Bootstrapped Secrets

A new way to look at the “big domino” and how it’ll help you function as an entrepreneur.

Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com

---Transcript---

What's up everybody, good morning. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that I know all of us entrepreneurs deal with a lot, which is pressure and noise. If you listen to Alex Charfen, if you studied him, the entrepreneur personality type, he talks a lot about how entrepreneurs, when you are able to lower pressure and noise, you can do greatness. You can change the world, but when the pressure and noise gets higher, it gets really difficult. And oftentimes it turns into chaos and into bad things. And so I talk about that during this episode, because I'm in definitely a state of increased pressure noise and I want to talk about what I'm doing to deal with it and how it's helping. So with that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song. When we come back, we're going to dive deep.

All right. So sure, like most of you and every... Okay, what step you are in your entrepreneurial journey? If you are beginning, if you are growing, if you are scaling, if you are selling, if you are buying, if you were like, whatever you're doing, there are times when you have increased pressure and noise. And Alex Charfen's one of my friends, I love his stuff. He was one of our head coaches for two comma club, X coaching program for a while. And he has a whole message, he talks about entrepreneurial personality types, EPT as he calls it, people like us. and he always says, "You're not broken, you're not weird, you're just different. You're and entrepreneur and that's okay." And in his teachings, he talks a lot about just how entrepreneurs, a lot of times we think we're crazy. And like a lot of times entrepreneurs are the ones who snap and go crazy and go off the deep end and other times they're the ones who are creating the most amazing things in the world.

And he talks about there's this fine line between greatness and chaos, right? And for entrepreneurs, the biggest thing you do is you have to if you can decrease the pressure noise around you, then you can succeed. But when the pressure noise goes up, that's where you typically, they crash and burn. If you think about if you've had a chance to crash and burn a business or two, you probably know it was during a season or a time of increased pressure noise, and it's hard to handle it. And that's when things happened, right? That's why it's so important to build a team and to have people around you and things help support you to decrease the pressure noise so you can succeed.

So there's a little mini chunk out of Charfen's training so you guys understand kind of the context I'm talking about. But in my life over the last 30 days, has been an insane, increase in pressure noise. I can't talk about all the things, but people I love who I work with daily, or who have had health issues that I was not expecting, there's that. And then we just finished our first acquisition and we were in the middle of our second acquisition, so new companies coming in. We also have Funnel Hacking Live in 30 days. We also have a new coaching program that we are changing. We also have, I can't tell you all the things, there's a lot of stuff and it's exciting. And it's partially, it's the most exciting time of the business, right? I just have so many fun things and so many things I'm excited for it.

But then on the other side, man, between all these things, I was not planning over the last 30 days the pressure and noise and things have gone up dramatically. And I don't know about you guys, but it's made it for me it's hard to sleep at night. I lay there in bed I'm so tired but I can't sleep because there's just these things happening and all the stuff and the stress and all the balls you're juggling, you don't want to drop them, right? And I'm curious, have you guys ever felt that before? And for me, the last month it's been hard to sleep. And then I come into the office and there's so many things to do that half of them I don't know where to start and there's this and there's this and there's this and all of them are on fire. And it's overwhelming sometimes.

And so it's interesting because by default I want to get things done so I go and I start working, I'm trying to get task after task. But it seems like an insurmountable thing. And so earlier this week, I had a thought, and you guys have heard me talk about the big domino before, right? In every sales presentation, it's one big domino. If you can knock down that one domino, it takes care of everything else and all the other dominoes fall down.

And it's true in selling, but it's true in a lot of aspects of life, right? And I started looking at all my big, huge tasks and all the things. Each to do had like 500 little sub to do's. Instead of looking at all the sub to do's, I started looking at the bigger tasks with bigger project and saying, "Okay, what's the one big domino I can do that's going to knock down all these little tasks?" There's no way I can do all of them, it's virtually impossible. What is the big domino or who is the big domino? Who is the person that's going to come that could take this off of my plate? What's been interesting is to be able to look at this differently, I've had to completely slow down, which has been hard for me because I'm like, "I'm not going to make it to the finish line if I stop." But at the same time, I'm not going to make the finish line no matter what.

So, it's forced me to stop and say, "I got to find the person or the thing or whatever that's going to knock this thing down." It's made me sit there in my thoughts for a lot longer, which has been good. And I've often thought of how do I get done with the task? The thought is like, "Who is the person I can find it or what's the process or thing I need to do that gets rid of all the other tasks so I can actually make it to the finish line?" And as I've been doing that, it's been interesting because sometimes you ask better questions, you get better answers.

And so that's the question I started asking. And all of a sudden the answer started coming clear and it was like, "Okay, well if I had a person for here, this would make all these things disappear." I'm like, "Well, who's the person for that? I don't know somebody." And it's like, "Okay, let's think." And sitting in your thoughts and thinking and thinking and praying and thinking and trying to figure things out. And all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, what about this person? Or how about this? Or how about this?" Or literally one of the things was a text message from a friend who was like, "Hey, there's this person you should meet." And it's like, "Oh my gosh, that person I think is the big domino is can knock down this set of things for me."

And it's been interesting because this week I had a whole task list of stuff I had to get done and I had not had a chance to do my tasks yet. But I've had longer meetings, which I hate meetings. Typically, I have slow two to three hour meetings with certain people to build a relationship, to be able to hand the reins to somebody to then go and knock down the domino for me. And I can tell you Friday was the first time this happened. I remember leaving Friday and it was the first night I was just not stressed. When I left, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this might be possible." And today I did it again and it's like, "Okay, this might actually be possible." And it wasn't for me speeding up or spending more hours or doing more things. It was me stopping, stepping back and trying to figure out the big domino.

So for you guys, as you are entrepreneurs and you have increased pressure noise, and you're stressing about all the things, I want to encourage you to slow down, or maybe even stop for a moment and look at those tasks differently. Not from "How in the world am I going to get get this done, where am I going to find the extra time?" But, "Who is the big domino or what is the big domino that if I can figure that out, it makes all these other ones irrelevant."

And that's been the thing for me that's keeping me sane. It's getting me excited and helping me to now finally starting to see the finish line again. Like, "Oh my gosh, it's there, I can see it, it's possible, you're saying there's a chance I could actually make it to the end." And so, as I'm getting through that and again, I spent two and a half hours meeting somebody today and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I feel better. I'm going to probably sleep tonight a little bit. I'm pumped about that." It made me think I'm going to stop for a second and just do a quick podcast for my people, because I'm sure some of you guys are in that same season. If you're not now, you will be soon.

And so just remembering the big domino concept in a way that you can solve these kind of problems for yourself. So I hope that helps, I hope that was useful. I'm grateful for all you guys for listening, for subscribing, for paying attention. I'm trying to serve you at my highest level and sometimes it's overwhelming, but I feel like we're doing good work. And I feel like the fruits of this stuff that we're creating for you guys right now is going to change a lot of lives, hopefully your life. So keep your eyes out. Everything from Funnel Hacking Live until January of 20, whatever next year is, 2022, it's going to be a crazy ride. You'll see a lot of stuff happened and it's going to be, fun. So I'm pumped. I'm pumped to show you what we've been working on.

That's all I got. There's the tease. All right, appreciate you all each for listening and we'll talk to you all soon. Bye, everybody.

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On today’s episode you will hear part 4 of 4 of Russell’s interview with Andrew Warner about the Clickfunnels start up story.

Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the 4th and final installment here of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, where he’s going deep into the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far. You know, throughout this entire interview, it was really fun. He brought my wife onstage and some of my partners onstage, and brought other people who didn’t like me at first onstage and kind of shared all these things. I hope all you guys are enjoying it and really enjoying this interview.

I hope that this starts making you think about your startup story. Some of you guys are living your startup story right now, and maybe you’re depressed or nervous, or scared, or afraid or whatever. And hopefully this gives you motivation to know that I was there too. In fact, I’m still there many times, but it’s okay and it’s part of the game and part of the process. And someday you’ll look back and you’ll have someone like Andrew interviewing you about your startup story and you’ll be so grateful for the trials and things you’re going through now.

So with that said, we’re going to queue up the theme song, when we come back we’ll listen to part 4 of 4 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club.

Andrew: And I know a lot of you have asked me what’s coming up next and Russell’s going to talk about that, how you’re going to get to Sales Force level, but why don’t I take a couple of questions from someone. Is there anyone who’s been sitting here going, “I can’t believe Andrew didn’t ask that.”? Is there anyone who has something standing out for them? Should we just have them onstage.

Unknown person: We got mic’s.

Andrew: We got mic’s from over there, okay.

Audience member: Alright, a little bit deeper of a question. What is something, I know you’re strong in your faith, family, God, I mean kind of all around, what’s something that’s really made you who you are? You’ve mentioned before that made you as a marketer with your dad, you’re up late watching an infomercial. But what’s something that inherently that could have been experienced, maybe a quote in the back of your mind that’s just driven you, it could have been something that your parents taught you when you were young. What is, is there, it’s kind of a little bit difficult of a question to look back, there’s probably a million things. But what are one or two that really stick out, that make you the person that you are?

Russell: I have a million thoughts just racing through my head. The one that just popped in the front, so I’ll share that one, hopefully it’s good. I remember when I was a kid my dad gave me a job to go clean the car. I went out there and I cleaned the car, I did my best job, I thought. And I came back in and I was like, “Hey dad, it’s clean. Can I go play?” I was like, “Come look at it.” So he could let me go out and play. And he was like, “Well, is it good? Are you proud of it?” and I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Well, are you proud of it.” I was like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Go work on it until you’re proud of it, then come back and let me know.”

And I was like, oh man. So I go back out, and I was like, “Am I proud of this?” and I was thinking about it, I guess technically I’m really not that proud of it. So I was like trying to do more things, trying to clean it better, and to the point where I was actually proud of it. And then I came back and I’m like, “Dad, okay the car’s clean now.” And he’s like, “Are you proud of it.” I’m like, “I am.” And he’s like, “Okay, you can go out and play then.”

I think for me that was such a big thing because it was just like, that internal “Am I proud of this thing that I’m giving, that I’m putting out there?” and if not, keep doing it until you are. And I don’t know, that was one of those little weird dad moments that he probably didn’t mean as a teaching opportunity, but definitely has been big for me ever since then.

Andrew: Good question. Is there one on this side? While you’re finding a person who has a question, Whitney, did you have more to say? You were going to ask more, right? Yeah, can you get the mic over to Whitney, please? She’s right over here. I know I didn’t ask your full question.

Whitney: Hi Russell, how are you?

Russell: Awesome, how are you doing?

Whitney: Good. So with your business, what is, back to like when you were first starting, I kind of want to know, what’s the one thing when your business was really hard, when you were really struggling, what’s the one thing that kept you going? Just in the back of your mind. And then I have a second part of that. What would you say was your biggest failure and what was the greatest lesson you learned from it?

Russell: That’s not an easy question.

Andrew: The biggest failure.

Russell: Oh man. So the first question was, what was the first one again? Thinking about the biggest failure, I’m trying to…Oh, what kept it going?

Andrew: Give me a sec. Are you going through that now? You are, what are you going through right now? Can you stand up and get close to the mic? I can see that this is a meaningful question for a reason. What’s going on? Be open.

Whitney: I’m just trying with my business, I’m trying to get my message out there. I’m really, I’m just baby parts of Clickfunnels, so I’m just figuring out how to do a funnel still. But my company is called Creating Powerful Women, so I am just trying to teach women how to grow a business while they grow their family at the same time. And I’m doing that right now, because I have 3 little tiny girls. So I’m just like, okay, I’m still trying to figure out this myself and then teach women how to do it at the same time. So it’s just, I’m still in that struggle phase.

Andrew: Is it partially because you feel like an imposter, how can I tell them what to do? That’s what I was saying to you earlier.

Whitney: When I don’t even know. Yeah.

{Crosstalk}

Whitney: I feel like I need to have that success level before I can teach women to go out and do it. But the reason when I found you in the hall, and I said, “I want Russell to be vulnerable and tell like the nitty gritty parts of the story.” And those stories are what make people relatable to you, that’s kind of where I’m at, as I realize that I grow a bigger following and a bigger audience when I’m more relatable to them, which I realize I don’t need to be up at that level to do that.

Andrew: I get that.

Russell: So my question for you is, have you been working with women? Helping them so far? Tell me a story of someone you’ve helped. I’m curious.

Whitney: So I went through post partum depression a couple of years ago, after I had a baby and a lot of the women I’ve been reaching out to when I shared those stories, those women have been coming to me saying, “Hey, how do you get through this struggle? I know you’ve gotten past that, so I want to hear the hard stories that you went through.” So a lot of the people who I’ve been coaching one on one have been people who have gone through those exact same things  that I have.

Russell: Okay when you do that, and you share the stuff with them, and that clicks for them, how does that feel?

Whitney: Like I’m fulfilling what I was put on this planet to do.

Russell: That’s the thing. That’s the thing that keeps me going. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough that I crave that. I’m super introverted, so it’s always awkward for people to come to me, but I still love when they come to me and they’re like, “Hey, just so you know real quick…..” Like last night, we were in San Francisco, or San Diego, excuse me. Someone came up to me in the hall and I was kind of like, I’m nervous to talk to you but you’re going to talk to me. And he said, “Hey, just real quick, you legitimately changed my life, you changed my family.” And started tearing up. And I was just like, I let myself feel that just for a second and then I go back to the awkwardness, but for a second I feel that. And It’s just like ahh. That’s what it’s about you know.

I use Voxer for my coaching clients. So every time they Vox me and say something like that, there’s a little star button and I star it and it stores them in this huge thing of all the starred ones. So now days I’ll go back and I’ll listen to that and I’ll listen to people like 2 years ago that said something about how something I did effected them, and it’s just like, that feeling. Because everything we do in this life is for feeling’s right. Everything is just a feeling we’re looking for. We eat because we want a feeling. We did this because we, I wanted a feeling. We’re doing everything for a feeling.

So it’s like if I can remember the feelings of the thing I’m trying to get, and I can experience it again, then it, that’s what gets me and keeps me going.  And I think that any of us that are lucky enough to have those feelings, a lot of times we forget about them. No, remember that because that’s the thing, when it’s hard and it’s painful and it’s dark, it’s that feeling that’s just like, that’s the, you remember that and you let yourself experience it again for a minute. And then for me, that’s like, okay, I can get back up and I can go again.

Andrew: Great question, I’m glad you asked it. How about one more over there? You know what, yeah, let’s give her a big round of applause, please.

Audience member: I was actually going to ask a little bit about that vulnerability. I was surprised, I’m big in the SAAS space, I’ve been to Dream Force, follow a lot of Clickfunnels. It’s pretty rare to see a CEO want to put themselves kind of on the roasting side of things. You’re from here, from Sandy. I was just kind of surprised, what was it that really compelled you to kind of want to come back and do this in Utah? When I saw your email I thought it was a clickbait scam.

Russell: Oh it is, we’re selling you something next.

Audience member: I really thought I was going to come and it was going to be a video of your face spinning and it was going to be like, “Hi, we’re here.” Because I follow Clickfunnels, but it’s just really rare, especially being down in Utah county, that was kind of unique that way.

Andrew: Wait, one sec. Does Clickfunnels allow me to actually place someone’s city in the headline, like I want someone from San Francisco, you could. Oh, alright, I get it.

Audience Member: It said like Idaho, we’re in the surrounding areas, it’s going out to 8000 people, limited seating. So as a marketer I was just like, is this a real thing? You know. So I showed up and I was excited to see you. But why come back to Utah, what does this event mean to you and why want to be vulnerable and kind of open up? I learned a lot about you personally that was great to hear from a business side.

Russell: So my beliefs are, and I believe we have the best software company in the world, so I’m going to start with that. But if it’s just about the software, then it comes down to who’s got what feature. People are moving and shifting and changing because of the features. That’s the thing. So Clickfunnels was like, no it has to be more and it has to be a thing. And it’s interesting, people who sign up for Clickfunnels, who click on an ad, they come and sign up. That’s why John can’t do, it doesn’t work that way.

They sign up for a web, clickfunnels is a website builder for crying out loud. You boil it down, we are a website builder. That is boring. So people don’t come for that. They stay for that. That’s why they stay, that’s why they stay. But they come because of a feeling, and they come because of a connection. I want to be able to take the videos from here because if I can more people who come through my funnels to hear this story, they’re going to stick with Clickfunnels because they realize we have a soul. There’s a reason behind this, it’s not just the software company who’s trying to make a bunch of money. We’re actually, we have belief behind it.

So that’s why we do all these things. That’s why I still write books. That’s why we do videos. That’s why we do vlogs. That’s why we do this fun stuff, because it builds connection with people, and connection really keeps people staying, even if some other company’s got a different feature than we do, or it’s cheaper and we’re more expensive, or whatever. So that’s the big reason why we still do it.

And then I thought it would be fun to come down here because I grew up not far from here and it’s just kind of a fun thing. We’ve been working with the Harmon Brothers and we started another project with them and their family owns the Dry Bar Comedy Club, if you guys have ever watched Vid Angel, that’s one of their families companies. When Vid Angel had their little hiccups, they shifted all the programming to this, the Dry Bar Comedy Club, so we used to watch all the comedians here. And I was like, this is like the coolest location to do something like this. And one of the other side jokes, I don’t know if I shared this with you or if it was just in my head, but Andrew is famous for doing these big scotch nights, and as a Mormon I can’t drink scotch. And I was like, what if we did this, but at a Dry Bar, just this funny play off of that? And it all worked out.

Andrew: You know, usually at events I do scotch night afterwards and say, ‘Everyone come back to my room.’ That’s not going to go over very well. But Dave’s been to mine. He drinks water and feels comfortable. We have good water for Dave. How about one more, then I want to get into the future.

Audience Member: So you always talk about how, like for Clickfunnels you guys took like 6 tries to finally make it work, right. And how most of the time when you guys start something it doesn’t work the first time, that’s why you have audibles and all those things. So I was wondering as someone that, you know I’m starting and getting that, kind of like that lifts, what is the biggest thing that you see, versus like a flop funnel versus something that kind of takes off and explodes? What’s the audible or the change that you normally do that shift or the message change or whatever it is, that makes it finally take off?

Russell: Traditionally the difference between a funnel that works and doesn’t work, I’d say it’s probably 50% offer. Like if the offer’s wrong it’s not gonna, that’s usually the first thing. But then if it’s actually a good offer, that people actually want, second then is usually copy. So like what’s the hook, those kind of things. And then design is probably 3rd. All that stuff that Theron and those guys didn’t like at first. The things that, because it’s not like we just made up this stuff, you saw 8000 funnels we tested and tried in the journey of 15 years of this, that now we know what things people convert on.

So it’s just like looking at stuff that you know is working and modeling it because you this structure works, this kind of thing. But usually when something is broken it’s coming back and figuring out, this offer’s not right. People didn’t want it. And that was the problem with Clickfunnels. The offer, we took 4 or 5 times to get the offer right, and then as soon as the offer is right, you can tell when it’s right because people will buy, even if everything else is bad, if your offer is amazing people will give you money for it, you know. So that’s definitely the biggest part, and from there it’s copy, then design, then all the little things that stress some people out, like me.

Andrew: So I’ve got, we’ll come back. I see there are a few people that have more questions; we’ll come back to them in a moment, including you. I promise I’ll do more. But you did tell me about all the different things you guys are working on now. Of all of them, what one is going to get you the closest to Sales Force level?

Russell: That’s a good question, there’s so many things. So I would say, I’m going to ask you a question is that alright? Have you ever played bigger yet? Played bigger? Playing bigger? 

Andrew: No, what do you mean by that?

Russell: That’s the name of the book right? Play Bigger?

Andrew: Oh Playing Bigger, the book. No.

Russell: Yes. So that’s book’s been interesting, if you guys haven’t read it, it’s one of the biggest ones as a team that we’ve been reading. But it’s all about designing the category and becoming the king of that category. So I feel like we are the king of sales funnels, and that’s our category, the thing that’s going to be there. And then if you read through the book, the next phases are like, building out the ecosystem that supports you as the category.

And the fascinating thing about sales force, if you look at it when, I probably shouldn’t say this on video because someday Mark Benioff’s going to watch this and be like, “I’ll never give you money.” But sales force isn’t great software, right. It’s this hub that things are tied into, but the reason why they did 13 billion this year, they’re trying to get to 20 billion is because they built this ecosystem. The ecosystem is what supports this thing and grows it up, and builds it.

And that’s like the next phase. So I think for us, it’s like we have this, we have funnels which are the key. It’s like the CRM for them, it’s the central point. But it’s then bringing all the ecosystem, it’s building up all the things around it, right.

Andrew: Letting other people create things on your platform, becoming a platform.

Russell: Yes, becoming a true platform.

Andrew: can you create a platform when what you want is the all in one solution when you’re saying, “you don’t have to plug in your chat bot to our software. We’re going to be chat bot software.” “You don’t have to plug in infusion soft, we’ve got email marketing in here or mail chimp.”

Russell: It depends, because you look at Sales Force is similar too. They have their own things that they either acquire and bring them in, or they build their own, things like that. And I think it’s a hybrid of that. I think it’s, we allow people to integrate because some people have tools. We will, our goal is to always be the best sales funnel builder on planet earth. We may not be the best email auto responder in the world, we have one and that increases our revenue. And people who love us will use our email auto responder, but there may be some other one that’s better. But it’s not our big focal point.

There may be a chat bot that’s got more features and more things, that’s not gonna be our focus to make it the best, but we’ve got one built in to make it. So theer will be, that’s kind of our thought, that we will have the things included, so if people want to go all in they can use it. But if they love yours because of these things, they can still bring that and still bring it in. You know, and then as we grow, who knows what the next phase is. Is it acquisitions, finding the best partners? People that most of our members are using, start acquiring companies and bringing them in, internally similar to what Sales Force does, growing the platform.

Andrew: Just keep letting people build on your platform and then does that make the platform more valuable, or do you guys get a share of the money that people spend on these external tools?

Russell: Both, I think. Stripe for example, Stripe, I think we process 1.7 billion dollars through Stripe. We make over a million bucks a year from Stripe referral fees, for just letting them connect with us. So there’s value on both sides because it makes the platform more valuable because people can use it easier, but we also make money that direction as well, and those type of things.

Andrew: Okay, what is Actionlytics, Action…

Russell: Actionetics.

Andrew: Excuse me.

Russell: So that was Todd’s name. He loved that name. So Actionetics is, it’s what we call internally, follow-up funnels. So we have sales funnels, which are page one, page two, page three, page four. Then a follow-up funnel is send this email, send this text message. “Here’s the retargeting pixels, here’s the thing.” So it’s the follow-up funnels. It’s all of the communication that’s happened after somebody leaves the page with your audience.

Andrew: And that’s a new product that you guys are creating?

Russell: Yeah, it’s been, actually we make more revenue from Actionetics than we do from Clickfunnels right now. We’ve never marketed it outside though.

Andrew: I can’t get access to it, it asked me for my username and password. I said, I don’t have that, so how do I sign up for it?

Russell: it’s only been in beta. So we opened up at Funnel Hacking Live, people signed up there. And then we kept it down for a year, then we opened it, so two Funnel Hacking Lives we opened it, and then my birthday we opened it. So that’s it. But we have, it’s over, 12-13 thousand members who have upgraded to that. And then we’re probably a couple weeks away from the actual public launch where people will be to get, everyone will be able to get access.

Andrew: And already people are spending more money on that than Clickfunnels?

Russell: Yeah, because it starts at $300 a month versus $100. So it’s the ascension up. So they go from $100 a month to $300 a month and then the new one, it scales with you. Because we’re sending emails and Facebook message, it gives us an ability to grow with the platform as well, and not just have a $200 a month limit. Someone might pay $1000 or $5000 depending on how big their lists are.

Andrew: You’re really good at these upsells, you’re really good at these extra features. How do you think about what to add? How do the rest of us think about it, based on what’s worked for you?

Russell: Okay, that’s a great question, and everyone thinks it’s a product, the question most people ask is, what price point should my upsells be? It has nothing to do with that. It has 100% to with the logical progression of events for your customer. So when someone comes to you and they buy something, let’s just say it’s weight loss. So they come to you and they buy a weight loss book right, and let’s say it’s about how to get abs. So they buy that, the second they put their credit card in and click the button, in their mind that problem has now been solved. I now have six pack abs, the second it’s done.

And people don’t think that. So what people do wrong is the next page is like, “Cool, you bought my abs book. Do you want my abs video series?” it’s like, “No, I just solved that problem. I gave you money. It’s been solved.” So what we have to think through, for logical upsells is like, “okay, I just got abs, what’s the next logical thing I need?” So it’s like, “Cool you got abs now, but how would you like biceps? We can work it out. This is my training program to grow here.”

For funnels it’s like, here’s this funnels software, or here’s this book teaching you how to build funnels, but after you have a funnel you need traffic. So traffic’s the next logical progression. So as soon as someone’s bought something, the customer’s mind, I believe, that problems been solved. And it’s like, what’s the new problem that’s been opened up, because that problem’s been solved. That’s the logical…

Andrew: I got my email addresses because of Clickfunnels, the next problem I’m probably going to have is what do I send to people? And that’s what you’re solving. What about this, fill your funnel, it’s a new software.

Russell: Yeah.

Andrew: What is it?

Russell: How do you know these things? That is good, you have been digging. So I’m writing my third book right now, it’s called Traffic Secrets, and then on the back of it we have software that’s called Fill Your Funnel, that matches how we do traffic with the book. So when someone reads the book, you login and the way we do traffic, we focus very heavily on influencers. We call it the Dream 100. So you come in and you login and you’re like, “Here’s the people in my market. There’s Tony Robbins, there’s Andrew..” you list all these people and it starts pulling all our data, scraping all their ads, their funnels, everything  and shows you everything that’s happening in their companies, so you can reverse engineer it for what you’re doing.

Andrew: So if I admire what John is doing for you guys, I could put you in the software, you’ll show me what you guys are doing, and then I’ll be able to scrape it and do it myself. You’re nodding. And you’re okay with that?

John: It’s awesome. I’m excited.

Russell: Excited.

Andrew: Have you been doing that? Is that part of what’s worked for you guys at Clickfunnels?

John: Yeah, we like to, we call it funnel hacking. We like to look and see what other people are doing.

Andrew: So you’re actively looking to see what other, man as an interviewer that would be so good for me to understand what people are doing to get traffic to their sites. Alright, so…

Russell: We buy everyone’s product, everyone’s. I bought Drew’s like 6 times. Yeah, you’re welcome. Just because the process is fascinating to see.

Andrew: And then the book. What’s the name of the book?

Russell: Traffic Secrets.

Andrew: Why is everything a secret? What is that?

Russell: I don’t know.

Andrew: No, I feel like you do. I remember I think it was…

Russell: It all converts, 100% because it out converts.

Andrew: Because the word, “secret” out converts? In everything?

Russell: Everything. I used to onstage be like, “The top three myths, the top three strategies, the top three lies, the top three everything” and like “secrets” always out converted everything else, and then it just kind of stuck.

Andrew: And then that’s the name of this book. I’m looking here to see…yeah, Melanie, she told me when you organized this event you said, “Secret project”. That’s it.

Russell: If I just tell people what’s happening then they like, “Oh cool.” I need to have to build up the anticipation.

Andrew: Even within your team?

Russell: Especially within the team. Yes.

Andrew: Especially. So secret is one big thing. What else do you do?

Russell: Secrets, hacks…

Andrew: No, within the team. So now you get them interested by saying it’s a secret.

Russell: So I’ll tell them a story, I’ll tell them the beginning of a story. I’ll be like, “Oh my gosh you guys, I was listening, I was cleaning the wrestling room and I was going through this thing, and I was listening to Andrew and he was doing this campfire chat and it was amazing. And he’s telling this whole story, and I have this idea, it’s going to be amazing. But I’ll tell you guys about it tomorrow.”

So what happens now, is they’ve got a whole night to like marinate on this and be like, “What in the world?” and get all excited. And then when they show up, they’re anticipating me telling them, and then when I tell them, then I get the response I want. If I tell them they’re like, “Oh cool.” I’m like, no, you missed it. I need that, in fact, I’ll share ideas all the time, I’ll pitch it out there just to see. I know it’s a good idea because Brent will be like, “I got chills.” Dave will start freaking out, and that’s when I know, “Okay, that was a good idea.” If they’re like, “Oh that’s cool.” I’m like, crap. Not doing that one. It’s the same thing.

Andrew: I’ve heard one of the reasons that you guys hang out together is one, he’s an extrovert and you’re an introvert, but the other one is Dave will one up you.

Russell: It starts the process. This is the bubble soccer event we did. Initially it was like we’re going to have influences, or we were launching the viral video and like we need, let’s bring some people into it. And then we were asking how someone could bring big influencers, like “you have to do something crazy. Like get a Ferrari and let them drive over it in a monster truck.” I was like, “That seems extreme.” I was like, “What if we played football on the Boise State Stadium?” And Dave’s like, “What if we did bubble soccer? What if we tried to set a Guinness book of world records…” and then next thing we know, we’re all Guinness book of world record champion bubble soccer players. It was amazing.

Andrew: And that’s the thing that I’ve heard about your office environment. That it’s this kind of atmosphere where, see for me, look at me, I’ve got that New York tension. When I talk to my people and I talk to everyone it’s like, “You’ve gotta do something already.” And you guys like fun, there’s a ball pit or whatever in the office. Am I right? You go “we need a, we’re gonna create a new office. Let’s have a bowling alley in it and a place to shoot.” That’s the truth.

Russell: It is the truth. It’s going to be amazing.

Andrew: Does he also tell you, “We need to do something this weekend. Date night, it’s a secret.”?

Russell: Maybe I need to do more than that, huh.

Andrew: Yes, does he use persuasion techniques on you?

Russell: It doesn’t work on her.

Andrew: No.

Russell: She’s the only person I can’t persuade. It’s amazing. My powers are useless against my wife. It’s unfortunate.

Andrew: Do you actually use them, or when it comes to the house you go, “come on, I’m tired already, just…”?

Russell: I tried to do something today and she was like, “That was the worst sales pitch ever.” I’m like, “Dang it. Alright, I’ll try again.”

Andrew: Hey Siri, text my wife “I’ve got plans for tomorrow night. So good, Russell just told me about it. I’ll tell you later. Secret.” Period, send.

Russell: That’s amazing.

Andrew: Wowee. Does anybody know how I can get a babysitter here.

{Audience speaking indistinctly}

Andrew: They’re a little too eager to spend time with my kids. Thank you. Alright, I said I would take a few more questions. I know we’re almost out of time here. Who was it, it was someone on the right here that was especially, you looked, uh yeah you, who just pointed behind you.

Audience Member: Hi, okay, Russell I’ve been in your world since about 2016..

Andrew: Hang on a second, who the, I’m sorry to curse, but who the f**k comes to a software event and goes, “I’ve been in your world.”? This is amazing about you. I’m in San Francisco, there’s nobody that goes, “I’m so glad I’ve been in the hubspot world.” It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, I had to interrupt. Okay. I’ve been in your world. He’s selling you software, you’re in his world. Sorry.

Audience member: You have to listen to his podcast, it’s a..

Andrew: I’ve listened to his podcast. It’s just him talking.

Audience Member: He talks about it, it’s a universe. He creates a universe.

Andrew: You know what, here’s the thing that blew my mind. I thought it was him in a professional studio, I saw him in San Francisco, he’s talking into the voice recorder on his phone. Okay, yeah. I gotta feeling that Russell’s going to go, at some point, “Religion is just an info product. I think I could do a better job here.” Alright, yeah.

Audience Member: okay, I entered the Clickfunnels universe in 2016 and since that time, I came in with a lot of hopes and a lot of, it was just a really exciting experience to have you break down the marketing, you really simplified it right. So I see that, I’m an ambassador for the one comma club challenge right now, and people are coming in with such high hopes and such tremendous faith and trust in you. And I have a friends that I brought into it and everything and they’re coming in, just like, they’re really staking a lot on how they’ve persuaded to join your universe. Sorry, universe is the wrong word. But from that, I guess the question is, there’s a few things. I think a lot of people are afraid of that type of responsibility in the products that they’re delivering, and of course there is a tremendous failure rate of people who don’t get what they’re persuaded in.

So there’s a lot of magnification on the two comma club, and the people there that are the successes, but the question that I have is, the responsibility that you feel for that, I feel that you feel the responsibility because you’re constantly looking for new ways to simplify, bring in new coaches, bring in the new team, make products and offers that are completely irresistible. Truthfully, I went to Funnel Hacking Live, I’m not spending any money, 20 thousand dollars later. I mean it was truthfully so irresistible, but you’ve crafted such unique things in an effort to truly serve that client and really get them to the place that they’re looking to go.

So I’m not sure if the question is coming out, but there’s a lot of responsibility that all these bright eyed, bushy tailed you know, wannabe marketers are coming in really truthfully feeling the genuine just truth that you’re telling them, but then there’s a big crash and burn rate too, which is normal in that space. I’m not sure what the question is.

Andrew: Congratulations  to the people in the two comma club, what about the people in the no comma club. What do you feel is a sense of obligation to the people who aren’t yet there? What do you feel about that?

Russell: Is that the question?

Andrew: Is that right?

Audience member: I guess the question is, there’s two parts, one is the responsibility that other people are feeling, the fear that they’re feeling to put something out there because they’re afraid of a failure rate. So just like, Whitney over there was talking about, she’s got those fears. So there’s normal fears that come along with that, so how you deal with that, in that it’s not because of lack of delivery on your end, but there’s still people who are spending tremendous amounts of money, or small amounts of money that just aren’t getting what it is. So it’s really about your internal feelings about that topic.

Russell: It’s a good question. There’s a lot of different ways I could answer it. I’m trying to think, for me it’s a big reason I do have a con stripe, because I do feel like I have a huge obligation to people who sign up for our stuff. So I’m always thinking, how do we simplify this, how do we simplify it? What’s the best way to do it? What’s the thing? But that’s also what creates innovation right. It creates the ideas, it’s that, how do we serve these people better? How do we serve them better?

Probably the best analogy, in fact, Brandon over here was working on a video that he sent me last night, that I had a chance to watch, it was really cool. We had Sean Stephenson speak at the second Funnel Hacking Live. Was anyone there for that one? A couple of you guys. Sean Stephenson, if you know him, is the 3 foot giant. He’s this little dude in a wheel chair, one of the coolest humans on earth. And he told this story, it was funny because man, I had another emotional connection watching it last night actually, watching it. And he talked about stories like, “How many of you guys here are upset because you got 17 followers on Facebook and you’ve got 13 likes on your YouTube video, and you’re pissed because of all this stuff.”

And I think of a lot things that way. “I’m trying this thing, I’m not a millionaire yet, I’m not making any money, blah, blah, blah.” And they’re upset about that right. And what Sean said, he’s like, “Do you know how they choose who they’re going to save when a helicopter is flying into an ocean and there’s a boat that’s wrecked with all these people. Guess how they choose who they’re going to save?” and he said, “What happens is the helicopter drivers, they fly over there and go down to the people, going to save them, and guess who they save, they save the people who are swimming towards you.” He says, “That’s how you do it. If you try to save everyone, it will drown you, it’ll drown the boat, and everybody dies. But you save the people who are swimming toward you.”

And then he came back and said, “Those 17 likes on your video, those are the 17 people who are swimming towards you. You have to understand that.” So for me it’s like, we talk about the money because that gets people inspired, but when it all comes down, the really internal belief, no one really cares about the money. They want the feeling of the connection and the help and they want to change the world. They have their thing, and so it’s like, we talk about the money because it gets people excited, but I don’t know anybody who that’s the real reason why they’re in business. They’re in because they want, they want to help those people that are coming towards them.

So you notice when you get deeper into the culture, it’s not just money, money, money, money. It’s how do you serve, how do you impact, how do you change the world, how can you get your message clearer, how can you do those things? And when you shift from the money to that, then the money starts magically coming. So for me, it’s just like how do we get more people thinking that way more often.

I don’t know if that’s the right answer or if that helps at all, but it is definitely something I feel a big obligation for but I also feel like I’m super grateful for the people who are willing, I’m grateful to Don Lepre, spent all that money doing the infomercial on that thing. And I didn’t implement it back then, when I was 14, right. I’m grateful to the next guy who re-inspired me and I bought the thing and didn’t do anything and then next person and all those things, because eventually it stuck.

So for me, it’s like I’m going to keep creating offers and keep doing cool things, and trying to inspire people because it might not be the first or the second or the fifth, but eventually if I keep being consistent on my side, it’s going to keep getting it and eventually the right people, those who actually have something they want to share, something they actually care about what they’re doing will figure out the way. And we’re just going to keep trailblazing and trying to do our best to make a path that they can all follow. So that’s kind of how I look at it.

Andrew: Great question. Let’s close it out with one more. Yes. Dave did you find someone, because I just found someone right here. Why don’t we do two more then? Since you found one and I found one. What’s your name? Sorry, Parker? Parker. Go next. There we go, let’s go to Parker next and we’ll close it out with him.

Parker: Alright, so the biggest question I have for you Russell is, I’ve seen you guys’ amazing group you guys have at Clickfunnels, and every time I go in your guys’ office it’s nothing but excitement, energy, and not only you don’t have to inspire your workers to work for you. They come there excited and hearing your amazing stories that John and Brent had of, they stayed with you for all this time and you pushed them and they pushed you and there’s this amazing cycle. I’m curious as far as, because I want to have an amazing group like that one too so I can affect the world the same way that you have, and even do better than you did. And that’s a completely admiration thing, that’s I don’t know.

Dave: Cut from the same cloth here.

Russell: That’s his dad. Dave’s son.

Andrew: Oh got it. That makes sense.

Parker: The question I have for you is, how do you find those people? Is it nothing but like a whittling out process or do you see these characteristics already in the people that you have?

Andrew: One sec, how old are you?

Parker: I’m 20 years old.

Andrew: 20 years old and you admire your dad and the guy that he works with so much that you want to not just be like him, but be more like him? Can you take of my kid tonight? Sorry, that’s amazing. Does your dad come home with this energy like this energy like, “We’re going to capture the world. This is what we’re going to do.”

Parker: it is the funniest thing. Oh my gosh. Every way you see him online, social media, whatever the heck it is, it’s exactly the same way he is at home. When you see him on the tv talking about like, “Oh this is…” or when you interviewed him.

Andrew: I’ve watched his podcast, I see that thing.

{Crosstalk}

Parker: you know as much as I do then.

Andrew: What did he motivate you to, like to sell as a kid, or to upsell as a kid.

Parker: So he would like talk to us like he was a sales person basically, in the aspect of he talks about things as far as, this person did a terrible job at selling. They could have done this, this, this and this.” And we’re like 10 years old, I think at the time, I think. I don’t know. It’s more of a recent change since he joined clickfunnels and he’s got this amazing excitement and energy. It’s an amazing thing and I wish to have to people like my dad when I become a, when I start to do my own thing.

Andrew: It is contagious isn’t it?

Parker: yeah, it totally is.

Andrew: And I’ve been watching, what’s this new Vlog that you’ve got. It’s on Russell, it’s on Russell Brunson’s YouTube channel right? I’m at the end of it going, “Hell yeah, why am I taking a shower now. I gotta go, I got stuff to do.” Right. These guys are out there taking over San Francisco, that’s my city. So I guess you’re feeling the same way at home. Now, he’s there twice, he suddenly owns a place. So your question was…?

Parker: My question was basically, how do you find these amazing people to work, not only for you, but with you and to help you accomplish your dream? Is it whittling out process or it you have innate ability to find people?

Russell: So as you were saying that I started thinking, I’m thinking about the partners on our team, who none of them came through like a help wanted site. None of them came through like, Brent went to church with me and he showed up every single week, every single month, he was my home teacher and showed up every single month consistently and we became friends and we did stuff together. John married my cousin. We were on the boat in the middle of the lake and he pitched me on a network marketer opportunity and I was like, I love this guy. And then I pitched him back and we just, and it was amazing.

And then Dave, we were at an event like this and we had a signup sheet if you wanted to take the speakers out to dinner and Dave ran back and signed up every single line under mine. So I went to every single meal with him for 3 days. I think it’s just, I think a big part of it, I think most entrepreneurs can’t build a team because they’re waiting to build the team. And I think for me, I didn’t know what I was doing so I just started running, and what happens when you’re moving forward and motion is happening, people get attracted to that. And some people will come for bad reasons and they’ll leave, and I’ve been taken advantage of multiple times, things like that will happen, but the right people will stick around.

But it’s all about, it’s the motion right. That’s what people are attracted to. If something’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening, but I want to be on that train and they start coming. So I think it’s taking the initiative of “Okay, I’m going to start running and I have no idea if anyone’s going to follow me ever. But If I do this and I keep doing it consistently then people will.” And you know, it’s been a consistency thing. I’m 15 years into this business now, 8000 funnels deep. But it’s a consistency, and when you do that and you’re consistent, then the right people will just start coming into your life. But not waiting for them initially. If I would have waited to build my team initially, we wouldn’t have a team. Everyone we met was like in the, as we were having motion, the right people started showing up.

Andrew: Alright. Thanks. Speaking of, thank you. How many people here are actually at Clickfunnels, if you work at Clickfunnels. Can you guys stand up if you work at Clickfunnels. There you go. I feel like at the end of this everyone’s going to want to go and meet Russell. Everyone’s going to want to go and mob him. And he’s not that social, number one. Number two, I feel like you’re going to pass up these fan-freaking-tastic conversations, I’ve gotten to know the people who work here a lot really well in preparation for this, I really urge you to see the guys, the people who are wearing these t-shirts. Get to know them. Push them into a corner, understand what’s working for them. And really, you’re fantastic people, thanks so much for helping me do this.

And thank you for having me on here. I really appreciate you being open, being willing to let me take this anywhere. You said, “I understand what Andrew is trying to do. He’s trying to figure this out. I’m going to let him run with it and let him make the magic happen.” And I think we made a lot of magic happen. Thanks so much for having me here.

Russell: Yeah man, it was amazing.

Andrew: Thank you all for coming, I’m looking forward to meeting every one of you. Thanks.

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Enjoy part three of this classic episode series where Andrew Warner from Mixergy interviews Russell on the ClickFunnels startup story!

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---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you enjoyed episodes 1 and 2 of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club where he was telling the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you are enjoying this interview series so far, and I hope also this motivates you guys to go over to the mixergy podcast and subscribe to everything that Andrew does. Like I said, he is my favorite interviewer and I think that what he does is second to none. So I hope that you guys enjoy him as well, and go subscribe to the mixergy podcast. But with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back we will start into part 3 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview.

Andrew: I actually got, I did see, I don’t know, I didn’t see the video you mentioned, but I did see what it looked like. Here’s one of the first versions. He compared it to Clickfunnels, he said, I mean to Lead Pages. He said, “Look at how Lead Pages has their stuff all the way on the left, all the controls.” Oh you can’t see it. Oh, let me try it again, let me see if I can bring up the screen because this is just, it’s just too good. Hang on a second.

I’m just constantly amazed how you’re able to draw people to you. So this is the article from Lead Pages, this is the first landing page from Clickfunnels, this is what he created before, this is what you guys did together. This is your editor and h e said, “Look, if you’re on Lead Pages, their controls, their editor is all the way on the left and it’s just moving the main content to the right, which is not looking right. And I prefer something that looks like this, with a hundred pixels on the left, a hundred pixels…” I go, who knows a hundred pixels, it’s like you, what is this?

Russell: Dylan is obsessed with that type of stuff, it’s amazing.

Andrew: Obsessed. And you draw people like that. You draw people like Dave, who is just phenomenal. Dave, the traffic and conversion event that he was just talking about, is that the one that you went to?

Dave: The one after that.

Andrew: The one after that. Okay, we’ll come back to that in a second then. So this became your next version, you brought on a new partner, and then you did a webinar with this guy. Who is this guy?

Russell: It’s Mike Filsaime, one of my first friends online. It actually wasn’t a webinar, it was a live event. He was doing a live event in San Diego and he was like, “You have to come and sell Clickfunnels.” And I was like, “Nobody’s buying Clickfunnels.” We had a free trial and like, we couldn’t give it away. It was crazy. And he’s like, “Well, you’re on this website, you’re picture is there, you have to come and sell Clickfunnels, and I need you to sell it for at least $1000.” Because the way it works, if you speak at someone’s event, you sell something, you split the money 50/50. So he’s like, “It needs to be at least $1000.”

And I was all bummed out. I didn’t want to do it. And the event actually started, but they were streaming it live online, so I was actually sitting at our office in Boise, watching it as I’m putting together my slides to create Clickfunnels, and then flew out to the event. And then we had a booth, and I don’t know if I told you this, we had a booth and Lead Pages had a booth right across the little hallway, skinny hallway. And Todd’s wife was manning our booth and then Lead Pages was right there, and it was so funny because she was not shy at all about talking about Lead Pages.

She’s like, “Yeah, we’re like Lead Pages except for way better. We can do this and this.” And the other guy is sitting there like, right in front of her as she’s telling them everything. And it was..anyway, I digress. It was pretty funny.

Andrew: By the way, she’s still at it. I saw a video that you guys created, you were talking to her and she goes, “I will be Clickfunnels.” I go wait a minute, you still had that fire, okay. So you were at that event.

Russell: So we’re at the event and there’s probably, I can’t remember, 150-200 people maybe in the room. So I got the slides up and Dylan was there and he was like, when we got to the funnels he was going to demo the editor, so I did the whole thing, showed the presentation and we demo’d Clickfunnels and at the end of the thing I sold. And I’ve been good onstage, but by far, that was the first time in probably 8 years that I’d seen a table rush, where people are stepping over the things, jumping around, trying to get to the back to buy as fast as they could.

Andrew: What did you say to get them to want to do that?

Russell: We made a really, I mean we gave the presentation, and gave a really good offer at the end. They get a year of Clickfunnels for free, plus they get training, plus they were going to get all these other things for $1000.

Andrew: It was $1000 training and a year of Clickfunnels for free, and then they become long term members. And it was also called, Funnel Hackers?

Russell: Funnel Hacks, yeah.

Andrew: Funnel Hacks. And that’s the thing that became like…

Russell: The culture.

Andrew: This culture, this tribe. It wasn’t just they were signing to learn from you, they were becoming funnel hackers. That’s it.

Russell: I mean, that wasn’t planned though. It was like, I was trying to think about a sexy name for the presentation, so I’m like ah, Funnel Hacks. And somebody owned FunnelHacks.com, and I’m like, I’m still doing the presentation that way. And then later we made t-shirts that said, “Funnel Hackers” and then now we got 4 or 5 people have tattooed that to their bodies, it’s really weird. But anyway, that’s what happened.

We did that and we sold it and I remember going to dinner that night with the guys who were there, and Todd and his wife and everything. And we were all excited because we made some money finally. But I was just like, “You guys don’t understand, like I’ve spoken on a lot of stages, and I haven’t seen a table rush like that.” And I remember back, there was a guy, he passed away a couple of years ago, his name was Fred Catona. And he was a radio guy. He was the guy who did the radio commercials for, do you guys remember, it’s got the guy from Star Trek, what’s his name?

Audience member: Priceline.

Russell: Priceline. He did the Priceline radio commercials and made that guy a billionaire. And he told me when we were doing the radio ads, “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going to test your ad and if it works, I’m going to call you on the phone and let you know you’re rich. Because if it works, it means you’re going to be rich.”

So I remember going to dinner that night and I told the guys, “Just so you guys know, we’re rich.” And they’re like, “What do you mean? We made $150,000.” I’m like, “No, no, no. The way people responded to that, I’ve never seen that in my life. We’re rich.” The response rate from that, I’ve never seen.

Andrew: And then you went to webinar after webinar after webinar.

Russell: On the flight home that day I’m texting everybody I’ve ever met. “I got a hot offer, this webinar crushed it. We just closed whatever percent of the room at Filsaime’s event. Who wants to do it?” And we started filling up the calendar.

Andrew: And the idea was, and you told me you did 2 to 3 some days. And the idea was, they would sell somebody on a course, and then their members would then hear how your software and your funnel hacking technique would help up what they just bought and then they would sign up. You’re still excited, I can see it in your face. And then this thing took off. And then you started doing an event for your culture, your community, and this guy spoke, Tony Robbins.

Russell: Oh yeah, there’s Tony.

Andrew: One of the first ones. Was he at the very first one?

Russell: No, he came to the third one, was the first one we had him come to.

Andrew: Yeah? Why do an event? Why do your own live event?

Russell: So we’ve done events in the past. I know events are good, but I’d sworn off them because the last event we did, I think we sold 3 or 400 tickets and less than 100 people showed up and I was so embarrassed. I was like, “We’ll never do events again.” And as soon as this, as soon as Clickfunnels launched and it was growing, everyone’s like, “We want to do a meet up. We should do an event.” All the customers kept asking. And against my, I didn’t really want to do it, but at the same time I was launching my book, and I had won a Ferrari in this affiliate contest so I was like, “What if we did an event and we had the Ferrari there and we gave it away and then we’re…” we had other ideas for giving away other cars and it became this big, exciting thing that eventually turned into an event.

And that was the first Funnel Hacking Live event in Vegas, and we had about 600 people at that one that showed up. And that’s where it all kind of, it all started.

Andrew: And it built how much, how many people are you up to now?

Russell: Last year we had 3500 people and we’re on track to have about 5000 at this year’s event.

Andrew: 5000? Yeah.

Russell: Those aren’t free tickets. Each ticket’s $1000, so it’s….

Andrew: So how much is that in total revenue?

Russell: From the event?

Andrew: Yeah.

Russell: So ticket sales, last year was $3 ½ million, this year will be over $5. But at the event we sell coaching so last year we made $13 million in coaching sales at the event as well.

Andrew: Wow, would you come up here for a second, Dave? Do you guys know Dave? Yeah, everyone knows Dave. You know what’s amazing…

{Audience catcalls}

Andrew: That’s amazing.

Dave: I don’t know who that is.

Andrew: A catcall. I saw a video, you guys have this vlog now, a beautifully show vlog. You guys went to sales force’s conference, you’re looking at the booths and in the video, do you remember what you did as you saw the different booths?

Dave: I think that one I went and asked what the prices for each of the booths were.

Andrew: Yes, and then you multiplied. And he’s like, you’re not enjoying the event, you’re calculating ahead, how much. “10,000 that’s 100,000….” It’s like wow, right. You do this all the time?

Dave: Yeah. It’s a lot of money in an event like that.

Andrew: And you think, and if this was not your event, you would be doing the same calculation trying to figure out how much they brought in today. Wowee. Alright when you went to sales force did you calculate how much money they probably did from their event?

Dave: We were doing that the whole time, absolutely.

Andrew: You saw the building, you had to know…

Dave: Oh my gosh. 61 stories.

Andrew: Why? Why do you guys want to know that? Why does, how does that… I want to understand your drive as a company and I feel like this is a part of it. Figuring out how much money other people are making, using that for fuel somehow. Tell me.

Dave: I think it actually goes back to Russell and his wrestling days. We had the experience of going to Chicago right after that, and super just exhausted. And it was one of those things where he literally landed, we walked down and we’re underneath the tarmac and all the sudden Russell goes from just being totally exhausted to a massive state change. Where he’s literally right back where he was with his dad and he and his dad are walking that same path to go to, I think it was Nationals. And I saw Dan Usher, who was doing the filming, capturing that moment and it’s that type of a thing for Russell. Where all the sudden it’s the dream, where as soon as you see it, it can then happen. And Russell’s just been amazing at modeling, and again the whole idea as far as just going at a rapid, rapid speed. I mean it’s “Ready, fire, aim.”

Andrew: It’s not you gawking at the sales force, what’s the sales force event called?

Dave: Dream Force.

Andrew: Dream force. It’s not you gawking at how well Sales Force’s event, Dream Force is doing, it’s not you having envy or just curiosity, it’s you saying, it’s possible. This is us. That’s it.

Dave: It’s totally possible.

Andrew: It’s totally possible. We could get there. And when you’re sizing up the building, you even found out how much the building cost. Who does that? Most people go, “Where’s the bathroom?” How much does the building cost?

Dave: There’s a number.

Andrew: It’s you saying, “We could maybe have that.”

Dave: We can have that, yeah.

Andrew: Got it. And so let’s go back a little bit. I asked you about Traffic and Conversion because the very first Traffic and Conversion conference you went to, you guys were nobodies. Nobody came and saw you.

Dave: We were put out in North 40 pasture, way, way far away.

Andrew: And some people would say, “One day I’ll get there.” you told Russell, “Today we’re going to get there.”

Dave: Well Russell wanted, he was speaking and so whenever you’re speaking at an event, it’s important that you fill a room, like this. And there’s nothing worse than having an event and having no one show up. It’s just the worst feeling in the world. And so he’s like, “All we need, I gotta find some way of getting people into the event. I wish we had like some girls who could just hand out t-shirts or do something.” And I was like, we’re in San Diego, that’s like my home town.

Russell: Dave’s like, “How many do you need?” That’s all he said.

Dave: It’s just a number. It comes down to a number. How many do you want? So we ended up having, within an hour or so we had 5 girls there who were more than happy to dance around and give out t-shirts and fill the room.

Andrew: and the room was full?

Dave: Packed.

Andrew: Packed. And why wouldn’t you say, “One day, the next time we come to Traffic and Conversion, the tenth time we’re going to do it.” Why did it have to be right there?

Dave: It’s always now.  

Andrew: It’s always now.

Dave: It’s always now.

Andrew: It’s always now. It’s never going to be the next funnel, it’s never going to be the next product launch. I’m going to do whatever we can right now, and the next one, and the next one. That’s it. That’s who you are.

Dave: That’s how it works.

Andrew: And now you’re a partner in the business. $83 million so far this year, you got a piece of that.

Dave: Yes. Do i?

Russell: Yeah.

Dave: Just checking.

Andrew: Do you get to take profits home now?

Dave: We do.

Andrew: You do, you personally do?

Dave: Yes.

Andrew: Are you a millionaire?

Dave: Things are really good.

Andrew: Millionaire good from Clickfunnels?

Dave: yes.

Andrew: Really?

Dave: Yes.

Andrew: Wow. And you’re another one. I was driving and I said, “What was it about Russell that made you work for him? What was it?” and you said, “I’ve never seen anyone implement like him.” Give me an example of early days, something that he implemented…you know what, forget that, let’s not go back to Russell. As a team, you guys have gotten really good at implementing. Give me an example of one thing that you’re just stunned by, we did it, it came out of nowhere, we could have been distracted by funnel software, we could have distracted by the next book, we did this thing, what is it?

Dave: You’re here on this stage with JP, and this was what 6 weeks ago?

Andrew: and this whole thing just came from an idea I heard. You use Voxer. Why do you use Voxer?

Russell: I don’t know.

Andrew: Because you like to talk into it.

Russell: Yeah, and you can fast forward, you can listen at 4x speed, you can forward the messages to people really easily, it’s awesome.

Andrew: and it’s just train of thought, boom, here’s what I think we’re going to…No, it’s not that. I heard it’s, “I have a secret project…”

Russell: “I’ll tell you guys about it later.” And they all start freaking out. “Tell us now.”

Andrew: “Secret project. I don’t know what it, it’s going to be exciting.” They don’t know what it is, going to be excited.

Russell: Do you know how it started, this one? I was cleaning my wrestling room listening to you, and you were, I don’t know whose event it was, but you were at the campfire, it sounded like. And you were doing something like this and I was like, I want my own campfire chat to tell our story. And then I was like, “Dave, we should do it.” And now we’re here. So thanks for coming to our campfire….

Dave: That’s how it happens.

Andrew: And that’s exciting to this day. Alright, thank you. Give him a big round, thank you so much. You know what, I didn’t mean for this to come onstage, but I’m glad that it is. This made you laugh when you accidentally saw it earlier too. Why is this making you laugh? What is it?

Russell: So we’re not shy about our competitors, even when they’re our friends. So one of the companies we’re crossing out is his. That’s why it’s funny.

Andrew: It’s one of my companies. That’s Bot Academy there. It’s also a company I invest in, that octopus is ManyChat, I’ve been a very big angel investor and supporter of theirs. I’m not at all insulted by that, I’m curious about it. You guys come across as such nice, happy-go-lucky guys. Dave asked me if I want water, I said “Dave I can’t have you give me any more things. I feel uncomfortable, I’m a New Yorker. Punch me, please.” So he goes, “Okay, one more thing. I’m going to give you socks.” So he gave me socks. Really, but still, you have murder in your eyes sometimes. You’re crossing out everybody. This is part of your culture, why?

Russell: It comes back, for me its wrestling. When I was wrestling it was not, I don’t know, there’s different mentalities right. And I did a podcast on this one time and I think I offended some people, so I apologize in advance, but if you’re in a band and everyone gets together and you play together and you harmonize, it’s beautiful. When you’re a wrestler you don’t do that. You know, you walk in everyday and you’re like, those are the two guys I have to beat to be varsity. And then after you do that, you walk in and you’re like, “Okay who are the people I have to beat to be in the region champ, and then the state champ, and then the national champ?”

So for me, my entire 15 years of my life, all my focus was like, who’s the next person on the rung that I have to beat? And it’s studying and learning about them and figuring their moves and figuring out what they’re good at, what they’re bad at so we can beat them. Then we beat them and go to the next thing, and next thing, and next thing.

So it was never negative for me, it was competition. Half the guys were my friends and they were doing the same thing to me, we were doing the same thing to them. I come from a hyper competitive world where that’s everything we do. And I feel bad now, because in business, a lot of people we compete against aren’t competitive and I forget that sometimes, and some people don’t appreciate it. But that’s the drive. It’s just like, who do we, if I don’t have someone to, if there’s not someone we’re driving towards, there’s not a point for me.

Andrew: And even if they’re, even if I was hurt, “I accept it, I’m sorry you’re hurt, Andrew. I still care and love you. We’re going to crush you.” That’s still there.

Russell: And I had someone, so obviously InfusionSoft was one of our people we were targeting for a long, long time and I had a call with Clayton and someone on his team asked me, “Why do you hate Infusion Soft so much?” I was like, “I don’t, you don’t understand. I don’t hate, I love Infusion Soft. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for Lead Pages, I’m grateful for….” I told them, have you guys seen the Dark Knight, my favorite movie of all time? And it’s the part where Batman and the Joker are there and Batman is like, asks the Joker, “Why are you trying to kill me?” And the Joker starts laughing and he’s like, “I’m not trying to kill you. The reason I do this is because of you. If I didn’t have you, there’s no purpose behind it.”

So for me it’s like, if I don’t have someone to compete against, why are we playing the game? So for me, that’s why we’re always looking…

Andrew: It’s not enough to say, it’s not enough to just say “we’re playing the game because we want to help the next entrepreneur, or the next person who’s sick and needs to create…” no, it’s not.

Russell: That’s a big part of it, but like, there’s something…

Andrew: Yeah, but it’s not enough, it’s gotta be both.

Russell: My whole life there’s, the competition is what drives me for sure.

Andrew: And just like you’re wrestling with someone, trying to beat them, but you don’t hate them. You’re not going to their house and break it down…

Russell: Everyone we wrestled, we were friends afterwards. We were on the same Freestyle and Greco teams later in the season, but during, when we’re competing, we’re competing and everyone’s going all at it.

Andrew: Everyone’s going all at it. That’s an interesting way to end it. How much more time do we have? How much more time do we have? I’m going to keep going. Can I get you to come up here John, because I gotta get you to explain something to me?

So I told you, I was online the other day, yeah give him a big round. I was online the other day, I don’t even know what I clicked, I clicked something and then I saw that Russell’s a great webinar person, everyone keeps telling me. Well, alright, I gotta find out how he does it. So I click over, “Alright, just give your email address and you can find out how..” Alright, I’ll give my email address to find out how he became such a great webinar presenter. “Just give a credit card. It’s only $4.95, so it comes in the mail.” It comes in the mail, that’s pretty cool. Nothing comes in the mail anymore. Here’s my credit card.

It goes, “Alright, it’s going to mail it out. Would you also like to learn how to use these slides? $400.” I go, no! I’m done.

Russell: Welcome to the funnel.

Andrew: Welcome to the funnel. I’m done. But I’m going to put in Evernote a link to this page so I don’t lose it so I can come back. I swear. I did it. And this is my receipt for $4.95. Don’t you ever feel like, we’re beyond this? We’re in the software space now, we’re competing with Dropbox, we’re not competing with Joe Schmoe and his ebook. And you’re the guy who sold the, who bought the ad that got me.

John: I know.

Andrew: I asked you that. Do you ever feel a little embarrassed, “We’re still in the info market space.”?

John: No, I think it’s the essence of what we do, of what Russell does. We love education. We love teaching people. I mean, the software is like the backend, but we’re not software people. I mean, we sell software, but we teach people. All these people here and all the people at all of our events, they just want to learn how to do it better.

Andrew: I don’t believe it.

John: Okay.

Andrew: I believe in him. I don’t believe in you. I believe that for you it’s the numbers. Here’s why I don’t believe it. I’m looking in your eyes and you’re like, “I’m giving the script. I’m good, I’m doing the script.” I see it in your eyes, but when I was talking to you earlier, no offense. This is why he does what he does. When I was talking to you earlier, you told me about the numbers, the conversion, how we get you in the sales funnel, how we actually can then modify…That’s the exciting part. Don’t be insulted by the fact that I said it. Know that we have marketers here, they’re going to love you for being open about it.

What’s going on here? What’s going on, keeping you in this space?

John: Okay, from my perspective. Okay so, initially it was self liquidation on the front, which is what I was telling you. It was the fact that we were bootstrapped, we didn’t have money to just like throw out there. We had to make sure we were earning enough money to cover our ads. And Russell had all the trust in the world in me, I don’t know why he did, but he did. And he’s just like, “Spend money, and try to make it self-liquidate.” I’m like, “Okay.” So we just had to spend money and hope that we got enough back to keep spending money.

Andrew: And self-liquidate means buy an ad today and make sure that we make money from that ad right away and then software.

John: Yeah.

Andrew: And then you told, and then software’s going to pay overtime, that’s our legacy, that’s our thing. And you told me software sucks for selling. Why?

John: Software sucks, yeah.

Andrew: Why? Everyone who’s in info, everyone’s who in education says, “I wish I was a software guy. Software is eating the world, they’re getting all the risk back.” I walked through San Francisco; they think anyone who doesn’t have software in their veins is a sucker.

John: I asked the same thing to myself, you know. I was running ads, I’m like why can’t I just run ads straight to the offer? Why do I have go to these info products? I want to get on the soft…. And then I was like, I feel like it’s kind of like marriage. Like it’s a big thing to say like, “You probably already built websites, but come over, drop everything you’re doing and come over here and build websites over here on our thing.” And it’s like, that’s a hard pull. But “Hey, you want to build webinars? Here’s a little thing for $5 to build webinars.” Now you’re in our world, now we can talk to you, now you can trust us, now we can get you over there.

Andrew: Got it. Okay, and if that’s what it takes to get people in your world, you’re going to accept it, you’re not going to feel too good for that, you’re just going to do it and grow it and grow it.

John: Yeah.

Andrew: What’s your ad budget now? See now you’re eyes are lighting up. Now I tapped into it.

John: We spend about half a million a month.

Andrew: half a million a month!

John: Yeah. Don’t tell the accountant.

Andrew: Do you guys pay with a credit card? Do you have a lot of miles?

John: Yeah, we do. In fact….

Andrew: You do! How many miles?

John: In fact, the accountant came into my office the other day and said, “Next time you buy a ticket, use the miles.”

Andrew: Are they with Delta, because I think you guys flew me out with Delta.

John: Yeah, American Express is where we’re spending all our money.

Andrew: Wow. And you’re a partner too?

John: Yeah.

Andrew: Wow, congratulations.

John: Thank you.

Andrew: I don’t know you well enough to ask you if you’re a millionaire, I’m just going to say congratulations. Give him a big round.

John: Thank you.

Andrew: Wow, you know what, I actually was going to ask the videographers to come up here. I wrote their names down, I got the whole thing and I realized I shouldn’t interrupt them, because they’re shooting video. But I asked them, why are you, they had this career where they were flying all over the world shooting videos for their YouTube channel. I’m sorry, I forgot their name, and I don’t want to leave them out.

Russell: Dan and Blake.

Andrew: They were shooting YouTube videos, they were doing videos for other people. I said, “Why are you now giving it up and just working for Clickfunnels all the time? More importantly, why are you so excited about it?” And they said, “You know, it’s the way that we work with Russell.” And I said, do you remember the first time that you invited them out to shoot something? What was it?

Russell: It was the very first Funnel Hacking Live we ever had, and probably 2 weeks prior to that, one of our friends had an event and Dan had captured the footage, and he showed me the videos. “Did you check out my Ven Video?” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that was amazing.” And I said “Who did it?” and he told me. So I emailed Dan and I was like, “Hey, can you come do that for Funnel Hacking Live?” And he’s like, “What’s Funnel Hacking Live?” So I kind of told him, and he’s like, “Sure.”

And it was like 2 weeks later and he’s like, “What’s the direction?” and I was like, “I don’t know, just bring the magic man. Whatever you did there, do that here.” And that’s kind of been his calling card since. He just comes and does stuff.

Andrew: Bring the magic. He wants to have those words painted on the Toronto office you guys are starting. Literally, because he says you say that all the time. And the idea is, I want to understand how you hire. The idea is, “I’m going to find people who do good work, and I’m going to let them do it.” What happens if they wouldn’t have done it your way? What happens if it would have gone a different direction?

Russell: I see your question, and I’m not perfect. So I’m going to caveat that by, some of the guys on my team know that I’m kind of, especially on the design and funnel stuff, I’m more picky on that, because I’m so into that and I love it. But what I’ve found is when you hire amazing people like Todd for example, doing Clickfunnels. The times I tried to do Clickfunnels prior, build it was like, me and I’m telling developers, “here’s what to do and how to do it.” And like there’s always some loss in communication.

With Todd, he’s like, “I know exactly what I would build because I want this product too.” And then he just built it and he showed me stuff. And I’m like, “That’s a good idea.” And he’s like, “I did this too.” And I’m like, “That’s a good idea.” And it’s so much easier that way. So when you find the right people, it’s not you giving them ideas, it’s them coming to you with the ideas. And you’re like, “that is a good idea. Go do it.” And it just makes, takes all the pressure off your back. So for us, and it’s been fun because I look at, man, the last 15 years of all those different websites and the ups and the downs, the best people have always stuck. So we’ve got 15 years of getting the cream of the crop.

It’s kind of like, I’m a super hero nerd, but it’s like the Avengers, at the end of, when Clickfunnels came about we had this Avenger team of people. And we’re like, now we’ve put in our dues, now it’s time to use all of our super powers to do this thing, and it all kind of came together.

Andrew: Build it and build it up. And then as you were building it up, you then went to Sales Force. You guys invited me, you said, “Hey Andrew, we’re in San Francisco, you’re home town. Do you want to come out?” I said, “I’m going to be with the family.” And you said, “Good. Being with the family is better than hanging out with us.” But I still said, “What are you guys doing in San Francisco at Sales Force?” Because sales people don’t need landing pages, yet you guys will probably find a way for them to need it.

Then I saw this, this is the last video that I’ve got. There’s no audio on it. I want you guys to look at their faces as they’re looking up at these buildings, walking through the Sales Force office. Look, they’re getting on the motorcycles in the lobby. They’re looking all around like, “Oh gee.” Counting the buildings that are Sales Force labeled. Look at that! What are they doing? Not believing that this is even possible. And then just stopping and going, this is dream force. This is your dream. What did you get out of going to sales Force’s event and seeing their office?

Russell: Honestly, prior to Sales Force, I was kind of going through a weird funk in my business, because it was like, again there was the goals. So it was like, okay, we’re going to do a million bucks, and then we did that. And then it’s like, let’s make 10 million a year. And then 50, and then this year we’ll hit a hundred. And like, what’s the next goal?  A billion, because a hundred million, 2 hundred million is not that big of a difference. And it was just kind of like, what’s the point, what’s the purpose?

We’ve grown as big as any company that I know. And then last year, Dave and Ryan had gone out there and they were telling me stories like, “There’s 170,000 businesses here.” And they were telling me all these things, and it sounded cool, but I didn’t, and they were going crazy. You have to see this so you can believe it. But there’s something about the energy about seeing something that makes it real. So this year I was like, I want to go and I want to see Benioff speak. I want to see the thing, the towers, I want to just understand it, because if I understand it, cool. Now we can reverse engineer and figure out how we can do it.

So for me it was just like seeing it. I think in anything, any, as entrepreneurs too, if you’re people believe that you can do it, you’ll do it. If you believe you can lose weight, you’ll lose 3eight. If you believe you can grow a company, and I don’t feel like I believed that the next level was possible for us until I saw it. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is not ridiculous. Benioff’s not, none of these guys are any smarter than any of us. It’s just like, they figured out the path. It was like, okay let’s look at the path. And then let’s look at it and now we can figure out our path.

Andrew: And seeing it in person did that for you?

Russell: Oh yeah. It makes it tangible, it makes it like, it’s like your physiology feels it, versus reading a book about it or hearing about it. It’s like you see it and you experience it, and it’s like it’s tangible.

Andrew: I told you, I asked people before they came in here, “What are you looking for?” and a few of them frustrated me because they said, “I just wanted to see Russell. I just want to see the event.” I go, “Give me something I could ask a question about.” But I think they were looking for the same thing that you got out of there. And I know they got it. I’m going to ask them to come up here and ask some questions, and I want to know about the future of Clickfunnels, but first I’ve got to just acknowledge that, that we are here to just kind of pick up on that energy. That energy that got you to pick yourself back up when anyone else would have said, “I’m a failure of a husband, I can’t do this.” Go back.

The tension that came from failing and almost going to jail as you said, from failing and succeeding, and failing again. And still, that is inspiring to see. I want to give the whole Clickfunnels family a big round of applause, please everybody.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enjoy part two of this classic episode series where Andrew Warner from Mixergy interviews Russell on the ClickFunnels startup story!

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---Transcript---

Alright everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope yesterday you enjoyed part one of the Clickfunnels start up story interview at the Dry Bar Comedy Club with Andrew. I love the way he interviews. I hope you’re enjoying it as well.

So we are going to dive right into part 2 of 4 from this interview. And again, if you’re liking these interviews please, please, please take a snapshot on your phone, post it on Facebook, Instagram or wherever you do your posting and tag me in it and use hashtag marketing secrets so I can see that you’re talking about it. I’d appreciate it. With that said, we’re going to queue up the theme song, when we come back we’ll start in on part 2 of the interview of the Clickfunnels start up story.

Andrew: You know what, I’ve talked to a few of your people because they’re so good, that Dave could really be a leader on his own, start his own company, he’s got his own online reputation, the whole thing. I keep asking him, “Why do you work for Russell? What is it that lets you be second to Russell who’s getting all the attention?” And I’ve got some answers and would you mind coming up here and in a second I’m going to ask you. No, come back here and I’ll just bring you up in a second. Actually, you know what, it looks like you can come pretty fast. I thought that it would be a little bit more, I thought it would be more of a thing to get mics on people. And I realized if Collette can do it….

Okay honestly, dig down deep. Why did you want to stick with him?

Brent: Through all that stuff?

Andrew: Yeah.

Brent: I don’t know. My heart was just racing. As he started telling that story, it just makes me sick to my stomach. As you scroll down and look at all those businesses of, for years, every 30 days it was a new business launch, it was crazy. Always why I stuck with him is, you know, Collette mentioned that spirit. He’s absolutely different than anybody else I’ve ever met in my entire life, a friend….

Andrew: Of what? Give me an example. Let’s be more specific. Back then, not today, he’s got this track record, adoring fans, I asked him to do an interview, everyone wants him on his podcast. Back then when it wasn’t going so well. Give me an example that let you know this is a guy who’s going to figure it out eventually, and I could possibly go down, watch him go to jail, but I believe that it’s going to go up.

Brent: Well, at the time when things are crashing, I saw him as the income stopped. And he had started a program that he loves, obviously wrestling, and he brought an Olympic wrestling coach to Boise and he brought all these amazing wrestlers to Boise and he wanted them to be able to train and get to the Olympics, he wanted to help them get there and live their dream. And you know, he was supplementing, at the time the business was paying for these guys to do a little bit of work for us, they weren’t doing very much for us. But I saw him out of his own pocket, be paying for these guys. And I knew how hard he wanted to support them.

And there was a day when my wife and I, we were struggling because I just, I was concerned about him financially because he was supplementing and trying to keep this business afloat, and we talked about things and I came into the office one day and I asked if I could talk to him and sat down, and kind of spoke in language that I normally don’t speak in, I might have dropped a bomb or two. It was, I was so concerned I pretty much told him, I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep watching you every month pulling the money that you saved for your family to try keep jobs for other people. I said, I’ll leave if that helps you.

And the fact that he stuck with people, that was the true character of who he is.

Andrew: He kept paying your salary, kept sticking with you, and also constantly launching things.

Brent: Absolutely.

Andrew: That you’ve never seen anyone implement like him.

Brent: You know some people call it faith or belief. He has this inherit belief that he can truly change people’s lives.

Andrew: That’s it, even when he wasn’t fully in control of his own. Alright thanks. Thanks for, give him a big round of applause, thanks for being up here. I feel like this is the thing that helped get you out of trouble and potentially, and getting out of potential jail.

What is this business that you created?

Russell: So we, during the time of that and this there was time, probably a year and a half-two years that we were trying all sorts of stuff. And again, marginal success on a lot of them, nothing like….and this was the one, we actually, this is before….I’ve done a lot of webinars and speaking from seminars and stuff like that, but this is right when auto webinars were coming out and Mike Filsaime had just done an auto webinar and a couple of people, and I felt like that was going to be the future thing. So we’re like, what do we do the webinar on? We didn’t know.

And we flew out to Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher’s office for two days and picked their brains, went to Rich Schefren’s office for a day. And then on the flight home, I’m just like sick to my stomach. I couldn’t figure out what’s the thing that we could serve people the most right now. And on the flight home I was like, all the internet marketing stuff we do works for internet marketers, but we’re way better at like local business. Like if a chiropractor implements like two things it works. Or if a dentist does it.

But I was like, I don’t want to be the guy going to dentists, but we could be the backbone for that. What if we created an opportunity where people could come in, we train them, and we connect them with the right tools and resources, and then they could go and sell to chiropractors and dentists. And that’s what the idea was. We turned it into an offer called Dotcom Secrets Local, it was a thousand dollar offer at the time. Did the auto webinar for it, and it launched and within 90 days it had done over a million dollars, which covered payroll taxes and then got us out of debt to the point now we could stop and dream again, and believe again and try to figure out what we really wanted to do.

Andrew: Dotcom Secrets Local to a million dollars within 90 days. And how did you find the people who were going to sign up for this. A lot of us will have landing pages like this, we’ll have these funnels. How did you get people in this funnel?

Russell: And this was pre-Facebook too, so it wasn’t just like go turn Facebook ads on. But you know, one thing that happened over all the years prior to this, I’d met a lot of people and go to a lot of events and get to know everybody. And everyone I met, you know, you meet a lot of people who have lists, they have followings, they have different things like that. I just got to know them really, really well. And in the past I’d promote a lot of their products, they’d promote my products.

So we had this one and we did it first to my list, and it did really well. So I then I then called them and I’m like, “Okay, I did this webinar to my list, these are the numbers, it did awesome. Do you want to do it to your list as well?” and they’re like, “Oh sure. Sounds like a great offer.” We did that list and it did good for them too. And we told the next person and then, if you have a webinar, it’s kind of like the speaking circuit, if you’re good at speaking then people will put you all over the place. Same thing, if you have a webinar that converts, then it’s easy to get a lot of people to do it. So as soon as that one worked and it converted well, then people lined up and we kept doing it, doing it, and doing it, and it was really quick to get to that spot pretty quick.

Andrew: I went on Facebook recently and I saw webinar slides from Russell Brunson, I went to the landing page, Clickfunnels page and I signed up and I’ll talk about it maybe later, but I bought it and I know other people did. And I’ve seen other people say, “Russell’s webinar technique is the thing that just works.” I’m wondering how did you figure it out? How did you come across this and how did you build it and make it work?

Russell: Yeah, so rewind back probably ten years prior to this, when I was first learning this whole business. I went to my very first internet marketing seminar ever, it was Armand Morin’s Big Seminar. Did you ever go to Big Seminar? Anyway, I went to it and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be like, I showed up with my laptop and I was going to like, I thought we were a bunch of geeks going to do computer stuff.

And the first person got onstage and started speaking and at the end of it he sold like a two thousand dollar thing. And I’d never seen this before. I saw people jumping up and running to the back of the room to buy it. And I’m like this little 23 year old kid and I was counting the people in the back of the room, doing the math, you know doing the math and I’m like, that guy made 60 thousand dollars in an hour.

And the next guy gets up and does his presentation and I watch this for three days and I was like, I’m super shy and introverted, but that skill is worth learning. If someone can walk on a stage and make 100,000 dollars in an hour, I need to learn how to do that. So I started that. And it was really bad for the first probably 8 or 9 months. I tried to do it. I’d go to places and I just, I couldn’t figure it out. And then I started asking the people who were good because you go there and all the speakers kind of talk and hang out, and I’d watch the ones that always had the people in the back of the room. And I’d ask them questions, I’m like, ‘What did I do wrong? I feel like I’m teaching the best stuff possible.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s the problem, it’s not about teaching, it’s about stories, telling stories and breaking beliefs.”

So for about the next two years I was about once a month flying somewhere to speak, and then when I would go I would meet all the speakers and find out what they were doing and I’d watch them and I’d take notes on the different things they were saying and how they were saying it. And then I kept taking my presentation and tweaking it, and tweaking it, and tweaking it. And you know, now 12 years later, I’ve done so many webinars, it kind of worked. The process works now.

Andrew: You are a really good story teller and I’ve seen you do that. I’ve seen you do it, and I know you’re going to do it even more. What I’m curious about is the belief system that you were saying, breaking people’s…what was it that you said?

Russell: False beliefs.

Andrew: Breaking people’s false beliefs. How do you understand what, like as you look at this audience, do you understand what some of our false beliefs are?

Russell: If I knew what I was selling I could figure out for sure.

Andrew: If you knew what you were selling. Alright we’re selling this belief that entrepreneurship does work. And I know we’re all going to go through a period like some of the ones that you had where things just aren’t’ working, other people aren’t believing in us, almost failure, what is at that point, the belief system that we have to work on? What do you recognize in people here?

Russell: So usually there’s three core beliefs that people have. The first is about the opportunity itself right. So like with entrepreneurship, the first belief that people have is could I actually be an entrepreneur? And some people who actually believe that, they’re like, I’m in. And that’s an easy one. But for those who don’t there’s a reason and usually it’s like, they saw a parent that tried to do it. And the parent tried to be an entrepreneur and wasn’t able to and they saw that failure. Or they’d tried it in the past and they failed or whatever it is.

So it’s showing them that even if you tried in the past and showed different ways, let me tell you a story. And for me, I could show 800 different failures. But eventually you get better and you get better until eventually you have the thing that actually works. So I tell a story to kind of show that, to make them believe that, oh my gosh maybe I just need to try a couple more times.

And then the second level of beliefs is like beliefs about themselves like, I’m sure it works for you, Russell or Andrew but not for me because I’m different. It’s helping them figure out their false beliefs, and if you can break that, then the third one is like, then they always want to blame somebody else. “I could lose lots of weight but my wife buys lots of cupcakes and candy. So I could do it, but because of that I can’t.” So then it’s like figuring out how you break the beliefs of the external people that are going to keep them.

Andrew: And how would you know what that is? How would you know who the external influencers are, that your potential customers are worried about?

Russell: I think for most of us it’s because the thing that we’re selling is something that, one of our, Nick Barely said “Our mess becomes our message.” For most of us, what we’re selling is the thing we struggled with before. So I think back about me as 12 year old Russell, watching Don Lepre, like what would have kept me back? And I would have been like, I can’t afford classified ads. Like if you showed me how I can, if you could tell me a story of, oh my gosh I could afford classified ads. Now that belief’s gone and now I’m going to go give you money.

It’s just kind of remembering back to the state that you were in when you were trying to figure this stuff out as well.

Andrew: Who was who I met when we were coming in here that said that they were part of Russell’s mastermind and I asked how much did you pay and he said, “I’m not telling you.” I can’t see who that person was. But I know you got a mastermind, people coming in. I’m wondering how much of it comes from that? working with people directly, seeing them in the group share openly, and then saying, ah, this is what my potential customers are feeling?

Russell: 100% At this point especially. People always ask me, “Where do you go, Russell, to learn stuff?” and it’s my mastermind, because I bring, all the people come in and they’re all in different industries and you see that. You see the road blocks that hold people back, but then they also share the stuff that they’re doing and it’s like, that’s 100% now where I get most of my intell. Because people ask me, “Why, you’re a software company, why in the world do you have a mastermind group?” And it’s because the reason why our software is good is because we have the mastermind group, where they’re all crowd sourcing, they’re doing all this stuff and bringing back to us, and then we’re able to make shifts and pivots based on that.

Andrew: Somehow we just lost Apple, but that’s okay. It’s back, good. There we go. This is the next thing, Rippln.

Russell: I forgot I put that one in there.

Andrew: I went back and I watched the YouTube video explaining it. It’s a cartoon. I thought it was a professional voice over artist, no it’s you. You’re really comfortable getting on stage and talking. But basically in that video that you guys can see in the top left of your screen, it’s Russell, through this voice over and cartoon explaining, “Look, you guys were around in the early days of Facebook, you told your friends, here’s how many friends you would have had, for the sake of numbers, let’s say you told 7 people and let’s say they told 7 people, and that’s how things spread. And the same thing happened with Pinterest and all these other sites. Don’t you ever wish that instead of making them rich by telling stuff, you made yourself rich? Well here’s how Rippln comes in.” and then you created it. And Rippln was what?

Russell: So Rippln was actually one of my friend’s ideas, and he is a network marketing guy so he’s like, “We’re building a network marketing program.” And I’d like dabbled in network marketing, never been involved with it. And he came and was like, “Hey, be part of this.” And I was like, “No.” and then he sold us on the whole pitch of the idea, network marketers are really good at selling you on vision, and I was like, “Okay, that sounds awesome.”

And then my role was to write the pitch. So I wrote the pitch, did the voice over, did the video, and then we launched it and we had in six weeks, it was like 1.5 million people signed up for Rippln, and I thought it was like, “This is the thing, I’m done.” My down line was like half of the company. And I was like, when this thing goes live, it’s going to be amazing. And then the tech side of it, what we’re promising people in this video that the main developer ended up dying and he had all the code. So they had to restart building it in the middle of this thing.

And it was like thing after thing and by the time it finally got done, everyone had lost interest. It was like 8 months later, and I think the biggest check I got was like $47 for the whole thing. And I was just like, I spent like 6 months of my life. It was like a penny a day. It was horrible.

Andrew: I’m just wondering whether I should ask this or not.

Russell: Go for it.

Andrew: So I stopped asking about religion, but I get the sense that you believe that there’s a spiritual element here that keeps you from seeing, my down line is growing, the whole thing is working. Is any of this, does it feel divinely inspired to you? Be honest.

Russell: Business or…?

Andrew: Business, life, success, things working out, so much so that when you’re at your lowest, you feel like there’s some divine guidance, some divine hand that says, “Russell, it’s going to work out. Russell, I don’t know if I got you, but I know you got this. Go do it.” I feel that from you and I…

Russell: I 100% believe that.

Andrew: You do?

Russell: Every bit of it. I believe that God gives us talents and gifts and abilities and then watches what we do with it. And if we do good then he increases our capacity to do more. And if we do good with it, increases our capacity…

Andrew: if you earn it? If you do good, if you use what God gives you, then you get more. So you think that that is your duty to do that and if you don’t do more, if you don’t pick yourself up after Rippln, you’ve let down God. Do you believe that? Is that it? Or that you haven’t lived up to…

Russell: Yeah, I don’t think I feel that I’ve let down God, but I definitely feel like I haven’t lived up to my potential, you know. But also I feel like a lot of stuff, as I was putting together that document, all the pages, it’s interesting because each one of them, looking in hindsight, each built upon the next thing and the next thing. And there’s twice we tried to build Clickfunnels and each one was like the next level, and each one was a stepping stone. Like Rippln, if I wouldn’t have done Rippln, that was my very first viral video we ever created. I learned how to pitch things and when we did the Clickfunnels initial sales video, because I had done this one, I knew how to do this one.

So for me, it’s less of like I let down God, as much as like, it’s just like the piece, what are you going to do with this? Are you going to do something with it? It doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful, but it means, if you do well with this, then we’re going to increase your capacity for the next step, and the next thing. But we definitely, especially in times at the office, we talk about this a lot. We definitely feel that what we do is a spiritual mission.

Andrew: You do?

Russell: 100% yeah. I don’t think that it’s just like, we’re lucky. I think the way that the people have come, the partnerships, how it was created is super inspired.

Andrew: You know what, a lot of us are selling things that are software, PDF guide, this, that, it’s really hard to find the bigger mission in it. You’re finding the bigger mission in Funnels. What is that bigger mission? Really, how do you connect with it? Because you’re right, if you can find that bigger meaning then the work becomes more meaningful and you’re working with become, it’s more exciting to work with them, more meaningful to do it. How did you find it in funnels? What is the meaning?

Russell: So for us, and I’m thinking about members in my inner circle, so right now as of today I think we had 68,000 members in Clickfunnels, which is the big number we all brag about. But for me, that’s 68,000 entrepreneurs, each one has a gift. So I think about, one member I’ll mention his name’s Chris Wark, he runs chrisbeatcancer.com and Chris was someone who came down with cancer and was given a death sentence, and instead of going through chemo therapy he decided, ‘I’m going to see if I can heal myself.” And he did. Cleared himself of cancer.

And then instead of just being like, ‘cool, I’m going to go back into work.’ He was like, ‘Man I need to help other people.’ So he started a blog and started doing some things, and now he’s got this thing where he’s helped thousands and thousands of people to naturally cure themselves of cancer. And that’s one of our 68,000 people.

Andrew: See, you’re focusing on him where I think a lot of us would focus on, here’s one person who’s just a smarmy marketer, and here’s who’s creating….but you don’t. That’s not who you are. Look, I see it in your eyes and you’re shaking your head. That’s not it at all, it’s not even a put on.

Russell: It’s funny because for me it’s like, I understand because I get it all the time from people all the time, “Oh he’s this slimy marketer.” The first time people meet me, all the time, the first time their introduced, that’s a lot of times the first impression. And they get closer and they feel the heart and it’s just like, “oh my gosh, I had you wrong.” I get that all the time from people.

Andrew: Brian, sorry Ryan and Brad, are either of them here? Would one of you come up here? Yeah, come on up. Because they felt that way, right?

Russell: I don’t know about them. I know who you’re thinking about.

Audience member: I think it’s Theron.

{Crosstalk}

Andrew: No, no stay up here, as long as you’re here. Theron come on up.

Audience member: If it wasn’t me, then I’m going to sit back in the seats.

Andrew: Are you nervous?

Audience member: A little bit. Is there another Ryan and Brad?

Russell: Different story, another story. Do you want to come up? Theron had no idea we were bringing him onstage.

Andrew: Come on over here. Let’s stand in the center so we can get you on camera. Does this help?

Russell: Do you want me to introduce Theron real quick?

Andrew: Yeah, please.

Russell: So Theron is one of the Harmon Brothers, they’re the ones who did the viral video for us.

Andrew: I heard that you felt that he was a scam. What was the situation and how did you honestly feel?

Theron: I don’t know that it…well…

Russell: Be honest.

Theron: I know, I don’t think that I felt that Clickfunnels itself was a scam,

Russell: Just Russell.

Theron: But that it just felt like so many of the ways that the funnels were built and the types of language they were using, it felt like it was that side of the internet. So I became very, well basically we were kind of in a desperate situation, where we had a video that had not performed and not worked out the way we wanted it to work out.

Andrew: The video that you created for Russell?

Theron: No, another client.

Andrew: Another client, okay.

Theron: And so our CEO had used Clickfunnels product to help drive, I think it was attendance to a big video event. And so he had some familiarity with the product, so he goes to Russell and at the same time Russell’s like, “I’m a big fan of you guys.” So he’s coming to us and these things are happening. Yeah, it was almost the same day. So we’re thinking like this and we’re like, “Well, they seem to really know how to drive traffic, to really know how to drive conversion. And we feellike we know how to drive conversion as well, but for some reason we missed it on this one.” So we’re like, “Well, let’s do a deal.”

Andrew: What do you mean missed it? Okay, go ahead, go through to the end.

Theron: We were failing our client. We were failing on our client. We weren’t giving them and ROI. So we said, let’s do a deal with Russell and we’ll have our internal team compete with his team, and we’re humble enough to say we’re failing our client. We want our client to succeed, let’s bring in their team and see if they can make a funnel that can bring down the cost for acquisition, bring up the return on investment for our client, and they were able to do it. 

And then we said, what we’ll do is we’ll write a script, we’ll take you through our script writing process, but we don’t want to do the video because we don’t want to be affiliated with you.

Russell: The contract said, “You can’t tell anyone ever that the Harmon Brothers wrote the script for you.”

Andrew: Wow, because you didn’t want to be associated with something that you thought was a little too scammy for…

Theron: Yeah, we just didn’t want our brand kind of brought down to their brand, which is super arrogant and really wrong headed. And in any case, so we go into this script writing training, and I wasn’t following his podcast, I wasn’t listening to enough. I mean, read Dotcom Secrets, those kinds of things are like, well, there’s some really valuable stuff there, this is really interesting. A

nd then as we got to know each other and really start to connect, like you said, heart to heart. And to feel what he’s really about, and the types of team, the people that he surrounds himself with, I was like, wow, these are really, really good people. And they have a mission here that they feel, just like we feel that about our own group. And in any case, by the end of that 2 day retreat we’re like, all off in private saying, “First of all we like what we’ve written and second of all, we’d really like to work with these guys and I think we’re plenty happy being connected to them and associated with them.” So it’s been a ride and a blessing ever since.

Russell: We’re about to start video number two with them.

Andrew: You what?

Russell: We’re about to start video number two with them right now.

Theron: Anyway, we love them.

Andrew: Alright, give him a big round, yeah. Thanks. This was pivotal for you guys. Lead Pages, there’s an article about how Lead Pages raised $5 million, and you saw that and you thought…

Russell: Well, what happened was Todd, so Todd’s the cofounder of Clickfunnels, and he was working with us at the time and he would fly to Boise about once a quarter and we’d work on the next project, the new idea. And that morning he woke up and he saw that, and then he forwarded me the article. And he’s Atlanta, so it’s east coast, so I’m still in bed. And he’s got a 4 hour flight to Boise and he’s just getting angry, because Todd is, Todd’s like a genius. He literally, when he landed in Boise and he saw me and he’s like, “We can build Lead Pages tonight. I will clone, I will beat it. We’re going to launch this, this week while we’re here.”

He’s that good of a developer. He, I’ve never seen someone code as fast and as good as him. He’s amazing. So he comes in, he’s mad because he’s like, “This is the stupidest site in the world. We could literally clone this. Let’s just do it.” And I’m like, “Yes, let’s clone it.” And we’re all excited and then he’s like, “Do you want me to add any other features while I’m doing it.” And I’m like, ‘Oh, yes. We should do this, and we should do this.” And then the scope creep from the marketer comes, and we ended up spending an entire week in front of a whiteboard mapping out all my dreams, “If we could do this and this and what kind of shopping cart, and we could do upsells, and what if we could actually move things on the page instead of just having it sit there. And what if…” and Todd’s just taking notes and everything.

And then he’s like, “Okay, I think I could do this.” And he told me though, “If I do this, I don’t want to do this as an employee. I want to do this as a partner.” And at first I was like, ugh, because I didn’t want to do the partnership thing. And then the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, outside of marrying my wife was saying yes to Todd. Said, “Let’s do it.” And then he flew home and built Clickfunnels.

Andrew: Wow. And this is after trying software so much. I have screenshots of all the different, it’s not even worth going into it, of all the different products you created, there was one about, it was digital repo, right?

Russell: That was a good idea.

Andrew: Digital Repo, man. What was….

Russell: So I used to sell ebooks and stuff, and people would steal it and email it to their friends and I’d get angry.

Andrew: Can I read this? How to protect every type of lowlife and other form of human scum from cheating you from the profits you should be making by hijacking, stealing, and illegally prostituting….your online digital products.

Russell: Theron, why did you think we were…..Just kidding. So no, it was this really cool product where you take an ebook and it would protect it, and if somebody gave it to their friend, you could push a button and it would take back access. It was like the coolest thing in the world, we thought.

Andrew: And there was software that was going to attach your ad to any other software that was out there. There was software that was going to, what are some of the other ones? It’s going to hit me later on. But we’re talking about a dozen different pieces of software, a dozen different attempts at software. What’s one? I thought somebody remembered one of them. They’re just the kind of stuff you’d never think of. There was one that was kind of like Clickfunnels, an early version of Clickfunnels for landing pages. Why did you want to get into software when you were teaching, creating membership sites? What was software, what was drawing you to it?

Russell: I think honestly, when I first learned this internet marketing game, the first mentor I had, the first person I saw was a guy name Armand Morin and Armand had all these little software products. Ecover generator, sales letter generator, everything generator, so that’s what I kept seeing. I was like, I need to create software because he made software. In fact, I even shifted my major from, I can’t remember what it was before, to computer information systems, because I was like, I’m going to learn how to code, because I couldn’t afford programmers.

And then that’s just kind of what I’d seen. And then I was trying to think of ideas for software. And every time I would get stuck, instead of trying to find something to do, I’d be like let me just, let me just hire a guy to go build that, and then I can sell it somebody else as well. So that’s kind of how it started.

Andrew: And it was a lot of different tools, a lot of different attempts, and then this one was the one that you went with. I think this is an early version of the home page, basically saying, “Coming soon, sign up.” The first one didn’t work out. And then you saw someone else on a forum who had a version that was better. What was his name? This is I think Dylan Jones.

Russell: Oh you’re talking about the editor, yes. Okay, so the story was, Todd built the first version of Clickfunnels and Dylan who became one of our cofounders, I’d been working with Dylan as a designer for about 6 years prior. And he his hands, and we talked about this earlier, he is the best designer I’ve ever seen in my life, he is amazing. He would, but he’s also, this is the pros and cons of Dylan.

He, I’ve talked about this onstage at Funnel Hacking Live, so I have no problem saying this. He would agree. But I would give him a project, and I couldn’t hear, he wouldn’t respond back to me, and I wouldn’t hear from him for 2 or 3 months, and then one day in the middle of the night he messaged me, “Hey, rent’s due tomorrow. Do you have any projects for me?” and I’d be so mad at him, and I look back at every project we’d done in the last 3 or 4 months that other designers had done, and I’d just resend him all the lists, just boom, give him 12 sites and I’d go to bed. I’d wake up 5 or 6 hours later and all of them were done, perfectly, amazing, some of the best designs ever, and then he’d send me a bill for whatever, and then I’d send him money and he’d disappear again for like 5 months.

And I could never get a hold of him. I’d be like, “I need you to tweak something.” And he was just gone. And that was my pattern for 6 years with him. And then fast forward to when Todd and I were building Clickfunnels, we were at Traffic Conversion and we were up in the hotel room at like 3 in the morning trying to, we were on dribble.com trying to find a UI designer to help us, and we couldn’t get a hold of all these people, and all the sudden on Skype Dylan popped in, I saw his thing pop up. I was like, “Todd, Dylan just showed up.” And he’s like, “Do you think he needs some money?” I’m like, “I guarantee he needs money.”

So I’m like, “Hey man!” And Dylan messaged back. He’s like, “Hey.” I’m like, “Do you need some money?” and he’s like, “Yeah, you got any projects?” I’m like, “Yes, I do.” I’m like, “We built this cool thing, it’s called Clickfunnels, but the UI is horrible and the editor is horrible and there’s any way we could hire you for a week to fly to Boise and just do all the UI for every single page of the app?” and he kind of said no at first because, “I’m developing my own website builder. I might have spent 6 years on it, so I can’t do it.”

Andrew: It was this, he had something that was essentially Clickfunnels, right?

Russell: No, no. It was just pages though, so it’d just do pages, there was no funnels.

Andrew: Right, closer to Lead Pages.

Russell: Lead Pages, but amazing. You could move things around. But he did tell me that, “I’m working on something.” So eventually we got him to come, flew to Boise, spent a week, did all of our UI, and then we went and launched our beta to my list. So we launched the beta, got some signups, and then a week before the launch, launch was supposed to happen, all the affiliates were lined up, everything was supposed to happen. He sends me, I don’t know if he sent you the video, but he sends me this little video that’s like a 30 second video of him demoing the editor he’d built. And I probably watched that video, I don’t know, at least a hundred times. And I was just sick to my stomach because I was like, “I hate Clickfunnels right now. I can’t move things on my pages, I can’t do anything.”

I was just, and I sent it to Todd and then I didn’t hear from him for like an hour, and he messaged me back and he’s like, “I’m pissed.” I’m like, “Me too.” And I’m like, “What do we do?” and I was like, “We have to have his editor or I don’t even want to sell this thing.” And I called Dylan and I’m like, “Would you be willing to sell?” and he’s like, “No, I’m selling it and we’re going to sell it for $100.” It was like $100 this one time for this editor that designed all the websites. I was like, “Dude, it is worth so much more than that. Please?” and we spent all night going back and forth negotiating. And finally, we came to like, “I will give you this editor if I can be a cofounder and be a partner.” And Todd and I sat there, brainstorming and figured out if we could do it and finally said yes. And then him and Dylan and Todd flew back to Boise and for the next week just sat in a room with a whole bunch of caffeine and figured out how to smush Dylan’s editor into Clickfunnels to get the editor to be the editor that you guys know today.

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Enjoy part one of this classic episode series where Andrew Warner from Mixergy interviews Russell on the ClickFunnels startup story!

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---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. And you guys are in for a very special treat over the next four episodes. So let me give you some context on what’s going to happen, and why you should be so excited.

Alright so, my favorite podcast, other than mine of course, that all of you guys should be subscribed to is called Mixergy. Andrew Warner is the guy who runs Mixergy podcast and I love that podcast because of Andrew. He is my favorite interviewer. If you look at how a lot of people do interview podcasts, they ask questions and I don’t know, I’ve suffered from this in the past as well. I’m not a good interviewer, at least not now. I’d like to learn how to do that skill, but I’m not a great interviewer.

And most people who do podcasts with interviews aren’t like great interviewers, but Andrew is like the best interviewer I’ve ever seen. The way he asks questions, how deep he goes and the research he does before the interviews, and all sorts of stuff.

Anyway, I love his style, love how he does it so what’s cool, I’ve actually been on the show twice in the past. And the first time, I don’t even, sorry, the second time, he totally caught me off guard. I remember he asked me some questions and I didn’t really know and I responded and he told me after, he told me live on the interview that he doesn’t edit his interviews. He was like, “Well, that was the worst answer you’ve ever given.” I was like, “Oh, thanks.” Anyway, it just totally caught me off guard, but it was cool the way that he just like kind of holds your feet to the fire.

So a little while ago I thought, I want to tell the Clickfunnels startup story. But I didn’t want me to just to tell it, I wanted someone who would tell it from a different angle, who would ask the questions that I think people would want to know and do it in a really cool way.

So I called Andrew and I’m like, “Hey, I’ve been wanting to do this thing, and I want to do an event around it. Would you be interested.” And he was like, luckily he said yes. So it’s funny, Andrew’s famous, I think I might have talked about this in the interview too, but he’s famous for these scotch nights he does, and as a Mormon I don’t drink so I can’t go to his scotch nights. So when we planned this interview, we planned it in Provo, Utah at this place called the Dry Bar Comedy Club. So a dry bar is a bar with no alcohol.

So it was kind of a funny thing. We brought those two things, my world and his world together in this one spot to a dry bar, and told the Clickfunnels startup story. And it was cool, ahead of time he did so much research. He interviewed people who love me, people who hated me, he interviewed our old business partners who are no longer part of the business. He did everything and then he came and I told him, “Everything’s, you can ask me any question you want. Nothing, no holds barred, feel free to do whatever you want.”

So we did the interview and it was about two hours long, and I loved it. I think it turned out amazing. And I hope you guys like it too. So I’ll tell you some of the details about the Clickfunnels startup story. How we built what we did, what happened, the ups, the downs, the negatives, the positives. He brings a couple of people up onstage to tell their parts of the story. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy it.

So what we’re going to do, I’m going to have each episode over the next four episodes be about thirty minutes long so you can listen to them in pieces. I hope iyou enjoy them, I hope you love them. And if you do, please, please, please take a screen shot of your phone when you’re listening to it, and go post it on Instagram or Facebook and tag me. And then do hashtag marketing secrets and hopefully that will get more people to listen to the podcast. And then please, if you haven’t yet, go rate and review, which would be amazing.

So with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song and when we come back we will start immediately into part one of four of the Dry Bar Comedy Club Interview.

Keith Yacky: Clickfunnels has changed a lot of our lives. We all have an origin story. Mine was something similar to, I set up my website on GoDaddy and things were going great. And then Dave Woodward was like, “Dude, you need Clickfunnels.” I’m like, “I don’t need a Clickfunnel. I don’t even know what a Clickfunnel is.” And he’s like, “No, seriously man. This is going to totally change your business.” I’m like, “Bro, I have GoDaddy. They have a commercial on the Super Bowl, Clickfunnels doesn’t. But when they do, I’ll do it.”

Well, boy was I wrong. I changed over and it absolutely changed our business and changed our lives. So thank you for that, Dave. But here’s the thing, in every industry there’s somebody that comes along that really disrupts the industry, that really changes it, and that really does something amazing for that industry. And as we all, why we’re here, we know that person is Russell Brunson. And he has changed a lot of our lives. So before I bring him up here, they have asked me to ask you to make sure you don’t do any live recording of this next interview, because the gloves are coming off and they want to be able to present it to the world. You can do little Instagram clips if you’d like, like 15 second ones and tag them. My understanding is the best hashtag and the best clip, gets a date with Drew. I don’t know, that’s just what they told me. So blame them.

But with that, again, no videoing, and let us just absolutely take the roof off this place as we bring up our beloved Russell Brunson. Give it up guys.

Russell: Alright, well thanks for coming you guys. This is so cool. I’m excited to be here. So a couple of real quick things before we get started. For all of you guys who know, who came to be part of this, we had you all donate a little bit of money towards Operation Underground Railroad, and I’m really excited because Melanie told me right before I got here the total of how much money we raised from this little event for them. So I think the final number was a little over $13,000 was raised for Operation Underground Railroad. So thank you guys for your continued support with them.

Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough money to save about 5 children from sex slavery. So it’s a big deal and a life changing thing, so it’s pretty special. So I’m grateful for you guys donating money to come here. And hopefully you’ve had a good time so far. Has it been fun?

I really want to tuck my shirt in now, I’m feeling kind of awkward. No it’s been awesome.

Okay so what we’re going to do now, I want to introduce the person who’s going to be doing the interview tonight. And it’s somebody I’m really excited to have here. In fact, I met him for the first time like an hour ago, in person. But I want to tell kind of the reason why I wanted him to do this, and why we’re all here. And I’m grateful he said yes, and was willing to come out here and kind of do this.

So Andrew runs a podcast called Mixergy. How many of you guys in here are Mixergy listeners? Mixergy is my favorite podcast, I love it. He’s interviewed thousands of people about their startup stories and about how they started their businesses. And it’s really cool because he brings in entrepreneurs and he tells, gets them to tell their stories.

But what’s unique about what Andrew does that’s fascinating, the way he interviews people is completely different, it’s unique. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I don’t like a lot of interview shows because a lot of them are just kind of high level. Everyone you listen to with Andrew, he gets really, really deep. The other fun thing is he doesn’t edit his interviews. So there was one interview, I’ll tease him about this right now. But I was listening to it on my headphones, and him and the guest got in kind of an argument and a fight and then it just ended and they aired it. I was like, “I can’t believe you aired that, it was amazing.”

And then I was on his podcast a little while later, and he asked me some questions that I couldn’t quite understand perfectly, so I was trying to respond the best I could and kind of fumbled through it. And instead of letting me off the hook, his response was, “Man Russell, that was probably the worst answer I’ve ever heard you give in any interview ever.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.”

So I’m excited for tonight because I told it was like no holds barred and he could ask me anything he wants about the ups of Clickfunnels, the downs of Clickfunnels and anything else, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

So I’m excited to have him here. So with that said, let’s put our hands together for Mr. Andrew Warner.

Andrew Warner: I think my mic is right over here. Thank you everyone, thanks Russell for having me here. Most people will contact me after I interview them and say, “Could you please not air the interview?” And you actually had me back here to do it in person. And you were so nice, you even got us this room here. Check this out, they set us up, they’re so nice at Clickfunnels. They said, “Andrew, you’re staying here, we’re going to put you and your family up the night before in a room.” My wife was so good, look that’s her journaling. My kids were playing around, sleeping in the same, sleeping together, enjoying themselves.

And then I went to call somebody who was basically let go from Clickfunnels. And my wife goes, “Andrew, why do you have to do that? That’s not why they invited you here.” And I said, “I do know Russell. I know the team. They actually did invite me to really help get to the story of how Clickfunnels started, how it built up.” And the reason I was up calling people, understanding the story is because I want to make it meaningful for you.

I’ve talked to a lot of you as you were coming in here, you want to know how they got here, what worked for Clickfunnels, what would work for us. So that’s my goal here, to spend the time understanding by interviewing you about how you did it.

So I want to go way back to a guy a few of you might recognize, and I know you would, and ask you what drew you to this guy when you were younger?

Russell: Don Lepre

Clip: “One tiny classified ad in the newspaper that makes just 30-40 dollars profit in a week, it could make you a fortune, because the secret is learning how to take that one tiny classified that just made 30-40 dollars profit in a week, and to realize that you could now take that same exact ad and place it in up to 3,000 other newspapers around the country….”

Russell: I’m having nostalgia right now. So this is the story of that, I was 12, 13 years old, something like that, and I was watching the news with my dad. And usually he’s like, “Go to bed Russell.” And he didn’t that night and then the news got over and I think he thought I was asleep and Mash came on. So Mash started playing and then it got over, and then this infomercial showed up. And I’m laying there on the couch watching Don Lepre talk about tiny classified ads, I was totally freaking out and I jumped up and begged my dad to buy it and he said no. And I was like, “Are you kidding? Did you not listen to what he said?” Did you guys just hear that? That was a good pitch huh? It’s really good. I love a good pitch. It is so good.

So I went and asked my dad if I could earn the money. So I went and mowed lawns and earned the money and ordered the kit and I still have the original books to this day.

Andrew: Were you disappointed? I bought it too. It was the dream of being able to do it.

Russell: That’s why I like you so much, that’s amazing.

Andrew: And it’s just, all he sent you was a bunch of paper guides with how to buy ads, right. Were you disappointed when you got that?

Russell: No, I was excited. I think for me because the vision was cast, it was like, he said right there word for word, you make 40 dollars a newspaper, and if you’re disappointed, but he put that same ad in 3,000 newspapers, imagine that. So I had the vision of that, I think the only thing I was disappointed in, I didn’t have any money to actually buy an ad. And that was more like, I can’t actually do it now.

Andrew: You are a champion wrestler and then you got here. Is your wife here?

Russell: My beautiful wife right here, Collette.

Andrew: Hey Collette. And your dad had a conversation with you about money, what did he say?

Russell: So up to that point my dad had supported me, and I figured he would the rest of my life, I think. I don’t know. So I was 21 almost 22 at this time, I was wrestling so I couldn’t get a job because I was wrestling all the time. Then I met Collette, fell in love with her and then I called my parents and I was like, “Hey, I’m going to marry her. I’m going propose to her and everything.” Expecting them to be like, “Sweet, that’ll be awesome.” And my mom was all excited, I’m not going to lie.

But then my dad was like, “Just so you know if you get married, you have to be a man now. You have to support yourself.” And I was like, “I don’t know how to do that, I’m wrestling.” And he’s like, “Well, I’m not going to keep paying for you to do it.” I’m like, “But I literally got the ring. I have, I can’t not propose now.” So that was kind of the thing.

So it was interesting because about that time there was another infomercial, there’s the pattern, about I can’t remember exactly the name of the company, but they were doing an event at the local Holiday inn that was like, “Hey, you’re going to build websites and make money.” And it was like the night or two days after I told my dad this and he was like, “you’re in trouble.” And all the sudden I saw that, so I was like, there’s the answer.

So I’m at the holiday in two days later, sitting in the room, hearing the pitch, signing up for stuff I shouldn’t have bought. There’s the pattern.

Andrew: Did you feel like a loser getting married at 22 and still counting on your dad for money? Did you feel like you were marrying a loser?

Russell: Actually, this is a sad story because she actually, my roommate at the time, she actually asked him, “Do you think he’s going to be able to support me in the future?” and he was like, “Yeah, I think so.” I’m like, I didn’t know this until later. I don’t think I felt like a loser, but I definitely was nervous, like oh my gosh. Because my whole identity at that point in my life was I was a wrestler and if that was to disappear…I couldn’t have that disappear. So I was like, I have to figure out something. There’s gotta be some way to do both.

Andrew: To both what? To be a wrestler and make money from some infomercial?

Russell: I didn’t know that was going to be the path, but yeah.

Andrew: But you knew you were going to do something. What did you think that was going to be?

Russell: I wasn’t sure. When I went to the event, they were selling these time share books and you could buy resale rights to them, so I was like, oh. And I remember back, because I remembered the Don Lepre stuff, so I was like, maybe I could buy classified ads and sell these things. And then I was at the event and they were talking about websites, and that was the first thing I’d heard about websites. And they’re talking about Google and the beginnings of this whole internet thing.

So I was like, I can do that. It made all logical sense to me, I just didn’t know how to do it. I just knew that that was going to be the only path because if I had to get a job I wouldn’t be able to wrestle. So I was like, I have to figure out something that’s not going to be a 40 hour thing because I’m spending that time wrestling and going to school. So I had to figure out the best of how to do both.

Andrew: And you obviously found it. My goal today is to go through this process of finding it. But let me skip ahead a little bit. What is this website?

Russell: Oh man, alright. This is actually, the back story behind this is there was a guy named Vince James who wrote a book called the Twelve Month Millionaire. And if anybody’s got that book, it’s fat like a phone book. It’s a huge book. I read and I was like, this book’s amazing. And at the time I was an affiliate marketer, so I had a little bit, maybe a thousand people on my list. So I called up Vince and I was like, “Hey, can I interview you about the book and then I’ll use that as a tool to sell more copies of your book?” and he was like, “Sure.”

So he jumped on the phone with me on a Saturday and he spent 3 hours letting me interview with any questions I had. And I got to the end of it and I still had a ton of questions and he’s like, “Well come back next week and do it again.” So I interviewed him for 6 hours about it. And then we used that to sell some copies of his book and then it just sat there, probably for 2 or 3 years as I was trying different ideas, different businesses and things like that.

But every time I would talk to people I would tell them about this interview. I’m like, “I interviewed this guy who made a hundred million dollars through direct mail.” And everyone wanted to hear the interview, everybody asked me for it. So one day I was like, “Let’s just make that the product.” And we put it up here and this was the very first funnel we had that did over a million dollars, my first Two Comma Club funnel.

Andrew: A million dollars. Do you remember what that felt like?

Russell: It was amazing because it was funny back then. There were people, a few people who were making a lot of money online that I was watching and just idolizing everything they’d do. I was trying to model what they were doing. And I’d had little wins, you know $10,000 here, $15,000 here, but this was by far the first one that just hit. Everyone was so excited.

Andrew: How’d you celebrate?

Russell: I don’t even remember how we celebrated.

Andrew: You married a winner after all. I mean really. Do you remember what you guys did to celebrate? No.

Russell: I don’t even remember. (audience responding, inaudible) It was in my list. That’s a good question.

Andrew: It’ll come up, that list is going to come up in a second too. You ended up creating Clickfunnels. How much revenue are you guys doing now, 2018?

Russell: 2018 we’ll pass over a hundred million dollars, this year.

Andrew:  A hundred million dollars, wowee. How far have you come?

Russell: Like when did we start?

Andrew: Today revenue, as of today, October 2018?

Russell: Oh this year? Oh from the beginning of time until now?

Andrew: No, no I mean I want to know, you’re going to do a hundred million dollars, are you at 10 and you’re hoping to get….

Russell: These guys know better than me, do you know exactly where we’re at right now? 83 million for the year.

Andrew: 83! I love that Dave knows that right, so I want to know how you got to that. I went through your site, pages and pages that look like this. It’s like long form sales letters. I asked my assistant to take pictures, she said, “This is, I can’t do it, it’s too many.” Look at this guys. I asked him to help me figure out what he did. He created this list, this is not the full list, look at this. Every blue line is him finding an old archive of a page he created. It goes on and on like this. How long did it take you to put that together?

Russell: It was probably 5 or 6 hours just to find all the pages.

Andrew: 5 or 6 hours you spent to find these images to help me tell the story. Years and years of doing this, a lot of failure, what amazes me is you didn’t feel jaded and let down after Don Lepre sold you that stuff. You didn’t feel jaded and let down and say, ‘This whole make money thing is a failure.’ After, and we’re going to talk about some of your failures, you just kept going with that same smile, the same eagerness.

Alright, let’s start with the very first business. What’s this one? This is called…

Russell: Sublime Net. How many of you guys remember Sublime Net out there?

Andrew: You guys remember this? Anyone remember it. You do?

Russell: John does. So actually this is the first business for the first website I bought. I was so proud of it, and I spent, I don’t know, I wanted to sell software so I was like, ‘what could I name my company?” So I figured out Exciting Software. So I went to buy Exciteware.com, but it wasn’t for sale. So I bought Exciteware.net and Collette was working at the time and she came home and I was so excited, I’m like, “We got our first website. We’re going to be rich.”

 And I told her the name, I was like, “It’s Exciteware.net.” and she looked at me with this look like, she’s like, “Are you selling underwear, what is the…lingerie?” I’m like, “No, it’s software.” And she’s like, “You can’t, I’m not going to tell my mom that you bought that. You gotta think of another name.” I’m like, “Crap.” So that was the next best name I came up with was Sublime Net. Like the band Sublime. That was it.

Andrew: And I was going to ask you what it was, but it was lots of different things. Every screenshot on there is a whole other business under the same name. What are the businesses? Do you remember?

Russell: There was website hosting, there was affiliates sites, there were, I can’t even remember now, trying to remember. Everything I could think of, resell rights….

Andrew: Lots of different things. How did you do, how well did you do?

Russell: Never anything, very little. I remember the first thing I ever sold was an affiliate product, I made $20 on it through my Paypal account, because I remember that night, I do remember I celebrated. We went out to dinner and I had a Paypal credit card, and we bought dinner with $20 and then the guy refunded the next day. It was so sad. But I was proud that I had made money.

Andrew: How did you support yourself while this was not working?

Russell: I didn’t. My beautiful wife did, she had 2 jobs at the time to support me while I was wrestling and doing these things. She was the one who made it possible to gamble and risk and try crazy things.

Andrew: Can I put you on the spot and ask you to just come over here and just tell me about this period and what you felt at the time? Is that, I know you don’t love being onstage, Russell is good with it, but I know you don’t love it. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to go with one more story and then I’ll come back to you. You cool with it? Good, she seems a little nervous. Actually, wait. Let’s see if we can get her right now. Oh you are, okay.

Russell: Everyone, this is Collette, my beautiful wife.

Andrew: Do you want to use his mic?

Collette: Sure.

Russell: She’s so mad at me right now.

Collette: I wanted to come to this, who knew?

Andrew: You are like his, he’s so proud that he had no venture funding. But you are like his first investor.

Russell: That is true.

Collette: Yes, I’ll be his first investor.

Andrew: Can you hold the mic a little closer. How did you know he wasn’t a loser? No job, he’s wrestling, he’s buying infomercial stuff that doesn’t go anywhere. We know he did well, so we’re not insulting him now, but what did you see in him back then that let you say, ‘I’m going to work extra hard and pay for what he’s not doing?’

Collette: What did I see in him? It was actually his energy, his spirit, because I’m not going to lie, it was kind of not love at first site, we had, we were geeko’s, do you know what I mean? Shopped at the Goodwill, in baggy pants and tshirts, I don’t know. But it was the person who just was always positive and we had the same goals.

Andrew: That’s the thing I noticed too, the positivity. When these businesses fail, we’re showing the few on the screen, it’s easy to look back and go, ‘ha ha, I did this and it was interesting.’ But at the time, what was the bounce back like when things didn’t work out? When the world basically said, you know what as sales people, when they don’t buy your stuff it’s like they don’t buy you. When the world basically said, ‘we don’t like you. We don’t like what you’ve created.’ What was the bounce back like? Hard?

Collette: No, because I come from a hard working family. So I work hard. So you just work hard to make it work.

Andrew: And he’s just an eternal optimistic, and you’re an eternal optimist too, like genuinely, really?

Collette: Yeah, I guess. It works.

Andrew: His dad said, ‘No more money. You had to cut up your credit cards too.’

Collette: Yeah.

Andrew: What was, how did you cut up your credit cards. What was that day like?

Collette: Hard. Yeah hard. Those that don’t know, I’m a little bit older than Russell. So I’ve always had this little bit of independency to go do and buy and do these things, and then all the sudden I’m like, step back sista! You gotta take care of this young man, so we can get to where we’re at. Anyway, but now…

Andrew: Now things are good?

Collette: Now things are amazing.

Andrew: Alright, give her a big round of applause. Thanks for coming up here. These businesses did okay, and then you started something that I never heard about, but look at this. I’m going to zoom in on a section of the Google doc you sent me. This is the call center. The call center got to how many employees? 100?

Russell: We had about 60 full time sales people, 20 full time coaches, and about 20 people doing the marketing and sales, so about 100 people in the whole company, yeah.

Andrew: 100 people doing what kind of call center, what kind of work?

Russell: So what we would do, we would sell free CDs and things like that online, free CDs, free books, free whatever, and then when someone would buy it we’d call them on the phone, and then we’d offer them high end coaching.

Andrew: And this was you getting customers, how?

Russell: Man, back then it was pre-facebook. So a lot of it was Google, it was email lists, it was anything we could figure out to drive traffic, all sorts of weird stuff.

Andrew: And then people come in, get a free CD, sign up for coaching, and then you had to hire people and teach them how to coach? How did you do that.

Russell: Yeah, that was the hard thing. When we first started doing it, I was just doing the coaching. People would come in and we had a little, Brent and some of you guys remember the little offices we had, and we’d bring people in and we were so proud of our little office. And they’d come in and we’d teach them for 2 or 3 days, teach an event for them, and then as it got bigger it was harder and harder for me to do that. So eventually, and a lot of people didn’t want to come to Boise. I love Boise, but it’s really hard to get to.

So people would sign up for coaching, and then they’d never show up to Boise and then a year later they’d want their money back. So we’re like, we have to get something where they’re getting fulfilled whether they showed up to Boise or now. So we started doing phone coaching, and at first it was me, and then it was me and a couple other people, and then we started training more coaches, and that’s kind of how it started.

It was one of those things though, at  first it was just like 5 or 6 of us in a room doing it, and it worked and so then the next logical thing is, we should go from 5 people to 10 to 20 and next thing you know, we wake up with 100 people. I’m like, what are we doing? We’re little kids, it scares me that I’m in charge of all these people’s livelihood, but that’s kind of where it was at and it got kind of scary for me.

Andrew: Sometimes I wonder if I’m hiding behind interviewing because I’m afraid to stand up and say, ‘here’s what I want. Here’s what I think we need to do. Here’s how the world should be.’ So I’m amazed that even back then, after having a few businesses that didn’t really work out, you were comfortable enough to say, ‘Come to my office, I’m going to teach you. I’ve got it figured out.’ When you hadn’t.  How did you get yourself comfortable, and what made you feel comfortable about being able to say, ‘I could teach these people. Come to my office.’ Who call up, who then become my coaches, who then have to teach other people?

Russell: I think for me it was like, when I first started learning the online stuff and entrepreneurship, I think most people feel this, it’s so exciting you want to tell everybody about it. So I’m telling my friends and my family and nobody cares at first. And you’re like, I have to share this gift I’ve figured out, it’s amazing. And nobody cares.

And then the first time somebody cares, and you just dump on them, you want to show it to them. So I hadn’t made tons of money, but I had a lot of these little websites that had done, $30 grand, $50 grand, $100 grand. So for me it was like, if I can show these people, I know what that did for me, it gave me the spark to want to do the next one and the next one. So for me it was like I want to share this because I feel like I figured it out. So that was the thing coming in. We weren’t teaching people how to build a hundred million dollar company, but we’re like, “Hey, you can quit your job. You can make 2 or 3 thousand dollars a month, you can quit your job, and this is how I did it. This is the process.” So that’s what we were showing people. Just the foundation of how we did it, and we showed other people, because they cared and it was exciting to share it with other people.

Andrew: Is Whitney here? There she is. I met her as she was coming in. I wanted to get to know why people were coming to watch this, what they wanted to hear from you. And Whitney was asking about the difficult period, the why. I’m wondering the same thing that she and I were talking about, which is why put yourself through this? You could have gotten a job, you could have done okay, why put yourself through the risk of hiring people, the eventual as we’ll see, closing of the company, what was your motivation? What was the goal? Why did you want to do it?

Russell: I think it shifts throughout time. I think most entrepreneurs when they first get started, it’s because of money. They’re like, ‘I want to make money.’ And then you get that and then really quick, that doesn’t last very long. And then it’s like, then for me it was like, I want to share that with other people. And then when other people get it, there’s something about that aha moment where you’re like, oh my gosh they got it. They got what I was saying. And that for me was like the next level, the next high. It was just like, ah, I love that.

And back then we had some success stories coming through, but now days, it’s like the bigger success stories come through and that’s what drives it on. That is the fascinating part. That’s why we keep, because most software company owners don’t keep creating books, and courses and inter….but when people have the aha, oh my gosh, that’s the best for me.

Andrew: That’s the thing, you get the high of the thing that you wanted when you were growing up, that you wanted someone to show it to you, and if you could then genuinely give it them, not like Don Lepre. But Don Lepre plus actual results, that’s what fires you up.

Russell: That does fire me up. That’s amazing.

Andrew: What happened? Why did that close down?

Russell: Oh man, a lot of things. A lot of bad mistakes, a lot of first time growing a company stuff that I didn’t, again, we just woke up one day it felt like, and we were in this huge office, huge overhead, and about that time, it was 99, 2000 something like that, and there was the merchant account that me and most of the people doing internet marketing at the time, we all used the same merchant account, and they got hit by Visa and Mastercard, so they freaked out and shut down. I think it ended up being 4 or 5 merchant accounts overnight, and we had 9 different merchant accounts with that company, and all of them got shut down instantly.

I remember because everything was fine, we were going through the day and it was like 1:00 in the afternoon on a Friday. They came in like, “None of the, the cards won’t process.” And I’m like, couldn’t figure out why they weren’t processing. We tried to call the company and no one’s answering at the company. Finally we get someone on the phone and they’re like, “Yep, you got shut down along with all the other scammers.” And then she hung up on me.

And I was like, I don’t know what to do right now. I’ve got 100+ people and payroll is not small, and we didn’t have a ton of cash in the bank, it was more of a cash flow business. And Collette actually just left town that night, and she was gone. I remember Avatar just came out, and everyone was going to the movie Avatar that night, and I remember sitting there during the longest movie of all time, and I don’t remember anything other than the sick feeling in my stomach. I was texting everyone I know, trying to see if anyone knew what to do. And everyone was like, “We got shut down too.” “We got shut down.” Everyone got shut down. And we couldn’t figure out anything.

So we came back the next day and I called everyone up, and actually kind of a funny side story, I had just met Tony Robbins a little prior, earlier to this. So that night I was laying in bed, it was like 4 in the morning, and my phone rings and I look at it and it was Tony Robbins’ assistant. And I pick it up and he’s like, “Hey, is there any way you can be in Vegas in three hours? There’s a plane from Boise to Vegas and Tony wants you to speak at this event. It’s starting in three hours. You need to be on stage in three hours.”

I’m sitting here like, my whole world just collapsed, I’m laying in bed sick to my stomach and I’m like, “I don’t think I can. I have to figure this thing out.” And then he tells Tony, and they call me back. “Tony says if your business is…if you can’t make it, don’t show up. You’re fine.” So I didn’t go and then the next morning I woke up and there was a message on my phone that I’d missed. I passed out and I woke up and it was a message from Tony. And he was like, “Hey man, I know that you care about your customers, you care about things. I don’t know the whole situation, but worst case scenario, if you need help let me know, and we can absorb you into Robbins research or whatever and you can be one of my companies, and that way if you want, we can protect you.”

And I heard that and I was like, “Okay, that’s the worst case scenario, I get to work with Tony Robbins? That’s the worst case scenario.” So then I called up everyone on my team and I was like, “Okay guys, we gotta try to figure out how to save this.” And Brent and John and everyone, we came back to my house and I was like, “Okay, what ideas do we got?” And we just sat there for the next 5 or 6 hours trying to figure stuff out.

And then we went to work, and I wish I could say that everything turned around, but it was the next probably 2 or 3 years of us firing 30 people, firing 20 people, closing things down, moving down offices. Just shrinking for a long, long time, until the peak of it, it was about a year after that moment, and we were in an event in Vegas trying to figure out how to save stuff, and I got an email from my dad who was helping with the books at the time, and he said, “Hey, I got really bad news for you. I looked through the books and it turns out your assistant who is supposed to be doing payroll taxes, hadn’t paid payroll in over a year. You owe the IRS $170,000 and if you don’t pay this, you’re probably going to go to jail.”

And I was like, every penny I’d earned to that point was gone. Everything was done and we’d lost everything and I was just like, I don’t know how to fight this battle, but if I don’t fight it I go to jail apparently. And I remember that’s a really crappy feeling. Brent, some of you guys are reliving this with me right now, I know. I remember going back that night, laying in bed and I was just like, “I wish I had a boss that could fire me, because I don’t know what to do, how to do it.” And that was kind of, that was definitely the lowest spot for me.

Andrew: And you stuck with him? Wow, yeah.

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Let me take you behind the scenes of what we’re doing to sell out Funnel Hacking Live once again.

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I want to tell you guys a secret about how to fill live events. All right everybody, as you guys know, we are coming down to the final stretch of Funnel Hacking Live. I think we're less than 60 days. Dang, two months. Less than two months away. Whew. It makes me nervous just saying that, from Funnel Hacking Live happening, which is exciting. It's been almost 18 months since the last Funnel Hacking Live. I hope you're excited. I think most of you guys are going to be there, which is exciting. If you aren't going to be there, literally, do you hate money? Do you hate growth? Do you hate relationships with amazing people? Do you hate hearing me talk? Those are the only logical explanations that I can think of. I say that with making sure that you need to be there. If you don't have your tickets yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com. The show is on. Right now we're in the final stretch.

Tickets are almost sold out, and we sell out every year, but this year we're selling out earlier, because the venue's smaller. We only have 3,500 seats versus last year, we had 5,000 people in the event. We pre-sold more tickets the last Funnel Hacking Live than ever before either. Anyway, we're almost sold out. If you don't have a ticket yet, now is the time to go. The other interesting thing is, this is the first and hopefully the only year we're doing a virtual as well, just because a lot of countries, people actually can't get to here, which is frustrating. Other than that, I've always been anti virtual, but we had to, this time around. If you aren't able to come, you're locked out of the country, or whatever, or you're nervous about people, which is understandable as well, there's a virtual option this year, but that one is also almost sold out. If you're getting tickets, now's the time, but anyway, I digress, as we're getting towards the final stretch. We're like, "Okay. Well, I just want to get done selling tickets," because selling tickets is a grind.

If anyone who has ever done a live event or a virtual event, it's a lot of work to continually sell tickets. Right? That's the place that we're in now. I was like, "I just want to get it done with. How do we just sell the last batch?" Like, "Let's get it over with." It's funny, because every year we try to reinvent the wheel. Like, "How did we sell these last year? What campaigns work the best?" We went back through, and we looked at ticket sales. We saw there was a week or two, where we sold hundreds of tickets a day, right? We're like, "What did we do during that week?" We went back and found the emails. It was funny, because of course, here's me reinventing the wheel. Hopefully in a year from now, someone can remind me, "Russell, don't forget, this is what we did last year," but I'm sharing this with you guys, because the thing that we'd done in the past that sold more tickets than anything else, outside of at the last year live event, we sell tickets to next year's, that sells the best.

Number two, when we do the kickoff Webinar this year, that sold a ton of them this year for us, which we'd never done that in the past, so kickoff Webinar. Then the third biggest thing to sell tickets has always been taking things away, right? Taking away a bonus or increasing the price, things like that, and usually throughout the promotional campaign, we always are doing little things like that. Right? We're increasing the price. We're taking away a bonus. We're doing this. Last year, we had this great idea, which I forgot about until just recently. We had each speaker jump on a Facebook Live with me, just for a quick 10, 15 minutes. I jump on, I talk about who they are, what they're talking about. We do that tease, like "This is what we're going to talk about." It's really exciting to get people pumped about being there, talk about that speaker's experience at FHL. It's just a really fun thing. Then at the end of it, I said, "Hey, for those who were coming to FHL, do you want to give them a bonus to make sure they show up?"

Each speaker then gives a bonus. It's crazy. Some speakers are like, "Here's my three-day live event. Here's my $2,000 course. Here's my..." People are giving crazy stuff. Right? Each speaker gives away a bonus. Today, depending when you're listening to this, I've probably done five or six at this point, but I did the first one today. It was with Peng Joon. Peng Joon giveaway is literally a $3,000 event, a three-day live event, the virtual recordings of it, in a member's area and everything, which is crazy for everyone who got their ticket from Funnel Hacking Live. What we do is, we start doing the speaker offer stack. Today Peng Joon gave his bonus. We send emails with a list. Say, "Hey. Go watch Peng Joon's Facebook Live. By the way, he gave everyone this bonus, if you guys get your tickets this weekend." Right? Then next week I think I have three or four Facebook Lives. Each one with two speakers, jumping on, and we're doing this thing. Then each of those speakers, I'm asking them the same thing. Like, "Hey, what bonus do you have?"

Then, they'll give us a bonus, and they'll give us a bonus. These bonuses will keep stacking, keep stacking, keep stacking. Then each email goes out like, "Hey, don't forget. Here's Russell's bonus. Here's Peng Joon's. Here's so, and so's. Here's so, and so's, and here's three new bonuses added today." It keeps getting bigger and bigger, and offer stack gets bigger and bigger. What happens during this week or two weeks of these interviews, the sales come in slow, and they get bigger and they get bigger, because the offer keeps getting more and more insane, til eventually, it's like, "I would literally be insane to not get my tickets." Like, "Do I, even if I don't show up to the event?" Like, "I still need to get the thing, because this bonus has gotten so good." It gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. We do that as we go through all the speakers, and at the very end, now that the offer stack is insane, if you show up to Funnel Hacking Live, you're getting all the speakers, these amazing products.

You get to know the speakers ahead of time, plus you get to come to the event, plus all the other bonuses, and all the other things. Then after we built that up, then we take all those bonuses away. We do a three-day cart close, where it's like, "Hey, you can still get tickets, but you'll miss out on this." Like, "Here's the offer stack of all the things," and we pull that away. That pull away, those three days is when we were selling 200 or 300 tickets a day, every single day. It's crazy. We don't have that many tickets to sell this year. I don't know how far we'll get into it, but again, I found the campaign. I was like, "Oh my gosh, of course." We've restructured it, and we're doing it again right now, but for any of you guys who were trying to sell tickets, this is a powerful way to do it. Then what else is cool is that today, Peng Joon, he Instagrammed his audience. Like, "Hey. Check out this Facebook Live I was on." Now he's selling tickets for us as well. Right?

Then, yeah. It's just really interesting, because all of this. You're getting the speakers to promote it. You're promoting it. You're increasing the offer, and you're able to pull the offer away. It's just a powerful, unique strategy we're using to sell a ton of tickets. Anyway, I hope that helps. I've tried a lot of things to sell tickets, and like I said, looking at this, is the thing that's worked the best. Make sure you're watching us, if you're not, go make sure you follow me on Facebook. That's where these are all streaming too. Actually, I think it streams to Facebook, LinkedIn, a whole bunch of other places as well, but go and watch that. You'll see the campaign. You'll see what we're doing. You watch, as the offer gets more and more insane. Then when we pull the offer away, that's when the huge ticket sales come through. Anyway, I love this game. I hope you guys can see that. I hope you can feel it. It's so much fun, and I love sharing with you guys behind the scenes, what we're doing. Hopefully you guys can model it for your events.

It worked for virtual events, worked for live events, worked for all sorts of things. That said, thanks, you guys for listening. Appreciate you all, and we will talk to you all again soon. Definitely the next podcast episode, but hopefully more importantly, at Funnel Hacking Live. If you don't have your tickets yet, now is the time. You don't want to miss it. The only logical reason to not go is, if you hate money or you hate me. If you hate me, you probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast anyway. If you hate money, you probably aren't listening to this podcast. That means you. Yes, if you're listening right now, you need to go. Pull over the side of the car, pause this thing, open up a new browser window, go to funnelhackinglive.com, and get your tickets. If you're not sure if you want tickets, go watch the video at the top of funnelhackinglive.com, then go get your tickets. It's that good. All right, guys. Appreciate you all. Thanks for listening, and I hope you guys have an amazing day. Talk soon.

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A little behind the scenes on the thought process of what we did and why.

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the marketing secrets podcast. So today I'm excited because we officially just purchased our first company, which is crazy. And so I will talk to you about that today, what I learned and some things that might help you along your journey as well.

All right. So I can't tell you all the details yet because we're still... I don't know, we'll officially announce it to the world, what it is, why and all that kind of stuff later. But we finished signing all the paperwork today, which is crazy because two days ago I had to sign 96 signatures and there was like another like 20, and then there was a couple more. So it's like over a hundred and something signatures I had to sign to officially get this company. And it's exciting. It's our first ever acquisition.

Now I bought a lot of things in the past. Right. I bought traffic secrets. We bought mastermind.com, I bought bootstrap, salesfunnels.com. Like we bought really expensive domains, but not like full, active acting businesses. Right? This is the first time where it's a business that we purchased that has huge cashflows and all sorts of crazy stuff.

And I wanted to share with you guys just because hopefully it gives you guys just a different way to look at business. It's definitely given me a different way to look at business, which is one of the reasons why we did this. And a lot of you guys know my philosophies and principles on business, right? That's what we talk about all the time, that's what my books are about. This is what my podcast is about and there're different ways to grow a business, one way is that the more traditional where you get an idea, you get a bunch of investors, you raise money and then you go and you create something cool. I hate that way, as you know.

So we are the bootstrapped way, which is like create something amazing and then create fronted offers that self liquidate to bring customers in. And that's the bootstrap model we've been doing that, I love. But there're other ways to grow a business as well. And this one I wanted to talk about, because this has been something really, really interesting to us, and I'm not going to share all the stats, the numbers and all that kind of stuff. Partially because I don't know if I'm legally allowed to partially because I don't know the numbers I wasn't involved with all of the day-to-day because I'm no longer the CEO, Dave did all the work. I've just had to sign a million times. So I wanted to give you like some structural concepts to think through that were really, really cool for me.

So part of my understanding of this dates back to about a decade ago, I was actually at a mastermind meeting in Mexico and sitting next to this dude and he is different kind of business person than me, right? Like I'm like startup guy, start a business, grow it, scale it, launch it all that kind of stuff where he was like, he told me, he's like, I'm not an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, you start stuff, it's amazing. I'm in mergers and acquisitions. And I think he had bought like 60 or 70 businesses and bought and sold and made a ton of money. And so I was trying to understand them. I'm like, so you never started a business? He's like, no, you guys do that, that's way too hard. He's like, what I do instead, is I find entrepreneurs like you, and he's like, what you have to understand...

And I'm probably going to mess up these numbers but this is just illustration purposes. Right?

He said if you look at your businesses, right, he's like at a certain level, let's say you're at like $3 million. He's like, you're only going to sell for like a three X multiple. Right. So maybe you'll get 9 million for it. He's like, but at $10 million you'll sell for a five X or 10 X, multiple or whatever it is. Right? I don't know. But like this was what he was explaining to me, okay.

He's like, so right now, let’s say your company's making $3 million, like best case you're going to get three X and it's probably closer to three X net. But anyway regardless, he said, so what I do is like I find three or four companies that are each doing $3 million a year. And they're each valued at three X, let's say. He's like, and I buy all four of them or all three of them. Let's say it's four companies at 3 million each bundled together. He said, now because the revenue of this new company is now $12 million. He's like, I can sell that. So I bought it for three X, but I can sell now for six X, for 10 X or whatever it is. It's like, that's all I do.

I just find a market. I want to be in, I find three companies that are selling it three X. I buy all three of them. I bundle them together and now they're worth five X or six X or whatever it is. And I flip them and he's like that's my business. He's like, so I have these entrepreneurs like you guys who are geniuses, who will start launch these businesses. And I just come in as the acquisition guy acquire three or four of you bundle you together and then your value goes up because of how much more you're worth. And that was his business. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

And so it's been interesting over the last 12 months, with click funnels I try to understand, what are our evaluations, how do things work? What are we actually worth? In my head we're worth like 10 billion, but we're probably not in real life. And so it's interesting because... The evaluation game is annoying me because there're tons of ways. Like some companies evaluate off top line, some are just off EBITDA, somewhere are off whatever. But let's just say for example, let's just say click funnels is worth 10 X, our EBITDA. Right?

And I don't even know what that is. Let's say it's $50 million. So that means 50 million times 10 would be worth half a billion. Right? And so by us acquiring this company, let's say that company has, I don't know, $20 million EBITDA. Right?

I'm messing these numbers in my head, but regardless, let's say we spend, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, $50 million in this company, we buy it. Right? And we plug it in. But then the EBITDA, let's say the EBITDA they had is worth $20 million. Right? We plug that into our thing it increases our EBITDA $20 million times of 10 X valuation is 200 million. So maybe we spend, you know, whatever 40, $50 million buying this thing. But the value instantly adds for our company is a hundred million or 200 million or whatever it is. Right? So instantly just by bundling the two companies together, our value goes up way more than what we actually spend for it.

So that's like the first thing that's really, really interesting that I had never considered until we started doing this deal. Right? It's like, oh my gosh, even if like we never make our money back the value of our company dramatically goes up because we're adding all their revenues and their profits to our bottom line, which is like fascinating. And then from there we also get the customer flow and the lead flow and the cash flow and like all the other things that come with building a company or buying a company as well. And it's just, the synergy is really, really interesting.

And so anyway, that was again, our first acquisition, and now we're finishing the process. We literally finished it today, which was crazy. It got me excited to start thinking like, okay, what other deals like this are there where we can buy company for X amount dollars. We plug it into our, our beast, our machine and it instantly, whatever X is the value of our company, but then also get lead flow, customer flow, cash flow, all other things as well kind of come in.

And it's really interesting and fascinating. So anyway, just a different way to look at business that I wanted to kind of share with you guys because I've already had a lot of people, like, why are you buying a business? Why would you do that? All the things that kind of come with that. And I want to share that because it's just a different perspective I hadn't thought a lot about prior to 10 years ago when I met my merger and acquisition guy. And so I would look at that for you guys' own businesses as well.

Like think about is there a business that in your market that you could acquire that you could bundle together. All of a sudden now you get more customers, you get more traffic, but also you're adding to your cashflow, right? Like you buy the company, doubles your cashflow and now it increases the value of your company because now you're in a different bracket of what businesses are selling for and trading for, that number. And then it kind of goes from there.

So anyway, it's an interesting game. It's a different game than I'm used to playing. I'm much more comfortable in the whole, like let's build a company and grow it and scale it through paid ads and organically without taking on any VC money. That's the world I understand. And this new one of like mergers and acquisitions is fascinating to me because it's going to get us to our goals way faster.

My goal we've talked about a lot. My goal is a billion dollar evaluation. My goal is take over the world, change the world, all these different things. Right? And it's just getting us there faster. Hopefully. I mean, honestly, I'm like 30 minutes into owning this new company and I have no idea. Maybe it'll actually turn out really bad. Maybe things fall apart. I don't know we're going to find out, but I'm hopeful. I'm excited. I think it's going to be a really cool opportunity. And so as we move forward, I will share with you guys in the podcast here, behind the scenes of what we're doing. When I'm able to, I'll talk more about the companies and how they're synergistic and how we're using their lead flow and how we're using their funnels that we're acquiring and how we're using us in the backend and how we're... Just all the other fun things.

Honestly, in my head, a lot of it's, not vague. Like I know a vision of where I'm going with things, but we're going to be actually executing on it and I'll be sharing the vision with my team and with everybody over the next little bit. And it's exciting. So anyway, it's a fun time to be alive. So many fun things happening. I hope this episode just gets you thinking a little bit differently. Who could you acquire? And if not acquiring, there's also like licensing, there's three or four deals right now where we're going to existing companies that have really good content or software things. And instead of acquiring them full out, because maybe they don't have the customers or maybe they don't have the lead flow or maybe whatever, there's a million reasons why instead we're just doing licensing deals where we're licensing the technology and plugging it in and then we can start selling it or licensing their intellectual property, licensing things like there's a lot more fun ways to grow businesses than just the traditional stuff.

So, anyway, I'm curious if you guys are interested, would you want to know more information about us buying companies, would you like more information about licensing? Like what would be the things that you guys would want me to go deeper on? I'd love to hear it, let me know. The best way to do that is actually take a snapshot of this podcast episode, post it on Instagram or Facebook and tag me in it and then post in the comments. Like what else you'd like to know? Like what would be other things that you'd love to hear more about?

So anyway, I hope that helps. I'm going to go bounce and have some lunch and celebrate the acquisition of our new company. I'm so excited. I just wanted to celebrate that with you guys right now and help you understand a little bit reasons why. And like I said, over the next few months, now that you have context I can share more the insights, details, and other cool stuff as well. So that's it, thanks so much, and we'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

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Enjoy this classic episode from the vault. Russell explains that the day you became an entrepreneur is the day you took personal responsibility for a problem that wasn’t your own.

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---Transcript---

What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to a late night episode of Marketing Secrets.

Hey everyone, I’m about to head to bed but I listened to a podcast this week from Ryan Moran, from capitalism.com and he’s got the Freedom Fast Lane show podcast, which is pretty awesome. I love it a lot and he goes deep into the ecommerce side and also business investing and other things that I don’t typically focus on, which has been fun for me to kind of listen to him and world. But he said something in one of his presentations, it was a stage event somewhere,  I don’t even know, a few episodes back. And I don’t remember how he said or what he said but it sparked a thought in my mind.

So I’m probably going to slaughter how he said it. He said it probably much better than me, but the concept was so cool. What he basically said is the difference between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world, yes we are different folk if you haven’t noticed. But what he said was interesting, he said, entrepreneurs are the people who see a problem and then take responsibility for it. Isn’t that weird?

 I think about the world we live in today. The problem is most people don’t responsibility for anything. Even though they do things that are really bad or wrong or whatever, they won’t take responsibility. They want to blame it on their mom, or their brother, or their sister, or whoever. The world is all about blaming someone else for all the issues that it has. What makes us entrepreneurs weird is we see a problem and instead of blaming somebody else, we look at it and say, “I’m going to take responsibility for that problem, I’m going to figure out an answer.”

And when I heard that I was just like, oh my gosh, that is so interesting. Because most people don’t do that. Most people don’t see an issue, a problem and then be like, “I’m going to take responsibility for that.” I was thinking about this with Clickfunnels for example. For a decade we tried to build funnels and it was frustrating. And yeah, we could have blamed everybody else, I’m sure we did. Everyone else did that, it’s the tech designers, the developers, programming is hard, all the things. It wasn’t for us until we said, you know what it does suck and I’m going to take responsibility for it, this is my issue now. And then we figure out a way to solve it. And that’s when everything changed.

That’s so fascinating. For you, as an entrepreneur, or someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, I think if we all make conscious decision of what we are doing is consciously saying, “That problem right there, I’m taking on myself, I’m taking responsibility for that.” Instead of doing what most of us do, what’s our human nature. “Oh it’s them. Oh it’s her.” I didn’t fix anything because of this, because of this. We just want to pass the blame, pass the buck so often, but that’s what makes us weird.  That’s what makes us different. It makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs.

We see those problems, we see those issues and we take a personal responsibility for it. I was thinking about this as I was looking at the Inner circle meetings over the last couple of weeks. I could go through all 100 of my entrepreneurs and share this, but just a couple of them off my head.

Pamela Weibold for example, she was a doctor and she started seeing all of her friends who were doctors committing suicide. Person after person after person. And she could have sat there and blamed this, blamed that, but instead she stopped and said, “I’m going to take personal responsibility for this issue and I’m going to save doctors lives.” And she’s gone out there and done that. She’s created a platform. She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever seen. She’s literally spent every penny she’s ever made to go and save doctors lives. She’s like, “I can live on 20 grand a year, I’m good. Every penny I make goes back into helping save doctors from committing suicide.”

Because she took that as her own personal responsibility. That’s not her responsibility, it’s not her fault. Yet, she looked at it and said, this is my responsibility. That day she became an entrepreneur.

You think about another one, Annie Grace, who is so cool. She’s someone who her whole life drank socially. It got to a point where she kept drinking and drinking and she couldn’t break away from it. And she started looking around and it wasn’t just her, it was other people and she went on this mission and started saying….and again, drinking is not her responsibility. People struggling and trying to give up alcohol addiction, that’s not her responsibility, she’s got better things to do with her life.

But she looked at it and said, “This problem, I’m going to take responsibility for it.” And she’s gone out and changed thousands of people’s lives. Thousands of people she has helped break away from this addiction that’s robbing them of their freedom, their happiness. She took that personal. She didn’t have to, she didn’t need to but she decided to and that day she became an entrepreneur.

I could go through person after person after person after person, the day that they looked at this thing, this problem that wasn’t even supposed to be their own, but they saw it. And whatever it was, I don’t know if tuition, if it’s God, if it’s a spark, if it’s your brain. Whatever it is, you see it and there’s that spark saying, “That one’s mine. That is the problem I’m going to fix and I’m going to take personal responsibility. It may not be my fault, but I am the one who’s going to fix this and change it.”

And that’s what makes you different as an entrepreneur, and it’s fascinating and exciting. And if you wondered, how do I become an entrepreneur, how do I do that? It’s time to start looking at that and saying, “Instead of pushing responsibility on different places, different things, different people, different whatever, look at a problem and take on that responsibility yourself. And that’s the game plan, that’s how it works.

Anyway, I heard that three or four days ago and it’s been ringing through my head over and over. I keep thinking about person after person after person in my inner circle, and entrepreneurs I work with, and inner circle members, and Two Comma Club members, and I look at the people around me who are serving and doing stuff. Every single time I could link back to, that is the problem they took personal responsibility for. They didn’t have to, they didn’t need to, but they did. And that’s the magic.

So I hope that helps you guys. I hope that rings through your head and makes you start looking and being more aware of the stuff around you that’s happening and trying to figure out what it is that you’re going to take personal responsibility for. Because when you do that, that’s the day you’ll become an entrepreneur, and that’s the day you will literally change the world.

Thanks you guys, so much for everything. Thanks for your support, thanks for your effort. Thanks for your contribution to the world. We love you guys, we appreciate you guys, we enjoy serving you guys. And we’re so grateful that you listen to this podcast. If you like this podcast and learn anything from it, please go to iTunes and subscribe and share it with another entrepreneur who could help. Thanks so much you guys. Talk to you soon.

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On this episode we answer a question from one of our listeners.

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Tonight, I'm going to have a special episode, actually. Someone on Instagram, who I've become friends with recently, been talking back and forth, asked me a really good question about feeling uninspired, and low confidence publishing and wondered what I do to keep myself confident and motivated. And I think the answer may surprise you. So, I wanted to do this as an episode instead of just responding back to him directly, and hopefully it'll help a lot of you guys out as well.

All right everyone, so like I said, one of my new friends Alex, he had posted on Instagram or he actually sent me a DM, a question, and I thought it was really good question. I think it's something that I know I personally deal with way more often than I'd like to admit, and I'm sure a lot of you guys do as well. And so I thought I would, instead of just responding to him personally, respond through a podcast and hopefully it'll give you guys some value as well. So this is what he wrote.

He said, "Hey man, question for you. If you ever find yourself feeling uninspired, low in confidence to publish every day or put yourself out there, what are some of your go-to activities to create lasting peak state again, where you feel full of fire, belief and vision. I'm in a spot that haven't been in a long time. I'm committed to breaking out of it, and I have faith that I will. I have a feeling that finding the right catalyst to help spark the fire again is the key." Anyway, so I thought it was really good question. And again, I think my answer may be different than him, or even probably most people think.

And so to put it in context, I'm going to give you a quick glimpse at my life recently. It's summertime here at the time that I'm recording this, and I've got five amazing kids, three teenagers and two younger kids. And my teenagers have a party every night, something planned with friends and everything. And there's no school. And they're like, "Well there's no school tomorrow." I'm like, "Yeah, but I still have to get up tomorrow at six. I still have things to do. I still have all this stuff." My poor wife and I, usually during school time we put them to bed at nine and we've got two hours by ourselves before we pass out. Where now they're getting home from friend's houses around 11, and then we're trying to put them to bed. And then it's midnight, and then one, and then one thirty and then we're so tired.

And right now is a really busy season, we are like 60 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. P.S. if you don’t have your tickets yet go to funnelhackinglive.com. And I find myself now every morning, literally waking up and I am feeling, I think exactly what Alex is feeling. I wake up and I'm tired, I'm uninspired, I have low confidence. I don't want to publish. I don't want to talk. I don't want to get a bed. I don't want to work out. It's tough. Today, I set my alarm for six and I snoozed it for an hour and a half. I kept pushing it over and over and over again. And I actually, this morning as I was going to the office. I was like, "Why am I struggling so much?" And I start thinking back, and I think in my mind, I think in most of our minds, we assume that we're always like, there are seasons and times when we're on fire and full belief and vision, all these kind of things.

But when I started like really looking back, I started thinking about different parts of my life, especially some of my favorite parts of my life. And if I really remembered, I try to... I think most of the times our memories remember the good things and we fade out the bad, right? It's like, when you have a baby. Five minutes after my wife gave birth, if I was like, "Let's have another baby," she would probably strangle me. But then, a day goes by, then a week and then a month. And within three or four months, you forget the pain. All you remember is this cute little baby and you're like, "Oh, we should have kids again. It was so much fun." And then all of a sudden you're pregnant. You're like, "What was I thinking? Why didn't somebody tell me about this?"

I think it's the same thing in life. Like if I honestly think back, I think back about wrestling. That was my first passion, my first love. I remember winning the state title. I remember these big things that are amazing, but if I'm really honest, I try to remember the practices. I remember cutting weight. I remember not eating for four or five days in a row, every single week for my entire high school career. And cutting weight, and not having energy, and being tired in class and like cutting weight. Those who've cut weight know what I'm talking about, but I was doing that. And I don't think that there was a time when I was really... It didn't feel good, I didn't enjoy it. It was hard. It was miserable. But then the thing at the end happened, and it was amazing.

And because I had this desire, and this belief and this hope in the thing at the end, that's why I kept doing it. Cause I was like, "Ah, someday I want to win a state title. Someday I want to be an All-American, someday." And I had these things, so I put myself through these things. And then afterwards I hit the goals. You don't hit the goals and you remember the positives, and you remember these things and you kind of fade out the negative. But the reality is that a lot of times going through the stuff, like the day by, day by day, you don't come into it super inspired, and tons of energy, and high confidence and all those things that we think we are, or we're looking for, we're thinking it's going to happen.

At least not that I remember, as I'm trying to be completely honest with myself, I'm remembering the practices and leading up to them, and most days I didn't want to go to practice. Like I did because when I got into it, I enjoyed it. But going to practice, I would dread. And then fast forward, most of you guys I think know, I had a chance to serve a mission for my church for two years. And so for two years I was on this mission, and I'm knocking doors, and I'm teaching about Jesus, and doing these things and had a great experience.

Looking back now, it's one of the greatest highlights of my life. If I remember, every morning waking up, and we'd wake up super early, and study scriptures and do these things, and we were tired. And those who haven't been on a mission, or have never seen like the Mormon missionaries before, like you don't get to go on dates, you don't get to call home, you don't get to... You're with a companion and you don't go to movies, you don't have a TV, so it's tough. I remember every morning waking up, and knowing I had to go knock on doors, knowing I had to go do these things and dreading it. Like, ah it was hard consistently.

And then we're going out and knocking door, and usually within doing it for a little while, it'd become fun. And we'd talk to people, like I enjoyed it. And as I'm enjoying it, I'm like, "Why was I so complaining? Like why was I so tired this morning? Why was I so miserable? I actually enjoy this stuff," but I still did. And if I look back on my mission now, it was two years I was out there. Like I would wage, I would bet that most mornings I woke up dreading having to do the work I actually had to do.

And now I started thinking about this, about my entrepreneurial career. And again, I think back about all the highs and the big wins and all these kinds of things. But if I'm completely honest with myself, throughout the day by day, and the week by week, it was not sunshine and roses. I didn't wake up inspired, and excited and have tons of confidence and wanting to publish. Like it came... Usually me waking up and dreading it, and then going and doing it. And then as I started doing it, it was like, "Oh, I actually do enjoy this. This is kind of fun."

It was weird to me because two days ago I was working on this webinar, and all day at the office I was having fun, I was doing it and I got home. And then first I was excited, "Tomorrow's going to be fun to work on it." But then again, my evening happened and it was crazy, and kids get to bed at midnight and I'm asleep at 1:00, and my alarm is going off at six in the morning and I'm just dreading going the office. Like, "I don't want to open the slides. I'm too tired. I don't want to work on it." And like, I'm miserable. Right? Uninspired, low confidence, like all these things.

But I woke up, I did the thing, got out there, got to the office and started working on it. And then as I got back into it again, it became fun and I enjoyed it. And then eventually I'm going to do this webinar and I'm going to be stressed out. I'll probably pull all-nighters ahead of time, and then do the webinar and it's going to make a bunch of money. Then I'll be able to celebrate and all I'm going to remember is the celebration. Right?

The baby came out, we made a bunch of money. Someone got baptized. Whatever the result was that I was working towards. And I'll Remember that, and it's all I remember is like how great it was. I mean, we did this event, the Funnel Hackathon event. It was interesting because, I was teaching a webinar model. I was like, we launched ClickFunnels... I always tell them they should do a webinar a week, every single week for a year. And I was like, "I tell people that, but that's not what I did." I was like, "I was doing at least a webinar a day, some days two or three webinars a day."

And if you've ever done a webinar, like a two hour webinar, it's like working a nine hour or eight hour workday. Right? So you're doing three back-to-back-to-back, six hours of straight webinars. Like in my head, I remember this amazing thing in me, closing sales and like how amazing it was. But if I'm honest with myself, It was horrible. I couldn't talk, I was tired. I had no energy. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to do the second let alone the third webinar that day, knowing that tomorrow I'd wake up and do it again. And it's just interesting because I think our brain blocks out so much those things.

So I'm not saying that we can't be inspired, have high confidence in those kinds of things. But my bet is in most situations, most mornings you're going to wake up and you're going to be uninspired, you're going to have low confidence. You're not going to want to publish. You're going to want to go out there. You're not going to want to do a webinar, you're not going to want to publish your podcast, you're not going to want to knock doors. You're not going to want to go read a book, you're not going to want to write a book. You're not going to want to... Whatever the thing is.

Because that's the reality of life, at least as far as I've experienced it. I try to think back like, when were the mornings I woke up super excited? And there have been some, I can tell you there have been, but they are few and far between. The thing that gets me moving in the morning is not the feeling of inspiration or confidence or anything in the morning. It is the vision of the thing at the end. It was me knowing I wanted to win a state title. Not just knowing I want to be a state champ, but knowing like in my heart and my soul and my gut, that's all I wanted. That's all I wanted in life was that, I wanted to get my hand raised. And it's because of that I was willing to go through anything.

My coach has said, "You got to lose 30 pounds this week." Which happened every single week. I was like, "Okay." They're like, "Hey, you've got to go run four miles right now. You got to do this." Like I just said yes to everything, because that was the goal. That was the... Like, whatever it took to get there, I was okay with it. So the vision, the goal is the thing, but it doesn't mean you're going to feel the things I think we want to feel. I want to feel like, wake up in the morning, I want to go run. I want to go do these things. I want to go... But I don't think I ever feel those things. And maybe I'm the one that's messed up, I don't know. But if I'm honest with myself, I don't remember really feeling those things.

I don't remember any morning when my alarm went off and I woke up feeling like I wanted to go run, feeling like I want to go lift weights again. Maybe every once in a while, but it was rare. The thing that was a constant was like this North Star, it was the vision. And again in high school, it was winning a state title and it was being an All-American, that's all I could dream about. Like I'd sit there without any food or water in my stomach for weeks... For not weeks, but days at a time, miserable, cutting 25, 30 pounds a week, every single week, week in and week out, over and over and over again. Being thirsty beyond any kind of anything you can imagine. For those who have never cut weight before, you think that that being hungry is hard. Like people who skip a meal and they're like, "I'm so hungry." Like hunger pains are easy. Thirst pains are bad. Like you skip water for a day, your hunger pains disappear and you can not eat for a week. Fine. But that those thirst pains like keep you up at night.

But again, like what was the thing? It was the vision and it was doing it when you're not inspired, doing it when you don't feel like it, because you're normally not going to feel like it. Like right now, we're 60 days away from Funnel Hacking Live, I have so much work to do. We are rebuilding three different coaching programs and I'm tired. I've got six core presentations, nine total presentations that I haven't started on. I'm rewriting a core webinar that I have to do. We've got film dates. We've got events. We've got... If you guys saw my schedule for the next 60 days, you'd probably laugh or cry or a little bit of both.

And I tell you what, I don't want to do most of it. But guess what I do want to do? I want Funnel Hacking Live to happen. I want... When it's over, the night Funnel Hacking Live ends, when I go to bed at night, there's this feeling that I don't know. It's not as good as getting my hand raised and wrestling. I'm not going to lie, but it's this feeling. And I felt it before, I feel like when the whole thing's done, and you see people and you see their change, and you see them leave and you get to go home and be in your room for a minute and just be like, "We did it," that feeling, that vision and seeing like the ripple effect that will come from that room, from the 3,500 people who will be in the room, that ripple effect that will come out from there around the world. That vision of that. Like for me, it's a tangible visually. It's like, I can see...

For me, it's like I see the audience, I see this huge rock going boom, and hitting it. And the ripple effect goes to 3,500 people in the room. Then from there, it goes out to millions and millions of people around the world. That vision of that is what gets me moving and going. And for some reason, I wish... I keep thinking or wishing that vision would make it so I woke up every morning inspired, excited, with energy, but it doesn't. Because the reality is, if that's all it was, was the vision. I think we'd be able to... If the vision affected us, so we felt so good that was easy, then it would be easier. But for me at least it doesn't. So anyway, if any of you guys got a secret, let me know.

But for me, it's just waking up thinking about, this is the thing. This is what I'm working towards, I want it, I'm going for it. And then start the process. And like I said, after I start the process, usually it feels good, but it's that initial momentum that's not fun, right? Like the initial waking up and going to the gym is not fun, but then when you start lifting. It's like, "Oh, I actually enjoy this." Getting up, getting dressed, getting to the office, not fun. Start working your slides, you're like, "Oh I actually enjoy this." This podcast episode for example, my brother who does my podcast is going out of town. He's been asking me for a week and a half for three episodes. And right now it is 11:27 at night, and I've been dreading this podcast all day long.

I've been thinking about it and like talking myself out of it, like dreading it. Literally, I don't want to do this podcast. I don't want to do it. I'm tired, I just want to go to bed, I got so much stuff. Like I finally got my kids to bed. Now, last thing in the world I want to do is publish my podcast, the last thing I want to do. But now I'm 14 minutes and 25 seconds into it, and I'm actually really enjoying this. I could go for the two hours. Like I'm feeling the energy now, right? But initially you don't have it.

And so I think that's the biggest thing is just, understanding that it's the initial momentum. That's the hardest part. In the morning you wake up and you're out of momentum, like getting back into momentum. That's a hard thing. And so most people, most humans on this planet never get back into momentum. They're just like, ugh. They just stop, right? So the thing that's going to get you from this stagnated stop spot is like, either the memory of the vision or the dream of the vision.

When I was wrestling, it was the dream of being a state champ. Right now it's the memory of last years Funnel Hacking Live and the experience that I felt afterwards. Like, that's the thing that gets me out of bed into momentum, and with the momentum I start feeling more inspired, I start feeling more confident. I start listening, they start happening, but they don't happen right out of the gate.

Most mornings, you're going to wake up not wanting to do with the thing you got to do. You're not going to feel good. You're not going to feel inspired, have confidence, any of those kinds of things. So it's like, you got to have this vision that pulls you into momentum, and then momentum picks up and that's when you start feeling good and start having fun. And right now, I want to go film 12 more podcast episodes, which is good because my brother told me I need to give him three by tomorrow. So, this is the first one, I've got two more tonight and I'm really excited about one of them, so I'll probably do that one next because now I'm in momentum. I'm feeling good. And anyway, so I hope that helps. I think the biggest thing that I want to share is just that if you're struggling every morning, for any of you guys, like that's okay. So do I, every morning,

Very, very, very rare do I wake up and like, "Yes, let's go. Like, this is the thing." It's unfortunately not there and I don't think it's there for most people. And if it is there for you, that's amazing. Like run. That means you're waking up already in momentum, start running. Don't stop. But for most of us it's, man, making that vision. It's like what we talked about for wrestling, so clear, so vivid, so real, that you would go through anything to get it. First time I saw someone win a state title and I was like, "That's what I want more than air," literally, like more than food, more than water, more than friends, more than anything. And it became that real, that tangible that vivid where I could feel it, taste it, touch it, like smell, I could envision it. Like that's when I was willing to do anything and I did do anything, like literally.

Insane things we did to get that goal. And same thing rings true in business. Right? Like when we started building ClickFunnels and I started seeing... At first it was hard for me, because I didn't know it was going to become what it was. Like I'd tried to build ClickFunnels three times before and every time we'd fail. So Todd's like, "I'm going to build ClickFunnels." I'm like, "Cool," so we started building it. But as soon as I saw it and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is really good. Okay. Like, all right." And I saw the vision what it could be, then it was like crazy. But again if I remember back, we used to do these hackathons. Todd would fly out before we launched ClickFunnels and spend three weeks in Boise. And we would go all day, all night and like sleep for three or four hours, get back up and keep going.

And I don't think it was fun. Like looking back now, the nostalgia of it's amazing. Like, oh these were like the greatest times of our life. Like times I'll never forget, but in the moment they were horrible. I did not enjoy them. I was tired. I was miserable. I missed my family, missed my kids, missed my things. We didn't know if this was actually going to work. Like, there's all these things, but we did it because I'd seen the vision. Todd had seen the vision. We knew that there was something there. And so we pushed, and we pushed, and we pushed, and we grind through it. And now looking back, those are some of the best times.

So, you got to do it in spite of the uninspired, in spite of not feeling worthy, or ready or whatever. Get yourself momentum, like hook to the vision, hook to the thing you have and it start running. So anyway, I hope that helps. It gives probably not the answer you're looking for. I wish I had a better secret magic button, but it's just understanding and realizing every morning, like, "All right, I don't want to move, but I got to. Let's go." So, I hope that helps. Thanks so much everyone for listening, and have a great night and we'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

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---Transcript---

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I am at Lake Powell. If you've been listening to some of these past episodes you know that I'm on family vacation right now. I'm unplugged, and so I am stuck to my thoughts, which has been really fun, and just thinking through a lot of things, and hopefully... In the past, people told me that Lake Powell episodes are some of the best ones. Hopefully this gives you some ideas, some ahas, some insights in you, your life, your business, and a bunch of other really cool things.

Okay. So what I want to talk you guys about today is actually something that happened right before we left for Lake Powell. So obviously I've been playing this marketing game for a long, long, long, long time. Right? I love building funnels. I love creating offers. I've been doing it for as long as anyone I know. I've been doing it... I think I'm on, like, my 20th year or so. I've been playing this game. I love it and I think I'm pretty good at it. I'm not the best at all areas of it, but I think as a whole, I'd say I'm in the top 1% of people who play this game and I enjoy it. Hopefully you enjoy it as well. And I enjoy talking about it, hopefully as you enjoy listening to me talk about it.

But I had little things that happened right before I left that was really, really cool. So we brought in a couple of new people on our team, some really, really good copywriters, conversion analytics people. And we're looking at some of our old funnels that have done well traditionally. In fact, specifically looking at our book funnels. We have three really good book funnels, my Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic secrets books, which have a lot of traffic to those funnels. Traditionally have done really, really well. And the question was, could we make these better? And one of the reasons why we had to do it is be one of our offers, upsell number two, we had to change out because it was a partnership with someone and we had to change it out. And so it got us kind of thinking like, well, how do we change this?

And as long as we're changing it, let's brainstorm again. And so it was nice because I had a whole bunch of people who weren't me, who weren't there initially when we brainstormed the book funnel and we sat down and said, "Okay, let's kind of talk about this. What can we do? What does it look like?" And specifically there's someone new on our team. Her name is Sabah and she's awesome. And that's all I'm going to tell you because I don't want you guys hiring her away from me. She's really, really cool. But she went through all of the offers and the upsells and everything, and I made kind of a pallet. Here's like all the stuff we have. We have basically unlimited... I've created a billion products. I'm like, "We have unlimited content. We do whatever we want. Well, what should we create?" And so I kind of gave her the pallet.

She spent a couple of days and came back. We started looking at this upsell flow and it was really cool for a couple of reasons. One is it's interesting, things that you kind of forget. Like at my events, when we teach upsell flows, I always talk about the importance of the strategic flow of your upsell flow, right? That people always ask me, "What's the first price point? What's the second price point?" And price point is not the important thing. It's the flow. Like if someone buys this, say they bu the Dotcom Secrets book. So it solved the problem for them. Now they have this book that's going to show them how to funnel.

So next upsell has to solve a new problem. So that by buying this first product, what is the new problem it created, right? So if you bought Dotcom Secrets book, for example, now you know how to make funnels, but now you're like, "I don't know how to get traffic to my funnels," or, "I don't know how to write, copy for my funnels." Or whatever the next problem is. Or, "I know how to build a funnel now, but I need help. I need someone to hold my hand. I want coaching. I want accountability. I want..." Whatever. There's a million things it could be, but it's very strategic.

And what I realized, interestingly enough, is that, and I wonder if you guys do this too, or if it's just me, but sometimes my ego gets in the way. And so my book funnels were, I literally built the book funnels because I wanted my first upsell to be Dotcom Secrets or the secrets chosen, my box set of all my books. Which is cool because it's like now everyone has a chance to buy my books. And I forced that as the upsell on all three of my funnels, but looking at the actual data and numbers, they didn't... I mean, they convert good, but not amazing. I didn't change it because I was like, "Well, that's what I want to sell, that's what I want to sell," as opposed to me asking the question, "Well, what do people actually want to buy?"

And so what was cool was when Saba came back and said, "Okay, let's look at all these different offers." She kind of restructured things. And she took like my book offer where right now, you buy the books and you get this one book for free. And it's really, really cool. She's like, 'What if we did that, plus we gave them this?" I think it was One Funnel Away Challenge. "Plus we gave them this software over here, and plus we give them...". It was like five or six things. And I remember like, as she's going through, I was like kind of sick to my stomach, like, ugh. But I didn't say anything, because I'm trying to be cool, you know? And I don't want to... I hate when you're brainstorming, someone comes in and has all the negative things to say about it.

So I felt this like sick feeling in my stomach where, I was like, oh, okay. And then she talked about upsell number two and then proposed upsell number three. And upsell number two was like, we can give them this, and this, and this. I'm like, "You can't do that because this one's like a thousand dollars, and this one's this over here." And I was kind of freaking out.

And the next upsell, she's going through it, and in my head, I'm just stressing out because I'm like, "We can't sell these things for that cheap. This is insanity." I'm just like this feeling of just like uneasiness because of this. And then we sat there, we were talking about it and we're looking at, and I was drawing it out on a whiteboard trying to map it out in my head so I could come to grips with this whole thing. And all of a sudden, I stopped for a moment, and I was like, "Oh my gosh. Look at this internal anxiety I have going through this process."

And I started thinking about that. And I was like, oh my gosh. I am struggling because this offer is so good that I don't want to do it. Now what do you think about an offer that's so good that you feel sick to your stomach actually giving it somebody because it's such a good deal? That's probably the right offer, right, if you're trying to make an irresistible, one-time offer. You're like, "I sell of this course for $97. I'll sell it to you for 97 bucks." That's an offer, but it's not an irresistible, insane offer. When you are sick to your stomach because you're like, there's no way we can do this. I can't give people this and this and all these things for this price because it's not worth it to me. You're sick to your stomach? That's when you're close. That's when you probably have the right offer.

And for me it was this big aha of just like, oh my gosh, I've been stingy. I've been trying to feed my ego and trying to make sure that the offers are the things that I want to sell, not what people actually want. And then looking at it from, okay, I'm not just making an offer, I got to make something irresistible. If I want to go from like a 15, 20% conversion rate on an upsell rate to a 40, 50%, it has to be irresistible. We're in the process right now of purchasing a company. I can't talk about it yet. As soon as we finalize it... In fact, the deal might be finalized when I get back from Lake Powell. So I'm sure you will hear me shouting it from the roofs.

But the funnel, we're literally buying this thing because the funnels are so good. Like when someone buys a product through the funnel, the average cart value is like $180, which means, I can spend $180 to sell this front end product, which is crazy. It's so good. But you look at the upsell flow and it's the same thing. It's the most insane, irresistible offer where you... I'm sure when the person we're buying the company from was first putting it together, he was sick to his stomach, like, "Oh, I could easily sell this for a thousand bucks or $2000 or more." And he's like, "I'm just going to do it for $97." Like, wait, wait, what? You can't do that. This is insane. "I'm sick to my stomach. We spent $50,000 creating this thing. I can't sell it you for $97." And when you get that internal dialogue in your head where you're fighting it because this doesn't make any logical sense, that's when you probably have an actual irresistible offer. That's the key.

And that was my big humbling this weekend, or this week before I came out to Lake Powell, was that. And I've been thinking a lot about it, like sitting on the boat. As I'm sitting here I'm thinking like, "Man, I felt so much anxiety and frustration." Is kind of like how many of you guys have ever seen the greatest show of all time, 24? If not, you should pause this right now, go watch all the eight or nine seasons of it and then come back and finish the episode. Otherwise you're going to... It's more important than anything else you could be doing right now is watching every episode of 24. But I digress.

So there's this bad guy in 24 and he's the president. President Logan? I can't remember exactly. It's been a while since I've watched it, but he's the president. And I remember that at first I thought that the guy who played the president, I was like, I hate this character. I hate him. And every single episode, it got worse. I was like, I hate him. I remember being so angry, upset watching, episode, after episode, after episode. This president was such a horrible person and so angry. And I was like, I hate him. Why did they pick him to be the actor? Why these things? And being so frustrated and angry and I couldn't sleep. And I was so angry at this person, this president, I hated him so bad.

And all of a sudden one day I stopped and I was like, oh my gosh. Look how I feel right now. I hated this guy, but I'm realizing now, I don't hate him. He's probably one of the best actors I've ever seen because he's making me have this visceral response to everything he's saying. And all of a sudden I was like, oh my gosh, he's not the worst character of all time. He's the best character. To make me hate him that bad is magical.

Same thing when I first met Ben Settle. I joined Ben Settle's email list and I used to get the daily emails. And I remember I kept reading them and kept reading them and they would annoy me so bad, get me so frustrated. And it was probably two or three weeks into this email sequence where I was like... And I don't unsubscribe from anything ever. And I remember the emails were coming in. I read one. I was so upset that I was going to unsubscribe because I was so angry at him and his philosophies, and his thoughts and everything. I was like, oh, and I was about to unsubscribe. I stopped for a second. I was like, oh my gosh, look how I feel. Notice how he's making me feel right now? He's giving me, once again, this visceral response where I'm like angry, and upset, and frustrated. And so much so that I wanted to like, oh, and I was like, oh my gosh.

I think prior to that I was like, he's the worst marketer ever. I hate this guy. He's wrong about everything. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, oh my gosh. Look how he's making me feel. He's an amazing marketer. He got me to feel this way. Never in my life I've read every email from a marketer and I'd read every email of his for months because I was so angry and so upset and so frustrated. And I was like, I bought his thing. I bought the other thing even though I hated him and frustrated by it and annoyed by him.

In fact, the first time I met Ben, I told him that story. I was like, "Just so you know, like I hated you at first." I was like, 'Every email that would come, I would get so annoyed and so upset and all of a sudden I realized, oh, look at how he made me feel." To cause this kind of feeling in me shows that he's a master, not someone who's bad. And so a lot of times I want you to start noticing how you're feeling as these things are happening to you because a lot of times our brain is pushing us one way and hating this thing where it could be like the greatest thing we could have learned.

And so, anyway, I wanted to share that because that's how I felt when we were going through this upsell flow. And so next time you're creating an offer and you're working on your upsells, your down sells or your, whatever your thing is, you're working on, I want you to start thinking about that, like how do I make this offer so good that I literally am sick to my stomach and frustrated and angry and like, oh, I can't do this? Like, there's no way we can give people this much value. We just can't do it. And all of a sudden you're like, that's it. We got there. We finally got to a point where I don't want to do this because I feel like the value is so high.

Like they always say in any good offer, but any kind of good business deal or business partnership, both people should feel like they got the better end of the stick. Right? And if not, it means that someone felt like they got a worse end and that's not good. You want both people to feel like they got a better end of the stick. So if I make an offer so good, I'm like, this is insane. I can't do this because it's such a good offer, and honestly feeling that way deep in your gut. And then the customer coming in like, "Oh my gosh. They only want $97 for that?" Or $200, whatever the price is like, oh my gosh. Now both sides feel like they got the better end of the stick. That's how to make irresistible offers. That's how you create raving fans. That's how you create amazing offers.

Anyway, I wanted to share it with you guys because it was interesting. It was fascinating. And I hope that helps you guys. Go back to your old offers. Look at the upsell flow and be like, what else could I add? What else could I add? What else could I tweak? How can we make this offer better? How can we make it better? How can I up this offer? How can I increase it even better? And keep thinking through that. And the better you make the offer, the more likely people will be to give you money.

A lot of times people are like, "My upsell's not converting. What do I need to do?" I'm like, "Your offer sucks. Make a better offer." "This is the best thing I've got." Well then make something better. Like, what else can you give them? What else can you create? What else can you invent? What else can you put together? You need to make something that is so irresistible that they look at it, they're like, "I have to give them money. I need this thing. This is such a good deal. It's such a good offer. I have to give them money." That's the feeling they have to have or else you missed it.

So anyway, with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Hopefully you guys go back and look at all of your old funnels, all your old offers. Look at things you're doing and figure out what else can I bundle? What else can I add to make the software even more irresistible? And keep doing it until you feel sick to your stomach. And that's when you're probably to the spot where your offer's finally going to start converting.

Okay, I hope that helps you guys. I appreciate you all. Thanks for listening, for subscribing, for hanging out. If you liked this podcast, please do go to iTunes and leave me a review. That'd be pretty sweet. And with that said, I'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye everybody.

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