he gave me the resources, honestly I just watched YouTube videos, read books, listened to podcasts. I just mostly learned it on my own but if it weren't for him introducing me to the resources, I wouldn't be where I am to.

Steve Larsen: What's your favorite part of the entire funnel building process itself? What do you like to actually do with it?

Noah Lenz: Oh, in terms of my favorite type of funnel.

Steve Larsen: Yeah, type of funnel or is it the building or do you like writing the copy, the sales message?

Noah Lenz: Honestly, it's the offer creation. The page building's cool. But I like the offer creation figuring out okay, we have this, what else can I give? What else can I give? What else can I give?

...To make it as awesome as possible but really all around I like just doing webinar slides. I love doing webinars. And then, I also it turns out I'm really good at high ticket funnels so I need to do some more of those. But I like the high ticket funnels but then I also like webinars and offer creation.

Steve Larsen: That's amazing. So high ticket funnels and webinars. And I saw recently, you've been really active on Instagram.

You've been publishing like crazy...

You're probably one of my best students ever from the podcast. You're actually doing all of it which is awesome. Now when you're doing webinars, you just barely did one. What is it that you're selling now? What are you doing now?

Noah Lenz: Okay, so right now I need to get more focused and one of Russell's ... Actually, the very first one he did at Funnel Hacking Live has helped a lot with that. But on the most recent webinar I did, I think I mentioned Caleb Maddix earlier, but he used to have a program called Summa Success.

And he also did it with somebody called Emily Shay. And it went great. I think you actually built the funnel for that originally, the webinar, didn't you, Steve?

Steve Larsen: I think so. It might not be the same one but definitely did a while ago.

Noah Lenz: Yeah, on like Funnel Hacker TV or something.

Steve Larsen: It was a long time ago. I don't remember honestly.

Noah Lenz: Yeah, no problem. But you built so many funnels that it's just crazy. So he had all this content for Maddix book clubs, Summa Success, YouTube channel. And he was spending crazy amounts of time on it when it was really just a trip wire kind of like Funnel-U or just like a middle offer.

...And he was spending a ton of time on it. And he also had a publishing company at the time which he was spending just as much time on. And the publishing company was just far exceeding his expectations.

And there were a whole bunch of problems going on with Summa. So he had to shut it down. But it was driving me nuts because I was like he has all this good content but we're just not doing anything with it.

So I talked him in kind of like what you did with Secrets Mastery class to taking all his content and putting it together in chronological order and getting that all like first, in order to do this, you need to do this and this.

So I got it all together in one huge membership site. Got it all mapped out on a spreadsheet, plugged it in and all that. And there's hundreds of lessons in there. But the goal is to help kids become successful and all that. And so, that's what the webinar is for right now.

Steve Larsen: That's incredible. So you built ... Oh my gosh, I'm just blown away right now. You're probably the smartest kid I've ever met in my entire life, Noah. That is so, so incredible.

Oh my gosh...

So you went through ... You put his content in an order that's more easy to consume and actually apply and do stuff with.

And then, you built a webinar to sell it.

Noah Lenz: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steve Larsen: Congratulations man. It takes the rest of us adults a while just to do that alone. That's really, really ... You should be very proud. I hope that you are, man. That's incredible.

Noah Lenz: And the goal with that was we actually code named it Project Passive Income. So the goal of this, we just wanted to take all the content that he already had and then basically just put me in charge or actually selling it. So that's what we've been doing.

Steve Larsen: Now what kind of roadblocks have you hit along the way as you've been doing this?

Noah Lenz: I've hit a lot of them. Not huge things but one of them is at first, to be honest, I was very hesitant to actually want to use ClickFunnels.

Steve Larsen: Sure.

Noah Lenz: I was like that's $97 a month. Blah, blah, blah. False, belief, false belief. So I'm like ugh. But eventually, it's like you know what, I need to get this out there but I don't want to use ClickFunnels. I don't want to use WordPress. I know, I'm going to use Leadpages which I now call Loki Pages.

So I sign up for Leadpages, $25 a month, four times cheaper. So I signed up Leadpages and I get in there and it was not good. I get in there to Loki Pages and I'm starting building out my thing. And I say, perfect. Now it's time to go do the checkout page. Perfect. Great.

So I go in there to the checkout page and it says checkout page is not available unless you upgrade to the whatever a month plan. And it was more than ClickFunnels. And I'm like ah! But I don't want ClickFunnels. SamCart, what about SamCart? So I go run over to SamCart. $25, perfect. As much as Leadpages. Go over there. What do you mean my landing page can only have 100 characters?

Come on now. Well, 100 character landing pages sell better. Okay, sure thing.
I just got so tired of it and I ran over to ClickFunnels and it was the best decision of my life.

And I wish I would have just saved myself that time and all that and just originally went with ClickFunnels. So that was the main one.

Steve Larsen: That's incredible. Noah, that's amazing. What other kind of things do you run into? You like the offer creation piece. The actual building of it obviously I'm sure. What are you doing to get traffic to your stuff right now?

Noah Lenz: Traffic. That's been a major roadblock for me in terms of initial question. But I have been studying traffic like crazy lately. So I am doing a lot of Facebook ads. And what I found out is I'm not very good with the actual conversion type, traffic type.

We need a 2.5 frequency with a $17 ad cap or whatever. I don't understand all that. But I'm fairly good with the copy and just the actual ad type. So right now I'm figuring out how we can take Facebook ads to the next level and all of that.

But I've just been running my own but I'm looking to hire an ads manager where I deal with the creative piece. They deal with all that. And then, I've also been for Summa Success, I've been working on Dream 100 strategy for other big players in this spot, in this space. And that's what I've been doing a lot of. Getting cool gift packages together.

And then, also you can never underestimate the power of events. You can get a ton of traffic into your funnels just from going to events. So that's what I've been doing a lot of too. And I've also ... I used to do a lot more Google Ads. I'm not a huge fan of Google Ads but that's mainly where I've been getting my traffic.

Steve Larsen: That's awesome. I'm going ads. Facebook, I'm not honestly ... I don't want to learn how to do that stuff. I can write the copy, the hook part, all that stuff. I love that part.

Noah Lenz: Same here.

Steve Larsen: But the mechanics of it, it's like oh. I'd rather do Dream 100 stuff, things like that.

Noah Lenz: Exactly.

Steve Larsen: Now what are you doing for traffic as far as going to events? That was kind of interesting.

Noah Lenz: So whenever I went to Funnel Hacking Live, I had this funnel built out. And it was a funnel and it was basically like a home page funnel if you guys have ever heard of that. But it was only for Epic Shell attendees. And so I had something on there and it's like, do you want this exact funnel for yourself?

You can get it for only $47 or whatever. And so, it was also just a great list grower. And a lot of it too is just networking and then you can get connections there and then later on, you can go back to those people you know keep providing value, helping them with everything.

And then later on, you can say hey, I have this real special offer I think would be great for you. And then, also I went to one of Caleb's entrepreneurial retreats a while back and there's a couple people there that are on a waiting list right now wanting me to build their funnels around. So that's what a lot of it has been.

Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. You know I wanted to ... I mean, it's no doubt that you're going to be successful in this. I'm sure you already are which is awesome. As far as looking back to again what got you where you are, what are the books or the courses of the educational things that really helped you get where you are? You know what I mean? If you were to sit down, this is something I'm thinking of right now.

Wow, I wish ... My little girl is four years old and I hope so much that in four more years I can get her going on these kinds of things too. You know what I mean? What kinds of things do you think I should indoctrinate her with, I mean, teach her, that would help? You know what I mean? As a parent, what are the things you look back and like thanks dad, that helped me a lot.

Noah Lenz: Really, it would really rather than waiting, just actually doing something and just going forward with it. And then, Expert Secrets, obviously. I've read that book I don't know how many times now. Dot Com Secrets. And then, also the Funnel-U Gift Package.

That's an amazing, just an awesome package that has a lot of stuff. And then, of course, we also have the Funnel Hacks membership. And just that alone has so much content in there that you can easily be successful with it.

Steve Larsen: That's awesome. That's awesome. And where do you go to keep learning the information as well without getting overwhelmed? How do you choose what to learn and what not to learn?

Noah Lenz: Okay, so more or less, I listen basically ... I listen to you, Dave Woodward, and Uncle Russell, as I like to call him.

Steve Larsen: Uncle Russell, nice.

Noah Lenz: Caleb calls him Uncle Russell all the time. And somebody the other day was like no wonder you're so successful, your uncle is Russell Brunson. Anyways, so I basically I study a few other players in the business game but I mainly just study you three. And I just study everything you have out there.

Russell, some days I constantly reload my Instagram like every five minutes just to see if he's posted a new story. I have a zap set up so that whenever he posts a new YouTube video I get a text. So I like crazy study his stuff. And Funnel-U obviously, whenever the new edition comes in the mail I rip the package open, read it right away.

And then, I'm also just always go back and study his old stuff. I got the little marketing in your car MP3 drive and I'm listening to all 257 episodes like crazy. Just going through trying to take away little nuggets. Rather than getting overwhelmed with a whole bunch of gurus, I just study deeply with a couple of them.

Steve Larsen: I think that's really key. I think that's really smart. And I'm noticing more and more, just drinking really deeply from the two or three you love and broadly from the rest. I absolutely love that.

What do you think is driving you to do this? You know what I mean?

Noah Lenz: I think it's more or less the impact because especially with Summa Success, that's what helped me. And I know that if other kids can get that, it's just amazing. But just also at the end of the day, I just love marketing too. Marketing is my favorite thing on planet earth other than my family and God and all that. But marketing, I love it.

Steve Larsen: That's so cool.

Noah Lenz: I'm so obsessed with it. So that's a lot of it.

Steve Larsen: That's so cool. I will never bash public education or anything like that but more and more and more, it's no longer enough to actually make a real difference in the long run for how to actually make money. So I think it's really amazing that you've dove into it this early.

And honestly, with Summa Success and you basically are bringing in your own students. Other kids, students that you're teaching. You're helping them be successful as well. That's awesome. I'm sure that's fast tracking what you're doing as well.

Now what advice would you give for somebody who just, I don't know, they just feel kind of stuck. They see what could happen but they're like oh, I don't even know where to start on this.

Noah Lenz: Well, what I would do is I wouldn't try and be perfect at first. I would just get your ClickFunnels account. Don't try Leadpages. Don't try SamCart. Get your ClickFunnels account and go sign up and literally make a webinar funnel.

Or just read Expert Secrets, Read Dot Com Secrets, and Brenda and Calen, what they did was they would watch a video for like 30 seconds. Stop it. Go do it. And you should do the same thing.

Read Expert Secrets. Do a webinar. Okay, let me ... I'll sign up for Funnel Scripts here. Enter my stuff in. Oh perfect, got a webinar. Let's run some traffic to it. Boom.

So I think other than just being obsessed with it, of course, I'm a huge Russell fan.

I study him like crazy. But don't wait six months to study and then execute. Just execute and then keep studying along the way.

Steve Larsen: That's incredible. That's incredible. Well hey, what's coming up for you next? What's the next thing that you want to go do?

Noah Lenz: A few months actually ago, my teacher has this thing called self-paced math, my math teacher. And I'm like that's cool, whatever. And I really liked it actually. I liked it better than the normal math.

But she was using this Google site and all that and so I was like this needs to be a ClickFunnels membership site. So I went in and I spent like a week building it out in ClickFunnels and then, I came in and I showed it to her. And I showed her that and it's funny because she was like ... There was another teacher there and she was saying wow, that's awesome.

And then, she somehow, I don't know. I messed up. Got caught off guard. She asked me about my ClickFunnels stuff and whatnot so I must have said something about that, I don't know.

But anyways, so then she's like ... What's funny though is there was this science teacher there also in the room and he's like awesome soft skills. And then, we had a science presentation and he didn't want me to use the perfect webinar.

Steve Larsen: Are you serious?

Noah Lenz: Well, that's how I convinced her to use this math program.

Steve Larsen: You're putting your school presentations into perfect webinar format?

Noah Lenz: More or less.

Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Do you trial close all the way to get an A?

Noah Lenz: Exactly what I was going to say. Does that make sense?

Steve Larsen: Does that make sense? It does, yeah. Oh man.

Noah Lenz: I'm glad you think that. Do you do that in your webinar?

Steve Larsen: Noah, that's incredible. So somehow your teachers are finding out about what you're doing behind the scenes.

Noah Lenz: Yeah, exactly. But what I'm excited about is that ... he's like I need to do this. And I'm like you know what? You can do this as long as we can partner on selling this to other schools and then I'll just give you a certain percent of the sales. And she's like okay. Sounds good.

So what I'm excited about is this summer, she's going to be refilming all the videos and all that, making it even better. And then we're going to do it kind of like Summa Success where we make it entertaining for the kids and throw in funny memes and stuff.

But anyways, so we're going to do that this summer and then, I think we're going to do a webinar to sell it. So that's what I'm excited about too just getting that out there and making math more interesting, at least it was for me.

Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. So you're literally partnering with teachers and showing them. That's incredible. You know that, Noah. I mean, that's amazing. I've just got to stop and acknowledge that real quick.

Noah Lenz: Thank you.

Steve Larsen: That's amazing. I mean, I was doing that in college. I had never thought of doing it ... I was that kid that was trying to not get in trouble in high school for selling just random knick knacks.

Noah Lenz: Oh yeah, like the pen.

Steve Larsen: Yeah. That's right. I forget you know all my stuff as well. Yeah, yeah. That is so cool to me that you're doing that. Just congrats to you for moving forward on those things.

What is it that you ... How should I ask this? What is it that you, I guess, as far as this impact. You're developing this talent. You're developing this skill. You're developing the ability to sell face to face, sell ideas. So right now you're going to go off and partner with the teachers and stuff.

What about 10 years from now? You know what I mean? It's that question that I always got tired of all the adults asking me. What do you want to be when you grow up? But I'm going to go ahead and ask you. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Noah Lenz: Really, at the end of the day, I just want to be doing this same thing that I'm doing right now. I mean, I'm working on writing my first book right now. So I'm hoping that I can have multiple ... I just want to keep marketing, just helping as many people as possible.

Maybe having some kind of funnel building agency or other business owners. But really, more than anything just keep marketing, keep doing what I'm more or less doing now, just trying to help as many people as possible.

Steve Larsen: Now I just want to ask one final question here because it seems to be something that you've mastered which is just fantastic. When you have something that is...

Okay, let's say that you're like oh man, I don't know what a funnel is? Or I don't know what this is? I don't know what that is? When you encounter something that is new that you need to learn, what is your process for learning something quickly so that you can actually use it? Because you seem to be very good at that?

Noah Lenz: Really, I don't know. I've just gotten so used to it. I guess I go to youtube.com and I search into the search box how to do it.

It's not that simple but more or less, actually it is...

Steve Larsen: Yeah, isn't that interesting.

Noah Lenz: But I will look it up and sometimes I might get a book on it. I might subscribe to a podcast and listen to a few episodes on it.

And then, if it's something that I'm really interested in, I'll immerse myself in it. But if it's just more or less a simple skill, I'll learn it quickly and then implement on it.

What's funny is the other day, I had a webinar and I realized that there was no chat box because we weren't doing it for GoToWebinar or anything. We were just doing it through YouTube Live with an iFrame on the ClickFunnel page.

Steve Larsen: Sure.

Noah Lenz: So I realized that there was no chat box and it was like 20 minutes before the webinar. And what's funny is in school they probably would have spent two hours saying you know, here's how to configure the chat box and make it look all pretty.

Make sure the welcome message says welcome to this webinar. Make the title is blah, blah, blah. But really, I just wanted to get it going because the webinar was so soon. So I more or less just googled chat box or something. Or I think I might have logged into a membership site or something wherever there was a chat box resource. And I real quick just signed up for it and did it.

So I think more than anything it's just taking action and then, the one thing you should immerse yourself in, if it's anything, is offer creation and then just file building. All the other things that supplement that. Those I like to spend time on but not as much as that.

So when I need to learn those more than anything, I just hop on over to YouTube or Google and look up how to do it...

Steve Larsen: That's incredible. Noah, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and teach the rest of us and share your journey. I mean, it's really, really fascinating to see everything that you're doing here. And the speed, I think that's something that's really just blown me away. Very, very fascinating. Where can people learn more about you and connect with you?

Noah Lenz: So right before this call, I made a real cool link that you guys can actually go to and get this special marketing guide that I normally sell for anywhere from $7-$97. And it just has some checklists and things like that that you need to make sure you have in place before you launch your funnel.

Because I remember when I was learning my very first funnel and then I realized that half the things were wrong, out of order, didn't have everything that you needed on the checklist. And I don't want you guys to have to go through that.

So I decided that since you guys are listening to this really awesome podcast, I will give you guys this entirely free. All you need to do is go to noahlenz ... That's noahlenz.com/steve. And you will be able to get this marketing guide 100% free. No trip wire, no nothing. 100% free. Just because I want to give value to everybody here on the podcast.

Steve Larsen: That's very nice of you, Noah. So it's noahlenz ... L-E-N-Z as in zebra ... .com/steve. Awesome man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time. This has meant quite a lot.

Noah Lenz: Yeah, thank you for having me on today.

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