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Forms Aren’t Dead: The State of Email Lead Capture in 2019

Email lead capture is the process marketers use to collect information from their website visitors. Typically, this is done through a traditional web form, although you can also capture leads through popups, chatbots, live chat, quizzes, surveys, and more.

Despite the process being fairly straightforward, our strategies often fluctuate in how we accomplish lead capture. Similarly, the results we achieve can vary quite a bit, too.

Unfortunately, the diversity of lead capture strategies, tools, and results can make it difficult to know precisely which process you should follow with your own marketing team — which is why we decided to conduct a survey.

We wanted to see, in 2019, what tools marketers are using for lead capture, what strategies they are using to optimize their efforts, and what kind of results and conversion rates people are seeing.

To ensure you’re able to optimize your lead capture strategy in 2019, keep reading.

Survey Methodology and Respondent Data

Any survey you conduct is limited by the sample you can reach. In our case, we received 173 valid survey responses. We filtered for marketers working full-time on lead capture and lead generation. Here are some quick statistics about our sample.

A large percentage of our respondents work at small businesses, with roughly 33% reporting less than 50 employees, although the distribution evens out among the other responses:

Additionally, a good chunk of our respondents (24%) work in advertising and marketing, but the rest is fairly diverse and split evenly between other industries.

Everyone in our sample works full-time and said they were “very” or at least “somewhat” involved in lead generation and lead capture efforts at their companies.

As with any research you conduct, there are some limitations with our dataset, as well. We’ll cover sample limitation and quirks later in this article.

Key Lead Capture Statistics and Findings

Here’s a quick overview of the most interesting statistics we learned about lead capture in 2019:

• Forms aren’t dead. 74% of marketers are using web forms for lead generation, and 49.7% of marketers say that web forms are their highest converting lead generation tool.
• Chatbots still have low adoption, but still, 17% of marketers are using chatbots today. However, only 6.5% say its their highest converting lead capture tool.
• The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields. Because contexts vary so wildly, this is neither good nor bad, though we have seen in consistent studies that fewer form fields usually result in higher conversion rates.
• Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual. Reported conversion rates varied consistently across reported categories, but the mean conversion rate from our study is 21.5% (*read more below about the limitations with our reported conversion rates).
• Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone. Running A/B tests, using form analytics, and running user tests are all correlated with higher form conversion rates and satisfaction with lead generation efforts.
• Multi-step forms convert 86% higher. Only 40% of marketers use them, but those that do report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher.
• Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses. Marketers who use lead magnets, or downloadable resources after a website visitor shares their email address, report marginally higher satisfaction rates and conversion rates than those who do not use lead magnets.
• Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet, with 27.7% of marketers using them. However, 24.9% are using webinars and almost as many (21.3%) are using free tools to get email addresses.
• The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words. Barely anyone writes an Ebook that is larger than 10,000 words, and the most common length is between 5,000 and 10,000 words.
• Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality. It’s reported that only 56.4% of marketers have a lead qualification strategy, and only 39.5% are using any sort of predictive lead scoring. It appears we overemphasize on volume on leads without considering the quality of each lead.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s explore a few of these statistics more in-depth.

Takeaway #1: Forms aren’t dead.

Online forms are the most commonly used type of lead capture tool, with 74% of respondents reporting they use them.

Half of our respondents reported forms gave them the highest conversion rates, making online forms the highest-converting lead capture tool for marketers.

Takeaway #2: Chatbots still have comparatively low adoption.

Many marketers report using more than one type of lead capture tool, but roughly 40% report only using one tool. And, while 37% of respondents use live chat, only 17% use a chatbot.

Additionally, only 7% of respondents said chatbots were their highest converting tool. By comparison, around 13% reported live chat or quizzes/surveys being the most effective tool.

It would appear from this data that, despite hype and trends, the old school web form is still alive and well for marketers.

Takeaway #3: The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields.

Forms are popular and pretty well loved in 2019, but what does the average form look like?

For starters, we found that marketers use, on average, 4.92 form fields on their forms (with five being the most popular answer). The number of form fields mostly resembles a normal distribution that centers around five, although there is a small spike of marketers who use more than 10 form fields.

Takeaway #4: Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual.

Average conversion rates are pretty varied, with a pretty stable distribution of reported conversion rates. Very few people report conversion rates in the 51-100% bucket.

This is one piece of data we need to take with a grain of salt, as with any self-reported KPI or metric. We don’t know exactly how our respondents define a conversion, how they measure conversion rates, or what their offers are, so we lack a lot of context.

Still, when we couple our conversion rate data with our data on self-reported satisfaction rates, we start to see interesting patterns.

First, take a look at our aggregated satisfaction rates:

Very few people (8%) are dissatisfied with their lead generation efforts, but only 12% report being very satisfied.

It also gets interesting when you examine these answers in conjunction with others. For instance, we found that those who are most satisfied with their lead generation efforts are those who use chatbots and report chatbots as their top converting lead capture tool.

Takeaway #5: Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone.

Generally speaking, marketers who use methods to improve the customer experience, and specifically those who are using data to drive experiences, are outperforming those who don’t.

For instance, marketers who run A/B tests on their forms tend to be more satisfied than those who don’t, and they also report roughly 10% higher conversion rates than those who don’t run A/B tests.

Following the trend, those who use form analytics report 15% higher satisfaction with their lead generation efforts and 19% higher conversion rates.

But what about user testing? A user test is a type of usability test in which you have users run through your website and attempt a task, and analyze their ability to do so.

Most people are running between one and five per year, but a full 36% never run user tests on their forms.

Again, we found that people who run user tests are more satisfied with their lead generation programs than those who don’t, and that the satisfaction rating increases as the number of user tests rises.

This is a big area of opportunity. Combined with a form analytics tool like Formisimo, you can learn a lot about user behavior from occasionally running user tests. To learn more about form optimization in general, check out this CXL Institute course.

Takeaway #6: Multi-step forms convert 86% higher.

Only 39% of marketers report using multi-step forms. Those who do, however, report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher (16.05% for those who don’t use multi-step, and 29.76% for those who do).

A small majority of marketers report using lead magnets in their campaigns, but 40% report not using them at all.

Takeaway #7: Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses.

A lead magnet is simply something of value you give in exchange for a visitor’s contact information.

We found that a small majority of marketers use lead magnets to capture emails, but a full 40% don’t use them (and roughly 10% don’t know if they are or aren’t).

Creating a relevant and valuable lead magnet is one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on lead capture forms. If you’re not doing this, it might be time to consider trying it out.

Takeaway #8: Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet.

If you’re wondering what type of lead magnets people generally use, Ebooks lead the way — but webinars, checklists, and free tools are close behind.

Other answers included “Qualifying email lists”, “Rewards”, “Customized vehicle brochure”, and “Property information”, meaning it’s largely made up of industry-specific offers that are related to the product or service in question.

Takeaway #9: The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words.

Very few marketers create Ebooks with greater than 10,000 words, and most fall within the area of 5,000-10,000 words long.

Takeaway #10: Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality.

Collecting a lead is a small part of the overall process. It’s important, of course, but you also need to worry about where you’re storing the data, and how you’re qualifying and nurturing leads.

Most marketers use more than one tool to store their leads — something that definitely jives with my personal experience.

Because we’re often using a myriad of tools for our marketing efforts, we need to store leads in many places and integrate many systems together to build a coherent system.

Specifically, we found that the most common tool for lead storage is a CRM, with 57% of marketers reporting using one. 48.8% report using an email marketing tool for storage, and 43.6% report using spreadsheets.

Of course, capturing leads is just one step of the process. What we do with them matters as well, as the end goal isn’t just to store them in a CRM or an email tool, but to turn them into customers. Part of this approach is qualifying leads and reacting appropriately based on their quality.

Do marketers normally have a strategy for lead qualification? It appears that, yes, this is the norm, with 56.4% of marketers saying they do have a documented lead qualification process. However, that leaves 34.9% with no documented process.

This is important because, as you would logically suppose, those who have a documented lead qualification process report 21.4% higher satisfaction ratings with their lead generation efforts.

While 39.5% of marketers are using predictive lead scoring in their marketing strategy, roughly half of marketers (48.8%) are not (and 11.6% don’t know if they are or not).

Limitations and Quirks With Our Data

As with any collection of data, you need to question its quality thoroughly. Especially with surveys and self-reported data, the nature of the questions can affect the output of answers. In our case, we can draw a lot of valid insights about lead generation and marketing in 2019, but we need to be careful about generalizing some of it.

The big question we need to consider is the “average conversion rate” of lead capture forms.

Naturally, this depends on how you calculate conversion rates, where your web form is, what your offer is, etc. For instance, the conversion rate of an offer for a free tool that is only seen by targeted paid traffic and only has an email address field is entirely different than a pop-up form that everyone on an ecommerce site sees.

Ultimately, conversion rates are wildly contextual.

How people calculate conversion rates is also different. Do you calculate by those who see your form, those who count as a page view (despite not scrolling to the form), or those who start filling out the form but never finish?

None of this is straightforward, so it can be tough to generalize findings about this metric.

As evidence for this quirkiness, look at this chart:

Our respondents seem to get better and better conversion rates the more form fields they use. While this is possible, it’s incredibly unlikely, at least when all other variables are controlled for. Almost all historical research has shown that increasing the number of form fields has an inverse effect on conversion rates (although not all studies have shown that).

That’s not to say the data is inherently untrustworthy. Just take any “average conversion rate” data with a grain of salt!

Additionally, we believe our sample is quite representative, as it had been filtered to include only those who work full-time on lead generation and lead capture efforts. But a greater sample would have been desirable. There is a lot of nuance — in industries, company size, etc. — that we couldn’t dive into because our sample size was only 173.

Looking to the Future

The process of capturing email leads is a huge part of inbound marketing. Parts of it change over time, such as the lead capture tools we use and the specific tactics around lead magnets, form optimization, and lead scoring and storage.

However, much remains the same, such as the core ideas of crafting relevant offers and building a lead capture tool with as little friction as possible.

It appears from this survey that less has changed than one would expect. Despite new “conversational” tools like live chat and chatbots, most people still use forms, and most people still entice visitors with Ebooks and webinars.

To no one’s surprise, those who run A/B tests, conduct user tests, and use form analytics, are more successful than those who don’t.

It will be interesting to see how things change in the next few years, as inbound marketing channels become more crowded and lead capture tools get “smarter” and more interactive.

Will we still be writing 7,500 word Ebooks in exchange for five form fields’ worth of information?

That’s where we stand today. Where will we be next year?

EU copyright directive nearing final form as Google tests stripped-down news SERPs

Once the language is finalized, each member state will need to ratify the directive.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Why Gillette’s New Ad Campaign Is Toxic

While it focuses on important social issues related to masculinity, Gillette has alienated a large proportion of its target market. This article provides a historical perspective on Gillette’s “Best a Man Can Get” campaign and explains what has gone wrong with the updated version.

The 7 Most Common Sales Objections by Prospects & How to Overcome Them

When we talk about objection handling in sales, it is often focused on the later stages of the buying cycle, usually during negotiations. We focus on pricing and timing issues — the types of objections that prevent a deal from closing.

A crucial yet overlooked aspect of objection handling occurs at the very beginning of the buying process, during prospecting. Sales reps who do their own prospecting and sales development reps encounter a myriad of objections in their attempts to connect with and qualify prospects.

Prospecting is hard. You are typically barging in on someone, so you’ll hear objections such as, “I’m too busy, call back next quarter,” “Just send me some information,” “We don’t have budget outlined for this,” and so on. The good news is you will begin to identify a set of common objections during prospecting. The key to success is to be prepared to overcome them and move prospects to the next step.

The vast majority of objections heard during prospecting are knee-jerk reactions from busy people who don’t yet see the value in working with you. Nearly all objections at the prospecting phase of the sales process fit into one of two categories:

1. I don’t understand the value and I’m too busy to think about it.
2. I’m not ready for a buying conversation.

Here’s how to avoid or overcome these objections.

What is a sales objection?

Sales objections are issues that prospects communicate to sales professionals as reasons why they can’t buy a product or service from them. Objections aren’t always hard “no”s, and they can sometimes represent opportunities for sales reps to clarify any misconceptions about the product or service to try to qualify the prospect and close the sale.

Usually, there are only a few moments after hearing an objection that a sales rep can clarify the value proposition of the product or service before being perceived as too pushy — or being hung up on. Here are our tips for handling the objection before we dig into specifics:

First, articulate value early and concisely. You can mitigate the value objection by simply respecting the prospect’s time and explaining what you want early in your outreach. Every email, voicemail, and phone interaction should lead with an assurance that you won’t take much time, followed by a short (30 seconds or less, or one to two sentences), buyer-centric, and customized value proposition. (For more on the quick value prop, check out this post.)

Second, don’t sell the product, sell the next step. It does not matter if the prospect is ready for a buying conversation yet. How could they be? It’s possible they’ve only just learned about you and your product from this call. Don’t get into a discussion of the product yet. If they ask a product question, recommend that you show them in the next meeting.

Common Sales Objections

1. “Just send me some information.”
2. “We already work with [Competitor].”
3. “Call me back next quarter.”
4. “We don’t have the budget.”
5. “Does your product do X, Y, and Z?”
6. “Sorry, I have to cancel. I’ll get back to you with a better time.”
7. “Hello, you’ve reached [Prospect’s Name] … “

Here are the most common objections prospectors might face, along with some very simple approaches to responding to them.

1. “Just send me some information.”

We call this objection style “the brush-off.” This objection varies in intent depending on when it comes up in your call with a prospect. If it comes up before you have had the chance to deliver your value proposition and explain who you are and what you do, it’s very clearly a brush-off. If it comes afterward, but before you’ve had the chance to ask qualification questions, there may be interest, but the prospect isn’t yet willing to talk about it further.

If it comes at the end of your call, after you’ve gone through both your value prop and qualification, the prospect may have decided this isn’t valuable somewhere along the way. No matter where it comes up in the call, it’s the SDR’s duty to uncover what is really going on: Do they not yet understand the value, or are they not ready for a buying conversation? Why not?

Responses: There are a few potential responses to this one, depending on what stage the call is in.

• Before you’ve delivered the value proposition: “Can we take 30 seconds now for me to explain what we do, and you can then decide if it’s worth a follow-up?”
• Before qualification: “Can I ask you a couple questions now to better understand how we might help?”
• After qualification: “Typically, people find it more valuable to see how this works in a demo.”

2. “We already work with [Competitor].”

This is where it’s important to know why you are unique, and be able to explain that value clearly. Your prospect just heard, “Hi, we do X” and thought, “Oh, we have a vendor for that, we’re good.” Your prospects are busy — they don’t want to fix things that aren’t broken. It is your duty to change their mindset, and explain why they need the specific value you provide.

Response: “At this point, we aren’t asking you to rip anything out. A lot of our customers used to or still use Competitor X. We’d just like the opportunity to show you how we are different and how we have provided additional value to our customers. We can present some use cases of other companies like yours who work with us and with Competitor X. When is a good time to schedule a follow-up call?”

3. “Call me back next quarter.”

Prospects are busy. They will push anything off to tomorrow because today is swamped. Don’t let them! You have a solution they needed yesterday. Reassure them that this is not a buying conversation. You just want to show them what you do, and see if there’s value for them.

Response: “Of course. If it really is bad timing, I’m happy to do that. However, I would still like to set up a five-minute call to show you what we are doing and how we might help. That way, if it’s not interesting, we don’t have to worry about me chasing you next quarter, but if it is, we’ll have more to talk about then. When is a good day/time for us to chat?”

4. “We don’t have the budget.”

If budget is an important part of your qualified lead definition (e.g. traditional BANT) this may be a stopping point. Even with BANT, however, it is important to dig a bit further to understand what not having budget means. Can they not afford it? Has your buyer burned through her personal budget for the year? Could your buyer find the money elsewhere if you show enough value? In most cases, the prospect doesn’t need to have a budget at this stage of the process, and SDRs should leverage this fact to overcome this objection.

Response: “That’s okay. We don’t expect you to buy anything right now. We’d just like the opportunity to share what we are doing and see if it’s valuable to your company. Can we schedule a follow-up call over the next couple days?”

5. “Does your product do X, Y, and Z?”

This isn’t so much an objection as an obstacle to closing a call with a prospect and getting them to the next appointment, (e.g., a demo, or a discovery call with the sales rep). However, it is one of the most common obstacles that prevent an SDR from converting the lead to an SQL. Not only does getting in the weeds waste time, but you also run the potential of devolving into a features/benefits conversation. The good news is this generally means the prospect is interested. Use this fact to end the conversation and set up the next appointment.

Response: “I am glad you asked that. I think it will be helpful to set up a time where we can answer this question and others with a specialist. When is a good day/time for us to talk?”

6. “Sorry, I have to cancel. I’ll get back to you with a better time.”

People don’t like to say “No” — and that includes your prospects. This manifests in ghosting, procrastination (as mentioned above), and asking for more time.

Sales pro Mike Rogewitz swears by Sandler’s Negative Reverse Selling strategy to overcome tricky non-objection objections like these. “You want to call out your prospect’s lack of interest and get them to admit the answer is ‘No‘ without going too negative,” says Rogewitz. “Essentially, you’re getting them to realize they’re bullshitting you.” Here’s the formula:

Prospect: “XYZ fluffy response.”

Salesperson: “Typically when I hear someone say XYZ, it really means ABC. Is it fair for me to assume that’s the case?”

By using this simple script, you’ll nudge your prospect into giving you the final answer you need to move on.

Response: “Typically, when someone cancels and says they’ll get back to me, it means they’re just not interested in what I have to offer right now. Is it fair for me to assume that’s the case?”

7. “Hello, you’ve reached [Prospect’s Name] … “

Does your prospect avoid your phone calls like the plague? Do they take a while to get back to you and always need approval? Do they give vague answers when you ask about budget and priorities for the year?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you might be talking with an individual contributor. They’re usually not as comfortable talking on the phone as managers or decision makers, they need a lot of internal approval, and they aren’t privy to important budgetary information or company-wide priorities.

It’s important to gain the gatekeeper’s trust and learn as much as you can from them — but then you need to move on and build relationships with the people in the company who can actually choose your product/service.

Response: “Have you ever purchased this type of product/service before?” “Who will be in charge of this buying process?” “Would you be able to connect me with that person?”

When an Objection Means No

Prospects often don’t give you a chance to explain the value you think you can provide. They are too busy, and have too little faith in the hordes of SDRs and sales reps that reach out to them on a daily basis. Unfortunately, they have learned through experience that these knee-jerk objections are the best defense against people wasting their time. This forces salespeople to be more assertive and persistent.

That said, at a certain point no means no. The responses to the common objections above give you a way to pierce through the reactionary objections prospects give without thinking. However, if you have said your piece and the prospect still objects, let it go. Nobody is going to buy against their will. Get as clear as you can on the objection and try to determine what your prospect is really concerned about, but don’t push past the prospect’s point of comfort. Rule of thumb: if the prospect says an objection twice, it’s real. No means no.

Want to learn more? Get a list of responses for when a prospect asks for a discount.

Day 1: Transformation Week (Get Clarity!)

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SUMMARY

• “Do you know what everyone does with their second chance? They start fine tuning who they want to be in life. This might be that second chance for you – this time of year, or this moment, or as we start Transformation Week together. This might be your second chance to live life more congruent with who you know you are, and who you know you can be.”
• “Every human being wants to be proud of themselves because they’re being congruent with who they know they can be. We also have relating goals: I want deep, caring, rich relationships with other people. I want to create things that amplify and turn on my mind, that make me feel creative and remind me that I am making a difference in the world. And I want to know that I’m getting better at things and that life FEELS better. Those statements are the sum of everything I guarantee you want in life. But how do you know if you’re going to get them?”
• This training is all about developing CLARITY for your new year, identifying your Being Goals, Relating Goals, Creating Goals and Growing goals. You’ll also learn the 2 difference-makers to support with achieving success with these goals.
• Watch the video to get the full training.
• This is a MUST WATCH episode featuring Day 1 of Transformation Week. Develop the ultimate level of clarity with these three powerful frameworks.
• Take your 2019 to a whole new level! To access the worksheet for this POWERFUL training, signup at www.TransformationWeek.com. This free 7-day online challenge helps you set 2019 goals and create the mindset and daily habits needed to achieve them faster.
• Watch the video, take notes, chat with Brendon and Denise (when you signup at www.TransformationWeek.com), and post your lessons and goals on social media with #TransformationWeek to win shoutouts and prizes.
• Already have the High Performance Planner and CRUSHING each and every day? Let’s celebrate you! Take a photo with your planner and use #HPXlife .

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

1. Free Book!

   My blog readers get a complimentary copy of my new book High Performance Habits, while supplies last! I bought 1000 for you – so no charge for the book itself – but I do ask you pay your shipping. While supplies last. Get yours here.

2. Three Online Courses for $1!

   My blog readers also get an exclusive $1 trial to access ALL my personal development courses! Click here for the #1 trial. Students call it “the Netflix of Personal Development.” You’ll call it the curriculum that changed your life forever!

3. Latest Instagram!

   I’m releasing a new podcast in coming days. So watch my Instagram for announcement.

DID YOU KNOW?

I give weekly prizes, gratitude and shout-outs to our students, so post a screenshot or video on Instagram and use #TheBrendonShow! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about this episode!

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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of Youtube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

Hey, everybody! Happy New Year! It’s Brendon Burchard and I’m excited to welcome you to Transformation Week. For the next seven days, I’m going to send you a brand new training video every single day where we’re really going to help you start this new year in a more focused, confident, and productive place. It’s a great honor to be with you here on your New Year, if that’s when you’re watching this. I cannot wait for you to get this training. A lot of people have high ambitions for these next 12 months, but they really don’t know where to start, or they have really, really good plans, but they don’t feel good and they’re not ready for the demands of what’s coming in 2019.

I think you’re going to find Transformation Week is really going to support you in your long-term growth, but also in the next seven days, you’re going to find a new vitalization about life. So, I’m really excited that you’re here. In a moment, I’m going to step back and teach you three different frameworks for the theme of today.

CLARITY

Transformation week begins with getting clarity.

If you don’t have clarity, you can’t change. You can’t grow, right? No clarity, no change. No goals, no growth. It just ties together.

So my job here today is to remind you that only two things are going to change in your life in 2019. Either something new is going to come into your life, something new and positive. A new person, a lottery, or something. Or, something new is going to come from within. And what I’m going to share with you over these next seven days, you might be like, “Oh yeah. I know that Brendon, but I’m not applying that. I haven’t thought of it that way before, and let me journal about that.”

I’m not going do a casual, seven-day challenge with you. We’re going to go deep.

If you’ve never been in my community before, I want to share something with you. I’ve had the blessing of writing six books. I’ve spent 20 years studying neuroscience, positive psychology, and high performance studies to really understand: How do you develop expertise? I’m not the guy you go to for just hope or memes. I’ve never posted a meme. My job is to be the advanced guy. My job is to be the tactical guy.

You come to me for high performance work, which is:

How do I really change my mindset, develop better behaviors and more self-discipline to change the world in the way that I want to?

I want you to really step into command of your life in 2019. So, I’m going to push you. I’m going to bug you. I’m going to be a little bit strong throughout these transformation days together, because I want to see you change your life. I want to see you out there on social media posting #TransformationWeek. I want you, as a new member of this HPX community, to really get a tremendous amount of value from this. I’m going to tell you some simple things to do with that.

One, make the time today to watch this full video. You can pause it right now and see it’s a longer video, ’cause it’s day one. We have to get clarity. Two, I wanted to make sure that you download the worksheet below this video, because the worksheet is really an activity guide. There’s going to be prompts in there. They’re going to help you get really clear about your 2019. Not just in the different parts of your life, but also existentially. Where are you going? What’s it all about, man? We’re going to solve some of those things, so I honor you being here. If this is your first time interacting with me or this new HPX Life brand, HPX stands for the High Performance Experience.

It’s what I believe every single person wants to experience in their life: the High Performance Experience. It’s that level where you are fully engaged with life, where you’re joyous and you’re confident, and you’re moving in the direction towards your dreams with real momentum.

Living the High Performance Experience to me is what makes me feel happy. Do you know any under-performers who are super happy? It’s like when I’m performing at my best, meaning I have high intention. I’m present in the moment. I’m in command of my thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings. I’m taking charge of my day. I’m making sure that I set boundaries, that I move towards goals judiciously, conscientiously, with real discipline and real excitement for the day. That’s the High Performance Experience, and that’s what I want to gift to you. I thank you all and I celebrate you.

You could be in a lot of different places today, but today you chose to be part of Transformation Week. You chose day one. And that’s the way I want you to look at this. This is day one. But this is day one of the rest of your life. I’m going to ask you questions in today’s training when we step back to the flip chart. I’m going to teach you a primary aspiration theory to help you identify different parts of your life. And I really want you to watch this full video. I promise it will deliver the goods, even if it sometimes gets philosophical or academic. I want you to learn to think in different categories of your life. I want you to have frameworks for how to succeed. I want the path ahead to become more predictable for you. I want the path ahead to be something that you’re exciting about. That’s going to take you watching this video and downloading the tools. Please share in the community by making sure you #TransformationWeek. Get your friends involved. Get the girls involved. Get your buddies involved. Get everybody involved because by the end of these seven days, you will know 2019 will be the best year of your life. It’s an honor to be here with you. I’m going to step back now. We’re going to change the scene and I’m going to be teaching you primary aspiration theory. Let’s get it, 2019.

Day one of Transformation Week is all about getting clarity.

If you don’t have clarity about who you are and where you want to go in life, then it’s difficult to get there, which we all know. I would say no clarity, no change. No change, no goals. No goals, no growth.

So we have to start by getting you clear about what you want and where you’re going. The funny thing is, most people don’t have any framework for doing that. So in this video, I’m going to give you three different, very complex

but easy for you to fill out frameworks to help you figure out your life. We all have different ways of thinking about our life. Some people love to just get into each area of their life. They like to think about their relationships. They like to think about their health. They like to think about their friends and their adventures and their learning. And that’s like their whole life. It’s like looking into each arena of their life.

Other people, me specifically, I love to think more philosophically, existentially, big picture, long-term purpose stuff. That’s going to be this framework I’m going to teach you here today in Transformation Week.

I’m also going to teach one more framework. It’s the third framework, and that’s what I call Vision Circles. It’s about: How do I decide what I should do with my life, and how can that become a career or a thing?

A lot of people ask me, “Well Brendon, I’m excited about the next 12 months of my life, but I don’t know what my purpose or my passion or my career could even be.”

So, we’ve got a big session here today. Three different frameworks. I’m going to start with the one where we just get into the different arenas of your life. To access the downloads and worksheets for each of these frameworks, sign up at www.TransformationWeek.com.

We’re going to start with what we call The Whole Life Assessment in my High Performance Planner. I hope you have this already. It’s not mandatory or required for Transformation Week, but it will definitely help you for the rest of your life. This is what I use every single morning to get my life in order, and it’s what I use at the end of the day to review my habits. And, there is something else in here. There are literally two or three different times you’ll get to do this in the book, and that is what we call The Whole Life Assessment. It’s the opening of the High Performance Planner. I have people do this spot check on their entire life in 10 different categories. I have them look at their health, their mental, emotional states, their partner, relationship, love, family, friends, mission, experiences, spirit, their finances and their learning. I have them score themselves on a score of one to 10. One is not so good, 10 is pretty good. 10 different areas, 10 different ratings, which means they get a score of zero to 100%. It’s just a good spot check.

What I want you to do for Transformation Week, and this whole concept today of getting clear, is to score yourself in each of these areas, and then I want you to set goals in each of these areas. When you fill it out, it’s good to get some awareness and to score yourself, but then I want you to set goals. Set goals for what should be your health. I want you to set aspirational, big goals.

So for your health, you can ask yourself: “It’s going to be the best year for my health ever. What would I do for my mental and emotional health? If I was going to feel my absolute best, what would that look like in terms of partnerships, relationship love, and significant others? What would that relationship feel like?”

Family, friends, mission, experiences, spirit, finances, and learning. You get the idea. It’s a really great tool if you don’t have it. It’s discounted right now on Amazon, wherever you’re at in the world. I highly recommend it for the next part of your life. It’s really important. You can download that specific Whole Life Assessment below. What I’d like to do is spend time with you thinking about your life and the aspirations of your life in a different way.

That’s what we’re going to do here today, and it’s going to be most of my teaching for today’s Transformation Week day. What are our primary aspirations?

I really believe there are only four primary aspirations in life. We only have four aspirations, or major goals, what they might call in psychology higher-order goals. We have being goals. We have relating goals. We also have creating goals. If you think about it, almost everything you feel or you think or you seek or you need or you go after, once you have safety and sustenance in place, it’s really these types of things: being, relating, and creating.

Specifically, we all want to be a person who we are proud of and who we respect. We want to feel alive.

If you ask a person, “What do you want?” One thing every person will say is, “I want to feel fully alive and energized, and I want to be proud of who I am.” Everybody says that. Those are being goals.

Who have you been being in the last 12 months, and who do you want to become in the next 12 months? I’m going help you do that.

People also talk about relating goals. Every single one of us thinks through our life in many ways from a social lens. We think about how we relate with other people, and how we want to feel with other people. How we want to interact with them, how we want our relationships to have depth and pop and vibrancy and connection. We also think about things that we’re going to create. This is where a lot of people ask, “What do I want to do? What do I want to make? What do I want to contribute? How do I want to think and use my brain each day?”

Those are types of creating higher-order goals. And in the middle of everything, we all have growing aspirations. We all want to grow. So if you think about it, when I sit down with people and I’m doing high-level coaching with people, often as simple as it sounds, a lot of people never do the work. They’re not thinking about who they’re being each day at work. They’re just kind of showing up and going through the motions. Going through the motions is the death of high performance.

So we’ve got to be more intentional these next 12 months. Can you agree? We’ve got to be more conscientious and more conscious of how we’re showing up. We’ve got to think about how we’re going to relate with other people, what we’re creating, and how we’re growing along the way. These are the four things we all want: being, relating, creating, and growing.

What I want to do for you now is jump into each of the goals that help those higher-order goals happen.

Being Goals

When I say we have being goals, what do I mean by that? I mean, specifically, we all want congruence in our life. We all want to be congruent with the best possible person we know we can be. We want to be congruent with the future vision of ourselves as our best self.

When there’s suffering in our life, it’s often because we’re being incongruent. We have stepped out of integrity, and we’re not being the person we know we can be, and it causes mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but there are a lot of people that go through the day faking it. They’re not being real. They’re not telling people what they really think, feel, desire, want, and love. Instead, they’re putting on a mask. They’re showing up. They’re not being who they really know they can be, because they feel like they have to get along. They feel like they have to fit in. They’re trying so desperately to belong that they’re becoming fake. When we are incongruent with who we know we really are, those are the deepest levels of misery in life.

So if you were going to be more congruent, how would you show up? First, you would have to ask who you want to be.

You don’t have to think about the end of your life; though, that’s a really positive and good thing to do. Let’s start with five years out. In five years from now, if you were more joyous, more confident than you are now, what would that person be like? Describe your best self five years from now.

Then, I’d love for you to go to the very end of your life and ask: “If at the end of my life I was happy with the person I became, what does that person who I became look like in terms of their values, their beliefs, who they are in the world, and how they show up?” And I want you to know you’re going to ask that.

Many of you have been with me for a really long time in my community, and you know that my story began when I had a car accident at 19.

That car accident taught me, essentially, that I wanted to be a more intentional man. I wanted to realize the blessing of life. I wanted to have reverence for life, because I realize we all get second chances.

You know what everyone does with their second chance? They start fine tuning who they want to be in life. This might be that second chance for you, this time of year, or this moment, or as we start Transformation Week together.

Maybe this is your second chance to live a life more congruent with who you know you are, and who you know you can be. You have to make that commitment. We can’t do it in a worksheet. You won’t get it just hearing me talk. You’ve got to show up each day and say: “I have to start living my life, not other people’s lives. I have to be congruent with who I know I can be.”

If that’s not a deep-seeded commitment to you, then you have to think longer about the end of your life and about the person you’re going to become. That might charge you up today. That’s the second thing we’re going to talk about. If you talk about the being goals, we ought to be somebody who we’re proud of because we’re congruent with our best values and our highest self. We also want to be somebody who has a level of charge. And if you haven’t heard that language from me before, what I mean by that is, we all want a positive energy in our life. We want to feel fully charged. Ask any person. What do you want? They want to feel fully alive and proud of who they are. That’s the being aspiration: “I’m proud of who I am. I feel alive.”

How are you going to be proud of who you’re going to be, and how are you going to feel more fully alive?How are you going to develop more charge and more vibrancy? This is the stuff of health and wellness.

This is the stuff of taking care of your body. Sleep well, eat well, exercise regularly, get your doctor’s check-ups, and get your workout. Take care of yourself. That’s what the charge is. That’s how you get it. I’m this annoying because for a long time, I’ve known I want to be a guy who has the energy to deliver his service to the world. I never want to run out of gas. I want to have stamina all day. I want to be mentally sharp when I need to be mentally sharp. I want to show up with joy and positivity. I want to be a light, not the darkness. I’ve got to figure out how to take care of myself to do that.

So, have you been thinking about these things and who you’re going to be over the next 12 months?

I’d love for you to live in congruence with that. In the worksheet, there are some prompts and questions that will get you thinking about these types of things. How you’re showing up in the world and whether or not it is your truth. For you to live your highest, truest sense of yourself: that’s congruence. For you to have the energy to feel good about your being. There are some prompts for that as well, so you can start developing in these areas. These are obviously longer-term, bigger-picture things than most people think about at just New Year’s.

It’s like: “I really have to be more focused on who I’m being in the world and how I’m living in the world.” That’s what our being aspirations are.

Relating Goals

The second thing I was talking about was relating. We have relating aspirations. Primarily, we want to have deep, vibrant levels of connection with people. Ask anyone. What do you want from your relationship? At base, they’re ultimately going to get to the fact of wanting to feel a real level of connection and vibrancy. Whether they’re discussing a significant other, a family member, a friend, a lover, we all want that.

We all want that level of depth with somebody, and that vibrancy. We want an energy there and we want realness there.

Everybody at the end of their life has to be aware of the facts of how they treated people and the types of relationships they created.

I’m in my 40s and I’ve had two significant bouts of accidents in my life where I was in hospital beds. And I can tell you, you think about the people who you are going to miss, and who’s going to miss you.

That’s why I always talk about living and loving. It’s about relating. We really will think about our relationships. At the end of your life, you’re either going to be in a bed by yourself if you’re passing away that way, or you’re going to be in a bed and you have family and friends around who appreciate you and who care for you. That’s really important.

It’s also not just a matter of going through the motions with relationships, but deciding to have extraordinary relationships.

If you’re going to have greater quality relationships with people, greater depth and greater vibrancy, how would you need to show up in those relationships?How would you need to show up to set that tone, to be the role model, to create that magic?

We’re so good at that when we first start dating somebody. You do all the little tricks to make them smile. You give them gifts. You send the thank you notes. You dote on them. And then five, 10 years go by, and you’re like, “Did you take out the trash?”

You lost the sense that it’s your job to create connection. It is your job in your marriage, in your partnership, and in your love relationship with other people to create the connection.

That’s your job: create the connection. Deepen the connection. Make that connection more vibrant. That is your job. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand relationships.

This is the end outcome: the depth and vibrancy of relationships.

I also know that in relating, what’s really important to us is that we need to feel care. We need to feel cared for. Connection is something we can go and make happen, but we desperately need to feel cared for by others. When an infant is born, if they’re not cared for, they die. If an infant is born and they’re raised in malice, if they’re raised in total chaos, it’s not that they can’t have a good life, but the odds are highly against them. So, we’ve got to feel cared for, but here’s the deal.

If you’re not caring for yourself and you’re not setting boundaries and expectations with other people, if you’re letting people run you over all the time, and overload you with too many tasks, then you don’t feel cared for.

Suddenly you’re the high performer or you’re the leader at the top, and it’s lonely at the top. It’s like what one of my mentors, Brian Tracy, says: If you’re lonely at the top, you did it wrong.

If you don’t feel like anyone is caring for you, you’re not asking for help, or you’re not asking for help from the right people. Listen, you can be a person who creates great, positive, amazing relationships, but if there’s no reciprocity there, you’re miserable. Isn’t it true? I know that you might be the person who’s the giving spirit in your family and friends. You might be the high performer. But if no one is caring back, then there’s misery. So what do you have to do? You have to ask for it. It’s the hardest thing in the world, but if you don’t get the cards, the appreciation, the acknowledgement, or the validation from your spouse, your partner, your friends, your team, you have to call that out and say: “I’m not feeling cared for in this relationship. I’m doing all the work. I’m not feeling like you guys care if I’m here or not.”

If you don’t feel cared for, everything else can be good in your life, but that one thing strips you of joy. And the only way to get more caring from others is to have the courage to ask for it.

If you need more caring from your spouse, this Transformation Week should kick that off and you should ask for it. You just say: “I need a little more attention. I need a little more acknowledgement. I need a little more appreciation. I’m kind of drowning here. I feel alone.” If you don’t voice these things, how is your life going to improve? We all want deep and vibrant relationships in our lives, but we don’t get them unless we ask for the caring that we need.

Creating Goals

The other thing that we all want is the creating aspiration, and that is specifically two things. One, creativity. Creativity is vital for a sense of well-being in our life. I’m sure you’ve had those jobs where you go to work and you don’t actually make, do, or participate in anything. You’re pushing the paper or you’re just going through the motions, but you’re not really there creating, contributing, or being a part of the process. There’s no magic there. So how are you going to activate your creativity in the next 12 months? What are you going to do? How are you going to put creativity on your agenda every day in some way or another? That means maybe you take 20 minutes to draw. Maybe it means you take 30 extra minutes on projects to go ahead and flower it up a little bit. Maybe it means, for you, you start shooting those videos or creating that content, or doing that thing that you love.

For me, I have to write every day or I go insane. Everyone has their different thing.

But your ability to consistently express creativity is something that most people forget when they think about their resolutions or their goals. So right here in Transformation Week, you need to activate your creativity more often.

You need to ask: how, when, where? It’s really important. Let me give you an example. I have a creativity rule. Whenever I finish a project, I go back through it one time and ask myself: ‘How would I change things up if it was a little more creative? How could I add a little more of my voice, my values, and my aesthetic to this? It’s one of the things I feel really made my career magical. I never just go through and finish something and hand it off or post it. I go through it one more time and ask how I can do this a little more creatively. That sparks my mind.

If your mind is bored, you can be a very congruent, healthy person. If your mind is bored, you can also have great relationships. But you’ll be miserable if your mind is bored. You are the person who is responsible for your mind. You’re the person who has to activate it and let that thing dance, play and flow.

And if you’re not doing it, you can’t blame your job. You can’t blame your boss. You can’t blame your spouse. If you’re living a boring, uncreative life, that’s on you. And one of the best things you can ever do to revitalize yourself is to create more habits where you’re doing something creatively engaging. Building something. Contributing something. Doing something that matters.

In the act of creating, we find our meaning, our sense of joy, and our contribution.

We all want to know that our life is ultimately contributing something. This is where some people would say, “Well, Brendon, I’ve got these giving goals.” What you’re really trying to do is create contribution in the world. Contribution doesn’t just happen. You create it. You have to be specific, thoughtful, strategic. You have to ask: “What do I want to contribute? What do I want my legacy to be? What do I want to contribute for my sense of magic of life?”

It comes from giving. We’re never living unless we’re giving.

So what contributions would you love to make in the next 12 months? And I don’t mean just write a check somewhere. (That’s okay, too, though.) I mean, what would you like to contribute ultimately?

Your life is creating a story. And as your life is creating this story, what is it giving? At the end of these chapters, what’s being given out? What’s the message? What’s the contribution specifically?

I think what happens this time of year is people don’t think about giving. They’re more like, “Well, I want to write this best-selling book. I want to get this stuff.”

But what they’re really after is new states of being, better relationships, and knowing that their work, their daily activities, are adding up to some type of difference in the world. That’s our contribution.

With that being said, in the middle of all this, we want to grow. We want to grow in our relationships and who we’re being and in what we’re giving. Two things matter the most to our happiness. It took me a long time to figure these two things out, but they’re so fundamental. Number one is our drive for excellence. This, some people frankly don’t have. Other people have too much. But this drive for excellence comes from a feeling of wanting to be more excellent.

If you want grow as a public speaker, it means you want to be more excellent onstage. If you want to grow in any given skillset, if you want to develop competency, that means you want to get better at what you’re doing.

Wanting to get better comes from that impulse of excellence. Wanting to do things well and getting better at them is at the center of our sense of growth.

Look at your life. Where can you become more excellent? Is it a skill? Is it something that you give? If you think of all the major activities you do during a day, how could you do them better? It could be as simple as going to the gym and doing your bicep workout. So, how do you do it better next time?

Learning how to do things better is one of the great things that built our human society to the level it is at. People had the aspiration to do things with excellence.

It’s also about building excellence.

There’s another sense of growing that’s really important, and that is called enrichment goals. Enriching means being more mindful. I feel it more. There’s more presence. I’m making memories now. Our real sense of growth in life is when we start to feel more.

When you start enriching a moment with presence, mindfulness, awareness, conscientiousness, consciousness.

Our real sense of spiritual growth doesn’t come from getting more things. It comes from learning to be present in a way in which our spirit is more alive, that we have enriched the moment with spirit. We don’t need more things. We need to feel differently.

You’re growing in life when each day feels more magical. That’s what we’re after. So I call this Primary Aspiration Theory, and it’s really important. Here’s why I teach you all this. I want to teach you the difference in people’s lives, and once you get this, I think your life is forever transformed. We all have these. Every human being wants to be proud of themselves because they’re congruent with who they know they can be, and they have energy. Remember, I want to be alive and proud of who I am.

You also have relating goals. I want deep, caring, rich relationships with other people. I want to create things that amplify, turn on my mind, make me feel creative, and make a difference in the world. That’s a creating goal. And I want to know I’m getting better at things and that life feels better. Those statements are the sum of everything I guarantee you really want in life. But how do you get them?

You have to start thinking about these things on more philosophical, deep, practical levels. These show up for me in every way when I fill out my Whole Life Assessment from the High Performance Planner.

But for you, maybe you revisit this video. Maybe you download the worksheet. You revisit it every Sunday. You need to make it a practice that these are on the dashboard of your mind.

But here’s the thing. As this goes on and on in our lives, what I have learned is something so simple and so basic. It’s that the difference it has made in people’s lives are based on two primary things.

So, are you going to be the person you want to be? Are you going to have the relationships you really want? Are you really going to grow? Are you going to create things that really matter and make you come alive with creativity? There tends to be two things that differentiate people, because we all want this. Obviously clarity is important. We have to know these things. That’s why I’m having you do the work.

But here’s the difference in how people feel later in their life:

#1 Difference: Ambition

If your ambition for your relationships is down low, then that’s a different quality of relationship. If your ambition is to have great relationships, that aims your intention. That sets your expectation. That changes the interactions. For many people, their ambitions are too low for the quality of life they really want to experience. They’re not dreaming big enough. They’re not thinking big enough. They’ve given up on themselves. They don’t believe in themselves. And they keep hoping that something else is going to change for them.

Only two things change your life. Either something new comes into your life. So you’re lucky. You win the lottery. You meet a new person. You get that new job out of nowhere. Or something new comes from within. Only two things change your life. Either something new comes into your life or something new comes from within.

And one of the things that you must allow these next 12 months is permission for yourself to have higher ambition.

Your level of contribution in the world, your level of excellence at what you’re doing, your level of who you show up as, and your level of relationships are all based on the ambitions you have. Your desire, your hunger, your dreams, and your vision for all those things.

And many people just never thought about it. So A, that’s the problem, or B, they’re aiming too low.

You have come further in your life than you give yourself credit for. Your goals must appropriately adjust.

What happens is, most people set their ambitions based on their current circumstances, or their current competencies, or their past childhood.

You’re in a new place now. The future’s better than you think. You’re stronger than you think. Today, you can’t let your vision for your future be limited by the circumstances or the conditions of today or the past. You’ve got to break all that in your mind and see where you want your life to go. Have ambition again.

One of the best ways to change your life is to start expecting something from yourself again. Ambition. It’s time to raise your standards. To set your sights higher.

That’s what doesn’t happen for people here, and that’s often where they struggle. So all around this, two things are happening. One, your level of ambition.

#2 Difference: Command 

Your level of command makes the difference.

No one likes this word but I love it. Your level of command in life: this means you take charge of your life. When you get back up from getting knocked down and say, “I’m in charge.” When you struggle in life, you take charge of life again.

If you don’t have command of your life, if you don’t take the helm, if you’re not the captain of the ship, all of this is just positive thinking. The difference maker in people’s lives is the ambition they set and the command they take over their circumstances, their thoughts, their behaviors, their actions, their relationships, and the direction of their daily focus and goals. That’s it.

Think about the importance of command. Another way that might sound softer to say is this: resilience, competence, and self-direction. Lots of people want things. They have big goals. When they get knocked down, they don’t have the confidence, the resilience, or the self-determination to get up and go again. Or they let other people push them around. Everyone says “No,” so they quit. Everyone says you can’t, so they believe they can’t. But highly successful people take command of their life. They say, “You know what? This is the demarcation line. I am no longer going to let everyone else push me around. I am no longer going to play small. When someone speaks down to me, I will speak up to them. When someone tells me I don’t have a chance, I say, ‘Watch me.’”

When someone doesn’t believe in you, realize that their understanding is not necessary for your progress. It’s taking command over your thoughts, behavior, and direction in life, and being able to do that in the most difficult of circumstances. Being able to do that when no one believes. Being able to take command when you don’t feel like it. Another way to say it? Self-discipline.

You might wake up and not feel like it today, but you take command. You say, “Okay brain, I hear what you’re saying. You don’t feel like it, but listen. We’re going to do it. Put those shoes on. Hit the road. You’re jogging. Let’s go.”

Command is taking control of those fearful or lazy impulses that shut us down or turn off our action. It says, “Listen, I know I don’t feel like it, but it’s my time. I know I don’t feel like it, but I don’t care what I feel like. What’s important? What is necessary?”

I would say this has been a difference maker in my life. Everyone thinks: “Brendon, you’re the motivator. You must wake up everyday in a flowery mood.”

Ask my wife. Sometimes I wake up, I’m like a grump. Denise is like, “What’s up with you?”

It’s partially because I don’t drink caffeine in the morning. She’s just flowing and she’s a morning person. My father, my mother: they’re morning people. They’re happy and loving and joyous, and sometimes I’m like, “Don’t talk to me for a little bit here. I need to get myself situated.”

So believe it or not, I need to take command of my mornings. When my day feels like it’s derailed, I think, “Let’s get it back on track. Let’s go.”

Think of the alternative. A difficulty shows up in life and you flow with the difficulty in the sense of giving up. Something interrupts your day and you go, “Oh, I guess there goes the whole day. Screw it. Netflix, popcorn, and wine.”

Well, Netflix, popcorn, and wine feels really good in the moment. But you lost command of your life and you gave it to the TV.

So I want you to think about taking command over how you’re showing up in the world, how you’re treating other people, what you’re creating, and how your growing changes everything. When you develop your own curriculum for growth in life, everything changes. Mediocrity happens when somebody is not taking command of the true potential within them.

This is the most important thing I can tell you: The quality of people’s lives usually comes back to if they are clear about these areas. Do they have some clarity about their life assessment? Are they clear about where they’re at and what they want in these areas?

Ultimately, the quality really depends on your ambition and the command that you take.

Now, I know as you’re watching this, if you know my work, you may be thinking, “But Brendon, you also love sociology and environment.”

I’m not here to say that people who have lots of ambition and command can succeed in every environment.

Sometimes the culture, the community, sometimes disrespect, sometimes people just having terrible actions towards you. Sometimes life happens. I get it. But I’ll tell you what, no one succeeds without these two things.

So let’s develop them. I want you to believe in a higher purpose, a higher calling, a higher quality of life, a higher abundance for yourself. I want you to get up tomorrow, and no matter how you feel, take command of that day.

Vision Circle

When I talk about these types of things, most people say they don’t know what they want. So let’s talk about the Vision Circle.

Now for those of you who are really struggling to tactfully line it up a little bit, here’s what I like to suggest. What I learned about finding clarity in my life, about my passion and my vision for my life, is what I just call the Vision Circle.

It’s just a different way of thinking about what your trade, your mission, your career, or your major contribution might be. Now, some of them are basic. You’ve all heard before: Just follow your passions. So passions is a good one. If you already know what you’re passionate about and you love it, do more of it. Got it? If you already know what brings you alive, the world needs you to do more of that. So focus on that! Passion and knowing what you enjoy is a lot of it. But, I also want to communicate to you that passion isn’t everything.

I never had passion for video. I was terrified of video. I didn’t have passion for speaking on stages. I was mortified of public speaking. As many of you know, I have 250 million video views. I spoke to 55,000 people live in person these last 12 months. I do those things really well, and now they’re a passion. But in the beginning, they were not a passion.

Those skill sets were a requirement for me to serve.

Sometimes, your passion grows as you find where you want to serve.

Some people don’t know where they want to serve. That’s where this other thing comes in mind, and that’s need. This is often what you’ll hear new teachers in the entrepreneurial space say: just find a problem and solve it. Just find a need in the marketplace and give the solution, and you’ll be rich!

It really bothers me when people focus solely on that one. Here’s the thing.

If all you do in your life is solve other people’s problems, you probably won’t live your own life. If all you do is create solutions for big needs, but you’re not passionate about those needs, you’ll be solving problems and you will be unfulfilled.

People tell me all the time, “Brendon, just create more of your posts. Look at the analytics of all your posts, and just create more posts based on what the audience always liked.”

And I think, “Oh. So meaning, give up my personal art? Meaning, don’t put out things that I want to put out for no other reason?”

Most of my contributions on social media have nothing to do with getting the most likes. It’s about a message I want to put out into the world. Often, I’ll put a post out there and it’ll get like a thousand likes, and someone will write back, ”Brendon! If you did this thing, or you made this meme, you could reach 10,000 or a million people.”

I know this, but I’m not a meme creator. There’s no passion there for me. Yeah, it solves a need, the customers like it. But it’s not who I am. My passion isn’t there. That’s why I think these things have to overlap.

You can see opportunities or needs in the marketplace, but if we all just went along and tried to solve every need or opportunity in the marketplace, we’d be very unfulfilled if we didn’t learn to match it up with what’s true in our heart, what our passions dictate.

That’s why those need to overlap. Then, what is really important-and this is what most people fail at in life-is whatever you choose to do, you need to make sure it matches up with the lifestyle that you want to live.

This is one most people don’t get until they get older. When you’re young, you’re following your passions. You’re trying to get a job. But at some point, you have to ask: “Does this match with the lifestyle that I want to live?”

For me, I know I could have built these big companies. I’ve got four brands that do tens of millions in dollars. I’m super proud of that. But for me, I also didn’t build a company of 10,000 employees. I could have, but that wasn’t a lifestyle that I wanted. I could have gone and done dozens of other things in my life that wouldn’t have allowed my lifestyle.

I knew my lifestyle was not having a jam-packed agenda in the morning, or being at an office everyday at 8am.

I determined there was a lifestyle that I wanted. I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world at any time I wanted, to generate the levels of revenue that I wanted.

That pushed me in specific directions. Your lifestyle that you want for your family should push you in a certain direction. I know as I’m speaking, some of you have careers that are compromising a lifestyle that you want. And at some point, you’re going to open up your calendar, mark a date six months from now, and decide that’s when a change is going to happen. You have to set a date.

If you’re meeting a need to pay the bills, but you have no passion there and it’s destroying your life at home, you’ve got to change that. Otherwise, you’ll be unhappy.

This last piece is really important that most people don’t think about, and that is community: the people who you are around. I’ve had really great corporate jobs in my past. And I tell you, some of them I quit because I didn’t like the people.

Part of finding your thing in life if you don’t know what your passion is, is being around people who you think are cool, aspirational, who you look up to, and who let life find its way. I tell young kids this all the time.

They’re like, “I don’t know. I’m going to work for this company or this company, and there are these benefits and all this.”

Choose the culture that inspires you. Don’t choose the one that writes the bigger check or the one that’s more convenient. Choose the one where you’re going to be around a community of people. I tell other people: If you don’t know what you’re passion is, you don’t know a need, and you don’t even know what your lifestyle is, get around cool people.

Elevate your peer group and they will open doors. They will mentor you. They will guide you to find what is true.

In these four circles, there’s that sweet spot in the middle. And to me, that sweet spot is always one of two things.

If you don’t know what you want to do, follow what you love learning. And if you’ve done all this and you still don’t know what you want to do, go back and look for the things in which you found meaning, things that brought your heart and your soul alive.

That’s what I’d go back for. So if you totally feel like, “Brendon, I don’t know what my passions are. I’m 16, 18 years old. I don’t know what my passions are. I don’t know what I should do. I don’t like my parents, my family, or the kids around school. I don’t know how I want to live.”

Follow what you love learning. If you love learning literature, follow that. If you love dance, follow that. If you love video and content, follow that. Follow wherever that thing is.

I love tinkering with this. If it’s building Legos, follow that. I don’t care what it is. Follow what you love learning, and then if you still don’t know, go back to what you found meaning in, what really connected with your heart and your soul.

Thanks for being a part of Transformation Week Day 1 on CLARITY! Everyone has a different way of getting clarity. I hope in some way, somewhere in this process, I put a spark in your brain to get a little more clarity about what you want.

 

Give me a shoutout on social media by using #TransformationWeek so we can find you and celebrate you!

The post Day 1: Transformation Week (Get Clarity!) appeared first on Brendon Burchard.

The Entrepreneur Index™ Rides Netflix’s Coattails to Big Stock Jump

The index closed up 2.04 percent today.

SearchCap: Google Gmail ads, DuckDuckGp Apple Maps & Amazon ads

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Work From Home 2019: The Top 100 Companies For Remote Jobs

As telecommuting becomes easier, more companies are offering remote jobs…and that illusive work-life balance.

Forms Aren’t Dead: The State of Email Lead Capture in 2019

Email lead capture is the process marketers use to collect information from their website visitors. Typically, this is done through a traditional web form, although you can also capture leads through popups, chatbots, live chat, quizzes, surveys, and more.

Despite the process being fairly straightforward, our strategies often fluctuate in how we accomplish lead capture. Similarly, the results we achieve can vary quite a bit, too.

Unfortunately, the diversity of lead capture strategies, tools, and results can make it difficult to know precisely which process you should follow with your own marketing team — which is why we decided to conduct a survey.

We wanted to see, in 2019, what tools marketers are using for lead capture, what strategies they are using to optimize their efforts, and what kind of results and conversion rates people are seeing.

To ensure you’re able to optimize your lead capture strategy in 2019, keep reading.

Survey Methodology and Respondent Data

Any survey you conduct is limited by the sample you can reach. In our case, we received 173 valid survey responses. We filtered for marketers working full-time on lead capture and lead generation. Here are some quick statistics about our sample.

A large percentage of our respondents work at small businesses, with roughly 33% reporting less than 50 employees, although the distribution evens out among the other responses:

Additionally, a good chunk of our respondents (24%) work in advertising and marketing, but the rest is fairly diverse and split evenly between other industries.

Everyone in our sample works full-time and said they were “very” or at least “somewhat” involved in lead generation and lead capture efforts at their companies.

As with any research you conduct, there are some limitations with our dataset, as well. We’ll cover sample limitation and quirks later in this article.

Key Lead Capture Statistics and Findings

Here’s a quick overview of the most interesting statistics we learned about lead capture in 2019:

• Forms aren’t dead. 74% of marketers are using web forms for lead generation, and 49.7% of marketers say that web forms are their highest converting lead generation tool.
• Chatbots still have low adoption, but still, 17% of marketers are using chatbots today. However, only 6.5% say its their highest converting lead capture tool.
• The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields. Because contexts vary so wildly, this is neither good nor bad, though we have seen in consistent studies that fewer form fields usually result in higher conversion rates.
• Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual. Reported conversion rates varied consistently across reported categories, but the mean conversion rate from our study is 21.5% (*read more below about the limitations with our reported conversion rates).
• Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone. Running A/B tests, using form analytics, and running user tests are all correlated with higher form conversion rates and satisfaction with lead generation efforts.
• Multi-step forms convert 86% higher. Only 40% of marketers use them, but those that do report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher.
• Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses. Marketers who use lead magnets, or downloadable resources after a website visitor shares their email address, report marginally higher satisfaction rates and conversion rates than those who do not use lead magnets.
• Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet, with 27.7% of marketers using them. However, 24.9% are using webinars and almost as many (21.3%) are using free tools to get email addresses.
• The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words. Barely anyone writes an Ebook that is larger than 10,000 words, and the most common length is between 5,000 and 10,000 words.
• Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality. It’s reported that only 56.4% of marketers have a lead qualification strategy, and only 39.5% are using any sort of predictive lead scoring. It appears we overemphasize on volume on leads without considering the quality of each lead.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s explore a few of these statistics more in-depth.

Takeaway #1: Forms aren’t dead.

Online forms are the most commonly used type of lead capture tool, with 74% of respondents reporting they use them.

Half of our respondents reported forms gave them the highest conversion rates, making online forms the highest-converting lead capture tool for marketers.

Takeaway #2: Chatbots still have comparatively low adoption.

Many marketers report using more than one type of lead capture tool, but roughly 40% report only using one tool. And, while 37% of respondents use live chat, only 17% use a chatbot.

Additionally, only 7% of respondents said chatbots were their highest converting tool. By comparison, around 13% reported live chat or quizzes/surveys being the most effective tool.

It would appear from this data that, despite hype and trends, the old school web form is still alive and well for marketers.

Takeaway #3: The average length of a web form in 2019 is about 5 form fields.

Forms are popular and pretty well loved in 2019, but what does the average form look like?

For starters, we found that marketers use, on average, 4.92 form fields on their forms (with five being the most popular answer). The number of form fields mostly resembles a normal distribution that centers around five, although there is a small spike of marketers who use more than 10 form fields.

Takeaway #4: Conversion rates are highly variable and contextual.

Average conversion rates are pretty varied, with a pretty stable distribution of reported conversion rates. Very few people report conversion rates in the 51-100% bucket.

This is one piece of data we need to take with a grain of salt, as with any self-reported KPI or metric. We don’t know exactly how our respondents define a conversion, how they measure conversion rates, or what their offers are, so we lack a lot of context.

Still, when we couple our conversion rate data with our data on self-reported satisfaction rates, we start to see interesting patterns.

First, take a look at our aggregated satisfaction rates:

Very few people (8%) are dissatisfied with their lead generation efforts, but only 12% report being very satisfied.

It also gets interesting when you examine these answers in conjunction with others. For instance, we found that those who are most satisfied with their lead generation efforts are those who use chatbots and report chatbots as their top converting lead capture tool.

Takeaway #5: Data-driven marketers are outpacing everyone.

Generally speaking, marketers who use methods to improve the customer experience, and specifically those who are using data to drive experiences, are outperforming those who don’t.

For instance, marketers who run A/B tests on their forms tend to be more satisfied than those who don’t, and they also report roughly 10% higher conversion rates than those who don’t run A/B tests.

Following the trend, those who use form analytics report 15% higher satisfaction with their lead generation efforts and 19% higher conversion rates.

But what about user testing? A user test is a type of usability test in which you have users run through your website and attempt a task, and analyze their ability to do so.

Most people are running between one and five per year, but a full 36% never run user tests on their forms.

Again, we found that people who run user tests are more satisfied with their lead generation programs than those who don’t, and that the satisfaction rating increases as the number of user tests rises.

This is a big area of opportunity. Combined with a form analytics tool like Formisimo, you can learn a lot about user behavior from occasionally running user tests. To learn more about form optimization in general, check out this CXL Institute course.

Takeaway #6: Multi-step forms convert 86% higher.

Only 39% of marketers report using multi-step forms. Those who do, however, report 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self reported conversion rates are 86% higher (16.05% for those who don’t use multi-step, and 29.76% for those who do).

A small majority of marketers report using lead magnets in their campaigns, but 40% report not using them at all.

Takeaway #7: Only half of marketers use “lead magnets” to capture email addresses.

A lead magnet is simply something of value you give in exchange for a visitor’s contact information.

We found that a small majority of marketers use lead magnets to capture emails, but a full 40% don’t use them (and roughly 10% don’t know if they are or aren’t).

Creating a relevant and valuable lead magnet is one of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on lead capture forms. If you’re not doing this, it might be time to consider trying it out.

Takeaway #8: Ebooks are the most popular lead magnet.

If you’re wondering what type of lead magnets people generally use, Ebooks lead the way — but webinars, checklists, and free tools are close behind.

Other answers included “Qualifying email lists”, “Rewards”, “Customized vehicle brochure”, and “Property information”, meaning it’s largely made up of industry-specific offers that are related to the product or service in question.

Takeaway #9: The average Ebook length is between 5k and 10k words.

Very few marketers create Ebooks with greater than 10,000 words, and most fall within the area of 5,000-10,000 words long.

Takeaway #10: Marketers overemphasize on total lead volume and not enough on lead quality.

Collecting a lead is a small part of the overall process. It’s important, of course, but you also need to worry about where you’re storing the data, and how you’re qualifying and nurturing leads.

Most marketers use more than one tool to store their leads — something that definitely jives with my personal experience.

Because we’re often using a myriad of tools for our marketing efforts, we need to store leads in many places and integrate many systems together to build a coherent system.

Specifically, we found that the most common tool for lead storage is a CRM, with 57% of marketers reporting using one. 48.8% report using an email marketing tool for storage, and 43.6% report using spreadsheets.

Of course, capturing leads is just one step of the process. What we do with them matters as well, as the end goal isn’t just to store them in a CRM or an email tool, but to turn them into customers. Part of this approach is qualifying leads and reacting appropriately based on their quality.

Do marketers normally have a strategy for lead qualification? It appears that, yes, this is the norm, with 56.4% of marketers saying they do have a documented lead qualification process. However, that leaves 34.9% with no documented process.

This is important because, as you would logically suppose, those who have a documented lead qualification process report 21.4% higher satisfaction ratings with their lead generation efforts.

While 39.5% of marketers are using predictive lead scoring in their marketing strategy, roughly half of marketers (48.8%) are not (and 11.6% don’t know if they are or not).

Limitations and Quirks With Our Data

As with any collection of data, you need to question its quality thoroughly. Especially with surveys and self-reported data, the nature of the questions can affect the output of answers. In our case, we can draw a lot of valid insights about lead generation and marketing in 2019, but we need to be careful about generalizing some of it.

The big question we need to consider is the “average conversion rate” of lead capture forms.

Naturally, this depends on how you calculate conversion rates, where your web form is, what your offer is, etc. For instance, the conversion rate of an offer for a free tool that is only seen by targeted paid traffic and only has an email address field is entirely different than a pop-up form that everyone on an ecommerce site sees.

Ultimately, conversion rates are wildly contextual.

How people calculate conversion rates is also different. Do you calculate by those who see your form, those who count as a page view (despite not scrolling to the form), or those who start filling out the form but never finish?

None of this is straightforward, so it can be tough to generalize findings about this metric.

As evidence for this quirkiness, look at this chart:

Our respondents seem to get better and better conversion rates the more form fields they use. While this is possible, it’s incredibly unlikely, at least when all other variables are controlled for. Almost all historical research has shown that increasing the number of form fields has an inverse effect on conversion rates (although not all studies have shown that).

That’s not to say the data is inherently untrustworthy. Just take any “average conversion rate” data with a grain of salt!

Additionally, we believe our sample is quite representative, as it had been filtered to include only those who work full-time on lead generation and lead capture efforts. But a greater sample would have been desirable. There is a lot of nuance — in industries, company size, etc. — that we couldn’t dive into because our sample size was only 173.

Looking to the Future

The process of capturing email leads is a huge part of inbound marketing. Parts of it change over time, such as the lead capture tools we use and the specific tactics around lead magnets, form optimization, and lead scoring and storage.

However, much remains the same, such as the core ideas of crafting relevant offers and building a lead capture tool with as little friction as possible.

It appears from this survey that less has changed than one would expect. Despite new “conversational” tools like live chat and chatbots, most people still use forms, and most people still entice visitors with Ebooks and webinars.

To no one’s surprise, those who run A/B tests, conduct user tests, and use form analytics, are more successful than those who don’t.

It will be interesting to see how things change in the next few years, as inbound marketing channels become more crowded and lead capture tools get “smarter” and more interactive.

Will we still be writing 7,500 word Ebooks in exchange for five form fields’ worth of information?

That’s where we stand today. Where will we be next year?