Russell Brunson: How to Build a Million-Dollar Sales Funnel

Welcome back to the show. And today, I have the pleasure of interviewing one of my role models and new friends, Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson is the CEO and founder of ClickFunnels. He's one of the most famous internet marketers in the world, and he's also the host of The Marketing Secret Show, as well as a bestselling author of many marketing books.

We are going to go deep on a number of things in today's episode. We just had an hour together, which was not enough time. Russell promised me he would be coming back on at least once a year. And today, we got a chance to cover funnels. We talked about webinars. We went super deep on webinars, how to create effective ones. We also talked a lot about psychology and sales, and he just dropped so many gems in this episode. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. This was one of my favorite episodes of 2024, just because it was packed with so much value. Russell really dropped so much knowledge about marketing and sales. I learned so much personally. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Without further delay, here's my conversation with Russell Brunson.

Russell, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited too.

So, Russell, you are actually my big pinch-me moment of the year. I remember back in March, I got a website inquiry, and it was from Russell Brunson. And Russell Brunson was asking me, "Hey, I've heard a lot about you. I'm interested in joining your network." And I couldn't believe my eyes because I'm in marketing, and I've always looked up to you. And I've always known about Russell Brunson since I just, you know, was just starting out in marketing. And so it was such an awesome moment to get a message from you asking to join my network. I literally couldn't believe my eyes.

Well, it's funny because, like, you know, I obviously, I've had a podcast for a long, long time, like over a decade. I've been running podcasts just kind of on my own as a silo. And I was talking to Jenna Kutcher, who's a, you know, friend of both of ours. And I've been watching her podcast blow up and all the things she's doing. And she's like, "You just need to meet Holla." And so that was kind of the introduction. And, um, started watching what you were doing for a while. I usually like to observe before I jump in. And so I was watching what you were doing for a long time. And then, yeah, just got excited to come jump in and start working with you. And, um, and it's been amazing so far. So thank you for for having me and having me as part of the network.

Part of the network. Thank you so much. Welcome to YAP Media Network. And shout out to Jenna Kutcher. You know, I always tell my listeners, it's all about just doing good work and doing the best that you can. And when you do that, good things will just happen to you. So shout out to Jenna and you for joining the network.

Okay, so you are an online marketing guru. You're really famous for creating ClickFunnels. It's this software that helps people drive leads and sales. You have hundreds of thousands of active users. You got to $100 million in your first year. And so I want to understand, how did you first learn the power of online marketing and building funnels?

Yeah, I don't think a lot of people know is I've been playing this game for a long, long, long time. Before funnels, before Facebook, before. In fact, I remember when I got started, I was in college, and this is before Myspace even came out. Because I remember we were trying to do marketing online, and all of a sudden, this new thing came out called Myspace. And we were all freaking out because we were so excited. This is going to be a new platform we could drive traffic from. So I've been doing this game for a long time since I was in my early 20s. I was in college and, and I was doing digital marketing before that. Again, we were just trying to figure things out. Like, it's weird looking back now. I'm like, I don't even know how we got leads because we couldn't, there was no social media, we couldn't buy ads, you know, it was just a different game back then. But that's kind of when I got started, and I was trying to figure out how to start businesses online. And, uh, Google was just coming out right then. I remember Google Pay-Per-Click ads, like this new thing that we were all testing out. And we were trying. And so that's kind of how I got started way back then. And, you know, I did this for a decade. A decade as somebody who was just creating offers and launching them and putting them out there. You know, I had, I had an offer selling people, teaching people how to make potato guns. I partnered with somebody who was teaching couponing. I partnered with somebody who was the world's fastest reader. So we were creating these different courses and products way back then for 10 years before, you know, we started buying ads on Facebook. And then that's about the time that we we built the the software platform ClickFunnels. That was actually a decade ago. We launched that. And, you know, the last 10 years has been crazy as we've been now teaching people how to do that and giving them software to make it simple. And, um, that's kind of how I got started way back, man, 20 something, 20 something years ago now.

Yeah, sounds like you were just like experimenting, figuring out, like you said, your first offer was how to create a potato gun, which I had to like Google like what a potato gun even was. Like, I'm a city girl, I had no idea. So I love that. I love that you've just been experimenting and getting really awesome at your craft. And I read or I heard, I don't remember where I read it or where I heard it, but you basically were like, "Hey, like, I'm not the best operator. Like, I'm not the best operator of business. My passion is the art, the art of creating funnels." And so I'd love to understand, what kind of art goes into creating a good funnel?

Yeah, it's actually interesting. I remember I had this conversation with Tony Robbins because Tony was similar. Tony was like, "I'm not an entrepreneur. He's like, my art is changing people's lives." And I had to learn business to be able to do my art, right? To get people to actually show up. I feel like for me, it was similar. Like, um, you know, funnels for me, it's funny because I look at the whole world through funnels. Every time someone's got a problem, I'm like, there's always a funnel that'll solve almost any problem, right? But for me, it's like, um, I love looking, like when I, when I'm online, I probably do things different than most people. Like, I love going through social media specifically to see ads. And then I'll see an ad, I get so excited if it if it stops me in my tracks. I'm like, "Oh!" And so I click on it. I'm like, "This is amazing." And then I will go and like, literally every time I click on an ad, I take a picture of the ad first. And then I go to the landing page. I take, I take a screenshot of the landing page. And I go and I opt-in. I take a screenshot of the next page. And I have like thousands of funnels saved. I go through every single page in the funnel because I want to see the process, right? Because there's the first part of the art is just understanding the psychology. If I'm taking somebody from a cold ad, where am I taking them? What's the first step? What's the second step? What's the third step, right? So that's kind of the first part is the structure. Kind of similar in my mind, like the structure of a house, right? Like, here's the framework that we're taking somebody through. But then on every ad and every page, there's always three things I look at. Like, every ad will have a hook, a story, and then an offer. And every landing page has a hook, a story, and an offer. And then every sales page has a hook. Like, those those elements are on every single page. So I was look at that, okay, what's hook, story, offer this part of the funnel? What's hook, story, offer this part? You know, and I look at those kinds of things. And then I like looking at, you know, how they tell their story and how they're doing it in a way that gets me excited to want to buy their product or to, you know, how does it, how does this story increase the perceived value of the thing they want me to buy? And so for me, like that's the art. Like I love studying it and looking at. I look at everybody's funnels, what everyone's doing, and then I just learn from that. And then from there, when I'm building my own funnels, you know, I'm looking at, here's all these these ideas, here's all these things people are doing. And I try to bring the best of those things into my funnels. And I always tell people who come into my world, I'm like, if you want to buy something from me, like, you, like, please buy it because I want you to buy the product, right? But more importantly, I'm like, buy things from me very, very slowly. Because I'm like, if you look at any page inside of any of the funnels, like, this is not me just throwing up something and hoping it works. This is like me. I will go look at, like, let's say I'm doing a a book funnel or a webinar funnel. I will go through and look at 50 to 100 webinar funnels before I build my next webinar funnel, every time. And I'm studying and looking and pulling the best practices in. So like, when I'm building out my webinar funnel, it's it's like the best art in the world. Like it's all the best practices you can dream of in every single page. And so, um, yeah, that that's the art for me. So the rest of the business got built around that. Like, I just wanted to build funnels. You know, initially, like, it was, it took us so long to build a funnel. Like, we would take a team of like seven or eight of us about 90 days to build a funnel in the past. And so ClickFunnels, we built the software to speed up the process for me, so I could build a funnel in a day versus, uh, you know, 3 months. And then everything else kind of came on the back side of that. And then teaching entrepreneurs the same thing and trying to show them, like, here's the best practice. Like, you want to build a book funnel, this is what it looks like. You want to build a webinar funnel, this is what the best ones look like. And, um, that's kind of been our calling for the last decade is just try to shortcut people so they don't have to geek out as much as I do and look at every funnel. But we can give them like templates and things like, this is the best practices in a simple way for you to to model.

I love that. And I can I can just hear all the passion in your voice. And I teach marketing too. And something that I always tell my students is like, it's all about the nuance, right? It's like these little tiny tweaks that get people to make the decisions that you want them to make. So can you talk about subtle nuances that people can do within their funnels that can make or break their funnels?

Yeah, so first off, it comes back to what I mentioned earlier. So there's always three things in every page of a funnel: so hook, a story, and an offer. And I always tell people, like, if you were to hire me, uh, I do console days for $100,000 a day. And people fly out here. And like, I always tell, like, the only thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at every page in the funnel, and it's either going to be a hook, a story, or an offer. Like, one of those things is is always off, right? So, good example, I have someone that's in my inner circle, and they had a webinar that was, um, teaching people how to, like, make money with local reviews or something like that, right? And they had this webinar, and they had a webinar that was really good. The landing page, registration, everything was there. Right? But it was costing them, I think on average, it cost them like $25 per lead to get someone to register for a webinar. And then from that, it was like, I think they're like 12% of people who registered actually showed up. So it's costing like $150 for every person to show up on this webinar. And then the webinar was actually converted really good. Like, they're teaching the process, they sold a really good offer, and they did really, really well. But it was just the conversions were bad. And so they wanted me to help them rebuild the entire funnel and the webinar and everything. And I was like, "I don't think it's that big. I think you're just missing one thing." I said, "When I look at the registration page, their headlining was something like, 'Learn how to make money with helping local businesses with local reviews.'" I was like, "The problem with that is there's no curiosity." When I see that, I'm like, "Oh, this is a webinar teaching people how to make, you know, they're going to teach me how to make money with local reviews." And if you think you know the answer already, then first off, you're not going to register. And if you do register, you may or may not show up. But you're like, "I think I know this. I'll register and if I, you know, if I'm bored, maybe I'll show up." Right? And so all we did is we took that was like, let's just change the hook and make it more like, let's make more curiosity in the hook. And so we changed it from "how to make money teaching people how to do local reviews" or whatever, to like, um, something like, "This is the loophole we found to help, uh, make extra money helping local businesses." And this is not, and we talked about all the things it wasn't. This is not doing Facebook ads. This is not doing Instagram. This, whatever, all the things that people might think it was. Talk about what it was not. And said, "Register to find out exactly what this new thing is, and then we'll show you how to use it inside your business." So we just made it more curiosity-based. That's all we changed on the registration page. And it went from like $25 per registrant to now I started getting registers at $5 a piece. So it dropped the cost down to one-fifth. And then because people didn't know what it was unless they showed up, their show-up rate went from like 12% to like 26%. Wow. And so between those two things, all of a sudden, the the metrics of the business changed. And this funnel went on to make them millions of dollars, just by changing a hook on a page, right? So that's how, like, you're talking about, it's just like simple psychology that, like, these little tiny tweaks, the little tiny changes have huge impact across the funnel, right? And so for me, like, that's what I'm always looking for. That's why I look at so many people's funnels just to get ideas of like, "Oh, look how they did that. Look how they did this." And the more I see people buying ads, like the tell-tale sign of like, people always ask me, "How do you know if a funnel is working?" Like, if the company is spending a lot of money on ads, and you keep seeing it over and over and over again, they're probably doing something right. And so I'll click on it. I'll go look at, like, "Oh, look how they did that. Look how they framed that. Look how they made this offer. Look what, you know." And we're just looking at those little things. And they'll come back and test them on our pages. And like I said, a little tweak like that can dramatically change the metrics of a business. So, um, it's like searching for buried treasure and then applying it back to your business, which is so much fun.

Yeah, you're making me feel inspired like I should go look at every related business and see how they do their funnels and what's working and what's not working. So you said you have this superpower where you can take any product, any service, and then you can determine how it should best be sold online, like what the funnel should look like, what the messaging, the script should look like, what the sales process should be. So I thought we could do a little quick game where I tell you, since you said it's a superpower, I'll tell you a business idea, and you tell me, what do you, how do you think it should be sold? What do you think the funnel should look like? What do you think some of the messaging should be and stuff like that? And it could be super quick and high-level. Are you good for this?

Yeah, that'd be fun. Go.

All right. Number one is a high-ticket social media agency with retainer services. How would you build? What's the typical price point on that?

Let's say it is $5,000 a month.

Okay, very cool. And traditionally, when you sell that, do you get somebody on the phone to sell that, or do you try to sell off a page, or what, what do, how does it normally work in your world?

In my world, because I have a social agency, so I'll just, I'll just answer for myself. Usually, it's a discovery call. And it's most my business is unique. It's mostly referrals because I have so much social proof. So the leads come to me. But for the average person, I'd say they're like posting on social media, maybe retargeting with a DM, and then having a discovery call.

Gotcha. Cool. So my my experience with something like that, where it's, for me, if it's, if the price point is like under $2,000, for most people, we can sell that off of a webinar, no close, no phone call needed, right? When you get to $5,000, especially $5,000 with like recurring, 100% I agree that you need to get someone on a on a call, right? Strategy call, discovery call, things like that. So knowing that's the end goal, right? So the end goal is to create a strategy call. Now, what I'm looking for is like, okay, how do I make it so by the time they get to the strategy call, they're already pre-sold? And when they're jumping on the strategy call, it's not me trying to sell them, it's them trying to sell me on why I should accept them, right? That's those are the positioning things I'm trying to do. So my very first thing I would do is I would probably create the landing page would be like a case study. Like, "Let me show you a free case study about how we were able to..." And then find like one or two or three of your clients that you've done really, really cool things for. I'd build a case study around that, right? So the first page is like, "Give us your email address. I'm going to show you a free case study about how I took, uh, Jenna Kutcher, Russell Brunson, and so and so, and we 3x their views and made them each $100,000 a month in advertising cost, uh, by making these three little simple tweaks to their campaign or to their their podcast." Right? Something like that. Because that would be intriguing for me. In fact, the way you sold me, by the way, as you probably know, is you showed me a quick video like, "Here's the three things I would change on how you're doing things to increase." And then I saw three things. I was like, "This makes 100% sense. 100% sense. Let me give her my money right away." Right? I'd be a a case study like that. And then I would just, "Oh, hey, I, you know, I started working with Jenna." So sorry, that's page one. Page two, then is there'd be a video headline. The video would be like, uh, "Free Case Study Reveals How to blah blah blah." And I'd have the video down below. Had them watch the video, and I would show the case studies of of Russell, of Jenna, of someone else, right? "Here's what we did. Here's the tweaks we made. They're very simple, very easy." And then underneath that, then I'd have a a link to where they can apply for a discovery call. Um, and I would make it very exclusive. In fact, I would probably charge for the discovery call. It's been like, "Hey, you know, obviously, we work with clients of this caliber. If you're interested in working with us, basically the way it works is you put $100 down, deposit. This is refundable if we don't work with you. If we do work with you, it applies towards the first month." But that way, you have some kind of gate there. That way, you don't get a million people applying. And that would set up the discovery call. So now you got a really cool funnel. And now you can go out there and the advertising would be basically like, "Hey, um, do you want to see a free case study about how I got Jenna, Russell, and so and so this result? If so, check out the page." And send to the page. Now you go to podcast or different interviews. It's really simple. Again, the call to action would be like, "Hey, if you want me to show you exactly how I did this, I have a free case study over at Russellfreestudy.com. Go check it out." And then from there, you can push people from social, from podcast interviews, from everything into this funnel that then gets people pre-qualified to give you money for your agency.

This is so good. I feel like so many of my listeners are going to find so much value at this because you could do this with any basically professional service that's a retainer offering. So it's really, really smart. One more thing to drill down on this: why do you want to make it so exclusive? Tell us about how that kind of switches the power dynamic, or what are you trying to do by making it, it seem like they've got to apply to you, not that you need them as a customer?

Yeah, two things. Number one is it makes it easier for you operationally. My first business, I built, I was outbound calling every lead that came in. We were trying to sell them, and it was expensive. I had 60 full-time salespeople. I had to get a huge office. We had all his expenses because we were chasing people. Uh, and most people aren't qualified. Most people have no idea why we're calling. It was just, it was a nightmare. We made money, but it was it was such a grind. It was so expensive. And anyway, uh, eventually, we let go of all 60 salespeople. We built a funnel very similar to what I'm talking about right now. I had two salespeople, and I was like, "Okay, I cannot, they can't go outbound call people." So said, "Let's get people to raise their hand." And so we shifted it. So it gave us the ability to go from 60 salespeople to just two and get pretty similar volume on how much money we were making, which was fantastic, without the cost and stuff. But number two is, um, the the principle we call the takeaway sell. Right? And if you think about this, the the psychology behind this, like, when when someone's chasing you trying to sell you something, like they feel like this pushy, annoying salesperson. Right? Instead, what I wanted, I want to create desire in something, right? But then take it away. So it's like, "Hey, I have this amazing thing, but I take it away." For example, I have an inner circle. My high-end coaching program is Inner Circle with 100, only 100 people can be in there, right? And before I, I capped 100 people, I had it where it was like, anybody who we could sign up with, we're going that. And it took us three or four years to get. We had about 35 people in that group paying every single year. And I was like, "I want to get this bigger." I remember I decided. I was like, "I'm going to cap it at 100 people." And I'm going to cap it out. In my mind, I was like, "That's, I'm so far from 100 people. This will never actually happen." Right? It took me three years to get 30 people, 35 people to say yes. But I switched it. I said, "Okay, this is exclusive. There's only 100 people. When the seats are gone, they're gone." And I put it out there. I remember emailing my list. I said, "Hey, you guys have seen me talk about Inner Circle. You've seen the success stories coming out of it. We're only going to have 100 people. And when it caps out, it's sold out." I put that messaging out there. And I made them apply. Like, "Let me know why you're a good fit because we only have 100 seats. And when they're, you know, we got to make sure the right people are in here." And it was crazy because people started submitting these applications. They would call us on the phone. I had people sending me gifts in my home. I don't know how I got my home address. It was kind of creepy, like begging me, "Let me be one of the people." It was crazy. And in like 3 months, we sold out all the to the 100 spots. And it was crazy. And then there's a waiting list. And I was like, "It just shifts the shifts the psychology, right?" Right? I'm not chasing them, begging them to sell. I'm putting in something where it's like they have to apply to be part of it. And so that's been the the biggest thing for us is is creating a takeaway sell situation where you're taking something away from people. Because, you know, I look at my kid. I got five kids. It's the same way. If I'm like, "Hey, I need you to do chores." Kids don't want to do it. But if I can position it differently where it's like, "Hey, only one of you guys get to do this, but this is why it's so exciting." Then my kids are fighting over doing the chore because they want the, you know, they want to be the one to get the the benefit from it. So it's all about creating desire and then taking it away. And then that gets people to start coming to you.

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Okay, the next one is a low or medium ticket software offering.

Oh, very cool. So like a recurring software continuity? Yes, like signing up for ClickFunnels, for example.

Yeah, okay. So for ClickFunnels, if you look at the way, you know, we've been running this for 10 years, and there's two core funnels that I use. So one of them is a trial funnel. Someone comes up, they get a free 14-day trial to test it out. And I love that one because it gives people no risk to come in and try it out. They get on a month, they get try for a month, and or sorry, 14 days, and then it starts billing them afterwards. The problem with that is it's really hard to spend a lot of money on ads that way, right? Because it might cost me $100 to get somebody to take a free trial, and then, you know, for most people, can't grow a business that way. You know, you have to wait two or three months for them to, for you to get your money back. And it can be really stressful if you don't have a lot of money to be able to do that, right? So then the second funnel I use is a webinar funnel. And in during the webinar, what I do is I sell $1,000. I sell basically year access to the software for $1,000. So smart, right? So what happens that when somebody registers? So I'll promote my webinar. They register for the webinar. On the thank you page, after they register for the webinar, before the webinar starts, I tell people, "Hey, the webinar is about to start, but I want you to get a free trial to our software so you can play with it before the webinar starts. That way, when you show up to the webinar, and I'm teaching you about, you know, exactly how to use it." So they register for the free webinar, right? They're offered, they're offered a trial, a 14-day trial on the thank you page. Then the webinar happens, and during the webinar, I'm teaching them how to use funnels. I explain everything. And then I make them a special offer where where they can get, um, a year for, you know, it would normally be $1,200 a year. They can get $1,200, basically two months for free, right? So they get a really special offer. And I added a bunch of other bonuses there. We sold it for $1,000. And that way, when people buy the $1,000 offer, it covers my ad spend. And that way I can spend money. And then, but with that, people start joining the trial. So a good example, the very first year of ClickFunnels, this is how that was our playbook. And, um, after year, it was kind of crazy is we had, we had, um, 2,500 people who had signed up for the $1,000 offer, right? Which is basically $2.5 million collected. But that money we collected, that wasn't like our profit. We took that money and we put that money back into ads. That's how we started growing the company, right? But from the 2,500 people that gave us the $1,000, 7,500 people had signed up for the trials and actually stuck. And so you look at 7,500 people times $97 a month, like that was the business. That was that was where we made our money. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally makes sense. And so those two funnels together is how we grew ClickFunnels. And I, everyone who comes to me, like, "How's the software coming? How do we grow? How do I grow my software?" Like, this is the blueprint. How we did it. It worked insanely well. So that's kind of how I would definitely do it.

Yeah, I'm going to make sure that we spend a bunch of time on webinars. I also have been doing webinars a lot. I love them so much. So I want to pick your brain on that.

Okay, the last one is a local brick-and-mortar car wash.

Okay, interesting. The local ones are always fun because not a lot of people do funnels in the markets. So anyone who comes in with a local market usually crushes. In fact, one of my friends is a dentist, and she created an Invisalign funnel, and she blew up her practice, like completely filled it up in like a couple of weeks. And then she licensed that funnel to all these other dentists, and they've all blown up their practices. So if you can figure out local funnels, it's really good. Okay, so a local car wash. I'm trying to think, the first question I would ask is like, what are, without doing the research, like, what are offers that car washes have used in the past through direct mail or TV or radio to get people in? I'm assuming it's probably some kind of like free wash or free.

I actually dated somebody who owned a car wash, funny enough, for like two weeks. And he told me that his big thing was that getting people to become members, to subscribe to the car wash.

Oh, very cool. Okay, so they sign for membership and they get, I think, I know my wife's on a car wash membership where she pays, I don't know, $30 bucks a month.

$30 bucks a month for a car wash? Yeah, very cool. Okay, so what I would do is I would try to first off, I'd try to create some kind of offer, right? Because memberships are typically hard to sell by themselves. I'm okay, what else can I package together to make a really irresistible offer, right? So for me, it's I would look at, especially the car wash, I'm thinking the car wash here in our neighborhoods right over here, and there's like, there's a couple of restaurants around, there's, uh, haircuts, places, three or four really cool things right in the vicinity. So I would go to those different businesses like, "Hey, um, I'm going to bring people to the car wash. People come to the car wash, they're going to need their haircuts, they're going to need fast food, they're going to need..." And I'm like, "Can I create something where I get a free haircut from you? A free lunch from you? A free, you know, pick three or four things?" And they make an offer, right? And so then that would be the offer. The offer would be something like, "Hey, when you come in and join the car wash membership club, you're going to get your first wash for free, plus you're going to get free food at Taco Bell, a free haircut, free cookies at, uh, so delicious." I think things are out there. And that's going to be the offer when you come in. So I make that offer, then I'd create, I'd create a funnel. And I would probably make it to look similar to, do you remember Groupon and LivingSocial? I'd make the page look similar to that because people locally are used to those styles. Like, "I have the offer like, 'Hey, when you come in for you join the free car wash, you get this. Here's the other things you get.'" And I make the page look very similar to that. And then I would just go target Facebook ads to people within like, I don't know, 10-mile radius of the car wash. And I would blanket it so that every time any of those people opened Facebook or Instagram, all they saw was my offer for the free car wash with the other bonuses. And I would drive all the traffic to that page.

What's the importance of adding those bonuses? What does that do psychologically to people?

Yeah, it's always, um, so I always talk about there's like, there's two ways to be the cheapest person in town, right? And this is where people mix it up. They always think like, okay, especially people who don't understand psychology and marketing, they always want to be the lowest price leader, right? So there's like, there's two car washes competing. One guy's like, "I'll do it for $10." Next guy, "I'll do it for $9." "I'll do it for $8." And they try to compete by price until eventually they cut all their margins away, right? And my mentor, uh, is a guy named Dan Kennedy. And Dan Kennedy told me one time, he said, he said, "If you can't be the lowest price leader in town, there's no advantage of being the second lowest price leader, right?" So like, if you want to be, if you can be Walmart, cool. But if you're like, "I'm a little more expensive than Walmart, but I'm also cheaper." There's no advantage there, right? But being the most expensive in town, there is a huge strategic advantage of being the most expensive. So I never try to to increase my value by lowering the cost. I try to increase my value by adding value on top of things, right? And then it seems cheaper, seems less expensive. So now, by by making this offer, it's like, I'm still paying $10 for the car wash, the other guy's paying. But I also get free lunch, free haircut, free all these other things. And all of a sudden, like, it seems cheaper, even though it's the same price. Or I can make it a premium where it's more expensive, but it still seems cheaper because I'm getting these other things, this other value on top of it. So anytime I create any kind of offer, my number one thing is like, "How do I increase the perceived value of this so that it seems cheaper without having to cut any price?" And when you do that, then that's what makes marketing fun. Well, people like, in fact, we've done this with chiropractors where people will drive past five different chiropractors in town to get to the sixth chiropractor because his offer seems seems cheaper, even though it costs more a lot of times, because the value that they wrapped on top of that. Um, and a lot of times the value doesn't cost you any extra money, right? It doesn't cost these other companies money to give you the coupons for their things. It just gives them a new customer in the door. So it's a huge value add for them as well. And, um, yeah, that's why it's so good.

I love that advice. So a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs. So that just helped them. A lot of them are aspiring entrepreneurs. And I always say, you know, the easiest way to become an entrepreneur is to just do something that you're good at, sell a service that you're good at. I was good at social media, I started a social agency. I was good at getting sponsors, I started a podcast network. It's the easiest thing to do. Um, so how can you know when you're ready and that you're a true expert at what you do and you can start selling your expertise?

First off, 100% agree. I think anybody when they're first getting started, like picking a service that you or a thing that you can do, um, and becoming really good, like that's the easiest way to get started. Then eventually it turns into businesses and services and courses or whatever else. Um, but I think the biggest part is most people, I don't know, I have a very, um, obsessive-compulsive personality. Like when I get excited about something, like I go deep, and I get, I geek out really, really deep. Right? So it helps me to get leverage over other people because I, I go deep on these topics. So for anybody doing this, like I would say, okay, if you want to be in the business world, again, you, as you know, there's so many different services people need. Like we need funnel builders, we need designers, people drive traffic, we need people do social media, we need people to do video editing, people to do, like, there's so many different pieces of the puzzle that make any kind of business work. So first off, it's looking at all those kind of things. And then figuring out what you actually like to do. So I'd recommend even for a lot of people, if you don't know yet, like go find an entrepreneur you look up to and go volunteer. Go work for them for free. Go move to their city. Like, "I'm going to work for you. Let me figure out." And just try a bunch of things until you find something that you actually have interest in or passion, right? I mean, I have people on my team that full-time, all they do for a living now is write emails because they came into our world and they're like, "I really like the email thing." They became obsessed with that. They started studying emails. They got, and like, some of these guys make six-plus figures a year writing emails, right? And it's like, that seems so dumb. Like, how hard is it to write emails? Right? But because that person got so good at it and they loved it, they became obsessed with it, that's what their thing is, right? For you, sponsorships, like you, great. Or social media, or, um, writing captions on on Facebook posts. Like, there's so many little pieces. And if you become excellent at something, a lot of people that are okay, a lot of people that can do the work. But when you find someone who can become amazing at the thing and specialize in it, that's worth a lot of value, right? So figure out that, figure out the lane you want to go. And then become obsessed with it, is number one. Then from there, it's like doing it for a client for the entrepreneur until you can prove a result there. It's like, "Okay, now I've got a result there. Now let me do it. Now me shift from like a, you know, this is my full-time job thing to like, let me start an agency. I can do it for five entrepreneurs or 10 entrepreneurs, right?" And then, you know, from there, if you get really good, you can make a course, and it kind of blossoms into all the other things you could do with your with your skill and your expertise.

I learned something new about you when I was studying for you for this interview. You said that outside of, you know, the business world, I guess you feel more shy and reserved. But here you are on camera, you're so energetic, you're so like outgoing. For those aspiring entrepreneurs out there who feel like they're shy, and nowadays you need a personal brand. Honestly, it, you don't need one, but it will turbocharge your success if you have a personal brand. Can you speak to them and give them some inspiration in terms of they can do this too?

Yeah, for sure. Um, in fact, it's funny because people never believe me until they see me in my real life that I'm very introverted. In fact, I go to church, and no one in my world, no one goes to church and even knows who I am or what I do, because I'm just kind of like hanging out inside, you know. I remember I did a podcast episode one time on this. I said, "I feel like I'm an introvert in an extrovert's clothing." Right? I see these extroverts who feel so comfortable, they go out there to talking to everyone and all that stuff. And like, I can't do that. Like, I see that and I'm like, I'm always envious of, like, I wish I had that skill set. I could walk into a crowd and just talk. Um, but for some reason, I wasn't blessed with that. But then I started like understanding myself, right? Because again, I'm very nervous when I, when I see someone one-on-one, I'm having this conversation. But when I can prepare for something and I get on stage, like I feel very comfortable in front of 100 or a thousand or 10,000 people. It feels less stressful to me than a one-on-one conversation in the hallway. Like, I'd rather die than do that. It scares me so bad. I don't know why. Or phone calls. Like, my number one favorite in this world is phone calls. Like I hate when the phone rings. Like I only answer for my wife and nobody else. Like it just, there's, I get anxiety. Um, but I realized it's, it's actually really fascinating. If you look at, um, most really good entertainers, actors, people who are on stage, uh, entrepreneurs who are on stage a lot, most of them are introverted. And when I started learning about introverts, is we like to create things privately and then present them publicly. Versus extroverts come and they, they're processing live in in real time and stuff like that. And so what I found is that introverts actually do really do better, a lot of times, in these in these roles in being social media, being the face of a brand, because we have to go and at least for me, like I have to prepare a lot behind the scenes, get my thoughts, get things figured out, and I come in and I can present things in a way that's simpler, that's clear. Whereas extroverts, a lot of times they jump in. Nothing against extroverts, like again, I wish I had more of that in me. But extroverts can, they process externally, so they're talking, they're like figuring things out on

The Fly, which is amazing, but also, like, a lot of times, the things they're teaching may not be as clear the very first time because they're not, like, you know, thought through. So for introverts, just understand, like, you don't have to be an extrovert. You don't have to just, like, go live anytime you want. You can sit back and think through your frameworks and figure things out and, like, prepare things ahead of time and then present them publicly.

But, yeah, if you think of, look at most really good actors or actresses, like, most of them are very introverted, but they can perform because they prepared over here and they perform externally. So I don't know, hopefully that gives some hope. Uh, because, yeah, like, you came to one of our events and I had a chance to talk to you. Probably like, man, Russell is so weird and awkward, like, nervous. I was the nervous one. I was like, kept the conversation going because I was just too nervous. I was like, okay, well, yeah.

I think it's part of, and, like, what's fun about this too is, like, most social media stuff, like, you can record on your phone and then, and then post it later. It doesn't have to be, like, that scary interaction of, like, I'm live. And eventually, you'll get more comfortable. Like, for me, again, I got started 20 years ago. So this is before we had webinars. But back then, we had tel-seminars. So I cut my teeth learning how to speak on a tel-seminar.

You would dial a phone number, and I had an admin number, and I would invite people to this call. I'd push it, and I'd pick up the phone. I had no idea if there was one person listening or 100. I just hoped. So I'd get in there, and then I had to talk for an hour, just to myself. I remember feeling so weird. And so I had to pretend like the people were there. I would talk to myself. And then I only knew if people were on the call if somebody bought something later. I'm like, oh, somebody bought something. That means somebody must have actually showed up. But we didn't know back then, right?

Later, GoToWebinar came out, and then Zoom, and you could see people were there. But that's how I had to learn. So I was just practicing talking on a phone by myself, hoping that someone was there. You guys, nowadays, we have the chance to, like, practice on your phone and practice till you feel comfortable. You could try 10 times, then post the one that you're actually proud of at the end of the day.

So, yeah, and to your point, when you get obsessed with something and you're so good at something really specific, like a part of a marketing process, like writing emails, now you're, you're, you're confident because Ed Mylett told me, "Confidence breeds confidence," right? So it's like, now suddenly you can talk and you're energetic about it because you know, you know more than 99% of people about this one specific thing. Yeah, for sure. It's like it's your baby. And that's what's fun too, is like you start seeing nuances inside of your art that's different than other people, and you start sharing that, and people are like, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool." And then, yeah, the confidence breeds more confidence because you're like, "I shared something, people were..."

The funnels. I always thought everybody, for a long time, I assumed that everybody was looking at the world the way I was. And I remember the very first time I started talking about funnels and showing people what was working, and people were like, "This is the coolest thing ever!" I was like, "Don't you guys all see this?" Like, a lot of times, it's hard because our superpower, because it's common to us, we don't realize that it's the superpower until you share it with somebody else, right? And I think that's one of the hard things too, is just like, we underestimate, like, our own value because it's like, "Oh, it's just, this is what I do. Of course, can you guys all see this?" It's like, "No, we can't." And you sharing that is what lights up the world for other people. It's pretty cool.

Okay, so I want to talk about offer development. I want to talk about finding your target market and things like that. Uh, starting with niches. What's your guidance on niches? How can we make sure it's not too much competition, but still has enough people? Uh, and it's not like finding a needle in a haystack when we're looking for our customers.

Yeah, for sure. It's funny because there's, there's always this, you know, I always get into these arguments with people because, especially they're starting new people, like, "I want to be able to target everybody." So they create these big offers that are so big. And I'm like, the problem is, like, eventually you want to be broad market, right? That's what you can scale. But when you get broad market, you're competing against people like me who can spend multiple million dollars a month in ads, right? So if you're trying to compete, you're trying to get access to all entrepreneurs, like, that's going to be really, really hard for you because, again, you're, you're dealing with people, you're fighting against people like me who have huge budgets, right?

And so if you want to beat me, it's like, you can't beat this huge thing. You have to start, like, niching down and niching down and niching down until you find your sweet spot. But if you get too small, you're right, like, there's no, you know, if it gets too small. But for most people, you can get a lot smaller than you think you can, right?

Uh, I look at just even me and you, and obviously you've got a lot of facets of your business. But if you look at, like, entrepreneurship, and then from there, it's like, in my mind, I like it's content creation, traffic generation, then there it's like podcast, and then it's like the way you do podcast. Like, it's, it's four or five levels deep from, like, just pure entrepreneurship, right? To find your sweet spot where you're dominating, you're having so much success, right? Even me, it's like, even though I'm targeting all entrepreneurs, but my message is not that. I'm going down all entrepreneurs who want to make money online, who are trying to sell stuff online, who want to do it on a website, who want to do it through a sales funnel. Like, it ends up being even a smaller market in there. And inside sales funnels, there's markets of, like, how to write copy inside sales funnels, how to do email. Like, it keeps getting smaller and smaller.

But what's nice about it is, is the smaller you can get, the easier it is to actually find the people you were trying to to target, right? It's, and it's less expensive. Like, right now, if I tried to buy a Super Bowl ad, the reason why I would never do that is because the Super Bowl ad is going to be seen by, who knows, a million, you know, I don't know, 25 million, 100 million people are going to see it. But of that 25 million people, there's only maybe 20,000 that would want a funnel, right? And so if I do that, I'm wasting all that money on eyeballs. Same thing for most of us, where if I know I'm going after Christian entrepreneurs who, uh, or female Christian entrepreneurs, um, who are mothers, like, also now it's very, very targeted. And I can, I can buy ads that just hit that target. And now I'm not wasting all this money on all the rest of the people, right?

And then over time, and this, I'm giving this comfort to those who are like, "But I want to change the world." It's like, cool, you'll be able to. But you start niche, and then you can start moving and getting broader and broader over time. Uh, when you can start reinvesting more money and you get more assets and things like that, you can start going bigger, right? That's why I'm able to now go where I'm targeting, you know, most of the world with my message now. It's because we spent so much money mastering people who want to build funnels, then people who want to be experts, then people who want to drive traffic, and then we kind of started going up from there. But it, it gave me time to to build a foundation. So, yeah.

Yeah, that makes total sense. So basically, you're saying niche down a bit so that you can target the exact person, make some money, and then the more money that you have, the more that you can compete with people who are going after these broader niches. So can you give us, like, an example of, like, what a good target sub-niche is, I guess? Like, some examples to put it into practice?

Yeah, for sure. And one thing I would, I would share people just to think through is, like, I always think about this, like, who is your sub-niche? Who's the person? Like, I would phrase it like, "Who's the dream customer that you want to serve?" Right? And typically, for most people, your dream customer is you five years ago, right? Especially if you're coming as an influencer showing your face and the brand. The person that's going to be attracted to you is the person that you were five years ago. So that's what I'm looking at specifically.

So for me, if I look back five years ago in my business, or 10 years ago, whenever it was that I was trying to learn this stuff, right? I'm trying to think, "Who was I?" Like, I was the person like, so for example, if I was to start over my business right now and I go back 10 years ago, before I launched ClickFunnels, like, who would I target initially? Well, who was I 10 years ago? Um, I was an athlete, like a retired student athlete, right? So I had success. I was an athlete who wanted to be an entrepreneur, right? Um, I was married, had young kids. And so I'd be like, "Hey, I want to target athletes who are entrepreneurial, who have young families, who are trying to figure out how to support those families with their entrepreneurial dream, but also at the same time, trying to change the world and trying to share the message." Like, that's who I would try to target. And these are probably male athletes, because that's, I'm a male, right? So that's where I would start.

One of my friends, Annie Grace, she is in the alcohol addiction market. And, you know, for her, it's like, well, who was she? And she was like, she was in corporate America. She was someone who was, uh, drinking because it was socially part of, like, her job description. She was flying around the world. She was expected to be at these parties and be drinking. And she got an alcohol addiction because of that, right? And she struggled. And then she, over time, figured out how to break this alcohol addiction. And anyway, she's, she's brilliant. If anyone's got issues with that, study antiracist stuff, she's amazing. But what's fascinating about that, um, when she launched her message initially, who was she targeting? She was targeting people who are in the corporate world, who, uh, who travel, who are struggling with alcohol addiction. Like, she was targeting her five years earlier, right? Exact demographic and profile because she could speak to that so well, right? And that became who she launched her book to. She launched her movement, she got those people. And then over time, she's able to, like, get case studies of people who came into her world who maybe they weren't corporate, but someone had referred them. And that was a mom who struggled, or or a husband who struggled, or something. And then she's able to take those case studies from these people and then launch into markets where it wasn't her story, but it was their story. And like, start getting those markets and bring them in. Now she's, you know, as you know, she's changing the world, bringing in tons of people from around the world. But it all started with her niching down to basically exactly who she was five years earlier and targeting those people first because she can speak to them perfectly.

This is actually such a great example. So she was targeting alcoholics, and she's one of, she's in our network now. I know a bit about her now. She's just doing "Breaking Bad Habits." So it went from alcohol to now she wants to just be the person that helps people break all addictions, right? So what a great example of, like, a niche. And now she gets to broaden it out because she's more successful, she has more credibility, more money to spend on putting her out there.

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Okay, so let's talk about offer development. You talk about avoiding building a better mouse trap. So what does that mean? Uh, what should we be thinking about when we're creating our offers?

For sure. Um, so I mentioned earlier, my, my mentor, Dan Kennedy, um, he taught me something back, man, 15, 20 years ago when I first got started. And I never heard people talk about it because in the business world, in fact, I remember in college, in classes, they taught, like, "Okay, all you got to do is find, find someone's product, and you build a better mouse trap." And what he said was really fascinating. He said, "If you look at the history and the evolution of offers throughout time, right?" Said, "Back, you know, 200 years ago, there were not tons of entrepreneurs doing stuff because it just wasn't possible, right? The businesses that built stuff, they were like the big, you know, Sears and like all these, you know, Carnegie and all these like big companies that made stuff, right?" And so the first wave of entrepreneurs, what they would do is they would take something that somebody was selling, and then what they would do, the way entrepreneurs popped out were like, entrepreneurs would repair stuff, right? So the refrigerator broke, the washing machine broke, the sofa broke. And the entrepreneurs were the ones who, like, who they did repair. They would fix the things that the big corporate conglomerates were were building, right? That was the first phase.

And then as, as, uh, the market started shifting, people started getting, you know, it was easier to start businesses. Then the next phase was, this is where people start building a better mouse trap. Like, "Oh, you bought a fridge from Sears? I can give you one that's better." Dan Kennedy calls these improvement offers. So anytime you hear the word "er" in in a thing, that's an improvement offer. Something's better, faster, stronger, uh, cheaper. Like, there's an "er." It's an improvement offer. You're taking something that's already there and you're trying to make a better version of it, okay? And you can do that, like, you can make money by making something that's an improvement. But the problem with by with improvement is, especially if you're selling, like, information products and things like that, like, if someone just tried the ketogenic diet and they failed at it, and you come in, you're like, "Hey, I've got a better way to do the ketogenic diet." They're like, "I just failed at it. They look at that, it's like, this is a better way to fail." Like, that's how, like, our subconscious mind looks at things like that. And so you're coming in, you're trying to show somebody, "Here's a better way to do something." By default, it just, it makes it harder to sell something.

So the third phase, so it goes from repair to improvement to what Dan Kennedy calls a new opportunity. And so new opportunity is basically looking at something, saying, "Look, I know you've tried this in the past and you failed, and it's not your fault. It's because of the system you were using was broken. I have something that's a new opportunity that's different. That's not a better way to do that, it's a different way to do that." I think about, like, some of the great inventions of all time, like Steve Jobs, when, you know, his prolific, you know, him on on stage. This is when music was out, the people had CDs and stuff. And he could have came out and said, "Hey guys, I figured out a better way to do CDs. Now your CDs don't hold 10 songs, it holds 100 songs." But he didn't. He stood there in front of the entire world and said, "Look, this is how you, you carried your music past CDs, but we're getting rid of CDs. I'm throwing them out the door. This is a broken system, and I have a new opportunity." And boom, he pulls out the iPod. A thousand songs in your pocket. It wasn't a better way to CDs, it was a new opportunity, a new thing. And that, it's like, you know, boom, takes off. Same thing with the phone. When he came out with the, with the iPhone, it was like, "Here's a better way to do a phone." He's like, "The phone is broken. Here's the new opportunity, right?"

When we, when we launched ClickFunnels, the same thing. Like, there were a lot of website building platforms at the time. There were platforms that did email marketing, there were platforms that did CRMs. And if I had come and said, "Hey, I have a better CRM, I have a better thing." Like, now we're fighting on features and stuff. Instead, like, "No, no, we have something that's completely different than you guys ever thought about. We have a platform that builds this new thing called funnels." And like, it's a new opportunity, which is why I think it took off 10 years ago as fast as it did, because we introduced a new opportunity. So it's looking at how to position what you're selling differently, not as "this is the better." In fact, every time I watch an entrepreneur try to pitch their product, I'm, I'm critiquing them. If they say the word "better" or "stronger" or the "er," like, "You're positioning it wrong." The offer can be, and this is the position is that where the "er" comes from that you were saying that's an "er" offer? I didn't get that. Got it. So it's like anything, yeah, it's kind of like this, only it's better. It's like, "No, no, don't say it's better." It's saying, "That's that's broken. The way you do that was not working. Here's the new opportunity, right?" And it's how you position everything. So, yeah. Anyway, that's that's what a new opportunity is. And if you can figure out how to position your offer as a new opportunity and not an improvement, it'll skyrocket yourselves because it, it takes the stress off of the person's back and shows them it wasn't their fault that they failed. This way, we're not trying to make a better failure. We're giving them this new opportunity.

Okay, so related to new opportunities, why is status and leveraging status really important to do a good job with that?

Yeah, um, it's fascinating. In fact, most, I bet most listeners will argue with me on this or they won't believe it's true for themselves. But, um, I promise you, it is. Everything we do or we don't do in life is because it's all has to do with status. Like, if you do something, it's either going to increase your status or it's going to decrease your status. So we do things because we hope it's going to increase our status, or we don't do things because we're afraid that it's going to decrease our status. So, for example, somebody sees a nice car, like, "I want to buy, I want to buy a Ferrari." And the reason why I want to buy the Ferrari is because if I buy this thing, it will increase my status. My people around me will think that I'm that I'm better. So, like, that's what drives us to want to buy something, right?

If I'm going to buy a course from somebody, there's two, there's two weird things, right? If I buy something from you, I'm taking money out of my bank account and giving it to you. So by, so what happens immediately is my, my status is decreased. I'm losing money. But I have a hope that by giving you this money, it's going to increase my status by the result you're giving me, right? And so they're always waiting, like, "Ah, if I give you this, it's going to decrease my status temporarily, but by doing so, I will learn, I'll figure out, do this thing, which will increase my status. Therefore, I'm willing to take that risk."

So whenever I share this, people always laugh because they're like, "Well, I'm not that way. Like, I don't do things based on my status." And I actually had this conversation with my wife. And I was writing Expert Secrets. I had a whole chapter on status. And I asked her, I was reading this to her, and she was like, she's like, "Russ, you don't understand. I don't, I don't look at it that same way." I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "I would never buy a Ferrari. I would never do..." I'm like, "Why not?" And she's like, "If I had a Ferrari, she's like, my friends would make fun of me. Oh, the mom showing up at the pickup line, picking the kids in the Ferrari." And I was like, "Okay." Like, I kind of stopped. I said, "So by you buying a Ferrari, for you, it would have actually been a decrease in status because your friends and people at the pickup line would have made fun of you, right?" She's like, "Oh." I was like, "Yes." All the choices we're making is based on this weird thing of like, "If I do this, is it going to increase my status or decrease my status?"

And so when I'm selling something or I'm making an offer to somebody, I'm always thinking about that. Like, by them giving me money, it's going to decrease their status. But I have to help them see the vision of like, "Over time, this will actually increase their status." If they buy this thing, and status could be, they're going to make more money, they're going to lose more weight, whatever that thing is they're trying to get, right? And if they believe that the increase in the status will offset the decrease by paying you, then they're more likely to buy the thing, right?

And the same thing is true now when you come back to, like, the new opportunity versus, uh, an improvement offer. An improvement offer, by default, if I'm going to try another keto diet that I failed on three times, but you got a better one. Like, like, is the status decrease versus like, "Hey, that thing in the past that you tried that that failed, that was not your fault, right? I'm increasing their status. Like, that was not your fault. Like, what they sold you was incorrect. Like, it wasn't a good thing. But this is the new opportunity." It's like, "Oh my gosh, this is something that's going to increase my status. It's not going to be like another failure, another thing I tried in the past, right?" It shifts it for them. So status is an interesting one that's hard for a lot of people to believe it dictates your choices, but 100% it is. From everything I think about, like, the people we date, the people we marry, the the clothes we wear, all these things have to do with how we perceive it's going to increase or decrease our status. Kind of fascinating.

It is so fascinating. And knowing that it can help, you know, determine your marketing messaging and how you position stuff. Okay, one, one more question, and then I want to stick on webinars because I know we don't have a lot of time and I definitely want to talk about webinars. And this is insider information because I've been trying to get you to do ads on YouTube and you won't let me, and you're obsessed with your YouTube channel. So talk to us about why you are so focused on YouTube. What have you been learning this year? Because your YouTube has like 300,000 some followers, you're doing like really well. So just quickly, what have you been learning? Why are you so bullish on YouTube?

Yeah, I don't feel like we've cracked the code on YouTube yet. Um, and so we're trying, like, we're very particular trying to figure it out and trying to master it. I think the big reason why is, you know, every other advertising platform, you think about this, like, we create content and then it disappears in the feed, right? We put for the effort and it disappears. And for me, I don't know about you, but like, ROI is one of my highest values, my highest driver. Like, what's the ROI of me doing? If I'm going to spend an hour recording this video or this thing, like, what's the long-term ROI? And most things, again, it goes in the feed and it disappears. It goes in the, you know, and disappears. YouTube's the only one where you post the video and over time, it actually grows. Like, I have videos I did five or six years ago that still get thousands of views every single month from something I did five years ago, right? And so for me, like, that's a big part of it.

And the second part is, I feel like YouTube is becoming, I don't know, I, I love all the platforms. I, I'm careful, tip-toeing around this. I love all the platforms. I love podcasting. I love Instagram. I love everything. But, um, I look at YouTube right now as, I think, one of the best spots to put long-form content. YouTube, the same way, like our best buyers come from or podcast. Our best buyers come from podcast because there's someone spending an hour with you in their ears, hearing you talk. Like, it builds a different relationship than a short-form reel or Instagram, you know? Uh, YouTube's the same way. Someone spends an hour with you or 45 minutes on a video, it builds such a better connection. And, um, people who will spend an hour with you on video are more likely to invest, to come to your events, to buy your other things. And so what we're seeing right now is the people who are coming from YouTube, uh, are YouTube and actually, honestly, long-form podcast, like the two long-form, uh, styles of content, those are the people, um, that become the best buyers over time.

Now, YouTube's algorithm is goofy, though. So we're, we're really focusing on trying to create videos in a way where our personal goal internally here, within next year, I want to make it where every video I put out gets 100,000 views. We're not there yet. We, every once in a while, that pops off and gets it. But YouTube, like, you have to understand the algorithm, the content, how to get people to, how to pull people through. And like, it's, it's a lot more, um, a lot more nuanced to get a video to get to 100,000 views consistently than, like, for example, our podcast. Our podcast, we have our followers, we post the podcast, people listen to it, and for us, it's growing the following and then it, it kind of works. Whereas YouTube, it's, it's definitely, it's more finicky because the algorithm, uh, demands something very, very specific. And, um, and it's also momentum. So if one video hits, the next video hits, it keeps growing. Whereas if a video hits, the one drops, the momentum goes downwards, and it takes three or four videos to get it back. It's just a little, a little more finicky what we're finding so far. Again, we haven't mastered it yet, but that is one of our big goals this year to master it so we can get the spot where every video we put out there has 100,000 views or more. And then, you know, from there, it's like, man, if I'm doing that, we're getting an extra million views a month, uh, across our content. How does that affect everything else in our, in our brand, which is obviously really, really big?

Yeah, and it's basically the start of a funnel, most of the time, right? So, so instead of paying for ads, you're getting all this organic traffic through YouTube. Oh, yeah. I get the same 100,000 views on paying for the ads. I mean, it's costing me, you know, who knows, $10, $20, $30,000 where I'm getting that for free. Like, it's worth putting in the time to figure out how to master the algorithm.

Okay, so something we've both been, uh, really interested in is webinars. Uh, I've been doing webinars for the last couple of years. I love webinars because I feel like it helps me really build, like, super fans. It's really effective for selling. But I feel like having this two-way communication, people really start to get bought into the idea of me and really start to support me. You know, so why do you love webinars?

Yeah, um, I'm obsessed with webinars, mostly because, um, for me, it's the, again, first off, I agree with what you said about connection building, relationships, audience. It's also the fastest way to take somebody who's really, really cold, has no idea who you are, warm them up, build trust, and then get them to buy an offer, right? Um, when we launched ClickFunnels, again, I'm trying to, like, "How do I grow this company as fast as I can?" And we did it 100% through webinars. And I was doing, um, I created one webinar presentation. You know, I have a script called the Perfect Webinar that kind of shows how to do it. But I had this one webinar presentation, uh, we launched it, it converted. And so I did that webinar. And if you read my book, Expert Secrets, I tell people, like, "You need to do a webinar, a live webinar, every single week, um, until you master that one presentation." Same presentation, week in and week out, until you've mastered the presentation. So for me, when I launched ClickFunnels, I did the exact same webinar 70 times in a row. Uh, sometimes it was three or four times a week, sometimes I did like two or three in a day. Um, and I have a new audience. I give a webinar presentation. And again, takes a freezing cold person who has no idea who I am. They come in, they spend 90 minutes with me, and at the end of it, they're buying a $1,000, $2,000 course that fast. Now I can serve them. Whereas every other, you know, funnel, every other way to sell and get people takes longer to do that. Where I think a webinar is the fastest way to take somebody from, "We don't have a relationship," to like, "Man, we're best friends, and we're going to go on this journey together." And so that's why I'm mildly obsessed. Where I still do them all the time. People, I see people all the time like, "Oh, webinars are dead." I was like, "They are not dead." No, they are far from it.

They're also so fun. Like, I love, like, creating my webinars, optimizing my webinars, what kind of things work well to sell on a webinar, and what doesn't? Like, is there a certain price point where it doesn't work? Or can you give any advice on that?

For sure. I think the reality is, like, I have a, I have a $10,000 offer I sell on the webinar, and it works. Um, but it's harder. Like, the more expensive the, like, the better you have to get, right? And so, um, for most people, I think the sweet spot for webinars is like $297 up to like $2,000 is kind of the sweet spot where a 90-minute presentation can get somebody to warm them up enough where they feel comfortable, like, part with that much money. So that's kind of the sweet spot in the in the pricing. I've seen people sell me, like, for us, we sell a year's worth of ClickFunnels on a webinar for like $1,000, and then they get it for free for a year or for six months, and after that, it starts billing them. So you can sell, you can sell memberships and continuity programs through webinars as well. It works really effectively. I just, like, if I have someone's attention for 90 minutes, I'll usually, again, bundle it together. So instead of getting five or six months for free for higher, you know, higher price and put people into it. But, yeah, I think that's the, that's kind of the price point. When it gets above that, I'll still do webinars. A lot of times, the webinar will will traditionally push them to a sales call or discovery call. That way, I still have the time to build a relationship with them, and I can push them there to do the higher transactions if we need.

Yeah, something I want to point out to my listeners is, like, the webinars is this two-way communication. They're seeing you, like, let's say on a paid ad or a social media post. Pretty social media, they're warmer. Paid ad, totally cold. You bring them on a webinar, you're warming them up, you're getting two-way communication. If it's super high ticket, you didn't want to bring them on a call. You can't get any warmer than that, right? Like being on a call with somebody. So you're just like warming them up. And the more expensive it is, the more you need, you know, personal connection and talking with people. But webinars are awesome because you can get that personal connection in mass, and it saves you a lot of time.

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Okay, so let's talk about the intro of a webinar. What are some things we should think about?

Yeah, so a couple of things. Obviously, someone's registering for this webinar, and then most people are very unsure, like, "Why am I here? How long is this going to be?" All those kind of things, right? So, generally, when I look at, like, what's the hook on my landing page, the hook is like, "Hey, I'm going to teach you guys how to blah blah blah blah blah." Whatever. First thing, webinar starts is like, I want to tell them, like, "Hey, you're in the right spot. You guys registered for the webinar. I'm going to teach you this. How many of you guys are excited?" And I try to start creating interaction immediately, right? I want people commenting, like you said, two-way communication, right? I'm getting them participating, like, "Hey, how's it going? Like, this is what we're talking about. How many of you guys are excited about that?" I go back and forth.

And then afterwards, in people's heads, they're still trying to figure out, like, "Is this for me?" In the first three or four minutes, five minutes of a webinar, this is where you get the biggest drop-off. People show up like, "Oh, this is not for me." So during that time, I'm trying to, like, show them, "This is for you." So usually, after I kind of reintroduce the title of the webinar and get them excited, get them re, you know, get them re-hyped about what they registered for initially, then I'm coming back, say, "Okay, now I want to make sure you guys know you're in the right space." So, um, a lot of times I'll do a survey before a webinar trying to figure out where people are at. Um, you don't have to, you can do it without a survey, but I'll ask them, "Okay, um, how many of you guys are brand new beginners? This is your first time ever thinking about this. That's you, raise your hand right now in the comments or say yes." And they're like, "Yes, yes." Like, "Cool. If you're a brand new beginner, this is going to be great for you because I'm going to show you exactly how to get started and how to have success very, very quickly." Okay, now, second, "How many of you guys, you've had some success, but you're kind of struggling? How many of you guys are in that in that camp, right? If that's you, type number two in the comments, right?" And they got all these twos. "If that's you, during this presentation, I'm going to show you guys if you got started, how to take that and actually have more success and start growing and scaling it." Then, "How many of you guys are super successful, you're trying to figure out a hack to get to the next level? Put in three in the comments, right?" So I'm showing, like, "If you're a beginner, this works for you. If you're intermediate, this works for you. If you're advanced, this works for you." And so I'm trying to, like, make them all included of like, "Okay, cool. Because otherwise, they're like, 'Oh, this is kind of a newbie thing. I'm out.' Or, 'Oh, this is too advanced. I'm out.'" I'm trying to show, like, "Doesn't matter who you are, this is going to be a good fit for them, right?" So I'm kind of bringing them in through there. Um, and again, for me, I mean, there's a lot of little things I do, but the key part is just try to build that relationship, getting engagement with them ahead of time, so that now, now I can go into the presentation, I can tell the story, and they're like, they're all bought in and are excited about it, right? Um, and so, yeah, those are some of the core, core things you do initially.

So I know that having an epiphany story is really important for your business. Is this something that you also do on a webinar?

Yeah, so the Epiphany Bridge. I've taught like whole classes on the Epiphany Bridge. But basically, the Epiphany Bridge is like, what is the story, um, about how you got introduced to the thing that you're going to be sharing during the presentation, right? So if you're doing a presentation showing how you, like, how someone's going to start their own podcast, then the very first, the first 15 minutes of my presentation is, uh, where I'm telling the story about how I discovered this new opportunity I'm about to reveal to them, right? So the webinar is all tied around the new opportunity, like we talked about earlier. So I'm going to tell this Epiphany Bridge story, like, uh, "Here's the story how I discovered this thing. Like, I was just like you five years ago. I went through this thing you're telling the story that you went on and how you discovered this thing." I always tell people, like, when someone's coming to your webinar, um, they're looking for a result. When they're buying a product, they're looking for a result. And typically, when they come to you, this is not the first time they've tried to figure out that result, right?

So, good example, I bought a company last year, a women's weight loss company. And I remember the owner, I bought it from her. She told me she said that the average woman in America goes on eight diets a year. Wow. Eight. Is that crazy? And she said, and so when you look at that, like, if I assume that someone's coming to my webinar and like, they've never thought about having been on a diet before, I'm dumb, right? They come to mind thinking they've never thought about a funnel before, I'm wrong, right? So I have to show them, like, "What is my new opportunity that's different? Like, they've tried eight diets this year to lose weight, none of them worked. Why is my new opportunity different than these? Like, why is it different?" Right?

So I'm going to tell my story about, like, "Hey, I was just like you five years ago. I tried the paleo diet, the keto diet, the blah blah blah, and tried these things. I'd have little successes and I'd crash and burn." Little, "How many of you done before you tried the same thing, right?" Yeah. "I had the same problems. And so I went on this journey and I found out something was completely different than what anybody was talking about online, and it was this process called blah blah blah, whatever your process is, right? And this is where I tell that whole story, how I discovered it, what it looked like, and the result I ended up getting because of it." And then basically, I tell people at the end, like, "I went through and I figured out a map. I have this map, and I'm going to teach you on the rest of the webinar is this map and how you can use it to have the same result I had. Are you guys ready for that?" And they get all excited. And then from there, I transition to the actual teaching part of the presentation.

Amazing. I know we have like no time left, but please, very quickly, just explain the teaching part. Like, what should we not include in there? What should we include? High level, and then we'll close up the interview.

Yeah, this is actually my favorite part because this is where most people get it wrong. A lot of people think, "I'm just going to teach whatever I want, and I'll sell them at the end." And like, you can do that, but the teaching is the most important. If you do the teaching part correctly, then people will buy what you have at the end of your presentation. So, uh, a couple of things. Number one is, um, is your job is not to teach them how to do everything. If you do that, like, you're not going to serve the person, right? My job is to inspire them that this, this map that I have is the thing that's actually going to get them the result. So when I do that, for me, I break down my teaching into three sections. My first section is I'm teaching them the framework for how to do the things. Number two is I'm teaching them that they can, I'm showing them how they could actually do that. And I'm showing the third thing is like teaching them that, like, there's nothing else that can hold them back from being successful, right? So I'm going to have be three teaching points. I go through. I'm doing the, the presentation. And the key here is what I'm teaching, I'm teaching them the what, but not the how. Does that make sense? So I'm going to teach them what to do, but not how to do it. So what is the strategy? How is the tactics?

Okay, I think about this like when I do my webinar teaching people about...

building a funnels. I'm going to teach them the strategy. So I make step number one, you're going to go find a funnel that's already converting. Step number two, then is you're going to funnel hack it. You're going to buy their products to see what does the funnel actually look like. Step number three, you're going to sketch out what the funnel looks like. And step number four, you're going to click funnels and actually build it out. So that's the what they're going to do, right? I'm show them what like the strategy of it. Now, the how is like, I log in to ClickFunnels, I click on this button, then I'm going to click over here, and I'm going to add the product here. Then I'm going to, I'm going to write the copy here. Like it's all the tactics take a long time to actually show, show somebody. And so what people have to understand is that you're teaching them the what during the presentation, but they're buying from you the how. Like that's the big differentiator. So when people have a webinar, it's not working, the reason why it usually doesn't work is because they're teaching the what and the how. And in their mind, they're like, I'm serving this person, I'm helping them, I'm showing them everything they need. But then number one is like, it's impossible in 90 minutes to give somebody all of the tactics they need to be successful. So you're not actually serving them, you're giving them half stuff. And number two, um, it just overwhelms them and they don't buy. But us as educators, like I want to give them everything, but you can't actually empower people to have success. So we teach them the what, and then the offer is the how, where we could take them out of the webinar situation and we can show them through a course or a training or a mastermind how to actually implement everything that they just learned about. And that's the key to really making, uh, stories work during your, during the, the content side of the, the train. That's see your point. The number one mistake I've made with webinars is just teaching too much. And then people are like, well, I already learned enough. I'm just going to have to implement what she taught me on this webinar. No need to go buy her course, right? So really good in terms of conversion. Really quick, what's a good registration attendance rate? What's a good conversion rate? Like, what are our benchmarks?

Great question, great question. So first off, if you're emailing your own list, the numbers always are skewed very positive. So that's problem a lot of people have is they email their list, they're like, my conversions are great, and they try to buy ads, and then it doesn't work, right? So I don't judge, like whatever my email list does, like that's just free money. I don't judge that. I look at like, if I'm actually buying paid ads. So, um, the numbers, again, it's going to be different market by market. But, uh, registrations, I want registration rates on the page to be between like 30% and 50%. Like that's kind of the sweet spot in there. Show up rate, I want it to be the lowest 20%, usually around 30%. That's kind of like, that's the sweet spot between 20, 30%. Then when somebody's on the webinar, when I transition from my teaching to my selling, I always look to see how many people are on the line right there. So let's say I get to that spot and there's 100 people on the, on, they're still on where I'm transitioning to my pitch. If you can get 5% of the people to close, that's usually ends up being like a six-figure year webinar if you run that very often. If you can get 10%, that's usually a multi-million dollar webinar. And you get 15%, that's where the ClickFunnels webinar was when we first launched it, which took us to, we just passed a billion dollars in sales, uh, in the last 10 years. So somewhere between five, 5% is like a really good webinar. 7%, like you should be celebrating, having a party, like it's time to go buy a new house. 15%, it's like you can do whatever you want. So that's kind of am the numbers we're looking for.

Love that, such good information, so helpful. Okay, I end my show with a question. I ask all my guests a couple questions. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitter can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Oh, very cool. I think, um, the number one thing I would do, like you mentioned earlier, like figuring out the skill set you want to do and then becoming obsessed. Like decide, like this is my career, this is my thing. I'm going to become mildly obsessed and go deep on this thing, uh, because nowadays we don't pay for people who are Jacks of all trades. We pay for people who are really good at one thing and can go really, really deep in a lane. And if you become a master of that, you can write your own paycheck for the rest of your life.

Love it. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond marketing, whatever you think. What is your secret to profiting in life?

I have a philosophy I've been thinking about a lot over the last year or so. And, um, it's true like all areas of life. Like there's, there's things that we produce and things we consume, right? You think about this, I just think about like weight loss, right? Like if somebody is consuming more calories than they are burning, they gain weight. And so are you, are you consuming more than you are producing in business? Or, you know, in your life? If you're consuming, so you're spending more money than you are producing, then you go bankrupt, you lose your money. Success in life in almost every area, I look at my relationships, my business, my health, and everything. I've got to be producing more than I'm consuming. And the, the, this, the difference between there is how you're successful. Like in business, if you are producing more value than you are consuming, then your bank account grows, right? If I am producing, if I'm burning, producing more calories than I'm consuming, I lose weight. If I'm producing a better relationship value with my wife or my customers, whatever that I'm consuming, then we have a great relationship. And so that's coming down to that, like we need to be producers. I have a big model, we call our people prime movers, like we are the producers of society. We got to be producing at a higher level when consuming. And that's how you change everything. It's when you flip around, you're consuming more than you're producing, you're taking more than you're giving in all areas of life, that's where you gain weight, you lose relationships, your business goes bankrupt. And so it's learning how do I become a producer who can produce more I consume? And that's like, that's the secret sauce to how you be successful in all areas of life.

I love that. That is, uh, such a unique answer. I've never heard before and it was.