The Webinar Bombed... Now What?

Even for me who has done literally hundreds and hundreds of webinars, sometimes they don’t work. What are the adjustments we make to make it work better next time?

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---Transcript---

Hey. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I'm going to tell you about my most recent failure, that happened yesterday. All right, everybody. So usually, on most things you have a chance to hear the highlight reel. Normally I will tell you a story about how like, "Oh, five years ago, six years ago, I did a webinar and it bombed, and now I'm amazing." But rarely do you get to hear me talk about my failures in the midst of the failures, when I'm still licking my wounds and trying to figure it all out. So, that's our mood today. I hope you guys don't mind.

It's actually interesting. A lot of you have heard my story about 10X, where I did $3.2 million in 90 minutes. What a lot of you don't know is like two months prior to that, I had spoken at an event, and I had tweaked my pitch a little bit. I did the pitch in a little small audience, and it completely bombed. And you know, two and a half months later I did it at 10X and killed it. And I told the story about 10X and I killed it because that's the story that's fun to tell, but I didn't tell the story about how two months earlier, I did a webinar to a group of people and completely bombed. Or not a webinar. Like a live event.

That's the thing about this game. There's always the ebbs and the flows, the ups and the downs. I've been reading a new book by Tim... Tim something. Dang it. I should know this. Tim Grover. Tim Glover. Something. Anyway, it's called Winning. He wrote one called Relentless, which was good, but Winning is way better. Talking about winning in there. He's like, "Winning is unforgiving. Winning doesn't care about you. Winning, there's ups and the downs, and it's just... " Anyway, so today, or after yesterday I'm like I feel like winning is beating me up a little bit. But it's okay, because it's how you learn.

And so, but I'm just like everybody else. Like yesterday... And I did a webinar yesterday, or a podcast yesterday, so if you listen to the last podcast, you'll hear me talk a little about this. But I was excited. We bought a new company. We spent multiple eight figures on the new company, so it wasn't small, and we were doing a webinar to the customer list to sell ClickFunnels. Because the whole purpose of buying this company was to use it as a front end to hopefully people in ClickFunnels, right? And so, I'm all excited because we're going to turn these people into ClickFunnels members. It's going to be amazing.

Anyway, so I do this webinar. And first off, I'm like, "Dude. Well, I'm on fire. Things are feeling good." And then I look over at the comments, because at a couple parts I played little videos. So the videos, I looked at the comments, and oh my gosh. These people, my new customers that I just spent multiple eight figures on, are not happy. They are pissed. They don't like the webinar. They don't like the beat. They think I talk too fast. They think that this is like an MLM pitch. They think all of the things. And I start reading these things by a whole bunch of people, and John on my team runs in. He's like, "The comments are going south." I'm like, "Yeah. I don't know what to do." I'm doing a webinar. The whole bunch of people, I've got to keep going.

And so I get back on. I do the whole webinar. And afterwards, you know. What I was expecting to be a high six figure day, maybe seven figure day, ended up being a five figure. A low five figure day. I was like, "Oh, man. That was not good." Because I've got to pay back multiple eight figures. I needed this to convert better than it did. So at first I was just like, the initial was just like anger, and then depression. These are all in the moment, right? And then it's just like I want to be depressed. I want to go hide. I just want to quit. But then I'm like, "I can't quit. I need to pay back the loan that we took out for this company. I've got to figure this out." Right?

So after being kind of bummed for a little bit, then it was like, "Okay. I've got to figure this out." So after about an hour of me moping and wanting just to quit and run and hide in a hole and everything... Because it's weird. I don't know about you guys, but there's so many emotions. I'm not sure if you saw the 10X documentary. If not, I think it's 10xdocumentary.com. We did a whole documentary on this. But I spoke at the first 10X. We had $3.2 million in sales. The next 10X was in a stadium. It was three times as big. 35,000 people. Everyone thought I was going to make a billion dollars, and I bombed at it. We have a whole documentary documenting the bomb.

But the thing for me is it's hard for a couple reasons. Number one is like I always want people on my team to feel the energy of what we're doing. Right? Because the more excited they are, they're more excited about their jobs and what we're doing. And so, leading this webinar, we had 7,500 people register, and we're talking to them and getting them excited. And the day of the webinar I message them, "It's webinar day. It's going to be so much fun." Like we're pumped and excited, and the webinar is happening. And then when it doesn't happen, partially it's like, "Oh, I feel like I let all of them down. Right?" Because the 10X thing, if you watch the documentary, I felt the same way. I felt like I let all these people down. We flew all these people in, and everyone was excited to see this thing, and it didn't happen. And so, like ugh. Partially it's me licking my wounds, because I felt like I let everybody down.

The second half for me is just like embarrassing. Right? I'm a performer. I'm an athlete. I'm an entrepreneur. I step up, I perform. And when I step up and don't perform, it's embarrassing. Right? One of my friends, he's a UFC fighter. He fought a big fight. He's in the top four or five. This is just like a month ago. Two or three weeks ago, actually. And he went out there and he lost in the first round. He got tapped out. And he went to Instagram instantly afterwards and posted. He's like, "I'm embarrassed." That's how I feel. It's like it's embarrassing. Just embarrassing. Even my wife. I get home, and Colette's like, "How'd it go?" And I'm like, "Uh, I just want to crawl in a hole and hide."

So, I'm telling you these things for a couple reasons. Number one, I want you to know that I go through it as well. Because I'm sure you guys go through this too, right? Where you're expecting this, and then this comes in and you're frustrated or depressed or angry. All of the emotions come in, right? So I wanted to share with you, hopefully to help you just understand that even me, at this level in the game for me, I still go through that. I'm going through it right now, like in the middle of it. In the middle of being embarrassed and being frustrated. Like I didn't even want to go to the office today. I just want to sit at home and watch movies and eat ice cream. That sounds good, actually. Maybe I will do that. Just kidding. Well, I'm not completely ruling it out yet, but anyway.

But then the second half is where the lesson is. Because after licking my wounds and being depressed and being embarrassed, and all the emotions that come with that, then I was like, "Well, I've got a job to do." Right? And wrestling is the same way. I lose a match, be frustrated, embarrassed, angry, all the things, and then it's like, "Well, I've got to come back and win this tournament." Or, you know. Placed third in this tournament. "I've got to come back and compete in the next tournament. I've got to come back and like... " So now it's like what are the adjustments I make? I'm like, "Okay. Well, the webinar didn't work, so I'm not going to go set out 500 replay emails, because it didn't work, and so it's not worth the effort. Right? So we're calling an audible. We're shifting that."

Number two, it's like, "Okay. We misunderstood our audience." Right? The audience who I thought they were were definitely not who they were, so who is the audience? I've got to figure this out. Like Danny Kennedy 101, message to market match. My message did not match the market, right? So I've got to figure this out. In fact, when we lost ClickFunnels the first five times, it was an interesting thing. Same thing. The first five launches of ClickFunnels failed, failed, failed, failed, failed. And number six is when it hit, because I'd figured out the message to market match. What is the message that this market needs to buy the product? So I realized I had a message to market mismatch.

So the first question is, who is the actual market? So we started digging through the data, and like who are they. I assumed they were this. They're not. So, who are they? And I figured that out. Okay, now what is the purpose? Why are they buying this product? Why did they come into this room? Why in this ecosystem? What's the reasoning they had? Okay, now we know that. Now the mechanism. I just talked about getting from zero to a million bucks. First off is like you've got to figure out who is it you're selling, then you start figuring out what is it you're actually selling, and then how you're selling it. The what and the how, right?

And so, I know the what's ClickFunnels. It's like it has to be that. That's the whole purpose, right? So I know who now. The who, I misunderstood the who. Number two is like what? Well, I'm still selling the same what. So, the last one is how. What is the mechanism? What's the thing that we're using to sell? Right? And I thought that the webinar was going to be the thing to sell everybody. Now that I quickly figured out, okay, the webinar's not the thing. Okay, well what is the thing? How am I going to sell people this product? I'm like, well they just bought... I'm looking at what the product they just purchased, which is video creation software that helps make doodle videos and things like that, right? So it's like, okay, this is the mechanism that they bought, right? They're buying software that helps them do this, so I need to use that same mechanism to convert them.

So, right now I am in the process. Within an hour of me bombing the webinar, I had hired a writer to start on this process. But now we're working on a Video Sales Letter for my OGs. We call them VSLs, for those who are newer. It's called a Video Sales Letter, VSL. And we're going to hand sketch out the VSL. So, someone comes in. They bought software that does VSLs. I'm going to have them hand sketch out a VSL. We're going to have them surveying the VSL to figure out which audience they are, and then the VSL will change on the fly, depending on who they are. So if, "This person is this market or this market or this market or this," who they are, it will speak specifically to that who, and bridge the gap on why they now need ClickFunnels.

So that is the second test, and that test may bomb. I may go and spend a month trying to build this thing out, paying to hand do all the videos, all of the thing, and it may completely bomb. But that's the game, right? It's trying and failing, trying and failing. But it comes back to understanding it's the core things, right? Understanding, okay, who is the market? Right? The market to message match. Who is the market? What's the message you need to actually convert that, and keep tweaking that and change that until you figure it out. ClickFunnels, I failed five times. Five launches before we hit it. And I could have easily failed on the first or the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth, but I didn't, luckily. Thank heavens. Woo hoo. Otherwise most of you guys wouldn't even be here. And I kept working until we figured it out.

Three weeks before... Or two weeks. Whatever it was. A month ago. A month before the 10X event, I tried my presentation, and I flopped. I tweaked the market to method match, tweaked those things, and then a month later, whatever it was, at 10X, boom. $3.2 million in sales. Right? So, it's our ability to look at the failures, lick our wounds quickly, and then make the adjustments that are the key to winning this game. Okay? Because man, I don't care what level you are. I don't care if you do this for 20 years, like I had. I don't care if you've done that webinar 150 times live, and you know exactly what words to say in order to get people to buy. If it fails, sometimes it does, and you've got to come back and figure out what are the adjustments.

My buddy who's a UFC fighter, right? Lost in the match. He's going to come back and look at the adjustments. What are the adjustments he's got to make? I think that's where a lot of people, they fail. It's that they failed, and then they think that they're a failure, as opposed to like, "I failed. Crap. That method didn't work, but I'm stubborn, and I've got pigheadedness. I'm going to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying." And for me with ClickFunnels, six times, we got it. Gave this offer. It may even take six times. Maybe eight, maybe 10, maybe 15, maybe 30. But I have to make it work, right? And the same thing's got to be true for you. Okay? If it hasn't worked yet, all right. That's okay. Let's get back to the drawing board, and you've got to think. Did I mess up on the message? Is the market wrong? What do I got to tweak? And keep doing it until you've figured out the method that's going to work for that audience.

So, anyway. I hope that helps. You guys are hearing me talk about it in the midst of the pain, as opposed to later. They always say in vulnerability, like show your scars but not your open wounds, but I've got an open wound. There it is. I just dumped some salt on it to embarrass myself in front of you guys even more, because that's how much I love you guys. But hopefully it gives you some understanding in some of the things you need to be able to lick your wounds and get back up and keep trying, because it's going to happen. It happened to me. It's going to happen to you. It's going to happen to other people. But the ones who win are the ones who are able to sit in the frustration of the moment for a moment.

Because as annoying as it is, it feels good to be like, "Duh," and letting that pain just kind of writhe inside of you. You know, it's like someone stabbing you and turning the knife, twisting the knife. It's like I want to feel that pain, so I can be angry enough and frustrated enough to do the work to figure it out. Because if you're like, "Oh, I failed. Whatever. You know, win some, lose some," and keep moving on, you're not going to be successful. I want to sit in that pain for a little bit, so I can be like, "Ah, I'm so angry. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so frustrated." Like all of the things, and twisting that knife, because that's what gets you to be like, "Okay. I've got to change this. I've got to figure something out." Right? And that's what gives you the fuel you need to make the adjustments and to change, right?

I mean, losing. I lose a wrestling match, that pain and that frustration, that embarrassment, those things are the things that drive me now to get back in the gym and to figure things out. And as an entrepreneur, the same thing. You bomb a campaign. All right. Let it hurt. Feel it. Okay, now you feel that? That sucks, right? Okay, now let's get back to work and let's fix this thing. And that's kind of the way you guys got to be looking at. That's the way I'm looking at it, right? The annoyance and the pain of me bombing on this thing is the fuel that I need to fix it, and I'm excited now to fix it. Still upset, still frustrated, still have that pain in my gut from failing, but that's okay.

Again, that's the thing that's going to drive me through figuring it out. And we're going to figure it out. And when I figure it out I'll share it with you guys, because I have to figure it out. It's just not like, "Oh, that'd be nice." It's like, "No, I'm multiple eight figures in the hole right now in this company. We've got to figure out how to turn it around." And I will. We'll figure it out. But this is my mindset. This is how I'm doing. These are the things I'm looking at. Okay? What was the market? What did I screw up on? Right? What's the message? Where did I screw up there? Okay, what am I selling, and how am I selling it? What are the methodologies? What do I got to tweak? What do I got to change? And those things put together is how I win this game.

So just remember, you guys. It's a game. Don't let it stress you out. Don't let it keep you up at nights. But realize it's a game that you're playing. If you want to win, you've got to be able to move, to adjust, and yeah. So, there you go. I appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and learned something, please share it. Let people know. That's the best thing you could do for me, is tell someone. Like, "Dude, go listen to Russell's podcast this week." Or if you hate it, then don't. That's cool, too. I get it. I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea, as they say, which is totally fine by me. So for my people, you'll hear my voice, and hopefully this will help you.

So thanks again for listening, and I'll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye, everybody.