The Power Behind Virtual Curated Events
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Welcome to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. My name is Russell Brunson, and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time, I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50% of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to nine figures and beyond. Welcome to the show.

What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And I have an idea for you guys today. So I think that this will be my second time doing it and it's really interesting and cool. By the time you guys are listening to this, I'll actually be in the middle of it. So we are launching the Two Comma Club Live Linchpin Edition.

It's a live virtual event that's starting, I think, it starts for me tomorrow. I think you guys have been getting this today. It's live. So if you want to go see it, go to 2comiclublive.com is the event. It's a three-day virtual event. But it's what I'm calling a curated event. So let me explain what that means. It's like,

And this isn't going to be applicable for everyone yet, but for some of you guys, this will be really, really applicable. How many of you guys have done a lot of events or trainings or teachings or things like that? Or you run your own events or like, you know, like I think about us, we've done nine Funnel Hacking Lives. I've done a million Inner Circle events. I've done, you know, there's like so many things, so much content, so many things that we've done trainings on over and over and over and over again, all over the place. And there's just so much cool stuff has come from it.

Um, but a lot of times the event gets done and you never see it again. You know, it gets put in a members area, sell the replays, people watch it for the next week or two and then it's done. And it's like, I don't know about you, but like when I put into this effort into something, I'm like, I want it to live forever. You know, especially the presentations I did that I nailed it. And I was like super proud of like, I want everybody on the planet to see this because I think it's going to help change their lives. Um, so that's like, keep thinking about it. It's just that, that, um, that concept. And so a couple of years ago, um,

Right before COVID. So we did Funnel Hacking Live right before COVID. And, well, I'll tell you the full story. This is probably TMI, but here's Russell being vulnerable and honest. So if you go back to like 2018, I think is when we launched 2ComicClubX.com.

And we sold it at Funnel Hacking Live and we did over eight figures in sales, which was the very first time. Like, oh, that's amazing. Then we did it next year. Boom. Eight figures in sales next year. And we did it again. Like it kept happening. And then I had this brilliant idea like, hey, we have this thing that's working really good. I should change the name of the whole thing in the process. And so I changed it from Two Common Quebecs to the Funnel Hacker Collective because I thought that would be really cool. One of my designers designed a t-shirt and called it that. And I was like, ooh, the collective. And I thought it was so cool.

So at this FHL, like the two weeks before COVID hit, um, I changed the name of it and I launched this collective. I was so excited about the messaging and the branding and the t-shirts and logos. And we launched it and it was the first time, um, in like three or four years that, um,

the coaching offer did not go well. And I could tell because normally after some, after we, people sign up for coaching, they get pictures on stage with us. And usually the, the line wraps around the entire ballroom of the event, you know, and we're up there for two hours. And this time I looked at it, it was like a fourth of the ballroom. And I was like, I mean, I don't have pictures in like, I don't know, 20 minutes. And I was like, Oh dear me. Like, you know, photo acting live,

costs us, you know, all the ticket sales doesn't even cover the cost of running the event. You know, like we'll sell 5,000 tickets at a thousand bucks a pop. Plus we have, you know, people who pre-bought during the event earlier and all that stuff. So when all is said and done, like 100% of the ticket money goes to run the event. The event's cost is four or $5 million to run and produce and all that kind of stuff, right? So we only make money if Russell sells on stage. If Russell does not sell on stage, nobody makes any money, right?

So I get up there and I do this whole thing. I'm like, holy cow, we spent nine months of our life preparing for this event and we did not make enough money. Like I could have done a webinar and made more money than this, you know? And it's like, oh, and then COVID hit right afterwards and it's chaos and everyone's trying to figure out what to do and people are doing live events. So we decided to do a live event and I'm like, well, how am I gonna do a live event? Like, I don't want to teach for three days. We just did Funnel Hacking Live. Like, what do we do? And plus like, I need to make some money because the last thing I did didn't really work.

So in the middle of COVID or the very beginning of COVID, we launched the very first ever two comical blab event. And, um, and we ended up selling, it's crazy. We sold 5,000 tickets, which at the time I was like, Oh, 5,000 tickets, you know? Um,

which is crazy this this version we're like closer like 1500 tickets or something so now i'm like looking back like dang it was way easier to sell tickets at the very beginning of covid but um and so my thought was like how like am i just gonna teach for three days i mean people don't want to fly out everyone's scared of touching and masks and all that stuff right now you know i'm like i don't know what to do and so um what we decide to do is what is now like i think i invented i don't even know but it's a curated event which happens i became the mc

And I would teach some sessions live because I wanted to teach some things new that I had never taught before. But then the majority of it was not me teaching it live. The majority of it was me curating a really cool experience. So I'm like, okay, here's this speaker I'm going to bring in. There's a speaker over here I'm going to bring in. And this person. And so I'm kind of like weaving together the tapestry of this beautiful event to make it happen. And so that was what was cool. It was like basically...

We did that two comic club live virtual event and I, you know, here's the three or four sessions I wanted to teach that were new, that were really important to me. But then, you know, I was like, man, three years ago, FHL, someone taught this one way better than me. And then, you know, five years ago I taught this principle that was really good. And then, you know, a year and a half ago someone did this. And it's like, I went through and like I storyboard out, like what would be the perfect experience for somebody to go through to really have them master and understand, you know, the, the, the concepts I wanted to teach.

And so that was the very first one. And we ran that event three or four times and it was awesome. You know, I changed the offer back to two comic books and luckily it saved the company. We say it sold a bunch of people, new coaching program. And, you know, it was, it was great.

And so anyway, we ran that until last year, I think the last time we ran it, and then that was kind of it. And then over the last 18 months or so, I've been so excited about this linchpin concept. So I taught it in Inner Circle, and then I taught it at FHL, and then at 2CCX that next year, we focused primarily on the linchpin model, which was really, really cool.

And then when the linchpin, uh, inside the coach program, we went to Mexico and in Mexico, um, I was like, we're a bunch of guest speakers instead of me just speaking this whole time. Let's have people who are actually doing parts of linchpin, get up and speak. And so the Mexico mastermind was amazing because everyone was like, here's everyone doing Mifkis. And they talked about it. Here's everyone doing this, talked about it and like went through the entire linchpin and just had other people teaching. And it was like,

after people like that was so cool because it wasn't just random stuff it was all like helped me double down on this exact principle and the thing i was trying to figure out and gave us the ability to teach something they never go talk about it and it was really cool and then i was like i kind of wanted the same thing for fun hockey live if i'm not gonna have in the past is always like a whole bunch of speakers talking about different stuff but like this year we're gonna have an all speak on the lynchpin like and in fact if you were there

each speaker before they got up there's a video of me explaining how what they were teaching fit into the linchpin right and so like i would talk about it set them up show them where it fits the linchpin and go back and forth and so like um and then the workbook was just the linchpin workbook and like oh it was just it was really really cool um yeah that's that that was kind of how the fun hacking live event came and when it was done i got people so many people came back and were just like that was the best fun like live yet because it was just everything was so curated to help me

And so after the event, everyone wanted replays and they wanted, you know, people heard about it. They wanted us to do all this stuff. And I was like, I didn't want to just like, let me show the replays. I was like, like I wanted to, I wanted to like, there are things I wanted to tweak. You know what it is? I'm like, you know, so-and-so taught this here, but they taught it better over here. And then like in Mexico, someone talked this or that, that we didn't have. I want to bring it back. And there's this and that. And like,

And so I went through and I kind of mapped out like if I was doing Fun Like Alive again, how would I curate this? It would be perfect. I'd be like, well, it would be this presentation, this, this, this. I would not have these two and I would have this. And we mapped out like the perfect thing. And I was like, we should do another Two Comic Club Live. This time we're called Linchpin Edition where literally we go through and we give people like the linchpin like curated flawlessly, perfectly.

And so that's what we're doing. So it's this curated event. And yes, we will be selling to Comic Club X in the middle of the curated event because that's there. But it's just this really cool way to have the content you created in the past live on forever. So I'm excited. So again, it's happening in the next three days. And it's me getting to relive Funnel Hacking Live and the Lynch Pivot, teaching it all in very strategic, very step-by-step, systematic order. And

I'm actually really excited for it. It makes me want to do more of these two comic club live virtual events where I curate stuff, you know, and just look at the back archives. Like I could do a high ticket one and every high ticket speaker from the beginning time to now come back and they could teach something. I could do one that's based on everyone who's doing book funnels, everyone who's doing traffic, you know, like, and then curate all the best presentations into this one three day virtual event.

And it's easy on my side because next week is fun. I'm going to have some cool teaching sessions I'm going to do that are new. But for the most part, it's me talking about the speaker and I'm the emcee curating it. And I'm the DJ mixing it up, making sure that they get all the things in the right order so everything makes sense to them. Anyway, it's exciting. So there's a curated event. So for any of you guys who have a lot of content in the past, you're like, man, I did all these things. What do I do with it now? Make a curated event. It's powerful. And then I'm going to test something. We haven't done this yet, but

When the curated event's done, I want to use ChallengeFuel. It's Anthony Morrison's software. It's really cool. But I think I could take this entire three-day event when it's done, put it into ChallengeFuel, and run it as like an evergreen three-day event. That way this curated event I created once, people could watch it in 100 years now and I'm dead. You know what I mean? Like how cool would that be?

Anyway, so I'm excited. There's the concept, curated events. I invented it. You heard it here from Russell first, taking all the content you've created in the past, curating it into a perfect step-by-step seamless process. Again, I keep imagining if my mom came to an event, how would I want to walk her through the process? And this is how I do it, through this cool curated process.

event and process. So anyway, I hope you guys, if you're experiencing it, I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you love it. If you're thinking about cool ways to do events, like this is just an interesting new way to do events. It's fun. It's low maintenance. It's not a lot of hard work. Um, and people love it. And it's a great experience for your customers. And it gives you the ability to repitch your high end coaching programs as well. So, all right, there's the idea. There's the concept curated events. Go run with it. Let me know how it goes for you. And, uh, if you want to see ours, go to two comical live.com. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you soon.