Funnel Magazine First Edition

FUNNEL MAGAZINE 

TRAFFIC & 

LEAD GEN 

FUNNEL 

FEATURES 

STRATEGY & 

TACTICS 

SOCIAL 

MEDIA 

THE 

INTERVIEW 

MARKETING 

9 COMMON SENSE TIPS 

How to spend no money and 

LEADERSHIP 

& TEAM 

7 43 

29 

51 

20 

33 

improve your marketing with 9 

easy to implement tips 

IN 

EVERY 

EDITION 

CLICKFUNNELS 

CERTIFIED 

PARTNERS 

TECH 

73 

METRICS 

CASINO ROYALE 

39 

10 TECH TOOLS 

81 

67 

37 

02 JANUARY 2017 

FUNNEL MAGAZINE

PUBLISHER 

WELCOME 

LETTER 

FROM THE EDITOR 

03 

05 

RUSSEL BRUNSON 

YOU’RE JUST ONE FUNNEL AWAY... 

ONCE 

UPON A HACKER 

WHAT 

IS YOUR WHY? 

67 

71 

51 

MARKETER’S 

GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA 

RYAN 

STEWMAN: HARDCORE 

33 

23 

BUSINESS 

ON THE BOARD 

LIVE 

VIDEO WAR 

45 

37 

ALL THIS... 

AND MORE! 

With the launch of Funnel Magazine this is a landmark 

edition with insights from Russell Brunson sharing about his 

new book Expert Secrets. This edition we cover all things 

Free +Shipping. Keep an eye out for the next edition all about 

High Ticket Funnels. 

EDITION 1 

FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM 

03

Article by 

HAWK 

MIKADO 

WELCOME 

FROM OUR PUBLISHER 

Special Thanks: 

This magazine would not have 

been possible without the 

following people: 

Our Team: 

Jane Amora 

John Amora 

Jonah Bocabo 

Omar Buscato 

John Paul Cabrera 

Anjie Demasco 

Noelene Delos Reyes 

Russ Enriquez 

Joe Freeman 

Aubrey Gestoso 

John Roca 

John Villanueva 

Terri Levine for your warmth 

and encouragement when 

we were on the ropes. Jeremy 

Wenger for the laughs and 

lifting our spirits when we hit 

our wall. Michael Dantu for 

your guidance on making 

sure this magazine was the 

highest print quality. Our 

Feedback Team for helping 

us make those last minute 

improvements. And to our 

family who has always 

supported us in all our 

endeavors big and small. 

And to you, our readers who 

are FunnelHackers at Heart. 

Hey, this is Hawk Mikado, 

publisher of Funnel Magazine and 

I have a special message for you. 

First of all, thank you so much for 

choosing to read Funnel Magazine 

and getting our very first edition. 

This publication is truly something 

special, just for you, and we want 

to make sure that you’re getting the 

most out of building, creating, and 

expanding your funnels. 

The things you’re going to read in 

our magazine are going to give you 

some powerful ideas. I want you to 

bear in mind that they work for the 

person that is currently using them. 

It’s working in that industry, in that 

niche, for those people’s clients. 

That doesn’t mean that it’s going to 

work for you, but that also doesn’t 

mean that it’s not going to work for 

you. I want you to take each one 

of these concepts and ask yourself 

one simple question. Is this going to 

work for my company and me? If 

you think it will, then I want you to 

take it, and I want you to run with it. 

I want you to take the idea and split 

test the shit out of it because as long 

as you’re split testing, you can never 

go wrong. 

As you read the magazine, you can 

use the strategies, tactics, and tools 

as you design, split test, and increase 

your conversions with your funnel. 

If you decrease your conversions, 

you’re going to throw that idea out 

the window and try the next thing. 

If you increase it, you’re going 

to throw out whatever was there 

before and try something new 

and see if you can start to increase 

the conversions from that point 

forward. Just like Thomas Edison in 

his lab, no experiment is a faliure 

because it still brings you one step 

closer to your goal. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Again, thank you so much for reading 

our magazine. I want to share with 

you I truly appreciate you. I believe 

in my heart that you have made an 

incredible decision to change your 

life, to change your business, and to 

get real results by modeling what 

successful people in your industry and 

other industries are currently doing. 

One of the best things that you can 

do is take ideas from other industries 

and apply them to your own business. 

Some of the best things that we’ve ever 

implemented have come from other 

people’s companies from industries 

that we would never have thought 

would have worked in our situation. 

As long as you’re testing, as long as 

you’re growing, and as long as you 

are developing funnels, you’ll be able 

to continue to succeed and continue 

to rise, make millions, and be world 

class. 

Coming Up: 

In our second Edition, we 

talk with Caleb Maddix 

and his high ticket funnel 

that made him five figures 

in just one hour. 

In our third Edition, we 

talk with Ryan Levesque, 

Author of Ask and do a 

deep dive on the power of 

a survey funnel. 

“...ask yourself 

one simple 

question. Is this 

going to work 

for my company 

and me?” 

EDITION 1 


07

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF 

FUNNEL 

M A G A Z I N E 

Dear Funnel Hackers: 

In full disclosure, I used Funnel Scripts and the Origin story to write you this letter. 

My name is Kate Mikado, and I’m the Editor-In-Chief of the publication you are holding 

in your hands right now. Let me tell you a quick story about how we came up with the 

idea for Funnel Magazine. At the time we were having some challenges internally with 

our company. My husband was trying to put out all the fires. As a result, we realized 

that our value ladder needed a serious makeover. 

And so Funnel Magazine was born, and it’s why our First Edition is all about the 

Free + Shipping Funnel. I had a passion for writing, and now I was trying to learn 

how to be an editor of a magazine. I’d never been an editor before, and with this 

edition coming out January 31st, I had a quick learning curve. It was so amazing 

working on the whiteboard wall (some of you may have seen the video) and 

discovering that this was something I could get lost in. If people were going to 

take us seriously, we HAD to play bigger. Now I was staying at the office until 

9 pm and working over the weekend to make sure everything was to the standard 

of the Impact, Excellence, and Innovation that we at Funnel Magazine strive 

for. It was easy to have people say yes, and I started adding people right into 

my phone (you don’t need business cards). By listening to Russell Brunson for 

three days straight I was able to understand better what Hawk was always 

going on about. For many of you reading this, that is what funnels do for 

you. 

It’s our Mission here at Funnel Magazine to take a stand against hype 

internet marketing, the people who are making their money with Facebook 

Ads teaching about how to make money using Facebook Ads. Now 

I’m living the dream of getting the amazing content and insights to you, 

and I never have to worry about making money ever again (well almost 

never again). And that’s why I’m so passionate about Funnel Magazine. 

Because it was the beginning of a new chapter in my life and one that 

I want to be around for many years to come. Thank you for joining us 

on our journey. 

- Kate Mikado, Editor-In-Chief 



“This was something... 

I could get lost in.”

EDITION 1 


09

TRAFFIC & 

LEAD GEN 

LEVERAGING VIDEO TO DRIVE MARKETING FUNNEL PROFITS 

ARTICLE BY MICHELLE LANGE 

The natural assumption is small companies don’t have the budget for a robust video platform, 

yet when we spoke to several fast-growing companies, we found a different reason. Our insights 

interviews with CEOs and CMOs at companies ranging from six figures to $30 million reveal 

that it is a lack of video strategy - not budget - that keeps small businesses from creating 

a video. The CEOs and CMOs we interviewed are unclear as to where to start and what videos would give 

them the greatest ROI on their time, money, and effort. This knowledge gap causes them to press the pause 

button and put the video at the bottom of their priority list. WE will uncover the essential videos you need 

for each phase of your marketing funnel and demystify the video strategy challenge. 

“...it is the lack of video strategy - not budget - that keeps 

small businesses from creating a video.” 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

VIDEO MARKETING 

Did you know... 

93% of all marketers use 

video for marketing online. 

Video has been proven to 

increase lead generation, 

conversions, and profits in 

marketing funnels (Invodo). 

This report has been 

approved by the 

SCAA and the IFC. 

EDITION 1 


11

Here are the videos we recommend for 

the 5 phases 

The Righ Video for the Right Occasion 

Attact, Nurture, Convert, Retain, Reignite 

Although 96% of B2B companies 

surveyed are engaged in video 

content marketing, and 73% claim 

that video has positively impacted 

their marketing results and ROI 

(Web Video Marketing Council, 

ReelSEO, and Flimp Media), 

only 22% of U.S. small businesses 

plan to post a video in the next 

12 months (BIA/Kelsey). Which 

brings forth the question: Why are 

small businesses trailing behind 

other B2Bs who are leveraging 

video for their marketing? With this 

compelling data, one wonders why 

any small business would NOT 

use video in their marketing funnel. 

When creating your video strategy, 

it is essential to identify where your 



96% 

73% 

22% 

Video Marketing Stats 

client is in your marketing funnel and 

the optimal video(s) to use for each 

phase of the funnel. Let’s look at the 

five stages of marketing funnels. 

It starts with Attraction. You must 

create awareness of your service 

or product and inspire prospects 

to learn more. Nurture them by 

building a relationship with your 

prospects by providing valuable, 

engaging content. Convert the 

opportunity by taking them past the 

goal line to become a paying client. 

Retain your customers by keeping 

them fully engaged and commited 

to using your products and services. 

Lastly, you must Reignite and 

rekindle your inactive clients’ interest 

and engagement. Companies 

often create videos for the first 3 

phases of their funnels (Attraction, 

Nurture, and Conversion), yet they 

neglect the last two phases (Retain 

and Reignite). Most companies 

miss key opportunities to maximize 

their profits by using video through 

all phases of the client life cycle. 

Attraction stage. There are 3 kinds 

of videos that are best utilized in 

the attraction stage. Your brand 

message video, your explainer 

video, and your traffic video. The 

brand message video shares the 

brand story of your company: 

What inspired you to create it, the 

challenges you solve, the solutions 

you provide, the benefits and transformations 

you bring clients, and the 

greater “Why” behind your business. 

It’s a great way for a new prospect 

to get to know your company in 

3-4 minutes or less. Hubspot did an 

excellent example of a well executed 

Brand Message Video.

High Impact Videos 

High ROI for Your Funnels 

The explainer video gives an overview 

of your product or service 

and addresses how your product 

or service works. It is especially 

effective when selling a complex 

product or service that requires 

explanation or simplification 

for your target audience, and 

technology companies often use it. 

Oracle created an explainer video 

for their product Big Data SCE, 

which helped their sales team book 

more meetings and close more 

sales. The traffic video is a short 

60-90 second video that is used 

in online advertising to lead the 

viewer to take an important next 

step. It often drives the audience 

to a landing page to opt in for 

content, sign up for a webinar or 

make a purchase. Nurture stage. 

Tip videos provide valuable tips 

and content that address your ideal 

clients’ top of mind challenges. 

Tip videos establish your expert 

status while building rapport with 

your prospects. Marie Forleo has 

created a huge following of raving 

fans by sharing her advice on 

Marie TV. 

“Tip videos establish your 

expert status...” 

The how to videos show your 

prospects how to do a particular 

task within your area of expertise. 

Neuman’s Kitchen, a catering 

company that made the Inc. 

500 fastest growing company 

list in 2014, uses how-to demo 

videos to engage their B2B and 

B2C prospects. Behind the scenes 

(BTS) videos build rapport with 

your audience by pulling back the 

curtains to give your prospects a 

behind-the-scenes look at your 

business or a particular initiative. 

BTS videos help establish trust 

with your audience by providing 

”The brand message video creates 

a WOW factor...” 

Attraction videos can also help fill live events and generate 

multiple six figures. 

a degree of transparency. 

Conversion stage. A sales page 

video is crucial to your sales success. 

At this juncture of your funnel, you 

have attracted and nurtured your 

prospect, and the goal is to take 

them past the finish line. A wellcrafted 

sales video is the next best 

thing to having an in-person sales 

conversation with your prospect 

and is a highly efficient way to 

close the deal. The opt-in video is 

similar in structure to a sales video, 

yet the goal is “convert” the client to 

sign up for freebie content such as 

an insights paper, self-assessment, 

or webinar, as opposed to a paid 

offer. These unpaid conversions 

are important - if you enroll your 

prospect in a freebie offer, you are 

one step closer to enrolling them in 

a paid offer. Client success videos 

provide social proof and vital ROI 

metrics. It can persuade a customer 

who is on the fence that they will 

get their desired results if they 

purchase from you. This video tells the 

story of where your client was before 

using your products or services, how 

your product or services helped them, 

EDITION 1 


15

In Fact: 

• Prospects are 72% likelier 

to buy your products and 

services when video is 

used. (Wharton School of 

Business) 

• Video increases landing 

page conversion rates by 

100%. (Optimizely) 

• Video boosts email click 

through rates by 200- 

300%. (Forrester) 

• Video added to your social 

media means audiences 

are 10 x more likely to 

engage and share your 

post. (Content Marketing 

Institute) 

• 59% of executives would 

rather watch a video than 

read text. (Forbes) 

and the benefits and ROI they experienced. Retention stage. Videos for 

the retention phase of the funnel are similar to videos for the nurturing stage. 

The goal is to engage the client with compelling, valuable content. The 

leverage video is a powerful retention tool as it shows your customers how 

to utilize your product or service better to maximize their results. ToDoist 

shows their clients how to leverage their platform in their video “10 ToDoist 

Tips and Tricks You Need to Know”. The special offer videos announce 

special offers and promotions to your clients, such as a discounts and 

flash sales for the holidays, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday. 

Reignite stage. Share more client success story videos in the reignite 

stage. These videos can be shared with existing clients to remind them 

of what’s possible if they fully utilize your products or services. Also in 

the reignite stage, you will want to share more special offers to inspire 

clients to make additional purchases with discounts, flash sales, and 

other promotions. The last type of video to use in your marketing strategy 

is the Ask video. These videos can re-engage clients who have become 

inactive or lukewarm. “Ask” videos invite your clients to ask their most 

burning questions or give input on an upcoming initiative. 

Creating the right video mix for your marketing funnels takes time and 

energy up front, yet once you create your videos, they will do the selling 

for you while you are off running your business or better yet, enjoying a 

vacation! Using video through each phase of the client life cycle will not 

only boost your profits, but it will also increase your brand recognition, 

improve your engagement, establish your expert status, and build your 

tribe of raving fans. The only thing you stand to lose by waiting to get 

into the video game is time, money, and opportunity. So go for it! Your 

marketing funnels will thank you for it. 

Michelle Lange is a Video Strategist who helps small and mid-sized companies make a 

big brand splash by creating high-impact videos and sleek marketing campaigns that 

make you unforgettable and in demand. 

You can check out Hubspot’s videos and more at: 

funnelmagazine.com/read 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

9 Common Sense Marketing Tips 

That cost $0 to implement By Janice Means 

1) Email Signature 6) Receiving Calls 

2) LinkedIn Profile 7) Voicemail 

3) Facebook Biz Page 8) Soliciting Calls 

4) Review Sites 9) Get Contact Info 

5) Website Updates 

Don’t make it hard for people to do business with you. 

These common sense tips while small go a long way. 

Remembering to do these nine things can help separate 

you in the marketing information overload. 

Always use a signature line on your business email to 

contain your contact information. Particularly in the case 

of your email from your phone. Be different from “Sent 

from my iPhone.” 

LinkedIn Personal Profile. Make sure the information 

is correct for your current business(es) and have a 

professional picture (pertinent to your business). Make 

sure your Facebook business page is up to date with 

contact information. Make sure the hours are correct. 

Make sure it links to your website if you have one. Don’t 

have a Facebook business page? You should probably 

get one. Periodically check your listings. Claim your 

listings on Yelp, Yahoo, Google+ and other review sites. 

There is a reason that “reputation marketing” is a thing. 

Keep your brochure website up to date and give accurate 

contact information. Answer your business phone with 

your company name and your name. Remember to 

include your company name in your voicemail and tell 

people how long it will be before you can call back. 

When cold calling, get to the point, get 

permission, and be polite. Example: “Hi, I’m 

Janice with Marketing with JR, and I have 

three quick marketing questions, do you have 

a minute or 2 to answer them?” Give people 

your contact info; a business card, or an even 

better approach is to put them right into 

your phone. 

Janice is President of Marketing with JR – Common Sense Marketing with 

Extraordinary Results. Janice spent years in Corporate IT interwoven with 

various Marketing stints. Janice brings her Fortune 50 experience to you 

with a focus on traditional EDITION 1 


17

NOT ALL FACEBOOK FUNNELS 

ARE CREATED 

EQUAL 

Article by Chad Lio 

It’s no secret that Facebook marketing has commanded 90% of marketers’ attention 

And not just digital marketers. 

The “traditional” marketers that were/are so accustomed to the primary channels of television, radio, and 

print is looking to allocate significantly more budget to the social media giant. Quarter after quarter, year 

after year, Facebook’s advertising revenue continues to outperform projections, and for a good reason. 

Facebook’s ad platform is one of the most dynamic demographic targeting interfaces ever to hit the 

advertising and marketing profession. Its ad pricing model is dramatically cheaper than that of TV, radio, 

and print advertising. 

As Facebook continues to improve and expand on their ad offerings, marketers need to do a better job 

at well…marketing. It’s no longer a time to ask “Should we be utilizing Facebook ads,” but “What type of 

Facebook ad is going to have the greatest ROI.” As businesses and entrepreneurs invest more of their 

marketing budget into Facebook Ads, there also comes a responsibility to learn all the different options 

of a Facebook ad and the sales/lead generation funnels that will behave differently. Let’s break down 

Facebook’s ad technology and the various types of funnels that we may want to test to achieve a higher 

conversion rate. 

” It’s no longer a time to ask “Should we be utilizing Facebook ads”, but 

“What type of Facebook Ad is going to have 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

It’s All About the Pixel 

Before we even begin to break down some of ad/ 

funnel combinations, I can’t stress enough how important 

it is to implement the designated Facebook Pixel 

that is assigned to your ad account. This pixel is 

crucial to remarketing, lead conversion, and audience 

building, so be sure it’s implemented across your entire 

website.While the primary pixel will be applied across 

your website, Facebook also has several additional 

modifiers that you can add to specific pages for better 

tracking and ROI. To save time and resources, Google 

Tag Manager is an excellent way to implement these 

ad modifiers. If you haven’t utilized GTM, make it 

one of your first priorities. Once your pixel is installed, 

you will now have access to multiple variations of ad 

products offered by Facebook. 

Here’s where marketers 

go wrong: 

They do minimal research to find out who 

their potential customers or leads are. They 

cast an extremely wide net to target as many 

people as possible, and their ad performs 

poorly. 

Top of the Funnel: 

Quantity Isn’t Always a Good Thing 

When you’re looking to grow top of the funnel awareness 

and leads, it’s a no-brainer to utilize Facebook’s massive 

demographic database to put your ad in front of 

potential customers or subscribers. Interest targeting is 

one if not the most popular features used within the ad 

platform, which allows for continuous variables to target 

a potential customer. Here’s where marketers go wrong: 

They do minimal research to find out who their potential 

customers or leads are. They cast an extremely wide 

net to target as many people as possible, and their ad 

performs poorly. They continue to target individuals who 

like similar brands or products to their product or service, 

without completing the necessary competitive research to 

differentiate themselves. 

It’s a common mistake that most marketers make at this 

stage in the funnel. When you have a highly targeted 

audience, not only do you increase your amount of 

conversions, but your CPC or CPM decreases as well. 

Some valuable tools that you can use to find out more 

about who your audience is Facebook Audience Insights 

and Buzzsumo. Audience Insights (https://www.facebook. 

com/ads/audience-insights) allows you to drill deeper on 

specific fan bases of popular pages and highlight unique 

demographics that can have benefits ranging from ad 

copy to a webinar or lead magnet ideas. 

To complement audience insights, Buzzsumo (www. 

buzzsumo.com) is a valuable tool that will highlight the 

most shared content across social media networks based 

on your keywords. Seeing what type of content resonates 

with your potential audience also gives ideas for content 

upgrades and overall free offerings that you might want 

to offer as an incentive for lead information. 

Recommended FaceBook Ad type for Top of Funnel: If 

you’ve built a custom landing page to assist in conversion 

rate, a traditional FB ad that sends traffic to your website 

will suffice. 

If you’re looking to increase CRO or decrease bounce 

rate, you may want to a try a Facebook Lead Ad, 

which captures information without the person leaving 

Facebook. 

Recommended Funnel for Top of Funnel: Since this will 

be your first attempt to collect an MQL (marketing 

qualified lead), your funnel should reflect that of a typical 

free offering. Your ad would promote some webinar or 

free piece of content that addresses a pain point of your 

potential customer, which would then require submitting 

their information to obtain. Once the lead has been 

acquired, they would be put in some automation sequence 

that eventually moves them to the middle of the funnel. 

Website Custom Audiences: 

Hyper-Relevance At It’s Finest 

A Facebook Pixel implementedon your site allows 

for custom website audiences. It lets you advertise 

exclusively to individuals that have previously visited 

your site. Advertising to website visitors is hyperrelevant 

because they already understand what our 

brand is about. 

EDITION 1 


19


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

“If current customers have had 

a positive experience with your 

product they will likely buy again” 

With Facebook Website Custom Audiences, the technology allows you to drill down on specific 

pages of your website they have visited, creating different offers and funnels for specific pages. 

Example 1: Visitor has landed on your homepage or a general navigation page. Because this is a free 

visit, you create an ad that offers a free lead magnet that puts them in an email funnel sequence. Visitor 

lands on website> guest heads over to FaceBook> visitor sees an ad for free ebook or webinar. 

Example 2: You’ve created a general awareness ad that promotes a piece of valuable content on your 

website. Because that person lands on that content, you will now enable a webinar ad that offers an 

upsell after the webinar. FB ad that promotes valuable blog post> visitor reads blog post> visitor 

returns to FB> visitor sees the ad for a free webinar that offers solutions to pain points> visitor signs 

up for a free webinar, and is now in nurture funnel. 

Example 3: A visitor has viewed a sales page on your website and has not converted. You can 

offer a bonus upsell once they login into Facebook, ultimately enticing them to become a 

customer. The visitor comes to a sales page but doesn’t convert (doesn’t reach a Thank 

You page)> visitor returns to FaceBook> visitor sees the ad for product sales page they 

left. 

Whenever you have an opportunity to remarket to a previous website visitor, your 

opportunity for moving that visitor down your funnel increases significantly from 

real exposure to your brand or product. 

Customer Retention: The Growth We Continue To Forget About 

As much as I actively participate in growth hacking (where growth is your 

only metric), I continue to see brands completely bypass their current 

customers for new ones. While growth is necessary, customer retention is 

just as critical for sustainable success; and yes you can utilize Facebook 

ads and funnels for this as well. Facebook Custom Audiences also allows 

you to upload email lists to their platform, which allows for multiple 

segmentation for customers vs. non-customers. If current customers 

have had a positive experience with your product/services, they more 

than likely will buy again or upgrade. You can remarket this with a 

custom Facebook Ad that targets them by email address, and leads 

them into your highest-price product funnel. 

It’s Only Just Begun 

Just remember, when you selected which Facebook Ads match 

up with your funnels, it’s only just begun! You may find that 

you’re having success with a click-through rate of your ads, but 

conversion rates may be lower than expected. You’ll need to 

test different funnels with ads by mixing and matching to find 

the best available combination. When you can fully utilize 

Facebook’s dynamic ad technology, not only does your 

remarketing provide a better customer experience, your 

ROI increases significantly. 

EDITION 1 


21

5 Steps to Writing A Lead Generation 

Sales Page 

Article by Carol Brennan 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

A way with 

Words 

So it’s time to your write your sales 

page. But to be honest, you don’t 

know where to start. Navigating 

the rules about what goes where, 

what to include and how to keep 

it from turning into a page that 

simply sends your readers to 

sleep rather than captivates them 

can be tough. Writing your sales 

page doesn’t have to turn into 

a nightmare if you remember to 

include a few vital components: 

• Start with the Pain 

• Get Clear 

• Handle Objections 

• Prove Your Solution Works 

• Close with a Strong CTA 

Many people make the mistake 

of starting their sales pages 

by talking about their product. 

Remember that your clients are 

seeking help for a pain they have 

in their lives. You have to show 

them that you understand their 

pain to convince them that your 

product is the solution to that 

pain. For example, if you are a 

productivity coach, your clients 

might feel totally overwhelmed. 

One of the symptoms of this 

overwhelm might be an evergrowing 

list of tasks that they 

never finish. They’ve tried writing 

to-do lists, but they never seem 

to get to the end of them. They 

haven’t worked because the tasks 

they are setting are too big. You 

help them break down these tasks 

into small, manageable chunks. 

You might not want to define your 

ideal client because you want to 

appeal to everyone but a product 

made for everyone appeals to no 

one. It ends up being very bland. 

Decide on who your best client is. 

Who would get the most out of 

your product? 

For example, my productivity 

coaching is ideal for working 

mothers who need shortcuts to 

productivity. Common objections 

are over time, price and whether 

the product is suitable for them. 

You can even take several 

objections and answer them in a 

frequently asked questions section. 

For example, our productivity 

coach might tackle the objection 

of price by pointing out that her 

clients will have more time to 

“Many people make the mistake of starting their 

sales page by talking about their product.” 

Carol Brennan is a copywriter who helps coaches craft persuasive copy 

which connects their unique talents with the needs of their target market 

so they can easily attract a steady stream of ideal clients. 

make more money when they 

implement the productivity 

strategies she teaches them. 

You have to provide evidence that 

your product can do what you say 

it can. Sprinkle testimonials that 

back up you claims throughout 

your copy. End with a strong callto-action 

to encourage your ideal 

client to buy. Give them a reason to 

opt-in now such as a deadline for 

when the doors close. Also, explain 

what happens next – for example, 

will they get instant access? So 

your call-to-action might look like 

this: “To end the overwhelm and 

get super productive, click the buy 

now button. The program starts 

on the 1st of December. You get 

access within 24 hours.” 

EDITION 1 


25

FUNNEL MAGIC 

Attract new customers like magic! 

As someone who wants to know about funnels, you are interested in 

finding out what works, and that’s what we want to share with you. 

We’ve enrolled some of the best and brightest people who know how 

to actually get a funnel to convert. You want a converting funnel, don’t 

you? Well, this section is going to teach you some incredible things. 

We hope that you enjoy the insights, and again, think back to what I 

shared in my publisher’s note so that you can indeed make sure you’re 

leveraging the right funnels, the right tactics, the right strategies and 

techniques for your success. 

HAWK MIKADO 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

FUNNELS 

“One factor determines 50% of the success” 

Is your funnel a coin flip? Will your funnel work? Not 

the tech side, the traffic and conversion side. This 

one factor determines 50% of the success or failure 

of any funnel. If you want to get your funnel better 

odds than a coin flip, this is the most important 

thing you need to get right – before you worry 

about a domain name, or a lead gen magnet, or 

upsells, or anything else. Are you ready for it? It’s 

your “Who.” Who is your target market? Who 

is your funnel for? In a crowded marketplace, 

how do you differentiate yourself? If your 

prospective clients can buy in essence the 

same products and policies from anyone, 

anywhere, why should they choose you? 

Article by Seth Greene 

EDITION 1 


27

HOW DO YOU STAND OUT IN A 

CROWD? 

How do you answer the Dan 

Kennedy question, “Why should I 

do business with you, as opposed 

to anyone else who does what you 

do?” With a magical marketing 

proposition that makes them want 

you and only you! How do you do 

that? You have to start with who 

you want in the first place, your 

target market. What if (pardon my 

crazy example, this is something 

we crafted for an actual financial 

advisor funnel we worked on) 

your target market was affluent 

baby boomer REPUBLICAN 

HUNTERS with money? Does 

that change your marketing 

message? You bet it does. The 

hunting Facebook fan page ads 

you are running (you mean to 

tell me you aren’t hanging out 

where your prospects hang out? 

shame on you), when someone 

asked what you do, you could say 

“I help conservative sportsmen 

protect their retirement nest egg 

from Hillary Clinton.” BOOM! You 

think that started a conversation 

before Trump was elected? You 

bet it did! All of a sudden you had 

lots of wealthy hunters asking you 

questions because they were all 

terrified that she was going to get 

elected and take their guns, health 

care, and money away. We have 

a client right now who is a plastic 

surgeon. When we analyzed his 

patient base and interviewed him 

about the patients he liked serving 

the most, we came up with two 

groups of people: 

1. Breast Cancer Survivors who 

were looking for reconstructive 

surgery. 

2. Pediatric burn victims. 

That totally revamped his 

website, his videos; his opt-in 

offer, everything he does for both 

traffic and conversion. He is now 

working on a separate funnel for 

each of those markets, and you 

can bet that they will both convert 

better than a general plastic 

surgery offer. Once you figure that 

out – what do you do next? Tune 

them of course! We will go more 

into this in the next edition, but 

here is a teaser of what’s coming... 

An anti-oxidant 1,400 times more 

potent than blueberries and will 

be the next big alt-health product. 

When they came to us, the opt-in 

video on their home page didn’t 

tell anyone to opt in for the eBook! 

But these folks are the #1 US 

distributor of this product, have an 

email list of 100,000+ eBook optins, 

and they weren’t doing it... 



“Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest 

for the trees and you need fresh eyes.”

HOW TO BE A 

DEALMAKER... 

Most people in real estate are doing it wrong. Whether 

you’re a real estate agent or an investor our business 

is all about attracting motivated sellers. In the olden 

days, realtors would spend endless hours walking 

neighborhoods in their high heels knocking on strangers 

doors and having idle conversations with random people 

hoping - just hoping - someone they met along the way 

might consider them (over their Aunt Sally) when it came 

time to list their home for sale. 

I recently read a post on Facebook from a realtor that said 

if they had to start from scratch in a new town they would 

get $500 and bribe 100 random people at Starbucks to 

sit and talk with them. In hopes of building a relationship 

with the community and ultimately (someday hopefully) 

listing a home for sale. Well, maybe this is how they did 

it in the olden days when cars had wooden rims, and the 

MLS was printed on papyrus. 

And then, the funnel was born... 

Today a smart realtor or investor looking to get offmarket 

deals will run a very cheap ad on Facebook to 

homeowners in a particular geographic area and entice 

only the would-be sellers to contact them. Use a value 

driven hook like “get a free ebook” or “7 Secrets to Selling 

Your House for Top Dollar” or “Three Steps to Avoiding 

Foreclosure” in exchange for an email address and phone 

number. 

Running ads takes very little time and a $500 ad spend 

(likely overkill) on FB will make you look like you are king 

of the mountain. Just remember, marketing is just making 

friends and giving them value. Focus on giving the right 

kind of value that only serious sellers would want and you 

will be able to get qualified leads for motivated sellers 

coming to you in droves. We run several funnels in our 

local market. 

As an investor first (and a real estate broker/contractor 

second) I focus on running ads to apartment owners, 

divorcees, and homeowners facing foreclosure. But my 

best ad just says “I am looking to buy a house in your 

neighborhood, and I am willing to pay full price”. 

Honestly, we don’t buy many properties with that ad, 

but my firm does list a bunch of them. My ad spend is 

$100/week, and we average about five qualified leads 

with a commission potential of $15k to $30k each. Don’t 

get caught in the trap of working hard like a peasant. 

Automate everything and get the “robots” (your funnel) 

working smart for you. 

”marketing is just 

making friends and 

giving them value.” 

”I am looking to 

buy a house in your 

neighborhood and 

I am willing to pay 

full price” 

Matt Skinner is a professional real estate investor 

and manages a private equity fund. He is founder 

of RealPeopleRealReturns.com and creator of 

the secret real estate entrepreneurs club 

DealMakerSociety.com 

EDITION 1 


31

RYAN STEWMAN 

Ryan Stewman: 

HARDCORE 

Hardcore 

Article by Kate Mikado 

Heart 

Ryan Stewman is the rock star CEO of Hardcore 

Closer. He became a household name...by 

accident. “I started this not thinking it would 

take off under that name; people started calling 

me that.” And although the people proclaimed 

Ryan as the Hardcore Closer neither Google or 

Facebook liked it much. His tribe came because 

his content was good. He had a powerful 

message to share, and nothing was going to 

stop him. Ryan started the Hardcore Blog as a 

means to Jumpstart Break Free Academy, a sales 

training course. “It all starts with a three-day, 

intensive, get shit done event and is followed by 

six weeks of accountability, continuing education, 

and support.” 

To say Ryan doesn’t care what you think about 

him is an understatement. He is comfortable in his 

skin, saying what he feels and open to anything. 

This in part comes from Ryan’s background. “I 

remember with serious clarity, in prison at age 

21 and coming back from snack and shit line; 

a couple of older black dudes said, “Hey man 



nothing like snack Tuesday.” For those men in 

prison, it was the highlight of the week, and 

Ryan knew that he had something more to do in 

this life. 

Making a choice to change was the first step. 

However, it seemed that Ryan would have to 

fight for his freedom. After the passing of the 

Dodd-Frank Act, he was back at square one. “In 

2010 the Government passed the Dodd-Frank 

Act, and due to my felony gun charges, I was 

unable to get a Federal mortgage license. I went 

from being one of the top producing mortgage 

people on the planet to nothing. Overnight.” 

At this point, Ryan shares the story of Joseph 

in the the Bible. Taking liberties with the story 

and peppering with a lot of profanities he 

understood and felt a connection to what Joseph 

went through. From being sold into slavery to 

winning favor with his owner then being chased 

off for assumed adultery. Finally, Joseph was in 

prison when he was summoned by the Pharaoh 

to interpret his dream. As a result, Joseph saves 

Egypt from a famine, and the Pharaoh makes 

him second in command. Ryan went through 

many trials just like Joseph. “If I let prison define 

me I could have been like, ‘nothing has been right 

since prison,’ I’ve chosen not to let that stop me.”

Step 2 

Step 1 

Funnel Mastery 

Now Ryan has produced funnels that have generated millions. He 

says it’s like getting a black belt in karate. For anyone struggling 

to make it you first have to get your white belt then yellow and 

green and so on. When something isn’t working in the process, 

Ryan states, “It’s not working because you’re stopping because 

they didn’t work.” If you just spend a little bit more time and 

become slightly more resilient, that is where success will happen. 

As the Hardcore Closer Ryan has learned the ins and outs of 

sales. I asked him to teach me something about sales, and he 

said this: “The #1 thing about sales objections, they are nothing 

more than buying signals. Some people say, ‘Oh they gave me 

objections it’s time to stop.’ When someone wants something, 

they are scared to make a bad decision. They have objections 

because they want to make a good decision. When you offer 

someone something, and they say no, it’s pretty firm. I say ‘I 

appreciate your time’ unless I know better. ‘I need to think about 

it’, ‘I don’t have the money’, they haven’t said no they are just 

feeling blocked. Objections will be the stopping point, so you 

need to help their people move through. People are wanting to 

say yes and are just not certain about it yet.” 

”We are all sitting here with 

specific DNA code...” 

What’s unusual about Ryan is that although he comes off as this 

tough ex-con who’s made some serious cash he has a big heart. 

“I care about the people that we help because I’m one of them. 

Most of us are damaged goods, especially in sales. I didn’t grow 

up in the Ivy League with a silver spoon. So I got into sales, I 

wanted to be a leader, and I have experiences that I’ve gone 

through and a lot of the selling community goes through. This is 

my Calling.” 

While Ryan doesn’t consider himself a religious person, he says 

that what he does is a lot like being a pastor or priest. And he 

feels that this is his divine calling. “We are all sitting with specific 

DNA code, like an operating code for a computer. When you 

figure out the DNA code and follow it, which is not external, then 

success comes. It comes from doing what you were put on this 

earth to do. I’m a success because I’m doing what I’ve been called 

to do. My family said I should be a preacher… which means I’m 

doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” Now Ryan has his own 

strategy for his success. “I wake up and do the work that needs 

to be done. Those that do the most work get the most money. It 

is not difficult, delegate, I workout most days, and I don’t stop 

working till I’m done. I have a great balance with family by using 

a calendar system. Date night gets put on the calendar. 

Step 3 

EDITION 1 


33

People are wanting to say yes they are just not certain 

about it yet. 

You set appointments in business, and I treat my 

personal calendar the same way.” Ryan has a 

lot of sayings in the business world calling them 

Stewmanisms. He claims to have about 14,000 

of them. So when it’s time to create content, there 

is no short supply. His #1 Stewmanisms is this: 

“Knowledge + Action = Success, which is not the 

same as being successful.” Ryan says. 

Q&A 

Kate: What is the funniest thing that has 

happened to you recently? 

Ryan: Somebody sent me a picture of a 

caterpillar in Africa that looked like a dick. 

Someone your audience knows. 

K: What’s your one biggest pet peeve? 

R: People that complain and don’t want a 

solution. My team knows better. They complain 

to each other then come to me with a solution. 

K: If there was a movie produced about your life, 

who would play you and why? 

R: Ryan Gosling or Justin Timberlake - someone 

who looks better than you. Cool guys, good 

looking good guys, just not Will Ferrell. He’s funny 

but not good looking. 

K: What’s on your iPod during workouts? 

R: This morning - Audible, Art of Not Giving a 

Fuck, Mark Manson. 

K: What is your Superpower? 

R: I see through the bullshit. I can tell if someone 

is full of shit or not in minutes. 

Free + Shipping Funnel 

For Ryan’s book funnel, he has already given 

away 1900 books. With a 21% conversation rate 

that means less than 9100 people have entered 

his funnel. So you don’t need to get a million 

people to be successful. 

Time and again people say they want to make 

one million dollars, but you make a lot of money 

with a break even funnel like this one. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

What’s Next 

On the horizon, Ryan has a new book out: Elevator to 

the Top. He is using the Free + Shipping model to sell 

the book. “This book arms you with the information you 

need to close more sales in the modern marketplace. 

Whether it’s your first day in sales, or you’re a 40- 

year sales-dawg veteran, this book is full of awesome 

badassery that you can see results from with ease. 

Many readers have told me this book is an absolute 

game changer for them. My goal is for you to say the 

same thing. Grab your copy of Elevator To The Top, 

and I’ll see you in the penthouse.” (Ryan went from 

living in prison to life in a penthouse.) 

When Ryan isn’t giving his book away for free, he is 

focusing on the next chapter for Break Free Academy. 

He is looking to see, “How can we make it better, 

further fill that gap, take it from online/seminar to a 

full-blown school.” Ryan eventually would like to have 

multiple locations for the Break Free Academy. Ryan 

has a clear vision and a fantastic team to achieve 

that. 

To learn more about Ryan and to get his free book 

Elevator to the Top go to myfunnel.link/elevator 

“Knowledge + Action = Success” 

Ryan’s Ad For His Free Book 

Step 4 

EDITION 1 


35

Books as Funnel Strategy for 

Marketers 

Article By Linda Stirling 

At the Start 

Using a book as the start of a 

funnel can lend momentum. 

A book does something even 

greater—it gives authority. 

Something about stating, 

“John Doe is the author of” 

makes an impact on readers 

and potential clients. Even 

better, if you can say, “author 

of the bestseller” or “author 

of the number one bestseller” 

you’re going to grab attention 

right away. When a book 

is used to begin a product 

launch, it can be positioned 

as a low-priced or free gift to 

begin to build your list. 



Make sure to have an 

incentive within the book 

that leads to the ultimate 

purchase of what you want 

to sell. How you create that 

incentive should be relevant 

to your other product(s). For 

example, if your book is about 

how vegans can grow their 

own organic vegetables and 

your ultimate goal is to sell 

an online recipe membership 

to vegans, don’t make your 

incentive something like 

“How to Build A Raised Bed 

Growing Frame.” Yes, that ties 

in with the book’s overall topic, 

but you’re not going to sell a 

menu subscription program 

from this. 

Instead, offer “Ten Simply 

Wonderful Vegan Recipes 

For Healthy Eating” as your 

opt-in incentive. This gets the 

reader thinking in terms of 

great recipes, not how to grow 

the food in the first place. 

The mindset becomes one of 

how to use the foods they’ll 

produce or purchase, putting 

you smack in the position of 

being able to sell the answer 

to that question. And you 

always want to be able to sell 

solutions. With your incentive, 

or what’s called an ethical 

bribe, you want to offer the 

most enticing recipes—or tieins 

to your ultimate product— 

as you can to capture email 

addresses.

Therein lies the danger with how marketers can go 

wrong when using a book as the starting point of 

their funnel. They offer a product they’ve picked 

up for a few dollars that doesn’t have relevance 

to what they want to offer down the road, or they 

offer lame tips or ideas of little value. I’ve seen 

opt-ins that were simply more spewing about how 

impressive the product is. Don’t do that. Give value. 

You want to make a strong impression with what 

you offer, establishing the thought that whatever 

you have to sell will be of incredible value. If you’ve 

already built trust through your book, a genuinely 

valuable opt-in enforces that feeling. Building 

trust is the greatest thing you can achieve, so don’t 

treat it lightly. The other thing to be aware of when 

using a book as the starting point of your funnel is 

how to position your incentive. It’s likely that you’ll 

have an eBook version. Because Amazon.com is 

among the largest retailers in the world and is the 

largest book retailer in the U.S., you will want to 

have your eBook on sale there. Amazon’s “Look 

Inside The Book” feature allows readers to see the 

first ten percent of the book’s contents. 

If you’ve cluttered that up with a table of contents, 

acknowledgment page, copyright page, etc., the 

reader may not get to any of the content that 

compels them to purchase the book. Instead, 

put all that content at the end of your book and 

place your incentive right up front. (Yes, Amazon 

allows you to set your table of contents at the 

back of the book, in case you were wondering.) 

That allows even those readers who don’t buy the 

book to see the freebie when they look inside the 

book, and some may even skip buying the book 

and go directly to your offer—thus immediately 

becoming part of your funnel. An instant win! 

Provide the incentive at the back of the book, 

too, for many other readers may not want to opt 

for anything until they determine whether or not 

what you’re offering feels valuable. Amazon’s 

terms of service don’t allow you to have a link 

that goes directly to an opt-in that’s a standalone 

element on your website, so you’ll want to 

include other items on this page, turning it into an 

informational page. Maybe you include one or 

two recipes which the reader doesn’t have to optin 

to receive, along with some beautiful images 

of fresh produce, a story about how easy it is to 

cook simple and enticing organic meals, a list 

of herbs to have on hand, and so on. In other 

words, keep the general theme of this page in line 

with what you ultimately want to sell: recipes by 

subscription. Another way to set yourself up for 

a better chance of snagging that potential client 

is to list the fact that you have bonuses in the 

book inside the Amazon book description itself. 

Amazon no longer allows you to put a direct link 

to a bonus in your book description that resides 

on their site, but you can say something along the 

line of “Readers of this book will receive a special 

bonus: ‘Ten Simply Wonderful Vegan Recipes For 

Healthy Eating’ a collection of the author’s alltime 

favorite standbys that guests never fail to 

compliment her on.” Including something like that 

in your book description will appeal to a lot of 

potential readers and may be the deciding factor 

for purchasing your book instead of another. 

Perhaps the greatest advantage of all that a 

book offers as the starting point for developing a 

funnel is that you can place a book where millions 

of people can see it . . . Without spending a dime. 

For additional insights from Linda go to: 

FunnelMagazine.com/read 

EDITION 1 


37

STRATEGY 

Article by Hawk Mikado 

One of the smartest things that you can do is follow a proven formula. 

A strategy is all about taking what’s currently working and what has 

been proven to work, time and time again, and implementing it so that you 

can develop tactics to make an impact on your business. 

Here’s one critical distinction. A strategy is a sequence of events that 

you’ve planned out for the long term. A tactic is something that you 

plan on doing work right away. A strategy, for instance, is developing a 

system, like a funnel, to bring somebody through the buying process. A 

tactic is driving traffic from Facebook ads so that you can put someone 

through that strategy. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

DESIGNED FOR YOU 

Customized Answers for Your Biz 

The INVERT formula is designed to 

take your business to the next level, truly 

get your business into an impact driven, 

creative space, where you’re able to 

create your success...designed by you. 

It’s up to you to create the strategy and 

implement the tactics that make it able to 

happen. 

The INVERT formula is one of the biggest 

ways to make the incredible changes and 

make a big impact, both on the world 

and on your bank account so that you 

can make the most significant shifts in 

the world. What I’d like to introduce you 

to is a way to understand and learn the 

INVERT formula. I can’t explain it to you 

in just a page or two so we will be doing 

a deep dive on each of the steps in each 

edition of Funnel Magazine. 

INVERT FORMULA 

This formula has been proven time and time again. We just 

put a nice label on it. Our formula has been derived from 

companies like Google, Facebook, Disney, Nike, and many 

other highly successful, Fortune 500 companies. 

• IMPACT 

• NICHE 

• VISION 

• ENGAGEMENT 

• RECOMMENDATION 

• TRANSFORMATION 

The INVERT Formula is 

Designed 

to take your 

business to the 

next level. 

EDITION 1 


39

To get a really good 

sales funnel is not cheap. 

The Reality 

of Your First 

Successful Funnel... 

Article by Jill Addison 

If you’re reading this article, I know you’re very 

interested in getting an automated online 

system to bring you new clients and customers 

effortlessly. Something that works even when 

you’re not working. And let me tell you from 

personal experience when it works, it is a 

beautiful thing. I’ve spent the last 18 months 

perfecting my online sales funnel, and now it 

is indeed running on autopilot and bringing 

new clients into my life effortlessly. But I’m not 

going to lie; it’s not easy to build a successful 

sales funnel. 



Big Picture Insights to Shortcut the Process: 

It takes marketing savvy, copywriting skills, 

technical expertise and software, online 

advertising know-how, passion, persistence, 

and patience. Of course, if you have the 

budget, you can hire all these things 

out. To get great sales funnels 

is not cheap, it will cost lots of 

time or lots of money. But 

when it works, it will pay you 

back, over and over and 

over. I made the mistake 

of thinking I had a niche 

when I just had a product 

type. When I launched 

my Whiteboard Video 

Package, I was working 

with clients in a broad 

cross-section of industries. 

I thought if I just advertised 

whiteboard videos online, 

that would be enough. It wasn’t. 

I needed a particular audience to 

target, so I could get to know them 

and target exactly their needs with my 

product. When I noticed that over half the 

people finding me online were in the financial 

services industry, I thought, “That’s who’s finding 

me, so I should go find them.” So I did, and that 

was a major key to making my online sales funnel 

work. Be sure to choose a narrow niche that you 

can get to know intimately and serve directly. It 

will make all the difference in your online sales 

funnel success. 

• Choose a niche. 

• Test various avenues to reach your target 

• Test your lead magnet 

• Automate your followup 

• Use video to accelerate your sales funnel 

When I was learning about online advertising, 

I tested several different media platforms to 

reach my target audience, including Google 

ads, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. Through 

measuring my results (no easy feat), I could see 

which one was the most effective in reaching my 

audience. So then I turned off the others and 

focused my advertising spend on the one that 

was producing the highest ROI. You may be 

able to guess where your ideal client is hanging 

out online, but it’s always a good idea to test 

your assumptions. Sometimes what works will 

surprise you..

After you’re satisfied that you have an offer 

that is enticing your target audience to give 

you their email address in exchange for it, now 

you’re ready to refine your offer. For instance, 

if you’re doing a webinar, do it live until you 

see a big positive response to your content. 

Then, and only then, you’re ready to automate 

that webinar. If you collect hundreds of emails, 

and then you never contact those people 

again, it’s a huge waste of time, money and 

energy. You must follow up, and the best way 

to do that is through an automated sequence. 

That commonly includes emails, but can also 

include physical mailings and sales calls. 

Probably the best option is a combination. 

For instance, I’ve found that an automated 

email sequence offering a “15 Minute Digital 

Marketing Strategy Session” is effective in 

generating sales call opportunities. I’ve found 

that video has made my Opt In pages convert 

at a higher rate. It’s also helped me close deals 

as I’ve incorporated videos into my automated 

email follow up sequences. There’s something 

magical about a video that engages people 

and helps them feel a personal connection to 

you. I often have people tell me “I feel like I 

already know you.” It’s because they’ve been 

“spending time with me” by watching my video 

tips all these years. So that’s a big picture look 

at some principles for building a successful 

online funnel. 

Now, let’s look at some practical tools you’ll need 

to get it done. 

Offer: If you’re going to put your offer on your 

website, I recommend you use Wordpress. It’s the 

most widely used platform for websites, and it 

gives you flexibility to easily change what’s on your 

website. Another option is a web page drag and 

drop builder. You just drag and drop your photos 

and text and type your changes right into the 

page. If you’re planning to do a lot of testing of 

different pages (where you’ll need to be continually 

generating new web pages), this is worth the 

investment. (It’s much cheaper than working with 

your webmaster if you’re doing a large volume of 

changes each month.) A third option is to automate 

a successful webinar. Once I had my successful live 

webinar recorded, I automated it. 

Automating your follow up: Email is the easiest 

and cheapest way to follow up, so that’s a good 

place to start. Even basic email newsletter systems 

like Mailchimp and Constant Contact have what’s 

known as “autoresponders”. These are email 

sequences you can set up to drip out over time. For 

instance, when someone opts in to your offer, you 

may set it to trigger an autoresponder sequence 

that will send them emails every three days for the 

next three weeks. If you want to take it to the next 

level, you can use more sophisticated programs. 

These programs enable you to responsively react 

to the actions your audience takes. For instance, if 

they buy your product, or take another action like 

scheduling a call with you, you can set your system 

to stop the current autoresponder sequence and 

start another more appropriate one, based on their 

responses. 

Hosting your videos: Although there are video 

platforms with fancy metrics like Wistia, I believe 

YouTube is the best solution for most small businesses 

The more views you get on YouTube, the higher 

you’ll rank with search engines like YouTube and 

even Google. Most people are surprised to discover 

YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the 

world, second only to Google. 

EDITION 1 


41

SOCIAL PLATF 

The Marketer’s Guide to 

Social Media Platforms Article by Chad Lio 

hen many think of the internet, they 

W immediately default to social media. And 

for a good reason. Not only does it seem like 

a new social media platform is emerging every 

second, but the amount of time and users that 

they acquire is nothing short of impressive. What’s 

the most appealing factor to marketers that 

these social media platforms accomplish more 

than any other vehicle on the internet? Attention. 

Attention is the Holy Grail that marketers flock 

to. The more users and daily views, the bigger the 

opportunity to reach your target demographic 

to sell your product or service. But with so many 

social media platforms to market on, which 

one(s) are right for your business goals. Here is 

a breakdown of the most popular social media 

platforms and the marketing opportunities they 

provide. 

Facebook 

If this is your first time hearing about 

Facebook, then you may be in the running 



for the worst marketer award. Facebook’s incredible growth 

and innovation have accomplished leaps and bounds for a 

relatively young company. With over 1.8 billion active users, 

there’s no doubt your target audience is on Facebook What 

makes Facebook such a crucial tool is their innovation; they 

continually develop tools for both the users (Facebook Live, 

360 photos and video, Messenger) along with marketers 

(various types of ads, retargeting tools, and analytics 

reporting with custom events). As users of Facebook 

continue to offer more data to Facebook (brands they 

engage with, favorite books, movies, companies, types of 

post they engage with, tools used..., Facebook will continue 

to innovate products to help you reach your business goals.

ORMS MEDIA 

Twitter 

Twitter is grouped in with Facebook as one 

of the original “darlings” of social media. 

Created in 2006, Twitter emerged as a 

micro-blogging platform that allowed you 

to share your thoughts in 140 characters or 

less. While Twitter grew immensely from the 

time of conception, it remained a mystery 

to many how it worked or how it compared 

to Facebook. As for demographics, Twitter 

is far behind in Facebook’s available data 

and the overall pattern of users. Twitter has 

now evolved into a speedy provider of realtime 

updates, and a great place for B2C. 

Instagram 

Created in 2010, Instagram is a go-to option 

for teens and millennials. Strictly focused 

on visuals (photos and videos), Instagram 

provides a wealth of opportunity for 

marketers targeting a younger demographic 

that engages frequently. While Facebook 

saw primary engagement and active time on 

the platform with image sharing, Instagram 

focused solely on images by catering to a 

mobile-only platform with easy-to-user filters 

to make pictures visually appealing. 

With exponential growth, Facebook quickly took notice and 

purchased Instagram for 1 billion dollars. Instagram still 

operates independently from Facebook but has all the features 

of Facebook ads, which makes it one of the most promising 

social media platforms for brand awareness and engagement. 

EDITION 1 


43

Pinterest 

If your ideal customer is female, 

Pinterest should be your number one 

focus. Known for its visual boards, 

users of Pinterest create online 

“boards” that contain individual 

“pins.” Ideal for recipes, crafts, and 

interior designs, each pin can contain 

a clickable URL directly to a website 

or eCommerce product. Because 

Pinterest provides almost a “visual 

search engine,” it has become the 

2nd largest social media platform for 

referral traffic, and its ad platform is 

coming along. They have recently 

installed a “Buy” call-to-action button 

that should increase its potential for 

eCommerce ad spending. 

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is technically older than 

Facebook, but the two platforms 

are completely different in goals. 

LinkedIn is the central hub for 

business professionals, which 

allows each user to display their 

professional achievements, places of 

employment, and carry on business 

networking. While LinkedIn provides 

an immense opportunity for thought 

leadership and B2B lead generation, 

it absolutely will not suffice for B2C 

(business to consumer) eCommerce. 

LinkedIn provides the opportunity to 

position yourself as a thought leader 

by posting good content on their 

blog platform. However, this requires 

a large time commitment and many 

posts to achieve. 

Snapchat 

Snapchat is all the rage these days 

with a dynamic platform that 

originally was a head-scratcher for 

marketers. How could you justify 

marketing success with a message 

that automatically deletes itself after 

viewing? Initially, Snapchat seemed 

like a cool and fun platform for users 

but had little marketing value. Fast 

forward a few years, and it seems 

like Snapchat is mentioned in every 

marketing blog! While there are few 

ways to track the success of snaps 

and it has a huge learning curve 

for older users, the platform attracts 

serious content creators and is great 

for daily engagement and brand 

awareness. Starting a brand profile 

is free, and you’ll have to use your 

other social media communities to 

build a user base for Snapchat. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Snapchat’s ad platform first rolled out to global 

brands only, attracting brands like ESPN, The 

Food Network, Comedy Central, and People 

Magazine, but have recently started to expand to 

small businesses. You can now create geo-targeted 

filters that can assist in drawing awareness to local 

businesses, events, conferences, etc. 

Snapchat’s technology is evolving every day to 

offer users different ways to engage. They recently 

released Spectacles, which is a pair of sunglasses 

that allows you to post directly to your Snap 

account, like Google Glass but in a much more 

authentic way. Also, Snapchat has partnered 

with Uber to create custom filters for users as 

they travel. The opportunities are endless for what 

Snapchat can do, and it will be exciting to see how 

they can better the platform for marketers also. 

Reddit 

Known as “The Front Page of the Internet” Reddit 

is simple in its design and functionality. Reddit is 

a discussion board style social media platform 

that allows users to post submissions that can be 

original content, links, or a combination of the two. 

These posts can be “upvoted” and the most 

upvoted links or comments will be brought to 

the top of the conversation. Reddit is massive for 

referral traffic, and allows a unique opportunity to 

engage a specific audience with your content. As 

of recently, community moderators have become 

stricter when a new user just posts a link to a specific 

conversation without valuable contribution to the 

conversation at hand. The Reddit community is 

very passionate and favors a social media platform 

that brings insightful comments and contribution. 

It’s ad platform is very simple in nature, but lets 

you target a very niche and passionate user base. 

Be the Smart Marketer 

While these breakdowns of each social media 

platform give you the “nuts and bolts” of what 

each provides to a marketer, spend the necessary 

time to research your potential customer, how 

they engage within the platform, and identify 

pain points and the proper verbiage to helping 

your customer. You will more likely succeed in your 

marketing efforts, and be far more successful in 

building an online community that values your 

company and the way you engage with them. 

Chad Lio is the Director of Content Marketing 

for The Doyle Group, an eCommerce company 

for the alternative health and wellness space. 

He is also the founder of Waiver Warrior, a 

fantasy football advice site. You can always find 

him reading up on the latest trends in content 

marketing, growth hacking, and effective funnel 

building. 

“Attention is the 

Holy Grail that 

marketers flock 

to.” 

EDITION 1 


47

Article By Peter Drew 

Facebook has gone to 

War with the other 

LIVE Video companies, 

such as Periscope, You- 

Tube, and Snapchat. 

They’ve already beaten 

Vine, those short 6 second 

videos owned by Twitter 

which just announced the 

end of Vine this week. So 

Facebook has already 

taken out one competitor, 

and they are winning. 

They are winning because 

they’ve already 

got a captive audience 

of 1.8 Billion people. So 

what have they done to 

ensure their LIVE video 

wins and provides more 

views of their videos over 

the other companies? 

Well, they’ve weighted 

their Facebook timeline 

Algorithm heavily in favor 

of their own Live Content. 

That means when you 

go LIVE on Facebook, 

all your friend’s Notifications 

light up, letting 

them know you’ve gone 

live. Plus they give more 

preference in everyone’s 

timelines to LIVE video 

over everything else including 

text, images, and 

other videos. When you 

go LIVE, your content 

pops up at the top of all 

your friends’ timelines, so 

they are ensured to see it 

and give you views. Now 

here’s where it gets interesting. 

We know there 

are millions of groups 

on Facebook, and there 

are certainly a ton of 

groups of people passionate 

about whatever 

it is you’re promoting. 

So I searched Facebook 

and found there are over 

100 groups dedicated to 

affiliate promotions, and 

these groups are filled 

with people who are passionate 

about making 

money. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Live Video 

WAR 

On average there are 

around 1500 people 

in each group, times that 

by 100 and you have 

150,000 people. Which 

is an incredible reach 

especially for free and to 

laser targeted folk. But 

here’s where it gets cool, 

using FB LIVE as your 

medium to distribute your 

message. Here’s where 

it gets awesome. These 

people don’t even need 

to be “In the group” to 

see my LIVE event. My 

live event will pop up in 

their timeline, generally 

at the top thanks to the 

advantage provided 

by the algorithm. So 

generally speaking my 

videos get a Reach on 

Facebook of 150,000 

from one simple 

promotion. And it only 

“In 2010 Google Indexed 

620 Million Facebook 

takes me under five mins 

to setup this project (after 

the video is created.) Then, 

of course, the conversion 

will be only as good as 

my offer is in my video. 

LIVE videos need a ton 

of action in them to get 

them noticed and clicked 

on because the videos 

start playing without 

audio, so we use different 

strategies to get the 

engagement happening 

and to encourage people 

to click on the speaker 

icon to listen in to the offer 

we are presenting them. 

Since you already know 

your market, you can 

craft the perfect message 

for them. The more value 

you present, the better 

your offer will convert. To 

top the icing on the cake, 

you need to give them 

something unexpected. 

An offer, they can’t refuse. 

Groups.” EDITION 1 


49

Casino 

Royale 

Article by Joe Freeman 

Are your sales funnels promoting a one-way conversation? 

How can you turn your sales funnel into a two-way one-to-one marketing channel? 

To discuss marketing metrics and data collection you first need to understand why the collection of this data is 

important to your business no matter what products or services you are bringing to the market. 

Most marketing professionals focus on mathematical marketing with the sole goal of utilizing metrics to calculate 

the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns so that they can take the guesswork out of their marketing and 

project profitability. However, there are so many metrics that are available to marketers today that it can be 

somewhat overwhelming. 

“Statistics say that it takes 7 or more touches to get a 

prospective client to know, like, and trust you or your 

company” 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Acronym Mania 

(CTR) Click Through Rate, (uCTR) Unique Click 

Through Rate, Frequency, People Reached, (CPC) 

Cost Per Click, Cost Per Website Click, (DPL or CPL) 

Dollars/Cost Per Lead, (EPC) Earnings Per Click, (CVR) 

Conversion Rate, (CPA) Cost Per Customer Acquisition, 

Email Open Rate %, Email (CTR) Click Through Rate, 

Relevance Score, Webinar Show Up Rate, (CPR) 

Cost Per Webinar Registration, Webinar (CPA) Cost 

Per Attendee, (CCR) Contacts Conversion Rate, (BR) 

Bounce Rate, (LCV or CLV) Lifetime Customer Value, 

(ROR) Rate Of Return Visitors, Churn Rate...and there 

are many more. 

In some cases the old adage: “What isn’t measured 

cannot be managed.” can lead to information overload 

and get you stuck in a sea of overwhelm. 

All of the above metrics can provide insight into your 

marketing and can provide value if you learn to look 

at each one for their value over time instead of trying 

to focus on them all at once. These are the eight core 

marketing metrics that Conversionfly and Todd Brown 

have encouraged digital marketers to utilize when 

measuring each sales funnel. 

Total Sales Volume = 

Your total $ sales (for a given funnel) 

Average Visitor Value “AVV” = 

Your total $ sales / Your total visitors 

Revenue Per Lead “RPL” = 

Your total $ sales / Your total leads 

Average Cart Value “ACV” = 

Your total $ sales / Your total buyers 

Cost Per Acquisition = 

Your total $ ad invested / Your total buyers 

Lifetime Customer Value “LCV” = 

Your total $ sales + Jump Revenue / Total buyers 

Return On Investment “ROI” = 

total $ sales / Total ad dollars invested *100% 

Break-Even Speed = 

Your total $ sales in a given period of time / 

Total ad dollars invested 

I could go deeper into what each metric tells you and 

how to use it, but there are many resources available 

that discuss these topics. Personally, I would like to 

challenge you to look at marketing metrics from a 

different standpoint which is more focused on the 

data each user provides when traveling through your 

marketing campaigns specific to them. 

The more you know about your perfect client, why 

they need or want your product or service, how to 

talk to them, how to serve them, and engage them 

in conversation the better chance you have for your 

business to thrive in the current age of information and 

technology overload. What are your primary goals in 

your marketing campaigns? Are they to gain brand 

and product awareness, generate leads, nurture those 

leads, acquire a customer, maximize your conversions 

and sales, engage your customers, retain customers 

and gain repeat buyers, earn your customers loyalty? 

The truth is you may have a Sales Channel for each of 

these goals, and one sales funnel may have multiple 

goals depending on where and when they are used. 

Your company sales funnels may have similar but 

tactically different marketing strategies, copy, and 

images but all of these goals have one thing in common, 

and that is that each of your marketing campaigns is 

another chance for you to have a conversation with 

your perfect audience. In most of the cases above, the 

leads you have already driven to your campaigns have 

already raised their hand by entering one or more of 

your sales funnels. Many marketing professionals 

create campaigns with visually pleasing designs 

and emotionally charged copy and broadcast it to 

the world either via blog posts, forum articles, email 

broadcasts, direct mail, television, radio, social media, 

etc. There are an abundant number of opportunities 

to communicate with your audience in our civilization 

today. 

However, if you do not monitor your metrics and collect 

data you’re having a one-way conversation with your 

prospective client, and you run the risk of losing touch 

with your audience and in some cases even annoying 

your audience. Statistics say that it takes 7 or more 

touches to get a prospective client to know, like, and 

trust you or your company and become a customer but 

once you create that relationship your client is 100% 

more likely to continue going to you, the company 

they trust on a repetitive basis. I believe that the first 

step in converting your sales funnels over to promote a 

two-way conversation is to select your mathematical 

marketing metrics strategically. However, it’s the 

following steps that my company and I enjoy focusing 

our attention and energy towards. 

EDITION 1 


51

TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE WHERE 

THEY WORK, LIVE, OR PLAY... 

with extremely precise personalized messaging that caters 

directly to your prospect’s needs, wants, and desires at that 

very moment. We combine sales funnels, Personalized URLs, 

Direct Mail, and Digital Advertising by onboarding and 

unifying your customer data. 

Our technology can match your client’s physical 

mailing address to their home or building’s internet 

connection allowing us to deliver your message 

to your client at their specific address online. 

making us the Mail Carrier of the internet. 

Contact us today to learn more 

about this or one of our many 

other online and offline 

marketing techniques. 

ORANGETREEMARKETING.COM 

JOSEPH FREEMAN | 4 12-757-5957

STRUGGLING TO WRITE, PROMOTE, OR SELL 

YOUR PHYSICAL OR DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS? 

Do you have a message to share but get overwhelmed by the 

complicated process of writing, designing, promoting, or selling 

your Physical Book, Ebook, Magazine Publication, or Catalog. 

Are you convinced you need a Tripwire, Checklists, 

Handout, Brochure, Membership Site, Blog, or any of the 

many information products that can be used to promote 

your message, create a following, and leave a lasting 

impression on your current or prospective client? 

With over 20 years experience in the graphic 

design, commercial print, and publishing 

industries we can help. We help create 

and sell your publication using 

the services provided by our 

many partners as well as 

Orange Tree Marketing. 

ORANGETREEPUBLISHING.COM 

JOSEPH FREEMAN | 4 12-757-5957

Step two in transitioning your marketing initiative over to a 

two-way conversation is to utilize the things that current leads 

are naturally telling you about themselves while experiencing 

your sales funnels without adding additional technology. The 

utilization of email list segmentation and email triggers can 

do just that. I would argue that at the very least every digital 

marketer should be efficient with email list segmentation. 

What can email list segmentation do for you? Have you ever 

bought a marketer’s offer just to continue receiving emails 

day after day, week after week, encouraging you to buy the 

product you just bought? How did that make you feel? As a 

follower of a specific individual or company, we as human 

beings tend to get emotionally involved with the products 

we purchase. We’re looking for a connection, inclusion, 

and results. Not being recognized for your purchase feels 

like a slap in the face and scars that connection. And on 

the marketer’s side, you are wasting valuable revenue and 

energy trying to sell me something I already bought when 

you could be sending me new content and leading up to 

offering me the next product in your value ladder. 

Let me ask you if you have a sales funnel that promotes 

A free book -> Order Bump -> OTO -> Membership Site 

and I invest in the free book but do not take the OTO why 

would you send me an email promoting the free book 

especially if I haven’t received it in the mail yet? Wouldn’t 

it make more sense to send valuable content via email and 

promote another offer based on my interaction with your 

email topics? 

Email Segmentation can be configured to break your 

audience down into tiny subsets (buckets) based on their 

interaction with your sales funnels and email campaigns. 

One of the keys to this approach is making sure that when 

you include a client into another email list/bucket (ex. Bought 

Free Book Offer), you also remove them from the list they 

were on (ex. Free Book Opt-In). This allows you to promote 

the book to individuals who are opening your emails but did 

not buy the book without sending the same promotion to 

individuals who bought the book previously. 



Step three would be making sure to have a strong “CRM” 

Customer Relationship Manager and Survey Solution which 

would allow you to “ASK” additional questions and get to 

know your clients based on the data you already have. This 

can be a fun way to not only create a few more “buckets” 

of individuals who are your top clients and get to know their 

needs more but also prepare for step four

Step four is my personal favorite and is something 

I’ve had experience in for the last six years. Adding 

personalized content to your sales funnels based on 

the data you’ve collected while having a one-on-one 

conversation with your clients. Personalized Sales 

Funnels are usually referred to as “PURL” Personalized 

URL or Cross Media Campaigns. This approach 

allows me to use the data from my CRM taking into 

consideration segmentation and other data values to 

send a pinpoint marketing campaign to my current 

clients. PURL Campaigns are not primarily used 

to acquire leads but are instead used to maximize 

the value of a customer, lead nurturing, customer 

engagement, customer retention, loyalty, and referral 

programs. Each recipient receives their own completely 

personalized marketing campaign. The email, direct 

mail piece (postcard, letter, etc.), landing pages, funnel 

steps, offers, survey questions, etc. are all personalized 

based on the information you currently have on your 

customer as well as any answers they provide during 

the customer’s engagement in the campaign. 

but to keep them coming back over and over and over 

again. Segmentation, Personalization, Direct Mail, 

Email Marketing, and Personalized Sales Funnels 

are being used right now to promote custom offers to 

players based on their actions both on the casino floor 

and in the marketing sent out by the casino multiple 

times a month. You can use these proven tactics as 

well, and I would encourage you to do just that no 

matter what product or service you have to offer your 

ideal audience. 

As a marketing professional in the industry, today 

the more you approach your marketing initiatives as 

a two-way conversation and collect the data needed 

to promote the right offers with the right content at 

the right time the better your marketing metrics will 

be. I’ve had marketers argue that you can’t get 30%+ 

open rates in an email campaign. But if you utilize 

segmentation and personalization in conjunction with 

multiple touch points to nurture a house list it can be 

done. 

I’ve been working with casinos now for 10+ years, and 

they know how to use every tool available to them to 

not only get players on the floor and keep them there 

EDITION 1 


55

LEADERSHIP

B 

usiness 

Business 

on the 

Article by Jim Egerton 

is a game 

and the better we know how to play it the more successful we can be. Winning the game of business requires 

having the right strategies and tactics available for the leader to use. The real key to success is using the right 

form of leadership. The startup of a company is very different than growing a mature enterprise. Starting 

a business requires an entrepreneur be a thought leader with a vision that can be translated into a working 

model. In the beginning a company leader determines the best form of ownership, acquires the financial 

assets needed by the firm, and determines how to make a profit from ongoing operations from a product 

or service the market wants or needs. Leadership has different styles and not one style meets the needs of 

every situation. Transformational leadership takes a vision and translates it into a successful business. In the 

game of business that means knowing your market, developing your resources and managing your risk. In a 

game of chess that means play for the center of the chessboard, get your pieces actively involved and castle 

Leadership: Getting it Right at the Start 



with the king. While business leaders typically practice one of 

the many leadership styles based on their own personalities 

and the training they have received, the great leaders learn 

how to shift styles when circumstances change. This shifting 

of leadership styles is one of the most difficult management 

disciplines to learn. Fortunately, chess is the perfect training 

ground for three of the most powerful leadership styles: 

transformational, situational, and results-based.

Board 

EDITION 1 


59

A Transformed 

WORKFORCE 

Transformational: The opening of a chess game, 

like a business startup, requires a leader who has a 

vision of how the enterprise will transform the market. 

When setting up FedEx, Fred Smith had the foresight 

to position his pieces like a chess player taking control 

of the center. He discovered that Memphis, Tennessee, 

provided a central location within the US, a willing 

airport administration partner, and the best chance to 

avoid the worst weather conditions from snowstorms 

to hurricanes. Once these critical opening decisions 

were made, it was possible to make FedEx what it is 

today. 

Chess is a way to practice leadership, financial 

management, risk management, and employee 

development which can transfer directly to your work. 

In Figure 2 which player do you think has been a 

better transformational leader of their chess pieces/ 

employees? 

once asked this question to a person in my class 

I who admitted other than how to spell chess she 

knew nothing about the game. Which side would 

you rather play? She considered for a few seconds 

and said “White.” When I asked her why, she said: 

“I don’t know for sure, but it looks like White is up to 

something.” Her insightful response demonstrated 

how intuitive and visually compelling leadership could 

be. Yes, White is up to something and although they 

have not won the game if Black is not careful their 

King is about to be run out of town in a hurry. 

To be successful in your company startup use 

transformational leadership to build a strong 

foundation upon which to grow your enterprise. 



J.K. Egerton is the CEO and founder of Business on 

the Board, a leading-edge talent development 

company that uses a game-based approach with 

business strategies and tactics. His book, Business 

on the Board, is a #1 management self-help 

bestseller that reveals how business and chess are 

related. It’s available on Amazon. 

Next Issue: Leadership: Managing the Situation at Hand.....use situational 

leadership because your business is in a unique position now that the opening 

is over. Analysis of threats, gaining an advantage known as making a 

profit, and staying on course uses situational leadership. The middlegame 

in chess and business requires deep understanding of strategies and tactics 

you need to know.

When will enough be enough? 

Article by Tim Matthews 

As men, we rarely feel like enough is enough and it’s affecting 

the quality of our leadership. We typically run a cycle of ‘create 

– conquer – next,’ ‘create – conquer - next,’ ‘create – conquer – 

next’...why? Whether we like to admit it or not, we are constantly 

trying to prove ourselves, and often, in the pursuit of proving 

we sacrifice our health, our relationships and ourselves. For me, 

this was unconscious for 29 years of my life, and it remains so 

for a lot of the leaders that we support, especially the coaches, 

entrepreneurs, and CEOs. 

The intention of this article is to bring awareness to this and to 

offer perspective as to why this is happening so we can shift 

from a place of hustle, grind and forcing to one of flow, ease 

and allowing...to a place of achieving the ‘holy grail’ that we 

all set out to experience on Day 1... having it all in every area of 

business and life without constant stress, struggle, and sacrifice. 

We’re in a totally different era to that of our fathers and 

forefathers. What worked for them does not work for us. 

Times have changed, but for so many of us, we’re still running 

the same mental scripts that our fathers ran in 1950 and it’s 

affecting how we lead ourselves professionally and personally. 

Let’s face it, as men we’ve been left behind. The past 30 years 

has seen the explosion of the women’s movement; women 

now have more options and opportunities in society than ever 

before. It’s no longer about men being the ‘bread winner’ and 

women staying at home. Sure that may happen in certain 

situations, but even there it’s a choice, not a given. Where has 

this left the male leaders of today? 

I see a lot of men that are lost and I was one of them. We’re 

stuck in the middle ground of knowing that there’s a different 

way to lead, a more effective way to lead but not knowing 

what it is. 

Like so many men, I knew I was capable of powerfully leading 

my organization and myself without having to compromise 

every area of business and life, but the question was how? 

I knew the hustle, grind, and force that 

served my father wasn’t going to get me 

there. I tried that for seven years, and I 

was constantly putting out fires. It’s about 

working smarter, not harder, but what is 

smarter? 

It’s time for something different, not 

something more, but what does different 

look like? So, let me ask you a question: 

What does success look like to you? And 

what type of leader are you when you 

are living out your success? My bet is that 

when you are truly visualising your ultimate, 

abundant life, you’re not the type of leader 

who is hard on himself, who judges his every 

move and who never allows himself to feel 

happy and successful. So where does this 

come from? From my experience of working 

closely with hundreds of high-achieving 

men it usually comes from our definition of 

what being a man means to us, and our 

unconscious desire for love and connection. 

At the end of the day, men are still human 

beings who crave love and connection as 

much as the next person, but we’ve been 

taught that emotion is a weakness. A lot of 

what I heard growing up was, ‘men don’t 

cry,’ ‘don’t be a girl,’ ‘man up.’ I was taught 

to believe that I had to compete with other 

men, it was either me, or them, and it wasn’t 

going to be me. Fast-forward 22 years to 

when I’m leading my first business and how 

did this serve me? 

A LOT OF WHAT I HEARD 

GROWING UP WAS, ‘MEN 

DON’T CRY’ 

WE’RE STILL 

RUNNING THE 

SAME MENTAL 

SCRIPTS THAT OUR 

FATHERS RAN IN 

1950 

“We are actually CHOOSING a state of 

being that most people consider to be an 

affliction and take medication to alleviate.” 

- Dr. John Ratey, Harvard University 

EDITION 1 


61

WE KNOW 

we’re playing smaller than we’re capable of playing 

At every turn I ignored my gut instinct because I’d learned to shut 

down my inner voice, I’d learned that my inner voice didn’t matter. 

Every decision I made was out of desperation for success; I was 

hungry but needy. Success was the thing that was going to prove 

myself to my father, to the world and everyone around me. In reality, 

the tug of war that was raging inside of me was affecting every 

decision I made and impacting every action I took. I was rarely ever 

fully present in my business because of the guilt I was carrying at 

sacrificing every other area of my life. I was unknowingly carrying 

baggage, and it weighed me down. I felt exhausted, empty and 

alone. I daren’t speak to anyone about how I felt because I believed 

if I did then it would be a weakness. I pushed my emotions down 

and continued to put on a brave face as I hustled like a mad man 

for 15, 16, 17 hours a day. Business was number one, and it came 

before everything – my health, my relationships and myself. 

I’ve come to learn that this pattern is true of so many high achieving 

men in today’s world. They’re running outdated scripts that served 

their fathers in their day but that do not serve us in today’s world. 

Where has this left us? We deny our emotion, we show up in a mask, 

and we put on a brave face trying to prove ourselves. We hold back, 

we don’t feel fully worthy, and we play down our wins and wander 

through life looking like strong men, but in reality, we often feel like 

lost boys looking for acceptance. We don’t know who we truly are. 

We like to think that this doesn’t affect our business, but it does. 

We like to think that our business is the one place we’ve got it all 

together, the one place we feel safe to express, but the truth is we 

know we’re playing smaller than we’re capable of playing and we 

often feel empty there too. We’re never fully free to be in the total 

flow. 

Second-guessing, doubting. Not taking fast action, not taking big 

action and our relationships often offer the biggest mirror for this – 

the place where we fear being fully vulnerable and the place where 

we hold back the most. There are people in our lives dying to feel us, 

literally dying to feel us, and we’re holding back because we’ve been 

taught not even to feel ourselves, and if we don’t feel ourselves then 

how can anyone else fully feel us? 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

But here’s the thing – it’s ok that we’re in this 

position, in fact, it’s exciting that we’re in this 

position! If we choose to combine the rugged work 

ethic that we’ve developed with a connection to 

oneself, then imagine what would be possible? 

The concept of ‘having it all’ doesn’t seem that far 

away…We can drop the stories of emotion being 

a weakness, and we begin to feel ourselves fully, 

and others, for the first time. The result is that our 

relationships can take on a whole new level of 

depth and connection because we’re no longer 

afraid of being vulnerable and we’re finally 

expressing ourselves. Now can you imagine 

the creative powers you tap into when you are 

leading your business every single day feeling 

aligned because out of the office you’re rocking 

one of the most important areas of your life? 

We drop the desire to prove ourselves and 

let go of the need for acceptance because 

we become our own source of validation. As a 

result, we have more clarity, conviction, and 

confidence to play BIG. The need to work 15, 

16, 17 hour days isn’t there any more because 

we are communicating more effectively with our 

team, so our business has better leadership and 

we’re taking bigger, bolder and faster action so 

the business is generally in better shape. Plus, we 

naturally want to spend time in our relationships, 

so we don’t want to be in our business for so long. 

It’s refreshing; it’s food for the soul. We’re no longer 

being controlled out of an unconscious desire to 

try and prove; instead, it’s our conscious desire to 

live, serve and be served. Life is meant to be lived, 

and life is today not someday. It’s time to live it, 

and from here true success will flow. One of the 

greatest gifts we give our high achieving men is 

a community, a space to recognize that this type 

of openness, communication, and connection in 

men is ok. Space where they won’t be shunned or 

laughed at if they express themselves in this way. 

“I hustled like a mad 

man for 15, 16, 17 hours 

a day.” 

Bravado has had its day; it’s now the time for a 

new version of masculinity that supports the new 

version of ‘conscious business’ that is sweeping 

the world. New age leadership for the new age 

man and it all starts with a connection to oneself. 

Tim Matthews is the founder of “The Powerful Man,” he is a 

men’s empowerment coach, speaker, and soon-to-be author! 

He is the creator of the ‘activation method’, and he is a master 

at helping men to unleash themselves from the patterns of selfsabotage 

and negative self-talk so they can have it all without 

stress, struggle, and sacrifice. 

EDITION 1 


63

You’re Just One Funnel 

AWAY... 

have to fire your friends and family. Some of them left on their own. In one day 50 employees 

were laid off and then another 30. Payroll was $500,000, and they weren’t going to make it. 

For 18 months Russell wondered, “How do I not go bankrupt so I don’t go to jail?” This was his 

real life nightmare. 

// Kate Mikado The accounts were frozen. All of them. Being an entrepreneur is tough especially when you 

JANUARY 2017 * FUNNEL MAGAZINE 

While looking back, he was going through something he calls cycling. He felt like he was on top 

of the world and then had to let go of all the people that worked for him. Humbled, he had just 

ten people to help rebuild the company. He owed S100K to the IRS and wished that he had 

a boss to fire him. 

In this tragedy, he had to give hope to the people that were still working with the company. 

It was two weeks until the accounts were unlocked. Russell had to do everything in his power 

to keep his sales people who were commissioned based and couldn’t process the orders they 

were bringing in. Once the accounts were unlocked, the merchant had them at 100% reserve, 

meaning they would keep everything. For six months payroll was locked. When they told another 

64

merchant account they would be processing $100K; the company still froze the money. All Russell 

could think was, “If I stop trying I go to jail.” How did he get here… 

It was a late evening, Russell was watching TV with his father when an infomercial aired. Some 

may remember the get rich quick scheme of buying tiny ads in the newspapers and making money 

with them. A little bit like what Facebook Ads are now without the metrics. 

Russell asked his dad to buy him the product; he made Russell work for it. So Russell worked his 

tush off and bought the product. He signed up for all the direct mail ads he could get his hands on. 

And he was hooked. Fast forward to college, as a wrestler he needed to support his wife and new 

family. He saw another infomercial on making money on the internet, which was hosting an event. 

He mentored under Mark Joyner who taught him the importance of having an email list. He 

then mastered writing emails learning from Andre Chaperon how to engage an audience with 

storytelling, which is now in everything that ClickFunnels does. He then added Dagen Smith’s 

concept of starting at the peak emotional state and then give the backstory to create emotional 

impact. Taking that to the next level with Ben Settle’s “Seinfeld Email”. 

Taking advice from Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer (whom he calls his “marketing dad”) 

and many books and podcasts he was able to quantify his results. After 2 years of study, Russell 

had his first internet success: a potato gun info product. The first upsell was partnering with the 

people who sold the potato gun kit. Sales came from Google Adwords. The cost of the DVD was 

$27, and the upsell was $100. 

65 EDITION 1 FUNNELMAGAZINE.COM

23 

“FOR ANYONE OUT HERE THAT 

THINKS IT’S THE RUSSELL 

BRUNSON SHOW, IT’S NOT” 

Before Russell finished college he was making 1 million in gross sales (profit minus 

the ad cost). Using Google Adwords worked for awhile but soon the market became 

saturated, and he began losing money. Russell attended a marketing seminar, and 

it was his first time experiencing people running to the back of the room. He did the 

math, $60K than $100K and he realized that real money comes when you learn to 

sell. He was inspired by the book Ready, Fire, Aim and started speaking on stages. 

For his first offer no one bought. He took 15 different courses to learn and spent 

two years on the road speaking 2 to 3 times a month. At Internet Prophets Live 

when Russell introduced ClickFunnels before his talk finished people were raising 

their hands to buy. He wasn’t even allowed to make an offer at that event. Russell 

had figured it out. He went from the stage to webinars and then helped to craft 

“The Perfect Webinar.” In one year his client hit 1 million in sales. From there he built 

several companies: Supplement, Coaching, Software, Dating, Weight loss. With a 

team of 8, they were building funnels, and it took them three months to go from 

idea to launching the funnel. He would have conversations with people, and their 

eyes would glaze over at the complexity of what they would need to do online. 

At the time a traditional web build took $15k and 2 months. Russell saw a pattern 

in the way they were building that the elements were the same and only some of 

the pieces needed to change. Initially, he hired six developers to create ClickFunnels 

and were still unsuccessful after four years. Russell brought on two key partners to 

help build ClickFunnels, Dylan Jones and Todd Dickerson. 


66

It took Todd only three months to 

build the code for ClickFunnels. 

Russell says the key difference 

was that Dylan and Todd had 

a different mindset that the 

employees. Between Russell, 

Dylan, and Todd they equally 

split ownership 33%. “For anyone 

out here that thinks it’s the Russell 

Brunson Show, it’s not.” 

Russell flew Dylan out to Boise, 

handed him a check and launched 

the beta for ClickFunnels. Dylan 

is responsible for the look and 

feel of how ClickFunnels works for 

its users, the user interface (UI). 

Todd built the backend. With 

the help of two developers hired 

from Toptal, they used Ruby to 

make ClickFunnels work. Russell 

identified the base of what 

ClickFunnels needed: 

• Landing Page 

• Email 

• Sale 

• Upsell 

• Affiliate 

• Shopping cart (Stripe) 

• SMS 

And they eat their cooking. 

ClickFunnels runs on ClickFunnels. 

The three core pieces: 

1. CF build funnels 

(initially had to integrate with 

CRMs) 

2. Shopping cart/Affiliate 

(Backpack) 

3. Email automation 

(Actionetics) 

When ClickFunnels launched, 

it didn’t have all of that 

functionality. Initially, they had to 

integrate a shopping cart. After 

getting customer feedback, they 

sent out an email for people to 

sign up for ClickFunnels for no 

charge the first 60 days. 

It didn’t go well. The user 

interface was initially ugly. Six 

people received Free Access for 

a lifetime. They set a goal of 

10,000 members by the first 

month. It took them a year. At 

first, they had a handful of users 

(1,200) then that dropped to just 

200, and not all of them were 

paying. 

Filled with doubt, Russell 

wondered, “What went wrong?” 

Todd and Dylan did some 

split testing and came to the 

conclusion that people didn’t 

understand it. Russell spoke with 

Mike Filsaime of WebinarJam 

and landed a speaking gig in 

San Diego at his 3-day event. 

Russell created his “Funnel 

Hacking” presentation with a 

special offer. 38% of the room 

closed. At the event, Russell 

realized that he needed to share 

that it applied to all industries 

when he spoke with the audience 

at the back of the room. 

He had a friend with a list. After 

promoting ClickFunnels he did 

$100k in sales, then he promoted 

ClickFunnels, Backpack 

& Actionetics 

Now ClickFunnels runs with 

Actionetics. The CRM software 

which has tagging, smart lists 

and much more for keeping 

track of your customers. The 

second piece that was added 

was Backpack which is the cart 

integration that also allows you 

to track your affiliates. 

to his own list and made an 

addition $150K. Both emails 

were sent on the same day, and 

he made $250k. 

He offered a trial of ClickFunnels 

on the landing page and with 

a split test found that webinars 

worked better for the home page 

selling 3 to 4 times more trials. 

With the free trial link, people 

wanted to see it, but ClickFunnels 

made less money as a SaaS 

website. 

Russell did the webinars himself 

as the CEO and seller for the 

company. He brought on John 

Parks to handle the Facebook 

Ads. 

They were out of the woods…or so 

they thought. 

ClickFunnels Runs on 

ClickFunnels 

The code for ClickFunnels is Ruby 

and allows the user to work in a 

GUI environment. This means 

you don’t need to know code in 

order to build a page. There are 

ways that you can use code for 

the more savvy FunnelHackers. 


“People’s Lives Change Because of 

CLICKFUNNELS” 

“I was taking my family, and we were flying to London 

to speak to a bunch of entrepreneurs out there about 

ClickFunnels. So, I’m on the plane flying across the 

ocean with my family. I brought my wife and my kids, 

amazing experience. We land. You don’t have the 

Internet initially. I [check in] to make sure everything is 

good. I start seeing messages on Facebook and Skype 

and everything blowing up that we’re done, like, “What 

does that mean?” 

We’re racing to the hotel trying to get in there. It turned 

out the database server company we used in the past 

had kind of like handcuffed us. We were trying to move 

over to Amazon’s Aurora; I think it’s called, their highend 

database servers. This company handcuffed us 

like, “No, we won’t let you leave. If you do leave, you’re 

going to be down for a day to two to be able to migrate 

everything over.” Then all of a sudden the databases 

and the backups all just crashed. I guess that like on 

the timeline, they said to restore the databases, they 

said it was going to be a 24-hour thing. It ended up 

taking three weeks before this database server had 

been restructured. We would have been down for three 

weeks. 

Luckily our CTO and Dylan, these guys are geniuses. 

They saw that. They went to Amazon Aurora servers 

and rebuilt the whole database structure, migrated 

everything over. We were down I think for about six and 

a half hours or so. So, I’m sitting there in London not 

doing anything. Everyone is freaking out. ClickFunnels 

is down. My sites are down. I’m losing money. Everyone 

is losing money. Everyone wants to kill us. I was just like, 

‘What do you do?” 

As the leader in this situation, do you try to ignore 

it? Do you blow it off? This is my first time as a 

real CEO. I don’t know the right thing to do. All I 

remember is how pissed I was, and I thought, “I’m 

going to let our community know how upset I am 

because I don’t want to try to hide this and so I got my 

iPhone out, and I’m sitting in the hotel room in London, 

I’m tired. My kids are going crazy. I just told everybody 

that it was unacceptable. I was mad. Everything was 

unacceptable. We were pissed. This was not okay that 

this happened to us and to you guys and everybody. I 

made this video. I posted it in our Facebook group. We 

had at the time about 10,000 people in our Facebook 

group. I posted it, and I said, “This is what’s happening. 

We’re sorry.” 

I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know 

if people were going to be mad at me or whatever. 

What was interesting was from that, we ended up 

getting 500-600 comments of people saying, “We 

understand. We’re here for the long haul. I don’t care 

what happens. We’re here through thick and thin. 

We’re with you guys. We’re praying for you guys.” Even 

Stripe who’s our merchant provider, they sent us this 

huge gift basket in the mail, like, “We’re here. We want 

to make sure you guys…” All this stuff, it was like this 

really weird rallying of our community that everybody 

came together and like supported us. It was the coolest 

thing in the world, and then six hours later, we were 

back up, and everything was functional. All these 

little hiccups we had been having over the last two or 

three months–we found out later it was because of the 

database server. We moved it over; it was done. All the 

issues were gone. Stability was perfect. 

We were looking at our log like, “If we’re down six 

hours, people are going to leave.” I can’t tell you how 

stressful it was. We looked at the logs, our cancellations. 

Our cancellations during that time did not dip at all. 


68

It was just this thing where our 

community loved us, and what 

we’re doing so much, so they said, 

“We’re behind you.” It was just this 

really cool experience where I feel 

like we shifted from like a company 

to a community. I feel like the 

community did that as well. Ever 

since then, it’s been cool. But it was 

definitely a very scary, very painful 

day.” 

Russell loves working with 

entrepreneurs and helping 

people to get their message out. 

“People’s lives change because 

of ClickFunnels.” In their first year 

they achieved twelve million in 

revenue and an additional five 

million in coaching. Their second 

year they are performing at a 

million a month. When profits are 

at 40-50% margin, you know you 

are doing something right. With 

affiliates, buying ads, word of 

mouth and organic growth Russell 

can do some pretty crazy things. 

Like, pay for leases of dream cars 

for his affiliates. How was he able 

to this? Something Russell calls the 

mañana principle. Most people 

will push things back to tomorrow, 

again and again, and again. 

Russell doesn’t leave the office until 

it’s done. Tomorrow is not an option. 

He also talked about how it’s like 

the Mexican mafia that come into 

your house in the middle of the 

night. They have a bag of gold in 

one hand and a gun in the other. 

Lead or gold. Most people make a 

choice for gold. Don’t deviate. 

This commitment comes from 

his background in wrestling. You 

have to make weigh-ins, or you 

don’t get to compete. You might 

be wondering what got Russell 

out of the pickle he was in at the 

beginning of the story. Well if you’ve 

ever met or seen a video of Russell 

you know that he loves webinars 

and here’s why. The webinar saved 

his business. Russell went from 

broke to one million in 3 months 

with the webinar, which got him out 

of the situation. “Get one webinar 

that works.” If he knew no one and 

only had his current knowledge, a 

laptop, and $500 what would he 

do: In one week he would get the 

trial of GoToWebinar, pick or create 

a product or service he loves, spend 

the $500 on Facebook ads, and 

pitch the product on the webinar. 

The best advice he got was from 

Mark Joyner, and that is that the 

only thing you focus on is “the list.” 

Russell emails every day or at least 

he tries to. The point of the emails 

is to be entertaining, exciting, and 

fun. He treats it like The Russell 

Show similar to the way that Ellen 

Degeneres and Oprah Winfrey 

had their daytime talk show. People 

are on your list to be entertained 

so focus on 90% entertainment 

and 10% content when it comes 

to emails. Russell talks about the 

attractive character being the 

center of the email sequences. He 

created the attractive character 

from a relationship expert. Build 

the relationship and then blast 

to everyone and cross-promote 

products. 

The Dream 100 

How do you find the dream 

people that you want to partner 

with? Well, Russell figured out this 

one too. After working with Chet 

Holmes, author of The Ultimate 

Sales Machine, He identified 

that first, you have to figure out 

who is your dream partner. Dig 

Your Well (before you’re thirsty). 

Do homework ahead of time. 

Ask yourself: How do I build a 

relationship? Comment on Posts, 

Follow, Friend, buy products, 

subscribe – get to know the people 

that you want to rub shoulders 

with. Start your own podcast and 

give them exposure (push their 

message out) which Provides 

Value. You need a platform. Send 

gifts to build a relationship. A great 

example of this was someone that 

wanted to build a relationship with 

the author of Ask Ryan Levesque. 

Ryan loves LEGO, and so the 

person sent him Lego figures of 

Ryan and his family. For $10 in 

shipping and handling, that person 

made themselves memorable. 

Promotion: Products (Package as 

a gift), Deliver random pizza with 

a note (yes Russell did that too.) 

Parasite marketing – Facebook 

Ads to target (Tony Robbins, Zig 

Ziglar) push messages to their 

audience and finally JV. 

. 


Hawk: What are the three key secrets that you’re going 

to be sharing in the Expert Secrets book? 

Russell: Cool, so the Expert Secrets book, if you look at 

it as a whole there’s a couple of things. The first thing is 

to try and teach people how to build a huge following. 

One of the biggest problems people have when they’re 

trying to sell things online is that they’re selling to cold 

audiences or they’re not building a following. I’ve done 

a ton of research on how cults are built and how are 

movements built and all these kind of things. The first 

step is, how do we build a movement of people to 

follow you and to listen to you? That’s probably the 

first big pillar of it. 

The second thing is, after you have a group of people, 

how do you speak to them and communicate to them 

in a way that gets them to change their belief patterns 

and to want to follow you and to buy your products 

and things like that? It’s understanding how to sell 

correctly in a cool way that gets people to like you and 

doesn’t make you feel all salesy and weird. 

Then the last piece is now you got this thing, what are 

the funnels that are tied to that? What are the funnels 

that get people in so they can hear the message so 

they can buy your products and follow you into your 

movement that you’re starting? Those are some of the 

core things. 

Hawk: Awesome. What’s one of the things that you 

feel is really important to be able to market your book? 

Is this one going to be a free plus shipping as well? 

Russell: Kind of. We’re going to be doing a kind of 

different funnel. Yes, it will be a free plus shipping book, 

but then we have a kit that’s called a funnel hacker 

kit. It’s going to have both the DotComSecrets book, 

the Expert Secrets book, and then nine other booklets 

that come with it. It’s going to be either the book or for 

super cheap like 30 or 40 bucks they’re going to get 

the kit with basically nine books in it. It’s going to be 

kind of a different funnel. In my mind, if someone has 

this kit with both the books it’s like the full system of 

what everything you need to be successful in life. 

While we’re doing the book free plus shipping, the goal 

will be to get people to buy the kit, which is everything. 

Hawk: Okay, and that’s going to be the bump order 

around this one? 

Russell: I’m not quite sure yet. I’m not sure if it’s going 

to be a bump order. I think it’s going to be two options. 

I haven’t designed it all yet, but in my mind, it’s going 

to be two options either the book or the kit, and then 

there will be bumps on either of those depending what 

you pick. 

Kate: I love Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. I’d love to 

find out why you decided to write this book. 

Russell: It’s kind of funny because I swore I’d never 

write another book again after the DotComSecrets 

book because there was so much pain associated with 

writing it. 

What I found in our community as a whole, I feel like 

the ClickFunnels community has become really good 

at building funnels. That’s what the DotComSecrets 

book was about, the strategy behind funnels and how 

they work and how they interact with each other. I feel 

like as a community, everyone’s amazing at that. 

I feel like where people are really struggling is selling 

in those funnels. How do you create the right offers to 

sell? How do you communicate with your audience? 

That’s what people are missing. I see people that put 

all this time and energy and money into a funnel, and 

they roll it out and then it doesn’t work for them, and 

it’s almost always tied to the fact that they do not know 

how to communicate. Persuasion, how do you get 

somebody to actually purchase your product or your 

service? It was almost like there was so much frustration 

around people getting stuck. I was like, this was the 

piece that’s kind of missing. That was kind of the reason 

why ... I mean there’s a lot of reasons why, but that was 

one of the big reasons why. This was the piece that 

people are struggling with and it’s so powerful when 

they understand it. When you get it, it makes this whole 

process simple. 

A good case study is Justin Williams who was in my 

inner circle, and they flip houses. They flip 100 houses 

a year. He nets over a million bucks doing that. They 

went out, and they were like, “We want to teach people 

how to do this.” They created this course and had these 

funnels and tried to launch it and for the life of them, 

they could not have success. They tried over and over. 

They were like. “We created this. It’s amazing. It would 

change people’s lives, but we can’t get people to give 

us money in exchange for this thing we created.” They 

almost gave up. They were literally on the brink of 


70

shutting down their information business and sticking 

with the real estate. Then as a last ditch effort, they 

came to Funnel Hacking Live and then they joined the 

inner circle. When they came into it, all we had to do 

was teach them how to sell. As soon as we taught them 

how to sell, within eight months, they did a million 

dollars in sales with it. This year they’ll probably do 

three or four million. It’s just been skyrocketing. 

The one piece they were missing, they had the great 

product, they had everything they needed, they just 

didn’t know how to get people to desire their product 

and to want to give them money. It was such a simple 

transition that when we gave that to them, it became 

really easy. I’m like, “If we can give this to everybody it will 

give them the ability to sell the products and services.” 

The reason why I like working with entrepreneurs is 

because when entrepreneurs have a product or service, 

it changes people’s lives. The moment you can change 

people’s lives if you can break their faults, belief 

patterns, get them to actually invest in your product 

then it unlocks the gate to that. It’s like, “If I can get 

entrepreneurs better at the selling, then they can serve 

more people, they can change more people’s lives.” It 

kind of fits back to what my mission is, which is helping 

entrepreneurs to have what they need to be able to 

effect change in their customers’ lives. That’s kind of 

the why behind it. 

Hawk: From that, you mentioned he made a couple 

million. I saw your post about the two comma club. 

What inspired that? 

Russell: Yeah. In fact, if you wanted, you can go look, 

if you go to 2commaclub.com there’s a video there 

that tells the story as well. When I got started in this 

business, my goal was to make a thousand bucks a 

month. That was what I aspired to. I’m like, “If I can 

do that I’ll be rich.” During that process of me trying 

to figure out how to make a thousand bucks a month, 

there was John Reese. During that time he launched 

his product Traffic Secrets and they did $1,000,000 

in a day. 

When he did that, I remember getting emails about 

him and talking about him; I remember looking at 

that and was like, “Man, he made $1,000,000 in a 

day.” My whole perception of what was possible in this 

business and my life shifted. I thought my reality now 

was like this is possible. 

As soon as I knew this was possible I was like, “I want 

that, I need ... “ He has proved that that’s possible. 

Just like, what’s his name? Roger Bannister? The guy 

that ran a four-minute mile. Everyone thought it was 

impossible and then he did it and afterward everyone 

else did it. Same thing happened with John Reese, 

he made a million dollar day and then me and Mike 

Filsaime and all these people were like, “We got to 

make a million dollars,” and then we all did. It gave me 

something to shoot towards and have belief; I could 

actually do this. 

That’s what Two Comma Club is about. I want everyone 

to see there are tons of people who are doing this. 

I think right now there’s 51, 52 something people 

in ClickFunnels who had a funnel that’s made over 

$1,000,000. I want to put those people up on a 

pedestal, so people see it and then they’re like, “Holy 

cow, lots of people are doing this, this is completely 

possible,” and now they got something to shoot 

towards and work towards. You give them belief that 

it’s actually possible. That’s kind of the focus and the 

goal for the Two Comma Club. Almost like a light that 

people can look at and say, “That’s where I’m going, 

that’s where I want to get to.” 

Hawk: Based on the Expert Secrets, what would you 

say is the quickest path for people to go from wherever 

they are now to the Two Comma Club? 


Russell: Yeah, so if you look at the 

Expert Secrets book, the first half 

of the book is picking the market 

and figuring out how to build your 

culture. All those kinds of things. The 

second half of the book is teaching 

basically my perfect webinar script. 

That’s half the book, is the perfect 

webinar. If you look in my Inner 

Circle, I would say probably 70% 

of the people in there wrote a 

perfect webinar, and that’s where 

they made all their money so far. I 

think for me, that’s the fastest way. 

If you create a really good product 

framework from 300 bucks to a 

couple of thousand dollars, create a 

webinar around it. If you look at the 

way the webinar is structured, it’s not 

selling on the webinar, it’s figuring 

out what your audience’s false 

beliefs are and reframing them for 

them. Then they’ll buy the product 

in the end. I think that’s the fastest 

way. That’s why this whole book, 

it’s a whole bunch of set up to help 

them understand who they actually 

are and how they can contribute 

and change people’s lives. It’s like 

this is the tool, the presentation, to 

give you money. I think that’s the 

fastest way for someone to hit the 

Two Comma Club. 

Hawk: How can you build your 

culture? How do you create that 

environment and build that group? 

You’ve got the CF Group; you have 

the DotComSecrets group, I’m 

sure there will be an Expert Secrets 

group, how did you develop that in 

a way that truly just magnifies itself 

and continues to build on itself? 

Russell: Well, one thing in the 

Expert Secrets book, you’ll see the 

first three chapters about that. I 

looked at that when I was doing 

all this research. It doesn’t matter 

who you look at; you can look at 

anyone from the way that Hitler 

did his thing to the way that Christ 

did his. The evil spectrum, the good 

and evil spectrum. Both of them did 

it the exact same way. There are 

three things that are the pattern. 

The pattern is number one is there’s 

always a charismatic leader; 

number two is there’s a vision of 

where things are going and number 

three, the charismatic leader offers 

everybody a new opportunity. It’s 

not like I’m going to teach someone 

how to become better, or whatever. 

This is a whole new opportunity. We 

didn’t plan that initially, but as we 

started doing it and I started looking 

for patterns and started seeing it, 

it’s like there’s someone out there 

that’s the face of it, so that’s me. 

Then there’s what’s the movement 

and what’s the new opportunity? 

The new opportunity was easy 

for us. It’s this thing that’s called 

funnels, ClickFunnel; this is this new 

opportunity we’re offering. The 

second thing there is what’s the 

movement? How do we get people 

to buy into this thing we’re trying 

to do? It happened as an accident 

initially. If you look at the webinar 

that launched ClickFunnels, it was 

called the Funnel Hack webinar. On 

the webinar, we talked about funnel 

hacking and then a little while later 

we made a t-shirt that said funnel 

hacker on it. Then we started like, 

“Hey let’s give this away to people 

when they join ClickFunnels.” We 

started giving away these funnel 

hacker t-shirts, and everybody 

started getting these t-shirts and 

what was cool is they started selfidentifying 

with that thing. “Hey, I’m 

a funnel hacker.” 

In fact, I had a guy email me; he 

was like, “Hey, I’ve been a member 

of ClickFunnels for three or four 

months now, when I signed up I got 

the t-shirt. I’ve never actually logged 

into ClickFunnels and used it, but 

I wear the t-shirt every single week, 

so I’ve never canceled because 

I feel like I’m part of this community, 

I feel like I’m a funnel hacker. 

I just wanted to let you know that 

I’m going to keep paying forever 

because of the t-shirt I feel like a 

part of something.” I was like, how 

crazy is that? That’s so powerful 

that people will keep paying 

monthly because they feel like 

they’re part of something bigger 

than themselves. 

Kate: I think we have five or 

six funnel hacker t-shirts. We’re 

definitely in that culture and selfproclaimed 

funnel hackers, right? 

Russell: I know, isn’t that cool? 

Hawk: If you were working with 

someone in your Inner Circle, 

they’ve got something that’s rock 

solid, it’s working well, and they 

want to bring in other people to 

promote them, what would you tell 

them? 

Russell: Basically, there are two 

sides of it. There’s one side of people 

that are already affiliates that are 

good at being affiliates, and there’s 

another side of people who aren’t 

affiliates but are your customers 

who love what you’re doing. We 

treat both those groups differently. 

In fact, right now I’m looking at a big 

box of ClickFunnels Avenger comic 

books that we just had designed, 

and we’re going to be sending 

them out for our Dream 100. I’m 

sure you’ve heard me talk about 

it before, it’s called Dream 100. 

Those are people that are already 

really good affiliates, and basically, 

they’re promoting stuff no matter 

what, but we need to somehow get 

them to see us and want to promote 

us. We actually send out a package 

almost every single month. 


35 

It started out as Dream 100; I think it’s Dream five or 

600 now, of people that are influencers who have the 

email list or big following, we want them every single 

month to be hearing from us, and trying to get them to 

promote something. That’s half the strategy. 

The other half is everyone has customers who buy your 

things, and they love what you’re doing and if they 

knew that they could get paid for referring others, 

they would. For us, it’s hard because we tried to tell 

people, “Hey, promote it,” and then no-one knew what 

to do. We created an actual training course. If you 

look at affiliatebootcamp.com, it trains people how 

to be our affiliate. I remembered probably nine or 10 

years ago, Stu McLaren and I did a course teaching 

people how to launch their own affiliate programs. Stu 

was managing Dan Kennedy’s and a whole bunch of 

people with affiliate programs; I had my own affiliate 

program with about 30,000 affiliates at the time. 

We were teaching people how to get affiliates, how to 

attract them. Stuff like that. 

One of the guys we had on a call, Marlon Sanders, he 

got up and it was interesting, he was talking, he said, 

“You know what’s one interesting pattern between 

everybody who has a really successful affiliate 

program? What’s the one thing they all have?” I couldn’t 

think of what it was. He said, “Every single one that has 

a successful affiliate program has a product teaching 

people how to be an affiliate.” Teach them how to be 

an affiliate and then how to sell their products. When I 

got that, I was like, “Holy cow.” 

Every time, I think it’s like three core times in my business 

that I’ve launched a really good affiliate program, 

every single time I did it behind training teaching 

people how to build affiliates. With ClickFunnels I feel 

like the boot camp is the training program teaching 

people how to be affiliates for us. 

Kate: It’s such a powerful training. The attractive 

character, I got it, I understood what you were sharing, 

but it wasn’t until I got the boot camp training and we 

really did that deep dive with it that I was like, “Oh. I 

understand it on a whole new level.” It’s an incredible 

training. It’s amazing that you share that and it’s free. 

I’m like, people sign up, it’s free. 

Hawk: In terms of your best-converting funnel, what 

would you say for somebody who wants to promote you 

and promote ClickFunnels and promote everything, 

what would you say the best converting funnel is for 

them to jump in on? 

Russell: Ooh, that’s a good question. It honestly kind 

of depends on the audience in terms of relationship you 

have with the audience, things like that. We had the 

most successes with the webinar funnels. Typically, that 

works for those people who already have the email list 

to get people in the webinar. It works less for affiliates 

that are driving Facebook ads to a webinar, because 

it’s not quite as good. Whereas, something like the 

book funnel where they’re giving away free books, or 

a free MP3 player, usually works better on more cold 

traffic because it’s such a small community. “Get this 

free book; this is why I recommend it.” The free things 

typically do better for those kind of affiliates. It’s hard 

to say if there’s a best one. 

I think more importantly for me as an affiliate; I 

typically look less at what’s converting the best, and 

more which thing am I going to promote, where can I 

provide the most value? All the things that I’ve been a 

really good affiliate for, and I’ve been a good affiliate 

for ten plus years, I won Ferraris and all sorts of stuff, 

and it’s a product that I’m really passionate about. 

Because of that, I can create my own things to provide 

more value if I promote it. If I were going to promote 

the Dot Com Secrets book, I wouldn’t just drive and 

ask for the book, I would go and I would make a whole 

bunch of training or make a whole bunch of funnels 

and quick funnels that are all the funnels inside of 

Russell’s book and I would be like, “Hey, if you buy 

Russell’s book from my link you get all these funnels.” 

I’d be like, “How do I create more bites for this offer 

that’s already there?” 

Kate: What advice do you have for people that maybe 

want to write a book? We all know building the funnel 

is easy, but writing the book is the hard part. What 

advice would you have for someone who’s sticking the 

book at the beginning of the funnel and how they can 

get from idea to printed and sent out as quickly and 

easily as possible? 


74

Russell: Yeah, well, I would say 

writing a book, at least for me, both 

my books took a year and a half of 

actual writing time, so it was painful. 

There are easier ways to do it. I know 

that I have friends like Rob Cosberg 

and other guys, you pay them 

whatever and they will help write 

your book, and they will get it done 

in a month or a month and a half 

or something like that. What I even 

say is, it’s funny, if you look at all the 

front offers that we have right now, 

the one that converts the best is the 

perfectwebinarsecrets.com, which 

is one piece of paper and a CD 

of me explaining the paper. That’s 

our highest converting, highest cart 

value front end we have. I almost 

look at it like, what can you create 

that’s easier? We just launched the 

Marketing in Your Car MP3 player. 

It was just me taking a whole bunch 

of my pre-recorded stuff, putting it 

on an MP3 player from China, and 

that was way easier to create than 

a book. 

I’m going to say the book is the 

hardest thing on earth to make. I 

would shift away from that. Unless 

you’re already doing it, then I would 

find someone who’s a good writer. 

Kind of the way I do my process is 

I have a super detailed outline, and 

then I record myself teaching all the 

stuff, and I have a writer who puts 

that in order and sends it back to 

me and I rewrite it from there. I don’t 

know if that saves me time because 

it still takes me a year and a half to 

write a book. Anyway, the time, it’s 

a lot easier to talk your content than 

it is to write it. 

Hawk: Yeah, so what advice would 

you give as an expert in the funnel 

world? The expert, I should say in the 

funnel world. What would you say 

to somebody who’s getting started 

and they just got a ClickFunnels 

account or they’re just about to buy 

a ClickFunnels account through an 

affiliate link, what would you say 

to them to say, “Here’s what you 

need to do to actually get started 

and make money within 14 days or 

within 30 days?” 

Russell: What I would do, if it were 

me, I would first off figure out what 

you want to do long term. I know I 

want to be in the weight loss industry, 

I want to be in internet marketing, 

I want to be in Forex, figure out 

whatever it is you’re passionate 

about and then find someone who’s 

got a funnel that’s crushing it in that 

already. Let’s just say it’s weight loss. 

I go, and I find some Venus Factor 

beyonddiet.com or one of the ones 

that are doing really, really well. 

Go back and look at what the funnel 

looks like, but then I would not go 

and recreate it, I would become 

an affiliate of that person because 

I would want to see if I can figure 

out how to get traffic to buy their 

product before I went and created 

my own. 

It’s kind of similar, what we teach 

inside of boot camp. I’d set up a 

squeeze, a landing page, and I 

would drive traffic to it selling their 

product as an affiliate. If I can make 

the numbers work, then I would go 

in and build my own funnel that’s 

similar that would then replace 

theirs with mine and then keep all 

the money. A lot of times, especially 

in 14 days, there’s so many pieces 

you’ve got to learn. You’ve got to 

build the funnel; you’ve got the 

copy, the design, you’ve got to do 

all these things. If you can say let’s 

take all those things out and just 

figure out how to become good at 

one thing, which is like driving traffic 

or whatever that piece is, focus 

on that to a funnel that’s already 

working and see if you can make 

that work. Then come back and say 

okay, now I’m going to figure out 

how to build a funnel and I’m going 

to figure out how to make a product 

and plug in other things after you’ve 

kind of proven the model. 


35 

Most of the funnels we do nowadays are successful, 

and they ask, how do you pick which markets you want 

to do stuff in? For me, it’s 100% tied to, do I know 

where the traffic is going to come from to make this 

funnel profitable? Then I say, “As soon as this funnel is 

done this is where I’m buying traffic from.” 

If I can see it, this is the email list, or this is where on 

Facebook, or then I’ll go into that market. I don’t want 

to build a funnel and then be like where’s traffic at 

and try to wander around hoping I can find it. I want 

to know exactly where it’s at. As soon as I find it, now I 

want to make sure that traffic is actually good. Become 

an affiliate, drive it somewhere else, see if it’s going to 

convert, see if it’s going to work, and if it is, cool now I 

know where traffic’s at, now I know what funnel works, 

now I can build a funnel that’s going to compete with 

that. That would be the way that I would definitely do 

it. 

If you guys have the funnel immersion package, in 

there, we’ve got the recordings from the very first Funnel 

Hacking Live, and Richard Cousins did a presentation 

in there that was the most brilliant. He’s kind of really 

smart, so most people miss the whole point of it, but if 

you watch that presentation, he explained that in super 

nerdy number terms. I’ve seen the guy when he goes 

into the market, he does exactly what I said, and he’ll 

go list seven, eight, nine thousand people before he 

gets the product done. He does it all profitably. He’ll 

get paid to build this huge list, perfects the market, 

perfects the traffic, then puts it in the funnel and he’s 

just off to the races. He’s brilliant at it. That’s what I 

would do. 

Hawk: Just to clarify, you create a landing page, 

capture an email, name, phone number potentially, 

whatever information you want, then from there you 

drive them to the sales page or the order page for the 

product that you’re affiliate selling? 

Russell: Yeah, one step beyond that the new survey 

element’s that’s coming out hopefully this week in the 

editor; it’s amazing. We’ll start teaching that a lot more 

as soon as the survey element is done. 

Hawk: All right, do you have any recommendations 

for people, because I know a lot of the people come 

to us and say we have ClickFunnels and we have 

InfusionSoft. They are asking, how do we get rid of 

InfusionSoft, how do we go so we can fully automate 

and have that sales pipeline functionality? Do you 

have any recommendations for the people who are 

interested in going purely to ClickFunnels or having 

that one last piece integrated with one of the other 

tools? 

Russell: I know there’s one, is it Polio or Podio? There’s 

one in real estate, all the real estate people that use 

ClickFunnels use what’s called Podio, is that right? 

Yeah, Podio. I think you can integrate that really easily, 

that’s what a lot of guys are doing. 

The other thing I think is I think people should upgrade 

their business models. I had a sales force, 60 sales 

guys on at one time. That was awesome, except for it 

sucked, every second of it did. 

We had all these people and all this overhead and 

everything and then we were able to replace one auto 

webinar, and two sales guys create 60 full-time dudes, 

and our CRM right now is Wufoo. 

Our sales guys they get a Wufoo form, they print it 

out, they put it on the desk, and that’s it. We’re making 

more money with two dudes and no CRM than we ever 

did with 60 people in this all complex CRM. It’s like I 

have people that focus on getting better at selling, it 

replaces a lot of that stuff. It’s probably not the popular 

thing to say, but honestly, I think that if people upgrade 

their business, those things aren’t necessary nowadays, 

nearly as much as people think they are. 

Kate: No CRM is perfect either, and that’s what 

I’ve found. It’s like that’s almost a better solution to 

this question of how do we keep track of people. I 

appreciate you sharing that with us. 

Hawk: I know it cracks me up. 

Russell: We knew the guys we were working with. You’ve 

got a new high ticket funnel starting to integrate all 

these huge and complex systems and stuff and they’re 

not even making that much money. I’m like, dude, we 

literally print out Wufoo forms, and we set them on the 

sales guy’s desk every morning. They call those forms, 

and they sell people stuff, and at the end, we’ve got 

three baskets they put the forms in: This person was 

broke; this person’s not interested, this person calls 

back in a week or two. That’s it, it works, and it’s magic. 

We make a lot of money with it. I don’t know; I do think 

CRM’s are going to be something we’ll look at. 


76

Kate: What is your favorite part of 

the book? 

Russell: I think the biggest ‘aha’ 

that people are going to get is 

we talk about the creating of new 

opportunities as opposed to selling 

improvement offers. I think that’s 

like when people get that piece 

of it, they’ll make infinitely more 

money. Most people are selling 

improvement. Improvement is the 

worst thing on earth to sell because 

for somebody to say yes, I want 

to become better; they have to 

admit they failed. Whereas when 

you structure your offer as a new 

opportunity, then it gets rid of all 

past failures, all past expectations. 

Every offer I’ve had that has blown 

up and made insane amounts of 

money has always been a new 

opportunity I offered my audience. 

I think that’s the piece, which when 

people get that, it’s like the big 

domino knocks down everything 

else. 

Kate: Do you have a fun fact about 

the book that people might not 

know? 

Russell: I was six months into 

writing the book, and I was on a 

family vacation doing one of the 

final rounds of editing, and I got 

so angry at the book I highlighted 

240 pages, and I deleted it live on 

Snapchat and started over from 

scratch. That was really painful, but 

it was funny. 

Kate: I was in one of Darren 

Hardy’s funnels, and I saw the link, 

ClickFunnel and like shoot Darren 

Hardy’s using this. Can you share the 

people that are using ClickFunnels? 

Can you share so that people know 

who they’re in company with as far 

as who else is using ClickFunnels to 

make tons of money in the industry? 

Russell: Definitely. I always tell 

people it’s not a matter of if you’re 

going to used ClickFunnels, it’s a 

matter of when because it’s the 

future. I think we’re a day or two 

away from passing 30,000 active 

customers, which is insane. Tony 

Robbins is using ClickFunnels, 

Darren Hardy; Success Magazine 

is using ClickFunnels, Dave Asprey 

from Bulletproof. All the top weight 

loss gurus in the world are using 

ClickFunnels. Honestly, I don’t 

know anyone who’s having success 

out there right now that’s not 

really using ClickFunnels. In any 

market we have the top financial 

trading coaches, they’re all using 

ClickFunnels. E-commerce, if you 

look at the people who are in the 

Two Comma Club, I’d say half of 

them, probably more than half, are 

all eCommerce people. 

They’re shifting away from Shopify 

and Amazon and moving their 

platform over to ClickFunnels 

because it’s an easier way to do 

business. If you look at any guru in 

almost any market, if you look at their 

sites, it’s probably a ClickFunnels 

page. We did a test, probably five 

months ago, went to Facebook and 

started clicking on every single ad 

and nine out of ten ads we clicked 

on all went to ClickFunnel pages, 

which was awesome. 


Hawk: Why would somebody want to join the Certified Partner Program? 

Russell: I think for a couple of reasons. One, it helps your skillset. Helps you to be good, not just from a funnel 

building standpoint, but from how you find clients, how do you treat clients? Even if you are just working for 

yourself or you’re working with partners or an employer, there’s still the setting of expectation ... All of those kind of 

things go into it. I think that’s the first thing. Number two is now there’s such a good network of certified partners 

that are helping each other. In fact, Liz Tennis is working and actually flying up here today. She’s working on a 

second level group that a partition of people that are certified will have ... Them being in a group by themselves 

where you’ve got this unique mastermind group of people who are in the same business, doing the same thing, 

kind of a cutting edge thing. I think there’s a lot of opportunities that happen there. I send all my Inner Circle 

people. I send ... everyone talks to me, I send everyone to the marketplace, the certified page. I think there’s a 

lot of leads going there. As the marketplace starts growing, that’s going to keep dramatically increasing. There’s 

lead flow; there’s a lot of other good things as well. That’s some of the reasons. 

Kate: Is there anything you want to say to the readers in advance? I know your following has been blowing up. 

There’s over, I think, 40,000 people in just the ClickFunnels official group alone. Anything you want to share 

with them? 

Russell: It comes back to what our theme is for Funnel Hacking Live. The theme of you’re just one funnel away. 

I want everyone to understand that and believe that. I look at my business the last 12 years like the rises and 

the falls, every time I’ve had huge horrible problems; it was the funnel that saved me. I almost had to declare 

bankruptcy twice, and both times the funnel saved me from that. Everyone is one funnel away. It’s worth it to 

keep trying and testing and trying. 


78

Kate: What were the funnels that saved you? That’s pretty significant to go from bankrupt to we’re back to 

millions. What funnel does that? 

Russell: I’m going to be talking about that at Funnel Hacking Live, I do a whole 90-minute presentation to 

walk through the history of all the funnels that have saved my butt, and it’s going to be really cool. It’s been a lot. 

Sometimes it’s been webinar funnels; sometimes it’s been the high ticket. Every step in the journey there has been 

something different that saved my butt. It just depends. If you get the right message, the right audience, the right 

offer, the right time, it can change everything. 

Kate: When does the book come out, so everybody knows, and where can they get it? 

Russell: Launch date is April 18th, and it will be at MyFunnel.link/ExpertSecrets. 


Once 

Upon A Hacker

Article By Lydia Puller 

See that little girl 

in the picture? 

Staring. Determined. 

Headstrong. Well, that’s 

me. A funnel hacker in 

the making. I was almost 

five years old in that picture, and I 

was rocking those Salvation Army 

second-hand knee-high boots 

because they made me feel like a 

total badass! Five years old! And 

yes...I was a badass! It was 1969, 

and we were a new immigrant family 

of six that lived in an old raggedy 

ranch style home in Levittown, 

Pennsylvania. 105 Magnolia Drive 

to be exact. We had scenic forest 

wallpaper, wood paneling, a 

sectional couch and a big fenced 

backyard where our dog Misty lived. 

Levittown was the place that Billy Joel 

sang about in his song Allentown. 

Levittown was a picture-perfect, 

carefully controlled community 

that represented entrepreneurship, 

ingenuity, and uniformity. I grew up 

in a post-World War II American 

suburb where you were expected to 

conform and fit in. At age 5 I knew 

I’d never fit in. I didn’t conform. I was 

different. First off we were poor, on 

welfare, and I was this half black half 

Jewish kid that just didn’t fit in with 

my surroundings. 

Workaholic 

By the time 1970 hit our family of 

6 had become a family of 5. My 

mom was always home, and my 

dad was always gone. Although we 

went without, my fondest memory 

was going to the Jersey Shore for the 

day, all of us kids and mom, with 

a bucket of Kentucky Fried chicken 

and our bathing suits! Sometimes 

we went to Trenton New Jersey to the 

museum. We all piled into my mom’s 

Fiat 500 and off we went. Or 

sometimes we would take the train 

to Philadelphia and walk around 

window shopping in Roosevelt Mall 

talking about what we’d do if we 

won a lot of money. Once we visited 

the Philadelphia Zoo. To this day I 

don’t know where my mom got the 

money for her car or the gas or how 

she took us on those adventures. Four 

kids, a single mom and on welfare? 

I know I get my strength and drive 

from her. My childhood memories 

were also filled with memories of 

processed government cheese, 

powdered milk, Ovaltine, Bisquick, 

our dog Misty, second-hand clothes, 

fireflies and waiting for the mosquito 

man on hot summer nights. I also 

remember going back to school after 

the Christmas holidays watching 

classmates run around in new clothes 

and new shoes and bragging about 

their bicycles. While we had nothing 

new. Same clothes. Same Shoes. All 

hand me downs.I remember how we 

never had potato chips or Captain 

Crunch cereal like the other kids. I 

remember wanting more. The young 

girl in me was trying to figure out 

how to get money and how to get 

out of Levittown. I wanted more. I 

wanted more for me I just had to find 

it. And that’s when an entrepreneur 

was born. 

The Entreprenuer In Me 

That little girl in the picture grew into a 

motivated, creative, driven, risk-taking 

visionary. It all began with the words; “I 

have an idea!” I was up on all the newest 

and coolest technology of the 1970s 

man! I had my second-hand typewriter, 

my transistor radio and my old black 

and white television with the rabbit ears 

wrapped in aluminum foil. I even got my 

hands on a push button phone, which 

was walkaway ahead of the dial phone! 

For the 70s I was all high tech! I had my 

hands in the mix with my knackers and 

Jax and view camera. I started to make 

money on the side by renting my toys 

out to friends that wanted to use them. 

At our house on Magnolia Drive, we had 

a big yellow bowl in the house where 

we collected all of our change. It also 

had four silver dollars! My goal back 

then was to fill that bowl with nothing 

but silver dollars! By the time I was 12 

years old, I was renting out my clothes 

to my sister. I figured if she was going 

to wear my clothes and not give them 

back she could rent them! I charged her 

$1/item. After a while, I lost a customer, 

but it sparked bigger ideas for me. I also 

babysat after school for a next-door 

neighbor, and at 13 I was selling donuts 

around the neighborhood and charged 

a $.05 upsell for a baker’s dozen. At 14 

I got my first “real” job at Taco Bell and 

then went on to McDonald’s. At 15 I hit 

my stride as a cashier at Macy’s and 

Rite Aid while renting out my bike so 

kids could take it 5 miles down the road 

to the Pong and Pac-Man game room. 

At 16 years old I was an Avon rep selling 

makeup and upselling lotions door to 

door! 

Lydia Puller; standing 

EDITION 1 


83

The 

TRAVELER 

Being able to make money when I wanted and when 

I needed it was a huge awakening for someone 

from the wrong side of the tracks. I paid for my own 

Jordache jeans, my class ski trip to Killington Vermont 

and I was able to buy my mom real gifts for the 

holidays rather than make a homemade gift like we 

always did. Ultimately my side hustle allowed me to 

save enough money at 17 and I headed out of dodge 

with a one-way ticket to Europe and the Middle East. 

Four years of being a ‘traveling-gypsy-couch-surfingmaking-money-as-I-go’ 

waitress. I landed in Israel 

where I studied at Tel Aviv University and ultimately 

I ended up in a brief military program for new 

immigrants. In the mid-80s, I took a one-way ticket 

to California because I was determined to make my 

mark and hit the California coast. I had one goal in 

mind...get into U.C. Berkeley. Want to know why? 

Because I had a high school counselor in Levittown 

that said I would never get into Berkeley. His exact 

words were, “Lydia, you’re not the caliber of student 

that gets into Berkeley. Now let’s take a look at these 

technical school brochures.” 

I was dumbfounded. How can you tell someone that 

they aren’t good enough? That they can’t achieve 

their goals and hit their dreams? I think about that 

now, and I think about that girl in the picture. The 

determination. The inner resolve. Tell that girl now, 

and somehow she will get to yes. Needless to say, I 

got into UC Berkeley and then went off to law school 

all the while with my side hustle working over time as 

I worked as a library attendant, shopkeeper, bagel 

maker and au-pair. I left law school and went into 

high-tech recruiting, contract negotiations and real 

estate. I made good money, well into the six figures. 

I had what I thought I wanted but then everything 

shifted. 

My Reason Why 

In 1998 I became a mom. And now, finally, I have 

my real and authentic why. I had made money in 

the past, and I had lost money. It always felt like 

it was never enough. My chase for the American 

dream was simply dollars and cents. Now it had 

meaning. My son became the ONLY reason why. 

The flesh of my flesh, living and breathing. For him 

I want more. In 2008 I lost everything. The real 

estate and financial markets tanked, my business 

stopped, and my relationship ended overnight. 

I lost my properties, and I lost all of my savings. 

I didn’t know how I was going to feed my child or 

keep the lights on or keep a roof over our heads. 

I had no income whatsoever. None. Nada. Nunca. 

Nothing. I was scared shitless, but I think that in our 

bleakest moments we find the greatest strength. 

The only thing I had going for me because it never 

left me was my drive. Just to give you some insight 

into my world I had someone say to me the other 

day “OHMYGAWD Lydia! You are a unicorn! 

You’re old, and you know technology? That’s 

unheard of!” I like the idea of being a unicorn but 

NOT the old comment. What The Hell!! Right 

now I am in my prime (for you millennials I’m over 

50!), and I am starting a new chapter in my life as 

a ClickFunnels Certified Partner. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. The last 15+ buying 

and selling real estate, working with investors and coaching 

women to believe in themselves and build wealth. This year 

has been filled with lots of things that could have stopped 

me from reaching my goals. For starters I am a “solo” mom 

with no family around, one of my dogs died, my son almost 

didn’t graduate high school, so I had to drop everything 

and make sure he made it across the finish line. I was given 

30 days notice to move while in the midst of packing my 

son off to college, my mom fell and broke her hip, and my 

home became the rehab facility which meant that I had 

to drop everything and take care of my mom. (I was nurse 

Nightingale, and Nurse Ratchet all rolled into one!). I got 

sick and was bedridden, my car broke down, and the list 

goes on. I haven’t shared my story, so you feel sorry for me. 

I am sharing with you because life gets in the way…all the 

time! Are you going to give up or are you going to dig in? 

Are you going to continue making excuses or are you going 

to excuse yourself so you can hunker down and hone in on 

what it is that you really want? Ask for help when you need 

it. Let go of the vampires and look for the cheerleaders! Your 

success depends on you. IF you want success it’s here for 

you and you have a community here that supports you. If I 

personally can help you in any way, please feel free to reach 

out to me even if it’s just for the encouragement! 

The biggest takeaways for me were over my lifetime are: 

believe in yourself unconditionally, don’t compare yourself 

to others and their timelines, stop being a perfectionist, get 

done what needs to be done without excuses, be kind to 

yourself, it’s okay to take a break, and…I am NOT old! 

Lydia Puller is an entrepreneur, business strategist, 

and ClickFunnels Certified Partner. She is also the 

owner and founder of Herspective, a marketing 

firm that helps entrepreneurs and business owners 

discover their true potential! Lydia is also a mom, 

vegan chef and dog lover that lives in the San 

Francisco Bay Area. 

“Being able to make 

money when I wanted 

and when I needed it was 

a huge awakening for 

someone from the wrong 

side of the tracks.” 

EDITION 1 


85

What is your 

Why? 

Article by Connie Pak 

Mark’s Why 

Mark starts his day early getting ready for work while 

his wife, Jennifer, gets the kids ready for school. He has 

some brief time to sit with his four-year-old son, Tyler, 

and his two-year-old daughter, Madison before he 

needs to rush off to work. Mark and his family live in 

the suburbs, and his drive into the city takes him 1.5 

hours in and 1.25 hours home. Once Mark gets to work, 

he checks and answers the 100 emails that all urgently 

need his attention. Then, he’s busy in meetings all day, 

works through lunch and heads home. Even though he 

has plenty of work to justify staying late, he is excited 

to get home to his family, so he leaves as soon as he 

can to rush home and eat dinner with his family.” Mark 

loves hearing the stories about how Madison made 

cute bubbles while laughing, which made Tyler laugh 

too. He hears stories about the kids going between 

fighting and bonding throughout the day. Soon after 

dinner, Mark helps with the nighttime routine, and the 

day is over, and tomorrow will be the same routine. 

These wonderful but short times with his family make 

Mark wish he could be home more often. He’d love to 

start an online business, and he has plenty of ideas for 

it, but never has the time to work on it. Mark shared 

with us about how he was overly stressed at work, 

had impossible deadlines to meet, was carrying the 

workload of three positions, didn’t feel appreciated 

or valued, and didn’t feel like he had a purpose. He 

felt like he was just going through the motions to bring 

home a paycheck. Most importantly, Mark felt like 

he was missing out on seeing his kids grow up. The 

helplessness and defeat in his voice fueled the passion 

for my husband and me. We told each other we would 

not be in the same situation as Mark. Making the 

transition to becoming an entrepreneur is scary when 

you have a family, but if you know deep down inside 

that there is something else you want to do and share 

with the world, this is the best time to start. It isn’t going 

to be easy, and initially, it may take up more time away 

from your family to set it up, but it is an investment to 

get you to where you want to be. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Our Why 

When my husband and I got married in 2007 in 

Orange County, CA, we both had two to three-hour 

commutes round trip in opposite directions to go to our 

corporate jobs. A couple of years into our marriage, 

we made the decision that we were going to be 

entrepreneurs. 

We wanted to have flexible schedules and, most 

importantly, spend quality time with our future 

children. This was our why. If you ask us why we are 

entrepreneurs, it is because of our son, Aidan. If we 

stayed at our previous jobs, we would only see him for 

an hour in the morning and an hour before he went 

to bed. This gave us the courage and determination 

to be entrepreneurs. Since 2010, I went from working 

part time to being a full-time entrepreneur. 

What Is Your Why? 

If you’ve forgotten what your purpose is, take some 

time to journal it. If you feel you just don’t have the 

time for your business, remind yourself why you are 

doing what you are doing. If you are feeling like you 

are not making progress, remind yourself why you 

even started. You need to remind yourself of your why 

on a daily basis. When your kids get sick, and you 

have a rough week of sleepless nights, you need to 

remind yourself that you started this journey so that 

you had the freedom of being there for your kids when 

they need you. 

When you feel like other people are making significant 

progress, and you feel so far behind, you need to 

remind yourself that we each have our own paths, and 

each is unique and custom to our own lives. Remind 

yourself of your why every day, and follow this system 

to create and build your own business using funnels. 

Ten Practical Steps of Building a Business 

Through Funnels 

1. Create a plan and set goals. I highly recommend 

the Law of Attraction planner. 

2. Create a routine. If you have issues with time, then 

wake up earlier before the busyness of the day 

begins. Dedicate time every day for the business. 

Initial sacrifices may need to be made to get the 

business going. 

3. Delegate tasks. Look to see if there is something 

that takes up a lot of your time that can be 

delegated to someone else. There are virtual 

assistants you can work with. 

4. Set up an accountability system. Whether it is 

a colleague through Skype or your next door 

neighbor, set tangible monthly goals and reward 

yourself when you achieve them. Choose someone 

that can encourage you when you are in a slump, 

and be happy for you when you hit milestones. 

5. Be a part of a community. Join a community in 

your industry to learn new things and share ideas 

with, i.e. Funnel Magazine. More importantly, be 

a part of a community that will inspire you and 

encourage you to keep going, and ask them for 

feedback. Separate yourself from the naysayers. 

6. Create partnerships. You are more powerful as 

a team. Identify your strengths, and look to find 

strategic partnerships for the other areas of your 

business. For example, if you love sales and sharing 

about your business but don’t feel confident about 

learning and building the funnel, find a resource 

or person with that skill who you might be able to 

partner up with. 

7. Always be teachable. Although we may be an 

expert in our field, there is still so much for us to 

learn if we posture ourselves as being teachable. 

8. Always be learning. There are books, audio books, 

podcasts, and more easily at your disposal. There 

is no excuse not to be consistently learning. 

9. Save up and give yourself an ample traffic budget 

to really test the market. Set aside a marketing 

budget and plan wisely on how to use that budget 

to give your funnel sufficient time to ramp up. 

10. Don’t forget to constantly tweak and make changes 

to your funnels and your business. Remember to 

pivot appropriately and not just follow the puck 

but to pivot to where the puck will be. 

EDITION 1 


87

How Low 

Volume 

Funnels Can 

Sell 6 Figures 

Article By Bryan Durkin 

I wanted to start out this article by 

thanking Kate & Hawk for allowing 

me to contribute to the first edition 

of Funnel Magazine. I love so much 

getting to help people, and I hope 

this gives you a different perspective 

of someone who’s an active user of 

funnels. I have been involved in 

the sales process for more than 20 

years, but have embraced what the 

technology can do for us today as 

it is completely different than it was 

even just five years ago. One of the 

things that I always see, a common 

misconception, is when someone 

looks at using funnels and how they 

can help your business, is that you 

don’t need 100,000 or 200,000, 

or even 50,000 emails or contacts 

to make it successful. 

It’s simply that funnels are a process, 

and processes are something to 

make our life easier and to help us 

do more with less. By using these 

tools and automation that will help 

us greatly to keep us “top of mind” 

with our customers and prospects 

so that when they buy, they buy 

from us. That’s really important. If 

you are selling a $100 item, the 

volume is completely different than 

if you were selling a $10,000 or 

$20,000 item. “How do I create 

a list,” is a question I hear every 

day and I’m here to share with you 

that you don’t need a giant list. 

I’m going to share with you some 

ideas of how I use this for myself 

and for my clients on how you 

might consider looking at different 

volumes for business. If we look at 

these so-called low volume sales 

funnel and who it may be ideal for 

you can think of the high valued 

service providers – both to business 

and consumers. For the B2B world, 

you could think of examples of 

coaches, consultants, accountants, 

and advisors. If you think about us 

as consumers, what we consume, 

you think about dentists, doctors, 

chiropractors, builders, attorneys, 

ophthalmologists, and realtors, 

and many other professionals 

that provide lots of high value to 

us as consumers. Many buyers 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

(both consumers and business) don’t necessarily seek 

out information on getting new providers until we’re 

ready to buy. In MANY cases there are all kinds of 

reasons as to why they don’t buy today but with the 

right automation, the right funnel, and the right copy 

– you can help tell your story so that when those buyers 

purchase, they buy from YOU! 

As you’ve probably heard before you have to think 

about the overall lifetime customer value. In a low 

volume situation, you need to have highly qualified 

and specialized traffic because you need to have 

higher close rates than low-cost traffic. Whether it’s a 

$100 a month lawn service with a three-year average 

life ($3600) vs. a remodeling contractor doing a 

$50,000 kitchen, you have to understand what that 

customer value is so that you can determine what your 

investment is. If you’re going to invest, how much would 

you invest? As an owner of a lawn service, you may 

consider investing up to 1 month’s service to get a client 

that lasts for three years. As an owner of a remodeling 

contractor business that does $50,000 kitchen, you 

may spend up to $500 per opportunity if you can close 

enough business. You need to understand the value of 

your transaction and the ability for you to close deals. 

In a low-volume approach, the quality of your traffic 

is the key to being able to grow. You need to spend 

your time getting the most qualified prospects in your 

funnel and process them as efficiently as you can and 

as fast as you can fulfill. 

Now, I’m going to share with you an example of a 

low-volume funnel. An example of a low-volume lead 

capture source might be something that is a local meetand-greet, 

a chamber event, a speaking engagement 

where you’re a speaker or just an attendee, and some 

type of network or BNI type events that happen all 

over the world on a very consistent basis. You meet a 

qualified prospect, or you meet a qualified referral 

source, put them into your sales pipeline so that they 

understand what it is you do. You can then determine 

how to treat them as you go forward. Another 

example would be customer referrals. Probably 

the single best way to grow your business is to refer 

people. It’s always the question of, am I going to refer 

a friend and you’re going to screw up? By building a 

referral pipeline and a referral funnel, you can help 

alleviate both your referrers and past customers pain 

points as well as your potential new clients as to why 

they can be a benefit. If you are selling any type of 

professional services or business-to-business, LinkedIn’s 

a wonderful resource to meet people who could fit your 

demographic and psychographic profiles, but you just 

don’t know who they are and you can certainly put 

them in that process. I’m going to share with you an 

example book funnel that I did for my business. I have 

written a book about a year ago called Stuck on First: 

The 9 Positions of a Playoff Ready Business. I share 

that book with highly qualified prospects through 

various sources. I may meet them at events, I may get 

referred to them by a friend, a colleague, or I may 

contact them through LinkedIn. The first thing I do is I 

send them a copy of the book. In most cases, they’ve 

asked for it, or I’ve had some prior communication to 

it probably 80% of the time. Then seven days after the 

book gets sent, I send automatically, a postcard with a 

sweet treat. In this case, I send the postcard that says, 

“Listen, I hope you’re enjoying my book. I sent you this 

postcard automatically with some brownies. Please 

enjoy it.” Seven days after that sequence event I send 

a voicemail to ask them how they like the brownies, 

and how much I would love to hear a review or 

any comments on my book. 

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FUNNEL MAGAZINE

“I am averaging almost 52% 

engagement and each engagement is 

typically between $7,500 & $25,000” 

The fourth step would be to send an email. The copy is something like “Hey, listen, I haven’t heard from 

you. You asked for a copy of my book. I automatically sent you a copy of my postcard. I sent you a 

voicemail asking how you liked it and I just wanted to see what you thought of it because I’d really love 

to get a testimonial of what you thought of the book.” 

Another seven days pass (now we’re on week five) I send a letter in the mail, again automatically, telling 

them how important it was for me for the book to share with as many people as possible and that if you 

have any friends that would like a copy of it to please ask me and I will send to them at no charge. Then 

one of the final steps, is we send them a newsletter, a printed newsletter, both in email as well as in the 

post, or post office. After that we put them into a monthly newsletter sequence, ask them to join various 

events that we have. 

There’s an example of a low-volume funnel. Now, I will tell you that I typically only put between 10 and 

20 people per month in. Because parts of my consulting practice are not highly scalable, I choose how 

often I want to put them in. I am averaging almost 52% engagement and each engagement is typically 

between $7,500 & $25,000. This 6 step sales funnel has been a life saver for me and has helped me 

develop other lines of business that are fully automated and provide a market-while you sleep type of 

approach. While all of us are looking for the perfect funnel I will share with you that good is better than 

perfect – money loves speed! By using ClickFunnels and many of the other awesome tools available you 

can build a funnel that reaches your market and shows your prospects how far behind your competition 

is. Happy Funneling! Now go sell something! 

Bryan Durkin has more than 25 years of experience in 

the entrepreneur’s lifestyle, both as a business owner as 

well as a direct sales producer. For more than 20 years 

his direct clients included the Fortune 100. 

In 2016 Bryan wrote his first book “Stuck On First – the 

9 Positions of Playoff Ready Business” that is available 

on Amazon. His passion for helping business grow is 

evident in the book that shares the ups and downs of a 

growing technology company. 

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91

2013 

3 WAYS TO FLOOD 

YOUR COURSE WITH 

STUDENTS 

Article By Brad Hart 

Understanding funnels and 

how you can drive interested 

prospects to your courses, training 

programs, products, and services 

can be all too overwhelming. 

However, there are three simple 

steps you can implement to 

truly push the needle ahead 

when it comes to getting your 

content seen by interested eyes, 

leveraging other platforms for 

leads, and effectively marketing 

your course (although, these 

lessons also apply to other types 

of products or services). Let’s get 

into the meat of what you can do 

to stop the wheels of your business 

from spinning for any longer. 

#1. LEVERAGE UDEMY AS A 

LEAD GEN PLATFORM 

For the uninitiated, Udemy is the 

world’s largest collection of online 



courses and serves as an online 

learning platform for professionals 

who want to add new skills to their 

resume. While Udemy in and of 

itself pioneered the online course 

industry and offered a great 

platform for you to host your 

course, you can use it as a part of a 

funnel to drive traffic off-site, right 

to your self-hosted course. If you 

haven’t put the pieces together, 

that means you get to keep all of 

the proceeds instead of a paltry 

50% while still having Udemy do 

much of the marketing. Here’s 

how it works: First up, you need to 

upload a ‘teaser’ course to Udemy. 

This can either be a short or even 

free course that serves your target 

niche. 

Of note: Despite being short 

or free, this still needs to be a 

quality offering that people can 

derive value from. Udemy has 

been cracking down on less-thansatisfactory 

courses of late, and 

having great reviews as well as 

adhering to their guidelines is key. 

The great thing about Udemy is 

that they allow you to pitch for 

your own product (or whatever you 

want really) in the last lecture of 

your course. So, you get to take all 

these warm to red-hot prospects 

through a low-cost (or free) course 

that delivers immense value, then 

at the end you get to hit them with 

the real deal (your full-fledged 

course, service or product), drive 

them off Udemy and directly to 

your sales page or website. Do this 

right, and you’ll get conversions 

galore. You can also upsell people 

to any related offering they might 

be interested in. 

#2. MARKETING YOUR 

CONTENT AND DRIVING 

TRAFFIC 

You need to remember that you 

can’t be perfect or amazing at 

every aspect of running your 

business.Being able to recognize 

what you excel and suck at in your 

business is an invaluable skill to 

develop. When you know what 

you’re bad at, you can farm out 

to people who excel in that area.

If you have any hope of having a 

successful business that doesn’t work 

you into the ground one day, you 

need to cognizant of marketing. If 

you’re not going to spend the time 

and energy yourself to learn the tricks 

of the trade, you need to be willing to 

invest into people who are. 

Below are three of the most effective 

ways you can market content and 

drive warm traffic. 

Content Marketing 

Content marketing (provided you’re 

producing great content) is a fantastic 

tool. Because if you promote it 

effectively, you’ll be flooding your site 

with genuinely interested people who 

want to hear more about what you 

have to say and offer. To a business 

of any level or size, these warm/ 

hot leads are everything. When you 

get into the content creation game, 

you must create content that blows 

away everything else around it. As a 

general rule of them, spending 20% 

of your time creating excellent, standout 

content, and the remaining 80% 

promoting the heck out of it is a great 

starting point. Seriously. Put 80% of 

your time into getting that piece of 

great content shared by as many 

people as possible. 

• Go through and pick out 

highlight paragraphs. Use 

these for emails and Facebook 

posts. 

• Pick out great sentences for 

Twitter. 

• Use the blog as a script and 

make a YouTube video. 

• Pull the audio from the video 

and upload it as a podcast. 

That’s five different pieces of native 

content...all derived from one 

exceptional article. 

YouTube (paid and 

organic traffic) 

Next up regarding lead and traffic 

generation is YouTube. YouTube is 

right up there with Google as one 

of the most powerful and most used 

search engines on the internet. That 

being said, find someone with a 

great grasp of the platform and how 

to use it effectively. Otherwise, you’ll 

be wasting a lot of time, energy and 

money. 

Facebook Ads 

Facebook ads are still (and likely will 

be for a while) an incredibly powerful 

tool. The amount of data they have 

access to...it’s simply staggering. And 

you can use it all to your advantage 

if you know what you’re doing. 

Here’s the thing, though. Facebook 

ads require money, patience, and 

testing. Similar to YouTube, you need 

to either be willing to invest your time 

and energy in learning the intricacies 

of Facebook ads or be willing to hire 

someone who knows what works 

and what doesn’t. The bottom 

line is that you need to produce 

consistent, high-quality content, and 

put it everywhere you know there are 

interested eyes. 

#3. EFFECTIVELY 

MARKETING YOUR COURSE 

When it comes down to marketing 

your course (effectively), there 

are two great ways to go about 

doing so. 

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93

Our current cold traffic 

(from FB Ads) 

conversion rates: 

Optin Page: Up to 94% 

(70% over the last 30 days) 

Webinar Registrations: 55% 

Webinar Show Up Rate: 51% 

Stick Rate: Up to 90% 

Conversion rates: 

Varies by audience and 

targeting, usually above 

10%. 

Brad Hart is committed 

to helping entrepreneurs 

and investors reach their 

full potential, so they can 

focus on solving the grand 

challenges of our time. With 

extensive experience in real 

estate, investments, trading, 

marketing, sales and peak 

performance strategy, he’s 

been teaching entrepreneurs 

from every walk of life the 

skills to thrive in the modern 

world, growing their incomes, 

increasing the value of their 

assets, and making wise 

investments into their future, 

and the future of the world. 

First off, there are webinars. Webinars are a fantastic way to sell your 

course (they work great for products and services as well) as the visual 

aspect allows you to engage and connect with your prospects at a 

high level. This aspect is key if you’re selling higher ticket courses. Here’s 

how you can flip one live webinar into a turn-key, high converting lead 

generation machine that sends loads of hot traffic to your course’s sales 

page: 

1. Build an enticing opt-in page that directs visitors to register for 

your webinar. 2. Whether it be through paid traffic or smart content 

marketing, drive traffic from Facebook to the opt-in page. 3. With leads 

coming in left, right, and center, host and run weekly (or bi-weekly) 

webinars. Be sure to tweak and improve these as needed. Once you 

get your opt-in page and webinar dialed in, you should see 30-40% 

show up rates to your webinar, and 10-15% conversion rates.That’s it for 

webinars. It’s really quite elegant. 

Second, you can send emails to your list (you do have an email list, 

right?). Emailing your list is fantastic because you already have a 

relationship with them. More often than not, a large percentage of your 

readers are ready and willing to buy. If you’re not emailing valuable 

content to your list on a regular basis (at LEAST weekly, but daily is 

ideal) then you need to start immediately. You can also take this a step 

further by offering an exclusive beta test to your list. This serves a few 

purposes. 

1. It helps foster the relationship with your list as it makes them feel 

special and respected. 2. You can get people to test your course (while 

you get paid for it). This means you can tweak and optimize as you 

go, have some funds to drive paid traffic during your launch, and then 

release a remarkable course. 

3. When launching to your list, the sequence is rather straightforward. 

A simple 5-7 day email sequence where you ‘warm them up’ over 

the first three days before switching to hard selling will do the trick. 

Between running evergreen webinars and nurturing the relationship 

with your list, you’ll have more students in your course than you know 

what to do with. 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE

Sponsored Content 

Are Stereotypes Keeping Your Technical 

and Creative People at Odds? 

Article By Andrea MacKenzie 

If you work in an environment where creative 

and technical people must rely on each other for 

successful business outcomes, such as launching 

digital marketing campaigns, harmful stereotypes 

can begin to emerge. They go something like 

this: creative people are idea-generating and 

clever innovators who can’t follow the rules and 

deadlines, and technical people are detailed and 

systematic geniuses who are inflexible and too 

critical. While these stereotypes can be hurtful, 

and often untrue, they do raise an important 

point. We cannot all be strong at all things, but it 

is just that fact that is the key to great teams if we 

can learn to work with diversity instead of remain 

in conflict with those who are not like us. 

So, how does a team avoid conflict and leverage 

the positive aspects of diversity? Let’s look at the 

team required to create a marketing funnel, for 

example. Copywriters and designers spend their 

time crafting words and mulling over the look 

and feel of content that will attract and engage 

prospects and leads. The funnel programmers 

and technical managers take careful measures 

to ensure that each piece of content is served 

out seamlessly and timed perfectly to collect 

valuable data, and ultimately, to convert the 

leads into sales. Assuming the two groups do 

not have opposing goals - in other words, they 

all want to attract leads, nurture prospects, and 

close sales - why would they end up in conflict? 

The answer often lies in conflicting approaches or 

work styles, which are not always apparent without 

simple self-assessments to determine how people 

most effectively and efficiently work. However, once 

people’s strengths and work styles are known, a team 

can create strategies to communicate better, hire 

and promote better, increase productivity, reduce 

conflict and stress, and trust each other to do what 

they do best. 

By no means are the stereotypes listed above remotely 

true. There are many creative people who follow rules 

and pay very close attention to detail, and many 

technical people who can generate innovative ideas 

and be flexible to changing needs. Organizations 

often have some hidden talents that can be gamechanging 

when people simply become more aware 

of themselves and the people around them. 

If you are interested in learning about how to 

become more aware of your team’s strengths and 

create strategies for your teams or partnerships 

that reduce conflict, streamline processes, and help 

people communicate more effectively, please check 

out leadwithharmony.com for more information. 

leadwithharmony.com 

EDITION 1 


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Funnel Tool Kit 

MyFunnel.Link/ClickFunnels 

MyFunnel.Link/CFProTools 

MyFunnel.Link/HotJar 

MyFunnel.Link/EverWebinar 

MyFunnel.Link/HubSpot 

MyFunnel.Link/TeamWork 

MyFunnel.Link/SlyBroadcast 

MyFunnel.Link/FunnelPlugins 

MyFunnel.Link/HackThisFunnel 

MyFunnel.Link/FunnelScripts 



We Also Use Zapier. Go to MyFunnel.link/Zapier

REINVENTION 

REVOLUTION 

Simon recently appeared on Reinvention Radio and 

Steve & Simon had a very interesting conversation about 

one’s WHAT vs. one’s WHY. 

Steve Olsher: Where did the whole concept of the 

Golden Circle and the whole Start With Why initiative 

come from? 

Simon Sinek: Like any idea, it was an evolution. It 

was also born out of a personal need. It wasn’t an 

academic or professional exercise, commercial exercise. 

I was always curious why some marketing worked, 

and some marketing didn’t. I was a marketing guy. I 

looked at the order that great marketers marketed. It 

was based on this why, how, what thing. I put it on a 

shelf. It was good for PowerPoints. Then I went through 

this personal crisis where I’d lost my passion for what I 

was doing. It was a really dark period for me. I think 

a lot of entrepreneurs at some point go through it. The 

question is can you get through it. Really, all of my 

energy went into pretending that I was happier, more 

successful, and more in control than I felt. I was also 

very embarrassed by this feeling because superficially 

everything was good. I owned my own business. I 

made an okay living. We had amazing clients. I didn’t 

want to complain that I didn’t want to wake up and 

do it again the next day, so I kept those feelings to 

myself. Like I said, all of the energy I had went into 

pretending that I was more in control than I felt. It was 

a confluence of events. I met somebody who started 

telling me about the way the human brain worked. I 

started putting pieces together and realizing there was 

this pattern. I realized I knew what I did, and I knew 

how I did it but I didn’t know why. That’s where it came 

from. It came out of personal need. It was born out of 

struggle. 

Steve Olsher: Any take on the what versus why? 

Simon Sinek: Semantic. It’s a semantic debate. It’s 

like I got tired of having the discussion with people, 

“What comes first? Vision or Mission or positioning or 

brand?” Because it’s a semantic debate. I ask people 

who believe vision was primary and they said, “Well, 

it’s why we do what we do.” I ask people who believe 

the mission was primary and they said, “Well, it’s why 

we get out of bed in the morning.” I ask people who 

believe brand came first and they said, “Well, it’s why 

we exist.” I said, “Okay. Well, let’s call it the why. We 

can all agree.” 

Steve Olsher: Does the why stay constant once you 

find it or can it modify over time? 

Simon Sinek: Your why is fully formed by the time 

you’re about 17, 18, 19-years old. The youngest person 

I’ve done a Why Discovery with was 17-years old, 

and it worked perfectly. It’s fully formed by that age, 

and it never changes. The rest of your life are simply 

opportunities to either live in balance with your why 

or not. That’s why knowing your why helps you make 

decisions whether you should or shouldn’t do something 

or whether you should or shouldn’t work with someone. 

Steve Olsher: Your TED Talk crushes. You’re an indemand 

speaker. What keeps the fire going for you at 

this point? 

Simon Sinek: I’m driven by my cause, to inspire people, 

to do what inspires them. It hasn’t waned at all. I have 

a vision. Whenever anybody says, “Simon, you’ve done 

all of these things and all of this stuff,” it’s tip of the 

iceberg. I think about the vision that I have, and I have 

so much more work to do. I have this vision of creating 

a world in which the vast majority of people wake up 

every single morning inspired to go to work, feel safe 

when they’re there, and feel fulfilled when they come 

home at the end of the day. I am way, way far away 

from success, and anything that I’ve achieved up until 

now are simply stepping stones that will help me get to 

where I need to go to. 

Steve Olsher: What’s the most important lesson you’ve 

learned from one of your business failures or mistakes? 

Simon Sinek: You can’t do this stuff alone. The biggest 

mistake I made was thinking that I had to have 

all the answers, or if I didn’t, I had to pretend that I 

did. The biggest lesson I learned was to ask for help 

and accept it when it was offered. No one can build 

a business by themselves. You’re a fool if you think you 

can. 

Watch the full interview at: 

http://MyFunnel.link/WhatvsWhy 

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Recommended 

Podcasts 

& Blogs

EMAILS & 

FEEDBACK 

Letter from Steve Forrester 

Growth By Social 

...off the chart crazy 

value. 

Lydia Puller 

ClickFunnels Certified Partner 

I like the different topics throughout the 

magazine. A little bit of everything and it’s all 

interesting. A brief read through some articles 

and I wanted to take out my highlighter and 

post it so I could mark those pages for later 

use. That’s good. 

There is a lot that I 

LOVE!! 

Davide Di Giorgio 

Experience Alchemist 

Letter from Joe Freeman 

ClickFunnels Certified Partner 

I can tell you put some heart into it 

I love it... 


FUNNEL MAGAZINE


EDITION 1 VOLUME 1 JAN 31 2017 

Thank You to our Readers! 

You made it all the way to the end of the magazine. 

If you enjoyed this copy and want more, subscribe to 

get Funnel Magazine for a year. Details are to the 

right. 

Pete Winiarski 

Co-Founder of The Business Consultant 

Institute and CEO of Win Enterprises, LLC 

I am SUPER IMPRESSED! 

The colors, the graphics, the 

images, and the content are 

all amazing! Hawk and Kate 

have brought together the 

best of the best. The content is 

relevant and easy to apply to 

business – I enjoyed reading 

this and so will you. I am 

looking forward to many more 

editions of the magazine. 

Letter from 

Andrey Seas 

You guys are 

packing so 

much value. 

Jeremy Wenger 

Business Development Strategist 

Corporate Attraction 

“ All I can truly say is... 

WOW! The content, format 

and value from Funnel 

Magazine is priceless 

beyond words. You’re crazy 

if you don’t get this for 

yourself and the ones you 

network with on a daily 

basis.” 

Barbara Lloyd 

Ocean Sanctuaries 

“The insights shared in the 

magazine have helped our 

non-profit get better with using 

funnels and marketing.” 

• PUBLISHER - Hawk Mikado 

• EDITOR - Kate Mikado 

• LAYOUT - Joe Freeman 

• COPY EDITOR - Rob Vanden Heuvel 

• CONTRIBUTORS 

Michelle Lange, Chad Lio, Carol 

Brennan, Seth Greene, Matt Skinner, 

Ryan Stewman, Linda Sterling, 

Hawk Mikado, Jill Addison, Peter Drew, 

Joe Freeman, Jim Egerton, Tim Matthews, 

Russell Brunson, Lydia Puller, Connie Pak, 

Bryan Durkin, Brad Hart, 

Andrea MacKenzie, Steve Olsher 

• PRODUCTION 

Jane Amora 

John Amora 

Jonah Bocabo 

Omar Buscato 

John Paul Cabrera 

Anjie Demasco 

Noelene Delos Reyes 

Russ Enriquez 

Joe Freeman 

Aubrey Gestoso 

John Roca 

John Villanueva 

• SUBSCRIPTIONS 

FunnelMagazine.com 

• OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER 

4660 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite 500 

San Diego, CA 92122 

832.800.4295 

hawk@funnelmagazine.com 

• HOW TO REACH US 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 

Editor@FunnelMagazine.com 

Subject Line: LETTER TO THE EDITOR 

CUSTOMER SERVICE: 

For service on your subscription, including 

renewal, change of address or other customer 

service matters call 855.350.4295 

ARTICLE PROPOSALS and unsolicited 

articles can be emailed to: 

Editor@FunnelMagazine.com 

SUBJECT LINE: Article Proposal or mailed to 

Editor, Funnel Magazine 



• POSTMASTER 

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Twitter.com/EditorMikado 

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EDITION 1 


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