[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Young and profiters, welcome back to the show. And today I have the pleasure of interviewing one of my role models and new friends, Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson is the CEO and founder of ClickFunnels. He's one of the most famous internet marketers in the world. And he's also the host of the Marketing Secret Show, as well as a bestselling author of many marketing books.

We are going to go deep on a number of things in today's episode. We just had an hour together, which was not enough time. Russell promised me he would be coming back on at least once a year. And today we got a chance to cover funnels. We talked about webinars. We went super deep on webinars, how to create effective ones.

We also talked a lot about psychology and psychology. Sales, and he just dropped so many gems in this episode. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. This was one of my favorite episodes of 2024 just because it was packed with so much value. Russell really dropped so much knowledge about marketing and sales.

I learned so much personally. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Without further delay, here's my conversation with Russell Brunson.

Russell, welcome to young and profiting podcast. 

[00:02:00] Russel Brunson: I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:02] Hala Taha: I'm really excited too. So Russell, you are actually my big pinched me moment of the year. I remember back in March, I got a website inquiry and it was from Russell Brunson. And Russell Brunson was asking me, Hey, I've heard a lot about you.

I'm interested in joining your network. And I couldn't believe my eyes because I'm in marketing and I've always looked up to you. And I've always known about Russell Brunson since I'd Was just starting out in marketing. And so it was such an awesome moment to get a message from you asking to join my network.

I literally couldn't believe my eyes. 

[00:02:38] Russel Brunson: I've had a podcast for a long, long time, like over a decade. I've been running podcasts just kind of on my own as a silo. And I was talking to Jenna Kuchar, who's a friend of both of ours, and I've been watching her podcast blow up and all the things she's doing. And she's like, You just need to meet Holland.

So that was the introduction and started watching what you were doing for a while. I usually like to observe before I jump in. And so I was watching, we're doing for a long time and then, uh, yeah, just got excited to come jump in and start working with you and it's been amazing so far. So thank you for having me and having me as part of the network.

[00:03:05] Hala Taha: Thank you so much. Welcome to Yap Media Network and shout out to Jenna Kutcher. You know, I always tell my listeners, it's all about just doing good work and doing the best that you can. And when you do that, good things will just happen to you. So shout out to Jenna and you for joining the network. Okay.

So you are an online marketing guru. You're really famous for creating ClickFunnels. It's the software that helps people drive leads and sales. You have hundreds of thousands of active users. You got to a hundred million dollars in your first year. And so I want to understand how did you first. Learn the power of online marketing and building funnels.

[00:03:43] Russel Brunson: Yeah. Well, a lot of people don't know is I've been playing this game for a long, long, long time before funnels, before Facebook. In fact, I remember when I got started, I was in college and this is before MySpace even came out. Cause I remember we were trying to do marketing online and all of a sudden this new thing came out called MySpace and we were all freaking out cause we were so excited.

This new platform we could drive traffic from. So I've been doing this game for a long time since I was in my early twenties, I was in college. And we were just trying to figure things out. It's weird looking back now. I'm like, I don't even know how we got leads. Cause there was no social media. We couldn't buy ads.

You know, it was just a different game back then, but that's where I got started. And I was trying to figure out how to start businesses online. And Google was just coming out right then. I remember Google pay per click ads, right? This new thing that we were all testing out and we were trying. And, you know, I did this for a decade as somebody who was just creating offers and launching them and putting them out there.

I had teaching people how to make potato guns. I partnered with somebody who was teaching couponing. I partnered with somebody who was the world's fastest readers. We were creating these different courses and products way back then for 10 years before we started buying ads on Facebook. And then that's about the time that we built the, the, uh, Software platform ClickFunnels is actually a decade ago.

We launched that and the last 10 years has been crazy. We've been now teaching people how to do that and giving them software to make it simple. And that's kind of how I got started way back 20 something years ago now. 

[00:05:02] Hala Taha: Yeah. It sounds like you were experimenting, figuring out, like you said, your first offer was how to create a potato gun, which I had to like Google, like what a potato gun even was.

I'm a city girl. I had no idea. So I love that. I love that you've just been experimenting and getting Really awesome at your craft. And I read. Or I heard, I don't remember where I read it, where I heard it, but you basically were like, Hey, I'm not the best operator of business. My passion is the art, the art of creating funnels.

And so I'd love to understand what kind of art goes into creating a good funnel. 

[00:05:38] Russel Brunson: It's actually interesting. I remember I had this conversation with Tony Robbins because Tony was similar. Tony was like, I'm not an entrepreneur. My art is changing people's lives. And I had to learn business to be able to do my art right.

And to get people to actually show up. I feel like for me, it was similar. Funnels for me, it's funny because I look at the whole world through funnels. Every time someone's got a problem, I'm like, there's always a funnel that'll solve almost any problem. Right. But for me, it's when I'm online, I probably do things different than most, but like, I love going through social media specifically to see ads and then I'll see an ad.

I get so excited. If it stops in my tracks, I'm like, Oh, it's like, click on it. I'm like, this is amazing. And then I will go and I literally, every time I click on an ad, I take a picture of the ad first, and then I go and I go to landing page. I take a screenshot landing page and I go and I opt in. I take a screenshot of the next page and I have.

Thousands of funnels saved. I go through every single page in the funnel because I want to see the process, right? Because there's the first part of the art is just understanding the psychology. If I'm taking somebody from a cold ad, where am I taking them? What's the first step? What's the second step?

What's the third step, right? So that's the first part is the structure. It's similar in my mind, like the structure of a house. Here's the framework that we're taking somebody through. But then on every ad and every page, there's always three things I look at. Every ad will have a hook, a story, and then an offer.

And every landing page has a hook, a story, and an offer. And then every sales page. Those elements are on every single page. So I was looking at that. Okay. What's the hook story offer of this part of the funnel? What's hook story offer this part, you know, and I look at those kinds of things. And then I like looking at how they tell their story and how they're doing in a way that gets me excited to want to buy the product or how does this story increase the perceived value of the thing they want me to buy.

And so for me, like that's the art. I love studying it and looking at, look at everybody's funnels, what everyone's doing. And then I just learned from that. And then from there, when I'm building my own funnels, You know, I'm looking at here's all these ideas. Here's all these things people are doing. And I try to bring the best of those things into my funnels.

And I always tell people who come into my world, if you want to buy something from me, please buy it because I want you to buy the product, right? But more importantly, I'm like, buy things from me very, very slowly. Because if you look at any page inside of any of the funnels, this is not me just throwing up something and hoping it works.

I will go look at Let's say I'm doing a book funnel or a webinar funnel, I will go through and look at 50 to a hundred webinar funnels before I build my next webinar funnel every time. And I'm studying and looking and putting the best practices in. So like when I'm building out my webinar funnel, it's the best art in the world.

Like it's all the best practices you can dream of in every single page. And so that's the art for me. So the rest of the business got built around that. I just wanted to build funnels. It took us so long to build a funnel, like we would take a team of seven or eight of us about 90 days to build a funnel in the past.

And so ClickFunnels, we built the software to speed up the process for me so I could build a funnel in a day versus three months. And then everything else came on the backside of that. And then teaching entrepreneurs the same thing and try to show them like, here's the best practice. Like you want to build a book funnel.

This is what it looks like. You want to build a webinar funnel. This is what the best ones look like. That's been our calling for the last decade is just try to shortcut people so they don't have to geek out as much as I do and look at every funnel, but we can give them like templates and things like this is the best practices in a simple way for you to model.

[00:08:32] Hala Taha: I love that. And I can. Hear all the passion in your voice. And I teach marketing too. And something that I always tell my students is it's all about the nuance. These little tiny tweaks that get people to make the decisions that you want them to make. So can you talk about subtle nuances that people can do within their funnels that can make or break their funnels?

[00:08:53] Russel Brunson: Yeah. So first off, there's always three things in every page of a funnel. So the hook, a story they offer. And I always tell people, if you were to hire me, I do console days for a hundred grand a day and people fly out here. I was telling like, the only thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at every page of the funnel and it's either going to be a hook, a story or they offer, like one of those things is always off.

Right. So good example, I have someone that's in my inner circle and they had a webinar that was teaching people how to make money with local reviews or something like that. Right. And they had this webinar that was really good. That landing page register, everything was there. Right. Right. But it was costing them, I think on average, it costs like 25 per lead to get someone to register for a webinar.

And then from that, I think they're like 12 percent of the people who registered actually showed up. So it's costing them like 150 for every person to show up on this webinar. And then the webinar is actually converted really good. They're teaching the process. They sold a really good offer and they did real well, but it was just, the conversions were bad.

And so they wanted me to help them rebuild the entire funnel and the webinar and everything. And I was like, I don't think it's that big. I think you're just missing one thing. I said, when I look at the registration page, like, learn how to make money with helping local businesses with local reviews. I was like, the problem with that is there's no curiosity.

When I see that, I'm like, Oh, this is a webinar. They're going to teach me how to make money with local reviews. And if you think, you know, the answer. Already then first off, you're not going to register. And if you do register, you may or may not show up. But you're like, I think I know this is about register.

And if I'm bored, maybe I'll show up. And so all we did is we took that was like, let's just change the hook and let's make more curiosity in the hook. And so we changed it from how to make money teaching people how to do local reviews or whatever to like, Something like this is the loophole we found to help make extra money, helping local businesses.

And this is not, and we talked about all the things that wasn't, so it's not doing Facebook ads. This is not doing Instagram. This is whatever, all the things that people might think it was talking about what it was not and said, register to find out exactly what this new thing is. And then we'll show you how to use it inside your business.

So we just made it more curiosity based. That's all we changed on the registration page. And it went from 25 per registrant 5 a piece. So it dropped the cost down to one fifth. Okay. And then because people didn't know what it was, unless they showed up, their show up rate went from like 12 percent to like 26%.

And so between those two things, all of a sudden the metrics of the business change and this funnel went on to make them millions of dollars just by changing a hook on a page, simple psychology, these little tiny tweaks, little tiny changes. Have huge impact across the funnel. That's what I'm always looking for.

I look at so many people's funnels just to get ideas of like, Oh, look how they did that. Look how they did this. And the more I see people buying ads, people always ask me, how do you know if funnels working? Because the company is spending a lot of money on ads and you keep seeing it over and over and over again that probably are doing something right.

And so I'll click on it. I'll go look at like, Oh, look how they did that. Look how they frame that. Look how they made this offer. We're just looking at those little things and they'll come back and test them on our pages. And like I said, a little tweak like that can dramatically change the metrics of a business.

So it's like searching for buried treasure and then applying it back to your business, which is so much fun. 

[00:11:43] Hala Taha: Yeah, you're making me feel inspired. Like I should go look at every related business and see how they do their funnels and what's working and what's not working. So you said you have this superpower where you can take any product, any service, and then you can determine how it should best be sold online.

What the funnel should look like, what the messaging, the script should look like, what the sales process should be. So I thought we could do a little quick game. Where I tell you, since you said it's just you for power, I'll tell you a business idea and you tell me how do you think it should be sold? What do you think the funnel should look like?

And what do you think some of the messaging should be and stuff like that? And it can be super quick and high level. Are you good for this? 

[00:12:24] Russel Brunson: Yeah, that'd be fun. 

[00:12:25] Hala Taha: Okay, cool. All right. Number one is a high ticket social media agency with retainer services. 

[00:12:32] Russel Brunson: What's typical price point on that? 

[00:12:34] Hala Taha: Let's say it is 5, 000 a month.

[00:12:37] Russel Brunson: Okay, very cool. And traditionally when you sell that, do you get somebody on the phone to sell that? Or do you try to sell off a page? How does it normally work in your world? 

[00:12:45] Hala Taha: In my world, because I have a social agency, so I'll just answer for myself. Usually it's a discovery call. My business is unique.

It's mostly referrals because I have so much social proof. So the leads come to me, but for the average person, I'd say they're posting on social media, maybe retargeting with a DM and then having a discovery call. 

[00:13:03] Russel Brunson: Gotcha. Cool. My experience with something like that, where it's for me, if the price points under 2, 000, for most people, we can sell that off of a webinar.

No clothes, no phone call needed, right? When you get to 5, 000, especially 5, 000. With recurring a hundred percent. I agree that you need to get someone on a call, right? Strategy call, discovery call, things like that. So knowing that's the end goal, right? So the end goal is to create a strategy call. Now what I'm looking for is, okay, how do I make it?

So by the time they get to the strategy call, they're already pre sold. And when they're jumping on the strategy call, it's not me trying to sell them. It's them trying to sell me on why I should accept them, right? Those are the positioning things I'm trying to do. So my very first thing I would do is I would probably create.

The landing page would be like a case study. Like, so let me show you a free case study about how we were able to, and then find like one or two or three of your clients that you've done really, really cool things for. I'd build a case study around that. So the first page is like, give us your email address.

I'm gonna show you a free case study about how I took Jenna Kuchar, Russell Brunson, and so and so, and we 3x their views and made them each a hundred grand a month in advertising costs. By making these three little simple tweaks to their podcast, right? Something like that, because that would be intriguing for me.

In fact, the way you sold me, by the way, as you probably know, is you showed me a quick video. Like here's the three things I would change on how you're doing things to increase. I saw three things. I was like, this makes a hundred percent sense. Let me give her my money right away. Right. So I'd build a case study like that.

Page two, then there'd be a video, headline of video, but like free case that reveals how to blah, blah, blah. And I'd have the video down below and watch the video. And I would show the case studies of Russell, of Jenna, of someone else, right? Here's what we did. Here's the tweaks we made. They're very simple, very easy.

And then underneath that, then I'd have a link to where they could apply for a discovery call and I would make it very exclusive. In fact, I would probably charge for the discovery call. It's been like, Hey, obviously we work with the clients of this caliber. If you're interested in working with us, basically the way it works is you put a hundred dollars down deposit.

This is refundable. If we don't work with you, if you do work with you, it applies towards the first month, but that way you have some kind of gate there. That way you don't get a million people applying and that would set up the discovery call. So now you've got a really cool funnel and now you can go out there and the advertising would be basically like, Hey, Do you want to see a free case study about how I got Jenna, Russell, and so and so this result?

If so, check out the page and send me the page. Now you go to podcasts or different interviews. It's really simple. Again, the call to action would be like, Hey, if you want me to show you exactly how I did this, I have a free case study over at russellsfreecasestudy. com. Go check it out. And then from there, you can push people from social, from podcast interviews, from everything into this funnel that then gets people pre qualified to give you money for your agency.

[00:15:23] Hala Taha: This is so good. I feel like so many of my listeners are going to find so much value at this. Because you could do this with any basically professional service that's a retainer offering. So it's really, really smart. One more thing to drill down on this is why do you want to make it so exclusive? Tell us about how that switches the power dynamic or what are you trying to do by making it seem like.

They've got to apply to you, not that you need them as a customer. 

[00:15:48] Russel Brunson: Two things. Number one is it makes easier for you operationally. My first business I built, I was outbound calling every lead that came in. We were trying to sell them and it was expensive. I had 60 full time salespeople. I had to get a huge office.

We had all these expenses because we were chasing people and most people aren't qualified. Most people have no idea why we're calling. It was just, it was a nightmare. We made money, but it was such a grind. It was so expensive. Uh, eventually we let go all 60 salespeople. We built a funnel, very similar to what I'm talking about right now.

I had two salespeople. They can't go outbound and call people. So instead, let's get people to raise their hands. So it gave us the ability to go from 60 salespeople to just two, and get pretty similar volume on how much money we were making, which was fantastic without the cost and stuff. But number two is, the principle we call the take away sell, right?

And if you think about this, the psychology behind this, When someone's chasing you, trying to sell you something, they feel like this pushy, annoying salesperson, right? Instead, what I want to do is I want to create desire in something, but then take it away. So it's like, Hey, I have this amazing thing, but I take away, for example, I have a inner circle, my high end coaching programs, inner circle wave, only a hundred people can be in there.

Right. And before I capped it to a hundred people, I had it where it was like anybody who we could sign up with assignments that we're going at. Three or four years to get the way about 35 people in that group paying every single year. And I was like, I want to get this bigger. I remember I decided I was like, I'm going to cap it 100 people.

And I'm going to cap it out in my mind. I was like, I'm so far from a hundred people. This will never actually happen. Right. It took me three years to get 30 people, 35 people to say yes, but I switched. I said, okay, this is exclusive. There's only a hundred people and the seats are gone. They're gone. And I put it out there.

I remember emailing my list. I said, Hey, you guys have seen me talking to their circle. You've seen the success stories coming out of it. Yeah. We're only going to have a hundred people. And when it caps out, it's sold out. And I put that messaging out there and I made them apply. Like, let me know why you're a good fit.

Cause we only have a hundred seats. We got to make sure the right people are in here. And it was crazy because people started submitting these applications. They would call us on the phone. I had people sending me gifts at my home. I don't know how to get my home address. It was kind of creepy begging me, like, let me be one of the people.

It was crazy. And in like three months, we sold out all 200 spots and it was crazy. And then there's a waiting list. And I was like, it just shifts the psychology, right? And you're like, I'm not chasing them, begging them to sell. I'm putting in something where it's like they have to apply to be part of it.

And so that's been the biggest thing for us is creating a takeaway sales situation where you're taking something away from people. Cause I got five kids. It's the same way. If I'm like, Hey, I need you to do the same kids. They don't want to do, but if I can position differently where it's like, Hey, only one of you guys get to do this, but this is why it's so exciting that my kids are fighting over doing the chore because they want to be the one to get the benefit from it.

So it's all about creating desire and then taking it away. And then I guess people will start coming to you. 

[00:18:14] Hala Taha: This was like a marketing psychology 101 class. Okay. The next line is low or medium ticket software offering. 

[00:18:23] Russel Brunson: Ooh, very cool. It's like a recurring software continuity. 

[00:18:26] Hala Taha: Yes. Like signing up for ClickFunnels, for example.

[00:18:29] Russel Brunson: Okay. So for ClickFunnels, if you look at the way we've been running this for 10 years, and there's two core funnels that I use. So one of them is a trial funnel. So someone comes up, they get a free 14 day trial to test it out. And I love that one because It gives people no risk to come in and try it out.

And then it starts billing them afterwards. The problem with that is it's really hard to spend a lot of money on ads that way, right? Because it might cost me 100 to get somebody to take a free trial. And then for most people, you can't grow a business that way. You have to wait two or three months for you to get your money back.

And it can be really stressful if you don't have a lot of money to be able to do that, right? So in the second funnel I use is a webinar funnel. During the webinar, what I do is I sell basically year access to the software for 1, 000. So I'll promote my webinar, they register for the webinar. On the thank you page, after they register for the webinar, before the webinar starts, I tell people, hey, the webinar is about to start, but I want you to get a free trial to our software so you can play with it before the webinar starts.

That way, when you show up at the webinar and I'm teaching about it, you know exactly how to use it. So they register for the free webinar. They're offered a trial, a fortnite trial on the thank you page. Then the webinar happens. And during the webinar, I'm teaching him how to use funnels. I explain everything.

And then I make them a special offer where they can get a year for, it would normally be 1, 200 a year. They can get basically two months for free, right? So you get a really special offer. And I added a bunch of other bonuses there. We sell for a thousand dollars. And that way, when people buy the 1, 000 offer, it covers my ad spend and that way I can spend money and then, but with that, people start joining the trial.

A good example, the very first year of ClickFunnels, that was our playbook. After a year, what was crazy is we had 2, 500 people who had signed up for the 1, 000 offer, right? Which is basically 2. 5 million collected. But that money we collected, that wasn't our profit. We Took that money and we put that money back in the ads.

That's how we started growing the company. But from the 2, 500 people that gave us the thousand dollars, 7, 500 people had signed up for the trials and actually stuck. And so you look at 7, 500 people times 97 a month. That was the business. That was where we made our money. Does that make sense? 

[00:20:22] Hala Taha: Yeah, totally makes sense.

[00:20:23] Russel Brunson: And so those two funnels together is how we grew ClickFunnels. And everyone who comes to me, like, how's the software come to? How do I grow my software? This is the blueprint, how we did it. It worked insanely well. So that's how I would definitely do 

it. 

[00:20:43] Hala Taha: I'm going to make sure that we spend a bunch of time on webinars.

I also have been doing webinars a lot. I love them so much. So I want to pick your brain on that. Okay. The last one. This is a local brick and mortar car wash. 

[00:20:55] Russel Brunson: Interesting. The local ones are always fun because not a lot of people do funnels in the markets, so anyone who comes in with a local market usually crushes.

In fact, one of my friends is a dentist, and she created an Invisalign funnel, and she blew up her practice, completely filled it up in like a couple weeks, and then she licensed that funnel to all these other dentists, and they've all blown up their practices. So if you can figure out local funnels, it's really good.

Okay, so a local car wash. So I'm trying to think the first question I would ask without doing the research, like what are offers that car washes have used in the past through direct mail or TV or radio to get people in. 

[00:21:26] Hala Taha: So I actually dated somebody who owned a car wash 

And he told me that his big thing was getting people to become members, to subscribe to the car. 

[00:21:35] Russel Brunson: Oh, very cool. Okay. So it's time for a membership and they get, I think I know my wife's on a car wash membership where she pays, I don't know, 30 bucks a month. Unlimited car wash. 

[00:21:42] Hala Taha: Something like this, like 30 bucks a month for a car wash.

Yeah. 

[00:21:45] Russel Brunson: Very cool. Okay. So what I would do is I would try to, first off, I try to create some kind of offer, right? Because. Memberships are typically hard to sell by themselves. I'm like, okay, what else can I package together to make a really irresistible offer? Right? So for me, it's, I would look at, I'm sitting in the carwash here in our neighborhoods right over here.

There's a couple of restaurants around. There's three or four really cool things right in the vicinity. So I would go to those different businesses. Like, Hey, I'm going to bring people to the carwash. People who come to car wash are going to need their haircuts. They're going to need fast food. They're going to need, and I'm like, can I create something where I get a free haircut from you, a free lunch from you, a free, you know, pick three or four things and then make an offer.

Right? And then that'd be the offers. The offer would be something like, Hey, when you come in and join the car wash membership club, you can get your first wash for free. Plus you're going to get free food at Taco Bell, a free haircut, free cookies. So delicious. I'm gonna think of things around there and that's gonna be the offer when you come in So I make that offer now I create a funnel and I would probably make it fun to look similar to do you ever group on and live in social?

I'd make a page look similar to that because people locally are used to the styles like that I haven't they offer like you mean join the free car wash you get this Here's the other things you get and I make the page look very similar to that And then I would just go target Facebook ads to people within, I don't know, a 10 mile radius of the car wash and I would blanket it so that every time any of those people open Facebook or Instagram, all they saw was my offer for the free car wash with the other bonuses and I would drive all the traffic to that page and that's how I do it.

[00:23:02] Hala Taha: What's the importance of adding those bonuses? What does that do psychologically to people? 

[00:23:08] Russel Brunson: There's two ways to be the cheapest person in town, right? And this is where people mix it up. They always think, okay, especially people who don't understand psychology and marketing, they always want to be the lowest price leader, right?

So there's like, there's two car washes competing. One guy's like, I'll do it for 10. The next guy, I'll do it for nine. I'll do it for eight. Set. And they try to compete by price to eventually cut all their margins away. Right. And my mentor is a guy named Dan Kennedy. And Dan Kennedy told me one time, he said, And if you can't be the lowest priced leader in town, there's no strategic advantage of being the second lowest priced leader, right?

If you can get Walmart, cool. But if you're like, I'm a little more expensive than Walmart, but I'm also cheap, there's no advantage there, right? But being the most expensive in town, there is a huge strategic advantage of being the most expensive. So I never try to increase my value by lowering the cost. I try to increase my value by adding value on top of things, right?

And then it seems cheaper, seems less expensive. So now by making this offer, it's like, I'm still paying 10 for a car wash. The other guy's paying, but I also get free lunch, free haircut, free, all these other things. It seems cheaper, even though it's the same price, or I can make it a premium where it's more expensive.

It still seems cheaper because I'm getting these other things, this other value out on top of it. So anytime I create any kind of offer, my number one thing is like, how do I increase the perceived value of this? So that it seems cheaper without having to cut any price. We've done this with chiropractors where people will drive past five different chiropractors in town to get to the sixth chiropractor because his offer seems cheaper, even though it costs more a lot of times because the value that they wrapped on top of that. And a lot of times the value doesn't cost you any extra money, right?

It doesn't cost these other companies money to give you the coupons for their things. It just gives them a new customer in the door. So it's a huge value out for them as well. 

[00:24:41] Hala Taha: So good. I love that advice. Okay, so a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs, so that just helped them. A lot of them are aspiring entrepreneurs.

And I always say the easiest way to become an entrepreneur is to just do something that you're good at. Sell a service that you're good at. I was good at social media. I started a social agency. I was good at getting sponsors. I started a podcast network. It's the easiest thing to do. So how can you know when you're ready and that you're a true expert at what you do and you can start selling your expertise?

Yeah. 

[00:25:11] Russel Brunson: Oh, very cool. First off, I 100 percent agree. I think anybody when they're first getting started picking a service or a thing that you can do, that's the easiest way to get started. And then eventually it turns into businesses and services and courses or whatever else. But I think the biggest part is most people, I don't know, I have a very obsessive compulsive Personality.

Like when I get excited about something, like I go deep and I get, I geek out really, really deep. Right. So it helps me to get leverage over other people because I go deep on these topics. So for anybody doing this, like I would say, okay, if you want to be in the business world, As you know, there's so many different services people need.

We need funnel builders, we need designers, we need people to drive traffic, we need people to do social media, we need people to do video editing, we need people to do, like, there's so many different pieces of the puzzle that make any kind of business work. So first off, it's looking at all those things and then figuring out what you actually like to do.

So I'd recommend even for a lot of people, if you don't know yet, go find an entrepreneur you look up to and go volunteer, go work for them for free, go move to their city, like, I'm gonna work for you, like, let me figure out, And just try a bunch of things until you find something that you actually have interest in or passion, right?

I mean, I have people on my team that full time all they do for a living now is write emails because they came into our world and they're like, I really like the email thing. They became obsessed with that. And they start studying emails and they've got some of these guys make six plus figures a year.

Writing emails, how hard is it to write emails, right? But because that person got so good at and they love, they can obsess with it. That's what their thing is, right? For you, sponsorships, like you were great at that or social media or writing captions on Facebook posts. Like there's so many little pieces.

And if you become excellent at something, cause a lot of people that are okay, a lot of people that can do the work, but when you find someone who can become amazing at the thing and specialize in it, that's worth a lot of value, right? So figure out the lane you want to go in. And then. Become obsessed with it is number one.

And then from there, doing it for a client, for the entrepreneur, until you can prove a result there. And it's like, Hey, now I've got a result there. Now let me shift from like, this is my full time job thing to like, let me start an agency where I can do it for five entrepreneurs or 10 entrepreneurs, right?

And then from there, if you get really good, you can make a course and it kind of blossoms into all the other things you could do with your skill and your expertise. 

[00:27:08] Hala Taha: So I learned something new about you when I was studying for you for this interview, you said that outside of. The business world, I guess you feel more shy and reserved, but here you are on camera.

You're so energetic. You're so outgoing for those aspiring entrepreneurs out there who feel like they're shy and nowadays you need a personal brand, honestly. You don't need one, but it will turbocharge your success. If you have a personal brand, can you speak to them and give them some inspiration in terms of they can do this too?

[00:27:39] Russel Brunson: Yeah, for sure. People never believe me till they see me in my real life that I'm very introverted. Uh, in fact, I go to church. No one goes to church and even knows who I am, what I do. Cause I'm just kind of like hanging out inside, you know, I did a podcast episode one time, and as I said, I feel like I'm an introvert and extroverts calling, right?

I see these extroverts who feel so comfortable. They go out there to talk and everyone else stuff. And like, I can't do that. Like I see that. I'm like, I'm always envious of like, I wish I had that skill set where I could walk into a crowd and just talk. But for some reason I wasn't blessed with that. I started understanding myself because again, I'm very nervous when I see someone one on one, I'm having this conversation.

But when I can prepare for something and I get on stage, like I feel very comfortable in front of a hundred or a thousand or 10, 000 people. It feels less stressful to me than a one on one conversation in the hallway. I'd rather die than do that. It scares me so bad. I don't know why, or phone calls. Like my number one fear in this world is phone calls.

Like I hate when the phone rings. Like I only answer for my wife and nobody else. I get anxiety, but I realized it's actually fascinating. If you look at most really good entertainers, actors, people who are on stage entrepreneurs who are on stage a lot, most of them are introverted. And when I started learning about introverts is we like to create things privately and then present them publicly versus extroverts come.

They're processing live in real time and stuff like that. And so what I found is the introverts actually do better a lot of times in these roles in being social media, I mean, the face of a brand, because we have to go and at least for me, like I have to prepare a lot behind the scenes, get my thoughts, get things figured out and then come in and I can present things in a way that's simpler.

That's clear. Whereas extroverts, a lot of times they jump in and nothing gets extroverts. Like I'm again, I wish I had more of that in me, but experts process externally. So they're talking and they're like figuring things out on the fly, which is amazing, but also like a lot of times. The things they're teaching may not be as clear the very first time because they're not thought through.

So for introverts to understand, like you don't have to be an extrovert. You don't have to just like go live anytime you want. You can sit back and think through your frameworks and figure things out and like prepare things ahead of times and then present them publicly. Look at most really good actors or actresses.

Most of them are very introverted, but they can perform because they prepared over here and they perform externally. So I don't know. Hopefully I get some hope. You came to one of our events and I had a chance to talk to you. You're probably like, man, Russell, it's so weird and awkward. Like, that's how I am.

[00:29:42] Hala Taha: I was the nervous one. I was like, cut the conversation short. Cause I was just too nervous. 

[00:29:51] Russel Brunson: Yeah. I think this is part of it. And like, what's fun about this too, is like most social media stuff. Like you can record on your phone and then post it later. It doesn't have to be that scary interaction of like I'm live and eventually get more comfortable.

Again, I got started 20 years ago. So this is before we had. But back then we had teleseminars, you would dial a phone number and I'd had an admin number. I would invite people to this call and I'd pick up the phone. I had no idea if there was one person listening or a hundred. So I get in there and then I had to talk for an hour just to myself.

I remember it was so weird. And so I'd pretend like the people were there and I would talk to myself. And then I'd only know if people were on the call, if somebody bought something later. I'm like, Oh, somebody bought something. I mean, somebody must've actually showed up, but we didn't know back then.

Right. Later that go to webinar came out and then zoom and you could see what people were there, but that's why I had to learn. So I was just practicing talking on a phone by myself, hoping that someone was there. You guys, nowadays we have the chance to like practice on your phone and practice until you feel comfortable.

You could try 10 times and post the one that. You're actually proud of at the end of the day. 

[00:30:46] Hala Taha: And to your point, when you get obsessed with something and you're so good at something really specific, like a part of a marketing process, like writing emails, now you're confident because Ed Milet told me confidence breeds confidence, right?

Now suddenly you can talk and you're energetic about it because you know, you know more than 99 percent of people about this one specific thing. 

[00:31:08] Russel Brunson: Yeah, for sure. And it's like, it's your baby. And that's what's fun too, is like, you start seeing nuances inside of your art that's different than other people and you start sharing that and people are like, oh my gosh, that's so cool.

And then yeah, the confidence breeds more confidence. For a long time, I assumed that everybody was looking at the world the way I was. And I remember the very first time I started talking about funnels and showing people what was working and people were like, this is the coolest thing ever. I was like, Don't you guys all see this?

A lot of times it's hard because our superpower, because it's common to us, we don't realize that it's a superpower until you share it with somebody else. And I think that's one of the hard things too, is just like we underestimate like our own value because it's like, Oh, it's just, this is what I do. Of course.

Can you guys all see this? No, we can't. And you sharing that is what lights up the world for other people. And it's pretty cool. 

[00:31:47] Hala Taha: Okay. So I want to talk about offer development. I want to talk about finding your target market and things like that. Starting with niches. What's your guidance on niches? How can we make sure it's not too much competition, but still has enough people?

And it's not like finding a needle in a haystack when we're looking for our customers. 

[00:32:04] Russel Brunson: Yeah, for sure. It's funny because I was getting these arguments with people because especially starting new people, I want to be able to target everybody. So they create these Big offers are so big. And I'm like the problem is like, eventually you want to be broad market, right?

Cause that's what you can scale. But when you get broad market, you're competing against people like me who can spend multiple million dollars a month in ads. Right? So if you're trying to get access to all entrepreneurs, that's going to be really, really hard for you because you're fighting against people like me, who have huge budgets.

Right? And so if you want to beat me, it's like, you can't be this huge thing. You have to start. Nitching down and nitching down, nitching down until you find your sweet spot. But if you get too small, you're right. Like there's no, you know, for most people, you get a lot smaller than you think you can, right?

I look at just even me and you, and obviously you've got a lot of facets of your business, but if you look like entrepreneurship and then from there, it's in my mind, I'd be like, it's content creation, traffic generation. Then there it's like. Podcast. And then it's like the way you do podcasts, like it's four or five levels deep from like just pure entrepreneurship, right.

To find your sweet spot where you're dominating, you're having so much success. Even me, it's like, even though I'm targeting all entrepreneurs. But my message is not that I'm going down all entrepreneurs who want to make money online, who are trying to sell stuff online, who want to do it on a website, who want to do it through a sales funnel.

I get, it ends up being even smaller market in there. And then inside sales funnels, there's some markets of like how to write copy inside sales funnels, how to do email. It keeps getting smaller and smaller, but it's nice about it is that the smaller you can get. The easier it is to actually find the people you were trying to target, and it's less expensive.

Like right now, if I tried to buy a Superbowl ad, the reason why I would never do that is because the Superbowl ad is going to be seen by, who knows, 25 million, 100 million people are going to see it. But of that 25 million people, there's only maybe 20, 000 that would want to funnel, right? And so if I do that, I'm wasting all that money on eyeballs.

Same thing for most of us. If I know I'm going after Christian entrepreneurs or female Christian entrepreneurs who are mothers. Like all of a sudden now it's very, very targeted and now I can buy ads that just hit that target. And now I'm not wasting all this money on all the rest of the people, right?

And then over time, and this, I'm giving this comfort to those who are like, but I want to change the world. It's like, cool, you, you'll be able to, but you start niched and then you can start moving and getting broader and broader over time. When you can start reinvesting more money and you get more assets and things like that, you can start going bigger, right?

That's why I'm able to now go where I'm targeting. Most of the world with my message now is because we spent so much money mastering people who want to build funnels and people who want to be experts and then people who want to drive traffic. And then we kind of started going up from there, but it gave me time to build the foundation.

[00:34:25] Hala Taha: Yeah, that makes total sense. So basically you're saying niche down a bit so that you can target the exact person, make some money. And then the more money that you have, the more that you can compete with people who are going after these broader niches. So can you give us an example of. What a good target sub niche, I guess, is to put it into practice.

[00:34:47] Russel Brunson: Yeah, for sure. And one thing I would share people just to think through is who's the dream customer that you want to serve, right? And typically for most people, your dream customer is you five years ago, right? Especially if you're coming as an influencer, showing your face and the brand, the person that's going to be attracted to you is the person that you were five years ago.

So that's what I'm looking at specifically. So for me, if I look back five years ago in my business or 10 years ago, whenever That I was trying to learn this stuff, right? Who was like, I was the person I, so for example, like if I was to start with my business right now and I go back 10 years ago, before I launched ClickFunnels, like who would I target initially?

Well, who was I 10 years ago? I was an athlete, a retired student athlete, right? So I had success. I was an athlete who wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was married, had young kids. And so I'd be like, Hey, I want to target athletes who are entrepreneurial, who have young families who are trying to figure out how to support those families with their entrepreneur dream, but also at the same time, trying to change the world and try and share the message, like that's who I would try to target.

And these are probably male athletes because that's what I'm a male, right? So that's what I would start at. One of my friends, Annie Grace, she is in the alcohol addiction market. And for her, it's like, well, who was she? She was in corporate America. She was someone who was drinking because it was socially part of like her job description.

She was flying around the world. She was expected to be at these parties and be drinking. And she got an alcohol addiction because of that. Right. And she struggled and then she, over time figured out how to break this alcohol addiction. And anyway, she's brilliant. If anyone's got issues with that study, anti racist stuff, she's amazing.

But what's fascinating about that is when she launched her message, initially, who was she targeting? She was targeting people who are in corporate world, who travel, who are struggling, alcohol addiction. Like she was targeting her five years earlier, right? Exact demographic and profile. Cause she could speak to that so well.

Okay. Right. And that became who she launched her book to. She launched her movement. She got those people. And then over time, she's able to like get case studies of people who came into a world who maybe they weren't corporate, but someone had referred them and that was a mom who struggled or a husband who struggled or something.

And then she's able to take those case studies from these people and then launch into markets, you know, Well, it wasn't her story, but it was their story and start getting in those markets and bringing them in. Now she's changing the world, bringing in tons of people from around the world. But it all started with her niching down to basically exactly who she was five years earlier and targeting those people first because she could speak to them perfectly.

[00:36:53] Hala Taha: This is actually such a great example. So she was targeting alcoholics and she's in our network now, so I know a bit about her. Now she's just doing breaking bad habits. So it went from alcohol to now she wants to just be the person that helps people break all addictions. What a great example of a niche and now she gets to broaden out because she's more successful.

She has more credibility, more money to spend on putting herself out there. Okay, so let's talk about offer development. You talk about avoiding building a better mousetrap. So what does that mean? What should we be thinking about when we're creating our offers? 

[00:37:32] Russel Brunson: I mentioned earlier, my mentor, Dan Kennedy, he taught me something back 15, 20 years ago when I first got started.

And I never heard people talk about it because in the business world, in fact, I remember in college in classes. They taught like, okay, all you gotta do is find someone's product that you build a better mousetrap. And what he said was really fascinating. He said, if you look at the history and the evolution of offers throughout time, right?

So back 200 years ago, there were not tons of entrepreneurs doing stuff because it just wasn't possible. Right? So the businesses that built stuff, they were like the big, yeah, I don't know, Sears and. Carnegie and all these like big brands that made stuff, right? And so the first wave of entrepreneurs what they would do is they would take something that somebody was selling They would do the way entrepreneurs popped out where like entrepreneurs would repair stuff So the refrigerator broke the washing machine broke the sofa broke and the entrepreneurs were the ones who they did repair They would fix the things that the big corporate conglomerates We're building right now is the first phase and then as the market starts shifting, people started getting, it was easier to start businesses than the next phase was.

This is where people start building a better mousetrap. Like, Oh, you bought a fridge from Sears. I can give you one. That's better. Dan. Kenny calls these improvement offers. So anytime you hear the word er and think that's an improvement office, something's better, faster, stronger, cheaper. Like there's er, it's an improvement offer.

You're taking something that's already there and you're trying to make a better version of it. And you can do that. Like you can make money. by making something that's an improvement. But the problem with improvement is, especially if you're selling like information products and things like that. If someone just tried the ketogenic diet and they failed at it and you come in, you're like, Hey, I've got a better way to do the ketogenic diet.

They're like, I just failed at this. They look at that and it's like, this is a better way to fail. Like that's how our subconscious mind looks at things like that. And so you're coming in, you're trying to show someone here's a better way to do something by default. It's just, it makes it harder to sell something.

So the third phase, it goes from repair to improvement, to what Dan Kennedy calls a new opportunity. And so new opportunity is basically looking at something saying, look, I know you've tried this in the past and you failed. And it's not your fault. It's because of the system you were using was broken. I have something that's a new opportunity that's different.

That's not a better way to do that. It's a different way to do that. I think about like some of the great inventions of all time, like Steve Jobs, when, you know, this is when music without the people that CDs and stuff. And he could have came out and said, Hey guys, I figured out a better way to do CDs. Now you see, he's all 10 songs.

It holds a hundred songs. But he didn't do that. He stood there in front of the entire world. So look, This is how you carried your music the past CDs, but we're getting rid of CDs. I'm throwing them out the door. This is a broken system and I have a new opportunity. And boom, he pulls out the iPod, a thousand songs in your pocket.

It wasn't a better way to do CDs. It was a new opportunity, a new thing. And that's like, you know, boom takes off. Same thing with the phone when he came out with the iPhone. It wasn't like, here's a better way to do a phone. He's like. The phone is broken. Here's the new opportunity. When we launched click funnels, the same thing, like there were a lot of website building platforms at the time.

There were platforms into email marketing or platforms into CRMs. If I were to say, Hey, I have a better CRM, I have a better thing. Like now we're fighting on features and stuff instead, right? No, no, we have something that's completely different than you guys ever thought about. We have a platform that builds this new thing called funnels.

It's a new opportunity, which is why I think it took off 10 years ago as fast as it did because we introduced a new opportunity. So it's looking at how to position. What you're selling differently. In fact, every time I watch an entrepreneur try to pitch their product, I'm critiquing them. If they say the word better or stronger or the ER, I'm like, ah, like you're positioning it wrong.

[00:40:40] Hala Taha: Oh, is that where the ER comes from that you were saying that's an ER offer? I didn't get that. Got it. Yeah. 

[00:40:45] Russel Brunson: So it's like, yeah, it's kind of like this, only it's better. It's like, no, no, don't say it's better. That's broken. The way you do that was not working. Here's the new opportunity, right? And it's how you position everything.

So. That's what a new opportunity is, and if you can figure out how to position your offer as a new opportunity and not an improvement, it'll skyrocket yourselves because it takes the stress off of the person's back and shows them it wasn't their fault that they failed this way. We're not trying to make a better failure.

We're giving them this new opportunity. 

[00:41:10] Hala Taha: Okay, so related to new opportunities, why is status and leveraging status really important to do a good job with that? 

[00:41:18] Russel Brunson: It's fascinating. In fact, I bet most listeners will argue with me on this or they won't believe it's true for themselves, but I promise you, it is everything we do, or we don't do in life.

If you do something, it's either going to increase your status or it's going to decrease your status. So we do things because we hope it's going to increase our status or we don't do things because we're feared that it's going to decrease our status, right? So for example, somebody sees a nice car, like, Oh, I want to buy a Ferrari.

And the reason why I want to buy a Ferrari is because if I buy this thing, it will increase my status. My people around me will think that I'm crazy. That's what drives us to want to buy something, right? If I'm going to buy a course from somebody, there's two weird things, right? If I buy something from you, I'm taking money out of my bank account and giving it to you.

So what happens to me is my status is decreased because I'm losing money, but I have a hope that by giving you this money, it's going to increase my status by the result you're giving me, right? And so they're always weighing like, ah, if I give you this, it's going to decrease my status temporarily. But by doing so, I will learn.

I'll figure out this thing which will increase my status. Therefore, I'm willing to take that risk. So whenever I share this with people, I always laugh because they're like, well, I'm not that way. I don't do things based on my status and actually had this conversation with my wife and I was writing expert secrets.

I had a whole chapter on status. And I asked her, I was reading this to her, and she was like, I don't look at it that same way. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, I would never buy a Ferrari. I would never do that. I'm like, why not? And she's like, if I had a Ferrari, she's like, my friends would make fun of me.

They'd be like, oh, the mom showing up at the pickup line, picking the kids in the Ferrari. And I kind of stopped and I said, so by you buying a Ferrari, for you, it would have actually been a decrease in status, because your friends and people at the pickup line would have made fun of you, right? She's like, Oh, I said, yes, all the choices we're making is based on this weird thing of like, if I do this, is it going to increase my status or decrease my status?

And so when I'm selling something or making an offer to somebody, I'm always thinking about that, like, by them giving me money, it's going to decrease their status, but I have to help them see the vision of like, over time, this will actually increase their status if they buy this thing. And status could be, they're going to make more money.

They're going to lose more weight, whatever that thing is they're trying to get right. And if they believe that the increase in the status will offset the decrease by paying you, then they're more likely to buy the thing. And the same thing true now, when you come back to like the new opportunity versus.

An improvement offer, an improvement offer by default. If I'm going to try another keto diet that I failed on three times, but you got a better one, like, like, is the status decreased, right? Versus Hey, that thing in the past that you tried that failed, that was not your fault, right? I'm increasing their status.

Like that was not your fault. What they sold you was incorrect. Like it wasn't a good thing, but this is the new opportunity. It's like, Oh my gosh, this is something that's going to increase my status. It's not going to be like another failure. Another thing I tried in the past, right? It shifts it for him.

So status is an interesting one. That's hard for a lot of people to believe dictates your choices, but 100 percent it is from everything I think about, like the people we date, the people we marry, the clothes we wear, like all these things have to do with how we perceive it's going to increase or decrease our status.

It's kind of fascinating. 

 It is so fascinating. And knowing that it can help determine your marketing messaging and how you position stuff. One more question. Then I wanna stick on webinars 'cause I know we don't have a lot of time. And I definitely wanna talk about webinars. And this is insider information because I've been trying to get you to do ads on YouTube, , and you won't let me.

[00:44:20] Hala Taha: And you're obsessed with growing your YouTube channel, . So talk to us about why you are so focused on YouTube. What have you been learning this year? 'cause your YouTube has like 300,000 some followers. You're doing like really well. So just quickly, what have you been learning? Why are you so bullish on YouTube?

[00:44:36] Russel Brunson: Yeah, I don't feel like we've cracked the code on YouTube yet. We're very particular trying to figure it out, trying to master it. I think the big reason why is, you know, every other advertising platform, you think about this, like we create content. And then it disappears in the feed, right? We put forth the effort and it disappears.

And for me, I don't know about you, but like, ROI is one of my highest values, my highest driver. Like, what's the ROI of me doing? If I'm going to spend an hour recording this video or this thing, what's the long term ROI? And most things, again, it goes in the feed and it disappears. It goes in the, you know, and it disappears.

YouTube's the only one where you post the video and over time it actually grows. Like, I have videos I did five or six years ago that still get thousands of views every single month. From something I did five years ago. Right. And so for me, that's a big part of it. And the second part is I feel like YouTube is becoming.

I've careful tiptoeing around this guy. I love all the platforms. I love podcasting. I love Instagram. I love everything. But, um, I look at YouTube right now as I think one of the best spots to put long form content. Our best buyers come from podcasts because there's someone spending an hour with you in their ears, hearing you talk.

It builds a different relationship than a short form reel or Instagram. You know, YouTube's the same way someone spends an hour with you or 45 minutes on a video, it builds such a better connection. And, um, people who will spend an hour here on video are more likely to invest, to come to your events, to buy your other things.

And so what we're seeing right now is the people who are coming from YouTube are YouTube. They actually, honestly, long form podcasts like the two long form styles of content. Those are the people that become the best buyers for us over time. Now, YouTube algorithm is goofy though, so we're, we're really focusing on trying to create.

Videos in a way where our personal goal internally here within next year. I want to make it where every video I put out gets 100, 000 views. We're not there yet. We have every once in a while that pops off and gets it. But YouTube, like you have to understand the algorithm, the content, how to pull people through.

And like, it's a lot more nuance to get a video, to get to 100, 000 views consistently. Then, you know, Like for example, our podcast, our podcast, we have our followers. We post the podcast, people listen to it. And for us, it's growing the following and then it kind of works. Whereas YouTube it's, it's definitely, it's more finicky because the algorithm demands something very, very specific and it's also momentum.

So if one video hits and then the next video hits, it keeps growing. Whereas if you have video hit and then one drops, the momentum goes downwards and it takes three or four videos to get it back up. And so it's just, it's just a little more. finicky what we're finding so far. But again, we haven't mastered it yet, but that is one of our big goals this year is to master it so we can get the spot where every video we put out there has a hundred thousand views or more.

And then from there, it's like, man, if I'm doing that, we're getting an extra million views a month across our content. How does that affect everything else in our brand? Which is obviously really, really big. 

[00:46:59] Hala Taha: Yeah, and it's basically the start of a funnel most of the time, right? So instead of paying for ads, you're getting all this organic traffic through YouTube.

[00:47:07] Russel Brunson: Oh yeah, I get the same 100, 000 views on paying for the ads. I mean, it's costing me, who knows, 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars where I'm getting that for free. Like, it's worth putting in the time to figure out how to master the algorithm. 

[00:47:19] Hala Taha: Okay, so something we've both been, uh, Really interested in is webinars.

I've been doing webinars for the last couple of years. I love webinars because I feel like it helps me really build super fans. It's really effective for selling, but I feel like having this two way communication, people really start to get bought into the idea of me and really start to support me 10 X.

So why do you love webinars? 

[00:47:42] Russel Brunson: I'm obsessed with webinars mostly because. For me, it's the, again, first off, I agree with what you said about connection, building a relationship, audience. It's also the fastest way to take somebody who's really, really cold and has no idea who you are, warm them up, build trust, and then get them to buy an offer.

When we launched ClickFunnels, again, I'm trying to like, how do I grow this company as fast as I can? And we did it 100 percent through webinars. I created one webinar presentation. I have a script called the perfect webinar that kind of shows how I do it. But it's one webinar presentation. Uh, we launched it, it converted.

And so I did that webinar. And if you read my book, Expert Secret, I tell people like you need to do a webinar, a live webinar every single week until you master that one presentation, same presentation week in and week out until you've mastered the presentation. So for me, when I launched ClickFunnels, I did the exact same webinar 70 times in a row.

Sometimes it was three or four times a week. Sometimes I did. Two or three in a day. And I have a new audience. I give a webinar presentation. And again, it takes a freezing cold person has no idea who I am. They come in, they spent 90 minutes with me. And the end of it, they're buying a thousand dollar, 2, 000 course that fast.

And now I can serve them. Whereas every other funnel, every other way to sell and get people, it takes longer to do that. But I feel like a webinar is the fastest way to take somebody from, we don't have relationship to like, man, we're best friends. And we're going to go on this journey together. And so that's why I'm mildly obsessed and why I still do them all the time.

I see people all the time like, Oh, webinars are dead. I was like, they are not dead. They are far from it. 

[00:48:58] Hala Taha: They're also so fun. I love creating my webinars, optimizing my webinars. What kind of things work well to sell on a webinar? And what doesn't? Is there a certain price point where it doesn't work? Or can you give any advice on that?

[00:49:12] Russel Brunson: I have a 10, 000 offer. I saw on the webinar and it works, but it's harder. Like the more expensive, the better you have to get. Right. And so for most people, I think the sweet spot for webinars is like 297. Yeah. Up to like $2,000. It's kind of the sweet spot where a 90 minute presentation can get somebody to warm 'em up enough where they feel comfortable like parting with that much money.

So that's kind of the sweet spot in the pricing for us. We sell a year worth of ClickFunnels on a webinar for like a thousand dollars, and then they get it for free for a year or for six months, and after that it starts billing 'em. So you can sell memberships and continuity programs through webinars as well.

It works really effectively. I just like, if I have someone's attention for 90 minutes, I'll usually again bundle it together so they're getting five or six months. For free for higher price than put people into it. But yeah, I think that's kind of price when it gets above that. I'll still do webinars a lot of times, but the webinar will traditionally push them to a sales call or discovery call.

That way, I still have the time to build the relationship with them. They can push them there to do the higher transactions if we need to. 

[00:50:06] Hala Taha: Yeah. Something I want to point out to my listeners is the webinars is this two way communication. They're seeing you like, let's say on a paid ad or a social media post.

Social media, they're warmer. Paid ad, totally cold. You bring them on a webinar, you're warming them up. You're getting two way communication. If it's super high ticket, you then want to bring them on a call. You can't get any warmer than that, right? Like being on a call with somebody. So you're just like warming them up and the more expensive it is, the more you need personal connection and talking with people.

But webinars are awesome because you can get that personal connection in mass and it saves you a lot of time. Okay, so let's talk about the intro of a webinar. What are some things we should think about? 

[00:50:43] Russel Brunson: A couple of things, obviously someone's registering for this webinar. Most people are very unsure.

Like why am I here? How long is this going to be? All those kind of things. Right? So when I look at like, what's the hook on my landing page? The hook is like, Hey, I'm gonna teach you guys how to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. The first thing webinar starts. I wanted to tell them like, Hey, you're in the right spot.

You guys registered for webinar. I'm gonna teach you this. How many guys are excited? And I try to start creating interaction immediately. Right? I want people commenting that you said two way communication, right? I'm getting them participate. Like, Hey, how's it going? This is what we're talking about. How many guys are excited about that?

Go back and forth. And then afterwards. In people's heads, they're still trying to figure like, is this for me? In the first three or four minutes, five minutes of a webinar, this is where you get the biggest drop off. People show up like, oh, this is not for me. So during that time, I'm trying to like show them this is for you.

So usually after I kind of reintroduce the title of the webinar, I'm getting excited, getting rehyped about what they registered for initially. Then I'm coming back and say, okay, Now I want to make sure you guys know you're in the right space. A lot of times I'll do a survey before webinar, trying to figure out where people are at.

Um, you don't have to, you can do it without a survey, but I'll ask him with K. Um, how many guys are brand new beginners? Is this your first time ever thinking about this? Is that you? Raise your hand right now in the comments or say yes. And they're like, yes, yes. Okay. I'm like, cool. If you're a brand new beginner, this is going to be great for you.

Cause I'm going to show you exactly how to get started and how to have success very, very quickly. Okay. The second, how many guys you've had some success, but you're kind of struggling. How many guys are not in that camp, right? That's you type number two in the comments, right? And they got all these twos.

Cool. That's you during this presentation. I'm gonna show you guys. If you've got started, how to take that, actually have more success and start growing and scaling it. Then how many guys are super successful? You're trying to figure out a hack to get the next level, put in three in the comments. So I'm showing like If you're a beginner, this works for you.

If you're intermediate, it works for you. If you're advanced, it works for you. Cause otherwise I'm like, Oh, this is kind of a newbie thing. I'm out. Or, Oh, this is too advanced. I'm out. Right. I'm trying to show like, it doesn't matter who you are. This is going to be a good fit for them. Right. So I'm kind of bringing them in through there.

And again, for me, I mean, there's a lot of little things I do, but the key part is just trying to build that relationship, getting engagement with them ahead of time. So that now, now I can go into the presentation. I can tell the story and they're like, they're all bought in. They're excited about it. And so, yeah, those are some of the core things to do.

[00:52:37] Hala Taha: I know that having an epiphany story is really important for your business. Is this something that you also do on a webinar? 

[00:52:44] Russel Brunson: The Epiphany Bridge. I've teached like whole classes on Epiphany Bridge. Basically Epiphany Bridge is like, what is the story about how you got introduced to the thing that you're going to be sharing during the presentation, right?

So if you're in a presentation showing how someone's going to start their own podcast, right? Then the first 15 minutes of my presentation is, Uh, where I'm telling the story about how I discovered this new opportunity I'm about to reveal to them. Right? So the webinar is all tied around the new opportunity that we talked about earlier.

So I'm going to tell this 50 bridge story, like, uh, here's a story how I discovered this thing. I was just like you five years ago. I went through this thing and you're telling the story that you went on and how you discovered this thing. Right? I always tell people like when someone's coming to your webinar, they're looking for a result, right?

When they're buying a product, looking for a result. And typically when they come to you, this is not the first time they've tried to figure out that result. Right? So good example. I bought a company last year, a women's weight loss company. And I remember the owner, I bought it from her. She told me, she said that the average.

Woman in America goes on eight diets a year. Eight. That crazy. When you look at that, like, if I assume that someone's coming to my webinar and they've never thought about having been on a diet before I'm done, right. They come to mind thinking they never thought about a funnel before. I'm wrong. Right. So I have to show them like.

What is my new opportunity? That's different. Like they've tried eight diets this year to lose weight. None of them worked. Why is my new opportunity different than these? Like, why is it different? Right? So I'm going to tell my story about like, Hey, I was just like you five years ago. I tried the paleo diet, the keto diet, the da, da, da, da.

I try all these things. I'd have little successes and I would crash and burn a little. How many guys have done before? You tried the same thing, right? Yeah. I had the same problem. And so I went on this journey and I found out something that was completely different than what anybody was talking about online.

And it was this process called blah, blah, blah, whatever your process is. Right. And this is where I tell that whole story, how I discovered it, what it looked like in the result I ended up getting because of it. And then basically I tell people then like, I, I went through and I figured out a map, I have this map and I'm going to teach you on the rest of the webinars, this map and how you can use it to have the same result I had.

You guys ready for that? And they get all excited. And from there I transitioned to the actual teaching part of the presentation. 

[00:54:36] Hala Taha: Amazing. Please, very quickly, just explain the teaching part. What should we not include in there? What should we include? High level, and then we'll close up the interview. 

[00:54:46] Russel Brunson: This is actually my favorite part because this is where most people get it wrong.

A lot of people think I'm just gonna teach whatever I want and then I'll sell them at the end. You can do that, but The teaching is the most important. If you do the teaching part correctly, then people will buy what you have at the end of your presentation. So a couple of things, number one is your job is not to teach them how to do everything.

If you do that, like you're not going to serve the person, right? My job is to inspire them that this map that I have is the thing that's actually going to get them the result. Right? So I do that for me. I break down my teaching to three sections. My first section is I'm teaching them the framework for how to do the thing.

Number two is I'm teaching them that they could actually do that. And I'm showing them that a third thing is like teaching them that like, There's nothing else that can hold them back from being successful. So I'm going to have three teaching points. I go through, I'm doing that presentation. And the key here is when I'm teaching, I'm teaching them the what, but not the how that makes sense.

So I'm gonna teach them what to do, but not how to do it. So what is the strategy? How is the tactics? Okay. So I think about this, like when I do my webinar, teaching people about building a funnels, I'm gonna teach them the strategy. So I make step number one, you can go find a funnel. That's already converting step.

Number two, then is you're going to funnel hack it. You're going to buy their products and see what does the funnel actually look like? Step number three, you're gonna sketch out what the funnel looks like. And step number four, you're going to click funnels and actually build it out. So that's the, what they're going to do, right?

I'm showing them the strategy of it. Now the how is like. I log into ClickFunnels, I click on this button, then I'm going to click over here and I'm going to add the product here. Then I'm going to write the copy here that you're like, it's all the tactics to take a long time to actually show somebody.

And so what people have to understand is that you're teaching them the what during the presentation, but they're buying from you the how. That's the big differentiator. So people have a webinar that's not working. The reason why it usually doesn't work is because they're teaching the what and the how.

And in their mind, they're like, I'm serving this person. I'm helping them and showing them everything they need. But then it's impossible in 90 minutes to give somebody all of the tactics that need to be successful. So you're not actually serving him. You're giving him half stuff. And number two, It just overwhelms them and they don't buy.

But us as educators, like I want to give them everything, but you can't actually empower people to have success. And so we teach them the what, and then the offer is the how, where we could take them out of the webinar situation. We can show them through a course or a training or a mastermind, how to actually implement everything that they just learned about.

And that's the key to really making stories work during the content side of the training. 

[00:56:57] Hala Taha: Yeah, to your point, the number one mistake I've made with webinars is just Teaching too much. And then people are like, well, I already learned enough. I'm just gonna have to implement what she taught me on this webinar.

No need to go buy her course. Right? Yeah. So really good in terms of conversion, really quick. What's a good registration attendance rate? What's a good conversion rate? What are our benchmarks? 

[00:57:16] Russel Brunson: Great question. Great question. So first off, if you're emailing your own list, the numbers always are skewed very positive.

So that's the problem. A lot of people have is they email their list. They're like, my conversions are great. And they try to buy ads and then it doesn't work. Right. So I don't judge like whatever my email list does, like that's just free money. I don't judge that. I look at like, If I'm actually buying paid ads, so the numbers, again, it's gonna be different market by market, but uh, registrations, I want registration rates on the page be between like 30% and 50%.

Like that's kinda the sweet spot in there. Show up rate. I want it to be the lowest 20%, usually around 30%. That's the sweet spot between 30%. Then when somebody's on the webinar. When I transition from my teaching to my selling, I always look to see how many people are on the line right there. So let's say I get that spot and there's a hundred people that are still on, I'm transitioning to my pitch.

If you can get 5% of the people with the close, that's usually ends up being like a six figure year webinar. If you run that very often, if you can get 10%, that's usually a multimillion dollar webinar and you get 15%. That's where the ClickFunnels webinar was when we first launched it, which took us to, we just passed a billion dollars in sales.

Uh, in the last 10 years. So 5 percent is like a really good webinar. 7 percent like you should be celebrating having a party. Like it's time to go buy a new house. 15 percent it's like you can do whatever you want. So that's kind of the 

[00:58:25] Hala Taha: amazing 

[00:58:25] Russel Brunson: numbers we're looking for. 

[00:58:26] Hala Taha: Love that. Such good information.

So helpful. Okay. I end my show with a couple of questions. the first one is what is one actionable thing our young improfiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[00:58:39] Russel Brunson: Ooh, very cool. The number one thing I would do, like you mentioned earlier, Figuring out the skills that you want to do and then becoming obsessed.

I decide like, this is my career. This is my thing. I'm going to become mildly obsessed and go deep on this thing. Cause nowadays we don't pay for people who are jacks of all trade. We pay for people who are really good at one thing and can go really, really deep in the lane. And if you become a master of that, you can write your own paycheck for the rest of your life.

[00:59:01] Hala Taha: Love it. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond marketing, whatever you think. What is your secret to profiting in life? 

[00:59:09] Russel Brunson: Oh, cool. I have a philosophy I've been thinking about a lot over the last year or so. It's true in like all areas of life. There's things that we produce and things we consume, right?

I just think about like weight loss, right? Like if somebody is consuming more calories than they are burning, they gain weight, right? And so are you, Consuming more than you are producing in business or, you know, in your life. If you are consuming, you're spending more money than you are producing. Then you go bankrupt, you lose your money, right?

Success in life in almost every area. I look at my relationships, my business, my health and everything. I've got to be producing more than I'm consuming. The difference between there's how you're successful. Like in business, if you are producing more value than you are consuming, then your bank account grows.

If I am producing more calories than I'm consuming, I lose weight, right? If I'm producing a better relationship value with my wife or my customers, whatever that I'm consuming, then we have a great relationship. And so that's coming down to that. Like we need to be producers. I have a big model. We call our people prime movers.

Like we are the producers of society. We got to be producing at a higher level and consuming, and that's how you change everything. It's when you flip around, you're consuming more than you're producing. You're taking more than you're giving in all areas of life. That's where you gain weight. You lose relationships.

Your business goes bankrupt. And so it's learning how do I become a producer who can produce more? I consume. And that's like, that's the secret sauce to how you be successful in all areas of life. 

[01:00:22] Hala Taha: I love that. That is such a unique answer. I've never heard before and it was just so awesome. So thank you so much.

I feel like all of my listeners are going to want to follow you and learn more about you. Tell them about the Marketing Secrets Show. Tell them where they can find you, where you want to point them to. 

[01:00:39] Russel Brunson: Obviously the marketing secrets podcast. That's the podcast I do with you inside your network. I'm going twice a week right now, teaching the best marketing strategies and tips and things we're figuring out, having a ton of fun with it.

So if you want to subscribe to the podcast, that'd be awesome. And then if you want to learn the webinar selling side of things that you're talking about, um, I do an event once a month, it's live event. It's so much fun. It's three event. It's called selling online where I teach people how we sell online, how we tell stories, how we rewrite thoughts, beliefs in people's subconscious minds during presentations.

And so the best place to go to that event, selling online. com and register, you have a chance. Sit with me for three days and go deep on psychology and selling and how to get people to buy the products and services you create. So that's, that's probably the two best places to get ahold of me. 

[01:01:16] Hala Taha: Amazing. And Russell, can you promise me to come on the show at least once a year?

[01:01:20] Russel Brunson: Done. You have my word. It'll be fun. 

[01:01:23] Hala Taha: Thank you so much, Russell. Really enjoyed this conversation. 

[01:01:25] Russel Brunson: Thank you. It's awesome hanging out. 

[01:01:31] Hala Taha: Wow. I mean, that was. Value bomb after value bomb after value bomb dropped by the OG marketer, Russell Brunson, the legend. He's incredible. I mean, it was so fun to see his super power funnel skills in action. And I loved how obsessed he is with sales funnels. And I really got to enjoy getting a glimpse of the art and science that goes into creating an effective funnel.

Like, I just love that he, like, Studies other people's funnels and works backwards to figure out their funnels. And bottom line, it's all about the hook story and offer. And sometimes it's just the slightest tweaks that could unlock an entire funnel and make it super successful. Finding the buried treasure as Russell puts it, how can you tweak something that's going to make somebody do the decision that you want them to do?

It's so fun. Marketing is just so fun. I also found his concept of an epiphany bridge to be really compelling, whether you're building a funnel to a webinar or something else. Take the time to tell the story of how you yourself discovered the opportunity that you're about to share with your audience.

Russell had so many great insights and here are just a few more of my favorites. First, you have to drill down to find the sweet spot when it comes to your market niche. Don't try to just serve everyone all at once. You can't compete with the big boys. They're going to beat you every time. So you got to drill down a couple notches and be more specific.

Next, try to figure out a way to position your offer as a new opportunity and not just an improvement on an existing product or service. Also, if you're not on YouTube already, don't sleep on YouTube. I think of YouTube as sort of like social posts for Google search because they rank super high and they can actually go viral and I just feel like that's what it is.

It is basically social posts for Google search and the web. YouTube is such a powerful platform for building a relationship with your audience and it lets you build momentum like no other place. It's basically like free ads. You basically put out videos that are free ads. Now, it's not to say that YouTube is easy because that's certainly not true.

But once you crack the YouTube code, I just feel like, The amount of brand awareness and revenue and just the flywheel effect of YouTube is just so enormous. Finally, if you're shy or introverted and hesitant to put yourself out on a place like YouTube, just start to practice. Take out your phone.

Practice until you feel comfortable and take the time to drill down and become an expert on whatever you're talking about. Nothing breeds confidence like just flat out knowing your stuff. Inside and out. When somebody asks me about LinkedIn, podcasts, social media, marketing, entrepreneurship. And because I feel confident, it attracts people to me.

People want to buy from me. They want to learn from me. They want to be around me. It inspires them and it's the confidence, but that's really related to the competence. Okay. So young and profiteers. Be a nerd, go on the internet and look things up and watch videos and get into rabbit holes and study your mentors and be around your mentors and intern for free and do everything that you need to do to acquire information about specific lanes and be an expert in that lane.

That is going to get you out of being shy and introverted. Like Russell says, he's confident because he just knows so much about marketing, not because he's actually a really outgoing person. Such a great thing to step back and think about. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting.

If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation with the amazing Russell Brunson, then please share this episode with your friends and family. It would mean a lot to me if you helped spread this podcast by word of mouth. If you love this podcast, let your friends and family know. And Write us a review about it.

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All of our videos are uploaded to YouTube. I'm starting to do more in person videos, which is really exciting. If you want to find me online, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala. I'm also on LinkedIn. You can search for my name. It's Hala Taha. And of course, I got to shout out my amazing production team.

Shout out to Hesham and for Khan for just doing an incredible job on the guest outreach side. Thank you for flawlessly executing my in person interviews, my batch interviews. You guys are just doing an incredible job. I also want to shout out Christina Corday. Sean and Greta for helping me with research.

You guys are just an awesome team. Maxi, of course. Thank you for all of your audio editing. Paul for YouTube. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for all your hard work. This is your host, Hala Taha, a. k. a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.