- Boom!
What's going on everyone?
It is Steve Larsen, this is Sales Funnel Radio.
Today I'm gonna teach you guys, why branding comes second.
(rock music)
I've spent the last four years learning
from the most brilliant marketers today.
And now I've left my nine to five
to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it
without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch?
This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply,
and share marketing strategies to grow my online business,
using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen,
and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.
(rock music)
Alright you guys, I know that I'm probably
gonna ruffle some feathers with this episode.
I totally get that.
(laughs)
I totally understand.
I'm not trying to but I have a very,
I feel so strongly about this.
If someone gets offended like,
(grunt)
Okay, you know (laughs) all right, sounds good.
So it was about six years ago,
I was going, and I had the unique opportunity
of going and pitching some actual investors
to invest in a business plan that I had written.
Now this is before I ever had considered
the fact that maybe VC funding wasn't
always the best route depending on what you were doing.
Maybe I didn't need to get funding.
Maybe I didn't need to give up debt.
Maybe I didn't need to give up, sorry.
Maybe I didn't need to give up ownership
in a company just to get it going, right?
And what was interesting is
that was before I learned about any of this stuff.
And I've always been very active in this sphere though.
And so I was doing what I thought
was best and so what I did is
I remember we went and we wrote,
I think it was like a 30-page business plan
and it was in the real estate space,
and it was with a buddy of mine,
and he and I as well as a few others,
we came up with this plan
to go and, it was this really cool real estate strategy.
His dad was a kind of a real estate mogul, kind of.
He was taking us under his wing a little bit
and he was showing us some cool,
neat ways to get, I think it was storage units,
and off-set costs with these clever.
And it was cool, it was really cool.
Anyway, so we were excited about it.
And we're like, sweet!
And what if we just asked for the amount
of investment that it would cost for us
to go get a down payment on one of these properties.
'Cause we were like, let's just try it. (laughs)
And cool enough, the professor we were doing this class
with was facilitating the whole process.
So he went out and he, the professor went
and he actually grabbed these investors,
so we did it in front of a live panel of investors.
And we had a cool and unique opportunity
of going in and we did the exact process
that, I mean man you see it on Shark Tank.
It was without as much drama.
There was no slow motion, and there wasn't
any slow-mo staring at each other looks
before anyone said anything (laughs) on CNBC.
But it was still awesome.
I remember we sat there and we got to watch
as each group would present their business plan.
How much they believed their company was worth,
ask for a percentage, or sorry,
give a percentage of the company away in exchange
for an investment amount and then
watch them as they would defend
why that was an awesome idea, why they should get the cash.
How come they had great numbers.
You know, things like that.
It was really, really cool and I learned a lot
just in that, and understanding how all of that works.
And it's really helped me even
in my funnel building, funny enough.
Even though I don't go that route.
So what was interesting is like,
as I started doing that stuff they told us,
"Hey if somebody goes in and it truly
is amazing, they will actually invest."
And it was like, sweet, right
Well we get up there and we start talking
and stuff like that, and I remember
that there were these different elements
in creating this.
It was like a 30-page business plan.
It was very, very professional looking.
We did everything from a SWOT analysis,
if you guys know what that is,
We went in there, I mean all like
the standard stuff that you're supposed to do
when creating a business plan and analyzing a market,
which is 100% different than I do it now.
Anyway, very fascinating.
But we went in and one of the key points,
so I don't think any of us got any kind of investment.
We did really well all of one of us.
It was awesome in front of that board.
Anyway, none of us got any kind
of investment or anything like that.
But we did that actually multiple times
because of what I had studied and I actually
really do appreciate the college
I went to on all this stuff.
They did a great job for what they had, right?
No one really teaches direct response marketing.
That's kind of something you have
to go learn on your own, you know what I mean?
There's not like a major for that.
No one's teaching that stuff, you know what I'm saying.
For what they had it was awesome, I get it.
There were multiple occasions though where we did that.
I wrote a ton of business plans in college.
And they were all very, very similar.
We would go in and we would -
there was a format we were following
and then we would go and we would present it,
whether it was just a professor
or kinda like a dummy panel or a real panel.
We did that many times, multiple times.
And I started getting good at defending ideas.
And back and forth for that.
And when we actually started doing it for real,
Colton and I sitting over there,
we actually went - we did it with
a business that he and I were doing.
We ended up winning the business
competition in our college and they
sent us off to another college to go
do it over there and we totally
did not win over there. (laughs)
But it was a good experience.
It was a bunch of fun and we learned a lot.
Now you say, "Stephen, what does
that have to do with branding?"
There was always a moment in creating
these business plans where you're like
Crap, I got this idea.
What represents my idea?
We need a logo.
What's our slogan?
What's our mission statement?
What's this, what's that?
And it's like, we would spend so much
time on those things that it actually
ended up being a distraction of what
actually caused value in that company.
It's so much the same pattern now.
The reason why I have such a war against branding
is because it doesn't matter for a long time.
It really doesn't.
Most of the time when I go and I start
creating something like a brand,
man I go to sites and I will buy
a little logo that I think looks cool.
I'll switch the colors around so it
looks somewhat okay and in 15 minutes I have a logo.
I do that all the time.
There's only like three or four logos
I've ever had professionally created.
But it's not until there's cash raining
that I even think about that stuff.
What's interesting about that
is that the case of branding comes along very frequently.
There was one group I remember
this student group that came up
And in fact you can see this on Shark Tank all the time.
There was a lady I was watching, it was on Shark Tank.
She came up and she had the product there in front of her.
I love watching Shark Tank.
She had the product there in front of her.
She had a beautiful display, amazing display with her stuff.
There was the slogan.
There was the, This is what we're
gonna do that's different.
And cool, that was awesome and then here
comes the dreaded question they always ask,
"Now, tell us what your numbers are."
They go, "Well, we just started this
three months ago," and you always see the faces.
It was like (vocal sad noise). You're like, oh crap.
I'm sure they just add those in because of stray drama.
They never invest in them.
And it's because it's not worth anything.
And you hear the way the entrepreneurs
that are brand new will defend their products.
And they always a lot times, well not always, but a lot
of times their defense comes back to things like branding.
Well we got a great logo.
We got a great color scheme.
We got a great, right
It's not uncommon to hear that
kind of a phrase when somebody's defending their idea.
"Well we got the logo done, we got the. "
This has happened many times.
I told you guys it took me about 17 tries
to really get a business right.
I've had many of those early 17 tries
before I knew anything what I was doing
where I would spend literally two or three days
looking through different logos
trying to figure out which one was
the best to represent the company,
rather than, How do we sell the thing?
(laughs)
Totally different question and
it's so funny how different it is.
There's so many stories that
are running through my head about this topic.
Recently, somebody reached out and they said,
"You know what, Stephen?
"You could do a lot better
"if your personal branding was better.
"I'm a personal branding expert."
I was like, "Cool, I really don't care."
And they're like, "What are you talking about?"
So I said this like a year ago, and I was like,
I really don't care.
Personal branding doesn't mean a thing to me for awhile.
And they're like,
"No, the personal branding is what represents you."
I was like, No, my products represent me.
My stories represent me.
My podcast represents me.
My branding does not.
I just barely got this back-drop.
We just barely got these sweet intro's and outro's.
The reason I'm saying this is that,
Does branding matter? Yes.
But not for a long time, okay.
Not for awhile.
You go back and you even listen
to Russel Brunson's courses.
You can go back and lots of guys
courses that are out there, they all say the same thing.
When you're starting to deal
with things like cold traffic
Okay here's when it matters.
This is when branding actually matters.
If you got warm traffic
Sorry, sorry , hot traffic, warm traffic, cold traffic.
Branding tends to matter more to hot traffic.
Hot and warm, kind of in that realm.
When you get to a warm cold,
that kind of scenario where people
don't know who you are anyway, it really doesn't
matter as much as we wish it did.
It's the reason why I build the pages,
and I just kind of like, "All right, let's ship it."
We went through and we grabbed the top
100 funnels that are converting the most in ClickFunnels.
For the most part, they're all pretty butt-ugly funnels.
I mean like really, and almost all of them.
It was like 95 of the 100.
Absolutely not design pretty. Absolutely not.
Does this make sense what I am saying?
Does this make sense what I'm trying with this whole thing?
I have been geeking out on an author lately.
He's become one of my favorite authors.
His name is Christopher Lockhead.
I think that's how you say his last name.
Anyway, he talks about this.
For a small 'e' entrpreneur,
branding comes so far down the road.
In fact, actually let me grab the quote right here,
It's super awesome.
I read this on a plane.
I like to either read or write on a plane.
Anyway, he says quite bluntly,
"Branding, in the absence of category creation is bs."
he doesn't say bs, he say quite bluntly though,
"Branding in the absence of category creation is bs."
He says, "Categories make brands."
Categories make brands.
Branding comes after category creation.
If you are like, hey you know what, I'm gonna go into,
I don't know, think about anything where
there's super high competitive.
Let's say you're gonna go into the BizOp space.
Let's say you're gonna sell wealth.
And let's say you're gonna go sell real estate.
And let's say in order for you
to be successful in real estate, you're like.
I'm gonna become a real estate agent.
Does that make sense?
You're gonna be wealthy because
you're gonna go into real estate
and you're gonna go into real estate
by becoming a real estate agent, sweet.
Now if you are doing literally the
exact same thing as everybody else,
why on earth are you going to make a brand?
That's not going to set you apart very well.
What sets you apart is figuring out
how to be different than every, right.
I'm not saying branding different.
I'm saying what are you physically
doing different to collect leads than every other agent?
What are you physically doing different to
close leads that's different than every other agent?
What are you physically doing
that's different to follow up, to up-sell if you do up-sell.
Does that make sense?
Then think about branding, right?
You don't have a freaking business.
Why would you think through.
Why would you spend money on something like a brand?
Do you know what I mean?
It's funny to me, there's been multiple times
where I'll go in, and I'm not going to
name names but start looking, kay.
And you go in the these people
have these beautiful personal brands
And I can't figure out what the heck they sell.
And I start diving in deeply and you find out
they don't even have a product yet,
but man they have spent five thousand dollars
hiring the great people to make them look awesome.
And I'm like, sweet, that is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Again, I'm not trying to throw rocks but
I don't really care if you feel it
because I'm so forward on this topic.
Categories make brands.
When you go in
it's kind of like in the book, "Expert Secrets"
The idea is not to choose a niche.
The idea is to create a niche.
Another word for a niche is market or category.
Go create the market that doesn't exist.
Go create the category that's never existed before.
Do something, come up with a category that truly is unique.
And the way you move people into that
is by using what I've called the purple offer.
You use elements from the red so there's a place
of security for them and you 'cause it's like it's proven.
But then you also lace in these other things
from this category that's never existed before,
from things that have never existed before,
and you start moving them this way.
There's a super cool, I think it was
another Shark Tank thing.
These guys made these really cool,
they were like mechanical engineers.
They were extremely smart.
I think they had gotten their
it was at least Masters or PhD in
Mechanical Engineering or something like that.
I think the company's called Pop Cards.
I have one over there.
I got one for my wife for her birthday.
They're super cool.
What they figured out is that they could
use cool machine lasering and stuff like that
to create these 3D pop up cards, welcome cards.
And people are like, Why did you get that much education
to create a card company?
(laughs)
That's a good question, right?
Why would you ask that?
You look at these things and they're gorgeous.
It's absolutely, it's breathtaking.
You open these things up and it's extremely intricate.
A lot of math involved in what they've done.
Anyway, super, super cool what they've done.
They created something that's never been done before.
Now let's think about branding.
Does that make sense?
So it's in that order that I like to do it.
They first create the category
that's never existed before, now the brand.
Music even, I was just talking
about this with Russel yesterday.
There is a band I really, really like.
I've followed their music for years,
found out that he likes a song from them too.
I was like, what's up, that's really cool.
And I messaged him and said
the reason why they're so big and so popular,
the name of them is Odessa, and the reason
they are so popular and they're such a big deal
is because they kind of created a category
of music that's never existed before
so they were the obvious owner of it.
Now they made branding and you look
at all their stuff and it's amazing and it's incredible.
They didn't have any of that stuff though
before they launched.
It doesn't matter, what matters
is figuring out which category, which niche,
which market you can create and step into
be the first of, and then may go the branding.
So anyways, without saying the same
thing over and over again, that's
the main point of this podcast.
That's the reason why when somebody's like,
"What should my logo be?"
I'm like, "I don't freaking care."
I will never have a business card.
I don't understand them.
Why do I need a business card?
Why do I need these little tiny things,
unless it is part of a little marketing
campaign that I've done.
Last year at Funnel Hacking Live,
I made my dad business cards but with a qr code
that was his bait, so to scan the qr code,
and he got his cool free bait and it
started him into the funnel.
That makes sense right?
But just a freaking name and email, man they
could get on my Facebook profile.
Anyway so that's my whole beef with it.
When someone's like, "Oh man this page could,
"you could design it better.
"You could do this over here."
I'm like, You know what?
This page gets 65% opt-in rate.
I don't really care to touch it.
(laughs)
And I know it's not because of how
it looks that it's converting
Guys I just want to say,
Anyway, I'm trying to clear the smoke
on my opinions of this topic 'cause
several people have reached in asking about it.
It's not a personal attack or anything
but literally from a sales or marketing standpoint.
Marketing is not branding.
It's not.
Marketing is the act of changing beliefs with the
intent for a purchase to happen.
That's all marketing is.
I'm changing someone's beliefs
with the intent for them to make a purchase.
That's what marketing is.
Branding is not marketing, it's not.
Facebook ads is not marketing.
It can be part of it, just like
branding can be part of marketing,
but it's not marketing.
I'm trying to get clear on these
definitions with people and I actually
might do a definitions podcast here soon.
Which I think would be really, really cool,
Just so that you all see where I operate from
and why my stuff is working.
I know the three or four terms that I focus on
that make the money flow
and when I take my eye away from 'em
and I start looking at things like branding
(laughs)
that's when my money usually start decreasing.
For all the hot traffic, for all the follow-up
sales for repeat purchases, branding
can start to matter more for sure, absolutely.
And people will want that kind of
professional feel depending on what you are doing.
They just want to know that it was
created with intent, that it's not haphazard.
But when it comes down to a lot of my front-end stuff.
That's why I didn't upgrade the podcast for a long time.
That's why I didn't upgrade - do you know what I mean?
It didn't matter, it didn't matter for a long time.
And now that hot traffic, I've gone through
We've done a pretty strong re-branding
of a lot of my front end stuff.
We've got chat bots in place now.
Everything's tied together, a lot of value ladder steps.
I'm getting to a place in both businesses
that I've been building, not in both,
especially in one of them where it's a lot more
automation where I'm going in and I'm creating
systems and processes to remove me.
Now it's time to think about branding.
Now it's time to think about creating
more of that feeling and that experience as well.
We're upgrading the package that we ship
out to people when they buy products.
The actual physical box, we've got logos we put on it
rather than just a normal envelope.
For awhile, a normal envelope was fine.
But people will act like branding
is like this lock-gate for them to make money.
It's not, and it's not the reason
someone's not buying from you, it's not.
Go back to the sales message.
Go back to the fundamentals.
Do I have a sales message that's compelling?
Do I have an offer that over-delivers
both to the customer and my wallet?
Because you don't have to compete
on price, you don't have to compete
on price when you have a good offer.
And then when when those are all confirming
that they're great and the cash is coming
and you can go do all the tweaks you want to
on the funnel and it's still working.
You got cool sustainable traffic,
then I think about a little re-brand and branding itself.
So anyway guys, I hope that's helpful to you.
And hopefully it clarifies a little bit
about why I look at things that I do
and when I'm building a page, I'm not really looking
I'll kind of make it so the lay-out
is easy to consume the text and they
can actually see more of the sales message.
But that doesn't have anything to do
really with like, colors. It really doesn't.
Thanks guys so much, hopefully that makes sense to you guys.
Remember categories make brands.
Branding in the absence of category
creation and in the absence of niche
or market creation is bs, and it's a waste of time.
It's not the reason why things convert.
All right guys thank you so much.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the episode
and we'll see you in the next one, bye.
(upbeat techno music)
Woohoo, hey thanks for listening.
Hey, many don't actually know that
I made my first money online as an affiliate marketer.
If you want to know how I funded
my entire company without using
any of my own money ever, you can
learn to do the same for free at affiliateoutrage.com.
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