The Simplest Funnel Business Model - a podcast by Russell Brunson

What I would do if I was to start over today.

On this episode Russell breaks down what kind of business he would run if was starting all over again from scratch. Here are some of the awesome things you’ll here in today’s episode:

• Find out why Russell’s business model would be a lot simpler if he started all over.
• Find out who’s business model Russell would choose to follow due to its simplicity.
• And see why a simple business model might be great for someone who is completely overwhelmed by what it takes to run a giant company.

So listen here to see what a simpler business model consists of and if it might be right for your business.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I am excited you are here today on the Marketing Secrets show, so thanks for hanging out. Today I’m going to talk about probably the most simple funnel business model of all time.

Alright everybody, I hope you guys are all doing great, there’s so much chaos happening in my world right now. Between re-writing the Expert Secrets book and the Dotcom Secrets book, and the launch of the Traffic Secrets book, plus Funnel Hacking Live tickets, plus today we launched the Marketing Secrets show, plus my kids are in wrestling and a bunch of other, it’s just chaos, and it’s fun and exciting. Someday I know I’m going to look back on this time of life and be like, “Remember that, when all that was happening?” Sometimes though, it feels like a lot, but it’s cool.

Anyway, last night was kind of fun, I was at my kids wrestling tournament, and I was talking to Toby Brockner, who is one of the, he’s a Clickfunnels funnel hacker dude who’s awesome, he’s also a wrestling dad, he comes in and films my kids, which is really cool. We were talking about business and business models and things like that, and as I was sitting there talking to him, I can’t remember what we were talking about exactly but I remember thinking about this and then telling him, ‘Man, if I was to start over today, right now, what would my business model be, what would it look like?” and as much as I’ve loved this journey of building Clickfunnels and it’s been so much fun and so fulfilling, and so much amazingness has come from it, if or when I was to start over again, I would make things so much more simple.

And so I want to, people ask me all the time, “If you were to start over from scratch, what would you do right now?” and maybe it’s just because I’m in a season in my life that’s so hectic, so busy that I just want simplicity, but if I could step back and be like, what would be the business model today, if I was starting today? It would be really simple. In fact the person who I would probably model the most is Ben Settle. Some of you guys have heard me talk about Ben Settle before, I talked about him a little bit in the Dotcom Secrets book and things like that.

But his business model is so simple. He has a squeeze page where he drives traffic to, and it’s just basically like, “Hey, give me your email address, I’m going to email you every day and share with you stuff.” And that’s what he does. And he drives some traffic, I don’t think he drives that much traffic, I think he does a few things here and there. I think a lot of his leads come from me, because I talk about him a lot.

But he’s not like a hard core, buy a bunch of ads, all sorts of stuff. He does podcast interviews and he’s doing things, but he’s definitely not like me out there obsessing over traffic and sales, he’s just doing his thing. And he builds a list and he emails his list every single day. And he always tells a story, this is where the whole concept of Seinfeld emails came from, in the Dotcom Secrets book. He writes an email each day about what’s happening in his life, and somehow ties it back to his product. And he’s got one product for sale. His one product is a $97 a month newsletter. And that’s it.

So once a month he writes a newsletter, a print newsletter that he prints and ships out to his customers, he sells it for $97 a month, and then 30 days a months, you know, every month, he writes an email and sends it to his list. And that’s his business model. It’s like 15 minutes a day to write an email, and then maybe a couple hours each month to write the newsletter, and that’s. And the rest of the time he sits there and writes zombie novels and stuff like that. That’s his, that’s what he does because it sounds like fun to him, apparently. He writes zombie books and stuff like that.

But that’s the business model, and I’ve been watching him do it consistently now for probably 7 or 8 years and he just sends an email every day, never misses a day, very consistent. Writes an email, sends it out. And the emails aren’t super complicated, they’re telling cool stories or different, that’s why we call them Seinfeld emails, if you watch the show Seinfeld, they’re about the random thing at the time, and it’s happening in his life and how it ties back to his email newsletter.

And in fact, if you go to bensettle.com, I’m going to do it right now to make sure it’s still there, but he’s got a blog where he then posts his emails as blog posts, so you can literally go back and look at the last 8 years, 5, I don’t know how many years, 10 years of him doing this. You can go read every email so you get an idea of what do the emails look like? There they are.

If you go to Bensettle.com and click on no thanks, it then takes you to his blog, and every blog post is in here. So there you go. They’re all in here, they each tell a story and they tie back to his $97 a month newsletter. Tells a story, back to the newsletter. That’s it. And the blog, again if you go to the blog there’s literally however many years, a decade worth of these. He consistently, rarely if ever misses a day. He just writes an email, sends it out, promotes this one thing.

And I think sometimes, especially for me, I’m so passionate about the art of this, the funnels, the funnel structure, and all the kind of things, and because of that I create a lot of funnels, and stuff like that. But if I was to step back and say look, I really want to design my business around me and around my lifestyle, I would look at Ben’s model super close. Have a squeeze page, drive leads to get people to opt in, email the list every single day, sell my one product. I would just consistently make that product awesome, and it’d be a print newsletter or something, maybe it’s a membership site, but just always pushing people to the same thing.

If you think about, the math on that, let’s say it’s $100 and you get 100 people in there, that’s $10 grand a month. You get 500 people in there, is that right, $50 grand a month. Yeah, 50 grand a month. You get a thousand people in there at 100 bucks a piece, 100 grand a month. If you just consistently did that, consistently focused on that, it’s not going to happen overnight, but within a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, you could have that. And if you look at your business at the time, and it’s like, man I make a hundred grand a month and I send out an email a day, it’s 15 minutes a day of my time, and then once a month I write a newsletter.

So I’m just putting that out there for you guys to just think about different business models, and you know, you don’t always have to try and build a huge company. And for some of you guys, that’s the goal, and I get that and I support that, we teach that, we train on that. But for some of you guys it’s, I’m looking for something that could be consistent, it’s like, what can you be the bes tin the world at, create a print newsletter or a membership site or something around that thing, that’s monthly, have a squeeze page, have an email a day, always push people back and focus continually on your message, the same message over and over and over and over again.

So I hope that helps. I think for somebody out there who is getting overwhelmed by, “Oh, there’s all these funnels and all these things. I need a simpler business model.” There’s a simpler business model and I wanted to share that with you guys today. 

So with that said, thank you guys so much for everything. Next week we start, I recorded the Marketing Secrets Live show on Facebook this week, and we’re going to start sharing some of the podcast episodes that come from that show, so you guys can get some live stuff happening tomorrow, which would be a lot of fun. So with that said, thanks so much for everything you guys. I appreciate you for listening and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.

On the next episode of the marketing Secrets show, we’re going to be answering a question from the community. Somebody asked, “Russell, how in the world do you remain humble after growing a company this big?” So I’m going to talk about how to make sure your head doesn’t get too big, and if it does, how to shrink it back down. You’re going to hear that and a whole bunch more on the next episode of the Marketing Secrets show.

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