Russell & Myron Golden: 8 Closing Techniques Everyone Needs to Know

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Hey, what's going on everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the podcast.

Excited to have you guys here today. Um, today actually we posted something really cool on YouTube, uh, over the last week or so that did really well and people loved it. And I thought, man, this is something to be really cool to share with you guys here, um, on the actual podcast. So, uh, kind of the backstory is that a couple of years ago, Funnel Hacking Live, I wanted to do a presentation called Persuasion Secrets. And so I kind of mapped out a really cool presentation and I thought, man, wouldn't it be cool if I was able to pull Myron Golden into here and have him teach some stuff as well? And so we did this really cool presentation where we tag-teamed back and forth our greatest persuasion secrets to get people to buy and to come to you and all that kind of stuff, right? And anyway, so that presentation happened on Funnel Hacking Live, and then it's been like 2 years, we haven't done anything with that footage, and so I made 2 YouTube videos, one where I just pulled my persuasion secrets, and the second video was just Myron's persuasion secrets, and it turned out really cool, so I thought, what if I shared it with you guys right now, today, as we're going?

So how many of you guys wanna learn some persuasion secrets?

This will help you in your webinars, presentations, your videos, everywhere? If so, I need you to do me a favor. After you listen to this, you need to come and learn how to sell online, okay? We have an event called Selling Online I do every couple months, and the next one's coming up here at the end of January, and if you go to sellingonline.com, you can get a ticket for $100. It's a 3-day event of me going deep into persuasion and selling and all sorts of cool stuff, but this'll be a really cool podcast that can get you guys into the mindset of persuasion. So with that said, I'm gonna jump into the very first YouTube video. Which is me teaching my persuasion secrets, and then from there we'll jump over to Myron Golden teaching his persuasion secrets. Between the two, I hope you pick up 2 or 3 things that'll change your business forever. Thanks so much, and I hope you guys enjoy this episode.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over $1 billion of my own products and services online. This show's gonna show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. So what we're talking about today during this presentation, you can see the title, it's called Persuasion Secrets.

Secrets.

And we call that— and I wanted to spend a good 45 minutes with you guys today talking about persuasion because in every aspect of your life, you guys are gonna be persuading people. You're gonna be doing it in your personal life with your spouses, with your kids, with other people, right? We're always using persuasion. But specifically in this business, it's all about persuasion, right? You have something you believe in. You have a gift. You got a product, a service, something that you need people to come with you with. If you don't learn how to persuade people to move with you, no matter how good your product, your service is, there's no way they're gonna buy it. And so that's what this whole presentation is gonna be, to teach you guys some persuasion techniques you can weave in everything you're doing, from Facebook Lives to blog posts to webinars to live events to teleseminars, tele-summits, virtual events, like anytime you're speaking, Instagram stories. Anytime you're like, we're speaking, we're using these persuasion elements. And so we're gonna show you guys a whole bunch of them. But to do this, I wanted to bring on stage one of my favorite speakers. We've had a chance to literally to go to war with each other 3 or 4 times doing big stages. We did one time at Grant Cardone's event in front of 35,000 people. We were on stage together persuading and closing a room of 35,000 people. Can you guys imagine that? We've had so much fun. He's one of the best stage presenters I've ever met in my life and also one of the best closers. And so, we wanted to spend today talking about persuasion with him. So, if you guys can all stand your feet and put your hands together for Myron Golden.

Appreciate it, bro. All right, all right, all right. How many of you already learned some persuasion secrets? Let me hear you say yes. All right, you ready to learn persuasion secrets from two of the best in the business, and you're gonna do it, right? Say yes. All right, what's up, Russell?

You excited for this?

I stay excited so I don't have to get excited, brother.

I'm so excited. The first time I ever saw Myron, by the way, we were at an event. Dagan Smith was in the audience somewhere. Me and Dagan did an event and Myron came as a guest. And he was an attendee sitting in the back just doing his thing, hanging out. And then I can't remember what happened, but you're like, let me tell you guys something real quick. And he dropped this little bomb. There was just like this little thing and he said it. And me and Dagan were looking at each other like, what did you say? I'm like, what's that guy's name? I gotta know. It was just, it was magic and it was like these little things that come through Myron's brain, they're just like the most amazing thing in the world. So I'm excited to be sharing a bunch of them with you. And the game plan is we're gonna start tag teaming, going back and forth sharing some of the things I do from stage to sell and persuade, and then Myron, and we'll kinda go back and forth, have some fun. Does that sound good to you guys? Okay. Anything you wanna say before we jump right into this?

Be ready, 'cause it's about to go down.

Awesome. Okay, so I'm actually gonna start, I'm gonna start number 1, but before, so, I'm trying to think of the best way to set this up. So, we're gonna go through a bunch of different principles. The first principle I'm gonna talk about when you are persuading people is a principle called social compliance. Who here has ever heard of that before? Okay, to begin with, I'm actually gonna show a really quick, it's like a minute-long trailer for a movie. It's a documentary on Netflix called The Push. Who here has ever seen The Push before? Okay. To set this up, this documentary is crazy. This is your assigned homework for the next week is go home and watch this. But basically, it's a social experiment to see if they could get somebody they'd met brand new and within a 90-minute window get that person to push somebody off of a building to their death. Could they actually do that? Now, logically, like, there's no way. That's not possible. But as you watch the documentary, the 4 people they took through it, 3 of the 4 people thought they were pushing somebody to their death within 90 minutes of the experiment starting. And so I want to show you guys this documentary just because it's kind of creepy, kind of evil, but also there's some really cool principles we talk about. So let's cue up that documentary trailer right now. OK, here we go. Why is it wrong? I want to talk to the auctioneer. You did talk to the auctioneer, and you helped him set these prices. It's completed. It's just the— Benny, Benny, pills, pills. Chris, I'll call an ambulance. Find the pills and bring them back.

Chris is in emmeshed in a web of lies. And that's important. I need him to feel like there's only one way out when he's told to commit murder. My name is Derren Brown, and the question we're considering is simple. Can we be manipulated through social pressure to commit murder?

70 people coming in here. They can't see this. Take them by the knees.

70 actors will be playing out a meticulously planned and rehearsed scenario to manipulate this man. Who has no idea he's being filmed.

Come on, guys, what are we gonna do? He's a millionaire, he's gonna make sure you go to jail.

This show is about how readily we hand over authorship of our lives every day.

Just give him one big push.

Can social compliance be used to make someone push a living, breathing human being to their death?

Welcome to The Push.

Whoa. Everyone's like, do we clap?

That's not normal.

All right. So obviously, my goal is not to get any of you guys to push somebody to their death in 90 minutes period of time. But there are many times in my life where I need to use compliance and things like that to get somebody to run to the back of the room to buy my product, to buy my service. And so, there's interesting things that by watching that documentary when you don't look at it through the evil side but through the just like how can you use this as a persuasion technique that are really powerful. So, I remember when I spoke at the very first 10X event, the one that had 9,000 people in the room in the Mandalay Bay. And my goal was to set the record for the most sales in a 90-minute period of time. And I'm like, "How do I get people?" This is a huge audience. The stadium was like, it was just so big. It was hard like, how do you get rapport and persuasion? And how do you connect with people that are like from all over the place in this huge stadium? And one of the things that I learned from watching this documentary was all about getting people to make these little micro-commitments. Commitments and consistency. Commitments and consistency. Right? They didn't walk up to the person the very first time and say, "Hey, go push this person off the building." Because they would have said no. Instead, what they had to do is like little things. And so I thought, "OK. How— what's the first thing I can do to get everybody as a whole, as a group to do a little thing? I'm going to do an ask that's going to get everybody to say yes to that. And that will be the very first ask. And then I'll go to the next and the next." OK, so those of you guys who had a chance to watch my presentation at 10X, what was the very first thing I did to build social compliance? Who here knows? I had everybody pull their phone out. I said, everybody pull your phone out, everybody get your thing, and suddenly within 30 seconds, I had 9,000 people in the room all mirror and matching me, all with the same phone. And I asked them to do something, they said yes. I got people moving it around, and we were mirroring and matching, and everything was connected. Now I put it away, and I already had this connection immediately with the audience. Where now we were connected, as opposed to typically it's like, oh, there's this person on stage, they're very disconnected and things like that. And so by doing that, I asked a little commitment, and then I asked them for another commitment, another commitment. By the time I got to the end, it wasn't crazy for me to ask for a commitment for them to go run and spend $3,000 for an account for ClickFunnels. Does that make sense? And so for all of you guys, you can weave these social compliance things into anything you're doing, right? Just think about in the last, how long have we been going, a day and a half here at Funnel Hacking Live, I've asked you guys to do a lot of things. We had you guys stand up, we had you sit down, we had you do different things, right? Because I'm trying to build rapport so that you guys will be able to move with me, be able to connect with me, and move throughout the entire event. And so that's principle number 1, is this insanely cool concept of social compliance and how to use it and weave it into all your presentations. And it works just as well, like, on a webinar. That's why in webinars, I'm like, who here— like, tell me what city you're from. And suddenly everyone's like, brrr. You see the chats blow up with 1,000 people telling you what cities they're from, right? Like, their social compliance. Awesome. Who here came the furthest? Like, who's excited to be here? Tell me your things. And people are complying. They're filling out the chat. They're moving. They're having them do things, right? By doing that, you're creating these little micro-commitments that lead up to bigger commitments. And so, there's principle number 1 is social compliance.

Wow, that's good. Give it up for Russell, y'all. Make some noise. Make some noise. Thank you. So, principle number 2 is the all my cards on the table close. So, understand this about closing. Closing is not something you do at the end of your presentation. Closing is something you do all through your presentation. When? Everybody say all through. When? All through. All through. You do it all through your presentation. And so you have to start out closing if you're going to end up closing. And so one of the ones that I like to start with is the all my cards on the table close. And how that works is like this. Like, I'll do a challenge or a webinar or whatever, and I'll say, hey, you guys, have you ever been to one of those webinars or a presentation or a live event or a summit or something where people actually, they pretend to be teaching you something while the whole time they're trying to sell you something? And so you're sitting there trying to figure out how much it costs? How many of y'all have ever had that? And they wave their hands, yeah, okay. This is not that. Now, after I say this is not that, I say, not only is this not that, I'm gonna tell you right now, I have something to sell you at the end, but, and I can tell you how much it is, it's $87,000. Now you don't have to spend any energy whatsoever worrying about if I'm going to sell you something or how much it costs. So now you can spend all of your time evaluating what I'm teaching you to see if what I'm saying makes sense enough to you that you would want the learning to continue going, so you pay me at the end. Does that make sense? Everyone say yes. And so what I do is I say, okay, so here's what's going to happen. I'm going to teach you a lot of cool stuff. In fact, In this challenge, webinar, whatever, in this challenge, I'm gonna teach you more than you've learned in a lot of multi-thousand dollar courses you've bought. And so your job is to evaluate whether or not it's worth it. My job is to give you so much value, when I'm done, you don't want the learning to stop. Does that sound fair? Say, "That's fair." That's fair.

Excellent.

Give yourselves a hand for being here today. Now, when I do that, when I do that, what happens is I've taken away all of the things that they were going to use to resist my offer. At the beginning, right? Now, instead of them thinking, okay, what's he gonna try to sell me? Okay, how much is it gonna cost? And they're using all of that energy to distract themselves from everything I'm saying. They don't have to use any of that energy for that at all. Now they can just evaluate it. They know how much it costs. And after I say it's $87,000, at the beginning of my presentation, they say, there's no way I'm paying that guy $87,000. In the middle of my presentation, they're thinking, man, I wish I had $87,000. By the end of my presentation, they're saying, I gotta go find $87,000, right? And then, when I give them the price, I give them a reason that I'm going to do them a favor and maybe only charge them $30,000 or $50,000, whatever that price is for that thing, and I can create a reason to sell it to them for less because they don't know who I am and whatever else, the other reasons I give them. But now, I put all my cards on the table, and since I put my cards on the table and I told them I'm gonna sell them something and I told them how much it costs, now they have a higher level of trust with me because I also acknowledged that I've recognized recognized the kind of webinars and seminars and presentations they've been to before, and this is not that. And just me saying this is not that, even if they say, well, I hear you saying this is not that, but I'm going to see. Now they're paying attention to see if this is not that. So the next thing you have to do in that presentation, you have to make sure that your presentation is actually good, actually provides value, and it's not just a sales pitch disguised as teaching something. Is that helpful? Yes.

Yeah.

All right, Russell.

I want to add to that. So the first time he told me that, I was like, So you tell them the price at the beginning. He's like, yeah. Like, that is so scary. And so I never did. The very first time I ever did it literally was at the 10X event, and I had it in my slides, and I kept going through. I'm like, nope, nope, nope. And like, probably 5 minutes before, I like was gonna delete the slides. I'm like, I got so scared, so scared. I was like, I'm just gonna do it. So then I sent the slides off, and it was too late. And so I get out there, I'm going through the slides, and also I see like slide 3 or 4 is me literally telling them like At the end of this, I'm gonna sell you guys something for $11,557, and if I can prove to you that funnels are the greatest thing in the world, how many of you guys are willing to pay $11,552? And I got everyone to actually commit to it, and then I did the entire presentation, and then I did the end, and it crushed, and it blew my mind. And recently I did a webinar. How many of you guys saw the funnel builder webinar I did a couple, like a month ago or so? During that webinar, I did the same thing. Like slide 2, I'm like, just so you guys know, my goal of this entire presentation is to get you guys to become certified I'd become a certified funnel builder and the cost of this is gonna be $20,000. Here's the price up here. And then I did the entire presentation and at the end we had the price drop. So the two biggest times I've done it, probably the two biggest closes I've ever done.

And so it works.

It works really well no matter how scared you might be to do it. So try that one out as well. I love it.

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Okay, number 3 principle. This is one that I learned from a guy named Ted Thomas, and Ted is one of the, one of the best stage presenters like ever. And I remember when I was first learning speaking, I heard people talk about him. In fact, his nickname they called him the Pied Piper of closing. And they said what would happen is you'd see like the Pied Piper would be like walking and all the things are following. He's like, same thing, you see him at his presentations, he'd get everybody to pull their credit card out of the wallet and then he'd get people and if you go to YouTube and type in Ted Thomas Pied Piper, there's videos of this where he's got his credit card in hand, he's walking and there's a line of 400 or 500 people walking around holding their credit cards and he's walking them to the back of the room, right? The guy's famous for this. I was like, anyway, so I had been watching him, I had been studying him, I had been learning some stuff, but I'd never actually met him in person. And one day I'm speaking at this event and I'm sitting there in the room, there's probably maybe 200 people in the room, and all of a sudden, I see it. Ted Thomas walks through the back door and sits in the audience. And I was like, that's the dude who's really good at closing and I'm trying to sell. Like, I just kind of freaked out for a second. I'm like, okay, pretend he's not here. So I did my best to do my pitch and I closed pretty well. People ran to the back and they signed up. And then after that, he kind of lingered in the back of the room as I'm closing sales and stuff. And I'm like, "Oh, man." And finally, everyone left. It's just him and me. And he's like, "Hey, man, that was a great presentation. Can I take you to lunch?" I was like, "Sure, let's go to lunch." And so he takes me to lunch. And at lunch, he starts asking me all these questions, making me feel like I'm super fascinating. He's asking me question after question after question after question. And I'm like, "This is so cool." And then he stopped. He said, "Hey, Russell, look at your head right now." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He's like, "Look at your head. What's happening?" He's like, "You see what's happening to your head?" I'm like, "What happened?" He's like, "I got you to nod your head. You've been nodding your head for about 5 minutes right now." I'm like, "OK." He's like, "I need to teach you something that's going to change your speaking career forever." He said, "When I was in the back of the room," he's like, "you did a great presentation. You did all the things. But I was watching the heads of the audience, and everyone's head just sat there. Nobody's head was moving." He's like, the reason why is because the only time you tried to sell me something was at the very end. The only time, the first time you asked me for like, you know, for something was towards the very end. He said, if you watch the way that I speak, he said, I do these things called trial closes. Like I was just doing to you. He said, what a trial close is, I ask you a quick question, like a yes or no question where you answer yes. And he asked another question, they answer yes. He said, if you watch me at the back of the room, he said, if I'm on stage, you're in the back of the room, he said, you'll see a sea of people whose heads are going like this for 90 minutes. They said yes. Thousands of times before I ever asked them to take out their credit card. And I was like, that's fascinating. How does this work? He said, okay, this is what you need to do. He's like, you gotta start weaving in these trial closes all throughout your presentation. Right? So he said, you say something, say, you guys getting this? Does that make sense? How awesome is that? People are like, yes, yes, yes. And you keep doing that, keep weaving in as many times as you can. So I remember after he told me that, I was trying to think of like where I could put trial closes into what I was doing. At the time, I had an automated webinar that was doing really, really good. In fact, I remember to this day, we were making $9.50 for every person who registered for the webinar. And so I got home, I took that webinar, and I got it all transcribed, and I figured out trial closes I could put throughout the entire webinar, probably 100 of them. So I wrote out these trial closes, I recorded myself just saying the trial close. Like, "Are you guys getting this? Is this amazing? How many of you guys wish this was you? Can you see yourself doing this?" Et cetera, et cetera. I recorded those and had my brother take the video file and just weave in the trial closes. Like, I didn't change the rest of the webinar, I was just weaving in the trial closes to that presentation. We put it back live and we relaunched it, and we went from making $9.50 per registrant to $16.40 per registrant just by adding in these trial closes. Okay? Now, at first, it's gonna feel weird 'cause you're gonna be like feeling awkward trying to get people to say yes, but what I learned initially was I started getting these little sticky notes, and I would write out different trial closes. I would stick them all over my monitor on my computer, and when I would do a webinar, I would talk about something, and I'd see one and be like, "Oh, you guys getting this?" I'd see another one like, "Oh, does this make sense?" Can you imagine yourself doing this? Can you, like, wouldn't that be cool to be able to do what that person just did? Like, would that change your life forever? And they get, yes, yes, yes, yes. I started getting better and better at that. But you've probably noticed when I speak in a traditional event, I probably ask you guys 5,000 questions in the hour I speak, even though I'm not selling something, because I'm trying to get, again, commitment, consistency, compliance, and get you guys saying yes over and over and over again. So trial close is one of the most powerful things you can start learning and mastering. And weaving into everything you're doing from Facebook Lives, Instagram, YouTube, your podcast episodes. Like, I want people nodding their head wherever they're at. Even on webinars, I'll be on a webinar, I'm like, I know you're out there somewhere, like I know, I can't see you, I want you to nod your head yes, like tell me yes so you can see it, shake your head up and down. I'm getting them in this yes state, this yes momentum, so by the end of time when I ask them for money, they're so used to saying yes. So that's the principle of trial closes.

Man, that's good. Man, that's good. Give it up for Russell, y'all, make some noise. It's so interesting, most people think that a presentation, I'm just gonna, like add something onto what you just said. So most people think a presentation is a dissertation. A presentation is not a dissertation. A presentation is a conversation, right? And if you're the only one talking in your presentation, if you're the only one participating in your presentation, you'll probably be the only one participating in your close. So anyway, I thought you might think about that for a minute. So, all right, so, uh, the no permission decision close. Now you gotta have a little bit of intestinal fortitude to use this close. So a lot of times, see, and understand what Russell and I are doing, we're showing you that we already know the points of resistance people have. You don't have to wait till they become objections to overcome them. You can just answer them while they're questions and they don't fester into objections. Does that make sense to everybody? Yes? Okay, so, so So the no permission decision close is the one that you have to use when you feel like there are going to be people on your webinar, in your seminar, whatever, where they're going to have to say, I need to go talk to my wife, I need to go talk to my husband, I need to get permission from my wife, I need to get permission from my husband, I need to get permission from the mailman, the milkman, the dog catcher, my next door neighbor who's just as broke as I am. Right. And they're always going to find somebody they need to get permission from. So what you have to do is you have to empower people. I don't believe you have to convince people to buy. You have to empower people. They already, like, people don't come to your webinar about how to do XYZ because they don't want to learn how to do XYZ, right? So you have to empower them to say yes. How do you do that? No permission decision. So, and I tell a story, and this story is I was at the driving range one day and I was hitting practice balls because I'm a golfaholic, and I know I need to join Golfaholics Anonymous. Hi, my name is Myron. I'm a golfer. Okay, so Anyway, so I was at the driving range one day. This dude that I've never had a conversation with before in my life, he comes up to me, he says, "You must not be married." Now at that time I was married for 35 years. I've been married now for 37 years. He said, "You must not be married." I said, "I've been married for 35 years. Why would you assume that I'm not married?" He said, "Your wife lets you play golf this much?" And I said, "Lets me? What am I in the third grade?" I said, let me help you understand how we do it in my house, bro. We don't do permission in my house. My wife doesn't give me permission. I don't give her permission. We are both grown. If my wife wants to buy a house on her way home, do your thing, baby. Show it to me when you get done closing, right? And so all the ladies love that one, right? Can I get witness sisters? Can I get a witness? Okay, so So, and so the reason I use that, well, first of all, it's true. My wife doesn't ask me for permission to buy anything. I don't ask her for permission to buy anything. That's not how we do it in our house. It's insane. People get married and now the woman has a new dad and the dude has a new mom. Like, what is that? That's not marriage, right? So anyway, I don't have any opinions about that anyway. If I did, I'd never voice them in public. But since we're just, since it's just us here, right? When I say that, I say, you know what, your life is gonna be better off when you stop giving permission to your spouse and you stop seeking permission from your spouse. And your marriage is gonna get better off because your spouse is not gonna resent you when you tell them no, and you're not gonna resent them when they tell you no, because y'all will celebrate the fact that each of you are adults. And I'm telling you, you say, well, How well does that work? I've been married for 37 years. Yeah. So it might work some, right? But we're grown. Like, my wife is not my daughter. I'm not her son. That's not how we do the thing, right? So the no permission permission close, you have to tell a story about when you didn't ask for permission. Now, you've been married for 10 years and getting permission for 11, that close might not work for you.

That's awesome. Give my wife a round of applause for that one.

I love it.

OK, the next one is one of my favorites because so many of us who are speaking about the topic that we love, one of the things we want to do is we want to show the rest of the world how smart we are, right? Which is the worst way to persuade somebody. We think that, like, oh, by being more scholarly and putting on a hat and being able to use big words, people are going to think I'm very, very smart. What actually happens is it distances you from the audience, right? They're like, oh, this person is using big words. I don't understand half the things they're saying. Separates you. OK, so for me, if you notice, I always want my communication to be simple at everybody's level. So it doesn't matter how old you are, how— like, that everybody can understand the things that I'm saying. I remember back— man, this is however many years ago— during the— before Trump was president, when they were doing all the primaries and stuff, and they did a test. I think one of the news stations did a test where they took every one of the people that were running on the Republican card, and they ran their presentation through like a test to see like what age, like what grade level they're all speaking at. And the typical politician was speaking like a 7th or 8th grade level, which may seem kind of low, but whatever. But they ran Trump's back and it was at a 4th grade level.

OK?

And it's interesting because when you're trying to persuade people, if you're talking at a 7th grade level or 10th grade level or, you know, college level, you're not going to persuade them. You're going to confuse them. They're going to think they're dumb. They're going to think— and they're going to separate away. You got to be speaking at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. OK, that is the key through all sorts of communication. So what happens though is there's times in our communication we're selling something, we're talking about it, we're trying to teach something where we have to use a word that's complicated, right, a bigger word. And so what I do is every time I come to a word that's kind of complicated, like for example, when I was doing, working with Pruvit when they first launched, we were helping them write the scripts and the pitches, and it was interesting because everyone in that business, they used very techno, like techno jargon, right? They used words like ketosis and ketones and glucose and all these things that you may think, oh, everyone knows what that is. It's not true. Like, I've been in that business helping them for almost a decade now. I still don't know the difference between glucose and ketone. I don't even know what those things even mean, right? But they assume that everybody knows. They start throwing this jargon in. Like, you're trying to close somebody on this thing, and you're using this jargon assuming they know what it is, and they don't. OK? So what I do, I use this thing called the kind of like bridge. And what the kind of like bridge is, is you basically, every time that there's a word, let's say this is a word right here, I'm gonna use a really confusing word, and it could be funnels, it could be ketones, it could be whatever. So let's say it's ketones. I gotta realize that like most of the audience has no idea what a ketone actually is, and if they do, they probably already bought the product or service anyway. So the people I'm trying to persuade don't know what that is yet, so as soon as I say the word ketones, I have to stop and say, it's kind of like, And then I tell them a story that's going to bridge the gap for something they do understand. OK? So it's ketones. It's kind of like— so I draw this bridge backwards. It's going this direction. And I explain something that they do understand, that they already have context for. So like when I wrote the sales video for Pruvit, one of the things I said— I talked about ketones. I said— in the script I said, then you drink this stuff. You get these things in your body called ketones. Ketones are kind of like having a million motivational speakers who are running through your body. Making you feel amazing. And people are like, oh, that sounds awesome. They don't know what ketones are, but they know what motivational speakers and 1,000 ranks in your body. Like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. OK? And so anytime I'm speaking, I try to figure out what are the words that are going to come over here that are going to be this wall that as soon as somebody hears it and they don't understand it, they feel dumb, and they kind of start separating away from you.

OK?

Every time that comes up, I got to stop and say, what's the kind of like bridge? 2 of my favorite people inside of my Category Kings program, Ryan Lee and Brad Gibb, are you guys here somewhere probably? Yeah, they're here somewhere. They were probably the best, well, they were probably the worst at this and now the best at this. When they first came into our world, they're selling financial planning, all these things, and they used words that were so big that I did like, I don't know what they're talking about. And they're like, but Russell, you have tons of money, you should blah blah, and they started dumping these words on me and I was like, none of these words are English, like I don't know what you're saying. And they're like, but you're an educated person, you have tons of money. I'm like, yeah, I still don't understand a thing you're saying. And so they literally went back to their presentations and their webinars and their speaking and they figured out kind of like bridges for every single principle, every single concept they had. And I watched them as they kind of struggle, they kind of struggle, they kind of struggle. And they were some of the fastest from as soon as their message like clicked. They went from not having any success to 2 Comma Club, to 2 Comma Club X and beyond in months versus decades. Like it was crazy. And when it came down to one of the core things was coming back and simplifying their communication. Instead of using these words they assume everybody knows, they use kind of like bridges every single time. So every time you're creating webinars, slides, Instagram, anytime you use a word you're like, somebody might not know this, just stop and like, it's kind of like this. Then you're gonna build a funnel. It's kind of like this, and you explain something that they're gonna make sense. It's kind of like bridges are so simple and so powerful, and it'll help you to be able to persuade people and move them to what you need them to do. So that is kind of like bridge.

Give it up for Russell, y'all, make some noise, make some noise. Oh, I thought we were at Funnel Hacking Live. Russell Brunson, y'all make some noise! That's better. That's better.

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How many of you ever get the objection, I can't afford it, right? Okay, that's when you have to answer really, really early in your presentation. You can't wait until they say I can't afford it, because if you try to overcome it then, then it feels like arguing, right? So I call this the I can't afford it close. And so what I do is I tell them early on in my presentation I define what "I can't afford it" really means. So I say, some of you have heard people say— and by the way, let me be— even before I say that, let me say this. One of the best ways for you to use a close— I probably shouldn't tell you this part. I'm really giving you keys to the castle right now. So, okay, but I'm going to tell you, give us the keys, Myron. Okay, so, so, so, so one of the best ways to teach people something that is going to immediately help you and cost them money is to teach them how it's gonna immediately help them and make them money.

Right?

Did y'all pick up what I just said? So instead of me saying, instead of me saying, don't tell me you can't afford it, say, how many of you, how many of you ever get I can't afford it? Wave at me and say I.

Okay.

How many of you would like to never get that again? Say me. Me. Okay, here's what you do. And I get it, there's only 7 of you who don't wanna get that anymore. I get that. Okay, so. So here's what you do. You say, I'm gonna teach you now how to not have to deal with I can't afford it anymore. Everybody ready? Let me hear everybody shout, I'm ready! I'm ready! Okay, cool. So here's how it works. Understand that when you talk to people and they say I can't afford it, it never means they don't have the money. Here's what it really means. I'm gonna translate I can't afford it into a language you can understand. Here it is. This is not important enough to me to figure it out. I mean, think about it. How many of you have ever seen something that you want but you didn't have the money for, but you figured it out? Wave at me and say aye. Aye. Right. We've seen a house, we've seen a car, we've seen a pair of shoes, we've seen a vacation, we've seen something we wanted to buy, didn't have the money for it, but what do we do? We figured it out because we know that everything is figureoutable. But when it doesn't mean enough to us, We don't figure it out. So understand that when your clients say, your potential clients say to you, "I can't afford it," what they're saying is, "This isn't important enough to me to figure it out." Now, here's what you gotta do after they say that. You have to figure out what in your presentation, whose presentation? Everybody tap yourself on the chest and say, "Mine." You gotta figure out what in your presentation made them come to the conclusion that it's not important enough for them to figure it out and then fix that. And then I can't afford it won't come up anymore. Does that make sense to everybody? Say yes. And so watch what happens. If I pre-frame that new belief, see, people weren't born believing anything. So we think, well, this is what they believe though. I can't just tell them they don't believe. They weren't born believing that. They adopted it from somewhere. You can give them a new belief that serves them at a higher level and they'll adopt that, like in the moment. So that's how I overcome I can't afford it before I ever hear I can't afford it so people don't say I can't afford it. Even if they wanna say, even if they don't have the money, And it's not even important enough for them to figure it out, they don't say either one of those. Right? They just don't do it.

Yet.

I had a lady, seriously, I had a lady come to me. She said, "Marion, I've been following you for 12 years, and finally I decided to buy your high-ticket program." Back when it was like $25,000. She had been following me for 12 years before she bought anything, and the first thing she decides to buy is $25,000. So, sometimes, it's not important enough for me to figure it out. If you're really, really good, the last word in that sentence will be yet. Y-E-T, yet. Russell?

Give him a round of applause, that was amazing. I just wanna add one cool example that back when I was first getting started in this business, I was doing a teleseminar, this is pre-webinars before we had Zoom, we had phones. And so, I was doing a teleseminar and the person I was doing the teleseminar with jumped on. He's like, "Hey, before we do this present..." Like we're going to do a 60-minute call and then sell his thing at the end. And he said, "Just so you know..." He's like, "There's 4 things to get people that people say no to. These are what they are. If you ask me these 4 questions, people will buy like crazy at the end." And so, one of the questions was the product was $297. He's like, "Most people think that's really expensive when they first hear about it. So, the way I need you to ask me the question is is asking the question saying, hey, the guy's name is Mike Chan, I said, hey Mike, it's kind of crazy, this product you created, like it does so many things, you're only charging $297 for it. Why in the world are you selling it for so cheap? That was the question I asked like 10 minutes in the thing, and then guess what? At the end, no one said I can't afford it, they're like, oh, that is so cheap. Just shifted the frame very beginning so that by the time we got to the close, it seemed really, really cheap. Okay, little tweaks you're weaving into your presentation all throughout. To set it up so it closes easier at the end.

So good.

Okay, principle number 7. This is one I could literally do a 3-day event on, but we do not have that much time unfortunately. But I'm gonna spend 3 or 4 minutes on it, which is gonna be so much fun. So when I'm closing anybody, and this is true in all aspects of everything, in webinars, teleseminars, sales pages, email sequences, retargeting campaigns, everything, there's 3 core things that I use to close someone. Number 1 is emotion, number 2 is logic, and number 3 is fear. Now, I'm going to draw a picture of the human brain because the human brain looks kind of like— oh, I wish it was better— like that-ish, OK? And this is like the squirrely part. OK, the front of the human brain up here somewhere, this is our conscious mind, right? In our conscious mind, there's two things that are happening. One is called emotion and one is called logic. OK, back here is our subconscious mind, and then down here somewhere is the lymphatic system, I believe, and back here is where we have Fear. Now I did this whole thing at the Unlock the Secrets family event this summer with all the kids. I came out and we showed how this is an elephant, these are monkeys, this is a lizard, and we drew this big— it was so much fun. So your kids can explain this to you later if you need it to. Just ask about the monkeys, the elephants, they'll break it back down for you. But these are things that are happening in our brain every single day. And so every single one of us works off of different things. Some of you guys are very emotional, some of you guys are very logical, and some of you guys only buy or move based off fear. OK? And so a good way to explain these first ones, if I came out to you with a box of Twinkies and I showed you the Twinkies, how many of you guys would be like, oh my gosh, I want a Twinkie right now? Who are my Twinkie— people want a Twinkie right now? OK? That's not a very big audience, which actually makes a lot of sense. Your kids would all freak out, right? Because they see the Twinkie and emotion leads. They're like, oh my gosh, I want that Twinkie so good. OK? All of you guys in this room, though, what happened is you saw the Twinkie and all of a sudden logic kicked in. You're like, how many calories is it going to be? How much sugar? I'm going to have a sugar crash. You start logically thinking through all the things.

Right?

OK, and we have this thing we're fighting between emotion and logic. Emotion, logic, these two things are always battling back and forth. OK? And so I'm giving a presentation. I got to speak to both these minds. Now, for the most part, emotion for me is the better thing to close with. So I will lead with emotion. It's my best thing. I'm going to lead with stories, emotion, to get somebody emotionally to want to move. OK? And there's going to be a segment of the audience that's going to move based on emotion. OK? After I get the emotional buyers to say yes, then I have to transition to the logical buyers. People who logically need me to explain things so they can basically go back to their spouse and tell them logically why they bought it. OK, we all know that people buy things emotionally. Like if you were to go buy a Ferrari, you sit in it, or a Lamborghini, you sit in it and you're like, oh, this would be so cool. You're driving around, you're like, this is amazing, like I feel so good. You pull up to the gas station and people are coming to you and you're like, this feels really, really good. And then you drive back home and you tell your spouse like, hey, I just bought a Ferrari, but the thing is it gets really good gas mileage, it has really high resale value, which is amazing, And we logically justify it, right? There's emotion, there's logic, and then the last one is fear. And to overcome fear, we use urgency and scarcity. So it's interesting, if you look at just this event, for example, how many of you guys bought your tickets last year's Funnel Hacking Live because you're like, "This is amazing. I'm not going to miss this no matter what." Who are my people who bought it last year? You're my most emotional buyers. Number 2, how many of you guys were waiting, who's going to speak next year, is it going to be worth it? Like, is Tony coming back? Who's going to be like, "Oh, I'm going to wait and find out." How many of you guys bought between last year's Funnel Hacking Live and maybe like 3 months ago? How many of you guys bought during that window of time? Okay, very cool. So emotional logic. Now, did you guys know that almost 50% of our tickets are sold in the last 3 weeks?

Hmm.

How many of you guys bought in the last 3 weeks? Oh, guess what took me to get you here? Fear, fear of missing out, urgency, scarcity pulling things away.

OK?

Now if I only tried to sell with emotion or only tried to sell with logic or only tried to sell with fear, I would not make as much money. So every sales argument has— I'm attacking emotion, logic, and fear.

OK?

I do it when I'm speaking at a webinar. I'm doing it on stage. If I have a sales page, right? Here's my sales page. The top 1/3 of my sales page uses a video that's driving towards the emotion. Underneath the video, there's longer form copy speaking to logic. In the bottom, I have urgency and scarcity speaking towards the fear. In a retargeting campaign, guess what happens first? You hit my page and you leave, the first set of retargeting ads are all speaking towards the logic. Then we transition over, or excuse me, to emotion. Then we transition to logic, and last ones in the campaign transition to fear. My email sequences, guess how they go? We lead with emotion, then we go to logic, and then we go to fear. Over and over and over and over again. And so for me, I'm attacking these three parts of the brain, 'cause these are things that either get you to move or to not move. And if I don't focus on all three of those I'm presenting, nobody's gonna move. So there you go with emotion, logic, and fear.

Crazy town. Let's give it up for Russell Brunson, y'all.

Wow.

Wow, I was having all kinds of ahas there. I almost got stuck in my own brain. Okay, okay, so this one I'm going to give you, this is like a price elasticity and how you overcome price resistance close. I call it the upgrade your money close. Okay, so, and here's how it works. So I will say to somebody in the audience, I said, well, I'll say, look, I've got a $100 bill, I got a $100 bill. Is there anybody in this audience who would like to buy this from me for $10? You give me 10, I give you 100. Okay, cool. So I want to pick somebody. Raise your hands again. I want to pick somebody. I want to pick somebody. I'm looking for somebody I know. It's so hard to see people. Okay. Okay. So anyway, yeah, I'm just going to say John Smith. I'm not selling it yet. So, but stay there. Stay there. What is your name? Samir? Samir. So Samir, we're going to take Samir, y'all. So Samir, if I gave, if I said you give me 10, I give you 100. Right? Do you like that deal? How many of y'all think that's a good deal for Samir? Say yes. Okay, so what if I say, what if I say, okay, Samir, let's change the game a little bit. Let's say you give me $100, I give you $1,000. Like, you give me $100, like, I like start peeling them off, right? I give you $1,000, right? You like that deal? Do you like that deal? How many of y'all think he's making a good deal, y'all? Yeah. Okay, all right, what about this? What about you give me $1,000, I give you $10,000? You like that better? Okay, so let's play the game a little longer because this is getting kind of tiring. You give me $10,000, I give you $100,000. Do you like that deal? How many of y'all think he's making a good decision? Yes? Yeah. Okay, you give me $100,000, I'll give you a million. I mean, like, write you a check right now, clears the bank, let's go. Do you want that deal? You give me 100 grand, I give you a million dollars. By the way, how many of y'all think he's making a good deal? Okay, how many of you, if I said to you, you give me $100,000, I give you a million, that's good? You do— like, you would do it today? Right, okay. So, so watch what happens. What I just— what if I said to Samir and all of the rest of you, I'm only going to do one of those. I'm going to give you $100 for $10, $1,000 for $100, $10,000 for $1,000, $100,000 for $10,000, or $1 million for $100,000, and you can only pick one. Samir, which one are you going to pick? The first one, a middle one, or the last one? The last one. How many of y'all First or middle or last? Can't hear you. Okay, so what did I just do? I just taught you how to think like a wealthy person. What does that mean? Poor people ask the wrong questions. That's why they get the wrong answers. They always ask, how much does it cost? When they should be asking, how much is it worth? And so does it stand to reason— I mean, watch, watch this. I want you, I want y'all to really think about this now. This is, this is me teaching you how to close stuff on your presentations. Does it stand to reason that Russell Brunson has helped 400 and something people get— no, 1,900 something people get 2 Comma Club Awards, 400 and some people get 2 Comma Club X Awards, and then 40-something people get like 2 Comma Club C— I don't even know the letters anymore, the bigger one— awards? Does it stand to reason he could teach you how to make a million dollars? Yes or yes? Right, right. And so when I'm doing it, I ask people, so does it stand to reason that if I've taught this person how to have a million-dollar day, this person how to have a $100,000 day, this person how to have a $300 day, this person how to have a $900,000 day, and apologize for it not being a million-dollar day, does it stand to reason I could teach you how to make that much in a year, right? And all you have to do is think about it. So now, I've given them a new frame to think about my offer, and they're not asking when I make the offer how much does it cost, they're asking what? How much is it worth? Because the reality is, like, if I had not joined Russell's inner circle, and I'm not trying to pitch you on Russell's inner circle, I'm just using this as an analogy, like, but it's true. But, but, but if I had not joined Russell's inner circle back in 2015 when I was coming back from 7 years of like total devastation, like, if you want to know that story, I've got a video on YouTube that says I've lost, I lost millions, like, and literally before I came to Russell, I'd lost millions of dollars and came to his inner circle and it changed my life forever. And I would not be here today. I would not be here today. So, so doesn't it make more sense to spend more to make more by asking a better question than spending less because of how much it costs? See, it's going to cost you something either way. It's going to cost you if you don't buy, but it's going to cost you if you buy. The problem is it's gonna cost you more if you don't buy. It would have cost me all of this. We've done over $11 million already this year in revenue that we would not have done if I had said no to back then what was a $25,000, now it's a $50,000 Inner Circle. So anyway, that's the upgrade your money close.

Dude, that was amazing. You guys love that one? He's trying to buy your money from you now. He still wants the—

Come see me. I'll sell you a million dollars for like Couple hundred grand. No, seriously, I got you, bro.

That's awesome, you guys. There are so many amazing persuasion techniques we had a chance to share with you. 8 before we ran out of time today. Uh, did you guys enjoy those? All right, that's it, man.

I guess we're done.

Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.