The Foundation - Russell recaps the first day of Funnel Hacking Live, the biggest tips, tricks, and insights, as well as how we lay the foundation for the rest of the event. On today’s episode Russell recaps day one of Funnel Hacking Live 2019. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in this episode:

-- Find out who the speakers were and what they spoke about.

-- Find out how much money was raised for both Village Impact and Operation Underground Railroad.

-- And see how much money Russell’s own mom was able to raise by making a quilt for the event.

So listen here to see what you may have missed at Funnel Hacking Live 2019, on day one.

When people come in, they sprint to the front. Everyone was running and piling in and finding seats. The energy is high. It’s like a rock concert from the second it starts until the last day. And nobody stays in the halls, it’s crazy. The last day, we’re four days in, and looking out and the room was still completely filled. And everyone’s like, “There’s no on in the hall just networking.” There’s networking that happens, but it’s not like a networking event. It’s a learning and networking event. You know what I mean? So it’s cool.

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m going to be talking about Funnel Hacking Live, so for those of you guys who were there, it was amazing. I’m going to recap some of it. For those who weren’t there, I’m going to talk about what you missed. And that’s the game plan for today.

Hey everybody, so I can’t believe it’s over. Funnel Hacking Live is done. It is insane how much went into that. How much stress, and time, and energy and effort, and then it’s done, just as fast as it comes, it’s over. And it’s crazy. I was going to record a podcast, I stayed in one day late, and I’m like, “I’m going to record a podcast once in the hotel room.” And then I was just beat, and I didn’t. And I was like, “I’m going to do it when I get home.” And I haven’t. And it’s been over a week now, and I’m finally having some time to spend and be like, okay I’m going to talk about this. So I wanted to kind of share it with you guys.

So for those of you guys who were there, you know it was amazing. We did it in Nashville, and we’re also, by the way, going to be in Nashville next year, which is really, really cool. So if you haven’t got your tickets yet, go to Funnel Hacking Live.com and get them. But we’re going back to Nashville, and it’s cool because the place we stayed at, the Gaylord, the Opryland Gaylord, or whatever they call it, it’s like this village, the whole thing is in this huge dome. And there’s like 22 restaurants, there were all these things. So all of our Funnel Hackers were there and what’s cool, this year we did, we actually paid extra for our signage.

So we had the whole thing wrapped in Clickfunnels stuff. My face was everywhere, it was kind of embarrassing. Like on the boats, there’s a boat ride you can ride through the canals, and my face was on the boats. And funnel hacker sign everywhere. A big old sign that says, you know, “Welcome Funnel Hackers.” It just made it feel like you were in this little Clickfunnels community or village or something like that. It was so, so cool.

And what’s cool is because we’re going to the same place next year, we already have all the signs done, so we’re going to put those up, plus more, and make it even bigger and better next year, if that’s possible. But it was cool, just very giggly. It felt like you came to like Clickfunnels land, like you know Disneyland you go and stay in different places, which made the experience just so, so cool. And I did a podcast probably 2 years ago, year and a half ago about creating a world. And I talked about it after the Disney, probably a year ago then, after Disney. How Disney didn’t just create characters, it created a universe.

It’s kind of fun because inside of our community, we’re doing those same things, there’s characters, there’s all these people you guys know, we’ve created this universe. And it was special.

Alright so I’m going to walk you through, I’m going to kind of go day by day and talk about some of this stuff. And it’s tough because I feel like I’m doing a disservice. I want to give everyone’s presentation to you again so you can hear it, unfortunately can’t do that. But I want to go through that so you guys can kind of just hear some of the big lessons, the big takeaways that I have, as a whole.

Basically, the first night, the night before the whole craziness happens, we do a big event. We do a big dinner with the inner circle, and people who actually won a Two comma Club…no excuse me, it was just inner circle and our speakers. We took them out to the Rock and Roll Hall, not the rock and roll, the Country Music hall of fame, which was so cool. We saw all the gold records on the wall, which look just like Clickfunnels Two Comma Club records, only not as cool, because we’ve got commas in ours and they don’t.

But it was really cool to see all that, and then we had a big dinner and we had some country singers come and sing to us. So it was just, it kicked off the whole event, the whole everything, which was really cool. And then from there, we drove over to the Blake Shelton’s Ole Red Restaurant. We went over there and then we had the inner circle there, the Two Comma Club, then the Two Comma Club X members were there, Two Comma Club winners were there, 8 Figure Award winners were there, it was this huge party with a live band, and we just hung out. Well, honestly I took pictures for like 3 hours with people. But everyone else hung out, had fun and danced, it was such a good. It was like the pre-frame of how the whole event started.

So then, the next day was Wednesday. We woke up, we had registration in the morning. And we don’t start until noon because it gives us time to get everyone checked in and processed and all that kind of stuff. I remember walking in the room and it looked so cool. The stage was amazing, the room was huge. We had just shy of 4500 people who came. Which, 4500 people in our community are crazy. And it’s funny because the week after the event, or the day after, there was another, probably the other big event in our industry. And I’m not going to talk about that specifically, other than just like, people who went to both of them are just like, “Man, the energy in your room is just insane.”

When people come in, they sprint to the front. Everyone was running and piling in and finding seats. The energy is high. It’s like a rock concert from the second it starts until the last day. And nobody stays in the halls, it’s crazy. The last day, we’re four days in, and looking out and the room was still completely filled. And everyone’s like, “There’s no on in the hall just networking.” There’s networking that happens, but it’s not like a networking event. It’s a learning and networking event. You know what I mean? So it’s cool.

Anyway, we open the door and people run in. It was fun because I had my mom and my dad there. So they were sitting on the front row. And I give my very first presentation, which was all hook, story, offer. And we actually streamed that one live because I wanted people to see what they’re missing out on, cause a little FOMO. Marketing Secret number 107, I don’t know, creating FOMO. So we actually streamed my presentation live, which was in the Facebook group, and I think I’m going to be putting that here in the podcast, so you can hear it. But I was really, really proud of it. It’s called hook, story, offer and how that relates to the perfect webinar and stuff like that.

And it was fun because I did the whole thing and we brought Todd onstage, talked about the Clickfunnels state of the union, we talked about the updates, and then  I went deep into hook, story, offer and just taught it. And it was funny because my mom has never seen me speak from stage ever. And afterwards she was like, “You’re really good onstage. You’re funny and you tell stories so well.” And all this stuff. I’m like, “Yeah Mom, this is what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years of my life.” It was just kind of fun to have her there, and have her experience it.

So anyway, I’m not going to go too deep into that, because you’ll hear that presentation here hopefully in the next couple of episodes, which will be really fun. And I got done, I talked about hook, story, offers, how you grab a customer, bring them into your world, but then after you get them in your world, then you’ve got to serve them like crazy. So the next person I wanted to have speak was Stacy Martino. Stacy runs a company, they’ve helped save over 10,000 marriages, her and her husband Paul. And they are some of my favorite people I’ve ever met. They don’t teach marketing, they teach relationship stuff, right. But they are amazing marketers.

And they had like a 91% renewal rate on their $14,000 a year program and I was like “How do you do that?” She said, “Well, we use your value ladder concept, but we call it the Customer’s Yellow Brick Road.” So she did this amazing presentation about the Yellow Brick Road, here’s how you take someone on the yellow brick road, on this journey. They want to come to Oz, they want to see the wizard and you’re the wizard. So it’s like, how do you take them and how do you get them going on this yellow brick road.

And honestly, as the person who wrote the chapter in Dotcom Secrets about the value ladder, I was like, she came off stage and I gave her a hug, and I’m like, “You taught the value ladder better than I teach it.” Which is actually fun for me, because I’m actually going back right now and re-writing Dotcom, not re-writing, I’m updating Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets with some really cool new things that I wanted just to plug in there. And I’m going to be using some of the stuff she taught on the Customer Yellow Brick Road, in that section, because I think it was so powerful, the way she taught it. And how your customers want to come to Oz anyway, so you serving them and helping them along that journey, help them get there, which was really cool.

So after Stacy came off, then I was like, okay, now some people don’t even know how to create an offer, how they do it, so I had Stephen Larsen come in and he belongs onstage. He just, he’s good at, he loves it. You can tell. And he came and talked about offer creation. But offer creation, he does a three day event on offer creation, so he can go deep, but specifically I wanted him talking about red ocean/blue ocean.

If you’ve read the Expert Secrets book, I talk about how you’ve got to find the red ocean, but you’ve got to create your own blue ocean. A lot of people got stuck and confused on that whole process, and what Stephen talked about, most people focus on trying to build a blue ocean. And it’s like, no you go and study the red ocean and that gives you all the answers of how you then create your blue ocean.

And I think it was a really, really powerful presentation to help people understand that because if you really want to be a category king and you really want to dominate your market, you can’t just be fishing in the same red ,bloody waters as everyone else, with the same offer, same everything. It’s like you have to create something unique and different and new. And when you do that, that’s when you create a blue ocean. But how you create the blue ocean is you study the red ocean. And he talked really deep about that, which was awesome.

Then after Stephen got done I had Alex Charfen get up. And I had Alex get up because at one of the inner circle meetings, I think I did a podcast about this, he talked about defending and advocating for your customer. And oh man, when he shared that I was like, I want a presentation on that. So he came and gave an amazing presentation about that, which was interesting because all of us talk about how we build a following, how we build a movement, how we get all these people into our world. And the biggest thing is you have to first off, figure out who your customer is. You’ve got to be obsessed with them and love them. And then you step back, and your content you put out there is defending and advocating for them.

That’s what causes attraction, because every customer base feels like they’re different, feels like they’re weird for some reason. So for you to come in and defend them and advocate for them, is what gets them to be attracted to you. I think of all people I’ve ever seen this, with entrepreneurs, Alex has done this the best. He has this book, Entrepreneur Personality Type and his podcast Momentum. If you listen to the intro of the Momentum podcast, it’s all about defending and advocating for your customers so they come to you, they’re attracted to you.

And I think it’s so fascinating, that whole study. You could write books just on that concept and it was fun to have Alex sharing that. How do you defend and advocate for your customers so they are attracted to you. So for you guys to ask that question, how do I defend and advocate for a customer. All the content I’m putting out should be focusing on that.

After that, then I had Nicholas and Amanda Bayerl come up, which they joined our inner circle last year so I, the first time I met them in person was less than a year ago. And I just love them as a couple and as business owners and as people. And one thing, when you hear Nicholas speak, he speaks poetry almost. He says these things and you’re like, “Where did that come from?” And the first inner circle meeting, he said something. He said, “Your mess becomes your message.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so powerful.”

I struggled with marketing so I studied and geeked out, and my mess that I was bad at became my message. I look at Stacy Martino, with the relationship stuff. She was about to go through this break up with Paul, and they had this horrible thing, and then she fixed that. So her mess became her message, and now they’ve saved over 10,000 marriages. And I could go through this with all these, Alex, Stephen, with everyone who spoke, that’s a common theme. You realize your mess becomes your message.

So they talked about that, then they also had Nick’s wife Amanda come up because part of it is, okay you’re in this relationship with this person you love and you’re trying to change the world and your mess becomes your message, but how do you navigate that as a couple as well, which I think was a really unique presentation that was so cool, so cool.

I remember one of the things he said onstage was like, “I need to take a second for the most important thing.” And then he gave his wife a kiss onstage. I was like, ah, so cool. Anyway, theirs was amazing.

And then, after Nick and Amanda got done, I had Matt Maddix come up, some of you guys may not know Matt, but I love him. He is, a lot of you have probably heard of Caleb Maddix, Caleb spoke at the second Funnel Hacking Live, and at the time I think he was 15 years old, and he was killing it online. And I had a chance before that to have Matt and Caleb fly out to Boise and spend time with them. And I just really connected with Matt, on a really personal level.

I want to be a good dad, a good father, but it’s hard, especially with business and life and all these things. And I watched how Matt worked with Caleb and just, I was like, not I don’t think envy or jealousy is the right word, but admiration. I was like, I wish I could do that better. I wish I could do what he did. Just some of the little nuggets I got from him, back a couple years ago was, when the other kids were getting paid to do chores, he was like, “I’d rather have Caleb go and read books, like personal development, success books.” So he started paying Caleb to read personal development books. He paid him $20 for each success book he read.

So I started doing that with my kids. It’s like, now they’re reading books that are putting good stuff into their brain. That’s way better than like, “Go learn how to weed the garden.” That’s important right, but it’s like what’s going to help serve them long term, them understanding good personal development tactics or them weeding a garden?

So it was interesting, so I had him come and speak about how you raise a young entrepreneur? How do you support them, how do you serve them? And he came onstage with typical Matt Maddix energy and was insane. He came off pouring sweat. And ugh, I love it. It was so cool this year, all the speakers, I was nervous about some, because some I had never seen speak onstage before, things like that, but it’s like, every single person came and just nailed the landing, nailed their presentation at such a high level. It was so cool.

Then after that, then Todd and I came back onstage, and we brought Stu and Amy McLaren up, some of my favorite people in the world, and we showed a video from us taking a bunch of Funnel Hackers to Kenya. We took like 20 Funnel Hackers to Kenya last year. So we showed the video about that. Some of you know inside of Clickfunnels we donate one dollar for every funnel that’s built to Village Impact, which builds schools in Kenya and things like that.

So we gave Stu and Amy a huge check. Not a little check, a huge check. It’s like 8 feet long by 5 feet wide. I did it because Stu always videos himself on Instagram taking the check back home. So I’m like, I gave him the biggest check ever and I feel bad because he wasn’t going home, he was going to California and then somewhere else. But he filmed himself checking the check, because it was too big to carryon. And it made it back to Toronto, to Canada, which is amazing.

We gave him this huge check for like $133,000 for Village Impact, which was cool. And then after that we had Tim Ballard come out and we showed the preview for the new OUR video which is called Operation Triple Take. So we showed the preview for that, and then I made an offer for people to donate to OUR, and over the weekend we ended up raising a million dollars for OUR, which is amazing as well. I want to thank everyone who helped support that. But we made an irresistible offer and people went crazy for it. In fact, my mom even made a quilt, a funnel hacking quilt, and we brought it up onstage and we auctioned it off. I think it went for $78,000 and all the money went to OUR. So my mom was part of it, which was really cool as well.

And then we broke to, we called it the Funnel Rolodex event, which I don’t know if we’re going to do this next year or not. But we had 20 people or so who had booths, and we fed everyone dinner, and everyone went down there and hung out and networked and met all the vendors, it was a really cool thing. And they did that for two hours, and when that was done, then everyone came back and we watched the new documentary Operation Triple Take, which was really cool.

And it’s interesting because the first OUR movie was all about Tim Ballard and OUR and all the people involved and the Haiti mission, and if you haven’t seen it yet, if you go to ourfilm.org, you can go watch it for free. Or, it’s on Amazon Prime now actually. So just go to Amazon Prime and type in Operation Toussaint, or OUR will probably pull it up as well.

And the first one was very emotional, like everyone bawled their eyes out. The second one was not emotional, but it was tactical. It was interesting, it was the biggest sting operation ever. They hit three cities at the same time, three different sex trafficking rings all at the same time. And they arrested, I don’t know, like 100+ people, saved a couple hundred kids, so this huge thing. So this one was more tactical, but you got to see behind the scenes of an actual huge sting operation and how it works, the setup and the tactical and the thing. And it was really, it was fun to see as well. It was different, it wasn’t emotional, but it was cool to that part of it as well.

When that got done it was like 11 o’clock at night and I was like, I can’t believe that was day one. That was the first half of a day, it was insane. And I don’t think anyone who was in that room, their life wasn’t shifted and altered. It was really, really special.

So that was day number one of Funnel Hacking Live. So I think I’m going to do an episode for each day, because that would be kind of fun. Especially since that was the shortest day and we’re already 15 minutes in. So with that said, that was day number one of Funnel Hacking Live. The next episode I will talk about day number two. Thanks so much you guys, and I will talk to you tomorrow.