SFR 214: Snapshot Of My Long Term Funnel Plan
I try to pay myself as little as possible, but ONLY for this reason... Here's what I'm ultimately building towards.
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Would it surprise you to know that, even though I came pretty close to hitting $1,000,000 this year, the amount of money that my wife and I live on is less than half of what we were getting paid when I worked at ClickFunnels?
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Out of all the money that comes into the business, I take just a tiny amount to live off\u2026
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I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s fun, but I\u2019ve got my eye on a bigger prize. I'm focused on building a long-term asset.
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I know that if I just focus for 4 years, then it's gonna shortcut 40 years!
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Some people have asked:
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What's your long-term vision?
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What's your long-term goal?
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What do you do with the money once it comes in?\u201d
So I decided to share my 30,000-foot-view strategy with a small group of people in my OfferLab Program to help them understand a little bit more about the game I'm playing.
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OfferLab is the equivalent of my Mastermind or inner circle. It\u2019s where I share the most of my nerdy geek out brain.
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I don't think I've ever actually shown this to anybody outside of that group\u2026
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Frankly, one of the major reasons why I left ClickFunnels is that I realized I couldn't pull this plan off while I worked for somebody else.
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Insert *Massive Disclaimer* Here: \xa0
I\u2019m NOT a financial advisor. I\u2019m NOT an investment person. I'm just telling you this is what I'm doing and this is how I look at things.
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The reason I'm sharing my plan is so that you can start thinking through your long-term strategy as well.
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WHY I TOOK A HUGE PAY CUT
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I hardly paid myself at all in 2018. Even now, my wife and I, are just scraping by\u2026
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That might shock you, but it's actually on purpose because I'm dumping in all the cash I make back into:
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Building a Funnel Team
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Creating Mind-blowing Content
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Increasing my Web Presence
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My plan is NOT to live off the income from my funnels or any of my time that I contract out. I'm really playing long term, top-down strategy\u2026
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I have a plan, I'm working the plan... and the plan's working.
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Making a million bucks is not that crazy. Everyone will most likely do that in their lifetime...
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I don't wanna die and barely have made a million bucks\u2026
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What I really want in the end is philanthropy. I wanna go do cool projects. I really wanna go help domestic and international, but that takes money.
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That takes a lot of crap to be able to pull that off, so that\u2019s why I'm trying to freakin' dominate right now.
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BUYING BACK YOUR TIME
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Most people start by contracting out their time in a service business.
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These are the things that I am doing right now, it's everything from:
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FHAT events
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The One Funnel Away Challenge
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The 2 Comma Club X
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My own funnels
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My own projects
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Coaching is definitely part of my major service-based business.
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Everything I get paid from Russell usually ends up being about a fifth of my monthly revenue. Everything else, I generate on my own. I'm very proud of that. I\u2019ve worked my face off for it.
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But when the cash comes in I'm using it to develop something that's long-term because the downfall with a service business is that it takes a lot of time, and usually when you get paid money, the work begins.
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The benefit of a product business, physical or digital, is that once you pay the money, typically, the sale's over. It's easy to get into the service business, but you eventually gotta move into the product business to buy back your time.
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What is it that's going to release you and buy you back your time in the long run.
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PLAYING THE FUNNEL GAME
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Funnels are extremely effective, so you need to have a plan for when the cash comes rolling in.
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I've been part of multiple funnel launches where we almost bankrupted em\u2019 because we sell too fast. I know the funnels work.
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That's not the problem, but sometimes businesses aren't strong enough for the funnels that I build.
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....then a lot of times, once people have made all their money, they don't know to do with it.
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You might be thinking, \u201cOh, that'd be a nice problem to have.\u201d \xa0And yeah, you\u2019re right! *BUT IT IS A PROBLEM ALL THE SAME*
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Most people don't know what the heck to do with the cash that they get from the funnel game because it comes in a lot faster than from many other businesses, especially when you leverage the internet.
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You could have an entire funnel offline, but when you decided to use the funnel online as well... a lot of amazing stuff can go down.
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I've got my time contracted out in several places, it\u2019s not just theOne Funnel Away Challenge and the 2 Comma Club X...
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There are several places where I contract my time out... that's the reason I'm hustling so hard right now.
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There are two value ladders I'm building out, a front-end business, a back-end business\u2026
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I need the outcome of having a team that handles more of the creative decisions for me... and I also want to create mind-blowing content.
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You wanna change an industry, you change the content that they are consuming.
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So this is the strategy; this is how I'm doing what I am right now\u2026
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BUILDING A TEAM
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I grab my revenue, and I dump it into:
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My own funnel team
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Mind-blowing content
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Then all I do to turn the gears...
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My input is the strategy and critical creatives.
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Critical creatives = No one else can write my book for me.
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I have an author who's helping me with the initial draft, but I will definitely rewrite it a billion times.
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So in order to turn these gears, I need to put in the strategy and creatives that that represent my part of the brain that no one else can do It's my shtick, it's my thing. Offers, funnels... that's me.
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I'm trying to be the best, so it's kinda hard to find other people in that area, so I'm NOT gonna try and outsource that part of it. I think that's stupid.
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Then all the revenue that gets generated supports the teams. The other income I get from Russell (about a fifth of my revenue), the rest of the income I create, I dump all of that back in.
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I'm really stoked, guys. I found out that I actually miscalculated how much money I made last year by a good chunk. I forgot about another account... so it was about almost 900 grand that I did my first year on my own, starting with no product, no funnel, no nothing, and that's really awesome.
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The teams are handling the 80% while I do the critical the 20%. I was doing 100% for a long time.
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Then all the cash that comes from the 80%... I'm still NOT taking money from it. Here\u2019s an overview:
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2018 = the goal was to create services and assets to bring in cash to build teams
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2019 = The goal is to build a web presence and have my teams take on 80% of the work
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2020 = I'm I'm rolling the cash from everything I create into my next thing\u2026 (more about this later) ;-)
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This is how I've NOT:
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Taken on any debt
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Borrowed any money
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I've never put a dollar of my own in my own companies, and it's because only take a tiny amount of money to live on... and I roll everything else back into the business.
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I've only been away from ClickFunnels for a year, and it's pretty amazing what's happened. It\u2019s to toot my own horn. I'm just saying, it works...
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WHAT ABOUT AFFILIATE INCOME?
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I don't even treat affiliate cash like profit. I use it as investment cash to go launch expensive things that I don't wanna pay for out of my own pocket or business pocket.
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The One Funnel Away Challenge is something I run for ClickFunnels on the daily. I coach and go live with people to help them to build funnels and overcome challenges, and it's a lot of fun.
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A lot of lives are changed by it, and it has kind of a soft spot in my heart.
When you promote The One Funnel Away Challenge you get $100 for every person who signs up, which is pretty awesome, right?
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A lot of you guys have seen me talk about it, you've probably seen my emails\u2026
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Well, I ended up selling 388 copies of the book. I was like, \u201cWhat? That\u2019s 38 grand!\u201d
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Now, I'm not the kinda guy to just be like, \u201cThis is how much money I made in that amount of time!\u201d That's NOT what I'm saying. I just put that money back into my business...
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WHAT NEXT?
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So the next thing I'm doing is rolling all that cash over into other assets.
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For me and my wife, the asset type that we want to marry is real estate. I'm gonna go in and grab apartment complexes... that's our plan.
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But even when I have those apartment complexes and the money they\u2019ll bring in, I'm still not gonna be livin\u2019 it large. Instead, I\u2019ll take that money and roll it into more real estate. I\u2019ve started looking already.
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I\u2019m gonna roll the money those assets create back into more real estate. Then those assets will create more assets.
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One of my favorite lessons that ever came from the book Rich Dad Poor Dad is that assets create assets... then assets create luxuries.
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Someone reached out \xa0to me and said, \u2018Stephen, you make more in a month than I do in a year.\u201d I was like, \u201cCorrection, my business does. That's true. At this point, (Jan 2019) Me? No!\u201d
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The money that I live on is tiny\u2026 there\u2019s maybe a little glaze on top... a little sesame seeds on the buns every once in a while, but that's basically it.
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The asset goes in and creates cash and rolls the money back into more assets.
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...And that's gonna happen for an undisclosed time, and then, finally, then... I will start living large.
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This is a four-year plan that I'm running, and year one went really well; it's totally working.
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If you don't have a specific plan like this as you move forward, that's okay. Just know this is what I'm doing:
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PHASE #1:
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My own money
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My own funnels
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All the stuff that I'm building
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Other stuff for other people
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High-ticket events
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Low-ticket events
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2 Comma Club X
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... all the places where I\u2019m contracting my time.
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What's fun is when you transition from the service-based business to the product-based business.
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Some people do that out of the gate because then you start to make even more margins... and get your time back, so then you can start building a team.
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PHASE #2:
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I take all that money, and I rolled it into:
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My team
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Mind-blowing content
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A web presence
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My input now is only like 20% of each product instead of the full 100% because these other guys are doing all the stuff.
PHASE #3:
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I take all that cash, and roll it into different asset accounts\u2026 they're savings accounts, but I hate that word. It's really a storage account like Grant Cardone talks about.
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It's a storage account where we're saving up a lot of money so that we can roll that into apartment buildings.
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Then that apartment building will roll on top of itself until it buys the next one, and then both of those until they buy the next one...
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The aim is to buy a new asset (#apartment building) once a quarter from the money created from other assets.
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PHASE#4:
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Assets create luxuries = I get to live large and focus on philanthropic work.
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ARE GURUS DIFFERENT?
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So when you think through how your strategy in the entire game is played... it's fine if you don't know beginning to end, but I would at least try and figure out your 30,000-foot view.
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IMPORTANT: I did NOT know all of this before I started moving forward. Please hear me when I say that.
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If you're like, \u201cBut Steve, I don't have a top-level, 30,000-foot-view strategy. Do I need one before I start moving forward?\u201d No, you don't.
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Just get the funnel out the door, and then as you move forward things will begin to form and crystallize. All these opportunities that you didn't have before will start to appear, that's just the name of the game.
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The longer I've done this, the more I've realized that, honestly, one of the major things that keeps some of these gurus where they are is... the fact that they have a team. It's literally their speed. That\u2019s the difference, nothing else.
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A lot of them don't even know much more than you. It's true. The reason that they've blown up is that:
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They have a web presence
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They've got more content out there so they're easily more findable
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They're actively creating more and more campaigns to sell the same products a lot of times
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They just drop their content while living a cool lifestyle because they've rolled all that cash over into other asset types
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Pretty cool, huh? Now you can play the long term game too!
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Until Next Time - Viva La Capitalist Pigs!
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Hey, many don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer.
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If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money EVER? You can learn to do the same for FREE at AffiliateOutrage.com.
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