Creating a Movement: How to Build a Brand That People Follow for Life | #Marketing - Ep. 09

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Speaker 2 This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Speaker 2 What's up, everybody? This is Russell. I am so excited to be hanging out with you guys today.
I am actually less than 24 hours.

Speaker 2 I think I'm like 18 hours away from jumping in a plane and flying to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the last ever funnel hacking live.

Speaker 2 And I've been sitting here all day today, it's a Saturday, working on my slides, getting things done.

Speaker 2 And I thought I want to jump in and do one more podcast episode before I head out to kind of share two things I've

Speaker 2 been thinking a lot about that I think will have a big impact on you.

Speaker 2 And both of them have to do with what are the things you have to do, we have to create what you have to have if you want to build a movement okay if you've read my book expert seekers i talk a lot about building a movement you know not just having a product-based business but having a client-based business a customer-based business where you are gathering your customers together you're helping them you are serving them and you're creating an actual movement when we launched click funnels a decade ago now that was the goal right the software is called click funnels the people were called funnel hackers and the movement right is what we created to take all these funnel hackers and help them to grow their businesses to change their lives

Speaker 2 and that was kind of the the initial vision the initial goal what we were doing um here inside and so as i was thinking about this with again this is the last ever funnel hacking live we're about to do our last big event we have more tickets sold for this one than any funnel hacking live in the past it's going to be insane it's also the last one which i'm not sure if i'm going to emotionally be able to handle that um it's going to be kind of crazy but uh that's what's happening and so uh we are literally fine out to go to to do that so i was thinking while i was preparing and like uh this this event i have actually have 11 presentations i'm doing so i'm working on the presentations and my last one is like, What's next?

Speaker 2 Like, what's happening? Because everyone keeps asking, Why would you cancel this event? You have the most successful event in the industry, why would you just turn it off?

Speaker 2 And so, I'm gonna talk about that. But, but I wanted to step back because the things, I don't know, it's just been fun.

Speaker 2 Like, a lot of my presentations, I'm going back in time and thinking through the different last decade and what we did and why we did it, and the reasons, and the ups and the downs, and the pros and the cons, the things I did that were smart, and the moronic things I did, thinking I was smart, finding out later I really wasn't.

Speaker 2 But there are two core things that had such a huge impact on this, on this business on creating a movement instead of just selling a product that I want to share with you guys today.

Speaker 2 So and partially the reason why I'm sharing this with you guys is because I don't know.

Speaker 2 Yes, business is great. Making money is great, but the reality is like I, and you guys have heard me say this before.
I say it a lot, especially when I'm on stage, but I believe business is a calling.

Speaker 2 I believe that each of you guys have been called by God to serve a group of people, right? It's contribution. Like there's a time in your life you go through growth, right?

Speaker 2 And you guys know when you go through growth, there's the pain of that, right?

Speaker 2 There's positive pain.

Speaker 2 Like I think about going going to the gym you lift weights you're sore next to this pocket there's positive stuff like that right it's like there's the positiveness of you're building a business and it's hard and you're tired stuff like that there's also a lot of negative things right the problems the issues the headaches the the people stabbing you in the back the stuff is painful right but you're you're through that process you've been growing right and so that's the first half of business there's the growth side right and you went through those problems those issues and the reason why you went through them right is because you learned something you learned now how to serve someone who's just like you right i think about business all the time time.

Speaker 2 I talk about how business is contribution, right? You have growth and then you contribute, right?

Speaker 2 And contributions now going back to the people who were just like you five years ago before you got started, right? You're taking all the lessons you learned, both the positive, right?

Speaker 2 The pain that you got going to the gym, like the positive pain, but also the negative pain and the trials and like the issues you went through. And you learn through all that process.

Speaker 2 You came out the other side unscathed. Maybe you're scathed a little bit, but you came out the other side as a better person, right?

Speaker 2 You grew, and now your business is about contribution, going back and helping those people.

Speaker 2 And those are the people I'm most passionate about serving is the people you know the entrepreneurs who are doing that right who are in that phase of the business right now and so um that's really what i want to talk about during this podcast is like not like here's how to start a business but like if you actually want to build a movement of people where you're going to find these people that god's called you to to to um to help right you're going to gather those people together again these people are people who are just like you five years ago you're going to gather them together and you're going to change their life how do we actually do that okay and there's a lot of ways to do it there's a lot of things but there are two core ones that i've been thinking about a lot today that i want to share with you um and so i'm just going to jump jump right into them.

Speaker 2 So the very first one, and this is interesting, I remember I have my category King's group, which is like $150,000 a year.

Speaker 2 And we had some guys coming in, and they were asking specifically about, like,

Speaker 2 should I write a book? Should we not write a book?

Speaker 2 And I remember I shared something just kind of as an afterthought thinking about it.

Speaker 2 And then, like, a month later, I saw it on their podcast, their Instagram channel, like that it was like one of those big mic drop moments for them. And I was like, oh, it kind of is.

Speaker 2 And so they asked me, like,

Speaker 2 should we write a book? What I told them, I said, if you think about it, every great mass movement throughout time and history always started with a book. Okay, think about this.

Speaker 2 I think about at least the major religions that I know about, right? I think about Christianity. It led with the book, the Bible, boom, right? You think about

Speaker 2 the, again, I'm Mormon, so the Mormon faith, right? It started with the book, the Book of Mormon.

Speaker 2 You think about, you know, Christian Islam, like every major mass movement started with the book, right?

Speaker 2 When I launched the ClickFunnels business, we had ClickFunnels, we had the software, and luckily at the same time, I was was writing a book with my thoughts and ideas about how to build funnels, and boom, on the backside of launching ClickFunnels,

Speaker 2 out came dot-com secrets. This was the book that started the movement, right? I remember we launched ClickFunnels, I think it was like September we launched.
We did an initial launch

Speaker 2 during the summertime. We let a group of people in and closed it down.
And then in September, we did the official launch. We started, people started coming in.
And it was crazy.

Speaker 2 People came in and like... They use the software,

Speaker 2 it didn't stick. We couldn't get people to stick, couldn't get people to sign up, and it was tough, right?

Speaker 2 And this is the time where I'm thinking about creating a movement versus just selling software. In fact, I had this really cool experience.
Some of you guys know David Fry.

Speaker 2 He's one of my friends and mentors. And David was in a network marketing company with me at the time.
There's a company called Send Out Cards. Some of you guys remember Send Out Cards.

Speaker 2 But I was in this company and I had never, I'd promoted it, but I'd never actually

Speaker 2 I'd never actually been to an event. And David's like, you have to come to me.
You have to see what this is like. And so I come to this event.

Speaker 2 It's in Salt Lake City and it's a three or four day event. I'm sitting there and you know, I'm, I'm there.
Like I'm used to going to marketing events.

Speaker 2 I'm there with a pad of paper, you know, Dan Kennedy Kennedy events I'm there with pad of paper ready to take notes I'm sitting there the first day and like first people get up on stage they're telling their story and then they're crying and then next people get on stage they're telling their story they're crying and then someone gets up and they get an award and then someone else gets an and I'm like what is happening I'm like so confused like day number one no notes day two day three and by like day three or day four I remember Dave leaned over me like you see what's what's happening I was like, no, I have no idea what's happening right now.

Speaker 2 And he goes, they didn't create a software company. They created a movement.
And it was like the, ah, boom.

Speaker 2 So for me, right, fast forward a year later, I've got this new software company called ClickFunnels. And I'm trying to figure out how to sell as a SaaS company.

Speaker 2 I'm looking at what are the other big SaaSes doing. I'm trying to model them, right? So we're funnel hacking these SaaS companies and we're struggling.
Nothing's working. Nothing's converting.

Speaker 2 It's too expensive to acquire elites. Everything was just not working.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden that light bulb hit my head from David Fry, like, like, they don't have a software company, which it was. Send out cards as a software company.

Speaker 2 You log in and you type the thing, you click send it, it sends a card to somebody. It's software, right? It's like, they don't have a software company.
They built a movement.

Speaker 2 And I started thinking, oh, that's the difference. How do I build a movement, right? And luckily, again, at the time, I've been writing this book for a decade.
This was like, for me,

Speaker 2 you know, the decade prior to ClickFunnels, I was learning these principles, I was doing them, I was having so much fun building funnels and trying these things out.

Speaker 2 And I was going to these events and teaching and talking about it and sharing what was happening.

Speaker 2 And so I remember I started, like, I always wanted to write a book. In fact, I remember it was, it was,

Speaker 2 man, it was almost 10 years, it was like 10 years before I ever wrote Dot Com Secrets. I was in an event, and

Speaker 2 it was an Armour Morns event, and I remember they kept talking about writing your own book, writing your own book.

Speaker 2 And then I remember David Hancock, who owns Borg and James Publishing, he was there, and he was like, Russell, you should write a book. I was like, I should write a book.

Speaker 2 So, I paid him to help me to write a book back way back then. And then I remember, see, I met Brendan Bouchard the very first time.

Speaker 2 Brendan was kind of new in the industry, just like I was, and he had just written this book called

Speaker 2 Life's Golden Ticket. And on the front of the book, there's like this, this,

Speaker 2 this really cool,

Speaker 2 what's it called, like, like a circus tent on it.

Speaker 2 And he told me, he's like, yeah, I sold the book, and people started reading it, and then I do these events, and they're in circus tents, you're explaining the whole thing.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, this is so cool. I got to have a book.
And so that was my thought.

Speaker 2 So for 10 years, I thought about a book, kept thinking about it, kept changing the title and changing it back and forth.

Speaker 2 But it took me a decade to finally sit down and like, okay, I'm going to write this book. So I sat down and finally started writing it.
I took...

Speaker 2 a decade of my life, all these things I've been learning and studying and practicing and trying, right? All the funnels and the front end and the back end and copywriting, like just everything.

Speaker 2 And I put it into this book, right?

Speaker 2 And this was not like fast little thing this was a labor of love like I spent man two years or so researching writing putting it together rewriting it all the stuff to make the dot-com seekers book become a thing right and so again Cliff Funnels launches in September I think the the dot com secrets book launch was in February or March we're like within first four or five months boom we launched this book and this book created the movement people got it right and it's the doctrine or the dogma or whatever you want to call it right so we got the book they read it and they're like oh my gosh now i understand what russell's trying to tell me because i read it inside of a book right the book gives them again the initial if you think about this from a religious movement it's the doctrine right here's the doctrine of like the belief system that you and your following your movement has right something they can read they can talk about they can like get behind which is another reason why it's very important to write a good book and not a crappy book so i'll leave that for i'll go into rant there in a few seconds but um this book became that so we launched out in the world people started reading it uh we sold over 100 000 copies and it became like the foundation for this movement people to read it understand it and now they understood what we did, what we thought about, what we what we were teaching.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, like, that was the first foundation point, right?

Speaker 2 Um, and so the first of the two things I want to share with you: number one is like, if you want to create a movement, you've got to write a book, right?

Speaker 2 The book is like, again, the doctrine or the dogma or the principles, or whatever you want to call it, for your people, for your movement, for your following, for the people you are bringing into the world to be able to help them, right?

Speaker 2 They have something to look back to is like, this is what, this is like what the truth is, this is what the foundational core principles are.

Speaker 2 Okay, now I'm going to go down the rant about writing a good book.

Speaker 2 I want you to understand why I'm not a big fan of like, hey, here's how to write a book in a weekend or have AI write your book or whatever.

Speaker 2 In fact, I'm mildly obsessed with books. You probably noticed this.
Just my background for watching the videos.

Speaker 2 There's a dozen or so books, but in the last three years, I've bought over 18,000 books, most of them first editions, rare books. I'm obsessed with books.

Speaker 2 Because I know what it takes to write a really, really good book, right? You can never, I don't know, maybe someday AI will get smarter than all of us.

Speaker 2 But for me to write dot-com seekers, expert seekers, or traffic seekers, like the writing of the book was the most painful thing I'd ever gone through. It gets so painful to write a book.

Speaker 2 But by going through the process of writing and thinking and putting things together, all these insane, like,

Speaker 2 the process of writing the book is where all these insights, these ideas come. Like, they all start, I don't know how to explain it other than...
When they first started writing a book, there's always

Speaker 2 these siloed ideas. And you start writing a book, you have to put them together.
And when you do that, you start seeing these connections and these interactions that never were there before.

Speaker 2 That's why when people are like, oh, I'm going to have AI write my book, or I'm going to speak on stage, and then someone will transcribe and turn into a book or whatever.

Speaker 2 It's like, you're missing it, or even a ghostwriter, because, like, the magic of my books came for me at two in the morning, like, wrestling between two or three different concepts.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, this thing appears. And you're like, there's the answer.
And all of a sudden, it makes the book make sense, right? It's like, you have to earn a book.

Speaker 2 You have to birth it.

Speaker 2 And the reason why it's so important, because if somebody in your movement gets your book and your book sucks, okay, it will destroy everything quickly.

Speaker 2 In fact, I'm not going to say the person's name. A lot of you guys know who he is.
Or who this person, I should say. I said he, now cut it in half.

Speaker 2 But when I first got in this world, this person wrote a book and they kept talking about it. And I was like, this is so cool.
And like, that was the person.

Speaker 2 I'm like, okay, that's the person I'm plugging into. This is my guru.
Right. And they wrote this book.
They did a big product launch around it.

Speaker 2 It became an Amazon bestseller, all sorts of stuff forever. I buy the book.
I get in the mail. And I'm so excited to read this book.
Like, I am pumped. I'm on fire.

Speaker 2 Like, you have no idea how much I anxiously waited for this book. So I pre-ordered it while they were waiting for the pre-launch, right? And then they shipped it.
And the book shows up.

Speaker 2 I remember getting it. I was like, I was so excited to read it.
And I blocked out time. I was sitting down.
I was going to read it. I was going to study.
I was going to devour it.

Speaker 2 I'm going to understand what's in this author's brain. And it'll be in my brain.

Speaker 2 It's like Tony Robbins calls it a decade in a day, right? A book gives you the ability to compress a decade of an author's life into a day. And you can just read it.
So I get the book. I sit down.

Speaker 2 I still have it on my shelf. I know exactly which one it is.

Speaker 2 And I start reading the book. And it was horrible.
It was like he had taken some teleseminars he had done, transcribed them, threw in a book. There were typos, there were misspellings.

Speaker 2 It didn't go deep. It was just like surface level fluff.

Speaker 2 And I remember I read that and I lost all respect for the person i stopped following stop listening to him and i was just like that's it um you don't want that happening someone get your book right you need to give them the insights the stories the like that's how you create a really really good book okay um if you do that that's one of the core things about creating a movement right so step number one like if you want to really do this like what are the the foundational thoughts, beliefs, principles, things that you have that you believe in that you can take and actually put into a book, okay?

Speaker 2 And create something that's really good. Again, like dot-com secrets, I'm proud of this book.
Like, I bled for this book. Like, it it was so hard.
Okay.

Speaker 2 For me, it takes me about two years to write a book on average. That's how much time and effort and energy I put into it.
Obviously, I'm not. In fact, it's funny.

Speaker 2 My first two books, I went with

Speaker 2 kind of a smaller publisher. And then my third book, I went to Hay House, which is a bigger publisher.
And I remember we did the contract negotiations.

Speaker 2 I wasn't paying that much attention, sign a thing. And all of a sudden, like a week later in the mail, I get a check for a whole bunch of money.
And I was like, what is this for?

Speaker 2 So I messages them like, hey, I got a check. I haven't sold any books yet.
Like, what's this for?

Speaker 2 Because I'm an entrepreneur. I'm used to like, I eat what I kill, right?

Speaker 2 Like, like i go kill something and then i get fed from it like for me to get money before i'd written the thing it was so confusing and they're like oh that's your that's your forward your advance i'm like what like

Speaker 2 well what like

Speaker 2 what if i don't sell any books how's this work i need to pay it back i was all stressed out and they said no typically when when you sign a book deal um the the uh you know the publishing house gives you enough money you can live for the year so you don't have to work so you can actually write the book i was like oh that's how it works because for me i'm working eight hours a day running click funnels and then i'm like you know five or six, seven hours a day as a dad and a father, and then I got like two hours a night in the morning where I am writing my actual book, right?

Speaker 2 I was like, I didn't know that's how it worked.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I probably should have done that because I would have got the books done a lot faster. But for me, it's a longer process.

Speaker 2 But I take a lot of time, but it's like, again, I'm trying to figure out those insights.

Speaker 2 Like, I had someone recently who wanted to help co-author a book with me, and I started down the path, and I was just like, this can't work because...

Speaker 2 Like, the writing of the book is how I discovered these principles.

Speaker 2 By me being willing to go into the pages and into the work and do the stuff, that's where I believe God started implanting ideas and thoughts into my head that made it actually become something amazing had I just tried to go the easy way the cheap way and had AI or ghostwriter or somebody do it it wouldn't have been the same okay so that's the very very first thing all right okay now while we're sitting here you guys just you guys know before I jump into number two I got this cool new setup in my in my office in fact I'm gonna show you I'm on a gimbal I got a couple cameras here so check this out the way I do my work I've got three different monitors here I just have to have a lot of monitor space to work and then right here I have my camera and if you I don't know if you can see it or not it's gonna be kind of weird here because the gimbal is gonna want to see my face actually flip this around

Speaker 2 so I got a teleprompter right here which is really really cool and I can put my notes here if I'm doing a zoom call you know you look you do zoom with someone you're like you're looking like you're looking down you're trying to look at them because you're looking at their eyeballs now I can pull up into this thing right here and then I could actually like I can talk to the person and have eye to eye cont anyway I'm really excited and the other cool thing is

Speaker 2 I have a couple ads that I that I wrote for our stuff and I never do in the past because I like I'm looking down in the ad and didn't work in the video but guess what I got a teleprompter now so so I'm going to read two ads

Speaker 2 just for my own products because I thought it'd be awesome. So, the very first one is for a company you may have heard of called ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2 Now, obviously, if you want to sell stuff online, you're going to need a good funnel, but if you want a great funnel, then you're going to need to use ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2 ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first-time entrepreneurs to leave their nine-to-five and to launch their dream than any other company in the world.

Speaker 2 ClickFunnels was built for the dreamers and the doers, and you can grab a 14-day free trial by clicking on a link in the description or going to clickfunnels.com/slash podcast right now.

Speaker 2 ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. How was that? My first ad reach myself.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 I know on the podcast I've been doing, we started selling ads over on the podcast I've been doing reads for other companies. I thought this is way more fun to read for my own.
Okay, number two.

Speaker 2 So number one, every mass movement of all time led with a book. Sit down, figure out your doctrines for your people, write a book.
Like, it'll change you.

Speaker 2 It'll change things for you more than anything else

Speaker 2 you can do. In fact, if you look at this, I've been in this business now for like 23, 24 years.

Speaker 2 I've launched so many courses, so many events, so many many masterminds so many things and it's crazy because um the only thing people come up to me later on and say hey russell you changed my life your book changed my life that's the word it's always your book changed my life it's never that event it's never that course it's never the way like the book is the thing it's the thing that lasts beyond the life of the author if you want legacy if you want to live forever through your words the book is the thing that actually does that okay like that's how important it is um that's why i'm obsessed with it in fact i remember You know, back in the day, I do this product launches, see a big spike in sales and we dropped another launch, another launch, and we were doing launches multiple times a year.

Speaker 2 That's how I made our money. We launched ClickFunnels and started getting recurring revenue.

Speaker 2 It was crazy because it went like this, really small, and it got bigger, bigger, bigger to the point where every single day I checked my Stripe app, and it's half a million dollars is there every morning before I wake up.

Speaker 2 It's just like, this is insane. Okay, what's happening? And so then when we do these launches, I do a launch of a course.

Speaker 2 It's like, boop, you see this little blip, blip, like it barely registers on the thing. I'm like, what? Right? And I would launch a book, a little blip, blip.

Speaker 2 And what I found is that almost anything I launched didn't actually have any long-term in there, no long-term impact.

Speaker 2 Sales, the impact was so minuscule it didn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things. And the only thing that lasted beyond the launch was the book.

Speaker 2 The only thing that lasts beyond the life of the author is the book, right? Think about this.

Speaker 2 Napoleon Hill, why do we know him? He wrote books that are still around, right?

Speaker 2 I think about people I know who run huge mega events, right? When they die and those events disappear, so does the legacy. It goes away.

Speaker 2 The book is the only thing that outlives the author. So write a book.
All right, that's number one.

Speaker 2 Number two, now, second thing is if you want to create a movement movement and be like the leader in your industry, you have got to basically plant a flag in the middle and say, this is the industry event.

Speaker 2 We are the one. Okay.

Speaker 2 Funnel Hacking Live, 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 It was crazy. If you look at the timeline of events, right? Way back in the day, there were two events.

Speaker 2 There was an internet marketing event, Armen Morn's big seminar, and then there's Dan Kennedy's Info Summit and Super Conference, right?

Speaker 2 And those were the two big things happening in the marketing world, right? Internet version and then the direct selling version. And then eventually Yannick Silver came out with the Underground.

Speaker 2 That became the second one. So there are two big internet marketing seminars and then the two direct response.
So those are the events like you had to be at every single year, right?

Speaker 2 Fast forward 2008, 2009, economy crashes, events dry up, everyone cancels their events, no events for four or five years. Then they come back, first event happens, TNC.

Speaker 2 Ryan Dice, Perry Belcher launched TNC, an amazing event. It used to be you go to TNC and it was just Ryan and Perry teaching.
I love both those guys.

Speaker 2 I think I could listen to Perry tell stories for days. Like he's my favorite storyteller ever.
And so we'd go to the event because I want to hear Ryan and Perry, Ryan and Perry.

Speaker 2 and then as it started getting bigger the event got bigger they started bringing more speakers and more speakers and Ryan and Perry got less and less and less and eventually got the point where they had like 90 speakers they had all these different breakout rooms and if you go to the event you might hear Perry talk once and Ryan talk once and that was it and that's when I stopped going to TNC and I remember that as feeling my feeling as a consumer I was just like this is great but like I came for those guys and they're no longer speaking there's a whole bunch of people and I watched over the years that event got smaller and ours started getting bigger so when we launched ours funnel hacking live there were there was there was tnc and they were the biggest like i get at the time they're getting like 3 000 people in the event i'm like like, how do I compete with that?

Speaker 2 I'm like, well, we're going to because I want to create my own version. So I put the flag in, like, I'm going to create the industry event.
And it became Funnel Hacking Live.

Speaker 2 Okay, so we launched it, did the very first one, we had 600 people at it, right? Second one, we had 1,200, and it kept growing and growing and growing over time.

Speaker 2 And eventually,

Speaker 2 what was cool is that the event gave us the ability where our people, not all of our people, right, but it's the bottom of the funnel, right?

Speaker 2 The bottom of the funnel are the people who are the most hardcore, that are the craziest, that are the most fun. Like, those are the people that came to the event, right?

Speaker 2 And so also you get the energy of like, who are the people that care the most? And they show up. It's like, oh, these are our people.
And they're just like me. They're obsessed with the stuff.

Speaker 2 They're like the high energy. They're crazy.
And that's how we built Funnel Hacking Live, right? Like our dream people or the bottom of the funnel came to the event, like the best people, right?

Speaker 2 And then what happened is like when they're there, it builds culture, it builds excitement, and those people go out to the rest of the world and they take that energy and they resonate out to the rest of the world, right?

Speaker 2 So even though only four or five thousand people were able to come to Funnel Hacking Live at a time, the energy of that, when it goes back out, just like ripple effects into the industry right so it's such a powerful thing it brings your people together it gives them time to network to hang out it gives you the ability to like speak directly to the people um and i tell them what you're doing what the future is like what's happening right i started thinking back about the send out cards event when i got there right people were on stage and they had i remember they had the ceo and the head tech guy get up and show the new features i was like okay we got it like this is the cool thing right steve jobs at their big event he'd always come out his black turtleneck and he would show the thing right so like we needed an event so we could show like what we were doing what we were creating right?

Speaker 2 That's the thing about send out cards, right? They had people who would come on stage, right? People, and they would cry, they'd tell their story.

Speaker 2 I'm like, that's what we need, like, have our members come and talk and share their stories, right? And then they gave away awards. I'm like, we need to have awards.

Speaker 2 Like, this is how you create a movement, right? And so we build an event that wasn't just like every other event. Every other event at the time, there were a couple inversions.

Speaker 2 It used to be you'd have multi-speaker, every single speaker get online, get on, and they would each, everyone have a chance to sell. And they call them pitch fests sometimes.

Speaker 2 That was like how events were back in the day,

Speaker 2 way back in the day.

Speaker 2 And then after the crash and it happened again it was different and i remember with t and c they came in and and they would run the whole event and maybe they might pitch one thing or sometimes they didn't pitch anything they they sold a lot more um

Speaker 2 um like sponsors and booths and stuff like that and for us i was like i don't really want to be in the sponsor booth game i want to be all the people in the room and i want to be able to sell like coaching the next thing right so it gave us the ability to sell our coaching program um it gave us the ability to highlight uh students and testimonials and find out who our people were uh so we could go find those people and then later go to their homes and film them telling their stories and all sorts of stuff right like it just became the thing like having the industry event and so for you if you really want to create a movement after you've written your book the next phase like you need to create an event you need to be one putting the like planning the flag and like this is the thing this is my event this is where people in our industry go even if like you have no right of saying that initially right like we didn't we have tnc have three to five thousand people at these events we get you know first one 600 right they were way bigger than us and we kept trying to get bigger and trying to get bigger and eventually we got a spot where we were similar like we were we were three four thousand people there three or four thousand people and then COVID hit right everything collapses shrinks down and then right after COVID we both launched our events weeks.

Speaker 2 We didn't realize this when we launched it, but it just happened like theirs was week number one ours week number two. I was like, oh man.
And like now we're competing.

Speaker 2 Now people got to pick up and go this one or this one, right? And so they do their event. So I'm home just, it's just like this week.
I'm here doing slides during the event and TNC is happening.

Speaker 2 And so, but we sent much of our team down there to go check it out. And it's crazy.
You look in the ballroom. It was set for like 3,000 people.

Speaker 2 and during the opening keynote there are about 30 maybe 50 people in there maybe a hundred people and my team would send me videos and like this place is empty and I was like oh crap we're in COVID people are not going to come to events like we just saw that I was so scared and for us like we spent so much money like

Speaker 2 it could have it could have it could have been really really bad for us if people didn't show up because there's a lot of money that goes into events there's a lot of things you guarantee the hotel like a room block how many rooms you can like it can be a really expensive learning lesson and anyway but because like the people that came to the bottom of our funnel like like they are the crazy ones, the 1% crazies, the funnel hackers, like

Speaker 2 the most insane people, right? One week later, we go to ours and it was packed from back to front, wall to wall, it is packed. And it was crazy.

Speaker 2 And I remember, I can't remember, was that funnel hacking live or the next one? It might have been the next one, but Perry Belcher spoke at it. And then Perry messaged me on Messenger afterwards.

Speaker 2 And he's like, congratulations, man, your event won. And I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 I knew we were competing. I didn't know he knew we were competing, but he said that.

Speaker 2 And I i was like like for me i was just like we became the industry event and what how did we do that right it's like coming back and it wasn't just like let's make a convention and boost and speakers like let's create a movement right like let's look at how network marketing let's look at how other ways and how do we how do we bring those things in to make something that's really truly special and different um and so that's what we um that's what we do with funnel hacking live and uh now we're 10 years into it this is our 10th technically it's our 11th one because we did a virtual international one six months ago so technically it's our 11th it's our fhl 10, the last dance.

Speaker 2 And it's weird because people be asking me, like, why would you stop this? Like, you're the industry event. You're the biggest one.
We're like, why would you stop this?

Speaker 2 And it's weird because, like, we're stopping ours and our TNC got canceled this year. They shut it down.
Grant Cardone's got a huge event.

Speaker 2 This is his last year. It's kind of weird.
Like,

Speaker 2 all of us are kind of ending these things. And I think a couple of reasons.
Number one is like...

Speaker 2 You know, if you're going to do an industry event, like, it's a lot of work.

Speaker 2 For us, it's a 10-month cycle. So we do the event.
We have two months just like, oh, and it's it's like, okay, back at it.

Speaker 2 Like, we're going to promote the next one, sell the tickets, get the speakers, line it up. Like, it's such a

Speaker 2 lot. And we've been doing it for a decade.
And honestly, I'm tired. Number two is I'm working on something else.

Speaker 2 By doing the event we did, when we first launched Funnel Hacking Live, it was very unique. It was very different.
People came like, this is not like normal events.

Speaker 2 This is not like anything else they've ever experienced. Even the way we captured and the way that we did our videos, everything was different.

Speaker 2 And it was really special.

Speaker 2 And then over time, people started modeling us and funnel hacking us and copying us right and now it's like 10 years later looking like most events look like funnel hacking live like people understand like we figured out a formula they're modeling it and it's amazing but like this is the reality is I'm not done doing events

Speaker 2 by any stretch of the imagination I wanted something different I wanted something better, but I needed some time to reset.

Speaker 2 With Funnel Hacking Live, it's hard because we have a framework and things that people expect, right? So it's like every year it's like that, a little bigger, a little bigger, a little bigger, right?

Speaker 2 And for me to do what I want to do in the near future to create the new industry event it has to be different and I had to reset. I couldn't just be FHL 11 now because it's a little different like

Speaker 2 it needed to be a huge reset. I needed space and time to like rethink through it and how to make something amazing.

Speaker 2 So that's the reason why we're stopping funnel hacking live but it's still part of the thing right part of the movement writing a book creating an event and that is how you build a movement.

Speaker 2 That's how we built click funds. We get spot now where we're a software company who's literally taking on zero dollars in funding.
We're the last of the of our competitors to not take on money.

Speaker 2 All the rest sold out, right? We're the last ones who are sticking to the bootstrap story and it's been amazing, right? We've passed a billion dollars in sales. Three comma, three comma club award.

Speaker 2 Let's go. By the way, we did design it.
I'm going to show you guys that at Funnel Hacking Live. Because all you guys that make out a goal to go up to three comma club award.

Speaker 2 But like, we did it because of these things, right? Obviously funnels are key, but we did it with a front end book, with a virtual, or not virtual, with a live event.

Speaker 2 Those are the two core things things to actually create a movement. So that's what I want to share with you guys today.
I hope that it helps get the wheels in your head spinning, right?

Speaker 2 Every mass movement was built initially with the book, right? All of them, throughout time, throughout history, right?

Speaker 2 And then if you want to create this movement, you've got to become, like, put your flag in the ground. Like, I'm going to become the industry event.
This is where people come to gather.

Speaker 2 This is the spot. When you do those two things, that's how you start finding your people and bringing them together.
Now they've got, they've got the doctrine of the movement you are creating.

Speaker 2 They've got the people together. Again, give them a name, funnel hackers, whatever you want to call your people.

Speaker 2 Call your people and then give them identity, have them come together, and then you can serve them. And it's just

Speaker 2 a fun, powerful, exciting thing. So I hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
Hope you learned a lot.

Speaker 2 Can I read one more ad? Because I'm here. This will be a fun one for me as well.
This is for our selling align event, which is insane.

Speaker 2 We do this once a month, and it's one of the best things I've ever done. It is a virtual event, so you can do it from the comfort of your home.
But here you go. Here is the ad read.
Here we go.

Speaker 2 Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem is 99% of the time it's... Oh, let me fix this ad.

Speaker 2 editors don't edit this we'll keep it in so they can see me messing up okay okay if you have a funnel but it's not converting the problem 99.9% of the time is your funnel is good but you suck at selling if you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert then get a ticket to my next selling online event by clicking on link in the description or going to sellingonline.com slash podcast Look at me reading ads.

Speaker 2 Like I feel like a professional podcast host. After what, 1,200 episodes, whatever, I'm finally, finally becoming like a legit host.

Speaker 2 And it's funny, a lot of guys on my team have been listening to podcasts. Like, I don't like having you here in the other ads.
I'm like, I know, it's okay.

Speaker 2 But these are cool companies with cool products, and they're willing to host, to promote, to dump ad money into this.

Speaker 2 And what's cool for us, we take all the ad money, we use it to drive more people back to the podcast so we can continue to grow.

Speaker 2 So if you want to help me in the process, what I would love to do is tell people about new podcasts, either on the YouTube channel or on the podcast, or both. Share with other people.

Speaker 2 That's how you can help serve me selfishly back for any of the stuff. I'm giving to you guys and that way more people start listening to podcasts.

Speaker 2 Again, all the money makers and sponsors goes 100% back into just promoting the podcast, getting more people on here so I can keep serving you guys.

Speaker 2 Because for me, like in my life right now, everything's about impact. And so for me, it's like, if I'm going to spend an hour a day doing a podcast like this, like, what's the return on investment?

Speaker 2 Like, what does it look like? And for me, it's like, how many listeners?

Speaker 2 And so, as that number is growing and growing and growing, I'm like, okay, I'm going to put more time, more effort, more energy into it. The podcast is huge right now.

Speaker 2 It's growing very quickly, which is awesome. YouTube channel is kind of more new.
I've been doing YouTube stuff for a long time. We're talking a lot of formats.
And I was like,

Speaker 2 I'm really enjoying this. So if you're listening, watching on YouTube, I know it's a different format I was doing in the past.

Speaker 2 and it's a little different from YouTube, but my goal is to keep this going for a while and see if I can get you guys all on YouTube converted to like enjoying it and sharing it.

Speaker 2 Because if I can do that, then it's anyway, it's pretty cool. So with that said, you guys, I appreciate you.
Thank you for hanging out with me for this episode.

Speaker 2 If you liked it, again, let me know in the comments, share with a friend. I appreciate you guys.

Speaker 2 And for those of you guys who will be at Funnel Hacking Live, what time this is live, FHL will probably be done, but I'm excited to hang out with you guys and serve you guys one last time for the biggest event in the world.

Speaker 2 And just know that I'm there.

Speaker 2 And again,

Speaker 2 it's the last of the funnel hacking lives, but it's not the end of an era, it is the beginning of something amazing that will be coming very, very soon. I appreciate y'all.

Speaker 2 Thank you guys so much for listening, and we'll talk to y'all soon. Bye.