SFR 130:The CORE Of A Funnel...

This is the extended version of what I taught at Funnel Hacking Live 2018. There are TWO parts to a funnel's core...

What’s going on everyone? It’s Steve Larsen and you’re listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

I’ve spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now, I’ve left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real question is, how would I do it, without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learned, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's Internet best sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. I am so excited for this episode. I've been dying to record it. I feel like it's going to be one of the episodes that I look back on and I'm like, “man that was one of the Hallmark, amazing episodes of sales Funnel Radio.” You know what I mean? 10 years from now, hopefully this show is still going, but I feel like I look back and be like, “man, that was one of them. That was one of the ones that made it click for a lot of people.”

It's one of the things that made a click for me, and anyway, I'm excited to share with you. It all kind of started honestly, well, how should I say this? How far back you want to go?

Lets see, I was born in 1988. No. So, it's been it’s been a lot of fun working with Russell because, what is fun about it is, I feel like he and I are probably some of the only people on planet earth that geek out at the level that we do. And so, every time we see each other it's like a show and tell, like, “hey dude, check this out.” And he shows me, and we go through all the cool stuff he's doing.

And I'm like, “yeah, check this out.” I tell him all the stuff I'm going through and doing, and the epiphanies that either or of us have had. And so anyway, I was chatting with him a little while ago, and that is when he was saying, “Hey, we want to get you on the funnel hacking live stage”, and I was like, “sweet.” Are you serious? Okay. That’d be awesome. And, which just ended, and I'm kind of backtracking a little, okay? I'm a little bit behind on recording these episodes. But I went and he said, “We want you to teach new offer creation in 10 minutes.” I was like, 10 minutes?!

What? Oh my gosh! That's what I teach in 3 days at the fan event.” You know what I mean? Are you serious? Okay. Oh my gosh.

So, I was sitting there in and the magic formula happened, which is caffeine and dubstep. I was pacing around my own office here and I remember. My head was just kind of subconsciously on this problem, and I love that. Because I will be in random places around the house, around wherever, and I'll have these epiphanies like, “oh my gosh!

It's easier like that...

Holy crap!” My head is constantly on these problems, you guys. I rarely think about anything else, which sounds like obsession, and it is, and I'm glad it is, okay. I sit and just kind of think. I told you guys a little while ago how I kind of brainstorm and come up with these ideas. I imagine them as these little threads and I kind of tug on them, see where they lead, and if it's like good then I just drop it and I go on to the next thing and try and find different possibilities for solving different problems.

Anyway, I was thinking through. I was trying to distill down the 3 days into minutes. It was rough, it was rough. I was trying to work the problem, and figure out the different angles to teach it. I went into click funnels at like 10:00 at night the week before Funnel Live happened. I sat there and I was trying to do it for about 2 hours. I was doodling. For some reason if I can doodle it I know that I can teach it, and I know that it's a clear thing. And so that's the reason why I draw so many pictures. So, I was doodling and I was like, “oh my gosh.” I started having these epiphanies and they start coming faster, and faster, and faster, on the way to teach this.

Well, next morning I'm back in the home office here, which is where I'm now, and I was standing in front of my white board and all of a sudden I had this, guys I don't know really how this happens but I will forget where I am. It actually makes me a little bit nervous because it's happening more frequently.

Whatever I'm thinking of, that's where I physically feel like I am at that time. I will forget where I'm standing and I get kind of lost, in my head. 20 minutes will go by and I'll suddenly come to and realize that I've been standing in the corner of the room for a while. But I’ve been deep meditation and thought. It's a little bit weird and it's kind of happening more frequently. I'm kind of trying to get used it.

So, I was in one of those little, I don't know what I'm going to call it, weirdness things. I was kind of zoning out a little bit. All of a sudden, I had this realization. One of the things that people struggle with the most when it comes to building funnels is, they think that the funnel is a series of pages, and we have had the hardest time trying to describe in this very small amount of words, the shortest amount of words, what a funnel actually is. Right?

My mom used to think that funnels, I was selling literally kitchen hardware. “You’re selling funnels, kitchen stuff. You don’t even know how to cook.” I’d be like, “yeah I know I should not be in that space.” Anyway, we’ve had a hard time getting people to understand what a funnel is without people seeing it, right? We've tried literally for years. We’ve tried to figure out how to explain what a funnel is in the shortest amount of time, where people are like, and “oh.”

A couple of years ago, that's honestly where this whole conversation started. We were trying to figure it out. It's a series of pages linked together to turn prospective customers into buying customers. Oh man, that's just a lot of a lot of, how do we shrink it down? What’s the core of funnel building? Suddenly, it hit me! That’s what I'm so excited about, you guys! Holy crap! What is it?! I figured out.

I was sitting I realized, I was standing in front of the white board and I realized, that at the core funnel building is the offer. For a long time I was saying that. It's the offer, it's the offer, and the core funnel building is the offer. But it's not. It's actually only half of it.

The other half of it is story. It's the sales message. It's the belief that carries the offer, and those two things is what makes a funnel. It's the reason why whether or not you decided to make a funnel, you have a funnel. If you're in business and you've made a sale, you brought them through a funnel.

Whether online or offline, intentional or not, you have a funnel. It's just better if it was intentional. It's the reason why people can go, it doesn't matter if it's online, offline. Doesn't matter what you're selling. If there was a sale that was made, there was some kind of offer. Most times people don't make an intentional offer, they have a product, but there's also a message, a belief that carried that into the heart and mind of that person when they purchased it. I was like, holy crap! Maybe I should find that box, because I sent Russell.

I...