SFR 21: Those Who Are More Playful…

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And, Why My Professor Used To Spray Us In The Face…

Hey my names Steve Larsen and this is 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.

All right. So, last night...Yesterday was my wife's birthday, right? I don't know why I'm saying right, you probably didn't know that. But yesterday was my wife's birthday, and we went to...Well, okay, I'll tell you a little back story. A week or two ago, we're driving back from this family reunion, I did a podcast a little while ago about one of my ancestors graves that we visited over there.

Anyway, so on our drive back, my wife was like, "Hey, like, growing up it was my family culture, we just never really did a lot, you know? As far as like, we went putt-putting the other day. That's really like the second or third time in my life."

I was like, "What! Are you kidding?" She's like, "I've never done like, bumper cars, or go karts, or rock climbing, or any of that." I was like, "Are you joking me? This is amazing! We have a whole childhood to go catch up on. This is nuts."

There's a lot more to that story, obviously. The whole point is that my wife and I are going around we're doing all like these little kid things that she never did growing up. It just wasn't her families culture to do that.

Yesterday was her birthday, so last night we decided to go and she wanted to go to one of those huge trampoline places. You know, it's like one of those rooms where it's just full of trampolines. There's one here called Jump Time, there's one called I Jump I think over in Denver.

Anyways, there's like a whole bunch of those places, right? So we've been going like place, to place, to place. This may not have a whole lot to do with Sales Funnels, but I think there's an important lesson here actually, and it actually does directly correlate, for me it has, on how fast I built Sales Funnels, and how good they look, so.

Anyway, we're over there, we're jumping on the tramps, you know, it's a lot of fun. She and I are like...There's basketball hoops with the floor being a trampoline. We're like flying through the air, doing dunks and stuff. It was really fun. There's huge foam pits. We're doing all these flips, jumping into these huge foam pits. Anyways, it's a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun...

What was killing me is...I'm 28, right? I know I look a little bit like a kid still, but obviously I'm not. But all these adults are standing on the side while all these young teenagers are with us jumping all over the place.

I could see that some of them we're just like, "well, he's an adult, he shouldn't be doing that. I'm not going to jump on the trampoline because I'm an adult."

Oh my gosh, just go barf. Play on the high way, like, do something. That's nuts. I can't believe that you would say something like that...

The reason that that bothered me so much is because I had this teacher in college, this professor, he's actually one of the...I'm not trying to be mean to anyone else, but there's really only like 3 teachers, or professors or whatever, that had a huge impact on me.

This guy was one of them...

We were in a marketing class once, and the whole semester, all that they do is they take you, and they say, "Hey, this whole semester all you're gonna go do is make a business. It's not made for you. You need to go grow the whole thing, and try and be making lots of money by the end of the semester."

I mean, huge learning opportunity, holy crap, cause we vote each other who's gonna be CEO. I will say that I was voted as that. What? Then we broke ourselves up into different groups and we went and we tackled an idea. We started making 2 or 3 grand a week, which isn't bad when you're restricted to only making the money on campus. You know?

So we're pulling 2 or 3 grand a week, from the campus students...

Anyways, there was a lesson that this guy gave us, this teacher. I remember one day, he sat down, and he could tell we were struggling with one...I can't even remember what it was, but the lesson is what I remember.

We sat down and he had all these toys, like kid toys, all around the room. He had a few squirt bottles also. He said, "Okay, we're gonna have a brainstorming session, but the rule is, in order to actually contribute an idea, what you have to do is you have to pickup a toy and you have to be playing with."

Whatever it is, you know, Silly Puddy, or LEGO's, or something. Whatever it is that you're going to be saying, the whole time you need to be playing with some toy in the room. Something that's typically for a kid, right? You're like, "what? What's this guy doing?"

It was weird, but cool, what happened. He's like, "All right everyone, go grab a toy." We're like, "Okay."

It was a little awkward at first, when you start grabbing these toys, we start playing with them. What was interesting was as we started playing with these toys, and we started doing little kid stuff.

Our creativity shot through the roof. Right? Just exploded through the roof...

We started coming up with he craziest ideas, and we started destroying all the other student businesses with these ideas. We went out and we'd execute them and they were fantastic. We tried to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest...Anyways, we did a lot of fun stuff. But his whole point...I'll tell you my story though.

As we would be brainstorming, as we'd be tossing ideas up on the board, I mean, we put 100's of ideas on this board, you know? We were trying to figure out different ways to market and be creative with stuff. Huge brainstorming sessions, you know?

What was interesting though, was whenever somebody, like, poo-pooed of downed another persons idea, I don't know how else to say that. Whenever they talked bad about someones idea, or smirked, or said, you know like, "That's a stupid idea." You know what I mean? Made that kind of gesture.

Everyone in the classroom grabbed squirt gun, and shot the other person int he face, and screamed, "Bad kitty."

I don't get the bad kitty part. It was kind of funny though...

The whole purpose was that when you're brainstorming, when you're doing things that cause you to...When you're coming up with ideas, being playful, causes more creativity. People who are boring, have a really hard time being creative, right? People who are so worried about following the rules, and I will follow the law, and I'm not jumping on the trampoline because I'm an adult. You know?

That stupid. Don't ever do that...

I mean, it really helps a lot. What's kind of funny is that right now I'm holding a golf ball. I just play with it, in my hands. I don't know. I like to golf.

I'm not amazing at it, but I think it's fun. I feel like my boss has all these little nic-nacs on his desk. He and I just fidget with stuff, and it's kind of fun.

I mean, I have a blow dart gun next to me desk. I'll just shoot stuff around the office while we're starting to come up with ideas, and things like that.

That kind of creative atmosphere is very, very...It's like a catalyst...

You know, if you look at like Google the way they do...Google's campus is like a playground. They have all sorts of random stuff there. It's not like they sit around in these cubicles and stuff. They've got like bean bags chairs all over the place. Same with like, if you've ever heard of the company Ideo. It's I-D-E-O. I think that's how you say it.

Anyways, they're responsible for like, how the toothbrush looks today, and all these appliances and things that are...They're the ones that kind of innovated all that stuff. The way shopping carts are. Anyways, go look them up. They're really cool.

They have a really awesome innovative process that they go through every time they're making an idea.

It was funny because last night, I was looking at it, and I was like, "Ugh, these adults are just standing by the side watching their kids jump on trampolines." There's nothing that was stopping them. It wasn't expensive.

Anyways, we were jumping around all over the place, and it's just fun. It's cool to see, you know, that creative fun streak, where the brain is just going nuts.

There's a really good book called, Why Right Brain Thinkers Will Rule the World. It's a book that goes through that says...I wish I had it with me. It's a book that goes through and says, hey look, the basics of life are kind of taken care of, right? That's a very left brain thing. Where do I get food? How do I survive? I've got to mate. You know what I mean?

It goes through the list, and it says look, here are all of the things that are human needs, and physically for you to stay alive there's a lot of processes built around those things now. You're not hunting for food all the time.

Especially if you live in America, that's very true. We're so commercialized. We're not fitting for food. We have surplus of food in this country. Which probably goes without saying, so many obese people, you know?

We have so much abundance, whatever it is, that we now crave things that have to do with creativity. Right? That's where the right brain comes in. That's where creativity comes in and we say, "Hey, how can I make this process better? How can I take the process of communication better?" Well, Steve Jobs understood that for sure. I'm holding my iPhone right now, right? I'm looking at my Apple computer right now, my MacBook.

It's all about how can I make a process more smooth, and better, for fast, faster for somebody else.

That's why right brain thinkers will rule the world in the future...

Because all these other left brain activities are taken care of. Anyways, in the book, I can remember who it's by. I think it's Daniel Pink. I think that's how you say his name. Anyways, in the book it says that that...it started giving all these ways to become more creative.

In there, I talks about play, and the importance of play. Even though it's something that you typically think of as an adult for kids, you know. You think, this is for child, these are for kid things.

I'm not saying you gotta go practice, you know, playing with a Barbie doll and Ken doll. But I mean, if that's what gets you into it, sure. Even appropriate amounts of video games is good for the brain as far as problem solving and things like that, so.

Ten minutes, 15 minutes, of some time of play, or game, or something like that is really, really, really good for you when you start getting into these creative moments.

So anyways, I was just laughing yesterday because I could tell I was getting all these like weird looks by parents. Like, "What? This guys jumping in the foam pit? 190 lb dude, jumping into foam, next to all these little kids? Whose he think he is? Having fun. What a goober. By the beard of Zeus, he should get out."

You know, like oh gosh, you guys are gonna die. You should just die.

What do you doing in life if you're not enjoying it? I don't know. I have strong opinions about this, obviously, I'm making a podcast about it.

Anyways, if you're to go through brainstorming sessions, number 1, don't bad mouth any idea that comes out from anyone. Often you'll see what happens in brainstorming sessions, or creativity sessions, or things you're trying make something; is that you'll have one kind of mainstream, logical idea, but then someone else with come out with this crazy, left-wing idea.

You know? Just way, way out, and say, "What about this? What about this?" It's crazy. It's like, "Well, we should have emus in the commercial." You know, something nuts.

What's funny is, when you blend the two ideas together and you put them up on the board, you actually get something that's actually prolific. Something that your competition is not thinking about doing.

So, whenever you're in brainstorming sessions, don't down ideas that seem crazy, or dumb, or the ones that aren't complex enough, or things that won't take over, things that aren't gonna match the 401K. Ugh, I hate that.

Just start putting out all these different ideas. Mainstream crazies. Mainstream crazies, and it'll start to blend together in this really cool space that most likely your competitors are not in.

When I'm building Sales Funnels, this is where I'm going to tie it all in, all right, I promise there's a point to this.

When I'm building Sales Funnels, I play. I think of it like playing. Especially when you use something like ClickFunnels, it's like playing a video game almost. It's super fun. I listen to awesome music. Whether it's, like, really intense rock, or dubstep. I just enjoy the moment whatever it is. I take my shoes off. I am always barefoot. I just have fun building. I put my sweet oversized headphones on that make me look like a DJ, that's kind of goofy, but I love it.

I'm in my element...

Because of that, creativity starts to flow, and I start to come with these cool things. I've made a lot of Sales Funnels, a lot, like 20 or 30 in the last year, custom ones. Anyways, right now you guys know that I'm creating real estate Sales Funnels, and it's going great. Almost done with the 3 core funnels that

I'm using to help realtors sell more, and automate more.

There's a lot of routine work in real estate. Anyways, the creativity aspect of it is very, very important. You have to have that. Or else you just stay mainstream, and there's nothing different with you, and literally the only thing you'll compete on is price, because you have nothing else that differentiates you.

You have to find something else to make you prolific, or something else that makes you easier to use, or smarter, or some way to get ahead. Otherwise, like I said, you have to get beat out price.

I've said this before, in other podcasts, but like, if you are competing only with a coupon, and you're saying, "Well we'll make ours 50% off." You're gonna die. That's the K-Mart way and they're going the way of all the earth.

They're dying...

Unless you pull it off like Kohls...Anyways, there's othere scenarios that work with that. There's just nothing else that differentiates you beside price, you're in a dangerous spot. So find some way to be prolific. The easiest way to do that is be creative. The easiest way to be creative is to be playful.

The easiest way to be playful is to play...

Anyways guys, I won't want to beat a dead horse on this, but man, go like play. Go do something that's fun.

That your brain has fun.

Okay, last little rant with this section, I promise. I'm trying not to make this podcast like a rant podcast, but at the same time, like some things just really piss off as an adult. I hate being an adult sometimes.

I'm a little kid at heart forever...

Okay, I took my kids over to this playground, right? We're over there, and as soon as I get there, I'm seeing the exact same thing over at the trampoline place, or whatever.

All of these adults standing on the side with their arms folded. "Yes I am an adult, and I will watch my kids play. I don't do this because I'm an adult." I don't know where that whole things coming from that I'm saying right here.

It's just, ugh, it ticks me off...

I get on the freakin playground, with my kid. I get on the swings. I go down the slides. I do all of it. It teaches my kid how to play, right? Because of that, I feel like it helps my little girl be creative, you know?

It teaches her how to play. It teaches them how to entertain themselves.

It teaches how to be creative...

They'll go and...My little girl has these markers and she'll go and draw all over on this whiteboard on our fridge. She gets so excited about it, so proud about it.

She didn't really start that though until a little while ago, but anyways. I don't know if it's totally working, or if it's because of stuff I'm doing. I like to think that.

Anyways, I don't want to be a Dad, or a guy, or a business person who is so uptight that I can't participate. You know what I mean? It's kind of funny. A little while ago I posted something on FaceBook, and I was like, "Hey, sorry I'm wearing a shirt and tie in this. Haha." Just kind of a joke. One of my buddies commented back and he goes, "Don't worry man. No one took you for a shirt and tie guy anyway." I was like, "Sweet. You guys all get it then."

When you start to go play the right side of your brain fires all over the place, electrons go nuts...

Your noggin loves it, because obviously you are, so. Anyways guys, have an awesome day. If you guys have any questions or anything, I do have the HeySteve Show. Which is just also on the same podcast.

I just do them all on the same podcast; interviews, my own thoughts, and the "HeySteve!" Show. But if you've got questions and you want to ask any kind of question about your own Sales Funnel. The last question I think I answered was about Ecommerce, but if you go to salesfunnelbroker.com, up in the top click on podcast and right on the web page you can record a voicemail to me, and it will email that message over to me, and you can ask your question.

I kind of vet the questions and its goes through for the ones that would be good for the show. If yours is one on the show I send you a "HeySteve!" t-shirt, and they look pretty cool. I did kind of like a crowd sourcing design and that's kind of the one they all came up with, and it looks really sweet, so. Anyways guys, I will talk to you later. Bye.

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