SFR 67: My "Healthy" Obsession...

Not to blame my childhood, but a few early circumstances set me on quite the path. Here's a Mantra of mine...

Hey what's going on everyone this is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio and real quick I just want to ask, how did you get started doing what you're doing?

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.

Alright now I know that that's kind of a ... that should be somewhat of an introspective question alright, there should be something that causes you to go like "How did I get here?"

And I hope that that's a question that you continue to ask yourself over and over it's actually been one that my wife and I funny enough have actually been asking about what I've been doing and why I have funnels that I've been working on my own and why is it that I work where I do and why is it ... it's been really cool to kind of work backwards and go "Woah, like if we hadn't made that one choice like we'd not be here" you know or "If we didn't do that one thing" you know or you know what, "if we didn't go down that path which totally failed but even though it failed it still led us here" you know what I mean?

And what was interesting is that's actually been a topic of conversation for us rather frequently over the last little bit here, it's been really really cool to look back and be like "Holy crap, I graduated like a year ago from college" I'm a bit older than the standard graduate okay but I did, I graduated a little bit over a year ago and like holy, man what happened, how did that happen?

What was the big difference, like why is it that I feel like I am just ... Guys I love my life, I love life and I love everything that's going on, I get so excited about everything that's out there, all the opportunity...

Whenever somebody says "Hey I need someone to go do this" or whenever this ... my knee jerk reaction is just to raise my hand because I want to try everything and I'm not trying to just talk about myself here on this podcast, I'm trying to show you guys how I have built successful sales funnels and how I continue to do it both personally and obviously with Russel where I work.

You know what it's been, as my wife and I started going and started dissecting right and going through all these things, this common theme started to bubble up and it's a theme, it's an attitude funny enough. I actually didn't realize ever that this is what I was doing ever but it's turned out to be this really really powerful ... it's turned out to be somewhat of a gift and it actually started when I was really really young.

My dad, and I've told this story a little bit before it's like the second episode ever of this podcast, if you've never heard it that's totally fine but you can go back and listen to it, but my dad had me be what he called the yard manager and we didn't have a small yard, it wasn't massive but I mean it was a good size though, there was a garden, there was a whole bunch of places to weed, there's a whole bunch of ... and it was really really ... anyway, it was a big task.

He said, I'm the oldest of six kids, and he said "Stephen, you're the oldest, I get it, but you are the oldest and you're the only one that I can ..." anyways I was deemed as the yard manager first obviously being the eldest and what that meant is he would have me go hire my siblings, he didn't tell me how to do it but I literally would write hiring contracts, I think I was 14 and I would write these contracts to hire my siblings for certain jobs, hey sibling number two would you please mow the lawn every week, that job is contracted at $13 every week or something like that, you know what I mean?

Then I'd go to the next sibling, could I contract you to do this? And they would sign it and there's literally an interview and it sounds so cheesy but oh my gosh like think about what that did.

Then I'd go to the next sibling and I'd do it and the work would get done, or if it didn't get done I'd have to pick up the slack, I was the contractor so to speak and that's how we set it up and my dads only point of contact for the yard was me and so when something happened or something didn't happen or if there was something out of whack he would come to me and then I would go to my hirees you know and I would go to my employees so to speak and I'd go talk to them and I'd say "Hey do this better, do this better" and obviously the sibling environment came around and said at times that we would fight about it you know and there was many renegotiations of contacts but whenever I wanted to get paid I had to go create an actual invoice and I'd turn it into my dad and then he would write it back and it was really, it was interesting, because while that story is cool the main point of it is that I would come to him and I would say "Dad, I don't know what kind of fertilizer to get"

And he would go "Oh interesting, yeah what do you think?" And I wasn't expecting that, I was not expecting that question at all, guys 100% I promise that this relates 100 and a bazillion percent to building sales funnels to please stick with me what I'm saying here okay, this thread after like months of introspection, this is what it came down to.

My dad would say "Well hey what do you think" and I'd go "I don't know" he's like "Huh, guess you gotta go find that out huh?" And it'd be like "Crap, are you serious that's all the help I get?"

And I remember feeling a little bit frustrated and annoyed and totally vulnerable and I would go and I'd just kind of get on google or I'd ride my bike over to home depot and I would price out stuff and shovels and whatever the yard needed and I'd go back to him and I'd say "Hey I think we should get this one because of this" and he'd go "Great, sounds good" and like no contest it'd be like wow okay.

Sometimes he'd ask "Does that fit within the bounds of the budget I've given you for the yard?"

And I'd be like "Well I think so". Repeatedly, over and over again, he stopped giving me answers and it was something that started very young in my life and I know that it's one of the major reasons for what has transpired since I was 14 and very very young he stopped answering all sorts of questions, he never got me a job, and I started working very very young, with actual jobs and I'd go, I would be the one going at the job and I did a crap ton of labor jobs and I'm so thankful that I did them, they taught me to work in crappy environments and make the best of it and bloom where I was planted which is huge.

Holy crap it's huge and then I'd go onto the next thing, and repeatedly over and over and over again this whole, you know I would ask my dad "Hey, I want to get a car, how should I get it?"

And he'd go "How do you think you should get it?" You know, it wasn't condescending at all he was truly asking okay cool, what's your plan?

He would have me being the one going through like hey, look at the different cars here you go so which one do you think you should get? I'd be like "Probably this one?" "Cool, go for it" you know and that was it, there was no other warm fuzzies yeah great job, or bad job, you know what I mean.

If it was a really critical thing he'd say "Hey you know what, maybe go for this or this or this, or he'd teach me and stuff like that but the large bulk of decision making was in my hands from a very early age and I've realized that it's one of the major things that set me apart army wise, set me apart school wise amongst my colleagues, even amongst some of my professors right.

Amongst so many scenarios the rest of my life the ability to solve my own problems and it's not that I know the answer, it's that I hunt the answer okay, I get out and I work my freaking butt off and I just find the answer, get out of my way I'm gonna figure it out, right.

This whole mentality started out and I didn't realize that's what he was doing and honestly I don't know if he knew that's what he was doing, I think the concept comes from the book Seven Habits of High Effective People, he did that with his kids with their yard and I don't know if that's why he did it but I'm glad he did but it started this whole thing.

I was not very good at school because I didn't want to be...

I didn't realize that was the reason why but I realize that now and I didn't want to go solve those problems, I didn't want to ... I barely graduated high school, I figured out how to learn when I was in college and that was great, I ended up getting mostly straight As almost the entire time except for like one semester which is awesome you know but guess how I did it?

I was a self solver, I figured it out on my own, it's not that I was smart enough to figure it out, it wasn't that I didn't halt every other activity until I found that answer, that's not it at all. I kept everything else going that could go forward until I found that answer, then I kept moving forward.

Does that make sense?

When I needed to figure out "Hey, how do I post something on youtube?" I would figure out "Hey, how do I build a website?" I went on the internet and I googled it, I found a tutorial and I just did it. I put the tutorial on one side of the screen and then I remember I was in word press the first time I did it for a client I pulled up WordPress and I just started building.

I would watch three minutes and I'd pause it and go do what he said, and then I'd play for three minutes pause it and go do what he said. It took me 8 hours, something like that, to build the first one even though it was like a one or two hour tutorial just because I was doing it with him the whole time. That's literally how I built my first website, was watching a tutorial for a client.

I don't know that he knew I was doing that, but anyway but it worked. That was the problem set infront of me, I did not stop just because a problem arose. You don't stop, you don't ... I get so animated about this topic because I'm starting to get questions sent to me over Facebook, I'm not starting to I've been getting them like crazy, people ask me things like "Steven, how do I move a button from the left side to the right?"

Freaking look it up!

It's not my job to solve that problem for you, you know what I mean? And it's the same thing, that's the mentality that I hope everyone is developing, that's what it means to be a business, that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, you are a 100% frontlines only person who owns it problem solver. That's it. How did I figure out how to build at click funnels?

I didn't learn when I was at click funnels, I was building for people way before Russel ever knew who I was, way before I ever got hired, way before I ever went to his event.

I went and I got clients, I said "Hey here's this cool funnel I'm gonna build it for you" and I knew just enough, there was just enough light infront of where I could see for me to go offer that to him and I knew there would be questions but I knew I could figure it out and again guys please understand I am not tooting my own horn but it's enough of a theme that keeps coming up I just feel like I have to share this, you've got to be a self solver.

I tell it to the two comic club students, I tell it to everybody I know. You need to solve your own problems! It's not that you are the one solving them, it's that you're hunting them, you're searching for them.

One of the biggest issues that I find over and over and over again with people who build sales funnels or entrepreneurs in general or people who are not quite entrepreneurs and are trying to break into being an entrepreneur or they've never actually made a dollar online or they're trying to create an extra source of income or or whatever it is, they're not obsessed enough.

They're not obsessed enough, you have got to be a monomaniac, when somebody turns around and they say "There's really online like three of the eleven business partners that I had in college that I still keep up with" and it's not that again, it is not at all that I'm bashing them, it's just there's this common theme that I saw every single time.

We would go and we'd meet, we'd have this sweet idea, a legitimate opportunity anywhere from ... any industry you can imagine, we tried to sell anything and it was awesome, my whole college was littered with that. I learned more doing that than I did in my actual major and you can expect that from anything you put your mind to.

What would end up happening, and it was true for any group project, it was true for ... things in the army, anywhere at all...

Not like this only happens in college, happens anywhere, at any time, any place. This is like human behavior that most of the time when there is something new that pops up, something unexpected, something that's like "Hey, here's a piece of adversity you should probably stop" 99% of people stop.

Don't stop, okay, if you stop, you're not obsessed enough, you didn't want it in the first place. That's my opinion, huge opinion, but I believe it to be true. I put my foot down behind that because I just holy crap like ... anyway, I wrote down a few notes here.

There's a few points I just wanted here with this is that you have to understand that when you start moving towards something it's like pushing a boulder up a hill, or even down a hill. It takes a lot of effort to get that thing to move at first, tons of efforts, like 80% of the fuel for a rocket is spent in the actual launch, right? Tons of it. Then this really weird thing happens, most of the people will give up just off of that first initial push, right?

They were in love with the idea of it rather than the activity of doing it, and what ends up happening is as you start to push this boulder forwards, this huge heap of work right, it becomes this sanctifying thing for the entrepreneur.

What it does, it starts to almost so to speak baptize them into the realm of entrepreneurship as they start to actually solve the problems because there's new problems every single day "How do I do this, how do I post to Instagram, you know, how do I get these videos done?"

You know how I learned how to video edit? YouTube. You know how I learned to do all the sound editing I'm doing right now? YouTube. You know how I learned to do what podcast intros are, how to put together a sales funnel right. YouTube and a combination of support docs on Click Funnels. I have read probably 90% of the support docs at Click Funnels, way before I ever worked there.

That's one of the reasons I work there. I know the system so dang well. That's why I've read a lot of the nitty gritties. Be a self teacher, you've gotta be a self teacher and what ends up happening is you push that boulder forward.

Number one, all these people back away. Seth Goden calls that the dip, great book called The Dip. Then this other thing starts to happen too, the boulder starts to move a little bit easier on its own right, a little bit of momentum starts to come together and really interesting things start to happen. It's almost like the world tries to say "Oh you want to go do that thing?

You want to go do that thing? Oh that's so cool, well we're gonna test the crap out of your will first and then once we see you're serious, lets go ahead and start placing little cool things in your path to help you."

Resources start coming out of the woodwork. It has happened every single time I have ever built a funnel or a business or anything ever whether it's my own project or someone else's, number one there is always unexpected conflicts that happens. We're tryna launch a certain kind of funnel right now. It's taken like six weeks, I'm super frustrated they're not out yet but it's because there's this one problem that is kicking my butt and I have got to figure it out and I know I'm going to figure it out I just haven't yet.

It's like a weight on my shoulders, I've got to figure it out. I suffer from insatiable curiosity, I've got to fix the problem. I suggest you suffer the same, please suffer from insatiable curiosity okay?

You've gotta be in love with it, you've got to obsess over the answer. Each individual answer, not just the outcome, make a million bucks, be successful, get on the cover of Forbes! You know?

Whatever it is, those are the outcomes, everyone falls in love with those really easy to fall in love with those, much harder to fall in love with the process. I'm asking you to fall in love with the process, because as you move forward, as the boulder moves forward resources start coming out of the wood work that you didn't know were there. You're like "Huh" so you can start to move them and use them and the boulder starts to move a little bit quicker.

You're pushing hard, as hard as you were before but you're actually starting to see some progress and you're like "Dang" and other people who fell out, they try to jump back on the bandwagon, happens every single time, I always get people "Oh did you need help with that?" Like no, I needed help with it at the beginning but you left and now you're just trying to backpack on what I've done.

Anyway what always happens is like this third stage, this third stage happens where this second round and this whole thing repeats over and over again in different areas but it's like this third round of testing your will comes out again, it's like okay push this big boulder, solve some of the immediate problems, little bit of momentum happens, resources come up and you're like "Wow cool, I didn't know I got this, wow there's actually ... alright sweet" it happens every time and then after that there's like this another big round of distraction that comes out and every time I start on some kind of new thing that I think is a cool business opportunity, it's the weirdest thing.

If I'm not trying to build something, there's no opportunities finding me, it's the weirdest thing...

The moment I start getting myself an action though and I say "I'm gonna go after this, just this one thing" tons of business opportunities and deals and stuff like that, they all just come out of the wood work and I was talking to my wife about it the other day like "It's so funny, I put my foot down, I'm gonna go after this one thing, just this one thing."

And she's like "Yeah and you started getting all these things coming to you again and again" I was like "Yeah it happens every time" then I gotta practice saying no and it's like the world is testing me saying "Do you really want that or can I distract you with this?

Can I get you with some shiny object syndrome here you go". It happens every time. It's kind of funny to watch it.

I just expect it now, any time I'm gonna go after this one thing, like boom and then I gotta say "Nope, not my plan" I truly believe that the ability to be a self solver, to obsess and fall in love with the process, not just the outcome is one of the biggest keys to being successful in anything. Building sales funnels, anything. I'm not a coder.

I know some code because I self taught it when I needed it. I just solved the immediate problem infront of me, I didn't just go try to learn code for nothing. I learned code ... when I say code I mean like CSS like really baseline stuff, I would not consider myself a coder programmer at all but the stuff that I did learn was the stuff I needed to use right then, I just YouTube it. I just googled it. Guys I freaking YouTube and googled my entire major.

I went and I took all my books, I got the PDF versions, I loaded them into this thing that spoke them to me at 400 words a minute, I would listen for three things I could rant about and that's how I wrote all my papers.

That's it. That's how I did it. I hacked my homework. That way I could go build sales funnels. That's the reason why. It worked. Anyway, yeah. There's a few other points I wanted to make with this but I'm running on 19 minutes now and I'm trying not to have these things be too long.

When I first started this podcast someone was like "I love that your podcasts are only like 12-15 minutes. They're perfect, any longer they wouldn't be awesome" but it's funny because I feel like I've gotten better so there's more good things to say and someone the other day was asking like "Hey, how long should my videos be, how long should my podcast be, how long should any content piece be?" And I said "As long as you're not boring, the moment you get boring it's time for you to stop."

So anyway, for fear that I am sounding like a broken record, I'm probably gonna end it here but just please know that I take this very seriously that when I would partner with somebody in the past or when I would do a project with someone or anything, they would not try to solve the problems that arose first by themselves, I would immediately fire that person.

I'm not kidding, I would do that with VAs, I do that with anybody. You're telling me you can't go to freaking google, the library of the world and just do a simple search try and figure it out yourself first before you bring it to me and solve the problem on your own?

Like holy crap, I don't want you on my team...

That's how I built it on college, that's how I do it now. Half the time, there's been so many ... god I can't even tell you how many times we will be at work and Russel will be like "Hey I gotta have this done, I gotta have this done". Sometimes, especially at the beginning, I had no idea how to pull off what he was asking me to do. I didn't!

Most of the time I would tell him, look I don't know how to do that but I know I can figure it out. Give me like 15 minutes, I'll watch a few youtube videos to get the just, I'll figure out the rest of the way.

I build the parachute while I'm falling and anyway, so if you don't feel like you can self solve, if you can go answer the problems that are popping up infront of you on your own without going to other people, my guess is you are not actually in love with the process itself, you're in love with the outcome, that's fine to be in love with the outcome, but honestly I was running like ... I'd run the two mile in 11 minutes and 54 seconds, is that Olympic speeds?

No but that's really fast...

When I was doing that, I didn't look at the finish line, I had to look at this three steps infront of me. It's the same thing with building stuff, you can't just start looking at the finish line all the time, you're gonna eat it. Anyway, be a self solver guys and just go and understand.

If you're going to ... it's fine to blow up support and ask them "How do I do this, how do I do this?" That's why they're there but man, look at freaking google, it's all there! It's how I learned everything. It's not that I know, I know it's not that I'm smarter! I know it is nothing to do with that. I barely graduated high school, that's not a joke.

I got straight D's in all math...

I got straight D's in all foreign language...

I got straight D's in almost every single subject it's not a joke, 60.1%. That's not a joke. You know the A's I got in, extra curricular stuff.

Yearbook. Stuff like that, theater, stage, singing. You guys don't know that about me, anyway, those are things and for the rest of my life it's just been, solve the immediate problem infront of me and that's the major reason I stopped reading just for the sake of reading for such a long period of time. I realized I needed to solve the challenge directly infront of me and stop distracting myself with reading the next book, taking the next course.

It's not that I have nothing to learn. It's that it gets distracting and you stop executing, you start getting slower than the other guy. Anyway I'm definitely talking too much now. Hey guys hopefully that helped, go be a self solver and I will talk to you all later, bye.

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