Between September 6 and 13, Russell Brunson (the co-founder of ClickFunnels) and Iman Gadzhi (of Consulting.com and Whop) ran a free, live, online event called the Side Hustle Summit. The pitch was simple and loud: come build an AI-powered side hustle with us, live, even if you have no audience and no money to start. It was the first time the two of them had taught together, and by any measure it was one of the largest launches of the year.
Here's the thing. The headline number, however big it was, is not what you should take away. You don't have their lists or their ad budget, and you never will. What you can copy is the mechanics. Strip away the scale and there are four moves underneath, and every one of them works at the size of a Miami small business.
1. The free part is the first half of the product, not a long ad
Most free webinars are a commercial in a trench coat. Ninety minutes of "and I'll tell you the secret right after this," and people smell it in the first three. A good launch does the opposite. It teaches something real, all the way through, so that by the time an offer shows up you've already proven you know your stuff. The pitch then becomes the softest thing in the world: "if you want, we keep going together."
For your business that means your free thing, the guide, the workshop, the audit, has to actually solve a piece of the problem. Give away a real result. The sale is just the next chapter, not the whole book you were hiding.
2. Fuse two audiences onto one page, don't trade interviews
The quiet genius of this event wasn't a collaboration in the usual sense. Brunson didn't go on Gadzhi's podcast and call it a day. Both of them pointed their own, very different audiences, one built around sales funnels, the other around young creators, at the same single registration page. One event, one link, two crowds who don't normally overlap.
You can run the small version this week. Find a business in your city that serves a customer next to yours but not the same one, a wedding planner and a florist, a gym and a meal-prep kitchen, and instead of a mutual "shout each other out" that moves nothing, build one event with one sign-up page and both of you drive to it. You each bring people the other would never have reached.
3. Production is the part everyone skips
Reports say Brunson spent two full days just recording ads for this. Two days. Most people film a launch on a phone in one take and then wonder why the strategy "didn't work." It worked; the strategy was fine. The execution was rushed. You don't need a studio, but you do need to treat the thing like it matters: decent light, clean audio, a second take when the first is flat. The idea is common. The care is not, and the care is what shows.
4. Sell the thing you're already doing
The strongest part is the quietest one. What they taught during the event was essentially the same method they were using to run the event: two people with audiences teaming up to launch a digital product. The demonstration and the product were the same object. That's why the offer sells itself, there's no gap between the promise and the proof.
Ask yourself: is what you sell visible in how you show up? If you sell social media management but your own feed is a ghost town, the gap does the talking. Close it. Let the work be the ad.
Your small version
You don't need millions. You need one honest free thing that solves a real slice of the problem, one partner whose audience isn't yours, one page you both send people to, and enough care in the production that it doesn't look thrown together. That's a launch. The rest is just volume.
If you want a hand designing one for your business, that's the kind of thing we do all day. Reach out to the La Media Social team and we'll map it with you.
