If you structure your value ladder right, you’ll never have to do a payment plan.
On this episode Russell answers a question posted on Facebook about why he doesn’t do payment plans. Here are some of the awesome things he has to say in today’s episode.
So listen here to find out why Russell doesn’t usually give an option for payment plans.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? It’s Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Tonight we are going to be hanging out with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Alright so, why am I talking real quiet? Because it’s late at night and the wife and kids, everyone is asleep. Why am I eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Because I have committed that by Funnel Hacking Live I’m going to be in shape. So, Bart Miller who helped dress me at Funnel Hacking Live, he just went through this big body transformation, got ripped with a six pack and everything. I was like, “Alright Bart, we’re going to do it, just get me in shape.” So we’re going to do it, but it doesn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving, so I got a week to eat garbage. I’ve been eating really healthy for the last 6 months, right now I’m going to go as unhealthy as possible so I’m eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch at like midnight. How great is that? I’m pretty excited about that.
Alright, I was just going through Facebook right now and somebody asked a good question, they said, “How come RB (I’m assuming that’s me, hopefully), why doesn’t Russell use payment plans on anything?” It was fun because all the, everyone’s just kind of throwing out their guess of why they think I don’t use payment plans and stuff like that. I’m just going to tell you why.
A couple of things, first off, it’s not that I don’t believe in payment plans. I think a lot of times you will make more money when you offer payment plans, but there’s just things about it that drive me crazy. Especially online, one of the big ones to drive me crazy is the fact that there’s no repercussions if someone signs up for a thousand dollar course and you give three payments or whatever, and they do one of the three payments and then they don’t do anything else. There’s nothing you can do, you can’t go after them, you can’t call them out. It’s just kind of frustrating.
In the digital world, unfortunately there are a lot of people who, they’ll get one payment through, they’ll go through some of the course, then they’ll feel okay not doing it. It just kind of bugs me. That’s not really the real reason. You know the real reason why I don’t do them for the most part, and I won’t say that I won’t do them because there’ll be situations I’m sure I will in the future. One of our new higher coaching programs will be having a payment program, which I’ve never done that in the past, but we will be just to be helping people with cash flow and stuff like that.
But the main reason I don’t is because, one person commented and said, “Russell doesn’t do it because Russell’s rule is don’t sell to broke people.” And well, that’s mostly true. It’s not that I don’t like broke people or that I don’t want to help them. But if you study my stuff, especially Dotcom Secrets, in the book I talk about the value ladder. I’m taking people up the value ladder and I know full well that people likely come into my world and they don’t have money when they first come in. So I’m like, okay how can I provide the most value possible so they have everything they need to be successful? On the front end, on my books, my perfect webinar training, things like that that are free plus shipping or really, really low price. I don’t hold stuff back on that.
Dan Henrie’s a good example, he struggled for years, read the Dotcom Secrets book, learned how to do my webinar, did it and made a million bucks in 5 months. I’ve been giving away the perfect webinar now for 2 or 3 years, just the script and the video and power point slides. And people always ask me, “Why do you give it away for free, your best stuff?” I’m like, “Because if someone uses it and they make money, they can afford my expensive stuff.”
So for me, that’s really more of my goal. I want people to come in and I want them to use the stuff I have and it makes them more money and then they can come for the next things. If they’re jumping up four or five tiers, if they have money that’s fine, they can short cut success, but I almost feel like sometimes, it does not serve your customer to short cut their success.
When we first started doing Funnel Hacker Tv the very first time, I was just taking businesses, a few I liked, the people, the entrepreneur, but they weren’t having success yet. We would come in and just do all the work for them, launching their businesses. And what we found is people weren’t ready for that. We’d launch it and hand it back to them, and the people who get these businesses back, they hadn’t learned all the stuff they needed to have success with it. And they struggled and then despite the fact that I gave them the keys to a Ferrari, they couldn’t drive the Ferrari.
I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice. Sometimes people just jump too far too fast, spend a bunch of money they don’t have, and then try the thing and it doesn’t really work because they don’t have the foundation stuff they need to get there. Business is all about for us, increasing our capacity. When you first start a business you have a big capacity to do a lot of stuff. I did, when I got started my capacity was, I struggled to read a book. Then I read a book and I was like, that book was awesome, and my capacity expanded a little bit and I did more and it expanded, more and it expanded.
Now 15 years later we run a huge company where we’re one of the top two or three most visited websites in the world. Making a lot of money, doing a lot of stuff, helping a lot of people, all those things. But if I would have just been handed this 15 years ago, I promise you I would have destroyed it. Not because I wanted to, but because I wasn’t ready for it. And I think a lot of times, I know I could sell more stuff if I offered these huge payment plans to let people in, but the reality is someone comes in on a payment plan they can’t afford and they’re trying to learn stuff and then they can’t afford it, and then they go buy traffic and other things they need to do and they can’t afford it, it doesn’t really serve them more, or me.
So I want people to grow with us. So that’s why we do stuff, the way low ticket stuff, mid tier, high tier things like that. That way people come in, they learn, they apply, and if they get value they should naturally ascend up, right. It’s kind of like in my stack I have a line that I say in there, it’s funny because it’s a really good closing line, and I’ve had a lot of people knock it off since I started using it, but it’s true for me.
For me it says, “I have a philosophy here at my company that if I can’t make you money then I don’t deserve yours.” And I honestly do believe that, which is why I don’t just go hard close them on these huge payment plans. We see a lot of people do product launches, they’re selling a $2,000 course, or twelve payments of $300. I’m like, the problem with $300, I remember me in those days and that was a lot of money. It almost does them a disservice. If I have twelve payments of $300, twelve months from now, I’m going to have my stuff in place and start buying ads again because I got this huge budget of $300 a month. So that’s kind of my thoughts.
So I hope that kind of helps. Again, it’s not that I won’t do payment plans, I will do them in the future. There will times and seasons I will do them. A lot of businesses I recommend them. So it’s nothing against them, I just think for me personally, that’s my goal, that’s my vision. Just try to blow people’s minds at every step of the value ladder, and if I do that correctly then they’ll be able to afford the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
You know, I could tell you probably a couple dozen examples of this but Dan Henrie is one of my favorites. He joined the Inner circle and he posted on Facebook. He was like, “I don’t know why I joined Russell’s inner circle, I feel like I got, I made a bunch of money and everything, I don’t really need to be, I don’t really want to be in it. But I feel like I owed Russell 25k for all I got for the free book I bought.”
How cool is that if your customers feel that way. Man, I got so much from this I feel like I owe you. I need to invest in higher ticket things because I got so much down here. That’s what I’m trying to create.
So there you go, I hope that helps you guys. I hope it helps you, again, obviously we’re talking about this for my business which is teaching business owners how to grow. So it’s very applicable because it’s like “Hey make money here and grow.” But it’s the same with any business. Let’s say your business is helping marriages right. You give them something free and it increases the spark in their relationship or it fixes something and they feel better, man they will want to give you more and follow you further and all that kind of stuff.
So anyway, it’s a fun game we play. I love it. I appreciate you guys, as customers, as friends, as subscribers, listeners, and I hope that you got some good ideas out of this, I’m going to get back to eating my Cinnamon Toast Crunch before it all gets cold, gets soggy. It’s a little soggy already so I’m going to go. And by Funnel Hacking Live I will be sexy. I promise you guys, I will have a six pack. And if not then I won’t say anything else about it. Alright everybody, talk to you soon. Bye.