SFR 21: Those Who Are More Playful…

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And, Why My Professor Used To Spray Us In The Face…

Hey my names Steve Larsen and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right. So, last night...Yesterday was my wife's birthday, right? I don't know why I'm saying right, you probably didn't know that. But yesterday was my wife's birthday, and we went to...Well, okay, I'll tell you a little back story. A week or two ago, we're driving back from this family reunion, I did a podcast a little while ago about one of my ancestors graves that we visited over there.

Anyway, so on our drive back, my wife was like, "Hey, like, growing up it was my family culture, we just never really did a lot, you know? As far as like, we went putt-putting the other day. That's really like the second or third time in my life."

I was like, "What! Are you kidding?" She's like, "I've never done like, bumper cars, or go karts, or rock climbing, or any of that." I was like, "Are you joking me? This is amazing! We have a whole childhood to go catch up on. This is nuts."

There's a lot more to that story, obviously. The whole point is that my wife and I are going around we're doing all like these little kid things that she never did growing up. It just wasn't her families culture to do that.

Yesterday was her birthday, so last night we decided to go and she wanted to go to one of those huge trampoline places. You know, it's like one of those rooms where it's just full of trampolines. There's one here called Jump Time, there's one called I Jump I think over in Denver.

Anyways, there's like a whole bunch of those places, right? So we've been going like place, to place, to place. This may not have a whole lot to do with Sales Funnels, but I think there's an important lesson here actually, and it actually does directly correlate, for me it has, on how fast I built Sales Funnels, and how good they look, so.

Anyway, we're over there, we're jumping on the tramps, you know, it's a lot of fun. She and I are like...There's basketball hoops with the floor being a trampoline. We're like flying through the air, doing dunks and stuff. It was really fun. There's huge foam pits. We're doing all these flips, jumping into these huge foam pits. Anyways, it's a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun...

What was killing me is...I'm 28, right? I know I look a little bit like a kid still, but obviously I'm not. But all these adults are standing on the side while all these young teenagers are with us jumping all over the place.

I could see that some of them we're just like, "well, he's an adult, he shouldn't be doing that. I'm not going to jump on the trampoline because I'm an adult."

Oh my gosh, just go barf. Play on the high way, like, do something. That's nuts. I can't believe that you would say something like that...

The reason that that bothered me so much is because I had this teacher in college, this professor, he's actually one of the...I'm not trying to be mean to anyone else, but there's really only like 3 teachers, or professors or whatever, that had a huge impact on me.

This guy was one of them...

We were in a marketing class once, and the whole semester, all that they do is they take you, and they say, "Hey, this whole semester all you're gonna go do is make a business. It's not made for you. You need to go grow the whole thing, and try and be making lots of money by the end of the semester."

I mean, huge learning opportunity, holy crap, cause we vote each other who's gonna be CEO. I will say that I was voted as that. What? Then we broke ourselves up into different groups and we went and we tackled an idea. We started making 2 or 3 grand a week, which isn't bad when you're restricted to only making the money on campus. You know?

So we're pulling 2 or 3 grand a week, from the campus students...

Anyways, there was a lesson that this guy gave us, this teacher. I remember one day, he sat down, and he could tell we were struggling with one...I can't even remember what it was, but the lesson is what I remember.

We sat down and he had all these toys, like kid toys, all around the room. He had a few squirt bottles also. He said, "Okay, we're gonna have a brainstorming session, but the rule is, in order to actually contribute an idea, what you have to do is you have to pickup a toy and you have to be playing with."

Whatever it is, you know, Silly Puddy, or LEGO's, or something. Whatever it is that you're going to be saying, the whole time you need to be playing with some toy in the room. Something that's typically for a kid, right? You're like, "what? What's this guy doing?"

It was weird, but cool, what happened. He's like, "All right everyone, go grab a toy." We're like, "Okay."

It was a little awkward at first, when you start grabbing these toys, we start playing with them. What was interesting was as we started playing with these toys, and we started doing little kid stuff.

Our creativity shot through the roof. Right? Just exploded through the roof...

We started coming up with he craziest ideas, and we started destroying all the other student businesses with these ideas. We went out and we'd execute them and they were fantastic. We tried to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest...Anyways, we did a lot of fun stuff. But his whole point...I'll tell you my story though.

As we would be brainstorming, as we'd be tossing ideas up on the board, I mean, we put 100's of ideas on this board, you know? We were trying to figure out different ways to market and be creative with stuff. Huge brainstorming sessions, you know?

What was interesting though, was whenever somebody, like, poo-pooed of downed another persons idea, I don't know how else to say that. Whenever they talked bad about someones idea, or smirked, or said, you know like, "That's a stupid idea." You know what I mean? Made that kind of gesture.

Everyone in the classroom grabbed squirt gun, and shot the other person int he face, and screamed, "Bad kitty."

I don't get the bad kitty part. It was kind of funny though...

The whole purpose was that when you're brainstorming, when you're doing things that cause you to...When you're coming up with ideas, being playful, causes more creativity. People who are boring, have a really hard time being creative, right? People who are so worried about following the rules, and I will follow the law, and I'm not jumping on the trampoline because I'm an adult. You know?

That stupid. Don't ever do that...

I mean, it really helps a lot. What's kind of funny is that right now I'm holding a golf ball. I just play with it, in my hands. I don't know. I like to golf.

I'm not amazing at it, but I think it's fun. I feel like my boss has all these little nic-nacs on his desk. He and I just fidget with stuff, and it's kind of fun.

I mean, I h...