Sales Funnel Radio

Groceries, Restaurants, Clothes, etc. Joe spills the beans on HOW to drive WALK-INs to Brick and Mortar businesses...   Steve Larsen: What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another episode of Sales Funnel Radio. This is part four of our six part series, and the highlight of today is going to be all about retail funnels, brick and mortar style. This is an interesting category of funnels that we put together, because it does go and transcend across a lot of different areas. The person I'm going to be interviewing today, his name is Joe Giglietti. Joe, I respect him like crazy. Personal friend of mine. Really, really enjoy any kind of time I get to spend with him. I always learn from him quite a bit. He has a great story he's going to share with you, and then also he's going to dive through the funnel he uses to get people to show up. It's not just about leads with the retail world, it's all about walk-ins and getting people to come and actually step into your store, whether it's a restaurant or grocery store or whatever it is. This is not including the professional services category, that category includes dentists and lawyers and doctors. People who there's some kind of specialty involved with it. We call it the professional services. This is not that, this is retail/brick and mortar. You might think grocery stores, you might think restaurants, you might think Best Buy, those kinds of places. With that, we're going to dive right into the episode. I would grab a piece of paper because I literally filled an entire thing of notes again on beautiful concept, amazing things that I know that can transform your business, especially if you're jumping into the retail space. It is a different style funnel than the other funnels, which is why it's its own category. With that, let's jump right into this episode. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Alright, alright. With me today I've got a very special guest, who is representing the retail/brick and mortar space in this special six part series. This would be part four. What he's going to teach us is how he's been using Facebook ads and funnels to drive his business and help other businesses with their own companies and their successes. I first met this person, I don't even know, it's probably a year ago now. Immediately fell in love with what he believes and what he does. As we started to get more and more of a relationship, it became very apparent that he and I actually have very similar views on the world, beliefs on it, what we're here to do, providing value. It was really a cool thing to bond over. Anyways, with that I want to welcome you to the show. This is Mr. Joe Giglietti everyone. Joe Giglietti: What's up man, thank you so much. I am super stocked to be here on the show with you. I know there'll be lots of energy because I'm with Steven. You guys don't even know. Before we even got on here we were screaming at each other through Voxer, like those motivational things Steven does. It was great. Steve Larsen: It's so fun. I don't know how that started but one day I just started, I was like, "This is Russell Brunson, this is my mentor. I can't screw this up. What's up..." You know, I was like ... Joe Giglietti: Do all your other guest call you and go crazy on Voxer too? [crosstalk 00:03:20] Steve Larsen: No, you're definitely the first one to ever do that. Joe Giglietti: Okay, awesome. I'm proud, I'm proud. Steve Larsen: Actually, I think I'll toss it inside if you're cool with it. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, absolutely sure. Steve Larsen: I'm going to put in the show. Joe Giglietti: I think it's time to give you a little dose of what you give Russell, I'm told, almost every day. Do you know what today is? Do you know what today is Steven? Today is the day that you get to Funnel Hack. Today is the day that you get to change people's thinking. You get to change people's action. Today is the day you get to change people's focus and thereby change their lives. Today is the day that you get to tell the world how to Funnel Hack. Are you with me? Shout yes. Steve Larsen: Yeah baby. We get... Let me hear your war cry. Hey, thanks so much for joining though. I want to dive into a little bit more about how I met you. For everyone who's listening on the show, we were building some funnels. This was back when Russell was taking clients. We were building, it was for your daughter. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: It was for Emily. I just remember talking to Russell after we saw some videos of you guys doing stuff. He's trying to show me, showing about the client, showing what were going to do and the funnel we were going to build. I was like, "Man, this girl is incredible." Then I immediately had the same thought, it was like, "Her parents must be incredible for her to be like that." Then it was a few months later, then I actually met you and I was like, "This guy is incredible." I actually went to Dan Henry's and you were speaking and, no joke, I was like, again, "This guy is incredible again." I actually thought you bar none were the best speech of the entire thing. Joe Giglietti: Thanks man. Steve Larsen: I'm dead serious. I told Russell when I came back and everyone else. I was like, "He just crushed it." You were taking off. You were telling these amazing stories of things you had been going through at the same time that we were working. I had no idea about any of it. Anyway, whatever else you'd like to go into or share, whatever, but do you mind telling people a little bit about the backstory of how you got into this world, sales funnels, funnel building, and what put you here? Because I know you've been around, you're certainly a professional. You went around, real estate, right? You did lots of different things. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: How did you end up here? Joe Giglietti: I'm an entrepreneur... I did take one job out of college, I lasted two months. I had to go because I told them they had all kind of things they needed to do and I was going to fix it for them, and they were averse to change. Surprising, right, a corporation averse to change. Steve Larsen: Yeah, that's the first thing that happened Joe Giglietti: Yeah. I'm like, "I think I'm going to go do my own thing." So I went and started a real estate business and was investing in real estate. Really learned marketing there. At first I didn't know I was learning marketing. It was like the general public that's like, you think about marketing you're like, "That's a category." You're like, "Oh yeah, just do some marketing." What does that even mean? Steve Larsen: I know it's so fluffy for a while. Yeah, it's totally fluffy for a while. Joe Giglietti: So yeah, we did all kinds of stuff then and stuff like that. But I hit rock bottom with the crash of the real estate market back in 2007/2008, and realized that I really wanted to change the world more than anything, more than just make money all the time. So I started this non-profit student movement. It was when I was in that non-profit student movement I started listening to a show called I Love Marketing. Are you familiar with that Steven? Steve Larsen: No, no I'm not actually. Joe Giglietti: Joe Polish and Dean Jackson. Steve Larsen: Okay. Joe Giglietti: That's what I [crosstalk 00:06:46] my teeth on, my gosh. Steve Larsen: Very familiar with Joe Polish but not his actual show. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, yeah. I learned to market on that show. I started applying it to real estate, which was cool but it was pretty tough, like running a non-profit. I was helping teens, I was in this really poverty stricken area of St. Louis, just trying to change the world there and do it without money. Had a lot of pain. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Joe Giglietti: In that process I learned, for me I think, you're obviously a part of that whole want-to-change-the-world community, and what I learned in that time of financial suffering was, yes I know I can make an impact on people's lives. I knew how to take a student whose life was probably going to get messed up and help direct their path, to really make an impact on their life. That's impact, and then you think about influence and you're like, "How do you that with lots of people?" Influence is like multiplying that one to one thing. Almost like from a sales call to a webinar or something, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Joe Giglietti: Right, so you go from sale to expanding that to influence, but then the hard lesson I learned is, if I want to change the world as influence grows so do the costs. All those costs were based on my individual ability with real estate and running the non-profit at the same time. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Joe Giglietti: I just totally failed. I just totally sucked. It was rock bottom for me man, because I was mad at God, I was mad at the world. I was like, "I'm trying to do a good thing here." Steve Larsen: Sure. Joe Giglietti: "And I'm failing." You know what I'm saying? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: We had huge influence that is all kinds of students being a part of it, but we had to keep shutting it down because we couldn't afford it. I realized that I can either keep fighting that or I can realize that whatever this whole money aspect is is a part of us doing what we want to do to change the world, and whatever I need to figure out in that process, is going to be the key that helps me loose so that I can multiply my impact, multiply my influence and then multiply my income to pay for that influence and to pay for that expansion. Kind of like we teach in Funnel Hacking, right? Where it's like, guess what, you could market forever for free to as many people as you want, as long as you can break even at the front end and continually expand your front end, right? Steve Larsen: Right. Joe Giglietti: Those kinds of ideas really appealed to me. From there, I got connected with you and the ClickFunnels community. I think Russell's first book, DotCom Secrets. The rest is history. I got to tell this story though because it's super fun. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: This stuff is so easy a 10 year old can do it. Steve Larsen: A 10 year old does do it. Joe Giglietti: Yes. Yes, my daughter in the midst of a broken season, where we were giving up on the non-profit and realized that we had to move into taking care of my family and not just being homeless or anything like that. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: Which we were three times during our process of trying to lead that student movement we were homeless. The final time, I was done, I had spent everything I could emotionally and financially. Drained all of our life insurance accounts, everything, there was nothing. We decided to move to Florida. During that process, my daughter wanted to write a book. She wanted to start her own little business and I was listening to marketing stuff... Like everybody, listening but not doing, or doing a little bit here and a little bit there, kind of messing with it. Spend 20 bucks and then be like, "Oh, that didn't work." It's like, $20 is not a test. You know what I'm saying, $20 is not even lunch. Steve Larsen: Right, right. Joe Giglietti: But yeah, I was doing stupid stuff like that. My daughter wanted to write a book and so we went door to door with it. At least I knew how to sell, so I was able to teach her how to pitch. She went door to door and over the course of less than six months made $20,000, going door to door. Steve Larsen: Which is cra ... That's ridiculous, man. When I heard that my jaw dropped to the floor. Everyone who's ever heard that just goes crazy, it's like, "What?" We're like, "Oh my gosh that's insane. That's a huge, huge ... " Now, when was this? That all of this was happening? Joe Giglietti: She was 10. It was right before we moved to Florida, almost two years ago. It's funny too because this is a really interesting point and it doesn't relate to funnels. I was trying to change the world but in that process I was ignoring my family and we were sacrificing ourselves for the greater good kind of thing, whatever that means. When I started investing in my kids and in my family, that's when it all really happened. World change starts at an individual level, and then it expands to the family and then out from there. You can't go out first and bring it back in, it doesn't work that way. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Anyway, she starts selling like crazy, and then some people hear about it and they interview her, and then their show blows up. All of a sudden, she's got all this stuff that they want to sell. Me and my friend, Matt Maddix and Caleb Maddix, I know you know them. If you guys haven't heard of them, they're awesome too. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: We ended working together on a thing called Kids For Success and all kind of door started opening there. I realized, I didn't really love real estate, I loved marketing. That was the whole part of real estate I always did love, was figuring out how to persuade people and get more people to the open house to sell an investment property or whatever, blah blah blah blah blah. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: Matt really encouraged me, I'm thankful for that. He's like, "Dude, you don't love real estate, you love marketing." I'm like, "You are so right." My daughter is what got me into it. It gave me the freedom where now she's traveling the world and speaking, I needed to do something that wasn't just local. I was like, "Cool, I'm going to start marketing," and it's just blown up because I've got focus now. Steve Larsen: That door and that whole thing that was happening, that was only a year ago then really? Joe Giglietti: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. As a matter of fact, when my daughter was doing her thing to keep it 100% ... because people always, they look at me now and they're like, "Oh, he's got 80 clients in his marketing agency and he just started it in January. He's crushing it," right? They're like, they have a different view than if I tell at Christmas I was broke. The reason I was broke is I was broke again. It had been a year since I'd move to Florida but I was broke again because really I was putting everything into my daughter's business, 100% to try and get that off the ground. But I don't want to take anything from my daughter so it wasn't like I was making some buku bucks or anything like that. She was the little seedling that led me to ... Man, I love what I do now. I love what I do. Steve Larsen: Isn't it cool? It's so cool too. Joe Giglietti: Yes. Yes. Steve Larsen: It's addicting. Joe Giglietti: Yes. Steve Larsen: Every day you get to wake up smiling. I was like, this has been several days which have been honestly I probably should have stayed home, I was sick. But I was like, "I can stay away." It becomes an addiction a little bit. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: It's the other side of it. Most people don't have to worry about loving their job too much or whatever they do too much. It's the [crosstalk 00:13:35] like, "I can't wait for the weekend." It's like the opposite. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. No, there are no weekends. It's just like, "Yes," everything I see it's like, "How can I market that better?" Steve Larsen: Yeah. This morning I had the same thought. In my head I was like, "Oh, I could go do this with this. I could do this with this." It's like, "Here's a whole brand new funnel type. What? Okay, nevermind. I could go to the office, get to interview Joe." Joe Giglietti: It's awesome. Steve Larsen: That's cool. About Christmas time then, you're broke, you're going through this experience. You dove into that story a little bit as well pretty deeply, Dan with the Christmas presents, right? Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Yeah, so Christmas Eve day. This was very hard to share from the stage. It definitely got everybody's attention though. Steve Larsen: Man, it's amazing. Joe Giglietti: Because I'm up there teaching on client acquisition and I'm like, "Okay," and this was what, March maybe? I'm like, "Christmas Eve day, I was broke. I did not have enough to buy my kids present. Literally like $20 broke." Dude, I had met with you three months before, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: On Emily's stuff, it was like, to be perfectly honest it's what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, we just go in too many directions man. It's kind of like what you just said, "I could do this, I could do that." There's all this kind of untested and then we're entrepreneurs so we want to try to something really cool, instead of just doing something that you know will work. Steve Larsen: Yeah. That's such a disease, it's so true. Joe Giglietti: Yes, yes. That's what I was doing. I saw something actually that Dan Henry did, he was teaching on his webinar, on how to get a client fast. He calls it a curious student offer. I put out that offer, getting by at that time, because I couldn't. I just did the curious student offer and it ended up being a guy who was in, he was traveling to Mexico and was going to wire me the money from Mexico. That's what my hopes and dreams were pinned on on Christmas Eve day, to get a client to help with our marketing, who I knew I could help. They were actually a real estate investor, so I knew how to do the marketing for them and stuff like that. Yeah, that's what it was. One test, that test, it worked and I was like, "Okay, this is what I want to do. I want to have an agency and help other people. That's an easy sale. All I'm selling is money." Steve Larsen: That's amazing. You're using Facebook ads though. Joe Giglietti: Yes. Steve Larsen: To pull someone in then you add a funnel afterwards. I'm sure at the beginning though, did you have that all set up? Joe Giglietti: No. No, no. Okay. Steve Larsen: How did that first guy happen? Joe Giglietti: The first guy happened, I just put it on my own thing. I did what Dan said. I said, "Hey, I'm learning a whole bunch of things about Facebook ads and I can get you a bunch of results. If you'll just pay for the ad spend, I'll take care of it for you." I had a bunch of people respond and I called, and did sales call like a free consultation type thing. I asked them, I told them he'd been $1,500 to set everything up and then we were going to do a pay-for-results model off of everything that he did, a certain percentage. He was in. Yeah. Steve Larsen: It's amazing. Joe Giglietti: It's just that easy. I think you're asking me about the funnel, aren't you Steven? You want to get into the nitty gritty now, don't you. Steve Larsen: Into the deets, man. Into the deets. This is super fun because I had very similar situations like that. Where it was like ... When you were telling that story on stage, I couldn't help but think of all the similarities between what you and I I think have gone through. Where it's like, I was dead broke, wife couldn't eat. It was intense, intense also, and suddenly this massive realization, similar to what you just said, that when an individual focuses on the marketing money comes, but if they focus on the money, no money comes. It's all about focusing in on my marketing and it's ... Anyway, I just love your story, all the stuff you're getting through. Joe Giglietti: I'm not sure how deep you want me to go into that specific funnel because I know that a lot people listening are listening for retail stuff, but at the end of the day to me it isn't which funnel you do. It isn't whether you do a retail funnel or you do a professional services funnel or you do a free book funnel. That isn't what's holding people up. What's holding people up, first of all, it's just fear. They're afraid to choose... I talked a lot about this at Ad Con... They're afraid to choose. They don't know ... that was I was doing, going in lots of different directions. There are so many ways to make money with marketing. It's almost dumb to say, right? It's silly to even make that sentence but there are so many ways as an entrepreneur, especially today with the tools available and the accessibility and the accessibility to the know-how with great podcasts like this. It's easy to get distracted into a thousand different directions. Steve Larsen: Totally. Joe Giglietti: The first thing you have to do is choose. You have to decide. The word decide comes from the Latin word, incision, becomes the word decision. Decision means to cut off all other options. That's the first thing you have to do. That change, when I went to my wife and I said, "I want to do this." She said, "I'm tired of you jumping around from thing to thing... I want you to choose one and I want you to make it happen, and not to move from until it's done, until you've done it, until you've conquered it." I was like, "Okay. I know I love marketing. I know I want to go on in on this 100%." Then it was like, "Okay, what in the marketing world do I want to do?" For me, I want a real ... That's not the right way to say it but, I want a real business in the sense that a lot of times internet marketing, sometimes it's like people think a 20 year old sitting on the couch on their laptop, and that's the business, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: If that's your thing, that's cool. I'm not dissing that at all. Have fun, but I want to build a business where I've got 50 or 100 employees and we're doing big things. That's what I want. My thought, like a lot of people, it's kind of cool too, a lot of people want to sell courses, which is awesome. I'll probably sell courses at some point too. I kind of do right now but that's not my of ... I do that to get clients into my business. That's just a lead in to get into my business so that I can actually do the marketing for them. That's what I like to do. Steve Larsen: How are you, and I love that... I was taking notes, every time I interview somebody, and I wrote down, "Decide equals incision, to cut off all other options." That's ama ... I had to do that too, otherwise if you shoot all over the place you actually don't get anything done. You're just staying busy and you confuse action with achievement. It's the biggest, biggest smoking mirror game ever. Joe Giglietti: Yes, yes. Steve Larsen: Anyway, what are you using in retail then? How's the retail world working with funnels? Joe Giglietti: There's a couple of things. I help clients, so I don't own a retail place but I do it for other groups that would be considered retail. Which is kind of weird one to categorize. I'm not sure if you've categorized it for everyone already but it's a weird one to categorize. It's kind of like the leftover miscellaneous bucket or something like that... Steve Larsen: It is, of the six categories it's like, yeah, it's like well because kind of anything could be retail so ... anyway. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. First thing, I think the first thing that we're seeing in the retail world is the same thing that I've seen in the real estate world, which is the old methodologies of attracting clients still work. They still work really, really well because now you can put that same offer up to the world, even though Facebook, all the spoiled internet marketers are like, "Man, Facebook's so expensive now." Because they're used to how it was before but to all of us who are new to it, we're like, "Man, this is awesome." Steve Larsen: So cheap, comparatively, yeah. Joe Giglietti: Yes, yes. You think about a place like Walgreens, I think of Walgreens when I think of the word retail, right? Steve Larsen: Right. Joe Giglietti: When you think about how does Walgreens gets cust ... there's a couple things to think about with the retail funnel. The first thing you think about is like, "Really?" A lot of times we think in terms of leads, and one of the things I've learned is, man, I'm about to violate, I'm about to blaspheme. So close your ears Steven. Steve Larsen: Do it. Joe Giglietti: In some way, in a retail funnel leads are unimportant. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: Right? Because ... Steve Larsen: You need walk-ins. Joe Giglietti: Yes. The way that that's spoken of a lot of times, not only in the retail funnel area but in some of the more professional services, and there's a lot of cross over, is they talk about it as appointment requests. When you think of a place like Walgreens, they need to get somebody in the door. We all know, every single one of us listening to this knows how Walgreens gets people in the door. There's two basic ways. One they have the pharmacy. They've got that, they've got some kind of high value offer that a lot of people can't get and kind of got a corner on the market so to speak, even though CVS is on the other corner. Then the other thing though, and one of the primary ways that they'll use is discounted bread and milk. Everybody needs bread and milk, and so Walgreens always puts out these pamphlets with the discounted things. It's usually the discounted things, if they're doing a good job, that everybody's going to want. It's not necessarily some obscure thing that they're not sure, although they've got a pamphlet so they can do that. But I mean like bread and milk at discounted prices gets people in the door, and then once they're in the door they buy other things. In the internet marketing world we call that a crazy discount offer. That works. It's always worked and it will continue to work, right? Steve Larsen: Right. Joe Giglietti: The difference is, is now you put that offer in front of ... you figure out what they want, there's a lot of ways to figure that out but you figure out what they want. In most cases, retail establishments already know that. Like a restaurant, they're a retail establishment. I just moved into a brand new office, super excited about that and ready to hire a bunch of new staff. If you're out there and you want to be hired, come to me, I'm in Florida. Steve Larsen: Go to Joe. Joe Giglietti: Go to Joe. There's a new pizza place that opened a few doors down. Basically, they wanted help and I'm doing this for free pizza, just because I'm too busy to take on new clients, so I did this one for free and they will not let me pay for pizza anymore. Steve Larsen: Wait a second, that's how they're paying you? Joe Giglietti: Yeah. They literally offered me the business and I rejected it because as I said at Ad Con, I have too many clients and I need more employees to handle them. Steve Larsen: That's hilarious. Joe Giglietti: I really wanted to help them because they're a new business. I went in there and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I own a marketing company," and they're wondering if I'm going to sell to them. I'm like, "Don't worry. I'm too busy, I can't handle you." Then of course they wanted me, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, what I did for them is first of all, new opportunity, right? Hello Expert Secrets, new opportunity. It's a new pizza place in the area, so all I did was I had them ... a piece of pizza costs them like 50 cents or 60 cents or something like that. They're called Slices Pizza, so what I did was, I said, "Okay, let's go a three mile radius and let's choose people who are foodies, which means they're going to like trying new food. We're going to say, 'New pizza place is now available. We're giving away free pizza. Comment below for a free slice and check out the greatest new pizza place in town,' kind of thing." There was more to the copy obviously, I don't have it in front of me, but the point is free pizza. Crazy discount offer, gets them in the door. Now, here's the thing with those kinds of funnels, notice that I said leads aren't important because if somebody comments, "Free pizza," on that, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to come on the door. As a matter of fact, they're probably not going to come on the door, which is the other reason why I'm saying leads aren't important a lot of times in these retail funnels. What is important, and I sound like a broken record Steven so it's annoying to even say it, I knew this but my marketing didn't operate as if I knew this. It's this, it's all ... Dude, getting leads is so easy. If you're struggling to get leads, just put a crazy discount offer out there. It's very easy to get leads now, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: The game, the true game, I can't over emphasize this, is in the follow up. How do you move a lead and convert a lead to an appointment, to a person who walks in the door? That is all about the marketing, which we tend not to think about because we talk about lead generation. Don't be a lead generator, be a business multiplier. If you're going to be a business multiplier, by the way, the name of my company is Multiply Inc. If you're going to be a business multiplier, you have to convert those leads. If you expect the business owner to do that, they're not, 90% of the time they're not going to do it. Steve Larsen: No. Joe Giglietti: It's all about creating that follow up process and creating a funnel inside of the funnel to move the person from saying, raising their hand, saying, "I want free pizza," to actually showing up. Steve Larsen: 100%, I totally get what you're saying. I back it up to the nth degree because the way I got broke into the funnel was very similar as far as, I was building lead gen strategies for Paul Mitchell, local Paul Mitchell stores. I ran into the same problem though, I could drive tons of leads, but after all they're like, "That's kind of cool but no one's walked in." I was like, "Crap, I've got to change the game." So we started running ads for these T3 scalp treatments or whatever. If you'd walk in and you'd say the magic word or whatever, because that meant that they got to pitch you on their $18,000 student package. You go through a lot of those and actually still break even, have a good business. Anyway, totally, we had to change the funnel. My gosh, no one else I've ever talked to has ever said that, thank you. Joe Giglietti: Awesome. Yeah, no, it's huge. I know this is retail but I help a lot of real estate agents because that's my background, and it's like that's how I started the company, and it's like my assumption was and I think many, if you're out there no matter business you're in, the assumption is if I get enough leads I'll close some of those and give very little attention to the conversion process of those. I have people, it's like, "Yeah. Oh yeah, I got a lead, I called them." Yeah, and what happened? "Oh, I left a message." How long ago was that? "A week." Steve Larsen: They're dead, they're not coming. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, yeah. It's over. James Sturman actually, he's great at restaurant funnels. If you guys don't know him, he's amazing at restaurant funnels. He's got like, I don't know, 50 to 100 restaurant clients and all of these. Anyways, he's a friend of mine and he has this whole process when people sign up. Messenger is working really well for a lot of retail stuff, and so having a phenomenal follow up process with a lot of, I know, scarcity, urgency, surprise. Limit it to say seven days, and then you can do a countdown. You can say, "Oh five days left, oh three days left, two, once," right? Maybe throw in some other bonuses or other things if they show up on certain days, or whatever you can do to try and incentivize that and take it away. That's why, again in the real estate world for me, one house always does better than a list of homes when I'm offering stuff. Why? Because there's scarcity and urgency to one house. It could be gone. But there's no scarcity and urgency with a list of homes because there'll always be a list of homes available. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Joe Giglietti: It just works better. But there's one other thing I want to share about retail funnels that I think is really important. If you don't to do, because some people are like, "Dude, I don't want to give away the farm," which is just fear. You don't get it if you're thinking that way. Apparently Walgreens has figured it out. But nevertheless, the other thing that is really huge for any kind of retail style funnel, and I'm not only saying restaurants or things like that. You'd be surprised the places you can use this, is events. Events. Steve Larsen: For retail. Joe Giglietti: For retail, yeah, absolutely. Whether it's a chiropractor, which I know that's more professional services, or even a real estate agent, against that's kind of professional services. But a restaurant, hosting an event could be huge. I'm trying to think of other kinds of ... give me an example. Let's play a game Steven. Steve Larsen: Let's do it. Joe Giglietti: Throw me a business and I'll talk about how you could use an event funnel to crush it. Steve Larsen: Let's say the ma and pa style of Walmart, let's say some small version of a grocery store. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, awesome. I think businesses do this all the time, but you could do a three day open style event with prizes given away every hour on the hour, and balloons for kids and clown, blah blah blah. Stuff like that, to do some of sort of whatever. Promoting that to the area, I would probably couple that since again it's a very small ticket items kind of thing, although if they $200 in groceries they're doing good. I would put a discount funnel, crazy discount on certain items to get them in the door along with this whole thing for the kids, if that's your target audience, and some sort of event that's associated with that. Events, again, have some sort of scarcity and urgency attached to them, and so it helps. Also, it requires them to get in the door. If they get in the door, now that mom and pop can do a one to one sell, but if they don't get them in the door and get them connecting to them or scheduling an appointment ... You could even do specific hours, specific offers that area available at specific hours. You could do segmented times to send people to and stuff like that, "Okay, at this hour we're giving away XYZ, it's 50% off in the meat department." Something like that. Again, just scarcity and urgency is huge. Steve Larsen: It makes sense too because you see the event game being played like crazy. I'm thinking of all the car commercials, "Come in for the Thanksgiving event," and then a little later, "Come in for this Christmas even," a little bit later, "Come in for New Year's event," then whatever it is. It's always the event and it seems like it's going to right right then. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, it's like, so many of the people, right now I'm helping a bunch of digital marketers get a bunch of new clients because obviously I've done okay with that. They want help. It's funny because a lot of the marketers need help getting their own clients because it's a different thing to get a marketing client than it is to help whatever their specific funnel is that they're running. One of the things I've seen though just again and again and again, is they, again, they depend on leads. This whole thing is not about leads. I help agents, and I'll get them ... I have an agent I got 500 leads for in a matter of two and a half months. He closed zero of them. As a matter of fact, he didn't even move them to an appointment. Steve Larsen: Really? Joe Giglietti: How is that even possible? It's because, again, they have no follow up funnel. With people like that, when I'm realizing, and again this applies to the entire retail world but it's like, if I take that same guy and instead of doing all these other promotions I'm doing, if I just do an open house and get a bunch of people to an open house, now they're face to face. They can't skip the call. They can't skip the voice mail and then he never calls again. He meets some people one on one and he'll get some deals out of that. Again, that straight up the whole goal for me of retail, is to get them face to face. If you don't get them face to face, you're not really doing the job with a funnel, you may get something out of it but it's not guaranteed at all. Steve Larsen: Yeah, that's really interesting. There was, I can't remember who said. It was Joe Polish, Joe Polish said this too. He said, "Sales is what happens face to face, but the marketing is how you get them to your face." Joe Giglietti: Beautiful. Steve Larsen: I love that. I love that. Joe Giglietti: I wish I was that awesome and could get good quotes like that. Steve Larsen: I know, right? What can I say that's prolific today? I'm not trying to make a big ploy for ClickFunnels here, even if it's the best software on the planet. Joe Giglietti: Yes, Amen. Preaching to the choir brother. Steve Larsen: Those funnels though are amazing though. It really is how we get everything done. If we just left everything on the table, even in whatever it is we're doing, whether it's one of Russell's clients or whatever it is, any front end funnel we do, if that's where we leave it, just like you've said, our only expectation is to break even. All that did is open up the gate. If someone took something free, in fact I just ranted about this to someone the other day. I was like, someone who takes something that's free, like a free plus ... Or not even a free plus shipping. If it's some free thing, I don't even consider that a lead per se. That's just somebody who wants something for free. You've got to do something else to qualify him. Anyway, so essentially in the retail world, you'll run some kind of ad, obviously talking about the free thing or the event or whatever it is. And then afterwards follow up with ... what's the most common follow up funnel you usually do for a retail space? Joe Giglietti: A lot of it can be, for retail space it's funny enough, we follow up, yes, directly with the person who's interested in the product or service kind of thing that they're coming for. Usually that's going to be text. Text is working way better obviously, a lot of email's not getting opened up. Messenger is great, that's why we're using a lot of, not even necessarily bots just getting conversations starting in Messenger. May use a bot for the first one, and then when they reply get into that engaged conversation to move them to an appointment. That works really well... Obviously the text follow up, using Actionetics. Actionetics, go all in. I can't give my affiliate link here, this is Steven's show, but...No, but yeah, and Actionetics...but that's the basics. Then of course, please tell me, so many people are still not retargeting. I remember when I was like, "Yeah, yeah. I'll get to that but that's more complex, I just want to blah blah blah." Dude, I was such an idiot. When you start retargeting, my gosh. Can I tell a story about follow up? Steve Larsen: Yeah, please do. Joe Giglietti: Do we still have time? Steve Larsen: Yeah, we have plenty of time. Joe Giglietti: My gosh. This is about a realtor but it will make sense to everybody. Like I said, I have some of these agents who are in who are like, they'll get couple hundred leads and literally maybe follow up once. They're doing terrible, so then I've been following this guy, he's got great marketing. I'm going to go ahead and say his name, even though I don't know him personally, Jonathan Zabrocki. This dude does $900,000 a year in commissions by himself. He has no assistant, he has no team. He does it by himself because he doesn't want to work a lot he says. He only wants to work 20 hours a week. Here's the thing, here's the thing. He does it, because he doesn't want to work a lot, he only allows himself 16 leads per month. One six. Steve Larsen: Because he closes that many of them, right? Joe Giglietti: Yeah. So what he does is, and this will point to it, this dude's ... I'm super impressed with the guy, I can't wait to meet him. I've been following him for a long time. I know this is true just because I've been following him for so long, that or he's really consistent with his story and a really good liar, but I don't think so. What he does is when he gets a lead ... By the way, he's spending, I'm getting leads right now for people at $1, $2, some higher end real estate deal $8, whatever. He doesn't want to get a lot of leads so he doesn't use any of those sources. He gets leads and they end up costing him like $500 a piece. They're no better leads. I know how he gets them, they're no better leads than normal leads I'm getting for five bucks. It's really funny. But anyways, here's the thing, when he gets a lead come in, he treats it like gold. He calls them, emails them and texts them three times each per day. Nine total contacts per day for seven days, until he gets in touch with them. I'm listening to this one day and I'm like, "This is nonsense." People get ticked off, right? I was, "I'm so mad at myself that I even thought that, I feel like suck an average guy." I feel like a loser for even saying it right now, because I went ahead and said, "I'm going to try it." So I started trying it with some of my older contacts, people who were looking to get in and stuff like that. I said, "Okay, here's what we're going to do." I get my sales team together, I'm like, "We're going to follow up. We're going to call them three times a day, we're going to text them three times a day, and we're going to email them three times a day, every lead that comes in." They looked at me like, "Are you an idiot?" Steve Larsen: Yeah, because the fear is that you're going to tick people off. I totally get that. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. It was like, he had mentioned, "You're probably afraid you're going to scare people but ... " It's an old ... I can't remember his name now. Dan, Dan Hardy, Dan Hardy. Dan Hardy says, "If you're very aggressive in your follow up you'll lose one out of five but you'll get the other four." I was like, "Cool." I was like, "Alright, I'm going to try this. What do I have to lose, they're just old leads, right?" I started following up like crazy, like he said. Now, full disclosure, I could not keep up. I could not do nine. I was trying, because it's personal, it wasn't automated. It's very personal. We did it, follow up, follow up, follow up, text, text, text, voicemail, voicemail, voice ... being really cool about it, not being like, "Hey, I've called you three times." No, it's just super cool, you know people are busy. Dude, it was almost every time between the seventh and tenth time, people would either call or text back, and the first words out of their mouth were, "I'm so sorry I haven't gotten back with you." Steve Larsen: Are you serious? Joe Giglietti: I'm serious. Steve Larsen: That's not what you would expect. Joe Giglietti: No, because the level of professionalism, nobody does that. The fact that you keep bringing it and keep trying to serve them, you do it with the right attitude and bring it in front of them, they feel guilty because they know they asked for...They're a lead, right, they requested for you to contact them. We forget that so much. Just that level of intensity with follow up and it was like, I kept counting, we would go through the text when somebody would finally respond and go through our notes and notations. It was like eight times, 10 times, seven times, 12 times, six times. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I am losing so much money because I'm so good at getting leads, I don't value them." But here is this dude, he gets 16 leads a month, out of 16 leads he gets eight appointments, and out of eight appointments he gets four or five transactions. Steve Larsen: Every month. Joe Giglietti: Every month, like clockwork. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. 25% close rate from your ... Joe Giglietti: Leads. Steve Larsen: ... from your leads. That's actually really high. Joe Giglietti: Yes. Steve Larsen: That's awesome, especially in real estate. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, compare that to say getting 100 leads from people and not doing a good job of following up and getting two or three. But you still call all 100 of them, and still only get one to three them closing. Instead you could be like, "I'll just take a few of them and treat them really, really well. Reach out to each of them nine times." Then you need a tenth the number of leads and can still get the same results. Steve Larsen: That's so awesome. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: Okay, wait, wait, wait, so is there much of a difference that you're seeing when you're running ... You go get the ad, the ad starts driving in leads. Because I know that a lot of times in the internet marketing world selling marketing to marketers, there's usually a difference in the environment, I have to put them in or the funnel in order to go to different price points. Is it the same way with retail? Meaning, can I sell high ticket stuff? It sounds like that guys is already if he's selling houses. Do you use the same strategy though for a $7 pizza? That level of high touch intensity, or is there some other strategies for other retail businesses like that? Joe Giglietti: I guess the answer is yes and no. Again, because my focus may be on the target audience. Someone that I'm working with right now, he's got a limo company, but they like these corporate high end clients. Those clients are obviously way different than somebody who's just trying to get a cheap limo for the prom one night or something like that. There would be a difference in the offer but again, that's lead generation, front end. You figure out what they want and you put that in front of them and do what you can to remove risk or stack value if they do it. But if you drive that to, like for example one thing we're liking to do right now is when someone opts in, the next page, this is a big secret we're really testing out right now. I can't believe I'm sharing this right now. Steve Larsen: I can, keep going. Joe Giglietti: Every single person who goes to a thank you page, in all of our funnels, retail and some of the others as well, we're always trying to drive that and give some sort of bonus or added value to get them to schedule an appointment, either on Calendly or even if it's an even to schedule a specific time to get a private access tour, a private this, private that, whatever, like one on one access with the owner or whoever the character is who's leading that business kind of thing. Everything, I don't care if it's a limo company, I don't care if it's a restaurant, I don't care what it is, if I can drive them to actually schedule an appointment, that's again, I'm telling you, the name of the game is appointments not leads. Everything is pushing them though, and then by the way, all the retargeting is pushing them to the appointment, not just to be a lead. Does that make sense? On that thank you page ... Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: ... we've got different options, and really it doesn't matter what, it depends on what they want but it could be two or three different things that we think that we're split testing or seeing how many do. Whichever they click, those are all leading them to schedule appointment. It may be about being at the special event, or it may be about getting this other free bonus, or it may be about having a one on one conversation with the owner, but they're all really just trying to get an appointment. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. What's so interesting to me is how different the sales process is for different industries. Because again, back to, heavily in the internet marketing world as far as selling marketing to marketers, if I leave it up to somebody to call, like schedule an appointment, almost all the time, it's like let's say like Russell's high end coaching funnel, first there's an application funnel, the very last part says, "Hey, thanks so much for applying. We'll go ahead and give you a call, but if you want to jump ahead of the line, go ahead and give us a call," you know? Joe Giglietti: Right. Steve Larsen: The reason why is because when we used to put scheduling software on that stuff or we'd send them to Calendly, no one would ever show up, no one would ever call us, no one ever ... that's interesting that it's different when it's off the phones and it's in a different industry, that that actually works like crazy. That's an interesting difference there. Joe Giglietti: Listen, we're perfecting it. That's something that we're pushing. We've seen results, it's like, "Okay, why is this working?" Trying to drive that in other areas because I think you're right. Probably one to two out of five of our schedule appointments don't show. Steve Larsen: But the ones that do are probably rock stars. Joe Giglietti: Well yeah. That, and it's like it's not like these business owners in retail settings are getting a lot of these anyways. It's not like, "Oh man, my schedule is booked with 20, I could have had two more." You know what I'm saying? Steve Larsen: Right. Joe Giglietti: If they have four or five appointments a day and three show, they can make a lot of money just off of those, because you know what I'm saying? The no-show doesn't really bother us, I mean obviously you do things like indoctrination sequences and stuff like that, just like you do with webinars to get them to show up and come with value and stuff like that. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Joe Giglietti: Just as an example, for me to get clients, digital marketing. I don't if I'd do a retail funnel or not, but I'm helping digital marketers in all kinds of different niches get a bunch of appointments. It's the same thing, it's all about the appointment. Once you get the appointment, your original question was, "What if it's high price versus low price and stuff like that?" If you're going to sell one to one with a sales person or get someone in the door, schedules appointments. Think about it, like a chiropractor. They'll do a $21 exam. Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. Joe Giglietti: Right? To get somebody in the door kind of thing. That can be a high price, it's low price there but it's high price later. Steve Larsen: It's fascinating man. I'm geeking out with you so bad now. Joe Giglietti: Good. Steve Larsen: I've got notes all over the place. This is so cool. This is so cool. That's awesome. You've done several different retail areas then. I know you're kind of all over the ... not many people ... I really think that you're such a rare person, to be able to go out and become an expert at something that's retail, something that's professional services, something...You know what I mean? Crossing industry like that, that's not an easy thing to do. What types of retail businesses, I guess full spectrum, do you actually do for this? Let's say someone wanted to contact you, what are the full retail suite services that you use? You know what I mean? Joe Giglietti: Yeah. One of the things that I think is really important to everybody listening is that they focus. I've already talked about that a little bit. And then, once you get to a place and you can start hiring people to handle different options, you can take off focus. One of the, quote-unquote, retailer is, would be digital marketers helping other digital marketers doing other retail funnels, like I'm helping them right now. I actually have a wait list of 30 people right now, because I've got to hire somebody else before I can pick up some more. Steve Larsen: That's crazy. Joe Giglietti: But nevertheless, yeah, so digital marketers. I've got some doing limos, I've got a digital marketer who just started, we just broke through his funnel, we're getting appointments. We got him an appointment today with his first $2 and 50 cents on ad spend with a roofing company who will pull in probably 2,500 a month. So yes, those kinds of areas, gyms, MMA, restaurant. Usually I refer everything that I have on restaurant to my friend James Sturman, he's the man. I know I'm not supposed to do this, right? I'm a marketer, I'm supposed to promote myself, but there's lots of good guys out there doing some of this retail stuff. If people are interested in talking to me about any kind of retail stuff or anything like that, I would recommend they message me on Facebook on my business page at Joe Giglietti. Steve Larsen: Sure. Joe Giglietti: That's Joe and then Giglie T-T-I, G-I-G, L-I-E, T-T-I. If we don't handle it, I've got plenty of friends who are doing ... I've got friends who are doing events for bars, that's a big one by the way. Bars and events, dude, you can get 50 bars who you can help and just do events, every week do events. Steve Larsen: I've actually have heard that, yeah. Yeah, with the bars specifically. That's awesome. Joe Giglietti: One of my guys is helping Bellator MMA, there's a retail funnel. How is that for a retail event? What is it? You're just selling tickets to an event. They're doing the zoo, I think the LA Zoo he's doing, which is pretty cool. Just stuff like that. Funnels work for everything guys. I know [inaudible 00:49:12] but it's like ... yeah, like, what do you want to do? You can figure it out, it's fun. Steve Larsen: Man, it's so cool. It's so cool. Now, two other things here. Your recently told a story to me, when I originally jumped out and said, "Hey, would you mind jumping on here?" About you turning away 25 people. Do you mind sharing that, because that was amazing? Joe Giglietti: Yeah. I don't know, I hope. You know how it is. I don't want to be like that guy. I don't want to be like a jerk, like, "I'm the man," or something like that. Steve Larsen: Sure. No, that's you focusing though. We'll say that's in the name of focus. Joe Giglietti: In the name of focus, yeah. Steve Larsen: So it's okay now. Joe Giglietti: Cool. Yeah, so I focused. I've got a little soliloquy about that if you guys want it. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Joe Giglietti: But I made the commitment on January first, I read a book. "Amazing Joe." No, I read actually a page of a book and had to shut it. It was the book, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. It was the are where Peter Thiel, who's a billionaire, most of you should know who Peter Thiel is. He started PayPal and another couple other billion dollar companies. Not a bad entrepreneur... Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. Joe Giglietti: He said, "Listen," he's like, "If you want to be a billionaire, you've got to think like a billionaire." Tim Ferriss said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, here's the deal. What I want you to do is I want you to think about your 10 year goals." If you're listening to this podcast right now, do that with me. Let's do the exercise, think about your 10 year goals. Maybe it's financial, whatever it is, hopefully it's financial if you're listening to this. Now, you got it? Peter Thiel looks at Tim Ferriss and says, "Now ask yourself this question, what would it take for you to do it in six months?" When I read that, Steven, I literally slammed the book shut in books-a-million and I'm like, "What just happened?" Like, "Dude rocked my world." Of course, all of the fear, all the worry, all the reasons why it couldn't happen just jumped into my heart. I'm like, "No, no, no," and there's this fear. I was like, "Wait, this dude's a billionaire. Don't argue with him. Try and listen to what he's saying." I opened the book back up and then he's talked a little bit more and he's like, "Hey, if you're struggling with this idea, then think of a goal you can believe is possible in six months, but make yourself stretch." When I read that I said to myself, "I want to make $100,000 a month. I can do that. I can build a business to get to 100,000 a month in six months." So I focused, I started by focusing on real estate agents. I figured if I can get 50 real estate agents, I can get there. I figured, my whole focused shifted to how do I get a client? If I can figure out how to get a client, I can repeat that. I realized, I remember something Russell said, he said, "You need a KPI, a Key Performance Indicator." So I made my Key Performance Indicator, I need five appointments a day. If I get five appointments a day I can sell on out of five, because two won't show. That became my key, then it was like, "Well how do I get five appointments a day?" I realized I didn't want to cold call like crazy. I'd done that world with real estate and I was like, "I'm going to figure it out. I know it's possible. I don't know how I'm going to do it." Dude, I hope I'm not taking too long. Steve Larsen: No, I love it. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. What I did is I started by spending $20 a day testing out a funnel to get people, an appointment funnel, get people to a page, show them a demo and try and get them to click. I had to figure out the offer and all that kind of stuff. I was spending $20 a day and I kept stopping it, didn't work, changed it, stopping it, didn't work, changed it, stopping it, didn't work, changed it. Then one day I'm like, "Why don't I wait a whole day to try and figure out a funnel? Why don't I just put $200 on it and as soon as it spends $20 just turn it off?" Because in my mind, for whatever reason, $20 was the magic number to test something. I'm an idiot, I know. Steve Larsen: I don't think so. I don't think anyone listening will agree with that either. Joe Giglietti: So then, being the typical entrepreneur that I am, I put $200, said, "Okay, good. I'll know in a couple hours. I'll just check back on it." Would you know it, I got busy and forgot, and the kids, and blah blah blah. I fell asleep and woke up the next morning. I had like five or six appointments and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it worked." I go to my Facebook and I look and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I spent $200." I was scared. I'm like, "Why am I scared? I got five, this is good." I went ahead and did the appointments, I think I sold two of them or something like that. I'm like, "Wait a second, maybe I should spend $200 again." I wonder how many of those other funnels actually worked, I was just too scared to let them run, to really see.... Steve Larsen: We see that all the time. Someone will come back and be like, "I spent $10 and nothing happened." Or they're like, "I Facebook Lived two times. My first time ever and no one attended." You're like, "Two times? I have been doing this for years." It's like, "Come on." Anyway ... Joe Giglietti: Anyways, that whole story just leads to, so then it broke open. I couldn't turn my marketing on. I couldn't keep up with five appointments a day. I had over 50 clients within my six months. I didn't hit my $100,000 goal a month though because a lot of my clients are pay on results and realtors can take 90, 120 days. Then we also learned, some of these realtors aren't so good at closing deals so we started adjusting and figuring out those appointment funnels on the backend to try and get them in front of more. I'm not there yet. I'm very close. I'm very close now and I think in the next month or two I should hit it. But then I said, "Yay, I'm free. I focus for six months. [inaudible 00:55:01] now, who do I want to help? And I decided I wanted to help digital marketers, because that was one thing I'm really good at, is getting lots of clients for myself, so I'm like, "Uh, that would be so fun to work with other marketers, or so cool." I put an ad on, I have a group that I share with a couple friends, it's called Journey To Seven Figures. I put not an ad, I just put out there my offer. I figured out how to make really good offers and I put an offer out there. In 48 hours, no I mean immediately, how many hours was it? I don't know how soon it was, I can only let my schedule schedule out three days because I found people don't show up if it's more than three days in advance. I know that it's scheduled out and we had 45 scheduled appointments, every single space was booked for 12 hours a day. I did 22 one on one calls, because I couldn't do it my sales guy because I hadn't trained him how to help with digital marketer yet. So I did 22 sales calls, 20 of them bought immediately and I shut the doors on something called the 20K challenge, where I do the marketing for these marketers, to get them a bunch of clients, and they only pay me for results. Every time they close a deal, they pay me, and a little bit upfront. Yeah, so in 36 hours, because I filled up quickly, I had 20 clients and 25 on the wait list. I think that's a world record with zero dollars in ad spend. Zero dollars in ad spend in a group of 300 people, I got ... Yeah, so it's all about I guess making a good offer and figuring out how to get that one funnel working. An appointment funnel can absolutely change your life. Steve Larsen: Fascinating. The appointment funnel itself, that's amazing. Last question, I know I keep saying last question. Joe Giglietti: No, it's okay. Steve Larsen: It's so fun to geek out with you man, this has been awesome. I've been looking so forward to this. You're running a Facebook ad to an appointment page? What are you saying on this page to try and actually get the appointment? Joe Giglietti: Actually, with this most recent one, it was such ... Here's the thing. Man, you're pulling it out of me, man. When you're selling digital marketing or even marketing services to somebody, I think what most people miss is that you're not selling marketing. Too many people sell marketing and if you look at your news feed, too many people are selling, quote-unquote, Facebook ads, or selling, quote-unquote, funnels. Nobody wants a funnel... Steve Larsen: No. Joe Giglietti: Nobody wants a Facebook ad. Steve Larsen: No one knows what it is even. Joe Giglietti: Yeah, yeah, exactly. What they want is money. That's what I sell. When I figured out that I sell money, then it became this, and I learned this from Dean Jackson. This will help anybody in any kind of world when you think about it. When you ask yourself the question, why wouldn't somebody buy from me? When I ask that question, I sell money, why wouldn't somebody buy money on a discount. If I came to you and said, "Hey Steven, if you give me $1,000 I'll give you $10,000." Steve Larsen: I'm going to say yes. Joe Giglietti: Why wouldn't you do that. Yeah, you're going to say yes because you believe me, you trust me, you know I've got the skills to pay the bills and all that stuff. But some guy who just saw me for the first time on a Facebook ad is rolling his eyes. It's like, why wouldn't they? Because they're afraid. They're afraid that they'll lose. They're afraid that it's too good to be true. The same offer shifted changed my business. Man, how am I giving you this stuff? Here we go. I shifted the offer. Anyways, I'm just going to say it. I shifted the offer where I say, "Look, Steven, how about I make you $10,000 and when I make you $10,000 you give me 1,000?" Is that better or worse. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. Joe Giglietti: Right. The whole idea, and you're seeing this in the digital marketing world, only pay for results kind of thing, it's taking off. Now, that doesn't mean ... because all of you are like, "Oh, you're going to get all these clients who blah blah blah blah." No, you can qualify them. By the way, I don't get any money, quote-unquote, but I do get a deposit where if I hit this number I get to keep it, where I'm 100% certain I'm going to hit that number every time. They're not 100% certain but I am, but I need to take a deposit because you could rip me off. You can make the money and then not pay me, so I'm going to go ahead and take a deposit, but here's the contract, blah blah blah blah blah. What am I doing? I'm giving the same offer, I'm just removing the risk. If we think more about how to shift our offers where we ... actually you'll make more by doing it this way because you can charge more on results. But if we can shift our offers to putting all of the risk on ourselves, but to us it's not a risk because we know that we can perform, dude, it's a win-win. I charge people way more than I could charge them upfront, simply because I'm only paid on results for many of my customers, not all of them but many. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. That's kind of what goes back to what you were saying before, similar to the Dan Henry thing. That it's the hungry curious student offer but extended into an actual way beyond that first client. That's fascinating. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. Steve Larsen: Results first. Joe Giglietti: Absolutely. Steve Larsen: Imagine that still works. Joe Giglietti: Shocker, right? Steve Larsen: Shocker. What? Joe Giglietti: Yeah, I invented that. I did. Steve Larsen: You did. Joe Giglietti: Oh yeah... Steve Larsen: That's cool. What that does too is that it protects the person's status. I think that's so cool. Goes back to that status protection, how do they gain, how do they lose it? You're protecting it so that they can't lose their own status emotionally. That's fantastic. Joe Giglietti: Yeah. With that, I want to encourage everybody out there, I've got a little soliloquy, like when I was thinking about this morning what I was going through I've gotten to the place I am. I'm not bragging here, I'm just telling the honest truth. When I have enough employees, I promise you, getting 100 new clients a month, I could do it right now, I just can't take care of them. What was stopping me though was fear. Fear is robbing the world. It's robbing you who are listening. I put on an offer almost every day right now that will help people grow their business, they don't even have to pay me unless I actually multiply their business, and yet thousands, even tens of thousands of people pass me up on the offer. Why? Why would somebody pass up? They're afraid. They're afraid it's too good to be true. They're afraid it won't work. They're afraid it won't work for them. They're afraid of success. They're afraid of what it will look like if it does work or doesn't work. That's you, that's me robbing ourselves of our potential. I was afraid to hire. I was afraid of what big expenses may do to my business, failing to see what great revenues it would bring to my business. Fear, we're afraid to focus. We're afraid to make a decision. Why? Because we're afraid to lose out on another opportunity that we didn't decide upon. But I'm calling upon all of you who are listening today to face your fear. I'm asking you to believe. I'm asking you to believe in the possibility, to believe that your potential is bigger than your present reality. What is it about an impossible offer to refuse that makes it so refusable? What are you afraid of? Whatever it is, I assure you it can be defeated, no matter how large your fear or how substantial your trepidation. I promise you, your potential, what you're actually capable of doing when you believe, is vastly more substantial, more significant and importantly more real than the fear that's crippling your full ability. Today I call on everybody who's listening to this to face your fear. I call on you to shake of your shackles of indecision and step into your calling of possibilities with courage and belief, because the day you decide, the day you focus, the day you plant your flag in the ground and say, "This is my place. I'm going to own my space until I decide not to," the day that you commit and refuse to be governed by the inconsequential whispers of a liar named fear and step into your potential from the confident place of belief, is the day you will begin to change your own life and the world. Steve Larsen: Everyone, go check out Facebook.com/joegiglietti. We're going to end it right there man. Joe Giglietti: My pleasure, nice being on the show. Go get it guys. Go change the world. Steve Larsen: That was fantastic, I don't want to say anything else and mess it up.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Amazon, Walmart, Etc. Secrets of the ecommerce world ... What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another fantastic episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this episode is part three of our six-part series where I'm diving deep into the six different categories of people using ClickFunnels to blow up their businesses. This episode is all about eCommerce and there's a lot of ways to pull off eCommerce, there's a lot of ways to do it, and a lot of questions that everyone know who's in eCom has the answer from their beginning. Am I going to self-fulfill? Am I going to drop ship? Am I going to go for high ticket, low ticket, high volume? Am I going to brand it? Is it just going to be a straight sell and one off? Is it going to be community behinder? Am I going to be the brand behind it? There's a lot of things involved with eCommerce much like any business but I think I really enjoy what my guest today has to offer. I would take notes, see how he's doing it. He's got a great community behind him called ecomunderground.com and he's got a cool little offer for you guys at the end which I think you'll enjoy. Anyway, massive value, it's free for you so anyway, I think you guys will enjoy it. Let's jump into this episode and we got three others coming up deep into the industries that I know out of one of the six applies directly to your business. I hope you guys will enjoy the series so far, let's jump right into it. Announcer: 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. How is it going? I have with me a very special guest today and honestly one of my favorite categories of sales on the internet in general, very excited to learn more of the deep, dark ninja secrets of how to make this work. We're going to talk about eCom strategies today with the expert and my friend, Bryan Bowman. How are you doing, man? Bryan Bowman: I'm doing amazing. How are you doing, Steve? Steve Larsen: I'm doing awesome, living the dream. Doing really good. Hey, thanks for being on the show here, like I say and eCom is probably one of my favorite, one of my favorite personal category for income generation, whether someone doing it on the side or it's a full-time thing. What a lot of people would probably realize is that when Russell went out and hired this data scientist to come through and look up through all the users of ClickFunnels and try and find patterns, eCom was actually the highest revenue generating industry overall out of all of them. Everything, info products, I mean anything. If you guys want to pay attention, I mean, get a piece of paper out, take notes. Bryan is going to drop some massive gold here and super excited for you guys to learn more about eCom which is a space I'm personally very interested in as well. Anyways, Bryan, if you can just let us know how did you even get into eCommerce? It's a newish industry as far as kind of the wave of the internet taken over things. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. I mean, first of all, just to back up what you're saying, there is something really powerful about selling physical products. Steve Larsen: It's so cool. Bryan Bowman: This is something that I'll talk about a little bit but I do want to talk about how you don't have to choose one or the other and this is really what a big part of my message is right now because it's what we're doing in our brands and it's what's working in my community with my students is that what I have found, because I'm really, really entrenched in the physical product sellers universe or world. There is this mindset that it has to be one or the other. Where I'm really shaking things up is I'm telling people that we can have it all and physical products have their own power but info products have their own power as does a third category of product that I'm going to encourage those who really want to build a well-rounded business and a business that's going to be sellable and build an empire that I think they need to have as well. We'll leave that for a minute and I'll answer your question, I'll answer the first part of this which kind of like my backstory. Yeah, man, I've been involved in selling I guess products online or physical products for a long time. For me, it was really a hobby like literally all the way back to college I was buying, it was crazy, I would buy books and I still to this day I'm understanding why this worked but it's still a little confusing to me. I would buy books on eBay and then turn around and sell them on Amazon. The quickest arbitrage ever. Steve Larsen: It's straight up arbitrage, that's awesome. Bryan Bowman: That is available to everyone like everyone can go on eBay but I mean, I'm kind of joking like not understanding why. I mean, it's because of the confidence Amazon has. People trust Amazon so much so some people feel like a little sketchy about eBay, maybe they don't want to buy from there and literally I would buy textbooks for five bucks and sell them for 55 on Amazon. It was crazy.   Steve Larsen: Geez. Bryan Bowman: That was like a little side gig in college but I've been always leveraging the internet to sell physical products but really where it got really serious for me was about four years ago and for some of your listeners, they maybe selling on Amazon or maybe they've heard about this Amazon gold rush that's happening and four years ago it's kind of the wild west. I mean, FBA was around but not a lot of people were using it. That's where I started and basically FBA is where you can send in all your products to Amazon. They fulfill the orders and you just create the brand and ship everything off and then list on Amazon. Now, that was awesome. You're leveraging Amazon's traffic which is very cool. At the time, I need to figure out what I was going to do because we've talked about this a little bit, Steve. My wife was having some health issues and we were just trying to figure out what do we do because I needed to be home more, there's no way I could keep working my corporate job as actuarial consultant like traveling all over the place. I needed to figure out a side hustle that was going to make some extra money and ultimately free me from my job and that's really why I double down. Literally I would work all day long in a cubicle like nine to five either traveling, doing actuarial stuff, come home, eat dinner, and from like 7 PM till 3 in the morning, I was creating listings, working with my designers in Germany. Then I was talking to manufacturers in China at 1 AM because they are like on the complete opposite time as us in the U.S. and I'd be Skyping with them, seeing the factory, seeing samples. It was crazy. That's how we launched our first brand on Amazon and started leveraging that platform and really pretty quickly I think maybe because I had that actuarial background and understood the numbers which is another huge, huge thing guys. Those of you listening, I don't care what you're selling in your funnels and whatever industry you're in, you have to know your numbers. People usually don't like to talk about math, they shy away from it but you need to know basic stuff, cost per conversion, lifetime value of a customer, your cost of goods, those metrics they are going to separate you from the pack because of that very reason, no one else wants to think about those things. Steve Larsen: It's true, then you have to think about Excel sheets and that's hard and you have to think about ... It's kind of a big locked gate, a little bit to that industry a little bit. Bryan Bowman: Exactly, exactly. Listen, I love barriers to entry, it's why I became an actuary. I became an actuary, for those of you who don't know what it is, don't worry. If you have kids or brothers or sisters who are really good at math, tell them to go be an actuary if they are not going to become professional sellers online like internet marketer or sellers. Basically, having that background in stats and math, it helped me with my advertising on Amazon, ultimately, it now helped me with my Facebook advertising and in AdWords like understanding those numbers. I can't stress enough how important it is. If you're not that person, find somebody who's really good with numbers. Steve Larsen: How would I find someone like that? I mean, because that is a barrier, you know what I mean? That's a personal barrier to entry. How would I find some dude that actually go out and do that kind of thing? Bryan Bowman: I mean, we could have a whole conversation about this. I use VAs so what I do is I will set up the basic spreadsheet and then I have them, I train them on how to download reports, upload the reports and send me a summary so that I just get like an executive summary about every week. Steve Larsen: Okay. Bryan Bowman: They do the work that probably most of us, I mean, I don't really like, I kind of like being in spreadsheets but not all day. Steve Larsen: Right. Bryan Bowman: What they're good at like because I have SOPs in place they can download the reports that are already, this certain reports that are already set, they can upload them, they can refresh the workbooks and basically, just send me the summary that's already built in to the workbook and then I just can have a look at it, overview it and then make any changes that need to be made. There are plenty of people Upwork, you can go to, what is it now? Is it Elance? Is that what it's called now? Steve Larsen: Freelancer. Bryan Bowman: I mean, like I said I train my VAs one on one so I use onlinejobs.ph. Steve Larsen: Cool. Bryan Bowman: Even if you want to hire someone domestically like in the U.S. look at community colleges like see if there's some math students or someone who's in a business program, someone who's technical that's looking to pick up a few extra hours. I think it's important to have that person whether it's you or not in the business though because it's huge. Steve Larsen: I believe there are eCom people that I've talked to or some of these, that is the thing. It seems like there's a big difference between them who's successful and the others who aren't. Just merely knowing the numbers and tracking the numbers in each campaign. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, because then it just turns into a simple yes or no like, "Is this profitable?" Yes or no. "Should I double down on this?" I mean, especially if you need to make a quick turn around on your ad spend, I mean, if you have to put a $100 in today and you need to make it back in 48 hours because capital is limited and you can't wait 30 days to see your return, it is critical that you know your numbers and you know what your yes and your no is and when you need to double down and when you just stop your ads. Going back, I think because I leverage that, we had probably quicker success probably the most. I loved Amazon, it was awesome like we're doing really well really quickly but then my daddy used to always say, "No matter how thin the pancake there's always two sides." That couldn't be any more true with Amazon, you can have this great thing going but then we got hit with, man, I don't even want to get into the whole story because it brings up too much pain but I do remember waking up, it was a Tuesday morning, I checked my seller app and I'm like, "Wait a second, this is already a slow morning. I don't know about this." I went back to the desktop, checked and sure enough like our number one product had been blocked then our seller account was shut down. It took forever to get that back. It was just one thing after another and through all that pain, I really figured out, it became very apparent like I cannot depend on Amazon. I have to build my own sandbox. Amazon can be a spoke in the wheel but it cannot be the entire wheel. That's when I really double down on the funnels, honestly that's when I was looking for the best way to build funnels, how do I start because I had used them before but never really to the extent that I'm using them now. I just wanted to build that off Amazon strategy because I already had the brands in place. I was like, "All right, I need to build my sandbox." That's how I started using ClickFunnels and I guess it was at the time it felt like a curse but ended up being the biggest blessing for us because now we've been able to really diversify our sales and really develop a repeatable strategy. It's good, it's all good, man. I'm excited. I think it's interesting how this happens where some of our most painful times end up being the things that give us the most power and give us the most ability to make a difference and make a change. Steve Larsen: You said something that I thought was really interesting. I mean, you're basically describing the equivalent of the Amazon slap, the Google slap. Bryan Bowman: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Steve Larsen: There's a lot of people who I've spoken as well, they say like, "Just leave it on Amazon. All you need is Amazon." I mean, you just said the exact opposite that you realized that you can't do that. What advantage did you gain by not just staying on Amazon, by actually going off of it? Bryan Bowman: Absolutely, there are a lot of advantages but there's one that's the one that you should, all your listeners and you and everyone should write down, it's two x versus eleven x. That's all you need to know. Your Amazon business, if you have a purely Amazon based business where all your revenue is coming from Amazon, you can expect on the market when you go to sell that business, about a two x return on earnings. Steve Larsen: Really? Bryan Bowman: Yeah. If you have a business off Amazon, Shopify, big commerce ClickFunnels which by the way those listening, you can run an entire eCommerce business on ClickFunnels. It's one of the biggest misconceptions that I find. Steve Larsen: It's so true, thank you for saying that. Bryan Bowman: People, they think for some reason I don't know why and this is one of the things that I make sure I always educate people on in my community inside of eCom Underground is like it's a shopping cart. You can put everything in there. You can run an entire eCommerce store there. I compare it to basically a Costco versus a personal shopper. A Costco is like your Shopify store where you're walking around, you have a big shopping cart and you can throw a bunch of stuff from the rafters into your shopping cart and check out. That's a Costco. Whereas a funnel or ClickFunnels is it's like a personal shopper. When you walk in, you go to Neiman Marcus and they're curating goods just for you and the goods that you're going to see are different than the ones that I'm going to see because we have a different build, we have a different taste, we have different age. You're a man, if I'm a woman, you're going to see different things. That's the experience of a funnel so that's why they convert so much better. The two x is of your Amazon, eleven x, if you build that business on Shopify, if you build that business on ClickFunnels, BigCommerce, whatever, you can expect a ten to eleven x return on earnings when you go to sell that business. The market reflects the risk inherent in having a purely Amazon business. Steve Larsen: That's amazing, that's amazing. I never thought about that. I've got a buddy who just sold for a ton of money in the eCom space and I was like, "Man, that's remarkable at how big that thing scaled, how fast." It was exactly what you said, he wasn't just staying on Amazon itself. I've heard from a lot of people, "Make sure you are in Amazon," but just like you're saying, you can't leave the whole cake on Amazon itself. Bryan Bowman: Absolutely. The best analogy guys is imagine you've been doing marathon. Have you been in marathon, Steve? Steve Larsen: I've been in a sprint triathlon. Bryan Bowman: All right, do you know when a marathon when you have all the people on the side and they've got the waters and like the herd. It's like this massive, all these people are running, right? They are just like, people are holding out cups and they are just grabbing cups and water splashing everywhere. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Bryan Bowman: That's what I compare Amazon to. We're the ones with our cups and we're charging for them and there's this like all these people coming and they're grabbing our cups and they're drinking them. It's like yes, I get rid of all my cups but they're gone, they are just running. You don't even know who they were. Whoever was running the marathon, they've got the entry numbers, the emails, the phone numbers, they know everything but you're basically just hanging out on the side lines with your cup of water. That's kind of what Amazon is like and you're just waiting for the next herd of traffic that's going to buy your stuff. That's cool. Steve Larsen: It's a really good analogy. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, that's what it feels like. Then you're just waiting, you're like, "All right, hopefully the next marathon comes." The marathon by the way is called Q4. As opposed to building a business, and this is what I always tell people, what is your business? When you really think about it, it's not your inventory, it's not your sales or your profit or revenue, it's your customers, your customer list. That's why the market reflects that big difference in building that on Amazon versus off Amazon business so it's critical to have that ability to have that relationship with your customers. That's probably above anything, that is the biggest reason why you'd want to build something off of that marathon platform. Steve Larsen: Sure, and what's funny too is like anyway, I love the analogy that the customer is the business. Amazon takes all that, it take all that data. You can't really get that data, can you? You're just selling stuff. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. I mean, and they understand it. They understand the power in the customer that's why they keep it and in fact, they have a lot of things in place to keep you from driving traffic off the platform. They make their terms of service very open-ended so that they can really suspend you for any reason. It's kind of one of the dirty secrets like no one really knows that. It's interesting, when you first start selling on Amazon it's like it's so exciting because a lot of people like me were just like, "Hey, I need to build a business, an income that replaces my day job." Every advanced Amazon seller you talk to will tell you the same thing. It's always this worry in the back of their mind. Again, fortunately, this is a mindset thing is to really, really see the blessing in the pain sometimes. Fortunately, I went through some of these pain early on which forced me to have to become something else and have to learn something else which is again turned into the biggest blessing for us. Steve Larsen: I mean, someone once told me that for every dollar spent online, Amazon is so big that a quarter of that dollar is going to Amazon right now. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, that's crazy. One out of four dollars spent online is spent through Amazon or one of their companies. Steve Larsen: That is huge, absolutely massive. Bryan Bowman: If you really think about that. Steve Larsen: I know, you think about how much money that really is it's like oh my gosh, that's amazing but you're saying, obviously put some stuff on there just to be present but then keep the bulk of the business offline. How are you actually building it offline? I mean, not offline but off of Amazon. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, exactly. This takes me to my next point which I touched on earlier. Stephen, this is all the stuff I really I just I talk about all the time inside of eCom Underground because I just really want to open people's eyes to something else, like a different opportunity, different possibility. The first thing you have to do, it's nice that someone says, "Great, build off Amazon, you can do better," but how, right? The first thing is it's a mindset shift in how you're going to build your business. If you're looking to just sell general store type stuff or you just want to sell one off products that are hot sellers, maybe Amazon is a good fit or maybe some free plus shipping funnel, that's fine but long-term, we need to really build an asset. The way I like to think of it is shifting from commodity to community. This is something I repeat over and over and over again because as long as you're selling a widget and all widgets are the same, and the person who comes to your store sees it as another widget, you're competing on price. That's all you're competing on. Steve Larsen: Which is awful. Bryan Bowman: It's awful. It's awful. The life cycle of your product is shorter and it's not going to last as long before someone's going to undercut you. I mean, there's plenty of people that are doing this, they're literally making pennies on the dollar like a profit and they're just trying to do the volume play. I hope you consider this. Imagine you've built up a community instead, people who've rallied behind an interest or a common shared like passion or even an expert or a personality so it take for example, I was talking to my sister about this. One product that you would never want to sell right now by the way, if you're going to go on Amazon, it's completely saturated, measuring cups, kitchen utensil like measuring cups, you would never sell that. Maybe if you did, I don't know, maybe you could, I wouldn't. Margins aren't big enough and it's too competitive. It would make no sense. Then I was talking to my sister, she loves to cook. She's passionate about cooking and she follows this, oh what's her name? Cupcake Jemma, okay. She follows her and she loves Cupcake Jemma and she loves the content Cupcake Jenna puts out and follows all her videos and all these stuff. I asked her, I said, "If Cupcake Jemma came out with measuring cups that were twice the price of whatever you could find on Amazon, and the lowest price that you could find out there, would you buy the ones from Cupcake Jenna or would you price shop so you can get cheaper ones?" She's like, "No, I'll just buy hers." Why? "Because I know that's what she uses or I know it's her. It's her." She's getting to experience something of that community, of that interest, of that passion, right? When we start building communities and it doesn't necessarily have to have an expert at the front end. I like if it does because there's an attractive character that we can follow but if we can just build a community first, I learned this from Todd Brown, then the sale becomes superfluous because the messaging and the marketing is so good and people are craving to be a part of something. I don't know how else to explain it. If you start with the community then you can start introducing the physical products because people will actually start asking you for it. When we start building our communities and there's a lot of different ways you can build them. You can use Facebook pages, Facebook groups. There's a lot of different ways you can do it but the point is people will start asking you. You could do it on YouTube, they'll start looking at the videos and they'll be like, "What's that shirt you're wearing? What's that thing you're using?" They already want to know. Before we ever start pitching any physical products, people will start asking us for them like, "Oh, it would be cool if," let's say you're in the running niche, "If you could come up with a patch," like I love running, running addict, or whatever it is, they'll start asking you first which is awesome. That's like a very good thing. Steve Larsen: Crazy. Bryan Bowman: You start with the physical product but this is where I'm going to challenge you, probably not you but your listeners is to go a step further. Who says we only have to sell physical products? Let's get into the information space also. We can sell training. There's a lot of information that we can still be a part of and even if we're not selling it, we can form affiliate agreements with people where we can present relevant products and this is how we build our funnels relevant products that are information based because we need those higher margins to sustain the business. One of the dirty secrets about eCommerce is you only really get paid when your business is flat. When the business is growing, growing, growing, you're operating in let's say 30% margins, you're going to pay for the inventory because there's cost of goods, you're going to pay for the inventory shipping fulfillment, all that stuff. If you made a 100,000 this month, you want to make 200,000 next month. Steve Larsen: Don't grow. Bryan Bowman: You got to roll that money back in so you can pay for all that inventory and everything else associated with it. That's how you end up making five million dollars a year in eCommerce and you'll pay yourself 200 grand because you can't pay yourself very much but as soon as the business goes flat and you stop growing, then there's cash you can pull out. One of the things is if you can start adding information, and the third piece if you can add software which is awesome because you can have this trifecta inside of your community, now you can really start getting cash into the coffers and really start getting more cash flow coming in and let the eCommerce side build on its own and double down on that. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. I think it's really cool. I run the Two Comma Club Coaching Program right now and it's been a lot of fun but that's been one of the big questions, so I'm going to read the book Experts Secrets from Russell Brunson. Say like, "Hey, this is just for webinars." You're like, "No, no, no." Bryan Bowman: No way. Steve Larsen: No, it's not. If you look at it carefully, he's just using a webinar as an example of how to actually use the Expert Secret process but if you're to take an eCom product and combine it with info or combine it with something else or software or whatever it is, that's one of the easiest ways to create a blue ocean for yourself because no one else is thinking about that combination or taking information and then ... Actually with the Experts Secrets funnel itself, the actual book funnel, we do this all the time. We will combine just like you're saying, "Hey, here's this cool eCom thing, this cool products that's physical," but then really the revenue accelerators are all info products in the backend as the upsells. Anyway, just 100% I'm screaming over here that what you're saying I totally attest to. We've seen it so many times if you can combine them together whatever, that is huge, huge power, massive power for revenue. Bryan Bowman: The biggest thing and we could talk about this, I mean, I don't know if you like to get into it kind of the actual strategy we use with traffic and then getting that traffic to convert but the biggest thing is building that connection, the community. You have to have this... One thing I do and I run four different brands and in every single brand I have an org chart. Those of you who are listening, if you have not read E-Myth Revisited like, don't pause the podcast, finish the episode and then go to Amazon or wherever and go buy yourself that book. Steve Larsen: Yeah, great book. Bryan Bowman: You should have an org chart, think of your business as I don't care if you're a solo operation and I do this for all my businesses even if it's just me, I have no staff, no VA, no one at all, it's just me, and I am solo operation in that brand. Build an org chart as if you are going to build a McDonald's and you're going to franchise this business. You want it to be a well-oiled machine that the 5,000 version of your business will be just as profitable as the first that you founded. Build that org chart and make sure that in that org chart there's somebody who's in charge of relationship management like really managing relationships with your customers because at the end of the day ... Have a statement. Another thing I do is there's a contract for each one of those roles and every single one of those positions has to fulfill the promise to serve and to reinforce the values of the community more than selling like ever. It has nothing to do with selling. That's why I always say, "It's all enveloped in community." Make sure that you are reinforcing the values of the community and why they are there because that is your asset. Long-term it's that community because they're going to tell you what they want and they're going to start asking for it... They are going to start asking for that physical product that they're going to rest on their desk, that info product that they're going to, after they're done using your physical product they are going to log on and use your info product and then the software, if there's a need for it. Not every niche has it. It's funny, Russell, I'm a part of inner circle, it's just amazing to be coached and mentored by Russell. He talked a lot about how satisfying the itch in the funnel, like there's initial itch and then once that itch is scratched, there's another. I started using the phrase that different niches have different itches and it's like some niches have more itches than others, right? Some can't support a software let's say but you'd be surprised, if you think creatively, a lot of different interest can but anyway I'm geeking out a little bit. The big thing is remember why you're doing it, it's the community, it's not the product. If you're thinking product, product, product, you're selling a commodity. I don't care what you're selling, the info product, the physical product, whatever. If you're thinking about the product, it's just a commodity and someone else is going to beat your own price eventually. Steve Larsen: Oh man, I totally love that. The power of the community too is so huge because I mean, just like you said, they will start to tell you what is it that they want which takes a lot of the guesswork out for you. Basically, it's this huge platform for you to start crushing false beliefs and it's a little group for you to launch when you actually do create the products that they're asking you for. I don't know, it solves so many problems for you to have the community, have this following, a group of people it's like I'm totally in love with what you're doing. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. Steve Larsen: I love that you brought that up, it's part of the eCom selling because most people don't think of that for eCom. Most people since it's a physical product, I mean, it doesn't take that much copy usually to sell something physical. You don't really see massive sales letters on Amazon pages. The value is on the tangible thing I'm going to get to hold and touch. I'm being future paced alone. Usually, you can charge a little bit more easier than info products out of the gate because I'm going to get to hold it and it's real. Bryan Bowman: The only eCommerce people that are thinking about this are those that are in eCom Underground. Steve Larsen: Yeah, no, I totally believe that. Bryan Bowman: No, honestly. I know sometimes I sound like a broken record to the community. I'm always talking about this. It's so important like this is the one piece is this community piece but anyway, I love it. It's fun stuff, man. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. As far as how to sell an eCom product, you said the funnel, don't just be on Amazon, build a community, combine it with info product or software, how do you find the product? It's like we have these models in our head and we understand part of the marketing pieces like, "Oh, yeah, I can totally do that. I can do that." What? Do I do it too? What's the actual ... Find those things. Bryan Bowman: Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, I'm going to assume. It's so funny because I always talk about there's principles, there's strategies and there's tactics and the tactics what usually ends up happening is people don't usually share the tactics or talk about the tactics. They'll talk about the principles which is like find your Y, find the core interest, the strategy is how you're going to implement high level but then the tactics really people don't talk about much. We're covering all these which is actually pretty cool. The principles guys is what is the interest and I would always have you start there. I would have you not start at the product... I think that's an old mindset and if you start at the product, I think it's not that it can't be done and I'll share a way where you can do it that way but I would highly encourage you to start all the way at the beginning at the principle like what is it that you're trying to build, what is it that you're trying to create, who are the people you're trying to gather or congregate and the products will emerge out of that, I guarantee you. They do every single time. That's literally how we build brands. Now, we start first with the interest. We start first with the passion and the products will emerge. If you want to go straight to product, we're going to come full circle and go back to Amazon. Amazon has more data than you could ever go out and pay for with software or anything else. There's some really cool stuff you can do. If you go into, I mean, I'll just tip right here, guys, this is how we do product research. Even if we're in a niche already and we want to look for extra products, and this is assuming you don't have a list, if you already have a list then do an ask campaign. Ask your people like what do you want basically. Steve Larsen: Yes, I love you're bringing that up. Okay, nevermind. Bryan Bowman: Let's say we're starting with nothing. What's that? Steve Larsen: I said I'm geeking out with you. Bryan Bowman: Let's say we're starting with nothing. Amazon has these really cool things called Amazon best sellers. They are the hot list, the most wished for list. When you go into Amazon and they'll tell you what are people wishing for, what are they putting on their wishlist like what are things that they want, what are the things that are the hottest sellers overall in Amazon or by individual category. If you want to sell stuff in the sports and outdoor niche, Amazon will tell you these are the hot top hundred selling items in the sports and outdoor niche. It just gives you the data. That by far is the best place to start, to start brainstorming ideas. There's apps you can buy that are plug ins, none of them are really I mean, they're not super accurate in the sense that like this one says this sells 10,000 and this one sells 20,000. It's just a gauge to help you understand maybe approximate sales so you understand what's a hot selling product and where maybe there's some opportunity. Amazon is a place to start. If you want to look for purely product research, I would encourage all your listeners to start checking out some of those lists in Amazon. Again, guys, I would highly encourage you if you want to build a long-term asset, start with the principle of the actual interest. Steve Larsen: Could you give an example of that? Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: Could you give an example of that? Just for someone listening that goes, "What do you mean by principle?" Bryan Bowman: Yeah, if we decide like we want to get, okay, I'm just looking right here, I've got my cup of coffee right here. We'll go with coffee. If I'm like, "All right, I want to start selling eCommerce." Let's say I'm starting from day one, "Man, I really want to start selling some physical products." Then maybe you're going to go into Amazon and you're going to start looking for hot selling products in the coffee niche. There's a lot of them. I mean, coffee niche is such a good niche. I'll explain why it is in a second. There's tons of amazing products you can sell and probably can make some money on. You can get source pretty easily. You can find a manufacturer in China or maybe even domestically, but we tend to go overseas and get it sent, get your samples and start producing. That's one approach. You go to Amazon, you're going to be able to find some hot selling products but what I'm going to encourage your listeners to do and I hope you consider is let's go back before we even consider do I want to sell the coffee mug, do I want to sell the grinder, do I want to sell the pour over top, or whatever. Let's go back and let's talk about the niche, the interest coffee aficionados, coffee lovers, people who really like why do they love coffee so much and start building that community. Start thinking in terms of even if you're not going to build a community page or anything like that but start thinking about the interest, the principles. Why do they love coffee? What does it mean to them? Because what's that going to influence it's like top down, it's going to influence everything else. It's going to influence all the way down to your Facebook ads. If you're just like, the worst thing you can do if you're going to run a Facebook ad, we can talk about this is say, "Get my coffee," let's just say coffee mug, coffee mug 50% off today only like I guarantee you no one is going to buy that. No one is going to click on that and buy it because all you're trying to do is scream louder than everybody else, every other advertiser. If you can pull your customer out of the crowd. I always use a Waldo example like where's Waldo where there's like all the people and then Waldo is in there and if like a magnet, if I can pull Waldo out of that sea of people then I don't need to yell anymore. I can just have a conversation. If I start with the principle which is why do people love coffee so much, that's going to affect my messaging, right? That's going to affect how I connect and for some people, they choose a certain coffee because they want it to be free from toxins, and they want it to be organic and they want it to be the cleanest cup of coffee. For others, it's like a super power where it's productive, it's the first thing they have that inspires them. No caffeine, no creativity then that's how I'm going to connect with them. At the end, I'm still selling the same product, the pour over top thing but it's because I took the time to get my principles right, then the strategy I used for my Facebook ad was influenced and then tactically how I implemented it in my funnel was influenced as well. I don't know if that make sense... Steve Larsen: No, it totally does. Rather than selling, I mean you're basically selling the benefit rather than the feature which is awesome. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I mean there, you put it, see you're so much smarter than me, Steve. Steve Larsen: Whatever. Bryan Bowman: You put it so much more elegantly. Steve Larsen: I stole that from so many marketers. That's cool though, okay. Meaning, I've always thought of that in terms of how to sell it but you're taking that principle like way farther back into the actual product selection phase which is very interesting. Bryan Bowman: You know why though, man? This is my prediction, and not that this is ... I'm no Nostradamus so marketing, I know the guy who is though, but what's really going to start separating people is like being genuine, man and you can't fake it. That's the thing. I actually, I try to get into niches. I don't sell me-too products. I try to get in niches that I'm going to take a little bit of time to really understand the niche. Typically, it's going to be something I'm interested in but even if I'm not and I see a great opportunity in the market, I'm going to get to know these people. I really, really, really want to be genuine and serve and create a sense of community. It just makes everything so much easier. I can't emphasize it enough because you're going to be able to think their thoughts. You're going to be able to get into their head. It makes product selection and copy and offers and everything so much easier. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely with that kind of backdrop. You go in there and you start looking at Amazon best sellers and you're going to figure out how you can sell the result rather than the thing. How do you start testing? What is it that you're doing to go through you know, "Is this product actually good? Should I build a whole culture and community around this?" You know what I mean? What's the next step after that? Bryan Bowman: I mean, the first thing I mean I'll be honest, it's been tested enough where our method once I check some boxes in terms of knowing that there's enough interest in the niche, doing a little bit of preliminary product research, seeing that there's some products that people buy, again, going to Amazon, seeing what kind of stuff they buy, researching the niche a little bit, seeing the competitiveness of it. I'll double down and just start building up our communities but I think initially whenever you're going to sell any physical products, always use small test orders. More and more, because there's been so many more of these private label sellers or people starting their own brands and going to manufacturers in China. If you're using Alibaba or AliExpress or whatever you're using or global sources, there's just a lot of different ways you can go to get product more and more these manufacturers are accepting lower MOQs or lower order quantity. When I started, if you're not ordering a thousand units like good luck because you're going to pay, either you're not going to find any manufacturer to sell you anything or you're going to pay a lot of money. Now, it's not uncommon. I mean, if you just push back a little bit or just make a second or third request, it's not uncommon to be able to get 100 or 200 units, 300 units max, I guess not max but max for a minimum order like a small order and you start with something small. I mean, always order samples. I don't want to get too much into sourcing but always check a few samples on physical products because the picture they show you is never the same as what they actually send you. I mean, what they send you is never the same as the order so it's the bigger order. Order one, the 300 units and start selling those. You could put them, I like putting them on Amazon but you can create some simple funnels and see if the inventory moves. If you're able to actually get the product to sell, if it does, then you know you're ready to double down and order a bigger quantity. Anyway, I don't want to get too much into the inspection stuff and all that. Steve Larsen: Sure. Think about more the ecomunderground.com for sure. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, this is definitely all we talk about is all the nitty-gritty, the details, but I think the main take away is always start small and scale up because I've made that mistake. The first product that we ever launched, I mean, I didn't have a lot of disposable income and we put ten grand into it. I learned the hard way because I sold $500 worth of product. Steve Larsen: This is going to sound like crazy. Bryan Bowman: In fact, I still think I have some of those boxes of products sitting around in a storage unit somewhere. The biggest thing I can tell you like anything else is micro budgets, micro orders essentially and just scale up and test it first. Fortunately, ClickFunnels has made it super easy to be able to test product like using funnel. Steve Larsen: I was going to say, you go get the product, you find it on Amazon. First of all, what people are wanting, the interest, the principles. You go and you source the product to get small micro shipments of it and then you're testing the sale on Amazon plus like funnel, is that how you're doing it? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I mean I would pick one or the other honestly guys because I definitely don't want to divert. I'm a big believer like you focus your attention on one platform so the reason I like to test on Amazon, the only reason I like to is it's just quick. It's very quick to verify but I think that you also, if you're not really interested in getting into the whole Amazon world which you don't have to, the newest brand we're launching we're not even going to sell on Amazon. It's just not an interest of ours... We're doing it surely off of the marketplaces. When I say Amazon, I mean Walmart, Jet, Newegg, all of the marketplaces. You can build out simple funnels just to test to see if people are ordering and build out Facebook ads the way that we've talked about. Maybe we didn't talk about so much but the main thing with the Facebook ad is, actually this is really good, I really want to share this. Steve Larsen: Yeah, let's hear. Bryan Bowman: When you're building out your Facebook ads, there are so many ways to drive traffic, guys. I know people who are purely on Pinterest, that's how they get all their traffic. I know people who are purely on AdWords, that's how they get all their traffic. We use a combination of AdWords and Facebook. We're starting to branch out into Pinterest for one of our brands that's more in the mommy niche. Facebook is still I believe the most powerful platform but because of the increased competition, you've just have to step your game up and the biggest mistake I see people make, I kind of talked about it already with especially in eCommerce, with the streaming louder than your competition with bigger discounts and bolder funds, red borders or whatever is that streaming louder doesn't work. You have to get connection. It's really interesting because if you're selling a high ticket coaching program, let's say you're selling a $10,000 high ticket coaching program, you would never get on a Facebook ad and be like have a video or have an image that says, "Get my high ticket coaching for 50% off, it was 20,000, now 10 and I'm an amazing coach. You should totally come work with me, you will get amazing results." No one would ever start their campaign that way. It's like a coaching program, right? Steve Larsen: If they do, it's really annoying. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, if they do, it's really annoying and if you see those ads, just make them a spam or just report them because they don't work. Yet that's what most eCommerce sellers do, right? We're like, "Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now, 90% off, 95% off, I'll give you $5 if you buy it." It's like let's just push the offer. What would you do if you're a high ticket coach? What would your ad look like if you're trying to sell a $10,000 coaching program, Steve? Your initial ad to cold traffic, what would you ... Steve Larsen: If I was selling a high ticket coaching program from cold traffic, actually I wouldn't. I would sell to my own community. The first thing I would do is I would be out showing people benefits of using a funnel and first, defining the people who probably know what that vernacular is. Then, ascending then up slowly just like you and I were talking about before because I wouldn't walk up on the street and ask someone for ten grand. To me, that's what cold traffic is. I'm not that good at cold traffic and it's for a reason. I just feel like it's the harder method than going to warm traffic and hot so I don't do cold that much. Bryan Bowman: Like you said, first thing you do is you'd start serving and you just start probably connecting with them. It's a little bit easier with low ticket. It probably wasn't the best analogy because yeah, absolutely, good luck selling $10,000 program to cold traffic but let's say it's a $30 offer. Let's say it's a $10 offer, I don't care what it is. There is an independence and an interdependence between your ads and your landing page. There's an independence because you're not trying to sell with the ad. All you're trying to do is get people to click to find out more. It's like a headline, the headline has one purpose, right? To get people to read the next line. Steve Larsen: Right. Bryan Bowman: The headline is not there to sell them necessarily but your ad is definitely not there to sell them, it's to get them to just click to get to the landing page, however, there's an interdependence between the ad and the landing page because that pre-frames them and sets the stage for whether or not they're going to accept your message on that landing page. Not all clicks are created equally. When I understood this, this was like the biggest breakthrough for me and my ads was there's this independence but this interdependence and when in my ad I just want them to click so that's where I'm going to try to build that connection, that's where I use a lot of story, I use a lot of powerful imagery. Who is it? Oren Klaff in Pitch Anything, he talks about the three different parts of the brain. Steve Larsen: It's such a good book. Bryan Bowman: It's awesome. I could just ramble off books right now, they're so good. Steve Larsen: Me too, so good though. Bryan Bowman: Basically, the part of the brain that's responsible for making decisions is actually has nothing to do with the logical like fact-based like what percentage off am I getting, it's the emotional part of the brain. It's the part of the brain that's responsible for processing emotions. We want to connect and we want to feel what they're feeling and let them know that our product, we're not trying to create emotions. This is Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising, the job of your advertisement is not to create the emotion, it's to take their existing hopes, dreams, desires and put them onto your product and project them onto your product. We do that by connecting with the ad, we need to have more of a connection. It's a little bit hard. I know this all sounds very theoretical but- Steve Larsen: It's so true, though. Bryan Bowman: It's not that difficult if you actually care and you actually take the time to think about what pains, what fears, what hopes, what dreams your prospect has. The only job of the ad and it's not overly like sentimental or anything, we're not trying to be corny either. It's just enough to make people stop and go, "Okay, maybe I am interested in this pour over coffee top thing, maybe this really will make special cup of coffee, maybe it will make something that is worth tasting. Let me go ahead and click and find out." Steve Larsen: Right, it's powerful because like you said, you're not trying to create desire inside of a person or any kind of emotion or whatever. If they already have it, the only job I feel like of the sale and marketing is to just plug into exactly what you just said. I forgot it's Eugene Schwartz that said that. That's cool, that's really cool. With the ad, you're going in, you're saying, independence and interdependence in the ad but then also the way they flow together. I'm not trying to sell on the ad, I'm just trying to tap into current emotion and then the next page that has one role, the next page one role, I love that. Everything on every single piece of creative. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. Steve Larsen: Do you mind just real quick, I know we've been going for a little while here, but do you mind just real quick just sharing a little bit of one of the standard eCom funnel models is and maybe we'll wrap up with that? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, for sure. We still use free plus shipping a lot. I still love free plus shipping. Again, when people say, I see this all the time, you know free plus shipping, everyone is doing it, it doesn't work. Yeah, if you're leading with on your ad, get our widget for $7 or get it for free, get it for free, click here, click here, click here. Again, it's a commodity, people just don't respond as well to that ad. Last year they did, but they just don't respond as well anymore. I still like though a low ticket tripwire, whatever you want to call it, to get them in and qualify my buyer and qualify, qualify a subscriber and qualify a buyer at the same and obviously getting that credit card info on the front end allows us to do one click upsells. The biggest thing I would give for eCommerce folks and maybe you've heard this, maybe you haven't is multiple quantities, multiple quantities. I want you to test being a little over the top. In the sense like if you think nobody would ever want five- Steve Larsen: Coffeemakers. Bryan Bowman: Coffeemakers, exactly... You don't know how many people they have in their family, who they're going to gift these things to, you have to try it and you'd be surprised how often people will take the multiple quantity option. Again, ClickFunnels is why love it, it makes it super easy for me to not only add multiple quantities but with a few lines of custom code, a few easy lines, have some nice call outs, bold some things, really call out my best value to try to entice people to consider the higher quantities. On the upsell pages, I used to do more of the same thing, we're finding that doesn't convert as well so I am starting to switch to different complimentary products but again, in multiple quantities. Then, on my down sale we'll usually strip out the most popular item so let's say it's a supplement product. We lead with our free plus shipping or maybe our trial, then on the upsell with multiple quantities, on the upsell we might have a pack of different products that are likely to be purchased together like a bundle, stack or whatever of supplements. If they say no on the down sale, we would strip out the most popular product that we know people is our best seller or is a popular product of ours. We would strip it out of that stack. That's one example. Then just make sure you take advantage of those thank you pages. That's another common thing I see with funnels in general but definitely eCommerce funnels more than anything is no one is taking advantage like few people take advantage of that thank you page. That's a great place, again, learn from Amazon, frequently bought together, frequently viewed. Think of yourself as a massive ... Steve Larsen: This too. Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: Other customers bought this too. Bryan Bowman: Exactly... Customers who bought this bought this as well. Hack Amazon, I mean, if you're an eCommerce seller, hack Amazon but like look at every element on that page and see how you can incorporate some of that stuff. That's probably one of the best takeaways I can give is that thank you page, it's underutilized and start funnel stacking. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many times people will go through this free plus shipping offers when you start stacking them. Steve Larsen: It's so true. I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:41] gun oil thing, oh I have a few guns. Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: I said, it's so true, I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:47] gun oil thing. I only have a few guns but man, I bought so many of those things. It's so funny. That's hilarious... Man, I want to thank you for this. Just to recap everything, I always take a massive full page of notes every time I get to talk to a genius like you so I got it here again. You talked a lot about how not to choose eCom or info or just one thing, you actually can combine them and make even more powerful offer. I love the concept of how getting off of Amazon allows you to sell for 11 x potential on the backend. The dirty little secret is you get paid if it's flat. I love that. It's hilarious, man. Then, massive focus on community, otherwise you're just a commodity. You can still sell the commodity but there's no longevity in just selling commodity. You got to be able to sell to community too and get people into there. I love that. Itches are in the niches, love that too. Then a big focus on principles, what are the interest, what is it they're actually going after, actually fulfilling that and tapping into creative or tapping into the desires that they already have. I love the concept of independence and interdependence with the ads too and pre-frame bridges and all that before the funnel hits and then going to the funnel. Man, you dumped a ton of stuff on here. This is amazing. This is like just a little flavor of what you actually offer in eCom Underground, that's so cool. I really appreciate it. Bryan Bowman: I was excited to come on, man, when you invited me. I was very excited. We've become really great friends man and I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing. Anything I can do to help serve your audience and hopefully give back some value that they can implement, some strategy but also some very tactical things that if they're running funnels right now, hopefully they can go tweak and start testing. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that. You guys noticed, those of you guys that are listening now, how much did he actually just spend on the funnel itself like the pages, not that much time. I think it's a big place that people fumble up and they say, "I've got to spend all this time," now, the funnel matters but so much goes in to actually finding the product. Finding the needs, fulfilling and actually building the business around the funnel so it can be self-sustained, I love that. Anyway, thanks so much for all you shared and I really, really appreciate it. Hey, where can people go to I think you've mentioned the trial they can get? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I want to do something special for your audience just to have them experience a little bit of eCom Underground and be able to connect with them a little bit more. I recently created a group. We have a large private Facebook group like most ClickFunnels official, it's private but it's available for free to the public. That's an amazing group that's growing very, very quickly but we recently started a separate group which is our insiders group. Our eCom Underground Insiders... This is really special for me because it's a little smaller group and allows me to just serve them a little more closely and spend a little more time with them. What I do in that group is I have a weekly live Q&A where we literally breakout the whiteboard and your exact questions get answered and you come on and as a group we can answer them but what I do is anything that I can do to help to answer these questions I do. If you submit the questions in advance, if there's someone in my network who's a better expert than I am then I try to get them on that call and we try to make sure you get your questions answered every week on those live Q&As. What I also do is I have an expert, I call it expert no pitch interview where literally you know that moment, Stephen, it's one of my favorite things ever, it's like after you finished dinner, the plates have been cleared, dessert is gone, we're just sipping coffee or whatever it is and we're just sitting there talking. We're all just really calm and just sharing stories. That's the environment in the interviews, we're literally it's just an open dialog, somebody who's just amazing in what they do, most of the time eCommerce related, and we can just pick their brain and get our questions answered from an expert. We do that every month and we have a special private group just for us for the insider so it's a really special community. What I want to do is just extend a 30 day all access trial for all of your listeners, they can come check it out, see if it's for them and I'd love to have them obviously. It just reminds me of a sales page, like what's the catch, there's no catch. It's part of a huge national promotion. What I want honestly is like have your audience experience it, if they get value then of course I would love to have them stay and to be a part of the community long-term. What they can do is if you'd like to be a part of it and experience it, they can go to eCom, it's with one M, ecomunderground.com/steve S-T-E-V-E and yeah, we'd love to have you and have you try it out and see if it's a good fit for you. Steve Larsen: That's awesome, man. I appreciate it. Hey, if everything else is good, reach out to Bryan to say thank you so much. Bryan, I appreciate it, a personal friend and total eCom junkie and nerd. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, for sure. Steve Larsen: There's a lot of eCom people that listen to this podcast, so I know they're all going to really love it. Anyway, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate this. Bryan Bowman: Awesome. Thank you so much and yeah, it was awesome. Steve Larsen: All right, bye-bye. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this 2nd episode of our 6-part series, Yanni shows the funnel behind his painting business... Steve Larsen: What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this is part two of our six-part series. This episode, I'm going to dive deep into the professional services category. This is one of the six categories that we know people are using ClickFunnels for especially, and so, number two here is professional services. Now, if you are a dentist, a lawyer, a doctor, a chiropractor, a painter, anything where there's a trade involved. Whether or not you had to go to school, there's high skill involved with the actual service of the product. You're going to love this episode. What I did is I've interviewed ... His name is Yanni Fikaris. You'll hear the numbers as he talks about it, but he's pulled 160 grand with $900 in ads--it's ridiculous!--in only three months. He's only had a ClickFunnels account since March, which is ridiculous. Anyway, without further ado, let's dive into the episode... Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best Internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Dentists, lawyers, doctors, chiropractors, painters, anyone with a trade is going to love the episode that we've got for you today. This is honestly a category that's the holy grail of anyone I know who's a funnel builder. They're trying to go after people who've learned a trade, somebody who is trying to sell a specific service, someone who's trying to sell a specific skill, and it's not an easy area. Two days ago, I see a post by our speaker today, our guest today, basically saying, "Hey, look! I'm spending just a few dollars in leads, and I'm making a ton of money every month," and it's inside of what I call, what Russell calls, and what ClickFunnels calls the professional services category. I thought, hey, I've got to get him on the show, and I'm excited to have him. Hey, everyone, if you could welcome with me, Mr. Yanni Fikaris. How you doing, man? Yanni Fikaris: I'm doing great, man, how are you? Steve Larsen: Dude, I'm just doing awesome. I was super excited for today. I had a hard time sleeping last night, because most people don't figure out what you have figured out, and I don't know that you've realized that yet, as I've talked to you, either. Yanni Fikaris: It's a short time coming, but it's a lot of bumps. Steve Larsen: Sure, sure, absolutely. Do you mind? Just tell us a little bit about yourself, and then I'd love to hear about what you've pulled off, because it's pretty unique, man. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, I have a painting and refinishing company. It's been in the family. It's changed a little bit from when my dad and my uncle ran it, but we're a house painter, and we do specialty finishing, a lot of cabinet refinishing. My specialty is spraying, so I really can bring down the crew size and give a really good product because of our spray application. It's harder to do, but it's a niche, and that niche is what promotes me on Facebook, in the advertising. It's that specific niche. I coupled that with what I've been reading from Russell. What he's putting out there is these blue, the blue waters, and I was like, "You know what? This is pretty interesting." I mean, I'm not the sharpest guy, but I was like, "I've got to give this a shot." Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. It's funny. I've visited your site. Obviously, I've looked at your stuff, and you don't look like ... I mean, you don't necessarily look so much like a house painter. I mean, it looked like I was entering some kind of cult world. I mean, it was awesome. You have such awesome branding, such awesome sites, everything else. What eventually led you to get into the Internet space as a painter? Yanni Fikaris: Well, we were spending a fortune in print, and one day I'm going to the mailbox, and I'm taking all this print, all this advertising from all these people, and I'm just throwing it in the trash every day. Then, I eventually put my recycling bin next to the mailbox, because I would just take out print, take out the bills, and throw everything into the recycling bin. Steve Larsen: I think we all do that, yeah. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, I think, ultimately you either bring it in the house and put it in the recycling or take it outside. One day I'm thinking, man, we're spending 10 to 20 thousand dollars a month in advertising, and my newspaper and my print people are telling me, "Oh, if you get 1/1000 of a reader, it's good. It will pay for the ad." That's what they always say, "It's going to pay for the ad." I'm thinking, man, if I spend 20 grand and I make 20 grand, I didn't even have to do any ... It wasn't even worth it, so an old friend of mine that I knew through real estate was friends with Russell. I was watching The Profit, and I watched Russell help one of these guys in a funnel. You see, I empathize with the small business, as opposed to people who are just selling other guru, how to advertise on Facebook. You need to know the business. You need to know what it's like to sit at home and worry. Our family's owned small businesses before. We've had restaurants. We've had takeout places. This isn't my first one. It's not going to be my last. I can sit in your shoes and work on your problem. You put me in any ... That's why I like The Profit. I can do that. I'm a systems guy. I can figure out where you're weak and where you're strong and make anything efficient. I put two and two together. I found ClickFunnels. I did the demo, and I was like, you know what? I think I can do this. I really wasn't a big Facebook guy at all. I really just started doing Facebook in November of last year. It hasn't even been a year. It was pretty user friendly. My first funnel was horrible, but, like you guys say, it's really just about how it works. It doesn't have to look pretty... Pretty can come later, if it really needs to be. I went from spending a fortune to really bringing my ad cost down. Right away, it didn't work, but my ad cost was still a lot less, so I was spending a minuscule amount and getting deals, and people were starting to see it. Then, you see when the user rate starts, or the views start to actually increase. People start to share it, and people start to know your brand. It started to click, and I got that aha moment. I was like, dude, this is good. Steve Larsen: I went nuts when I saw your post. I was like, holy crap! Who is this guy? This is awesome. Holy crap. I started just scrolling, everyone just going nuts about it, everyone else tagging everyone else in it. I was like, this is amazing. This is absolutely ... It's so unique what you've done. I have really two areas I just wanted to dive into. Number one question: First of all, you're selling your main service outright, right? I mean, that's the main thing of the funnel selling, right? You're not doing like a lead in. You know what I mean? Yanni Fikaris: Yeah. I go direct to what I do best. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Yanni Fikaris: Unlike every other ... I'm not going to say good or bad. This is just how I do it. We have a specific niche service. People see ... I basically put the price and the results--the befores and afters and the price--right away, and that's cut down on all the wasted trips, the phone calls. People know exactly what they're going to get, and they know exactly how much they're going to pay, and you'll see. It's right on the first ... It's the first thing you say, and it's in a lot of the Facebook ads. It's, "This is how much it costs. Look at how cool it is." That's not exactly what it says, but that's basically it. Those are the clicks I get.   Those are the people that submit the information, and that's why my conversion rate's high. Steve Larsen: Huh, that's interesting. That's really cool. I'm actually just taking ferocious notes, just so you know. Yanni Fikaris: Do what you've got to do. Steve Larsen: Yeah, just because there's several points I want to hit here of what you just mentioned. Number one, I hope everyone is listening or hears what Yanni is saying on this, because it's something that we teach, and I teach like crazy, is you've got to promote that core offer. Whatever it is that's your business, that's the number one focus. That's the number one funnel to make first. It's too much of a temptation many times to go and say, "Hey, I've got this awesome Spraymen painter business. Why don't I go sell paint?" Instead of the actual service, why don't I go sell this? Why don't I sell this? It starts distracting you from the core business. Anyway, I just wanted to reinforce that. It's so powerful. First, start with the core. Get that nailed down. Then, you can go to other front ends or back ends or whatever. Interesting. Yanni Fikaris: Can I cut you off just for one second? Steve Larsen: Yeah, totally. Yanni Fikaris: I wrote a funnel ... I had two. Well, I actually had more than two, but let's just say I had two for this conversation. I had one that was just specific in cabinet refinishing, because we do paint other things. Then, the other one that I had was interior painting, cabinet refinishing, and exterior painting, the three things that I like to do or that make me the most money. It was too distracting for the people, even just with three options... Steve Larsen: Interesting. Yanni Fikaris: Even though they might just go there for cabinet refinishing, they saw the other two, and you're talking about the time on the page was ... I don't know the exact percentages, but it didn't convert. It was the same funnel, but I offered two other things that they weren't interested in, and automatically nobody wanted it, and my conversion ... I ended up just dumping and deleting the page. Steve Larsen: Wow, really? Yanni Fikaris: It was the one thing. It's that one thing that ... It's that one big ... They were there for one purpose. They clicked on it for one thing, and you offer them two more things? Forget it. It's too soon. Steve Larsen: That's so true. It's like other things they've got to go start to believe or they didn't know they had those other options, so it distracts them. Yeah, absolutely. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, because they start thinking about other things. They start thinking about, "Oh, maybe I should get my inside painted or my outside, or this other thing." You're dealing with a distracted world or a distracted audience now. You've got to keep them super-focused on what you do best and what you can monetize most successfully for your business. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. That's like buying a computer and walking up to the cashier. "Hey, thanks for the computer," and it's like, "Hey, don't worry. The next update, we'll fix the crashing issue." "I didn't know there was a crashing issue. Are you kidding?" Then they go put it back. Anyway, okay, interesting. It's cool that ... It sounds like you're just following straight from the Expert Secrets book itself. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, it is a good roadmap. There's no doubt about it. You've got to tweak it just a little bit, but don't stray away. When Russell talks about the arrows in the back and you're trying to find your own trail to the top. I mean, people climb Mount Everest the same way all the time. There's a reason. That's the quickest way to the result. If your goal is to the top of the mountain, A to B. If your goal is to pave a new way ... I mean, that's not usually what people's goal is. Steve Larsen: Yeah, absolutely. Now, along those lines, that's actually one of the questions I wanted to ask. You've got ClickFunnels. You're sorting this thing out, and you're building, I'm assuming ... Like you said, it's user friendly. Had you ever built a funnel before? Yanni Fikaris: Honestly, I used Leadpages, and it was a miserable attempt at marketing. That's what it comes down ... I mean, that's just my experience. Other people might have their own experiences, but I couldn't get it to work well. I could get it sort of looking cool, and then I was like, this is not as user friendly. I don't know what to do after this step, and then what? It was always like, and then what? People would submit their information in, and then what? It just wasn't for me. I paid for the subscription for six months, and it detracted me away from marketing. That was one of the reasons I went back into print, because I let the people at the newspaper and the print shops do it for me. Then I turned on to ClickFunnels, and it was great. Steve Larsen: That's interesting. Yeah, hey, that's awesome. I can't comment too much on that, otherwise my eyes are going to start to twitch, and I'll start yelling and screaming profanities. You go in, and, like you said, it's user friendly. You can drag and drop and put all the things together. I'm not trying to promote ClickFunnels with this. I want to dive straight and more into you. How did you know what funnel to build? You know what I mean? There's a lot of different styles and options out there, and you're building one for paint. How did you know which one to actually put together? Yanni Fikaris: That's probably the key question. The first one I built was god ugly. Oh, my God, it was so ugly. It was a picture. It had three buttons. When I actually sent people to it, I was just like, "Listen. The webpage is pretty ugly, but you know the service." I just did it on a whim. It was pretty bad, but it did work. There was no ... I didn't hack anybody else's at that point. I really just wanted to, and this is what I tell people ask me about ClickFunnels, is just go out there and build one, and then you get better at it. Then fine tune it, and then look back at what you did a month ago, and you'll laugh, but it starts getting better. You start playing with the animation. You start playing with the layout. What happens is, when you build that ugly funnel, you start going on Facebook or wherever you're looking, and you start seeing good funnels in front of you. Everything becomes a funnel, and then you're like, "I'm going to take that. I'm going to put that into my funnel, and I'm going to try it. Then, I'm going to see another funnel and I'm going to take a little bit of that and a little bit of this." Then you find one that's really good for what you have to do. The downside is there's not many good painting funnels. There's some big national companies that have funnels, but they do a lot of other advertising. Let's just drop a name, CertaPro. They do a lot of radio ads and phone calls, so they have a call center. They do radio ads. They're funnel is eh. It's really eh. I needed to find a funnel that was in your face service, brings out that price, without a lot of other minutiae, because I tried that with that three-tier cabinet painting, interior, and exterior. I needed a one-service funnel that I loved, and that's what I stuck to. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. That's fascinating. You bring up an interesting point. We always tell people. There's a few people that have come up to me and they're like ... I'm not going to name the name, but someone on Facebook tagged Russell and I in this post, and they're like, "How can Russell build such ugly funnels?" I was like, "I'm his main builder. I spent a ton of time on that funnel. It's not ugly." All these people are like, "It's not ugly." Other people are like, "Yeah, I've wondered that, too." There was this controversy back and forth about it. I got on there, and I was just like, "It doesn't matter what the thing looks like. It's the copy that sells. It's the offer that makes the sale." I mean, Frank Kern has got a white background with a headline a video and a button. That's it. His funnels don't look amazing or anything like that. I appreciate you bringing a point that beauty in the funnel is not what converts. It's actually the offer. It's actually just the one thing. It's literally the one thing you're offering, and anything else can detract from it. It detracts the entrepreneur eventually, too, to think that I've got to make this thing look beautiful out of the gate. Obviously, it does matter a little bit, but to go not launch because you're trying to make it beautiful or you're trying to make it look fantastic or function this way. It's totally a false idea. Yanni Fikaris: Exactly. The more you push towards that beauty, A. You're spending a lot of time doing something that may not help, and you just need to make it grow. You've got to stick with that one thing. The more you're distracted, the more people are going to be distracted. Steve Larsen: Yeah, absolutely. Do you mind walking through the funnel with us right here and just let us know? If you've got the one core offer, what's the first page look like, and the second one? Yanni Fikaris: All right, hang on. I'll bring it up on my ... Most people are looking at it on a mobile, so I'll do it there. Steve Larsen: Interesting. You've got that first page. I'm sure that ... Do you have a micro-commitment on that first page or is it straight to the order button? You say you put the price and everything straight on the ... right from the get-go, the very beginning. Yanni Fikaris: That's it.  It's right before the fold. If you go to cabinetdoorpainting.com, you'll see it. It's a picture of a kitchen that we did, a little tag that said, "99% of painters cannot do this." I do some of the editing. Actually, I do all the editing. Then, right, it smacks you, "$100 per door and drawer. Schedule estimate." There's really nothing else. There's nothing else to it, because the biggest question we had with cabinet refinishing is, "How much does it cost?" People don't know the process. Let me get into the process. If you scroll down to the pictures, you could see it, but their biggest concern right away that you have to either move forward or stop is how much is this going to cost? The biggest attraction is it's cheaper than doing a full kitchen renovation. If you hit them with their number one question right away, you're either opening the gates to people scheduling the appointment or you're not. What we've seen is everybody who has scheduled the appointment ... Our close rate on people that actually schedule an appointment is in the 90s. People know exactly what they're going to get. We have videos that we send to them. Why our process is better. Why our material is better, but that's all the second part of the sale. They're already closed with the price and what they see before and after. If you have a service company, and you have a niche, and it's specific, and your service is great, and you've showed it to them, and you tell them how much it's going to cost, what else needs to happen in the sale? You just have to perform the job. You have to schedule it. I've had people send this in, follow up with a phone call saying, "We're sold. We know how much it's going to cost, but when can you do it?" That's it: when. They need to see it. These are the questions. Steve Larsen: Huh, so I mean, you basically are closing people. They're closing themselves with this kind of front end page basically, right? Yanni Fikaris: Exactly. When you see the funnel, and if you're a painter or you're a homeowner, you can tell. These are our jobs. We didn't take these offline. These are our jobs. You know that you're going to get, so there's no question about ... They're not getting prices from somebody else, and if they do get prices from somebody else, they're not going to submit their information. If they're going to go with the cheaper guy, the cheaper guy's not going to do it our way, and you're not going to have results like this. They do all the research before, and, we can get into this later, but the Facebook re-target. They've already seen the video. They might have went to the landing page, saw the price, didn't put their information in because they wanted to get other prices, and we've had this conversation, and I know what's going on. They get other prices. The other guys are, let's say, either the same or a little cheaper, but they don't think that the results are going to be the same. The re-target works, because it goes right after the people that saw the video, landed on the page, was in there for three seconds or whatever, and then now they're submitting their information, because they're already sold. It lets them sell themselves. That's why I designed this funnel this way. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. Okay, so I'm just running back through here. You've got the first page. It says, "$100 per door." There's before and after shots, and it then it says, basically, schedule. Then people who leave, you are re-targeting them, I'm assuming, with Facebook ads. Yanni Fikaris: Correct. Steve Larsen: Then, as far as, and I definitely want to ask about that in a second, but when people hit schedule, though, what happens then? Yanni Fikaris: It's just a pop-up. It pops up. It says, your name, email address, phone number, and a promo code. Now, the promo code is how I track which ad groups are working the best. Every ad group that I have has a different promo code name. Then I also have one that I give out to people when I see them. Let's say, my promo code online is FREE123 or whatever it is, make one up. I know that it's from the Facebook group. That's that. Now, if I do SPRAYMAN15, I've physically spoken to somebody and I said, "Listen. If you're interested"--or I give them a business card--"put SPRAYMAN15 on the promo code, and you'll get" ... It's the same coupon, but I know where it's coming from. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: That's it. They get that. They schedule the thing. They get an email from me. It's automated. It comes out, I want to say, about 15 to 20 minutes later. It's not automatic, so it doesn't look like a robot. It comes out a little later, and we schedule right away. That's the key to it. I tell them to send me pictures of their kitchen. I try to reduce the amount of time that I'm actually going out. I can price this up, looking at the job in photos. I'm here or I'm at a job, somebody sends me, I say, every angle of every cabinet. You're just trying to be seamless with your process or whatever your product is, and you have to be seamless in the sale.  You don't want to waste your time. Steve Larsen: Okay, with the scheduling process, there's something really key here. They're not necessarily choosing a spot in your schedule. Basically, they're submitting, and then you call them back immediately. Yanni Fikaris: Correct, yeah. I'll call them back. In the email, it says, "If text is better, text me," or, "We'll text each other," and that works a lot. People who would rather text, it's not old school, but I'm open to it. That's fine. They're not picking a time in the schedule to perform their job. We're booking into like October, November, at this point. Steve Larsen: Huh, that's insane. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, we're doing these back ... You saw the sales. It's like back to back to back to back. Steve Larsen: It's amazing. It's so amazing. There's something in here that is really key, and I don't know if you did this on purpose or what, but it actually reinforces something that we do in our own phone sales, as well. Usually when we do some kind of application style funnel, where it's similar to what you've done, and there's a scheduling aspect in it. Every single time we go and we say, "Schedule," and they actually pick a time for us to call them, it always fails 100%, because 90% of them aren't just going to show up or they're not going to answer the phone. If there's a future based time, where they're like ... I like the software Calendly, because you can go choose times for ... Unless they've already paid money, there's nothing that holds their feet to the fire, so we found that 90% of the leads with a scheduling software or something on the back just dies. It's so clever to me, so you're saying "Schedule," which sounds so much more low barrier to entry. It sounds so much less scary to say "Schedule" than it does, "Hey, I'm going to call you in 10 minutes," and you get them back on the phone. That's fascinating, so it's "Schedule," but you call them immediately, and that way's always, huh, that's a million times better. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, because they're not getting ... Even though they're really requesting services or getting a quote or whatever they're used to seeing, that in my mind is, they're so used to seeing it, and then there's no, not that there's no value to it, but it starts getting commonplace, and "Schedule estimate" is very specific. You're clicking this button to schedule an estimate. You're not picking this button to get a price, because it's already there. You're not picking this button for any other reason, and I'm really taking Russell's "knock that big domino down." I take out small snippets and small sections, and I'm walking through as the user, and I'm saying, "What's the big domino? What's the hurdle?" Let me just ease this and make the wording as specific as I can for whatever I'm trying to get them to do. I don't want them to ask me how much it's going to cost, because I already did that. That rarely happens. People don't go, "Is this going to cost two grand or 10 grand?" They go, "I have 61 cabinets. It's going to cost me $6100. When can you do it?" That's it. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, it is. I love it. Steve Larsen: Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool. Okay, front page, just walking everyone else through the funnel as well on the call with us. Okay, front page, you say $100 per door. We've got before and after shots, Schedule Estimate, a pop-up, and it asks for name, phone, address. Do you ask for email?... Yanni Fikaris: I do ask for email. Steve Larsen: You do, obviously, because, okay ... Then after that, you say, there's a Submit button, right? What happens after they click Submit? Yanni Fikaris: They go to the third page. It just says, "Thank you. We'll contact you," or, "Thank you for the estimate. We'll get right to you," and we do. We call them within 15 minutes. They'll get an email from me within 15 minutes. That's the next auto ... There's four steps, so that's the next automated step, and then somebody from the office calls. If they get the email and they want to text, they'll text. At that point, the sale has to take over. The actual person has to talk. You can't go back and forth with technology. Somebody has to get on the phone and explain the process. The reason I do that is our process is involved. It's kind of hard to, without- Steve Larsen: Like vetting people out almost? Yanni Fikaris: I get so passionate about what we do, you can feel it when I'm talking to you. Steve Larsen: Oh, yeah. Yanni Fikaris: I love to talk. I love to sell. That's probably what I should do, besides painting, is just sell stuff. When I'm on the phone with them, they can feel my passion. It just closes the door. I can't wait to do what we do at their house, and they can't wait to see the next video. Usually, we're videoing the job we're on now, and I get excited. I'm like, "Listen. I'm going to send you the videos before they're edited, or you can come out and see what we're doing." We've had people come to other projects. They just want to see, and they love it! Steve Larsen: You're kidding. Yanni Fikaris: At that point, we take over. The actual person takes over, the salesperson takes over. Usually it's myself who takes over at that point. Now I'm talking to the client. There's nothing else to it in our business. The only thing they'll get in technology after that ... They'll get a proposal in writing that they have to agree to electronically, but everything else, it starts to go hands-on after that, and that's how we close all of our business. Steve Larsen: Just more on the closing process itself, so if they don't answer the phone, do you follow up with them again later? Do you put them on some kind of a ... I don't know. What do you do after, if they don't answer? You just don't it? Yanni Fikaris: Well, yes and no. I don't do the crazy high school girlfriend routine, where I'm calling, calling, text, text, call, email. That just doesn't work. Just like distraction, overbearing doesn't work. There's a point that you have a good service, and you have to monetize your time effectively. If you're going to chase somebody down, you give them fair warning. "Listen, I'm going to" ... Don't do it the first time. "If you don't call me back, I'm never going to call you again." That's ridiculous, too. You call them... You do exactly what you say you're going to do. "I'm going to call you in 15 minutes," so you call them in 15 minutes. If they don't pick up, I don't leave a voicemail. I'll email them, and then I'll say, "I left you a message. Shoot me a call. Here's my number if you want to text me if it's easier." This is really where we get the texts. If texting is easier for you. Some people are dismissive to our initial phone call. They don't want to talk to people. Steve Larsen: That's massive, yeah. Yanni Fikaris: That's just part of the world we live in today, so you want to open them up to a text. Give them your personal cellphone. For us, we're selling $5000 to $50,000 paint jobs. "You'd better give me your cellphone." That's all I've got to tell you, so we do it. Here's my cellphone. I might email one more time after that, just to say, "Hi," in a few days, but if they're not going to buy at that point, something happens where they're going to circle back. We've had people circle back and say, "We went down a different road. It was horrible," or, "Something happened, life event, and now we're ready for it." Steve Larsen: Huh, wow. Do you even mention the texting option during the actual opt-in process? Yanni Fikaris: No. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. That's way awesome, because that's got to pull in so many more people, who are serious about talking with you than if you'd say, "Hey, just go ahead and text me." If you said that right out the gate, that obviously would bring in a different person. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, you have 15 texts open with all these people trying to get your product, your knowledge, your this, you don't even know who you're talking to. You've built funnels. Imagine if somebody was like, "I want you to build our funnel," and you're like, "All right, here's my cellphone, just text me," and that's what you put on Facebook, you'd have a million people. Steve Larsen: Oh, at least. I already do. I can't handle it. Yanni Fikaris: It's not, especially in a service environment, higher dollar, and I would definitely not do it for lower dollar ... If you did a $50 and you start giving your cellphone number out, it would be crazy. Steve Larsen: Oh, that'd be terrible. Yanni Fikaris: There's a continuum there. For how much are you willing to give out your private information, and then you have to do it, and then just do what you say. People will respect that, and they will not ... They don't pussyfoot around this. They're not going to hard sell you back with a negotiation. The best example, and this might not be for everybody, but the best example is when you go into a Mercedes dealership or the Range Rover or a Ferrari dealership, wherever you go for your high-end cars. If you ever try to negotiate with these guys, they're like, "Listen." They're like, "You see that sign out there. That says Ferrari. The only thing you're going to ask is what color and when is it going to be delivered. There is no more negotiations." That's it. That's your close. We're not there, but that's the mentality you need to hold for your time, because that's what's limited for everybody, especially in the service industry. Steve Larsen: Do you have sales guys? I mean, it sounds like you have one or two at least. Actual phone guys at all, who call up, or is it all you're running the whole thing? Yanni Fikaris: Zero. Steve Larsen: That's amazing! It's you doing the followups. You doing all the ... I'm assuming you have some kind of notification setup, "Hey, someone just filled out the form," and you just call them immediately. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, right through ClickFunnels. I get an email. It's one of my- Steve Larsen: Automation tabs. Yanni Fikaris: My automation alerts, yep. Listen, somebody just sent it in. I actually put my phone settings on 15-minute alerts, so if you did it in 15 minutes, it's realistic. The reason I did that is I get to it right away. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: If I say I'm going to email you in 15 minutes or call you, that's where I want it to be, so I'm no later than 15 minutes when they submit it. If I got the alert, and this is just a hack for me, but if I got that alert right away, and I called, it just promotes neediness, as the service provider. There is a time that you have to allow people to wait to want something more, and I've found out 15 minutes is the threshold. Half an hour, they've moved onto something else. Five minutes is too soon. Ten minutes ... Fifteen minutes just worked for us. Steve Larsen: Let them wait to want it more. That's powerful, very powerful, and it's cool you've tested that, too, 15 minutes. Okay, a year from now, all right, you've continued doing this. I'm sure you're going to perfect it even more as you keep going. Do you think you will bring on another sales guy or something? Yanni Fikaris: My goal is to either license this whole model from the sale, from what we do to the sales, and give it out as a licensee or a franchise... From my two- to three-man team, and the numbers that you're seeing, that's with a two- and possibly three-man team at times--those are the numbers we're doing--is to be able to put this into a package, train people what to do, and say, "Here is what we do. You can either use our branding and become one of us, or we can use your brand and then make you follow this model." That's where I'm going to be in six months. Steve Larsen: That is so powerful. When I saw what you were doing, obviously ... I'm in ClickFunnels headquarters right now. We're in our cool sound booth room, and from the position that we're able to sit in, we see so many funnels. We see how it's working, how they're not working, in different industries, with different ads, all across the board. When I saw yours, I was like, "I don't know anyone who is in the painting business, who is using a funnel, period." You're not just using it, you're killing it with it. It's cool to see. You obviously have proven the model, and you're thinking about the franchising. I have one more just followup question about closing, and then, if you're okay with it, if you've got time, I wanted to ask a little bit about the ad, as well, because that's probably the next scary piece for people. Yanni Fikaris: Sure. Steve Larsen: Have you noticed much of a difference between the close rate with someone who's engaged in a text message conversation with you versus an actual phone? Yanni Fikaris: I like to ... That's a good question. I would say that ... Oh, that is a good question. Steve Larsen: Because there's a lot of parts to that I can think of. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, there is definitely a lot of parts. A lot of times, my phone calls will end up deferring to a text, and that's what I see. A lot of times, we do out-of-state moves, where people are coming in, and they start with a text, and we close with a text. No matter what, we're always going to a technology piece somehow. If I send you an email, I'm going to text you, "I sent you the email. Here's a proposal. Just sign it," whatever, and then they say, "Yes." I would say that texting ends up being part of the close more often than the actual phone call. Steve Larsen: Really? That's actually opposite than what I was assuming, interesting. Yanni Fikaris: I think I can close them on the phone. Maybe I can close you on the phone, but the text is definitely a part of that afterwards. Once we have this conversation, we can go and then we can digress into a text message conversation, because I've hit all the key points, and texting is a lot easier. The message is there. That's what I'm thinking off the top of my head. I could, from now, for another two months figure it out, but that's what I think. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating, though. I'm really stuck on this, because I think it's really interesting, and it's not an area that most people jump into, I don't think, that much, but would you say that ... I mean, does pretty much every sale involve both? Yanni Fikaris: I like to get you on the phone after you've written down what you're looking for. I think writing down ... I ask people, "What exactly do you need from me?" Maybe not in so many words and maybe not so harsh, but a one-sentence question, "What are you looking for? What do you need me to do?" Then, once I realize I can't text back my explanation or anything else, I pick up the phone. I want to hear what you have to say. I am making sure I am also attracting the right, not attracting the right clients. I am making sure that I'm also working for the right clients that fit my business. I think, as a service provider, the power of not wasting your time, and I don't think I could express this anymore, and you probably got it from the 10th time I said it, but you only have a limited amount of time. You have to work for the right clients, and you are in the power position to work for the right client or the wrong client. If you're chasing the money, you're going to work for anybody who has your deposit. If you're going to work for the right client, it has to be fun. You have to get excited. Otherwise, it'll start to be mundane. You start to hate it, and then whatever you've built is going to just disintegrate, because you're just working for anybody. I have to hear you on the phone. I have to. I've got to hear you... Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah, and that makes total sense... Now, we always tell people, and obviously you're very familiar with this concept, that if you change the bait, you're going to change the client. It sounds like you've obviously gone through the opposite bad part of that. What was the difference in the bait that you've created? You know what I mean? What was the bad client like, and what were the differences you made to boost that client? Yanni Fikaris: That's a really good question. Before I put the cost in the advertisement or on the first page or before the fold, before the cost was in there, everybody had me out to their house, and I would go. How much is it going to cost to refinish a 10 x 10 kitchen. Oh, let me go see it in person, and I'm thinking to myself, Yanni, what are you doing driving? You know exactly what this is going to cost? Why would you not settle this right away? These are just people fishing for numbers. They want to know your process... They see you on Facebook. They know you know all the information. They might just go tell somebody else to do it, which they probably wouldn't get the same results, but you get the idea. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: When I changed the bait to ... I don't like to fish, so when you change the bait to the fish you're going after, the exact meal that they're looking for, it gets everybody else out of the ocean, and you're going specifically for that one target. It might sound rude, but that's just reality. It's marketing and sales... You can't just put every sort of bait out there. You're going to get everything to bite. That's not what you're looking for. Steve Larsen: It's interesting you brought that up, because obviously with these six different categories, there are rules between the six that, hey, you can do this in this industry. You can't in this one, and vice versa. I'd say that this is probably one of the biggest differences between the professional services area and the author/speaker/coach/consultant area, because in the author and speaker and coaches/consultant spot, most of the time price is not brought up at the very beginning, but it's cool that you do that. You don't get on a webinar and somebody's like, "Just so you know, at the end of this you're going to be charged $1000." You know what I mean. You don't do that, but by creating, by making cost an upfront thing, and there's a lot of coaches I know that'll do that, too, but stereotypically this industry or this area seems to be one of the only places where that actually works. Yanni Fikaris: I can't tell you for other, anything else. I'm not yet a coach or selling anything technology based. I have sat on webinars, and some of them are very inspiring, and you wait until the end to find the price. You are still waiting to the end to find how much it's going to cost. I've tried that, and I've- Steve Larsen: Time wasters. Yanni Fikaris: Time waste. There's a big company out here. It's a big plumbing/heating company, and they put you through this ... They double team you, and they come in polo shirts and khakis, and two guys come. They have a portfolio of all their services. No prices on the page. They go through the song and dance, and at the end, they're like, "Here. Here's the number. It's four times more expensive than Joe, but we guarantee this for 10 years." People are like, "Holy moly! I can't pay that! The other guy charges $200. You're charging $1000." He's like, "Aw, but the song and dance." They're like, "Yeah, but" ... In the service industry, you're either--and this is really cool--you're either the cheapest or the best. I think Russell might have wrote that down, but if not, maybe he'll put it in his next book, but you're either the cheapest guy or the best guy, and that's who you're looking for. If you want to be the cheapest guy, be the cheapest guy. If you want to be the best guy, be the best guy, and then you dictate the price first. Now, let me back into this. I studied the mind in college. I was going to be a neurosurgeon, so I have a lot of psych and philosophy background. Steve Larsen: Wow. Yanni Fikaris: I might have a little advantage on just how the mind perceives a lot of things, but for me, if I want to be the best guy, the easiest way to get rid of all the bottom, the people that don't want to pay, is to tell them how much it costs. Steve Larsen: Yeah, it's true. Yanni Fikaris: You know? When the rich guy ... All our clients aren't rich; maybe that's the wrong word, but when the guy goes to the Ferrari dealership, he knows he's going to spend 240. He knows it. Steve Larsen: It's a status thing. Yanni Fikaris: Exactly. You don't have to tell him that. It doesn't make a difference what the price is. He already knows he's going to pay, but that's the best. When you go into the Hyundai used car dealership, they're waiting for the price at the end, because it's a negotiation. Do you see how that changes? It's a menace to a lot of people, but most people, their sales pitch is they're waiting to get the courage to tell the price. Steve Larsen: They're like, "No, I won't tell you. Here it is, because I'm not the best, so let's negotiate." Yanni Fikaris: Exactly. I have daughters. I tell my daughters all the time, "Sometimes there's no room to negotiate. It's a win-win, a lose-lose, or no deal." Go read some good books about negotiation. The philosophy has never changed. It's either good for both of us or it's not going to work. The middle ground, you control me, and I get spiteful. It doesn't work in the service industry. It just doesn't. Hands-on, wasting your own time, physical, employees, workman's comp, I mean, just so many things that whoever's listening to this in the service industry realizes that you're either the cheapest or you're the best. Charge for being the best. Get rid of all the people that are just going to price negotiate you, and then move on. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I remember when I started doing that for funnel building services. I don't currently do it for anyone else anymore at this time, but when I first ... I was like, "I'm going to build it for 10 grand," and it brought in all these people, and I was like, "You know what? I really think I'm way better than that now, and I'm 2X-ing businesses. It's worth way more than 10 grand. I'll do 20." Then it went to 50, and then some guy came recently and offered 100, and I was like, it's so funny to say no to those kinds of opportunities, because I know that that's the same thing that you're probably going to run into, because there's only one of you, and you're awesome. What's nice about what you're saying right now is that you, and it's the same thing I've found, is you get to be choosy with who you want to work with. There's just some people, it doesn't matter how much they'll spend and will give to you. I turned down a 100K one, just because I knew I did not want to work with the guy, himself. I was like, ah, I feel like we're not going to get along. That's not worth any amount of money to me, but when you work toward being best, rather than cheapest, in my opinion, that's the one to go for. Obviously, if you're in eComm or other places like that, it's a little bit different if you can be the cheapest and really get away with it, but by trying to strive for the best. How many people does Ferrari turn away? Probably a ton, because they get to choose the client. Do you qualify? Do you get to qualify? It goes back to, I think, what Russell talks about in the book, too. Everything's status. You're protecting status. You're putting status at risk. Whatever it is. As people are moving through the funnel, and as they get ... Only because I can tell that you've really read his book am I going to ask this, because it's kind of intense, but what have you done to protect somebody's status inside of the funnel? What kind of guarantee or what kind of safety nets have you given them emotionally, so that their status is protected? Yanni Fikaris: Well, if you look at our funnel, the people are there for a result. They want something, and they want a really good result. What they really want is not to spend a lot of money, so, in the world of status, their pocketbook stays full, and when we're done, their kitchen looks like they did spend enough to empty their pocketbook. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Yanni Fikaris: That's a very basic way to look at it, but let's curtail into Facebook ads through this conversation. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Yanni Fikaris: I have two audiences. I have women and I have men. The women want ... Listen. Don't write me nasty emails, if you don't like what I'm going to say. This is just scientific data that I've collected. Steve Larsen: It's marketing. Yanni Fikaris: This is marketing. The women, more or less, want the result. They want the outcome to look like the photos on our webpage, and they get it, so their status goes up. It first mentally goes up when they're like, "Wow! This kid can really make this kitchen look like that? Look at the before and afters. I love it." Now, the husband's status gets shocked when he's like, "Oh, my God, I don't want that. It looks so expensive," but once you tell him the price, then he feels okay. He's like, "Okay, I can pay for this." Now, I say it like that, where the woman decides, and the husband pays, because 87% of my clients, that's the relationship. The husband foots the bill for the job... Steve Larsen: 87. Yanni Fikaris: Now, I'm not telling you that is across the country. I'm telling you that's my clients, and I only know that because I ask. Steve Larsen: Right. Yanni Fikaris: Because I need to know. If you want to better your business, you need to know who you're actually selling to. If you're selling to men, then advertise to men. If you're selling to women, advertise to women. Most of the time, I'm getting women first, and then the man is actually the one paying. Steve Larsen: Fascinating. Yanni Fikaris: If you go into our Facebook, how our Facebook ads play out, I do something similar. I'm advertising pictures and results to women, and I'm advertising price to males. Steve Larsen: Interesting, so do you literally have two separate Facebook audiences running those separate ads? Yanni Fikaris: Correct. Steve Larsen: Wow! Yanni Fikaris: Absolutely. I never mix the two. It doesn't work. Steve Larsen: That's so cool. Yanni Fikaris: If you saw a breakdown between, let's say, Facebook ad group one and Facebook ad group two, one is photos and no mention of cost, and that's directed towards women, and the other one is a basic one and mentioned towards how much is it going to cost or save. A lot of big ones, sometimes, it saves $35,000 to $50,000 versus a full kitchen renovation. That's a good one that hits on men. Another one that hits is we can do this, we start on Monday, we end on Friday. Steve Larsen: Oh, time. Yanni Fikaris: They want to know the time, time, yeah. You have to understand the psyche of your clients, and if you don't know that, write it down. Think about, besides who do you want your ideal client to be? ... Like Russell says, "Who do I want?" Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: You need to know who you've had. You need to know who was your best client and who was your worst client. Two percent of our clients are nut-job crazies. It doesn't matter, you could give them a pile of gold, and they would say you're the most ridiculously overpriced person in the world. You could pay for their job, and they hate you. Two percent... Steve Larsen: Yeah, I call them the dirties. Yanni Fikaris: The dirties. Yeah, we do 115 jobs actually a year, 2% of them are nuts. It just happens. Those are outliers. You don't put them into any group. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: They could be anybody, but you need to know exactly who you've sold to in the last, let's say, five years. That would help. Last six months, I mean, that's not enough of a pool. Once you get that, that's where Facebook starts to come in, because Facebook is integrated so well with that. Steve Larsen: Right, they're everywhere. Yanni Fikaris: They know- Steve Larsen: They've got every demographic. Yanni Fikaris: Every demo, and use it! Don't think that, wow, if I write this, I'm being judgmental. You have to be judgmental. This is marketing. You have to. You're spending your own money. If you were going to say, "I'm going to spend 10 grand." I will spend 10 grand a month, but let's say you're going to spend $1000 a month and not be judgmental and send this ad to everybody and just throw it away, or I'm going to be a little judgmental, and I'm going to be very specific, and I want to know exactly who I've sold to, and that's who I'm going to advertise to. Steve Larsen: Amazing, amazing... I know we've been going a while. Just, it's super cool. Most people don't geek out about the marketing part as much as you do, which is refreshing for me. I wanted to ask, and then we'll end here soon, because I know we're way over on time, but I appreciate your time here. Yanni Fikaris: It's all right. Steve Larsen: When you first started out on the Facebook ad and doing the audiences and such, did you already know all of that data? Yanni Fikaris: No. Oh, God, no. Somebody just asked me that on a post. How'd you figure this out? I was like, "Dude, trial and error, and mostly error." Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah. Yanni Fikaris: The one thing I did know is who my first contact was over the last five years, even in the last two years. I primarily talk to a woman first, and that made me think that that's the person that I needed to advertise towards. At first, I did both, and then it was a huge percentage of women, compared to men, who were responding to the ads, so naturally I just took men right out of it, and it didn't affect anything. Then I ran the two splits. Women are, they're engaging way more than men. If I split my money in half, it would still be more women than men. If I did 90% men, 10% women, it would still be more of a woman. They're engaging more for this service... Now, again, I can't tell you for every service, but for this specific service, I'm engaged way more from a woman between 34 and 65, than a man any age. Steve Larsen: Wow, wow! To know that, that's pretty awesome. I mean, I saw the post that you put out there. You said you're getting $4 CPA. Is that right? Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, we spent. Let me tell you, the month before I posted ... I did this three months in a row. I did one a month ago to show the last two months, and I did it this month just to say, "Wow, man. This isn't a fluke. This is pretty cool." The two months we did 165 grand in business, I spent 900 bucks on Facebook ads. Steve Larsen: Are you serious? Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, dude, I could show you the printout on Facebook, and I think this month we might have spent 300. Steve Larsen: That's got to be some kind of freaking record. I'm not joking. Holy crap! Yanni Fikaris: What happens is--you know this--it starts to pick up- Steve Larsen: Other, yeah. Yanni Fikaris: People just start to see the brand, and the word of mouth, and we get a lot of ... I'll tell you a good story. I had a lady call, and she was like, "I need my cabinets refinished, and I called two of my friends"--this is a lady talking--"I called two of my friends and asked them for recommendations. One said you," and she goes, "I called the other one, and the other one said you. Then I went on Facebook, and I saw your pictures." She's like, "I'm sold." If you have a specific product or service that's excellent, that's the best, you start to be the person that people talk about when they want that. Painting, in general, isn't enough. There's a million painters and everybody can do it. Name one person that could bring the equipment that we have, that we show online, and we could talk about advertising and why we're the best, because what we show people, we do. There's value in the proof, or there's value in establishing what you actually are doing for them. It's not just the results. They're seeing the process. They're seeing how this comes together, and they're like, "Holy crap! This other guy doesn't do anything like this." There's value in that, and it starts to close the door. When you see ... We didn't even post these yet, because I don't want to post too many things at the same time. I don't want people to liken our company with so many different things, they get distracted, but we have another brand that I have, that I didn't even post this yet, but it's another painting company, and it just does move-out painting. Totally different brand... I'll send you the logos, but that painting company has nothing to do with cabinet refinishing. It has nothing to do with exterior painting. It's specifically just for people who move out and want their house painted. Steve Larsen: Wow! That niche- Yanni Fikaris: That's the niche. Cabinet refinishing's a niche, that's the niche, and I have one for exterior painting. Those are the niches, but there's so many people on the market, so you have to be the best. You have to show people the process. My advertisements for cabinet refinishing, they basically go something like this, and I also post on my regular Facebook page, not to be too long-winded, but it says, with a video or a photo, "If your guy or gal or painter doesn't start like this, he'll never end like this." I'll show two pictures, one of us completely maxed out and prepped out, not an inch to be painted on, and another one a finished product, and now you, in your head, you're like, "Damn, I hired Joe's Painting, and there's freaking paint everywhere!" Steve Larsen: Interesting. Yanni Fikaris: Now, it's the dichotomy of cost. You want Joe's Painting because he's cheap, but did you really want Joe's Painting? Steve Larsen: Right, no, you probably didn't. You don't want the result attached to it. Yanni Fikaris: Right. Steve Larsen: Absolutely. Now, you've clearly become a Facebook ad expert, probably, through this process, out of necessity, which is awesome. It's cool, because it sounds like you wrote the ad, and the ad pretty much stays the same, or does it? Are you split testing ads or are you split testing audiences? You know what I mean? Yanni Fikaris: I had a couple ads. The funny thing is the ads that I have, or the ad that actually works is not any picture you see on the landing page, which I thought that was odd. I thought that people would want to see the ad, then the landing page, and be the same. Now, I tried that, but what was happening was I think I was getting too much aversion to cost from the ad. People were like, "Dude, that looks like a magazine. I can't afford that. I don't care. I'm not even going to ask for the price." It's like, I can't go to the Ferrari dealership, because it's too expensive, so I had to back that into a more economic ad, almost like how Mercedes went from their real high class, now they're putting things into the $30,000 price range for more people. It's still high end, but more people can afford it, so I did the same thing. Instead of using my DSLR and flash and making the picture look like we actually publish it onto our webpage, I took a picture on my iPhone 6 and didn't edit it and had it a little crooked, just a little, not obscene, but just to know that somebody actually stood there and took it. That ad worked the best. Steve Larsen: Amazing! Yanni Fikaris: It's amazing! Listen. Some things you can't explain. Do you know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Sure, right. Yanni Fikaris: It just, it doesn't work like you thought it would work, but you have to test it. Steve Larsen: Right. Basically, you widen the net with the ad, but then you make it tighter what seems at the landing page and have all the criteria before it. That's brilliant, my friend. That is a funnel. Yanni Fikaris: That's exactly what it is. You want a million people to see it for nothing, then you want to re-target the people that are interested into the funnel or into the ad that has the cost. Now, they're not going to click on it to spend your money. If they're going to click on it, they're going to spend their money. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Interesting, so super cheap, big, wide open net, goes down to tight, and then ... I've kept you on way too long, but I'm just having fun with you now. Everyone else who's listening, you just have the privilege of listening, because this is all for me now. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, keep- Steve Larsen: How do you run the ... What's different about the re-targeting ads? Do you keep it more of the strict style then, or do you widen it back out to the bigger net? Yanni Fikaris: No, I go to people who have seen a video or an ad placement. It's pretty specific. What I've noticed is a lot of people will go to the re-target and buy from the same ad. I have one that re-targets basically to a copy of the same ad. That works for me. Steve Larsen: Oh, really? Yanni Fikaris: Not a new picture. The new picture ones re-target ... Let's say I have a picture of kitchen A, and they re-target. I've copied everything, except for the picture, and I change the picture. It's like a new dimension for them. It's the same guy, but that's the thing that doesn't work. Once they re-target to the same copy, maybe different words, but the same picture, that works. Steve Larsen: Interesting, so same picture, just switching the copy on the re-targeting ad. Yanni Fikaris: Right. The re-targeting ad has more things about cost. Either they're going to save money or they're going to spend 100 ... I don't want them to click it unless they're going to spend $100 per door. That's what keeps my cost down. If your adverse to cost, once you see that on your screen, you're going to say, "I'm not clicking this. It doesn't make a difference. I just can't afford this," or, "I'm not going to pay." Once you see it, you're like, "Oh, my God, that's better than a kitchen renovation, because I'm going to save 50 grand. Let's find out more," and they've already seen it before. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating, so you go through it. You keep the net open and big, and you say, and it's more about the process, right? Hey, this is what I did, little iPhone 6 picture, and then you go to landing page. It gets a little bit tight, but then on the ad on the way out, the re-targeting ad, it's more about cost to just sift out the last fence-sitters, I guess, right? Yanni Fikaris: Basically. Steve Larsen: Numbers-wise, how do those usually perform? Do you get a lot of closing from that, as well? Yanni Fikaris: The closing ratio of any ... If you go to the landing page and actually snitch our information, we are in the 90s of doing the job. The few times that we don't do the job, it's life changes, something happens, or they fall off the face of the planet, which really doesn't happen. I have a whiteboard in my office. I'll take a snapshot of it. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: The top part is the jobs that we scheduled. The bottom is, we call them the unknowns. We're not really sure, maybe they are, maybe they're not. There's one at, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 ... We have 16 jobs for this month. One is an unknown. I'm talking to her at two o'clock today. Steve Larsen: Fascinating! Yanni Fikaris: They total ... I could do this. This is for this month [inaudible 01:02:56] probably if not a little more than the month before that I posted. Steve Larsen: Powerful. Last question, then we'll go ahead and end. How long did it take you to get this whole funnel process down and really working? I mean, three months in a row, that's awesome, but I'm sure is months of figuring it out. Yanni Fikaris: I don't want to lie to you. I think I started in March. Steve Larsen: Okay, that's crazy, you know? Yanni Fikaris: You could check my receipt of ClickFunnels, but I'm pretty sure it was March or April. Steve Larsen: That's ... It's August, barely. Yanni Fikaris: It was right away, because I'm the guy, that nerd, that's going to stay up until four o'clock in the morning and make sure that everything is centered right, and why didn't this work? Let me just look at this other page one more time. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: It was a ... I need a challenge. That's my personality, so I was like, if somebody else is doing this, dude, I'm going to do this. I couldn't let it wait. The longest thing to do is wait for the ads to actually work, because it does take time. That was the most frustrating part. Steve Larsen: Sure. Yanni Fikaris: That's why, at first, the biggest failure and the biggest mistake that I think that people should avoid, but maybe they have to make it, just--I learn from my own mistakes--is casting that net and not tightening it up. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Yanni Fikaris: Remember how I told you I would go to appointments? I would go everywhere, try to do face-to-face, but these people weren't going to pay when I went out there anyway. Just because your funnel works, people actually submit their information, doesn't mean you're going to make money. Steve Larsen: Right, it doesn't mean the funnel works. Yanni Fikaris: Yeah, the funnel gets people, but you're getting the wrong people. Steve Larsen: Right. Yanni Fikaris: That takes some tailoring, and, like you said before, having the ability to tell people, "Dude, I can't work for you," or, "This isn't just a good project for both of us." That ownership of work, that takes time. Not many people have that skill to turn away work. That gut instinct where you're like, dude ... You look at your buddies in the room or whoever you have in management, and you're like, I don't want to do this. Steve Larsen: This is not the one, yeah. You'd better run. Yanni Fikaris: I, for years ... Everybody makes the same mistake, because they really just want the paycheck, and that's just experience. Steve Larsen: Man, that's incredible. Man, I want to thank you so much for this. You have over-delivered to the nth degree, and I really appreciate it. Hey, just so people can follow you, they can see what you do, where are the places they should go to be watching what you're doing? Yanni Fikaris: I'm on Facebook... I really, I guess I should get a public page more than my own page, but if you just go to Facebook and click in Yanni Fikaris, you can see what we do on a daily basis. Every day, we're putting out cabinets and promoting what we do. I'm sure, after this conversation, it's going to grow. Steve Larsen: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just so you guys know, Fikaris, the spelling, it's F-I-K-A-R-I-S. Yanni Fikaris: That's correct. Steve Larsen: Yanni Fikaris. You're actual site where you're doing all this stuff ... Don't go jumble his numbers, everybody, but you can go check out what he's doing at cabinetdoorpainting.com, right? Yanni Fikaris: That's correct. Steve Larsen: Awesome. Man, I want to thank you very much. This has been fantastic. No matter what kind of professional service you're in, listen to what Yanni's been telling you. If you're a dentist, you're a lawyer, doctor, chiropractor, any trade, any area that's taken a lot of skill to develop, this can be used. A very simple, two-page funnel that is just totally killing it, but very, very ingenious. I mean, every single spot, you have thought of and every single ... There's nothing on this funnel or in these pages or on these ads that is not there for a reason, and that is very rare. I think most of it, a lot of times haphazard at the beginning, which just makes sense, but, man, you have honed everything in. I want to thank you and thank you for all the value you've shared here. Yanni Fikaris: Thanks, Steve. Steve Larsen: Awesome. Thanks, man. Yanni Fikaris: All right, buddy. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best Internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

James is not only one of the most well connected individuals I've ever met, he's also got his B2B funnel totally dialed in... Steve Larsen: What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a very special and frankly quite unique episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Speaker: 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, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited to welcome you and our special guest today to the show. This is an episode I've never quite done before, and frankly, it's an area that I personally am still learning about sales funnels and I'm really excited to have him here with us today and I think part the curtain, let the veil down, so to speak. Very, very pumped to learn from him. Guys, please help me welcome Mr. James Smiley. How you doing? James Smiley: What's going on, Steve? Steve Larsen: Living the dream, man. James Smiley: Woohoo. Steve Larsen: Living the dream. James Smiley: Thanks so much. This is going to be awesome. Steve Larsen: I'm excited that you're here. Just for everyone else, the first time I ever met James, my life is run off of an app Voxer, and pretty much my life, Russell's life, all of our lives, we live on this app of Voxer, and that's how we talk. I don't think I've ever called Russell on the phone ever. I don't know his number, you know what I mean? We all live on Voxer and I get Voxed a lot, from just lots of people. Sometimes it's about me creating new barriers just so I can have my own headspace, you know? But then also there was this guy who kept asking, he's like, "Hey, do you want" ... From these really big and really popular companies, "Will you build a funnel for these guys?" "Hey, what if you built a funnel for these guys?" They were these huge companies, massive, massive, some of them billion dollar companies, and I was like, "Who is this guy? How is he" ... Number one, "Who is this?" Number two, "That would be cool, but how are you getting these leads? How do you find? That's insane." We have a lot of our own certification partners, ClickFunnels. I have my own clients I've built for, but man, the people that you were talking about, I was like, I mean, "This is insane." Anyway, I don't know if I'm allowed to say any of the names, so that's the reason I'm not, but man, I just got to ask, how do you get into something like B2B funnel building? James Smiley: Yeah, no, thanks, Steve. Super excited to be here hanging out with you guys, and I'll just start by saying massive, massive ClickFunnels fan. Being following you guys since before ClickFunnels. I was actually working at- Steve Larsen: Oh, really? James Smiley: Yeah. I was following Russell from some research that we were doing at a big company that I was consulting with, and we were trying to figure out how big was this internet marketing thing going to be and content ... It was really content and where was content going. It was really cool. It's just been awesome to see everything that's happened and been a massive consumer of everything that you guys do, so thanks for everything you guys are doing. I guess to directly share how can somebody go from being an internet marketer or running an agency, or whatever they do now into getting B2B clients, I think one of the things I try to share with people is you've got to get face to face with these kind of people... I think your chances go up exponentially if you can get face to face with them. One of the things that I've been doing and having a lot of success in the past couple years is running a webinar, mini webinar type of system where you could be running a lead or you could be running a lead ad or a Facebook ad or something, and running that into a small auto-webinar kind of scenario. Believe it or not, even removing the login aspect, we've seen a lot of success. We've gotten a tremendous amount of appointments by sending a LinkedIn ad or a YouTube ad directly to a website, to a ClickFunnels page, where it's auto playing myself or one of our sales reps or whatnot, and then from there, they can just click to book, to book a meeting. Steve Larsen: And that's the main goal? You don't do anything else besides that's just the main goal, the interaction from? James Smiley: Yeah. Something that I've used for a long time, I actually learned this I want to say it was like in 2004 or 5, at a Chet Holmes event. Chet Holmes, Tony Robbins event. I think it was called Ultimate Business Mastery a long time ago. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: But I learned about the ideal thing to do is to try to broaden and generalize more your message and really hit on something that's new, cutting edge, innovative. Chet taught us year ago to do things like an executive report or an executive summary, and nowadays with technology, it's pretty easy to come up with something innovative. You can look up online really innovative videos and blogs, and what are the trends in such and such technology. And then essentially what we're doing is we're saying, we're running an ad saying, "Mr. or Mrs. executive. Are you prepared for the 2020 blah blah blah revolution?" Or, "Are you prepared for this and this? Join a three minute webinar," whatever you want to call it, "And let me explain it to you." The person there explaining it is my sales rep. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, and then at the end he or she is saying, "Well, I'd love to follow-up with you. I'd love to give you this $600,000 of research that we've done" or whatever that number is, "Book an appointment right now and I can give you this guide, I can hand you this guide," or whatever. We would always try to get face to face with them if we can. Steve Larsen: So do you run these local just to where you are mostly? Or I mean, you're getting on a plane? You're flying out to them a lot? James Smiley: Yeah. I think it really depends on what kind of business you're running. When I worked for much larger companies, our territory was across the nation, but in more of an agency model I've helped some internet marketers in the space, it's easy to set up a local roadshow or those kind of things through your town or through your city, where you can go and present some information. Really hot things I would think would be for your guys' audience maybe like where is Facebook going to take business in the next three years? And, are the companies in your area prepared for that? You can run a local ad saying, "Hey, I'm booking nine meetings" or, "Six meetings and this is a local tour that we're doing and it's a $3000 event and I'll do it for free, and I'll come to your office, but here's the deal. Number one, the owner has to be there, and then number two, you have to give me X amount of time," or something like that. You put some stipulations on it, but if you can get in front of them, your chances are going to go tremendously. Utilizing the web system and the web tools and the web automation that you guys have set up, and I really like Russell's two step follow-up process that you guys use. I believe for like high ticket sales and stuff. We use a very similar approach. I would say a lot of the times it's one person versus two, but the psychology's actually exactly the same as a two step, so that might help people when they get on the phone with somebody, knowing what to do and where to take it next, but yeah. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. That's really cool. I mean, we're always ... Go ahead. James Smiley: I've done this with as big as companies that are in the government all the way down to when I ... I think I was one of Dan Henry's first 50 or 60 students. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: When I buy even a course like that, I'll just go implement it right away. I want to know, I want to know everything in the first 10 days or so, so I went out and booked a ton of small appointments and went out there and did it. The same process works whether you're going after a chiropractor or whether you're going after a Fortune 2000 or somebody in the government. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. Because this kind of approach, I mean, the core of what we usually teach is usually, "Hey, let's do a free plus shipping offer. Here's this little $7 thing." That's not really the same approach you're going to use when you go to B2B, but the same principles certainly apply of sales. This is cool... I've never seen this before, that's awesome. I want to ask more about you personally, right after this too, but you're saying funnel wise ... Go ahead. James Smiley: You're right. Like, the psychology is the same, which is when I read the DotCom Secrets book, I was like, "This is right on." Even in my industry, I was like, "I don't know if you guys fully understand like how big it is in my industry." I mean, it's huge. Steve Larsen: It's massive, dude. I read it when I was laying out, holding my M16 out there and I was reading this thing and I was like, "This is changing everything" and all these startups were like, "Shut up Larsen." I was like, "No, I don't think you get it. This book's amazing." Sorry. Just a little testimonial there. James Smiley: And I would say the comprehensiveness of that, I mean it's just scripted out for you. It's the most complete book I've ever seen on this kind of stuff. The other thing I was going to inject, too, Steve, is a lot of people say, "Okay, I can get that meeting. What do I sell them? What do companies want? What are the sweet spots?" I'll share some of the things that we're doing and seen a lot of success with, so we're seeing a lot of success with companies that are five million to about 15 million. Steve Larsen: That's the sweet spot for you, right? With this funnel. James Smiley: It's a sweet spot that it's almost downmarket from where I usually play. I usually play in the 10 to 100 million dollar client range, but I've found the ease of getting into clients that are between five and 15 million is unbelievable. If you look at how many businesses in the last three to five years have gotten into that four, five, six, seven million dollar range, it's astronomical. The small and medium sized business has exploded and so most of these owners have gotten there because of some innovation, some relationship they built, some partnerships, some new technology or new industry that came out, and they almost, when you get with them, they almost don't fully understand how they got there. But they're just happy they did, right? Which anybody would be, and so- Steve Larsen: So like the people that have like, they've figured out enough stuff to get that far but they're ... That's kind of an interesting filter, though, as far as cool clients to have. That's interesting. James Smiley: Yeah. The beauty of these people, these companies, is number one they have money. Number two, they reach a plateau where their main goal of the executive staff, the CFO, these people, is they're just trying to maintain revenue and herd the cats. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: They don't want revenue drop off, right? I mean, it's a generalization, but I can tell you through Gartner and Forrester and all these market research firms that I've been fortunate enough to see what the data is, these companies that are in this small and medium sized world, they have no real focus on sales anymore because they're just trying to maintain the revenue that they just ramped up in the last one to five years. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: So you come in, right? Or any of your followers who have an agency or whatever, and the great questions to ask them is, "How does your pipeline look? How does your sales funnel look? What's your cost per acquisition? What's your cost per lead?" It's astonishing. I would say over 9 out of 10, almost 95% of the time they will not know how to answer that. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: You talk to a 10 million dollar company, they don't know what their cost to acquire a customer is, what their cost per lead is. Steve Larsen: Wow. Truly is an accident then, which makes you the hero. That's awesome. James Smiley: Yeah, so you come in with that angle and then it's funny, like the main thing we lead with is funnels, right? It's the main thing we lead in. We say, "Are you getting leads online? Are you using online automation? Are you using social media?" 9 out of 10 times, maybe more than that, they're going to say, "No, not really but we've heard about it" or, "We're thinking it." Steve Larsen: "We posted on Facebook once. We have a page we don't do anything with." James Smiley: Yeah, like one of my clients is a big company in California. They're a top tech company, and they were telling me that when I asked them these questions they said, "Well, we have a marketing agency that did our website and then a year ago they said, 'Hey, do you want us to run Facebook ads?'" This is very typical, right? Marketing company- Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: ... they know branding, they don't really know leads, sales, or want to be responsible or on the hook for sales, but they know branding, they know the four Ps of marketing, all that stuff, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: They watch an Etsy video or YouTube, or took a class, and now they're Facebook ad experts. Here I come into a client, they're spending 5 to $6000 a month on Facebook ads, and all the agency is doing is boosting their posts. Steve Larsen: Like, with no other strategy. James Smiley: I could not believe that. I was like, "You're paying this company thousands of dollars, plus you're earning five grand of your own money, and all they're doing is boosting your post? That's not even an ad. That's not like a real ad." Steve Larsen: No. I could do that, and I don't even know Facebook very well. That's easy. James Smiley: Yeah. They had done this full fledge for about three months. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: They ramped into it and then they said, "We're all in, five grand a month." I said, "How many sales have you ever made in those three months?" They said, "Zero." I said, "So you've spent over $15,000 in ads and you don't have one trackable sale?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "Can you help us with that?" It's like, once you get in the door, you'd be surprised how many of these big companies are disorganized in that area and they're looking for somebody to help them. Steve Larsen: That's so cool. That's so cool. I mean, right before this we were chatting, and you were talking about, "Hey." I mean, there's this process you go through while you're with them. Do you mind taking us through that, like the outline you have in your head? James Smiley: Yeah. One of the things that I'll train people on is when you're in a meeting, when you get face to face with somebody, there's really three things that you need to know before you close, okay? Here's one thing about closing is if a sale is moving too fast and it's a big sale, something is drastically wrong, okay? Steve Larsen: Which is such the opposite thing you want to know and here. James Smiley: It's almost like the opposite of true internet marketing, where it's like you want speed, you want traction, right? With these big companies, very few times does one person make the decision. Nobody really wants to be on the hook if there's a downside, but everybody wants to wave the flag if there's an upside. When you're coming in, you have to understand that there's going to be ... B2B is more of a chess match and you have to understand how the chess match is played and why people want you in there. Believe it or not, the bigger the company, it's not always about revenue and it's not always about sales... It's usually about the bigger the company, and I'm just saying this so people understand, that most of the time the motivation, the influential factor is going to be somebody wants a promotion, somebody wants to look good, something like that. Steve Larsen: Just to follow-up with that real quick, what's your strategy to make sure you're actually pitching the decision maker, you know what I mean? Because otherwise, I could see you literally pitching everybody, you know what I mean? James Smiley: Yeah. One of the things that I do when we're warming up leads and booking meetings is so number one, we're trying to get a face to face meeting. Number two, if we're going to do an onsite seminar or something like that, we require the business, the decision maker to be there, or we'll say, "Or we'll charge you." Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: The decision maker has to be there or we'll send you an invoice, and they have to stay the whole time. If you don't set those parameters, 80% of the time you're going to get some marketing manager who's just basically stealing your ideas and going to go tell the boss that now they're smarter. You've got to get the decision maker there when you're presenting and being the guru. Steve Larsen: And you're presenting in their office, with them, as like a roadshow, part of your funnel basically? James Smiley: Yeah, that's been a big thing that we've done the past five, six, seven years. I've done it at a number of different companies, big companies, small startups, all those kind of things, and for my own agency, and it's worked really well. If you can't get into meetings, the next best thing, something that and I'll just throw this out there for your audience as well, just like a backend hack that we're using, is something that works really, really well is to set up your own Meetup.com or network with somebody who runs a Meetup.com. Say, "Hey, I'm an XYZ expert." "I'm a Facebook ad expert," "I'm an online automation expert," and say, "I do this seminar and we've done it, the value of it is thousands of dollars, but I'll do it for your people for free if you can get 10 people or 20 people in the room." Then, so you can use Facebook, you can use all the little event invites apps to get people there. You can use Meetup.com. For a while, we ran our own Meetup.com here when we we're just getting established in Dallas. Here's the thing about B2B that's different, is you only need like one or two or three really good people in the room to make a six figure income. Steve Larsen: Yeah. That's ... Wow, yeah. James Smiley: Yeah. One of the most profitable meetings in the past, or really this year that I did, was with one person. This person was a big business owner, big time networker, multimillionaire, and it was just to him, and I talked to him and wrote all over his whiteboard for an hour and a half, and then he referred me to my biggest client this year, which I mean, getting a five and six figure deal is pretty common in the B2B space. Steve Larsen: Sure, which is just crazy for so many people who are just starting this game. Like, that blows their mind. "One deal, six figures, what?" But that's the kind of stuff that you kept dropping on my Voxer and I was like, "Who is this guy?" James Smiley: Yeah. Really, some of the people that I've been helping is the ideal scenario for somebody like me, is to go there, win that relationship, keep up the corporate relations, and broker out the services on the backend to people. I've got a network of trusted people. If I need email copy, if I need funnels, if I need Facebook ads, you know what I mean?... That's an ideal scenario for somebody like me. I would say when you start out, try to do as much as you can so you learn the process inside and out, but it's amazing how much money you can make versus how much time you put in. I always have people say, they're like, "James, you have four kids, married for 13 years, great marriage, you seem like you" ... I used to be a pro fisherman, pro bass fisherman, so I fish a lot, I have all these fishing pictures, I run an info product for fishing. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: They're like, "How do you do all this stuff? You have this huge business, and you're speaking at these conferences and stuff." I'm like, it's the B2B space that I play in where I only need less than a handful of clients at a time, and they're going to more than take care of me. I would say something that's really important and I don't want to be one of those people to paint a false reality here. You've got to know how to fire your own client when you're in this game. Steve Larsen: Do you do it a lot? James Smiley: I would say I turn down about 50% of the people who say they want to work with me. Steve Larsen: That makes me feel better because I fire a lot of people. Fire your own customer, yeah, okay. James Smiley: Yeah, it might even be more. Whereas, if I feel like I'm going to get into something and as soon as something goes wrong they're going to blame me, like it could be anything, something in marketing, revenue, CFO doesn't ... Whatever. I'm out of there, you know? Steve Larsen: Totally, yeah. There was a guy, like just recently, and he ran up to me and he's like, "Hey." He's offering me 50-100 grand for me to build a funnel and I was like, "Hey, that's really cool" and it was like a drop in the hat, really easy one that I knew it'd like double sales and all this stuff, but it was simply because ... I said no to him just because I didn't think we'd get along. That sounds ludicrous to people but I don't want to get into this relationship with someone where it's like just hell the whole way, you know? James Smiley: Yeah. Steve Larsen: It's like, "Oh." Yeah, anyway. James Smiley: Yeah. I mean- Steve Larsen: The key is firing more than hiring almost, you know? Just be really picky with those high end ones. That's the biggest thing, [inaudible 00:23:48]. James Smiley: Yeah. Something to piggyback off that, Steve, is you want to make sure you're set up as a corporate entity, a minimum of an LLC. Because you're dealing with big clients and they have lawyers, so- Steve Larsen: Got you. James Smiley: I mean, I've been able to navigate the waters and stay out of any of that, but this is not like working with a three-man show down at the local strip mall area, you know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Sure, yeah. James Smiley: If something goes wrong, the CFO's not going to take the heat. He's going to shift it to somebody else, and so you just need to be prepared for that. Make sure that you don't get into those type of relationships on the frontend, that's the best thing you can do to protect yourself. Steve Larsen: Right, that's interesting. I mean, when you first got started doing this, I'm sure you had your own legal documents and all this stuff. I mean, did you spend a lot ... Probably more time obviously than the average person, just setting up the legal aspects of it? James Smiley: Yeah. I hired a coach to make sure I did everything right. Steve Larsen: Oh, cool. James Smiley: I'm big into coaching, have always been, and so yeah, I hired somebody just to make sure that I had all that buttoned up. It's not as complicated as I thought, but I'd rather be safe than sorry on that end. Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: A lot of these companies, they're legacy business models and legacy leadership styles. They're not going to be all about handshake deals a lot, so you're going to need decent contracts and things like that. Out clauses. You don't ever want to get stuck to where you can't get out. You always want there to be a way for you to step out without any repercussion. That's a big thing, yeah. Steve Larsen: You've gone through and you ... I mean, you showed me how you got the leads. Totally genius funnel, and Meetup.com, ah, I wonder why I've never thought of that before. Like, people go to those. James Smiley: crosstalk... Steve Larsen: Like, that's such a, that's perfect for that industry. Anyway. James Smiley: Yeah. We've ran them, like digital marketing ones, like 5-10 people would show up the first meeting. We ran technology ones, you'll get a ton of people. Meetup.com, there's people there. Once you schedule that, you can rally all your social media channels and get more people there, but yeah, I mean we've ... Let me give people a hack on how where to have this meeting, right? You don't want to have it home or something, and you may not have a place of business. The best places I've found is number one, a really nice local library. Steve Larsen: Really? James Smiley: Yeah. Like, I'm here in Frisco, Texas, just a local library. There's a great meeting space, projectors, all that stuff, and it's free. As long as you're a card carrying member of the library. Steve Larsen: Which takes like five seconds. James Smiley: That's right. Steve Larsen: Yeah... James Smiley: It's funny, this lady actually asked me, "Are you a card carrying member?" I'm like, "Um, that sounds like a little bit more than" ... A card carrying member of the library. Steve Larsen: "Where's the bouncer?" James Smiley: The other really cool place is the Microsoft stores, if you have a Microsoft store in your town or city. They usually have a business center that's attached to it, and you can go in there, and as long as you're not ... I hate to say this, but as long as you're not bringing an Apple computer, and a Windows computer, there are hookups and everything, and just- Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: ... A really cool free innovative space. You just call down there and say, "Hey, I want to book a business meeting." They love it because a bunch of business executives are going to come and be around their technology, so they'll let you come in for free. That's two easy places to have it. The third one is I'll ask somebody, a company, if they want to sponsor the location. That actually works really well, because you'll usually have somebody who wants to show off or maybe wants to create opportunity for themselves, so they'll host it in their own building. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: That's the third way we've done it and it works out really well. Steve Larsen: Do you end up selling a lot of times the sponsor on your services? I can imagine that they'd get interested, too. That's [crosstalk 00:28:07]. James Smiley: We will sell everybody in the meeting. We'll sell to everybody, yeah. Steve Larsen: Do you mind going into how you run the meeting itself? Like, what do you do in there? "Hey guys, want to build a funnel?" James Smiley: Yeah. Surprisingly when I first downloaded Webinar Secrets and all these online methodologies, it's actually very similar. Steve Larsen: I thought so. I was wondering if it was ... Okay, yeah. Nevermind, go on. James Smiley: Yeah. That's why the more that I've unraveled all the things that you guys are putting out, number one I've personally spent over $10,000 on your guys' stuff. I mean, Steal Your Funnel, Let The Show, everything. Your guys' stuff has been rock solid and I actually consume it, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: As I've been consuming it, I'm like, "This is so unbelievably productive in my area." Like, you could actually take the content of some of these things and just say, "Hey, B2B, fill your funnel. B2B, sales presentations." It would open up the doors tremendously. Steve Larsen: That's all I did in that first info product, actually. I was in college, I read DotCom Secrets, I was obsessed with it, and I held a three hour meeting in a stranger's home with tons of people and I recorded it. It was the same content. They were like, "Brilliant." James Smiley: Yeah. It's amazing, like one of the biggest things that people are going to need when they're starting out is they're going to need credibility. Usually people will give you a shot, you can set up one of these meetings in a couple weeks, and actually have it. Like, in 10 days from now you can have your first meeting and have people there. But you're going to want to make sure you record it, the audio. You can go onto Amazon.com, there's a $20 Bouyer microphone that has a 20 foot extension. You can lapel it up onto yourself, so you can record what you're doing. Number two, you want to get somebody to take some photos so you have photos. All those kind of things help you build credibility, so as you continue to move forward, you can use those photos, use the recording, all those things as promotional items and those kind of things. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, and then once you get into the meeting, the general structure is in the very beginning I will absolutely try to wow with something big. Like, the biggest headline I can come up with, and so in my career, I was able to grow two zero to 20 million dollar businesses, new lines of business, like from nothing to over 20 million. Steve Larsen: Oh, my gosh. James Smiley: And I did two of those before I was 35. Steve Larsen: Holy crap. James Smiley: Yeah, so that's usually the line I'll start out with. I'll say, "I'm going to tell you the backend secrets of how I grew two zero to 20 million dollar businesses for two different companies, and how I did it before I was 35, and maybe some of that will be helpful for you guys. Would you guys be onboard if I shared that with you?" Steve Larsen: what... James Smiley: Yeah, exactly. Steve Larsen: Cool. James Smiley: That shocks them, and then you go into like the three step process you use is awesome. Then, on the backend, the biggest thing you want to do is push them to one on one meeting. Like, you'll get people just the hot leads are going to walk right up to you, but try to push everybody to a meeting. If you can get 10 people or let's say you only get five people in the room, if you can book half of those people and then close one of them, that could be easily a five figure deal, easily a five figure deal. Steve Larsen: Interesting. James Smiley: So, yeah, I mean and that's just with five, you know? Steve Larsen: Right. James Smiley: But it's surprising. When you think of psychology of what we're doing, the more I read the stuff you guys put out, I'm like, "Wow, this just crystallizes what we've been working on." Like, it streamlined everything we've been doing. Steve Larsen: That's cool. James Smiley: Yeah, it's been really cool. Steve Larsen: You just barely touched on, so you go through, use some of the Perfect Webinar script which we ... Russell's always mentioned he regrets that he called it that because it's used way more places than just a webinar. Then, you're trying to push to a one on one with them which is awesome, booking and closing them. The one part that you kind of mentioned before the call, so I'm like biting at the bit to try ... I want to hear about also, because every single one that you ever talked about with me was like these huge deals with these very well known companies. I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to say the names so I'm not, but like, "Whoa, that's crazy." How do you structure a five and six figure kind of deal? James Smiley: Yeah, good question. I'll just reveal what we do and hopefully that helps your audience. The three things that mentally in my head, when I get to a one on one meeting, whether that's a phone call, but ideally it's face to face, is I'm looking for is there a need? Like, do they really have a need for my results? I'm pushing results, what I've done, and here's a simple hack I've taught new sales reps. I mean, I had a sales rep come in who was a used car salesman, and at AT&T he ended up being one of the top salesmen in the entire country among 10,000 sales reps and he was a used car salesman. I've taught them this strategy of if you don't have a true result, just Google a result in that industry for that type of service or technology. There's stories out there, there's blogs, there's videos, and you want to be able to share some type of result. Like, "People who used this, this is the type of result they're getting." Like if you can't honestly say, "My clients are doing this," or, "Your competitor who works with me is doing this," then at least share something in the industry. It will help you move the conversation forward. You need them to anchor on a result, and I will keep going back to, "So is that the kind of result that you guys want in your business?" Or, somehow I might say, "What would it do for you guys? I mean, I know you guys have a lot going on, but what it would do if you were able to get that kind of result? Do you actually think you could handle that amount of leads or would I absolutely swamp you?" Once I can get them to anchor on a result, I'm trying to see like is there really a need with that, right? Once I've established that, and a lot of times if I don't understand it, I will just ask them. I'll say, "Do you actually need this or do you just think it's cool? Like, do you need that result? Will it actually help your business?" Stakeholder, board members, VC angel investors, will those guys care or how big is this, right? Number one is need. Number two ... Go ahead. Steve Larsen: Yeah, I just wanted to touch on that. Because that's actually a very stark difference between what we do and sounds like B2B funnels. We always tell people what they want. If we try and sell people what they need, most of the time you don't make a lot of money with B2C, you know? In that category. That's interesting. You specifically go for the ... That makes sense, too. These big companies, they've got a bunch of cash, they're trying to figure out how to plug the holes in. That's probably their mindset anyway, that's fascinating. That's a big difference. James Smiley: Yeah no, that's a very good point. I would say one of the things that I've seen a contrast between what the internet marketing world as I understood it and consumed it to be, and B2B, is in B2B there's not as much emotional decisions. People who make emotional decisions do not stay in executive leadership very long. It's like the bigger a company gets, the less agile they get, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: I ran innovation at AT&T, I did some stuff with Facebook. When you deal with these bigger companies they'll talk about ... I ran an innovation center, but I would always say, "What are we innovating?" You know? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: Because when you're a big company, you can't make as many mistakes because when you make a mistake, that could tank your stock price three bucks, which is billions of dollars. Steve Larsen: Interesting. They're all walking on eggshells all the time, that's interesting. James Smiley: Yeah, so people want sign off, approvals, and all those kind of things, and so it's important to have someone inside the business, ideally the key decision maker, the owner, who's your champion. Very key to have a champion, someone who's willing to champion it internally, in the business, but I would not try to push to one call closes and those kind of things as much, because a lot of times there are influential factors. Like, if a CEO makes a decision and he spends money on you but then this other part of the business is going under, somebody, like the CFO, the board, whatever, could say, "Well, why did you shift money there versus over on this side?" There's a lot of factors that take place, and so, although I am absolutely pushing them to make an emotional decision, so I'm actually trying to push on that want feeling more, but I'm presenting it more as a need is maybe the way I would say that. Steve Larsen: Oh, that's clever. I love that. James Smiley: Number one need, the next thing I'll go to in the meeting is I will ask them directly, "Perfect. I mean, that's cool. I know we can do it. You've got the right person" type of thing, and then I'll say, "So what's your timeline to get this done? When would it be good for you to get this done? When do you want it done?" Once again, if a sale is moving too fast and they're just skipping over this stuff, something's going to fall on the backend, and you're not going to close the sale. You need to establish a need and get common agreement there. Then, you need to establish and get common agreement on a timeline. They may say, "I need all these results in two weeks." You're running LinkedIn or Facebook ads or whatever and you go, "That ain't happening." So, you need to understand the timeline, and that's going to set expectations, right? If you can agreement there, the next question I'll ask is the most important, which is about the money. I'll say, "So, you want these results, we've already talked about how you think you can generate $8000 a month more or $8000 a week more," whatever. Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: "What's your budget to be able to" ... "What are you willing to invest to be able to do that?" I'll tell you, like 90% of the time, somebody's not going to come back and say, "I have $200,000 free cash flow." But you will find out with that question if they don't have a budget. I mean, most of the time, you're going to find out if they don't and that's key, right? Like, if somebody comes back to me and says, "I can probably carve out like 6 to $8000 this year for you," that's not my client, you know? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: Although it could be a great relationship for a lot of people, it's not my client. Steve Larsen: If they don't have a budget, do you walk then? James Smiley: Yes. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. James Smiley: Yep. I've got a playbook that I'll usually leave with them that during the meeting, I'm kind of like writing a few notes, a few ideas. I'm wowing them with the type of results and if they start asking you, they might start asking you details about, "Well, why are you an expert at this?" I might go into different ways to create audiences and as I'm telling them hacks and things like that, I'll be writing those down. Then, I end up leaving that behind with them, so it's something nice that we leave behind. But typically, the only three things that I need to know is is there a need? Is there a timeline? Is there a budget? That goes for whether I'm working with somebody in the government, so whether I'm working with a Fortune 10 or a new startup or an individual. Steve Larsen: That's amazing. That's amazing. Holy crap. That's really cool. It's neat to see how you pulling off on their ... I mean, I always tell people, "The customer's not always right, the customer's not always right." Whoever said that phrase was just totally wrong and not in business, or read about it in a book or something. It's call to see you sifting and sorting out people like that. James Smiley: Yeah, and there for time, I know we're going to be cutting close here, do you want me to share how to structure the price tag? Steve Larsen: That would be awesome, actually. That's a big question I've got for it, as well, yeah. James Smiley: Yeah, so I've learned this over the years. When I was in my 20s, I would always screw this up. When I got in my late 20s, early 30s, I just started figuring out, now I feel like I've really crystallized this, so what you want to do, especially if you're an individual consultant or running a small agency, is number one, you're going to probably laugh at how similar this is to what you guys do. It's actually the same exact psychology, just a little bit different on how you present it. But the first thing I do is I'll say ... So, if I were working at such and such a company ... So, a live example would be when I was at AT&T, I was in what's called the "high-po" program, the high potential executives program, so I was on a fast track to be an executive in the company. Essentially, around October of this year, I left a couple of years ago, but around October this year there was a high likelihood I would be at a VP or some type of executive or something like that, as long as I was progressing, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: So what I tell them is, that kind of a job ... So I left that and I say, "Now, that's a 300 to $500,000 a year job." That's kind of where I start, you know? It's really important that when you present that figure of what your true full value is, it's important that they believe it, okay? When I was younger, I used to just zoom by it and I was kind of embarrassed. Like, if you can't anchor off of that, because that actually becomes your high price tag, where then you start doing a price drop, right? Similar to what all these guys do, what you guys teach. You want to anchor off of what's your absolute highest value, and be honest. If you're a $80,000 person, say you're 80. If you're a 100, say you're a 100. If you're 50, say you're 50, but so you anchor off that and then so in their mind they're going, "I want that result, but crap, I can't afford that." Then, the next thing you bridge to is you say, "So not only am I at least a 3 to $500,000 employee, but you look at some of my competitors who offer this service," and trust me, there's always going to be someone who's more pricier than you, than me, right? So you say, "Some of competitors and you may know these guys, this guy or this guy, they charge 400 to $600,000 for this service. In fact, just to have this meeting could be $2000." Now, they're going, "Dude, this was a great meeting but I don't have that kind of meeting," but they have to believe that you're worth it or that somebody would actually pay you for that, okay? If they don't believe- Steve Larsen: How are you doing that? Yeah, how are you anchoring that? James Smiley: You set it up in the very beginning. From when you come in, when somebody says ... I was meeting with, a sales meeting with Siemens' CO not that long ago and I don't know the guy. A partner of mine brought me in and he sits me in, I'm the youngest guy in the room and he looks me dead in the eye, shakes my hand with a big old smile, he says, "James, tell me something about yourself." Just right away, no introduction, "Tell me about" ... That's very common, right? Steve Larsen: Sure. James Smiley: The last thing you want to do is go through your resume. They're not actually asking you, "Tell me your resume." The thing you want to say is what are your results. What are the things you've done that are huge, the big headlines. That's where, instead of saying, "Well, when I first got into technology," you're losing the sale already. The first thing you want to say, "Well, what's really cool is I sold this deal and had this partnership and I've been able to help these logos, and I've been in this publication, or I have a book." You want to almost give your sales pitch, like your value proposition to the world, you know? Like what are your big headlines? In the very beginning they're going, "Wow, this person's pretty high level. This person is much more high level than our marketing managers." Steve Larsen: That's interesting. You're not necessarily telling the origin story, but you're telling ... You're in the testimonial phase of what you've done. Okay. I'm just putting it in my head where you're going, okay. James Smiley: Yes. The only thing I teach people to talk about, I've told hundreds of sales reps this, the only thing you want to share is your results. You want to share what you've done, who've you've helped, what their ROI was. Don't talk about, "I've been in the industry for 22 years." No one cares about that stuff because most people have been in the industry for XX amount of years. Steve Larsen: Sure, especially if the CEO, if they're like, "Yeah, I've been here forever." James Smiley: Yeah, yeah. That's not impressive and I would say the same thing in terms of how you fill out your LinkedIn. If you're not established in the industry, don't make your LinkedIn a resume. Make your LinkedIn from top to bottom, all about results. You'll see a significant difference in the type of people that want to engage with you, and so yeah, do you want me to come back to the price tag thing? Steve Larsen: Oh heck yeah, yeah. This is awesome. I'm just trying to keep you going. I don't want to turn it off. This is awesome. James Smiley: Yeah, this is fun. I'm going to anchor on a super high price tag that I'm worth as a full time employee, working at a corporation, working 40 to 60 hours a week, whatever that is, and then I'll bridge it to, "Okay, this is what my competitors are worth and this is what they charge you, and hey, you might even talk to one of these guys, right?" A lot of times they're like, "Yeah, I've heard about them and man, this is way too pricey." Then, I'll start to back it into typically, I would charge $150,000 for something like this. When I present that, I'm saying, I start off with, "In order for me to drive 1.2 million dollars of new sales revenue" or whatever that is, right? I actually try not to lean as much on revenue. I'll lean more towards a different metric. I'll try to anchor on a different metric like, "In order for me to double your leads, in order for me to 4X your leads, or in order for me to take your cost per lead to this number," right? I'll try to stay off of the revenue number now. I learned that when I was really young. I used to just talk about revenue, but it's better to talk about something slightly different, something that's a little bit more easily measurable for something that I can deliver. Then so I'll say, "In order for me to do this, you think about the impact and what that could do to your revenue, how it could double, triple your revenue, how it could make you" ... I won't say this directly but essentially I'll hit on something like, "How it could make you look better to your boss, to your board, how much more money you can get from your VCs," right? I'll hit on that. Then, I'll say, "In order for me to do that, it's a deal at $150,000." Now, I've established like, "Okay, there's a price tag," and now they're like, "Oh crap." The very next thing I step into, and you have to snap to this quick is, "The only thing we need to know together here is do you want this result? I f you want that, I can always find a way to help you pay for it." Once you say that line, now they're like, "Oh cool. Awesome." They're with you, right? Now they're like, "Okay, help me pay for this." That's where you can break it into different structures, where you can do ... If I can, I'll try to do half up front and then take the rest and divide it over six months or 10 months or whatever you want to do. Make sure you have a good contract there, so if they cancel, there's a ... We try to do a 60 day out, so if they want to cancel today, they still have to pay two more months, so we'll include a lot of those clauses in there. They can't just drop us on a dime. We tell them, "Look, you're a big company." Every partnership will end at some point, every one. You're never linked at the hip with a company forever, so the contracts are set up to help you make sure that when those departures happen that everyone's on the same page. What I'll say is, "You don't want me just to leave and all your ads are running and all this stuff, right? The clause is something that makes it a smooth transition for both of us, to make sure that you're covered, that you guys have exposure, those kind of things, added risk, just because maybe I find a better client." I wouldn't say it like that, but you know, whatever... Yeah, and then a lot of people will ask you in the contracting process about, they'll say, "Well, I don't know if I want a commitment. I want it month to month. Do you do month to month?" I will say this, I'll say, "I don't and here's why. One is if there's no commitment, I can drop you like a dime because there's a lot of you. There's only one of me, but there's a lot of you, so you have to- Steve Larsen: Great line. James Smiley: Yeah. So, I may not say that directly, but I'm just trying to be quick here. I'm going to turn the table there and say, "Do you just want me to leave?" That's where they're usually like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. We want some type of commitment. We don't want you to just run off to our competitors," right? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: So yeah, that's something I'll do in the contracting process as well, is try to make sure that I'm not just going to get left out in the cold, protecting myself, protecting my revenues so it's more predictable. Most companies are not just going to drop it all upfront unless they're more government related, those kind of things, or if you're backing up on their fiscal year they might just drop some cash like that. But yeah, I mean, most of the time they're going to want some type of structure and so the best is to do half upfront if you can. It's very typical in contracts to see that. The next best would be make them pay some balloon payment upfront, and say, "Guys, you guys know, to set this up, it's a thousand times harder to set it up than to maintain it three months later, so I need to make sure I'm not running on a negative." I always say things, when it comes down to cost, the big thing you want to inject is, "As you can imagine, I've got a million people. I can go down to all your competitors, they would all want to work with me on this. I just need to make sure that I'm paid so that this keeps my attention, so my attention's on it." That's actually true. Steve Larsen: It is, 100%, yeah. James Smiley: It's so true, yeah. Like, when you're getting paid $500 or $1000 a month, you're like, "$1000, I'm trying to get to 12,000," it's so small, right? Steve Larsen: Yeah, it is small. James Smiley: But if somebody's paying you 5000 or 12,000, it's a much bigger deal, right? That's one thing that I'll try to inject, is you're paying to make sure that my attention stays on it. I'll inject that. Another thing, if I'm having problems closing or adjusting price is I will bring up that what you're really getting here, I'll talk about corporate positions, "Is you're getting a marketing manager, you're getting online strategic digital marketing VP, and you're getting a salesperson. Think about if you were to hire those people. Like, just the hiring process would cost you five figures or more, multi five figures, just to hire them," you know? Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. James Smiley: Then you're like, "Then you've got to maintain them, then you've got all the different things that come in with employees." Then I'll even throw it out. I'll say, "Look, if you want me to find you those three people, I know three really good ones. I can help you bring them on." They're looking at that price tag going, "Forget that." Those are some of the things that I do to try to work on price justification but if you can get down to selling them on the result and then you've set them at ease and say, "Look, my only job now is to help you. Let's work together to figure out how to pay for it, right?" They're like, "Yeah, let's have that discussion." Steve Larsen: That is so cool, because then you're not standing in there being the bad guy. Instead of standing forward face to face with them, now you're standing side by side. Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's cool. James Smiley: Yeah. It works. Steve Larsen: I mean obviously you're selling throughout. The sale's never going to end, even after you've made the end, the sale continues obviously, but when do you know that you have them? James Smiley: I know I have them when ... That's a great question. To me, I've learned it's more of a gut feel over time. I just get this gut feel like, "This one's going to work" but I think the reality of that is when I've got the decision maker, I've got agreement on time, on need, time, and budget, and the person is like anchoring with me on all the big anchors. The result, my value, my ultimate value. Like, when they're anchoring on those two things and they're sold on it, they're like ... I'm trying to close a $150,000 deal right now, and I've had the CEO tell me multiple times, because I'll throw it out there, I'll say, call him on his cellphone, "Hey man, are we going to sign it?" He's like, "Well," he's like, "Man," he's like, "Yeah, I need to get this done. We need to get this done." I'll say, "The other option, man, honestly, you can hire me out right. I will entertain that. If you want to bring that kind of contract forward." The first thing they do is go, "Dude, I can't afford that." I'm giving them a bargain, right? Steve Larsen: Sure, sure. James Smiley: Yeah, so when I know I've got them there, I've got them. The last thing I'll say is, it's a fine line between ... You want to keep pushing, you want to make them commit to, "Okay, cool, why don't you think about it and let's set up a meeting for Friday where we can finalize this?" You want to give them an end date. That's where the scarcity and all those kind of things come into play, and I will absolutely, 80% of the time they're going to drag their feet. It just happens, right? People don't want to be on the hook for signing a 100,000 or a 200,000 or a $50,000 deal, and there's always a level of unknown any time you sign a deal. It doesn't matter how good you know, what kind of testimony someone has, there's a level of unknown. You're like, "I don't know. I mean, I hope the guy does what he says, but I don't know." There's a level of risk that they're taking on, so that's why they drag their feet and it's important to ... Like, what's that saying in the seven highly habits? It's like, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," it's like, "It's more important to understand than to be understood." The reason they're dragging their feed, you have to understand that. Most of the time it's because they don't want to be on the hook if something goes wrong. Steve Larsen: Which is why you set the positioning of being next to them, helping them pay for it. I'm assuming that helps like crazy. James Smiley: Yes. It's huge there and then also, as days go by, I'll say, "Hey man, as you know, we have marketing systems, automation out there, 24/7, 365. Just to let you know, I've got to move my business forward like you do every day, and so I've got some more leads in this area. I just want to know, how does it look? What's your level of confidence here that this is going to happen in the next week or two?" Steve Larsen: Oh, good question. James Smiley: You know what I mean? Steve Larsen: Yeah. James Smiley: That's a good gauging question, and so you need to inject, I just love when you guys talk about scarcity. Because I've been doing that my whole life but I've never called it that. It makes it so clear. Like, it's a word that you can always go to at the end of a sale. Like, "What do I need to do to create some scarcity and some urgency in this guy's mind?" You know? Steve Larsen: Right. That's interesting. Scarcity without saying, "Hey, I'm so hard to get a hold of that we should jump into bed together," you know what I mean? James Smiley: Yeah. B2B, most people are going to see through that stuff. You need to be genuine, for sure, yeah. Steve Larsen: That makes sense. Man, oh, my gosh, I wish there was more time. I have to actually leave and actually go build, but I'm blown away. This is insane. This is so cool. I've never had such a clear understanding of how someone actually pulls the funnels off in B2B. I've got another buddy who does them as well, but this is insane, though. You've gone through and just to recap, I always take notes every time I interview somebody, just because I learn so much, man. Especially, holy crap, this has been amazing. So obviously you went through how to structure the five to six figure price point, the price tag, and the deal, with the needs, timeline and, "What's the budget for this?" And actually start getting the money there. I love the process, the actual funnel itself. That's amazing... Every time that we teach somebody, "Hey, if you want to start going," like right now, in Two Comma Club Coaching, there's been a few people who have asked, "Hey, can I sell a $10,000 price point off of a webinar?" Most of the time, we usually say no. Like, by that price tag, you need to start getting them out. You've got to change the selling environment. You need to go and separate them from behind their computer and go get them somewhere. The fact that you say that first of all, the lead's coming through LinkedIn usually, then through some maybe auto-webinar, you're booking a call, and you're pushing them to an event where you're a traveling roadshow so, "Catch me because I'm leaving" kind of thing. Oh, my gosh, that's so cool, because you're changing that selling environment. Anyway, I have so many notes that I'm putting notes on my notes in between lines, so I can't even decipher them all no the spot right now but I will very shortly. Man, this has been fantastic. James Smiley: Yeah. I mean, I appreciated being able to share with you guys. Steve Larsen: Where can people find out about you? James Smiley: Yeah, thanks for that. JamesSmiley.org is the main site to go to. We're going to be doing, there's just been so much demand in the past couple months. Really, I would say last three or four months. I had a big press release and just different things, and I've had a lot of people say, "How do I do that?" We're going to put something together to start coaching people and helping them get into this. I'm really into personalization which is kind of my style, so I'm not going to do a traditional, "Hey," like most people would probably do it. Just, "Buy my online course" or something. We're going to do it a little bit more personal, but because I think if you're going to get into this space, that's where your head needs to start going no matter what. We put together some resources at JamesSmiley.org/sales, and there's a playbook that we've put together. This is a playbook that I used when we IPO'd a company called TeleNav. It was 350 million dollar a year revenue SaaS company. It was one of the most successful GPS technology companies out of Silicon Valley, but when I came in, I was the sixth employee and when I left there was like 400 employees. I ran sales from Los Angeles, all the way to the other side of the country, and so this kind of goes over how did we go about that process and how did we go about closing all those big deals and getting all those big partnerships done. It's really become a playbook for people when they go into a meeting. It tells them how you talk through the price tag, how do you even start generating B2B leads, and another cool thing that we just went ahead and put in this playbook is there's a PowerPoint presentation that's a template. It's like 100 slides. We had a big market research firm put this thing together, and so whenever I need to make a pitch, I'll go in there and grab three or four slides, and the graphics and everything is amazing. We actually paid $7000, we literally paid $7000 to have this thing made about two years ago. I'm just going to give that away in this playbook so you'll know how to generate leads, you'll have a really slick way to do your presentations so you'll look super professional, just slap your own logo and your own feature function benefits, and your results in there, and we'll teach you the system of how to close. One of the biggest things that you guys need is credibility, and if you're not an author, what I'm going to do is I'll include in here as maybe like a bonus, is I'll co-author a book with you, which is very likely to be an Amazon Best Seller. I've got a couple of those. Steve Larsen: Whoa. James Smiley: At least you'll be, you'll get the home study course, you'll get one on one time with me in the mastermind group, and then you'll also be a co-author of a best seller that you can use that as your business card, you know what I mean? Going into businesses- Steve Larsen: Wow. James Smiley: ... saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, here's something I wrote on Facebook ads. Here's something I wrote on online automation," or whatever. I'm hoping that's just a killer value and people would sign up for that, so that's... Steve Larsen: Good. Awesome, man. That's huge. James Smiley: Yeah, so hopefully that adds a ton of value to people who are trying to figure this thing out. It's at JamesSmiley.org/sales. You know what's just funny is like my passion truly is to help people and especially entrepreneurs. Like, that's where I came from, and one of the things that I started telling people last year when they started asking me about this is is, you know, I bet you when people first got into Facebook ads or they first got into whatever, that there was all this unknown, right? Steve Larsen: Right. James Smiley: But then a couple months later they're like, "I got this." That's the same thing here. I mean, once you get your first one or two down, you're going to feel like this is easy. The process becomes a lot easier. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for listening, and thanks so much for James as well. The B2B expert, sales rep trainer, script writer, event thrower, sponsor getterer, pro bass fisherman. James Smiley: Woohoo. Steve Larsen: It's been amazing. I really appreciate it, and guys go to JamesSmiley.org/sales and get frankly, one of the coolest things anyone's ever given away on this show. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to go there right now and go opt-in as soon as we're done. Anyways, thanks so much man. James Smiley: Okay. Appreciate you guys, have a great day. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Not to blame my childhood, but a few early circumstances set me on quite the path. Here's a Mantra of mine... Hey what's going on everyone this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio and real quick I just want to ask, how did you get started doing what you're doing? 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. Alright now I know that that's kind of a ... that should be somewhat of an introspective question alright, there should be something that causes you to go like "How did I get here?" And I hope that that's a question that you continue to ask yourself over and over it's actually been one that my wife and I funny enough have actually been asking about what I've been doing and why I have funnels that I've been working on my own and why is it that I work where I do and why is it ... it's been really cool to kind of work backwards and go "Woah, like if we hadn't made that one choice like we'd not be here" you know or "If we didn't do that one thing" you know or you know what, "if we didn't go down that path which totally failed but even though it failed it still led us here" you know what I mean? And what was interesting is that's actually been a topic of conversation for us rather frequently over the last little bit here, it's been really really cool to look back and be like "Holy crap, I graduated like a year ago from college" I'm a bit older than the standard graduate okay but I did, I graduated a little bit over a year ago and like holy, man what happened, how did that happen? What was the big difference, like why is it that I feel like I am just ... Guys I love my life, I love life and I love everything that's going on, I get so excited about everything that's out there, all the opportunity... Whenever somebody says "Hey I need someone to go do this" or whenever this ... my knee jerk reaction is just to raise my hand because I want to try everything and I'm not trying to just talk about myself here on this podcast, I'm trying to show you guys how I have built successful sales funnels and how I continue to do it both personally and obviously with Russel where I work. You know what it's been, as my wife and I started going and started dissecting right and going through all these things, this common theme started to bubble up and it's a theme, it's an attitude funny enough. I actually didn't realize ever that this is what I was doing ever but it's turned out to be this really really powerful ... it's turned out to be somewhat of a gift and it actually started when I was really really young. My dad, and I've told this story a little bit before it's like the second episode ever of this podcast, if you've never heard it that's totally fine but you can go back and listen to it, but my dad had me be what he called the yard manager and we didn't have a small yard, it wasn't massive but I mean it was a good size though, there was a garden, there was a whole bunch of places to weed, there's a whole bunch of ... and it was really really ... anyway, it was a big task. He said, I'm the oldest of six kids, and he said "Stephen, you're the oldest, I get it, but you are the oldest and you're the only one that I can ..." anyways I was deemed as the yard manager first obviously being the eldest and what that meant is he would have me go hire my siblings, he didn't tell me how to do it but I literally would write hiring contracts, I think I was 14 and I would write these contracts to hire my siblings for certain jobs, hey sibling number two would you please mow the lawn every week, that job is contracted at $13 every week or something like that, you know what I mean? Then I'd go to the next sibling, could I contract you to do this? And they would sign it and there's literally an interview and it sounds so cheesy but oh my gosh like think about what that did. Then I'd go to the next sibling and I'd do it and the work would get done, or if it didn't get done I'd have to pick up the slack, I was the contractor so to speak and that's how we set it up and my dads only point of contact for the yard was me and so when something happened or something didn't happen or if there was something out of whack he would come to me and then I would go to my hirees you know and I would go to my employees so to speak and I'd go talk to them and I'd say "Hey do this better, do this better" and obviously the sibling environment came around and said at times that we would fight about it you know and there was many renegotiations of contacts but whenever I wanted to get paid I had to go create an actual invoice and I'd turn it into my dad and then he would write it back and it was really, it was interesting, because while that story is cool the main point of it is that I would come to him and I would say "Dad, I don't know what kind of fertilizer to get" And he would go "Oh interesting, yeah what do you think?" And I wasn't expecting that, I was not expecting that question at all, guys 100% I promise that this relates 100 and a bazillion percent to building sales funnels to please stick with me what I'm saying here okay, this thread after like months of introspection, this is what it came down to. My dad would say "Well hey what do you think" and I'd go "I don't know" he's like "Huh, guess you gotta go find that out huh?" And it'd be like "Crap, are you serious that's all the help I get?" And I remember feeling a little bit frustrated and annoyed and totally vulnerable and I would go and I'd just kind of get on google or I'd ride my bike over to home depot and I would price out stuff and shovels and whatever the yard needed and I'd go back to him and I'd say "Hey I think we should get this one because of this" and he'd go "Great, sounds good" and like no contest it'd be like wow okay. Sometimes he'd ask "Does that fit within the bounds of the budget I've given you for the yard?" And I'd be like "Well I think so". Repeatedly, over and over again, he stopped giving me answers and it was something that started very young in my life and I know that it's one of the major reasons for what has transpired since I was 14 and very very young he stopped answering all sorts of questions, he never got me a job, and I started working very very young, with actual jobs and I'd go, I would be the one going at the job and I did a crap ton of labor jobs and I'm so thankful that I did them, they taught me to work in crappy environments and make the best of it and bloom where I was planted which is huge. Holy crap it's huge and then I'd go onto the next thing, and repeatedly over and over and over again this whole, you know I would ask my dad "Hey, I want to get a car, how should I get it?" And he'd go "How do you think you should get it?" You know, it wasn't condescending at all he was truly asking okay cool, what's your plan? He would have me being the one going through like hey, look at the different cars here you go so which one do you think you should get? I'd be like "Probably this one?" "Cool, go for it" you know and that was it, there was no other warm fuzzies yeah great job, or bad job, you know what I mean. If it was a really critical thing he'd say "Hey you know what, maybe go for this or this or this, or he'd teach me and stuff like that but the large bulk of decision making was in my hands from a very early age and I've realized that it's one of the major things that set me apart army wise, set me apart school wise amongst my colleagues, even amongst some of my professors right. Amongst so many scenarios the rest of my life the ability to solve my own problems and it's not that I know the answer, it's that I hunt the answer okay, I get out and I work my freaking butt off and I just find the answer, get out of my way I'm gonna figure it out, right. This whole mentality started out and I didn't realize that's what he was doing and honestly I don't know if he knew that's what he was doing, I think the concept comes from the book Seven Habits of High Effective People, he did that with his kids with their yard and I don't know if that's why he did it but I'm glad he did but it started this whole thing. I was not very good at school because I didn't want to be... I didn't realize that was the reason why but I realize that now and I didn't want to go solve those problems, I didn't want to ... I barely graduated high school, I figured out how to learn when I was in college and that was great, I ended up getting mostly straight As almost the entire time except for like one semester which is awesome you know but guess how I did it? I was a self solver, I figured it out on my own, it's not that I was smart enough to figure it out, it wasn't that I didn't halt every other activity until I found that answer, that's not it at all. I kept everything else going that could go forward until I found that answer, then I kept moving forward. Does that make sense? When I needed to figure out "Hey, how do I post something on youtube?" I would figure out "Hey, how do I build a website?" I went on the internet and I googled it, I found a tutorial and I just did it. I put the tutorial on one side of the screen and then I remember I was in word press the first time I did it for a client I pulled up WordPress and I just started building. I would watch three minutes and I'd pause it and go do what he said, and then I'd play for three minutes pause it and go do what he said. It took me 8 hours, something like that, to build the first one even though it was like a one or two hour tutorial just because I was doing it with him the whole time. That's literally how I built my first website, was watching a tutorial for a client. I don't know that he knew I was doing that, but anyway but it worked. That was the problem set infront of me, I did not stop just because a problem arose. You don't stop, you don't ... I get so animated about this topic because I'm starting to get questions sent to me over Facebook, I'm not starting to I've been getting them like crazy, people ask me things like "Steven, how do I move a button from the left side to the right?" Freaking look it up! It's not my job to solve that problem for you, you know what I mean? And it's the same thing, that's the mentality that I hope everyone is developing, that's what it means to be a business, that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, you are a 100% frontlines only person who owns it problem solver. That's it. How did I figure out how to build at click funnels? I didn't learn when I was at click funnels, I was building for people way before Russel ever knew who I was, way before I ever got hired, way before I ever went to his event. I went and I got clients, I said "Hey here's this cool funnel I'm gonna build it for you" and I knew just enough, there was just enough light infront of where I could see for me to go offer that to him and I knew there would be questions but I knew I could figure it out and again guys please understand I am not tooting my own horn but it's enough of a theme that keeps coming up I just feel like I have to share this, you've got to be a self solver. I tell it to the two comic club students, I tell it to everybody I know. You need to solve your own problems! It's not that you are the one solving them, it's that you're hunting them, you're searching for them. One of the biggest issues that I find over and over and over again with people who build sales funnels or entrepreneurs in general or people who are not quite entrepreneurs and are trying to break into being an entrepreneur or they've never actually made a dollar online or they're trying to create an extra source of income or or whatever it is, they're not obsessed enough. They're not obsessed enough, you have got to be a monomaniac, when somebody turns around and they say "There's really online like three of the eleven business partners that I had in college that I still keep up with" and it's not that again, it is not at all that I'm bashing them, it's just there's this common theme that I saw every single time. We would go and we'd meet, we'd have this sweet idea, a legitimate opportunity anywhere from ... any industry you can imagine, we tried to sell anything and it was awesome, my whole college was littered with that. I learned more doing that than I did in my actual major and you can expect that from anything you put your mind to. What would end up happening, and it was true for any group project, it was true for ... things in the army, anywhere at all... Not like this only happens in college, happens anywhere, at any time, any place. This is like human behavior that most of the time when there is something new that pops up, something unexpected, something that's like "Hey, here's a piece of adversity you should probably stop" 99% of people stop. Don't stop, okay, if you stop, you're not obsessed enough, you didn't want it in the first place. That's my opinion, huge opinion, but I believe it to be true. I put my foot down behind that because I just holy crap like ... anyway, I wrote down a few notes here. There's a few points I just wanted here with this is that you have to understand that when you start moving towards something it's like pushing a boulder up a hill, or even down a hill. It takes a lot of effort to get that thing to move at first, tons of efforts, like 80% of the fuel for a rocket is spent in the actual launch, right? Tons of it. Then this really weird thing happens, most of the people will give up just off of that first initial push, right? They were in love with the idea of it rather than the activity of doing it, and what ends up happening is as you start to push this boulder forwards, this huge heap of work right, it becomes this sanctifying thing for the entrepreneur. What it does, it starts to almost so to speak baptize them into the realm of entrepreneurship as they start to actually solve the problems because there's new problems every single day "How do I do this, how do I post to Instagram, you know, how do I get these videos done?" You know how I learned how to video edit? YouTube. You know how I learned to do all the sound editing I'm doing right now? YouTube. You know how I learned to do what podcast intros are, how to put together a sales funnel right. YouTube and a combination of support docs on Click Funnels. I have read probably 90% of the support docs at Click Funnels, way before I ever worked there. That's one of the reasons I work there. I know the system so dang well. That's why I've read a lot of the nitty gritties. Be a self teacher, you've gotta be a self teacher and what ends up happening is you push that boulder forward. Number one, all these people back away. Seth Goden calls that the dip, great book called The Dip. Then this other thing starts to happen too, the boulder starts to move a little bit easier on its own right, a little bit of momentum starts to come together and really interesting things start to happen. It's almost like the world tries to say "Oh you want to go do that thing? You want to go do that thing? Oh that's so cool, well we're gonna test the crap out of your will first and then once we see you're serious, lets go ahead and start placing little cool things in your path to help you." Resources start coming out of the woodwork. It has happened every single time I have ever built a funnel or a business or anything ever whether it's my own project or someone else's, number one there is always unexpected conflicts that happens. We're tryna launch a certain kind of funnel right now. It's taken like six weeks, I'm super frustrated they're not out yet but it's because there's this one problem that is kicking my butt and I have got to figure it out and I know I'm going to figure it out I just haven't yet. It's like a weight on my shoulders, I've got to figure it out. I suffer from insatiable curiosity, I've got to fix the problem. I suggest you suffer the same, please suffer from insatiable curiosity okay? You've gotta be in love with it, you've got to obsess over the answer. Each individual answer, not just the outcome, make a million bucks, be successful, get on the cover of Forbes! You know? Whatever it is, those are the outcomes, everyone falls in love with those really easy to fall in love with those, much harder to fall in love with the process. I'm asking you to fall in love with the process, because as you move forward, as the boulder moves forward resources start coming out of the wood work that you didn't know were there. You're like "Huh" so you can start to move them and use them and the boulder starts to move a little bit quicker. You're pushing hard, as hard as you were before but you're actually starting to see some progress and you're like "Dang" and other people who fell out, they try to jump back on the bandwagon, happens every single time, I always get people "Oh did you need help with that?" Like no, I needed help with it at the beginning but you left and now you're just trying to backpack on what I've done. Anyway what always happens is like this third stage, this third stage happens where this second round and this whole thing repeats over and over again in different areas but it's like this third round of testing your will comes out again, it's like okay push this big boulder, solve some of the immediate problems, little bit of momentum happens, resources come up and you're like "Wow cool, I didn't know I got this, wow there's actually ... alright sweet" it happens every time and then after that there's like this another big round of distraction that comes out and every time I start on some kind of new thing that I think is a cool business opportunity, it's the weirdest thing. If I'm not trying to build something, there's no opportunities finding me, it's the weirdest thing... The moment I start getting myself an action though and I say "I'm gonna go after this, just this one thing" tons of business opportunities and deals and stuff like that, they all just come out of the wood work and I was talking to my wife about it the other day like "It's so funny, I put my foot down, I'm gonna go after this one thing, just this one thing." And she's like "Yeah and you started getting all these things coming to you again and again" I was like "Yeah it happens every time" then I gotta practice saying no and it's like the world is testing me saying "Do you really want that or can I distract you with this? Can I get you with some shiny object syndrome here you go". It happens every time. It's kind of funny to watch it. I just expect it now, any time I'm gonna go after this one thing, like boom and then I gotta say "Nope, not my plan" I truly believe that the ability to be a self solver, to obsess and fall in love with the process, not just the outcome is one of the biggest keys to being successful in anything. Building sales funnels, anything. I'm not a coder. I know some code because I self taught it when I needed it. I just solved the immediate problem infront of me, I didn't just go try to learn code for nothing. I learned code ... when I say code I mean like CSS like really baseline stuff, I would not consider myself a coder programmer at all but the stuff that I did learn was the stuff I needed to use right then, I just YouTube it. I just googled it. Guys I freaking YouTube and googled my entire major. I went and I took all my books, I got the PDF versions, I loaded them into this thing that spoke them to me at 400 words a minute, I would listen for three things I could rant about and that's how I wrote all my papers. That's it. That's how I did it. I hacked my homework. That way I could go build sales funnels. That's the reason why. It worked. Anyway, yeah. There's a few other points I wanted to make with this but I'm running on 19 minutes now and I'm trying not to have these things be too long. When I first started this podcast someone was like "I love that your podcasts are only like 12-15 minutes. They're perfect, any longer they wouldn't be awesome" but it's funny because I feel like I've gotten better so there's more good things to say and someone the other day was asking like "Hey, how long should my videos be, how long should my podcast be, how long should any content piece be?" And I said "As long as you're not boring, the moment you get boring it's time for you to stop." So anyway, for fear that I am sounding like a broken record, I'm probably gonna end it here but just please know that I take this very seriously that when I would partner with somebody in the past or when I would do a project with someone or anything, they would not try to solve the problems that arose first by themselves, I would immediately fire that person. I'm not kidding, I would do that with VAs, I do that with anybody. You're telling me you can't go to freaking google, the library of the world and just do a simple search try and figure it out yourself first before you bring it to me and solve the problem on your own? Like holy crap, I don't want you on my team... That's how I built it on college, that's how I do it now. Half the time, there's been so many ... god I can't even tell you how many times we will be at work and Russel will be like "Hey I gotta have this done, I gotta have this done". Sometimes, especially at the beginning, I had no idea how to pull off what he was asking me to do. I didn't! Most of the time I would tell him, look I don't know how to do that but I know I can figure it out. Give me like 15 minutes, I'll watch a few youtube videos to get the just, I'll figure out the rest of the way. I build the parachute while I'm falling and anyway, so if you don't feel like you can self solve, if you can go answer the problems that are popping up infront of you on your own without going to other people, my guess is you are not actually in love with the process itself, you're in love with the outcome, that's fine to be in love with the outcome, but honestly I was running like ... I'd run the two mile in 11 minutes and 54 seconds, is that Olympic speeds? No but that's really fast... When I was doing that, I didn't look at the finish line, I had to look at this three steps infront of me. It's the same thing with building stuff, you can't just start looking at the finish line all the time, you're gonna eat it. Anyway, be a self solver guys and just go and understand. If you're going to ... it's fine to blow up support and ask them "How do I do this, how do I do this?" That's why they're there but man, look at freaking google, it's all there! It's how I learned everything. It's not that I know, I know it's not that I'm smarter! I know it is nothing to do with that. I barely graduated high school, that's not a joke. I got straight D's in all math... I got straight D's in all foreign language... I got straight D's in almost every single subject it's not a joke, 60.1%. That's not a joke. You know the A's I got in, extra curricular stuff. Yearbook. Stuff like that, theater, stage, singing. You guys don't know that about me, anyway, those are things and for the rest of my life it's just been, solve the immediate problem infront of me and that's the major reason I stopped reading just for the sake of reading for such a long period of time. I realized I needed to solve the challenge directly infront of me and stop distracting myself with reading the next book, taking the next course. It's not that I have nothing to learn. It's that it gets distracting and you stop executing, you start getting slower than the other guy. Anyway I'm definitely talking too much now. Hey guys hopefully that helped, go be a self solver and I will talk to you all later, bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio, please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnels for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/FreeFunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

  Here's a look at some of my favorite selling methods AND how I'm using them in my funnels. What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you are 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. Hey, hope you guys are doing good. The last little bit here's been a little bit busy, we've had 4th of July, we had a bunch of family over. We went and bought a ton of fireworks. We blew a whole bunch of stuff up, and it reminded me a lot of my childhood. We used to take them all apart and make our own fireworks. It was not safe, but it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with family over, and it's just been busy. There was a lot of people here just enjoying the house, enjoying the place we just moved into, and it's just been great. It's been a good experience the last little bit. I just literally have not had the time to podcast. It's 11:30 at night right now, and I just decided I should probably push one back out there. I wanted to show you guys something really cool that has been on my mind the last little bit. This will probably be a quick episode, but I just wanted to share with you this really cool epiphany that I've been having about "The Perfect Webinar Script." Now if you don't know what I'm talking about, "The Perfect Webinar Script" is the script that Russell Brunson has put together to help basically sell anything. Now it's perfect webinar script, but we've often mentioned how much we wish that it wasn't called "The Perfect Webinar Script" because it can be used for any kind of sales; whether you're doing stage presentation, whether you're doing any kind of obviously webinar, of course, video. Honestly guys, I use "The Perfect Webinar Script" on you guys, on this podcast, almost every single episode. You probably just don't know that's what I'm doing... I always come up with a story, and the story is structured similar or the same way. Usually there's a wall, my back is up against a wall, there's inner and external desires, there's conflict along the way. As I go toward the main thing I think I want, there's this side transformation that happens. You know what I mean? We go through the hero's journey, and I don't always hit them all perfectly every single time. If I was crafting an actual sales message I would, but I use that as a guideline for anything. You can use "The Perfect Webinar Script" for any kind of communication with any of your people at any time. What's really been fun is a lot of you guys know that I'm the coach for the "2 Comma Club Coaching Program" of Russell's, and it's been a lot of fun. Every Friday I'll get on and typically there's anywhere from 30 to 70 people on the phone calls, a big range back and forth, but 30 to 70 people. I'm there for about four hours, four solid hours and I've done that for probably four months now. Each week on Fridays for about four months now and it's been way, way past 40 hours of me and our little sound recording booth right next to where Russell's office is, and it's really awesome. I go sit over there and it's funny, there's always an air conditioning vent right above my head, it doesn't stop, and it's way too powerful for the little tiny room, so I'm always numb by the end of the four hours, but it's a lot of fun, I really enjoy it. There's a bunch of people that get on and what happens is they'll come submit all their questions, "Hey, how does this work here? Should I use this script? Is my funnel set up correctly here? Is it this, this, this, this?" There's tons of questions that I get. Hundreds that we've gone back and indexed... Over the last, especially the last about six weeks, through this last group that's just gone through it, there's been this realization that I've been having more and more and more. You might look at this and might go, "Okay, Stephen duh, like, I get it. That make sense. How come you didn't see that, Steve, okay?" But for me, I just barely saw this... It takes me back to when I was doing door to door sales. I know I reference that a lot, but it really was a massive boot camp, so to speak, on how to sell, how to approach people and how to handle objections. Obviously you've got to do that in a sales funnel, this is Sales Funnel Radio. I remember there was a guy that brought me to the side once, and he said, "Stephen, look," and he was actually the guy that recruited me into the company to go sell for them for that summer. He brought me to the side, and he goes, "Look, Stephen, here's the big secret. People already know whether or not they want the thing, whatever you're selling. They already have made the decision. You don't need to convince them to have the product, yes, or no. What you're trying to do is you're trying to help them come to a logical conclusion, so they can close themselves. That's it. That's the whole thing. That's the whole secret. You are not there to create desire. You can amplify desire... You can take someone's desire and you can blow it up, or you can poke at it a little bit and say, 'Remember, here's desire. Remember you do want this, remember, see,' then you start logically closing them, 'Hey, you should get it now because the price is going to go up,' or, 'You should get it now because you know what,' well, some pest control, 'We're spraying the neighbors so since we're here,' and you start logically showing them how that fits. How the decision to actually buy your product works." He's like, "That's the big secret, man." When I was speaking at Dan Henry's event at AdCON in Florida, he actually had a whole speech about that very thing. That very, very same thing. I still remember the story, it was really, really cool. It was all about the same time. This whole thing started forming in my mind, like, "Oh, my gosh. Here's a connection, here's a connection, here's a connection. Wow! That works!" Looks like we've been doing that all along, and I didn't even know it. What was cool was Dan Henry stood up, and he starts telling a story about when he was, I hope he's okay to tell me this, I'm sure he is ... Had a great interview with him, by the way, on this podcast go back and listen to it if you want to. He told a story about when, I think he was selling Dish or TV services or something like that, and he was the top salesman in Dish; they'd sell two, three, four services a day and he would do 17, insane amounts. These are sales funnels. Please try and think how you can use this inside of sales funnels. It's been really helpful, it's actually simplified the sales process for me a lot. Just work with me for just a second here. Stick with me. What he would do is he would stand up and go to these big conventions, and he would basically, as people would walk up to him, and they'd walk by the booth that they had set up there, people would walk by the booth and all he would do is he would stand up and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" and they'd go, "What?" and he'd go, "Get out of here," and he'd wait for the next person, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" They'd be like, "What? No, no." He'd be like, "Okay, okay, nevermind, get out of here." He just kept saying that over and over again, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "You know what, I did and ..." and he would go, "Oh, hey, it's fine. We got a form right here. You'll have it done in two minutes. While you're here it's super easy, and we got some cool thing. Just do it right now," and he'd hand them a piece of paper. He'd hand them the form with the pen right there. Did he try and convince them? No. But he would do that literally every single day for every single person and go, "Hey, did you forget to sign up for Dish?" "Did you forget to sign up for Dish" He just kept asking that over and over and over again. He said, "Guys, it's the reason I don't split test my ads, I split test my audiences. I keep my ad so targeted that the right person who hears that will be the easiest lay down sale." He's going and he's grabbing the low hanging fruit that a lot of times we'll go and overthink. That was one of the first things. You take what he was saying about keeping the message in such a way that you're just tapping into desire that already exists. People already want to buy. They already want to buy. They always are ready to want to buy. Buying is such an emotional thing. We get this dopamine release, we love to buy stuff. We actually physically get somewhat of a high from when we buy stuff. We all want to feel that. We don't want to feel sold because we feel taken, we feel cheated, we feel cheap, but we do want to go buy. We want to make that decision on our own and come to that conclusion on our own. The way we do that is we start to logically close people and hopefully the message resonates with people who've already decided whether or not to buy it. Think about that. Then you think about what the other guy was saying with door-to-door sales. "Look, man, they already have made the decision. They already know. All you're doing is you're trying to help them see why it's a good decision to do it now. Do it right now. Take action now. There's no time line. Nobody's ever going to do anything." Then you mix that with what Dan Henry was saying at his event, and it just amplifies that. Taking the same message and just pounding it over and over and over and that's how he would get ... I think he got to go meet the VP of Dish and all this stuff because he blew away so many records with that kind of thing. Coming back to the "2 Comma Club Coaching," the last little bit, we've been focusing heavily on webinars. How to create a million dollar webinar. That's part of what my job is I go and help them tweak the message, tweak the funnel, put all the stuff together, launch the thing. What happened? How do we fix it? Sitting where I am, it's a cool experience to go back and forth with them and do that. That's what the "2 Comma Club Coaching" is. There's a ton of other stuff but that's what the Q&A section is. One of the reoccurring things that I've noticed over and over again with the way people write their pitches, or the way the people will write scripts. This is true for webinars, it's true for trip wire funnels, it's true for back end funnels where the really high ticket things versus low ticket, anything at all. Someone sent a funnel to me that said, "Hey, Stephen, check this out." I went and I checked it out and on the copy, the actual sales copy itself, was a whole lot of logical reasons. There was nothing else on there but a whole bunch of logical reasons why I should buy the thing. A lot of people write copy that way. A lot of newbs... A lot of people who don't know how to write copy or people who don't know how to write any kind of sales messaging or have never done sales at all before. A lot of them will handle sales that way. They'll get straight into the logic of it. The problem when you do that is that you haven't tapped into the emotional side. This is where Russell helps and bridges the gap like crazy. Especially with "The Perfect Webinar Script." He says, "Guys, look. Buying is an emotional experience. First, we've got to appeal to the emotions. Let's load up the front end of this pitch with a ton of stories." That's what "The Perfect Webinar Script" is. What Russell teaches and what "The Perfect Webinar Script" ... It's so funny, when I spoke at Dan Henry's event, I used "The Perfect Webinar Script." There wasn't a pitch at the end. When I spoke at LCT, there wasn't a pitch at the end, but it was "The Perfect Webinar Script." Teaching and breaking and rebuilding belief patterns in general works for anything. Any kind of content and communication that you put out there. The huge realization that I had recently about it is that when you ... There's a great book I'd recommend out there called "Pitch Anything." I don't remember the author but the book, "Pitch Anything" also illustrates a huge part of what I'm trying to say right here. When you think about the sales process, and I walk up to someone at their door, and I knock on the door and what's the first thing they're thinking inside their house? "Wait a second. Who the heck is at my door? Should I be worried? Should I be nervous? Is there someone out there? Is there a killer? Is there a robber? Is someone going to come in and take from me? Is it the tax guy? Should I run?" You know what I mean. There's tons of question and red flags that get raised in someone's head when they're not expecting someone to come to the door. They come to the door and what's the first thing? If I stand up and go, "What's up, man? I got this thing and this, this, this," and logical close, logical close, logical close. The very first thing that person's going to do is they're going to start backing up. They're going to go, "Let me put as many walls up. How can I get rid of this guy? There's something on the stove. My wife's calling me. Not interested at this time." They'll just shut the door, shut the door, shut the door. That sucks but it happens in any kind of sale, even if they wanted it. What the book, "Pitch Anything" goes through is it talks about and says, "Hey look, literally every single one of us has got these instincts on survival that have to be met before any kind of buying decision can be made." These are things that have been part of all humanity in our brains for millions of years, they make up the brain. As soon as the sale starts, actually not even the sale, as soon as I approach anybody, the very first things that are going through their head are, "Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to ... Should I run? Should I fight? Can I eat it? Can I mate with it?" You know what I mean? It's all the primal instincts that are just meant to keep me alive and there's all this subconscious decisions that are starting to fly through my head. I don't even know that I'm making those, but I do that every single time. Really fast, quick judgements on whether or not I should fight, flee, eat. You know what I mean? Anytime I meet anyone, any new situation in general, we're constantly accessing through what the book, "Pitch Anything" calls the croc brain. We got to get through the croc brain. As soon as we help someone come down with all those different red flags, and we help them pull down the walls and pull down the barriers, they have to do that. I can't do that... If I try and do that it will feel like an infringement, and they will back up. But if I can help them convince themselves that everything's safe, everything's fine, this is new, it's exciting, there's novelty here. If it's boring, that's another wall. It can't be boring, that's another wall, run away. But if it's new, it's novelty, but it's not so new that it's scary, it's out on the fringes then, "Hey, who's this guy at my door?" What Russell then teaches is that, a bridge from the book, "Pitch Anything" to "The Perfect Webinar Script" is why don't we tell some stories? The person I'm talking to might have some false beliefs. They may want the product but have a few questions. I'm going to figure out what these people actually need, and I'm going to go answer that actual question. I'm sorry, I'm diving deep a little bit into a few different concepts here, and I hope that this is making sense. I've talked for 14 minutes. I said this is going to be a fast episode. I hope this is making sense. I hope really this is helpful because a lot of the sales funnels that are being sent to me, honestly, an overwhelming amount of them I just can't look at them, but a lot of them what's actually happening I've noticed is that everybody ... You cannot make a sale by only going logical. Even when people think, "Hey, I'm an engineer. Hey, I'm a software guy. Hey, I'm an architect. Hey, I'm a ..." Like the brainiacs of the world when they're self-proclaimed brainiacs of the world, even it they think that they need to be closed logically, they still have got to be closed emotionally. Everybody makes the decision emotionally to buy first. Well, guess what? That happens before what Russell calls "The Stack." Before you actually get into the price, before you actually get into what the offer is, before you actually start asking for somebody's money, they have already decided if they want the product. The price is almost irrelevant... The price is almost always irrelevant. It's almost always a matter of whether or not you broke and rebuilt that person's belief patterns to accept your message. To accept the fact that the product does fit their life. If you have rebuilt their belief patterns that strongly, by the time you get to what Russell calls "The Stack," and if you don't know what I'm talking about go to perfectwebinarsecrets.com or join twocommaclubcoaching.com and you'll run through that and you'll see. Hey, look first we're going to focus on false beliefs then, then ... Just so you know, Russell, when he does his perfect webinars, he doesn't start the actual logical closing phase until about an hour into the actual webinar. An hour. A whole hour. Crazy, ridiculous, that's amazing. A whole hour... The first hour is spent on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. The first hour. Then only 20, 30 minutes is spent on the logical part of it. But that's not how most of us sell. Most of us think we got to get out there, and we got to start logically closing people. It's completely 180, it's totally the opposite. We'll start logically closing, "Well, it's on sale. Well, you know what, since you're here. Well, you know what, why don't we have you come over and just try it on?" You know what I mean? It's all these logical closes, "Well, it has these features. Well, it's better than that other competitor. It's better than that other competitor. We have this, this and this." He's like "Oh, well I didn't even know that was an option so thank you for telling me about your competition." Hopefully, this is starting to make sense, what I'm saying. There's really three major phases of the sale. Three major phases. Now this is what I found, this is what I've used. There's three major phases. Number one, you've got to get past their immediate knee-jerk reaction subconscious croc brain. Number one, you've got to get past the croc brain. You got to get past all of the ancient parts of the brain that just keep us alive. You got to get past that. Part of that, I said, is meaning you can't just be boring. That's another wall. It's still got to be new... It's still got to be novelty. It's still got to be things that are interesting. Number one, you got to get past the knee-jerk gatekeeper of our brains. Number two, break and rebuild belief patterns using story. The belief patterns, the false beliefs that they most likely have, you're making stories that directly go against what their false beliefs are, so you can break and rebuild the belief patterns. Number three, that's when you start doing the logical closes, and it's typically the shortest phase. I hope that helped. I hope that made sense to you. That was probably the most technobabble I've ever said on a podcast ever, and I'm so sorry. I hope that it made sense what I was trying to say. Back to door-to-door sales. When I started learning more about the product that I was selling at door-to-door sales, my sales plummeted, they plummeted. It's because I started logically closing people. That was it. I got really good at getting past that gatekeeper, that part of the brain. I got really good at getting past all those, the knee-jerk reactions, keep us safe, croc brain. But I was not at all, at all, spending any effort at all in breaking and rebuilding belief patterns. When they would ask me, I would barf fact all over them, all over them. I would barf so much fact all over them they would end up closing the door just to get me to shut up. Man, it sucked so bad because I was selling like hotcakes until I started learning about our product. I think it's such a key lesson with that. That's all I wanted to share with you guys. These are the three phases of the sale and it's, honestly, one of the major reasons why we have sales funnels. Number one, what are you going to do, we got to break ... This guy's actually here to help me. We give them a free thing at the very first part. We're starting to bring down those walls. Number two, let's go with star story solution scripts. Let's bring in a character. Let's bring in a cool story. Let's go talk about a problem and a cool solution. That kind of script works really well as usually an up sale after they've already made the first commitment. Then we start logically closing them. You know what I mean? It doesn't work out perfectly that way, but all I'm saying is when we go out, and we start to logically close people, it is the easiest way to just lose the sale off the bat. Of all three of those phases, in my opinion, number two is the most important. Number two is the most important. Number one we usually take care of subconsciously, we don't even realize we're doing it most, of us, if we're socially adequate people. That's all I've got for you guys, three phases. First, get the walls down then epiphany, working on breaking and rebuilding belief patterns, and the third part is the logical close. That's "The Stack." Guys hopefully that is helpful, and I'll see you guys in the next one. I'm excited for you guys to go implement stuff. Please, honestly, let me know if that helps. Usually I don't do this form of podcast. I usually go into a little bit more, this is a different kind of style. I should say it that way. I would love to know whether or not this actually was awesome and this helped. That's how I look at the sales, that's how I look at the phases. It's not always perfect but that guideline right there, knowing that those are the steps that the individual needs to go through, super helpful. Totally changed the way I sell and definitely has helped me online a lot. All right guys. Talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

    I'm the "Anti-Renaissance Man! If you know anything about my message, I'm pretty against doing more than one thing/business at a time. I believe success comes to the "mono-maniac". Oh, what's going on? How's it going guys? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a sweet episode of 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. Now here's your host Steve Larsen. Now legally I don't know if I was allowed to include some of the soundtrack from Pirates of the Caribbean, but if the government comes after me I'll just ask them about their failing business. Ho, ho, how about them apples? Hey. Hope you guys are doing great. Hope you guys listened to that last episode with Alison Prince, that honestly, that was such a good episode, oh my gosh. Anyway I thought it was great. Hey, hope everything's going great with you guys. The last little bit here has been crazy busy. Not that that's any different at all than any other time so I guess I should say everything's normal, but I guess anyways it just feels like there's a lot going on because some holidays, you know, 4th July has been going on. I actually have been able to detach a little bit and take a little bit of a break, which I highly recommend everyone does that every once in a while. It's a weird feeling, but I literally had to not bring my computer with me and we went to Pirates Cove, what? Russell Brunson the man was super nice and did not need to do it at all actually. But he invited my wife and I to this place in Vegas. I can't remember what it's called, Boulderville, Boulder, something like that. Anyways it's like 30 minutes outside Vegas. Apparently one of the guys who owns Nuskin is one of the top guys in ... he bought up all the old Pirates of the Caribbean stuff and ride stuff from Disney when they shut down the old Pirates of the Caribbean and they remodeled it for the new pirate stuff. Anyway he bought up all the old ... so you got all the old, like the dog in the corner and all the little pirates and stuff in their cages and things like that, and it's all over the place. The guy built ... I mean he bought like five mansions all in this little neighborhood and built pools and water slides and stuff like that in between. It was awesome, it was so cool. We were for several days just hanging out there and they got this crazy fast water slide that we were flying down that thing, I still have scabs all over my elbows for how fast we were going down that thing, it was super fun. Soon as the kids all went to sleep we were just hauling down. Anyways it was a lot of fun, we did a lot of things. It was honestly just a lot of play and it was good to detach and I recommend everybody do that every once in a while. I have a hard time doing that because a little bit of ADHD in my head but it is anyway super helpful. My wife and I though, we drove around, we swan and played, we watched movies, we did nothing. I took a nap, that was the weirdest thing, I don't do that. It was great and we went on ... The Hoover Dam is like 10 minutes away from where we were so Lake Mead was right there. We were over at the Hoover Dam, we were like, "Hey we should do a helicopter ride over here. And let's go do that, let's go to the helicopter tour." And so we did. We booked it and we drive over early the next morning for this cool helicopter tour around the Hoover Dam. I had no idea it was that big first of all, I had no idea, and that it was built around the Great Depression, you guys didn't know this was going to be a Hoover Dam history lesson but I just took a sweet tour. 100 people died making it, like I had no idea it was that big... So we get in this helicopter. Well I should say beforehand we drive up and the rental car we got was just super awesome sweet Camaro that was all tricked out. It was fun. We blew money, we had a lot of fun though. So we drive up to this little shack where we waited for this helicopter to come [inaudible 00:04:14] right next to this helipad, right. It was super hot out, we go inside and we were waiting for our turn to get on this helicopter, and they're going through little safety videos and things like that. It was so funny because we walked inside this little shack thing and there's like three guys in there and at first they're spraying this stuff on the windows and then they take this orange squeegee, then they're wiping it off again, and then they would do it again, so they spray it again, spray the window, and then squeegee it again. And they do that again. This guy must have cleaned this window like I don't even know, like seven times. He's cleaning it and he just keeps squeezing off over and over and pretty soon I was like what the heck is, like what is he doing? It almost got kind of annoying because he just kept doing it over and over and over. Pretty soon, this guy leans over and ... alright my wife's attractive, right, I know that, she's awesome. It always cracks me up when other guys start to hit on her and it's totally what this guy was doing. He leans over and there's no lead in, like he didn't set the stage at all. All he does is he turns around while he's spraying this window, turns out they were tinting the window, and I've never seen that process before but they were cleaning it like crazy because they were about to put tinting on it, it's to keep the heat out because it was like 116 degrees. No joke, so crazy hot while we were there. But he leans over and he looks right at my wife and he goes, "I speak eight languages." And I was like, "You got to be kidding me? Are you joking? Are you serious? You gonna ... you're hitting on my wife like that blatantly and you're clearly, you're not self aware enough to realize that's what's going on? That's what you're doing?" And he leans over he's like, "You know I speak eight languages." And she's like, "Wow, cool." And I was like, "Uhh, really? Wow, eight languages that's cool." He's like, "Yeah." And he starts rifling off all these sayings in different languages, and I was like, "Dude, just coz you can say sayings doesn't mean that you speak the language, it just means you know the saying, you know?" And he turns over and he keeps cleaning windows and you could tell he's in charge of the other guys that were there, and he was like barking orders at them like getting stuff done and he kind of like you know ... I mean it's totally what happens when I'm sure a lion sees a lioness, you know what I mean? They fluff the mane, you know, they start presenting, they start looking like all macho, they start fluffing the muscles out, you know what I mean? Guys do that all the time, it's natural, you know what I mean?... We try and impress the girl. I could tell that that's what he was doing, so I started like putting my arm around her and I was just like hey, like clearly we are together, like you see the ring on my hand, you see the ring on her. Like what are you doing? I was like whatever look, let's just play this out, this could be really fun. So I did. He kept going. He's saying all these phrases in different languages, and like cool. And he goes, "How long are you guys here for?" Then he starts giving us all these stats of Vegas, you know just I guess, and he's like, "Dude," and he looks at me, "Any club you want to get into, here you go, here's my card. You just give me a quick phone call, I'll make a phone call, I'll get you into any club in Vegas." And I was like, "Oh wow that's awesome." He hands me this card and as he's doing it he also says like, "Hey what do you do?" And I was like, to people who don't know what internet sales funnels are, it's totally technobabble, and so I always tell people, oh I'm in internet marketing. He's like, "Oh cool, I'm actually a marketer also." And I was like, "Oh wow, okay cool." But he hands me this card and this has got to be one of the coolest cards that I've ever seen in my life. It is a relic. This is like the prime example card. I'm going to take a picture of this and put it on the blog so you guys can see it if you want to, blog.salesfunnelbroker.com if you want to check it out. But it is the most ridiculous card I've ever seen in my life. This guy was so proud at was he was doing. It was great for him, you should be, he was working hard, you could tell he knew what he was doing, which is awesome. But he was handing a card to me while he was doing something that is not on his business card. And I started thinking, I was like wait a second, and I started looking at the card and I was like, this is the most ridiculous, stupid card I've ever seen in my life. Is he serious? And he was dead serious... He was telling me, "Yeah I do this. Oh yeah I do ... oh you do that? Oh I do too." I was like, "Oh wow man you do everything don't you?" I was like wow cool. This is what his card says. On the back of the card, I'm not going to say his name obviously or the phone number or email or anything like that, but it is the most eccentric, eccentric, it's the most eccentric business card I've ever seen in my life. On the back of it there's three categories, it's basically a resume. On the back, the first thing he does is management, corporate. Right, you do corporate management and you're tinting windows. Nightclubs, he's a nightclub manager and you're tinting windows? Bar and restaurants, loss prevention. What does that have to do with the others? Okay first of all I'm not even a third of the way through this list. This is like really small fine print on the back of this thing. Just get a load of this, alright. Hopefully we all take this as a lesson okay. I'm going to wrap this all up here this will be a fast episode but this is pretty intense. Alright so under management, we've got corporate and then the next one is nightclubs, bar and restaurant, loss prevention. Man that's a lot of things you manage on the side of your window tinting business. Alright next thing, marketing. This is the biggest ... I don't even know what some of these things are and I'd like to think I'm a marketer. Alright, under marketing he has director of marketing. What is that? Second thing, creative marketing expert. Is that not the same thing? If you're a director of marketing and you're not a marketing expert ... anyway okay. So director of marketing, creative marketing expert. Next one is internet marketing. Next one is brand marketing. Okay and by the way brand marketing is the most fluffy thing on the planet. Are you serious? Anyway that's what I think. Now there are some people who really go specialize in it and that's awesome, but I don't ever sit down and just start thinking through brand. I go create a cool product, make it look awesome, the brand kind of comes on the side. Alright, that's how I shortcut that whole thing. Otherwise you could spend too much time doing stuff on business that is not revenue generating and that's frustrating for me, and it's frustrating for me to watch others go do that also. I come up with a cool logo or honestly I just go to some place like GraphicRiver, I'll download one of their sweet logos and then I'll tweak it inside Adobe Illustrator because I do like graphics, things like that. But it's not something that I sit down and just, it's not like a checklist thing that keeps me from selling, it's like something that I figure out along the way. I'm like cool, here's my brand I guess... By that I guess that's what colors are. I mean I don't know. I'd rather call it culture, culture building, let's go focus on that. I really don't think many people care what my logo is. I'm the only one who cares what my logo is. Logos are just self backscratching things. Anyway moving on, I'm only halfway through this list. Okay so director of marketing, creative marketing expert, internet marketing, brand marketing. Next one is direct marketing specialist, next one is social media marketing, next one is promotions manager. How's that not the same thing as the one before? Next one is special events coordinator. Alright now we're branching out a little bit. Next one is corporate sponsorships. Does that mean you just did one event and you put those two things on there? Alright, alright, alright, here's the third category. This is all on the back of a single standard business card. Anyway. I kind of want to keep this, this is a relic, this is a relic. Maybe I'll auction it off if we have some cool contest or something because this is ... I feel like I should have laminated this. Alright next thing is under consulting, so we are management, marketing, and consulting. Okay. First thing on here revenue increase programs. Next one motivational communication. That dude was not motivating me, he was motivating me to slap him from stop hitting on my wife. Next one, restructure business planning. Restructure business planning. Oh man, okay. On this card also PowerPoint presentations. Next thing, life coaching. Are you serious? There's so many different things on this. Alright next one, staff development. How many things does this guy do? Alright, I'm going to call this episode the anti renaissance man. You guys, I so hope that we do not do this to our businesses. I understand that we are all great at many things, we are. I love sound editing, it's one of the reasons why I like to do the podcast, I love it. It's super fun. Because I'm right now inside Adobe Audition recording it right now, right? I did the episodes previously, it was two or three ago about how I make my podcast, it's fun, I actually enjoy the process, for some reason podcasting is almost therapeutic to me. I enjoy it, but it's not my flagship talent, right? Funnel building is. I choose one peak. Please go choose one peak. There's a guy I was talking to recently, he's like, "Stephen Larsen I love the things you're doing, it's so awesome, so inspiring, it's so great. I really appreciate it. I'm learning all about funnels. I just built my first few funnels, now I'm going to go learn how to be a traffic expert." And I was like, "No!" It's not that you can't be. It's not that it can't be a side interest, but man like find somebody else who is passionate about ... Okay, when I run my own stuff, I don't run Facebook ads on my own, I barely know how to do it. I go find somebody else who made Facebook ads their peak, who made it their summit, the thing that they want to stay on top of and be the top in the world at. Right? I go find them, not somebody who's like dabbling in this and that and all over the, oh my gosh, back and forth, what are you actually ... it's like Russell says, man you give people schizophrenia with your offers if you don't know what you're good at, the one thing, the one opportunity switch and then you do a bunch of stacks of things that are related to it, right, from the Expert Secrets book. It's the exact same thing that I'm talking about here. First of all, if you hand me a business card with all this stuff that you're doing on it and you're tinting windows, you're probably not making money with these things, therefore this whole card in my opinion it total crap. Right, the whole thing, it's all fluff. This card is a nice card, you can tell it's laminated or it's great, it's amazing card, paper, whatever, it's like crazy high gloss, it's really thick. I mean it's a nice card, but man what a supreme waste of money. This is not revenue generating, this right here, this business card, it's not revenue generating at all, right? I've had one business card ever and it wasn't even mine, I made it for my dad for his own webinar, that's it. Alright, and it's because it's not a revenue generating activity. If you want to contact me, gosh, there's a ton of social media profiles I can direct you to, right, there's a lot of ways you can get in touch with me. Some of you guys disagree because I know a lot of people try to get a hold of me so I've had to build more and more walls and try and figure out who's actually serious and work with those people, you know what I mean? It happens. You'll have to do it too at some point. But man, please only focus on one thing at a time and only make one of your skills your main thing that you're going to go climb a mountain on, right? I think I've told the story before, I get so frustrated, this is about four years, about three and a half years ago, I got so frustrated with what I was doing, I realized that I had been learning and not executing and I was stuck in this education loop, right, and I was focusing just on learning and I was ... and yeah, yeah, you know what, sure maybe I could say brand marketing, I've made logos before. Maybe I could say promotions manager, maybe, I don't know, I've run a Facebook ad before, it wasn't good. Social media marketing, I've posted stuff before. You know what I mean? Every single one of us has got multiple skills inside of our wheelhouse, but that does not mean that it's the flagship thing of my business. It's the same thing with you, don't do that. It's so funny because finally I was relieved when we were talking to this guy and I was just trying to get away. He went on for a solid 10 minutes, which is forever, and he wouldn't stop so I literally was like, "Hey, I forgot something in the car, whatever," and we walked away. The helicopter came, we went, we got on the helicopter, we were flying around the Hoover Dam, it was so cool, and came and landed and threw the little life jacket thing that they make you just hold while you're in there back in that room, and walked away as fast as I could because I did not want to start another conversation with the guy. Do you think there's any chance at all I'm going to call this card? It's like heck no. Choose something. Choose something. Or at least don't barf all over me. If you're doing a sale it's so true, when I was doing telemarketing, when I was doing door to door sales, whoever does the most talking is usually the one who loses, and the dude lost so hard, oh my gosh, he barfed all over us. I still don't know what he does besides window tint. I don't know what half the things are on this business card. Anyway just choose one thing and be good at that one thing. Outsource the rest, right. Every one of us has, what is it, is it Dan ... I'm going to misquote it, I'm so sorry, Sullivan? Maybe I'm mixing up names. Dan Sullivan? Anyway I think he's the one that talks about every one of us has unique abilities. You have this unique ability to do something in a way that nobody else can do it, just you, and it's the coolest thing. It's this amazing gift that god has blessed you with, that comes to you more naturally than anybody else, right? Funnel buildings, systems and automation, little details, things like that, those things come to me extremely naturally, and I know that for a lot of the people that are like, "Ah, I can't figure how to put this together. I don't know how to do the funnel, I don't know how to do x, y and z." I realize like I actually I'm kind of good at this stuff but number one, which is awesome, but number two I kind of want to plant my anchor here. After several years of trying stuff, right, in one of why previous podcasts I said I was the seven year overnight success story. After several years I was like, you know what, I think I've found it. I'm going to plant my anchor, I'm going to drop anchor right here and I'm going to say no to everything else. And I started doing that and it was awesome and things started happening. You can't brand yourself if you've got several things going on. I was like I'm going to brand myself as a funnel guy and I started building for free for all these people, and that's really when everything started happening. Before I did that it was like someone would walk up and they'd be like, hey I got this cool thing. I was like sweet let's go do it, right? Because that's what I thought it meant to do business. Deal, so you do deals, that's what business is. That was totally the Trump way. If you've ever read any of his books, business is just deal making all the time. I actually don't think that's true, I think that you do one deal, you know two deals, unless that's your thing, but whatever it is you're just doing one thing though, it's not multiple things. Just choose one thing, do that one thing really really well, and outsource or figure out a way to get around the rest of it then everything's going to go a lot better for you. Anyway that was a long story and I said it was going to be a short podcast but I think I'm going to take a picture of this thing and put it on the blog because that is just ... it's completely a relic. I feel like I should almost make a t-shirt out of it. This is quite the card... I am thoroughly impressed by the level of depth. Who was it that said ... it's one of the quotes I have written on my wall. I've got all these legal sheets all over my wall and I write quotes on them. I could have swore that one was on my wall, I'm looking around. Anyway it basically is that every time you open your mouth, you're either creating value or making noise, one of the two. It's not both, it's one or the other. And this card is all about noise. Make sure your marketing is not all about noise, don't say you do this and this and this and this and this, that's the equivalent of a website, that's why funnels work better than websites, it's one thing. Anyways I think I've beat a dead horse on that one. Hey guys, hopefully you're doing awesome, you're all rock stars, and I will see you on the next episode. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to sales funnel radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to https://salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

The Story Behind Alison's Ecommerce Empire... Stephen Larsen: Hey everybody, this is Steve Larsen, and welcome to a very special episode of 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 funnel. Now, here's your host, Steve Larson. Stephen Larsen: All right you guys. Hey, this is exciting. You know, for me I'm just selfishly wanting to talk to, in my opinion, one of the coolest people that is out there. One of the most inspiring stories. Doing exactly what they love. I'm just excited that I hit the record button and you guys get to listen in. There's a lot that I feel like I could learn from this person. I haven't done an interview in a very long time, and I'm excited to bring on just a complete rock star. Everybody, this is Alison Prince. Alison, how you doing? Alison Prince: Good. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. You've been running the, let's see, Pick a Plum and Because I Can Clan for a while now, right? Alison Prince: I have. I actually own seven businesses, Stephen. Stephen Larsen: Oh really? Don't tell Russell. Alison Prince: I know. I'm a little bit of a serial entrepreneur. Stephen Larsen: We get that. That's cool. What's your most favorite one right now that you're doing? Alison Prince: Do you know, it's actually the Because I Can Clan. Stephen Larsen: Oh really? That's your most recent one, isn't it? Alison Prince: It is. I launched that right after I joined the Inner Circle. Launched it in about March, officially in March. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Just for everyone listening, the first time I ever met Alison is actually, actually do you want to tell everyone how you got into the Inner Circle? I think it's hilarious. Alison Prince: Yeah. I hope I don't get in trouble for it, though. Stephen Larsen: No. It'll be awesome. Alison Prince: I own a blog called How Doe She? I've been running that for almost eight years, which is crazy. We're always trying to learn, always trying to figure out new ways to do affiliate type promotions on the blog. I went to an affiliate conference, it was actually down in Las Vegas. When I got there, it was not the conference that I signed up for. I went to the classes. The classes, I swear, every single speaker was drunk, or it was totally a click bait class. The title was one thing and then what they spoke on was totally different. I'm like, where am I? I saw Click Funnel and I'm like, oh I wonder if this will really help my business? I went and I listened to Russell, and his title was exactly what he spoke about. He wasn't drunk. I really appreciated the honesty from the title. His pitch, the way he presented himself, I was just super impressed with it. Then what, two weeks later I had joined the Inner Circle. From just figuring out who Russell Brunson was, two weeks later, joined the Inner Circle because I knew he was good. I knew his message was good. I knew he was honest, and so I just jumped in with both feet. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. I mean, it was literally, what, two weeks later you were at the Funnel Hackathon event, the FHAT event. Alison Prince: Yes, which was a wild ride. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, and you stood up and you were talking and stuff. It's funny because you introduced yourself and your story. I remember, I mean it's an intense three days. In the back office though, like back in Russell's office, he and I were both like, "Have you met that Alison lady? Oh my gosh, she's so cool. Where does she come from? Where are more people like that?" When we see you as an individual, and you as a person and the things that you're doing, you just seem like the kind of person that is 100% truly genuine and there and happy. You're present in the moment, and it makes people wonder, "Who is this lady? How is she doing what she's doing and why am I not doing that?" It's really cool. We talked all about ... Don't think, yeah, we were talking all about you. It's really easy. Alison Prince: Go for it. Lots of people do. I don't care. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. It's really easy to see just that you absolutely love what you do. It's super unique, it's extremely inspiring. You've got the family side down and the business side down, it seems like. You're traveling. Anyways. Alison Prince: Yeah. Well there is. Okay, so I've been over to Thailand for the last three weeks. I have severe jet lag right now. I took my whole family over there. We were out there for three weeks doing service projects. Why? Because we can... I decided, I've been able to do this and I have lived my dream life. Now it's time to help others live their dream life too. This is, we have so many opportunities here in America. The education, like on YouTube University, everything that Russell gives. Stephen, your podcast is absolutely amazing. We have so much information to change our lives. I decided to start the Because I Can Clan, because we can. We can change our lives. We can do the things of the dreams that we want to, and be in the moment. Have the family. I mean, I have four kids and we're over Thailand. Like real severe poverty, helping those kids, trying to help them change their lives. We were able to do some job training over there too. It was just, I don't know, there's just so much opportunity, so much excitement out there, to be able to live how you want to. Because it's just, it's there. There's so much out there right now. Stephen Larsen: It's so true. Before I hit the record button everyone, we were talking and you were saying, "It seems lik you and Russell don't sleep." That's so true. It's the exact same reason. It's funny, all these things that we learn and we go do, it's fun, but there's also a bit of a mantle that comes with it, it sometimes feels like. You have a responsibility, in my opinion, to go out and help other people know that you know how to do. Anyway, I'm just completely in agreeance of what you're saying. It's so real and tangible. When you start getting to these levels of various success, that you've got to turn around. I believe and it sounds like you do too, that there's a little bit of a responsibility to turn around and kind of just help humanity, help the other guy who's still struggling. Alison Prince: Yeah. Then I think it's ... Okay, so let's go back. I think it might be a little bit of selfishness too, because when you serve, you feel so good. If you can create a business around serving, it just fulfills you. In the mornings when you get up, it's not hard to get up at five, six in the morning, and you're so excited to get to work. You don't feel like you're working. It's just this beautiful thing that goes together, where you're actually having fun every single day, doing what you love. Then going to bed at night knowing that you did ... I don't know, you're just happy. It just fulfills, it fulfills me... Stephen Larsen: That's so fun. That's so cool. Yeah. I love what I do for people. My wife always makes fun of me. She's like, "How come you get kind of awkward every time someone asks you what you do?" I'm like, well because I don't know what to say sometimes. How much time do they have? Alison Prince: So true. Stephen Larsen: I want to just tell them everything, and they'll run away from me from that. I am extremely interested, my sister, my brother, lots of my close family and friends actually follow you very closely, and what you do. They're incredibly inspired by it. I just wanted to ask, did you always want to have your own business? Is this something you stumbled into? Is it something you created out of a side necessity? You know what I mean? What really put you into that? Alison Prince: Okay. I went to college and I was a junior high teacher, if you can believe that. Stephen Larsen: Wow. I had no idea. Alison Prince: I loved those kids. We laughed, or I laughed at them, every single day. Imagine, I don't know, 300 eighth graders that you got to see every single day. They were just a ball of energy. I know some people it's like their worst nightmare, but I love, we had so much fun together. We would do pumpkin chucking contests. Then we would sit in shopping carts for the mass equals acceleration times whatever. I forgot. It's all physics stuff. We'd put a kid in a shopping cart, push them down the hallway to see if they would go faster if someone was in the shopping cart, out of the shopping cart. We had so much fun learning. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Alison Prince: Then I got my first paycheck. Stephen, it was like a slap in the face. Because they handed me my paycheck and they said, "Oh, by the way, you qualify for food stamps." I was like, "Wait, what? No, I studied math and science for four years in college. What do you mean I get food stamps?" They're like, "Yup, welcome to being a teacher." You know, I should have done the research beforehand, but when you're young you don't really think about money until you start having children and your husband's going to school full time and you have real bills. I started a little tutoring business on the side. I could tutor one to two kids a night, but I had a baby at home. My husband was going to school full time and I just couldn't get enough tutoring hours in. Then I started hiring people. Hired them for $15 an hour but charged $20 an hour, so I made an additional $5. Then I ended up hiring about four teachers, and so I was making as much money, not actually having to go and work those two hours. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is this? That's when the entrepreneur bug bit, as I figured out how I could free up my time by hiring other people to be able to grow a business, or to be able to work on the things that made me happy. I haven't stopped since. Stephen Larsen: That's amazing. What eventually made you leave that? I really wanted to be a tenth grade history teacher for a long time. That was actually my dream for a long time. That's the first time all you guys on this podcast have heard that. I really love history. I love war stories. I love all that stuff. It was the exact same thing you just said, it was the paycheck that kept me from doing any of that. What eventually made you leave that altogether? Alison Prince: Well, we moved to Oklahoma. My husband got accepted to school out there. The pay was $10,000 less than the pay in Utah, if you can even imagine that. Then I was pregnant with my second child. We were on food stamps, state support, and I was working a ton as a teacher. I'm like, this is just, this isn't right. This isn't right... I don't want to be on state assistance. I've gone to college. My husband's going to college. I became a realtor at that point. I had to stop the tutoring business because, this is going to tell you how old I am, but the internet really wasn't up and going at that point. It was hard to do a business out of state, so I became a realtor during the boom. I made $60,000 working part-time. Was able to get off all the assistance, be able to support, help pay for my husband's college. Through that, real estate, I was helping new buyers and so I was still educating. I was still getting that fulfillment of educating people, but it was just in a different area. I was helping new home buyers find their first home, and it was awesome. Then that just led to the next business and then the next business. Then eventually it rolled around into How Does She, which is the blog. I call it my playground, where I get to learn how the internet works, how to grow Facebook. We actually grew our Facebook page to two million followers organically. Stephen Larsen: That's huge. Alison Prince: I know. We just hit two million like two weeks ago. We did it in about two years, so we're pretty excited about that. I get to learn and play. Now I started the Because I Can Clan, helping others be able to do the entrepreneur side of things, to be able to change their lives. To be able to, if they are teachers and they need extra money, there's a way to do it where it doesn't eat all your time. There's a way to do it to be able to bring in that extra income. Stephen Larsen: Yeah. I know everyone's situations are different, especially the guys that are listening out there. Everyone's coming from different backgrounds, so obviously take what I'll say with a grain of salt here. I remember the exact same thing, when we were in college and all this stuff. When we were first starting out, we had to take loans. We had to get all the assistance and stuff. I could not help but fight this incredibly huge feeling that I was just cheating, and I needed to go create a business. That's one of the major reasons I started doing that also. You're heavily involved though, right now in eCommerce, right? Alison Prince: Yes. Stephen Larsen: Big, big, big. Alison Prince: Yeah, when I started the blog, with How Does She, we would do posts. They were creative posts, like how to make this or how to make that. Then people would say, "Where do you get your products from?" I was sending them to Home Depot. I was sending them to Michael's Crafts. Then one day I was like, "Why am I not sending them to me? Why am I sending them to these other stores? Why don't I set up like an eCommerce store?" I started a business called Pick Your Plum, and sold out the very first day. What it was is, it was a daily deal site and I would have one product up every single day. The very first day, put up my product, sold out. Second day, sold out. Third day, didn't sell any. I'm like, dang it, is this the right thing? Then grew it into a huge business within two years, just by sending people over. It was just one product a day. Now it's about 70, 80 products a day. In the beginning it was just one product a day. I had never done eCommerce before. Then we would sell out so fast, and a lot of our American distributors, they would run out of the product for us. I got on an airplane, went over to China, and started finding manufacturers. I don't know any Chinese. I have never been to China. I've never taken a business class, Stephen, ever. Stephen Larsen: They're overrated. Off the record, they're totally overrated. I learn more from books. It's all good. Alison Prince: Yup. I learned more from doing and getting on that plane to China, than I ever could have in a classroom. It was scary. I had four kids at the time. My sweet husband was here and I'm like, "I'm going to China." He's like, "Okay." It's not just like going to the mall and getting products. Stephen Larsen: No. Alison Prince: It's crazy across the world. Yeah, got on a plane, went and found manufacturers. Then started to learn how to import. Did I make mistakes? Oh yes I did. Did I learn from it and created a successful business from it? Absolutely. It was well worth that. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, I remember, okay one of the most recent things that I've heard of that you've done is, you sold pillowcases. Alison Prince: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephen Larsen: First of all, how did you choose pillowcases out of every product that was out there? Alison Prince: Okay, so let me back up a little bit and tell you a little bit more about the story. Stephen Larsen: I would love that, yeah. Alison Prince: My daughters, they were sleeping in and just, they were 10 and 13 at the time. This is when I'm running How Does She, when I'm running Pick Your Plum. The girls, they were just being teenagers, and they were tired and sleeping in till 10. My husband and I were like, we don't want to raise children that are lazy. They were just trying to figure out what they wanted. What we did is we said, "You guys have three options. You can move out of the house." Which of course, we didn't want them to move out of the house. "You can do more chores, which we're going to start at seven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday morning. Or you can start a business. Which of those three choices would you want to do?" Of course, they were like, "We want to start a business." Stephen Larsen: Cool. Alison Prince: What they did is they started this business. I gave them some resources, but I really wanted them to try and to test it, because I didn't want to be holding their hand the whole time. They needed to learn this journey. Then you're not going to believe this, but in nine months, just nine months, they sold over $100,000. Stephen Larsen: That's crazy. Alison Prince: $100,000. Makayla, she was in junior high at the time, she would come home crying because she couldn't get her locker open. I'm like, "Don't worry honey, you just sold $5000 today. You can pay someone to open up your locker for you." Stephen Larsen: A 10 and a 13 year old, $100,000 a year. Alison Prince: 10 and a 13 year old, yeah. Yes, they sold over $100,000 in nine months. I was like, okay, if these girls can do it, other people can do it. Then I of course went to my sister. You got to test it, right? Done it with my girls, so I went to my sister and I'm like, "Hey, let's try something." She needed something at the time because she needed a new roof. There was just a lot going on in her life. She was budgeting and going to garage sales and just didn't have a ton of money to buy this roof that she needed. She went through this whole thing and she sold $129,000 in nine months. Apparently she wanted to outdo the girls. Stephen Larsen: New roof. Alison Prince: Got her new roof, yeah, it was pretty exciting. People have said, "Alison, well that's cool you've done it, and it's probably because you have these platforms." I'm not going to lie, How Does She has a great following of two million people. When the girls started, it wasn't that big of a number. People have said, "Alison, of course you can do it. You have these huge social media platforms." This goes to the pillowcases. I build a business to prove that you don't need to have this huge social media following to be successful. I went out and I found that pillowcases, yeah, like the lamest, boring product, were trending. That's the rule, secret number one, the rule to success is just sell what other people are buying. If people are buying it, just put it in front of them. You don't have to go out and have this huge, crazy shark tank idea. We went and we built this little pillowcase business. In 24 months we sold over a million dollars in pillowcases. Stephen Larsen: That is insane. Alison Prince: Yeah, and it was to prove that you don't have to have this big, huge social media following. On that pillowcase business, there's only like 55 Facebook followers. It's my sister and my brother, and I guarantee you they did not buy $1.1 million in pillowcases. Promise. Stephen Larsen: Now my brother and my sister, they've all gone through your course. They love your course. They talk about you all the time. Alison Prince: Yay, good. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, they just really, really love it, all the value you put out there too, and showing people how you do it. Their biggest question afterward though, and I was wondering if I could ask you here. Alison Prince: Put me on the spot. Stephen Larsen: Was, what are some of the methods you use to go find what people are buying? Alison Prince: I've actually built, and I go through it step by step in the course, so maybe I just need to point them to that again. You go and you, like there are specific sites that I look at to see what's trending. I check it almost every single day, except of course when I was in Thailand, because you couldn't get the internet half the time. The internet is so amazing and so beautiful, and it just, it literally spoon feeds you the information. You just have to know where to find it, and be receptive to it. Stephen Larsen: Oh that's so true. Yeah. Alison Prince: Once you know how to find the #trending on specific sites, then you just see what's selling. Then you go, and you don't copy their idea, I want to put that out there. You don't copy, like if they've got a specific branded product, you don't copy it, but there's so many commodity products out there. My girls, they didn't come up with some new crazy idea. You want to know what they sold? Did I already tell you what they sold? Stephen Larsen: No, I don't think so. Alison Prince: They sold scarves, Stephen. Scarves. Stephen Larsen: $100,000 with scarves. I told Russell the other day, if there's another like 12 year old that makes a million bucks, so help me, because it's ridiculous. The formulas are all out there everybody, for you to actually just make money. Alison Prince: It is. Stephen Larsen: You really just have to look around. The market will always tell you what you need to sell. I always tell people, the creativity that you need in order to make a lot of money is actually not inside of you. You don't have it or you don't possess it. All you do is you look around at everything that's around you, and you look at the market through some of the ways Alison's talking about. There's these ways you can test and see before you jump in, and before it's scary and you might lose your shirt. The market will always tell you what to sell, it's not inside of you to know. Alison Prince: You don't invest a lot of money, I love that you said that. The girls, they didn't put in like $16,000. No. They bought some from California, and then they just tested it. We probably, I don't know, put in maybe like $100 to $200 to see if they would even sell, and they sold out very fast so we knew we had something. Then we invested more, and then we invested more. Don't risk your whole life savings, you don't need to. That's crazy Stephen. I have sold so many products, and to this day I still won't invest huge money into stuff until I tested it. You don't need to. Test it first. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, 100%. I'm in the middle of doing that with my own thing. Just this small, little $100 thing, and it's been running for a long time. Finally, I feel like, all right, that's been tested to death, I think that I can actually jump full in on this other thing. It's been a lot of fun to do that. The testing is so key. Everybody dreams, I feel like. We get caught in this, it's totally the shark tank mentality. I need to sell something that's big and unique and crazy. I call it product big bang theory, where it's just boom, this big massive idea that no one's ever heard of before. The problem is that no one ever wants that stuff. They think they do. It's really product evolution. You're just finding other things that are selling and you add little tweaks to them, and go blow it up. Alison Prince: Yup. Stephen Larsen: This is Sales Funnel Radio. Which funnel do you use to sell that stuff? Alison Prince: Okay, so you have to remember that I just started ClickFunnels in March. Stephen Larson: You're a pro. Alison Prince: From February until June, I have been out of the country for two of the months. It has been insane and crazy, crazy stuff. I did a freemium funnel, and honestly the freemium funnel didn't convert as much as the 4.99 funnel did. Stephen Larsen: Wow. Alison Prince: I know, it's kind of crazy, right? The scarves, this was done before I knew about Click Funnels, the scarves, so we just did it on a basic shopping cart website. We did a freemium offer then, did amazing. We did three free scarves with the shipping, and then shipping and handling, and they did amazing. We did a lot of those. It did really well. I've noticed that in the community that I am in, I work with a lot of bloggers. I work with a lot of marketplaces. The freemium offer isn't converting as well. I think people are a little scared of it. They've been burnt by it. It's too good to be true. If we can just give them a really good deal, let's say we do the pillowcases for like two for 24, that goes like wildfire, with free shipping. Because it's an offer, and what you and Russell both talk about is give them an option, give them an offer they cannot turn down. Two for 24 with free shipping on these pillowcases, people eat it up. What we've been doing is we've been putting a lot of funnels in place that just really focus on one item, and one really good offer, which you guys of course talk about nonstop. That's it. Stephen, all we have to do is just listen to you guys and do it, and it works. Stephen Larsen: I'm paying her to say that everybody. Alison Prince: No, but it is so true. We over complicate things. We just need to keep things simple, and listen. It works. It's just super, we overthink things, we over complicate things as human beings. I know when I built my course out, I was over complicating things like crazy. Stephen, like I asked you some questions and you're like, "Simple Alison. Keep it simple." It converted so much better than when it was complicated... Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. Alison Prince: Props to you. Stephen Larsen: Thank you very much. You know, it's funny, most people, they tend to think, "Well Alison right now, she's talking about eCommerce and I'm over here in info products. That's completely different so I must need to disregard all of the things that she's saying." Or, "I'm doing this over here." Guys, it's all the same. It's human psychology. These sales processes, the way you create offers and you put it all together, it's the same thing across the board. It doesn't matter if you're selling physical, digital, any kind of info product business, a service based professional service, like you're a dentist or something. It's all the same. Alison Prince: It really is. Stephen Larsen: You just have to think what part your business fits in that model, and then go fill the gaps and it starts to come together. That being said, how did you think up an offer that they can't turn down? That's interesting. Alison Prince: I just asked them. Stephen Larsen: It can't be that simple. Alison Prince: It is that simple. You put it out there, and if nobody buys, no one pulls out their wallet, you know your offer stinks. You don't take it personally. You just say, okay, let me come up with another offer. I was on Facebook the other day, of course, and I wish I can remember the quote. Someone was saying, the reason why he's successful is because he just puts out offers. The more offers he puts out, the better he does. You take your product and you put out an offer. If it doesn't do well, okay, not a big deal, redo it and then test it again, and test it again and test it again. We need to be testing things constantly, until we can nail it. Then once we nail it, then of course we scale it, we grow it as big as we can. To put out a Facebook offer, that doesn't cost a lot of money. If you've got a good following, it doesn't really cost anything to just test it. You put out an offer, you put $5 in. If someone bites, oh take it. Tweak it just a little bit... See if you can get two people to buy off of it. I think that's what people think, they put out an offer and if nobody buys they're like, "Oh, my product stinks." Or, "Oh, I'm not good enough." When that's not the case at all. It's they just need to tweak it and try it again. I mean you're an entrepreneur, you know this. The only way you fail as an entrepreneur is when you stop. That's when you fail right there, is when you stop. Stephen Larsen: You know it's funny, two or three days ago Russell and I were at the office still, it was 1:30 in the morning, as men do. Alison Prince: Are you sleeping at the office too? I know Russell is. On a cot or something. Stephen Larsen: Not always by choice. Sometimes I just fall asleep there. We got this big cot there and a tent right now. It's funny. Alison Prince: You know, okay a little, another pitch. Seriously, I am so grateful for you guys. All of the information that you give makes my life so much easier, so thank you for not ever sleeping, just for Alison Prince. Stephen Larsen: Oh thank you very much. We have a lot of fun doing it. It's very, very fun. Alison Prince: That does not go unnoticed. I am seriously very, very grateful for everything you guys produce and put out there. Stephen Larsen: That's much appreciated, very much. We were talking a few days ago. He and I, for some reason, we both got on this big rant. We had been working super hard on these things, trying to relaunch and tweak and fix. Exactly what you're saying, what's the problem with this one? All right, let's go fix it. Just relaunch, relaunch. We both got on this topic, how did we both get started? He started going through his journey with me, and luckily we flipped the camera on, so it's going to be an episode here soon. It's really cool. He was walking through all the different products and all the sites and all the things that he had put out there. The ones that worked and the ones that didn't. I started doing the same thing, and it was really fun. He asked me, he was like, "When did it finally click for you?" I said, "It finally clicked for me when I realized that products and offers are not the same thing." For years, I had been selling products, and that's why I was failing, because I was the exact same as the other guy. When I created an offer out of it and I made it this awesome thing, and you get this and this, or you get this and an info product, or whatever it is. I started bundling and creating offers. That's honestly when it blew up for me. He said, "Yeah, for me what I've noticed is that it's the people who are obsessed with the marketing who always make the money. But the people who are obsessed with the money never make the money." It's totally about the marketing part of it and creating the offers. Anyway, I thought that was interesting you just said that. Alison Prince: It is. It is like, I call it the vision. How do you put together a product that's going to inspire people? On Pick Your Plum, it's a lot of like commodity, it's a product based site. I've never sold a product on Pick Your Plum. I sell the vision. One of my examples is, this is crazy, but when we first got started there wasn't a lot of money. I went out to my backyard. I found these blocks of wood. What I did is I decorated them with some stuff and made them cute, made them into ornaments for Christmas trees. Made them into block kits for kids, stuff like that. I sold the vision of what you could do with these blocks. Stephen, we ended up selling over $9000 in trash. Stephen Larsen: That's so cool. Alison Prince: Because we never sold the product, we sold the vision of what you could do with it. That's what you sell, right? You don't sell something. Stephen Larsen: You sell the hole, not the drill. Alison Prince: Yes, yes, that's exactly it. What can they do with it, that's what you sell, that's what converts. That's what people want. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. How many times do you buy something and you never end up using it? Russell, it was kind of fun, he came over for dinner last night over here. We were geeking out over my books and the bookshelves. That's what we do, it's geeky and it's fun. We're going through all these books and my wife walks up and she goes, "Are you ever actually going to read those?" I was like, "Yeah, of course I am." Yeah, whatever. Russell was like, "Yeah, we read the titles and get the gist." It's funny that so many of us are like that though. We look at these, we'll go buy stuff, whatever it is. Exercise equipment is a classic example. Treadmills are just another kind of coat hanger for most people. It's because they got sold on the vision and not the actual thing. It's powerful. Alison Prince: It is. Stephen Larsen: Now I wanted to ask another part here. You've talked about how you just ask them and you create the offer. How do you get a lot of your traffic? How have you figured out that aspect of it? I know that's a big challenge for some of the listeners. Alison Prince: Okay. Remember what we learned in like kindergarten, about how to share? Stephen Larsen: Barely. I kind of skipped that one. Just kidding. Alison Prince: It really goes back to like elementary school, you share. You reach out to a blogger. You reach out to another shop, and you figure out how you can collaborate. Because that shop's trying to grow too, and you find out how you can work together. It really, it's so simple and everybody makes it very, very complicated, but it doesn't need to be. Like in blog land, we always are sharing each other's posts. In the eCommerce world, we're going out there and we're saying, "Hey, let's do a giveaway together. You've got a product that compliments my product, let's do a giveaway together. We'll get your readers and my readers excited, pumped up about it, and we can throw traffic to each other." Then we go to, now I'm working with my course, my digital product, so now I'm going out there and I'm working with other people who have a complimentary product. Then we interview each other or we post each other's stuff. I'm helping them grow. They're helping me grow. Now when I do this, you have to do it with people with similar numbers. If I came up to like Russell and I'm like, "Hey Russell, post me on your Instagram page." Something like that, and I only have like 200 followers or something like that and he's got a gajillion, it's not going to work. It's got to be something where, if I've got 200 followers, I'm working with someone with around 200 to 500 followers. You do it in a way, it's more organic, or it's more like a friendship instead of go follow, I don't know, Cookies With Lacy or something like that. That just looks too spammy. If you can post a picture that says, "Hey look at these cookies that Lacy made. They are so great." Vice versa. It really is networking and getting to know each other in the social world. It really does work. That is the big secret to how we grew our Facebook page to two million, is we just worked together. We came up with, "Hey, let's share each other's posts." Then I've got some bloggers right now that are excited about sharing this course. There's a few things that I've been working on, tweaking on. Stephen, I'm still working on that. I launched it in March, this course, and I've been tweaking it, testing it and perfecting it. Then I'm excited, I just got back from Thailand, to be able to start pushing it harder and harder and harder. I've actually got a webinar this morning and I'm really excited about it. Stephen Larsen: Oh cool. Alison Prince: I guess it's not a webinar anymore, we call them master classes, because nobody wants to go on a webinar. Stephen Larsen: Marketers. Alison Prince: Yeah. I've got a secret master class coming up today. I'm constantly tweaking that offer. How can I serve my people more? How can I get them more information? How can I help them become more successful? They see it. Then other people see it and then people start talking about it. It really goes back to what you learned in elementary, and it's to share. It really is so simple. Stephen Larsen: That's so interesting too, that you say it that way. Because I know one of the pieces of advice Russell and I give is, some people will be like, "Okay, I've got this sweet offer but I have no money for ads." A situation that we've probably all been in before. "I've got no money for ads. I've got no following. I'm literally brand new, there's still green on my ears." We always tell them to do something that sound ludicrous but is very strategic, which is just to go find somebody who has a following who would want the product, and just give it to them. Don't even try and get any profit from it. What you end up getting out of it though is a list, because you just send them out there and you end up getting all these people who opt in. Now you have another asset, there's a piece of value there. You go to the next guy and you say, "Hey, I got this list, you got this list, you want to do a little cross promotion?" Just like you just said. Now your list grows and you've got a little money. You go to the next person and do it again. By the time you've done it and flipped it six or seven times, you're rich. It's exactly like you're talking. Alison Prince: Yeah. You are going to get told no, and I think a lot of people are scared by the word no. Who cares if you get told no, just go find another person. You don't want to work with them anyways, if they're ... Stephen Larsen: It's going to happen. Alison Prince: It is. If you're prepared to get one yes out of ten, then you're a rock star and you will feel good when you get that yes. Don't think that everybody's going to say yes. You're going to get told no, it's not a big deal, just move on to the next one. Move on to the next one. I mean if it was easy, if we were just to flip on a light switch and become a millionaire, everybody would be and then money wouldn't have any value. We actually have to go out, do the work, build those relationships. Spoil those people and be treated how we would want to be treated. I know when I get a product in the door, a package, I'm like, "Woo hoo, this is the best thing ever." Stephen Larsen: I loved yours, by the way. Thank you. Alison Prince: Good. I'm glad you got it. That's the same thing. People want to be loved and want to be spoiled. Just treat them how you want to be treated. It's back to kindergarten. Stephen Larsen: That's awesome. I have one other area I just wanted to ask you about real quick. That is, okay you've got a guy over here who's saying drop shipping is the thing. Another person over here saying, "Do all fulfillment but only high ticket." This person says ... There's a lot of areas and a lot of facets of the eCommerce world, and you're obviously an expert in it. I just wanted to ask why you picked self-fulfillment, and low ticket, high volume? That's mostly where you've been, right? Alison Prince: Yeah. The In-N-out Burger approach. Where we can sell thousands and thousands of a product at a low price and make good money. The reason why, a couple things. When I first started, I didn't have money to get a huge warehouse. I didn't have money to have someone fulfill my products. It's expensive to have someone fulfill. The margins weren't there, and I knew a lot of people that needed jobs. I started, the very first one was in the garage, and I had people come over to the garage and help me fulfill out of the garage, because you do what you need to, to start growing your business. Then we got a little tiny warehouse, I think it was about 1200 square feet. Which I'll tell you what, scared the hejeebies out of me to sign that contract. Stephen Larsen: I bet. Alison Prince: When you're uncomfortable, I don't know, if we stay comfortable ... Stephen Larsen: Stuff happens. Alison Prince: Yeah. Don't stay comfortable... You've got to get uncomfortable to be able to have results. Then I just found joy in writing people checks that I knew, that I grew to love, that I grew to find. Then there was more margins in it. We got to do a lot more fun things as a company. In my course I do teach self-fulfilling has higher margins, and there are great ways to do it, but I do give options about having other people fulfill for you. The reason why I give both options is because I've been gone a lot, and I've been traveling. I want to be with my family. I don't want to stay up till two o'clock in the morning shipping products. That just, to me, is not fun. There's other options that I give to help you, because the entrepreneur should not be shipping. They should not ever ship one product. Well maybe one, to see how the process goes, but they should not be shipping the product. I do give options. I do talk about ways to be able to get that off your plate, and how to hire it out. How to hire another company to do it when you're ready. Things like that, just so you can truly focus on what you're good at. Finding the product, marketing, getting sales, getting out there, branding your product, growing your business. Not necessarily shipping, because that's, I don't know. Some people love shipping. I'm not a fan of shipping. Stephen Larsen: No, and it's funny to hear you say that, with the amount of stuff that you ship. Alison Prince: Yeah, no. I had my fair share of shipping. Oh man. Find help. Do not do it yourself. Find help. I teach that a lot in my course, you do what you're good at. You have, tell me which one it is, you have a podcast that talks exactly about that. When you guys are at ... See I stalk you Stephen, I really like what you have to say. When you're at IHOP and you were asking Russell like how he can get so much stuff done. He just hires it out because he's like, "I don't know how to do it." Which podcast is that, do you remember? Stephen Larsen: I don't remember. You know, it's funny, I usually, I just know that there's something cool that I want to share and then I come up with a title later. Alison Prince: Oh. It was probably about a month ago, because I listened to it. It was probably about a month, month and a half ago, but it was really, really good on focusing on what you're good at. Everything else, hire it out, get it off our plate. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, he told me once, he's like, "Stephen, I realized that I am a starter, and you are a finisher, that's why you're here." It's so true. That's how it happens, he starts and I finish. We're a cool team like that. It's very true, you've got to know which one you are though, hire out the other. Alison Prince: Agreed. Absolutely. Stephen Larsen: That's so cool. Alison, I know we've been going for a little bit... I just want to thank you for, I mean for anyone who's listening to this, I'm going to put so much stinking ad money behind this because I want everyone to hear your story and your voice and everything that you do. I am such a huge fan of Alison Prince and all the things that you do. It sounds like we stalk each other. You're just one of those people out there who's living and loving living. You set up what you do in a way so that you can love it. There's a lot of trial and error that comes with that in order to have it be that way. Anyway, it's just a massive example. Where can people find out more about you? Alison Prince: Facebook page, I just started the Because I Can Clan about three months ago. You can find me on Facebook over there. I do have a personal Instagram account AlisonJPrince, which I will start converting over into more of the business side soon. I really like about the journey, talking about the journey, how we're doing it. You're going to see how I start doing that, and I'm sharing my story. Like right now, on the Because I Can Clan, I've been doing a Facebook Live. I did a Facebook Live every single day except for two days in Cambodia when I didn't have internet. Stephen Larsen: Wow, what's your excuse? Just kidding. Alison Prince: Oh Verizon and Cambodia do not get along. Stephen Larson: That's funny. Alison Prince: I even called them and they're like, "Yeah, no. We just don't work with Cambodia." I'm like, "Wait, what? You realize what year it is." They said, "Yeah, there's just a lot of stuff." I'm like, okay, I don't wan to get into it. There was a couple days that we couldn't do it in Cambodia. I did, I related our experiences of scorpions and elephants and crazy stuff that we ran into and how that related to business. I did a Facebook Live. We're on day 19 today. I did it and I'm jotting down how fast that page is growing. In 17 days it had grown over 1000 followers, which I was pretty excited about. Then the next half the month I'm going to be doing that and then adding more. I'm documenting my journey. I'll do it on the Facebook page, and then I've got a closed group, Because I Can Clan group. Then I'm sharing with people over there what I'm doing, so they can watch what I'm doing. What you guys do, watch the master's hands. We go out there, we test it. We tell people what we're doing and what works and what doesn't work. Then they go out there and then they replicate it. Anyways, long story short, Because I Can Clan on Facebook, or my Instagram page. Then if they want to sign up for the course, that's 0-100k.com. You can find out all the information on the course. How people can make this a reality, if they want to get their kids going on it. Like my girls, they have their college education ready to go. They've got their savings accounts set up. They actually set up Roth IRAs this year. My eight and nine year old little boy, they have Roth IRAs right now. Stephen Larsen: I don't even have that. That's awesome. Alison Prince: It's a gift that we can give them as parents to be able to set them up financially when they hit certain ages. You've got to think through the process of, no, they're not going to be able to get all that money when they're 18 and go crazy with it. We've set up milestones so they can get it when they're this age or this age or this age. They have something, and they're eight and nine years old right now. Imagine what it's going to be like when they retire. Anyways, I talk about that kind of stuff because it's life changing. Stephen Larsen: It is. Alison Prince: I want others to be able to do it too, because it's not hard. You just have to listen to people. I think that's the biggest thing. Listen and do. You have to be a doer. You have to make things happen. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, and you can't be so afraid of appearing imperfect. I think that's the biggest killer. Alison Prince: Yeah. Stephen Larsen: I know it's one of the biggest killers, in my opinion, of entrepreneurs. Actually being vulnerable with your marketing, and getting out and sharing stories. Sharing the successes, but even more importantly the failures, if you are afraid of appearing imperfect. I always bring this up and people are always sick of me saying it. Again, when you start down the entrepreneurial path, like your imperfections explode in your face and you can't move on till you fix them. Anyway, it's awesome to have a person like you who's walked down the path. You know what it's like and you've been very successful. It's really cool to see. You're not afraid of messing up or being imperfect, or hey that test didn't work, and being public about it. That's a huge key. Alison Prince: You want to hear something funny? Stephen Larsen: Yes I do. Alison Prince: When I did my course, I set a date. Stephen, I set that date way too early but I wanted to push myself. I had stayed up for probably two weeks solid, just trying to get it done. I bought Liz Benny's course on the whole, how to set up everything for a course. Which Liz Benny, props to her, she is an amazing, amazing woman, a very wonderful teacher. When I did, oh my gosh, talk about a hot mess. When I did the course, I did the master class, it went well. I had people buying the course after. I had linked them to Liz Benny's course. People would buy the course and then they'd say, "Alison, how come I see a lady that's like talking about monkeys?" Which is her course, Social Media Monkey. I'm like, "Oh my gosh I forgot to change her link out." Then it gets even better. Then the payment plan, I didn't know that Stripe, when you do a payment plan it automatically sets it to a free 30 day trial, so I had given everybody my course for free that signed up for the payment plan. I'm like, oh my gosh. Then it gets even better, because why not, right? I put a huge type, like ginormously huge typo in the guarantee. I said, "100% money back guarantee if you are happy with the course." Stephen Larsen: Usually we don't care about typos that much, that's kind of a big one though. Alison Prince: That's a huge, huge typo. I am the perfect example of just do it. I ended up selling over, I think it was 26 courses my very first launch, and it was a complete hot mess. Stephen Larsen: I remember that. You did it, you crushed it. You just did it. Alison Prince: I just did it. You go out there knowing you're going to make mistakes. You tell people, say, "You guys, the tech's probably going to be screwed up because this is my first time, but the information that I have is valuable." It was. I was confident in what the offer was. I was not confident on the technology. They were patient with me and they were like, "It's okay. It's okay." I was able to get Liz Benny's course off there and direct them to my course. Get the payments fixed. Change the guarantee. I didn't have one person ask for their money back, because of what I was giving them. Because they were so excited about the offer, that they were fine with the mistakes. I think that we don't give ourselves enough credit, and we're too scared. Don't be scared. People are there to help you because they want to be helped too. Stephen Larsen: Yeah, they're all making it up. Alison Prince: Just do it. Yup. Mistakes and all Stephen. Everybody listening, who cares, just go do it. People need you. They need your information. They need your product, so just get out there and do it with mistakes and all. Stephen Larson: Yeah. I can't remember, I think it was Dan Kennedy, or I can't remember who it was, but he says, "You have an obligation to sell." If you've got something, it's actually an obligation. Alison Prince: Agreed. Stephen Larsen: Get out there and just do it. You owe it to your message. Alison Prince: Yup. You owe it to, I don't know, we were given talents, so let's go out there and share our talents. Let's do the best that we can, and live that Because I Can Clan life. Live how we want, because we can. Stephen Larsen: That's so true. Guys, go check out AlisonJPrince.com. 0-100k.com, I love that course, so good. The Because I Can Clan, the Facebook page. Alison Prince is the real deal. Super authentic. Very, very genuine, and is willing to be vulnerable whenever she makes mistakes like the rest of us. No reason to hide behind your own, because we all make them. Alison Prince: That's right. Stephen Larsen: Anyways, thank you so much Alison for being on the show, really appreciate it and all the value you gave. Alison Prince: Yeah. Thank you, it's been fun. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels, to download your pre-built sales funnel today.    Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Approaching someone with nothing but an idea doesn't put you in a position to start partnering with someone. Here what you need to have before going to others... What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and in this episode I want to share with you guys when it's actually really cool to partner with somebody, but also I want to share with you when it's completely inappropriate. 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. Now when I first got started in this business, I started getting a little bit of traction, I was studying a lot of traffic strategies, and I didn't know it at the time but I literally was taking this piece of paper in the middle of my internet marketing class, and I was drawing out a funnel, a sales funnel. And I was drawing from a squeeze page, to a thank you page, over to an affiliate offer, and there was an email sequence. And I was learning how to put all this stuff together. I had no idea that I was drawing what is now commonly known as a sales funnel. And it was super cool, and there was all these really cool things that I was drawing, this really detailed little map of how this was going to be all working out. And I walked up to my internet marketing professor, this was about two and a half, eh, this was way longer than that. This was probably three and a half years ago now, four years ago. And I walked up to him and I said, "Hey, you know what? Hey, great class. I never want to come back." And he's like, "What?" And I said, "Look, it's like day two and you just asked me what SEO stands for. Like, I've been studying this stuff way longer than you probably have been." I didn't say that part. But I was like, "Look, I don't want to come back." And he's like, "All right, fine." And I held up this piece of paper, that funnel, and I said, "I'm gonna go build this instead," and he, I thought he was going to say no. But he said something that probably changed my life. He said, "Okay. You can leave, don't come back the rest of the entire semester. And what you're going to go do is you're going to hold a class on your own. And at the end of the semester, I expect some kind of deliverable." And so what I did is I looked around in class, and I looked for the other kid that looked like he was just bored out of his mind because he just knew this stuff already, and I was like, "Hey, let's go." And we left class for the rest of the semester. And we, every single day, held class for three hours. We called it class, but literally all we were doing is we were trying to make as much money online as we possibly could. And that's what our class was. And it's super unique, it was really, really cool, I can't believe he actually said yes to that. And so that's all we did. We sat down and we just started executing the plan. I said, "Hey, okay, here's the plan." And I, his name's Ben Wilson, he's one of the first interviews on my podcast, by the way. He's about to launch his own. Anyway. And he ... I was like, hey, here's what this is. I didn't know it was a funnel that I was drawing. But I was like, first we're going to send it to this and then we'll go do this, and then we'll go do this. You know, it was all this cool automation and I was kind of patch working together these different systems that weren't really supposed to work together but I somehow in weird ways got them to. And we went and we got a Clickbank offer and the coolest thing happened. We went and we grabbed this Clickbank offer and we put basically together an affiliate funnel. Using some free software for some crappy landing page thing. And we thought through all the lines of copy and we thought through the headlines. All that we could, we were just focusing as hard as we could on when to say this line, and when this line. And we took this video from here. It was just really, really fun. And I was like hey, I have no money. We're gonna put fifty bucks in, let's say, on ads, and I learned some really awesome traffic driving strategies. This is literally before I even learned who Russell Brunson was by like a month before I learned who he was. And it was really, really cool. I went and we put fifty bucks in and I was like, okay, let's see if it works. And we went to bed. And that night, I woke, the next morning I woke up and I was really, really excited. I had a hard time sleeping because I was so excited to see what would happen. I was like, we're gonna be rich! We're gonna be rich! This is gonna be amazing! And not from fifty bucks, but just to prove the concept and knew we could scale afterwards. And so we put fifty bucks in, and I open up my account, and there was fifty dollars in there. It was like fifty-something. Anyway, we basically, we broke even. And I was like, God! No way! Oh my gosh, we broke even, we broke even! Dude! And I called him up and I was like, "We freaking made it!" And he's like, "Are you kidding me man?" And I was like, "Yeah, meet me there." So we go and I get on my bike, because we only have one car, and I wanted to like, to have the car for the kids. And I'm riding my bike as fast I can, rah! Go as fast as I can. I get to campus, get to the room that we always stole from the other people so that we could try to make money every day. And I pull my computer up and he comes running in and I show it to him and we were like, "Oh my gosh, it worked!" Well the news of that spread. And part of me was like, yeah, whoa! And the other part of me was like, eh, we broke even. We had 17 people opt in and one person bought and then bought the upsell which made fifty bucks. And I was like, huh. Well, it looks like we failed on that, I guess what else should we try? And it's so funny because until I just kicked myself. We made a break even funnel our very first try, which, just so you know, in the sales funnel world, is not a small feat. It was huge. And it was mass ... Anyway. What was funny was this onslaught of people with these deals that just started coming out of the woodwork for us. And news of that spread. And we were just excited. We weren't thinking. We were just like, "yeah, check this out! We did this, this, and this!" It was like, aw, so crazy cool! Well, pretty soon everybody was a deal maker. And I was in the middle of my marketing classes and I'd go from class to class and these people would come out and be like, "hey, you want to do this?" "Hey, dude, I've got this great thing. Hey, you want to drive traffic for me and do x, y and z?" And I was like, "Yeah! Totally!" And I was just saying yes to everything. And we were saying yes to all this stuff, thinking, oh my gosh, this is huge, we've learned this cool little skill, we've just proved it, we have a case study now, let's go do, it's an actual business. And let's see if it works, you know? And I can't even remember what we did next. Oh! We started doing all these little small businesses. And trying to drive, you know, driving traffic for them, and it was really, really fun. It was cool. And then one day ... I mean, we were just saying yes to everything. And then one day, this company called Paul Mitchell came and they asked the school for some help. And they said, "hey, we don't know what these kids are doing but you gotta go work with them. Their fame is spreading all over the place for whatever they're doing online." Well, it was me and my buddy. It was Ben and I. And Ben and I went, we went out and we started driving traffic for these guys. And what was funny was just the ridiculous onslaught of deals, all right? We technically were not even that successful with it yet. I mean, we had just proven the concept. But the motion created attention. Because most people won't even make any kind of action. They won't even get into motion because they're so afraid that they're gonna mess up. And so what ended up happening, it's kind of a short lesson for you guys today, but this is really, really powerful. What ended up happening is all these deals started coming out of the woodwork. Just, I mean, I can't even believe it. And I went ... We were talking to tons of tons of people. We had 15 businesses on a waiting list to drive traffic for. Fifteen! It was nuts. We had investor wanting to help us create a platform where we could do our system that we had, you know ... Some of it was ours, some of it was proprietary, some of it was from other people, some of it was ... You know, like, we had an investor who was willing to place like, a lot of money. Hundred of thousands of dollars into putting together this little system. And we were like, Holy crap! What did we make? Why is this happening so much? And I remember sitting back and thinking, dude, we are just gonna be rich! Oh my gosh! And I remember getting really excited about it. And Ben and I would sit back and we'd talk about it and we'd have super late nights and we'd be on whiteboards drawing out all this stuff. I still miss those days. It was so fun. And always reminds me of it whenever I do it with Russell, you know? And we would draw it all out and we'd put all these things, all these pieces and systems together. Big mastermind sessions and things like that. Really, really fun. And we'd go meet with these business owners. Millionaires. Even some billion dollar companies. And we'd go show them the system and ... I mean, it was working by that time. It was pulling in lots of traffic, and it'd pull in more leads, and we were proving the system as we were selling it, basically. Which is a lesson in that alone. And again, just deals and deals on deals from students, from teachers. Lots of teachers. And it was really awkward when I would tell them no. But that wasn't my initial knee jerk reaction. What ended up happening is that there were so many deals that started coming out of the woodwork, all these people saying, "Please, help with, do this with me, do this with me." And I was just ... My resting state is nice guy, although I can get pissed off in very specific scenarios. My resting state is nice guy, so I'd say yes to everybody. And I was like, "Yeah, we could totally do that with you!" Pretty soon, I'm running ads for construction people, I'm running ads for someone's pizza company, and we're running ads for some guy's networking agency. And we're running ads for ... I mean, it was all over the place. It was nuts. And this was literally in the middle of college. Okay? In the middle of my internet marketing class that was supposed to be Internet Marketing 101. And we had our own, like, freaking agency. And we were building sites for all these people. I mean, it was really, really fun. Really, really enjoyed it. But what was funny, again, is how many deals were just popping out of the woodwork. And what was funny is that never stopped. But, but I did. I did it out of necessity. What ended up happening is I had to remember, okay. In this guy's business, he has this scenario going on, but over here it's different because of this. And this guy's headline is this, this. And it caused so much noise in my head I could not sleep. It was so hard. There was so much pressure and this thing that initially was very exciting ended up being very, very, kind of demoralizing almost. It was like ... It kind of became depressing. It became this thing that I did not want to work in anymore. And for months and months and months, it was this beast that we couldn't turn off very easily. And I learned just like so much from that. What honestly stopped it is Ben graduated before I did and he left. So I was like, well, I guess I'll just drop all these clients too and just, years were ... What money or ads didn't spend, here you go, here's it back. And here you go, here you go, you know what I mean? And that's kind of how it went. And ... But the deals never stopped. And one of the major points I wanted to put on this podcast is that guys, when you start to get into motion, motion attracts people. Motion in general attracts people. Action attracts people... I mean, the TV and its effect on humanity is a case in point of that very statement right there. You know whenever there's a car crash, everyone stops and looks. The crash is over. But something happened, right? When you get in motion there are things that happen for some reason in other people's brains as they begin to look at what you're doing. And they begin to assign value to your action. And there's real power in it, but there's also a gigantic façade and mirage. The power is that you're gonna get a lot of people who start to follow you because of the action. "Wow, this guy has the guts and, quite honestly, the straight-up cajones and balls to just do something with his life. And be vulnerable and go try and make some money and do something new and creative and be a business owner and entrepreneur and marketer." Right? That's where the power comes from. The mirage comes though, by you thinking and mistaking action and progress with achievement and accomplishment. Action and movement is not the same thing as accomplishing. Right? I can jump up and down all I want, but I'm not gonna grow my lats until I actually start lifting them. "But wait, I'm in motion! How come I'm not ... " You know? You know what I mean? It's very, very true for marketing in general. This is what I've learned. People will go take motion, and they'll go take this action, thinking that it's achievement and accomplishment. And what they'll do is they'll go market it. As if it is accomplishment and action. And in my opinion, I think that's false. I think that's wrong. I don't think you should ever do that. If you haven't actually accomplished something, what ... You're marketing a mirage, which is very scary because people are gonna find out about that. We just had a guy who got caught recently in my Two Comma Club coaching group. We caught him lying and he was saying that he had built all these funnels and he had built all these funnels for entrepreneurs that I personally built. Or these other million dollar funnels, saying that he was the one that was actually the one behind him. And we caught him on recording and it was so sad, because I kicked him out of my community. I literally kicked him out. And I sent a message to him, I said, "I hope you learn from this. Like, I have no room for that in my community... I worked too dang hard for someone who's a fake, a mirage, a façade, to be in my community. You're not allowed in here anymore." And I kicked him out and I locked him out. And ... That's a classic example of somebody mixing up motion and movement and action with accomplishment and achievement. You know? You're not done ... It's like when we, I'm a do, it's kind of ... here's a kind of like bridge, okay? It's kind of like when I would do sprints, you know? And we would do what we'd call 61 20s or we would sprint, just dead sprint, as hard as you could, like a cougar was gonna eat you alive. We would sprint as hard as we could for 60 seconds. And then we'd walk for 120 seconds. And then we'd sprint for 60 seconds, and walk for 120 seconds. And we'd do that for like 50 minutes in the army. It sucked. Guys would throw up by the end. It rocks your lungs. It is not easy. Especially after round two, it's like, oh my gosh. It's just full out dead sprint like you're going to die straight to nothing. Really, really intense... Anyway, what was interesting about that is that when we would do laps, we had to actually do the lap itself. If I had done the entire race and the whole sprint perfectly, but then ended up walking out at the end, you know, the last turn ... Well I didn't finish. It's the exact same thing. You can't mix motion and action with achievement and accomplishment. They're not the same thing. You have to cross the finish line. And so it's great that you get started. It's great that you get out and start doing something. But that's not the point. You guys, what I'm trying to tell you is that as you get started in your entrepreneurial journey, or as you're moving along currently, deals will continue to find you because it is attractive to humanity. You will find so ... Opportunities are not something that you're gonna be in need of if you are a person who's in motion. People will find you. And guess what? Not all opportunities are made equal. Most opportunities are made really poorly, actually. Most opportune ... And you should ... I have made far more money by saying "no" 90% of the time than "yes" 90% of the time. That was the biggest lesson I learned back in the story I was just telling you. We were saying yes to everything. The problem is that you really are saying yes to nothing. Because you've said yes to everything. Just by definition almost. Like, yeah, we could do, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it turns out, spreads your focus so thin that you end up dying. You can't dive in, really, on more than one thing. You know what I mean? You gotta be tricky if you can do two. It's not easy to do more than even two things. Even more than one. Okay? So don't go and confuse those things. When we were going and we were doing ... One of the biggest powers that I started realizing ... We started having these deals come out, I'm trying to remember some of them specifically. This is easily three years ago, I mean it was ... Anyway. We have these deals come out of the woodwork though. Like one of them was for a construction company. And they're like, "hey we want to drive ads." It was like residential construction for residential pools and stuff like that. And we said yes at first, but around that time, that's when there were so many people who wanted the service. Which A, really solidified the value that I thought we were bringing to market, I was like, wow, people actually want this, that's really cool. But B, it became a little bit stressful. And it was a side thing that I wasn't expecting to happen... What, stress? Because of too many opportunities? What? That's real? I thought that was a joke. That's actually very real! Well, I just had that happen to me again today. It literally happens to me at least three times a week, I think? Where somebody reaches out and it's very flattering, but they're always like, "Steven, I got this sweet thing, I really want you to be a part of it. Please, please, please, will you build my funnel? Here's the idea. If you build the funnel and kind of help me create the product and drive the traffic to it, dude, I'll give you 50% of this awesome idea." What's wrong with that? It means I'm literally building their entire business. And I get 50% of it? Like, no, no, no, no. There's a guy who reached out to me, it was actually today. I won't say the name. Anyway, he was trying to pitch me on this idea and I was like, "hey, no. I have a ... My full time attention is working with ClickFunnels and as Russell Brunson's funnel building assistant. You know? It's really, really awesome and I really love what I do," and I was happy to do an interview or something, but I've had more success by saying no to the bountiful opportunities than saying yes. Most of the time when someone wants to partner with me, I could've just done the idea on my own. Not trying to be rude here, but I'm just saying. Sounds like you want me to ... sounds like you want to pay me to build you a funnel, not partner with you. And then he jumped over and he said, "well, hey, I've made $8,000 a month. I've made $8,000 this month. Is that not proof enough?" I said, "hey ..." I said, "if it's not mainstream ... " Anyways. He said, "I need a marketer, a marketing partner, not a funnel builder." Okay, first of all, you all know my position on entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are marketers! If you're not, you really need to get in behind the marketing wheel. All right? You already have lost control of your business if you're the entrepreneur and you're not also the marketer. Anyway. Ugh! That always drives me just bat crazy. Anyway. But I said, "hey brother, there's more opportunity than I can handle. My focus is here and on my own projects. I appreciate the reach out." And I was just trying to like, nicely, back him off. He said, "all right buddy, at least I tried to get you on board." And he kind of, he kept saying all of this stuff, saying hey, this is super trendy right now, but I'm gonna adapt. And he was trying to guilt me into saying yes. And to get into ... and to say ... I cannot tell you how many times this happens to me. And you're gonna get it too, if you're not already getting it now, opportunities are going to come out of the woodwork, and they are not all good! Okay? And I said, "hey, what I'm saying is this, meaning you need to come out with, you need to come at me with more than just an idea. You need to already have brought it to life. Know how it sells before you partner or hire. The entrepreneur is the marketer." And he went through and whole, all this other stuff. And I was like, "hey man, I'm already partnered with Russell and the Two Comma Club Coaching Program. I'm not really for hire right now, but either way ... " Anyway. What was just making me totally go nuts and actually really frustrated was the fact that this guy had not put two and two together, that just having an idea is not value. You guys, you buy your customer somehow. You either buy them with your time or you buy them with your money. I prefer to do it with money. You know? Or some kind of value. It's the exact thing when you guys go partner and you go hire. You only hire when it hurts. You bootstrap that crap. You don't go get VC money, you figure out how to sell it on your own. And you will have a way better, more sustainable business because of it. It's the same thing when you go partner with somebody. You don't partner somebody for the sake of getting a partner. It's like getting a board. You don't go put a board together for the sake of having a board. It's the dumbest thing on the planet. Don't go just get a board because it's the MBA crap to do. That's not, that's not how bootstrapping business ... That's not how having your own business works. You don't just go get people in the business and try to pay them money for the sake of it. You know what I mean? That's like me paying you allowance for crap you didn't do. That's like me paying allowance period. I don't pay my kids allowance, I don't plan on it. They're gonna work. You know what I mean? Anyway I get really fired up about this topic because deals will come to you, and they are not all good. When you want to go partner with somebody, you do the exact same thing that Russell teaches in his books, which is the Dream 100 concept. You go provide value. I remember there was a guy who came out to me once and he was like, he reached out and, you know ... I get about at least a hundred messages a week, just on Facebook alone, let alone the billions of other platforms that are out there. And it stresses me out. And anytime I go and I try hook up with somebody else who's also kind of farther along the path, and I want to do some kind of JV thing with him, I don't just reach out straight to them. Unless I know that they know who I am. And that there could be value and it could be awesome. You know what I mean? But usually I don't just reach straight out to somebody. I try and figure ... I, I ... essentially date them. And that's what this guy did to me too. So cool. What he did is he went out and when I was creating the Sales Funnel Broker website inside of ClickFunnels, I was like, "well I still want the SEO capabilities that WordPress brings." And so what I did was I hired this coder and basically she created this custom WordPress theme that synced up with my ClickFunnels website. So it looked like you were on the same website even though you were really on a blog page, just for one of the pages. It was really cool. Super awesome. And I was like, hey this would be super cool if I sell this. I was just gonna use it for myself but it's awesome. Well, I started selling it and it's awesome and it's this cool little upsell and I can't believe the amount of money that it's brought it. Totally, you know, to buy a product. Like the book Rework says, I'm still in my buy products and it's awesome. Well, one day this guy reaches out to me and he's like, "hey I bought your thing." Notice he didn't even ask for it for free. He's like, "hey, I bought your thing. Your WordPress, your custom WordPress theme that's ... " He's like, "it's totally awesome." And he's like, "But by the way, I've got all these coders, and they're sitting on the side. And I just thought it'd be kind of cool, I saw a few holes inside of your WordPress theme. I thought it could be even cooler. And I thought you'd maybe want a start-up guide." He's like, "so what I did is I bought your WordPress theme, I handed it over to my coders, and for the next, last while, they went in and they ... I had, I paid for my coders to go make your thing even cooler. Here you go, it's yours. And by the way, here's a video start-up guide so that these people don't, stop bothering you with questions on how to hook it up." And I was like, "Who are you? Oh my gosh, you're the man! Are you serious? Whoa!" Right? He provided value to me first. And I had no idea that, later on, he was planning, he wanted to ask me for a ... all he wanted was an interview. And you know, I might have just said yes to the interview anyways. But now I know anytime he comes out and he asks me anything, I'm gonna say, "hey, what's up?" And I'm gonna respond to him. He provided such deep value to me and my community. Why would I not give time and the day for him? It's the same thing when you go partner. When you go walk up to somebody and you're like, oh, my gosh, you know what, I really don't want to do Facebook ads. Or you know what, I really don't want to be the guy who builds the funnel. I don't want to be the guy who's gonna do ... whatever. Whatever role it is, you do it yourself as long as you can. Unless you just truly cannot. But what you do is you go hire somebody and partner with them for that specific role. You know what I mean? This guy wanted me to build his entire company and then just him take 50% of it. That sounds like a great deal for him. Oh my gosh. Anyway, it just drives me nuts when people come out, they're like, "hey I've got this sweet thing, it's awesome." It's like, cool. You know how many sweet things there are out there? A billion. So what, why is yours any different? Why am I gonna take it on? You've gotta have ... Why are you so unique? You know what I mean? What's the thing that you already have built? When somebody comes to me, it's literally the entire reason I stop focusing on start-up businesses when I was building funnels for people. It's because their business wasn't proven yet, they hadn't created value in the marketplace. No one in the marketplace knew who they were. And so how can I partner with somebody who's not done that? And I made that mistake for years. And I went and I was building these funnels for people who hadn't actually made it. And as I build the funnel, if the funnel didn't work, they thought it was the funnel's fault and then I'm like, no! You haven't proven yourself in the market! Why did I ever partner with you? Ah! And it took me years to realize that lesson. So if you're gonna go partner with someone, oh my gosh, only do it when it hurts. Same when you hire. But second of all, you don't just approach people and just say, "uh, I've got this sweet thing." Here's the reality. If somebody approaches me ... This is gonna ... I'm not trying to be conceited, you know what I mean? But like, I have worked my butt off for the last, like, seven years. I said in a recent podcast I'm a seven year overnight success story. I've worked my butt off. And people who are successful are typically in motion, right? They're accomplishing things. They're getting out there, they're doing things. They're in motion to get the accomplishment. They're already moving. You don't have to get them moving. They already are. You know? If you walk up to me, and you say, hey I've got this sweet thing. And let's say I drop everything and I turn and I start focusing directly on the one thing that you have, what does that say about what I was originally doing? It means it probably wasn't that good in the first place. You know what I mean? So you ... quite honestly, when you want to go partner with somebody, expect to sell them a little bit. Court them, so to speak... Figure out how you can provide value for what they're doing. Show them how this is amazing. You're gonna need to sell them. It took us a long time to get this totally awesome person on the ClickFunnels team. It took us a long time to get them. Because we had to quote and quote date them. You know? We had to ... And that's exactly what happened. I'm not just telling you crap, you guys, this is how we actually do it. This is how I do it. When you create cool stuff in the marketplace, there's gonna be people that come out of the woodwork who are asking for your services and who bring you opportunities. I'm just trying to tell you that not all of them are good. In fact, 99% of them are not going to be good. And it's because they haven't even proven the idea. They haven't even started it. Why would I jump ship on all the other crap that I've got going on that I just absolutely love? Why would I just drop all that stuff and go to an idea that is barely proven? No, thank you. And so what I did is I started focusing on businesses that already had, you know, x amount of cash flow and customers. And my strategies would bloom up. And that's quite literally what got me in a position where Russell noticed me. That's it! And I started focusing on all these other businesses that are already blowing up and I knew ... I still, you know ... I knew that hey, what I was doing, that was, what, three years ago? When I started doing that? And all I did is I changed my bait. I changed my customer. And the opportunities changed. Which is super key. So if you have all these opportunities coming in, you've got all these people who are just hounding you, you probably aren't putting up the right message, A. B, please don't accept all of them. In fact, you should say no to all of ... I have made more money by saying no to things than yes. Seth Godin has got this great book called The Dip. And in The Dip he talks about that very same principle... He's like, look. There's this really stupid misconception in the planet that quitting is a bad thing. That is, and I'm just echoing him right now, that is complete, utter, ridiculous bull crap. I quit stuff all the time. And that's exactly what he said. He's like, he's like, the thing is that winners quit more than losers. They just quit the right stuff. You know? When I decided to really get focused on stuff, I quit certain ... I quit watching Netflix all the time. I quit watching, I quit doing all sorts of, I quit so many things in my life so that I could say yes to the thing that was important. And that's all I'm trying to tell you, is that these people who are gonna bring you all these deals. It's not that they're crappy deals. Some of them are just not fleshed out enough for you to go jump full, you know, full bore into. And it's gonna be a complete, utter waste of your time. And so I urge you, if you're not ... If somebody comes to you with an idea and they don't have a history with a business that has any cash flow. If they have zero history of ever being successful in any kind of marketing, if they've zero history of the idea itself or it's in such a blue ocean that's so crazy and out there that no one's ever done it before, man, you should have so many freaking red flags going off in your head. And you should say, "thank you. Have a great day." And you should walk away. Just literally turn around and walk away. Don't, don't ... No small talk. Don't try and make them feel good. Don't, just ... You literally turn around and you walk the other way. And it's only because that kind of person is looking for somebody else to prove their idea. They have not, honestly, they hadn't had the balls to do it on their own. And so, I don't, personally, ever want to work with a person like that. And it's the reason I don't. And so this person who reached out to me, like "I got this great thing," it's cool, yeah. He already had cash flow, he was already doing cool stuff with it. I don't even know who he is. And his first thing he comes out to me with is, "hey! Bleh bleh bleh bleh! Bleh bleh bleh bleh!" That makes me feel like he's a door-to-door salesmen. You know? And I don't ... those deals come around, how many, so many times every week. So the Dream 100, you know, I can tell when I'm on someone's Dream 100 list because I receive packages in the mail every once in a while. And I get these things and I'm like, oh, cool little toys! Like, cool! Aw! That's this person. I get more than enough messages and emails, you know, so how do they break through all the noise? They send me packages, you know? And I'm beginning to do the same kind of stuff. It's just a lot of fun. That's what people do to Russell, that's what Russell does to other people to let them know that they're serious. Anything that makes them stand out and guys, it's kind of like on Shark Tank. Have you ever seen, I'm sure you've seen this show Shark Tank. In Shark Tank, there's this super classic scenario that seems to happen at least once every episode where ... or every thirty minute episode. Where some guy has this fantastic idea. And he's poured in all this money and he's gone and he's done all these things and then it gets to the spot where they all want to know the numbers. And they're like, "hey that's really cool. Hey, hey, how much is it selling?" And they're like, "oh, I, I, it actually hasn't started selling yet." It's like, "oh. Dead already." It doesn't matter if you had the idea to cure cancer. You know what I mean? Man, well, it depends on who you talk to I guess. But the thing is that like when it comes to these different business ideas and these different opportunities, it doesn't matter how good you make it sound, you have got to have some numbers behind it. So when you go partner with somebody who actually could be a heavy hitter, who actually could do great things for your business, man, you better have some numbers behind you. Know your numbers! And get to know your own weaknesses. You know what, I've done this and I've tried this, we sold two or three this way, but it didn't work that well. I mean, go door-to-door if you freaking have to. You've got to get results or nobody who actually could help you is even gonna look or blink an eye at you. Because you haven't proven it. And so, anyway. That's enough on that. But I just wanted you to know that you guys, more money's made by you saying no than yes. Just get focused. And know, it's the weirdest thing. It's funny, my wife and I were just talking about this. Every time I put my foot down on something else that I'm gonna go start doing, and I'll be like, okay. That's my project for the next two years! I'm just gonna go do it. Every single time I do that I always get this onslaught of deals. It's almost like the world subconsciously is trying to test me. "Are you sure that you're committed to that? Are you sure that you want that really bad?" You know, and it's the weirdest thing that happens, it happens every single time. It just happened again. So I was like, cool, I'm gonna go do that thing. And I wrote it all a plan, I pulled stuff together, and I was like, cool. That's, wow, I could totally do that and it's actually not gonna take that long and I think it could provide some insane value in the market. It literally is the exact same thing, just deal after deal after deal every day for the last several weeks has just been hitting me and I'm like no! Just go away! Stop distracting me! It's the biggest killer of me finishing. Of you too, anything. Anyway. Guys, hey, thanks so much. Remember to stay focused and go prove your idea. It's very, very fun. It's very exciting. And if you have the nuts enough to just go do it, you're already gonna set yourself apart from so many people who are not willing. All right guys, talk to you later, 'bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio! Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

"Steve, what mic and setup do you use?" Well, here that is too! Hey, what's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this is the Power of Publishing, How to Create a Podcast, Part 2. The reason I did it this way is because, at the beginning, the first episode, part number 1 of this was really me diving into how I come up with my podcast content. It's something that I get asked frequently, how can you generate that kind of content over and over and over and repeatedly? Week after week? So, part number 1 was all about that, if you've not heard it I encourage you to go back and listen to it. So, this episode though, what I want to dive into is more about a few more of the rules of podcasting, there are some rules if you actually want to be successful with it that I've noticed as I've not followed them and a lot of it's been haphazard, if I've not followed these rules then I've not been successful with that episode, if I have then they go great. So, I want to share with you what those things are and then I'm going to share with you, how do I actually get this thing recorded now? I want to tell you real quick what the software is that I use, the kind of mic as well as how do I actually publish to fifteen different platforms with a single click? I make this thing as super turnkey as possible, which I have to, because I have a full time job working at Click Funnels and so it's kind of a trick and I'm a true believer that stress creates fantastic systems and this has been no different. I'm really excited to share with you guys how I've actually finished this. So, with that I'm going to jump right into this next episode. 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 you guys, so let me dive a little bit more into this, only because I think the tech side and, what kind of mic do you use and all that stuff, I don't think it really matters that much, I'll dive into that in a second but I just want to run through some rules of podcasting. Number 1, you cannot be boring. Everybody, I don't care where you are, what you're doing, unless you're in the gym, jack up your shoulder, raise your arm right now and say "I, state your name, will not be boring". What's funny is, most people are so afraid of messing up that they don't do anything anyway, ever, it keeps them from taking action and so by merely taking action you will set yourself apart from so many people because you're seriously just moving. Since you're moving, you might as well not be boring and you do that by telling stories, you do that by getting excited about your own message. I love music, you guys, I love it. I love going to live concerts, it is one of my favorite things on the planet and I don't know if you guys ever heard the band Incubus? I saw them live at Redrocks Amphitheater, 20,000 people, I was on the 4th row, anyway, I've seen a lot of concerts, total concert junkie in my day growing up and I love an artist that loves his own music and you can see it and you can tell it and I believe that's true for marketing in your message and how you interact with your community and the culture that you create. People will love you if you love what you're doing, it's contagious. It's not something that you can hide behind and so when you're creating these pieces of content, you can't be boring. Get excited about your own thing, get passionate about it, act like somebody's threatening it, get really intense about it. Sometimes I do that, I will literally do push-ups here on the side of the desk before I get started. Stay controlled, get really, really intense about it, grrr freaking funnels, who's gonna tell me they're wrong? You know what I mean and I get pumped about it and have courage to publish that stuff and that leads to the second thing. Publishing is cool but you gotta publish with a purpose. As you publish with purpose, meaning, I don't just put a podcast out there merely to just fill your air with my thoughts, I'm not doing for my own health, I want you to go to salesfunnelradio.com and subscribe and rate. I want you to go to salesfunnelradio.com and download the free website that I created out of click funnels for you. I want you to go do those things, when you go out and you start thinking through your messaging, you've got to put together the reason why you're actually doing it, which is really, really important. Just know that your publishing is a means to and end and while it's good to continually give tips, but what's the purpose for you? After a while you'll experience burnout if there's not a purpose and a theme that you're shooting towards. I'm exhausted right now, I've only slept a few hours the last few nights and there seems to be this constant theme in the past and I would not have the wherewithal and the energy and the gusto do this if I did not believe that it's actually helping people who've been asking me this question. So, what I'm saying is to put call to action at every one of your episodes or whatever it is that you're publishing and putting out there. Number 2, sorry, 1, 2, 3, whatever number this is. You guys need to practice inflections. Don't speak monotone, don't just sit there and say that funnels are fantastic, wow, I'm really exciting everyone follow me, I'm clearly a leader. You know what I mean? You just can't do that... Notice at the end of every one of my sentences, did you hear that? If I was to speak a sentence without word it would sound uuuhhhuuhhhuuuhh and it's really weird for me to do that on a podcast, you get the point? Okay? You can't speak monotone and so at the end of every one of your sentences, you either go up or you go down or you do a little uuuhhhh in the middle of a sentence. Does that make sense? You guys are gonna hear it and you're gonna be really, really conscious of it now for the rest of this episode and the rest of the things that I do. Feel free to laugh like I just did... The reason that I'm doing that is because there are so many people that I've been listening to lately who come from the corporate world or who are afraid that people are going to judge them and they are scared to death to just be vulnerable, that's the last rule here. You have got to be vulnerable, I just told you I'm religious, I just told you stories of me failing, I told you I was scared to launch this podcast, I told you I was scared to get out there and do stuff and I made it up. There's a lot of thought behind it, I'm not saying I just winged it but do you guys get what I'm saying? You have to be vulnerable. Anyway, that could start a whole other tangent but if you're not vulnerable, no one is gonna want to listen to you because you're gonna seem fake. Fair? Okay, check the box on that one, I'm going on to number 4 now. Okay, let me get into the more of the strategy of how you actually set up the podcast itself and this is super important and it's very, very powerful... Back in February, we were running what Russell and I were calling, the FAT event, the Funnel Hackathon Event, and for 3 days people come and we help them set up their businesses to make a million bucks, it's really, really cool. Great programs, absolutely fantastic and he asked me to MC, well, we introduced him each day and I was like oh, my gosh, how do you introduce a guy like Russell Bronson? He's Russell Bronson, you know what I mean? How do you do that and thoughts going right through my head and I was like how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this? It was really cool, he could tell that I was excited to do it, my answer is almost always yes for everything when it comes to scary things. I just almost always try and say yes to scary stuff because I know it's going to push me. So, I was yes absolutely, I'm totally going to do that and in that back of my head, he's starting in 5 minutes, I don't even know what I'm going to say and I've got to MC? I've got to introduce him and he could see that I was running through a whole bunch of stuff in my head trying to figure out what to say and he goes "good MC's, the whole point of MC's is to increase the state of the audience before I get on stage". He's like, if you can increase the state of the audience before I get on stage, increase the energy level, increase their anticipation, just get them to a higher state, it's way easier for me because I don't have to spend a lot of time doing that, all I have to do is start teaching because they're already at a fast, high paced state because I'm going to be and if they're not it's weird and then I've got to spend all this time getting them to a state and it makes me look weird and not position correctly. So, all you gotta do is go get them to a high state... So, I told this awesome story and we got everyone laughing and jumping around and they were in a really high peak state to receive Russell. Guys, your podcast intro is the exact same thing. Any intro is the exact same thing. All right, when you go out and you create a podcast intro or video intro or any kind of introduction, it's all about state control. It's not so much about saying, look what I did and here are my credentials, this is gonna teach you about x, y and z. I choose music very specifically for my podcasts or for the things that I put out there so that it gets people jazzed up and in a higher state, if I can get people in a state where they're like whoa, yeah oh my gosh, this is Sales Funnel freakin Radio, oh my gosh whoa! If they can get in that state, then whatever I'm going to say they're going to receive a lot better. If I don't do that, if I just jump straight into it, it's going to sound awkward, it's going to sound weird. It becomes culture building for you to have that intro, people expect it, they like getting in state. People like to be happy, people like to go into a higher level of energy and oh my gosh I'm excited, whatever it is, I'm pumped about it now. Which makes me want to switch to my podcast intro now because I like it but we're like 64 episodes in now and getting a little bit old, I kind of what to rinse and repeat a little bit. So, anyways, when you create your intro, state control. What I did is I went to the top podcasts in the business area, you can do this for videos on You Tube or whatever, Vlogging or whatever. All I did was I went to the very top people in the business area, in the marketing area and I listened to all their intros and I transcribed every one of them by hand, I looked at all the commonalities and I was like, cool and I wrote my script from that and that's literally how I made my podcast script. Then what I did, because I went to premiumb.com and audiojungle.com, and in there you can buy royalty free songs and they've got all these sweet jingles, a lot of the music that happens in b-roll and movies and stuff like that, you can buy those soundtracks and some of them are fifty bucks but it's fully worth it. You get your own and it's super awesome. So, what's super cool about that though, is that you can sort by 30 second little segments and so I know, that I don't really want my podcast intro to be longer than 30 seconds, so I have this script now and I go find the sweet song with this cool, upbeat fast thing, I always look for songs that are 120 bpm or faster so that it makes the person feel like, oh yeah, what, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get started, super cool, yeah, you know what I mean? It's almost like you're at a dance, you know, like they went to some club or whatever. Then what I do, is I go and find someone to do a voice over and I've done this several times now and I go back to the same guy, he's fantastic, took me a long time to find him and in fact, you know what, you know what I'm going to do? If you guys go to blog.salesfunnelbroker.com, if you find this episode here, I'm going to call the Power of Publishing or How to Start a Podcast, it'll be one of those 2 and I'm going to put in there the link for my guy who does the voiceover intro because he's just so, so amazing. Really enjoyed working with him, I've used him many times now but all I do is, I hit him with the script, I send him the song so that he knows the feel and he knows how he's mashing it and I say, cool, it's 30 seconds long, you have like 25 seconds so there's a little time at the front and the back, and boom, done. Now, that's the really easy way to do it, to be honest, I love sound editing and I've been mixing music since I was in middle school, so I like to mix it all myself and put it all together myself and I've got a lot of sound editing stuff and things like that and I've created Russell's new podcast intro, marketingsecrets.com, I created the sound for that. Same for the Drop Mic Show that he's got, that's super cool, I made that audio thing too and it's been really, really fun and I love to mix it by hand but if you aren't that kind of person, the easiest way to do it, is to go to premiumb.com or audiojungle.com, sort by 30 second clips and 120 bpm or faster, figure out something that's kind of cool, get your script, hand it over to my voiceover guy and tell him, hey, you've got this many seconds and he'll even lay it over for you, hey lay your voice over this, cool, done. He'll send it back to you and boom, done, podcast intro. It doesn't need to be as crazy as people think it is. Boom mics and all this stuff and sound equipment, no that's crap. Like half the time I've used my phone to create my podcast, I doesn't matter if you've got great content and I'm just obsessed with sound quality so, let me jump into that part of it. For my intro and and my outtro. My outtro, what I do is use a call to action, hey, go get a free funnel that I built for you, took 200 hours to build, then go to salesfunnelbroker.com and you can download it straight off the front page there, took 200 hours to build, there you go, merry Christmas. So, that's insane value, you've got to give something away that they should have paid for, that's the secret and so that's what I do for my call to actions on my outtros. Or, hey, ask Steven a question... My Hey Steve show, if you go to salesfunnelradio.com, click on the green button in the bottom right, I've got a ton of questions pouring in the last few days, it's been a lot of fun and I'll do these segments where I just answer people's questions and I actually love it and it creates engagement. So, long as I haven't run out, I'll send you a Hey Steve tshirt, you know what I mean? That's really cool, it's awesome. People go wear it, they take a picture of themselves, they put it on Facebook, it spreads my brand, it spreads them and they get their question answered, it's really, really fun. So the outtro is super key as well. You guys might notice that I'm pretty energetic on my mic, I'm pretty energetic on my podcasts and there's a lot of reasons for it. One of the reasons why, is because I know that if I'm excited, you probably will be too, you know. If I'm super low key, there are times for either and so I use energy as a tool to my advantage. One of my buddies just reached out to me, he's launching his own podcast, I'm excited for him, he's really, really pumped about it, he's going to do great, he's got a good voice for it, he's got good content, I've know him for a long time, we actually started in this world together and he's actually one of my first interviews on my podcasts, but I'm excited for him. He's like, dude how do you set up your mic? So, I'll tell you guys. I have an Audio Technica AT2020 mic, it's on a boom arm, which has only been there for the last 15 episodes, because we've just moved to a house and I've got a spit screen, I call it a spit screen, it's a windscreen. If I take it away it sounds like this and it's really loud and you can hear all my little huh hee huh, my umms and aahs but if I put it back over across like this, it's a lot cleaner sound. That's the reason I do that. So, what's cool about this mic, and I'm going to go fast on this stuff because I'm assuming you guys don't care, and it's true, that you don't need to care that much about it, just put good stuff out there okay? Sound is not going to make you a million dollars, sound quality you know? I guess unless you're selling sound quality equipment or something. It doesn't matter as much as people think it does. What you're going to do, if you want the AT2020 mic, I really, really like it, Ive got a boom arm on it that attaches to my desk, the reason I like it is because it's retractable, I can put it in front of my face and then push it away from my face when I don't need to be doing anything, so I still work on my computer and it runs off, what's called Phantom Power, Phantom Power is 48 volts and I have a Phantom Power convertor that plugs straight into my computer, each was like a hundred bucks with the boom arm, I bet this whole thing was 400 dollars set up, that way it plugged USB straight into my computer with my boom mic. That's basically it. Then all I do is I turn the levels down enough so that I have to yell into the mic for it to pick up all the things that I'm saying to you. Steven, why do you do that? Because it keeps my energy higher and it keeps your energy higher as you listen to me. I literally yell into the mic, by the time my podcasts are over, my voice always hurts, my stomach hurts because I've been forcing through my diaphragm as much as I can, guys I am trying to spit into the mic, I'm trying to yell into it and I try and do that a lot and it's for the reason of keeping energy. So, that's more of how I do my podcast, then what I do is, after this is over, I always stop, I put my intro and my outtro, front and back, I export it, I use a tool right now this is all recording on a Adobe Edition but you could use [inaudible 00:17:10] if you needed to, Russell just uses the voice memos app on his phone, like it doesn't matter as much as people think it does. Do you guys remember that episode I did recently called The Tools I Hate? The tools I hate are the ones that distract you from doing the thing right? Some people get so distracted on the tools, they look for tools to distract themselves with and they won't ever launch, the won't ever do anything because they keep getting distracted with tools and they keep getting distracted with tricks and gadgets and little shiny things. It doesn't really matter that much, just start and eventually you get to it. I bootstrapped this whole thing, it wasn't only until recently when I started putting all this stuff up together. So,  what I do after I actually I go and have the podcast done, I always export is as mp3, but what I do is take it to rev.com. That's REV as in Romeo, EV, does that make sense? Romeo, echo, I can't remember, envelope. That's a classic example of being vulnerable right there, I'm tired and I can't remember the phonetic alphabet okay? So, it's REV, rev, like you're revving and engine, rev.com. It's cool because you can transcribe a dollar per minute. So, I go send it over to them and I get a transcription that I send over to my assistant, who actually is my sister, and she goes and she reads the whole transcript, make sure they did it okay. She throws pictures in there, she actually puts the podcast straight on the blog, then she publishes it to Libsyn and the Libsyn blast it out to like fifteen different platforms in one button. I don't like Twitter, I hate Twitter but it publishes there and I have a following there. I don't hate Linkedin, I just don't really know what their unique proposition is, I don't know what their blue ocean is really, that much but a lot of people listen to my podcast on Linkedin, I mean a lot of people do, I'm actually shocked by the number of people that listen on Linkedin. It automatically publishes there, it automatically publishes to You Tube, it publishes all over the place and you can do it for 5 dollars a month to Lip Sync, it's amazing. So, it basically shotgun publishes to tones of platforms. Google player, I just figured out I can put it on Spotify, and all these different places, I'm going to go do it on Stitcher, so it blasts all over the place in one button and it pushes it out on iTunes and then what I do is I take a little stock. I wait a few days, I see if the headline that I wrote, and usually what I do is I write some kind of intriguing headline that's highly curiosity based, sometimes the how to statement. Regardless, it's like the subject line of an email, it's got to be so intriguing that it gets you to open the actual podcast, you know what I mean? So sometimes I'm documenting stuff, sometimes it's how to stuff and then when I see that people have been listening to it, I go boost it on Facebook for about fifty or a hundred bucks behind it and I just go blast it all over the place so the podcast will keep growing. Guys, that's a little of how I do my podcasts, I got nothing else to say about it, I've been going for 45 minutes, I will probably split this into 2 different episodes because of that but that's it. It sounds crazy but to be quite honest, half of that's just techo babble crap that you can just kind of wing and figure out while you need to figure it out, you don't need to see the whole road, you know what I mean? Just figure it out when you're there and you need to figure it out, not before you get it all done. Anyway, that's how I publish my podcasts and I love my podcasts and I'm so glad that there are so many people that have been joining it and loving it and all the awesome messages, I just really appreciate all the shoutouts on Facebook, it's been really, really awesome and I just want to thank you guys for helping me as much as the cool things I've been able to share with you about building sales funnels and putting things together. I just finished another sales funnel today and I should be finishing 3 more tomorrow and it's awesome. So, anyways, guys if you like this stuff, please, please go to iTunes and leave a review, that helps me like crazy, helps other people find this podcast, if you leave review and share it and rate, that would be awesome. I would love it if you shared it, share it on Facebook, share it wherever. A lot of people on You Tube listen, love to have you as a subscriber and if you've got any questions or whatever go to salesfunnelradio.com, ask me a question, there's going to be a green button, you can literally record your voice straight over the browser and it will email a copy of it to me and I put it on the podcasts, it's really fun. Or, if you want to go get a sales funnel, I've got a whole slew of free ones, whether it's email, or membership sites or webinars or whatever it is, there's a whole bunch of them you can go download for free with your Click funnels account. If you don't have Click funnels, I don't know why, but my funnels come with a free trial so anyways, super excited for this episode, I'm really glad I go to do this with you guys, thanks for the question. I've been getting enough, I just thought I should do kind of an exclusive big episode about it, so you guys are all awesome and I appreciate you and looking forward to the next episode as well, I'm really stoked about it, it's been on my mind a lot so, anyways, stay tuned for the next one and love to have you as big time subscriber here, talk to you guys later, go crush it, literally go crush something. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free tshirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands