Podcast appearances and mentions of tim castleman

But everything changed for me when I discovered ONE thing during my business journey. Listen to how I handled and overcame feeling like I was in “The Loneliest Job In The World”. On today’s episode Russell talks about why being an entrepreneur is the loneliest job in the world. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode: Why it’s hard to find support and others like you when you first get into the business of being an entrepreneur. Why going to events made it easier for Russell to connect with others like him, and to help him find vendors to do the things he couldn’t. And why it’s so important to go to Funnel Hacking Live, especially when you are first getting started, and why it’s one of the best events in marketing ever. So listen here to find out why you need to attend events, and how you can get your tickets to Funnel Hacking Live. ---Transcript--- Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson and we’re about to start a Marketing Secrets podcast episode. I’m heading to the airport, I almost just got in a wreck, literally live on radio. But here we go, let’s have some fun. Alright everybody, so I’m heading to the airport. I’m about to go do a secret meeting, there’s ten people who got invited to this secret meeting, and I’m not allowed to say anything about it. Is that crazy? I’m the worst secret keeper in the world. People are like, “Hey Russell, can you keep a secret?” No, why would you tell me? I’ve written two books that literally all they are is me sharing every secret I’ve ever heard my whole life. So don’t trust me with secrets, and this is killing me. But I’m going to tell you everything I’m allowed to tell you without getting in trouble. So Brendan Burchard set this whole thing up, I wonder if I’ll get in trouble for that? Crap. Anyway, he messaged a bunch of people and he’s like, “This is a secret meeting of a bunch of titans of different industries, all moving together to plan world domination.” It’s kind of like the illuminati I think, or maybe the Bilderberg group, or I don’t know. Something cool or ninja like that, maybe not. Anyway, so I’m meeting all these cool people and I’m like the internet, software nerd dude who is coming and then there’s all these other legit people who are coming. One of them is like a multibillion dollar a year supplement company, there’s …..I can’t tell, I’m going to be in trouble. Anyway, I’m excited. I’m heading there right now, to the airport to go fly out and hang out with those dudes for a couple of days. And from there I’m flying to Dana Derricks Dream 100 Conference. Dana did me a little favor last year when we were doing the viral video launch, we redid the sales page for Clickfunnels and he flew in and spent a week, actually, he didn’t fly in, he’s scared of planes. He literally found a dude who is like a retired truck driver and paid the guy to drive him to Boise, which is I don’t know, a 30 hour drive. So then he sat in the back of the car and worked on stuff while this dude just drove him, which is insanely cool. Anyway, I love Dana, he learned how to fly since then and he was like, “Oh my gosh, this is way faster and easier.” But a year ago he was scared of airplanes. So he drove to Boise, spent a week with me working on the sales letter, got me in overalls, doing the whole goat dance thing, and it was funny. And in exchange he wanted me to speak at his event this year, which is now next week. So I’m flying out there, talking about some cool things. His whole thing is about the Dream 100, which is exciting. And I’ve been working on the Traffic Secrets book which is coming out, and there’s a whole foundational layer of Dream 100 and how it ties into all the different marketing channels, and I’m going to be sharing that for the first time, live onstage, which I’m excited for. It’s kind of me testing out the concepts from the book and getting people’s feedback for the first time. So it’ll be fun. I’m looking forward to that. So that’s what’s happening with me now, and in that vein, I want to talk about something interesting. I’m heading to this event, why do I still do events? Why do I still go to events? Why do I run events? And the reason why is because my life was changed by going to live events. So I was an internet nerd who sat behind my computer all day thinking I was the stuff, right. I don’t about you, but entrepreneurship is the loneliest job in the world, especially when you’re first getting started because nobody believes in you, depending on who you are. But most of the time spouses don’t believe in you, friends don’t believe, your coworkers. I literally was building my first internet company, I was also painting at a paint place during the summer breaks. And the owner of the paint company was a friend. And I remember I would tell him all the stuff I’m learning about and I was so excited. And at first it was a cool thing, and then I believed it was going to work, so I would talk about my dreams and my visions and what I was trying to create and do, and it’s funny because you think that people would be supportive of that and be like, “Oh, that’s amazing. You should do that.” But guess what? They’re typically not. It got to the point where I would come into work and the owner of that company and other people would start teasing me. They’d be like, “Hey Russell, why are you hear today? I thought you were going to be retired by now. I thought you were going to be a millionaire. Why are you here?” All sorts of stuff like that. My family, my brother who is editing this and his wife who is transcribing this, will laugh at this part. When I was a kid growing up I used to order all the junk mail, and I would read all the junk mail of people out there making money, and I was like, “This is the greatest thing in the world.” And I would always tell everyone, “I’m going to be a millionaire. I’m going to be a millionaire so soon.” And my brothers and sister and everyone would tease me, “Oh Russell, are you a millionaire yet? Are you a millionaire yet?” and I’m like, “No, I’m still working on it. I’m 13, give me some time.” But it’s just funny because you expect initially that everyone is going to be all pumped for you, but you find out that at first they’re not. They’re skeptical, and I think a lot of times it’s because they love you and they care about you and they don’t want you to get hurt, because it’s a scary road. So typically people aren’t like, “Sweet, you should chase these entrepreneurial dreams.” They’re more like, “Dude, you should just do what everyone does, and do the normal path.” They have good intentions, but that’s typically what happens. So entrepreneurship at first is a very, very lonely road. So for me, I still remember I was doing my thing, behind my computer. And back then, this is pre-Facebook, it was hard, there were some forums that you could talk to people. But it was still really, really lonely. I didn’t have anyone to talk about, I was just reading and learning and I’d explain it to my wife and she would look at me and be like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I’m like, “Ahh.” I’d tell other people and they’re like, “That sounds awesome.” But it was just tough. So I remember the very first event I ever went to, I went there and a couple of amazing things happened. First off, I went there and got to the room and I think there was about 4 or 500 people in this room. And I got there and instantly I was just like, “Oh my gosh, there are other people on this planet that think like me. These are my people.” I remember thinking that. I remember sitting in the hallways talking to people and staying up late at night in the hotel rooms until 3 or 4 in the morning, and I was like, “I can’t believe I’m having these discussions with other people who actually care about the same thing I’m talking about.” And we’d geek out on it, talk about the ups and the downs and the struggles and ideas and concepts. It was like plugging in life in my body as I was going through this process. I found my tribe of people and I finally had these connections. And when I left the event it was amazing because I had friends. I had people I could call on the phone and skype and talk about, and it was cool. So that was the first thing, I found my people. Number two is I started finding vendors. I didn’t know where to find people to do all these different things. And I’m in this room with, at the time 500 or so people and I’m meeting people. And some guys like, “Yeah, I do whatever.” And I’m like, “What? I need that.” And then someone’s like, “I do this, I do this.” And I built out my rolodex of people that are able to help me in all the different aspects. And it dramatically sped up my process. And what was cool is because I met them face to face, it wasn’t like I went to their website and I contacted them through a contact form and they didn’t know who I was. It was like, “Hey, remember the other day when we were hanging out?” It was funny for me, they always went to the bar afterwards and I’m like the clean cut Mormon kid who’s like, “I don’t know what to do at a bar.” So I’d go to the bar with them, because I wanted to keep talking with everybody. And it was funny because they’re all drinking and the first time I ordered a water, and again I know nothing about drinking. And the guy came back and is like, “Hey do you need another scotch?” and I’m like, “I don’t even know what that means.” Or vodka, I don’t even know, whatever the drinks are. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, people here think I’m drinking. This is awkward. I don’t want people to think I’m drinking.” Because again, I’m the clean cut Mormon kid. So I was like, I started ordering milk at the bars. It’s so funny. They’d bring me out this big old cup of milk because I was like, “I don’t want people to think I’m drinking.” And so I had this big cup of milk and people would come to me like, “What are you drinking?” I’m like, “Milk.” They’re like, “what?” I’m like, “Well I’m Mormon, so I don’t drink.” And they’re like, “Why would you order milk?” I’m like, “Because I don’t want people thinking I’m drinking.” So I’d have this connection point though. So I’d call people up and be like, “Hey, this is Russell.” They’re like, “Russell?” and I’m like, “yeah, I’m the dude who was drinking milk with you at the bar.” They’re like, “Oh yeah, you’re the Mormon guy.” I’m like, “Yes, I am.” And we had instant connection and rapport so it was easy to start doing deals because they had that connection point, because I had connected with people and met them. So that was the next huge, huge benefit. Number one is I found my people. I had friends now who I could communicate with about this thing I was geeking out about. I had relationships. Number two was I was able to meet with vendors and find all the different pieces that I needed to help grow my company.  Number three is I had a chance to go to an event and actually learn from people, which was really, really cool. So for me it’s like, it was interesting because I would focus on one thing, but the event promoters had brought in different speakers and different topics and it helped round me out and I started to understand. I remember I didn’t know what copywriting was and at my very first event there was this dude, Michael Fortin, who is a great copywriter, talking about copy and conversion. And I’m like, “What? I didn’t even know that was a thing. Who knew I needed a headline? I didn’t.” I remember him talking about conversion and it was funny, I had never split test….I didn’t even know what split testing was at the time. But he was showing all these different split tests like, “I did a red headline versus a blue headline and this is what happened. And I did this versus that….” And I was like, oh my gosh. And I’m taking notes and all the sudden, I went home and I was able to take the tests that he’d figured out and I just modeled it. I remember one of his tests was a red headline out converts a blue headline. I was like, are you serious? So I went back to my little funnels back at the time, I wrote a headline and made it red, and sure enough, guess what? It increased conversions. And I gave myself a raise and I was like, this is amazing. So I started learning these amazing things, coming back and implementing back into my little funnels I had at the time. We didn’t call them funnels back then, we called them mini sites. So I went back and edited all my mini sites. Oh crap, this happens when I’m not paying attention. I’m late to the airport already, I’m podcasting, oh dang, and the freeway is completely jam packed. Alright guys, you are going to be part of a live experience to see if Russell can make it to the airport in time to go to his top secret meeting with the Blilderberg, or the Illuminati. Anyway, we’ll podcast the whole process, because if I don’t make it then we’ll just keep going. It’ll be fun. Alright so anyway, where did I leave off? I met friends, met connections, started learning really cool things in different areas I wouldn’t have ever assumed and thought, brought new concepts and strategies to my mind. Number four amazing thing that happened, and this event is different than Funnel Hacking Live, this event was a multi-speaker event where every speaker spoke and then they sold. This was the first time I had ever seen something like that. Some of you guys have heard me tell this story before about how I got into becoming a public speaker, but I was a shy awkward, nerdy kid who never talked to anyone ever, super introverted. Still am. Anyway, so I’m sitting there at the first event, the first speaker gets up and talks for 90 minutes, I still remember it was Mike Lipman, if you guys don’t know who Mike Lipman is, the dude’s awesome and I still remember to this day, that he taught this concept about amateurs focus on the front end. And I was like, what? And he’s like, “Yeah, these cd’s we sell, it costs me $30 to sell a cd. But guess why I’m winning?” I’m like, “Why?” and he’s like, “Because amateurs focus on the front end. I have this back end thing.” And he started talking about, “Everyone who buys the cd, I call them on the phone and sell them coaching.” I was like, “What?” My whole world just shattered. And he was telling this whole thing and I was like amateurs focus on the front end, my whole business up to this point I’d been focusing on the front end. I don’t want to be an amateur, I want to be a professional. And he’s like, “Professionals need to go in the hole on the front end so they can make their profits on the back end.” And it was like, boom, paradigm shift. And at the end of it he sold a program where he’s like, “Hey, I’ll teach you guys how to do this whole thing I’m doing. Free plus shipping cds and then calling them on the phone and selling them coaching.” And he sold it for like $2 grand and I watched as people in the room started jumping up and running to the back of the room. And I was doing the math, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, that dude just made $65,000 in an hour. I was like, I have never even experienced something that….that dude made more money in an hour than I’d made in the entire last year. And the next guy gets up and he starts speaking about something and I get these epiphany’s and aha’s and he sells something and I’m doing the math, and that guy sold like a $5000 thing. I’m like, 5, 10, 15, 20….that guy made $100 grand, and my whole world, I saw how people were selling it. It’s funny to me now days when people are like, “I went to an event and somebody sold and I was all upset.” And I’m like, “What event was it?” and they’re like, “It’s a marketing and selling event.” And I’m like, “So you went to a marketing and selling event, you had a chance to experience somebody sell something and you got upset about it?” At the 10x event this year, it’s funny because I, some of you guys have heard this story, I went to the event, there were 9 thousand people and I sold 3.2 million dollars in products in 90 minutes. And it’s funny, this event was there to teach people how to sell and I had a couple of people I saw in Facebook afterwards, “I went to the 10x event, but Russell’s presentation was good but then he sold something at the end.” I’m like, “Dude, you paid to learn how to sell and you watched somebody orchestrate a 3.2 million dollar hour. That was worth more than the price of admission. You should be studying and dissecting and diagramming everything I did.” So for me, I’m watching each speaker get up on stage back here. And I’m watching it, and it was seeing behind the scenes of everything I’d dreamt about doing. And that’s how I went on this whole path of I have to learn how to sell from stage and doing these closing techniques and how to tell stories. I learned watching people as well. For those that came to last year’s Funnel Hacking Live, some of you may or may not know this, we only sell one thing at Funnel Hacking Live. So it’s not a multi-day everyone’s pitching and selling, there’s only one thing for sell. And the only thing we sell is the actual Two Comma Club X coaching. We only open it once a year, it’s at the event, it’s the only way to buy it, at the event. So at last year’s event, for those who were there, I did $12 million in sales at the event. So it’s like, if you want to learn how to sell coaching or consulting or anything like that, if you watch the process we orchestrate of the thing, that alone is worth the price of admission times 100. So at the event I learned how to sell. I started watching this thing, I started learning how to break down presentations. So that was another unintended benefit that I had. And it went on and on and on, and the event literally changed my life. So why am I sharing this with you guys? A couple of reasons, one is I’m going to an event this weekend, and I go because I know that transformation happens at events, faster than anywhere else. So I love going to events because I love seeing people have that transformation. If I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids, I would be going to three or four events a week. That’s how important and how impactful they are, both for me as an attendee but also as a speaker. I can have more impact with someone there face to face in a room, than I could ever in a million years on a podcast or webinar, or any virtual means. So that’s a big part, and number is we have Funnel Hacking Live coming up, and this year is going to be amazing. The first year we did it, we had about 600 people come, the second year was 1200, third year was 1300, we sold out in a month. So I was like, we should probably make it a bit bigger. Last year we had about 3000ish, and this year we’re going to have about 4500. We’ve already sold almost 2000 tickets, so there’s not going to be a lot more. But what’s interesting to me, as of today we have 65000 active Clickfunnels members, we have less than 5000 tickets, so it’s like less than 5%, is that the math? I don’t know, whatever the math is, it’s like 5% of all active Clickfunnel members will have a chance to come to it. Yet, it’s a thing that of all the things we do, it’ll have the biggest impact on somebody’s business and on somebody’s life. It’s interesting, and we were talking about this yesterday in the office, we were looking at the Two Comma Club wall. And if you’ve ever seen my pictures, we’ve got the entire bathroom hallway is wallpapered in Two Comma Club awards, now the kitchen is completely wallpapered, there’s so many people that have now hit the Two Comma Club, it’s something like, I don’t 3 or 400 people now. We have the Two Comma Club X program, which means they made over 10 million dollars, and we have a whole wall of just those. I think we have 25 or so people that have hit that now and it’s going up every single day. We were sitting there talking and as we were reading the names off, we know most of the people. And I’m like, “How do I know all these names?” and the interesting thing behind the majority, not all of them, but the majority of all the people who are on the wall is they come to our events. It’s weird. What are the top 1% doing? I’m a big believer in modeling. I look at what is the top 1% doing, they’re going to live events. So what should I do? I should go to the live event. When you come to Funnel Hacking Live, just to understand it, and again our event’s is not like any other event. Ours is closer to a rock concert than a marketing seminar. I’ve gone to a lot of marketing seminars, it’s hard to stay awake at pretty much all of them. Honestly, I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s insane. I don’t know, marketing for whatever reason, people have not done a good job. And I’ve tried to be the person to make marketing fun again and sexy and exciting and bringing the energy and making it what it should be. This is the most exciting topic on planet earth. We should be freaking out, going crazy, jumping and screaming and dancing because we learned something and two things happened. Number one, we make a crap ton of money. Number two, we change somebody’s life. What is more exciting than that? So I think the last, I don’t know, decade or two decades or since the pony express began and we had direct mail, marketing events have always been boring, and I’m trying to make these things exciting so people like me will actually come to them. Because if there’s entertainment and it’s exciting and fun, it’s awesome. So that’s number one, Funnel Hacking Live is different than anything else you’ll ever experience, I promise you that. The speakers we bring, people are like, “I’ve never heard of these speakers, why not?” and I’m like, “Because I don’t bring the dudes and the ladies who are on every single stage speaking. The people who come to our events are the people who are actually doing it. They’re Clickfunnels members, they’re our Two Comma Club winners. They’re people who are doing unique, interesting things that you would never have a chance to see unless you had the bird’s eye view like I do. I’m watching everybody, I’m watching 65000 members like, ‘What are the funnels that are interesting, that are different?” So I’m able to bring those out, so those are the speakers you’re going to hear from. People in different markets and different industries who are doing the most fascinating things that you can look at and you can learn and then bring it back to your specific business. So the learning is second to none because again, most of these people aren’t polished stage presenters, these are people who are your peers, people who last year were sitting in the audience who are now looking at you. For example, I’m excited for all our presentations, one that I’m really excited for, some of you guys know Jamie Cross, Jamie Cross came to Funnel Hacking Live two years ago at the bottom of her journey, struggling financially. She came to Funnel Hacking Live, she had a mission, she had literally a revelation, “I need to start this soap company.” So she starts this natural soap company. She hears a voice in her head saying “You need to do this thing.” And she’s going and she’s doing it and she’s moving forward, but she doesn’t know what to do. She comes to this thing, and she’s out of money and I’m talking about perfect webinars and she’s like, “I’m selling soap, I can’t do webinars for soap. But I was led to come to this thing, so I’m going to do a perfect webinar for my soap.” And she does a webinar and the first one bombs, the second one bombs, the third one bombs, the fourth….she keeps trying and trying and trying and she’s like, “This doesn’t make any sense.” I get tons of people who are like, “Russell, I read Expert Secrets, but I’m selling physical products. It doesn’t make sense.” But she didn’t say, “This won’t work for me.” She said, “How can this work for me? How can this work for me?” And she kept doing the webinar, doing it and doing it, and she kept tweaking it and modifying it, until eventually she came to..she made a five minute webinar, following the exact same process in the perfect webinar, it’s insane. She did a facebook live with this 5 minute webinar, selling a physical product, soap, natural soap that she creates in her basement (well she used to, now she’s big time as it’s been growing really fast) but she did it and finally boom, one of the webinars she did hit. It’s a five minute perfect webinar, selling soap, and it hit. Within like 6 weeks it did $130,000 and it was like boom, off to the races. It’s funny, after that she joined the inner circle, she was all in and what’s crazy, this is the coolest thing in the world, the next year’s Funnel Hacking Live, so exactly a year later, she’s at Funnel Hacking Live, I believe, if I remember this story right, I think it was her anniversary. It’s either her anniversary or her birthday, I think it was anniversary and it was the day at Funnel Hacking Live when we were delivering Two Comma Club awards on stage to everybody, and that morning she came in and she’s like, “We hit, we crossed Two Comma Club, today we literally passed it. It’s our anniversary and it’s this huge thing.” I was like, “Are you serious?” And she’s like, “Yeah, but it’s probably too late to get the award.” I’m like, “Are you freaking kidding me? This is the best time on earth to get the award.” So she went and submitted all the financial numbers, we found it and it was like, oh my gosh she literally hit it to the day that the Two Comma Club awards were being handed out. So we had the chance to have her and her husband onstage and give them this award onstage. So I’m excited because again, two years ago she was an attendee, last year literally at the event during the Two Comma Club awards she earned Two Comma Club, and this year she’s going to be showing, “Hey if you’re selling physical products, here’s my 5 minute perfect webinar.” And she’s going to talk about it, and then she’s literally going to do her 5 minute webinar onstage. How cool is that? And you guys are going to see it. Here’s somebody who did a thousand perfect webinars for physical products to crack the code on how it actually worked, and we’re going to have her explain the concepts behind it, how it worked, what her funnel looks like, and then she’s actually going to do it live for you and you will see her do the webinar. And if you’re selling any product, physical product, digital product, anything, how valuable is that? You’re not going to get that anywhere else on planet earth, and she’s going to come and share it. So for me, I have this bird’s eye view of what’s the fascinating, interesting things that are happening inside our community and we bring those people to share what they’re doing. So that’s what’s going to happen at Funnel Hacking Live, you’re going to learn from these people that are, I can’t even tell you how excited I am for the people that are coming. So that’s number 1 or 2. After that, what’s going to be really, really cool is we’ll have, we’re launching our new Funnel Rolodex, some of you guys already know about that. If you are a service provider and you want to be in our rolodex go to funnelrolodex.com, we’re building out the thing right now, but we’re having literally a network meet up with everyone in the Funnel Rolodex. If you’re like, “I just don’t know how to write copy or do my images or my design. I don’t know how to build a funnel.” All the different sticking points you’re stuck with, cool come with those sticking points and we’ll introduce you to every single person in our community that can do those things for you. It’s like here are the top ten best copywriters, hire any of them. Here’s the best designers, the best programmers, the best funnel builders. They’re all going to be there and you can come and just build your network, build your own rolodex of people that are going to build your funnels for you. So all those excuses you’ve had in the past, why you couldn’t make it work, they’re obliterated. We just exploded them by handing you my entire rolodex of providers you can use, which is awesome. You’re going to be inspired, you’r egoing to have the chance to watch the new OUR film. Last year we showed an OUR film and then we raised over a million dollars for OUR while we were sitting there in the room. But we have the second documentary, it’s going to be live and we’ll have a chance to view that with you guys at the event. I promise you that will shift your perspective, it will shift your mission, it will shift your life work. That’s going to be amazing. I’m going to be sharing stuff I’ve never shared before. The new things we’re doing, the new up and coming things. We’re going to be releasing new features. Last year at Funnel Hacking Live we gave features to a whole bunch of people that are still not live in the app for anybody else. So you get features about 6 months ahead of time before everybody else does, which is exciting. We will sell one thing, so “Oh Russell, is it going to be a pitch fest?” No. But I am going to sell one thing, I’m going to sell the Two Comma Club X program. You’ll have a chance to see how did Russell sell this? Let’s see Russell do a perfect webinar live, and let’s see what happens. Does he get a table rush? Does he bomb? What happens, what doesn’t happen? You’ll have a chance to see that. If you want to get in on our high end coaching program and be a part of the Two Comma Club X program, the only way to do that is to actually, this is the doorway that you have to go through to be able to come. We don’t allow people any other time throughout the year, except for through this door. So you’ll see those things. We’ve got so many cool things. Lindsey Sterling, if you guys know Lindsey Sterling, she was someone on America’s Got Talent, she made it two or three rounds in and the judges were like, “You don’t have enough talent, you’re never going to make it.” She’s a dancing violinist. She’s an artist who creates and does these unique things, but what she does is so different that no one’s ever heard of it. No one’s ever heard of a dancing violinist on America’s Got Talent, that after a little while they’re like, “You’re just not going to make it. Sorry.” And they kicked her off. And instead of being all bummed, she’s like, “You know what, I’ve got something unique here, I’m going to do something.” So she went out there just like any of us and started doing what? Building her following, building her tribe. She had a YouTube channel, she stared doing music videos, started doing some stuff and very quickly she built a following of millions of people and now she’s one of the highest sought after artists in the world, doing dancing violinist. It’s insanely cool. She also has a part with OUR, so there’s this really cool tie-in. So we have Lindsey Sterling coming and I’m going to interview her onstage talking about how she built her whole empire, and then she’s going to do a private concert for us. You are going to see Lindsey perform. And I’ve actually seen her in concert before and it is insane. And the fact that we have her coming is, it’s not just like we could have done a concert and we’ll bring someone in to come sing to you. No, it’s someone who’s, she’s from the same foundation that we’re from. Somebody who is an entrepreneur who has a vision and a dream and was told no, yet she said, “I got told no through all t he typical means, but how do we build this thing online? Let’s leverage YouTube and join ventures and traffic and generation and following and subscribers and let’s do it the grass roots way.” The same way that we’re doing it and she built a huge following and it’s been a huge, successful business. So we’re going to find out how she did that, and then she’s actually going to perform. We’re going to have a chance to see her art up close and personal. I can’t even tell you how excited I am for that, it’s going to be insanely cool. It goes on and on and on, there’s so much stuff you guys. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that because tickets are for sale right now. They won’t be for sale for long. We will sell out, we’ve sold out every year in the past. The first 2000, and I think we only have 2 or 300 left this morning, so this may not be for everyone. But for the first 2000 tickets sold, what we’re doing is, I took all of the last four years of Funnel Hacking Lives, I took all the presentations and I put them on a preloaded MP3 player. And then we got this dude, Tim Castleman who comes to every single Funnel Hacking Live and he takes notes of every presenter, and his notes are insanely good, and then he sells them afterwards for a couple hundred bucks every year. So I went back and acquired the rights back to all the last four years notes, and I put them in this spiral bound binder, it’s 4 or 500 pages of notes of all the speakers. So for the first 2000 people, especially for you guys who love podcasts, because you’re listening right now, it’s literally four years of our events, you listen to the MP3 player, and you have all the notes predone, so you can take notes on his notes of all the last four years. And I want you to do that because I want you to binge listen to it, so when you show up to Funnel Hacking Live, you’re up to speed and you’re able to hit the ground running. So much magic inside the MP3 notes. Literally we had the first binder shipped to our office yesterday and I was holding it. I’m holding this fat, huge binder of all the notes and this MP3 player and I was like, “I would have paid conservatively $5000 for this alone.” And we’re literally giving it to the first 2000 for free. So if you’re coming, you should get that gift because it’s just insane, but there’s just 2000. And we pre-sold it, 755 tickets sold before the event started, and I think we’ve sold like 6 or 700 now, maybe it was 800. Whatever the numbers are, but we only got 2000 physical copies, so the first 2000 people will get that shipped out as well. So if I were you and you’re like, “Dude, I want to listen to 800 hours of funnel building stuff.” Even if you didn’t come to the event, go buy a ticket to the event just for that alone, but you should come to the event because it’ll change your life. Anyway, that’s the process you guys. The last thing I want to mention is so far before the event has actually started, I’ve already spent over a million dollars to put this party on for you. Now if I had a friend who was obsessed with marketing and funnels, and you’re obsessed with it as well, and he spent a million dollars to throw a party and all you gotta do is cover the thousand dollar ticket cost to just come to the party, I would totally come. And that’s not some kind of exaggeration guys. We feed you guys at all the events. I had to prepay for the food. I had to prepay for Lindsey, she doesn’t come free. I had to prepay for the speakers. We’re at a million dollars right now before the event’s even started just to throw this party for you. So if you’re trying to convince your spouse or your company or your friends, be like, “This is the deal. One of my friends, he’s this insane funnel building, marketing nerd and he’s throwing a party. He spent a million dollars on this party so far, I have to go experience it.” If you tell somebody that, if they don’t say, “You definitely should go to that.” They’re crazy, right. So for you guys, hopefully you hear that and you’re like, “Yes, I’m in. I’m going to go to this party because one of my friends, (because I’m your friend), my friend Russell, he spent a million dollars to throw a party, I’m not going to miss it.” We only throw a couple of parties a year, and they’re worth coming to. Last year we had Funnel Hacking Live, which was insane. And then we did, we threw a bubble soccer, we set a Guinness book of world record event and we had people at that one too. We only do one or two parties a year and this is the big show you guys. I promise you that if you come and you play full out and you experience it, this will change your life. I know people throw that around all the time, but I’m not kidding. Ask anyone who came last year, ask anybody who has been to any of our Funnel Hacking Live events, it’s not a typical event. I have friends with events that are happening at a similar time, and their events you will learn good content, I promise you will. But this is more than that. This is a life transforming experience and we do it different. We do it special, we make it worth your time. So that’s it you guys. It’s going to be in Nashville Tennessee this year. I promise that we will put on a show that you will never forget, and it will change the trajectory of your life. It’s funny, when I went to Tony Robbins date with destiny, he said something kind of similar, and I didn’t know if…I was like, “cool, yeah. I’m going to go to an event.” And what’s interesting as he talked about it, he’s like, “This event will make a shift where the focal point where you’re going is just different. What’s going to happen, if you look at a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, your entire destiny…” You know those things where small hinges swing big doors, this little small hinge will change your trajectory. Then you look at where you end up a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, a decade from now and beyond, it’ll radically shift the trajectory of your life from this point forward and forever. I promise you that. And if not, let me know, I’ll give you your money back. Because seriously, I’m not in this for the money, hopefully you guys know this at this point. I’m in this because of the transformations. If I can get you to the event and I can give you the same transformational experience that Jamie Cross had, where she’s struggling and a year later she’s got a Two Comma Club award, and now a year later, she’s getting picked up by, her company is growing so fast, and it started with the shift, the date with destiny, the thing that we’re going to be doing at Funnel Hacking Live. So this is your official invitation guys, I want you there, you need to be there, you want to be there. Make it a priority, if you’re getting married that weekend, tell your spouse, “We need to move it. We can get married any weekend, but Funnel Hacking Live only happens this weekend.” If you’ve got some other thing happening, shift it, move it, you need to be here and if you’re not I guarantee you’ll be kicking yourself as you’re watching the four or five thousand people that are  with me experiencing this, as you’re seeing them on social media crying and shifting and changing and growing. And then you’ll see as their businesses explode. I promise you will be kicking yourself forever if you are not there. So this is your official invitation, now is the time. I’m almost to the airport, I went on back roads, which I’m actually going to get there almost an hour early. So we did pretty good. So there you go guys. Funnel Hacking Live tickets are on sale now. Go to funnelhackinglive.com, funnelhackinglive.com, www.funnelhackinglive.com, go get your tickets. Get one for you, get one for your spouse, get one for your community. We have a lot of people right now who are bringing their entire communities. They go ttheir tickets and they go into their Facebook group and they’re like, “Hey guys, we’re all going together.” And they’ll get 10, 15, 20 people all come with them together, that way it makes the experience even more fun. I highly recommend that. Find other people who are just like me, just like you, people who are trying, who are entrepreneurs, you’re friends that have the same vision as you, bring them. If you’ve got a spouse that doesn’t have the vision yet, bring them. I promise you, by then end of day number one your spouse will be so brought into your vision and your mission that moving forward everything else will become easier for you. I know a lot of us who get involved in this, that’s the hardest thing, getting your spouse on board. But if you have them in the room and they see the impact that you can make with your talents and your hobbies, it’ll get them onboard as well. So bring your spouse. If you want to bring your kids, bring your kids. I have actually something really exciting for…anyway, I can’t talk about that yet. I’m so bad at secrets, I’m the worst. Anyway, if you’ve got kids, something cool is coming soon. And just a bunch of other cool things. So please go to funnelhackinglive.com, I promise you guys, you will love it. Get your tickets at funnelhackinglive.com. Alright guys, I’m at the airport, I gotta bounce, appreciate you all. Thanks so much for all you do, for your support, for listening, for subscribing, for sharing, for commenting. Please go leave feedback and comments, I love to hear them and read them. With that said, I will see you at the Funnel Hacking Live, get your tickets now. Bye everybody. Funnelhackinglive.com. See you guys soon.

In this episode, Tim talks about the aftermath of Alicia Castleman abandoning their marriage, his $10,000 legal fight over a dog, and how he missed the meeting of a lifetime as a result.

Tim Castleman returns and tell you about a sudden death, the end of an 11 year relationship , abandonment issues, previews his new Alicia Castleman voice and so ... so ... so much more

Tim Castleman reveals his secret for selling more than a thousand copies of his first product within a few hours... without a big list or affiliate promotions. He also busts some common myths about what's really happening at the biggest marketing events..

A quick glimpse behind the WHY of this funnel… On today's episode Russell goes on a mini tour of his new office and podcasts from two conference rooms and the kitchen. He talks about how you need to watch a magician's hands to figure out what he's doing, and how that relates to being a marketer. Here are some of the cool things to listen for in this episode: What it means to be a magician in marketing. Why Russell buys other people's products that he doesn't need, and why you should buy his Marketing In Your Car MP3 player, even if you don't need it. And why it's good to grow a business organically, but it's better to push it along faster by buying ads. So listen below to find out why you need to be looking at a magicians hands instead of getting distracted by what he wants you to see. ---Transcript--- What's up everybody, this is Russell, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Now this is a special episode because I'm not in my car. In fact, I'm at the brand new office. We moved in this week and it's insanely cool and I'm not only in the office, I'm in an actual conference room, which is the first thing I've done in this conference room is actually talk on this podcast. I'm looking out and everybody is working. We all have standing and sitting desks. So everybody out here working standing and sitting. So exciting. Anyway, if you haven't seen yet, I've been Snapchatting and I'll probably Facebook Live Friday. Friday we get the big Clickfunnels sign in the office, which looks so cool. So as soon as that's here I'll Facebook Live this whole place so you guys can see it. You can see the bookshelf and everything. What's cool, Monday and Tuesday we had a certification event here in Boise. We were supposed to do it here in the office initially, but we didn't think we were going to get the office done in time, so we moved it back to a hotel. Then Tuesday, at certification I make everyone do a hack-a-thon, which they stay up  all night building funnels. Part of the cult-ture that we're trying to do is you need to get crap done, you just pull an all nighter and just get it done. So we taught them that and they did it. And then on Tuesday they went and presented all their funnels and everything and we gave away awards and it was cool. Tuesday morning I woke up like, man these guys have been killing themselves. How cool would be if they actually got to come to the office. So we chartered a bus, had the bus drive to downtown Boise, pick them up and bring them back. And now they're……. Anyway, they came to the office last night and it was so much fun to have everyone here and showing off the new stuff. People were like, “Is that really your bookshelf? Are those all your books?” And I'm like, “Yeah, I'm kind of a nerd. Sorry about that.” Anyway, it was so much fun. So now, today we're here. This is the first day we'll actually work the whole day. Everybody's here and it's exciting. One big fear I have is we have our FHAT event coming up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week in the big conference room which is amazing. But it's got echo. I don't know if you hear echo in here. This is the conference room and it's kind of echo in here as well. We have a sound engineer coming to try to figure out how to put up paneling and stuff so we won't have those issues. But the problem is it's like 2 to 4 weeks to get those things fixed. So that kind of stresses me out a little bit on that side. Hopefully we get some of it figured out. We've got people coming and they're going to be hanging up sound panels and things like that in the conference room. Anyway, someone just came in the conference room so I'm going to walk out here. Now I'm going into the kitchen. The kitchen also has got a lot of echo in here as well. But we designed this because we do a lot of videos in the kitchen, so we made it a really nice kitchen so we can do videos and stuff in here. So it should be pretty office. So now I'm wandering. So fun to wander around the office, now I'm in the conference room. So anyway, I wish you guys could see what I'm doing, probably more interesting than hearing me talk about it. But it's so exciting. So what I want to talk about today, yesterday the Marketing In Your Car free MP3 player offer, we were paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player, and I think it ended last night at midnight. It's been fun watching a lot of our affiliates promote it and then seeing people's feedback. Tim Castleman, one of my buddies, he's been promoting it. He's like, “Just go buy it, you guys. Why are you not buying it?” and people are commenting why they're not buying it. It made me laugh so hard. These are all people trying to learn marketing. And they're trying to figure this whole thing out. They're studying, learning, following Tim, following me, following people and they're like, “that offer didn't make sense to me. I don't really want an MP3 player. I need to subscribe for free on iTunes.” All these things, all these reasons why they wouldn't buy. It made me laugh because we've sold a lot of them. I think we've sold, we're almost at 4 thousand sold, which is cool. What we're finding is for every single person who's buying an MP3 player, probably 5 or 6 people are subscribing to the podcast, even if they're not buying. So if you watch, I don't know if you guys are watching, but if you go to iTunes right now, and you go to the business section, we've been in the top ten ever since this thing has launched. The business section is hard to get in the top ten. Tony Robins is not in the top ten. Eric Ward is not in the top ten. All these legends are not in the top ten. Neil Patel is not in the top ten, we've been in the top ten for the last 2 or 3 weeks now. And it's like, I want, since you guys are my best people. You're hanging out, you're here listening, I want to reveal, show the curtain, behind the scenes of what's happening. You know how they say, magicians are doing a trick, but he's distracting you with stuff so you don't see what's actually happening, so you don't see his hands move when he's doing whatever that thing is that makes the trick possible. So he's doing misdirection stuff and leading you places and stuff like that. With marketing, it's kind of fun, my job. Most businesses is, it's like you're doing marketing, selling your product. Whereas, I'm doing marketing, selling my stuff. But for those who are watching, I'm hoping you are watching. Watching my hands, watching what the magician is actually doing because that's the most valuable lesson. Me giving my MP3 player, pre-loaded episodes is kind of a cool little thing, but why did I do that. Why am I doing that? What's the magician actually doing and watching that. I always tell people, I buy everybody's products. Usually I do not go through most of the products, but I'm buying because I want to see what the magicians are doing. What do they learn? If you saw the stuff I'm buying. You'd be like, “Russell, why are you buying another weight loss course?” and I'm like, “Because the weight loss dudes are really good at funnels.” “Why are you buying a thing on stocks? You don't even know what the stock market is?” I'm like, “I know, I have no idea how to do stocks. I don't even want to know how to do stocks. But the stock guys are really good at funnels, so I want to watch what they're doing.” I want to see what the magician is doing. So for those who are listening and those who are paying attention, and I hope you guys are paying attention, is watch these processes. Don't say, “I didn't buy Russell's MP3 player because I don't want an MP3 player. I'd never listen to it anyway.” Dude there's a lesson here. I'm not just doing these things for fun. I'm creating things and testing things and if they're working, you'll see me keep pushing them and keep pushing them. I look at right now, our podcast has grown insanely over the last little bit. We're in the top ten, we're consistently in the top ten, which is amazing. We're getting tons of, I mean tens of thousands of downloads a day, which is amazing. And it's because these things we're doing, if you're not watching, if you're not looking you will miss it. It was kind of cool, I did a podcast interview last week with Paul Colligan, who's the podcasting guy and he'll be, I think it goes live to day. And Paul is someone who's watching the magician. He messaged me like, “Dude, I've seen your podcast funnel, I gotta know what and why.” It was really cool. A really cool podcast with him, kind of explaining. All of his followers are podcasters. Podcasters are out there and they're trying to create good content to organically grow. And I'm like, “Organic growth is good, but it's hard.” I did a podcast every day for 3 years. We had 300+ episodes while I was organically growing it, it was good, we got followers, we got traction, but it wasn't until I created something that I could stimulate with paid ads that it grew dramatically. So for you guys, looking at that, look I can go on a blog all day long, but if I can't stimulate with paid ads, man that's a long time. Same with podcasting or whatever it is for you. But for this funnel, for the one you guys went through, a lot of you guys to get here. That was the vehicle, was the podcasting funnel. And it was a way for me to be able to pay for ads. And he, Paul basically was like, “There's nobody that can do this. You're the only person that can pay for subscribers profitably.” I'm like, “Yeah, because of the model.” Anyway, I hoping you guys again, are watching the magician's hand. Because prior to that we'd try to grow Marketing In Your Car and what we were doing is we were buying Facebook ads, trying to get people to subscribe. I'd ask John, “How many subscribers did we get from the Facebook ads?” And he's like, “I have no idea. There's no way to track it through iTunes.” He was like, “I'm basically just crossing my fingers and hoping that somebody subscribes.” We have no way to track it and test it. We're just dumping money at it and crossing our fingers. That's a horrible way to do business, stupidest thing in the world. That's what branding guys do. That's what companies that are backed by VC cash do. They just burn cash and they're stupid. Funnel hackers like us, we're smarter. We're looking at the ROI and it's like, I had to create this thing to be able to create the ROI. So what's cool about it, right now we're driving traffic through these funnels. We're paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player. But we know our metrics and we're profitable on the front end. I think we're close to about $30, might be a little lower than that. Somewhere around $30 we're making. And we're spending $20 to affiliates, but our ads are making about $10 – 15 to sell an MP3 player. If you look at that, we pay for the ads, we pay affiliates, get the MP3 player, we're profitable so we actually make a little money there. Not a lot, but enough to cover our costs. Then after we've covered those costs, like I said, a big percentage of people come to the page, never buy the MP3 player, but then subscribe to the podcast. And everyone who's, again iTunes doesn't give us the best numbers possible. But based on my guestimations, for every single person that's subscribing to, or that's buying the MP3 player, we're getting 4 or 5 people that are subscribing to the podcast as well. So I'm paying for that growth profitably. It doesn't cost me anything. So anyway, I just wanted to kind of lay that out for the guys who are paying attention and just thinking through that. Because organic is good, but if I could stimulate that with paid and be profitable with it, that's great. That's how I build a company fast. That's how I do it without VC cash and all the other crap we've been told you need to do to build a company. You don't if you're smart, the market will back you. They'll cover for you.  That's the magic of funnel hacking, what we all do. With that said, you guys. I appreciate you. I'm going to bounce. Get back to work and probably do some more podcasts from the office, find different cool locations and go from there. Thanks everybody. Talk to you guys soon.

A quick glimpse behind the WHY of this funnel… On today’s episode Russell goes on a mini tour of his new office and podcasts from two conference rooms and the kitchen. He talks about how you need to watch a magician’s hands to figure out what he’s doing, and how that relates to being a marketer. Here are some of the cool things to listen for in this episode: What it means to be a magician in marketing. Why Russell buys other people’s products that he doesn’t need, and why you should buy his Marketing In Your Car MP3 player, even if you don’t need it. And why it’s good to grow a business organically, but it’s better to push it along faster by buying ads. So listen below to find out why you need to be looking at a magicians hands instead of getting distracted by what he wants you to see. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody, this is Russell, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Now this is a special episode because I’m not in my car. In fact, I’m at the brand new office. We moved in this week and it’s insanely cool and I’m not only in the office, I’m in an actual conference room, which is the first thing I’ve done in this conference room is actually talk on this podcast. I’m looking out and everybody is working. We all have standing and sitting desks. So everybody out here working standing and sitting. So exciting. Anyway, if you haven’t seen yet, I’ve been Snapchatting and I’ll probably Facebook Live Friday. Friday we get the big Clickfunnels sign in the office, which looks so cool. So as soon as that’s here I’ll Facebook Live this whole place so you guys can see it. You can see the bookshelf and everything. What’s cool, Monday and Tuesday we had a certification event here in Boise. We were supposed to do it here in the office initially, but we didn’t think we were going to get the office done in time, so we moved it back to a hotel. Then Tuesday, at certification I make everyone do a hack-a-thon, which they stay up  all night building funnels. Part of the cult-ture that we’re trying to do is you need to get crap done, you just pull an all nighter and just get it done. So we taught them that and they did it. And then on Tuesday they went and presented all their funnels and everything and we gave away awards and it was cool. Tuesday morning I woke up like, man these guys have been killing themselves. How cool would be if they actually got to come to the office. So we chartered a bus, had the bus drive to downtown Boise, pick them up and bring them back. And now they’re……. Anyway, they came to the office last night and it was so much fun to have everyone here and showing off the new stuff. People were like, “Is that really your bookshelf? Are those all your books?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m kind of a nerd. Sorry about that.” Anyway, it was so much fun. So now, today we’re here. This is the first day we’ll actually work the whole day. Everybody’s here and it’s exciting. One big fear I have is we have our FHAT event coming up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week in the big conference room which is amazing. But it’s got echo. I don’t know if you hear echo in here. This is the conference room and it’s kind of echo in here as well. We have a sound engineer coming to try to figure out how to put up paneling and stuff so we won’t have those issues. But the problem is it’s like 2 to 4 weeks to get those things fixed. So that kind of stresses me out a little bit on that side. Hopefully we get some of it figured out. We’ve got people coming and they’re going to be hanging up sound panels and things like that in the conference room. Anyway, someone just came in the conference room so I’m going to walk out here. Now I’m going into the kitchen. The kitchen also has got a lot of echo in here as well. But we designed this because we do a lot of videos in the kitchen, so we made it a really nice kitchen so we can do videos and stuff in here. So it should be pretty office. So now I’m wandering. So fun to wander around the office, now I’m in the conference room. So anyway, I wish you guys could see what I’m doing, probably more interesting than hearing me talk about it. But it’s so exciting. So what I want to talk about today, yesterday the Marketing In Your Car free MP3 player offer, we were paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player, and I think it ended last night at midnight. It’s been fun watching a lot of our affiliates promote it and then seeing people’s feedback. Tim Castleman, one of my buddies, he’s been promoting it. He’s like, “Just go buy it, you guys. Why are you not buying it?” and people are commenting why they’re not buying it. It made me laugh so hard. These are all people trying to learn marketing. And they’re trying to figure this whole thing out. They’re studying, learning, following Tim, following me, following people and they’re like, “that offer didn’t make sense to me. I don’t really want an MP3 player. I need to subscribe for free on iTunes.” All these things, all these reasons why they wouldn’t buy. It made me laugh because we’ve sold a lot of them. I think we’ve sold, we’re almost at 4 thousand sold, which is cool. What we’re finding is for every single person who’s buying an MP3 player, probably 5 or 6 people are subscribing to the podcast, even if they’re not buying. So if you watch, I don’t know if you guys are watching, but if you go to iTunes right now, and you go to the business section, we’ve been in the top ten ever since this thing has launched. The business section is hard to get in the top ten. Tony Robins is not in the top ten. Eric Ward is not in the top ten. All these legends are not in the top ten. Neil Patel is not in the top ten, we’ve been in the top ten for the last 2 or 3 weeks now. And it’s like, I want, since you guys are my best people. You’re hanging out, you’re here listening, I want to reveal, show the curtain, behind the scenes of what’s happening. You know how they say, magicians are doing a trick, but he’s distracting you with stuff so you don’t see what’s actually happening, so you don’t see his hands move when he’s doing whatever that thing is that makes the trick possible. So he’s doing misdirection stuff and leading you places and stuff like that. With marketing, it’s kind of fun, my job. Most businesses is, it’s like you’re doing marketing, selling your product. Whereas, I’m doing marketing, selling my stuff. But for those who are watching, I’m hoping you are watching. Watching my hands, watching what the magician is actually doing because that’s the most valuable lesson. Me giving my MP3 player, pre-loaded episodes is kind of a cool little thing, but why did I do that. Why am I doing that? What’s the magician actually doing and watching that. I always tell people, I buy everybody’s products. Usually I do not go through most of the products, but I’m buying because I want to see what the magicians are doing. What do they learn? If you saw the stuff I’m buying. You’d be like, “Russell, why are you buying another weight loss course?” and I’m like, “Because the weight loss dudes are really good at funnels.” “Why are you buying a thing on stocks? You don’t even know what the stock market is?” I’m like, “I know, I have no idea how to do stocks. I don’t even want to know how to do stocks. But the stock guys are really good at funnels, so I want to watch what they’re doing.” I want to see what the magician is doing. So for those who are listening and those who are paying attention, and I hope you guys are paying attention, is watch these processes. Don’t say, “I didn’t buy Russell’s MP3 player because I don’t want an MP3 player. I’d never listen to it anyway.” Dude there’s a lesson here. I’m not just doing these things for fun. I’m creating things and testing things and if they’re working, you’ll see me keep pushing them and keep pushing them. I look at right now, our podcast has grown insanely over the last little bit. We’re in the top ten, we’re consistently in the top ten, which is amazing. We’re getting tons of, I mean tens of thousands of downloads a day, which is amazing. And it’s because these things we’re doing, if you’re not watching, if you’re not looking you will miss it. It was kind of cool, I did a podcast interview last week with Paul Colligan, who’s the podcasting guy and he’ll be, I think it goes live to day. And Paul is someone who’s watching the magician. He messaged me like, “Dude, I’ve seen your podcast funnel, I gotta know what and why.” It was really cool. A really cool podcast with him, kind of explaining. All of his followers are podcasters. Podcasters are out there and they’re trying to create good content to organically grow. And I’m like, “Organic growth is good, but it’s hard.” I did a podcast every day for 3 years. We had 300+ episodes while I was organically growing it, it was good, we got followers, we got traction, but it wasn’t until I created something that I could stimulate with paid ads that it grew dramatically. So for you guys, looking at that, look I can go on a blog all day long, but if I can’t stimulate with paid ads, man that’s a long time. Same with podcasting or whatever it is for you. But for this funnel, for the one you guys went through, a lot of you guys to get here. That was the vehicle, was the podcasting funnel. And it was a way for me to be able to pay for ads. And he, Paul basically was like, “There’s nobody that can do this. You’re the only person that can pay for subscribers profitably.” I’m like, “Yeah, because of the model.” Anyway, I hoping you guys again, are watching the magician’s hand. Because prior to that we’d try to grow Marketing In Your Car and what we were doing is we were buying Facebook ads, trying to get people to subscribe. I’d ask John, “How many subscribers did we get from the Facebook ads?” And he’s like, “I have no idea. There’s no way to track it through iTunes.” He was like, “I’m basically just crossing my fingers and hoping that somebody subscribes.” We have no way to track it and test it. We’re just dumping money at it and crossing our fingers. That’s a horrible way to do business, stupidest thing in the world. That’s what branding guys do. That’s what companies that are backed by VC cash do. They just burn cash and they’re stupid. Funnel hackers like us, we’re smarter. We’re looking at the ROI and it’s like, I had to create this thing to be able to create the ROI. So what’s cool about it, right now we’re driving traffic through these funnels. We’re paying affiliates $20 to give away a free MP3 player. But we know our metrics and we’re profitable on the front end. I think we’re close to about $30, might be a little lower than that. Somewhere around $30 we’re making. And we’re spending $20 to affiliates, but our ads are making about $10 – 15 to sell an MP3 player. If you look at that, we pay for the ads, we pay affiliates, get the MP3 player, we’re profitable so we actually make a little money there. Not a lot, but enough to cover our costs. Then after we’ve covered those costs, like I said, a big percentage of people come to the page, never buy the MP3 player, but then subscribe to the podcast. And everyone who’s, again iTunes doesn’t give us the best numbers possible. But based on my guestimations, for every single person that’s subscribing to, or that’s buying the MP3 player, we’re getting 4 or 5 people that are subscribing to the podcast as well. So I’m paying for that growth profitably. It doesn’t cost me anything. So anyway, I just wanted to kind of lay that out for the guys who are paying attention and just thinking through that. Because organic is good, but if I could stimulate that with paid and be profitable with it, that’s great. That’s how I build a company fast. That’s how I do it without VC cash and all the other crap we’ve been told you need to do to build a company. You don’t if you’re smart, the market will back you. They’ll cover for you.  That’s the magic of funnel hacking, what we all do. With that said, you guys. I appreciate you. I’m going to bounce. Get back to work and probably do some more podcasts from the office, find different cool locations and go from there. Thanks everybody. Talk to you guys soon.

Tim Castleman ends the Two Drink Tim Podcast. Listen to his reasons why, what his plans are for the future, and more.

Tim talks about being left for dead in Montreal, and how he is being sued for a million bucks by Kevin O'Connor & The Offline Assistant Company

Tim talks about his recent trip to Austin for Ryan Levesque's Ask Intensive, hotel wake up calls, and name drops a bunch of cool people

Tim shares how he plans to keep his business running this summer while he's taking time off. He also shares a road story from Uncle Lucius.

Tim talks about why he's taking a summer vacation from work, talking himself off of a ledge, and a Two Drink Tim Birthday bash ...

Hear the highlights and lowlights of what I've been up to in 2016. Also get some new music and tech recommendations from me while professing my case for being Grady Spencer's new BFF.

Tim Castleman sheds light on why you don't need mega-star results to get started as a marketer... and how to guarantee yourself the best shot at success

For the last 10 years Ryan Montbleau toured across the world surrounded by friends and protected in the solace of their tour van. When life called his bandmates away he was left alone, with only his thoughts and a hazy way forward. Over the past few years he's started to put his life, his music, and his band back together all while trying to find time to find calm and peace in this crazy world. This is his story ...

Rohit Bhargava has the ability to spot emerging ideas and predict the future which has lead him to Ted talks, the Amazon, NY Times, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. I had him stop by to share how to think different, create ideas, and predict the future. He also shares his writing process, and his productivity tips for getting so much done.

When you talk about Satan and Hilter being Eskimo brothers, gay marriage, and breaking the 7 figure mark all in within 30 minutes ... well you're going to hell. Or at least I am, and so it anyone who listens to this week's episode. Listeners beware :)

Lead singer of Uncle Lucius, Kevin Galloway stops by and talks about pawn shop roulette, 10 years on the road and what Willie Nelson and famous philosophers have in common.

Tim interviews the lead singer of Flatland Cavalry (along with a guest appearance by Laura Jane) on his crazy first year in the music business. Listen to how faith, a drunken frat party, and leaping before they looked helped these guys form a band, write their first record, and start the long journey ahead. Lots of golden nuggets in this one.

In this episode, Tim talks about the one thing you need to protect as if your life depended on it. Tag: Rachel Rofe, Robert Stukes, Frank Kern, Luke Jaten

In this episode Tim talks about how to deal with people who are trying to keep you down and below your potential, perception vs reality and what really happened when he first got started.

A very special and surprise musical duo stops by and talks about life on the road, where the music business is heading and the gig they've never talked about before. If you want an indie and inside look at what bands are doing today this is for you.

In this episode Tim talks about shopping with women, the state of parenting, getting hate mail from his list and who you should listen to when it comes to your business.

In this episode Tim talks about the grind of trying to help people and how it causes a lot of great people to lose their way in the process. It doesn't matter if you're on the product creation or consumption side of the business ... you need to hear this.

What do you do when someone who abandoned you 5 years ago suddenly appears back in your life? How do you overcome doubt, self hate, and insecurity ... we talk about it all on this special 4/20 edition of the Two Drink Tim Podcast.

In this edition of BWN, I speak with Internet Marketer, Author and Podcaster, Tim Castleman. He talks about how he got started in internet marketing, the biggest reasons why most people NEVER make money online and he walks us step by step through his process in creating a best selling Kindle book.

In this episode Tim talks about the American Dream and how it is turning into a nightmare for those who follow it. He also shares how to escape from it and why you SHOULD be looking at what everyone else is doing right now.

Today I will be talking to Tim Castleman. He did something amazing. He wrote two 8k words in under 8 hours. Both books became Amazon bestsellers and ended up generating him over $3k in royalties in just 2 months from the launch + hundreds of glowing reviews! Tim's Story been doing online marketing since 2009. He found a partner with whom he worked for a year. And then, when they parted he had his lowest times of his life. He almost quit and was already thinking of going back to 9-5 job. That was when his friend contacted him telling about the Amazon self-publishing. So Tim decided to do it. He hired a ghostwriter for his non-fiction book. But when he received the text he realized that he could not release it under his name. It was not his voice and was not written well. So Tim had to write the book in 48 hours because he had a deadline. He wrote his book, which was over 8k words in just 4 hours. Now that book is an Amazon bestseller for 90+ days. And being frank with he Tim admits that he did not expect such good results in the beginning. Q: Once you finished the book and it was ready, did you do anything with the marketing of the book? A: I mentioned already that I am Internet marketer and I do have a customer list. Some people will turn immediately off and say “Oh that’s how he made all his sales”. Let me tell you I actually tracked with software the sales that actually came from customers that were on my list vs. social media. And for my last book the clicks from my customers and the clicks from my social media were between 200-300 of each other. Meaning that if you don’t have a list you can to do what I will share with you via social media. The key is you need to find a group of people, that you’re talking to and they actively involved. My first book is called “The creativity Checklist”. That’s a checklist that I use to create products and services for my market. So I’ve already been in several Facebook groups and several forums. I’ve already made my presence known there by being useful and active contributor. So I didn’t just show up by saying Hey everybody here is my book buy it. I showed up I said hey let me help this person. Let me get my name known. And then when it was my turn I said hey guys I have this book out. It is limited for 3 days if you be so kind please purchase it and enjoy the discount. And it’s really all I had to do to get that initial push. I really think when it comes to sales and marketing Amazon looks at 2 things. Your sales obviously initially but then they look at your reviews as well. And the best way I can describe this is imagine you have this friend. And you want to introduce this friend to all your other friends. If Amazon sees that you are making lot of sales and people are leaving positive reviews, then they will show your book to other people. Because Amazon does the majority of marketing for me now. They e mail out their customers, they tell people about my book. And all I had to do was get the initial burst of sales and reviews and Amazon takes from there. Q: Do you know how many books were sold to have that initial push in the beginning? It’s always gonna depend on your niche and your genre and your industry, but I would say if you could do 10+ sales initially you’re gonna at least get that initial momentum. Cause what happens is you get those sales Amazon puts you in a ranking category, so let’s say you’re the 5th most popular book on writing. They also put you in the Hot New Release list. So Amazon puts it in front of the customers, they start buying it and it basically just becomes a big snowball Q: Did you launch the book at 0.99 cents?  A: It was 99 cents. Here is how I do all my launches. I do 99 cents at the very beginning for 3 days. I tell everyone hey it’s for 3 days and then from 99 cents I bump it up to $2,99. The 99 cents is meant to get sales and get reviews at cheapest price possible. Q: You have big amount of reviews for your books. Were they organic reviews or you did something to get them? A: I did something and then they started to come organically. So here is what I did. I basically sent to my list and my social media contacts “hey if you buy the book just do me a favor and leave a review. And if you leave a review and send me a copy of the review to my e-mail address then I’ll send you either another book or a bonus video or something along those lines. They key there you obviously can’t tell to leave a 5 star review so if you get 1 star review you still have to send the book. But the whole goal is to get those reviews initially up there. So I would say 2/3 of my reviews came from the initial push. What is amazing to see is those books continue to get reviews that are what I would call organic reviews. That is you see a book you read it and like it so much that you leave a review of it. Q: Can we say that if you launch the book successfully and get the initial push and reach the momentum, later on there is much less to do? A: Right, exactly. Like I haven’t done anything with either of my 2 books probably in the last 35 days as far as advertising, promotion, sales, discounts, etc and I still make thousands of dollars out of them. Q: The problem with Amazon is that you don’t get the contacts of your readers. How do you deal with that? Do you have an opt-in form in the books? How do you engage people, who have bought your book? A: I have an opt-in form right at the very beginning of my book. I think it’s the first or second page or the third. They see the title, they see the table of content and right there I give them a free gift for signing up. The key is to be successful you have to be a frequent publisher, so you have to be producing content on regular basis. No fewer than every 60 days. You have to build a list of your buyers. There is so much information out there that the only way you can get to them is to have their e mail addresses. And then frequent promotion. KDP days, Kindle Unlimited, you can bundle your books… there are many things you can do to increase your availability and ability to make more sales. Q: You mentioned that every 60 days one has to come up with a new book. Why 60 days? A: Here is my belief and this is untested but it is based on my own experience. Q: Do you send your e-mail list anything before your new book comes out? A: You can send out a survey with possible book subjects, which they choose. I also make teasing by telling that my book is almost finished. Then I send e-mail the day it goes to Amazon. Then the day it launches I send them the e-mail that it is live and priced 0.99 for three days. Then I ask for a review and offer them a free book for the review. The most important tips Tip 1: Come up with your hook or angle before you even start to write your book Tip 2: Come up with the outline Tip 3: Come up with a system or process that works well and then trust that process Bonus Tip: [spp-tweet " Done is better than perfect!"] Links Tim's website 8 Hour Bestseller Don't Forget to Get Your Free Book Click Here to Download  

Welcome to the Online Marketing News, it's the 2nd of March of and here is my round of digital marketing news that has caught my eye during the month of February. 1. I got a very promising email the other day from Infusionsoft saying they are soon to release an app so we can use InfusionSoft on mobile, which is obviously excellent news for InfusionSoft users. I believe it will be free for current users and available on both IOS and Android. 2. OP2 released their copy and paste a row feature. This was previously enabled within the same page but now you can take a row from one OptimzePress page and put it into another. A handy time saver and more definitely brownie points earned, they are getting into a lot of peoples good books again! 3. Leadpages as always have been innovating. In my opinion their most exciting update is automatic pre-population, so when someone lands on your page and decides to opt-in, this new feature will automatically have the opt-in form filled out with their details! Making the opt-in process even more frictionless. They also recently added the ability to split test & add images to leadboxes. 4. The big news over at Facebook last month was of course Facebooks $19 billion dollar acquisition of What's App. This was worldwide news so I'm sure you already saw this. Early rumours that the monetization strategy for What's App would be advertising like they did with Instagram were quickly downplayed however, Mark Zuckerberg himself announcing that their initial focus would be on growth rather than monetization. When the time comes for monetization it may or may not present a new opportunity for us online marketing folk, we'll have to wait and see on that one. 5. In other Facebook news, Facebook have announced that they are discontinuing sponsored stories. These are the ads that page owners can use to show a users that one of their connections has liked their page or checked-in, in the hope that they might do the same. As of April 9th however, this kind of ad will be gone. 6. Facebook ads have a new update coming on the 4th of March will be to add another level within their ad structure. They used to have 2 levels which was campaigns and ads but this made for a quite messy and unorganized way to keep track of your ads. The new level they are adding inbetween campaigns and ads is, ad groups. This means you can group certain types of ads together within your campaigns and will make it much more organized. Welcome news for FB advertisers. 7. Facebook will also be rolling out new targeting features available thanks to their 3rd party partner categories, this data will now be available in the regular FB ad platform giving better location,interest, behavior and demographic targeting. 8. In more excellent FB ads news, Facebook announced they will be adding job titles to their ads targeting. LinkedIn ads have given this option for years and now Facebook wants a piece of it too, I can't wait for that to happen. 9. Finally on Facebook, Facebook page tagging just got a little more interesting too. When you tag another page in a status update from your fan page, their fans may see your update in their newsfeed meaning you can tap into almost any other fan pages audience by using tagging. I think this could be easy to abuse but done correctly it could help you grow your fan page audience for free. 10. LinkedIn has opened up their publishing platform, where you can publish long-form content to the site. This used to be a feature only available to top influencers like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk and other high level people but now all users will be able to use this tool. 11. LinkedIn has also recently added a block feature just like Facebook has. It means you and the other person will no longer be able to see each others accounts on the site. So don't go spamming people or using any weird black hat marketing tactics, you'll simply be blocked! 12. Google has added usage rights to it's image search tools. This has been around a while but wasn't included as an option in it's main menu. You still need to be careful when using it though, it's not 100% accurate. So you could use an image thinking you have permission when you do not. My advice is where possible create your own images or purchase stock images. 13. Twitter advertising took another big step forward by introducing the ability to target ads based on email addresses and user ID's. This is similar to custom audiences on Facebook and it means you can retarget your email list through Twitter or even have the ability to avoid those users, depending on your marketing goals. Great option to have. Twitter ads continue to rise in my estimations. 14. Adroll has just beta launched mobile retargeting for cross device campaigns. Meaning desktops users can now also be followed up on the mobiles and tablets too. For example someone who enters your website on their desktop, may then see your retargeting ads whilst using FB or Twitter using their mobile phone. 15. A few big upcoming events that have caught my eye... On the 11th of March, Marketing Land's Digital Marketing Summit will be held in San Jose, California. Top speakers include Googles Search Chief, Amit Singhal, Copybloggers Brian Clark and Rand Fishkin of Moz. Also on the 11th -13th of March, The Joint Venture Summit is being held in Atlanta, Georgia. Speakers taking the stage include Robert Allen, Alex Mandossian, Joel Comm, Spike Humer, Mike Filsaime, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, Daven Michaels and whole list of other excellent speakers too. On the 22nd and 23rd of March, Brian McLeod and Sam England are hosting the Spring 2014 Warrior Networking Event in Raleigh, North Carolina. Joel Comm, Matt Bacak, E Brian Rose and a whole line up of top speakers will be sharing their best stuff. Social Media Examiner are hosting the Social Media Marketing World event in San Diego, California on the 26th -28th of March. They have a huge list of amazing speakers, Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, Patt Flynn, Michael Hyatt, Michael Stelzner, John Jantsch, Amy Porterfield, Joel Comm, Brian Clark, Cliff Ravenscraft and bunch more. If you're listening to this on the podcast, you can get links to these events over at my blog. 16. A few new podcasts that I'm excited about have been announced Jon Benson the king of VSL's has just recently started his podcast called The Sales Copy Samurai. Colin Theriot of the cult of copy has also he will be starting a new podcast sharing his copywriting wisdom so keep an eye out for that one, and last but not least Clay Collins and the team over at LeadPages announced that their new podcast called conversion cast will start soon and they will be diving deep into split testing and what's working now in online marketing. You won't want to miss that either. Both Colin and Clay have been on previous episodes of the online marketing show are always good value. Jon is set to come on the show in a few weeks time too so stay tuned for that. 17. Tim Castleman has released his Traffic and Conversion Summit 2014 notes. I attended this event and it was brilliant. His notes have all the golden nuggets from the presentations for just a fraction of the cost of going to the event. Grab a copy, it's well worth it. 18. Todd Brown is launching his latest product this week, it's called Six Figure Funnel Formula. Todd has been on the podcast before and he is my recommended go to guy when it comes to marketing funnels. His last flagship program has been locked down for quite some time so you'll want to jump on this if you want to learn how to convert leads into paying customers. There will be a lot of buzz over the next week or so and Todd will be releasing a ton of free premium content during the launch. Again if you're listening to this on the podcast, head over to my blog you can get the link for Todd's free videos there. And that's the online marketing news, 2nd of March 2014.