The Umbrella Brand
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The thing that encompasses your product, your offer, your funnel, and your value ladder.

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. This is a late night edition of the Marketing Secrets Podcast, that's why I'm talking a little bit quieter because I don't want to wake up my wife and kids. But I was thinking about you guys, wanted to jump on and share with you a concept that I call 'the umbrella brand'. I may have mentioned this before in a podcast. And when someone joins my Two Comma Club X Coaching Program, it's one of the first things I tell them to do. Because so many times we get into business and we're thinking about a part of the business. We're thinking about a product, or we start thinking about an offer.

Initially, when people get started, before they've been hanging out with me for a while, their first thought is like, "I'm going to create a product," and then eventually they're like, "Wait, I don't want a product, I want an offer." So they create an offer, and then they're like, "Wait, I don't want an offer, I want a funnel with multiple offers in the funnel." And then they're like, "Oh, cool. Actually I don't want just a funnel with offers in it, I want a value ladder." Right? And so the vision starts growing and growing from product, to offer, to funnel, to value ladder. It's interesting because in my business I've done the same thing. I've gone all over the place.

I always laugh, because when somebody joined my inner circle back in the day and they'd come in, the very first conversation we'd usually have was like, "Well, how many businesses you have?" And people would be like, "Oh, I've got 12 or eight." And they're always proud of it, and they're like, "I have eight, but four more that I'm building." Like, "Okay, well, the first thing we're going to do to grow your company is you've got to pick which of your eight babies we're going to kill, which we're going to keep?" And they're like, "What?" And I'm like, "You're only allowed to have one." The person that serves more than one master is not going to be successful. And it was always hard them. The people who grew in scale were all ones who started focusing on one business. And so the question though is something that means one funnel, or it means one value ladder.

What does that actually mean? And so for me, when I go into a market or when I consult somebody in a market, one of the first things I tell them to do is to create an umbrella brand. It's an umbrella brand that all the other products, and services, and offers, and things can fit underneath. Does that make sense? So if you think about ClickFunnels; ClickFunnels is a software product, but it's an umbrella brand. So underneath ClickFunnels there's a lot of different things, a lot of tools, a lot of stuff. But I want to illustrate this with a different brand of mine that you probably know, that it's probably going to be more clear for most of you guys.

A lot of you know I own marketingsecrets.com. This podcast is called the Marketing Secrets Podcast, but right now I've taken most of my intellectual property and I moved it out of my own personal name, I moved it out of ClickFunnels, moved it away from everything, and I set up this umbrella brand called Marketing Secrets. If you look at that, that umbrella brand is the core thing that I do. So it's, I teach people marketing. And so underneath that big umbrella, there's a lot of stuff.

There's the Dotcom Secrets book, the Expert Secrets book, the Traffic Secrets book. There's the High Ticket Secrets Training Course, there's the Course Secrets Course, there's... What else do I got? There's all the products, everything I teach. There's this podcast, there's a blog, which I'm not a very good blogger, but there's a blog in there. There's all these things, right? It's cool when you have an umbrella brand, because then all the things in your value ladder fit underneath this thing. And so my education business, the value ladder that's associated with that, it all fits underneath this Marketing Secrets brand. You know, ClickFunnels is different because it's its own brand. And so I'm breaking my own rules, by having two companies. I have my information business company, which is the Marketing Secrets one. Then I have the ClickFunnels software company, but they compliment each other obviously. We're bringing in people through the education company, they're going to software and vice versa, so they do compliment each other.

But I just wanted you guys to think through this concept of an umbrella brand. Do you have one? It's cool because right now, there's so many cool new things coming out on the market. For example, Clubhouse came out, and for a long time I was like, "How do I play clubhouse? What do I do? How do I not do this? I've got to figure something out."

But if I step back and look my umbrella brand, Marketing Secrets, like, "Oh, I could jump in there and just do a Marketing Secrets Clubhouse room." I jump in there and just say, "Okay, I'm going to share marketing secrets." What does that mean? It means anything. I'm going to share things about marketing that I like, that are exciting. I could bring guest speakers in and like, "Okay, tell me your number one marketing secret. Tell me your number one marketing secret." And it gets really, really fun, right? I can say like in this podcast, every week I'm like, "Hey, what's your marketing secret." What's something I want to talk about, what's something I'm learning. What's something I'm discovering, what's something I remember from the past, I want to share with people. I can just share that. If I have a blog post, I can do blog posts on different marketing secrets.

And so this umbrella brand... I don't know, all these things fall off it. Somebody who was going to clubhouse and see, "Oh, there's a Marketing Secrets room. What is this?" They're going to jump in the room, they're going to learn some marketing secrets and they're naturally going to come back and be like, "Okay, Marketing Secrets is this brand that teaches a lot of marketing secrets." But then now it pushes people to a specific offer like, "Oh, I'm going to read a book called Dotcom Secrets or Traffic Secrets or Expert Secrets, or all the things that fit underneath that umbrella brand.

This is funny, this is me telling on myself. I've been so good for the last seven years at just focusing on my business, which was ClickFunnels and Marketing Secrets, just focusing on that one baby. But as my team's gotten bigger, we've got 400 plus employees now, part of me is missing the thrill of building offers that aren't necessarily just ClickFunnels offers. And so I've got a little side team where we're building some fun things. But as I'm going into each of these different markets, it's fun because one of the first things I identify is, what's the umbrella brand of this thing?

So when I'm thinking about an umbrella brand, I'm thinking about a couple of things, like number one, I should be able to have a blog that fits underneath that brand, there's a podcast that could fit under that brand. I could do a Clubhouse room under that brand, I could do an Instagram channel, I can do all these things, that are not a product, but it's just this brand. A bigger thing, right? And then inside that, underneath this umbrella brand, then I could have products, and then offers, and then funnels, and then value ladders. So that stuff all fits underneath it.

But the overarching brand I can use to bring noise to the topic, to the concept, to the thing. Which creates noise, which sucks people in, and then from there, then I can direct them into specific products, and offers, and funnels, that'll solve a problem, fix a result, and things like that. Does that make sense? So, for example, right now we're working on a really cool software product. It's personality based, like those personality tests and things like that. It's not done yet, but it's going to be so cool when it is. And so for me, I say, "Okay, what's the umbrella brand." So I tried to find a really cool domain name, eventually the domain name I got is understand.me. If you go there, it's dead right now, don't go there. The umbrella brand has not been built other than I got a logo, and a couple of things. We did do Summit, and we started playing there a little bit, but there's a lot of work to do. So don't go there and model it yet, later this year you'll be able to.

But that becomes this big brand, understanding me. I want to understand myself, I want to understand you, I want to understand people. So it becomes this umbrella brand. Inside of there, now I can do all these things, I can have a blog that's talking about personality tests and understanding. I can have a podcast, I can do a Clubhouse room about personality. There's so many cool things I can do that all tie to this brand.

And then inside the brand, eventually, it'll be like, "Oh, hey, if you're listening to this podcast, by the way, guys, cool software, go check it out here." Which I did with click funnels, right? "Oh, by the way, there's this really cool book that's going to teach you specifically, all these bigger, higher level topics, these secrets, these concepts, these, whatever we're talking about. There's a book here that's going to give you very specific... my favorite ones, the ones that I like the most, or whatever. Or the stuff that's the best, just like I did inside Marketing Secrets. Like, "Oh, go buy Dotcom Secrets, buy Expert Secrets, buy Traffic Secrets. So I never really sell a product called Marketing Secrets, because it's not a product, it's a brand. It's an umbrella brand that encompasses the products, the offers, the value ladders, et cetera. So anyway, I don't know. It's late. I may be rambling and this may not make much sense, but anyway, that's just what to think about.

I've been buying a lot of big domain names recently, with the idea of, this is going to be an umbrella brand someday for a topic and a concept I'm excited for. We have some cool domains, really excited for it. One of them, for example, if you've read the book Atlas Shrugged, then you know who John Galt is, right? Obviously I've been fascinated with that book for the last year or so of my life. And so when I went to buy it, I bought John Galt Society. So John Galt Society becomes this big umbrella brand. And it could be a blog, it could be a podcast, it could be a news... It could be all these things. It could be an Instagram channel, could be this thing where it's like, "Hey, this is the John Galt Society. We're talking about John Galt and his principles, and all these things." And then under that umbrella brand, then I could sell whatever. I could write books, I could do t-shirts, I could do courses, I could do other things. But this umbrella brand gives ability to bring people in.

Another one, I bought haveitall.com. That could be such a cool umbrella brand. It's not a product, it's not an offer, but man, it could be such a cool brand, a big umbrella brand, and then underneath there there's all sorts of things you could do. Bodyevolution.com is a domain name I own, that could be a great umbrella brand. And then underneath there there's weight loss, there's fitness there's... anyway, I digress. I'm just excited about all the cool domains that I'm buying lately. I probably should stop, but it's just so exciting. I don't know if or when any of these ideas will come to fruition, I'm still focusing on my main baby, which is ClickFunnels and the marketing, or the content side of my business, which is Marketing Secrets. That's still the focal point and always will be, but I'm just having fun playing with these other ideas, to be able to test out concepts and try ideas, and then share them back with you guys.

So anyway, that's all I got. I'm going to go crash. It's late, I am tired. I appreciate you guys, thanks for listening. Hopefully this wasn't incoherent rambling, I hopefully gave you an idea, to think about your business. Is your business just a product? If so, it needs to evolve, from a product to an offer, from an offer to a funnel. Which, a funnel is basically multiple offers. Then from a funnel to a value ladder, and then what's the big brand above that, that holds all those things underneath it. The bigger brand that's more of a concept, not a product, right? It's more of a... I don't know the right word, but it's the bigger thing where, when you create it and you put it out there, underneath there, all the other stuff falls. All right, hope that helps. Appreciate you all. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.

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