SFR 6: …The Blood Down My Arms, And A Live-Virus Later...The Military's "Sales Funnel":)

There I was standing in a line of people, blood dripping down my arms, this is actually a true story though. I was going through basic and I remember we get to this medical part, this is for the army and we get to this medical part and they're like, "Sit down," they're yelling at us, making us feel like we're not large at all. They're like, "Sit down," and they're like squishing us chest to chest like crazy tight to each other. We had just come from a haircut and they're were like crazy rough. They through us in this chair and they would shave our heads but the guys that were shaving our heads were so rough with our heads that we were all bleeding from our scalps by the time we were done. I look at this now and I just laugh.

There's a point to the story, by the way but I just laugh. They're throwing us up against the wall afterwards, they've missed some spots so some of us still have patches of hair coming out the side. They don't care that you're not clean at all either. There's hair everywhere and you're shoved up against the wall. I remember this guy's little blood streak coming down by his neck and right after that they have us go get cleaned up because we go to the medical area. In the medical area they take us and they put us down on the ground roll our sleeves up. They're like, "Take this alcohol swab, wipe down your arms, clean your arms," and it was the craziest thing I've ever experienced, I guess, medical wise. Every time I think of it I always have to laugh. We rolled our sleeves up and we're standing, we call it nut to butt, toe to heel, basically really close to the other guy.

You're standing super close and you take one step forward and there's a doctor on each side of you and they have a shot in each hand. You take one step forward and they both go right in to your arm. I got four shots at one time. Boom. Took another step forward, another set of two doctors, each with two shots in each, a shot with each hand. Then I got two more shots on each side. Boom. Took a step forward, two more doctors, each with a shot and it's like factory style. I mean, you took one step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. They're not being soft or anything so there's like blood coming down your arms. I remember the last guy, he was giving us a Tetanus shot and this guy must have really, really been having a bad day or something like that because oh my gosh, he was taking it out on us. That dude was jamming that big fat Tetanus needle in our arm so hard, I'm pretty sure it was hitting all of our bones or something because there were these other girls were there that were screaming and stuff. The very last thing that just kind of took the whole cake, they made us take this live virus by mouth. It was this pill, right?

We took a step forward and you had to show them that you swallowed it. You put it in your mouth and took some water down and show them that you swallow it because they said it goes in and kills all this crazy crap in your body. They're like, "For the next two weeks that live virus will come out of your pores. Make sure you always wash your hands. Don't touch your eyes," that kind of stuff. They're like, "You're worthless pieces of crap." Of course, everybody gets sick. We were sick, basic training is like two and half months long, we were sick for probably two months of that. Coughing up green crap and you're not really sleeping. Sleep isn't actually that, too crazy, it's the no eating part. I lost fifteen pounds and I was not overweight.

We were all like crazy sick and I remember feeling at the end of it, it's funny going in actually because I was like, "They're not going to break me. They're not going to get me." I was a little bit older than everyone else there. I was doing it in the middle of college instead of right out of high school. I had a kid, I was married, you know what I mean? I was gone for like six months total and I remember going in thinking, "They're not going to break me, they're not going to get me, I'm Steve Larsen, they're not getting me." They totally did. They broke me down hard and they rebuild you. It's the organization older than the United States so they know what they're doing for sure. It was cool though because I remember at the end of it we had thrown grenades, shot machine guns, we had done all this stuff. Crawling in the mud, laying in thirty-three degree water that's barely about to freeze, do that for half a day and anyways, at the end of it, I just remember feeling like crap, I feel like a soldier. This is weird. I did not expect that.

Anyways, why am I telling you this story? That sounds awful doesn't it? I'll tell you it kind of was at some points. I actually loved basic though. It was fun just because of the challenge of it and going and being intense like that. Anyways, why am I telling you this story? Because that's not what they show you in the commercials on TV about military. They don't show you that you only sleep three hours a night when you're out in the field and it's at one and a half hour increments. You get up constantly through the evening. They don't show you that you're not eating hardly at all. They don't show you all that crazy stuff. You have an idea that it's going to happen. You're going to put camo on and you're going to go do tough stuff. It's cool and it's fun after the fact. In the middle of it sometimes it's kind of challenging but it's actually super fun though. Basic wasn't that intense physically, which I know it doesn't sound that way, it was just the mental games they play with you. Anyways, it was fun though. I'm really glad that I did that. That was a while ago now.

The reason I'm telling you that is, like I said, those aren't the things they show in the commercials. Those aren't the things that the recruiter tells you. Look, the whole thing, they show you pictures and images of you, of these guys wearing camo and holding a gun, sitting, watching, they're the ones that are the guardian of, you know what I mean? They show you the sexy side of it. We all love the sexy side of it. That happens like five percent of the time though. The other ninety-five percent of the time, you're doing the stuff that gets you to the sexy part of it. The reason I'm showing you this, yesterday I reviewed two more value ladders that people send to me. If you don't know what a value ladder is, it's just a way to model out your business so that you can serve more people and get more money from customers and spend less on ads and acquiring customers. It's pretty cool. Go Google, Russell Brunson talks about it a lot. There's, I think Jeff Walker talks about it. Anyways, value ladders, they're not like a new thing or whatever. They've been around a long time.

Anyways, this is the reason I'm doing this because after reviewing tons of these value ladders from people, especially over the last couple years, there's a common thread that I'm seeing and I'm realizing that I'm saying the exact same things to every person who sends me their value ladder. It is not about just giving a free eBook to get an opt in. It's not about, here's a free course or here's a free, whatever it is to get the opt in. That's not how it works. What you do is you think, what's my main goal? For me, I like to sell real estate sales funnels. Some for like ten grand a piece and people come to me and they pay for that and I give them a sweet, awesome real estate sales funnel that helps them sell another house or two every month. That's huge for their income. That's massive. What you do is you take the sexiest part of the goal and that's what you offer for free to people as the bait. It's just like when I was going, I realized this, it was actually last night as I was falling asleep and I was like, that's a great analogy because going through the military they don't show you all the crazy hard stuff.

I'm not saying that you got to have hard stuff ...