Marcus Neto
This past week Jared and I traveled to Nashville to attend Funnel Hacking live. For those of you not familiar, Funnel Hacking Live is the annual conference organized by Click Funnels for their community. This was the first year that we have attended and I have to say, I have not experienced anything quite like it. I have been to tech conferences before, but this conference was a lot more about changing your mindset to what is possible vs the technical details of using the Click Funnels tool.
You see, so many of us, myself included, are hindered by a story that keeps us from pursuing our dreams. I went thinking the conference was going to be one thing and by the end of the first full day, I realized I had been duped, but in a wonderfully glorious way.
Let’s take a look at some of the speakers and what they were talking about though.
The first speaker we heard from was Ryan Holiday. Ryan is an author, but he also used to be the Director of Marketing for American Apparel. When he was at American Apparel he is most notably known for doing outlandish things that end up in the news. Running ads he knew would get him in trouble so that they would end up in the news, giving him even more exposure.
One of the things he said was actually a quote from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. The idea that you should go where you can own the space. Invent your own category. Competition is for losers. If you cant be first in a category then make your own new category.
Jermaine Griggs took the stage after Ryan and immediately made everyone in the audience jealous. Jermain runs a community where his company teaches people to play gospel music by ear. That isn’t what made everyone jealous though. What made us all jealous is that Jermaine has set up his company in such a way that he was able to travel to 40 different countries last year. Did I mention that Jermaine’s company currently generates revenue north of $400k a month? Yea.
Jermaine talked about having a F.R.E.E.D.O.M. business where freedom is the following
- Focus on the activities that move the needle
- Realign & prioritize the right things
- Eliminate anything that is not a core competency
- Empower others to execute for you
- Data-Driven Marketing
- Optimize consistently for compound growth
- Multiply profits by scaling what is working
Needless to say, his talk was amazing. I was inspired by this one not because of the revenue, but because of the freedom he has.
The next speaker that hit me upside the head with a 2x4 was Tom Bilyeu. Tom is the former owner/CEO of Quest Nutrition and current owner of Impact Theory. He started from scratch and created a company that was worth a billion dollars in 5 years… yea. What are you doing with your life? Not only was it worth a billion dollars, but Tom actually sold Quest for a billion dollars...
Tom is a mind hack expert. His knowledge of how the brain works is amazing. He talked about how Artificial Intelligence is successful because it does not judge itself. It only asks what is the pathway to success. He implored us to stop judging ourselves. That we should instead ask, what is the path to success? And then, without judgment, move towards that. And if we make a mistake or have a setback just chalk it up as a learning experience that gives us more data and allows us to move quickly towards success.
Years ago I stumbled upon Frank Kern. I am not sure where. But once I found him I immediately had a marketing man-crush. He is arguably the most successful online marketing expert. As a bonus, he is super funny. He started as a direct response marketer so all of his online stuff still has that same feel to it. My major takeaways from Frank’s talk was to have fun. Experiment. And be honest. Frank’s ads and podcast all have a really honest feel to them. If you have not looked up his stuff, you should. He is at the top of the pyramid when it comes to marketing.
Next was Steve Larson. Steve is an animal. He tried marketing 34 products over 5 years!!! Who among us has that sort of tenacity? One of the things that resonated with me that he said is “creating noise is much more challenging than simply aligning with where the noise already resides”. In other words, stepping in front of an audience that already exists is much easier than trying to create an audience from scratch. He also used this quote from PT Barnum that I love:
Without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing.
Yea. That.
But by far, the person that influenced me the most was Myron Golden. He held a roundtable discussion that ended up being more like a 2-hour sermon about business. It. Was. Amazing! And I wanted more. But, some of the highlights of that talk were:
Making 6-7 figures a month is easy. The hard part is becoming the person that can do it. You have to unprogram yourself because school teaches us that the way to make our lives better is to do more of some thing. But that just makes us more tired. Working hard is not the solution. Working smart is the solution.
He also said that in business, If it is not working for you then it is working on you. That in those times when we hit a brick wall, those are the times we are learning a lesson that we need in order to become the person that can do it.
He also said that when you begin to value time more than money, then you begin to build wealth. That wealth has a need for speed. The example here is that we can make a million dollars $40,000 at a time over the course of 25 years and feel broke, but we made a million dollars. But if you accelerate that over a year or two you really feel like you have really accomplished something. He made the statement that we have been warned our entire lives about get rich quick schemes but that no one ever warns us about the be broke forever scheme.
I love that. And I, for one, do not intend on living out the broke forever scenario.
Garrett White also spoke. He is so powerful. If you are a guy I would highly suggest you look him up. His talk was not one that you really took notes on. But it was so moving that I immediately subscribed to his podcast and looked through all of his various online stuff to learn more about him.
We left after Garrett as we had a 6-hour drive back home and I did not want to get back at midnight. I am about to say something super crazy. There was one more speaker, but all of the other speakers were so effective and so powerful I did not mind missing out on the final speaker. Know who it was? Tony Robbins. Yea, they were all that good. I have always wanted to see him speak. And one day I will. But my brain was mush after 4 days of getting my mental outlook pushed through the wringer.
I am so thankful to Russell Brunson for putting together this conference. I will be implementing Click Funnels for our business and we will be using it for some of our clients as well. It is very powerful software that has a lot of capabilities.
But none of that matters if you don’t have the right mindset. That is the most important thing in life. The tools are all just that, tools. They will come and go.
But if you can get your brain right? That is priceless!