The Russell Brunson Show - The Russell Brunson Show: A New Beginning for 2025

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Today, I’m thrilled to introduce not just a new episode but a completely rebranded podcast: The Russell Brunson Show! This transformation represents a shift, not only in the podcast’s name but in its format and focus. After years of being boxed into the “Marketing Secrets” space, I’m excited to expand into conversations about marketing, sales, personal development, and the stories of impactful individuals throughout history. This evolution allows me to bring you more value, more insights, and more variety—all while staying true to what you’ve loved about the show. In this premiere episode, I take you back to where it all started: from Marketing in Your Car to Marketing Secrets, and now, to The Russell Brunson Show. I share some pivotal moments from my entrepreneurial journey, discuss why 2024 was one of the toughest years in my life and business, and outline six key areas I’m focusing on in 2025 to ensure massive growth. These six principles aren’t just guiding me—they’re strategies you can use to scale your own business this year. Key Highlights: The Power of Reinvention: Why the podcast rebrand reflects the evolving needs of my audience and my mission. Six Growth Strategies for 2025: Discover what I’m doubling down on this year, including break-even funnels, metrics, ad creativity, and curiosity. Lessons from the Past: How overcoming personal and professional challenges shaped my perspective on resilience and innovation. Whether you’re new to my world or a long-time listener, this first episode marks an exciting new chapter. Tune in to get inspired, refocused, and equipped for a year of extraordinary growth. I can’t wait to share more in the episodes to come! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With TD Direct Investing, new and existing clients could get 1% cash back. Great! That's 1% closer to being part of the 1%. Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. Hey, this is Russell Brunson. I want to officially welcome you to episode number one of the Russell Brunson Show. And you may be thinking, Russell, this is not your first podcast episode. Why are you calling it episode number one? And the reason is because I'm changing the name of the show to the Russell Brunson Show.

I'll talk about why here in a few minutes. And we got a bunch of really, really cool announcements. And then at the end of this podcast, I'm going to be going through six things you got to focus on 2025 to grow and scale your company dramatically. And I'm excited. So with that said, I'm gonna jump right into the first ever episode of the Russell Brunson Show. This is the Russell Brunson Show. This is the Russell Brunson Show. Okay, so I'm going to step back. I'm going to tell you guys the history of this podcast for those who are just jumping in for the very first time. So when I first heard about podcasting, it was almost 20 years ago. In fact, I remember sitting in a hotel room and at a seminar and they were talking about podcasting

and I was like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. No one's ever going to podcast. It's not a real thing. No one's going to care. The word podcast is just so annoying that it's not going to become a thing. Little did I know that it would become such a big thing. But I remember I fought it for a long time. But I do remember thinking like, if I ever started a podcast, I was going to call it Marketing in Your Car. And so I bought the domain name Marketing in Your Car. And almost a decade later, I decided to launch my very first podcast ever when it started kind of catching on. And so I launched a podcast called Marketing in Your Car. And some of you guys may remember this if you've listened to the old episodes. It was on the back of my business kind of collapsing.

Everything – at the time, I built my company up to about 100 employees and everything had fallen apart. It was collapsing. Everything was collapsing. I had to let go like 90 some odd people in the day. And I was moving down to this really small business and like, or sorry, to a smaller office. And I remember just being, I don't know, like depressed and sad and like all my dreams had fallen apart. I thought I was failing. And I had this weird, this weird pull, this real, this weird tug. Some of you guys have felt that before. I call it now the call to contribution. We feel it's like contribution. Okay. I got that term from Alex

Sharfman, but it's called the contribution where I felt like I should start podcasting. I'm like, this is the worst time to start podcasting. My company's failing, everything's falling apart. Um, but it was like, you need to start documenting this journey. And so, uh, at that time where I'd moved from this big, huge, like 20,000 square foot office down to like a 2000 square foot office, they gone from a hundred employees down to like four or five that I could still afford. And I had a four minute drive from my house to the office every day. And so most days I would grab my phone and I would just record a podcast episode. It was called Marking Your Car. And it was literally me just like talking about what I was learning, what we were trying, what we were testing. And it was kind of how I

launched it. And I remember putting it out there and I didn't know how to see if people were listening or not. So I put it out there, kind of promoted it, and then I just hoped for the best. And I didn't know for a couple of years before we were figured out how to like actually hook up analytics to see how many people were downloading it. And I remember the time when we finally hooked it all up, I was like, wow, I'm grateful that I didn't know how few people are listening at the time. Cause I wouldn't have probably had put so much effort into, I was doing it probably three times a week for, um, I don't even know for three or four years, four, I don't even know, four or five years. I don't even know how long it is.

In fact, it's just fun for me to go back and listen to those episodes because in those episodes, I remember one episode I was talking about like, you have to be a moron to want to make more than $10 million a year. Like, why would you ever want that? It's so dumb to even go after that, you know, which is kind of funny now. I remember talking about this idea,

talking about this thing called ClickFunnels as we were developing and designing it. And it went from literally like the, you know, our company failing to this um, to this journey of us launching ClickFunnels and going out into the world. And so the marketing, uh, in your car podcast, um, kind of was this really cool journey of me coming from a business failure up into launching ClickFunnels. And, and it was just such a cool thing.

Uh, and I remember, um, man, probably year two into ClickFunnels. I hired this guy named Steve Larson. Some of you guys know Steve. And he came into the office and he was my funnel builder, my first funnel builder I hired. He was sitting right next to me and all day long we'd be talking and stuff. And he went through and he's like, I binge will listen to every episode you ever did from the very beginning.

And he told me one, something one time, he's like, he's like, man, the first like 35, 40 episodes, like you were not very good. He's like, by 40, 45, you started getting your, your groove and it started like actually being good. And, uh, I thought that was so cool. Again, so grateful. I didn't know that nobody was listening initially. Cause I would have probably quit before I ever got that way. But it's also interesting. It took me 40 or 50 episodes to find my voice and start figuring out how I was going to speak to people and communicate. And I use that as a lesson. I talk about this actually in Traffic Secrets book where I talk about the fact that like you have to publish long enough to get noticed, right? And two things will happen. Number one is that in that process, you will learn how to find

your voice. And then number two, your audience will have a chance to find you. I'm just so grateful that I did it consistently long enough for my audience to start finding me. And I started looking at over time, it was crazy because after we launched ClickFunnels, I launched my inner circle. And what's crazy is like the majority of people who came into my inner circle came from initially, they were like, they were podcast listeners. They listened to all my podcasts. Like, I feel like I was like listening to you when I was working out and driving and it became part of their lives. And so that was kind of how marketing in your car launched the very first version of this podcast. Then fast forward after that, I remember I was buying a whole bunch of domain names from John Reese. I

bought traffic secrets, product secrets, and all these different things. And one of the things I bought from him was marketing secrets, which is his blog back. Like when I first got started, that was the blog back then he had. I used to read and study from him. He was one of the original OGs of this market. And I bought Marketing Secrets and I decided to change the branding of the show to Marketing Secrets. And it became the Marketing Secrets Show. And it ran that way for another, I don't even know now, five, six, seven years. I think done like 600 episodes as the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And I've always loved that. And it's been awesome. In fact, this is the first episode that isn't Marketing Secrets, which is hard for

me. But what's tough is like, I don't know, I'm in a spot in my career, in my life where I want to talk about a lot of stuff. And the marketing secrets kind of pigeonholes me in this weird spot where I'm allowed to talk about marketing. And I kind of go outside those bonds, but those bounds. But a lot of people are like, I'm coming to you, Russell, to learn about marketing. I'm like, I know, it's awesome. And so like for a little while, I was like, well, I love marketing, but I also love sales.

What if I changed the branding to the Selling Online podcast? And did that. We, in fact, we even created an intro video. It was awesome. But then I was like, I love talking about personal development. And so like, we almost changed the podcast to round pegs, square holes. And that was going to be a thing where I was going to create a whole separate podcast. I have one on marketing, one on personal development. And it was just getting confusing. And I was like, you know what? This is the deal. People come to me for different reasons. Some of you guys came to me because you want their marketing. Some of you guys came to me because you want their marketing. Some of you guys came to me because you want their sales. Some of you guys came to me because you want personal development. Some of

you guys just like, you have no idea why you're listening to me. You're just here because I'm trying to entertain you. We're having a good time. Some of you guys like me telling stories about old people who have passed on, who like, who changed the world that, you know, like, uh, like Napoleon Hills and Orson Sweat Martins and like all these people that like, and, and, and so I have a lot of things I want to talk about. And so I kept trying to shift these things around. And finally I was like, you know what? Most of the people I know the show's named after them. It's like the Rachel Hollis show, the Gary Vee show, like things like that. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to change this to the Russell Brunson show. And I can talk about things I want to, um, all the things. And

I think it'll be more fun for you guys. Uh, we're also on YouTube setting up a separate podcast channel where it's just my podcast stuff. So I have the Russell Brunson channel. It's got all sorts of stuff, but we're gonna create a Russell Brunson podcast. It's just these interviews, just, just me going live. Like just these things that are very specific to, uh, to the podcast format that I'm going to kind of use.

Uh, so by the way, that means you got to go back to YouTube and resubscribe. You want the video versions of these. Um, but that's why we're doing it, Ken. But I also want to know that like, like when you're coming to an episode and listening, I want you to be able to know like what you're getting into, right? I know there's some podcasts I listen to where like I like when they talk about personal development, maybe not this part or vice versa. So in the titles, it'll be like episode one. Here's the title. And then I'll have some kind of thing afterwards that I'll talk about if this is a marketing episode, a selling episode, a success episode, or like a round peg square hole where I'm talking about some other person from history

that I think you should know about. And so that's kind of how I'll break these things up. There may be other categories coming in the future, but for the most part, you know, the things I deal with, the things I think I'm the greatest in the world, I'm great at marketing. I'm great at selling. I'm obsessed with personal development and I love stories of just amazing people who have passed on who most of you guys don't know about. So those are things I'm passionate about and that's the stuff I'm going to be talking about more so during this podcast. So hopefully you'll find something that you love and it should be a lot of fun.

So there's kind of set up about what the new Russell Brunson show is. So now you know. And I want to talk about, before I dive in, I've got six things I want you to understand that I'm focusing on dramatically in our business this year that I think are going to be the keys for us growing. And so I'm going to talk about this here in a minute, but before we do, I want to talk about the last 12 months. We're at the beginning of the new year right now of 2020, what year are we? 2025. I'm not bad at remembering years. I'm not good at remembering years. So we're at the beginning of a new, um, a new year.

And I'll be with that. There's a lot of new growth and things like that. And I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of weeks about this kind of stuff. And, um, and also just about the last 12 months. And it's crazy. I just, before we got here, I listened to an episode that I did last December. So a little over a year ago. And, um, I was at a, at a low spot in my business and my life.

Um, and I was listening, I'm like, man, that Russell's in a lot of pain listening to that. And I was very excited, like this year's gonna be great. And we're gonna do a lot of stuff and get kind of dig out of this hole and get back to spot where I feel like we're growing and having success. And what's crazy is a year later, it's been a brutal year this year. I don't know about you guys, but, um, and for me, it's like the last, I don't know, the last cycle, I would say I'm not into politics, but the last political cycle has been rough for me, um, as a whole. And for me, for my business, for my family, just a lot of things, a lot of changes, a lot of stuff I was not prepared for.

And what's crazy is, um, I have a group, uh, I have my inner circle group. I have a group above that called the Atlas group. And, um, we met in December with the whole Atlas group. And it was crazy. Almost every single one of the people in that group were like, this year was really, really hard. Uh, everyone had very, it was a very consistent feeling of it being a really, really hard year. Um, and also like, I'm not in big, I don't know anything about numerology at all, but one of the guys, my inner circle names, but Shaw, he, uh, he was talking about numerology is like based on the numbers, like this year is supposed to be the hardest year for everybody, but 20 to five, based on numerology, it's supposed to be amazing. So I'm like,

I don't know anything about numerology, but I'm pumped because I feel something different this year. I don't know if you guys are feeling it as well, but I'm really excited and really motivated. The last 12 months have been tough, and I want to kind of talk about that just because I think it's been tough for a lot of you guys. And I want to have empathy to that because I'm going to talk about how to succeed this year, what to do, what to focus on, all that kind of stuff. But I also want to do it through the lens of like I understand where you're coming from. If you got beat up this year, man, so did I. If you got beat up the last couple of years, like so did I. And so if you – and I'll fast forward actually four years ago first.

So four years ago during the last election cycle. In fact, I remember it was like it was the day of the election. I flew out to Atlanta to hang out with Todd. And that's when we got the offer for somebody to buy ClickFunnels. We'd gone through this process for five or six months ahead of time. And it came down and it's just a big funnel. Everything in the world is a funnel, right? But we put it out there.

We had people coming initially, really high offers. And then you go through all the due diligence that goes from like a hundred companies to 80 to 50 to 40 to 10 to, you know, all the way down to like three or four companies. And we ended up getting three or four offers at the very end. And it was the day of the elections that just happens was the next day. And we're sitting there looking at the offers and, um, I don't know. It was weird. The offer was insane. Um, had I have said yes to that, I'd never would have had to work again. Um, it, I don't know. It was crazy, but there was something weird inside where I was just like, I didn't feel good about it. I was just like, I don't feel like

I'm done. I don't feel like, I don't know. It was a weird thing. Um, it's crazy because like the selfish thing would have been like, peace, I'm out. You know, I've got a nine-figure check for myself. Todd's got one to all, you know, and it would have been easy. But for some reason, I don't know, maybe we're dumb. We decided to say no to it. And it started this journey and we were so excited. Like we're going to build – we got to build something because like we knew we built Cliffhorns. It was amazing.

But we knew we could build – we needed to build something for the next – to take it to the future, to do what we got to build something because like we knew we built ClickFunnels was amazing, but we knew we could build, we needed to build something for the next, to take it to the future, to do what we needed to do. We needed to do something different. And so we sat down and we went back through the drawing board and, um, it kind of designed it all out. And Todd spent a year in by himself with the, with the team, a team of guys build out the foundation for what would become the new ClickFunnels. We spent a year of it and it was like turning out so good. And the next year is Funnel Hacking Live.

And this is probably my mistake, but like, I was so excited and I wanted people to know, because people were asking like, like there's other competitors coming out, like, what are you guys doing? And like, and we're obviously fixing and trying to make the core product really, really, you know, solid and stable, all kinds of stuff. But we were building something new. And so finally that next Funnel H hiking life, so it was a year into development. I came out and I was like, okay, this is what like, I told everyone like 2.0, it's what we're building, it's what it's going to look like.

And people were so excited. And then, yeah. And so, and I don't know, some of those things where you always feel like you're, you're closer to done than you are, you know? And so that year we announced it and it's just crazy because, because half our audience was so excited. And then half the audience was like – I don't know.

It was just funny. The people who don't like me or like ClickFunnels were just like from day one, oh, it's going to be horrible. And it was just – it was so crazy. We just told you we're working on something and you're already talking trash about it. It just blows my mind how people work. But then it was out there. So people knew about it. And so we spent the next year working on it and about it. It just blows my mind how people work. But then it was out there, so people knew about it. And so we spent the next year working on it and building it.

And so the next year's Funnel Hacking Live was coming up, and it was tough because people were waiting a year for it. And we were waiting, and we'd been testing it for an entire year. And it was very solid. It was working great. There were bugs and hiccups and stuff, but it was like – anyway, it is what it is, right? And so the next year of Funnel Hacking Live, we didn't launch it there.

We did a beta launch, everyone who was at Funnel Hacking Live. And then like two months later a month later whenever we did the click funnels 2.0 launch and we gave it to everybody and what's crazy this is like in hindsight when we launched click funnels first time there weren't very many customers people come in they find bugs we fix them and then more people come and we find more bugs and just like kind of cleaning things up but we went from from zero to getting 18,000 new signups in a week. 18,000 people joined. And what's crazy, in hindsight,

if I could go back in time and say, young Russell, don't be an idiot. We had 18,000 signup and there were all sorts of things. And we spent the next year just trying to keep on top of it. And it's hard because like when we launched it, I told everyone, I'm like, this is the beta of 2.0. It's amazing. When you sign up for it for a year, we'll give you classic and 2.0.

You get both. So I was like, my head is like best of both worlds. There's gonna be some bugs and stuff, but people can have classics. It doesn't matter. They can both best of both worlds. The problem is a lot of people don't look that way. And we had people that were upset with us. And for the next year, we spent just fixing things and fix it and try to keep in front

of it and like improving it and getting platform solid and like trying to, anyway, it was, it was a lot. And so that was like last December. It was like, it'd been a year of that. So again, four years, we had a year of building a year of pre-launch and then we launched it in a year. And so last December I was like beat up. And I listened to that podcast episode and I was just like, I was beat up. Right. And I was just like, man, this is crazy. Like I'm trying to serve people. Like I, I literally did not quit. I did not take this huge payout. And instead we just, we sacrificed all the stuff to like, to create this amazing

thing for people. And a lot of the people who we'd created it for were angry at me and mad and like talking trash about me and like attacking. And it was just like, I don't understand this. Like we thought we were doing the right thing was to not just take easy money and just walk away. It was like, no, let's like, let's go back. And like, anyway, it's just weird to me. And it was like, anyway, it was tough. It was tough. Um, and I remember at the end of, I was talking about how a couple of things, like just how brutal it had been, like people attacking me and attacking the company and stuff that, and how hard that hurt me. Um, it also had been a year since, uh, my partner, Dave Woodward had passed away, which was hard. And it was just like, man,

I don't understand. Like when, I don't know, it's a weird thing. Like when you're the underdog coming up, everybody cheers for you. And when you're on top, it's weird how people just want to take shots at you. Uh, especially people who like, who you helped, who you served, who you like, you helped them start their businesses and launch it. And then they come attacking you. It's just like, I don't understand. I'm trying to do everything right. I'm trying to do what I think is best for us and for the community. Like I wasn't selfish and just cashed out in like peace and like left, you left things where they were at. And so it was hard, man. It was, it was brutal. I think it was something I was not expecting

and then come into the new year. So a couple other things. So I don't know if I talked about some of that podcast episode, but last December also my twins turned 18 and I don't know about you guys, but you always think you have more time with your kids and everything. And, um, and, and I'm like, I love my kids. They're amazing. Like, but being a parent's hard. I don't know if any of you guys are parents out there, but it is hard. It's like crazy.

Like you had a fun hockey live and I speak and everything I say, people are like latching on. I'm like, that's so smart. You're the greatest. With your kids, it's not that way. Like you, it's like you try to give your kids everything and they, and it's a whole different experience. It is, it is hard. And you try to give your kids the best.

And like parenting is weird because parenting, there's like, I don't know how you guys feel as a parent. I always have this thing where it's just like, uh, and this isn't completely true, but in my head, it's like, I'm like, there's no value as a parent. Right. And that's not true. There's value, but it's like, it's like, you don't get anything out of it. You don't get paid for it.

You don't get, you know, they don't tell you they love you when they get older. Like all these things are just like, and like everything you do is trying to help them. And then they're angry. They're mad. They want to rebel. And she's like, I'm not getting paid for this. I'm doing this because I love you. That's the only purpose.

Right. And it's just so hard. And so last December, my twins turned 18 and it was tough because like one of my, one of my sons, he turned 18, you know, had a birthday party for him when he went out that night and he didn't come back home and he basically moved out. And, and that was not something we were prepared for or ready for. Um, we didn't know what was happening. We, it was in the transition for months was like, it was, it was brutal on me and on Colette and on knowing what was happening and why he wasn't coming home and where he was even

staying. And like, and like, I don't know, it was mentally really tough. So being a parent's hard. So anyway, those of you who don't have teenagers yet, you're going to find out. It's a different game, but that was really, I don't know, that was really hard. 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. 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 in 10 minutes. You can build your entire business identity. I'm talking about formation paperwork, a real business address, premium mail forwarding,

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So we had a, I don't wanna get too deep into the details of it, but we had a scare with our one son moved out. We had a scare. It was a Friday night. And anyway, we were out till two or three in the morning trying to find him and all sorts of, anyway, that's as far as I'll go.

I came home, went to bed, and then the next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. for wrestling tournament. I took my son to it. And for me, wrestling is my happy place. You guys know that. I don't know. Nothing brings me more happiness than wrestling. And anyway, I go to this wrestling tournament. I'm watching Bowman. It's his senior year, we've been working so hard. Like literally every day of the summer, we worked out, um, me, him and his wrestling partner, just trying to perfect

things and get better. He was like, just doing so good and so excited. And we're at this wrestling tournament. And for some reason, normally the coaches sit back off the mats, but for some reason, like the gym was small. Everything, everything's on top of each other like it's like i'm sitting right on the mat and my son's wrestling and um and i did something stupid uh the kid wrestling put it put a hold on my son that he should not have the ref was very slow to react to it and um don't know, just call it lack of sleep, call it stressed, call anxiety, call it being stupid. Um, a million different things. And, um, I jumped out and tried to get the kid off my son. And, and, um, anyway, I got kicked out of the tournament rightfully. So I should have, uh, it was, I was in the wrong there. I should not have done it. Um, and, uh, and,

and I thought that was it. I don't know. Normally that would, that would have been, what's it, um, this kind of stuff happens in wrestling often. It's not something that, I don't know. And, uh, someone caught on video and, um, because I am who I am, they posted it and tagged me and tagged everybody. And, and that video went viral. Um, and I don't know if any of you guys ever had a chance to stand in front of millions of people and have them all take shots at you without you having to really say anything back. Man, it is brutal. It's crazy because like we went to the family, apologized, made it right. Like everything was fine. Like the jury of public opinion, I don't know, it was called Judge, Jury, Executioner of the World. Yeah, for the next, I don't know, six weeks.

I would say conservatively I probably got, I don't know, 3,000, 4,000 death threats. I got people. Anyway, it was like nothing I've experienced before. And again, it's one of those things that like happened in the normal world. It wouldn't have been that big a deal because it made it on the news and it made it everywhere. I got on the Joe Rogan show. Yeah, I made it on Rogan. I don't know, but because of it, it was just, they, they won't let, they, they forced me to

quit, quit as a coach. They wouldn't let me go and watch my son wrestle ever again. Won't let me go to practices. Won't let me even into watch a wrestling match for two years. I can't coach ever. I literally taken the thing that was most important to me away. That was hard, man. I don't know. And again, it sucks because like, I mean, it was a mistake. I messed up 100%. Man, I would say conservatively probably cost me a couple million dollars. Cost me a lot of, it was tough it was tough to see how

like people who i thought were friends uh you know jump up and throw you under the bus people who are your enemies feel like it's christmas and they get a do they want people using just for clickbait uh to take as many shots as possible. Like it was, um, it was hard for me, for my family, for every, I didn't know. Anyway, it was, um, man. Uh, so that was, that was my January. Um, yeah, so I don't even know. Uh, but yeah, that was kind of, it was brutal. And then from there, um, it was, you know, the rest of the years kept happening, kept having things. And it's just, we had, you know, problems with ClickFunnels, problems with employees, problems. It was just like, man, it's like everything could

possibly go wrong that year. It kept happening. It kept getting hit over and over and over again. Towards the end of the year, we decided to take, our company, our company's got a lot of stuff, right? We got ClickFunnels, we got the training, we got everything, coaching programs. That was one company. And we decided to separate them as two different companies. And so we spent a lot of time doing that. Um, which, uh, officially got done December 31st, January 1st. Uh, we're running as two companies as prime mover, which is the info coaching side of the business and click funnels, which is the software side of the business. But, um, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of things along the way. Anyway, it's, it's, uh, it was a tough year and I'm sure a lot of you guys had, had similar things. Um, in fact,

it was like month after month. It's like, I don't know how, like, you know, just thing would happen. The next thing would happen. The next thing, it was just like, um, anyway, it just, just a lot. And, um, and it's funny because like, I mean, you guys, if you follow me at all, you know, our mantra inside of ClickFunnels, you're one funnel away, you're one funnel away. You know, we launched a ton of funnels. It's like, I need funnels to increase coaching sales, to increase ClickFunnels trials, to increase revenue. So we don't have to let people go. And there were a couple of times we had to do layoffs this year, like things like that. I'm just trying and trying and trying. Um, and, uh, and it's crazy as we got closer and closer to the end of the year. Um, and again, one funnel away, man, I,

I, I, I said that for a long time. It's been our mantra. Um, and if you look at how many different funnels we rolled out over the last year, but then, uh, towards the end of the year, um, we launched after we were splitting the company info side, I was like, Hey, how do we, how do we sustain info product side, the coaching side, we need something. And so we sat down and said, okay, we need to build something. We sat down and we built a funnel and you probably seen the funnel. It's selling online.com and it's a three day event. And we launched that and that event and that offer the back-end coaching everything

just shifted everything for us like it it gave me the ability like oh okay it's working again thank heavens all right we have an offer we have something to scale if something can grow it was like it was like the brink of everything falling apart and then like one funnel way one funnel way wasn't that one wasn't that one wasn't that one wasn't that one, it wasn't that one, it wasn't that one, it wasn't that one. And I was like, boom, we got one. This is the one. It's the highest converting funnel we've had six, seven years. And so that was the selling online funnel. And then it was like, okay, now the info product side is happening. But like the ClickFunnels side, we're still losing members and things are shrinking. I'm like, how do we save this? And it was like, try another funnel. We did this

funnel and this funnel, same thing, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And all of a sudden during Thanksgiving, boom, we hit one called The Last Secret. You probably see it at thelastsecret.com. We hit it and it was like, boom, like that was the funnel that we can grow, we can scale. And so by the end of the year, it was like, oh my gosh, the two sides of the business is we have two funnels that are scalable, growing funnels that we can spend a million dollars a month on to grow the companies, both companies individually. And it was just like, Oh, anyway, I think a lot of that comes back to like, I don't know, in a year of a year of it being brutal. It's like a lot of praying and a lot of just up at bats. Try this one, try this one, try this one. I think a lot of times, um, you know, when, when things get hard, we just like clam up and just like, Oh, I'm not gonna,

I'm, um, I'm just gonna, I'm going to quit. I'm going to, I'm going to, and it's like, we didn't have that opportunity. I couldn't just quit. Like I've got, you know, hundreds of employees. It's like, I got to try and keep trying, keep trying, keep showing up, keep stepping up to play and like striking out, striking out, striking out. And then how good it feels when you hit something and your team rallies behind it. It's just like, Oh my gosh, we have something that's going to like, it's going to serve our customers at such a level deeper than we ever thought possible. And then also something that our team is fired up about. Everyone, the employees, the staff, the team. And I remember I was selling a line event. We got done and Miles runs our event, came out. He was freaking out. He's like, this is so exciting. First time I had

introduced the concept of a prime mover and this thing. And he was just like, yeah, I'm a prime mover forever. He was so excited. Everyone else was rallying behind us. Like, it feels like, like we're back. Right. And the last secret to sending click phones, we're trying different versions, different things like, and, uh, like how do we get trials back to where they used to be? How do we get all kinds of stuff? And then boom, that one hit. And it's just like, oh, thank heavens. So, uh, I don't know if there's something about that. You guys are just keeping, keeping on keeping, showing up and trying and trying and trying despite all of the challenges and all the pain. So that was the end of last year.

It's like finally we had two funnels. We're just like now we get the two sides of our company. We can grow them. We can scale them. And we've got the ammunition we need, which is really exciting. And that brings me to today. So actually tomorrow. So tomorrow, I told you guys I have twin boys. Uh, one of my sons went left a year ago on his birthday and has been living away and he's doing great now. He's got a job. He's having anyway. So, you know, a year later, it's like after you

get past the initial three or four months of just like, I was not prepared for this. How does this work? How do you, how do you navigate the emotional and the physical and the, like all the things, right? He's doing great now and thriving. And it's been, um, it's been interesting and fun watching him take that step into, uh, into the real world. And now my other son is going on a mission. Uh, in fact, tomorrow we were driving him to Utah to the missionary training center. We're going to drop him off and he'll be gone for two years. And so my family life is like changing. It's so weird. But also it's like, it's, um, it's, you know, we're more prepared now and it's, it's, it's better. So anyway, that's the, that's the year for me coming up to now. So like I said, the last four years, as you've seen,

have been brutal at the same time. Um, now, right now we are, we are on the, I don't know, the precipice of like so many great things. Um, like ClickFunnels, are, we are on the, I don't know, the precipice of like so many great things. Um, like ClickFunnels, um, we're not calling it ClickFunnels 2.0, but new ClickFunnels. We have like two or three really cool things happening this month before Funnel Hacking Live. You guys will see, um, I want to tell you so bad, but I can't, you'll see it soon, but just new things that are coming out that are like so exciting. And like the platform's insane now. It's stable.

It's great. The editor is second to none. The, the, anyway, I'm so proud of what ClickFunnels has become. It took us longer to get there than we wanted. And I apologize for that. Um, but man, where it is now is insane. I got, we have people in swarms coming back and like, they're like so fed up with all the crappy other solutions. And like, we miss the funnel builder. We miss this. And like ClickFunnels is today the greatest funnel builder on the planet, hands down. There's nothing that comes close to it. The page load speeds faster.

The features, the simplicity, the – it is insane. There's nothing better than that. Like it is – anyway, so that is true and I'm proud of it. And with that foundation, like growing again is like – it's so exciting. So, okay. So with that said, sorry, there's a, it's so exciting. So, okay. So with that said, sorry, there's a long lead up to the things I actually wanted to talk about and teach you on today's podcast, but I wanted to give you some, some, some background, why I'm calling the Russell Brunson show, uh, why we're doing things like the last year. Um, and, and now it's like, Hey,

we're at the beginning of the year. One of the things we're going to do to take over the world, right? I want to take over my world while you guys take over your world and your businesses. And so I've got six things to be focusing on that are the keys. A going to do to take over the world, right? I want to take over my world. I want you guys to take over your world and your businesses. And so I've got six things to be focusing on that are the keys. A lot of this comes back to the fundamental foundational things that, you know, from the ClickFunnels world, from Russell Brunson, from the dot-com secrets, experts, traffic seekers, books, but it's refocusing. And it's funny because for me, it's like this is what I'm refocusing on. And so usually when I'm trying to refocus, it's like most of the people who follow me are like,

I'm also refocusing on the same things. And so I hope this helps serve you guys and stuff to focus on first. Okay. Thing number one, get your hand notes out, write them down. Thing number one is, uh, is focusing on, on creating a break even funnel for your business. Okay. What is a break even funnel? A break even funnel is a funnel that I can spend a million dollars a month in ads. And I get a million dollars back during the point of sale, during the signup process, right? It is the key. It's the thing that gives you the ability to sustain and grow your company, okay? For me, Selling Online was the first one. Again, my whole goal was I need to get a funnel that we can spend a ton of money on to get leads in again. So we're trying thing after thing after thing, like this funnel, this funnel,

this funnel, this funnel. And finally, for us, it was sellingonline.com. That funnel became the break-even funnel. Okay. It's a three-day event. It's a hundred dollars to get a ticket. If you guys haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend going and funnel hacking it. One of the highest converting funnels of all time. And it's working. And you should also go through the event anyway, because it's a three-day event on teaching you how to actually sell more. So sellingonline.com, right? But it's a break-even funnel. Okay. Right now, my goal, in fact, my entire goal, we, one of our guys in our inner circle, my Atlas program, he spends $150,000 a day in ads. So I built this funnel with that goal. I need a funnel. I can spend $150,000 a day in

ads. We're not there yet. We are the spot where we're spending probably 50 to $60,000 a day in ads and trying to get that to the spot where we can consistently get to $100,000 a day in ads and beyond. But if you can spend $100,000 a day in ads and beyond. But if you can spend $100,000 a day profitably in ads, what does that do for the rest of your business? Like it explodes it. Think how many new leads, how much new blood is coming into your business

every single day. Think about how much, how people are buying your back-end coaching program and now you have these new leads who can buy everything else in your ecosystem. Like the key number one is break-even funnel. So for the info product side of the business, which we call Prime Mover, that was the key. S ecosystem. Like the key number one is break even funnel. So for the info product side of the business, which we call prime mover, um, that was the key. So I became the funnel.

Now we can spend the money a day. Now the second thing is I need a break even funnel in the click funnels business. We've had them for years, but over the last probably a year and a half, two years, we've not had a break even funnel. Okay. Uh, initially it was just, uh, it was a funnel hacks webinar. We ran that, you know, you guys know the story. I did a webinar, like 70, 80 times live. And then we transitioned to evergreen and ran that for years, right? That was the Funnel Hacks webinar. We ran that. You guys know the story. I did a webinar like 70, 80 times live. Then we transitioned to Evergreen and ran that for years, right? That was the funnel. Now that funnel was not the offer, the webinar, whatever is not profitable anymore. So we had to turn that one off.

Then the One Funnel Away Challenge was the next thing. We ran that for years. That was the profitable front-end funnel that we spent tons of money. We had 180-something thousand people buy the One Funnel Away funnel, right? That was the next one that lasted for a long time. After that, when we launched 2.0, we had the year first funnel challenge. That one ran profitably for like two years,

maybe a year, year and a half before it stopped working. And I was like, we need a funnel, need a funnel. So again, we were trying different thing after thing after thing. And then finally, thelastseeker.com launched, boom. And if you guys follow the linchpin model, it is modeling the linchpin business uh, business model to a T. Um, and so if you want to go see it, the last secret.com, you can go check it out.

Um, but they register for a live event. Then, uh, there's the thank you page. Mifki giving people click funnels trial. Um, and then we do the event where we're basically, um, white label a whole bunch of like $40 million software company for free when they have a click funnels account. Like it's insane. Um, and so that right now, just we did the launch during Black Friday and it crushed.

It was insane. Probably the highest converting offer I've ever done. And now we just this week are rolling it out as a live evergreen. So boom, number one, break even funnel. Okay, if I was to go to create a new business, in fact, a good example of secrets of success is the side business I have, right?

My number one focus post FHL is to create a new business, in fact, a good example of secrets of success is the side business I have, right? My number one focus post FHL is to get a break-even funnel in that business. And so I'm gonna try two or three until I get one that's like, boom, this is the one that can scale. Same thing with magnetic marketing, Dan Kenney's business. Like my number one focus post FHL

is getting a break-even funnel. So for you guys, like number one thing for this year is you have to have a funnel where you can spend money profitably to get customers. Otherwise, you're in trouble, okay? Now, if you're waiting to build this funnel, like you need to go test a bunch of things. Like now is the time to go build a breakeven funnel. It is the key that will unlock all the freedom, all the success, all the growth, all the things you need. Okay. My ability to grow and scale click funnels right now is second to

none. Better than it's ever been in the past, right? Like if I'm going to beat everyone else, there's nothing to do anything other than having a good, solid front end break-even funnel I can scale through paid ads. Like that is the key. That's how you win this game. Nothing else actually matters that much. Okay. All right. That's thing number one. Okay. You're right. Thing number two, thing number two is what is your key metric? I lost sight of this. In your business, you have a key metric and mine has shifted over the years. In fact, I remember when I was first growing my business, this is man, pre-click funnels. I had built a business that kind of collapsed. And I was like back in the rebuilding phase. I had a really cool call with my buddy

Dagan Smith. And we're talking about our businesses and growing and stuff like that. And Dagan asked me this question. It was so cool. He said, how many people join your list today? He dropped that today. Because he would say, how many people join your list? Oh, I got 100,000 people on my list. How many people join your list today? And I didn't know. I was like, I don't, I'm not sure. Let me see. So I logged into my whatever, I think I had Aweber at the time, Aweber account. It was like six. How many joined today? I'm like, six? He's like, oh, that is your problem. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, dude, your only focus should be how many people are joining your list every day. I'm like, how many join your list every day?

He's like, and he logged in, it was like 3,000 something. And he's like, dude, your only focus should be how many people are joining your list every day. I'm like, how many join your list every day? He's like, and he logged in, it was like 3000 something. And he's like, this happens every day. He's like, my focus is this, is building my list, building my list, building my list. And as soon as he told me that, then that became our focus. I told my entire team, all right, only it matters how many people join our list today. And what's crazy about it, as soon as you look at something, um, like it'll grow. It's crazy. And so it's just like, because it's back in my head, like, okay, well, how do I get more people to listen?

What do I need to do? Oh, I need to do a, I do a podcast. Instead of just doing a podcast, I do a podcast and I give a call to action, right? Instead of doing a Facebook Live, I do a Facebook Live

and I give a call to action. Instead of just going, you know, like, you just start thinking differently and start focusing. And I remember when we shifted our focus, how many people during this day

went from six, you know, to like 50 a day, to 100 a day, to 1,000 a day, to 5,000 a day a day to a hundred a day to a thousand a day to 5,000 a day to 10,000 a day. Like when it became the focus, okay. We want to click funnels. Um, our key metric shift, our key metric was how many trials did we get today? When that became the focus, guess what happened? We got way more trials and we started this, this run to remember we want our goal was like get to a hundred thousand active members. And so, um, that was like on all the TVs

in the office, everyone saw it every single day. It was like the thing we talked about every meeting is like how many people each day are joining, how many people we have, how do we get to 100,000? And that became the focus point, right? We blew up the spot. We hit past 100,000 active members. It blew up beyond that.

And then after we passed 100,000, I stopped focusing on it. We hit the goal. It's crazy. And it's been like four or five years since I focused on that goal. And because of that, like because no one's focusing on that as the goal, like the goalposts moved

and just kind of like settled down, right? Now we're below 100,000 active members. And so it's coming back to like, what is your key metric? Okay, so the ClickFunnels business is how many people are actively on ClickFunnels. Like, and so how many trials are we getting today? Like that becomes,

so in the ClickFunnels business, that is the key metric. And we're bringing it back to that. We'd forgotten about it. It's like bringing that back. That is the only thing that matters. Okay. And the selling online, sorry, the prime mover side of the business, right, is different.

That one is like how many tickets have we sold? How many people are going to be on this month's live challenge? Okay. And so my goal is I want to have 5,000 people every single month doing the selling online challenge. Right now we're about 2,500 to 3,000 that join every single month. So I'm about halfway. But our entire team, we all know like everything from social to ads, everything's like we need 5,000 people a month on this thing for our numbers to work. Right. And so those are the key, the two key metrics for the two key businesses. Okay. All right.

So that's number two is what is your key metric? Okay. I don't care what it is, but it's gotta be the thing that drives your growth and needs to be something that's literally on your wall every single day. You see it when you wake up in the morning, if you got a team, that's the first thing everyone's asking you, how many people joined the thing that drives your growth. It needs to be something that's literally on your wall every single day. You see it. When you wake up in the morning, if you've got a team, that's the first thing everyone's asking. How many people joined the thing last night, right? If you don't have a team, then it's like you're yourself asking, like, how many people joined the thing last night? That should be the only thing that actually matters in your business. Okay? Everything else is just a byproduct of that, not only what your key metric is.

Okay? And by the way, your breaking funnel, step number one, should be the thing that's fueling your key number two metric. Okay? All right. One, two. 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

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LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. Number three, I just wrote really big in all bold caps, promotion, promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting. Okay, too many times us as creators, we create something and then we move to create something else. We have to focus on promotion of the thing we have. Promotion, promotion, promotion. Okay, I've got three of arguably the greatest marketing books of all time.

Dotcom secrets, experts, traffic secrets. I'm not focused on promoting those in a long, long, long time. So we just rebuilt the funnels and now I'm coming back to promotion advocate promotion. You hear me talking about more often, like promotion, promotion, promotion, right? I'm doing more Facebook lives. I'm getting like, I'm doing more podcast episodes. I'm getting other people's podcast episodes. Like I'm, I'm speaking at more events. Like I got to get back into the promotion game. Same thing for you every single day. How, how, like, how are you promoting yourself today?

I remember a couple of years ago, my friend, um, uh, one of my friends, he, uh, it was January 1st and he, he, um, he, he posted a thing. It was like, how many, he's like, my goal is to give, I can't remember. I have a PowerPoint slide where I walked through what he did, but it was like, he was going to try to do, um, a thousand live presentations and, um, or a thousand speeches that year or something. And he said, I defined a speech where there's me and at least two other people, right? It's going to be one to two, one to five and a hundred, but it's like a one to many presentation. And he said, the goal is I can't remember. I wish, I wish I pulled, I think it was a thousand though for the year he wanted to do. And so we put it out first day. It was like January 1st. I spoke to like my list,

right? You know, I had one, one out of one. And then February I did this and get, or January 2nd, January 3rd, every day he posts publicly how many speeches he had given. And as I started doing that and people started messaging like, hey, you want to speak to my audience? I'll speak to my audience. And by the time he was in March, he was getting like six, seven, eight speeches a day where he's doing a podcast here. He's doing a Facebook Live. This group, he's talking to this guy's – this group over here. He's doing – just like – and it was just him doing this kind of stuff.

And it made me remember, like, we got to focus more on promotion, promotion, promotion, promotion, right? How are you promoting your business today? I give you all the time, like, I'm working on my funnel. I'm going to launch my funnel. I'm like, okay, that's great. But you got to be promoting at the same time, right? If you're not doing active promotion, when your funnel's ready, no one's going to be

there to buy. Okay. Promotion is a consistent, constant, consistent things happening every single day. Okay. So you got to figure out where are the places that you can talk, that you can promote and then be there as much as you possibly can. Okay. Promotion, promotion, promotion. All right. So number one is breaking funnels. Number two, figure out a key metric. Number three is constant, consistent promotion. Number four. Okay. And this is something that's going to be a little controversial. You got to focus on ad creative over social. Okay. I've been doing social game for a little controversial. You got to focus on ad creative over social.

Okay. I've been doing social game for a long time. I got a million plus followers on, on Facebook and on Instagram, another million. And on YouTube, we got 400,000. What's crazy. And I love social and maybe I just suck at social. That's definitely a possibility. There are people who are killing on social.

But for the amount of effort I put into social and the number of leads that come back and number of sales and trials and stuff like it's not bad, but it's not good. Okay. When I put that same effort into ad creative, um, those make me way more money. It's crazy. Um, I was looking at like how many hours a week I do creating social. I, again, I, cause it was podcasts, YouTube channel, these things like these are all social things I'm doing.

They're all great. Okay. And they're good for longterm consistently good for building brand, good for connection with the audience, all sorts of stuff. But if you want to'm doing. They're all great. Okay. And they're good for long-term consistently, good for building brand, good for connection with the audience, all sorts of stuff. But if you want to make money, it's creating ads. Okay. Last Friday, we sat there and I spent four hours just creating ads, ad after ad, after ad, after ad.

Those ads get plugged in and instantly they turn into more money. Social eventually turns into more money. Ads instantly. Okay. So focusing on ad creative over social. Okay. For every hour you're putting into social, you should be putting an hour into more money. Ads instantly, okay? So focusing on ad creative over social. Okay, for every hour you're putting into social, you should be putting an hour into ad creative. If you do that, watch how your business changes, okay?

If you look at like really good offers, the reality is with really good offers, the difference between an offer that's doing good and doing great is how much creative you have going towards that. In fact, a really good story. Dean Graciosi and I, we both launched a book about same time.

I had expert secrets and he launched millionaire success habits. And we were, you know, we basically had very similar funnels. He had, he had funnel hacked my funnel. So his funnel looked like mine. And we were kind of sharing stats back and forth.

And what's crazy is that he had spent, he was getting four times the book sales that I was having. And I, we couldn't figure it out. Like even I asked him, he's like, he's like, I don't know.

We're looking at stuff. And finally I was like, can I come down and let's just spend a day with my team and your team. It was just like, let's kind of coach each other, look at everything. He's like, sure, come on down. So we flew down there and we went through all his numbers, his analytics, his everything. And when all said and done, when we found out is the only difference between Dean and me was Dean was creating four times more creative than I was. That's it. Okay. For every ad I made, he was making four ads. And it was interesting because Dean's from the infomercial world. And he told me, he's like, back in his life, I would do an infomercial. And he's like,

one infomercial lasts for 18 months before it would get ad fatigue and I have to go record a new one. He's like, with ads on Facebook and Google, it's like six days. So you gotta keep creating a lot of creative. You don't know which ones are going to work and which ones are not going to work. And then what's interesting, he told me, he's like, when you find the message that works, then you can double down. And so like he was showing us, he ended up selling, I think during this campaign, like four or 500,000 copies of his book,

which is crazy for a book. But he's like, it took me like six months to get the right hook. And so he's just doing ad after ad after ad. And eventually like just one of the ad creatives he did, boom, the hook landed. And he's like, oh, that's the hook. And then he did all the ads afterwards using that same hook. And that's

when it blew up. So for me, it was selling online. Guess what I'm doing once a month, I'm going and creating a whole bunch of new ad creative, right? Cause we're like, we're running this live event every single 30 days, every single month. So I need new ads. And so I'm doing new ads. And so like every month it's like, Oh, that one didn't work. That one didn't work. This one did. And so like, I'm learning, like, this is the messaging that gets people to sign up for this event. Okay? So I'm putting more time into ad creative.

Ad creative. Ad creative. So number four is ad creative over social. For every hour you put into social, you're putting an hour into ad creative because the ad creative will pay off instantly. Social pays off over long term. So you still want to do both, but focusing on ad creative over social. All right.

Number five. I wrote curiosity. You've got to become curious. I don't know what it is about people. Maybe it's just I'm so curious, but people drive me nuts. Okay. So for example, I have people come to me all the time in my real world and they're like, wow, Russell, you're making a lot of money.

And that's it. They never say, what are you doing? Like, how do you do this? Okay. You guys remember the movie Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith and he's coming down and he's out from the building and the stockbroker pulls up in like some insane car and he gets out. Will Smith's like, what do you do and how do you do it?

Right. I'm going to figure that out. And he went and did it. Right. Same thing if you watch the Wolf of Wall Street where, what's his name? Jonah, Jonah Hill's character. When he's talking to Leonardo DiCaprio and he's like, you show me a page.

Or he's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm a stockbroker. How much money do you make? He's like, $50,000 a week. He's like, you show me a pay stub. You make $50,000 a week. I quit my job right now and I come work for you. And he shows him the thing and the next scene is like, yeah, I quit.

It hangs up. Anyway, it's crazy to me how not curious people are. If you come to somebody and you find them and they're making more money than you. You should be so curious. Like what are you doing? How are you doing it? If you find someone who is in better shape than you, you need to become extremely curious. What are you doing? How are you doing?

What's the program? What's the protocol? I need to understand. Like you know something. I don't know. I need to know. Okay. When somebody is doing something amazing that you want to be like or you want to understand,

like you have to become insanely curious. I can't tell you how many tens of thousands of people I've met who come into my world or they meet me or something. And, uh, and they're like, they'll ask me like, wow, what do you do? I'm like, oh, I started online business. And then they don't, they don't follow up. Oh, nice. And they stop. I'm like, you guys, this is like, it, it blows my mind. Um, the people that are most successful at all areas of life are the people who are the most curious. You have to become more curious. What is this?

Like what's happening? What's working? Why is it working? Okay. I think one of the things I find interesting is people come into my world who want to learn how to grow businesses and do funnels

and all that kind of stuff. The ones who want to just come make money, they're not curious. They're just like, how do I make money? And they try to do things. They struggle. The ones who get curious,

like how does this work? Like what is it? Like I want to understand the psychology and the marketing, the business. Like the ones who get curious, like, how does this work? Like, what is the, like, I want to understand the psychology and the marketing, the business. Like, the ones who get curious about it, those are the ones who have success, right? Because they build a foundation of success that helps them be successful, right?

It's not just like, like, if I meet someone's six-pack ass, like, how do you do that? And then they give you a list of their other recipes that they eat and then, like, you try to do that, like, you're not going to be successful, right? You got to understand everything, like, their mindset, why they do it and how it works and how they structure the day.

And like, you got to get deep into their mindset. So we need to become more curious about the people and the things that are having success in the world that we want to be in. Okay. We always talk about modeling success, but it's more than that. It's like, it's like figure out who you're going to model and then becoming extremely curious. Like, what are they doing and how are they doing it?

And why are they doing it? Asking a lot of questions. Okay. If you see someone on, like when I see someone on social who's having, I see something blowing up

and I, like I do this all the time. In fact, if any of you guys are out there, you know this. If I've seen your stuff, like I'll see like an ad or a video or something

that's going viral, something I love and I message people like, dude, your ad's awesome. That was so cool. How'd you do that? Where'd you come up with the idea?

Is it yours? It was an agent's thing. Like I start asking these questions, right? And it's how it opens up all these doors for me, okay? Extreme curiosity. The more curiosity you have, the more likely you are you're gonna be to have success, okay?

So start asking more questions. When someone has what you want or has something you desire, don't just be like, oh, nice. Like drill them, right? Think about Will Smith, Pursuit of Happiness, right? Like what do you do and how do you do it, okay? Or Jonah Hill, right? Think about Will Smith, pursuit of happiness, right? Like what do you do and how do you do it, okay?

Or Jonah Hill, right? You show me a check with $70,000, I quit my job right now, I can work for you. That's the kind of mentality, that's the kind of curiosity you have to have to be successful in this game, okay? All right, and then number six, achievers never quit, okay?

That's it. If you wanna be successful, you have to stop stopping, okay? Achievers do not quit. I, that's it. If you want to be successful, you have to stop stopping. Okay, achievers do not quit. I think about this all the time. Like, I don't know, I'm a hyper intense achiever, right? I'm a high achiever. I love achievement.

Like it's one of my few things that fuel me, right? I want to win at everything. So I was wrestling. Like, it's crazy to me. Like I would go in the wrestling room and we'd have all these people coming in and just people like, I don't know, it's just crazy to me. Like they come in, it gets room and we'd have all these people coming in and, and just people like, I don't know. It's just crazy to me.

Like they come in, it gets hard. They quit, they quit, they quit, they quit. Like you come in the wrestling room on the very first day of practice, the room's so jammed. Nobody could fit in there. Within a month, like a fourth of them are gone. Within two months, half are gone. By the end of the season, it's like a third of the people are left.

Right. And it just blows my mind. How many people quit? And it's like, do you want to know why you're not successful in areas of life? Cause you quit. It's just insane to me you want to know why you're not successful in areas of life? Because you quit. It's just insane to me, right? I see it in business too. People come in and they dabble, they dabble, and they quit, right?

Like if you want to win this game, like this is not a short-term game. Like how do I get rich quick? No, no, no, no. This is a game for achievers, right? And you come in and the thing that makes you an achiever is that you don't quit, right? You're curious and you don't quit. And you try and you fail and you try and you fail and you try and you like, that's, that's the key. Um, uh, I saw a kid, uh, this guy gave me a speech the other day and, um,

great kid. Um, but he was someone who came in the wrestling room and he worked out for two months. Then he quit. And I just saw him and I was just like, I'm like, I could quit. And it's like, now that he's done that, like in all areas of his life, now he's got an outlet. It's like, oh, I quit wrestling. I quit this. I quit. Like you've got to stop quitting at things. I don't know.

I think one of the reasons I've been so successful is like I don't quit. Right? Like I think about wrestling. Wrestling puts you under the most extreme situations of any human on this planet, I think. I don't know. I mean, I look at like what wrestling practice looks like. If you ever survived like a three-hour wrestling practice at like division one level, like it is brutal. It's hard to compete. It's hard to survive. But imagine doing that while

cutting weight, which means you haven't eaten or drinking in three days and you still have to walk into that room and perform at a high level, right? With plastics on and sweats on while you're trying to cut weight, right? Like there's so many times I would have loved to quit like over and over and over again, right? Sometimes people just quit, right? But I didn't quit, right? And so I have this thing in my head, like I don't have it. I don't have the ability to quit. Like that's not an option. I don't give myself that option, right? I think about just last four years of my journey, okay? You look at like when we launched ClickFunnels, we're growing and everyone's cheering because they love the underdog story and you're growing. And then we get to the top. And the second we stumble, everyone comes attacking. Everyone comes throwing stuff at us.

Like, man, I could have quit earlier and left on a high with a whole, you know, a hundred million dollars in my pocket and be like, peace, I'm out. Right. But instead, because I decided to continue to serve, the second I stumbled, man, everyone wants to like throw their cheap shots in. And it's insane. Right. I could have quit a million times along the way. I wanted to quit sometimes, right? But I don't quit. Achievers don't quit, right? And if you want to win at this game or the game of life as a whole, you have to stop quitting. And so those are the things this year that I wanted to kind of bring to your plate to think about on success, right? If you want to be successful in 2025, like this game is fun. Like I love it. I'm still obsessed with it. There are times when I'm tired

and it's brutal. It's ups and the downs, all sorts of stuff. But I love this game, right? And so think about the things to focus on, right? Number one, again, break-even funnels. You need a break-even funnel for your business. You should be obsessed with creating funnel after funnel after funnel until you got one, okay? You probably noticed I didn't just try one funnel. I didn't work. I don't know what to do now, right? Like, I don't know, go back to my email list. If you guys are on my email list, how many funnels I launched in the last 12 months?

I promise it's a lot more than you did, okay? Well Russell, you have, like, no, no, no, no, no. If I'm gonna launch 12 funnels this year to find one break-in funnel, how many are you gonna launch? You might launch 20, okay? Because I'm pretty dang good at this game, but it took me a lot of funnels to get one that I can now scale, okay? Which means you got to pick up speed. You got to stop slowing

down. You got to stop like wasting time and thinking about it. And like, you got to put some stuff, you got to put stuff out there. Okay. I always used to joke about this. You got a bunch of crap, throw the wall and see which thing's going to stick. Okay. Most guys are sitting there like pile of crap. Like, I don't know. Should I throw it? I don't know. I'm just going to think about it. Like what if someone makes fun of me? What if it doesn't work? And you're just like holding this, like throw it and then see, and then try again and try again and try again, right? You got to find out what the breaking funnel is that's going to grow for you and scale. But you don't know until you go out there and you actually do it, okay?

Number one is breaking funnels. Number two, pick out your key metric. Every morning, waking up, looking at that metric, knowing what it is. As soon as you start focusing on it, it will grow, okay? Say that everything you focus on will grow except for your waistline, which will actually shrink when you focus on it because you're gonna try to lose weight. Right. But everything else, if we focus on it, it grows. So figure out the key driving metric in your business. Is it options? Is it sales? Is it trials? Like what is the thing for you? Okay. For me, it's easy. Trials

over and click phones business ticket sales over here in this, in the, um, the prime mover business. That's it. Those are the two metrics. All matters every single day, day in and day out. Okay. Number three promotion. We came every morning thinking about, I got to promote, I got to promote, I got to promote. I was talking to a friend yesterday about PT Barnum. I have PT Barnum's actual pocket watch. And I was telling him about it at church. And I was like, yeah, I got PT Barnum's pocket watch. He's like, that's so cool. It's like, why are you collecting PT Barnum stuff? I was like, PT Barnum's one of the greatest promoters of all time. I'm like, you know, he knows I run a business. I'm like, that's like promotions, like the key to success in this business, right?

Like I love Barnum because of promotion. Like I study him, I read his books. I studied what he did because he's a great promoter. Like we got to become great promoters, okay? Number four, ad creative over social. For every hour you put it into social, you got to spend at least an hour in creating ads so you can find the hooks.

So you have enough creative to be able to scale when you do have a funnel that's going to be a break even. Okay. Number five, curiosity, becoming like obscenely curious when somebody's got something you don't have and figure out how they do it, why they do it. Reverse engineer, asking questions, like do whatever it takes to be able to figure out what that thing is. And number six, achievers never quit.

Stop quitting. Okay. Go stand in the fire for a little bit, throw some fists and just know you don't have an outlet. Don't give yourself, don't let yourself off the hook. Okay. If you're struggling right now, my guess is you've probably let yourself off the hook more than once. It's time to stop. Okay. There is no turning back. Like this is it. You were in the fire. You chose to come on this path. You feel called to be here. You got to step into that and lean into it and do not stop. Okay.

Because achievers never quit. Those are my six things for you guys. I hope that was helpful for you. A couple other things. Depending on where you're listening to this, we are less than a month away from the last ever Funnel Hacking Live. I'm excited for it. I'm sad about it. I'm happy for that. It's going to be the last one. I'm sad about it. Like all the things. If you don't have your ticket yet, now is the time to come. This will be the last. It's going to be the biggest, the best. Go to funnelhackinglive. If you don't have your ticket yet, now is the time to come. This will be the last. It's going to be the biggest, the best. Go to funnelhackinglive.com. Get your tickets in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's going to be a lot of fun. So come out there, hang out with us. I'm going to share with you guys the funnels we're using, what we're doing behind the scenes, a whole bunch of other cool stuff. We're going to light you on

fire and get you excited and motivated and fired up. It's time to plug back in. Again, this is the last time. People for years are like, oh, I'm going to come to the next one. I'm going to come to the next one. There is no next one. This is it. Russell, why are you stopping? It's like, I've been doing this for a decade. Okay. I've been doing this for you, right? Like I'm taking a break because I got to focus on this. I got to focus on my promotion, my growing, my scaling, those kinds of things. Russell, what's the plan? I'll talk about the plan at Funnel Hacking. I couldn't find a lot. I'll tell you what's happening. Uh, but this is the last Funnel Hacking Live. You do not want to miss it. Um, and then on top of that, uh, russellbrunson.com

because this is the Russell Brunson show, I'm going to update that site with links to the podcast, YouTube channels, things like that. YouTube, we've got different YouTube channels. There's one that's like all my Russell Brunson, me breaking out funnel hacks. There's one with the podcast, one with shorts. Like go subscribe to all those channels, podcasts.

Everything's going to be in this one podcast where I can just focus on one. Instagram, like come plug into all the things. You also see links to all my businesses, my funnels. Like if you go to RussellBrunson.com, there's a whole bunch of really cool stuff there to go check out, uh, which is a lot of fun. And, um, I think that's it you guys. So what do you think? Episode one of the Russell Brunson show was a good, bad up down. Let me know if you liked it. Uh, please take a screenshot of your phone and I go post it on social Instagram,

Facebook, whatever tag and be like, Russell, I love it. Or if you don't like Russell, you talk too fast, whatever. I don't really care. I just want to make sure you guys are plugged in because I'm excited about this year. I'm excited to spend more time podcasting with you guys. This kind of this format. I kind of went from like me doing short form show shows to me doing long form shows. I've done a lot of interviews and I'll probably still bring in interviews and stuff. I miss just hanging out. Well, this is someone else's podcast. I'm there to listen to their thoughts and their ideas, not so much interviews. So again, I'll probably do some interviews, but I'm gonna do a lot more just me and you guys hanging out because I don't know, if I was listening to me, that's what I want to hear.

So you get the Russell perspective on things. I hope you enjoy it. Other than that, you guys, I appreciate you. For any of you guys who had a hard last 12 months or two years or four years, just know that there is, there, there is hope is lightly in the tunnel. Uh, I'm feeling it right now. Uh, but it comes down to the seven or six things we've talked about right now is like focusing extreme focus on those things. And yeah, so I appreciate y'all. Thanks for being part of the podcast. Um, that said, I'll see you guys on the next episode. Thanks everybody.