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Expert Secrets Book Summary – Russell Brunson

What you will learn from reading Expert Secrets

– How to identify a niche to market your information product too. 

– Tactics, strategies and ideas to help turn people into your followers.

– How to frame your offering as new opportunity to supercharge sales. 

Expert Secrets Book Summary

Expert Secrets Book Summary is all about finding a niche online that would be looking for your advice. With actionable tips and templates to take away. Russel Brunson has created the go to guide for selling information products online.

 

How to choose your niche:

“Thanks to the internet the money is NOT in the submarket. The riches are in the niches.”

How to visualise the – core market, submarket and niche:  

example-of-submarket-and-niches

Health nutrition high-fat diets or Health weight loss weight loss for college students.  

Wealth real estate flipping houses on eBay or Wealth online business Facebook traffic for e-commerce products. 

Relationships parenting dealing with teenagers or Relationships dating how to recover after a breakup. 

 

Questions to consider – when deciding on niche to influence:

Communities: Are there online forums and message boards and social groups dedicated to this topic? 

Vocabulary: Does the market have its own special language? 

Other Experts: Does this market have its own celebrities and gurus? 

 

It’s time to create your Story:

Go deep into figuring out your backstory, character flaws, identity, story lines, and more. 

The key is to understand that the people will follow you because you have completed the journey they are on right now, and they want the result you have already achieved. They want to become like you.

Why use stories you ask? 

People are  inherently skeptical about making the leap forward. When you can confirm in story format that you had similar suspicions and describe how you overcame them, it will bond people to you.

 

Use Polarity – It’s a Strategy:

When your messages cause polarity, it attracts attention and people will pay for it. Neutrality is boring, and rarely is money made or change created when you stay neutral. Being polar is what will attract raving fans and people who will follow you and pay for your advice. 

“If you haven’t offended someone by noon each day, then you’re not marketing hard enough.” 

 

Key to persuasion:

REMEMBER: People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. 

Encourage their dreams. As the leader, it’s vital that you first understand your audience’s dreams, then encourage them inside the new opportunity you are creating for them. 

Justify their failures. Most people who become followers and then fans will have tried to make a change before. You will not be the first person they have tried to learn from. For some reason, they didn’t get their needs met from any prior encounters. It’s important that you take the blame for past failures off their shoulders and place it back onto the old opportunities they attempted in the past. This way, they will be more open to trying your new opportunity. 

 

Are you offering an improvement? Or new opportunity?

Winners present a new opportunity where the losers tend to offer improvement.

 

Our goal is not to fix what’s not working. Our goal is to REPLACE what’s not working with something better.

 

A new opportunity, on the other hand, plays on people’s desires for the change they want in their lives. We want to JUSTIFY their past failures. A new opportunity does that. 

 

When you make a new opportunity, you’re giving them a new dream to move toward. 

 

When we’re looking at any opportunity, we have to decide if it will make us appear smarter, happier, more stylish, more wealthy, more powerful, or more attractive. All these things will increase status. If a potential customer can say, “Yes, this will increase my status.” they will move toward it. 

 

Creating a Movement: 

What do your people really want? Where do they want to go? How can you capture that in a simple calling you could put on a campaign sign? 

For example Russels example: 

 

“You’re Just One Funnel Away…” That was it! Because having a funnel means something different to everyone, by not quantifying it, I left it open for their interpretation.

The next goal is to get your niche to identify with your movement.

Example: 

“Ignite: Energy For Those Who See Things Differently.” 

People say, “Yes, that’s me! I see things differently. I’m a rebel, an entrepreneur, a coder…someone who is trying to change the world.” 

So that is how I create something that people can identify with. 

Your cult-ure needs a Title of Liberty. Something they can look at when they’re feeling doubtful—a rallying call. Something that will help them know who YOU are, remind them who THEY are, and refocus them on where you are going together. 

 

Russels Inspiring script example:

Identify the charismatic leader. Who are you? My name is Russell Brunson.  

Identify the movement. I’m part of a group of underground entrepreneurs you’ve probably never heard of.  

US vs. THEM • Take a stand. We don’t rely on cash from venture capitalists to get started, and we don’t even have goals to go public either. In fact, our motivation is the exact opposite. We have products and services and things that we KNOW can change people’s lives.  

Why are you different? Because we’re fighting against the big brands, people with literally unlimited budgets, we have to do things differently. We have to do things smarter. We don’t have financial safety nets. Every test we take is with our own money. We have to be profitable from day number one. So how do we do that? How is that even possible? 

Who or what are you collectively fighting against? If you asked the MBAs or look in the college textbooks, they’d tell you that what we’re doing is impossible. Yet it’s happening. Every single day. It’s happening through the art and science that we call Funnel Hacking.  

Who you ARE! We are Funnel Hackers, and these are our stories! 

 

Your Job as an Expert:

Your job as the expert is to load up the elevated status side of the scale and decrease the risk of failure. You can do that by creating an amazing product and minimizing risk with things like money-back guarantees, risk reversals, and done-for-you options. 

The key to making a sale is 100% tied to this concept of status. 

To simplify:

Is this thing I’m considering going to increase my status or decrease it?

 

How to get First client script:

Then I asked him, “Would you mind if I came back and just worked a day for free to see if I could help?”  

“Sure. But why would you do that for free?”  

“If I am able to make a big impact on your business, then I’ll probably charge a lot in the future. But for now, I just want to see if I can help you.” 

 

Simple value proposition as an expert:

“I am going to teach __________ how to __________.”

How to [result they desire most] Without [thing they fear most]

 

Market research for modules:

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.

So take all the questions and rewrite them as bullet points to use in sales letters, ads, emails, webinars, and lots of other places.

 

The Big Domino:

“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.” 

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. 

Put Simply:

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

Remember — Logic is justification for the emotional attachment I’ve already made.

 

How to explain anything:

Any time you’re speaking (or writing) and you hit a friction point where some people may not understand what you’re trying to convey, just say “it’s kinda like…” and relate it to something easy to understand. 

This keeps your stories simple, entertaining, and effective. Oversimplification is the key. 

 

The elements of a good story:

Every good story is built on three foundational elements (Character, Desire and Conflict):

Character: Russell Brunson.

Desire: Support his new family. 

Conflict: Google’s ad costs tripled and his business dried up overnight.

 

How to force people to build rapport with the hero:

Make the character a victim of some outside force, so we want to root for them.  

Put the character in jeopardy, so we worry about them. 

Make the character likable, so we want to be with them.  

Make the character funny, so we connect with them.  

Make the character powerful, so we want to be like them. 

However, sharing flaws is critical to gaining rapport. 

 

Towards pleasure:

To Win The hero may be trying to win the heart of someone they love, or they may want to win fame, money, a competition, or prestige. But as you now know, they are really looking for an increase in status.  

To Retrieve The hero wants to obtain something and bring it back.  

Away From Pain:

To Escape The hero desires to get away from something that’s upsetting or causing pain.  

To Stop The hero wants to stop some bad thing from happening. 

 

Underlying transformation:

We see the death and rebirth of his identity. We see the new beliefs he has created. We see his essence. That is the key to a great story.

 

Story stages:

1. The Backstory:  

What is your backstory that gives us a vested interest in your journey?  

2. Your Desires: What is it you want to accomplish? a. External: What is the external struggle you are dealing with? b. Internal: What is the internal struggle you are dealing with?  

3. The Wall: What was the wall or problem you hit within your current opportunity that started you on this new journey?  

4. The Epiphany: What was the epiphany you experienced and new opportunity you discovered?  

5. The Plan: What was the plan you created to achieve your desire?  

6. The Conflict: What conflict did you experience along the way?  

7. The Achievement: What was your end result?  

8. The Transformation: What was the transformation you experienced? 

The internal struggle is not that they want to make money, it’s that they want their kids and spouse to love them. They want love, security, status. 

Even though they failed at their external goals, both of them won their internal struggles, the journey of transformation. 

Michael Hauge said that the internal journey is all about the death of our identity, and the rebirth of our essence. 

Epiphany – It could be a person who helps them understand something. It might be an idea they had while reading, or it could be a breakthrough they discovered while trying to overcome conflict. Describe for them the moment you made the shift, including how it felt inside. 

That story, the one that made you believe in your domino statement, is what I call the “origin story”. If you’re not able to think of false beliefs that your potential prospects might have, think about the false beliefs that you had before your big epiphany. 

 

Stories are the key to peoples beliefs:

Russel — ” Isn’t that exciting? When first started to understand this concept, I realised that stories are the keys to belief. If I can identify people’s false beliefs and tell stories that show them the truth, I didn’t need to “sell” them anything. The stories lead people to the right belief, and they sell themselves. “

 

False Beliefs that are a barrier to action:

So all the false beliefs you found that are related to “the vehicle”, put them into the first column.  

False beliefs about their own “internal beliefs” go in the second column,  

and “external beliefs” into the third.  

Now decide which of those false beliefs is the CORE belief holding them back in each column and put it at the top. Three core false beliefs that are holding that domino up. 

 

Develop frameworks and tools:

Remember — People want tangible assets that make the core training easier to implement. Scripts, templates, cheat sheets, checklists, timelines, and schedules are all valuable tools you could create.

Russell discovered that one of their biggest fears was writing the copy for the funnel pages. So for this element, he gave people his copywriting course, as well as all his templates and swipe files, so they can easily complete that part of the process.

Give solutions to fears. 

When I was first figuring this stuff out, I ran into a big roadblock. I didn’t know how to __________. So I had to create __________ for myself.

The goal is always to help them to see that this new opportunity will give them their greatest desires, increase their status, and help them achieve their goals.

Remember — they need to believe that your specific vehicle is the ONLY way to get what they desire most.

 

You need High Agency People:

If they’re blaming other people or outside circumstances for their failures, you really don’t want them as a client. You want people who will take responsibility for their own actions.

 

If you can answer these questions you are 90% of the way there:

Question #1: What’s the new opportunity I’m offering?

Question #2: What is the one Big Domino for this offer?

Question #3: What special offer can I create for those who purchase?

Question #4: What is my Epiphany Bridge origin story?

Question #5: What are three false beliefs they have about this new opportunity (the 3 Secrets), and what Epiphany Bridge stories will I tell to break those false belief patterns?

  • A. False Belief (Vehicle) B. Epiphany Bridge Story (Vehicle) C. False Belief (Internal) D. Epiphany Bridge Story (Internal) E. False Belief (External) F. Epiphany Bridge Story (External)

 

Hacking Traffic – The Click Funnels Way:

“Russell, you don’t need to create traffic, it’s already there. People are already online. You just have to figure out how to get those people to leave where they are and come to you instead.”

Russell – “I realized that there were probably 100 people who already had MY dream customers. They had the traffic. I didn’t need to create it, I just needed to figure out how to get those people to come and see my new opportunity instead.

I found that the key to the Dream 100 was to step back from my niche and go back up to the submarket level.

Initially, I tried to find 25 list owners in my submarket, 25 bloggers, 25 podcasters, and 25 social media influencers.

I had the 100 people who already had the attention of those I wanted to serve. Then I put together a plan to infiltrate my Dream 100. “

 

Find out peoples projects first:

Russell: “Is what project they’re working on that is most important to them at the moment. After they tell me, I figure out what extra value I can offer to help them reach their goal. And that’s it. It’s simple, but it’s how great business relationships are built. I’m digging my well BEFORE I’m thirsty.”

 

Where to Start after Expert Secrets?

1. Become VERY clear about who you want to serve and what new opportunity you will create. 

2. Get results for your beta group. Your results will become the foundation your expert business will grow from. 

3. Become a master storyteller. This is the most important skill you can learn. 

4. Change the world. Your message has the ability to change people’s lives, so use it.