SFR 188: Branding Comes Second...

Boom! What's going on everyone? It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

 

Today, I'm gonna teach you guys why branding comes second.

 

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.

 

Alright you guys, I know that I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers with this episode. I totally get that. I totally understand. I'm not trying to, but I  feel so strongly about this that if someone gets offended like, “Hmm... Okay! You know, alright... sounds good!”

 

So it was about six years ago, I had the unique opportunity of going and pitching some actual investors to invest in a business plan that I'd written. Now, this is before I ever had considered the fact that maybe VC funding wasn't always the best route... depending on what you were doing.

 

Maybe I didn't need to get funding. Maybe I didn't need to give up ownership in a company just to get it going, right?

 

And what was interesting is.... that was before I learned about any of this stuff.

 

I've always been very active in this sphere though... And so I was doing what I thought was best.

 

So what I did is... I remember we went and we wrote, I think it was like a 30-page business plan for the real estate space. It was with a buddy of mine, and he and I (as well as a few others), we came up with this plan.

 

It was this really cool real estate strategy. His dad was a kind of a real estate mogul, kind of. He was taking us under his wing a little bit, and he was showing us some cool, neat ways to (I think it was storage units) off-set costs with these clever strategies.

 

And it was cool - it was really cool.

 

Anyway, so we were excited about it; we're like, "Sweet! What if we just asked for the amount of investment that it would cost for us to go get a down payment on one of these properties? Let's just try it."

 

And cool enough, the professor we were doing this class with was facilitating the whole process. So the professor went and he actually grabbed these investors, so we did it in front of a live panel of investors.

 

We had a cool and unique opportunity of going in, and we did the exact process that you see on Shark Tank...without as much drama.

 

There was no slow motion, and there wasn't any slow-mo 'staring at each other looks' before anyone said anything - like on CNBC. But it was still awesome.

 

I remember we sat there, and we got to watch as each group would present their business plan; how much they believed their company was worth, give a percentage of the company away in exchange for an investment amount. Then watch them as they would defend why that was an awesome idea, and why they should get the cash, and why they had great numbers. You know, things like that.

 

It was really, really cool and I learned a lot and understood how all of that works. And it's really helped me even in my funnel building, funny enough. Even though I don't go that route.

 

So what was interesting is like, as I started doing that stuff they told us, "Hey, if somebody goes in and it truly is amazing - they will actually invest." And I was like, "Sweet, alright!"

 

Well, we get up there, and we start talking and stuff like that, and I remember that there were these different elements in creating this. It was like a 30-page business plan. It was very, very professional looking. We did everything from a SWOT analysis, (if you guys know what that is). All the standard stuff that you're supposed to do when creating a business plan and analyzing a market.  Which is 100% different than I do it now. Anyway, very fascinating...

 

I don't think any of us got any kind of investment. We did really well all of one of us. It was awesome in front of that board. Anyway, none of us got any kind of investment or anything like that. But we did that actually multiple times because of what I had studied.

 

I actually really do appreciate the college I went to on all this stuff. They did a great job for what they had, right? No one really teaches direct response marketing. That's kind of something you have to go learn on your own, you know what I mean? There's not like a major for that. No one's teaching that stuff, you know what I'm saying. For what they had it was awesome, I get it...

 

There were multiple occasions though where we pitched. I wrote a ton of business plans in college. And they were all very, very similar. We would go in and we would - there was a format we were following, and then we would go, and we would present it, whether it was just a professor or kinda like a dummy panel or a real panel. We did that many times, multiple times.

 

I started getting good at defending ideas back and forth for that. And when we actually started doing it for real... Colton and I, sitting over there, we actually went - we did it with a business that he and I were doing. We ended up winning the business competition in our college, and they sent us off to another college to go do it. We totally didn't win, but it was a good experience. It was a bunch of fun, and we learned a lot.

 

Now you say, "Stephen, what does that have to do with branding?" Well, there was always a moment in creating these business plans where you're like," Crap, I got this idea. What represents my idea? We need a logo. What's our slogan? What's our mission statement? What's this, what's that?" And we would spend so much time on those things that it actually ended up being a distraction of what actually caused value in that company. I see so much of the same pattern now...

 

The reason why I have such a war against branding is because it doesn't matter for a long time. It really doesn't.

 

Most of the time when I go, and I start creating something like a brand, man I go to a site, and I will buy a little logo that I think looks cool. I'll switch the colors around, so it looks somewhat okay, and in 15 minutes I have a logo! I do that all the time.

 

There's only like three or four logos I've ever had professionally created. But it's not until there's cash raining that I even think about that stuff.

 

What's interesting about that is that issue of branding comes up very frequently. In fact, you can see this on Shark Tank all the time. There was a lady I was watching, it was on Shark Tank. She came up, and she had the product there in front of her. I love watching Shark Tank. She had the product there in front of her.

 

She had a beautiful display... an amazing display with he...