My own personal biggest take-aways from the first day of Funnel Hacking Live.
On today’s episode Russell talks about the events and speakers from the first day of 2018 Funnel Hacking Live. Here are some of the coolest parts of day one:
So listen to this episode to be able to relive what happened the first day of Funnel Hacking Live, or be filled with regret if you missed it.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to recap day number 1 of 4 of the Funnel Hacking Live event.
What’s up everybody? I hope you guys who were here at Funnel Hacking Live with us, made it home safely and that you had a great time. The journey of the last four days has been amazing. I found a cool spot of quietness here. You’ll probably see people walking back and forth with their suitcases, but hopefully that’s alright with you guys.
I just wanted to kind of, over the next four days recap Funnel Hacking Live. A lot of you guys were there, some of you guys weren’t, the crazy ones weren’t. But everybody else was there and those who were crazy enough not to come this time, I know you’ve got your tickets for next time already coming. If not, depending on when you go, funnelhackinglive.com has tickets for next year, but it’s going to be pulled down either today or tomorrow. So if you don’t have your tickets yet, go and get them for next year’s event.
But I wanted to kind of just spend a little time over the next four days going through some of the key take-aways, key points, and key ideas that happened at the event. So hopefully those of you guys who missed it will get some insights and you’ll have more reason to come next year.
Some of the things, first off, this year….Funnel Hacking Live’s in the past have been three days, but for some reason four or five months ago at like two in the morning, I had this idea that like, to get everything done that I needed to do, it had to happen in four days. So we shifted it to basically a three and a half day event and it’ll probably end up being four days next year, just to get all the cool stuff in that we’re trying to plan. It takes at least three and a half, four days to change somebody’s life. We’re trying to change 3,000+ people’s lives, it’s a lot of work.
But to kind of give you an end result of what happened and then we’ll kind of back fill over the next few days. This event was amazing. We raised over a million dollars for Operation Underground Railroad. Those who are watching the video, I’m wearing the shirt that everybody got. I’ll talk about that here in a minute.
Number two, we had 91 new people on stage that got two comma club awards, which is amazing. We’re up to 258 people now that have achieved that. We have 15 people who have made 8 figures, over ten million dollars in a funnel, who got their new award which is this huge plaque. It’s twice as big as the two comma club one. Plus they got these rings that are like 2 karats of gold and four karats of diamonds. So we gave those away, which was insanely cool as well.
3,000+ people were here and then we launched our new two comma club x coaching program to get people from 0 to a million, a million to ten and I’m not going to share the exact numbers, but those who were there know that it was crazy.
30 days ago at Grant Cardone’s event, I got onstage and did over 3 million dollars in sales in 90 minutes. And at this event we did, again I’m not going to give you the exact numbers, but it was over 10 million dollars in sales, which is insane. A new world record. And it was more than that, it was crazy.
I’m not going to share the numbers, not because I don’t mind sharing numbers, more so because at Grant Cardone’s event there was $3 million cash in the bank account in that time, this was different because there was two options. There was $1800 a month or $18,000 a year. So if I was to say an exact number it would have been stomper math, which is a joke for another day. But it was amazing and I’m excited for the over 650+ people who decided to take a leap of faith and go on this journey for the next 12 months.
And in 12 months from now, my guess is that most of those guys will be back onstage. My goal for next year is to have 500 new people to get the two comma club award and from that we’re going to get dozens and dozens who get the 8 figure award. So it’s insane.
But I wanted to kind of recap. One of the main reasons we decided to do this extra day, probably 7 or 8 months ago, I’m not going to share all the details of the story, but I got a call from somebody who I’ve respected my entire life, asked me if I’d be willing to help with this project called Operation Underground Railroad. I didn’t know what that was at the time. I remember I jumped on that night and started Googling and searching it, and watching videos and I remember the feeling. In fact, if you guys watch Funnel Hacker TV, that night I made a video and I said, “I feel like the direction of my life will be forever changed because of this.”
At the time we were planning Funnel Hacking Live and I’m like, how can we weave Operation Underground Railroad into Funnel Hacking Live? What’s the process? How do we do that? And a few months later, during a time of a lot of prayer, trying to figure out the best way to serve this audience and have our community to help them, I had an idea that we needed to make a documentary. I was like, I don’t know how to make a documentary.
But I met a guy named Nick Nanton a couple of years earlier. I didn’t know him super well, I just knew that he had won 6 Emmy’s and done like 50 different documentaries and this voice in my head said, “Call Nick.” I was like, I don’t even know Nick’s number. So I messaged him on Facebook like, “Hey man, I need to talk to you.”
This is like 5 minutes after I heard the voice in my head say, “Call Nick.” So I’m like, okay I’m doing what I’m told. I messaged Nick, got him on Voxer, I voxed him and said, “hey man, I don’t know how but I think we need to make a documentary about Operation Underground Railroad, are you in?” and he’s like, “Dude, I’m 100% in.” I said, “The only thing is we have to do this by Funnel Hacking Live. We have to show it at Funnel Hacking Live.” He’s like, “dude, that’s not very much time.” I was like, “I know but it has to happen.” And he’s like, “Alright, we’ll make it work.”
So over the last 5 months since that call, he’s flown to Haiti, flown around the world, filming, documenting, all these kind of things. So at Funnel Hacking Live, we had the chance to actually watch the documentary. And it was cool because when we had orchestrated the day, the very first presentation I had was called “Funnel Hackers: we see things differently” which was kind of the whole premise of the event. We had a really cool video that I’m sure we’ll post online here soon, of just kind of that concept. I was sharing different people in our community who have changed people’s lives and their businesses.
I talked about Stacy and Paul who have saved over 10,000 marriages, I talked about Pamela who save hundreds of thousands of doctors lives from doctor suicide. I talked about Annie Grace who’ve helped all sorts of people break the chains of alcohol addiction, then I talked about Tim Ballard who has saved over a thousand kids from sex trafficking.
So I shared that in the original presentation and I said, “Tonight we’re going to have a chance to watch this documentary together as a community.” Then after I got off stage Kaelin Poulin came on stage, it was so good. She came up and talked about how she’s built her cult-ture. Man, it was good. Her whole presentation was amazing.
I’ve heard her talk about this before, I’ve been studying her like crazy. One thing she said, there’s so many good things, but one thing I took away that was like, she was talking about how you’re empowering people to become super heroes and change their life and she talked about funnel swag and how that’s like their super hero cape. If you give them swag wearing your brand, your logo, your message, your mission, then they feel more empowered and they’re literally everyday putting on their super hero costume.
I was like, oh my gosh. I’ve been a big believer in swag since the whole funnel hacker movement began and we got tons and tons of shirts. This shirt for example, OUR shirt, this is one that I’m wearing right now, this is now part of my super hero costume. I put this on and I’m out there ready to save kids.
And what’s cool, is we actually had a funnel swag store here at the Funnel Hacking Live event this year, which is the first time we’ve ever done that. I think we’re going to start going harder into swag because I want everyone feeling more empowered. I want every morning when our community wakes up and they put on a funnel hacker shirt, or I build funnels, or I build follow up funnels, or all the different swag we have to empower them and it’s literally like your super hero costume.
That was one of the thousand amazing things she said during her presentation. I feel bad, most of the speakers had 30 minutes to speak and I wish that her and everyone could have gone longer.
But she spoke and then right after her we had Natalie Hodson come up. And Natalie, she cracked me up, her first four slides are like, “I’m Natalie Hodson, this is me I was broke.” She flipped to the next slide, “This is me, I peed my pants on live camera and then I made the two comma club award. The end.” It was like boom, boom, boom. I was like, “What?” and everyone was like, “What?” and then she came back and told her whole story about vulnerability and how one of her most vulnerable times was, she’s in the fitness industry and she was recording a video and she actually peed her pants on camera and how embarrassing it was.
And she could have and probably should have hid that, but instead she said, “No, this is my most vulnerable thing, so I’m going to share this because no one else is willing to talk about it.” So she shared this thing and wrote an e-book teaching women how to strengthen themselves, so they won’t have that same problem that she had. She sold 60,000 copies of her e-book in four months and became a Two Comma club winner with a $37 e-book.
And it was just so cool when she talked about the power of vulnerability and how to do it, like real vulnerability. I’m going to try to block this wind, it’s coming in hard. Anyway, real vulnerability, not the type that some people try to put out there online. And it was also amazing.
So we led with two of the most amazing women speakers in our community, which were amazing. At Funnel Hacking Live this, almost half the speakers were women. My goal next year is to have more than half of the speakers be women, because our women are doing such amazing things. I’m going to let this lawnmower pass. This is what happens when you’re recording a live podcast, right, without a mic.
Anyway, they both spoke and I think it was amazing and I think it gave people faith and hope and understanding of how to build a community and then how to open up yourself as the leader, which is the hardest thing, how to be vulnerable. So many times we as leaders try to be so postured and perfect and put on a good face for people and the reality is that actually pushes people away more than it draws them to you. Actually breaking down your barriers and being vulnerable, truly vulnerable and not, what did she call it. “Oh, ever since I lost all this weight these pants are so baggy.” That’s fake vulnerability. True vulnerability is like, the thing she mentioned is, “I was at the grocery store today and I saw my ex-husband with his new girlfriend and it broke me down.” That’s something truly vulnerable that you can share that has a bigger impact.
Both those messages were so awesome, then afterwards, after they both spoke, then we had, I got onstage with Todd Dickerson, my partner, I basically brought him onstage and I introduced Operation Underground Railroad. We had Tim Ballard come up and we had Nick Nanton both come up to talk about what they were doing and they came up and we showed the trailer of the documentary, which is, you guys now could go see it. I posted it live. Go to OURfilm.org, if you go there you can actually see the trailer.
If you do go watch it, please share it as well. I’m trying to get everyone in our community to share it, but OURfilm.org. We watched the trailer and everyone went crazy. I said, “This is a hard film to watch. I haven’t actually seen it yet. Tim hasn’t seen it yet. Nick’s the only one who’s seen it, but if you want to watch it tonight, we’re going to take a break and go and do our speed networking, but when you come back you can have a chance to watch this together as a community. But it is hard, so if you’re not able to come back, I totally understand as well.”
So at that point, I basically talked about how for anyone who was at the event, unfortunately this is only available at the event, but for $250 they would get the recordings of the event and it would go towards Operation Underground Railroad. $2500 would save a kid, and $10,000 would save a kid and rehabilitate them. And then they could also sign up for monthly if they wanted to go on a recurring donation and keep helping long term.
Basically I told everybody that, and this was Todd’s idea the night before. Todd said, “What if we matched everyone’s donation?” I’m like, “Are you serious?” So we decided anyone who donated, we would match their donation. So that was what we put out there and from that a whole bunch of people went and started donating money, which was so cool.
I think the first night we raised like 200 and something thousand dollars and with our match it was 400,000. So throughout the event we kept talking about that and talking about that, it was cool.
So then we broke and had this vender speed dating where everyone had the chance to network, meet other venders, and we paid for dinner for everyone, which is a big bill to feed 3,000 people, but everyone came and ate, it was cool. Everyone got a chance to network and hangout and get to know each other, which is cool. When that ended we invited people to come back in and watch the documentary.
I would say we probably had, conservatively, 85% of everybody came back, which was really, really cool. We watched the documentary together as a group and man, I cried for an hour straight. I couldn’t even compose myself. Then we came onstage afterwards, Nick and Tim and I and we couldn’t even….I couldn’t compose myself, it was so hard.
And then we let people ask questions. A lot of people needed closure after that obviously, and we let people open the mics and ask Tim questions and he responded and it was just so cool. And then we gave people another push, “donate to charity. Again, we’re matching it. Go and help.” I think that night we had raised over 300,000, with our match made over 600,000.
At that point, Todd and I were like, “Let’s see if we could do a million. I think we could do a million.” So throughout the event we kept pushing that and pushing that and before lunch the final day we were just below a million dollars. I came up on stage and I’m like, “you guys, we’re just below a million dollars. Anyone else who goes and donates, if you guys all donate $250 I will not only give you the recordings to this year’s event, I’ll give you the recordings for all past year events as well.
And they went and did that, everyone stepped up and when we came back from lunch we had just crossed the million dollar mark and it was cool. And what was crazy, this is the best part of the story. At the end of the documentary, which you guys will have a chance to see here soon, in fact go to ourfilm.org and go and register, we’re going to be doing a big, huge live online premier here soon. You can go register and watch it with us together as a community.
But when we went there……at the end of the documentary, I’m trying to catch my thoughts here….At the end of the documentary, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but basically two of the children that Tim rescued, he’s been trying to adopt for the last 3 ½ - 4 years, and he’d just gotten the call before he flew to our event, that they were able to go get them. So he actually flew from our event to Haiti to pick up his children.
So on the last day, right before Tony Robins got on stage, we were able to Skype in Tim Ballard from his home, it was so cool. We Skyped him in, he was with his two new kids he’d just adopted. Everyone got to see them, meet them and then we had some of the OUR operators who were there, onstage, we had them come up and we got his huge check and we wrote the total, One million dollars, thirteen thousand or whatever it was and we presented it to their team and also to Tim. It was super emotional and amazing.
And what’s cool is Tony Robins is their biggest donor right now, he’s raised more money than anyone else, he actually went on a sting operation with them, went undercover and all sorts of crazy stuff. So we did that and Tony came out right afterwards and was talking all about them and the mission and it was so cool. The whole thing was amazing.
So I just wanted to give you guys a glimpse of that, for those who missed it. That was day number one and it was an emotional day. I remember going to bed that night and I was like, we had started at noon that day, it was supposed to be half a day, we got done about midnight. I was just like, that was an emotionally draining day, how are we going to do three more days of this? But we did and it was amazing.
So that’s the recap of day number one, I just wanted to share that with you guys. So those who weren’t here had a chance to hear and see what happened. I’ll let the rolling bag go by so you can continue to hear me. But that was day number one and it was awesome.
So throughout this week I’m going to share, I’m here with my kids at Disney for the rest of the week, so each day I’ll kind of share each day, the big take-aways and aha’s. But that was what happened day number one. So for you guys right now, I recommend the biggest thing to do right now is go to ourfilm.org and go watch the trailer and share it. You can donate on the thank you page afterwards and start sharing with people. When you guys do that, you’ll be on a waiting list, but when the big event goes live, when the documentary goes live, you can actually see it with us as a community, which is going to be super fun.
So that’s it for today, go watch at ourfilm.org, check out the documentary, opt in to be on the list to see the live documentary in the next few weeks when we go live, and please share it on Facebook, Instagram, tell your friends and family, everyone you know because this is a mission worth talking about and worth sharing.
I told everyone day one, the biggest thing is that slavery is existing here. It’s happening in America, around the world and nobody even knows about it. So my goal with this documentary is to shine a light on the darkness. If you shine a light in a room full of cockroaches, they all scurry to the corner and they hide and that’s what we’re trying to do, blow this thing up and shine a light on the darkness.
So the best way you can help them and this organization is to go to ourfilm.org and share that message right now and get ready for the launch of the documentary which is coming soon.
Anyway, that’s day number one you guys, again I’ll recap each day, each of the next things and I hope you guys love it. Again, thanks so much for everyone that was here, I hope you guys enjoyed it. I cannot wait to start working with our 650+ people in the Two Comma Club x coaching program. I got some amazing things in store for you guys. We’re going on a cruise with everybody at the end of it, which is going to be insane and it’s going to be amazing. So again, thanks for everything you guys, appreciate you all. Thanks to everyone who came to Funnel Hacking Live and we’ll see you guys soon. Bye everybody.
What to do when your baby flops.
On today’s episode Russell talks about what one of his presentations for Funnel Hacking Live and why he is giving it. Here are a few of the awesome things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out what Funnel Audibles is, and why it’s going to be a great presentation.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing amazing. We are like 5 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. It’s coming, it’s almost here, we’re so excited. I’ve been working early mornings, late nights, trying to get my slides done. But they’re turning out really, really cool.
Obviously most of you are going to be at Funnel Hacking Live, if not you’re insane, certifiably insane. But one of the presentations I was working on yesterday was called Funnel Audibles, which is kind of a fun one. Those of you who are going to be at the event, you’re going to see. I’m going to go through and go deep into this and show numbers and stats and all sorts of stuff like that. But it’s interesting because this is why I think most people fail funnels.
What they do is they go and like, they watch our webinar and they’re like, “Oh this is exciting, I’m excited.” They sign up and they’re like, “Oh I’m going to build a funnel!” and they go in there and they’re like, “Okay, I don’t know what kind of funnel to build.” And then they get confused and they try some stuff, and then they decide on a funnel and they go and build a funnel and launch it and then nothing happens. And then they’re like, “That funnel stuff’s a scam! That Russell has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Together we have 60,000 Clickfunnels members, they’re all full of it, right? All the almost 300 people in the two comma club, and the 17 people in the two comma club X club. There’s no way all of them are really doing what they’re doing. And then they walk away. And it’s sad because it breaks my heart. So that’s what Funnel Audibles is all about.
So what most people don’t know is most of the times when I launch a funnel, guess what? It doesn’t do very good. “But Russell I thought that you were the funnel guy, everything’s perfect.” No, it’s not. This is the difference between and me and everyone else, what happens. I do a funnel, and I do the best one that I know how and so I base it off of things I’ve funnel hacked in the past. Okay, I remember so and so did this really cool landing page, and someone had an upsell like this.
I look at stuff I’ve looked at and try to model it as close as I can and make it the best possible guess that I have. So I create the funnel and then I’m like, okay is it good or is it bad? Now this is what a lot of people will do, that hire me for coaching. They’ll call me and be like, “Hey Russell, what do you think about this? Is it good or is it bad?” I’m like, “I don’t know. What did the market say?” they’re like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I’m just a dude who looks at what’s proven and try to model it. But I have no idea if it’s going to work or not.” And they’re like, “Russell, you’re the funnel guy. You should know all this stuff.” No, I have no idea.
In fact, I never will review someone’s funnel until, because I don’t want to taint it with my judgment. I know enough from split testing to know that I’m wrong most of the time. So I don’t want to taint it. All I do is I go and let the market vote. I ask the market it’s opinion. I say, “Hey market, does this funnel give you a market that you actually want to buy? And does it convince you and persuade you to do it?” and guess what I don’t do? I don’t ask for people’s opinions. I don’t send it to my wife or my mom or my friends or other marketers that are like, “I would change this and tweak…” and give me all these things that they think, “I would never buy that.” Or all these things.
The only person who’s opinion I care about is my customer and the only way I care about their opinion is not what they tell me in a Facebook ad, “This seems scammy.” I don’t care about any of that crap. The only thing I care about is people voting with this thing right here, if you’re watching the video you can see. The only people voting with their wallet. It’s the only vote I care about.
So I’m going to see, will they open their wallet and pull out a credit card and buy the thing? If they did, that is the vote I care about. So that’s all I do.
So we create something and what I do is usually take about, depending on the offer, but probably around $1000 and we go usually to Facebook nowadays, because that’s the fastest way to test things, I think it’s shifting, but for right now it’s still Facebook. And then we spend $1000 on Facebook and throw it out there and just sit back.
People are like, “What are you doing Russell?” I’m like, “I’m watching. I’m letting the market tell me what works and what doesn’t work.” So I sit there and let the market, and then the traffic starts going through, people are clicking and they go through. They go through page one, page two, page…and I just watch. And this is the hard part because most people are freaking out.
I’ll get a message, “I launched yesterday, what’s happening?” I’m like, “dude, just relax. Just watch.” This is the thousand dollar investment to have the market tell you if your funnel is good enough or not. So you spend a thousand bucks, traffic goes through. Some people are like, “I don’t have a thousand dollars to waste, Russell.” The word waste is the wrong word. You’re spending a thousand dollars on market research to ge the actual market to tell you if it works or not. And they’re telling you by voting with their credit card, that’s the magic.
So I watch it, I let the traffic go through. It may take 3 or 4 or 5 days or whatever. Traffic goes through and when it’s done, then I come back and I look at it. Okay, here’s my funnel. Page 1, page 2, page 4, usually its 4 or 5 pages, the entire funnel. I look at, what percentage of people land on page number one did the thing I wanted them to do? I wanted them to give me an email address, I wanted them to join me on Facebook messenger. I wanted them to give me their credit card. Whatever it is.
And then what percentage of people did page 2, page 3, page 4 and then I just look at that and I literally, we made these score cards last night that I’ll be showing at the event, but there’s this big score card that shows the percentage of each thing. I look at it and I’m like okay, was that percentage good or bad? And at first you don’t know, but after a while you get kind of a gut feeling of, this is good, this is bad, so we look at that.
Then it’s like, okay. Opt in rate was like 11%, that’s really low. So I’m going to change that. And I look at everything else and everything else looks pretty good, so I make a split test, try to the best of my knowledge what things would I tweak and change. I make those changes and then I go back and buy some more marketing research. Spend another thousand bucks or 5 hundred bucks or whatever. I push it and I see what starts happening and let the market go through and I step back and I’m like, okay based on that, what happened? Okay cool, we increased conversion rates from 11% to 28%, that’s pretty good now.
And then the sales page, what’s happening? It’s not high enough. What tweak can we make there? And we tweak it. And we do this process three or four times. And usually in three or four times, we go from a crappy funnel to a winner, winner, chicken dinner. When we get a winner, winner, chicken dinner, that’s when we start promoting it, drive traffic and ads and money and everything. That’s when you start scaling.
But don’t even assume for a second that I just guess and that’s it. I guess and then I have the market tell me, and then I tweak, the market tell me, tweak, let the market tell me, and then I roll out a funnel. It’s the step that everyone’s missing. So we’re calling it Funnel Audibles, and I’m going to be showing an example.
In fact, last night we went through all the database of all the data and I show 5 big tests we did inside of the Expert Secrets book launch, made changes to the average cart value from about $30 to $54. And I show, here’s the first thing we did, second thing we did, third thing we did, fourth thing we did, fifth thing we did. And then I show funnel after funnel, a whole bunch of stuff I did and stuff like that.
So that’s the process guys. So now you understand, those who are Funnel Hacking Live will see me break down our numbers and stuff, but Funnel Audibles. I’m coming to the line of scrimmage, I’m looking around, seeing the tweaks and changes and making them based on that. Dave’s in there dancing.
Alright, I gotta go. I gotta go finish that presentation and five others on top of that, that’s 6 presentations. Anyway, I appreciate you guys. Funnel Audibles, it’s the key, it’s the secret. It’s how you go from good funnels to great, from bad funnels to good and from wherever you’re at to where you want to be. Learn how to do it, master it and have fun with it. Thanks you guys, appreciate you all and I’ll see you at Funnel Hacking Live. Bye everybody.
Do your homework, funnel hack everything, and Russell’s new motivation.
On this episode Russell talks about listening to a podcast and finding out what company he now wants to compete against. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear on today’s episode:
So listen here to hear what company Russell wants to compete with next, and how he will funnel hack them.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing amazing today. We are a week away today, 7 days from today the event will be live. So I’m actually heading into the office right now, because it’s kind of late, which you can see if you’re on camera, because I’ve got a lot of slides still to do. I have yet to finish any presentation. I’ve gotten close on a couple. But there’s still so much work that goes into this. Anyway, it’s really, really fun.
But I wanted to just message you guys today because this morning as I was getting ready I was listening to a podcast, I listen to a lot of podcasts, but the one I was listening to today was Nathan Latka’s The Top, and he was interviewing the CEO of Hubspot, which was kind of cool. Hubspot, for those who don’t know, is kind of one of our competitors, only not directly.
I was telling Clint this morning, he’s my CFO/my wife’s cousin. So he stayed over last night, he travels in to work from the office one or two days a week and then goes back to where he lives normally. But he was here last night, so this morning I was telling him about Hubspot a little bit and I was like, “They’re kind of like the yin to our yang.”
They’re all about putting out good content and people will come to you and hopefully by your stuff someday, maybe. And we’re like, “build a funnel and drive traffic to them.” But their suite of tools is kind of similar. They’ve got landing page software, they’ve got CRM, they’ve got all these kind of things.
So anyway, really, really cool interview that they were doing, but it was fun because I don’t know, for me it’s, maybe it’s just the competitive part of me, but they started sharing their stats and their numbers and what they were doing and it just got me excited. I’m like, “Okay cool, they’re doing almost a million dollars a day, we’re at, I don’t know, about a quarter of that right now. So I was like, okay.
But we have more customers, we’ve got about, almost double as many customers as they do, but they do it based on…anyway, it was interesting because what they were showing and what they are doing is almost identical to one of the big shifts and big changes that we are going to be launching at Funnel Hacking Live, which was cool because it was like, “Oh sweet, we’re on the right path, doing the right things.”
But it gave me someone to start chasing towards again, which is fun. It’s been a while. All our other competitors, we blew past them and then it’s just like, huh. What do you do when the competition is gone? For me it’s tough. Not that I want to compete directly, or whatever. I think most of you guys know I’m pretty competitive at this point.
But it’s just like, I need to have someone I’m running towards or else it’s tough for me to have that energy and excitement of like…so now it’s like, Hubspot, this is their numbers, their stats, this is where they’re at, now we know. Now we’ve got a shot. Now we’ve got a place to aspire and ascend to and to run towards. So it just pumped me up this morning.
So for you guys, I don’t know. I know we have people listening to this from all different levels of business from, a lot of startups, all the way to people that are making tens of millions of dollars. So what I would recommend is, and this goes back to Funnel Hacking 101 right, find someone to model. That’s not just talking about their landing pages, or their offers or whatever. It’s really understanding who in the marketplace, who’s there? Who’s leading the way? Who’s proven this model before you? How do you funnel hack them?
Hubspot, I may be excited to go funnel hack how they do their pricing strategy, they talked a little bit about that. I’m like, okay cool. That’s their pricing strategy, this is how they do this and this is how they do this. And so it’s like, it gets me all excited to run towards that now. It gives me motivation knowing it’s possible, knowing that it’s doable, knowing somebody’s done it before. It’s like sweet, 400 miles it’s been broken, now I know where to run, how to run, in the direction.
And they’ve left clues, I know they left clues. It’s funny, we started kind of funnel hacking Sales Force as well last year. We listened to all Sales Force books, went to Sales Force event, and really understanding them a lot better and their path and their journey has given us a lot of momentum, which has been really, really cool.
But now I’m like, sweet. Now I got Hubspot. I’m going to read the dudes, he’s written 3 or 4 books, I’m going to go read the books and start studying him and start geeking out and start funnel hacking the business, not the funnel, their funnel sucks. Their landing pages are so bad. I honestly have no idea how they have any customers. I shouldn’t say that in public, but they are really bad.
Hubspot CEO I can’t remember your name, you are awesome, but if you want me to help you fix your funnels, let me know. But that’s not what they’re good at, but what they are good at is different than what I’m good at. So I’m like, sweet I’ve got someone to model, someone to look at, someone to chase, someone to aspire towards.
I’m pumped and I’m excited and I’m going to start studying and geeking out and funnel hacking and I will know more about him and his company than anybody else on earth here, within the next two or three months, which is kind of cool.
Which brings me to the moral of today’s story. The moral of today’s story is you need to do your dang homework. It’s funny, I have people all the time who come to me like, “Hey Russell, I’m launching this kind of business.” I’m like, “Cool.” And it’s funny because I’m kind of obsessed and in most markets I know the key players. I’m like, “Do you know so and so?” They’re like, “No?” I’m like, “Do you know so and so?” “No.” “Have you ever heard of so and so?” “No.” I’m like, “Dude, how is it I know more about your market than you do? This is not a good thing. You need to become obsessed with it.”
If you’re in a market or you’re going into a market, you need to know. Who are the players? Who are the guru’s? What are the events? What are the things that you need to go to? Go to the live events, go meet the people, go buy the people’s products. Become obsessed and do your homework because you’re trying to compete in a market you don’t even know about. Its not very smart.
But if you know, you’re like, “Okay cool. Here’s the players, here’s where people are at, here’s the good old boys club, here’s the events that are happening, here’s the hierarchy of things, here’s the people at the top, people in the middle, people at the bottom.” All of that stuff is out there, you just gotta go and look for it. And it’s worth finding.
So funnel hacking isn’t just landing pages, it’s not just traffic sources, it’s everything. It’s all the pieces, all put together. I hope that helps you guys. That’s all I got. I’m going to go in there and get some slides done and get prepared for Funnel Hacking Live. I hope you guys are preparing yourselves as well, this event is going to change some of your lives and I’m excited for it. Alright guys, I’ll talk soon. Bye.
Behind the scenes of what I’m currently doing to simplify and sexify my messages.
On this episode Russell talks about how much time he spends simplifying his presentations so that even his kids could understand his concepts. Here are some of the other things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out why Russell thinks its so important to simplify and sexify your message.
---Transcript---
Hey what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets Podcast. It’s Saturday and I’m getting ready for the big Funnel Hacking Live Event.
Hey everyone, just wanted to jump on, I know that this last week and next week I’ve been working so much on presentations and slides and getting ready for Funnel Hacking Live, I haven’t done many podcasts and I just wanted to kind of communicate and connect with everybody because I’ve been thinking about you a lot. There’s just so much stuff happening.
Anyway, there’s a lot that goes into events. The venue, the people, the speakers, there’s so much stuff, the organization, the schedule, the timing, everything. So for the last six months or so we’ve been spending time doing everything else, and now it’s like, it was two weeks away last week, now we’re 10 days away as of right now. So for me it was like, okay it’s the last two weeks, it’s all about I need to get my presentations done.
And it’s interesting, most, I don’t know, it’s weird. Most people who do their own events nowadays, they don’t speak very much at their own events, which is weird to me, it doesn’t quite make sense. But that’s what people do. A couple of ones I went to this year, and they were great events, nothing against that, it’s just the promoter didn’t speak as much.
I went to Ryan Rand’s event, which was really neat, and I asked him, “Are you nervous? What are you speaking about?” and he’s like, “I don’t speak at my own presentations.” I was like, “Oh you don’t?” He’s like, “Yeah, at my event I like to bring people in and then I let them speak.” I was like, oh that’s interesting.
Then I was at Grant Cardone’s event and he came and didn’t speak hardly at all either and I was like, I would die….If I had a stage like Grant Cardone’s I would have been on stage like 20 hours a day every single day, just leveraging that because that’s such an important thing, you know what I mean?
And then if you look at just different ones. For me, I feel like.. I know that when Traffic Conversion, when it first came out I used to go because I loved hearing Ryan and Perry speak. Both those guys are geniuses and I loved hearing from them and as Traffic Conversion grew, they started speaking less and less and less. Now I think the last T&C had like 50-60 speakers and they maybe spoke once each. And it was just like, I don’t even, this isn’t worth me going anymore because I wanted to hear from them.
I look at people who’ve got tons of longevity, someone like Tony Robbins. When he does his events he’s on stage for 50 hours in a weekend. I feel like, I don’t know, I always want to be there. I want to be the one inside of it.
So because of that, for this event I’ve got 6 presentations I’m creating. And of course I’m not someone who can just make a, I don’t want to go just off the top of my head. I want to make these impactful and emotional and strong. So every presentation the design I’m spending on each one, that alone is amazing. The last podcast talked about figuring out the hook, the headline, and the framework and I spent a week just doing that on the six presentations. I’m only about half way through all the framework, which is sad because I was trying to get it all done this week so next week I could work on slides.
But as I was doing this, I was trying to think, I’ve been talking to a lot of people on my team, people at the event, a lot of people just trying to figure things out. I think the reason why I’ve been successful, so I’m saying this for people who are creating courses or content or products or events or slides or presentations or anything, because I think it’s a hint and I hope it helps because that’s the whole point of why I wanted to jump on here. I wish you guys knew how much time I spend trying to figure out how to simplify concepts. I think that the biggest thing that keeps people back from success when they’re presenting is techno babble. If you’ve read the Expert Secrets book, I talk about techno babble.
We use these huge vocabularies, and my vocabulary is very simple, it’s very easy. I’m always trying to simplify. If you look at these standing whiteboards here and here, those who are watching. And here and here, and then I’ve got papers all over the ground here. This is me taking a concept and writing it out, writing it out again, and again trying to simplify it so it’s so simple that I could explain it to my kids. So simple I could understand it. And I don’t think people spend the time. If you knew, it’s Saturday night at 6:24 pm, I’m sitting here trying to simplify this one section of a presentation because it needs to be so simple that people understand it.
I think that instead we think that we’re so smart and we use our techno babble and our learning to show how intelligent we are, but all it does is alienate the audience and pushes them away from you. So I think that’s one of my super powers, but it’s not something that’s magical. It’s me sitting here for 10 hours trying to figure out one presentation, how to simplify it and make it simpler and simpler until it’s simple.
For all of you guys out there, I’d spend more time on that. Try to simplify things. Simplify your vocabulary, pull the big words out, pull the complex things out. See if you can explain what you’re doing in a doodle graph. If you can’t then it’s too complex. Some of you guys are like, “Well mines, I couldn’t do mine in a doodle graph.”
No, you could. When I, we did a thing in network marketing program a while ago and they wanted me to do a video explaining the comp plan and it was way over my head anyway. So I had John on my team go through and he watched, I don’t know, 12 plus hours of video of people explaining the comp plan from the lawyers and the marketers and all sorts of stuff. He went through and tried to explain it to me and it took like 4 or 5 hours for him to explain to me. Then I had it all on a whiteboard and I was like okay, how to make this simple? And it took me another 2 or 3 days to simplify it to a point where it’s like, “Oh, that’s really, really easy.”
So I just wanted to, I don’t know, for you guys who are, and this is kind of to the audience who’s presenting and experts and things like that. First off, continue to publish your stuff. That’s one big key I want to put out there. Don’t, I don’t know, your longevity of you as a person, as a personality, has to do with how much time you put out there. Now, a tangent on that, I’m very strategic. At my events I spend a lot of time on people coming there. I don’t speak at many other people’s events anymore because I want, I also don’t want to be the guy who’s at every event speaking, because you lose your supply and demand type thing there.
But my own event, I want to be the one there. I want to make it so this is a venue people come to and they’re going to come because “I’m going to hear six whole new presentations from Russell that I’ve never heard before, that he’s never talked about on the podcast.” It’s this unique thing and I want to give that experience to people.
And so, I think for your own things, do that kind of stuff. Be willing to do it. Second is simplify things as much as you can. And then third, I don’t know how to teach this, but try to make things sexy. I could have said, “This presentation is how to get traffic to your website.” Or “How to increase your social media profiling.” Or whatever. But instead we made it sexy. I read these headlines to you guys during the last event. Like, “Conversation Domination. How to get your dream clients addictively binge watching you on every platform that they live on. Warning, this aggressive approach is only for those who truly believe in their message.”
You look at that and you’re like, okay that’s a cool headline Russell. But we sat here for like 3 hours going back and trying to make it easier. So for you, you’ve got to put the time in to simplify your message and make it sexy and figure out the hook. Spend time doing that.
I wish you guys could all get a glimpse at how much time I spend on that part of it, because I don’t think people understand that. They just put something together and go out there. And it’s like, no, that’s the valuable part. That’s what makes you valuable to your audience, your ability to go through and collect information, ideas and things like that. I did a podcast before how your job is to think for a lot of other people. You’re doing that and then bringing it back to somebody in a simple format and they’re like, ‘Oh, cool. I could actually do that.”
So that’s what your job is to do. You’re curating all this stuff and then bringing it back in the most simple form possible to give to people. But you’ve got to spend the time doing that. You have put in the energy, the effort to think through those things for them, simplify them and give them in a way that they can do it.
I don’t know how to teach that other than, I want you guys to be aware of how much time I spend doing it because then you might realize, “Oh I don’t spend any time doing that. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I should spend a Saturday here in my sweats in my office just thinking through how to simplify this for people, because it’s meant the world to me, and I think it’s helped me to build an audience and get followers and people listening to me because I’ve been good at that.
I hope that helps. I don’t know, I’m not the best in the world. I still talk to fast, I mumble, I have all sorts of quirks and things that are strange. I know some people don’t like me at all, which is totally cool. But that’s one thing I’ve been good at and it’s helped a lot of people. I look at my books, Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, they’re not my original ideas, it’s me reading a billion things, trying a bunch of stuff, and then putting it into a format that’s as simple as possible. That’s why I doodle things out. I’m trying to doodle it so you’ll be like, “Oh there’s the doodle, that’s what he’s thinking.”
So for you, it’s figuring out simplify, simplify, simplify. Cut out the techno babble, make things sexy, make things interesting, spend that extra time to do that because it’s worth it. If I can do that for 6 presentations in a 2 week period of time, that’s doing it for all of them, plus then creating slides for all of them on top of everything else I’m doing for this event, I guarantee you can do for one presentation or with your perfect webinar that you’re doing. I’m guessing a lot of times if your webinar’s aren’t converting it’s because you’re too complex. Simplify the story, simplify the process, simplify those things for people so they get it. Make them sexy, make the hooks good, make it intriguing and curiosity driven because those are the keys.
Anyway, that’s it you guys. I’m going to get back to work. I gotta make this thing sexy and simplify it so hopefully sometime today I can go take a nap. Alright appreciate you all, for those coming to Funnel Hacking Live, I cannot wait to see you. It’s going to be amazing and hopefully this event will change your business, but more importantly I want it to change your life. So I’ll see you guys there. Bye everybody.
How We Create Presentations That Are SUPER Sexy, That Get Attention And Make It Simple To Teach
On this episode Russell talks about all the work that goes into putting his presentations together for Funnel Hacking Live. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out the process Russell goes through to create a headline and framework for a presentation.
---Transcript---
Hey this is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast, so excited to have you guys here today. Before we get started make sure you go to iTunes, if you’re listening to this podcast. Rate, review, like us, let us know what you think, it means a lot to me. I read the comments and it helps me to know what you want and what to give you more of.
Today we’re going to be talking about the framework behind the new conversation domination presentation, going to show you what we did, how we did it, how we made it sexy and a whole bunch more.
Hey everyone this is Russell. I’m so excited to be here today. We are less than two weeks away from Funnel Hacking Live going live, which is crazy. All sorts of craziness is happening. To start it off, of course I don’t like doing anything normal, I want as much pressure as possible because for some reason when a lot of things are happening I’m able to focus and get stuff done. So we decided this week to do a keto fast/reboot diet and I tricked about 9 other people besides me into doing it. Because Prove It just came out with their new Keto Reboot kit, so I wanted to try it out, and they asked if I’d help write some stuff for them and help on a funnel and stuff so I’m like, “Let me try it out.”
So they shipped us out a bunch of reboot kits, so for the last 60 hours, it’s a 60 hour fast, and all you do is have all these different Keto products and it’s like, you have a keto drink in the morning and then you’ve got a keto bone broth, which was shockingly good, and then another keto drink and these little pills and this keto tea at night, which was good too. Anyway, you do that for 60 hours. So we just broke our 60 hour fast and just had bacon, eggs and avocados, my three favorite foods all in one super meal, which was awesome.
Now I’m heading into the office to work on my slides and presentation and stuff like that. But I wanted to share something with you guys today, because maybe it will give you a little hope or faith or knowledge, I don’t know. Whatever it is you need to get through what it is you’re doing. So I’ve got 6 presentations I’m giving at Funnel Hacking Live, and I just started on them basically on Monday. So I got a two week window to get them all done. And maybe you’re like, “oh that’s easy, six presentations in two weeks.”
But each presentation for me is usually between 150-300 slides. So these aren’t micro, these are macro, big, big, big projects I’m trying to get done. For me, if I were planning this for the last six months it never got done. For me it’s all about just in time, getting things you need done just in time. So now it’s like, okay it’s go time. I have to get these done, I have no other option. Now is the time to start creating them.
So I just wanted to share the process because maybe that will help some of you guys. So it’s been 48 hours and at the end of the 48 all I have done is for my presentation number one, I have a title, the title slide, a headline, and a doodle graph of the, what’s the word I’m looking for? Of the process I’m going to be teaching, not the process, that’s not the word, of the system. Dangit, there’s a word, it’ll come to me.
But basically this is what I’m teaching and the doodle in the whiteboard thing. That’s what I got done in 48 hours and people are like, “You’re never going to get these slides done in time Russell. If you spent 48 hours on that.” And it’s true, but the slides take a lot of grunt work, but not a lot of thinking. It’s kind of like, what image can I put in here to remember my brain to talk about this concept, and what’s the headline? Things like that that pull you through the presentation.
The bigger part is the structure, what’s the structure or what you’re going to be teaching people? What’s the hook? How do you make it sexy? So for me it’s like, yeah maybe that’s the thing. The structure, the hook, and try to be sexy. So the structure was the biggest thing. So I was trying to think conceptually what do I want to teach and how do I want to teach it?
So I had this huge whiteboard and we mapped it all out and I was like, okay that’s awesome but super complex. Then I took a big pad of paper and shrunk it out again. I was like, it’s awesome but it’s still too complex. I got it down, down, down until finally it was like this really simple, here’s the process, here’s the framework, I think that’s the word I’m looking for. Here’s the framework of how I’m going to teach this concept.
For example, this presentation I’m working on, for the first 48 hours is called Conversation Domination, and it’s basically how to dominate the conversation everywhere, on every single platform, every single channel, all at the same time. And I bought, one of my friends used to own a product called Conversation Domination and I bought the brand and the domain and stuff from him, so that was going to be the title of it.
Then I needed a structure, a framework, so they took all that time, a day and a half to get the frame to simplify where it’s like, ah here’s the framework, which if you look at all my books, Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, it’s all about a framework. The little doodles are my framework, and I can teach off of the framework.
So now I got the framework and then I need, how to make this sexy. Conversation domination is sexy, but we needed a really sexy headline and so in fact, I’m going to go inside and find a headline right now, so I can read it to you guys. But we had to get the headline because that’s part of the hook right there, getting the headline that’s going to capture people so that when they see the presentation they’ll be like, “Oh crap, I actually do want to hear that. I want to know what he’s going to be talking about.”
So that was the next piece, pulling out the headline. I’m walking through the office right now. We’re live everybody, what’s up? Anyway, so we’re pulling out the headline and that was kind of the next step in the process. So let me come in here and show you guys who are watching. If you’re listening I will read it to you. Here we are in the office.
Alright, so the headline ended up being, and this is after probably 2 1/2 -3 hours of headlining back and forth with a whole bunch of people, again, it’s not just a fast process, most of the time it’s going into these little things that set up the framework for everything else. So Conversation Domination, this is the headline we came up with, “How to get your dream clients addictively binge watching you on every platform that they live on. Warning, this aggressive approach is only for those that truly believe in their message.” So for those who are watching, here’s a little picture of it you can see. For those listening, that’s the headline.
So that became the headline and then it was like, okay now I’ve got the title, the hook or the headline, and then we’ve got the framework for me to teach and then the last thing, we gotta make it sexy and this is where design comes in. We need to make this thing look amazing.
So kind of the storyline behind this presentation, and I’ll get to that, I’m not going to tell you too much of the storyline because I can go on for hours about that. But for those who are going to Funnel Hacking Live, the presentation you’ll hear the story behind it, but it basically likens social media to TV’s back in 1965.
So how it works, if you look at the design here, you can see it’s designed like an old TV set and it just looks awesome. So I had this and I got the title and the headline done and I sent it over to Julie Stoian, who is not in Boise this week, against her wishes. She wanted to be here, but we had too much stuff. But I sent it to her and then she wrote back, she said, in all caps, “How do you make everything so sexy?” And I said, “Ha, that’s the big secret.” And then she shared with me a screenshot from someone in her group that said, from Karen Wolf Milner it said, “How is that Russell Brunson can make the seven phases of a funnel sound so sexy? LOL, I’m becoming slightly obsessed with funnels.”That was literally 12 minutes ago in my group.
So what I want to share, the whole point of this podcast I want to share is like, you have to make your thing sexy. I could have been like, “Here’s how to drive traffic to your offers.” Bleh. Or, “Here’s how to be seen on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.” Blah, boring. It’s got to be something that captures people, that’s different and unique that people will remember forever.
I think so many times I see people like, “My funnel’s not working.” and I go and look at it and it’s just so bland. Of course not, you don’t have a good hook, you don’t have a good headline, you don’t have a good design, there’s nothing interesting or intriguing, there’s no story behind it. What’s the whole thing?
This presentation, literally I start with the title. “Hey you guys this is a presentation called Conversation Domination. I’m going to show you how to get your dream clients addictively binge watching you on every social platform that they’re living on. Warning, this aggressive approach is only for those that truly believe in their message.” Then I go into the story. “So I want to tell you guys this story. There’s this clip….blah, blah, blah.” And tell the story about TV in 1965 and explain that whole thing and now all the sudden there’s intrigue, there’s interest, and now I can move to the framework.
For those who are looking at the framework, for those who are watching live, excuse me watching on the video, you can see a picture of the framework here. I clear off all my mess, sorry. A week before events things become a mess because I got 8 thousand papers open everywhere. But here’s the framework, and that framework started out as this framework on this whiteboard here, then it shifted into a whole bunch of pads of paper like this to try to simplify it more and more and more until I finally got to this, and that’s the framework I’m going to teach.
So what’s cool about it now, when I do my presentation, this is all I have to teach. If I did no slides, I could just go up on a whiteboard and map this out, and explain this piece and this piece and this piece. That’s how I could do it really simply. If I wanted to do it complex, I could go make 5 or 6 slides explaining each one, showing pictures for visual demonstrations of each thing, which is probably what I’ll end up doing. But worst case, I have the framework, so now I could go and I could present this tonight and I could do a 90 minute presentation with nothing but this framework.
When I teach a lot of times people think, “How in the world do you get on stage without any preparation and speak for like an hour?” or 2 hours or 5 hours. I’m like, “Well, I sit in the back before and try to fill out a framework of what I want to create.” I remember Brendon Burchard used to tell me, “The framework is your savior.”
If you’ve got a framework like this you always know where you’re going. You just put the thing in, you talk, talk, talk, talk and then you stop and you’re like, “Okay, what’s the next thing? Okay, here’s the next thing, next thing, next thing.” So for me, my framework is always these doodle graphs. I could go and if someone wanted me to teach a lesson, teach a three day event tomorrow on Dotcom Secrets, I wouldn’t have to rehearse anything. I would just go get the book, pull out the framework, pull out the images, and just talk off the images as you show it. It would not be hard because the framework shows me where my mind needs to go, what I need to talk about, how it all fits together, it makes it very, very clear.
So for you guys, I want you thinking, when you’re making presentations, you’re trying to sell stuff, trying to create things, some of the things you need to be thinking about. It’s gotta be sexy, it’s gotta have a sexy hook that grabs them, that looks interesting. A headline that like sucks them in. A story that gets them to care about it, and then there’s the framework where you deliver all the big promises you gave them during the headline.
So anyway, I hope that kind of helps, because I know even people here on my team internally are like, “Why have you spent 48 hours and all you have is a headline and some doodles.” And I’m like, “Because that’s the most important part. Everything else is just details.” So there you go. I hope that helps you guys.
I have to go on lock down and now make 150 slides for this presentation and then do the same process for the other 5. Actually, I’m going to this process for the other 5 first, because this is the hardest part. This is the brainwork, then it’s just like again, now that I have this the brainwork is gone. Next week I have to go and grab images for all these things and slap them into slides and make them look amazing. So the brainwork is the hard part.
Alright guys, that’s all I got. Thanks so much for listening today. If you are not subscribed on iTunes, again go to iTunes, search for Marketing Secrets and subscribe to the podcast and please, rate, review if you like this. That’ll get me excited to keep on making cool stuff. Thanks you guys, appreciate you all and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
The marketing strategy I would use if I was going to try to literally take over the world… or my city.
On this episode Russell rants about politicians in his area that use boring signs on the side of the road to campaign. He discusses in detail the ways he would market himself if he were to run for political office. Here are some of the awesome things you will here in this episode:
So listen here to find out why if Russell cared about politics and ran for political office, he would win.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? My name is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about political marketing, what’s driving me crazy and what I would do if I were running for president, or Congress, or whatever it is.
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing awesome. I hope you enjoyed the last few podcasts, I think the last one people have been going nuts for. We got tons of downloads from it which has been really, really fun. Talked about how we basically did $3 million dollars in 90 minutes and I walk you guys through the whole process. So I hope you guys enjoyed that.
It’s been a couple days since I did a podcast because I’m kind of recovering and recouping from the craziness that consumed last week. Today I was driving into the office and it’s political season here in Idaho, it probably is everywhere. I’m not a big politic guy, I don’t really care about voting too much. Anyway, I’ll leave that. I just don’t care. I care more about entrepreneurship and stuff like that.
But I know there’s a big political thing because I keep seeing all these signs and I met one of the dudes who is running for, I don’t know what it is, congress, senate, something here in Idaho. And then I drove by and saw his sign, a big old sign it’s got his name on it really, really big, and like the logo of the party. Then I saw another guy and it’s got his name really, really big and the logo of the party. It drives me nuts. I just cringe when I know how much money is being wasted.
They keep asking me to donate to so and so’s campaign and this and that and I’m just like, politicians’ are the worst marketers in the history of all time, outside of a few people.
I’m sure there’s a lot of you guys who watched the last elections. And the person who won was actually a great marketer. I’m sure he had his name really big all over the signs, but what was better, he had a benefit. What is the benefit for our people?
So instead of saying, “Russell Brunson” on a big sign on the side of the road, I’d be like, what do people here actually care about? And have something like, “Hey do you want to make Idaho great again?” or “Hey, do you want to pay less taxes?” or some benefit to the actual human being. Not just my name. Nobody cares about my name. So all of you politicians who have a big old sign with your name on it and a logo, you are literally just flushing money down the toilet.
I’m sure there’s the hyper-actives who know who you are, every time they see your sign they’re like, “Yay!” They were going to vote for you anyway. All the rest of us, people who don’t care about politics or aren’t going out to vote, we look at that and see a name and just keep driving. It does zero for memory. I don’t know what the benefits are to me, I don’t know why I’d vote for you over everyone else. It does nothing whatsoever, yet we keep doing it. I don’t know how much money the sign companies make from this, it’s ridiculous.
Then I got invited today to a get together party thing at somebody’s house where they were doing a, I don’t know, fundraiser, a big get together. Everybody is going to be at somebody’s house and I don’t even know if the politicians are going to be there, but there’s a big party and they’re going to talk about it and share it. And they invited me to it.
I just kind of smiled and like, first off, why am I going to this thing? Is a person going to be there that nobody told me? What’s the benefit? My thoughts are people are going to go once again, to something like this, are people who are predisposed to vote for that person anyway and then get together and be all excited about that person and it’s going to be awesome. But it doesn’t get a single extra vote created.
So if I was running for politics, people asked me, I did a rant on this about a month ago about if I were ever to run for politics. First off, I will never run. Mark my word. Second off, someday I do want to be a puppet master for some politician, so if and when I ever end this part of my career, I’m totally going to find a politician and just be a puppet master, just in the marketing, just to prove that this stuff works.
So if I was a politician, first off, my big old sign on the side of the road would have the benefit for the person, huge headline and my name would be underneath it in much smaller font. But the benefit of why they would want to vote for me would be number one.
Number two, I wouldn’t be trying to throw rally’s for people who are already going to vote for me. Do you want to know why? Because it doesn’t create new votes. So what I would be doing instead is I would be going to my local area, my geographical area that can vote for me. I’d be going to Facebook, I’d be doing Facebook Live’s every single day for the entire year and a half leading up to my campaign.
What would I talk about on those things? I don’t know. I’d find out what people actually care about. Not people necessarily that are already voting for me, but I’d be finding topics and be doing one Facebook Live per day, per topic and I would target my local…I would want it so that every single person who could possibly vote for me, when they open up Facebook or Instagram, all they see every single day is my face talking about the new topic.
I haven’t seen a single Facebook Live from a single politician ever, which blows my mind. Guess how we’re all making all this money online guys. Facebook Lives. I haven’t seen a single swipe up ad for any of my politicians, guess where I’m making money online guys? Swipe up ads.
Why in the world aren’t these people using things? They’re doing all these old school methods, they’re doing horrible branding, horrible messaging, they’re not doing any kind of future based cause, they’re doing rallies to get their existing warm audience excited about them, although it creates no new votes. I’d be focusing how to create new votes. What’s my future based cause? All this crap we talked about on Expert Secrets, I’m going to get a new cover for this, and call it political secrets, and then we’ll wrap it and sell it to the politicians, teach them how to actually sell themselves and market.
I would totally be doing a perfect webinar. I would literally do all these Facebook Lives, pushing people to, “hey I’m going to be doing this….” I wouldn’t call it a webinar, I’d call it a something…”a town hall meeting where I’m going to reveal to you the three biggest things we are going to do to destroy (not destroy) to fix our economy locally and to blah, blah, blah…” Whatever it is.
I would figure out their false believes of my core audience, I would do a perfect webinar and I would try to at the end of the perfect webinar I would totally sell them something. Some kind of packet, because as soon as somebody has paid with their wallet, now they’re emotionally invested, they’re more likely to spend time with you and give you more money and vote for you and tell other people to vote for you, because they’ve given you money.
I wouldn’t go ask people for campaign donations, “Hey can you donate to so and so’s campaign. This is the platform he’s on.” Because nobody cares about the platform that they’re on. What do people want? They want something. They want an ROI, they want to get something in return.
So I would figure out cool stuff. What would I make? I’d make a box of stuff like this and put cool things in there that people would actually want locally. I’d have like coupons from the local area, where they support me as a cause and you get $5000 in coupons if you donate $50, or something. I would find, I don’t know. I would just do good marketing.
We just need to get one politician to understand good DR, direct response marketing, and we could change the world. James, you in on that?
James: I’ll be the politician, you be my puppet master.
Russell: Oh my gosh you guys heard it right here on Marketing Secrets. The puppet master.
James: The puppet master,
Russell: And the puppet.
James: And the politician.
Russell: the politician.
James: We’ll call it politician.
Russell: Aka, the politician. Okay, so you’re going to do it.
James: I’m going to do it.
Russell: Can you do it in Idaho, or do you have to be an Idaho citizen?
James: I think I’m pretty sure to being a…
Russell: Are you an American citizen?
James: I’m an American citizen, even though I’m wearing my Italian shirt.
Russell: Yeah, should we do it for…anyway. We’re going to do it and document it.
James: Yes, that would be amazing.
Russell: That would actually be really cool. Alright, so there you go guys. If you’re running for political office, take the Expert Secrets book, rip the cover off, handwrite in Political Secrets or Politician Secrets or something and then when you campaign, I hope this helps.
Because I don’t care if you’re selling politics, or you’re selling books, if you’re selling courses, if you’re selling software, you’re selling ebooks, you’re selling food at the grocery store, all these principles are the same. If I hear one person like, “Oh Expert Secrets, that doesn’t work for my business.” Or “I’m not selling information products.” This has nothing to do with selling information products. If you think that that’s what it means, it means you missed the entire point. Read the book again, it has to do with selling everything and anything.
It’s human emotion, psychology. I would have called this book, Russell’s copywriting secrets book, but that would have been boring and nobody would have bought it. This is teaching you as the presenter, as the attractive character in your audience, whatever business you are selling, I promise you 10x in sales as soon as you attach an attractive character to it. What is the guide book for how that attractive character communicates with your audience, with you, with other people, this book is the book.
So there’s the pitch for my book, you probably already bought it and you probably read it. So if you have read it, go read it again. If you haven’t read it, now is the time. It’s going to help you sell whatever it is you’re selling, way more efficiently, and way better. It is the key. So once again, if you’re selling politics or anything else, that’s the process and the path.
Alright, so you heard it first. What are you going to run for, man?
James: Let’s take it as high as we can go.
Russell: We can go for president?
James: Yeah, why not?
Russell: Are you political? What party are you for? I want to know what you actually stand for before I put you in there.
James: Before you endorse me?
Russell: Because we’ve got.
{Crosstalk}
Russell: We’ve got a conservative and a liberal both in this office. James where do you fall in the middle?
James: I’m conservative.
Russell: Uh oh, okay. Well, Melanie, you’re running the campaign here, you gotta….anyway, I’m ending the podcast now you guys. Look for James coming soon to a ballot near you. Vote for him, Mr. James P. Friel and Associates will be running and the puppet master will be doing the marketing behind the scenes. Going to be a lot of fun.
Anyway, appreciate you guys, thanks so much for everything and I’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.