Scaling Online Q&A: Funnels, High Ticket, Ads & More - Part 1 | #Marketing - Ep. 114

Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast. What's up everybody, this is Russell.

I hope you're doing amazing. I've been having so much fun building funnels, launching new challenges, learning so much cool stuff. It's been a really fun season of my business for me last couple months. And anyway, having some fun. We, uh, just recently did a new event called Scaling Online. A lot of you guys were there for it. I hope you enjoyed it. And then at the end, I did some Q&A, and it was really fun. Some unique questions for some really cool people. And so I thought it'd be fun to share some of those Q&As with you guys here during the podcast. Um, we're building out a new podcast studio. We have a lot of fun things happening. We'll be relaunching this here soon. I've been talking about for the last little while, but we're getting closer closer to be able to do some really cool things here. And so just in the interim while we're getting it all finalized and figured out, just gonna share a couple more cool things. So what we're gonna do right now is share with you guys the Q&As from the Scaling Online event. And I hope you love it. It was about 90 minutes long, so we're gonna break it into 2 episodes. This will be episode number 1 of my Scaling Online question and answers.

This is The Russell Brunson Show. Well, we had about a dozen of you guys who submitted questions. And so that's my plan for the next, I don't know, hour or so, is to kind of go through Q&As. We had people pre-submit them, because what happens a lot of times is we'll go live on this stuff with the questions, and then sometimes people freeze and they kind of stress out. And so is that game plan still in good? Do you want to try pulling one up, too?

Yeah, that is the game plan. So what we're going to do is they provided a little context about their business, and then I'm going to ask you the question once the context is provided. Okay, if that works for you. So our first question is from Sarah J. She said, I run a business helping educators, entrepreneurs serve atypical kids who don't fit traditional school. I sell certification plus coaching and want to scale and impact fast. So the question is, I am a mission-driven solo, solopreneur scaling an education certification, possibly joining a mentors masterminds team. How do I scale the opportunity without losing my mission and identity?

Okay, mission-driven solo entrepreneur, scaling an online education certification program, possibly joining a big— okay, cool. Well, what I would do is, I mean, if you look at the One Common Club Challenge, we are selling a certification program. By the way, I think certification is one of the easiest things to sell. I told you guys Mifki or continuity is the hardest thing to sell, and live events are the hardest thing to sell, certification is the easiest thing to sell. So I love certifications. So if you look at the One Calm Club Challenge, it was a dramatic demonstration that sold a $5,500 certification program at the end of it. And so the key is like, it was interesting because the question was about losing my mission and my identity. I think the biggest thing is like, I think sometimes people get this confusion of like, if I am selling something, then I'm not helping people, right? It's just a mindset shift of understanding. It's like, the way you sell people, sorry, the way you actually serve people is you have to get them to make commitments, right? I served a mission for my church, man, 20-something, 25 years ago, crazy. And one thing that I learned on the mission was like, is that there's two types of people. There's people that will make commitments, and there's people that will keep commitments, right? And so for me to change someone's life, I had to find people who will both make and keep commitments. So this was the process. We would knock on someone's door, we would talk to them, we would share with them some scriptures, and I would ask them to make a commitment. I'm like, hey, Will you read this thing, right? And I'm gonna come back in 2 days from now and see if you read it. Now what's interesting is most everyone will be like, oh yeah, I'll read it. Like most people will make the commitment. Like, oh yeah, I'll do it, I'll totally do it. Okay, then I come back 2 days later and 99% of people didn't keep the commitment. They made the commitment, didn't keep the commitment. Okay, now there's the 2%, 1% who actually made the commitment and kept the commitment. Okay, and people who make and they keep commitments are people who progress. Okay, so that's what's interesting. So it's like, they make and they keep commitments. Okay, and so this is true on a lot of different levels. Number 1, for you guys who are listening, a lot of you guys will make commitments, but you don't keep them. That's why you're struggling, okay? In any area of your life. It could be your health, it could be your business, it could be like, everyone's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do it. I think about this event, like how many people registered for this event? They made the commitment, I'm gonna come to this event, and then how many kept the commitment and actually showed up? And showed up for all the days and did all the things, right? The number's very small, it's like the bottom of the funnel. Okay, and so first off, if you wanna be successful in life, you gotta be someone who makes and keeps commitments, okay? This goes back to your certification and like, your mission-driven, you wanna change somebody's life. So I'm guessing, based on the question, Sarah, I'm guessing that you're probably somebody who's very mission-driven, like you love people, you wanna change their lives, and you feel guilty selling them because you're like, I don't wanna lose my mission or my identity 'cause I don't wanna sell these people, but I wanna change their lives. Like, if you don't get them to do something, they will not change, okay? Again, you have to get them to make and keep commitments. That's the only way to progress somebody in any area of life is getting them to make them and keeping commitments, okay? What are the best ways to do that? One of my mentors used to tell me, like, people who don't pay don't pay attention. Like, we have to get people to make a commitment. And the best way to make a commitment is with somebody's wallet, with their credit card. They pull it out, they make a financial commitment. Okay? 'Cause me making a commitment to opt into a challenge, low barrier of entry, easy for me to like blow off the commitment. Right? But for me, if I pull out a credit card to put in for, you know, what I asked you guys to do 2 days ago, $2,500 a month. Oh, that's a commitment, right? What's gonna happen? By you pulling your credit card and actually putting the money in, what's gonna happen? You're either gonna freak out and cancel like 2 days later, or you're gonna be like, I made a financial commitment. It hurts a little bit, right? We could've sold 2 CCX for $100, right? But then you're less likely to show up, right? The more expensive something is, the more likely you are to actually do something, right? The people who pay me $50 grand a year Inner Circle, guess what? They show up and they do the thing. People pay me $150 grand for Category Kings, they show up and do the thing. People, $250 grand for Atlas, They show up and they do things 'cause they've made a financial commitment. So the best way you can serve somebody, getting them to actually make a financial commitment, 'cause where you put your money is where your heart's at, right? You see this with people all the time. This is like scriptural, like where our money is is where our hearts are, right? Where do you spend your money at? Where do people spend their money at? If they're not willing to spend money for the thing you're trying to get them to do, they're not actually bought in, they're not actually invested in this, right? And so the best way you can do it is by getting them to come over that loop and actually invest money, right? And so how to scale without losing your mission and your identity is understanding that the way that you actually fulfill your mission, you actually fulfill your identity, is by getting them to take the steps, getting them to make commitments and keep commitments, okay? If you look at the selling online, or sorry, not selling online, the One Comma Club Challenge, right? I'm asking them to make a commitment, register and show up, okay? And then I'm like, on the thank you page, I'm like, alright, become a VIP, it's free, You have a 14-day trial, but you gotta go find your credit card, like I'm actually making another commitment, it's a little bit scarier. You gotta go find your credit card and like actually put in the digits, right? Okay, then they go through the challenge, each day I'm serving them, serving them, then day 3 we make an offer for the certification program. Right, and so that'd be kind of the things I'd be looking at. Also, if you look at, you know, if you wanna be a service-based person, doing a 5-day challenge is a great way to serve someone like crazy for 5 days before you ever ask them for any money too. So if I was you, I would go back through when the One Calm Mind Club event goes live again, which should be the next couple days, we'll have the evergreen version live, is go and funnel hack that. Like, go through the process slowly, download the BarnumPT.com Chrome extension, take a screenshot of every single page as you're going through and watching what we're doing, okay? Again, that funnel, unless I'm insane, should make $100 million this year, right? Like, that's what I'm pushing towards. And so, and it's selling a certification program. So for you, model the whole thing, right? We had people who went through the certification program and were getting results by that weekend. We did a thing 2 weeks later with everybody who went through and we had tons of results. So for me it's like, man, I was able to do that and like we're having so much success in my results, like it's, the community's fired up, I'm able to lead those people, like it'll shift everything. So anyway, hope that works. Any other things from this question that I think we're missing?

I don't think— part of it was she's worried that she's gonna lose her drive and mission as she joins another team. So she's got an offer to join a mastermind team, and part of it is she's worried she's gonna lose her mission by joining the team as well.

Gotcha. Oh, because you're— I see what you're saying. So you're gonna be joining their team, so it's their offer. Well, I think, I think there's a couple things. It's like understanding who you are at the core. Like, are you someone who can be an intrapreneur? And be an entrepreneur inside of somebody else's business. If you can, you can thrive in that kind of thing. And I look at my team, I'd say half of my staff are very intrapreneurial. They're entrepreneurial people who are working inside of my company, but each of them have their own departments, their own things, and they're able to create their own opportunities inside of what we're doing. I think for most of them, they're having a good time, hopefully. Yeah, I try to create an environment where they can be very intrapreneurial. They use their entrepreneurial talents inside of our business. But there's other people who have come here that I love them and they came for a week, 6 weeks, a year, 2 years, but they couldn't handle it. They wanted their own thing. For me, it would be very difficult for me to go into another business where I'm an entrepreneur. It would be very hard for me. Other people, they fit in that role great. So I'd be looking at yourself, like, are you someone who thinks they can be an entrepreneur inside of somebody else's business? If so, that can be an amazing opportunity. It takes away so much risk and so many fears. But if you can't, and you know that, then I would say, like, don't do that. Or maybe have that conversation with your mentor, like, this is my fear, like, I'm very entrepreneurial, I wanna be able to grow and scale, and if there's not that opportunity or that structure here inside this, it's not gonna be a good fit for me. And have that conversation now before you decide to take that team or not. And just even say, like, these are the things that are important to me, I wanna make sure that I'm still able to do these things with my mission, with my identity, like, I wanna be able to do these things as well. And make sure they're in alignment with that, and if they're not, Figure that out right now. Don't, you know, I'd rather like, if it was me, I'd rather, I'd rather like make less money or take a lot longer by myself figuring things out than plugging into someone else if I'm not able to actually, you know, get to my end goal, my end values I wanna pursue. So yeah, have those conversations ahead of time, that should help. Cool.

Perfect.

Great question.

All right, you ready to move on to the next one?

Let's do it, who do we got next?

All right, so next one is from Alaric. And the context behind his question is, I do marketing, branding, and sales coaching. I tried selling software in 2023 through 2024, but hated the tech support side. So I'm focusing on coaching again, and I've noticed a lot of coaching continuity programs seem to have high churn. So the question is, do I actually need a continuity offer to grow long-term, or is it smarter to stick with a high-ticket— to stick with high-ticket coaching? And if continuity is needed, What's the best way to structure to avoid high churn?

Cool, great question. There's two guys that teach this really well. Daniel Priestley, he's got a book called Oversubscribed, and he's got another one, I can't remember the name off the top of my head. And then Taylor Welch also teaches this, he calls it, he's got a fancy name for it, it's basically a very similar thing, but it's about how to structure your coaching offers to have continuity. And so I don't, again, I'm probably gonna mess this up, but the gist is very similar. The way they structure their high-ticket coaching programs is someone will pay, let's say it's $10,000 for the initial onboarding. So it's $10,000, we onboard you, da da da, here's what's gonna happen, and then after that, it rolls into a $697 a month continuity, or a $997 continuity, whatever the thing might be, right? And so what happens is a couple things. Number one is you get the high-ticket revenue up front very, very quickly, but then within 30 days you're rolled into continuity. But then the churn, it solves the churn problem because Somebody's already invested the $10,000 for this onboarding stuff to be part of it, right? Now they're paying the monthly, and if they cancel and they want to come back, they've got to repay the $10,000. So there's this whole like mental thing they have to go through of just like, man, I lose my $10,000 investment if I disassociate, if I unplug from this. But if I stay in it, then we've got this thing and we have a long— like we stick long-term with it, right? And so it's been really fascinating. A lot of the guys in my inner circle went to Taylor Welch's trading and then they started implement that in their high ticket, and it's really fascinating watching it because it gets rid of most of the churn problems. It gets people where they're, you're getting a bunch of money up front, so it's nice 'cause it covers ad spend, it covers like all those, the fixed costs, but then it gets people plugged into this continuity, and that's kinda where it goes from there. So my recommendation would be, looking at something like that, again, Daniel Priestley, the Oversubscribed book may be the one that talks about this, but if not, there's another book he wrote that goes deeper on it, and Taylor Welch has got, a bunch of stuff on it as well, but that's kind of the way I would structure it. I would always, like, I have so many friends that are all just high-ticket people and I love it, but I just look at their business because typically what happens is you close, you crush a bunch of high-ticket sales and you're like, man, I got $200K in the bank, I'm gonna go fly on a private jet, and you do that and then within like 6 weeks, like, it's gone. And then you're like, ah, and you start to go do it again. And it's like, they're never building towards something, right? There's never, And for me, it's like when I shifted my mindset from like high ticket to like compounding continuity, how can I do these things that yes, will give me a high ticket, but at the same time, it's also building more continuity into it, right? Like you look at the 2CCX offer that I made to you guys 2 days ago, that I'm making for you right now, right? Like for me, there's a high ticket, it's $25,000 a year, but people pay $2,500 a month. So for me, it's like, yes, I get the high ticket $25,000 thing, and I get people on the continuity at $2,500 a month, so I'm kinda getting the best of both worlds. And so I would just structure that way. And yes, there is churn, people leave, but at the same time, it's like, that's better than someone paid me, I spent the money, and now I gotta find more people all the time to keep pushing into it. Does that make sense? So hopefully that helps with some of the kind of reframes I look at that. Look at how those guys are structuring their high-ticket programs. I haven't structured mine that way yet. I've looked at that or thought about that. I may restructure Inner Circle in the future to be something more similar to that. Haven't decided yet. So yeah, hope that helps.

Awesome. All right. Nice job, Russell. You kind of know what you're talking about. All right, we're going to move to the next question. This is from Deborah. Deborah, text Deborah provided is, I'm moving from one-on-one or one-to-one blood analysis nutrition coaching to a tiered membership, 3 to 4 tiers. Higher tiers include comprehensive blood draws plus custom supplement plans through a partner lab supplement provider. I'll sell via webinar and lead funnel and want to stop daily one-on-one, go location independent, and scale across North America. So the question is, what's a strong MIFKI for this if I don't own the lab or supplements lines, so I can't give away tests or products?

Cool. Well, first off, what's your name again?

You— Deborah.

Deborah. So first off, Optimal Health and Doug's, who I use. So you're selling an insanely good product. That's a We do our blood draws every 90 days, my wife and I. It's been probably, of all the biohacks I've done, probably the best biohack. And I've done mostly everything. So that's a great product you're selling, which is great. So it's a good question. I did a promo with Doug as well, where it's like, we were selling the back-end blood and certification, you know, all that kind of stuff as well. We were selling the high-ticket version of it. And so we did a webinar, we did a chat, we did a bunch of different things in front of it. The biggest thing is just understanding, it's like, hey, when all said and done, the end thing you're selling is custom blood work, custom supplements, things like that, right? So my, when I'm creating a MIFT key, I'm thinking like, okay, what's something that my dream client would go crazy for, right? Something that's useful but incomplete that will get that person to raise their hands so I know who they are, that then I can then push them into something later, right? And so a good example of this, Perry Belcher, back in the day, he had a suit company. I don't know if he bought or he invested in it, but they did custom suits, right? And so he was thinking, he's like, custom, I can't do a Miffy, I can't do a free plus ship, there's nothing I can do for like a suit company, but how do I get people who are likely to buy custom suits? He's like, hey, well let me think about this, custom suit people, what do custom suit people, like what are other things we know about them, right? Well, people who wear custom suits, they wear custom shirts, they wear custom ties, they wear, you know, they do different things. And he's like, oh, people that buy custom suits, traditionally, they're getting French cuff shirts, right? And they've got what? They've got cufflinks. Oh, anybody who's gonna buy a cufflink is likely the same person who's gonna eventually buy a custom suit. And so Perry went and he found these cufflinks, he called them cuff, cuff, I can't remember, I have a picture of the funnel back in the day, it was really cool. But basically it was like free plus shipping cufflinks. And they were these really cool, sick cufflinks. And so you buy that free plus shipping, and then from there he knew like, okay, people who just bought this free plus shipping cufflinks, they're likely, and then from there he would send them and upsell them into buying the suits, okay? Now he didn't have continuity and all those things built into it, but that's the idea. So that's the mindset I want you thinking about. It's like, what's something that my dream client who's gonna be buying custom supplements is also going to buy, right? Earlier in the journey. And so it could be all sorts of things. It could be you go and you find 5 cool biohackers and you interview them, you put together a package and it's like, alright, here's the biohacking super conference or summit or whatever, right? And you pull people together. So it could be that. It could be, you know, if you look at the way that Cardone blew up TEDxHealth, he just got, he created a MIFKI for the blood test. Right, him and Brecka put it together. It was like, it was a blood test for the gene test that Brecka does, right? So it's like, it was an expensive Mifki, but it was like, I think $500, $600 for this Mifki, and that was the test, right? And so they would just sell this test like crazy. And you look at Brecka, he was on Joe Rogan, he was on everywhere selling this test, I think it was a blood test, for $600. But that gave them the data, and then from there they would do something. So like, the blood test could be the Mifki. I don't know what Doug and those guys charge for that. The initial one, that could be, that's what it could be, right? Or it could be, you could create an info product that's going through, like, based on blood test results, like, hey, if your blood test is this and this, it means you need more iron, you know, whatever. You create an offer like that. And then it's like, now someone buys that and they're like, this is amazing, but I actually need my blood test to find out what mine actually is, right? And so then you could upsell a blood test. And so those are things I would be looking at, right? Just what are the things that someone who is eventually gonna wanna buy the supplements would be interested in, right? And creating something based on that. So like for example, when we did ours initially, it wasn't for the blood test one, but it was for, we had a bone broth that we were doing, right? So I'm trying to sell bone broth to people, but I'm like, how do I get someone to think that bone broth's sexy? I'm like, well, it's not sexy by itself, but I'm like, if I can get them to understand the value of the protein that the bone broth gives them, then it could be really sexy. So we did a webinar where I basically taught this whole structure on protein, how it works, how do you eat the protein, how you lose weight on it, and did that, and also it created desire now for protein. I was like, you can buy all sorts of protein that's gonna give you gas 'cause it's all whey-based, or you can get our collagen protein that's way better, right? And we pushed people into that, and it converted like crazy. So it's just thinking through those things, right? It's just, like, we're always looking for like a dotted line, but it's not that way. It's just thinking like, here's the end customer, what are things that they would be excited for, that'd get them to geek out? And then from there, then it's like, that's what you create. Like, you know, MIFKIs again are something that's useful but incomplete. So it's like, what's this thing that's very, very useful, it's exciting, it's cool, but it's incomplete, right? And you put that together, that becomes the MIFKI to bring somebody in. And maybe it's not gonna be directly into, well, actually it's kinda interesting. So Doug and I did the deal back in the day and then we stopped doing it just 'cause we were selling $10,000 a thing and anyway, it didn't work because a lot of people didn't see the value of custom supplements. If and when I do the deal with Doug again in the future, our Mifki will not be the custom supplements. It would be some sexy Mifki thing that puts them on the, what's it called, the natural supplements, the non-synthetic supplements, which he sells, right? It would be something to get someone on that, 'cause you can do the default supplements that aren't customized for whatever it is, and that would be my Mifki. And then after they're on the Mifki getting the regular supplements in a box every single month, then my job, my goal would be to send them from from regular supplements up into custom supplements. And so that's how I'd restructure the offer if I, if and when I do that again with Doug in the future. So hopefully that's helpful.

Wonderful. We're going to move on to the next question. This one is from Ed, and here's the context. So since 1997, Ed's helped companies raise capital by matching early-stage investments up to 3 times and de-risking investors via diversification and hedging. He's currently selling offline via networks and referrals, and he wants to go online, but he's cautious about regulatory boundaries. So the question— and I, I— you like legal stuff. So, has ClickFunnels worked with regulated investment-adjacent businesses, and how can I use funnels to market ethically without crossing lines?

Yes, good, good. Yeah, first off, I'm sorry, I It's like this weird annoying loophole that like there's a dozen industries that have to do it. We've got people successfully on ClickFunnels doing that. And so it comes down to like you've got to figure out how to create something on the front end that doesn't have the regulations but your dream client would want, right? A lot of times that's a book, right? It's like I see people who like they have funds for accredited investors, right? And so it's like, how do you get those people, you know? And so like, there's all sorts of rules you have to do. And so what they do is they create a book or an offer, something on the front end that's teaching like the strategy behind the thing, but it's not selling the services, right? 'Cause that has to happen separately through regulations and stuff like that. So I use like, if it was me doing it, I'd be using funnels and stuff to get the potential dream clients to come into my world, to position myself as an authority, but then all of the regulative, I don't know, selling stuff would be happening separately externally from the online funnel. Does that make sense? 'Cause there's usually gotta be that arm's distance length 'cause there are so many rules and so many things in so many different businesses, right? In insurance stuff there's issues, in capital raising 100%, right? Accredited versus unaccredited versus like, there's all sorts of different things. And so it's coming down to like, what can you create on the front end that's gonna get someone who potentially wants to do that in the future to raise their hand, you can bring them in, right? And a book is a great way. I've seen a lot of people do this with book offers where you sell a book on information about how, like, investment strategies of the rich, right? I watched Tony Robbins did this. Tony Robbins, he is so smart. So he did a thing where he interviewed, you know, the top 50 greatest investors in the history of all time, and he made the book, Money Master the Game, and they launched this book, and he was on Today Show, CNN, everywhere, like, pitching this book and he sold, you know, we ran part of the funnel for it for a while, but like, he sold millions of copies of this book, right? And Tony's not, he can't say these things, he can't do anything, but he had a partner on the back end who, when someone read the book, they're like, oh, I need somebody with fiduciary, blah blah, whatever Tony talked about in this big old fat book. And he just told people this is where they should go. And I think that like year one, he put like $8 billion in assets on the back end of the book. Right? And so like very heavily regulated, but he was just interviewing people about the topic and everyone read the book, they're excited, and it's like, oh, like what? He created a concern and a desire. And all of a sudden, Albert was like, well, I don't know who to invest with then. Oh, what do I do? And Tony's like, oh, just talk to these guys over here. And then they could put him over there, right? But Tony didn't have to have the regulations and the rules and all that kind of stuff because he wasn't asking people for money up front. He wasn't doing those kind of things. He was just sharing information from the greatest traders in the world and brought those people in.

Right?

And that all happened here and then separate transaction over here. But he had all the leads and he created, like marketing, all marketing really is is like hooking somebody to get their attention and then you're planting a seed of desire and you're watering that seed to make that desire grow. Right? I mean think about this, when I started a decade ago teaching funnels, nobody had desire for funnels. Nobody cared about funnels. So what was my job? My job was plant seeds of desire and then water that. Well all of a sudden it's like, oh, I need a funnel, I need a book funnel, I have to have a funnel, right? And by me planting seeds for a decade, that's how my business has grown this huge thing. So I'm planting seeds of desire. So think about that as like, you're bringing somebody in, similar concept, but something that's not regulated, planting seeds of desire, and you're gonna water them through podcasts, through YouTube videos, through trainings, through the education, through the books, through all this kind of thing, right? It blossoms into something. Now they have this like pain because you've created this desire, it's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're like, oh, over here, I run an investment firm, or I run a thing over here, or whatever that might be, and then you can push them to something externally through the regulations, but it's just separating those two things and understanding what can you say and not say over here that's separate. Or even creating a whole separate business that does the, like Tony's business that sells the books, Robbins Research, is completely different from the investment fund that Tony's an investor in over here that then takes all the money and, does that make sense? So hopefully that kind of helps a little bit, but yeah, in terms of regulation stuff, obviously you gotta, there's a lot of rules you gotta follow, but for the most part it's understanding these are two separate businesses. One's for lead gen and bringing people in and like educating, creating desire, and then separately is where you push somebody over there. Hope that helps. Thank you, Ed Swain.

Yeah, thank you, Ed Swain.

I think that was very helpful.

We have a handful of folks in Inner Circle who deal with that same stuff, do investments. I won't list off a bunch of names, but there's a ton of people who have found how to do those types of things without crossing boundaries. So, all right, next question we have is from Leah. And the context is that she helps burned-out homeschool mom and kids love learning again. She keeps hearing start high ticket, but linchpin seems to place high ticket later. So she's stuck and hasn't launched. So the question is, should she start with a $47 a month membership or a $2997 high ticket offer? And how do I decide so I can finally move forward?

All right, Leah, they say name Leah.

I think so. I would say yes.

We're going to get you unstuck right now and you are going to be in it and we're going to start playing and it's, it's time to party. Okay. All right. It comes back down to levels of continuity, right? Level 1, level 2, level 3. So you've got $47 a month is your level 1 continuity, right? Traditionally, level 2 is like a year access to that, right? So you're looking at $47 a month times 12 minus 2 months for free. So usually times 10, right? Usually we do. So usually when we're moving someone from level 1 to level 2, We're going from $97 a month to $997, so they get 2 months for free, right? So if you're going $47 a month, here you're at like basically $500, so $500 is this, and then $2997 is your high-ticket offer, okay? So boom, boom, boom, you got all 3 of 'em, okay? So this is simple 'cause level 1, level 2's the exact same thing, they're just prepaying for a year, right? Look at the ClickFunnels offer, they built ClickFunnels, $97 a month for ClickFunnels, and then we prepaid for a year and then moved them to level 2. And then back here's now 2CCX, Prime Move, like all the other things happen at level 3, right? So these are your first 2 things. So what I would say is, right now, just to get unstuck, like go and launch your $47 a month thing immediately, that's your MFTY, the upsell becomes, hey, when you upgrade, you get 2 months for free, and it's $500, and that gives you level 1, level 2. Like that's what I would, I would get that done today. Go get that done, get it launched, get it out there, send emails to your existing list and your people, and get them into motion, right? And that's what's gonna happen. And I would spend a little while doing this. I would keep doing this, until you're like, man, I can't, like, I'm assuming you said you have an audience, you said I burned out help moms, right? So you have an existing audience, I'm assuming. So I would say existing audience is great, this is your warm traffic, and just start hitting there fast, okay? Typically people say start high ticket because high ticket, it's gonna be harder for you to run profitable ads to a $47 a month continuity, right? It's just the math is harder to make work. Okay, but in the short term, it's like, I always tell, this is one of the conversations I have literally every 3 months with the Inner Circle when they come here to Boise, and I've been doing it for a decade or more now, is that everyone's like, okay, I want to scale this business, and so I have this idea, and so what's happening is there's a big pile of cash right here, and they're like, they see it, but they're like, okay, but I wanna scale it, so they step over the big pile of cash, ugh, and they walk over here, and they're trying to figure out these other things. Okay, I'm so sorry Brad, and Brad's gotta like follow me on this stage as I'm running around, okay? So what I do first, I come down here, I'm like hey, there's a big pile of cash right here, I'm going to grab that pile of cash first, and then I'll go get the other cash. But we always step over this pile of cash to go get the other cash, right? Why would you do that? If you look at every single funnel we've ever launched, including this one right now, depending when you're watching this, right? Moshe is watching this live, but this eventually will be an evergreen thing, right? But the live version, Guess what I did? I just emailed my own existing audience. I'm just grabbing the pile of cash, I didn't buy any ads. None, like we just bought, like just grab the pile of cash now, and then we'll go and we'll figure out how to scale it. So for you it's like, yes, a $297 offer is gonna be the thing you're gonna want to be able to scale in the future, 'cause you need that profit margin for you to be able to grow and scale. But if you've got an existing audience right now, and they love you and they know you, like make the $47 thing, upsell $500 thing, and email, post on social, tweet, spam, like everything you got to your warm audience, and get them to come in here and grab that pile of cash right now and pull all that cash off the table, And now you got some reserves, you're like, hey, I was able to pull off $1,000, $10,000, I don't know how big your audience is, $50,000 of money, right? You pull that cash off and now, let's plug in your level 3 continuity, your $2,997, and now you can take the money, again, you're betting house money, like you already pulled, your warm market is gonna finance now you coming back and doing an offer that sells your $2,997 you gotta go buy ads for. Does that make sense? Like we did the one comic book challenge, everyone's like, why aren't you buying ads on this? I play the game where I have the lowest amount of risk possible, okay? So the first thing I do, we launched the One Comma Club Challenge, email our existing list, okay? We did the challenge, we got 1,200 people on Mifki, we made a, again, we had a $5,500 offer, 600 sales for that, so I grabbed the pile of cash, right? So what happens? If you look at the math on what 600 times $5,500, it's like $3 million, right? So we got $3 million in cash, okay? Now I'm playing with house money. Okay, I'm not investing money to buy ads. I've got $3 million in cash we collected. Now I go out and say, okay, let's start spending money here. Does that make sense? So my warm audience funds the growth for everything else. Okay, too many of you guys are risking and trying and hoping and praying for stuff. It's like, if you have an audience right now, get them to finance it all. So again, I would launch a $47 a month thing immediately with a $500 upsell for yearly. That gets us 2 things, and then spend the next month, 2 months, 3 months, however long it works profitably, keep promoting, keep pitching it, keep getting stuff, just pull that money, pull that money, pull that money off, and then you got a pile of money. Don't go spend it on your new car, don't go spend it on whatever the thing is, entrepreneurs are the worst at that, we get excited and we go buy a new watch, we buy something that we don't need. Keep that money and still, like, I'm using house money, so my audience is financing this for me, now I'm taking this money, and now we're gonna sell my $2,000 offer, I'm gonna evergreen it, or I'm gonna start buying ads, and that money then goes back into ads. Does that make sense, you guys? Alright. Cool, cool, cool. Awesome, Dave said that's amazing. That's how we start growing things and scaling things without risking our own money, right? My warm, my hot audience, my existing audience right here, they are funding and financing this for me. I get the money off the table, and then I reinvest now to get the warm audience, and start scaling and going from there. Now most of you guys are never gonna get to the spot where you have to get the cold audience, okay? Most of you guys can build good, you know, 8-figure a year businesses off going hot and warm, okay? Cold's when you're trying to get to $100 million a year. So a lot of you guys will never have to worry about this, so hot, hot, again, every new offer, put it out there, get the hot audience, pull the money out of it, then you reinvest that into the warm audience, start buying ads, and be able to go to the next level. So that'd be my recommendation for you, okay? Again, the reason why everyone's saying lead high ticket is because most people saying that, they don't have an audience yet. It's like, I have no audience, I gotta sell $10,000 things I can pay for ads with. But if you've already got homeschool moms who know who you are, who are paying there, grab the pile of cash in front of you and then go to the next phase. That help? Cool, cool, cool. Alright, who's up next?

Alright, up next is Nisha, or Nisha, I apologize for mispronouncing it. The context is Nisha helps small businesses and wedding pros with strategic— with strategy Marketing Systems. She has a goal of 10 new paying customers per month. So the question is, if you need to generate $10,000 to $20,000 in 30 days with minimal ad spend, what acquisition strategy would you prioritize first?

Cool. All right, Nisha, I'm going to give you some good news. If I had to make $10,000 to $20,000 in the next 30 days, I would not use any ads, not even one. A lot of you may not know this, we didn't buy our first ad for ClickFunnels for 2 years because ads ads, as much as we love them for scaling, they suck for profit initially. And we didn't have money to buy ads initially, number one, but number two, it's like, there's so many ways to get free traffic that are way better, right? So again, talk about this, if you have your own hot audience, right, this is your best. Your hot audience loves you, they're gonna forgive you, they're gonna sign up for stuff if your funnel doesn't convert very well, so that's the best. If you got your own audience, like, I would just market to my own audience. If I need to pull $10,000 or $20,000 out, like, that's what I do. If you don't have your own audience, that's okay. My next phase would be like, hey, I'm gonna go down to my warm audience, and I could go buy ads and give Zuckerberg money, or what if instead I find people who already have a list, that list is hot for them, right, they're warm to me but they're hot to them, so I'm gonna leverage that relationship and get them to promote something that then I can sell, okay? So that's kind of the strategy, so conceptually how it would work. What I would do is I would figure out what is the thing I'm trying to sell? Let's say if it's gonna be a, Again, I'm not sure what price point you're selling, so 10 new paying clients, so you're probably selling something $1,000, $2,000 or so, so that's what it is, right? So what I do is I would go and I would create a way to, like some funnel to sell that, right? Could be a webinar, could be a coaching app, whatever that is, like, we figure out what it is, right? And then I would say okay, if you're helping business, like wedding pros, I would say okay, who are 100 people that have a podcast speaking to wedding pros? Okay, maybe you find 100, maybe you only find 2 podcasts, but find a little, what are the YouTube channels they're speaking to wedding pros. I was thinking, what are the email lists speaking to wedding pros, okay? This is like out of my book Traffic Seekers, okay? Step number 1 is building Dream 100. I figure out who are the people that are already speaking to my audience? Who has a warm audience speaking to my dream customer, or hot audience, okay? They're warm to me but it's hot to them, and I would go to those people and say, hey, I love your podcast, you're speaking to wedding pros all the time, I have a really unique way that I help wedding pros, I help them do it by blah blah blah blah blah, it's completely different. Would you be, could I come on your podcast and share the strategy with your audience? They were gonna love it. Person would say yeah, right? As long as you pitch it and present it correctly, okay? And then I would go to the YouTube channel and say hey, you got this YouTube channel, I love what you're doing. I have a unique way that I help wedding pros that's different than what you're talking about now. Can I come on and do an interview and share this way? They're like yeah. And I started getting on other people's lists, other people's audiences to go and do that. Does that make sense? So that's what I would do. And I would focus 100% of my time on that. If you look at like, When movies come out, right? And nowadays movies are kind of lame, but you remember back in the day when Marvel was still awesome? And you look at the cycle, like each of the Marvel movies would come out, right? I used to love watching this, 'cause Iron Man, Iron Man Part 2, Thor, like all the movies would come out. Before the movie would come out, the very first thing that they would do is they'd send all the actors out on a tour, right? A TV tour, they'd be on Today Show, Tonight Show, Good Morning America, CNN, like they'd hit all the different talk shows. And they'd come and they'd talk about the movie and they show a clip of the movie and then go, go, this weekend we're going live. And they would just blitz the media for 2 weeks leading up to the movie and then they would go and get everyone live, right? And that's how they would promote it. I was like, in a perfect world, if I was launching a book or a coaching program webinar, I'd be on Today Show, Tonight Show, but I can't get on those things, right? But I can do the same thing, I can do a virtual book tour. So for me, I'm looking at this, if I have an offer, I need to make some money, I'm gonna go on a virtual book tour, I'm gonna try to get on every podcast, every YouTube channel, everyone's email list, and get that way, and then they have me on there, I provide content to their audience for free, and then from there, at the end of it, Normally happens at the end of every interview, it's like, hey, if you want more information, where do they go? I'm like, oh cool, there's actually an application, if you want me to help you implement this in your business, go to RussellBrunson.com/coolkidsgohere.com, whatever it is, you know? And then now you're getting all this audience, warm audience for someone else to hear your message, now they become hot, sorry, hot audience for someone else, now they become hot to you, and you push them to a thing. But that's what I would do. I think for most of you guys, you shouldn't buy ads for the first 2 or 3 years of your business, you should be just doing that strategy. If you wanna understand it, go read Traffic Secrets and then go listen, like that's the whole thing, like Dream 100, focus on that, do that first. Anyways, that's what I'd focus. So that'd be what I was gonna do. If you're like, I need $10K, or I need it quick, what's the best way to spend ads? I would then go, if the people say no, be like, cool, can I pay you $1,000 to be on your podcast instead? And they're like, sure. I have podcasts I go on now, I have YouTube channels. We had a guy the other day, he's got a huge YouTube channel. And I was like, hey, put them out for free. He's like, no. I'm like, cool, how much would you charge? And like, I think like 10 grand. I'm like, done. And so 10 grand, he flew out here, filmed me, posted it up, we got like, I don't know, a million views on it. I was like, that's the cheapest ads ever, right? So ask you know for free, if they say no, ask how much it costs to be on it and then just pay them. That's way cheaper ads and way better ads, 'cause you're going directly to the hot audience of somebody else, they're giving you a personal recommendation versus you buying ads on Facebook and hoping, find somebody. It's like, yeah, so that'd be my recommendation. Good luck, Nisha. I hope that that helps for you. Yeah.

You mind if I add one thing, Russell?

Yeah, please do.

Oh, really? Cool. Um, LinkedIn, uh, she said she helps like wedding pros and, you know, business planners, events planners. Like, they're on LinkedIn trying to get insights from other people in the industry all the time, and we're posting our wins or there's our struggles, and you'd be surprised how many connections or people will come to you for help. Um, so I mean, that's while you're trying to get on those podcasts or YouTube channels, just to post on LinkedIn could probably do the trick. Make sure you use the right hashtags and utilize that.

So very cool. Yeah, there you go, from Miles, Miles himself.

I love LinkedIn, love LinkedIn. All right, so our next question is from Preeti, and again, I apologize, I'm not good at pronouncing names, but here's the context. So Preeti sells an 8-week live cohort strength longevity program for women 40 years and over. She has 4,000 email subscribers, but most buyers come from local Facebook groups. I want to scale reach. So the question is, how do I diagnose whether my bottleneck is top funnel, not enough leads, or mid funnel leads not converting? And what metrics should I check?

So they have a 4,000 person list, but their sales coming from Facebook groups. So they're saying the list isn't buying, is that what they're saying, you think?

I guess trying to find the diagnosis is the bottleneck not enough leads coming in, or the leads that she's getting, are they not converting?

Okay, oh, they just posted, so yes, the list isn't buying. Okay, cool. So list isn't buying. So a couple things I would say is, is number one is it's like, if you think about lists, like, The list is the lifeblood of every single business, okay? And so for me, it's like, I have to continually be adding people to the list because lists wear out. They don't last forever, right? I think if I was to look back the last 10 years, we probably had, I don't know, 10, 15 million people that have opted off my list at one time or another, and there's like, they're flowing through, they stay for a while, they fall off, and like, new people, so like, there's always gonna be new things coming. And so a lot of it's like, okay, you have a 4,000-person list, but it's like, you've gotta like, you gotta stimulate growth. That's why the dramatic demonstrations we talk about are so great, 'cause dramatic demonstrations like, I gotta give them something exciting, 'cause if I'm just like buy this thing, buy this thing, it's hard, right? If I'm like, I'm going to Dan Kennedy's basement, it's gonna be amazing, like, they'll re-engage a cold, dead list, right? So it's like re-engaging them to be excited. So that's number 1, but number 2, it's like, when we do a dramatic demonstration, one of the reasons why we do that is 'cause it's the best list-building tool we have, right? The dramatic demonstration is a lead magnet, right? If you look at the Dan Kennedy business, the Write Like Dan Challenge, that challenge is the lead magnet. And so like, we're promoting it, they're registering, and that's how the list is growing. Okay, for the One Calm Clip Challenge, my goal when we get evergreen is get 10,000 people a day to opt in. Okay, like that's the number, that's the metric, that's where we're sprinting towards, right? So that's adding 10,000 people a day to the list. So you have a 4,000-person list, cool, do some of that to try to reengage them, number one, but then number two, it's like, okay, now you have the drag demonstration, now start putting new leads in there, have them, have them start coming in. Now if you're saying that the conversions are all coming from Facebook groups, it's like hey, for us it's very similar. Like when we do challenges, like we did the Lung Comp Club Challenge, we put them all into a backstage pass group, right, which is kinda like a Facebook group, put them in there, and so that like, in the community, like we're dropping things, it's the social proof, it's the networking that gets people to buy eventually. So it's like using these strategies in tandem. So it's like, with Facebook group, or sorry, email list, and a Facebook group promotion about a demonstration. They register for that, we put them into a Facebook group to have a conversation, get them excited about what's happening, like we're communicating with there, right? And we keep going back and forth from there. Okay, they're posting on here, so the list is from Facebook ads, could it not be my ideal audience? I don't know, I mean people are people, there's so many things that would be hard to know unless we know, like if that list was 100% Facebook ads and they're not buying at all, so maybe just tell us that, is nobody buying at all from that list? And they never have? And did you gather that list from just all Facebook ads? I mean, there is definitely, there definitely is, you know, you could have a list that's just dead or it's not working or they came in under different pref— you know, they signed up for one thing and then what you're trying to sell is completely different so it disconnects, they're not gonna buy from that. Those things are all possible. But I think my initial thing, if I had that, I'd be like, okay, How do we revive that list? In fact, oh, Yana Golden has a training called the Subscriber Reviver that she teaches people how to subscribe and get people back, right? And so that's like an option is like following that, but okay, my program's 8 weeks, it's $2,000, 3 people bought it. 3 people from a 4,000-person list or 3 people from the local Facebook groups? I think the biggest thing is just like, okay, 3 people on the list, okay, so that's not bad, 4,000 person list, 3 people paid you 2 grand, 2, 4, 6, I mean that's not bad. Now it's just like, hey, how do we keep selling to that list and how do we build the list bigger, right? I mean I think about this like, you know, yeah, I mean, it's all a math and a numbers game, right? So if you promote the 4,000 person list, Like, do a webinar, do a challenge, keep doing things, but it's like, hey, just know that's a stagnant number that's gonna, it's atrophying over time. What's Einstein's law of thermodynamics? Like, things deteriorate over time, or I don't know, I'm acting smart, I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's true, like you put an apple outside in the sun, it just deteriorates and it disintegrates over time, right? The chaos theory, everything goes to chaos over time. Same with your list, you have a 4,000-person list today, tomorrow it's less and it's less and it goes to chaos and it gets worse and worse and worse over time, right? So dramatic demonstrations reinvigorate a list, but also understand that that list is stagnant, it's always gonna be shrinking and growing. So the question I'd be asking is how do I add 4,000 people a week to that list? 'Cause if I can add 4,000 people a week to the list, right, and you come back to there and it's like, hey, you got 3 people to buy from the list so far, it's like, hey, if I had 4,000 more people, so that's $6,000, right? Wait, you said 2,000, yeah, 3 people bought, $2,000 off, 2, 4, 6, you made 6 grand off a 4,000-person list, okay? It's like, how do we keep replicating? How do we get more people on the list, keep selling? So I'd be like, if you have a webinar that's selling your $2,000 offer, okay, you got the webinar, it's a dramatic demonstration, buy ads, keep buying ads, keep buying ads, and keep doing that. Like, you got the things in place, it just feels like you're not putting more people into the process, into the funnel. I think you're thinking, nobody bought it for 4,000 person list except for 3 people. 3 people bought, you made 6 grand, like that's great. There's probably another 3 people you could get from that if you just keep following up, keep doing stuff, keep doing stuff. You know, $6,000 a year, $12,000, you made $12,000 on a 4,000-person list, cool. Now it's going like, let's get another 4,000 people on our list. How do I add another 4,000 people today? Or this week, or this month, right? So, yeah, I hope that's helpful. It's just understanding, it's just like, this is a numbers game, so you gotta keep putting more people in. I see people all the time, this is one of the, I see this in inner circle a lot actually, is where people will spend a period of their business growing a list, the list grows to be, whatever, 5,000, 10,000 people big, and then they stop the activity that built the list, right? So they have 10,000 people on the list, and they sell something, they're making money, they're making money, what happens is that that list now, it starts deteriorating and deteriorating, and so like, they come in their circle and they're like, man, I made way more last year than this year, I can't figure out why, and like, I'm still doing the same webinar, same challenge, like, but less people are buying, it's like, it's because you stopped growing, so the list is shrinking, atrophying over time, law of chaos, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, right? And then they can't figure it out, and then we're trying to figure out like, maybe the presentation's not right, hook's not right, and we keep looking at stuff, and eventually we're like, Oh, it's 'cause you stopped getting new leads in. Like, new leads are the lifeblood of your business. Like, that's why this whole thing's structured that way. Everything's pushing into a dramatic demonstration they have to register. Dramatic demonstration they have to register for. Mifki, that's low ticket, free plus shipping, they're coming in to get, you know, like, we're just trying to always be bringing new blood in, okay? So the question that I'd be asking yourself every single day is how many people joined my list today? That should be your KPI you're looking at every single day, 'cause as that grows, the rest of your business will grow with it. Okay, it's figuring out how to get that 4,000 people list to like, how do I add 4,000 people a month to my list? That's the mindset shift. If you start focusing on getting new leads into the funnel, into the thing, that's, that's the game plan. Hope that helps, but it's just, it's, it's just volume, increasing the volume of people coming into your world.

You guys know I've written a few books and people always ask me, how do you stay focused long enough to actually finish? Because let's be honest, writing isn't hard. Staying in the zone is hard. Email pops up, texts come in, you open one tab, and 45 minutes later you're watching something random on YouTube. That's why I use Freewrite. It's a distraction-free writing device built for one purpose: to help you get words out of your head and onto the page. No notifications, no internet, no browser tabs, just you and the draft. When I sit down with my Freewrite, my brain knows it's time to create. If you've got a book in you or a sales letter or the next big idea you've been putting off, go to www.getfreewrite.com/russell and grab yours. Turn off the noise, turn on the words. Your future bestseller is waiting.