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

by Russell Brunson

  • Who / What Statement: I am going to teach people who are trying to lose weight how to stop dieting and start drinking ketones for energy and weight loss.

  • The Opportunity Switch Headline: How to Stop Exercising and Still Lose Weight Through a Little-Known Trick That Almost Instantly Puts Your Body into Ketosis, Without Giving Up Your Favorite Carbs

  • Curiosity Hook: There’s this little-known thing called ketosis. Hardly anybody is talking about it. But when you learn it and use it, you’ll see a huge difference in your energy levels and how fast you can lose weight.

  STEP #3: GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT (THE ASK CAMPAIGN)

  At this point, it’s important to remember that people don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want. All too often we create a new opportunity giving people exactly what they need, a vehicle that is capable of getting them to their end result. But when they get into the vehicle, they don’t see what they actually WANTED, like air conditioning, leather seats, radio options, etc. Because of that, they will leave before they ever give you a chance to take them to the result they really desire.

  So in addition to providing them with their new opportunity, you also need to find out exactly what they want inside of that vehicle. If you do this correctly, they’ll feel like they’ve found their new home.

  You accomplish this by running a simple one-question survey we call an “Ask Campaign”. The Ask Campaign is based on a simple three-step formula that I learned from two of my early mentors, Frank Kern and Ed Dale. This technique is SO simple, but don’t skip it because of its simplicity. It’s one of the most important steps.

  1. Find a hot market.

  2. Ask them what they want.

  3. Give it to them.

  That’s it. Simple, right?

  Because we’re the experts in our respective niches, it’s easy to assume we know what people want. And while sometimes we may be right, more often we miss the mark. (Probably because we are so close to our own ideas.)

  For example, I own a company called OvercomePornography.com. When we started that company, we assumed that we were mostly selling to men who wanted to overcome their pornography addictions. But after running a simple Ask Campaign, we discovered that the people who responded were primarily wives and mothers who were looking for help for their spouses or kids. Just imagine how that changed the final product and how we sold it.

  We used an Ask Campaign to collect lots of important information from our market. And we used that information to create a product people really wanted.

  Let me show you how this works. First, you create a very simple page that asks, “What’s your #1 question about __________?”

  On the same page, I offer people a ticket to the beta group of my masterclass for free if they’ll tell me their #1 question about my topic. The page reads:

  Dear friend, I know your time is valuable, so I’ll get right to the point. I need your advice. I’m putting finishing touches on a new course called “How to __________ Without __________”. I want to make sure I don’t leave anything out, so will you let me know your biggest question about how to __________? It could be anything. You may think it’s silly. All you have to do is type your questions in the box below and click Submit. In exchange for your advice, I’ll give you FREE access to my masterclass that’s happening on (date). This course will sell for $197 in the near future, but you’ll get special access to experience the course free when you let me know your #1 question. Okay, here is the easy form…

  Getting your first 100 responses Once you have the web page set up (we have a template in ClickFunnels to make it super easy for you), it’s time to start promoting it. Start by telling everyone you know. It sounds strange, but that’s where I start every time I’m creating a brand-new niche. I post it on Facebook. I text my friends and family members. I try to get everyone I know to come to my very first masterclass. That’s the low-hanging fruit.

  Next, I start to look at the submarket that I’ve built my new opportunity in, and I look for people who are already in those submarkets. When I got started over 10 years ago, I used to look for forums full of people in my submarket. So if my new niche was about flipping houses on eBay, then I’d look for forums about real estate investing. I would become part of those communities and start participating in the groups.

  Notice I didn’t say, “Post spam messages about the masterclass.” You need to give before you can take. So I go in and answer questions for a week or two. People see that I’m there to add to the community. And then, after I’ve become a familiar face who provides lots of value, it’s usually okay to invite those people to answer my survey and take the masterclass for free.

  I don’t use forums as much these days because most of that communication is happening in groups inside of Facebook. In the future, there may be a different platform where people gather in groups, but regardless the concept is the same. If you’re looking for people on Facebook, search for groups in your submarket, and join the active groups. Then become an active participant in those communities and provide value. Then, when it’s appropriate, ask people, “What’s your #1 question about __________?” and post a link to your survey.

  Of course, you can always run paid ads directing people to the survey, as well. If you’re in a hurry, some Facebook or Google ads can get you answers in a hurry. But if you’d prefer not to spend money at this stage, social media groups work well.

  Using the survey data Run traffic to the Ask Campaign page until you have about 100 responses. Out of those 100, you’re going to find 8 to 10 core questions people are asking over and over. Those questions will become the titles of the modules in your masterclass. For example, when we ran the Ask Campaign for my “how to make a potato gun” product, people asked things like:

  • What type of pipe do you use? Do the PSI ratings on the pipes matter?

  • Which type of igniter should I use—barbecue or lantern?

  • How long should I cut my pipes?

  • What type of propellants should I use?

  • Am I going to die if I make the gun wrong?

  Next I found the most common 6–8 questions people were asking and created an outline.

  • Module #1: How to Decide Which Type of Gun You Want to Create

  º What’s a pneumatic gun?

  º What size gun should we build?

  º How do you build a bolt-action spud gun?

  • Module #2: How to Pick the Right Pipes

  º What type of pipe do you use?

  º Do the PSI ratings on the pipes matter?

  • Module #3: How to Find Accessories Before You Start Building

  º What type of igniter should I use?

  º Barbecue lighter or lantern igniter?

  • Module #4: How to Cut the Right Barrel-to-Chamber Volume Ratio

  º How long should I cut my pipes?

  º What happens if my chamber is too big or too small?

  • Module #5: How to Assemble the Pieces

  º How do I assemble the gun?

  º What tools do I need to make my spud gun?

  • Module #6: How to Increase Potato Flight Distance

  º What type of propellants should I use?

  º What if my gun won’t shoot?

  • Module #7: How to Stay Safe While Shooting Your Potato Gun

  º Am I going to die if I make the gun wrong?

  º Has anyone ever died from a potato gun?

  After you have the questions and the outline, there’s one more step that gives you a really cool asset to use when you start selling your masterclass in the future. People have just told us EXACTLY what they want to know, right? So take all the questions and rewrite them as bullet points to use in sales letters, ads, emails, webinars, and lots of other places.

  Question: What type of pipe do you use? Do the PSI ratings on the pipes matter?

  Bullet: Discover the only pipe we will ever use AND the secret PSI rating that will guarantee your potatoes go farther and your gun l
asts longer.

  Question: Which type of igniter should I use—BBQ or lantern?

  Bullet: Find out which igniter we’ll NEVER use (and hear about a scary near-death experience that kept us from ever using it again), and why there is only one brand we trust.

  Question: How long should I cut my pipes?

  Bullet: You’ll learn the correct barrel-to-chamber ratio that will keep you safe AND help your gun shoot 25% farther! (WARNING: Even being ¼ inch off could make every potato you shoot a flop.)

  Question: What type of propellants should I use?

  Bullet: Discover the secret propellant we accidently stumbled upon (when we ran out of hair spray) that immediately made our gun shoot over 50 yards farther every time!

  Question: Am I going to die if I make the gun wrong?

  Bullet: Learn the safety secrets we use to make sure every potato gun outing is safe as well as exciting!

  Rewriting all the questions into bullet points will help make what you teach SO much more exciting to your students. And it will make writing your marketing materials easier later on.

  At this point, you have an outline, which is really a table of contents. You could write a book from here, if you wanted to. All you have to do to deliver an amazing masterclass is find the answers to their questions and teach them in a way that will facilitate the best results. The participants will be happy because you’re answering their questions. You’re giving them exactly what they want.

  STEP #4: DELIVER YOUR FREE MASTERCLASS

  To make running your first masterclass simple, you really only need two tools—a Facebook group and Facebook Live (both free!)

  Set up a private Facebook group so your beta members can interact with each other. A group allows you to post content, give class updates, provide accountability, and deliver any bonuses. Later on, you can make a membership site and get a little fancier, but for now you’re just looking at getting some results for a group of people with your new opportunity.

  Next, you need some technology to help you deliver the masterclass. Recently we started using Facebook Live inside our member group to deliver the live training. It works really well, especially if you’re starting on a budget. There are other webinar platforms you can use as well. Platforms come and go, but my favorites right now are GoToWebinar. com or Zoom.us for webinars, or www.InstantTeleseminar.com for audio teleseminars.

  You’ll also need to let people know how to access the class. When is it being held? Where do they log in? What materials might they need to bring? You can give them the information inside your private Facebook group.

  As for teaching the actual class, everyone has a different teaching style. You might decide to use PowerPoint slides and a webinar format, or you might just want to talk on the phone with a teleseminar format. And while I don’t think it matters what format you actually teach it in, I do highly recommend using the storytelling skills that you’ll be learning in Section Two of this book to get people to listen and make lasting changes.

  So now that you have your vehicle for change in a newly created blue-ocean niche and a beta group of members you can start getting results for, you may be thinking, “But Russell, when do I start making money?” We’re going to start addressing that in the next section.

  After you’ve completed your masterclass and have some great results that prove what you can do for people. That’s the goal from this first section. The results you get from this beta group will become the fuel that grows your expert business.

  SECTION TWO

  CREATING BELIEF

  The first section of this book was all about understanding who you must become and what you must create to start building your mass movement. In this section, we shift focus to how you create certain beliefs in the minds of your followers. These beliefs allow them to be more receptive to the opportunities you’re offering. When people have absolute belief in what you are telling them, you can positively influence them.

  The longer I work in this business, the more I realize how everything comes down to one thing—belief.

  Belief creates the customer.

  Belief creates the results.

  You must persuade people to believe in what you are doing, and you do that by mastering the art of storytelling. Secrets #5 through #10 will give you the foundation you need to tell stories that make your audience believe.

  SECRET #5

  THE BIG DOMINO

  I was sitting in a room with about 120 other successful entrepreneurs, all of whom made at least a million dollars a year, a requirement to be in that room. One of the featured keynote speakers was Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek. After his presentation, he opened up the floor for questions. A woman stood up and asked, “Hey Tim, you seem to get so much done. What is it that you do all day?”

  He paused for a moment, then gave an awkward half-smile and said, “If you watched my daily routine, you’d be bored out of your mind. Most people wake up every morning with a task list of a thousand things to do. They go through the day trying to knock down all these things. I wake up every morning, and I meditate. I drink tea or coffee. I go for a walk, and maybe I read a book.” He said he might spend three or four weeks doing that and nothing else. “My whole goal is to slow down and look around. Instead of looking for all the tasks that I could do, I try to identify the one Big Domino—the One Thing that, if I could knock THAT down, all the other dominos would either fall down or become irrelevant.”

  When he said that, I had an “aha” moment. I haven’t yet figured out how to implement this in my personal life. But when it comes to how I sell things, he was 100% right. The first step to creating belief is figuring out the ONE THING you have to get someone to believe that will knock down all their other objections, make them irrelevant, or disappear altogether.

  A little while later, I was talking to a friend and mentor, Perry Belcher. He told me how he had gone back and analyzed all the different offers that his companies had created and sold over the past 10 years.

  He discovered that the more things they asked someone to believe in their sales pitch, the worse the offer converted. In fact, he figured out that if they tried to make more than ONE point or ask someone to focus on more than ONE thing in a sales message, conversion rates dropped by half! He then said, “Look at how many things a prospect has to believe in order to buy what you’re selling. If it’s more than one, you need to rework your sales presentation.”

  After hearing that, I knew we had to go back and look at everything we were selling. We asked ourselves, “What’s the One Thing? What is the one Big Domino of belief that we need to knock down?” Every product has one Big Domino, One Thing that will knock down all the smaller objections and resistance—if we can get people to believe in that One Thing, then they will have to buy it.

  I took a logic class in college that showed different ways to create valid arguments. One of the many valid argument forms is called “modus ponens”. It looks like this:

  If A, then B

  A

  Therefore B

  If I were to put this argument into a sentence, I’d say something like:

  If Dallin doesn’t finish his homework, then he will not go to class.

  Dallin did not finish his homework.

  Therefore, Dallin will not go to class.

  If you think about it, you’ll start to see patterns of this argument everywhere. Religion is an easy example. In Christianity, everything hinges upon the truth of the Bible. If someone believes the Bible is true, then they have no other option than to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior. If he is truly the Savior, then all the other concerns you have about Christianity disappear.

  If the Bible is true, then Jesus is the Savior.

  The Bible is true.

  Therefore, Jesus is the Savior.

  As a Christian, if I can get someone to believe the Bible—their one Big Domino—then it knocks down every other domino and makes any other argument irrelevant to the person who has tha
t belief.

  But it’s not just in religion. We see this happening everywhere around us from politics to sports to the people we spend time with. That’s why it’s hard to have an argument with someone about something they truly believe in. When that seed of belief is there, it doesn’t matter how much you try to convince them otherwise, it has already knocked down all the other smaller dominos that you’re trying to stack back up.

  The One Thing, aka The Big Domino Statement When we launched ClickFunnels, I tried to figure out the one key belief that I needed my audience to understand and believe. I came up with this basic statement:

  If I can make people believe that (my new opportunity) is / are key to (what they desire most) and is / are only attainable through (my specific vehicle), then all other objections and concerns become irrelevant and they have to give me money.