In this episode, I join Andy and Jacqueline Elliott on the “1%er Podcast” to share how my journey in self-development transformed my life and business, taking me from humble beginnings to building a nine-figure enterprise.
Discover the secrets behind embracing failure, the importance of self-leadership, and the power of continuous learning. Plus I get to share how pivotal moments in my journey shaped my entrepreneurial mindset.
Don't miss this deep, engaging conversation filled with actionable takeaways to help you become the best version of yourself.
Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b4or6-GTEE
"In wrestling, I lost all the time... I learned it was like okay if I fail, I'm not a failure. Failure is like the most data-rich source we have. It shows us everything."
Kristine Mirelle:
There's paid traffic, and you can run ads and all that kind of thing. But if you don't run ads, you can just go straight to where they're at. For me, it was they're at home. That's where they are. And just finding where they're congregating, like you always talk about. Where's your ideal customer congregating? And go pitch to them. And just being okay with people telling you no, and that sometimes people are going to hate you for it, too. But there's, occasionally, going to be someone that's really grateful for you. And that one person makes up for everybody else.
Russell Brunson:
In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.
I just got done with one of my favorite interviews ever, and you guys are going to love this. I'm bringing you somebody who, their back story is amazing. They were a musician who went door to door selling their music. After that, learned about funnels and created really funny ads to sell her music products and things like that. And anyway, it was a fascinating interview, but for any of you guys who have something you're passionate about, who are trying to figure out how do you take your message? How do you get to more people? How do you grow? She has some really unique, interesting ways.
She creates really funny ads. And these aren't the highly produced. As you you guys know, we've worked with the Harmon Brothers before, and we've paid half a million dollars for these crazy, funny viral ads. We're not talking about that. We're talking about literally finding things around your house and making ads with your phone, launching them, and as you'll see, one of the very first ads got over 60 million views from one ad that she made with some stuff she found in her backyard. It completely transformed her life. And just a really fascinating interview.
So I think you guy's will love this. You going to learn about her journey selling things door to door. You going to learn about her journey about launching funnels using funny ads. And now she's literally changing the entire industry by just shifting how we create ads in a way to get more attention. The ad costs drops dramatically, and people are sharing your ads. Can you imagine, you post an ad, and instead of paying Zuckerberg for every click, you have people sharing the ads with other people, getting free traffic every time you post an ad? So her name's Kristine Mirelle. She's someone who's been in our Inner Circle last, man, three plus years. And some of my favorite people in our community. And I cannot just wait to share this interview with you guys about how to launch and grow your company with funny ads.
What's up, everybody? Today I've got a really special guest. I am so excited to introduce you guys to someone who I met a couple of years ago here in our Inner Circle, and didn't know what she was doing, and then found out what she was doing. Which she creates some of the funniest ads in the world, and she's used these funny ads. These aren't funny ads like the Harmon Brothers are going to spend half a million dollars to produce a funny ad. It's like finding some random things and actually going out there and filming an ad. And I watched her take her business from the very beginning to now she's grown huge companies all using these crazy, funny, hilarious ads for herself and for other people. And I'm excited to talk about that. In fact, at the end of this, I'm hopefully going to show a whole bunch of her ads to you guys so you can see how funny they are, if you allow us to show the ads at the end.
Kristine:
Absolutely.
Russell:
Which will be awesome. But before we do, I want to talk to her about some other really cool things that I think are fascinating about her journey. And so our special guest for today is Kristine Mirelle, and I'm so excited to have her here. So how are you doing today?
Kristine:
Thanks, Russell. I'm doing great. How are you?
Russell:
I'm doing so good. Actually, let's do this. Let's start again, just the beginning story with the first kind of funny ad that you did that kind of took off. And then I want to go deeper into some of the back story. But what was the very first kind of situation, take people to the situation you were in when you created the first ad that took off?
Kristine:
Yeah. So I was living on a farm basically, in New Mexico. And I had no Wi-Fi. And I was like just figuring out how am I going to promote my products? How am I'm to sell my products?
Russell:
When was this by?
Kristine:
This was 2019. It was right when covid hit. So I had moved to New Mexico. I just had a baby. I needed help. I moved in with my parents. And then I looked outside. And I always tell everyone, we had this old toilet in our backyard, and we even had washers and dryers and all kinds of other stuff. We're Mexican, and I always joke with everyone, I'm like, "Mexicans, we do all of our own plumbing. We do all of our own landscaping. We do everything. So there's always just stuff everywhere." So there's this old toilet because we had redone my mom's bathroom.
Russell:
And just left it outside?
Kristine:
And just left it outside. Where else are you going to put it? You don't throw it away. You leave it in the backyard. That's what we do. Maybe we'll need it later. And so then I asked my dad and my brother, I'm like, "Hey, can you move it into the middle of the field?" And my mom had this old horse there, like a rocking horse type thing. And then we had this book and some oranges. And my brother was there and I was like, "Maybe we could shoot an ad." And then what I've actually never shared with you is there was tornadoes. So just across the street from us in the other field, there were three tornadoes. And so in the middle of us shooting this ad, I had minutes because there was a gigantic tornado coming after us. But I was like, "I got to make money to feed my baby."
So I got my brother to sit on the toilet and I just said, "Hey, you're probably on the toilet right now." Because I figured some people are going to be on their phone and they're on their toilet. I'm like, how funny it would be if you got called out and said, "You're probably on the toilet, but you should be promoting your music." And so that's what I did. I had a music offer, and we just shot that. And my brother just sat there on the toilet. And I called him Harry, and he had an accent, and it was absolutely ridiculous. And it got millions of views. And I wasn't expecting that and I didn't know it. And then everyone's like, "This is the best ad ever." And I was like, oh, everyone has a really weird sense of humor. We'll run with this. So that was the first ad.
Russell:
That was very first one. Can we play that real quick?
Kristine:
Yeah. Oh my God.
Russell:
Let's cue that up. Here's the ad.
Kristine:
Hey, artists and musicians. I know a lot of you guys are at home right now doing nothing, trying to figure out what to do with your time, not promoting your music, maybe riding plastic horses like this one. Or maybe you've learned how to juggle, or maybe you've learned a new language. [foreign language 00:05:46]. Or a lot of you may have even started your own lawn mowing business. But none of that matters if you're not promoting your music. See, a lot of you guys are Harry over here. Say hello, Harry.
Harry:
Howdy, y'all.
Kristine:
How long have you been sitting there, Harry?
Harry:
25 minutes.
Kristine:
A lot of you guys that are watching right now are doing the exact same thing that Harry's doing.
Harry:
Ain't that the truth, Kristine Mirelle?
Kristine:
You can call me Kristine.
Harry:
All right, Kristine Mirelle.
Kristine:
Now, instead of wasting time doing stuff like this, you could have already have submitted your music to 4,592 blogs and magazines and Spotify playlists that all play music and publish music from independent artists like yourself. And in fact, I put together a list of 4,592 of them. And if you get just one of these blogs to publish your music, you'll potentially reach hundreds to thousands of listeners overnight. So if you're an artist that wants to get your music out there, don't be like Harry.
Harry:
Hey.
Kristine:
Check the description, click on the link and let's get your music out there.
Russell:
All right. That's amazing. So I want to go deeper than that because now you've turned this into a whole business and you've done it for me and for other people, and it's so fascinating. But I want to tell a story. I bet most people don't know this about you. In fact, I didn't know. We had a chance to go to Wise, Virginia, together to the Napoleon Hill Foundation. And at dinner we were sitting talking. And your origin story, how you learned how to sell and do these things was so cool. Because obviously, I spent two years on a mission, knocking on doors, selling religion for the most part. And yours was the same thing. You were knocking on doors. So will you tell us that story? Because you're a musician, you were creating music, but you didn't have someone who was selling it. You were out there knocking on doors. Tell us about how that started.
Kristine:
So I started when I was 10, actually. So when I was 10 years old, we were the little Mexican family. And then my friend, her dad actually was a dentist. And so I went into her neighborhood and I was like, oh, all these rich people live here. They all have money. Let me sell them something. And so I'm like, what could we sell? And she had a iced cappuccino machine. She's like, let's make iced cappuccino. I didn't even know what that was. Like, what's a cappuccino? I don't even know what that is. And so we made these little cappuccinos and she had these little plastic things, and then we took GAC. I know, this is so bad. This was so unethical. We're 10. So this is not recently.
We took GAC, I've never even told the story, and we put it in water. And then we're like, we're just going to call this makeup remover. And so then we put that into these plastic bottles, and I just remember taking paper and writing makeup remover on it. So we had iced cappuccino as a makeup remover, and then we go door to door. And within an hour, I walk away with $75, right? I'm 10, $75 is like, I'm balling. I am balling. And so we go back home. And then her mom gets so angry with her and she makes her go give all the money back.
Russell:
Oh, really?
Kristine:
I kept my money. I was like, I don't know about you. I'm keeping my money. $75, that's a lot. So she had to go give it back. But for me, that was the first lesson in, create something and then go find the people to sell it to. I just continued selling all kinds of random things. I used to go to the Dollar Store, and I used to actually negotiate with the Dollar Store, so they'd give me everything for about 55 cents, and then I would go sell everything for $5. So then I went door to door selling little candles and stuff.
Russell:
How old were you when you were doing that?
Kristine:
10. I did door to door sales until I was like 23.
Russell:
That's crazy.
Kristine:
And just selling anything that I could find. One of the best things, which I don't know if this is even good. Maybe it's not best. Maybe it's totally bad. I'd buy one thing. So this is so terrible. So I'd buy a clock, because then I'd go to Family Dollar, and then I'd go buy raffle tickets. Because then I realized I could buy one clock and sell as many raffle tickets as I want. And then I wouldn't even give them a date. I'd be like, I just have a clock. I'm going to give this away. So it was like a never-ending place. And then eventually at some point-
Russell:
$2,000 in raffle tickets for a $12 clock?
Kristine:
Like a $12 clock. It was so bad. But it was like, you just create something and you get in front of people. And then when I started making music, that's when it was like, okay, I've just already done this already. Let me just go directly to the people. And so I used to create albums, would burn them on my CDs, back when we would burn them, and make copies and write in sharpie, Kristine's Music. And then I would go door to door and I would just, "Hey." You know how it is. I mean, it'd be 120 degrees, and pouring sweat, or it'd be freezing cold, so cold that I could barely move and just ask people, "Hey, would you be interested in playing my music? Hey, I'm a musician. This is what I'm doing." Tell them a little bit, kind of like hook, story, offer, I guess. "Here's a little bit my story, here's my offer." And seeing if they're interested. And I did that until I was like 23 years old.
Russell:
When did you start selling? When do you think your first CD sold?
Kristine:
I was about 17 years old, and I sold thousands of albums that way. And I always tell everyone, it was like a 90% failure rate. Nine out of 10 people said, no. I'm sure people were slamming the door. I mean, I remember people would come to our door, the Jehovah's witnesses, and we would all hide in the bathroom. So we'd be like, "Shh. Shh."
Russell:
We used to do that, knocking doors. I was like, "I can hear you in there." They was like, "Quiet. Quiet."
Kristine:
Yeah, definitely. Would put us all in the bathroom and be like, "Quiet." So I already knew people aren't happy when you're knocking on their door. So I was just kind of already expectant of it. But yeah, I was 17. And then like nine out of 10 people said no, but one out of 10 people would say yes, or I'd meet a really cool family that would be like, "I'll buy all your CDs." Or, "Come inside and have dinner with us." And I'd sleep on people's couches and I was living in Motel 6s or whatever, however I was surviving. And occasionally, someone would say, "Hey, we have an extra room. You could stay here for the weekend." And so I met all these really nice people.
Russell:
Interesting.
Kristine:
And then there was all kinds of crazy stories too, which I guess we can get into. But it was like nine out of 10 people slamming doors in my face, telling me, "Go get a real job." Or real kind of mean people. And then there'd be one person that's just like, "Hey, come have dinner and we'll pray for you." And their family would gather around and pray. So it was like, wow, you get used to rejection really fast. And I think that's a huge superpower of you just-
Russell:
For entrepreneurship.
Kristine:
Yeah, for entrepreneurship. Because you're just, okay, you said no. Okay, next. No. Okay, next.
Russell:
That's such a big thing for me too, because I was knocking doors in Jersey. And for us it wasn't one out of 10, it was one out of 100, maybe was nice to you.
Kristine:
Yeah, I bet.
Russell:
But it's like, no, no, no. Slam the door. We had people let their dogs out on us. We're jumping over the fence while dogs are biting at you. It was chaos. But you learned like, they're not rejecting me, they're rejecting the message, which is fine. And then you just keep going. Okay. So I'm curious, do you remember your door approach, how you did it?
Kristine:
Yeah.
Russell:
Can you pitch me right now? Knock on my door and pitch it to me.
Kristine:
If you open the door and you didn't yell at me first.
Russell:
Hello, how are you doing?
Kristine:
Like, Hi. "My name's Kristine Mirelle. I'm a singer. I'm here." A lot of times I was maybe getting ready for an album or something, so I'd be like, "I've just put together a new album and I just wanted to see if you'd be interested in checking it out. And you could even take a listen if you'd like. And if you like it, it's $10. And just wanted to see if you'd be interested in supporting a local artist." So something kind of just like that. Really simple. And then sometimes they would ask me to sing.
Russell:
Really?
Kristine:
So I would sing on the doorstep and I'd be like, yeah. Or if they had a piano, I'd be like, "Oh, I could play something for you." So kind of offering, almost like Costco, "Let me give you a little sample. Let me give you a little sample, and if you like the cheese, you can buy the whole bag." So I tried giving them a little sample of it. But yeah, it was just real simple like that. Or it was me apologizing because now their baby's awake because I rang the doorbell.
Russell:
I'm so sorry. My music will put them back to sleep, if you want.
Kristine:
Right. Yeah. I should have segued into that. The music will make them go to sleep.
Russell:
Do you have copies of all your old albums? How cool would that be to have a collection of here's every album I sold door to door.
Kristine:
I believe I do. And you know what's crazy, if you go on eBay, people are selling them for like a hundred dollars.
Russell:
Oh, seriously.
Kristine:
And I'm like, that makes me feel really cool. I'm like, ooh, people pay a hundred bucks. You could probably google it. You could probably look it up. My brother sent me one two weeks ago, and it was like, "Before the fame." And I was like, I'm really not famous, but that's cute.
Russell:
That's so cool.
Kristine:
Yeah, so people sell different albums. And I still get hit up at least once a week where someone says, "Oh, this song was an important part of my life or something."
Russell:
There it is. I'm going to buy them right now as we're sitting here. Okay, which ones? So we've got 2006, 2007. Those are the two that are popping in there. I'm buying them both right now. Will you sign these next time you come out?
Kristine:
Yeah. Those are the worst songs I ever wrote in my life.
Russell:
So don't judge me. This is going to be like, oh.
Kristine:
And you know what? I was so emo. I don't know if it's the one. My very first album, I'm sitting in the corner like this. So emo. And it's like black and white, and the album's called Cry. It's so emo. You know when you're like 13. But I was 16 and I was still so emo, like life is hard. People don't understand me. So the whole album is like me. That album's called Cry. It was so bad. But we shot it with a disposable camera. So I remember you could take 17 photos, and you had to wait a week for it to get developed. But yeah, I don't think that was the first one. I'll have to get you a copy of the first one.
Russell:
I'm going to put an alert on here too so every time it pops up. I'm going to get the entire collection eventually and have you sign them all. I'm actually really pumped about that.
Kristine:
Oh man.
Russell:
Okay. So as you're doing door approaches, I'm curious, I have so many funny, strange, weird stories. But what are some stories for you as you're knocking on doors, some of the weird or awkward or whatever, things that happened that you remember?
Kristine:
So many things. There's two that always stick out. So I had a little scooter. I made it, I don't know if you ever did this. You were walking, weren't you? So I had a little electric scooter, because I could cover more doors quicker. So I would take my little electric scooter. And I remember if there were kids in the neighborhood. I ended up with a posse. So I was the head of the ten-year-olds. I was like, I would've been really cool if I was 10. It's not so cool when I'm like 18, but okay. So I'm on my little electric scooter that I would charge every night, and then I would go up to these houses.
And then I remember this one guy, he answers the door literally in little white underwear and he's like, "Hey, what's going on?" I'm like, "Do you want to buy one of my albums?" Like, what do you do? Do you turn around and run? And then he had this big dog in the back and he's like, "Oh, just come inside." And I didn't really know what to do. And so I said, "I'm afraid of dogs." And I took off running. I just didn't know what else to do. Because I didn't want to be like, "It's you." Instead, it's like, "It's your dog that scared me." That just felt more believable in my mind than saying, "No, I don't want to walk into a stranger's house in their underwear." That's the beginning of a murder movie.
Russell:
I was thinking about people who answer the door. It happened to us all the time too. It's like, would you answer the door in your underwear, wouldn't you?
Kristine:
It was the weirdest.
Russell:
Yeah, it's so weird. Humans are strange.
Kristine:
Just to know that you think that's okay, what else do you think is okay? That that's just already, I'm not walking into your house. And then another time there was a huge dog chasing me. It was like a pit bull and I was on my electric scooter. And I'm just going, I'm just flying. And I have my bag of CDs. And I just remember these two guys outside, they're like America type guys. They have a pickup truck and an American flag, and they're drinking a beer. And I'm screaming because there's this, I'm like, "Help." It's so terrible. And then I just look over there. These guys are on lawn chairs, like the $10 lawn chairs you buy from Walmart and they're just having a beer, with the aviator glasses. And I'm like, they're not even laughing.
In my mind, I'm thinking, this has got to be hilarious. There's this poor girl, it's 120 degrees outside, on her little scooter getting chased by a dog. The whole thing. I'm looking over here and there's like, Proud to be an American's playing over their radio. It was just so bizarre. And then luckily the dog turned around and I got away with it. But yeah, I knocked on tens of thousands of doors and it would be about a hundred doors a day. I did that until I was like 23. So yeah, all kinds of craziness.
Russell:
That's so cool. I wanted to share that part because I think some people get into entrepreneurship and they don't understand, to be successful, most people put in a lot of time ahead of time. I remember Jamie Cross, she sells soaps. And when she came to Clickfunnels, she built a soap funnel and launched it, and hit Two Comma Club.
But what people don't know is, before that, she was selling her soaps door to door, and she learned what the hooks were and what the pitch was. And then she was in farmer's markets, and people walking by, and she had to learn, how do we get somebody to stop and walk over to my booth? And then what's the story I got to? She'd done that for years over and over again until the point where when she put it into the funnel, she knew the message, she knew the hooks. It was very fast. I think same thing for you, as you're going out there, you know every objection, you know every hook, you know the things that work, things that don't work and all that kind of stuff. So when you step into the next selling situation, whatever, you have all that stuff that a lot of people are missing out on.
Kristine:
And then also, already, you're not having to get past any belief system. You just already know the data is, majority of people say no, and occasionally one person says yes. So you already walk in going, every no is closer to a yes. And then kind of just knowing, I need an offer and then I just need to find people to buy it. And I think now, too, there's paid traffic and you can run ads and all that kind of thing. But if you don't run ads, you can just go straight to where they're at. And for me it was, they're at home. That's where they are. And just finding where they're congregating, like you always talk about. Where's your ideal customer congregating? And go pitch to them. And just being okay with people telling you no. And that sometimes people are going to hate you for it too, but there's, occasionally, going to to be someone that's really grateful for you. And that one person makes up for everybody else.
Russell:
That's so cool. There's a story I want to ask you about. But if it's too personal and you don't want to tell it, feel free. But I remember you told me the story about, I don't remember all the details, but somebody who you knocked on the door and they met you later and gave you more money and kind of changed the trajectory. Do you remember? It was someone who, I'm going to tell this story, but it's probably incorrect in my head. There was someone you met and they said, "Meet me later at a diner," or something like that. Yeah.
Kristine:
Oh, this is great.
Russell:
It was such a cool thing.
Kristine:
Oh, I would love to tell this story. It was actually a really challenging time for me with my faith and my beliefs at that time. I was kind of going through this, do I believe in something bigger? Where am I here? Do I believe in God? Do I not believe in God? Just kind of at this place where it was just like, I don't know. But there was this huge part of me that's really faith driven. If you just believe something will happen, it will, if you just believe hard enough and you take actions towards it. And I had just left New Mexico. And where I'm from, actually, I was looking at this the other day, more murders per capita than any other state in the country. And there was a lot of things. I had bullet holes in my car, bullet holes in my house. There was a lot of violence. My boyfriend had died of a drug overdose. There was all these different things.
And I had decided that I was going to get out of it, but I was in debt and I had been in this physically abusive relationship. I just was at this place where it was just a really low part of my life. And as I was leaving New Mexico, I ran over a screwdriver, my car just went to MMA. And then these girls stole my phone. It was just all bad. And I remember my friends being like, "That's a sign. You don't need to leave." I'm like, "I am going to crawl out of this state. I don't care. I don't care what, I'm crawling out of this state." So I finally get out and I randomly go to Las Vegas. And I'm actually, if you know couchsurfing.com. It's like people randomly-
Russell:
This is a real thing?
Kristine:
Yeah, it's a real thing. It's couchsurfing.com. So if someone has a couch, they'll say, "Hey, if someone's in town, and needs a place to crash. You can crash at my place." So I'd reached out to maybe a hundred people, and three people had said yes. And there was this guy and he was like, "Yeah, you can come stay." And I go, and there's 30 other women there. It's really weird, and there's people everywhere. And then he's hooking up with one of the girls in the room. And so I go and I sit on the pavement and I'm like, how did I end up here? All the things, how did I end up here? And I'm in the pavement, I can hear the guy and the girl inside. I'm like, this is weird.
And then I'm on a website, Craigslist, and someone says that they need someone to watch their dogs. And I was like, "I'll watch your dogs if I can stay in your house." Because he's going on vacation, he's like, "Sure." So I show up. He has this beautiful home. Hands me the keys to a convertible car. And he has nine Pomeranians, nine Pomeranians and like six fish. And he leaves and he is gone for weeks or whatever. So I'm just there in this house. And I have no money and I don't know what I'm doing. But things are like, they're okay though. I'm not on the street though. I'm here. I'm taking care of these nine Pomeranians. I just remember they would attack me every day, and I was still really depressed because of where my life was. And he doesn't know this. I hope he's watching this.
I left the water on in his kitchen and it flooded the entire place. So I get home and the whole place is flooded. Nine Pomeranians are attacking me and I'm crying. So I'm crying in this kitchen.
But I mean, I never really thought of how funny that image is now, imagining how funny this was. And so then I'm like, you know what, I still have my CDs. I'm going to go out. And so I go out onto the street, and I'm selling, and I'm going door to door. And I had decided that I needed a promo video. I needed a video that showed what a good performer I was. I'm a classical pianist. I need to show that I'm a great pianist and I'm a singer because I want to go and start performing at the casinos. But I knew I needed a video. And so I'd kind of budgeted it all out and it was like $7,000. And at that time, $7,000 might as well have been a hundred million dollars. There's no way I could come up with $7,000 at that time.
And just something was, again, going back to that faith and I was like, I feel like I don't know how to make money, but I know how to do music. And if I just say, all right, God, this is up to you. I'm just going to let you deal with the money stuff. I'm just going to do what I know how to do. I'm going to go door to door. And when I would go door to door, I'd make maybe a hundred bucks. I wasn't making a whole lot. But I was like, I'm going to schedule this shoot in about 12 days, so hopefully you can come up with $7,000 in 12 days.
Russell:
$7,000 in 12 days, please.
Kristine:
And for me, even going door to door every single day, I would've made like $1,200. It wasn't a lot. And so I went door to door that day, and that day I started reaching out, I started hiring musicians, I started hiring choreographers, videographers, and I just kept walking with faith. It was faith, faith, faith. It will happen. And I'm going to take all these steps that show that I believe. I'm going to hire the videographers. I rented out the studio, which was like a hundred dollars an hour. And I surrendered all that stuff. And that day I'm like, all right, I'm going to go out door to door. And so I go door to door and I vaguely remember this guy, but he bought a CD. And I used to sell these CDs for $10. And that night, it was MySpace days, back in MySpace. I get a message on MySpace. It's like, "Hey, you sold me a CD today and I would love to make a donation. I'd love to donate another $200 or $300 to what you're doing and to your music career."
Now he doesn't know. I didn't tell anybody about my situation. Nobody knew about my financial situation. Nobody knew that I was making a promo video. I kept that to myself. And so I was like, "Great, great, great." And I felt so good. I'm like, awesome. There's going to be 20 more guys like that that are like, I just want to donate $200 in the next 12 days. Sure, this is going to be great. So I go to Starbucks and we sit there, and he's just really like a scared, timid guy.
And he just asked me a bunch of questions. And he was very sad and he's like, "I'm really successful and my family doesn't talk to me." He was just kind of really sad, but he was asking how I stayed so excited about what I was doing, because he's like, "Door-to-Door sucks." He's like, "Why are you so happy?" And I'm like, "Well, I just know that this isn't the end of my story. This is the middle of my story. In every story, there has to be the part where it's hard. And I always kind of looked at it like, or else it's not even a story worth telling. So I know that this isn't the end. And that drives me because I'm like, oh, cool, I'm having to couch surf. I'm getting attacked by Pomeranians, whatever. These are all stories I get to tell when I'm successful and walking in. So it makes this not painful. Instead, I go, ooh, let me write this down." So I'm telling him about my journey.
And anyways, he looks at me at the very end and he says, "How do I spell your name?" And again, I had never told him about any. And this is within 24 hours of my prayer, of me hiring people. And he says, "How do I spell your name?" And I told him. And he pulls out a checkbook and he goes, "I don't even know why I'm doing this. Something is telling me that I'm supposed to do this." And he said, "You never have to talk to me again. You owe me nothing." And he writes something down in the checkbook. He closes it and he hands it to me.
And we talked briefly, and I'm scared to open it because everything that's happening, life is just so crazy at this point. And he leaves that Starbucks. And I just wait inside of the Starbucks and I'm so scared to open the check. I'm like, what is this? And I grab the check and I open it up, and it's a check for $10,000. And I immediately started crying. And I go into the bathroom and I sit in the corner of the Starbucks. It was such a feeling of everything to me was falling apart in this realm in earth. But if the creator of this earth is on my side, then it doesn't matter what's happening here. It doesn't matter because if I have a team member that created all this stuff, that's my team member right here. That's a pretty good team member to have.
And so I just thought, wow, that was 24 hours. And I felt like, you hear these stories of the waitress that someone wrote a check to pay for their college education. Or you hear those things, you never ever think that that would happen to you. And I never would've guessed that within 24 hours of just making the decisions and moving in faith, like that within 24 hours I would have more than what I needed, and especially in such a large amount of money. And that was a mind opener. So for me, it just reiterated, faith is so powerful, and just walking and moving in faith and taking steps in faith.
Russell:
And then from there you went and made the video?
Kristine:
That wasn't until, okay, I read your book Expert Secrets years later. Because after that, I actually got into performing. So I finally figured it out. I made my videos and I performed and I traveled the world.
Russell:
Did all those things.
Kristine:
Yeah, I did all the things that a musician would want. I earned seven figures as an independent musician and toured and did some cool things. But that was over the span of my career. And then when I read Expert Secrets, I was at the point where I was about to have a baby. I was like, I can't be touring around and living this rock star life anymore. And then decided that I would get into coaching. And that's when the first ad came out. Yeah.
Russell:
All right, so let's dive into that side of the story now. So you did that first ad. And obviously we watched the ad earlier today. But explain, because you created an offer for people like you, who are struggling musicians, who couldn't maybe get on getting published. What was the offer that you created initially that the ad sold?
Kristine:
Yeah. My first offer was actually a course. I sold a 997 course, and that was when I was still living in Vegas. And then, actually, I was joking today because I was living in this garage when I held my first webinar. So you were like, "Hold a webinar once a week." And I'm like, okay, I'm going to hold a webinar. And I held the webinar, and I was living in this garage because at this point I had separated from my son's dad. It was like just kind of lost everything overnight. And I'm five months pregnant, I'm all depressed again. It is just this sad story.
And then there's a water softener in the side corner. And if you've ever listened to a water softener in a garage, it's like. And so I'm doing the webinar, I'm like, "Hey everybody, I just want to talk to you." And then the water softener's like. I'm like, "I'm just so excited to talk to you about this," trying to talk over the water softener. But I sold something online and I sold a course. And I was like, oh my God, I just made a thousand dollars. This is crazy.
And then I had moved to New Mexico, and now I don't have Wi-Fi. And so I was like, okay, I can't sell the course anymore. I can't do webinars anymore. And so then I created a book. And so I would work on this book. And then it was a $19 book that I decided to sell online. And it was crazy because, again, I couldn't do any dramatic demonstrations. I wasn't doing any webinars or challenges or any live master classes or anything. I just was running paid ads. But that funny ad that everyone was commenting on, everyone was liking it, everyone was sharing it. My first month, I think it was a $47,000 net profit month, which was, I didn't even realize how wild that was.
Russell:
This is off a $19 ebook, right?
Kristine:
That's a $19 ebook. And I had made some other $19 ebooks. And then, because some of the books weren't finished yet, I just sold them unfinished. I'm like, "Pre-order it. It's coming."
Russell:
"It's going to be awesome, I swear."
Kristine:
This is a great thing because what I tell people, I'm like, "You could sell something that's not even done yet. You just got to be honest about, 'Hey, it's not done.' You can't just be like, surprise, it's not finished, but I'll send it to you later." So I put, "Hey, it's coming. You'll have it in a month." So in the funnel, I added other books that didn't exist yet. I said, but they will. So I'm writing a book on this and this and this. And then I had a little mini course at the end. And again, I couldn't do any coaching, but I used Clickfunnels and it automatically activated the email that would send them their product. So they got their product, they saw the product, the ad brought them in, and I didn't have to do anything else. And that was really reassuring for me because I was raising my son. He had just been born, I was breastfeeding. It was just like, I didn't have a car. I was living on this farm, all that kind of stuff. That was absolutely crazy.
But it was really those funny ads. People, they were watching, they were consuming them. And because the product was good, the offer was good. But then when you get someone to laugh, immediately, they like you. They immediately like you as soon as you get them to laugh. I'm like, this is crazy. So yeah, that was my very first ad to a low ticket. And I couldn't believe that I can make so much, even just selling a $19 book.
Russell:
So cool. I'm curious. I have a guess on this. I'm curious if you know the stats. Because right now, as you know, ad costs are going up, up and up. And what's interesting, I assume, is with the funny ads, I'm assuming the ad costs to acquire customers are way lower because there's virality, people share it. There's people socially interacting with it. If you have stats or numbers that show a traditional thing versus a funny ad, just the cost to acquire customers or anything?
Kristine:
I really should get more on the stats side. But this is what I have noticed. Immediately when I would bring in funny ads, the sales, at one point, I remember one time I had the same ad. I didn't change the ad spend or anything. The sales had tripled on one of the ads, and it was the second ad that I had offered. And then I was able to scale more. Because I hadn't gotten to a point where I could keep spending more. Every time you increase your ads budget, you want to continue to be doing this, right? You want to make more or you want to break even, whatever your goals are. But for me, I was keeping this one ad. I had a really serious ad that I just couldn't scale. And the moment that I brought in the funny ones, I was able to actually spend more and scale more. And at that point I was like, "What? Triple?" That was insane.
But I've definitely, definitely noticed also the reach, and how many people share, how much organic reach you get because everyone's sharing it to their friends. And because the toilet ad, for example, it was like, "You probably look like this, or you're probably sitting on this toilet right now." You'd have Mary Smith be like, "Oh my gosh, Yolanda, this is you all day." They would send to their friends.
Russell:
They'd keep tagging their friends.
Kristine:
They tagged their friends. And so then their friends would go, "Who's this girl?" And then they would start talking and stuff. And so it was really cool to also see the organic and how much people were sharing it. And then to see millions. It was real quick the first, it was a year or two years, it was 60 million views. It was 60 million views. That was insane. It was absolutely insanity. And I wasn't posting every day.
Russell:
That's like the size of LA, right? That's a lot of people.
Kristine:
Yeah. And I wasn't posting every day at all. I wasn't doing anything. It was just from paid traffic. And now we do ads for other companies that use just serious ads. And now they've replaced everything with fun. And they don't even have to necessarily be funny. They don't have to have a kick, but just fun. Something that makes people go, "Oh, they don't take life too seriously. They're a fun person. I want to work with them. If I'm going to choose someone to work with, I want to work with them."
Russell:
Yeah, so cool. So afterwards, you obviously were doing it for the music business. But then, I know, later you started, I don't know if you're partnering with brands or buying brands, but you have a couple of other companies you started doing these for. Because what's cool about this is you master this thing for your own business. And then the skillset master, now you were able to leverage it to get equity in other businesses for applying that skill, which is so fascinating.
Kristine:
This is so cool. And so a friend of mine had a cologne company and they were running ads and they were losing money. And I was able to quickly identify a couple of things. Their ads were terrible, and they didn't have a funnel. And so I just called him. And again, I'm on the farm. So I'd seen it and I'm like, I'm starting an ads agency on a farm with no Wi-Fi. At the time, I didn't think of how wild this was. I just saw that it worked. And I'm like, it worked for me. It should work for him. And so I called him, I'm like, "There's this thing called a funnel, and you set it up and it'll take me a week. I got to build it out. But let me run your ads and let me do this stuff and we'll do a 50/50 split." And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it."
And so he had showed me his ads account, they were losing money, but they were still getting sales. And I was like, "If I just tweaked a couple of things, I believe this would be profitable." And so worked out a 50/50 rev share. And immediately, I mean, it was similar numbers to the book. I mean, it was thousands a day. It was like right away. And it was like these funny, ridiculous ads that we're shooting with a cell phone. This isn't like video production. But the very first ad I shot in the backyard, I didn't even have the cologne. And I think this is a big thing for people. So there's two things here. One, I didn't have any cologne. And two, recognizing that anybody that sees this ad has never smelled this cologne. So I think most people would go, "That's not going to work." Right? And we have no Wi-Fi. There's so many things.
But what I did was I was like, but wait, we have software. So I'd be like, "Guys, check out the cologne." And then we just put the cologne there, an image, and we would say stuff like, "Are you this guy that's like a lonely guy? Well, you got to smell good so you could have all the ladies." And then it'd show all these ladies around the guy. So it's just like these images. There's no people. And I'm in the backyard. There's pecans and my mom's washer and dryers. The toilet's over there.
Russell:
It's still there.
Kristine:
It's still there. Yeah, the toilets there. But it just started selling. So then I did it for a brick and mortar company. I did it for, we sell food. I set up the same ad in the same backyard, but I'm holding a plate of tamales, and I'm like, "Tamales. You want some tamales?" And I'm in the ad. But it just worked. And I saw it work across every niche. I saw it work across everything. And the cologne company, we actually got a Two Comma Club Award for selling millions of dollars of cologne that nobody's smelled before, which was crazy. So yeah, it was really cool. It's like, once you master ads, most people, their problem is traffic. They can't get traffic. They have a good offer and they have no idea how to get traffic. Or they're not willing to do what needs to be done to get traffic. Sometimes there's ego and they don't want to like, even how we went door to door. I love how there was no ego. It's like all my ego is gone.
Russell:
I lost that years ago.
Kristine:
Doesn't exist. And so yeah, it was like a quick, to have that now. And now I work with different companies and I have a very similar arrangement with each one, depending on what I'm doing. And some of that's everything. Because I built out the entire funnel, I'm also like, oh, this is how we build it out. And it's not just the funny ads, but also helping with the entire sales structure. And to me, that's so fun. I love it because you tweak a couple of things, just a few little things, and it makes huge, huge differences. So it was really cool to acquire that skill. And then now, working with other companies, and they've done all the work to create the products. The Cologne company did all the shipping. I'm not having to do anything. I'm just promoting them on the front end. This is awesome.
Russell:
Can we show one of the cologne ads?
Kristine:
Yeah.
Russell:
Or is it top secret?
Kristine:
Yeah. Let me. Okay, let's do it.
Russell:
Okay, we're going to show the cologne ad right here so you guys can see it.
Kristine:
Hey guys, I want to show you this amazing cologne. It's called LPR. And did I mention that it has pheromones in it? Pheromones are scientifically proven to attract women to men. What? Let me demonstrate.
Billy:
I'm so lonely. None of the ladies love me. I'm going to die alone.
Kristine:
Now watch what happens.
Speaker 5:
I love you, Billy. Muah. Muah. Muah.
Speaker 6:
I love you too, Billy. Muah. Muah. Muah.
Billy:
What am I going to do? All these ladies want me. How am I going to choose one?
Speaker 6:
You don't have to choose one, Billy. You can have us both.
Billy:
Yeah.
Kristine:
Click the link to get LPR cologne straight to your door.
Russell:
Okay. Question that I think people are probably going to be asking. You said you had no Wi-Fi. If you have no Wi-Fi, you record that on your phone, then how are you getting it on the internet?
Kristine:
Oh, yeah. No, this is a good question. I left this out. Magically, it just appeared on the internet. I know. Well, I remember when Elon did the, he came up with, I was like, yes, I'm finally going to have Wi-Fi. And it was like, not in your area. And I'm like, dang it.
Russell:
Everywhere on the planet except here.
Kristine:
But where we were, there's crop circles everywhere. If he had focused on our area, two people would've signed up. But what I would do is I would wait until my mom got home every day and I would use her car because I didn't have a car either. And then I would drive into town to Wi-Fi, and then I would upload the ads. And so what was interesting too is I couldn't check the stats constantly.
Russell:
It's not like you were going to refresh and check the stuff. Like, “hopefully it goes well.”
Kristine:
Yeah, I couldn't always do it. Right, exactly. I just remember being like, please, little baby Jesus, please sell some stuff. My baby needs diapers. And so I'd go down and upload the stuff and I'd go home and I'd just sit there.
Russell:
Just waiting until-
Kristine:
Yeah, waiting. And I'd get mad. I'd get so mad at my mom because sometimes she'd come home late. I'm like, when are you coming home? Because I'm just sitting there like a baby just sitting there, like, I got to go check these ads. And yeah, it was like, it took a few days, but what was cool was, I didn't have a budget. I didn't have a designated budget. I think the first day I spent 60 bucks or 80 bucks or something like that. And so it wasn't a lot, but I made like 120. And so then I was like, okay, cool. I made 40 bucks. And so the next day I spent a little bit more. If I spent 150 bucks, now I'm making 250 bucks, whatever that looked like. And I just kept on scaling until all of a sudden I had spent $10,000 that month.
But if somebody originally had said, "Do you have $10,000 to spend?" I would've been like, "No. God no. I'm not going to spend $10,000." And I think also a really, really big moment for me too was it was during Covid, and I had gotten approval for an unemployment check. And they were like, here, you can go get your unemployment. And it was right before I kind of launched all these funny ads and stuff. And this kind of goes back to faith. And I look at the unemployment check and I said, if I accept this check, I'm going to get in a lot of trouble because I'm about to make a lot of money. And so I didn't take it.
I look back then, and I think if any single mom had taken that check, I wouldn't have thought any less of them. You have a child, there's a check right here for quite a bit of money that would've helped you. But I was so confident. Like what you said, when you would say a funnel works, when you would say you can sell your stuff online. When you said you can sell your knowledge online, it just made sense to me and I just believed you. And so that's such a huge part of my life was that I believed what you said. And that when the check was in front of me, I'm like, I'm not taking this because I'm going to get in so much trouble because the government's going to come back to me and they're going to say I made way too much money. Why did I take this check? Because I'm going to make way too much money this year. It's going to happen this year. And so I didn't take the check.
And it ended up happening. I ended up making more money than I'd ever made in my whole life. But it was just kind of having that belief and walking like you believe in it. Not walking like you have a plan B. You're walking you like, this is it. This is what's going to work. I believe it's going to work. And I'm just going a hundred percent so much that I'm not taking this check right now. So this is really, really cool. When I look back on it now.
Russell:
I just recently read a book called The Magic of Believing. I'm not sure if you read it, but it's like a classic old book about that. And it's fascinating because I've said this before, but I've never seen someone who's skeptical and successful. Those two things don't go together. And just your story, every single time you're like, okay, I believe in this thing. And so you weren't skeptical. You're like, I believe in it, I'm going to do it. And then everything showed up. And it's like, to see the pattern in your life three or four times now where that's the thing you're doing. It's like hopefully people listen to that because our society's taught us to be skeptical of everything. And it's just like, obviously you got to protect yourself. But it's like, man, when you're skeptical, it's just hard to. You don't take the steps forward. You're always second-guessing and you don't make the actions versus like, I'm just going to believe and go and then see what happens. That's when the magic shows up.
Kristine:
Yeah. Well, and I also think it's just like people hear the, I make most my decisions just off logic. Like what you said. When I would read the book, I'm like, okay, this makes sense. It doesn't matter what I believe, it doesn't matter what my track record has. It doesn't matter. Everything that you said made sense. And when you said, "These are the numbers, this is all it has to do is convert at 1% on a webinar and you have a million dollar webinar." And when you break down the number, I'm like, this makes sense. That's all. I don't need the majority of people. And from the experience going door-to-door, right, nine out of 10 people can tell you no, and you can still get yes. A few percentage will. So there's logic there. It's when we start thinking emotionally and we go, but am I good enough? Am I this?
And what I tell everyone always, I was talking to a young lady yesterday who was actually in tears. And she was so sweet. And she was like, "How are you so confident on what you're doing? Basically, how are you walking in faith? How are you so confident in what you're doing?" And I'm like, "Okay, let me just stop right there. Everyone tells you you got to be great and you got to be so good. So everyone's focusing here. So for you to believe that you can sell something, you have to believe you have to be amazing. So everyone goes to all these life coach stuff and they're like, I'm amazing. I'm worth it. They wake up in the morning and they're listening to their mornings like, you are valuable, you are lovable."
And I'm like, "Let me just tell you something. A chia pet is so pointless. It's just grass. That's all it is. They have made millions of dollars. The Shake Weight is pointless,. The Pet Rock is pointless. Millions and millions of dollars." And so she starts laughing and I said, "Do you believe that you could offer a fraction of the value that a chia pet offers?" And she starts laughing. She's like, "Yes." And I'm like, "So you don't even got to be great. You just got to offer something of some sort of value to the world and you could work for yourself and you could have a business and you could be successful. And at that point, it's just like, you just got to believe you're kind of good. That's it. Are you kind of good? And obviously, do your best. Be the best that you can be. Always be growing. But I think everyone thinks you got to be like, I got to be this perfect entrepreneur."
Russell:
When I become this, then I'll do it.
Kristine:
Then I can do it. But hey, if you just have something. And you had always said something that was so powerful when you said, "Wherever you are when it comes to selling education, is there someone that would want to be where you are?" And that hit me. And it was like, yeah, I've toured and I've sung. And even if I'm just singing at a restaurant, there's plenty of people that would rather do that than working at a Starbucks, you know what I mean, if that's their dream.
And so I just thought, yeah, if there's just a thousand people a year that want the same dream that I have, if I sell a thousand dollar course, I don't know my math right now, is that a million dollars, something like that? Whatever those numbers are, I can make a really great living. And that's just a small percentage of the world that just have to want to be where I am. And I'm not famous. I'm not Beyonce, I'm not any of those things, but I could help them get there, that belief. And so going, "Hey, actually you could just believe in little things and you could still do amazing." And I love that because no matter where you are, and then you can grow and ascend and I don't know, I just thought that was really powerful when you said that.
Russell:
That's awesome. So cool. Okay, so for people watching this now who are curious, I want to make funny ads. Is there a process? Especially someone like me, I don't consider myself funny. What are some ideas that you could help me generate, like, here's something you could do or something that people watching at home could do to create a fun ad?
Kristine:
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. There's a really simple formula that I always tell everyone. Your hook is the most important thing. The first few seconds of your ad is the most important thing. You want to capture someone's attention. And so the easiest way to make something funny, even if you're not funny, and even if your business is not funny. Now, no business is funny.
Russell:
Cologne is not funny.
Kristine:
Nothing's funny, right? Unless you sell like whoopee cushions or something, there's a fart spray. This is not funny. Okay, so if you're selling, let's say you're selling, I always use this example. Let's say you're someone that teaches busy moms how to make a living. What you do is you just write down what all their challenges are. So what's their challenge? Dirty diapers, kids, they don't have any time, they're exhausted. You start just writing all of their challenges. And then what you do is you take their challenge and you exaggerate it.
I call this the Muhammad Ali, like boom, boom, punch type thing. So this is like Muhammad Ali hook. So what you do is you say, "Hey, are you a mom?" So you call out the person. "Hey, are you a busy mom who wants to be an entrepreneur? But it's hard for you to get started because..." And boom, boom, punch is the boom boom is you offer two actual real, legitimate things. Like you're exhausted, you have no time. And then you offer, "And you're tired of feeling like this?" And visually, you just show the exaggeration. There's a kid, there's poop on the wall, you hair looks like you just got electrocuted, you haven't done your makeup. Maybe your mascara is everywhere and you have a calculator, but you're trying to do sales. The dog's pulled your underwear out into the living room. Just exaggerating whatever the problem is.
And we even did this when we did Brooke Castillo's ad, when we said, "Are you tired of feeling stuck?" And I'm wedged in two mattresses. Like, "You couldn't even get yourself." It took five of us to even get me into the mattress, but just showing. And so it's like you're stuck, but you're obviously in a really weird, are you tired of being stuck? I'm in a mattress, guys, I don't even know how I ended up here. That kind of thing. The visual is so easy to do. You don't even have to be funny to do that. Are you tired of being broke? You're in front of the dollar store. Just different things that you could exaggerate. So really, all it is calling out your customer, writing down all their pain points and just exaggerating it. And you could just say, "Are you tired of this?" And you just exaggerate the heck out of that. And that's all. Such a simple way.
And the rest of your ad could just be, you don't even have to add a ton of comedy. That first hook is so important. It already set the tone. And now you can say, "Hey, well guess what? I have my new make a hundred thousand dollars this year during nap time," or whatever it is at that point. And then they're already hooked because then they're looking at that and they're going, that's me. And then they start tagging their friends like, "Hey Mary, look, this is us." They have all their mom friends, or they have their other friends that are in the same business or trying to achieve the same goal. And they start sharing your ad because it reminds them of themselves. And that's what you want. You want them to look at it and be like, that's me, because they like to laugh at themselves.
Russell:
Yeah. So cool. Do you have a site where it just says every ad you've ever created that people can go look at? I feel similar. The ads I'm proud of, I want to display these as art because they're so cool. It's like an ad, but I want to show everybody. It'd be cool if you did something, like, we could go see here's all of Kristine's ads she's ever written and created. It'd be so much fun to see it all.
Kristine:
I have a bunch of ads. Oh, I should put them. Maybe I'll put them all on. Maybe by the time you air this, I'll have them all on there, laughmyadsoff.com. So we have a bunch. And I had bought a bunch of funny domains, like whoopyourads.com. And all kinds of, like kicksomeads.com. So we're able to play off that word a lot. And then, yeah, I have a lot of stuff there, Laugh My Ads Off.
Russell:
So awesome. Well, this has been so much fun. And I'm grateful for you. I know you came to Unlock The Secrets and our kid's event. And it was cool because you taught this process to the kids and you had all the kids go and write ads. This is all the kids. Maybe we can show some, I don't know if you can show the kids ads, maybe. But they all came back and they did ads and we picked a winner who had the funniest ad. But it's cool, even if the adults are like, oh. All the kids did it. Tell your kids like, "Hey, go make me a funny ad. Here's the process."
Kristine:
Yeah. Make your kids do it. Slave them away.
Russell:
And then you did Funnel Hacking Live. And the same thing, I think it was cool because so many people in the audience there, they've seen funny ads that, again, big production companies make like, oh, I can't afford that. And all of a sudden they saw it and it's like, I could actually do that. It's something that's-
Kristine:
Just do it on my cell phone.
Russell:
It makes it just simple and real. Yeah, it was just leaning into the humor and the scripting versus the high production and stuff like that. But I think what you're doing is so good for just our community and for everybody and giving people belief they can do it. And it just makes ads more fun too, which just makes the internet more fun.
Kristine:
Right. Well, and you know what? What's so cool is, when I was younger we used to make just funny skits. And I'd always dreamt, I thought, how fun would my life be if I could just do this forever? And then thankful to you, you're like, "Hey, this is how you can turn anything into a business. It's a funnel. It's a funnel." And when I saw the funnel, I'm like, oh yeah. So now I can just make funny skits and then I just say, "Want to buy something?" I just add a call to action. Now I do get to do this. So every day I'm like, oh my gosh, I actually get to do that thing that I wanted to do when I was a kid. I just got to sell something on the end. And so thank you for that, Russell.
Russell:
That's amazing.
Kristine:
I live my life dream now because of you. So thank you.
Russell:
That's the greatest thing ever. I love it. Well, very cool. All right, so everyone go to Laugh My Ads Off. If you want to go check out some more of the videos and see all that. Thank you Kristine for being amazing, for being here and sharing this with everybody.
Kristine:
Thank you, Russell, so much.
Russell:
That's awesome.
Kristine:
Thank you.
Russell:
Thank you.
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