Here’s a behind the scene’s glimpse of the chaos that ensued in the 24 hour webinar.
On today’s episode Russell goes over what happened when he planned and executed a new webinar in under 24 hours. He recounts what went wrong, what went well, and how it did overall. Here are some cool things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out how Russell’s webinar went and hear what he’s changing when he redoes it later this week.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I am actually in the car. Don’t worry I’m safe. Don’t yell at me, “Russell you’re going to die.” I got my phone mounted so we’re safe. I’m just going to be talking, I’m not even going to look at the camera unless I stop. Then I’ll look at the camera.
But I’m excited for today, in fact, I’m heading to a doctor’s appointment. Hopefully I can find that. I’m a little late, but that’s kind of typical for me. Anyway, a lot of fun stuff happening now, and I just wanted to share some stuff because hopefully it will help some of you guys because I’m sure all of you guys are going through some stuff right now as well.
So a couple of things. Yesterday I saw, it’s funny, somebody posted in one of our groups a message about, critiquing the webinar I did last week. So some context on the webinar, this webinar that we had the idea on Tuesday. I had to write brand new slides from scratch on Tuesday. I had all day Wednesday and half a day Thursday. So I had a day and a half to do all the slides, it ended up being like a hundred and sixty slides. I made a registration page, we had to promote it. All this stuff in under a 48 hour period of time. A lot of stuff.
I can’t remember if I told you guys much about it. But when all was said and done, we launched it and we had an 81 1/2 % opt in rate after over 10,000 opt in’s, which is insane, highest converting one I’ve ever had. Number two is we are selling a similar offer, but we are kind of changing it some, to our old funnel hacks. We are changing it, increased the price, we changed the training a little bit. So it’s a similar offer, but it’s different. So I have a lot of stuff going against me. Most of the people on our list have heard me do the webinar selling them the main thing probably, I don’t know a hundred different times.
So I needed and wanted to make a new version. So this I did this whole new thing that showed a bunch of stats and analytics and it was just a really cool thing. So we did the whole thing and put it together, I literally as I ended up with over 10,000 people registered and I’m cranking out slides all the way up to the point where the webinar starts, I think it was 3 eastern, or 3 mountain time it started. I probably had 75% of my slides done at that point. So I didn’t have time to finish, I probably needed another 3 or 4 hours to actually get it done, but I ran out of time. So literally as the clock hit 3 I am copying and pasting all my slides from my old presentation to my new one because I have no time to actually finish it, which is crazy.
So then we start the webinar and we start going, and I never used….we never had a webinar that had that many people register. So we used Zoom instead of Go to Webinar, which I was nervous about because I always used Go to Webinar, it’s like good old faithful. But we decided to try Zoom because Zoom has the capacity to do I think 3 or 5 thousand people live, plus you can stream into Facebook. So you can do Facebook Live or Youtube live and things like that. So I was like, let’s try it. I know it’s scary to try something huge, especially something that you have this many people registered for, but I was like, we keep talking about trying it but we’re scared it’s not going to work at scale but the only way to find out if it works at scale is if you just do it. So we’re like, alright let’s just do it. If worst case scenario we’ll lose millions of dollars.
So we do it, and I start Zoom and at first it’s all frozen up. It’s not processing very well at all. And finally I’m able to get on and people can hear me but I can’t see questions and every time I try to just hover over the thing, there’s just a spinning circle, but people could hear me. So I was like, alright. And we’d already clicked record and it was already streaming to Facebook, so I’m like, I just gotta go.
So I started the presentation, and there’s like 30 people in my office. Not 30, I’m exaggerating, there’s probably 8 people in the office who are trying to get things setup and working and they’re talking and I’m trying to be like, “Don’t talk, I’m doing the webinar now. I’m stressing out.” And the slides aren’t done and in my head I’m all mad about that. I haven’t had a chance to even go through the slides yet, I have no idea if the transitions are working.
All the stress of the moment is just insane. So I start kind of going and man, I totally am fumbling as I start because I’m kind of overwhelmed because the slides aren’t working. I’m overwhelmed just because of the stress of it all. The first probably 15 minutes and I’m just fumbling and I can’t get my rhythm. You know how that feels to get the rhythm. It took me probably 15-20 minutes before I finally started getting the rhythm. But then even with that, because it was a new webinar, I didn’t know super well where it was going. I kind of remembered because I had just created it. But I hadn’t really done it before, so I don’t really know where I’m going, I’m trying to do it all right.
Anyway, I do my best in the confines….some reason I have this weird thing where I set these crazy confines for myself. So we had probably a day and a half total time to…no actually excuse me…..it was the night before, I started on slides at 4pm and the webinar was the next day at 3. So I had 24 hours total, but I had to sleep in the middle there. So I think we were up all that night until like 2 working on slides. So it was less than a 24 hour period of time to do all 160 slides for a new presentation I’d never done before and then give it live in front of all these people.
We ended up having about 3500 people on live and I think we had 11,000 that watched it on Facebook, but that kind of ebbs and flows. I think we had on average about 4 or 500 people on Facebook. So it was crazy.
So I do the webinar, do the presentation, do the pitch and again it’s the first time doing the pitch, there’s all sorts of confusion and questions and things coming up that I didn’t even have time to plan for because I was going to pitch it this way, but I was using slides from my old presentation. It doesn’t even make any sense. But then the powerful thing I did, the night before when I was planning to do this, I messaged like 20 different people in my inner circle that were just people who were killing it in Clickfunnels in different markets and different industries. I was like, “Hey, could you guys jump on tomorrow for like an hour and just tell your Clickfunnels story?” and they were like, “Oh sure.” And amazingly they all show up.
So I get on the webinar and I’m trying to do the interviews but my computer is frozen, the zoom on my computer is frozen up, so I can’t actually interview anyone. We have all these amazing people who took an hour out of their life to be here and I can’t even communicate with them. It took us like 10 minutes to figure out…On my computer we couldn’t do it, so we had to switch the presenter to Mark’s computer, on our team. So then we were on his computer, and then we’re…so crazy.
So then I got it work, so I’m doing the Q&A through his, but then people can’t see the screen, so I’m trying to do call to action’s throughout, and no one can see the countdown clock and it was just kind of like, it was all sorts of messed up. So many problems, so many issues.
But we’re doing the live Q&A and that part, it went for an hour, but it was really good. People’s Q&A’s were so good. I’m praying, please let the Zoom recording stuff work because we want, I need to use these recordings somwehre else. Please, I want to use them again. And luckily the recordings came out. So we do the webinar, it finally ends, it’s like 3 ½ hours from start time to this point. I haven’t slept literally more than a few hours in the last 24 hours. I’m tired, I’m worn out. It was like a thousand degrees in my office because everyone was in there.
It’s just done, I’m soaking wet from sweating, and I was like ugh. We finally end the whole thing and we couldn’t figure out how to actually end it. I’m like, “Don’t talk guys.” Because Zoom’s frozen on my computer, we can’t even end the event. And it was just crazy. Finally we figured out to take it off and end the event, and it was done and wasn’t streaming on Facebook anymore, and then everyone starts cheering and clapping. I was like, “Did we sell any? Because I have no idea.” Who knows.
So finally, we get done and we look at the sales and it was crazy. The highest grossing webinar I’ve ever done to date. I’ve done a couple of webinars in my decade and a half in this game now. So it was really, really good. And obviously there were things that I need to fix and want to fix and change and all that kind of stuff. So I sent emails basically telling everyone, “Hey, the webinar replay crashed,” which is kind of true. I do have a backup but I don’t want to show it to everyone. I want to go actually finish the slides and all that kind of stuff.
So this week, actually in two days, we’re going to redo it again live for all these people, hopefully I’ll have my act together, and you know, it will probably not convert as well because I’m all polished now. But I want it cleaned up and get all the things in the right order, the right place and do the presentation right.
So we’re doing it again Thursday. But it was the highest opt in we’ve ever had, highest grossing webinar I’ve ever had. So many amazing things. We’re super proud of ourselves and all sorts of stuff. Then yesterday, I’m about to leave the office and I login to Facebook just to check out what people are posting on the book of faces. And some dude in one of our coaching programs, he posted this long post about my webinar was fugly and how he watched it and how sick to his stomach he got and I broke my own rules and how it wasn’t truly a blue ocean, it was a proven offer. And then he had a 30 minute video critiquing everything.
And in the video he’s like, “To quote Russell, he said this, yet he blah, blah, blah. And CLickfunnels, we know it’s good, but it’s not great.” And just totally, for 30 minutes…This is somebody who paid me to coach them to teach them how to do webinars. So I want to put the context, he’s in a coaching group specifically dedicated to teaching people how to do a webinar. Now in this comment he also said, “I tried to join your inner circle, but I couldn’t afford the 25 thousand.” So he’s someone who’s paying me good money to learn to do webinars, doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to pay for my coaching program, so instead what he decides to do is spend how many hours of his life critiquing my webinar and telling me why it was the ugliest webinar he’s ever seen, and all the things I did wrong, how I broke my own rules, on and on and on, and all these kinds of things.
And I read this, I didn’t watch the whole video because I was so just annoyed. I was just dumbfounded. I’m just staring like, I don’t even know how to respond. Should I be angry? Should I be happy? Should I be grateful? Should I be…all these emotions. So I go through the whole range of emotions from pissed, I’m going to flat out kill him, to thank you maybe, or no…all these things in between. And all that kept ringing through my head was the quote from Theodore Roosevelt, and I’m driving right now, or else I would read it for you.
But it says something like this, “It’s not the critic who counts. It’s not the man in the arena who points out how the doer of good deeds has messed up, it’s the man who’s in the arena who’s face is marred with dust and sweat and blood and tears, who maybe he fails but at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his position will never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory, nor defeat.”
And that’s my paraphrase of it, Roosevelt said it way cooler than me, but you get the gist. So in my response, I just copied that and I pasted it and I said, “Hey man, here you go.” And I posted it and then I left one other comment and I’m sure that it was missed by him and probably most people, but what I said was, “If I just watched somebody do a million dollars in an hour, the last thing I would do is critique them on what they could do better. What I would do is zip my lips and I would take notes.”
I look back on the decade that I went through trying to learn this craft and this business. I was speaking at events every single weekend and I was doing my presentation. I was watching other speakers. And I watched some speakers that were horrible, but I watched their presentation and how they do it and be like, “Wow, notice how they did that cool thing, that was awesome.” And I would take that piece and add it back to my thing. I’d notice something and like, “Whoa, that was cool.” And I would….. I never once looked at someone’s presentation in a critical route to try to figure out the things they did wrong so I could coach them through how to do it better. That was never, that thought never crossed my mind in a billion, infinity years.
The only thought that crossed my mind is “What is this person doing that I can use? The way they did that, the way they made that transition, the way they closed.” There were people who sucked, who did not do any good, I still was watching and paying attention and figure out what were the nuggets for me? I think….I can’t remember the comment exactly, but it was something to the point of next someone does a million dollars…..I said “message me the next time you do a million dollars in an hour and let me know, because I want to watch that webinar and I’m going to take notes and not give you feed back.” Because that’s the thing.
So I just wanted to kind of put that out there because I think a lot of times we get too smart for our own good and we’re trying to critique people and that’s not your job, that’s not your role. If I…in all honesty, if I wanted your opinion I would have paid you for it, but I haven’t. Therefore don’t give me your opinion, listen. You paid me, and maybe I didn’t do it perfect. Maybe I did the entire webinar in less than 24 hours, maybe there was a billion things happening at the time. And in spite of all those things, it was the highest grossing webinar of all time for us.
So it’s like, I know there were things wrong. I’m fully aware, that’s why I’m redoing it this week. I didn’t even have a chance to finish my slides, the last 40 slides I copied and pasted from a different presentation, because I ran out of time. Yes, I can critique myself too, but until someone’s paying you for your advice, don’t give them your advice. Sit back and listen.
I’ve done a couple of podcasts on this recently. You as a student should be, you pick your mentors, so pick your mentor and then stop, listen, and then do what they say. Don’t be like, “well you actually said this.” Dude, that’s not your role. Stop, listen. And I say that at the same time that I want to always be coachable. And I feel like I’m a very coachable person. I have multiple coaches working with me in different aspects of my life, but the difference is that I paid those people for their advice because they are at a level beyond me of that thing that I want to learn how to do.
So I would never sign up for John Carlton’s copywriting course and when I was in there critique his sales letters and tell him how to do it better, in a billion years. I would say, dude, I’m paying you, and maybe there’s things I might do different and might do better, but I am listening because I paid you. I am paying attention, trying to find the pieces of gold that I can then apply back to my thing.
So I hope for everybody else who was watching that, you know it was an imperfect thing and hopefully first off, that was inspirational for you to see, wow Russell screwed up a lot and then still made a bunch of money. Maybe there’s something here. And second off, I hope you learn that you’re watching…I did an episode probably a year ago about watching the magician’s hand. I’m trying to, in my books and my podcast and these places, I’m trying to show, I don’t hold things back. I hope you see that. I’m like, here’s everything, and I give it to you so you see it all. But then when I’m doing the thing, watch, pay attention and listen. Watch the magician’s hands at work and see what they’re trying to do and try to understand it. Don’t try to critique. That’s not going to help you or them. Watch and learn.
And that’s all, that’s my message for today. Hope that helps. I hope you guys enjoyed this story. It was a lot of fun. I’m excited to do the webinar again on Thursday, and hopefully I don’t screw it up by fixing it. Anyway, that’s it. I’m going to let you guys go. Appreciate you all. I hope you have an amazing day. Go out there and change the world. Like I said, if I can do a webinar in 24 hours, I’ll give you guys at least 48 because I’ve done it a few times, you’ve got 48 hours to get your webinar done and launched.
We’ve got a bunch of people who have gone through our Two Comma Club coaching, which is all about getting their webinar up and launched and live and some people have gone through the training, we’ve done three cycles of it now. They’ve gone through three cycles of it and still haven’t launched their webinar. It’s like, just do it. Russell what if the webinar software crashes? Yeah, mine could have crashed too, I just did it. What happens if it doesn’t close right? Then just do it, who cares. Just do it again if it doesn’t close. Just do it. Just go out there and just do it. I’m going to go you guys. Appreciate you all, thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you guys soon.