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Summary

This week on Making Bank, we’re bringing back a guest who needs no elaborate introduction—Russell Brunson of Click Funnels fame.

(For those of you who are unfamiliar with Russell, check out Josh’s first interview with him here on Advisor TV).

More than anything, today’s Making Bank episode is a check-in between Josh and Russell. A chance for Josh to ask Russell about the tsunami of success he’s enjoyed since releasing his best-selling book, Dot-Com Secrets, and the inspiration for his new book, Expert Secrets.

If Dot-Com Secrets was the science behind Russell’s entrepreneurial success, then Expert Secrets is the art. It is an unabridged journey into how Russell makes his businesses work, and how he communicates his value to consumers.

So, listen-up to hear Josh and Russell discuss the inspiration behind Expert Secrets, as well as…

• How to position any new opportunity…
• The three foundations of a mass movement…
• False beliefs and the art of invalidating them…
• The initial motivation and idea for Click Funnels…
• The difference between selling improvement and selling inspiration…
• Why the “Attractive Character” is absolutely essential to your success…

And more…

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New Opportunities and Real Growth: Expert Secrets with Guest Russell Brunson: MakingBank S2Ep26

Josh Felber:        Welcome to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the success strategies and the mindsets of the top 1% so you can amplify and transform your life and your business today. I’m really excited and honored for today’s guest. He’s back again on Making Bank. This time, we first talked about his initial book launch, kind of his background a little bit more, and now we’re gonna dive into really what makes you an expert, how you can get your voice out there, then how you can transform and move your, whether it’s your eCommerce business, whatever kind of online business that you want to get more marketing, better marketing, and just transform to being a better person overall.

I want to welcome Russell Brunson back to Making Bank. Russell, welcome back.

Russell Brunson:               Glad to be here, man. I appreciate it as always.

Josh Felber:        Yeah. Awesome. We’re gonna be talking a little bit today about Expert Secrets, so here’s a copy. I know he’s got one. Ba-Boom. Can’t miss it out. Actually I was at Barnes and Noble the other day, and was looking all around, and they didn’t have them, so I put in a couple orders so they’ll pull it into the store for you.

Russell Brunson:               Oh, you do. That’s awesome.

Josh Felber:        We gotta get Barnes and Noble hustling there.

Russell Brunson:               I know it. They need to know.

Josh Felber:        That’s right. Well, cool man. I’m excited to have you back. I know our first show we shot, probably a year and a half or so ago. When it came out, I remember going back in and looking at the backend. I don’t ever look at my numbers or my stats or anything. I just love doing this, so it’s fun to have you on, but I just happened to go in to download it to help push it out and get it all over the internet, and after I think it was like five days, or six days, we had over 40,000 views of it.

Russell Brunson:               Oh, wow.

Josh Felber:        Yeah.

Russell Brunson:               That’s awesome.

Josh Felber:        So people loved what you had to say. That’s kind of our guide to see if we can crush those numbers this time around.

Russell Brunson:               Make it even better. Sweet.

Josh Felber:        That’s right. Let’s see. Let’s talk a little bit about what inspired you to really kind of write that next step in the book, because I know DotCom Secrets came out, and that was kind of like your prequel, as you say, to what Expert Secrets is. Tell us a little bit about what drove you to write this book.

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. It’s funny because after I wrote the DotCom Secrets book, I swore I would never write another book again, ever. I don’t know. Some people are really good authors and they’re good at writing and I don’t think that’s me. It’s like giving birth. I gave birth to the first book and then I was like, I remember my wife, we’ve got five kids now, but after every time, she’s like, “I’ll never to this again.” A few months later you forget.

But I was like, “I’ll never do that again,” because it was so hard and I didn’t for a long time. We just focused on the book. We sold a lot of them. It was good. It helped so many people to understand the basics of funnels and communication with those funnels and how the whole game is played. I’m really proud of it. Then, again, I swore I’d never write another book again.

It was funny, I was actually at a 25K meeting. You might have been there. You were at the same one.

Josh Felber:        Yeah.

Russell Brunson:               But it was the night before. I had a dinner with a group of five or six people and Dean Graziosi was sitting across the table from me, and we’re talking about, I don’t know even know what we’re talking about, but we’re talking about something. I’m sitting there, and it was funny because, Dean, as you know Dean, he’s done infomercials and this whole thing on TV and everything. At the time, I was figuring out, how do I get ClickFunnels out to the masses? That was the question through my head.

As Dean and I were sitting there talking about some unrelated topic, I looked at him, and I was like, “I need to write another book. It needs to be called Expert Secrets.” I just bought the domain name a couple of months ago, and I’m like, it needs to be Expert Secrets and Dean’s gonna somehow do an infomercial for me. I don’t even know how. I don’t even know him yet. This is like I’m just meeting him. It’s kind of awkward. I was like, “Huh.” So I just kind of stop and I’m listening to him, I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Am I really gonna write a book?” I was like, “I don’t want to. I can’t do it.” That’s the real story. I went back to the apartment that night. Dave was there with me at the thing. I was like, “Dave, we’re writing a book.” He said, “What? You said you’d never do it again.” I’m like, “I know, but I know what it is. I know how it’s supposed to be. I know why it’s so important.”

We talked about earlier, like in ClickFunnels, I think as of right now, we’re about 40,000 active members. Either we’re gonna cross that today or tomorrow or something like that, but we’re really close to that. It’s interesting, as I watch, we did our Two Comma Clubs. We’ve got over 100 people that made at least a million bucks in a funnel.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome.

Russell Brunson:               We’ve got 39,900 and whatever. They have it. What’s the difference between the one percenters and the rest? As I looked at all their businesses, it was interesting is that there are eCommerce businesses, there was network marketing businesses, there were all sorts of business models. That didn’t matter.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               What did matter was the commonality between this stuff. They understood how to position themselves, having a person in the brand. They understood how to tell stories. They understood. Funnels don’t convert based on the process of the funnel.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               That’s nice, but what converts the funnel is the words on the page and the communication with the audience and how you sell them. It’s like almost like funnels became so technical, people were geeking out on the tech side and they’re forgetting the human side. There’s an art and the science.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               DotCom Secrets is almost like, here’s the science and Expert Secrets is like here’s the art. Here’s how we make these things work and how do we communicate and all those kind of things. That’s kind of what I knew I needed to create, then it started the process of creating it, which took me over 18 months to actually do.

I don’t know if you heard this story or not. I was about seven or eight months into it. I just finished the first draft, so 240 pages in and I was at a cabin with my kids. I was playing with them all day and they went to bed at night and my wife went to bed. I went to do an edit. I was reading it and I was like, dang it. I was like, “This is turning out good, but it’s not what I want. I wanted something just great.” I had to do it on Snapchat. So I got my phone out. If I don’t do it live, I knew I was gonna wuss out, so I put it live. I’m like, “Hey, guys. Look what I’m doing.” I highlighted the whole book and I deleted it. Then I saved it so it was gone, gone, like forever.

Josh Felber:        Oh, no.

Russell Brunson:               It’s gone. I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Now I gotta start back from scratch,” from about, whenever that was, seven or eight months ago, was when I started back from scratch. It was really cool because it gave me a chance to really think, what does this book need to be to get people to really, to get anybody, if they have a business or they don’t, how do you get it to a point where it gives them a framework and a process so they can do it?

That was kind of the premise of it, and started the process and now we’re here.

Josh Felber:        So you had the book, totally scrapped it. You don’t like writing books. I’m there with you. I’m struggling still to get a full one. I’ve done pieces of other books that have done well and everything else, but man it’s just a struggle to get that information down. I totally can feel for you, where you’re coming from.

Obviously, rewriting the book and everything now, what you have now, is what you were going for initially?

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. I’m so proud of it now. It’s really, really cool. I don’t know. The first time around I felt like was kind of all over the place. This time, it’s interesting because after I deleted everything, I was like, it came back to the foundation. What creates mass movements or cults or whatever you want to call it? That’s what I was trying to figure out. So I sat back and I spent probably the next two or three months studying deep into cults and movements and how all these things work. As I found, as you read in the book, there’s a pattern that almost all of them had. After I figured out the pattern, then I was like, “Okay, that’s the foundation of the book and then everything else blossoms from that pattern.”

So you understand these are the three things that every mass movement has. That’s what I’ll say. That’s what you need to know about the book. These are the three things. Go and do it. Then it’s like, “Wait a minute. Here’s what we did and how we did it. And what worked and what didn’t work.” We go piece by piece, all the different pieces of it.

I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve read a lot on how to start a mass movement, how to build cults. They talk about, here’s what these guys did, and then they leave it there, kind of to your imagination. So I’m like, “Okay, well, I learned about this concept here, but how does someone like me do it selling software, selling a supplement?”

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               How does that relate? I’m not building a real cult. It was like, “Okay, let me think to that.” We started trying things out and we would test them. One good example of this is, you look at any of the mass movements. They have a future base cause, but there’s something’s that like they’re all trying to shoot for. In the book, I call that section, Helping Them Break the Four Minute Mile. Obviously you know about the four minute mile. Soon as the first dude broke the four minute mile, everyone else was doing it afterwards.

Josh Felber:        Everybody.

Russell Brunson:               But until then, nobody could do it. For me, that was true in this business. My goal when I got started in this business was make a $1000 a month. That was my honest goal, because that’s what my wife was making, supporting us. I was like, “If I can do that, then I’d be helping as much as she’s helping.” My lofty goals. But during that time, John Reese, it’s a shame. Not as many people know him right now, but when [inaudible 00:09:20], he’s one of the founders of our whole market. He did the first product launch, he did a million dollars in a day. I think it took him like 18 hours.

I was a young kid. I was at Bear Lake, Idaho with my parents and my wife. We didn’t have any kids yet. There’s no internet access at this lake. I remember, I went to the public library and checked my email in case my one or two customers was upset about something. I checked my email, none of my customers messaged me. Then I saw this email coming through from John Reese, it said, basically he made a million dollars in a day.

I remember sitting back in my chair being like … He sold a $1000 course. I’m like $1000 times what times 1000 equals a million? I’m like, he sold 1000 copies of $1000 course, and made a million bucks. I was like, “I don’t think I can do that, but what if I sold, what if I made a $1000 course and I sold three a day?” In a year, I’d be a millionaire. He broke the four minute mile for me.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               A lot of my friends now in the business, that was the same day for them that they were kind of dabbling in the scene. It was like that four minute mile’s been broken. Most movements have something like that.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               For us, inside of ClickFunnels, we built that in our community. We built an award called the Two Comma Club, that you know about.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               Put it out there. What’s interesting is, when we first put it out, I didn’t know how many people had qualified for one. Dave ran the stats and I think we had like 55 or 60 people who had qualified for it. So we started putting that out there, then we started making it more public and our event. Obviously, we gave way trophies, big ole to everyone. What’s interesting is that, now that that’s out there, people are like, “Oh my gosh. It’s not just Russell making funnels. There’s tons of my peers have made a million dollar funnel. It’s really not that hard.” It’s like the four minute mile’s been broken for them, and now we’re seeing people all the time coming through like, “Oh, I broke a million bucks.” It’s like, it’s not that big of a deal anymore, whereas six months ago, it was.

We had to break the four minute mile and give them something to achieve, and now everyone’s trying to achieve that. Everyone that was at the event who didn’t get a trophy on stage, was sitting back in the audience like, “I want to be on stage with a trophy next year.”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               Half my staff told me that too. Everyone was saying that, right? That’s the practical application of this thing that we see tons of movements doing, but here’s how we did it in our business. I share how other people have done it in their business, so it makes things really practical. You kind of think through for yourself, how can I make that work for what I’m doing?

Josh Felber:        No, that’s awesome. We’ll actually hit this year, in 2017 here, we’ll hit our Two Comma Club with one of our funnels, and another one’s launching hopefully by the end of the week, so that one actually might hit it a lot faster I’m thinking.

Russell Brunson:               Oh, nice.

Josh Felber:        Yeah.

Russell Brunson:               You’ll be double trophies next year.

Josh Felber:        That’s right. Double trophies. Let’s dive a little bit in the book. I know initially in the book itself, and if you kind of missed our clip yesterday on the live talking about the attractive character and everything else, maybe just kind of give us a quick overview on that, because there’s a couple other sections I want to really dive into a little bit more, but I know that kind of sets up the whole process.

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. That comes down to the foundation that I talked about. The foundation of every mass movement. There are three things that all of them had. It’s here, if you’re watching the video there. There’s the screenshot. It’s page number one. Then like I said, we dive deep. The whole rest of the book is diving deep into those.

Number one, was every mass movement had some kind of charismatic leader or attractive character.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               You think about it. It’s funny, the first time I started talking about this, I was talking about the negative and the positive. Negative’s you’ve got Hitler and his Nazi party. He was the attractive character. Then you’ve got Christ and Christianity. He was the attractive character. Well that’s true with cults, Russell, and religion, but it’s not true for business. I was like, “All right. What about Apple? Do they have an attractive leader? I don’t know.” They’re like, “Oh. Well Steve Jobs, but that was a fluke. No one else has ever done that, man.” What about Tesla? They’re like, “Well Elon Musk, but …”

It’s funny, because they’re like, “Okay, fine. Maybe the good ones do.” I’m like, “Well, yes. They do.” That’s the first thing, the charismatic leader. You gotta identify that. Then say, “Well, is that me in the business? Is it my partner? Who is that person that’s gonna be the face of it?” Then now you’re aware of it, so how do we amplify that? The first section is all about that. Here’s things we did to amplify our message and find our voice and understand how to communicate and talk and tell the story. All that kind of stuff ties into the first one.

Then the second one is the future base cause. Every movement had a big future base cause. The Two Comma Club for us is one piece of that, but the concept as a whole, my community I’m leading, I’m trying to lead them somewhere.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               Where are they going? There’s a lot of pieces inside of there. Inside of our community, one of our big mantras is that you’re one funnel away. That’s part of our future base cause. It’s like, you’re one funnel away. Here’s my story. Here’s so and so story, and person after person. Here’s all these stories people talking about their one funnel away, and all of sudden there’s this future base cause for everyone. I’m one funnel away from success. I need to be part of this because that’s … We’re building these future base causes or we call them inside the circle, as you know cultures, which is kind of funny.

Josh Felber:        I was trying to find that shirt this morning. I’m like, “Where is it? No.”

Russell Brunson:               Where’s the cult shirt?

Josh Felber:        It must be dirty.

Russell Brunson:               That’s part of it too. That whole section is here about t-shirts. How many of my t-shirts do you have? You’ve got one on right now, right?

Josh Felber:        I do. Yeah.

Russell Brunson:               Get me a cool t-shirt so people identify with it. That one says, “I build funnels.” We’ve got funnel hacker. Shirts that people wear that they personally identify with the movement. Because all of us are involved in a lot of movements. In religion, I’m a Mormon, so I belong to that. I identify with that. Other people are Christians, other people are Muslim. They identify with the movement. How do I get people to identify with me? One huge way is have them wear you on their chest. A shirt is one of the greatest culture building things in the world, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               Which is why we keep doing so many cool ones. In fact, we were on a writing retreat last week with the Harmon brothers, who did the squatty potty commercial and a bunch of other ones.

Josh Felber:        Oh, yeah.

Russell Brunson:               They’re writing a commercial for us, which is hilarious. At the end of it, they had this one line. As soon as they hit the line, I was like, “That’s gonna be a t-shirt. We’re gonna have that t-shirt made and everyone’s gonna be wearing it.” I’m always looking for things because that will self identify people with the movement.

Josh Felber:        That’s cool.

Russell Brunson:               That’s number two. Then the third one, and this is one of my favorites, probably the least understood one, is that every mass movement, cult, whatever you want to call it, the leader, the charismatic leader, always offered their people a new opportunity. The opposite of new opportunity is what we call an improvement offer. A lot of people, if you’re struggling in business, it’s because you’re selling improvement. This book goes deep into it.

You think about improvement. Let’s say you’re selling me something that’s gonna help make me smarter or stronger or faster, usually like the er words are like improvement, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               If I’m gonna give you money, because you’re gonna make me smarter, by default, I’m admitting that I’m not smart, if it want to be smarter. There’s huge, ugh. I have to admit that I’m dumb to become smarter, admit that I’m weak to become strong. There’s this internal dilemma that we actually have.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               The other thing is, you think about most people are not … A lot of people have desires to do things, but they’re not like, what’s the word? I’m blanking out on my word. I referenced my own book. When people aren’t ambitious. That’s the right word. People don’t have ambition. If you’re selling improvement, you’re selling towards people’s ambition, and most people, I say one or two percent of the population is actually ambitious. Everybody’s got desires, but they don’t have ambition.

So when you’re saying, “Look. You can become better. You can be smarter. We’re gonna work out really, really hard.” The majority, the masses are like, “Uh, that sounds like a lot of work.” Improvement, inherently, if you’re selling an improvement offer, 98% of your audience, you’ve already disqualified because it’s gonna be hard. That’s tough. The opposite of that is this new opportunity, where new opportunity is something new and it’s green. They don’t understand it. You’re not saying, we talked about it yesterday.

If someone’s coming to you, because there’s a result that they want. They want to lose weight or make money or whatever that thing is. Typically, you’re not the first person they’re coming to. They’re already in some kind of vehicle trying to get that. They’re driving down the road. I’m gonna lose weight. They’re in the Atkins Diet vehicle and they’re driving. I’m trying to lose weight. If I come to you and I’m like, “Look. This is deal. You’re in the Atkins Diet. You’re trying to lose weight. I know you know that sucks because it’s horrible and you want to eat some bread, but I’ve got a way to make the Atkins Diet a little bit better. What you gotta do is, instead of you’re gonna …” I’m trying to improve it, but you’re like, “This sucks. I’m not getting my result, and you’re gonna make it better. It’s still not good. I know this vehicle and I hate it.” That’s what an improvement offer’s doing.

A new opportunity’s saying, “Look. You’re in that vehicle, the Atkins Diet, let’s say. It sucks. Come over here to whatever your new opportunity is.” Let’s say it’s the Bulletproof Diet. “You can drink butter in your coffee and it’s super good. Life over here is way better. You don’t have to diet or count calories. Come hang out with us.” You’re sitting here in this vehicle you hate, and you’re like, “You’re right.” So you get out of that and you switch to a new opportunity.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               To get that same result. That’s what every single mass movement has happened. The leader comes in and doesn’t say I’m gonna make this thing you’re in better, it’s saying, “That stuff sucks. Here’s a new opportunity. Take this.” The cool thing about new opportunities, you don’t know. You don’t have any preconceived notion, because you know that the thing you’re in sucks. You know it’s hard. But over here, is a new thing. You’re like, “I have no preconceived notion.” It plays off of people’s desires, which means when you have an offer that is desire based, then you’re not getting the two percent, you’re getting everybody. That’s the key to starting these mass movements.

Anyway, that’s kind of the hype for the book.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, no, that’s awesome. That makes total sense because with the whole new opportunity to just trying to get people to change where they currently are, makes massive sense because it’s like it’s a struggle to, like you said, want to be able to go, oh, okay. Now I gotta eat like this or I gotta do this. I’m already missing out on this, because all my friends get to go do that. But if you present it, hey, here is this new opportunity, even though it may be pretty similar, it’s gonna give them a whole substantial, hey, we’re gonna be able to do this, but with this vehicle here, you’re gonna be able to feel better. You’re gonna be able to, like you said, eat whatever you want. Whether it was with ketogenics, with the drinks and everything as well.

No. That’s awesome. So with the new opportunity then, I know, from there, take people into kind of an opportunity switch. So, hey, here’s this new opportunity, now we’re going to switch you into it. Is that correct?

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. Yeah. Basically, there’s two ways to position new opportunity. One, I call it the opportunity switch and the other one is called opportunity stack. The opportunity switch is kind of like what we talked about. They’re in this vehicle. I’m gonna switch you out of this vehicle into a new vehicle. We’re literally taking you out of whatever you’re doing now and we’re switching you to this new one.

One thing that I find interesting is, is that when I first got started in my business, I was still kind of learning all this stuff, I didn’t understand that, so I started creating a whole bunch of opportunity switches. I don’t talk a lot about this publicly, but we did a launch every three months for five or six years. Every month be like, “Here’s the newest thing in the world. It’s amazing. Come switch to my new opportunity.” Everyone would come in and they’re all excited. They’re making money and things are happening good, then three months later, I’d launch a new thing. I’m like, “Hey, everyone. Here’s a new thing.” They’d switch and they’d switch. Then after two or three switches, people were like, “You told me that was the greatest thing.” I’m like, “Yeah, it is, but this is greater now. Come on over.”

I tell people, your customers will get schizophrenia because they’re shifting from thing to thing. Eventually-

Josh Felber:        Oh, yeah. You get burned out.

Russell Brunson:               [crosstalk 00:20:37] and leave you. I think that every good business needs one and only one opportunity switch. You’re switching someone from whatever opportunity they’re in to what they’re in today. And after you have them in that opportunity, you want to protect them and say, “Look. I’m not gonna switch you again. This is the thing.” But how do we make more money? How do we serve them more?

The next phase is, we’ve switched them into this, now what are the opportunities stacks so we can add upon this. For example, for me, I switch people into ClickFunnels and that opportunity. Now they’ve used ClickFunnels. If I just come the next day and say, “Hey, guys. Guess what? There’s this new thing on Amazon. Amazon’s amazing. Come over here guys.” They’d be like, “But you said funnels.” I’m like, “But Amazon now.” They’d be confused, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               I stay in my vehicle. I stay in my lane. Here’s ClickFunnels and it’s funnels. What other opportunities do I have for these guys inside of this? So I say, “One opportunity is I know their funnels aren’t converting very well. If we had some software to help them write copy, that would help.” So we introduce an opportunity stack, which is called Funnel Scripts. I’m like, “Hey, you’re in this vehicle right here. How many of you guys would like to make this your actual full time job? This could be your profession. You can become a Click Funnel certified consultant.” Boom. I offer them an opportunity switch to become a consultant, but it’s all within the same switch that I did initially, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               That’s the thing. Usually, every business sees an opportunity switch, which is usually the first thing you sell somebody after they come into your world. Then from there, we transition to that opportunity stacking. How can I serve these guys at a higher level? What’s the next thing within this vehicle that’s gonna help them to get more, to get better. That’s kind of what I’m looking at between those two things.

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Josh Felber:        I know we dove into a lot about a little bit more on the epiphany bridge yesterday. So guys, if you missed yesterday’s live interview, go watch it, because we dive into a little bit about the epiphany bridge. Maybe give just us 30 seconds on it, because I want to try to get into a little bit about the false belief patterns and everything too before, because it goes fast.

Russell Brunson:               Time goes so fast with these. I’m so sorry. All right. I’m gonna show you guys. When you have the book, when you open to page, where we at? Where we at? Page 195, or 95, sorry. There’s a picture of the epiphany bridge. The basic concept is, most of us, we’re living a normal life and then there’s something emotional that happens to us. We have this emotional epiphany where someone introduces something to us.

Think about what you’re good at. It could be weight loss, business, finance, whatever it is you’re passionate about. Before you got into that, you lived a normal every day life, then all of a sudden, something happened and you had this epiphany of like, wow. I’m gonna be an entrepreneur. Wow. This is how I lose weight. You get that wow moment, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Russell Brunson:               You have the big epiphany, and then you come over here and you start like, how’s this gonna work? You start studying and you start geeking out. You read every book, every blog, listen to every podcast. Soon you’re using huge words we call techno babble right here. If you’re in the biohacking community, you start using words like ketogenics and all the nerdy terms. If you’re internet marketing, you’re talking about auto responders and split testing and sequencing. All this techno babble.

Then what happens, we try to sell somebody on this concept and we see them and we’re all excited and the first thing we do is we start spewing out this techno babble on them, and they get all covered in it. We’re trying to logically convince them of the truth and they freak out and then they run away and hide and they never talk to you again, because of the way we do it.

We have to understand is that people don’t buy things logically. You didn’t buy into this because somebody convinced you that ketogenics or ketogensis or whatever was the greatest thing to do. You got into that because of something else that happened. The key for us in selling anything is coming back and being like, “What was it that got me excited? What was the epiphany that I had?”

When you understand that, that’s how you sell somebody. You tell them that story and try to give them the same epiphany. If they have the same epiphany you had, they’ll go logically sell themselves. You don’t have to do that. You have to help them. You have to create an environment through your stories that gives them that epiphany bridge or gives them that epiphany.

The book goes into how do you create the right state? How do you get them to feel your story? What’s the structure of the story? All those kinds of things in the next three or four chapters after here that walk you through that. When you understand it, if you listen to any of my anything, I tell like 55 stories every 30 minutes or so. It’s like this process over and over again to get people to feel a certain way and emotionally connect. It’s pretty powerful. It’s surprisingly simple after you see how it’s broken down in the book. At the end of it, it’s like, here’s the script. Here’s the nine questions you answer. You answer these nine questions. If you do it in the right order, you’ve built a perfect epiphany bridge.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. The cool thing too is, I remember just seeing you guys have the epiphany bridge in the Funnel Scripts now?

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. I know Jim’s being working on it. I don’t know if it’s live yet or not. If not now, it will be very soon, yeah.

Josh Felber:        Very soon. Okay. Cool. Yeah, no, I remember seeing it. I’m like, “Oh, sweet. It’ll help create the whole epiphany bridge thing. How easy.”

Russell Brunson:               Boom. It’s almost too simple.

Josh Felber:        Yeah. What’s he doing to us? Funny story was, I remember when I was flying out to Boise. It’s always like the longest connecting times to get to Boise from Cleveland.

Russell Brunson:               Sorry about that.

Josh Felber:        I think it’s Cleveland. But I remember, I was listening to something. I think it was one of your marketing podcasts. You were talking about the, it was for the keto drink OS, and you started talking about it and I’m like, “Okay, sweet.” I’m on the airplane waiting. They shut the door. We took off. I’m like, “Crap. There’s no wifi in the airplane.” And it’s like a three hour flight from Chicago or whatever. I’m like, “What was he talking about?” I saved it on my phone. I finally get there and land and I’m listening. I’m like, “Oh,” because I’m all in to health and supplements. What is this little keto drink that he’s talking about? I gotta get some of that.

So it was the whole epiphany bridge. You were talking about, oh. This is what I found. I remember you were talking about it was a campfire and this. The whole little story and everything for it.

Russell Brunson:               It sold ya. You got the same epiphany. Yes.

Josh Felber:        Yeah. But the stuff works, so …

Russell Brunson:               That’s awesome.

Josh Felber:        All right. After the epiphany bridge and everything then, you talk into about false belief patterns. I’d like to kind of understand a little bit more and what you mean by breaking those false belief patterns.

Russell Brunson:               Yeah. As you’ll find through the rest of the book, the first half’s teaching the core concepts. The last half is basically teaching how I do my presentation, my webinars, my stories. If you look at the foundation of all that, everyone thinks the way you sell someone is you come in there, you educate them for 60 minutes, then you sell them something at the end. It is completely not true.

The way that it works, the way I do my presentations, the way I teach, the way I sell, the way everything works is, I have to understand what somebody’s false belief patterns are about the thing that I’m trying to sell, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               If I was gonna try to sell you this phone, inherently, there’s gonna be a bunch of false beliefs you have almost immediately. I found that they kind of fall into three different buckets. One is usually false beliefs about the thing, the new opportunity you’re giving them. Number two is the false belief that they have about themselves, like I don’t know if I could actually do that. Then third, false beliefs like, oh, well, they gotta blame someone, their wife, their spouse, the weather, whatever it is.

What I try to do is walk you in the book is like, if I’m gonna sell you this phone, what are all the false beliefs they currently have? I’m gonna write them all down. They believe it’s gonna be too big to fit into their pocket. They’re gonna believe whatever it is, for whatever it is you sell, it’s probably gonna be different. What are the false beliefs they have about those things? What are the false beliefs they have about themselves being able to actually execute on those things? And what are the external things that they, other false beliefs about other people, other things they can blame it on? Oh, I can’t do it because of blah.

I figure out all those things and I list out all the false beliefs. Then what we do, in the process in the book, you look at the false beliefs. Let’s say, I’ll use network marketing because it’s the easiest to illustrate with, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Russell Brunson:               Network marketing, the false belief could be like, if I join a network marketing company, I’m gonna lose my friends and my family members. That’s a false belief that they have. My question’s like, “Why do they have that false belief? What was experienced that made them believe that? So the experience they had was probably, maybe they either joined one at one time, and they called their mom and their dad and their sister, and they got hung up on three times. It created this story.

Or maybe one of their friends called them and started pressuring them, and they were like, ugh, and they didn’t feel good, so they’re like, “No, this is bad.” So they created this story. The story is the false belief they have about it.

If I want to overcome that false belief for them, I have to have a better story.

Josh Felber:        Sure, okay.

Russell Brunson:               So I say, “Here’s their false belief. What’s the epiphany bridge story that I have that trumps that one?” So I might say, “Look. I had the same false beliefs that you do. In fact, let me tell you the story.” I go to my epiphany bridge story. Let’s say the story’s like, “You know, I got into network marketing. I called my mom and my dad and my sister just like you did and guess what? They all hung up on me. It was the same thing. It was horrible. I almost gave up but then I met this guy. He explained this thing called the internet and how you can actually generate leads on the internet.” Whatever it is, right? “I had this epiphany, that’s there’s actually people who want this crap. So I went online. I started doing this thing, and all of a sudden, people started coming to me. I got leads. I got this big team. Everyone contacts me. People actually want this product and it’s so great.”

I tell that story, and all of a sudden, they’re over here, and they’re like, “Wow. My belief was this before, but he’s right. He had the same experience I had, but he figured out this other piece.” All of a sudden, this false belief disappears and it’s gone. Now your story becomes their new belief and that’s the key.

I figure out what’s the core false belief they have about the vehicle I’m trying to get them into. The second one’s what about me? If you look at my webinar. My first false belief, I’m trying to get people to believe that funnels are the greatest thing in the world. So as soon as I explain it, then all of a sudden they’re like, “Wow. Russell’s right. Funnels are awesome.” They believe the vehicle, but then they’re like, “Oh, but, I’m not technical. I can’t do.” There’s my false belief. I’m like, “Guess what? I’m not technical either. Check this out.” I show what I do. I do a demo. All of a sudden I show it and they’re like, “Holy cow. I can actually do that.” This false belief disappears, so now my belief’s in there for them.

So, boom, boom. Then my third one from the external for my business is like, “I believe funnels are the coolest thing in the world. I think I can actually build them. But I don’t know how to get traffic, so I can’t do it.” So I’m like, “Guess what? I don’t know how to get traffic either. In fact, let me tell you the story.” I tell a story about how I do my traffic stuff and all of a sudden they’re like, “I could do that.” This false belief falls away.

If you do it right, as you knock down those false beliefs, the only option they have is to give you money or else they’re gonna be lying to themselves.

Josh Felber:        Wow.

Russell Brunson:               That’s what’s so cool about this thing. This book is all about that. You understand the structuring of stories. What are all the false beliefs? These are all the things I need to touch upon in the stories that I need to have. When you tell those stories, those false beliefs fall away and that’s when they become customers or clients or fans or whatever you want to call them for you. That’s the key.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. With the whole false belief and everything this is, and I think you kind of mentioned it early on here when we were just chatting a few minutes at the beginning of this topic. You have your whole model that you use on webinars in here.

Russell Brunson:               Yeah.

Josh Felber:        The model’s that created millions of dollars in revenue. You shoved the whole secret in here.

Russell Brunson:               I go slide by slide. Here’s slide number one, and you turn the page and it’s like, here’s slide number two and number three. I go through the entire … I’m not holding anything back. You get slide by slide, exactly how I pitch everything I pitch, no matter what market I’m in. That’s pretty awesome.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. And you can get the audio, I remember. Sometimes when you’re reading, but then when you read and listen, at the same time, that’s even better to help anchor it in. It helps make, I think, some major breakthroughs and stuff doing it that way as well.

Russell Brunson:               Definitely.

Josh Felber:        Well, cool. We’ve got a couple minutes left. What would be one highlight of the book that you really want to let people know, hey guys, this is why you need to grab Expert Secrets, it’s gonna change what you’re doing right now today?

Russell Brunson:               Besides all the amazing stuff we already touched upon, the biggest thing is, I always tell people this, because people ask me a lot. Why’d you write a book? Why should I care? I’m always like, “My goal with this book it two fold. Number one, I believe this book will change your life. It can help you to understand yourself. It will help you to tell your stories, to actually present and sell in a way that’s cool and not weird and cheesy. It’ll help you to change your life, but more importantly, it’ll give you the tools you need to actually change other people’s lives.” That’s the biggest thing.

In the very beginning of the book I talk about this concept of, I don’t know if I can find the picture real quick of growth versus contribution. I’m not gonna find the picture, but there’s that little doodle in the beginning. You think about, most of us in our lives, we get excited about our topic, our thing that we’re passionate about. We start studying, we start learning, we start geeking out. We read every blog, every podcast, every book. You become amazing at this thing, but it comes to a point where you can’t continue to progress by just learning alone. There comes a point where you’ll stall out. I don’t know. It happens in every single person I’ve ever met. It becomes a point where they just stop. The only way to continue to progress, is to take all the stuff you’ve learned and share it with others.

As you share with others, you get so much more. It lights you up more than anything you’ve ever experienced, but also it helps you to really understand your craft better.

The best story I have to share this is, when I was wrestling, in high school I was a state champ. I took second place in the country. I was an All-American. I was a good wrestler. Between my high school and my college career, my coach asked if wanted to come and coach at a wrestling camp, and I’d never done that before. I’m like, “Sure.” I came to wrestling camp. I’m teaching these little kids how to do my moves. I’m showing them. They can’t figure it out. I’m pulling my hair out and I’m like, “No. You do it like this.” They try it and they couldn’t do it.

The first day or two, I was so frustrated I was like, “I hate coaching. I’ll never coach.” Then I finally found a couple kids that were really trying to figure it out, so I started breaking it down. I’d get down on their level and I’d try stuff, and all of a sudden, I was like, “Oh, the reason why this move works is because my hips …” Stuff I was unconsciously competent at-

Josh Felber:        Right, naturally.

Russell Brunson:               I found that. I showed them. As soon as I realized what the pattern was, I could coach it to them. As soon as I was able to coach it to them, then I was like, “This is why that move works.” I had no idea. As soon as I understood that, then I was able to amplify things because now I understood how it worked.

I always tell people, the greatest experience you’ll have to help continue your personal development, your personal growth is by sharing what you’ve learned with others, because it makes you sharper, it makes you better. You find out why things work and that’s what this book’s about. This is gonna help you to grow so much as a human being. It’s gonna help you to change other people’s lives and hopefully change the world. That’s the whole new book.

Josh Felber:        Awesome. Dude, it was so cool to have you back on today. Guys, if you’re watching right now, make sure right over here on the side, there’s a link to go get your free copy. Just pay shipping and handling for Expert Secrets. Bunch of other cool stuff I know Russell’s throwing in there as well that you can take advantage of. Then, if you want, there’s also a link for a 14 day free trial of ClickFunnels right here as well. Get in there. Try it out.

Like I said, I’ve been using ClickFunnels. It’s super simple. I am not technical like Russell said he’s not either. If you can just drag something around on the screen, and type some text, you can make a funnel. It’s that simple. My kids are learning how to do it, so it’s way easy.

Check out the book. Go get the book for yourself. Support Russell and transform your life and your business today, like we say here on Making Bank.

Again, Russell, thank you for coming on. Thank you for spending your time today and it was an honor to have you back.

Russell Brunson:               Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Josh Felber:        Cool. I am Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.