The Russell Brunson Show - Q&A With The Kids

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

Behind the scenes conversation with a bunch of young entrepreneurs. On today's episode, Russell talks to a class of young entrepreneurs about what it's like to start and run your own business. Here are some of the fun things in today's episode: How he got started with his first business of potato guns! He talks about what are the hardest, easiest, and best parts of being an entrepreneur. They discuss how risk is like riding a teeter-totter on a cliff... So listen here to enjoy this special, fun episode where Russell talks to kids about entrepreneurship. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/212-q-a-with-the-kids 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. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. I've got a really fun special episode for you today. Recently, I had someone in our community contact us and say, hey, we run a school with kids from, I don't even know how young from first grade up to sixth grade. And, um, I think the oldest kids were about 12 years

old anyway. And, uh, they said, we love to have these kids come over and, um, and, and ask you questions about your, your company, about being an entrepreneur and all that kind of stuff. And so, um, I thought it'd be really fun. So we had them come over this last week and, um, they'd been studying entrepreneurship and business and they were, um, and they were doing a bunch of things. They had to make a pitch deck to pitch to investors. They were going that night to actually go sell stuff. This little cute entrepreneurial classroom of kids came here to ClickFunnels offices. I thought, you know what?

I'm going to record this just in case anything cool comes out of it. It turned out to be really, really fun. This is an episode, if you have kids, you should probably put your kids in and listen with them. I think you'll hear some new stories and get some ideas whether or not you have kids or not. But this is definitely a presentation geared towards children and getting excited about entrepreneurship and kind of telling them some stories about how I built my company. It was funny. We had this little microphone box you could throw to them and they all were fighting over and they wanted to hear their voice. So you'll

hear a little bit of that. I had my brother try to edit out any of the long pauses or the awkward things. So hopefully it's listenable to listen to everything. And it's kind of funny, I think eight or nine kids asked the exact same question, so I had to re-answer it different ways every single time. So hopefully you guys catch that in there. One of the girls talked about entrepreneurship, asked who wants to be an entrepreneur, and she's like, no. And I'm like, why not? And she's like, it's kind of like a teeter-totter where you're off a cliff, where either you fall off a cliff and you die, or you don't, or something like that. And I was like, that is the best explanation of entrepreneurship I've ever heard. So anyway, this is just a fun episode I wanted to post here for

you guys. I hope you enjoy it. Again, if you have kids, maybe have them listen in as well. And with that said, I'll keep the theme song and I hope you guys enjoyed this Q&A session from the kids group that came into our office the other day. 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. What's up, guys? How are you guys doing? Good! Welcome to ClickFunnels.

We're excited to have you guys here. Why did what? Why do you sound like you have a microphone? Because I have a microphone. It checks out, I have a microphone here. This is called the catch box. You hold it like this and you talk into it. And I want to do this that way we can ask questions and make sure we hear everything.

Because it's kind of fun. Sometimes this room gets loud because we have all these superheroes everywhere that sometimes mess things up. So we're going to practice this to make sure you guys can make this work. So who wants to tell me their name? My name's Garrett. My name is Paxton. My name's Brynn. My name's Jack.

My name's Liam. All right, so my first question for you guys, do you guys know what my name is? What's my name? Do you want to catch it? Jack. It's ClickFunnels. Russell. You're right. Good job.

Okay, thank you. Russell, and I'm one of the founders of ClickFunnels, which is where you guys are at today. So I heard you guys have been learning about entrepreneurship. Is that true? Yeah. How many of you guys want to be entrepreneurs when you grow up? No thanks. No thanks?

I want to know why you don't want to keep... The reason I don't want to be an entrepreneur is, well, first of all, I'm afraid of messing up. And I don't like the risk that I'm taking. Who has a cool thing about being an entrepreneur? One cool thing is that you can be almost anything that isn't already, like, a corporation. Like, you can be, like, a YouTuber is kind of an entrepreneur. Like ClickFunnels is made by entrepreneurs and it's made for entrepreneurs as well.

Stuff like that. Okay, so I'm going to tell you guys my story real quick about how I became an entrepreneur. And then I'm going to let you guys ask questions because I heard you guys had some good questions. So I didn't know I was going to be an entrepreneur my whole life. But when I was, let's see, how old are you guys?

Six, nine. Six, nine. Ten. Who's the oldest? Who's the oldest here? Six to 12. How old are you? 12.

12. Okay, so I was about 12 or 13 years old. And I didn't know what I was going to be when I grew up. I had no idea. And I remember I was watching TV one night. And late at night, there's these things called infomercials. Any of you guys ever seen infomercial before? They try to sell stuff

and there was this guy on the infomercial, excuse me, he was selling this book about how to make money in the newspapers and I was like, that is the coolest thing in the world. But he was selling, you gotta pay $40 to buy this kit and I did not have $40. So I begged my dad for money and he said, no. He said, if you wanna have that money, you have to earn it. And I was like, ah. So I went out and so I mowed lawns for

a whole month to earn $40. And then I took that and I bought this kit on the TV that taught me how to make money in newspapers, which was kind of cool. So that's when I first started learning. I was about your guys' age when I first started learning about it. So you guys are in a good spot. And then fast forward till when I was in college, I was going to school. I didn't know what I wanted to be. I like to wrestle. Do you have any wrestlers in here? What? We got a couple wrestlers.

So I'm a wrestler. So I was wrestling in high school and I loved it. And then I started wrestling in college. I came to Boise State to wrestle. And then I met my beautiful wife and I fell in love with her and I wanted to marry her. But guess what you have to have when you get married? You know what this means? Money.

And I didn't have any money. know this means money and I didn't have any money I was completely broke I didn't have a job and I was like I gotta do something or else I'm gonna be in big trouble and my wife's not gonna have a house to live under if I'm gonna marry her so I tried to figure out how to make money but I couldn't get a job because I was wrestling so I had a different way to do this and so I thought you know what I could do I could quit wrestling but I loved wrestling I was, maybe I can become an entrepreneur and try to sell something on my own. I didn't know what to do.

So I started trying to learn how to make money. I was trying to think what my first big idea was going to be. And I tried a whole bunch of different things. And guess what? None of them worked. I tried thing after thing to make money. None of them worked. And then one day, one of my friends, he said,

hey, Russell, do you want to make a potato gun? And I was like, what's a potato gun? How many here knows what a potato gun is? So this is a potato gun. And I didn't even know what it was. And I was like, what's a potato gun? He said, well, what a potato gun is, he's like, you make it out of sprinkler pipes. He said, you get a potato and you put it here and you jam it in. So it'll be like right here. And you get a broom and you push it down. So it pushes it all the way down to right here. And then over here, there's like a big hole, right? And so what you did is you spray hairspray in here.

And you put a cap over the top of it. And then guess what happens? Inside of here, there's a whole bunch of fuel. And there's a potato stuck right here. So in the cap, and I couldn't find the cap this morning because I think somebody stole it or somebody just misplaced it. There's a little igniter. And if you click the button on the igniter, it makes a little spark inside of this hole right here. And that spark lights the hairspray on fire. The hairspray's like, oh,

and it wants to explode, but it can't. And so guess what it does? It takes the potato right here and it goes, and it shoots it out. And it goes like a hundred yards. How many is how far a hundred yards is? You ever been to a football game before? A hundred yards is the whole football field. It shoots it all the way across the whole football field. Is that crazy? So he told me that my friend told me that I said, that sounds like so much fun. Let's do that. So we went and we didn't know how to make it though. So we went on Google and we typed in how to make a potato gun. And then people had different instructions like, well, this is how you cut the pipes and this is how you glue it together. And you got to buy a pipe this size and this size and this size and this and this.

And I reread all the instructions on how to make it. And so then we went home that night and we started making it. And we had so much fun. It took us three or four days to build our first potato gun. And when it was done, we went out to buy the airport and we started shooting potatoes. And it was so much fun. But then guess what happened? We were shooting potatoes, and all of a sudden, this big, huge Jeep that had camouflage on it started coming towards us.

And I was like, what's going on? And they drove all the way up, and out came this big, huge army guy with a big old mustache. He walks over. What are you guys doing? Like, we're shooting potatoes. And he's like, you're on, uh, cause we're behind the airport. He said, you're on government land. You cannot be shooting things back here. And I thought I was going to go to jail. I was so scared. I was like, uh, okay. Okay. And he's like, how does that thing work? So I kind of told him, he's like, it doesn't go that far. I'm like, no, it really does. He's

like, prove it. Like, really? So he said, yeah. So we, he started shooting guns with me, this big policeman who was going to arrest me. And he shot like five or six potatoes with me. And then he's like, okay, you can't shoot back here at all. I'll have to put you to jail. So go shoot him out in the forest or something. And he let us go. And I was like, oh good. I thought I was going to go to jail. So luckily I didn't. So then, um, we had so much fun making these. They were so much fun. And then, um, the next day I went back to school and I was, yeah. Why didn't he arrest you for having an illegal and dangerous weapon? That's a good question.

He said, how come you didn't arrest me having legal and dangerous? I think it's because he thought it was kind of cool. It could have been worse. Anyway, luckily he didn't. I don't know why, but I'm super grateful he didn't arrest me. So anyway, I went back to school on the next Monday and I was sitting there and I was thinking, what should my business be? What should my business be? And then all of a sudden, boom, the light bulb went off my head. You guys ever had that before? We have an idea. I was like, what if there's more people besides me

that want to make potato gun? What if I'm not the only person? And I thought, I I'm going to see if there's more people besides me. And so on the internet, what's cool is it'll show you how many people are typing in different searches in Google. And guess how many people were looking for potato gun plans that month? 200,000. Ooh, I wish. At least. 500. 500? 100?

500. I'm only at one thing. Five feet? So if you look at the entire world, around the whole world, there were 18,000 people searching for how to make potato guns. And nobody was selling a product about how to make potato guns. And I was like, what if I made a product about how to make potato guns?

I can make some money. This would be the coolest thing in the world and I could get arrested. So I had the idea. So then I called my friend up. His name is Nate. And I said, Nate, we're going to make a product teaching people how to make potato guns. He said, how do you do that? I said, I don't know. I've never done it before,

but let's figure it out. So we borrowed a video camera from somebody. And then we drove down to Home Depot. Maybe it was Lowe's. I can't remember. Home Depot or Lowe's. We walked to the sprinkler aisle. And I had all the sprinkler pipes. And I recorded a video. I said, OK, when you buy the sprinklers, there's a secret. You have to make sure that the PSI is right. So if you look on here, it talks about the pounds per square. And so the can handle anyway summarizes how much that is and how much these are what size and so we made a video of us buying all the the pipe the pieces of the gun then we drove to my wife's work where they had a little workshop and then we made a video of us record like gluing the thing together and making the actual potato gun then we drove and filmed us

at school writing out all the different formulas and all the different plans on how to make potato guns. We took all of those different things and we put it on these videos and then we made a DVD. And this was my very first DVD. It was called HowToMakeAPotatoGun.com.

And this DVD taught people how to make a potato gun just like that. And so this was my very first product I ever made. And there's the DVD inside. Do you guys even know what DVDs are? You've seen those before? I know it's a pain to get scratched. They have to rebuy a new one, which is good for me. I don't think you put a bandaid on DVD, but that was a good idea. All right. So this is my very first DVD. I was so excited. I'm like, now what do I do? How do I sell it? I didn't know how to sell it. So I went, I got this website,

howtomakepotatogun.com. And then I put up a webpage to sell it. And I had a little picture of the DVD. I said, here's a DVD teaching people how to make potato guns, just like the one that I just made. And I started buying ads. So when somebody would go to Google and type in how to make a potato gun, they'd see my ad and say, want to learn how to make a potato gun? Click here. And they click on the ad and they come to my webpage. And a lot of them started buying this DVD for like $27 and they buy the DVD. And that's how I got started as an entrepreneur. I started selling this DVD. I sold a whole bunch of them for a while. And that was my very first product. Any questions about that at all? Uh, what was the hardest part about making it?

Ooh, good question. So hardest part about making it was I didn't know how to edit videos. So we record them all on this camera and then I didn't know what to do. So I had to go like read books about how do you get them from your video camera onto the computer. So we got them on the computer and it's like how do you turn it into a DVD? I don't know how to do that. So we had to edit the thing and then we had to glue it together or put it together and then we had to burn it on a DVD. So learning how to actually make the DVD was the hardest thing for me. What was the most difficult thing about making your whole business?

Ooh. The most difficult thing about making my whole business was probably believing it was going to work. This thing is so fun. Because a lot of times we have an idea, we're like, is that really going to work? Should I do this? I have to do all this work. Should I do it or not? So the hardest part

is just believing that it'll actually work the very first time. And how did you make it? Good thing. All right, who else got a question? What was the easiest part

about making your business? The easiest part, man, there's not a lot of easy parts. There's a lot of hard parts. The easiest part was probably after it started working because there's a lot of hard work

to get it started. Then when it started working, then guess what? The webpage was there. My ads were there. And I'd go to school every day. I'd go to wrestling practice. And while I was goofing off,

having fun, people were going to Google. They'd type it in. They'd click on the ad and they would buy. So even when I was sleeping at night, people started paying me money. So I was making money in the morning, at night, they'd click on the ad, and they would buy. So even when I was sleeping at night, people started paying me money. So I was making money in the morning, at night, when I was on vacation, and money kept coming in.

So that was the best part. After all the hard work was done, then I just started making money, whether I was there or not. What, like, how much money did you make about, like, every day? Good question. So this product, this was my very first one, so it never made me tons of money. But it was making probably between $25 and $50 a day. But for me, how many of you guys would like $50 a day? It would be amazing.

Yeah, so it was like tons. When I was going to college, I was like, $50 a day is a lot of money for me. It was really, really cool. Good question. My name is Paxton. Thanks, Paxton. You're awesome.

All right. What inspired you to make the potato gum? Ooh, good question. So when I was trying to figure out what to make, I was looking around. I saw a lot of other people selling things. So I was looking around. What's everyone doing? And I had a friend, one friend who was making a product teaching people how to do baby sign language.

And so I was like, that's kind of cool because she was really good at teaching baby sign language. Another friend was teaching people how to do hair bows. They make hair bows. Any girls have hair bows? They make these really cool hair bows and had a DVD teaching that. So I saw three or four things. I saw all these people who were really good at something. They made a DVD teaching it. And then, uh, I was like, well, I'm not good at anything. What could I do? And then I made that potato gun. I was like, Oh, what if that's my thing? What if, what if I make potato guns? And so that's how I got the inspiration. What was your biggest regret? My biggest regret?

Hmm. Probably my biggest regret is I didn't start sooner. I waited for like two years before I made my first product. I was thinking about it and talking about it. I was scared, so I didn't do it. I wish I would have started faster, because then I would have started having success faster. How much money did you make every year? Every year? Well, the first year, I didn't make very much money. I made probably maybe $10,000. And then it started getting bigger.

And then one year, I made a million dollars in a year, which was so cool. And it got bigger. And then ClickFunnels, this company now, so this, so I'll tell you what we do in a minute, but ClickFunnels did over a hundred million dollars last year. What would you guys buy with that? Just kidding. I'd buy this company. You'd buy the company. All right, funnel hackers, listen up. It's 2025. And let me ask you, are your B2B ads actually driving results? Or are they getting lost in the noise? You and I both know the pain of running campaigns that fall flat because they aren't seen by the right people. But here's the game changer. LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn isn't just another ad platform. It's the place where professionals live.

I'm talking about the decision makers you dream about working with CEOs, VPC suite powerhouses, 130 million of them all in one place. And LinkedIn gives you the laser sharp targeting to reach them by job title company, and even industry. Imagine how your business could scale. If your message hits the right inboxes every time. Now here's the kicker. LinkedIn delivers up to five times higher ROAS and other platforms. Yeah, you heard me right. Five times more return on every ad dollar. And that's because LinkedIn's professional environment is made for people who actually take action.

This isn't where people scroll mindlessly. This is where they're making decisions. So stop playing small because it's time to level up. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. And to get started, LinkedIn is offering you $100 credit for your next campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash clicks to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash clicks. Term your credit. That's linkedin.com slash clicks. Terms and conditions may apply. LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. Hey, funnel hackers,

let me paint you a picture. You're running a business. Your funnel's finally converting like crazy and suddenly it hits you. You need to hire someone like yesterday. Maybe it's a copywriter to help you crank out more sales pages or a designer to refresh your landing pages or someone to do customer support to help you to handle your growing audience. The problem is you're swamped and you don't have weeks to shift through resumes. So what do you do? You turn to Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all that you need. They make it fast, simple, and super effective. Stop struggling to get your job seen on those other job sites that bury your listing. With Indeed's sponsored jobs, your post jumps straight to the top of the page so that the right candidates see it first. It's just like pulling

your job out on a billboard for the exact person you need to hire. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more application than non-sponsored jobs. Now here's the best part. With Indeed, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And let me tell you how fast this platform is. Literally in the time that we've been talking right now, 23 people have been hired on Indeed worldwide. Imagine finding your dream hire while your competitors are still waiting through job boards and job boards that don't deliver. So here's what you need to do right now.

Go to indeed.com slash clicks right now and get a $75 sponsored job credit board to boost your post visibility. That's indeed.com slash clicks. Support the show, save time, and find your next hire faster. What was your favorite part? My favorite part? I love when somebody buys your product and then they use it and they have success. That's the best. So somebody would buy it and they make a potato gun and they send me a picture. Look at my potato gun I made.

Yes, that's awesome.. So somebody would buy it and they make a potato gun. They send me a picture. Look at my potato gun I made. Yes, that's awesome. I helped him do it. How many did you like sell in the first week or month of your, of you releasing it? Good question. The first week, I don't think I sold any first month. I probably sold five or six and then it got the point I was selling about one a day. So probably 30 a month, one or two a day is what kind of average for. Do you have any like advice for people who like want to be an entrepreneur or want to get like what they're doing out there? Like if you're like streaming and stuff? Yes. Great question. Okay. I can't tell you a story about that. So I have a, I have a friend, his name is Jacob Hiller. And when he was born, he wanted to be able to dunk a basketball. How many of you guys here can dunk a basketball? In a baby. How many of you guys here can dunk a basketball? In a baby.

How many of you guys dunk on a 10-foot hoop? It's hard, right? I still can't do it either. I'm not good enough. But he wanted to be able to dunk. He loved basketball, but he couldn't quite dunk. He said his arms were a little bit shorter, so he couldn't ever dunk. And so he said, I want to figure out.

He set a goal. He said, my goal, I'm going to become someone who can dunk a basketball. He said, well, how do I do that? I can't dunk right now. He said, well, I have to learn some exercises. So he started reading books and started studying, like, how can I increase my vertical? That's what they call it, your vertical is how high you can jump, right? So he started learning, started watching videos and reading books. And then that's how he started. And then he started learning some stuff and started helping him. And he thought, I'm going to start a YouTube channel

teaching people, like, what I'm learning. So he started this YouTube channel. And in the in the YouTube channel, he would like learn something. So he would learn, you know, if you, if you do a certain exercise, it'll make you jump higher. So he showed people how to do the exercise and he posted a video on that. Then he posted another video learning other, other ways to increase your vertical. And he did a whole bunch of videos and just started posting on YouTube because he was, he was loving it. He was learning it. And then he would share as he was learning what he was learning. And then I said, one day he ended up having about 10,000 people who were following him on YouTube. And he was like, this is so cool. I have all these followers that are, that are following me, but I don't know what to do with it. And so he asked those guys, he said, what do you guys want me to like, what can I, what can I do?

And so someone said, I wish you'd put together a book that would teach me all the different ways you learned how to jump. And he was like, okay, that's kind of cool. I could do that. So he wrote, he wrote an ebook. Do you guys know what an ebook is? Yeah. Yeah. It's like a book that's online and it's really cool. Yeah. So he wrote his first ebook and all it was, was a whole bunch of different ways that he used to jump higher. So he showed like here, I tried this exercise, how I did it. And then this exercise, and he showed like a hundred different ways to jump higher and he put it together and he called the book, he called it the jump manual, teaching people how to jump higher. And so he got that all done. So he also, he started with having, being like excited about something. Then he

started talking about it every single day until he got a lot of people following him. Then he came out with his very first product, which was an ebook. I think he sells ebook for $37. And, um, he, he makes man three or $4,000 a day, every single day selling that book. But what's crazy, he did that. he did that while he was in college. Then he met his wife and they fell in love and they got married. And they were saying, where should we move to? And he said, well, our business is on the internet.

We don't have to live anywhere. And they said, what if we just pick somewhere really cool? So his wife got a globe out, a big globe. You guys know those big globes? And they spun it like this. They said, ready, go. And they stopped it and it was like, they said, Kenya. Like, let's move to Kenya. So they spun it like this. They said, ready, go. And they stopped it. And it was like, they said, Kenya.

Like, let's move to Kenya. So they got on a plane. They packed up all their suitcases. They didn't have a house yet. And they flew to Kenya. And then in Kenya, they found out that in Kenya, there's these warriors called the Masimar warriors. Have you ever heard of them before?

No. Well, guess what they're famous for? Killing. Jumping. They're famous for? Killing. Jumping. They're famous for jumping. They go out in the plains in the desert and they jump. So he got to Kenya and he's like, there's these guys that are great at jumping. So he got his video camera out and said, teach me how to jump better.

And these warriors in the middle of the desert in Africa taught him how to jump higher. And he filmed it all. And he posted those videos online. I learned these cool jumping tricks from these guys. They said, if you like these, you should go buy my book. And more people bought his book. And so he lived there. He lived there in Kenya for three years, or excuse me, three months. And the whole time they were there, people were buying his book on the internet. So they didn't have a job. He was just like living and having fun. And three months later, they said, let's move. They said, where should we move to? Like, I don't know.

So they got the globe out again. They spun it like, uh, here. And it was like the great wall of China. Like we're moving to China. So they moved and flew to China and they got to China. Like, what should we do in China? They said, well, what kind of exercises can we do on the great wall of China? Like, well, we can like, I can sit against the wall. I can do jumps on the wall. So they made videos and doing all sorts of exercises on the great wall of China. And they put those on YouTube and then more people bought his book. And then three months later, they spun the globe again and they picked a new spot. And they've been doing that now for like eight years. They've not had a house for eight years. Every three months, they pick a new place around the world

and they fly there and they live there and their internet business. Just people keep buying his ebook while he's traveling the world, having a good time. Is that cool? And another question is buying ads for like your video, like even worth it in your opinion. Definitely. We spend, we spent about $750,000 a month buying ads. So we spent a lot of money because it's, uh, it's, uh, it's the fastest way to get to people. There's, there's three ways you can do it, but it takes a lot longer. Um, if you can buy ads, it speeds up the process a lot. But like for like smaller youtubers who are trying to get out there and get like more followers so it's good to buy ads when you have a product to sell because if you're just buying ads to grow your channel it's hard because you're not making

any money and you're just spending money but if you have you have youtube channel and you're selling something um on the channel then it makes sense to buy as long as you as long as you make more money than you're spending that's all we're at. I want to make sure that if I spend a dollar, I make $2. And you just kind of watch that really close. Good questions. What was the best part after you made your business? The best part is, let's see. There's been a lot of really, really cool parts, but I think my best part is there's this group.

Have you ever heard of Operation Underground Railroad? So, have you heard of it? You think so? Do you guys know what the Underground Railroad is? Did you learn about that yet in school? What's the Underground Railroad? It's how slaves get away from their own slaves. It's in a ditch.

Yeah, so the Underground Railroad is how they freed slaves back in the day. So Operation Underground Railroad is an organization. It's called a charity, and they help save people who are in slavery. Do you know there's still people in slavery? There are little kids that get kidnapped that are put in slavery. And they think there's over 2 million kids right now that are in slavery all around the world. It's really sad. And so there's this group, and they go and they try to save these little kids. So the most exciting thing so far is the last two years in a row, we helped raise money for

Operation Underground Railroad. We raised over $2 million for them, which is enough money to save almost 1,000 kids from slavery. So everything we've done, that's the thing that's the coolest for me. How did you get the idea of ClickFunnels? Ooh, good question. That's a great question. Okay. So after I made my potato gun, we were selling this, right? And then what happened is I wanted to figure out how do you make more money? I was just selling DVD, but I want to make more money. And so I had a friend, he said, what you need to do is you need to figure out how do you make more money? I was just selling DVD, but I want to make more money. And so I had a friend. He said, what you need to do is you need to add an upsell. Do you guys know what an upsell is?

No. How many of you guys have ever been to McDonald's before? So you go to McDonald's, and if your mom or dad says, hey, I want to order a Big Mac, then what does the guy say on the drive-thru? Do you know? He goes, a Big Mac? Do you want a fries and drink with that? Do you hear him say that before?

That's called an upsell. Good. It's bad for you. That food kills you. Anyway. But if you go, that's called an upsell. So my friend said, you should have upsells for this. I said, what does that even mean? He said, well, if someone buys a potato gun DVD, what's the next thing they need? I said, well, they have to go to

Home Depot and they have to buy all the pipes and all the stuff and the glue. He said, what if you put those together in a kit and then just sold the kit and you send the kit out to people? I said, that's a cool idea. So I found somebody to make these kits and they make a potato gun kit, had all the pipes and everything, all the glue, everything. And so what we did is someone would buy the DVD from me and they'd say, I want the DVD. And then the next page would say, cool, you bought the DVD, we're going to send it to you. Do you want us to put one of these kits in the mail? That way you don't have to buy the pipes.

You can just glue them together. And out of every single person who bought the DVD, for every three people who got the DVD, one person would buy the kit right there. And so that's what we call a funnel. A funnel is where you take people through a sales process. Someone buys the DVD, and then someone buys the kit. And so that's kind of what a funnel is.

I know it's kind of confusing. But that was what a funnel was. And so we did it for my own business is. I know it's kind of confusing, but that was what a funnel was. And so we did it for my own business. I did it for a lot of other people's businesses. And then one day I met this guy named Todd. He's my business partner in ClickFunnels. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia though. He doesn't know where Atlanta is? A couple of you guys? So he lives in Atlanta, way over there. And he said, what if we build software that makes it super easy for people to make, to make websites and funnels the way that you do? And so he built the software and we decided to call it ClickFunnels.

And so what we do is we help entrepreneurs and we teach them about stuff like this, teach them how to start their own businesses, and then they use ClickFunnels to build out their web pages and their funnels. So that's how we got the idea for ClickFunnels. And you guys know what a funnel hacker is on your shirt? A funnel hacker is someone who uses ClickFunnels. So you guys are all funnel hackers now. So that means you are part of our tribe. So all of our people, they say, I'm a funnel hacker. What was your most exciting part of starting your business? Most exciting. So there's this guy. He's six foot seven. You know how tall that is? It's like this tall. His head's like this big and he's super famous. His name's Tony

Robbins. Any of you guys ever heard of Tony Robbins before? You guys have? He could be. Anyway, Tony Robbins is cool. He was someone who I saw him in movies, on TV, and he was super famous. And I always thought he was awesome. And so about 10 years ago, I got to meet him. And then he had me fly out to Fiji. Do you guys know where Fiji is? You do? Fiji is awesome. He has a resort in Fiji. So I flew to Fiji and I got to speak at his seminar. And then he spoke at my seminar, which was super cool and then um recently became business partner so i got to be friends with someone who was my hero for a long time now i became friends and business partners with them so that's probably the most exciting to be able to hang out with with a giant he's literally a giant he is so cool what was the most expensive part

of your business so for click funnels there's over 300 people to work here not all of this office but it costs us a few million dollars a month to pay everybody who works here so that's by far the most expensive is all of the people okay but they're amazing people so we love it what was the most fun part oh the most fun part let's see i think the very first time I made my very first sale, that was so fun. Because I tried to sell stuff, nobody bought it. And the very first time someone gave me money, I made $20. Someone bought something on the internet for me.

I made $20. I was so excited that I called my wife up. I said, we made $20. And she said, that's not very much money. I said, I know, but it's the very first time I made money on the internet. So we went out to dinner and spent that $20 on dinner and a movie. And then guess what? The next day, the person who paid the $20, he asked for a refund. I had to give it back. But it was the very first one. So it was still exciting.

Can we watch your potato gun video? Oh, I can give one to your teachers if they want to make a whole class on potato guns i told you but that's up to them not to me that that that would be a cool class in school i think potato gun 101 yes like on the commercials it costs a lot of money have you ever like been in debt from the commercials yeah a couple times we tried to a couple times we did commercials they didn't make any money and we got in some debt. But we were able to pay it off. What happens a lot of times, a lot of times you'll do a lot of different commercials or ads. And sometimes some of them work, sometimes some don't work.

But hopefully you get more that work than don't work. And the other thing is if you put a commercial on TV, it costs a lot of money. But if you put a commercial on Facebook, it doesn't cost very much money. What made you come up with the name ClickFunnels? What's the inspiration for that? Great question. So we had this other company that we tried to start back in the day called ClickFusion. And I was like, that's a cool name.

I don't know why we thought it was kind of cool, but guess what? That business failed three times. It kept failing. And so when we started the idea for click funnels my uh todd who's my business partner i was like we should call click fusion he's like click fusion always fails it's bad it's bad luck we should call something different like what should we call it right click click um waffles waffle funnels funnel ice cream funnel cake funnel and then also say click funnels i was like oh that sounds cool let's see if we can buy it and nobody also it said ClickFunnels. I was like, ooh, that sounds cool.

Let's see if we can buy it, and nobody owned it. So we're like, yes, we bought ClickFunnels. What do you sell besides Weapons of Death by Potato? So besides Weapon of Death by Potato, so I've written some books. Let's see. So I've written these books. I wrote see. So I've written these books. I wrote this book right here called Expert Secrets. I wrote a book called Dot Com Secrets.

So I sell these books. We also do seminars where we have entrepreneurs from all around the world. They fly actually here to Boise sometimes. So we actually, last week, we had people here from all around the whole world, and they pay us to teach them how to build funnels. And then we also sell click funnels as software so most of our money comes from from click funnels from the software but usually it's us coaching people on how to build businesses or it's the soft click funnel

software that's where most of the money comes from now where were you originally from i grew up in utah what yep i grew up in utah and then I actually, I told you I was a wrestler, remember? So I wrestled and I wrestled at BYU and the BYU dropped the wrestling program. And so I was like, where should I go to wrestle? And Boise State had a program, so I moved to Boise. And I've been here ever since. Is it hard or easy to own your company? Ooh, good question.

Some days it's really easy because I wake up in the morning. I'm like, I can do whatever I want. I don't have to wake up. But some days it's really, really hard. Some days you wake up and it's like, you have 300 for me. I have 300 people to work for me. So if we don't make money, then where are they going to get paid from? And sometimes then they have all their kids. Sometimes it's kind of stressful thinking, man, there's a lot of people who rely on us. So some days it's really nice. I go on vacation for like a week and not worry about it or a couple

weeks but some days it's really stressful so it's kind of that's the entrepreneurship there's the there's really good things that are really scary things at the same time why is your logo like a tablet with gears oh good question so um when we started click phones right we needed a logo design so we hired this guy. His name is Mantis. Kind of like praying mantis, but he's Mantis. And he lives over in Europe somewhere. I don't even know.

And so I said, I want a really cool logo, but I don't know what it looks like. So he designed like 20 different logos and a whole bunch of different ones. And that was one of the ones he designed. And I was like, ooh, it's kind of cool.

I like that was my favorite one. And I like the gears because we could do gears like on my Jeep, we could have gears on it. We could Jeep gears on our t-shirts and our things like that. And so that was just the favorite one I liked of all the different ones that he designed. Did you ever get like, when you wrestled, did you ever get really like hurt really bad? Nothing too bad. I hurt my, I got hurt a little bit, but I never broke a bone or anything super bad. What was your favorite part about starting your business? I think my favorite part is my boys now are wrestling and my kids,

so they do a lot of sporting things. And it's cool because I can leave anytime I want in the middle of the day and go see them go see my wrestling practice or I can do things like that. I can kind of set my own schedule. So that's one of my favorite things. I can set my own schedule and be able to do whatever I want. Were you nervous at all? Oh, yes.

All the time I get nervous. Especially sometimes I get to stand up. So this is kind of a little stage. And there's about, I think about 50 people can fit in here. But this year in February, I spoke at a baseball stadium with 35,000 people in it. So I walked on this huge stage. And there's 35,000 people in it. So I walked on this huge stage and there's 35,000 people and that was really scary. But it was pretty cool too.

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 roadblock. That's why you need Northwest Registered Agent. They're like the dream team for business formation. With just 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can build your entire business identity.

I'm talking about formation paperwork, a real business address, premium mail forwarding, and even a local phone number so you can keep your home address private and stay safe. And it doesn't stop there. Northwest is your one-stop shop for business owners. They've been doing this for nearly 30 years, and they've got the expertise to back it up. From trademark registration to custom domains, Northwest does it all and they do it right. You get more when you start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. Don't wait.

Protect your privacy, build your brand, and set up your business in just 10 clicks in 10 minutes. Head to Northwest Registered Agent today and start building something amazing. Hey, funnel hackers, let's be real. How many of you have forgotten about subscriptions and you keep paying for these things month after month after month? That was my wife and I before Rocket Money came along. Literally a couple months ago, we downloaded this app and within minutes, we found out a whole bunch of subscriptions. In fact, we had multiple Hulu payments, multiple Disney payments from accounts that my wife had set up and I had set up,

and we weren't even using one of them. It was crazy. Okay. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you to find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money showed us where all of our subscriptions were in one place. In fact, it was crazy how many recurring payments we had that we had completely forgotten about. With just a couple of clicks, Rocket Money canceled the ones we didn't need. And the best part is they even monitor unusual spending activity and they alert us if our bills increase. So I'm always in the loop. Rocket Money has over 5 million users, including my wife and I, and has saved a total of over $500 million in canceled subscriptions,

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

That's rocketmoney.com slash russell. If you don't have this restricted access, what's the next product you plan on selling if you are going to? Oh, that's a good question. I, you know know i love software the software business is fun because you create it once and people pay you every single month for it so i think if i ever sold click funnels or if i ever got unrestricted access to whatever i'd probably i'd call my business partner taught up i'd say okay let's build some more software this is really fun because it's really nice some some businesses are hard because it's like you have to ship products from China or the supplements, you have to get all the materials and mix them all.

This one's just nice because it's like we have a bunch of programmers who make the software better every single day, but people are just buying the software. So they keep paying every single month that you keep using it. Also, I'm wondering where did you get your, you know, you said you had that extra pack with all the tubes and stuff. Where did you get those things? Oh, to sell the kits?

Yeah. There was a guy in northern Idaho who I met who he was selling potato guns online. He wasn't selling very many of them. So I bought a kit from him. I'm like, these are really cool. So I called him and I said, hey, you're selling these kits. I'm selling the DVD. If I sell your kit and I pay you for it,

will you ship it out to people? And he said, yeah. So I think, I can't remember exactly, I think I'd pay like $50 to buy the kit from him and I'd sell it for $200. So basically someone would give me $200 and then I would send him $50 and he'd send the kit to him. It was really cool.

Would ClickFunnels be something that smaller YouTubers would make that would maybe be beneficial to them? Or really cool would click funnels be something that smaller youtubers would make that would maybe beneficial to them or would it be like you want to be a youtuber no for sure in fact we have um so do you see did you see the bathroom hallway yet or the kitchen so we have we have we have a really cool thing that we created um it's called the two comma clubs when somebody makes a million dollars inside of a funnel, we give them this huge gold record and there's two commas in it. Do you know why it's called two comma club?

Okay, this is why. If you draw a million dollars, right, this is what a million dollars looks like. That's a million dollars. How many commas are in a million dollars? Two. Oh, so we call it the two comma club. So anytime somebody makes over a million dollars,

we send them a trophy like this and there's two commas and it says, you're in the two comma club. So when you guys see, we send them a big one like this big, and then we put a small one in our office. So when you guys do a tour, you'll see all these all over the place. And then there's a silver one. It means they made $10 million inside of a funnel.

So anyway, I was going to tell you this because we have some kids right now. There's one kid who's, I think, what's Caleb's? Is Caleb 17 or did he turn 18? One kid's like 17 or 18. He won a two comma club award. We've got a couple other kids that are teenagers that are like 15, 16 year old that have almost won a two comma club award. So there are kids that are not that much older than you that are, that are doing this. We had one girl who was here last week. She was, when she was 13 years old, she's, her mom taught her about how this whole business works and she started selling scarves.

And at 13 years old, she made over $100,000 on the internet selling scarves. Isn't that crazy? And then when she turned 16, she didn't want to get a driver's license because she had too much money. So she just had Ubers drive around everywhere, so she never got a driver's license. That's how much money she had. That'd be crazy.

Taking Uber to school every day. If you're just selling like merchandise on your channel like like you know how youtubers sell merchandise yep if you were to make merchandise would it be worth it to advertise it through click funnels or no yeah for sure okay yep for sure what was like the part that you kind of found most interesting who was most interesting? Definitely is all different people we've had a chance to meet. So people that started using ClickFunnels.

First, we didn't know who was going to use it. And then we started meeting these amazing people. Like there's one guy, his name is Chris. And Chris had cancer. He almost died of cancer. And he figured out how to fight cancer. And he ended up not dying. And so he wrote a book called Crisp cancer and he was trying to sell it and

he started selling on click funnels and he's helped like tens of thousands of people to overcome, to be able to fight cancer now from it, from his book, which is really, really cool. And that was just one person. And there's so many interesting people,

like people selling all sorts of things. And so I think that's my favorite part is just seeing all the cool people that we're helping and letting them sell more of their products to help more people. What other awarenesses do you help with? So the main ones that we do, we do Operation Underground Road that helps children from slavery. We go to Kenya every year. We build schools in Kenya for kids out there. And then a lot of people that work with us to do stuff.

Like one, one of these guys, he helps gym owners to build up their gyms. And, uh, last month, he has an Arnold Schwarzenegger is our source. It was like Mr. Olympia, like 20 years. They're like the strongest man ever for a while. Yeah. He gave a hundred thousand dollars to Arnold Schwarzenegger to, to, uh, the, as a boy and boys and girls program or yeah, boys and girls. So he had to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger and he gave him Girls program. Yeah, Boys and Girls. So he got to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he gave him $100,000 to help all these kids. So a lot of people that we help help tons of different organizations and charities too.

It's really cool. What was the hardest part of your job? For a long time, the hardest part was I had to fire somebody. Oh, that was the worst. Someone works for you, and they're not doing a very good job, they'd be like, I have to fire you. In fact, the first time I fired someone, guess what happened afterwards? I cried for like 10 minutes. It was really bad. I don't fire people anymore, which is really nice. Hardest thing now

is sometimes when ClickFunnels has problems, we have 89,000 people use our software. So like one time we were flying to London and when I was in the air, ClickFunnels went down and everybody's websites, everyone's funnels went down. And when I landed, people were super mad. I got thousands of messages on my phone, everyone who was mad that all their websites were down and that was not very much fun. So those are the hard parts sometimes when stuff like that happens. What's the hardest part that happened to you before, like in the start of your business? The start of my business? Twice I almost went bankrupt. Twice where I started making a little bit of money and then I lost it all.

That was the first time I had probably six or seven employees and then I couldn't afford it all and we almost lost it all. And the second time I built up to 100 employees I was like, this is amazing. And then everything fell apart and I had to fire like 80 people in one day. That was really hard too.

There's a lot of ups and downs. Someone earlier, you back here earlier said you didn't want to be an entrepreneur because of the risks. So the nice thing about being an entrepreneur, there's, there's two things, right? There's a lot of risks. So there's a lot of reasons, like a lot of times you can fail. And if you fail, you don't get paid anything. Like when I show up at work, I don't guarantee to get money. When you're an employee, you guarantee, like if you get a job, you always get paycheck every two weeks. For me, I didn't get a guarantee. But the upside is that you can make unlimited money.

So you have unlimited, there's no ceiling on it. So you kind of have the both. You can lose everything or you can make everything, but that's the scary part of it. But I still think it's worth it. It's sort of like a teeter-totter hanging off a cliff. You either fall or you live. So risk or no risk. You go on it, you risk your life.

You don't, you stay alive. There you go. The entrepreneur teeter totter. You either live or you die. The last question. Make sure it's the best one ever what's your favorite part about your job hmm so all i like all the people that work here at click funnels are my best friends so i have my favorite thing they come every day i see all my best friends we all get to hang out

and talk about business and have ideas and brainstorm and it's just fun to hang out all my friends every day i'll give you one more final, maybe tough question. All right. Um, as you've built this, obviously you've had to venture out into different things, whether that's speaking or hiring people and firing people, all these different things. What would you say has been, um, the greatest fear that you've had to face? It's, it's tough. Cause there's a, there's a lot of fears that go into starting a business because the past never, like there's never a path a path it's always you're just kind of like so when you fire hire your first employee you're like do i actually hire somebody i have enough money to hire like like what's the rules what's the laws i don't even know but it's like i know i need help so it's

just like i just hire them and then you're like waiting for everything to collapse and you're like okay nothing bad happened okay cool let me hire person. And my first time I hired eight employees before I knew how to pay taxes. I didn't even know that was the thing. I had no idea. And I found out later and it's like, oh, you have to pay taxes and payroll tax. And like, I didn't know that.

It's like, then you have to like go and fix all the problems that you made. But I think a lot of times for me, the scary part is I didn't know anything. I was just kind of just stepping out and like, I was passionate about stuff. So I was trying to create things. And as I was creating things, that's when to be able to support the art of what we're trying to

do. Like we had to figure out all the other stuff along the way, but we're so passionate what we're doing. Like it made it worth it. But just the fear of like, and every step of it, because there's, there's a million books, but you don't know like which book to read for this problem or this situation. Or a lot of times you read a book later, like, oh, that would have been awesome to know way back, way back here. So a lot of it's just being willing to risk it all and just hope for the best and hopefully figure it out as you go. I heard someone say one time, it's like you're jumping out of airplane and you're building the parachute as you're falling. And you're like, I hope I get this thing figured out before I hit the ground.

I guess what it feels like most days, especially in the early, especially the early days, less nowadays, we've got pretty good structure in place now, but initially was very a lot of that kind of stuff and that's why i think a lot of people don't do the entrepreneurship because that first step is really scary it's not like i know this is the past you know get a get a degree go to college get a job there's no path like that it's like okay go create something in the the market will tell you if you're worth it or not that's kind of scary to put yourself out there a lot of times. Would you like to see behind the scenes of what we're actually doing each day to grow our company? If so, then go subscribe to our free behind the scenes reality TV show at www.funnelhacker.tv.