SFR 92: The Purge of Pricing

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I STOLE from Russell Brunson when I was poor (one of his favorite stories), but here is what I learned from it....

What's going on everyone, this is Steve Larsen, you're listening 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, and now here's your host, Steve Larsen.

Steve Larsen: Alright guys hey, real quick I just want to let you know about the time that I stole. Okay, I do not condone this behavior, I have since gone to these people and said sorry, and actually this is one of Russell's favorite stories, 'cause I actually stole from Russell.

I stole from Russell when I was in college and we had nothing, we had like hardly any money, and I knew that if I just could get my hands on one of his courses that I would be able to be successful with the thing that I was going forward with. It was true, and I was, and it was great, but I got a copy of his course from a bootlegger and I don't totally know how, I think I was poking around on YouTube trying to find versions of it and things like that. I was like I've just got to, if I could just do this one piece I know I'd be successful with it.

I went and I, there was some guy in the description who was telling everybody, hey if you need copies of X, Y and Z go ahead and reach out to me. So I was like sweet, oh awesome, and I feel bad, like don't do this okay. This was a stupid thing, it was a very bad decision and I don't know what else I can say because I mean it's not right and I do take that seriously. You know what's funny is so I got the course and I learned a lot from it, it was great, it was awesome. It was actually Dot Com Secrets X, you know one of the earlier courses.

I shouldn't say earlier, I mean he had been having lots of courses out there and stuff. But this one was a three month course, it was awesome, I went through it. It was fantastic, it actually was very life changing for me, it was very life changing. Changed what I was doing, and I mean it was awesome. I was laughing that I ended up getting hired by Russell, and one day I was like I've got to tell Russell this story.

For the sake of number one apologizing and you know I obviously offered to pay for it, I offered to pay the price for the course and everything, you know I felt bad. I mean it's wrong, and it's not something that I'm honestly proud of that I did, but I often would sit back ... The reason I bring this up is because I would often sit back and I would think to myself, like why would this marketer, why would this guru, why would this individual not give his course away to me for cheaper? It was a question that would go through my head a lot, not that I was mad, I wasn't mad at all, but I was just like gosh like why can't I get this?

I would love to go through this course, I would love to learn what this guys teaching, maybe it could change my life. I knew that I would take it seriously, if I could just have the content, if I could just have the stuff, right?

What's funny about the whole thing is that, okay so I ended up going and I got the course and I went through it and I applied it and it was great. A lot of times what would happen was there were these pieces of jealousy that I would kind of go through, this is kind of early on in my endeavors on the Internet anyway. I'd kind of get jealous and a little bit mad and be like come on, like give this to me cheaper, I would love to have this thing. I was excited when I finally got Russell's, but I was ... I just wanted the discount, you know, and you may have gone through this before, I just wanted to know. I just wanted the discount, I just wanted to be able to go through the content.

There was, I think I was in the gym, I think so anyways, I'm recalling a lot of memories right here. But I was listening to a podcast of Russell's, okay keep in mind I had just stolen a course from him.

I had stolen the course and what I learned from the whole thing was that he basically said that like look I don't discount prices, pretty much ever, because if you can't afford this thing it means you actually need it even more. I know it's kind of a weird way to say that, but think about it this way, if I ... Let's say I was in like high school okay, in a high school when I was going through these different classes, or even in college when I was going through these different classes. Actually college is probably a better example, you don't start at the senior level classes, right? You don't, what happens?

You'd go into the senior level classes, obviously there's like some crazy person out there who probably did, and did great at it or whatever. But you don't start at the senior level classes, you start at freshman level, and you start with basic stuff, and you start with foundational things and you hustle through a little bit of Mr Miyagi type of things out there. Like why am I doing this? Paint the fence and the floor, you know stuff like that.

It's good that an individual wants to be able to go and get the course, that they'll go and they want to pay coaching, to get coaching from the guy. They want to be able to spend time doing the thing, you know what I mean? What I realized though is that a lot of personal development happens inside of business because prices are set as they are.

Meaning, when I couldn't get to Funnel Hacking live, I had to do a ton of stuff, a lot of experimenting, a lot of soul searching. A lot of grinding, a lot of problem solving on my own that I would not have had to have gone through if I had just been able to just buy the tickets outright. I had to get creative, I was trading tickets for funnels. Back and forth, and back and forth. What's funny is when I learned that, when I realized that, that's what was going on, and that was the lesson I realized that I actually fell in love with the fact that I didn't have money for it.

Now not the fact that I didn't have money, but I started learning to love the problem. The problem being that I did not have money to get the thing. When I knew that what a guru was offering was a good thing, when I knew that the product they were offering was amazing, when I knew that it would change my life. If I had to work that much harder than the other guy just to have the money to buy it, I knew that I would actually do it, I knew I'd actually apply it.

How many times have you bought a course and you've never actually done anything with it? Okay, how many books are sitting on your bookshelf that you've actually never read? It's the exact same thing, and obviously I believe in learning with purpose and you guys all know that. I don't just learn anything for the sake of it, if I need to solve the problem in front of me then I'll go read the related books and take the related courses, but I don't just read just willy-nilly. I don't go anywhere, like whatever.

But what I'm saying is I don't discount prices, and it's for that exact same reason, I don't discount prices. Russell didn't discount prices, when I finally left college and I had learned that lesson, and I fell in love with the purification that comes with trying to just solve the problem. I was so enamored by it, I wanted all the other students, and all my friends, and all the teachers I was with to learn the stuff that I had been learning. So I left college and I went and I grabbed basically 30 books, and 30 Dot com Secrets books, 'cause I was not working at ClickFunnels.

I started shipping out all these books all over the place, tons of them. I'd ship out books to these friends and all these people kept asking me, like how are you doing what you're doing? Dude are you kidding me that's crazy, how are you doing this? How you are doing this? I kept telling them like, just wait dude I'm sending you something, you got to read it. Okay. What's funny is I sent out 30 of these books and you know how many people actually read the book?

None of them. Not a single person. Why? It's 'cause they didn't, there was no actual sacrifice that they gave on their part to actually take part in the course. To take part in the learning, to take part in the development that they were looking for. They had done nothing except think about it, one time. Oh it'd be so nice to have that, they're not in love with the thing, they're in love with the idea of the thing. Does that make sense?

So I don't discount prices. Any time anyone of my buddies, or anyone in my past, or even any current customers or people who listen to this podcast, whatever it is. Anytime anyone comes to me and they say, Steven please will you look at my funnel? My answer is yes, here is my coaching link where you can buy my time. Why? It's not to throw the finger at the people who are asking that, it's not to go and rub it in peoples faces. It's because if I actually do it for free I rob them, they won't do anything with it. You know how many times I've done stuff for free for people, I have built so many funnels for free on the hopes and the promises that it would be worth tons in the future. Hey Steven please build this funnel, we got this great opportunity, if you build the funnel we'll give you 50% of the revenue for the rest of your life.

That's a dumb deal, that's a bad deal, very stupid deal, right? I'm going go do all the work and then they take half the money for it.

First of all it's crazy, second of all when I learned, when I figured out that nobody that I was building these funnels for were actually doing anything with them afterwards, I got ticked. I got so mad, I realized that, that was honestly only like a year and a half ago, a year ago.

So I stopped building funnels for free for people, and I stopped giving my products for free, unless it was strategic, like a front end or something like that. I stopped giving me, I stopped giving my stuff for free. I'm unapologetic about it now, and it's like it is this price, number one because it's worth that much, I make great offers. I know there's amazing value in them, but number two I literally know that you will not do a darn thing with it unless I have you give a little sacrifice and put a little skin in the game.

You know what's funny about sales funnel broker coaching, it's no different than anything else, right? 80/20 rules still applies, 20% of them do anything, it's true for any event. It's true for ... I had worked so hard to get to Russell's first Funnel Hacking live event, by boot strapping my way there. I took 52 pages of notes at that event, I stayed up, I did everything that I could. I was drinking deeply, if they said we're doing this, I participated, full in both feet in the whole time. I was baffled at how many people didn't even bring their note books home with them. That they had left out on the chairs for all of us, with all the slides and all the speaker notes. Like are you kidding me?

Do you not know what they just gave us? But it didn't mean the same thing to those people, they hadn't actually given anything of their self away.

What I'm trying to tell you is number one I don't discount on price and you shouldn't either. Unless there's something in there, but usually the first thing people go to, okay lets say that you're going to sell something to me or to a buddy. You go to the buddy and you say, hey here's a thing, and it's a $1000, and someone goes oh will it do this?

A lot of times the knee jerk reaction to any rejection is a price decrease. I mean that happens all the time. A price decrease, someone literally decreases the price, immediately as soon as there is an objection to your product. Oh don't worry it's 30% off today. If you're doing that it means your offer isn't good enough yet. If the offer is amazing you don't have to compete on price, it's the exact same thing for what I build, for what Russell builds, for all the things that I put out, for what Russell puts out. I know their good, I know their good and I do not, I am not apologetic and I'm not embarrassed. I had a hard time ... I'm just being open with you guys.

I had a hard time charging money for my stuff for a while, and I know it's actually quite a common concern. Where conceptually you understand the marketing stuff, you understand the business, you know the automation pieces but you're not actually doing it 'cause you don't have a product because you're too afraid to charge something. You're too afraid to ask for someones credit card number. I know in a lot of cases I'm preaching to the choir here, like you guys get that, but there's a lot more cases out there than I ever realized until I started coaching people how to do this stuff inside sales funnel broker coaching. I did not realize how big of an issue it was mentally for people to have to overcome that.
I know I've talked a little bit in the past about ways to get around that, you know go buy a product for $1000 to give yourself emotional permission to go sell stuff for $1000. If you feel like you can't charge $10,000 for something, you should probably go pay $10,000 for something.

There's a lot of ways to get around that emotionally, and get through that barrier but what I'm trying to tell you is like stop, don't apologize for charging people. You actually do a disservice when you give it for free. You do a disservice if you deliver in any other way.

Don't be afraid to charge money, and don't be afraid to charge more money than the competitor. Don't be afraid to charge more money than other people around you. If you walk out to ...

Let's say you go to a car lot, okay a brand new car lot, brand new Lamborghini car lot and you walk out to the car lot and you say, hey I would like to look at this Lamborghini and they say great come on with me sir. You're walking, and let's say you even wore a suit, because you might go buy a Lamborghini, and you have the cash for it and you're super stoked. You've saved up and it's been on your dream wall, and you know the exact model and color.

You know everything about it and you walk up and you see the car and you know it is. It's beautiful, I'm not even that much of a car guy, I'm just saying. You walk up to this car and it's beautiful and you're like, this is the one, I have waited so long for this car, how much is this? The sales guy looks over at you, and the sales guy looks right at you and he starts to smile and he goes, you know what I can tell you really like this car, just for you this brand new Lamborghini, it's only five grand.

What would you do? You would sit back and be like, what's the first knee jerk reaction that you would have to that? You would ask what's wrong with it. What's wrong with the car? Why is it only five grand? I'm expecting to pay like a hundred times more than that, I don't know how much a Lamborghini is, I'm not really a car guy like I said. But you'd expect to pay a lot more money, right?

A lot more money, it's the same thing with your offers, what ends up happening when somebody goes out and you start price decreasing right out of the gate, it immediately starts to plant these little seeds of doubt inside of the perspective customer. It starts to put inside their head questions like, what's wrong with it? Oh so it is okay, and you need to keep reassuring them. Well does it have these other features? They may not even care, they might not even use them, like the billion settings on your car stereo, how many of them you actually use? Like three, the on button and a few others, you know what I mean?

I'm like features don't really sell very well, it's all about benefits, you know what I mean? But that's what I'm trying to say, so I am unapologetic about the pricing that I place there. You know what's funny about that is I typically get a higher quality customer with higher prices. When I was selling a lot of $100 funnels and $100 products and things like that, and since I've taken a lot of them off the market, I don't want to sell that. I know this is stereotypical and it was not true in every case, but $100 product brought a very different customer to me than I wanted to work with.

Again it's not at all me being selfish, it is very much me deciding who I want to work with, and realizing that the individual who is scraping to get $100 probably is working on a different problem set in their life than let me start a business. They might be still solving the problems of hey how do I pay bills every month? Or how do I keep a steady job?

I'm not trying to judge, I'm not trying, like I get it, it's totally fine. I've been there. You all know I've been there. There was a time like I couldn't afford that stuff, sadly I stole over it, but what I'm trying to tell you though is like there are a hundred reasons. There's tons of reasons why you should never discount price and in fact let the price bring the right customer to you. I'm not telling you not to do this either, but like this is such a powerful concept guys, you could literally take two of the exact same product, charge more, double for one of them and you'll get a higher quality customer, someone who's more status driven. Again, use that for good or bad, you know what I mean?

Like use, it for good, but what I'm saying just know that, that's the power of this thing, that status is very much involved in an element of this.

Working with someone who's figured out a lot of the basic problem sets of life, self care and things like that. They're going to be more attracted to higher prices, or I'm sorry, they're going to be more attracted to the lower prices. Again, I'm not telling you not to sell low, I'm not telling you not to sell high, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to tell you that you don't need to compete on price. That it is okay to charge higher, that it's okay to unapologetic about it and that you are doing a disservice to somebody else when you do not charge enough money or when you give it to them for free.

Just going to wrap the whole thing up here, I ended up telling Russell this whole story of me stealing the thing. He was laughing so hard, he's like, are you kidding me? I was like, I'm sorry man, like I will pay you right now, I have the money obviously and I will. He just started laughing, he's like, nah, that course brought you to me so whatever. So it's all good. I was like alright, as long as you feel like that's okay, but I just need my conscience clear about it 'cause it was wrong and I feel bad and I'm not a thief.

Anyway yeah, so charge money and charge good money, and understand that if you feel like you can't charge money it really might be that your offer might not be good enough yet. So go back and look at it, keep tweaking it, keep tweaking it. But have price dropping be like your very last go to thing, when you're actually selling it. Don't decrease price, you decrease bonuses okay?

You remove bonuses, you remove certain elements, little goodies and things like that, that you're going to go with it. That way the value that they're getting is less for the money you're charging. It's still worth it, they're just getting less stuff, does that make sense? You'll still get a better customer by keeping the price high and then just tweaking, and removing and playing around with it, and doing scarcity and urgency with bonuses rather than dropping price.

Anyway that's it guys, be unapologetic about the price, hope you guys are doing great and I'll talk to you later.

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