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

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This is the Russell Brunson Show. I want to jump in and do one more podcast episode before I head out to kind of share two things that I've been thinking a lot about that I think will have a big impact on you.
And both of them have to do with what are the things you have to do, what you have to create, what you have to have if you want to build a movement, okay? If you've read my book, Expert Secrets, 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're serving them and you're creating an actual movement.
When we launched ClickFunnels a decade ago now, that was the goal, right? The software is called ClickFunnels. 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.
And that was kind of the initial vision, the initial goal, what we were doing 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.
It's going to be kind of crazy, but that's what's happening. And so we are literally fine out to go to do that.
So I was thinking, well, I was preparing and like this event, I actually have 11 presentations I'm doing. So I'm working on presentations.
And my last one is like, what's next? 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? And so I'm going to talk about that.
But I wanted to step back because the things, I don't know, it's just been fun. Like a lot of my presentations, I'm going back in time and thinking through the different, the last decade, 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.
Uh, 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. So, uh, and partially the reason why I'm sharing this with you guys is because, um, I don't know, I, 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. 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? And you guys know when you go through growth, there's the pain of that, right? There's positive pain. Like I think about when we go into the gym, you lift weights, you're sore next to it.
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 people stabbing in the back, the stuff that's painful, right? But 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.
I talk about how business is contribution, right? You have growth and then you contribute, right? And contribution is now going back to the people who are just like you five years ago, before you got started, right? You're taking all the lessons you learned, both the positive, right? 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 then you learn through all that process.
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 right? You grew and now your business is about contribution, going back and helping those people. And those are the people I'm most passionate about serving is the people, the entrepreneurs who are doing that, right? Who are in that phase of the business right now.
And so 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 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's two core ones that I've been thinking about a lot today that I want to share with you.
And so I'm just going to jump right into them. So the very first one, and this is interesting.
I remember I have my category Kings I have my category Kings group, which is $150,000 a year. And, and, um, we had some guys coming in and, and, uh, they were asking specifically about like, should we, should I write a book? Should we not write a book? And I remember I shared something just kind of as a, as an afterthought in thinking about it.
And then like a month later, I saw it on the podcast, their Instagram channel, like that. It was like one of those big, like mic drop moments for him.
And I was like, Oh, it kind of is. is.
And so when they asked me, should we write a book? When 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.
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? Think about, again, I'm Mormon, so the Mormon faith, right? It started with the book, the Book of Mormon.
You think about, you know, Christian, Islam, like every major mass movement started with the book, right? When I launched the ClickFunnels business, we had ClickFunnels, we had the software, and luckily at the same time I was writing a book with my thoughts and my ideas about how to build funnels, and boom, on the backside of launching ClickFunnels, out came .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 during the summertime.
We let a group of people in and we closed it down. And then in September, we did the official launch.
People started coming in. It was crazy.
People came in and they used the software. It didn't stick.
We couldn't get people to. Like we couldn't get people to stick and get people to sign up.
And it was tough. Right.
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. 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. But I was in this company and I'd never, I'd promoted it, but I'd never actually, like I'd never actually been to an event.
And Dave was like, you have to come to an event. You have to see what this is like.
And so I come to this event. It's in Salt Lake City, and it's a three or four day event.
I'm sitting there, and you know, I'm there, I'm used to going to marketing events. I'm there with a pad of paper, you know, a Dan Kennedy event.
So I'm there with a 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 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 award.
And I'm like, what is happening? I'm like so confused. Like day number one, no notes, day two, day three.
And by the day three or day four, I remember Dave leaned over to him. He's like, do you see what's happening? I was like, no, I have no idea what's happening right now.
And he goes, they didn't create a software company. They created a movement.
And it was like the, ah, boom. 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. I'm looking at what are all the big SaaS is 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.
It's too expensive to acquire. Everything was just not working.
And then all of a sudden that light bulb hit in my head from David Fry. Like they don't have a software company, which it was.
Send out cards to software. Can we log in and you type the thing, you click send, it sends a card to somebody.
Software, right? It's like they don't have a software company. They built a movement.
And I started thinking, oh, that's the difference. How do I build a movement, right? And luckily, again, at the time, been writing this book for a decade, right? This was like, for me, the, you know, the decade prior to click funnels, I was, I was learning these principles.
I was doing them. I was having so much fun building funnels and trying these things out.
And I was going to these events and teaching and talking about it and sharing what was happening. Um, and so I remember, um, I started like, I always wanted it to write a book.
In fact, I remember it was, it was, um, man, almost 10 years. It was like 10 years before I ever wrote Dotcom Secrets.
I was in an event and, and it was Armour Mourn's event. And I remember they kept talking about writing your own book, writing your own book.
And then I remember David Hancock, who owns Borgin James Publishing, he was there and he was like, Russell, you should write a book. I was like, I should write a book.
So I paid him to help me to write a book that way back then. And then I remember, see, I met Brendan Burchard the very first time.
Brendan was kind of new in the industry, just like I was. And he had just written his book called, um, uh, life's golden ticket.
And on the front of the book, there's like this, this, uh, this really cool, um, uh, what's it called? Like a circus tent on it. And he told me, he's like, yeah, I sold a book and people started reading.
And then I do these events and they're in circus tents. They're just playing the whole thing.
I'm like, this is so cool. I got to have a book.
And so that was my thought. So for 10 years, I thought about a book, kept thinking about it, kept changing the title and changing it back and forth.
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 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, the back end and copywriting, like just everything.
And I put it into this book, right? And this was not like a fast little thing. This is 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.com secrets book become a thing, right? And, um, so again, ClickFunnels launches in September. I think that the.com secrets book launch was in February or March.
We're like within the 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.
Uh, so we've 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 you're 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 on a rant there in a few seconds.
But this book became that. So we launched it on the world, people started reading it.
We sold over a hundred thousand 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 were teaching.
And all of a sudden, that was the first foundation point, right? And so the first of the two things I wanna share with you, number one is, like if you want to create a movement, you've gotta write a book, right? 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? And 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.
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Now I'm gonna go into the rant about writing a good book. 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.
Like, um, in fact, I'm mildly obsessed with books.

You probably notice this.

Um,

just my background,

if you watch the videos,

there's a dozen,

dozen or so books.

But,

uh,

in the last three years,

I've gotten over 18,000 books.

Most of them first editions,

rare books.

Like I'm obsessed with books.

I,

cause I know what it takes to write a really,

really good book,

right?

Um,

you can never,

I don't know,

maybe someday AI will get smarter than all of us,

but like for me to write.com secrets,

expert secrets,

the traffic secrets,

like the writing of the book was the most painful thing I had ever gone through. It gets so painful to write a book.
Um, but by going through the process of writing and thinking and the putting things together, like all these like insane, like, like 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 start writing a book, there's always like these, these siloed ideas and you start writing a book, you have to put them together. And when you do it, you start seeing these connections and these interactions that never were there before.
That's why when people are like, Oh, I'm going to have AI write my book, I'm going to speak on stage. Then someone will transcribe and turn into a book or whatever.
It's like, you're missing it. Or even a ghostwriter.
Cause like the, the magic of my books came from me like at two in the morning, like wrestling between two or three different concepts. 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.
You have to like birth it. Um, 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.
In fact, I'm not going to say the person's name. You guys, a lot of you guys know who he is, um, or who this person, I should say, I said, he now cut it in half.
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 that was the person.
I'm like, okay, that's the person I'm plugging into. This is my guru.
And they wrote this book. They did a big product launch around.
They 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.
I am pumped. I'm on fire.
You have no idea how much I anxiously waited for this book. Cause I pre-ordered it while they're waiting for the pre-launch.
Right. And then they shipped it and the book shows up and we're getting it.
I was like, I was so excited to read it. And I, I like blocked out time.
I was sitting, I was going to read, I was going to study, I was going to devour. I'm going to like understand what's in this, this author's brain.
And like, it'd be in my brain. Right.
Uh, it's like Tony Robbins calls it a decade and a day. Like 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, I still have it on my shelf. I know exactly which one it is.
Um, and I start

reading the book and it's, it was horrible. It was like he had taken, uh, some teleseminars he'd

done transcribed them through in a book. There were typos or misspellings.
It didn't go deep.

There was no, it was just like surface level fluff. And I remember I read that and I lost

all respect for the person. I stopped following.
So I listened to him and I was just like, that's it.

Thank you. typos or misspellings.
It didn't go deep. There was no, it was just like surface level fluff.
And I remember I read that and I lost all respect for the person. I stopped following, stopped listening to him and I was just like, that's it.
Um, you don't want that happening. So get your book, right? You need to give them the insights, the stories, the way 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 foundational thoughts, beliefs, principles, things that you have that you believe in, you can take and actually put into a book.
Okay. And create something that's really good.
Again, like.com secrets. I'm proud of this book.
Like I bled for this book. Like it was so hard.
Okay. 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 my first two books I went with

kind of a smaller publisher

and my third book I put into it. Obviously I'm not, uh, in fact, it's funny.
Um, my first two books, uh, I went with, uh, kind of a smaller publisher and my third book, I went to Hay House, which is a bigger publisher. And remember we did the contract negotiations.
I wasn't paying that much attention, sign and thing. And all of a sudden, uh, 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? So I messaged him. I'm like, Hey, I got a check.
I haven't sold any books yet. Like what's this for? Um, cause I'm using, I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm used to like, I eat what I kill, right? 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 forward or your advance. I'm like, what? Like, well, 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 you sign a book deal, the publishing house gives you enough money that 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 ClickFunnels, and then I'm like 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. I was like, I didn't know that's how it worked.
Anyway, I probably should have done that because I would have gotten the books done a lot faster. But for me, it's a longer process.
But I take a lot of time. But it's like, again, I'm trying to figure out those insights.
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 like the writing of the book is how I discovered these principles.
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 a ghostwriter or somebody do it, it wouldn't have been the same.
So that's the very, very first thing. Okay, now while we're sitting here, you guys, just so you guys know, before I jump into number two, I got this cool new setup in my office.
In fact, I'm going to 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 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, let me see if I can flip this around.
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 do Zoom with someone and you're 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 contact. Anyway, I'm really excited.
And the other cool thing is, I have a couple ads that I wrote for our stuff. And I can never do them in the past because I'm looking down in the ad and it didn't work on the video.
But guess what? I got a teleprompter now so I'm going to read two ads 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.
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.
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. ClickFunnels was built for the dreamers and the doers, and you can grab a 14-day free trial by clicking on the link in the description or going to clickfunnels.com slash podcast right now.
ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. How was that? My first ad read for myself.
I hope you guys enjoyed it. 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. 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.
It'll change things for you more than anything else you can do. In fact, if you look at this, I've been in this business now for like 23, 24 years.
right? I've launched so many courses, so many events, so 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, 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.

That's why I'm obsessed with it.

In fact, I remember, you know, back in the day I do this product launches, he's a big

spike in sales and we dropped another launch, another launch.

And we're doing launches multiple times a year.

That's how I made our money.

We launched ClickFunnels, started getting a recurring revenue.

It was crazy because it went like this really small and it got bigger, bigger, bigger to

the point where every single day I check my Stripe app and it's half a million dollars is there every morning before I wake up. 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. It's like, you see this little blip, like it barely registers on the thing.
I'm like, what? Right. And I would launch a book, little blip, blip.
And what I found is that almost anything I launched didn't actually have any long-term impact. There's no long-term impact.
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. The only thing that lasted beyond the life of the author is the book, right? Think about this.
Napoleon Hill, why do we know him? He wrote books that are still around, right? 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, right? Like the book is the only thing that outlives the author.
So write a book. All right.
That's number one. Number two now.
Second thing is if you want to create a 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. We are the one, okay? Funnel Hacking Live, 10 years ago.
Okay. I've looked at, it was crazy.
If you look at the timeline of events, right? Way back in the day, there were two events. There was an internet marketing event, Armand Morn's big seminar, and then there's Dan Kennedy's Info Summit and Super Conference, right? And those were the two big things happening in the marketing world, right? Internet version and then the direct selling version.
Then eventually Yannick Silver came out with the underground. That became the second one.
So there were two big internet marketing seminars and then the two direct response. So those are events like you had to be at every single year, right? 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, Ryan Dice, Perry Belcher launched TNC.
Amazing event.

It used to be you go to TNC and it was just

Ryan and Perry teaching.

I love both those guys.

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.

And then 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 to 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. 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, Final Hacking Live, there was TNC and they were the biggest.
I think at the time, they were getting like 3,000 people in the event. I'm like, how do I compete with that? 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. We launched it, did the very first one, we had 600 people at it.
Second one, we had 1,200 and it kept growing and growing and growing over time. And eventually, what was cool was the event gave us the ability where our people, not all of our people, but it's the bottom of the funnel, right? The bottom of the funnel are the people who are the most hardcore, that are the craziest, that are the most fun.
Those are the people that came to the event, right? So also you get the energy of who are the people that care the most and they show up and say, oh, these are our people and they're just like me. They're obsessed with the stuff.
They're like high energy. They're crazy.

And that's what 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?

And 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, they, they take that energy and they, they resonate out to the rest of the world, right?

So even though only four or 5,000 people were able to come to Funnel Hacking Live at a time,

the energy of that, when it goes back out, just like a ripple effects into the industry, right? So it's such a powerful thing It brings people together gives them to network to hang out It gives you the ability to like speak directly to the people And I tell them what you're doing but the future is like what's happening, right? I start thinking back about the send out cards event when I got there, right? People are on stage and they have I remember they had the ceo and the head tech guy get up and show the new features. And I was like, okay, we got to, like, this is the cool thing, right? Steve Jobs at their big event, he'd always come out of 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? That's the other 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.
I'm like, that's what we need. Like, we have our members come and talk and share their stories, right? And they gave away awards.
I'm like, we need to have awards. Like, this is how you create a movement, right? And so we built an event that wasn't just like every other event.
Every other event at the time, there were a couple of versions. It used to be you'd have multi-speaker.
Every single speaker would get online or get on, and they would each, everyone would have a chance to sell. And they called pitch fest sometimes.
That was like how events were back in the day, way back in the day. And then after the crash and it happened again, it was different.
And I remember with TNC, they came in and they would run the whole event and they might pitch one thing or sometimes they didn't pitch anything. They sold a lot more 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 on people in the room and I want to be able to sell coaching, the next thing, right? So it gave us the ability to sell our coaching program.
Um, it gave us 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? Uh, 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 able to plan the flag and this is the thing.

This is my event.

This is where people in our industry go.

Even if you have no right of saying that initially.

We didn't.

We have TNC.

We have 3,000 to 5,000 people at these events.

We get, first one, 600.

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.

We were 3,000 or 4,000 people there, 3,000 or 4,000 people. And then COVID hit, right? Everything collapses, shrinks down.
And then right after COVID, we both launched our events. We, I realized this when we launched it, but it just happened.
Like there's was week number one, ours week number two. I was like, oh man.
And like, now we're competing. Now people got to pick up.
We're going this one or this one, right? And so they do their events. So I'm home just, it's just like this week.
I'm here doing slides during the event and TNC's happening. 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, there's, it was set for like 3,000 people.
And during the opening keynote, there were about 30, maybe 50 people in there, maybe a hundred people. And my team was sending me videos.
They're 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.

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 they are the crazy ones, the 1% crazy, the funnel hackers, like the, the, the most insane people, right? Um, one week later we go to ours and it was packed from back to front wall to wall. It is packed.
Um, and it was crazy. And I remember, um, I can't remember if it was that funnel hacking live or the next one, it might've been the next one, but Perry Belcher spoke at it.
And then Perry messaged me on Messenger afterwards. And he's like, congratulations, man.
Your event won. And I was like, oh, I knew we were competing.
I didn't know he knew we were competing. But he said that.
And I was like, for me, I was just like, we became the industry event. How do we do that? It's like coming back.
And it wasn't just like, let's make a convention and boost and speakers. Let's create a movement, right? Let's look at how network marketing, let's look at how other ways, and how do we bring those things in to make something that's really, truly special and different? And so that's what we do with Funnel Hacking Live.
And now we're 10 years into it. This is our 10th, Technics is our 11th one, so we did a virtual international one six months ago.
So Technics is our 11th, this isth this is our fhl 10 the last dance and it's weird because people will be asking like why would you stop this like you're the industry event you're the biggest one like why would you stop this it's weird because like we're stopping ours and our tnc got canceled this year they shut it down uh grant cardone's got a huge event his uh he this is his last year he's it's kind of weird like um all of us are these things. And I think a couple of reasons.
Number one is like, you know, if you're going to do an industry event, like it's a lot of work. Um, for us, it's a 10 month cycle.
So we do the event. We have two months just like, Oh, and it's like, okay, back at it.
Like we're next one, sell the tickets, get the speakers, line it up. Like it's, it's such a, it's a lot.
And we've been doing it for a decade. And honestly, I'm tired.

Number two is, I'm working on something else.

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,

this is not like anything else they've ever experienced.

Even the way we captured it,

the way that we did our videos,

everything was different.

And that was really special.

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. People understand like we figured out a formula, they're modeling it.
And it's amazing. But like this is the reality.
I'm not done doing events by any stretch of the imagination. I wanted something different.
I wanted something better, but I need some time to reset. With Funnel Act 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? Um, 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 it needed to be a huge reset. I needed space and time to like rethink through it and how to make something amazing.
So, um, 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.
That's how we built ClickFunnels. And we would get spot now where we software company.
It's literally taking on zero dollars in funding. We're the last of our competitors to not take on money.
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 passed a billion dollars in sales.
Three comma, three comma club award, let's go. By the way, we did design it.
I'm gonna show you guys at Funnel Hacking Live. Because I want all you guys to that a goal to go up to three comic club award.
Um, but like we did it because of these things, right? Obviously funnels are key, but we did with the front end book with a virtual or not virtual with a live event. Those are the two core things to actually create a movement.
So that's what I want to share with you guys today. I hope that, um, that it helps get the wheels in your head spinning, right? Every mass movement was built initially with the book, right? All of them throughout time, throughout history, right? And then if you want to create this movement, you 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. 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 the doctrine of the movement you are creating.
They've got the people together. Again, give them a name, funnel hackers, whatever you want to call your people, call your people and then give them identity, have them come together and then you can serve them.
And it's just a, it's, it's a, it's a fun, powerful, exciting thing. So, uh, hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
Hope you learned a lot. I got one more, can I read one more ad? Cause I'm here.
This would be fun one for me as well. This is for our selling online event, which is insane.
We do this once a month and it's one of the best things I've ever done. Um, 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. 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.
Editors don't edit this. We'll keep it in so they can see me messing up.
Okay. Okay.
Do 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. I got like a professional podcast host after about 1200 episodes, whatever.
I'm finally, finally becoming like legit host. And it's funny, a lot of guys on my team have been listening to podcasts.
Like I don't like having to hear any other ads. I'm like, I know, it's okay.
But these are cool companies with cool products and they're willing to host, to promote, to dump ad money into this. And what's cool for us, we take all the ad money, we use it to drive more people back to the podcast so it'll continue to grow.
So if you want to help me in the process, what I would love to do is tell people about new podcasts, either on YouTube channel or on the podcast or both. Share with other people.
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.
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. Because for me, like in my life right now, I get everything's about impact.
And so for me, it's like if I'm going to spend an hour a day doing a a podcast like this, what's the return on investment? What does it look like? And for me, it's like, how many listeners? And so as that number's 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.
It's growing very quickly, which is awesome. YouTube channel's kind of more new.
I've been doing YouTube stuff for a long time. We've tried a lot of formats.
And I was like, I'm really enjoying this. So if you're watching on YouTube, I know it's a different format I was doing in the past.
Um, and it's a little different from YouTube, but I, my goal is keep this going for a while and see if I can get you guys all on YouTube converges, like enjoying it and sharing it. Because if I can do that, then it's, it's, anyway, it's pretty cool.
So that's it. You guys, I appreciate you.
Thank you for hanging out with me, uh, for this episode. Uh, if you liked it again, let me know in the comments, share with a friend.
I appreciate you guys. And for those of you guys

who will be at Funnel Hacking Live,

by the 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.

And just know that I'm there.

And again, it's the last of the Funnel Hacking Lives,

but it's not the end of an era.

It's the beginning of something amazing

that will be coming very, very soon. I appreciate y'all.
Thank you guys so much for listening and

we'll talk to y'all soon. Bye.