SFR 151: My Revenue Outpaced My Business...

What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen and this is Sales Funnel Radio. Today we are going to talk about what to do when your revenue outgrows your business.

 

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine-to-five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

 

The real question is how will 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 learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.

 

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

 

What's up guys, hey, I am very excited for this episode. So, when I officially left my job, just like the intro to this podcast says, January first, it's been five months. Five solid months now, five and a half-ish by the time this episode goes out, and five and half.. it's been fascinating to watch what's happened. So follow me here, this is what happened.

 

Okay, so I left, right, and I had this awesome idea, I vetted it, I knew it'd be successful and what I did is I went and I started launching, launching, launching, launching, launching and what started happening was over on this side was the sales. Sales, sales, sales, sales, revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue. Lots of money started coming in.

 

I was like "Whoa! This is crazy, "I've never had this much cash coming. "Whoa, my gosh, whoa!" And all this cash started dumping on in. And we did about 100 grand the first month and then it just continued.

 

Now it's 50 grand a month and that's where it's been for a while because I slowed it down ..

 

You guys might be like, "Hey, that's kinda funny, why would you slow it down?" I actually slowed it down because here's what happened; January, February, March was like sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and I'm selling, and we're making cash, and it's coming in, and we're at a 100 grand. You know, 100 grand, right... Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, we're making... A lot of cash coming in...

 

What I started realizing was the actual, my actual business wasn't able to handle what was going on. I was like, "Crap, I never ever thought this would ever happen to me." And I say that because when I started building funnels for companies while I was in college and it always happened the same way…

 

The funnels that we build, they sell things very, very, very well. I don't think people understand how well the funnels work, and that actually creates a business problem NOT a funnel problem.

 

Here's what I mean:

 

I was building all these funnels for people in college and there's this guy I was building a funnel for…  I did the research, I ran ASK campaigns, and I figured out exactly what his customers needed. Then I went put those things together, and created funnels. When we launched them, boom! He made a lot of cash real fast.

 

He made 50 grand really quick. 50 grand in the first month, it something like that. I can't remember exactly, it was a long time ago now. But there was a lot of cash coming in and then it kept going, and going, and going.

 

It’s funny because Day #1 after launching the funnel, the business owner always comes and they're like, "Oh my gosh, look at all this cash coming in! "That's amazing, these funnels are so cool!"

 

Then Day #2, they reach back out and they're like, "Wow, this is really awesome. "Holy crap, that's still a lot of sales."

 

Then Day #3, they're always like, "Turn it off! Turn it off! "You're gonna bankrupt us, turn it off!"

 

I remember I was kind of laughing when they said that, I thought they were joking. I was like, "Why would I ever turn off this... " Why would I turn off this funnel? Who wants less sales? I've never heard anyone say that in my life ever and at the time, I was making fun of it... I just didn't know any better. I was like, "Aw, that's stupid, why would you ever want less sales?"

 

However, he’d run into a situation where the revenue was outpacing his business!

 

Funnels are not businesses, they're not. A funnel is a revenue arm. A funnel is a very effective way to sell stuff. A business, though, that's completely different.

 

A business is a series of systems - that's really all it is. It's a series of systems that fulfills on the funnel, that's really it. Okay, that's the way I define it anyway, okay?

 

If you don't have enough systems in place, it means that every person who purchases from you is being fulfilled on differently.

 

It means that every person who's coming in, right, and has a support question, you're treating it differently every single time.

 

It means for every single, you know, package that needs to get shipped out there's not a process in place.

 

It's literally different every time, and what's hard about that is that it makes it very challenging to scale.  Especially if you’re just starting out and you’re kind of a solo guy for a while. If you're a solo, individual person for a while and you're kind of running on your own, that's great. That's a great place to be, but eventually you're gonna get to a place where your revenue starts to outpace your ability to fulfill well, and that's what happened to me.

 

Funnily enough, right after, I graduated college and started working at ClickFunnels, we did the exact same thing to so many other people:

 

Day #1, we launch an amazing funnel. They're like, "Oh, my gosh, look at all the sales!"

 

Day #2,  they're like, "Wow, that is "still a lot of sales, oh my gosh."

 

Day #3, they're like, "Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off, there's no way... "Oh, my gosh, we're gonna die, you're literally gonna bankrupt us, we're not gonna be able to fulfill on all this stuff"

 

I remember the second time it happened it was for a funnel we’d built for... I don't know if I should say the name, but anyway…

 

Russell and I built this sweet e-comm funnel. It was amazing, they had tons of revenue coming in, and they spent the next two or three months simply upgrading, building, solidifying and putting in place systems inside of their company so that it actually could handle the revenue coming in. Isn't that funny?

 

For some reason I had never, ever considered that for such a long time, and so I ran into the same thing.

Part of my first role as ClickFunnels was to build funnels for Russell's personal clients. I built a lot of funnels for ClickFunnels itself, but (especially when I first got there there) I built funnels for his personal clients - building them, putting them together…

 

I have a marketing degree. In the business marketing degree that I got they do a lot on teaching ‘the business.’ The actual systems and the structure. They do hardly anything on teaching sales, right? Which i...