This Sales Funnel Gap is Killing Your Conversions (Here’s the Fix) | #Marketing - Ep. 29

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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. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody? It's Russell. Welcome back to the show. Most of you guys are probably listening to this, but if you can see me right now, I only have one arm. Which may seem like a negative thing other than the fact that in 2 days from now I'm getting my other bicep operated on and I'll have no arms. And so right now I am so grateful in my life that I have one arm that's actually functioning, knowing that soon I'll have zero arms. So backstory for those who don't know, wrestling tournament a couple weeks ago, I tore both my biceps. And so they did the first surgery last week, now the second. Anyway, long story short, it's gonna be a weird next 3 or 4 weeks where I literally will have both my arms in casts. And so it's gonna force me to do less and think more and talk more. And so it's kind of fun. I'm recording more podcast episodes, more interviews, things like that, but also strategically spent, like, because I literally can't type right now. I can type with one hand and it's so much slower, but soon I'll be typing with my nose or else having my team type for me. But it's gonna be kind of an interesting season, 'cause I'll have a chance to start thinking more strategically as opposed to tactically doing stuff. So I'm really looking forward to that. A lot of you guys who've ever gone on vacation or something, it gives you that time a lot of times to break away where you start thinking about things differently. So anyway, just kinda catching up on some stuff like that that I think's interesting. Today's episode, I wanted to talk about funnels. I don't know about you, but it's still my favorite topic. I still wanna talk about these all the time. And a lot of times, recently I talk more about personal development and traffic generation, other things like that. But I just wanted to go deeper back into funnels for a lot of reasons. Number one, it's still my favorite topic. But number two, one of my close friends, Jake Leslie, who's been our core lead funnel builder for, I don't even know, 5, 6, 7 years. He asked a really interesting question, some of his clients he's working with, and so I'm actually gonna play his Voxer so you guys can hear it, to hear what his question was, and I'm gonna dive into this because it's definitely a trend that we see a lot of people hitting into. So let me play the Voxer message real quick, and then after that, I'll give you some of my thoughts.

What's up? Hey, I have a question for you. And maybe I'm abusing my powers of just knowing Russell Brunson, but I just have a very honest question and it's driving me nuts and I'm seeing it over and over again. It drives me crazy. So I would love to hear what Rusty Brunson has to say about it. So I'm talking to a lot of different people, obviously in the funnel space. And like a lot, a lot of these people have funnels, a lot of them have products, a lot of them have things. They just like, obviously want to go faster. They want to be like Russell. They want to do this. They want to do that. They want to move faster. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what I'm noticing is so many freaking people have like, they have good front ends and then they have high-ticketed products, but they don't have like that core $297, $97 offer. I'm curious where you've talked about that before, or if like, if you want to break it down, obviously don't expect you to, but it's so interesting how they get people to come in for free off of lead magnets, and then they're just gonna like assume that like, oh yeah, then now Now they're going to pay $2,000 for this thing. So the ascension is just this crazy leap. And I don't— it's kind of baffling me. I thought most people would struggle on the front end side, which I do see. They just don't have lead magnets. They're not throwing in the coal to the fire. They're just throwing random people into these higher-priced things. There's a ton of people that just aren't missing or that are missing that gap of a 97 or 297 or just something in the middle to indoctrinate them into who they are and why they should be paying a higher premium. It's just like, "Oh, pay me." It's like, "Who the freak are you? I don't even know who you are." But so many people feel like they don't need to build that indoctrination and it's driving me nuts. It's like, "Dude, you have to have this piece." They're not just going to throw $1,500 at you. I opted in for free and then it's like, boom, pay $1,500. Like, are you crazy? But so many people do that. Anyway, I don't know where you've taught that before, but I would love to hear the Book of Brunson on that particular piece because it's becoming annoying more and more why a lot of people are getting frustrated because it's like, oh, this doesn't— like funnels don't work because that didn't work. It's like, no, man, you just like, that's a horrible structure. That's just— anyway. You didn't do that part right.

Let's do it right. Okay, so what is happening? Um, first off, one of the— I want to have so many different angles, like different directions I can take this, but the first one I want to spend a little time on because last week we had a really cool, uh, opportunity. We're filming a course for Secrets of Success, and basically, um, we got an unpublished manuscript from Napoleon Hill where he was teaching advertising course in 1917. And I had Heath Wilcock and Shawn Vossler come out here. We spent like 5 hours going deep into the books and talking about it and brainstorming. And one of the key principles we talked about was the difference in people who have longevity in this business versus those who are like a spot in the pan, right? Who had a little success and it all crashes down to the ground. And the big difference was the people who have been around for a long time are people who not only understand, but they study the fundamentals of business, of marketing and advertising. I've been in this game now almost 25 years. In the 25 years I've played this game, the number of gurus who have come and gone in this space, I wanna build a timeline. Nobody would believe me. I think I can mention, like, top of my head, people I can remember that started when I got started, there's probably 2 or maybe 3 who are still relevant today. And so most people don't have longevity, and the reason why, just so you're fully, like, it's not that I'm smarter or better, the reason why for me is I geeked out on understanding the psychology behind why these things actually work. I got obsessed with Dan Kennedy and direct mail and reading old books and all these things, and I got really solid in the foundation. Where most people, what they do is they see the tactics of the day, they master the tactics, and they have huge wins, they make a lot of money, too much money for one human being to handle in a very short period of time, and then something shifts in the market, the algorithm, the whatever, and then they lose it all overnight. Like, that's literally the thing. I've had a chance to watch over 25 years of doing this, probably 4 or 5 big business cycles, and every single cycle there's a new group of entrepreneurs and marketers who fall off the face of the planet, and I've never seen them come back again. And so the reason, like, the difference is that the people who focus on the tactical thing of the day don't surpass when times get hard. I think there's a Warren Buffett quote, it says like, you can tell, what is it, like when the tide goes out, you can see who's been swimming naked the whole time? That's kinda what it is, when things are easy, everyone's having success, everyone's making money, and then the tide goes out and that's when most people fall apart. And so, a lot of what Jake's asking is because people don't understand the deeper psychology behind what is at play, like why funnels actually work, right? They come in and they see a hack, they see a tactic, and they do that, and it works for them. And then they just stopped learning. They're like, okay cool, I got a thing, I'm just gonna keep running this play for as long as I can. You don't understand, the plays change. The strategy doesn't, the tactical parts of the plays do change. And so in his example, a lot of people are doing free lead magnet to a call, right? And that model, for probably 5 or 6 years, has worked really, really well in and of itself, right? And the reason why is because advertising was cheap, you can get a lead very cheap, you can call them on the phone, and even though, because the advertising cost to acquire the customer's so inexpensive, You could only close 1 out of 20 people and you're still profitable, right? There was the efficiencies there in the advertising that made it possible. Then what happens, advertising costs go up, things get more expensive, everything starts shifting and all of a sudden now it's like, it's not working anymore. And the reality is the metrics are still the same other than before you could close 1 out of 20, but now because the costs have 10x or 30x or 50x, you gotta close 1 out of 3 or else you're not profitable. And they can't close 1 out of 3, all of a sudden it's like the business is upside down, it's not working, why? It's because they're missing the fundamental strategies behind the scenes of why this actually works. I'm working on my co-author book with Dan Kennedy, and it's funny, I've been anti-AI tools, yeah, up until just recently when I lost my left arm, and I was like, I can't write right now, so let me just do some research stuff. So what I was doing is I was uploading, I was trying ChatGPT, the new, the new, the $200 a month version. I tried Maneus, I'm trying different ones, and so I've been uploading tons of stuff to have it analyzed for me. So what was cool is like I had the Dan, the book Dan and I writing together. So I uploaded all the chapters he'd written, chapters I've written, the outline, and then I started taking all of my interviews, Dan. I've interviewed Dan like 50 times in the last 3 years. I upload all the interviews and everything. I was like, hey, here's the introduction I made based on this. What are other stories that Dan's told in the past that we can weave in? So I started like pulling all these stories out that I'd forgotten about. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a great one and a great one. And so the introduction for mine and Dan's book, the book, I don't know exactly what it's gonna be called, but the working title right now is Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins, right? Anyway, the story that it pulled out was from the very first interview I did with Dan during FHL. I think it was 2021. It was right after— it was the first event after COVID. Everyone thought Dan was dead. We bought his company. He came and spoke, and it was like one of the coolest moments of Funnel Hacking Live, right? And in that interview, I asked him that question about whoever spends the most money to acquire customer wins, and the story he told is really fascinating. He talked about way back in the day, I guess the way the TV cycles work, right? Like the morning would start at like 7:00 AM, whatever, and then they'd have TV happening all the way till Johnny Carson. And then Johnny Carson was over, they assumed everyone went to bed, so then TV just cut off. It was off air all night long. And so Dan and whoever, they started going to these TV companies like, hey, can we buy the after-hour time block? Can we buy all the other stuff? And at first they're like, why would you wanna buy it? No, like everyone went to bed after Carson, there's nobody watching TV. And they're like, well, it's okay, we just wanna buy it. So they start selling it to him for like, $200 for like 8 hours of dead airtime, right? So they're buying this thing at $200, and they started making a ton of money. They were making crazy amounts of money, right? Because it was $200 for 8 hours of media time. And they only get 1 or 2 sales, and it broke even. After that, it was all profit, right? So it was just like the heyday. And they said over time, they started realizing, like, these guys keep rebuying these things. Maybe they're, you know, other people start asking if they can advertise. And it went from like, you know, $200 for an 8-hour window to, You know, he said fast forward 5 years, it was $20,000 for a 30-minute spot because, you know, more people wanted it, it was more valuable. And all of a sudden now, you know, before you could spend $200, you know, $200, you make 2 sales, you're breaking even, everything after that's profit. You had an 8-hour runway to think. Now it's like, oh, because everyone else wants this, you've got $20,000 and you only get 30 minutes. Now the numbers of your business change radically, right? And so Dan said that we had to become good at like understanding whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. So he was like, we had to make more money quicker. So that's, so now instead of just selling the product off of, our TV time, now we had to start having upsells and downsells, right? Not only that, then we had to like send them to a next higher ticket thing afterwards. Not only that, is then if they didn't buy our stuff, you know, we still needed to make money, so then we would sell that name to like 10 other people that had similar products. Maybe they could sell something, but we gotta sell the name for $10 to each different person, so we made an extra $50 by selling the name. All these different things to monetize the money, right? These are the core strategies, these are the fundamentals we're talking about, right? Again, you come back to a business where somebody, all they know is Facebook ads are cheap, they're spending $200 for 8 hours of airtime, and so the business is easy, but when it shifts, it gets harder, okay? So these are some of the things I want you thinking about, but then the answers, when I actually voxed Jake Vadek back after that, I said, you know, I said, well, in the book of Brunson, chapter 6, verse 2, there's this thing called a value ladder, right? And it's funny because I started teaching the value ladder probably 20 years ago. I think it was a version, Dan Kennedy has like this this ladder concept he talks about, but I don't think, for some reason in my head when he explained it and I started seeing it and started doing it, I pictured it more like the value ladder that's inside the DotCom Secrets book. If you haven't read it yet, go back and read that book, that's the core fundamental thing, right? But the core concept behind the value ladder is that when somebody comes into your world, you ascend them through different offers, okay? And so what happens is, and in the book I like different things I say, you know, for example, like the very first time I met my wife, right? I didn't walk up to her the very first time and be like, Colette, you were gorgeous, you're gorgeous, we should get married and have some babies. Like what would she have done? She would have slapped me in the face like, what are you talking about, you're a pervert, or whatever, you know, like that would have ended the date right there, right? We don't go to the top of the value ladder. So what a value ladder looks like, I'm gonna draw with my finger, but most of you guys are listening to this, on the left-hand side there's an axis, on the bottom there's an axis, right? So the left-hand side, we're gonna write price, you know, and so the higher up is higher price, the bottom is lower price, and then the bottom we'll write value. So when it's really close to the left-hand axis there, There's little value, little price, but as you move forward, right, as you increase the value, it increases the price and goes up as you move through the graph. Does that make sense? If not, go buy the book, come on. Or just go to Google and type in Russell Brunson value ladder and you'll see the doodles in Google Images, right? But there's this value ladder, right?

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And so what happens is ideally the thing at the back is what we want, right? Like I want— I wanted to marry my wife and a bunch of kids with her. That was like, that's the end goal. That's the extreme value, right? I'm going to get the most value from her. It's going to be the most expensive thing, but it's the best, right? Just like for you guys, like if you were like, honestly, the way that I could serve you the best as a client is not for you to go buy a book. Like it's a great thing, right? The way I could serve you the best is have you actually come here to Boise in my office and I just built the entire funnel for you, right? Like that'd be the best. For me to actually do that, like realistically at this point in our career and our team and everything, it'd be like we need to charge you $1 million up front plus a percentage of royalties on that funnel for the rest of its life, right? And so that's what it would take. But if I came up to you on the street, I'm like, hey, my name's Russell Brunson. I know I look like I'm 11 years old, but this is the deal. I have, this thing where if you give me $1 million, I will build a sales funnel for you, plus I want a percentage of all the sales you ever make from that. Will you give me $1 million? Like that's the equivalent of me walking up to my wife day number one and being like, we should go have babies. Like that's the same thing, right? It's like most people are gonna say no, right? If they don't say no, maybe you should be, you know, there's other issues there probably. So that's what a lot of people are doing in business. That's what Jake was talking about. He would, they're getting a lead, they call them on the phone like, hey, do you wanna buy my $1,500 or $15,000 or whatever the thing is, right? They're trying to give somebody a high price with a lot of value without proving the value first. So how does it work in the real world? I come back to my wife, I see her, I'm like, man, she's cute. First thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to go talk to her, right? The talking to the spouse, number one, that's the first tier of the value ladder, right? We're having a conversation. What's happening is there's no price, right? Other than her time, she's spending a little time with me, we're having a conversation, and really quick she's gonna figure out something like, did I receive value from this interaction? If she receives value from this interaction, we talk for 15 minutes, whatever, and I'm like, hey, would you wanna go out someday? I'm moving her up the value ladder. Now if she did not get value at that step in the interaction, she's like, oh, let me look at my calendar, I'll get back to you, and she's gonna ghost me after that, right? 'Cause I didn't provide value at the lowest tier. But if I did provide value, she's like, man, I really enjoyed this relationship, that talk was awesome, I'd love to go out with this person again, she'll say yes and I move up a tier in the value ladder, right? So now what's happening, Now the value went up and then for me now there's a price. I'm gonna take her on a date, it's gonna cost me a couple hundred bucks, we're gonna go out to dinner, we're gonna go on a walk, we're gonna go to a movie, whatever that thing is, right? And I'm gonna go on that date and at that tier in the value ladder, we're in this experience together and we're both trying to figure out like, are we getting value from this interaction? If somebody, if I got value from my wife and she gets value from me, right, that first date's great, then I might say, hey, I wanna go on another date with you, right? If we both decide, then we move up to the next tier in the value ladder, right? And eventually, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna go for a kiss. And you know, if I haven't given value, then she's gonna walk away. I've got value, then she's gonna kiss me back, right? And then if the kiss was good, and it's like, that was valuable, then I want the next, and so you start moving through this value ladder. Well, eventually, I dropped down on a knee and I proposed, and she's like, yes, I would love to. It's not scary at that point, right? Now sure, you can, again, you can go and if you walked up to 100 people on the street and proposed, you could probably get 1 or 2 people to say yes to your marriage proposal. Like, it's a thing. There's gonna be people who are like, yeah, I got no other options, let's do it, right? And that's literally what people like Jake's talking about are doing on their business right now. Like they're going from zero value to someone top tier of the value ladder, and the only people who are coming in typically are people who are insane, they are crazy, they're not gonna be the best clients, they're not gonna understand you, your culture, your anything, and so it's all these things that happen, right? Higher refund rates, lower satisfaction rates, and all these things happen, right? But you get a couple crazies to say yes. Okay, so now I wanna fast forward to what happens when the water goes out and all these people look naked, right? The advertising cost goes from $200 for 8 hours to $20,000 for 30 minutes, right? Or it goes from your Facebook ads costing $3 a lead to $50 a lead. Like, what happens in your business now? Okay, and that's the problem most people are struggling with, is they are going from no value to tons of value. And so the value ladder is the key. And what's funny to me, it's really interesting to me because, you know, I was, before I wrote the DotCom Secrets book, I spent 10 years teaching these concepts. I was teaching value ladder, I was teaching funnels, I was traveling around the world teaching these things, and I decided to put it into a book, and then for the next 2 or 3 years we launched DotCom Secrets book, people were finally understanding funnels, it was great, and then what was funny to me is then all these people knew that my audience had read the DotCom Secrets book, they knew that they understood my principles, and so they're using smart marketing, which is tactically trying to confuse you by breaking away from the strategy, right? So I saw all the time, like, don't do a value ladder, value ladders are stupid, go directly for high ticket, okay? I can tell you probably 50 high ticket coaches who literally in their ads talk about my value ladder, and say skip the rest of the value ladder, just focus on this, 'cause they're going after a strategy I'm teaching and they're saying we found this hack to be able to do this, right? And so they're doing that, so everyone's like, oh screw the value ladder, I should go high ticket, right? So they're listening to that because most people are not paying attention to the strategies. You gotta dig deeper for the strategies, you gotta read a book, you gotta go to a course, like you gotta go deeper for the strategies typically, right? And most of the wannabe coaches on the planet, on the internet right now, guess what they didn't do? They didn't read the book, they didn't go through the time, Study Dan Kennedy, they didn't go through these things, right? All they do is like, what's the hack? I'm like, oh, I was on this webinar, this guy said I could just do an ad and get someone on the phone, right? And yes, typically what happens is it works for somebody for a window, it stops working as effectively, and then they start teaching it to you. So by the time it's been handed to you as like the killer strategy of the day, it's already less effective, right? And eventually that wears out, and then you never understood the strategy, and then your business disappears, and you're one of the death tales that we hear about all the time. From the cycles of business, right? 'Cause you never understood the fundamental strategies behind it, okay? Same thing when I had people come out with webinars, like, webinars are better, you don't do any value, just do the webinar, and then every variation of it. And so I wanna come back to you as like this revisiting and coming back to the concept of the value ladder, because when the water comes out, this is the key you have to understand, you have to master, right? You are providing people value to people along the way. Now what's cool about today that wasn't there when I wrote DotCom Secrets book a decade ago, was we didn't have social media. Okay, social media's amplifiers, also it's the front end of the value ladder, right, it's pre-any funnel, this is me seeing my wife at a party and having a first initial conversation, that's what social media is, right? And what's cool, in fact, I literally just finished a podcast interview with Adrien, it's probably there, you probably heard it last week or it's coming the week after, so I'm not sure where it's gonna fit in the publishing queue, you know, but she's out there and she just does free videos that she's got there, she said that she's gotten, A billion views per month for every month since 2020. So what's she doing? She's creating these valuable videos that go viral to bring people, it's the front tier of the value ladder. People watch that, either her or her brands that she's running, they get value, and then boom, it naturally sends them to the next tier. And now you start moving them through the value ladder. If you look at my businesses, you'll probably notice I have products at all sorts of price points. I have free plus shipping books. Well, first off, sorry, first the value ladder. We've got organic content, YouTube, Instagram, social, podcasts, like all that stuff is us hanging out on a date trying to build a relationship. Then from there, hopefully you guys enjoy this, like especially this podcast. A lot of you guys who haven't read the DotCom Secrets book, you're like, wow, that podcast is really valuable. Russell said I probably should get the book he's talking about, right? My guess, we'll probably sell 200 or 300 books in this podcast, right? So 200 or 300 of you guys who haven't read the book yet, you can go buy the book. And all of a sudden you read the book, you're gonna get that in the mail, and that's the next tier of the value ladder. You get the book, you're gonna read it, you're like, whoa, I never understood this, like now I know what funnels are, how they work, understand value ladders, understand these things, right? You can get value from there, then you're gonna be like, I'm gonna go all in, I'm gonna need ClickFunnels, you're gonna go buy ClickFunnels, then you're gonna go through one of our courses and you're gonna start moving through these different value ladders, right? Then you're gonna go to the Selling Online event. Selling Online's $100, right? You come to this event, it's $100, it's a 3-day event with me. Someone pays $100, right, this price is low, but they get 3 days worth of value with me, tons of connection, tons of like, you know, getting value, and we make the offer on that step for the next step in coaching. Right now, 5.5% of the people who buy the $100 offer end up ascending to our higher-end coaching program, right? And it's just like, and then from there, they go into our inner circle, and then like, it's moving people through these different levels of offers. And so for you and your business, like you need that value adder, because there are people, yes, there are people, the cream of either the cream of the crop or the bottom feeders will go directly from meeting you socially to, saying yes to your proposal 5 minutes later. There are those people, but they are few and far between. And as media gets harder, it's gonna be harder and harder to find those people. So what do we do? We take 'em on dates, we build relationships, we sell them a free plus shipping book, we sell them a $7 course, we sell them a $100 3-day event, we sell them a $297 whatever it is, we sell them a $500 thing. We have things at different price points, 'cause we're moving them systematically through the value ladder. And every time I talk about this, people are like, I would never buy that, I only buy the most expensive. I understand, but you are rare. There are people who come to my world, the very first thing they buy is $250,000 ticket to Atlas Group, that happens. Not very often. If I base my money off of the random person who went directly to the top of the value ladder, I would not be here today. It's building a pipeline of people. It comes back to, It's biblical, like the law of the harvest. We're planting seeds, we're planting seeds, right? So we're planting free seeds socially, right? Then we're nurturing the seeds. I'm trying to weave in like 50 analogies here so that one of these will land for you guys, okay? So law of the harvest, right? So I'm planting social seeds, you come over, right? You got the seed, now I'm watering it with the book, and then you're growing, it's nurturing more, we provide more value, now we're gonna sell the next thing, the next thing. And so if you look at my sequences, you guys are probably on our email list, if not, go buy something from me so you can see the sequences. Like, it'll be more valuable than anything. But if you look at our business right now, we have our core things we're moving somebody through, right? If you look at the core, we have a very much direct line we're taking people. We're taking you from free social to a book to $100 event, Selling Online. From there, give me a ClickFunnels account. From there, our Prime Mover coaching program, Inner Circle, Atlas. Like, there's our straight line, right? But we've decided we have a whole bunch of different offers to get you guys to, um, to keep moving, okay? How do I explain this? A buyer who is in heat will continue to buy, right? I told some of this before, I think I got this from Dan Kennedy, I believe, but it's like a person will continue to buy from you until you either stop selling them something or you offend them, okay? But if you stop selling them something, they're gonna go look for something else, okay? The first time I got this, man, rewind back a long time, this is probably 18 years ago now, it's crazy. Ryan Dyson and I were both in Bill Glazer's mastermind, Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy's mastermind group, but we were in different groups, and one time Bill did a group together where we all met in the Bahamas, did like a co-group together, right? So Ryan was in the other group, I was in this group, and so we go to this thing in the Bahamas, and it was the first time we had a chance to really hang out, and I remember Ryan pulled me aside, he's like, hey, he's like, why are you here? I'm like, 'cause Bill threw the event here. He's like, no, like, why are you in Bill's mastermind? And I was like, I don't know, like the offer seemed good. I wanted to be, I wanted to keep learning, like I loved it. And he's like, have you studied Jay Abraham? I'm like, yeah. I was like, I bought everything Jay Abraham had. He's like, me too. He's like, then what? He's like, I'm like, he didn't have anything else to buy. He's like, well, if you study so-and-so. I'm like, yeah, I bought everything. He's like, me too. He's like, I'm here in this room 'cause Dan Kennedy is the only person who continues to sell me stuff. Everybody else stopped. They had one or two offers and they stopped selling. He's like, I'm here 'cause Dan kept selling me things. I was like, oh my gosh, that's true for me too. Like I stopped plugging into everybody else 'cause they stopped having offers. I kept, because I wasn't getting offers, like I moved to, like people want to buy, like they're in motion, right? So buyers in heat, they're gonna keep buying from you 'til you stop selling them something or you offend them. So you offend them, that's a different problem, we'll talk about that on a different podcast. But if you stop selling to them, they're still gonna be looking for that thing somewhere else. They're gonna go, they're gonna find somebody else to plug into to get that itch scratched. So you have to keep offering them stuff. Another good example is TJ Rowe Letters, one of the greatest direct mail, marketers of all time. He's in the business opportunity niche. He has a huge list of offline people and he sends them how to make money information in the mail. And I don't know what TJ publishes right now, but I did an interview with him like 10 years ago. He was publishing, sending out like 100,000 letters a week, some crazy number. Like, when we send in emails, he's sending out in letters. And it was interesting 'cause I was trying to do this big JV with him, like, hey, you should send out one of my letters and we can make a bunch of money. And he's like, cool, here's my list broker, just go rent my list any time you want. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, just rent the list and then you can send out whatever you want to them whenever you want. I was like, but doesn't that like interrupt what you're doing? Like, doesn't that like, if they're seeing my message and yours, like, what if they buy mine and not yours? He's like, Ross, you don't understand how people work. He's like, they're gonna continue to buy. In fact, he's like, what I found is like the more, he's like, the more, and again, he's in the biz-op, business opportunity market. He's like, the more business opportunities they buy, the more likely they are to buy more. He's like, the worst thing is when they stop buying stuff. 'Cause when they stop buying stuff, they give up hope and then they stop, they don't keep buying stuff. He's like, I want you to rent my list 'cause if I have a segment that hasn't been buying and you convince them to buy again, then they're back in the business opportunity market. Now they'll buy my stuff again. Right? And for us, most of us look at it so differently. We're like, this is our list, like we're gonna protect them. But the reality is, these people are buying from everybody anyway. Right? And so, you have to keep having offers go out there. So if you look at our follow-up sequences, once again, go buy something from me so you can get on a sequence. But every single week we have some offer going out. And this is happening to the Russell Brunson list, this is happening to the ClickFunnels list, we are about to roll it out in the Secrets of Success list and also the Dan Kennedy list.

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I did a podcast recently about this, talking about free content funnels, but it's the same thing. Each week there is a core offer that we are trying to get people on our list to actually go buy, okay? And the only reason why is we're trying to keep people in the buying motion, okay? So for example, last week We gave out Funnelology. Funnelology is a $7, used to be like a, used to be a $97 course, made a $7 version of it, right? And my goal is I just need people to buy this so they'll study funnels, and guess what? They buy it, they're still learning about funnels from me, and on top of that, they have more desire to have funnel software if they have funnels, and they're gonna have more desire to learn how to sell through those funnels, and by my, like everything else, it stimulates growth in all the other things I'm selling, right? And so we sent out 2 or 3 emails last week, there's like free training video about Funnelology, whatever, and then they went and bought the course for $7, And we sold, I think, 1,200 copies, okay? And it wasn't a huge revenue generator, like 1,200 copies at $7 apiece plus upsell, downsell, so I don't know what the math is. So we probably made $50, $60 grand, which is great, but what was more powerful is 1,200 people now, like, we kept them in the buying cycle. They're still buying from me. They're still interested in funnels. They're still interested in these things, right? Like, it stimulated that desire back in them that they would've lost had I not sold them more things, right? If your business is free opt-in to a $15,000 coaching program and nothing else, You are literally just taking the top 1% of the 1% of the 1% who wants something, and you're forgetting everybody else, right? And then most people aren't ready to buy it anyway, so there's so much breakage in your model, there's so much money you're losing because you're only getting the cream of the crop or the crazy people and you're missing out on the majority of your audience, which are people that just, number one, they need to buy something from you to feel comfortable, they need to have a good experience, they wanna learn your content, they wanna hear your frameworks, they wanna go deeper with you so they get value before they move into SendUp, Right, and then number 2, it's a lot of these people like, you're not messaging, so they're falling out of your buying cycle very, very quickly, they're moving on to something else. If you realize, if you don't email your list at least once a month, they will forget about you. If you don't email your list at least once a week, like even, I think worst case scenario, you should be emailing your list once a week. I remember when I first got into this game, I was so scared to send email to my list, 'cause again, I just set it up the first time. I set up the autoresponder, I figured it out, and I had started getting people on my list. I sent an email, but like the reply address was my own, right? So I sent an email out, and then 2 or 3 people write back like, I hope you die, stop sending me emails. I'm like, oh, like I freak out, right? So I unsubscribe, okay, people don't like getting emails. So I had this false belief like people don't want emails. And so I was very careful, like once a month I sent an email, 'cause I didn't wanna annoy them, I didn't wanna like be overbearing. I was like, I'm gonna be careful. So like once a month I sent an email. So I'd send an email,, and then, you know, a bunch of people unsubscribed, people angry, and it's like, ah, so, and that's what I was doing, I was just like, people hate getting emails, I'm gonna interrupt them once a month and that's it. And then I remember, Matt Fury's one of the guys I was studying really hardcore at the time back then, and I bought his email training, and his email training, he was like, I send out 2 emails a day. I was like, what? 2 emails a day? I'm like, there's no way. And he's like, what happens? He's like, initially at first, he's like, you get a lot of unsubscribes from the annoying people, He's like, then afterwards you have these people who are looking forward to your emails every single day. And so I remember thinking, I was like, well, I am not willing to do 2 emails a day, but I'm gonna try to do it twice a month instead of once a month. And so I did that, I started sending 2 emails a month. And at that time I figured out how to like have my unsubscribes and angry people go to like a filtered inbox. I wasn't personally seeing them, 'cause like you get emotionally scared when you see the people coming back like unsubscribe me, and you're like, oh, and it's like, you know, 1,000 people got the email and there's one angry person, right? And so I was like, I can't see those 'cause they're making me not wanna market. I'm just shifting things around. So I started emailing twice a month, right? So I increased the thing, and what happened is my income more than doubled by doing that. I was like, interesting. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna try once a week. And so I went to once a week, right? And again, my income more than doubled again. I was like, okay. And that was my cadence for a long time. And then I remember I had this product coming out. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna save up all my goodwill, all my value. I'm like, I don't want, I want these people to just be waiting for this thing from me. So as we were building this thing, I didn't send an email 'cause I was waiting. And I thought, again, in my head, I'm like, this'll take 2 weeks to build. That 2 weeks turned into 6 weeks, which turned into 8 weeks, and you know how software is, and eventually it was like, we're 3 months in, and finally it's done, I'm so excited, and I'm like, my list is like, I'm sure they've been waiting here for me for the last 3 months, just like anticipating the day that I'm gonna respond and send 'em another email, right? So I go and I send an email to that list, and it was crazy. Guess what happened?

Nothing.

It was crickets. Nobody knew who I was. They'd already forgotten who I was in 3 months. I was like, oh my gosh, like people's attention, like I thought they were all sitting around anxiously waiting for my email, waiting for me to be done with this thing I was creating. They weren't. They read everybody else's email, they forgot who I was. I was irrelevant at that point. They didn't even know my name. And I realized my list was dead. I had to start over from scratch. And when I started from scratch again, I said, okay, I'm never gonna send less than 1 email a day. And we started getting to the point where I was making 3 emails a week. And I'm probably closer to 3 to 5 emails a week now. Bandwagon right now. I do have one friend who sends 9 emails a day, so there are different versions, but the reality is like you have to be top of mind, you have to be communicating, you have to be there. The reason my friend who sends out 9 emails a day, he's in the dating market, his name's John Alness, it was interesting, he told me this, he's like, he was doing Matt Fury, the 2 emails a day for a long time, and then he upped it to 9, I was like, why are you sending out 9 emails a day? And he's in the market where he's helping men to get a girlfriend, right, like that's the market he's in, he's like, most of the men on my list He's like, they open up the 90 emails a day 'cause they want entertainment. He's like, I'm entertaining. In fact, John's where I learned the concept of an attractive character from. He's like, you be an attractive character, people like you and you build this relationship. He's like, that's how the whole game is played, right? And he's like, 90% of the time my men, like they have a girlfriend, they're here for entertainment, right? They wanna hear funny stories and then all these things. But he's like, there's a window where they get their heart broken. And he's like, whoever is the first person in the inbox when that pain point is there, That person is the one who's gonna get the sale. And he's like, so I need to make sure that the moment that they get their heart broken, like, my email's in there. So he's like, 9 emails a day, 'cause I'm not sure when the heartbreak's gonna happen, but as soon as it happens, I gotta be sure I'm sliding in there, they're reading my thing, 'cause that's when they're gonna buy. And he's like, in my market, they're not buying all the time. When they have a girlfriend, there's no pain, they're fine. When the girl's gone, that's when they're buying. So he's like, consistency. And I think for you guys, it's the same thing. Like, we keep thinking, like, I don't wanna annoy my customers, they've heard about my thing, whatever it is. It's like, no, no, no, you gotta be out there. If they fall out of the buying cycle, either they are leaving the market, which is a tragedy, so I teach a roller, I send them stuff to get them back in the market, get them really excited about the potential of losing weight and making money, whatever your thing is, right? So it's like, that's part of it. Number 2 is like, if they're not hearing from you, they're spending their dollars somewhere, right? This is their discretionary money they're spending with somebody, and if you're not there making them offers, then they're gonna go somewhere else, okay? The business that can make the most offers in any industry is always the business that wins. Wins. Just write it down, okay? The business in any industry that makes the most offers is the business that wins. And it's funny, I get people all the time, Russell, I'm so overwhelmed, you make so many different offers. That's the game, right? 'Cause again, I've got 6 million people on my list, 1,200 bought Funnelology, that means there are 5,900, whatever the numbers are, who didn't buy something last week, right? I gotta reach, like, what's another offer we can do? Okay, let's go tell them about this thing, tell them about this thing. And some are gonna be low tickets, some are gonna be mid tickets, some are gonna be high tickets, some are gonna be free, with a high-ticket upsell. Like you'll notice the price points of things we're offering are variable, right, they're changing, they're shifting, 'cause we're moving people through the value ladder, right? Some of you guys will never in a million years buy, register for a webinar, I understand that, right? Cool, if you're not gonna register for a webinar, maybe you're gonna buy a free book. I buy every free book offer, I say I love free books, right, like I love books as a whole, so I'm gonna buy every free book offer, okay? I'm probably not gonna watch a webinar, probably not gonna watch a challenge, I probably will watch a VSL, Everyone buys differently too, right? So I'm hitting different modalities. You'll probably notice again, if you sit on the email sequence, start watching, notice that one time we're doing a webinar. That's a modality that a certain percentage of people will go and consume. Other times I'm doing a free video series. You opt in, you get this video, video 1, video 2, video 3, all pushing to a free trial, right, or to a free book. Another way is just straight free offer. Sometimes it is going directly like, hey, call this number and jump on a call. Here's a book a call, right? There are times I go directly from there. But this is how you make your business protected when the tide goes out. And so these are the things I wanted to just kinda talk about, is really coming back to like, you guys have to understand the strategy of business, understand customer psychology, understand these things. I'd recommend diving back into the DotCom Secrets book if you haven't, just to understand these things. You probably fell for an ad that was like, all you gotta do is skip the value ladder and just go to the high ticket, and yeah, it worked for a season, Ad costs aren't $200 for 8 hours anymore for cable TV, right? They're $20,000 for 30 minutes. Facebook ads are no longer $3 leads anymore, right? We're at $30 leads. So like, the game's changed, the game's shifted. You have to come back to the fundamentals. Always a reset to the fundamentals. When you reset back to the fundamentals and start saying, hey, why did this stuff work? Those are the people who have lasted the test of time. Again, I've been here for 25 years. 2 or 3 people I can name that are still relevant today. And that's like literally thousands of people who have come and gone who were always like the guru, the person, the brand, And the longevity for me comes back to like, I'm still the guy who's studying Dan Kennedy, I'm still reading Napoleon Hill's advertising course from 1917, right? Like, it's understanding these core fundamentals that do not change. It's not jumping on the bandwagon of the tactic of the day, because they don't last, okay? The stuff that lasts is the stuff. So, you need a palette of offers. You need, you know, again, you, and I'm gonna take it one step further, if you haven't gone through the Lynchpin training, The linchpin that I think is taking the value ladder and putting it on steroids is structuring the value ladder a little bit differently. It's kind of like phasing, like you understand the value ladder, then linchpin is, so if you go to, I think it's linchpinbook.com or freelinchpinbook.com, you can look at that book and it'll show you the next step, which is like here you take the value ladder and you structure it with some guardrails and it gives you the ability to scale the fastest. But reality is like you need different offers, like you need a continuity offer, which is what the linchpin is all based around, right? You need a free plus shipping, which is the miff kit, puts people into the continuity. You need like, again, $100 offer, which is like, dramatic demonstration number 2, right? Which is our version of selling online. You need free events, like free challenges, free webinars, which is dramatic demonstration number 1. If you look at the game plan, like you look at the playbook that I'm playing in all of our brands, it literally is the linchpin. Like it's understand the value ladder, structure it through the linchpin, and you can look at any of my funnels, any of my offers, like where does this fit? It's like, oh, it's this part of the linchpin, it's this part, it's this part. There's not just me randomly, I think people think sometimes I'm randomly putting out offers. No, no, no, there's strategy behind all of it, there's guardrails, there's a thing, right? It's the value adder is the concept, the linchpin is the strategy, how we execute on the strategy, and everything we're doing is pushing people through one of those parts of the funnels to get somebody into our businesses. So I hope that's helpful, hope it gets you guys excited to go dive deeper, not even, but explore especially if your business is struggling now, especially if you're having success 18 months ago and you're struggling today, especially if you had success 5 years ago and you're like not doing it right now, like these are the core fundamentals you gotta go back to. These are what people have been doing and testing throughout time as media's changed in every industry from TV ads to direct mail to radio to fax machines to email to direct mail, like just across the board, You got to go back in the past to study from industries whose media costs rose to be able to survive today's market where internet media has rose so much. Because it's a different landscape than it ever has been in the past. Or, and/or it's understanding how to do organic stuff at a high level where now instead of like being the commercials on the TV show, you are the TV show. I think there's value in understanding both sides of those. Because whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. And if you can get customers for free through organic, that makes sense as well. So, revisit the fundamentals, go back to DotCom Secrets, read that book again, then read the Linchpin book as homework assignment number 2. That's like your, that's your Funnel Building 101 and Funnel Building 201. It's a more advanced course. A lot of people struggle a little more understanding that one, but it is the way to really start growing and scaling your businesses in a world that we live in today. So, that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I appreciate you guys listening in. Thank you, Jake, for the great question. Maybe we'll step away if you guys ask more questions in the future, 'cause I like kind of going off on these rants with you. I'm gonna leave with one last thing, and that is don't forget, There's one funnel way. Which one is it? Go read the DotCom Secrets book and find out. Thanks, you guys, and I'll see you soon. Hey, this is Russell, and I had a really cool offer for you right now. Shortly after we launched ClickFunnels, I remember asking some of our top 2 Comma Club Award winners what would they do if they had everything taken away from them, if they lost their name, their brand, their email list, their traffic, everything, and all they had was a ClickFunnels account and internet connection for 30 days. What would they do over the next 30 days to get back on top. I asked over 100 Two Comma Club winners, and from that, 30 people wrote me back and gave me very detailed step-by-step battle plans. Day number 1, they would do this. Day number 2, they would do this. And by the time the 30 days was done, they'd be back on top with a very successful business. Do you want to know what these people wrote? If so, I took all these 30 battle plans and I put them inside of one book that you can get free at 30days.com. All you got to do is go to 30days.com and go get a free copy of this book. We'll ship it out to you, just cover the shipping handling, And when you get it in the mailbox, you have a chance to go through and look at all of these detailed step-by-step blueprints. All you gotta do is find one of these blueprints that you like, follow it step-by-step, and when you're done, you will have your own online business done and launched and live. So go get a free copy of one of my favorite books we've ever created at 30Days.com. Again, that's 30Days.com.