Artwork

Content provided by Steve J Larsen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Steve J Larsen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Podcast App
Go offline with the Player FM app!

SFR 41: WHEN Is A Biz READY For A Sales Funnel???

41:23
 
Share
 

Manage episode 174102400 series 1257885
Content provided by Steve J Larsen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Steve J Larsen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Click above to listen in iTunes...

My 11 Point PDF Checklist + I'm Publicly Leaving Funnel Building :(

DOWNLOAD THE FREE CHECKLIST AT SteveJLarsen.com

What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, before I get into the episodes, or this episode, I just want you to see a little behind the scenes.

Typically, what I do when I get these podcasts together, is I'll just write out a whole bunch of principles of things I know that you guys are struggling with, have questions about, or there's a challenge. I'll go directly address that so that I can just keep trying to provide value. Or, I'll go interview somebody and we'll go dive deep into their business.

By the way, I've got about 20 more interviews lined up for you guys. It's going to be great...

This podcast is actually a little bit different. This one actually took me about an hour and a half to two hours just to prep. There's a lot of cool things going in it, so I'm encouraging you right now before I start, get a pen and paper if you can. I think you're really going to enjoy this.

Anyways, without further ado, let's jump into this. Again, 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 your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, all right. Now, while I was getting this all together, I was remembering the way I got into this industry. I've shared a little bit of this, but there's a certain part of it that I've been realizing that I haven't really shared. It's so key to success, I mean right out the gate.

I had a little podcast episode a little bit ago called 'How I Broke into the Industry.' I almost wish I hadn't put that out there, so that you guys could hear a little bit more of some of the things that really happened behind the scenes.

I was in college, and I was going around ... What happened was, and I've told parts of this, pieces and parts. What happened was I got married, my wife and I, we went up to college. I really hadn't had that much college done before we got married. It was only a semester or two, so I had the full brunt left. She actually had already graduated, although we're the same age. It took me ... I went on a mission for my church. I was gone for two years. I took a year off to work and get some stuff done, and put together.

Anyway, through various things, I actually waited on college for a little bit. I was doing a lot of construction jobs and just trying to get money together for it.

I told this story of when I walked away, and I was like, "Yeah, no more construction jobs. I'm done with this." I started going and learning, and I was doing door-to-door sales. I was like, "I got to learn how to sell stuff," so I was doing door-to-door sales.

When we got married, we had like no money. You want to provide, especially as the man. Like, "I want to be the man. I want to provide for my misses." That's how I was feeling. The problem is that I couldn't. I didn't know business. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know what marketing was. I had no idea on any of that stuff.

I went into what I thought was going to be a prestigious thing going into a business degree, and going into a marketing degree. I started listening to this podcast called ... Actually, I can't even remember it. I can't remember what the name of it was, but it was a guy named Sean Terry. He was teaching how you could flip houses for zero cash, and it was totally legit. It was awesome. It was actually really, really cool. I learned a lot from him. He got me going and out the gates.

I'll fast forward a little bit. There was failure after failure, after failure, and as I started getting into this funnel game ... I've told you a bit of this story before, I went to door-to-door sales. I realized that you could actually attract people who want to buy your stuff, rather than go door-to-door and ask people to buy who are not planning on it.

I went from door-to-door sales to writing eBooks, and made my first funnel; although I didn't realize that's what I was making. I was using WordPress and all these tools and systems, and then I learned how to drive traffic because no one was buying my eBook.

Then, I got hired by Paul Mitchell and started working on building sites and sending traffic for celebrities, which was kind of cool.

I was like, "Man, none of this traffic's converting." That led me into Russell Brunson, and I found how to convert and actually sell online. That's really where money started happening. That was four years. I didn't stop. I kept going, and going, and going. Four years! It was painful. It was very painful, because I refused to get a normal job.

We were living on student loans, and I was like, "Crap. Like, this is my time to figure this out big and I've got to do it now." I did not sleep much. I did not do any really extra-curricular activities at all. I worked my butt off, and I know I did, and I'm really proud of that.

Here's one of the major lessons I learned...

As soon as I learned what funnels were and I started building my own funnels, we launched a company called Fixed Insurance. We were doing smart phone insurance. We had customers and there was money coming in. It was great.

I was brand new. We kind of mismanaged it a little bit. It wasn't the business I wanted to be in, insurance business. I wanted to go be in ... I wanted to work with people directly, one-on-one, and make their business explode. I wanted to do essentially what Russell now calls the certification program; but that didn't exist then.

I was going around and I was going from client to client. I pitched to the owners of Vivant. I went over and I was working with some of the top leaders in different MLMs, building their product, MLM funnels, selling lots of their product. I was going and it was super, super awesome.

The big problem was, was that none of them were big payouts. In between each of those successes that I was having was a crap ton of failure. It wasn't until I started looking back, like two days ago, literally. I was looking back and I was thinking, 'Why did this work, and why did that not? Why? Why did some funnels explode a business, and other funnels I mean, did nothing?'

Even in the same business, every once in a while, a funnel would go in and it would blow up, and then would do nothing again afterwards. Like, 'What's the difference? Why? Why? Why did some ... Why did some businesses just not take?' I was going back and forth, and I was looking around.

I said, "Oh my gosh, I think that there are times when a business is ready for a funnel." All right, now that's not normal thinking, right? We usually think that a funnel is good for any business at any time, always, ever; and yes, that's true. I'm not saying that you should not build funnels if you don't have all these elements but I started looking at all the people I've built funnels for. I've built over 150 funnels in the last year alone. Actually, 11 months; in the last 11 months alone.

A lot from my own clients, a lot for obviously for Russell's, a lot for click funnels internal, for click funnels external, for all the clients that he's got. All over the place, from supplement funnels to funnels for toilet paper, no joke. Funnels for lots of webinar funnels, lots of info products, retail; I mean across the whole gambit, MLM, local clients.

All over the place. It's been a lot of fun and a hardcore education, learned way more than my entire marketing degree combined. It's been fantastic.

I started looked back and I started seeing the patterns. I noticed that there's a specific moment when a business is ready to accept a funnel. All right, you got your pen and paper now; because I created it's 11 pieces in this checklist to help you and I know when a business is ready. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go open this thing up. You can hear me clicking around right now, but what I did though is I figured out that ... it's not always ...

I got to be careful of what I'm going say here, because I don't want any one of you to jump out and suddenly say "Well, Stephen said it's not good to build a funnel yet." That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's a moment when a funnel explodes the business. If you don't have one at all, if you have no extra income jumping in on you, that sucks.

Build a funnel...

All right, get it out there, start testing it; but there's a moment when the funnel explodes the business. What I did is I build what's called ... I've been calling it, it's just the pre-funnel build checklist. It's kind of a dumb generic name, should have probably made the name something different.

I said, "How I know if the business is ready for a funnel." This is a checklist you guys can all go download right now if you want at Steve J. Larsen, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen, so SteveJLarsen.com. I said, "No, I'm not saying you should not ... I'm not saying that you shouldn't build a funnel if you don't have these things.

" This is simply a list of the things I use to gauge how much I think a funnel is going to expand a current business. I've gone through and I've built a whole bunch of funnels for lots of people and my own personal clients, this bit of a checklist I'm running through, it was all mentally in my head until I sat down two days ago and wrote it out. I was like, "Holy crap, this is totally what I do."

I created and personally use this list to vet out potential clients and prep my own businesses for a funnel. The point is to remember that funnels are not business models, or the complete business. There's been many times I've built funnels for people before I understood this. I built them just an awesome funnel. I will say that's the one constant is I build really good funnels; like a natural ... Not a natural ability at all, I shouldn't say that. Crazy enough, the things that I used to build funnels, I'm very good with the Adobe Suite. I'm very good at layout and design, and that's all I did in high school. I wish I did sports, but I was the head editor of yearbook. I got three state awards in Colorado for my layout and design. I know that's where a lot of it comes from, and super grateful for that. I had no idea it would apply to what I'm doing now, but it does.

Anyways, this checklist helps me see to which extent the entrepreneur or myself knows his own company. This is one of the biggest pieces on here. What I want to do is I want to go through these items with you guys real quick. It's 11 things that help you know ... What's kind of cool is let's say you're not hitting all 11 of these things. That's totally fine, use it as a gauge. Go in and start to figure this out, because here's what happened.

When I was in college and I started going back, and kind of walking back; I went and I started trying to find a client that I could blow up. I had all these start-ups. I had all these people that wanted funnels. I had 15 businesses on a waiting list in the middle of college during my marketing classes.

I walked up to the teacher and I said, "I don't want to be here anymore. This is dumb."

He said, "Honestly, I can see you're doing cool stuff. Why don't you just give me a cool deliverable at the end of the semester, and I'll see you at the end." I walked away and never came back to class. For three hours a day, I held my own class just trying to make as much money online as possible. It was the coolest thing on the planet. I call myself the student of exceptions.

The answer's always 'Yes,' until you can get a 'No.' Just go freaking do it. Stop waiting for permission. Stop asking for permission, just do stuff. That's kind of my mentality. It's like get out of my way, that's kind of what it is.

Anyway, what happened, though, is I was looking around. I was like, "Okay, I need to prove the market that I know what I'm doing on a lot of these things." Nobody knows who I am. I remember doing my first periscope and I was like, "Man, no one knows who I am. No one's going to watch this."

I think I had one person watch it. The next day, I had maybe two. The next day I had maybe three. That's literally how I built this. I was like, "I got to prove to the market that I can do this stuff, and that I've been doing it, and that I can ... " I've just never marketed myself out as a person that does this. What I started doing is I started looking around. I didn't realize it, but I was using this checklist inadvertently to vet out businesses.

I went and I said, "Okay," and a lot of you guys have asked this question to me, which is actually what has started spawning this podcast episode.

You said, "Hey, Stephen. I've got to know how to start. How do I get going? How do I prove myself?" They're like, "Well, there's this cool start-up that wants me to."

I'm like, "You said the word 'start-up.' Okay, if you're trying to prove quickly to the market that you know what you're doing, do not build for a start-up." I've told a lot of you guys that. I said, "You need to go build for a business that is ready for a funnel, and will just explode it. All right?

It makes you look like a champion...

It makes your funnel look like a champion, and makes the business look like a champion, all right? Because you've made them a bunch of money in a short amount of time. Well, you need certain things in place in order to actually do that. Does that make sense?"

I started looking around and I was calling buddies. I'm going back to the story. I made a huge list of businesses that I thought would be cool to go build funnels for. I was sitting there and I was like, "Okay. I could my own. I could build one for a company that's already established, where they could blow it up. I could go," and I made this big list.

I started going piece by piece, and I started shotgun emailing tons and tons of businesses. It's actually funny, Justin and Tara Williams in the inner circle, Russell's inner circle, they're one of the people I reached out to. They were just too slow to get back to me, so that's one of the reasons I work for Russell now and not them, which is kind of funny.

I went out and I started shotgun telling people, I was like, "I will build you a funnel. I know you don't know what it is. I will do it for free, and I will show you once it's making revenue, then let's talk about me getting paid; but first, let me prove myself." It was like "Whoa."

These people were like, "Who is this kid?" Then I had them proving themself to me, because then they came back to me and they're like, "Well, I want you. I want you."

I was like, "Well, I can only take one of you guys, so who's it going to be?" About that time, I met a company down in Florida. I will keep them nameless, Echo. I went and I was checking out their stuff. I was like, "I could totally build for these guys. These guys would be a good candidate."

I met the owner, and he was like, "That sounds amazing. I have no idea what you're talking about. Sales funnel, what does that even mean, right? That's all techno-babble. No one really knows what that is unless you're in the industry."

I was like, "Well, I know you don't know what it is. I'm going to build it, and then let's just do this. So these are the things I need from you." I was like, "X, Y, and Z." I said, "I've got to have one, two, and three from you; and this is what we can expect in the timeline. Let's go," and I went to work. I started putting the funnel together. First I ran an ask campaign and I ran out there, and I got tons, like 150 responses in a day. He already had a pretty big customer base.

I said, "Oh my gosh." I started looking through the responses of the ask campaign and I was like, "Oh my gosh, did you guys know that they want X, Y, and Z?"

They're like, "No." We went and we built a ... We, I. I built a trip bar funnel and I launched it out to these guys. We made them like 20 grand in two days. It brought in an additional 30 grand on top of that over the next week or two, all to his internal list from an ask campaign.

I was like, "Cool! I got my story. Woo!" I looked back and I was like, "Why did that really work?" That's because of this checklist. I've danced around it, but let's jump into it here.

This is a slightly longer podcast, but I hope you see the value in what I'm about to say here to you guys. If you can't find a business that matches these, I'm not saying you shouldn't go do it, but look harder. If you're really trying to prove yourself, or you're trying to break into the industry, or your own business; let's say you're not building for other people but for your own business. You're trying to make these things work. You're trying to make your funnel work for your business. It might be because your business is not hitting these criteria, so let's jump in.

Number one, is their business ... I'm going to share this with the standpoint of, 'Hey, I'm looking for a client,' because I've built a lot of funnels for other people. All right, so number one, is their business already making sales? Whether offline or online, I don't care. They could seriously be going door-to-door. I don't care. Are they already selling the product they're wishing a funnel was for? Do they have repeat buyers? This is all part of number one. I wrote in here this question alone is a major barrier. If the answer is 'No,' I don't work them because they haven't built the business enough to support a full-fledged funnel. Full-fledged funnel.

Is there already sales happening, or is this a start-up? If it's a start-up, I usually will always say 'No,' unless they're throwing just an inordinate amount of money at me; because they haven't build the funnel around it, or they haven't build a business. You'll see more what I'm talking about as I move into this. This is a whole aspect of this business that most people don't think about, or know about, or we even really talk about. I don't think we've really thought about it before.

Anyway, number two, what assets do they have? Do they have an email list? Do they have social presence, phone numbers? Do they have a website at least? Are they at least online? Do they have things like logos, images, videos, copy, sales copy. Do they have those things? What I'm really trying to figure out here is if they have enough people and enough following for me to run a successful ask campaign.

An ask campaign, if you don't know what that is, is where you go out and you say, "Hey, what's your number one challenge with X, Y, and Z?" You get back a whole bunch of responses from this open-ended question, and it will tell you what to sell them next. It's really helpful.

Number three, can they name and do they know who their competition is? This blows me away. When people can't say who their competition is, it's almost like an automatic 'No.'

What it means is they haven't actually gone through and they don't know their own place in their own industry, and their own spot in the ecosystem inside their own industry. I wrote 'This is huge. If they can't name their own competition, but are telling me their revenue is massive, I'm going to strongly question that.'

What I'm really looking for here is someone to funnel hack. If there's no one to funnel hack and they don't know who I can funnel hack, I get skeptical on the future success of the funnel right off the bat. I got to be able to funnel hack people who are being successful.

It's the other reason why I don't do start-ups, because if there's no one to compete with, it's ... You're a pioneer.

You're not modeling anybody. You're doing something that no one has done or no one's been successful with. That means that you might be drifting into an area where you're selling products that are based on improvement, not products that are new opportunities.

Improvement-based offers are terrible. New opportunities sell a lot, just right off the bat.

Anyway, you might be selling into a red ocean. Or, the ocean is so blue that the market isn't ready for it. How many of you guys use all the features in Excel, or do you just use the basic plus/minus multiplication, division features? It's the most ... Anyway. Different story.

Are they trying to be a market disrupter, or are they trying to make money? You know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to say.

Number four, how many products are they selling or can they offer? If they're selling complimentary products to their customers, I would know how to structure the funnel almost immediately. If they're only selling one product, I know we're probably going to have to make some of their product not just a funnel. That's fine, I just charge more. That's what I wrote.

Basically, are they selling more than one product? If they're selling more than one product, successfully, it's a really easy way to make the funnel. If they're only selling one thing, typically a funnel has at least two products, different variations at least, of the same product. If they don't have that and they want to make a ...

That's the hard part when insurance companies come to me and is like, "You guys have a single product, and your only other product is more insurance." I'm like, "Ugh. Like, we got to create another product here."

They're like, "Oh, okay."

All right, number five, what is their current monthly revenue? Some people will quote their glory days revenue.

Find out how much they're really making...

If they're spending their last dime to build a funnel with you, feel sketchy about it. What money will they have to drive traffic with? Plus, they get too needy. It's like going to a five star restaurant after not eating for two days. You'll hardly taste it and no one will enjoy the five stardom. Don't sell broke people. I know that I build high level funnel, and I don't want to sell level two ... business a level ten funnel. That sounds harsh, but you're actually doing a disservice if you do that.

Number six, do they already know what kind of funnel they want? This matters, because it's how I gauge their education level. If they know what kind of funnel they want already, I don't have to continually educate them on the vision of what I propose to build; and especially during the build. It's much easier.

Again, not a deal breaker but I go from being a funnel builder to a funnel builder plus coach. I need to allocate my time accordingly. If someone doesn't even know what funnels are, it's kind of like ... It's fine if it's this way, but you're going to be educating them a lot further.

One of the people I most recently built for, they pay the ten grand, they came in, they built ... Actually, I'm going to try and interview them here soon, so you guys can all see. It's really cool. It's a political campaign funnel for another country. I live in America, and it's for another country. He's actually about to get elected, and the funnel actually helped him take office. How freaking cool is that?

Anyway, but they already knew what kind of funnel they wanted. It made it really easy, because I could just build. I didn't have to coach. It's fine if you have to coach, I just have to change some things.

All right, number seven, do they know their numbers? Do they know how much it costs for them to acquire for somebody? CPA? Do they know what their average cart value is per customer? Do they know what their earnings per click are? Et cetera. If they already know the numbers, that helps a lot.

Number eight, do they have current and consistent traffic? If not, what's the plan to get it? If they don't have any kind of traffic flow that I could just drop something into, that's going to be hard. It'd be like if I went to ... I live in Idaho now.

I'm from Colorado. There's mountains and valleys all around us. There's rivers and dams where they put those hydroelectric generators in there to get electricity. It'd be like building a dam in the middle of a valley and then trying to find the water. That's what it's like when you're trying to build a funnel for somebody who does not already have traffic. It's very difficult.

It's so much easier to go find somebody who's ... It's like the Nile, they already got tons of traffic. Just drop a whole bunch of dams in there, you're going to get electricity off of it. It's the exact same principle. It's hard to build for somebody who doesn't have traffic yet. It's fine, again, if they don't. You got to know what the plan is. Who's driving it? Do they think it's you? I've had people who thought I was going to drive it.

I was like, "No." I'm like, "I'm not going to drive your traffic for you."

Anyway, number nine, what software and systems do they already? This is so big. This is an element we don't really talk about a lot, but you're going to become an integrations master if you're trying to build for other people.

Even if you're for your own funnel, you're going to have to be somewhat of an integrations master as well. Do they know they're going to require additional software and subscriptions to build their funnel?

Here's a little story. I had some people who wanted me to build a funnel using Infusionsoft. I ran the other way. I said "No."

Number ten, this is so big. Again, we don't really talk about this. Do they already have their own performing fulfillment? I wrote it all caps in here, selling and funnels is the sex of business. Fulfillment is the red headed stepchild with a mole on his forehead that no one wants to think about but will actually kill the business. I wrote a little story here.

I said, "I once ... " Yeah, I was stupid once and built a funnel years ago for somebody who had no fulfillment. I was just excited to get the client. I made them some quick cash in a couple days.

They frantically called me back and asked me to turn it off. They're like, "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

I was like, "Why? You guys are making all these sales! Are you kidding me? I just like two X'ed your company."

They're like, "I know, but we don't have ... We can't handle it." I ended up having to go build this whole inventory system in the back end. They got so gun shy from it making all these sales that they never turned it back on.

I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." They still wouldn't do it, though.

Number 11, I said "Finally, have they ever been successful in anything at all, ever?" That sounds harsh, but ... Anyway, I wrote a little note on this one, too. I said, "This might seem like a joke, but someone who's never done anything, ever, in life, at all, but who has all the previously mentioned steps, has potential to be a massive basket case of emotions. Then, you'll turn into an icky life coach again."

Unless they're really, really upping the price, I'd run the other way...

You're not trying to keep people out, but what you need to understand is that there's been people ... There's a guy I was building a funnel with once. It was for ... He was selling a book that was, once people read it, they automatically wanted to buy product for some supplement thing. It was a long time ago. It was probably, that was about four years ago, probably. Three and a half, four years ago. I was building a funnel for him.

This was before click funnels existed, but I was using things like Get Response, and WordPress, and things like that. I was building a funnel for him and literally every move I made, he was excited about but questioned like crazy. It was the most ... It was damming to my progress, just like a dam with water, but where it doesn't let the water through. I had to verify every single step the whole way, because he had never been successful in something before.

He was having little successes here and there, but nothing where he could let go a little bit and say "Okay, you take the reins. I trust the expertise, and you should back off ... I'm going to back off a little bit and you just go build this thing." These are all some of the lessons I've learned.

Again, this is kind of a long podcast but I wanted to show you guys some of that. Final note, and you can get this checklist and I'll show you out.

I said, "Final note, this list sifts out a lot of people, and I realize that. But, that's why I made this checklist for my personal use. Your goal, and it's honestly what I've been using in my head all along, and I had no idea; but if they didn't meet these criteria, which was different than a lot of the criteria that I've seen out there for other people...

But anyways, your goal is to match your funnel building skill level with the correct client for you. I waded through three plus years of bad, bad, bad clients to learn this. All right."

Then, I put the actual website there. It's a little checklist, a little asset that I put together for you guys. I think you're going to really like it. There's some spelling errors and stuff like that, but anyway I think you'll understand the point of it.

Guys, I wanted to ask you something. I've got actually a bit of announcement here, this is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, personally. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I'm actually leaving the public funnel building game.

I'm pretty sad about it...

Click Funnels is growing so fast. It's growing so incredibly fast. We're actually just trying to keep up. We've 3X'd, two years in a row. We're on track to do the same thing again this year. By the way, just so you know, that kind of thing doesn't really happen. We're extremely unique as a company, Click Funnels is.

To commemorate this whole 'Hey, I'm no longer going to be doing this thing,' I wanted to just take on my last few clients. I'm excited. I want to be able to focus more.

It's actually Russell has asked me. This is the reason I'm doing this is Russell's asked me to no longer really be doing anything more publicly, and to focus on helping him with Click Funnels. I completely understand what he's asking. I love Click Funnels, you guys, we are changing the world. It's so fun, but understand what I'm saying here.

What I'm going to do is I'm totally going to make you a cool deal for the last few people who want me to build for them. I have until the end of March to make this happen. I only have space for three people because I put my heart and soul into these funnels.

The thing I can promise and guarantee you, all my integrity, my very name, and maybe even my kids, is that I'll give you a sweet funnel. That that's something that that's what I do. It's all I do, every day, all day for ... It's been years, especially this last year with Russell. I've given some pretty big info on this podcast, you know what I mean?

I just wanted to obviously this type of information I'm giving you is not ... It's not going to do anything for you if you don't actually go build one.

The reason I'm doing this is like I said, I am publicly going to no longer be offering funnel building services. I've had to increase my coaching price. I first started hundred dollars an hour and I coached a lot of people and it was great; but I had no life. So I increased my price to take people even more serious, to $400 an hour; but it still, again, I had to stop. I bumped my price up again, just because I can't handle the volume.

I'm being totally honest and vulnerable with you guys right now as I say this. I'm going to make this quick. I know I've been going for about 30 minutes here, and I apologize. Hopefully you guys hear what I'm telling you.

You can get this checklist by going to SteveJLarsen.com. Also, there is a spot on there where you're going to see if you want to be one of my last three people, there's a spot for you to put down your name and a deposit. What will happen is I'll go through this checklist with you and I'll vet out your situation. If we're a fit, that deposit will go towards the price I charge for the funnel; which is ten grand. I thought about doubling my price, and that would be totally appropriate; but it's not even that. He wants me to stop building altogether; as far as external funnels. I'll still have my own projects that I'm building out, but I will no longer be doing it for other people.

I legitimately am taking four people, but I already have one gone. I'm building for my dad right now. His is almost done and I'm going to share behind the scenes of that here soon, just so you guys can learn what we did. It's kind of cool. It's very clever.

I don't think anyone really in the financial area is doing what we just pulled off. Then, I'm also building for a company called 'A Statue of Responsibility.' There's the State of Liberty on the East Coast, an equal sized statue called the Statue of Responsibility's going on the West Coast. They've asked me to build the funnel for them to make all the donations so that that statue can get built on the West Coast. They're just trying to figure out which city it's going to go in; so super cool stuff. That's basically it, so I mean technically that's five, but one of them's about done.

I only have room for three more clients. This is real urgency and scarcity, you guys. I know that we teach you guys to do the real urgency and scarcity, like 'Oh, it's never going to happen again!' This probably literally will never happen again, because I'm going to sink my teeth even farther into Click Funnels. I know that there are, and ...

I didn't just want to come out and say "Oh, you can't get any more funnels from me. I'm out and out of the count." Yeah, right. You can't. I'm tapping out. I literally had to ... I'm going to show you guys some of the things in here, but I literally had two choices. Russell and I have had some heart-to-hearts on it. Two choices.

Russell said, "Okay, man. Like, I really need more help with what I'm doing. You can go build your own stuff and keep this going, or stay with Click Funnels. And I want to help you, um, help you there, as well."

I was like, "Man, like this is just nice. My wife and I have been talking about it.

She's like "This is a weird, nice problem to have. You know, which direction are you going to take?" That doesn't mean ... It will probably be like five years before I go and accept a funnel build for somebody else, you know what I mean?

Unless again, it's like this inordinate amount of money. There's no way that I have time to do it anymore. This last little rah-rah. I just want to remind you guys that there's a lot of you guys I know that are thinking about hiring me. I've had 27 applications to build funnels just in the last little bit. 27! 90% of you guys I know sadly, you don't meet some of these criteria, or the ten grand is too much.

That's okay, just keep pushing it, keep rushing it. I can't build for you, and that's okay; but there are a lot of you, though, who do have the ten grand, who are wanting me to build.

I'm trying to give you this real urgency and scarcity and tell you that like, "Look, I cannot. I am not allowed. I can't. I can't move forward anymore building funnels after these three clients." Those are my two choices.

Literally, your two choices are whether or not I'm going to go build for you because this is real urgency and scarcity. I have to move on. The landscape of my profession and my path is starting to change. For three years, I built for start-ups. For this past year, I've only built for professionals, people with at least ten grand. I have a buddy who sells $50,000 funnels.

Anyway, ten grand for a funnel, the type that I build, I know it's actually dirt cheap...

I just want to remind you guys that ... It's kind of funny. You think about the attractive character, this is the reluctant hero category. I'm trying to show you guys the magician's hands, kind of like what Russell calls it. I'm trying to show you what I'm doing here. I am closing this, and so I actually wanted to make you guys an offer. I'm going to make you guys an offer right now. I'm excited to do it.

Not only are you guys gonna get a funnel that writes $10,000, I'll build you guys whatever kind of funnel you want. I'll do all the images. I'll help put the copy together. Videos will probably have to be done by you, so it's your face on them, but I'll help you put those together as well.

I'll help you write the emails, the fulfillment emails, which there's a lot more to do on those than I've noticed you guys do. All right, help you write the soap opera series, helping you write sticky emails that will get people back in to buy, even several weeks after they've left your funny. All the different communication pieces, and that's $10,000. That's a value of ten grand.

I remember the first time I charged ten grand. I was like, "This is crazy!" Then they went off and they did these amazing things. I was like, "Wow! Ten grand was nothing!" All right, I'm also going to give you guys every funnel I charge for. Every single one of them. That's about $1,000 value, almost; so I'm going to give you guys every single funnel.

You'll get the $10,000, and then you'll get the about another $1,000 in funnels that I use for MLM; the funnel that I used to get 650 people to a live event, which was crazy. It was in the middle of college. That was so amazing. We raised seven grand for charity. It was awesome, but I built that funnel. I'll give you that one.

You guys are going to get my insurance funnel. You'll get my podcasting funnel. You'll get my live coaching funnels, the funnel I use to get all my coaching stuff in. Which by the way, does quite a bit, monetarily.

Anyway, you guys are going to get all those for free. I'm just going to share funnel them over to you. I'm going to build the funnel for you. Then, I'll give you every funnel that I charge, I'll give it to you for free. That's 11 grand in value.

I'm also going to give you guys two coaching sessions post-build. This is huge. I charge $1,000 for an hour now. That's a $2,000 value. A lot of you guys, post-build, I've noticed will want to ... Obviously you're going to want another coaching session.

It's like a check-up, it's like going back to the doctor after a surgery. 100% totally get it, so I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free. I'll do it like two weeks after, and then one month after I'm done building. Usually my building period is two weeks, so within two weeks you'll have your funnel back; dependent on how quick you can get me the assets that I need.

There's the built funnel for ten grand. Every funnel that I charge, for free, I'll give that to you for free. That's another $1,000. Two coaching sessions, that's $2,000. Then, I'm also going to give you ... Guys, I don't think a lot of you guys know, but I do a lot of stuff with the affiliate game.

I've only got like 20 affiliates for Click Funnels, but it makes an extra grand a month; which is awesome. I don't do anything for that. I'm going to give you the email series I use to get people in the door. It's worth a $1,000 a month to me, right now. A real, real cost and I don't do anything. I should drive ads. I should drive traffic to it.

I don't, and it still makes a $1,000 a month. I'm going to give you that specific email sequence, which is awesome. It's worth $1,000 a month.

Again, get the funnel built. I'll give you ever funnel I've ever charged for, for free. Two coaching sessions, my affiliate email sequence. Then, the last thing I'm going to give you guys is I want to feature you guys on the podcast. I think it'd be cool for everybody if you guys, if we go and we peel back the funnel, maybe after the coaching sessions are done or whatever.

We go through and we show the progression of the funnel, and we show how what we're doing. I thought it'd be really cool to feature you guys on the podcast so that everyone can see what we did and how we pulled it off. All together, that's like $15,000 in value. Obviously I charge ten grand for it. I'm going to give you guys $5,000 off, free for that. That's real urgency and scarcity.

If you guys go to SteveJLarsen.com, you'll be able to download the checklist. Then, right after that on the next page, you can hold your spot. Again, it's $500 just as the deposit to hold your place. The reason I do that is because a lot of people want me to build their funnels, but the $500 helps me know that you're serious and in a position for me to build your funnel. If it doesn't work, I give you the $500 back.

That's no risk to you at all. If we are building the funnel together, then it just goes towards the $10,000 price. That's only $9500 after that.

That's it, guys. Go to SteveJLarsen.com. Again, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen but it's SteveJLarsen.com. You can download the checklist that I use to vet companies. You can use it to vet your own, and how much a funnel will blow up your business. Then you can also reserve one of my last three places for funnel building. Some real urgency and scarcity on this, okay? You guys have 'til the very last day in March to do this. The very last day in March. I have to do this now. You know what?

Actually, what's the date? I only have two weeks, because I have to have the funnels almost done by the end of March. Anyway, the countdown clock for the real world time that I have to stop building funnels publicly, or I get in trouble, because I need to focus inwardly on Click Funnels. It will be done. Go to SteveJLarsen.com, get the checklist, and go to the next page. You'll be able to see what that all is.

Guys, thanks so much. Again, you get the funnel built, ten grand. Get every funnel I've built and charged for free. I'll give you everything I have. Then, I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free, for two grand; and then my email sequence for all my affiliates that gets loaded straight into your Actionetics.

I can share link all my email sequence straight into your Actionetics account, which is awesome. Then, I'm going to feature you on the podcast. I think everyone will get a lot of value from that, actually. That's going to be really cool. That's real world value of over 15 grand. I'm going to give it to you for $10,000. Anyways, guys, again, SteveJLarsen.com. I will talk to you guys later. Bye.

  continue reading

378 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 174102400 series 1257885
Content provided by Steve J Larsen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Steve J Larsen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Click above to listen in iTunes...

My 11 Point PDF Checklist + I'm Publicly Leaving Funnel Building :(

DOWNLOAD THE FREE CHECKLIST AT SteveJLarsen.com

What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, before I get into the episodes, or this episode, I just want you to see a little behind the scenes.

Typically, what I do when I get these podcasts together, is I'll just write out a whole bunch of principles of things I know that you guys are struggling with, have questions about, or there's a challenge. I'll go directly address that so that I can just keep trying to provide value. Or, I'll go interview somebody and we'll go dive deep into their business.

By the way, I've got about 20 more interviews lined up for you guys. It's going to be great...

This podcast is actually a little bit different. This one actually took me about an hour and a half to two hours just to prep. There's a lot of cool things going in it, so I'm encouraging you right now before I start, get a pen and paper if you can. I think you're really going to enjoy this.

Anyways, without further ado, let's jump into this. Again, 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 your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, all right. Now, while I was getting this all together, I was remembering the way I got into this industry. I've shared a little bit of this, but there's a certain part of it that I've been realizing that I haven't really shared. It's so key to success, I mean right out the gate.

I had a little podcast episode a little bit ago called 'How I Broke into the Industry.' I almost wish I hadn't put that out there, so that you guys could hear a little bit more of some of the things that really happened behind the scenes.

I was in college, and I was going around ... What happened was, and I've told parts of this, pieces and parts. What happened was I got married, my wife and I, we went up to college. I really hadn't had that much college done before we got married. It was only a semester or two, so I had the full brunt left. She actually had already graduated, although we're the same age. It took me ... I went on a mission for my church. I was gone for two years. I took a year off to work and get some stuff done, and put together.

Anyway, through various things, I actually waited on college for a little bit. I was doing a lot of construction jobs and just trying to get money together for it.

I told this story of when I walked away, and I was like, "Yeah, no more construction jobs. I'm done with this." I started going and learning, and I was doing door-to-door sales. I was like, "I got to learn how to sell stuff," so I was doing door-to-door sales.

When we got married, we had like no money. You want to provide, especially as the man. Like, "I want to be the man. I want to provide for my misses." That's how I was feeling. The problem is that I couldn't. I didn't know business. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know what marketing was. I had no idea on any of that stuff.

I went into what I thought was going to be a prestigious thing going into a business degree, and going into a marketing degree. I started listening to this podcast called ... Actually, I can't even remember it. I can't remember what the name of it was, but it was a guy named Sean Terry. He was teaching how you could flip houses for zero cash, and it was totally legit. It was awesome. It was actually really, really cool. I learned a lot from him. He got me going and out the gates.

I'll fast forward a little bit. There was failure after failure, after failure, and as I started getting into this funnel game ... I've told you a bit of this story before, I went to door-to-door sales. I realized that you could actually attract people who want to buy your stuff, rather than go door-to-door and ask people to buy who are not planning on it.

I went from door-to-door sales to writing eBooks, and made my first funnel; although I didn't realize that's what I was making. I was using WordPress and all these tools and systems, and then I learned how to drive traffic because no one was buying my eBook.

Then, I got hired by Paul Mitchell and started working on building sites and sending traffic for celebrities, which was kind of cool.

I was like, "Man, none of this traffic's converting." That led me into Russell Brunson, and I found how to convert and actually sell online. That's really where money started happening. That was four years. I didn't stop. I kept going, and going, and going. Four years! It was painful. It was very painful, because I refused to get a normal job.

We were living on student loans, and I was like, "Crap. Like, this is my time to figure this out big and I've got to do it now." I did not sleep much. I did not do any really extra-curricular activities at all. I worked my butt off, and I know I did, and I'm really proud of that.

Here's one of the major lessons I learned...

As soon as I learned what funnels were and I started building my own funnels, we launched a company called Fixed Insurance. We were doing smart phone insurance. We had customers and there was money coming in. It was great.

I was brand new. We kind of mismanaged it a little bit. It wasn't the business I wanted to be in, insurance business. I wanted to go be in ... I wanted to work with people directly, one-on-one, and make their business explode. I wanted to do essentially what Russell now calls the certification program; but that didn't exist then.

I was going around and I was going from client to client. I pitched to the owners of Vivant. I went over and I was working with some of the top leaders in different MLMs, building their product, MLM funnels, selling lots of their product. I was going and it was super, super awesome.

The big problem was, was that none of them were big payouts. In between each of those successes that I was having was a crap ton of failure. It wasn't until I started looking back, like two days ago, literally. I was looking back and I was thinking, 'Why did this work, and why did that not? Why? Why did some funnels explode a business, and other funnels I mean, did nothing?'

Even in the same business, every once in a while, a funnel would go in and it would blow up, and then would do nothing again afterwards. Like, 'What's the difference? Why? Why? Why did some ... Why did some businesses just not take?' I was going back and forth, and I was looking around.

I said, "Oh my gosh, I think that there are times when a business is ready for a funnel." All right, now that's not normal thinking, right? We usually think that a funnel is good for any business at any time, always, ever; and yes, that's true. I'm not saying that you should not build funnels if you don't have all these elements but I started looking at all the people I've built funnels for. I've built over 150 funnels in the last year alone. Actually, 11 months; in the last 11 months alone.

A lot from my own clients, a lot for obviously for Russell's, a lot for click funnels internal, for click funnels external, for all the clients that he's got. All over the place, from supplement funnels to funnels for toilet paper, no joke. Funnels for lots of webinar funnels, lots of info products, retail; I mean across the whole gambit, MLM, local clients.

All over the place. It's been a lot of fun and a hardcore education, learned way more than my entire marketing degree combined. It's been fantastic.

I started looked back and I started seeing the patterns. I noticed that there's a specific moment when a business is ready to accept a funnel. All right, you got your pen and paper now; because I created it's 11 pieces in this checklist to help you and I know when a business is ready. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go open this thing up. You can hear me clicking around right now, but what I did though is I figured out that ... it's not always ...

I got to be careful of what I'm going say here, because I don't want any one of you to jump out and suddenly say "Well, Stephen said it's not good to build a funnel yet." That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's a moment when a funnel explodes the business. If you don't have one at all, if you have no extra income jumping in on you, that sucks.

Build a funnel...

All right, get it out there, start testing it; but there's a moment when the funnel explodes the business. What I did is I build what's called ... I've been calling it, it's just the pre-funnel build checklist. It's kind of a dumb generic name, should have probably made the name something different.

I said, "How I know if the business is ready for a funnel." This is a checklist you guys can all go download right now if you want at Steve J. Larsen, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen, so SteveJLarsen.com. I said, "No, I'm not saying you should not ... I'm not saying that you shouldn't build a funnel if you don't have these things.

" This is simply a list of the things I use to gauge how much I think a funnel is going to expand a current business. I've gone through and I've built a whole bunch of funnels for lots of people and my own personal clients, this bit of a checklist I'm running through, it was all mentally in my head until I sat down two days ago and wrote it out. I was like, "Holy crap, this is totally what I do."

I created and personally use this list to vet out potential clients and prep my own businesses for a funnel. The point is to remember that funnels are not business models, or the complete business. There's been many times I've built funnels for people before I understood this. I built them just an awesome funnel. I will say that's the one constant is I build really good funnels; like a natural ... Not a natural ability at all, I shouldn't say that. Crazy enough, the things that I used to build funnels, I'm very good with the Adobe Suite. I'm very good at layout and design, and that's all I did in high school. I wish I did sports, but I was the head editor of yearbook. I got three state awards in Colorado for my layout and design. I know that's where a lot of it comes from, and super grateful for that. I had no idea it would apply to what I'm doing now, but it does.

Anyways, this checklist helps me see to which extent the entrepreneur or myself knows his own company. This is one of the biggest pieces on here. What I want to do is I want to go through these items with you guys real quick. It's 11 things that help you know ... What's kind of cool is let's say you're not hitting all 11 of these things. That's totally fine, use it as a gauge. Go in and start to figure this out, because here's what happened.

When I was in college and I started going back, and kind of walking back; I went and I started trying to find a client that I could blow up. I had all these start-ups. I had all these people that wanted funnels. I had 15 businesses on a waiting list in the middle of college during my marketing classes.

I walked up to the teacher and I said, "I don't want to be here anymore. This is dumb."

He said, "Honestly, I can see you're doing cool stuff. Why don't you just give me a cool deliverable at the end of the semester, and I'll see you at the end." I walked away and never came back to class. For three hours a day, I held my own class just trying to make as much money online as possible. It was the coolest thing on the planet. I call myself the student of exceptions.

The answer's always 'Yes,' until you can get a 'No.' Just go freaking do it. Stop waiting for permission. Stop asking for permission, just do stuff. That's kind of my mentality. It's like get out of my way, that's kind of what it is.

Anyway, what happened, though, is I was looking around. I was like, "Okay, I need to prove the market that I know what I'm doing on a lot of these things." Nobody knows who I am. I remember doing my first periscope and I was like, "Man, no one knows who I am. No one's going to watch this."

I think I had one person watch it. The next day, I had maybe two. The next day I had maybe three. That's literally how I built this. I was like, "I got to prove to the market that I can do this stuff, and that I've been doing it, and that I can ... " I've just never marketed myself out as a person that does this. What I started doing is I started looking around. I didn't realize it, but I was using this checklist inadvertently to vet out businesses.

I went and I said, "Okay," and a lot of you guys have asked this question to me, which is actually what has started spawning this podcast episode.

You said, "Hey, Stephen. I've got to know how to start. How do I get going? How do I prove myself?" They're like, "Well, there's this cool start-up that wants me to."

I'm like, "You said the word 'start-up.' Okay, if you're trying to prove quickly to the market that you know what you're doing, do not build for a start-up." I've told a lot of you guys that. I said, "You need to go build for a business that is ready for a funnel, and will just explode it. All right?

It makes you look like a champion...

It makes your funnel look like a champion, and makes the business look like a champion, all right? Because you've made them a bunch of money in a short amount of time. Well, you need certain things in place in order to actually do that. Does that make sense?"

I started looking around and I was calling buddies. I'm going back to the story. I made a huge list of businesses that I thought would be cool to go build funnels for. I was sitting there and I was like, "Okay. I could my own. I could build one for a company that's already established, where they could blow it up. I could go," and I made this big list.

I started going piece by piece, and I started shotgun emailing tons and tons of businesses. It's actually funny, Justin and Tara Williams in the inner circle, Russell's inner circle, they're one of the people I reached out to. They were just too slow to get back to me, so that's one of the reasons I work for Russell now and not them, which is kind of funny.

I went out and I started shotgun telling people, I was like, "I will build you a funnel. I know you don't know what it is. I will do it for free, and I will show you once it's making revenue, then let's talk about me getting paid; but first, let me prove myself." It was like "Whoa."

These people were like, "Who is this kid?" Then I had them proving themself to me, because then they came back to me and they're like, "Well, I want you. I want you."

I was like, "Well, I can only take one of you guys, so who's it going to be?" About that time, I met a company down in Florida. I will keep them nameless, Echo. I went and I was checking out their stuff. I was like, "I could totally build for these guys. These guys would be a good candidate."

I met the owner, and he was like, "That sounds amazing. I have no idea what you're talking about. Sales funnel, what does that even mean, right? That's all techno-babble. No one really knows what that is unless you're in the industry."

I was like, "Well, I know you don't know what it is. I'm going to build it, and then let's just do this. So these are the things I need from you." I was like, "X, Y, and Z." I said, "I've got to have one, two, and three from you; and this is what we can expect in the timeline. Let's go," and I went to work. I started putting the funnel together. First I ran an ask campaign and I ran out there, and I got tons, like 150 responses in a day. He already had a pretty big customer base.

I said, "Oh my gosh." I started looking through the responses of the ask campaign and I was like, "Oh my gosh, did you guys know that they want X, Y, and Z?"

They're like, "No." We went and we built a ... We, I. I built a trip bar funnel and I launched it out to these guys. We made them like 20 grand in two days. It brought in an additional 30 grand on top of that over the next week or two, all to his internal list from an ask campaign.

I was like, "Cool! I got my story. Woo!" I looked back and I was like, "Why did that really work?" That's because of this checklist. I've danced around it, but let's jump into it here.

This is a slightly longer podcast, but I hope you see the value in what I'm about to say here to you guys. If you can't find a business that matches these, I'm not saying you shouldn't go do it, but look harder. If you're really trying to prove yourself, or you're trying to break into the industry, or your own business; let's say you're not building for other people but for your own business. You're trying to make these things work. You're trying to make your funnel work for your business. It might be because your business is not hitting these criteria, so let's jump in.

Number one, is their business ... I'm going to share this with the standpoint of, 'Hey, I'm looking for a client,' because I've built a lot of funnels for other people. All right, so number one, is their business already making sales? Whether offline or online, I don't care. They could seriously be going door-to-door. I don't care. Are they already selling the product they're wishing a funnel was for? Do they have repeat buyers? This is all part of number one. I wrote in here this question alone is a major barrier. If the answer is 'No,' I don't work them because they haven't built the business enough to support a full-fledged funnel. Full-fledged funnel.

Is there already sales happening, or is this a start-up? If it's a start-up, I usually will always say 'No,' unless they're throwing just an inordinate amount of money at me; because they haven't build the funnel around it, or they haven't build a business. You'll see more what I'm talking about as I move into this. This is a whole aspect of this business that most people don't think about, or know about, or we even really talk about. I don't think we've really thought about it before.

Anyway, number two, what assets do they have? Do they have an email list? Do they have social presence, phone numbers? Do they have a website at least? Are they at least online? Do they have things like logos, images, videos, copy, sales copy. Do they have those things? What I'm really trying to figure out here is if they have enough people and enough following for me to run a successful ask campaign.

An ask campaign, if you don't know what that is, is where you go out and you say, "Hey, what's your number one challenge with X, Y, and Z?" You get back a whole bunch of responses from this open-ended question, and it will tell you what to sell them next. It's really helpful.

Number three, can they name and do they know who their competition is? This blows me away. When people can't say who their competition is, it's almost like an automatic 'No.'

What it means is they haven't actually gone through and they don't know their own place in their own industry, and their own spot in the ecosystem inside their own industry. I wrote 'This is huge. If they can't name their own competition, but are telling me their revenue is massive, I'm going to strongly question that.'

What I'm really looking for here is someone to funnel hack. If there's no one to funnel hack and they don't know who I can funnel hack, I get skeptical on the future success of the funnel right off the bat. I got to be able to funnel hack people who are being successful.

It's the other reason why I don't do start-ups, because if there's no one to compete with, it's ... You're a pioneer.

You're not modeling anybody. You're doing something that no one has done or no one's been successful with. That means that you might be drifting into an area where you're selling products that are based on improvement, not products that are new opportunities.

Improvement-based offers are terrible. New opportunities sell a lot, just right off the bat.

Anyway, you might be selling into a red ocean. Or, the ocean is so blue that the market isn't ready for it. How many of you guys use all the features in Excel, or do you just use the basic plus/minus multiplication, division features? It's the most ... Anyway. Different story.

Are they trying to be a market disrupter, or are they trying to make money? You know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to say.

Number four, how many products are they selling or can they offer? If they're selling complimentary products to their customers, I would know how to structure the funnel almost immediately. If they're only selling one product, I know we're probably going to have to make some of their product not just a funnel. That's fine, I just charge more. That's what I wrote.

Basically, are they selling more than one product? If they're selling more than one product, successfully, it's a really easy way to make the funnel. If they're only selling one thing, typically a funnel has at least two products, different variations at least, of the same product. If they don't have that and they want to make a ...

That's the hard part when insurance companies come to me and is like, "You guys have a single product, and your only other product is more insurance." I'm like, "Ugh. Like, we got to create another product here."

They're like, "Oh, okay."

All right, number five, what is their current monthly revenue? Some people will quote their glory days revenue.

Find out how much they're really making...

If they're spending their last dime to build a funnel with you, feel sketchy about it. What money will they have to drive traffic with? Plus, they get too needy. It's like going to a five star restaurant after not eating for two days. You'll hardly taste it and no one will enjoy the five stardom. Don't sell broke people. I know that I build high level funnel, and I don't want to sell level two ... business a level ten funnel. That sounds harsh, but you're actually doing a disservice if you do that.

Number six, do they already know what kind of funnel they want? This matters, because it's how I gauge their education level. If they know what kind of funnel they want already, I don't have to continually educate them on the vision of what I propose to build; and especially during the build. It's much easier.

Again, not a deal breaker but I go from being a funnel builder to a funnel builder plus coach. I need to allocate my time accordingly. If someone doesn't even know what funnels are, it's kind of like ... It's fine if it's this way, but you're going to be educating them a lot further.

One of the people I most recently built for, they pay the ten grand, they came in, they built ... Actually, I'm going to try and interview them here soon, so you guys can all see. It's really cool. It's a political campaign funnel for another country. I live in America, and it's for another country. He's actually about to get elected, and the funnel actually helped him take office. How freaking cool is that?

Anyway, but they already knew what kind of funnel they wanted. It made it really easy, because I could just build. I didn't have to coach. It's fine if you have to coach, I just have to change some things.

All right, number seven, do they know their numbers? Do they know how much it costs for them to acquire for somebody? CPA? Do they know what their average cart value is per customer? Do they know what their earnings per click are? Et cetera. If they already know the numbers, that helps a lot.

Number eight, do they have current and consistent traffic? If not, what's the plan to get it? If they don't have any kind of traffic flow that I could just drop something into, that's going to be hard. It'd be like if I went to ... I live in Idaho now.

I'm from Colorado. There's mountains and valleys all around us. There's rivers and dams where they put those hydroelectric generators in there to get electricity. It'd be like building a dam in the middle of a valley and then trying to find the water. That's what it's like when you're trying to build a funnel for somebody who does not already have traffic. It's very difficult.

It's so much easier to go find somebody who's ... It's like the Nile, they already got tons of traffic. Just drop a whole bunch of dams in there, you're going to get electricity off of it. It's the exact same principle. It's hard to build for somebody who doesn't have traffic yet. It's fine, again, if they don't. You got to know what the plan is. Who's driving it? Do they think it's you? I've had people who thought I was going to drive it.

I was like, "No." I'm like, "I'm not going to drive your traffic for you."

Anyway, number nine, what software and systems do they already? This is so big. This is an element we don't really talk about a lot, but you're going to become an integrations master if you're trying to build for other people.

Even if you're for your own funnel, you're going to have to be somewhat of an integrations master as well. Do they know they're going to require additional software and subscriptions to build their funnel?

Here's a little story. I had some people who wanted me to build a funnel using Infusionsoft. I ran the other way. I said "No."

Number ten, this is so big. Again, we don't really talk about this. Do they already have their own performing fulfillment? I wrote it all caps in here, selling and funnels is the sex of business. Fulfillment is the red headed stepchild with a mole on his forehead that no one wants to think about but will actually kill the business. I wrote a little story here.

I said, "I once ... " Yeah, I was stupid once and built a funnel years ago for somebody who had no fulfillment. I was just excited to get the client. I made them some quick cash in a couple days.

They frantically called me back and asked me to turn it off. They're like, "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

I was like, "Why? You guys are making all these sales! Are you kidding me? I just like two X'ed your company."

They're like, "I know, but we don't have ... We can't handle it." I ended up having to go build this whole inventory system in the back end. They got so gun shy from it making all these sales that they never turned it back on.

I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." They still wouldn't do it, though.

Number 11, I said "Finally, have they ever been successful in anything at all, ever?" That sounds harsh, but ... Anyway, I wrote a little note on this one, too. I said, "This might seem like a joke, but someone who's never done anything, ever, in life, at all, but who has all the previously mentioned steps, has potential to be a massive basket case of emotions. Then, you'll turn into an icky life coach again."

Unless they're really, really upping the price, I'd run the other way...

You're not trying to keep people out, but what you need to understand is that there's been people ... There's a guy I was building a funnel with once. It was for ... He was selling a book that was, once people read it, they automatically wanted to buy product for some supplement thing. It was a long time ago. It was probably, that was about four years ago, probably. Three and a half, four years ago. I was building a funnel for him.

This was before click funnels existed, but I was using things like Get Response, and WordPress, and things like that. I was building a funnel for him and literally every move I made, he was excited about but questioned like crazy. It was the most ... It was damming to my progress, just like a dam with water, but where it doesn't let the water through. I had to verify every single step the whole way, because he had never been successful in something before.

He was having little successes here and there, but nothing where he could let go a little bit and say "Okay, you take the reins. I trust the expertise, and you should back off ... I'm going to back off a little bit and you just go build this thing." These are all some of the lessons I've learned.

Again, this is kind of a long podcast but I wanted to show you guys some of that. Final note, and you can get this checklist and I'll show you out.

I said, "Final note, this list sifts out a lot of people, and I realize that. But, that's why I made this checklist for my personal use. Your goal, and it's honestly what I've been using in my head all along, and I had no idea; but if they didn't meet these criteria, which was different than a lot of the criteria that I've seen out there for other people...

But anyways, your goal is to match your funnel building skill level with the correct client for you. I waded through three plus years of bad, bad, bad clients to learn this. All right."

Then, I put the actual website there. It's a little checklist, a little asset that I put together for you guys. I think you're going to really like it. There's some spelling errors and stuff like that, but anyway I think you'll understand the point of it.

Guys, I wanted to ask you something. I've got actually a bit of announcement here, this is kind of a bittersweet thing for me, personally. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I'm actually leaving the public funnel building game.

I'm pretty sad about it...

Click Funnels is growing so fast. It's growing so incredibly fast. We're actually just trying to keep up. We've 3X'd, two years in a row. We're on track to do the same thing again this year. By the way, just so you know, that kind of thing doesn't really happen. We're extremely unique as a company, Click Funnels is.

To commemorate this whole 'Hey, I'm no longer going to be doing this thing,' I wanted to just take on my last few clients. I'm excited. I want to be able to focus more.

It's actually Russell has asked me. This is the reason I'm doing this is Russell's asked me to no longer really be doing anything more publicly, and to focus on helping him with Click Funnels. I completely understand what he's asking. I love Click Funnels, you guys, we are changing the world. It's so fun, but understand what I'm saying here.

What I'm going to do is I'm totally going to make you a cool deal for the last few people who want me to build for them. I have until the end of March to make this happen. I only have space for three people because I put my heart and soul into these funnels.

The thing I can promise and guarantee you, all my integrity, my very name, and maybe even my kids, is that I'll give you a sweet funnel. That that's something that that's what I do. It's all I do, every day, all day for ... It's been years, especially this last year with Russell. I've given some pretty big info on this podcast, you know what I mean?

I just wanted to obviously this type of information I'm giving you is not ... It's not going to do anything for you if you don't actually go build one.

The reason I'm doing this is like I said, I am publicly going to no longer be offering funnel building services. I've had to increase my coaching price. I first started hundred dollars an hour and I coached a lot of people and it was great; but I had no life. So I increased my price to take people even more serious, to $400 an hour; but it still, again, I had to stop. I bumped my price up again, just because I can't handle the volume.

I'm being totally honest and vulnerable with you guys right now as I say this. I'm going to make this quick. I know I've been going for about 30 minutes here, and I apologize. Hopefully you guys hear what I'm telling you.

You can get this checklist by going to SteveJLarsen.com. Also, there is a spot on there where you're going to see if you want to be one of my last three people, there's a spot for you to put down your name and a deposit. What will happen is I'll go through this checklist with you and I'll vet out your situation. If we're a fit, that deposit will go towards the price I charge for the funnel; which is ten grand. I thought about doubling my price, and that would be totally appropriate; but it's not even that. He wants me to stop building altogether; as far as external funnels. I'll still have my own projects that I'm building out, but I will no longer be doing it for other people.

I legitimately am taking four people, but I already have one gone. I'm building for my dad right now. His is almost done and I'm going to share behind the scenes of that here soon, just so you guys can learn what we did. It's kind of cool. It's very clever.

I don't think anyone really in the financial area is doing what we just pulled off. Then, I'm also building for a company called 'A Statue of Responsibility.' There's the State of Liberty on the East Coast, an equal sized statue called the Statue of Responsibility's going on the West Coast. They've asked me to build the funnel for them to make all the donations so that that statue can get built on the West Coast. They're just trying to figure out which city it's going to go in; so super cool stuff. That's basically it, so I mean technically that's five, but one of them's about done.

I only have room for three more clients. This is real urgency and scarcity, you guys. I know that we teach you guys to do the real urgency and scarcity, like 'Oh, it's never going to happen again!' This probably literally will never happen again, because I'm going to sink my teeth even farther into Click Funnels. I know that there are, and ...

I didn't just want to come out and say "Oh, you can't get any more funnels from me. I'm out and out of the count." Yeah, right. You can't. I'm tapping out. I literally had to ... I'm going to show you guys some of the things in here, but I literally had two choices. Russell and I have had some heart-to-hearts on it. Two choices.

Russell said, "Okay, man. Like, I really need more help with what I'm doing. You can go build your own stuff and keep this going, or stay with Click Funnels. And I want to help you, um, help you there, as well."

I was like, "Man, like this is just nice. My wife and I have been talking about it.

She's like "This is a weird, nice problem to have. You know, which direction are you going to take?" That doesn't mean ... It will probably be like five years before I go and accept a funnel build for somebody else, you know what I mean?

Unless again, it's like this inordinate amount of money. There's no way that I have time to do it anymore. This last little rah-rah. I just want to remind you guys that there's a lot of you guys I know that are thinking about hiring me. I've had 27 applications to build funnels just in the last little bit. 27! 90% of you guys I know sadly, you don't meet some of these criteria, or the ten grand is too much.

That's okay, just keep pushing it, keep rushing it. I can't build for you, and that's okay; but there are a lot of you, though, who do have the ten grand, who are wanting me to build.

I'm trying to give you this real urgency and scarcity and tell you that like, "Look, I cannot. I am not allowed. I can't. I can't move forward anymore building funnels after these three clients." Those are my two choices.

Literally, your two choices are whether or not I'm going to go build for you because this is real urgency and scarcity. I have to move on. The landscape of my profession and my path is starting to change. For three years, I built for start-ups. For this past year, I've only built for professionals, people with at least ten grand. I have a buddy who sells $50,000 funnels.

Anyway, ten grand for a funnel, the type that I build, I know it's actually dirt cheap...

I just want to remind you guys that ... It's kind of funny. You think about the attractive character, this is the reluctant hero category. I'm trying to show you guys the magician's hands, kind of like what Russell calls it. I'm trying to show you what I'm doing here. I am closing this, and so I actually wanted to make you guys an offer. I'm going to make you guys an offer right now. I'm excited to do it.

Not only are you guys gonna get a funnel that writes $10,000, I'll build you guys whatever kind of funnel you want. I'll do all the images. I'll help put the copy together. Videos will probably have to be done by you, so it's your face on them, but I'll help you put those together as well.

I'll help you write the emails, the fulfillment emails, which there's a lot more to do on those than I've noticed you guys do. All right, help you write the soap opera series, helping you write sticky emails that will get people back in to buy, even several weeks after they've left your funny. All the different communication pieces, and that's $10,000. That's a value of ten grand.

I remember the first time I charged ten grand. I was like, "This is crazy!" Then they went off and they did these amazing things. I was like, "Wow! Ten grand was nothing!" All right, I'm also going to give you guys every funnel I charge for. Every single one of them. That's about $1,000 value, almost; so I'm going to give you guys every single funnel.

You'll get the $10,000, and then you'll get the about another $1,000 in funnels that I use for MLM; the funnel that I used to get 650 people to a live event, which was crazy. It was in the middle of college. That was so amazing. We raised seven grand for charity. It was awesome, but I built that funnel. I'll give you that one.

You guys are going to get my insurance funnel. You'll get my podcasting funnel. You'll get my live coaching funnels, the funnel I use to get all my coaching stuff in. Which by the way, does quite a bit, monetarily.

Anyway, you guys are going to get all those for free. I'm just going to share funnel them over to you. I'm going to build the funnel for you. Then, I'll give you every funnel that I charge, I'll give it to you for free. That's 11 grand in value.

I'm also going to give you guys two coaching sessions post-build. This is huge. I charge $1,000 for an hour now. That's a $2,000 value. A lot of you guys, post-build, I've noticed will want to ... Obviously you're going to want another coaching session.

It's like a check-up, it's like going back to the doctor after a surgery. 100% totally get it, so I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free. I'll do it like two weeks after, and then one month after I'm done building. Usually my building period is two weeks, so within two weeks you'll have your funnel back; dependent on how quick you can get me the assets that I need.

There's the built funnel for ten grand. Every funnel that I charge, for free, I'll give that to you for free. That's another $1,000. Two coaching sessions, that's $2,000. Then, I'm also going to give you ... Guys, I don't think a lot of you guys know, but I do a lot of stuff with the affiliate game.

I've only got like 20 affiliates for Click Funnels, but it makes an extra grand a month; which is awesome. I don't do anything for that. I'm going to give you the email series I use to get people in the door. It's worth a $1,000 a month to me, right now. A real, real cost and I don't do anything. I should drive ads. I should drive traffic to it.

I don't, and it still makes a $1,000 a month. I'm going to give you that specific email sequence, which is awesome. It's worth $1,000 a month.

Again, get the funnel built. I'll give you ever funnel I've ever charged for, for free. Two coaching sessions, my affiliate email sequence. Then, the last thing I'm going to give you guys is I want to feature you guys on the podcast. I think it'd be cool for everybody if you guys, if we go and we peel back the funnel, maybe after the coaching sessions are done or whatever.

We go through and we show the progression of the funnel, and we show how what we're doing. I thought it'd be really cool to feature you guys on the podcast so that everyone can see what we did and how we pulled it off. All together, that's like $15,000 in value. Obviously I charge ten grand for it. I'm going to give you guys $5,000 off, free for that. That's real urgency and scarcity.

If you guys go to SteveJLarsen.com, you'll be able to download the checklist. Then, right after that on the next page, you can hold your spot. Again, it's $500 just as the deposit to hold your place. The reason I do that is because a lot of people want me to build their funnels, but the $500 helps me know that you're serious and in a position for me to build your funnel. If it doesn't work, I give you the $500 back.

That's no risk to you at all. If we are building the funnel together, then it just goes towards the $10,000 price. That's only $9500 after that.

That's it, guys. Go to SteveJLarsen.com. Again, my full name is Stephen Joseph Larsen but it's SteveJLarsen.com. You can download the checklist that I use to vet companies. You can use it to vet your own, and how much a funnel will blow up your business. Then you can also reserve one of my last three places for funnel building. Some real urgency and scarcity on this, okay? You guys have 'til the very last day in March to do this. The very last day in March. I have to do this now. You know what?

Actually, what's the date? I only have two weeks, because I have to have the funnels almost done by the end of March. Anyway, the countdown clock for the real world time that I have to stop building funnels publicly, or I get in trouble, because I need to focus inwardly on Click Funnels. It will be done. Go to SteveJLarsen.com, get the checklist, and go to the next page. You'll be able to see what that all is.

Guys, thanks so much. Again, you get the funnel built, ten grand. Get every funnel I've built and charged for free. I'll give you everything I have. Then, I'm going to give you guys two coaching sessions for free, for two grand; and then my email sequence for all my affiliates that gets loaded straight into your Actionetics.

I can share link all my email sequence straight into your Actionetics account, which is awesome. Then, I'm going to feature you on the podcast. I think everyone will get a lot of value from that, actually. That's going to be really cool. That's real world value of over 15 grand. I'm going to give it to you for $10,000. Anyways, guys, again, SteveJLarsen.com. I will talk to you guys later. Bye.

  continue reading

378 episodes

All episodes

×
 
Loading …

Welcome to Player FM!

Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.

 

Quick Reference Guide