PDF Summary:Expert Secrets, by Russell Brunson

Imagine you have a product or service that can change people’s lives—one that can help them reach their most ambitious goals financially or personally. If you don’t know how to effectively market it, your idea won’t make a difference in anyone’s life. Russell Brunson, who made his name selling online marketing tools and advising startups on building a brand, aims to solve this problem with Expert Secrets, a how-to guide for creating excitement for your idea that turns potential customers into lifelong buyers.

In this guide, we’ll give an overview of the main “secrets” Brunson discusses, focusing on how you can tap into your audience’s emotions to create loyal customers. Along the way, we’ll examine the human instincts that drive purchasing decisions and how other sales experts advise you to close a sale.

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Offer a Vision of a New Identity

Brunson writes that to create a movement that attracts people, you have to offer a vision of an idealistic future in which your customers are better versions of themselves. This vision should be one of both achievement and transformation, and Brunson emphasizes that it should be more than a mere improvement plan—it should prompt your audience to envision a completely new identity for themselves. For example, instead of selling an exercise plan that merely shows people how to do better sit-ups, help your customers envision themselves as masters of their health and bodies. This will engage them emotionally and turn them into lifelong customers.

To encourage your customers to envision this new identity, Brunson recommends that you create a manifesto stating your company’s vision in an inspiring way and helping your audience see themselves as part of a group with special characteristics. One way you can do this is to name the kind of customer who uses your product and describe them—for example, for Brunson’s company, ClickFunnels, his manifesto said, “A Funnel Hacker is a new breed of entrepreneur…” and it went on to describe “funnel hackers” as people who “define their own identity” and “create their own luck.”

You can take these statements a step further to foster a sense of belonging by creating swag, such as t-shirts or mugs, that sport “I am” statements mirroring your manifesto (such as, “I am a Funnel Hacker” or “I create my own luck”).

The Link Between Identity and Behavior

Brunson is not the first to observe that the best way to change your behavior is to adopt a new identity. In Atomic Habits, James Clear agrees, writing that if you want to change your behavior, you should focus on who you want to become rather than what you want to achieve. Clear goes further to note that behavior (specifically, habits) and identity are interwoven: As much as a new identity inspires new habits, those new habits will solidify your new identity (if you run daily, you’re a runner).

Brunson focuses more exclusively on the line of causation from identity to behavior, but we might infer that he’d agree that behavioral changes resulting from a new identity serve to strengthen that new identity. His advice to create swag for your customer is based on a similar underlying principle, in that both habits and swag serve as routine, daily reminders of the new identity a person has chosen.

Offer a New Opportunity

The third element of a movement is a new opportunity, which is the product or service you’ll offer to solve your customers’ problems. Brunson writes that you must ensure this idea isn’t merely an improvement on an existing product, but instead is something entirely new and original—this is how you’ll create and dominate an original category, as discussed earlier.

Brunson argues that unless your product creates a new category, you won’t create a movement that engages people and creates fans. He notes that Steve Jobs didn’t just offer a faster or bigger CD player, but instead created a new category—a way to carry your entire music collection in your pocket (with an iPod). If he’d merely developed an improved music player, he wouldn’t have inspired the following he attracted.

Possible Limits of New Markets and New Identities

In many aspects of Brunson’s advice, he emphasizes the need to set your company apart from competitors in any way possible, and as such, his advice to create a completely new category with your opportunity aligns with his advice to help your customers create a completely new identity. It’s worth noting that Steve Jobs’s product creations not only created a new category but helped his customers envision themselves as part of a new identity—one in which they saw themselves as Apple users who feel good about themselves and their choices under this identity.

However, while Brunson advises that you use your innovation to create a new market, not all business experts agree creating a new market is necessary—some argue that there’s enough unmet demand within existing markets to ensure success for your innovation. In Competing Against Luck, Clayton Christensen writes that to come up with an idea that can lead you to success in any market, look for ways people creatively tackle tasks for which there’s no sufficient solution yet. These DIY solutions can reveal problems for which there’s a ready customer base, and even if this isn’t in a unique field, any innovation you develop to meet this customer need can bring you success

Structure Your Idea in a Framework

Brunson writes that to be successful, you can’t just sell a product, but instead you must sell a product within a framework—a set of predictable steps your customers can follow to achieve their goals using your product. This framework will be so integral to your product that it will be inseparable from it—without the framework guiding customers, your product won’t be nearly as powerful and your customers won’t be as interested.

He cites his own marketing tool as an example. His company, ClickFunnels, sells software to help online businesses create sales funnels that upsell additional products. What makes the software stand out from competitors are the frameworks—predictable, repeatable steps—helping customers incorporate this software into their businesses.

To develop frameworks for your product or service, first research existing successful frameworks. Find successful people and find out what they did to reach success. Often, they’ll talk freely about their process in interviews, podcasts, live events, and so on.

Then, take the elements of those processes that appeal to you and incorporate them into new frameworks designed for your specific goal. Test your framework on yourself and make adjustments as needed. Name it, as this makes it easy for people to recognize and remember it.

Finally, test your framework on other people to ensure it works for them, too. Initially, don’t charge people to use your framework—at this point, your goal isn’t to make money but instead, to perfect your framework, get experience, and build a track record that shows your framework is effective.

Using Frameworks for Frameworks

Businesses have been using frameworks for years to both develop and execute strategy—by following an established system of rules, they can more easily make decisions or carry out business processes.

Brunson’s innovation is to apply frameworks to customer experiences rather than business processes. The underlying principle is the same, though: By following a predictable set of steps, both customers and businesses can achieve their goals faster than if they were figuring out how to use a product each time they worked with it.

In the same way that Brunson says that when creating a framework, you should adopt elements from other successful frameworks, business consultants also recommend that companies looking to adopt frameworks examine the multitude already in existence. Whether you’re looking to design new products, analyze your industry’s strengths and weaknesses, become more customer-focused, or manage complex projects, a framework likely exists for a similar problem. Successful frameworks are often examined in the same forums Brunson recommends you look into—blogs, websites, and podcasts frequently post information to help companies strategize.

In fact, frameworks exist for each step of Brunson’s advice on how to create frameworks. There are frameworks that can help you research other companies’ frameworks, test your framework, and even name your framework. Ultimately, no matter what you’re trying to accomplish or what step you’re on, you can streamline your process by examining how others have approached a similar challenge.

Use Stories to Sell Your Product

So far, we’ve examined Bruson’s advice on how to create your product and your company. We’ll now turn to Brunson’s thoughts on how to present your product and company in a way that will excite customers and turn them into lifelong users.

Brunson writes that to effectively engage your customers, you need to tell them not only about your product but also about the story behind it—the problems you faced and how you came up with your idea to solve them. By sharing this story, you’ll help your audience understand the “aha” moment that hooked you into your idea emotionally, and it will likewise hook them emotionally.

Brunson emphasizes that this is the only way to spur them to become customers, because people make purchasing decisions when they’re emotionally invested in an idea, not when they logically understand it. Thus, even if they mentally understand and agree with your concepts, they won’t adopt them if they’re not emotionally involved, and your company won’t change their lives.

Why We Buy Emotionally

In Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff also writes that to convince people to buy your offer, you must appeal to their emotions. He writes that people don’t make decisions with their neocortex—their “thinking” brain—but instead with what he calls their “croc brain.” This is the most primitive part of the brain, and it processes information before any other part so that it can filter out threats and look for opportunities that can aid survival. It only engages the neocortex to think through complex decisions when it decides that new information is worth paying attention to.

Klaff writes that desire is one of the urges that spurs the croc brain into action, and he notes that one of the ways we can spark desire is to present a puzzle. Humans instinctively like figuring out puzzles because we like a bit of a challenge. He also writes that we’re drawn to tension, because tension indicates consequences and importance. Brunson’s “aha” moment incorporates both of these: It presents a tension-filled puzzle (the problem you were initially trying to solve) and offers a solution. By engaging your audience in this puzzle-solving exercise, you can engage their emotions and thus, their croc brain, which will pave the way for the rest of their brain to get on board with your idea.

To tell a story about your product, Brunson outlines a set of steps—a framework that’s proven to be an effective way to convey the important details of your product and get people excited about it. He calls it the “Epiphany Bridge.”

(Shortform note: Brunson doesn’t explain his term Epiphany Bridge but we can infer that the bridge is the infrastructure, in the form of a story, that brings a customer from a place of reluctance to a place of eagerness to purchase your offer. The epiphany, naturally, is the moment of sudden understanding they experience regarding how to solve a problem or challenge. In literature, an epiphany is often used as a turning point in a story, and Brunson’s use of the term aligns with that purpose, as it’s aimed at bringing about a turning point in their behavior.)

The Epiphany Bridge

Brunson’s Epiphany Bridge framework has five parts, and he writes that it’s useful not only because it inspires excitement but also because it allows you to go into as much or as little detail as you need when presenting your idea. If you have an hour-long training session, you can review each of the steps in detail, but if you only have 60 seconds, you can give a quick overview of your product by focusing just on the broad concepts of each step, but your message will still be effective.

(Shortform note: Flexibility of your sales message is important because it allows you to engage potential customers at different points in their purchasing journey. People who aren’t familiar with your product haven’t started their journey yet and probably won’t be as open to a long presentation, so a quick “elevator pitch” highlighting the main things you want them to know would be the best approach. People who are attending a training session have already committed to at least considering your offer, and so will be more inclined to listen to a long speech.)

The five parts of the Epiphany Bridge are:

1. The introduction
2. The journey and conflict
3. The new opportunity
4. The framework
5. The successes

Brunson notes that the steps of this framework are similar to many traditional storytelling structures, which start by introducing the hero’s original world and then bring in antagonistic forces, failed attempts at success, helping characters, struggles (both internal and external), and finally, resolution and success.

(Shortform note: In Wired for Story, Lisa Cron explains that the human instinct to follow stories that have these traditional elements comes from an evolutionary need to learn about dangers. As humans evolved, we developed storytelling strategies that aligned with how our brains process information, and as a result, we’ve learned to pay attention to stories that follow a somewhat predictable structure—one that Brunson’s techniques adhere to.)

Part 1: The Introduction

Start by telling your audience your framework’s name and then giving some background about what your life was like before you came up with your idea (your “original world,” in storytelling language). Mention the problems you faced—both externally, like financial struggles, and internally, like having a fear of never reaching your potential. Brunson advises that the problems you name should be similar to problems your audience faces, so they’ll identify with you and your process.

Finally, mention some things you did to try to resolve your problems but weren’t successful at (for example, maybe you tried selling dog-training services but couldn’t get your business off the ground).

(Shortform note: This step is aimed at helping your audience identify with you, which many sales professionals agree is the key to encouraging sales. In New Sales. Simplified., Mike Weinberg writes that the problem with most presentations is the salesperson launches into a speech focusing on the company and its products rather than on the customer and their needs. Customers will instinctively resist this kind of pitch because it won’t seem relevant to them. Brunson’s method of naming the challenges they’ve faced and exploring the fact that, like you, they’ve struggled to overcome them is a time-tested way to shift the focus onto them and prevent that resistance.)

Part 2: The Journey and Conflict

In this step, you’ll describe the inspiration that started you on the path toward your idea. For example, maybe someone asked you why you aren’t targeting pet stores, and that got you thinking about the potential of that business model.

Then, describe the obstacles you faced—perhaps your attempts to contact pet stores were ignored, or your initial classes went poorly.

Also mention in this step what you stood to lose if you failed—the stakes of your story. Were you close to being evicted from your apartment? Would you not be able to afford grad school if you couldn’t develop this source of income?

(Shortform note: This step is where, in terms of storytelling, you jump out of Act 1 and into the more active Act 2, where you purposefully start working toward a goal (prompted in Brunson’s structure by an outside suggestion), and you increase the tension (Brunson’s “stakes”). This keeps your story moving and also keeps your audience attentive, as they may lose interest unless they sense increased risks to your character.)

Part 3: The New Opportunity

In this step you’ll discuss the epiphany you had that led you to your solution. You’ll talk about the expert who guided you to your aha moment, the realization itself, and the new opportunity you developed based on this epiphany.

For example, you could tell them about the zookeeper who taught you how to speak an animal’s language, and your aha moment when you realized that if you could teach others how to speak dog, your dog training classes would take off. Then you’d describe the dog dictionary you wrote and the audiobooks you recorded as part of your training classes.

(Shortform note: This step aligns with the “midpoint” of a traditional storytelling structure, which is when, halfway through your tale, you reveal a momentous discovery that marks the point when your main character shifts from reactive to proactive. At the midpoint, your hero recognizes the truth of their situation and how to work toward a solution. In Brunson’s structure, this realization, or epiphany, likewise tells of the moment where you stopped reacting to the hand you were dealt (as in the previous step, where you were still making poor choices that led nowhere) and instead came up with a new idea that allowed you to take control of your situation—your new opportunity.)

Part 4: The Framework

Here you’ll describe the framework you’ve developed to accompany your product. You’ll start by outlining it in broad strokes, touching on its goal and the main steps needed to achieve it.

Brunson warns that if you’re using this Epiphany Bridge to sell your product to potential customers, you shouldn’t go into further details in this step. Outline your framework’s strategy but not the specific tactics and techniques within it. Only describe the specific techniques to customers who have already purchased your product.

(Shortform note: Oren Klaff likewise advises that when describing your offer, you should only mention the highlights so as to grab your audience’s attention but not overwhelm them with details that won’t appeal to their primitive croc brain. He recommends that you structure this overall description in a slightly different way than Brunson does, using this format: “This is for [target customers] who are unsatisfied with [current market options]. My idea is a [new product or category] that provides [key benefit]. Unlike [competitors], my idea [has these key features].” While this structure doesn’t touch on the steps your customer would take to adopt your idea, it’s another way to give a brief overview of your idea’s functionality and purpose.)

Brunson argues that withholding information is not just a way to protect sales, but more importantly, it’s a way to convince people to adopt your ideas. It’s a quirk of human nature that if people are told everything they need to know upfront, they’ll listen, nod, and then go on about their lives as usual. It’s only when you create excitement and desire but don’t tell them everything they need to know that they’ll be motivated to fully buy into your program.

Thus, he writes that the only way to create true, lasting excitement for your product is to withhold the details of how it works.

(Shortform note: Psychologists offer some reasons why withholding the details of your offer may increase your audience’s interest: It can cause cognitive dissonance—mental discomfort that occurs when you harbor conflicting emotions or thoughts. In this case, your customer will feel, on one hand, desire to find out more and, on the other hand, frustration at not knowing more. When people have this sort of mental discomfort, they instinctively try to fix it, which may lead them to pursue your idea so they find out more and therefore resolve the frustration they feel.)

Part 5: The Successes

In the final step, talk about how your framework and product have helped you achieve your goals, both internal and external.

Then, lastly, discuss how your framework has helped others—this offers the ultimate proof of your concept. People are likely to be skeptical of any service or product if you can only show that it’s worked for you—they’ll assume you have special circumstances that helped it be successful (for example, maybe dogs in your training classes pay attention to you because you naturally smell like raw beef—it’s only when you can point to others who successfully trained their dogs using your dog-language lessons that your program will seem credible).

(Shortform note: Weinberg agrees that an important characteristic of a good sales story is that it’s reality-based. If your story isn’t backed up by a provable track record, it won’t capture your audience’s attention. He notes that another drawback of pushing a sales message that’s not backed by experience is that it can be embarrassing and demotivating for salespeople to deliver—they don’t want to be associated with a message that sounds phony any more than your customers do. By mentioning the success of others, you can position your idea as reality-based and you can tap into what Robert Cialdini calls, in Influence, your audience’s desire for social proof: the human instinct to decide what’s right based on what others think.)

How to Sell to a Large Audience

Brunson notes that if you’re able to present your frameworks to a large audience—for example, at a live event or through a webinar—you can supercharge your business by selling a high volume at once. He cautions that you must use different strategies when addressing a large crowd. Since you can’t ask questions of your audience as you would when speaking to one person or a small group, you can’t respond to their individual answers, concerns, objections, and so forth.

(Shortform note: While it can be harder to present to a large audience because you can’t respond to individual questions, some experts note that large audiences can have advantages, too. People in large groups feel more anonymous, and so are more likely to sit back and let you present without interrupting—unlike in a smaller group where you might have more trouble staying on course. Large audiences can also have more energy, especially at an event where they’re expecting to have a good time. Ultimately, there are pros and cons to presenting to either audience size, and the important thing is to be prepared with a presentation appropriate for each.)

Brunson offers a number of tips to help you succeed in a large gathering:

Focus on Just One Thing

Brunson writes that instead of trying to address all possible reasons your audience should want to use your product, you should focus on just one thing—aim to change just one belief they hold. He argues that if you get them to believe one central idea, all their other objections and concerns will disappear, and they’ll be eager to purchase your product.

The central belief you should focus on is getting them to believe that the only way to be successful in whatever pursuit they choose is to use your product. This is where the uniqueness of your product matters—if you’ve come up with an opportunity different from any existing solutions on the market, you can convince your customers that the only way to success is through you.

(Shortform note: One reason to follow Brunson’s advice to convey just one message is that doing so will help people remember your presentation better. Studies show that people routinely forget the majority of what they hear in presentations within a few days. But by focusing on changing one key belief, you increase the odds that your audience will retain the lesson you taught them since they don’t have other thoughts competing for space in their long-term memory. Further, by highlighting one core belief, you can focus your audience’s emotional attention on it and your message of change, and emotions enhance memory because they convince your brain this message is worth paying attention to.)

Offer Three Secrets

Brunson also advises that you create three “secrets” that address three possible false beliefs that potential customers often hold.

These false beliefs are:

I can’t see how this framework will work: This is when people see a characteristic of your framework they don’t fully understand. For example, they may be unfamiliar with a sales technique (like network marketing) or a product type (like a sales funnel).

My internal obstacles will keep me from using this framework effectively: Sometimes people think they lack a skill or characteristic that the framework requires. For example, they might assume they need to be highly computer literate in order to use your service.

My external obstacles will keep me from using this framework effectively: People might face challenges in their daily lives that they feel will keep them from success. For example, they might be working two jobs and not feel they have spare time, or they don’t think they have logistical access to a certain customer base.

Fears as a Reflection of Identity Conflicts

Ultimately, each of these fears reflects an identity problem: the customer’s belief that their identity doesn’t fit with your product. The things they don’t understand about your idea, such as network marketing or sales funnels, might be things they’ve heard of but associate with other types of people—people they don’t identify with (for example, outgoing or experienced salespeople).

Likewise, when people believe their internal or external traits will prevent them from using your product effectively, they’re assuming success can only happen to a different type of person (one who doesn’t face the same pressures they do and thus one they don’t identify with).

This problem lies at the core of much customer resistance to product purchases, because people won’t behave in ways that conflict with their identities, even if they consciously know that changing their behavior will benefit them. Brunson’s efforts to address these fears, then, can be seen as part of his advice to help them envision a new identity for themselves—an identity of someone who can overcome the types of challenges they face.

Brunson writes that you can address each of these fears by creating a “secret” that highlights the benefits of your product and alludes to how easy it is to overcome these fears. He advises writing each of these secrets as a “how to” statement, such as:

• How to attract new customers in four easy steps
• How to copy your competitor’s playbook in five minutes
• How to get more out of your long-term customers without any more effort

These “secrets” address customers’ fears of not understanding how your framework works, not having the skills to pull it off, and not having the tools to do it effectively.

(Shortform note: Brunson doesn’t detail why he advises using “how to” statements, but psychologists have noted their effectiveness in engaging an audience and encouraging confidence in a task. The simplicity of the statements makes it feel as if the underlying principle is easy to learn, and the simpler you can make your product seem, the more success you’ll have in selling it—people instinctively shy away from complexity because it threatens us with uncertainty. This is why short, simple messages that can be boiled down to a single sentence or slogan (like the “secrets” above) best hold customers’ attention.)

Close Strongly

Brunson writes that when your presentation is over, your audience will only remember the last thing you’ve shown them. This means if you outline your product’s elements one by one, they’ll only remember the last one you discuss. Often this one element is not compelling enough to get them to make a purchase.

Instead, Brunson advises that as you review your product’s elements, you add them one by one to the same slide so that at the end of your presentation, the last slide you show the audience lists the full collection of the offer’s elements. Then, add up the value of each of those elements and post it so they can see the complete value of what they’d receive by purchasing your product.

In this way, your audience will be left with a feeling that your offer is a great value with a lot of parts to it, and they’ll be far more likely to buy it. Brunson writes that once he used this technique instead of closing his presentation with more traditional sales techniques, his sales skyrocketed.

(Shortform note: The traditional sales techniques Brunson refers to typically include ending with a call-to-action (a request that they take the next step, whether that’s purchasing your product, signing up for your newsletter, attending another event, and so on), a memorable quote, a case study or anecdote, or a visual image (such as a running timer, to emphasize a deadline). Brunson’s strategy implies that ending on any of these notes will separate your customer’s attention from the elements of your presentation that matter most. Thus, while these endings might result in a pleasant feeling of closure or an enjoyable speech, they won’t spur sales, which is, as Brunson emphasizes, the ultimate goal of your sales presentation.)