One Visualization Trick That Almost Got Me To Spend $33,000 On An Old Book

If you can use this one secret, you can sell anything.

On today’s special LA version of Marketing In Your Car, Russell and Dave Woodward talk about how Russell nearly spent $33,000 on a rare copy of The Book of Mormon and why he felt like he had to have it.

Here are some fun things to listen for in this episode:

• Find out what kind of items Russell searches for on Ebay.
• Find out why he was willing to spend such a large amount of money on a book.
• And see what this experience taught him about marketing and how he’s going to use it in his business.

So listen below to find out what kind of stuff Russell buys on Ebay and why he’s willing to spend some serious cash on a book.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to a special California, LA edition of Marketing in Your Car. Alright guys, I’m here with Dave Woodward tonight. How you doing?

Dave: Hello.

Russell: We just got done at Tai Lopez’s house, filming a bunch of video promotions for the big promotion I’m going to do for Clickfunnels next week. Last webinar promotion they did, they did 1.8 million dollars. So it was worth flying to LA to contact some of your dream 100 to get them to hopefully make you at least that, if not more. Actually our goal is more, we’re going to try to do 2 million bucks, which would be amazing. Then tomorrow at 9:15 in the morning, we are going to go film with Marcus Lemonis, an episode of the Profit. How insane is that? People always ask me if we’re on the show as a business. No, we’re not on the show as a business. There’s another business, we’re coming in as the internet dudes, funnel dudes. It’s going to be so crazy.

Anyway, we wanted to do a late night impromptu Marketing In Your Car because I just had this crazy powerful marketing experience. I was telling Dave what happened and then we both at the same time we were like, “This needs to be a podcast.” So on Ebay today…..Most of you all should know at this point in life, or in the podcast, that I am a Mormon, if you’re not, I drop it all the time. I’m not shy, but proud as can be. So you should know that at this point. So in the Mormon faith there’s a book called the Book of Mormon. Oh, that’s kind of, pretty complex, right? So there’s this book that is amazing and in 1830 was the first printing of it, and there were 5,000 copies printed. It was cool because it was printed, instead of like, if you look at it today, it looks like scripture, chapter and verse. But this was like a novel, like a book. There was no chapter or verse back then when it was first printed in the 5,000 copies. And probably today there’s only, they speculate there’s only 500 of them still in circulation, the rest have been destroyed or whatever. They’re gone.

A couple of years ago I saw one on Ebay that sold for $120,000 and I was like, “AHHH! How cool is that?” Anyway, I only go to Ebay once every 4 or 5 months, and when I do I go and search for every term on Earth that I’m interested in and I end up spending way too much money. So I search for, should I tell you the terms that I search for? Is that interesting?

Dave: Yes, it definitely is.

Russell: Matt Furey, Farmer Burns, rare LDS, rare Mormon, rare marketing, Dan Kennedy rare, Tony Robbins rare….Anyway, these all….

(crossover talk)

Russell: Now you know what I’m looking for. But I always, those things I always search for, Jay Abraham rare, Chet Holmes, looking for things I don’t own. So I always look for things rare or unique. Anyway, so that’s the stuff I’m searching for, and then I always search for 1st edition Book of Mormon, because who knows? Last time I checked, earlier this week there were two. One of them was listed for $70,000 and one was listed for $33,000. I’m like, “$33,000, that’s 90 grand discount from the other dude who bought one a couple of years ago when I saw it.” So I’m like “How cool would that be?” Then I’m like, “I’m not going to pay $33,000 for a book. That’s completely ridiculous.” But of course there’s a little watch button, so I watch it. I’m like, I’m just going to watch and see how much some dude ends up paying for this book. So I’m watching it, and I’m looking at it and every day I go back and then Ebay texts you on your phone. Like, “Hey somebody else looked at it, you should go look again.” So I’m like, okay. And I go look again and all these things to get me engaged in the process. Finally one day a couple of days ago. I looked down and there was this spot to buy it now for $33,000 and I was like, “Oh my gosh! Someone’s going to get this for $33 grand.” And they had a button next to it that was like, you can make an offer. So I was like, I’m going to make an offer. So I made an offer that is ridiculous when you think about, it’s a book, right?

Anyway, I was like, I could realistically justify this, so I put in an offer for a price, and then an hour later, he rejected it. I’m like, “Dangit, how did he reject my price.” That was a lot of money for an old book that’s falling apart. I’m like, dangit, so I’ll just wait. Then I’m about to come here to LA, so I look down and there’s 4 hours before the auction ends and I’m like, “Ahh. I don’t really need it.” And I’m sitting there talking to Brent and Steve and a couple other guys in the office. I can’t remember who it was, but we were talking like, “Can you imagine how cool it would be to have that book and read it to your kids. Let them hold it and then actually read the entire thing to them through one of the original books. One that Joseph Smith probably handled.” Whatever it was. And I was thinking about it, how cool it’d be just for yourself to read that and be able to read one from back in the day. I put myself.. I was thinking how cool that’d be.

I was like, “I have to have it now.” I told Dave, “I’ve now experienced that moment and it was amazing. And my kids haven’t had a chance to experience it yet and I want them to experience it so bad, because I experienced it and It was amazing even though it was in my head. But I imagined it and I want to have that experience with them now.” Anyway, long story short, I didn’t win the auction. No one did. It ended. Oh, I made a new offer. I made another offer that I was like, “There’s no way he’s going to say no this time.” Put that offer in and then he just ignored it. He didn’t reject it, just ignored it. I was like, he’s got to be playing a game. I’m sure he’s going to wait til….it’s like a game of chicken. Two guys are driving cars at each other and one steers off at the last second. I’m like, I have my bid in there, I guarantee he’s going to wait til there’s a minute left and then be like, accept.  Because he wants my money, right?

So I’m waiting and waiting and then he doesn’t accept. And it ends. The auction ends and I don’t get the book. So now I’m like, he’s going to email me and be like, “okay man, I’ll take your offer.” And he didn’t for like 3 or 4 hours and I’m like, dangit. So finally I caved and wrote him, “hey man, what’s the lowest possible amount you’d take for that book?” So he may or may not write back. I don’t know. But the lesson, the moral of the story is if you can create a selling thing, where your customer actually visualizes themselves consuming the thing that you have. That happened to me when Brent or Steve, I can’t remember who it was, maybe it was a blend of this conversation. Talking, “Can you imagine reading that book to your kids and holding an original copy and letting them touch it and turning the pages.” And I did and when I had that vision in my head, I couldn’t get it out, because I wanted that experience. Because I experienced it already and I wanted to share that experience with other people but I couldn’t unless I consumed, unless I bought.

So think about that. How can you create in all that you’re selling, your webinars, your sales videos, your letters, your videos, everything you’re doing. How do you create an experience where they visualize it so strong that they can’t live without it? When you do that, that’s how you close book sales for $33,000 a book, which is insane.

Right now we’re driving up to the Bulletproof Coffee shop, I’m so excited. As you know now, I’m a Mormon, I mentioned earlier. I don’t drink coffee, but I’m a huge fan of Bulletproof stuff and last time we filmed Dave asked for his book funnel here, we ate at this coffee shop. They have food to die for. So we’re in LA, we just drove here and I’m about to eat everything on the menu, except for the coffee.

Dave: This actually goes back to having a cult following, because we drove half hour out of our way, just because it is that good, because we had one experience. Goes back to having an experience. We had the experience and we’re like, I don’t care where it’s at, we’re close enough we’ll find a way to go re-experience what we’d already experienced once before, because we craved it that much.

(crossover talk)

Russell: The crazy thing too is the first time we were here, we ordered one thing off the menu that was so good, that we ordered 3 more things for lunch, then we left and came back for dinner. We weren’t even hungry, but we did it again. I ordered 3 or 4 things because I wanted to try everything because it was such a good experience. So many good marketing lessons in this whole 7 minutes and 43 seconds you’ve been here with me so far.

Dave: Create the experience.

Russell: Create it, have them envision it. Have them experience it in their minds and then they will desire it in their lives. Alright guys, we’re out of here. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day and if anyone wants to send me some rare stuff from Ebay, now you know my keywords. Thanks guys. We’ll talk to you guys all again soon.