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.