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325 - Inner Circle For Life

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325 - Inner Circle For Life

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Cool lessons learned while watching Mary Poppins with my kids.

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It’s just fun because she can go deep with people and that’s what I want. I want to be able to take this group, my Inner Circle and I don’t look at it as a way for me to make money because this is a way to legitimately change the world and go really deep with these entrepreneurs. And it’s just fun.

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Transcripts:

Hey everyone, this is Russell and this is a late night Marketing In Your Car, I hope you don’t mind. I’m actually just about to start watching 24, before I do I wanted to kind of reflect on the last 4 days and share some cool stuff with you guys.

We had our Inner Circle group here in Boise. We had 2 Inner Circle groups. One group on Monday and Tuesday, and a second group on Wednesday, Thursday. It’s the first Inner Circle at the new office, which was so insane. Because that was the whole reason I moved into this new office, if I’m completely honest. It’s because I wanted to have a room to do Inner Circle meetings in. A year and a half ago, almost 2 years ago, I went to Joe Polish’s Genius Network Event at his office. We were in his office and we walked up the stairs into this room, it was layed in a way where you could have a lot of people in it. As soon as I saw the room, I was like I want this.

I took a bunch of pictures of it and then went home and messaged our realtor and said we wanted a place and we started looking around and all the sudden I remembered this place we looked at before. I didn’t like the office before because it was layed out really weird, but I was like if we gutted the whole thing and rebuilt it, we could do this. So we put the offer in and now a year and a half later we’re in and we just did our first Inner Circle meeting, which is so cool.

So there’s lesson number one. When you see it, then you gotta go and get it. Which actually reminds me of one of my favorite stories, it was a story I’ll probably mess up the details. I think it was at the grand opening of Disney World, and they were there opening day and the news and the reporters and everyone’s there. And they’re opening up Disney World and at the time, Walt Disney had passed away and one of the reporters standing next to Roy Disney, who was Walt’s brother. He looked at Roy and said, “Hey, it’s a shame that Walt didn’t live to see this.” And Roy looked back at the reporter, he said, “No, you don’t understand. Because Walt saw this, that’s why we’re here today.”

It’s such a cool thing, so many of us have a vision of what we want and we don’t get it. Anyway, I hope that’s inspiring. I saw it, and I didn’t think about it. We had got it, and now it’s here and it’s insane. I think it was cool and it was fun having our own room because we can control the energy and the music and the motion.

Thanks to Garret White, he came to one of our last Inner Circle meetings at our hotel room. They used to be in hotel rooms and he kind of shifted how we do the format of stuff, which has added a whole other level of energy to it.

It’s crazy, in Inner Circle, there’s a hundred people in it. But we broke it down into four groups, 25 in each group. So we had 25 that came Monday, Tuesday. 25 came Wednesday, Thursday. And then in April we’ve got two more groups that come through. It’s funny because April groups are packed. We had to shut those groups down because we had so many people. These groups are smaller and I get super nervous during smaller ones. Because I’m like, “They’re not going to meet as many cool people.” And all these things, but it seems like the smaller groups almost are better sometimes. Because the smaller the more intimate, we get a lot more done.

The two groups, I wish ….first off, I can’t even believe that I get paid to be in that room with these entrepreneurs and people that legitimately are changing the world in so many different areas and have so many unique ideas and things that I would never think of or fathom. To be able to sit there, honestly for four days just have a chance to absorb their ideas and mindset. Watching these people and we have companies from smaller companies doing whatever, up to, one of the guys in our group is the main marketing guy for the Truth About Cancer, they did a launch, did 20 million dollars. They’re about to do a launch, and my guess, this new launch they’re putting out called the Truth About Vaccines, and they’ll probably do 50-60 million dollars.

Then there’s people in the software space and people in the….it’s so unique. I’ve been to other mastermind groups but it’s like everyone’s in the same industry so it’s hard to glean much because everyone’s trying to do the same thing. It’s so diverse. It’s almost like there’s not two people in the same genre of business so it’s just insane.

And so this is kind of a cool thing and this is what I wanted to share with you guys because……I might be ruining the surprise for Inner Circle members, but the first few groups at the end of it, I basically got up and thanked everyone and we gave everyone these shirts that say Inner Circle For Life on it. And I told them, “Look, this is the deal. The Inner Circle for me was never about making much money. I make good money on it, but you know Clickfunnels is what makes my real money. This is kind of a thing, in fact, there’s been multiple times where I almost shut it down because I don’t know if it’s worth doing and pursuing because it’s pulling me away from Clickfunnels, which is my focus. I finish I four day event like this, I can’t even fathom not having this in my life, how much I get from it. From the group and the people.

My goal with this was never a big coaching program where I could just keep running people through it, bring people in and let them back out the other side, which is how most other mastermind groups that are out there happen.” So because of that we set a cap, about a year ago…..and I think at the time we had 37 people in it. I was like, “If I was to know how I could facilitate this, I can’t facilitate more than 100 people the way I do it. So I’m going to cap it at 100 and when we get to 100 we’re going to stop selling it and close it out.”

And at first it was kind of a dream. I didn’t think that was actually possible. Then after we kind of put that limit on it, it grew almost instantly. It was crazy, bloomed and filled all the way up to 100 so we shut it down. What’s interesting is after we shut it down, then there’s always some kind of float where one or two people go out and then people come in and it goes back and forth. It just kind of…applications come in and if we have spots we call them, if not we don’t. That’s kind of how it works. We have people fight and beg to get in sometimes.

So that’s kind of what happens, but recently, over the last few months, there’s been probably 5 or 6 people that have been in Inner Circle and then they’re like, “I love it, I don’t want to lose it, but I’ll put it on pause for 3 or 4 months and come back later. Hold my spot, though.” I was like, a couple of these first off, it’s not really fair to me or my team. I was like, it’s not really fair to them. It’s really not fair to the rest of the group. I said, “My goal is not to keep bringing new people into this group, my goal is I want to take this group and go deeper and deeper and deeper.”

So I basically told them that today. So because of that, we decided to set this new rule. We gave everyone a shirt that says, Inner Circle For Life on it. The rule is if you need to leave the Inner Circle, for whatever reason, it’s totally cool and we’ll always remain friends but if you leave, you can’t get back in. That’s the new rule, that’s it. So if you leave, your spot’s gone. And what’s interesting is for the most part, everyone is laughing and cheering and excited for that. And I didn’t tell everybody this but while I was sitting in the meeting, just today, not like the last four days, just today, we got 17 applications for Inner Circle during today’s session.

I almost wish I told them that. If you decide to leave, there’s a line up. 17 people today applied for your spot. And that’s coming in all the time. Some days are less, some days there’s 10, some days there’s 5. Whatever, but today alone, 17 applications came in for Inner Circle, and there’s not any…I actually have no idea. But I mean, it’s pretty dang close. If it’s not full there’s one or two spots. But then when those are in, it’s done.

Like I said, what I kind of told them is that if you cancel, we still love you, but you can’t get back in. And I want people there, in the Inner Circle for life. Because I want to be able to go, because even we have a new batch of probably 8 or 10 people that came in new since the Funnel Hacking Live event, it kind of got it back up to being at capacity. And today at, or the first day I spent the first 3 hours sharing the insanely cool stuff that we’re doing that I don’t have a chance to share anywhere else. So I’m showing all this stuff and I’m like, ahh….New people don’t have a foundation to build on this next level stuff. I’m trying to show what we’re doing to get from 8 figures to 9 figures, which is insanely ……it’s kind of crazy.

We went from 7 figures to 8 figures in a year and then I think in two to two and a half years we’ll pass 9 in a year. Which is crazy but how do you do that? It’s really shifting from…the traffic source isn’t how you do it, how you scale. I remember showing these guys all this stuff, but it sucks because some people, the newer people aren’t ready for that yet, because they don’t have the foundation of the last twelve months. The first twelve months of the Inner Circle is all about getting your front end funnel and lead in acquisition right to where you can consistently bring in people.

Not everyone, but the majority of the Inner Circle have that now. They’ve got funnels coming in consistently. It’s like, okay now we gotta build on this. So I wanted to shift and go super deep and I did, but I had to back step and spend almost 30 to 45 minutes giving the foundation. Here’s kind of to catch everyone new up. This is what we gotta focus on and you still gotta do that, but now let’s jump into where we’re going.

So many cool things I wish I could share with you guys. I wish everyone could be inner Circle. I wish it was possible. One of the cool things we were sharing was basically there are, and if you study Jay Abraham at all, there’s three ways to grow a company. Get more customers, get them to spend more, and then get them to buy more often. That’s the only three ways. Get more customers, get them to spend more, and get them to spend more often.

So you look at that, it’s like well how do you execute on that? So getting more customers are all about acquisition funnels. What are the funnels you have in your business that are there to acquire customers? Again, that’s the whole months of the Inner Circle have been getting our group masters at customer acquisition. I’d say more than half of our Inner Circle has a front end webinar that they’re consistently driving leads into every single day. It’s an acquisition thing. I would say the other half are other types of funnels. Some are book funnels, some are high ticket funnels, but most everyone has a really good lead acquisition funnels in place. That’s step number one, how to get more customers.

Step number two then, how to get your customers to pay more. That type of funnels is what we call an ascension funnel. We’ve got step one, the acquisition funnel, acquiring customers. Step two is ascension funnels for ascending customers. So I showed them behind the scenes of our ascension funnels. How are we getting people from dollar trial Clickfunnels to $97 a month to $297 to our $3000 to our $10000 and then to our $25000. What are the funnels inside of our business that are ascending people.

Where else can I talk about this kind of stuff. People have to be a certain level to understand this part of it. So I want to keep the group so I can keep going deeper, but I showed them acquisition funnels. I’m sure some of you saw Follow up Funnels. At the Funnel Hacking Live event I did a presentation about Follow up Funnels and we did it all for my birthday. Probably didn’t all sink in, in a week or two. But that ascension funnel is huge for us. It’s ascending people up from $97 a month to $300 a month and it’s huge for the growth of our company. So that’s number, again Number one, get more customers through acquisition funnels. Number two get your customers to spend more through ascension funnels. And then number three is get them to buy more often, and that’s through your monetization funnels.

So now it opens this question. What are all the monetization funnels that are possible? What could they be? So I was showing the ways for monetizing people on the back end. What’s interesting, this comes back to the new book, the new opportunity. So in the Expert Secrets book, the foundation, I wish I could…I wish you were sitting here and we were all on the same page. So three ways to build a culture, three ways to build a mass movement, attractive character, future based cause, and then the new opportunity. Then there’s two ways to structure the opportunity. One’s an opportunity switch and the other’s the opportunity stack.

Opportunity switch is usually your acquisition funnel, you’re switching them to a new opportunity and then everything else you sell that person in the future is an opportunity stack. So the monetization funnels are what are the other opportunities I can stack within this vehicle? I know for some of you guys, especially if you just got on my podcast are like, “What is Russell talking about? This sounds like math or PHD or something.” But if you go back through and listen and read the book…again, I just got done spending four days with my advanced members, so I’m geeking out.

So hopefully, those of you guys who are at that level are kind of geeking out with me. And those who are beginners are thinking, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, but this sounds amazing. I’m going to go study and this will make sense pretty soon.” When I was in school I remember my teachers talking, I had no idea what they’re saying and by the end of the semester I was like, “Oh, that’s what they’re saying. It’s still boring but at least I get it.” This won’t be boring when you get it. You’ll be like, “Oh my gosh. I’m making insane amounts of money.”

But that’s it, there’s three ways to grow a company. Acquisition funnels, ascension funnels, and monetization funnels. That’s it. So when you understand that, how these things flow together. Here’s an acquisition funnel, how do those link to ascension funnels? And how do those link to monetization funnels? Boom, there’s the process.

And then what’s cool is me showing…I talk a lot, and if you read the Dotcom Secrets book, I talk about hot traffic, warm traffic, and cold traffic, right. And typically I would say, if you get anyone online teaching traffic, they’re teaching hot or warm traffic. Hot traffic’s your market that loves you, so you just, they give you money because they love you. Then you go one step back to your warm audience, people always call this cold traffic, but it’s not. My definition of warm audience are people who are in your market but don’t know who you are yet.

So if I use Facebook ads, just by the nature of how you’re running them, you are running interest, right. They’re interested in internet marketing, they’re interested in weight loss, so you’re running ads to those people. That’s warm traffic. Again, people always tell you it’s cold traffic. It’s not cold, you’re targeting interests, so it’s warm.

What cold traffic is, and I’ve been geeking out and studying Gary Halverson recently. Gary and also Kennedy, Dan Kennedy, he was talking about it in Renegade Millionaire, which is a cool course. But he was saying, every marketer’s dream is to be able to, and he’s talking about direct mail. Every marketer’s dream is to be able to take the yellow pages, or the white pages and just mail direct mail through the white pages and have it convert.

Offline this is the easier to quantify. You’re….well, it is for me because I understand a mailing list. If you understand a mailing list it works, right. Here’s your own mailing list, that’s your hot market. Your warm market are other buyers in the market that you are. You will rent lists of buyers, that’s your warm. And then cold is the phone book. So that’s the next level I’m trying to get with a lot of these guys, which is, even for us, we’re just starting to dabble in legitimately cold traffic right now. But I showed them what people in our industry are doing.

I showed them Brendon Burchard, what he’s doing right now with radio. He gets cold audience, the phone book people to come into his funnels. I showed what Dean Graziosi’s doing with infomercials to get cold people in. I showed just other things. That’s the next level. How do you structure, how do you switch your offers. I show them our hot market, this is how we structure an offer. Our warm market, that’s the Dotcom Secrets book was all about. We created it for our warm market, people who understood marketing and sales and had some kind of business. This book was for my warm audience.

The Expert Secrets book was designed for two reasons. One it would be a really cool book you guys are all going to love. And number two, it was built for cold audiences. Built so I could go mail the phone book and get everybody to come in. At least that’s the goal.

Anyway, I’m actually getting tired. I may make zero sense right now. It’s just exciting. So why am I sharing this with you guys? A couple of reasons. First off, for all of you guys who are selling coaching this would probably be for you. Number one is don’t just build a program where you just push people through. That’s how most of them are done out there and it’s like you’re just pushing cattle through. You can make money along the way but you don’t get to go deep with people.

So like I said, the first thing is we limited ours and said, okay we’re only going to have 100 people in our group and we did. And we figured out a way to facilitate 100 people that doesn’t destroy me, but also gives the group and people what they need from me. But then it also makes the group insanely strong because there’s so much, it’s just so awesome. So that’s step number one.

Step number two is try to build a culture. When people come in, when they leave they can’t necessarily come back. Most of us allow customers to leave, come and go. And I understand. We do that in Clickfunnels and other things. I was listening to a Matt Furey CD from like, I don’t know, 10 years ago and he’s talking his members. He had a continuity program at the time and he said, “You can cancel any time you want, but if you cancel you can’t come back in.” I was like, “That’s cool.” It puts more personal responsibility back in their hands and it kind of does for you as well. You’ve got to carry a good enough experience too that you can keep people in. It can be a challenge for me.

Mandy who helps run the Inner Circle with me, we brought it up to her and she was game, and I was game. So we were like, alright. Let’s do this. It was interesting because I shared it with half the group, the first 50 entrepreneurs that came through the last four days. For the most part, all of them were really excited by that.

So I encourage you guys when you’re hiring coaching to do two things. One thing is limit the number, number two is don’t let people leave and come back in. And it’ll force you to be better. It’ll force them to commit. And it’ll give you the ability to go deeper with people. And all the stuff I shared with you over the last 18 minutes and 28 seconds is stuff that probably over a lot of people’s heads and I understand that. But when you’ve been in the room with me for a while, those things start lighting up and all the sudden it’s like, “Oh my gosh.” It becomes more clear.

For me, it’s taken a long time to get this clarity and even in Inner Circle, we’re layering things on. Every meeting we’re layering things on. We’re layering and then I just look at the, I was thinking about last year, for example. Last year, at the last funnel hacking live, when people started coming into the Inner Circle that was the first time we started talking about building a culture. And started talking about epiphany bridges. All last year my entire focus with that group was building a culture and epiphany bridge stories, and perfect webinar. That was our message for the last twelve months.

And look at it now. Look at those who came through. We’ve got, I always brag about them. You guys can guess who they are, I’m not going to say their names again because…..alright I’ll tell you, it’s Brandon and Kaelin. Their webinar, they’re getting 500 customers a day right now off a webinar. A perfect webinar that they did through Facebook Live. It’s so cool. They’re doing the best with their webinar, but seeing person after person after person, Tara Williams did her first webinar and closed 20 or 25% of her audience. Just killed it.

And then Alison Prince did her first webinar, She joined Inner Circle six weeks ago. She never heard who I was and then she was at Affiliate Summit, and I was the only speaker that who didn’t get drunk, who wasn’t drunk speaking. So she called our offices, and she joined the Inner Circle, came to the FHAT Event, wrote a webinar and this Monday, four days ago, she did her first webinar and did $20,000 in sales and now she’s got this tool that will make her millions over the next six months or so. I’m not sure exactly where I was going with this. It’s been a long week, a long night.

It’s just fun because she can go deep with people and that’s what I want. I want to be able to take this group, my Inner Circle and I don’t look at it as a way for me to make money because this is a way to legitimately change the world and go really deep with these entrepreneurs. And it’s just fun.

Anyway, I hope that helps. It could be just rambling, and if it is, I apologize. You can just skip this episode and listen to the next one when I’m not quite as tired. But it’s been amazing. The last four days have been fun. It’s been a hard week though. It’s funny, Monday and Tuesday we had the first group. Tuesday we did a little dinner party that both groups could hang out at. Then Wednesday my wife flew off to go to a Tony Robbins event. So she’s gone. Luckily, we’ve got a helper who helps out during the day, she helps with the kids. Wednesday night, I forgot I had to teach scouts. I got done with the meeting, I had to come home, get my kids. My twins are in scouts. I grab the kids, get our scout shirts on, leave my little daughter with the other kids, we race over and I teach scouts for an hour. Race back home and get the kids to bed.

It’s funny, without your wife here, I know my wife works hard, but it always seems easier….I shouldn’t say this but from an outside view, it looks easy what they do, but when you’re in charge of doing it you’re like, “Wow, they really do a lot. Who knew this whole time?” you know what I mean? Playing dad and waking up early in the morning and getting kids ready, getting their lunch ready, getting stuff done. The hustle and bustle, getting them on the school bus, getting their hair combed and boom, they’re out the door. And I’m like, oh crap. Inner Circle starts in 30 minutes. So I’m running, showering, shaving, racing out the door.

I get to Inner Circle meeting like 5 minutes late. I’m like, “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to playing mom and dad.” Then run the Inner Circle and today was an emotionally impactful day, it was awesome. So as soon as I get done with Inner Circle and I had to race and get my kids and get my daughter from soccer practice, and then they had a big school art party tonight. They were all starving because we didn’t have time to eat dinner yet. So we swung by KFC and ate a bunch of chicken and root beer, which was super unhealthy and everyone’s angry and tired.

I got them all to bed and now I’m sitting on the couch rambling. The last four days have been insane. Anyway, I’m excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s going to be a little more relaxed. I have some projects I gotta get done and then I’ll be having some fun while the wife’s away. And then she’ll be back and then we’ll be good.

Not sure why I’m telling you guys all this stuff. I must be tired or lonely or both. Anyway, I’m going to go watch 24 now because it’s still the best show on TV, even though Jack Bauer is gone. I’m going to cross my fingers that he comes back. In fact, I don’t know if you guys watch, 24’s got the new….I can’t remember what it’s called, the new one. Jack Bauer is not in it, but he’s the executive producer, but at the same time I’m also watching Designated Survivor where Jack Bauer is now, I guess it’s Keifer Sutherland, but Jack Bauer, he’s now the president in that show.

I’m thinking what’s going to happen is somewhere in the middle there’s going to be a crossover event where it’s 24 and all the sudden people at CET are going to realize that Jack Bauer is actually the president and they’re going to be like, “Wait a minute, you’re Jack Bauer.” And then he’s like, “Wait a minute.” And then Jack Bauer faked as the HUD secretary in Designated Survivor….anyway, it’s going to be amazing.

If you’re not watching either of those shows you have no idea what I’m talking about. But if you watch both of them you just had a geek out moment with me and you’re like, yes. They’re doing a crossover event, and Jack Bauer is coming back. Hopefully because that would be amazing. If I was writing for both these guys, I would be.

Alright I’m going to stop before I say something really dumb. Anyway you guys, I appreciate you all. Have an amazing night, weekend. We’re a few weeks away from the launch of the new book. Oh w’ere doing something cool. Okay, one more thing.

So the new Facebook Messenger stuff is the new craze. Everyone’s talking about how cool it is. Everyone’s convinced it’s going to be the greatest thing in marketing since sliced bread. I think it’ll be cool, but I don’t think it’ll be that cool. But I think it’s going to be cool for a while. I’m pretty sure people like me will abuse it and then Facebook will take it away. So I’m not banking on it as a long term strategy, but definitely banking on it as a short term strategy.

And then if it does happen to stay long term that would be awesome. But I feel like it’s way too easy to abuse. But while it’s abusable, we’re going to. So basically what it is, you can get people, you can run an ad in Facebook, get people to click on something and then it ads them to your Facebook messenger, and then you can send out auto responders and mass broadcast to everyone who’s ever subscribed to your Facebook messenger, which is awesome.

So I recorded a quick little video today, and we’re going to run it tomorrow through Facebook live and basically give away the first three chapters of the book if they click on the, if they join my Facebook messenger. So my goal is to try to get, I don’t know, 20-100,000 people in the next month to get the first three chapters of the book for free through Facebook messenger. Then when we go live, I can have 100,000 people to spam, I mean mass market, I mean communicate with about our book launch happening. It would be pretty amazing. Anyway, I’m excited.

And I also got, so many cool things. I forgot, so for our affiliate contest, we’re kind of having a big super hero theme, Todd found these Superman, not Superman, but Batman, Ironman, costumes. But they’re not costumes, they’re legit. I bought one, they’re 3 grand. They custom fit it to you. Then they mold the metal. I’m pretty much Batman. They ship me it, they took a picture, they’re about to ship it. It should be here, I think, early next week. I’m going to be doing a bunch of JV videos with it. And we’re going to be giving away a bunch of those outfits to people who win our affiliate contest. But I’m actually going to be Batman within a week.

And it’s not like the wimpy Batman from back in the day. It’s the Batman vs Superman. Even though Ben Affleck is lame, the suit that he wore, he looks like the biggest baddest Batman of all time. That’s the one I bought. So I’m really looking forward to that as well.

Alright guys, well 26 minutes. It’s the equivalent of 22 normal Marketing In Your Car podcasts. So I’m going to be done for today. Appreciate you guys. Hopefully this makes some sense. Talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

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