Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Russell Brunson: From Rock Bottom to $100 Million in 5 Years with ClickFunnels

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

At age 12, Russell Brunson was inspired to become an entrepreneur after watching an infomercial about making money. Over the years, he faced massive personal and professional setbacks, from losing 60% of his staff to battling infertility, financial struggles, and nearly going to jail. But instead of giving up, he turned each failure into a lesson, tweaking his approach and ultimately co-founding the multi-billion-dollar company, ClickFunnels. In this episode, Russell shares with Ilana how he transformed his toughest setbacks into the foundation of his thriving business, offering powerful lessons on resilience, success, and the impact of 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  (01:54) The Infomercial That Turned Him Into a Young Entrepreneur (05:29) What Wrestling Taught Him About Overcoming Failure in Business (07:55) Launching His First Business, The Potato Gun (09:52) Russell’s Rollercoaster Journey to His First Million (14:25) Key Lessons from His Toughest Year (21:27) The Birth of ClickFunnels (26:61) Finding Fulfillment in Helping Others Succeed (28:58) Leading ClickFunnels Through Its First Major Crisis (34:18) How Serving Tony Robbins Led to Lifelong Mentorship (37:32) Building Lasting Relationships with the Dream 100 Strategy (42:45) The Emotional Story of Russell’s Fertility Journey (44:38) Why Vulnerability in Business Can Lead to Unlikely Success  (46:51) Tips for Building a Winning Team That Drives Your Success (49:58) 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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbrunson/  Russell’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/russellbrunson  Resources Mentioned: Russell’s YouTube: www.youtube.com/@russellbrunson The 12 month millionaire Droplets: Vincent James's Unmissable Revelations by Vincent James: https://www.amazon.com/month-millionaire-Droplets-Unmissable-Revelations/dp/B0CXJGPXNN  Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You'll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Well-Before-Youre-Thirsty/dp/0385485468  Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training

I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non-venture backed tech startup in the world. ClickFunnels grew from zero to a hundred million dollars in just three years. Unbelievable. 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. My first time growing a company I was new, I was

young and probably hired too fast. At that point we had about a hundred employees. I had no way to process money and I owed $200,000 I was gonna go to jail. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like, my friends just left. I was like, I wanna quit, but I can't, cause I'll go to jail. How do you scale from zero to a hundred million? I always tell people, I'm like. ["Sandstorms of Love"]

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. Oh, 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 time to collect things. 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 to do inside businesses, but it didn't really cross my mind.

And then I remember one night, I think I was like 12 or 13 years old, and my parents always watched the news and I, and then my mom would go to bed and my dad would sit there working for a couple more hours. And usually they'd make me like, Russell go to bed. So I didn't 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 notice I was in the room, but he didn't make me go to bed.

He was just working. So I was like, I 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 a sudden this thing popped up.

And I had no idea what it was. I now know it's an infomercial, but there's infomercial and there was this guy on it named Don Lepre and he was like, me times a thousand, 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 is 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, I just kind of make it 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 gonna buy this like dad

I have to have it and they have 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, you start mowing the lawns I'll pay a camera five bucks a week or something. So I started mowing his lawn, other people's lawns. In about a month, I'd earned 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 stay that night. We watched news and we watched mash. And then the show came up and it came up again. And so as soon as it got to the part where they said, call now, get the special bonus, we called called and my dad bought with a 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 gonna 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, just, you can't stop thinking about it, right? And I remember my mom and I were at the grocery store and there was a magazine there. They still sell magazines called Small Bizzop Magazine. There's all these like cartoons on it.

So I'm like, mom, will 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 his 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 inch. So I number for free info kits. So I called them a free info kit. Next page, like you can make money

selling gold chains by the end. So I call every 144 info kits. I go in and 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 call it, anyway.

And there's the whole thing, but as a 12 year old kid, I would sit there, I would get home from school and there'd be a stack of junk like this big. And I would sit there, I would get home from school and there'd be a stack of junk mail like this big. And I would sit there and 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.

It's 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 at a young age. I didn't rise to 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, I started wrestling. It 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 it. So for next eight years of my life, that's all I focused on was wrestling. And then when I got done with my wrestling career, it's when I like, 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. Sports are so great for that. 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 podcasts and they'll 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 that they get stuck in this learning loop forever.

I think for me it's because I stepped on the wrestling mat a hundred times a year and I didn't win a lot of them. It's like I lose and then an hour later back on the mat again, the back end of the mat and like 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 junior year I wanted to be a state champ.

And the very first match of the year, I wrestled a guy who'd taken 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 gonna be a state champ, it's gonna be amazing. And my very first match I lost. And I remember my dad,

and my dad's 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 practice had 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 a 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. Cause I drilled it so many times, I knew how to do it. That's carried over into entrepreneurship. Cause like entrepreneurship, like I create offers all the time that I

launch and they fail and most people that would cripple them for me. It's just like, okay, well I failed. Like what do we do now? It's quick. Okay. Just change the headline, keep tweaking until it works. I think that's what people understand. A lot of times they give up on their business and it's just like a couple

of tweaks away from having success. They give up on their athletic career where it's just like you're a couple of tweaks 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 this entrepreneurship endeavor 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 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 who 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 he showed, he had like one teaching how to do dog training, one, like how to teach a parrot how to talk and one how to do like all these little niche products, they create these little eBooks and then they would go and they'd 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. 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 kinds 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 a potato gun? So he 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 you know we made these potato guns and we shot them and like all week 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. So we went 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 guns, 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, etc, etc. Can you share a little bit of that? Yeah, for sure. So when I got started 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. That was kind of how we started, right?

With the potato gun and other little products. And then I remember, we'd been married about a year. And I remember because we were on a family reunion, it was at this lake where there's no internet access. I remember going to the library to check my email. I'm sitting in this little 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 says something like, we did it or something with 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.

It's a thousand dollar course. And in the first 18 hours, we sold a thousand 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 the chair and I was just like so perplexed. My goal was like maybe in my lifetime, making a million dollars. I'm like, there's a guy who's just like me, a couple of 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 dollar course, he 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 wheels, 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 can 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 I was like, okay, very first thing I did is like, I need to make a thousand-dollar course, just like this guy did. It was my very first time I funnel hacked somebody, right? Before we called

it that. And so I went and I put together an event. I recorded it. I made my first thousand-dollar course. And when I launched on January 1st, it was like everyone on New Year's Day will want to change their life. Little did 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, my six 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, and I tried it again that year, but I got close again, missed it again. And 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, 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 direct mail guy and he'd made a hundred million dollars 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 will 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 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 12monthinternetmillionaire.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 axis of the interview and we sold a million dollars. 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 why 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 gonna try to do it. It was interesting because I think the reason a lot of people never make a million dollars they never try to make a million dollars right. It wasn't until I was like okay I'm going to try to do it this is the goal and I started working towards that that like all 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 couple 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 state champ I was just kind of there doing the things when I realized I want to be state champ I had something to shoot towards and I became really good. I think the same thing with this. And so that's why we created that the two comic club awards to give people something.

OK, 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 stories. And again, we have our millionaires 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 senior manager to senior,

senior manager, you know, like, go on, there's more to life. 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 his, to Russell's YouTube channel. Like his videos, to me, are 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 reel of 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 to film so much better. I'm going through that same thing as well. In fact, to set up that story is kind of funny 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 him, 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 unless they cycled at least once. He's like, cause otherwise they still believe they don't buy, they still drink with their own Kool-Aid. And I was like, oh, that feels a lot better. I just cycled like all entrepreneurs cycle. Like, okay, so it reframed it for me.

Hopefully it'll reframe for some of you guys. Cause 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 kool-aid, I thought it was so great. And then one day, it was in January, just one day, all of a sudden, one of our customers was trying to buy something and the merchant account failed, and the merchant account failed, and then another one failed, and we had nine merchant accounts. If you get merchant accounts, have them in different banks. That's the story for the day. But I had nine merchant accounts, one 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 were 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 a hundred employees, you have payroll coming every 14 days. It's like that stress. And I remember calling the credit card company and it was, I guess it was 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 I couldn't get ahold of them for like two or three hours. Finally got ahold of me.

I was like, I got shut down, what's happening? And they're like, if you got shut down, it means that you're never gonna 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's freaking out. I was like, okay, 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. It's, you know, try to figure out everything. And what's crazy, I thought ever my team was 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 check could be something they all started leaving 40, 50, 60 people who I thought

were like my friends just left and disappeared. Even like family members who like just walked out on me. And it was like the weirdest thing. And 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. I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this.

We got, you know, I like sell myself. And I go in the office and I meet everyone together. And I have to like sell all of them. I'm like, this is gonna work. We're gonna try, you know, we try try a new thing, we tried so many things. And it was like almost a year. We would open a new merchant account, we'd process a bunch of money,

but we'd process 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, it kept 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. He said 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 taxes, 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, well, how much is our payroll tax. And he's like, you understand, like, if you don't pay payroll taxes, not like a fine, like they put you in jail for that Russell. I was like, what? Michael, 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 can 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 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 gonna go to jail. I was like, I wanna quit, but I can't cause 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 cause 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. My wife saw me and she could tell like I was not doing well.

And I swear 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 and 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 that was 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 gonna make this work. And we kept doing it.

It was crazy. Those things like in the moment of pain is always like the hardest time. But then looking back, you realize that it was actually God taking you down a very certain path, you know? Because it's crazy because we lost everything. We started everything.

We had to shrink this little tiny office, like five or six of us from there, trying to figure out how to make money just to pay off the thing from there. Like I was doing different webinars every week, like rewriting my webinar, rewriting getting better and better. And eventually we had a webinar that hit,

that paid off all the taxes. I was like, I'm not going to jail, woohoo. And I was like, okay, now we gotta create another offer. And like, 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 the one who built ClickFunnels.

All these amazing blessings came because of that darkness that I had to go through. And looking back now, it's like, even though that was the most painful, stressful time of my life, it also was the catalyst for everything we 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 and 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 gonna happen in the venture world as I was investing in companies We call it the near-death experience.

Every founder has to go through 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 where everything was falling apart and we're trying different offers and different things, I remember that I went to the site called Flippa.com and it's like people who are selling their businesses and stuff. And I went to it, I remember there was a site for sale. It was called champion sound.com It was an email text message autoresponder for bands. I didn't want to be selling to bands I'm like if I bought the email text message autoresponder 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 they try to transfer it over to our servers. And the guy who's transferring is 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. Then the couple guys I knew, the dev guys, like, that's like Chinese.

I don't know how 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're trying to make this thing work and finally was like I just had to give up and so like I remember Just being sick to my stomach cuz like that was all the money we had and I just burned it on a stupid idea It wasn't gonna work that day I emailed the server company told him 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 try to start businesses. I'm like, there's no Ruby on rails developers like but I felt that precious I walked back in turn my computer back on Said emails my list and in fact, it's funny, like Todd and I, we found the email, it's kind of crazy. But 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 the last three or four years. I got a side business system making pretty good money, but yeah, I've been looking for partnership opportunities. So I just sent him a 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, someday we'll partner on something will 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 on all these different pieces. I'm like, I can't pay you yet because I have to pay off the IRS. So he had no worries. So I took all the money he 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, work on projects together, and never asked for money ever. And in fact, I remember about a year into the relationship, one day he was in Boise and I looked over his shoulder in his email and there are all these job offers for Ruby on Rails developers that were in his inbox. And Ruby on Rails, especially then, was a really rare language. So there wasn't many people. And I was like, what are those? He's like, oh, just people trying to recruit me. I'm like, how much are they, what are they paying you? And he pulled up a couple and they were like,

half a million dollar a 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 wanna work for those guys. I wanna 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 that LeadPages, I think he got $5 million in funding and he was flying to Boise that day. So that morning he woke up, he saw the LeadPages, he got $5 million in funding. He forwarded me the article and then he was flying to Boise. I wake up in the morning, I see the article, I'm like, LeadPages, I'm like, this is like the most simple software ever. And by the time he gets to Boise, he's like, I can build LeadPages 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 LeapPages, do you want to add any other features? I was like, oh yeah, I love you do a sales letter and upsell. And also like, we spent the whole week in front of a whiteboard mapping out what eventually became ClickFunnels and get mapping. I like what if we did this and did this and like, we mapped out this whole thing. There's like this dream. It'd 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 gonna call this thing ClickFusion. He's like, no, that domain, that's this jinx. Everything we do in ClickFusion fails. We can't call it that. I'm like, what else are we gonna call it? And he's like, well, it's like, it builds funnels.

We call it ClickFunnels. And so like, so we looked in the domain, it was available. So we bought it. I'm like, okay, it's called ClickFun builds funnels. We call it click funnels. And so we looked and the domain was available, so we bought it. We're like, hey, it's called click funnels. That day I was driving him back to the airport. He was gonna 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 wanna do this as like your employee. I wanna do this as your partner. And for me, like I'd been an entrepreneur for a decade of 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 sitting want to. And I was just like, ugh.

I remember sitting there for a second and then just felt impressed. I was like, okay, let's be partners on this. And I told people this before, 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 ClickFunnels by himself. And then we came back. We ended up bringing another partner who built the editor and the UI. And we launched ClickFunnels by himself. And then we came back, we ended up bringing in 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, changed millions of people's lives

around the world now. And that's kind of the ClickFunnels story. Oh my God. What's beautiful is 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. I want to start a business. 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, then really quick that feels shallow. You're like, huh, that's not what 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, it's like, when I was a wrestler, I loved wrestling. You know, my hand raise 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 name is 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 and 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 we were getting his hand raised and he was jumping around. And like, I was like, nothing has ever felt better than watching him use his hand. That was the best feeling, like so much better than me winning a match and watching him win it. And it's the same thing. Like when I launched 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 comic cup award. They have success or whatever. Like that feels so much better. 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 change 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's 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 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 a hundred 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. 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 then you do something more, it's harder and then you get 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, they're born though, it's like there's little problems that get a little bigger, but over time you like you grow with it. And I think we launched ClickFunnels 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 Todd built ClickFunnels. 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, 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.

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 click funnels. And anyway, it grew really, really rapidly. Eight or nine months in, it kept like having like, we'd just go out for an hour or come back in or go out for a 10 minutes and back in. And it'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 and like, it goes down again, like, ah, you know, they're fixing it. And like, it's got bigger and bigger, kept happening more and more often. And I remember it was in Chicago speaking to Dan Kennedy event, right before I was supposed to speak,

it was down and I called Todd, I'm like, what's gonna happen? He's like, oh, I'm working on it, I'm working on it. And I'm going on stage selling click funnels, knowing that it's down. I'm just like, this is so embarrassing. 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, I 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 many, 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, also my phone starts, texts, messages, Foxers, Skypes, like every messaging platform, my phone's just blowing up.

And these are people who are angry, like I'm gonna kill you Russell, you owe me money. Like it was insane, I'm like, what is happening? So finally I called Tom, what's happening? And all I remember he said, it was down, he's 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 in my heart drop and I was like, what do we do? And that time I've been down like two or three hours and people are upset, all of our customer, I don't know what to do. Like I'm a first time CEO. And so I take my wife and my kids to the hotel and I went to 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, 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 gonna happen, I don't know when we're gonna back up. And so I remember we had this little Facebook group at the time and we're 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, this is not good. This is our fault. I'm so sorry we're gonna 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 in eight hours they got it back up live. And it had been rebuilt on this new platform which is way more stable. And what's crazy is I was assuming we lose half our members

or most, I thought everyone was gonna leave us. And what's crazy, look at the daily cancellations, it didn't change. It was just almost nothing had happened. 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, okay, when things are happening, we'll be 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 learn the other way to 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,

especially as you're growing through right now, you guys are growing like crazy, right? You feel it's like, these problems pop up, like what's happening? You know, for us people, when clickbaits start growing, like everyone's building their sites on their bread. What's crazy is, I don't know, I can't monitor 10,000 people sites

or 100,000 people 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 site.

Like I'm getting these things in the mail. I'm like, I don't know, like am I going to jail? I don't even know. I don't know who these people are. We're trying to find their sites and turn them off and apologize to the FBI and like all these things like, you know, so it's like, but you just keep showing up and going through it and eventually like you get thicker skin and you get capacity and they're like, okay, now we can handle these kinds of problems and you get things. But you just keep showing up and going through it. Eventually, you get thicker skin and you get capacity.

And they're like, okay, now we can handle these kinds of problems and you get things in place. But it's not something you can prepare for. You got to jump into the fire. And by doing that, God will qualify you. He always says he doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the call. You jump out there and by just being in the storm, that's how you learn the things. But that's why I love entrepreneurship.

One of my friends, Steve Larson, said, it's the greatest personal development course in the world is 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. But then at the end of the day, man, what a great growth tool. 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 shared 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 ClickFunnels, 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 be relationships with them

and they promote to the list, one person says yes, they might promote to 100 or 1000 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 we just, for a decade I was serving him and try the anytime he'd ask for something I'd jump on and jump and call this team, like help him through things. And when our final HackinLive event came out, our third final HackinLive, he came in as

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 gonna show up and serve him and show up and keep serving him. Eventually something cool happened from it. And I remember that him and Dean Graciosi were gonna launch a company.

It was about masterminds and stuff. So I remember I went and I bought, we bought mastermind.com for, I think it's been like 600 grand on it. And I gave it to him as a gift. Like, here you go, I hope you guys can 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 it 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. It was 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, and we were in this mastermind, and it was this time of my life where I was like, ClickFilms is growing, but I don't know 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 them a question. Every year I get asked 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 said, he's like, why would you sell the company?

You love funnels more than anyone in the world. He's like, when someone says the world, click funnels are fun, 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'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 then you shifted from you being the CEO and the person running it to like, you go on the board and 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.

It never really crossed my mind. I was like, huh. You know, after that 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 I go back and I get asked Tony another question about some aspect of my life or the business that has 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? Can't under my got myself into, you know? Anyways, pretty cool. 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. We need to somehow learn how to break that people pile to create that connection. I think the idea of spending $600,000 was like, esmerizing for me, but seriously,

the patience together with the investment, because that's exactly what I've done with Richard Branson to some extent, just not with that level. And I think that just taught 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 the 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, because just like, some people in my life 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 to 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 is going to be the thing versus like, you know, there's a book called Dig Your Well before you're thirsty. It's that it's like digging your well, I just build a relationship. 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 gonna get something from this person, therefore I'm gonna do this thing.

And it's just like, that's not how you, that's how you win 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. Like, 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 gonna 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 pun intended. So one of the very first events I went to,

it was Armand Morin'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 the 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 he came back and I was like, first off, how do you have $25,000 to buy that? I couldn't comprehend that. But 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 to the top, Russell.

You can work your way in or 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 relationship. I can tell these 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 never, what's it gonna teach me for this worth 25,000?

I was trying to figure that out. And it's like, no, no, no. Like, how do you get in the room with the people? You work your way in, which takes a lot of time, or just buy your way in. After I learned that from000, 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 versus buy your way in. 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 Philip Prize was to go into being feed you

with them, like there's, I couldn't buy that. There was no amount of money. So I had to work my way in, you know? 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, 18 years ago, he did a, him and his mom did an event called the Rock the Casbah. And somehow I got invited to the 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'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 war, me and Dean Graciosi ended up getting into bidding war over this plane. 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. He's like, who was it at 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane too. And I was like, yeah. So we came on stage, you got pictures of me and Dean and then Branson comes on stage, he's like, who was it at 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane too. And I was like, yeah. So we came on stage, he got pictures of me and Dean and Richard Branson

and all this stuff. And on the side of one of the planes, it says.com secrets air to this day because of that. But like, I can't remember him going over the story other than like, that's how I got to know Dean. Like eventually 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 a 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. 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's okay to go there for a second

about 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, now that we got, you know... I know, you start me with 18-year-olds, yes.

Such a blur, yeah, but after my wife and I got married, we tried to get pregnant, we weren't able to for... And my wife's older than me, my wife's six years older than me, and so she had anxiety anyway, 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 to live 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 who 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, took the shots, do all the, everything step by step. And then nothing happened. In the second month, Cindy went through the whole process, nothing happened. And then the third month, it was actually the same month I was graduating from college. Cause I remember we went through the whole process,

did the tests and then that day, my family and her family was coming in cause I had graduation the next day. So they were all driving in and about two minutes before they pulled into the driveway, Cleo 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 are pregnant. I'm like, what? And I walk out to Cleo and I was like, you're pregnant. She's like, what? She was crying. She wouldn't believe it. She's like, you know, and all of a sudden we're sitting in the front

porch, she's bawling her eyes out and all of a sudden all the cars drive over our family. She's like, don't tell anyone. I'm like, what? She said, don't tell anyone. I'm 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 of her, she's bawling her eyes out and all of a sudden all the cars drive over our family. She's like, don't tell anyone. I'm like, what? She said, don't tell anyone. I'm like, oh, so we went inside and like everyone came in and we're like just tears in our face from trying this conversation, like smiling. And finally she looks at me and she's like,

okay, just tell them. I'm like, cool, that's pregnant. Anyway, it's funny cause I've shared that story. People are like, why would you share that story? It has nothing to do with business. And I remember at that time I'd go to speaking events and I would always tell like, I would tell my wrestling stories.

I tell stories about my business, stuff like that. And it was weird because when I would sell something, people would buy from me, usually like athletes and people who are very similar to me, right? And I remember for some reason, one of them I'm talking and all of a sudden like, I just feel this impression to tell the story of 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 it's 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. Cause like everything good in my life came because some entrepreneur risked everything to figure out how to to change someone's life. And so for me, it's like, that's been my mission. So I shared that and I was balling and I tell a little story. And then at that event, it was crazy seeing the people that bought from me, they were like, the athletes still bought from me.

And I was like, wives and mothers and families are buying my stuff. And I was like, how fascinating. When you're willing to share parts of yourself that most people aren't willing to share, what's crazy about that is it opens you up where like now people, they will connect to you at different levels. Cause like, wow, that person went through what I had to go through.

Or like, you know, 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 every 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. Um, when you're willing to share this with most people, won't it comes away, everyone wants to share the highlight reel. 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 share that story. Cause again, for me, it's like, that's why I do what I do. Cause 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 honesty, 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 Tresillian Others on my audible. Like, how do you do it all? And what would be an advice to people who 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 makes sure that the home's great. I have an amazing team here in the office that helps support me. I had a mentor when I first got started who said something so powerful. He said, he's like, there's two types of people in the world. There's people who are really good at starting things and people who 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 at starting things. I'm really bad at finishing things. And so if you look at my company, you know, there's me who starts 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 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, like right now we're in the middle of a big project. 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 on 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, so one person can do the video. It's gotta 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. It just feels hard. 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. And so I think for me, that's, it's just to have an amazing support network and then try to double down on, on the things that are your unique ability that no one else can do that you can do. And then like I said leverage impact, like 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 had the most lasting impact like Click Funnels for sure, my books for sure. People 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 why I love, I love doing them. Even though I'm in the middle of a book right now and 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 when it's done, it'll be like the next thing that people tell me is the thing that changed their lives. 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 Sharpen calls it the call to contribution. Like I want to contribute more. I want to like, you feel that call to contribution. And I'm a big believer. Like if you felt that call, it's not

just like some magic feeling or like butterfly. Like I believe that we're all called to God, right? That we're 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 to contribution is typically like, you went through a whole bunch and you 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 from me thinking how to make money to make, I feel like God's called me to serve this group of people. It changes everything. Then it's easy to get through the ups and downs and the hard stuff because you're like, these are

people's lives I'm supposed to be changing. I think for the final things for people, if you lean into that and realize that it's not just you trying to make money, but it's like there's something bigger that you're striving towards in life, you're changing, it changes the dynamics of it. It makes the 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.