The Russell Brunson Show - Building ClickFunnels to $200M a Year & The Future of Marketing with Ryan Pineda

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

In my first ever podcast guest experience in over three years, I visited with Ryan Pineda on his “Wealthy Way” podcast! We delve into my personal journey, dropping some serious truth bombs on how to conquer marketing fatigue and revealing those coveted insider tips on effectively marketing any business. Check out the full video here! 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. Hey, what's up? This is Russell.

I want to jump on real quick and just record this before you jump into today's episode. I'm actually really excited for today's episode. For those of you guys who know, when I first got started in this business and when podcasting, YouTube videos, all these things kind of became the thing. I was on everybody's podcasts and shows and channels and making a lot of noise and it was a lot of fun. But then I honestly got tired and I got burned out. When I launched the Expert Seekers book, I ended up doing, I don't even know, like two or 300 shows and episodes and news stations. And it was so intense. It was during COVID and I just got so burned out that i stopped doing podcast interviews pretty much for almost three years um and it was funny because i was speaking at this event in um in salt lake city was the day before

we went to funnel hiking live this last year and um the guy who's putting on the events his name is the muscle and he's got this huge house and helicopters that fly to his house and all this huge crazy things they had a big speaker dinner his house the night before and, uh, we're up there eating and again, they're helicoptering people in to his home. And it was kind of crazy. And it's like the who's who of famous people. Like there's David Goggins and Tai Lopez. And just like all these people are, are coming in and you know, there's me and my wife who were like, did not feel super comfortable with that situation, but you know, we were there and having a good time. And, um, anyway, it was, it was cool. And, uh, while we were there, um, a guy came up to me who I'd seen socially, but I didn't know him very well at the time.

His name's Ryan Panetta. And, um, we started talking and he told me, he's like, dude, you know that like when you spoke at Grant Cardone's 10X, when you set the world record, he's like, I was in that audience. He's like, you were the first thing I ever bought was yours. Like I'd never, I'd never bought something before. And, uh, but your presentation convinced me I went and bought. And that's what got me in this business now. And he's like, it changed my whole life. And, and then he's like, you just come on the podcast sometime. I'm like, ah, no, I just haven't done them for a couple of years. He's like, I know everyone says you're a hermit. He's like, you need to come out and actually do a podcast. And I told him,

I was like, all right, this is the deal. When I'm ready to start doing podcasts again, you'll be the first one that I come on. And so a couple of weeks ago i decided i was like all right i just need to i need to start i need to rip the band-aid off starting podcast again so i messaged him i flew down to vegas and we did this podcast and we were there all day recording and talking and anyway it was it was fun it was therapeutic it was you know i had a really good time with ryan he's a cool guy and i really enjoyed it and so anyway he launched a podcast a couple weeks ago on his and it was amazing. I got such good feedback. Some people came back to me like, man, this is fun. I listened to it three or four times. It was cool to hear how vulnerable you got about things. And anyway, I thought it'd be fun for you guys to hear it here as well. So this

episode is going to be, it's a little longer, it's about two hours long, but it's going to be my interview with Ryan Panetta. Him interviewing me on his podcast and asking a lot of questions about where I've been the last three years, what's been happening in the market and what it looks like and a whole bunch of other things. So I hope you enjoy it. If you do, make sure you go over and subscribe to Ryan's show. He's a super cool guy. He's got a lot of cool guests. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

All right. Talk soon. Thanks, guys. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm the funnel dude. I've had more funnels than anyone on this planet. We've got deep funnels. We've got front ends, back ends. I've got $250,000 back ends, everything.

And even amongst that, it's harder and harder to be profitable. Well, let's talk about that. Why is the paid stuff scaring you now? Just the cost to acquire customers is insane. So we've talked a lot about just products and offers and obviously running the company, but I want to talk about some applicable things to just people listening. So one question I always get. Today, I had Russell Brunson come by the office and give his first ever interview in the last three years. If you don't know who he is, he's the founder of ClickFunnels, which is a company doing over $200 million a year, and most of it is recurring revenue. So I'm talking about a

business that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He talked about what it was like building that business, but also what it's been like the last couple of years, having to really completely change it and deal with backlash from those changes from customers who have loved him over the years to then having to deal with controversy from that, dealing with controversy from a viral wrestling moment when he was coaching his son. You know, we talked about what it's like dealing with haters. We talked about the biggest mistakes that he's made in business. He really opened up about what it takes to become a great entrepreneur and how you get through the adversity. We also talked about where the education business is going and how you have to get on recurring revenue. And it's something that's really important to me because I'm undergoing

a huge shift in my business. So being able to pick his brain on this interview, as well as having him stay at my office for five hours after and train my team and just being able to learn from him was such a treat for myself. And I know you guys are going to enjoy this episode too. It's one of my favorite ones that I've ever done. So let's jump into it. What's up, Well Builders? Today, I've got someone special on the podcast. This dude, some would consider the GOAT of the marketing industry. He is the guy most known for creating all the funnels you guys see online today. He has a business that's doing over $200 million a year in revenue. And a lot of that, nine figures of it, is recurring revenue as a SaaS product.

This is the founder of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson. What's up, man? Hey, man. I'm excited to be here and hanging out with you finally. I know, dude. I challenged you maybe, I don't know, six months know six months ago and i said dude when are you gonna come out to vegas you're a hermit you need to leave boise and here we are here we are this is the first podcast interview i've done in like three years so there you go i'm coming out of

my shell and anyway but excited to hang out with you we got the exclusive guys so hey all right since that's being said why why? Why now? Yeah. I think a lot of reasons. Like number one is obviously I have my business, which is a big part of my life. That's big as well. And I'm very involved in my kids' lives. And my son's a wrestler. And this year was a senior year and season ended.

And I'm also a part-time coach. So I'm, you know, I've been coaching. And so now that's over, like my coaching side of my life is kind of finished. And I'm like, okay, that buys back three hours a day that I can start focusing on other things. And, um, yeah, so that's a big part is a little more time opened up. So I'm like, okay, I gotta get back in there. Also the other selfish motivation is I'm watching guys like you and other people who are getting so much organic free traffic. I look at our business right now and how much we spend on paid media. I was like, I have to start doing more organic stuff on my own side. Um, just because ad costs have gone up so dramatically.

And so, yeah, it's like, I was talking to your editors earlier. Like I'm working, like we just relaunched our YouTube channel, relaunching our podcast, like all those things we're doubling down on with the extra time.

Um, and my goal is in the year from now to be able to be getting more traffic from organic than we are from paid. Um, because the paid stuff scares me, which we could go down that rabbit hole a long time, but it's just getting harder and harder for everybody. Well, let's talk about that. Why is the paid stuff scaring you now? Just the cost to acquire customers is insane.

And I look at, again, I'm the funnel dude. I've had more funnels than anyone on this planet. We've got deep funnels. We've got front ends, back ends. I've got $250,000 back ends, everything. And even amongst that, it's harder and harder to be be profitable i look at people who have a traditional business like how are they it's so much harder to do it and so i'm trying to really master understand it partially for ourselves it gives stability to us but also to be able to train our people so that

they're not relying on these you know crazy ad costs and it's just part of it's it's the way like uh advertising media has happened throughout the beginning time time, right? Like, um, Dan Kennedy, who's my first mentor, he was telling this story at funnel hacking live about how, uh, when late night infomercials, like TVA used to play to like 10 o'clock at night and they would just turn off. Like there's no TV and him, a bunch of guys were like, went to the TV station, like, Hey, can we buy that airtime? Why would you want that? Everyone's asleep. They're like, I don't know. So finally they convinced some, some studio to let them have like from midnight till 6am or something. And they bought it for like,

it's like $20 for that ad time. And they started running infomercials and they were killing it. Just like media was free. They were the only ones doing it. It was basically free and they were killing it. And then the radio station or the TV station started seeing what they were doing. And then they started opening to other people and it went from like $20 for

eight hours, you know, segment to like, all of a sudden people were paying 20, 30 grand for an hour because you know, more people found out about it and the cost went up. And same thing with ads. Like we started Facebook ads 10 years ago. They were a handful. Yeah. It was amazing.

And we thought it was expensive. They're like, how is this possible? Now it's like, you know, I mean, we have some campaigns for paying $10 per lead off Facebook. I'm like, God, like how does the average person do that? Right. I mean, we pay any, we usually pay like $30 for an opt-in to like learn about wealth con. Isn't that crazy? It's insane.

It's insane. Yeah. So it's like, you don't have a good funnel and good backend and that kind of stuff. Like you can't, you can't play this game unless you master organic. And so one of my big realizations, I have friends right now who are a hundred percent YouTube driven and it's crazy because they'll post YouTube video. That video will make them 20, 30 grand and it'll send 8,000 people to their phone or whatever it is.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm like that side, like you're getting paid up front and then you're driving ads to your thing. Like my podcast right now, we just signed up with a sponsor who's now has all these people. They're buying ads on my podcast. I'm like, I'm making like, I don't know, it's like 15 grand per podcast episode and it's driving traffic to my funnels. So I'm trying to find out more of those kinds of things we can do, or just shifts around

where I'm getting paid to drive track my funnels versus paying so much to drive traffic. So yeah. Yeah. I think it's just getting more creative with customer acquisition. Yeah. Like I've cut a similar deal like that. I mean, obviously like on my podcast, I just, um, I sponsor myself, right. But yeah. But, uh, you know, like for example, I just, um, I sponsor myself. Right. But yeah, but, uh, you know, like for example, I have a deal with an IRA company. So now like I'm running ads for them and you know, they're paying us a retainer to run the ads. And then we also get the leads and they get the leads and we split profits and all these other things. And like, it's a great way. Like for me, you know, there's not really much risk because I'm not covering the ad spend and I'm getting paid to do it. Like, you know, we're talking about here. Yeah. And

it's interesting too, because I did the opposite of what most direct marketers do. Like I started organic first, I had no idea how to run ads. And then I later started running ads the last couple of years. Yeah. And it became clear to me too, like even just in the last year, I'm like, dude, if you don't have any organic content, how are you making money? Yeah. Because if they, you know, see your ad and then they want to go look you up, like what happens? Yeah. It's so interesting because it didn't used to be an ad to a funnel thing. Now it's like an ad makes people aware of you.

So they go and they stalk you and they follow you. If you don't have those things in place you're 100 right like it's it's a lot of our clients who do that who don't have the organic and just like the ad costs are so much higher because yeah it's it's but you used to be able to convert easily with not having any organic it's just oh they watch the webinar the vsl and i got started before social media is the thing at all like pre-facebook it's even easier back then because there was no like they could you can even look you up they could google you but like it wasn't hard to like make sure you were looking on the first page of google right and now it's like they're googling you then they're looking on

instagram and tiktok and then there's checking you out like they're hitting all the platforms to see if they like you or not while they're watching your webinar while they're you know whatever the thing might be and so like if you're not able to engage them that level like it's just the costs get astronomical whereas if you are able to they watch four or five things like wow i really like this person then they're in um but you gotta have that, that foundation or else you're in trouble. Yeah. So you're going all in on organic along with obviously still doing your paid and the funnels and everything. Yeah, for sure. No, that's awesome. So, you know, I'll give a little story to the viewers, you know, this, but, um, you know, I, I went to my first

business event, 10 X growth con in 2018, and you were one of the guys and you did what is now like a legendary pitch. I didn't even know I was being pitched, like whatever, right? I had never bought any. The best pitch always works that way, right? Yep. I never knew. I never bought coaching or anything to that point. But after your pitch, I was like, I don't even know like what I'm going to buy, like

what this is or what it, but like I'll buy it. And it was like, I don't even know like what I'm going to buy, like what this is or what it, but like, I'll, I'll buy it. And it was like three grand or something at the time. And I think you sold like 3 million bucks, right? Yeah. 3.2, 3.2 million an hour. Yeah. Right. And I was like, if all these people are buying this, like I'm going to buy it too. So I bought it. And you know, the truth of the matter was I got a book and I got like a year of ClickFunnels. I didn't use ClickFunnels at all. Cause I just still like at that time I was building my real estate business and scaling that. And then I was like, but you know, I'm going to start creating the products. And I read the book. I think it, I think it was expert secrets with that. I can't remember.

And, um, I read it and it actually made me write my first book, flip your future. So I wrote my first book, then I made my first course and you know, that took time. And by the time it was done, you know, I launched it and you know, I had some sales, like the book actually did really good, but I did not like try to get course sales and I didn't have coaching or any of that stuff. Um, but your, your talk did influence me to say, okay, I will like, you know, create content. I will do education because at the time I was very like anti-guru because I think there's, you know, and I guess you don't want to become one for sure. Yeah. Like I was already really successful in real estate. I'm like, I don't want to be one of these guys that's, you know, not doing the

thing, but selling the thing. And so I was just focused on building real estate. And then around 2020, a couple of years later was when, um, you know, I started getting on social media, getting the organic content and then coaching really took off without me really, I guess, realizing that, Oh man, all this traffic, they want to learn now because I'm just putting out valuable content. Yeah. So kudos to you. Cause like you, you were the, you were the, the fire to that, but I'll add another thing too. So after I bought it, um, you know, I get a call about funnel hacking live, which was maybe like a couple of months after. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, I'll get a ticket. So I bought a ticket, went to funnel hacking live. And I do remember you saying something, um, about how social media was the new, like just form of media.

And you did this presentation. I still have the pictures in my phone to this day where you were like, you know, podcast is the new radio, IGTV or IG is like the new reality TV. Yeah. Um, YouTube is like sitcoms. Do you remember that? Yep. And that actually made a lot of sense to me. I was like, I get that. That makes sense. Like that is where the world's going. It's fascinating because that time is the first time that we could act like for me to be on a sitcom or life we couldn't write and social made it where like all of us could be a sitcom star or be a reality TV shows are like really fascinating time. Well, now you look back, you know, that was in 2018, you know, six years later, you're like, Oh yeah. Like, dude, I watch these people on Instagram stories and stuff every day, reality TV,

YouTube, you know, Mr. Beast. And these guys have taken it to just extreme levels of no dude. Like I would much rather watch a Mr. Beast video or this guy, you know, versus a sitcom. I got to go figure out, you know, and then even how big podcasts have blown up in the last five years is kind of incredible to see, you know, Joe Rogan getting paid. Yeah. I think most entrepreneurs, like their performed thing of like watching or doing is a podcast. It's funny. I remember sitting in the room the very first time the word podcast came out. Everyone's like, there's this new thing called podcast.

And this is 20 years ago. And I was like, that's the stupidest thing no one's ever gonna do that and it took like seven or eight years after that before started people started actually doing it but i remember like thinking back like i was there when people were first talking about it and i didn't start a podcast i thought it was stupid like yeah and now it's like you know again it's a huge part of our business and everything we do is our podcast but yeah yeah i missed it back then why do you think podcasting and youtube and these things are so important now? Cause like you were calling it out in 2018. That's what makes me think about, I'm like, dude, he, he called it for what it was six years ago. And like, it's just really blown up. And then, you know, I, I mean, I guess

from your side, you're like, all right, I really need to go back to organic content. Like, how does that work in life where it's like you knew, but maybe you didn't do it to the degree that you thought you should have. Yeah. Or were you just busy? I think it's a lot of stuff, you know, um, we were building a company and it grew and the things that worked fast, we were, we doubled down on, right? So if ads were worked for us, like, Oh, this is simple.

It's easy, direct ROI. And we're sprinting so fast and click funnels launched. It's only been 10 years, 10 years years but like it came out of the gate so we were running and so i think a lot of times it was like organic takes longer as you know like you don't just post your first video and then get you know a hundred thousand views it takes more effort and energy i think that um i would i wasn't able to put that effort in because we were having so much success on the the paid side it wasn't really worth it yeah i think that's a big part of it um and now it's coming back like i said the cost is going up and i was like okay gosh i wish i would have five years ago really double down because but you know i think the same time it's never too late like i think in my mind i'm like we are doubling down for the

next 12 months really really aggressively i think the next 12 months um again i don't know if it'll catch up to paid but i'm hoping it gets close to you know because the the million half two million bucks a month i give zuckerberg i could be amazing if like if i was able to match that with organic or cut some of that budget whatever that ends up looking like you know what i mean yeah so to build click funnels to this point i mean like we i talked about it earlier you guys got over a hundred million dollars a month and like continuity stuff not a month a year a year sorry yeah 100 million that would be insane though yeah that's the next goal. Yeah. So nine figures a year. And then, um, you know, you still have your inner circle and all the other products and things you guys sell. And I mean,

to do that in less than 10 years is crazy. Yeah. Like from scratch with no, I always think back, I'm not like a tech guy, my tech guy, we didn't have VCc backing or funding or we still don't like it was all just just scrapping along and it was interesting because you know we i have a partner who's technical so he built the software and you know when we first got done i was like okay well how do people launch software companies and so we saw what they were doing so we kind of model software companies were doing it didn't work i'm like i kept trying different like you know typical sass website we're trying that trying things that like nothing was working and we were trying to like do what you know what these people were doing not knowing at a time like oh the reason why they're able to do that is because they got 100 million dollars

in funding and they can spend you know 300 to get a trial like we couldn't do that right yeah and so it was almost like i tried five or six different versions of trying to make that work and finally i was like i'm just gonna do the way that i know like i'm you know i used to speak on seminars on stages and we did webinar like i I'm just doing a webinar to sell this. And so we put together our very first webinar and basically the same presentation you saw at 10X back in 2018. I made that presentation and did the very first – it was a live event. Someone invited me to speak at this event. I showed up and I did the pitch.

And it was the first time I'd ever like actually had – I heard people talk about table rushes and I've seen videos of this first time I made the pitch. I was like thousand dollars a year, click funnels. And then you get all these other bonuses for the year. Yeah. Yeah. That's way more. But that was the first time I saw people like jumping over the tables to get to the back.

Uh, someone like throwing their credit card at the people. I was like, I heard about this, but I thought it was like a joke, but I've seen it happening. I was like, this is insane. I remember we went to dinner and I was Todd and dylan and my two co-founders and we're all this excited because like we had i don't know i don't remember it was probably 150 people bought it this event right so like 150 000 we just made where we had been eight months you know a year and a half of them building with no money coming in eight four or five months i was trying to sell nothing coming in austin's like boom we made 150 000 in a night so we're all just

having fun at dinner and i was just i was more quiet they were more just kind of goofing off and i was like i said do you realize what just happened like yeah we made 150 grand like like like that presentation like do you see people jumping over like that was the message like that's the message like we figured it out like that was a message that gets people to like to get out of their seat to run to like to do this thing yeah i think any business like that's the message like we figured it out like that was a message that gets people to like to get out of their seat to run to like to do this thing yeah i think any business like that's the hardest part is figuring out what's the message that gets people so excited they're gonna jump up and run to like do business with you right and i told him i was like now we have this message like figured out i was like this is and i didn't i was like we can make 100 million

dollars like that's what i thought which we just passed a billion dollars in collected sales which is crazy wow but the goal is a hundred million. Like there's no way. And, but so I took that presentation that we knew worked. And I remember flying home from that event. I started texting everyone I knew who had any kind of like following email list or social media following. I was like, I have a webinar.

I just, I just did a crush. Do you want to do a webinar with me? And, and you know, most people like 85% either ignored me or said no, but like 15% like, sure, I'll run the webinar. And so I get back to Boise next day. we set up a landing page and click funnels. That person promotes the webinar. And then, um, you know, two days later I jump on and I do the same presentation and it crushes again.

Um, but what's interesting is like, is I had two presentations that day. And the first one I did it, I can't remember the exact numbers. It was like 30 or $40,000 in sales, which was great. I was like freaking out. Yeah. But I remember, um, one of the guys on my team, he exported all of the comments that people were posted in the webinar. And I started reading through them. I was like, oh my gosh, like minute 12, everyone's asking this question or they're stuck or I

said something confusing. So I went back to my slides. I found that part and I kind of tweaked it a little bit. And then went down minute 38. It's like there was confusion. I went to the offer. People kept asking the same questions. They were confused.

So I just went back and I made those little tweaks to the presentation and then that night i did the second webinar but with the cleaned up slides and that time same i'll say same size people the same amount of people were on that webinar maybe even a little less it was like 150 000 in sales and i was like holy crap so like we export the questions again i read through them again and i start seeing like okay these ones are answered but they're stuck here and stuck here and i just kept tweaking that so i tweaked the slides and the next day we did another another webinar another one i did i think i did it was like 80 or 90 webinars live in that first year just over and every single time we export it tweak it export and tweak it the point like

like i knew the pitch perfect i knew every concern was going to come up before it came up i knew every like all that stuff i just knew it's like when i went to grant's event i'm on stage you know it's we were joking before grants tell me like just don't just pitch like tell him the price up front i was like i was like i promise you like i've done that i know exactly what's gonna get him to work and we did the presentation made the thing and you know in a student in a stadium of 9 000 people um a thousand of them jumped up ran to the back of the room and and signed up for it you know i mean and um and that's how we built the company. It was just that.

It's like we do webinars, explain the product, make an offer. And then the other piece that was really powerful is just because people didn't buy on the webinar, when someone would register for the webinar on the landing page afterwards, we'd tell them like, hey, before the webinar shows up, go get a free trial of the ClickFunnels and just play with it. That way when you show up, you'll know what this is. And what was interesting is from that, like the end of year one, we had 2,500 people who had bought the $1,000 version. But 7,500 people had signed up for continuity and it stuck.

And so you look at the math on that. Most people have a webinar and they'll make $2.5 million. Like that's amazing. But if you look at 7,500 people paid $97 a month, that's like 9 million is it 9 million in arr somebody it's like yeah like there's the bulk of the money and that was like the aha versus like okay because you don't see it right away yeah you don't see it but compounds webinar after webinar event after event and so like we came back so okay that's that's the model like we're just going to do webinars tell people about click funnels make some money there but then that money will reinvest in ads and like the real

businesses people sign up for the trials after they register for the webinar yeah and so for a decade that's been the model and we've been pushing that and pushing that and i've done that webinar i don't even know how many times hundreds of times at this point um and it just works and so like that's how we built the company and i think i look at anybody with the company that's trying to grow it it's just like the key is like figuring out the message but then not stopping and then like keep tweaking it and tweaking it until it just gets perfect perfect and then after you have that then you can start dumping money and energy into growing and scaling that thing and so um yeah that's kind of the that's how we did it what uh i mean obviously

i think the three million was the most you guys had ever made on like a pitch right like how what was the reaction at that point like what did grant say i don't think he was just like kind of confused he's like wow i've never seen that yeah it was crazy like we sold more than all the other speakers combined which is which is crazy yeah it was interesting because like i wanted the event it was more like an ego because i knew somebody who had done a million dollars from stage like that was like the standing record and so i was like okay he did a million dollars in 90 minutes I was like I want to be able to say that I took home a million dollars in 90 minutes but or in an hour but I was like

it's a 90-minute presentation so I ahead of time we're like we do three million dollars means my take-home was a million dollars an hour so that was kind of the goal going into it yeah and but but then like it became like an obsession as we're working towards it because like okay if that's really the goal like what are we going to do and this is like i think where most people miss on their goals is they like they don't pick a definite purpose like this is the thing i'm gonna do they're like oh i'm gonna try to be successful for us it was like three million dollars in 90 minutes that's the goal we have to so like we spent so much time reverse engineering how are we going to do it and we're in the stadium this huge stadium right and we're like

and i talked about grants like had everybody like buy on their on their phone like no do not buy on the phone because then the internet could like, well, the internet doesn't work. What if this doesn't work? Or what if there's no social proof? No one's moving. So I was like, we have to do paper forms. And they're like, well, how are we going to get paper forms out to like, you know, it's Mandalay Bay, this huge stadium with seats.

Like, how are we gonna do that? It's like, well, okay, well, what if we like put an order form in everyone's chair? But like, then they know we're selling them something. So it's like, and, and then like, if they have an order form, they might have a pen. How do you even fill out an order form yeah okay let's figure out how do we get an order form on their chair with a pen but not let them know it's an order from how do we sneak attack it so we made these little like these things where it's like it was like this envelope and you open it up and there's a spot to take notes and that and a pen but it was like sealed

it had a big sticker like don't open this to russell brunson presents and then we tried to get them on the chairs but they were sliding off people's chairs so we had to go out by these bags hook on the it was this whole like reverse engineering every possible scenario right and it was cool like when we did the presentation everyone had this thing i had them open the presentation pull out the notes with the pen so i had a pen in hand and notes they're taking notes yeah and most of them didn't even see the order form in the envelope and address it so we're going through it and but we're thinking through all those pieces then we're like well how do we get people like where are we going to set people up to run and how are we going to like just it's

just really uh choreographing all the different pieces of that um to make it happen you know and i think then when it actually happened it was nuts because it was just like i can't believe like we actually yeah we actually did that i think a lot of times people don't they don't choreograph the process well if they go out and just kind of shotgun approach and hopefully it works you know and i think on my side, I always try and think through all the little pieces. How do we create the experience event in a way that like gives people the greatest like happiness, but also like sets up sales in the greatest,

the greatest way. And there's, yeah, that choreograph, the choreography that's so huge. I think like the thing that sticks out to me is you guys, I mean, you had spent,

you'd already done a hundred of that presentation before, you know? So it's like me watching it from the audience. I don't know how many times you've done this thing or whatever, or like, you know, anything, but you know, I'm looking at the end result and I'm like, dude, that guy killed it. And you don't see all the work that you just explained. I had to, you know, you had to do a hundred of them for the year before you had to think about the bags and the, the order, the envelope, the like every minute detail that could affect the conversion. You had already process it in your head.

Yeah, for sure. It seems like I watch people. I try to coach people now who like want to speak from stage or do webinars and like, how time is there just winging it? I was like, there's presentations. I wing, like when I'm teaching and training in my big events, like I'm, I got a direction I'm going, but when I'm selling something, I get scripted. Like I know exactly where I'm taking my drink of water. I know when I'm laughing. I know the joke I'm teaching and training in my big events, like I'm, I got a direction I'm going, but when I'm selling something, I get scripted. Like I know exactly where I'm taking my drink of water.

I know when I'm laughing. I know the joke I'm going to land. I know like, like none of that's left to chance. Like there's too important to leave to chance. Like I gotta just make sure that's, um, it's not script. Like I wrote it out and memorize it. It's just like, I just know the pacing. I know what it's supposed to be.

I know, you know, and you can feel it. And, um, it's just interesting because I see people who, who leave a lot more of it to chance and some days they have big sales days other days they bombs it's like the same presentation they don't know why it's just like because they're they're going off script it's like yeah when you're when you're trying to to execute a sale like the script is is the key yeah i am very guilty of being the other guy um i think i i lean more with grant where i'm just like hey guys like look this is the thing you should buy it or don't like, you know, but, but I hope you buy it. Cause I think it's going to help. And you know, I kind of wing everything and I got to quit doing that because even, I don't know, dude, it's, it's just one of those things,

right. Where you have so much success doing it that you're just like, yeah, I mean, why change it? Yeah. You know, I was interviewing Ed Milet and he goes, Hey, where did you, um, learn to, to podcast and like interview people like you're, you're good. And I was like, well, um, I just show up and I talk and it's great. You know, I'm just, I'm, I'm just naturally curious of the people I'm speaking to. And I ask questions that I personally just want to answer. And, um, he's like, you know, you'd probably do better if you just prepped a little bit more. And I was like, yeah, I'll have to do that. If you look at my life, he's got his speeches. It's amazing.

He's dialed in the best ever, but it's like the same story, same lines. Like he's just, he's nailed. He's created it. And we talked about this earlier, Tony Robbins, UPW, like, like me and you, like I do my big fun. I bet you do your event. Like it's different every single time tony like 30 years ago he wrote upw it is a four times a year for 30 years word

for i'm not but pretty close they knew date with destiny it was like he wrote date with destiny and they became thingy did twice a year for 40 years you know yeah interesting once you have something that works why change it yeah i was actually surprised because when i saw you in utah i knew you were speaking and um i was, what are you going to talk about? And you're like, you know that presentation you saw in 2018? Yeah, I'm going to do that. And I was like, okay. Why don't you tweak it?

Because it works. Yeah. New audience all the time. That's the big problem I think people understand is like, is I talked to Mary Ellen Tribby. She's a fascinating marketer. She went, a couple of companies she came into, the companies are doing like three or $4 million a year. She came in and she's taking from 3 million to like 80 million. Like, and she did like three or four times.

And I asked her, I was like, how in the world do you do that? Cause you know, that's how I think my business was doing 3 million. I'm like, how did you take a business from three to 80 in like 18 months? Like what's the secret? And it was so fascinating. She's like, you marketer. She's like, you guys do the equivalent of like writing a Hollywood play, right? You hire the best screenwriters and actors and you practice and you rehearse and then because you live in boise idaho you put on the

plane boise idaho you know you promote it people come in and like you know opening day curtains are up you do the thing it nails it curtains close everyone loves it gives a standing ovation and then it ends and next day you write a new play and she's like all i do is instead of writing a new play she's like i take the show from boise idaho and i take it on the road i take it to boise to chicago to new york over and over and over again and so for me with click for like when uh she told me at the very beginning of click funnels journey i was like oh because i was i was gonna try to write another webinar pitch and i was like no just take it on the road there's a million audiences never heard this like why do i need you know in utah that an event yeah i don't know how many

people i can remember people had in the room but i would say maybe five percent ever heard of me before and breston was brand new people it's like yeah why deviate keep with you know just keep the whole thing going so they can just show on the road 10 years later so what do you do when things don't work out right because you get the same pitch per se but you know different audiences respond differently like do you think that if an audience doesn't respond is it just the audience are you screwed up like how do you differentiate that there's a lot of variables that are fascinating i learned on this journey that were like for example i remember going to the uk the very first time and i'm so excited to go to uk i see big ben like all that you know yeah i'm excited i go to the audience and i've never i don't i've never been in that situation

and i do this presentation same presentation stuff and it does not go well i get bombs um i remember later reading in like some facebook groups that the attendees were at like like they were it was they were mean like they did not like me like the fact that i was like this annoying i think on the yankee or something all these things like and i was like oh my gosh my people in the uk hate me and so i didn't go back for three or four years and then this still happened jay braham was trying to get me to come back i was like oh people you can't hate me he's like he's like just come back and so i went back but i remember ahead of time like i studied people and like understand like what like what do people there think about americans like how does it work and it's fascinating because i was like i realized like their perception of americans

are way different than i i would have assumed and so i went back the second time and i was like okay i have to understand that these people think i'm an annoying yankee america whatever they call me now so instead like i was very self-deprecating, made fun of me, made fun of our president, make fun of the States. And like, it shifted the whole tone of it. And then what's weird is in America, people jump up and run the bathroom in the UK. They don't, they're very proper and they sit in their way. And so like the first time I, no one's running back rooms, I freaked out.

So I was like trying to like do stuff and I'm like telling them to go back. I think they were just annoyed. Cause like, you know, and this time I was like, okay, this is their culture. It's different. And, um, by understanding the audience ahead of time then we crushed that time so that's what i've learned biggest even going to audience like i hate speaking the first day an event like i hate when when promoters like can i have your slides like you've done this webinar a million times give me the slides i'm like no like i want to sit in the in the room like for grants i spoke strategically on day two before lunch like that's

the spot because i wanted a day and a half to like sit in the audience and like understand the audience i was i was sitting in in the room amongst all these people listening to the speakers interacting i was changing slides and tweaking stuff based on like what was happening in the room like i didn't even realize grant's audience i walk in like everyone's in decked out in suits they're all alpha males that i'm like oh this is not like my normal audience my audience is very mixed you know male female like all that kind of stuff i was like this is just online people these people are like sales people yeah i was like so i shifted if you notice if you watch that presentation like i had to shift the pacing like usually uh i'm more like uh i'm more like uh you know i'm kind of playing with the audience this was like i had to take

command of the audience because i was like if i if they don't respect me immediately like i'm screwed yeah these people are all alphas it's like i had to take control like it was all these things i shifted to mill to make sure that that i could captivate their their attention their trust out of the gate um one of the problems i had in salt lake and then with that one like i was day one and i was or maybe it was only one day event right yeah it was only one day yeah so i'm trying to tweak you don't even know what they're doing yeah it, and then it was all sorts of K it was, yeah, it was all sorts of chaos, but it was like, I was backstage. Yeah. I was not able to, yeah. Yeah. We can talk about that. Yeah. But, um, yeah. So I think that's a big part of it is understanding like, uh, audiences are

different. A lot of times you try to figure out the person whose audience it is. Like they sync with it. Right. Like I remember doing a deal with Jeff Walker, Jeff Walker's audience. Do you know, Jeff? No. Um, he's a big product launch guy he's amazing but he's very much like very calm and very you know and like his whole team you work and they're all they're all like synced to that level his audience are all very calm and i'm like the blue you know like yeah it's like this guy's a nut yeah it's like uh when i work with them it's like i have to like i have to change how i speak i have to be a lot slower or else they just think i'm this nut you know yeah so it's like a lot of times it's syncing

with the the person's audience and like mirroring and matching their energy levels as you're presenting to be able to you know and then sometimes it's just sometimes offers fatigue sometimes the webinars at work like well that's what i was gonna ask about because like okay so in utah that was the last time i've seen you pitch and like like, I was just thinking in my head, I'm like, okay, everyone in this crowd is like some young kid that's, uh, like in door-to-door sales and like hustling and sell it. Like, I don't know that they need click funnels. Like that was my perception. I'm like, I don't see them like making online stuff and like creating offers. Like I see them just hustling, trying to go get sales. Cause you know, we're in Utah, the door to door capital of the world.

And it was just interesting for me to watch. I'm like, I don't know how this is going to go. Yeah. I think if I had more time to tweak and then also like my demo didn't work, like if we got to download the web, like there was so much chaos tied around that. But yeah, there's definitely, you have to,

I mean, Dan Kennedy would get my first mentor. He talks about message to market match., you have to, I mean, Dan Kennedy, my first mentor, he talks about, um, message to market match. Like you have to match that thing. It's like those who aren't willing to put in the time to like make sure the message matches it, it falls. I think that that was a good example for me, like not having enough time to like match the message. Um, yeah. What do you think of offer fatigue? So like, I mean, to your point, you know, you're selling ClickFunnels as like the core offer.

And then obviously you've had your different coaching programs and things too. But like, um, does ClickFunnels fatigue, do you have to keep changing it? Like, how's that work? Yeah. It's a, and that's the hardest thing is I've been selling ClickFunnels every day for a decade, you know, which is like, how do you make the sexy again? How do you talk about it differently? Um, but there's always new audiences coming in.

But I think the big part of it is the core offer doesn't shift. Um, but everything around it does. Right. So, I mean, you see this, I'm sure with social and like paid ads,

like paid ads. Uh, I was reading this, um, well, sorry, one of my, one of my friends went to Facebook's,

um, agency, whatever. And they were sitting with there. And so that Facebook wants people to update their creative on their ads every 1.5 weeks if they want creative to go fast a lot of work i had this conversation with dean graciosi dean you know those who know him he's the infomercial guy he ran infomercials and he said when they would write a good webinar or a good infomercial

it would run for like two to five years and then it was it was over time go down they had a new a new webinar or sorry new infomercial but they had longevity right and then you look at when i first got started on facebook like we create ads and they would run for six months or ever like now sound like 1.5 weeks is how often they want you refreshing your creative which is hard you're so creative wears out really really fast um and then like so if creative's the one you do the most the second is like then the hook of the thing right it's like my old hooks to get people on the presentation those are fatigued for sure so i'm always coming different hooks different angles different markets we're going after specifically so for example we did a webinar with bricastile uh a few months back

and she's you know she she's the queen of the life coaching industry she coaches all the life coaches so the hook was like here's the sales funnel for life coaches to get whatever so it's like the hook shifts for that audience. The offer is exactly the same. And so the offer does fatigue over time, but it's the last of fatigue. It's usually the creative, then the hooks, and then the offers further down. Because, I mean, we're still a decade in, and the offer still works pretty well. But how we wrap everything around it changes a lot more often so what do you think about you know having an offer

that is so like um pliable that can be molded to so many things right because i have a real estate offer and i think about it and i'm like there's not like a ton we can do with that you could though it just takes being creative like i would be like uh real estate for and i would do a deal let's say it's a ufc fighter find a ufc fighter bag real estate for for combat athletes and then now you have a whole segment you go after and they have real estate for college kids do real estate for like i'd be segmenting that way but it's still going to the same offer same offer yeah but but like you think about this like if you walk into a a bookstore you say 10 books like internet marketing internet marketing internet marketing for for college wrestlers

and i'm college wrestler i'm gonna buy the college wrestler one you know i mean i think segmenting down and so that's probably i would try to find i would try to find um a celebrity in each of those markets to co-brand with like for example we're talking right now i was telling you we filmed yesterday with damon john yeah so damon john's a big brand obviously and so we have and he's he's tradition is e-commerce so clickfunnels has a new e-commerce engine that's coming out we're really excited about so we're partnering with damon because it's like damon's the king of e-commerce um and he's giving people free e-commerce store inside of click funnels so that's the whole offer but the offer you know still click funnels but it's like it's like we

took a feature of click funnels which e-commerce stores and uh and cart funnels had tied it with damon because he's a celebrity that was e-com and then now we have a whole new channel that you know that that offer if it goes well could run for for a couple of years, you know? So it's looking at those kinds of things. How do you get Damon John to keep making you creatives every, you know, one and a half weeks though? That's, that is true. Yeah, that's a lot harder. But with like, with the deal we have,

we have six hours to go film this. We film as much creative as we can in six hours. Yeah. And then we're spinning it, making different versions. We're, yeah. And the bigger the brand is, the more longevity is. Cause you know, they're, they're, they're big,'re big you know well it always goes back to what we just said

at the beginning of just having good organic content right like you know you're gonna have to pay dame and john because of the work he's built you know or put in to build his personal brand and you know you're looking for other guys with personal brands and women and um it's a lot of work but like that's like part of using your brand. If you, you know, now you can use it for other things. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Anyway. Yeah. It's crazy. But like, I guess too, with ClickFunnels, how is it with, you know, just continuing to develop the product? Cause like, as we know in tech, I mean, tech is changing so fast all the time. And I think probably when you started

ClickFunnels, there wasn't a ton of competitors. Now there's a bunch of competitors and other things. So like, how do you deal with that? Yeah. So it's interesting. Yeah. You're a hundred percent. We launched ClickFunnels. We were the first, um, which gave us an advantage. It was awesome. Uh, for five or six years, we had a lot of people come in that, that tried to compete. Um, none of them were, were great. great. And so that was the journey. And we ran that for six and a half years or so. And then we got to the point where it's like, what are we going to do next?

And so that's whenever it starts. We had people from year one trying to buy us or acquire us, but we'd always kind of push it off just as a thing. And so after six years, we finally like, well, let's see what this looks like. What's possible? And so we decided to put ourselves out on the market. And it was crazy. It crazy a whole different experience i don't know if you've had a chance it was a whole different world yeah a whole set of new sharks

that are way smarter than you just feel like yeah i feel like i'm walking into like you know yeah they're smarter than me i know but so we did that whole process spent a year going through and it was fascinating because you start with you know 100 companies and it goes down to eventually come down to a couple and they're bidding against each other and we end up getting a couple really good offers that were like oh this is this could be potentially good um but it also was like we we knew some of the competitors were coming in and stuff like that it was like i felt like we were sold the people who would have bought it i don't think it would have been around in five years from then we would have had an exit and a payday. Um, we knew what we wanted to create to make it, to make it something that's

going to be around for the next 20 years, but it would require us rebuilding from the ground up. And so we decided to decline the offer and then intend to rebuild from the ground up, which was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Uh, we thought it was gonna take us a year to rebuild. Um, it took us two years to get to that point where it was gonna take us a year to rebuild um it took us two years to get to that point where it was working for us internally and then we rolled out to our customers uh we definitely rolled it out earlier than we should have um when you're running we're using a platform you don't see the bugs when we did our big launch we had 18 000 people sign up in a day um and all of a sudden we realized like oh my gosh like there's way more bugs our trust test yeah so

it definitely was was uh was it was a year of us just getting under that in control, which was brutal. It was hard. We lost a lot of people because of that. Um, you know, so that was hard. And then we spent the last year since then really making it, I'm really proud of it now. Like in fact, we're running, you know, we're putting through, uh, on one of our businesses, 20, 30 million a year, one of them over a hundred million a year.

So we have, it's working, it's stress test. Like it's, it's awesome. Um, but it's, we had that time where we made that transition and we lost some, some trust with people and some faith in people. So now we're coming back and trying to rebuild that. So that's been the harder thing is just like, you know, these things that you don't know as you're going into it, like, um, that have been interesting. Uh, but it's, it's also cool though, because right now we have there's more people signing up for ClickFunnels per day right now than there was before

it's just like getting people like how do I explain this the way we built the new ClickFunnels, ClickFunnels 2.0 it does a lot more stuff right it does CRMs and stores and stuff like that so the problem is when you join ClickFunnels in the past you log in and like you just build a funnel now it's like you can do all these things and like um there's so much confusion so we've been working really hard to like strip out the confusion and

like in fact one of the big updates coming out where i'm really excited for is like when you join click funnels it just has funnels now just like click funnels 1.0 but it has all the other apps that you can like you can um you can opt into them yeah so it's like you have to opt into complexity yeah and so that's rolling out right now and um like in the e-commerce stores and like there's so many cool things so it's in a really good spot now it's growing again and it's been fun but but that was stressful a couple years a hundred percent it was like we had to like to get where we needed to be we had to take first off we had to say no to hundreds of millions of dollars you know which is a mental stress anyway you're

going through the stress 100 yeah you're like dude i should just take that money and bounce yeah for sure um and it's tough because like man you're like we're in the eye of this and you know getting beat up by people left and right but it's just like saying that we believe what we're doing we believe in the direction and like um and so it's just been yeah it's been one of those things that i can was brutal i think again we thought it was like a year it's been three years uh this year will be year four um and now it's finally like spot where it's like it's actually awesome and it's really really cool and so it's been weird on my side i've had to like almost um slow down i've been like holding the line like trying to get it awesome and then now to be able to go out and say

okay now we're now we're going back to hyper growth mode and like focusing on it yeah um and so anyway i you guys everyone everyone know you'll start seeing the dame and john ads everywhere like that's that's phase number one of this uh new growth expansion and um anyway but i'm my guess is everyone will see a lot more of what we're doing because now we're able to like take our we put our foot back you kind of put your head down and fix the product made it elite and now it's time to go and yeah showcase it yeah but like let's even talk about that, right? So one, I appreciate you being like vulnerable

and transparent because it's not easy. Like you're running a nine figure company and to say like, yeah, dude, like we probably rolled this out too quick and lost some trust and some users. And now, you know, we're finally at a place where I'm like loving the product again. But you kind of even mentioned like, dude,

you turned down hundreds of millions knowing that you were going to have to change the product, you know, to reach the next level. Yeah. Like that's a hard thing to do. Like what, what like, I guess gave you the, I guess, foresight to say, cause like, dude, I mean, if you're running it and a company values you at this much money and you're like, bro, like the product obviously is great. Yeah. We got loyal fans. This is awesome.

But then for you to say, well, actually, though, we're going to have to shift because it's, you know, it's not going to continue to work out the way it has. Like, I can see, I guess, the writing on the wall. Yeah. Like, how do you do that as a business owner? It's tough. 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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um, I don't know. I don't know if everyone feels this way. I think everyone's in business for different reasons. I think for me, uh, I very much feel like business, they always get put into a business because of like, because we've been called to serve somebody right like yeah and i'm a big believer like i was put on the earth 20 years ago for some reason i got super interested in direct response marketing and funnels and all these stupid things when i was in college like why did i care about you know what i mean yeah some reason like that desires placed my head i got really good at it i became obsessed with it like um i feel like i was given those gifts because there's someone i was supposed to serve and so for me it's like this is the group people i'm serving and i love them it's been so much for

the last six years but i was like i feel like if i bounce right now like i don't it's gonna happen to them and i was like i want to make sure that they're in good hands and people ask like would you sell clothes phones in the future i'm like yes as long as it's like yeah yes for sure but no but like as long as it was a spot where it's like this is like like my people like i've left you in a spot where it's like it's gonna get better and not worse i feel like if we would have left then it would have been atrophy and it would have been five years now i've been gone and that would have sucked you know yeah and like and for me it's like even if i sold click phones like i'm not stopping what i'm doing like my i'm like i serve entrepreneurs but i do i'm obsessed with them you

know i told you before like my company's separate where my info product brands are separate from click funnels if i sold click funnels i would keep doing everything i'm doing now like nothing that would shift um and so it's like i want to make sure that like i have the foundation for these people so that in 10 years not 20 years from now like like even if i don't click funnels i'm still push people there because it's like that's the right foundation so i wanted to build that for me personally so i think that's the hardest i mean you know but yeah there's definitely i think there's definitely days where it's like, man, this has been brutal, especially when you have people that – people you've helped along the way that have gone and – yeah. Then they're just talking crap and whatever.

Yeah, it's frustrating. It's like, man, I remember on stage when you came back to Comic-Con board and you were crying. I changed your life. Now you're in the cheap sheets and Facebook taking shots. I mean it's just like, that's just frustrating. But at the same time, it's like, I'm willing to take that because it's necessary for me to get what I'm trying to do and serve the next group of people that we're bringing in. So do you think that, I mean, for me, I've, I haven't experienced it at your level cause I haven't built a company that big, but, um,

you know, I think for me too, I've experienced that just like people taking shots and stuff as you know, you get bigger or also too, as you just have more mistakes as an entrepreneur, like inevitably your mistakes are seen more. Cause it's not like, yeah, they're amplified and they're bigger. Cause you're just do things bigger. And I've had to learn to deal with that too, where it's like, man, dude, like, okay, but what about the other nine things that were great? But then the one thing wasn't, you know, and it's like, it's just kind of the world we live in with social media now where it's like a very, um, just gotcha game. Yeah. But then, you know, you think about it too. And it's like, all right,

you know, people are hating for a day and then they're on to hating the next person, the next, like, it's just, it's so just one and a half weeks. Like Facebook says, you're going to refresh it. Yeah. You're all right. You screwed up. You know,

you go get crapped on for a week and then like, all right, cool. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. It's, it's,

it's tough, man. Sometimes I've watched something, you know, I've watched some of the, when the, some of the worst came out and stuff, I watched some of your,

your content and then, which was amazing by the way, like, um, but it was just interesting. I saw you kind of having to to read like yeah make a second post and third and i had the same thing i was like i made a post and it's like i said this does not mean this like it can be this and this it doesn't mean this or you know and like people think these are context and then um yeah and they're fast at the faster you know it's interesting is like when you're the underdog and you're the the up and coming they all want to celebrate your your success when you're on top like everyone wants to see the hero fall yeah and they're fast at the faster you know it's interesting is like when you're the underdog and you're the the up and coming they all want to celebrate your your success when you're on top

like everyone wants to see the hero fall yeah and it's interesting and i i had a thing a couple um in january where uh it's my son's wrestling tournament something you know my anyway long story short um something happens rest terms all the time it's not that anyway my kids getting choked and i jump out i try to stop the match uh gets caught on video goes viral and it's not that anyway my kids getting choked and i jump out i try to stop the match uh gets caught on video goes viral and it's crazy like everyone in the wrestling community from the business community like everyone who's ever had something like you know because i i'm a pretty clean cut kid i don't do like yeah you know and like they're like oh find something to talk about talk about russell and like russell and like they're making videos and they're like like

russell beats up kids and like all and they're all like taking the 10 seconds of fame take shots at me i'm just like are you freaking kidding me like i've been nothing but like trying to serve my face off for 10 years the second they have a shot to like oh the hero falls let's take this hit him while he's down like i was like i would never do that somebody it just blows my mind that like yeah you know and so but it's just like that's the world we live in and you're right like you know you stand there and get kicked get kicked nuts for a couple weeks and then they're on the next thing. But it's, it's like,

it's brutal. But I think that's why it's so important to like, I don't know if business was just business for me, like I would, I would have bounced a long time ago, but it's like, if you really believe in like the calling that you have and you're like, ah,

this is something that I like, I'm willing to take these shots because I believe in the thing that I'm doing that it's, it makes it possible. Otherwise, like, yeah, like I have people come into my world that I, I'm gonna start a business. Like why? Like, I want to make some money. Like, ah, man, you need something. It's, it makes it possible. Otherwise, like, yeah, like I have people come into my world that I almost started business. Like why? Like, Oh, I want to make some money.

Like, Oh man, you need something deeper. It's a long, long road. Cause it's not worth the money times. If money's the only motivator, it's not worth it, man. Yeah. You'll, you'll just go to your other job and you'll be fine. Yeah. No, I'm with you, man. It's, um, I always tell just our students and everything else. I'm like, you gotta have a deeper why for why you're doing it. You know, at the end of the day, you know, why? Because every shot you take in the face, every hour you work, every time you figure it out and then it no longer works. And you're like, dude, I thought I just figured this out. And then now back to the drawing board again, like you will quit at some point if your why is not strong enough. Yeah.

And so, you know, it's just you do get to see someone's character, though, when times get hard. You know, when everybody's rolling, everybody looks good. Yeah. And I do think, too, we were talking about this, like the economy plays a role in that, too. You know, I think people are much more, you know, just unhappy when the economy is not good. And so we're going into the election cycle, which is not going to be a friendly one. I think there's everyone's agitated moving into that, you know, and like, yeah, there's me so much divisiveness in the next eight months. It just sucks.

Yeah. You know, so we're just in this weird arena right now. But what do you see like happening now? Because, you know, one big shift I've been making is trying to go continuity. Like what you're doing. You just wrote a book called linchpin. That's exactly about that. And it inspired, like I had a guest on his name's Robbie. Um, and he was the one who's like, no, dude, I'm going all continuity. He's like, read Russell's book linchpin. I was like, okay, let me go look it up. It wasn't even on Amazon. I'm like, how do

I get it? You know, go to the funnel. Yeah. I got to go find the funnel to buy it. And then I was like, I'll buy the order bump, whatever. So, um, thank you by the way. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, let me read linchpin. And, um, everything you said make perfect sense about why click funnels got to where it got, why like just only selling like high ticket coaching is very difficult to do. We've been talking about issues with salespeople, which we can talk about after that. But like, my point is it's making me realize, okay, we're in a pivot stage, you know, very much like what you just said, Hey, we got to like redo click funnels for us to be successful longterm.

And that's what I'm like now saying, like, we are going to have to go all in on this to like build the foundation for the next 10 years, you know? So what are you seeing with the education space? Cause many of ClickFunnels users are coaches, you know, would that probably be the biggest demographic I would guess? Uh, yes. Right now e-commerce is really, really, in fact, 30% of our cancellations are people e-commerce who don't have the e-commerce engine done yet. They're like all waiting for it. So I think e-commerce who don't have the e-commerce engine done yet they're like all waiting for so i think e-commerce will trump it this year actually but for sure right now it's it's heavily on the coaching side um so a couple things i'm noticing is like uh number one is there's always you know there's people doing webinars or live events or whatever and most of them are it's tough because they're focusing on the high ticket thing they're

focusing on the thing um but it's tough because they're focusing on the high ticket thing. They're focusing on the thing. But it's tough because to do something like that, they have to ramp up. They have to have ad spend, support, staff, salespeople, everything. So they do this, they ramp up the cost to do this big event. They make a bunch of money, but then they have the cost. So they got to pay, you know, it pays for all the ads, pays for people. But then they have these people, right? And they keep paying for these people.

And now they're like, oh crap, I have this overhead now 000 $200,000 a month exactly then they're like okay why do the events i gotta pay these guys yep and so they're like oh scram next thing do the event pay the guys and then you know so it's like it's just like ebb and flow of like up and down up and down you know like feast and famine type thing um and so what continuity does like the people they're doing like and i've been preaching this really hardcore in our community last year it's just it gives you the stability you know i mean like i love the fact that are doing it, like, and I've been preaching this really hardcore in our community last year. It's just, it gives you the stability. You know what I mean? Like, I love the fact that regardless of what I do today, uh, every morning I get my, my text from Stripe that says how much money made the night before. So I wake up in the morning and continuity

income comes in. It's like, I made 250 grand today, whether I do anything or not today, it's just like sweet. And then you can go and try and do stuff. Right. Versus like, okay, I got overhead. How do I pay staff today? Like that's in that I've been in that cycle so today it's just like sweet and then you go and try and do stuff right yeah versus like okay i got overhead how do i pay staff today like that's and that i've been in that cycle so many times for the first decade of my business that was the cycle and it's just so much stress like peace and famine and when click phones came out the first time i had a continuity that were consistently growing consistently growing and i was a spot where it just like gave us stability where i could like i could rest i could relax a little i could spend more time with my family i

could take off half day for six months at a time to be a wrestling coach, you know, because that was happening no matter what and everything else was just gravy on top of it. And I think, uh, people get so blindsided by the high ticket or whatever. It's just like, oh, but I made blah today. I'm like, yeah, but what about tomorrow? You know? And so it just gives you stability to build, to actually build a team, people fulfill on the things you sell and all that kind of stuff, you know? So that that's one thing the other thing has been really fascinating just in the last i just had my big inner circle meeting uh last week and so um these people pay anywhere from fifty thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars to be in the room with us um and most of them are

in are some type of coaches in different industries um but what a lot of them are doing now um i think taylor welch is actually one who's kind of uh i was on a zoom with taylor yesterday oh very cool i actually have never met him in person i study him and i watch him um he's he's speaking at wealth con next week oh very cool he's fascinating i really he's smart he's really smart and it's fascinating it's like half of my group are also in his group like we have a lot of yeah similarities so all of them come back and they're like oh we're doing this new thing i think calls it um revolvingving pricing. What does he call it? I don't know what he calls it. But the gist of it is what he's doing is instead of like, like right now where I sell my, my mid-level coaching program, it's 25 grand a year, $2,500 a month, right?

Yeah. People come in, the problems, they come in for two or three months and they can't handle it. They freak out. They bounce. What he does, interesting is he has initially when you come in, there's an onboarding. So it's like 10 grand up front and then it's 25 or whatever it is. Yeah.

But the psychology is they come in the 10 grand, it gives you the ability now to use first off that 10 grand you can put into ad spend. So like you're making money back plus the 10 grand, the upfront you make, excuse me, that front you make, you can put into like the customer experience.

So you have a really rich onboarding where it's like you come in first 30 days or 90 days, whatever it is really cool onboarding because the cash collector, they can spend a lot of time energy on that and just make an amazing experience. Plus you have more money to acquire customers. And then it rolls into the thousand dollars a month, whatever the continuity is. And people can stay and they can leave whenever they want, but they're less likely to leave because they've already spent the big upfront investment. If they leave, they lose that. If they come back, they'll repay that. So people stick way longer as well.

We do a version of that with our all starts 25 for the year. And then after that, it's a thousand a month. Okay. And this rolls. Yeah. Super interesting. So we're,

um, anyway, it's funny cause we have Dan Kennedy's, uh, event next month. So I'm trying to restructure the offer base, like around that concept and some of our things like that's really fascinating. But again,

it comes down to continuity. It comes down to like, how do you build in the continuity? It gets people to stick. So the people that are, that are really successful in coaching, it's like, they're doing all the same things. They're doing a high ticket, they're doing events, they're doing VSL, the phone calls, doing those things, but they're not just leaving it off at just like a one-time sale. Like they're tying in recurring. So they have the stability, um, when times get crazy and the ups and downs, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. You know, it's funny. So I was talking to Taylor yesterday.

We did an IG live to promote wealth con. And then I was like, Hey, can you hop on a zoom real quick? So I hopped on a zoom with him for like 40 minutes. And, um, I was like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this and this and this. He's like, bro, let me just show you this. Okay. And so he shows me his page. Cause I was like, I can't get my low ticket to self liquidate.

It just can't do it. Yeah. He's like, all right, change this, this, this, this, ticket to self liquidate. It just can't do it. He's like, all right, change this, this, this, this, you know, don't put the price right at the top, put, put it somewhere else. Um, you know, like just, just like you and your events. Yeah. This is the price is by it. Yeah, I know. I'm like, dude, it's $27. If you're like turned off by that, I don't know what to tell you. Right. But, um, he's like, he basically said, Hey, I, you know, I'm not concerned about the front end.

I'll sell it for $3. I don't care. He's like, but the back end is where you're going to make your money. And he's like, I'm more worried about back end continuity on a higher ticket thing, not the $97 thing. See, I'm kind of a blight. I'd rather have both. If you can, why not have both? You know what I mean?

I like a mixed book of business of one thing goes bad or whatever and like i had a couple years ago right before covid i i got tired of my mastermind so i shut the whole thing down i couldn't have done that if that was my only recurring you know i mean yeah um so you just get burnt out or what yeah it's got burned out we had it was weird dynamic we had a lot like internal feuds people like joined the group they became business partners they started hating each other and like and i was like the big like the dad in charge of these things i was like no so we killed it i brought it back like three years later but with strict rules of just like dang like yeah i'm not your dad you do business deals together it's on you don't bring it to me you know like yeah i'm

not shifting not arbitrating this with people who are like you're like we have multiple meetings like okay well if so-and-so come here because i'm not gonna and there's this whole thing i'm like this is i'm not sharing what i'm doing. Yeah. If they're in my industry. Yeah. So it was just, it got weird. So, uh, yeah. So, but it was, you know, I was able to do that because it's like, oh, well I have this over here.

I got this other thing. I don't need this. I'm a big believer in just having multiple different types of, uh, when I was asking him, cause I was the four funnels I was telling you about earlier. I was like, Hey Taylor, what do you think of these? And, um, he's like, look, dude, I'll be honest with you. What you're trying to do. Cause I was telling, he's like look dude i'll be honest with you what you're trying to do because i was telling i was like i'm gonna meet with russell tomorrow and he was like one russell russell's been buying our stuff lately he's like he knows what we're doing and everything else but he's like but two russell knows for sure how to do what you're

trying to do with the 97 stuff better than me he's like i'm basically the model you explain he's like i'm just trying to get him in for, you know, higher end stuff and whatever. But he goes, he goes, you know, when Russell talked about the value ladder 10 years ago or whatever, he's like, that was built for a recession. He's like the stuff that's been happening the last bunch of years where people will just straight up buy a 25 or a 10 and you don't need all this other stuff. Yeah, that, that works when times are good. He's like, but when times are bad, he's like, right now people still have money. It's just, they're less trusting. They're holding it back a little more. Yeah. And he's

like, you got to just give them such insane value for so cheap that now they're not looking at Ryan versus somebody else. They're just looking at, okay, dude ryan really crushed it for this price like yeah i believe i trust for sure um it's interesting um because i almost have to almost it's harder for me to sell like the low ticket like i look at my book funnels like it's like a 30 page sales letter to sell a free book you know i mean to sell a free book and then our continuity the same thing like um so i'll show you um the continuity funnels we have like we we uh we call mifki funnels stands for most incredible free gift ever yeah um but it's like it's that's like the continuity but it's like they're getting this huge box of stuff that's even more than like when

someone that joins a 25 000 program they don't get as much cool stuff up front as they do for the for the continuity low-tech economy because it's harder to get someone in that level, but then you get them in. Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, it's just, it's interesting. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm new in the journey, but like, it just makes sense, man. You know, I'm just thinking if I could go get 5,000, 10,000 people on a 97, like that's a good business, man. And, you know, obviously there there's way more stuff that comes from that you know working together partnerships deals ascensions all the other good stuff but um it gets your it gets your uh your raving fans like tied into you like it takes them off the market you know someone's not gonna join 10 continuity programs it's like one or two and

so they if they decide to sick you it's like and then you're their guy like they're not gonna you know i mean so it kind of like it ties people to you it's one of these dan kennedy time because dan kennedy's when we bought his company it's a newsletter company right he's got his newsletter but he's like when you have the newsletters like it's like the that continuity it's like he calls it the the tent pole that holds the rest of the tent together yeah it's like now they're they're paying for you to like to market to them they're listening to you more because they're paying you like yeah right now like we're posting social stuff hoping people pay attention but it's free but the people who are paying like those who pay pay attention right they're showing up they're

listening and so they'll consume the thing that they're paying for but they're more likely to consume everything else they're they're listening more of the podcast they're listening because they're like man this is my guy i'm paying for it yeah i gotta make sure i'm getting my value worth so it's like it makes them like hyperactive people who then they're more likely to send to buy coaching to go to masterminds everything else yeah comes from that so it's like, it makes them like hyperactive people who then they're more likely to send to buy coaching, to go to the masterminds and everything else comes from that. So it's like, that's why I love having the low, low take continuity because just it. It all just brings it all together. Yeah.

It is like you said, the linchpin, it makes everything work. Everything else grows because of it. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about just products and offers and obviously running the company, but I want to talk about some applicable things to just people listening. So one question I always get, cause it's like, we've been talking about webinars and these different ways to get people to buy usually digital products, right? What can brick and mortar businesses and local businesses, how can they start using funnels

better? Yeah. Give me an example of a business like um i don't know let's just say the plumber the plumber um man it's so interesting because like um typically it's funny because people struggle to figure out how to do funnels for local businesses but it's actually so much easier like what we do is so hard because we're competing against a million people we're trying to figure out you know creative and hooks and different angles and stuff like that like if i was a plumber i would just buy something like emergency plumber in boiseidaho.com or something like that where it's like i think about the plumbers that i've hired it's always like at two in the morning when my toilet's flooding you know what i mean yeah and i don't have a plumber on speed dial and so

i would i would build a really simple funnel and i just want to call someone so i have a one-page funnel with a phone number on top of it i'd rank it for for boise i don't know boise plumber i think i would search for we had this we bought our new house um nine years ago now and the second day we were in there it went from like having a went from a 3,500 square foot house to 11,000 square foot house move in it's like amazing our kids are going crazy and um the people owned it before they had it for like 11 12 years and and they when they left they were single there was just them you know so there's no one using the house yeah so we move in we're flushing toilets we're doing sinks everything it's like i just remember like the second night it's like 11 or 12 o'clock at night and i don't know all the kids were showering at the same time or whatever and

then just it died the water was off everything's gone we couldn't flush so you know i'm like what do you do so let's grab my phone so i always put myself in the mind of of myself if i was going to look for that thing so that's it was me i'm like emergency plumber boise and then the first one popped up i click on it and if there's a phone i click on it try to talk to someone right now i don't want to fill out a form on you know so thinking through that reverse engineering like how i'd want to do it and then just making sure you're there for the keywords and that's it like it's pretty simple like you don't need a complex funnel you need a landing page you don't need vsls or or content yeah um very rarely i mean especially something like they already know what they want you know i mean like typically with like when when we're in

the expert business we're trying to like we're trying to bring something new like trying to bring something new to them right there's a new idea a new something so we had like we had to figure out a hook and an angle and a something new to them, right? There's a new idea. I knew something. So we had to like, we had to figure out a hook and an angle and a story and all these kind of things. If I'm, if I'm looking for a gym in Boise, Idaho, I just got to find a gym.

You know, I'm not looking for, so like the person who's up top is going to win the person who's got whatever, like a simple offer is the key, right? Like come in for 30 days for free or a free, um,

uh, like the free challenges or something like that. We're the cheapest gym. We're the most exclusive gym. Yeah. So let's figure out what's the offer that's going to grab somebody, but it's not super complicated because most people are horrible marketers, right? Yeah. Your competition's easy in those local businesses. It's funny cause back in the day, um, when I was in, when I first joined the Dan Kennedy world 20 years ago, um,

we'd go to events and they would talk about like yellow page strategies right because like you'll be yellow pages the pizza section there's 800 pizza stores and so they would talk about like every pizza store is like name and phone or name and phone number and they're like they're one person to buy a big old ad that's like hey get a free topping when you call it and like that person would get 99 of all the business because it's like the only ad amongst all the other things i have the same thing here it's just like how do you dominate the yellow page that used to be a little bit better than everybody else. Right. Yeah. And it's not hard to rank, uh, locally for almost anything, you know, buying paid ads, uh, click to call like stuff like that. So that's a couple of things. The one thing that I think

if I was in a, in a truly local business, like a local area, um, that I would try to do is I would, um, in fact, I have a, I have a realtor friend who's done this in Boise. He does really well. He, he, um, um, he started like a boise luxury newsletter where you sign up for it it's like every single house in boise i know it's over a million dollars he sends them out each week so you can see like the cool things right so he launches a whole bunch of campaigns and promotions for i don't know six months in boise and he had a building list of like five or six thousand people who want to see the most expensive house super Super qualified list. And it was super. And then every Friday he sent an email out and it would be like, here's the five coolest

expense houses from the MLSP or whatever. And like, and what started happening is number one is everyone started coming to him to list their expense houses and then everyone's buying through him. So he's getting just from a stupid little newsletter. Yeah. And so I was like, if I was, if I went to a gym, I'd do the same thing, but I would say, okay, I need to find five or six partners. I own a gym.

I'm going to find a yoga place, a juice place. Uh, like what are all the places that like the gym person goes to, right? I find like 10 different businesses. I go to all these businesses like, Hey,

I'm gonna start a newsletter, like getting fit in Boise, Idaho. And what I'm gonna do is every single person comes to my doors. I'm going to put them on this newsletter. I want you guys all do the exact same thing. And we'll do is every single week we'll promote different one of the businesses.

No, what happens is you start capitalizing on foot traffic from 10 different businesses yeah all building one email list and then one day you promote the gym next week for the green the juice place next week you promote the yoga studio and everyone's just building this list and pretty soon you have a list of you know 5 000 people in boise idaho you know we're health fitness related then it's like i'm gonna make my own supplement brand and launch these people i'm gonna do my own yoga retreats like whatever it is yeah um those are some ideas i would do if i was running a traditional local business you know okay so that's the traditional local now what

would your advice be today to somebody who's trying to now do an online business um you know i guess you could say e-com or you could say coaching um you know like how would you, how would you start today? Cause I'm going to imagine it's probably a lot different than when I've heard your first speech in 2018 compared to like, oh, well now social media is a huge part of like today we're talking about organic content. You know, you're talking about continuity. You, you understand that, like, would you start with a continuity? Would you start with high ticket? Like, how would you do that? Yeah. I think. So the hardest thing is, you know, initially is building an audience, like to get people you're able to like talk to. So my first step would probably not be like, let's launch Instagram channel, start posting like it would be in there, but it wouldn't be the first focus because it'd be so slow. My first thing, like who's already has eyeballs of the people that I want to to talk to you.

Right. So probably the easiest way to do that is i grab my phone um in fact we're launching a business right now on personality profiling so i literally just did this we grabbed our phone opened up the itunes app and then we found um the category that was closest like it was like the personal development industry right and itunes ranks podcasts from top from one down to top? Yeah. So we have 200 top podcasts and personal development. I looked at that and there was only one in the 200 that had anything to do with any kind of personality stuff. I was like, sweet.

We have an angle, right? I always look at like, in every market, there's an ecosystem. And what most people do is they try to come into the ecosystem and copy somebody else. Like, oh, I'm going to copy someone else. What I try to do is I look at the ecosystem and like, okay, like this business or person

or brand or podcast is all about this topic and this topic and all different pieces in the ecosystem right like again i'm not a real estate guy but i assume in the real estate market there's probably guys who do wholesaling guys who do flipping and guys who like all different people so like there's kind of this this this ecosystem in my world in the in the online marketing world same thing there's people who focus on social and then paid and then funnels and then webinar. There's all these things. So I'm like, like, where do I fit in this ecosystem where I'm unique? I have a unique, different message than everybody else.

Cause you can figure that out. Then, then you have access to everybody else's platform very, very easily. Right. Cause people have podcasts looking for content. And if you contact them, you're like, Hey, you've got a person or you have a, a, um, a relationship podcast. You're getting a million views a month. Um, and my, my guru for our business, she's, she does personality profile.

Like she can come to them like, Hey, can I do, uh, I have a really cool, um, process. We can teach your people on how to do a personality profiling for the relationships. They can figure out how to, you know, connect with their spouse and whatever. Right. Like that's an interesting topic now for relationship podcasts. Um, you can go to business podcasts, but Hey, I can show you how, how business owners can use a personality profiling to hire better. Now that's an interesting hook for, for relationship podcasts um you can go to business podcasts like hey i can show you how how business owners can use uh personality profiling to hire better now that's an interesting hook for for business podcasts and like we can take her hook and we can hit a hundred different

podcasts and if we get on three or four of those podcasts like now we have a business as a guest or as a sponsor as a guest initially ideally guess yeah coming in because guess as long as you bring a unique angle unique hook like that's what most podcasters looking for is just yeah you know it's just like tv like they by the way we use personality profiles for hiring and everything me too dude we can geek out on that for days i love that stuff use predictive index okay i like that one yeah i like disc and any like all of them so easy i just um interviewed patrick lencioni he has a new one coming out too that's really cool uh this is fascinating so i don't know if you know, like I, I'm obsessed with Napoleon Hill, but he wrote a personality profile back in the 1900s.

I got, I got the original copy of it. Whoa. Um, and his actual test results. I'm trying to reverse engineer that into like one that someone could take online. It's kind of cool.

Well, that is cool. But yeah, that'd be the game plan. And now it's like, now you're getting people's podcasts and you can push to whatever your social is like push to your own podcast or push your, you can chop it up into content and ads, social proof for sure. But that's how you start. It's like, you have getting people's podcasts then you can push to whatever your social is like push to your own podcast or push your you can chop it up into content into ads social proof for sure

that's how you start it's like you have to get an audience and building what's hard it's just like i want to go leverage other people's audiences so podcasts are easy social it's just like but you have to come in with your own like angle your own hook like what is the thing you do that's different than everybody else's so it's really doing your homework and understanding the ecosystem do you think that and like this is a hard thing for me to teach because I never did any of those things. Like, obviously, you know, being on a podcast is great. And so like, I've been on lots of podcasts, but I always did from the jump. I was like, I'm going to build my own foundation. I'm going to be the, I'll build my own stage. I'll build my own podcast. I'll create my own traffic. I'm not going to rely on anyone. And, um, literally

to this day, my affiliate income is like non-existent from both me affiliating other, other things. And then people affiliating my stuff because I just don't try. Yeah. And, um, how many podcasts have you been on? I mean, I've been on most of the big business ones, but like I should try to be on a more, I just, it just percentage of your audience and came from that though. I don't think a lot. I think it's all come just organically from, cause like up to this point in the last, uh, four years, I've gotten over a billion views myself organically. So I don't know what a billion views is worth, but like they, they find, yeah, they find

it. So like, you know, sure. If I like, I've been on the bigger pockets podcast, which is the biggest real estate, um, three times. And I don't know how many downloads or views that got, but I do know for a fact when I was on it the first time in 2018, being unknown for sure. Yep. Huge for me at the time I didn't have education or anything to sell, but like huge thing for me. Um, but then, you know, thereafter, like at that point, like most people kind of already knew me in the real estate space, maybe some new people. It's like a launchpad. It's, it's, how do you, because again, the whole goal is I had to acquire

a customer or acquire an audience I can sell to. Right. So it's like starting that from scratch is hard. Um, but I do think what's interesting I found is that like, um, is that people don't switch media. Like people have their favorite thing like people listen to podcasts listen to podcasts it doesn't mean they watch youtube people watch youtube watch youtube doesn't mean that they watch podcasts and so what we found is like um like if the platform i want to create is a podcast that i'm gonna get on everyone else's because like i don't know about you the way i consume podcasts i'm subscribed to four or five i listen all the time that's it and the only way i get introduced to new ones is when somebody on a podcast comes on who's fascinating me then i go find that person

but like i don't see a facebook ad to come on a podcast right yeah yeah it's in the youtube like i don't i'm not instagram like i mean there are people who want go from instagram to youtube but it's shockingly small how many crossover but people are on youtube on youtube so if i want to grow a youtube platform um yes i'm gonna go post my channel my thing but then i'm gonna get as many other people's things possible because Cause that's how people find you. And so that's, that's kind of the bigger thing. And you're right after, after a while you get critical mass where it's less, uh, less important, but for sure when you're starting, Oh, 1000%.

But I do think now with reels and shorts, that is another way people are now finding podcasts. Yeah. Just seeing all the clips. Yeah. I do agree with that. It's also interesting. Cause like, um, I've noticed this man man i've been in the business 20 years now so like anytime a new platform comes

out a new thing they want to reward you for uh or they want you to use they reward you for right it's like right now reels are the thing that that they're pushing and so they're rewards like nowadays i see people come out and they'll post a video and get a million views and it's like oh my gosh that didn't happen before and it won't happen in the future but right now it works right yeah it's like facebook groups and facebook groups first came out. I remember, I remember sitting there, uh, watching TV and there was an ad on a TV for a Facebook group. Like they're pitching Google or Facebook, an ad on TV about Facebook.

And I was like, Oh crap, this is the number one thing. So that's when we launched the ClickFunnels Facebook group and it blew up. Cause like, that's what the, like they're rewarding people that today so much of the buying ads on TV about like focus on that. um you know like every platform and so like i remember when uh i was even calling it was google when google had like their google meetup or google hangouts yeah when that popped it was it was in the spot where like if you made a google hangout video for any keyword you were ranked on page one in google within minutes because they wanted it so i was doing thousands a day we had a list of I was like, boom, click it up.

Hey, what's up? This is Russell Brunson. That, that, that insert keyword, insert keyword, insert keyword,

call to action done. And there's another one, another one. And like, it was crazy. Cause like they're rewarding it. So we were like dominating everything in search engines, just busting out video after video.

And then it died and they D index everyone. It was gone, but there's a window, right? So I think right now there's a window where reels shorts, like that's the thing. And so like people can capitalize and they can, they can cheat the system and get ahead because because of that but just knowing that eventually window

closes it always does and there'll be a new one that opens but it's just it's playing the trends but also understand the trend's not there you can still do it just by like finding the eyeballs getting in front of them and and bringing the people back to your platform well i think like this has been my realization now you you know, going on four years of like really going hard at content. Like the way I did it obviously is like the much harder way, right? Like what you're explaining, I think is for 99% of people. And like, I think back now and I'm like, yeah, I mean for most people just build it, just getting on other people's podcasts, just consistently do that. And you're going to get traffic and everything else. It is really hard to like do it yourself

and build brand and stand out like in such a crowded place. And, you know, and also too, I just realized that social media is, um, dude, it's a skill, like it's a talent and it's not a talent that everyone has for sure. And know you're you yeah and you're shockingly good at like i literally with my wife i was watching videos last night my gosh he's so freaking good like i even like to myself like i'm just getting a long time and i'm not as good as you at this like you're anyway so thank you it's yeah it's definitely there's a skill set there's different levels of it and like even for me like i'm not as good socially as a lot of people i know and i'm trying i'm working but it's like it's way harder for me like that's why you have the

personality test yeah you can know like what you're naturally inclined to be great at i think it's people understand like in again for click phones i have to like i have to be on all the platforms for most people it's like you can build a huge seven figure plus year business just focusing on platform in fact most people try to do two or three or more like that's when they fail because they're trying to juggle it's like just pick one like you can be a seven-figure your podcaster or seven-figure youtuber or it's harder to be all of them you know like again i got 400 people to work for me so i can do i can do stuff people can do like yeah like how do you get some stuff done like well i got 400 times the

labor force yeah it's way different so like if you're getting started don't do 10 just because russell's doing it because you're doing like yeah did you start with 10 or did you start with just one you know well i first started with just tiktok i was like dude i think this tiktok thing is gonna pop off like i don't know why and then eventually it was gaining traction i was like all right i think i'm gonna try some youtube too yeah but that was it i wasn't focused on anything else yeah i didn't have a podcast i didn't have you know i think people make that mistake they see where we're all at this point they try to copy that like i gotta be everywhere it's like no like don't yeah in fact this is i don't know if you know rachel hollis

if you if you follow her she's fascinating she wrote girl wash your face became the best-selling book of the year she blew up everywhere it was like it was insane right and so she was doing speaking tours she was doing stadiums of like 60 000 people i was watching week after week it was crazy right um just like she blew up overnight she was doing all things podcast everything and then you know everything comes and goes and dust settled and things kind of, you know, changed around. And, and I talked to her and it was fascinating because she's like, I was doing so much stuff. I was so stressed out doing everything.

And then she's like, I realized of all things I was doing, the thing that was like the least effort, maybe the most of my money was my podcast. She's like, so I kill everything else, fired her staff. Now she does the podcast. She's making way more money, way less effort and just one channel. And she's someone who had access to every channel, like to man and she went back down to just one so i think for me i was just like man i keep trying to like do all things like just if we focus better one thing that i can become really really good at it's better well i was gonna ask you that

because like you've been focused on click funnels for 10 years now clearly having such a big audience and community, you get opportunities left and right partnerships, businesses, ideas. And you're like, dude, that idea sounds good. That sounds good. Like we could integrate that into ClickFunnels or I could definitely push that to my email list or whatever. Right. Yeah. How have you stayed focused? I can't, it's so hard simplifying. I've like gotten rid of so many of my businesses to simplify yeah I go through that and flow that too in fact we just shut down like six side businesses that were just costing more than they were making because of effort yeah but I'm an opportunist I love I get so excited especially if someone comes to me like hey here's the idea like that's

a great idea like you build the funnel I'll give you 50% I'm like oh you know like I get excited and then but never it never works out good so for me what I've had to do, that's why I have my inner circle. 100% is because that's not true. I'd say 80% of the reason why I have it is because it gives me the ability to like flex my creative muscle on someone else's business. But then when it's over, they go home and I don't have the, you know, it's like, it's like, I can have the one night stand without having the baby afterwards. You know what I mean? It's like, for me, that's what I've had to do because it's hard. Like I get that itch of just wanting to, yeah.

And I see some friends who I've got, you know, like Hermosi is a great example. You know, he came into our program way back in the day and now he's out there and he's taking equity on people's businesses and the parties like, ah, it'd be amazing. But then 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

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I get excited and I plug into things. But, like, also, too, your opportunity cost has, you know, gotten so high where it's like yeah this could maybe make 10 million dollars but like but then what's the cost yeah if i so what i could do the webinar over here and you know i mean like yes it's it's tough and so for me it's like this is this is the what i've looked at to like make it the thing as i look at like who's my dream customer like that's who i'm actually serving so everything from software to books to everything's like just about this one avatar the person i've called to serve and so that's i look'm actually serving. So everything I'm doing from software to books to everything's like just about this one avatar, the person I've called to serve.

And so that's, I look at through lens and just like, well, this actually helped them resist my ego. Cause that most time it's just my ego. Like, Oh, I can do this versus like,

that's me for sure. Yeah. Versus like, um, is actually gonna help them more than me doing what I'm doing now, more than me doubling what I'm doing now. So that's kind of how I try to, cause like,

for example, I did launch one business this year, which is a passion project of mine, but it's it's like it's it's a personal development brand and stuff like that but what business is this uh secrets of success okay and then the personality one so i got to you sorry um but both of those are like are things that i believe because like most of the people who come into my world they don't fail because the tactics aren't there right i've written three books like read them all tactics you need like they're there you've already three i feel like you have so many well there's three that are real

books i've written like a dozen but like there's three that were the others are lead magnets yeah however yeah i look at three that have been published i'm working on my fourth but like but like the reason why they're failing it literally 100 is because of the psychology like they they just they're stuck in their head they can figure out they have too much fear they have like like all the things it's like that business is to help serve those people who are like let me uns get you unstuck so you can actually just do the thing because the thing's not that hard building a funnel is not hard like launching an ad not that hard like you know it's all said done it's just like you follow like these 10 steps and you have the thing done yeah so why

is not everyone doing it doesn't make any sense it's all because of like this stuff i know we talked about you don't have that problem i don't have that problem like because i was able to just to do it but the majority of people and i i actually think it's fascinating because of like this stuff. I know we talked about it. You don't have that problem. I don't have that problem. Like, cause I was able to just to do it, but the majority of people, and I actually think it's fascinating because I think athletes are better at this than most people because to be successful in wrestling, I'm sure same thing with baseball, right? Like there's so many things you have to go through to figure out that most people never do that. They come to business and they've never failed.

And so like, oh, if I failed, then I'm a failure. And they're so scared to try versus like, you know, how many games a year did you play a lot how many times i step on the mat and i lost like tons yeah and you get used to it but most people have never experienced that like they were in their high school band or musical or drama there's not a winner and a loser like they're just and so they come into entrepreneurship it's like what if i fail and they're not used to that so they're like yeah you are yeah you're going to that's part of it and so i think for that the personal development business is to help those because like, it's such a sticking point there.

And so that's a big one there. And the personalities, because it's the hiring, like people are hiring. It's like so wrong. I'm the same way. We hire based on personality profiles, 100%. And so like that whole business is built around that. So it's like, how do we like, what's actually gonna help these people the most? And so that I'm also fascinated in.

So that's kind of how we, yeah. But you're, you're ultra disciplined with, especially to like, are you acquiring businesses or mainly all yours are always startups? We acquired two businesses. I don't think I'll acquire business again. That was not,

I don't know. Everyone's like talking about acquisitions, how great they are. So we acquired Dan Kennedy's business, but actually it was, that was great. Yeah. You've talked about that.

That was, that was fit in like everything. We acquired another company. We, we spent way too much money on it. And they had 100 plus employees. And again, as someone who's never acquired a business, so anyone who's listening to this, people who acquire businesses, they have a mergers, acquisitions, division, their team who like does the thing. I bought the business. I bought the business and they hand me the keys to it.

I also have 100 new employees. And I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. I'm not an operations person. And the operations person was the owner and he was gone. And I was just like, we're screwed. It costs way. Anyway.

So, um, I've not had a success with that. So, um, I don't think we'll be doing at least not until we hire, not till we get someone who's good at that kind of thing. So we haven't,

um, and I don't think I'll do it again. Um, uh, unless there's something really strategic that makes sense in, in the business. But even that point, I don't think I'd acquire,

I think I would just partner and do it in a way where it's like i'm not taking over this business like i'm we're merging 100 yeah because as soon as you lose the entrepreneur yeah that was my yeah that was if you want to have a podcast about business mistakes i can tell you about all the mistakes that was the biggest one i think is acquisition we acquired a company way too much lost the lost the founder and like, yeah, it was, it was brutal. We, we almost didn't survive that one. So, wow. Yeah. What, um, speaking of founders, you know, you mentioned you have two co-founders and you guys all obviously been together this whole time. Actually, uh, there's been some breakups. So that was a bit, so I was going to talk about, cause like I've had partnership breakups and,

you know, to like maintain a partnership for so long is like dude it's hard enough to stay married yeah you know like to stay in a business partnership yeah it's hard it's very hard so my core partner todd dickerson we're still um he was the one who built clickfunnels from the ground up like he's he's still a partner but it was me who initially started it and we brought in a third co-founder named dylan jones who's genius Like one of the most talented people I ever met. He was the one who built an original editor. He did all the UI. And then a couple of years into it, it just, it just wasn't working.

And luckily this is my biggest advice in this process is like, I'm grateful that we had a smart lawyer who, when we started the company, like had us figure out like, what does it look like if someone exits? Cause otherwise that's when, you know so for us it sucked it was painful for us it was painful for him but we have like this is how the game is played so we're able to do that um and we brought in a couple other partners throughout time and then another one we just recently bought two of our partners um we've bought out both cost so much money that you're just like, Oh, but, um, anyway,

so, uh, why did you bring them in? Like after the fact, like, was it for capital? Was it for, uh, knowledge skill sets?

Yeah. Things we needed. Uh, when Dylan came in, it's like he built the editor and the UI. He was so, again, we need,

he was so essential for working. Uh, Ryan was the next part we brought in just because we had never scaled the company. You know, I mean, click phones, look at it right now. I think we're like the top, like 30th most visited website on the planet. Whoa. Look at bandwidth. So it's like to, to, to, cause it's like, is that, cause that is accounting all the

users websites. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So to be, to do the, the back end architecture and databases, it's insane. So we didn't know, we didn't know, like we, I remember when Todd first built, he's like, this will last way about 10,000 members. And then we'll need to change things. And I didn't know what we i remember when todd first built he's like this will last we have about 10 000 members and then we'll need to change things and i know that man i was like selling my crazy and sure enough year one we started getting 10 000 members and it's

like going out it's glitching it's like and like and so we had a partner we brought in and he helped figure that out like build out the infrastructure and the servers and the and like we were just why did you need a partner why couldn't you just you know hire some he did he came in as an employee for a year and then he was just like this is like you know he and he's up christmas morning fixing you know yeah i need more and he was after a year he's just like he's like i was gonna give us a year he's like at this point he's like i'm either gonna leave or because i can make more money doing less or i want to be a partner and um and we needed him and he was a great guy we loved him he was you know so we brought him in and um he was there for five years or so but then it got a point when um it just didn't make sense for other reasons

and so um yeah we had a way to exit that and so yeah that's been kind of the thing but the biggest thing is like having that up front even with him same thing it's like you know lawyers get involved they're all trying to yell each other back and forth and it's also then luckily we have like here's the here's how it plays out And we played out according to the rules and, and now it's done. And, but how is it like, um,

cause 10 years ago, you know, you weren't, um, let's just say you have your fame that you have today. Right. Because like some partners, you know,

and unfortunately it's not a lot of companies start. Yeah, let's do it 50, 50. And then, you know, one person starts really putting in the work or whatever. And the other person's just kind of hanging around.

Like, have you had to deal with that too i've been lucky todd todd is a workhorse like he's um i've never felt where like i was it was unequal yeah so and i kill myself and he kills himself so i think i've been lucky there um there's definitely other situations where in fact that the reason why the other ones we had eggs is we started feeling that it was just like and us seeing trajectory here's where we're going it's like it's not fair because they've kind of they stopped and we're going here and it's like they were needed for this stage and they're gonna make money all the upside that they're not involved in not doing and like so it's like we decided because part of it's like you just leave me there forever and who cares but it's like you know that that mental gymnastics that was hard hard to deal with. I have, I have a friend though,

who, um, they have a business that's half a billion dollars a year right now. And when they first created the company, they had three partners. One of them came up with the name, they incorporated, they started, they launched it. And then he left in like three months, never showed up since. And, um, very, they all hate each other. Won't talk to each other. They have to send him a third there. I mean, hundreds a year and they just did an esop and so they were cashing like making like you know huge chunk of cash and um the guy got this huge it was there for three months that's crazy so like you have to be really careful like there's yeah you know i think especially the internet world like everyone's like oh those people are business partners they started business they just hope for

the best and like one of the worst things that happens, you're successful. And they're like, Oh crap. One of the worst things. I gave the guy a hundred million dollars. He came up with a domain name. Like that's the worst, you know, like, wow. Anyway, it's, it's crazy. That is crazy.

And so now it's like, we've brought in people now, um, not so much like a partner partner, but like we bring them in, we give them royalties and rev share, but it's based on like where they came in at. Right. So like we've built this foundation. Yeah. You're not getting any,

like this is ours. Yeah. So like, here's where you're at. And if you leave it, it stops. It's like, that's been so much smarter.

We've been able to attract really good talent. Um, but this, we didn't know. We were just like, yeah, we'll just chop up the company. And this,

you know, so much better. They're, they're smarter people out there that I wish we would have asked ahead of time on how to structure things like that. But, um, be careful giving away equity.

Cause how do you deal with, cause you have 400 employees now, like how do you deal with hiring and turnover and all those things? It's a lot of people. Luckily I don't deal with any of it, which is nice. Um, so there are three,

like three core personalities you need to like launch a company. And most of us, including us, didn't have the third one. So you'd have to have somebody who's obsessed with the product, which was Todd, like three core personalities you need to like launch a company. And most of us, including us didn't have the third one. So you'd have to have somebody who's obsessed with the product, which was Todd, like assess the software. So I'm obsessed with marketing,

which was me. And that's all you need to launch a company, which is why, you know, but as it starts growing, the third person you need is someone who's obsessed with operations. We did not have that person for a long, long time.

And we were able to make up with this really good marketing, really good product, really good sales. Yeah. People forgive you. Yeah. Yeah. But it, it got spot where it was like unsustainable for us. And we were able to make up with this really good marketing, a really good product, really good sales. Yeah. People forgive you. Yeah. Yeah. But it got to the spot where it was unsustainable for us.

And we had people try to learn operations, try to hire people. And it was honestly until about three years ago, we finally got someone who came in who was a marketer first. His name's Kevin Richards. He's a marketer, which is great. But he also had done operations. Because we bring these high-level, like, you know,

$300,000, $500,000 a year operations, COO, people that come in. which is great but he also done operations because we bring these high level like you know 300 500 000 a year operations ceo people come in they don't see our business at all and just like they don't know the internet business or people who know the internet business they can't do operations so he was this weird hybrid that we got and it was the first time it's like oh my gosh now we have structure and there's meetings and there's things happening and there's firing and onboarding operating hr all that kind of stuff so if i was ever started a company over from scratch now i would i would have this even though you know the operations day one i'd have three people before we started because that's the one that i think most of the creatives forget about until it's too late there's so much pain associated

but it's nice now because like i just say i need this role and then i tell somebody and next thing they know they they interview 100 people they bring back three applications like here's our three best i look at those and i'm like i'll talk to that person and then yeah it's just fast and easy you know we're firing like i'm just like oh this is bloated division we should change things and then they they take care i don't even know what happens it's just you know it's like that's what you have to get to but you have a really good operations person or else it you're on a shaky foundation that is really hard to yeah hard to manage the growth what do you think um you got me thinking

about this because you mentioned um hormosi a minute ago like who are like the most successful like stories to come out of click funnels because um you know i've had alex on the show and he's spoken at some of my event before and uh you know great dude obviously super talented and i i've remembered people i met my whole life like he's yeah shock super talented and i i've remembered people i met my whole life like he's yeah shockingly talented and he was talking about how like i think it was you that inspired him to do gym launch because he was just doing brick and mortar and then you're like dude no like that you're in a level one vehicle or whatever and yeah you know whatever right so who are some guys that have come through that have been really like impressive?

Yeah. Um, that just needed a tweak or something. Yeah. Alex, that are big, uh, Brandon, Kate and Poland launched lady boss. They were, you know, they built that company up to $30 million a year. Then I actually bought it cause that was dumb, but, but yeah, so, uh, they built that company up. Um, a lot lot of people most of them are probably familiar but they're like the gurus of different industries so for example uh annie grace she is um alcoholic nominate a is like number one competitor oh wow she's figured out a i think a is like 10 success rate she's like a 70 80 success rate her stuff i guess i didn't even know like a was like a business yeah oh yeah it's all business yeah i didn't know that um yeah and like a business. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's all business. Yeah. I didn't know that. Um, yeah.

And they, and so she's, she's built this huge company. She's, she's multiple time, New York time, best selling author now, but she came into our world,

had written this book and that was it. Now built funnels and build follow. She's been on every TV platform you can dream of multiple times, you know? And so she's changing the whole alcohol addiction market. And she's the number one outside of like the known establishment.'s the number one person and rapidly gaining on them um uh uh ryan lee and brad gibb they're in the financial market right they're taking like financial planners and they're like training financial planners how to actually like be marketers so it's like they're taking a

lot of our stuff into that world in that market um and they've got two sides of the market they call and one is their their muggles one's the wizard so like they're they go to like like normal people like helping them investing it's like they're growing that scale like crazy and they've got the wizard side which is all the entrepreneurs and they're basically doing all of the investing on the back end for all the people in our world who are really successful entrepreneurs who are really good at making money not so good at keeping money They're like taking the money and hiding it and making it turn into more money, which is cool. We've got Chris Wark who – crispycancer.com.

Like he's one of the most prolific cancer researchers on the planet. And so, you know, there's thousands of stories like that. And the most – I don't know. The thing that's been most fulfilling for me is like when. Like all in the most, I don't know. Things that are most fulfilling for me is like, when I first got in the business world, it was, I'd go to events and everyone in the events were all like people, business, people teaching business people how to do business.

Like that's what it was. And so it was just, I always felt weird. And click phones is fun. Cause the community is like, it's people from every industry can dream of. Like in alcohol, like marriage is Stacy and Paul Martino there.

Uh, they have like a, they help relationships. I think the national average of like divorce is like, it's like 40% of marriages make it 60% divorce rate. And they have like a less than 1% success or 1% divorce rate with their, with their students. Like, and people come to them when they're like on the brink of divorce. Like, it's like that whole segment of the market, you know, so it's like all these, it's just been so fun because it it's like every every guru in almost every industry you can think of ends up in our world somehow either from a book or from software and so it's it's just been like for me it's been the most fascinating journey because i get to like hang out at these meetings with the top thought leaders in every

market you can you can dream of you know i mean what do you think separates those people from the rest um obsessive compulsiveness about their thing. Like they're just like the greatest people in every market and anything. It's like they're not typically the best business people, but they are obsessed with their art. Like whatever their thing is. Like they just – it's like me. Like I – I don't know. I think about funnels.

I draw funnels. I dream about funnels. I write about funnels. I'm just obsessed. Every website I go to, like I spend hours looking at people's things buying everything look at the like the process i'm obsessed with it right like um same thing all these people it's like they're just obsessed with their art um and it's not like it's like an eternal obsession like it doesn't stop you know like the people don't succeed are people who are

obsessed for a window and then they they learn what they learn and they kind of like stagnate yeah um it's the ones that are always on the bleeding edge are always trying to stay in front of it because the internet whatever like it wants the new right and so the people are always on the cutting edge they have the new it's like it's it's that momentum like that that blows people up you know um it feels like you have to create new so much more now than ever. And I mean, that goes back to the Facebook ad thing and everything else. Like, I just feel like everyone is so hungry for new. Yeah. Like I've already heard you say that before, dude. And I think it's interesting. I think people are getting, I mean, I don't know if it's actual smarts, but because people now, you know, thinking about back in the day, someone

might read one book a year and like, that's the the that's the input they get inside their brain now i like my kids like they'll watch 500 tiktoks in an hour and they're getting so much right or wrong yeah so like people like they see more they understand more and so um because that's like you have to be you have to have something that's unique otherwise they're they're they're flopping or whatever you know they're moving through it so it's like those things and there's always like a huge new idea as much as like a way to wrap it in entertainment you know what i mean where where like does that make sense like so i think about the real estate market for example again there's not i don't know maybe there's there's like i only know like no there's not a dozen ways to do real estate that's it right and there's a lot of people teaching so like you

have to wrap it in your own entertainment your own edge like you're like that's the that's the key um like even my world like you know i wrote a book on funnels 10 years ago like the book's still true but i gotta wrap it in different different rappers all the time you know and i have to be entertaining around and stuff like that it's not enough to just be just be good just to be you have to entertain and you can't just say read the book yeah they they gotta like be tricked well i don't say tricked but they'll be connected to care like they're gonna read the book unless they're connected to you as the entertain and you can't just say read the book yeah they they gotta like be tricked well i don't say tricked but they'll be connected to care like they're not gonna read the book unless they're connected to you as the author like it used to be weird we'd find a book we'd read and like who's this author now it's like you become such an author okay i i trust the person i'm

gonna go read the book now it's like fascinating in fact right now i'm um i'm working on my next book and so i was thinking about this i was like if i just like write the book and then launch it like it'll do all right to my existing audience. But I was like, what if I spend the next like year writing the book? And I, and I, I bring people in the process the whole time.

So I started this, like this little series on Instagram and Tik TOK, where it's like, uh, this is Russell Brunson's day. Number one, writing a bestselling book and hopefully selling a million copies. And I talk for a minute when I'm doing that day and just every single day I'm

doing it. And it's fascinating because, um, those videos are like, are scaling faster anything else you've ever done and i had um actually someone messaged me on one of my friends is an author he's like can you imagine a year from now this book's done he's like these reels will be getting i don't know five ten million views each one and then you release the book on the back

side of it like they're just you're building such anticipation yeah it's cool so i think a lot of that too is it getting like we're entertaining people we're bringing on a journey with us it's not like let me hide like here's my thing it's like the more they're engaged in the process you know i think um i remember when uh when marvel was doing it and like you're waiting for an end game to happen infinity wars that all happened like like i was like watching all the actors i see what they're gonna leak something like yeah i i should know better but i was like in i really sucked in the whole thing as well you know what i mean it's like that's what people want they want to be voyeuristically obviously that we're looking into your life and like and living with you and then

they're bought into like the rest of it yeah so it's like social media gives you a really cool ability to do that that we've never had before. Interesting. Where do you think all this goes, man? Because for example, right? Like we lived in the information age where it's like, I don't know if we're still in it or what, but like it used to be selling education was, um, easier because information wasn't widely available. So like really you just had to have the information. Yeah. Now the information's, you can go learn anything right now. So like, how do you differentiate yourself? And you know, besides repackaging, because when I think about repackaging, to me, that's just marketing. You know, it's like, all right, I got to like, get them aware of this, this offer and this,

this opportunity and this product, whatever. But at the end of the day, still like, to me, it can't just be more information. Yeah. It's interesting when I bought dan kennedy's company like it came with like they've run a newsletter for 20 years but they also like a cd of the month club and people pay 97 bucks a month for for a c an extra an additional 97 a month for cd each month and so i looked at all i was like this is crazy this is just a podcast episode people have it even has a cd for free now yeah back then they're like that was a hundred dollars

a month to your c. We interview an expert. Like it was such a big deal. It's like, yeah, there's no value in that at all right now. Right. And it's true. Cause like even yeah, like on YouTube you can get, yeah. And podcasts like the information becomes such a commodity now. So like, I think that the two things that we have that, that are decommodity that we can decommoditize information is number one, the relationship,

the audience, like that's something we have that nobody else can have. Right. And then number two is like the information is free. The implementation is what people go to. Right. Yeah. They're coming to your event this weekend because they've got the

information, but they want your help to implement it. They come to click phones. They want to implement, they come to my inner circle because they want implementation. And I think that's really key. I think it's, it's,

it's cutting through the noise of like, here's all this information to like, here's what you actually need. Like, here's the, here's the steps to do it. You know what I mean? I guess we're at right now,

but with my, my fear, then the next phase was like AI and stuff. I mean, right now funnels, like we're doing some really interesting things with AI where you can literally type in like, I want a product launch funnel like jeff walker i want

a webinar funnel like russell brunson and it'll go it'll write the copy creates it does all the invitation for you for free it doesn't cost anything you're right yeah it's getting it's not perfect yet it's getting better and better and it's like so that's the question is like when implementation now is just a commodity because it's like ai will do all that for you like that's that's what's interesting like what's on the other side of that i'm not 100 sure what do you think i don't know i think it's it's going to be weird for the info product people and businesses i mean do you think it's community at that point i think for sure the community but i also think it's like um how do you how do you structure your stuff where the people paying for it?

Aren't the people learning it, right? Like I was thinking about this with, with the podcast, like right now we're shifting the podcast where I'm selling ads on it. And you know, it's fascinating. Like BMW, Airbnb, Geico, these people are now buying ads on my podcast, which is ridiculous. It cracks me up. That's actually a thing. But it's like those people, those are like utilities and like utilities will always be here.

It's like almost like how do you create something where you can just do your whole experience for free and the utilities are paying for it? You know what I mean? It's like even YouTube. Like you get a good YouTube video that's going. You're making $34,000 off a thing. It's the utilities that are there that make the money. So I don't know. I feel like – I don't know.

I'm not 100% sure. Yeah. But I do think there's that. Like if you're building a community and you're building the things and you're giving people access to that community that do have the ability or the willingness to spend money, I think that's what we have to start preparing for too. Yeah, I think it comes down to community and experiences you know like and i know you guys have done this before too but it's like man we have retreats you know we have obviously these events and everything else and it's like dude humans just crave connection yeah and an online community is great but like nothing beats you know in person experiences yeah and in my opinion i think that's

where it all goes you know to be and that's why funnel hacking live and wealth con or you know so people keep coming back yeah because where else can you be around like-minded people yeah like you know are these people coming back like truly like learning that much more like if they're in the coaching program probably not like they're already getting the information you know so why are they still coming yeah connection i remember the very first kennedy seminar i went to he uh he asked he's like who here's been coming to my events you know for more than a year if so stand-ups ever stands up then more than five years more than 10 years more than 30 years it was like i remember we got like 40 years it was like three people still standing back it was funny because he said something he's like

he's like you guys realize i haven't had an original thought for 40 years he's like but why do you keep coming he's like you keep coming because the community and because the relationship with the attractive characters like that's the reason why people keep showing up i remember that was like really impactful because i was like eventually i'm gonna run out of ideas right like what else am i gonna say why do we keep watching the rock movies? It's the same crap. You know, like. You want to see the rock.

Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. I feel like I was, I think about the podcast I listen to, like the people I connect with that I listen to is because like I get some kind of weird comfort from like hearing them. Even if I might implement, it's just like I have some connection where it's just like, yeah, they understand me or something. And like, I want to, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it gets that connection to the attractive character or the community. Dude, you know, you actually just reminded me of something that you

said back in 2018. So at funnel hacking live, I remember you were like, you know, this is the new TV and you were like, you know, yeah, this, um, you know, Instagram's this, this, and this, he's like, but you're competing not with just social media. You're competing with Netflix. You're competing with, you know, every other thing that captures attention. And it's like, that's the currency. I mean, that's literally what ads are. They're just, you're buying attention and it's really the only non-renewable resource. It's like, yeah, we only have so much discretionary time we all have 24 hours and you know we're busy for however many hours doing work and stuff and we sleep and it's like

how much time do you really have like you choosing to listen to this podcast right now you you chose this over everything else you could have been doing yeah like that's the value interesting yeah so the better you get the more likely our people are going to come to you which again it comes back to like the obsessed people people are obsessed with their art they well i was i was saying it to our students um on tuesday and i was like guys think about this like well um uh netflix they got the lowest churn in the world like for a company that size and everything i was reading about it they're like less than five percent and um well they have like over 200 million users or something so i mean they're bringing in a couple billion a month like just chilling and i was just like but what if

netflix stopped putting out new content what would happen they would just slowly just you know everyone would jump off and some other competitor. What's by the fact there's a billion movies on there. You know, I still go to Netflix. I spend like an hour trying to find something like, I don't, let's just go to bed.

Yeah. But then you see like, Oh, new release. Oh, the new top. Like I just watch off the top 10, you know,

it's like, Oh, okay. They got the new top. Cool. Like, I'll just go to that. And like,

if they stop producing new content, originals, buying movies, whatever, they would just drop off a cliff, even though they built up such a great brand, all this work to that. And I was like, man, it just never stops. Like, it's funny. Cause you asked me that off camera. You asked me like, you know, why don't you just stop doing quickly?

You have enough country coming in, but it's like, I think the same thing. It's like, you can lose relevancy so fast. Yeah. And if you don't says that, yeah, it's, it's so, it's like i think the same thing it's like you can lose relevancy so fast yeah and if you don't says that yeah it's it's so it's crazy because i remember like it used to be longer like you like like you said you could let's say you don't email your list for 30 days and email again like you'd be fine right but now it's like if you don't send an email out to your list multiple times a week they forgot who you are by friday you know like and same thing on social media like if you're not in someone's feed, they. Yeah.

You're just competing against all this noise. And it's like, goes back to the infomercial. Like nobody wanted that time. There was no competition. And they're like, oh, this time is actually kind of valuable. Like more competition arises. And then, oh, tick tock and reels are kind of valuable. Oh, okay.

Oh, podcast. Let's let's create podcast. So my mind is always thinking, even as a marketer and a content creator and this guy who just like thinks about the future a lot, like, where does all this go? Like, we know that attention is the resource people are fighting for and that's where they're throwing their dollars, you know, same thing. Like there's lots of events, man, for somebody to choose to come out here to Vegas next week. And, you know, not only put up money, but just step away from their life, their kids, their business. I think about that and I'm like, that is a huge commitment.

Yeah. And I better perform that event and make it really good or else guess what? If they have a bad experience, it don't matter that the five before we're good. Yeah're like you're as good as your last show dude it's crazy but that's what it is yeah i don't see this on the upside that too how cool the world we live in now like i remember um and youtube you see this a lot but the first time i had the realization i was like funnel hacking live 5 000 people in the room we taught for five days right and i started like looking at like 5 000 people if i was to try to download this week to one person and I did it to another person, another person, you line them up. I was like – I can't remember the math. It was like 400 years it would take me to do that that we got done in a weekend.

You see a YouTube video that pops. It gets a million views and it shows you how many hours of watch time. Yeah, and it's just like it's crazy how much influence we are able to have though with our thing. And I think at least for me that's what's inspiring to like why i love doing it because you're just like man if i if i do something i create it goes out there it's the equivalent of me going knocking on a thousand doors to give the same amount of value to the world as that one thing can do and if i do every day or consistently keep doing it like um the compounding interest that over time is insane

yeah it's really it's i've talked about that before last year we had, um, it was like 1.2 million watch hours on YouTube. And so, you know, you bundle that up and it's like 150 years, like in one year, you know, people consumed 150 years of content. Like that's crazy. I'm going to waste their time. What a waste. When I say that was important. No, but like, it just, it shows, but also too, the great thing about the world today in tech is that the, like the higher, the quality gets rewarded. You know, it didn't used to be that way. Five years ago, when you were talking about Instagram, it was pay to play, you know, like there was no, like videos that popped off and ways to be found and then reels and all that changed it. Like, yo, if you were good, the algorithm is going to show you YouTube.

If you're good, you're going to get seen. It's just a matter of time. Yeah. That like, and I talk about that all the time with organic versus paid. I'm like, what other way could you make con like go get free marketing? They'll push it more if it's good and it costs you to actually pay you to do it. Yeah. And you get all of it. It's and they'll put it out if it's good and it costs you, they'll actually pay you to do it. Yeah. And you get all of it.

It's. And they'll put it out there forever. Yeah. You know, it doesn't stop when you stop paying. It grows over time. Yeah. That's what's, yeah, that's what's cool. Where the ad, as soon as you turn the ad off, it stops.

You're dead. It's like. It never existed. It stops. Yeah. I think about it too. It's like, like, when do we hit a point of critical mass? You know, like, because that's the goal, right?

You put enough stuff out there that like the traffic keeps coming you don't have to keep you know i thought about click phones like right now look at our ad spend i was like if we just turn off our ad spend for like six months and just roll it for like for how long like you know um or anything else we're doing you know like like when do you get the point of critical mass you put you put enough stuff out there where it's just like it keeps rolling whether you're out there or not you know like i think that's you know because i don't know about you but there's no way any of us can do this forever i've been doing this game for 20 years now which is awesome i got probably another 10 where i might have there's not many who've made it that long

yeah there's the the the list is short tony robbins grant cardone and i don't know who else yeah it's been it's been a few but i was like you know if i spend the next 10 years really just keep doubling down on this, it's fascinating to think. Because, again, one of my side passions is I love old books. I'm obsessed when I buy books from people who have died to collect their works, first editions, manuscripts. And the amount of people who are still relevant, if I named off the names, you've probably heard of like three of the names, right, of these thousand plus people I'm collecting. But it's because they never got to critical mass. They they wrote a book and they were buying newspaper ads and radio ads and they just kind of fizzled right the few that made it like mainstream something like

napoleon hill who sold 100 million copies of think and grow rich like like that was so rare but it's like with us like we put in a decade of stuff it makes me fast it makes me wonder like like when we hit critical mass where it just keeps rolling and keeps keeps happening or for a while i think you brought up a good point about books like books are the one piece of content that stand the test of time 100 i okay so i wrote my very first book and it was so painful i was like i will never write a book again ever yeah um i swear i never would and before my book i probably launched conservatively 50 different products um since then another 50 or so products and what's crazy is to this and to this day the only people ever remember him out like click funnels or one of the books that's it they don't remember anything else it's so

fascinating um and like it click funnels got a point like we had so much recurring like daily money coming in like we do a big product launch and you see the stripe things it's like here's how much man big and then we go down i'm like we killed ourselves for like that little blip like it was not even worth the effort but then like and it was gone like no one remembered it a month later it's gone but like the books have like this weird longevity so that's what making obsessive books now i've written three i got my fourth one um in the queue right now and um because that was just like i think it's the only thing that outlives the life of the author i think about this like even our live events we do a live event right amazing experience people come in we change

their lives and then it ends and it's over it's over and it's like ah like the only thing that outlives the life of the author at least in historically is the written word yeah and i'm curious to see what happens with podcasts you know and with video like these things now that are more you know have the ability to be around long term well i mean like look like i think to what we're saying like books historically they stand the test of time you know the bible's been around long thousand years like and it's still here and yeah people can make all the content and give all the sermons and everything but the bible's still here and that's still you know the source now with you know content and podcasts and everything it's like you know it's like i think too movies and everything yeah you'll watch classic movies and those will come back and so like really highly

produced things but like you know i don't know that anybody's watching YouTube videos from 10 years ago that, you know, like they just want the new, right. So I just think that anything that takes a lot of effort can last, which this podcast did not take a ton of effort to create, you know, a documentary can last a book can last, you know, things that, and I think like even like hormosi realized that too with his books and like building out this series of i think it's genius because you know i think he was saying the other day he um i don't know he makes a few hundred thousand a month just from the books and it's like that's only going to keep increasing because like you don't even have to

promote it like just because it's a top seller it will just constantly you've seen that with napoleon hill and atomic habits and these they're consistently in the top they just sell themselves Like just because it's a top seller, it will just constantly – you've seen that with Napoleon Hill and Atomic Habits. They're consistently in the top. They just sell themselves. Yeah. It's been – my goal with this new book is to sell a million copies. I think it's like 0.04% of books sell a million copies. So because I've been studying like all the books that have sold a million copies in our life and before trying to understand like what was different and the intricacies like how they're written how they're marketed and it's like what's such a fascinating thing um the books that

that sell over a million copies almost all of them have one point they're trying to make just one the rest of the book is around trying to like trying to um prove that one point from a lot of different angles they're not like there's this and there's this and there's this like my my first three books all of them have sold well um i think combined the three sold a million copies so like whatever 250 300 thousand of each but like my those books are all they'll never be like the huge best sells because they're all they're principally but it's like you have to step one step two you know like you can't just grab my book and open up a chapter and like get something like you have to like read it in order to get it right like you look at the books like you could grab something and read it it's like

hitting the same angle from a different direction it's kind of fascinating they're all like building upon each other but they're all like like the core books are based around a topic um you just have some it's like super hard to believe but it's different than what the belief is like think and grow it's like like in your mind like cool but like especially when it first came out like can you like can you really think and grow rich it's so simple but it's enough to like you're the curiosity of it and then it's you know things like that um a bunch of other things but it's it's it's breaking things down to like very very simple things like atomic habits uh it's he's he's not like the most simple writer like he's hard to read but the concepts are

simple it's not like, it's not hard. It's like, how do you just sell something down to like great core thing that like, and I also think it's the audience. Anybody can read it and get value. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because it's got to be mass,

massive pill enough that. So anyway, that's what, it's been fun for me to try and work on this one. Cause this is the first one that's, it's not a business, it's personal development, but it's trying to be like,

it could be like athletes could read it or business owners or whoever but it would it would be it would it could it could grow outside of my my niche you know what i mean so i don't know i have no idea if it's gonna work or not but like i'm trying to when is it gonna be done you think well i signed the contract with hay house three years ago and so um but i'm not even close so they keep asking me i'm like i promise when it's done it's gonna be amazing um yeah i would say i don't know i'm surprised you signed with the publisher and you know because you're not gonna be able to do all the cool things you want to do like um hey house actually is really good for authors like us in our contracts they've brandon richard actually worked them initially and like he's

like i need to do free shipping offers i need to be authorized yeah and so he kind of blazed the way for all of us and so hey house is the only traditional publisher like big publisher who lets us do what we need to do so got it i love them they give you they give you uh out of credibility and things like that that are great so that's why i say like a real book they're all published through my mind those are real books for city magnets um and so yeah and they've been great partners with us and they have distribution they get you different languages uh, every two or three months I get one of my books and some random, like the contractors, they get someone to do it in, in Portuguese or Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever.

And then like, they had to send me a box of the books. I used to get a random boxes, my books and like different languages. And it's like the coolest thing in the world. Like, Oh, this is so cool. I had no idea. Like, yeah, I'm not going to do it with my other books. You know what I mean? Yeah.

No, you guys, whatever you want to do with them, who cares? Just more distribution. Yeah. It's really fun. Yeah. No, you guys, whatever you want to do with them, who cares? Just more distribution. Yeah. It's really fun. Yeah. Well, bro, this has been great, man. I mean, for your first interview in three years, man, we talked on a lot and a lot of topics.

Hopefully you got something. Yeah, dude. There's a lot of clips for sure. There's a lot of things, but no, dude, I appreciate you coming out here, man. And I'm just excited to, you know, obviously see the book when it's done. I'm excited to, you know, just see the book when it's done. I'm excited to, uh, you know, just see everything that, you know, is unfolding and I'm excited to, uh, you know, continue to just build my own business based off a lot of, you know, the things that you've

already pioneered. And so I'm thankful for that. And, uh, just want to encourage you don't worry about the haters, you know, just freaking keep doing what you're doing, man. It's, it's impacting and helping a lot of lives, dude. I appreciate it, man. It's been really fun watching you over the last couple of years. Like, um, anyway, I'm always watching, I'm always watching everybody and some people, um, some people pop for a little bit and then they, they don't become relevant. It's just been fun to watch you as you've grown consistently over time. Um, anyway, I'm proud of you and just fun watching all the stuff you're doing and how people you're serving. So yeah. Awesome. Appreciate it, bro. Guys, if you're not already go get on click funnels,

we'll link to it down below. Go catch, uh, Russell's other books. We'll link to them on, uh, you know, all the other sites, Amazons and what's, what's the website where they can get linchpin? Cause I already, that's a great book. Yeah. Uh, I think it's the linchpin book.com the linchpin book.com. We'll link to it. It's a really good book. I, I enjoyed it we'll link to all that. And guys, make sure you subscribe and we'll see you on the next one. Peace.