I can't stop thinking about this. "It doesn't take money to make money, it takes leverage to make money." -Naval Ravikant For the last 5 years, I've been stalking the world's top entrepreneurs like a hungry lion. Yep, that includes the one and only Mr. Russell Brunson. The NUMBER ONE thing I've noticed? 🚀 They're all obsessed with LEVERAGE 🚀 Now, you might be thinking, "Austin, what the hell does that mean?" Well, sit tight and I'll tell you. A few years back I spent 15+ hours per week editing YouTube videos. Sure, I was making some pocket change, but after hundreds of mind-numbing hours, I had a shocking realization: ⏳ I was spending all my time on UNLEVERAGED tasks ⏳ Yep... I was pumping out a measly video every other week, and they weren't even performing well enough to buy me a decent steak dinner, let alone quit my soul-crushing 9-to-5. So, I did what any desperate man would do. I grabbed a pen and paper and mapped out every single thing I was doing (or could be doing) with my time. Then, I slapped a hypothetical long-term dollar-per-hour ROI on each activity. Here's what it looked like: - Drinking booze? -$100/h (Yeah, that's right, it's COSTING you money) - Mindlessly scrolling Instagram? A big fat $0/h - Editing those damn videos? A measly $10/h Here's where it gets interesting. I started thinking about activities worth $100/h, $1,000/h, and even $100,000/h. I mean, what the hell is Warren Buffett doing with his time that's making him filthy rich? 👇🏻These are all the activities I mapped out (below) 👇🏻 🛑 Disclaimer, this isn't perfect. Not ALL these activities are spot on. But I'd say it's pretty damn close. So, I asked myself two critical questions: 1. "How can I spend MORE TIME in the $100/h+ areas?" 2. "How can I STOP doing the things below $100/h?" And you know what I did? I kicked video editing to the curb. Instead, I started flexing my writing muscles. I dove headfirst into building funnels and driving traffic like a madman.

I went and watched The Push last night after @Russell Brunson suggested it and wow... That show is TWISTED! This dude Darren Brown orchestrates an incredibly elaborate setup designed to manipulate an ordinary person into committing an unthinkable act: pushing someone off a building to their apparent death. Brown creates these situations where the participant is surrounded by actors who all engage in increasingly unethical behaviors. As the situation escalates, the pressure to conform to the group and follow instructions become super intense. At the beginning of the show, he convinced a stranger to steal someone's baby! And yes, he manipulates multiple people to make the push. A few lessons that I took away from the show: 1. Authority: People are more likely to follow orders from someone they perceive as an authority figure, even they aren't a legitimate authority and the orders are unethical. 2. Social Proof: When people are uncertain on what to do, they look for others on cues for how to behave or act, especially in intense situation 3. Gradual Commitment: The participant is led through a series of small commitment the whole way through the show. After a few small micro commitments, he's eventually led to the ultimate commitment of pushing someone off a ledge. 4. Social Conformance: People conform to the norms and expectations of a broader group. This show definitely raises some ethical questions around the extent to which people can be manipulated. But I believe we can also use some of these principles to ethically persuade people into buying from us so that they can help themselves. A few observations I've noticed from Russell, Tony Robbins, Myron Golden, and Alex Becker that follows along the lines of social conformance: 1. Dance party 2. Turn your phone lights on 3. Jump up and down 4. Let me know where you're from in the chat 5. Put a 1 in the chat 6. Turn your camera on 7. Micro commitments: "Would you agree that..."

What's up Prime Movers!?! I'm working late to prep for the BIG "Selling Online" event next week, and going through some of my older trainings, and found a gem that I haven't seen in YEARS!!! Prior to me focusing 100% of my effort on webinars after ClickFunnels launched, I had spent the prior 5 years 100% focused on VSL's. This was a training I did back then, showing how I structured all of my VSL's (called the "Star, Story, Solution" script). This script is in the original DotComSecrets book... but this video goes a LOT deeper! Attached is the script and an 1 hour 16 minute video teaching it. This VSL script is a great tool to have in your copywriting toolbox!

For everyone who's on the fence about joining the Selling Online Event, what was YOUR experience? Missed it? Grab your ticket for the NEXT Selling Online Event here!!

Last year, I discovered a game-changing book on storytelling that transformed the way I tell stories. The book is called Storyworthy, written by Matthew Dicks. Dicks is a multi-time Moth StorySLAM winner. In other words, this guy knows how to tell a story (almost as good as RB😉) Anyway, I took a ton of notes when I was reading this book. Hope you all can take some nuggets from this when you're telling stories in your one-to-many presentations! P.S. Thank you Russell for this amazing community and the live event! 🔥 It's so fun and inspiring to watch a master at their craft. Notes from the book StoryWorthy: Goal: The story must move your audience emotionally. You connect with an audience by bridging the gap between you and another person through a space of authenticity, vulnerability, and truth. - The story must reflect change over time. - Nobody cares about drinking stories or vacation stories or the weather. - The dinner test: Your story should be similar to one you would tell at a family dinner. - Stories resonate with people when they hear secrets about others that they can relate to - All great stories have a 5 second moment of intense change. Every scene should bring clarity to that moment of change. This is the moment when something fundamentally changes forever in the main character - regret, fear, acceptance, despair, resign, life changing decision, fail spectacular, chooses a new path - The beginning always starts with the end. The beginning is the opposite of the 5 seconds of change. This is the story arc. Examples: I was once hopeful now I am not, I was once uncertain but now I am certain, I was lost now I'm found, I was angry now I'm grateful, I was single now I'm married - Decrease the amount of time between the beginning and end to simplify the story. Start with forward movement, moving through space. - Always provide a physical location at all times in the story. This creates a movie in mind of listeners. Cinema of the mind. No location means no story.  - Don’t connect paragraphs, scenes, and sentences together with the word AND. No movement or momentum. Momentum is straightforward and unchanged. Instead, use but and therefore to create zigs and zags.. scenes work against each other. Constantly going some place new. - Failure is more engaging than success. Getting fired vs getting hired. Make yourself the underdog. Undermine yourself. Marginalize yourself. Share a highly flawed example of yourself. Step by step nature. Share the small wins.  - Offer one granular bit of wisdom. Small, original, useful idea. Compelling wisdom and insight. - Raise the stakes. What makes the audience want to hear the next sentence? Who will the winner be? The reason audiences listen and continue to listen. What does storyteller want or need? What are they fighting against? How is this story going to turn out?