The rest of the story…
On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event.
Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode:
So listen below for the conclusion of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017.
---Transcript---
Day number two now, Devon got on stage he intro to government estate. Then we came up and did a section on follow-up funnels. Which was Todd and Dylan and Ryan and me and we talked about how email funnels are from 1998 and the future is follow up funnels. And we did a presentation and during the presentation we ripped our shirts off and we had these shirts. I’m actually wearing the shirt today. It says, “We are not confusion soft, we’re Clickfunnels” and then we challenged everybody to go all in and be all in, in Clickfunnels. And we gave them these t-shirts and temporary tattoos and a whole bunch of stuff for anyone who went all in.
Basically they had to open up their phone and go to imallin.com and if you’re not all in it had Macauley Culkin slapping his face saying, “ahh, you’re not in.” and there was a big button where you could upgrade. And if you were all in, it showed you were all in and basically you’d run to the back of the room, show them the funnel and then we’d give you a huge packet of swag, which was cool.
So if any of you guys are listening to this. Don’t do that right now. We’re updating it to make it work online, I think by next week. Actually my birthday, March 8th. So on my birthday we’re going to be doing that presentation live to Facebook Live and it’ll be live so you can all go all in and get the same swag shipped out to you, which will be fun. But it was cool to show people what’s possible in Actionetics. Most people don’t know, they assume it’s an email auto-responder, and that’s like saying that Clickfunnels builds websites. Come on now, that’s 1998.
I had a slide, I wanted to use Urkel, Steve urkel in my slides, and I was able to use him twice. I was like, “You know what else was cool in 1998, Steve Urkel. Actually no, Steve Urkel’s show was cancelled in 1998. So even in 98 Urkel wasn’t cool anymore. But that’s what you’re using if you’re doing email funnels. We’re talking about follow-up funnels and all the stuff that’s possible.” So we showed people what’s possible in Actionetics, and most people didn’t even know. And everyone is shifting everything over to Clickfunnels, which is the goal. We want everybody all in, I want you all in.
So that was what Follow-up Funnels is about. It was probably the coolest presentation. So much energy, it was awesome. Then we had a break after that. And then Justin and Tara Williams came on and did a whole section on podcast funnels, which was awesome. They told their story, which was cool. And basically showed how these three podcasts they had done, how these three podcasts had each launched three entire businesses for them and it was just cool to see.
Anyway, that part was awesome. So podcast funnels, Justin and Tara were amazing. They killed it. After that we had Emily Shay come up and she is 11 years old and she stood up there on a huge stage where most people would be so scared and so intimidated and she crushed it. She was so awesome. She had about 15 or 20 minutes up there and she told her story and did it in a really fun way that tied it to the audience. She’s just a superstar. Some people would say the youth speakers were the best one’s of the whole thing, and I was like, “Yes.”
So Emily crushed it. Caleb Maddix came on, I talked about him yesterday on the podcast. He came on and just did an amazing job as well. And it was just so cool to see Emily and Caleb, two young entrepreneurs who were able to stand in front of a room and control the audience like that. For me, it took me honestly, it took me ten plus years to get a spot that they were in already and it was just so cool to see them. They’re the future.
So exciting, so they both crushed it and did such an amazing job. Then we had a lunch break. Again, the annoying thing where our stomachs were hungry and we had to go eat. So everyone went to lunch. We came back and Trey Lewellen stood up on stage and Trey is really, Trey spoke at the very first Funnel Hacking Event and he did a great job then. But it’s fun seeing him transition, him owning the stage now, he just, he did awesome. He went into deep funnelytics, like here’s the metrics you’ve got to figure out to make your funnels works. And he showed this stuff where it’s just like, well I didn’t understand that. Most people who set up a funnel that doesn’t make a million bucks day one they’re like, “This didn’t work.” No, you gotta understand the math behind it. And Trey showed how he’s built these huge companies. 20-30 million dollar companies off of a funnel that was not profitable upfront.
But when you understand the funnelytics, the math behind the funnels, how it worked. It was so cool for him to document and show it all off, it was just amazing.
Then from there, we’re only halfway through, it just keeps getting, the whole thing was amazing. Then Jason Fladlien, who is someone I’ve learned, in fact in the Expert Secrets book, I dedicated a lot to him as well. Because there’s so much I learned from him about breaking belief patterns and rebuilding and reframing and he’s just brilliant. He got on stage and talked about Amazon Funnels. And even though a lot of people know him as the guy who’s the best in the world at selling from webinars, he happens to also be good at Amazon as well.
So he showed 7 different Amazon funnels that he uses in his company and then he gave everybody at the event. “Here’s the Amazon funnels, there’s 7 of them. You guys can knock them off and use them in your business.” Which was so cool. So if you’re using any Amazon or ecommerce stuff, Jason’s stuff was amazing.
From there Darrin Stevens got on stage. A lot of you guys probably don’t know Darrin Stevens but he is a legend. He was one of the, he did the marketing behind Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Brilliant book launch and stuff like that. But he also runs events. He does these events that have 80 people in the room who make 2-3million dollars in a weekend, for a room of less than 100 people. And it’s all about how he structures his events and event funnels. So he walked us through the whole process and he had 18 or 19 things that he does at events to build rapport and get people buying. If I was able to close what Darrin does, again he did what did I say, 2.5 million dollars from 80 people. I would have done like 60 million dollars from this event, but I didn’t so Darrin is still the king. He’s amazing.
So he shared event funnel stuff, which was awesome. Then we had another break, then Setema got on stage, and Setema is the Super Bowl winner who had to sell his ring because after he won the Super Bowl his life kind of fell apart and talks about how you win again. How do you get that stuff back? How do you implement all the stuff you’ve learned? It was amazing. He’s nicknamed himself the reverend of the revolution. I feel like he was the reverend preaching to us about how to take this stuff and have success with imperfect action and just going through and doing it. It was so cool, Setema is the man. That was awesome.
After that we came onstage and we awarded the Two Comma Club awards, which was amazing. We had, I think right now, we have over 100 people who have qualified for the Two Comma Club. Which means they have a funnel that made at least a million dollars. 100 people! So we gave away I think 80 something Two Comma Club trophy’s. These huge trophy’s with a gold record on it with two commas etched into it. It was cool for everyone else to see that and be like, “Wow, these are my peers. And they’re all making a million dollars in a funnel.”
I was trying to make it so real. If they can do it, you can do it. So we did that, and afterwards I did a presentation called “You’re one Funnel Away.” Which basically I had no power point slides, I just told the story of all the ups and downs in my business and the funnels that have saved me. I talked about the two or three times I’ve almost gone bankrupt. I talked about the fears, the pain, all that kind of stuff. What were the funnels we created that saved us from that.
It was emotional, I started crying, which is really embarrassing, especially on stage. Other people were crying and it was cool. I hope people enjoyed that. It was a scary thing for me to get vulnerable like that, but I think it was important so that everyone understands, whatever you’re struggling at, it happens to all of us. It happens to me, it happens to everyone. So understanding that and being okay with it and giving yourself permission through that to be able to succeed.
That was really cool. After that we had a hack-a-thon at night. I was super tired. I went to the hack-a-thon, talked for a few minutes, then I went back up, ate some dinner and then passed out because I was so tired. But then I hadn’t finished my next presentation for the next night. So I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning, the next morning to get started.
Hack-a-thon was awesome, people were up til midnight building funnels. We had a whole bunch of people who built, launched and made money on funnels that night, which was cool. We catered dinner again, which was cool. Then the next day, the last day, which was Thursday.
So the last day we came in, Devon brought everyone in, brought the energy high. Then Garrett White and his wife, Danielle and their kids were going to come to the stage and when the event started we couldn’t find them anywhere. I was like, “Where’s Garrett? Where’s Danielle?” We started freaking out. I was totally stressing out and we’re trying to Vox them and text them and call them and nothing. And finally Melanie found out what room number they were in, so Dave ran up and knocked on the door like, “Ahhh, we’re on stage trying to announce you, where are you guys.” It was a miscommunication, we had told them the wrong, we messed up on our side.
But they came down and during that time it was fun because Devon was able to invent a new secret handshake for all funnel hackers, out of necessity. He bought ten minutes time by inventing a new secret handshake, which all of you who have been to Funnel Hacking Live know the secret handshake. Don’t show to those who were not there. They’ll have to learn it at next year’s event. But we’ve got a secret handshake now that is so cool. In fact, I should add a chapter to the Expert Secrets book about secret handshakes, that would be cool.
Anyway, we got a secret handshake and then Garrett, Danielle and their two kids came on stage and gave a presentation that was, I don’t even know what to say, it was so amazing. It was so cool. I’m just going to leave it at that. It was something where if you were in the room you felt it and you heard it and it moved you. It was amazing. So there you go.
Maybe someday we’ll do a launch like warrior funnels .com and share all the presentations of Garrett throughout the Funnel Hacking Live events because they have just been amazing Anyway, who knows, but we’ll look at that. So then we had after they got done. I came up and did a presentation called fill your funnel, which is how to make it rain. How to get people into your funnels. And this was the only presentation where I actually sold-sold. We were selling things throughout the event and I’ll talk about this at the end, but this is the only one where I did the actual presentation.
It went good, but a couple of weird things. When I got on stage after Garrett, there was so much energy from Garrett and Danielle and it was amazing. I came on immediately afterwards and the audio/video guys didn’t turn the music on, so I got up there and it was just kind of a weird transition. And then we awarded Stu and Amy their checks for World Teacher Aide, which was the quarter of a million bucks, which was awesome. Then it was my chance to get up there and teach affiliate funnel and we sold a course called fill your funnels. And just something about that, I don’t know what it was. Something about the presentation was kind of off. I’m just going to be completely honest. I had numbers in my head of what I thought I was going to do and I didn’t do that. It did well, if I told you guys how many we sold, everyone else would think I was a selfish kid and rude.
It did well, but what I expected, and there was this, I was doing it, I couldn’t get the flow right. I don’t know if it was, part of it I think was because I worked on the presentation the week earlier, then that morning I woke up at 4:30 trying to get it done and I was tired and worn out. There was something about the energy that wasn’t quite right. I think it was good, but it wasn’t great, like I wanted it to be. But at the end of it we sold, and it was awkward. I’m like, in the pitch, “This is hard selling you guys through my perfect webinar, even though I’ve trained all you guys on it and most of you guys are doing it now. It’s like, I’m doing it onstage live. It’s funny how that works.”
But it did well, that was when had breaks, we had snack breaks. And then basically we had to clear the whole audience out, secret service came through for Tony Robbins group, swept the whole thing and then Tony was onstage and I was in the back super nervous and awkward and worried. It’s so different, because with Marcus when he came, he just showed up in his own Uber, it was laid back, he hung out with the crowd, it was really easy and laid back. And Tony was the opposite of that. He had his security detail of 10 or 15 people there who were like, swept all the chairs making sure there were no bombs or guns and we had check people as they came through.
I was in the back and they had to pull us all out so he could come in. Very intense and caused anxiety and nerves and all this stuff, that was nervous. Plus, I found out Tony was throwing up before he came. So he wasn’t feeling good. So much stress. He brought Tony into this little green room and they let us come in and he came out. It went from this nerve, all the nerves, it was like an hour of this, while we were waiting for him to get here. All the nerves and fear and anxiety. What if he’s sick and he can’t speak? What if people don’t get what, they were so excited for him to be there. Secret service security was honestly kind of frustrating because it just. You know how I am, I’m so laid back, it was beyond corporatey, it was secret service, military. Which is good, he needs that, I understand that. But it was just kind of, at first we were trying to make this cool experience and it was so hard.
And then again, Tony came in and did his thing in the green room and came out and came to us and we had moment before he got on stage where he just kind of came in and gave me a hug, and gave my wife, Collette, a hug. And Dylan and Todd and their wives, he just connected personally with us at a level. I was so grateful for that, because it just made all the stress and everything go away. It was like, it’s going to be okay. Tony’s here, he’s going to do what he does, and he’s the best in the world and everyone’s going to love it. I’m not going to stress and I’m going to let it happen and it was cool.
Normally, I guess they don’t let people introduce him, but I was like, “I would love to introduce Tony, there is a reason why I wanted him here and I want everyone to know that reason.” So they let me introduce Tony and I got all choked up during the introduction. But I was talking about how in his bio it talks about how he’s helped 50 million people around the world. I was like, well that’s cool. Tony helped me. He helped my wife. He helped our family. If it wasn’t for Tony, my wife and I were at a rough spot before I met Tony, before I went to his event.
It was honestly, it was what healed us. And I’m just so grateful for him and after I went to Tony’s stuff, I went to all of his events in a year period of time, and then right after that my company collapsed. Had I not been equipped by the tools he gave me, I don’t know if I could have handled that. I was just talking about how grateful I am and how excited I was to share him with my world and my people, my funnel hackers. Then we played a video of him and we all went crazy and Tony came up on stage, gave me a hug and took over.
And he was supposed to go for three hours. And again, he was puking five minutes before he got on the stage and I was nervous. And he stood there and he went not for three hours, not for four hours, but for five hours with everybody. It was just cool. Everyone’s jumping and screaming and having fun. It was awesome. It just made the event, it was already amazing, just that much more amazing.
And when it was done, all of the Inner Circle members had a chance to get pictures with Tony, which was cool. Then we went up and ate real quick, and then I had a chance to go up to his hotel room afterwards and interview him for his new book, which hopefully you guys saw him on Facebook live. We showed that. And it was just awesome. That night we passed out, woke up in the morning. We had late checkout, so we hung out for a while and it was just cool to sit there and reflect with my wife. And the coolest thing for me is that this is the first time that Collette has ever been to, I mean she’s come to my events and poked her head in and then had to leave to watch the kids or all these different things, that time the kids didn’t come. So she had a chance to be there and be present and sit in the audience for almost the entire thing. For me, that was special.
It was cool and it was I think the first time she’d ever seen me doing what we do. And you guys have a chance to see it through the podcast and through all the stuff I’m doing, but she’s not connected to that. She’s not connected to the business very much, she’s very much supporting from home, but not part of everything that’s happening. So for her to be able to see that and experience it with people in the audience, it was special for me. So I just loved that. It was awesome.
That was kind of Funnel Hacking Live. And then as we’re, that day we’re leaving, flying home and I look at the Facebook group, and everyday I’m looking, kind of scrolling through, and if any of you guys are in our Facebook group you’re probably bombarded by millions and millions, everyone talking about it. I was like, alright, ready fire aim. Everybody is excited right now. Why don’t we sell tickets for next year’s event right now? So from the airport I did a Facebook Live.
“Okay, we’re selling tickets. There’s a discount and Sunday at midnight we’re pulling the page down. So you gotta buy them now if you want them. Otherwise you gotta wait six months and who knows what the price will be then?” Did a Facebook Live, emailed the list and over the next three days we sold almost a thousand tickets to next year’s event. We almost sold as many tickets as last year, just from that. Hopefully won’t lessen the momentum. If the momentum is there, capitalize on it. Don’t wait six months, “Hey you guys remember the event we talked about six months ago? Who wants to come again?” When people’s energy and emotion and excitement are high, that’s the best time to sell.
So we sold a lot of tickets, which was cool. It’s funny, I had some of the Inner Circle members freaking out, “Do we get discount tickets or not?” I was like, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought through this.” This is the lesson for everyone. I’m a big believer in “Ready Fire Aim” We just fired and I have no idea. We’ll figure it out way later, but we don’t have time right now. We just fired. Sorry, but that’s how it works over here. Everything’s not scripted out and planned second by second. Some things are, but most things aren’t.
Hopefully that’s inspiration for you guys to. To know, “Look, figure things out and just do it.” So that was kind of the event in a nutshell. For those who were there, hopefully that was a good breakdown. I wish I could spend the hour or two hours on each presentation that people did, so you can experience it. But hopefully those that weren’t there, this will give you desire to come next year. I want you guys to be there. Yeah, I will probably sell recordings, and you will probably have some of these videos that are easy to see, but there’s something different about being in the room and being surrounded by 1500 of your peers who are doing the same thing. Seeing 100 of your peers on stage with a big trophy saying I made a million dollars with a funnel this year. There’s something different about that. So I recommend for all of you guys to make that break and come to the event.
One last thing I want to share, because I kind of hinted to this earlier. And I think it’ll be cool for you guys to know. This is actually not a victory, this is a failure. A failure in my eyes. But I want to share with you guys, just so you understand that I mess things up too.
So one of the cool things that I wanted to do is, usually at each Funnel Hacking Live we sell one thing. We did certification at the first event and second event. This year, I didn’t want to sell, I don’t want this to be a selling event, but there’s things we want to offer people. So we had this big trip to Kenya, which was awesome and people jumped on that. We had the Follow-up Funnels which was awesome and people jumped on that. Then I was trying to, we had this new event called the FHAT event that I was excited about and want people to come to that. Then we also had Fill Your Funnel and I think I tried to offer too many things. Not that we, it wasn’t like I was selling each thing, but we had them available.
At the Hack-a-thon, I was like “Hey if you want to come to the FHAT event, here’s one more thing on it.” And I think it almost caused confusion. People didn’t know what to do. I think moving forward next year, we’ll probably just pick one thing and focus on that again, just to not cause confusion. But one of my big things, again I only want one session when we sold, and that was Fill Your Funnel. That one went well, but it was just, the energy wasn’t quite right when I did it. So that was one thing.
But the other cool thing is that the entire Funnel Hacking Live event, if you look at it from the outside, it was a big perfect webinar. Session number one, if you’ve gone through the perfect webinar in detail and as you read the Expert Secrets book, you’ll understand it at a level I’ve never really shared it before. But the first thing we do is talk about the vehicle putting people in. So my first presentation was about creating a mass movement, becoming an expert. So that was the first vehicle. Session number one, would have been secret number one if this was a webinar.
Session number two is about the internal beliefs and that’s how I walked into, I shared the story, showing “Look, you can create a mass movement.” And they’re like, “Well I don’t know if I can.” I’m like, “If you can master stories you can.” Belief number two was all about can they internally do it? So the second presentation for me was all about that. The internal.
Then the third presentation, which was the One Funnel Away, was the external. I believe I can do it, I can tell stories, but I don’t know how to do this whole funnel thing. So I shared at the One Funnel Away presentation to help people understand the external fears. So if you look at, again if you break down the perfect webinar, you’ve got the belief pattern is tied to the vehicle, which is the new opportunity we’re putting people into. That was session number one, number two is their internal beliefs, false beliefs about themselves, and number three is the external false beliefs about themselves.
So that’s how we structure those three presentations, and what we do at the hack-a-thon is offer people to come to the FHAT event, because that was kind of the natural continuation of that. The problem I have is that, if you look at the perfect webinar, what’s the last step? It’s stack and close and we didn’t stack and close anymore. We just basically said, “hey you should come to the FHAT event because it’s awesome.” And we had a lot of people who did, but not what I expected or hoped.
My two big lessons, number one when you’re doing a webinar you can’t forget the stack and the close. It’s important even if you break their beliefs, if you don’t offer them the opportunity to buy and do it in a way that’s going to convince them to buy, a lot of people that you could have served, won’t be served.
I honestly think that everybody should be at the FHAT event. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to serve anybody at a higher level than that. And because I kind of shied away and didn’t sell it and skipped the last step, I’m not able to affect as many people’s lives’ because of that. For me that looks like a failure. IT’s not the money. Money’s a cool way to keep score, but for me, I should have had 100 people from that room coming to Boise so I could help them create the perfect webinar. And I don’t. I have a lot but not that many because I…..I don’t know the exact reason, but I didn’t do it right. It came down to me having fears of trying to make it an official offer to people. It’s funny, even after this long I still make the same fears that other people make as well. That was one big thing.
And then the other thing, is again, shipping the focus of the event to being focusing on core thing we want people to do. Because I think people were confused, “I’m coming to Kenya, I upgraded and I’m all in, there’s this FHAT event Russell’s talking about and I don’t know what that is because he didn’t tell me about it. Sounds cool, but I have no idea. Then there’s Fill Your Funnel.” So I think that that was my other mistake. There was confusion in where I wanted people to go from here.
So those are the things I learned, and again, that’s something you always learn as you do them. So it’ll be fun, next year my goal is to make the event even better. It’s shifting the focus, well I don’t know what the focus is going to be yet. But it’s making sure that everyone has an amazing experience, both from a marketing standpoint and also a personal development standpoint. I think that’s one neat thing we bring that nobody else does, which is cool.
And then the third thing is really figuring out for people who come through the experience, what’s the next step for them. And focusing everything on that and not having two or three next steps, but one. And saying, “This is what you guys should be doing next. Those who are interested.”
So that’s what I learned at Funnel Hacking Live as well. Anyway, I appreciate everyone who was there, I had a great time. With that said, this is probably the longest marketing in your car of all time, but it’s a recap for those who missed it. And hopefully you guys will come next year, because it’s going to be amazing. Tickets are not for sale right now, but in four or five months we’ll open it and we have probably 1500 more tickets or so I believe. When we do open it up, the price has gone up, I apologize for those that didn’t get my emails and everything else. I tried to warn you. With that said, thank you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.