The Primary Question That Fuels Your Value Ladder

How asking the correct primary question could lead to a two comma club funnel and a fully fleshed out value ladder!

On this episode Russell talks about discovering a concept that could help create an entire multi-million dollar a year company. Here are some of the amazing things to listen for in this episode: 

Why basing your business on one primary question can help you with all the product creation. How this one question makes finding a hook and story easier. And hear examples of how you can use the primary question strategy with your own business.

So listen here to find out how asking the right, really good question, could be the foundation to your entire business.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I am so excited to have you guys here today. This episode is one that I think is going to change a lot of your guys’ lives. I’m going to show you how to change one really good question into a million dollar a year business. So I hope you’re ready, and let’s get started.

Alright everybody, I’m at Lake Powell sitting here thinking about you all and what I can share to give you guys some ideas and insights and I was thinking about last week, I was actually recording a podcast for the Mastermind.com product, not a podcast, but a video training for the mastermind.com member’s area. And in that training I was talking about how, a lot of ways you can make money selling information products and one of them is you become a reporter.

And as I was diagramming out this presentation, I was looking at, you know, who are famous reporters we know throughout time? There’s like Napoleon Hill who went out and interviewed over 500 people and then wrote Think and Grow Rich, which became an amazing book. And you look at nowadays, someone like Oprah Winfrey who interviewed hundreds of amazing people, so she built her brand. And then Larry King, and all these people who were reporters.

Then I started thinking about my journey, because I didn’t always start as, “I’m Russell Brunson, the internet nerd expert guy.” Initially it wasn’t, I had no idea about internet stuff. In fact, when I was first getting started I remember the second course I created, the first course I created was on how to sell public domain products, and it was a course I did and I think it was like $250, or maybe $500, I sold access to the course for. It was a live training course and I think we ended up selling, I don’t know, $25,000 worth, which is really, really good for me.

Then 4 or 5 months later I decided to do a new course, and I called it Affiliate Bootcamp, which is funny because we just launched affiliatebootcamp.com, which I’ll talk about here in a minute. But it was the original Affiliate Bootcamp, and I sold it for a thousand dollars. And I still remember, I launched it and I had no idea who was going to buy and how many people. And we ended up selling 79 people $1000 a piece, made 79 grand. This is me in college, and I’m flipping out.

I’m like, “I cannot believe I just made $80,000. That’s more than any of my teacher’s made, and I made it by selling one course that I had not yet fulfilled on.” So we sold the course and I started fulfilling. So module number one I did and I started teaching my affiliate marketing stuff, and I was teaching what I was doing. And then I sent out a survey and said, “Okay, for the next modules, what are you interested in learning most about?”

People started submitting in all these things and it was funny because one person, well not one, but a lot of people were like, “I want to learn PPC, I want to learn SEO, I want to learn….” All these things that I did not know how to do. I was like, “Oh crap, they’re all going to want their money back, and I’ve already spent it on dumb stuff.” Just kidding, kind of.

Anyway, so I was like, “I gotta figure out how to do this.” So I taught the two or three modules I knew I was going to teach myself, then I was like, “I gotta figure out how to get the right people in here to teach these other modules, because I don’t know the answer to these questions.” So I remember looking out and I made a list of like 10 people who I looked up to, who were really good at doing pay per click search engine marketing, as an affiliate, and I messaged them all. I said, “Hey, I got this training program. I got 79 people that signed up and they want to know about PPC, can I have you come on and let me interview about how to do pay per click if you were an affiliate?”

And from that I got someone who said yes. So I brought them on my training, I did a module, I interviewed them. And it was really cool because I had a chance to ask them all my own personal questions. I interviewed them and asked all these questions, and I learned from it, plus my members got to hear the module on that topic and it was awesome.

The next week, the same thing, they wanted to learn about SEO, and I didn’t know about SEO, so I found the top SEO person, I messaged a couple of them and one of them said yes. I brought them on, they got to train and I asked them all my questions. And what was cool, during this process of me being the reporter, I started learning these things, and I would then go apply them and I became good at all these things. I became good at PPC, I became good at SEO, I became good at all these things, and that’s how I became the internet marketing nerd that I am today, by interviewing amazing people.

So that was what I was sharing during this training, the Mastermind.com training series. About how I became the reporter and started selling courses just asking people questions. It was shown in Tony Robbins book, his Money: The Master of the Game, as well as Unbreakable. In both those books he took on the rule of reporter. He went and found amazing people, interviewed them and compiled them into a book and boom, made two New York Times bestselling books by being the reporter.

So then I started thinking practical applications, nowadays how do I do this? Because I still do this, right. A lot of times we think we just become the reporter when we’re starting a business and trying to learn things, which is a great way to get started by the way, but I look at it now and now I want to keep growing Clickfunnels. I want to have more frontend offers, but I don’t have the ability to create all the content.

So last year what we did is we sat down and created our very first summit funnel, and you guys have probably seen our summit funnels, the first one was at thirtydays.com and now there’s an evergreen version. If you go to thirtydays.com you can see this in action. But this whole funnel came about based on one question, one really, really good question. The question was this, and I’m probably going to mess it up a little bit because I don’t’ have it here in front of me at the beach, but the question was basically, “If you were to lose everything, your list, your JV partners, your products, your name, everything, and all you had left was your marketing knowhow and your Clickfunnels account, what would you do from day number one to day 30 to save yourself?”

Boom, that was the question. And it was a really, really good question I think. So instead of me going and writing, creating a product and me teaching it, I went out there and asked a whole bunch of people, I got 30 people each to answer that question for me, and they answered it for a written chapter, which we compiled into a big book, we also had them, we interviewed them, that was the question and they answered it, and that became the summit and a bunch of other cool things. So you guys can get that, if you haven’t, I’m sure of you guys are like, ‘I want the answer to that question Russell.” If you do just go to thirtydays.com, you can go and opt in and you can hear everybody’s answers, how they answered that question.

But that funnel became a Two Comma Club Funnel in like a week, week and a half, something like that. Made a million bucks really, really fast, all based on one super intriguing amazing question. Now fast forward a little while later, affiliate bootcamp, I had created affiliate bootcamp when Clickfunnels first launched and it was kind of out of date and everyone wanted a new one, and they’re like, ‘Russell, you’ve got to create content to do a new one.” I’m like, “I don’t have time. I’m literally trying to change the world. How am I supposed to sit down and make a course on affiliate bootcamp again, for like the 20th time?”

So then all the sudden we thought, what if we do the same thing we did with thirtydays.com? And we ask our top affiliates that same question? So we said, “What’s the question we’re going to ask? It’s not the same question, but what’s an interesting question an affiliate would want to know?” and I said, “What if the question was, you know, right now you’re an affiliate and you’re making some good money, but you want to shift this part time hobby into a fulltime career. What would you do over the next 100 days to go fulltime?” again, I slaughtered the question. If you go to affiliatebootcamp.com you can read the headline on top of it. It says it correctly because it’s the headline, right.

So go there, but basically, if you had to rely on your affiliate commissions to survive and you had 100 days to figure it out, what would you do if you wanted to change this hobby into a fulltime career? That was the question which drove the product, which drove everything else. And it was really, I think turned out, you know, affiliate bootcamp is doing killer right now. It’ll be a Two Comma Club funnel very, very soon as well. But it was all based on a really good question.

Now for us, basically for each quarter we’re launching a new summit. I love this so much and it helps me to get into new markets. So our next one we’re doing is called brick and mortar funnels and it’s going to be going after using funnels for brick and mortars. So the question will be something like, “Hey if you’re a brick and mortar business owner and your yellow pages, tv, radio, flyers, google, SEO all disappeared and all you had left was a Clickfunnels account, what would you do to get a hundred new clients into your door in the next 100 days?”

So it’s always something like that. Here’s a question, hypothetically speaking, if you lost everything what would you do? I’m watching Stephen Larsen right now putting on his very first summit, which is kind of cool and his question, I don’t want to ruin his question, but it’s like the opposite of mine. It wasn’t like, “What would you do if you had 30 days left?” His was like, “you’re about to die and you got one shot to make an offer, the offer of your lifetime, one that will be the thing you’re remembered for because you’re going to die, and this offer is going to be your legacy that feeds your family, feeds your kids for the rest of time, what is that offer going to be? How would you create it?” So he’s taken that whole concept as well, and boom, he’s launching his summit and everything else behind it.

Anyway, I wanted to kind of get this thought in your head as you’re creating products or courses or, and I’m not positive of this yet, but Stephen and I were kind of geeking out about this. I said, “Almost you can build your entire value ladder based on one question.” Like if I was a little less ADD and not creating a million things at once, I could have just turned thirtydays.com into my entire business. Imagine this okay, someone comes into thirtydays.com and there’s the free summit they come into. And then I could upsell them to buy the recordings and the transcripts and make money there.

And then I could do, okay, after going through all these 30 days plans from other people, I wanted to test the whole thing out. So I went and picked a plan and followed it in a market I’ve never been in before and I tested the whole thing out and this is what happened. And I could create a whole home study course now, for I don’t know, $500 or $1000 of me doing a plan where I’ll take a look over my shoulder and watch the whole thing. I’m going to record everything, document it, show you how much money I made, show you what I did, what I tried, trial and error and you get to see the whole thing. And that could be a whole home study course where they get to watch what I did, and I could do Q&A’s each Friday.

Maybe it’s an 8 week course. Each week I’m going to do part of one of these plans to execute this thing and it may be awesome, it may bomb, I don’t know. And you guys could come on, and again, every Tuesday I’m going to release a new module and every Friday I’ll do a live Q&A, you could jump on. I could sell that from anywhere from $500 to a couple thousand bucks. Boom, there’s a home study course.

And then I could do 30 day bootcamps where it’s like, “You went through everybody else’s 30 day plans, you watched me do my 30 day plan, how would you guys like us to help you with your 30 day plan. You fly to Boise, or fly to wherever you live, Timbuktu and we’ll sit down in this small workshop with ten people, and we’re going to sit down and figure out your 30 day plan. What’s the market, what’s the thing? And we’re going to do it with you, and it’s 8 grand for this done with you experience, and it’s going to be an amazing 30 day experience. You come here and you set up the whole thing, and over 30 days we’re watching and coaching and making sure you’re doing a good job.”

And then for those who want additional, you have the 3 day, 30 day bootcamp where you come through and we help you get things set up for you, and then on the backside of it, we do live one on one coaching where you get free coaching calls for the next 90 days, and that’s $15,000 or $18,000. And that could be it. I’d build a whole entire multimillion dollar a year business off of one question. I could easily do the same thing with affiliate bootcamp if I had the time and inclination to go deeper with it.

I don’t because for me, my business is different. My model is to get people into Clickfunnels. So I don’t have to or need to go as deep. But if this was my business I could. But for most of you guys, this is your business. You could go really, really deep on this. Right, the affiliate bootcamp question alone could be a multimillion dollar a year business. Boom, number one, they get the summit, they come in. Number two, the get to look over the shoulder as I do the process with them, where they get to watch me do the thing, live Q&A’s watching the thing that are actually done with you, where I’m executing this thing with them, with live Q&A’s. It’s like done for you, or even more so if you fly to Boise and we sit down and do this in a workshop event. And you can easily grow that into a big business.

So I’m sharing this with you guys because a lot of times we look at our businesses and we’re trying to figure out what’s the course? What’s the product? What’s all these different things we’re trying to figure out and it’s like, no wait. What’ if instead we came back and said, “What’s the one question that I could ask that’s a good enough question that people are going to be so intrigued they have to come in.” I think the reason why thirtydays.com is done so good is that people are like, “Man, I want to hear what Trey Lewellen thinks. Or what does Garrett White think? What does Stephen Larsen think? What does Julie Stoian think? What do all these people think that are in our community and successful. What would they do if they lost everything?” Just the pure intrigue of that is like, I want to find out. And you get in the front door.

If you look at the way this funnel is structured, we don’t charge people. They opt in and they get all this stuff for free. We upsell them the recordings and the transcripts and things like that. Excuse me, the recordings and transcripts of the interviews, and we start making money. But we’re giving, that question causes the curiosity and intrigue to get somebody to come in. It’s good from an ad standpoint. It’s a good hook, a good story, a good…all those things are tied into that so strongly and so powerfully.

Anyway, I want you guys thinking about that. Take a minute and step back and look at your entire value ladder. If you don’t know what a value ladder is, go and read the Dotcom Secrets book. You can get a free copy at dotcomsecrets.com, there’s my pitch. But your value ladder, step back and say, “What’s the question that could drive this entire value ladder?”

 If I was in the weight loss space it could be something like “Alright, it’s swimsuit season, you’ve got thirty days. You’ve got thirty days and you’ve got to lose 3 pounds off your hips and fit in your size, (I don’t know what girl sizes are) size 2 or size 12 or whatever it is. The sizes. Fit in this size, and you have to make sure that you weren’t hungry. What would you do from day one to day 30 to lose the 22 lbs, feel good, and fit into your swimsuit?” Boom, there’s your question, which comes with a summit, a book, a product, a webinar, a coaching program, all those things could be based on that one question, that one concept, that one thing.

Let’s say in the financial space, let’s say, “All you had left was $2000 to your name to invest and you wanted to make sure that by the time your retired you’re able to whatever. What would you do for the next 30 days? Where would you invest your money?” I don’t know something like that.

“If you’re married and you’re 30 days away from being divorced, or someone just filed divorce papers and you got one last shot to try and save your marriage, what would you do from day 1 to day 30 to transform everything?”

And it doesn’t have to be 30 days. It could be 30 days, it could be 100 days, it could be the next 12 months. It could be whatever, it doesn’t really matter the timeline. It’s just getting the question that’s a hook that could fuel every single step of the value ladder.

Anyway, I wanted you to kind of step back and just think about that, because I think it’s super powerful. It’s funny because the 30 days, we asked the question and the content, everything came together really quick. With affiliate bootcamp we didn’t leave the question, we just kind of went, “Let’s interview people on affiliate marketing.” And the whole project was harder to figure out. It wasn’t until the end when we said, “We need to attach this to a question.” And we shifted around and asked the right question and then everything came together really quickly.

And with Brick and Mortar Funnels coming out, it’s very simple. I think with Traffic Secrets and these other ones, it’s all going to be the same question. You know, Dotcom Secrets, if you’re business is struggling and you had 30 days to fix it, what would you do? Boom, Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook For Growing Your Thing With CLickfunnels.

You got a funnel that wasn’t converting and you knew that your friend’s family, you know, your family wasn’t going to eat, and the people you were called to serve wouldn’t be saved unless you got this funnel to convert, what would you do? Boom, Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Persuading People to Buy Your Stuff.

You just got hit up in the Google or Facebook slap and your entire business ran away from you and you’ve got 30 days to not only get traffic to your business again, but to start to grow, what would you do for the next 30 days to quickly grow your traffic? Boom, Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Funnels with Your Dream Customers. Boom.

So it’s like the question and the product becomes the answer. Man, it makes it fun. It makes me want to go back to all of my old sales pages from my old books and lead all of them with the question. What’s the question?

It’s funny, man, probably two, maybe three years ago I did a podcast about the primary questions, which means if you haven’t been listening to the back episodes of the podcast you are failing. Go back and binge listen now, go to marketingsecrets.com/binge and download the binge guide. But there’s one I did about primary question, which is a concept I learned from Tony Robbins, but he basically said every single person has a primary question that is subconsciously driving everything they do.

So it’s like, you have to become aware of you primary question because sometimes your primary question is leading you to destruction or destroying your family, your marriage, your life and all these things. So figure out what your primary question is and then figuring out how to change it or deviate it. And I think it’s kind of the same, or similar thinking here. What’s the primary question for your business, for your value ladder? What’s the primary question that can drive everything for you?

So I’d recommend to start thinking about that because it makes the product creation standpoint and process so much more fun. It makes the hooks easier, the stories better, and the offers insane.

I hope that helps. I appreciate you guys, all. I’m going to get back to having fun with my kids, my wife, out on the water. So if you enjoyed this episode please take a snapshot of it on your phone right now, post it on instagram, facebook, or wherever you like to post stuff, and tag me and do #marketingsecrets. I greatly appreciate it. And if you haven’t yet, go to iTunes and rate and review, that would mean the world to me. And that’s all I got.

Alright Aiden, say bye to everybody.

Aiden: Bye.

Russell: Alright we’re going to go play. See you later and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.