This Sales Funnel Gap is Killing Your Conversions (Here’s the Fix) | #Marketing - Ep. 29

Speaker 2 At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments, it's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Speaker 2 Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

Speaker 2 From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Speaker 2 Black Friday deals are going on all month long. Save up to 45% off site-wide, plus an additional 10% off every order right now at blinds.com.

Speaker 1 Rules and restrictions apply.

Speaker 3 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

Speaker 3 These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Speaker 3 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

Speaker 4 Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling.

Speaker 4 If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast.

Speaker 4 That's sellingonline.com slash podcast.

Speaker 4 This is the Russell Brunson show.

Speaker 4 What's up, everybody? It's Russell. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 4 Most of you guys are probably listening to this, but if you can see me right now, I only have one arm, which may seem like a negative thing other than the the fact that in two days from now, I'm getting my other bicep operated on, and then I'll have no arms.

Speaker 4 And so right now, I am so grateful in my life that I have one arm that's actually functioning, knowing that soon I'll have zero arms.

Speaker 4 So backstory for those who don't know, Russ and turned a couple weeks ago, I tore both my biceps. And so they did the first surgery last week, now the second one.

Speaker 4 Anyway, long story short, it's going to be a weird next three or four weeks where I literally will have both my arms and casts. And so it's going to force me to do less and think more and talk more.

Speaker 4 And so it's kind of fun. I'm recording more podcast episodes, more interviews, things like that, but also strategically spent like because I literally can't type.

Speaker 4 Right now I can type with one hand and it's so much slower, but soon I'll be typing with my nose or else having my team type for me.

Speaker 4 But it's going to be kind of interesting season because I'll have a chance to start thinking more strategically as opposed to tactically doing stuff. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Speaker 4 A lot of you guys who've ever gone on vacation or something, it gives you that time, a lot of times to break away where you start thinking about things differently.

Speaker 4 So anyway, just kind of catching up on some stuff like that that I think is interesting.

Speaker 4 Today's episode, I wanted to talk about funnels. I don't know about you, but it's still my favorite topic.
I still want to talk about these all the time.

Speaker 4 And a lot of times recently I talked more about public or personal development and

Speaker 4 traffic generation, other things like that.

Speaker 4 But I just wanted to go deeper back into funnels for a lot of reasons. Number one, it's still my favorite topic.

Speaker 4 But number two, one of my close friends, Jake Leslie, who's been our core lead funnel builder for,

Speaker 4 I don't even know, five, six, seven years.

Speaker 4 He asked a really interesting question, some of his clients he's working with.

Speaker 4 um and so i'm actually going to play his voxer so you guys can hear it uh to hear what his question was and i'm going to dive into this because it's definitely a trend that we see a lot of people um hitting into so let me let me play the the voxer message me real quick and then uh and after that um i'll give you some of my thoughts

Speaker 5 what's up hey i have a question for you

Speaker 5 and maybe i'm abusing my powers of just knowing Russell Brunson, but I just have a very honest question and it's driving me nuts. And I'm seeing it over and over again.
It drives me crazy.

Speaker 5 So I would love to hear what rusty brunson has to say about it

Speaker 5 so i'm talking to a lot of different people obviously in the funnel space and like

Speaker 5 a lot of these people have funnels a lot of them have products a lot of them have things they just like obviously want to go faster they want to be like russell they want to do this they want to do that but they want to move faster blah blah blah blah blah But what I'm noticing is so many freaking people have like, they have good front ends and then they have high ticketed products, but they don't have like that core $297, $97 offer.

Speaker 5 I'm curious where you've talked about that before, or if, like,

Speaker 5 if you want to break it down, obviously don't expect you to, but it's so interesting how

Speaker 5 they get people to come in for free off of lead magnets, and then they're just gonna like assume that, like, oh, yeah, now they're gonna pay $2,000 for this thing.

Speaker 5 So, like, the ascension is just like this crazy leap. And I don't, I, anyway, it's just, it's kind of baffling me.

Speaker 5 I didn't, I thought most people would struggle on the front end side, which I do see like they just don't have lead magnets. They're feeding, you know, the,

Speaker 5 they're not throwing in the coal, the fire. They're just throwing random people into these like higher price things.
But

Speaker 5 there's a ton of people that just aren't missing or that are missing that gap of a 97 or 297 or just something in the middle to like indoctrinate them into who they are, you know, and like why they should be paying a higher premium.

Speaker 5 It's just like, oh, pay me. It's like, who the freak are you? I don't even know who you are.

Speaker 5 But so many people feel like they don't need to build that indoctrination. And it's, you know, it's driving me nuts.
It's like, dude, you have to have this piece.

Speaker 5 Like they don't, they're not just going to throw $1,500 at you. Like, I opted in for free and then it's like, boom, pay $1,500.
Like, are you crazy? But so many people do that.

Speaker 5 Anyway, I don't know where you've taught that before, but I would love to hear the book of Brunson on that particular piece because it's becoming annoying more and more

Speaker 5 why a lot of people are getting frustrated because it's like, oh, this doesn't like funnels don't work because that didn't work. It's like, no, man, you just like, that's a horrible structure.

Speaker 5 That's just, anyway, you didn't do that part right. Let's do it right.

Speaker 4 Okay, so what is happening?

Speaker 4 First off, one of the, I want to have so many different angles, like different directions I can take this, but the first one I want to spend a little time on because last week we had a really cool opportunity.

Speaker 4 We're filming a course for Secrets of Success. And basically we got an unpublished manuscript from Napoleon Hill where he was teaching advertising course in 1917.

Speaker 4 And I had Heath Wilcock and Sean Vossler come out here. We spent like five hours

Speaker 4 going deep into the books and talking about it and brainstorming.

Speaker 4 And then and one of the key principles we talked about was the difference in people who have longevity in this business versus those who are like a spot in the pan, right?

Speaker 4 Who had a little success and it all crashes down to the ground. And the big difference was the people who have been around for a long time are people who

Speaker 4 not only understand, but they study the fundamentals of business, of marketing and advertising.

Speaker 4 I've been in this game now almost 25 years. In the 25 years I've played this game, the number of gurus who have come and gone in this space, I want to build the timeline.
Nobody would believe me.

Speaker 4 I think I can mention, like, top of it, people I can remember that started when I got started, there's probably two or maybe three who are still relevant today.

Speaker 4 And so most people don't have longevity. And the reason why, just so you're fully, like, it's not that I'm smarter or better.

Speaker 4 The reason why for me is I geeked out on understanding the psychology behind why these things actually work. I got obsessed with Dan Kennedy and direct mail and reading old books and all these things.

Speaker 4 And I got really solid in the foundation. Where most people, what they do is they see the tactics of the day, they master the tactics, and they have huge wins.

Speaker 4 They make a lot of money, too much money for one human being to handle in a very short period of time.

Speaker 4 And then something shifts in the market, the algorithm or whatever, and then they lose it all overnight. Like that's literally the thing.

Speaker 4 I've had a chance to watch over 25 years of doing this, probably four or five big big business cycles.

Speaker 4 And every single cycle, there's a new group of entrepreneurs and marketers who fall off the face of the planet and I've never seen them come back again.

Speaker 4 And so the reason like the difference is that the people who focus on the tactical thing of the day don't surpass when times get hard.

Speaker 4 I think there's a Warren Buffett quote that says like you can tell what it's like when the water, when the tide goes out, you can see who's been swimming naked the whole time.

Speaker 4 That's kind of what it is. When things are easy, everyone's having success.
Everyone's making money. And then the tide goes out, and that's when most people fall apart.
And so

Speaker 4 a lot of what Jake's asking is because people don't understand the deeper psychology behind what is at play, like why funnels actually work, right?

Speaker 4 They come in and they see a hack, they see a tactic, and they do that and it works for them. And then they just stopped learning.
They're like, literally, like, okay, cool. I got a thing.

Speaker 4 Like, I'm just going to keep running this play for as long as I can. You don't understand.
Like, the plays change. The strategy doesn't.
The tactical parts of the plays do change.

Speaker 4 And so in his example, a lot of people are doing like free lead magnet to a call, right? And that model for probably five or six years has worked really, really well in and of itself, right?

Speaker 4 And the reason why is because advertising was cheap. You can get a lead very cheap.
You can call them on the phone. And even though

Speaker 4 because the advertising cost to acquire the customer is so inexpensive,

Speaker 4 you could only close one out of 20 people and you're still profitable.

Speaker 4 There was the inefficiencies there in the advertising that made it possible. Then what happens? Advertising costs go up, things get more expensive, everything starts shifting.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden now it's like, it's not working anymore.

Speaker 4 And the reality is the metrics are still the same other than before you could close one out of 20, but now because the cost of 10x or 30x or 50x you got to close one out of three or else you're not profitable and they can't close one out of three and all of it's like the business upside down it's not working why it's because they're missing the fundamental strategies behind the scenes of why this actually works um i'm working on my uh co-authored book with dan kennedy and um it's funny i've been anti-ai tools yeah up until just recently when i lost my left arm and i was like i can't write right now so let me just do some research stuff so what i was doing is i was uploading um i was trying chat gbt the new the new um the $200 a month version.

Speaker 4 I tried Manius. I'm trying different ones.
And so I've been uploading tons of stuff to have it analyzed for me. So what was cool is like, I have the Dan, the book that Dan and I are writing together.

Speaker 4 So I uploaded all the chapters. He'd written the chapters.
I've written the outline. And then I started taking all of my interviews, Dan.
I've interviewed Dan like 50 times in the last three years.

Speaker 4 I uploaded all the interviews and everything. And I was like, okay, here's the introduction.
I'm like, based on this, what are other stories that Dan's told in the past that we can weave in?

Speaker 4 So I started pulling all these stories out that I've forgotten about. They're like, oh my gosh, this is a great one, and a great one.

Speaker 4 And And so the introduction for Mine and Dan's book, the book, I don't know exactly what's going to be called, but the working title right now is Whoever Can Spend the Most Money to Acquire Customer Wins, right?

Speaker 4 Anyway, the story that it pulled out was from the very first interview I did with Dan

Speaker 4 during FHL. I think it was 2021.
It was right after, it was the first event after COVID. Everyone thought Dan was dead.
We bought his company.

Speaker 4 He came and spoke, and it was like one of the coolest moments of Funnel Hacking Live, right? And in that interview,

Speaker 4 I asked him that question about whoever spends the most money to acquire customer wins. And the story he told is really fascinating.

Speaker 4 He talked about way back in the day, I guess the way the TV cycles worked, right? Like the morning would start at 7 a.m. Whatever, and then they'd have TV happening all the way until Johnny Carson.

Speaker 4 And then Johnny Carson was over, they assumed everyone went to bed. So then TV just cut off.
It was off air all night long.

Speaker 4 And so Dan and whoever, they started going to these TV companies, like, hey, can we buy the

Speaker 4 after-hour time block? Can we buy all the other stuff? And at first, they're like, why would you want to buy it? No, like everyone went to bed after Carson. There's nobody watching TV.

Speaker 4 And they're like, well, it's okay. We just want to buy it.
So they started selling it to him for like 200 bucks for like eight hours of dead air time, right? So they're buying this thing at 200 bucks.

Speaker 4 And they started making a ton of money. They were making crazy amounts of money, right? Because it was $200 for eight hours of media time.

Speaker 4 They only get one or two sales and it broke even. After that, it was all profit, right? So it was just like the heyday.

Speaker 4 And they said over time, they started realizing, like, these guys keep rebuying these things. Maybe they're, you know, other people started asking if they could advertise.
And it went from

Speaker 4 like, you know, $200 for an eight-hour window to, you know, he said fast forward five years, it It was twenty thousand dollars for a 30-minute spot because you know more people wanted it was more valuable and all of a sudden now you know before you can spend two dollar you know two hundred dollars you make two sales you're breaking your average profit you had an eight-hour runway to like now it's like oh because everyone else wants this you've got twenty thousand dollars and you only get 30 minutes now the number the numbers your business change radically right and so dan says that we had to become good at like understanding whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins so he's like we had to make more money quicker so that's the nance now instead of just selling the product off of our tv time now we had to start having upsells and downsells right Not only that, then we had to like send them to a next higher ticket thing afterwards.

Speaker 4 Not only that, is then if they didn't buy our stuff, we still needed to make money. So then we would sell that name to like 10 other people that had similar products.

Speaker 4 Maybe they could sell something, but we got to sell the name for $10 to each different person.

Speaker 4 So we made an extra $50 by selling the name, like all these different things to monetize the money, right? These are the core strategies. These are the fundamentals we're talking about, right?

Speaker 4 And again, you come back to a business where somebody, all they know is Facebook ads are cheap. They're spending $200 for eight hours of airtime.

Speaker 4 And so the business is easy, but But when it shifts, it gets harder.

Speaker 4 And so these are some of the things I want to be thinking about. But then the answer is when I actually boxed Jake Vatic back after that, I said, you know,

Speaker 4 I said, well, in the book of Brunson, chapter 6, verse 2,

Speaker 4 there's this thing called a value ladder.

Speaker 4 And it's funny because I started teaching the value ladder probably 20 years ago. I think it was the version.

Speaker 4 Dan Kennedy has like this ladder concept he talks about, but I don't think for some reason in my head, when he explained it and I started seeing it and started doing it, I pictured it more like the value ladder that's inside the dot-com secrets book.

Speaker 4 If If you haven't read it yet, go back and read that book. That's the core fundamental thing, right? But

Speaker 4 the core concept behind the value ladder is that when somebody comes into your world, you ascend them through different offers.

Speaker 4 And so what happens is,

Speaker 4 and in the book, I like different things. I see, you know, for example, like the very first time I met my wife, right? I didn't walk up to her the very first time be like, Colette, you were gorgeous.

Speaker 4 We should get married and have some babies. Like, what would she have done? She would have slapped me in the face, like, what are you talking about? You're a pervert or whatever.

Speaker 4 You know, like, that would have ended the date right there right we don't go to the top of the value ladder so what a value ladder looks like if you i'm gonna draw with my finger but most of you guys are listening to this on the left hand side there's an axis and the bottom there's an axis right so the left hand side we're gonna write price you know and so the the the higher up is a higher price the bottom is lower price and then the bottom we'll write value so the when it's really close to the left-hand like axis there, there's little value, little price.

Speaker 4 But as you move forward, right, as you increase the value, it increases the price and goes up as you move through the graph. Does that make sense? If not, go buy the book.
Come on.

Speaker 4 Or just go to to Google and type in Russell Brunson Value Adder and you'll see the doodles in Google images, right? But there's this value adder, right?

Speaker 6 Ah, the sounds of an Etsy holiday.

Speaker 6 Now that's special.

Speaker 4 Want to hear it again?

Speaker 6 Get original and affordable gifts from small shops on Etsy. For gifts that say, I get you, shop Etsy.
Tap the banner to shop now.

Speaker 3 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 1 You wanna sell those wheels? You wanna get a CarMax instant offer. So fast.
Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a month.

Speaker 7 Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer.

Speaker 1 With OfferWatch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from the driveway.

Speaker 1 So, want to drive?

Speaker 2 CarMax.

Speaker 4 Pickup's not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply.
And so what happens is, ideally, the thing at the back is what we want, right?

Speaker 4 Like, I wanted to marry my wife and a bunch of kids with her.

Speaker 4 That was like, that's the end goal that's the the extreme value right I'm gonna get get the most value from her it's gonna be the most expensive thing but it's the best right just like for you guys like if you were like honestly the way that I could serve you the best as a client is not for you to go buy a book like it's a great thing right the way I could serve you the best is have you actually come here to boise in my office and I just built the entire funnel for you right like that'd be the best for me to actually do that like realistically at this point our career and our team and everything would be like we we need to charge you a million dollars up front plus a percentage of royalties on that funnel for the rest of its life right and so that's what it would take but if i came up to you um on the street i'm like hey my name is russell brunson i know i look like i'm 11 years old but this is the deal um i have this uh this thing where if you give me a million dollars i will build a sales funnel for you plus i want a percentage of all the sales you ever make from that will you give me a million dollars like that's the equivalent of me walking to my wife day number one and like we should go have babies like that's the same thing right it's like most people are going to say no right if they don't say no maybe you should be you know there's other issues there probably.

Speaker 4 So that's what a lot of people are doing in business. That's what Jake was talking about.
He would be getting a lead.

Speaker 4 They call them on the phone, like, hey, do you want to buy my $1,500 or $1,500 or whatever the thing is, right? They're trying to give somebody

Speaker 4 a high price with a lot of value without proving the value first. So how does it work in the real world? Okay.

Speaker 4 I come back to my wife. I see her.
I'm like, man, man, she's cute. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go talk to her, right?

Speaker 4 The talking to the spouse, number one, is like, that's the first tier of the value ladder, right? We're having a conversation. What's happening is there's no price, right?

Speaker 4 Other than her time, she's spending a little time with me. We're having a conversation.
And really quick, she's going to figure out something. Like, did I receive value from this interaction?

Speaker 4 If she receives value from this interaction, we talk for 15 minutes, whatever, and I'm like, hey, would you want to go out someday? You know, I'm moving her up the value ladder.

Speaker 4 Now, if she did not get value at that step in the interaction, she's like, oh, let me look at my calendar. I'll get back to you.
And she's going to ghost me after that, right?

Speaker 4 Like, because I didn't provide value at the lowest tier. But if I did provide value, she's like, man, I really enjoyed this relationship.
That talk was awesome.

Speaker 4 I love to go out this person again She'll say yes and I move up a tier in the value ladder, right? So now it's happening now The value went up and then for me now.

Speaker 4 There's a price I'm gonna take her on a date It's gonna cost me a couple hundred bucks We're gonna go out to dinner.

Speaker 4 We're gonna go on a walk We're gonna go to a movie whatever that thing is right and I'm gonna go on that date and at that tier in the value ladder We're in this experience together and we're both trying to figure out like are we getting value from this interaction if somebody if I got value for my wife and she gives value for me right that first date's great then I might say hey I want to go on another date with you right if we both decide then we moved up to the next tier in the value ladder, right?

Speaker 4 And eventually I'm going to go in, I'm going to go for a kiss. And, you know, if I haven't given value, then she's going to walk away.
If she has gotten value, then she's going to kiss me back, right?

Speaker 4 And then if the kiss was good, and it's like, that was valuable, then I want the next. And so you start moving through this value latch.
Well, eventually. I dropped down on her knee and I proposed.

Speaker 4 And she's like, yes, I would love to. It's not scary at that point, right? Now, sure,

Speaker 4 again, you can go and if you walked up to 100 people on the street and proposed, you could probably get one or two people to say yes to your marriage proposal. Like it's a thing.

Speaker 4 There's going to be people like, yeah, I got none of other options. Let's do it, right? And that's literally what people like Jake's talking about are doing on their business right now.

Speaker 4 Like, they are going from zero value to someone top tier of the value ladder. And the only people who are coming in typically are people who are insane.
They are crazy.

Speaker 4 They're not going to be the best clients. They're not going to understand you, your culture, your anything.
And so it's all these things that happen, right?

Speaker 4 Higher refund rates, lower satisfaction rates, and all these things happen, right? But you get a couple crazies to say yes. Okay.

Speaker 4 So now I want to fast forward to what happens when the water goes out and all these people look naked, right? Or

Speaker 4 you know the advertising cost that goes from $200 for eight hours to $20,000 for 30 minutes, right? Or it goes from your Facebook ads costing $3 a lead to $50 a lead.

Speaker 4 Like what happens in your business now?

Speaker 4 And that's the problem most people are struggling with. They are going from no value to tons of value.
And so the value ladder is the key.

Speaker 4 And what's funny to me, it's really interesting to me because,

Speaker 4 you know, I was

Speaker 4 before I wrote the dot-com secrets book, I spent 10 years teaching these concepts. I was teaching value ladder, I was teaching funnels, I was traveling around the world teaching these things.

Speaker 4 I decided to put it into a book. And then for the next two or three years, we launched.com Seekers book.
People are finally understanding funnels. It was great.

Speaker 4 And then what was funny to me is then all these people knew that my audience had read the dot-com secrets book. They knew that they understood my principles.

Speaker 4 And so they're using smart marketing, which is tactically trying to confuse you by breaking away from the strategy, right? So I saw all the time, but like, don't do a value ladder.

Speaker 4 Value ladders are stupid. Go directly for high ticket.
Okay.

Speaker 4 I can tell you probably 50 high ticket coaches who literally in their ads talk about my value adder and say skip the rest of the value ladder just focus on this because they're going after a strategy i'm teaching and they're saying we found this hack to be able to do this right and so they're doing that so everyone's like oh screw the value ladder i just go high ticket right so they're listening to that because most people are not paying attention to the strategies you got to dig deeper for the strategies you got to read a book you got to go to a course like you got to go deeper for the strategies typically right and most of the uh the wannabe coaches on the planet on the internet right now guess what they didn't do they didn't read the book they didn't go through the time they didn't go study dan can they didn't go through these things right all doing is like what's the hack like oh i was on this webinar this guy said i could just do an ad and get someone on the phone right and yes typically what happens is it works for somebody for a window it stops working as effectively and then they start teaching it to you so by the time it's been handed to you as like the killer strategy of the day it's already less effective right and eventually that saw that wears out and then you never understood the strategy and then your business disappears and you're one of the the death tales that we hear about all the time from the cycles of business right because you never understood the fundamental strategies behind it okay uh Same thing when

Speaker 4 I had people come out with webinars, like webinars are better, you don't do any value ladder, just do the webinar, and then every variation of it.

Speaker 4 And so I want to come back to you is like this revisiting of coming back to the concept of the value ladder, because when the water comes out, this is the key you have to understand, you have to master, right?

Speaker 4 You are providing value to people along the way. Now, what's cool about today that wasn't there when I wrote Dot Com Secrets book a decade ago, was we didn't have social media.

Speaker 4 Okay, social media is amplifiers. Also, it's the front end of the value ladder.

Speaker 4 It's pre any funnel. This is me seeing my wife at a party and having a first initial conversation.
That's what social media is, right?

Speaker 4 And what's cool, in fact, I literally just finished a podcast interview with Adley.

Speaker 4 And it's probably either, you probably heard it last week or it's come the week after, so I'm not sure where it's going to fit in the publishing queue, you know, but she's out there and she just does free videos out that she's got there.

Speaker 4 She said that she's gotten a billion views per month for every

Speaker 4 month since 2020, right? So what she doing, she's creating these valuable videos that go viral to bring people. It's the front tier of the value ladder, right?

Speaker 4 People watch that, either her or her brands that she's running, they get value, and then boom, it actually sends them to the next tier, right?

Speaker 4 And now you start moving them through the value ladder, okay? If you look at my businesses, you'll probably notice I have products at all sorts of price points, right?

Speaker 4 I have free plus shipping books, right?

Speaker 4 Well, first off, sorry, first of the value ladder, we've got organic content, YouTube, Instagram, social podcasts, like all that stuff is us hanging out on a date trying to build a relationship.

Speaker 4 Then from there, hopefully if you guys enjoy this, like especially this podcast, a lot of you guys who haven't done a dot com secrets book, you're like, wow, that podcast is really valuable.

Speaker 4 Russell said, I probably should get the book he's talking about, right? My guest will probably sell two or three hundred books in this podcast, right?

Speaker 4 So two or three hundred of you guys who haven't read the book yet, you're gonna go buy the book.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden, you read the book, you're gonna get that in the mail, and that's the next year of the value ladder. You're gonna get the book, you're gonna read it.

Speaker 4 You're like, whoa, I never understood this. Like, now I know what funnels are, how they work, understand value ladders, understand these things, right? You can get value from there.

Speaker 4 Then you're gonna be like, I'm gonna go all in. I'm gonna need click funnels.
You're gonna go buy click funnels.

Speaker 4 Then you're gonna go to one of our courses, and you're gonna start moving through these different value ladders, right? Then you're gonna go to the selling align event. Selling aligns $100, right?

Speaker 4 You come to this event, it's $100. It's a three-day event with me.
Someone pays $100, right?

Speaker 4 Its price is low, but they get three days worth of value with me, tons of connection, tons of like, you know, getting value. And we make the offer on that step for the next step in coaching.

Speaker 4 Right, right now, 5.5% of the people who buy the $100 offer end up ascending to our higher-end coaching program, right?

Speaker 4 And it's just like, and then from there, they go into our inner circle, and then like it's moving people through these different levels of offers.

Speaker 4 And so for you and your business, you need that value adder because

Speaker 4 there are people. Yes, there are people.

Speaker 4 Either the cream of the crop or the bottom feeders will go directly from meeting you socially to saying yes to your proposal five minutes later.

Speaker 4 Like, there are those people, but they are few and far between. And as

Speaker 4 meeting gets harder, it's going to be harder and harder to find those people, right? So, what do we do? Right? We take them on dates. We build relationships.
We sell them a free plus shipping book.

Speaker 4 We sell them a $7 course. We sell them a $100 three-day event.
We sell them a $297, whatever it is. We sell them a $500 thing.
We have things at different price points, right?

Speaker 4 Because we're moving them systematically through the value ladder. And every time I talk about this, people are like, I would never buy that.
I only buy the most expensive. I understand.

Speaker 4 But you are rare, right? There are people who come to my world, the very first thing they buy is $250,000 to get to Atlas Group. That happens.
not very often.

Speaker 4 If I based my money off of the random person who went directly to the top of the value ladder,

Speaker 4 I would not be here today.

Speaker 4 It's building a pipeline of people, right? It comes back to,

Speaker 4 you know, it's biblical, like the law of the harvest. Like we're planting seeds, we're planting seeds, right? So we're planting free seeds socially, right?

Speaker 4 Then we're plant, then we're nurturing the seeds. I'm trying to weave like 50 analogies here so that one of these will land for you guys, okay? So law of the harvest, right?

Speaker 4 So I'm planting the social seed. You come over, right? You got the seed.
Now I'm watering it with the book. And then, you know, you're growing.
It's nurturing more. We're providing more value.

Speaker 4 Now we're going to sell the next thing, the next thing. And so if you look at my sequences, you guys are probably on our email list.
If not, go buy something from me so you can see the sequences.

Speaker 4 Like it'll be more valuable than anything. But if you look at our business right now, we have our core things for moving somebody through, right?

Speaker 4 If you look at the core, we have a very much much direct line we're taking people. It's taking you from free social to a book to $100 event selling online.
From there, getting a ClickFunnels account.

Speaker 4 From there, our Prime Mover coaching program, Inner Circle Atlas. Like, there's our straight line, right? But we've decided we have a whole bunch of different offers to get you guys to

Speaker 4 keep moving, okay? How do I explain this?

Speaker 4 A buyer who is in heat will continue to buy. Right.

Speaker 4 I told some of this before. I think I got this from Dan Kennedy, I believe, but it's like a person will continue to buy from you until you either stop selling them something or you offend them.

Speaker 4 And so if, but if you stop selling them something, they're going to go look for something else. Okay.

Speaker 4 The first time I got this,

Speaker 4 man, rewind back a long time. This is probably 18 years ago now.
It's crazy.

Speaker 4 Ryan Dice and I were both in Bill Glazer's mastermind, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy's mastermind group, but we were in different groups. And one time Bill did a group together where we all met in

Speaker 4 the Bahamas and did like a co-group together, right? So Ryan was in the other group. I was in this group.

Speaker 4 And so we go to this thing in the Bahamas, and it was the first time we had a really chance to hang out. And I remember Ryan pulled me aside.
He's like, hey, he's like, why are you here?

Speaker 4 I'm like, because Bill threw the event here. He's like, no, like, why are you, why are you in Bill's mastermind? And I was like,

Speaker 4 I don't know. Like, the offer seemed good.
I wanted to be. I want to keep learning.
Like, I loved it. And

Speaker 4 he's like, have you studied J-Bram? I'm like, yeah. I was like, I bought everything J-Bram had.
He's like, me too. He's like, then what? He's like, I'm like, he didn't have anything else to buy.

Speaker 4 He's like, well, if you study so-and-so, I'm like, yeah, I bought everything. He's like, hey, me too.

Speaker 4 He's like, I'm here in this room because Dan Kennedy is the only person who continues to sell me stuff. Everybody else stopped.
They had one or two offers and they stopped selling.

Speaker 4 He's like, I'm here because Dan kept selling me things. I was like, oh my gosh, that's true for me too.
Like, I stopped plugging into everybody else because they stopped having offers. I kept

Speaker 4 because I wasn't getting offers. Like, I moved to, like, people want to buy.
Like, they're in motion, right?

Speaker 4 So buyers and heat, they're going to keep buying from you until you stop selling something or you fend them. So if you fend them, that's a different problem.

Speaker 4 We'll talk about that on a different podcast. But if you stop selling it to them, they're still going to be looking for that thing somewhere else.

Speaker 4 They're going to go, they're going to find somebody else to plug into to get that itch scratched. So you have to keep offering them stuff.
Another good example is TJ Rowletters, one of the

Speaker 4 greatest direct mail marketers of all time. He's in the business opportunity niche.
He has a huge list of offline people and he sends them

Speaker 4 how to make money

Speaker 4 information in the mail. And I don't know what TJ publishes right now, but I did an interview with him like 10 years ago.

Speaker 4 And he was publishing, sending out like 100,000 letters a week, some crazy number. Like what we send in emails, he's sending out in letters.

Speaker 4 And it was interesting because I was trying to do this big JV with him. Like, hey, like, you should send out one of my letters and we can make a bunch of money.
And he's like, cool.

Speaker 4 He's like, here's my list broker.

Speaker 4 Just go rent my list anytime you want i'm like what he's like yeah just rent just rent the list and then you can send out whatever you want to whenever you want i was like but doesn't that like interrupt what you're doing like doesn't that like if if they're seeing my message and yours like what they have by mine and not yours he's like he's like russ you don't understand how people work he's like they're gonna continue to buy in fact he's like what i found he's like the more he's like the more and again he's in the biz op business opportunity market he's like the more business opportunities they buy the more likely they are to buy more he's like when they he's like the worst thing is when they stop buying stuff because when they stop buying stuff they they give up hope and then they stop, they don't keep buying stuff.

Speaker 4 He's like, I want you to rent my list because if I have a segment that hasn't been buying and you convince them to buy again, then they're back in the business opportunity market.

Speaker 4 Now they'll buy my stuff again. Right.
And for us, most of us look at it so differently. We're like, this is our list.
Like we're going to protect them.

Speaker 4 But the reality is these people are buying from everybody anyway. Right.
And so you have to keep having offers that go out there.

Speaker 4 So if you look at our follow-up sequences, once again, go buy something from me so you can get on a sequence. But every single week we have some offer going out.

Speaker 4 And this happened to the Russell Brunson list. This is happening to the ClickFunnels list.

Speaker 4 We are about to roll it out in the Secrets of Success list and also the Dan Kennedy list. I did a podcast recently about this, talking about free content funnels.
But it's the same thing.

Speaker 4 Each week there is a core offer that we are trying to get people on our list to actually go buy.

Speaker 4 And the only reason why is we're trying to keep people in the buying motion.

Speaker 4 So for example, last week we gave out funnelogy. So funnelology is a $7, it used to be like a, it used to be a $97 course, made a $7 version of it, right?

Speaker 4 And my goal is that I just need people to buy this. So they'll study funnels.
And guess what? They buy it.

Speaker 4 They're still learning about funnels from me. And on top of that, they have more desire to have funnel software if they have funnels.

Speaker 4 And they're going to have more desire to learn how to sell through those funnels. And everything else, it stimulates growth in all the other things I'm selling.

Speaker 4 And so we sent out two or three emails last week. There's a free training video about funnelology, whatever.
And then they went and bought the course for seven bucks.

Speaker 4 And we sold, I think, 1,200 copies. Okay.
And it wasn't a huge revenue generator, right? 1,200 copies at $7 a piece, plus upsell, downsell. So I don't know what the the math is.

Speaker 4 So we probably made 50, 60 grand, which is great. But what was more powerful is 1,200 people now, like we kept them in the buying cycle.
They're still buying from me.

Speaker 4 They're still interested in funnels. They're still interested in these things, right? Like it stimulated that desire back in them that they would have lost had I not sold them more things, right?

Speaker 4 If your business is free opt-in to a $15,000 coaching program and nothing else, like you are literally just taking the top 1% of the 1%, 1% who want something, and you're forgetting everybody else, right?

Speaker 4 And then most people aren't ready to buy it anyway. So

Speaker 4 there's

Speaker 4 uh, so much breakage in your model.

Speaker 4 There's so much money you're losing because you're only getting the cream of the crop or the crazy people and you're missing out on the majority of your audience, which are people that just number one, they need to buy something from you to feel comfortable.

Speaker 4 They need to have a good experience. They want to learn your content.
They want to hear your frameworks. They want to understand, like, they want to go deeper with you.

Speaker 4 So they get value before they move and send up. Right.
And then number two, it's a lot of these people like you're not messaging them, so they're falling out of your buying cycle very, very quickly.

Speaker 4 They're moving on to something else. Like, if you realize, if you don't email your list at least once a month, they will forget about you.
If you don't email a list at least once a week, even

Speaker 4 like worst case scenario, you should be emailing your list once a week. I remember when I first got into this game,

Speaker 4 I was so scared to send emails to my list. Because again, I just set it up the first time.
I set up the audience on it. I figured it out.
And I had started getting people my list.

Speaker 4 I sent an email, but like the reply address was my own, right? So I send an email out and then two or three people right back, like, I hope you die. Stop sending me emails.

Speaker 4 I'm like, oh, like I freak out, right? So I unsubscribe.

Speaker 4 Okay, people don't like getting emails and so i had this false belief like people don't want emails and so i was very careful like once a month i sent an email because i didn't want to annoy him i don't want to like over be overbearing i was like i'm gonna be careful it's like once a month i sent emails so i'd send an email and then you know a bunch of people unsubscribed angry it's like oh so and and um and that's what that was like what i was doing i was just like people hate getting emails i'm gonna interrupt them once a month that's it And then I remember

Speaker 4 Matt Fury's one of the guys I was studying really hardcore at the time back then. And I bought his email training.
And his email training, he was like, I send out two emails a day. I was like, what?

Speaker 4 Two emails a day? I'm like, I'm like, there's no way. And he's like, what happens? He's like, initially at first, he's like, you get a lot of unsubscribed and annoying people.

Speaker 4 He's like, then afterwards, you have these people who are looking forward to your emails every single day.

Speaker 4 And so I remember thinking, I was like, well, I am not willing to do two emails a day, but I'm going to try to do it twice a month instead of once a month. And so I did that.

Speaker 4 I started sending two emails a month. And at that time, I figured out how to like have my unsubscribes and angry people go to like a filtered inbox.

Speaker 4 I wasn't personally seeing them because like you get emotionally scared when you see the people coming back like unsubscribe like oh and it's like you know a thousand people got the email and there's one angry person right and so I was like I can't see those because they're they're making me not want to market I'm just shifting things around so I started my emailing twice a month right so I increased the the thing and what happened is as my income started like my income more than doubled by doing that I was like interesting and that was like okay I'm gonna try it once a week and so I went to once a week right and again my income more than doubled again I was like okay and that was my cadence for a long time and then I remember I had this product coming out and I was like okay I'm gonna save up all my goodwill all my value I'm like I don't want like I want to like, I want these people like to just be waiting for this thing for me.

Speaker 4 So, I, as we were building this thing, I didn't send an email because I was waiting. And I thought, again, in my head, I'm like, it's take two weeks to build.

Speaker 4 And that two weeks turned into six weeks, which turned into eight weeks. And you know how software is.
And eventually it was like, we're three months in, and finally, it's done. I'm so excited.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, my list is like, I'm sure they've been waiting here for me for the last three months, just like anticipating the day that I'm going to respond. I'm sending another email, right?

Speaker 4 So I go and I send an email to that list, and it was crazy. Guess what happened? Nothing.
It's crickets. Nobody knew who I was.
They'd already forgotten who I was in three months.

Speaker 4 I was like, oh my gosh, like people's attention. Like, I thought they were all sitting around anxiously waiting for my email, waiting for me to be done with this thing I was creating.
They weren't.

Speaker 4 They read everybody else even. They forgot who I was.
I was irrelevant at that point. They didn't even know my name.
And I realized my list was dead. I had to start over from scratch.

Speaker 4 When I started from scratch, I said, okay, I'm never going to send less than one email a day. And we started getting to the point where I was like three emails a week.

Speaker 4 And I'm probably closer to three to five emails a week bandwagon right now. I do have one friend who sends nine emails a day.

Speaker 4 So there are different versions, but the reality is like you have to be top of mind. You have to be communicating.
You have to be there.

Speaker 4 The reason why my friend who sends out nine emails a day, he's in the dating market. His name is John Almis.
It was interesting. He told me this.

Speaker 4 He's like, he was doing Matt Fury, the two emails a day for a long time, and then he upped it to nine. I was like, why are you sending out nine emails a day?

Speaker 4 And he's in the market where he's helping men to get a girlfriend, right? Like that's the market he's in.

Speaker 4 He's like, he's like, most of the men on my list, he's like, they open up the nine emails a day because they want entertainment. He's like, I'm entertaining.

Speaker 4 In fact, John's way learned the concept of an attractive character from. So he's like, you begin an attractive character, people like you, and you're building this relationship.
He's like,

Speaker 4 that's how the whole game is played, right? And he's like, and he's like, 90% of the time, my men, like, they have a girlfriend. They're here for entertainment, right?

Speaker 4 They want to hear me funny stories and then all these things. But he's like, there's a window where they get their heart broken.

Speaker 4 And he's like, whoever is the first person in the inbox, when that pain point is there, that person is the one who's going to get the sale.

Speaker 4 And he's like, so I need to make sure that the moment that they get their heart broken, like my email is in there.

Speaker 4 So he's like, nine emails a day, because I'm not sure when that's going to, when the heartbreak's going to happen, but as soon as it happens, i gotta be sure i'm sliding in there they're reading my thing because that's when they're gonna buy because and he's like in my market they're not buying all the time when they have a girlfriend there's no pain they're fine when the girl's gone that's when they're buying so he's like consistency and i think for you guys it's the same thing like we keep thinking like i don't want to know my customers they've heard about my thing whatever it is it's like no no no like you got to be out there if they fall out of the buying cycle either they are leaving the market which is a tragedy so like tj roller like send them stuff to get him back get them back in the market get him re-excited about the potential of losing weight and making money whatever your thing is right so it's like that's part of it number two, it's like if they're not hearing from you, they're spending their dollars somewhere, right?

Speaker 4 This is their discretionary money they're spending with somebody. And if you're not there making them offers, then they're gonna go somewhere else, okay?

Speaker 4 The business that can make the most offers in any industry is always the business that wins. There's a writer-downer, okay.

Speaker 4 The business in any industry that makes the most offers is the business that wins. It's funny, I get people tell me, Russell, I'm so overwhelmed.
You make so many different offers.

Speaker 4 That's the game, right? Because again, I've got six million people on my list, 1,200 bought phonology.

Speaker 4 That means there are 5 million 900 and whatever the numbers are who didn't buy something last week, right? I got to reach like what's another offer we can do? Okay, let's go tell about this thing.

Speaker 4 Tell me about this thing. And some are going to be low tickets.
I'm going to be mid tickets. I'm going to be high tickets.
I'm going to be free with a high ticket upsell.

Speaker 4 Like, you'll notice that the price points of things

Speaker 4 we're offering are variable, right? They're changing. They're shifting because we're moving people through the value ladder, right?

Speaker 4 Some of you guys will never in a million years buy, like register for webinar. I understand that, right? Cool.

Speaker 4 If you're not going to register for webinar, maybe you're going to buy a free book, right i buy every free book free book offer i say i love free books right like i love books as a whole so i'm going to buy every free book offer okay i'm probably not going to watch a webinar probably not going to watch a challenge um i probably will watch a vsl like there's different everyone buys differently too right so i'm hitting different modalities right you probably notice again if you sit on the if you sit on the email sequence start watching notice that one time we're doing a webinar okay this that's a modality that a certain percentage of people will go and consume other times i'm doing a free video series you opt in you get this video when number one video two video three all push into a free trial right or to a free book another way is just just straight free free offer sometimes it's it is going directly like hey call this number and jump on a call here's a book a call right there are times i go directly to them from there right but but like this is like this is how you make your business you know protected when this when the when the tidy goes out and so these are the things i wanted to just kind of talk about um is really coming back to like you guys have to understand the strategy of business understand customer psychology understanding these things i'd recommend diving back into the dot-com secrets book if you haven't just to understand these things like uh you probably you know fell for an ad that was like all you got to do is you know skip the value ladder and just go to the high ticket and yeah it worked for a season but ad costs aren't 200 bucks for eight hours anymore for cable tv right they're 20 000 for 30 minutes facebook ads are no longer 3 leads anymore right we're 30 leads so like the game's changed this game's shifted you have to come back to the fundamentals and always always a reset to the fundamentals when you reset back to the fundamentals and start saying hey why did this stuff work like those are the people who have lasted the test of time Again, I've been over 25 years.

Speaker 4 Two or three people I can name that are still relevant today. Okay, and that's like literally thousands of people who have come and gone who were always like the guru, the person, the brand, right?

Speaker 4 And the longevity for me comes back to like, I'm still the guy who's studying Dan Kenny. I'm still reading Napoleon Hill's advertising course from 1917, right?

Speaker 4 Like it's understanding these core fundamentals that do not change.

Speaker 4 And it's not jumping on the bandwagon of the tactic of the day

Speaker 4 because they don't last.

Speaker 4 The stuff that lasts is the stuff. So you need a palette of offers.
You need, you know, again, you, you, and

Speaker 4 I'm going to take it one step further.

Speaker 4 If if you haven't gone through the linchpin training the linchpin that i think is taking the value ladder and putting on steroids it's structuring the value ladder a little bit differently um it's kind of like phasing like you understand the value ladder then linchpin is so if you go to i think it's linchpinbook.com or free linchpinbook.com uh you can go to that book and it'll show you the next step which is like here you take the value ladder you structure it with some guardrails and it it gives you the ability to scale the fastest uh but reality is like you need different offers like you need a continuity offer and which is what the linchpin is all based around right you need a free plus shipping which is the myth key that puts people into the continuity right you need like, again, a hundred dollar offer, which is like dramatic demonstration number two, right?

Speaker 4 Which is our selling, our version of selling the line. You need free events, like free challenges, free web, which is dramatic demonstration number one.

Speaker 4 Like if you look at the game plan, like you look at the playbook that I'm playing in all of our brands, it literally is the linchpin.

Speaker 4 Like it's understand the value ladder, structure it through the linchpin. And you can look at any of my funnels, any of my offers, like, where does this fit?

Speaker 4 It's like, oh, it's this part of the linchpin. It's this part.
It's this part. Like, there's not just me randomly, I think people think sometimes I'm randomly putting out offers.
Like, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 There's strategy behind all. There's guardrails.

Speaker 4 There's a thing, right? It's the value adder is the concept.

Speaker 4 The linchpin is the strategy, like how we execute on the strategy and everything we're doing. It's pushing people through one of those parts of the of the funnels to get somebody into our businesses.

Speaker 4 So I hope that's helpful.

Speaker 4 Hope it gives you guys excited to go dive deep dive deeper, even not even, but especially if your business is struggling out, especially if you're having success 18 months ago and you're struggling to, especially if you had a success five years ago and you're like not doing it right now.

Speaker 4 like these are the core fundamentals you got to go back to um these are what people have been doing and testing throughout time as media has changed in every industry from you know from from tv ads to direct mail to radio to fax machines to uh to email to direct mail like just across the board like you got to go back in the past to study from industries whose media costs rose to be able to survive today's market where internet media is has rose so much because it's it's a different landscape than it ever has been in the past um or And or it's understanding how to do organic stuff at a high level where now instead of like being the commercials on the TV show, you are the TV show.

Speaker 4 I think there's value in understanding both sides of those because whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins.

Speaker 4 And then if you can get customers for free through organic, that makes sense as well.

Speaker 4 So revisit the fundamentals, go back to dot-com secrets, read that book again, then read the Lynchpin book as homework assignment number two. That's like your, that's your

Speaker 4 funnel building 101 and funnel building 201. It's more advanced course.

Speaker 4 A lot of people struggle a little more understanding that one, but it is the way to really start growing and scaling your businesses in a world that we live in today.

Speaker 4 So with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I appreciate you guys listening in.
Thank you, Jake, for the great question.

Speaker 4 Maybe we'll step away if you guys ask more questions in the future because I like kind of going off on these rants with you.

Speaker 4 I'm going to leave one last thing, and that is don't forget, there's one funnel away. Which one is it? Go read the dot-com secrets book and find out.
Thanks, you guys, and see you soon.

Speaker 4 Hey, this is Russell. I had a really cool offer for you right now.

Speaker 4 Shortly after we launched ClickFunnels, I remember asking some of our top two Comic Club award winners, what would they do if they had everything taken away from it?

Speaker 4 If they lost their name, their brand, their email list, their traffic, everything. And all they had was a ClickFunnels account and internet connection for 30 days.

Speaker 4 What would they do over the next 30 days to get back on top? I asked over 100 two Comic Club winners and from that 30 people wrote me back and gave me very detailed step-by-step battle plans.

Speaker 4 Day number one, they would do this. Day number two, they would do this.
And by the time the 30 days was done, they'd be back on top with a very successful business.

Speaker 4 Do you want to know what these people wrote? If so, I took all of these 30 battle plants and I put them inside of one book you can get free at 30days.com.

Speaker 4 All you got to do is go to 30days.com and go get a free copy of this book.

Speaker 4 We'll ship it out to you, just cover the shipping handling, and when you get it in the mailbox, you have a chance to go through and look at all of these detailed step-by-step blueprints.

Speaker 4 All you got to do is find one of these blueprints that you like, follow it step-by-step, and when you're done, you will have your own online business done and launched and live.

Speaker 4 So, go get a free copy of one of my favorite books we've ever created at 30days.com. Again, that's 30days.com.