World Record Event Planner Secrets For Filling Events - Kolton Krottinger - FHR #242

Why Dave Decided to talk to Kolton:

Kolton Krottinger is the World's Leading Record Breaking Event Expert. The best part is he mastered his skills when he had no money. He failed at 34 businesses. He details how he was able to reverse the University of Texas' administration's decision to let him in to college all because of an event he put together on the UT stadium field. He discusses the impact of awards and how he was able to add $100K in a few months to his business all because of a $70 award.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Vision and keys to success (8:15)
• Guerilla marketing for events. Brand yourself, save money doing it (15:30)
• Business Advice: Pointers (18:15)

Quotable Moments:

"Everybody loves recognition and awards. Give them out to people doing great things, and it will grow your company."

"When people stop focusing on money, and focus on aligning your passion, it's absolutely incredible."

Other Tidbits:

Event Hosting: 7:33

Aligning your passions 18:38

Being Different/Reverse Engineering: 20:32

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Hey everybody. Welcome back.

Speaker 2: 00:18 You guys are in for the ride of your life today. This is. I've been looking so forward to this interview. It's taken me months to get this guy on the show because he'd been so dang busy and it keeps canceling on me, but I want to introduce you guys to call, call them. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 00:33 Oh Dave. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. So pumped.

Speaker 2: 00:36 So for those who may not know, Colton, Colton is the world's greatest event planner, coach. She actually has the world's leading record for breaking events. He also, one of my favorite things is he is a self proclaimed first and basically saying he's failed the most more than any of my other guests. So I'm kind of excited to go into that one. And for those of you guys, right, but on hacking live, you'll recognize Colin as he was our very first person to actually get engaged on stage at funnel hacking live. So Colton, I am so excited. Where do you want to drive? We can start. What do you want to start? We'd go all over the place with this one.

Speaker 3: 01:09 Absolutely. And I actually ended up in a homeless shelter and that's where I started my first business and I was able to scale that one to a million dollar business, um, whenever I was 23. And so that's Kinda like how I got started into this and then it all started with just a facebook events.

Speaker 2: 01:30 You're kidding me. So at age 23 starting in a homeless shelter, make a million bucks. Yes sir. And then I lost it. Lost it. So why did you want, we'll start off. First of all, why don't you give people who are listening to us a little bit of hope as far as, uh, what's, what's available, what's the potential, where you've come from and where you're going?

Speaker 3: 01:56 Absolutely. Uh, you know, I guess I forgot who said the quote, you have to say nine or I guess it's justice sticks, you know, that nine out of 10 small businesses fail. So, um, I decided to start 10 businesses and increase my chances for success. You know, it's a. and that's exactly what I did and it actually took me a 34 businesses before I got onto this one. But had I known about click funnels out of been a lot more successful a lot sooner. So

Speaker 2: 02:23 34 businesses. You're not even 34 years old?

Speaker 3: 02:26 No, no, I'm 28 years old and I mean I've started every time a business, you know, from lawn care, cleaning, a short shorts for men, a drug company, a security companies have a. and then I finally got into event planning.

Speaker 2: 02:43 That's awesome. So tell me about this whole event planning thing.

Speaker 3: 02:46 Yeah. So I'm. And to touch on, what'd you say, to give people hope. So yes. I lost my million dollar business. I ended up living on my grandmother's couch, and so I really had to figure out how to start a company with no money and it's free to put an event on facebook. So, um, and, and every time I've ever, all my greatest achievements happened, whatever I put my feet to the fire. So I put together this event and called it the world's largest super soaker battle. Um, and I went to sleep the next day. I had 10,000 people on there, you know, later that week, 30,000 people. Um, then I started receiving calls from General Motors, Nestle, Hasbro, Vita Coco, um, and it really just changed my life and I hosted this event and I had thousands of people begging me to sign up for the next one. And I said, you know what, we might have a business here.

Speaker 2: 03:32 So for those people who are not familiar with the world's largest soaker part, what the world are you talking about?

Speaker 3: 03:38 Uh, the, the world's eyes supersoaker battle. So it's the world's largest gathering of people with water guns. You know, I wanted to do it really big, cheap event. So I charge people $10, you bring your own super soaker and I had a dj and we just had a four hour party. So where do you put all these people? So I rented out a stadium, like college stadiums. So actually what I did was I was trying to go to college to have the University of Texas and they denied me. So what I did was I rented

Speaker 3: 04:08 and out their entire stadium and broke a world record there to get their attention so that I could become a student there. And then they sent me a letter saying that I can join. You're kidding. That's so, so that's, that's the, you know, just uh, and that's what I'm really big into is just like guerrilla marketing in a way of just, hey, if you're not gonna see me, I'll figure out a way for you to see me. And it's just kind of something I've done my whole life. So how many people were there? It was about 1500 to 2000 people kind of lost count after $1,500. Yeah. But, uh, I mean it was, it was a blast. And then decided to try it again and let's have the world's largest gathering of people with their dogs. And I'm rented out Dr Pepper Ballpark. And uh, yeah, we had a few thousand people there as well.

Speaker 2: 04:55 So how much does it cost around the Dr Pepper Ballpark for the stadium?

Speaker 3: 04:59 Um, so Dr Pepper Ballpark was about 20,000 and then, um, the college stadium was about 5,000, but, uh, like I said, I had no money so I put the, the, the key is to put the event on facebook, you know, six months prior, start selling tickets and then just negotiate with the venue. Say, Hey, let me pay you two weeks out. So I actually ticket sale. So I literally had no money. Um, and you know, a lot of people out there and running facebook ads, but there are so many other things you can do. So how I promoted this event to grow so big was at about $100 in my name. And um, I paid two off duty police officers to follow me and escort me into the world's largest nerf battle, which was my competitor. And I went to a park, plays Maserati, and I said, hey, if you'd let me borrow a car for two hours, I'll get you 10,000 views. And so they gave me a car, so I showed up there and a fancy car and police escort. I got out, started signing autographs, and I signed a few thousand autographs so everybody thought was a celebrity. So then I made a youtube video how to be a celebrity for a day. I promoted my super soaker battle and so this event really blew up for $100.

Speaker 2: 06:07 Dude, that is crazy. Yeah, that's about as a gorilla as it can go.

Speaker 3: 06:12 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 06:14 So did Dan Henry gets your eye, his idea from you, what do you entered a funnel hacking live with? That?

Speaker 3: 06:20 I don't. He did not get his idea from me, but he definitely had me facilitate and run the whole thing for him for sure.

Speaker 2: 06:27 I saw your involvement in that. That's. Well, I was kind of curious.

Speaker 3: 06:29 Yeah. Yeah, because it's crazy. You know, I told him I've done it before and, and this is just another thing, you know, he was holding a mastermind and you know, a heels masterminds and I said, hey, can you help me, you know, we'll spend the evening for free, you know, sit down and chat. So I did that and then I got a ton of value from him later that evening and really work on my business. It was great.

Speaker 2: 06:49 So you started off with the world's largest super soaker battle. You did. Did the dog. How many people came to the dog park?

Speaker 3: 06:56 Um, I believe it is about the same, about 1500 to 2000 people. And that's the thing is I didn't have A.

Speaker 2: 07:03 Okay,

Speaker 3: 07:03 oh for this, imagine if I would've had a funnel where if you buy one ticket, the next page you get three more for the price of one. And then I could have sold dog. He sold guns like. So now I believe that, um, my fiance and I, we are going to be announcing soon that we are gonna hold hosted. The second annual world's are super soaker battle and have about 5,000 peoples, but waiting for

Speaker 2: 07:24 that is awesome. So it now becomes a huge lead Gen. Yes.

Speaker 3: 07:32 And, and that's something that I wish more businesses, you know, even with the click funnels, you know, everybody in click funnels can host events. So the great thing about hosting a big event, it's almost like owning a billboard agency. So I'm promoting all of my products, my businesses and then you can even even invite your competitors out there and sell them, you know, booth space to be there and uh, and it's, you can pretty much have your competitors pay for your entire event.

Speaker 2: 07:58 That is insane. So you've now become the world's best event planner, coach here. So give me some other ideas as far as things you've been doing, what, how you're getting other people's attention, guerrilla marketing type of things you're pulling off here.

Speaker 3: 08:10 No, absolutely. Um, so I've got a new, you know, the name of my company is a vent rockstars and um, and I saw a big event with the Dallas cowboys and so I reached out and said, hey, I would love to present, you know, one of the star players, you know, Cole Beasley, I said I want to present with him, you know, the role model of the year award from on behalf of the event rock stars know, because I love everything he's doing. He's a great role model for the kids. But um, and so that's what I did. So that actually got me and the company is about a month old and so we're actually having recognizing this guy on behalf of my company, even though it's a new company, you know, he gets recognition and everybody loves recognition. Everybody loves, you know, trophies, everybody loves award. So give them out to people that are doing great things and it will grow your company.

Speaker 2: 08:57 That is fantastic. Oh my gosh, I love it. I appreciate just dropping value bombs after value on, for our audience here. What else you got?

Speaker 3: 09:06 So yeah, I mean it reminds me of like the two comment that I really like more than to make a million dollars. I want to win the two Comma Club award. I mean it goes back to uh, you know, uh, Russell loves to recognize people, Click funnels, loves to recognize people and I believe it's just a huge thing to improve the culture and get everyone together. Everybody wants these awards, everybody wants these, the swag shirts and, and you can, everybody can do that for their company and it costs, you know, you can do it for very little amount of money,

Speaker 2: 09:37 you know, I called, I really do appreciate your saying that we have miles and I actually were, I just got back from Boise state today. I'm back in September. We did our viral video launch and then afterwards played the world's largest game of human bubble soccer on the Albertson, Boise state blue turf and get us out here, set the record, all that kind of stuff. And so today I went out there and presented the football coach, his trophy of his award and uh, had another war for Brent Moore who basically was the primary contact at the stadium. And it was really fascinating because we ended up having, oh gosh, I think we might've had five minutes of their time today. There was a four or five news channels. They're all all excited about primarily getting time to time to talk to the head coach at Boise state.

Speaker 2: 10:24 And the irony was I'm sitting in my office about an hour and a half later and all of a sudden myles comes running in with his phone going, she's not going to believe this. We on ESPN. And so the guys who were there actually were part of Espn radio and we had talked about this bubble human bubble soccer event sending the Guinness World Record. And we actually, the record was only 99. And they're like, why didn't you do 100? I said, well, we actually started with 100, but one of the guys got claustrophobia inside the bubble and couldn't make it. And so all these guys were going, man, if you ever been in one of those bubbles, you know, hot there. And so they went on for like five or six minutes about click funnels event at Boise state and how claustrophobic inside the those bubbles get. So I honestly, I didn't think anything of it.

Speaker 2: 11:09 I totally, if I go back and look again when I. Gosh, we, we learned so much smarts. What we did wrong at that event. We had all these influences there. I didn't get enough video footage with them because we were more concerned about our viral video launch party. But the cool thing is I'm such a huge believer in events. Obviously we have click funnels, funnel hacking live event, which we'll talk about here in just a second. But in addition to that, with our two comma club x, we've had a couple of other events. And you know the irony when you're talking about these awards, this two Comma Club award thing is it has literally become like the grammy's or the Emmy's of our industry. And I see people's facebook profiles with that on and they're doing with their plaques behind them then doing ads because they can actually say two comma club where facebook doesn't know that's a million dollars, but they can market it to everybody else. Let it mean. So I love what you're doing.

Speaker 3: 12:05 Thank you. Thank you. And I'm like, it's the same for me. Like I don't want that award more than I want the million dollars.

Speaker 2: 12:13 That is hilarious. We actually have a guy did, he did about $16 million last year, but not inside of click funnels. Just like, you know what, I'm shutting everything down and move it over for no other reason than I just want the stupid award.

Speaker 3: 12:26 No, it's great. I mean it's, it's, uh, really, uh, awards are definitely like I'm under utilized whenever it comes to the real marketing. I mean it's, you can think of an award if you present someone with an warranty, you can think of it almost like a key to me. Absolutely. Anybody you want and get on, get on stage of any, any event you can imagine. Um, it's a key. Awards are essentially keys and more companies should definitely use them.

Speaker 2: 12:50 No, I totally agree. I had any idea how big it would have been. I would have done it even earlier than we did, but no, I totally agree with you. It's been fascinating for me just to see the impact, uh, last week and, and I were down in Salt Lake where he received the Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year award and it was fascinating. I mean you got 1200 people in this banquet hall basically hearing a pitch from about 30 different companies that were finalists after, not including all the other thousands that applied and it was just kind of fast. I, I learned so much from that golden and a lot about what you were saying. I was actually talking to the athletic director at Boise State today about the award and everything else and how Ernst and young actually you just this event nationwide actually it's worldwide and they use it for no other reason than lead Gen. it's just a massive lead gen opportunity to where they get to see who are the best companies that they want to work with or they can then pick and choose from. And it was fascinating as I sat and talked to her, a couple of the executives of Ernst and young or the weekend. I'm like, you guys, this is a super, super smart, so I love what you're doing because it awards and events like this and that kind of recognition, man. It goes so far so far.

Speaker 3: 14:03 Absolutely. And I'll tell you, you know, like I told you, my, my company was 30 days old whenever represented Cole Beasley with this award and then I ended up hanging out with the whole team and now I'm taking over all the events for Travis Frederick. He's the center for the Dallas Cowboys. I'm taking on all of his events and now I've got a couple other cowboys and their foundations are reaching out to me. And so like it was a, it was just a great time to, you know, gorilla marketing your company and then, uh, you know, it's massive legion, like you said.

Speaker 2: 14:30 Okay, so you're going to have to give a little more background and story to this. I mean, so your award to called Bz lead into how many other clients on a, on a company. Again, remember everyone who's listening. This is a 30 day old company.

Speaker 3: 14:42 Yeah, well I would say um, I definitely like with hard numbers that are hard number of translation. I would say at least $100,000 is that event got me as far as revenue as far as like what I'm going to be doing this year for a couple of cowboys. The award and the award cost me, it was about $75.

Speaker 2: 15:03 So that was an investment we call that a massive Roi. That's fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. That is super cool. Well, I know you do obviously coaching in this kind of thing. Now you're in the process of getting, heading towards your own two Comma Club award and I think it's [inaudible] dot com. Is that the, a site? [inaudible] DOT com. So it's k, r o, t, t. So two t's I n, G E R Dot com. And your whole focus there is teaching people how to do this type of guerrilla marketing for events. Is that right?

Speaker 3: 15:40 Absolutely. Absolutely. So I teach people how to do exactly what I'm doing and really not spend money and just really brand yourself and make a lot of money doing it

Speaker 2: 15:49 well again. And to get true Colton like fashion. This is a website that I believe as we're, as we're recording this isn't done yet,

Speaker 3: 15:57 right? It's just about done like a blank noubar built it out and it's, it's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's just about them. But yeah, you can still go in there and check everything out for sure.

Speaker 2: 16:09 I love it. Well by the time we air this at a couple of weeks, I'm hoping it will be done. You know, so I think it's really cool. I was kind of looking at just so this is a webinar funnel for those guys who are listening. So basically I was going to be an auto webinar, going to be a live webinar. What are you gonna do?

Speaker 3: 16:24 Uh, it'll be an auto webinar. Okay. So on a front end offer, I give like, you know, teach people how to get, like the email addresses, get leads, stuff like that, and then it goes into a webinar and then into my, uh, my event planner chorus where I pretty much I give everything, um, you know, including templates on how to get on the news and how to do everything. Everything.

Speaker 2: 16:45 Well, I think you've been on Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS. I mean it's, you've got some serious publicity.

Speaker 3: 16:52 Absolutely man. It was crazy. Like definitely like leaving my grandma's couch to go drive the new station will be on news to do some, you know, because I'm doing something cool whenever I literally just couldn't even pay for the gas to get to the news station. But um, that's, that's how I got started.

Speaker 2: 17:07 You don't call them. That's the part I absolutely love about. What you do is you take, there's just no excuses and you and you're not one to. It's basically whatever it takes to make stuff happen. It's kind of your approach to life. And I've, I've loved seeing that. Thank you. Thank you. It was kind of reminded me of you reached out to me when we're funnel hacking live and hey, you know, I've got this idea, I'd love to be able to, to propose to my fiance at funnel hacking live by Russell Brunson or having to be there and in fact your, I think your facebook posts to me very personal message was he doesn't even have to know I'm there. I just want to be close enough to. I can kneel down behind it. Like what the heck's going on? So it was, it was hilarious. We were actually ice. I saw your post and I thought, you know what actually can be a lot of fun here at funnel hacking live. And so we were out to dinner with just the night before the event with the team and I was talking with Melanie, I said, Melanie, what would you think about this? And she starts getting all weepy eyed and oh my gosh, don't be the coolest thing ever. And so again, it was a lot of fun for us to have you on stage in the, you want to say about it.

Speaker 3: 18:16 Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, um, I mean you can definitely get started, uh, you know, having no money anybody can, but I mean the key is to getting people to believe in your vision and surrounding yourself with amazing people. Like it opens up so many doors and I think, I think when people stop focusing on money and just focus on, they're aligning their passions like you love to help people, that's what you do. I love to help people. And um, and that's why we align so well and it just, it was absolutely incredible. And like I promise this was

Speaker 3: 18:48 on a guerrilla marketing tactic to get onstage because you believe you, you put together everything. And I, I never imagined, you know, like, like he said, I figured I'd be behind a wall or something and just kneel behind the vessel, but it was so great. It opened up so many doors and it gained me so many mentors just from doing that because people love that story. You know, I've got Jeffrey Bannock, Ariel a lot, henry, like all these people, uh, decided to help me and mentor me after that moment. And it was absolutely life changing. And then on top of that, getting to marry the woman of my dreams, uh, you know, it just, it's icing on the cake.

Speaker 2: 19:23 I love it. Well, it was fun for us and again, we appreciate that it was a, we're always trying to find different things we can do to make funnel hacking live a little different than the year before. So it's a, it worked out real well for us too.

Speaker 3: 19:35 Yeah, absolutely. You know, Todd Dickerson was saying, you know, we might have to come up with a new staff on the stats page.

Speaker 2: 19:43 That's right. Those are the things that matter most. It's the people.

Speaker 3: 19:46 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 19:48 Well, I get a call it and I think that part I've loved most about getting to know you is really your approach to doing whatever it takes. Is there any other advice or counsel or encouragement you'd give people who are listening right now?

Speaker 3: 19:58 Yes, absolutely. I mean, the, the absolute biggest thing that, that works for me. And again, you know, I approach everything without spending money. So this is coming from like a broke mindset. I'm brainstorming sessions, you know, I do these every week and anybody should do this. So that's where, you know, I got a big table, I get a, I put paper everywhere, I get crayons and markers and sharpies and I invite friends over, you know, give him some bare cookout for them. Just get some friends together and brainstorm, which I do. Okay, okay. I want to get on this stage where I want to do this, I want to start this business and reverse engineer, how can we do it, how can we be different, you know? Um, I love what I do because I never had to compete with anybody because I do things so weird and so different than nobody else does them. So the power of brainstorm with some friends and amazing people like yourself, you know, getting together. Um, it's, it's so powerful. It's the most powerful tool I have.

Speaker 2: 20:53 Oh cool. That's great advice. I appreciate it. Well, if we get close to wrapping things up, again, people as you're listening, go to [inaudible] Dot Com, k r o t t I n g e r take a look at Colton sites. Uh, again, world's leading record breaking event, an expert, obviously the guy knows everything about social media, guerrilla marketing strategies, and really encourage these, pick his brain, so called the people want to reach out to you. What other ways can they reach out to you?

Speaker 3: 21:16 Yeah, absolutely. Just add me on facebook, Colton croutons here. I'm definitely here to help people and give advice, you know, um, or even brainstorm. I'll help anybody in any way I can. I love the click funnels group in the community. So absolutely anything I can do for anybody just let me know.

Speaker 2: 21:33 Awesome. Well thanks again bud and we'll talk to you real soon.

Speaker 3: 21:37 Yes sir. Thank you.

Speaker 4: 21:38 Okay. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if the you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to itunes rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.