How to prepare yourself mentally when launching your funnel! On this episode Russell talks about how to prepare yourself for when you launch a new funnel and it flops. Here are some of the awesome tips he gives in today’s episode:

-- Why you should never “call your shot” to family and friends.

-- Why you need to be okay with it if your funnel doesn’t work the way you wanted.

-- And find out when you should finally tell your family and friends about your funnel.

So listen here to find out how Russell takes some pressure off of launching funnels by not telling the whole world about it.

And what they did is they teased me and they made fun of me, and they should have. I deserved it. You shouldn’t be calling your shot like that. As much as you want to, as soon as you start calling your shot, there’s so much stress and anxiety that goes into it because all your friends are looking and watching and waiting. And you’ve told them this thing is going to be huge, you’re going to make a thousand or ten thousand or a million or whatever number you told them and now they’re all watching. And now if you fail, it’s so much bigger. So because of that, just the nature of you going into this thing, it’s scary.

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk to you about what happens when one of your funnel flops.

Hey everyone, I’m in the Tesla right now. I’m driving with no hands as I podcast. Seriously, let’s just call this the podcast mobile instead of the Tesla, because that’s exactly what it becomes. It’s pretty awesome.

Anyway, I digress, today I want to talk about something that is oh so real, it happens all the time and people always freak out about it. And I’ve seen for a lot of people it becomes the death of their business. It becomes the time they walk away, the time that all their potential fears are realized and they’re like, ‘Ah, this whole thing is a scam. I told you funnels are not real Russell. You lied to me.” Or whatever it might be.

You put in all the time and the effort and the focus and the strain and the energy into getting this funnel live and then you launch it, and then it’s crickets, or it bombs, or nobody buys or one person buys and it was your mom, and then she asks for a refund, or whatever may happen. There’s a billion different scenarios of what happens. So the question is not so much, “How do I fix my funnel when it flops?” but “How do I prepare for that? How do I make sure that it’s not going to be the thing that’s the nail in the coffin, that makes me walk away from this whole thing?”

And I feel very qualified to share this with you because I guarantee I have flopped on more funnels than I bet you’ve ever even dreamt of creating. Therefore I can share a little bit with you. Alright so the number one, my Tesla, I think it fired me because I took my hands off too long. Alright, I’m driving it again, like a good boy should be.

Anyway, so the first thing that I would recommend because what happens to most of us is we get excited and we get sold on this vision and “This is going to be the most amazing thing in the world, I’m going to change everyone’s life and I’m going to sell a bunch of product and I’m going to be rich.” So what we start doing is we go out there and we start telling everybody around us, “Oh, I’m learning this thing and it’s amazing.” And at first they’re confused, they don’t really care, they’re worried about you. So what you start doing is you start projecting on what you believe is possible. You’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to make a million bucks.” Or “I’m going to make a hundred thousand on my first launch.” You start saying these things to people because they’re not getting and you want to just like prove to them, you want to shock them almost. Like, “This is going to work. It’s going to be huge.” So you start telling these big numbers.

I think this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people do initially. People who are the biggest unbelievers, they start telling them the projection of what they think is possible. Like, “I’m going to do this and quit my job and make a million bucks.” Or “I’m going to do this.” You know, you start telling them things like that. And then the second you start doing that, all the sudden there’s this pressure.

And I know, it happened to me. I went through this problem initially back when I was super young, like 12 years old-ish. I was learning all these money making ideas and tips and tricks. And I would tell my brothers and my sisters and my mom and dad, “I’m going to be a millionaire. By this time next month I will be a millionaire.” You know, I was so confident and I should have been more skeptical. Not skeptical, but I should have been more whatever.

And what they did is they teased me and they made fun of me, and they should have. I deserved it. You shouldn’t be calling your shot like that. As much as you want to, as soon as you start calling your shot, there’s so much stress and anxiety that goes into it because all your friends are looking and watching and waiting. And you’ve told them this thing is going to be huge, you’re going to make a thousand or ten thousand or a million or whatever number you told them and now they’re all watching. And now if you fail, it’s so much bigger. So because of that, just the nature of you going into this thing, it’s scary.

Now my friend Stephen Larsen may disagree with me on this. Every single year at the beginning of the year he sets a goal like, “I’m going to make 3 million dollars.” And he does a big Facebook live and he tells the world about it. I know why he does that, and I’m not against stuff like that, especially bigger goals. Like, “I want to make a million bucks and hit two comma club.” Bigger goals like that, I’m not against. But if “this funnel is going live, my goal is to make a hundred grand in the first month.” As soon as you do that, the pressure starts coming.

I know with Clickfunnels I did that to myself again. You know, we were building it out and doing the launch and I told everyone, I told myself, I told my family, I told my affiliates, “We’re going to get 10,000 members so fast. It’s a free trial. It’s going to be super easy. We’re going to hit 10,000 members.” I told them all that, and then we launched and it was crickets, crickets.

And what sucks about that is then all your friends who are, even if they are rooting for you, which they probably are, your family members are rooting for you and you come back and they’re like, “How did it go, how did it go?” They’re all excited because they know you’re excited, and it’s the most painful feeling in the world to be like, “Oh well, you know, it’s doing okay. We got thirty sign ups and it’s starting to grow…” “Oh cool, do you think you’ll still hit 10,000?” Like, ‘No! I’m not going to hit 10,000 you jerk. Why would you ask that at this point?” And that’s what always happens.

So the reason I’m saying this as my very first recommendation for you is to step back and don’t call your shot to the world. Again, if you want to do that at the macro like, “This year I’m going to try and do this.” That’s okay. But on the micro of like, ‘This is going to do this.” It’s just so hard because it causes all this extra stress and then when it doesn’t, instead of you just adjusting and being okay with it, it’s really, really hard.

I had the same thing happen in wrestling. My junior year I told everyone all summer long, “I’m going to be state champ. I’m going to be state champ. I’m going to be state champ.” And I was going to be state champ. And on my very first match senior year, I step out against the guy who took second place the year before. I step on the mat, and the very first match of the entire season I lose. And I want to go hide in a corner and cry my eyes out. And it gets worse when I go to school and everyone at school is like, “How’d you do? How’d you do?” I’m like, “I lost.” And they’re like, “Oh. You’re not going to be a state champ then. You lost your first match.”

Or your friends and family, “How’d it go? How’d the match go?” and everyone who is at the match is like, “Oh.” The disappointment with other people, at least for me, buries me. I just want to hide and give up and run away.

So for some of you guys, you tried to call your shot, you tried to launch your funnel and you told everyone in the world it’s going to be amazing. Then you launched it and it didn’t do well, the last thing you want to do is tweak it, you want to go hide in a corner and die. I know that feeling.

This leads me now to the second, my second suggestion. So when I was wrestling my junior year and I lost in the very first match of the year and I wanted to hide and die, luckily for me, my pride or my whatever is so high that I was like, “Ugh, I’m going to beat that guy.” And my whole desire was just to destroy him. So if that’s your motivation, that’s the right motivation. I was like, “I’m going to beat him.”

And luckily my dad had filmed the match. So my dad watched the match literally every single morning for the next four months and then he would come to practice afterwards and we’d practice over and over and over again how to beat that guy. And I ended up wrestling him in the state finals, some of you guys know this story, and I ended up beating him in the state finals. And I became a better wrestler and it was because I looked at my mistakes, I looked at my failures and I started calling audible. What do I need to do different? I’m standing to low, my elbows are out, I’m out of position, I’m leading with the wrong foot, when I’m doing this I’m opening myself up here, or I’m shooting my hips too wide.

All this stuff, I started looking at and started shifting and adjusting and doing these little audible along the way, so by the time four months later I had the chance to wrestle him again, all the things that he had picked apart on me, all the flaws and mistakes I had made were no longer there and so when I wrestled him the next time, I destroyed him.

It’s the same thing for you. After your funnel goes live, I don’t talk about the big funnel launch because I know that for most people including me, the very first funnel does not do well. So I put it out ther ein the world, I buy some ads, I pay someone to promote it, I promote ads with my own audience. I drive the emails or Facebook or whatever, I try to get some initial sales, just to find out the data behind the funnel. What’s it doing? Is it good? Is it bad? What’s happening? I want to know that stuff immediately, before I’m calling my shot, before I’m telling everybody.

Now I want you to understand that, again, the very first funnel traditionally kind of flops. But it’s after that happens it’s stepping back and looking and saying, “Okay, what are the adjustments? What do I need to make, what tweaks, changes, what does that look like?” and then we start looking at the data and the analytics. Just like in wrestling, I started looking at video tapes and saying, “Okay, my elbows are out, this is happening. That’s happening, this is where I’m making mistakes.”

The same thing is true in the funnel world. I said a thousand dollars worth of traffic. Or try to get 100 clicks or a thousand clicks, whatever it is. Then I step back and look at the data and say, “Okay, my landing page conversion is doing awesome. 30% of people here are opting in. But the upsell, only 1% of people are buying. So there’s my mistake. How do I straighten this. What do I need to do different? A different hook, different story, different offer, different angle? Is the color scheme bad, is the layout wrong?” what are the things? And I’m making the tweaks and the changes, and then I try again. And I make tweaks and changes and try it again. I’m looking at the data, looking at the numbers and making these incremental changes and incremental shifts.

And as you do that, you become better at that part of it, that’s when all the sudden you get to the point where you test things into existence, to the point now where they work. And now I can go back to somebody and say, “Hey, after my initial testing on this funnel, we spent $5 grand in tests, all the stuff’s gone through, but right now we are profitable on ads, we get a positive ROAS (return on ads spent), it was a positive ROAS. For every dollar I’m spending I’m making $1.20.” Now that’s when you talk to your friends and brag about it. Say, “I got a funnel, it’s profitable.” And now we’re going to go roll this thing out, we’re going to blow it up. We’re going to have a bunch of things like that.” That’s when it becomes fun, that’s when you start bragging to your friends about it.

You don’t brag at the point of idea. You brag about it after you’ve got a profitable thing because it’s like, “Now I got something to scale.” Now you can talk about it, now it becomes fun, “Hey, it’s profitable. We’re having fun, buying more ads, rolling more money into it.” All the things start happening, “We’re doing JVs, we’re doing webinars, we’re doing all this stuff.” Now it becomes fun.

But knowing going into it, it’s probably going to be a mistake at first, I don’t want to tell the whole world about it, because if and when it probably flops, I need to be able to have that room to adjust and make the shifts and the changes. Without that it becomes really, really difficult to want to make those, because the outside noise becomes so loud and so painful, it’s hard. So that’s kind of the second one.

You know, other things I would say is, I think sometimes and this is probably the last big one I’ll share on this podcast, but sometimes even after the funnel is launched, sometimes it’s just not the right funnel, not the right product, not the right offer, not the right audience, whatever it might be. And it’s being okay with that too.

I had a friend back when I first got started in this business, how many years ago was that? It’s been quite a while, probably 13-14 years ago. And when I met him, he had written an ebook and he was trying to sell it and was struggling with it. And at that point he’d spent two years on this ebook. He’d written it, he published it, he was trying to sell it and it just wasn’t working.

I met him, and then for the next four years of me trying to figure this game out, I launched like 500 little mini funnels, and most of them flopped, one or two of them hit. And I remember talking to him and he was still trying to sell his book. And I was like, “Dude, why don’t you try something else?” and I remember he told me, “I can’t.” And I’m like, “Why not? No one is buying this thing. The market has spoken. They don’t want this thing. Make something different.” And he said, I still remember this, he said, “Russell, I can’t change my product now. I spent too long, I spent 5 or 6 years on it, I can’t change it now.”

And the funny thing is, that’s actually the reason why you should, you know what I mean? Because you spent so much time on it and it hasn’t worked, you need to do it. But I think obviously for a lot of us, we have this don’t quit mindset. “I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to fail. Success is the only option.” All those kind of things, and that’s like a good mindset to have, but when the market tells you ‘no’, and this product is not the right product, you have to be okay with that. “You know what, I tried. I tested a bunch of stuff, we tried different offers. It’s just not working. Either the product is wrong, or the offer is wrong, or the market, something is wrong. I’m okay with that. Let’s try something different, let’s shift. Let’s do something different.”

If any of you guys think that Clickfunnels is my very first idea, my very first product, you are definitely wrong. Clickfunnels is on the back of I would say conservatively, at least a hundred different funnels that I’ve launched, probably closer to 150. So when you understand that, it’s like, man, if I would have done my first funnel, I’d still be selling potato guns to this day, which was a fun market, but it wouldn’t be a full time job. Just so you guys are fully aware, at least not if I wanted to be making at least minimum wage.

You know, it was an idea and it did okay, but it wasn’t the idea. And it’s like, if I wouldn’t have been okay, killing that funnel and flopping and walking away, and trying something different, I never would have gotten to the next funnel, or the next, or the next, or the next, or the next until boom, clickfunnels came to me. That was the opportunity that came to my door.

So you just have to understand that it’s not always going to be the first offer, and you gotta be okay with that. And maybe this is not the right one, and maybe this one did okay. Maybe this was a single, or maybe it was a double, or maybe it was a triple, and each one gets a little incrementally better, but if you don’t have these other “at bats” you’re never going to get the home runs. So it’s understanding that and being okay with that and saying, “You know what, maybe this wasn’t my big grand slam.”

And again, if you’ve just told your friends and your family and everyone you know that this is, “I’m retiring and I’m going to be a billionaire by morning.” And that happens, it’s going to be devastating and hard for you to recover from. But if you come at it with kind of that mindset of like, “Hey, I tried this one, it didn’t work. We’re shifting the product, shifting the market, shifting the offer.” Whatever that might be, and you’re okay with that, then it’s okay. Now you’re in the next step. And it gives you the ability to keep moving forward and not stress as much.

Anyway, there’s some things, I hope that helps you guys who have been in that situation. You know, I’ve talked about different things like this before in the past, and there’s always different ideas, different things, and hopefully these 2 or 3 will help any of you guys who are struggling right now, as you’re building your funnels and things like that.

And if you’ve already called your shot and told your whole world you’re going to be a billionaire by Wednesday, and you’re nervous about that now, go back and tell them, “You know what, I’m going to do a different funnel. I’m going to take my time.” And then just don’t tell them. And then launch it and when it’s working come back and be like, ‘Hey, remember that thing I told you about 6 months ago? It’s on. It’s on like Donkey Kong.” because that’s the best way to do it.

I remember after my junior year, when I lost the very first match, I didn’t talk about being a state champ again. I had been calling my shot all summer long, all the year before. And after I lost that match, I stopped talking. I got to work on the adjustments, the tweaks, and the changes. And after I won state, then I came out and celebrated. I told the world and I was proud. I bragged about it and it was fun. But I didn’t do it before.

Anyway, I hope that helps you guys. I appreciate you all. I gotta go, so I’ll talk to you guys soon. Thanks everybody.