How quickly can you explain yours and identify others’ actual business model?…

For years now, you’ve heard me go on and on about ‘hacking’; funnel hacking, design hacking, copy hacking, business model hacking… And still, some folks think that when I say ‘hacking’ they hear ‘stealing.’

Please understand that stealing is unethical! Hacking is NOT stealing. It’s not copying. It’s not duplicating. Hacking is ‘modeling.’ It’s taking a close look at what works, analyzing WHY and HOW it works and then using that model as a FRAMEWORK for your business, your funnel, your offer.

Inside our company, we even look at industries OUTSIDE of the internet marketing space to see what’s working and we ask ourselves: “How can this work in OUR industry? It’s totally different than ours, but the PRINCIPLES are applicable to what we do. Let’s explore THAT!”

So…how would you like to know how to ETHICALLY HACK (not steal) a super successful business, and apply it to YOUR business? Then DO NOT miss this episode of Marketing Secrets.

---Transcript---

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. All right. As we all know, 2020's been insane, but now that we are rounding out the end of 2020, getting towards the end, I've got some really fun, and exciting, and cool things that I'm working on that I'm so excited for. Most of them I can't tell you about yet, unfortunately. It's coming soon. I promise. I will divulge everything in real time as soon as I am able to here on this podcast, but you guys have been behind the scenes with me now for six or seven years. Again, it's coming soon, but until it does come soon, until it's actually here, I can't tell you the details, but I can tell you what my mind is thinking about as I'm going into these things.

I want to share with you guys some of my thoughts about funnel hacking, business models, and really what you need to do to be successful quickly in any business you decide you want to jump into. All right. What I want to talk about is just I spend so much time with you guys, with entrepreneurs talking about all these core concepts, the funnel hacking, and offer hacking, and design hacking, and all these things, right? Where we're looking at other businesses, looking at what they're doing, and trying to understand their models. The reason why is because... It drives me nuts because I get people, somebody like, "Oh, Russel says you should copy."

I'm like, "That's not what I said." I never said to copy. I specifically said, "Don't copy. It's illegal and unethical." I said, "Look at business models." You try to understand what someone's doing, right? If I was going to get into the T-shirt business, I would go find out who are the top 10 most successful T-shirt business owners in the world, and see what they're doing. What are they doing? How are they structuring their funnel? Do they have upsells? Do they have downsells? Do they do a whole bunch of front ends? Do they have one front end with a lot of back ends? Is it a Shopify store? Is it ClickFunnels? Is it a funnel to a store?

What's the model that's working today look like, right? I would study it. I would spend a lot of time figuring it out, and as soon as I saw it, I'm like, "Oh. That's it." It would be super easy and I would just model it, right? I'm not going to copy it. I'm going to say, "Okay. I can tell by based on these people who are making X amount of dollars a month or a year that they start with this, and they go from here, and they go from here." Now, I'm going to take my own T-shirts and my own designs. I'm going to use that structure and maybe the same pricing strategy, but I'm going to do my own thing. Right?

That's kind of what funnel hacking is, but it's interesting because if you look at... I don't know. I think sometimes we all over-complicate this. There's not that many different business models, right? Depending on what business you're in, there's one or two business models, right? It's interesting. I think not enough people spend time just studying like, "What's this person's business model? Let me understand. What's this person's?" One of the things I do when I meet new people for the first time is literally I try to figure out their business model. That's the first set of questions I'm asking them.

I'm like, "Okay. So, what do you sell? What's the price point? What's in the funnel? Do you have upsells? Do you do back end? What's the price point? How much money do you make? How much money do you make from this part versus this? What percentage of your revenue comes from here, versus here, versus here?" Within about five, 10 minutes I can usually get a really good snapshot of like, "Oh, that's what the business looks like? I understand it." Right? Then all I start doing is I'm interviewing people, and talking to people, and trying to figure things out. I'm looking at whose business model is the sexiest? Whose is the best, right?

It was interesting. I'm not going to name names because I don't want everybody funnel hacking this person and everything, but there's a person I was hanging out with recently, and the first time I had a chance to meet this person, and super impressed with this person. I'll just keep saying that. Honestly, the person's awesome. Anyway, I kind of knew what their revenues were, and I knew what they were doing, and I started asking them questions. Within maybe five minutes or so, I saw their business model. I'm like, "That's it. What am I missing? There's got to be five ways to over-complicate this, right? What if I did this, or this, or this, or this?"

They're like, "No. That's literally my business." I'm like, "Oh my gosh. It's so simple, and so brilliant, and so beautiful." It's like, I'm not in that business, but if I was going to do something kind of similar, I'd be like, "There's the structure. That's what the business model looks like. I do this. It drives to this and drives to this." Right? It was so exciting for me. As I'm working through these new projects, I'm like, "Okay. That person's business model fit really good in this business over here, right?" I can see it really quickly. Same kind of thing... I'll just show you guys a super easy example that might make this more tangible like Ben Settle.

All you guys know Ben Settle. You've heard me talk about him. He's the guy who pioneered this concept of daily Seinfeld emails. He read the DotCom Secrets book. I talked about this, right? But Ben's business model is so simple, okay? Let me explain it. He's got a landing page that people opt into. When they opt into the landing page, they keep a free copy of his Email Players newsletter that he sells for $97 a month. You get a free issue. After that, he emails you every single day, and he sells you, in every single email every single day, the ability to sign up for his $97-a-month newsletter. That it. That's the business model, okay?

He's done that now, send a email every single day, for as long as I've known him, which is almost a decade now. I don't think he's ever missed a day. He's so consistent, but his business model is drive traffic to the landing page. People give you a email address in exchange for a free issue of my newsletter. Then send a email every single day telling a story talking about my newsletter, and get them to buy my newsletter for $97 a month. That's it. That's the business model. Super simple. Super easy. Super non-complicated. That's it.

If I was like, "Man, I want to be in a business where I have a print newsletter," it's like, "Okay. What's the business model? Oh, okay. I need a squeeze page. I need a free copy of my newsletter, probably the best one I got. Then every day I'm going to send a email talking about my newsletter." That's it. That's the business model, right? If I was launching a newsletter business like Ben Settle, his is teaching email copywriting. Maybe yours is teaching weight loss, or keto, or it's photography, or I don't know. Whatever your thing, it's that simple, right?

Maybe you're like, "I don't really want a newsletter. I don't want to do a print newsletter, but I want to do a membership site." The same model, right? Just use Ben's model, but instead of selling a print newsletter, sell a membership site. Send a email every single day talking about something and pushing it back to the membership site, right? It's a simple model. It takes you 15 seconds. When I met Ben the first time, I asked him some questions like, "So, you do this, this, this?" Within five minutes I'm like, "Okay. I got it. That's the business model. It's so simple. It's super easy." Right?

Then another thing that's kind of cool, this is what I've been noticing Ben do recently. He's been doing this print newsletter now for like a decade, right? Each newsletter has got kind of a theme, and so what he's been doing, which is awesome, is he's gone back through the last 10 years of print newsletters. He's like, "Oh, these 10 issues that I talked about how I deal with haters, right?" He took those 10 issues, put them together into a hardbound book, and he sells the hardbound book for like 500 bucks on like, "My top strategies for people when you have haters." That becomes a book.

I know because I buy every one of them. I bought that one for 300 bucks, and he went back through. He was like, "Hey, here's 10 emails to do if..." They have to do with, I don't know, bad customer support. He's takes these five, 10, 15 print newsletters, publish, puts them together in one book, and sells the book now for 500 bucks. Right? He does it over, and over, and over again. He's just going through the back archives, putting them all together into a book based on a topic, and sells the book to the same people like me, who read all the newsletters. Loved the newsletter, and they're like, "Oh, I want the book version because that's really cool, too." Okay?

That's his business model. It's so simple, right? You've got to think. Sometimes we over-complicate this. I know that I do because I get so excited by the business models, right? But there's this new business I am working on with some partners and some friends, and the first thing I did is we sat down and figured out what's the business model. Right? It's not even the funnel yet. It's just kind of almost a step ahead of that of just like, "Okay. What's the model going to look like?" I said, "Okay. We are going to do a summit to get initial exposure, right? Then from there we're going to have a software that's all about lead gen, and then from there we're going to have this product and this product." Right? A X-amount-of-dollar-a-month continuity program and then a X-amount-a-month high-ticket thing.

That's it. That's the business. We know this is what we need to create. This is the things, it's the pieces, and we're doing that. We're executing on them, but that's the business model, right? For me, I'm curious if I was to sit down with you and say, "Okay. What's your business model?" Could you tell me what it is? I remember my very first mastermind meeting ever when I joined Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer's mastermind group, each person had a chance to share their business. I got up and my business model was simple.

I said, "Okay. I drive traffic to this free DVD page. People pay me 4.95 to get my free DVD in the mail. I then send them this DVD in the mail, and then 21 days later we call them on the phone, and then we sell them a $5,500 coaching package, and if for some reason... Oh, and then between when they buy this or they order the DVD and we call them 21 days later, I try to get them to initiate an inbound call. I have a email sequence basically asking them to call me." That was the business model, and we did that, $10 million plus in that business model. A free DVD. 21 days later, call them on the phone. Sell them the coaching program for 5,500 bucks.

Rinse and repeat. Do it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Right? That was our model, okay? I explained it really quickly, and then people could help me tweak the intricacies like, "Oh, what if you did this? What if you did this, right? What if I asked them about the DVD, you had an upsell or a downsell?" All these things where funnels came from, but we didn't have that initially. It was just, free DVD. Call on the phone. Sell them $5,500 coaching. Done. That was the business model, right?

ClickFunnels is really simple. This is the ClickFunnels business model, right? Somebody comes and they buy a book, free plus shipping. We had our upsells and downsells to try to break even our ad cost. From there, we then push people into the ClickFunnels auto webinar. We try to sell a $1,000 version of ClickFunnels. On the thank-you page, we give them a $1 trial... or excuse me, a free trial. Then our goal is either they buy the six-month access for 1,000 bucks or they get the free trial, and then they're in ClickFunnels.

After they're in ClickFunnels, our goal is to get them from $97 a month to send up to 297 a month. Then we're at 297 a month, to get them to send up to $2,500 a month. That's ClickFunnels business model. That's it. Everything else is just appendages to that, right? That is the model. That is the structure, and again, there are funnels and intricacies inside of it, but the business really is simple. We're selling software, but we lead with a free book offer. From there, we push people to a webinar that sells the high-ticket version of the software. On the thank-you page, we sell the trial version of the software. After we get them in the software, then we try to send them up through our value ladder.

Very simple. Very easy to explain. Our question for you, I want you to think through this, is what's your business model? Could you explain it really simply? Could you write it down on a napkin? If I was to sit down and start picking your brains like, "Okay. What do you do? Tell me this. Tell me this," within two to three minutes, could I get a pretty good idea of what your business model is? Okay? Number two is if either you've got that or you don't. If you don't, it's time to start thinking through, "What's my business model?" Right? Or number one, or yeah. If you're like, "Yeah. I do know that," then congratulations. You're a step further than most people.

The second thing I want you to do is start doing this to other business owners. I want you to start picking their brains, but not in a way of... Just picking their brains just to figure out what their business model is and say, "Okay. Explain your business to me. You buy ads, right? What happens then? You buy the ads, and where does it go to? Okay. It goes to my whatever page. Okay. Then after they do that, then where's it go? And then what are you trying to do, and how much money does it make?" You just got to ask these, a couple of steps. Within two or three minutes, you'll know really closely exactly what their business model is. This is a fun exercise I want you guys to do and have some fun with. With that said, Norah just came in, and me and her-

I'm wrestling a bear.

Norah is wrestling a teddy bear on the floor.

It's all stuffy and it's really big.

It's a huge teddy bear. It's twice the size of her, and she's wrestling it, and we're about to go out swimming. So, I'm going to end this episode of the podcast, and that's your homework this time, you guys. Write it down for yourself what's your business model, and then go and ask at least one other business owner, if not more, what's their business model? What does it look like? Start asking the questions, and see how quickly you can get a glimpse of, "Oh, this is all they're doing." It's actually really simple, right? There's a lot of things in business, but how do we make this simple? I want to understand the business model, okay? Enjoy that. I appreciate you guys. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.

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Are You Able To Actually SEE Their Business Model? 13:18 Share

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Are You Able To Actually SEE Their Business Model?