HOLY CRAP… Step Back

You’re so close, you’re actually missing it…

On this episode Russell talks about having a breakthrough while trying to write a script for a video to sell Clickfunnels. He explains why he’s been pitching it wrong for the last two years.

Here are a few interesting things you will hear in today’s episode:

• How Russell realized that he hadn’t taken his own and advice and had been pitching Clickfunnels incorrectly for two years.
• What super exciting actor might be in the upcoming Clickfunnels commercial.
• And why Russell will no longer compare Clickfunnels to websites.

So listen below to find out how Russell plans to pitch Clickfunnels now.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, good morning. I hope you are as excited about today as I am, if not we gotta wake you up. What should we do? For me, if you guys want to know, there’s a song that instantly gets me in state every time I listen to it, it’s Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. So if you’re down right now, go get your Spotify account or go search YouTube or whatever, search that song and play it and it will get you ready for work. It does it every single time. In fact, we listen to it multiple times throughout the day. Every time my energy starts getting sluggish, the White Stripes bring me back and I’m ready to march on. So there you go, there’s one of my tricks.

Alright so today, I want to talk about something, it’s so interesting. I’ve been selling Clickfunnels for a long time. Two years, it’s been my focus. Been selling it and selling and we’ve done pretty okay, we’ve done amazing with it. Not going to lie. I’ll pat myself on the back, I am proud of what we’ve done. We are taking over the world and it’s been really, really fun.

We are stealing all of Leadpage’s customers, which is not even a goal for us anymore because I’m pretty sure we passed them in revenues and members and all that kind of stuff, so that’s awesome. Target number one done. That was easy. Now we’re going after InfusionSoft. That’s the next thing. And they are scared of us, they keep us out of their partner con because they’re like, “You guys are our competitors, you’re stealing all our customers.”

I’m like, “Dude, what do you expect? Your software sucks.” So that’s target number two. I say, give us a year, we’ll pass them and then we’re going to keep on going. It’s been really fun. I’m having the time of my life. It’s been amazing..

With that said, I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes you get so close to your own project, that you miss it. I’m curious how many of you guys have felt that way. For the last two years, my argument that I’ve been selling against has been that funnels are basically the evolution of the website. The death of the website was one of our promotions. “Websites are dead. Here’s a funnel.”

And I kept trying to tie these two things together. This is a website, this is a funnel. In my mind they are both online properties. So that’s the way I’ve been arguing it. Trying to convince people when I tell people, “Oh you know what a website is? Websites are dead. This is the evolution and it’s called a funnel.” And I keep going to this thing, and I thought that was the right way to sell it.

It’s so funny because, when you guys read The Expert Secrets book, which is coming soon to a funnel near you, it’s funny. We have a whole section in there about how to structure offers the right way. We talk about how to build a cult-ture, and in there we talk about the three things that have to happen to become a vehicle of change. To become a vehicle of change, there’s three things that have to happen.

Number one, the charismatic leader, or attractive character. Number two is a vision of the future. Number three is a new opportunity. There’s been no mass movements ever created on an improvement. Perry Belcher calls them improvement offers. An improvement offer is like, “Oh you’re going to do this thing better.” An improvement offer, first off they’re very, very, very, hard to sell. Second off, you can’t create a movement around that. And nobody gets excited. “Oh this is a better way to do a website.” That’s not the movement.

But that’s the way I’ve been pitching it and talking about it and coaching it. That’s what I’ve been talking about. What I realized….actually let me step back. It’s been fun, we’re working on, I think I told you guys before, we’re working with the Harmon Brothers, they’re the guys that did the Squatty Potty commercial, and Fiber Fix and a bunch of other ones.

Anyway, the Fiber Fix video when crazy viral but the funnel wasn’t converting. So we just rebuilt it all for them, launched it and it’s been live for 12 hours and so far we’re more than doubling their old funnel, which has been awesome. So that’s been really, really cool. But while we’re working with them, we’re trying to think about…..we wanted to work with them because we wanted to do a cool video, like a Squatty Potty commercial for Clickfunnels.

So how do we do that? Me and my team sat in a room for probably 3 or 4 hours trying to figure out the coolest way to pitch it, and every argument kept coming back to website vs funnel, website vs funnel. And it was hard, we could not figure out the right hook or right angle or anything. And 3 hours into this, I think it was by the time you’re like there’s so much pain because you can’t figure out the right answer and your defenses start going down and you stop trying to think you know everything and all the sudden, that’s when the magic happens.

Which is why brainstorming sessions are so important. We come in with our own ideas and our own things we want to do and then no magic happens until we’ve broken through and realized that you’ve gone through your pride and you’re like, “Huh. I’ve got to humble myself to figure out the answer to that one.” So we got to that point and all the sudden I’m like, “Hey, you know the book I’m writing. Chapter six we talk about this…the way we’re pitching this is an improvement offer. A funnel’s a little bit better than a website. That’s not sexy, it’s not motivating, it doesn’t do anything for anybody.”

I thought, for an entrepreneur, a funnel is a new opportunity. I’m about to use a bad word, but screw websites. The website is a dead antiquated thing that’s stupid. I’m not comparing it to that. You can have a website if you want. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to build a funnel; it’s a whole new opportunity. This is a thing you can plug into any product.

You take any product, you plug it into a funnel and boom it’s…..it’s not a website. A website does not do what a funnel does. It’s completely different, this is a new opportunity. What’s the difference between a website and a funnel? They’re completely different. A website’s some stupid thing you have over here that looks good. A funnel’s how you make money. And positioning it as a whole new opportunity, and when we did that, the coolest thing about it is no longer will we have to make the argument of website versus funnel because it’s irrelevant.

I’m not trying to improve upon the website; I’m talking about a new opportunity called a funnel. If you are a new entrepreneur, or want to be, or a beginner or startup, whatever that is, this funnel is the new opportunity. When you understand the power behind this, it changes everything.

And when we did that, it was like angels singing, lights come on and within 15 minutes we had the perfect script idea, concept, which we are working on right now and it’s so exciting. I think I told you guys before, we’re trying to get Jon Heder, the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite to be in the video. I don’t know if that will happen or not, but if we do it’s going to be amazing.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you guys because my guess is that like me, many of us are so close to our projects that we’re presenting it wrong. We went from 10,000 customers year one, to our goal of 30,000. We should hit that, we’re pretty dang close to that, we got a couple months left. So we should hit 30,000. And then our goal for next year is to 3x it again and get to 90,000. And if we’re completely honest, 90,000 is lame, I want 100,000.

More than 3x next year. How do we do that. Well, we’ve got to change the conversation, and it’s moving away from stuff like that and transitioning over. Transitioning to this opportunity and explaining it to the right market that way. And that’s the magic.

In the Dotcom Secrets book I talk about hot traffic, warm traffic, cold traffic. So hot traffic, those guys bought Clickfunnels because it was easier. Warm traffic is where we spent the last two years, people that are already kind of entrepreneurial and already doing stuff online. How do we convince them that this is the solution to their answers. Now our next phase to be able to get to 100,000 is how to take it out there to people who don’t even know this is a problem and presenting them with this new opportunity.

When we do that, that’s the magic. That’s when it comes like, “Wow. I didn’t even know funnels were a thing. Now that I see that my eyes have been opened. I have this vision of the future.” And if there happened to be a charismatic leader involved, now they’re part of a cult. That’s the goal now.

I’m excited, I’m so excited. I wish I could tell you guys more, because the idea for the sketch is so good. It’s going to be Squatty Potty on steroids. I’m excited. And we’re actually doing this one, so it’s kind of a funny story. It’s kind of hard to explain. I’ll just wait and let you guys….first off, if we get Napoleon Dynamite to be the character in this video, that’ll be one thing and I’ll be going crazy. I think we’ll get him.

And the second piece, obviously is just creating it all and putting it all together. It’s such a good idea I don’t want somebody to use it before we’ve executed on it. Anyway, usually I’m pretty much an open book. But this time I’m holding this one close to the chest just because it’s so awesome.

Alright that’s what I got. Appreciate you all. I want you guys to step back and look at your offers and think about that. Think about how you’re positioning them, and get an outsiders perspective. Ask people. If I was to ask ten people, “When you think of Clickfunnels, do you think of it as a better way to do a website?” I bet most people would say no, outside of the people who are probably consultants who are trying to pitch it and have heard me pitch it that way. You know what I mean?

We need to change that, we need to make this. For me, here’s this new opportunity and for you guys, the same thing. Present your offers as a new opportunity, that’s how you’ll get engagement. That’s how you’ll increase your sales, everything like that. It moves you from being in a red ocean, which we talked about in the past. Where everyone’s fighting over the scraps and there’s blood everywhere to a new ocean where you are a category in and of itself. And when you’re there it makes it really, really fun. Alright guys. That’s what I got. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you guys again soon.