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On today’s episode Russell talks about his trip to Kenya and the nightmare of getting back home and being stuck in airports for 56 hours. He also talks about a street show he witnessed in Amsterdam that was filled with golden marketing lessons.
Here are some fun things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to find out the valuable marketing lessons Russell learned from a street performer.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Hey guys and gals and all my friends out there. It’s been a little while since we hung out and I apologize, but I’ve been traveling like crazy and I’m finally getting to a spot where I can report back and hang out. But if you watch my Snapchats then you’ve been seeing all the craziness that’s been happening.
So last week, it’s kind of a last minute, spur of the moment, we decided to go to Kenya with World Teachers Aid and it’s usually a ten day trip but I have an event starting tomorrow, therefore I could not go for ten days. So we thought well, the trips broken down in two parts. The first part you go and see the kids in the villages and you help build the school and stuff and the second half is a safari. So we decided we won’t go to the safari and we’ll just focus on the first half. So that’s what we did, which was really cool. So that was where we’ve been. We weren’t supposed to go. Dylan, one of the Clickfunnels co-founders was supposed to go, but he was working on the new editor and just ran out of time and didn’t get his shots and stuff, so we headed in the last minute and kind of went there. So we’ve been doing that.
On the way there we decided, hey we have a couple days at the beginning that we have some free time, so we flew to Amsterdam for two days and hung out there, which was cool. I’ve never been to Amsterdam before it was awesome. It’s like super quiet. I was walking around the downtowns and there’s no cars anywhere and mostly everyone is on bikes. I was telling Collette, “Listen. Do you know how quiet it is here?” It’s just crazy quiet and it was really neat. We loved it and had a great time. I did a boat tour through all the canals and saw the Anne Frank house and a bunch of other cool things, that was awesome.
We went to Kenya and had a chance to hang out with these little kids and it was just like last time 4 years ago we went. It was a very emotional, powerful experience to see these kids and the transformations. One of the cool things is that the village that we spent all of our time at 4 years ago, we had a chance to go back there and see the progress and how things have evolved. There’s this little girl that we’ve been helping, her name is Jane. When we saw her 4 years ago, she’s a little, I think she was 13 or 14 years old. We’ve been sponsoring her and helping her get through high school and stuff, it’s just amazing to see her progress. My wife and her really connected before, so my wife is bawling her eyes out seeing her. It was really a neat experience.
Then after that we went to a new village, it was the most beautiful place. Cliffs that…or this big huge…it was up on a mountain looking over this huge valley and it was beautiful, but the kids didn’t have a school yet, so they just were almost finished with the school and it was amazing. Such a cool experience. One thing that you may or may not know as a Clickfunnels member, every time you build a funnel that goes live a dollar goes toward World Teacher Aid and we’re always working on that, trying to help support those guys and build more schools and support more children. It’s just amazing to see the transformation from 4 years ago, til this week. Which was really cool.
And then we jumped in a plane to head home, so we could hurry and get home. We were supposed to get home Monday because Aiden’s birthday, my little 5 and now 6 year old, his birthday was on Monday. So we had everything booked and traveled so we could get home in time for his birthday. We were supposed to get in Boise at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. So we were going to take him out to dinner and the next day take him to the water park. That was the plan, but unfortunately plans don’t always go how they were supposed to.
So we get into Kenya and they’re like, “Oh, the dude who is supposed to be flying this plane is late.” So we were 4 hours late leaving from Kenya, which was horrible because our layover in Amsterdam was 2 hours. So we finally leave Kenya, we fly to Amsterdam. Get to Amsterdam and our plane is already gone, so they rebook us on one that’s 7 hours later. So we’re waiting forever and finally we get on that one and fly from Amsterdam to…..where were we going to? Oh, Minneapolis. So we get to Minneapolis, and we basically missed Monday, which was kind of sad because we were gonna miss his birthday, but we’re like, “We’ll still be there, but like at 2 in the morning. We’ll take him to the water park on Tuesday, it’ll be awesome.” So we’re sitting there and then the flight course in Minneapolis gets delayed 3 hours, then 5 hours and we’re sitting there waiting and waiting and finally we’re about to board and they say, “Oh, by the way all the pilots have been flying too long, therefore they cannot fly, therefore this flights been canceled. Oh by the way, there’s no flights out tomorrow, so you gotta wait til Wednesday to leave.” I was like, “Are you freaking kidding me? I needed to get home to my kids birthday!” And we were just missing our kids like crazy.
It was kind of like Home Alone, I felt like. The mom had to race to get home to Kevin and every little thing possible, hiccup that could happen was happening. So anyway, I’m sitting there; it’s like 10:30, 11:00 at night and I message Melanie, my assistant, I’m like, “All the flights tomorrow are apparently booked, we need to figure out how to get home and we need a hotel.” The other thing they said was, “All flights are canceled plus there’s no flights tomorrow and there’s no hotels available.” We’re like, “Are you kidding me?”
So Melanie went on and was able to find a flight that didn’t leave until the next day at 5, which got us home at 9:40 at night on Tuesday. So we missed our water park day, and then she booked us a hotel. So we jumped in an Uber, headed to the hotel, slept, hung out all day and I got a bunch of work done towards the event, which is starting tomorrow. Then we get in our plane finally. We leave Minneapolis, fly to Denver, and we’re like, “Last leg, we’ll be home by 9:30.” Get in our plane to head to Denver and guess what happened? Yes, you are right. Lightning storm. Therefore our flight was delayed again.
Anyway, we ended up getting home at 10:30 at night, finally. And I think it was 56 total hours that we were in airports. So that was horrible. And we missed the little man’s birthday. But today, this morning we went and celebrated his birthday and got some cool stuff. Now I’m headed to the office because we have an event tomorrow and I got a lot of work to do before that.
So that’s kind of what’s happening over. So anyway, there’s the catch-up of where we’ve been and now we can start moving forward again and keep hanging out. So the event tomorrow, I’m excited. It’s all of our Inner Circle members and our old Ignite Program. This is the last Ignite event ever, so we’ve got a bunch of those guys coming as well. I think we’ve got about 100 people coming, or so. And it went from kind of a concept to after spending 56 hours in the airport and geeking out and going through as much marketing stuff as I could consume during that time, it’s gonna be an amazing event. I’m crazy excited. I hand sketched out, I think another 40 new sketches, similar to the Dotcom Secrets book, all with new concepts and I’m hoping and praying that Vlad, my designer can get them all looking good today so we can get handouts printed for tomorrow. Oh it’s all running together. I don’t know if we’ll make it all. Anyway, worst case scenario I’ll just re-sketch them live on a whiteboard for everybody.
The event is going to be awesome and it’s actually focusing on the new book, Expert Secrets. I’m excited for Expert Secrets, we spent about 6 months writing it and when I was in Bear Lake last month, I basically deleted the whole book and started over from scratch and the new direction that this is going, I’m really, really proud of. It’s what this whole event is based on. I’m kind of teaching it out loud so I can make sure all the pieces make logical sense in my mind before we turn it into a book, which is similar to what I did with the Dotcom Secrets book. We re-wrote it 3 times and then I did a live event for 3 days and then that helped me organize the thoughts in a better way. And I’m teaching onstage and I’m like, “That was good, but that one didn’t make sense and I need to tweak this.” Anyway, it was really cool.
So I kind of did the same process with this one. So if you want to write a book, that’s the secret, throw an event. It forces you to get everything done in time and then it lets you teach it out loud. I don’t know about you but when I teach out loud, I just get different ideas and thoughts and I figure out what makes sense, what’s slow and boring, what’s exciting and what pieces people get and what pieces they don’t. Anyway, that’s what’s happening. Hopefully this book will be done before the end of the year, because I’m really excited for it, it’s going to be amazing.
With that said, I gotta draw some value for you guys before I get to the office. So when we were in Amsterdam, the second day my wife were walking around downtown and all the sudden we get to this, I think it was a parliament or something, some big huge building. And we’re like, “Wow, that building is amazing.” And all the sudden we hear, “Ahem, ahem, ahem.” Like this coughing and we look over and there’s this guy with a nice shirt on and a microphone and he’s coughing. He keeps coughing louder and louder and keeps doing it and all these people start coming close and I’m like, “What’s happening?” and he had a unicycle on the ground, a bunch of boxes, a bunch of things. He had this flame that was there, so we kind of get closer to him. And he keeps coughing, probably for 5 minutes and we’re like, “This is weird.” And we’re about to leave and all the sudden he stops and says, “Everyone, I’m okay. I’m just trying to get all of your attention.” And then he said something that I thought was really cool. He said….how did he say it? He said something like, what did he say? “A show without attention is just an accident.” I might have screwed that up, but it was basically that. I thought, that’s kind of powerful. How many times do we do something, but no one’s paying attention, therefore it’s just an accident? Didn’t even happen, right? So in our business are we getting attention first? You get attention first; you get people to pay attention. So that’s the first thing.
As I’m watching him as he does that, get’s attention and then he’s like, “I’m going to start the show.” And he goes and draws this big, huge chalk square around him, a pretty big square. So all these people are out further from the square so he’s like, “Okay everyone, come up to the square, this is the edge. Come in.” and he gets everyone to come closer. So he’s getting everyone to move towards him. So first he gets attention, second he gets everyone to move their physical bodies towards him so they are closer. And everyone gets kind of close. Then we started watching and I was watching what he was doing and the show ended up being 45 minutes long. And when all was said and done, if you look at it, all the show was, was he juggled fire for 30 seconds. That was it, but it was 45 minutes of buildup and excitement and building rapport.
So he did all sorts of things to build rapport. First he got everyone to pull in close, and he started……and at first you could tell the crowd was cold, “What’s this guy doing? What’s happening?” and he could of just got on his unicycle and started juggling fire and it could have been over in like a minute, but if he did that he would have missed….the whole presentation is what made this thing work. He gets everyone together and starts talking and telling jokes and starts making fun of people in the audience to get them to laugh. He starts getting everybody talking about fire and to breathe together. Breathing is one of the fastest ways to build rapport. So if you can match breathing patterns. So he’s getting everyone to breathe and pretending like they’re blowing fire. Get everyone to breathe the same thing which instantly builds rapport for everybody. So he’s getting everybody to build rapport to just all sorts of the really smart things to build rapport with this audience. From making fun of people to making fun of himself and getting people laughing and all these things to get rapport within this group.
So then he starts, he’s telling jokes and everything and then he’s trying to train the audience on what he needs them to do. So he gets on the unicycle and he’s got basically juggling things. He gets people throwing things to him. He’s training the audience on what he wants them to do and how he wants them to react. He’s like, “Okay, when you throw this…” He had Collette, actually take one of these juggling batons and had her throw it to him. “Okay now, when she throws it to me, everyone cheer like crazy.” So he’s training the audience on how he wants them to respond. Probably for another good 10 or 15 minutes. He’s doing this whole thing, training his audience how he wants and needs them to respond.
He does this whole thing and sets up this fire thing, builds up the anticipation. Now we’re probably 30-35 minutes into it. And he says, “This is what’s going to happen, you guys.” And then he explains, “In a minute I’m going to get on my unicycle and we’re going to light fire and we’re going to juggle this fire.” So it’s like, okay this is what we’ve been building up towards and we’re so excited. And then before he does he says, “Look, now what’s going to happen..” and this is where he asks for money, and first thing he does is price justification, “Look, I’m a street performer and this is how I make my living. If you were to go to the bar right now and you were to buy a beer or whatever, it’s going to be about 5 pounds and that’s going to take maybe a minute to drink, or a minute and a half if you take your time. I’ve been performing for almost 45 minutes so far, and I would assume this is worth at least the same as just a quick beer in actual entertainment value. So the minimum donation accepted is 5 pounds. The maximum is 100.”
So he starts going through and he does his price justification and he keeps explaining to the audience how to buy, which was so good. I wish I could have recorded this whole thing. So he teaches them how to buy, how to buy, how to buy. “When this is done,” he’s coaching them through, “When this is done, I’m going to juggle my things, fires going to go. I’m juggling fire, everyone’s going to go crazy. I’m going to put my hat out and everyone’s going to come rush to me and give me a minimum of 5 pounds up to 35” or whatever it is. So he explains and coaches and shows them how to pay him. He’s coaching them this whole time and what he wants and now he’s coaching them on how to pay him at the end, which is just brilliant.
Then he finally does the thing. Gets on the unicycle, juggles fire. The whole show’s maybe a minute long. Boom, gets down, everyone cheers and then people start flooding him in droves to bring him money. And everyone’s throwing 5 dollars in it and again he coaches. Then some people that start walking away. He’s like, “What are you going to be a freebie seeker?” starts calling out people who just basically came and witnessed it and ran away. So he calls these people out, so they feel kind of dumb. Everyone else goes, “I don’t want to be called out. I can’t leave this because this guy just performed for me the last 45 minutes.” And they felt this obligation to pay. And initially I probably would have given him maybe 1 pound or whatever that is. I think its pounds there. Anyway, because I felt obligated at 5, I was like, “okay I gotta give 5.” So we came to give 5, we give 5. And I looked at this process, when all is said and done he probably made, a couple thousand pounds. It was impressive.
And then everyone displaced and he started packing up his stuff and took off. And it was just cool. There were so many cool marketing lessons. One was getting attention. Number two was building a rapport. Number three was training your audience on what you want and need them to do. Number five was price justification. Number 6 was the actual show. Number 7 was the call to action. Get people to come back and pay. Number 8 would probably be calling out those who didn’t take action. And then number 9 was wrapping up the show.
Anyway, so many cool marketing lessons in one. I’m totally geeking out watching this guy. My wife’s like, “This guy is annoying.” I’m like, “He’s kept everyone’s attention here for 45 minutes to do a 30 second to 1 minute long show and at the end he made a ton of money.” Like I said, he could have just got up there and juggled fire and would have made 50 bucks. But instead he went through the whole thing and made 5 or 6 hundred dollars. Pretty impressive.
Anyway, I hope that gives you guys some value, some things you can think about with what you’re doing. One of the biggest questions people have is, “I can’t get people to show up to my webinar.” It’s like, “What are you doing? This guy spent 45 minutes for a minute long trick. What are you doing to get people excited and fired up? What kind of video, what kind of….the more you’ve got to be exciting. You’ve got to create attention. You’ve got to create desire to get people to do what you want them to do. That’s how you get people to show up on webinars is doing all those kind of things.” With that said, I’m at the office. Get some work done real quick. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day.