After 301 funnels, I’m just barely noticing why I’ve been building so fast...
What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels and now here's your host, Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen: All right guys, I apologize first off that I've been a little bit less consistent with this podcast the last little bit here. It's been so busy. It's been so busy. We've been going and building a lot. Russel's been in inner circles. There's a lot of stuff been going on in the sales funnel world in general and it's so fun living in the click funnels area because I feel like I'm in the nucleus of where marketing principles and status quo is created.
It's fun, it's cool to sit back and go, "Oh my gosh, I can see how this is going to become a thing in the whole industry," and really fun to get to do that. Anyway, it's been busy, it's been fast. The last four days alone I have built four membership sites and these are not like little tiny membership sites. Anyone would be happy to just have one of them. There's been 500 videos put inside of them. Redesigning them, each one at a time. It's been fast, fast paced and I've really, really enjoyed it.
There was something interesting thought that happened as I was building these membership sites and I was putting them all together, and honestly if you don't have a membership site I think you should go create one. Even if you're like, "Hey, Steven, I don't know what the heck to put inside of it." I would go create a membership site for the sole reason of you being able to put cool content in there. When people are like, "Hey," whatever your expertise is. Whatever it is that you do out there.
You're like, "Hey, how do I do X, Y, and Z?" If you go make videos on that and put it in there, I mean, that becomes a really cool asset, or at least cool bonus, or something.
Anyway, I really think that click funnel's on massive power with membership sites which we've been building. Our 25,000 dollar packages. Guess what, membership sites have been click funnels. 15,000 dollars, guess what? Built inside click funnels. Several 10,000 dollar packages. All the membership sites have been in the click funnels. I've had a lot people come back and say, "There's no way this was built with click funnels."
I promise you it is. I'm not a coder and that's, I billed it out. Anyway, that was a bit of a rant there but I notice something. I notice something as I was building it. As I was, I mean, I was probably on video number 400. I was placing in, I was building, I was going fast pace. There was resource links. PDF downloads, checklists all over the place.
All this stuff that you'd want to have when going through a course to help someone actually understand and learn.
What was interesting is I got about half way through the first one and I realized that I was not ... It's freaking but you know how like you can get in a car and you're driving somewhere and then all of a sudden you realize you're there and you don't realize you got there. Your brain's on autopilot. You know what I mean, kind of feeling? I'm not saying I don't pay attention when I drive, but I'm saying your brain can be in other places and it's kind of second nature for you to drive the route you are and you're not really noticing that tree on the side of the road.
That happens to me sometimes when I build but not usually...
Usually, that happens to me when I do things where it's not so creatively intense, you know where little details matter but I found myself doing that. I realized like, "Holy crap," like dozens and dozens of videos and lesson sections had gone by and I didn't even notice it. I was like, "How interesting. I wonder why that is with this." A lot of it was a lot of copy paste, building stuff. There was some redundancy in the task I was doing which made sense.
I don't actually think that, that's the reason why they got done so fast. Why I got them done so quickly. There's four massive sites in three and a half days. I mean, those weren't the only things I did either. I mean, these huge, huge, huge, huge sites and like I thought it was going to take me way longer than that. Like a week or two, or three weeks to build out these just massive things.
I know a lot of you guys go through this. You're like, "Okay, I've got these huge sites to build. There are these funnels or whatever it is." You're probably like me.
Maybe you're not a coder or programmer so it might feel a little bit more intense for you to get those things done right.
Anyway, I realized why I was able to do it. It's because there was a pattern that I started following. I had two monitors up and even in the way I was building there was this system that I was creating without realizing that I was creating it. I was putting this whole system together. I'd look over on the left, see what I was modeling, grab the URL in the center. Copy and paste in the text. Copy, paste, repeat. Open up. Drop inside the link.
I can still see the process in my head because I've been doing it for the last three and a half days. Just pumping out these huge sites. These huge membership funnels and sites. I was like, "How interesting is it that it's that way. That I was able to do that. I mean, I've built over 300 funnels in the last year and a half working at click funnels and I usually don't, I can't get into that.
I usually have to think consciously about every single decision that needs to be made and it almost freaked me out. I'm not going to lie.
It almost kind of scared me a little bit because I was like, "Is there a detail I'm missing?" I actually had to backtrack a little bit but I realized that I was creating these processes and systems to handle things that I was doing over and over and over again. I suddenly had all these experiences I've had in my past just kind of start flooding back to me. I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's like this. That's like this." There was a company that I was working for when I was in college.
It was around the time I was trying to prove to the industry that I was worth my salt as a funnel builder. That I honestly had so much more to learn. I obviously still do but I was trying to prove that like, "Hey, I'm a runner. I'm willing to work. I've got the base skills down. Somebody hire me.
" I was trying to say like, "Somebody get to me. Somebody hire me." I was running around, I was shotgun emailing all these people and I ended up working for this company.
I had the most interesting experience when I was working there. I was excited. I was trying to prove myself. I wasn't charging them anything, I just wanted to show that I knew what I was doing in these certain areas.
I was like, "Look, I know you have no idea what a funnel is. Let me just go ahead and build it and if it makes money let's talk about me making some kind of cash, or whatever. Only if, so zero risk to you." They're like, "Okay, that's sweet."
That's how it happened, and so I start building this funnel. Actually, I ran an ask campaign to their current customer list. I was very strategic on who it was I chose and I ran this ask campaign and I built this funnel based off the data and it was huge win and it made all this money and I was like, "Oh my gosh, it worked." I was like, "What, this is so cool." It was really cool because I learned something super valuable. As I was moving forward and building this funnel, it was a water product. These guys had an amazing product.
I mean, it was a fantastic product but I realized and I don't want to offend anybody, I realized that their business had been successful because of the product, not because of their business. Like, "Steven, woah. Wait. What are you talking about? That makes no sense." Of course they were successful because of the business. No, they really didn't have much of a business itself. They were very, very few business elements to it and they had survived for years and years and years on the merits on a freaking amazing product.
Okay, now let's compare that to tons of other scenarios that I have build for where it's like we'll go out and we'll build for someone and we realize, "Oh my gosh the same thing." These people over here have successfully been a business for the last number of years strictly because their product is amazing. Not because they have a great business. Okay, now let's think of the difference between the two. Obviously the product is, that's obviously the medium that the cash comes in.
However, there's so many times I've built funnels for people where their business was not able to handle the funnel. Does that make sense? This is a very, very important distinction that I learned about three years ago as I started building for all these other people. It was about two and a half years ago and I started looking around realizing like, "Oh my gosh, some of these people have no idea why they're being successful. They understand the product is why they're making money, but they don't actually have a business."
One of my favorite books is a book called The E-Myth. E-Myth revisited. Now, I know you guys have all heard this before or you've read the book before. If you haven't read the book E-Myth, you should go read it because it's going to talk very, very clearly about something that I'm trying to ... This one principle that I'm talking about right here has been one of the things repeatedly I've seen over and over and over again between someone who's a so-so funnel builder and someone who is a freaking great funnel builder with a business. Okay.
I didn't know my own processes at the time...
I didn't understand and honestly I thought that, I was like processing...
I don't want to put processes together. James Freal, freaking man. He's got a podcast I believe with Dean Hall. They got a podcast called Just the Tips. It's amazing, it's hilarious. I think I'll be on it soon. James Freal came in and he's a master at processes and he came in a year ago and he sat down with each of the employees at click funnels and he's like, "Hey, what do you do? Describe your processes to me. Let's figure out for your position what these processes are so we can package them up in case we want to add stuff to them and we'll make more of a system out of this."
It was so funny because he came to me and we sat down in this side room and we start chatting and he's like, "Hey, what are your processes? How come you're successful. What are the things that you do when you're building a funnel where anyone else could walk up behind and pick it back up?" I almost got offended. Not offended, that's the wrong word, but I certainly was tongue tied. I was not able to actually tell him what my processes were. I didn't have processes.
Even as Russel's funnel builder when I was just barely getting in there...
I didn't have processes. I barely still do and I was like, "Okay, what's step number one?" I was like, "Oh, gosh. I don't know, it's different ever single time." There's so much art behind what I do. I would not consider myself a designer. I would not consider myself an artist but just the art of the marketing. The art of putting all these things together. I was like, "I have no idea how to actually define my process. What do I do?" This is a super important question you have to ask yourself.
Why does Microsoft and why does ... Why does IBM, why does Microsoft, why does Apple buy little tiny incubator startups? These little companies that have gone and they've built this cool app and this app has gone out and they've launched and they've put this app out onto the space. Now, let's think about this. Does Apple have the capacity to build the same software that, that other tiny little startup built? Of course they do. They have ridiculously amazing engineers.
Why would Apple care to buy the little startup with the brand new app?
It's because of the following, it's because of the business. They've put processes in place, they know that when they do X, Y, and Z, they get this many dollars out. They have a process in place. That's what a funnel is. I mean, essentially you're creating a process for revenue and most people have no idea why they make money. That's what the thing I was realizing when I started doing that work two and a half years ago for this other company. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Every sale for you is different. Every customer service inquiry for you is different."
Every time someone needs a refund or there's a part that broke or whatever, it's different.
Every time you do this, it's different. It's different, it's different, it's different and you know how much of a headache that causes inside of you? It's ridicules. It was funny because I had to take a big old slice of humble pie, or it was actually the full pie and I was talking to the brilliant James Freal and I was talking with him and he was like, "Yeah, what are your processes?" I'm like, "I don't freaking know. I've never actually thought about what those are."
I know what the outcome is but I don't know what the processes are to get me to the outcome and I was like, "I don't know."
Guys that was like a year ago and I am just barely figuring out what my processes are when I funnel build. I obsess so much with the process of funnel building and the process of marketing itself that I follow these blueprints all over the place that I just know work. None of it's mine and what I've been doing is I've been trying to sit back and go like, "Okay, why. Why am I actually able to build it that fast? How come that happened that quick?"
I'm not saying I'm the best in the world, I know I'm not, but I know I'm pretty good. Why did it work? Anyway, this is from the book of the E-Myth. I thought I'd grab it. This is one of my books on the shelf. I just dropped like three more thousand dollars on books, built an entire other book shelf so I have ... You know what's funny is that everyone's got these motives for why they want to be successful. I honestly want to read, I want to buy a lot. I buy books. I can't stand audio books.
It's not that I can't stand them, I actually love listening to them, but if the book is only an audio book or if the book is only a kindle book, for whatever reason for me it's not worth as much. I'm like, "Oh, well it's not worth its salt. It didn't make it to be a physical book. I'm not going to even listen to it or read it kindle or whatever. You know what I mean? I like to buy the physical thing. Anyway, I looked it up and I was like "Oh, yeah. This just like what I learned about in E-Myth like four or five years ago."
Anyway this is on page 83 and towards the bottom there he's talking about the importance of creating the business. Basically turning each position into a franchisable thing. Meaning, not that you go ... What he's teaching is, he's teaching how to create processes and he's teaching you the importance of looking at each position, so you might be a solo-penuer.
You might have a nine to five...
You listening right now, you might be doing something else that actually pulls on your actual income and you're trying to build a funnel to take you out of that nine to five.
You're trying to build a funnel to get you to the next step or whatever you're trying to do or it's the ascension. You know what I mean? What ever process you're in, whether or not you have a team, it's important to start looking at the processes and all the things that are involved in turning the dollar for you.
That's how you're going to hire people out. That's how you're going to replace yourself eventually. Anyway, this whole thing's been on my mind a lot lately.
Anyway, so this is on the bottom of page 83 and he says, "Because the business format franchise is built on the belief that the true product of a business is not what it sells, but how it sells it."
Okay, he basically said, "Look, an actual business, it's not ..." What is a business? He's saying, "It's not the product that it sells. A business is merely how it sells the product. A business is a set of systems. A business is a set of processes that talk with each other that sells the product." That's all he's saying.
He says, "The true product of a business is the business itself." The true product of a business is the business itself. I thought, "How fascinating, how interesting." That's why Apple wants to go by the little start up that has the app. It's not that they can't make the technology, it's that they've proven how to sell the technology. They've proven how to sell the app. They've proven that, "Hey, these are the positions you need so if you want to buy us or acquire us or whatever it is, you now know turn key wise you have to have this position, this position, this position."
They do this, this, and this. This one is X, Y, Z and this one does one, two, and three. If you can start to do that with everything that you're doing, holy crap it's a lot of work. Tim Ferus actually talks about this in the four hour work week.
He talks about every time he'd go launch a product or he'd put his supplement out there from his supplement company. He fielded all of the customer service questions himself for the first month and he did it for the sole reason that he could literally keep track of every question that was coming in and the answer that he started making a format for on the way out.
We did the same thing and then he went out and then he went out and he hired a person and they literally just had to read the docs that he created and send the response back out. I mean, he made it dummy proof. That's the whole reason why he was able to blow up ... Four hour work week, that's why that's possible, it's because of all the systems he put in place.
He made it turn key. Every position around him and then he just systematized that thing. Found someone, boom. Then they only talk to him when there's contingencies. When there's things that were not in that process.
It's the same thing with funnel building. I now know when I funnel build, that first thing I've got to go do is I sit down. Whether it's me or Russel, or us together, whatever it is. Usually I almost always draw it out. I draw it literally on paper. I draw boxes and I put a few details in the box. Okay, this is one page.
Okay, now this link goes over to the other page. This is the next part of the funnel. That starts this emails sequence. I'm going to add them to this list.
I kind of diagram out the entire thing but the step that's even before that is I have to know what the actual offer is inside of the funnel. Every single sales funnel is a mini value ladder. Okay, a business has a value ladder where you're trying to send people up to hire dollar amounts and different value levels and things like that. Each individual step in the value ladder is a mini value ladder. That's what a funnel is. That's why you can have up sales.
This is the higher point on an up sale or a down sale. Higher tickets in the back end, things like that. Follow up sequences that push to more and more dollars in the back. All right, that is a value ladder. Anyways, what I do is I sit back and we have to think through. Okay, what's the offer? What's the value ladder of this funnel alone. How does it fit into the bigger picture value ladder? The big macro level one. Then I go and we draw that out and we draw these pieces out and we put it all together and that's how it works.
Those are my first few steps and then even before is start building before that, then I start thinking through, "Okay, what's it going to look like? What are the colors like? Is there something proven in the industry I need to start looking at and start putting those elements in? Are there things that I know are little ninja tricks from other unrelated industries that also work?
Are there things that you know ..." And I start putting all those pieces together way before I ever, ever start building the new funnel.
I think one of the issues that I see over and over again is that people just go straight into click funnels and they just start building crap and they don't know what they're building towards or to and there's nothing that ... They haven't planned any kind of ascension. They haven't planned anything for their bait. How they'll get people in there.
They haven't planned anything so much as, "I funnel hacked, meaning I went and I copied and pasted." I looked at someone else's page and I put it all together.
That's not how it works. That's not what funnel hacking is. That's like the surface level of funnel hacking. Anyway, that was totally way more of a rant than I ever thought it would be, but basically this is it.
This is the whole point of the podcast that I wanted to make on the show today is that there's really two different levels, two different strength levels of a business. The weaker form of your business. How should I say this?
The weaker form of revenue is when you have a business that survives strictly because the product is amazing. Now, I don't know about you, but I know several places where that's true. Where the product is amazing but the actual business that sucks. How many times have you said, "Oh, yeah they've got a great thing but the customer service sucks over there."
Okay, that's a perfect example of a product that is literally driving all the revenue. There's barely enough business built behind it.
I mean, so many times we've built funnels for people and then we get a frantic phone call three days later begging us to turn it off. Turn it off, turn it off, my business can't handle it. I don't have enough inventory. I can't handle the volume you're sending over this way.
That's because there's not enough business built underneath the funnel to support the strength of the funnel that we've built. That's the first level, that's the weakest kind is when a business survives strictly because the product is good.
That's great and it's a good place to be. It's better than not having the business at all. In fact, that's probably the place to start. I would rather that you start there instead of trying to build up a business and figure out your freaking logo and the stupid crap that doesn't matter. Only worry about revenue first. That doesn't matter.
Revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue. Sales, sales, sales, sales, sale.
Nothing else, don't go rent an office. Don't go, none of that. Don't do any.
It's funny. Any of the stuff that I learned in business school is probably the stuff you should not do at the beginning. All right, first go to get the sale but it is ultimately the weaker form and the weaker part of business. It's more ... It's better to be the business style where the business survives because of processes. Where there's enough processes behind it, you can walk away and the thing could run itself. That's how the four hour work week works. That's how Russel's company works.
That's how, there are processes and whether or not every single position has been defined and all the processes behind it and here's how we actually put all the funnel together, and here's how we put the things in. Whether or not you've actually put those things together consciously, every person knows what those things are. My challenge to you is to write them down and to start taking note of what those things are.
If you get hit by a bus, heaven forbid, what are they going to do to pick it up? What are they going to do? Is everyone else's jobs going to be on the line just because you're the only guy that knew what was going on? That sucks, it should not be that way. First it can be that way for a while, Ferus talks about that and that's how he did it for a while but eventually systematize the whole thing.
Anyways, that's the entire purpose of this whole podcast is I just wanted you to know that it can take a while and I am literally just barely starting to figure out why my speed on these things is so quick and it's because literally, subconsciously every single time I have always built the process. There's been several times Russel would say, "Hey dude, how's it going on that one thing?" I was like, "Honestly dude, I'm only on the first page but I just got the process down and so I know the rest of them will go quick." It's true, it's bam, the rest of it goes quick because I got the system down in the beginning.
Anyway, I feel like I'm saying the same thing over again now, but hey, so one thing real quick I wanted to point out to you guys is that there is definitely a very forward and definitive process that has been put together on how to build a live webinar funnel. Now, last week, this last Saturday I went and I built a live webinar funnel live in front of a bunch of people.
I don't remember how many people were on but they watched me build the whole thing and I honestly just thought I'd be kind of fun to do it.
I thought it'd be a lot of fun to put the whole funnel together live, answer any questions and see what other things people are struggling with. There's no replay or anything like that. I'll probably do one again some other time shortly. If you want to follow next time I do something like that go to salesfunnelbroker.com/live. Salesfunnelbroker.com/live is the place where I broadcast and build out things live. Whatever I'm building so you can watch and learn and I like to interact back and forth.
Anyway, so I went and I built this live webinar funnel in front of a whole group of people and there's always a map that is true for that funnel style and I know it very well. Anyway, I made it into this really cool PDF document and I'd like to give it to you guys. I'd like to give it to everyone on this call. I'm sorry, I said call because I'm in front of a mic.
Everyone who listens to this podcast, I'd like to be able to give to you guys but I do ask for one thing in return. I would like ... I have never collected testimonials and if you guys can just grab your iPhone or whatever it is and shoot a sincere testimonial about me or whatever about me or something like that, or whatever it is.
Just shoot a testimonial around myself and if you send it over to me in Facebook messenger, I'll send that PDF of the map of what it takes to make an actual successful live webinar funnel as well as the share funnel link to the funnel, I'll give that to you guys for free. It's going to be something I charge 400 bucks for in the future.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop that on out because I see over, and over, and over again ... There's all these people reaching out to me saying, "Hey, Steven, would you look at my webinar funnel?" I would go check out their webinar funnel and it was like ... I was surprised the thing was running it was so bad.
Anyway, so, I've built it and I put it all together and I'll give you the funnel as well as the map. It's a PDF that's pretty rocking.
Anyways, if you want that go ahead and record a testimonial to me and send it to me on Facebook messenger and immediately I'll just shoot back, or as soon as I can, the PDF as well as the share link to that actual webinar funnel. Anyways, reach out to me. My name is just Steven Larsen. Meaning that's the spelling of it. S-T-E-P-H-E-N L-A-R-S-E-N on Facebook so you can find me. Anyways, that's it 
guys. Go create processes. It is more important than I ever gave stock to, and I'll talk to you later. Bye.
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