Living The Red Life - From Potato Guns to ClickFunnels: Russell Brunson’s Billion-Dollar Journey

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Russell Brunson, a legendary marketer and entrepreneur, offers listeners a journey through Russell's inspiring story, starting from his early days of discovering online business ventures to co-founding the revolutionary ClickFunnels. Learn how Russell’s passion and dedication to developing entrepreneurs made ClickFunnels a significant game-changer in the digital marketing landscape.In this enriching episode, Russell Brunson shares invaluable insights into the elements of successful marketing funnels, entrepreneurial perseverance, and fostering community engagement. Delving into the DNA of thousands of successful offers, Russell provides a roadmap for increasing conversion rates and mastering the art of upselling. Learn about "OfferLab," his latest venture to revitalize collaborative marketing efforts. Through enriching dialogues, discover how Bruno’s life experiences shape his current endeavors and what the future holds for this visionary entrepreneur. Whether you are a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned marketer, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge from one of the industry's foremost experts.Key Takeaways:Discover the journey of Russell Brunson from selling potato gun DVDs to founding the billion-dollar company ClickFunnels.Understanding the anatomy of a successful funnel through solid conversion strategies and effective upselling techniques.Explore the concept of "OfferLab" as a transformative platform for affiliate marketing and entrepreneurial collaboration.Insights into scaling a business effectively by incorporating vital operations and HR functionalities.Emphasizing the balance between personal life and entrepreneurial success as key to sustainable longevity in business.Notable Quotes:"No success can compensate for failure in the home." — Russell Brunson"The first time that somebody pays you for something you made, you're like a stranger on the Internet." — Russell Brunson"Developing entrepreneurs...they're my people, so I love to serve." — Russell Brunson"Enjoy the journey more along the way." — Russell Brunson"It's fun watching people...making insane amounts of money." — Russell Brunson.Connect with Russell Brunson:InstagramFacebookYoutubeWebsiteClickFunnelsConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

I have a true marketing legend sat here today. Russell Brunson, Russell, thanks for coming. Welcome. Yeah, man, great to be here. Russell Brunson is a marketing legend and bestselling author, celebrated for co-founding ClickFunnels, the software that made sales funnels accessible to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. With decades of experience, Russell continues to lead the digital marketing world, empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. You know, you're constantly bringing ways, I think, to get the community more engaged, because as you know, you can have the best training plan in the world,

but if people aren't using it, that it's never going to get there. I look at my business always is like developing entrepreneurs. That's right. They're my people who I love to serve. So everything from our coaching programs to the old books, success books, like everything we're doing is like to help entrepreneurs. And I was like,

what's the next thing? Like what do entrepreneurs need more? Biggest things you've seen over thousands of successful funnels and offers come through click funnels. What are some key, you know, denominators of success? The people are the most success are ones who have, they have kind of two things.

They have one really solid funnel that's like, They're like a really good conversion funnel that's, that's just like they can put paid ads on, they can turn it on and convert. And they spend a lot of time like tweaking and just adjusting it, especially as ad costs keep going up. It's like a constant. So that thing's happening. But then when they're getting the customers and stuff, the mistake a lot of people make is they just.

My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. And I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill. Take the Red Pill. Join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I have a true marketing legend sat here today. Russell Brunson, Russell, thanks for coming.

Welcome. Yeah, man, great to be here. So I'm so excited for this. You don't really need an introduction. But I would love to just start with, like, you know, you built arguably the biggest or one of the biggest companies in our industry and been a pioneer for so many years, for so many people. But I'd love to go back, and I know your story, but it's a very fun story and relevant

to Boise. So can you start with how it all came about? Yes, I was in school, actually wrestling in Boise State University, and met my wife, fell in love. We got engaged, and then I realized I didn't have a job. And I was wrestling, and I'm like, my dad was like, so how are you going to support her? And I was like, huh, I thought about that.

Maybe I should have thought about it for a proposed. So I was like, I figured I'd make money. So I went on Google and typed in how to make money online. That started the journey. And for next little while, I was trying to hold. bunch of different things. Well, what year was that, roughly? That would have been, man, 2002, 2003, or something like that.

Yeah, and back then there were a couple of people doing stuff online, but it was not, like today. It was very rare. People who were, most people thought they were scammers and stuff. And I started studying from some guys like Arm and Moore and Frank Kern, and Frank kept talking about this thing he called Underachiever Product. He's like, find this little product, it's an underachiever product, and you can create something and sell it. And I was like, I don't know what I could do.

I have no idea what I could do. And then it was spring break. And during spring break in Boise, you know, wrestling season just ended. All the wrestlers went down to Vegas and they're having fun. And my buddy and I were only two married guys on the team. So we were kind of stuck at home with our wives, like, not sure what to do. And my buddy Nate was like, we should go make potato guns. I'm like, what's that?

I mean, you say, yeah, these are potato guns and you can, you build them out of PVC pipe and you can go shoot potatoes like 100 yards. I was like, all right. And so we spent a whole week building potato guns and had so much fun doing it. and then the next day I was at school on Monday and I was thinking about what am I going to do to make money what could I create and then I was like wait what if what if I made a DVD teaching

people how to make potato guns and it was like my first big idea and I was like I wonder if anyone's looking for this I went online and back then there was a site called Overture and you could type in any keyword it would show you how many times a day it was being searched and it was like I think it was 18,000 people day

were searching for how to make a potato gun and I was like all right so I called Nate back up I was like hey man let's go just make a DVD of us, you know, making a potato gun. He thought it was so weird. But he agreed to it. And so we got a little hand cam quarter back in the day before we had iPhones.

We went to Home Depot and we filmed ourselves buying the pipes and cutting them and gluing them together and did the whole thing. It made a DVD out of it. And then put up a little website like I was learning and turn on some Google ads. And lo and behold, people started buying my DVD. And I was like, this is crazy. Isn't it fascinating to like, do you ever look back and go like the whole, like the whole? Home Depot visualization and then where you are now. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because I just, I couldn't figure. I mean, everyone, all these people were making money. I couldn't have figured out. I was like, if I just had an idea. And again, that happened, I was like, I finally have an idea. And then the coolest thing is the first time that somebody pays you for something you made. You're like, a stranger on the internet. It's money for a potato gun DVD.

It was, you know, my wife started burning him at home and we're putting in the thing and shipping them out. We're like, I can't be someone who bought this thing for us. So I remember I, you know, I was a personal trainer all my life, moved to America, and I launched a e-book because I'd lost to my clients. And I was sat on Clearwater Beach, on a deck chair. I'd launched my funnels and stuff. And I got my first $19 sale. And, yeah, it is a cool feeling that was time, right?

I always remember. So, and what I love to is I teach a lot. I'm like, don't fall in love with your first products. It's probably not going to be your last, right? It's kind of cool a potato gun course to click funnels, right? So let's fast forward to click funnels for sake of time You know talk about building that the growth You know it goes from an idea

Solving a problem to a massive enterprise Yeah well it was our is my problem Because after the potato gun then we launched another We did a speed reading business And a couponing business They're dating like we were just doing every You know so much fun But it was like a pain to like custom code every page

And design it I'm not technical so I can do anything And it wasn't like a big idea Everyone knew like everyone's like We didn't call them funnels back then But everyone knew they were trying to build something like that. It was almost like an arms race where everyone was racing. And this is like HTML or WordPress or whatever back then, right?

It's pre-W WordPress. Front page and Dreamweaver. Yeah, Dreamweaver. Yeah, I remember Dreamweaver. When that WordPress came out, we're like, this is insane. This is so cool. But yeah, everyone was trying to do that. And then I tried twice and failed trying to build a software.

And then eventually I met my business partner, Todd Dickerson, who lives out in Atlanta. And we had done a bunch of projects together. And then one day he was like, we should build, we should build this thing. And I was like, I've tried it before. Everyone's tried it. It's not going to work. He said, I think I can do it. And so we sat down from a whiteboard.

He flew out to Bois. We sat up for a whiteboard for a week, just mapping out, like, well, what if it did this? What if it did this? And then just like dreaming, like, what, you know, everything I wish they could do. And then he went home to Atlanta, sat down and started coding it about six months later. He's like, all right, log in and see if you can build a funnel. And I logged in. And it was super clanky and, like, it didn't work.

But it worked was just kind of like. You know, but it was the first time I was like, I was able to do something. I was able to, like, go on a page and like move something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Type something. It would show up. And I was just like, I felt for me as an entrepreneur, I feel like I had a hand called.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I can actually do this. And I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I knew that I was going to be a big deal. So we started, uh, we launched it, man, almost 11 years ago now. And first, it took a little while if you would catch on. People couldn't quite figure out like what I was talking about. Like these things called funnels and you do upsells and down sales.

I was trying to explain it. And the people that were marketers understood, but most of the world was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And so about the time I wrote my first book.com seekers, which explained like what funnels are. And kind of the psychology behind them. And we launched that book.

And after people started reading the book, then it took off. And it was like, oh, that's what these are. And then we were doing it. I started doing webinars. I was doing a webinar three or four times a week, just teaching about ClickFunnels to sell in it. And within a year, we did $10 million in sales

our first year. Within three years, we had passed 100, million and uh and last year we passed a billion dollars in sales on so it's yeah kind of crazy to go from home defa to that yeah but it's interesting though because you talk about the first idea is not your best idea but that first idea is what led me to the next a catalyst i've already known that i need his funnel or any of the scenes like by doing the process i think by just like people just do the process like um it that's when the ideas and the opportunities will start showing up as you're doing the well you learn the skills too right like you know now my main

folks is a TV movie studio, which is a big change from fitness to then like agency and celebs. But it's like all the skills I learned for 10 years makes like, I can do this easy. Well, now I've brought all the marketing skills to an industry that has never had it before or never done it. So it's kind of cool to have that. And I do remember too, like I was probably nine years ago, I signed up for click funnels. And before I just had, you know, these, I didn't, you know, a smaller business I had these developers in India and places, right? And you you'd be pulling your hair out trying to explain, like, move the headline. Yeah, yeah, and I still remember, like, dragging something, and it's like this, like,

you've just invented the light bulb, right? It's like, you drag it, and then you refresh the page, and it's there, and it's like, so it's cool that it still has, and it still has that now, I'm sure, for users, right? The first time they get it, it's like a simple thing. So, so let's talk a bit about now what's next for you. You know, you've obviously built this massive business. But now you're doing things that, you know, maybe fulfilling for you beyond that, right? Like the books and the education side that you still love.

And, you know, you're constantly bringing ways, I think, to, like, get the community more engaged. Because, as you know, you can have the best training plan in the world. But if people aren't using it, it's never going to get there. So I see Offer Labs. Can you talk about what you're up to these days? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I look at my business always is, like, developing entrepreneurs. That's really, they're my people who I love to serve.

so everything from our coaching programs to the old books success books like everything we're doing is like to help entrepreneurs and about a year and a half ago we were thinking about like with click funnels and you know when first launched click funnels there's nobody else now there's you know a thousand competitors and so it's just the water's all murky and there's a lot of people doing stuff and i was like what's the next thing like what do entrepreneurs need more and i remember back when i got started before there was facebook ads before there was my space before friends strike i got started back at the very beginning of this whole game and we had to do the way we got traffic was different And we had to do it all through partnerships. Sure. And collaboration and stuff like that. And nowadays in our market, it's kind of dead. Like everyone's in their own silos. Everyone's run their own things. There's not a lot of collaboration happening.

We're like, what if we built a platform where I could build a funnel? Let's say it's my product, but I can use your product as Upsail 1. I can use someone else's product, Lipsal 2. And we just put it all together. And then I can promote it and we all work together. And that's where the will start kind of thinking about how would that look. Like, what could we do? and so we want to make something

that's not going to be competing with everybody but actually would like unite the industry it doesn't matter if you're using my platform or any of the competitors you could still use you can still use what we were trying to create and so we built OfferLab it's a free platform and what's been fun is we did our official launch

just like a week or two ago I was going to come it's two weeks yeah last week two weekends ago 10 days ago out of a blur now yeah 10 days ago yeah and it was really cool because in the first like 72 hours that over 1,600 people put their offers on the platform. So it's cool.

Like, people that, like, you have won multiple Comic Club awards in their offers on the platform. Other people are new beginners. And so that's kind of cool. So it's like this huge platform of all these offers. And then affiliates or, you know, anybody honestly can come in and like, okay, I'm going to build a funnel. I'm going to have, you know, I'm going to take Rudy's first thing,

Russell's thing. You click four or five buttons. And in 30 seconds, you have a funneling you start promoting. And so it's fun we're seeing influencers now who have big followings and have gotten little sponsorship deals with every hell. Now they're coming in. They're like, oh, wait, what if I just go boom, boom, boom, boom, they launch a funnel and half people

in the off lab are paying hirms and commissions on their offers it's like so it's really cool watching like people who are traditionally getting not paid very much with the traffic they have also making insane amounts of money it's kind of like

Ali Barber you know I work a lot with Ali Barbar and they were so revolutionary when they like gave drop shippers the opportunity right it's like just unlocked this whole world so it's kind of like that more for the education info in some capacities all these

you know beginners can like because I think I think the biggest problem we beginers too is they spend six, 12 months trying to make the product and they don't realize it may not sell, you know, so now they can get their hands dirty and learn and then figure out what people actually want before you go make your product. Or you have a chance to sell, like, the best people's products in the world. I was showing, I was in a training the day because we're getting like Robert Kiyosaki stuff. So like the book in his game. And I was like, how many guys have read Rich Dad Porta and everyone's hands? I'm like, how many guys like the book?

Yeah. How many guys would recommend that book to another? Like all, raise it out. Like, oh, raise it out. Like, take his book, take the game's upsell. and then take my $300 course and then so-and-so's $400 course. I'm like, literally, 30 seconds,

you got a funnel. Now go online and hold your copy rich set up for an ad and be like, hey, this book's really good. If you want a copy, click link down below. That's all you got to do. 30 seconds to set it up,

you know, 25 second real and you're done and you can start making sales coming through. They're buying the book, buying the upsells and the downsels. And it's almost like, we just got,

I'm sure you've looked into this like viral clipping thing. It's almost like that for offers. Now he's getting all this traffic. Ooh, that's a good effort. That's a great way to like, influx from all these random people. And also with the viral clipping, when we did it, you actually, like, I hired a couple of

people from that were clipping because you start to take note of, like, selling. So, like, if he sees an affiliate or someone selling thousands of copies, it's a really cool ecosystem, so I think. So I got to ask you, just as we get to the end today, I can't have someone sat here that saw probably more offers and funnels than anyone, some funnel marketing questions. So just a couple of quick ones, right? like biggest things you've seen over thousands of successful funnels and offers come through click funnels what are some key you know denominators of success yeah um the the people are the most success are ones who have they have kind of two things like they have one really solid funnel that's like they're like a really good conversion funnel that's that's just like they can put paid ads on they can turn it on and convert and they spend a lot of time like tweaking and just adjusting it especially as ad costs keep going up it's like a constant so that that thing's happening but then when they're getting the customers and stuff the mistake a lot of people make is they just they just focus on that piece

that was me originally yeah yeah yeah and so it's people who are then taking the list that they're they're generating and then um i call it a dramatic demonstration so you can be a webinar or a channel or something fun where it's like an event that's happening and um the events do a couple things more like it gets your list the buyers like re-engage or re-excited like people think about offers people see every single day it's overwhelming so someone who come to my world and they buy something at least within 38th i'm doing some kind of event some kind of webinar or channel or something where they're getting engaged, they're coming on, and then we're spending time face-to-face, you know, we're building a relationship with them and rapport, and then we can sell them the

next thing. The next thing is pure profit, because you made all money caught up here. And so the people that are winning the best are the ones who are, it's like that one-two punch of like a really good front-in, you know, one funnel that's breaking even on media, and then they're doing these like monthly events with their audience just to like, to provide value, build a community and then make offers for the next things in their, in their business. and it's uh i think that's the biggest secret yeah i love that yeah i first business fitness i didn't have back end stuff so i did like eight million and then i did the maths that you know

i would have probably made about 24 i i free xed it that's kind of my rule of thumb and i was like i left about 24 million behind just on that yeah but uh okay so next rapid fire question you know there's a massive i've grown to about 130 employees and there's a massive change from like zero to 20 20 to 50 and then like beyond that What are some of the lessons you've learned growing a big, actual big company? Growing business, big companies hard because it's not like our skill set, right? It's not a marketing problem. I think when any businesses start, there's three core personalities that business needs,

and I only had two of the three for years, which caused a lot of our growth issues initially. So it's like, yeah, there's someone who's obsessed with the product. Yeah. If someone's obsessed with the marketing and someone who's obsessed with operations. And the operation one is one that we all hate as entrepreneurs, just like, what are they doing? Especially at the beginning, you're operating with you're making system for both of us, you know, and they seem useless at the beginning. But as soon as you have any success,

that's when the business gets really wobbly. And so what most entrepreneurs do, they try to sell more to cover up the sins and cover up the mistakes they made, right? And it gets bigger, it gets more wobbly and more wobbly. And that's where so many businesses crash. So for us, it was finally, like,

getting in good operations people and systems people and all that kind of stuff. And that was what gave us the ability to really start scaling past, you know, from 10 million to 20 to 50 to 100 and beyond, which is having those things. You know, HR, like all the legal, like all the things that aren't exciting about a business that I think they'd probably teach

in business college that we didn't go to. So I don't know. But yeah, those are things that actually make a lot more sense and you need them a lot more as you start growing. Good. Last question. So you're obviously, you're visiting us in Miami in our studio here. But you're also here filming because we're doing a series on iconic, infamous people that have had a lot of success in life and have a lot of lessons to share. So before we tee you up on the main set, what a couple of life lessons you could go back 20 years and teach yourself oh i think um this is one that i've been a believer for long time it's like when i was thinking about is uh that no success can compensate for failure in the home i think so many people start a business because they are trying to create something for

their family their life whatever and they get so caught up in the business that the family falls apart and so i think that's one big thing um i think uh understanding that like i don't know the last 20 years i feel like i'm going to rush like i got a hurry because something's about to happen and looking back now it's like I should just I wish I would have like enjoyed more along the way and just been like this is all going to be this is fun this is fun it's going to be I'm going to do this for 20 years for 30 years who knows yeah and not stress about as much which I'm trying to do a lot more nowadays and and and then just realizing like all my closest friends have come from the business like investing in people you know employees and partners and all that kind

of stuff good love it and last question what's next for you and you know your life and benches um man we we just have we have five kids and three of them have left the house now to go to college and stuff so we're my wife and down to two kids of the home so for us it's about um i think we're trying to figure like what do we want the next decade of our life to look like like the last decade was was like kids in business and chaos and so i think a lot of it is you know we're starting first time i've ever done is instead of just training people we're starting to do more partnerships like we're coming in and taking the resources and the teams we have we've got the best funnel building copywriters you know video team on the planet and we've only

of my own projects. It's now we're starting part of other people. We're doing some of theirs. And it's been fun to leverage our systems as opposed to just using them over and over again. And so, yeah, some of the fun things are working. Good. Well, guys, you know, awesome session that I've wanted to do for two years

since I launched the podcast. So Russell, thanks to coming in. And check the links below because we will be linking Russell's full episode on one of our shows that's going to hopefully, you know, dive even deeper into his life story and all of his lessons along the way. And, of course, check out Offer Labs and all the new stuff. he's up to Russell. Thank you, buddy.

Yeah. Guys, take care.