Competitors Everywhere! | Study Russel Brunson | LIVE EVENT: Founder Brand ... Where do I start?

RB2Bers -

Another big week for those following from home.

Here’s a link to our Baremetrics dashboard.

COMPETITORS EVERYWHERE … WHAT DO I DO???

We live in America.

It’s no surprise that since I’m sitting here yelling about how hard we are crushing it everybody and their mother is trying to get a piece of the pie.

First it was Max and Warmly cold emailing all my LinkedIn egagers.

Now it’s Instantly adding this to their “all-in-one” suite.

Two other no-name’s hit, maybe a third.

What’s my opinion?

I believe one thing from doing this for almost five years and will go to my grave with it.

Everybody does identity differently and pulls DIFFERENT ICP website visitors.

See Sam Levan’s blog post.

In that reality (which is the reality we are living in), you try to buy as much signal as possible, incrementally, until buying is no longer incremental.

The “rip them out” message is incorrect and I believe it just ads friction.

“Use us too” is correct and backed by data.

I hear it all the time.

Here’s another experiment/results from a marketer on LinkedIn who was totally confused …

(… I was not confused, it was exactly as I would have expected):

rB2B

210 total leads

16% - within title ICP

22% - within Industry ICP

40% - within size ICP

3.3% - within overall ICP

Vendor 2

231 total leads

14% - within title ICP

48% - within Industry ICP

41% - within size ICP

2.5% - within overall ICP

And get this:

THERE WASN’T A SINGLE OVERLAPPING ICP NAME!!!

 So, as these guys keep popping up, you only really have one option.

Use the gold standard (RB2B), and bolt on whoever else that you feel like giving time to trying.

Study Russel Brunson - He’s the FUTURE OF GTM

If you’re in SaaS you may not recognize this guy, but every serious entrepreneur needs to study him. Why? Because he bootstrapped his SaaS startup to $100M ARR in just 36 months.

Here are 8 lessons I’ve learned from Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels that you should implement in everything you do, starting today:

1. Start posting content every day

Russell started a daily podcast in his car on the way to work where he published experiments he was doing, what was working, and what wasn’t. He stuck with it for years and woke up to thousands of fans saying they binged every episode.

Slowly becoming an “expert” over time created the possibility of $100m ARR.

2. Deeply understand the psychology of your prospects

If you understand the deepest fears and biggest dreams of your prospects, you can create messaging that pierces the hearts of your target audience.

3. Make sure your offer ISN’T incremental

People are not looking for a better version of what’s not working for them. You need to offer a new vehicle.

4. Master one-to-many selling

This was the true unlock, and something no one else has done. Russell was spending $3K driving traffic to a weekly webinar that made on average $50k in yearly subscriptions. Not kidding.

The secret: he bundled/value stacked info products WITH his SaaS (and positioned the subscription to the SaaS as “free”).

5. Create a category

Russell created a website builder when there were 100s of them, but positioned it as a “sales funnel builder” and had zero competition (for a bit) in that new category.

6. Have ugly branding

The first time I saw the Clickfunnels website, I couldn't believe it. It looked like a kindergartener made it. Like everybody else in SaaS, I blew them off, only to find that it was the fastest growing bootstrapped SaaS ever.

7. Start a movement

Russell studied the biggest movements in history - good and bad - and dialed them down to 3 key components: A charismatic leader, a new opportunity and a future-based cause.

Russell created a tribe called Funnel Hackers and his 2 Comma Club to celebrate the most successful members. He’s a religious-level figure to many.

8. Stay bootstrapped!

Infusionsoft tried to acquire Clickfunnels for $35m early on and VCs were beating the door down. Russell wanted to stay bootstrapped.

TAKEAWAY:

Russell Brunson would crush anything he set out to do.

Even so, it’s SHOCKING he could bootstrap $100m ARR selling a $97/mo product to vSMB.

What’s even more insane is that it’s been almost 5 years and no one has tried to replicate his playbook in SaaS.

I believe that Russell’s go-to-market strategy:

1. Driving people to a live event

2. Using an influencer to do one-to-many selling

3. Value-stacking tech with info, tools and templates

…is the future of GTM.

I’m sure the sellers of $1M unbudgeted tech will push back and say “no way”.

And maybe for complex and expensive enterprise tech, that’s true.

But for everybody else, I have just one question...

Why not?

There was a very active discussion in the comments - click here to join the conversation.

This Week’s LIVE Event - How to START a Founder Brand

People ask me the same thing all the time.

“How do I start posting on LinkedIn?”

My journey was somewhat unique, so I always feel like my answer to that questions isn’t great.

Jessica Zweig started and sold SimplyBe, a personal branding agency that was acquired by Hawke Media and the highest demand offering Hawke currently has.

I asked her to come on the show to talk to us about different ways to start out, different goals people hope to achieve, and options out there to help get started.

She sold the business so she’s not going to be selling anything.

Just dropping wisdom.

This Tuesday, July 23, 3pm EDT.

Register here!

If you made it this far, as always, thank you for reading!

I got a fairly positive response to the “course” question, so I’m starting to make a couple.

I think I’m also going to use it to get experimental with GTM.

See if I can do some of what Russel was doing.

We’ll see …

Have a great weekend, and keep building!

Adam