steve larsen: All right everybody, hey. I'm super excited for today. This is the first interview that I've actually done on, Sales Funnel Radio. It's actually one of the main reasons that I started this podcast. There's so many cool, silent, unspoken entrepreneurial heroes out there. I really, I just wanted to go expose a lot of those stories and share with you guys how possible it is to make a profitable sales funnel. Today, I have, actually one of my good friends, Ben Wilson, on the phone here recording. Ben and I actually have quite a history together. I'd say that I first got into sales funnels online with him, doing products with him. Anyway, I'm excited. We want to go through our story a little bit and share with you guys things you guys can do in your own business. Ben, how's it going? ben wilson: Absolutely good, man. Great to be here. steve larsen: Awesome, awesome. I was thinking back to the time when you and I first met. That was ... We were in college, that was back, what class was that? ben wilson: I think we were probably, Marketing 101, something wasting our time. steve larsen: Yeah. ben wilson: I remember leaning over and you were looking at Stripe, and I was like, "Most kids aren't looking at Stripe in class. Why is this kid looking at Stripe?" Then I leaned over and I was like, "Hey man, we should totally set up an API for you. We could get that going." You're like, "What do you know about Stripe?" I was like, "Yeah, man, I've set up Stripe." That was the start. steve larsen: That was the start right there. I remember I was making an e-book. ben wilson: Yeah. steve larsen: Yeah. That was my first attempt ever at making a landing page on WordPress, and I had spent two days trying to get this stupid theme to do what I wanted it to do. Yeah. That was funny. That project, I think I've sold two copies of that thing. It's on Amazon. ben wilson: That was a good book though. steve larsen: How did we get together after that though? What did we do? I actually can't remember. I just remember... ben wilson: I think we started bouncing ideas off as to what had done in the past. You started sharing to me about, I don't think you called it funnels at the time, you really started looking at affiliate marketing, and how to push products online without necessarily being attached. I think, I don't know if it was a clash, or some type of beautiful art piece. I always got attached, like, "Well, we have to brand it. We have to be attached to some level at what we're doing." You're like, "It doesn't matter what it is. Let's do it and we're moving forward." Just like a rubber band. Sometimes we'd have the snap, but the snap wasn't a bad thing. The snap was like, okay, I'll give up that I don't have to be that attached. You're like, "Okay, we can kind of brand it," and something would actually happen. Then we convinced our teachers. steve larsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. ben wilson: I was describing this to someone yesterday. We convinced our teachers that what we were doing was a lot more beneficial. steve larsen: Than in class. ben wilson: Yes! steve larsen: I remember that. That was our internet marketing class itself, man. ben wilson: We missed ... I mean, we convinced several teachers... steve larsen: To not go to class anymore. ben wilson: To [call up the class 00:03:52] the class, and they're ... Oh man. I can't believe we actually pulled that off. steve larsen: Me neither. I was thinking about it. We drew up that plan. We got in our internet marketing and they were doing that stupid, SEO old school stuff. We both wanted to shoot ourselves. I noticed you were the other kid in the class that was just pounding their head on the wall. Like, "Oh this crap is so old. It doesn't work." ben wilson: Yes. I remember they were trying to teach WordPress, and they were like, "How do you do such and such?" I was like, every answer, both of us just raising our hands. steve larsen: Yeah. ben wilson: I was like, "Do we really have to sit here the en