In this post I want to tell you about 2 stellar marketers who gave me the privilege of attending their invite-only event in Baltimore this weekend. It’s a tremendous case study of giving an enormous amount and expecting little, if nothing in return. I think you’re going to get an awesome idea about the right way to run your business and what it takes to garner a huge amount of respect in your industry like these guys have. I’ll also let you in on a few unbelievable things I learned at their event…
I got a very simple, short Facebook message from Russell a few weeks back telling me that he and Daegan were putting on an event in Baltimore to show some of their friends a revolutionary selling technique that has been doing incredible numbers for them. Immediately my interest was piqued because while I was fairly new to Daegan’s work, I have been a big fan of Russell’s for many years. Not only do I learn a lot from him, as he is extremely experienced and generous with his knowledge, but he’s also a super nice guy. I sent him a Skype message asking for a bit more information. He told me this… (paraphrased)
“This ‘invisible funnel’ idea is the best selling tool I’ve ever used. We’re making $50k (upfront) on each webinar we do, there’s an 85-90% show rate, people listen intently to 2-4 hours of information, and our backend sales on $10k to $25k stuff is insane. Best sales system I’ve ever done. So we’re doing a workshop for our friends/peers.”
I mean let me ask you… if someone with this kind of credibility made these kinds of claims and didn’t ask anything in return to teach it to you… would you want to go?
Heck yea!!
So that’s where I was this weekend, at the BWI Sheraton soaking up as much information as I could. And man, it was unbelievable. It was actually the first event of my career where I just sat and listened to hours and hours of content. I actually didn’t want to miss anything because the stuff they were doling out was that life-changing. So the first 2 days, I was sure to wake up at 8:15am by alarm clock (believe me, I RARELY wake up by alarm clock) and get down there in time for everything. The first day went over 11 hours and most of the people listened to everything! Russell didn’t hype me at all. The room was full with mostly extremely successful marketers and a large percentage of millionaires and multi-millionaires. And they were all extremely grateful for the truly groundbreaking information.
The first session was all about this “invisible funnel” technique. They showed their numbers and had a number of people in the room whom they had introduced it to so far tell their experiences with it as well. Tom Beal (of Strategic Profits) told about how he and Rich Schefren didn’t even sell anything but made $50k on just 2 webinars with it. A couple other guys stood up and told of their tremendous success of around $200k each since they implemented it. And when he explained the technique, it was clear why it was working so well. After the first hour, I knew it was worth my trip and I went up to Daegan to voice my appreciation. LIke a smart marketer, they had me immediately give a testimonial and about an hour later I looked over and saw Daegan’s wife uploading it to youtube. It made me laugh… they are good at what they do!
Then there were sessions on ironing out the details of the process, crafting an irresistible offer (with people like Bill Glazer of Glazer-Kennedy chiming in to give their thoughts), copywriting… actually, before I talk about the other sessions I want to talk about the copywriting session that Russell taught…
This really blew me away because Russell explained a new copywriting technique that is about 10x easier to implement and works 10x better (approximately… you know!). He learned it by studying the form of a copywriter that was having incredible success… but didn’t really know why. When he dissected it, he realized… it’s ALL about evoking emotion in the prospect and is actually written at a 1st grade reading level! See, most people think copywriting is about explaining features and benefits and telling why their thing is cool. But it actually does not get nearly as good results as just simply evoking emotion from the customer and getting them to act on that emotion. So what he has been able to do is cut his sales letter writing time down from 3-4 days to 2-3 HOURS and get much better results. And since I had been a “victim” (I say that lightheartedly, obviously) of one of his letters recently, I knew just how powerful this stuff was. Couldn’t appreciate him more for sharing it with us.
Then we received A TON of information on effective storytelling. See, storytelling (or storySELLING) is what evokes emotion in the customer and allows you sell much much more easily because the customer becomes bonded with you, relates to you, and therefor trusts you. There is so much power in this that Daegan actually got one of the most respected screenwriting teachers in Hollywood to talk TWICE during the seminar on how to write an effective story that people are captivated by. And while the writer admitted he had little knowledge on marketing, it was clear his expertise with screenwriting was immediately applicable. Daegan also brought in Jonathan Otto, who has made emotion-inducing videos for extremely successful marketers like Vick Strizhaus (who has done well over a million dollars with Empower Network with the videos just this year alone!).
John Alanis, who teaches men how to get women to approach them, and who has been a successful IMer for many years also gave an awesome talk about how to present yourself as an “attractive character” to your prospect and customer base and shared the secrets of his 65-day followup sequence! It included 2 emails a day and over 130 offers! Isn’t that crazy?! But it works like gangbusters and his list loves him. It’s not just the fact that he does it… he uses the “hero’s journey” storytelling technique in his followup emails in order to bond with his prospects. So even though he sends out a ton of offers, his prospects really get to know and love him because he’s sharing his story candidly. This allows him to make unbelievable money and mail for a slew of partners. It was really powerful stuff.
Then there was T.J. Rohleder, the multi-millionaire direct mail guy. I loved this dude! I thought he just had a really light-hearted and infectious personality. He has a book called, “How to get super rich in the opportunity market” and he was qualified to write it because he has sold either tens of hundreds of millions of make money opportunity products through direct mail. His knowledge and experience was pure gold. One of the most valuable things I learned from him was about the psychology of the prospects in the market. For example, (you ready for a dirty little secret?) he learned that even though most people claim that they want just and extra 500, 2,000 or 10,000 dollars a month… the real truth is that every prospect’s REAL hidden desire it to be filthy rich. So even though your prospects may never tell you that, it’s the downright truth. This is from the mouth of someone who has mailed BILLIONS of direct mail pieces.
And then right before I had to leave for my flight, Russell delivered a training session about the 8 elements for an 8-figure marketing business! Just when I thought it wouldn’t get anymore ninja… we started talking about split test results and being more strategic about our marketing. Get this… did you know that adding Facebook screen shots of testimonials instead of just the standard photo + testimonial quote can boost your conversions by more than 567%?! This is what happened when Brad Callen implemented this on one of his top-ten Clickbank offers in the weight-loss niche. What’s cool is that he’s now publishing stuff like this in his new Dotcomsecrets Newsletter. He gave out a copy of it free at the seminar and I’m reading it on the plane (as I write this blog post) and it is blowing me away…
So today they passed out a piece of paper asking if you people wanted the recordings to the workshop. They had two options – get it for free, or “help defray the costs of the recordings” by happily giving $197. Which one do you think I chose?
I couldn’t be more appreciative of Russell and Daegan right now. Man, they put on the best event I’ve been to in my career, honored me with an invitation, and didn’t ask me for anything in return. At the end, they made an offer to be in a new mastermind and I’m thinking about joining for $25k.
Let me ask you… could there be a better way to build goodwill with other super-successful people?! This is just the right way to do stuff, guys. Because they may not have made anything off the event yet, but they have my appreciation and respect FO’ LIFE! And lord knows, it won’t be very hard for them to get me to promote one of their products, if they wanted me to.
So I took awesome notes and later this week I’m going to be doing a webinar for my peeps (you) sharing the incredible secrets and revolutionary tactics I learned from these uber-successful millionaires at this event. If I can relay even 1% of what they taught me (and it should be quite a bit more), it will be well worth your time. I can’t wait! Talk soon.
Comment below and let me know how excited you are for this…
