- Boom, what's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen, and this is Sales Funnel Radio.
Today, we’re gonna talk about my content machine and how I'm pulling it off.
I've spent the last four years learning form the most brilliant marketers today. And now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million dollar business.
The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.
Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's best internet sales funnels.
My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's up guys?
Hey, I am excited to share this with you. You know when I first started listening to gurus on the internet, when I first started consuming their content, when I first started going through and reading it - I was grateful for the content. But... I don't know if you're like me?... I didn’t ever want to do any kind of publishing ever, ever.
I remember when I first went to my first Funnel Hacking Live. It was 2016. I remember this very clearly... I think I might have shared this with you before....
I was biking around the bay at San Diego because what cash we had, I didn't want to spend on a cab. So I was biking around on a hired bike and I remember thinking to myself, “I will do whatever Russell tells me to do, except I will not publish.” That was my actual thought.
Fast forward a week, and I'm working next to Russell Brunson, and this is what I see him doing. He's sitting there and he's on camera going, “What's up guys, this is Russell Brunson!” Then he's over on his podcast, “What's up guys, this is Russell Brunson!” And then he's over on his blog... “What's up guys, this is Russell Brunson.” And I was like, there's something to this. This is really interesting.
Funnily enough, on the very first day at Funnel Hacking Live, he said, “Everyone needs to start publishing.” And I was like, “there's no way I'm not gonna do it. I will build the funnels. I'll do whatever you want me to do Russell. My life's already changed. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. But I will never, ever, Mr. Russell Brunson, ever be one of those podcasters.” And that was my thought.
Well, “What's up, how you doing?” I'm podcasting!
We've crossed over 160,000 downloads between the two shows that I have - which is awesome. It's gone really, really well.
I remember after watching Russell publish…. We didn't do anything unless there was a camera around a lot of times, right. We’d go grab a camera...
One day it was like 4:00 a.m. and he voxed me; he goes, “Dude, I got this sick idea man - swing down to the office as soon as you can. I'm really, really pumped about this. I'm gonna make you famous.” I was like, what does that mean? And then he goes, “Dude, we're gonna start a reality TV show man!” And that's when we started Funnel Hacker TV.
So we had a visual show... and then a podcast so people could listen... then there were blogs so people could read. Dominating everywhere! I mean, to be completely honest with you, can you consume all of the content that ClickFunnels puts out? No, nobody can. But that's not the point. He's trying to dominate the conversation.
I remember about six weeks into working at CF, I decided to get a handle on this whole content creation thing. There was no way to do this without actually publishing.
I know I'm gonna suck at first. Like I'm gonna be terrible. I'm gonna be awful. And I was awful. I was super bad. I really was not good. If you guys go listen to the first few episodes of Sales Funnel Radio - the content is good. What I'm talking about is great. But the delivery is terrible. I knew that. And I came to grips with the fact. I just needed to gut it out a little bit - just start moving forward.
When I first started publishing, I was the only person in my content team.
I was watching a lot of major entrepreneurs, and they were never the only one doing the content. They had a content team.
I was like, “Oh my gosh, I'm not gonna be able to afford something like that… and how do you even put a team like that together.”
The whole point of this episode is to show with you guys the journey through my content team - because even though I have a team now - it didn’t start that way.
When I started, I was just using Libsyn. That's Liberated Syndication dot com. Libsyn.com. It's L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. It's amazing, okay. It was like five bucks a month for me to start.
And what it allowed me to do was... I wanted to be able to push out on iTunes obviously.... But I knew that a lot of people want to read, but I didn't want to write a blog.
I like writing about this kind of stuff. But I'm not gonna take the time to write a blog for every podcast episode.
So what I did was rip the audio and get it transcribed at Rev.com. Then I took that transcription, and it became the blog post. So now I have an blog for every episode. That's all I did. I just took the transcription, I put it on WordPress, and pressed go.
I believe in using tools for the intent they were created. ClickFunnels is not meant to be a blogging platform. So I don't blog on it.
I use WordPress because WordPress was built to be a blogging platform.
Some people do some weird things with WordPress and turn it into a sales platform. But it's not a sales funnel. So I don't use WordPress to sell things. I use WordPress to publish things. Does that make sense?
You could make a lot of things turn into a lot of other things with weird connections and stuff. I just don't.
It's kind of like going to a sushi place and ordering a hamburger. I'm sure they could make it for you, but that's not their thing. You know what I mean?
I look at software the same way. Whatever the software was intended to do, that's what I use it for. And that's why I still use several different platforms and I'll tie them together.
ClickFunnels is built to sell crap. So I use it to sell my crap.
When I first started out, it was just me; it took me about two hours per episode to get it out of the door. I would wake up at about 5:00 a.m - I'd be at ClickFunnel's HQ at about 6:00 a.m - and I would take Russell's microphone 'cause I didn't have money to go get a microphone at that time… I would unplug the microphone from his computer and I'd go over and plug it into mine. Then I'd record the episode 'cause I knew his mic was good.
And I was like, well crap. I gotta figure out how to use Adobe Audition, or some kind of software for editing, or something like that. I went through and I created my intros. And I make all my intros and outros by the way. I really like doing it.
I've been a sound junky and editor since I was like 12. And I would make a lot of music on a lot of different platforms. I spent a lot of Saturdays just making music. It was a...
