OMG wait til you listen in on this! His 5 question framework he reveals below and on the podcast are questions to drive your business into SERIOUS profits.
Plus…wait til you hear how to get over ANY insecurities or FEARs about being an entrepreneur with his “IDENTITY” discussion so that you can put on your CONFIDENCE pants and grow, scale and SOAR your business to the STARS!
Stephen Larsen has:
COACHED HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE INTO MILLIONAIRES
HE’S THE ‘ONE FUNNEL AWAY’ COACH FOR CLICKFUNNELS
DEVELOPED HIS OWN CASH FLOW-CAUSING FRAMEWORK THAT HAS WORKED IN EVERY INDUSTRY
Steve Larsen:
Once every three months, I ask myself five questions. And I say, How well are we generating leads? How well are we converting on those leads? How well are we delivering what they bought? The fourth question is how well are we retaining them? And then the fifth is how well are we up selling?
And then off of those, that’s actually what makes a lot of decisions for the following three months.
To find out more about Steve check out:
https://stevejlarsen.com
https://offermind.com/offermind-2019
Want clarity and effective strategy for your business?
Let’s MEET shall we?
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Love n light to you!
Maria Gudelis
Transcript
Maria Gudelis:
Steve, I’m so glad you’re on the I Am Possible podcast radio. How are you doing today?
Steve Larsen:
Absolutely fantastic. Thanks for having me here.
Maria Gudelis:
Good, good. And one of the three questions I ask before any start to the podcast is, first of all, what made you smile today?
Steve Larsen:
You know what’s funny, is I get genuinely excited about what I do. I wake up in the morning … and I don’t really have a very consistent schedule, I’ll tell you, like it’s kind of all over the place. But when I get to the chair it’s just … I don’t know. I feel like I am … I got a huge board over there of where we’re going, and the tasks, and how I plan out the business, and where we’re moving. And I’ll just stand up and I’ll just stare at it, just making sure everything’s in place and like ready to rock. Okay. The employees come in and this, and … you know, and it’s just fun. I really do-
Maria Gudelis:
Awesome … and I’m going to get to that in a moment, because the third question is about your stack of tools. But if you were to be trapped in an elevator somewhere who would you like to be trapped in the elevator with?
Steve Larsen:
You know, I’m not as extroverted as people probably perceive me as. So do I have headphones on? I don’t know. You know, I’d love to chat with Mark Cuban. That’d be fun.
Maria Gudelis:
Mark Cuban. Cool. Cool. And I love the part about the extrovert/introvert. I remember reading part one part of your story, how you used to hide in the sky box to do your stuff, to get high fast internet, and you hopped over to get in and kind of get by the security guards. I think that’s a pretty cool story.
Steve Larsen:
Well, it’s crazy.
Maria Gudelis:
So let’s talk systems and tools for a minute. What is kind of your … you showed it a little bit and I see it a lot in your videos. Like I’m in your group as well and I listen to your podcast. What are your favorite technology tools, or even just, you know, plain old paper and pen tools that you use?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah. No, it’s funny. So I think of it in two different steps here. Every time I’ve tried to combine these two steps, it doesn’t work very well. Everything gets kind of complicated and fat, I guess, in my business decision making. The first thing that I do is an overall plan of where we’re moving, as far as, “Hey, we’re going to go do this project. We’re going to do that project,” and I’ll use Excel or a whiteboard for that.
Steve Larsen:
Once every three months, I ask myself five questions. And I say, “How well are we generating leads? How well are we converting on those leads? How well are we delivering what they bought?” The fourth question is how well are we retaining them? And then the fifth is how well are we upselling? And then off of those, that’s actually what makes a lot of decisions for the following three months.
Steve Larsen:
So those five questions, whatever one is weakest … You know it’s funny as a marketer I sell my strengths, but as a CEO my job is to kind of patch up and fix weaknesses. So it’s two different roles and mentalities, and I feel like people get in trouble when they try and mix them. So I go through and answer those five questions, and I’m like “Okay, this is the weakest one.” And what we do is we’re actually on a whiteboard together as a team or in Excel. I usually don’t do it on paper much.
Steve Larsen:
I start brainstorming ways to make that lowest score higher than all the rest. And it’s funny, because when that one gets higher, the rest go down or whatever, and like vice versa. So that’s just how I choose what projects I’m going to focus on. So that’s like phase one. Where am I driving the ship? Kind of like a general blueprint.
Steve Larsen:
But then when it comes down to actual project management, like individual specific project management, I do use Trello.
Maria Gudelis:
Trello? okay.
Steve Larsen:
Each funnel is a single card, rather than make a board for a whole funnel, it just too much for me. So I have the whole process be on one card. Every episode I put out, it’s one card. And then that way it’s a system. We just literally copy a template, funnel building template, and I am not the one product managing that as much. Or we … sales, phone, and radio episode template, we just copy that and fill it all out and it runs through the system.
Maria Gudelis:
Oh, that’s cool. So that Trello-
Steve Larsen:
It’s super systemized.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah. And I get what you’re saying because I would get confused by having way too many Trello boards when I first started using Trello. And so if you ever want [crosstalk 00:05:25] Yeah. So if you have one card, are you then making it like a checklist within the card, like for your podcast SOP?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, we just made a checklist per roll: writer, designer, videographer, builder, ads people. And so the card just gets assigned based on where the checklist is top to bottom.
Maria Gudelis:
That’s awesome. Oh my God. Cool.
Steve Larsen:
Way easier.
Maria Gudelis:
Cool. All right. So now let’s kind of get into … one of the main things that I really want to talk to you about is that a lot of us … first of all, you’re known as the offer guy, right? And your results and student results are amazing. And you know, if we have time at the end of this interview, I’d love to dive into your new XAVIER model because that’s so powerful for any business. It’s like, as you would say, the framework that causes success.
Maria Gudelis:
But let’s go back to the beginning, because there’s going to be some listeners on this podcast that maybe are just starting. Or they’re working nine to five in a decent job and they want to get out and make extra money or start their own online business. You know, you talk … there’s three ways I feel that you could probably share on how to smash apart the most common limiting belief that we have, where on your latest sales funnel radio podcast episode … I’m just going to write it down here. Yeah, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t mistake it, Episode 257, where people come to you and say, “Steven, no one will buy from me because I don’t have any following. I have no influence. I have no authority on the Internet.” So-
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Maria Gudelis:
And because of social media compare-itis, like we all can feel unworthy. Like even if I get on my phone this morning, it’s like, “Ah!” You know. What are your three ways to get around that so that people can believe, right? This whole podcast up is about I am possible, you know. Share with … how … your story on how to get over that.
Steve Larsen:
I had to get around me not believing in me?
Maria Gudelis:
Okay. Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
You know what’s funny is, you know, failure is such an amazing teacher, but you don’t know that until you’re usually through it, and usually it’s gone several times. So I’ll say this is not a lesson I’ve learned until probably in the last like year. There’s a coin I keep on my desk, and I’m sure that you’ve seen this.
Maria Gudelis:
Yes.
Steve Larsen:
It means a lot to me and I keep it on there for a lot of reasons. You know, I’ll tell you that … So I’m the One Funnel Away coach, and I get on with tons of people. I mean it’s like 20 000 people now that have gone through this thing. It’s like … it’s a lot: Two Comma Club coaching stuff, my own programs … It’s a lot that I’ve gone through now and there’s patterns in the people I’m noticing that come through this stuff now and try this.
Steve Larsen:
Especially if they’re brand new or they don’t have like a business that’s really gone somewhere yet, it is super common for someone to feel this way. You know, it’s like, “Oh I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough,“ and all these self limiting beliefs, that’s super common. I just want to say that so that people know like, “Oh, I’m not the only one who’s experienced this.” I think they usually think that they are, you know, “I’m the only one out of the millions of people who have had success that cannot qualify now,” and you’re like, “Nah, let’s call that out because that’s not true.”
Steve Larsen:
Everyone’s felt like that. I always get nervous before I go on stage. Anyway. So I had to realize that everything that I have gone through in my life was actually in preparation for what I’m about to do, and like everything, even if it had nothing to do with funnels. I was going to some counseling and college and I was like having a hard time and I was talking to this counselor and he’s like, “Do you have ADHD? Have you ever been tested for that?” And I was like, “Who are you to ask me if something’s wrong with me?” You know, I was like mad about it and I was like, “And why do you think that I have it?” And he’s like, “You’re doing it right now, you know.”
Maria Gudelis:
Right, right.
Steve Larsen:
My wife was like, “Just go take the test.” So I took the test and brought it back and he goes, “You probably have it,” you know. “I don’t think you have it but you have a lot of symptoms of it.” And I was like, “Isn’t that how you tell if someone has something?” But anyway.
Steve Larsen:
So I became a banner and it became the reason I felt disqualified, and I was like …
Maria Gudelis:
Interesting.
Steve Larsen:
It was like my card, “Like I don’t qualify because of this. I don’t qualify because of this,” and it was like a whip and I got kicked out of my first semester of college because I just got straight Fs. I didn’t learn how to learn. And I had … I was massively overweight for a long time, which I know doesn’t look like it now, but like I was hugely overweight. I had a double chin. I was working on that triple. And it’s funny because like every single thing in my life … like I am the least likely success story. And when people can sit back and say like, “Man, like if I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t even qualify for the thing that I’ve wanted all along.”
Steve Larsen:
When I sat down with Russell Brunson for the first time … he is 100 percent different now than he was then. And the Russell Brunson of three years ago, four years ago, there was no way he could handle what they’re doing now as an individual. And so like it’s funny because people would be like, “I want to be a millionaire.” It’s like just focus on making a grand and watch how much you change. Right? And like, “I want to be like six figures.” Cool. Like, “Good, just back it off.” Not saying to drop the goal but your business will not grow beyond what you do.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s almost like getting to that first mini milestone? Like that milestone might be like everyone’s, if they’d been polled, “Oh, I want to make a million dollars,” right, that’s usually the common answer. But it’s like okay, “What do you need to do to get there?” and it’s a different mindset between each phase to get there. So one part would be … Talk a bit about … because I think this will help people who are going, “Oh, there’s everyone else doing this,” or, “I’m not sure if I could make that kind of money.” You put on a kind of a super identity from … because I was in one of your One Funnel Away challenges … of the tee shirt. “I am a …”
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. “… A capitalist pig.”
Maria Gudelis:
Exactly, yeah. And why did you do that? Because I think that’s important. I think a lot of people have that fear or limiting belief as well.
Steve Larsen:
You know, there’s a lot of reasons. I had so many money false beliefs.
Maria Gudelis:
Okay.
Steve Larsen:
So many of them. It’s almost like Batman became Batman because he was afraid of bats.
Maria Gudelis:
Got you. Got you. Okay. Do you think you still? I’m just interrupting you for a sec, sorry about that, but do you think you still have some limiting beliefs?
Steve Larsen:
Sure. Yeah. You know, they’re just constant things that you get more and more … and there’s less and less of them. I don’t having nearly as many. So I guess it’s like clean up crew now, but I’m sure they’re still there. It’s funny though because like identity just drives so much of what we do but we probably have no idea. Steven was dumb, right, bad in school. People have got to call it out as it is. “Steven, you weren’t that fat. It’s like, “No.” Like don’t take it from me. Let me be honest about in where I am. You were fat. You were dumb. You were broke. And that’s okay, but people can’t be honest enough. And they want to like … “No, let’s stroke your ego. Let’s make sure you still feel okay with where you are.”
Steve Larsen:
And they want to do that so much that they don’t end up progressing without … you know, have a little brutal honesty with yourself and say like, “Look, man, you’re dumb. Like you don’t know … You were studying all this stuff like you got it all together but six years ago you were still broke.” You know, “You’re judging other businesses son like you can’t be doing that.” Right?
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
And be honest on where we are … The identity piece is so huge. So I was walking out to go on the stage … or Russell was, and Russell looks at me and he goes, “Dude, do you want to introduce me?” And I immediately got scared and I was like, “Dude, are you serious? These guys are …” Everyone had paid 25 to 50 grand to be in the room and it was a huge, very expensive high level room. And I had spent six months putting together this course that he was testing on stage.
Steve Larsen:
So we walk out there and he goes, “You want to introduce me?” And I was like, “Wow, are you kidding me?” I started freaking out, you know. I said, “What’s the script?” And he started laughing, and we had been working together for probably almost a year by that time. Started laughing at me, like, took me out of the room, took me back to another room and he goes, “Look, you model me so well. It’s impressive how well you model me, but you have got to learn to use your own voice now. Stop trying to model me.” He handed me the mic and that’s when Steve was born and I started becoming a second alter ego. And anytime I get scared … like before [inaudible 00:14:00] live when I spoke I’m not going to lie, I got nervous. And Steven, I had to really kill him for awhile and get into my Steve mentality and go out and crush the stage, and that’s a huge, huge trick.
Maria Gudelis:
That’s pretty powerful. Yeah. And so let’s kind of come back to someone’s scared to get started, or they have these limiting beliefs. So the super identity, alter ego … and I did by James Smiley’s book by the way. So I love it. It’s great. The influence and income …
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maria Gudelis:
And you know, break down into mini milestones if you will … What could be a third way to kind of get over feeling disqualified, unworthy, outclassed, you know, kind of like right from your podcast episode that you talked about that?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:14:46] class for a long time. There’s a course my dad and I were going through with Robert Kiyosaki’s company, First Stocks, and it was interesting because there were several moments in there where I realized like I needed to become somebody different. As far as like taking on a new identity, or not feeling like I was qualified, or I … I really truly did not … Like I didn’t make any money from that. [inaudible 00:15:21] 15 grand on that course. It was 30 000 dollars. My dad and I split it. I spent 15 grand on that course. I think too many times what will happen is people look at the things they go through, and not just on an individual level, but they say like, “Hey, I tried this and it didn’t work.” That is like the most shallow excuse for not moving forward ever.
Steve Larsen:
I went through a lot of tries. I mean I went back and I recounted. I thought it was 17. it was 17 before I’d learned what a funnel was. And you know another seven … it’s 34th try. I went back and counted. My 34th try or [crosstalk 00:15:56] that actually happened. And I’ll hear these people just say, “Yeah, I tried it. it Didn’t work.” And I get a little bit intense. “Are you serious?” So there’s not like a flashy answer on this third part. I just gotta say like, you know, grit and …
Maria Gudelis:
True grit.
Steve Larsen:
… Just moving forward. No one believes in your mission more than you will and placing blank … like going to other people with your dream and saying, “Validate this for me,” major mistake and it’s never going to happen. And people are trying to do that all the time. They’ll come to me and say, “Validate my thing,” and I’m like, “You know what’s good enough to try. What you want from me is a blessing so that if it doesn’t work you say, ‘Oh Steven said it should,’” like then it’s probably not. You know what I mean? But like [crosstalk 00:16:49] most of all these things usually … I don’t know another way around feeling a little bit of discomfort. I just don’t. It’s part of the game. So when people are like, “How do I do it without feeling a little pain, or feeling a little growth,” like probably should choose something else. You know that’s the reality. Just grit.
Maria Gudelis:
You know it sort of reminds me … I love what you said when you did the … in your group, the lives. I think it was last week or the week before. One quote really stuck out with me on one of the lives is, “This is a faith based game being an entrepreneur,” and it kind of relates to everything you just talked about, doesn’t it?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah. Because after a while … like even Russell and I are guessing.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah. So how about this … because I know we’re short for time that’s left here. Why don’t we go into kind of the sexy teaser part, so that anyone who’s listening to this right now needs to go start watching … listening to your sales funnel radio podcast, start joining your group. So first of all, can you kind of dive … kind of an appetizer portion of what the XAVIER model is that you’re going to expand on in your upcoming book, and how people can get a hold of you?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah. That’s nice of you. Yeah. So when I left Click Falls I had no revenue, I had no products, I had nothing, and super scary, but I wanted to do it to prove a point, that number one, you didn’t need a list. Because I really didn’t have much of a list either. I had some people who were excited about what I was going to go do. I didn’t really have a list. I didn’t have a product. The only thing that I did was this XAVIER model, and I didn’t have that acronym for it when I started that. But that’s what it was. And basically what I learned how to do is like … sales and marketing is totally different but a lot of people think they’re the same thing.
Steve Larsen:
And what I was getting good at was writing a sales message, but I hadn’t learned really the difference between marketing and sales yet. So what’s powerful about the Xavier model is it is a way to marry your sales message and what you’re selling, but do it in a way that’s very marketable. So it actually puts all the pieces together in one flowy formula which is really awesome, and at the end you have this incredibly attractive offer that is also paired with a message that directly sells everything in it, but doesn’t feel like that to those who are listening to the message, which is powerful. So anyway, yeah, it’s … my event is called Offer Mind, and teach that formula to those who come. If you go to OfferMind.com and Sales Funnel radio … The hub for everything is SteveJayLarsen.com.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah, that’s actually … you’re right. Thank you for saying that because it’s actually a really slick looking website that, you’re right, is such a perfect hub. I think you even have an episode about that, and why you switched over to that too.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah. Cool. Cool. Well, thank you so much Steve for getting on this podcast. Is there any other final parting words of wisdom to anyone listening to this episode right now that are either amazing entrepreneurs, as far as they’ve maybe brushed past the first million and want to scale, or maybe they’re just trying to get their first one K like you said at the beginning of this podcast?
Steve Larsen:
I know I talked before about it, but the obstacle is the way. That’s kind of like my big thing, this coin right there. Obstacle’s the way; the impediment to action advances action; what stands in the way becomes the way. And I totally love that. And the true grit that it can take to do that will feel almost a little bit alienating to you in terms of your other relationships and that’s okay. You don’t need to convert everybody to be an entrepreneur. Everyone’s not supposed to be.
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Don’t try and convert everybody into it.
Steve Larsen:
The second thing I would say is like the most powerful skill I have found any entrepreneur to have is the confidence in themselves to come up with a plan and just execute on it without needing validation from anybody else, and just moving, and when you do that in true … And be willing to accept a total failure as you move, and that is a very rare skill. A lot of us will think, “Oh no, I could totally do that,” but we can’t and a lot of us ….
Steve Larsen:
We grow up, we got these railroad tracks that we follow that are built for us and it’s kind of meant to be that way developmentally. I’m a kid: I’m told what to do, what to wear, what to eat, all that stuff, my schedule. I go through college then suddenly the tracks end and the hardest … The most challenging category of people, I find, who have a really hard time doing all this stuff, is adults who worked for somebody else and always had the train tracks built for them. No one’s giving them a to do list.
Steve Larsen:
I wake up every day and I’m like, “What do I do?” And having the confidence to say, “This is what I’m going to do because of X, Y, and Z, and I’m going to move like my life depends on it, but I’m totally not judging my personal worth if it doesn’t work,” and like most adults can’t do that.
Maria Gudelis:
That’s huge.
Steve Larsen:
I find [crosstalk 00:21:34] … Teenagers in my groups have an easier time doing that than a lot of adults. And it’s not a bag and I’m like … I’m not like … but it’s the reality. I say those two things in mind, like be willing to just move and build your own tracks, and number two, remember the obstacle’s the way and you’ll do amazing things that people will be like, “Where was the formula for that?” And you’re like, “Ah, I just kind of came up with an idea based on principles and just did it.”
Maria Gudelis:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much Steve. That’s a wonderful and powerful way to end the I Am Possible podcast. Thank you.
Steve Larsen:
That’s awesome. Thank you.
Maria Gudelis:
All-
