Don’t Sell To Broke People

This is the FIRST marketing on your bike podcast! :)

On today’s special episode Russell rides his bike to work and talks about why you shouldn’t sell to people who are broke. He also tells some of the things he learned while trying to sell to people who didn’t have money and didn’t want to work.

Here are a few things you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why selling to broke people will get you nowhere.
• Why raising prices Russell was able to weed out all the broke people and actually made selling easier.
• And why the people who are broke and unsuccessful are that way because they are trying to find external reasons when the problem is actually them.

So listen below to find out why you should never sell to broke people.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone! This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the first ever Marketing On Your Bike. Yes, you guys, today I am riding my bike to the office and doing our podcast at the same time. Hopefully, the wind is not too loud.

Hi, everyone. So, I’m excited for today. I’ve been wanting to ride my bike to the office for as long as I had a bike which has been like a week. So it’s happening today. I have no idea how long it’s going to take to get there but we’re going to find out here in a minute.

My wife is convinced that I’m going to die today. In fact, she had all the kids gave me a hug and a kiss before I left because she thought I was going to be dead. Mostly, because I don’t want to wear a helmet and I’m sure that some of you guys out there are – whoa! I’m out of shape already. Some of you guys are very safety conscious people. But from my house to the office is one street, one long street and it’s all back roads.

And so, I don’t want to wear a helmet. I am not going to lie. So if I die, that’s why you guys will be witnessed to that. So anyway, I’m not wearing a helmet today. I’ll see how bad it is and maybe I will wear it tomorrow but yeah. This is harder than I thought it was going to be, to talk while riding while carrying a backpack of stuff. But it’s all good.

Okay, so today, a couple of things, last night I did a podcast. I was talking about Periscope and how excited I was and how I’m going to post in that platform. And then literally an hour later, we got approved by Facebook for their Facebook Mentions Product. Did you guys see that? My wife just drove by. She’s dropping the kids off. She said, “No texting while you’re biking.” Oh man, she thinks I’m crazy.

Anyway, so I got home and I got approved in the Facebook’s Mentions Program which means according to Facebook, I am officially a celebrity. So with their Mention Program, you can use their – I guess you get like a blue checkmark saying that you’re a celebrity. And then on top of that, you also get to use their platform where you’re… it’s kind of Periscope but for Facebook.

So, I now got access to that, which my Facebook following is way more larger and more prominent than my Twitter following. So anyway, I’m going to try some things on that too and we’ll kind of see what happens between Mention and Periscope and it will be fun.

So today, my message for you guys is that… I’ve got to figure out how to pause this so I don’t die at the light up here… Anyway, my message for you guys today is, don’t sell things to broke people. And that’s it. You guys can take that and you gain today what you needed to know. No. Hold on. I’m switching hands with the phone. One second here.

All right. So, it’s funny. If you look at my business, if you read the DotComSecrets book, you know about this. I talked about how a few years ago, I realized I was not in love with my current clients. And the real reason why is we were selling stuff to people who are broke. We were in the how to start a business online business and we were selling – we were helping start a business. And our typical package is almost $5,000. And we sold a lot. We sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of that.

But the problem was like most of these of people who are were coming to us like they didn’t have money to start a business. And as you know and I know, business is not some make believe thing. It’s something you have to build and create and it takes money and capital and time and energy and work. Weird…you have to work.

In fact, I remember at one of my events back then, there were these guys there. And two older guys and we were talking about everything and they’re in the office in Boise. And basically I told them what they had to do. I’m like, “Guys, you have to create something. That’s how it works.” And the guy literally told me, “Well, I got into this to get rich quick. And if I have to make something, I don’t want to do it.” This was what the guy told me. I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You’re only here to get rich quick and if you can’t then you don’t want to try.” I was just like blown away.

So, that was my reality for four, five years. And then we shut the call center down. We stopped selling high end coaching and we kind of walked away from that. And then when I wrote – in the DotCom Secrets book, I talked about this, how like I realized my biggest problem was… it was like my dream customer… I was getting the wrong customers, customers I didn’t want. And people first of all couldn’t afford. But then the people who can’t afford it – what I found like there’s a reason why they can’t afford it typically. And then obviously, there is an exception to every rule. People have hard times. There’s a lot of stuff like that.

But the vast majority of people who can’t afford to invest in your program, they can’t afford to invest in your program because of something outside of just like, “I need to make more money or whatever.” Like typically, they are struggling with a whole bunch of stuff. They got other underlying issues that got them there typically. Like these guys from the event who basically didn’t want to make money. Let’s just get rich quick. We don’t want to work that’s why we’re here.

Anyway, so when we did re-launch our coaching program two years ago, we jacked up the prices. It started at $8,000. We raised it to $10,000 then we raised it to $12,000. That’s our lowest right now. Then we have our $25,000 and then we have our $100,000. And what happened by raising our prices is it naturally weeded out all the people who couldn’t afford it. And what was really interesting to me is that when I did that, all of my headaches disappeared almost, not all of them. But I think 99% of my problem clients couldn’t afford it and they were gone.

And it was amazing. Like last year’s coaching event, amazing. Most of my coaching clients have me on Voxer so they can ask me questions. And they are like good people who have businesses, who are successful, who are trying to grow them and scale them.

And so, that was my reality. And I was just like, “Man, people are amazing. Everyone works hard. Everyone gets it.” It’s funny. I think we had two refunds in the last two years from our coaching program and both of them we from people who joined at the $12,000 level and had to have payment plans. They couldn’t afford it. And I’m about to have a talk with my sales guys today because I kind of have of this re-awakening and re-epiphany that if someone can’t write a check to join the coaching program flat out, no payments, they can’t write a check, they’re not a good fit for the program. And I’m recommending for you guys the same thing. If someone can’t afford to pay you like don’t sell to broke people.

So again, I’ve forgotten this lesson. We did our funnel hacking event earlier this year. And we wanted to sell certification program and give people the ability to learn ClickFunnels but also learn how to go and sell ClickFunnels and make a lot of money as a certified funnel consultant, right?

And so, when we did it, we decided like I wanted a lot of people here so we can have a good community and stuff like that, so let’s lower the prices from our typical $12,000 and let’s give people access for I think it was like $3,500 bucks for one person or five grand for two. So, at $3,500 if you – whatever.

And then because I love these people so much and I want to serve them in the best way possible, OK, let’s do this for a week. And in that week, we’ll teach them everything. We’ll teach them funnel strategy, how to use ClickFunnels, how to sell ClickFunnels. Let’s bring our top salespeople in and let’s bring people that do our videos and showing them how we our video. Let’s show them everything we got and let’s serve these guys at the highest level possible.

And so, we sold certification program, a bunch of people come in. And again for the most part, amazing experience.

Then this morning, I get a Facebook message from one of the guys who was there and this guy – his comment illustrates exactly what I’m talking about like why you should not sell to broke people. And again, it comes back to they’re broke for a reason. That’s honestly my opinion.

So, in the Facebook message, he thanks me for the event, tells me it was great and then explained why he’s not going to ask for a refund, which is like day one, wrong mindset. Anyway, so it was like from step one like his mind is wrong. He’s trying to convince himself why he shouldn’t ask for a refund. This is why he’s not successful in life…like flat out. So there’s number one.

And then he goes on to say that three of the days were amazing and life-changing and so awesome for him but two days were a complete waste of his time and that’s why he wanted to ask for his money back because two of the days, we weren’t entertaining enough for him or whatever.

And one of the days he complained about by the way was sales. So I had my top sales guy, someone who in the first quarter of this year, so from January to March, sold $1.2 million worth of funnel services. I don’t think there’s a human being on earth who sold more funnel stuff than this guy. He came and he spoke for three and a half hours showing our sales scripts, doing live training, closing people live in front of the whole room, and showing how he generated $1.2 million in three months selling funnel services for me. OK. It’s probably something I should teach in a funnel certification program, wouldn’t you think? Trying to teach people how to be funnel consultants?

Now, I want to caveat this with, most of the people in the room got it. They’re not morons. They saw the value. In fact, one of the guys who is in the $12,000 program, he came. He has done like two or three calls with Robbie and then went through it again. He said, “Man, every time I do this, I get more value, more insight.” He said, “That was so valuable for me, to come and hear Robbie do it again live. I’ve probably seen that presentation ten times or variation of it and done three or four calls with Robbie and still like – that alone was worth the trip.”

So this guy tells me – so, this is the guy that Facebooks me, “Russell, I’m broke. I couldn’t afford the $3,000, let alone, a week from my family. But I made the sacrifice and I came and then I wasted half a day listening to some guy talking about sales. I didn’t come here to learn sales. I came here to learn to be funnel consultant.” And I’m not going to – I hope he listens to my podcast because this is for you if you are listening because you got to fix your brain. This is why you’re not having success right now in life – in any area of your life. It’s all tied back to the same thing.

The reason why $3,000 is hard for you, it be might be expensive and all stuff for you is because you don’t know how to sell. Do you not understand that? That session was specifically created for you. OK? If you can’t afford the $3,000 to be here and you’re complaining about the sales section, that’s why you’re struggling in life because you don’t know how to sell. It’s the only thing that matters in this whole game.

You actually building the funnel does not matter… like you can hire someone for a couple of hundred bucks to build the funnel. You being able to sell it is the only thing that matters. OK?

Now, I want to talk to you about another guy who is in the certification program in the same room and listening to the same presentations, but someone who has been successful all aspects of his life, has multimillion dollar business, was in the room because – and again, someone who doesn’t want to necessarily build funnels but he’s like, “I’m going to be in that room for a week because I know that Russell is going to be dropping tons of hints and gold and bombs and things that I can use in tons of different areas of my life. I have no idea where. I understand that some sessions are not going to be for me but there are going to be some gold nuggets there.”

So this guy sitting in the session, someone who did not want – who has a whole team who sells, everything, still shows up, still participates and gets value out of every session, little things for him or people on his team or for whatever. And he also understands that sometimes some sessions aren’t for you. And instead of whining and complaining, realizing that there are hundred other people in the room that we are also trying to serve beside you. You’re not the only person on earth.

So he gets it. He goes through the training, comes back and on Tuesday, posted on a Facebook group how based on one thing that he learned from Robbie’s presentation, he called someone up and sold a $12,000 funnel. Boom! Three X’d his money instantly because why? First off, he was there to try to figure out like the one or two little nuggets he needed to amplify what he was doing.

Second off, he paid attention every session. Even though he may not have wanted to listen to the sales session, he paid attention. And then holy crap! There’s some value there.

And then third off, he went home and instead of spending an hour Facebooking me the reason why he wasn’t going to ask for a refund, he freaking picked up the phone and sold somebody like we taught you.

Anyway, it blows my mind sometimes and it kind of re-reminding me the reason why we don’t sell to broke people. This guy I believed had to do payment plan to come in and all that stuff. And I get that. And there’s a time and a place. But for me and my company, I don’t want to deal with people like that. I want to deal with people who get it. I look at my $12,000 clients. They’re easy to work with. They work hard. They don’t complain. They are moving forward and they’re using us as a guide to give them ideas and tips and move in the right way.

People come in at $5,000 or $3,000, they’re basically, at least in my world, expecting you to hand them a business in a box that prints out cash as oppose to, “Teach me how to build a business that will print out cash.”

Anyway, it’s just a big reminder to me. When we do certification program next year, we’ll probably going to, I don’t know, three, four, five times the price. Have a smaller group to weed out the tire kickers and weed out people who are broke and only focus on the higher level people because I look at the few complainers we had and all of them are broke. That’s it. That was the only commonality in them is they were broke.

And again, while there are some people that – there are circumstances in life that caused people to do that. And nine times out of ten, from my experience, I’ve been doing this for 12 years now, is that the people who are broke, they are broke because their minds are broke. Their mindsets wrong. They are making decisions and doing things and approaching life the wrong way. And until they fix that, never going to be successful, OK?

Until this dude can sit in the room and listen to a guy who did $1.2 million in funnel sales in three months and say, “Man, there is value there for me. I’m going to listen to him and I’m going to go and freaking apply what I learned,” as opposed to messaging me and trying to convince me or try to explain why he’s not going to ask for a refund. And until he can change his mindset, he will never be successful.

My bet, I’m prophesying, I’ll get a message from him sometime in the next 30 days after he had not picked up the phone, he has not sold a funnel, he hasn’t done a single thing we taught him, has not listened or applied, which is probably the pattern in most of his life, I’ll get a message from him in the next 30 days asking for a refund because now it’s going to be my fault he did not success as opposed to him paying attention, taking ownership for himself, which is again, another commonality between people who are successful and those who aren’t.

So, for you guys listening, whoa! I’m out of breath. This is hard to ride a bike and talk on the phone and not get killed at the same time. But I’m impressed I’ve been doing this so far.

So here’s the value for everyone listening in. OK? If you are broke right now, that’s OK. But the reason why you’re probably broke, my guess is that you look for external reasons to figure out why you’re broke. This guy is looking for external reasons. You need to look internally. It’s you. I couldn’t say it any nicer. It’s not me. It’s you. OK? You got to understand that.

Until you take ownership of yourself, until you quit trying to make these mistakes, until you stop spending an hour writing an email trying to convince or explain to me why you’re not asking for a refund and freaking do that work, get out there, pick up the phone and start dialing. Do the process that I showed you like eight times in Boise. Go find someone you can serve, work for them for free, build a funnel, blow their minds with it, with the value you can provide someone then take that case study, showing what you did, how you served someone, what the results were you got from them, and then find other business owners like them and then sell that process to them. That’s how you become a millionaire.

And if something breaks in the process, you can’t look external for somebody to blame. The only person to blame is yourself. It’s you, not them. The process is simple. Guys, if you want to sum what the whole certification event was, that’s what it was. Find the market you want to be in. So I want serve chiropractors. Find a local chiropractor that you believe in what he does and work for free. Blow his mind. Build out a funnel. Try all those traffic strategies. Work on this list, setup Facebook ads and everything. Build a funnel. Get that thing working and you’re working for free.

After you’ve done that, now you’ve got a proven model that works then you go to every other chiropractor in town and sell that for $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 and you become rich overnight. That’s it. How do you think Robbie sold $1.2 million in funnel services in the first three months of the year this year? It’s pretty simple.

What we did, first off, I worked for free Drew Canole and we had success there. And then I got some clients like Liz and a bunch of people. We had results there that blew their minds. And we got tons and tons of proof and case studies now. And now, when people come, they see the results and they want that for themselves. And it’s not hard to sell now. OK?

But my guess is it has been… not even a week since the funnel services has been done. And if you guys haven’t – those who were there, if you have not made at least one phone call, you’re not following my process. If you don’t have someone that you are working for for free right now then it’s only on you. It’s not on anybody else. So hopefully guys, you’re listening to this. You’re listening to my message. Hopefully, the guy who Facebooked me, and my guess is one of two things is going to happen. One is, he’s going to get offended and he’ll ask me for a refund anyway, which is fine.

Or number two, is then take it to heart and realized, “Man, it’s me. Not them. Maybe I’m the one that’s keeping me back. Maybe it’s my fault I’m not successful.” And maybe he’s going to change his mind. Maybe he’s going to change his ways. Maybe he will figure out that he needs to listen to what I say and do what I say and apply it and then he’ll be successfully.

Anyway, there’s my rant. I love you guys. I know that you guys are doers on my… that are listening to this. And if you’ve been struggling up to this point, just try to look internal at yourself, figure out what you are doing and what you are not doing and that’s holding you back and you got to change it because you’re not going to have success, you’re not going to make any amounts of money until you change yourself. OK?

If I look consistently, people pay me $12,000, $25,000 and $100,000. We’re giving the same thing. The difference is their mindset. They get it. They understand that what we provide is a piece and what they provide is the rest. They get off their butt and implement it. Until they do, they’re not going to have success.

So, I hope that helps. And maybe actually, one more kind of story. I don’t know how long I’ve been riding for. It’s going to be like 3-hour podcast for all I know. One other story I want to share with you.

So there was a guy that joined our… at the funnel hacking event, who joined our $25k Group. The guy is awesome like one of my favorite people so far. And it’s funny because he jumps on Voxer, he’s like, “Hey Russell, what do you think about this?” I’m like, “Yes, I love it.” He said, “Cool!” And he goes and works on it. Three days later he messaged me, “OK, I tried that. Facebook shut me down. So I tried this. I tried this. I tried this. Nothing is working. I’ve been trying this. What do you think about that?” I’m like, “Cool! But change this.” And then he goes back. And he’s working his butt off.

He is taking personal responsibility. He realizes that his success relies on him and he’s using us as a guide to make sure that we got feedback like, “Yes, this is right. No, this is wrong. Change this. Try this. We’ve tried this over here, try that.” And he’s using it that way.

And this dude is like since the funnel hacking event to now, now he’s more than made his money back and now he’s like, “How do we grow this? How do we 10 X? How do we get it to a million, to two million, to ten million dollars?” And he’s going to get it because he takes personal responsibility and he’s not sitting around and waiting. He’s moving forward, moving forward and using the training and the people and the resources we give them as checks and balances to make sure things are working right. And that’s why that dude is going to be a multimillionaire very, very soon.

So those of you guys who are listening, I hope that helps. I probably offended some of you. If I offended you, that means it’s probably an issue with you to be all honest. Hold on. I’m crossing the street. In fact, that’s a really good test as if I’m talking to you directly. If this offended you in any way that means this is your issue.

And I hope that you can look at me as a coach and a friend and as a mentor and someone who cares about your success. And don’t get offended and do exactly what this dude probably did who Facebooked me last night. Don’t try to look for other excuses and other reasons why you’re not successful because if you’re offended by this, it’s you. It’s you, my friend. And until you fix you, it’s going to be hard for success in any area of your life.

So, hope that helps. Appreciate you guys. Love you guys. I’m here to serve and to give and help and inspire and change you guys. I hope you get that. I hope you see my passion and my commitment because when all said and done like I’m fine. My business is fine. Everything is good. I don’t – I’m not doing this for my health. I’m riding my bike for my health. But all these things that I do is to serve you guys because I care. I didn’t make a ton of money off the certification program. My goal is to get people using ClickFunnels. That’s where I make my money to help people use our tool better.

And a certification program is a way for us to serve and we served our freaking butts off. I was there for five days and my entire staff was there for five days. The two co-founders of ClickFunnels, Thursday night, pulled all-nighters, they did not go to bed. They’re helping and serving. They’re not doing that because it’s some external thing. We’re doing that because we care about you guys. If you get any other coaching program in our industry, they go to bed at 6:00 o’clock at night. They leave. We were there serving because we care and we want you guys to be successful.

So, I hope you understand that. I hope you feel that. We’re here for you guys. And that’s about it for today. I’m out and I’ll talk to you guys soon.