Episode 004 – Justin Burns

Automated Transcription

Richard Matthews 0:00
Okay so I’d like to welcome Justin burns on to the show. How are you doing, Justin?
Justin Burns 0:06
What’s up, how’s it going?
Richard Matthews 0:07
Awesome! So, I hear you are out in Chicago enjoying the cold cold winter weather out there.
Justin Burns 0:13
Don’t say enjoy.
Richard Matthews 0:15
You want to know something fun? It was 80 degrees here yesterday in Southern California. That’s winter for us.
Justin Burns 0:21
Yeah, just throw it all in my face. Us mid-west people love to hear about how sunny it is…
Richard Matthews 0:30
How sunny and beautiful it is here?
Richard Matthews 0:34
Okay, so Justin, I want to start this off. Thank you again for coming on the show and agreeing to do this with us. You are the principle behind the Sales Funnel Agency. That right?
Justin Burns 0:42
Yep!
Richard Matthews 0:44
Okay, so you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you do for the Sales Funnel Agency? What that company focuses on and what your part in it is?
Justin Burns 0:53
Yeah sure. So, for the past eight years-which means, you know that over a hundred years old and internet is…
Richard Matthews 1:01
Yeah.
Justin Burns 1:03
We’ve been building funnels for people like authors on Oprah Winfrey Network…so we’ve built a lot of funnels for celebrities.
Richard Matthews 1:16
Yeah.
Justin Burns 1:17
So, that really put a lot of success to the degree of building hundreds and hundreds of sales…Now that means that we’ve done a lot of work.
Richard Matthews 1:25
Yeah
Justin Burns 1:25
When you’re kind of giving your audience the baseline of what a sales funnel is: A sales funnel is nothing more than a nurturing mechanism. Okay. That’s what it is.
It nurtures prospect it is the series of sequences that you can kind of summarize it to behavioral marketing.
Richard Matthews 1:44
Yeah.
Justin Burns 1:44
So, a lot of people, a lot of business owners have static websites and as you know, especially on the internet, everything evolves, everything changes, everything grows, right.
And so five years ago, if you are a business owner, you could have a traditional website. And that was okay. All you had to do was have your mug, and some professional pictures, and then the nice tie, the nice suit…and people judge you based on,
“Oh, website looks great!”
Nowadays -because everything is evolving and changing…People don’t judge you on that. People judge you on the pain points that you’ve solved in their business and whatever it is that they’re buying.
So, in a lot of business owners, what we found is that they’re missing what’s called an indoctrination component. The Indoctrination is all about really connecting with the prospect and helping them to identify the problems that they have and expand that a little more.
And so that’s what a sales funnel does. That’s the summary of sales funnel.
So there’s different types of sales funnels. You have different things like Webinar Funnels, Case Study Funnels, you have Opt-In Funnels and what I found is that a lot of people were investing in different trainings. I did it with a lot of success for over -again, under the past couple years. And before I started to go into, you know, helping other people do it, I did it with a lot of success. Eight people, we were just really cranking and so what I found is that there were people out there are so many business owners that need to be served.
Richard Matthews 3:26
Yeah
Justin Burns 3:26
And, even if I built a hundred-person sales team, I still wouldn’t be able to cover the end of their sales funnel. So, it’d be cool if instead, I’m gonna empower people to be able to do the same thing…help them to build a successful sales funnel agency!
At first I wasn’t going to do it I was going to show people this. I don’t want to be one of those coaches that sell -you know…
Richard Matthews 3:51
Yeah.
Justin Burns 3:52
…and then one day I was speaking at an event and a guy similar to kind of how you did came up to me and said…
He came back the next day, he took “Immediate Action,”as what I call them. And he said, “Dude, I closed the $5,000 deal last night in my hotel room and I was going to charge $500 for that funnel and because of you telling me that I could charge $5000, it was awesome!”
Seeing that I was like, “You know what?”
Richard Matthews 4:22
“I can help people!” Yeah.
Justin Burns 4:25
Exactly. Why not help them do the same?
Richard Matthews 4:28
Yeah, that’s awesome. So that’s really your your origin story for the Sales Funnel Agency. I want to go a little bit farther back. When did you -I wanna talk about sort of your origin story for becoming an entrepreneur? I like to say every hero has an origin story. When did you first discover or think to yourself, “You know what, I might be a little bit different.”?
I’m not cut out of the same mold is you know, 90% of the people in the world. When did you discover that you wanted to be in business for yourself and that you can bring value to other people that way As opposed to joining the regular workforce?
Justin Burns 5:07
We all have those stories, right?
Richard Matthews 5:09
Yeah.
Justin Burns 5:11
The the hero’s journey. It’s definitely a hero’s journey if you are not. How I actually got started at being an entrepreneur was…I’ve always had this selling ability.
in school, I was the kid who always tries to find something to sell.
Richard Matthews 5:33
Yeah.
Justin Burns 5:34
I remember when I was working at BestBuy. Luckily I didn’t have to do all the jobs are really hated. I went right into BestBuy but I didn’t have any work experience. So, a guy who was mentoring me at the time, he was the district manager in BestBuy he said, “Well I can’t really hire you for anything. You’re going to be a cashier.”
I’m like the only guy cashier!
Richard Matthews 6:03
Yeah.
Justin Burns 6:03
Like a bunch of women and I’m the only guy. I remember they were like, “You have this quota to sell Sports Illustrated.” The magazine.
Richard Matthews 6:14
Yeah.
Justin Burns 6:15
So you know, somebody is like checking out a line in BestBuy and now you’re pitching them and they’re like, they’re pissed off. Now. You got to pitch them…
Richard Matthews 6:22
Sports Illustrated.
Justin Burns 6:23
…magazine. Wasn’t the best conversation. But what happened is that I started to develop this knack for really connecting.
Richard Matthews 6:33
Yeah.
Justin Burns 6:35
Naturally I had the highest sales in all of BestBuy history for selling the most Sports Illustrated magazine. So then they kind of… I got a little bit of promotion -not even got a raise. But I got a little bit of promotion.
And I went to the sales floor and they put me in home theater. All the speakers and I was just fascinated with technology.
Richard Matthews 6:55
Yeah.
Justin Burns 7:00
That’s when I started to love technology. I just started to see the Television. And the internet started coming on to TVs. I was just completely blown away. And I’ll never forget this guy. I shouldn’t be admitting this. But I don’t work for BestBuy anymore.
This guy cam in and he was a really successful businessman. I’m selling and I’m telling him about the features. But the difference is that I was asking him about what did he really need the system for? Because the system would -I was asking him questions.
Richard Matthews 7:36
Yeah. Question-based selling.
Justin Burns 7:39
Yeah, they don’t ask questions and then allow the prospect to sell themselves. What they typically do is they go into feature-driven selling, which is…
Richard Matthews 7:51
Yeah.
Justin Burns 7:51
…let me tell you about the features of my product. Let me tell you how great my product is. As opposed to: let me get down to the pain of what my prospect is experiencing and sell him on that.
Richard Matthews 8:03
Yeah.
Justin Burns 8:03
And this guy identified that. He said, “Dude, why are you selling home theater systems?” He said, “Listen, I’m not trying to shortcut Best Buy, but I want you to come by my house, and I’m going to pay to hook up my surround sound system.”
So I said, “What do you mean? I can’t do that”
He was like, “I want to teach you a lesson. Come by.”
So I went by his house, I was afraid. I was calling my girl. I don’t know. Is this guy gonna murder me. I don’t know. What does he want?
And I go by this guy’s house. The guy is sitting there and he’s like, “Come in and hook up the surround sound system.” And he pays me $500.
Now, mind you, I’m getting paid like $7 an hour.
Richard Matthews 8:52
Yeah.
Justin Burns 8:52
So at that time, for an hour of my time, I got paid $500. Now, I think I was a millionaire at that point.
Richard Matthews 9:01
Yeah, changed your whole outlook on money.
Justin Burns 9:04
Changed my whole outlook on money. And he said something at the end. He said, “I want you to start to develop your mindset.” And I’m like, 16 years old. So I didn’t really get it at that time.
He’s like, “I want you to start to change your mindset about money and the value that put out.”
And at that time, I didn’t realize what it meant until I started to kind of work as I transition from that job. But that experience led me into a sales job where I became the number one salesman that company for almost three years.
And I made a really nice six figure income, I was doing very well. And the thing was I got comfortable. As most people do.
Richard Matthews 9:48
Yeah.
Justin Burns 9:48
And very comfortable because I was making over $10,000 a month. I was doing fairly well in my early 20s. And I thought that I had life figured out I said, “Look, I can make ten thousand dollars a month forever. I’ll be fine.”
Richard Matthews 10:02
Yeah.
Justin Burns 10:03
Obviously, that didn’t happen. They started to lay off people, even though I was number 1 salesman. They laid me off, and it became, one of those things where I was struggling.
And, so I got another opportunity. Luckily, one of my supervisors reach out to me.
He said, “Hey Justin I want you to work for my company.”
And so right when I was about to do that, I sort of just felt like, -I call it the Epiphany Moment. The Epiphany Moment is when you trust your gut level to do it, even though it’s the hardest decision that you will probably ever make. It’s one of, I think, it’s something that every entrepreneur gets. It’s like, the most difficult decision is typically the decision that you have to ultimately hear. And it’s the one with the most resistance.
It’s the one with the most just the most barriers, the most challenges, everything.
Richard Matthews 10:59
Yeah.
Justin Burns 11:01
So I’m here. I’m like, “here’s this $40,000 a year, guaranteed job plus commissions. I wanted to get back up to where I was.” And then you have this hard road, paved with thorns and all kinds of other stuff.
Richard Matthews 11:18
I took the road less traveled.
Justin Burns 11:20
And which road do you take? And I got on the phone with my mother and my mom worked a traditional job her entire life.
Richard Matthews 11:29
Yeah.
Justin Burns 11:30
“You need to take the guaranteed income, what are you doing?” And that’s what I when I just listened and tuned in to really what the universe had for me.
I remember when I thought about this, and I said in my gut feeling, “Something is telling me to go to the road that’s less traveled.”
Richard Matthews 11:51
Yeah.
Justin Burns 11:52
And for three years, that road was less traveled. Because it was very challenging. I mean, for at least around two or three years, I hardly made any money.
It was really hard. It was really plagued with limiting beliefs. It was a lot of thinking that I had to change in myself and I started an SEO company. I studied SEO for a couple years. I started an SEO company and I started charging $500 an hour. I mean, $500 a month, I’m sorry. For my services.
Now. Fast forward, I started to figure it out, and I started to get clients. I’m making a couple thousand bucks a month. But I’m miserable.
Richard Matthews 12:46
Yeah.
Justin Burns 12:47
Like, I’m miserable. I have all these clients. I’m overwhelmed. It’s just me and somebody else and I’m miserable. I hate what I’m what I’m doing. And I completely sabotage that business. Because when you hate something, technically are going to sabotage it.
Richard Matthews 13:03
And it’s hard to keep going and making it do what you want.
Justin Burns 13:07
Yeah, you typically do that. And so I’m back to square one like that. I have, I mean, no money. No income coming. And I’m like, “What the hell am I going to do?”
And I’m afraid. It’s one of those things that you get to.
What I really found -what I realized…and this is a really big learning lesson for your listeners…
What I realized in those two to three years that I failed is, I was going through information courses, I was consuming all type of books. It wasn’t just sitting around and not doing anything.
Richard Matthews 13:50
You were bettering yourself
Justin Burns 13:53
Yeah, I was better myself. And I was preparing myself. The biggest thing is that, I was missing someone that had already done it.
Richard Matthews 14:03
Yeah.
Justin Burns 14:03
I was missing someone who could help me to remove the barriers. Not to say there wasn’t going to be challenges, but I was missing someone to help me to remove it. And I would say that the biggest thing that was missing as a mentor to help me not just any mentor, some mentor who gets it, who had done it, and to help me get there a lot faster.
Richard Matthews 14:23
Yeah, I talked a lot about, very specifically like, “you want to find someone who has already the results that you want to have. And then, doing what they do, and learning from them.” Because that’s the best way to have what they have. To get to that point.
Justin Burns 14:40
Oh, dude, it’s like, night and day.
Richard Matthews 14:43
Yeah,
Justin Burns 14:45
You know, there’s nothing wrong with evolving yourself…going through information and courses and that’s really commendable.
Those things will help you evolve. What’s even more fascinating is being with someone…working with someone that can sort of call you out on your crap.
Richard Matthews 15:04
Yeah.
Justin Burns 15:04
Because we all have crap. We all have things that are stopping us from achieving the goal. Kind of, like, let’s say you want to do $20,000? Like, that’s your goal, 20, $30,000 a month? Well, most people say that, you know, whatever it is, they make whatever excuse they’d come up.
But everything can really come down to a strategy -a strategic way of getting to point A, from where you are now to point B. The only difference is the way that you get there, and the strategy that we get with it.
Richard Matthews 15:43
Yeah.
Justin Burns 15:43
So we know that if you want to do service based businesses, if you charge -you can get there charging $1,000. If you want to get to $20,000, then you have to think about the consequences of getting to $20,000 at a thousand-dollar price point.
Richard Matthews 16:00
Get 20 clients… Yeah.
Justin Burns 16:03
You gotta hire more people, your margins are very thin. So most people don’t really take those things into consideration when they’re scaling their business. As opposed to charging what you’re worth getting your client a bigger payoff, instead of thinking about, you can charge less than what you’re worth, you charge more than what you’re worth, you’re working with lesser and few fewer clients, and you’re actually getting to your goal.
Richard Matthews 16:31
So I want to I want to stop right there because you said something really powerful and I want to talk about it for just a second. You said, getting your clients bigger results.
And it’s a focus shift from thinking, “I want to make $20,000 a month” to “How can I give my clients a better result.” And then the result of that will be that I get paid what I’m worth. Which I think is a really important point.
Justin Burns 16:56
Yeah, it is. What we do for our clients is like, it’s great that we have our revenue goals and our income goals, but it’s really all about who you serve, it’s all about the results that you give other people.
Then, in kind of equipping yourself to get people results instead of -what I find is like a lot of marketing consultants, what they do is they jump from thing to thing to thing. They’re just trying to sell the next best thing as opposed to you know, a model that really serves their clients at the best level.
For me, the reason why I chose sales funnels was not because it was the next best thing. It wasn’t the best thing at that time. I chose that because from my experience with SEO, is that I started to see why people are really failing. It’s not that they you know, needed more traffic they were missing an automated system.
Richard Matthews 17:50
Yeah.
Justin Burns 17:51
To nurture their prospects. I said if I can get them this, I’m going to get them results and that’s what happens. When I turned my first $3,000 client I got a chance to see them make $5,000 return on their investment.
So you have to make sure -and the key that you just kind of touched on, you got to make sure that you over deliver and that you get people results because then…you know you don’t have to worry about, “Am I charging too little?” “Am I charging too much?” You charge based on the value that you put out.
Richard Matthews 18:24
Absolutely. So that actually brings me to the next question.You just talked about a little bit -and that’s your superpowers and I know we just talked about sales funnels, the things that you build, or you provide to your clients that help solve people’s problems.
And I want you to -I know we covered this a little bit already- but when it comes to a sales funnel, how is that different than what most people are doing? And how is that like? Are you giving a business or giving something to whomever you’re building a sales funnel for?
If you’re giving them superpowers, you can talk a little bit about how you -how sales funnels are different than what most people are doing and how that impacts their business.
Justin Burns 19:08
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Right around seven years ago, when I kind of stumbled upon what you have labeled, like everybody labels the sales funnel now.
Richard Matthews 19:17
Yeah.
Justin Burns 19:18
It was just a bunch of moving pieces: email marketing was over here, webinars was over here, opt in pages, like everything has its own category, to some degree, it still does today. Because everybody talks about the niche, the niche, the niche.
But just like a business has so many different parts, like sales is over here, marketing is over here. What really makes the business successful is bringing it all together and systematizing everything.
See the thing that really makes a business successful is the systems. That’s really what it is. When you set up systems in your business, you become more successful, your have less headaches, you solve more problems in your business.
Richard Matthews 20:04
And you remove bottlenecks.
Justin Burns 20:07
Yeah, you remove a heck of a lot of bottlenecks. So kind of like what I look at sales funnel is that…Sales funnel is like in an automated business, an automated business system for a lot of business owners, because you have different things like…the biggest thing that I would just say is that, a sales funnel will reduce the time that it takes for a lot of businesses to make more sales.
It automates that piece. Plus you have the internet at your entire disposal. So a lot of these components that go into all those different things, you can incorporate all those things and box it up into “Attraction Marketing.”
Richard Matthews 20:53
Yeah.
Justin Burns 20:53
Attraction marketing is way better than trying to oversell somebody on what you do. And that’s what a sales funnel really brings to the table. For example, I was just talking to a client probably about about a day ago. I think it was like…No, I’m sorry. Today’s Monday, it was Saturday. I lose track of the days. If you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t know what day it is sometimes.
Richard Matthews 21:16
My wife teases me about that all the time. Because she’s like, “Are you ready for this thing?” And I’m like, “I don’t even know what day it is.”
Justin Burns 21:24
Yeah, sometimes we lose track of time. But one of the things is that I was talking to them on Saturday. Before I was taking my fiance out for breakfast. And one of the things that I thought about was my own systems is that someone watched a video of me and they went through this process and I’m on the phone with them and at the end of the day, I didn’t really have to talk about who I was and I’ve built hundreds of funnels and I’ve generated millions in profit because my automated sales funnel did all that for me.
Richard Matthews 22:01
Did all that all that for you. Yeah.
Justin Burns 22:03
It did it all for me. I didn’t have to do it. I’m gonna have to get on and go on about that. All I had to do was get on and discover the pain point of my prospect and see if that was a problem that they really wanted to solve and then essentially proceed -help them get to the finish line of solving that problem. Seeing that was a serious decision that they want to make.
Richard Matthews 22:24
So what the sales funnels do is they change the conversation and the work that you’re doing instead of constantly trying to attract leads or to close sales you are now able to focus on what you do best which is help people.
Justin Burns 22:41
And that’s what we all want to focus on, right?
Richard Matthews 22:44
Yeah.
Justin Burns 22:46
But we have to deal with -when it’s something like…I love selling. I love to get on the phone even if a prospect doesn’t know who I am. I love to get on the phone and discover a pain point. That’s what I’m good at. But the sales funnel automates everything: follow-up sequences, behavior which is behavioral marketing, segmenting people from one list to another list.
The biggest thing about sales funnels is when you incorporate direct response marketing principles…really proven marketing principles such as the big idea and hooked. It means it really can attract clients.
Richard Matthews 23:23
-and open loops and closed loops and stuff like that.
Justin Burns 23:27
Yeah, so much psychology behind sales funnels.
Richard Matthews 23:29
Yeah, and you know, one of the one of the things I really like too is that nowadays with the tools that are available you’re not talking about single modality either.
I mean one of the funnels I just set up the other day for the show actually. And, when we do our little commercial sponsor breaks, people get the opportunity to like to sign up for updates from this show. And it uses SMS and there’s web pages and there’s video involved and there’s email involved and you can even like…hook in postcards and like physical mail and the power of sales funnels is like after you do that work once you set up the funnels you don’t have to, you know, it’s a one time thing and then the system just runs and you can have so many touch points with people.
To be involved in their lives and provide them value and then when they get to the point where they want to do business with you for whatever reason. They know you, they like you, they trust you. They already know what you do. And depending on how your business model works, they probably already know what you charge and they’ve already decided, “You know what? I want to work with this guy.” And it changes your game completely.
Justin Burns 24:38
It changes everything because you know it’s really awesome. I mean there’s this new world technology and when you move into a space like this, this is a space that’s only going to get bigger and grow because more businesses.
Richard Matthews 24:53
-more fun.
Justin Burns 24:54
…realize that the focal point of their business should be focused on what they’re good at. Instead of focusing on setting up all these different systems that they don’t have to they can automate the entire process with a proven and effective sales funnel.
Richard Matthews 25:09
Yeah. So on that point, I’m going to talk a little bit about the heroes’ tool belt for the Sales Funnel Academy -what you guys do… I like to say, maybe maybe you have a big magical hammer like Thor, right? Or maybe you have a bulletproof vest like your neighborhood cop. Or maybe you just really love Evernote or in your case you talk about sales funnels. Maybe it’s Active Campaign or Lob. I like Lob. Lob is fun. Or maybe it’s just questions you ask your clients or techniques that you use for closing things.
What are some of the tools that you use to do what you do to make your business run?
Justin Burns 25:46
Yeah so one of the things is we use a lot of different tools that we like -automated tools that we love. We use a lot of ActiveCampaign, we just talked about that. I love those guys, they’re actually based here in Chicago. But I’m a little biased, right?
Richard Matthews 26:00
Yeah.
Justin Burns 26:03
It is awesome. I love the software. I got a chance to go down to their offices, I love, just love what they’re doing with tool. And just love how simple… when you get into email segmentation It can get a little bit tricky.
Richard Matthews 26:17
Yeah.
Justin Burns 26:18
When it comes to tagging and untagging and segmenting. It become a little bit complex. But you know, they make it really easy. I love that tool set. Also love ClickFunnels. I like ClickFunnels a lot. ClickFunnels is really awesome, awesome tool that we use to build funnels. But a lot of our funnels built, are custom. But I would say that here’s the biggest tool set I love to give to my students. It’s the ability to find out what’s stopping them from getting to the next level. Which typically comes in the form of limiting beliefs.
Richard Matthews 26:51
Yeah.
Justin Burns 26:51
Like, we all have them. And so that’s my biggest tool. My biggest tool set is helping someone identify what are some of the limiting beliefs that are stopping them from getting to the next level, because they’re just literally one belief away from that one sale that will literally catapult them to the next level.
Whether they’re doing, you know, five figures. So it’s a process and we go through that process in The Sales Funnel Agency. Where it’s like, “Okay, cool. You have all these strategies, I can teach you more strategies, how to build funnels and how to get clients all day.”
But at the end of the day…What is going to serve you at the highest level? What’s that fear? What’s the limiting belief that stopping you when you hit that wall? Why are you not charging $20,000 or your funnel? Why are you not charging $15,000 for your funnel? “What’s stopping you?” has been my big event.
Richard Matthews 27:50
So on that topic, you said you have a whole tool set? Do you have like an example question or something that someone could ask themselves that would, you know, remove or at least start the conversation removing limiting beliefs.
Justin Burns 28:03
Yeah, you know, I don’t want to go through a whole two hours. Rebecca talks about this stuff all day!
Richard Matthews 28:08
All day, probably,
Justin Burns 28:12
Here’s the thing that I found.I’ve worked with a lot of guys who do NLP -(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) all the different stuff. At the end of the day, our minds hold on to these beliefs. A set of beliefs. And we experienced these beliefs in childhood. All of us have them. Some of us got bullied as a kid.
Whatever our experience is, we come into a set of…our mind associates this meaning to something that happened to us and when we accept that meaning as being true. We fall in line with that
But here’s the thing, as we go through life and our experiences, what happens is that, those meanings that we associated in our past, they show up in our future and in our present.
So, the bully picked on us. So then, we have this association, we have this belief that plays in our mind: a story that continuously plays in our mind that people are bad.
Richard Matthews 29:15
Yeah.
Justin Burns 29:18
And when it’s time for us to make the sales call, this story is still playing in our mind. “People are bad people are bad.” We have all this anxiety, we have all this fear, and we sabotage the sale, not because we’re bad people, or we’re terrible at what we do.
But because that story that we keep playing in our head, keeps continuously playing back and forth as we’re trying to get whatever it is we’re trying to get done.
So here’s a simple process that I kind of go through, it’s really being observant of everything in your life. And every experience, in my opinion -like, this is just what I believe- every experience comes to you to show you what some of the things that are holding you back, or some of the resistance is.
So for example, my girlfriend says something to piss me off. To make me upset. I’m angry. I’m sad at something that she says.
At the end of the day, I can choose to go, “Well, she made me angry.” Or I can choose to take another route, which is, “What is it that made me sort of react to that? What am I thinking? What are some of the limiting beliefs that I’m thinking about that’s stopping me; that made me react that way?” So I may come up with a belief that, “people control me.”
Richard Matthews 30:43
Yes.
Justin Burns 30:43
Maybe my mom, “people control me”. So people are not going to control.
What I typically do is when I get those experiences, I write them down. And what I do is to make sure -and this is how you know a belief is true. When you write it down, and you say it out loud, you’re going to get some type of reaction in your body. And if you get any type of reaction, you know the belief is true. And then what I typically do is go through a series of questions, because you have to basically put a trick on your mind a little bit to really let go of the belief. So what I typically do, the first question is, and people are familiar with this process, probably heard it before. It’s not something I created is something that I’ve taken from a lot of great people.
So the first question is, “Is this belief true?” “Is it true?”
Now, most people, your first reaction is typically going to go, “No, it’s not true.”
“That’s not true.”
Richard Matthews 31:39
Yeah.
Justin Burns 31:39
But it is true. So you can’t go with your head because your head is going to come out and say… -if you believe you’re stupid, right?
If people told you, “You are stupid.” all your life. Then your first reaction when you say that is, you’re going to get this feeling like, “Oh I believe it’s true.” But then your head is going to kick in and say, “That’s not true.”
“That’s not true.” In a order for this process to work, you have to be able to really be honest with yourself. So, “Yes, it is true. I believe that I’m stupid.” Doesn’t mean it’s true right now. But I believe that. But the next question is really important, which is, “Can you be certain that this is true? And that is, for the most part going to be, “No, because you don’t have proof.”
You can’t, for sure, without a reasonable doubt, say that you’re stupid, because you figured things out in a month. Now, somebody may have told you that you were stupid, but it’s not for sure. Like 100%.
Richard Matthews 32:40
Especially, you’re asking yourself these questions.
Justin Burns 32:43
Yeah. Interesting conversation when you start doing this stuff. The next two questions is really powerful. And I go through them really quick.
“How do you react when you believe this?” You have to be honest with yourself. How do you react? So then that’s where you find out what the block is. When I get on sales calls, I avoid asking the tough questions. I don’t call my prospects. I don’t ask the tough questions.
And then the next question, Who would you be without this belief? So now you’re showing your mind that this belief is not serving you anymore. And so you said, “Well, I will make the call. I would charge $15,000. I would charge $20,000, I wouldn’t be afraid to ask for the credit card. When I’m on the phone with my prospect, I wouldn’t be afraid to say, “Is that Visa or MasterCard?” I wouldn’t be afraid to do that.
So, what I do is at the end of the process…really quick, if I reverse it, and I turned it into a positive statement. And I incorporate that statement into my everyday sort of Regiment, where I listened to it in the morning. I just started going back to the gym, when I started. And it’s a very, very powerful concept.
Richard Matthews 34:04
So if I could just recap real quick, what you’re doing is…you’re finding out that I’ve got some sort of a limiting belief. I’ve noticed it because I’m having this reaction somewhere.
Something happened, like, I got on a phone call with a prospect and I wasn’t able to ask them for the sale. To ask them for their credit card. So there’s some sort of belief that’s blocking me here.
Write that down: I can’t ask the person for the credit card. And start looking at what’s the story that’s going on in my head behind that reaction. And maybe I don’t think that what I’m doing is valuable enough. So I can’t ask.
So you figured out that story that’s in your head, and then you’re going to ask yourself a couple of questions based on that. Okay, so here’s that story. And then, you know, “Is that true?”
Yeah, yes. “I believe that what I’m doing is not valuable enough.” So I can’t ask for the sale.
“Can you be certain that’s true?” Well, no, actually. I can look at some of my past clients and see that, it really is valuable and here’s what it’s done for them. You’re changing the -here’s what the reality is.
And then the last question there is, what would it look like, if I didn’t have that limiting belief? “I’d be able to close the sales better.”
Justin Burns 35:18
Yeah, typically those questions. How do I react when I believe it? Then you’re able to see your behavior in what you’re doing. Even the fact of just self awareness allows you to feel that belief and really be aware of the belief.
And then, the next question is. Who would I be without that limiting belief?
Richard Matthews 35:39
Absolutely. And then you start incorporating that new belief…that what I’m doing is valuable -it’s incredibly valuable. Whatever your new belief is into your everyday life, either via meditation or just listening to it or writing it down or whatever your method of you know supplanting that belief into your subconscious.
And that’s a formula for extracting limiting beliefs and putting in empowering beliefs!
Justin Burns 36:04
Yeah and it’s a it’s a powerful thing! I did this with one of my students in the Sales Funnel Agency and we were doing the call and we were supposed to be doing a call all about copywriting
Richard Matthews 36:18
Yeah.
Justin Burns 36:18
Going over like copywriting tool. And she came on the call. And she asked this question. She told me about her phone call.
She said, “I got to the point where I didn’t ask for the sale. I was afraid because it was $5,000 and I only charge 1,000 bucks.”
And I said, “Well, let’s discover something here. What do you believe at a core level? When you ask that when you ask for $5,000? Do you believe that you can provide more value in the $5,000 if they’re going to pay you?”
And he said, Yes. But there may be some other limiting beliefs going on here. And when we found is that -and she was really open about it… she said, “Well, I grew up in a really poor household and I think, on a core level, I still believe that I’m poor.”
Here’s a lady making $10,000 a month. And she still believes at a subconscious level, she’s poor! And she’s going to sabotage anything that’s going to help her get past those certain levels.
Now, once she removed that, the next week, she made a $5,000 sale. And then the week after that, she had a $20,000 sale. She did $25,000 in one month. So literally, you know, some people are just one or two or three beliefs.
Now sometimes it’s a process. Some people have more things and experiences in their childhood or whatever it is, but some people are just a few beliefs away from changing their income and their life.
Richard Matthews 37:51
Interesting. Thanks for that -was actually really cool to talk about that particular tool in your business.
Talk about one other thing and then we’ll take a quick little break. So I want to talk about your mission over at the Sales Funnel Agency. I guess, what is it that you fight to do?
And because I know you build sales funnels yourself for clients, but it’s Sales Funnel Agency, you are teaching others how to build their own Sales Funnel Agency. So what what is the actual mission there?
Justin Burns 38:26
The mission over at the Sales Funnel Agency is to empower people to build a long term sustainable business, selling sales funnels to business owners. But more importantly, to get them to charge what they’re worth.
While still serving their clients at the highest level. It’s one of the things that I’ve been just grateful and happy for, because we have so many people posting in our coaching group, “I made a $15,000 sale today.” I mean, even you were telling me from some of the stuff you learned from the webinar you generated.
I think it was the sixth thousand dollar sale? So, that’s my mission. I’m excited when I hear people taking something that I’ve said, or some of the strategies and really building a business that their family deserves, and more importantly, being able to serve their clients at the highest levels.
Richard Matthews 39:18
Yeah. And to that note, I know you mentioned I went through one of your webinars. You do have a fantastic webinar on Sales Funnels, and I had hired a business coach to help me get past some of my limiting beliefs. And we talked about this earlier.
You find someone who’s doing what you want to do, and then, you know, learn from them. So I’d hired a business coach. And one of the things that I was struggling with was, there was two things.
One was that I wasn’t charging what I was worth. And the second was, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do. I was like, I had this mind map of all these things I could help people with, and it was it was seriously big. And I was like, “I know how to do this, and this and the other things.”
I was like, “I just can’t do everything.” So what’s the one thing that I really both love to do and can provide a really high value for people and what it came down for me was building sales funnels.
And that’s when I started, I found you and was going through some of your training and I was like, “He’s doing what I want to do.” Sort of learning from some of your stuff and put that together. But anyways, yeah, good stuff on what you teach over at Sales Funnel Agency.
Justin Burns 40:22
Definitely.
Richard Matthews 40:24
Yeah. Next question I want to ask you here is about your own personal heroes. I like to say, Frodo had Gandalf; and Obi Wan -Luke had Obi Wan, right? Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad.
Are there any other authors or real people, mentors, people that are just a little farther down the line than you are in the same industry, who are some of your mentors that have helped shape your hero’s journey?
Justin Burns 40:56
Yeah, there’s so many of them, I’m looking at my books. So many books that have made an impact. But I would say some of the people are one of my funnel mentors that I’m really awesome friends with like Todd Brown -love the guy.
He’s been a really great part of my growth online. And some of the guys who really helped me like, authors that I love. The book by Robert Greene. He’s one of my favorite authors. He’s, like a hero to me.
There’s very few books that I read, like, mind blowing when I’m done. And I would say, Robert Greene is one of those guys, I’ve read Mastery, 48 Laws of Power.
Those books are really, really awesome, for those have helped me a lot. I look up to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk.
Richard Matthews 41:53
Yeah.
Justin Burns 41:54
The guy says he gave away 99% of his wealth, you know, guys like that. I look up to people, like, Oprah Winfrey, who, you know, her story is awesome. I mean, she built, you know, very, very successful entrepreneur who just, you know, she built this massive media empire doing what you’re doing right now.
Richard Matthews 42:17
Just interviewing people.
Justin Burns 42:19
Just, sharing what she loves! I mean, she’s a billionaire from that. So those are just some of the people that, I would just say, I kind of touched on different areas, like authors and media people and older people that really, really inspire me over the years.
Richard Matthews 42:33
Awesome. So last question for the actual show portion of this. And that’s, some of your guiding principles. Bring it home for our listeners. What are some of the things that either you do on a daily or weekly -just like, regimented.
These are actions I do every day that helped me build the success and the influence that I have in my life and in my business. Things that the someone could start implementing those in their own lives.
Justin Burns 43:00
Yeah, I think that when you look at your day. You have three components to your day, in my opinion. You have your morning, then you have the core of your day, and then you got the end of day.
Now typically, what I do is in the morning, I have my morning rituals. So that kind of consists of my limiting beliefs. I’m always, you know, chopping down limiting beliefs. So, I do that every morning, or at least I try to, every single morning, for the most part, I’m pretty good about that.
So I’ll do it every morning, I’ll do some manifestation. So I’ll set some really good intentions for the day. So I’ll set: I am going to manifest and do this. I’m going to do three sales, try to at least set a manifestation.
And then I looked at my goals. So I do some visualizations. But those are some other things that I do like I visualize, okay, today I am going to make two or three sales. Oh, I am going to impact two or three people today. Those are some of my morning ritual, I just incorporated working out. But I’m a night owl. So yeah, like balance that out because my brain cuts on at 2am in the morning. So that’s my morning, the middle of the day are going to be what I call your H.I.T. Your High Impact Training.
Richard Matthews 44:19
Yeah.
Justin Burns 44:23
Most people overwhelm themselves. You got to think about what are the three things that are really going to get you closer to your goal. So, no matter what I do, no matter all the other things like, “I’ve got to return this email or do this.”
What are the three major things that I have to do every single day that is going to make an impact and get me closer to my goal. So that’s the core of my day.
And then the end of my day, -and this is the biggest thing that will really help your growth as an entrepreneur. At the end of the day I always devote 30 minutes to 45 minutes of learning.
So, reading some type of book or going through some type of training. Always, constantly growing, always learning. Always be learning. It’s always closing, but always be learning. It’s one of my models, and then what I typically try to do is, at the end of the day, I try to always do a self evaluation.
What did I learn from today? What is it that I could have done better? Like, what did I do? You want to also do some positive, reinforcement. What did I do right for today? So, today, I did all of my three major things. But what can I do better for tomorrow? And I think having that core thing, at the end of the day, sets your day up for the next day to be successful.
You get to see some of the successes that you’ll experience if you’re able to implement those things almost immediately.
Richard Matthews 45:58
That’s awesome! So I want a quick recap on that, because I’ve heard this before, from a lot of people. And you’ve touched on three things that I see regularly in productivity hacks and people who are ultra successful.
One is having a morning routine. It doesn’t always have to be the same for every person. People are different, and doing different things. But having something that you’re doing every day that triggers the core part of your day. That puts you into the right mindset to accomplish things.
The second one, the core part of your day is to have you call them HIT, which is, High Impact Training. I think it’s a physical exercise term, right?
You pick the three highest impact things. These are the core things that you can do to help move your business or move your life or whatever it is you’re working on, moving forward. Whatever those three things, get those three things done and done first. And then you can worry about everything else.
And the last one is having some sort of recap on the end of your day. Did I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish? Yes or no. Why. And what’s my big goal for tomorrow? So you can put that all down, and then actually let your body rest without going into mind numbing craziness. Which I know entrepreneurs, a lot of times, suffer from lack of sleep. Because we’ve can’t turn our brains off.
Justin Burns 47:14
Yeah, yeah. The recapping is as been such a huge thing in my business, because it allows me to kind of see some of the areas and that’s how you improve on a lot of the things. You can also apply that to like different areas. So, for example, if you want to get good at selling. If you want to get good at webinars, you want to get good at whatever it is, you’re terrible at.
The best people in the world practice day in and day out, they self evaluate and they don’t really focus on “Well, I’m terrible at this.” They focus on “How can I make an impact and how can I be better every day?” One of my favorites…I don’t know if you’re an NBA fan. I’m a huge NBA fan.
Richard Matthews 48:06
I know what I know what the NBA is. Does that count?
Justin Burns 48:12
That’s bad. You gotta go watch. I love the NBA! Been an NBA fan since I was in high school. I just loved the NBA. One of my favorite players in the world is is Stephen Curry, who plays for Golden State. And one of the things I love in all my favorite players is they have ridiculous workout ethics.
Richard Matthews 48:38
Yeah.
Justin Burns 48:38
Like Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry. When you really look at their documentaries, you find that they’re always looking at how they can be better? How can I have a better regiment, they’re always looking at those things. And it’s so critical to do that. And that’s why I love studying those guys because it’s just awesome.
Richard Matthews 49:02
Absolutely. Okay, so last thing that I want to talk about on the show, and that is the Hero Challenge. Now, I don’t think I actually told you the hero challenge at the beginning when we were chit chatting but if there was one person that you know that you can introduce me to that you think would be a good fit for this show that I could bring on and we could hear their hero’s story.
Maybe it’s someone that you want to hear their story or you think their story would be particularly impactful for our listeners. Do you have one person that you would recommend that I try to get on the show?
Justin Burns 49:35
Yeah, there’s oh god there’s like so many of them but I would just say you know one of really a good buddy of mine that you would want to interview. His name is Sam Ovens. He’s a really awesome entrepreneur. He just sold his technology business. He had a software business so you know he’s an awesome guy. And he does a lot of consulting stuff as well. That would be a guy I’d definitely connect with. He’s a hero. He’s an awesome guy and and he be great for your show.
Richard Matthews 50:13
Awesome! So, Sam Ovens. I will hit you up about that after we are off on the show. So to just finish everything up and tie it all on…where can people find out more about you if they want to learn about the sales funnel agency or if they are you know just want to to learn from you what’s the best way to to get in contact?
Justin Burns 50:33
Yeah definitely. So you know you can always reach out to me on Facebook and it’s pretty easy! facebook.com/justinburns Some people still Burns like Barnes. B U R N S
So you can reach out to me on Facebook. And again, the Sales Funnel Agency is just salesfunnelagency.com If you want to learn more, you can see all about what we do there and we’re doing some really awesome stuff. So again, if you want to chat you want to talk to me just reach out to me on Facebook.
Richard Matthews 51:05
Yeah, that’s how I reached out to you. I said, “Hey, you wanna come on the show?” And you were there!
Justin Burns 51:09
I’m always there. Always living on Facebook.
Richard Matthews 51:12
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and I look forward to seeing what people here think about your story.
Justin Burns 51:20
Awesome. Thanks for having me guys.