(MS) The Controversial Hormozi "Leads Book" Launch

You're listening to Marketing Secrets with your host Russell Brunson. What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I am pumped and excited to be hanging out with you guys. I've not recorded a new episode in a couple weeks. In fact, the last 6 weeks of my life have been insane. We've been to Kenya and then to Jerusalem and then back home for a couple days. We did a Linchpin event and from there flew to Paris. Pirates Cove for a family trip and then two mastermind meetings with my Category Kings and my Atlas Group. And now I'm back in Boise catching up, getting ready for Funnel Hacking Live, which we are like 5 weeks away from, which is crazy. So if you haven't bought your tickets yet, you should hurry. We are almost sold out and this year's Funnel Hacking Live is gonna be insane. I'm so excited. In fact, I'm gonna be doing a million videos, Facebook Lives, talking about Funnel Hacking Live. Only problem is I got a huge black eye at Pirates Cove. I was wrestling, This kid, he's I think a junior in high school this year, really good wrestler, and we were wrestling and he, anyway, I'm a little taller than him so my head was up higher than his. He popped his head up and gave me a nice little shiner, which is great. But it's hard when you're trying to do videos and courses and trainings, all these things I need to do. So I had to cancel an event and move things around, but alas, it's all good because, you know, it's part of the process, part of the fun. Okay, so I have a specific thing I wanna talk about during this episode. Mostly 'cause I've had probably 2 million people message me about it. People I haven't heard from in years, people all over the place. And then recently I moved all my social apps off of my main phone and I got a second phone, a social phone. So all my apps and things are there and I leave the social phone away from me. That way, the only thing I can do on my main phone is I can listen to podcasts and I can text and Vox and record podcasts. That's about it. If I wanna be social, I have to get to the other phone. So I keep the other phone far away from me, like in a different building or different office or whatever. And then if I do have something I wanna share on social, I make videos of it here and then I text it to that other phone. And then when I get to that phone, I go and I text it, right? So I hadn't seen social for a while and I pulled up that social phone last night and I'm kind of surprised. There's all this controversy around the Hermosil launch and everyone's asking and people messaging me, but everyone online's freaking out, positive, negative, all sorts of stuff, which kind of confused me. So because so many of you guys have asked my opinion and because you guys know I've been hanging out with Alex for a long, long time, I'm gonna tell you guys my version of the Hermosi launch, and hopefully you guys get some ideas and value out of it, and yeah, I think it'll be a lot of fun. So there is the topic episode of today. So the first question I get a lot is like, how do you know Alex Hermosi? So I met Alex actually, man, I think it was year 2 of ClickFunnels. No, it would've been year 1 of ClickFunnels. We did the first year of ClickFunnels, We launched like in September, and then that January was Traffic and Conversion event. That's back when TNC was the biggest event ever before we had Funnel Hacking Live, right? So this is a decade ago. And I remember I got asked to speak in a breakout room, but they told me I couldn't sell, which is like the worst thing ever. So I took my webinar presentation, I burned it on these DVDs, we had a whole bunch of them at our booth, and then, and the story's gonna, it's kind of a long story, but it's really fun. Anyway, so we get to TNC and I'm not allowed to sell, I have an hour on stage, but I still like, I wanna teach my Funnel Hacker presentation, so we did everything, like in the manual that goes out to the entire attendees, we had a big ad for them to go register for the webinar. In fact, I had people, I remember people taking pictures like, this is the best, this is the only direct response ad in the entire Traffic and Conversion newsletter, or you know, whatever. I was like, yeah, I'm the only one who still does direct response, so we had a big ad in there. And then we had a booth, and I remember the day I was supposed to be speaking, I was like, man, we have 3 breakout rooms, I'm competing against 2 other people in the breakout room, no one knows who I am or what funnel hacking is yet, and I remember Dave Woodward, who at the time was not working for ClickFunnels, he was just a friend, he was there, I was like, man, I wish we had some booth babes who we could get to push people into my session, and Dave looks at me, how many do you need? I'm like, I'm speaking like 3 hours, there's no way, he's like, how many do you need? I don't know, as many as you can get. So he gets on the phone, he's calling, I don't know who he's calling, or I don't even know, I didn't ever ask questions, but next thing you know, within an hour, he's like, alright, I got 4 girls coming. And so we had these 4 beautiful models show up, and we put them in Funnel Hacker t-shirts, and they stood outside my door to try to get everybody to come into our session. And so, luckily, between the Booth Babes, and my marketing, and whatever else, I think funnels were kind of the hot topic at the time as well, my breakout room had like 80% of the people, and we had people standing room only, in fact, I think fire marshal got mad at us, 'cause it was, anyway, it was awesome. So people come in there, I did my presentation and I only spoke for 60 minutes, which meant I taught the whole Funnel Hacks presentation except for the pitch, so I left people wanting more, and then I was like, I'm not allowed to pitch anything, so if you wanna watch the rest of this presentation, go to our booth and get a DVD where you can watch the rest of it. And that was kind of it, and I didn't know who was in the audience or anything, and that was kind of it. And then a year later, I get a phone call, not me, but our sales guys get a phone call from this gym owner named Alex Hormozi, and Alex was like, hey, last year I heard Russell speak at this event and I wanna do the thing he was doing. I'm sick of my gyms, I wanna do what he was doing. What are you doing? And the guy sold him on Inner Circle, and a week later he's on a Decade in a Day call with me, and he jumps on and we start talking. And you know when you start talking to someone really quick, you know when someone's just sharp and bright, you know? So I'm talking to Hormozy, and within like a few minutes I was like, and again, I had not met him yet, Funnel Hacking Live number 2 was coming up, so we had the San Diego Funnel Hacking Live was about to happen, and he was a gym owner and he was doing all these cool things, and I was like, man, I want someone to teach funnels to gym owners, And so during my first conversation with him, I was like, hey, do you wanna speak at Funnel Hacking Live? Which again, that normally never happens, but I just felt something about him, I was like, ah, there's something here. And so he was like, sure, and I told my team, and they're like, wait, who? Who is this? I'm like, I don't know, just some guy, he runs a gym, he seems really cool, he should speak at Funnel Hacking Live. And everyone on my team's freaking out, like, you've never met him before, what if he, like, I don't know, he just seems really cool. So yeah, so he came to Funnel Hacking Live, and I think that was the first time I met him was at Funnel Hacking Live, and he got up and spoke and kinda showed what he was doing, the funnels and the sales stuff he was doing people's gyms, and at Funnel Hacking Live, I think from there, somebody saw what he was doing and hired him, like, hey, can you teach me how to do this for my gyms? And that kind of was the beginning of him doing Gym Launch, and it's a long story, I'm not gonna tell you all the details, I'm sure you've heard the details from him, but, you know, he went and first off was flying out to gyms and filling them, and then from there he created an info product course, and then licensed it and blew it up and became Gym Launch. I had the opportunity to hang out with Alex a lot over the years and just someone who I'm grateful that I had a chance to be, you know, a part of as he was learning and growing, a part of that. But man, just someone who I love and respect and grateful for. So that's number one. That's how Alex and I kind of know each other is through that time. And we were, back when he was in the inner circle, we were hanging out, you know, 3, 4 times a year here in Boise or other places. I remember the very first TEDx event I ever went to was Dave, Alex, and Leila came to the event Grant Cardone wouldn't back then give us a sales table. He didn't think that that was necessary. So it was like, I did my sales pitch and there was nowhere for people to run. So Dave had a box of order forms and pens, Alex had one and Leila had one. So people were running to them and they're selling each other, selling everybody into it. And it was just, it was chaos and fun. I just have so many good memories with Alex. Anyway, so regardless, so Alex 2 years ago decides, sells Gym Launch and decides to go all in on organic. And he's insane, he's great. If you've ever talked to Alex short form, he's really good, he's like giving you an idea or principle or something and like doing it short form. And so like for every reason he started doing social and just went really hardcore on it and blew it up to the point where he's getting, you know, all his videos get half a million views or more. You know, my videos get 50,000 views or more. So he's 10x'd me on his organic reach, which drives me crazy as a friend, but also as a fan, I'm pumped for him. So anyway, but he's just, he's the best at short form. You watch him, he's just so good at like picking a topic, riffing on it, and just, he's so natural, so good. And so the last 2 years he's built this huge social following. He launched his first book and he crushed it there, and so he was launching his second book, and I knew he was writing it, and I think everyone's like anxiously waiting to see what he was gonna do and how he was gonna launch it. And so he decided to do a free book launch event. And you know, again, I'm working on book number 4 right now, so I'm looking and watching, and you know, I have a goal with this next book is to sell 1 million copies within the first year and 10 million copies within the first 5 years. And so I'm looking hard, like what are people doing to launch books and stuff like that? And I've seen recently a lot of people doing book launches. You know, Jenna Kutcher did a really good book launch recently. Jamie Kern Lima did a really good one, and she did hers with a big event. So I was curious how Alex was gonna do this, but I didn't know any of the details. I've texted him back 2 or 3 times, during the process, but he didn't ask for my opinion or didn't ask for any help and he was doing it and I was just more watching him to see what his creative mind would do and create. And so I'm sure a lot of you guys did as well. I don't know the exact numbers, but he was around 500,000 people subscribed to this live, this free event. I think mostly organic, I'm sure he paid some ads, but I think the majority is organic and getting affiliates to promote and all sorts of stuff. And what's crazy is you opt in, he opted you in with a text message, so I'm like, he's got a 500,000 person text message list, which if it was me, I would be spamming every single day with offers 500,000 person, just kidding, well kind of, but they haven't yet. I'm hoping he sells me something through text, but text and email, so he built a 500,000 person list from this exercise, which is crazy, right? And then the event he was doing was at Eric Worre's studio, and Eric Worre, he's got a big studio in Vegas, and I happened to be in Vegas during the book launch, and Eric Worre came and actually spoke at the Category Kings Mastermind event, and he's like, yeah, we're getting ready for Hormozy's big event this weekend, and so he actually invited me and the Atlas Group actually went over to his event center the night before Alex's thing. So we got there and like they had all the signage for Alex and all this stuff, you know, and so, but we had to go the night before just to go see the studio, which was really cool knowing that tomorrow Alex is gonna be doing the thing there. And so that was kind of the last day of our mastermind. The next day I was with Bart Miller shopping for my Fun Hacking Live wardrobe. I was at the, you know, in downtown or in Vegas running around store by store trying to find some clothes for me to wear so I don't look like I'm, Russell in a t-shirt and jeans at Funnel Hacking Live, right when the event's happening. So I'm trying to watch it while I'm shopping and all sorts of stuff, and I don't know all the details, and so I haven't talked to Alex post-event, so I don't know all this, so this is from Russell's recollection, what he's able to see. So number 1 is I tried to start the event initially and it didn't work, and it went to a dead page, and then I re-opted in, and it spun, didn't give me a page, and then I never got a text message link, went to email, email's like, tomorrow you'll get a link, so I didn't get the email or text message, and I was like, oh no, everything's crashed. And so I think it crashed for a while. Again, I didn't get an email or text with a link to register. And then when I went directly there, the page was down. So I was kind of like stressing out for him anyway, 'cause I don't know if you guys have ever done a huge launch, but whenever you have a big launch and it crashes, there's nothing more stressful than that. And then I don't know, 10, 15 minutes into the event, I got a text saying go watch it on YouTube. So I'm like, okay, I think Zoom must be down, but the YouTube link's working. So I went to YouTube and boom, he's live in the studio. So I'm kind of pumped that, I'm able to watch it. I missed the first part, so I don't know if he started on time or what happened, but I finally got a way to watch it. So I was literally at the food court. I sent him, I sent Alex a video. I'm in the food court and I've got a big black eye from wrestling. You know, it's like I got a big black eye. I'm sitting in the food court. I'm like watching him, listening to him pitch and trying to see what he's doing. So he goes into it and it was interesting 'cause I watched Jamie Kern Lima when she did her virtual event book launch. She had like 10 speakers and they all came and they, they added value and they taught stuff in between. She would do little mini pushes back to her book. And I feel like that's kind of the way I would've structured an event. Alex wasn't that way. He was the only speaker and it was structured more like a webinar. I think it only went for 2 hours, then it was done. And I was like, for me it was sick to my stomach. Like if you got 500,000 people registered for an event, like I would talk for forever. Like I would never stop. I would just keep talking until everyone disappeared. You know what I mean? Like it's like, ah, don't miss that opportunity. Went for like, I think, 2 hours and then it was over. And then, so that's kind of, anyway, so for me, I would have elongated that and tried to serve those people as long as I could while I had their attention. Same thing, like, it's funny, day 4 of Funnel Hacking Live, when I'm on stage saying goodbye to everyone, I'm looking out and there's 5,000 people still there, and I'm like, it takes us so much work to get these people in the room, like, I don't want to leave, I don't wanna, like, I just wanna, like, let's go all night long, let's go 5 more sessions, 'cause they're all here, like, let's keep having fun, you know? And that's how I felt about that. I was like, ah, like I wish Alex would've kept going or had more speakers or had more people talking about the topic or whatever. But, so that was one thing I thought was kind of interesting, how he structured the event was different than I definitely would've, but he structured it like a webinar. And so then he started going through the webinar and I was like, he's doing the perfect webinar, which was kind of cool. And it was funny 'cause I was watching the comments and like, as he's doing the perfect webinar, it's like he's leading up to his sell. Which I'm like, oh, in fact I texted Alex the night before, I'm like, what are you selling? Please tell me you're selling something. Don't deprive these people of giving you money. And he's like, well, just watch, I'm doing something that you'll notice, but I'm making some twists on it. So I'm watching him do the Perfect Webinar, and as he starts getting to the stack, the comments, people are upset, they're freaking out, like, oh, he's just like all the other ones, and he's trying to sell, and stuff like that. I'll talk about what he did here in a second, but a couple things I noticed from the webinar which were interesting to me. Interesting because like when you watch Alex on short-form reels, like he's just the best I've ever seen at like just riffing and talking. Whereas the webinar, I've never seen Alex do a long-form 2-hour, I've seen him do presentations, but like a structured sales presentation for that long. And it was interesting 'cause I think he had written the whole thing out 'cause it felt like he was reading it. And I was like, how interesting. For me, I'm the other way around. Like when I do, the reason why I suck at, not that I suck, but I'm not as good as I'm gonna be soon in the future. But like, I'm not as great on short form as Alex 'cause like I'm the opposite way where I have to structure it and I write it almost and then like it sounds like I'm reading it. And so I'm trying to get better at that. And it's just interesting to me 'cause the long form though, I have a 90-minute webinar, like I just flow. Like that's my arena, that's where I feel the most comfortable. I can talk, I can share, share stories. I don't write a single word out and I can go for 90 minutes and kill a webinar. But on a 60-second reel, I'm the one that's gotta structure it out and I sound like I'm reading it. It's horrible. Funny, 'cause me and Alex had flip-flopped where he was long-form teaching/selling, I feel like he was more reading, whereas he's just so natural short-form, and I'm the exact opposite. So I thought that was, it was an interesting thing as I was listening, like how interesting how he's so good in this one and then where I'm so bad and then vice versa. So I thought it was kind of fun. All right, so then he did his pitch and he built a whole value, and the value dropped and dropped and dropped, and eventually he's like, dropped all the way down to like, it's just free. Like, you all get it for free. And so it was funny watching the tides turn in the comments from like, we hate you, you're trying to sell something, to like, we love you, you're the greatest ever, right? And he pitched it at $0 and basically like you just go to his site and like the whole course is there. You can just watch it, no paywall, no opt-in, it's just there. So that was cool. I think it was, I've seen some other people do it, like open sourcing their content. So it's just like, it's there, it's for you to learn and grow from. And so he did that. And this is where a lot of the controversy I saw online come, is people were like, oh no, Alex gave away this, you know, a $2,000 course for free, like it's destroying the market, like he's moving the free line where now everyone's gonna have to give away their courses for free and all sorts of stuff, and that's where a lot of the controversy came from. And I don't actually agree with that. I thought it was interesting that people were so nervous about that, but I don't think it's like a legitimate fear. You know, Alex's business model's different. He's not selling info products. He is, he's trying to serve people and then get the right businesses, businesses doing like $3 to $5 million a year to come give him equity and then he helps consult. That's his business model, right? And so he's just serving the lower audience to get the cream to rise to the top so he can do equity deals with the best businesses, which is pretty cool. And so for him, he's not trying to sell a course. Yeah, he could've made a couple million bucks selling a course, but instead he gives it away for free because for him the long game is different than us. And so everyone's like, I'm gonna have to give my stuff away for free. First off, you don't have to. Second off, It's not even the right model unless you're modeling Hermosi's model, right? So it's like understanding what business model you're in. Don't think that like because he did it, like that should become your business model. I think that's a misconception some people were having watching their reactions to it afterwards, which was kind of interesting. But one thing that I do want to stress, at Pirate's Cove, we had the Category Kings Mastermind. I had a guy come speak. Some of you guys know him. His name's Pace Morby. And Pace, he got into the real estate coaching business like 2 years ago, and this year I think they did over $100 million or something crazy like that. And what's interesting about Pace is I had him come speak about, wasn't about their coaching business, I just had him come speak about the community he's built. He is the best I've ever seen at building a community. In fact, I thought I was the best, I'm not gonna lie, Expert Secrets is about how I built the Funnel Hacker community, but Pace has done a better job, just flat out, he's done a better job. And so it's been fun 'cause actually, you know, he spoke for over an hour and I modeled out A lot of changes. You guys are gonna see some really cool funnel hacking community stuff happening over between now and the end of the year, primarily from Pace's stuff. But somebody asked Pace that about community, like why is it so important? And what Pace said was interesting. He's like, he's like, I don't think courses are gonna matter in the future. He's like, you can go to AI and be like, write me a course on how to, you know, do underwater basket weaving and it'll create a course better than any of us could create. He's like, so the value's not in the course and information, the value is in the community. AI can't build a community. Right, it's like that's the thing. So he's doubling and tripling and 100x-ing down on community. I think this is similar to what, you know, for those who are freaking about Hermosi's things, like yes, info may be devalued or may whatever you want to call it, but like the value is in the community. I think that's hopefully lesson for everybody here is understanding that, like between AI making content easier, Alex giving away for free or whatever, like the fear may be, like don't fear that, like the community is the secret. That is the key. And so how do you double down and triple down on, on building your community? So that's something, a big takeaway I really had from the whole process.

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Okay, so then after he pitched his pitch for $0, then he's like, hey, by the way, those who do want the book and you want to pass on, you can go buy one book if you want, but if you buy 3 books, one for you and then give away 2 to people you think would benefit from it, I'll give you a free Hermosely hat. So I was like, buy 3 books, get a hat. And then he had a 10-book option as well on the site. So that was kind of the pitch, was just go buy 1 book or go buy 3, to give away 2 copies and you get a free hat, and number 3 was buy 10 copies, I think was the other option. So one cool thing I got from there is like, I've only done this on 1 book funnel ever. On my Network Marketing Secrets, go to networkmarketingsecrets.com, I got a book funnel there. And because network marketers will a lot of times buy something for their team, so I have on the order form option there, so you can buy 1 book, 3 books, 5 books, or 10 books. And most people buy multiple books of Network Marketing Secrets, but I've never offered that on any of my other books. I was like, dang it, I should have done that for all these and just make it like, hey, get one for you, or, you know, buy, buy one book for you, or buy three to give two away to friends or business partners, or buy three. And so I think I'm going to update my funnels to have an option, like a 1-3-5 option above the credit card form where you can order multiple copies, because I just thought that was kind of cool to see how he did that. Now I don't know exactly how many copies he sold. He told me before he had printed over 150,000 copies of the book before the launch, and then most of them sold out within the first hour or so. So I think he sold, who knows, 100,000+ copies of the book, which is awesome. Yeah, and so that was the book launch. Then it ended, and the webinar ended, and I was like, why would you end this? Like, sell me something or talk some more or whatever, you know? But, you know, he ended, and that was kind of the end of it. So that was interesting. Now, A couple other things. So number one, the big thing I wanted to talk about was just the fact about information, it's a commodity. And so thinking about different business models. Hermosies is like give away information for free, give away the commodity, and then I get equity in the back. With Pace, it's like information's there, but you're building community. Just thinking about that with your business. I think for me, it's wrapping information more in community than I've ever done before. To increase the value and make it valuable. Number 2 thing was interesting is that, and this is, anyway, this was like, hurt my heart as a marketer, but Hermosi didn't send people through a funnel, and his tech stack was interesting. He sent people, I think, to a Shopify page, and from there took them to a HubSpot CRM. So it was like Shopify for the product, HubSpot for the CRM, and I know Alex, Alex grew up on ClickFunnels, but he always says, oh, we need more enterprise, using enterprise software, but the reality is, number one, is ClickFunnels is enterprise software, especially 2.0, if you guys have been using it lately, like it's getting really, really good to do all the things. In fact, Funnel Hacking Live, we're launching the CRM features and a bunch of other really cool things that are insane. But the other thing is like, HubSpot can't even do a basic funnel, which drives me crazy, so you use Shopify, which also doesn't do a funnel, so it's just like, ah, you know, he had no, no funnel, no order form bump, no upsell, no downsell, no nothing. It was just buy the 3 books and it was there. And again, I understand Alex is trying to monetize the thing, so I forgive him for that, but for any of you guys who are watching that, if he sold 150,000 copies of the book, his average cart value should've been, I don't know, on a book launch like that, average cart value, you're probably looking at $70 to $80. So done correctly, 100,000 copies of the book times $70, what's the math on that? Okay, I'm doing math. Let's see, let's do just 100,000 copies of the book times, let's say, $70 cart value, which I think is low, I think you got a lot higher. That's $7 million. Instead of using Shopify and HubSpot to glue together something, if you just would've put that funnel inside of ClickFunnels, that would've been $7 million net in your pocket. Day number one. I don't know, so I feel like that was a $7 million mistake in this book launch. I think he could've made a lot more with other stuff, but again, his model's not to make money on the info, so I understand that. But it hurt my heart seeing no upsells, no downsells, no order form bumps, no two-step order forms, no like all the things we know that drive a book and sell a crap ton copies of the book were implemented. So that, again, that hurt my heart a little bit. Other than that, as a whole, her Mozzi launch was awesome. So I love him, grateful for him, love watching him. I think there's a lot of really cool innovative things he was doing in the whole process. And just gave me some more ideas for our book launch. So my book launch, well, my big, we launched a book recently, you guys probably saw Lynchpin book, which is selling like crazy, it's one of our highest converting funnels right now, which is exciting, but I have my next big book a big, big book launch in about a year from now, so I'm taking close notes on all these kind of things, and I'm excited. You guys will see what my version looks like here in about a year from now, a little over a year from now, for our big book launch. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. So, thank you, Alex, for doing the launch. Thank you for showing us some new innovative ideas. Thank you guys for listening. Hopefully you got some ideas from it. And just biggest thing is make sure you use ClickFunnels. Don't miss out on $7 million in pure, unadulterated, free profit that is yours just for the taking, just by just structuring things correctly. So that's all I say, that's my only hope for you guys if you got nothing else from it. Also focusing on community over info and all the other things. So I hope this helps, I appreciate y'all, thanks for listening, and with that said, I will talk to you guys on another episode very, very soon here on the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Thanks everybody.