The Power Of Secrets

Russell talks about how fast a new idea went viral when it was locked behind NDA’s…

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Hey, this is Russell Brunson with the “Marketing in Your Car” podcast from DotComSecrets.com. I am actually driving home from work today. I’ve had a really fun experience, and I want to share, because I think there’s some value in it for everybody.

This is what I want to talk about –the power of secrets [laughs]. Our company name is “Dot Com Secrets”, and I remember at one of my events that I did, I was telling someone, “Find some secrets, and that’s what you should be selling.” Someone told me, “We hate the word ‘secrets’. We want to change it to ‘strategies’.” I’m like, “You can do that, but secrets works.”

So here’s some more proof that the whole secretive concept is awesome. I do webinars, and we’ll promote them to our list of half a million people. From that, I might get five thousand people to register for a webinar, which is great. We make a lot of money with 5,000 people on a webinar. Last night, or actually it was two nights ago, we did a webinar, and this one I didn’t promote. I personally texted a couple of people, and I said, “Hey, this is this thing I’m doing. We’re rolling out this new app. It’s going to be really cool, and you may want to be part of it. I’m doing a secret webinar. If you want to come to it, show up.” That was my text, and there was a link to register for the webinar. I only sent it out to maybe twenty people. I had two of my friends send it out. Between all three of us, we maybe sent it out to fifty people – maybe, but probably not even that many, and we specifically said, “Do not tell anybody else about this. This is just for you.”

That night, we had over a hundred people register for the webinar, and about eighty-five of them showed up. Almost everyone showed up, and it was interesting because I was like, “Man, I specifically told you not to invite anybody, but you invited five people.” Each of them did, and it was interesting. We’re doing another one tonight, and it’s been amazing to watch how fast something grows when they’re not supposed to tell anybody about it. And it’s funny.

There’s this new network marketing company rolling out, and they hired me to come and do the sales process and the scripts and stuff. It’s kind of fun. I’ve never been on the inside of a network marketing company to see how something like that rolls out, and how the whole process works, but they are some of the best at using this concept. They’re rolling it out in about two weeks from now, and they’ve been telling people, “Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t tell anyone about that,” and so specifically nobody’s been able to tell anyone. To learn anything about it, you have to sign an NDA to find out about it.

They’re doing this event in a week from now. Nobody knows what it is still, but they have to pay to come to this event, and they’ve got twenty-five hundred paid people coming to this event without knowing what it is. All they know is they can’t tell anybody, so it’s this interesting…I almost just hit a squirrel. You guys who are listening in live while I’m driving, I barely just missed a squirrel [laughs]. Anyway, it’s interesting the power behind that.

I saw one guy do this with a webinar. It was Trey Smith, in the app industry. He does the same thing. –“I’m doing this webinar. It’s so secretive. If you want to know what it is, you’ve got to sign an NDA.” I don’t know his numbers, but I’m sure his turnout rate was amazing and the sales rates were amazing.

Figure out how you can use that in your business. Figure out if you want to do an event for whatever it is you’re doing – a new rollout of a new product, or a new project, or a new whatever. I promise you, if you tell people that it’s a secret and that they can’t tell anyone else, magically the word of mouth will start working, whereas if you ask somebody, and you bribe someone and you say, “Hey, I’ll pay you twenty bucks to tell your friends,” a lot of times the referral marketing stops there. They don’t tell their friends, but you tell them not to tell anybody and it’s amazing what happens, so that’s kind of an interesting concept.

I’m sure you guys can use that in a lot of different spots in your business. I’m seeing the power of it right now, and it’s fantastic and really exciting. In fact, with the rollout of this network marketing company, their goal is to get a hundred thousand people on NDAs before it ever goes live – a hundred thousand people to sign an NDA to find out about something that they can’t tell anyone else about. That’s the interesting. It’s a powerful strategy, so I hope you guys can use that. I’m going to be using it, and you will see it coming from me in my marketing in the very near future.

Thanks, everybody. Oh yeah, and to end with, I learned from somebody who actually does podcasts a lot that you should always tell people on your podcast to go and to rate your show, so if you’ve like anything you’ve learned so far, please go back to iTunes and rate it. I would appreciate it. This is still a kind of a new project for me, but I’ve noticed we’re in the top, I think, eighty-sixth new and hot podcasts, so we’re rising in the ranks, you guys, so if you’ve enjoyed this at all, or enjoyed any of them, please go and leave some feedback. It would be much appreciated, and I’ll talk to you guys again tomorrow. All right, ‘bye.