SFR 198: The SECOND Origin Story...

Boom, what's going on everyone?

It's Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.

Today I'm gonna teach you guys about the origins of the offer.

I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.

The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.

Join me and follow along, as I learn, apply, and share in marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.

My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
What's up, guys?

Hey, okay. So I was at the Traffic Secrets event. Traffic Secrets was an event run by Russell Brunson, just for the Two Comma Club X people.

If you don't know what that is, Two Comma Club X coaching is a program where we take people and we help them make their first million. Tons of fun, and it is successful. It's lots of fun. It's a fun group. There's a lot of events that come with it.

I'm a Two Comma Club X coach. I've now brought, at the time I'm recording this, about 2,000 people through this process now. There are patterns; and when people follow the pattern, they have success.

This event was called Traffic Secrets, it was over in Phoenix. Getting to Phoenix was pretty crazy. There was something messed up with the airplane, so they had to get us off and get a new plane. There was like, a bolt coming out of the side of the airplane, and no one could figure out what it was. It was really freaky.

We got off the plane to switch planes, and that is the moment, my friends, when adults become children and start whining and complaining.

Anyways,  I get over to Traffic Secrets, it's a bunch of fun. It's a lot of work.

I remember growing up, my dad traveled quite a bit as well. I always had this perception like, "Oh man, Dad, is it so cool going out?" Like, "You're traveling like a beast, do you have so much fun? What, did you see while you're there? Did you see this while you're there?"

It wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized, it's pretty much straight work. I only see my hotel room, the event room, and the walk in between, that's it. And then the shuttle ride back to the airport. That's kind of all I see any event I go to.

Anyway, so, Russell got up. He talked for two days. I had a ton of fun. Right before that, I got a chance to go and hang out with him in his office just he and I, until about 2:00 am, to structure a lot of the content and things like that. It was just a ton of fun.

I'm going off script here real quick, okay? It's funny, 'cause my wife kinda laughs, she'll be like, "Hey, did you have fun with Russell tonight?"  

I'm not teasing her, I just think it's funny, and I get it, you know. She'll be like, "Why do you like hanging out so much?"  Well, besides the fact that it's Russell Brunson and we are good friends, the more you learn about the thing that you're doing, the less people you can relate with about what you're doing. You know what I mean?

And that's why the game can sometimes be a little bit lonely. So I always have a bunch of fun going and doing that. It was cool to be behind the scenes and be back structuring content and putting ideas and concepts together, and then go sit back and watch the audience as Russell executed that plan. Cool education right there.

Russell talked for two days. Lots of energy. "Rah, rah, rah," right? He's all over the place - lots of energy. At the end of two days, we go, and we're having dinner with the ClickFunnels crew, the staff and all the coaches were there. We were just shooting the breeze, just chatting for a little bit.

Most people left, and there's only five or six of us left, and we're like, "Hey, let's go see that movie, Venom." Which was super cool by the way, it was a good movie.

Just before we left to see the movie, Russell leaves for a second. He comes back, and he goes, "Dude. Do you know who Claude Hopkins is?" I'd heard the name, but I hadn't studied him yet.

I'm making the rounds on who I'm studying right now. I haven't gotten to Claude Hopkins yet. And I said, "No, heard the name though." And he goes, “Dude, you are going to love Claude Hopkins." I said, "Alright, cool." So he starts telling me a little about Claude Hopkins...and he said, "...basically, he's like the godfather of what you do." And I said, "Please tell me more."

This is a picture of Claude.  I went and printed out a picture of him.  It's gonna look really blurry. This is the man himself. What's up, man? Alright,  Claude Hopkins?

Claude Hopkins (1866–1932) was brought into companies to create the equivalent of an offer.  In 1907 he was paid a salary of $185,000 a year. That's like getting paid 1.3 million in today's dollars. This is a highly paid guy. And all he would do is go in and create offers. That's what he was known for.

Companies would hire him to come in and help construct the offer as part of the sales message. So he goes in and he would create the offer, but then also pieces of the sales message that would make it sexy.

I was like, "Russell, dude, that was like the greatest gift you could give me. Are you serious? You just taught me about how my market came to be."

I've been looking around trying to find the history of what I do? And it's not been an easy thing to go figure out. Not many people teach what I teach, which is one of the reasons why I'm stepping into that zone and being the category king of offer creation. That's my goal, that's what I'm going for.

You wanna see my second shot I'm calling? I'm calling it! My podcast introduction is all about, "Hey, I'm calling my shot!" Well, I'm doing that:

I'm on track I hope, for a million dollars this year. It's gonna be close; it's gonna be really, really, tight. But we're getting close. Some of you guys have reached out and asked, so I'm just telling you.

I'm trying to make my first million dollar business. I haven't taken on any VC funding, haven't taken on any debt.  It's gonna be close. Makes me feel better knowing it took Russell three tries to get it in a year. I'm getting close, though. I'm hoping that I can make it. I'm excited about it, though.

I started freaking out. I was like, wait, this Claude Hopkins guy. Here's more about him:

Back in the day, they were not called offers. They were called schemes. Meaning a scheme, like, you're gonna go create a scheme. What's your scheme to actually make cash? Back in the 1800s, you had a scheme man. A guy who created your scheme. They would come in, like, "Oh, I need a scheme man."

A scheme man would come in and would create the offer, or their scheme. And so that's the origins of offer creation. That's literally, that's how that stuff came about.

Now, I'm sure if some copywriter way back in the day, way before we actually wrote stuff down, similar concepts were going down, maybe? But that's how it happened, though.  They would go create these schemes and guys would come in and get paid huge sums of money to go in and actually create these things.

I freaked out when Russell started telling me some of this. And I was like, "That's amazing. It’s a huge deal that you told me that."  There was a few, little epiphanies I had. My brain just started running, which it does, and I let it. It's a ton of fun - totally like the Beautiful Mind thing. "I gotta ask you guys if some of you guys are real." But in my head, because of learning that, certain frameworks about how I know money is made started getting adjusted right there at the dinner table. Right there.

I was like, "Oh my gosh. That's how it works?" I was sitting next to Julie Stoian, and she leans to me after about five minutes, I was just zoned out. It's funny, my wife will reach over and be like, "You doing okay?" And it will wake me from this reverie; you know what I mean? I'm like, "Oh."

Well, Julie Stoian leaned over, she goes, "You're getting very pensive." And I was like, "Oh, crap." I realized I had zoned out, I was staring at something for, I don't know, probably ten minutes. My head was racing, and what I realized was that...

okay, walk with me for just a second here, okay? Just think about this for a second...

Every sales message, every good sales message has two introductions, and it has to do with the way the brain functions. Every sales message has two introductions:

One of the introductions, whoever the audience is that's listening to us, the introduction must introduce the person who's speaking. That makes sense. "Steve, who are ya?" Now I gotta do a little bit of an origin story. Meaning, how did I originally come into the thing that I'm doing?

"Well, I started the Sales Funnel Radio podcast back when I worked in ClickFunnels,” right?

You guys know all my, you all know my origin story.

Now, if I'm gonna sell something, I also need to tell, I need to do an introduction about the topic. So there's two introductions, does that makes sense? I'm just kind of setting the framework here. This is a big deal, this is a huge deal. This has made it so much easier for me to teach copywriting to people since I learned that.

And you, hearing this episode right now, just know I recorded this a few weeks ago, just so you know, that's just how I run my content - so that my team's got time to repurpose it like an animal.

So, anyway, there are two introductions to every single sales message. Now, think about this, what I'm doing is I'm going in and I'm telling my origin story. It is the way I introduce myself. It was not until Russell walked in and said, "Dude. Claude Hopkins," that I'm like, "Whoa! That's crazy." I realized, markets have origin stories too.  I was like, "What?" That's the second intro. You guys getting this?

If you're not freaking out right now, I totally get it. I'm a psycho, I'm a freak in this stuff, I totally get it. I'm gonna nerd out over things that you may not, and that's totally fine...

But here's basically what it means:

A lot of people when they sell, they believe that they need to come at it logically, or just emotionally. There are all these different ways to come in and be like, "I'm gonna tell you this, and do a whole bunch of scarcity urgency. I'm gonna do this and do the takeaway sale. I'm gonna do this and do that way." Does that make sense? "I'm gonna do the drug dealer close."

There's all these different ways - there's a lot of different scripts out there on how to sell something.

But what's fascinating is that it was the first time when I realized, if I just told the origin story of my product, there's a likelihood that my customers will see the product's flaws without me pointing them out. Think about this for a moment...

So if I'm thinking about, well, offers... it's really hard to find books about offers. It did not take me long to buy all the books on offers I could find on Amazon, and start to move through them. There's just not a lot on offers. There really isn't.

Claude Hopkins. He wrote the book Scientific Advertising. This guy knows what the heck he's talking about. If you start looking at the things that he's doing, the most crucial part of the sales script, the most crucial part of the sale, right, is the offer. Now, the sales message is what makes the sale, but that offer is the exchange to value. It has to be amazing.

And if I can go in and teach you, "Look, you have to have an offer."  So I didn't tell you a full out rap story with the correct script and all that stuff about the origins - you know, teaching you guys about the origins of the offer...

But if you think about this, if I just educate you on, "This is how offers used to be created..." Suddenly just knowing that there's a backstory that you may not have known about drastically produces and increases perceived value about what I'm talking about, right?

Let's say you're gonna try and sell somebody the keto diet, right? You go out and you're gonna talk about the Atkins diet. "Oh, here's the Atkins diet, you're just gonna eat meat, basically." I think that's the Atkins diet, is it? I don't know, anyway... Here's the one where you just eat meat all the time, right?

If  I start showing you a whole bunch of research on why the Atkins diet is the best, why this is awesome, why this is incredible. That's effective, but it's not nearly as effective, or it's not nearly as much incredible perceived value as if I can educate you on the history of the vehicle that my customer's already in.

I'm going deep here, is that okay? It's not a normal podcast episode. I'm just freaking out by this concept. Way easier for me to draw it, I should totally have my whiteboard over here with me.

The book Play Bigger, one of my favorite books lately, Play Bigger talks about how, whoever can best articulate the problem to a market, it's also assumed that that person has the best solution. You guys get that?

Let me say that one more time. Whoever can articulate the problem the best to a market, it is assumed that that individual also has the best solution. And that's why this is so powerful.

I realized that if I can get good at teaching the origin story for the market, for the product, that my customers are currently using. And I'm like, "No, you shouldn't be using that." If I'm the best at going in and teaching, "Look, here's the origin story about the product you're using." It's another way for me to sell them. It's another way to educate the market in a way. It's another way for me to articulate the problem the best - like Play Bigger is talking about.

And to do what Claude Hopkins teaches, and actually say, "Oh my gosh, check this out." And they self-educate. And then suddenly, it's like being pulled from the Matrix. "Whoa! I never realized the product for the flaws that it has." Does this make sense? This is a huge deal.

When I first started building a whole bunch of funnels, I was like, "Yeah, I got the Page Editor and ClickFunnels, I totally understand how this is going around. This makes a ton of sense. This is actually amazing. How do I write copy?" This is before Funnel Scripts or anything like that came out...

I was like, "How do I write copy? Dang it, aw, man, hm. You know what, I don't even know." And there was no answer. But guys, if you're like, "How do I write copy, one of the easiest ways to do it is just by telling the origin story of the products that your customer's currently using. How did that thing come into existence?

It was Steve Jobs who said, something along the lines of ... if you look around and understand that all the things that are around you that you can see, someone just made it up at some point.

When you understand that, it's freeing 'cause you realize, "Wait, that was created with the restraints of a human being's brain." One person, most likely, right? Which means it also could be altered, like, "Whoa. That's crazy stuff!" That's huge.

I'm trying to help you guys understand that when you are telling your story, when you're telling your offers... you're not just telling your origin story. The key and the point is to try and tell the origin story of the red ocean you're selling into. Does that make sense?

Someone put that on a freaking t-shirt, 'cause that's good stuff right there, okay? That's gold. It better be on a freaking Instagram quote card here soon. That's a big deal. That's a big deal - because it means I can shortcut a lot of the little scientific isms of writing copy, but still get the idea across.

 

That means I don't have to go learn why the engine works. I can just drive the car when I just tell the origin story for the market.

There's this super, super cool quote I really like from the book. I just have to log in real quick to it. I took a screenshot of it. I believe this is Claude Hopkins here. He has a very interesting way of speaking:

"Many have advertised, 'Try for a week, if you don't like it, we'll return your money.' Then someone conceives the idea of sending goods without any money down and saying, 'Pay in a week If you like it?' That proved many times as impressive.”

One great advertising man stated the difference in this way; "Two men came to me, each offering a different horse. Both made equal claims. They were good horses, kind and gentle, a child could drive them. One man said, 'try the horse for a week. If my claim's not true, come back for your money.' The other man also said, 'Try the horse for a week.' But he added, 'Come and pay me then.' I naturally bought the second horse."

You understand what I just did there?

 

This is a big deal, and it's the reason why, if you have an offer and you have a product, if you have a skill, a talent, something that you have that you know you are better than the majority of the market at what you do - which is probably likely all of you guys if you're listening to this...

If you're better than  the majority of the market at what you do, and you're having a hard time selling, the answer is, "You need to have a better offer." Which includes a sales message in my mind. They're very inseparable. That's why I create them at the same time. Does this make sense?

Two horses, exactly the same, right? Exactly the same, both amazing. A child could drive both of them, as it says. One of them says, "Try it for a week, if you don't like it, come back, ill give you your money back." The other says, "Try it for a week and then pay if you like it." The only difference between those two offers is a little tweak in the way it's presented. That's like, the definition of a freaking offer. Does that make sense? This guy is brilliant.

This is another Claude Hopkins quote I really, really like. I've been geeking out about him, this episode is just kinda about that:

"The time has come when advertising in some hands has reached the status of a science..."

Oh, what's up, Claude Hopkins, how you doing? I'm your man, 'kay? I am your man, that's me, that's me. The science of selling online. That's why that group was created. It's not about the art, it's about the science. What are the formulas? You guys heard about the frameworks episode that I did?

"The time has come when advertising in some hands "has reached the status of a science."

I want you to understand that.

There's some really cool quotes he has in here also about, I was going through about, where he talks about, this stuff, advertising, and selling. It's all salesmanship, and if you have any questions, the best answers come from looking at the problem from the stance of a salesman. Does it sell?

You are not in the business of entertaining. You're not. I'm in the business of selling. Now, as part of that, I might go and do some entertaining stuff. I might yell in the mic, and I might go crazy. And every Monday I might yell on the Instagram, "It's Monday, baby, whoo!"  Right? And there's a showmanship aspect to it.

But I clearly understand that the showmanship is not selling. The showmanship is getting people to me, but I still have to sell the different mechanisms.

Anyway, I've kind of danced all over the place in this episode. I just want you guys to know how stoked I am. And the major key of this entire thing, I'm trying to help you guys understand, is that your market, much like you, has an origin story.

Your red ocean that you're selling back into, just like you, has a red ocean, I'm sorry, has an origin story. If you can go, just learn, and figure out how to describe the red ocean that your customers or the people you wish were buying from you.  

You walk up and you're like, "Hey, you should be trying some ketones over here," and they're like, "Why?"

If you can go in and educate them why their current solution is not awesome, and use the origin story to do so - it's huge power. Huge power.

Origin stories are not just for an individual.

Anyways guys, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Mr. Claude Hopkins, for your awesome quotes and inspiration.

You guys will see me, many times now, attach, watch what I'm doing, okay? You will see many times now attach what I do in the offer world to the backstory, the origin story, of what Claude Hopkins created and pioneered as well. That's what I'm doing, that's why I'm telling you guys this episode right now. That's what I'm doing, and it's tying into so many pieces in my brain. I'm so stoked about it. It was the missing piece I've been looking for.

Boom! Found the hook, found the hook, baby.

Alright, my friends, go be schemers. Be scheming. Go create cool offers, I'll see you guys later.

If you guys like the episode, please rate and subscribe it. And I'll talk to you guys later, bye.

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