Sales Funnel Radio

Latest Episodes:

SRF 10: Resume's, Business Plans, and Mission Statements Are Kinda Dumb... Sep 24, 2016

Show notes

Not that I won't, but so far, anyone with a "mission statement" actually written and printed out hasn't truly done anything cool yet... So those must not be that helpful...

Good, good morning everybody. How you doing? Welcome 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. Now here's you host, Steve Larsen.

Hey what's going on? Actually it's morning time for me. It's about 6:18 in the morning. I actually got here a little bit late. Usually I'm here a little bit early but my mom and sister dropped in from Arizona and we were just talking this morning. Love my mama.

She said something that was really interesting to me though. She goes, "Hey don't kill yourself." She said, "Hey please don't kill yourself."

She got up, my little girls were crying so I got up and got them some milk and got up and got going. I get out here to the office early, about three hours before I need to so that I can work for you guys and record and get some sweet stuff out and make you sweet sales funnels. As I was leaving she stops and she goes, "Hey make sure you don't kill yourself."

I was like, "I appreciate what you're saying and I understand what you're saying but I've been living at this pace for three or four years now."

She goes, "I know, I know, I know, you've been doing it for a while, that's fine.

She goes, "But still make sure you do things for you, make sure you take a break." I said, "Well I want you to know that I really want to make a lot of money in this life."

She goes, "That would be nice." I said, "It would be nice but I'm purposeful about it." I mean it. I want that to happen and I'm doing everything in my life for it to happen. I've sold a lot of sales funnels and I've make good money right, but I want to really crank it up.

She goes, "That would be so nice to make that much and I would like a lot of money too," and I was like, "No you don't get it, unless you say I want to make a lot of money you're not going to, right."

Because everyone that I've talked to and everybody that I've coached and all the people that come to me for help. The people that say, "It would be cool to make that much money one day, ha, ha, ha," and nothing about their pattern changes.

They're not going to make a lot of money. They're not. You won't. You have to actually be willing to tell people, "Yeah I'm doing this and working my butt off so that I can make a lot of money," and I want to do it so I can keep serving people.

That sounds oh really Peter Panny of me or really Robin Hood style right there. Really I just want to be able to go invest in people's businesses and help it grow and help the American economy and stuff like that. I see the Shark Tank guys and I'm like, "Yeah that's totally me, I'm totally going to do that one day." That's all I really want to say. Unless you are serious about it. Unless you're big about it and you say, "Yes I want to go do this and yes I want to make a lot of money and yes I'm going to change my behavior, change what I'm doing," you're not going to make a lot of money. You're not, right.

Right now one of the main reasons I started doing this also is because I have a normal job, and so I wanted you to know that you can still make a crap ton of money on the side, right, that's why I'm three hours before my actual job starts. I'm here early kicking it. Working hard, right, I've been doing this for a long time and it works. All I do is set a clear goal knowing I only have three hours before work starts and I got to go crush it and turn a dollar.

The other thing I wanted you do know is you can do it too but you have to be serious about it. There is a guy ... It stuck out to me a lot. I graduated from BYU Idaho, I got a marketing degree. I remember as one of my last classes this kid, it was a business strategy class and I remember it so clearly and I remember his face because what he said just make me want to spit. I wanted to barf when he said it just ugh.

The guy was sitting near me and he raised his hand and I can't remember what the professor said or whatever. He said ... He raised his hand and he goes, "Yeah, one of the main problems I have, I just have ... Like I know I should probably be an entrepreneur because I just have so many ideas and there's so many things I feel like I should go do and there's all this stuff that I want to get out there and crank out and I just can't stop the ideas from coming."

In my mind I'm like, "Oh my gosh, shut up. Shut up. No one cares about your ideas. I don't care about your ideas. You barely care about your ideas because you're not doing anything about it." Oh man, was it Benjamin Franklin that said, "The value in the idea lies in the using of it." Oh man, I don't care that you have a sweet idea. Nobody cares that you have a good idea. I don't care if you have a good idea if you're listening to this.

Because it's not a good idea unless you've made a dollar with it, right? I share my ideas with everybody, and the whole reason for it is because when you share the idea it becomes more polished and 99.9% of the time no one ever does anything with you idea ever. I think I've had maybe one guy actually go out and do ... Someone who's not already in this game. Someone who's not already working hard and trying to do things in their life. I think I've only ever had one guy who's in that kind of scenario who actually went out and actually tried to do some cool stuff and do some things I was trying.

The other people I have begged. I've sent books to literally. I went back to some of my teachers who are teaching marketing stuff. I don't know if this is a jerk move or whatever, but I sent them some marketing books that told them ... It was a little bit ... It was pretty forward, but I did tell them like look, "I learned more from this book than I did from a lot of the marketing things that you were teaching, just know that, and know that that's the reason why I was hustling like crazy when I was in the middle of your class, and I know you noticed that, right, and ..."

The whole point is you got to hustle. You got to be willing to say, "Yes I want to make a lot of money," and you got to be able to say that to everyone you meet. You have to be able to learn to share your ideas. Your ideas don't mean a thing unless you actually go and do something with them. Share them with everybody. Get people's reactions. That's where the value of it is, right.

It's like when you launch a product. You don't just put a product out there without seeing people ... You know if people are going to buy it. That's suicide right? I learned that the hard way and I'm sure a lot of you guys have also.

Years ago I started making these different ebooks and products and things like that and I just put them out there and no one had heard of it or seen of it ever. Well go figure, no one purchased it for a long time. I had to drive ads hard and things like that. Anyways, all I'm really saying is you got to be purposeful. I know I've said that several times but it's just such a clear lesson to me.

Holy crap, nothing happened in my life until I actually went out and started being purposeful about it and raising my hand to the sky and to the universe and to God and saying, "Look I want it, give it to me please." I am doing everything that would require me to make that kind of money. Sales guys are selling. I'm working and producing. People are fulfilling. I got a business running, right, and I am in the spot where I am mos...

SFR 9: Interview - Dallin Greenberg and Kristian Cotta Discuss Their Political Quiz Funnel... Sep 17, 2016

Show notes

Steve:

Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

Speaker 4:

(music starts) 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. (music ends)

Steve:

All right you guys. Hey, I am super excited. Today I've got two very special, kind of unique guests on the podcast. As you guys know, a lot of times, I record my own thoughts on things that Russell and I are doing to make marketing awesome, but I like to go and interview other people as well. Today I've got on the show with me, it's Dallin Greenberg and Kristian Cotta. These guys have a pretty awesome unique way for building funnels. Anyways, I want to welcome you. Thanks for joining me.

Dallin:

Appreciate it.

Kristian:

What up.

Steve:

Hey. I actually was thinking about it and Dallin, I don't even remember how we actually met. It wasn't that long ago, was it?

Dallin:

Ah, no, not very. Just a couple weeks.

Steve:

Just a couple weeks ago.

Kristian:

I think Dallin met you the way that him and I kind of joke about he's the black box back alley hacker. He does all the ...

Dallin:

If there's someone I want to meet, I find a way.

Kristian:

He's the unconventional guy. You won't find his practices in a book or a manual.

Steve:

Crap, that makes me a little nervous.

Dallin:

Yeah, don't mess ... I told Kristian the other day ...

Kristian:

Not black hat, black box.

Steve:

Yeah. We can call it whatever we want, right? No, just kidding.

Kristian:

Yeah.

Steve:

Well, hey thanks for-

Dallin:

I told Kristian, the other ... Oh, I'm sorry.

Steve:

No, no, you get a say. Thanks for letting me wake you up at the butt crack of dawn and still being willing to share some cool stuff.

Dallin:

Yeah.

Steve:

How did you guys start meeting or working with each other?

Kristian:

I'll let Dallin take that one.

Dallin:

Yeah. I was working on a kind of unique project. We had a guy up in Scottsdale that owns a software. He's the developer. It's a software that does algorithmic stock trading and he was stuck with his marketing. He's a big guy. He's got a lot of stuff going, but anyway, we were trying to help him get some plans going.

I had actually watched Kristian on Periscope. I'd met a lot of guys on Periscope and one day I noticed Kristian was actually in Chandler, which is only a few miles away from me. Like I said, if I see someone, I'm going to find a way to meet him, so I'll comment in his Periscope a few times and little by little, end up getting his contact info. Day later we're in a Starbucks together talking about a plan that we can do, well I was more impressed with Kristian, what he was doing. My partner that I was working on with this marketing plan for this software developer, we were on kind of different pages. I have a background in sales and Kristian's dynamic was a little more my still, so my partner ended up leaving and I ended up asking Kristian, "Hey, is there anything on the side that you're working on or that I think we can do together?"

Steve:

Mmm.

Dallin:

Badda bing badda boom. We've ... I feel like it's the perfect love story. We've been hanging out pretty much ever since.

Steve:

As long as he says the same thing, I guess that is true, right?

Dallin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kristian:

Yeah, no. The funny thing, Steve, about Dallin is I'd been with ClickFunnels, I was one of the first 50 people that signed up for the beta version of ClickFunnels.

Steve:

Wow. You're from the dark ages, Man, that's awesome.

Kristian:

Dude. Yeah. We were just talking yesterday because we literally I mean the crazy part ... I'd been so resistant to start using Actionetics.

Steve:

Yeah.

Kristian:

Until I had to transfer from Infusionsoft to AWeber, AWeber to ActiveCampaign and we're trying to do something and it's like, "Dude, why don't we just use Actionetics?" It's all in here." I'm like, "Fine." We're switching everything over and I needed ... I'd been doing funnels and learning about ... like when I first signed up for ClickFunnels, I didn't know what a funnel was. I wasn't even sure what Russell had explained to me. It just sounded so cool and I was like, "Dude, I'm going to figure this thing out because what he's talking about and the numbers, I'm like, "That's what I need to be doing. That's it." I been doing this for two and a half years, which is kind of a long time in funnel years.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Kristian:

It's not really that long of a time in regular terms, but I got on Periscope and started kind of talking about my business. At the time, I was trying to grow this fitness, be an online fitness guy.

Steve:

Yeah.

Kristian:

I'd used funnels to grow an email list of 3,500 people and I got on to Periscope and nobody cared about the fitness. They wanted to know how I was growing my email list and how I was doing my, how was I doing this business.

Steve:

Interesting.

Kristian:

Then I kind of became one of the funnel guys on Periscope and was a speaker at the Periscope Summit. I got this notoriety on Periscope for, they call me the King of Funnels. I'm like, "No, guys. I know some really big funnel guys on Periscope." They're like, "No, King of Funnels."

Steve:

Wow.

Kristian:

It's been like two and a half years of this little journey of learning funnels where it's been ... I'll tell you the three guys I credit everything to are Russell, Todd Brown and [Lo Silva 00:06:09].

Steve:

Mmm.

Kristian:

I actually had just finished the PCP coaching program with Todd Brown and those guys. Dallin, when he came to me was like, "Dude, this stuff you're talking about is awesome." I said, "Well, let's, I need a guy that gets it. That is driven and ... " that was Dallin. Now we've got this little, little agency we're trying to scale.

Steve:

That's awesome, because good partners are hard to find. I remember I started doing this back in college. My buddy and I were driving traffic for Paul Mitchell and we were doing all this stuff. I ended up firing, going through nine different partners. It's cool that you guys found each other, you know what I mean? That's pretty rare just right there.

Kristian:

Yeah. If you go back and talk about Dallin's ... there's a couple of key things that I was looking for, because I have an entire course. You love Periscope. I saw some of your Periscopes on YouTube and ...

Steve:

Dang it. Man, those were the new days for me.

Kristian:

Yeah. I was a speaker at the Periscope Summit in January.

Steve:

Cool. Wow.

Kristian:

Dallin's helped me develop this program and it's something that we've rolled out in beta and we're going to roll out as a digital product. It's called the Live Video Funnel. I've been working with Todd Brown and the guys at MFA on the entire sequence and the packaging and all that kind of stuff. They're calling Kurt [Malley 00:08:00] speaking at Marketing F...

"HeySteve!" Show 1: Todd Cardon Asks About Using Sales Funnels With eCommerce Sep 09, 2016

Show notes

Hey guys, what's going on. I'm super excited because today is number ONE of the "HeySteve!" Show. Sales funnel Radio encompasses all the stuff that I do. However, there's lots of different things like, I'm going to have some interviews here soon for you guys. Obviously I post my own thoughts on what I'm doing for marketing that's working and my own sales funnels.

What I wanted to share though is a show that I'm calling "HeySteve!". Here's how it works, you guys get on Sales Funnel Radio, go to salesfunnelradio.com or you go to salesfunnelbroker.com. Up the top it says podcast. You can look for"HeySteve!". What's cool is right on the website, there's a little widget that I found, I think it's called SpeakPipe, really, really cool software. Simple, but amazing.

What's neat about it is that you can click right in the browser, it says start recording. You can ask a question to me. That little widget or whatever will record whatever you ask and send an email copy over to me, which is awesome. I get a copy of your question.

Anyway, just got the first question in. This is from Todd. Todd is from Littleton, Colorado. He said, "Hey Steve, my background is on online marketing for e-commerce businesses. Each have 20 to 50,000 products ..." Holy crap, "first place I worked was for a ski and snowboards place and now I work for a place that sells restaurant equipment."

In this scenario he said, "Where do funnels come into play?" Do you start with top selling products, do you build the ladder from there, do you build maybe from a group of brands, where do you think the best place to start is or is it better to just find a business that just sells a handful of things where you can find your value ladder?"

Hey, that's a great question. E-commerce is the question on this one. I've had people ask me this before. How should I say this? Sales funnels are not supposed to give the person who is going through a lot of options. That's like totally the opposite of what an e-commerce business does.

E-commerce is 20 to 50,000 in options, that's a lot of products man. A sales funnel, what it's supposed to do is, it's supposed to give them only like one or two options the whole way through. That's why we call them upsells. It's literally one time offers. They literally can only get it right then and right there. It creates urgency and it creates scarcity.

The person wants to go through a purchase, because it's the only time they are going to see it. You get those feelings, "Oh man." That's what a sales funnel is. That's what it's meant to do. How can you use it in e-commerce setting? Now, you certainly can. If you use something like Shopify, I use ClickFunnels, you guys know that.

I love ClickFunnels. If you guys want a ClickFunnels trial you can go to the resource section of salesfunnelbroker.com. There's a free trial on thee you can use or just download any of the sales funnels that I have on the free funnels section. You will get those also.

What's cool is for e-commerce, here's what I would do. I would still use some kind of bait. You want something to get people over to you. If you are using restaurant equipment, that's what you are selling, you can still put something out there that's for free.

That's one of the biggest aspects of marketing when it comes to the funnel. You've got to give something for free off the bat. That's how you get a relationship with people. That's how you create a feeling of reciprocity. If I give you something for free over and over again, that's going to make you feel really indebted to me, whether or not I wanted to.

It's the whole reason we do it, is that if I give you something for free ... Think about my free funnel section for example. That free funnel section represents months and months and months of work. I'm just giving it to you for free. There's probably all the stuff that I've built in there and just decided to just give away, probably represents like a year of my life.

Now, I've made some money from those things. They are great. A lot of them, I just decided to give you for free because I know it would be a lot of value, why, why did I do that? It's because of how I know it makes you feel. I wanted to solve a lot of problems for you. I love building funnels. A lot of people don't like building funnels.

I'm just going to solve one of your problems, give you a crap load of value and you are going to be more apt to listen to things that I say. That's the whole reason I do it. It's to give value and to help you guys. Same thing with e-commerce. The rules of this don't change. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to make here. The rules don't change. You've got to find something.

If you are selling restaurant equipment or you said that you used to work for skis and snowboard place selling lots of e-commerce stuff too, think about that market. Think about like if it's a restaurant equipment ... I used to ski like crazy growing up. That's like all we wanted for Christmas was a ski pass. We would go like 30 times in a season and it's so fun.

Anyway skiing and snowboard, let's take that for example. What do those people want? If they are coming to an e-commerce place, they obviously like skiing and snowboarding. What can you give to that person for free? The rule is that you take the most valuable thing that you have. You take the thing that is the coolest thing and you give it for free, which is really hard for people to do.

It's hard for business owners to do that, which is understandable. You take the biggest thing that you've got, give it for free. Hand it off to those people and say, "Hey, look, here you go" and that's your bait. Now it's irresistible. Now you are someone who has given away tons of value. Now you are someone who has given so much value that they feel the need to purchase something from you in the future. That's the feeling you want to create.

Everybody can give a discount. Everybody can give coupons. That's overdone. I don't care about that stuff anymore. That's not a very good bait, "Order now and get you get 50% off," that's a terrible bait, don't do that in your own business. Oh man, unless you've got like a countdown time or anything, where you can tie it to like an event like there's a holiday going on. Don't use a discount.

That's my own opinion. If you've got data that says otherwise, by all means go for it. Have something that is even more sexy on there. I give away free funnels. You could give something away equipment-wise, it's free, "Hey, we want to give you guys these sweet ski poles or something like that." Something that's low cost to you that is perceived high value.

That's how you can use an e-commerce setting. If you sell equipment to restaurants, you can say, "Hey, look, here's latest tips on how to get more people into your restaurant." PDFs or e-books would be great for this, "Here's a guide on how to get your restaurant equipment cleaner using half of the manpower. The guy that's using your dish washing, here's how to still pay him well, but how to get all the jobs and the cleaning done in half the time."

If you are a restaurant owner, you've got to want to know that stuff, "You are right, yeah, they go straight to my bottom-line, why would I know, I want to figure that out." Solve the problem of the conversation that's goring on in their head. If it's a restaurant equipment, there's just a few examples I just gave there.

If it's a ski and snowboard place, "Hey, here's the best places for powder," "Here are the best places if you are into stunts, this is an awesome place to go. These are the resorts you need to go to," "If you are really into moguls and downhill skiing, things like that, here's the best places to go."

If someone is going to go buy something in a ski or snowboard place, they are buying it because they want to be entertain...

SFR 7: Interview - Becky De Acetis Shares Her Methods For 6X-ing Alex Charfen's Funnel Performance Sep 07, 2016

Show notes

Steve Larsen:
All right. Hey, welcome everyone. Today I am super excited; I have a very special guest who's very near and dear to me actually. I have been looking forward to this actually for several weeks; ever since we set it up. Everyone, this is Becky. Becky, say hi.

Becky:
Hi, everyone.

Steve Larsen:
Really though, Becky has been very influential to me, and I don't know that I've told you this which makes me feel even worse, but I actually feel like you were very influential on me being in the position that I'm in right now.

Becky:
Oh, wow. Thank you.

Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. If it's all right, I'd like to tell that story because it was a moment of high drama for me, you know what I mean? We always talking to people when they're in a life transition period, and that's kind of what I was in when you and I met. I was in college, obviously. I was about to graduate, literally the week before we met at Russel's last event, the Funnel Hacker event. I was about to go over and work for this guy in Florida. I knew it would be good, but I wasn't totally stoked. I remember at the event Russel had just pitched the whole certification event and I had a little prayer in my heart. I was like, "God, I feel like I should do this," and then ... I can't even remember what I stopped by and asked you. Do you remember that?

Becky:
I think you just asked me about the certification and kind of what I had talked about. A few of the certification partners had talked a little bit about what I meant to me and I had mentioned that it really meant a lot to me to be able to be home with my kids and work with people who I believed in and who I [crosstalk 00:02:20] make a different.

Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. I must've had a freaked out look on my face or something like that because I remember the first thing you said to me is, "Do you just need to go talk?" I was like, "Sure, I guess I do." I didn't realize that I ... I don't know. Anyways, so we stepped out of the whole meeting and you started just answering questions for me and it was awesome and that led me to apply not just for certification, but to work at ClickFunnels, and that's literally why I'm sitting in Russel's office right now I think. It really ... Everyone listening, Becky is amazing.

Becky:
Thank you. I appreciate that.

Steve Larsen:
Yeah, I've just been very excited for this. It's fun to interview everyone, but I was like, "Oh, I've got to interview Becky. Becky's been awesome." Throughout the rest of the event you were texting me and you were like, "Hey, just following up with you. Have you been doing all your stuff?" I was like, "Man! Normal people don't do this, that's awesome." Anyways, you've been working on a lot of funnels, obviously. You've been doing this as a certified partner especially for how long? A year and a half?

Becky:
Yes. I signed up for the certification at the first Funnel Hacking Live in May of 2015, and I've been working with ClickFunnels since it was in beta, so 2 and a half years.

Steve Larsen:
Oh, awesome. How'd you get into it overall? How'd you get into funnels?

Becky:
I really just kind of fell into it. Some of my clients had been using different things and we were piecing it together. The whole story about piecing all these different things together. I'd been actually doing funnels without the name "funnels" for years and years just trying to get people in and build that relationship. Then a client of mine went to one of Russel's events or seminars and he said, "Hey, I really wanna try this. Let's check it out." From there we just kind of jumped on. Even after I stopped working with him, when he went to travel, I was hooked; completely jumped on board.

Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. Obviously ClickFunnels' beta version versus what it is now is very different.

Becky:
Yes, very very different. It was much clunkier, you didn't have a lot of the drag and drop capabilities, you didn't have a lot of the editing capabilities. It was still better than anything out there, but a far cry from what it is now with the amazing capabilities that it has to drag and drop and edit and customize. I'm really excited with the changes that are coming this summer, too. That's going to be even more cool.

Steve Larsen:
Oh, yeah. It's going to be cool. For sure. Was it because you'd already been kind of doing it that led you to be a certified partner and go through that whole gate also?

Becky:
Absolutely. Because I already had that experience, I already had the knowledge, I was already using ClickFunnels about 60% with my clients at the time, if not more. Just a few of the benefits of becoming certified were enough to tell me that it was really a great thing to do, and in the process i developed this whole new family of partners and colleagues and friends who've supported and helped and it's just been really amazing to have that group of people to support me in growing my business and helping people.

Steve Larsen:
I remember that's one of the things you had mentioned to me when I was asking questions about it, is just how big the network is when you jump into that boat. I've actually really felt that. It's amazing. I know a lot of people and they're all amazing. I went through 9 business partners in the last year and a half and they were awesome, but I moved on for certain reasons. Everyone I've been meeting is just ... They're all A-players.

Becky:
Absolutely. Absolutely. They say that you draw the people toward you that you need, and I really believe that, particular with this group of people because obviously there's people in this realm who are not the caliber that you and I have met, but somehow we've drawn to us the type of people who we need and who are amazing to work with and supportive and ethical and just not any of the negativities that maybe you've experienced before or I have or that you've seen out there. It's just been a great group of people who are willing to make referrals and help out and answer questions.

Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. It's not to say that everyone that everyone that I ever worked with in the past has not been good, because especially a few of them, they knock the socks off of what they do, but it's the ... I don't know what it is. It's fantastic, though. It's a cool community that I've never experienced.

Becky:
It really is.

Steve Larsen:
It's kind of funny because whenever you see ads or we all see sales video [headers 00:07:38] or we all see whatever it is. We all like to kind of puff our chest out and say, "This is what I've done and it's amazing and I'm making this much money," but beneath it all there's usually this lifetime of struggle and this lifetime worth of just going against odds that no one else would; a lot of courage and stuff like that. No doubt I'm sure you're the same with that. I was wondering, what are some of the issues you've had with some of the funnels that are now successful that may not have been in the past?

Becky:
It's funny that you ask that because I've been working recently on one that I feel like it's just a poster child. It's so cool when everything meshes and it just clicks. I didn't really start to feel success with this until I kind of was willing to have my own voice to say who I was and use my personality as opposed to try to be a cookie cutter with other people. That's particular what has made this particular funnel with Alex [Sharfon 00:08:52], and he said that I could definitely use him as an example.

Steve Larsen:
Do a little name drop. That's awesome.

Becky:
Yes. It's really cool because he has had so many successes in the past and these particular funnels were successful, but they weren't having the type of reach and success tha...

SFR 8: How To Cut Through 94% Of The Talentless Freelancers To Find The Skilled 6% Aug 31, 2016

Show notes

All right you guys, I have a little bit of a cool little, I don't know what you call it. A freelancer hack, or something like that. Anyway, I was looking at how I built salesfunnelbroker.com so fast. I built it really quick. It was up, it was live super fast, and I was thinking about it. This will relate, I promise. Just go on a little journey with me.

I did door to door sales for two summers, and I was also a telemarketer. In each of them, I was one of the top guys, both times. I was making good money, and I remember, I got to this conference that was for people who were doing well. In the conference, they said, "Eventually, what happens is, you guys start getting good enough, you don't know what it is that you're doing that makes you successful". They said, "You start to become blind. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you do know. You start to get into this zone where you're saying things, and you have strategies in your normal work flows that are making you successful. But you couldn't teach it to somebody else, because you don't see yourself working. You're just no longer aware of it". It's true, in your own jobs. In your own businesses.

It's interesting, thinking about that. Think about what it is you're doing, that's making you successful, but that you're not seeing. Because every one of us who's working our butts off, we all have these little things that we do, that we don't know. One thing that I do, I get up early every day. Super small, but I was thinking about it. I get at least three hours every single day, on top of normal work, to just go work. My family is all asleep anyway, it's not an extra strain on the family. I get here at least three hours before hand, times five days a week, at least. It's fifteen hours, that's almost a part time job on top of my other job. That's how I get so much crap done.

There's also little tiny tactics and strategies that I use. I was thinking about with Sales Funnel Broker, when I built it, what did I do that made that go up so quick? Here's one of the things that I did. This is a freelancer hack. I always recommend, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should be. I'm not bad with Photoshop. I'm not amazing, but I can get by with it. Same with Adobe illustrator, a lot of the Adobe suite. A lot of building stuff. But that doesn't mean I should always be the one doing it. There's somebody else out there who loves what it is that I'm trying to do. Whereas I just can do it, I don't love it.

When I need images made, the HeySteve t-shirt, things like that, this is what I did. I went on to freelancer.com, and as far as I know, freelancer.com is the only one that actually lets you do this. I don't know if UpWork does. Definitely don't use this for Fiverr. Fiverr is good for certain things, but it's not good for a lot of stuff, because it's so cheap. You get what you pay for a lot of times. All I do is, I go inside of freelancer.com and, I think it's up on the top right. There's a button there that will say, "Create contest". We humans thrive on contests, oh my gosh. It's all about social status and social ques, whether or not we want it to be. That's one of the reasons we do most of the stuff in our life, is because it increases our own status. We want to be interesting, we want to put things out there that help people. We want to be noticed and recognized. Whether or not we're actually trying to be, we want to have that.

So I create contests. The HeySteve t-shirt contest, I got on there, and I said, "Hey, I want a sweet t-shirt for my podcast. I want people ...", and by the way, if you haven't seen that t-shirt, just go to salesfunnelbroker.com/podcasts and you'll see it right there. It says, "HeySteve". What I did is I got onto freelancer.com and I said, "I want this t-shirt, and I want it to have these elements. I want it to have this color scheme, and I want it to look somewhat like this. But really, I'm interested in just what your ideas are". I got 83 submissions. There were so many sick t-shirt contests, and there were so many crappy ones. What was nuts about it is, how fast it came in. Within a week, I had three amazing designs. There's only one design up there right now, at the time of recording this. There might be more now, depending on when you listen to this.

What was cool was, as people submitted, and the deal is I only pay someone, one person. I only pay the person that I like. The work that's good. 82 other people of the 83 submissions, they worked for free for me. I'm not saying to take advantage of people, but my gosh. I have spent thousands, and wasted thousands of dollars, hiring a freelancer straight out, without knowing everything they can do. If you've ever used Freelancers, I know you've felt that pain before. You're like, "I don't really know if this guy is going to do exactly what I want. I don't know if they're going to be the best for my business". Or you have some serious pain going, "No, that's not exactly what I wanted", and you ping pong back and forth. Just screw it, just go create a contest. Get tons of submissions all at once. What's cool is that Freelancer lets you talk to the freelancer, to the person who actually put the work up.

Throughout the whole week, I was critiquing their work like crazy. I only put the contest up for a week, and at the end of the week, I had to choose. Day one, I had tons of submissions. Day two, even more, and just ramped up, until day four. All I did is, throughout the week, at the end of the day I got on and said, "I like this, but just shift it over here to the right". Or, "I like this, but I don't know who's looking at this wrong. I said I want the shirt color to be dark, not white. All the other shirt colors before hand were all white". Until Wednesday or Thursday. Everyone's switching their designs up, and it's such a huge contest. My comments were public, and it was interesting, people started going through and reading other people's comments, and going, "Crap, I've got to switch to that". They would go take their design, and make it better, and work it and tweak it, and do what they're good at. Do what I'm not good at. I would just tell them what I like and don't like, over and over again.

I did that throughout the week, and after a while ... 83 submissions from 50 freelancers. At the end, throughout the week, I just kept rejecting the ones that I knew I hated, and I could rate on the bottom with stars the ones I like. Everyone's looking at the 5 star ones, the top ones, and modeling after that. Then I get dozens and dozens of attempts at the same thing, over and over again, and it made the work really quality. I was like, "This is freaking cool". I got really awesome work over and over and over again, and I only paid 100 bucks. You can choose the amount you want for the contest, you can make it 50 or whatever, but you get the work that's a little ... I just wanted to excite people, and I wanted to motivate people.

I was like, "100 bucks, probably motivating for someone who does this all the time. They can probably whip something up quick, so I want them to fight for it. I want to create tension inside of my contest". So I created it, and just boom, started rejecting, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting. I rejected so much stuff. I think overall there was 8 pages worth of submissions, and 7 of them were all rejected. I'm sure it was disheartening for some people, but it made the ones who really wanted it want it. It made them really hungry.

There were two or three at the end that I really liked. I awarded one person the 100 dollars, and then I went back and purchased the designs of the other two.

I started using that same model for everything else. Images, that header image on Sales Funnel Broker, there's also a footer image. There's also ... I started using it for everything. What was cool is, it worked every single time. Wher...

SFR 6: …The Blood Down My Arms, And A Live-Virus Later...The Military's "Sales Funnel":) Aug 30, 2016

Show notes

There I was standing in a line of people, blood dripping down my arms, this is actually a true story though. I was going through basic and I remember we get to this medical part, this is for the army and we get to this medical part and they're like, "Sit down," they're yelling at us, making us feel like we're not large at all. They're like, "Sit down," and they're like squishing us chest to chest like crazy tight to each other. We had just come from a haircut and they're were like crazy rough. They through us in this chair and they would shave our heads but the guys that were shaving our heads were so rough with our heads that we were all bleeding from our scalps by the time we were done. I look at this now and I just laugh.

There's a point to the story, by the way but I just laugh. They're throwing us up against the wall afterwards, they've missed some spots so some of us still have patches of hair coming out the side. They don't care that you're not clean at all either. There's hair everywhere and you're shoved up against the wall. I remember this guy's little blood streak coming down by his neck and right after that they have us go get cleaned up because we go to the medical area. In the medical area they take us and they put us down on the ground roll our sleeves up. They're like, "Take this alcohol swab, wipe down your arms, clean your arms," and it was the craziest thing I've ever experienced, I guess, medical wise. Every time I think of it I always have to laugh. We rolled our sleeves up and we're standing, we call it nut to butt, toe to heel, basically really close to the other guy.

You're standing super close and you take one step forward and there's a doctor on each side of you and they have a shot in each hand. You take one step forward and they both go right in to your arm. I got four shots at one time. Boom. Took another step forward, another set of two doctors, each with two shots in each, a shot with each hand. Then I got two more shots on each side. Boom. Took a step forward, two more doctors, each with a shot and it's like factory style. I mean, you took one step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. They're not being soft or anything so there's like blood coming down your arms. I remember the last guy, he was giving us a Tetanus shot and this guy must have really, really been having a bad day or something like that because oh my gosh, he was taking it out on us. That dude was jamming that big fat Tetanus needle in our arm so hard, I'm pretty sure it was hitting all of our bones or something because there were these other girls were there that were screaming and stuff. The very last thing that just kind of took the whole cake, they made us take this live virus by mouth. It was this pill, right?

We took a step forward and you had to show them that you swallowed it. You put it in your mouth and took some water down and show them that you swallow it because they said it goes in and kills all this crazy crap in your body. They're like, "For the next two weeks that live virus will come out of your pores. Make sure you always wash your hands. Don't touch your eyes," that kind of stuff. They're like, "You're worthless pieces of crap." Of course, everybody gets sick. We were sick, basic training is like two and half months long, we were sick for probably two months of that. Coughing up green crap and you're not really sleeping. Sleep isn't actually that, too crazy, it's the no eating part. I lost fifteen pounds and I was not overweight.

We were all like crazy sick and I remember feeling at the end of it, it's funny going in actually because I was like, "They're not going to break me. They're not going to get me." I was a little bit older than everyone else there. I was doing it in the middle of college instead of right out of high school. I had a kid, I was married, you know what I mean? I was gone for like six months total and I remember going in thinking, "They're not going to break me, they're not going to get me, I'm Steve Larsen, they're not getting me." They totally did. They broke me down hard and they rebuild you. It's the organization older than the United States so they know what they're doing for sure. It was cool though because I remember at the end of it we had thrown grenades, shot machine guns, we had done all this stuff. Crawling in the mud, laying in thirty-three degree water that's barely about to freeze, do that for half a day and anyways, at the end of it, I just remember feeling like crap, I feel like a soldier. This is weird. I did not expect that.

Anyways, why am I telling you this story? That sounds awful doesn't it? I'll tell you it kind of was at some points. I actually loved basic though. It was fun just because of the challenge of it and going and being intense like that. Anyways, why am I telling you this story? Because that's not what they show you in the commercials on TV about military. They don't show you that you only sleep three hours a night when you're out in the field and it's at one and a half hour increments. You get up constantly through the evening. They don't show you that you're not eating hardly at all. They don't show you all that crazy stuff. You have an idea that it's going to happen. You're going to put camo on and you're going to go do tough stuff. It's cool and it's fun after the fact. In the middle of it sometimes it's kind of challenging but it's actually super fun though. Basic wasn't that intense physically, which I know it doesn't sound that way, it was just the mental games they play with you. Anyways, it was fun though. I'm really glad that I did that. That was a while ago now.

The reason I'm telling you that is, like I said, those aren't the things they show in the commercials. Those aren't the things that the recruiter tells you. Look, the whole thing, they show you pictures and images of you, of these guys wearing camo and holding a gun, sitting, watching, they're the ones that are the guardian of, you know what I mean? They show you the sexy side of it. We all love the sexy side of it. That happens like five percent of the time though. The other ninety-five percent of the time, you're doing the stuff that gets you to the sexy part of it. The reason I'm showing you this, yesterday I reviewed two more value ladders that people send to me. If you don't know what a value ladder is, it's just a way to model out your business so that you can serve more people and get more money from customers and spend less on ads and acquiring customers. It's pretty cool. Go Google, Russell Brunson talks about it a lot. There's, I think Jeff Walker talks about it. Anyways, value ladders, they're not like a new thing or whatever. They've been around a long time.

Anyways, this is the reason I'm doing this because after reviewing tons of these value ladders from people, especially over the last couple years, there's a common thread that I'm seeing and I'm realizing that I'm saying the exact same things to every person who sends me their value ladder. It is not about just giving a free eBook to get an opt in. It's not about, here's a free course or here's a free, whatever it is to get the opt in. That's not how it works. What you do is you think, what's my main goal? For me, I like to sell real estate sales funnels. Some for like ten grand a piece and people come to me and they pay for that and I give them a sweet, awesome real estate sales funnel that helps them sell another house or two every month. That's huge for their income. That's massive. What you do is you take the sexiest part of the goal and that's what you offer for free to people as the bait. It's just like when I was going, I realized this, it was actually last night as I was falling asleep and I was like, that's a great analogy because going through the military they don't show you all the crazy hard stuff.

I'm not saying that you got to have hard stuff ...

SFR 5: High School - To Kick Me, Or Not To Kick Me (true story) Aug 30, 2016

Show notes

Hey you guys. I am actually excited to share this story with you guys. This is a personal story. This is something that happened to me and I'm laughing because I'm looking back at it, thinking how crazy it was. I grew up in Littleton, Colorado and I loved it. I had a fantastic childhood. I look back at all the crap that I did growing up and it's just fun. I had a really awesome child. I had awesome friends and grew up in a cool neighborhood with tons of other kids on the street. You know there was like two kids in every house on our street for the longest time. It was kinda fun because at night, I feel like everybody came out and the street became alive which is good and bad for various reasons.

Growing up, I went to this high school called Chatfield High School. I go and my brother and I were always trying to find stuff to sell to other people. I think it started because we grew up on the back nine of a public golf course. It wasn't like crazy nice or anything, but it was kinda cool because we'd go sneak on there, run from the golf rangers. We'd have our backpacks on, but the top open, and we'd have our swimsuits on, and we'd go jump in this pond. There's tons of them, it's a golf course. We'd go riding our bikes through this golf course on the paths and everything or just straight down the fairway just collecting golf balls. Then, we'd clean them up and we'd go sell them back to the golfers. I think that started us on this, I don't know, downward spiral.

One day, we got out of high school, and my brother and I we're pretty close in age so we were usually in the same school buildings. We get out and we're like "Hey, let's go over to- there's a Walgreens nearby." There's a Walgreens over there and its not far away. It was not uncommon for us to take like huge detours before we'd go home just for fun, just doing whatever. I don't know at that time that I'd necessarily call myself book smart, at all. I think I barely graduated high school like literally. I know some people say that figuratively, but I think I actually literally barely graduated. I had straight D's for a very long time in all the major course subjects. I guess you could say I was "street-smart" or whatever that is.

We go over to this Walgreens and we're looking at this toy aisle, which is the coolest aisle. You always go to the toy aisle when you're a kid, you know, even when you're an adult. I go over to the toy aisle and we're looking in there and we're like "What can we get?" We only had a couple bucks on us. We started looking around. We didn't even know what we were looking for. All the sudden, something catches our eye, and it's this little tiny ... It was kind of shiny, actually, but it's these pens, like writing pens.

They're in these awesome cases, like plastic cases to make them look really nice. Some of you will probably know what I'm talking about. There's two buttons on the side. It was a nice chrome pen and it's like one of those twist pens and on the side, there's two buttons. The top button makes this blue light come out the top. It was really cool. The bottom button shined a laser pointer out of the top of this pen and we're like "Holy crap, that's so cool!" We love that stuff. So we're like "This is awesome." We look at the price and you could get two of them for five dollars. We're like "What, this is ridiculous!" We each had like 20 bucks on us. We bought all the pens that I think that they had. We're like "I think we can go sell these," so we grabbed our pens, there was dollars in our eyes, we were thinking all about it.

We get back and my mom had this labeler and so we went and we were making these labels that are like "eight dollars", "twelve bucks," I mean like huge mark-ups from what they currently were. We marked all these things up and as a big fan of cargo shorts back then for their "utility and comfort," we loaded up our cargo shorts full of these pens in these nice looking cases. We'd taken off the original price tags for 2.50 and put on like 12 bucks. We go to school the next day and those were always the days I was excited to go to school.

I didn't necessarily love school. I liked it for all the extracurricular stuff that was going on there. I was a bit of a geek for sure. I was one of the head editors for yearbook and for computer stuff, go figure, not writing or taking pictures and stuff like that, but for layout and stuff like that. I was in choir and theater and stuff like that, but I did awful in all the other subjects. The days where we were trying to take over the world and sell stuff to people, those were fun days.

We go to school and we start showing these pens in our classes. We're like "Hey, check it out," almost like we're doing a drug deal. It's funny to talk about it now. I never really thought about that, but it must've looked bad. I was like "Dude I got this sweet pen, do you want it man?" It was totally the drug dealer clothes. We'd play with them for a second and someone would be like "Oh, that's totally legit man! Can I have that pen?!" We're like "It'll cost you 12 bucks, I don't want to lose money on it." It showed 12 dollars on the price tag and they're like "Dude, I'll totally buy that from you!" We're like "Okay," you know? What's crazy is at the end of that day, we had sold all of the pens in a matter of like 20 minutes individually in our classes in one class period. We were like "Oh my gosh, we're going to be rich!"

We went straight back to that Walgreens, used all the money we got, bought more pens, which I'm glad they restocked and such, and went back, used the labeler, and the next day, we were loaded up with more pens. We sold all those pens in like a matter of hours, not even another class period. We go back and forth and we're doing this several times and we're making crazy margins on this thing. We're like "These pens are so under-priced, this is ridiculous!" We're selling these things to people for even like 15 dollars, 20 dollars, and they're two and a half bucks! We were making a killing on these things. We just kept going back, taking all the money we were making and dumping it straight back into our product.

It's funny because looking back on it, people were buying from us, turning around and selling again. We had our own freaking distribution channel starting! It was nuts. It kind of got out of control. It got to the point where people, I don't know how they heard about what ... I guess it was pretty easy to see and hear about us. You'd walk into the commons and there was all these red dots all over the walls, like I didn't grow up in a small high school. There was like 3,000- no, what was it? It was about 2,300 people in our school. It wasn't small. We had been pumping in tons and tons of these pens in there. Like I said, it got to this point where people were like interrupting us in the middle of a class. They seriously would open up the door in the middle of my english class and they'd go "Uhh ..."- like the class would be going on. They'd be like "Uhh, are you the kid with all the pens," and I'd be like "Dude, come on! You're stupid, man. Get out of here," and then I'd be like "Uhh, yeah," he's like "Do you have any more of them?" I'm like "Yeah," like "I'll meet you- here, I'll just wait right outside when your class is over and I'll get them right there."

We had caused so much freaking desire for these pens. It was starting to get us in trouble. What is funny because one day, like I said, you can start to see all these red dots all over the place. One day, I was sitting in algebra class which I think I failed, well no, I got like a 60.1% in that class. That's what I got in most my classes. Math for sure, English for sure, because you had to read a whole lot, definitely got straight D's every single semester in Spanish, like mercy kills- 60.1%, barely passing these so I could move forward. I think they knew that I just wasn't a kid th...

SRF 4: Interview - Ben Willson Strategy For 50,000 Free Site Visitors In ONE MONTH... Aug 30, 2016

Show notes

steve larsen:
All right everybody, hey. I'm super excited for today. This is the first interview that I've actually done on, Sales Funnel Radio. It's actually one of the main reasons that I started this podcast. There's so many cool, silent, unspoken entrepreneurial heroes out there. I really, I just wanted to go expose a lot of those stories and share with you guys how possible it is to make a profitable sales funnel. Today, I have, actually one of my good friends, Ben Wilson, on the phone here recording. Ben and I actually have quite a history together. I'd say that I first got into sales funnels online with him, doing products with him. Anyway, I'm excited. We want to go through our story a little bit and share with you guys things you guys can do in your own business. Ben, how's it going?

ben wilson:
Absolutely good, man. Great to be here.

steve larsen:
Awesome, awesome. I was thinking back to the time when you and I first met. That was ... We were in college, that was back, what class was that?

ben wilson:
I think we were probably, Marketing 101, something wasting our time.

steve larsen:
Yeah.

ben wilson:
I remember leaning over and you were looking at Stripe, and I was like, "Most kids aren't looking at Stripe in class. Why is this kid looking at Stripe?" Then I leaned over and I was like, "Hey man, we should totally set up an API for you. We could get that going." You're like, "What do you know about Stripe?" I was like, "Yeah, man, I've set up Stripe." That was the start.

steve larsen:
That was the start right there. I remember I was making an e-book.

ben wilson:
Yeah.

steve larsen:
Yeah. That was my first attempt ever at making a landing page on WordPress, and I had spent two days trying to get this stupid theme to do what I wanted it to do. Yeah. That was funny. That project, I think I've sold two copies of that thing. It's on Amazon.

ben wilson:
That was a good book though.

steve larsen:
How did we get together after that though? What did we do? I actually can't remember. I just remember...

ben wilson:
I think we started bouncing ideas off as to what had done in the past. You started sharing to me about, I don't think you called it funnels at the time, you really started looking at affiliate marketing, and how to push products online without necessarily being attached. I think, I don't know if it was a clash, or some type of beautiful art piece. I always got attached, like, "Well, we have to brand it. We have to be attached to some level at what we're doing." You're like, "It doesn't matter what it is. Let's do it and we're moving forward." Just like a rubber band. Sometimes we'd have the snap, but the snap wasn't a bad thing. The snap was like, okay, I'll give up that I don't have to be that attached. You're like, "Okay, we can kind of brand it," and something would actually happen. Then we convinced our teachers.

steve larsen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ben wilson:
I was describing this to someone yesterday. We convinced our teachers that what we were doing was a lot more beneficial.

steve larsen:
Than in class.

ben wilson:
Yes!

steve larsen:
I remember that. That was our internet marketing class itself, man.

ben wilson:
We missed ... I mean, we convinced several teachers...

steve larsen:
To not go to class anymore.

ben wilson:
To [call up the class 00:03:52] the class, and they're ... Oh man. I can't believe we actually pulled that off.

steve larsen:
Me neither. I was thinking about it. We drew up that plan. We got in our internet marketing and they were doing that stupid, SEO old school stuff. We both wanted to shoot ourselves. I noticed you were the other kid in the class that was just pounding their head on the wall. Like, "Oh this crap is so old. It doesn't work."

ben wilson:
Yes. I remember they were trying to teach WordPress, and they were like, "How do you do such and such?" I was like, every answer, both of us just raising our hands.

steve larsen:
Yeah.

ben wilson:
I was like, "Do we really have to sit here the entire time and build you a website? Can't we go build ourselves a website?"

steve larsen:
Yeah. That's funny. Then we wrote up that plan. It was basically a flow chart for pages.

ben wilson:
Yes!

steve larsen:
He said, "Yeah, go for it. Just bring a deliverable." Then we started meeting every morning for two or three hours. Way more than the other kids in class were doing it. I remember we made that first affiliate product. I think it was, Click Bank. Right?

ben wilson:
[inaudible 00:05:00] was it? Was our first one the weight loss supplements?

steve larsen:
It was something like ... No, no, it was the social media producer thing. We put a landing page together using some guys weird generator and put 50 bucks on it and woke up the next morning, saw that 50 bucks had come back, and I was like, "Holy crap! We didn't lose money!" We got 17 people to opt in, and we sold it.

ben wilson:
I was so stoked the moment we didn't lose money. That was the first accomplishments of, like, no way!

steve larsen:
How did we get with Paul Mitchell after that though?

ben wilson:
I think he was assigned to our class, and I had to go over ...

steve larsen:
That's right, you closed him.

ben wilson:
He was trying to do something with Facebook, and I noticed he had a lot more other issues than trying to do Facebook advertising through our class. Then we had an assignment that was to get 10 people to fill out the survey. You and I looked at each other like, "We could get a lot more than 10 people, but I'm not calling anyone." Right? Let's think hard of a way to get a lot more people. I think there ended up being, was there 1100 people we got to take the survey?

steve larsen:
Yeah. Everyone else got 100 or something.

ben wilson:
Yeah. I think they called their 10 people.

steve larsen:
Yep.

ben wilson:
Yeah.

steve larsen:
That was hilarious. Then we started driving traffic for them. Which, I can't believe we did that. Oh, and then the [Arhenis 00:06:32] Project.

ben wilson:
Arhenis. You and I were out for what, 72 hours straight building a website, and then come to find out, the guy didn't even mention his website that we had built for him after being asked by him to build this website.

steve larsen:
Gosh, that whole thing was so weird.

ben wilson:
We were like, "There's a million people watching right now, and the only way you're going to further your career is by sending people to this website, and you got 2 hours to do it." We sat, I sat, we sat there and even Paul Mitchell watching. They're like, "Okay, any time now, any time now."

steve larsen:
Mention, just say the URL, just say, and he never did.

ben wilson:
We're like, "We do not have to run any type of funnels. If you just by chance mention this email address that you paid $1800 for, if you could just mention it once."

steve larsen:
It would be great. Those of you who are listening, Paul Mitchell asked us to come build out ... They basically said, "Hey, we're getting on tv in 2 days, we need a website people can go to, and we need a lead capture system and all this stuff." This was ... Just mapping the same time, this was when ClickFunnels was still in beta. It was a while ago. It was way longer than that ago. Man, how long ago was that? That was 2 or 3 years ago now wasn't it?

ben wilson:
We're coming up on ... I mean, it's been 18 months since I graduated, and that was before my last semester. Yeah, at least 2 years.

steve larsen:
Yeah, yeah....

SFR 3: Shakin' My Stalker - Prolific Style:) Aug 30, 2016

Show notes

All right, All right. Sorry, I'm in the car again, by the way. Usually I am in front of a nice microphone. Every once in a while when nice thought hits me and I'm like, "Oh my gosh. That's one of the core principals that I use." I decide I should probably share them with you. Anyways, I'm in the car driving and just thought I'd take the time.

Recently somebody asked me, I can't remember what they asked me, but this story from my past popped up, right. I had this stalker and sorry if she's listening to this, I seriously doubt it. I was in college and I had this stalker and everyone kind of knew it. I guess that's the thing about stalkers is they're not being subtle. She was showing up at our door in our apartment. She'd be like, "Hey, how's it going?" She was awkward about it. She'd be like, "Hey, yeah, so hi. Just wanted to come by and say hi and come say hi." You're like, Yeah you said it three times now. Then it'd be silent for a second and be like, yep because I wasn't interested. Then she'd be like, "See you."

I'd be like, "Okay, we're done today, this is good. See you tomorrow or tonight or some awkward time." Then she'd show up again, and be like, "Hey I made this t-shirt for you." I was like, "You made me a t-shirt?" I think I threw it away after she left. I felt bad. I was like I'm not going to wear this and keep this going. Another day she came by and was like, "Hey, I made you cookies." I was like, "Oh my gosh, you're not buying me with your dang cookies, although they're tasty and delicious."

Anyways, she went through this crazy elaborate scheme to ask me to this Jane Austin Ball thing that the campus was putting on. That's not something I would usually go to but I'm not going to say no. I wanted to be nice. I can't even remember what she did. Maybe is was another shirt, I can't even remember what it was. It was big and elaborate and it was extremely clear that she was going through this massive thing to go through the trouble to ask me to this dance in a really crazy way. I was like, "Yeah, sounds good." She was like, "That's all you're going to say is yes? I went through this huge thing you've got to say yes back in a really fun way." I was like, "Okay." I never did. She got all offended. She was like, "I get the feeling you're not interested in me." I was like, "That'd be right."

I decided what the heck, I'll answer back in a crazy way. I was like, what's something that I can do that's kind of out there, I promise this relates to business, what's something I can do that's borderline crazy but it's not like the typical thing but will totally get the thing across. I want her to think afterwards she'll never forget it but also put a little disgust in her brain. I was just walking around and I was like, maybe something will pop up today. I was at the grocery store, I was getting food for the next week. I was over by where the meat section is, the deli area. I see these salmon, whole salmon, they're huge. They had been gutted and cleaned and everything of course but huge salmon. I'm like I'm totally buying it. I don't even know what I'm going to use it for yet, but it's somehow involved.

I had this huge salmon and I bring it back to my apartment. This thing is frozen rock solid. I'm like, how am I going to use this for. All the sudden, I'm like, "This is it!" I went and I grabbed this knife and I start trying to chop off the tail part. This sounds a totally morbid but it was frozen solid so I had to leave it out until it was oozing a little bit. It was totally disgusting, smells a little bit. There was six of us in that apartment. I'm sure all the other guys were like, "What the heck is wrong with this kid?" I was telling them the idea though, they were like, "This is genius."

I sawed off the tail and then I took a piece of paper and I wrote on there, "Looks like you got me hooked." I put it inside of a plastic bag and I shoved in it inside of the tail through the part where you clean it all out. Basically, there was a note in this massive Salmon tail. I went and I got a coat hanger and I made a hook out of it and some dental floss and I tied the floss to the hook, then I hooked the tail onto the coat hanger so it looked like it was a fish hook. Then I went to her apartment door an I hung it in front of their door. As soon as they open their door, they see it. It took them a while to try to find it. It was hanging in the hot sun getting all nasty and dripping everywhere. Its' totally disgusting. I had no problem dropping her after this.

She opened the door. I was hiding and I heard her open the door and I hear her go, "Oh my gosh, what the freak is that? This is disgusting." She was looking at it, sees this little note sticking out. Opens it up and was like, "Looks like you hooked my tail" or something like that. She's like, "That's how you said yes?" I was like, "You're not my stalker anymore." I didn't say that. We went on the date and she still was like, "Don't be nervous if I want to touch you the whole night, I'm just really excited I'm on a date with you."

I was like, "Oh, no." She totally got the idea, especially after the fish thing. I never saw her again after that. It's kind of a big long story. I ended up taking the other part of the Salmon and cooking it for a girl that I was actually interested in and totally impressed her and it was awesome.

Anyways, what's the whole point of that story? That sometimes you have to lose people. You don't have to be mean about it. I'm not saying you've got to do crazy stuff. Here's what the lesson is, you've got to be prolific. The question I started asking myself to make that whole thing happen was, "How can I be prolific?" Which is not crazy, but not mainstream. It's that in between stage. The only marketers that actually do anything with a lot of traction, do something prolific. You think of dollar shave club. Their marketing is pretty raw. Stuff like Carl's Jr., I'm not condoning anything that any of these people do but if you just look at what they're doing, they're prolific. They're doing things that are out of the norm.

If I'm going to go pitch someone and try to get them to buy, I might as well make them laugh, or shock them, or do something that's gong to be memorable because I'm sucking up their time. I guarantee she remembers that stupid salmon fish tail and understands that I'm just not interested, stop pursuing me, you're waisting your time. I guarantee she remembers that. Every one of my friends remember that. It was a little bit prolific especially for the dating world.

I keep giving all these dating examples so I'll give one more. I came back home in between semesters for Christmas. I came home and I was actually at church. Goes to show what was on my head by going to church this time. I go to church I sat down in front of this girl. I was like, "Dang, who is that? She is hot. Holy crap." I sit down and my brother is with me. I was like, "Did you see her?" He was like, "Freak yeah man. Holy smokes." Anyways took me a little bit of guts to work up the courage to ask her out and things like that because she's hot. I was making sure I had my buff stuff on.

I went and I asked her on a date. I was like, "I've got to do something on this date that's going to be really cool. Something that's not mainstream." It's really funny thinking about it, I never realized that I was asking that same question. Something that's not mainstream, something that's a little bit crazy. I want to get her out of there comfort zone a little bit just so she knows I'm a little bit nuts sometimes and she's got to know this is part of the package and I like to be out there sometimes. I was like, "All right, what are we going to go do"

I picked her up on the date, and I was like, "We're first going to go to Goodwill." Which was like Desert Industries or something like that. We're going to go buy anything in there tha...

SFR 2: Yard Manager, Door-to-Door Sales, ...Paul Mitchell? Aug 22, 2016

Show notes

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 you guys. I'm actually super excited for this. I can't believe I'm recording the first episode of this podcast. I mean this is awesome. I love podcasts. I think they're awesome. I've learned a lot from them. I've made money because of things I learn off podcasts. I've gained a lot of respect for a lot of people. Anyways, so I'm excited to be doing this podcast and I remember the idea first came up, and I was like, "I don't want to get podcasting. I don't want to go out and start, I don't know, going around and trying to interview all these people and stuff like that."

What I want you to know is what you can expect from this, though, because I'm excited that I decided to. I used to do a lot more parascoping than I used to. I got 600 parascope followers, and something interesting happened when I started publishing. The moment I started publishing, I started getting a ton of interaction with people. Way more than my ad spend, right? It's super fun. It was just, so, I've got to tell you, it's as much for me to be doing this podcast as it might be for the things that you learn in this. Selfishly, I just enjoy it. It's super fun. I feel a connection whenever I do that, and then I get feedback from people and they say, "Hey, I used that tactic and I made money with it." It blows me away. Super fun. Anyway, I enjoy that a lot.

What you can expect from this podcast is to learn specific sales funnel strategies, whether that's for webinars, trip wire funnels, product launch funnels, automated webinar funnels, anyways. If those don't mean anything to you, no worries. It's okay. I'll go crazy deep on some things, but other things not. I promise to keep it interesting as well. I hate monotone speaking podcasts. Oh my gosh, they're so boring. Those are the ones I always play at 2 time speed. If you didn't know you could do that, it's on your iPhone, but you can play things at 2 time speed, really fast. I kind of tend to talk quickly, so that might sound weird, but what I'm going to do is talk about sales funnels, things I'm building right now for clients.

I've been building sales funnels for the last, about 4 years and the first one I even built was for this guy named, actually I can't even remember his name, but he was an artist and we were selling his art. It wasn't quite like gif art, but it was ... Anyways it was cool. It was cool stuff. I remember I built the sales funnel, cool, and no one came to it. I was like, "what the heck?" I was like, "I've got to go learn how to send traffic." But I didn't, and time went on, time went on, and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to go learn door to door sales, just because I want to learn how to sell in really hard environments." That's why I did it. I went and I was like the number 2 sales guy for a while. I mean I was like crushing it. It was awesome. I was selling pest control and there were bugs everywhere so it was great.

I remember while we were driving out to one of our areas one morning. I was looking and we were on the highway and it was a great day out. I remember it was blue skies, you know, just fantastic out. It was hot, crazy hot. I remember looking around and seeing all these billboards as we were driving down the highway and thinking, this is crazy. I get up every morning and I convince people who were not planning on spending money that they should spend money, and I'm not doing bad at it, which is awesome. That's a skill. But everyone who's seeing these billboards is planning on spending on something when they call that number. It completely switches the psychology of the sale. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. I was in college at the time. I was like, I've got to learn how to do that.

What I did is I got online that night and I started putting out all these ads, just free classified ads, all over the place selling our pest control. "Hey, if you got this issue, call." "If you got this issue, call." "Hey we're doing a sale. Call." My phone started blowing up. I couldn't believe it. My boss called, he's like "How are you getting all these sales?" I was like, "They're calling me." He goes, "Are you kidding? What the heck?" I said, "I'm kind of shocked it's working." I remember I pulled like 10 phone sales in a very short period of time. It's funny because for a door to door salesman, there's different ratios right? Hey, I know that if I pitch 50 to 60 people one of them on average will say yes. That's a crap ton of work and a lot of talking, right? When I was doing this it flipped it and I closed 90% of the people who were calling, always. I think there was only 1 or 2 who didn't purchase, because they called because they had a problem and they knew I had a solution.

I was like, "this is nuts. This whole thing is crazy. Why am I selling this way?" It was a great way to learn how to sell, and it's a fantastic skill to have. I've used that many other places, but the interesting thing though, I was hooked after that. My sales numbers started sucking because I started thinking like, "How else can I blow this up?" I started thinking about ... Anyways, I kind of quit door knocking and I went home that summer. We made money. It was a good experience.

I came home and that just always stuck with me. I was like, that's nuts. People are clicking ... It's not clicking. That's where I'm going. They were calling. I was like, how can I get them to click on things that I want them to online? So I started getting obsessed with this stuff. Just like, okay, I've got to go make a product and then I'm going to get ads and then I'm going to drive it to that product. Wow, revolutionary Steve. It's not that crazy, but what's is that to me that was a huge deal.

I went and I built this product and no one came and it never sold and no one came and it was tumbleweed after tumbleweed. I was like, crap! That's when I was like, I need to learn how to send traffic. I started going and I started learning all these traffic techniques and it's super cool. At that time I was, this is just the story of how I got into this so you guys know. I thought it'd be good to tell as the first podcast. At the time I was in my internet marketing, it was called Intro to Internet Marketing. It was one of my classes in college. It was bad, man, it was so bad. For the last couple months I had been studying traffic, right, because none of my ebooks had sold. Still on Amazon, by the way.

Anyway, so I started learning all these traffic techniques but by the time that internet marketing class came up in college, I had been studying enough stuff and practicing enough and had made enough money that I knew everything he was already talking about, and I knew that what the teacher was saying was old and was wrong and wasn't going to work for what he was teaching. I told the teacher that. That's not always the wisest thing to do to a professor, but that's what I did.

I drew up this plan, and it was hey I'm going to have this squeeze page. People will come in. They'll opt in and I'll get their email address and then after that I'm going to push them over to the sales page of like someone else's product. I was practicing affiliate marketing. I would get a commission when I would send a buyer to someone and someone else would make the product. That's called affiliate marketing if you're not familiar with that.

It worked. I put 50 bucks in to some ads. I woke up and there was 50 bucks in my account. I was like, "Oh my gosh! Are you kidding me?" I went and I called my buddy. I was like, "Dude, get over here! It worked!" He comes flying over. I was like, "We didn't really make anything, but we gained 17 subscribers and we broke even. We got 17 people that we know are basically buyers and 2 or 3 of th...

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected