Sales Funnel Radio SFR 283: I Leased An Office For Free
From a 300 sqft room to a 3200 office (for free)
We’re (finally) getting an office space, and I wanna walk you around real quick to share a principle with you that I learned from Russell which means that taking on this space isn’t actually gonna cost me a dime!
I’m also gonna reveal to you:
- The next 3 revenue-generating moves I’m making...
- What’s coming after Sales Funnel Radio ends, (Yep, you heard that right!)...
- Why NOW is the right time to move into a larger space…
- Why you don’t need a ton of equipment to succeed and why bootstrapping doesn’t need to hold you back...
- Why my office is a MASSIVE mess… and WHY I don’t care!
But first, I want to let you into the dream I have for my NEW space…
HACKING ENTREPRENEUR SUCCESS
I’ve had several people reach out and ask:
"Stephen, why don't you have an office yet? You've made a lot of cash very fast in a short amount of period of time."
And the answer is that it made no sense to take on a BIG office space (when I can work from the couch)…
*Unless I have revenue plans attached to ‘that space’ as well*
And this principle is something I learned very early on from Russell!
When ClickFunnels was looking for a new office, not only did they find the shell of a space they wanted, they also drew all the things that they wanted in there.
And then, revenue-wise, in order to pay for it, Russell made sure he launched a product that would cover waaay more than the lease payment of that new building.
And he did that every single time he had something expensive to pay for...
For example:
When Tony Robbins came to speak at Funnel Hacking Live, it was expensive, man.
Tony Robbins is really, really expensive.
And so…
Russell put on his marketer hat and said, "How can I pay for that?" and then, he started coming up with clever ways in the FHL event to raise the money to pay for Tony.
And I'm doing the same thing here (...without Tony, but you get my drift?!).
This office is NOT anywhere near as expensive as Tony.
In fact, it's NOT that expensive a month at all, but even so, I’m NOT gonna be out of pocket to pay for it
Here’s my plan…
THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT
I have three things I'm launching (that everyone's been wanting from me), that will help more than pay for this office space.
But before I tell you what they are, I want to walk you around and share my plans with you…
This NEW office is 3200 square feet, it's funny, 'cause on camera, it doesn't look that huge.
I’m planning on doing A LOT of restructuring, and I’m gonna tear down a ton of walls and raise the ceilings.
We can literally create any kind of structure we want.
When I first started working for ClickFunnels, random people would just show up at the office.
And that's fine, but it was awkward, 'cause people we didn’t know would literally just walked in.
There were no keycards or any of that stuff, so you were always kind of on edge, wondering when someone was gonna just walk on in.
It's mentally hard to get into a creative space when random strangers just walked in.
So eventually, they made a wall with a keycard on one side and the event hall to the right…
I actually want the exact same setup…
There’s gonna be an event space in our NEW office
Every quarter we spend $8,000 to $10,000 renting a hall, but we could just use that cash and have the setup here...
ClickFunnel's made MORE money by building their own mini-event hall and attaching it to their office, and I'm doing the exact same thing.
So, we're gonna knock down some walls and build an event center with a full AV setup.
I'm trying to have my event room be almost the size of the event space that's in ClickFunnels.
It won't be as big, but that kind of a the spec.
I’ll still do my major events, like OfferMind, at other places, but what you need to understand is that
Colton, Austin, and I have been sitting in a 300 square foot bedroom for the last year-and-a-half … 😂
Now we're going from a 300 square foot bedroom to a 3200 square foot place.
...it’s really, really exciting!
HOW TO GROW A BUSINESS
Let me show you outside...
Check It Out….
It says Yellow Book USA; it's literally new tech replacing old tech.
I don't need all the space that ClickFunnels has.
Dave Woodward told me that Clickfunnels has about 7000 square feet and our office is about half of that.
I can't imagine a scenario where I’ll need more than 15 people on my team…
...and so that's kinda what we're planning for.
There'll be an open area and a few spaces with offices.
It's been nice to work from home, but there's a lot of pros and cons.
People ask me, "How do you handle working at home?"
It's *NOT* easy.
I spent $200 putting sound panels across the top of my “office” #bedroom; (it's just an over-sized bedroom).
I put sound panels across everything!
And I'll tell you…
WHY THE “BOOM!”?
One of the major reasons I started yelling so much was because I could hear my three girls in the background.
- Maybe there’d be a little fight…
- Maybe someone would get hurt…
- Maybe there was a little amping up...
And so I’d ‘amp it up on camera’ to mask my kid’s noise.
That's one of the real reasons I started yelling…
There'd be all this commotion going off in the background and I’d be like…
“And you gotta build the funnel! And you gotta... "
So, NOT having to deal with that anymore is gonna be super cool.
We will not have to put sound panels across the ceiling like we had to in the last office.
Up here on the top and the back of this door is literally soundproofing. I just put spray adhesive of everywhere.
But back to the NEW space, it's quite the large and it's perfect for what we need.
So…
- I'm gonna knock stuff down
- Draw out the floor plan
- Focus on building a really cool event space that saves me having to pay $10,000 to $20,000 every time I wanna do an event.
Instead, this space is $5000 a month; plus I'm building a revenue-generating machine.
It's a way of thinking that allows you to generate revenue rather than take on business costs.
When you have something expensive to pay for ALWAYS make sure that you plan for a way to make revenue with it as well.
MY BUSINESS SYNDICATE
For example:
In the next year, I've got five events planned, and now two or three of them can actually just happen here in my NEW space.
...that's awesome!
Every time I do an event for OfferLab it costs me $100,000.
Now, instead of us running around and trying to coordinate hotels (which is it’s own full-time job and pretty much does give Coulton and myself gray hairs)...
...we will just put the event on here
We've actually built on the cost of this revenue arm.
That's the whole point of what I want to share with you today!
Every time you're building out something and you realize:
- Hey, I need this piece done.
- I need to go build this piece of my business.
- I gotta go put something together.
Instead, just think through other ways to generate revenue exactly like…
- Russell did with Tony Robbins.
- I did to build a lot of my events in the last year.
Think about other ways that you can pull cash flow from what you’re doing?
TITANS OF INDUSTRY
So, I promised to share with you what I’m planning next after the demise of Sales Funnel Radio and when we move into the NEW space…
We're hoping around January, beginning of the year-ish, we’ll be in the space and start building a studio for...
#1: Pursuit of Profit is a live show that we'll be launching kinda like Impact Theory - (I'm a huge fan of Tom Bilyeu).
Once we move into this space I’ll be able to bring people in to film side by side, (kinda like what I did with Russell at OfferMind), and make sweet episodes right here.
#2: Business Syndicate is a show where I want people to come in and pitch me on building funnels for them, kinda like Shark Tank.
But instead of just giving dirty money, (which usually doesn't do a lot for the business)...
'Cause you know, you guys know, I'm crazy against VC funding...
Instead, you'll pitch me on building your funnels with my funnel team
#3: Titans of Industry is my MasterMind, and that can happen here as well!
Now, do you understand WHY it made sense for me to move now? 😉
It made makes no sense for me to take on a BIG expense…
*Unless I had revenue plans attached to expense as well*
You can go check out titansofindustry.com - it's NOT done (and ‘the space’ is obviously not done)...
But there's a waiting list.
It will NOT be a cheap Master Mind, but my stuff works really well.
But I'd love to have you inside of the MasterMind if you want to.
Anyway, I don't wanna say any more about that… 😉
It’s the same with Business Syndicate…
If you want to pitch me to build your stuff in exchange for equity in your business and to participate in profits, let me know.
Go to businesssyndicate.com and sign up on that waiting list.
Can you see how (on the back of the info product space), I am trying to build the rest of this legit stuff out?
… it’s very exciting!
FACE YOUR EXTERNAL OBJECTIONS
I challenge you to start thinking of things this way!
If you believe:
"Stephen, I can't afford these things in my business..."
*REMEMBER*
You're NOT the one paying for them.
It's NOT my cash; it's gonna be other people coming in helping to foot the bill for this cool space so that we can all…
- Share
- Grow
- Learn
...together!
By comparison, I just wanted to show you my old office… and check this out, it's a mess!
It's funny because I've had people reach out to me and they're like, "You are affected by the environment you work in."
That's kinda crap!
If you are that’s fine... but I'm not… I'm more affected by sound than clutter.
I've had multiple people reach out and say, "Stephen, it's so cluttered. How do you expect to get everything done in such a cluttered environment?"
What are you talking about? #JustDoIt
Are you telling me that you can't flex? Just do it!
However…
One of the major reasons why we need a NEW office is because we need storage space.
CAPITALISM SWAG
Q: Do you know how much leftover swag there is after an event?
A: A LOT
You never know exactly how many people will turn up and you want to have swag for EVERYBODY...
So, I ALWAYS over order, and that's one of the reasons why capitalismswag.com was created - so that we could have a spot to sell off extra swag from things like OfferMind.
So go to capitalismswag.com and we've got cool stuff there.
JUST DO IT!
The ONLY reason I'm showing you the *MESS* in my old office is to prove to you that…
You don't need a lot of stuff to be successful, especially in the Internet space.
Info products are one of the best places you can turn to if you're trying to increase your revenue.
You gotta learn how to sell… ‘cause you're NOT shipping
anything….
Things that are digital can be harder to sell - so learn how to sell and market, but at the same time, you can still bootstrap this thing, man.
BOOTSTRAPPING SUCCESS
When I was first building funnels in college, I didn't have the software I needed, so I went and I found it in public libraries.
I built so many videos, funnels, courses, and stuff in public libraries because they have the software. I could just go there and put my headphones on …
I'm just bringing that up because if like somebody says, "I don't have the tools," you don't need to own them.
Where are they? Go find them!
For my first ever info product, (which eventually turned into my thousand dollars a week product which was big for me at the time)...
I didn't have a camera, so I went to a public library and rented a DSLR camera and a tripod 'cause we didn't have any money.
I mean, this is cluttered guys, but “Your work environment affects you!”
...that's like the last 5% of things that matter. 😂
Just get it done.
- I'd rent the camera
- I'd rent the card
- I'd hunt computers down in the library that would take the card from the camera
- Upload YouTube - 'cause it was free.
And that’s why I tell people…
If you're trying to make something work, I have empathy (I’ve been there), but I have very little sympathy. I'm not gonna feel bad for you, but I will feel with you.
That's empathy versus sympathy, and I think it matters like crazy on this...
BUSINESS MINDSET & CLUTTER
Austin's desk is actually a picnic table, which is funny enough what my desk was when I first got to ClickFunnels.
We’ve got our TV that we are gonna use to show a stats dashboard that we’ve almost done building so we can ALWAYS track:
- Revenue
We’re still trying to figure out the last part, but we're almost done with that.
We also have a wall to track 'em sales and how close we are to a million bucks on stuff?
… it needs to be updated, 'cause it's way closer now!
We've got the paparazzi walls, but this is a black sheet that I stapled to the wall is how I filmed most of my first videos for the first program I created.
I just wanted to add some context to what we're doing here.
In the NEW office we’ll knock down all the walls and put flooring in. There's a lot of stuff that needs to happen during the TI space of the contract and stuff like that.
But we're ready to rock!
I'm just gonna drop a floor plan real quick and then talk to a few people to get some advice, and then we'll be good to go.
It’s crazy nuts to compare this new space to where it started in this CLUTTERED 300 square foot room.
(I only know that my house is 3500 square feet and that this room is 10% of it - because that's what we write off in taxes. 😂)
I started in a 300 square foot of room, and now, we're gonna move to a 3200 square foot office that’s as big as this house.
...which is pretty crazy and I'm really excited about it.
I expect we'll be in our new office for two, three years and then build the next building that we move to.
Hopefully, this has inspired you to just get it done.
If you don't have a briefcase, borrow one or realize they don't matter.
#GetRichGiveBack
As you likely have heard in my podcast, I left my job in January 2018 to build my million dollar business completely from scratch without any funding or any help...
AND I HIT IT, right on February 1, 2019...
Just 13 months later, we actually grossed a million dollars, which is pretty awesome.
Better yet, I got to keep a lot of the cash, just 'cause my costs are honestly NOT very high.
That said, there are several tools, though, I use to automate vital pieces of my business and ClickFunnels is one of them.
ClickFunnels lets me build automated sales machines all over the internet that are non-stop pitching people for me.
It's ONLY $97 a month...
Better yet, I don't need to be a coder.
If you're asking yourself, “Stephen, are you giving me a blatant pitch for ClickFunnels right now?”
YES, 100%!
I think it's dumb when people don't use ClickFunnels. It makes you MORE and saves you MORE.
Basically, I have the power of an entire tech team in my hand and I want you to have it.
Go grab a free trial of ClickFunnels by going to freecftrial.com.
I want EVERYONE to experience the power of ClickFunnels in their business, so they're letting me hook you up at freecftrial.com.
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