Boise FHAT event recap. Was it really worth it?

There was some problem with the Delta plane that was supposed to take me back home to NYC. It was so bad that we had to switch planes. New plane required the new crew to fly it… Naturally, that whole process caused a few extra hours of delay at the Salt Lake City airport.

Later on in the air, we discovered there was only one working toilet (I think they closed even that one eventually) and there was a big line of people waiting for their turn pretty much the whole flight. Once we landed in JFK five hours later and started approaching the terminal we learned (after about 30 minutes of staying still on the ground) there was an airport vehicle that broke down in front of the plane and we couldn’t proceed because of that.

Once the vehicle was finally cleared off the way, we approached the jetty only to realize that we (somehow?) docked to the wrong gate. At that point, we had to wait for another special vehicle to pull the plane back so we can get to the proper gate.

I had to check in one of my carry-on bags because when we swapped the planes in Salt Lake City we got the smaller plane and it didn’t have enough overhead storage.

After about 20 minutes of waiting at the baggage carousel at JFK, we heard the announcement saying they messed up the carousel number and we had to go to the different one to get our bags.

Yep, that was pretty funny and memorable trip. Fortunately, I didn’t have any connecting flights. One woman was really really pissed off as she desperately tried to get out of the plane to catch connecting flight to Italy because her father had cancer…

My trip to ClickFunnels headquarters in Boise, the one I was looking forward to for three months, was over. Sad.. It definitely was an unforgettable experience.

Let me tell you guys a bit more about that.

First of all, the Boise is faaaarrrr. It felt like going to Arctic Circle to meet Santa Clause 🙂 I had to cross the whole continent to get there!

It took me about 8 hours overall, but I’ve made it!

My first real experience of the “marketing mecca” (Boise?!) came from the interaction with the Uber driver that drove me to the Airbnb place. As we started chatting, I mentioned that I came for Russel Brunson’s event.

Surprisingly, the driver knew Russel Brunson and even read both of his books! He went on to tell me that he had to go back to driving (he made more than 7K trips according to Uber app!) because his daughter was hit by a drunk driver and he and his wife had to spend all the retirement savings on the medical bills… Crazy story, I know.

The good news is that in past he used to be a pretty successful currency trader, so he decided to go back to that but this time add some more digital strategies that Russel teaches. We exchanged numbers and who knows, maybe I’ll buy his course one day.

The event started the next day and I was pretty pumped up.

Since I didn’t have a super clear webinar idea, I decided not to stress about that and instead focus on learning the process and connecting with like-minded people.

After a short Uber ride from my Airbnb place, I finally made it to the famous FHAT room! The room that I saw so many times before during our Friday’s QA calls with Stephen Larsen in our private Facebook group. It felt surreal to finally be there in person.

Some may say it’s just a room after all. Could be, but for me it had a special meaning. I saw it as a secret gathering place for some of the best entrepreneurs in the world!

I was fortunate to meet quite a few of them during the event, including main organizers of course:

Turned out that particular FHAT week in September was pretty busy (is there not a busy week in Russel’s life?). There was a huge ClickFunnels Viral Video aunch party scheduled the next day after the FHAT event (September 15, 2017), plus Inner Circle meetup starting on Monday the following week.

Needless to say, Russel and the whole CF team was pretty stressed out. At the same time, it was amazing to see the magical power of deadlines. Things just happen if you schedule them, otherwise, you may think and plan and never do.

Anyway, the event started right on time and The Man himself showed up on stage!

Russel was a bit sick and slept only a few hours the night before so he could finish final preparations for the FHAT event (for us basically!), but that didn’t stop him from delivering an amazing presentation. In fact, around 6pm on the SAME day, he invited us to attend a special 3-hour recording of his new product called “funnels cookbook”!

We bunched up in the small room (actual Click Funnels office kitchen) and Russel delivered 3-hour long presentation with just one 5 minute water break in between! He just went on and on and on, basically recorded the whole thing in one try. That reminded me my own attempts to shoot a 3-minute video, where I would do 10 attempts and never record anything useful in the end…

The second day was all about building perfect webinar. We finished well after the midnight and of course, Russel was there to demonstrate and break down one of his best performing webinars right in front of us.

I met so many amazing people on the event:

Molly (Boudoir photography coach)

Peng Joon (public speaker and Experts Secrets book affiliate winner)

Tim Sales (well it’s Tim Sales, a former navy seal – I promised to learn more about him for the next event 🙂 )

Alex Charfen ( biohacker, real estate guru and business coach. I think he sold a few people on his new program right on the FHAT event. He is good! )

Nicolas (aka Garret White and abs guru from France), Charles (the superhero dad), Heather (business coach rockstar), Mark Moss (cryptocurrency trader and miner, surfer, ketones drinker and simply amazing guy), Caleb (storm restoration business pro, worked his way up from the very bottom), Luis (Real Estate magician with crazy interesting story, I’m sure you will hear more from him), Paul and Stacey (founders of rock-solid relationship program and simply amazing people), Krista ( also in Real Estate, she is just so amazing and energetic that I literally can’t find proper words to describe her).

Oh yes, I also connected with Myles, Click Funnels project manager, who helped all of us along the way. He started his own 60-day challenge to publish something interesting every single day, so keep an eye on that guy. He definitely has a lot to share because of the unique position in the middle of Russel’s and Click Funnels life. Special thanks to you my friend!

I can’t mention everyone, unfortunately, but I do love you all! I’m sure I’ll find some space for each one of you in my future posts.

The last day of the event was focused on technical implementation inside of the Click Funnels software. We learned how to create and set up the whole perfect webinar and eliminate all possible manual steps, so we could focus on delivering awesome (not boring) content and no the technical details.

It was so great to be around such an amazing group of people. The connections I formed during the event was my major takeaway. Totally worth 15K and more.

I think it would be awesome if the training would focus more on our specific webinar ideas, instead of going through the same content (Russels webinar) we saw in the online version. I would like it to be more personal, hands-on and specific, but I guess it’s hard to do in the group setting like that.

Here is the thing, if you considering purchasing FHAT training and expecting some magical outcomes just because you’ll go there in person – don’t do it. Wait until you have something going before you buy your ticket. Especially if that’s all the money that you currently have!

I personally bought the program mostly to get the push from behind, to set some real deadline that would force me to change and evolve. The other huge reason was a chance to connect with like-minded people who were willing to do whatever it takes to be able to “unstuck” and get on “another level”.

When I look back at the past few months of my life I definitely see a lot of changes. I started to wake up early, changed my diet, changed the way I think… You can read more about my journey on this very blog (which by the way was almost dead 30 days ago). Yeah, I didn’t build my million dollars funnel yet, but hey – I’m getting there, slowly but surely. To be honest, I stopped focusing on money a long time ago, money will come. I’m chasing my true passions and trying to rediscover myself. The ultimate goal is to find my spark again.

I remember my brother asking me on Viber how things were going in Boise and I replied: “It’s like u finally got home…”. There is something truly magical to be surrounded by the tightly selected group of like-minded people from all over the world (yep, Isla came all the way from Australia!).

Mike drop for all of you guys!

All in all, I’m glad that I did sign up for the FHAT program. All changes that I introduced into my life because of it will definitely outweigh the 15K I spent (invested). No doubts about that!

Bonus tip: I noticed Russel and Stephen do not like wearing shoes. After talking to Alex Charfen, who was wearing five finger shoes himself, it became clear that there are a lot of health benefits to stay barefooted. Do not believe me? Check this photo.

After the FHAT training was done, we went to the restaurant to celebrate and get to know each other a bit better. Over there we accidentally met another group of marketers who came to Boise just for the Viral Party scheduled for the next day.

Just imagine for a second, about 300 top internet marketers in the country came to Boise just for one day to be a part of it. That’s the power of Russel Brunson and Click Funnels community!

Including Jeffery Banek, a hardcore funnel builder who got himself Click Funnels tattoo! No kidding.

Now you know where to go if you need someone to build a funnel for your business. 🙂

The Viral Video Launch happened at the Boise State Stadium, right at the top in the Sky Center. Pretty cool place overlooking the mountains. There were a lot of people, I don’t even know how many. All the seats were taken basically.

Shortly after the event started, one of the Harmon Brothers, the company behind the Viral Video for Click Funnels, took the stage to share some tricks behind every successful video project.

Russel paid them around 500K (or at least those were the rumors I heard), so everyone was anxious to see how it turned out 🙂 You can search Click Funnels gold digger on youtube and make your own conclusions. I thought it was a bit too long. But hey, what do I know about viral videos right? Time will show if it was a success or not.

The influencers in the room definitely gave it the initial boost. A lot of them had millions of followers. Nothing in life is accidental, including Viral Videos… )

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention important detail – Gary V delivered the keynote speech which was like an icing on the cake. It turned into a giant QA session with the audience. Apparently the next big thing, according to Gary V, is the voice, whatever that means 🙂

He dropped many golden nuggets during the presentation. I wanted to ask how he maintains his energy levels but didn’t have a chance. I wonder if he has some special morning routine or something like that. We exchanged a few words in Russian after the keynote and that was pretty cool!

Then there was a short food break, so we had a chance to network some more. I met Beck and Trevor who were doing amazing stuff in e-commerce niche. Maybe one day we will get a chance to join our forces and produce something truly outstanding.

I also spotted Kaelin (the Lady Boss!). She is crashing in the weight loss niche. In just a few short years she was able sign up more than 90K people.

The last thing that concluded the event was the Giant Bubble Soccer game that happened outside on the football field. It wasn’t a simple game though, we set the new Guinness World record as the biggest bubble soccer ever played! There were 100 people who participated in the record-setting game (two 15 mins rounds and 10 mins break in between) and I was fortunate enough to leave my name in the annals of history.

Just about a month ago I joined the ranks of Fire Walkers on the Tony Robbins event and now I have my name in the Guinness Records book! Life is beautiful thing 🙂

It wasn’t over though…

I returned to my Airbnb place around 12am after everything was set and done only to realize that I forgot my iPhone in the Uber car… I really needed my phone because the next morning at 7am I had to be at the airport to fly back home. Turns out there is no way to contact Uber directly, there is no support number that I was able to find.

They have a small link on the website saying “Lost an item” or something like that. You need to click it and specify the phone number so Uber (automated system) can connect you with the driver. Since I didn’t have my phone (it was peacefully driving in the Uber car according to the findmyiphone service) and it was well past midnight I was pretty much stuck.

I tried to search the first floor of my Airbnb house for the landline phone but didn’t find anything (I also didn’t want to wake up the owners with their three dogs in the middle of the night, so didn’t look too hard). Then I facebook messaged some of the friends I met at the CF event. I few of them were not asleep at 1am and provided me their cell phone numbers. Unfortunately, this “Lost my item” service didn’t really work… All the calls were going straight to voicemail and we were unable to contact the driver.

Forgot to mention one more important detail, there was only about 5% charge remaining on the phone and I was running out of time.

The next thing I tried was Skype number. I paid about $20 to set that thing up so I could receive calls myself on my laptop instead of bothering friends at 2am in the morning. It worked, but I still would not be able to connect to the Uber driver through their system.

Around 2.30am I came up with the new amazing plan! I decided to simply call my cell phone number from google hangout. Guess what, after few beeps, I heard “Hello” on the other end of the line! Someone actually picked up the phone. I almost jumped off the bed in excitement. Turned out the driver found the phone, charged it with his cable but could not find a way to contact me.

See, in most cases, the simplest solution is the one that works. I spent almost two and a half hours trying to come up with some creative solution (over-engineering in action) instead of just calling my cell…

Fortunately, the driver turned out to be an awesome dude (like all of the people I met in Boise) and returned my phone about 30 minutes after we got in touch.

I went to sleep around 4am and slept just 3 hours as I needed to wake up early to catch my 9am flight to NY. That didn’t matter though because I re-connected with my phone and all of the pictures and notes that I took during the Boise week!

That’s my update. There were few bumps on the road, but overall it was a truly amazing and unforgettable week! I still didn’t build my funnel, but I’m hanging in there… )

p.s. It took me 5 days to write this post. My family is finally back from Belarus and every time I sit down to write my thoughts in the morning, they come down to my basement cave 10 minutes later to say hello and take me to play with them. At 6.50am 🙂 Well, the post is finally live, enjoy!