SFR 6: …The Blood Down My Arms, And A Live-Virus Later...The Military's "Sales Funnel":)

There I was standing in a line of people, blood dripping down my arms, this is actually a true story though. I was going through basic and I remember we get to this medical part, this is for the army and we get to this medical part and they're like, "Sit down," they're yelling at us, making us feel like we're not large at all. They're like, "Sit down," and they're like squishing us chest to chest like crazy tight to each other. We had just come from a haircut and they're were like crazy rough. They through us in this chair and they would shave our heads but the guys that were shaving our heads were so rough with our heads that we were all bleeding from our scalps by the time we were done. I look at this now and I just laugh.

There's a point to the story, by the way but I just laugh. They're throwing us up against the wall afterwards, they've missed some spots so some of us still have patches of hair coming out the side. They don't care that you're not clean at all either. There's hair everywhere and you're shoved up against the wall. I remember this guy's little blood streak coming down by his neck and right after that they have us go get cleaned up because we go to the medical area. In the medical area they take us and they put us down on the ground roll our sleeves up. They're like, "Take this alcohol swab, wipe down your arms, clean your arms," and it was the craziest thing I've ever experienced, I guess, medical wise. Every time I think of it I always have to laugh. We rolled our sleeves up and we're standing, we call it nut to butt, toe to heel, basically really close to the other guy.

You're standing super close and you take one step forward and there's a doctor on each side of you and they have a shot in each hand. You take one step forward and they both go right in to your arm. I got four shots at one time. Boom. Took another step forward, another set of two doctors, each with two shots in each, a shot with each hand. Then I got two more shots on each side. Boom. Took a step forward, two more doctors, each with a shot and it's like factory style. I mean, you took one step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. One step forward, boom. They're not being soft or anything so there's like blood coming down your arms. I remember the last guy, he was giving us a Tetanus shot and this guy must have really, really been having a bad day or something like that because oh my gosh, he was taking it out on us. That dude was jamming that big fat Tetanus needle in our arm so hard, I'm pretty sure it was hitting all of our bones or something because there were these other girls were there that were screaming and stuff. The very last thing that just kind of took the whole cake, they made us take this live virus by mouth. It was this pill, right?

We took a step forward and you had to show them that you swallowed it. You put it in your mouth and took some water down and show them that you swallow it because they said it goes in and kills all this crazy crap in your body. They're like, "For the next two weeks that live virus will come out of your pores. Make sure you always wash your hands. Don't touch your eyes," that kind of stuff. They're like, "You're worthless pieces of crap." Of course, everybody gets sick. We were sick, basic training is like two and half months long, we were sick for probably two months of that. Coughing up green crap and you're not really sleeping. Sleep isn't actually that, too crazy, it's the no eating part. I lost fifteen pounds and I was not overweight.

We were all like crazy sick and I remember feeling at the end of it, it's funny going in actually because I was like, "They're not going to break me. They're not going to get me." I was a little bit older than everyone else there. I was doing it in the middle of college instead of right out of high school. I had a kid, I was married, you know what I mean? I was gone for like six months total and I remember going in thinking, "They're not going to break me, they're not going to get me, I'm Steve Larsen, they're not getting me." They totally did. They broke me down hard and they rebuild you. It's the organization older than the United States so they know what they're doing for sure. It was cool though because I remember at the end of it we had thrown grenades, shot machine guns, we had done all this stuff. Crawling in the mud, laying in thirty-three degree water that's barely about to freeze, do that for half a day and anyways, at the end of it, I just remember feeling like crap, I feel like a soldier. This is weird. I did not expect that.

Anyways, why am I telling you this story? That sounds awful doesn't it? I'll tell you it kind of was at some points. I actually loved basic though. It was fun just because of the challenge of it and going and being intense like that. Anyways, why am I telling you this story? Because that's not what they show you in the commercials on TV about military. They don't show you that you only sleep three hours a night when you're out in the field and it's at one and a half hour increments. You get up constantly through the evening. They don't show you that you're not eating hardly at all. They don't show you all that crazy stuff. You have an idea that it's going to happen. You're going to put camo on and you're going to go do tough stuff. It's cool and it's fun after the fact. In the middle of it sometimes it's kind of challenging but it's actually super fun though. Basic wasn't that intense physically, which I know it doesn't sound that way, it was just the mental games they play with you. Anyways, it was fun though. I'm really glad that I did that. That was a while ago now.

The reason I'm telling you that is, like I said, those aren't the things they show in the commercials. Those aren't the things that the recruiter tells you. Look, the whole thing, they show you pictures and images of you, of these guys wearing camo and holding a gun, sitting, watching, they're the ones that are the guardian of, you know what I mean? They show you the sexy side of it. We all love the sexy side of it. That happens like five percent of the time though. The other ninety-five percent of the time, you're doing the stuff that gets you to the sexy part of it. The reason I'm showing you this, yesterday I reviewed two more value ladders that people send to me. If you don't know what a value ladder is, it's just a way to model out your business so that you can serve more people and get more money from customers and spend less on ads and acquiring customers. It's pretty cool. Go Google, Russell Brunson talks about it a lot. There's, I think Jeff Walker talks about it. Anyways, value ladders, they're not like a new thing or whatever. They've been around a long time.

Anyways, this is the reason I'm doing this because after reviewing tons of these value ladders from people, especially over the last couple years, there's a common thread that I'm seeing and I'm realizing that I'm saying the exact same things to every person who sends me their value ladder. It is not about just giving a free eBook to get an opt in. It's not about, here's a free course or here's a free, whatever it is to get the opt in. That's not how it works. What you do is you think, what's my main goal? For me, I like to sell real estate sales funnels. Some for like ten grand a piece and people come to me and they pay for that and I give them a sweet, awesome real estate sales funnel that helps them sell another house or two every month. That's huge for their income. That's massive. What you do is you take the sexiest part of the goal and that's what you offer for free to people as the bait. It's just like when I was going, I realized this, it was actually last night as I was falling asleep and I was like, that's a great analogy because going through the military they don't show you all the crazy hard stuff.

I'm not saying that you got to have hard stuff in your value ladder. I'm just saying they take the sexiest part of their organization and that's what they give to you. You know that there's harder stuff in there and you know that there's going to be challenges and it's going to be interesting but the whole point is that, stop just thinking, oh I'll just give a free eBook. It's like, no, no, no. It's actually deeper than that. Whatever it is that your goal is, the big thing out there, whether you're, you could be selling candy. Give some candy away for free and a free plus shipping model. If you're selling insurance, I don't know how to make insurance sexy but you could find a way. You know the industry more than I do but that's the whole point though. Whatever the main goal is, wherever you're trying to lead them, that's where you take the sexiest thing from and stick it for free all the way at the bottom of it. Take a part of that that's very enticing and then you'll get away from all the crap that all these other people are doing.

If you're getting people inside of your value ladder by just offering discounts, like fifty percent off or here's a coupon code , then you don't understand value ladders and you're doing it wrong. I know it's bold and if you're crying, I'm sorry but not really. This is how it works though. If the coupon is literally the only thing that you're offering, that's not an offering. You need to actually put another offer together. It's a whole different offer. It's a different product that you're giving away for free but it's the sexiest part of your main goal. Does that make sense? I'm going [inaudible 00:10:03] like crazy. Ready, here it comes. Does that make sense? You guys getting that? Are you seeing how this could work for you? That's true though. Stop sending me value ladders where there's no tie between the bottom and the top. It's a ladder. It's part of the same ladder. The bottom rung and the top rung, they're not different ladders, it's the same logical flow.

For salesfunnelbroker.com, I took the sexiest thing I could, which is a free done for you sales funnel that I built. I spent two-hundred hours just on the site. Then I spent another, I don't even know, on some of them like eight months to put together those different sales funnels and I get opt ins like crazy because of that. I give away my website for free because it is very sexy for people. That thing gets downloaded like crazy and I have not been outbound marketing it. A lot. I have no idea where all of them are coming from and it's awesome. I just haven't gotten that far in it yet, I'll figure out that soon. The whole point of it though is that you have to understand that it's, remember that it's a different rung so it is a different product itself. You're not just giving away something free or a discount but it needs to logically tie from one piece to the next.

So for secretmlmhacks.com when I built that, first there's a quiz that says, hey, how many people do you have? How many people do you want? How many opportunities is this for you? It just kind of pokes their eyes. Oh wait, you're not successful yet in this, how many of these have you tried? You really think you're going to be successful this next round? I kind of poke them in the eyes so that the very next page they see is this thing that says, I'm going to send you out this CD that teaches you how to create a sales funnel in your mlm so that you can, you just follow along with me. A lot of it's screen recordings you can just follow along with me and build out a sales funnel and it scratches a huge itch for them. People buy that. The very next thing is a logical progression. You know what though, this is my one time offer, you know what though, if you don't want to spend all this money, I'm sorry, if you don't want to spend all this time just pay a little extra money and I'll give you this done for you sales funnel that works for mlm's.

Then the very next one is like, now that you have a sales funnel, logically a sales funnel without traffic is nothing. It's worthless so here's a course about traffic. It's this logical conversation that you have with people throughout the sales funnel. It's not different products. They are different products but it's not this whole different category, where you're like, now I'm going to offer them health pills. Sweet. Let's go to insurance. Cool. Now it's offering a gym membership. That doesn't make any sense. They have to have a logical progression the whole way, then take from the very top thing, the thing at the very top, your most high ticket item, the whole purpose for you being in business, take some aspect of that, make it free, put it at the very bottom and now you have a very sexy sales funnel. Get away from the whole discount thing.

That's what the military did though. When I was talking to recruiters, when I went and did all the, they took the sexiest part of it and they say cool, we're going to put you up in a hotel tonight for free and you're going to go do this and this and this and you'll get to go do, we'll shoot bullets around your head, which they did, real ones. Which is kind of cool to hear as they go by you. They're only a little bit above you. You'll get to throw grenades which is like the coolest you'll ever do in your life. Holy crap. I threw grenades and I felt like a beast. I wanted to go climb Everest, riding a rhinoceros bare back, holding a mythical trident. It was like, oh baby. Throwing grenades was nuts. Same with shooting the M240 Bravos. Huge machines guns. Those things were crazy. Oh my gosh. It was like eight hundred grounds a minute out of that thing. I digress because I could, slightly salivating. That's the fun part of it. That's the sexy part that they sold.

Go find out the sexy part is of your business and make that the free thing. For example, there's a chiropractor who, chiropracticing and adjusting, that's not sexy. He went and he found a whole bunch of masseuses who, while they were doing massages, if they found anything that might be wrong with the persons spine, said hey, I know a great chiropractor if you want to go talk to him. Just this referral system, that's it but because of that, massages are much more sexy than a chiropractor that can do adjustment. Do you know what I mean? Whose up-sell was a huge health package for five grand and he gets one or two of those a month that purchase it. You guys get the idea. Find out whatever's sexy and sell it. Unless it's actual grenades or something. Give it for free. Don't do that either. Bye guys.