How 2 Funnel - SoundSage

Intro

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00:09 Topher: I’ve spent the last 12 years building websites for people that looked great, but didn’t sell. That changes today as I take you on my journey learning from the best sales and marketing people in the world. I’m Topher Fangio, and this is the How 2 Funnel Podcast.

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00:25 Topher: What's up everybody. Topher here from How 2 Funnel. Today talking about the One Funnel Away Challenge, Mission One. Which we are starting out this week, so last week was all the pre training. Today is the actual first mission and I'm super excited.

Today and this whole week is actually about offer hacking and today specifically is about getting ideas. Like where do you get ideas from. And the videos today were really great. I'm excited about this because it really takes you from having nothing to being able to figure out what you need to sell, what you want to sell.

So maybe you have an idea maybe you've already got a product that's great. If you don't though, there are a lot of ways that you can go about figuring out something to sell. And maybe you have this general idea of what you want to sell. But this week is really about taking that idea and turning it into an actual offer; something that you can sell to people.

Product. Market. Niche.

01:25 Topher: So a couple of things about this. The worksheet was really great, I think; it talked about three specific things.

Number one is you know what is your product? Write it out. OK that's cool. Easy to do.

Second question what core market does your idea fall into?

And as Russell said there's only three core markets. Now I think that there's actually a fourth one I want to talk to you guys about it, but I'm going to save that to the end. Alright. So keep listening if you want to hear what I think the fourth one is.

But the ones that Russell talks about are health, wealth, and relationships.

Anytime you're selling a product you're selling one of these three things. And he goes into a couple of examples of this like: well if you're selling this product what does that fall into? If you're selling this product, informational product, you know what does that fit into? Well, it's probably about relationships.

So it's it's really easy to break down exactly what you're selling and try and figure out which one of those three core categories it falls into. I think a lot of us are probably going to be in the wealth space and if you're doing well, you're probably talking about like information products. How can people learn from you to make more money? That's probably a pretty common one.

02:38 Topher: If you're doing supplements, you're probably doing health. So that's cool.

The third question is what submarket niche does your idea fit into. So the markets are health wealth and relationships. But when you're selling something you can't just sell to everybody in the health market. You've got to really laser focus and target the people that you really want to sell to. These people need to have money to buy from you.

So that's really important. So that's one of the things that we talked about. But finding out what you're submarket niche is, is incredibly important. So say you're selling supplements. Well you don't want to just sell supplements to everybody. You need to figure out who your supplement serves and why they need to buy from you.

And so like maybe you're selling supplements for neuropathy pain. Maybe you're selling a specific supplement that helps with back pain or knee pain like joint pain stuff like that. Maybe there's a disease and you know that your supplement can help with the side effects or the symptoms of that disease.

So go figure out what your specific niche is. For me I think this is gonna be funnel hacking, ClickFunnels, online marketing; that's kind of my niche and I'm trying to narrow it down even further than that. I've got some ideas. I'll tell you guys about those later.

But so mine are like: What is my product? Lessons and resources for becoming a funnel hacker. What core market does that serve? Wealth. If you're building these you want to be making money. Or it may actually be like you're wanting to increase your non-profit. Sure it maybe is not exactly about money, but you're wanting to grow in business. And then like the submarket I just told about, like ClickFunnels, funnel hacking, like that's my specific submarket. And I think I can do even more laser focused than that. Alright. So that was part of the worksheet.

Do Your Homework!

04:33 Topher: Then we get into all of the other things. So Stephen's coaching. Man I love Stephen. I hope you guys do too. Stephen, if you're listening man: love you. Appreciate it.

Funnel hacking is really about finding the offer. OK so going out and figure out what is selling right now and how is it selling and how can I sell that too. And he like screams this is like, "Do your homework!" That's all this is: go out and do your homework. Because that is how you're going to win.

You've got to go out and find what he calls the bloody red market. This is the market that is selling. This is the market where all of the money is at. That's what you've got to go out and do.

And so I love this one because they actually gives really practical examples of how you can do this. And the homework for this one is to sit down and look at Facebook ads and figure out kind of like how they're selling. And what they're selling and things like that. But there's a lot of ways.

You can use Facebook. You can use like Click Bank to see what ads are being run where and like which ones are successful. You can also use a site called Similar Web to find out...like...you go type in any company and they'll tell you, like where the traffic is coming from, like where they're running ads, where they're generating most of their leads from and stuff like that. So that's great.

If you can't find them on there though like somebody else like well what do I do if I can't find them on ClickBank or Similar Web? Use Google! Like figure it out!

That's your job is to go out and figure out how these people are making money and to funnel hack them. Maybe it's not even Google maybe it's not digital at all. Maybe it's magazines. So maybe you can go look at the last year's worth of magazines and see what ads are always running in those magazines.

And then like look across lots of magazines right all in the same industry all in the same genre. And figure out OK this ad was running in eight different magazines in November. And it's still running in December and January and February. And. So maybe this is an ad that we need to look at. Maybe it's...it's got to be selling well. Otherwise they would take it out of the magazines.

So try and think out of the box on this one but do your homework go find the bloody red market.

Who is Worthy of Homework?

06:55 Topher: How can I tell if someone is successful. Well, first off, they're probably running ads. If they're not running ads that means that they haven't figured out how to get the ads to generate revenue which means they probably have something wrong with their funnel. Another good indicator is that they have a big following. If somebody doesn't have a good following you don't want to funnel hack them. They don't know what they're doing.

Maybe they do know what they're doing but they're just not there yet. That's fine whatever. But you don't want to funnel hack them because you know...or You don't know if they know what they're doing. If they have a big following. Obviously they are doing something.

So that's who you should funnel hack.

What Does Your Customer Want?

07:36 Topher: Stephen went on with this great story about Trey Lewellen. He sold these little widgets online. And he would watch people as they went to the site to buy. Like there's like heat maps you can see where their cursor is, where their mouse is, and stuff like that. What they're typing things like that. To try and figure out what your customers are doing.

So he would sit there and he would watch them! And he would watch them fill out the form and he would watch them like hover over the buy button but never click it. He's like, "What the heck is going on?!" But he got their phone number in the previous form so he would like call them on the phone. "Hey...saw that you tried to buy this but you didn't like what happened? Like why didn't you actually make a purchase?".

And they would be like oh well this is really awesome. I thought my brother could use it too. But like I didn't see a way to buy two of them. So I'm gonna go talk to him and try and figure it out and stuff. It's like oh you wanted two of them? OK sure. Yeah. I guess I can do that.

And so he made a way, he made an option to buy two of them and it started selling. Like lots of people bought it. He's like well, I wonder how far I could push this...like so let's try three...and then four...and then five...and then 10 and then like 100 right! And he sold all of these things because he watched what the user did and what they were needing. What problems they ran into and he found solutions to those problems.

So this is business and marketing design. It works for every business. Let's say you do a service oriented business. Go find someone who is doing that service well, and model them.

So say you're like doing lawn care. So go out and find someone who's already being really successful at lawn care and figure out who their clients are, who they're serving, what the offer is that they're giving them. That offer is the thing that is solving the problems and that's why it sells well. What it means is this person has figured out what all of the problems are and given their buyers their customers a solution to those problems.

So I'm just going to kind of go off the cuff here but like say you're doing lawn care. And maybe you have a service. You go out and you mow lawns for $35. And it's doing okay but it's not like making you tons of money. Well who else is doing things in the lawn care industry in your area. Maybe you can go learn from them.

Maybe they're working for businesses and they're charging $500 bucks to go mow the lawn. Maybe that's working for them. If that's not working for them maybe they're serving multiple ways...maybe they're serving their customers in multiple ways. So maybe they also do tree trimming; maybe they also do like seeding and chemicals for your lawn. Maybe they do, like you know, clean up, and like trash removal.

Like what services are they offering? Because that's going to be the thing that helps you. So you're going to want to offer similar services probably at similar price points if you want to compete with them. But you can also go in and add value to your offer to make it even more lucrative and then you can increase your price a little bit.

Okay so that's the key thing here. What are people buying? And how can you sell that and give them an offer?

Funnel Hacking Facebook Ads

10:41 Topher: Man...so this was all really great stuff. One of the pieces of the homework for this was to go out and actually look at a bunch of ads. So we're just going through like 10 ads on Facebook go like find somebody that was doing really well on Facebook; go see what ads they're running.

It's really easy; like you click on the page and then on the left side there's like an ads and info banner, info and ads, or some like that. You click on that and you can see what ads that Facebook page is running. So it's really easy to see what things are working like if they're running ads, those ads are probably working.

I don't think you can see... you used to be able to see like how long the ads have been running a stuff like that you can't see that anymore. But this still gives you a pretty good idea and you can go in and look at this like go in every week. Did I see this ad last week? Yeah I did. OK maybe that one worked. Maybe you can even go through and like pick like 10 people or whatever and just like screenshot all of their ads and then see how they change week to week. Something like that.

But the idea behind this was we wanted to look for the three things that are essential for selling: that's the hook, the story, and the offer. So we're supposed to go through everything one of these ads that we find. Ideally in our niche. We're going to go through and figure out what the hook, the story, and the offer was.

So I'm just going to give you guys a couple of examples of these because I thought there were really great. So one of them, the hook is: there's video of these guys and they're standing in front of a Tesla. If you don't know what a Tesla is. First off where have you been? Secondly it's an awesome, very expensive car that most people can't afford. So if you see one of these in a video, obviously you're gonna go oh hey those guys must be rich. Maybe I want to listen to them because we all want to listen to rich people because they're probably telling us how we can be like them, how we can get rich.

And that was the story. Like hey we've worked with lots of clients and we know what's working and what isn't working in the ad space. And so that was their story. Like here's how we've made money.

The offer was for seven dollars a month, we'll share this with you. Click this button and you'll be part of our membership program for $7 a month. Obviously if you click the button you go through and there's an order bump: for $22, we'll show you our six step process for seven figure ads that we've run. Then you can get the training and download this and yada yada yada. You go through and they give you more stuff to offer. That's how this works.

And so Russell encourages us to go through a couple of these funnels; at least one or two and actually buy the product and see what they were selling. So that's what I did. But I want to share with you guys just a couple more of these things.

So one of the ones that ClickFunnels themselves are running. I really liked. It's actually a video of this drunk guy and you're like wait what. Like you don't ever see videos of drunk people on Facebook almost because it's just not something that pops up very often at least not in my feed. Maybe that pops up in your...I don't know. Depends on what you're doing on the weekend I guess.

But there's drunk like high school dropout and it says, "Drunk high school dropout reads one book and like makes millions of dollars!" Right. And so you're watching this video and he's like seriously saying, "Yeah I'm drunk right now..". And he's standing in front of this house that looks beautiful. And it's in the background. He's like Yeah. And I read this one book and y'all this one boLike I'd built one funnel and it made me $2.2 million dollars. And like this house behind me is like $2.2 million dollars. This is my house now because this has made me so much money you know yada yada yada.

OK so that was the story. And then the offer for that was click the button and I'll buy you the same boRight. So that you can go out and make that kind of money too. I thought that was really great.

Another one, so this was not in my niche but I thought it was really great. This one was actually for like a curling iron. And so the hook is, "Break up with bad hair days". And it's got this video of this woman doing her hair; and I love this one. And I wanted to mention it to you guys because it kind of doesn't follow the standards that you see with a lot of videos, but it's just this woman and there's a little bit of music in the background and there's no narration...there's no voice. There's nothing ok but it still tells a story. And I want you guys to realize that that you can absolutely do this. You can still tell a story even without any words.

And it shows this woman like she's got straight plain kind of boring hair and she uses the curling iron and she curls her hair and in like 30 seconds she goes from having this boring ugly hair to beautiful, bountiful, curled hair. And then the offer is: Shop now. Go buy your own curling iron so that you can have beautiful hair. I loved that: hook, story, offer; and even a story without words can even be done.

Alright. So I thought those were all really cool. I wanted to share a couple of those with you guys.

The Fourth Market?

15:21 Topher: Last thing: I told you at the beginning that I had another idea about a specific market. So we talked about the three markets are: health, wealth, and relationships. I kind of think that there's one more market I wanted to throw it out there, get y'all's comments to see what you thought. I feel like there is another market for entertainment and maybe it falls into one of those other three but I just can't wrap my head around that like I feel like entertainment is almost its own market. And I just wanted to see what you guys think about that.

So leave comments, hit me up on Facebook; definitely go check out the Facebook page. Please like it, share it with your friends. That'll help me out a lot.

Go get subscribed to the podcast and if you guys can write a review on like iTunes or Spotify or wherever you guys are listening that also makes a huge difference. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening. Have a fantastic night.

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16:17 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel Community on Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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Intro

[Upbeat Intro Music]

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00:28 Topher: What's up, everybody! Topher here from How 2 Funnel. Today talking about the One Funnel Away Challenge, the pre-training. This is kind of Mission 5 of the pre-training.

Today is learning about Lady Boss and we watched her video. This is the webinar, which is kind of selling ClickFunnels and, you know, Russell was talking in his video about like, "I want you to watch this and see how she sells" right? Because that's really important.

So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

Honesty and Openness

00:57 Topher: But I told you guys that I want to be honest with you; want to be open and totally kind of vulnerable and just you know, have you guys know who I am. And so tonight, I just want to tell you guys honestly: I'm a little bit bummed and I'll tell you why. I've actually already recorded this entire podcast episode.

And the first time I did, it was like 21 minutes long. I thought it was amazing, it was really great. And then when I went to save it, it like didn't save and the file got corrupted...guys, I was so upset! But it still said it recorded 21 minutes of stuff. So I spent like 2 hours the other night trying to see if I can figure out how to recover this. I finally found a company that claims that they could do it and so I like uploaded the file and it recovered like 6 minutes.

Okay, cool. Well that wasn't all of it. But let me click this little button that says "Reach out to a human and see if they can fix it."

So I clicked that; I sent them a ticket and they get back to me like the next day and are like, "Yeah, um, we recovered all of the audio that's in the file. Sometimes it lies to you about like how much time is actually done right? So maybe it was the whole file and that you just think it's recorded, you know more than that..."

I'm like yeah, thank you, but...no it actually lost a lot of data because I'm getting cut off mid-sentence. Right? And I know that was like a third of the way through my whole podcast.

So I'm honestly a little bit bummed about that, but we're here and I've got the opportunity to record it again. Hopefully even at a better quality; I've got a slightly better set up. I'll share a picture with you guys of what my current podcasting studio looks like. I think it's pretty amazing.

But again, just wanted to be open and honest with you guys, let you know how I'm feeling. We're going to move on we're going to make this happen. It's going to be great.

Lady Boss

02:45 Topher: So Lady Boss. If you guys don't know who Lady Boss is, she is amazing. Her and her husband: Kaelin and Brandon Poulin built this Health Empire for women that really empowers them to lose weight and get fit and just have a better, healthier life; and they're amazing. They've helped, I don't remember how many, like 1.3 million women, or something ridiculous, to lose weight and feel healthier and be better, and obviously they made lots of money in the process. It's just an absolutely amazing story.

This is my second time to watch the video and I watched the whole thing through again because it was just so good. Right? Like, just to hear this story, to hear all of the amazing things.

So the homework was like what is the one thing in this story that she says that really stuck with you? Okay, and so they're broke and they've got like no money, they show a picture of their apartment where they're like literally sleeping on a mattress on the floor and they've like got nothing else. And they go from that and they're like, "Okay...well I don't know how we're going to buy groceries next month", right?

And so they see this like webinar by Russell and he's like, "Okay, just give me like $2,000 and I will show you guys how to make money online." And they're like, "Ahhh! This makes so much sense."

Like they watch the webinar and they're like, "We've got to do this!" And they go back and forth and they like wind-up kind of buying it and she's like, "No! We have to get the whole thing!" So she goes back, she puts it like on a credit card or something. They buy this training.

And then they sit down and they watch the training, and the thing that stuck with me is: what they would do is: they would watch the video, and then they would pause the video, and then they would go out and execute on whatever the idea was...whatever the strategy was...whatever whatever Russell said in the video, they would go and they would do that.

Ok, and they were not allowed to unpause the video until they were finished. So they would watch the video; pause; do the thing; unpause; watch the video; pause do the thing and they just did that until they got through all the videos and they had this entire product in this entire funnel, like, laid out.

What was my takeaway?

04:50 Topher: So, why did this resonate with me? That's the next question. Why do you think it gave you a reaction? Right? What about it relates back to your own life? Business? Fears? Dreams? Hopes? Etcetera.

Okay guys, I don't know about you but I struggle with like getting stuff done. Right? Like I'm always the same person who is like, "Oh yeah! That course sounds great. Let me go buy that for $50 bucks or $20 bucks or a $100 bucks or whatever."

And then like I get it and I see all of the content and I sit there like, okay...now what? And I wind up never actually doing anything with it and it just sits there. It is just a total waste of money. And so this really resonated with me because they actually went out and executed on it. They really utilized the materials. They utilized the lessons, and the learning, and the tutorials to actually build their empire. And that's what I'm really really trying to do with this One Funnel Away Challenge, right?

So like every night I am committed to doing the homework. I am committed to working on my offer. I am committed to all of these things to get this done and make this happen because I want to succeed.

We talked about that in a few of the episode before, about how we have to change our belief and we have to absolutely believe that we can do this. You guys I absolutely believe that I can do this and I believe that you can too if you guys want to do this.

Okay. So this stuff is really great.

This is one reason I actually love the One Funnel Away Challenge is because as I'm going through this, they give you small nuggets everyday, like you can't move on. You can't go past this stuff right? But now you have something to do every day to work towards your goals. And that is fantastic. This is like the first thing that I've ever done where I don't just buy it and like throw it away after two days, right?

So, I'm really excited about that. I think it's this is probably the best way to learn ClickFunnels I have ever seen. I'm super excited about it!

The Three Pilars of Selling Anything

06:36 Topher: Then! Stephen's coaching...y'all...Stephen, I love Stephen. He's like, "Booooom!" at every single episode, it's how he starts out and he breaks people's eardrums. It's amazing! But he's so energetic because he loves what he's doing, right?

So the thing that I got from Stephen's coaching, like, he had so much; I can't even tell you how many notes I have on all of the stuff. But Stephen's coaching: he talks about the secrets of psychological marketing. And this stuff is really amazing. These are some things that I have never heard before. Obviously, I don't know hardly anything about sales, so most of this is new to me, but I think this is some really great stuff.

So one of the things he says and I wrote this down like word-for-word because I think it's absolute gold, right!

"Sales, Marketing and Closing are all three separate things that you need to become good at."~ Stephen Larsen

All three: Sales, Marketing and Closing are separate things. Okay, and he gives these definitions for all three of these that are absolutely genius. They're spot on and they make so much sense.

Okay. So marketing: is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a sale.

Obviously our intent here is to sell something right. And so you have to take the person's preconceived notions and beliefs and change them so that they're willing to buy.

Sales: is presenting an offer and overcoming objections.

Okay. It's like they've got all these excuses and you have to crush these excuses, right? You have to give them a solution for these problems, right?

So that was the second one. Marketing is first one: the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a sale. Sales is the second one: presenting an offer and overcoming objections.

The third one is closing, and I love this.

He says, "Cash is in the closing."

This is logical reasons why you should act now.

So closing is like actually making the sale and getting the money, right? And I think that is like spot on: Cash is absolutely in the closing.

If you can't close you're never going to sell, you're never going to have money, and so you got to be good at that. But you've also got to be good at the marketing and the sales piece.

Okay, go through this again:

Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the intent of a sale.
Sales is presenting an offer and overcoming objections.
And closing is logical reasons why you should act now.

This means so much to me. I absolutely don't even know like where to go from here. But there's there's some amazing other things that he does. So Stephen knows exactly where we should go with this right?

The Brain's Three Stages of Sales

09:07 Topher: So he says selling is 100% emotional, right? But you can make people think that it's logical. People like to be sold to. It gives them a high; it gets their endorphins and their dopamines going, right. And they actually enjoy it.

So for every person that you're trying to sell to, you have to ask like, what are those person's current beliefs and how can I change them? And the brain experiences sales in a specific order. And this was also, again, something I had never heard: three steps.

So step one is the vehicle: I see that this product could actually work.

How many people believed that the iPhone could work?

I want to go over this example because this is just absolutely amazing. And as Stephen was going through this, I kept going back to the original launch of the iPhone. I don't know if you guys saw it, but if you haven't seen it go like look on YouTube; I'm sure it's on there.

Where Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone. Steve was an absolute master salesman, and he did such an amazing job with this. So as I was going through this, all I could think of was like the vehicle: I see that this product could actually work.

The next one is internal beliefs: I believe that I could actually use this product or that this product would work for me.

And then the last one is external: I have the resources capable to do it. So time...support from your spouse...money...whatever.

The iPhone Launch

10:36 Topher: And so Steve Jobs, absolutely, I think I crushed all three of these and so I want to just kind of go through this with you because this was on my mind the whole time and it was amazing.

So step one: vehicle.

It's a phone right? I don't know how many of you guys remember this, but when the iPhone first came out all of the other phones on the market, like, you know, the big players like Blackberry was huge. I think Samsung was even there. Nokia was massive, right.

All of these big players, they were all saying: No...the iPhone...like, Apple can't make a phone...

Because they had heard rumors, right "Apple making a phone." Yeah, whatever...Apple can't make a phone. They do like MP3 players, right? There's no way that they can break into this market, okay.

So all of the people sitting in that stadium or whatever when they were watching the keynote were Steve Jobs talks about the iPhone and he introduces it to them. All of these people had these preconceived notions, these preconceived beliefs, that Apple can't build an iPhone. Like, it just won't be a good phone.

So the first thing he has to do is break that, okay and so he's like, "Okay. Well obviously people don't know if it works. So we've got to show them that it works." And so people are like well, what is a phone? Like what does a phone have to do? Well, it has to make calls.

Okay. So let's make a live call in front of everybody and show them that it works. Right? So he calls Starbucks, right?

And this poor Barista...he's like "Yeah, I need 3,000 lattes...Sorry! Wrong number...bye!" Click. And you can hear the barista on the other end like, "Whaaattt?!?"

And so it was this awesome experience for all of them! Everybody laughed, obviously. I don't know if it was planned, or not. I don't know if they like called the Starbucks beforehand to let them know, "By the way, we're doing this thing..."

But it was a really great way of showing people that the phone actually works and crushing those preconceived notions; those beliefs they held that Apple couldn't make a phone, right? Hey, here's a phone. It works. Let me show you how it works. That was absolutely amazing.

The second thing right? So that was vehicle. The second thing is internal: I believe that I can actually use it too, right?

And, man, this one was the big kicker for me!

So, if you remember all of those other phones beforehand, like they all had a keyboard and they all had this little like trackpad thingy that you could use. It was like a little button or something...not even a button. Like a little pointer or something that you could like move around and move the mouse on the screen.

If it was one of those kind. If it wasn't one of those kind, if you didn't have a fancy one, you might have like buttons on the side that let you scroll and then you could hit the menu button or maybe it had like up and down arrows and an okay button, something like that, right? It was like really complicated to try and use this thing.

And when Steve Jobs is talking about this is like, you know, "It's a beautiful design. It's amazing. It's great. And if you want to scroll..."

We're all sitting here looking at it like, "Okay...I don't see a place for a stylus...like how the heck are you supposed to use this thing? There's no buttons on the side to let you scroll. Like how am I supposed to interact with this thing that's an entire screen."

He's like, "All you have to do is put your finger on it...and flick."

And holy crap!! Like we take that for so much granted right now, but at the time that was revolutionary guys! That was absolutely revolutionary and amazing. And the crowd knew it!

They went wild, like, "OH MY GOD!" And you could hear everyone screaming because that was so simple. And like the physics worked right. Like you flick it and it just like really pretty in a nice smooth motion that slowed down.

When you got to the bottom, like he scrolled up a little bit too far and it like bounced back into place, like a rubber band. Like kind of a physical world item. And nothing...nobody had ever seen anything like this.

So what was he doing there? That was the internal one. Where he was saying "This is simple...anybody can use this. If you have a finger, you can use the iPhone."

That was absolutely amazing!

Third one: external. Do I have the resources capable to do this?

So a lot of people in the audience are thinking, "Okay. This is amazing. I definitely want one, but man it's got to be expensive. It's an Apple product. Right? All Apple products are expensive, I can't afford that."

And this is one of the ways is that I think Apple did really well here.

So first off, obviously they're like, well, you know, some of those were going to be saying well, "I don't have the right cable for it or I don't have a pair of headphones to use with it... whatever..."

We'll throw it in the box. You will have everything you need. Here, we'll give it to you.

You just buy this, and you'll have everything you need to use the iPhone and be successful with the iPhone, right? And so that gets some people that may have been like saying, "Oh, well I don't have all the right stuff..."

"Cool will give it to you. No problem."

Then the price comes in. Okay. Do I have the money to afford this? And here's what they did that was absolutely gold.

They worked with AT&T to subsidize the cost of the phone, right? So yeah, you wound up paying a little bit more per month on your data plan or on your voice plan and whatever. But, you got the phone right now and you paid it off over time, essentially. And at the end of two years, if you signed a two-year contract, the phone was yours; you got to keep it as long as you made your payments on time and stuff, and you got to have the iPhone.

The best, most amazing, most technologically-advanced phone right now, even if you don't have a whole lot of money.

And like everybody could do that right. Like almost everybody, right? So again, this goes back to Apple wasn't targeting people who were paying $20 for a crappy piece of junk phone, right? He was targeting people who could actually kind of somewhat afford $500 for a phone, but $500 that point in time was still expensive, so they found a way to say, "Okay. Well, maybe you can do like a $100 bucks a month and add it to your data plan."

And then everybody can afford...well a lot more people can afford it, a lot of the people who had money...who were making good money could definitely afford that.

So all three of those I think Steve Jobs and Apple did exceedingly well when they were doing that sales pitch, right?

And so I was thinking about that the whole time I was listening to Stephen talk about all of this stuff and god, it was just absolutely amazing.

Go Watch the Video

17:03 Topher: So that's what I have for you guys tonight.

If you haven't seen the video of Steve Jobs introducing iPhone, seriously, like pause the podcast go watch that right now. It is absolutely worth watching every second of it to see how Steve does this and how he's doing all three of these things: the vehicle, the internal, the external. And how he's doing the marketing, and the sales, and the closing; overcoming those objections and stuff.

And the closing was, "Hey, you can go buy it right now because we're working with AT&T to give you that subsidy."

So he does all of this so well, and to be able to look at it from this perspective now and see all of these different things working together and to see how Apple did it, how Steve Jobs did it.

Man! Like, now moving forward, I'm going to be watching sales videos in a totally new light to try and figure this out right and say, okay. "Well, what was the vehicle here? What was the internal? What was the external?"

You know, and I would encourage you guys to do the same thing because I think it's going to help us all become way better and actually sell things online and make lots of money and be able to help other people do that.

So thank you guys for listening. As always if you have questions or comments, hit me up on the Facebook group, or email, or wherever you guys can get a hold of me. I'm always happy to answer questions.

If you guys could like the Facebook page, share it with your friends; that would help out greatly.

And, if you're subscribed to the podcast, go ahead and write a review of the podcast; that also helps. On iTunes or Spotify, wherever you're looking at it.

And if you're not subscribed, why not!?

Click the button and get subscribed! Because there's going to be some amazing content coming your way.

All right. Thanks guys. Have a wonderful night.

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18:47 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel Community on Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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00:28 Topher: What's up, everybody! Topher here from How 2 Funnel! And man, I am so excited about mission number four from the One Funnel Away Challenge.

I just got through watching all the videos and really I'm super pumped about some of the stuff Stephen said today. It was like a 30 minute video. I watched it at 1.75 speed which is insanely fast because Stephen already talks incredibly fast.

Occasionally I even miss some of the words that he's saying because he's just soo energetic and soo fast and it's amazing and listening to at 1.75 speed is just like super sonic, right?

So anyway, I'm so excited and I've been pumped about this and it literally got my heart rate elevated. And so I wanted to do my podcast about this tonight and give you guys some of my perspective on this.

10x Your Business

01:14 Topher: So what Russell was talking about in his video...It's like a one hour presentation. I also watched it at like 1.5 speed just so I can get it done with a little quicker and it's about 10xing your business. Okay, so if you're making you, know $10,000 a year right now or $10,000 a month, let's get you to $100,000 a month.

If you're making $100,000, let's get you to $1,000,000 a month. Or maybe, you know, you're only making $1,000 a month and you want to be making $10,000. Let's make that happen!

So it's to 10x your business and that's what he was talking about and all of the different ways, all the different things that you have to think about when you're thinking about growing your business.

01:50 Topher: So one of the things that I love about ClickFunnels is that they took on absolutely zero funding; they had no venture-capital. They didn't even have money from their own pocket that they invested in this. They built ClickFunnels from the ground up using funnels to sell itself.

And this was the key. So at one point, you know, they're making like a hundred million dollars...they're one of the fastest growing companies and they have all these people saying, "Hey! We want to invest in you. Take our money!" All these VCs that are like, "You guys are growing incredibly fast...take our money and let's let's do this!"

And so, they're going, "We don't really need that money." Like, "We're doing this...we're doing the thing...why should we take money?" But one day they're like, okay, so everyone's talking about valuation. How much is ClickFunnels valued at?

So they sit down with one of these VC guys and he comes in and he's like, "Okay tell me: how much does it cost you to get a new customer?" And he was like, "Well, you know our ads run and it's like $20 bucks for a new customer."

"Okay, wow, $20...that's amazing." All right, so he's doing math in his head. "Okay...so if we give you like 30 million dollars, you know, we can translate that into...Okay. Well, so what do you make off that?" Russell's like, "Well for free, right. That costs me $20 to get them into a free trial and that's how they started."

And that was okay. But you know, you're getting free trial. So that's not that great. You still haven't gotten a paying customer. You might get some paying customers from that but really the thing that made ClickFunnels really amazing and really launch was that they realized they need a front end funnel.

Which is the book DotCom Secrets and they've got Expert Secrets and a couple of other things that they sell.

The Front End Funnel

03:37 Topher: Basically they're like. Okay, we'll ship this book to you for free, just pay shipping & handling; we'll give you the book for free, and then as you go you say, "Yeah sure I want that book! It's like, what, $6 for shipping. Absolutely! I'll take a free book to teach me how to make millions of dollars online, sure."

Well you get the free book, you go through the funnel and the next page is an upsell. So, they say, "Cool you bought this. So do you want this other thing also? It's like $12."

"Okay, cool. Yeah. Sure. I'll do that."

"OK awesome! Well now you should go sign up for my podcast." Right, and from the podcast they get signed up for something else and so for like, every person that goes through this funnel: Yeah, it cost like $20 in ads to get them through the funnel. But then you make $20 on that person, and then from your podcast, from all the email lists that they signed up for...from the book...

Literally! It's in the book! It says, "Go use ClickFunnels. Here's how to make lots of money: you use ClickFunnels".

So they pay $20 for the ads, and then they basically make $20.

So this funnel breaks even and it pays for their advertising. And the VC didn't get this. He said, "Okay, that's...what? I don't...I don't understand..." And Russell's like, "No dude...Yeah, you don't understand!"

"We put money into this and we get the exact same amount of money out. What that means is we never have to pay for advertising; we can advertise as much as we want, because for everything that we advertise we don't even have to sell our main product. We're not even trying to sell that; we're selling other smaller things that paid for the advertising."

Whoever Can Spend the Most Money to Acquire a Customer Wins

05:10 Topher: "Which means we can out-advertise our competitors."

And that is the key. So that was one of the big things that he said in his video was you have to be able to basically out-buy your competition. Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins.

Right? So if you can spend $100,000 to acquire customers because you're making $100,000 immediately to pay for those ads. Absolutely! If you can spend $1 on Monday and you get $2 on Tuesday; well, how much money would you put into that, so that you can sell your product right?

You put as much as you can! If you only have $10 you put $10 into it, because then you'll get $20 right? Or whatever and it's just going to pay for itself. And then as you start getting all of these people on your email list, you get them on your podcast, you get them getting your book...whatever; some of those people will convert to paying customers and you basically just got them for free!

Because your advertising will totally 100% pay for it! And that is the key to ClickFunnels success. And that is what Russell was trying to get across to everybody.

And that was just like blowing people's mind. Right. And that is really the secret he shares is: how to build your funnel, so that you have this front end funnel that makes a little bit of money to help you pay for the advertising to get them to buy your main product. So that you can spend as much money as you want on advertising, and it doesn't affect your bottom line on the revenue that gets generated from your products.

So that was like amazing thing number one!

I'm learning so much from these videos, I don't know if you guys can tell that I'm excited. I'm really excited about these videos!

The Ultimate Litmus Test

06:48 Topher: Then I went and watched Stephen talking about this, and, man I almost wish that I had watched Stephen first because he talks about the reason that Russell does some things he does in these videos.

So Stephen is great! He used to work for ClickFunnels, he used to build funnels. He used to do a lot of stuff for ClickFunnels and he quit over a year ago, like December 31st of not this past year but the previous year. And on January 1st, he wanted to be like the litmus test to say that this framework of selling works. Right?

So what he did was: January 1st, he sent out an email to his list saying, "Hey guys! I'm going to run a webinar and I just want to see if you guys are going to be interested in it."

And some people registered. And what's cool is, he had no idea what the webinar was going to be about! He had absolutely no clue!

So on January 2nd he's got all these people signed up. He was like, okay. Let's see. What should I do on my webinar? And instead of making something up, he went up to the people who registered and he talked to them, and he's like, "Hey! What do you guys want to hear about? What should I talk about? What value can I provide to you?"

And they told him; they gave him ideas. So that's what he did in his webinar.

And then he did some other stuff, and he came up with an actual product to sell. And so he did another webinar and in that webinar, he sold the product. And he made $13,000 from that one webinar. It was ridiculous. It's insane!

And that was on January 4th or something. Thursday or Friday, right

Like less than a week like he's already made $13,000 by following this framework. So he did it again the next week and he said, "I'm doing another webinar; what do you guys want to know about?" And so they would register and they would tell him.

And then he would sell that to them and then he would actually build something to give them in return and they got a lot of value out of that, and he made money. And it was absolutely mind-boggling and what he talked about in his video; Stephen was saying: What the One Funnel Away Challenge is designed to do, is to teach you how to sell.

The Three Keys of Sales

08:51 Topher: So there's there's three key things right? You've got: number one is the statement [also known as "message"; I couldn't remember the word when I was recording this podcast 😃].

Like, what's the problem? What value am I providing to you? And you've got to be able to craft that statement to people.

The second piece: is the actual offer. Okay, so; here's the value that you need; here's what you're missing; here is the thing that is going to provide you that value. Here's what I can actually offer you for $37.95 to fill that gap in your life; to do whatever you need it to do.

So you've got your statement, then you've got your offer, and then the funnel is just the delivery mechanism for that. It's the place where people can go and get your offer after reading your statement. And so that's all that a funnel is.

And what he talks about in the video; it's so amazing...he's talking about how Russell does all of these things in his training and in his webinars. The way that he uses his voice, the way he's like, "Hey is that cool? You guys like that, right?" Or talking about, "What you got to do...any good entrepreneur, you've got to pull out your wallet and you've got to pay for their product and go see what they're selling." Right?

He says all of these things in his webinar that are specifically designed to get you into a buying mode.

And that is what the One Funnel Away Challenge teaches you is: how to actually sell products.

One to Many, not One to One

10:18 Topher: The last thing that I took away from this was that is not a one-to-one sale. Okay, it's not: Hey, I'm Topher and I'm talking to you John and I want to sell you this product. It's not the door-to-door type of sales. It's a one-to-many sell.

So that is a different sell than a one-to-one relationship. Okay? And you have to be good at both obviously, but if you want to make good money and make money online, you have to be good at the one-to-many sale.

Because that is what is going to get you many buyers which in turn gives you more money. If I can sell something to somebody for $100 that sits in front of me; that's great.

But if I can sell something for $50 to a thousand people, I'm going to be in a much better financial position, and that's what we want to get to.

So that's what Russell does in his videos and that's the tips and tricks that we're going to learn throughout this One Funnel Away Challenge is how to sell in that one-to-many sales position.

And obviously we going to learn how to do it inside ClickFunnels. I know there's going to be a huge piece of it. I already know a little bit about that. I'm excited to learn more, but really, what I'm excited about is learning how to sell, especially in this environment.

11:32 Topher: So anyway; that was my take away from tonight. I hope you guys appreciate it. I hope you guys found something insightful in this and I hope that I'm delivering value to you guys. As always if you guys have comments or questions or feedback; anything I can do to deliver even more value.

If you want to hear more of these; less of these whatever; just let me know in the comments or shoot me an e-mail or Facebook. Whatever you want to do. However is most convenient to you; I want to hear from you because I want to serve you.

All right. Thanks for listening. Have a great night.

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12:07 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel Community on Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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00:28 Topher: What’s up everybody? Topher here from How 2 Funnel for mission number 3 of the One Funnel Away Challenge.

I am really excited today. This one kind of stuck a nerve with me. It's actually pretty short. Which is pretty cool. I like when they are short. Because you can get through them a lot faster, but this one is really really important and the kind of the center piece of this one was "Who" not "How".

Alright and I want to explain what that means. Because it’s incredibly important as you are beginning to build your business.

Mission #3 - The Who, Not The How

00:58 Topher: So you know your business. You know how to sell your product. You can sit there and say, this is why you should buy my product, right. That is kind of your role. Because it’s your thing, and you are the best person to sell your product, okay.

But there is a lot of other things that go into building a business and maybe those aren't your strong suits, right? And a lot of times as entrepreneurs we really get caught up in this idea that we have to do it all ourselves. And sometimes, that’s like, "Oh crap I can’t afford all these things. I need to save some money...I got to learn Photoshop and figure out how to do graphic design right? I need a logo or I need this web graphic." Or whatever...

And it’s tempting to say, yeah totally, you can do it yourself for free, right? You just got to learn all those things. But God! How much time do we waste learning something new? And so that's what’s this whole "who vs. how thing" is. It’s not "how can I do this", it’s "who can do this for me,so that I can concentrate on the things that really matter".

And you look at this and you say “oh crap" that means I've got to hire people right? Well no, not all. There is so many sites. Like the internet right now is the best place to be if you are starting a business. Because there are so many ways that you can get stuff done super cheap. There is like fiverr.com, where for starting for $5 you can get a logo. Okay and maybe you have to pay a little bit extra if you want the vector version of it, so that you can scale it up and make it really big. Then like throw it on a billboard or something right?

But you are trying to like another $5 like $10 to get started with this okay. And I had some logos done recently for like $40 right? Which is like the high quality stuff and I found somebody who’s like doing it for years and has like a 4.8 star rating or whatever. But this start at like $40 to get started right?

I know how much your time is worth? But it takes me like 8 to 10 hours to even like dream up a really crappy logo. I am not a graphic designer. I am totally 100% a computer kind of guy. Back-end I can do coding and stuff like that. You ask me to that, I am totally your guy.

But when it comes to designing a logo, like I can barely work Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, or lot of these other programs? So instead of figuring out like how can I do this, instead of going and learning how to do something; ask the question: Who could do this for me in a cheap manner, so that I can focus on what needs to happen?

But Where Do I Find Them?

03:36 Topher: So Mission 3 in One Funnel Away Challenge, Russell is kind of pitching this Funnel Rolodex that he has put together. Which is just a bunch of people that can do all these things.

You don't know how to write sales copy? Boom! You got somebody who can write sales copy. You don’t know how to write headlines? Man we got somebody to do that. You don’t know logos and graphics? We can do that for you.

And it’s really cool. He has this whole list that you are supposed go through to say okay I can do these things. I could offer my services, on the Funnel Rolodex. And that’s a way for me to pay for all these things, right.

Okay I can't afford $40 for a logo...well what if I can write headlines for somebody? So every time I write a headline, I can get a logo or graphic done; right! That’s how you fund your business!

And he is talking about how when he was doing all of this, he doesn't have this stuff available. He didn't even know what he was doing. So he would like go out and mow lawns on the weekends. Or early mornings or whatever to make a little extra money to pay for these things okay. So it’s not like I'll go throw it on credit cards right. Its figure out ways to make the money so you can go, do the things that you need to build your business.

And so he is really encouraging people to go out and see, out of this list of things, what can you do so that other people can't do that you can offer as a service to them? Kind of an exchange for the things that you need to get done to build your business okay.

One of the cool things I like about this is he is specifically left off "funnel builder" from the list okay. Because that’s the whole point of the challenge is to like show you how to build the funnels. So you shouldn’t offer that as a service and you shouldn't need that as a service. Because that’s what’s he is teaching you!

And I love that that he left that off. I also kind of hate it. Because I can totally build tunnels for other people. But the whole point of the challenge is to do it yourself and be able to do it yourself. Because it’s so simple and because you are the person who should be building the funnels. Because you know your product and you know how to sell your product. And if you don’t, that’s what this challenge is going to teach you!

The Topher Strategy

05:28 Topher: So anyway, the thing that I did, I got a design done on Fiver; I got a logo. Actually for How 2 Funnel. You guys are probably going to see it, if you haven't already; and it was okay. It turned out alright. I'm not...particularly fond of it.

So I reached out to a friend of mine who did some graphic design work in the past. He is pretty darn cheap. He is like $40 an hour and he is going to do some updates to it and make it look really awesome, make it look really professional. I am really excited about that! To see what he comes back with. Super pumped that he is doing it. I want to shout out to him say thank you very much! I am really excited to see how that goes.

But you guys, just think about who can do these things instead of how can I do them myself. And if you have questions about it, if you're like, "Dude, I don’t know such and such. I need this service done and I don’t know...". Reach out to me. Because I probably know somebody and I could point them to you and they would be happy to do it and they will love to get a recommendation to help you out.

So give me a shout out on Facebook, email, whatever. Let me know how I can serve you if you guys have needs; and obviously if you guys have questions about funnel building, I can answer a lot of them right now. Especially if they are technical. And then as I go through these challenge, my goal is to be able to answer tons and tons of questions and practically everything that you ask about building funnels and how to sell your product.

Alright, that is it for tonight. Thank you guys so much for listening. Love you guys all, have a great night.

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06:56 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel Community on Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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00:27 Topher: What's up everybody! Topher here from How 2 Funnel!

Today, I'm going to be talking about Mission #2 from the One Funnel Away Challenge which changes your life and changes your thinking about business so that you can make money online.

Again, I'm just doing this to share my experiences with you so that you guys know what this is all about and just to open this up, and be really transparent, because I want to show you guys a little bit more about me.

I've always wanted to help people, and I had a friend of mine, D Grant, encourage me recently to just get out there and show myself a little bit more. He said, "I really think that once people get to know you; obviously they like you. And they want to do things with you; they want to partner with you; they want to see what you have to offer. So you gotta put yourself out there. You gotta get in front of people to show them who you are."

So that's what I'm doing with this podcast, specifically this is about the One Funnel Away Challenge.

Mission #2 - Failure

01:22 Topher: And today, I'm going to talk about Mission #2 which is interestingly all about failure. So many times, we hear all of these stories of success. Like this guy made $100,000,000 in one year; and this guy made $10,000,000 in 2 weeks; and this guy, man he made $1,000,000 in 24 hours. And those stories are amazing, and they show you what is possible when you really know what you're doing and you follow the right way of doing it; you follow the framework and you make it happen.

But, there's also a lot of failures that the salespeople don't like to talk about a whole lot. So I was really excited to see this one from Russell where he's being really transparent and open and honest with us, to tell us about all of his failures and how over the years, that has transformed him.

But it's also been really really hard. And I don't know about you, but I think we've all had failures; I know I have. I have tried multiple times to do things, and it just never worked out. I've bought software thinking, this is going to be the one thing that helps me make money online. And it totally flopped.

Or you invest in some business and maybe it's a new cryptocurrency, I don't know. But you invest in something and it just doesn't pan out like you want it to. And so you fail; and that weighs on you, and so just hearing what Russell had to say about this was amazing.

Success as Failure

02:53 Topher: One of the things that he said that really struck me was when he was talking about one of his successes and how it was kinda a failure. He wasn't doing that great, he made like a couple thousand here, he made like $10,000 over here and he wasn't doing a ton of money, but he finally figured out one thing that worked! And he started hiring his friends, and they got together; and they were like, "Dude! I want to do what you're doing! You're so amazing! Give me a job and I'll work for you. I'll help you do this."

He said, "Cool; yeah; come on over!"

So he gets this one employee and then his friends come over and he's like, "Yeah sure, absolutely you guys can have a job too! We've got $100,000 it's all good!"

And so he starts this and he has like 6 or 7 employees, and one day, he's realizing; holy crap...these guys want to be paid and stuff; every 2 weeks! It's like a job or something. I can't just make the money when I make the money and pay them...they want this money up front.

And so he's paying them, and he's giving them this money; but he's not making any money, because he's just hanging out and talking and doing fun stuff. And building funnels that aren't really doing anything yet. They're talking about funnel building, but haven't really built one to actually make the money.

And he's talking about, okay guys; I don't know what to do...

And one day it's around Christmas time and he's putting up the lights on his house. And he doesn't have any idea what he's doing...they turn out horrible. Whenever you hire a professional, there's people that actually do this and get paid to do this, and they make them all straight and perfect and pretty and match the colors and things. He didn't do any of that, because any time you're doing something yourself; you just don't know what you're doing...

So he's tacking these up, and he's using a stapler or something...and he's even putting the staples through the wires and he's shorting the lights and it's horrible.

And he can't figure out what he's going to do because he knows that he's about to go bankrupt, and he's gotta call of his employees and tell them, like, "Hey guys...there may not be Christmas for you; I'm not actually going to be able to pay you guys." And that's just weighing on him heavily. Because those people depended on him, and I think as business owners, that's something that we all fear. Getting people to depend on us, but not being able to take care of them.

So, he's sitting there just trying to think of what to do, and I honestly don't remember what he said the idea was but he had this idea that came to him.

And so he thought through this, and he keeps thinking and he gets more energy about it; and he's like, "Yeah...this could work! I think this could work!"

And so he calls and texts all of his employees and says, "Hey, by the way; you don't know this, but we're about to go bankrupt, and there's no money left, and I've got this really awesome idea; I think it's going to save us! I need everybody to be there early tomorrow at 7:00am. We're gonna go through this, and we're gonna figure it out. Hope you have a great night!"

Of course, they're all like, "Wait, what!? We're going bankrupt?! Why didn't you tell us sooner?" And being kinda scared like people do when you say, "Hey, there's no more money..." I've been in that position before; it's not a cool position.

Anyway, they all get together the next day; and they start working through this, and the idea pans out and it saved their company. And not only did it save their company, but they went on to do great things! And they started this call center and he wound up having like 100 employees at one point; where they were making tons of money, and things were going great...and he kinda looked at it and said, "Is this really what I want to be doing? Is this the kind of business that I want to build?"

And, some things happened and the merchant accounts that they were using got locked out, and so they had made the money, but the merchant accounts weren't giving it to them, because there were some new laws in place or something. Whatever it was, it froze all of their assets. And he had 100 employees that he couldn't pay.

Long story short, it went way down hill from there. All of his employees left basically, all but 6 of them, left and went to the call center across the street that was making money. And he had to start all over; and he had money that he owed to the IRS. I think he owed like $150,000 to the IRS. And he had to figure out a way to pay that.

So just the stories there of coming back and building new businesses and just picking yourself up after the failure, and making sure that you build something that you actually care about, that you're invested in. That you want to support and that makes you want to get out of bed every day and go into the office and do the work to make something awesome.

What are your goals?

07:39 Topher: So that was the thing that really stuck out to me in Mission #2. This idea of making sure that whatever you're working on, you're actually cognizant about the goal, the mission; where you're headed. And saying, "Yes! That is where I want to be! That is the company I want to build! That is the company that I want to go to work for every day because I'm helping people; I'm uplifting people. I'm doing the things that I want to do. It's making my life better; it's making my family's life better, it's making my friends' lives better. It's making the world a better place."

You've got to be cognizant of your goals as you're building your business to make sure that you're always on track. So, the challenge for this mission was to come up with something that helps you in that process. For me, it was making sure that you track your goals.

So I came up with this image that has this guy on this mountain top. And he's looking out, and you can tell that he's just climbed the mountain. He's taking a rest because he was successful and he's done really well, and he's made his goal!

So I just put some text next to it that says, "Stay True to Your Goals." So that's what I want to encourage you guys to do. This is also encouraging to me. I want you guys to hold me accountable. If you ever look at me and say, "Topher, man, this is not at all what you said you were going to build. This is not what you said you wanted to do!"

I want you to call me out on it! Because I want to build a business that makes the world a better place. That helps people to make the world a better place.

So as I'm going through this, I want you guys to stay to true to your goals; figure out what they are. Make sure you always have them in mind. Write them on a sticky note. Write them on the white board in your office. Write them on something you see every single day, so that as you're going through this and you're building your business, THAT is what you're working towards, and you never lose sight of that.

So Stay True to Your Goals!

Alright, that's all I have for tonight. Thank you guys so much for listening. Join us tomorrow for Mission #3! I'm so excited, I can't wait to keep this going and see how you guys like it!

Leave me comments or feedback, wherever you guys can find me! You can email me, you can Facebook, Twitter, whatever. I want to hear what you guys think about this, and how I can make it better, how I can make it more relevant to you guys.

Thanks so much!
[Upbeat Outro Music]

10:09 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel Community on Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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[Upbeat Intro Music]

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00:27 Topher: Hey, what's up everybody! Topher here from How 2 Funnel!

Guys, I am so pumped right now.

I've been going through this One Funnel Away Challenge and tonight I decided that I want to go ahead and start a podcast to share with you guys my experiences going through this because I'm just watching these videos, and I'm learning soo much!

And the energy that these guys are providing when they give you these coaching videos and these training videos is just so amazing that I just have to share it with somebody, and I want that to be all of the people that I care about; all of the people that follow me.

You guys are special to me and I just wanted to do something to let you guys know what this is about and why I'm so excited about it. And maybe, how it can help you guys too.

So my plan for this is going to be really simple, really short. I've never done a podcast before so I'm sorry if it's like total crap you guys! Just let me know if I can do something to improve it.

I think I've got a pretty good mic, and I think I've got a decent setup for this, but let me know if you're like, "Oh man, the audio quality is terrible! Please do something about that!" Or if you want it to be longer or shorter, if I'm too loud, if I'm too energetic; which I don't think is possible because I sound...so amazingly laborious whenever I hear myself talking, so I'm trying to do this with enough energy so that when it comes out the other side, it's actually a good quality and something that you guys want to listen to.

The One Funnel Away Challenge

01:48 Topher: But my plan is to do one per day. So the One Funnel Away Challenge is 30 days to get your funnel, your business off the ground and making money! Getting actually revenue coming in and trying to actually make a profit and do something that builds itself up instead of having to take money beforehand and put a lot of money into something.

The idea behind a funnel is really like: take the product that you have, or maybe you don't even have a product; maybe you're selling somebody else's product. Maybe you're just an affiliate marketer and you don't even have something to sell, but you're selling something for somebody else and it's learning how to do that in a way that makes you money immediately so that you can turn around and use that money to build your business.

And this flips everything upside-down on its head! That's not how people tell you to build a business. They tell you to go out and get VC funding, like you have to have millions of dollars. You have to hire people and sales people and programmers, hire copywriters; whatever. And this just completely flips that upside-down and says, "No, you have a product; you have something that you can sell...you need to learn what the message is, how to tell people about the product and then make an offer to them that they can't refuse. And then build a funnel, which is just the delivery mechanism for your message and for your offer."

That's all that a funnel is! It's a specialized website that helps you sell your product to the people who need it and deliver value to them. So that's what a funnel is, and this challenge is all about getting that funnel up-and-running in 30 days so that you can be profitable.

So, I love the way that the've done this. They are actually setting up missions, kinda like a Mission Impossible thing and they have some really cool graphics along with that; so it's pretty fun.

Mission #1 - Crushing False Beliefs

03:33 Topher: So Mission #1 is really awesome, it's about Crushing False Beliefs and I'm going through this, and the introspection that I have with it is deep and amazing because I'm sitting here thinking, "Okay...what am I afraid of with starting my own company? What could go wrong? Why am I scared to do this? Why haven't I pulled the trigger and made this happen yet?"

And I came out with a couple of things, and I think that maybe these are things for everybody, right? I don't think that I am the only one who has these issues, so I just want to be real with you guys and kinda share what's on my heart about this and be totally honest about my fears.

Fear #1 - Time is Ticking

04:17 Topher: One of my biggest fears is that I may just not have enough time! We are super-busy in this day and age; we always have things planned, and I know that my family especially we have like Wednesday night church; we've got Sunday church...I almost never get to sleep in, and that's a big thing for me; because I love to sleep in!

But we've got stuff to do all of the time like birthday parties and Christmas parties. Thankfully that's all over now, but there's just always something to do. It seems like every weekend we have something that we have to do.

And as entrepreneurs, a lot of the times, we're trying to go out and make money. We're trying to build our business. We're going to events or we're doing a conference, or we're talking to people. Whatever we're trying to do, we have legitimate reasons that we're doing all of these things because we want to make money; to make our lives better.

And so you sit here and go, "I don't know if I have an hour a day...or maybe 2 hours if that's what it takes to get this done..." And this 30 day challenge, this One Funnel Away Challenge is potentially amazing, if you can put the time into it.

But my fear is that maybe I'm not going to have the time, maybe I won't be able to get this all done. Maybe something is going to come up that's going to keep me from doing it. And then Stephen comes through with his coaching call and is like, "Noooo! Just slap you in the face right now! That is SOO stupid! You MAKE the time for what is important!"

You get up earlier, you stay up later. You make sure that you eat well so that you can sleep better so that you don't need as much sleep. You do whatever it takes to get this stuff done because it is important to you. And it HAS to be important to you.

And so I'm crushing that biggest fear by making sure that I make time every single day to work on the worksheets, to watch the videos, and to just really think about this and to really go all-in on it. Because this is something that I really care about and something that I want to do and it's just amazing; I know it's going to be amazing for me.

It's 30 days to get this funnel launched. I'll tell you guys what my plan is, I'm planning to sell ClickFunnels through this; I've got some other things that I might sell. Some like spin offs that help you with CLickFunnels and things like that. And I'm gonna have some training videos. And I'm going to sell ClickFunnels, and so my hope is that at the end of 30 days, I get to come back to you guys; like the 30th episode of this podcast is going to be me saying, "Holy crap! I launched this and I made $1,000!"

That's my goal. Is to be able to say, I invested $100 at the beginning of this 30 days ago and today I 10x-ed it and I made so much money; and I'm on track to pay off some of my bills and student loans and credit cards and stuff like that. And this is going to make such a huge, positive impact on my life. That is my goal for this.

So I've got those fears of time and stuff, but I've got this goal that I want to hit. So I want to make the time, I'm going to make the time to make this happen so that I can reach those goals.

Fear #2 - What If I fail?

07:24 Topher: Second fear: so I may not have time is the first fear, second fear is: God, I may put in the time; I may do everything that I can to make this work right, and it may just not work at all! I don't know...I could do everything to the best of my ability, and it just may not be enough.

And just seeing what some of these other people have done with this, and I just watched another video from Russell today talking about how people can potentially make millions and millions of dollars with this, but what if you just made like 10% of that? Well that would still be like $100,000! That would be amazing, right! Or what if you can't even do 10%, what if you can only do 10% of the 10%? Well that's still like $10,000...that would still be life-changing for me.

And even if I can't do that, even if I can't get the 1%, what if I could get 10% of the 10% of the 10%? That's like a measly amount, it means I did something horribly, horribly wrong; but that's still like $1,000. And that's still amazing.

So I think all of these other people can do this; so the way that I crush that fear is by knowing that other people before me have done it; if I just follow the patterns, I know that it can happen for me. The other thing that I have to realize, though, is that it may not work the first time. And Stephen said a couple of points about this.

He said, "You know we launch funnels all the time and it like bombs. But the reason that it works for us is because we pick ourselves back up and we tweak it a little bit, we try again and like the second time, maybe, we break even. And it's still not great, so we tweak it a little bit more, and we try again, and then it starts making money. And then we go back and we tweak it a little bit more and it starts making even more money, and then it's really on track to be doing the right thing."

So you can't have this idea, of "Oh crap...it didn't work; I'm so screwed; I can't do anything..." because just tweak it and try again, and that's the whole purpose of ClickFunnels is to be really easy to use so that you can turn around and be really agile and really responsive, and say, "Oh crap; this didn't work the way we thought it would." Let's try this. Okay, that works a little bit better...well what if we did it like this?

And to be able to do that super, super fast.

Russell was talking about how they used to do these funnels; and it would take like 2-3 months to get a funnel built. Because they would send it off to the programmers and the programmers would take a couple of weeks. And they'd get it back, and they'd be like, "Well...we don't like this over here, can we like change the order of these pages, or whatever?" And they were like, "Sure, we can get it back to you next week..."

And they'd get it back to them next week, and they'd have to do that all over again. "Okay, crap, can we change this over here and move this up and yada yada yada..." And it would take another week to get that back and it took them forever to build these funnels.

But with ClickFunnels, you can literally drag and drop and take care of that. So, that's crushing fear #2 of "It just may not work." Yeah! It may not, I may have to tweak it a little bit. But, if I follow the pattern and I put the work into it, and I tweak it; I know that I can make this work.

Fear #3 - Am I Worthy?

10:23 Topher: Alright; last one, fear #3. Honestly, is maybe I'm not worthy of making this money, right? I think we all have that somewhere deep inside of us, like, I don't know if I'm worthy of having money like that. Should I be rich? Do I deserve to be rich? And you have to really kinda dig really deep on that and say, YES!

We all deserve to be happy, and we all deserve to be able to use that money wisely and to do things to help other people. And I think as long as you're looking at it from that perspective, absolutely, you are worth to make this money. You are worthy to do great things.

Personally, I believe in God; I don't know if you do. But I believe that God has put us on this planet to help other people; to change their lives, to make their lives better. And that is what I plan to do when I make this money.

So yes, absolutely, I deserve to be able to do this and to make this money.

So; that I think is going to wrap it up. These are the three fears that I had, that I just wanted to share with you guys and be real.

Fear #1: I may not have the time. We crushed that by making the time; making sure it's important. Making it a priority.

Fear #2: It may not work. Obviously, it may not work. Just keep trying. Keep going back and tweaking it; that's what ClickFunnels is there for. It's to be able to tweak things really fast, try new things, get it out there and see what works, so you can keep doing what works and make lots of money.

And then,

Fear #3: Am I worthy of that money. And yes, absolutely, we are all worthy of doing great things and sometimes that requires money; so absolutely, we are all worthy of making that money.

So, I hope that you guys enjoyed this! I'm going to try to keep it to like 10-15 minutes a piece; maybe shorter than that. I hope you guys really enjoy this and look forward to Episode 2 tomorrow; which I don't even know what it's going to be about because I haven't done Mission 2.

So thank you guys so much! Have a great night!

[Upbeat Outro Music]

12:28 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel community of Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

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[Upbeat Intro Music]

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00:27 Topher: What's up everybody!

Topher here from How 2 Funnel. Guys I am really excited about today, but also to be honest, I am a little bit nervous. Today, Russell has encouraged us to share our origin story and since I haven't quite gotten this podcast off of the ground yet, I thought this would be a great opportunity to go ahead and record this and release this as Episode 0, my intro episode, for the podcast.

And my goal is to go ahead and get this one done and tell you guys my story; tell you about why I'm doing this; why I'm starting this; where I came from; where I'm looking to go; and I want you guys to come on this journey with me.

And so my goal is to go ahead and get this all recorded get this all done and then launch my podcast...tonight!

Today is Groundhog Day, February 2nd and I think it is just a fantastic day to get this out there you know. I've been repeating myself for the last 10-15 years, just doing the same things over and over and over again. And today seems like a great day to break that pattern, break free from the spell, and move on with my life. And really start making money and doing business the right way...online.

The Story

01:38 Topher: So! I'm Topher Fangio, and this is my story.

So a little over 20 years ago, I started building websites; right. I was a freshman in high school at the time and I was just an absolute nerd! I had these big, round glasses; I was a little bit overweight, and I hung out with the weirdos. Like, you remember that kid who programmed Star Wars games on his calculator?

Those were my friends, right. And so I was a total geek.

But I had always loved computers since I was like 7. My granddad had this engineering company and he had an Apple IIe or something where I would go play with the Paint program. And I just loved it; I had so much fun with it. And so I loved computers...for...forever.

So in high school, I was taking this mandatory Computer Typing class. And during the class, there was another, more advanced class in the same lab. They just split it in half; computers on one side; computers on the other side and this big walkway between them where the teacher would walk up and down and he'd tell you guys what you'd need to do.

So anyway, they were working with HTML and images and all this really cool stuff (that what I thought at the time) they were building these REALLY cool websites. They had like blinking backgrounds, and big red scrolling marquee text! It was...it was awesome guys!

So when I finished my typing class, I would basically move over to the other side of the classroom and work on whatever they were doing. And my teacher didn’t like that; right. She was like, “No…you need to learn to type!” I’m like, I’ve been typing for years; I can literally do it without looking; I’m the fastest one in the class; just let me do this thing. But she was like, “But you’re supposed to be doing typing!”.

I was like, “Okaaayyy…” So anyway we worked something out; and I was able to kinda swap back-and-forth as long as I got my work done and I practiced my typing for at least half the time. That was kinda our arrangement; I could go over and watch was these guys were doing.

And it was the coolest thing...ever, right!

I would go over there and just learn whatever they were doing! I would sit down, and I would do it too. Like, you type out some code in a text editor, you save the file, you refresh the webpage and the computer did what I told it to! Like, it made that text bold or italic or a heading, or whatever I wanted it to do. It would do whatever I told it to.

And this was like the coolest thing to 12-year old me! I could make computers do my bidding. I could be the mastermind, right!

For those of you who just had a little bell go off in your head; yes, I was 12 when I started freshman year. I did skip a few grades. Again, nerd alert, right!

The College Years

04:13 Topher: So anyway, fast forward a few years, I’m 15 and I’m starting college. And I literally had to write an essay on why I thought I could do college as a 15 year old. I had to take the ACT test and they thought I was going to fail and do horrible. But I wound up actually doing pretty darn good, especially on the math section. I think I got a 34 out of 36 or something, it was really good. And I did well enough on everything else, they were like, "Okay cool...we'll let you in."

I was the second youngest person to ever go to that university. And since then, I think it's pretty awesome, I've gotten to go back and meet some people who've done it even younger than I was, which I thought was really cool.

But anyway, I get to college, right. And it was amazing!

I got to move out of my house at age 15 and live with people who were like...drinking and smoking weed and stuff. It was a really GREAT influence on me; let me tell you that. And there were girls too right! Oh, there were soo many girls.

But…I still had the big goofy glasses and I was kinda awkward. You can ask any of my female friends; I’ve actually kissed a lot of those girls, and they would tell you...100%...I was awkward. I remember this once incident with this like, minty flavored chapstick; it was...it was awful.

So anyway, I started out, and they offered this pre-engineering degree that led into an architecture degree. And my mom and stepdad had just built a house, and I had done a lot of cool things on their computer with building 3D models of homes and stuff; I thought it would be so awesome to design homes. I just, I really enjoyed that.

So I took this pre-engineering degree.

But as I got into it; I realized, I was like…really...really bad at physics. Like, I was smart and math came pretty easy, but for some reason, I just did NOT get the physics and engineering stuff, okay. And I remember this one class, Intro to Electronics and I told my professor, I went up to him and I was like “Um...professor, I’m struggling here; it’s just not clicking…” and he was like, “Well, here’s some additional study resources for you and you can come by my office any time.”

And so I did, I absolutely took advantage of those. I went by his office a lot, I read through all of the study materials multiple times.

But I took the first test and…y’all; I got a 7 okay…out of 100…right; actually it was like 104 because there was this bonus question. And I happened to get the bonus question so I got like one question, and the bonus question right and THAT was IT.

And he came up to me afterwards, and he was like, “Topher…man I know you said you were struggling…but I didn’t know it was THIS bad…” And I felt like horrible because I just felt like I was totally failing at this.

I still don’t know how I passed that course. I got like a ‘D’ and I was, proud of that ‘D’.

But the whole time that I’m failing these physics and engineering courses, I was also taking some Computer Science courses. So, CS120 - Introduction to Computer Programming. And man I was acing it without even trying. I would get done with my work during the lab portion and I would just sit there helping others. To the point that they actually offered me a job, and they were like, “Hey, do you want to be a lab mentor?”

I’m like, wait, I can get PAID to sit here and help people? Heck yeah! Sign me up!

And I very quickly came to love that part of my job. Just helping people with computers. You know, it ignited something in me and it just, it set me on fire. Especially when you could tell, like…oh…they got it! Right, like, they understood that, they figured it out.

That was like the best feeling in the world to me.

So, throughout college, I kept doing the mentoring thing; and I would build websites for people on the side. I built my own blog from the ground up; like 100%. I did all of the database programming and stuff.

Quick pro-tip: if you’re dealing with databases, make a backup! I lost 50% of my blog posts one day because I ran this delete command…buuuuttt…I didn’t specify WHAT to delete. And it was happy! It was like, "Cool...I’ll delete….evvverryyything..." I was like, oh my God…so there went my entire database.

And thank God Google existed back then, because they had this archive functionality: you could click on a button and see an archive of that same website from last week or whatever. In case there was something wrong with the website. And I was able to get back like 50% of my blogs just by copy & pasting them and it was...God it was so awful to just...I spent hours trying to do that.

But! I did get some of them back and it was one of the best lessons I ever learned. Like, back up your stuff so that you don't screw it up, right!

The First Funnel

08:33 Topher: But anyway...I think like halfway through college, I was a sophomore or something; there was this new web framework that came out called Ruby on Rails, and it looked really cool. And so me and some friends wanted to try it out. And we were part of this group that did a compatibility test every year. And when it first started, it was literally like, people would fill out a questionnaire on paper, and they'd go back and they'd run a bunch of numbers on it and stuff and then they would match you up with people who you were good with.

And it was like a clone of match.com right. And so when it started out, they did like 10 people maybe and it was all by hand. But when we were doing it, we were like, we can write a program to do this. So we sat down, we used Ruby on Rails and in 2 weeks of working nights and weekends and after work...after school and stuff, we built this...really pretty cool match.com clone basically, where all of the students on campus could go login. We actually tied it in to our own campus authentication and stuff. It was really cool!

So you just logged in with your regular username and password that you used for everything else on campus, you filled out this questionnaire online, and then once, like after I think 3 weeks or something, when everybody had filled everything out, we started selling the results.

So we ran a bunch of algorithms through it, right, and we would match you with the top 10 people on campus that you were compatible with.

And so, that went pretty well. I think we made like $300 that year and so we did it again the next year, and we just kinda tweaked it, and added to the website, right, and this was all around Valentine's Day so this is fresh on my mind since Valentine's Day is coming up.

And, so the next year, we did an add on sale. So, for, I think it was $1, you got to see the top 10 people that you were compatible with. We made it super cheap, super easy for people to pay for this. Because, we're all broke college students, right, there's nothing there.

But, we decided, "We're gonna do an upsell!" Right! And at the time, I didn't even know this was called an upsell, we were just like, "What else can we do?"

And so we had this version that you could buy for $10, right. And it would show you the top 100 people on campus that you were compatible with AND the top 10 people to avoid. And so we sold this for $10. You could get your regular results for $1 or you could upgrade and all of it for $11 bucks.

And we thought, like, not many people would buy it; but a lot of people did! And it was awesome! And we wound up making like $1,300 that year! It was amazing, right!

Anyway, so that was just a cool thing that we did.

The Real World

10:56 Topher: When it came time for me to graduate, you know, I wanted to help people, that's always been my goal, that's always been in the back of my mind.

But I also wanted to make money. I knew that I wanted to support my family and I wanted to be able to do that and go on vacations and stuff, and just do some things that I never got to do when I was a kid.

I grew up...we weren't like super poor, but we had garage sales occasionally, just to make ends meet. And we got like a new pair of shoes every year. But it's not like we had money, right. And I think a lot of people can relate to that.

We're not super-broke living on the streets, right, but you don't get all of the cool/fancy stuff, right.

So I wanted to make money for my family and that's kinda why I picked Computer Science as a field because I knew you could make a lot of money. I remember seeing this poster on the wall one day when I was in the lab looking around and it showed the starting salaries for people with different degrees and Computer Science was the top one on the list. You could start out making like $45k at the time, and 4 years later, it was even more than that.

So, I really wanted to get out of this little town called Abilene, which is where I went to university. So, I looked around and I sent out a bunch of resumés to places in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder was this HUGE tech hub at the time; like bigger than what Silicone Vally was back in the day. And it was one of the best places you could go for computer work.

And I wanted to live in Colorado. I thought it was really beautiful…you know, in pictures; because I had never been. I was a poor college student and I was about to lose my job at the university because you could only work there for 6 months after graduating. So, I just thought it would be a really cool place to go.

But, I had like one or two small interviews, but nothing in Colorado panned out. And I was about to lose my job at the university, but this Teaching Assistant from one of my previous classes reached out and said, “Hey, I’m looking for developers in the DFW area [Dallas Fort Worth; which is about 2.5 hours from where I live] for this oil company. They pay well...do you want to come do that?”

And I was like, yeah! Okay…sure I can go do that, and make a lot of money and save up, and then start my own business building websites to help people.

And, I did that for a couple of years. And I started dating this beautiful girl back inAbilene. She was gorgeous and sweet and funny. And now I get to date that gorgeous, sweet, funny girl every day because she’s my wife. And I’m soooo lucky to have her!

But anyway, she lived in Abilene, and I was in DFW, so it was a long distance relationship. We were driving like 2.5 hours back and forth, every single weekend, one of us would travel right.

So finally, I got tired of the driving; I got tired of her having to drive, right. Because she would do it late at night, and I just didn't feel comfortable with that. But really, I really got tired of working for an oil company that was making...literally millions of dollars…but they weren't really helping people.

It made jobs and stuff but they weren't taking that money and doing something good for society, right. They were just, making money. And that's not really what I wanted to do with my life.

And I had saved up a little bit of money, but I was looking at maybe proposing, so I needed money for the ring and the wedding and stuff like that, so I didn't have enough money to start my own company yet.

But an opportunity came up for me to move back to Abilene to be closer to my girlfriend and get a job with this little startup that was also using Ruby on Rails, which was great because I knew that from college and I had done one small project at the oil company with it.

And this startup was helping teachers and counselors at universities across the world find and reach out to students who were struggling. Like the ones who were about to drop out or the ones who just had a parent die, or something like that. This software helped the counselors and teachers find these kids and get them the help that they needed.

And so it wasn't exactly what I wanted to be doing; you know, helping people build websites. But, it was a lot closer and it was helping people. It was making a big impact in people's lives.

So this felt a lot more in-line with what I wanted to be doing. So I took the job and I moved back to Abilene and wound up getting engaged a couple of months later and then getting married after my fiancé graduated at the time. And so I worked for this startup for quite a while.

And it was great, but it definitely had some struggles. And at one point, our CEO came to us, and he was like, "Hey guys, um, we're out of money and I can't pay you anymore. So, I really want to keep this going, but I totally understand, if I can't pay you, obviously, you don't have to work for me." And most of the other people were really blessed to have a spouse that worked and had good money coming in. And even our CEO: his wife worked, and they were able to work stuff out so that he could work, and not really make any money.

But I couldn't do that. Like my wife made some money, but she was a teacher and teachers are so grossly underpaid, that we couldn't barely live off of that, especially with student loans and stuff.

So I worked like part time for them and they gave me a little bit of stock as compensation since the couldn't pay me, and then I went off and I worked on my own just doing some contract jobs here and there. And my goal was: I've got this opportunity now, I can get this stock and I can make some money on the side and I can do websites again! I can build websites for people!

Couldn't Break Through

16:51 Topher: And that sounded like a great idea, but, I could just never really break into it. Like, I did a couple of websites, but it was essentially more of just software consulting for other companies making millions of dollars doing whatever, but not really helping people.

And I just, I could never really break into the world of marketing and building websites. And I didn't have a marketing or business degree, so I think a lot of my struggles was, the only thing I could really do for people was the technical aspect of it. Like I could make a Wordpress site, and I could find a designer to get it going. But I didn't know how to make websites sell or anything like that. And most of my knowledge was around the technical side. If there was a problem with the database, I could go in and fix that.

But I didn't know how to make them sell.

So anyway, still had some struggles with that job, and eventually, in 2014, I quit that job to go full time with my own company, Profoundry LLC. And I had this goal, again: I always had this goal of helping people. So much so that it’s actually a big part of my logo. If you look at it, it's the outline of a hand with a thumb up, and the sign language for the word help is that you take your left hand and you put it underneath, and you raise your hand with the thumb up; and that's the sign for help.

And so I wanted that to be part of my logo because that's what I really want to be doing is helping people grow their business. That is my desire…but I STILL didn’t really know HOW.

And so I wound up just doing more software development for companies. I could not get into building websites that sold. And I was working full time…with decent pay, but without any of the benefits of full time work, like health insurance and paid vacation and taxes.

And so we were kinda struggling. We had just had a baby and my wife had quit her job as a teacher; which didn’t pay a lot, but that was like 30% of our income at the time. On top of that, one of my contracts had me out in San Francisco, which was amazing and difficult and eye opening; and I wouldn’t change anything about that because it helped me to grow sooo much. But it was expensive.

And so, the contract with the company in San Francisco was ending, and they offered me a really great paying job, with good benefits and stuff, but I just wasn’t really into it. And at the same time, I had been doing some work on this open source project at Google, and they really liked what I was doing, so they offered me some contract work and I thought; cool, I’ll do this for a while.

Because at least I'm still owning my own company and doing my own thing. And they paid well, but eventually, health insurance rates went way up. Because I was a contractor, they didn't pay for that. And the bills started to pile up, and I just needed something to kinda get back on track.

And this whole time, I still have this goal of helping people build businesses by building their websites.

And it was about this time that I had this epiphany: I can build websites; I can build great websites…they look good, they work well, they do the thing; but what I realized was that websites don’t generate sales. It used to be that you could just put a website up and there were so few that if someone needed something, and you had it, they would buy it from you! But the Internet had exploded in the last few years with things like Facebook, and Amazon and Ebay and simply HAVING a website was no longer enough.

And that’s when I learned about ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels (The Solution)

20:37 Topher: I had talked to this recruiter in Dallas and he sent me a job opportunity with this weird company in Boise, Idaho. And he was like, "Yeah; they do something with the internet; and you know Ruby on Rails, so I thought it might be a good fit."

And I started looking at this company; and I saw a few of the videos from Russell, and the light bulb went off in my head. And I was like; these guys are doing something right. They've got it figured out! They know, “Websites don’t sell, but funnels do!" And they had this ad, "Ditch your website, build a funnel!” And this really resonated with me.

And I realized; THAT is where I needed to be right then!

I knew the technical stuff, I knew the programming; I could do all of that stuff. If I could get with this company, and learn how to do the marketing; I knew that I could go a lot farther in my life.

Because, I don't want to work for somebody for the rest of my life, even though they pay well, I don't want to work for somebody else. I don't want to have a boss! I want to be my own boss.

And so, I started looking into them and I was like, I really want this job, and so I did everything that I could to prepare. And I got the interview setup with Ryan Montgomery, he's the CTO and he's like, "Yeah, so this first interview is to see if you're cool and if we'd like to work with you." And I'm like, okay, awesome!

So, THANK GOD that I had gone to San Francisco and later I had gone over to Google's headquarters because those experiences pushed me way outside my comfort zone and helped me to be WAY less awkward. So, I was a lot better at that point and Ryan was like, “Yeah; you seem great. Let’s do a technical interview.”

And so normally, I don't know if any of you have ever been through a job interview process like this, but normally, once they like you in the first interview they schedule the next one and it's like a few days later. And then maybe a couple of days after that, they do a third interview and then like a couple of weeks later, you find out, right?

Well, they setup the technical interview for the next day. And I was like, okay, cool. And I studied as best as I could for 24 hours or whatever. And he said, "So here's the thing, we don't do normal technical interviews, we're not going to ask you a bunch of questions. We just want to see how you code. So I'm going to give you a problem and I want to watch you solve it. And use code to solve it, and write some unit tests, but I want to watch how you do it. So walk me through it, okay? Don't just sit there and program it, but tell me why you're thinking about the things you're doing and what problems are you running into?"

And that was mind blowing to me! This was the best I have ever had, because that's what I excel at! You give me a problem and tell me, "I need you to solve this." I can sit down and figure it out! I don't care what it is, I can make it happen.

And so thankfully I did really pretty well, and Ryan was like, "Yeah; you know your stuff...we like you and we'll get back to you."

And so I thought this was going to be like another week or two before they got back to me with a decision. And like, literally, later that SAME NIGHT, my recruiter called me and was like “Congratulations! They want to hire you and I negotiated this salary.” And my jaw was like..."Uh...what?! Oh my god, yes! Absolutely!" It was a great salary and they have great benefits and it seemed like such an awesome company. And after being here for almost two years, it is an absolutely amazing company to work for.

The Plan

24:02 Topher: So, I got into this, and I’ve been working for them for like a year and a half, and I've learned quite a bit; and I know the technicalities of what a funnel is and what pages are and how to build them in the editor, but I still didn't know all of the secrets and understand how exactly does a funnel help you verses a regular website.

And so it was actually a couple of weeks ago that they launched this thing called the One Funnel Away Challenge; where the goal is that you’re only One Funnel Away from your dream life!

And so I decided that I really wanted to do that.

And the thing that really pushed me towards this was, about this time, a good friend of mine owned his own business doing lawn care and I built his website. He was a good friend of mine. And it was going okay but at one point, I get this letter from him in the mail. And I had literally talked to him like 2 or 3 days before about how his company was going and he told me he was struggling a little bit, but I didn't think it was quite this bad.

And I get this letter in the mail from him saying, "Hey guys, really appreciate your business, but I just can't keep doing this. We're not profitable, we're not making money, and I'm going to have to do something else." And it was really sad, he went to another lawn care company in town just as an employee and I'm super glad that he had somewhere to go, and it's been pretty good for his family, but guys, seriously, I felt like a failure...

I built his website to try and help him grow his business, and I had learned these things from ClickFunnels about how to do it better, and it still didn't help. I just didn't understand how to sell; I didn't understand how to help him.

So when this One Funnel Away Challenge came out that experience of that failure really drove me to do this challenge, and to try to do it to the best of my ability. And so I've been doing it, I've been staying up until like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning sometimes doing this challenge. Every night, because I don't want to have that same experience again.

And so I've been doing this challenge, and guys, it is absolutely incredible! I learned so much in the first 3 days, which is like the pre-mission stuff, just getting you ready for all of the training that you're about to go through. I learned so much in the 3 days that it was absolutely worth the price I paid for it.

And then every single day gives you sooo much more value and sooo much more insight into this! I just cannot believe that it is sooo cheap to be able to do this. I'm so glad that I did it and I signed up for it!

The Funnel Before Funnels

26:50 Topher: So I was like two weeks into this challenge and I had already scheduled to go out to my granddad's house, he lives out in the Dallas area; it's like a 4 hour drive. So I drove out there, I left my wife and kids at home, and I went up there to finish this website for him that I started like 2 years ago before I even started at ClickFunnels.

And I’m telling him all about funnels, and I'm trying to explain it to him, why it's great and all of the things that I've learned in this challenge and I'm looking at him, and he's older, he's almost 90. And he's just kinda sitting there and I feel like his eyes are just glazing over. And I get done talking and telling him about the idea of a Front-end Funnel and he looks at me. And I’m expecting him to say something like, “Well I don’t know about all that grandson.” Because that is his phrase every time there is something he doesn't understand.

But instead, he looks at me and says, “Well that sounds just like what I did for Garrett Electronics back in 1971…” and I’m like, “What?!…DO TELL!” How did you build a funnel nearly 50 years ago before the Internet even existed?

And he tells me this awesome story about this guy named Charles Garrett that sold metal detectors (which my granddad helped build; he was an engineer) and he was having trouble selling them, so he called my granddad. And back in those days, the way it worked was they would put these ads in newspapers or magazines or billboards or wherever and say, “We’re Garrett Electronics. We sell metal detectors. If you’d like a copy of our catalog, send a letter to this address and we’ll send you one!”

So my granddad goes in to their office one day, and he sees the secretary typing up a bunch of address labels for this catalog. I think her name was Becky. And as she’s typing them, on her type writer, she’s using special paper to make a carbon copy so that they can keep a copy, and have the name and address of the person who ordered the catalog.

So my granddad see this and he is like, “Great; I love that you're keeping these! What do you do with them?” And Becky says, “Well I put them over her to the side.” And he’s like, “Okay…but what do you DO with them.” And she says, “Well…I put them over here in this closet.” And my granddad is confused and is like, okay…and he goes over and he opens this closet and there’s this gigantic stack of carbon copy papers up to his waist with every person who has ever ordered a catalog from them!

And he’s like…Okay, I can use this…

So Charles Garrett was really big into treasure hunting; that’s kinda why he got into metal detectors. And he wrote this book called Treasure Hunting For Fun and Profit, by Charles Garrett. And he was trying to sell them just to get his name out. Because he wanted people to know who he was and share his passion about treasure hunting. So my granddad said, “Hey Charlie; how much does it cost you to publish that book.” And remember, this was 1971, a long time ago, and Charles apparently had his own publishing company just for the book, so he said, “Oh I don’t know, it’s about $0.59.” So my granddad thought for a minute and said, “What if I could get you $1 for those books. Would you take it?”

And he said, “Sure!” He wasn’t trying to make money, he was just trying to get his name out there.

And so my granddad went back and he got a bunch of envelopes & stamps and he printed a bunch of these cards. And on these cards, he had two checkboxes. And it said, “If you want a copy of Treasure Hunting For Fun and Profit by Charles Garrett; please enclose $1, check this box and fill out your address. The other checkbox: if you don’t want the book, but want to still be on our mailing list; check this box.”

And he sent these out to everyone who had ever ordered a catalog from Garrett Electronics.

And for WEEKS…they got back these stacks of letters in the mail with $1 enclosed. And it wasn’t much money, they didn't really make any money on it, but it covered the cost of the book, and it covered the cost of the envelopes and it covered the cost of the stamps. And it covered his advertising.

And the next time that they went to sell a metal detector, like they had a new model to sell, they sent it first to all of those people who had bought a book or wanted to be on the mailing list, and 20% of the people bought the metal detector! They had a 20% conversion rate because they KNEW who to target with their special offer!

That is exactly what a front-end funnel is! And as my granddad was telling this story, I was like, HOLY CRAP that is exactly it! That makes so much sense! And hearing his story really solidified it in my head so that I knew how this was going to work online.

Y’all, Garrett Electronics, I went and looked them up. They are still in business today and they still sells metal detectors nearly 50 years later.

And I realized, THAT…is the power of a funnel. The power of a funnel isn't just to make you money, it grew his business to the point where he was able to pass it down to his children and his grandchildren. I think his granddaughters run it now. It changed their family, it gave them an opportunity for wealth and hard work and for doing something.

Where I'm Headed

32:10 Topher: And what I love about this is, that worked 50 years ago, right, but the Internet has just made this SOOO much easier, right! You have an almost unlimited audience now and you don’t have to have physical addresses or send out mailings. It costs like 1/100th of a cent to send an email these days and Facebook ads are pretty cheap so that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get started.

So you can prove that your funnel is working. Put in like $1 or $2 into advertising and see if you get $1 or $2 out. If not, then tweak your funnel a little bit. And once you know that for ever $1 you put in, you get like $1.10 out, you can start putting $2, and $5 and $10 and $100 and however much you want because you know that it's going to convert, and make you money; at least enough to cover your advertising cost.

And that is what we've been learning about the last few weeks in the One Funnel Away Challenge and what I wanted to share with you guys.

And so this challenge, and this story from my granddad, have absolutely convinced me that funnels are the key and I just have to figure out how to use them to unlock my potential wealth, which in this day and age because of the Internet, is absolutely astounding!

And I still want to help people. And the best way I know how to help people is helping them build funnels. And so I'm going to learn how to build funnels, and I'm going to help people build their own.

But the other way that I can help people is by sharing my successes and my failures and my experiences, in particular, with this One Funnel Away Challenge and what I'm learning. Because I want to build a business, just like Garrett Electronics, that I can pass down to my kids in 50 years, or 25, and down to their kids in 50 years and build something for future generations. And help other people to do the same.

So, guys, thanks for listening; that’s why I started the challenge, and why I have started this podcast and my site how2funnel.com so that I can share everything that I learn with all you and help you succeed!

I hope that you guys enjoyed this; I hope that my story has shed some light on the possibilities, and I hope and pray that I can serve you in the future and help you, just like my granddad helped Garrett Electronics almost 50 years ago.

Thanks you guys so much, thanks for listening, and have a GREAT night!

[Upbeat Outro Music]

34:51 Topher: If you liked this episode of the How 2 Funnel Podcast, get subscribed; checkout my website how2funnel.com for more info and join our How 2 Funnel community of Facebook so you can tag along on this incredible journey with me.

[Music Fades Out]

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