Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - (VRE) Toonly - Voomly - Episode #1

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Listen in behind the scenes of all the ups and downs of another one of our recent "virtual real estate" acquisitions. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metrolinx and CrossLinx are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. show you guys behind the scenes what we did. I'm going to talk about what the company was, what are the front end offers were, why we were so excited by this specific company, what happened when we bought it and how everything crashed to the ground, the things we learned to get people to actually migrate from their platform to ClickFunnels, a bunch of things we're doing in the future and a whole bunch more. I hope you guys enjoy this

episode. I want to put this intention for you guys as you're listening to this episode today. As you're listening to it, I'm going to, again, I'm walking you guys behind the scenes of this acquisition we did. And you may or may not be looking to acquire a company. It doesn't matter. The lessons I learned along the way will be good for you no matter where you are. You're going to learn about funnel structure that works really, really good. You're going to be learning about things to look at if you were to buy a company or things

that probably you should be doing in your business if you ever want to sell your company and a whole bunch more. As always, if you are enjoying this podcast episode, this is something I do for free for you guys because I love you. The only way that I know that you guys like this is if you rate and review. So please go to whatever podcast platform you're on, rate and review, leave comments. That helps me to get this message out to more people. Also, don't forget that if you go to marketing secrets.com, you can see the video version of this. If you are listening to the audio, you can watch the video, you can get the transcripts, the show notes, and a whole bunch more. On top of that, if you have any questions for me specifically, you want me to answer during

the podcast related to this specific business or any of the crazy businesses we're working on, there's a spot there where you can ask the questions. Those do come directly to me and we'll be taking the best questions and they'll be on the show. So again, you go to marketingsecrets.com and right there you can submit your questions on the homepage, which is exciting. This episode is actually brought to you by a really cool software company called doodly.com. If you go to doodly, you'll find out about Hand Doodle Software. We'll talk more about that, but they are definitely sponsoring this episode because they owe me about $40 million right now. And so with that said, you guys, let's jump in the podcast and have some fun.

You're listening to Marketing Secrets with your host, Russell Brunson. All right, everybody. I'm excited for today's episode. I'm going to be talking to you guys about the biggest acquisition that ClickFunnels has had, the biggest company we purchased. But it's interesting because it's not a traditional company. It's not ones that you'd be like, oh, they bought HubSpot or they bought MailChimp. In fact, most people don't actually know the name of the company. In fact, I don't even know the name of the company. I know the name of the offers.

There are a whole bunch of really good front-end offers. The most famous one, the one that sells the most is called Doodly. You've probably seen it before. It's the hand doodle sketch software that draws videos. And there's another software called Toonly and a couple other ones. We bought the entire suite of the company. I'm going to tell you about that, why we did it, the reason, some of the ups and the downs and a whole bunch of stuff in between. But I want to actually go back in time because there's a longer backstory to this I think is actually important to understand why we did it. And so the backstory goes back to when I was in college.

And I was just first learning this whole internet marketing game. And one of the guys I met was also, I think he had graduated from college, but he had a full-time job. And he was also dabbling in internet marketing. And his name was Brad Cowens. This had been like, man, early 2000s, 2001, 2002, something like that. And we got to know each other. We always talked to each other like on Yahoo Messenger or something. It was like before Skype. It was like way back in the day, which is before Slack and before Facebook, before all those things. And we were trying to figure

this whole business out. And I had some offers I was selling. He had some. And we just got to know each other back then. And we would talk all the time, just all the things we were learning along the way. And I remember, I think his first big product that I was aware of, he had a lot of success with was a software product called SEO elite. He eventually went called keyword elite. He had a course called, uh, SEO mindset, but he was a big SEO guy back in the day. And, um, and that was kind of the first set of products he had. Uh, eventually he created a product called fat loss factor, which was a weight loss offer, which literally was like my favorite funnel back in the day. Um, every time I would launch a new funnel, I always showed my designers fat loss factor. I'm like, make it look like this one. And so, um, they used to always tease me. That's like your

favorite funnel. I'm like, it is like, stop making fun of me. But it was, uh, it was actually a, um, a weight loss program. And he had hand doodle software that doodled out the sales video and it converted great. He, um, he made tons of money with it. And then eventually he sold that, that business or that product. And then, um, Brad was kind of in between and didn't have a business. And I remember about that time he actually joined my inner circle, which was a huge honor for me because someone who's been my friend at that point for like 15 years, they joined my inner circle and he showed up. And it's funny because in their circle, um, everyone would get up and talk about their business. And Brad got up and he's like, I don't have a business. I sold my business.

And we're like, Oh, we don't talk about it. he's like, I don't have a business. I sold my business. And we're like, oh, what do you want to talk about? He's like, I don't know yet. We're trying to figure out what to do. And it was just kind of this, and he's super introverted, like even more introverted than me too. So like, I think his time on stage in our circle was just, I don't think, yeah,

I don't think he ever came back to another meeting. He was just like, well, I didn't really, I didn't have a business and I didn't have anything to talk about. So, but shortly after that, I remember meeting him message back and forth and he said he wanted to create a Doodle software. He's that, I remember I made a message back and forth and he said he wanted to create Doodle software. He's like, I had a ton of success with that.

I want to create Doodle software. And I was like, there's a lot of people that have created Doodle software. Like that isn't something that big of a market. Like why would you even do that? But he really wanted to. And those who don't know the Doodle, so the Hand Doodle software is actually the first,

this is internet marketing history lesson for you guys. The very first Hand Doodle software, actually the first, this is, this is internet marketing history lesson for you guys. The very first hand doodle software or not software, but hand doodle video, um, online was, um, Mike Geary's the truth about abs video. And it was handled by Vince Palco who used to run a company called add tunes. He still kind of does on the side, but he was the one that kind of invented this whole hand doodle software thing, uh, the hand doodle videos, uh, concept. And he did a whole bunch of the weight loss market. Then I hired Vince to be, he did probably 10 or 15 of them for me. Um, and then after that, people started building hand doodle software to kind of mimic what they were doing. And so anyway, so Brad had, had used his doodle software for fat loss factor. He decided he wanted to create

his own product. So he did and he created the product and he launched it and I didn't hear much about it. And again, I have two or three friends that actually sell hand doodle software. So I just like, Oh yeah, it's hand doodle software. And, um, it was like a year or two later, I was messaging Brad, just asking him how it was going. And he told me, he said that we're selling like 500, uh, 500 copies of this doodle software a day. And I was like, wait a day, like 500 new buyers a day. He's like, yeah, this is amazing. And then he's like, I took the model we figured out and I, uh, I created a new software called Tunely. So Doodly was like the hand tool software. Tunely was like a cartoon version. We have

cartoons and stuff. Um, and, uh, he said, I have 500 buyers a day. He's like, we're making tons of money, but it's like, but I don't have what you have with ClickFunnels. Like, I don't have a backend. Like I wish I had a continuity program, all these 500 people a day. I could put them into where I was getting paid monthly, but I didn't have something like that. So he had Dudley making money. Then he launched two and he was making money. He was working on one called Clay Mately, which is going to be like clay figures, kind of like doodle, but it'd be like clay characters. And, um, anyway, so the next two or three years, I kept going back and forth with him. And I remember he showed me, he's like, I figured out this model. And so this is what I

want to share with you guys. If you get nothing else from this episode, it's figuring out this model. So he said, I want to show you this model that I figured out. And it's the reason why I'm able to sell 500 copies a day. And he said, it's, it's a different, it's a different structure, um, way to kind of structure the funnel. He said, I look at most people were just selling like, here's the software at 67 bucks a month, or it's, you know, a hundred dollars one time or whatever. So he said, what what i did is like i created the doodly.com home page if you go to that home page you notice that there's the sales page for the sales letter software and inside of it um it's like $67 a month for the software he's like but i don't drive any

traffic that page he's like i have a special page it's like doodly.com slash whatever facebook or youtube or whatever wherever he's driving traffic from it's like you go to that page instead of selling it monthly uh we have a one-time fee where you pay 67 for lifetime access to the software and the page it literally says it's like special offer just for facebook visitors normally 67 a month if you go to the homepage because you're here it's 67 lifetime access right now so that was the first thing like this irresistible offer where you go from 67 a month to 67 lifetime that was the offer that got 500 buyers a day to come in. Right.

But as you know, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins, that's the game in the funnel world. Right. So he's making $67 for everyone that came in. But then his first upsell was a whole bunch of templates for people who are using the software. And he sold that for $97 one time for like three or 4,000 templates. And his take rate on, on OTO one, which is

97 offers like 60%, like more than half people were taking it, which is crazy. And they had upsell two and three and like, but the funnel was just killing it. Right. And so, uh, he was spending, I can't remember, you know, two or $300,000 a day and making profit on that and just killing it. Like anyway, the metrics were crazy. All these buyers are coming in, but the biggest thing he says is like, I don't have continuity on the click funnel. So I need to build something. So he spent the next couple of years building out this video, uh, like a video hosting platform

called the boom lady. He was going to let, he was going to host all these videos on. And after he created it, it was actually really, really good. It's like a good competitor to like Wistia or Vimeo or something like that. Uh, the big video hosting platforms. And so what he was going to do is make it where when someone creates a video, then they could host it on his video platform. That would be the continuity that he was going to make from it. And then for some reason, he created the continuity, like the platform, and then he never, it never really took off.

I don't know. I don't know exactly why, if I'm completely honest. I know he tried to launch it one way and then he tweaked it to be like this course creation platform. And then he just never really figured it out. And this is like about the time that, you know, 2020,

22 is all the whole, you know, pandemic stuff is happening. Chaos is happening. And Brad decided he wanted to sell the company. And he actually reached out to me because about the time is when we were looking, you know,

we were talking to people about potentially buying click funnels. He said, Hey, do you have somebody that you could introduce me to? So I was like, yeah, I have this really good business broker. So I introduced Brad to this business broker.

Brad went to the business broker and tried to start, started trying to sell his, his, his suite of products. So I was like, yeah, I have this really good business broker. So I introduced Brad to this business broker. Brad went to the business broker and tried to start, started trying to sell his, his, um, his suite of products. So Doodly, Toonly, Clay Maylee, Vroomly, uh, Takia, there's like 10 different front end products he was trying to, trying to sell. And so, um, it hadn't even crossed our mind that we would be potentially, you know, we were potentially going to buy it. We were just out there, um, you know, doing our thing with ClickFunnels. And about the time we decided we weren't going to sell click funnels and instead we're going to build click funnels 2.0 and then one of the big things that i kept thinking through is like i want to figure out ways to have more non-russell based front ends right

like my face is on the front end of all of our front end products and our courses and our things that bring people in the click funnels which is cool but you know if we ever want to sell something or go public or whatever the next step would be, it's weird if I'm the only person, if I get hit by a bus, like what happens to the company? Right? So the question was like, how do we build more non-Russell based front ends? And about that time is when we met Dan Kennedy. And I told that story in a different, in a different, um, or not met Dan Kennedy. I knew he was, but when Dan Kennedy's company was for sale, and that was one of the big reasons why I bought that company was Dan's written 40 books. There's 40 non-Russell based front ends we could

have, um, on the platform, which was amazing. Right. And so that was kind of the thought. And then all of a sudden Brad messaged me one day. He's like, Hey, we've got three or four people looking to buy the platform. And he's wanting your opinion on something we were talking. And I also had this idea that popped my head. I was like, he's getting 500 buyers a day, just on duly.com. It's like counting to only.com and in my head. I was like, he's getting 500 buyers a day just on Doodly.com. It's like counting Toonly.com and the other ones. I was like, what if we bought that company and we put these 500 buyers a day, got them into ClickFunnels? What would that look like?

That would be the huge – these are non-Russell-based front ends. They're software front ends. There's this thing. He's figured out the model. He's figured out this thing. He's crushing it. We should just – we should buy that. And also now we have all these different front ends that aren't, you know, aren't my face on them. And so that was kind of the thought. We started going back and

forth talking to Brad and talking to the broker. And it was so funny. Cause like we introduced that to the broker, the broker then ended up selling the business to us, which was kind of just this funny, weird thing. And so he got a commission check, even though, yeah, I should get the commission check, but you know, that's how it worked. So, um, look at my notes and anything we'll talk about. Oh, a couple of things we did. So again, there are 500 buyers a day coming to Doodly. Plus there's that, you know, I think 250 or so coming through Toonly.

Uh, he was working on this product called Clay Maitland. Anyway, like the opportunity seemed really, really good for us. Uh, we took all the customer lists from, from Brad's company and from ours and just to see if like, you know, if they're the same customers, there's only like a 5% crossover. It's like 95% of customers were not click funnels members, which in our minds, like this is this huge thing.

And so we all excited. We decided to buy it. It was extremely expensive. As you can probably tell, his company was killing it. So it was our first big acquisition. We had to get a bank loan and like, it was stressful and all those kinds of things.

And when we were like at the 99 yard line, we're about to close this whole deal. Um, this is where all of a sudden a whole bunch of crazy stuff started happening. So, um, I'm telling you guys some of the problems we ran into. And so this is, this is not the highlight reel of like, we bought this company. It's super successful. This is like all the rest of the stuff we learned along the way that I wish I would have known it would have saved me so much time, energy and effort. Hopefully this will help you guys if you decide to buy a company or yeah, things like that. So

first problem we ran into is right when we're about to close this whole deal is the same time that Dave Woodward, who was our CEO at the time, who was running the company, got his brain tumor. So that was the first thing of just like, we lost the person who was running the entire deal, which was, and you know, a year later, still like just this been a really, really hard thing. So there was that part, which was hard. Um, the second thing is we'd never bought a company before, so we didn't know how, like how it works. So we're buying this company with Brad and all these products and there's like a hundred

employees. And so we buy this company and then the date you would close on the day it closed. Then Brad's like, Hey, here's the company. Like, good luck you guys. And, and we, I never even thought through thought through like i think most companies have that are buying companies have like a mergers and acquisitions department that like onboards people we didn't have a we didn't think through any of that stuff so we bought the company wired them the money like oh we have this company that's all sudden like we have to hire 100 people we have to like figure out contracts we have to

figure out and it was a nightmare we didn't have any migration plan and again i lost dave's now it's like russell like what are you gonna do with these hundred new employees? And I was like, I have no idea. So that was really, really stressful and painful, um, for a long time, actually. I mean, I would say probably six or eight months. It took us just to like, to figure that thing out. Um, we also found questions we should have asked, uh, as we were going through due diligence, the company was basically Brad and Brad's insanely talented. So there's Brad. And then there was like a hundred people that worked under Brad. There was no organization. There were no managers. There were no, like all the kinds of stuff that you have in a typical company. Brad didn't have any of that. He's just super talented and managed

all these people. And so when Brad's little company was gone, all of a sudden, like I had a hundred direct reports reporting back up to me and everyone asked me a thousand questions. And I was like, no wonder Brad wants to sell his company. Like, I don't even know what to do right now. Like it was, it was kind of crazy. The operations was not in place for that company. Um, so that was really, really hard to figure out. Um, Brad likes is also a genius. Brad was running his own ads. He was, you know, he would be checking ads hour by hour, minute by minute, making tweaks and changes. And like, again, which is probably why he wanted to sell a company who's so involved in it. And so when we had our ads to take it over, you know know they're not checking every single ad set

multiple times an hour like he was able to do so he was optimizing constantly tweaking the funnel tweaking stuff and like it was his sole focus for you know four or five years he was building it up so when we took it over and we're plugging into like a machine with a media buyers and people and all sorts of stuff and there's different divisions from funnel team and from ads team and like and so instantly we took it over and it went from being really, really profitable to not profitable almost overnight where now we were like losing money. We're like every single day losing tens of not hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it was just trying to figure that out and try to like not have this thing.

Anyway, it was just, it was, it was crazy, but right. It's okay because we have this huge customer list. People are coming in. Um, and so the big first step, like step number one, let's get all these people into ClickFunnels. Maybe we'll add 10 or 20,000 people in ClickFunnels. It'll change, you know, it'll make it all worth it. And so we promote this big webinar to the Doodly and the Toonly and all the customer lists. We had this big webinar.

We had 3,000 or 4,000 people registered. We're like, this is going to be amazing. And I did the funnel hacks presentation. And in my head, I'm like, yeah, like doing the math and numbers, like how much money we're going to make, how many people are going to sign up. Do the presentation. And in my head, I'm like, yeah, like doing the math and numbers, like how much money we're going to make, how many people are going to sign up, do the presentation. And about halfway through the presentation, I look over to the comments and they were not, they were not going well. People were upset. They were complaining. This is a sales pitch. Like the whole, it was weird. Like I'm used to selling to people in our industry who are internet marketers who understand marketing. And what I quickly realized is that the customers who were buying Doodly and Toonly were not who I

thought they were. I thought they were marketers using videos to market their business. When I found out really quickly as people are buying more people who are creating videos to, to teach school, like they were making these videos for the classes. They were kindergarten teachers. They were, uh, people who were making, uh, presentations. They were doing trainings. They were like, it was course creators, not business owners and marketers. And, um, these people had never done a webinar. I'd never been sold to. And it was, I was reading the comments and I remember I was reading the comments. I start stressing out.

So it makes me nervous on the webinar. And then the webinar, I start talking faster and people can understand me and people are more angry. And I did the pitch and it was just – the whole thing was – it was bad. I'm not going to lie. I got on the webinar and I remember sitting in the room afterwards and I was like, what do we do? I thought these people were like potential ClickFunnels customers and we're now seeing that they are not. Like there's – it's different customers.

And we're just like, oh my gosh. Like this is a huge mistake, right? We sold a few on the webinar but it was not a slam dunk by any stretch. It wasn't even like a, it wasn't like a base hit. I don't know, it went from basketball to baseball, but I didn't know how to say that in basketball, like a, I don't know. Anyway, so, but yeah, it was just like, yeah, that night we were all like stressed out and we're like, we made a big mistake.

We shouldn't have bought this. It's losing money every single day. The buyers are not buying ClickFunnels. Like, oh crap, we wrote this, you know, we wired tens of millions of dollars for this company and we got a hundred people messaging us for support. We didn't know what to do. And all at the same time that Dave's now going through, you know, getting a tumor and chemotherapy and all these things.

And anyway, it was a really heavy, really scary season. And we had Funnel Hacking Live happening. And we closed Dan Kennedy's company like the week, the same week. I can't even, like it was a lot in a really short period of time. And anyway, yeah, so. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend Taylor Wells. Taylor spoke at our last Funnel Hacking Live because 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 want to 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. Uh, 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 figure out, make sure that you have first 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. Um, 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. You get 25% off. But then we'll take the test. Again, it takes you 10 minutes.

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, it's going to make sure that you are with your teams, getting them in the right seats as well. So anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out at workinggenius.com and enter the promo code secrets for 20% discount. 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. So there's the, there's what was really

happening behind the scenes in case you're all wondering. And so then we were trying to figure out, well, what do we do? Like, I don't know. And I was like, the biggest thing is like, we have to figure out, like, how do we bridge the gap from these people who are courses to like, to like, that they need to funnel? Like there, there's a gap there and we can bridge the gap, but we have to, we have to bridge the gap because there's not a direct correlation right now. Like, how do we do that?

And so I hired a copywriter who I thought was really good copywriter. I'm like, writing video sales that we're going to hand doodle the software out and we're going to put it, give it to the doodly customers that explain why they need, you know, why a course creator or some content videos needs a funnel. And so I paid someone $10,000 like, let's write this thing. I need a quick. And they wrote the sales letter and it was like the worst thing ever. I don't know if you guys ever hired copywriters before. You should see their slam dunk or so worst thing ever. And this one came back as the worst thing ever. I'm like, gosh, spend another 10 grand and this sales, I can't even use. It's literally unusable. You don't get a refund

when copywriters write bad copy, by the way, like you're paying for their time, not for the end result. And I was like, well, we got, yeah. So amongst all this stuff, I'm like, I'm so tired. I don't have time for this, but I have to write sales letters. So I sat down and I wrote an entire script, um, that, um, we're going to hand animate. So I wrote the script, which I was really proud of. Um, we found one of the animators did a lot of work with Brad to do doodle videos. Like, here's a script, doodle this video out. And then, um, we found somebody who did the Toonly videos. I said, here's the same script. I tweaked some things for Toonly. I need you to make a Toonly version of it. And so now someone went and they

spent a month or two going to making a doodly hand doodle video and a cartoon video. In fact, if you go to doodly funnels, doodly funnels.com, you can see what the video looks like or toonly funnels.com. You see the video looks like the whole goal was to take people from who are buying doodly or buying toonly and, and bridge the gap. So they would want to become funnel builders. Okay. And so much of marketing is just bridging gaps. So you guys understand that? Like, if you think about it, um, whenever you're trying to sell whatever your product is, like you're selling a book, you know, someone may not like, why do I need traffic seekers? It's making no sense. Well, I need to bridge a gap. Like, what did you have a business? The business needs customers, right? Customers are traffic. That's

why. So I had to bridge this gap where they're like, Oh, I actually need that thing. Right? So all businesses about that figuring out like, what is the result that you offer people? What is the thing that people are looking for? And like, how do you bridge the gap between those two things? And so doodleyfunnels.com and toodlyfunnels.com were a sales video to bridge the gap between where they were today and where I need them to go to actually buy ClickFunnels. So we created those two things and we ended up sending an email to all the doodly fund, to the doodly owners to go to doodlyfunnels.com and all the toodly owners to go to toodlyfunnels.com. That's a mouthful of, uh, words to say.

And from that, it was cool because we started seeing people actually start signing up, um, for ClickFunnels through these different funnels, right? Oh, thank heavens. Like not all is lost. Like we can, we can bridge the gap. We can convince these people why funnels is what they need to really get to the next level. So we made those bridges and then after we had those things and they were working, then we went back and said, okay, let's go and let's actually add the Doodly Funnels offer as upsell number three in the funnel.

And so we went back through and added it as upsell number three. So now when you go, if you buy Doodly, you'll see Doodly for $67 and there's a $97 lifetime pack and then there's another offer. And then it's ClickFunnels trial, which is basically Doodly Funnels video. And then we push people to trial. And we have that on the Doodly Funnel and the Toonly Funnel built into the funnel now. And what's cool is that every single day now, people who are coming into these funnels are now outside for ClickFunnels. So we're getting consistent stream of income. In fact, as of today, I asked Kevin, I was like,

where, like, you know, how many people are coming through there? He said, well, if you look at all of our referral sources, we track them all through affiliate links. We can kind of see what's happening. Here's all the stuff that comes to Facebook from these top affiliates and stuff. But Doodly.com, like that funnel is one of the top 10 ClickFunnels affiliates. That's how many new trials they consistently bring in. It's one of the top 10 lead sources we have right now, which is amazing. So it's finally starting to work.

And I need to give credit where which is amazing. So it's finally starting to work. Um, and, uh, one, one other, I need to give credit where credit is due. Um, when all this stuff was happening and we had a hundred employees with reporting back to me, we didn't have Dave. Um, uh, we added some of our team. Um, Kevin Richards, who's been one of the man, one of the greatest gifts of my life. Uh, over the last year, he came in, uh, about two weeks after Dave left with his tumor and came in and I basically was like, I'm drowning. I'm like, here's all this stuff. And he came in and, um, has become like our CMO, like our operational person or C was a CMO chief marketing officers, CMO and COO of ClickFunnels. Uh, when he came in and was able to, um, yeah, help with the ClickFunnels side, but also coming into this acquisition and say, okay, here's all the employees interviewing all finding who they are,

finding managers from all of them, finding people that weren't doing anything, like getting things set up, figuring out systems and processes and build out this entire org structure. And now it's like, oh, now this is actually running like a business is supposed to run, right? And so Kevin came and set all that stuff up. Kevin's the one who like took the Doodly funnels,

Toodly funnels, and after I built the sales video and the initial sales layers, weave them into the ClickFunnels funnels. And so like, he's been just insanely uh, helpful for us to get these things in place. And so I wanted to put that in there because like, how do you juggle all these things when you're struggling? Like it's finding more help.

It's finding the right people. It's getting the right people who can, whose skillset is to do these things. And so I was lucky I was able to find someone to help with that. Um, okay. Uh, and then afterwards, one of the other cool things is, uh, now that we have everything kind of in place now we've been focusing. And, um, I think last month was the first month where the funnels got the point where they're profitable again on the front end, which is amazing. And now we're scaling profitably. And so, um, it's taken almost a year from acquisition

till now to where it's like, Oh, now this company is actually making some money in our heads. We're like, Oh, this is going to be a slam dunk. We're going to buy it within 12 months. Now it'll pay for itself. It's all going to be free money. And it didn't do that. It's been, it's taking a lot longer, but it took us a year to get the structure, the people, the offers, the, the bridge points, like all those things in place to where now, uh, this becomes a really good front end engine to bring people in the click funnels and things like that. Um, okay. A couple other things, just where we're going so that you guys can watch over the next couple of weeks, months, and years. Um, I told you guys before that Brad had built a video hosting platform called Vroomly. Um, and after he'd done it, he kind of launched it. Then he's changed it

to like this course membership platform, which kind of competes with ClickFunnels and one thing. So we came back to look, video hosting is like the big thing, right? Like wistia.com and vimeo.com are huge companies. They do video hosting. Like we can do video hosting with Boomly just as well, if not better than them. Plus Brad had built this really cool engine into it. It's like a video funnel engine where you can have a video and you put the player on it. And, and imagine watching a sales video. It's like a choose your own adventure. So someone watches like two minutes of a sales video and it stops. It's like, wait, are you a man or a woman? You're like, I'm a man. And all of a sudden you click a button on the

video player and it loads up a next video, which is speaking specifically to a man. Or you can have a survey where it's like, uh, are you just getting started? You've been doing this for a long time. Are you moving or, you know, are you super advanced? And you pick it and it changes the video and you can build super complex video funnels through the Vroomly player, which is insanely cool. And so, um, anyway, so we kind of pulled out some of the core stuff that was in it initially, and we're getting close to relaunching that video hosting platform. And one of the biggest features is the video funnel players, which are insanely cool. And so we have that.

Plus, you'll see we've gotten all these software, Doodly, Toonly, Takia, all the different videos inside of Vlad's platform. We built kind of similar to like Adobe cloud, you know, or things like that, where it's like all the software is built in one thing. And so you'll see the new version. It hasn't launched yet, but basically by doodly or toonly, they're all kind of cross sell inside of the software. And then whenever you make a video, it automatically will host that video on Vroomly for free up to a certain amount of videos. And hopefully it'll get us to the point where we're moving all these people who are video creators. So we've got literally hundreds of thousands of video creators get into where they're hosting on our video hosting platform

using video funnels and it'll grow dramatically. On top of that, we're also gonna be taking this video, uh, Vumi video funnels technology and plugging into click funnels. So click funnels members will hopefully stop using Vimeo and Wistia and YouTube to host their videos or start using Vumi instead, because first, it's a better platform. Second off, you're able to do video funnels, things like that. And third off, it's just going to be super easy integration. And so over time, I think Vumly, just the video hosting platform could be a $20, $30, $40 million a year business just by itself, which is another big reason why we bought

the acquisition because it was like, there's this thing here that has not been used yet that I think there's a lot of value in that can be worth a lot of money. We just have to figure out the right way to do it, get it working correctly and plug in the whole system. So that's kind of the update on that acquisition. Again, Doodly is the software most people know, but Doodly, Toonly, Vroomly, Takia, Claymately, there's a whole bunch of ones. Then there's like a marketplace for Doodly and for Toonly stuff. There's Automatic Script, which is a funnel scripts clone. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

So like I said, a whole bunch of front-end offers that are software. They're non-Russell based. They're bringing people into the ClickFunnels world. And so anyway, that's one that's been – there are a lot of things we've learned on the way. We learned that like you need to have somebody in place of like migrating people over. We learned that you got to make sure when you're buying companies, you're not just looking at like, ooh, the marketing. Like the ads are converting. The funnels are getting us.

Like who's looking at the operational side of things? Like who's going to manage these people? Like what's it going to look like? Like are people actually doing something? Like who's – when Brad, the owner of the company, leaves and disappears, like what's going to happen? Like is there a process for running ads? Or is there one super genius who is like doing all this stuff? And if he leaves and he is leaving, cause he sold the company, like what happens? Like, do the ads just crash? Like so many questions that I wish I would have

asked initially, but now, you know, we've acquired a lot of companies over the last couple of months. Like, uh, we've, we've known now to ask the right questions. So hopefully that helps some of you guys. Um, uh, hopefully some of the conversations about like bridging the gap, like figuring out again, like the source, like the lead source coming from, and then like what I'm trying to sell, like how do I bridge the gap?

You know, think about that with anything you're doing, like you're buying ads from Facebook or from YouTube or podcast ads, or, you know, it's like if someone's listening to say they're listening to the mixer G podcast and you want to sell them your book on, I don't know,

traffic or funnels or something like, how do you bridge the gap? Right? Because just because it's like, oh, they're going to want this, like just because they're humans doesn't mean they're necessarily going to want it. You have to bridge that gap for them. And the gap could be an email. It could be a video sales letter. It could be a webinar.

A lot of ways to bridge that gap. You have to strategically think through it. By me just taking my existing webinar that I'd converted for internet marketers for the last 10 years and trying to put it on these course creators, it wasn't a bridge that they were able to follow, right? I had to create something very specific and very, you know, very specific for them. And same thing can happen when you're buying ads. Again, like the landing page, in fact, if you look at doodly.com, like the landing page for YouTube ads is different than the landing page for Facebook ads, right?

If you're on YouTube, it's like, hey, you're here on a special YouTube. You came from YouTube, so this is a YouTube special for YouTube people only. And so there's a page specifically for that that bridges the gap between the traffic and the thing you're trying to sell, right? And there's a specific one for Facebook and TikTok and Instagram. And so we're bridging that gap to be to, uh, to be able to, to match the traffic with the actual person. Um, uh, and hopefully gives you ideas of kind of like, you know, as you're buying companies or you're thinking through even creation of companies, like what are the big things that are, that are the most valuable, right?

Like the front end funnels were valuable for us. Video hosting platform that had been used as huge for us. Like there's so many ways we can monetize that. Um, yeah. So it's just looking at all the different assets and trying to figure out how things work. So I hope that helps you guys. Um guys and gives you kind of an update. If you haven't used Doodly or Toonly yet, you should go check it out. But I would go to the homepage. You'll

see it's $67 a month and then just wait and we'll retarget you and you'll get an ad somewhere that'll give you the lifetime deal. So there's your guys' homework is go let us stock you some ads and go find it out. But then look behind the scenes, like buy slowly, watch the funnel, look at the process. Like, um, when you see behind the scenes, what happened and, um, and what's like, what's happening, you'll see like, Oh, this is why Russell spent 40 some odd billion dollars in the company because of the funnels. Like for you to go and funnel hack that and look at the process is worth at least the price of buying the software. So go buy the software, funnel hack it, watch it. Um, and then figure out how could I reverse engineer a funnel like this for my specific business? In fact, on another

episode in the future, I'm gonna talk about one of the other acquisitions we bought was specifically because we understood the doodly funnel structure and we saw some other software that didn't do it. Like we buy that software and applied that funnel, boom, game over. And so, um, anyway, I'm trying to give you guys hints to see like what's going on in my head as I'm looking at offers and deals and like how to grow and scale our companies. Hopefully this was helpful for you. So thanks again. And we'll keep you on the journey, showing you guys behind the scenes of Doodly, Toonly, Boomly, and the entire suite of products.

All right, this is Russell again. I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with somebody you know who could benefit from it. Let them listen to it. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. And again, if you have any questions for me about this episode or any episodes, go to marketingsecrets.com. On the homepage, you can submit a question.

Those come directly to me and I'll answer them on one of the next podcast episodes. On top of that, when you go to marketingsecrets.com, you can see the video version of this podcast. You can see the show notes, a whole bunch of other stuff, plus all the other past episodes. You can go and binge watch them there. Thank you guys again for listening to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.