Secrets From The $100k Meeting- Part 1 of 3

The Epiphany Bridge, State Control, Kinda Like Bridges

Today’s episode is part 1 of a 3 part series of Russell speaking at a $100k event where he taught about the psychology of funnels.

Here are some of the things you will hear in part 1:

• How if you have something you are geeking out over or passionate about, it is the perfect thing to sell others on.
• How the epiphany bridge works including how to get your audience to have the same epiphany you had in order to get them to buy into you.
• And how to tell a story to make your audience feel how you felt.

So listen below to hear the first part of Russell’s presentation about the epiphany bridge.

---Transcript---

Speaker 1:           How many of you have this thing called a website? Okay.

Speaker 2:           What’s that?

Speaker 1:           Now, yeah it’s this thing on this thing called the internet, that came out a couple decades ago. I look at anything online as real estate. Back in my direct mail days, when there was no internet, I always loved the line, “The difference between a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill is the message on the paper.” Same paper, same ink, different message. One change in the message could make that same piece of paper worth a hundred times more. The same thing goes with any of the virtual space. It’s what you say, how you say it, how you compel people. Someone that actually knows how to print virtual money, would be Russell Brunson, and he has a whole process and a whole company and a whole software that can do this for you, and so he’s going to take you through something that I’m sure could be potentially worth millions, if not tens of millions of dollars to all of you. Give it up for Mr. Russell Brunson.

Russell Brunson:               Well, I’m excited to be here. Excited to share some cool stuff. I didn’t do my presentation until last night, cause I wanted to see what you guys, what I think would be the most help for everyone. That’s kind of where I came up with some handouts. Do you guys all have these?

Okay, so what I want to do is, I’m not going to show you guys anything about click funnels, cause that doesn’t matter. I want to bridge some gaps, hopefully help you guys understand the psychology of funnels, cause if you understand that, then everything else becomes easier. I think that’s the most essential part for us as the entrepreneurs in the business, to really understand. Hopefully this will kind of bridge some of the things from the copywriting and other things we’ve been talking about.

Okay, a couple things. Craig yesterday was talking about Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, which was like, I was totally geeking out and loving it. I look at things very similar. I just flip it on the side kind of. I want to kind of reshow this, cause it’ll help my next thing I’m going to explain make more sense. I look at the world where there’s like, there’s cold traffic, there’s warm traffic and then there’s hot traffic, right? I got the picture there in my little handouts. If you’ve ever read my book, Dot Com Secrets, I sketch out everything I do, cause I’m a visual person, so this is the sketch.

I learned this originally from Jean Schwartz. He talked about, if you look at any market, there’s this awareness, this cycle of awareness, right? Where we hear people are unaware of what’s happening. After they’re unaware, eventually they become problem aware. From problem, they become solution aware. From solution, they become product aware. Then they’re most aware. Just kind of noticing, the peoples companies here who are doing well, but not where they want to be, it’s almost … The biggest thing I see everyone doing, is that you’ve become masters at selling here. This is the warm market, right? You become really good at that, but to scale, you’ve got to step back. You’ve got to come back to here. This is like your existing audience, who loves you. This is like Facebook, they love the market, but they don’t understand you. This is like the cold, hard masses and in my mind, the only way to drill past 10 million or so … I think most businesses can be really successful here, you have to master this to get to about 10 and beyond 10, you’ve got to become a master of this.

This is like, how do you create your offer in a way that it goes to the masses, which is very similar to what Craig was talking about. That’s kind of how I look at things, and it kind of leads me to the first important thing I want to talk about here. It’s called the Epiphany Bridge. Anybody here ever done network marketing?

Speaker 1:           We’re very [inaudible 00:07:36]

Russell Brunson:               [inaudible 00:07:36], they’ve done network marketing. Okay, so I’m going to grab something real quick, cause it’ll help illustrate this. I have a buddy who started a network marketing company and he wanted me to join in and to market. I said no a million times, but eventually he sent me some of the product. I loved it, it was really, really good. This is a company called Prove It. Anybody here ever heard of Prove It? No one here? Okay. If you’ve studied Dave Ashbury’s stuff about high fat diet, skinnier body [inaudible 00:08:03], this is the product they made. You drink it, outs your body immediately in ketosis. Tastes like candy, and it’s awesome.

I helped them write a pitch and wrote this pitch for them. They took it out and in the first six months, the company had $20 million dollars this pitch. This year’ll be over a hundred million dollars, and it’s just growing like crazy, because of the pitch. Now, I want to explain. After the pitch, they wanted me to come out to the leadership team and explain to these network marketers how to use this [inaudible 00:08:30] that I created for them, right? I’m like, I love network marketers, but I’m also scared to death of them, cause they’re like … They just pounce on you. You know, that feeling where you’re just like, I was getting pounced by everyone. I come in this room, and I walk in, it’s this room, probably about three times as many people as this, and they want me to show them how to use this new message to sell more stuff.

I’m looking out in the audience, and I’m trying to think, “What am I going to talk about to these guys. They don’t understand funnels or marketing. They’re a bunch of people who are selling stuff. As I’m looking out at this audience, of these network marketers, and prior to me coming in the room, I was watching them as they were pouncing on hotel employees and other people, and I had this thing just popped in to my head. I want to share this, cause it’s the key now to everything we do. This is a typical person, right? I’m going to make fun of network marketers, but this is you, right? In your business. We were born, we went to school, things were going well, and all of a sudden, something happened in your life that got you excited about what you’re excited about, right? Dean probably, initially he sold a car and was like, “Holy crap. I can sell cars and make money.” Right? Then he sold a house.

Every one of you guys, something happened. You were just normal humans. Something happened and all of a sudden, you had an epiphany, where you were like, “Holy crap, real estate’s the greatest thing in the world. Holy crap, financial stuff.” Something happened, where you had this big epiphany, and it changed your whole life, right? Do you guys all remember that moment, when it happened for you? He got his epiphany and then he went over here and then all of a sudden, the worst thing possible happened. You started like, “This is the coolest thing in the world.” You start geeking out on it, right? I’ll draw this dude with glasses. You start geeking out, and you’re like, “Oh this is so cool.” You start studying, and you just start doing the research, and you start going deep. I was looking at these network marketers, and I was like, “This product …”

I was watching these guys in the hallway and people walking by, and they’re pouncing on people, and they’re like, “Dude, you’ve got to quit burning glucose. That’s why you’re so fat. You got to switch your fuel from glucose to ketones. If you do that, you won’t be fat anymore.” It’s like, “Man, if you had beta hydroxy blueberry salt in your drinks and in your coffee …” All this stuff. I’m watching this, right? What happens is we come in to this world, we get excited, and we start geeking out, and the worst thing possible happens to us. We learn this thing we call techno babble. In every one of your businesses, you’ve got a crap ton of techno babble, right? IT’s these words that you use to describe things.

What happens is, you meet this prospect, and they’re so cool, and you grab them, and you’re like, “Okay, this is my prospect. I’ve got my shot at him.” You’re about to, like, “I’m going to tell him everything I know, and they’re going to buy my crap, and it’s going to be amazing.” Then it’s “blugh,” and you spew out all this techno babble on the person, right? I’m watching these network marketers just spew out this stuff out at people and they’re freaking out and they run away. For most of your businesses, how many of you guys know that you use techno babble? There’s words for your industry that you use, that you shouldn’t probably be using, okay? The reason why … What happens, this warm market understands your techno babble. They’re excited and they’ll buy your crap over and over and over and over again. Okay? Everybody else? They haven’t geeked out yet.

They key, this is what I found, the key for me to sell anything, is I have to stop this right here. I’ve got to cross out techno babble and I’ve got to stop this, cause this is what kills sales. I’ve got to figure out what was it that gave me the experience that caused me to go on this journey? If I can figure out what gave me this epiphany, and if I can give somebody else that epiphany, I do not have to sell them anything, ever. They’ll have that epiphany in their mind and they’re going to geek out and then they will cause a revolution. They will go so crazy on it. I’ve got to step back here.

When I was talking to this network marketing group, and the pitch I wrote … I was telling Craig this yesterday. I got equity for the company for writing a pitch. It took me less than an hour to write the entire thing. The reason why, the [inaudible 00:12:11] wrote this pitch he sent to me, it was like the worst thing ever. I was dry heaving in my mouth, like “Ugh, that was such a bad …” It was all this. Thousands of pounds of techno babble, just spewing forth and I couldn’t even read the whole thing. I was like, “This is so bad.” He’s a friend, it was like two o’clock in the morning, I was sitting in bed. I was like, “I know he’s going to call me, wanting me to critique it and give him feedback, but it just sucks, the whole thing.” I just deleted the whole thing and I was like, “I’m just going to rewrite this for him.”

The first thing I did, is I was like … Cause I believe in this product. I believe in the concept. I was like, “This is really, really cool.” I was like, “What was it that gave me the epiphany, that got me excited? Why do I drink this crap every day now? What was it that gave me that epiphany?” I was thinking back and it took me a while to realize. I was thinking like, “When was it? Some time in my life, something happened where I was sold on that.” Then I was going back here, and all of a sudden, I remembered. I remembered the moment that I had the epiphany. I was at a seminar. I went out to eat with my buddy, his name’s Aaron Lily. Do you guys ever remember in Skymall Magazine, the cream that they would sell that you put on your mole and your mole would fall off? Have you ever seen that? He’s the inventor of that.

I’m out to dinner with the guy. Super cool, doing insane amounts of money with that business. We sit down to eat and he’s super ripped and healthy and everything and he … I order this amazing dinner, and he’s ordering chicken with a side of butter. I thought it was weird. Then he’s eating it, and he’s dipping his chicken in butter and eating it and I’m like, “Dude, you are a freak. What’s wrong?” He was like, “Oh, it’s this whole thing.” All of a sudden, he started giving me techno babble and so I started making fun of him more, cause it just that gave me fuel for my teasing, right? I’m making fun of him and he’s like, “No, no,” He said, “Okay, let me explain it like this.” He’s like, “Your body … ” Wow.

“Your body’s kind of like a campfire, right?” He said, “If you think about it, you have a campfire, you feed it kindling, right? You throw a bunch of kindling on it, what happens?” I was like, “It burns really fast, then it goes away.” He’s like, “Okay, cool. That’s like carbs. That’s why you wake up in the morning, you eat Cheerios and you get like Ahh and then like 10 minutes later, you’re starving. Your kids have ADD and they’re bouncing off the walls, cause it’s carbs. You just keep putting more carbs in, your body gets more hungry. That’s how that world works.”

I was like, “Okay, cool.” He’s like, “Proteins are kind of like getting a log and you throw a log on the fire and it’ll burn a little bit longer, but same thing. It burns up and then it eventually goes away.” He’s like, “Fats are like coal. It’s like throwing coal on. It’s harder to get the fats to catch on fire, but once they’re on fire, they burn warm and hard and dark. That’s the best energy source, cause as soon as they’re lit up, they’ll burn all through the night.” He said, “That’s like eating fat. If you can transition your body from needing carbs and proteins, to processing fat, then you’ve got this amazing thing where you lose weight, you feel more energy and everything.”

I was like, “Oh, so that’s why you’re dipping your chicken in butter. I get it.” It made sense to me, right? [inaudible 00:14:48] this pitch, I just wrote a little, it’s a three minute explainer video, about a dude and a campfire. I tell my epiphany and why it’s important to be in ketosis and how this product puts you in ketosis instantly and that was the pitch. Three minute video, took the company from zero to a hundred million dollars in 18 months. It’s because I figured that out, cause that speaks to everyone. I’m not dropping techno babble and all this other stuff. Does that make sense?

The biggest thing that I think I can share with all you guys, is this. Is figuring out how to get out of this state, cause this is where all you guys are stuck at. I’ve heard you guys talking about your business and you’re always throwing techno babble, assuming that any of us have any idea what you’re talking about and most of the times, I have no idea what any of you guys are talking about. It’s because this is so second nature, so you’re super power, this is what you’re good at and you understand. This is where you lead from. If you get rid of that and figure out this piece, this is the key.

I’m going to share some other things, because I have so much respect for what Craig does. I don’t think anyone’s ever studied him. It’s probably creepy for him to know how much I watch  what he does, cause I have so much respect. What he does is like a sniper rifle, right? He spends so much time to craft his message, he’s just flawless. When he gets it right, it’s like a sniper rifle and blows up a company. I’m not nearly as skilled as him. What I’ve become a master at is this process, at telling these stories. I watch good copy like his, so I can get good at incorporating it in to my speech patterns. I think I’m kind of like a blend between these two. I’m kind of in the middle there, and I’m doing a lot of stuff to be able to figure out messaging. I’ll kind of show you guys that here in a minute.

This is the best copywriting, I think, is mastering this piece. Mastering the telling of stories, because the process that I’m going to show you guys here, you can do a lot of them, every single day you’re doing them, and you’re finding the ones that work and you’re pushing away the ones that don’t. You can move through things really, really quick. Okay? Any questions about epiphany bridge? One other thing, I had a big realization the other day, as I was kind of going through this. How many of you guys have ever had something amazing happen to you, and you go to tell your friend, like, “This cool thing happened.” You’re telling this whole story and they’re like, “Oh.” You’re like, “No, no, no, no.” You tell it to them again and they’re like, “No, that sounds really cool man.” You’re like, “No, dude. God, you had to be there. If you were there, you would have felt what I felt.” How many of you guys have ever done that before? Right?

That’s the biggest problem we have, is a lot of times when we tell these stories, this is why it’s so important to become good at this, is we just, we suck at telling the story and then they don’t have the epiphany. My job is not to tell them what epiphany they’re supposed to have. My job is to set up an environment and a story that causes them to have this epiphany. When Marcus Lemonis spoke at our last funnel hacking live event, I had a 30 minute window before the event started, where we could sit down and just kind of talk, right? First time I’d ever met him and he gets there and he walks in and he’s got this really confused look on his face.

He’s like, “I thought you guys were a website builder.” I’m like, “Yeah, we are.” He’s like, “Why is everyone so crazy outside?” You come to our events, it’s more like a Tony Robbins event than anything. People are going nuts and going crazy and I was like, “Well, it’s more than that. We’re building a culture of people that love what we do [inaudible 00:17:57]” He’s like, “What’s a funnel?” First thing I do, stupid me, I start trying to explain from here, and he’s like, “All right, so why’s everyone so excited? I don’t get why everyone’s excited. You build websites.” I was like, “Ugh.” All of a sudden I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to tell my story.”

I came back and I told him a story, the story that got me excited about funnels, and I explained that story to him and he was like, “Wait. You’re telling me that these can work for anyone, right?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Well, how would it work for Camping World?” I was like, “Well, this is what I would do.” He’s like, “Okay, well how would this work for Sweet Peas?” I’m like, “I would do this.” “How would this work for …” He starts going through his businesses and after three or four of me telling these stories, he stops and he goes, “Man, every business needs a funnel, right?” It’s like, “Yeah.” He goes, “I got to get you on the show, okay?” I didn’t tell him, “Hey man, Marcus, every business needs a funnel. You should have me on the show.” I took him on a journey, told him a story, then I put it up in the air and let him have the epiphany, right?

That’s the key. I want them to have the epiphany. I don’t want to tell it to them. You get them to that state by telling them about the epiphany you had. A couple things about the story telling process, that I’ve learned that work so good. How many of you guys have ever seen the movie, the X-men movie, where they were little kids, before they became the big X-men? You guys remember that? I can’t remember which one it was. There’s this scene when Magneto before he … He was a little kid and they’re taking him to a Nazi concentration camp and they start taking him in, he’s freaking out and they see the fences start kind of bending and they’re like, “There’s something with this kid. He’s got some magic powers.”

They pull him in this room and it’s this really tiny room, it’s got Magneto sitting here, it’s got the head of the Nazi party there and it’s got Magneto’s mom. She’s sitting there crying, standing there. The Nazi guy is telling him to move this coin, there’s a coin on the desk and little Magneto’s trying to move it and trying to move it and he can’t get the power to do it. He’s trying and he’s trying and he’s trying, nothing’s moving. Then the Nazi guy gets kind of frustrated and looks over, pulls out a gun, shoots his mom in the head, boom and the mom falls dead on the ground. Then you see this scene that’s like so powerful. You see this little kid’s face and you see the pain and the agony. You see his whole body convulse down, like “My mom just died.” Then it transforms from this pain, to this anger and then he comes back up with this just pure anger in his eyes and everything. You see him and he shoves the coin across, he starts crushing all the metal , crushing and everything starts falling around him and he just destroys this whole room. That’s how he found his power, right?

Now, when watching film, you see that, right? Now words were said, but you see all these things that were happening. You see the pain, you see the frustration, you see the anger, you see … Us, as an audience, as we’re watching that, we feel it. [inaudible 00:20:31] I was just explaining it, you kind of felt some of that. You felt that stuff, right? That’s the magic of film. We don’t … Most of us aren’t producing films to sell our stuff, and so we have to do that through our words. Imagine if Magneto came and he’s like, “Yeah, so when I was a kid, I was in a Nazi concentration camp. They wanted me to move a coin and I couldn’t do it, so they killed my mom. I was pissed, so I blew the whole thing up.” You’re like, “All right.” You wouldn’t have had the experience, right? Magneto came and he started talking about how he felt.

When I’m telling my stories, I go in to how I feel. I talk about, “Man, I was sitting there, I was so freaked out because my bills were due and I had this stuff and I had this pain in my stomach and it was almost like a heart attack, but it was lower, and I felt this pressure coming down and I literally felt like someone was sitting on my back. Everything was coming down on my. I looked down at hands and they were sweating, yet I was freezing cold. My whole body was shaking and shivering, because I was in so much pain and frustration, so much fear.” You notice as I’m telling that story, I’m walking you guys through what I’m feeling and you start feeling it your audience starts feeling those things as well, right? My goal, for me telling the story, is I have to get you in the exact same state that I was in when I had the epiphany, or else you will not have that epiphany.

If you look at a good author, I mean you’ll read books where an author will come in to the room and they’ll spend 30 pages explaining the room and the lights and the look and the feel and everything, to set up a scene. Deliver some line, cause they need you to feel that line, but you won’t feel it if they haven’t set it up correctly. If I want you to have this epiphany, I have to get you in the exact same state that I was in when I had it. Okay? Tony Robbins 101, stay in control. I have to control their state and I do that by telling the story in a way to get you to feel what I felt, so that when I explain how I had my epiphany, you have the exact same epiphany. Does that make sense? Is that the coolest thing? I realized that, I was just like, “This is like a whole nother level.” It’s so easy when you start understanding, this is how the pieces work and how they all kind of flow together. Any questions about that at all?

All right, so if you flip over to the next page. In my inner circle group, people always ask me, “Okay, I got that [inaudible 00:22:44]. What’s the process now?” I’m a big … What I do a lot of times, I go through and I look at patterns. I go through and dissect like a hundred sales videos like, “What’s the pattern?” Then I like sketching out patterns, based on that, so I can replicate it over and over again. I started going through all the stories I tell and I was looking at commonalities. Also, we had an event where we hired … Any of you guys know Michael Hauge? Michael Hauge, I write his name down, Michael Hauge, H-A-U-G-E? There’s an audio with him and, I think, Chris Volgler, on Itunes. It’s like a six hour story telling workshop they gave. It’s like the best thing in the world.

Michael Hauge is, he works in Hollywood and he … We had him come to one of our events and he was showing everybody, he was like, “Look at any movie that’s ever been successful from the beginning of time, like Batman, Spider man, Titanic, anything. They all follow the exact same script.” He’s like, “If you look at the screenplay that you get,” He’s like, “On page number three is when the hero does this. On page 13, they always do this. On page 26 … Every movie, it’s exactly the same.” He came and talked, but if you listen to that class, it’s a college class he’s teaching on story telling. It’s insane. In fact, have you guys ever seen the movie Hitch? When Will Smith wrote that movie, it was before him and Michael Hauge were like best friends. Will Smith said, “I was studying Michael Hauge’s stuff and I was writing Hitch, 100% trying to follow the keys that Michael Hauge taught.” Then when it was done, he met Michael Hauge and they became best friends, like super good friends. Now Will Smith, all these guys, Michael’s the dude they go to help map out the screenplay. Super fascinating stuff.

This became, as I started looking at it, the outlines for most of my stories, but also the outlines, very similar to what they teach in Hollywood. It’s kind of interesting, if you go in to it. If you’re looking at how I typically teach things, or how I tell my stories, they all start with the backstory. The big reason why is because it’s this, right? Coming back to here, people see you over here as this guru on the mountain, if you start your presentation from there. They have no faith r trust or hope in you, right? It’s like, “Ugh. That’s Dean. He can get there, but I can’t.” You’ve got to come down the mountain, come back to where they’re at and be like, “Hey man, this is where you’re at. I was here too. Come on, let’s go on a journey. I’m going to take you where we’re going.” You start with the backstory.

The backstory usually leads you to some kind of wall, which typically is the same wall that your audience is in right now, that’s listening to you. Then the first thing you talk about is the external struggle, cause this is what your audience is willing to admit. “Yeah, I needed more money,” or “Yeah, I needed to get in shape.” You talk about, that’s the first struggle. Then the second thing’s, you’ve got to get to the internal struggle, cause this is the only thing that actually matters. This is what Dean was talking about yesterday. Seven why’s. This is how I get to my internal struggle. External, I need more money. I ask five or six or seven why’s. Why, why, why, why, why? That’s the real reason why they care.

In your story, you don’t talk about … You mention the external, cause that’s where they’re at. Then you go in to the internal. You talk about the internal thing that you were struggling with, cause that’s where it gets them. You’re controlling state, right? That’s where you get in to the same state you were in, cause you’re actually talking to them on a level that they don’t ever share. When you’re willing and able to share that, then it causes the empathy you need. From there something happens, you had this epiphany. “Whoa, check out how cool this thing was.” Then, after the epiphany, you’re like, “Here’s the plan, what I’m going to do.” After you have the plan, usually you still freak out like, “Ugh, is it going to work? What if it fails?” We talk about the painted picture of failure. Then we have the call to action, and then, at the end of it, we have the result.

This is kind of an example. I have this on my desk, when I’m doing videos, doing stuff, I just look at this all the time. I make sure I don’t miss pieces of it. I probably tell, I don’t know, 40 or 50 stories a day. If you look at how much we’re publishing stuff, I’m just telling stories all day long, and I want to make sure that I’m following a process. This is there, and this little thing will help, these questions will help walk you through what’s your back story and what did you want? There’s a problem you encounter, how’d you make it feel? What was the external struggle? What was the internal struggle? What was the epiphany you had? What plan did you come up with after the epiphany? What would happen if you failed? How’d you take action? What was the end experience?

Some epiphany bridge stories I tell are a minute to two minutes. Some of them are 30 to 40 minutes. I tell a lot of them. Every one of my presentations … One of the presentations I did, one of the guys on my team was counting things and in a 56 minute presentation, I told like 30 something stories. I’m telling them a lot, consistently, over. If you guys ever watch  my stuff, I can tell story after story after story after story, because that’s what gets people here. If you notice, any time I get to something where I come to some kind of technical thing, like when I did the pitch for this. I had to explain ketones, causes there’s a word called ketones. Ketones is techno babble, right?

As soon as I get to the word ketone, I say, “Ketone.” Then I stop and I say, “Ketones kind of like,” I step back, “It’s kind of like a million motivational speakers, running through your body.” Like, “Oh, cool.” Now they’ve got what ketones are and I keep moving on. Any time I introduce any kind of techno babble, I stop instantly, take a step back, I tell a really quick story to make it so that that word means something to them, and then I can keep moving on. Anyway, I’m doing that over and over. Does that help for like a tool for you guys, how to … People always say “How do you do your sales videos now?” It’s Really this. These are how, mostly everything we create is from that.