Expert Secrets: What’s it all about?

Published in 2017, Expert Secrets: The underground playbook, is all about how to build a following and how to sell to your loyal following once you’ve established one.

While most marketing books age quickly, the concepts presented in Expert Secrets are adaptable and still relevant today.

The book is available for $29,98 on Amazon or for free on Brunson’s website, you only have to pay for shipping.

There’s also an audiobook version available for those who don’t have the time to read it.

With Expert Secrets, you’ll learn:

People invest time and money into their passions, so using storytelling and emotion to get people excited and invested in what you do is a great way to grow your business.

The book is part of the ClickFunnels sales funnel, so expect some ClickFunnels upsells.

The concepts used in this book can be applied to any SaaS you use, so the same results, or better, can be achieved with other software, such as systeme.io.

Expert Secrets is all about the Expert business model, aimed at those in the information business, such as coaches and consultants.

According to Brunson, Expert Secrets will help you find your voice and become a leader that people look up to.

The main idea is to find a niche and become the go-to expert in that niche.

Once you’re considered an expert, you can start building a following to further sell your products and services.

The book is divided into five main sections.

Let’s take a quick look at what you can expect to find in each section:

Also considered the expert or guide that people look up to and follow.

It’s important to create a persona that people want to follow and want to be like.

In this section, you’ll learn how to find your target market, how to understand and appeal to your followers, and how to write marketing messages aimed at your audience.

It’s important to be persuasive, so don’t be boring!

It’s up to the leader to present their vision for the future and show their followers how to get there.

You’ll learn how to clearly communicate that vision and show your customer how to realize that vision and create the future they want.

As a leader, it’s your job to help people go from where they are to where they want to be — if you show people how you plan to do that, you’ll win some followers.

Here you’ll learn how to get people to believe in, and be passionate about, your cause and how to get them involved to grow your movement.

The new opportunity is your offer that clearly provides a solution to whatever problems your customers might be facing.

Brunson explains that it’s all about status — in this case, how people perceive themselves.

Simply improving on an existing product doesn’t work.

To improve requires hard work, and people need to admit that everything else they’ve done up to now has failed.

No one likes admitting failure.

But a new offer that promises to increase status, and allows your customers to become as successful as you, is far more appealing.

Brunson clearly explains how you can get people interested in your offer and how to convince your followers to switch from whatever product they're currently using to your offer instead.

This is the one big thing people need to believe in order to knock down any other objections they might have about your offer.

If your customer truly believes that your offer is the key to what they desire most, and that they can only get the result through you, they have no option but to buy your offer.

Brunson learned that logic doesn’t sell, but emotion does. The Epiphany Bridge is the bridge between emotion and logic.

In order to get your followers as excited about your offer as you are, you need to use a story to lead them down the same path and reach that emotional “a-ha” moment for themselves.

Once your customer reaches that epiphany, they’re emotionally invested, and they’ll fill in the logic behind buying the offer for themselves.

Here Brunson expands a bit on the value of storytelling and how to use it.

He shows the reader how to use the different elements of a story — plot, character, and conflict — to tell a compelling story to help followers cross the Epiphany Bridge.

The Hero’s Two Journeys are:

This formula works pretty well for Pixar, so Brunson might be onto something here.

This section is more practical and combines chapters on the Epiphany Bridge and the Hero’s Two Journeys to create a script that you can use for every aspect of your business.

With practical questions to get you thinking, and using the story structure covered in the Hero’s Two Journeys, Brunson guides you in writing your own Epiphany Bridge.

Once you know how to do this, you can adapt your story to your offer and your target audience.

Belief in your cause, or offer, is a vital part of Brunson’s strategy. So, identifying people’s beliefs is an important step.

Beliefs are formed from experiences people have and the stories they tell themselves based on those experiences.

In this section, Brunson explains:

Once a customer has a clear idea of just how much value you add, they’re more likely to buy from you.

The rest of the section focuses on the perfect webinar and how to use it as a selling tool.

The goal of the webinar is to get the customer to believe in one thing.

Brunson goes through the four steps of putting together a webinar to get the best results:

He shows the reader how to use the various concepts, like the Epiphany Bridge, the stack slide, and breaking down and replacing beliefs, to create a webinar that sells.

It’s a versatile script that can be used for video sales letters, teleseminars, and stage presentations.

Brunson takes the reader through each of the 7 steps needed to create a perfect webinar.

He also shows the reader how to drive more traffic to the same webinar every week to boost sales.

Selling high ticket offers is much easier in person or over the phone.

Here Brunson discusses the four questions to help your customer:

Creating the perfect webinar takes time.

If you’re running short on time, Brunson shows you how to create an effective webinar in a much shorter time by simplifying the Perfect Webinar model.

The Epiphany Bridge is an important concept which Brunson uses a lot.

Here he teaches the reader how to adapt the Perfect Webinar model and Epiphany Bridge story to an email campaign.

Finally, Brunson shows his readers how to use the webinar and Epiphany Bridge structure within a product launch funnel.

By now you know what sales funnels are and how they work, you have the niche, you have the following, so what’s next?

In the final section, you get to fill your funnel.

According to Brunson, the traffic is out there. You just need to find them and get them to follow you.

This section mostly looks at:

In this last section, you get to put everything you’ve learned into practice to see how it all fits together.

Expert Secrets has a lot of valuable information, and there’s much to learn from it:

It’s a great book, but nothing is perfect. Here are a few things to keep in mind when reading Expert Secrets:

A good entrepreneur never stops learning, and there’s much to learn from Expert Secrets.

Building a brand, building a loyal community, and communicating effectively with your customers are incredibly valuable tools.

Is it a good book to read if you’re serious about business and marketing? Absolutely.

Once you’ve learned all you can from Russell Brunson, open your systeme.io Freemium account and put that knowledge to good use!