The Russell Brunson Show
Category King: Crafting Your Category & Selling A Grand-Slam Offer
Mon, 06 Jan 2025
On this episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast, I dive into one of the most powerful strategies for entrepreneurs—becoming the "category king" of your market. This concept, inspired by the book Play Bigger, is all about creating and dominating entirely new categories rather than competing in crowded, existing markets. The episode kicks off with a segment from a recent YouTube video where I introduce the idea and discuss its importance, followed by highlights from a presentation I delivered to my Inner Circle mastermind group. We explore what it truly means to be a category king, how to differentiate in red oceans, and why identifying and solving one clear problem for your market is the foundation of category design. These strategies aren't just theory—they've been the cornerstone of ClickFunnels' success, helping us carve out a brand-new market category for sales funnels. Key Highlights: Understanding "Category Kings": Learn why creating a new category is more powerful than competing in existing ones. The Power of a Clear Problem: Discover how to articulate and solve a single core market problem in just ten words or less. Differentiation vs. Competition: Why submarkets and niches often lead to crowded "red oceans" and how to break free. Real-Life Applications: Insights from ClickFunnels' journey, including how we transitioned from a product-focused approach to dominating a category. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, this episode provides actionable takeaways to help you reimagine your market strategy. Don’t miss the chance to elevate your business and position yourself as the undeniable leader in your industry! Special thanks to our sponsors: Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/marketingsecrets to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does it mean to be a category king?
What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the podcast. This episode, I'm going to share with you guys a really cool presentation about becoming the category king of your market. I actually posted part of this the first 14 minutes or so as a YouTube video talking about one of my favorite books called Playing Bigger, which teaches you the concept of being a category king.
And then from there, I transitioned over to a presentation I did at my inner circle. It was right after one of the authors of Playing Bigger came out to my category king group and did a whole four-hour long presentation about how to become the category king in your industry, which was really, really fun and really cool.
um and then after that i did a presentation for my inner circle kind of going through the highlights of it so um this episode's all about becoming the category king in your market you can hear me talk about it um you know directly from the book and then from there we're gonna dive over to the inner circle presentation where i went deeper on how to become a category king hope you enjoyed this presentation if you do make sure you guys come to funnel hacking live we're like less than a month away from funnel hacking live
If you want to become the category king in your market, make sure you come and do not miss it. If you go to funnelhackinglive.com, you can get a ticket before they're sold out. This is the last dance, the last Funnel Hacking Live ever. We've done nine of them. This will be number 10. And then we're taking, who knows, a five-year break. I'm tired. So do not miss this show. It's going to be insane.
It'll be the biggest and the best one we've ever done. So go get your tickets at funnelhackinglive.com. With that said, we're going to jump right into the presentation on how to become a category king. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online.
This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. One of the biggest mistakes that new entrepreneurs make happens to be the thing that the biggest companies in the world have mastered yet they never talk about.
And this book is the first book I've ever found that actually explains it in a really cool way. This book is called Play Bigger, and you may or may not have heard this book. It's one of the more rare books out there, yet this is the one that gives you the key to how to be successful. It all has to do with figuring out how to dominate your market.
Now a lot of people think dominating the market is all about figuring out what's the market you're gonna go into, right? And that's actually the exact opposite of what you should be thinking about. In fact, I wanna walk you guys through a really quick process. This is something I talk about in my book Expert Secrets. I talk about figuring out what market you're gonna be in, okay?
What we're gonna be figuring out today is how can you become a category king? So when you think about markets, there are three core markets almost every business falls into, okay? These are the three markets. This is health, wealth, and relationships.
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Chapter 2: What are the core markets for businesses?
Number two, if you are here, I want you to look at it again and say, wait a minute, because I bet you half of you think you're here are actually here or you transitioned or you're there. and make sure you're still there, okay? What can I do to make that even stronger? Does that sound good? Okay, three minutes to think through this. Ready, set, go.
All right, how many of you guys feel, how many, like who are my introverts in the room right here? That's amazing. I love it. So for those of you guys who are introverted and are nervous about, like, what do I talk to other people about? These are the questions inside this group. Like, because we'll understand. Like, if you see someone like, hey, so what's the problem you solved?
Hey, so what's your new opportunity? How does it work? How do you structure it? Like, this is the group that would understand that and it would be weird, okay? Okay, next phase. If you can hear the sound of my voice say, shh. Oh, you guys are so much like me. It's amazing. I keep trying to explain to people. I'm like, no, they're just like me. You guys know. Okay. Um, all right.
So the next phase of this, so now we have, we figured out the problem we've got, we've created a new opportunity. And now this is where like this whole funnel world starts coming in. Right. Back in the day, we would create new opportunity and all it was, was basically a product, right? Like, here's my product. I sell it. 20 years ago, I'm getting old. 20 years ago, I got a potato gun DVD.
All we sold was the product. That's all it was like, oh, there's a product, right? And it worked because there was no competition. It's way easier. You know, we're all jumping in 20 years later. We're men. Now everybody's trying to figure out how to make money and the competition is up. And so we've got to become better. So we went from having a product to shifting to what? to an offer.
So here's like, here's what we used to sell. Now it's like, we need to increase the perceived value as high as humanly possible. So we shifted from an offer or from a product to an actual offer, right? So not only do you get this, you're gonna get this, this, this, this, and this now became an offer. Okay. And this was the first phase. Sorry, behind my slides. There we go.
Um, and this is like, for me, shortly after I launched potato gun, this is the very first time I started, uh, started studying Dan Kennedy. And this was the quote. I remember him saying like, whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. You guys heard of FHL. If you listen to him, he brings books, says it all the time.
And honestly, I did not understand it when he first said it, it didn't make any sense to me. Um, I was like, I'm not spending money to like, I'm spending a buck 50 day on Google. So I'm potato DVDs. Like that's all I'm doing. Um, And I'm like, I'm not going to spend any more than that. I didn't understand it until Google slapped me, everything shifted, and I had to figure out a new way.
And so the first phase was product. You're taking this new opportunity and creating a product. Second phase was taking the opportunity and creating an actual offer to increase the perceived value. Third phase then said, okay, well now it's getting more expensive to do this. Now I need to be able to spend more money to acquire a customer.
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