SFR 41: WHEN Is A Biz READY For A Sales Funnel???

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What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, before I get into the episodes, or this episode, I just want you to see a little behind the scenes.

Typically, what I do when I get these podcasts together, is I'll just write out a whole bunch of principles of things I know that you guys are struggling with, have questions about, or there's a challenge. I'll go directly address that so that I can just keep trying to provide value. Or, I'll go interview somebody and we'll go dive deep into their business.

By the way, I've got about 20 more interviews lined up for you guys. It's going to be great...

This podcast is actually a little bit different. This one actually took me about an hour and a half to two hours just to prep. There's a lot of cool things going in it, so I'm encouraging you right now before I start, get a pen and paper if you can. I think you're really going to enjoy this.

Anyways, without further ado, let's jump into this. Again, welcome to 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. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, all right. Now, while I was getting this all together, I was remembering the way I got into this industry. I've shared a little bit of this, but there's a certain part of it that I've been realizing that I haven't really shared. It's so key to success, I mean right out the gate.

I had a little podcast episode a little bit ago called 'How I Broke into the Industry.' I almost wish I hadn't put that out there, so that you guys could hear a little bit more of some of the things that really happened behind the scenes.

I was in college, and I was going around ... What happened was, and I've told parts of this, pieces and parts. What happened was I got married, my wife and I, we went up to college. I really hadn't had that much college done before we got married. It was only a semester or two, so I had the full brunt left. She actually had already graduated, although we're the same age. It took me ... I went on a mission for my church. I was gone for two years. I took a year off to work and get some stuff done, and put together.

Anyway, through various things, I actually waited on college for a little bit. I was doing a lot of construction jobs and just trying to get money together for it.

I told this story of when I walked away, and I was like, "Yeah, no more construction jobs. I'm done with this." I started going and learning, and I was doing door-to-door sales. I was like, "I got to learn how to sell stuff," so I was doing door-to-door sales.

When we got married, we had like no money. You want to provide, especially as the man. Like, "I want to be the man. I want to provide for my misses." That's how I was feeling. The problem is that I couldn't. I didn't know business. I didn't know how to sell. I didn't know what marketing was. I had no idea on any of that stuff.

I went into what I thought was going to be a prestigious thing going into a business degree, and going into a marketing degree. I started listening to this podcast called ... Actually, I can't even remember it. I can't remember what the name of it was, but it was a guy named Sean Terry. He was teaching how you could flip houses for zero cash, and it was totally legit. It was awesome. It was actually really, really cool. I learned a lot from him. He got me going and out the gates.

I'll fast forward a little bit. There was failure after failure, after failure, and as I started getting into this funnel game ... I've told you a bit of this story before, I went to door-to-door sales. I realized that you could actually attract people who want to buy your stuff, rather than go door-to-door and ask people to buy who are not planning on it.

I went from door-to-door sales to writing eBooks, and made my first funnel; although I didn't realize that's what I was making. I was using WordPress and all these tools and systems, and then I learned how to drive traffic because no one was buying my eBook.

Then, I got hired by Paul Mitchell and started working on building sites and sending traffic for celebrities, which was kind of cool.

I was like, "Man, none of this traffic's converting." That led me into Russell Brunson, and I found how to convert and actually sell online. That's really where money started happening. That was four years. I didn't stop. I kept going, and going, and going. Four years! It was painful. It was very painful, because I refused to get a normal job.

We were living on student loans, and I was like, "Crap. Like, this is my time to figure this out big and I've got to do it now." I did not sleep much. I did not do any really extra-curricular activities at all. I worked my butt off, and I know I did, and I'm really proud of that.

Here's one of the major lessons I learned...

As soon as I learned what funnels were and I started building my own funnels, we launched a company called Fixed Insurance. We were doing smart phone insurance. We had customers and there was money coming in. It was great.

I was brand new. We kind of mismanaged it a little bit. It wasn't the business I wanted to be in, insurance business. I wanted to go be in ... I wanted to work with people directly, one-on-one, and make their business explode. I wanted to do essentially what Russell now calls the certification program; but that didn't exist then.

I was going around and I was going from client to client. I pitched to the owners of Vivant. I went over and I was working with some of the top leaders in different MLMs, building their product, MLM funnels, selling lots of their product. I was going and it was super, super awesome.

The big problem was, was that none of them were big payouts. In between each of those successes that I was having was a crap ton of failure. It wasn't until I started looking back, like two days ago, literally. I was looking back and I was thinking, 'Why did this work, and why did that not? Why? Why did some funnels explode a business, and other funnels I mean, did nothing?'

Even in the same business, every once in a while, a funnel would go in and it would blow up, and then would do nothing again afterwards. Like, 'What's the difference? Why? Why? Why did some ... Why did some businesses just not take?' I was going back and forth, and I was looking around.

I said, "Oh my gosh, I think that there are times when a business is ready for a funnel." All right, now that's not normal thinking, right? We usually think that a funnel is good for any business at any time, always, ever; and yes, that's true. I'm not saying that you should not build funnels if you don't have all these elements but I started looking at all the people I've built funnels for. I've built over 150 funnels in the last year alone. Actually, 11 months; in the last 11 months alone.

A lot from my own clients, a lot f...