SFR 79: Funnel "Mentality"

Live listener Q&A about how I keep my "state" in the right place to build quickly...

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.

Hey, guys, got a cool episode here today. I get asked this question shockingly ... I expect this question to come along, but not with how often it's asked.

Anyway, this is gonna be a cool segment. I'm gonna pull in a question that I got from Gerim Atkinson. I appreciate the question, man.

I get a lot of questions from you guys and if you guys want to ask a question to me just go to salesfunnelradio.com. If you scroll down, there's gonna be a green button on the bottom right.

You can ask any question. It will voice record straight off your browser directly to me and then I can toss it in. Anyways, here's the question from Gerim.

Gerim:

Hey, Steve, Gerim Atkinson here. First, I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for your awesome podcast. I love all the content that you cover here. I love the super high level stuff. Then, I also really love when you get in the weeds; the tactical podcasts where you're talking about different techniques that you found have been successful in building funnels so really appreciate all the value you bake into here, as well as, the different funnels you built out.

Just appreciate all you do so super huge thanks for that.

The question I had for you was as you're getting into the zone to build out funnels and pulling from what Tony Robbins often talks about of getting into state. I would love to hear what you personally do to get into state to build funnels. Like what anything looks like for that process.

Are there things you do beforehand to get you focused and concentrated to sit down and work as you're building away? Are there foods that you found are really good for you to help keep up energy levels and keep you focused? Music? Headphones? Anyway, I would just love to hear what that process looks like for you that allows you to be zoned in on your game of building funnels and chasing after what you're working on.

Anyway, thanks again, and I hope you handle my question. Thanks.

Steve:

Hey, Gerim. Hey, man, thanks so much. Appreciate that. Hope you're doing well personally, as well, my friend. Hey, great question. I honestly get that ... I've always been shocked at how many people ask that. Not so much ... I always expected that I would get that question quite a bit, but not how ma' ... A lot of people ask me that. What's the ... In fact, a lot of people at the PHAT event that we did asked that question. That was one of the biggest ones. What's the state you have to be in? What's the mental control?

I always have made fun of the whole mindset training industry. When they're like, "I'm gonna teach you some mindset training." It's like, "What the heck does that mean?" It sounds so fluffy to me. It's taken me awhile to figure out my own process, but I have one, and it's been by accident as I've put things together, and I've built 'em and things like that.

Here's what I do. This might be weird or whatever, but in the morning when I wake up there's actually a YouTube playlist that I've been building over the last while. What it is, it's a lot of my favorite motivational videos. I hate calling them motivational videos because I don't need motivating.

I err on the side of doing too many things. There's no one putting a cow prod to my back. I just move. I know I move. I'm a shaker and that's one of my strengths; is I don't need motivating, but every once in a while, I get in a slump. I'm not gonna lie. Like the last week, I felt a little bit like I've been in a little bit of a funk. There's some vulnerability for you right there, right?

I mean we all feel it. Everyone I know feels that eventually. It's not like ... I don't just run around screaming all the time, but it is a great way to break state. It's a great way for me to ready and get excited. Even if I'm really, really tired, there's times where we'll be at the office till two or three in the morning. It's like I'm dying, but I get back into state by choice. That's the whole key. It's by choice.

I'll start jumping around, physically. Russell and I, we literally, we'll start jumping around. We'll play some music that's really fast and upbeat. We'll jam out to some rock music with some really silly air guitar stuff. You know what I mean?

I mean that's the whole thing. I've never been successful or a very good marketer or very good business person or very fun person around be, or I'm sorry, a very fun person in general to be around if I'm not having fun. Does that make se'? Even when crap hits the fan, even when stuff's really hard, even when it's very, very challenging ... The number one thing is I've gotta find a way to have fun with it.

Even in college, when I did not like classes or when there's stuff to go, I had to find something that I was doing, I had to find it interesting. Some aspect of it needed to be interesting to me, or I had find a way to make interesting.

Or I just didn't care. I'd enter into this total state of apathy.

That's one of the easiest things you can do when you're starting to build funnels. I mean or your business or whatever it is. It's this game and when you realize it's a game, like in my mind a lot of the pressure gets taken off. I'm like, "Well, I don't totally know what's gonna work so let me just throw it all against the wall and let's see what it does. Oh, that does, cool. Now, let's move forward."

You know? And that's how ... and with that backdrop, this gets a lot easier.

Number one, man, state control; tons of state control. There's a lot of times. I've mentioned many times before that I'm in the middle of getting out of the army. When I was in basic training and when I was there, and I was doing all the ... We were running around, and it was super hard.

It was really challenging. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the fastest. I wanted to shoot the best, so I basically was, almost the whole time.

I was the second fastest in my entire platoon and company. There was one other guy that could beat me. He was so freaking quick. He was like the second fastest runner in Nigeria or something. He was so ... Oh, my gosh. He was running the two miles in 10 minutes and 30 seconds. The guy was hauling. My fastest was only 11 minutes and 52 seconds. I mean, he was killing me by whole minutes.

Anyway, ah, still, I'm very competitive. I wanna be the best so like it's still ... That guy's awesome. He's the man. Rono's the coolest dude ever, but geez. Anyway.

There was a phrase that we would repeat a lot of times when it was freezing. I went in the middle of winter. That was a terrible time to go to basic. I went at a time when they were shutting down the different parts of the base that I went to and so they couldn't feed us normally. The amount of food we got was drastically less.

I lost a ton of weight that I didn't need to lose while I was there. Other guys in training were not that way at all. They were well fed. I mean anytime crap hit the fan and we would just ... Sometimes we'd just start yelling, be like, "Right." We just back into state.

There was a phrase they would repeat over and over again and they would yell, "Fake motivation is still motivation," okay? That sounds cheesy, but there's some serious truth to that. Especially when crap gets hard, and I guarantee you it's gonna hit. Look, when I'm trying to build a project, I see the beginning to the end on a macro level. It is impossible to see it on a micro level, though.

I can't tell you how many times ... Literally, every single time we launch a funnel at ClickFunnels, something bad happens. Mega bad. I'm not talking like, "Oh, we forgot to write an email sequence." No. For some reason, this integration over here didn't work, totally broke half the thing, whatever funnel we're building. Or major changes. Or massive hiccups. You know what I'm saying?

Literally, every single time.

I'm trying to say this you so that you understand that it happens to every single person and to think that it won't happen to you is ludicrous. You're gonna feel crappy sometimes. There's gonna eventually be a part where pure grit is involved, and your ability to withstand adversity mentally. You're gonna have one or maybe two people come out of the gate and tell you, you can't do it. But by the time it hits your ears, and it goes into your head, we translate it as precedents for how everyone's looking at us.

That's true anytime you start anything. It's true every time I start anything.

I'll go launch something. I'll get a lot of people saying, "Hey, that's sweet." I'll get some people saying, "Oh, that sucks. Like mwa, I can't believe you're doing that. Eh."

They're the haters and just expect that, but what's funny is that the tendency, and what I see a lot of people like who I coach and who I help and things like that, the tendency is to hear the one or two people and mistake it for being everybody.

Everyone hates my thing. No. It's two people, and they hate everything in life so don't even worry what they think. No, it was only two people, and they're just the kind of people who wanna be miserable their whole life, and they're trying to find something else to do, too.

You just happen to be the next victim.

That just happens.

Any time you put something out there, just know, number one, it's gonna take a lot of mental grit for you to combat a lot of the negativity that's gonna come your way. Whether you are a funnel builder, or you are the face of stuff and don't know anything about funnels, which is fine. Or you're a copywriter or whatever it is, any one of our roles. There's always very unanticipated resistance. Every time. To think it's gonna be different is totally ludicrous.

Any time I've ever launched anything from both friends, families and enemies, I've always had a lot of pro stuff and negative stuff. It's just the way it is, and it's fine. Eventually, you gotta just understand, you're not gonna please everyone, and you shouldn't try to. In fact, the fact that you're not pleasing everybody is a great thing. It means you got polarity inside your attractive character. I just said something before that's probably gonna offend a lot of people.

I think mindset training, like selling mindset training, it is the most fluffy thing on the planet to me. I don't understand it. Define it then at least. Like mindset training, it's like I do that everyday anyways. Not that I'm trying to, but I realized if I touch the hot stove, I can't do that. It hurts. I know it's not how it works, but you see what I'm saying?

'Cause we all have pros and cons. We have pushes and pulls towards everything going on around us. To think that everyone's gonna be happy about the things that you do, it's just not true and that's okay. That's why you build a community and culture around you. It's a support system.

One thing that I know the Russell does is he just doesn't look a lot of times at comments, whether he's in the middle of a webinar or on a Facebook live or stuff. When he's actually delivering the main thing, he doesn't look at comments. It's because 90% of it is really great stuff, but there's always 10% or just the freaking idiots. They decide that they wanna crap on everyone else's parade. It throws him off. It throws me off, so I don't look at the comments for a while. That is one trick.

While in the middle of delivering a presentation or a webinar or Facebook live or whatever it is, for a while, I look at the comments like crazy when I'm in the middle of the launch when I'm putting things out there 'cause I'm ask campaigning stuff, but besides that though, I don't really look at the comments for a while until I get the thing up. Then feel free to poop on it 'cause that's just how it works.

Anyway, I wasn't meaning on going off the whole thing, but I just I want you to know and everyone that's listening, I plan stuff on a macro level as deeply as I can, also, on the micro level, okay? I see the macro.

I'm like okay, I'm gonna go from this funnel to this funnel. People are generally really good at that piece. Then I try and get really nitty gritty on the micro level. Okay, well, this page is gonna have this and this page. It gonna have this offer and this automation over here and it's gonna have this, this, this, this.

I'm gonna do these things. I'm excited about it, but it never goes that way. Ever.

In the 300 funnels I've built in the last 18 months, it doesn't ever go how we're actually gonna ... We'll put stuff together. I mean it's so rare that there's not a hiccup or there's something that I've realized. Oh, you know what? I've taken it as far as I can. We have to have XYZ video. I thought we could get along without it, but we need it now. You know what I mean?

It always ends up that way.

This game has more to do with how fast can you get over the crap and just keep moving on? The tendency for most people, though, is they'll hit something. They'll hit a wall and they'll go, "No. Dang it, a wall. Eh." And they get uh, no, a wall. Then they fixate on it and it becomes bigger than it actually was in the first place. They start saying, "Well, I'm not successful because of the wall that came up. I wasn't expecting, and well, that guy didn't have a wall over there."

Not that you could see, but he probably had a ton more than you could see. Then they get fixated on this thing that was never that big in the first place. All they had to do was go around the left of it, around the right of it, over it, under it or they could just blow straight through it.

A lot of success in this, not just in funnel entrepreneurship, in life comes down to the ability to move past stuff quickly, the unexpected quickly, whatever the things are that are coming up. I'm not telling you to not acknowledge your emotion when you have that upset. Acknowledge it. Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. It's bad and then boom, move on.

You had the pity party. Go forward, okay? That's it because otherwise you fixate on this thing, and then it becomes the object in your mind for why you're not moving forward.

Then you start to fear the obstacle leaving because then you're like, "Crap. Now, I have to move forward." It becomes this backwards and forwards thing. I see that a lot of times. I mean there's over 500 people inside the Two Comma Coaching Program. I see that a lot. Every one of us goes through it.

Every one of us struggles through it. Every one of us ... When it comes to publishing for the first time, that's a biggie. A lot of people have a hard time with that one. Especially, creating a dream 100 list and actually starting to build relationships. That's one a lot of people stumble on.

Creating a new niche. Creating a new offer. Building out not just the funnel part, but ... the actual building of the funnel and sitting down and doing it, that's the sexy part that everyone wants to do, but they don't actually sit down, actually write the copy. In every one of those aspects, there's gonna be these hiccups. Hey, either you're not good enough, and you gotta figure it out or hire somebody. Or some other unexpected thing's gonna pop up. It's this game every single time, right?

One of my favorite quotes. I'm gonna botch it, but the idea ... is that, hey, look, you can measure the success of anybody based on the number of hard problems they've solved. If you want to be super successful, you have got to look at yourself as a problem solver. You can't look at others for the solution. You gotta solve it on your own. Be a self-solver. The faster you can self-solve, the faster you're gonna be successful with it.

I mean every time I put something out, that's how it works. Every time. You know what's fun? It's almost like ... That's why I call it mind muscle. It is like that. At first, it's really hard. You're like, "Oh, this is the first time I've experienced any kind of adversity in something that I want. The world doesn't seem to want to give it to me. They're asking me what my value is, and I'm not sure what my value is yet."

You're flexing this muscle in your brain for the first time. Then you get it out. You actually launch the thing or whatever, and it's like, "Ah, now relax for a second."

Now, let's do the next one. It's a big mind muscle flex again. You're like, "No, my gosh. This sucks. It's so hard." It's the same thing over and over and over again, but now you watch Russell's team. You watch the way he and I interact. You watch the way he interacts with his other people. It's like here's an adversity. Boom. With three ways, we could solve it. Sucks, but we're over it. Boom. Here's three ways we could fix this. Boom. Here's two ways we could do this.

What was cool is that I know one of the major attitudes that I've had, that has helped me tremendously in my very short career, as it's been so far, is I go to Russell or you might go to your boss, or you might go to whoever your higher up is, or you might go to your spouse, you might go to whoever, your girlfriend, your significant other and you say these words, give me your hardest problem, okay? You say those words, and you're gonna have a lot of guaranteed mind muscle flexing, right?

You're gonna have a lot of iron pumping with your brain. It's gonna be really hard, but if you're willing to go through that, holy crap, your speed increases so intensely and you can get so much stuff done in your life. You can move forward because you don't get caught up on petty crap like, "Uh-huh, they didn't like something I said. I got three negative comments back. Uh." So what?

Just do the next one...

Keep going...

You gotta practice that over and over and over again...

My suggestion when you're building these things, especially when it comes to your brain, is understand when you're about to have burn out. I actually have a ... It's this white cube. It's got all these different times on it and whatever side pops up ... I'll put a 30 minute timer on. Boop. Hear a little beep? And then in 30 minutes, the timer's gonna go off, and I'll switch over to the five minute one. Now that means you get a five minute break.

Then I'll switch back to 30 minutes, then go back to five minutes. 30 minutes/five minutes. Then I go back and forth and back and forth. That's one way I go faster and for longer periods of time without needing to have this big massive break. That is one strategy that I do use.

Another strategy that I use is I try to make three moves a day, meaning I just try and make, if you think ... like a chessboard, I try and make three moves per day, right? If I only have 24 hours per day to get whatever I'm trying to done, let's see, I'm gonna be at the office for a certain amount of time. I'll be home for a certain amount of time. I gotta sleep, a necessity, for a certain amount of time even though I hate it.

At some point, I gotta work out even though I'm not really been doing that for a while. You know what I mean? I only have 24 hours. If I can just make three moves per day, it will at least always be moving the ball forward. If I don't make any moves at all during the day whether it's for my own stuff or for Russell or for a client, for anybody, if I could just move just three moves a day, then you can define what that is, but they can be good sized moves, stuff that matters.

Okay. I got in contact with this correct person I needed to. Awesome. I did this podcast episode. Cool. I designed this page and least have the layout for the remainder of what the funnels gonna be like. Boom. Three things. Whoo. All right, I can go to sleep. You know what I mean?

I try and make three moves per day. That's a great way to pace yourself. We like to always think that we can sprint towards the end, but the reality is you gotta plan out how long you think it's gonna take you to build a funnel or a business.

Then double that assumption.

If you're like, "Hey, it's gonna take me three months." Okay. Plan on six, right? Work like it's gonna take you three months. Work like the plan is three months, but just know that you're actually gonna do it in six. That's another ... Same with cost. I think it's gonna cost me 10 grand to get this project out. All right, that means it's actually gonna be 20. What can I do to increase cash flow?

You know what I mean? Those little things that I do to expect and plan for any type of hiccups or bumps along the way.

Then honestly, I just listen to sweet music. I can't listen to music that has words in it very much. That distracts me too much and distracts my brain, but I know I have a little bit of enough ADD in my brain; actual ADHD a little bit, a lot of symptoms of it that I need some other stimulus going on in order for me to focus, so I'll have music playing, which is usually over 120 beats per minute, which sounds cheesy, but that's true. It's over 120 beats per minute.

Then I go ... The music doesn't have any words really that much. It's a lot of house music almost, and I just zone out and do my little 30 minute/five minute, 30 minute/five minute. Try and get three moves done in the day. That's how I do it.

If stuff ... Sorry. I'm getting stuttery. If stuff begins to get in somewhat of a lull, I need to stand up. I recommend standing desks. Usually, I stand the first half of the day. I stand the entire first half of the day without sitting, and I'll sit the last half of the day. That keeps me more engaged as well.

I guess those are some tricks ... actually wasn't thinking about, that I do. Then mixed with the mental, I call it mind muscle.

It's a post that I did on my personal Facebook page if you wanna go look at it, but it's the playlist, the playlist itself. Here's the post I wrote. I'll end with this. Okay.

Mentally, I think of myself as just a freaking warrior, like whether or not that means that physically or whatever. Says, "I'm Steve. Hear me roar. The latest conversation with me, myself and I." Then I said, "Enjoy your brain you're already marvelous. I don't need motivation. That junk fizzles and dies quickly anyway. Some place, at some time, you'll need actual grit in whatever you. Look forward to the grit. When motivation leaves so do the hobbyists."

It's a super key line. "When motivation leaves so do the hobbyists so although I love living and smiling on with purpose, make it hard, Coach. I found that this is all more about saying no to stuff rather than yes. Wonder junkies and Renaissance men have the toughest time of all so control your mind and rage after the goal like the last drop in a desert. Embrace the suck." That's another phrase from the Army a lot. "A ticked off drill Sargent at my basic training said that. They called him The Dragon."

"Never tell me what I can't do. I'll kick you in the neck. Has nothing to do with drinking my own Kool-Aid. I know my own weaknesses. Periodically, I lay in my office floor, seeing marvelous visions of my own goal," which is very true.

I actually do that a lot, too, so I'll lay on my office floor here at home, and I'll just stare at the ceiling, and I just envision, and I embody what I'm trying to be. I try and take that on. I try and shed things that I'm not trying to be. I do that many times also. There's all these things I'm remembering that I'm doing I forgot about. Let me keep reading here.

It says, "But I really only need and want to see the immediate three steps in front of me at all times. It's how I control noise. I've learned to love ambiguity. The battle is in you. It's against your own mind. Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts." That's from Buda. "Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."

"Business karma is real. Be a crappy human, and it'll return. Whoever said, 'The customer's always right' was probably a politician because that's total garbage, but everyone" ... I'm having a hard time reading this. I'm looking through my little foam screen thing here that's attached to my mic, and it's blurring my vision.

Anyway, the whole point of it is you gotta freaking move forward. Abraham Lincoln said, he said, "Gentleman, why not laugh, with the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die."

Just have fun with it. There's a whole bunch of little mind things. You'll figure out what works for you. You'll figure out what those things are, but when it comes to ... You just gotta be a freaking tank in your brain. I mean because no one else cares about what you're doing, okay.

It's a sad reality. I'm not saying that people don't listen to this. They don't care. I'm not saying people don't care, but you're the only one ... Let me say this another way. You're the only one who's passionate enough about what your thing is to actually go through the crap, in order to get it done. You're the only one. No one else can have that responsibility on their shoulders. Don't look to anyone else. Don't try and put it on anyone else. No one else cares as much as you do to actually get your thing up and out the door. If it's already moving, nobody cares enough to actually get it to the next level.

It's only you. You are so alone in that. It's actually not a freaky thing to realize. I'm not saying like, "Oh, you're all alone," or whatever. What I'm saying is it's actually a liberating thing to realize and understand that you have total control. You can get things on your own. 

I'm not saying it's totally on your own. Create a team. Put the pieces together you need to, but you are the driver, and it's exciting when you realize that. Like, "Ah, wow. The battle really is against my own brain and the critic inside of my own head. Huh?" It gets really, really easy after that.

Anyways, guys, it's a long episode again. The last two have been long. I'm so sorry about that, but Gerim, it's great question. When I heard that, I was like ... Massive fire behind that so, anyways, appreciate that.

As far as a recap, I would find out what your own mind muscle is. I would flex your mind muscle. Figure out how that works for you. Work on state control like crazy. I stand. I listen to music that's fast paced, not crazy, but that keeps me engaged. No words with it. I plan the micro, and I plan as much as I can ... I'm sorry. I plan the macro, and I plan as much as I can the micro; all the small little details, but then I 100% expect that that's gonna be false. It's totally gonna be different when I actually get in the weeds.

Anyway, whatever you think time and cost wise it's gonna take for you to get something out the door, I would make an entire launch plan before you ever start building anything. Plan the whole thing out with dates, when you're doing what and then hold your own feet to the fire, but then double that timeline to make it more realistic.

Then plan on making three moves per day...

When you actually do three moves per day, what it lets me do emotionally is it lets me have personal wins that I need in order to stay engaged. If I don't have a personal win in something for a little while, I feel a loss of momentum in motion. It actually make me feel a lot of anxiety. Like I'm not doing anything when I could be doing a lot still.

Anyway, hopefully that helps. Be freaking tanks and figure out exactly what it is that keeps you ticking when stuff gets hard 'cause it's gonna happen. Expect it, but only look to yourself for the answer to get over it.

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