The Russell Brunson Show - The MOST Important Part of the Funnel (I Guarantee it’s NOT What You Think!)

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

What is the future of funnels...? With meta-verse coming, what should we be focused on now!? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I'm back with my co-host Josh Forti. How you doing, man? Josh Forti: I'm doing awesome, man. How are you? Russell: Doing so good. We just recorded a new episode for you guys. This one's all about funnels and I think it went in a different direction you thought it was going to go, didn't it? Josh: Yeah, it did, a little bit. It was super good. Russell: …because the question was like, "What is the next funnel? What's the thing?" And it wasn't a funnel thing, it was something different. So, I think this is an episode you guys can enjoy. Josh: It's tough. Russell: It's been so exciting for me, I literally woke up at 5:00 AM every morning this week because I'm geeking out on the thing that you're going to learn about. And hopefully, it'll help you guys with all your funnels, no matter if you're running a webinar funnel, or a book funnel, or a challenge funnel, or whatever, doesn't really matter. This principle, you can overlay on top of all of them and it'll make them all better. So, that said, should we queue up the theme song? Josh: Let's do it. Russell: Let's go. Josh: Now we got to move into.. I want to move into funnels, dude. This is a topic that continued to come up. So kind of a back story. When we're preparing for this episode, guys like, Russell hit me up and was like, "Do you want to do a podcast together?" And I was like, "Yeah, what do you want to do it on?" He's like, "I don't know, find something." And I'm like, "oh, all right." And so- Russell: "You tell me." Josh: I do what I all always do and I go to the community and I'm like, if the community tells me... I loved Poland's presentation at Funnel Hacking Live it's like, "Ask, go ask your community. What did they tell you?" And so, that's what we did. I went to my Facebook group and I went on my Instagram and luckily, I have a pretty engaged following that will give us lots of feedback back. And this theme that kept coming up was funnels. And obviously, this is your world. But it was interesting because I've been talking with several different higher level people that are like, "How are all the funnels, they made tens of millions of dollars or whatever?" And it's like, "This funnel's not really working anymore. This funnel's kind of working here. This type of funnel is working." And so there's like, I feel like we're in this phase of funnels are almost evolving, where it used to be that you could run an ad to a webinar and sell a 9.97 product, and make a million bucks, and high profit margins, and you can make it work. But I was talking to Dan Henry the other day and he's like, "Dude, I can't even make that work anymore." And he's like, "And I'm brilliant at ads." And like Sam Ovens, I was talking to him the other day- Russell: Dan Henry, "I know everything." I love Dan. Josh: And Sam Ovens was like, "Man, we're probably going to shut down our front-end $2,000 program and we're going to transition up and evolve the way we do funnels." And so, funnels are the thing, obviously. They're going to be around forever, they've been around forever, you popularized them. But I want to go and take this into two parts and see where this goes. But number one, what is the foundation of funnels? What are the things that like... it doesn't matter how it's executed, the funnel itself, this is the thing that works. Because I think a lot of people get confused that... Whenever I talk to a lot of my students that are building funnels, they're like, "Should I do this type or this?" And I'm like, "The core essence of funnels doesn't change," so what are the core essence of funnels? And then two, what is the future of what that looks like rolled out with technology? Because I mean, I know it's not here yet and one of the things we'll talk about, but- Russell: Metaverse. Josh: We got Metaverse. And my wife was like, "Oh my gosh, ask Russell. If I want to be able to walk into Metaverse and Russell's going to be right there being like, "'Hey, do you want to buy my funnel cake,' click this button and you go into a portal. Instead of another page, you enter a new world that is Russell's world, that'd be so cool." But let's start with the foundation of funnels. When someone is building a funnel, when they're looking at it, what are the core pieces that they're actually looking at? Take us back to the foundation of that because I think a lot of people miss that or forget. Russell: Yeah. So, I'll take you back in history back in time so back to my beginning. Think what example I have sitting here on my desk that I can show you. So, the core, the thing you have to understand why funnels are essential, and why they'll always be here, comes back to my favorite Dan Kennedy quote of all time which is, "Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins." This is the foundation but... Everything else you have understand- Josh: Like 7,000 speakers at Funnel Hacking Live all said that. Russell: Yeah, because it's the thing. In fact, you'll see, if you look at the... And maybe we'll get into this. My next move, what's happening next year for me? I'm looking at this, all ties into that as well. Why did I buy Dan Kennedy's company? Why am I doing these things? And I'll show you it's literally to solve that exact same question. So, when I got started 20 years ago, people didn't have offers yet they just had a product. So, you would be... Just say a book, like, "Okay, here's my book," and I would just sell a product, and that was what I was selling. And it worked for a long time and then guess what? Everyone else is like, "Oh, dude's making money with this product, I can make a product," they make the same product. Now you got 10 people selling a product that's similar. And so, then it's harder to compete because now you're no longer a unique thing, you are a commodity. And anytime you're a commodity, the person with the lowest price always wins. So, as soon as everyone's doing it, you got to drop at the bottom and then you lose your margin and then life sucks because if you don't profit what's the point of what we're doing? So, there's the first phase. So, then the next phase is like, "Okay, well I got a product, everyone's got the same product but how do I turn this from a product into an offer?" That was the first evolution. It's like, "Hey, when you buy my book, you also get my book, but you're also going to get my video course, my audio course, and then my checklist and my..." And all of a sudden you make something truly unique again where it's like, not just a product, but this is my offer that's specific, unique to me, that nobody else has. So that was the next evolution. And we got really good then in making offers that were sexy. It's like, "Oh yeah, everyone's selling this, but mine, if you get mine, you also da da, da, da, these other things." Right? And that's where this whole offer development started happening. In my mind, probably 15 years ago is when this became the thing that we all focused on. And whoever had the best offer was going to win because ads didn't ship that much. It was just like you're competing so now you're competing with six different people or 10 different people. So because that, Google ads AdWords cost went up, because there's 20 people bidding on the same keyword versus just you, initially. Now you're coming in, you make a better offer. Then you get the lion share people buy from you because your offer is the best. That was kind the next phase. And then of course the market evolves. Everyone gets smart. Everyone starts making good offers. Now it's like, maybe they're unique offers, but they're all good offers. Now it's like the market's getting fragmented up again. And so this is where the evolution now of funnels started happening where... And it was before. We didn't have one click up-sales back in the day. But the first thing was like: you buy my potato gun DVD, fill in your credit card, you buy it. The next page, you're like, "Do you want the potato gun kit? Cool. Get your credit card back out and fill it out again." And they'd fill out all the credit card again. Josh: Dang. Russell: But even with that, there's no one-click up-sales, man, like 15, 20, 30% people would buy the second thing. And all of a sudden, I'm selling a potato gun DVD, but I'm making 200 bucks on the back of the kit and nobody else selling potato gun DVDs was doing. I could outspend them all. So even though costs me more per click, I was able to get all the clicks because I made way more money than anybody else. So I was able to dominate the market. And that was kind of the next phase. And what's interesting is that depending on the market you're in, depends on where this is. For example, I'm in a fun phase where I wanted some side projects. So I'm launching a couple supplement companies. The first supplement company launched is called Zooma Juice. It's a green drink company. And some of you guys know, I actually worked with Drew Canole and his team back in the day on Organifi, and helped them launch that when it first came out seven years ago, and helped him build an actual funnel. And what's interesting is because of that... The green drink market is sophisticated. I went and funnel hacked, probably, 30 green drink offers before we built Zooma Juice. And all of them have pretty advanced funnels. Everyone's doing the best practices pretty well. Second company that we are starting, I acquired a bone broth company. And so I took... Got bone broth company and went funnel hacked every bone broth offer. And that market's new. Nobody had a funnel, not one. They have an offer, they have a product, that's it. And I'm like, "I'm walking into virgin funnel territory." We’ll be the biggest bone broth company on the planet in like 30 days? Because there's nobody who understands any of what we're talking about. We'll outspend everybody 10 to 1 because we understand the funnel structure. So depending on what market you're in, some markets haven't even evolved to the funnels yet. Some have, that's exciting. If they have, it's like, "Cool. We got... We can funnel hack. We get good ideas of what's working." If it hasn't like, "Man, you can bring all the stuff we know into these markets and just dominate and destroy them all." It was funny, as we were buying, I was funnel hacking the bone broth offers, I was like, "There's literally not single upsell, order form bump, email sequence. Like nothing." I was just like, "This is like, oh, embarrassing. Almost too easy." That was next phase though. And then to your point, initially it was like... In fact, I remember 10 pre-click funnels. Almost every funnel was the same. It was a video sales letter order button order form upsell one, upsell two, down-sell, down-sell. Thank you, basically. That was what a funnel was. In fact, if you look at, before we launched ClickFunnels, the first T and C event, Ryan Dice and Perry, and they had this whole team event talk about, "Here's the funnel." And they had a funnel and there's only one. And it was just like, "This is the five steps of every funnel." And it fits. It was like trip wire. They had these five steps like trip wire, profit maximizer, and they five or six... They had a name for each page. And it was like, "This is the funnel." And in reality, that was the funnel. There weren't funnels. It was like, "This is a funnel. This is kind of the one." And at the time when I was writing The Dot Com Seekers book and we had been playing with different ones, but there wasn't a lot of this thing out there. Was just kind of like, for the most part, there was a funnel. After ClickFunnels came out and it gave people the ability to create things fast and start innovating, creating ideas, that. And then I was like writing all my ideas in the book and people are doing stuff. It started evolving quickly. Last seven years have evolved where now there's been like a million different funnel things come out, from webinar funnels, auto webinar funnels, high funnels, low ticket funnels, trip wires, SLOs VSLs, challenges, paid challenges, free challenges, challenges to a webinar challenges to high tickets, a webinar to high ticket. There's a billion variations that come from that which probably gets people overwhelming. And so this os what I want to tell them because, this kind of comes back to your first questions, what is it? The reality is, it's going to be shocking for most of you guys, what funnel type you use doesn't really matter. They all work. The thing that matters is the offer. You still have to make the sexiest offer. That's still the most important. We acquired Dan Kennedy's company and we're doing this merger. And like I've spent I podcast episode this morning driving to the office. I've been up every single morning at 5:00 AM because I'm so excited. Because we have a fun, we picked a funnel on structure, we have all of products. I spend a week every morning at 5:00 AM, from 5:00 till like 7:30, when my kids are getting up, in there writing the page for the copy and the offer, and then tweaking and tweaking. That's the thing. The sexiness of the offer that gets people in is the key. So I can get them in, I can use this to get them in a webinar, in a challenge, in a free plus shipping. It doesn't matter. It's like the offer is the thing that puts people in a momentum. And the thing that I'm selling, I could sell it in the webinar. I could sell it in the challenge. I like there's I could sell in all the different funnels. It would fit in all of them. I'm picking the one that I'm using because I think it's going to go... For like the launch campaign, it the one that'll probably get sells the fastest, but it'll work in all of them. And So it's understanding that, it's still coming to the core fundamentals. The funnel structure is the sales process. All of them will work. You just got to figure out better way to sell. Like that's the harder thing that people are missing. Josh: All right. So let's talk... I want to dive into that offer. When you say specifically here... Because I think, and this is just from coaching with a lot of people, the questions that I get asked when I talk about this type of stuff. You talk about the offers, the sexy thing, but how does the offer affect getting somebody to opt in? How does the offer affect my ad? How does the offer affect the training? I don't show my offer until the end after the whole thing. So how does that affect every other step of the funnel? Russell: Okay, great question. So if I can see one here. Right, sorry. I had all the examples here a second ago. Oh, well. I'll just tell you the story. So when Dan Kennedy started his newsletter, in the Dan Kennedy company, the newsletter's the foundation of everything. And we could do a whole podcast episode just on psychology of the original GKIC, when Bill Glazer was running it with Dan. But the newsletter- Josh: Sounds like a sexy topic. Russell: Yeah. It'd be really fun, actually. I love... In fact, it's funny because I spent so much time with Bill Glazer geeking out about. I knew their business really well. And when that they sold it the very first time people bought it and didn't understand the business. And I saw within weeks of them destroying the foundation, I was like, "You guys literally don't know what you bought. You should have asked some questions before you wrote a check that big anyway." But the core is the newsletter. And so I had a chance to go back in the archives. I literally... they gave me, "Here's Google drive. Everything's ever been created." So I'm like, "This is... It's insane." for nerdy Russell, everything Dan's ever said is in this drive. And most of it, no one's ever seen before, so I'm freaking out. But the newsletter started back in like 1995 ish. I was like 15 years old when it started and it was just a newsletter. That's all it was right. It's like a product. That's how they sold it. And from '95 till I think I was probably 23, 24. So, 2004, 2005 ish was when Bill Glazer bought out the company from Dan and kind of ran it, and then they launched it. Instead of a newsletter, they launched it as an offer. And the offer at the time... I still remember the day it happened because I got like 400 emails from my Yanik Silver and all the different gurus at the time. They all started emailing about this Dan Kennedy offer. And it was called the most incredible free gift ever. And in fact, internally in the company called the MIFGE offer, M-I-F-G-E, the most incredible free gift ever. And what it was, it was like, "Hey, when you sign up for magnetic marketing net letter, what you're going to get is you're going to get..." I think it's like, "$639.93 for the money making material from Dan Kennedy himself." So it was like, "We'll give you all this cool stuff when you sign up for the newsletter." And it was the bribe. It's kind of like, if you guys remember back in the day, sports illustrator. It's really hard to sell sports illustrated issues. So what they would do is they would have TV commercials were like, "Here's sports illustrator, 12 issues year about the best sports. When you sign up today, we're going to give you..." And then they had their version of the most incredible free gift offer. It was this huge football clock and the sports illustrator swimsuit issue. That was the MIFGE offer for sports illustrator. And so Dan had their... They had their MIFGE offer, and they went from having five or 600 subscribers at that time to... Bill built it up to over, I don't know, 10, 15, 20. I don't know how big it got it as peak, but 10,000 plus members. And it was because they took a newsletter and they made it an offer. And that's how they launched initially. And so the MIFGE is how they did it. Now, fast forward to Russell gets access to all this stuff. I'm like, "This is amazing." So I'm trying to sit... I sat down Monday morning. No, sorry. It was last Saturday. Saturday. I wanted to write... I didn't want to do all the pages in the offer. So I have some of my team do the upsells and down-sells. I was like, "The landing page, this is mine." I want to write because I want to make sure I get the offer right and everything. Because this is... everything hinges on this. The landing page is broken, nothing works. And so I went and I funnel hacked. I every newsletter, sales letter, I could find throughout time. I just went deep in my archives, way back machine. People I knew who publishing newsletters, looked at every variation of theirs for the last 10 years. I totally geeked out like Russell does. Funnel hacking. I want to understand how people are structuring their newsletter offers. Gore's got a ton of them. So I'm looking at tons of them and everyone I looked at, I come back to like the Dan Kennedy one I'm like this offers just not sexy. More like $630 of money making information sounded cool in 2003. But today, it's like every opt-in, people are giving a thousand dollars worth of free crap. It wasn't that sexy- Josh: Right. Inflation, baby. Oh my word. Russell: Yeah. And then I'm like, "Now my funnel nerds are going to go and they're going to sign for this newsletter, and they're going to get this newsletter from Dan. He's talking about direct mail and faxing. And they're going to be confused and they're going to cancel." I have this weird opportunity. I was like, "This is just not the right thing." And I was like, "How do I make this sexy excited? How do I get myself excited to email about it?" And then Dan's email. I got to get affiliates on board and other people. How do I make this sexy so that I can create the noise? So that when there's an ad, there's a good enough hook in the ad that people are going to click? Because if the ads like, "Old marketing, grumpy marketing genius is going to give you 300 or $639 money making material for free when you join this newsletter," no one's going to click on that. The hook sucks now. It was good in 2003, horrible in 2021. And so I'm like sitting there and I spent three hours just going to yourself. And I was like, no matter how I tried, the offer just didn't feel right. And I explain to other knight, I was like, "I know I wouldn't click and I know I wouldn't buy it. And I don't want to even email my list tell them about it because it's not that exciting. How do I structure this in a way that's going to be really exciting?" And so that the problem. This is where I got stuck at. Right. And then, after about three hours of it is when I had the light bulb, I was like, "Oh my gosh." So all of the current Dan Kennedy customers, they love Dan. They're obsessed with them. And actually, this is a fascinating step. You'll appreciate this. Have you read a thousand true fans? Josh: Yeah. I love that book. Russell: It was crazy. So Dan's company was sold initially like 10 years ago, from Bill Glazer sold it. In the last 10 years, they haven't bought a single ad. So that's the attrition of the company, that's been happening. And I'm acquiring it like, "Oh, let's buy some ads." But what's crazy is 10 years since they bought the last ad, there are almost, to a T, it's like 990 something active paid subscribers still on a newsletter a decade later, without any ads at all. A thousand true fans. Is that crazy? Josh: That's insane. Russell: Really? Josh: And you're one of those true fans because you bought the whole company. Russell: Yeah. I thought that was a fascinating side note. So anyway, that's crazy. Like Dan's people love Dan. They love him talking. If they want Dan, but they need funnels. And I'm like, I don't want to come and be the guy who acquires the company and just starts emailing his own offer. I need them to.. I need to indoctrinate them to want it. So it's like, they're going to read Dan's newsletter and how do I bridge that to ClickFunnels? And I'm like, my funnel nerds are going to read his newsletter and be like, "I don't understand. This isn't..." They need it. They don't know they want it yet. If I can indoctrinate them for a while, they'll be like, "Oh my gosh, I get this," but it's going to take a while for them to really respect it enough that they'll get it. I was the same way. First time I heard Kennedy, I was like, "This guy's old, boring, and doesn't relate to what I'm talking about." And after I went deep in, I was like, "Oh my gosh, everything he says is literal. He's handing gold nuggets out." And I was just like, I didn't notice them. Now I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And so I was like, "I need this bridge." And some people know, when I first joined the Kennedy world, we actually launched my first print newsletter right afterwards. It was called The Dot Com Seekers Journal. It morphed from The Dot Com Seekers Journal to eventually call it, The Dot Com Seekers Labs. And then it became a Funnel Report and then it became Funnel University. So I actually ran a print newsletter for 14 years. We shut it down two years ago, but 14 years I ran a print newsletter. Josh: Yeah. I remember when you shut it down actually. Russell: Yeah. And I loved it, but I just, anyway... There's reasons like the person who was publishing it, she had a baby and she retired and all these things. I was just like, "Ah. I'm, I'm focusing ClickFunnels. Don't even worry about this right now." So we shut it down. But I loved that part of it. And I was like, what if I create an offer where the concept, the story, the hook of this whole entire thing is like, "Russell bought Dan company and they're coming together to give you two things like the best foundational direct response in the world. Plus the best in the marketing, the cutting edge, the new things are happening. So you can have both sides. So you understand the foundation you need to be able to survive Facebook slapping you and all these things happening and media shifting and changing. But you also have like what's working today so you can capitalize on things in real time." What if we took those two worlds together? The baby. And so instead of just being like, "You're signing for the new, from the Dan Kennedy newsletter," what if it was like, "Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson?" Two different newsletters. You get two newsletters for the price of one. I was like, "That's the offer. That's the hook. That's what gets affiliates excited, to get ads excited, everything gets excited around this offer." And then, every mornings at 5:00 in this morning, or 5:00 AM every morning this week, I woke up and I'm writing copy for this page of like, "Okay, here's the hook. They're coming in. And there's Dan and there's Russell." How these things are coming together. And the story behind that, how it worked and then the offer instead of just like, "Here's $697 worth of free stuff," it's like, "you get two newsletters. You get the best direct response, best of Russell, every two weeks." So you get one in the mail and then 14 days later, you get the next one. And you're getting both of these. You get the old and the new but you only pay one price. You get both for the price of one. And then you get all Dan's bonus, all Russell's bonuses. Now becomes this like insane offer where, now, it's like, "I'm excited to mail my list." We bought Dan's company, you get all my best stuff in this to get, and it's this combination. And then affiliates will be excited. It just... And maybe the hook bombs, I don't know. But it gave me the energy, just like, "Okay, now, this is exciting and sexy." And so I can turn that into webinar where it's just like, "Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson coming together to literally blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever." Like, "Opt in here to find our webinar," and people would opt in because the story, the hook is exciting or I can do a challenge like, "The seven day challenge. Me and Dan are going to go through how to destroy your business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And in the end, I'm selling a newsletter or it could be a VSL telling the story with a newsletter or could be... all of them work. The book is the secrets of story. Josh: Well, what it sounds like... Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like you just created this story about the offer. And now that you know what the offer is, and there's a reason that that came together and like, "That's what it is," now, you understand the story behind that. I'm trying to think of it like an analogy. For example, Disney world. That offer is so good. You're literally going into a different world that pretty much sells itself once you put it out there. And so once you have the story, once you have that idea around what the offer does and how it's unique and how it's it's own unique thing, then you can just take that and then it fills the rest of the funnel. Because everybody wants that thing because now the offer itself is so good. And I think one of the problems that I had, man, for so long is, I was trying to convince people that they wanted my thing be... Or convince people that they had this problem, and then that they wanted this thing, and then I would make them an offer on it. And they wouldn't get to... they wouldn't even know about the offer, or what the offer did, or like anything about it, until like forced or like right before the offer. And they'd be like, "And then I've got this offer? Boo." And because of that, there was no story around it. There's no congruency with it. And so then it was like, "Oh, I didn't even know. That's what I was here for." And then I would like try to sell them something and it wouldn't sell. And I feel like that's the problem that got solved right there, is like first you created the offer and the story around the offer and you made it sexy. And then that made everything else on the funnel super, super easy, because you were just pointing them back to that. Russell: Everything, the funnel plus all the ads. Because now the ads are fun. "Why Dan Kennedy came out of retirement? Dan Kennedy almost died. What's he doing today?" All a sudden, all these hooks that tie into that. "Why did Dan Kennedy partner with the owner ClickFunnels? Why did... Is it true that ClickFunnels was built off the back of all Dan Kennedy principles?" There's so many stories I can tell now that are hooks. That'll grab his people in or my people in or... And then the landing page. And then... It creates everything. And the people that the best in the world of this, and they also make the most money, is Agora. The good Gora publishing. They're selling newsletters. That's all they sell. Right. But every single time they have these insane stories like Porter Stan's got... I think maybe not still, but for like a decade and a half, the highest of all the Agora divisions. I think he'll do like 1.5 or 2 billion dollars a year. Like these are big divisions. Porter's letter one. And, the story was like, "The railroad across America." And it was talking about like, "The original railroad, how it happened and all the people made money along the way. And this is the next railroad that's being built. It's the digital highway and all this stuff." And that offer was selling a newsletter. But it's the story behind it that became this thing that built a billion dollar company. And they're good. They're so good at figuring out the story, those kind of things. And I think sometimes we're like, "Hey, I've created a course in the passed. You should create a course too. I made money. It's going to be awesome." And then like, "You should buy my course creating software or whatever." Like, "That's not the thing." We're so bad at telling stories. We brag about our result. We tell them making the same result and that's it. It's like, no, that's not the key. It's the story. It's the entry. It's the... We want to be entertained. We want to be courted. We want to be... that's the game we're playing in marketing. And so when you figure that out... The offer is actually sexy. And then why is that sexy? The sexiness is not just, "You get a bunch of crap." The sexiness is the story about like how this was created. Josh: Literally what it does that. Russell: That’s the fascinating part. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Catherine Jones. One of her favorite things is, "When your stories become their stories, then your solutions become their solutions." and that's literally what this is. If you can tell them a story where they like it and they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing," then, go and do it. So for example, Harry Potter world. The story, it... My wife freaking loves Harry Potter world. I mean, that was her thing. When we went down to Funnel Hacking Live, it was like, we were going to take a half a day just to go to Harry Potter world. So we showed up and then it was like, "Hey." Miles is like, "Dude, the buss is leaving for Harry Potter world." There wasn't much convincing that has to be done. The story is, "Oh my gosh, Harry Potter world's amazing. It's Harry Potter. I want it" She wanted that thing because of the story that was leading up to it. There was no, "What's Harry Potter world? Is it any good? What's this?" It's like, "No, it's Harry Potter world." And you're like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I want it." That's like the story with that. So that's super, super interesting. So where do you see the future of funnels going? Because obviously there's a lot of changes coming with ClickFunnels and ClickFunnels 2.0, which, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Gusting. Gusting hits me up. Probably... Dude, he probably hits me up once a week and is like, "Hey, guess what? ClickFunnel 2.0 is awesome. And you don't have it." And I'm like, "I heard you. Stop." Russell: He actually built out the magnetic marketing funnel hub right now for me, which is cool. Josh: So, yeah. So anyway, but what's the next evolution? And we don't have really have too much to talk about metaverse and where that goes. But we're entering this new world. I mean, the world is changing very, very, very rapidly. COVID is one of those things that we thought the internet was a big deal, and internet marketing was a big deal, pre-COVID, and then we watch zoom blow up by like 3000% or something like that. And they ruin zoom for us. But anyway, so where are things going that people should be paying attention to and going actually studying and understanding about the future of funnels? Because one of the things that I've been really, really focused on and we're kind of getting dialed in, is community funnels, Specifically, I think for me, one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very, very... It's getting increasingly harder to sell things unless you have a community that's tied with it. And so like for me, one of the things we're focusing on is how do we build funnels inside of our community where our community actually becomes part of the funnel? Which is kind of a cool concept. What do you see as those future things of where funnels are headed, where the big opportunities are going to be? What's the next add to webinar to a 9 97 course? You know what I'm saying? What's the future? Where we're heading? Russell: I hate to make it sound simple, but if I come back to the fundamentals we talked about the beginning of this call. Like Dan Kennedy, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. So you look at it through that lens. Went from a product, to an offer, to a funnel. And now with the funnel, I have more ways to make money. And then, from there, the next evolution was like from funnel to value ladder. Right now, it's like, I have a break even funnel and move people up a value ladder and that's how I may lose money or break even on my book funnel, but then my webinar funnel's going to make money or vice versa. Right? Josh: Right. Russell: That was the next phase. And I think, for me, where I'm playing because I'm trying to play for the next 10 years. How do I win this game? We're doing well. I want to.. How do I get a point where, Shopify, or Salesforce is like, "I want to write you a check for 20 billion because you're such annoyance." The way I'm going to do that, for me, is... and it comes back to why did I acquire Magnet Marketing? Why did I buy Brad Callin’s company? Why am I doing this? Because I'm not looking at breakeven funnels anymore. Breakeven funnels, awesome. I'm going one chair back or I'm building breakeven businesses. So magnetic marketing, the only gold magnetic is to break even. The entire company, the value ladder, the coaching, the everything. So every penny made side of magnetic marketing be dumped back into ads, want 100% of the profits dump back into ads. So this company's blowing up. And I get now all these things dumped into my value ladder for ClickFunnels. Like that's it. Voomly doing 40 million a year? Why do we acquire that company? Tons of lead flow. Now, right now there's... it was 10 million dollars a year net profit. All that money now is being dumped directly into lead flow as a breakeven business, to acquire customers for ClickFunnel. So I think it's going deeper. It's looking past... from product to offer, to funnel, to value ladder, to how do I buy or acquire or create something where the only goal of this entire business is just get customers for free that can put into here. And I thing, for me, that's the next level is just like that thought. Josh: You just blew my mind, dude. Holy cow. You're creating an ecosystem, but in a very specific way. It's interesting, as you just told that out, just, "First, it was this. Then, it was this." The thing before it didn't change. That's still part of it. Russell: It's both the same. Yeah. Josh: Right. But it's kind of that next evolution, that next piece of where that comes out. That's fascinating. I think a lot of people need to just really rewind that, go listen to that clip again and let your brain sit on that. Russell: That's how I'm playing the game. Yes. Hopefully I'm four step ahead everyone else, but I'm all for showing that with you guys. And so I just... Again, for everyone to start thinking that, because it's going to get harder. It's going to get more expensive. It's going to get more... We've seen that this year. Ad costs have gone up. It's not going to get cheap. It's not going to bounce back down and be cheaper. It's going to keep doing that. The people who only had a product back in the day are out of business. People only had an offer back in day, they're out of business. People don't have a funnel are out of a business. People don't have a value ladder out of a business. So it's just thinking ahead of that. Metaverse or whatever next step is, doesn't really matter. It's the principle still is the same for me. For 20 years, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. Josh: Wins. Russell: How do I do that in a way that serves the customers, brings them in and then... I'll end on this, because it back to what you said. And I did a podcast on this. It's in the facts I got from Dan Kennedy. After the company sold last time, he was super mad at the company that had jacked up his brand and his legacy and stuff. And so like he sent this 25 page facts, like all the things to do to fix it. And there's one paragraph where he said, "There's difference between why customers come in and why they stay." He said, "People think they're the same things." He's like, "No, no, they're different." Why they come in is because they see the hook of like, "Ooh, the scene." They come in from that. They stay for something different. And you have to understand that. So like I had my inner circle meeting, right. Everyone paid 50 grand to be in the room. We had a hundred entrepreneurs in the room and I told them. I said like, "Well, you guys all because you want to learn funnels from Russell." But I'm like, "The reason why you came is not why you were going to stay here. The reason I get sick year, after year, after year is because of the community." That's it. That's why I sat in Dan Kennedy rooms for six years of my life is because the community built and I wanted to be around these people. I came for Dan stuck for the community. And I think that you start understanding that, that's how you get these people to come in on a front end, but they stay and they buy over and over and they stay on continuity. They stick because it's like.. They come in from a hook, but they stay for the something different. And so really understanding that and then weaving everything you're doing like you're doing now with the community funnels, which is perfect. Josh: That's amazing. That's amazing. All right. Well I think that's a good ending point for that topic. Russell: There's episode number two of our hangout today, which was amazing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I'm back with my co-host, Josh Forte.

How you doing, man? I'm doing awesome, man. How are you? Doing so good. We just recorded a new episode for you guys. This one's all about funnels. And I think it went in a different direction you thought it was going to go, didn't it?

Yeah, it did. A little bit. Yeah. It was super good. Because the question was like, what is the next funnel like what's the thing and uh it wasn't a funnel thing it was something different so i think this episode you guys can enjoy um it's been so exciting for me i literally woke up at 5 a.m every morning this

week because i'm geeking out on the thing that you're going to learn about um and uh hopefully i'll help you guys with all your funnels no matter if you're running a webinar funnel or a book funnel or a challenge funnel or whatever doesn't really matter this principle you can overlay on top of all of them and it'll make them all better. So that said, should we keep a theme song? Let's do it. Let's go. So the big question is this,

how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital? We're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. Now we've got to move into – I want to move into funnels, dude. This is a topic that continued to come up so kind of a backstory when we were preparing for this episode guys like russell

hit me up and was like do you want to do a podcast together and i was like yeah what do you want to do it on he's like i don't know find something and i'm like oh all right and so me i do what i always do and i go to the community right and i'm like the community tells me i loved um uh poland's uh presentation at funnel hacking live right it's like ask go ask your community like what did they tell you and so that's what we did i did it went on my facebook group and i went on my instagram and like luckily i have a pretty engaged following that you know will give us lots of feedback back right and this this theme that kept coming up was funnels right and obviously this is your world but it was

interesting because i i was talking with i've been talking with several different like kind of higher level people that are, you know, like how all the funnels, they made tens of millions of dollars or whatever. And it's like, this funnel is not really working anymore. Like this model is kind of working here. Like this type of funnel is working. Right. And so there's like, I feel like we're in this, this phase of like kind of funnels are almost like evolving, right.

Where it used to be that you could run an ad to a webinar and sell a 997 product and make a million bucks, right? Like, and high profit margins, and you can make it work, right? But I was talking to Dan Henry the other day, and he's like, dude, I can't even make that work anymore, right? And he's like, and I'm brilliant at ads, right? And like, Sam Ovens, I was talking to him the other day. I'm Dan Henry, I know everything. And like, Sam Ovens was like, man, like we're we're probably gonna shut down our front end two thousand dollar program we're gonna you know kind of transition up and kind of evolve the way we do funnels right and so like funnels are the thing obviously right they're gonna be around

forever they've been around forever like you popularize them right but like i kind of want to go and and take this like into two parts and kind of see where this goes with number one like what is the like what is the, like, what is the foundation of funnels? Like what, what, what are the things that like, it doesn't matter how it's executed, like the funnel itself, like this is the thing that works. And like, cause I think a lot of people get confused, right? That whenever I talk to a lot of my students that are like building funnels, like, should I do this type of thing? And I'm like, the core essence of funnels doesn't change. Right. So like, what are the core essence of funnels?

And then two, what is the future of what that looks like rolled out with technology? Because like, I mean, I know it's not here yet. And one of the things we'll talk about, but we got metaverse, right? Like, and like my, my wife was like, oh my gosh, ask Russell, if I'm going to be able to walk into the metaverse and Russell's going to be right there being like, Hey, do you want to buy my funnel cake? Click this button and you go into a portal. Instead of another page, you enter a new world that is Russell's world. Like that'd be so cool. Right? So, but like what, let's start with the kind of the foundation of funnels. Like when

someone is building a funnel, when they're looking at it, like what are the core pieces that they're actually looking at? Like, take us back to the foundation of that, because I think a lot of people are miss that or forget. Yeah. So I'll take you back in history, back in time. So back to my beginning. What example I have sitting here on my desk, I can show you. So the core, I think you have to understand why funnels are essential and why they'll always be here. It comes back to my favorite Dan Kennedy quote of all time, which is, whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. Like this is the foundation of everything else.

You have to understand. Like 7,000 speakers at Funnel Hacking Live all said that. Yeah, because it's part, it's a thing, right? In fact, you'll see like, if you look at the, and maybe we'll get into this, like my next move, what's happening next year for me, like I'm looking at this, all ties into that as well. Like why did I buy Dan Kennedy's company?

Why am I doing these things? And I'll show you, it's, it's literally to solve that exact same question. So when I got started 20 years ago, um, people didn't have offers yet. They just had a product, right? So you would be like, I like to say book, like, okay, here's my book. I mean, you sell, I would just sell a product, right? And that was what I was selling. And it worked for a long time. And then guess what? Everyone else is like, Oh, dude's making money with product.

I can make a product. They make the same product. Now you got 10 people selling a product that's similar. Right. And so then it's harder to compete because now you're no longer a unique thing. You are a commodity. And anytime you're a commodity, the person with the lowest price always wins. So as soon as everyone's doing it, you got to drop the bottom and then you lose your margin and then life sucks because if you don't profit, what's the point of what we're doing? Right. So there's the first phase. So then the next phase is like, okay, well, I got a product. Everyone's got the same product, but how do I turn this from a product into an offer?

That was the first evolution, right? It's like, Hey, will you buy my book? You're asking my book, but you're also gonna get my video course, my audio course, and my checklist and my, and all of a sudden you make something truly unique again, where it's like, not just a product, but this is my offer that's specific and unique to me that nobody else has. So that was the next evolution. And we got really good then at making offers that were sexy. It's like, oh yeah, everyone's selling this, but mine, if you get mine, you also get da, da, da, da, da,

these other things. Right. And that's where this whole offer development started happening. In my mind, probably 15 years ago is when this became the thing that we all focused on and whoever had the best offer was going to win because ads didn't ship that much. It was just kind of like you're competing. So now you're competing with six different people or 10 different people. So because that Google AdWords cost went up because there's 20 people been on the same keyword versus just you initially, right? Now you're coming in, you make a better offer. Then you get the line show people buy from you because your offer is the best, right?

That was kind of the next phase. And then, of course, the market evolves. Everyone gets smart. Everyone starts making good offers. Now it's like maybe they're unique offers, but they're all good offers. Now it's like that, you know, the market is getting fragmented up again. And so this is where the evolution now a funnel started happening where, um, and it was before we didn't have one click upsells back in the day, but the first thing was like, you buy my potato gun DVD, you fill in your credit card, you buy it.

The next page, like, do you want to take one kit? Cool. Get your credit card back out and fill it out again. They'd fill it out the credit card again. Dang. But even with that, you know, there's no one click upsells man like 15 20 30 percent people would buy the second thing and all of a sudden like you know i'm selling potato DVD but i'm making 200 bucks on the back of the kit that nobody else sell potato guns dvds doing

i could outspend them all so even though like you know cost me more per click i was able to get all the clicks because i made way more money than anybody else. I was able to dominate the market. Um, and that was kind of the next phase. And what's interesting is that, um, depending on the market you're in depends on where this is. For example, um, I'm in the, I'm in a fun phase where I wanted some side projects. I'm launching a couple of supplement companies. Uh, the first supplement company launched is, uh, called Zuma juice. It's a green drink company.

And some of you guys know, I actually worked with Drew Canole and his team back in the day, um day on Organifi and helped them launch that when it first came out seven years ago and helped them build an actual funnel. And what's interesting is because of that, the green drink market is sophisticated. Like I went and funnel hacked

probably 30 green drink offers before we built Zuma Juice. And all of them have pretty advanced funnels. Like everyone's doing the best practices pretty well. Second company that we're starting, I acquired a bone broth company. And we're starting i acquired a bone broth company and uh so i took you got bone broth company went for like every bone broth offer and that market's new nobody had a funnel not one they have an offer they have a product that's it and i'm like i'm

walking into virgin funnel territory like who'll be the biggest bone broth company on the planet in like 30 days because there's nobody who understands any of what we're talking about we outspend everybody 10 to 1 because we understand the funnel structure it's like so depending on what market you're in some markets haven't even evolved to the funnels yet some have that's exciting if they have it's like cool we got you know we can funnel hack we get good use you know good um ideas what's working if it hasn't like man you can bring all this if we know into these markets and just dominate and destroy them all um it was funny as we was funny as we were buying us as funnel hacking, all the bone broth offers. I was like, there's literally not a single upsell order form bump email sequence, like nothing.

Like I was just like, this is like, Oh, embarrassing. Almost too easy. Um, that was next phase though. Right. And then, uh, and then to your point, like initially it was like, in fact, I remember 10, like-click funnels almost every funnel was the same it was a video sales letter order button uh order form upsell one upsell two down so down so thank you basically that was what a funnel was in fact if you look at before we launched click funnels the first tnc event ryan dice and perry and they had this whole tnc event talked about like the like here's the funnel and they had a funnel and there's only one and it was just like this is the five steps of every funnel and it fits like the, like here's the funnel. And they had a funnel and there's only one. And it was just like, this is the five steps of every funnel.

And it fits like, it was like tripwire. I think like these five steps, like tripwire, uh, profit maximizer, five or six, they named for each page. It was like, this is a funnel. And in reality, that's, that's whatever, like that was the funnel. Like there weren't funnels. It was like, this is a funnel. Like this is, this is kind of the one.

And at the time I was writing the.com secrets book and I, we'd been playing with different ones, but there wasn't a lot of this thing out there. It was just kind of like for the most part, like there was a funnel. After click funnels came out and it gave people the ability to move, to create things fast and start innovating, creating ideas that, and then I was like writing all my ideas in the book and people were doing stuff. It started evolving quickly.

The last seven years have evolved where now there's been like a million different funnel things come out from like webinar funnels, auto webinar funnels, high ticket funnels, low ticket funnels, tripwires, SLOs, VSLs, challenges, paid challenges, free challenges, you know, challenges to a webinar, challenges to high tickets, you know, like a webinar to high ticket, like there's a billion variations that come from that, right? Which probably gets people overwhelming. And so this one I want to tell them because this kind of comes back to your first question. It's like, what is it?

The reality is, it's going to be shocking so this one I want to tell them because this kind of comes back to your first questions. Like, what is it? The reality is, it's going to be shocking for most of you guys. What funnel type you use doesn't really matter. They all work. The thing that matters is the offer. Like you still have to make the sexiest offer. That's still the most important. Like we acquired Dan Kenny's company and we're doing this merger. And like I've spent, uh, I said podcast episodes morning driving to the office. I've been up every single morning at

5.00 AM because I'm so excited. Cause I'm like, we have a fun, like we pick the final structure. We have all the products, right. I'm spending, I spend a week everywhere at 5.00 AM from five till like seven 30, when my kids are getting up, uh, in there writing the page for the copy and the offer and then tweaking and tweaking. Like, like that's the thing, like the sexiness of the offer that gets people in is the key. If I can get them in, I can use this to get them in a webinar and a challenge in a free plus shipping. It doesn't matter. It's like the,

the offer is the thing that puts people in momentum. Right. And so, and the thing that I'm selling, I could sell it in the webinar. I could sell it in the challenge. I could like, there's, I can sell that all of them funnels. It would fit in all of them. I'm picking the one that I, that I, that I'm using because I think it's gonna go, for like the launch campaign, it's the one that'll probably get the sales the fastest,

but it'll work in all of them, right? And so it's understanding that, like it's still coming back to the core fundamentals. Like the funnel structure is a sales process. All of them will work. You just gotta figure out a better way to sell. Like that's the harder thing that people are missing. All right, so let's talk.

I want to dive in that offer when you say specifically here, because I think, and this is just from coaching with a lot of people, like the questions that I get asked when I, you know, like talk about this type of stuff. So like, you've got, you talk about the offers that the sexy thing, but like, how does the offer affect getting somebody to opt in? How do, like, how does the offer affect my ad to opt in? How do like, how does the offer affect my ad? How does the offer affect the training? Right? Like I don't show my offer until the end, right? Like after the whole thing. So how does that affect

every other step of the funnel? Okay. Great question. Um, so I can see one here. So, all right. So sorry, I had all the examples here a second ago. Oh, well, I'll just tell you the story. So when Dan Candy started his newsletter, right? In the Dan Candy company, the newsletter is the foundation of everything, right? And we can do a whole podcast episode just on psychology of the original GKIC when Bill Glazer was running with Dan. But the newsletter- Sounds like a sexy topic. Yeah, it'd be really fun, actually. I love it. In fact, it's funny because like I spent so much time with Bill Glazer geeking out about like I knew their business really well. And when they sold it the very first time, people bought it, didn't understand the business. And I saw within weeks of them destroying the foundation. I was like, you guys literally don't know what you bought. You should have asked some questions before you wrote a check that big.

Anyway, but the core is the newsletter, right? And so I had a chance to go back in the archives. Like I literally like they gave me, here's Google Drive. Everything's already created. So I'm is, is the newsletter. Right. And so I had a chance to go back in the archives. Like I literally, like they gave me here's Google drive, everything's ever been created. So I'm like, this is insane. Like for everything Dan's ever said is in this drive and most of it, no one's ever seen before. So I'm freaking out. Right. But the newsletter started back in like 1995, I was like 15 years old when it started and it was just a newsletter.

That's all it was. Right. It's like a product. That's how they sold it. And from 95 till I think I was probably 23, 24. So 2004, 2005-ish. So Bill Glazer bought the company from Dan and kind of ran it. And then they launched it. Instead of a newsletter, they launched it as an offer. And the offer at the time, I still remember the day it happened because I got like 400 emails from like Yannick Silver and all the different gurus at the time. They all started emailing about this Dan Kennedy offer. And it was called the most incredible free gift ever. And in fact, internally in the company called the MIFGE offer, M-I-F-G-E,

the most incredible free gift ever. And what it was, it was like, hey, when you sign up for Magnetic Marketing Net Letter, what you're gonna get is you're gonna get, I think it's like $639.93 for the money-making material from Dan Kennedy himself, right? So it was like, we'll give you all this cool stuff when you sign up for the newsletter. And it was like the bribe. It's kind of like, uh, if you guys remember back in the day, um, uh, sports illustrates really hard to sell sports illustrated issues. So what they would do is they

would, they would, they would, uh, have TV commercials were like, uh, here's sports illustrates 12 issues a year about the best sports. When you sign up today, we're going to give you, and then they had their version of the most incredible free gift offer. It was this huge football clock and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Like that was the MIFCI offer for Sports Illustrated, right? And so Dan had their MIFCI offer, and they went from having, you know, five or 600 subscribers at that time to Bill built it up to over,

I don't know, 10, 15, 20, I don't know how big it got at its peak, but, you know, 10,000 plus members. And it was because they took newsletter and they made it an offer. And that's how they, they launched initially. Right. And so the MIFC is how they did it. Now, fast forward to Russell gets access to all this stuff. I'm like, this is amazing. So I'm trying to sit, I sat down Monday morning. No, sorry. It was last Saturday, Saturday. Um, I was like, I wanted to write, I didn't want to do all the pages in the offer. So I have some, my team did upsells and down. So I was like the landing page, this is mine. Like I want to write, cause I want to do all the pages in the offer. So I have some, my team did upsells and down. So I was like the landing page, this is mine.

Like I want to write, cause I want to make sure I get the offer right. And everything, cause this is like, everything hinges on the landing page is broken. Nothing works. And so I went and I funnel hacked, I found every newsletter sales that I could find throughout time.

Like I just went deep in my archives way back. We're seeing people I knew had published newsletters. Look at every variation of theirs for the last 10 years. Like I totally geeked out. Like, like Russell does right. Funnel hacking. Like I want to understand how people like, like Russell does, right. Funnel hacking. Like I want to understand how people are structuring their newsletter offers.

The Gore has got a ton of them. Right. So I'm looking at tons of them and everyone I looked at, I come back to like the Dan Kenny one. I'm like, this offer is just not sexy anymore. Like $630 of money-making information sounded cool in 2003. But today it's like every opt-in people are giving me a thousand dollars with the free crap. So it's like, it wasn't that sexy.

Inflation, baby. Oh my word. Yeah. And then I'm i'm like now my funnel nerds are gonna go and they're gonna they're gonna sign up this newsletter and they're gonna get this newsletter from dan he's talking about direct mail and faxing and they're gonna be like confused and they're gonna cancel so i'm like you know like i just i have this weird opportunity it's like this is just not the right thing um and i was like how do i make this sexy excited like how do i get myself excited email about and then and then dan's like Dan's like, I email and I get affiliates on board and other people like, how do I get, how do I make this sexy so that I can create the noise? So that when there's an ad,

there's a good enough hook in the ad that people are going to click because the ads like old marketing grumpy genius is going to give you 300 or $639 money-making material for free. When you join his newsletter, like no one's going to click on that. Right. The hook sucks. Now it was good in 2003, horrible in 2021. Right. and so i'm like sitting there i spent three hours and i just going through stuff and i was like no matter how hard i tried like the offer just didn't feel right and i i'm not explaining other than i was like i know i wouldn't click and i know i wouldn't buy and i don't want to be on my list tell me about it because it's not that exciting yeah what is it like how do i structure this in a way that's going to be really exciting and um so that was that was

the problem this is where i got stuck at right and then after about three hours of it is when I had the light bulb, I was like, Oh my gosh. Okay. So all of the, all the current Dan Kennedy customers, like they love Dan, they're obsessed with them. Um, and that actually, this is a fascinating stat. Oh, um, you'll appreciate this. Um, have you read, um, a thousand true fans? Yeah. I love that book. It was crazy. So Dan's company was sold initially like 10 years ago from Bill Glazer sold it.

In the last 10 years, they haven't bought a single ad. So that's like the attrition of the company that's been happening. And I'm acquiring it like, oh, let's buy some ads, right? But what's crazy is 10 years since they bought the last ad,

there are almost to a T, like it's like 990 something active paid subscribers still on the newsletter a decade later without any ads at all. Thousand true fans. Isn't that crazy? That's insane. Really? And you're one of those true fans because you bought the whole company. Yeah.

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And I'm like, I don't want to come in and be the guy who acquires the company and just, like, start emailing his own offer. I'm like, I need them to, I need to indoctrinate them to want it. Right. So it's like, they're going to read Dan's newsletter. And like, how do I bridge that to ClickFunnels? And like my funnel nerds are going to read his newsletter and be like, yeah, like, I don't understand. Like, this isn't like they need it.

They don't know they want it yet. Right. If I can indoctrinate them for a while, they'll be like, oh my gosh, I get this, but it's going to take a while for them to really respect it enough that they'll get it. Right. I was saying my first time I heard Kenny, I was like, this guy's all boring and doesn't relate to what I'm talking about. And after I went deep in, I was like, oh my gosh, everything he says is literal. Like he's handing gold nuggets out. And I was just like, I didn't notice something like that. I'm like, oh my gosh.

Yeah. And so I was like, I need this bridge. And, um, some people know, like, um, when I first joined the Kennedy world, we actually launched, um, my first new print newsletter right afterwards. It was called the.com secrets journal and more from the dot-com secrets journal to eventually call the dot-com secrets labs and then it became a funnel report and then it became funnel university so i actually ran a print newsletter for 14 years we shut it down two years ago but 14 years i ran a print newsletter yeah i remember when you shut it down actually yeah and i loved it but i just anyway there's reasons like the person who's publishing it she had a baby and she retired and all these things i was just like that i'm focusing on click funnels i don't need

to worry about this right now so we shut it down but i love that part of it and i was like what if what if i create an offer where the the concept the story the hook of this whole entire thing is like russell bought dan's company they're coming together to give you two things like the best foundational direct sponsor plus like the best like in the marketing like the cutting edge the new things are happening so you can have both sides so you understand the the foundation you need to be able to to survive facebook slapping you and all these things happening and you know media shifting and changing but you also have like what's working today so you can capitalize on things in real time like like we took those two worlds together and i was like um and so instead of just being like you're signing for the new for the dan kennedy newsletter

what if it was like dan kennedy and russell brunt like two different newsletters you get two newsletters for the price of one i was like that's the offer that's the hook that's what gets affiliates excited we get ads excited it's like everything gets exciting around this offer and so and then all every morning at five in this morning at five a.m every morning this week i woke up and i'm writing a copy for this page like okay here's the hook they're coming in and like there's dan and there's russell and how these things are coming together and the story behind that how it worked and then the offers like you know the offer instead of just like here's six seven dollars for the free stuff it's like you get two newsletters you get the best subject once best of wrestling or russell you know

every two weeks so you get one in the mail and then 14 days later you get next one and you're getting both of these you get old and the new but you only pay one price you get both for the price of one and then you get all of Dan's bonuses, all Russell's bonuses. Now it becomes this like insane offer where I, um, now it's like, I'm excited to mail my list. Like we bought Dan's company. You get all my best stuff is to get it. It's this combination and then affiliates will be excited. Like it just, and maybe the hook bombs. I don't know.

But like it gave me the energy of just like, okay, now this is exciting and sexy. Right. And so I can turn that into a webinar where it's just like Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson coming together to literally blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I opted here to find out a webinar. And people would opt in because the story, the hook is exciting. Or I could do a challenge, like the seven-day challenge where me and Dan are going to go through how to destroy your business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the end, I'm selling a newsletter. Or it could be a VSL telling the story with a newsletter.

Or it could be, you know, all of them work. The hook is the secret. It's the story with a newsletter, or it could be, you know, all of them work. The book is the secret is the story. Well, and it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like, like you just created this story about the offer, right? And like, now that you know what the offer is, and there's a reason that that came together and like, that's what it is right now, you understand the story behind that i'm trying to think of like an analogy like for example disney world right like that offer is so good right you're literally going into a different world that like it pretty much sells itself once you put it out there right and so once you have the story once you have that idea around what the offer does and how it's unique and how it's how it's its own unique thing then you can just take that and then it fills the rest of

the funnel because like everybody wants that thing because now, now the offer itself is so good. Right. And I think one of the problems that I had, man, for so long is like, I was, I was trying to convince people that they wanted my thing or convince people that they had this problem and then that they wanted this thing. And then I would make them an offer on it. And like, they wouldn't get to, they wouldn't even know about the offer what the offer did or like anything about it like until like forced like right before the offer and they'd be like and then i've got this offer right and because of that there was no story around it there's no congruency with it and so then it was like oh i didn't even know that that's what i was here for right then i like try

to sell them something it wouldn't sell and i feel like that's the problem that that got solved right there is like first you created the offer and the story around the offer and you made it sexy and then that made everything else in the funnel super super easy because you were just pointing them back to that everything the funnel plus all the ads because now the ads are functions like why dan kenney came out of retirement dan kenney almost died like what's he doing today like all of a sudden all these hooks that tie into that why did dan kenney partner with the owner of click funnels like why did um you know is it true that is it true that click funnels was built off the back of all dan kenney's principles like there's so many stories i can tell now that are hooks that will grab his people in or my people in or in the landing page.

And then it creates everything. And the people that are the best in the world at this, and they're also the ones that make the most money, is Agora. Look at Agora Publishing. They're selling newsletters. That's all they sell, right? But every single time, they have these insane stories. Like Porter Stansbury's got, I think, maybe not still, but for like a decade and a half, like the highest of all the Agora divisions, I think it'd be like $1.5 or $2 billion a year. It's like, these are big divisions.

Porter's letter one. And the story was like the railroad across America. And it's talking about like the original railroad, how it happened and all the people made money along the way. And this is the next railroad that's being built. It's the digital highway and all this stuff. And that offer was selling a newsletter, but it's the story behind it. They got, that like became this thing that built a billion dollar company. Right. And they're good. They're

so good at figuring out the story and those kinds of things. I think sometimes we're like, Hey, um, I created a course in the past. You should create a course too. I made money. It's going to be awesome. And then like, you should buy my course, creating software or whatever. Like, it's just like, ah, that's's not the thing like we're so bad at telling stories we brag about our result we tell them making the same result and that's it it's like no that's not the key it's the story it's the intrigue it's that we want to be entertained we want to be we want to be courted we want to be you know like that's that's the game we're playing in marketing and so when you figure that out like the offer is actually sexy and then why is that sexy the

sexiness is not just like you get a bunch of crap. The sexiness is the story about how this was created. Literally what it does. Yeah. Yeah. Catherine Jones, one of her favorite sayings is, when your stories become their stories, then your solutions become their solutions, right? And that's literally what this is.

It's like if you can tell them a story where they get it and they're like, oh, my gosh, it's amazing, right? Like then, you know, go and do it. So like, for example, Harry Potter World, right? the story it my my wife freaking loves harry potter world right i mean like that was her thing when we went down to funnel lagging live it was like we were gonna take a half a day just to go to harry potter world so we showed up and then it was like hey miles is like dude the buzz is leaving for harry potter world right like there wasn't much convincing it has to be done like the story is like oh my gosh harry potter world is amazing it's harry

potter and it's like i want it like she wanted that thing right because of the story that was leading up to it there was no it's like what's harry potter world like is it any good like what's this it's like no it's harry potter world you're like oh okay yeah i want it right and it's like that's like the story with that so that's super super interesting um so where do you see where do you see the future of funnels going right because obviously there's a lot of changes coming with click funnels and click funnels 2.0 which oh my gosh i'm so excited um gustin gustin hits me up probably dude he probably hits me up once a week and he's like hey guess what click funnels 2.0 is awesome and you don't have it and i'm like i hate you stop

he's actually building out the magnetic marketing funnel hub right now for me which is cool yeah so anyway but like what's the next evolution and and we don't have really have time too too much talk about metaverse and like kind of where that goes but like but like we're we're entering this new world right we're and i mean like the world is changing very very very rapidly covid is what kind of one of those things that you know we thought the internet was a big deal internet marketing is a big deal pre-covid and, we, you watch zoom blow up by like, you know, like 3000% or something like that. And then ruin zoom for us. But anyway, but like, you know, like, so like, where, where are things going that like people should be paying attention to and like going and like actually studying and understanding about like kind of the future of funnels. Because

one of the things that I've been really, really focused on and we're, we're kind of getting dialed in is like community funnels, right? Specifically, like, I think for me, really focused on and word we're kind of getting dialed in is like community funnels, right? Specifically, like, I think for me, like one of the things that I've noticed is that it's, it's very, very, it's getting increasingly harder to sell things unless you have a community that that's tied with it. Right. And so like, for me, one of the things we're focusing on is like, how do we build funnels inside of our community where like our community actually like becomes part of the funnel, right. Which is kind of like a cool concept. So like like what, what do you see as kind of like those future things of where funnels are headed, where the big opportunities are going to be?

Like what's the next add to webinar to a nine 97 course that, you know what I'm saying? Like what, what, what's the future where we're headed? 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 a multiple Hulu payments, multiple Disney payments from accounts that my wife had set up

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LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. You know, um, I, I hate to make it sound simple simple but if i come back to the fundamentals like we talked about the beginning of this call like dan kennedy like whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins so you look at it through that lens right it went from a product to an offer to a funnel right and now with the funnel i have more ways to make money and then from there the next evolution was like from funnel to value ladder right now it's like i'm gonna have a break-even funnel and move people up a value ladder and that's how you know i may lose money or break even on my book funnel but then my webinar phone's gonna make money or vice versa

right right that was the next phase and i think for me like where i'm playing so i'm trying to play for next 10 years like how do i how do i win this game like we're doing well i want to like how to get a point where you know shopify or salesforce is like i want to write you check for 20 billion dollars because you're such an annoyance right like the way i'm going to do that for me is like and it comes back like why do i hire magnetic marketing right i write bad brad callens can why i'm doing this because i'm not looking at break-even funnels anymore breaking and funnels awesome i'm going one chair back or i'm building breaking businesses so magnetic marketing the only goal magnetic

marketing is to break even the entire company, the value ladder, the coaching, everything. So every penny made inside of magnetic marketing, be dumped back into ads. I want 100% of the profits dumped back into ads. So this company keeps blowing up until I can get now all these things dumped into my value ladder for ClickFunnels. That's it. Vroomly doing $40 million a year. Why do we acquire that company? Tons of lead flow.

Now, right now, it was $10 million a year net profit. All that money now is being dumped directly into lead flow as a breakeven business to require customers for ClickFunnels. So I think it's, it's going deeper. It's looking past, you know, like from product to offer to funnel to value ladder to like, how do I, how do I buy or acquire or create something where the only goal of this entire business is just to get customers for free that can put into here. And I think for me's the next the next level is just like that just blew my mind dude holy cow like that's i mean that's you're creating an ecosystem but in a very specific way like it's it's interesting as you just told that out just like first it was this then it was this then it was

it's like the thing before it didn't change right like that's still part of it it's the same yeah right but it's kind of that next evolution that next piece of where that comes out that's fascinating i think a lot of people need to uh just really like rewind that and like go listen to that like clip again and like let your let your brain sit on that that's all right in the game yes hopefully my force force upset everyone else but i'm all all for showing that with you guys and so i just again for everyone to start thinking that. That's how I play in the game. Yes. Hopefully I have my four steps ahead of everyone else, but I'm all for showing that with you guys. And so I just, again, for everyone to start thinking that because it's going to get harder. It's going to get more expensive.

It's going to get more. When we've seen that this year, ad costs have gone up. Like it's going to, it's not going to get cheaper. It's not going to bounce back down and be cheaper. I guess I can keep doing that. You know, the people who only had a product back in there are out of business. People only had an offer back in there, out of business.

People don't have a funnel or out of a business. People don't have a value add or out of a business. Like, like, so it's just like thinking ahead of that like metaverse whatever next step is doesn't really matter it's the principle still is the same for me for 20 years whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins how do i do that in a way that serves the customers brings them in and then um i'll end on this because it ties back to what you said and i did a podcast on this uh it's a quote in the facts i got from dan kennedy after his um uh after the company sold last time he was super mad at the company that had jacked up his brand and his legacy and stuff

and so he sent this like 25 page fax like all things to do to fix it and there's one paragraph where he said there's difference between uh like why customers come in and why they stay he said people think they're the same things like no they're different like why they come in is because they see the hook of like oh this thing they come in from that they stay he said people think they're the same things it's like no they're different like why they come in is because they see the hook of like oh this thing they come in from that they stay for something different and you have to understand that so like i had my inner circle meeting right everyone paid 50 grand to be in the room we had 100 entrepreneurs in the room and i told him it's like well you guys all came because you want to learn funnels from russell but mike the reason why you came is not why you were going to stay here the reason you're sick

year after year after year is because of the community like that's it like that's why i stayed in the rooms for six years of my life. It's because the community built and I wanted to be around these people. I came for Dan, stuck for the community. And I think that you start understanding that. That's how you get these people to come in on a front end, but they stay and they buy over and over and they stay in continuity. They stay because it's like, it's that.

They come in from a hook, but they stay for something different. And so really understanding that and then weaving into everything you're doing, like you're doing now with the community funnels, which is perfect. That's amazing. That's amazing. All right. Well, I think that's a good ending point for that, for that topic. There's episode number two of our hangout today, which was amazing. Hey everybody, this is Russell again. And really quick, I just opened up a texting community, which means you can text me your questions. And right now I'm spending anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes every single day answering

questions through text message to people who are on the podcast. And so I wanted you to stop everything you're doing, pull your phone out and actually text me a message. Okay. Now the phone number you need to text is 208-231-3797. Once again, it's 208-231-3797. When you text me, just say hello. And then what's going to happen is I'll add you to my phone.

And then they'll send you back a message where you can add me to your phone. And then we can start having conversations. On top of that, through this texting community is where I'm going to be giving out free swag, giving away free copies of my book, let you know about book signings, about times I'm coming to your local area, and a whole bunch more. Just want to make sure you are on this list. On top of that, every single day I'm sending out my favorite favorite quotes, my favorite frameworks and things you can get for free only through my texting platform. So what you need to do right now is pull out your phone and text me

at area code 208-231-3797. One more time. That's 208-231-3797. I can't wait to hear from you right now.