SFR 74: Publish! ...and get haters

WHEN To Interview, AND When NOT To...

Oh, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening 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. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

You guys, it has been seriously six weeks since I had personally done a podcast and I'm very excited for this episode actually. I hope you've been enjoying the last six episode.

What I decided to do is that, you know, when we found out that oh my gosh, look, there's six different categories really that most businesses fit in.

Almost all of them actually...

I was like, "Why don't I go find someone who's killing it with internet sales funnels? Let me go find that person. Let me go interview them and go dive deep with them." Anyway, I hope that you've enjoyed it. If you've not had a chance to listen to each of them I would.

What was coolest to think through especially as the interviewer, watch all of these similarities that everyone one of them was talking about. A lot of it had to do with just standard marketing principles, but then also the very specific ways of like, "Hey, this works only in this industry," or, "This works only in this industry."

But what's funny, and the more I've talked with Russell and the more that I've learned from him, he's taught me in many aspects that a lot of the times some of the reasons why he goes and he crushes it so hard routinely, over and over and over and over again is because he will take tactics and use them cross-industry.

There's a great book ... Oh my gosh, I can't remember the name of it. It's the story of the dude that was selling snake oil almost literally and he made tons of money and people found ... Ah, man, I can't remember the name of it.

Crap, I should have found it before I started this episode, but basically what he's taught me is that hey look, one of the best ... And actually teaches that in the book too.

Is that one of the best places to find the best working marketing tactics out there is actually inside of the medical industry, right? They've got weight loss, they've got different dieting, they've got liposuction, they've got procedures, they've got high ticket things, low ticket things, supplements, continuity. You know what I mean? They've got all this stuff just over and over and over again.

There is so much money spent on having the best sales copy and the best advertorials, the best creatives, the best ...

You know, so if you think about different ways to do funnel hacking it's not always just yes, go find somebody inside your industry who's killing it.

Really red ocean. Funnel hack them and then take one step further, add your own piece into it and now you have a new niche, right?

That's how you have a new opportunity. Well, one of the other ways you can protect the niche and protect your business is to start studying cross-industry tactics. That's one of the major reasons why I'm telling you.

Even if it's one that you're like, "Hey, I did not think that at all I would get anything from that interview Steven did before," but my guess is that you will and that you'll learn something. Go, "Oh my gosh, if I was to take that from this industry and place it over here I wonder if it would work really well?"

Now you'd be prepared it might flop, but it's also highly likely that you're gonna ...

It's super fascinating to start thinking of it that way. Anyway, so go out and start trying to find different cross-industry tactics that you could be throwing in there. Now if you don't have a business yet, focus on the business.

Focus on creating something. Get something out there.

Start selling, start asking for people's credit cards...

Don't get distracted by that when I'm telling you right here. But if you've got something up and you know how it sells, you figured out what you're selling and you figured out how to sell it, now it's time to start going cross-industry.

Or maybe it is start going out and how can you create yourself to be more hard to beat, right? How can you create yourself even stiffer competition or stiffer for others to actually beat? Stronger marketing tactics, right? Make the offer even cooler. There's a whole bunch of different ways.

That's actually part of a presentation I give elsewhere that I should maybe show you here and ways to protect your niche. But anyway, I recently, while I was in the middle of those interviews, I had somebody reach out. And it's always so funny to me the people that react on what I publish. It's hilarious. You always get people who love what you do and it's super fun to hear from them. I love that. It keeps you motivated.

And then there's always people that reach out and you're like, "Did you get some kind of status by telling me how much you hated the last episode of something?" What was the motivation going on inside your head for why you felt you had to actually turn around and say, "Hey, that sucked." Or I don't know, when I knew it didn't. Or frankly I don't care. You know what I mean? If you're out there and you're starting to publish just understand it.

I wanted to just tell you guys why I actually publish. Why I do this. Because a lot of you know I did not want to publish for a long time and I want you to know why you should be.

I've written out several reasons here...

I want you to know why you need to be publishing, because this individual reached out and they were like, "Look ..." They said, "Steven ..." Which I totally disagree with, but I see what they're saying too. They said, "Steven, you're so much better interviewing people and you're terrible by yourself." I was like, "Mmmm, that's a strong opinion. I can see that."

But I want you to know why I interview and I want you to know why I will have ones where I just teach my own thoughts.

I recently was sitting in a room with JLD, right? John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur On Fire. Great guy. Do not take anything I'm about to say as a jab at him. Understand that it is completely out of a positioning move of what I'm about to say. I listened to him teach on stage and the man is amazing. He's done how many thousand interviews literally. That's his whole model.

He interviews people like crazy, right? Like Letterman. You know, David Letterman. He just interviews. The interview and the interview and the interview and the interview and the interview and the interview. And that's it, and I don't know any of his personal thoughts.

While he was talking I had the very, very distinct thought pop into my head. I was like, "You know what's interesting ...?" Because he started doing Q and A and every single one of the questions that was coming to him all had to do on how he podcasts. None of the questions had anything to do about business or marketing.

It was all about, "Hey, how the heck do you pull off recording that many interviews? Oh my gosh. Hey, how on earth are you able to get it done?" And I'm not taking jabs at him. What...