The Russell Brunson Show - You're One Funnel Away - Part 2

Episode Date: July 31, 2017

You're just one funnel away... On this special two part episode you will hear the second part of Russell's "One Funnel Away" presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you'll hear: How Russell nearly lost everything when his merchant accounts closed. Why Russell didn't know he hadn't paid Payroll taxes in a year and could have gone to jail. And how Russell turned it all around and along with Todd created Clickfunnels. So listen here to find out how Russell went from nearly bankrupt to amazing success with Clickfunnels within just a few years. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/you-re-one-funnel-away-part-2 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 everyone, it's Russell again. Welcome to the next episode of Marketing Secrets. This is part two of the One Funnel Away presentation. So the big question is this. How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn't cheat and take on venture capital,

who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, guys, so I hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode. If you did like it, I hope that you have shared it. You told other people to go listen to it. And today's going to be the exciting conclusion of Russell's bankruptcy and failure stories. So I hope you guys enjoy it.

It should be a lot of fun. Listen to it. If you're online at marketingsecrets.com, you can watch it. There's a video there where you can share it and see the actual presentation as well. But I hope this helps you. It helps give you faith and hope in what you're doing, what you're creating, and where you're trying to go with your business and the people's lives you're going to serve. So with that said, enjoy my failures.

I hope you guys have a good time with it. And we'll see you guys soon. Bye. Now, the pros and the cons of this. The pros is this was really, really awesome. And I was like, as getting a good entrepreneur, I'm like, hey, what's the book? Nail it and scale it. We nailed it.

We're like, hey, let's scale this thing. And so then I probably shouldn't have done some of this stuff, but we got excited. I was like, well, if this worked here, we should hire more people. And we started growing this. We went from this little thing with five or six of us to two years later, we had about 100 people operation where this is the model we were doing. CDs, calling them on the phone, selling coaching, having continuity. And it grew really, really big. And during that time, there were some really positive things that came from it.

Some negative things, some ups and some downs. And I'll share kind of a lot of those things. One cool thing is that while this was happening, um, uh, and it was going really well, my name kind of got out there. So I got a chance to go speak a lot, which was cool. And I had seen other people speaking from sage. And this is where I've told you guys a story. Anyone's gone through the perfect webinar. Like I spent about two and a half, three years on the road, going to seminars, standing in front of a bunch of people like this, talking and trying to sell something. And then, um, nothing happening. It's a really horrible feeling. Anyone ever done that before? My first presentation, I was on stage, I probably had, I don't know,

300 people in the room. I did a presentation, and I tried to, like, do what speakers do, and, like, close, and then hopefully everybody runs to the back, and, like, nobody budged, and then the guy forgot to turn the music on, and it was just, like, crickets, and then I was just, like, awkwardly, like, walking off the stage. Oh, this is awkward. And then running, you know? And then I remember the first, I was so embarrassed because usually like we have like those events where all like multi-speaker events and all the speakers are selling and everyone's bragging about their numbers. And like, and I knew that I don't want them to ask me my numbers cause I totally didn't like not one person signed up. So I went and hid in my hotel room and I remember ordering

coconut shrimp and Haagen-Dazs ice cream for every meal for the next two days while I hid in the room, eating it, watching movies. So I'm like, I'm going to go back downstairs. And I just, it was really bad and awesome at the same time because coconut shrimp and Haagen-Dazs is awesome. But I did that and I learned like how not to sell. And then I started learning from some amazing speakers and people. And I started learning the process and how it works. And all this stuff we talked about in the perfect webinar, all this stuff we talked about day one about creating belief and breaking belief pattern, all those kinds of things I learned like on the road in front of people on state. Like it was, it was scary, but it's such a good time for me to learn and understand that part of the process.

As we started to grow and make sure I cover all the cool things. We had a bunch of different offers. We came out with one of the ones that was more successful for us was a front-end offer like this called Microcontinuity. How many of you guys remember Microcontinuity? Yeah, that is awesome. So this is one we, it's probably, I don't even know, eight years ago now. We put it on an MP3 player from Hong Kong.

It had like six hours of this training and that was a funnel we put through and we just kept creating new front-end funnels to get people into this program and it worked awesome. And we grew the company from nothing to three or four million dollars a year and it was doing awesome. And then at a time, I started looking at other people in my industry and this is hopefully will help. One of you guys is going to get a good idea for this one. But I had this funnel.

We talked about the value ladder, right? Like I had this really cool value ladder happening here. And, um, and I was, I was sending people up and I realized that I was the only person in the market that had a real value ladder. Everyone else was kind of doing stuff down here and that was it. And I was the only person selling really expensive stuff. I started calling my friends. I called it like Mike Filson. I'm like, Hey man, like, so all of our customers, we call them, we sell them like these $5,000 things and lots of people buy that. Like you should do that. He's like, ah, I don't want to call center and I'm like, well, do you want us to call your customers and sell it? He's like, yeah. So we hooked up with Mike and we became Mike's backend. I call it Frank

Kern. Same thing. We came Frank Kern's backend for a little while. We started calling up a whole bunch of people and then we started becoming the backend. So all these people now had front end funnels. We became the backend for a lot of them. And that's how we took company from three or $4 million to $10 million. And it became really, really became really big and i was gonna say big and fun but i don't think i would say that at all it became really really big we had 100 employees and uh we had 60 people on phones and big huge call center we had 20 people uh doing coaching for all the things we're selling and then we had about 20 people who were driving leads and customers and stuff like that and it got really big and i don't know if you guys noticed this, but like, I'm really good at like selling and those things really bad at like

the management of stuff. And I was not good at managing all these people. And it just, it kind of started, um, just getting too big. And, uh, this is about the time that I was telling you guys, if you've read the.com secrets book that I, I started waking up and I was just like, God, I did not like what I created. I got so excited that I started building this thing. And then one day I woke up and I was like, huh, I really want to do this? I think half of the conversations I have with Inner Circle members when they first come in is this,

like, do you really want to build that business? Like, yes, that would work. But sometimes it's horrible when you get there. Like thinking through like, what do I actually want to do? Who would I really want to become? Who do I want to be when I grow up? And luckily during that time,

it was probably one of the most painful times in my life. But looking back now, it was probably one of the most important times in my life. We had this huge operation. Everything was working. And then one day, it was in January, literally 11 and 30 in the morning, one of my sales guys came in and said, hey, I'm trying to run a credit card, but it's not working. I'm not sure what's wrong. I'm like, oh, that's weird. Well, you know, try one of the other merchant accounts in and said, hey, I'm trying to run a credit card, but it's not working. I'm not sure what's wrong. I'm like, oh, that's weird.

Well, you know, try one of the other merchant accounts. Maybe there's something there. And then someone else came in. Hey, all the continuity orders are failing. I'm not sure why. And then the three or four people came to me. I'm like, what's happening? I logged in the backend system

and like 1137 or something like that, every sale stopped, just stop, no sales. I was like, what is happening? And so I'm kind of freaking out. So I call our merchant account company. There's a busy signal. I'm calling again, busy, calling and busy. And like, I can't get ahold of anybody. All of a sudden I start hearing from friends like, dude, everything got shut down. Like, are you still able to process? I'm like, no. Like what, what's happening? And everyone started, I don't know. I don't know. And, uh,

and soon I found out that it wasn't me. It was like, I eventually found it was like 300 or 400 people. At the same time, anybody who was doing any kind of like continuity-based stuff, the merchant accounts basically came in and said, look, we think that what you're doing might be illegal, and so we're shutting all of you guys down, and you're basically guilty until proven innocent. I was like, what? I've got 100 people I'm feeding, 100 people in their families. Like it turns into like hundreds of people. I was like, what? I've got a hundred people I'm feeding, a hundred people and their families.

Like it turns into like hundreds of people. I was like, you can't stop processing. Finally, after like an hour, I get through to somebody and the lady on the phone says, yep, we shut you down. Good luck ever getting a merchant account again. I got to go, boom, and hung up on me. And I was like, what? And at the time I thought I was, I thought I had diversity.

Like I had, we had nine merchant accounts all through one company. And so I thought that meant, but they were all through different merchant accounts, but all through one bank. And I found out that's the equivalent of having one, which is why I'm a very big believer now in having multiple merchant accounts in multiple different banks, which is the lesson, hopefully, for everybody. If you don't know Alex Roy yet, I don't know if Alex is in here, but meet Alex, and he's the man who can get you hooked up with lots of merchant accounts. He's done that for us. Yes, he's amazing. But it was bad. And so finally, got a hold of these guys, and I'm trying to figure some things out.

And basically said, okay, well, you've got to prove that you are a good guy. I was like, okay. So we went through. It took us two weeks for them to go through all our stuff. Look at our documentation, look at all our stuff. It's two weeks and they came back. So, okay. Uh, you're right. You're doing everything clean. Everything's above board. We'll turn your merchant accounts back on. Um, and you're good to go. I'm like, sweet. So we turn it back on. And that time, like when there's that kind of instability, like sales guys are

freaking out, they can't handle any kind of instability and they're leaving like crazy people walking out the door. And it was like, and I was like freaking out and we had, we had all this payroll, but no money coming in. And so like, I'm paying it out of my own pocket. Like everything, just like keep things afloat. And, um, as I'm going through this process, like it's getting scarier and scarier and finally it's like, if things, you know, merch counts are back on, you're, you're, you're a good guy. I'm like, sweet. So hey guys, we got to do a launch really quick to make a bunch of money. So we do this, put together this huge launch thing. We push it out to our customer lists. And, uh, in a weekend we made $250,000. And I was like, thank you. So great. I was like,

Monday, we should get the money. We can pay payroll. I'm telling everyone, like, just, you know, tell your wives and your kids we'll have money soon. Like it's coming. I promise like it's in the bank. It's just going to be here any day now. And money didn't come. Money didn't come. Monday didn't come. Tuesday didn't come. Wednesday didn't come. By Thursday, I'm like calling her like, where's our money, dude? Like, we need this money. And then the guy looks at the camera. Oh, it's definitely in there. I'm like, okay, when's it coming to our bank? He's like, well, it's not going to come to your bank. I'm like, well, why not? He said, oh, well, you're on 100% reserve, so we keep 100% of your money. I was like, what? Like, that's not

good for me or for anybody. How am I supposed to be in business? I got people to pay. He's like, yeah, well, that's just how it works. He's like, but the good news is that it looks like you are a legitimate company. No one's charging back or refunding this money we've collected so far. So what we'll do is we'll drop you down to 10% reserve. I'm like, oh, thank heavens. And then he said, but the $250,000 you collected last week, we're keeping that for the next six months just as collateral to make sure nothing bad happens. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, so I'm like, okay. Okay, another funnel. Quick.

So we're printing out a new thing. We push it out there. Make some money. And we start, you know, paying payroll for whatever we can. But like everything's collapsing around me. And so that started in January. And that started happening. At the same time, we're trying to find other merchant accounts, other banks.

And all these other banks are like, oh, yeah, we're cool. Come in. We'll give you a merchant account. And they're like, okay, this is how it works. Like you're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars a month. I'm like, cool. Okay. We're gonna do that in like two days. So I need like four merchant accounts because this is like, we can make money. We just need you to be able to like give it to us after we make it. And like, oh yeah, we're cool. We're good at that. Don't worry. It's like, okay, cool. So we get a merchant account, get it all set up, drive a bunch of traffic. And twice we made over the hundred thousand dollars a month we were

we were allowed within like a day day and a half and then they froze our accounts and they said oh you've made too much money too fast uh we're freezing your accounts uh we'll get this money back to you in six months i'm like six months like please stop doing this to me like we end up like four or five hundred thousand dollars lock up emergency accounts and it's getting worse and worse and worse so this whole this whole year was like like the hardest year of my life and it just kept going down and like every single day i'm like laying off friends and family members and people whose families i like people i just love and i care about and i'm coming in i'm like i don't see man i'm so sorry like i gotta let you go and just letting and it was just

oh like such a dark time in my life and And just over, thing after thing after thing. And I wish that I could say from there it got better. So that was an entire year. The next January started. And one of my friends was doing an event in Vegas. And I was like, I'm going to go out there and just see what everybody, like, I got to re-figure out my whole business. Like, everything's completely collapsed. At the time, by the way, we were in this big, huge office we had rented and, or, yeah, that we were leasing. And I think it was like 20,000 square feet because we had all

the call center and stuff. And I went to the landlord. I'm like, hey man, like I can't, I can't afford to pay you anymore. And he's like, okay, well, we've got a three-year contract. If you don't pay me, I'm going to sue you and you're probably going to end up in jail. I was like, are you kidding me, dude? Like I'm trying, like would not work with me at all. I had all this fear behind that. So I'm in Vegas a year later, trying to ask friends what's happening. What are you guys doing in your business? And they're trying to tell me their stories. I'm just like, oh, this is, I don't know what to do.

And then that night I got an email on my phone from my dad. And I opened this email, and it was like a shot in the gut. Like probably the worst second of my life as I read that. And the email said, hey, Russell, I'm so sorry. My dad was helping the books at the time, but we had a bookkeeper in the office. And he said, and the bookkeeper, I mean, she was trying her best, but she didn't know.

She knew we were struggling and she didn't want to stress me out. So she didn't tell me how much we were struggling. And it turns out what she'd been doing is she had been paying the bills she could and the ones she couldn't, she was trying to like not pay them and delay them., delay them. And, uh, and to hide it from my, from my dad and from everybody else, she was, she was saying in QuickBooks that she paid bills,

but then like not actually paying them. So it looked like it was clear. And he'd gone through and actually audit and found out, um, that she hadn't paid payroll taxes in almost a year. And the email, my dad said, Hey, just, you know, payroll taxes aren't like something where they find you. Like if you don't pay payroll taxes, you're going to go to jail. And it was over $150,000 a year on payroll taxes. And I was like, at the end, it had been an entire year. Every penny I'd ever earned was gone. All my people, my teams, like it just had all fallen apart.

And I'm sitting there like, I don't know what to do. And so the next morning, we got on a flight from Vegas back to Boise. We fly back to Boise. I get to Boise and I walk in, and the call center's empty. All the guys are gone. And there are two people that are left, and they said, hey, just so you know, the call center across the road just recruited us, and we all just left, and we're out.

See ya. And they walked out. I was like, oh. I have the government, $150,000. I have nobody to help me sell. Like, I don't know what to do. And I want to quit. Like, so bad I want to quit.

But if I quit, I go to jail. I'd also sold a lot of coaching to people I cared about. If I quit, all these people that bought coaching from me, like, I can't help them. That's not right. That's not the right thing to do. I was like, I don't know what to do. So I went to a bankruptcy lawyer. I'm like, how does this work, man?

I'm like, I don't know what to do. Like, I got to bankruptcy lawyer. I'm like, how does this work, man? Like, I don't know what to do. Like, I got to figure this out. And he's like, well, kind of explain the whole process. And I told him about my lease. I'm like, the landlords that are coming after me, like, the government's going to come after me. Like, I don't know what to do. And he's like, well, the best thing to do is I should come with you to your landlord and just explain you're going to bankruptcy. Maybe they'll be nice to you.

So I'm like, all right. He's like, do you have any money? I'm like, no. He's like, what do you got in your pocket? I was like, I got like a hundred bucks. He's like, cool. Give me a hundred bucks. I'll come and I'll tell the landlord you're going bankrupt. I'm like, all right, man, here you go. So he comes with me, which actually is the best hundred bucks I've ever spent. So he comes with me to the landlord and he's like, Russell screwed, man. He's going through bankruptcy. He just hired me. He's like, he can't pay you. Like you can come after him, but he is like, Russell, screwed man. He's going through bankruptcy. He just hired me. He's like, he can't pay you. Like, you can come after him, but he is like, and he got, it was like this old man.

He's just like, yeah, he's done. Like, oh, so bad. Like, so much money. Government's coming after him. Like, oh, you're screwed. Don't even try. And basically convinced our landlord that like it was a useless cause. So the landlord was like, all right, be out by Friday.

And we had a big space with office cubicles and phones and all sorts of just craziness, right? So I'm like, okay, I'll be out by Friday. But 90% of my team was gone at this point. From 100 employees down to about seven or eight. The few people that stuck by me, people like Brent Cole-Peters, who, like, just love that guy to death. Brent and John and some of the people back then, um, I mean, Brent had taken a pay cut, 50% pay cut and, uh, never. It's amazing people. Um, Hey, Funnel Hackers. I want to talk about building your business. You've got the idea, the passion, the drive.

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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. So the few of us that were left, we went and we packing up stuff. We put ads on Craigs. It's like we got tons of computers and crap coming by and things we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for. We were selling for hundreds of dollars. And just to get out of it, we made, I don't know, maybe five or six grand of all of our crap getting rid of. We had huge dumpsters just throwing away everything we'd ever created because we had a downsize and trying to figure out how do we get into a smaller building and how do we keep the people we have to have to be able to fulfill on coaching. But we

have to, we have to just cut everything else that we have. And so, um, uh, we were downsizing everything going out and the night we were moving like that Friday, we're supposed to be out at midnight or whatever, you know, whatever it was, I was sitting in the office and the night we were moving like that friday we're supposed to be out of midnight or whatever you know whatever it was i was sitting in the office and the desks were gone everything was gone all i had left was my laptop and i was sitting there i remember i had my socks on i had some levi's and i had no money and i was like i have to make some money or else so we can't even like move into it i don't know how to do anything and so uh i sent an email to my list i had at the time i had a bunch of people registered for webinar and i was sitting there in a chair with my laptop on my lap,

doing a webinar, praying that something would happen. And that webinar saved us. That webinar we did made $150,000 in sales over the next three or four days from that webinar, which gave me the money I needed to pay everyone to not leave, get into another office, get us moved in and get us like to stability so we could actually breathe for a few minutes and figure out, okay, what's the next step? Like, what do we want to be when we grow up?

And so we downsized from 20,000 square feet to like 2,000 square feet. And we had this really cool moment where it was like, what do we want to do when we grow up? Like, what do we want to be? And as painful as that process was, like it was one of the coolest things ever because we didn't have to keep going on this path. We could, we could pick anything.

And this is where I started thinking like, who's our dream customer? Like, who do we really want to serve? Like what fires us up? What gets us excited? And we started thinking through that. And, and during this process, like we started just creating again and started having some fun. We're like, well, what should we do? I had a friend at the time who he had this little website was making him like two or $3,000 a month. And he got in some trouble. And, uh, and I had a couple of things making a little bit of money at the time. And he's like, I need to get rid of the site. Can you, can you pay me some money? So I gave him $20,000. He gave me this little website. It was a little machine that you zap and get sort of cold sores. And autopilot was making two or $3,000 a month. And I was like,

oh, this is so cool. So we had this little thing. I'm like that little business just kind of runs. Like what if we had another one? So we started creating another one. So we did one in the couponing market. We set it up. We got a guru in there. We started running. And that started making money. And they're like, okay, what if another one? We did one in the weight loss and another. And then in a year period of time, we launched 12 different companies. Each were making different amounts of money. And during that time, we launched NeuroCell, our supplement companies. All these things were happening. And it was starting to get exciting again. Like, we were creating. We were doing the business instead of teaching the business again,

which was like so much fun for us to do and to learn and see like, why does this stuff work in this market, but not this market? One of the things that drive me crazy about teachers in my industry is that they come in and act like, um, the, the marketing techniques that work in one space work everywhere. And I learned during that two or three year period of time, that's not true. Like everything's different. There's intricacies that are different in couponing versus business versus weight loss versus diet versus supplements. Like there's differences. And, and I came to respect that because we had a chance to do it in so many different businesses and so many different, different things. And, uh, we spent the next two or three years creating stuff.

And during that process, um, one of the really cool things is, uh, I used to go to flip a.com all the time and try to find like websites we could buy and turn to businesses. And there's a website called Championsound.com that was for sale. And it was this little email text message autoresponder for bands. And I was like, I'm going to buy that, and then we're going to take it and niche it for every market. We'll make email autoresponders and text message autoresponders for dentists and for chiropractors. I was so excited. It was $20,000 grand we didn't have that much money but i was like this is the future of our company we have to do it so we ended up buying this this website

from these guys i'll flip but we get the website and then try and transfer it over to our servers after we paid them twenty thousand dollars and um as they're trying to transfer it they're like well you can't have this is the nerd talk you can't have a linux server you need a ruby server i'm like what does that mean they're like it means that this is not coded in PHP, it's coded in Ruby on Rails, so you have to have a different kind of server. I'm like, what does that mean? It means you have to go over here and pay like 800 bucks a month for a new server. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, I don't have 800 bucks a month for a server, but we just bought this thing, so we did, and they installed it, and it didn't really work. I'm like, I don't know what

to do. None of my tech guys had ever used Ruby on Rails, And so like, I went to Odesk, I hired some guys, and they couldn't fix it. And I tried like five or six guys, and finally I was like, wasted 20 grand. I was like so upset and so frustrated because like I didn't have that money. And on the way out of the office one day, I was like, I wonder,

what if anybody on my list knows Ruby on Rails? Like shot in the dark, I have no idea. So I sent an email out to my little list at the time. I was like, subject, I was like on rails, uh, looking for a partner. If you know, Ruby on rails, I'm looking for a partner. And I said, basically the story I just told you guys bought this thing. Can't make it work. If you know, Ruby on rails become my partner. We'll make a bunch of money with this thing together. Send the email out. I've an hour later, I get an email from this guy in Georgia named Todd Dickerson.

And Todd's like, hey man, I know Ruby. I'm like, you do? And then I looked at his picture. I was like, you don't look like a nerd. I don't think you do. And then I went to like Facebook and I have Facebook friends. It was actually six years ago last week or something. A Facebook friend, I'm like,

he's got a beautiful wife. He's got a daughter. I'm like, I don't think he's a coder. Like, I don't know if I believe that. He's like, yeah, man, shoot me the log and I'll fix it. I was like, whatever. I had like eight guys try to fix it for the last like four or five months. Nobody can do it. I'm like, whatever. Here's the login. So he logs it in. And then like an hour later, he's like, okay, done. It's fixed. I was like, what? He's like, I got it fixed. I just did blah, blah, blah. And it worked. I'm like, dude, how did you do that? He's like, I just love Ruby on Rails. I'm amazing. He didn't say that, but he's super humble. But I was like, what? You think I got it fixed? I just did blah, blah, blah, and it worked. I'm like, dude, how did you do that? He's like, I just love Ruby on Rails. I'm amazing. He didn't say that, but he's super humble.

But I was like, dude, this guy's amazing. And I was like, okay, well, I have these other things. You want me to do these other things? And so Todd came, and we started working on this other project. We ended up, we had a different auto webinar. Todd built out this software behind the scenes, which was like ClickFunnels version 00, like pre-everything. And he built this auto webinar software, because Mike Filsaime had been talking about auto webinars. Rich Sheffrin had put a webinar report out. A couple of guys had been talking about auto webinars,

and nobody had done one. Like, nobody was really doing them. So Todd Custon built this whole platform so we could do them. We launched an auto webinar through that. And in that auto webinar, we made a million dollars in 90 days. And the first thing I did from that 90, yeah. First thing I did from that million dollars, I took the money and we paid off the IRS. And I was like, I'm free. I'm free. I'm not going to jail. IRS is paid off. All the fines are paid off. And that auto webinar funnel literally saved me, literally gave me freedom. Like up to that point, every night when I went to bed at night, I was just like, they could come knock on my door. Like I have not paid payroll taxes in that long. And that webinar freed us. And we kept doing thing after thing. And what was fun is with

Todd and Dylan used to design half of these things. It says like contract, he designed these pages, then Todd would take them and code them up, make these funnels. He did funnel after funnel after funnel. We probably had, probably had 15 different companies, but then those companies, two or three funnels, probably like 40 funnels we built over after thing after thing after thing after thing. And the last funnel we actually built the old school way was the NeuroCell funnel. And that's one of the ones that blew up really, really big. It started making tons of sales.

We were having a bunch of fun with it. And about that time is when Todd was like, hey, we should really create something so I don't have to keep making websites for you every single day. And that was where the idea came for ClickFunnels. And so we started that project in front of Whiteboard like we talked about yesterday. We mapped out this whole thing and Todd went to work to build ClickFunnels.

Then we partnered with Dylan to build the editor and the UI. And then fast forward seven or eight months later, we came and we were like, this thing is going to change the world. And I was so excited. I was like, we came and we were like, this thing is gonna change the world. And I was so excited. I was like, we're gonna do a free trial. And I think the very first month,

our goal was to get 10,000 members the first month. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be the greatest thing in the world. So we put it out there. We created the first funnel. Had all the stuff in there. It was a free trial. We had a bunch of people all lined up to promote it. We launched it.

It was like crickets. People came, and they left. I was like, dude, do you guys not understand what I'm giving you? Like, I made that page you're looking at. Like, it's really good, right? And, like, nobody got it. And I was like, why didn't they get it? I'm like, there's something wrong with my messaging.

So we changed the funnel again, and then we launched it again. Like, a few of you guys signed up, but that was it. Like, most of you, like, hit it, and they left. I'm like, God, I tried again. We tried again. We rebuilt that funnel not once or twice or three times or four times or five times. Six times it took us before the ClickFunnels funnel worked. And the sixth time was because one of my friends, Mike Filson, invited me out to his event, and he's like, hey, Russell, I want you to come and sell ClickFunnels. I think it's awesome. I said, dude, Mike, nobody's buying ClickFunnels. Like, we got to figure out our next deal or figure out something

because it's not working. He's like, no, dude, my people need it. You need to come speak on it, but you got to sell it for $1,000. I'm like, it's a free trial. Nobody even wants it. All right. And so Mike's event was happening that weekend. And I was literally sitting in my office watching the event streaming. As I was sitting there, I started writing my webinar. And I had my slides open. I was following the perfect webinar script that I had been working on for like 10 years. I started filling in the blanks, started making this webinar like true to the perfect webinar script. I literally was like watching it, adding the things in while I'm watching Mike's event happen. That day, I finished the slides. Next morning, I jumped in a plane. I flew there. We

got to California. I think it was California where the event was at. I got there, put the slides up on the thing. I'm like, okay, so here we go. I started it and the title slide was my weirdness funnel. It's currently making $17,947 per day, talking about the neurocell funnel and how you can definitely knock it off in less than 10 minutes. Show the first slide, started going through. And when we got to the end, we got to the stack and the close, we did it. And 30% of the room jumped up and ran to the back, jumping over the tables, fighting to get back there. I was like, we did it. That was the message. That was the key.

Now I know how to sell ClickFunnels. We took that message, went back. And as a lot of you guys know, especially in the Circle members, starting webinars every single day, sometimes two a day. One time I did three in a day, which was really hard over and over and over again. I did that webinar live over 70 times over the next year and a half and went from being a startup with no members to a year after the end of last year at over 10,000 members. After this year, we have over 30,000 members and it's going to grow and grow and grow. And it was that one funnel that changed everything for me. So this process for all of us, you guys, is an up and a down.

Like it's always happening. And all of you guys are somewhere in this wave right now, right? Some of you guys are at the top riding it. Some of you guys are at the bottom in a crash. Some of you guys are somewhere in between wave right now, right? Some of you guys are at the top riding it. Some of you guys are at the bottom in a crash. Some of you guys are somewhere in between and always going up and down. But if nothing else, this event, I wanted you guys to all understand that no matter where you are, there's hope. Okay? It might not be this funnel.

I can't tell you how many funnels flopped. I guarantee I have failed at more funnels than anybody else in this room because we tried over and over and over and over again. Because of that, we found out what worked. And the only way to do that is to over and over and over and over again. Because of that, we found out what worked. And the only way to do that is to do it over and over and over again. And it's a lot easier now. I promise you, it's so much easier than what we used to do when poor Todd and Dylan had to custom code every single thing, every single time.

Like now you guys can test things really, really fast. First time I met Trey, first call, he said, Russell, I'm gonna launch a funnel a week every single week. And I watched the CD, launched a funnel and another funnel, another funnel, another funnel. And he had some marginal success, little success, more success, more success, more success. I saw him launch a funnel last year. One funnel, boom. And within 90 days, became the biggest selling funnel in the history of the world. I was talking to some of the guys that affiliate some of this. They said there's never been a funnel that's made more money in a

shorter period of time than one of Trey's funnels. I'm not privy to share all his numbers and his stats, but it was insane. And it came from him doing a funnel a day or funnel week, funnel week till he hits the one that just explodes. And you don't know what that's going to be. It's important. That's why this tool is so important because you can do that. You can test, you can try over and over and over again. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two bestselling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com. And book number two is called Expert Secrets, and you can get a free copy at expertsecrets.com. And book number two is called Dot Com Secrets,

and you can get your free copy at dotcomsecrets.com. Inside these two books, you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest-growing, non-VC-backed SaaS startup company in the world.