Some thoughts I had after staring at a blinking cursor for three hours.
On today’s episode Russell talks about how to find your big idea or hook. Here are some of the awesome things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out how you can figure out your next big idea.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everyone, it’s late at night. I was supposed to go to bed like two hours ago because I have to get up early. But no, my kids decided that even though it was Martin Luther King day and they had no school all day, they didn’t do homework until right now. So I’m up getting them to finish their homework.
So anyway, I thought I’d take a quick break while they’re doing their stuff to come talk to you guys because it’s been a little bit and I’ve got something really fun to share with you today.
So today I had a chance to go to the office, which is really fun because we just got this flow and this rhythm happening now with the systems and the agency and all this stuff. And it’s just exciting and a lot of fun, so I was really excited to go in there today. And then I have a bunch of tasks I need to do and one of them I’m already working on. The sales, like an explainer video. So explainer videos are like those little cartoon videos that kind of explain what you do in a short period of time. I don’t want to brag, but I’d say I’m probably the best explainer video script writer on planet earth. If not, I’m going to take that credit for myself.
Because I wrote Rippln ones that did 1.5 million members in 6 weeks even though the company never went anywhere. I did the Prove It ones that built a half a million dollar company this year alone, in the last three years, off of one video. Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff happening, it’s an amazing team. I’m not taking all the credit, but the explainer video was mine. So proud of that. The Clickfunnels ones have done super good. So I’ve probably done, I don’t know, two dozen explainer videos and I’m just really proud of them and I think they all have turned out good and done amazing things.
When you write for them, it’s different. Because you have to write in a way that would be fun to be animated, be interesting, be engaging, all those kind of things. But what’s interesting, I was writing this one, we have a new part of Clickfunnels coming out called Actionetics MD, that’s all I’m going to tell you guys right now. And today I needed to get the video script done so the explainer video guys could start animating and sketching and getting it all done in time for the Funnel Hacking Live Event. Because I’m going to be showing the video there when we release all our new awesomeness that I can’t tell you about right now. But it’s going to be so amazing.
My goal is to get all of you guys to start using Actionetics 100% and I think we have, last time I checked 10-12 thousand people who are on the full Etison suite who are getting, who have Actionetics, but there’s still the 40 whatever thousand customers that aren’t using it yet. So it’s like, how do I get everybody to use it because it’s awesome? So the biggest thing was just make it simple, better, easier, more awesome, so that’s what we’re doing a big sprint right now from the dev side, to get it all done and live by Funnel Hacking Live.
So those who are at Funnel Hacking Live will get first access to this amazing-ness and everything. So make sure you’re at Funnel Hacking Live, if you’re not you’re missing out because it could be six months or so before we release it to everybody else. So if you want to get the features early, go to funnelhackinglive.com get your tickets before they are all sold out. They should be sold out this month, in fact, we’re doing a big push starting tomorrow.
Anyway, I digress, I’m sharing this because I’ve had a lot of people, in fact, I’ve had a lot of companies since then come to me like, “Hey Russell, write me an explainer video, we’ll give you equity, we’ll give you percentages.” Blah, blah, blah. Because that’s kind of what Prove It had done and obviously it worked well for them and for us and for everyone.
But I’ve just told people no because I just obviously have a lot happening in my life right now and I don’t have time to really write explainer video scripts for people. But for my own stuff obviously it’s still important. I was like, how do I write this thing?
It’s funny because the thought that came through my head before I started writing this was, what is the hook, what is the big idea? Those who were at Funnel Hacking Live last time heard Todd Brown, came and spoke on that. The big idea, the big hook. And as I was sitting there with my blank sheet of paper, the little cursor blinking as I’m trying to figure this out. “What’s the hook? What’s the hook?” I know what the product is, I know the differentiation points, I know it’s exciting, but what’s the hook? You have to have the right hook.
And I think, I’m going to talk about Todd Brown for a while because I love Todd. I respect him and I think he’s amazing. I think that what I’ve gotten, I think I’ve done a good job getting our funnel community and our marketing community understanding funnels and things like that. And I think we’ve gotten better at understanding structure of funnels and how and where and front end funnels versus back end funnels, how to do the perfect webinar and all these cool things.
But I look at Todd and what he studies and geeks out on, and he hangs out with all the Agora guys and they’re always talking about the big hook and the big idea. What’s that thing that drives the rest of it? And I don’t talk about that a lot publically, probably because it’s not something I can…it’s hard to reverse engineer. It’s like, okay here’s the pattern, here’s how it works.
The pattern of the hook is like the opposite of a pattern. Most stuff I teach it’s like, here’s the pattern, where’s the hook? Is like the least pattern-y thing ever. It’s the opposite of the pattern. It’s the pattern interrupt that becomes the hook. So I never talk a lot about it, but when I’m doing my own stuff, I do it. If you watch my webinars, all the stuff that I do, I’m doing it all the time.
And I sat there today for probably 2 ½ - 3 hours with a blank sheet of paper with that little blinking cursor, that you just want to, you wish you could delete it but everything’s deleted, that’s all that’s left, that little blinking cursor mocking you the whole time.
And my whole thought was, “What’s the big idea? What’s the big idea?” and I was asking in my company, “Okay, we know what Actionetics MD is, what’s the big idea, what’s the big hook? Why should people care?” and it took a while, like I said, 2 ½ - 3 hours before I was like, I got it. And as soon as I got it, in my head the story just flows, because I’m visualizing taking people on a journey and the process and story and how it fits together and how we illustrate this, and those things come fast. But man, that hook is the hardest thing.
I’ve had webinars where I’ve spent two days in front of a white board trying to figure out a headline, the hook. What’s the thing that gets somebody into a webinar? And I think that I’ve probably done a disservice inside of the funnel hacker community where I don’t talk enough about that because again, I don’t know how to reverse engineer and teach it. But it is the key.
I’m so grateful for Todd Brown talking about that so much. Because he’s the one that talks about it the most. I wish that we talked about it more in the community. Maybe this podcast is kind of the first time of me kind of bringing it out. But I just thinking about that, what’s the big hook? Why should someone care about the thing you’re selling? What is that, what’s the big reason? What’s the big idea that you have?
So look at the big campaigns that you’ve seen around you. Every market there’s big things happening. I look at when we launched Clickfunnels, I tried a bunch of different messaging and funnels, but the funnel that worked was a webinar funnel, the process was, I’ve talked about this before, having a webinar and then on the thank you page having a trial. That was the process work, but the hook was this concept of funnel hacking. That was the big idea that got people to be like, “Oh my gosh, I understand it.” That was the big idea that drove Clickfunnels.
The thing about that, the markets you’re in, if you guys are in financial markets, look at Agora, what they’ve done. Some of the biggest campaigns are, when Obama ran for a second term, it was called the end of America that was the big idea that drove this huge thing. If you look at recently, there’s probably been 8 thousand crypto offers that have come out, but Agora’s the one that did, I think they did 30 million dollars in their webinar in like a 2 week period of time.
But what was the big idea? What was the big hook that they had? They was something there, I studied it. I don’t know if you did, but you should have. If not, it means you’re not listening to funnel hacking. Look at these people who are making insane amounts of money and reverse engineer the campaigns from everything.
A lot of people think funnel hacking is just like, “Oh, well they have a landing page and an upsell page, down sell page, and this price point.” That’s the beginning of funnel hacking, but it goes deeper. I don’t know about you but I get every webinar, every video sales letter, everything that I look at I get transcribed so I can read it. What was the hook, why did this work? What was the big idea that they were doing that made this separate?
Because man, if there’s 800 crypto webinars, why did one do 30 million and all the rest did, even the big ones did a million. There’s something different here, what’s the big idea that they led with?
Look at the weight loss industry, look at Prove It. Why did Prove It blow up? It hit keto at a time that was right. Dave Asprey blow up, because took this, the Atkins diet, it’s not the same, but he took the Atkins diet, and his big idea was this thing of butter in your coffee. Boom, that big idea of putting butter in your coffee. It was just a ketogenic diet, it wasn’t this new thing, but he was like, “Butter in your coffee” Boom, Bulletproof was born.
What’s the big idea for your business? I can’t tell you that, I can’t reverse, I can’t doodle something that shows you, here’s how to find your big idea. Maybe I can, I just don’t know how to do it right now. Again, because it’s not a pattern, it ‘s the opposite of a pattern. So look at the pattern, what’s everyone doing in your marketing to explain or to sell your thing? And what’s the opposite of that, how do you break the pattern? Have your big idea so that when someone hears it, it smacks them upside the head and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s brilliant, that’s the thing.”
I think my point of this podcast is just to get you guys thinking about that, because that’s what I did today. I sat in front of a blinking cursor for three hours thinking, what could it be? What could it be?
You know I looked at all of my competitors, I’m looking at, I’m not going to spoil what Actionetics MD is, but I’m looking at auto-responders and other things like that, and how do they pitch it? Because how everyone else is pitching it is the pattern. Now what’s the opposite of that? How do I make it the opposite, so that it becomes this interesting idea?
So I hope that helps. If nothing else, it gets you to sit there in front of a blinking cursor like I had to do today, and just think. What’s my hook? What’s my big idea? Why should people care? Why am I going to invest the time and energy it takes to make this video or this webinar, or this whatever? And why is someone going to take the time and energy to watch it? And why are they going to get excited to run and find their wallet and pull their money out and give it to me?
There’s a big idea behind it that drives it and I don’t think most of us are spending enough time doing it, figuring that out. When you get it right, you see you. Gary Halbert said, “One idea properly exploited is worth more than 100 lifetimes of hard work.” And I believe that. I’ve seen that in my own life. I’ve seen it with tons of our member’s lives. One idea, when you exploit it properly is worth 100 lifetimes of hard work. So what is that idea?
That’s what this is, the big idea, the big hook. What is that thing for you? If you listen to Todd Brown, listen to his stuff on the big idea, I think it’s fantastic. He did a whole presentation at last year’s Funnel Hacking Live about it. But just get that in your head spinning.
When you’re looking at good advertising and you’re funnel hacking people, what’s their big idea? What’s the big hook? What’s the thing that drives this campaign? Because if you find it and identify it, it will help you figure out your own as well.
I hope that helps, I hope that gives you some good ideas and gives you something to think on. That’s all I got. I gotta get these kids’ homework finished so I can go to bed. I gotta be up lifting weights soon. I’m trying to get rid of this double chin before Funnel Hacking Live, which is a pain. I wish you could just sleep it off, that’d be way better. Anyway, I appreciate you guys, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.