How To Beat Your Own Control

Welcome to Marketing Your Car, the podcast for funnel hackers everywhere. You're now part of a small group of underground entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world through the products and the services that we believe in. But because we don't rely on venture capitalists, we don't have financial safety nets, so we have to do things differently. We have to do things smarter. We do that through an art and a science we call funnel hacking.

This podcast will give you a glimpse at the daily life of a funnel hacker, so let's get started. Hey everyone, it's Russell. Welcome to a rainy, very rainy, Marketing Your Car. And I just dropped off Dallin, my oldest twin, who is my son who loves extracurricular activities, at dance class. Early morning, so heading back in the office now. And excited, so book launch has been live for I think almost 6 days now. In 6 days we sold over 20,000 books! What? Crazy, so last year it took us the entire month to sell 20,000. I don't even know if we even got 20,000, we were close to 20,000. Anyway, I can't remember exact numbers back then, It's pretty exciting actually for us. We haven't even pulled out the big guns yet. Those who are watching, some crazy stuff's happening. At 20,000, I think we should hit at least 50,000 or 60,000 books sold, which is insanely cool. Really proud and excited for that. Heading to the office right now because a bunch of things are happening. In fact, the number one thing, well, it's interesting. I don't know about you, but when you're in the middle of book launch and, well, launching a million things at once, right? Which obviously I've been doing, so my stress levels are a little higher than typical. Not stress levels, but you know what I mean? Just a lot of stuff happening. It's been interesting. I think it's almost like you're so close to something, you can't, you don't know what to do, right? And so the book launch has been going really well. In fact, our average cart value right now is about $34. So for everyone who buys the book on average make about $34 in the funnel, which is great. But we keep thinking, how do we get better, how do we get better? There's gotta be a way to make it better. And, but I've been in a blank, I don't even know what to do. I look at it, I was like, I got nothing. So anyway, I bought a thing called a float tank a while ago. It's in my house and I hardly ever use it. I feel bad, in fact I clean it more often than I use it 'cause it's kind of a pain to keep. Looking back now, I'd definitely not get a float tank in my house, but they are cool and I promise you somewhere in your hometown there's probably float tank place. If you Google float tank in your city, I bet you'll find one. But basically it's a huge salt sensory deprivation tank where it's like 1,000 pounds of salt. You lay in it and you float to the top and you just sit there. And typically I do my float tank, I go in there, listen to music or listen to CDs or talks or whatever, right? But this time for some reason like the music thing wasn't playing. So this is Saturday night, yeah, Saturday night. So went in there and music thing wasn't gonna work. I was like, ah, whatever, I'll just try to like focus and do my whole meditation thing. I'm not a very good meditator at all by any stretch. But I sat there and laid there and I tried to focus on my breathing and just try to think about the major things. And it was cool because the first time I think I had time to reset and not be in the motion of everything. I just sat there for like an hour. I sat there for probably 45 minutes and I passed out and I woke up and my alarm went off. And I didn't get any great ideas while I was sitting in there. But I feel like it was a flood. Like a cleanse or something because I then went back inside and it's probably 11 o'clock at this time or maybe almost 12 o'clock and float tank, like an hour in the float tank feels like you've slept for like 5 or 6 hours. I felt really good so I got up and I was like, huh. So I ended up staying up until like 2 or 3 in the morning and then next day I had church which was yesterday and I'm in church and all of a sudden like the ideas started flowing and I was like, what?

Where are these coming from?

And it was almost like there was a blockage and that flushed it and then all of a sudden it was like they just started flowing and I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even keep up with these all. So in church, trying to pay attention and listen and be good while I'm taking notes. I'm like, I can't forget this stuff. This is really good crap. I gotta make sure I don't forget it. So I'm like typing in my notepad and then I try to go back out and focus and then all of a sudden it's like keep flooding in the ideas and I was like, gah, this is so cool. So I got this huge flood of inspiration. So this morning I woke up early at 5, which I'm already, I'm hurting really bad. It's 8:30 and I can barely keep my eyes open. So I don't know, this is gonna be a long week I think. But I got up and I started kind of retweaking our funnel. So our average cart value right now I think, what did I say it was, $34, $36, I can't remember exactly what it was as of this morning. My goal is to get to $40 and I think I can. I have some ideas so I'm gonna be plugging in all these split tests and different things. I'm actually gonna record two different upsell videos right now. 'Cause I think I figured out what I messed up on. Which is so cool, which is, ah, this is the part I love about funnels. So for everyone who's got funnels who don't work, even if you have funnels that do work, I wanna stress like this process. I talked about it at Funnel Hacking Live and I'm gonna talk more and more about it. In fact, if I ever happen to do book 3, hopefully I never do, but if I happen to, this will be the premise of it. Not the premise, but the beginning of it is understanding this piece of it. So basically, we drive traffic, we spend time, and then we look at the numbers and based on the numbers, we try to figure out, okay, now we know what it is, how do we make it better? It's interesting, if you look at the copywriting world, what'll happen is that like big companies like Agora and, Boardroom and things like that where they're very copy intensive and they hire the best copywriters in the world to have the copywriter, whoever writes the copy, it's called the control, they get a royalty on that control as long as it wins. But then as soon as the control is written, then all these other writers kinda come and try to beat it, try to beat your control. And so they're all trying to write different headlines, different intros, different hooks, different angles, and just different things to beat your control. And they're not rewriting the whole letter, they're just taking what you already have and trying to figure out how they can increase it. And if they win, then they get the royalties. So it's like that's everyone's job is to try to beat the control. It's almost like for us, for us-ens, after you get the funnel launched and live and everything, then it's coming back and saying, okay, how do I beat the control? And then trying to figure that out. And so it's cool, you can step back and look at all the pieces. So I look at over the last 6 days, we've sold a lot of books, we got a lot of data, like what's our opt-in percentage? How many people are buying the, actually putting their credit card? How many people are buying the black box versus the book? How many people are buying the order form bump? How about the upsells, the downsells? And then looking at comments on Facebook and other things and trying to see like, okay, Where are the sticking points? And after you identify those, then it's not that hard to come back, okay, we're gonna retweak it and shift it. So I'm excited today to try to retweak those amongst the fact that we also are doing like another 20 Facebook Lives today to promote the book, so it's gonna be kind of crazy. But that's kind of the game plan. So that's what I'm doing today, and I hope you guys do as well. Look at your funnels and try to beat your control. It becomes a fun game. And if you're too close to it like I was, go rent a float tank for an hour, go float in it, and who knows, maybe like me, all the ideas will start flushing out. Or find someone else on your team and have them try to beat the control. Or hire someone and be like, hey, if you beat my control, I'll pay you $100 to try, but I'll pay you $1,000 if you beat it. Or whatever, and just have people start making it a game, because that's when it starts getting really, really fun. So anyway, this week I'm gonna take you guys on some fun journeys. We're actually going to, if you know who the Harmon Brothers are, if you've ever seen the Squatty Potty commercial, or FiberFix, or Snapbooks, or any of the awesome viral videos, we're working with them to write a script for ClickFunnels. So I'm actually heading down to Utah tomorrow, I think? So I'll take you on that journey and tell you the cool stuff I learned along the way as well, hanging out with those guys. Anyway, I'm at the office, I'm gonna get some work done, create some videos, make some funnels, try to beat my control, and it's gonna be fun, so we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks so much for listening, we hope you enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at our funnel hacking project. You can also watch the Funnel Hacker online reality show and watch us build and launch funnels live at www.funnelhacker.tv. If you'd like to come hang out with your fellow funnel hackers, come join our Facebook group at www.projectclickfunnels.com. Oh yeah, and don't forget, you can get a free MP3 player with the first 257 episodes preloaded at marketinginyourcar.com. Join us next time, and remember, you're just one funnel away from your dreams.