Transcript:

#00:00:13-4#                 Hey guys, Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing On The Move.

It is awesome to be back in Melbourne, back recording a podcast with you guys. On the way to the office.

I want to put quickly together a little podcast episode. I just got back from Funnel Hacking Live, which you all know about.

An event and conference in San Diego where a whole bunch of funnel hackers and users who build sales funnels get together.

I have to say it was an awesome event, really great experience.

If you followed my Snapchat, you would have seen some videos all throughout the event.

If you have not followed my Snapchat, you probably should. It is just stephenesketzis, all one-word, in lower case.

But aside from that, awesome event, awesome people.

Some massive takeaways from the event and I want to share some of those with you today so you guys can get a bit of insight into how it was, what went down, and what kind of things were there if you did not get a chance to go.

 

#00:01:05-7#                 One of the awesome — the first takeaway that I had after attending the event is about attending events themselves.

The very first thing was as soon as the event is finished, the number one thing I realized was you cannot afford to not attend events.

It sounds pretty strange but it is definitely something you cannot afford to miss.

With events these days, it is not even about the content that you are consuming, but it is about the relationships you are building.

The relationships that you build at these types of events are absolutely invaluable.

It is just that you cannot put a price on them.

Whether you are travelling around the world like I did twenty hours, whether you are spending a couple of thousand dollars on flight combinations to get there, it is just a drop of the ocean compared to the people you will meet.

Between the speakers, between some of the other attendees that were there, you have guys doing millions of dollars in business, other guys are just starting out, but I made some amazing connections, and it was just awesome to meet some of these people face to face.

You build the relationship like you cannot build one online. You cannot just introduce yourself and send a friend request on Facebook, and become friends the same way as when you go meet someone face to face.

Then you go for drinks, then you go have karaoke, believe it or not.

Then you go have some fun after that. It is just a relationship and rapport you cannot build.

So I highly recommend you guys start attending your events if you are not already.

Cut out some of your budget for attending events.

You cannot afford to not go to them because when you compare those who are going to them with other people in the industry going to them, you are just spending way too long behind the [apple?] and by the time you do start attending events like Funnel Hacking Live, Trafficking Conversion, all those types of marketing events, by the time you do start attending them, it is going to be too late.

Everyone is already going to know everyone.

So you get to the event, and this is how I was, before I started attending these events.

I started going to a couple of them and everyone knew everyone.

For example, Trafficking Conversion this year.

I went for the first time to that event and there were so many parties and people that knew everyone.

When I got there it seems everyone went to the same one last year and they just came back again. That is exactly what happens.

So you want to start going earlier, start building those relationships, making friends, getting in the industry, so that way when you go again and again, you already make friends.

You already know people. You text them, you catch up with them, you meet with them, you go to a party like you go to a karaoke, you have a drink, you enjoy yourself. I think that is critical.

 

#00:03:30-6#                 The other thing there is — so that was the very first takeaway of the event. You must attend them.

The second one, which I really, really worked up to, something, which I was not expecting, and this came after one of the speakers, I cannot remember his name but he was talking about local sales funnels.

This speaker was someone who opens up gyms, local brick-and-mortar gyms, and he uses sales funnels and paid traffic with Facebook ads to actually fill the gym, have fifty thousand dollars in his pocket, and then have a full gym with all the members filled out before he launches.

So he launches gyms but they are already full before he launches them.

Awesome model. One thing, which I realize which hit me was the simplicity of building a sales funnel has never been easier.

This guy, and I want to get his name because he actually really knew what he was doing and I applaud him for doing so — this guy essentially laid out his entire sales funnel, entire funnel, end-to-end like there was not a question that I did not have an answer to. [unclear] closes people, the strategy, how he gets people to sign up for the gym, how he keeps them sticking.

Every thing, every objection I would have had, he actually answered full on. He laid out his entire strategy end to end, top to bottom, and it just blew me away.

This guy is releasing every single one of his secrets. How is this even possible when people can be paying tens of thousand of dollars for these in the Mastermind, but this dude just rock up and share his entire funnel, all his metrics.

It just blew me away and then one thing I realized, and this was my takeaway, was there really is no excuse for you not to have a sales funnel that is working.

The simplicity that goes into it, all you do, all you need to do is follow a step-by-step pain point numbers, literally pain point numbers, picture of what he is telling and you get a funnel that is worth converting.

You would literally fill a gym in anywhere in the world, whether in Australia, the UK, America, wherever you are, you would literally be able to fill a gym just based on that one presentation, and start building your entire business. Isn’t that nuts?

An entire business. So my takeaway was do not worry about the hardships, do not worry about the events like tracking tips, do not worry about the scripts, do not worry about all that bullshit. Just focus on the simplicity, the simplicity and the funnel itself, and the cold principle is exactly what you need to focus on.

Nothing more. Nothing less. Just literally do what he says and it will work. That just blew me away. For someone to be actually able to go up there and just release all that data they would have taken so long to put together, that for them there is a ton of trial and error, it is just ridiculous. My second one was keep it simple.

With everything going on in the world, with blogs, with content marketing, with driving traffic, with whatever, if you see a funnel that is working and you actually want to commit to building that funnel, find someone that is already doing it and keep it simple. Do exactly what they say and keep it simple.

The amount of times — Russell was presenting there, so Russel Brunson was running the event along with the Click Funnels crew, and the amount of times all these testimonials from his Mastermind came up and just said literally, just do what he says.

Do not try something new, do not do anything else, do what he says and you will be successful. It is crazy because so many people go out there and they try, they tinker the process that works, they try making it better, they try split-test, they try this.

Literally go out there, close your eyes, do exactly what the person says, the funnel that is converting and just take it from there. You do not need to overcomplicate it.

 

#00:07:12-6#                 So those were my first two takeaways at the event. The third one was the power of building relationships outside the content.

That was like the first one, but I really want to stress it because it is something that I find a lot, this event specifically — we actually had a hackathon on the second night of the event and what a hackathon is pretty much you go there and what we had was pretty much a big room filled with people with desks and roundtables and things.

There were heaps of pizza there, heaps of soft drinks and drinks and stuff, what-not Red Bull, and what-not — so all the attendees had heaps of food, heaps of drinks, took their laptops down and started building funnels.

That is what the hackathon was. You just get there and start building funnels, start playing around with things, start networking, and I have to say, every single event has to have a hackathon. There is not one event that I have been to that has provided more value in a single session than that.

I think it was about 700 people, 600 or 700 people out of the 1,100 that attended, that went down there to the hackathon, sat down, grabbed a table, grabbed their laptop, sat next to a whole bunch of strangers they did not know about, they did not know what they did, their business or anything, and started building sales funnels for their business.

Then if I had a question, I would ask one of the seven guys sitting on their table. If they had anything wrong, they would just speak to them and they would network.

You meet so many people, it was ridiculous. It was one of my favorite tasks I have ever done. I met people that I wished I have met at other events as well. I met a guy who was killing it on Instagram, which I am sure will be on the podcast at some stage. I made another guy that is killing it on content marketing and another guy that is on fusion soft.

Experts who run a marketplace. The amount of people and the quality of people that are there and at the event, if you just push yourself to go network with them, spend time with is just crazy. It literally blew me away so I highly recommend you guys trying that and going out there and making sure that you put yourself out there.

If events do not have a hackaton, or do not have an opportunity to network, you need to go do it yourself. I know it is hard because I have been there, and when you are the only person at an event, you feel a little lonely and you do not want to get out of your shell too much. But do it because both of you will thank yourselves for it.

The person you are meeting and you will thank yourself for going out there and just saying, hey man, my name is Stephen, what type of business do you have. That is all you need to say to start a conversation. Then you keep talking, and the likelihood if you do that at the start of the event, you are likely going to keep sticking around with that person, then meet some more people until the end of it.

It is just awesome and that blew me away. That hackathon was awesome, we were up until 4 A.M. drinking Red Bull and building sales funnels. That was a lot of fun. I have to say it was one of the best events I have even been to so Funnel Hacking Live — initially I thought I was going to a sales funnel event but there was a lot of personal development stuff in there as well which I was not expecting, which I was very, very pleasantly surprised with.

There was Sean Stephenson, who had an amazing talk. Russell was doing the sales funnel stuff. That was awesome. There was a whole lot of people — Marcus Lemonis, who was the keynote speaker for the event. He was awesome.

His speech was actually — I was expecting him — if you guys are not familiar with The Profit, the TV show, I highly recommend it. Really good. If you are a fan of Shark Tank, you will love The Profit. Essentially it is show where Marcus goes to local businesses that have a high revenue but maybe struggling in debt and things like that, some businesses that might be doing nearly 4,000 or 5,000 a year in revenue but virtually cannot stay afloat.

They might be just about to go under or something like that. He goes in there, learns the business, makes an investment, takes a hundred percent full control of the business. He is completely in-charged, makes investment for equity in the business, and turns it around. That is the premise of the show. It does not always work as well so he makes deals and sometimes they fall through, the entrepreneur is a shitty guy or girl that do not stick to their word, but it is a really good show.

Anyway, he came. I definitely watch the show and I highly recommend it. He rocked up and he is one of the most down-to-earth people I have ever met in my life. Super, super genuine. Really just open and chill, and not high maintenance, because you would expect if you had a big dude coming down with a big reputation, usually they are pretty high maintenance.

They have security guards, and this and that, but super chill. Apparently this is what I hear from Russell as well, he pretty much said, alright, we are going to take you in from the back of the event, from behind the stage so you will not get harassed by people.

Do not worry, we will set you up for that, there is a secret elevator, but apparently what he said was do not worry about it, we will just go through the front. There were people there who wanted to take some photos, it is cool. It was a Thursday or Friday, do not stress.

He pretty much walked through, took a million photos on the way in as he was being announced to come up on stage, turned up, and I and everyone else in the audience thought he was going to talk about the product, the process, and the people. They are his three P’s.

That is what he is known for building businesses with. What he did was he had a massive talk about connecting with entrepreneurs and actually building relationships. That is something, which I think is massively, massively undervalued when you build a business.

He talked about how you share your vulnerabilities as the best way — sharing your vulnerabilities is the best way to build a relationship with other business owners.

Then he went deeper into talking about different vulnerabilities and how you can actually connect with business owners.

He went on to talking about mastering your pitch for what your business does. He brought up people in the audience, he sat down and literally just talked next to them [unclear]. It was awesome. Something really, really profound. That was cool.

 

#00:12:56-4#                 One more thing which was pretty unexpected, at the first night they brought a hypnotist in for the VIP dinner. I managed to get a sit in on that. I have to say, this is just a side note to all the marketing stuff.

I am not a really big fan of hypnotizing things and people, and I really did not believe it, but when I saw — so they brought in Marshall Sylver, who I had to opportunity to lunch with after the show as well, really cool guy. I watch him there and he pretty much put people to sleep, did not touch them, and did the whole hypnotist show.

Something, which I would never, believed ever in my life until you see it. I know another great guy who does hypnotizing and hypnotist work, Darren Stephens. He was there as well. Both of them, during the course, were hypnotizing people.

Darren was just, I think, helping a few people out with things. Marshall had the whole show going on for about two, three hundred people and it was crazy. I could never believe it unless I was there. I definitely recommend having a look at something that has to do with hypnotizing people.

I am definitely interested in learning it so I am probably going to get some [unclear] book or something like that and learn about it because it not just about just hypnotizing someone to go to sleep and do a show but it is more like how can you use that in sales, number one, and how can you use that to program yourself to wake yourself up, sort of hypnotize yourself to wake up at 5 A.M. every day.

There are other benefits to it as well I am sure if you get yourself in the mindset to make more money and things like that. That is something that I am going to be looking into now that I am back in the office and what-not.

 

#00:14:26-8#                 It is pretty much going to be a really, really cool few weeks ahead now. We have actually a lot going on in the office, which I will share with you guys in the future podcast episode.

There are a lot of cool interviews as well that are coming up so if do have someone that you want me to interview, if you want me to share something specific, be sure to drop me a line on the website.

Shoot me an email at stephen@stephenesketzis.com and I will be able to work something out for you. Hopefully we can keep pushing this podcast further and further.

I know we have actually done a lot more than I ever expected. We are going to do a lot more in the future too.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this little wrap up of the Funnel Hacking Live event. I will be at your side with some more podcasts later in the week. Hopefully you guys are crushing it in your business, and I will speak to you soon.

 

 

 

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