SFR 58: The Dominant Thought...

You're not alone, but it'll sure feel like it sometimes. Here's how to deal with it...

What's going on guys? You guys ready for the greatest episode of Sales Funnel Radio ever, until the next one comes out? Me too, let's get started.

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, I'm super excited for today, this is going to be awesome. A lot of you guys know we just got a house recently, we just got a house, and my wife and I were getting used to the new chores that come with home ownership, you know what I mean?

There's yard work, there's all sorts of stuff that you would not think about until you actually own your actual house, which is awesome, and it's been a whole lot of fun to do so. Funnels certainly have played a role in our ability to do this and be this. We know that realistically, we'll probably pay the house off in just a couple years here, and we're super excited about that.

It's not a mansion, but it's much larger than we actually need, but it's very fun. I'm not bragging, but I just want you guys to know what's possible out there if you guys are just barely getting started, which I know a lot of you guys who listen to this are. So anyways, I was outside the backyard, and I was doing yard work.

Actually, I really enjoy yard work, it's therapeutic for me, mostly because I'll toss on some podcasts, and I'll just lose myself a little bit while I'm doing stuff. I was in the backyard, and I was doing a few things, and I always like to find new podcasts, I don't know why, I just really like podcasts. I've personally gained a lot from them.

Anyway, I like podcasts a lot, and so I'll go download tons of them. I have a huge list of them, and sometimes I'll just go open up my phone, and just start looking at random ones, and I always binge listen to someone's podcast, I'll listen to like 15 episodes at once, and decide if I want to keep going on it, you know what I mean?

Well, there was this new podcast, and it will remain nameless, but it was so funny.

I don't know if it was just episode number one, or what, it sounded like it was a podcast that was just barely starting, but it was this guy who was getting up ... And again, I'm not badmouthing him, but I am blatantly disagreeing with him, okay?

If anyone's offended by that, whatever. Anyway, so this guy gets on and he's like, "Hey, thanks so much ... Thanks for joining my podcast." And he starts going into a few little pieces and tips, things like that, and he was extremely ... It always bothers me when people just get up, and they just try and prove how awesome they are. It's like, "Okay, let your content prove that," you know what I mean?

Anyway, so he gets up, and he starts naming all these stats, and it's very professional, and I can tell he probably starches his shirts, you know what I mean, you know what I mean? I was like, "Okay, you know, this doesn't ... Already I don't really want to keep listening to this."

But he said one line that about made me hit the floor. I couldn't believe that he made this statement that he did, and when he said it, I actually rewound the podcast, because I was listening to him at two times speed, and you know, because you can listen faster than you can talk and read and all that stuff, or you know, out loud anyway.

I re-listened to it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, he actually said it." He just listed all these stats out about himself. Is he just full of it, or is this a real thing, you know? It's not my podcast nature to typically go badmouth somebody else, so I'm so sorry if this is ... It's not the normal culture, but it's just, ah, what he said really threw me off.

What he said was, "Entrepreneurs are not marketers." And I was like, "What the heck did you just say? Wait, what?"

I went and I rewound it, and he said, "Entrepreneurs aren't marketers." I would like everyone on this podcast to know that yes, yes they are marketers by nature, because an entrepreneur is somebody who's proving an idea, therefore that means they're selling. What is selling? It's an arm of marketing, right? It's marketing, it's all marketing.

Me doing this podcast right now, whether or not I want it to be, is a form of marketing, does that make sense?

We've gone over the difference before, between what sales and marketing is, right? Sales is what happens when it's face-to-face, what you're actually saying to the person, right? What are you saying on the webinar, what are you saying when they're inside the funnel, what's on your sales video? That's why it's called a sales video.

However, marketing is the act of getting people to your face, so it's all the other pieces that go into actually getting them to walk up to you, right? What actually gets them to your funnel, what actually gets them to your webinar, or whatever it is. That's the act of marketing, and it doesn't stop when sales start.

Marketing continues to go all the way through the fulfillment of the product, as well as teaching them to consume the product, right? I think it was Dan Kennedy that said, "Marketing only has two ..." No, no, "A business only has really two responsibilities. The first is to innovate, and the second is to market." That's it, those are the only two things that you really have to do, those are the only actual two responsibilities that the entrepreneur has, to innovate and to market, and all marketing is, is education, right?

It's a form of education that actually gets people to cause belief in your product, you know? That's basically what it is. And so this guy's coming out, and he's like, "Yeah, entrepreneurs are not marketers, and that's why my stuff's so good, and that's why I'm so amazing." I was like, "Holy crap, this is episode one for you, you're a brand new podcast, but I cannot listen to you anymore, that's pure crap, pure crap."

You know what's funny? I've got this rule now, I never work with a business when the CEO, or entrepreneur, or person in charge of the business in general, whoever it is, president, whatever you want to call it. If the person who's in charge of the business is also not ... if he's not also the person who's in charge of marketing,

I 100% already just do not ever work with them, ever. That comes from a lot of experience, that comes from a lot of places of me going, "Oh my gosh," it is so frustrating for me to go out and go, "Hey, person who's not in charge of the business, but who does marketing, but that makes no sense. How about we build a funnel?"

Well, then they got to go clear it with this guy, and then they got to go over to this guy, and they got to go over to this guy, and then finally the guy comes back, "No." And you're like, "What? Are you kidding me? Hey, you know what would be cool, what if we added an order bump?"

"All right, well let me clear that through legal, let me clear that through this person, let me go through here." I'm like, "Are you kidding me? It's an order bump, like what else is there to think about? Are you running through the benefits? Why are we not doing an order bump?" You know what I mean?

It actually came to such a point that for a phase there, for Funnel Hacker TV, I was building a lot of funnels with Russell for all these people, and it was a lot of fun, lots and lots of fun. The challenge was that most the time, the person who was in charge of the business was not also the person in charge of marketing.

Oh my gosh, it was so hard. It was like eating sand, I mean, it was so, so tough to get anything done.

I think I told you guys before, I think I told you this here ... I can't remember. He said, "Is one of my ..." I'm pretty sure I did. I told you about a professor that I had, who was a CMO of Denny's, right?

He was in charge of all the marketing for Denny's, he was in charge of all the marketing for Pizza Hut, so maybe in gigantic corporate businesses that are Fortune 500 companies, maybe sometimes that guy's not also in charge of marketing, but I mean, okay, can you not argue with the fact that, okay, Steve Jobs was very much in charge of marketing, but also in charge of Apple, does that make sense?

Russell Brunson, very much in charge of marketing, in charge of ClickFunnels, all right? Most of the time when a business is doing prolific things, it's because there is an entrepreneur who is in charge of marketing also at the same time, does that make sense? I'm sorry I always reference Russell so much in this podcast, it's just that I literally spend more time around him per day than in my family, you know what I mean? So that's where I work.

Anyways, it's so funny, he always makes fun of people, he's like, "Why would you outsource your marketing, that's like outsourcing your sex life," okay? If you're going and you're outsourcing your marketing, you're literally outsourcing your sex life. Selling is the sex of business, and the fulfillment is the remainder of what comes with the relationship, that's what he always says. Anyway, it's true though.

I had this teacher, right? This CMO of Denny's, and I spent a lot of time with him, a lot of one-on-one time, and he taught me a lot of stuff, and it was great. I truly learned probably the most from him in college than anybody else. What he told me was like, "Look, think of business as a car, and you're driving down the road, and you got the guy who's in charge of supply chain.

He's the guy who's got the oil dipstick, and he's saying, 'Oh yeah, we could go this far, because our resources are this far.' You know, he's the guy in the supply chain. 'Oh yeah, we can go this far, let me order as much as we can.' That's the supply chain guy. Well, the finance guy, he's looking at the rest of the gauges at the dashboard, he's sitting next to the marketer who is the driver. Right?

The finance guy is sitting to the side, and he's like, 'Yeah, we could do this, we could go this far at this space, at this speed, I advise you to turn this way, advise you ...' But who's actually in the driver's seat? Right? Whoever is in charge of sales." Nothing happens until somebody sells something, right?

The person who's actually in the driver's seat is the marketer, and he's the one who's driving the car, pointing out the directions, "You know what? Let's go this way. You know what? Let's go this way. You know what? I think that we've got ... there's probably a gas station this way, let's go refuel up supply chain guy, right? Finance guy, you take note of that, I'm going to go over this way."

You know what I mean?

The marketer is the one who drives the company. Not always. I guess in that area, that other podcaster was right, but he said, "Entrepreneurs aren't marketers." It's just so freaking false, I can't even believe it. Every time and entrepreneur goes out, and is entrepreneuring, what is he entrepreneuring? Something that is either brand new, or his own version of it, or something.

Well, what does that entail? How does he know that the business is actually working? By selling.

What does that mean? It means you're a freaking marketer, you know what I mean? A lot of times people are like, "Oh, what is marketing, marketing seems so elusive, the term of it." Just think of it as educating, all right? You're educating, and you're pulling people in with a form of education.

That doesn't mean teaching, but you're teaching people how cool your product is, you're breaking and rebuilding belief patterns, you're getting people out, you're getting out there and you're saying, "Hey, check out this product, right? Change your current pattern of behavior, and go check out my product or my service. Change your view on the world, and go check out what I have."

Anyways, I could not believe ... Anyway. I don't know how much we want to beat this dead horse, I just want you guys to know that entrepreneurs are definitely marketers, and if you think you're not a marketer, I don't know what to tell you. Hard reality, you got to learn some sales, you know what I mean? That doesn't mean ... you know what, let me rephrase that. I don't like to do sales face-to-face.

I used to do that when I did door-to-door sales, I learned a lot, I got good at it, but then one of the things I learned, is this is not the thing that I want to be doing, right? An entrepreneur does not have to be good at sales, I should say, but they do have to be good at marketing.

They've got to be out there, they've got to be showing their thing. People have got to gain belief in the product, therefore yes, you are a marketer, and feel excited about that.

What's funny, is that way back in the day, I used to think ... I remember going through just tons of angst over what I should do, like, "What's my major, what's my ..." And you know, what's funny is now realizing how little that actually matters, unless you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or something like that. Oh gosh, anyway. It's funny, this same professor who's the charge of marketing for Denny's and all this stuff, he would sit me down, and we'd have these big long discussions, and I'd be like, "I don't know what I want to do, I feel like I could be good at that, I feel like I could be good a supply chain, I feel like I could be good at finance."

For a while, my major was CIT, I was learning programming, and all this stuff, you know? Then I went to finance, and I jumped around all over the place. I was going to go to financial economics, I really liked that stuff, I think it's fascinating, but the problem was I didn't know what I would actually have at the end of financial economics classes. Oddly enough, economists typically don't make that much money, and that's something to take into account of.

What's funny, is I used to sit down with this teacher, and I'd be like, "Hey, I really don't know what I want to do." And he goes, "You know what? Bar none, marketers are problem solvers." And I was like, "Yeah, but come on, marketers are like the guys ... That's like the major that people do when they're just trying to skip out, and not have it be an actual challenge or learn anything." I mean, that's what I thought, it's such a false belief, and he called it out on me.

He's like, "No, that's not how that works at all." He's like, "The reason is because marketers are problem solvers, it's not that anyone else isn't, but marketers are problem solvers. What's an entrepreneur? They solve problems, okay? Marketers are problem solvers." They go through and they said, "Okay, you know what?

Look at my second OTO, my second upsale, it looks like it's not working very well. I wonder what's wrong with it? You know what? Why don't I take it out, I'm going to switch it in with this new offer, let's plug it in, let's see if we get a higher conversion rate from it, right?" Or, "Let's tweak this," or, "Let's tweak that, and let's see if we get a better result from it."

They're problem solvers, they're a scientist of sorts. They go and they say, "It's like adult legos, they pick out pieces and say, 'What works here? What works here?' And they experiment, and they go put things out there." I mean, that's what a marketer is, that's what an entrepreneur is.

When I think about what is most related to an entrepreneur, it is marketers. They're so related, they're so related. What I've learned most by sitting next to the man, Mr. Russell Brunson, is that when a person takes charge of that emotionally, and they say, "Yes, I'm going to be the marketer, I'm going to try and make sales improve in this company," and they're the person who's also in charge of the company, who owns it, or runs it, or whatever? Man, great things happen.

That's why I stopped taking ... It's just miles of red tape whenever somebody goes ... You know how I can tell when the marketer is also not the CEO? When something needs to be changed, and it runs through so many legal people that it ends up not happening, you know? Or people start freaking out over a certain word, like, "Well, maybe we shouldn't say that exact phrase, because it could mean X, Y, and Z."

Now, obviously be legal, be ethical, but there are some tall tale signs to see whether or not the entrepreneur is also the person in charge of marketing, and you hope that's the case, otherwise ... I'm not saying that they're not an entrepreneur, but you know, sorts.

Marketing helps sales, you know?

Entrepreneurs, that's their only job, is to get sales and to prove their concepts. Anyway, beating the dead horse now. Guys, go out there, take charge of it, and super excited for all the things you guys are going to be doing, and love hearing about it. Okay guys, talk to you later, bye.

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