Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Russell Brunson: From Broke to $100M in Five Years, How I Bounced Back from Rock Bottom

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Russell Brunson failed more times in his early 20s than most founders do in a lifetime. From broken funnels to failed product launches, he turned every setback into a lesson, refining his craft while navigating near bankruptcy, legal threats, and even moments where he feared jail time. Those hard years became the foundation that ultimately led him to co-found ClickFunnels, one of the fastest-growing bootstrapped tech companies in the world. In this episode, Russell joins Ilana to share how he bounced back from his toughest moments, offering powerful lessons in resilience, leadership, and authentic relationships. Russell Brunson is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and digital marketing expert. He is widely recognized as the co-founder of ClickFunnels, a leading marketing software company that helps businesses worldwide boost conversions and drive sales. In this episode, Ilana and Russell will discuss: (00:00) Introduction  (02:04) The Infomercial That Led Him to Entrepreneurship (05:52) The Influence of Wrestling on His Business Drive (08:18) College Days and the Potato Gun Venture (10:15) The Rollercoaster Journey to His First Million (14:48) Key Lessons from His Toughest Year (21:50) The Birth of ClickFunnels and Its Challenges (34:41) Gaining Lifelong Mentorship from Tony Robbins (37:55) Dream 100 Strategy: The Power of Relationships (43:08) Why Vulnerability Can Lead to Unlikely Success (47:14) Tips for Building a Winning Team (50:17) Turning Your Pain into an Asset Russell Brunson is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and digital marketing expert. He is widely recognized as the co-founder of ClickFunnels, a leading marketing software company that helps businesses worldwide boost conversions and drive sales. Over the past 19 years, he has built a community of over a million entrepreneurs and authored New York Times bestsellers, including DotCom Secrets and Expert Secrets.  Connect with Russell: Russell’s Website: www.russellbrunson.com  Russell’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/russellbrunson Russell’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/russellbrunson  Resources Mentioned: Russell’s YouTube: youtube.com/@russellbrunson The 12 Month Millionaire Droplets: Vincent James's Unmissable Revelations by Vincent James: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXJGPXNN  Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You'll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385485468  Leap Academy: LeapCon is the #1 Conference for Reinvention, Leadership & Career — a powerful 3‑day experience designed to help you unlock what’s next in your career and life. 📍 San Jose, CA 📅 Feb 26–28, 2025 If you’re ready to step into clarity, confidence, and bold action, this is your moment. 👉 Grab your ticket before doors close at leapacademy.com/leapcon

It's unfortunate that most entrepreneurs only share the highlight real people and don't talk about the downsides. Entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for. Russell Branson, entrepreneur Arthur, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non-venturebacked tech startup in the world. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. It was my first time my growing a company, and I was new, I was young, and I started hiring people, probably hired too fast. At that point, we had about 100 employees.

I had nine Merks, counsel, won a bank, and literally in one day, they turned them all off. I thought everyone my team was, like, going to be like, we're here together. We're going to win this thing. And what was crazy is, like, as soon as people found out that there might not have a check, 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were, like, my friends just left. So I lost my ability to generate money. I had no way to process money, and I owed $200,000 or I was going to go to jail. And I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail.

Even though that was like the most painful, stressful time of my life, it also was the catalyst for everything we've built since then. We all go through cycles and entrepreneurship. Just know that if you keep showing up, you keep trying, you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go. How do you scale from zero to 100 million? Oh, man, it is. Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels,

the fastest growing non-venture-backed tech startup in the world. ClickFunnels grew from zero to listen to this, $100 million in just three years. Unbelievable. So Russell, first of all, so glad to have you here. I've been watching you and binge watching your stuff for many, many. years. I appreciate that. I'm excited to be here too. This will be so much fun. It will be so much fun. But you were drawn to marketing and sales from a very young age. Can you take us back in time? How far back do you want to go? Ah, it's tired. Collecting stuff. I want to go all the way back. All right. My dad was

an entrepreneur, so I kind of saw him. He was always hustling doing side businesses, but it didn't really crossed my mind. And I remember one night, I think I was like 12 or 13 years old. And my parents always watched the news the night and then my mom would go to bed and my dad would sit there working for a couple more hours and usually they make me like Russell go to bed so I'd have to go to bed at night and I remember one night my mom went to bed and my dad I don't know if he didn't know so I was in the room but he didn't make me go to bed he was just working so I was like they watched the news with him the news got done and then mash came on and we watched mash I was like I'm watching mash with my dad this is so cool and then mash ended and then all of sudden this thing popped up

and I had no idea what it was and now I know it's an infomercial but there's infomercial and there was this guy on it named Don the pre and he was like like me times 1,000, like so much energy. He was so excited. And he's like, talking about how you can make money with tiny classified ads. And I still remember he said, he's like, I placed an ad in a newspaper and it made $30. And all my friends and family made fun of me. But I took that same ad and I placed it in a thousand newspapers and made $30,000. And I was like, you know, my 12 year old brain's like, what? Like, I was totally freaking out. I was looking at my dad. I was like, dad, you have to buy this. My dad is like, whatever. You know, like, just kind of

making fun of me. And I remember like, it got to the call to action. We're like, call this 1-800 number and you can buy the course for $40 or something. And so I remember writing the number down. I'm like, dad, you got a call. He's like, we're not going to buy it. So I'm like, dad, I have to have it. And they had like some bonus. Like you bought in the next five minutes.

You got this other free gift. So I was like, we have to hurry, dad, you know. And he told me no. And the next morning, I was so mad. He's like, look, if you want that, you can earn the money to go buy it. So I was like, okay, how do I earn the money? He's like, okay, if you start mowing the lawns, I can't remember five bucks a week or something.

So I started mown his lawn, other people's lawns. In about a month, I'd earn the $40 I needed to buy it. And so I remember telling my dad, I was like, I have the phone number, but we have to call during the infomercial so we get the free gift. And so he let me save that night. We watched news and we watched MASH. And then the show came up and it came up again. And so soon it got to the part where they said, call now, get the special bonus.

We called. And my dad bought the credit card. And it was the coolest thing in the world. And I got the kit in the mail. In fact, I still have it to this day. I'm going to frame it or something. It's really cool. But I was like reading the books.

That was my entrance into business. And it was like the most fun thing in the world. And then for me, it's like these ideas in my head about how you can make money. All of a sudden, like, you can't stop thinking about it, right? And I remember my mom and I were at the grocery store and there's a magazine there. They still sell the magazine. It's called Small Bizop Magazine. There's always like cartoons on it.

So I'm like, Mom, you buy this magazine for me? So she bought me the magazine. And I remember in the magazine, if you ever get a copy, next time you're at the grocery store, Barnes & Noble, you can get one. It's like 140 pages of ads and then four pages of articles. And every ad is a different way to make money. And so I remember reading it. Like one of them was like, you can make donuts at the county fair and make money. Call this phone number for the free info kit.

So I'm like, call the number, send me free info kit. And the next page was like, you can make money by painting glow in the dark stars on people's roofs. Call the number for the free info kit. So I called number free info kit. Next page is like, you can make money selling gold chains by the end. So I call every 144 info kits. I go in order for every one of these businesses. It was funny now.

I was like, I was in a funnel. I didn't know it, right? But the info kit shows up. And all the info kit is is a sales letter. then selling the $100 version of it, right? Or whatever, so then you'd call it anyway. And there's a whole thing. But as a 12-year-old kid, I would sit there and I would get home from school

and there'd be a stack of junk mail like this big. And I would sit there. I'd read all these sales letters, all these ways to make money and completely ruin me for life. But that's kind of how I started my young entrepreneur journey. Oh, my God. Most people are just not as driven or kids. They're just not as driven.

I don't know what made you so driven to collect these things and get curious about it. And you also loved wrestling And actually you were like State champion in high school And you had this massive passion Do you think this shaped you also To who you are today?

Definitely as a young age I didn't realize the time But definitely was very driven For the business thing You know, like I don't dabble in something If I get excited like I go all in I'm so excited you know When I started wrestling was the same thing

I remember wrestling And as soon as I won my very first match I got my hand raised I was like that feeling I want that again So I like started running And so for next eight years of my life that's all I focused on was wrestling.

And then when I got done my wrestling career, it's when I found out about the online business. And I jumped into that. And I think all those things kind of compound. You learn how to work hard. You learn how to be driven. You learn how to overcome. And sports are so great for that.

Like, you learn how to lose and then not give up. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. They'll listen to the podcast and they read the book and they love learning about it. But they're so scared. If they take that step and if it fails, then their dream dies, right? So because of they stuck in this learning loop forever. I think for me it's because I'd stepped on the wrestling mat

a hundred times a year and I didn't win a lot of them. It's like I would lose. And then an hour later, you're back on the mat again, the back on the mat and the next weekend again. And so it's like I got good at learning. If I lose, it doesn't mean I'm a loser.

I have to learn something from it, right? Like I think the best example of this, my junior year, I wanted to be a state champ. And the very first match of the year, I wrestled a guy who takes a second state the year before. And I remember I lost to him. And it was like so painful.

I told everyone all summer long, I'm going to be a state champ, it's going to be amazing. And my very first match I lost. And I remember my dad, and my dad's, you get very entrepreneurial as well, but he got the videotape of me losing and he watched it. That night I lost, he watched it probably a hundred times. Next morning I woke up, he's like, okay, I know how to beat this kid. And so we, on the carpet, we would drill how to beat him.

And then that day, when practically I'd done, my dad would show up, and we drilled again. We drilled it for four months, I drilled it. And then come four months later, it was the state tournament, and I ended up wrestling that same kid in the finals, and I ended up beating him with the same move he'd beat me with because I drilled it so many times I knew how to do it. it, that's carried over into entrepreneurship because like entrepreneurship, like, I create offers all the time that I launch and they fail. And then most people that would cripple them. For me, it's just like, okay, well, I failed. Like, what do we need to tweak? Okay, it's change

the headline. Keep tweaking until it works. And I think that's what people understand. A lot times they give up on their business and it's just like a couple tweaks away from having success, right? They give up on their athletic career where it's just like you're a couple of weeks away from like hitting your dreams. It's so easy to stop three feet from gold because fear is numbing. So fear will take more dreams than anything, but you somehow started these entrepreneurship endeavour back in college, and you did all these super crazy, innovative potato guns and can you take us back in time? I remember the first time when I saw this, I'm like, rewind. Am I sure that this is what he actually meant? Yes, that's what he actually meant.

Russell, take us there for a second. So I got into college, and I met my wife, we got engaged, and she was working, after we got married, like she was working to support us. And I felt guilty because I wanted to wrestle, but I was like I should help support. And so I was trying to figure out a way to make money. It's interesting because back then I was like trying to study. There were a lot of people online doing it, but there were a few people doing online. In fact, one of them is Frank Kern, a lot of guys know him nowadays.

But he had this product. It was called the Underachiever Method. And it was like how to make really simple products. And I remember his show he had like one teaching, how to do dog training, one like, like how to teach a parrot how to talk and want how to do, like all these little niche products, they create these little e-books, and then they would go and they would buy Google ads to sell them. And it was just like this really simple process. And I remember going through the course, I was like, this is so cool. But I was like, I don't know how to teach a parrot how to talk.

You know, I don't know how to do those kind of things. And so I was kind of stuck trying to think what I would actually do. And then I remember I was in college and it was like spring break and my buddy was like, hey, Russell, we should go shoot potato guns. I'm like, what's the potato guns? We told me. And so during spring break, we went online. and we found all the potato gun plans and how to make a potato gun. We went to the Home Depot and bought the pipes and cut them up and we made these potato guns

and we shot them and like all weekend long we had so much fun with it. And then next Monday I was back in school and I was like, I wonder if I could create a product teaching people we just learned how to make potato guns. That was the idea. And so we went and we borrowed a video camera

from someone and we filmed ourselves going through the whole process of buying the pipes, gluing them together, making potato gun, shooting them. And then that became my very first product I created and put out there on the internet. You share, and I found that super inspiring, that someone helped you break that four-minute mile.

And you have this beautiful story about how you broke the first million for yourself, et cetera, et cetera. Can you share a little bit of that? Yeah, for sure. So when I got to start my online business, I'd never set a goal to make a million dollars. That wasn't my goal. I was just trying to figure out how to make some money. So my wife wouldn't have to work.

And that was kind of how we started, right, with the potato gun and made other little products. And then I remember, man, we've been married about a year. And I remember because we're on a family reunion. It was at this lake where there's no internet access. I remember going to the library to the library to the library in this lake town with nothing else around. I open my email. And there's an email in there from this guy named John Reese and said something like, we did it or something was a subject line. I'm like, did what? And I opened the email. And he's like, hey, earlier today, we launched a course called Traffic Secrets is a $1,000 course. And in the first 18 hours, we sold 1,000 copies, which means we're

the very first people ever make a million dollars online in a day selling a course. And I was like, what? I remember sitting there in a chair and I was just like so perplexed. Like my goal was like maybe in my lifetime to make a million dollars. I'm like, there's a guy who's just like me, a couple years older than me who made a million dollars in a day. I'm like, he can't be that much smarter than me, right? Like if he can do that, could I do that?

And I was doing the math in my head. I was like, he had a thousand-hour course. He'd sold a thousand copies. I'm like, it's just math. Like, how do I sell a thousand copies of a thousand-dollar product, right? that started my will with my head spinning. So I remember setting a goal. I was like, okay, because I didn't believe you.

I'm like, I don't think I could do a million dollars in a day, but can I do a million dollars in a year? If I had a thousand dollar course, if I sell three a day, that would be a million dollars in a year. So it's like, okay, the very first thing I did is like, I need to make a thousand dollar course just like this guy did. It's my very first time I had funnel hacked somebody, right, before we called to that.

And so I went and I put together an event. I recorded it. I made my first thousand dollar course. Remember I launched on January 1st because like everyone on New Year's Day will want to change their life. little as I know everyone was going to be drunk January 1st, and the launch went horrible. Like the whole entire launch, we sold 20 copies of my $1,000 course. It was devastating, but I kept trying, kept trying.

And like the first year, I got close. I think I can't remember, I made $6 or $700,000 that first year. But then I missed it by December. I'm like, okay, January 1st, I'm starting over, setting the goal. I tried it again that year. I got close again, missed it again. In that third year, I kept going and going. And I didn't know which product was going to sell, which offers.

I kept just putting out different offers and different things. And then it was crazy. There was this interview I did with a guy, His name was Vince James, and he was an old school, like, direct mail guy. And he'd made $100 million through direct mail selling supplements. He wrote a book, and for some reason, he let me interview him. And this was like two or three years earlier. I was like a college kid at the time.

He let me interview him for six hours. I asked him all these questions about how he did it. And so again, three years later, I'm sitting there. I'm like, what's the next offer I could sell? And it's like, what if I sold the interviews that I did with Vince? Like, that was a really cool interview. Maybe someone would buy that. And so we took that interview.

We sold it for $37. And then the guy, Vince that I, interviewed, he had sold licensing rights to his book. It was a $300 book. So I had bought the license to this book. And so I had someone bought the interview for $37 and we'd upsell them a copy of the book for $297. The book was called the 12-month millionaire. So I had, I own 12-month internet millionaire.com. We launched this whole thing, right? Put the launch out there. And in seven days, that funnel crossed a million dollars. And that was the first one I'd ever had. And I was just like, this is insane. I interviewed a person. I laid the access to the interview and we sold a million dollars. I

It was the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that was the first time I'd actually done it. It was interesting because I think the reason that a lot of people never make a million dollars is they never try to make a million dollars, right? And it wasn't until I was like, okay, I'm going to try to do it. This is a goal. And I started working towards that. That like all of the things kind of showed up for me to be able to do that. In ClickFunnels, one of the things we did is we created the two comic club of works.

I was like, I want to give people something to shoot towards. Like when I was wrestling, before I knew I wanted to be a state champ, I was just kind of there doing the things when I realized I wanted to be a state champ. I had something to shoot towards. Then I became really good. I think the same thing with this. And so that's why we created that, the two Common Club Awards, to give people something, okay, this is the goal. And then when they have a goal, you can reverse engineer it and you can figure it out.

But for me, that was as soon as I had that goal, then it was like everything to try to pursue that. And that's how I learned all the stuff I had to learn to make it possible. So, yeah, one of my favorite story. And again, we have our Millionaire's Club. We have the President Club because, again, I want people to see what's possible, right? If you don't even know what's possible, you're still stuck with that. I'm just trying to do this move from Sydney, manager to senior senior manager.

You know, I'm like, go on. There's more to life. Let's go. It's all about leaping, right? But yeah, you share at some point. You have the most brilliant videos. Folks, if you didn't see that, you're revamping your YouTube channel, although I always thought I was very revamped,

but go to Russell's YouTube channel. Like his videos, to me, it's just so inspiring. It's so beautiful. And you share so much with so much vulnerability and truth. and you share one of the hardest moments when you needed to lay off a lot of your team and just kind of rebuild. And I think it's just so important to listen to that too because there's always going to be like we said challenges and things and setbacks and things that will hurt you to your core. But you somehow continue. Can you share that a little bit? I think it's unfortunate that

most entrepreneurs only share like the highlight real people and don't talk about the downsides. And I was very nervous for a long time to share those things and I started sharing some of them and so many people are like, wow, like, I'm going through that same thing as well. In fact, to set up that story, it's kind of funny during this time when everything was like falling apart around me, I got invited to this little mastermind meeting in Mexico. And I was sitting next to this guy who's crazy rich, crazy expensive. And he asked me my story and I was like, oh, so I was kind of telling him, you know, the highlights. He's like, no, tell me your real story. I was like, well, and I told me this story, I'm going to tell you right now how bad everything was and everything.

and he was like, okay, cool. He's like, so you cycled once? I'm like, what? He's like, I'll never work with an entrepreneur. Let's say, cycled at least once. He's like, because otherwise, they still believe their own bio, they still drink with their own Kool-Aid. And I was like, oh, that feels a lot better.

I just cycled. Like, all entrepreneurs, I just reframed it for me. And hopefully it'll reframe for some of you guys because entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for. But so what happened is, it was my first time growing a company and I was new, I was young,

and I started hiring people, probably hired too fast. At that point, we had about 100 employees. We had this building downtown Boise, Idaho. It was like really, really cool. And like, I felt like I was on top of the world. Again, I was, I believe my own bio. I was drinking my own cool way. I thought it was so great. And then one day, it was in January. Just one day, all of a sudden, one of our, someone was trying to buy something. The merchant account failed. And then another one failed. And we had nine merchant accounts. If you had merch accounts, have them in different banks. That's the story for the other day. But I had nine merchants accounts, we won a bank. And literally in one day,

they turned them all off. And so we couldn't process money. Like nothing could happen. Our sales guys are like, I'm trying to run someone's car. Like, people wanted to give us money, but they couldn't. And, you know, you have 100 employees. You have payroll coming every 14 days. It's like, that stress. I remember calling the credit card company. And it was, um, passes like 2010, I think.

And there was this huge merchant crackdown where Visa and MasterCard, anyone who was doing any kind of continuity offers, they just shut them all down. So it wasn't just me. It was hundreds and hundreds of people all got shut down the same day. And I remember calling the merchant account. And it couldn't get hold of them for like two or three hours. Finally got a hold of me. I was like, I got shut down.

What's happening? And they're like, if you got shut down, down. It means that you're never going to process again. The guy hung up on me. I was like, what? And it was just like the scariest thing. And so, and then my whole team is freaking out. I was like, everyone, go home tonight, come back tomorrow. We'll have a plan. So everyone goes home and then next day, come back. I'm like, I have no plan. I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, tell people to set his checks or like, I don't know, try to figure out everything. And what's crazy is, I thought everyone my team was like going to be like, we're here together.

We're going to win this thing. And what's crazy is like as soon as people found out that there might not have a check. Maybe a check could be or something. They all just started leaving. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought or like my friends just left and disappeared. Even like family members who like just walked out on me. It was like the weirdest thing. Then we had a group of people who stayed behind and I still have money to pay for them, but I'd come back. And so every day, I'd wake up in the morning.

And the first thing I do is I just sell myself on like, okay, we're going to do this. We got, you know, like sell myself. And I go in the office and I meet everyone together. And I'd like sell all of them. I'm like, this is going to work. We're going to try. You know, we try a new thing.

And we tried so many things. And it was like almost a year that. We would open a new merchant account. We'd process it. a bunch of money, but we processed too much, too fast, and they would freeze our account and hold the money for 180 days. It was just chaos. We could not get a break, and it took about a year of going through that, getting worse and worse and

worse. And then at the end of the year, it was the next December, January. I remember my dad, he wasn't doing my books, but he was watching my bookkeepers doing the books. He called me or sent me an email, and he was like, hey, I reviewed the books, and it turns out your bookkeeper has not paid payroll taxes in the last 12 months. She's been hiding it. She just, he doesn't have the money, so she didn't pay the taxes.

And he's like, you don't understand, like, if you don't pay payroll tax, it's not like a fine. It's like, they put you in jail for that, Russell. And I was like, what? I'm like, how much is our payroll tax? And he was like, I can't remember. It was like a couple hundred thousand dollars. He's like, if you don't pay this soon, you could go to jail. And I'm like, I don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Like, we're out of money. And I remember the next day we had a call center of like 40, 50 sales guys. They all just walked out the next day. They all quit. They mass quit together. So I lost my ability to generate money. I had no way to process money. And I owed $200,000.

I was going to go to jail. And I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail. So it's like, all right, what do we got to do different? Innovate. How do we change this? What do we got to do different? And just every single day. And it's crazy because it was like probably the most painful and scary time of my life.

In fact, I remember waking up one morning, just kind of lingering at my house, not wanting to go to the office. And my wife saw me. She could tell like I was not doing well. And I just where she grabbed me and like, pulled me down to the ground to our knees. And she's like, we need to pray. Like, we need to ask for help. And I was like, okay. And so I remember us praying.

It was just like, I don't know what to do. I'm out of options. I've tried everything. I need guidance. I need help. And I remember the first time I was willing to humble myself enough. And then it was go back to the office today and sell everybody else. I'm like, we're going to make this work.

We kept doing it. But it was crazy. Some of those things like in the moment of pain is like always like the hardest time. But then looking back, you realize that was actually God taking you down a very certain path, you know? Because it's crazy because we lost everything. We showed everything. We had to shrink to this little tiny office, like five or six of us from there.

We were trying to figure out to make money just to pay off the thing from there. I was doing different webinars every week, like rewriting my webinar, rewrite and getting better and better. Eventually, we had a webinar that hit that paid off all the taxes. I was like, I'm not going to jail. Woo-hoo. And I was like, okay, now we got to create another offer. And we went through that.

But it was in that pain. Like, that's where I met Todd Dickerson. Like, I would never have met him otherwise. And he became my partner. He's one who built click funnels. All these amazing blessings came because of that darkness that had to go through. I'm looking back now, it's like, even though that was the most painful, stressful time in my life, it also was the catalyst for,

everything we've built since then, you know, reframing that in my head and hopefully for anyone else who's going through the hard times of like, it's just a cycle. We all go through cycles and entrepreneurship. It's okay. And just know that if you keep showing up, you keep trying, like, you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go on. And the right people will show up, the right things will show up, even though it may seem hopeless at times. If you keep at it, you never know what's going to happen. We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this, because this information can truly change your life and theirs.

Now, I want to check in with you. Yes, you. Are you driven, but maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be? Do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence, or impact? Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want was a paycheck?

The thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom. Because that was me, and that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program, which already, changed thousands of careers in lives. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. AQ, adaptability, reinventing, and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have, but no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from

your career in life, go to leapacademy.com slash training. Check out this completely free training about ways to fast-track your career and you'll even be able to book a completely free strategy call with my team. That's leapacademy.com slash training. In the venture world, as I was investing in companies, we call it the near-death experience. Every founder has to go to what we call a near-death experience because only then you know that they can actually go through it and actually continue. And every single one will have that. The way I look at it in Leap Academy is this is the muscle you have to build in order to become the leader that you're meant to be. And I think this is why you became more creative. So I do want to hear that story because it's a

beautiful story of how you met Todd and how ClickFunnels was born. I have to hear that. So in that whole time, everything was falling apart and we're trying different offers and different things. I remember I went to this site is called flippa.com and it's like people who were selling their businesses and stuff. And I went to it. I remember there was a site for sell. It was called champion sound.com. And it was an email text message auto responder for bands. I didn't want to be selling the bands.

I'm like, if I bought the email text message auto responder, I could make a version for chiropractors and a version for dentists. And like, that's kind of the big idea. And so I took the rest of the money I had plus borrowing money to go buy this company. We buy the company. They try to transfer it over to our servers. And the guy who's transfer, it's like, your servers are Linux. We need Ruby on Rails. And I'm like, what does that mean?

It's like, it's a different platform. I'm like, what are you even talking about? And so I had to buy this other server. They installed it. Then the couple guys I knew the dev guys, like, that's like Chinese. I don't know to speak Chinese. I can't fix it. And so we tried three or four times to hire people to do Ruby on Rails, which was a brand new

language at the time. And they couldn't fix it. And I remember for a month, we were trying to make this thing work. And finally it was like, I just had to give up. And so, like, I remember just being sick to my stomach because, like, that was all the money we had. And I just burned it on a stupid idea that it wasn't going to work. That day, I emailed the server company, told them to shut down the servers because we can't afford to keep paying for it. And as I was, like, packing my bags, I was walking out of the office, I felt this really weird impression.

Email your list to find someone who can, who knows Ruby on Rails, who can help you. I was like, I had this tiny little email at the time of people trying to start businesses. I'm like, there's no Ruby on Rails developers. But I felt that impression. So I walked back in, turn my computer back on, send email. to my list. In fact, it's funny, like, Todd and I, we found the email. It's kind of crazy. I sent it out saying, like, I'm looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, message me back. I sent this out to my list, went home that night, and then I checked my email, and I get this

email back from this guy named Todd. And he's like, I'm a Ruby on Rails developer. I've been semi-retired for last three or four years. I got a side business system making pretty good money. But yeah, I'd be looking for partnership opportunities. So I just sent him login to the server. I'm like, here's the login. It doesn't work. Can you fix it? And that was kind of it. So the next morning, I wake up. And he's like, all right, I logged in. He's like, I fixed this, this and this. I added this. They're missing this.

They should do this. I'm like, all this stuff. I was like, whoa, okay, cool. And then that's how we met each other. And then for the next year, we started working together. And I didn't have money to pay him. And he knew that, but I was like, we kept talking about like, somebody will partner on something.

It would be cool. So he just kept helping on these different offers. That webinar that I did that paid off all the debt. He helped me to build the webinar platform that did that webinar. So he was like helping all these different pieces. I'm like, I can't pay you yet because I pay off the IRS. So he said, no worries. So I took all the money you made.

I didn't pay him. I paid off the IRS. But for a year, he didn't once ask me for money. He just, like, showed up every day. He was working full days. He'd fly to Boise and work on projects together and never asked for money ever. In fact, I remember about a year into the relationship one day, he was in Boisey and I looked over his shoulder in his email. And there are all these job offers for Ruby on Rails developers who are in his inbox. And Ruby on Rails, especially that was a really rare language. So there wasn't many people. And I was like, what are those? He's like, oh, just people try not to recruit me. I'm like, how much are they, what are they paying you? He pulled up a couple. And they were like,

half a million dollar year starting salaries for these different roles i was like you should take that i'll never be able to pay that much he's like no i don't want to work for those guys he's like i want to build something cool and so for the next year so we're trying different projects having like minimal success on little things here and there but we kept building these funnels it was the day the lead pages i think they got five million dollars in funding and he was flying to boisey so that morning he woke up he saw the lead pages he got five million dollars in funding he forwarded me the article and then he was flying to boise i wake up the morning i see the article i'm like lead pages I'm like, that's like the most simple software ever.

And by the time he gets the voice, he's like, I can build lead pages today. We could launch it tonight. Let's do it, like so excited. And then he asked the question before he's like, well, if I'm going to build lead pages, do want to add any other features? I was like, oh, yeah, I'd love you to do a sales letter and an upsell. And also like, we spent the whole week in front of a whiteboard mapping out what eventually became click funnels.

And we kept mapping out, like, what if we did this? Then it did this. And like, we mapped out this whole thing. It was like this dream. It would be the coolest thing in the world if we could build this. And I remember we had this domain. It was clickfusion.com. And we'd launched three different things off ClickFusion.

All of them had failed. And remember we got down. I was like, okay, we're going to call us in Click Fusion. He's like, no, that domain, that's this jinx. Everything you're doing to ClickFusion fails. We can't call it that. I'm like, what else are we going to call it? And he's like, well, it builds funnels.

We call like ClickFunnels. And so we looked in the domain name was available. So we bought it. I'm like, hey, it's called ClickFunnels. That day I was driving him back to the airport. He was going to fly back home. I remember as we were getting to the airport. He told me he's like, hey, if we do this, I don't want to do this as like your employee.

I want to do this as your partner. And for me, like, I'd been an entrepreneur for a decade in my life. I'd never had partners. I was scared of partners. I was just like, I didn't want to. And I was just like, I remember staying there for a second. And then just felt impressed. I was like, okay, let's be partners on this.

And I told people before, like outside of marrying my wife, that was the best decision I've ever made in my life, was partnering with Todd. And he flew home. He spent the next eight months building what became click funnels by himself. And then we came back. We ended up bringing another partner who built the editor and the UI. and we launched ClickFunnels a decade ago now, and it was the thing that took off

and changed my life, changed his life's changed millions of people's lives around the world now, and that's kind of the ClickFunnels story. Oh my God. What's beautiful, it's not just that it changed what you created, it's what you're making possible

for so many people and the ripple that that creates because they're creating these amazing things that then have this mega impact on millions or billions or I don't even know, which must be, like, the best feeling in the world. It's so cool. I mean, I think anytime you do business, like initially you do it, I don't know, I think initially we do it for ourselves.

Like, I want to start a business. I want to make some money. And then you start making money. And then really quick, that feels shallow. You're like, huh, someone I was expecting. When we started having our students, like people who are users have success, that's when it was like, whoa, that feels so much, you know, it feels so much better. In fact, I thought about it's like, when I was a wrestler, I loved wrestling,

getting my hand raised is like the best feeling in the world. And then when I had my kids got to be wrestling age, one of my son's names, Bowen, the very first year of wrestling, he would go to practice and matches. And he lost every match the whole year. It was so devastating. He had a twin brother who was winning all his matches. He lost every single match. And we tried so hard and worked so hard with him. And then the very last match of the season, he actually won.

And I remember getting his hand raised and he was jumping around. And I was like, nothing has ever felt better than watching him get his handwritten. That was the best feeling, like, so much better than me winning a match than watching him win it. And it's the same thing. Like, when I launch a funnel, it makes a bunch of money, it's like, hey, that's really cool. But I see some of our students do it. And they launch it, and they win a two Coma Club award. They have success or whatever.

Like, that feels so much better. It's so addicting. In fact, people always ask me, why are you still doing this 10 years later? Like, you could have retired 10 times ago. There's something about it, man. When somebody takes the frameworks and the software and they launch it and, like, you see it changed their life. It's like, that's the most, I don't know, addicting feeling in the world.

And so it's the best feeling watching people have success with it. It's been so fulfilling and so much fun. And like you said, you continue for a decade now. And I think what interesting to see is also to view you is how you reinvent yourself, even within ClickFunnels, how you reinvent yourself, first of all, as a leader, that's somebody that can take something to this mega success, because I'm sure that needed a whole different mindset of money and leadership. Take us a little bit to how do you scale from zero to 100 million?

I just brag to you that we're one of the fastest-growing companies, but then after hearing you guys, I can't even say that. So how do you grow fast enough to be able to absorb that level of leadership and money risks and everything that comes with it? Oh, man, it is, I always tell people, I'm like, I feel like God will give you something. He wants to test your capacity, right? So give you something and like, what's going to happen? And then it's really heavy.

It's like lifting weights, right? The capacity is really heavy, but then you get stronger because of it. And they give something more, it's harder, and they get stronger. stronger because of it. Even the challenges that we still, we deal with today, I'm like 10 years ago, those would have destroyed me. It's like when you have a kid, right? Like, I've got teenagers now that are 18 and like, you know, when they're born, though, it's like there's little problems. They get a little bigger. But over time, you like, you grow with it. And I think we launched ClickFunels was so fast and furious. And I remember, I don't know, there's just so many things

happening that you don't know how to react. You're trying to figure them out. And like, but like it builds that capacity for the next thing, the next thing. One of the best examples is the very first year of ClickFunnels. We were a year into it. And I remember when we talked about I built click funnels. He was like, hey, the way I built it, it'll work for about 10,000 members or so. And then when it gets bigger, we have to change stuff. And I was like, I don't know what that means. But okay, so we launched it and it starts growing like crazy. It was interesting. All the other software companies we watched, they were growing by taking on VC money and then like using that to grow. And for us, we didn't have that. So we just, we would build

funnels and use those. And so we got really good at drinking our own Kool-Aid and building funnels to grow ClickFunnels. And anyway, it grew really, really rapidly. Eight or nine months state, it kept like having, like, we just go out for an hour or come back in or go out for a 10 minutes and back in. And there's just like, why does it keep crashing? Like what? And like, and Todd's up, you know, just Todd by himself. Todd and Dylan are two partners.

They're coding it. Like, it goes down and you're like, ah, you know, they're fixing it. And like it's got bigger, bigger. It kept happening more and more often. And I remember it was in Chicago speaking to Dan Kennedy event right before I was to speak, it was down. And I called Todd, I'm like, what's going to happen? He's like, oh, I'm working on.

I'm working on it. And I'm going on stage selling click funnels, knowing that it's down. I'm just so embarrassed. So I'm doing the thing. and I come back up and finally gets it back up before we're done. But then the next week, I'm flying to London. So I'm flying to London and go speak at this event. And the promoter invited my wife, my kids and stuff.

So we're flying overseas. And so we're up in the air for, however, I made, 15 hours. And when we land, you have to hook the SIM card into your phone or whatever back then. So I put a SIM card in. And also my phone starts, like text, messages, Foxers, Skype, many, like, every messaging platform, my phone's just blowing up. And these are people who are angry. Like, I'm going to kill you, Russell.

You owe me money? Like, it was inside. I'm like, what is happening? So finally I called taught him, what's happening? And all I remember he said, it was down. And it was like, and if I'm able to get it back up. And I was like, what? Like, if?

Like, are you saying this is not something? Like, and I was just my heart dropped. And I was like, what do we do? And at that time, I've been down like two or three hours. And people are upset all of our customers. I like, I don't know what to do. Like, I'm a first time CEO. And so I take my wife, my kids, the hotel.

And I wait two rooms. I'm like, can you take all the kids and just, I need to be in the room for a minute by myself. And I'm sitting there. I'm like, what do I do? And like, every instinct of me wanted to hide and just like, hide, you know? But I was like, we're down. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know we're going back up.

And so I remember we had this little Facebook group at the time. I remember going live in that Facebook group. And I was like, hey, we're down. And I don't know why. And this is not acceptable. All my business are down. All your business are down. We're hoping to fix it.

We're trying all these things. And like, I was just very vulnerable and very, I told them the truth. I didn't try to hide it or try to justify. I'm like, this is not good. This is our fault. I'm so sorry. We're going to figure this out. because I was like up front and didn't try to hide it

it was really interesting because the community rallied behind us and everyone and there are a lot of mad at people obviously but as a whole everyone's like no worries like we got you we're all praying for you all these sorts of stuff and in eight hours they had to rebuild the database on this other place and they copied everything over and somehow I'm relaxing eight hours they got it back up live and it had been rebuilt on this new platform that which is way more stable and what's crazy is I was assuming we lose half our members or most you know

I thought everyone was going to leave us and what's crazy you look at the daily cancellations like it didn't change. Like, it was just almost nothing could happen. And it drew the community closer to me and to us and everything. And then from there, we kind of made that like a standard. Like, hey, when things are happening, we're vulnerable, we'll tell people about it. Because obviously, people respected that and they needed that.

So I don't know, you don't learn that stuff. It's just in the moment, it's like, what's the decision? And sometimes, and that time I made the right decision. Tons of times I made the wrong decision. You learned the other way to you like, that was stupid. I should not have done that, you know? But it's like, that's this whole game. Like, you get thrown into the fire.

And especially as you're going through right now, you guys are growing like crazy. you feel it's like these problems poppy break what's happening you know for us people when click phone started growing like everyone's building their sites on the red what's crazy is i don't know i can't monitor 10,000 people's sites or 100,000 people's sites so we have people like doing illegal stuff and like we're getting letters from the FBI because we're hosting websites like why are you hosting these things i remember taylor swift sent us a huge lawsuit suing us because someone was selling Taylor swift merchandise on their side like i'm getting these things in the mail i'm like i don't like am i going to jail. I don't even know. I don't who these people are. We're trying to find their

sites and turn them off and apologize to the FBI and all these things like, you know, so it's like, but you just keep showing up and going through it. Eventually, like, you get thicker skin and you get capacity and they're like, okay, now we can handle these kind of problems and you get things in place, but it's not something you can prepare for. Like, you got to jump into the fire. And by doing that, God will qualify you. It always says, like, he doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call, right? Like, you jump out there, and by just being in the storm, that's how you learn the things. And that's why I love entrepreneurship. One of my friend, Steve Larsen said, it's the greatest personal

development course in the world as being an entrepreneur because you jump out there and it's like you get to learn so much in such a short period of time and um but then in the day like man like what a great growth tool like how much do you grow by doing that versus anything else in the world so one of the beautiful stories i think also that you share and i showed it a little bit with you you talk about the dream 100 which really impacted me when i showed that earlier and you talk a little bit about how you went ahead and created this amazing relationship with Tony Robbins. And also how that helped you with some really interesting decisions for yourself with ClickFunnels and leading it.

So can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, there's so many stories around that one. The concept of Dream 100, as you know, was when we launched ClickFunels, I'm like, we can go out there and try to get every single customer on our own, but there's already people who've already congregated those customers together. If we can be able to relationships with them and they promote to the list, you know, one person says, yes, they might promote it to 100 or 1,000, or 100,000 people, right?

So we started building these relationships. And so one of the ones early in my career I started building was Tony Robbins. And for a decade, I was serving him and every time he'd ask for something, I would jump on and jump a call with this team and help him through things. And when our Funnel Hacking Live event came out, our third Funnel Hockey Live, he came in was a speaker, which was like the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that's kind of how it started. We built that relationship.

But I was like very careful never to ask him for anything. I was like, I'm going to show up and serve him and keep serving him. And eventually something cool happened from it. And I remember that him and Dean Graciosi were going to launch a company. it was about masterminds and stuff. So I remember I went and I bought, we bought Mastermind.com for, I think I spent like $600 grand on it.

And I give it to him as a gift. Like, here you go, I hope you guys use this for your business. And they're like, what? And then they actually made me a partner. So we were a partner in that company together for a couple of years. What was cool about is when they launched it,

we would help promote every single year. And the affiliate prize was like, you get to go to these retreats with Tony Robbins. The very first one was in Fiji. And it was like you'd come to Tony's resort in Fiji. And then you get to be in this mastermind. You can ask Tony any question you want. And it's cool. In fact, we've done it. I think I've done it five, four or five years

I have a video of each one. We filmed and captured and made these really cool YouTube videos. So I flew out to Fiji, my wife and I were in this mastermind. And it was this time of life. I was like, click phone was growing, but I don't what to do. And like, who do you ask questions like that? I don't have people in my world that, you know, my family that have done this kind of thing. And so it was kind of cool to have a chance to ask me a question. Every year I could ask me a different question. That first year, the question was like, what do I do? Do I sell the company? Do I not? Like, what does that look like? And he, I remember he said, he was like, why would you sell the company?

You love funnels more in anyone in the world. He's like, when someone says the world, click funnels are funnels. Like, you light up like, you're going crazy about it. And he's just like, selling something sounds exciting in the moment. But he's like, if you don't have the next thing that you're passionate about, you'll end up unfulfilled and not happy. And he's like, instead of selling it, what if you shifted how it was? And you shifted from you being the CEO and the person running it to like,

you go on the board and, you know, give yourself a job inside the company that you're passionate about, like for me building funnels. And then hire someone to be the one in charge. You don't have to be that person. And it never really crossed my mind. I was like, huh, you know, after that's the first time I went and we actually found someone. It was my partner, Dave Woodward. He became the CEO of the company.

He was able to take those things on and run it. And I got a chance to focus on stuff I love doing, you know? It was super cool advice. And I said every year ago back and I get asked Tony another question about some aspect of my life or the business. And it's been really special spending time with him and getting to know him and then getting feedback directly from him. You know what I mean? Like someone who's influenced so many people and be able to say like, here's where I'm

stuck again. Like, how do I get out of this conundrum I got myself into, you know? Anyway, it's pretty cool. We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, every cool opportunity you will ever find is most likely from a hidden market. It's the people who think about you when you're not in the room and bring the right opportunities to you.

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search on Google leapcon 26. It's L-E-A-P-O-N. Don't miss out where the most impactful leaders hang out in February. So go to Leap Academy. dot com slash leapcon i will see you there i'll urge people you know if you're listening to this i think this is a video that really did impact me i think you call it dream 100 but i think first of all just the patience that you have in terms of yes i want everything yesterday that's who i am right and it's not going to happen yesterday it's not going to happen tomorrow either so building that relationship takes time and also just a lot about giving and finding the wins for them.

John Maxwell calls it the People's Pile. There's a big people's pile with Tony Robbins. They told you, for me, it was Richard Branson. Like, we need to somehow learn how to break that people pile to create that connection. And I think the idea of spending $600,000 was just like mesmerizing for me. But seriously, like the patience together with the investment, because that's exactly what I've done was Richard Branson to some extent, just not with that level. And I think that just taught me. me so much. Oh, yeah. I think it's interesting. People like to do business with people they like.

So it's like, how do we build an actual relationship? And I'm sure you get this as well. I get all a time where it's like people will come into my world and you can tell from the get, go, they're there for like something for them. So like for me, it's like I'm very guarded. I was hard to get through my gatekeepers. It's just like some people who come to me, it's like they always have an ulterior motive. And so for me, it's like, I never want to be the guy who someone gets that feeling. So I'm like, how do I just show up and just literally figure out how to be their friend? How can I help them? From that's when the best stuff happens anyway, right? But it's not coming in like, what can I take from this person?

It's like, what can I give from this person? And hopefully something cool happens. If not, I'm cool with that too. But like, and I think that's the key. And everyone's looking for like the short term, like the hit, the win really quick. It's going to be the thing versus like, you know, there's a book called dig your well before you're thirsty. It's that's like digging your well. Like just building relationships.

Like whenever I talk about Dream 100, people like, so when do I start the Dream 100 process? I'm like yesterday. Start building relationships. Like it's your business become infinitely better. Like if I lost everything tomorrow, within 30 days, I'd be back on top. I call a dozen people who I got great relationships with. and it'd be fine. Like, there's no, I don't have fear of that anymore because I've built deep relationships

with a lot of different people. And I think that's what people are missing is they're looking for this. I'm going to get something from this person, therefore I'm going to do this thing. And it's just like, that's not how you win in the long term. Maybe in the short term you may trick someone or get something out of it. But the long term is like putting in the effort, putting in the time, you know. And I think that's the key that most people miss. I love that you said that.

I'm sure you're getting a thousand. Hey, can you make me this introduction to the president of Starbucks or Shopify? No. Can we move on? Like, I don't know you. So you're right. It's really about how do you see things. But I think, again, it's that give, give, give mentality. How do you find win-wins for them? Because if there is no win, you know, it's not going to make sense. And I think also your ability to put yourself in a room with people who are just so smart that will force you to leap, if you will, right? No fun intended. So one of the very first events I went to, it was Arm and Morn's big seminar. And I was there, and I met this other kid.

I can't remember his name now. He had an interesting name. But I remember we were about same age. He might have been a year older than me. And I remember Armand made an offer. It was like a $25,000 mastermind. And the kid ran the back and he bought it. And I came back and I was like, first off, how do you have $25,000 to buy that?

I couldn't comprehend that. I was like, why would you buy that? And he told me something that was so simple and so powerful. He's like, there's two ways to get the top Russell. You can work your way and you can buy your way in. He's like, I just bought my way in. He's like, now I'm in the room. I have a relationship.

I get those people, and he's like, that's worth $25,000 every day of the week. And for me, I was like, oh, my gosh, I'd never, what's it going to tease me for this worth $2,000? I was trying to figure that out. And it's like, no, no, like, how do you get in the room, like with the people? Like, you work your way, which takes a lot of time or just buy your way. And after I learned that from him, I was like, okay, same thing. Like, how do I buy my way in?

You know, like, for the Tony thing, like, I knew that the affiliate prize was to go and to be in Fiji with them. Like, I couldn't buy that. There was no amount of money. So I had to work my way. And so, like, I went and I promoted and we sold a bunch of stuff to get in that room. Like, I need to figure out. Other times, in fact, here's a funny Richard Branson story.

You probably don't know about me. 17 and 18 years ago, he did, him and his mom did an event called the Rock the Casbah. And somehow I got invited to Rock the Casbah event, which was weird. I'm in this room with like all these famous people and entrepreneurs. And they were doing an auction. And during the auction, they're bidding a bunch of stuff. And one of the auction items was to get your name on the side of a Virgin airplane. I was like, that would be awesome.

And so I started bidding on that. And I started bidding. And during this bidding wore me and Dean Greene, Rossiosi ended up getting in a bidding war over this plane. And we're going back and forth and back and forth. And eventually I stopped at 45,000 and Dean bed 50. I was like, I'm out. My wife's like, stop raising your hand. So I stopped. And then Branson comes on stage is like, who is it in 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane too. And I was like, yeah. So he came on stage. You got pictures with me and Dean and Richard Branson and all the stuff. And on the side of one

the planes that says dot com secrets air to the state because of that. But like, I can't remember I'm going with the story other than like, that's how I got to know. Like eventually I met Dean. Eventually I I met Dean a year later or something, and it was kind of like, this thing's like, who's this guy? And I was like, hey, you don't probably remember me, but do you remember this? I showed him the picture of him on stage with the plane. I was like, that's me. He's like, you're the guy I got the bidding war with. And it was like, instant friends because of that, but open up all these different doors.

And anyway, so there's a random story. Oh, my God. I love that story. Oh, this is so good. And I love that sentence, work or crawl your way or buy your way. I just love that. You are pretty open, if that's okay, to go there for a second about something. something that usually nobody is. It's your difficulty to have children. And the reason why I would

love to go there for a second is because I think this is like for a lot of people, one of the hardest times in their life, and nobody can talk about it. Do you mind sharing it a little bit? For sure. It's been a little while now that we got, you know. I know. You start me with 18 year olds, yes. Such a blur. Yeah, but after a wife, I got married, we tried to get pregnant. We weren't able to for, and my wife's older than my wife's six years older than me. And so she had anxiety anyway of like, you know, wants to have babies before she's too old, stuff like that. And so we just weren't able to get pregnant and we didn't know what to do. And it's interesting because she was actually watching Oprah. And on Oprah, there was a doctor who was like a fertility doctor who happened

living in Boise, Idaho. I remember she called me that day from work. And she's like, I just watched this thing. There's a fertility doctor. He lives in Boise, Idaho. I'm like, what? This is crazy. And so we booked the thing and we went in there. And I remember first month went through the whole process, you know, took the shots, do all the, you know, everything step by step. And then nothing happened in the second months, and he went through the whole process, nothing happened. And then the third month, it was actually the same month I was graduating from college because I remember we went through the whole process, we did the test.

And then that day, my family and her family was coming in because I graduated the next day. So they were all driving in. And about two minutes before they pulled into the driveway, club was outside getting the yard ready or whatever. And the phone rings, I pick it up. And the nurse is like, hey, congratulations. you guys were pregnant.

I'm like, what? And I walk out to Colette, and I was like, you're pregnant. She's like, what? She starts crying. She wouldn't believe it. She's like, you know, and all of a sudden, we're sitting in front portions bawling her eyes out.

And all of a sudden, all the cars drive of our family. She's like, don't tell anyone. I'm like, don't tell anyone. I'm like, oh, sorry, we went inside and like, everyone came in and we're like just tears in our face from trying to this conversation, like smiling. And finally she looks and he's like, okay, just tell her. I'm like, class pregnant. Anyway, it's funny because I've shared that story.

And I've shared that story. It has nothing new with business. And I remember at that time I'd go to speak in events. And I would always tell like, I'd tell my wrestling stories. I'd tell stories about my business, stuff like that. And it was weird because when I would sell something, like people would buy it from me, you're usually like athletes and people who are very similar to me, right? And I remember for some reason, one of it I'm talking.

And all of a sudden, like, I just feel some impression to tell the story like my kids. And I was like, what? Like, and I don't know why I start telling the story and I get emotional on stage. I'm crying and just talking about how grateful I was for that doctor who was willing to like put themselves out there to, like, get on the Oprah show. It's not easy to get on. Like, they go out there to get themselves on Oprah so that, because their message changed my life.

That's why I love entrepreneurs because, like, everything good in my life came because some entrepreneur risked everything to figure out how to, like, change something's life. And so for me, it's like, that's been my mission. So I shared that. I was, like, bawling it. And I tell a whole story. And then at that event, it was crazy,

seeing the people that bought for me. They were like, the athletes still bought for me. And I was like, wives and mothers and families that are buying my stuff. And I was like, how fascinating? Like, when you're willing to, like, to share. parts of yourself that most people won't willing to share. What's crazy about that is it opens you up where now people, they will connect you to different levels because like, wow, that person went through what I had to go through. Or like, what I'm going through right now or something and you're able to bring

people into your world. And I think for anyone listening, like, one of the most powerful things you can do is like to tell those things of your life that are harder that may not make sense. But when you do that, like, that's how you build actual connection with your audience when you're willing to share those that most people won't. It comes away. Everyone wants to share the highlight real. It's like, talk about the stuff that's real, and then that's when people will come to you. And so, yeah, that's why I show that story, because again, for me, it's like, that's why I do what I do, because I know what one entrepreneur can do, how they change my life. And if I can help one other entrepreneur helps change someone else's life, like, what gets better than that? Nothing. That's incredible.

And I think that is really, really, really inspiring to hear your level of authenticity and just honestly, because I think it is missing in a lot of the leadership that we see today. But I also understand that it's easier to tell the stories from the scars, not from the wounds. When it's really, really, really open, it's hard. You need to sometimes let it scar a little bit. So maybe based on everything. And again, you write a ton of books. I have one here. I have a trillion others on my audio bowl. Like, how do you do it all? And what would be an advice to people are listening or to your younger self based on all of it. Oh, man.

Well, I'm able to do it all because I've got a great support network and team around me to be able to do what we're doing at scale. Like, you know, I've got an amazing wife at home who takes care of the kids who make sure that the home's great. I have an amazing team here in the office that helped support me. I didn't mentor when I first got started. He said something so powerful. He said, he's like, there's two types of people in the world.

There's people really good at starting things and people are really good at finishing things. Like he said, figure out who you are and then surround yourself with the opposite. And I was like, I'm really good starting things. I'm really bad at finishing things. And so if you look at my company, there's me who start stuff, and I got 400, you know, 399 other people who are just finishing the projects behind me. And so, for me, it's like I get to work on the stuff I'm most passionate about. But I know that if I'm going to write a book, I'm going to do something.

It's like I got to cut time out from other things. Like I got to make sure the team's in place. Okay, everyone's in the place, cool. I'm going to go deep. I'm going to spend the next 90 days. I got to work on this project over here. You know, right now we're in the middle of a big project. And so everyone's blocking and tackling so I can focus on getting it all done.

Because in a week from now, a week from today, actually, we're rolling out this new offer. So it's like, that's what we're all encompassed on. But it's just having a really good team of people around you who also believe in the mission, who are capable, who can pick up the reins around you so that you can do the things. And then I think it's really focusing, what are the biggest leverage impact points that you can do in your business, right? For me, it's like there's a lot of people that can do operations, they can do meetings, they can be a CEO. But there's only one person that can write my book, right?

It's me. So it's like, one person can do the video. It's got to be me. Like, those are the pieces that are unique to me, like my unique skill. I think for everyone, it's like understanding what your unique abilities are and figuring out how to build a team around you so you can focus on your unique abilities and your team can focus on their unique abilities. And when you can do that, everyone's like, focusing on the unique abilities, that's when things can blow up

and things can grow and things can scale. It's when you're not doing your unique ability, other people aren't doing theirs, they just feels hard and it's not fun and it's just like miserable. But when you get where everything's going the right direction, then it's just, it's exciting, it's fun. Like everyone enjoys what they're doing versus, you know, the other side. So I think for me, it's just to have an amazing support network and then trying to double down on the things that are your unique ability that no one else can do that you can do.

And then, like said, leverage impact. For me, it's like, of all the things, like, we've launched hundreds of courses and funnels and offers and events and everything. But, like, for me, the things that have made me the most money have the most lasting impact, like click funnels for sure, my books for sure. People don't come to me like, Russell, I bought your course four years ago and changed my life. And then no one ever says that.

They always say, I read your book and it changed my life. So for me, like, books are such high leverage, high impact. Like, I'm willing to spend a lot of energy there because I see the results that. come on the backside of those more than almost anything else I do. So that's what I love. I love doing them. Even though I'm in the middle of a book right now, I'm spending almost four years on it. It's painful. It's like giving birth to a really fat, overweight baby, but it's like, I know what it's done. It'll be like the next thing that people tell me is the thing that changed the life. So it's like you're birthing this book. Well, I'll be reading it for sure because

I read every single one. But seriously, Russell, anything else that you would want our listeners to hear about you. A lot of people struggle in business because they're trying to figure out how to make money. And like, I always tell my audience, I'm like, if you're coming to my world or your world, like, if you're in this business, like, my guess is that it's not just because you want to make money. It's because you've heard what my friend Alex Sharfen calls it the call the contribution. Like, I want to contribute more. I want to, like, you feel like call the contribution. And I'm a big believer. Like, if you felt that call, it's not just like some magic feeling or like butterfly. I believe that we're all called of God, right? They were all called

to serve a certain specific group of people. And it's based on like, yes, our talents and our things we're good at, but also like the things you've gone through, like the pain, the scars, the trials, the frustration, the stuff you had to go through, you overcame. And because you overcame that, you know how to do that, right? And so the call of contributions, typically, like, you went through a whole bunch and you've become something great. You can change other people's lives. You've been called to serve this group of people because of what you've gone through. For me, when I realized that's what it was, when it shifted for me, like thinking how to make money to make, I feel like God's called me to serve this group of people. Like, it changes

everything. Then it's easy to get through the ups and the downs and the hard stuff because you're like, these are the people's lives that I'm supposed to be changing. And I think you know, for the final things for people, just if you lean into that and realize that it's not just you try to make money, but it's like there's something bigger that you're striving towards someone's life, you're changing. It changes the dynamics of it. It makes a business fun.

It makes it so that during the hard days, the hard times, like you can overcome those things. I think when you make that shift mentally, like everything else changes for you. I totally agree. Russell, this was so, so, so inspiring. Thank you so much for everything. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It's fun watching what you're doing.

I'm proud of how fast you're growing. It's so exciting to see. I love watching entrepreneurs have success. It's the best. Remember this episode is not just for you and me. You never know whose life you are meant to change by sharing this episode with them. And if you love today's episode, please click the subscribe or download button for the show and give it a five-star review.

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