SFR 25: The Amazing Power Of INTENDED Procrastination

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Hey, what's going on, everyone. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome 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. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right. All right. I'm making this real quick actually. This is going to be a fast episode. Russell is out of town, Russell Brunson, so he asked me to run Funnel Friday for him. If you guys haven't seen Funnel Fridays, just go to FunnelFridays.com.

It's the show that he and I have been putting together, along with Jim Edwards and there's a few others, but we basically show people how they can build funnels in a matter of 30 minutes. We don't always finish them. In fact, most of the time we don't.

The whole purpose of it is just to show that you really can finish them quite quickly. Anyways. Man, I got to go put that together real quick.

I'm a little bit nervous. I'll be honest with you....

If you're on this podcast, you have the privilege of knowing that. I'm nervous. Four thousand people watch that show live, and within ten minutes, five hundred thousand people get it in their news feeds on Facebook. Anyways, I'm a little bit nervous.

Anyways, I build just as much as Russell, so I should be all right, but I'll just be honest with you right now. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm here early. I always am, but here to figure out a plan. I ought to make it cool, but I want to share something with you real quick. It starts in two hours and I'm just getting here to figure this stuff out.

Two hours...

You might think, "Steve, why would you show up just two hours beforehand just to figure it out now? Shouldn't you be figuring out that a day or two ago when you found out?" Here's the reason why.

I remember back in college, there were these semester-long projects that teachers would give. People would go walking around all the time thinking, "Oh my gosh, I got to start this thing," and they'd start crazy early. Then the whole semester would go by and they'd still be getting things done.

I would start a week or two before the semester-long project was even due. People would be like, "You're insane, dude. That's suicide. Holy crap." I would always get it done. I would almost always get an A, also.

People would be like, "What the heck, dude? How did you figure that out?"

There's a principle that I learned in the middle of college and it saved so much headache and stress. I had free time again.

I could do things again...

I kept funnel building for people in the middle of college because of this principle. All right? Here it is.

The amount of time that you assign to a task is equal to the amount of anxiety you're going to feel in it...

That's one of the principles. Let's say you know that something's coming up in a couple months. You can't do this for everything. Obviously, there are some things you just have to get done in a certain order.

There is planning...

There is preparation, but you can use this principle in a lot of different ways, and I've done it, I don't know, for the last several years, and it totally works. It's the reason I'm here right now.

I actually do have to get off and actually prepare this thing soon, but here's the other part, too, with those that your head and your subconscious understands that something is coming up, and it will already have been working on it before you actually start going on the task. As long as you know it's coming up, you'll already start to get ideas, things will start to formulate, and you'll be like, "Wait a second." I'll tell you guys. It was actually this morning in the shower. It hit me. I was like, "Ohhhh, I know what I'm going to do."

It hit me. Then I got to the office real quick and I'm going to build it real fast and all will be well. Anyways, that's basically it.

The whole point, the whole principle here, is that you have to think of whatever task is coming up for you soon, don't start on it on purpose. People call it procrastination.

There's actually a good side to procrastination, and I've been doing it for years.

If I'm about to go on a trip, I don't start packing until I need to leave, I don't know, like an hour or two.

There's no reason to...

You'll be able to figure out, and you'll always get it done. That's the funny thing about it is that everyone says, "Oh, you're not going to be able to get it done. Oh, you're going to run out of time."

Every once in a while following this principle, that has been true, but 90% of the time has been totally fine, and it saves me all the stress and anxiety so that I don't have to think about it the whole way.

"Am I going to bring a toothbrush?" Sure you are so just put it in. It's the same thing with funnel building though. Most of the time when I follow this principle, as soon as ... What's a good example of that?

This is one of the first funnels I ever built. If you look at FixdInsurance.com, F-I-X-Dinsurance.com, there's no E in Fixd, that's one of the first funnels I ever built, and it was awesome, man.

We had customers right off the bat. We were making money. It was great. I remember I got ClickFunnels as a trial. I waited to get the ClickFunnels trial for just a little bit. I planned it all out, meaning two days.

I planned it all out, figured out what I was going to do and go build, and then I was like, "Okay, it's a 2-week trial. I'm going to be making money before my trial's up." Boom. I hit the start button and I built and built and built with this ferocious focus, and I stayed up late for a week and a half.

I just crushed it out and pounded it out, and it was the first one I ever built, so I was a little bit slower at it, but I got it. I got it done, and we were making money by the time the trial was over, but it's because of that principle. I understood it at that point.

You just make decisions quickly. Just make them really fast...

I heard a stat on the radio yesterday actually. It's funny I'm talking about this. The average adult ... I can't remember which study. I can't remember which institute did the study. I can't remember the name of it, but take it for what it's worth.

I'm sure you could Google and find it, but they're saying how a study was just done that adults make 35,000 decisions a day, micro-decisions, small things here and there, 35,000, and that kids, really small kids like infants and toddlers and stuff like that, they'll still make 3,000 decisions a day, but the number of decisions that kids are making and need to make a day are increasing like crazy.

Just think about how many times you look at your phone or your email or whatever it is. It's the whole thing throughout the day, but it's the same thing with building or your business or anything you're doing.

You just have to go create quickly. Speed is your friend...

That's one thing I've really learned a lot just watching Russell. I don't know if you guys know ... It's who I work for. That's my day job, and then I build my own stuff in the evenings and mornings. It's the reason I'm here 5 am every day, but anyways, just watching him, the dude makes so many decisions so fast.

It's insane. It's crazy how fast he makes decisions.

He sits down. I'll watch the screen because I sit right behind him. He's all over the place. It sounds chaotic, but it's actually not. He just follows wherever his thoughts are going at that moment.

I'm having a hard time talking. We track it all on something called Trello. You use Trello to gather everything. We have one board just for him and I, and we track our stuff, what we got to do, all the things. Anyways, we just make decisions quickly.

There was a guy that we brought in recently. I won't say his name in case he listens to this, but he's one of the guys that gets hung up on details. He sits back and he's like, "Well, what are we doing to do about this?" We'll say, "Hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z."

He'd go, "That would be awesome, but, man, this could happen with X and be careful of Y and look out for Z." We'll be like, "Yeah, we already know that there's a risk. What we want to have happen is more than 50% of the time have a funnel work and have it make money and just break even. If we can do that, we'll make a million dollars with the funnel. Let's just move on."

He gets hung up on the details and just driving Russell and I nuts. It's driving me nuts more than him because I'm working with him a lot.

Just make decisions fast and understand that your brain is going to be able to handle it if you wait a little bit and on purpose...

What you'll find is that you have more free time in your life, but you'll still be able to get all the cool stuff done also that you wanted to. Anyways, I'm talking too much. That's basically the whole principle.

Wait. That's basically how I got straight A's in school almost in every semester. I waited on purpose. Guess what? I almost always got it done. Almost always got my assignments done, and the teachers knew I had good work, so the times I did have it a little bit late, they were like, "That's fine. It was 5 minutes late. You're cool."

I played the game and I buttered them up...

I did all this stuff that you're supposed to do in the game called school, and I'm doing the same thing with work. Give yourself short deadlines. Don't kill yourself.

No one can have crazy, ridiculous stamina all the time. Everyone needs a break at some point, so take the break, but understand that you'll still be able to get the things done you need to if you're willing to go through it. When it gets close and people are like, "Oh, I haven't even started it yet. I think I'm just going to fail." If you're not willing to go through ... There are some little moments of anxiety.

The first 20% that you push through might be a little bit muddy. You're trying to figure out how to get things done, but all of a sudden you'll have this moment of clarity. Pew. All these ideas and the way they connect together and how you have to build it or put things together or whatever, if it's an assignment, will just come waltzing into your brain.

You'll know exactly what you got to do. I do that every day now on purpose...

Anyways, guys. That's all I got for you. If you have a question or you might me to review your sales funnel, I've been doing that for people quite a bit lately, or if you want a free sales funnel, just go to SalesFunnelBroker.com. I got a whole lot of resources there for you. You can get a free t-shirt there if you ask a question and it gets on the show.

All right, guys. I'll talk to you later. I got to go build Funnel Friday real quick. Bye.

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