Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Finding Your Message, Building a Tribe, and Changing the World

by Russell Brunson

  Because we’re fighting against the big brands, people with literally unlimited budgets, we have to do things differently. We have to do things smarter. We don’t have financial safety nets. Every test we take is with our own money. We have to be profitable from day number one. So how do we do that? How is that even possible?

  • Who or what are you collectively fighting against?

  If you asked the MBAs or look in the college textbooks, they’d tell you that what we’re doing is impossible. Yet it’s happening. Every single day. It’s happening through the art and science that we call Funnel Hacking.

  • Who you ARE!

  We are Funnel Hackers, and these are our stories!

  Do you see how powerful that is? The video isn’t long—only a minute and 10 seconds. But it clearly defines who we are and what our cause is all about. People who resonate with that message are going to say, “HECK, yeah!” and then join us. Those who don’t get it will just move on. It’s natural selection for the true believers.

  Those are the four core things we use to create our future-based cause.

  Where can they place their hope and faith?

  Help them break their 4-minute mile.

  Let them self-identify.

  Create a Title of Liberty.

  It will cast a vision, create hope, and give people the faith they need to move forward and make change. Now that you’ve got a charismatic leader and a future-based cause, it’s time for the third piece of your vehicle for change—the new opportunity.

  SECRET #3

  THE NEW OPPORTUNITY

  The last piece of the puzzle you need to create your movement is something I call the New Opportunity, or the vehicle for change that you are offering to people. This is by far the most important, yet least understood, part of the process. The difference between having some modest success and changing the world comes down to understanding and implementing the new opportunity.

  When you study the successful mass movements of the past, you’ll notice that each of the leaders offered their followers a new opportunity. Christ didn’t give his followers a better way to follow Moses’ law, he offered them a NEW law, a new covenant where salvation didn’t come from animal sacrifices and following the letter of the law, but instead came from a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Hitler didn’t offer the Germans a way to make Germany better or to pay off their war reparations faster. He told them Germany wasn’t responsible for the first world war, and that he wanted to tear up the Treaty of Versailles and make Germany strong again.

  In 2001, Steve Jobs stood in front of the world and told everyone he wanted to revolutionize the music industry. Then he pointed out all the “improvement” offers that promised to get us more of the same. You could buy a CD and get 10–15 songs. You could buy an MP3 player and get about 150 songs, or use a heavy hard drive that held about 1,000 songs. Each product improved the one before it, gave people more songs on one device.

  Jobs wanted to create a new opportunity where someone could bring their entire music library—ALL their CDs and digital music—everywhere they went. And he wanted people to carry it inside their pockets. That’s when he pulled the first iPod out of his pocket, showed everyone the new opportunity he created, and transformed the music industry forever.

  He did it again when he made the announcement for the iPhone, and again when he changed how computers would work forever with the iPad. This pattern can be seen over and over again in business, religion, sports—anywhere there’s real innovation in an industry.

  In The True Believer, Eric Hoffer says, “The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement…a mass movement…appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.”

  Our goal is not to fix what’s not working. Our goal is to REPLACE what’s not working with something better.

  Most often, when people start thinking about the product or the service they want to offer, they start by looking around at what is already out there, and then they try to “build a better mousetrap”. When you do that, you are not offering them a new opportunity, you are offering them what we call an “improvement” offer.

  WHY PEOPLE DON’T WANT IMPROVEMENT OFFERS

  Improvement offers are much harder to sell for a lot of reasons. Here are a few of the main reasons people tend to avoid improvement offers at all costs.

  1. Improvement is Hard Most people have tried to improve in the past, and for some reason it didn’t work. They’ve tried to lose weight. They’ve tried to make money. They’ve tried to make their relationships better. But if they’re coming to you, then whatever they tried in the past didn’t work for some reason. They know the difficulties they’ve had to go through in the past, and there is pain associated with that.

  With a new opportunity, they don’t know what the process will be, so they don’t have to go through the known pain to get the result. Another amazing quote from The True Believer: “They must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.”

  2. Desire vs. Ambition All people have desire, but very few have ambition. My guess is that less than 2% of the population is actually ambitious. Improvement offers are selling to over-achieving ambitious people. If you do sell an improvement offer, you are automatically excluding 98% of the world. You will be fighting an uphill battle. A new opportunity, on the other hand, plays on people’s desires for the change they want in their lives.

  3. Memories of Poor Past Decisions If your followers are in need of improvement, they must first admit failure. In order for them to say yes to your offer, they have to admit that the choices they made in the past were wrong. No one wants to admit when they’re wrong, yet an improvement offer forces them to admit they’ve failed. Remember the One Sentence Persuasion Course from earlier in the book? We want to JUSTIFY their past failures. A new opportunity does that.

  4. Commodity Pricing When you are selling improvement, you are selling against dozens or hundreds of other improvement offers out there. You are stuck in the middle of a very red ocean, competing with everyone else selling similar options. This competition turns what you do into a commodity and pushes the pricing down. It quickly becomes a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.

  Dan Kennedy once told me, “If you can’t be the #1 lowest price leader in your market, there is no strategic advantage in being the #2 lowest price leader.” In other words, if you can’t be the cheapest, then you need to become the most expensive. And you can’t do that when you are fighting inside of this red ocean. When you present a new opportunity, you are creating a blue ocean, and all price resistance goes out the window.

  But the BIGGEST reason people don’t want improvement offers is so important that I wanted to write a separate section about it. The #1 reason people don’t want improvement, and the reason they will or won’t join your cult-ure is STATUS.

  STATUS: THE ONLY THING THAT CAUSES PEOPLE TO MOVE (OR NOT MOVE)

  A few years ago, my friend Perry Belcher explained this concept to me. Once I understood it, I immediately changed how I interacted with everyone. He told me that status is the only thing that causes people to move toward you or not move at all. That’s it. STATUS is the magic word in this business. When someone is presented with an opportunity, their subconscious mind is working on the answer to this question:

  Is this thing I’m considering going to increase my status or decrease it?

  Status as I’m defining it here has nothing to do with how other people perceive you, but rather with how you perceive yourself.

  Almost every choice in your life has revolved around status—whether you know it or not. For example, what school did you go to? You (or your parents) picked a school because you thought it would elevate your status. Who did you date? Who did you break up with? Who did you marry? You pick those people based on who you thought would elevate your status. What school do your kids go to? What books do y
ou read? What car do you drive? What car do you not drive?

  All these things are tied into status. Almost EVERY decision you’ve ever made was based on this one subconscious question:

  Is this thing I’m considering going to increase my status or decrease it?

  When we’re looking at any opportunity, we have to decide if it will make us appear smarter, happier, more stylish, more wealthy, more powerful, or more attractive. All these things will increase status. If a potential customer can say, “Yes, this will increase my status.” they will move toward it.

  What stops people from taking that new opportunity? Fear of decreased status. The sale-killing thought is “What if I try this and it decreases my status? I will feel stupid.” There’s this balancing act going on in our brains all the time. We’re balancing hope of increased status against fear of decreased status. If you’re selling a weight loss solution, and someone has tried and failed on 27 different diets, that fear is going to be pretty high. You’re going to have to work pretty hard to get the sale.

  If your brain thinks that taking an action will reverse your status, then you won’t do it—UNLESS it finds hope that by temporarily decreasing your status, you could increase it in the future. Your brain is always asking, “Will it be temporary and, if so, will the future gain in status eventually be higher?”

  When people first find you and your offers, it’s probably not the first time they’ve tried to solve their problems. They’ve tried to lose weight. They’ve tried to make money. They’ve tried to do whatever your thing is. That’s the big fear. I know if I invest $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000 with this expert and it doesn’t work, I’m going to look stupid. My wife or my kids or my friends are going to see that, and they’re going to think I’m an idiot.

  When someone invests in my $25,000 Inner Circle program, that money is leaving them, which causes an immediate decrease in status. But my members know that by taking that temporary decrease in status, the end result of being in the Inner Circle will be an increased status from what they learn and accomplish.

  People are going to weigh the likelihood of success and elevated status against the risk of failure and the cost of that failure. Your job as the expert is to load up the elevated status side of the scale and decrease the risk of failure. You can do that by creating an amazing product and minimizing risk with things like money-back guarantees, risk reversals, and done-for-you options. The key to making a sale is 100% tied to this concept of status.

  When people look at your new opportunity, that is the only real question they are trying to figure out. I like to think through what their perceived status is, and then try to make sure I add as many things possible that would make them increase their status, and then take away as many things from my offer that would decrease status. And so you can probably see why that is the BIGGEST reason why we don’t sell improvement offers. For someone to say yes to that, they have to admit to poor past decisions and create a huge decrease in status. Then you are forced to fight an uphill battle that few people ever win.

  So which factors elevate status? Well, it’s different for everyone, but here are a few that are pretty universal.

  • Appearance of intelligence (anything that makes them look smarter)

  • Appearance of wealth, power, or happiness

  • Physical appearance (weight loss, makeup, supplements, etc.)

  • Style (think Mac vs. PC)

  Now you might be thinking, “I’m not affected by status considerations. I like to drive a reasonable car and live in a modest home.” If so, I’d like to pose a question. Why? Why do you like driving a car you feel is reasonably priced? Does it have anything to do with the fact that if you drove a Ferrari home one day, you’re afraid that your friends, family, or neighbors would judge you? If they did judge you, how would that affect your status?

  Status works on both ends of the spectrum. It’s what makes some people fight for earthly possessions, and it’s also what keeps others from desiring them at all. As much as we may hate to admit it, we are all slaves to what we believe other people will think about us.

  WHY PEOPLE CRAVE NEW OPPORTUNITIES

  So now you know why improvement offers don’t work. Here are a few reasons why new opportunities DO work.

  1. New discovery When people discover your new opportunity for the first time, they’re going to want to share it because sharing something new gives them an immediate increase in status. Just think about when videos on YouTube or Facebook go viral. What’s happening behind the scenes? I’ve worked with teams who create viral videos for a living, and they’ve found that videos go viral when they are cool and new because others want to be the first to show them to their friends. Discovery immediately increases perceived status.

  2. No pain of disconnect Because they don’t have to admit they made bad decisions in the past, there is no longer a huge pain of disconnect from what they are currently doing. They can just move on to something brand new. No pain of disconnect = no decrease in status. Improvement offers sell THROUGH the pain, where new opportunities sell AWAY from the pain.

  3. Dream replacement One reason many people struggle to make the changes they want and need in their lives is the fear of failure. If they try to change and it doesn’t work for them, then their dreams are dead. So they will give up potential success for fear of losing their dreams. We know that “without a vision, the people perish”. When you make a new opportunity, you’re giving them a new dream to move toward.

  4. Greener pastures We’ve all heard a million times that “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”, right? Instead of trying to convince people that their grass is green or offering to fix their grass, allow them to follow you to the other side of the fence. That’s where they want to be anyway. Stop trying to make existing things that aren’t working better, and focus on fresh, exciting, NEW ideas that will inspire people to follow you!

  I hope by now you appreciate how important it is to create a mass movement for your cult-ure. When you have a charismatic leader, a future-based cause, and a new opportunity, you have the perfect environment for REAL change. Once you have that environment, you can get people to follow you and pay you so you can move them forward and change their lives for the better.

  But most people get stuck here. HOW do you actually create the new opportunity? And if you are already selling something else, how do you reposition it to become that new opportunity for your movement?

  CREATING THE NEW OPPORTUNITY, THEIR VEHICLE FOR CHANGE

  While there are lots of ways to structure improvement offers, there are only two ways to position a new opportunity, either as an Opportunity Switch or an Opportunity Stack.

  Opportunity Switching Each of our prospects has a desire for some result, and they have been trying to get that result through some vehicle. Maybe they are trying to lose weight, and the vehicle they have currently chosen to lose weight is the Atkins diet. So my opportunity switch is to take them out of the vehicle they’re currently using and put them into a new one. So in this example I could switch them from Atkins to something new, like the Paleo diet. If the Paleo diet has become a red ocean with lots of people teaching it, then it is no longer a new opportunity, and I need to create my own sub-niche like we discussed in Secret #1.

  In the real estate market, they might be flipping houses or doing short sales. To create a new opportunity, I’m going to switch them out of those vehicles and into the new vehicle I created, which might be something like selling houses on eBay. Opportunity switching takes them out of the pain they’re currently in and gives them hope for a new future through a new vehicle.

  Sometimes the opportunity switch happens when they are moving from one niche to the new one that you created in Secret #1.

  Other times it’s actually switching them from one submarket to another. For example, maybe they are moving from making an income in real estate, to making their income through internet marketing.

  Usually the first thi
ng I sell to someone when they enter into my culture is some type of opportunity switch. Sometimes the new opportunity is offered through a webinar, other times it’s through a book or a video. It matters less what product they are buying; it’s more important to understand that they are leaving behind whatever old beliefs they had about how to achieve their desired results and putting their hope and faith into this new opportunity.

  Opportunity Stacking After someone has made the switch into your new opportunity, then all future sales to that prospect are typically an opportunity stack, not an improvement offer. I don’t want to switch my prospects from opportunity to opportunity because it will cause confusion and break trust. But I can offer them an opportunity stack within the new opportunity that they have just joined.

  If you’ve read DotComSecrets, you probably recognize the value ladder in the picture above. You’ll notice that the first thing I offer people is this book, because it is an opportunity switch. I am trying to switch the career paths that you’ve been following up to this point (your current job, school, real estate, stock markets, or other ways to generate wealth). My goal is to help you see this new opportunity of becoming an expert and having a mass following who will pay you for your advice, and if I do my job right, you will make that switch into a career as an expert.