SFR 280: Next Steps After OfferMind 2019

Now that the event is over, here are some of the most important steps I'm taking in my business…

 

I just finished OfferMind 2019, and it was incredible.

 

Now, that might sound weird 'cause it was my event’ but the reality is - it was REALLY good.

 

 And as Sales Funnel Radio is all about documenting the journey, I want to...

 

1. Do a quick recap...

 

1. Tell you where I’m at now...

 

1. Explain what's happening now that OfferMind is over and WHY I’m in the process of DECONSTRUCTING and SIMPLIFYING...

 

1. Tell you WHY hiding in the park is one of the BEST moves you can use to grow your business…

 

OFFERMIND - THE RECAP

 

At the time of me creating this episode, Offermind was a week ago, and ‘Oh, my gosh,’ the event was...

 

This year OfferMind was 650 people, by contrast, at the first event last year, we had 140 -150 people show up.

 

The event was super cool. However...

 

The only problem is that most of the tickets were free.

 

In fact, they largely were free; people got them as bonuses for buying other offers…

 

And that's okay, but the downside is…

 

It pre-frames the brain for FREE stuff, so when you go to sell, it's just harder.

 

The #FACT is:

 

 It's a little bit more challenging to pitch a ‘FREE’ room.

 

Now, I understand everybody is in a different scenario in their life and I'm not making fun of that at all, but that's just the reality.

 

If it's a completely free event it's very different than if people just pay just a little bit.

 

OFFERMIND 2019 - FILLING THE EVENT

 

Filling events is hard!

 

 I kept track and we created 15 separate campaigns + 1 Ad Campaign

 

Which means it was 16 Campaigns that I ran in order to fill this year’s OfferMind.

 

That was *HARD*

 

In fact...

 

Running campaigns to fill the event was as hard as the event itself, if not harder.

 

I always wanna do awesome and over-deliver for the people who come to my events, but it’s very challenging to do that...

 

We had an awesome group of volunteers who are our social agents from my groups, and they volunteered to help set up a few things.

 

(The AWESOME volunteers… *Bonus Points* if you can spot me 😉)

 

We had an amazing company come and run registration for us - that's all they do at events.

 

OfferMind cost about a quarter-million bucks for me to put on.

 

AV is very expensive and Swag was 50 grand alone.

 

And I know I just did an episode about this, but I thought I'd just recap to show you my next steps…

 

THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB SELLING OFFERLAB

 

 Most people don't know what OfferLab is yet.

 

...‘cause, like the First Rule of Fight Club: Don’t talk about Fight Club, right? 😉

 

 

OfferLab is pretty ridiculous and it’s NEVER been offered before - by ANYONE!

 

So we sold OfferLab at the event and we had this really cool thing created.

 

It was a packet with A LOT of cool stuff in it…

 

However, I'm NOT gonna tell you about the offer right now 'cause I wanna share it with you another time.

 

BUT… (and this is sooo cool!)...

 

 I had a stage rush.

 

… and that says something.

 

I spent five days creating the pitch.

 

 Before that, there was the ‘brainstorming’ and all these other things, but when I finally landed on it...

 

I was like, “This is it! I’ve hit it! This offer is freaking sexy!”

 

 

From stage, we counted $1.9 million in sales.

 

MY FIRST STAGE RUSH

 

Here’s what happend…

 

I was pitching and showing more about what the program was worth and I hadn't even gotten to the price yet, and a guy stood up...

 

I still remember it!

 

Stage left, on the front, this guy stood up and started shimmying through everybody else to grab a form at the front of the room.

 

There were tables at the front of the room, and this guy went and slapped his credit card down before I even said the price or did a price drop.

 

It was so honoring.

 

Then it was like a waterfall that started slowly…

 

 I think I spoke for an additional 10, 15 minutes while everyone got up...

 

I'd never had that experience before, it was so cool.

 

Brandan Fisher, (he created FishDawg Productions), is one of my good friends, he's also a guy that does a lot of filming for me and for Russell’s programs…

 

He’s a very talented guy, who’s been around this world like crazy.

 

Afterward, Brandan sent me a message and he's like:

 

 "Dude, I've never seen anyone besides Russell actually do a legitimate stage rush. Huge congrats to you."

 

And I was like, "That's so cool of you to say, man. Oh my gosh."

  

I was freaking out…

 

 It was so cool to have a stage rush.

 

WHERE I’M AT NOW…

 

It is exhausting being the speaker on stage, let alone putting the event together.

 

Now, I had help, a lot of help…

 

Austin and Colton killed it while we were selling OfferLab.

 

 ...it was tons of fun.

 

But for three of us to pull off a 650 tickets event - that’s NOT normal.

 

And we suffered because of it! 

 

I'd have no desire to go through that again, it was physically painful.

 

I mean that in all reality.

 

The event was in Boise and I always stay at the hotel that I'm speaking at... 'cause I need to stay in the game.

 

After day one, I went back to my hotel room…

 

I'll just tell you right now, I was in a lot of pain… and the type of headache that comes from something like that is pretty big.

 

 And what I always do, especially when something is that intense, is grab the hotel towels and ice, then lay them out on either the floor or the bed…

 

 … and then I wrap my legs in ice till they're completely numb.

 

You gotta get enough ice so that it doesn't melt - it sticks to your skin and stuff.

 

So I totally iced my legs and numbed them out.

 

I've had some people reach out, and ask, "Well, Steven, why do you do it then?"

 

What are you talking about? Do you know how many lives I that just helped?

 

.. whether they bought my program or not (which I think everybody should)! 😉

 

You might laugh, like, "Well, of course, you would say that."

 

Okay, but seriously though, whether or not they bought, that was one baller event.

 

I mean, my gosh, the raving reviews.

 

I saw one negative review, and it's because we didn't have the piggy banks there.

 

I was supposed to give piggy banks out 'cause it was part of the offer.

 

TURNING A NEGATIVE INTO A POSITIVE

 

It was so frustrating…

 

 We ordered these piggybanks from a company in China, and they were like, "Okay, it’s on its way."

  

We were like, "Sweet, they’re gonna be here well within enough time."

 

Then a few weeks later, we got a message saying, "Oh, the plastic to create them is almost here."

 

We were like, "Okay, but that's NOT what you said. You said they were on the way!"

 

So, what we're gonna box each of those things up,( 'cause we said people would have them, so we owe them), and ship them out, on our penny, to EVERYBODY who was at the event along with something else as well...

 

Which is super cool!

 

 So negative thing turned into a positive, you know what I mean?

 

Just super frustrating, #OurBad.

 

But that was the ONLY negative comment I heard about the entire event

 

And usually, there are some negative comments that pop up …

 

I've done A LOT of events and A LOT  a lot of speaking, in A LOT of places…

 

 And there's ALWAYS someone!

 

But it was an awesome event ... Oh my gosh, it was awesome!

 

WHAT NEXT?

 

So the event was on a Monday and Tuesday…

 

On Wednesday, I woke up... and I don't think it had hit me yet.

 

I was tired, but, to be honest, I was riding the high.

 

1.9 million? What? Crazy!

 

It was super exciting and very honoring.

 

So, anyway, we had to go and clear the event room; the AV team and Boise Center dealt with most of it, but we still had stuff, upon stuff upon stuff to deal with.

 

There was a huge room full of leftover swag...‘cause we ordered A LOT of EVERYTHING!

 

So we rented a U-Haul, (that's how we got it all there in the first place), and it took two trips...

 

We had two U-Hauls worth of stuff.

 

Then once we dropped the U-Haul off, Austin, Colton, and I just started fading...

 

We wanted to go see a movie to celebrate real quick 'cause we knew that it was about to hit the fan again…

 

 'Cause now we have to start putting all the stuff together for onboarding, meeting, calling people, and stuff like that...

 

And it's just a whirlwind.

 

So we went and we decided, "Hey, let's go see this movie."

 

I didn't eat for almost the entire event. I was just so dialed in that I didn't realize.

 

• Day two, I didn’t eat for the whole day; the first time I ate was at 10:00 PM room service. I just forgot.

 

• Day one, I think I had some food.

 

• Wednesday, when we were tearing down the event, we had a little bit, but not really.

 

… so we were starving!

 

We were just super hungry and just sprinting around - none of us really slept much.

 

At the end of the event, we went an ordered $71 worth of concessions from this crappy movie theater.

 

It was the MOST dumpy movie theater I've ever seen in my life.

 

 It was so bad that sitting down made me wanna wash my hands.

 

… it was so bad, but we just didn't care.

 

I don't even remember really what the movie was about. I don't even remember the movie we saw…

 

 Oh, it was the new Men in Black, it wasn't that good. Not enough of a heuristic journey in it.

 

And that's where we've been, and that's the recap on what happened.

 

The event cost a quarter million, we pulled in $1.9 million

 

...which is exciting and impressive. Obviously, I feel really satisfied with it.

 

But you have to know, I'm tired…

  

#REALLYTIRED!

 

It's taken me a week, and even then I'm sleeping like 10 hours every night trying to catch up.

 

 I'm chronically exhausted, and so I've started thinking through the longevity of me, and what does that require?

 

WHAT’S YOUR COOKIE?

 

So we have this tradition in my business called ‘The Cookies.’

 

I say, "What's your cookie?"

 

Then we decide, "Okay, what would I want that's around 500 bucks?” ...and we each name what our individual motivational cookie.

 

And when we get our critical things done we go get the $500 thing…

  

… that’s OUR COOKIE!

 

Right now, the critical things in the business are:

 

• An office

 

• An assistant for me

 

• A full-time support person to just answer questions because people lose their logins, (which is fine, it's just part of it), or whatever.

 

And so what I've been doing this past little bit is just thinking through the strategic moves I could make in the business to save *ME*...

 

'Cause I'm NOT the business, but in the last few weeks, it has felt that way.

 

REMOVING ‘ME’ FROM THE BUSINESS

 

We're finally getting to a growth, a speed, and a phase where I need MORE people and an office.

 

I've been ‘appropriately annoying’ certain realtors in the area...

 

“I would walk into an office tomorrow. Show me a dang office!”

 

The squeaky wheel gets the oil, right! 😉

 

I've bootstrapped out of a room in my house that's technically my office...

 

But we're too big now, meaning there's three of us in this little bedroom.

 

I’ve got three kids screaming on the other side of the doors, and that's actually the real reason I started yelling on podcasts.

 

Most of you don't know that… 😂

I’d hear a little rivalry going on between my first and second kid, and that's the real reason I’d yell… 

 

I’d just hear them start to go at it, and I'd be like, "And you're gonna build a funnel!!!!”

 

...it's part of the reason why I'm out at the park right now!

 

I love my kids, and I never ever, ever, ever, ever wanna stifle their energy levels, so I need to move.

 

I'm all for bootstrapping, there's no reason to spend money you don't need to, but now is the time...

 

So the office,  the assistant, the support person, those are the next strategic moves that I'm making.

 

IT’S MONDAY, BABY!

 

The other thing that I'm doing is diving heavily into onboarding systems and processes.

 

I’m actually moving a lot of my systems out of Trello.

 

If you guys are like, "Steven, I don't understand what you're talking about."

 

 I totally get it.

 

Project management systems are awesome but they can also be a big pain in the butt.

 

Sometimes they're too intensive.

 

I love Trello, but I need something that's less breakable for users.

 

 I need something that I don't need to educate my people for.

 

So we're switching to monday.com 'cause “It's Monday, Baby!”

 

I should be an affiliate for them, that'd be fun.

 

So we're changing and transitioning everything from Trello to Monday... and we're putting more onboarding processes in place.

 

• I have a back-end phone team set in place.

 

• I have a funding team set in place.

 

... and that's where I am.

 

BUILD SLOWLY

 

So right now…

 

 There’s a lot of stuff in the air, but it’s on purpose.

  

And I wanna drop one little nugget here.

 

 I always want to build certain things slowly.

 

I heard Dana Derricks mention this as well.

 

He's like, "Yeah I wanna build stuff slowly so that I can build a system behind it."

 

And I was like, "Oh, that's awesome."

 

I'd been building that way, but I’d never put it into words like that.

 

I like to do is build these systems slower than it looks like I could because I'm building a system behind the system.

 

 80% is already done, but it’s that last 20% that makes it more turnkey...

 

The last little 20% putting the systems into place... I do slow, and it's so that I can critique my own thing.

 

MY FAVOURITE SEMESTER 

 

Back when I was in college, one of my favorite times was a semester where we had no classes.

 

The ONLY thing that we had to do was to start a business from scratch, and the professors were NOT allowed to help us or give us any instruction.

 

All they were supposed to do is…

 

• Put us in groups

 

• Assign us an industry

 

• Watch us build an actual real business for real money.

 

… and that's what we did.

 

It was one of the greatest educations in all of my college experience.

 

I was with this group of 15 other students, and they put us in the food business.

 

I suck at cooking.

 

I have no desire to learn cooking, I just don't. I'll pay for someone else to cook me food, and I do.

 

So when I heard I was in a food business, I was like, "Oh my gosh, are you serious? I don't wanna do this."

 

I was mad about it.

 

At that point in my life, I was already gung ho entrepreneurially and everyone knew that, so they voted me as the CEO.

 

I was like, "Crap. Dang it, I don't wanna do this."

 

....and what happened was every single decision was being placed on my shoulders…

 

EVERY DECISION!

 

For example:

 

We were selling empanadas, I didn't even know what they were.

 

Someone would say, "Stephen, we've got these logo designs, which one do you like?"

 

(Back when I thought logos mattered 😉)

 

 And I'd be like, "Oh, let's go with that one."

 

And then someone else would walk up to me, "Stephen, do you like this flavor empanada or this one?"

 

And I'd be like, "Which one does the customer like more? Sweet, let's go with that one."

 

"Stephen, the supply chain's having an issue and we're having an issue with a certain kind of ingredient, it's not gonna show up till this time, but we think we can hold out if we cut back recipe usage of this one ingredient for a little while."

 

“Okay, cool let's do that.”

 

 It was *MURDER*

 

For the first three, four weeks of that semester, I was dead.

 

Then for some reason, I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's why you create departments."

 

And that might sound funny... but I just didn't know that.

 

So I was like,

 

# "You five, you're gonna go over, you are now in charge of finance.

 

Please keep track of all the numbers, make sure our margins really are what we think they are.

 

Help me know what we can spend on marketing stuff."

 

 ('Cause I thought marketing needed a budget back then.)

 

#  I was like, "Cool, you five over here, you're in the supply chain, please order all the stuff mix, we have enough things that we can survive with.

 

Make sure you talk with finance to make sure that the stuff you're ordering can actually get paid for."

 

# Then I went to marketing, "Hey, what's up, marketing?" '

 

(I thought marketing should be a department by that time also.)

 

 I was like, "Hey, marketing, please bring in more sales, we really need to bring our projections and how much money we're gonna make by this level, by this time."

 

And that helped.

 

Another week would go by, another two weeks would go by, but I'm still having all these people come in.

 

So then I created department heads.

 

 I was like, "Cool, 80% of decisions are gonna be made by these heads. I'm just going to work with the heads of each department daily, that's it…”

 

And I went to them.

 

And suddenly our little fledgling system business actually started growing wheels, and we did quite well selling broke college students empanadas.

 

We had health inspectors come on in, and it was a crazy cool experience.

 

One of the reasons why it did so well was that halfway through the day, during the middle of the busiest seasons, I would disappear.

 

You see where I am right now… 😉

 

#ParkLife

 

 I disappear to observe my system.

 

IT IS YOUR FAULT!

 

One of the issues people have when they start putting together some of these things that I teach is that they think it's the person that should be held responsible.

 

Now ultimately, sure, right!

 

But that's NOT actually what you need to be judging the success of your marketing with.

 

You judge the system, not the person.

 

There was a time a while ago, (this isn’t happening right now)...

 

 There was a time a while ago, I was like, "Why aren't these individuals doing this thing that I asked?"

 

And after a while of being completely belligerent in the way I was judging the person falsely, (which I shouldn't have been), I realized…

 

 "Oh my gosh, my system sucks. It's NOT the person.”

 

Q: Have they ever had success?

 

A: Yes, they have.

 

So it's NOT them, it's my system, it's *ME*.

 

And taking that level of ownership and realizing that, "You don't have a process in place..."

 

That's helped me like crazy.

 

So why am I bringing that up right now?

 

I'm bringing that up right now because we have one of the most incredible programs ever that cause A LOT of success for people in the funnel and marketing world.

 

This is a powerful program, I know it is. It's NOT cheap but it's powerful.

 

And so my role in the program is NOT to do the program; my role is to tweak the program.

 

My role is to look at the systems and the structures that deliver what we promised and tweak the processes.

 

That's my role.

 

So when I talk about the next steps:

 

• We're getting an office

 

• We're getting an assistant

 

• We're getting a support person

 

Frankly, it’s ridiculous that we haven't had those things yet. I'm just gonna be honest…

 

We're kind of dying and it's a little bit insane that we haven't got that support yet.

 

Sooo…

 

My role is for the next little while here is to solely focus on the process for the fulfillment for these things.

 

MAKING IT SIMPLE

 

Here’s the question I’m asking…

 

How can I make it so stupid simple for every client that comes in?

 

 (... it already is, but how can I keep doing that?)

 

I'm gonna ask the question again and again and again…

 

That's where simplicity comes in.

 

*YOU MAKE IT SIMPLE*

 

I probably spent 20 hours cutting OfferMind material, NOT adding complexity.

 

 I was chopping stuff to make it so simple that everyone would get it, and they did.

 

 And I know that’s one of the reasons  WHY the event has been raved about so much on the Internet.

 

I chopped stuff out, I didn’t add.

 

There’s a quote from Ray Kurzweil that says:

 

The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.

 

Don't keep trying to make stuff…

 

 Instead, see how much you can take away.

 

And that's the key with it. that's the key to building processes... that's the key to ANYTHING you're delivering.

 

I'll tell you…

 

Russell gave me some advice a little while ago, and he's like:

 

 "Hey man, if I was ever to start this over again, I'd focus on certain areas, but instead of doing ‘this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this…’

 

 I would make my product do ONE THING really well."

 

And I was like, "Oh that's gold, my friend.”

 

 #Gold

 

Anyway, so I know it's a longer episode here, but I just wanted to recap what’s happened and what my NEXT steps are.

 

So super excited about it, really honored by it! I’m pumped to have those of you who are in OfferLab with me - 'cause *this* is pretty ridiculous.

 

#DevelopingMyCatergory.

 

BOOM!

 

If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.

 

But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?

 

That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.

 

So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.

 

Wanna come?

 

There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.

You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.

 

Again, that's OfferMind.com. 

 

 

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