The Russell Brunson Show - Bootstrapping from $0 to $100,000,000+ Part 1 (Ian Stanley Interview)

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Listen in on this rare interview with Russell Brunson and Ian Stanley. 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

Air Transat presents two friends traveling in Europe for the first time and feeling some pretty big emotions. This coffee is so good. How do they make it so rich and tasty? Those paintings we saw today weren't prints. They were the actual paintings. I have never seen tomatoes like this. How are they so red? With flight deals starting at just $589, it's time for you to see what Europe has to offer. Don't worry, you can handle it. Visit airtransat.com for details. Conditions apply. AirTransat. Travel moves us. If you don't know him, he is a really good marketer. Some really fun offers. In fact, the first time I ever saw him, there was an offer he had for, it was one of those like survival straws that you can, you know, if the world's coming to an end, you can drink

these straws and it'll filter your water. And the ad was him like downtown New York walking to the most disgusting bathroom of all time. And he got down into the toilet himself and drank out of his survival straw out of a New York toilet. It was the most amazing video offer of all time. So that's why I first saw him and I've been following him for years. He wrote a really good book called, he's called Confessions of an Advertising Hitman, which is really good as well.

Anyway, just a really cool marketer who happened to move to Boise, Idaho. And lives here now, he's got a team and they're creating amazing offers and products and doing cool stuff. And anyway, we always joke that our goal is to get all of the big marketers and funnel builders to move to Boise. So we're working on getting all y'all to come move out here. But Ian's out here. I'm out here. Obviously, I run my masterminds and stuff and he runs his here as well. So yeah, a lot of cool people come to Boise because of what Ian's doing and what I'm trying to do. And so anyway, the other day he asked me if I would come speak at one of the virtual events that he was doing, uh, at his, he calls it the Hoffice, which is his house slash office. It's the house he bought just to turn it into an office. And, um, there was anyway,

long story short, I said yes. And so a couple of Saturdays ago, I drove up there and we had a chance to hang out and talk for an hour. And it was really fun. We talked about all sorts of stuff from business to life to, you know, about a million things in between. Some of it was goofy and funny. Some of it was really serious and fun. So anyway, I hope you have fun listening in on this interview. It's about an hour long, so I'm going to break it into two episodes. The first one you have a chance to listen to now, and then the next one I'll release in a few days from now. But this is a behind the scenes interview where Ian Stanley was interviewing me for his highest end members of his mastermind group, all about business and life.

And I hope you guys enjoy part one of this interview. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. You guys, we got Russell Brunson with us us i don't even know if he needs an introduction to be perfectly honest uh he's he loves secrets um my license plate says so yeah when he came in of course he's got this license plate that just says secrets on it and i'm like oh that makes

perfect sense and i just wonder what's the weirdest thing somebody said to you about seeing that because you got to be like this guy made his money in some weird way oh yeah well it's like when i first got started i've been in this game 20 years now like when people were like what did you do for a living like i sell stuff on the internet and they're like oh it was always they're like so do you sell things on ebay or are you in porn that was the two things and that's those are the only two options people ask that like so like what is the secret like you know anyway so it's usually something related to that and which one was it yeah uh today of course well let's uh do you want to do you want to give any background i mean russell started click funnels you've done a million other things you just bought dan kennedy's company which is pretty amazing we'll have to talk about that

yeah and about a dozen other companies this year we bought a lot of companies geez really okay i don't talk much about it but we haven't been doing that okay i'd love to hear about that because that's something cam and i are starting to do i've realized that trying to create almost passive income using like whether it's crypto or stocks or this or that it's like doesn't actually fit within what i know yeah what if we just buy companies that what's crazy is you can buy them for free right now too which is nuts i can talk about if you want but yeah oh i definitely do okay let's let's start with because you actually said you've been doing this for 20 years i want to know about your first dollar you made online yeah i've heard about the potato gun like you've seen the muscle thunsen where i said that i had a

it was i had a tomato gun business and the tomatoes would break upon impact they're not as sturdy as potatoes but so is the potato gun was that the first dollar it actually wasn't no it was the it was the first thing like that i could talk about everything else was just dumb like i did affiliate marketing i did um i was trying i bought my like resale rights was a huge thing back 20 years ago and i so i started i was at boise state so i was in classes trying to like learn this stuff and i'd sneak out the computer lab and i'd you know be watching frank or listening to frank kern teleseminars because pre-video right so listen frank kern and armin moore frank was before you yeah frank's before me okay yeah frank's his underachiever thing i actually bought that from

him later but like underachiever thing he had way back almost 20 years ago was like he was talking about like finding a niche and then building a thing and so that was when i was was like, what's my niche? And then potato guns. But I had done, I had done a couple of things prior to that. Like my, in fact, my first actual product was a software product called ZipRander. It was the first idea I ever had. I was in college and I tried to hire, uh, try to hire a programming company to build it. And they wanted like $10,000, which I didn't have. So I actually, I literally switched my major to programming. So I could learn how to program this idea that I thought was going to be the greatest thing in the world. And like day three of programming class, I was like, I have no idea what these teachers are

talking about. And then, um, I remember I heard Armin Morin who had like 10 software products back then. He's like, Oh, I hired people off script lands to build it. So I took the same project idea that I'd sent to these, this programming company, put on script lands. And I hired this dude named Cyprian in Romania, and he built it for $20. For $20? It's not like Donkey Kong. Now I know how to play this game.

I started making my first – probably my first 10 products, little software products. And that was before the potato gun. I was making software products, software – these little one-off – What did it do? What was the first one? What did it do? It was ZipRender.

So I remember back in the day, everyone was selling resale rights. So you'd buy an ebook and then you download it. And then you could sell it. Somebody else wrote the content, but you were allowed to sell it. But if you read the content, the person who was giving resale rights was smart. They wrote an ebook, but the ebook was selling their back end stuff. And so I'd be selling this book and then they'd be making all this money off me. And so as an annoyed 21-year-old kid i was like i wish i could like brand this so the

first thing they did they opened it they'd see my ad before they read the book and i was like that was the idea so it's called zip brander it's gonna be it was gonna like zip the file down and then we open it you saw my ad first that was the big idea which is actually a stupid idea but at the time i thought like it was big enough almost like a a pop-up for. Yeah, totally a pop-up for a file. People love pop-ups. Yeah. I can't believe it didn't take off. But it was the first thing I mean, I thought it was so big.

I changed my major to like figure out how to make that thing. Right. But I did change your major back. And I just know. Yeah. You have a programming degree. Computer information systems. Okay.

But I graduated 2.1 GPApa so i don't know actually how to do any of it okay i got c's c's get degrees um but anyway but yeah that was my very first thing i did sell like i made a sales letter i did the whole process right i got some design e-cover of the software box and i wrote a sales letter and i remember i sent it to this guy named raymond mcnally and he wrote back he's like this is the coolest idea and the worst sales letter ever he's like i wrote you a new sales letter last night. And this dude wrote me an entire sales letter for free, free, just like to help me out. And so I had the sales letter, I had the image and, um, and this is before ads or, you know, Facebook or anything. And so then

I started like just sending my product for free to a whole bunch of people. And I think Mike Phil saying might've been the first person. How did you, how were you sending it out at that point? So this is cause what, yeah, this must be early 20 years ago so what's that 20 or 2002 yeah holy shit and so yeah i was just emailing it to people i like email you know it's mike i still remember mike phil saying his email address like sign and drive at hotmail.com and so like i sent him an email like here's the product and he wrote back this is cool and then he sent an email to his list and we made like 12 sales i was like oh my gosh like you know that's amazing that was like the first thing and then from that you know people had a little pop-up on the site so i got people join my email list and then i think i remember that very first promo that phil saying

that i got 217 people i remember the number but there's a day 217 people join my email list from the pop-up and i was like i have a list so i went to somebody else i was like hey if you promote my thing i'll promote your thing to my list i didn't tell my only 200 people and so they promoted my thing and i got another 500 people that joined list my pop and i promoted their thing and i started doing that these little cross promos and then um and then it was like i had another i was my second software i was in um i spent a lot of time in forums like doing forum marketing where you thought we in the warrior forum and just the bottom of the barrel the best i would make like all these posts and i can never like find them again i was like i need software that would like

they follow up so i could remember if someone posted i could find all these posts and so my second product was called forum fortunes again i paid someone 100 bucks or something to make the software and that was the second one and then i sold that to my little email list and then i had one called article spider so there's a bunch of those little things so you basically just had if you had a problem you were like can i solve this yeah software or a lot of times i'd see someone who had a really cool software but it's like 300 bucks i was like i could code that for i have my guys code that for 300 bucks and then i could sell it and then instead of becoming a cost became right a product because a lot of my things were just like oh i could hire someone to make that one and that one so because i thought you were

an info product guy or a potato it all started software so it started with software now it's so that was what was happening and i was having some success with it and that's when frank current came out the undertuber thing and i was like oh what's my thing and so potato guns was the first info thing i did so that's a more interesting story for most for the masses yeah it's a good well also the fact here's the thing called yeah oh yeah the fact that you're like i literally make money by teaching people how to shoot potatoes yeah much better story so that's what i lead with but yeah so how did that actually happen um so again i i read i got i bought kern's course went through it all and i was like i have no talents i don't know what i'm going to do and then um do you remember overture is that before your time i might be before my time

in 2002 i was 12 years old oh seriously yeah so you're like i had an email address and i'm like i was just starting to experience the joys of puberty at that point i was just trying to figure out i was making like rosie o'donnell at that point i I was just trying to figure out. I looked like Rosie O'Donnell at that point. I was a chubby little guy. I don't know if we'll be able to pull up a picture today, but that picture is fantastic. I mean, it looks like I'm pretty sure my dad shagged Rosie O'Donnell.

It's a spitting image when I was a kid. But that was what I was doing in 2002. Well, there was a site called Overture back in the day, and it was the first keyword research thing. And Yahoo did it. So the Yahoo results. So you type in a keyword and show you this is how many people search on yahoo for the keyword okay and so i remember that's something frank showed of course i went there um i typed in oh sorry it was after spring break my buddies and i'm we were the only two married guys on the wrestling team and so spring break hit and everyone else

like boom heading to vegas or went over to go gamble and have fun. And, you know, Nate and I, our wives were supporting us and working. And so they like, they weren't excited about us leaving town. Yeah. You know, and it's not really my style. And so our wives are working. So he, Nate's like, Hey man, let's make a potato gun this week. Like what's a potato gun. Oh, so we spent the whole spring break making a potato gun. And then we got done. I was like, that was really fun.

And then the next Monday I shot it. it in fact there's a whole funny story went out behind the airport shooting it and as we're shooting it this big tank thing drives up and apparently we're on like army ground or something and this big sergeant come out his thing and they start yelling at us and uh my wife was pregnant with our twins at the time she thought we're going to jail she was freaking out and then um and then the guy was like he was kind of a jerk at first and then at the end he's like so how far does it shoot like show it to me and so then we spend next like 30 minutes with the army dudes like shooting the guns and stuff and then like just you can shoot him just don't shoot him like here because we can see he's on our radar and that yeah you're gonna go to jail he

could see the potatoes on apparently yeah or i don't know if the potatoes are us driving something but yeah they told us and then this is the fastest ship we've seen out here what what is this ufo out here oh it's it's a bunch of potatoes it's some 21 year old wrestler shooting potatoes i thought we were in danger right here oh wow that's that's pretty yeah that's when i went the next day next monday at school i went to overture and i was like potato gun i typed in and i think there's like 18 000 people searching potato guns and i was like this is it i mean this is my product and so that started the whole the very first is like plans yeah it was plans when they and i spent the whole week building stuff so we built like 10 different versions and most of them didn't work

they didn't work as well and there's like the one that was our favorite one so like the one that the army contract yep major first money's like actually the army hired us to develop to develop rocket launchers that would have been a great story in the sales that would have been the army wants this potato gun technology can you imagine we got film or video of the dude they things would have been out in uniform yeah totally in uniform big old boots and everything and coming yeah potato guns would still be popular right now had you done that had i've had our phones back then to film everything did you even have a computer like at home or were you literally going to the computer lab to like do we had a we had a really crappy computer my wife's computer because my wife's older than me so she had

invested in a computer but it was not nice we had one that at the house and then i'd go to school and most work at the school computer lab um what people have all these excuses nowadays i feel like oh yeah it's like you have a supercomputer you have your phone yeah and you're like i was on dial-up at a computer lab we didn't have like cameras like there wasn't phones with cameras like we had a um i borrowed a video camera from somebody like uh you know like a little dad cameras that you'd go film you know with a little thing that scrolled zooming in out and so we borrowed a camera it went to the we actually broke into boise state university um uh and on the whiteboard like mapped out if you've watched the dvd you'll see it's like in a classroom boise state and like we we wrote out the formulas and filmed ourselves

doing it went to home depot and filmed ourselves behind the pipes and then my wife's work went back office and like she worked at a warehouse and we'd go back there and we were cutting it and gluing it all together but yeah it was all filmed on this old camera we had to give back and then we had to figure out like we have this tape right like how do you get that on a computer and onto a dvd and there's so many things we had to figure out and then we finally got that all figured out and we started burning on dvds i bought a dvd burner so we burned the dvds and we sell them we put it in things ship it out and you were shipping them so how did you actually get traffic because you had this list of people who were into software or internet marketing products right yeah but completely unrelated people who were like but

i also love potato guns so there were two big potato gun forums back in the day i don't know if there were four forums yeah there's just two forms just people talking about spud guns yeah okay it was really cool the hard part is a lot of those people in there were like hardcore like they were making these insane guns like bolt action like we could like shoot potatoes they'd like dudes building these like um like uh semi-automatic ones we could like load six potatoes and that like crazy stuff it's like i'm kind of potato gun plans and people are making fun of it but they sold ads they're a banner at top and on the side so i bought the banner ads and sure enough all the

newbies would come and buy our potato gun plans because no one was selling they just everyone's talking about their own yeah yeah what uh how much were you do you remember the first sale and like what i bet you put you know what you paid i can't remember there was that one and also i was buying google ads google ads were easy back in the day too so like i was also buying google ads those are the two i can't remember where the first sale came from but yes i do remember it coming through and i was like somebody and i remember nate was my buddy who did the thing with me i was like i messaged him i was like dude somebody just bought one he's like somebody paid us for that crap i was like

like um yeah and he's like what do you know i'm like we'll get a go figure out like now we got to burn a so we had to go figure out the whole like because we had the file on the computer and it burned a dvd and then we got bought a sticker with the printer to build, print a sticker and stick it on. Right. And like just all those little things we had to do to get it out. What did you sell it for? I think it was 37 bucks.

That's what current holders to sell for. Yeah. Especially then that's pretty good. I mean, that's pretty good price. Yeah. Cause then they got to buy all the gear they got to, you know,

make the potato gun. Cause that was the first thing. And then again, if you've heard the whole story, the funnel story, I think that's what it was. And then Google Ads changed and costs went up. And then later we found Northern Idaho, there's a distributor that actually makes and ships potato guns. They still do. In fact, we did a kid event last two months ago. So I bought a bunch of them from them.

We need to write that down. We need some potato guns for Wolfpack week that we can shoot off of the that we can shoot off the mountain of it white hawk 100 that's happening yes and in fact if you want good ones there's i do i don't want i don't want an average potato dude i bought one recently um it has a it's a mount that looks like a pistol like a actual gun that's just the barbecue igniter on the back and it is what you need but it looks like a big old handheld pistol you just like uh glue to the gun so it looks like anyway they're insane there's some really cool ones out there okay um yeah cam cam you're listening right you know that we're gonna be shooting i'll give you the resource list after the call it'll be

how much 37 bucks yeah no the kids yeah the kids are more expensive but we did a partnership with them and so that became the first upsell it's like people buy the dvd and then is like, hey, instead of going to buy all the pipes and stuff, there's these kits. And so it was a kit. So that wasn't pre-made. They shipped it and then put it together. It was all pre-cut, pre-everything. So they get it. You have to glue it together.

And then, yeah. And of course, they were in Northern Idaho. Yeah. Isn't that awesome? That's where they would be. Totally. I mean, if you're going to, if there's a company that's already making pre-made potato guns. They're definitely here.

But they've been doing them for like 20 years now because they're still doing them to this day, which is crazy. I don't know. I haven't looked at that market in a while, but enough of these guys are still building 20 years later. There's probably some opening. There's going to be the next Russell Brunson is watching right now going, you know what?

I'm going to redo potato guns and I'm going to have click funnels. Let me know. Do you seriously have that you seriously oh my god come on now you have every combination of words plus secrets secrets hacker and uh usually have every variation of every how many domains do you think you have uh three or four thousand probably wow yeah i've been buying for a long time. What's your favorite domain? Oh. Oh, crap. That's a good one. All right, funnel hackers, listen up. It's 2025, and let me ask you, are your B2B ads actually driving results,

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I can tell you the most expensive ones. That might be easier. I got bootstrap.com. There's a lot. Mastermind.com I bought and gave it to Dean and Tony. That was a lot. Oh, so you bought mastermind.com and then you just gave it to them for free? Is that what got you got it is that what i was kind of i was in with them already but

that was but you know that's a pretty good domain name to give them yeah well i told you to go buy it and um he messed up they wanted a million bucks for it and and then um i went to the site and their click funnels they're holding two comic club awards on the thing i was like oh really okay and so we messaged him again and negotiate. I think it cost me $600,000. I got it. And then, yeah,

I was like, what do you give Tony Robbins to like impress him? You know, like it's not easy. Like the government, like, like gives him black hop helicopters to go fly for fun. You know what I mean?

Like, how do I impress him? So I was like, okay, I'm just going to give it to him. And so he just gave it to him. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was kind of, that is a good question. How do you, how do you impress Tony Robbins? Yeah. Actually actually do you want to hear something funny i do i love the very first time i met tony robbins um the whole long story behind that but um i was in toronto his event and he invited me up and i went to his hotel room and had dinner with him and he was asking a bunch of questions and the first thing he told me that was like he looked at me he's like so potato guns huh i was like oh my gosh like he did you know did a research head of time right yeah and so

after that event was over i'm like i'm like i'm sure you meet a million people i'm like how is he going to remember me tomorrow like you know i mean like i don't want to be the guy pretty memorable yeah so the actual potato gun we built on the how to make potato gun dvd i still had and he has a house in sun valley idaho and so i found out from the assistant's address and so i shipped him the original potato gun and the dvd to his house and then he only visits like once a year so i didn't hear anything from him for like eight months and then one day i get this message like dude i just got in idaho and there's this potato gun thing he's like how does it work i want to do it so him and his wife uh went in the backyard and they made videos of them shooting my potato gun um and they said they sent me the videos like five times i never got them which if there's a video you want it's totally robin shooting a potato the original

potato gun yeah it must have looked so small in his hands like he's like a potato pistol he's just like this actually is huge but yeah it just looks tiny in his hands but that was the first thing i said because i was like i wanted to always remember me so that was the first thing i said him and i said then a decade later i gave him that one and anyway it was that long between so how did you know he's a long date like if you want to get to know him it's not well he's so that's the thing i i would not want his life in a million years like if you're breaking your life into like 33 minute sections that just seems horrible it just seems so intense yeah he is intense what so how did that happen what was

the progression there like how was the first how did you meet him the first time and then how did it progress to yeah so the very first time was he was during the crash of what 2008 and so his business was like he was struggling right his entire business had been on tv up to that point crash hits and nothing's really working for him so he had tried to hire some marketing people to bring him online and um i think he had like three or four people coming in to pitch him and then somewhere somehow he met like kern and mike keenigs and those guys and so they they got to come and pitch tony so they were the very first to pitch tony it's supposed to make a 30-minute meeting and they kind of pitched like what they were doing and tony was so blown away the other

two groups i guess were out in the lobby or whatever waiting for him and he messaged me like send other people home. Sent him home. He spent like eight hours with Mike and Frank and those guys. And he just showed them our world. And Tony was so blown away. And so he's like, I want to do something. I'm going to create something.

And so they worked with Tony to build the New Money Masters DVD series, which was him interviewing a bunch of internet marketers about how we were doing stuff back in the day. And so they started filming those. And at the time I was the only person in our industry that had a call center. We had a call center here in Boise with like 60 sales guys. And so, um, they basically told Tony, like the way this business works is you sell this thing on the front end, then you call them on the phone. And so I'm coaching and they're like, Brunson's the one that's got the call center. Like you need to meet Brunson to do the call center for you.

So, and this all happened to me knowing it also one day at the blue i get a call from jay garrity tony's assistant at the time and was like hey tony wants to meet you today can you meet him and i was like i got stuff going on yeah and i was i was in boise and he's like well we're in salt lake like can you come over they thought i lived in utah and i'm in boise and people think that it's the same i think it's the same yeah they're like it's utah idaho it's the same place yeah like just drive down real quick we have slightly fewer moments way more potatoes potatoes and less mormons i'm working on that side though we're yeah anyway but that was like yeah so he's like we were totally meeting toronto next week you do an upw come up as this guest and then

anyway so i was so i flew up next week at upw that's where i met him that's where i had a dinner with him and um and then i didn't hear from him for like four or five months i'm like oh crap he hated me and then and then he messaged me as again jay messaged me out of the blue it's like hey tony's uh doing an event in fiji in two weeks do you want to speak at it and while you're there uh he wants to if you want to be uh one of the if he can record an interview to be one of the dvds for the new money master series i was like yeah holy crap yeah yeah that's amazing and it was funny because we were actually doing at that time like what made you because you had

the call center and that's why he was like this is the guy yeah so how did that what were you actually doing then so we were uh so our business while we'd figured out um we were selling a free dvd someone to buy the free dvd and then we call them on the phone and sell them a high-end coaching package that was the whole that was the model back then right and so we did it and then we're getting related stuff okay yeah um so we were doing that and then um and then uh current came out something we did the back of these for him we did for phil saying we did it for like a dozen guys who in space because everyone like we figured out that was the model everyone wanted to shift that model but nobody else wanted to build a call center so we had a big call center here and

so um everyone else was doing free plus shipping stuff we do back in phone sales and then that was kind of like 2008 9 10 uh yeah about that okay yeah it was right during the whole crash 2008 like around that that area so then you go to fiji go to fiji uh which was so cool and so i got it you know you're on tony's actual private resort and it's really small and so we did you hung out there and then I got to speak and it was in a room with like maybe 80 attendees in this little room. And Tony sat in the back of the room, listening to me speak, which was like the most intimidating, scary thing in the world.

I remember cause I was teaching basic like direct, you know, digital marketing. We didn't call that back then. It was basic, you know, I remember teaching about, I teach about squeeze page. You, you know, have a squeeze page and people like, Oh my God. remember because tony raised his hand said isn't it true our squeeze page is dead he said this to me in 2010 or whatever and i was like oh i'm like no they actually they they still work he's like oh because i heard from my friends that it's dead i'm like no like anyway which is funny because this day we still still yeah a decade later they still work yeah but like he called me out during my presentation on stage asking if they were dead which was so intimidating um that happened and we the next day we filmed the

went to his private his actual house on the property went to the back deck and we filmed him interviewing me which was insane um and then we left and i hear from like five years i was just like five years once again i think he hates me and then out of the blue like it's weird like weird things would happen so like um you remember the 12- month millionaire book like vince james i don't oh my gosh okay i'm gonna send one it's the greatest book marketing book on the planet not this is not ryan daniel moran's 12 months to him no this is the guy named uh vince james or a book like uh it's called 12 month millionaire and it was uh how he made 100 million dollars in 23 months selling supplements through direct mail um and it's, it's insane.

So I did a partnership with the guy and we were selling that book for him. It's big. It's like sides of a phone book. It's a huge old fat, fat book. And it's like, I was selling that at the time. And that's like, you pop up on Tony's radar once in a while. It's like, you saw that. So popped up, Hey, can you give me, he's like, he just saw the ad. So the ad or the email, I don't't really know who knows one of those weird things have i bet a lot of famous people have seen your ads you want some weird um the other day on instagram hugh hefner's ex-wife messaged me and she wants to build a course and be on click funnels all these things which x didn't

he have like the one that he was the one yeah the one that he was married to when he died her last name's still hefner and i was like i don't even know how to respond to the dmd yeah dm me i'm like this is weird i don't yeah it's like there's always weird stuff what's it what did your wife think of that one yeah i don't respond back to her what's the course gonna be how to marry an old rich guy and take all his money i have no idea probably sound like crazy that's a great idea i'll buy that one shit i'll marry i'll marry you have no day to get all that that's not a bad call yeah but anyway there's like stuff like that like people yeah it's it's uh surprising to me how many people now like in the real world like big celebrities now are like

are starting to see our world and keep bumping into us in different spots like tony's next launch is uh matthew mcconaughey is like the main speaker on tony's next big launch is coming up next month which is which is crazy and like their building courses with matthew mcconaughey is like the main speaker on tony's next big launch is coming up next month which is which is crazy and like they're building courses with matthew mcconaughey like helping him like it's just crazy how how like the the real celebrity world in our world are like now bumping into each other and becoming well because that's the thing is is uh celebrities celebrities changing as well right with talk and instagram and youtube like what young kids think of as sugar daddy secrets. Russell's like already on it. I just thought about that one a while ago.

Yeah. I think the celebrities changed, you know, like what is a celebrity? Cause I think for my generation still, it's like, to me, it's like movie stars. Those are celebrities or like actors and TV shows, but to younger people still it's like to me it's like movie stars those are celebrities or like actors and tv shows but to younger people it's like youtubers yep those are like to them they're like more popular almost than a than a celebrity if i was my kid see how that happens you know mr beast versus whoever they would have you know they'd go mr beast 100 yeah who could you go meet like tom

cruise or mr beast like who's tom tom cruise okay they're wrong on that one tom cruise is if i so this is actually really funny so i was saying to whitney i i love tom cruise man i don't even when he was doing all the weird stuff and people are like he's crazy i'm like i don't care you put a tom cruise movie on and i'm watching the whole thing. Minority Report, edge of my seat the entire time. Even like five times in. I've seen it five times. He's unbelievable. The fact is, is he is, the movies are great. Even when people, I'm like, I don't care what you think. I love Tom Cruise. And now he's made the, people don't care anymore about when he was, you know was jumping around on couches or whatever, and that he's a Scientologist and all that stuff. But I watched a bunch of Top Gun related material on YouTube after it had come out.

And he's just such a likable dude. And he's so interesting. And I said to Whitney, I was like, God, if there was ever something I was doing, and Tom Cruise would give me a motivational speech, there's no way I'm not winning whatever that is, no matter what. That weekend, he's at four, I'm watching Formula One. And he's in the pit with Mercedes. And Lewis Hamilton has his best race of really and i'm like no wonder he i bet you tom cruise is like look here's what we need you're gonna be my wingman today lewis and lewis has his best race of the entire year while tom cruise is in the mercedes pit and i'm like that's we hire tom cruise i bet it's only we do it's only a hundred million dollars for an hour or something how would

you even get tom cruise i'm she's got an agent we try to get the rock for something and who literally if you ask alex like who's the most popular person in the world the rock is who's yeah who knows that's true or not but we try to get him he's because he what he did is he's used social media he's the only really big celebrity who's decided to use that and he's you know multi-racial he's like everybody he's everything everyone's just he's like he just hit all of it no matter how many steroids he uses no no everyone's like no no he doesn't know it's like that's it yes that human is gigantic the fact that you could even think that he's not is insane yeah although all the women i know are like i don't want to hear that we have we have a cut out of yeah i thought because when we went through traction, it's life-size it's actually,

he's just, I'm going to stand next to it. It's fantastic. But we did a traction, you know, the EOS stuff. Yep. And so every 90 days you set your rocks. And so I said, I said to, I said to implement her, I'm like, so we've got to get our Dwayne Johnson's done by the next 90 days. And she goes, what? I'm like, our Dwayne Johnson's? And she was like, nobody has ever done that.

She does say that we are the most fun group she works with. She's got like old people that are manufacturers and stuff. But so we got the cutout because this is the Hoffa's. So we might get a David Hasselhoff as well for the office but we have that's why we have duane johnson up there is because we call our rocks duane johnson that's amazing so we started last week i should have done that okay how am i still that for our team do traction yeah um so i have a guy our our new coo who's been here for the year he's amazing um i don't know the last time i was yeah kevin with the beard yeah yeah so i don't know what exactly he does i think he does more and he's i hate operations like i'm the least operational person like anything operations like i'm like i don't do meetings

i don't do that stuff you sounded like will ferrell in wedding crashes i don't know what she's doing back there i don't know what he does but he works for us yeah but i do know we do rocks we do stuff so it's probably based on traction i don't know what else but okay um like i said i this hopefully for those entrepreneurs who are listening who hate operations like i hate operations more than anything on this planet so i try to distance myself as far as possible from it as much as i can they they loop me in the means i have to be in but anything else so i do have to do the meeting once a quarter on okay our dwayne johnson's on your dwayne johnson's yeah you got to bring a cut out there but what are you doing so i'm that's a that's a good sort of transition there's i'm curious what do you think

if you had to boil it down to like one reason why you've been successful as you are what do you think that is um i'm obsessed with the art of this game like i just love it um if you look at if you look at this business, there's three personality types you have to have to be successful in the business. And I wish I understood this when I got started because we only had two of the three for the first, until a year ago, to be honest.

And the three personality types you have, number one, you got to have someone who's obsessed with the product, right? There's a product person. Number two, someone who's obsessed with the marketing. And then number three, someone who's obsessed with operations. If I ever start a new company in the future, it's like, those are the three people I need. And then number three, someone who's obsessed with operations. If I ever started a new company in the future,

it's like, those are the three people I need. And then from there, everything else will grow. Right? The problem with most entrepreneur based businesses is operations. At first we don't need operations because we're just marketing and selling, right? That's what we do. So we go build these companies and we blow it up. And then also the customers come and they're like, oh crap. And you operate, you need someone to manage people and we try to figure it out. And that's my most, especially like internet marketing run businesses end up failing eventually because they suck at like the actual deal suck at people and stuff yeah oh yeah and so it's like they're good at selling like you don't yeah you don't need the operations person on day well in our heads we don't need a day one we need like

after we've had success but the reality is like you need that person so when you have success success lasts longer than than the launch or the promotion of the campaign. Right. And so, um, so like when ClickFunnels launched, like Todd is my business partner, he's obsessed with the product. Um, and I was obsessed with the marketing. So we could sit there and spend, you know, he could spend his every waking hour, you know, 80 hours a week during the, during the building phase, focus on that. I can focus on the marketing and the sales. And so we just each were so obsessed with our, piece of the the pie that we made stuff that was great um and so i mean that's honestly i think most people in this business because they want to make money um but man like yes i want you still love marketing oh why do i keep doing this like yeah i just bought a company yesterday that's not

in my market at all because i know the marketing plan for that i'm freaking so excited to execute on because it's just like this is your this is your thing yeah like this is why you're here 100 like you just you haven't gotten tired of it you're not like done did you like you know what let's do something else this marketing stuff what else would i do like everything else seems stupid like this is so it's it's like the greatest game in the world and then the end of it you make like you play a video game and the end of it you get a high score here we play a video game and then we get paid they're like oh my gosh like i'm gonna buy a house and turn to an office you know you know whatever you want to do at this point but um there's not much i love the art so because people always ask me oh well you're lucky because you're teaching them to make people i make funnels and funnels are cool

i'm like funnels were not cool when i got started like i used to do i used to do um here in boise i would do events i was advertised on the radio we did direct mail campaigns to do events to go fill the holiday in on vista you people show up and i would sit there i have to ask you about that cam did you hear that we gotta we because we do our events here and we're like we gotta try some local apps and see what we can do here yeah it i can tell you i'll stay i mean it's been a while since we did them but like it was fascinating and like, doing this, this event, we had three times during the day. So we had radio and direct mail to fill this, fill this event. Um, we got there in the very first session, two people showed up and I was like, so embarrassed.

I have a huge room with seats, everything. And two people showed up, even though they had RSVP, people just didn't come. Um, and I, and I did the event and the most of them were like, oh, this sucks. I'm making money. I would have been, I would have been done. That was 20 years ago. I did the event with two people and then another one where there's four people and then eight people, two people, and I did the event and the most of them were like, Oh, this sucks. I'm making money. I would have been, I would have been done. That was 20 years ago. I did the event with two people and then another one where there's four people and then eight people, two people, 10 people, two people.

Yeah. I'm like, this sucks. And I'm, I'm awkward and inferred anyway. So it's like the bigger the audience, the more comfortable I am with two people. I'm like, Oh, like, but like I was talking about when there were two people in the room and then 10 people and people like, how'd you get 6,000 people from liking lives? Like, because I've been doing this for two decades. Like I've cared enough. I consistently keep doing it because I love this so much.

Like when there were two people, I kept doing it. When there were four people, there were eight people, there were 10 people. Most people, they do something like, Oh, only 10 people show up. I did a YouTube video. I got 30 likes. Like, who cares? Like if you actually care, like if you're obsessed with this thing, it doesn't matter. Like if you're obsessed with the art. So for me, it's like this point, like I just, like, I love this game. It's so much fun. It's so exciting. Every day we come in me it's like this point like i just like i love this game it's so much fun it's so exciting every day you come in it's like okay what can we do what

should we do like what you know and well and i could attest that being at your office the amount of books like it looks like a crazy person and i didn't take you to the library so i'm building you know i'm building a 20,000 square foot library so i have another office that's just storing my books right now because there's no room for them um i've conservatively in the last six months probably about 3 000 books um all first editions from like the 19 early 1900s like advertising marketing personal development success like um because this is this is my art this is the game i'm in right and so how many of the books how often are you reading um i read a little bit every day not a lot um um part of it again it's like i'm collecting this thing because there's a business i'm building

behind it so i'm collecting all these first editions and then um a lot of um one of the first business i ever got into back in the day was uh public domain which is books whose copyrights have expired and you can republish those things and so a lot of them buying because we're turning them into businesses and offers and things like that um And so all those books, I'm the ones that are like worth republishing. I'm reading, we're republishing, we're, I'm making audio book for like, there's a whole bunch of stuff we're doing with them. But that's a probably five hour event we could do later going deep into like the model behind that. But yeah, it's just, it's another business. Like they're all. So what, how are are you what does your day look like because there's so many things and i understand like i'm i get super excited about stuff but then

i'm like less excited later like mine doesn't i'm i'm like you know super quick start like yeah let's do this and now basically most of my job for myself is just telling myself to do less like i'm gonna write a book let's just called do less shit better because there's so many things and i found that the more stuff i do the worse results i get for rather than just staying focused on like the core model the core thing yeah so at this point obviously click funnels is now you know working whether you work on it or not right like it's it's got its yeah but also we're about to launch click funnels 2.0 so that's been our that's our biggest focus by far is the new relaunch and the new software and all that kind of stuff how much how much better is it oh it's night and day

it's it's the in my mind it's the future right it's it's yeah um we tried to like yeah i mean the first time i built click funnels we built it on a technology that was good 10 years eight years ago right and we built the base what we did eight years ago. Now we know what people want. We know how we wish it would have been. Technology is a million times better now. It's just faster and better. It's a full re-do.

Literally, when we decided to build it, we didn't tell anybody in our entire company, not even our other partners. It was me, Todd, and Dave. Three people knew about it. Then Todd, kind of like Steve Jobs built his skunkworks division inside of apple to build his thing with the same thing where todd built this thing just him at first and then he started um bringing in the best of our developers and made them literally like swear in like they had to go through a whole like hour-long thing with todd they'd like sign a contract

that went to anybody in our company or anybody where they're working on why was it because um when you're uh we didn't want is the rest of your company finding out about this right now yeah oh hey guys no we did have a meeting eventually about a year into it like this is the plan because people start getting more confused like why are you pulling the best developers off like why are they disappearing what are they doing and like it's finally i tell everybody but um because we have a platform with 100 000 plus members on it and like if everyone's like oh this everybody, but, um, because we have a platform with a hundred thousand plus members on it. And like, if everyone's like, Oh, this next thing would shift over here. Like this would have, this could have, we could lost everything.

So it's like, we have to have this separate thing. We can't shift focus or deviation. This has to continue to develop and improve and get better. But eventually we're going to, we're going to lose our business if we don't build the new thing. Right. Like, um, and so when I decided to do that, it was a separate thing. And, um, um yeah but it's

it's amazing whole new built from the ground up all new technology all new um just the thought process of how things work and why they work and how to structure you know it's just it's it's what we wish we you know would have done before how long has it been developing two years damn yeah and we launched if you go to cf the number two then p-o-i-N-T and zero.com. There's like the countdown. There's a countdown clock to like when we go live. October 4th is when it goes live to the world. So we're thinking 80 some days away from it. So that's the number one focus.

So everything like that defaults. And then all the other stuff's like my side projects of like, Hey, funnel hackers, let me paint you a picture. You're running a business. Your funnel's finally converting like crazy. And suddenly it hits you. You need to hire someone like yesterday. Maybe it's a copywriter to help you crank out more sales pages, or a designer to refresh your landing pages, or someone to do customer support to help

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Saving members up to $740 per year when using all of the app's premium features. In fact, my wife and I, we literally saved over $1,000 a month when we started using Rocket App. Now, their dashboard is amazing and you get a clear view of all your expenses across every account you have. You can even create a personalized budget with custom categories and track your monthly spending trends to stay on top of your goals. You want to save for that dream vacation or pay off some debt? Their new goals feature automatically saves money for you so you don't even have to think about it. So cancel all your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash russell today that's rocketmoney.com slash r-u-s-s-e-l-l that's rocketmoney.com slash russell um do you because you're like taking on stuff we're like i've got this marketing plan when i

hear you say that i'm like god that sounds like a nightmare like another thing is are you just at this point really idea person yeah so if you go and you go, this is what we're going to do. There's the people that will actually push your idea forward. Outside of like this, like my unique ability, like I'm going to do the presentation. I'm going to do, you know, like the things that are my unique ability. I still do, but it's very much like, here's the vision. And then I, uh, Kevin, I give it to Kevin. Like I make a video. Sometimes they're 30 minutes to an hour long video. Like here's, this is what needs to happen. How's it going to work? You know, I give it to Kevin. Like I make a video. Sometimes they're 30 minutes to an hour long video. Like here's, this is what needs to happen. How it's going to work.

You know, I've funnel hacked 400 other people. Like these are what, like, I like how they do this and they do this. And it's like, there's a big brain dub. And then he'll go through it. He'll take it all and project manage it out. Like chops it up into a million. That's the thing is like with this vision, then we don't want like, oh crap,

there's all these details. Like I hate, like I get so, the details stress me out so bad. Like, in fact, my team has project management management systems i'm not involved in any of those because if i see like here's all the tasks that have to happen with that to happen i get so i just want to give up right so i don't see any of that but then um after the vision's done then i become an employee of the team so then kevin's like russell these are your assignments to make this thing happen then he's giving me tasks like any other employee like you'd write the copy for this you're in the video for this here's that you know and so like i'm now

just an employee on the team and i only see the things i have to do to make it actually happen so what is your role now like when you say are you writing all the copies still uh primary no we've got some good copywriters but i work with them so it's like this you know like i love copy until we get past the initial scroll and then like oh i want to die but like everything above the fold like i obsess about i love talking about so i uh it's gonna be heath on our team is our uh our lead copywriter he uh what's his last name uh wilcox yes i love heath he's now full-time with us he's awesome he is my favorite copy i've ever worked with ever ever. Yeah, he's insane.

He's a good dude. And so we sit down and we brainstorm. And then he'll write stuff and I'll write stuff and go back and forth. We get the right lead, the right message, the right tone. And then he'll go and run and then just do his magic. And he's amazing. And then email sequences. I write a lot of those. We have a couple other writers, but I'm involved in those processes.

Do you write the daily emails that you guys send? Sometimes. It depends. we have a couple other writers, but I'm involved in those processes. Do you write the daily emails that you guys send? Sometimes there, it depends. I've yet to find someone who really can master my voice. I'm involved in, in, is there a difference in results in the ones that you write versus the ones that are written by others?

What, how significant would you say? It depends how good they, I, they're getting better at modeling me but it's like it's hard for them it's very unique that's the it's that's like it's hard for me to come the right hook right like yeah the right thing i'm like what even if the voice is yours but it's not the idea yeah then it's not gonna yeah a lot of times more of it's that me like hey order i

want to email campaigns with six emails like first one we should be talking about this and you know so i'll give them that and then they'll write it and they're like now i'll go back in like ah and then i'll retweak stuff so usually it's not it's rarely me just writing everything right now you know 100 it's usually it's usually me sending a vox message like here's the here's the hook here's like the thing i think or here's a story like find out like turn that into an email and then i'll get that and then i'll tweet you use that a lot boxer oh yeah i think i'm the only person that uses it still like i remember i can't remember what it was it was some sometime that you were using it i remember hearing i was like i don't know if anybody else yeah i'm the only one in fact the company was for sale they're trying to sell to

me because they're like you're the only person you're the only guy on here do you if you want to like like any partnership i have like already like already, like my, from my, my family to my relationships, to my business, everything that you all have in the box. It's just all, and it's all audio, right? Is that what it is? Audio? You can, you can 4x speed things. Like someone sent me a two minute message. I can get in 30 seconds and then, and then I can forward messages to people. So I can't imagine listening to you on four times. There's no way. But it's awesome. It's like, understand it but it's awesome it's like if

i have an idea it's like who needs to be involved in this idea i'm like okay so i make a voxer group i throw in the five people i need i sit there i'm driving i brain dump the entire idea like this is what i want to do and then it's over and then they all got it and then i forgot something i can just forward that message to them or bring in the group and so i can like i don't have to do meetings now i can just do a 30 second thing get the vision to everybody and they can start running um or my coaching programs like i used to do coaching calls and it's the worst they like if you give someone like a 30 minute coaching call with you they want to get on a call for 30 minutes and like oh this is my time i got to use it all it's like yeah their question is a 20 second question and so i shifted that to like for the high-end coaching that i do like they just messaged

me on voxer and they're only allowed to ask me one question in time and it can't go over a minute so usually it's like they they think through through it first. They asked me a 30 second question. I listened to 4X speeds. It takes me 10 seconds to listen to it or spawn back. Yes or no. And the whole coaching call takes 90 seconds as opposed to 90, you know, whatever the time allotted would have been. And they get exactly what they need. Thank you for listening to the marketing secrets podcast. If you've loved this episode, then please take a screenshot on your phone and post it to Facebook, Instagram,

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