The Russell Brunson Show - ClickFunnels Startup Story - Part 2 of 4

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

On today's episode you will hear part 2 of 4 of Russell's interview with Andrew Warner about the Clickfunnels start up story. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this part of the story: Find out from an employee of Russell's, Brent, why he stuck with the company through potential bankruptcy and jail time for Russell. Find out who thought Clickfunnels seemed like a scammy company and therefore didn't want others to know they'd worked with them. And hear how Clickfunnels actually finally came to fruition after many other failed software company attempts. So listen here to hear how Todd and Dylan became cofounders of Clickfunnels and together got the project off the ground. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/183-clickfunnels-startup-story-part-2-of-4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clear your schedule for you time with a handcrafted espresso beverage from Starbucks. Savor the new small and mighty Cortado. Cozy up with the familiar flavors of pistachio. Or shake up your mood with an iced brown sugar oat shaken espresso. Whatever you choose, your espresso will be handcrafted with care at Starbucks. All right, everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. with care at Starbucks. from this, uh, this interview. And again, if you're liking these interviews, please, please, please, um, take a snapshot on your phone, post it on Facebook, Instagram, or wherever you do your posting and, uh, and tag me in it and use hashtag marketing secrets so I can see that you're

talking about it. I would appreciate it. Um, but with that said, um, we're gonna keep the theme song and we come back, we'll listen, uh, we'll start in on part two of the interview of the ClickFunnels startup story. So the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in

out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. You know, I've talked to a few of your people because they're so good that Dave could really be a leader on his own, could start his own company. He's got his own online reputation, the whole thing. I keep asking them, why do you work for Russell? What is it that lets you be second to Russell who's getting all the attention? And I've got some answers. And would you mind coming up here in a second? I'm going to ask you. Just like, no,

come on back here and I'll just bring you up in a second. Actually, you know what? It looks like you can come pretty fast. I thought that it would be a little bit more. No, I thought it would be more of a thing to get mics on people. and I realized if Kaleck can do it. Okay, honestly, dig down deep. Why did you want to stick with him? Through all that stuff? Yeah. I don't know.

My heart was just racing. He started telling that story. It just makes me sick to my stomach. As you scroll down and look at all those businesses for years, just like every 30 days there was a new business launch like it was um it was crazy uh how is why i stuck with them is is uh you know clint mentioned that spirit like just he's absolutely different than anybody else i've ever met my entire life like uh give me an example let's be more specific back then not today when he's got this track record adoring fans i, I ask him to do an interview, everyone wants him on his podcast.

Back then when it wasn't going so well. Give me an example of something that he did that let you know, this is a guy who's going to figure it out eventually. And I could possibly go down, watch him go to jail, but I believe that it's going to go up. Well, at the time when things were crashing, I saw him as the income stopped. And he had started a program. He loves obviously wrestling. And he brought an Olympic wrestling coach to Boise. And he brought all these amazing wrestlers to Boise.

And he wanted them to build a train and get to the Olympics. He wanted to help them get there and live their dream. And he was supplementing. At the time, the business was paying for these guys to do a little bit of work for us, they weren't doing very much for us. But I saw him out of his own pocket be paying for these guys. And, and I knew how hard he wanted to support them. And there was a day that, you know, my wife and I, we were, we were struggling because I just, I was concerned about him, you know, financially, he was, he was supplementing his, trying to keep his business afloat. And we talked about things, and I came into the office one day,

and I asked if I could talk to him and sat down and kind of spoke in language that I normally don't speak in. I might have dropped a bomb or two. But I was so concerned. I pretty much told him, like, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep watching you every month pulling the money you've saved for your family to try to keep jobs for other people. Like I said, I'll leave if that helps you. And the fact that he stuck with people.

And that was the true character of who he is. He kept paying your salary, kept sticking with you, and also constantly launching things you were telling me before. Absolutely. You've never seen anyone implement like him. No, no. Some people call it faith or belief. He has this inherent belief that he can truly change people's lives.

That's it. Even when he wasn't fully in control of his own. All right, thanks. Give him a big round of applause. Thanks for being up here. I feel like this is the thing that helped get you out of trouble and potentially get it out of potential jail. What is this business that you created?

Yeah, so we, so during the time of that and this there was there was time it's probably a year and a half two years that we were trying all sorts of stuff and again marginal success on a lot of them nothing like and uh this was the one um we actually um this was before like we had done i've done a lot of webinars and speaking from seminars and stuff like that but this is right when auto webinars are coming out and Mike Phil somebody just an auto webinar, a couple of people. And like, I feel like that was going to be the future things. And we're like, well, what do we do the webinar on?

We didn't know. And, um, we flew out to Ryan Dyson Perry Belcher's office for like two days and pick their brains with Rich Sheffrin's office for day. And then on the flight home, I just like sick to my stomach. I couldn't figure out like, what's the thing that we can serve people with the most right now. And, um, on the flight home, I was was like i'm like all the internet marketing stuff we do works for like internet marketers works way better like local business like a chiropractor

implements like two things it works if a dentist does it like but i was like i don't want to be the guy going to dentist but like we could be the backbone for that what if we create an opportunity where people come in we train them and we connect them with the right tools and resources and they could go and sell it to to chiropractors and dentists. And that's what the idea was. We created, turned to an offer called dot com secrets local. Uh, it was a thousand dollar offer at the time, did the auto webinar for it. And it launched within, um, within 90 days, they've done over a million dollars, which covered payroll taxes and then got, got us out of debt to the point now we could like stop and like dream again and like believe again and try to figure out what we really wanted to do

dot com secrets local to a million dollars within 90 days and how did you find the people who are going to sign up for this a lot of us will have landing pages like this we'll have these funnels how did you get people in this funnel yeah and this was pre-facebook too so it's like it wasn't just like go turn facebook ads on but you know, one thing that happened over the last, you know, all the years prior to this, I met a lot of people. I've gone to a lot of events and get to know everybody. And, um, everyone I met that, you know, you meet a lot of people who have lists, they have followings, they have different things like that. I just got to know them really, really well. And, um, and in the past I'd, excuse me, I'd promote a lot of their products. They'd promote

my products. And so we had this one and we did did it first to my list, and it did really well. And so I then called them, like, hey, I did this webinar to my list. These are the numbers. You did it awesome. Do you want to do it to your list as well? And they're like, oh, sure. That sounds like a great offer. And we did that list, and they did good for them too.

And we told the next person. And then if you have a webinar that's good, it's kind of like the speaking circuit, right? Like if you're good at speaking, then people will put you all over the place. Same thing. If you have a webinar that converts, then it's easy to get a lot of people to do it. And so as soon as that one worked and it converted well, then people lined up and we just kept doing it, doing it, doing it. And, and, um, it was really quick to get that spot pretty quick. I was on Facebook recently and I saw webinar slides from Russell Brunson. I went to a landing page, click funnel page, and I signed

up and I'll talk about it maybe later, but I bought it and I'm no other people did. And I've seen other people say Russell's webinar technique is a thing that just works. I'm wondering how you figured it out. How did you come across this and how'd you build it and make it work? Yeah. So rewind back, um, my probably 10 years prior to this, it was when I was first learning this whole business. Um, and I went to my very first internet marketing seminar ever. It was Armand Morin's big seminar. Do you ever go to a big seminar? Anyway, I went to it and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be like, and I showed my laptop and I went to my very first internet marketing seminar ever. It was Armand Morin's big seminar. Did you ever go to a big seminar? Anyway, I went to it, and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be like,

and I showed my laptop, and I was going to like, I thought we were a bunch of geeks going to do computer stuff. And the first person got on stage, and they started speaking, and at the end of it, he sold like a $2,000 thing. I'd never seen this before. I saw people jumping up and running to the back of the room to buy it. And I'm like this little like 23-year-old kid, and I was counting the people in the back of the room doing the math the math, like, you know, doing the math. I was like,

that guy made like $60,000 in an hour. And next guy gets up, he does a presentation. And I watched this for three days and I was like, I'm super shy and introverted, but like I, that skill is worth learning. If I, someone can walk on a stage and make a hundred thousand dollars an hour, like I need to learn how to do that. And so I started that and, um, it was really bad for the first man, probably eight or nine months. I, I tried to do it. I'd go to places and I just, I couldn't figure it out. And then I started, um, asking the people to work good. Cause I, you'd go there and all the speakers kind of talk and hang out. And I watched the ones that always had like all the people were in the back of the room and I'd ask them questions. I'm like, what, like, what did I do wrong? Like, I feel like I'm teaching the best stuff possible. And they're

like, that's the problem. Like it's not about teaching it's about tori selling tori telling stories and breaking beliefs and and so for the next about two years i was about once a month flying somewhere to speak and then when i would go there i'd meet all the speakers and find out what they were doing and i'd watch them i'd take notes on the different things they were saying and how they were saying it and i kept taking my presentation and tweaking it and tweaking it and tweaking it and um you know now 12 years later done at so many webinars, like kind of work, the process works now. You are a really good storyteller and I've seen you do that and you've seen you do it here. I know you're going to do even more. Um, what I'm curious about

is the belief system that you were saying, breaking people's, what was it that you said? Uh, false beliefs, breaking people's false beliefs. How do you understand what, like, as you look at this audience, do you understand what some of some of our false beliefs are? If I knew I was selling, I could figure out for sure. If you knew what you were selling. All right. We're selling this belief that entrepreneurship does work. And I know that we're all going to go through a period like some of the ones that you had where things just aren't working. Other people aren't believing in us, it's almost failure. What's at that point, the belief system that we have to work on? What do you recognize in people here? So usually there's like three core beliefs that

people have. The first is about like the opportunity itself, right? So like the entrepreneurship, like the first belief that people have is like, can I actually be an entrepreneur? And so some people who already believe that they're like, I'm in, that's like an easy one. But for those who don't, there's a reason. And usually it's like, they saw a parent that tried to do it and the parent tried to be an entrepreneur and wasn't able to, and they saw that failure or they tried in the past and they failed or whatever it is. And so it's, it's showing them that like, even if you tried in the past and show different ways, like, let me tell you a story. Like, and for me, I could show 800 different failures, but it's like, but eventually you get better and you get better and you get better until

eventually you have the thing that actually works. So I tell a story to kind of show that, to make them believe like, oh my gosh, maybe I just need to try a couple more times. And then the second level of belief is like beliefs about themselves. Like I sure it works for you, Russell or Andrew, but not for, not for me. Cause I'm different. It's helping them figure out their false beliefs. And if you can break that, then the third one is like, then they always want to blame somebody else. Like, oh, like I could lose weight, but my wife has lots of cupcakes and candies. Like I could do it, but because of that, I can't. So then it's like figuring out, well, how do you break the beliefs of like the external people that are going to keep them? And how would you know what that is?

How would you know who the external influencers are that your potential customers are worried about? Um, I think for most of us, it's because the thing that we're selling is something that, that, uh, one of our, uh, Nick barely said, uh, our mess becomes our message. Like for most of us it's because the thing that we're selling is something that one of our – Nick Barely said our mess becomes our message. For most of us, what we're selling is the thing that we struggled with before. So I think back about me as 12-year-old Russell watching Don LaPree. What would have kept me back? I'd be like, I can't afford classified ads. If you can tell me a story like, oh my gosh, I couldn't afford classified ads, that belief is gone.

Now I'm going to go give you money. It's just kind of remembering back to the state where you were in when you were trying to figure this stuff out as well. Who was it who I met when we were coming in here? We said that they're part of Russell's mastermind. And I asked how much did you pay? You said, I'm not telling you.

I can't see who that person was, but I know you've got a mastermind. People are coming in. I'm wondering how much of it comes from that, working with people directly, seeing them in the group, share and then saying ah this is what my potential customers are feeling 100 at this point especially um um people always ask me like where do you go wrestle to learn stuff and it's my mastermind because i bring because all the people

come in and they're all in different industries and you see that you see the roadblocks hold people back but then they also share like the stuff that they're doing and it's like that's 100 now is where i get most of my my intel because people ask me why they give the software company why in the world do you have a mastermind group it's like because the reason why our software is good is because we have this mastermind group where they're all crowdsourcing they're doing all this stuff and bringing it back to us and then we're able to make shifts and pivots based on that somehow we just lost uh apple Apple, but that's okay. It's back. Good. There we go. This is the next thing. Rippling, right? I forgot to put that one in there.

I went back and I watched the YouTube video explaining it. It's a, it's a cartoon. I thought it was a professional voiceover artist. No, it's you. You really comfortable getting on stage and talking. But basically in that video that you guys can see in the top left of your screen, it's Russell through this voiceover and cartoon explaining, look, you guys were around in the early days of Facebook. You told your friends. Here's how many friends you would have said. For the sake of numbers, let's say you told seven people.

Let's say they told seven people, and that's how things spread. And the same thing happened with Pinterest and all these other sites. Don't you ever wish that instead of making them rich by telling stuff, you made yourself rich? Well, here's how Ripplin comes in. And then you created it. And Ripplin was what? So Ripplin was actually one of my friend's ideas. And he is a network marketing guy. So he's like, we're building a network marketing program. And I'd dabble in network marketing, never been involved in it. And he came and was like, hey, be part of this. I was like, no.

And they sold this on the whole pitch and the idea. And network marketers are really good at selling you on vision. And I was like, okay, that sounds awesome. And my role was to write the pitch. And so I wrote the pitch, did the voiceover, did the video. And then we launched it. And we had, in six weeks, it was like 1.5 million people signed up for rippling and i thought it was like this is the thing i'm done like my downline was like

half of the company and i was like when this thing goes live like it's going to be amazing and then um the tech side of it what we were promising people in this video that um the main developer ended up dying and he had all the code so they had to restart building in the middle of this thing and like all it was like thing after thing and by the time it finally got done everyone lost interest was like eight months later and like i think my i think my biggest check i got was like 47 bucks from the whole thing i was just like i spent like six months of my life it was it's like a penny a day it's horrible i'm just wondering whether i should ask this or not i'll go for it so i stopped asking

about religion but i get this sense that you believe that like that there's a spiritual element here that keeps you from seeing my downline is growing the whole thing's working do you is any of this does it feel divinely inspired to you be honest uh business or business life success things working out so much so that when you're at your lowest you feel like there's some divine guidance some divine hand that says russell it's gonna work out russell i don't know if i got you but i know you you got this. Go do it. I feel that from you. Yeah, I 100% believe that. You do? Every bit of it.

I believe that God gives us talents and gifts and abilities, and then watches who would do it. And if we do good, he increases our capacity to do more. If we do good, he increases our capacity. If you do good, if you use what God gives you, then you get more. And so you think that that is your duty to do that and if you don't do more if you don't pick yourself up up after rippling you've let down god do you believe that is that it or that you haven't lived you express it how yeah i don't think i feel like i let down god but i definitely like um i haven't lived up my potential pretend you, but also I feel like a lot of stuff, like, as I was putting together

the document, all the pages, like, um, it's interesting. Cause like each one of them looking in hindsight, like each built upon to the next thing in the next, and there's twice we tried to build click funnels and each one like was the next level. And then each one is a stepping stone. Like Ripplin, if I wouldn't have done Ripplin, like that was my very first like viral video we ever created. I learned how to pitch things. I'm like, when we did the click funnels, initial sales video, like, like because I had done this one, like I knew how to do this one. Right. Yeah. So for me, it's, it's less of like, I let down God as much as like, um, it's just like the, the piece and it's like, what are you going to do with this? Are you

going to do something with it? And then it doesn't mean it's gonna be successful, but it means it's like, if you do well with this and we're gonna increase your capacity for the next step and the next thing but we definitely and especially in time at the office we talk about a lot like we definitely feel what we do is a spiritual mission like it's you do 100 yeah i don't i don't think that it's just like we're lucky i think the way that the people have come the the partnerships like how it was created is super inspired. You know what? A lot of us are selling things that are software, PDF, guide, this, that. It's really hard to find the bigger mission in it. You're finding the bigger mission in funnels. What is that bigger mission? Really, how do you connect with it? Because you're right. If you

can find that bigger meaning, then the work becomes more meaningful and the people you're working with become like, it's, it's more exciting to work with and more meaningful to do it. How'd you find it in funnels? What is the meaning? So for us, um, and I'm thinking about some of my members in the inner circle, but, um, so right now, as of, I think today we had 68,000 members in click funnels, which is like the big number we all brag about. But for me, it's like that's 68,000 entrepreneurs. Each one has a gift, right? And so I think about one, like one member I'll mention, his name's Chris Wark. He runs ChrisBeatsCancer.com. And Chris was someone who came down with cancer and give him the death sentence. And instead of going through chemotherapy, he decided I'm going to see if I can

heal myself. And he, he did clear himself of cancer. And then instead of just like, cool, and then go back into work, he was like, man, I need to help other people. And so he started a blog, started doing some things. And now he's got this thing where he's helped thousands and thousands of people naturally cure themselves of cancer. And that's one of our 68,000 people, right? See, you're focusing on him where I think a lot of us would focus on, here's one person who's just a smarmy marketer and here's who's creating, right? But you don't. That's not who you are.

Look, I see you in your eyes. You're shaking your head. That's not it at all. It's not even a put on. It's funny because for me, it's like, I get that all the time. People are like,

oh, he's a slimy marketer. The first time people meet me all the time, the first time they introduce, that's a lot of times the first impression and they get closer and they feel the heart and it's just like, oh my gosh,

this is, I had you wrong i get that all the time from brian brian uh sorry ryan and brad are either of them here would one of you come up here yeah come on up because they felt that way right i don't know about them oh i know i don't i don't think about uh oh i guess there was a theron please no no stay here. Stay up here as long as you're here. Theron, come on up. If it wasn't me, I'm going to sit back and see.

You're nervous? How is there another Ryan and Brad? It's a different story. It's a different story. All right. Do you want to come up? Theron had no idea we were bringing him on stage. Come on over here.

Let's stand in the center so we can get you on camera. Does this help? Do you want me to introduce Theron real quick? Yeah, please. So Theron is one of the Harmon brothers. They're the ones who did the viral video for us. I've no idea where you want this. I heard that you felt that he was a scam.

What was the situation and how did you honestly feel? I don't know that it, well... Be honest. Oh, I know, I know. I don't think that I felt that ClickFunnels itself was a scam. She's rustling. But that it... It just felt like that so many of the ways that the funnels were built

and the types of language they were using, it was just not, it felt like it was that side of the internet, right? And so I became very, well basically we were kind of in a desperate situation where we had a video that had not performed and not worked out the way we wanted it to work out. The video that you created for Russell? No, for another client. Another client. Okay.

And so our CEO had used ClickFunnels product to help drive, I think it was attendance to a big video event. And so he had some familiarity with the product. And so he goes to Russell. And at the same time, Russell's like, I'm a big fan of you guys. And he's coming to Russell. And at the same time, Russell's like, I'm a big fan of you guys. And he's coming to us. And these things are happening. Yeah, it was almost the same day. And so we're thinking like this. And we're like, well, they seem to really know how to drive traffic, to really know how to drive conversion. And we feel

like we know how to drive conversion as well. but for some reason we missed it on this one. So we're like, well, let's do a deal. When you say missed it, okay, go ahead. We were failing our client. We were failing our client. We weren't getting them an ROI. So we said, let's do a deal with Russell, and we'll have our internal team compete with his team. We're humble enough to say, hey, we're failing our client.

We want our client to succeed. Let's bring in their team and see if they can make a funnel that can bring down the cost per acquisition, bring up the return on investment for our client. And they were able to do it, right? And then we said, well, what we'll do is we'll write a script. We'll take you through our script writing process, but we don't want to do the video because we don't want to be affiliated the contract said you can't tell anyone ever the harvard brothers wrote the script for you wow because you didn't want to be associated with something that you thought was a little too scammy for it yeah yeah we just didn't want our brand kind of brought down to their brand which is super arrogant and really wrongheaded.

And in any case, so we go into this script writing retreat, and I wasn't following his podcast. I wasn't listening to enough. I mean, Red.com Secrets, those kinds of things were like, wow, there's some really valuable stuff here. This is really interesting. And then as we got to know each other and really started to connect, like you said, heart to heart, and to feel what he's really about and the types of people that he surrounds himself with,

I was like, wow, these are really, really good people. And they have a mission here that they feel, and just like we feel that about our own group. And in any case, by the end of that two-day retreat we're like all off in private saying uh well first of all we like what we've written second of all we'd really like to work with these guys and i think we're plenty happy being connected to them and associated with them and so it's been a ride and a blessing ever since with them right now so what we're about to sense. So what? Anyway, we love them. All right. Give me a big round. Yeah. Thanks. Hey, funnel hackers. I want to talk about building your business. You've got the idea, the passion, the drive, but here's the thing. Setting up the legal stuff can feel like a total

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You saw that and you thought? Well, what happened was Todd. So Todd's the co-founder of ClickFunnels. And he was working with us at the time. He would fly to Boise about once a quarter and work on the next project, a new idea. And that morning he woke up and he saw that. And then he forwarded me the article. And he's Atlanta, so it's East Coast.

I'm still in bed. And then he's got a four-hour flight to Boise. And he's just getting angry because Todd is a genius. When he landed in Boise and he saw me, he's like, we can build lead pages tonight. I will clone it. I will beat it. We can launch this this week while we're here. Like he's,

he's that good of a developer. Like he, like I've never seen someone code as fast and as good as him. He's, he's amazing. Right. And so he comes in, he's mad. Cause he's like, this is the stupidest site in the world. I, we literally clone this. Let's just do it. And I'm like, yes, let's clone it. And we're all excited. And then he's like, do you want me to add any other features while I'm doing it? I'm like, Oh yes. Um, we should do this and we should do this. And then he's like, do you want me to add any other features while I'm doing it? I'm like, oh, yes. We should do this. And we should do this. And then the scope creep from the marketer comes. And we ended up spending an entire week in front of a whiteboard mapping out all my dreams.

Like, if we could do this and this. And what if I had a shopping cart? And what if we could do upsells? And what if we could actually move things on the page instead of just having it sit there? And what if? And Todd's just taking notes and everything. And then he's like, hey, I think I can do this. And he told me, he's like, but if I do this, I don't want to do this as like as an employee, I want to do as a partner.

And, um, I first, I was like, ah, like, cause I've never wanted to do the partnership thing. And then, um, the best decision I've ever made in my life outside of marrying my wife was saying yes to Todd. I said, let's do it. And then he flew home and built ClickFunnels. Wow. And this is after trying software so much. I have screenshots of all the different, it's not even worth going into it, of all the different products you created. There was one about, it was Digital Repo, right?

Digital Repo, man. What was... So I used to sell e-books and stuff and people would steal it and then email it to their friends and I'd get angry. Can I read this? How to protect every type of low life

and other form of human scum from cheating you from the profits you should be making by hijacking, stealing, and illegally prostituting... Your online digital products. Theron, why did you think we were... Just kidding. So, no, it was a really cool product that would, like, you take an e-book and it would, like, protect it. And then if somebody, like, gave it to their friend, you could push a button. It would like take back access. It was the might, it was like the coolest thing in the world we thought. And there was software that was going to attach your ad to any other software that was out there.

There was software that was going to, Ooh, what are some of the other ones? It's going to hit me later on, but we're talking about a dozen different pieces of software, a dozen different attempts of software. What what's the one? I thought somebody remembered one of them. Just the kinds of stuff you'd never think of. There was one that was kind of like ClickFunnels, an early version of ClickFunnels for landing pages. Why did you want to get into software when you were teaching, creating membership sites? What was software?

What was it that was drawing you in? I think, honestly, when I first learned this internet marketing game, the first mentor mentor i had the first person i saw was a guy named armin morin and armin had all these little software products like e-cover generator sales letter generator everything generator and so that's what i kept seeing i was like i need to create dude i need to create software because he made software in fact i even shifted my major from i can't remember what was before to computer information systems i was like i don't know how to code because i couldn't afford programmers and then um and that's kind of just what i seen. And so I, and then I was trying to think of ideas for software. And every time I would get stuck, instead of trying to like find something to do, I was like, let me just buy, let me hire a guy to go build that. And then I

can sell it to somebody else as well. And that's kind of how it started. And it was a lot of different tools, a lot of different attempts. And then this one was the one that you went with. I think this is an early version of the homepage, basically saying coming soon, sign up. The first one didn't work out. And then you saw someone else on a forum who had a forum, who had a version that was better. What was his name? This is, I think. Oh, we're talking about the editor. Yes. Okay. So yeah, so the story was, so we, we taught about the first version click funnels and um and dylan who became one of our co-founders um i've been working with dylan as a designer for about six years prior and he is hands and we talked about this earlier he's the best designer i've ever

seen in my life he is uh amazing um he would he would but he's also this is the pros and cons of dylan like he um i've talked to us on stage if I'm not going to have, so I have no problem saying this and he would, he would agree, but I'd give him a project and I couldn't hear, he wouldn't respond back to me. I wouldn't hear from him for two or three months. And then one day in the middle of night, he messaged me. He's like, he's like, Hey, uh, uh, rent's due tomorrow. You have any projects for me? And I'd be so mad at him. And I look back at every project we've done last three or four months that other designers had done. And I would just like resend them all the lists, like boom, give them 12 sites. And I go to bed, I wake up five or six hours later and all of them were done perfectly amazing. Like some of the best designs ever. And then he sent me a bill for

whatever. And I sent him money and he disappeared again for like five months and I could never get ahold of it. And then like, I need you to tweak something. He was just gone. And that was like my pattern for six years with him. Um, and then fast forward to when Todd and I were building click funnels, um, we were at traffic conversion and we were up in the hotel room at like three in the morning trying to, we were on dribble.com trying to find a UI designer to help us. And we couldn't get ahold of all these people. And all of a sudden on Skype, Dylan popped in. I saw this thing pop up. I was like, Todd, Dylan just showed up. He was like, do you need some money? I'm like, I guarantee he needs money.

So I'm like, Hey man. And, uh, and Dylan messaged back. He's like, Hey, I'm like, do you need some money? He's like, yeah. You got any projects? I'm like, yes, I do. I'm like, we built this cool thing. It's called click funnels, but the UI is horrible. And the editor is horrible. And there's any way we can hire you for a week to fly to Boise and just do all the UI for every single page of the app. And, um, we, he kind of said no at first. Cause like I'm, I'm developing my own website builder. I'm going to spend like six years on it, so I can't do it. It was this. He had something that was essentially ClickFunnels, right?

Yeah. It was just pages, though. So we'd just do pages. There was no funnels. Closer to lead pages than to ClickFunnels. Lead pages, but it made me move things around. But he didn't tell me that. He said, I'm working on something.

So eventually we got him to come. He flew to Boise. He spent a week. He did all of our UI. And then we went and we launched our beta to my list. So we launched the beta. We got some signups, and then a week before the launch launch was supposed to happen, all the affiliates were lined up, everything was supposed to happen. He sends me, I don't know if he sent you the video, but he sends me this little video

that's like a 30 second video of him demoing his editor he built. And I probably watched that video at least a hundred times, and I was just sick to my stomach because I was like, I hate ClickFunnels right now. I can't move things on my pages. I can't do anything. I was just, and then I sent it to Todd and then I hear from him for like an hour and he messages me back. He's like, I'm pissed. I'm like, me too. And then like, what do we do? And I was like, we have to have this editor. I don't even want to sell this thing. Like it's, and, and I called Dylan, I'm like, would you be willing to sell? And he's like, no, I'm doing, I'm selling it and we're gonna sell for a hundred bucks. And it's like a hundred dollars one time for this editor that designed all the websites. And I was like, dude, it is worth so much more than that, please. And, um, we spent all night going back and forth and negotiating. And, um, finally it came down to like, um, I will give you this editor if we can, if I can be a co-founder and be a

partner. And, uh, Todd and I sat there and brainstorming and figured out if we could do it finally said yes. And then him and Dylan and Todd flew back to brainstormed and figured out if we could do it and finally said yes and then him and Dylan and Todd flew back to Boise and for the next week just sat in a room with a whole bunch of caffeine and figured out how to smush Dylan's editor into ClickFunnels to get the editor

to be the editor that you guys know today. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two best-selling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com. And book number two is called Dotcom Secrets, and you can get your free copy at dotcomsecrets.com. Inside these two books, you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest-growing, non-VC-backed SaaS startup company in the world.