Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The Primary Question That Fuels Your Value Ladder

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

How asking the correct primary question could lead to a two comma club funnel and a fully fleshed out value ladder! On this episode Russell talks about discovering a concept that could help create an entire multi-million dollar a year company. Here are some of the amazing things to listen for in this episode: Why basing your business on one primary question can help you with all the product creation. How this one question makes finding a hook and story easier. And hear examples of how you can use the primary question strategy with your own business. So listen here to find out how asking the right, really good question, could be the foundation to your entire business. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/215-the-primary-question-that-fuels-your-value-ladder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I am so excited to have you guys here today. And this episode is one that I think is gonna change a lot of your guys' lives. I'm gonna show you how to turn one really good question into a million dollar a year business. So I hope you're ready, and let's get started.

So the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world, and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.

My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, everybody, so I'm at Lake Powell sitting here thinking about you all and what I can share to give you guys some ideas and insights. And I was thinking about last week, I was actually recording a podcast for the Mastermind.com product, not a podcast, but a video training for the Mastermind.com members area. And in that training, I was talking about how a lot of ways you can make money selling information products. And one of them is you become a reporter. And as I was diagramming out this presentation, I was looking at, you know, who are famous

reporters we know throughout time. There's like Napoleon Hill who went out and interviewed over 500 people and then wrote Think and Grow Rich, which became an amazing book. And you look at nowadays, someone like Oprah Winfrey, who interviewed hundreds of amazing people. And that's how she built her brand. And then, uh, Larry King, all these people who were reporters. And I started thinking about, you know, in my journey, you know, cause I didn't always start as like, I'm Russell Brunson, the internet nerd expert guy. Um, you know, initially it wasn't, I had no idea about internet stuff. In fact, um, when I was first getting started, I remember the,

um, the second course I created, the very first course I created was on how to sell public domain products. And it was a course I did, and I think it was like 250 bucks or maybe 500 bucks I sold it, access to the course for, it was a live training course.

I think we ended up selling, I can't remember, like $25,000 worth, which was really, really good for me. And then like four or five months later, I decided to do a new course and I called it affiliate bootcamp, which is funny because we just launched affiliate bootcamp.com, which I'll talk about here in a minute, but it was the original affiliate bootcamp and I sold it for a thousand dollars. And I still remember I launched it and I had no idea who was going to buy how many people. And we ended up selling 79 people

a thousand bucks a piece. I mean, 79 grand. This is me in college and I'm flipping out. I'm like, I cannot believe it's made $80,000. That's more than any of my teachers made. I did it by selling one course that I had not yet fulfilled on. And so we sold the course and I started fulfilling. And so module number one, um, I did, I started teaching my affiliate marketing stuff and I was teaching what I was doing. And then I sent out a survey. I said, okay, for the next modules, what are you interested in learning most about? People started submitting in all these things. And it was funny cause like one person or not one, but a lot of I said, okay, for the next modules, what are you interested in learning most about? People started submitting in all these things. And it was funny because like one person or not one, but a lot of people like, I want to learn PPC.

I want to learn SEO. I want to learn all these things that I did not know how to do. And I was like, oh crap, they're all gonna want their money back. And I've already spent it on dumb stuff. Just kidding. Kind of. Anyway. And so I was like, okay, I got to figure out how to do this.

And so I taught the two or three modules that I knew I was going to teach myself. And I was like, I got to figure out how to get the right people in here to teach these other modules. Cause I don't know the answer to these questions. Right. And so I remember looking out and I made a list of like 10 people who I looked up to who were really good at doing pay-per-click search engine marketing as an affiliate. And I messaged them all. I said, Hey, I have this training program. I got 79 people who signed up and they want to know about PPC. Can I have you come on and let me interview about how you do pay-per-click if you were an affiliate? And from that, I got someone who said yes. And so I brought them on my training. I did a module. I interviewed them. And it was really

cool because I had a chance to ask them all my own personal questions. I interviewed them. I asked all these questions. I learned from it. Plus my members got to hear the module on that topic. And it was awesome. Next week, the same thing. They wanted to know about SEO, but I didn't know about SEO. So I found the top SEO person, uh, messaged a couple of them. One of them said yes, brought them on. They got a train and I asked them all my questions. And what's cool is during this process of me being the reporter, I started learning these things. I would then go apply them. And I became really good at all these things, right? I became good at PPC. I became good at SEO. I became good at all these things. Um, and that's how I became

the internet marketing nerd that I am today, by interviewing amazing people. So that was what I was sharing during this training, the mastermind.com training series, about how I became the reporter and started selling courses, just asking people questions. And we showed in Tony Robbins' book, his Money, the Master, the Game, as well as Unbreakable. In both those books, he took on the role as a reporter. He went and found amazing people, interviewed took on the role as a reporter. He went and found amazing people, interviewed them, compiled them into a book,

and boom, made two New York Times bestselling books by being the reporter. And so I started thinking, okay, practical application. Like nowadays, how do I do this? Because I still do this, right? A lot of times we think that we just become the reporter when we're starting a business and trying to learn things, which is a great way to get started, by the way. But I still look at it now and it's now, you know, I want to keep growing ClickFunnels. I want to have more front end offers, but I don't have the

ability to create all the content. And so, uh, last year we did is, um, we sat down and we created, um, uh, our very first summit funnel. And you guys have probably seen our summit funnels. Um, the first one was at 30 days.com and now there's an evergreen version. There's 30 days.com. You can see this in action, but this whole funnel came about based on one question, one really, really good question. The question was this, I'm probably going to mess it up a little bit because I don't have it here in front of me at the beach. But the question was basically, hey, if you were to lose everything, your list, your JV partners, your products, your name, everything, and all you had left was your marketing know-how

and a ClickFunnels account. What would you do if name number one, today 30 to save yourself? Boom, that was the question, right? And it was a really, really good question, I think. And so we went and instead of me going and writing, you know, creating a product and me teaching it, I went out there and I asked how much people,

I got 30 people each to answer that question for me. And they answered it through a written chapter, which we've compiled into a big book. We also had them, we interviewed them with that was the question they answered. And that became the summit and a bunch of other cool things. Okay. So you guys can get that if you haven't, if you want to, I'm sure some of you guys are like, I want the answer to that question, Russell. If you do, then just go to 30 days.com. You can go and opt in and you can hear everybody's answers, how they answer that question. But, um, but um that funnel um became two column club funnel in like a week week and a half something like that made a million bucks really fast all based on like one super intriguing amazing question

okay now fast forward a little while later um affiliate boot camp i had created an affiliate boot camp when click phones first launched it was kind of out of date and everyone wanted a new one and like russie i create content to do a new one. I'm like, I don't have time. I'm literally trying to change the world. How am I supposed to like sit down and make a course on Affiliate Bootcamp again for like the 20th time? You know? And so then all of a sudden we said, what if we do the same thing we did with 30days.com?

And we ask our top affiliates that same question. And so we said, well, what's the question we're going to ask? You know, it's not the same question, but what's an interesting question the affiliate would want to know? And I said, well, what if the question was're going to ask? It's not the same question, but what's an interesting question the affiliate would want to know? I said, well, what if the question was, right now you're an affiliate and you're making some good money, but you want to shift this part-time hobby into a full-time career. What would you do over the next 100 days to go full-time? Again, I slaughtered the question.

If you go to affiliatebootcamp.com, you can read the headline on top of it. It says it correctly because it's a headline, right? Go there. But it's basically like if you had to rely on your affiliate commissions to survive and you had 100 days to figure out what would you do? Okay, if you wanted to change this hobby into a full-time career. That was the question which drove the product, which drove everything else, right? And it was really, I think, turned out, you know, Affiliate Bootcamp is doing killer right now. It'll be a two-comical funnel very, very soon as well.

But it's all based on one good question. Now, for us, basically each quarter we're launching a new summit. I love this so much and it helps me to get into new markets. So our next one we're doing is called Brick and Mortar Funnels. And it's going to be going after using funnels for brick and mortar. So the question will be something like, Hey, if you're a brick and mortar business owner and, um, you, your yellow pages, uh, yellow pages, TV, radio, flyers, Google, SEO all disappeared. All you had left was a click funnels account. What would you do to get a hundred new clients into your door in the next hundred days? Right? So it's always like something like that. Like, here's a question. Hypothetically speaking, if you lost everything,

what would you do? Um, I'm watching Steven Larson and I'm putting on his very first summit, which is kind of cool. His question, I don't want to ruin his question, but it's, it's like the opposite of mine. It wasn't like, what'd you do? And you have 30 days left. His is like, you're about to die. And you got one shot to make an offer, the offer of your lifetime. One that will be your thing. You remember, you remember for, cause you're gonna die. And this offer is going to be your legacy that feeds your family and feeds your kids for the rest of the time. What is that offer going to be? What would you do? How would you create it? Right? So he's taken that whole concept as well and boom's launched a summit and everything else behind it.

Anyway, so I want to kind of get this thought in your head as you're creating products or courses or, um, and I'm not positive this yet, but Steve and I were kind of geeking out about this. I said, almost you could build your entire value ladder based on one question, right? If I was a little less ADD and not creating a million things at once, I could have just turned 30days.com into my entire business. Imagine this, okay? Something comes into 30days.com and there's the free summit they come into, and then I can upsell them to buy the recordings and the transcripts, so they can make money there.

And then I could do, okay, after going through all of these 30-day plans with other people, I wanted to test the whole thing out. So I went and I picked a plan. I followed it in a market I'd never been in before. And I tested the whole thing out. And this is what happened, right? And I can create a whole home study course now for, I don't know, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks of me doing a plan where I was like, they can look over my shoulder and watch me do the whole thing.

I'm going to record a thing, document it, show you how much money I made, show you what I did, what I tried, can look over my shoulder and watch me the whole thing i'm gonna record a thing document it show you how much money i made show you what i did what i tried trial and error and you can see the whole thing and that could be a whole home study course where they get to watch what i did and then i can do q and a's each friday so maybe it's a eight-week course each week i'm going to do part of one of these plans to execute this thing and it may be awesome it may bomb i don't know but you guys can come on and again every tuesday i'm going to show you release a new module every friday Friday, I'll do live Q and A. You can jump on. I can sell that for, you know, anywhere from 500 to a couple thousand bucks. Boom, there's a home study course. And then I could do 30 day bootcamps. Just like, Hey, um, you've, you obviously went

through everyone's 30, everyone through everybody else's 30 plans. You watched me do my 30 plans. How'd you guys like for us to help you with your 30 plan? You fly to Boise or to wherever you live timbuktu and we'll sit down with a small group workshop with 10 people and we're sitting down and we're fair at your 30-day plan like what's the market what's the thing we're gonna do it with you and it's eight grand for this done with you experience it's gonna be amazing um 30 experience you come in here you set up whole thing in over 30 days we're watching and coaching make sure you're you're doing a good job right and then if you want additional you have the three of theday to 30-day boot camp. A three-day, 30-day boot camp where you come through and we help you get things set up for you.

And then on the back side of it, we do live one-on-one coaching. We get free coaching calls for the next 90 days, and that's $15,000, $18,000 for that, right? And that could be it. I built a whole entire multi-million dollar business off of one question. I could easily do the same thing with affiliate boot camp if I had the time and inclination to go deeper with it, right? And that could be it. I built a whole entire multimillion dollar business off of one question. I could easily do the same thing with affiliate bootcamp if I had the time and inclination to go deeper with it, right? I don't because for me, my business is different. My model is to get people in the click funnel. So I don't have to or need to go as deep. But if this was my business, I could. And for most of you guys, this is your business. You could go really, really deep on this, right? The affiliate bootcamp question alone could be a multimillion dollar

business, right? Boom. Number one, they get the summit, they come in. Number two, they get to look over the shoulder as I do the process with them. They get to watch me do the thing, live Q and A's, watch the thing, we're actually done with you. I'm executing the thing with them, they live Q and A's, right? And then it's like done for you or even more so with you. We fly to Boise and we sit down and we do this in a workshop event and then others, you know, and you can easily grow that into big business. And so I'm sharing this with you. We fly to Boise and we sit down and we do this in a workshop event. And then others, you know, and you can easily grow that into big business. And so I'm sharing this with you guys because, you know, a lot of times

we look at our businesses and we're trying to figure out, like, what's the course? What's the product? What's the, like, what, all these different things I figure out. And it's like, no, wait, what if instead we came back and said,

what's the one question that I could ask that's a good enough question that people are gonna be so intrigued they have to come in, right? Like, I know, I think the reason why 30 days has done so good is because people are like, man, I want to hear what, what does Trey Llewellyn think? What does Garrett White think? And what does Steven Larson think? And what did Julie Storian think? And what all these people think in our community are successful. What would they do if they lost everything? Just the pure intrigue of that. It's like, I want to find out. And you get in the front door, right? Okay. You

know, if you look at the way this funnel is structured, we don't charge people. They opt in. They get all the stuff for free. We upsell them the recordings and the transcripts and things like that into them. But, excuse me, the recordings and transcripts of the interviews. And we start making money. But we're giving them that question causes the curiosity and intrigue to get somebody to come in, right? It's good from an ad standpoint.

It's a good hook. It's a good story. It's a good offer. Like, all those things are tied into that so strongly and so, so powerfully. So, um, anyway, I want you to think about that. Take a minute and step back and look at your entire value ladder, right? If you don't want a value ladder as yet, go read the.com secrets book and get a free copy of.comsecrets.com. There's my pitch, but, um, like your value ladder, step back and say, okay, what's the question that could drive this entire value ladder? Okay. Um, if I was in a weight loss space, it could be something like, um, all right, it's swimsuit season. You got 30 days. Um,

and, uh, you know, you got 30 days, you gotta lose three pounds off your hips. Um, and fit in your size. I don't know what girl sizes are, size two or size 12 or whatever the size is. But in this size, and you had to make sure that you weren't hungry, what would you do from day one to day 30? Lose 22 pounds and still, you know, lose 22 pounds, feel good and fit in your new swimsuit. Boom, there's your question. Which comes to summit, a book, a product, a webinar, a coaching program, like all those things can be based on that one question, that one concept, that one thing, right?

Let's say in the financial space, let's say all you have left was, you know, $2,000 to your name to invest and you wanted to make sure that by the time you retired, you were able to, to whatever, like what would you do next 30 days? Where would you invest your money? Or I don't know, something like that. Um, uh, if you're married, you're 30 years away from being divorced and, you know, or someone just filed divorce papers and you got one last shot to try to save your marriage,

what would you do if you wanted to date 30 to transform everything? And again, it doesn't have to be 30 days. It could be 30 days, it could be 100 days, it could be the next 12 months, it could be whatever, right? It doesn't really matter. The time-wise, it's just getting the question that's a hook that can fuel every single step of the value ladder. So, um, anyway, I wanted you to just

kind of step back and think about that because I think it's super powerful. Um, it's funny cause, um, the 30 days we, we asked the question and the content came, you know, everything came together really quick through the bootcamp. We didn't leave the question. We just love like this interview people on affiliate marketing and the whole project was harder to figure out. It wasn't until the end that we said we need to attach this to a question and We just love like, let's interview people on affiliate marketing. And the whole project was harder to figure out. It wasn't until the end that we said, we need to attach this to a question. And we shifted around to ask the right question. And then everything came together really quickly. And with brick and mortar funnels coming out, it's very simple.

I think with Traffic Secrets and these other ones, it's all going to be the same question. You know,.com secrets, if your business is struggling and you had 30 days to fix it, what would you do? Boom,.com secrets, how to, you know, underground playbook for growing your thing with ClickFunnels. Okay, you had a funnel that wasn't converting and you knew that your friend's family had to, you know, your family wasn't going to eat and the people who've been called to serve

wouldn't be able to be saved unless you, unless you got this funnel to convert. What would you do? Boom, expert secrets, the underground playbook for persuading people to buy your stuff, right? You just got hit up in the Google to Facebook slap and your entire business ran away from you and you got 30 days to not only get traffic to your business again, but to start to grow. What would you do in the next 30 days to quickly grow your traffic?

Boom. Traffic secrets. Underground playbook for filling your funnels your dream customers right boom so it's like the question the product becomes the answer um man makes it fun makes me go back to all of my old um sales pages my old books and and lead all them with with the question like what's the question it's funny um man probably two maybe three years ago i did a a podcast about the primary questions, which means if you haven't been listening

to backups of the podcast, you are failing. Go back and binge listen now. Go to marketingsecrets.com slash binge and download the binge guide. But there's one I did about primary question, which is a concept I learned from Tony Robbins. He basically said every single person has a primary question that's subconsciously

driving everything they do. And so it's like you had to become aware of your primary question. Sometimes your primary question is like leading you to destruction or destroying your family, your marriage, your life, and all these things. It's like figuring out what your primary question is and then figuring out how to change it or deviate it. But I think it's kind of similar thinking here. Like what's the primary question for your business, for your value ladder?

What's the primary question that can drive everything for you? So I would recommend start thinking about that because it makes the product creation standpoint and process so much more fun. It makes the hooks easier, the stories better, and the offers insane. So I hope that helps. Appreciate you guys all. I'm going to get back to having fun with my kids and my wife out on the water. So if you enjoyed this episode, please take a snapshot of it on your phone right now.

Post it on Instagram, Facebook, or wherever you like to post stuff. And tag me and do hashtag marketingsecrets. I'd greatly appreciate it. And if you haven't yet, please go to iTunes and rate and review. That would mean the world to me. And that's all I got. All right, Aiden, say bye to everybody. Bye.

All right, we're going to go play. See you later and we'll talk to you soon. Bye, everybody. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two best-selling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets, and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com. And book number two is called Dot Com Secrets,

and you can get your free copy at dotcomsecrets.com. Inside these two books, you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest-growing, non-VC-backed SaaS startup company in the world.