10 Years of FunnelHacking Secrets
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What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. Hope you are having a great day today. I'm actually in Wise, Virginia, Napoleon Hill's hometown today. And I spent the last couple of days here going through the archives and finding just some really cool things and having a great time. And tomorrow, we actually have a mastermind group here with our top 10 affiliates for the Secrets of Success business. And I'm hoping to record my intro session for you guys tomorrow. I'm going to be talking about some cool Napoleon Hill stuff. And if I am able to do that, I'm going to be able to do it.

That will be in our next podcast. So look forward to that hopefully. And then today's podcast is going to be a little different. Not hugely different, but this year's Funnel Hacking Lab, I did an intro presentation the first day of the event. It was kind of a ClickFunnels State of the Union address, which was cool because, as you know, ClickFunnels turned 10 years old this year. We've been here doing this for a decade now, which is amazing. But a lot of other cool things are happening. And so –

This presentation, I'm not going to ruin the surprise, but a couple of cool things. Number one, there's something that happened 20 years ago that changed my life. I talk about what that was and how it changed my life and how I think it can change your life as well. I'm going to walk you guys through some funnel hacking, one funnel way, Russell Brunson style stuff I think you'll enjoy. There's one thing in here that I'm excited to reveal to you and it's basically a Napoleon Hill quote. You guys have heard me share this quote a million times. I always talk about the first part. It says, there's one quality which one must possess to win. That's definiteness of purpose.

The knowledge Wilton wants and then something.

I'm leaving that part blank because I always talk about having a definite purpose, knowing exactly what you want and like writing it down and saying, I want this thing by this date, by this time, like having a definite purpose and direction you're moving in. Um, but the second half of the quote is what I never talk about. And I spent more time on this episode, uh, talking about it. And I think it's going to be the real thing that's going to have the biggest impact on you from this episode. So I don't want to ruin it for you, but it's in there buried. You're going to find it. I share the Napoleon quote, wait for part two and see where I, uh, where I take it. I think you're gonna love it. Um, and on top of that,

And at the end, Todd Dickerson comes on stage with me. We talk about some of the cool updates in ClickFunnels, how many people have won awards, how much money you guys have processed in the last year, which is crazy. Anyway, really exciting, really cool. And I think you guys are going to love it. And it should get you fired about ClickFunnels, what's happening. And that's all I'm going to give you. So listen to this episode. I hope you love it. I hope you enjoy it. If so, let us know. And I'll see you guys in the next episode. We're going to go a little bit deeper into some of my thoughts from the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. We got my inner circle here in the room. This makes it so much easier, more fun. So fun. So fun.

We got 10,000 of you guys all around the world hanging out with us. It's going to be insane. I'm so excited for the next four days, three and a half days, whatever ends up being. It's going to be amazing. And man, I was sitting backstage as Devon was talking, showing Funnel Hacking Live at the very beginning, which is crazy. It was 10 years ago. It was the very first Funnel Hacking Live here in Las Vegas.

It was something we were going to do once and once only. We had no plan of making this like an annual event. It was just like we launched ClickFunnels. And I remember the presentation I used to launch it was called Funnel Hacking. We're teaching how to funnel hack and stuff like that. And people inside of the Facebook groups are calling themselves funnel hackers.

And I was like, that's kind of cool. This is like, this is the thing that's catching on. Like, yeah, we're funnel hackers. And then they started doing these meetups around the country. Like, hey, we're all going to meet over in Austin. Who wants to come? Here we're being in San Diego. Who wants to come? And I was like, this is happening whether we're doing it or not. Maybe we should...

We should do an event and like call something. I'm like, what should we call it? He's like, well, we're funnel hackers. We're funnel hacking. Let's call it Funnel Hacking Live. And that was the whole initial idea. We rented a space in Las Vegas that held, was it 600, 800? Remember, 800 people? And we told people about it and 800 people showed up. And I remember I was so scared. I had done an event yesterday.

And four or five years earlier, where we'd sold a bunch of tickets to this event, and we showed up at the hotel, got everything ready, and then we opened the stage and we walked out. And I think we had like three or four hundred people, and there was like 60 in the room. I walked in, everything was empty, and I was like, this is going to be really painful. And for three days, I did an event, and it was horrible. All the empty seats. And I was like, I will never do an event again. And that was the plan. And Funnel Hacking Live, we decided to do that. And I remember sitting backstage being so scared. Like, what if...

What if nobody shows up? No one's here. I remember looking through the curtain, that little curtain that Devon showed. I was looking through the curtain. I was like, oh, there's people here. This is fantastic. People showed up. And we did the first one. And I remember the very end of the first one, we're like, should we do this again? That was kind of fun. People showed up. Like, okay, let's do it again. And now we are on Funnel Hacking Live. This is nine and a half.

which I don't know if you guys know that our next Funnel Hacking Live which is 10 which is the big going to be the big show is here in Vegas again and it's happening in February in fact it's during Valentine's Day so you need to bring your wives your sweethearts your husband whoever it is bring them to the party because we're having Valentine's Day in Las Vegas uh next year which is where we're gonna do Funnel Hacking Live 10 and uh it's going to be the biggest the craziest the

It's going to be amazing. So I don't want any of you guys to miss that event. It's going to be insane. And so a lot of people are like, well, what's this one right here? This is, last year was nine. That one's 10. What is this? And it's changed a couple of times. At first I was like, well,

prior to COVID and those things happening, we were doing Fun Hockey Live the very first quarter of the year. I loved it. It was like New Year's resolutions. We're kicking this thing off. We're having a lot of fun. And then the whole pandemic happened. Everything shifted around. We ended up shifting the event till September, which was great, except for that's when all of our kids go back to school and all sorts of things. And it was just this weird timing where it was really, really hard to do in September. And we did it three or four years in a row. And then two years ago, like, let's see if we can get it back to the first quarter.

quarter of the year. And so that was the shift to move it to the first quarter of the year. But then there was an 18 month gap between Funnel Hacking Live 9 and 10. And 18 months is a long time to not hang out with my friends. And so I was like, what if we did a little one in between called 9 and 1/2? And we did it virtually. And we rented Eric's studio, which is this insane studio you guys are here.

It's insane. So, that was the vision and now we're here. And so, this is Funnel Hacking Live 9 1/2, Funnel Hacking Live International and in six months from now during Valentine's Day, we'll be doing it in person again. So, for everyone, especially everyone who's at home watching now, I would set a goal for you guys. I would love to have you guys at Funnel Hacking 10 for the big show 'cause it's 10 years. This is our 10 year birthday, it's 10 years of ClickFunnels being around and it's been an incredibly insane ride and it's been a lot of fun. So, that's some of the backstory.

A couple things we're going to do new this time because it is virtual. I want to do something fun. We tested this two or three weeks ago at an event we did for my office, and it turned out to be a really smashing success because we had some people that were virtual. I was like, how do we network when we're not...

in person. Like obviously all the Inner Circle guys, you guys are all going to have so much fun the next four days. We're all going to be networking, hanging out. But everyone else, I know you guys are kind of remote and I don't want you to lose the networking experience. So what we decided to do is we set up a group inside of school and I'll tell you guys why we did it. A lot of you guys are like, why would you use a school? I'll explain that in a little bit. We set up a group inside of school where right now everyone's coming and between each session we're setting up a new thread for everyone to come and comment and drop their ahas. In fact, if you were on the pre-show last night,

I showed it yesterday and I asked them, "What was the number one thing you're trying to get from Funnel Hacking Live this year?" And we had over a thousand comments in the last 12 hours since I posted that in a group, which is kind of cool. So, what's going to happen is each session before we go live, we're going to open up a new thread in that group and then we want all you guys who are at home to open it separately in another thing. And as you're hearing me or the other speakers talking about whatever it is, when you have in the "Aha" and something comes in, drop in that thing. And we want to see how many comments, how many "Aha"s, things that you pull out of the presentations in that one group, which is a lot of fun.

So this is where to go. If you go to hangoutwithrussell.com at home, if you go to that site right there, it'll take you to our school group that we set up. If you're not in there already, you might have to go ask for access to it. But my team's in there approving people as fast as possible. So the approving is as fast as possible. And then the very top, there will be a pinned comment that basically has whatever the session is. So right now, there's probably a pinned comment, I'm assuming, from my team that says like,

comment on Russell's presentation. So over the next hour or so that I'm up here, as you guys are getting ahas or insights or anything, drop them in there. I want to see if we can get a couple thousand comments for every single session. And then what's cool about this for the speakers, when they're on stage, when they get done, they'll have a chance to go back into the comments and see what you guys said about their presentation. So feel free to also, if you're talking to them specifically, like tell them your favorite thing, what you loved about them, about their story. And as a speaker, it feels really good afterwards to get good feedback from people. So does that sound fair? You guys good with that?

So hang out with Russell.com. Okay. All right. With that said, I got a couple of fun things I want to talk about before I bring Todd out here to share some really fun things that are happening inside the ClickFunnels world right now. But I want to start with something that happened last month that was a turning point for me in my life. August 17th, 2014. So this is 20 years ago last month.

something crazy happened. This guy right here on the picture, this is John Reese next to Tony Robbins. And 20 years ago, I had just gotten into this world. I was still in college. I had just married my wife. We didn't have any kids yet. We're trying to figure out this whole business thing. I was trying to figure out how to make money on the internet. And I was on a bunch of different people's email lists. And I remember one day I started getting all these different emails from people talking about this product coming out. It's called traffic secrets. It's so cool. Everyone should go buy it. And I remember going to the page, there's a thousand dollar course. I'm like, I don't have a thousand dollars. That looks awesome. And then, um, uh,

So that kind of happened. And then a couple hours later, in fact, I think I have a picture of this. This library, this is a library that's on the Utah-Idaho border. There's a little lake called Bear Lake, which my family goes every single year. And we were at Bear Lake when this whole thing was happening. And this is before we had...

cell phones before we had internet, before like Wi-Fi was everywhere. So if you wanted to get on the internet at Bear Lake, you had to go to this library. And so I remember after the day was over, I jumped in my bike or my car or something. We drove to this library, got in there. And do you guys remember this back in the day when you had to get internet? So there's like, there's two computers in the library and there's a line of people. Everyone's just waiting to check their email. So weird now because none of us would do that, right? So I'm standing in line waiting to check my email. First person gets down there, second person, third person. I finally get in line. I sit down. I put my email up.

It pops open and there's the email from John Reese. And at the top of the email, it says, we did it or something like that. I'm like, we did what? So I opened the email and I started reading it. And John basically announced that they had launched this course called Traffic Secrets earlier that morning. And in the first 18 hours, it was a $1,000 course. They sold 1,000 copies of this course. And they made a million dollars. I shouldn't say made. They'd sold a million dollars of this course in 18 hours.

So again, 20 years ago, I'm sitting there, young kid, at the time I'm 40 or 20, 40, what, 44 now. So I was 20, 24 years old, just gotten married. I'm sitting there at the library. I remember sitting back in my chair and just thinking, I was like, I can't believe there's a human being just like any of us who made a million dollars in a day. When I got started in entrepreneurship, I thought I had a big vision. I was like, oh, if I could make, you know, I'm going to become a millionaire someday. The next 20 years, I'll become a millionaire. I think that was like this big thing. And I saw a dude who made a million dollars in a day.

I remember I probably sat there like two or three minutes just like I can't even like the whole world my whole paradigm just shifted that what was even possible and I remember thinking like okay

that guy can make a million dollars. It's not even possible. Maybe I can make a million dollars, not in my lifetime, but what if I did a million dollars in a year? All these things started shifting in my head and I started having more and more belief. What's crazy is I didn't realize at the time, but I started talking to a lot of my other friends, and for them, it was the same thing. They saw this happen and it was just like, oh my gosh, if he can do it, I can do it. How many of you guys have been around long enough that you remember this experience? Anyone here in the room who was

A handful of you guys remember this, right? It was a turning point for so many of us. And I remember thinking that I said, okay, this guy, John Reese, he had a two comma club in just 24 hours. And I remember thinking that, and I was just like, um, I was like, if that's true, if he really did this, like I'm going to go, like, I'm going to focus a hundred percent of my time and energy effort figuring out how in the world he did this. Right. I said, that's true. I'm gonna drop everything else and just focus on this. And, um,

When I was making these slides and I wrote that down, I started thinking about a movie that had a similar experience. How many of you have ever seen this movie right here? So, okay, there's a scene from this movie I want to share, but actually...

I got some street cred for some young kids that are friends of my friends. We were talking to a bunch of them about what we do, and they're like, what do you do for a living? And I was kind of telling them, they're like, oh yeah, I know a guy kind of like that. His name's Jordan Belfort. You ever heard of him? I was like, actually, I was on his podcast. They're like, what? You were on Jordan Belfort's podcast? I'm like, yeah. So I got some street cred for the kids because of that, which is cool. But anyway, so this is a clip from Wolf of Wall Street, which kind of sums up how I felt after John Reese did the Million Dollar Day.

Excuse me. Is that your car on the line? Yeah. That's a nice ride. Thanks, man. County Azor. Hey, George Belfort. Nice to meet you. What do you do, bro? Money playing me. What do I do? For work, what do you do? I'm a stockbroker. Stockbroker? Yeah. You make a lot of money? Yeah, I do. I write for myself. How much money do you make? I don't know. $70,000 last month. $70,000?

I'm serious. I tell you what, you show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it, I quit my job right now and I work for you. Hey, Paulie, what's up? No, yeah, yeah, no, everything's fine. Hey, listen, I quit.

So that's why I fell out watching John reach that. I'm like, if this is true, if he actually did that, like nothing else matters to me right now. I'm going to stop everything I'm doing and focus on figuring out how in the world he did that. Because if a human being just like me could do a million dollars in a day, what could I do? A million dollars in a year? I don't even know what's possible. But I was like, I have to figure this out, whatever it takes.

Now, I started looking at what was John doing? This is me, the young funnel hacker, 24-year-old Russell who didn't know what funnel hacking was. This is something we talked about. I was like, "What do you do? I got to reverse engineer this." I remember going to trafficsecrets.com at the time. It wasn't like a traditional website like I was used to. It was a funnel. It was a two-page funnel. It had a long form sales letter. It was like a 150-page sales letter if anyone ever remembers seeing it. It was not short at all. I remember printing it out and it was like this fat. I'm like, "This is insane. People actually read this stuff?"

Blew my mind. 150-page sales letter with an order form, and that was the very first thing. I was like, this looks different than what I've seen before. This is not how people make money on the internet. This is the weirdest thing in the world. I'm like, this is what he did. So if that's how it worked, I wonder if I could do it. I remember thinking, if he could create a funnel, if he could do that,

How can I do the same thing? What would it look like? How do I model that? Right? And I remember wondering if I could create a funnel, could you get me into two comma club? So I started thinking again, reverse engineering, funnel hacking. I was like, okay, how did John do it? Well, John had a thousand dollar course. He sold a thousand copies. That's a million dollars. I was like, just math, right? Thousand, thousand dollar course, thousand copies. It's a million dollars. I was like, I don't think I can do a million dollars in a day. That like, my brain wasn't ready to comprehend that. But I was like, if I did a million dollars a year, what does that look like? I was like, well, a thousand dollar course, if I sold three a day,

That gets me over a million dollars. I'm like, okay, can I create a thousand dollar course? Can I sell three a day? Like, what would that look like? How would I get traffic? I didn't know what answers these questions, but these questions started giving me like the desire to figure things out. Like, how does this work? How do I find traffic? How do I get enough traffic to sell three a day of a thousand dollar course? And so I did exactly what I teach you guys to do all the time. It's funnel hacking. So John had a thousand dollar course. First thing in my head is like, cool, I got to make a thousand dollar course. So I made my very first thousand dollar course. Uh,

and it was called the.com secrets home study course. This is way before there was ever a book called.com secrets. I'd bought the domain name way back in the day. I thought it was cool. I've been, a lot of my friends have made fun of me about the name, but still for me, it means a lot to me. So I still keep it, but it was the.com secrets home study course. Uh,

I went and we rented a hotel room, we filmed us teaching this whole course, put it on deep because John's course was basically a seminar he had done, took the DVDs, made it work. So I modeled exactly like he did. He had like, I think 12 sessions or eight sessions. I had 12, I had the exact same amount of sessions. He had different handouts, he had the same, he had like, I tried to model as close as I could because that dude made a million dollars a day selling the course, I'm gonna just model it as close as I can and just do what he did and I'm gonna be successful. So I went out there, we made 1,000 on the course, we launched it, and how many of you guys think I made 1,000 sales?

Unfortunately, I didn't. But I'll tell you what we did here in a second. I forgot. That's the next slide. So I went back to the funnel. Again, this is what John's funnel looked like. I thought it was awesome. So I did the same thing. I modeled it. I modeled the look, the feel, the layout as close as I could. Modeled the price point as close as we could. I did my big launch. $1,000 course. And I sold. I didn't actually sell 1,000.

I launched it. I did this big, huge quarter-day launch trying to model the way that John had done his. And during the launch, I had a really good idea that turned out to be a really bad idea. You guys ever do that? I was like, if I launch this on New Year's Day, it means the first day of the year, I'll make a million dollars before January 1st is over. This will be insane. So I did this whole coordinated product launch. And I remember I called John ahead of time, and he's like, so you're going to launch this on New Year's Eve? I'm like, at midnight, we're going to launch it. He's like, do you think people are going to buy it on New Year's Eve? I'm like, oh yeah, they're all

going to be sitting around waiting on a computer for me to launch so they can buy my new course, right?

He's like, I know you're Mormon and stuff and you don't drink and things like that, but usually on New Year's Eve, that's not what people are doing. I was like, no, dude, you have no idea. You're wrong. So New Year's Eve, we launched this course. I don't know, Brent was there in the room. We were all excited, like waiting for sales to come in. And there were a couple people who were waiting to buy, but not very many. And during the entire launch sequence, seven days, whatever, we ended up selling a whopping 21 copies of the course, which is awesome. Yeah.

Only problem is back then, to build a course like this, I was convinced I was selling 1,000 copies. We had to print DVDs, workbooks, papers, and so my cost to print 1,000 copies of my home study course was a lot more than $21,000. So when all is said and done, we didn't make...

A million dollars. I made negative dollars. But I did it, right? I funnel hacked it, went out there, did the process, tried it out, and that was kind of the thought. It's like, oh, okay. Now, what a lot of people do at this point is they think, John Reese is a scam. Russell Brunson is a scam. These internet gurus are all scams, right? And they just quit.

But I want to share with you a message that Satema Ghali spoke at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego, there for Simon. He shared a message from the stage that meant so much to me. He said, everyone, you have to learn how to stop stopping. So many people hit an obstacle and then they stopped.

It's like, if you want to be successful at anything in life, you have to stop stopping. You have to keep moving forward. And so I was thinking about that. I was like, okay, it didn't work. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means I didn't do it right, or I didn't figure the right process, or I picked the wrong product or something. I got to stop stopping. What's the next phase? What's the next step? What's the next step? We started going back, right? Now, for a lot of you guys who may have been, may at home have tried, some of you guys, by the way, have launched at least one funnel so far that has not worked. I'm curious. Okay, everyone in this room here has done a lot. Back home, you're

In fact, I don't see his hands going up. How many of you guys are back home? How many of you guys have done at least one funnel that hasn't worked? Okay. Well, you guys are still here, which is good. Most people stopped, though. So you guys stopped stopping. But Russell, you said that I was just one funnel away. I did a funnel. Like, why am I not rich yet?

okay the reality is it's not it's not it's not the first funnel i never said you're what i never said like your first funnel away like you're a funnel way right but we don't know which one's going to be and i know which one's going to be like i did funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel um i didn't pull the slide up here but um in the past i have a slide that's showing is every one of my funnels i could find in the past it was like 150 funnels that i had

successfully launched, not successfully made money, but successfully launched before we had the ClickFunnels funnel. Like that's from everything from graphic design, product creation, sales letter, traffic, all this 150 funnels we've done over that period of time before we launched ClickFunnels. And so just gonna say you're one funnel doesn't mean like that's the end, right? It's the beginning. You do the first funnel and you keep trying.

What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I've got something really cool for you today from my friend Taylor Wells. Taylor spoke at our last Funnel Hacking Live because I wanted him to share a really cool concept about what he calls the revolving pricing method. And today he decided to sponsor the podcast to give you guys more access to this super cool strategy that you are going to love. It's something we've been implementing into our high-end coaching program as well, and it is amazing. But to kind of give you some context about

about this offer he's making for you guys. As you may or may not know, a few years ago, JPMorgan Chase did a study, and guess what they found? They found that the average small business only has about 28 days of operating expenses in reserve. That's right, less than a month of cash on hands. Now, if you're like me, the idea of your business being one bad month away from disaster is enough to make your stomach drop. Am I right? Especially with how the economy's been lately. It's not the time to be gambling with your finances.

So Taylor put together this book called The Revolving Pricing Method, and it's awesome. It helps you turn every client you close into a long-term profit machine. We're not talking about one-time paydays. We're talking about creating sustainable and real predictable income for the long haul. Now here's where it gets even better. Taylor put together an awesome exclusive deal just for you guys, my Marketing Secrets listeners. And if you go over to wealthyconsultants.com slash secrets, you can grab The Revolving Price Method book and over $150 worth of bonuses and get this all. It's at 70% off, and I promise you guys, as a customer of this book,

You are going to love it. So if you're serious about growing your business with real stability, this is the model you need to add into your funnels. So go over to wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets, grab your 70% off deal, and let's start turning your clients into long-term revenue. Again, that's wealthyconsultant.com slash secrets. Do not miss out.

Hey, this is Russell Brunson. And I want to jump in really quick to share with you a new assessment I found out that is insanely cool. You guys know I'm obsessed with personality profiles and assessments, but this one is different because not only does it help you understand yourself, but more importantly, especially for us who are entrepreneurs, it helps us understand our employees, our teams, and get people sitting on the right seats in the bus so they can get more stuff done.

I just had a chance to interview Patrick Lanchoni talking specifically about this new assessment they created called Working Genius. And the Working Genius is awesome. Like this test, I had actually blocked out an hour to take it because I was so excited for the new assessment. And it only took me like 10 minutes or less to get it done. Yet, even though it takes only 10 minutes, like you can actually apply this immediately. I took it for myself. I had my team take it. And what's cool about it is from there, we figured out exactly what people's Working Geniuses are.

And that's important because if you're building a team or a company, you got to figure out, make sure that you have first off the right people, but make sure the right people are sitting in the right seats on the bus. And this is what this assessment will teach you how to do. Now, normally this assessment, you can go to workinggenius.com and there's two G's in the middle, workinggenius.com, but I got you a 20% discount on

on the assessment, which is only $25. So don't stress. It's not an expensive test at all. But you get a 20% discount off when you put in the keyword secrets at checkout. So go to workinggenius.com. Again, two Gs, working genius, two Gs in the middle, workinggenius.com. And then use promo code secrets, S-E-C-R-E-T-S at checkout. You get 25% off. But then we'll take the test. Again, it takes you 10 minutes.

But even in a 10-minute session, you will get something that is so insanely valuable to help you understand yourself, to make sure you're working in a spot that's going to give you the most joy, number one. But then number two, it's going to make sure that you are with your teams getting them in the right seats as well. So anyway, I love this assessment. Go check it out at workinggenius.com and enter the promo code SECRETS for 20% discount. Take this test for yourself and for your team, and I promise you it will change the working dynamics amongst everybody and help your company to grow.

A lot of you guys know my favorite author is Napoleon Hill, and he's got a quote that I love. And there's two parts to this quote. I'm going to share both of them here, because I think sometimes we miss the second part. So this is the quote. Napoleon Hill says, "There's one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose and the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it." Okay? So the first thing is definiteness of purpose. If you study Napoleon Hill,

It doesn't matter which one of his books you read. Think and Grow Rich, you read Laws of Success, you read How to Raise Your Own Salary, if you read any of his books, the first law of basically everything he talks about is definiteness of purpose, right? That's knowing exactly what it is you want. Now most of the guys who, especially I know the inner circle here in the room, you guys pretty much all have a very clear path. I know exactly what I want, what I'm going for, right? For people who are not having success yet, this is one of the biggest problems we find, is that they don't have definiteness of purpose. They don't know what they're going for. Remember when I first got started in this business, I didn't know what I was going for. I got online, I was like, I'm gonna make some money on the internet.

That was my definite purpose, right? I was just like wandering around, like hoping I could figure this out. Hopefully I bump into something. I was, I didn't know what I was doing for two or three years. I looked back through that window before, before the whole John Reese incident, when I saw what someone was doing. Like I was selling stuff on eBay and I was like, I was trying to sell this and I was just trying a bunch of things, but I didn't have a definite purpose. I was just kind of wandering, right? And then August 17th, 20 years ago last month, John Reese sets a million dollar day, sitting in that chair in the library, looking at it. I was like, yeah,

That's what I want to do. But that guy just said, I want to do that. I know exactly what it is. I had a definite purpose. It shifted from like, oh, I'm going to try to make some money to like, no, I want that. I'm going to build a course. It's a thousand dollar course. I'm trying to figure out how to sell a thousand copies. And I had a definite purpose. I shifted from being this like wandering around, just kind of like, you know, just bumping into things to like having a direction, having a target, having something I was moving towards. Right? It shifted everything for me. That's the very first step. Okay? I think about other areas of my life where I've had success and

Probably the best one for me, I mean, outside of business, the other thing I've had really had success with in my life was wrestling. And I remember my first year on wrestling, I went initially 'cause my dad forced me to go 'cause that's how most good things happen. My dad forced me to go wrestling practice. I didn't wanna be a wrestler. And I went to, I started liking it a little bit, having some fun. And then my dad took me to the state tournament that year. And I remember there were two guys on my team who,

who had made it to the state finals. And I kind of knew them because they were in the room. They were the cool guys in the room. So I remember seeing like, oh, those are the good guys. And so I went to the state tournament to watch them compete. And I remember there was a, a hundred and, I think 120 pound or somebody, that little tiny guy. His name was Matt Woods. He'd won state title two years in a row. And this was his senior year. He went out there, wrestled the match. He won, beat the guy. And I remember seeing his hand raised. And,

And I don't know what it was. I feel like I'm sitting in this huge stadium arena. There's so much wrestling. All these matches happening. I saw Matt Woods get his hand raised. I remember sitting there. Everything got quiet. And I was like, that. That thing

That thing that he just experienced, like, I want that more than I want air, more than I want anything. I want to feel that feeling. And that became the definite purpose. I want to be a state champ. I remember going home, telling everyone, I'm going to be a state champ. I'm going to be a state champ. And they laughed at me because I was not very good. They're like, okay, cool. You lost your match last week to the guy that was 12th string, and you want to be, yeah, good luck with that.

And they teased me. They made fun of me. But it didn't matter to me because I knew exactly what it was. I had a definite purpose. I wasn't just going to practice like dinking around. I was like, I'm going to be a state champ. I've got to work out like a state champ. I've got to train like a state champ. I've got to figure things out. And I had a definite purpose and it gave me something to move towards hard and fast. So that's the first half of this quote. One quality which one must possess to win is definite in its purpose. The second half, this is where most people miss it. The second half is you also have to have a burning desire to possess it.

I want to talk about burning desire for minutes. I think this is where a lot of people miss it. When I was wrestling, I remember going to school every day and I barely, like I struggled in school. It was hard to pay attention and I

And I thought I was dumb, but the reality is the reason why I struggled in school so much is because all I could think about was wrestling. That was it. If you look at my notebooks back in the day, I was drawing pictures of wrestling mats. There's a circle and a square. I couldn't draw a wrestler. I'm a really bad drawer, but I was like wrestling mats. And then I would think about it. And I remember if you're a wrestler, you cut a lot of weight. So I was cutting weight every week. So I remember sitting in classes, my teacher were talking. I was making a list of the foods I wanted to eat after weigh-ins.

Like, I want this. And so I'd sit there for an eight-hour day at school writing out every single food I could dream about eating next time I could eat. And then what I would do is each day as I got closer and closer to weigh-ins, I'd look at that list and I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. And the night before weigh-ins, my mom would take me to the grocery store and I'd take, like, of all the things I've been dreaming about this week, these are the three things I want to eat the most. And we'd buy those three things and after weigh-ins, I'd eat them.

right? And they're sitting there, like, if I would lose a match, I would think about it. I would watch the video. I was just, like, all consumed. Like, how do I beat that person, right? In practice, if somebody beat me or somebody did something, like, it was just, it became, like, almost obsessive-compulsive, right? Like, that's the level of desire I had. Like, I wanted this goal so bad, so bad, so bad, okay? Same thing happened when

I got into business. I saw John Rhys do that. A lot of people saw that. A lot of people were like, oh, that guy made a million dollars. This is insane. A lot of people saw that. I think the difference between me and a lot of people was like, I became obsessed with it. It wasn't just like, okay, I'm going to dabble and try to make some more money. I was like, no, this is my definite purpose. And I had a burning desire. I was going through everything.

I mean, people have asked me, Russell, how did you write all these books? How do you understand how funnels work so good? It's like, I went through every funnel on the internet I could find. Every single person. I bought their products. I went through a funnel hack. I was like calling people. What did you do on your funnel? How did it work? What were the conversions? I became obsessed. I was like this little annoying kid who was just watching everyone, studying, trying to figure out what was happening. I would go to marketing events, kind of like this one. And I remember, some of you guys have heard this story before, but I bet most of our

at home audience hasn't heard this. I would go to these big seminars, right? And there'd be thousands of people in the room. I'd be learning from all the speakers. And after the seminar gets done, everyone goes down to the bars and networks. You guys know about this, how it works? So I'd never been to a bar before. I'm like, I'm this Mormon kid. I don't drink. This is going to be awkward. I don't want people to think I'm drinking. So I'd go down to the bars afterwards and everyone's down there. And so I would order a milk from the bartender so that nobody would think I was not drinking. And I have this big old cup of milk and everyone's like, Brunson, are you drinking milk? Like, yeah.

They're like, why? I'm like, because the Sprite looks like vodka. I don't know. I don't want people to go, oh, Brunson's drink. So I have a glass of milk while I'm down there in a bar. And what's crazy is the more people drink, the more they start just sharing their best ideas. And the better stuff kept coming out and coming out. And the more drunk they are, and I'm the only sober one in the room, I'm like, I can't believe they're sharing this. I'm taking notes like crazy. It was insane, right? But it wasn't just like I wanted to become better at

building funnels. I didn't want to make, you know, start a business. Like, I was obsessed with it. It was a burning desire. Like, all consuming, day and night, until I figured out how to figure it out, how to figure it out, how to figure it out. Like, that's the kind of, like, passion that you have to have to be successful in anything in life, right? And I know I'm preaching to the choir because you guys are in the room here, you guys are at home. Like, you're the ones who are obsessed with this, but I want you to understand to be successful in anything in life, like,

It causes, it takes a little bit of like weirdness, a little bit of obsession. A lot of times, how many of you guys have friends, family members, spouses who are like, you're mildly obsessed over here and it's freaking me out. Anyone here have that? Okay. Just so you know, you're in a good crowd, right? To be successful in most things in life, like you got to be a little crazy. You got to be mildly obsessed. There are times in your life, like everything good in my life has come during times of radical imbalance. I get this question a lot on podcasts. Russell, how do you have such a balanced life? I'm like, what are you talking about?

Like, in theory, that sounds really, really nice. But I was like, nothing in my life great came from times of balance, right? Think about wrestling. When I became obsessed with wrestling, like, everything else got completely out of balance, radically imbalanced for a season.

Right? When I was focusing on wrestling, like I was not a 4.0 student, even close. My graduating, my cumulative GPA was 2.3. So I was a 2.3 student. So I barely passed all my classes because I was not focused on my classes, I was focused on this dream. I did the least possible, I had to do every other area of life so I could consume and be successful in this dream.

Okay. Same name where I met my wife, Colette. I met Colette, right? I fell in love with her. I was like, she's amazing. Now, if I just kind of dabble and I build a relationship, it's not going to happen. My life became radically imbalanced. I was pursuing her, trying to make her fall in love with me. And eventually she said, yes, which is amazing. Yay, Colette. So she rolls her eyes. I love it.

All right, same thing with you in business. When I came in business, my life was not balanced. It was radically imbalanced. I remember when Bowen and Dallin, our twins were born, man, they were 18 years, almost 19 years old. So 19 years old, they're born. We're in the NICU for two weeks 'cause they were preemies super early. And I remember sitting there in the NICU, clothes out cold. We take turns, we take shifts. So she was like sleeping. I was down with the babies, four in the morning and I got the babies. I'm rocking with my laptop and I'm writing copy.

Kid you not, I remember I'd write a copy for a product called Link Brander while I was in the NICU with the kids. It's a really good copy. Anyway, I was really proud of it. But that's what I was doing back then, radical imbalance. Anything good in life comes during times of radical imbalance. So it comes back to, again, Napoleon Hill's quote here. There's one quality which one must possess to win. That's definite and purpose. So number one, you've got to know exactly what you want. And number two, having the knowledge of what you want and then having a burning desire to possess it.

right? And I think that if you're struggling, like that's a lot of times a thing, like that has to become an obsession. People tell me all the time, like, I just don't have time to build a business. I don't have the energy to build. I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't have the time? Like, oh, I have a job. I work eight hours a day. I'm like, there are 24 hours in a day. There's not eight, right? And then while you're working, are you literally thinking about what you're working? Like thinking about like your brain can think about whatever it wants. Nobody knows, right? During this time, like I've been in school. I was not thinking about school at all, right? I was thinking about wrestling. I was in business. I was like, it

it becomes all-consuming. So if you want to be successful in anything in life, it comes during times of radical imbalance, having the burning desire to do it, becoming mildly obsessed for a season. Now what's nice about it is it's not forever. I'm not saying to burn the bridges, ruin your families and things like that. It's times. Everything's moving different places. But if you want to do something great, it takes times of radical imbalance. If you're wondering how you deal with the family, you talk to the family.

Hey, this is what I'm pursuing. This is the goals. Colette knew what my goals were. She's like, okay, I understand. There's times you have to be doing these crazy things. When we were building ClickFunnels, you think it was easy for Todd and me and our wives, for Ashley and Colette? Like there were times when Todd would fly out to Boise. We spent three weeks like,

Like working on the platform before launch. It was like three weeks of us pulling all-nighters night after night after night after night, and then we'd fly back home. There were times like I'd be working all day, and I'd get done working at 2 or 3 in the morning when Todd would be waking up East Coast time at 4 or 5 in the morning to be working, and we'd be talking in between. Then I'd pass out. He'd be working all day, and I'd come back in. It was like radical times of imbalance to create something amazing.

right that comes down to knowing exactly what having a burning desire to possess it so for you guys um i want you to think about like what is it you want like you're at fun like and i have for a purpose like what is your reason if it's just like i'm here to like hang out hopefully i get something like that's not what i'm talking about that's this drifting thing right

If you're here saying, I'm at this event because I've got to figure out this one thing. I've got to figure out how to do this. I'm trying to figure out how to get to the Zucama Club, how to fix my funnel. My company's struggling right now. How do I get it back on track? My funnel's not converting. No one's coming to my site. I have no traffic. What is the problem? Because everything you're looking for is here over the next four days. I promise you that. We've curated the greatest speakers to come here to give you guys very specific things to help you in different parts of your journey. And everyone's journey's different. That's why we had to create an event that kind of touches on a lot of different things. But I promise you, if you are struggling with something right now, the answer is here and it'll be here in the next three and a half days.

But only if you show up. Because maybe the thing that you've been waiting for, the thing that's going to give you the key that unlocks the next door for you, if you miss it because I took that session off or I went to the grocery store or whatever that thing might be, do not miss it. Everything here is created and curated for you guys on purpose. The speakers we have for the next couple days, it's

It's gonna be really fun. And I just want my side of the presentation I've been working on, like I'm so excited to share with you guys some of the stuff I have not talked about before. A lot of new stuff, a lot of cool things I'm gonna show you guys behind the scenes of some of our funnels. And anyway, today's gonna be really fun. Okay, couple more things I'm gonna jump into.

So, my One Funnel Away story. After watching John's thing, launching it, not making enough money to cover it, I was like, "Hey, what else is there?" I kept launching funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel. We kept doing this, right? Obsession. I gotta figure this out. Try this one. Try this one. Try this niche. Try this market. Try it over and over and over again. And then I remember, on October 1st, 2007, I launched this product. And this product's interesting. There's a guy that wrote a book called "The 12-Month Millionaire." Anyone here ever read the book? It's like as fat as a phone book. It's amazing.

I have the right to put it somewhere cool for you guys to read. Anyway, I read this book and it's about a guy named Vince James. He sold supplements through direct mail and in 18 months he built a company that did $100 million in sales. I remember reading this book. I was like, this is crazy. This is the beginning of my journey. Before I'd ever made a million dollars or anything. And I remember reading this book. I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world. And so I called him. I was like, can I interview? And for some reason he picked up the phone. He's like, sure, that'd be great.

And so we set up an interview and I remember it was on a Saturday and I went through the entire book. I took the outline of the book and I had questions for every single chapter and interviewed him for three hours. When three hours were done, we're only halfway through the book. He's like, you want to do it again next Saturday and ask the rest of the questions? I was like, yeah, that'd be amazing. So I interviewed him for another three hours the next Saturday and it was six hour audio of me just picking his brain, asking him questions about how he built this company. And it was never made to be a product. It was just like,

I don't know, I just interviewed him and I had this thing and it sat on my hard drive for like a year and a half, two years. I never did anything with it. And I'm launching funnel after funnel after funnel. I was like, I wonder if anyone would buy the interview I did with Vince James. And that was the thought. I said, let's try it out. So we took that October 1st, we launched it as a product. And I remember this was the very first time that we'd ever used video in a funnel. So what happened is you'd come to the site and you bought the interview. The interview and the transcripts was $37.00.

And then you come to the next page. This is pre-click funnels. This is pre-one-click upsells. You guys know back in the day, we couldn't do one-click upsells. So what we'd have to do is that you go put your credit card in. You go to the next page. You want this too? Yeah, cool. Put your whole credit card in again. So they had to re-put in their whole credit card again. It was a nightmare. One-click upsells.

Like the greatest thing in the world. Anyway, but back in the day, we didn't have that. So people with credit cards in, again, and this is when YouTube just first came out. You can tell because the video's square, and I had a shaved head, and we'd bought the rights to be able to sell Vince's book for 300 bucks. And so this video, I should have found the video. I didn't.

I probably have it. I should have found it. Anyway, it's me sitting at our desk like, hey guys, thanks for buying my interview with Vince James. If you like the interview, you might want the book too. This book's huge. I kind of talked about the book. Do you remember this office? That's the one. Anyway, this is like our first actual office we had back in the day. So me pitching the book and there was a video. I remember people messaging me. They're like, dude, we saw your funnel. That was insane. You had a video upsell. Like no one ever seen it before. I was like, I was one of the first ones ever to do it. It converted like crazy. Um, $297 for the book. Uh,

And then we had a membership site where people would get all the interviews and all the stuff like that. Launched on October 1st, 2007. And October 16th, 2007 is when I officially joined the Two Comma Club with this funnel. So...

It was the first time that one of my funnels had ever done that. And it was the craziest thing. It was just one of those things where like, I had launched so many funnels. It was funnel after funnel after funnel. And it's funny because I had this mantra, you guys probably heard me say it before, that you're one funnel away. I share that mantra and it's funny because like all the funnel hackers are like, yes, this is amazing. But there are people online who hate me because of it. They rip me apart. I get so...

funny and aggravating a bunch of stuff but they're like russell says you're just one funnel away and it's like this is why that's not anyway i get a lot of crap because of it but i'm like man for me like this was the thing i launched a dozen funnels prior to that and then for some reason that was the one that hit and it was just like that changed my whole life everything was different i was like oh my gosh a million dollars in one funnel in what 16 17 days and it was like how to make a better funnel and a better funnel right and then for the last years ago is that like

18 years, 17 years, I haven't made your sense that we've launched 100 of funnels. But this was the very first one for me that ever did it. And it was awesome. How many guys, especially as the room here, I mean, I remember the very first follow you had that crossed seven figures of sales.

It's like special, right? You know exactly which one it is. In fact, the very first 2Comical I ever ordered, because we were getting it tested and I was talking to Dave, Dave's like, "What?" Like, "We're going to print a sample." He's like, "What product name do you want on it?" I'm like, "12-Minute Internet Millionaire." That was the very first product. So the very first 2Comical board ever printed had this for myself. And then I went through the archives, like, what funnels have I have done that made a million dollars? We found all of them, like printed an award for myself for every funnel I'd ever created that did a million dollars.

So the real reason why the Tukama Cup Award is literally just for me, and then I let you guys participate in it because I thought it was a cool award. Anyway, so there you go. So that's what it was, and it changed my whole life. I'm going to talk more about One Fun Way this afternoon, so I'll share some of the other stories. But man, this was the very first time it changed my life and gave me belief that I could do this for a living. I still remember because my mom...

I was like graduating from school this time. I was doing this stuff. My mom could ask me, so when are you going to get a real job? I was like, mom, I have a real job. She's like, no, but like, where you work for somebody and like they pay taxes. I'm like, mom, I have a real job. And she would not believe me. And then how many of you guys know David Frye?

David's one of my favorite people in this whole industry. So David's actually my second uncle or second, yeah, something like that. And I remember he does very similar business to all of us. And I didn't know that. And I met or I reconnected with him after a couple of years. He messaged me. He's like, he's like, wait, you do internet business too? And they show me his stuff. So I called my mom. I was like, I'm doing the same thing David Fry's doing. And she's like, oh, he makes really good money. Okay, you can do that then. It was the first time like this business was ever legitimate in my mom's eyes, even though this was happening behind the scenes. Anyway, kind of funny.

Adelassian.com.

It's the new Ghost Burger from Carl's Jr. It's a juicy char-boiled Angus beef burger.

So, um...

2016 was the very first time. And after that, we kept building funnel after funnel after funnel. I was like, if we could build some software that made this funnel process easier, I think that would be a good thing for me to sell.

And so 2009 is actually the very first time I tried to build ClickFunnels, which is funny. This is before I'd ever met Todd or any of the other guys, but I did know Dylan Jones. Dylan was one of our original co-founders. Dylan was the one who built the original editor. We ended up buying him out a couple years into ClickFunnels, but he was the first person. And Dylan actually designed my very first try at doing this. The domain name we had was click.com.com, which is so confusing.

Are you guys glad we changed it? But this is what it looked like. This is the Vlani page at click.com.com. You come in there, you sign up, and then you come through, and this is like the payment plans, and then this is where you sign up. We didn't call them sales funnels. Sales funnels wasn't a word back then. We called them sales flows. So you can see like your product, your follow-ups, and your sales flows. You set up your sales flow. Sales funnels is so much cooler. But yeah, that was what we called it back in the day. And then we had this where you could do all your things. Anyway, this was the whole site. And we spent...

I don't know, three or four years trying to build this, trying to launch it, trying to code it, trying to cause like, this is like the thing I need in the world the most. And I wanted it for myself. I knew that the market wanted it. We kept trying. And it wasn't just me. There were tons of people also trying to build some version of this. Like everyone I knew was all trying to build this thing. And it was like an arm's race. It was all trying to build a platform to make these funnels we were creating simpler and easier. And we tried over. So 2009 was the very first time that I tried this.

And we did over time. Eventually, the company we had that was building this, it kind of fell apart and we had to fire everybody. It was kind of a dark side in my journey where just everything fell apart. And I was like, all right, we're never going to do that. And I remember...

I remember it was a spot where we'd gone from about 100 employees, we'd let go probably 95 of them. We moved from this big, nice office, for instance, a little tiny office with five of us in there. We're trying to figure out how to pay the rent. We're trying to figure out how to pay off some debt. We had a bunch of IRS money. It was just this painful time in my journey, my life. And I was trying to figure out, what am I supposed to do? What's the next thing? There's got to be something I hear for me to do. And I remember going to Flippa.com. Anyone here ever go to Flippa?

Flippa sells websites. I went to Flippa and I'm looking at all the sites. I'm trying to find my next idea. What's the thing that's going to help me be successful? And all of a sudden, I saw this website pop in there. It's called Champion Sound. And it was a text message email marketing platform for bands.

And it was the coolest thing. I was like, this is amazing. Not that I wanted to be the guy doing text and email messaging for bands, but I was like, if we bought this company, we could take it, and then we could rebrand it and do a text marketing system for chiropractors and for dentists. So that was the whole vision. And so they were selling this, I think, for $20,000. I did not have $20,000 or a credit card or anything. And I was trying to figure out how to make some money and

I was hustling a bunch of things. I was selling stuff I had to earn the $20,000 and finally got enough money. I bought this on Flippa. I was like, cool, this is the future. I'm going to change the world. We're going to give email and text message autoresponders to every market. And so we bought it and then they were trying to transfer. After I wired them the money, his contractor signed, so I can't get out of it. I'm trying to transfer the website from theirs onto our servers, right? And

not to get nerdy with you guys, but we have different servers. They're like, we need servers that you can host Ruby on Rails on. I'm like, what does that even mean? They're like, Ruby on Rails, it's like a programming language. It's like a programming, they're like, yeah, you do PHP, which is like, which is like, uh,

English and Ruby on Rails is like Chinese. I was like, so that's my developers. I'm like, do you guys know Chinese? Like, no. I'm like, can you do Ruby on Rails? They're like, no. I'm like, dang it. So we couldn't transfer it over. So finally we had to get some new server. They moved it over to our server and then they left. And all my developers are like, we don't know Ruby on Rails. I don't know how to do this. Like, you're kind of screwed. I was like, that was the last $20,000 I didn't have. Like, this has to work. And they're like, sorry. So we went on, remember we went to like

I was trying to hire programmers to fix it, I was trying all sorts of stuff. The customers they had were all angry because it was falling apart, it wasn't working. I didn't know what to do. And I remember I just, I was like, I just wasted 20 grand we didn't have. I don't know what to do. I can't fix this thing. Customers are yelling at us. And so I remember emailing my developer. I was like, just cancel the servers and shut it down and we'll just walk away from it. And I was at my office and I remember getting up and I left the office and as I was walking out the door, I had this weird impression. You guys ever have those impressions? And the impression was like, email your list.

and see if there's a Ruby on Rails programmer that works, that's on your email list. I was like, what? Like my list is teaching people marketing stuff. Like there's not a Ruby on Rails, I don't even know what Ruby on Rails was. And my list wasn't that big at the time, but when I hear impressions like that, I try to follow them as much as I can. So I stopped, I walked back into my desk, I sat down, opened my email and I was like,

subject line was like, I'm looking for a partner who knows Ruby on Rails. And so I'm like, hey, this email's probably not for any of you guys, but if there's one person out there who happens to Ruby on Rails, I bought a site, I'm looking for a partner who wants to help me fix the site, send me a message. Here's a site. And I send the email out to my list thinking nothing's gonna happen. I go back home that night, check my email, and sure enough, I get a couple people respond back

And I'm reading through the different things. I'm looking at the different resumes. I don't even know what's right or what's not right. And also one of the people who popped through was this guy right here. And it was Todd.

And I remember I was like, hey, I have this site. If you want to partner with me, let me know. And here's logins. Good luck. And I remember I just sent him everything because I didn't know what to do. And I went to bed. Next morning I woke up and he's like, hey, I fixed this. I fixed this. I fixed this. This was dumb. I changed this. I added this. I moved this around. And it's all working great. What's next? I was like, what?

And it just, everything started working. I was like, this guy's awesome. And so we started something else. And I remember at the time, we had no money at all. I was like, this is awesome. I can't pay you, but if we ever make money from this, we can like share some of it. He's like, cool. And never asked me for money. And it's crazy because we kept going through our business like crazy.

he worked with us probably over a year. And he would fly out to Boise, we'd work on projects, we'd try to launch them. Sometimes we made some money, most times we made no money. We would try different things and different stuff. And he just came and like, and just, if we made some money, we'd pay him, but it was just kind of random. And I remember one day he was in Boise and I was looking over his shoulder and he had his laptop open. And they're like, all these like,

like, it's not only emails full of people like offering him jobs. I'm like, what's that? He's like, oh, it's people like Ruby on Rails is kind of a rare language. So like, it's really easy to get jobs if you want them. I was like, how much people offer you for jobs? He's like, I don't know, let's check it out. He opens up an email. It's like people offer him like $350,000 a year. I'll pay you 400,000. Like all these things, like the whole email box is full of these job offers. I was like,

You should take those deals. Like, I'm paying you $0 a year. That's a way better deal than this. He's like, no, I don't want to work for anybody. I want to be a part. I want to do this kind of cool stuff. And so after that, I remember I was like kind of freaking out. I'm like, if he ever leaves, I'm in big trouble. So I was like, hey, we don't have very much money, but I think I could spend, I could probably like, we could pay like 50 grand a year.

Like, is that okay? He's like, yeah, whatever. So they're cool. So I'm like, okay. So they set up to pay 50 grand a year. And then, um, you know, a little while later, we're launching some stuff, make a little more money. And then I remember coming back. I was like, Hey, I think I can pay like 70 grand a year now. Is that cool? He's like, yeah, whatever. So 70 grand a year, eventually got to like a hundred grand a year. And, um,

But he never once asked me for money. He was just there to help, to serve, hoping for the best, hoping something cool would happen. And I remember one day, he was flying out to Boise, and it was right after Leadpages had just gotten their $5 million round in funding. And he was about to leave Atlanta, and he sees that, takes a picture of it, texts it to me. He's flying in the air for four hours. I wake up in the morning, I see this text from him, and I'm like, Leadpages?

They're giving $5 million for the lead. I was like so confused. I couldn't understand it. By the time Todd got there, he's like, they're giving Leadpages $5 million. I'm like, I know, like, this is insane. He's like, I could build Leadpages tonight.

Like, you could? He's like, yeah. I'm like, let's build lead pages tonight. Let's do it then. And then he's like, cool. We're going to do this. We're going to build lead pages. It's going to be amazing. And he's like, do you want anything else besides what they have? Any other features you want? I'm like, oh, yeah. What if we did this? And then this. And we sat in front of a whiteboard for a week. Every idea we had possible. List them all out. And he looked at it all. He's like, okay, that's what we're going to go build. And he flew home. And over the next eight or nine months, he built the very first version of ClickFunnels, which is insane. So...

I got one last story, then I'll bring him out. I remember after we had that whiteboard meeting and we're driving, I'm driving him to the airport to drop him off. I remember we pulled up and pulling up the airport and we're kind of talking back and forth. And before he gets out of the car, he's like, hey, if we're going to do this, he's like, I don't want to do it like as one of your employees. He's like, I want to do this like as like a business partner. I remember like in that moment, I'd never had a business partner before. I was just like, I don't want to do this.

I had all the fear of like, no, like, like, no, I'm the entrepreneur. I want to be the business. Like, no. And I was going back and forth, back and forth. And it was like probably a thousand conversations in my head in like 20 seconds. So I'm sitting there and he's about to get out of the car. And I was like, all right, let's do it, man. Let's be business partners on it. And he got out of the car and he left. And I remember being scared and nervous and looking back now a decade and almost 12 years later from the first start building ClickFunnels, 12 years later, I look at that as, um,

Probably the second greatest decision of my life. And the first one would be marrying my wife, Colette. And the second one was when I told Todd, yes, I'd love to be your business partner. And that moment completely changed my life forever. And I am so grateful for him as a friend, as a person, as a partner, and someone who I have so much love and respect for. I'm glad that he's here. So with that said, should we all stand up and put our hands together for Todd Dickerson! Yeah! Yeah!

Good job, man. That was amazing. Good job! Amazing. Oh, my God.

Wow. You are way too kind. This is too cool. I'm super excited to be here with you guys in Vegas. My girls are at home, I think, watching live. Hey, girls. Yeah, this is so cool. Oh, man, I'm sitting backstage. I'm listening to that conversation. I'm thinking through my head of my side of what I was thinking at the same time because I sound a little crazy. This guy just wouldn't take money. I tried to pay him and he wouldn't take it. But when that email came through, I felt that tug, that calling. It was this...

there's something here. There's something more like what you're doing is cool. I had a, I was building software, doing cool stuff. I thought at the time, but there was this tug of like, there's more, right? There's, there's something more to work on. There's some bigger impact to make some bigger changes. And yeah, just channeled my inner Eileen and was like, do it now. Reply, do it. I'm curious. Like, cause I know like, I mean, this is for everybody, but like the leap of faith of like any new journey is always scary. Right. Especially entrepreneurship. And like,

you're coming into this, like explain to your wife, like, hey, I'm gonna go work for free for these guys. I have no idea if anything's gonna happen. We have no good ideas yet, but we're just gonna try. Like, was it, how did they deal with that? How's your wife feel about that? Like, there was definitely a lot of conversations around like,

you know, we need a new car. We need like, maybe we should make some more money. We should do this thing. And I'm like, no, it's fine. We got enough to get by. We have a successful, I had a four hour work week style business that was, you know, paying the bills. And it was like, no, we're good. I've got a bigger plan. Like there's something here. I didn't know what it was at the time. I obviously was just,

just following my instincts, that calling of just like, let's keep going. Let's, let's see what we can do. What's funny about this is, um, I'm gonna talk about level 10 opportunities tomorrow with you guys. Uh, some really cool stuff. But I remember like we were trying to think like, what's our level 10 opportunity. We were at TNC in a hotel room, like, uh, just talking about that. And I remember that we like, we thought we had the big idea, right? This is like, this is going to be the future to change the world. And I have a logo, not on the slides, but, uh,

we thought was gonna be the thing that changed WorldForce was a site. It was wpundies.com and it was the WordPress logo wearing tighty-whitey undies. I'm like, that's the thing that's gonna change the world. And it was funny, that actually was the first thing that eventually became ClickFunnels. - Yeah, it grew into that. That was one of the random prototype software projects I built at the time too, yeah. - Yeah, it's fun.

So I'm going to, I've got some dates and stuff here. So this was crazy. So September 23rd, 2014, this is the day that ClickFunnels officially went live, which is crazy because...

That was 10 years ago. Yeah, it was almost exactly 10 years ago. So in 10 days from now will be our 10 year birthday. So close. Like, oh, I wasn't planning on saying this, but I just thought of this too. Like we, when we were going live with this, I was literally like at the computer talking back and forth with you. We're doing this promotion. We're doing all this stuff. And my wife is like,

we got to go to the hospital. I got to go to the hospital. Um, and remember this was like two in the morning. You're talking to me and yeah. Yeah. I'm talking to Russell online and he's like, Oh no, what's wrong? What's wrong? Uh, and basically we had a miscarriage. So like at the same time we're launching click funnels, like we were going through that too. So it was a, it was a tough time, but also an exciting new time of a birth of a new business and a birth of a new thing. So super cool too. Crazy. You know, an emotional here. It was a friend from the room. Anyway,

It's crazy. So, February 3rd, we launched it. A couple of cool stories. These are like the original logos we first launched that we were going through. I found all these. I'm like, this is crazy. This was like, we're trying to figure out what is ClickFunnels? What's the branding? What's that actually look like? Initial logos. This is the room where it all happened. This is, that's Dylan Jones on the left-hand side, Todd Dickerson and me, and we're sitting there mapping out ClickFunnels. Like, there's the left-hand menu, including, like, we're mapping out page by page on these whiteboards and taking pictures and dreaming about crazy things. And when we got it done, we launched it. When we first launched it, it wasn't like,

I thought as soon as we launched this, it was like, I think our goal is 10,000 customers week number one. And we didn't. And then we kept trying different versions of different things. And it wasn't until this event happened.

i think it was like two or three months into click funnels maybe october maybe a month month and a half into click funnels uh we got invited to speak at an event one of my friends events and he's like hey uh we need you to come and and sell click funnels this event i was like you don't understand we have a free trial click phones right now and nobody's buying it he's like yeah but you got to come like already put your name on the sales letter you're coming to speak and i was like i don't know how like this is okay and he's like i need you to sell a thousand dollar version because if you have never spoken an event the way it works when you speak in an event is um you create an offer you sell it and then uh the uh

The promoter gets half the money, you get half the money. So they create a $1,000 offer of ClickFunnels to come and sell the event.

So we came to this event, we were pretty together. I remember like we're working on slides and we're flying out there. We did the first demo. Dylan was inside of the event room, like doing the first demo live as we're like going live. We did this whole presentation, the end of it, we did the offer to sell it. And it was crazy because like we did the pitch and people were jumping over the tables, running the back room, people knocking each other over. And I'm sitting there just like, I'd heard people talk about table rushes before, but never actually experienced before. And people were jumping over and it was just, it was the craziest thing. We closed more than half of the room at that event.

And that night, I remember going to dinner, and we're sitting there, and I was like, we're celebrating first off. We actually made some money, which is fantastic because we were completely broke. And so that was really nice first off. We're all happy, and I think we ordered good food that night. And I remember sitting there telling you and Dylan, I was just like, I don't think you guys understand. I've never had people respond to something we've done like that ever. I've been doing this for 10 years at this point. I've never used to do a table rush. I was like, I know the path now to get us together.

To the point we're going to be rich. Like, we're going to be crazy rich from this. And that was the kickoff of this whole movement. And from there, we went and just, yeah, 10 years later, here we are. I remember that conversation. You were just like, this changes everything, guys. You don't realize, like, this is it. This is how we teach the strategy, how we teach the software, how we do it. Now we can run. So do you want to talk about some of the things that have happened over the last...

the last little bit since we've launched this little company called ClickFunnels? Absolutely, yeah. I can't wait to talk in a little bit about what we've been up to for the past year, but it's much more important to talk first about what you guys have been up to. So jumping straight into it, we got over $12 billion have now been processed through ClickFunnels and sales by you guys. Just insane. Thank you.

it's crazy yeah almost two billion in the past 12 months alone just insane volume you guys are crying you skipped that it's not a big deal two billion dollars in the last 12 months alone you guys have processed through click funnels which is insane that's a lot of money congratulations all the guys yep that's over 2500 people who have joined the two comma club right so that's people that have made over a million dollars in a funnel um over 2500 now how crazy is that 25 congratulations yes

Our first Fun Hockey Live had 800 people. The second one had 1,200. The third one had 1,300. I mean, it was like five Fun Hockey Lives before we were able to get 2,500 people to be in a room. Yep. And now it's 24 people have won a two-comic club award, which is insane. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, 343 two-comic club X winners that have done over $10 million. Thank you.

We didn't have that many more people in Vegas 10 years ago, so that's crazy. It's insane. We had 105 Two Comic Club C winners, so that's you guys that have done over $25 million. Wow. That's crazy. And nine Two Heart winners, so if you guys are familiar with this, yeah. This is my...

Of all the awards, this is my favorite one because this is the one that's not about how much money you make, but it's how much money you give. And I remember when we first did this the first time, I thought this may be something we'd give an award every decade. Maybe someone actually will do this. And I said, nine of you guys have donated over a million dollars to charity for the money you made from your funnels, which is so awesome. It's amazing. So I love it. Thank you, guys.

This is the big question. How many guys? So the next Finale Clive is not a year away, which is crazy. The next Finale Clive is like five and a half months away. How many guys at home, I want to see by raise events, how many guys have a goal next year to be on stage with us getting your two comic club award? If that's you, raise your hands. Let's go. It's going to be awesome. That's awesome.

So our mission, obviously, for the past decade has been to free entrepreneurs, right? So you can focus on actually changing the lives of your customers. That was what I've set out to do from a software perspective since the very beginning in those early conversations, right? It was always about how we make this easy. Like there's constant challenges, constant tech hurdles, and that's been our vision and been our goal for well over a decade now. And yeah, we've got exciting new things to help make that even easier now going forward too. So this is our 10-year official birthday party. So happy birthday to ClickFunnels. Let's do it.

All right, everyone. I hope you love that episode and you got some cool value from it. Basically, right now, I want to make sure that you know about Funnel Hacking Live 10. It is the last dance. It's the last big Funnel Hacking Live mega event we're ever doing. As you know, the last four or five years, we had 5,000 plus people at Funnel Hacking Live. It is the greatest party rock concert event ever. And this year, we're going out with a bang. It's year 10 and I'm ready to retire from mega events. It's a lot of work.

We have something new coming. It'll be different. This will be the last time we do it this way, and I want to make sure you come out to it for the last big party for our 10-year anniversary. If you are someone who was a funnel hacker in the past, I want to invite you to come back. If you are somebody who's new to our world that come experience it before it's gone, it's going to be insane and amazing, and I want to make sure you guys are there at the event. So get your tickets at funnelhackinglive.com. I will be speaking there. One of my friends, Tony Robbins, will be speaking there, and that's all the speakers I've announced so far, so I'll...

Over the next few months, you'll find out who else is coming, but I want to make sure you get your tickets before they sell out. We've sold that every year in the past, and we'll sell out this year as well. So go to funnelhackingline.com and get your tickets to FHL 10.