4:40:31Russell Brunson · Presentation
AI Secrets Challenge - Day 3: The One-Person Marketing Machine
A four-hour slide-driven webinar where Russell Brunson turns the marketing side of an org chart into a stack of one-person AI apps.
July 1stThe argument in one line.
Selling out a live event isn't one big push, it's a ten-month drip built from three coordinated funnels and a recurring habit of giving something away, then publicly taking it back.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run or want to run a live or virtual event and need a repeatable system to sell tickets months in advance.
- You already have an audience or course and want to see real order-form bumps and a partner-ticket upsell that lift average cart value.
- You want to see an urgency campaign that doesn't rely on a straight discount to move sales.
SKIP IF…
- You're not selling anything ticketed or date-bound. This is an event-funnel playbook, not a general sales-page teardown.
- You want a first-event blueprint. The mystery speaker, past after-movies, and ten-year archive only work once there's history to draw on.
The full version, fast.
Russell Brunson breaks down the exact three funnels that have sold out Funnel Hacking Live for ten years. The core funnel is a simple three-page structure: a long-form sales page (get-tickets button above the fold, dates and location up top, an after-movie trailer, a hook-story-offer letter, a mystery speaker for curiosity, and an FAQ), an order form with a $97 replay bump and a partner-ticket add-on that pushes average cart value to $1,300, and a Day With Dan Kennedy upsell taken by roughly 40% of buyers. Two supporting funnels, a documentary opt-in and a scarcity-gated Backstage Pass, keep re-engaging the list for months. The real lever isn't the pages, it's a ten-month cadence of introducing something, then publicly taking it away.
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00:00 – 01:04
01 · Intro: the promise
Brunson opens by promising to show the exact behind-the-scenes funnel, ads, and swipe files that have filled Funnel Hacking Live for ten years, and says the pages and links will be handed over free by the end.
01:04 – 03:17
02 · The power of ads: creating an emotional experience
Breaks down the 'feeling' ad style, camera crews running with the crowd to put a stranger inside the room's energy, alongside a comedic pattern-interrupt ad (the FHL Survival Guide bit) meant to signal the event is different and fun.
03:17 – 05:03
03 · Humor and urgency in the ad creative
Shows a full comedic sketch ad built around a December 31st tax-deadline urgency hook, then a ClickFunnels plug, before transitioning into the actual funnel walkthrough.
05:03 – 09:51
04 · The core event funnel: sales page breakdown
Walks the full sales page top to bottom: above-the-fold get-tickets button, headline with location and dates, an after-movie trailer, the Tony Robbins keynote as the hook, the 'Dear Funnel Hacker' story letter using hook-story-offer, a named 'Radical' identity with stat proof points, a mystery 'Mr. X' speaker, the day-by-day schedule, and the order form with FAQs.
09:51 – 12:15
05 · Order form, partner tickets, and the Day With Dan upsell
Details the order form bumps (a $97 replay add-on and a multi-partner ticket option that pushes average cart value to $1,300), then the post-purchase 'Day With Dan Kennedy' upsell page taken by roughly 40% of buyers, plus its long-form sales letter and thank-you page.
12:15 – 14:46
06 · The ten-month campaign cadence
Explains the yearly rhythm behind the funnel: two months of rest after the prior event, then an after-movie relaunch with an early discount, followed by sequential speaker reveals and a final 30-day sprint of live interviews across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
14:46 – 18:27
07 · The documentary funnel: FHL Story
Introduces fhlstory.com, a free feature-length documentary gated behind an email opt-in, promoted with three separate retargeting trailers and a year-by-year archive of past after-movies and event stats (budget, donations, speaker counts) that keeps re-engaging the list with story instead of a pitch.
18:27 – 20:29
08 · The Backstage Pass funnel: manufactured scarcity
Shows the countdown-gated 'FHL Secrets' page that trades an email opt-in for 10 free raw, unedited speaker presentations delivered one per day over 10 days via an app and email, each one closing with a pitch back to the ticket page.
20:29 – 23:24
09 · Give and take away: the urgency mechanic
States the core urgency lesson of the video: ticket sales are a slow trickle, and the only thing that reliably spikes them is publicly introducing something (a discount, a speaker bonus) and then removing it on a countdown, repeated in waves through the campaign.
23:24 – 24:31
10 · BarnumPT: the swipe file tool
Demos BarnumPT, a free Chrome plugin used to screenshot and archive funnel pages, and offers to import all three funnels shown in the video (FHL, the documentary, and the Backstage Pass) into a viewer's own account for free.
24:31 – 24:50
11 · Close and sign-off
Recaps that the funnel has put over 5,000 people into the room year after year, asks viewers to share their biggest takeaway in the comments, and signs off.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The core Funnel Hacking Live funnel is only three pages: a sales page, an order form, and one upsell, proof that an event funnel doesn't need to be complicated to sell tickets at scale.
- Above the fold on the sales page carries a get-tickets button plus the event's location and dates in large text, because ticket buyers check the page hundreds of times before committing.
- An after-movie, a trailer-style recap of the prior year's event, only works once a business has run the event before; a first event can use a behind-the-scenes planning video instead.
- The sales letter follows hook-story-offer: the keynote speaker is the hook, the personal story of why this is 'the last one' is the story, and a named identity is the offer.
- Naming a hidden speaker 'Mr. X' turns curiosity into a driver of demand, since some buyers assume it's someone they already want to see.
- A partner-ticket add-on, letting a buyer add named partners to their order, lifted average cart value to $1,300 on a $997 base ticket.
- A same-page pre-event mentor-day upsell at $797 gets taken by roughly 40% of ticket buyers and adds close to $800 to the average sale.
- The promotional runway for the event is ten months long and never spikes, it's a daily trickle: 20 tickets one day, 15 the next, then 3, then 18.
- The first promotional beat after an event ends is posting the after-movie two months later with an early ticket discount, before any hard selling begins.
- A documentary funnel, a free feature-length behind-the-scenes film, gets retargeted with three separate trailer ads before the opt-in, then feeds an email sequence telling the event's year-by-year history.
- A scarcity-gated funnel drips 10 free raw speaker presentations, one per day over 10 days, each one ending with a pitch back to the ticket page.
- The single biggest driver of buying urgency isn't a discount, it's publicly taking something away: a discounted price, then speaker bonuses, each removed on a 72-hour countdown.
- Raising the ticket price should happen last, in the final week, paired with a sell-out deadline, not early in the campaign.
Selling out an event takes months, not a moment
THE URGENCY ENGINE
A ticket funnel that fills a five-figure room isn't one persuasive page, it's three coordinated funnels and a ten-month habit of giving something, then publicly taking it away.
02The power of ads: creating an emotional experience
- An ad that lets a stranger feel a room's energy, camera crews running with the crowd, close-ups on faces, sells the experience before anyone reads a word of copy.
- Running feeling-based ads, pattern-interrupt comedy ads, and urgency ads at the same time covers more of an audience's motivations than repeating one angle.
03Humor and urgency in the ad creative
- A comedic sketch ad can carry a real urgency mechanic, like a tax deadline, without feeling like a hard sell, because the joke does the persuading.
- Different calendar moments, a tax deadline, a holiday, each give a legitimate, non-manufactured reason to push a promotion.
04The core event funnel: sales page breakdown
- Put the purchase action above the fold on a page a buyer will revisit dozens of times before committing, rather than burying it behind a long scroll or a 30-minute video.
- State the date and location in large text near the top. If a reader can't find when and where something happens at a glance, they won't come back to find out.
- Give the reader a name for who they'll become by attending, not just a list of sessions, and back it up with real numbers.
- Leaving one credible detail unnamed, a mystery speaker slot, creates more curiosity than announcing every detail up front.
05Order form, partner tickets, and the Day With Dan upsell
- A same-page order bump for the recording or replay captures buyers who are already committed and costs nothing extra to offer.
- Letting a buyer add named companions to their own order raises the average order size more than any single separate upsell page does.
- A pre-event, high-touch add-on for a few hundred dollars more converts well when it's positioned as extra access, not a bigger version of the same ticket.
06The ten-month campaign cadence
- Selling something people can't buy on impulse, an event, a high-commitment course, requires a long runway of small consistent touches, not a single big push.
- Reintroducing new details one at a time, a speaker, a bonus, manufactures a fresh reason to talk about the same offer every few weeks.
07The documentary funnel: FHL Story
- A behind-the-scenes video of the process itself, not just the finished product, makes an audience feel invested before they've bought anything.
- If there's no history to draw on yet, filming the planning and preparation process can stand in for a highlight reel from a past event.
- Retargeting people who watched a trailer with a different trailer, rather than the same ad again, keeps the same message from going stale.
08The Backstage Pass funnel: manufactured scarcity
- Releasing free, unedited raw footage under a countdown timer earns an opt-in that a polished trailer alone wouldn't.
- Drip-feeding one piece of content a day, instead of unlocking everything at once, keeps a new prospect opening emails or notifications for over a week.
09Give and take away: the urgency mechanic
- A straight discount alone doesn't reliably move people to buy now. Publicly taking something away on a deadline does.
- Raise the price last, in the final week, paired with a hard sell-out deadline, instead of using a price increase as an early-campaign tactic.
10BarnumPT: the swipe file tool
- Turning a breakdown of your own funnels into a free downloadable swipe file removes the friction between 'that's a great idea' and actually building it.
- Watching how a funnel builder structures three real pages teaches faster than reading a description of best practices, since a swipe file shows exact copy, layout, and offer stacking in context.
Terms worth knowing.
- Order bump
- A low-friction add-on offered inside the checkout form itself, before the buyer completes the purchase, rather than on a separate upsell page.
- Hook, story, offer
- A copywriting structure where a page first grabs attention (hook), builds an emotional narrative (story), then presents what's actually being sold (offer).
- After-movie
- A highlight trailer recapping a past live event, used to sell tickets to the next one by showing the crowd's energy and the event's outcome.
- Average cart value
- The average total dollar amount spent per completed order, including any bumps, upsells, or add-ons attached to the base purchase.
Things they pointed at.
19:16toolWebby app
Lines you could clip.
05:43
“Events and continuity are the two hardest things to sell in our entire business.”
09:27
“On average, people spend $1,300 when they buy a ticket, even though a ticket's only $997.”
10:42
“Looking back now, I've lost tens of millions of dollars in my ad doing this.”
15:50
“If you can make your audience feel like they're part of the process, they're more likely to want to connect into it.”
20:24
“The number one thing that we found that drives ticket sales is we have to take something away.”
23:24
“That funnel has put over 5,000 people into the room, year after year after year.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogy
hey this is russell brunson and during this video i'm going to show you guys behind the scenes of our event funnel that has we've been using for the last 10 years to fill funnel hacking live i'm gonna show you behind the scenes because a lot of you guys are doing either live events or virtual events and one of the number one questions i get from you guys is how in the world do you use funnels to fill live events again this works for virtual or live events but specifically this is the exact funnels and the ads we've used to fill funnel hacking live year after year after year so if you want to learn how to fill a funnel this video is going to be great for you at the end of this video i'm going to give you all of the pages the links, everything you need to build a model list and build it outside of your ClickFunnels account.
And what's cool about this, this is a very simple funnel that anybody can do, even you. So with that said, let's jump right in. So the very first thing you need to know is to run an event.
for a decade, year in and year out, it's always like, how do you reinvent yourself? How do you be exciting? How do you get people to come back to it?
It all starts with the ads that people are gonna start seeing. And so you'll notice here above, there's a lot of different types of ads we use. Anytime you can get somebody to experience the product, they're more likely to buy it, right?
And so with the ads, I wanna try to put people inside of the room, I want them to feel what it feels like to be there. So this first ad you can see over here, I'll kind of blow it up. I'm not gonna show the audio, just the visuals you can see from this.
As you'll notice, it's like, we're trying to get people like a feeling of like, This is what it feels like when you're in Funnel Hacking Live and you see the energy and the emotion and what you'll notice is like... The shots we're trying to get are either, as you can see, it's like the audience, like we're running in with the audience.
You're trying to get people's eyes. You're trying to get the feeling of them being inside of it, right? Our camera guys are during the event on stage, running with people, getting their awards, all kind of stuff.
They want to experience what it looks like behind the scenes or front of the scenes. And so we're using a lot of visuals because I want people to put themselves in the mindset of like, wow, this is actually happening. This is what it would be like to be in that room, right?
So this type of ad is like a feeling ad. I want them to feel what it feels like to be part of Funnel Hacking Live. Next, we always try to do fun pattern interrupts.
And so, for those who have been there in the past, they see this, they remember some of the funny things, and it makes them wanna come back. And those who haven't, it's like, oh, this is different than other events. This is like really fun.
So, I'll show you guys just a few seconds of the video.
Funnel Hacking Live is an event like no other where thousands of people gather together to be inspired by world -class marketers like Russell Brunson, Tony Robbins, Kalen Fluin, and many more. However, it's also four days of intense training that's going to take everything you've got to come out the other side. That's why we created Funnel Hacking Live Survival Guide.
Four days is a long time. Is it worth it? Okay, now I wish you the whole thing, but obviously...
you don't want to watch a full 30 -minute ad. But you still bring humor in to make it just different and unique, right? Whenever we're building a long -term campaign like this, like, to fill Funnel Hacking Live, it takes us about 10 months to fill it.
So, like, we're hitting different angles. So there's the experiential, there's the comedy. So the question I was asking, like, Like, how do I give people a reason to buy now, right?
And so that's what this ad was for. So to really play into that part of the season, check out part of this ad. What are you doing?
I'm trying to hide my money from the IRS so I can pay less in taxes. Oh, there's a better way, honey. Didn't you hear?
The last Funnel Hacking Live is in Vegas. And when you click the link below to buy a ticket before December 31st, you can write off your entire expense from your taxes. But could I write off my flights to Vegas?
That's what I said. Well, how about the hotel? You can write off everything.
And the ticket to Funnel Hacking Live? Are you even listening to what I'm saying? blackjack, going shopping, and marrying a girl named Sparkles?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't go crazy with it. Okay, so there you go.
So that's kind of just a visual of like an ad again. We're trying to figure out like what's the reason for them to buy now? So there's these things to do around New Year's, there's things we do around Valentine's Day, whatever the holiday, whatever the thing is like, we're looking for different reasons to get people to promote, okay?
So that's the first thing when you're putting together your campaign for live advantages and realizing you gotta hit it from a lot of different angles, a lot of different ads, a lot of creative, different things you'll be mixing up to be able to get the right messaging to get people to wanna come. Now obviously if you're gonna sell stuff online, you're gonna need a good funnel.
But if you want a great funnel, then you're gonna need to use ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world and it's helped more first time entrepreneurs to leave their nine to five job and to launch their dreams than any other company in the world. ClickFunnels was built for dreamers and for doers and you can get your free 14 day trial by clicking on the link in the description down below or by going to clickfunnels .com slash YouTube right now.
ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. Okay, so now you guys see some of the hooks we use to get people in. Now I'm going to walk you guys through the actual funnel.
Now, what's cool about event funnels is they're not that complicated. They're very simple. But the reality is, even though I'm going to show you guys the core event funnel we use to sell Funnel Hacking Live, there's two other funnels we're also using kind of behind the scenes to sell tickets.
And so I'm going to show you guys all those different funnels so you have a chance to see them all, okay? So this is inside of the new ClickFunnels. You can kind of see what it looks like.
You know, page number one. It's a very simple funnel. Page number one, they go and they see the video about the event.
Page number two, then we have an upsell. Oh, and there's an order form, obviously, where they go and they buy them. Page number two, then we have an upsell to get them to buy a VIP ticket.
And then step number three, they ink them. So that's it. Three -page funnel, very simple, very easy.
I'll walk you through each of the pages and some of the intricacies and the important things about each of the pages. Okay, so here's the very first page. And, you know, first page, a couple of things is, again, typically because this is an event.
events of all the things we sell are the hardest thing to sell, right? Because it's not just like, do I want to come to the event, right? It's like, okay, I have to get time off work.
I got to convince my spouse. I got to get flights. I get hotels.
Like it's one of the hardest things to sell in our entire business. Like events and continuity are the two hardest things. And so a couple of things above the fold.
Number one is I want to have a spot where they can quickly, easily get tickets above the fold. That's why there's like get the tickets button way up here. I'm not trying to hide this.
It's not like a VSL product. I'm trying to sell something, you know, like watch the video for 30 minutes. I'm going to pop up an order form.
With this, it's like, I want them. because they're going to see this this page hundreds of times before they commit to it right it's not like a impulse buy it's much more of a i got to consistently get them excited by it right again that's why for funnel hacking live it's a 10 -month cycle to get the event filled okay number two is the headline obviously which is key and what you want to have in the headline above the fold really big are the location and the dates and times number one question gets when is it happening what's the dates what you know and they if they don't see that in front of their face all the time then there's a good shot they are not going to know what's happening and they're not going to sign up okay so above the full way of that and the next thing and this is different if you if this is your very first event ever you can't do this but if this is your second event um what you do with the event footage you create what we call an after movie okay an after movie is like a trailer and so this is an after movie so the sales letter is showing them what happened last year um but then talking about why they need to come this year right and so if you want to see the actual after movie i think that this is one of the things we do best inside of our company our after movies but if you go to funnelhackinglive .com obviously you can go and watch this video when you watch it
feel the energy. . That's what we're trying to get.
Now, if you haven't done the event yet, it's hard to do an after movie, obviously. I had one friend who, he was going to do an event, so he actually rented the studio, brought in a bunch of actors and taught for like an hour and made an after movie like that. I don't recommend that.
You know, you can obviously just do a more traditional video, but you're talking about what you're creating, why it's important, stuff like that. So that's kind of what this is right here. And then, again, above the fold, we have the option for them to buy a ticket.
So all that is above the fold, again, because I'm going to be sending people here so consistently, month after month after month, to fill the event. I don't want to hide those things. Then you have the spot to get tickets, the dates, after movie of what the event's about, and then a spot to have your, then buy tickets right out of the gate.
So those are the core, most important things. Then after that, Then we come down and now it's like, okay, now let's get people excited about who's actually speaking there, right?
So for us, we kick it off with whoever our keynote is. Obviously, Tony Robbins, the keynote for Funnel Hacking Live 10, which is, by the way, the last Funnel Hacking Live. So I'm showing you my secrets now because it's not going to matter because this is the last time I'm doing a big event like this.
So we lead off the keynote from there and then boom, now we start a story to our people, okay? Again. one of the most powerful things we've done inside of our community is giving people a name so it's like dear funnel hacker uh and then from here we start talking to him right it's a letter directly to the person who we're trying to get to come and so we tell the story so what's the story for us this is our last funnel hacking live ever we've done for 10 years i'm telling the story right so there's the story about what we're doing You might remember one of my frameworks I talk about a lot, hook, story, offer, right?
Up here, this is all the hook. Tony Robbins is the hook. Now we transition to the story.
Here's the story. This is the last dance. Is Russell going crazy?
Why is he doing this? So I'm telling the whole story, and then I'm introducing the offer, right? So the offer is like, you're gonna come and learn how to become one of the radicals.
And I talk about what the radical is, then we talk about the awards. So these are all the things that are happening in the event. Again, it's just the long form cells that are showing that.
And then we transition to who are the people that are speaking. And we don't tell all of them, right? One of the biggest things, like curiosity is one of the most powerful tools we have inside of marketing.
So when you're like, here's all the speakers, then a lot of times like, oh, I know that person, I don't. And it could be a draw, but also be like, oh, I've heard these people speak before, right? And so you'll notice.
that we have some people that are secret, right? Mr. X, I have so many of my friends message me, who's Mr.
X, who's Mr. X, right? So I show kind of a view of who the speakers are.
And then from there, we come down and we start walking through the schedule. Okay, here's day number one. Here's who's speaking.
Here's what's happening. Here's what we're gonna talk about. So you get more details about that, right?
You get a picture of angry Russell doing with the fist. I look very intense there. Day two, we tell the stories of the speakers, who's coming through, right?
Because you just need one speaker they want to connect with for them to come and say, okay, I'm going to get my tickets. Day number three, right? Mr.
X, we leave some curiosity there. And so we're showing all different people that are speaking, why they're speaking, all that kind of stuff. And then we come back down after we introduce all the people.
Then come back down to the call to action, which is get your tickets for Vegas. And then we order from right here on the page. Okay, a couple things we do.
Obviously for us, ticket prices are 1 ,000 bucks. They fill it out down here. we add the replays for 97 and it's crazy what percentage people take that so it's a great order form bump also if you want to bring a partner and click on there this takes some custom coding to be able to do this but then they can throw in their partners names right here if they want to bring in one partner three partners five partners right and so what's nice about this is it increases your average cart value how much how many tickets people are buying at one time right because a lot of times they want to take it for them and their spouse their business partner so you give them the bill in order form to do multiple tickets and multiple people take it in fact if you look back here on the order form You can see that the average cart value.
So on average, people spend $1 ,300 when they buy a ticket, even though a ticket's only $9 .97, right? So most people are buying something else in the funnel. And this is the core things right here are the partner plans and then the replays, okay?
And then down here we have FAQs, which are always powerful inside of funnels, but especially event funnels. There's so many things, you know, like are there sponsorship opportunities? What's the event schedule going to be like?
When's the deadline? Like all these kind of things. There you go.
That's all the info for page number one here inside the funnel. Now it turns into page number two. So they just bought their ticket.
they're so excited now what we do is then and this is the first year we've done this we've been doing this for 10 years we finally just We finally have done, you know, finally added this. And looking back now, I've lost tens of millions of dollars in my ad doing this.
But what we decided to do is we decided to add an extra day, a bonus day ahead of time. So Dan Kennedy wanted to do a Dan Kennedy day. So we attached it to the front of Funnel Hacking Live.
So the day before, and so it's basically like, hey, you're coming to Funnel Hacking Live anyway. We want to come a day early and then have my mentor, Dan Kennedy, actually teach you stuff, right? And boom, so I have a video here and be basically saying that.
So again, you notice the page. We congrats them on getting their seats. Before you go, read this page.
It's only available at FHL ticket purchasers. And then how would you like? I can meet my mentor, Dan Kennedy, boom, and then video, and then right here.
And then I wanted to make this very visually, like when we first had this funnel, it was confusing. Like it was in the copy, like Thursday ahead of time. But like, I look at me, I'm very visual.
So I'm like, I want to make sure that people understand this, right? So that's why I came up with this idea for this graphic. Like, okay, so here's the funnel I can have right now.
You come a day early, you get a special day with Dan Kennedy. And right now it's like 40 something percent of people who buy a ticket are buying this upsell. So this one is one of the easiest ways to add an extra.
$800 to your ticket sale just by adding a pre -day, right? And so, yeah, this is one of the most powerful things we've done. I wish I had done this back at FHDL number one, but unfortunately we didn't, right?
And again, you can do it with just above the fold. And then obviously my team and I, we get excited and we like write long form copy as well. So we've got a whole long form sales letter down below.
and then they can get their tickets here to upgrade or they can say no thanks, okay? And then from there, it takes you to the last page, which is just like, thank you, check your email, put it in your calendar, book your hotel, get the room blocked, join the community, all that kind of stuff. So those are the core pages there inside of an event funnel, okay?
And again, they're pretty simple, they're pretty easy. That funnel's something any of you guys can do. Then from there, I wanna transition to...
just because, again, I told you guys that this is like a 10 -month process. And so, yes, this is like the final destination. So we're pushing people to go and get their tickets, but it's not the only thing we do.
In fact... when people join my inner circle, a lot of them join because they want to learn event marketing. How do we fill an event?
And one of the things I tell them is that, again, I told you earlier, like events are the hardest thing to sell. And so it's a consistent grind. We're always talking about it, right?
So what happens is for us, Funnel Hacking Live ends, and then we've got 12 months before the next one. So for the next two months, you're just like catching our breath, breathing. And then two months later, that's when we start.
And so the first thing we do is at that time, we've got the after movie done, right? So the first thing we do is we post the after movie, the headline and a ticket and like, hey, you guys, FHL two months goes amazing. Check out the after movie.
check out what happened if you want your tickets for next year's fhl go get them right now right boom that's the first pass right and we don't get a ton of people but it gets them noting okay it's happening here's the dates and look at the calendar we start the cells start happening right and the goal with an event is just like it's funny because we do huge campaigns all the time, like big promotions, big webinars.
And I'm always in my head thinking, we're going to sell a thousand tickets in one day. We never do. It's a constant, consistent grind.
It's like we sell 20 tickets a day, then 15 tomorrow, then three, and then 18, and then 32, and then 12. And like, it's more of a constant, consistent thing. And so you've got to keep like over time for it to work, right?
So on my podcast, I start talking about Funnel Hacking Live during Facebook Lives. When I'm going on other people's podcasts, like in my email, I'm just keep talking, I keep pushing people back. So the first big push is the after movie.
And usually with the after movie, we have a ticket discount, right? So then after that's done, right? After movie's done, take a discount.
Then we go back and we start asking the speakers, right? And then what happens is now I got to give people a reason to buy a ticket. So what I'll do is I'll start introducing.
Hey, so -and -so, we just got Tony Robbins. Be our keynote. We don't have a ticket yet.
Go get it. And then we go back to the sales page, right? And we'll add the Tony Robbins section with the order button.
Okay, they come back and we get some more speakers. So I keep introducing speakers, introducing. So it's giving me a reason to talk, another reason to talk, another reason to talk, right?
So I keep doing that over and over and over again, right? So that's what starts happening. Then after that, then it transitions.
and we start getting more into like the ticket buying motion, right? So now we start hitting people from different directions, different angles. So like for example, in fact, right now we're 30 days away.
For me filming this about 30 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. Right now I'm interviewing each of the speakers live on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. I go live interviewing them and I push them back to the page, right?
So I keep pushing them back to this core funnel to make the actual transaction happen. But externally I'm doing all sorts of things. The ads, podcasts.
revealing speakers, announcing speakers, all that kind of stuff. Now I'm gonna show you two other funnels that we also use inside of our campaigns to get people to go and actually buy tickets. Okay, the first one I'm gonna show you is called the FHL Story or the Funnel Hacking Live Documentary.
So after like four or five years doing FHO, we actually made a documentary. So obviously a lot of you guys probably don't have a documentary yet, you can't do this, but think about some version of this. It could be a YouTube video, it could be something, but it's trying to tell the story, get people excited about the whole thing, right?
So what we do is we have this page, fhlstory .com, and we drive people, people, right? So as I'm talking about Funnel Hacking Live, I'll come back and every year I do this.
I'm like, hey you guys, we made a documentary showing behind the scenes of Funnel Hacking Live. This weekend, you and your kids just sit down and watch this, right? And we'll do a whole weekend campaign where we drive people here to go watch the documentary, right?
So come here and they can see some of these trailers. These are little trailers for the documentary to get them excited. They put their email address in.
So this is page number one in the funnel, okay? So again, it's just, this is a... getting people to watch a documentary.
So a couple of things, you notice there's three trailer videos here. So when someone hits this page, then we retarget those people with these ads as well. So we'll get retargeted with the trailer video, get them to come back and watch the documentary.
And then retargeted with another trailer video, another trailer video. So all these trailers push back the documentary and they opt in and then takes them to the actual documentary page. And this page is very simple.
There's a headline and then we just let them watch the entire 90 minute long documentary, which tells the story of Funnel Hacking Live. And so when people hear the story about Funnel Hacking Live, they get. bought into the idea, the concept, the whole thing, and then they're more likely to want to actually experience it, okay?
So one of the things I've learned in marketing, if you can make your audience feel like they're part of the process, they're more likely to want to connect into it, right? So I used to do this when I was launching new products.
I would like, in fact, you probably see now as I'm writing new books, right? I tell the stories about the books. I share behind the scenes.
I talk about what's happening. And so people are like, they're on this journey with me and they're as excited about the creation of it as I am, right? So this whole FHL documentary is like to get them to be able to experience the creation with it, right?
And so you can make a version of this where you filmed yourself planning the event, calling the speakers. In fact, we've done that in the years past where I filmed myself inviting every single speaker. We made a video about that and we sent that out to everybody, right?
It's a lot of fun things you can do, but conceptually, do you see what I'm doing? I'm creating a reason to promote and a reason for someone to get a ticket and getting them to feel invested in the event that I'm trying to get them to come to, right? Now, as well on this FHL story, we have a lot of other cool things up here.
Like you'll notice there's the documentary, but over here, this is over the years. Over the years, we have basically in the front... lives over we do is we go back through and we take the after movie right and we post that here so this is the after movie from the very first funnel hacking live ever someone can come and they can watch then over here we come back and they do for like a live 2016.
so when someone when someone comes back here optins uh fhl uh story a couple things happen, right? Number one, obviously, I push them to watch the documentary, but number two, I start putting them in email sequence, like, let me tell you the story behind it.
Here's 2015, what happened? Here's 2016, what happened, right? And we show, like, this is how much, how many registrants, how much the budget was, how much we raised for charity, how many speakers, and we show, like, our keynotes, and, like, we tell the whole story about that one, which is really fun, right?
They can go through, they can see all the different years. This is 2022, right? Same thing, 5 .2 million on the budget, how much was donated, like, keynotes, anyway.
So that's just, again, reasons to talk to them, reasons to send messages, reasons for people to get excited. And when it happens, when they go through this, they have a chance to go watch 10 different aftermovies from Funnel Hacking Lives.
It's more experiences than wanting to come and actually see it. Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? 99 .9 % of the times it's because you have a good funnel but you suck at selling.
If you wanna learn how to sell so your phones will actually convert, then get your tickets to my next Selling Online three -day event by going to sellingonline .com slash YouTube or clicking on the link in the description down below. And the next thing we do is I was like, okay, all these other ones, it's like, these are documentaries, these are stories, but like, I wanna give, I want a funnel that gets people excited about like experiencing Funnel Hacking Live, like seeing what some of the speeches look like, like why should I be in that room, right?
So that's why we added this little backstage pass tab right here. When you click on that, it takes you to a whole nother funnel, okay? So it says, for the first time ever, watch these live.
raw, unedited secrets we found on the cutting room floor. These controversial presentations can't be found anywhere else but here, but you have to hurry and pull them offline when the clock hits zero, right? So they come here and they register and then from there, they register and it's basically what we did is it...
It gets them to watch the documentary if they haven't yet, right? Which is, again, very, very important. And number two, it gives them free speech, about 10 free speeches.
They can hear Frank Kern's speech, Prince EA's speech, Julie's speech. These are some of our favorite speeches. Russell's speech, Dean's speech, Jamie Cross's, Pedro's.
So again, some of our favorite speeches, we plug those in here because they see that, they're like, wow, that's what's happening in Photonautica Live. I need to be part of that, right? So they opt in, and then what happens is, after you put your email address in here.
They put it in there. It takes you to the thank you page. And we're using webinar fuel to basically...
to daisy chain these webinars. So the very first webinar was Funnel Hacking Live, and the next webinar would be the first presentation. So every day for the next 10 days, they're gonna get one of these presentations, okay?
And so they watch it right here. They download this app called Webby. They can download it.
And I actually, right before we got here, check it out, when I did that, it sent me a text as well saying, yes, you finally locked FHL's 10 favorite presentations for free. You can watch the first video here right now. So I click on that, and on my phone, it'll actually take me directly to my phone.
And if I open the app, There he goes, he starts showing me. The actual documentary is starting.
There you go. So it watches, so it pushes the actual documentary here, and then the next day it pushes presentation number one, then number two, then number three, and number four. So it's pushing all those.
And so what happens is they keep seeing these experiences over, over, and over again, and they're more likely to be like, I need to be in that room. Man, that presentation from three years ago was so good. From 10 years ago was so good.
And at each presentation, at the end of it, they hear me pitch them on why they need to go get their tickets at FunnelHackingLive .com, okay? So again, all these different funnels all keep pushing back to FunnelHackingLive .com, FunnelHackingLive .com. He's pushing it back over and over and over again.
The number one thing that we found that drives ticket sales is we have to take something away, okay? What does that mean? Again, I told you as we promote Funnel Hacking Live or any event, it's like, it's never this big, huge rush in sales.
It's always like , right? And so for me, it's like, how do I cause people to go and buy now? And it's really hard to do.
And the only thing we found that gets people to buy right now is you have to take something away. What does that mean? Okay, so during the campaign, if I have a 10 -month campaign or six months or however long it's going to be, I start introducing these things where I'm going to introduce something and I'm going to take it away, okay?
So the very first thing I do is I introduce their ability to buy tickets at a discount, right? So when I first launch the event, tickets are on sale for whatever, $697 or $797, whatever it is. So I introduce the price, I give it to them, and then I take it away.
Basically, we have the watch the after movie, get discount tickets, and then for 72 hours, whatever that is, then it's okay. The price is going up to the normal price, which is $9 .97, and so I take that away, take away the discount price, boom, and now they get the price at $9 .97, okay? Now, the next thing I introduce is I introduce the speakers, right?
So I introduce the speakers, but then what I do is I have every speaker give a speaker bonus, right? So I'm giving them something. So you get your tickets, you can get the speaker speaking, and here's the bonus.
Here's the next speaker speaking, there's the bonus. So I walk through all the speakers, all different bonuses, so I introduce those things. that campaign that's okay you've seen all speaker bonuses these are now available for 72 hours and then we're getting rid of them i'm going to pull them away right and so then we uh we announced like the speaker bones are disappearing and so we're going to take them away in 72 hours we have a whole campaign 72 hours 48 24 12 6 3 hours from now and what happens you see huge uh spike in sales and then we take it away and then the cells drop back down to normal trickle right and so uh and then uh so i'm always introducing things then like we'll introduce like get replaced from the last 10 years events and then we take that away and you're gonna get this that we take away.
But giving them things and taking away is the best way to increase sales dramatically. One of the problems a lot of people do is they try to raise the price too early. I found as soon as you raise price, it's like the last stop is to raise price.
So for me, usually it's the week before and we do a raise price or sell out campaign. So it's like, hey, either we're going to double the price or we're going to sell out whatever happens first, go. And then we do a whole campaign on that.
We get our last big, huge surge of sales before the event actually happens. And then we always sell out. So that's kind of the game plan and what we do.
Okay. Okay, so I want you guys, I'm gonna take you guys over into Barnum, where you can actually get copies of all of the swipe files from these funnels. All right, now Barnum PT is kind of like ChatGPT, and PT Barnum had a baby, and this is a free Chrome plugin we created for you guys to be able to do all your funnel hacking in one spot.
And again, it's a free tool if you go to BarnumPT .com. But what's cool about this is I already used Barnum to go and take screenshots of all of these different funnels that I showed you guys today. So if you want, you can click on the link in the description down below, and what'll happen is I'll actually import the entire swipe file into your Barnum PT account for free right now.
In fact, let me show you what it looks like. Now the way Barnum works is this little plugin right here, you can see there's a little hat, you click on that, and it gives you all these really cool funnel hacking tools you can use. So let's say, for example, you wanna go and get a screenshot of just this section right here.
You can grab it right here, and boom, it takes a screenshot of that part of the page, and it saves it to your Barnum PT account, which is really cool. But like I said, I already funnel hacked all these pages for you, and so what you can do. So this is what it looks like in the back office of Barnum PT.
And you can see this is my swipe file sections. These are all different swipe files, all my favorite funnels. And so I took these three event funnels I just showed you, and you can see all of the swipe files are in here.
So here's the Funnel Hacking Live 10 funnel. You click right here and you can see here's page number one. There's page number.
So you can see all the pages. That way you can use them as a model when you're building out your event funnels. Over here is the FHL documentary funnel.
Again, you can see all the pages for this funnel here. And then number three is the FHL backstage pass funnel. You see all the pages of that funnel.
right here and again you get these for free by clicking link down description below you know import these swipe files into your barnumpt account and again you get barnumpt for free by going to barnumpt .com all right you guys so that is behind the scenes of our funnel hacking live event funnel again that funnel has put over 5 000 people into room force year after year after year if you haven't been to funnel hacking live yet this is the last one coming up very soon at funnelhackinglive .com i would love to know what your biggest aha was you got from this funnel build things you learned things you saw things you can implement let me know in the comments down below i want you to understand that my love language is physical touch, but because I can't hug you through the screen, my second love language is words of affirmation.
So any of you tell me in the comments down below would mean the world to me. That way I know what things you like, what things you want me to show more of. If there's a certain funnel you want me to funnel hack and show you behind the scenes of, let me know.
And that way I can go do those funnel hacks for you guys. Thanks so much. If you enjoyed this video, then over here or here or somewhere, there's going to be a link to another video where you can watch me going behind the scenes of another one of our funnels.
Thanks so much. And we'll see you guys soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title does the selling before the video even starts: a specific, unrounded ticket count attached to a promise to show the actual pages. What follows delivers on it, an unfiltered screen-share walkthrough of the three funnels, the order bumps, and the recurring urgency campaign that fills a five-thousand-person room every year.
Named ideas worth stealing.
07:00concept
Hook, Story, Offer
- Hook — the keynote name that grabs attention
- Story — the personal narrative for why this event exists now
- Offer — the identity and outcome being sold
The sales letter opens with the keynote speaker as a pure attention hook, pivots into a personal narrative about why this is framed as the last event, then lands on the actual offer: becoming 'The Radical.'
Steal forany long-form sales letter that needs a proof-then-pitch structure
08:10concept
The Radical (named identity)
The sales letter defines the reader's identity as 'The Radical,' a status label backed by stated numbers, then argues everything achieved traces back to adopting that identity.
Steal forgiving an audience a name or identity before pitching them anything
20:29model
Give and Take Away
- Introduce something (a price, a bonus, a speaker)
- Announce a fixed window to claim it, usually 72 hours
- Publicly remove it on schedule
- Repeat with a new thing
The recurring urgency mechanic credited as the single biggest driver of ticket sales: give something, then publicly take it away on a countdown, over and over through the campaign.
Steal forany launch or evergreen funnel that needs recurring urgency without a straight discount
14:46list
Three-Funnel Campaign Stack
- Core ticket funnel (sales page, order form, upsell)
- Documentary/story funnel (fhlstory.com)
- Backstage Pass scarcity funnel
Three separate funnels run in parallel over the ten-month campaign, each re-engaging the same list from a different emotional angle (urgency, story, curiosity), all routing back to the same ticket page.
Steal forspreading one offer across multiple funnels instead of asking one page to do all the work
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
24:22link
“click on the link in the description down below, and what'll happen is I'll actually import the entire swipe file into your Barnum PT account for free right now”
Framed as a favor (the work is already done for you) instead of a hard pitch, which fits the video's teach-first tone better than a direct sales ask would.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
