Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Navigating Growth and Culture with the "Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

In another "blast-from-the-past" episode, I visit Jordan Belfort (yes the Wolf of Wall Street) on his "Wolf’s Den" podcast! Hear the story of how ClickFunnels was built and scaled, and how we focused on growing through partnerships, reinvesting in ads, and surging user engagement even during Covid-19. And since this occurred during the pandemic, we also discuss the crucial role of entrepreneurship in solving problems and driving change. Check out the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVEun1mHzKc Don't forget to check out this awesome deal from Mint Mobile! https://mintmobile.com/funnels And if you want to enjoy the Marketing Secrets Show ad-free, check out http://marketingsecrets.com/adfree Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I've got a treat for you.

So how many of you guys have watched the movie Wolf of Wall Street? If you have, you probably shouldn't have watched it. It was really bad. But at least something you should definitely not, I don't know, we'll leave that on the table. But, uh, way back in the day, I remember pre click funnels pre, man, this is probably 17, 16, 17 years ago. Um, I was going on a trip to the UK and, um, when I was leaving, someone had mentioned this book called the wolf of wall street. I never heard of it. So I downloaded the audio book and I listened to it on my flight, um, over the UK.

And this is like the beginning, like pre-ClickFunnels. We're still building a business. We were struggling at the time. And I remember listening to the book. And obviously, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be edited out. So if you're going to watch it or listen to it. But I remember I listened to the whole thing. And I remember getting to the UK and then just thinking and dreaming about what we were trying to do with our business. And during that time is when, um, the Facebook, the social network came out. I remember we watched

the social network and there was this one scene when, um, Justin Timberlake comes out and it's like, you know, it's cool. A million dollars isn't cool. A billion is. I remember thinking like someday it'd be so cool to build a company that could do a billion dollars. And then the flight home that I listened to, um, the second book from Jordan Belfort which is called I think it's called Catching the Wolf of Wall Street and so um anyway interesting books but like I remember listening to the audiobooks years before there ever was a movie and uh after that I started like you know trying to figure out who is this Jordan Belfort guy and there's obviously a lot of a lot of different directions but you can't um doubt that he's you know one of the best sales people of all time

that sells trainers and building teams and i remember afterwards i bought his course called straight line persuasion i studied it like a lot of really good things in there but it was an honor when i launched the traffic secrets book that um he actually hit me up and said hey can i have you on the podcast i was like yes you can that'd be amazing so i had this really cool chance to be interviewed by jordan belford the wolf of wall street um and just someone he was i super cool to me the whole time. I had really great experience talking to him and hanging out. And I just refound this interview recently. I was like, oh, this would be a cool thing to put on the podcast for those who haven't heard it or didn't hear it, you know, three or four years ago when it first happened. And hopefully get a ton of value out of it and have a chance to hear,

you know, Russell Brunson, the potato gun guy hanging out with the Wolf of Wall Street and talking business and sales and marketing and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. So that's it. I hope you enjoy this episode of the Marketing Secrets Podcast with Jordan Belfort. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Hey, JB here, the Wolf of Wall Street in the Wolf's Den. I have an awesome guest,

very famous guy, entrepreneur extraordinaire, someone you're definitely going to know. He's the founder of a software platform that allows people to become world-class marketers and salespeople on the back end of it. I'm talking about Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels. So Russell's someone that I know for many, many years. We never interacted with, but we've admired each other from afar. Seriously, I've looked at his career. I've watched him grow. I've used his products. He's read all my books. So what you're going to see as we start to communicate with each other and really go back and forth, what you're going to see is not just mutual respect, but you're going to actually see how sales and marketing work together,

handing the two pillars of essentially monetizing an idea. Let me restate that. Now, I want to dig deeper. See, at the highest level, what business really is, entrepreneurship is, it's monetizing value. You have something of value, which means that it can cure someone's pain point. It can resolve something, right? You have something that has value. The purpose of a business is to deliver this value to people, to your customers, right? And to do that in a way that when it's all said and done, the amount that you spend on manufacturing your product or delivering your service, the amount that you spend on marketing, identifying the right people, bringing them into your funnel, and then ultimately on the sales side to close them, at the end of the day, you actually make

money. So I'll repeat, the purpose of a business is to allow you to deliver value in a way that actually makes a profit. Because you're not going to do very well if at the end of the day, the cost of delivering and sourcing and manufacturing your product or service costs you more than what someone's willing to pay for it, or you're charging for it, right? That's how you lose money. And you can't make it up in the volume, right? You don't lose money at every sale and make it up by selling more.

So what you see when Russell and I really start digging into this stuff is you'll start to notice that there's this really interesting line where like marketing ends and sales begins. And how you use the straight line system, the sales side of the equation to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of any marketing program. And conversely, how a sales system like the straight line is almost dependent on having a marketing program that actually brings in the qualified leads. So marketing essentially serves as almost like the fuel. It brings in the raw materials that salespeople need to close. Those raw materials are leads. People come into your pipeline from your marketing programs, right? We then close them using the straight line. So when you combine those two together, kick-ass marketing program, killer sales force, right?

That's how companies truly grow and get the CEOs and the shareholders and the employees rich. Bottom line. Now, granted, it's a lot going on right now, right? It's a tough time out there for many people. I understand that. But not in this world. In the world that Russell and I live in right now, there's opportunity everywhere. Engagement is growing massively. Fortunes are being made every single day. People that used to be in the traditional

economy have now moved to this side of the economy, online selling, online marketing. And what's happening is people that were barely scraping by in the pre-COVID world, working in traditional jobs, are now making tons of money in the world of ClickFunnels and the straight line. So I want to go right now, we got a quick word from our sponsor, one of our amazing sponsors, by the way, a quick word from them. Then we'll get right into this interview with Russell Brunson and I, and you're going to be really, really glad you watched this one because this is just chock full of like, you know, step by step, step one, step two, step three, how you start, and most importantly, how you scale. All right, so here we are, the man, the myth, and truly the legend, a living legend at that,

Russell Brunson. Russell, how are you, buddy? I'm doing amazing, man. Thanks for having me. Good. All right, so you're an enigma, right? To me, you really are because, you know, you are what I call the real deal. Like there's not many real deals out there, but you know, for whatever reason, I want to start at the beginning. Somehow you've really managed to not just like be in the online world. You've built a massive business, like a real business with, you know, with large operations and you know employing tons of people um and you know one thing i could say even my own future son-in-law is like you know because he won't come to me for advice he's like oh i'm getting into click funnels like it's

like become almost like it's almost like a buzzword like you're the google of the funnel world you know i'm trying to say it's like click funnels has become more than just click funnels it's like when you talk about funnels first time someone told me like i need to build a click funnel i was like we've become the term like that's insane we weren't even planning on that it's so cool so tell me how did that start i want to you know i usually don't do go back to the beginning but i'm very intrigued you know when you see something like this that becomes uh it's like you've captured almost the zeitgeist you know the moment like a feel it's more than just a, it's like you've captured almost the zeitgeist, you know, the moment, like a feel.

It's more than just a company. It's a feeling. It's a way of life. And first of all, was it intended? Was there any, was there ever like a vision at the beginning? Like, you know, we want to change the way people can go out there, young people or old people too, and redefine their lives and secure their you know futures financially and you know we believe we could be a big part was it like that or was it just no was it sort of one

foot in front of the other and holy crap wait a second we got something awesome which one was it um i say it's kind of half and half like the first half was when i first found out about these things we didn't call them funnels back then but just the concept of like you know we everyone make these big e-commerce stores a thousand products and and like we tried that never had success with it and we shifted to like sell a product then you have an upsell and downsell taking someone through a very strategic sales process um that's what for me blew like that first time i made money online was was creating one of those and blew up and then i became obsessed with it i was like what else could i could i do this with and uh the next five or six years i launched like 20 different companies

just little companies here and there, like selling supplements and selling info products and selling just all sorts of things. And I just, I started geeking out about just the concept of funnels. And it was funny because I started talking to people about it. And back then nobody seemed to care

or their eyes were just glazed over like, okay. But I was so excited. I kept talking, kept talking and kept talking about it. And it wasn't until um i found my partner todd who's the one who's the brains actually built the software he was building these funnels for me over and over and over again and he honestly got the point was just like man all these funnels are similar but you know like why do i have to keep doing these like he's like i can build software to make this process really easy so i don't keep asking me you know change things at 500 times a

day and so he built that and i remember that's when things kind of took off for us because it was like people could understand conceptually what i was talking about but it wasn't until they had click funnels the tool where it's like oh i can actually do this thing that russell keeps talking about and it's really simple and um it was funny because about the time we launched click funnels uh one of my friends invited me to like a network marketing thing i'd never been to one before he's like you just have to see this like just, just come and experience this. I went, I remember being in this room with like 5,000 people and they're all going crazy and they're, they're so excited.

And I'm watching people go on stage and it's funny because on stage, they're not teaching anything. There's just people on stage, like telling their stories and crying. And I was like, so confused. Like, I don't understand this. And my buddy looked over to me. He's like, he's like, do you notice what they've done? I was like, no, I have no idea.

And he goes, he goes, they didn't just sell a product. He's like, he's like, do you notice what they've done? I was like, no, I have no idea. And he goes, he goes, they didn't just sell a product. He's like, they created a movement. I remember we said that I had this like, oh my gosh, like that's, I don't want to just sell a software product. Like, like that's not that cool. Like how do I create something bigger? And so I started geeking out on like, on that, like, like how do, how do movements get started? How, how are cults built?

How are religious movements? Like I started looking at all those kinds of things and then trying to weave and incorporate those things into our messaging as ClickFunnels was growing. And now, you know, six years later, you look at, you know, this funnel hacker. Our people call themselves funnel hackers. We have people that tattooed on their arms. And, like, it's a culture. It's an identity shift that people have, like, that they become a funnel hacker. And so I don't think it was, like, super strategic.

But as I started kind of figuring it out then we've leaned into that and it's been really cool to see what's happened over the last the last few years how would you define click funnels if i'm saying hey what exactly is click funnels how would you describe it it's funny that's literally like the the hardest it's like it's the hardest thing for me because it's like, it's so hard to explain. Like, I don't have a phrase of like, oh, a funnel is or whatever. It's, so the way I try to explain it in a shorter period of time is I tell people,

and obviously, you know, you are the best at sales. I've gone through, it's funny. I don't know if I can tell you this ahead of time, but I read your books five years before the movie came out. I went through straight line, like when it first came out. So like, like the same way you take someone through a sales process, right? And it's not just like we're just shooting and hoping to close the deal. There's a strategic place you're taking someone through.

That's what a sales funnel is. It's strategically thinking through. The customer comes in from the ad to the landing page to the next page. What's the experience you take them through to increase the likelihood of selling something at each step in the in the in the funnel and so it's just it's it's um it's it's just yeah it's very strategic step-by-step sales it's like what's the sales process you take somebody through that's what a funnel is and click funnels makes it simple to customize and edit and and test every single like variation that till you have it perfect and that's kind of what it does. Do you think that from a pure

technology standpoint, that ClickFunnels is head and shoulders above everything else out there? Or is it that, you know what, the technology is as good as anything else out there, but it's the movement around ClickFunnels that creates this ancillary benefit because it motivates people and gets them to actually use the product. In other words, so there might be a lot of other companies that have a similar product, but the difference is that because of the movement that surrounds ClickFunnels, people come into it and they get inspired. They feel supported they look around and see what's possible so they end up taking action with clickfunnels while they probably might not have taken action using a similar product you think that's it or is it just a superior technology play as well or combination good question um you know, I think the software is amazing. And my partner, Todd, and our team

that's built it, it's amazing. But it's been interesting watching since we launched ClickFunnels. I think I lost track at like 30-something, like 30-something people that came out with, next, ClickFunnels killer. And at first, I'd be all panicked. I'm like, huh. And I go to their page, and their page, they're talking about, our page loads 0.00% faster than ClickFunnels. I'm like, oh, okay'm like oh okay and then like or oh we do this one feature that they don't do or oh ours is cheaper are they always have these things but you're right like there was no soul to it's just like okay we're gonna we can we can we're gonna feature this or whatever and i remember i had this conversation early on with uh with one of my one of my um people kind of hiring coaching program and he says man he's like every week we see the next click photos killer come out.

And he's like, I see him. I'm on Facebook and I'm swiping through. And he's like, I see that. I see the ad. He said, I stopped just long enough to like, look at it and be like, ha, I would never go with you because I trust Russell. He's the one that showed me the stuff and I keep swiping. And I feel like there's so much that there's always people that are going to price shop

and thrift shop and like, like the little things like that. But I think the reason why we're heads and shoulders bigger and growing faster than any of the other ones is just because of what you said, because of the movement, because people understand like, like here's the tool, but this is like a community and training and education and all the things that make success with the tool. So yeah, it's, it's funny because I got a call about maybe two weeks ago from a very smart guy who has no clue about this world. He's just a very successful businessman in a completely different industry. He's probably worth close to a billion dollars.

He goes, hey, a friend of mine in Israel, very sharp guy, says he's got a product that just blows away click files. It's going to put them out of business. I said, well, stop. I said, let me just explain. I said, the ship has sailed with click files it's going to put them out of business i said well stop i said let me just explain i said the ship has sailed with click files i said it's beyond the point it's a commodity click click files almost commoditized it's like it's almost like it's a standard is nothing that is not like a slightly superior technology a slight increase in the click rate of a page load. It's beyond that at this point because there's so many other things. There's so many nuances and also emotional ties to it that it's like, I just don't, I think it's past that point. Again, I really, I wasn't kidding

when I said it's almost like the Google of funnels that you almost think about like synonymous with click funnels. Did you, was there a certain point when you realized like that had happened and did that make you act differently the way you treat you do you ever go into like more of a like sort of okay wow we're on top i now got to play defense more than offense or has it not really altered the way you go about doing business um it's uh it some of the science some of it's strategic and some it's just the nature of the beast right so software when we first launched click funnels it was it was my favorite part i had two partners they were the coders and so like they were just you know all day long coming out like new like they see someone else have a cool idea for future they clone it boom is in click funnels we come up with ideas

and we're just innovating and developing. And it was like as fast as we could. And it was really fun because there's so much energy and excitement around that. Like every day it's like, here's a new feature we launched today. Here's a new feature. And like, there's so much stuff.

And that caused a lot of this initial momentum and surge. And I wish that we could still do that because I feel like that's like what people love is the new thing. And like they excited. The hard thing is now we've got 120,000 active members on the platform. And like every little tweak you make, it's so stressful because it's like what people love like is the new thing and like they excited the hard thing is now we've got 120 000 active members on the platform and like every little tweak you make it's so stressful because like oh if we edit this little thing over here you have no idea what's going to do over here and so like every time they they edit a line of code they got to do like

eight million tests on every single thing and how it racks this and this and like and so it's slowed down our process from like creating new things and stuff um which i which i hate so for me it's like we we can't develop um we can't develop as fast on like the software side it's like so for me it's like what what are we like like how can we keep developing like and so it was less like the new software feature but for us it was um for me now it's more of the education side okay like where are they stuck like what do they need like here's the funnel for this kind of situation we do big training a big launch around that and they're like oh my gosh i didn't know i could use a funnel for that and then we get a huge new segment of market it comes in who starts using and they're like oh

here's here's this other strategy and we bring it you know we do trainings and stuff like that so uh where we we used to iterate on you know features to get people excited and get them in now it's like more more iterating on like the strategies and the concepts and how people can can apply them and then giving them you know then here's the tool that makes it, makes it simple, makes it possible. What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend, Taylor Wells. And Taylor spoke at our last funnel hacking live. Cause I wanted him to share a really cool concept about what he calls the revolving pricing method. And today he decided to sponsor the podcast to give you guys more access to this super cool strategy that you

are going to love. It's something we've been implementing into our high-end coaching program as well, and it is amazing. But to kind of give you some context about this offer he's making for you guys, as you may or may not know, a few years ago, JPMorgan Chase did a study, and guess what they found? They found that the average small business only has about 28 days of operating expenses in reserve. That's right, less than a month of cash on hands. Now, if you're like me, the idea of your business being one bad month away from disaster is enough to make your stomach drop. Am I right?

Especially with how the economy's been lately. It's not the time to be gambling with your finances. So, Taylor put together this book called The Revolving Pricing Method, and it's awesome. It helps you turn every client you close into a long-term profit machine. We're not talking about one-time paydays. We're talking about creating sustainable and real predictable income for the long haul. Now, here's where it gets even better. Taylor put together an awesome exclusive deal just for you guys, my marketing secrets listeners. And if you go over to wealthyconsultants.com slash secrets, you can grab the revolving price method book and over $150 worth of bonuses and

get this all. It's at 70% off. And I promise you guys as a customer of this, you are going to love it. So if you're serious about growing your business with real stability, this is the model you need to add into your funnels. So go over to wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets, grab your 70% off deal, and let's start turning your clients into long-term revenue. Again, that's wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets. Do not miss out. Hey, this is Russell Brunson,

and I wanna jump in really quick to share with you a new assessment I found out that is insanely cool. You guys know I'm obsessed with personality profiles and assessments, but this one is different because not only does it help you understand yourself, but more importantly, especially for us who are entrepreneurs, it helps us understand our employees, our teams, and get people sitting on the right seats in the bus so they can get more stuff done. I just had a chance to interview Patrick Lanchoni talking

specifically about this new assessment they created called Working Genius. And the Working Genius is awesome. Like this test, I had actually blocked out an hour to take it because I was so excited for the new assessment. And it only took me like 10 minutes or less to get it done. Yet, even though it takes only 10 minutes, like you can actually apply this immediately. I took it for myself. I had my team take it. And what's cool about it is from there, we figured out exactly what people's Working Geniuses are. And that's important because if you're building a team or a company, you got to make sure that you have, first off off the right people, but make sure the right people are sitting in the right seats on the bus. And this is what this assessment will

teach you how to do. Now, normally this assessment, you can go to workinggenius.com and there's two G's in the middle, workinggenius.com, but I got you a 20% discount on the assessment, which is only $25. So don't stress. It's not an expensive test at all, but you get a 20% discount off when you put in the keyword secrets at checkout so go to workinggenius.com again two g's working genius two g's in the middle workinggenius.com and then use promo code secrets s-e-c-r-e-t-s at checkout get 25 off uh but then go take the test again takes you 10 minutes um but even in a 10 minute session you will get something that is so insanely valuable to help you understand yourself, to make sure you're working in a spot that's going to be

the most joy, number one. But then number two, um, it's going to make sure that you are, uh, with your teams, getting them in the right seats as well. So, um, anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out at workinggenius.com and enter the promo code secrets for 20% discount. Uh, take this test for yourself and for your team. And I promise you, it'll change the working dynamics amongst everybody and help your company to grow what do you think is the smartest move that you've made as the owner is one of the founders of click phones is like you have to really has there been

some sort of either a strategical line some sort of marketing shift what do you think is that is the if it's just one what would that Like not, not the secret to your success, but what was that one move that really allowed you to break out? Um, I think the biggest thing, um, that created the community and created like stickiness within it is, um, so every, you would do an annual event and we didn't do the first year or the second year, but before our third big annual event, I remember, um, you know, we were preparing for it and getting speakers and all this stuff you do for an

event. And I remember I saw an ad that it was a, it was a professional, you know, singer or whatever. And they're sitting in the wall on the, on the wall behind the head. I was like Grammy or Emmy, whatever the records are that the music industry gives. And I was like, Oh, it's so cool. Like if you're a musician, you get these cool, like trophies. And like, I'm like, what do entrepreneurs get? Like we get nothing. Like, and I remember like being frustrated. I was like like we should like create our own award and then uh we started playing with it and like what could the award be and i remember i had bought this domain

name a long time ago called the two comma club uh two commas a million dollars and i was like i own the domain we own the branding all stuff i was like we should make an award called the two comma club and then it was like so we started kind of freaking out i remember i asked dave one of my partners i was like how how many people inside click phones have made at least a million dollars inside of a funnel i thought maybe a dozen or so and he pulled the stats came back he said as of today we have 79 i was like oh my gosh this is crazy so we're like calling you know nash for like where do you guys get these records at and we found the company to customize the records and put commas and we built this trophy we didn't tell anybody like this thing was happening until that

event um and we invited everyone who had who had qualified for two comma club and said hey come to this event we have something really cool for you i can tell you what it is and i remember day three of the event uh right after lunch i told everyone the story about like the two comma club and like i was like i think there's there's like for every every like industry there's there's like the uh the emmys the grammys the oscars like everything but entrepreneurs don't get anything there's nothing that like we can celebrate our success with. Like, you know, we make a bunch of money

and like we try to celebrate and people think we're prideful. And it's like, how do you, you know, like we're killing ourselves to like try to change the world. How do we celebrate that? And so it's like, because that we want to create this award called the Two Comic Club Award. And we had everyone line up who'd won one.

They came on stage. I got a picture with them holding the award and they all went down. And I did not realize what that would create. So the 79 people got the picture with me. And then all those guys, those pictures became their ads, became their, their Facebook wall, everything. Everyone's like, what's that? What's that? It's like, Oh, that's a two comic club award. That's what entrepreneurs win inside of click funnels. We make a million dollars in a funnel. And it started shifting people where people, even if

they were on other software platforms that I, they ditch them, came to ours. Like I want that award. I want to be part of that. I want to get on stage. I want to get a picture. I want to be able to celebrate. And so people started coming. And I think year one, we had 79 year two, we had like 350. It was almost like one person a day started hitting two comic club. And then year three, right. We had people passing, you know, winning like people coming on stage when like five or six like awards are trying to hold them all.

And so then we made a new award called two comic club X, which is for 10 million. And then we had, we've had almost a hundred people have won that now. And this last year we launched a two comic club X, which is for 10 million. And then we had, we've had almost a hundred people have won that now. And this last year we launched a two comic club C, which is for a hundred million. And we had like a dozen people that won that now. And I think what's cool is there's a, there's a quote from, uh, I think it's Napoleon Bonaparte or something like that. He said, he said, uh, talking about in war, he said, it's amazing what, uh, what a soldier will do for a scrap of ribbon. And I feel like it was kind of that same thing. Like, man, it's entrepreneurs. Like we,

we want to serve, want to give it like, there's something about that recognition. Like we just don't get. And now this has become the same. We had a whole documentary called the two comic club now. And it's like, it's become this thing.

And that's a big reason why people come to us and they publish with us. And they do all their products. Cause like, I want to win that award. I want to get on stage. I want, I want to be able to show my family. This is what I accomplished.

Like, this is what I'm doing. This is why it's so important. And it gets, it got people. It's continues to get people to come in and it gets them to stick with our platform. Even when they're at $100 million in sales, they can easily custom code these things and hire big teams to do stuff. They still do it on our platform because they want to get the recognition. They want to be able to show what they're doing.

I think of all the things, that was this thing that just caused this internal, like you talked about, the feeling that's different that's not i own a software product it's like i want to be part of that like i want to be on stage i want to i want to get my award and what would be you think the worst decision you made with click funnels something that you would that you would like that you will obviously overcome it but you had to pivot for away from it has there been any moment things that you've done that you just said oh my god why did i do that? Yeah, there's so many of those. So many times where I, man, if we could go back and I remember, um, it was after we were growing and we got click phones, a certain spot.

And, um, and, uh, at a time it was still like Todd was Todd and Dylan, our two partners who are programming everything. And we started hiding, like they need help. Like they were, it was Christmas morning and they're coding things, things make sure things aren't crashing and so we started building a team and we started building a team and we never done before like we're like we're a bunch of hustler entrepreneurs who never had done anything right you know we've got 400 employees now click phones back then we'd never had employees we'd never managed people like we didn't know what to do or how to do it so we're hiring these people and you know the more they they charge us the more we assume like the better they were so we're like so we built this huge programming team um and the first thing all and now that i've done software now for long enough i realize this is what all

programmers want they look at something like oh i can do it better and so they get this team that we've hired came back to us like we want to recoup we want to redo click funnels from ground up because if we do we can do this and all these things and they you know they totally sold something's vision of like we could do ah so we're freaking out and so we spent in i think was year like an entire entire year them trying to build this new version which meant nobody was fixing the software developing it was like everyone's energy here we're building a building and um a year of time and then they cashed out way was probably two or three million dollars of cash for payroll. Not, not counting like the opportunity costs as if we wouldn't focus in here. And I remember a

year into it, they did the first demo of the software and they were demoing it. And, uh, I feel bad. It was like on a zoom call like this and the entire programming team was there. And I messaged and Todd, my partner, he was, he was first time he'd really seen it as well. I messaged him. I was like, one of our competitors initially was called lead pages. And I, and I, I messaged him. I was like, I was like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. I felt like we hired some crappy lead page developers and this turned out worse than lead pages. And it popped up on his screen on a, on zoom where everybody saw it. I was like, I'm like texting him, like turn off your screen. And it was the worst thing. And anyway, we ended up having to like literally lay off that entire team

because they were so focused on this and like cut it all and start back over. And it just slowed down a lot of the progress and insane amounts of money and time. What was it about it? Was it just like the aesthetics, the look and feel of it? Was it slow? Was it buggy? What was it about it? We just didn't have that same like snap. I guess I look at ClickFunnels and if there's something that would pop into my mind, it would be, it's almost like the way Facebook improved on what MySpace did. They made it very clean and crisp

and uniform. So in other words, you knew what to expect when you went on it and they turned what you would think would be a negative, which would mean lack of options, almost like into a positive because it sort of gave you this experience that just felt right versus like, you know,

almost when everything could be changed, it's like you don't even know what you're looking at. There's the advantage of, I think, a ClickFunnels page. I think this is a positive is that when you go when you go through a funnel page it's intuitive you know as you know you basically know what you should do it's sort of as soon as you see you feel like you're in the right place so was it something like that where it lost that feeling or just it just didn't work when todd was so todd my partner he's genius and

he's he's a marketing guy and a developer so as he was building initially he always says like i build really opinionated software i do i build it to do exactly what i want i don't make it so that anybody can do anything like you said it's like this is what it does this is the reason why we do and there's there's logic like steve jobs is like that too exactly he's like he said like i'll they don't know what they want till we tell them basically i just say all yes 100 todd's like he just say it all the time. Yes, 100% Todd's like, he just says it all the time. And so because he built what he wanted, like, ClickFunnels was, like, Todd's dream of, like, what he wanted it to be. And it was amazing.

And these other guys came in, and they started, we're going to call customers, and we're going to survey them. And, like, oh, just, like, this whole thing. And they're surveying people. Like, you don't even know what they want. And they come back, and they build this thing. And it's just, like, ah like it's it was just it was the whole thing was wrong it was like literally i always just highlighted and deleted the entire thing fired everyone to start over because it's just like it wasn't it wasn't even salvageable

wasn't even something we could build on and so so is the click funnels today is it the original platform or was it ever redone from the ground up at some point um it is the original platform there's been tons of stuff um like some of the things we know about again like at scale like we built software you know todd built it we launch it he didn't add new features launch it and stuff like that we didn't realize at scale that like the way the corporate software companies work is they they write lines of code around every or tests around every line of code so like when this new code goes live they click a button that says okay when this goes live let let's test it every situation

we could possibly dream of to see if it collapses anything. And so we didn't know that when we first got started. So like Todd would upload like this new feature and like half the app would go down, right? Oh, like fix it, you know, reverse it.

And so like we've had an amazing team come through and test around every line of code inside ClickFunnels and built the platform more stable. And so there's been a ton of work on it for the last five years, but it's still based on the same, the original code that Todd built back in the day.

One of the things that I, that I, that bothers me about, about the perception around ClickFunnels sometimes is that there, I feel like people get caught in the trap. They feel like, Oh, I'm going to, I'm just going to do ClickFunnels for a living. I don't think that's possible. And there's. They feel like, oh, I'm just going to do ClickFunnels for a living. I don't think that's possible. I think ClickFunnels is an incredibly powerful tool. It's a very powerful tool in the toolbox of an entrepreneur. And what I see sometimes is someone will almost use ClickFunnels as an excuse to like, oh, I'm getting into ClickFunnels. I'm going to be in the ClickFunnels world or something, right? And do you find that is there some group of people out there that they'll go

into it and they'll learn everything about ClickFunnels? But at the end of the day, the magic of ClickFunnels, to me at least, is that there's nothing to learn. You could just take action with it and test things so quickly, so cheaply, and it allows you to almost be this incredibly nimble entrepreneur versus trying to like almost go out there and perfect it and like, I'm going to make the perfect funnel versus like, well, there probably is no perfect funnel. It could always be improved on, but most importantly, I'm going to take action and try something with ClickFunnels. If it doesn't work, I lost an hour of my time, if that much, and I could try again.

So what do you think about that aspect of people getting caught up and trying to be too good at it? As you're saying that, I was just thinking about your world, right, where you came from, where it's like ClickFunnels is the phone, right? It's a tool that does a thing, and it converts a cell, but it's the sales guy who knows the script and can do the right tonality and the right – that's what sells something. Right. So it's like, I think I get a time. It's like, I built the funnel Russell. It didn't work. It's like, yeah, like technically the page

structure is right, but you suck at selling. Like you got to figure out some lands on the page. How do you get them to give you your email address and the next page? How do you convince them to give you their credit card? Like click funnels is a tool that builds a framework, but then you have to weave your art and your selling ability into the funnel. If you look at what a funnel is, it's just literally replacing you as the salesperson. I could go to every single person on the street and sell my book over and over and over again. Or I could create a funnel where it's me selling my book perfectly flawlessly. I know the script.

I've perfected it. And then I just put people through it, and they go through this funnel, and it sells them over and over. It's a one-sided sale, basically, where you're anticipating every objection and answering them with the funnel. It's no different than a regular sale, but it's a one-sided sale where you're imagining everything they could be thinking, feeling, objecting to, and somehow answering it as you move through the funnel. And that's why you have multiple calls to actions and why you go down to the page. And when I explain marketing, I'm like, guys, it's exactly like a straight line sale. Like every time there's a buy here and then it keeps going, that's what I call a loop

in the world of selling where you would ask for the order, they don't buy it, you keep talking. You don't say, oh, thanks. See you. They didn't buy. See you later. The sale's over. So they're very much the same.

What do you think is the, there's certain products that you see, like when you look at a product, can you immediately say, that's a winner? That's perfect for ClickFunnels. Is there something you say, ah, that's not right? Yeah, for sure. It may not be as right, but it's positioned not right. You know what I mean? I think with anything sold online, especially through funnels,

you're relying on people. You have their attention for a second. In my books, I talk about this concept called hook story offer. I always envision my customers sitting on the phone, sitting on the couch or, you know, whatever they're, they're scrolling through. And it's like, it's like, can your product capture their attention or can you, or the message or something grab their attention, uh, long enough that you can tell them the story. And so sometimes the product's hearts is like, ah, it's not exciting or whatever, or, or the person who's, who's selling it isn't able to like to grab someone's attention off the off the news feed right and just long enough that you can tell them the story about why they should care

about this product and why they should why they should buy it but um you know i think i think it's either the product's gonna be something that's sexy to grab their attention or the person selling it's got to be so passionate they can they can do what they need to do to grab someone's someone's attention you know i mean but for the most part it's crazy we have people selling i mean everything you can dream of we've there's a guy selling uh bigfoot hunting trips on click funnels and he's killing it and i was like he people know there's no bigfoot right but like the guy's excited he's passionate about bigfoot he's talking about these expeditions you give him money he'll go you hike up the mountains with him you try to find bigfoot like people are signing up all day long for that so it's like it's less of the product and

like i think the excitement of the person selling it and like their ability to grab grab your attention and inspire you to want to to get the thing i'm guessing if you're anything like me the thing you love most is hearing the success stories of people that used click funnels it's almost like a drug if there's a drug I'm addicted to nowadays, it's the people telling me, I use your system and it changed my life and lifted me up out of poverty. Can you tell me, give me a story

that you think is particularly moving and is also representative of someone that would be in like that people could connect with, like someone that used ClickFunnels and just, you know, that was not successful before and how they use that and what their life is like now. Yeah. I can get my Rolodex out. There's so many cool ones.

One of my favorites, just because they got started right at the very beginning of ClickFunnels. So it's been fun watching their journeys. It's kind of like followed the ClickFunnels journey. But they were a young couple, Brandon and Caitlin Poland. They'd just gotten married. Uh, they were in a network marketing thing that collapsed. And so they were just like, and they literally sent me a video on my phone. I still have it.

They're like, Russell, we just saw your webinar, man. We're going to be your biggest ClickFunnels success story. And like, you know, they sent this video to me and you know, you get those sometimes like, okay, well, good luck. And, um, and they, they went through the training and they, they, they created their very first funnel and, uh, Caitlin, she was someone, she, she, uh, had lost a ton of weight. And, um, uh, I think she lost like 50 or 60 pounds and won some titles of, you know, some, some fitness awards and stuff like that.

And, uh, and so she wanted to share that message with, with other women. And so, uh, they created their, their very first thing, this little app that they'd created and they put it online and they launched it. I think the very first, uh, the first little launch, uh very first, the first little launch to their social media following, which wasn't big at the time, they made like $20,000, which was like their, that was the thing, right?

And they got so excited and they kept going in and kept reinvesting in themselves and doing the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And I actually was talking to Brandon yesterday, last month, they just passed their first $6 million a month. And like, that's how much they've grown

the last four or five years. And now they've helped, they've uh, I think on their email list, they have like two and a half million women who are on the email list. They've all come through a funnel who given their email address. They're there. They have over 150,000 customers who've gone through the weight loss program. And it's amazing. Cause like I'm in there, I think I'm the only guy in the fate in the, the lady boss, weight loss, Facebook groups. Cause I want to sneak in there and watch it. But you see you see uh hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women posting their before and after pictures before and after crying like thanking caitlin like so much you changed my life

and it's fun because then caitlin messaged me she's like you realize that that the only reason those people found us is because of funnels right like because of what you showed us that's how they got in this group and it's just really cool. And that's one person, right? There's so many cool stories. Another one, there's a lady named Pamela Weibel, and she's a doctor. And when she was in medical school, she had two or three of the doctors she was with commit suicide. And she was just devastated by it. And so she's transitioned her life to help doctors to not commit suicide.

And she's used funnels to get this message out. And she saved thousands of doctors who were on the brink of committing suicide. I don't know. I didn't know at the time, like doctors are the highest suicide rate of any profession. And she's used funnels now to get this message out and save doctors lives. And it's just like, how many, how many people like the doctor was saved? And then how many lives are they able to save because of it? And it's because Pamela got a funnel, got her message out. And, and anyway, there's just, yeah, I'm the same way as you. It's like a drug. Like we have a daily meeting every morning in our company every morning we share a success story and it's just like like it ties our whole company together hearing like what

we do matters and it's important and and it gets everyone you know excited about the mission what percentage of your market is overseas versus the ice age oh um I don't have the number on top of my head. I'd say it's probably, my gut would say probably 60 to 70% of US and the other 30 to 40% overseas. It's growing overseas really rapidly now. We're trying to get, the next phase for us is getting,

we have a lot of overseas companies using it, but we don't have like official presences in those areas. And some countries you have to have people actually there. So trying to, that's the next phase for us is figuring out where do we need to have like office locations that support staff who can do other languages. So it's growing rapidly, despite the fact that we haven't done anything to like,

you know, we don't have anyone who speaks other languages on support teams and things like that, but it's still growing really rapidly. Introducing TD insurance for Business with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business.

Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. treats skippable midnight snacks skip my neighbor's nightly saxophone practices uh nope you're on your own there could have skipped it should have skipped it skip to the good part and get groceries meals and more delivered right to your door on skip how important of your like personal relationships within the self-development community been for the growth of click files like i know you do a lot of joint ventures with people that have large followings do you do you believe in that model of of you know sort of this idea that i remember early early on like back in 2010 there was a group of guys they called themselves like the syndicate and they were doing a lot of free product you You remember that, right? A lot of cross mailings and promotions and they'd done that.

And then that kind of faded away, broke up. And then, you know, is there something though, like, do you think that it's very important for someone that wants to grow their business to do that, to actually bring in outsiders and do those joint ventures or affiliate deals, as you would say, in your world? Yeah, I'm a big believer in it. Especially when you're beginning, it's like some of the fastest way to grow, to grow something, right? Like when we first, it was year two of ClickFunnels. And I was like, how do we get more adoption? So that's when I like, all the people I've met in the time, you know, Tony Robbins, and I feel like I call them up, like, hey, can I build a funnel for you? I'll do it for free. I like, normally we charge, we charge whatever I'll do all for free for you. I'll run the thing. And we

started building funnels for all these successful people. So they started using it and people saw, Oh, Tony Robbins is using ClickFunnels. And, uh, you know, Neil Strauss is using ClickFunnels and Dave Asprey and all these different people who I looked up to in different markets. And so we started building their funnels for them. People started seeing it. Um, and that was big. And then, um, as far as getting, uh, affiliates to mail um i think it's it's a really good short-term strategy not it's a good long-term like nowadays the majority of what we do is paid ads right but the beginning paid ads are expensive it's hard where the joint venture stuff was free like i um yeah the first year click funnels uh basically was was primarily grown through jv

webinars i was doing webinars at least two or three times a week, sometimes two or three times a day to people's email list. And that was just, it didn't cost me ad money. We split the money 50-50 with the affiliate, but I got the initial, probably the first 10,000 members or so of ClickFunnels came off of other people's list for sure. And then from there, took that cash, we could reinvest it into ads and everything else

that helped scale up from there. How do you think ClickFunnels has fared in the whole COVID-19? Has it been a positive for you as a company in the sense, I hate to say a positive because people died, but has it been like, you know, I could see how ClickFunnels would be a very elegant solution to someone that lost their job and that's looking for a new way to make money because it would seem that, you know, the online delivery world and, you know, a ClickFunnels page and, you know, connect to a Shopify store, something like that might be a very powerful combination. Have you seen an uptick in your business in response to COVID? Yeah, we've seen on two sides.

And one is like new customer acquisition has dramatically skyrocketed, which has been fantastic. Number two, what's interesting is pre-COVID on an average day, we had about 15,000 people actually logging the software and they're doing stuff and building things and looking at stats. During the last COVID, it's been like over 35,000 people a day are logging the software. So people are more, I think they're less distracted and they're getting in and actually doing it and getting their hands dirty. People who like for so long are like signed up like, oh, I'm going to do it this weekend or next week. You know, it's like now they had the time to actually do it. Um, and so it's, it's, uh, it's been really good for us as a company overall.

And I think it's, um, it's interesting just cause it's the transition, right? It's like, I think all these offline companies, like my friends who ran gyms, my friends who you have local stores, they're all, they're all understand now how, how fragile their companies are and how they're transitioning and fragile their companies are now they're transitioning and doing the online version and they're shipping things online and like and it's i think it's been a good transition and it's been i've been grateful we've been there to kind of catch people and help transition like let me show you how this could actually work and how it could work in in a for your type of business you know have you ever thought about either selling the

company or going public or take have you taken any outside capital at all? So we've never taken outside capital. In fact, that's my, my next book I'm writing is going to be called bootstrapped. It's going to be the click funnel story, how we bootstrapped it without any, any capital. So we haven't to this, to this date we have entertained a couple of ideas, like what would it look like if we went public and parts that scare me to death and the parts are really exciting. So we, you know,

and we've looked at things, but nothing, you know, as right now we're having a good exciting. So we, you know, and we've looked at things, but nothing, you know, as right now we're having a good time and we're, you know, we're profitable and there's no, I don't, I can do whatever I want. Like there's no, there's no board or people telling me, you know, and I really enjoy that. So I think as of now, you know, we're happy. Um, I don't think we'd be against it if it served the customers. Um, you know, cause like, uh, we've talked about some trends, our partners can like, I don't need more money. We don't need more things. But if it was like, man, if we, if we, if we went and did something and now we could hire a team, you know, like I was looking at just

Stripe, for example, Stripe, which processes most of the people's payment, you know, it's a simple software is one thing. They have a thousand developers on staff, thousand click funnels. We've got 50 developers like, Hey man, if we could do something where we could bring in a thousand developers to take click funnels you know what's gonna take us 10 years doing a year um i think i would be interested in some of that potentially but only if it's the the best thing for the customers because for me like my life's not going to shift either way at this point because you know you know how it is where where yeah we do where um where do you see click funnels going from here like do you have is there is there a plan is it more of the same is it um is there some sort of like shift

that you see that like you said you know we think that in the next few years the industry as a whole shift we want to shift with it you know do you do that do you have this sort of like this sort of long-term um you know vision where you're you know we are making pivots or no, is it more reactive? No. So things have been going through my mind. I recently read the book Crossing the Chasm for the first time. I tried a couple of times in the past. It's really, it's a heavy read, but I finally got it.

And like, as I'm, as I'm reading the book, like I'm looking at where we are in the cycle and I feel like we're, we're literally at the chasm and it's like to jump over. And I think for us to get to, you know, from going from a hundred thousand members to, to a million members of beyond, it's really, we have to shift a lot of what we do fundamentally, right? Like right now, ClickFunnels, as simple as it is, it's still a tool that does a lot of things. I think that we try to cross the chasm to like all the businesses, like all the mom and pops down the street, right? It has to be simpler. It has to be easier. It has to be, you know, and so like, I feel like for us to get to down the street, right? It has to be simpler. It has to be easier. It has to be, you know, and so like, I feel like for us to get to the next tier to go from a hundred thousand to a million members, like the software needs a deep, um,

I don't know if it's redesigned or just a fundamental shift. In what sense, in what sense, like specifically in what way? You know, I think the early adopters and something, people like me or you or whoever geeking out, like we'll spend the time to figure out the strategy and the things like that because it's worth it to us. We understand like we, if we make those tweaks, it's going to be worth blah. But someone who runs a restaurant down the street that they're not going to sit

through and like read a book and understand the strategy and like figure out like they run a restaurant. They just want a funnel that does restaurants. I want to click a button and boom, the restaurant funnel pops up. It's pre-populated. They plug in their menu items and they can rock and roll. Right. So it's like, it's a simplification of like, if we really want to get the next phase, it's, it's pre-populated they plug in their menu items and they can rock and roll right so it's like it's a simplification of like if we really want to get the next phase it's it's got to be less here you can customize it to whatever you want it's got to be like here's how like this plug and play this is going to work for your business your industry and so it's a big gap that scares me honestly um so that and i think the other big good growth thing for us is is internationalization

like getting uh actually in other countries as as opposed to just, you know, bleeding into countries, like having presences and having support teams and having, you know, all those things, you know, it's tough. Cause like we have some countries people in where 97 bucks a month that we charge is, is tons of like insane amounts of money, but they can't afford that. You know, but that's, that's the only way you can buy it right now where it's like, Hey, in these countries we could do it differently or, you know, things like that. Um, and the other big player right now, we're working with some local governments where they're looking at buying like 50 or 100,000 accounts to give to like their entire student body and things like that. And we never actually closed a deal like that, but we got one

or two that are like closed that if that, if we can figure that out, also we're in all these school systems, that gets me excited because there's so much like you know developing that at that level when they when they get to you know to our level they that's the tool they use they understand it so there's a lot of fun things like that we're working with do you think that click funnels should be taught and in college or you know in high school 100 um it's crazy we have so we have like a lot you know i've got my books that I sell we've got our one funnel way challenge and we just had a college last before COVID they took the entire entrepreneur section of their college and took them through the one funnel way challenge and

the teachers afterwards were freaking out there's like this is insane like we've been reading stuff from textbooks and trying to reteach it and now here it's like we're learning in real time what's actually working they're seeing real case studies people are actually able to do it and and um i definitely think for me personally i don't know if click funnels is a company but me as like as like a publisher of content i really want to figure out that next step i don't understand it well enough to know but i would love to get like our concepts and curriculum into the entrepreneur schools and the business schools because i think you know right now i mean when i got my degree at least it like the stuff we were learning were like companies in the 1800s and how they did their profit and loss statements,

all this stuff that's just like, how is this relevant to anything that's happening right now? Like the pulse of this market is like, it's moving so quickly that, um, anyway, so I'm hoping, so I think, I think it'd be, it'd be so much more useful. And I think just as a whole, watching what's going to happen with school system post COVID, I think that's going to open up a lot more opportunities for stuff like this to be put into colleges. What's the culture like at ClickFunnels, like the actual corporate – not your outward to all the customers, but inside the business? How would you describe your culture?

I love our people. I would say it's not, not all the, like I would, I wouldn't say this is true for the developers. Developers almost have their own culture. Um, but like for the support and the marketing and stuff like that, most of the people who work for our team are people who were ClickFunnels users first and they, they use the platform. They loved it, but for some reason they didn't have a business yet. They didn't have an idea. They, they're, they're still trying to figure it out but it's like they love click funnels and the message they get a job in the workforce and they love it the fact like i gotta be around this at nighttime i can work my own funnels and and they feel like they're part

of it and so such a big percentage of our staff are customers before they ever were um members which is really cool so because of that like it's funny because i'll do a podcast my entire you know, my entire, you know, 400 people team, right. Joe, that's your podcast. It was so cool. And you know, like they're answering support tickets, like, Oh, you should go watch this YouTube video. Russell did over here. Cause like he talked about this thing specific and it's just, it's cool because like our people are, are, you know, like our, our, our, our team or we're our customers at one point. And most of them are still actively using and actively building funnels. A lot of them have launched businesses on while they worked at ClickFunnels, left and grown them. And we support that. We encourage it. You know, like I always tell people like our, our mission at ClickFunnels isn't to have people build funnels. Our mission is to help

entrepreneurs to grow their companies. Like, and so whatever that means, like maybe it's using funnels, maybe it's doing an event, maybe it's, it's whatever, it doesn't matter. And if someone in our team starts a business and goes and blows it up like we are so excited for him and and so i think that's a that's a big part of it what do you what do you think about uh the state of the union right now does do you like you're in idaho right and um i think idaho skews a bit more conservative. But, you know... I think with most conservatives, they're probably going to be conservative. And do you feel like... Listen, I mean, I'll be honest with you. I look at the country right now

and I'm deeply disturbed at what I see. And I think, you know, I can trace back a lot of this to things that were happening over the last 20 or 30 years in the educational institutions. But it just seems like at this point now there's like a complete absence of truth in the media. Like they just lie.

I mean, like they just like this. I mean, I can't even believe like what I hear and see. You know, what are your thoughts on that whole thing right now? Like what's going on with the country and the violence in the streets? And I'm sure you're very far removed in Idaho. But, you know, what are your own thoughts on that um man it's it's scary um and i try i don't know i think all of us have our biases but i try as hard as i can to look at both sides and understand both sides it's interesting because i feel like you know the republican side they want they want less government they want more

freedoms they want the billy billy producers i'm a big believer in that right i just finished reading atlas shrugged and i was just like yes like this is what we need like the government regulations make it harder and harder for someone like me or you or whoever's producing stuff makes it harder for us to want to have a purpose in producing but then you look at the the other side it's like they want love and they want peace and they want they want you know and i i relate to that as well so it's tough like but i think there's there's man social media has given everybody such a loud voice that i remember this even four years ago like how beat up everyone got

like i i tried to post either direction because like no matter what you say like like it destroys relationships destroys families destroys businesses and it's just like it's kind of a thing that i don't know there's the positives of social media we all have our own voice the negatives is that we all have our own voice and I don't know. It's, it's definitely scary times. And I wish that I believed it was going to be done after the elections, but I think whatever happens is going to bleed over for, for a while. And I don't know. I think that, that I think all of us who are, who are,

I just told people, I feel like entrepreneurs are the people that are going to change the world, right? So like, I think the more tools we can give entrepreneurs and put things in their hands so they can get these messages out and, and be the change. I think that's, that's really the, the only thing that's, that's, I don't know, the only hope I really feel like, I don't feel like it's going to happen for the government side. I know it's not going to happen to the media side. It's going to happen from, from people who create products and services they believe in, who create missions and movements. I feel

like that's going to be the thing that causes the change that actually matters. Everything else is just, I don't know, it's just a mess. What do you think an entrepreneur should do? Should you say, you know what? I can't, I have to accept the things I cannot change. I'll make as much money as I possibly can to protect my family and those I love and to help the causes I believe in. Do you think it should be like,

you know, okay, the world is nuts. It's spiraling out of control. So let me just put my head down and make money. You know, is that a strategy that you think is a smart way to look at things if you're just, you know, is that, is that a strategy that you think is a smart way to look at things? If you're, if you're just, you know, a success oriented person, you think just to try to block it out or should you think that's not being a good citizen? You should try to have your voice heard too. What do you think? Good question. I mean, I mean, yeah, good question. You know,

I, I had a friend, Ryan Moran, He said something one time that was so profound to me. He said that an entrepreneur is somebody who sees, who sees the problem that's not their own and decides to take responsibility for it. Right? So it's like, you see this problem. It's not my problem. And most of the world's like, oh, it's not my problem. I'm going to back away from it.

But entrepreneurs like, that's a problem I'm going to solve. Like Caitlin was like, I'm going to figure out how to help these women lose weight. You know, Pamela Weibel was like, I'm going to solve like caitlin was like i'm going to figure out how to help these women lose weight you know um yeah pamela weibel's like i'm gonna help doctors not commit suicide like that's not her responsibility but she took it and she ran with it right and i feel like us entrepreneurs like that's that is what it is and the byproduct of us being entrepreneurs and creating is cash and so like if if if the question is like should we go out to make a ton of money yes because if you're doing that making a ton of money means you found a problem. That's not yours. You're going to take responsibility for it. And you're going to try to change that thing. And if you do it, uh, in the right way, cash will come

to you and the more money you make, the more impact you're having. And so I think it's a great way to keep score. I know that it's not probably popular in today's world as much to say it, but, um, I a hundred percent believe that right now, you know, for financial security for yourself and for your families. But second off, it's just, it's, it's a byproduct showing that you are actually taking a group of people and serving them at a level that's changing their lives. If you're getting the money from it, as long as you're doing it ethically, obviously. What do you think the best way for a young or old person that's young me in their career online? What's the best way, the most effective way to enter the world of ClickFunnels? What would

you do first? Let's say you say, you know what? I like this. I'm intrigued by it. I'm going to get into this. I want to capitalize on this movement. What's step one? Yeah. I think step one for people is you have to understand, you have to have the education, right? You can't just, if I'm going to sell this, I'm not picking up the phone and start dialing day one. Like I'm going to have a script and have some basics. I think it's going through the train to understand it and then before i ever like gambled you know everything on like my own business idea i would say i want to prove this actually works i would find somebody who already has because you know there's like starting a business there's so many things like what's the product what's you know how are we gonna sell

what's the who's gonna do the accounting who's paying taxes like there's a billion things to make a business work so i would try to like take away as many of those things as possible to work in a vacuum of like, I'm going to try to figure this thing out. So I find someone who already had a business, who already had a product, already had all these things. So I don't have to worry about that part of it and say, okay, like, let's say you find someone who's selling, um, I don't know, here's some fidget spinners. Like this is their product, right?

And they're selling, I'd go to them and say, okay, I'm going to take these fidget spinners. I want to build a funnel just to prove this concept. I'm going to work for free. I'm going to put my own sweat equity. I just want to see if it works. If it does work, I'd love to like a commission off to prove this concept i'm gonna work for free i'm gonna put my own sweat equity i just want to see if it works if it does work i'd love like a commission off all the the sales i make for this thing right and then go and learn and build the build a funnel based on you know based on all the things you're learning inside the community and

all those kind of things and and then do it and launch it and then and then you know if you make money awesome if not like okay just trying another product trying another thing till you kind of figure it out but i think that's the biggest because i think if you're going to try to figure out all the things to launch a business right out of the gate, there's so many things. So it's like, go and learn these strategies and apply it for somebody else. Work for free.

And that's how I would start. In fact, I've got tons of people in our community who've done that, who literally, they did that. And they've negotiated in front of like, hey, if this funnel works, I want half the money from them. The person's like, okay, it's free money for me. Who cares? And now they have these multi-million dollar businesses, like just like front ends for other people's big

companies. Cause they figured out how it works and they're doing this thing and they don't have any of the staff, the overhead, the payroll, the taxes, they just get a cut off every single sale. And some days I wish I would just do that. Cause that sounds easier than running a big company. What's the best. Okay. So now we're getting to the, unfortunately our time is almost up. I try to keep it to an hour. What's the best book that someone should read about ClickFunnels? What is it, your first book, your second? Which is book one? Yeah, so I'll grab my hair.

So I've written three books. These are the three books. The first one's called Dotcom Secrets. Second one's called Expert Secrets. And third's called Traffic Secrets. But Dotcom Sec secrets is the best. It's the strategy of funnels, right? It's like, okay, how do I take whatever business I'm in? And how do I, like, how do I translate that to here's the funnel that'll work for me?

And that's my first book. I'm super proud of it. The second book expert secrets is more about the selling side. Like now I have this funnel. How do I sell inside the funnel? How do I, like, how do I use persuasion and sales skills to get somebody to buy? And then traffic secrets, how do I get more people people in but from the beginning standpoint uh everyone always tells me the first book to read read.com secrets you understand like oh that's how a funnel worked for

me it'll like give you the aha moment it'll give you the understanding of like how these things fit into your world and uh and that's where i'd start for sure and what's the website to go to right now if you want to um find out more but it's clickfunnels.com um clickfunnels.com if you want to learn about software if you want the book um if you go to dot com secrets.com uh we have a free you know paid shipping handling for the hardbound version of it and you can get it there or it's on amazon too awesome well i will tell you you know you know i have a clickfunnels account and i've done really well with clickfunnels i love it um and i would strongly suggest any i'm not just saying this because rus's on the show, guys.

If you are in this world and you're not using ClickFunnels, you're out of your mind. I made the mistake because someone gave me some bad advice and said, oh, you need to have your own super duper high speed funnel because if you're, oh my God,

what a disaster that was, okay? You know what? And I learned from that, you know, when someone does something well, you know, just leverage off of their software and their mistakes they made, you probably made 8 million mistakes to get to where you are right now. We have this perfectly seamless interface. So I would really strongly recommend if you're not using ClickFunnels and you're in that world, you should at least check it out, take it for a test run. And, um, I think you'll be very happy that you did.

So that's my advice. Russell, thanks for coming on, buddy. You're an inspiration, great guy and a world-class entrepreneur. Thanks, guys. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It's been so much fun watching you for so long. I've just, I read your books

five years before the movies ever came out. It's fun to finally have some face time with. So I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on and a lot of fun. My pleasure. Everyone, Russell Brunson, share this with your friends and don't forget to check out click funnels and all the episodes of the wolf's den