Building ClickFunnels to $200M a Year & The Future of Marketing with Ryan Pineda
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Hey, what's up? This is Russell. I want to jump on real quick and just record this before you jump into today's episode. I'm actually really excited for today's episode. For those of you guys who know, when I first got started in this business and when podcasting, YouTube videos, all these things kind of became the thing. I was on everybody's podcasts and shows and channels and making a lot of noise and it was a lot of fun. But then I honestly got tired and I got burned out. When I launched the Expert Seekers book, I ended up doing, I don't even know,

like two or 300 shows and episodes and news stations. And like, it was so intense. It was during COVID and I just got so burned out that I stopped doing podcast interviews pretty much for almost three years. Um, and it was funny because I was speaking at this event in, um, Salt Lake city was the day before we went to funnel hiking live this last year. And, um, the guy who's putting on the events, his name is the muscle and he's got this huge house and helicopters that fly at his house and all this, it was huge, crazy things. So they had a big speaker dinner's house the night before, um,

and uh we're up there eating and again they're helicoptering people in to his home and it was kind of crazy and it's like the who's who of famous people like there's david goggins and ty lopez and just like all these people are are coming in and you know there's me and my wife who were like did not feel super comfortable in that situation but you know we're there and having a good time and um

Anyway, it was cool. And while we were there, a guy came up to me who I'd seen socially, but I didn't know him very well at the time. His name's Ryan Panetta. And we started talking and he told me, he's like, dude, you know that like,

When you spoke at Grant Cardone's 10X, when you set the world record, he's like, I was in that audience. He's like, you were the first thing I ever bought was yours. Like I'd never, I'd never bought something before. And, uh, but your presentation convinced me I went and bought. And that's what got me in this business now. And he's like, it changed my whole life. And, and then he's like, you just come on the podcast sometime. I'm like, ah, no, I just haven't done them for a couple of years. He's like, I know everyone says you're a hermit. He's like, you need to come out and actually do a podcast. And I told him, I was like, all right, this is the deal. When I'm ready to start doing podcasts again, you'll be the first one that I come on. And so a couple of weeks ago,

I decided, I was like, all right, I just need to, I need to start, I need to rip the bandaid off, start doing podcasts again. So I messaged him, I flew down to Vegas and we did this podcast and we were there all day recording and talking. And anyway, it was, it was fun. It was therapeutic. It was, you know, I had a really good time with Ryan. He's a cool guy and I really enjoyed it. And so anyway, he launched a podcast a couple of weeks ago on his, and it was amazing. I got such good feedback. Some people came back to me and were like, man, this is fun. And I was like, I listened to it three or four times. It was cool to hear how vulnerable you got about things. And

Anyway, I thought it'd be fun for you guys to hear it here as well. So this episode is going to be, it's a little longer, it's about two hours long, but it's going to be my interview with Ryan Panetta. Him interviewing me on his podcast and asking a lot of questions about where I've been the last three years, what's been happening in the market and what it looks like and a whole bunch of other things. So I hope you enjoy it. If you do, make sure you go over and subscribe to Ryan's show. He's a super cool guy. He's got a lot of cool guests. And I hope you enjoy this episode. All right, talk soon. Thanks, guys.

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.

I'm the funnel dude. I've had more funnels than anyone on this planet. We've got deep funnels. We've got front ends, back ends. I've got $250,000 back ends, everything. And even amongst that, it's harder and harder to be profitable. Well, let's talk about that. Why is the paid stuff scaring you now? Just the cost to acquire customers is insane. So we've talked a lot about just products and offers and obviously running the company, but I want to talk about some applicable things to just people listening. So one question I always get...

Today I had Russell Brunson come by the office and give his first ever interview in the last three years. If you don't know who he is, he's the founder of ClickFunnels, which is a company doing over $200 million a year, and most of it is recurring revenue. So I'm talking about a business that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He talked about what it was like building that business, but also what it's been like the last couple of years.

Having to really completely change it and deal with backlash from those changes from customers who have loved him over the years to then having to deal with controversy from that, dealing with controversy from a viral wrestling moment when he was coaching his son.

You know, we talked about what it's like dealing with haters. We talked about the biggest mistakes that he's made in business. He really opened up about what it takes to become a great entrepreneur and how you get through the adversity. We also talked about where the education business is going and how you have to get on recurring revenue. And it's something that's really important to me because I'm undergoing a huge shift in my business. So being able to pick his brain on this interview

as well as having him stay at my office for five hours after and train my team and just being able to learn from him was such a treat for myself. And I know you guys are going to enjoy this episode too. It's one of my favorite ones that I've ever done. So let's jump into it. What's up, Wild Builders? Today, I've got someone special on the podcast. This dude is

Some would consider the goat of the marketing industry. He is the guy most known for creating all the funnels you guys see online today. He has a business that's doing over $200 million a year in revenue. And a lot of that, nine figures of it, is recurring revenue revenue.

as a SAS product. This is the founder of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson. What's up, man? Hey, man. I'm excited to be here and hanging out with you finally. I know, dude. I challenged you maybe, I don't know, six months ago. And I said, dude, when are you going to come out to Vegas? You're a hermit. You need to leave Boise. And here we are. Here we are. This is the first podcast interview I've done in like three years. So there you go. I'm coming out of my shell. And anyway, but excited to hang out with you. We got the exclusive, guys. So, hey, all right. Since that's being said, why? Why now? Well,

Yeah. Um, I think a lot of reasons, like number one is, um, obviously I have my business, which is a big part of my life. That's big as well. And I'm very involved in my kids' lives and, uh, my son's a wrestler and this year was a senior year and season ended. And I'm also a part-time coach. So I'm, you know, I've been coaching. And so now that's over, like my coaching side of my life is kind of finished and I'm like, okay, that buys back three hours a day that I can start focusing on other things. And, um, yeah, so that's a big part is a little more time opened up. So I'm like, okay,

I got to get back in there. Also, the other selfish motivation is I'm watching guys like you and other people who are getting so much organic free traffic. I look at our business right now and

how much we spend on paid media i was like i have to start doing more organic stuff on my own side um just because ad costs have gone up so dramatically and so yeah yeah so like i was talking to your editors earlier like i'm working like we just relaunched our youtube channel relaunching our podcast like all those things we're doubling down on with the extra time um and my goal is in a year from now to be able to be getting more traffic from organic than we are from paid um because i

Paid stuff scares me, which we could go down that rabbit hole a long time, but it's just getting harder and harder for everybody. Well, let's talk about that. Why is the paid stuff scaring you now? Just the cost to acquire customers is insane. And I look at, again, I'm the funnel dude. I've had more funnels than anyone on this planet. We've got deep funnels. We've got front ends, back ends. I've got $250,000 back ends, everything. And even amongst that, it's harder and harder to be profitable. I look at people who have a traditional business, like how are they –

it's so much harder to do it. And so I'm trying to really master, understand it partially for ourselves. It gives stability to us, but also to be able to train our people so that they're not relying on these, you know, crazy high costs. And he's just part of, it's, it's the way like advertising media has happened throughout the beginning of time, right? Like Dan Kennedy, who's my first mentor, he was telling this story at funnel hockey live about, um,

how when late night infomercials like TV I used to play till like 10 o'clock at night and then it would just turn off like there's no TV and him and a bunch of guys like went to the TV station like hey can we buy that airtime like why would you want that everyone's asleep like I don't know so finally they convinced some studio to let them have like from midnight till 6am or something and they bought it for like

It's like $20 for that ad time. And they started running infomercials and they were killing it. Just like media was free. They were the only ones doing it. It was basically free and they were killing it. And then the radio station or the TV station started seeing what they were doing. And then they started opening to other people and it went from like $20 for an eight-hour segment to like all of a sudden people were paying $20,000, $30,000 for an hour because more people found out about it and the cost went up. And the same thing with ads. Like we started Facebook ads online.

10 years ago, there were a handful of dollar. Yeah, it was amazing. And we thought it was expensive. They're like, how is this possible? Now it's like, you know, I mean, we have some campaigns for paying $10 per lead off Facebook. I'm like,

God, like how does the average person do that? Right. I mean, we pay any, we usually pay like $30 for an opt-in to like learn about wealth con. Isn't that crazy? It's insane. It's insane. Yeah. It's just like, you don't have a good funnel and good backend and that kind of stuff. Like you can't, you can't play this game unless you master organic. And so one of my big realizations, I have friends right now who are a hundred percent YouTube driven and it's crazy because they'll post YouTube video. That video will make them 20, 30 grand and it'll send,

8,000 people to their phone or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm like that side, like you're getting paid up front and then you're driving ads to your thing. Like my podcast right now, we just signed up with a sponsor who's now has all these people. They're buying ads on my podcast. I'm like, I'm making like, I don't know. It's like 15 grand per podcast episode and it's driving traffic to my funnels. So I'm trying to find out more of those kinds of things we can do or just shifts around where I'm getting paid to drive track my funnels versus paying so much to drive traffic. So yeah. Yeah. I think it's just getting more creative with customer acquisition. Yeah. Like,

I've cut a similar deal like that. I mean, obviously, like on my podcast, I just sponsor myself. Right. But yeah. But, you know, like, for example, I have a deal with an IRA company. So now like I'm running ads for them and, you know, they're paying us a retainer to run the ads. And then we also get the leads and they get the leads and we split profits and all these other things. And like.

It's a great way. Like for me, you know, there's not really much risk because I'm not covering the ad spend and I'm getting paid to do it. Like, you know, we're talking about here. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because I did the opposite of what most direct marketers do. Like I started organic first. I had no idea how to run ads. And then I later started running ads last couple of years. Yeah. And,

It became clear to me too. Like even just in the last year, I'm like, dude, if you don't have any organic content, how are you making money? Yeah. Because if, if, if they, you know, see your ad, uh,

And then they want to go look you up. Like what happens? Yeah. It's so interesting. Cause they didn't use to, that used to be an ad to a funnel thing. Now it's like an ad makes people aware of you. So they go and they stock you and they follow you. And if you don't have those things in place, you're a hundred percent, right? Like it's, it's a lot of our clients who do that, who don't have the organic and just like the ad costs are so much higher because they're

Yeah. It's, it's, but you used to be able to convert easily with not having any organic. It's just, Oh, they watched the webinar, the VSL. And I got started before social media is a thing at all. Like pre Facebook isn't even easier back then. Cause there was no, like they could, you can even look you up. They could Google you, but like, it wasn't hard to like make sure you were looking on the first page of Google. Right. And now it's like,

They're Googling you. Then they're looking on Instagram and Tik TOK. And then there's checking you out. Like they're hitting all the platforms to see if they like you or not while they're watching your webinar, while they're, you know, whatever the thing might be. And so like, if you're not able to engage them that level, like it's just the cost to get astronomical. Whereas if you are able to, they watch four or five things like, wow, I really like this person. Then they're in. Um, but you got to have that, that foundation or else you're in trouble. Yeah. So you're going all in on organic along with obviously still doing your paid and the funnels and everything. Yeah, for sure. No, that's awesome. So, um,

you know, I'll give a little story to the viewers, you know, this, but, um, you know, I, I went to my first business event 10 X growth con in 2018 and you were one of the guys and you did what is now like a legendary pitch. Um, I didn't even know I was being pitched, like whatever, right. I had never bought any jobs works that way. Right. Yep. I never knew I, I, I'd never bought coaching or anything to that point. But after your pitch, I was like,

I don't even know like what I'm going to buy, like what this is or what it, but like I'll buy it. And it was like three grand or something at the time. And I think you sold like 3 million bucks, right? Yeah. 3.2, 3.2 million an hour. Yeah. Right. And I was like, if all these people are buying this, like I'm going to buy it too. So I bought it. And you know, the truth of the matter was I got a book and I got like a year of click funnels. I didn't use click funnels at all. Cause I just still like at that time I was building my real estate business and scaling that and,

And then I was like, but you know, I'm going to start creating the products. And I read the book. I think it, I think it was expert secrets with that. I can't remember. And, um, I read it and it actually made me write my first book, flip your future. So I wrote my first book, then I made my first course and you know, that took time. And by the time it was done, you know, I launched it and you know, I had some sales, like the book actually did really good, but I did not like try to get course sales and I didn't have coaching or any of that stuff. Um, but yeah,

Your your talk did influence me to say, OK, I will like, you know, create content. I will do education because at the time I was very like anti guru. Yeah, because I think there's you know, and I just want to become one for sure. Yeah. Like I was already really successful in real estate. I'm like, I don't want to be one of these guys that's, you know,

not doing the thing, but selling the thing. And so I was just focused on building real estate. And then around 2020, a couple of years later was when, um, you know, I started getting on social media, getting the organic content and then coaching really took off without me really, I guess, realizing that, Oh man, all this traffic, they want to learn now because I'm just putting out valuable content. Yeah. So kudos to you. Cause like you, you were the, you were the, the fire to that, but I'll add another thing too. So

After I bought it, you know, I get a call about Funnel Hacking Live, which was maybe like a couple of months after. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, I'll get a ticket. So I bought a ticket, went to Funnel Hacking Live. And I do remember you saying something about how social media was the new like just form of media. And you did this presentation. I still have the pictures in my phone to this day where you were like, you know, podcast is the new radio thing.

TV or IG is like the new reality TV. Yeah. Um, YouTube is like sitcoms. Do you remember that? Yep. And that actually made a lot of sense to me. I was like, I get that. That makes sense. Like that is where the world's going. It's fascinating because that time is the first time that we could act like for me to be on a sitcom or life, we couldn't write and social made it where like all of us could be a sitcom star or be a reality TV shows are like, really?

really fascinating time. Well, now you look back, you know, that was in 2018, you know, six years later, you're like, Oh yeah. Like, dude, I watch these people on Instagram stories and stuff every day. Reality TV, YouTube, you know, Mr. Beast. And these guys have taken it to just extreme levels of no dude. Like I would much rather watch a Mr. Beast video or this guy, you know, versus, uh,

It's a sitcom. I got to go figure out. Oh, yeah. You know, and then even how big podcasts have blown up in the last five years is kind of incredible to see.

you know, Joe Rogan getting paid. Um, I think most entrepreneurs, like their performed thing of like watching or doing as a podcast. It's funny. I remember sitting in the room the very first time the word podcast came out and everyone's like, there's this new thing. It's called podcast. And this is 20 years ago. And I was like, that's the stupidest thing. No one's ever going to do that. And it took like seven or eight years after that, before started people,

people started actually doing it. But I remember like thinking back, like I was there when people were first talking about it and I didn't start a podcast. I thought it was stupid. Like, and now it's like, you know, again, it's a huge part of our business and everything we do is our podcast. But yeah, yeah. I missed it back then. Why do you think podcasting and YouTube and these things are so important now? Cause like you were calling it out in 2018. Yeah.

That's what makes me think about. I'm like, dude, he he called it for what it was six years ago. And like, it's just really blown up. And then, you know, I mean, I guess from your side, you're like, all right, I really need to go back to organic content. Like, how does that work in life where it's like you knew, but maybe you didn't do it to the degree that you thought you should have? Yeah. Or were you just busy? I think a lot of stuff, you know, like.

We were building a company and it grew and the things that worked fast, we were, we doubled down on, right? So if ads were worked for us, like, Oh, this is simple. It's easy, direct ROI. And we're spreading so fast and click phones launched. It's only been 10 years, 10 years, but like it came out of the gate. And so we were running. And so I think a lot of times it was like,

organic takes longer as you know like you don't just post your first video and then get you know a hundred thousand views it takes more effort and energy i think that um i would i wasn't able to put that effort in because we're having so much success on the the paid side it wasn't really worth it yeah i think it's a big part of it um and now it's coming back like i said the cost is going up when i was like okay gosh i wish i would have five years ago really double down because but you know i think at the same time it's never too late like i think in my mind i'm like we are doubling down for the next 12 months really really aggressively i think the next 12 months

Again, I don't know if it'll catch up to paid, but I'm hoping it gets close to, you know, because the million and a half, two million bucks a month I give Zuckerberg, it'd be amazing if like I was able to match that with organic or cut some of that budget, whatever that ends up looking like, you know what I mean? Yeah. So,

to build click funnels to this point. I mean, like we, I talked about it earlier. You guys got over a hundred million dollars a month and like continuity stuff. Not a month, a year, a year. Sorry. Yeah. A hundred million. That would be insane though. That's the next goal. Yeah. So nine figures a year. And then, um, you know, you still have your inner circle and all the other products and things you guys sell. And, um,

I mean, to do that in less than 10 years is crazy. Yeah. Like from scratch with no, I always think back, I'm not like a tech guy, my tech guy, we didn't have VC backing or funding or we still don't like, it was all just, just scrapping along. And it was interesting because, you know, we, I have a partner who's technical, so he built the software and, and,

You know, when we first got done, I was like, okay, well, how do people launch software companies? And so we saw what they were doing. So we kind of modeled what software companies were doing. It didn't work. I'm like, I kept trying different, like, you know, typical SaaS website. We're trying that, trying things that like nothing was working. And we were trying to like do what, you know, what these people were doing, not knowing at the time, like, oh, the reason why they're able to do that is because they got a hundred million dollars in funding and they can spend,

you know, $300 to get a trial. Like we couldn't do that. Right. And so it was almost like I tried five or six different versions of trying to make that work. And finally I was like, I'm just going to do the way that I know. Like I'm, you know, I used to speak on seminars on stages and we did a webinar and like, I'm just do a webinar to sell this. And so we put together our very first webinar and basically the same presentation you saw at 10 X back in 2018. I made that presentation, uh,

and did the very first, you know, it was a live event. Someone invited me to speak at this event. I showed up and I did the pitch and it was the first time I'd ever like actually had, I heard people talk about table rushes and I seen videos of this first time I made the pitch. I was like, that was an energy a year, click funnels. And then you get all these other bonuses for the year. Yeah. Yeah. That's way more. But that was the first time I saw people like jumping over the tables to get to the back. Someone like throwing their credit card at the people. I was like, I heard about this, but I thought it was like a joke, but I've seen it happening. I was like,

this is insane. I remember we went to dinner and I was Todd and Dylan and my two co-founders and we're all this excited. Cause like we had, I don't know, I didn't remember it was probably 150 people bought it, this event, right? So like $150,000 we just made where we had been eight months, you know, a year and a half of them building with no money coming in eight or four or five months of us trying to sell nothing coming in Austin's like, boom, we made $150,000 in a night. So we're all just having fun at dinner. And I was just, I was more quiet. They were more just kind of goofing off. And I was like,

I said, do you realize what just happened? And like, yeah, we made 150 grand. Like, like, like that presentation, like juicy people jumping over. Like that was the message. Like, that's the message that we figured it out. Like that was a message that gets people to like, to get out of their seat, to run, to like, to do this thing. Yeah. I think any business, like that's the hardest part is figuring out what's the message that gets people so excited. They're going to jump up and run to, to like do business with you. Right. And I told him, I was like, now that we have this message, like figured out, I was like, this is,

And I didn't, I was like, we can make a hundred million dollars. Like, that's what I thought, which we just passed a billion dollars in collected sales, which is crazy. Wow. But the goal is a hundred million. Like, there's no way. And, but so I took that presentation that we knew worked.

And I remember flying home from that event. I started texting everyone I knew who had any kind of like following email list or social media following. I was like, I have a webinar. I just, I just did a crush to end the webinar with me. And, and you know, most people like 85% either ignored me or said no, but like 15% like, sure, I'll run the webinar. And so I get back to Boise next day, we set up a landing page and click funnels. That person promotes the webinar. And then, um, you know, two days later I jump on and I do the same presentation and it crushes again. Um, but what's interesting is like, is, um,

I had two presentations that day. And the first one I did it, I can't remember the exact numbers. It was like 30 or $40,000 in sales, which was great. I was like freaking out. Yeah. But I remember, um, one of the guys on my team, he exported all of the comments that people were posted in the webinar. And I started reading through them. I was like, Oh my gosh, like minute 12, everyone's asking this question or they're stuck. Or I said something confusing. So I went back to my slides. I found that part and I kind of tweaked it a little bit. And I went down minute 38. It's like, there was confusion. I went to the offer. People kept asking the same questions. They were confused. I just went back and I made those little tweaks to the presentation. Um,

And then that night I did the second webinar, but with the cleaned up slides and that time, same size people, same amount of people were on that webinar, maybe even a little less. It was like $150,000 in sales. And I was like, holy crap. So like we export the questions again. I read through them again and I start seeing like, okay, these ones are answered, but they're stuck here and they're stuck here. And I just kept,

So I tweaked the slides and the next day we did another, another webinar, another one I did. I think I did, it was like 80 or 90 webinars live in that first year, just over. And every single time we export it, tweak it, export and tweak it to the point. Like, like I knew the pitch. Perfect. I knew every concern was going to come up before it came up. I knew every, like all that stuff I just knew. It's like,

When I went to Grant's event, I'm on stage, you know, and we were joking before. Grant was telling me, like, don't just pitch it. Tell him the price up front. I was like, I promise you, like, I've done that. I know exactly what's going to get him to work. And we did the presentation, made the thing. And, you know, in a stadium of 9,000 people, 1,000 of them jumped up, ran to the back of the room, and signed up for it. You know what I mean? And that's how we built the company. It was just that. It's like we do webinars. Yeah.

explain the product, make an offer. And then the other piece that's, that's, that was, that was really powerful is it just cause people didn't buy on the webinar. Um, when someone to register for the webinar on the, on the, the landing page afterwards, I, we tell them like, Hey, before the webinar shows up, go get a free trial, the click funnels and just play with it that way. When you show up, you'll, you'll know what this is. And, um, what was interesting is from that, like the end of year one, we had 2,500 people had bought the thousand dollar version, but 7,500 people had signed up for continuity and it's stuck.

And so you look at the math on that. Most people have a webinar and, you know, they make, they'll make $2.5 million. Like that's amazing. But if you look at 7,500 people paid $97 a month, that's like 9 million, is it 9 million in

ARR somebody it's like yeah, there's the bulk of money and that was like the aha first is like okay Because you don't see it right away. Yeah, you don't see it but compounds webinar after webinar event after event It's like we came back so okay, that's that's the model like we're just gonna do webinars Tell me what click funnels make some money there But then that money reinvest ads and like the real businesses people sign up for the trials after the register for webinar Yeah, and so for a decade that's been the model and we've been pushing that and pushing that and I've done that webinar

I don't even know how many times, hundreds of times at this point. And it just works. And so like, that's how we built the company. And I think I look at anybody with a company that's trying to grow. And it's just like, the key is like figuring out

but then not stopping and then like keep tweaking it and tweaking it until it just gets perfect. And then after you have that, then you can just start dumping money and energy into growing and scaling that thing. And so, um, yeah, that's kind of the, that's how we did it. What, uh, I mean, obviously I think the 3 million was the most you guys had ever made on like a pitch, right? Like how, how, what was the reaction at that point? Like what, what did Grant say? I don't think he was just like kind of confused. He's like, wow,

I've never seen that. It was crazy. Like we sold more than all the other speakers combined, which is, which is crazy. It was interesting. Cause like I went to the event, it was more like an ego. Cause I knew somebody who had done a million dollars from stage. Like that was like the standing record. And so I was like, okay, he did a million dollars in 90 minutes. I was like, I want to be able to say that I took home a million dollars in 90 minutes, but, or in an hour, but I was like, it's a 90 minute presentation. So I, ahead of time, we're like, we do $3 million. It means my take home was a million dollars an hour. So that was kind of the goal going into it. Yeah. And,

but, but then like, it became like an obsession as we were working towards it. Cause like, okay, if that's really the goal, like what are we going to do? And this is like, I think where most people miss on their goals is they like, they don't pick a definite purpose. Like this is the thing I'm gonna do. They're like, Oh, I'm going to try to be successful for us. It was like $3 million in 90 minutes. That's the goal we have to. And so like we spent so much time reverse engineering, how are we going to do it? And we're in the stadium, this huge stadium. Right. And we're like,

And I talked about as grants, like had everybody like buy on their, on their phone. I know do not buy on the phone. Cause then the internet could like, well, the internet doesn't work. What if this doesn't work? Or what if there's no social proof? No one's moving. So I was like, we have to pay performs. And they're like, well, how are we going to get paper forms out to like, you know, it's Mandalay Bay, this huge stadium with seat. Like how are we gonna do that? It's like, okay, well, what if we like,

put an order form in everyone's chair, but like, then they know we're selling them something. So it's like, and, and then like, if they have an order form, they might have a pen. How do you even fill out an order form? Okay. Let's figure out how do we get an order form on their chair with a pen, but not let them know it's an order form. Like how do we sneak attack it? So we made these little, like these things where it's like, it was like this envelope and you open it up and there's a spot to take notes and a, and a pen. Um, but it was like sealed. It had a big sticker. Like don't open this to Russell Brunson presents. And then we tried to get them on the chairs, but they were sliding off people's chairs. So we had to go out by these bags, hook on the chair. It was this whole, like,

reverse engineering every possible scenario, right? And it was cool. It was like when we did the presentation, everyone had this thing. I had them open the presentation, pull out the notes with the pen. So I had a pen in hand and notes are taking notes. And most of them didn't even see the order form in the envelope. So I didn't address it. So we're going through it. And, but we're thinking through all those pieces and then we're like, well, how do we get people like, where are we going to set people up to run? And how are we going to like, just, it's just really choreographing all the different pieces of that to make it happen. You know? And I think,

And then when it actually happened, it was nuts. Cause it was just like, I can't believe like we actually, we actually did that. I think a lot of times people don't, they don't choreograph the process well enough. They go out and just kind of shotgun approach and hopefully it works, you know? And I think on my side, I was trying to think through all the little pieces. How do we create the experience event in a way that like gives people the greatest like happiness, but also like sets up sales in the greatest, the greatest way. And there's, yeah, that choreograph, the choreography, that's so huge. I think like the thing that sticks out to me is,

You guys, I mean, you had spent, you'd already done a hundred of that presentation before, you know? So it's like me watching it from the audience. I don't know how many times you've done this thing or whatever, or like, you know, anything, but yeah,

you know, I'm looking at the end result and I'm like, dude, that guy killed it. And you don't see all the work that you just explained. I had to, you know, you had to do a hundred of them for the year before you had to think about the bags and the, the order, the envelope, the like every minute detail that could affect the conversion. You had already process it in your head. Yeah, for sure. It seems like I watch people. I try to coach people now who like want to speak from stage or do webinars. And like, how time is there just winging it? I was like, there's presentations. I wing, like when I'm teaching and training in my big events, like I'm,

I got a direction I'm going, but when I'm selling something, I get scripted. Like I know exactly where I'm taking my drink of water. I know when I'm laughing, I know the joke I'm going to land. I know like, like none of that's left a chance. Like there's too important to leave to chance. Like I gotta just make sure that's, um, it's not script. Like I wrote it out and memorize. It's just like, I just know the pacing. I know what it's supposed to be. I know, you know, and you can feel it. And, um, it's just interesting because I see people who, who leave a lot more of it to chance. And some days they have big sales days, other days they bombs. And it's like the same presentation. They don't know why. And it's just like,

Because they're going off script. And it's like, yeah, when you're trying to execute a sale, like the script is the key. Yeah. I am very guilty of being the other guy. I think I lean more with Grant where I'm just like, hey, guys, like, look, this is the thing. You should buy it. Buy it or don't. Like, you know, but I hope you buy it because I think it's going to help. And, you know, I kind of wing everything. And I got to quit doing that. Because even...

I don't know, dude, it's, it's just one of those things, right. Where you have so much success doing it that you're just like, yeah, I mean, why change it? Yeah. You know, I was interviewing Ed Milet and he goes, Hey, where did you, um, learn to podcast and like interview people? Like you're, you're good. And I was like, well, um, I just show up and I talk and it's great. You know, I'm just, I'm, I'm just naturally curious of the people I'm speaking to. And I ask questions that I personally just want to answer. And, um,

He's like, you know, you'd probably do better if you just prepped a little bit more. And I was like, yeah, I'll have to do that. If you look at my life, he's got his speech is dialed in the best ever, but it's like the same story, same lines. Like he's just, he's nailed. He's created it. And we talked about this earlier, Tony Robbins, UPW, like,

Like me and you, like I do my big fun. I bet you do your event. Like it's different every single time. Tony, like 30 years ago, he wrote UPW. It is a four times a year for 30 years. Word for, I'm not, but pretty close. I knew date with destiny. It was like, he wrote date with destiny and they became thingy to twice a year for 40 years. You know, it's interesting. Once you have something that works, why change it?

Yeah. I was actually surprised because when I saw you in Utah, I knew you were speaking and I was like, what are you going to talk about? You're like, you know, that presentation you saw in 2018. Yeah, I'm going to do that. And I was like, OK, why don't you tweak it? Because it works. Yeah. New audience all the time. But that's the big problem. People understand is like

is, um, I talked to, um, Mary Ellen Tribby. She, she's a fascinating marketer. She went a couple of companies. She came into the companies are doing like three or $4 million a year. She came in and she took from 3 million to like 80 million. Like, and she did like three or four times. And I asked her, I was like, how in the world do you do that? Cause you know, it's happening. My business was doing 3 million. I'm like, how did you take a business from three to 80 in like 18 months? Like what's the secret? And it was so fascinating. She's like, you marketer. She's like,

You guys do the equivalent of like writing a Hollywood play, right? You hire the best screenwriters and actors and you practice and you rehearse. And then because you live in Boise, Idaho, you put on the plane, Boise, Idaho, you know, you promote it. People come in and like, you know, opening day curtains are up. You do the thing. It nails it. Curtains close. Everyone loves it. It gives a standing ovation. And then it ends. And next day you ride a new play.

And she's like, all I do is instead of writing a new play, she's like, I take the show from Boise, Idaho, and I take it on the road. I take it to Boise, to Chicago, to New York, over and over and over again. And so for me, it was click for like, when she told me at the very beginning of ClickFunnels journey, I was like, Oh, cause I was, I was going to try to write another webinar pitch. And I was like, no, just take it on the road. There's a million audiences never heard this. Like, why do I need, you know, in Utah that an event. Yeah. I don't know how many people I can remember people had in the room, but I would say maybe 5% ever heard of me before. And

Like, Breston was brand new people. It's like, why deviate? Keep with, you know. Just keep the whole thing going. So they can just show on the road 10 years later. So what do you do when things don't work out, right? Because you get the same pitch, per se. But, you know, different audiences respond differently. Like, do you think that if an audience doesn't respond, is it just...

the audience are you screwed up like how do you differentiate that there's a lot of variables that are fascinating i learned on this journey that were like for example i remember going to the uk the very first time and i'm so excited to go to uk i see big ben like all that you know yeah i'm excited i go to the audience and i've never i don't i've never been in that situation and i do this presentation same presentation stuff and it does not go well i get bombs um i remember later reading in like some facebook groups that the attendees were at like

like they were, it was, they were mean. Like they did not like me. Like the fact that I was like this annoying, I think on the Yankee or something, all these things like, and I was like, Oh my gosh, my people in the UK hate me. And so I didn't go back for three or four years. And then this still happened. Jay Bram was trying to get me to come back. I was like, Oh, people in UK hate me. He's like, just come back. And so I went back, but I remember ahead of time, like I studied people and like, understand like what, like what do people there think about Americans? Like, how does it work? And it was fascinating. Cause I was like, I realized like,

Their perception of Americans are way different than I would have assumed. And so I went back the second time and I was like, okay, I have to understand that these people –

I think I'm an annoying Yankee mayor or whatever they call it. So instead, like I was very self deprecating, made fun of me, made fun of our president, make fun of the States. And like it shifted the whole tone of it. And then what's weird is in America, people jump up and run the back of them in the UK. They don't, they're very proper and they sit in a way. And so like the first time I, no one's running back rooms. I freaked out. So I was like trying to like do stuff. And I'm like telling them to go back. I think they were just annoyed. Cause like, you know, and this time I was like, okay, this is their culture. It's different.

and by understanding the audience ahead of time then we crush to that time so that's what I've learned biggest even going to audience like I hate speaking the first day of an event like I hate when promoters like can I have your slides like you've done this webinar a million times give me the slides I'm like no like

I want to sit in the, in the room. Like for grants, I spoke strategically on day two before lunch. Like that's the spot. Cause I wanted a day and a half to like sit in the audience and like understand the audience. I was, I was sitting in, in the room amongst all these people listening to the speakers interacting. I was changing slides and tweaking stuff based on like what was happening in the room. Like I didn't even realize grants audience, uh,

I walk in and like, everyone's in decked out in suits. They're all alpha males. They're like, Oh, this is not like my normal audience. My audience is very mixed, you know, male, female, like all that kind of stuff. I was like, this is just online people. These people are like salespeople. I was like, so I shifted. If you notice, if you watch that presentation, like I had to shift the pacing. I can usually, uh, I'm more like,

I'm more like, you know, I'm kind of playing with the audience. This was like I had to take command of the audience because I was like, if they don't respect me, me, like I'm screwed. Yeah. These people are all alphas. It's like I had to take control. It was all these things I shifted to mill and make sure that that I could captivate their their attention, their trust out of the gate.

Um, one of the problems I had in Salt Lake and then with that one, like I was day one and I was, or maybe it was only one day event, right? Yeah. It was only one day. Yeah. So I'm trying to tweak. You don't even know what they're doing. Yeah. It was. And then it was all sorts of K it was. Yeah. It was all sorts of chaos, but it was like, I was backstage. Yeah. I was not able to. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We can talk about that. Yeah. But, um, yeah. So I think that's a big part of it is understanding like, uh, audiences are different. A lot of times you try to figure out the person whose audience it is. Like they sync with it. Right. Like I remember doing a deal with Jeff Walker, Jeff Walker's audience. Do you know Jeff? No. Um, he's a big product launch guy. He's, he's amazing, but he's very much like very calm and very,

you know, and like his whole team, you work and they're all, they're all like sync to that level. His audience are all very calm and I'm like the, you know, like, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, uh, when I work with them, it's like, I have to like, I have to change how I speak. I have to be a lot slower or else they just think I'm this nut, you know? Yeah. So it's like a lot of times it's syncing with the person's audience and like mirroring and matching their energy levels as you're presenting to be able to, you know, and then sometimes it's just sometimes offers fatigue. Sometimes the webinars at work, like, well, that's what I was going to ask about. Cause like,

okay so in utah that was the last time i've seen you pitch and like i was just thinking in my head i'm like okay everyone in this crowd is like some young kid that's uh like in door-to-door sales and like hustling and sell like

I don't know that they need click funnels. Like that was my perception. I'm like, I don't see them like making online stuff and like creating offers. Like I see them just hustling, trying to go get sales. Cause you know, we're in Utah, the door to door capital of the world. And, uh, it was just interesting for me to watch. I'm like, I don't know how this is going to go. Yeah. I think if I had more time to tweak and then also like my, my demo didn't work. Like if we got to download the web, like there was, there was so much chaos tied around that. But, um,

But yeah, there's definitely, you have to, I mean, Dan Kennedy, my first mentor, he talks about message to mark and match. Like you have to match that thing. And so like those who aren't willing to put in the time to like make sure the message matches, it falls. I think that was a good example for me, like not having enough time to like match the message. Yeah. What do you think of offer fatigue? So like, I mean, to your point, yeah.

you know, you're selling click funnels as like the core offer. And then obviously you've had your different coaching programs and things too. But like, um,

does click funnels fatigue do you have to keep changing it like how's that work yeah it's a and that's the hardest thing that i've been selling click funnels every day for a decade you know it's just like how do you make the sexy again how do you talk about it differently um there's always new audiences coming in but i think a big part of it is the core offer doesn't shift um but everything around it does right so i mean you see this i'm sure with social and like paid ads like paid ads uh i was reading this um well sorry one of my one of my friends went to facebook's um

whatever, and they were sitting there and said that Facebook wants people to update their creative on their ads every 1.5 weeks. If they want creative, we go fast. That's a lot of work. I had this conversation with Dean Graciosi. Dean, you know, those who know him, he's the infomercial guy. He ran infomercials and he said that when they would write a good webinar or a good infomercial, it would run for like two to five years. And then it was over time, go down, they'd renew a new webinar or sorry, new infomercial, but they had longevity, right? And then you look at...

when I first got started on Facebook, like we create ads and they would run for six months or ever. Like now it sounds like 1.5 weeks is how often they want you refreshing your creative, which is hard. So creative wears out really, really fast. And then like, so if creative is the one you have the most, the second is like, then the hook of the thing, right? It's like my old hooks to get people on the presentation. Those are fatigued for sure. So I'm always coming with different hooks, different angles, different markets we're going after specifically. So for example, we did a webinar with Brooke Castile a few months back and she's,

you know, she, she's the queen of the life coaching industry. She coaches all the life coaches. And so the hook was like, here's the sales funnel for life coaches to get whatever. So it's like the hook shifts for that audience. The offers exactly the same. Yeah. And so the offer does fatigue over time, but it's the last of fatigue. It's usually the creative, then the hooks and then, and then the offers further down. Cause I mean, we're still a decade in and the offer still works pretty well, but how we wrap everything around it changes a lot more often. So what do you think about,

you know, having an offer that is so like, um, pliable that can be molded to so many things. Right. Cause I have a real estate offer and I think about it and I'm like, there's not like a ton we can do with that. You could though. It's just, it's being creative. Like I would be like, uh, real estate for, and I would do a deal. Let's say it's a UFC fighter, find a UFC fighter, like real estate for, for combat athletes. And then now you have a whole segment you can go after and they have real estate for college kids. Do you real estate for like, I'd be segmenting that way, but it's still going to the same offer. Same offer. Yeah. But, but like,

You think about this, like if you walk into a bookstore and you say 10 books, like internet marketing, internet marketing, internet marketing for...

for college wrestlers and I'm a college wrestler. I'm going to buy the college wrestler one. You know what I mean? I think segmenting down. And so that's probably, I would try to find, I would try to find, um, a celebrity in each of those markets to co-brand with. Like for example, we're talking about right now, I was telling you, we filmed yesterday with Damon John. So Damon John's a big brand obviously. And so we have, and he's, he's tradition is e-commerce. So click phones has new e-commerce engine that's coming out. We're really excited about. So we're partnering with Damon cause it's like Damon's the king of e-commerce. Um,

and he's giving people free e-commerce store inside of click funnel. So that's the whole offer, but the offer, you know, click funnels, but it's like, it's like we took a feature of click funnels, which e-commerce stores and, uh, and cart funnels had tied it with Damon because he's a celebrity that was e-com. And then now we have a whole new channel that, you know, that, that offer, if it goes well, it could run for a couple of years, you know? So it's looking at those kinds of things. Um, it's just how you get Damon, John to keep making you creatives every, you know, one and a half weeks though. That's, that is true. Um,

yeah, that's a lot harder. Um, but with like, with the deal we have, we have six hours ago filming this. We film as much crave as we can in six hours. Yeah. And then we're spinning it, making different versions where, yeah. And the bigger the brand is, the more longevity is. Cause you know, they're, they're, they're big, you know, well, it always goes back to what we just said at the beginning of just having good organic content, right? Like,

you know, you're going to have to pay Damon John because of the work he's built, you know, or put in to build his personal brand. And, you know, you're looking for other guys with personal brands and women and, um, it's a lot of work, but like, that's like part of using your brand. If you, you know, now you can use it for other things. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Anyway. Yeah. It's crazy. But like, I guess too, with click funnels, how is it with, you know, just continuing to develop the product? Cause like, as we know in tech, um,

I mean, tech is changing so fast all the time. And I think probably when you started ClickFunnels, there wasn't a ton of competitors. Now there's a bunch of competitors and other things. So like, how do you deal with that? Yeah. So it's interesting. Yeah. You're 100%. We launched ClickFunnels. We were the first, which gave us an advantage. It was awesome. For five or six years, we had a lot of people come in that tried to compete. None of them were great. And so that was the journey. And we ran that for,

And six and a half years or so. And then we got a point where it's like, what are we gonna do next? And so that's whenever it starts, you know, we, we had people from year one trying to buy us or acquire us. And, but we'd always kind of push it off just as a, as a thing. And so after six years, we finally like, well, let's just like, let's see what this looks like. What, what's possible. And so we decided to put ourselves out on the market and, and, and,

it was, it was crazy. A whole different experience. I don't know if you've had a chance to, it was a whole different world. Yeah. A whole set of new sharks that are way smarter than you. I feel like, I feel like I'm walking into like, you know, they're smarter than me. I know. But so we did that whole process, spent a year going through it. And it was fascinating because you start with, you know, a hundred companies and it goes down to eventually come down to a couple and they're bidding against each other. And, uh, we ended up getting a couple of really good offers that were like, Oh, this is, this could be potentially good. Um,

But it also was like, we knew some of the competitors were coming in and stuff like that. And it was like, I felt like we were sold. The people who would have bought it, I don't think it would have been around in five years from then. We would have had an exit and a payday. We knew what we wanted to create to make it something that's going to be around for the next 20 years. But it would require us rebuilding from the ground up. And so we decided to decline the offer and then intend to rebuild from the ground up, which was...

one of the hardest things ever done i we thought it was gonna take us a year to rebuild um it took us two years at that point where it was working for us internally and then we rolled out our customers uh we definitely rolled it out earlier than we should have um when you're right we're using a platform

you don't see the bugs. When we did our big launch, we had 18,000 people sign up in a day. And all of a sudden we realized like, oh my gosh, like there's way more bugs. Yeah. So it definitely was, was, was, it was a year of us just getting under that in control, which was brutal. It was hard. We lost a lot of people.

people because of that um you know so it's hard and then we spent the last year since then really making it i'm really proud of now like in fact we're running you know we're putting through uh on one of our businesses 20 30 million a year one of them over 100 million a year so we have it's working it's stress test like it's it's awesome um but it's we had that time where we made that transition we lost some some trust with people and some faith in people so now we're coming back and trying to rebuild that so that's been the harder thing is just like

you know, these things that you don't know as you're going into it, like, um, that have been interesting. Uh, but it's, it's also cool though, because right now we have, there's more people signing up for click phones per day right now than there was before. Um, it's just, it's just like getting people like, how do I explain this? The, the, the way we built click, click the new click phones, click phones 2.0, it does a lot more stuff, right? It does CRMs and stores and stuff like that. And so the problem is when you join click phones in the past, you log in and like, you just build a funnel. Now it's like, you can do all these things and like,

There's so much confusion. So we've been working really hard to like strip out the confusion. And like, in fact, one of the big updates coming out where I'm really excited for is like, we joined ClickFunnels. It just has funnels now, just like ClickFunnels 1.0, but it has all the other apps that you can like, you can get opt into them. Yeah. So it was like, you have to opt into complexity. Yeah. And so that's rolling out right now. And like in the e-commerce stores and like, there's so many cool things. So it's in a really good spot now and it's growing again and it's, it's been fun, but, but,

but that was a couple of years, a hundred percent. It was like, we had to like to get where we needed to be. We had to take, first of all, we had to say no to hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, which is a mental stress anyway. When you're going through the stress. A hundred percent. Yeah. I should just take that money and bounce. Yeah, for sure. And it's tough. Cause you're like, man, you're like, we're in the eye of this and, you know, getting beat up by people left and right. But it's just like saying that we believe what we're doing. We believe in the direction. And like, and so it's just been, yeah, it's been one of those things that I can, was brutal. I think,

Again, we thought it was going to take a year. It's been three years. This year will be year four. And now it's finally like spot where it's like, it's actually awesome. And it's really, really cool. And so it's been weird. Cause on my side, I've had to like almost slow down. I've been like holding the line, like trying to get it awesome. And then now to be able to go out and say, okay, now we're, now we're going back to hyper growth mode and like focusing on it. Yeah. And so anyway, I,

You guys, everyone, everyone will know you'll start seeing the Damon John ads everywhere. Like that's, that's phase number one of this, uh, uh, new growth expansion. And, um, anyway, but I'm, my guess is everyone will see a lot more of what we're doing because now we're able to like take our, we put our foot back on. You kind of put your head down and fix the product, made it elite. And now it's time to go and showcase it. Yeah. But like, let's even talk about that. Right. So, um,

One, I appreciate you being like vulnerable and transparent because it's not easy. Like you're running a nine figure company and to say like, yeah, dude, like we probably rolled this out too quick and lost some trust and some users. And now, you know, we're finally at a place where I'm like loving the product again. But you kind of even mentioned like, dude, you turned down hundreds of millions knowing that you were going to have to change the product, you know, to reach the next level. Yeah. Like.

that's a hard thing to do. Like what, what like, I guess gave you the, I guess foresight to say, cause like, dude, I mean, if you're running it and a company values you at this much money and you're like, bro, like the product obviously is great. Yeah. We got loyal fans. This is awesome. But then for you to say, well, actually though, we're going to have to shift cause it's, you know, it's not going to continue to work out the way it has. Like I can see, I guess the writing on the wall. Yeah. Like how do you do that as a business owner? Yeah.

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I think back to like when we made that decision and for me, it was very much like, um,

I don't know. I don't know if everyone feels this way. I think everyone's in business for different reasons. I think for me, I very much feel like business, like all of us get put into a business because of like,

because we've been called to serve somebody right like yeah and i'm a big believer like i was put on the earth 20 years ago for some reason i got super interested in direct response marketing and funnels and all these stupid things when i was in college like why did i care about you know what i mean yeah some reason like that desire has placed my head i got really good at it i became obsessed with it like um i feel like i was given those gifts because there's someone i was supposed to serve and so for me it's like this is the group people i'm serving and i love them it's been so much fun last six years but i was like i feel like if i bounce right now like

I don't want to happen to them. And I was like, I want to make sure that they're in good hands. And people ask like, would you sell clothes phones in the future? I'm like, yes, as long as it's like, yeah, yes, for sure. But no, but like, as long as it was a spot where it's like, this is like, like my people, like I've left you in a spot where it's like, it's going to get better and not worse. I feel like if we would have left then it would have been atrophy and it would have been five years and I would have been gone and that would have sucked, you know? Yeah. And like, and for me, it's like,

even if I sold click phones, like I'm not stopping what I'm doing. Like my, I'm like, I serve entrepreneurs. I do. I'm obsessed with them. You know, I told you before, like my company is separate where my info product brands are separate from click phones. If I sold click phones, I would keep doing everything I'm doing now. Like nothing would shift. And so it's like, I want to make sure that like I have the foundation for these people so that in 10 years, not 20 years from now, like, like even if I don't own click phones, I'm still push people there because it's like, that's the right foundation. So I wanted to build that for me personally. So I think that's the hardest. I mean,

you know but yeah there's definitely i think there's definitely days where it's like man this has been brutal you know especially when you have you know people that you know people you've helped along the way that have gone and and yeah then they're just talking crap and whatever yeah it's frustrating it's like man i remember on stage when you came got your comic book board and you're crying i changed your life now you're yeah in the you know the cheap sheets and facebook you know taking shots i mean it's just like that's just frustrating but at the same time it's like

I'm willing to take that because it's necessary for me to get what I'm trying to do and serve the next group of people that we're bringing in. So do you think that, I mean, for me, I've, I haven't experienced it at your level cause I haven't built a company that big, but, um,

You know, I think for me too, I've experienced that just like people taking shots and stuff as you know, you get bigger. But also too, as you just have more mistakes as an entrepreneur, like inevitably your mistakes are seen more. Cause it's not like, yeah, you're missing. They're amplified and they're bigger. Cause you're just do things bigger. And I've had to learn to deal with that too, where it's like, man, dude, like, okay, but what about the other nine things that were great? But then the one thing wasn't, you know? And it's like,

It's just kind of the world we live in with social media now where it's like a very just gotcha game. Yeah. But then, you know, you think about it too and it's like, all right, you know, people are hating for a day and then they're on to hating the next person. Like it's just – it's so just –

one and a half weeks like facebook says yeah you're gonna refresh it yeah you're all right you screwed up you know you go get crapped on for a week and then like it all right cool yeah whatever yeah it's it's it's tough man sometimes i've watched something i've watched some of the when the some of the worst came out so i've watched some of your your content and then which was amazing by the way like um but it was just interesting i saw you kind of having to read like yeah make a second post and third and i had the same thing i was like i made a post and it's like

I said, this does not mean this, like it can be this and this, it doesn't mean this or, you know, and like people think these are context and then, um, yeah. And they're fast at the faster, you know, it's interesting. It's like when you're the underdog and you're the, the up and coming, they all want to celebrate your, your success. And we are top, like everyone wants to see the hero fall. Yeah. And it's interesting. And I, I had a thing, a couple, um, in January where, uh, as my son's wrestling tournament, something, you know, my, anyway, long story short, um,

Something happens to restrooms all the time. It's not that... Anyway, my kid's getting choked and I jump out. I try to stop the match.

uh, gets caught on video, goes viral. And it's crazy. Like everyone in the wrestling community, everyone in the business community, like everyone who's ever had something like, you know, cause I, I'm a pretty clean cut kid. I don't do like, you know, and like, they're like, Oh, find something to talk about. We'll talk about Russell and Russell. And like, they're making videos and they're like, like Russell beats up kids and like, and they're all like taking the 10 seconds of fame, take shots at me. I'm just like, are you freaking kidding me? Like I've been nothing but like trying to serve my face off for 10 years. The second they have a shot to like, Oh, the hero falls, let's take this, hit him while he's down. Like,

I was like, I would never do that to somebody. It just blows my mind that like, you know, and so, but it's just like, that's the world we live in. And you're right. Like, you know, you stand there and get kicked, get kicked nuts for a couple of weeks and then they're on the next thing. But it's, it's like, it's brutal. But I think that's why it's so important to like, I don't know if business was just business for me, like I would, I would have bounced a long time ago, but it's like, if you really believe in like the calling that you have and you're like, ah, this is something that I like, I'm willing to take these shots because I believe in the thing that I'm doing, that it makes it possible. Otherwise like,

Yeah. Like I have people come into my world that I almost started business. Like why? Like, Oh, I want to make some money. Like, Oh man, you need something. It's a long, long road. Cause yeah. Cause you're going to get punched in the face many times. If money's the only motivator, it's not worth it, man. Yeah. You'll, you'll just go to your other job and you'll be fine. Yeah. No, I'm with you, man. It's, um, I always tell just our students and everything else. I'm like, you gotta have a deeper why for why you're doing it. You know, at the end of the day,

you know, why? Because every shot you take in the face, every hour you work, every time you figure it out and then it no longer works. And you're like, dude, I thought I just figured this out. And then now back to the drawing board again, like,

You will quit at some point if your why is not strong enough. Yeah. And so, you know, it's just it. You do get to see someone's character, though, when times get hard. You know, when everybody's rolling, everybody looks good. Yeah. And I do think, too, we were talking about this, like the economy plays a role in that, too. You know, I think people are much more, you know, just unhappy when the economy is not good. And so we're going into the election cycle, which is not going to be a friendly one. I think there's everyone's agitated moving into that, you know, and like.

Yeah. There's gonna be so much divisiveness in the next eight months. It just sucks. Yeah. You know, so we're, we're just in this weird arena right now. Um, but what do you see like happening now? Cause you know, one big shift I've been making is trying to go continuity. Like what you're doing. You just wrote a book called linchpin. That's exactly about that. And, um,

It inspired like I had a guest on his name's Robbie, and he was the one who's like, no, dude, I'm going all continuity. He's like, read Russell's book, Linchpin. I was like, OK, let me go look it up. It wasn't even on Amazon. I'm like, how do I get it? You know, go to the funnel. Yeah, I got to go find the funnel to buy it. And then I was like, I'll buy the order bump, whatever. So thank you, by the way. Yeah. So I'm like, all right, let me read Linchpin. And everything you said made perfect sense about.

why click funnels got to where it got, why like just only selling like high ticket coaching is very difficult to do. We've been talking about issues with salespeople, which we can talk about after that. But like, my point is,

It's making me realize, okay, we're in a pivot stage, you know, very much like what you just said. Hey, we got to like redo ClickFunnels for us to be successful long term. And that's what I'm like now saying, like, we are going to have to go all in on this to like build the foundation for the next 10 years. Yeah. You know, so.

what are you seeing with the education space? Cause many of ClickFunnels users are coaches, you know, would that probably be the biggest demographic I would guess? Uh, yes. Right now e-commerce is really, really 30% of our cancellations are people e-commerce who don't have the e-commerce engine done yet. They're like all waiting for. So I think e-commerce will trumpet this year actually, but for sure right now it's, it's heavily on the coaching side. Um, so a couple of things I'm noticing is like, uh,

Number one is there's always, you know, there's people doing webinars or live events or whatever. And most of them are, it's tough because they're focusing on the high ticket thing. They're focusing on the thing.

Um, but it's tough because to do some of that, they have to ramp up their ad spend support staff, sells people, everything. So they do this, they ramp up the cost to do this big event and they make a bunch of money, but then they have the cost of, they got to pay, you know, it pays for all the ads, pays for people, but then they have these people, right? And they keep paying for these people. And now they're like, Oh crap, I have this overhead now of 150,000, $200,000 a month. So then they're like, okay, well I gotta do an event cause I gotta pay these guys. And so they're like, Oh, scrum next thing, do the event, pay the guys.

And then, you know, so it's like, it's just like ebb and flow of like up and down, up and down, you know, like feast and famine type thing. And so what continuity does, like the people that are doing it, like, and I've been preaching this really hardcore in our community for the last year, it's just, it gives you the stability. You know what I mean? Like, I love the fact that,

And regardless of what I do today, every morning I get my text from Stripe that says how much money we made the night before. So I wake up in the morning, my continuity income comes in. It's like I made 250 grand today, whether I do anything or not today. It's just like sweet. And then you go and try and do stuff, right? Versus like, okay, I got overhead. How do I pay staff today? Like that's in that – I've been in that cycle so many times.

for the first decade of my business, that was the cycle. And it's just so much stress, like feast and famine. And when ClickFunnels came out, it was the first time I had a continuity that were consistently growing, consistently growing. And it was a spot where it just like gave us stability where I could like, I could rest, I could relax a little bit. I could spend more time with my family. I could take off half day for six months at a time to be a wrestling coach, you know, because that was happening no matter what. And everything else was just gravy on top of it. And I think people get so blindsided by the high ticket or whatever. It's just like, oh, but I made,

blah today. I'm like, yeah, but what about tomorrow? You know? And so it just gives you stability to build, to actually build a team, to be able to fulfill on the things you sell and all that kind of stuff, you know? So that's one thing. The other thing has been really fascinating just in the last, I just had my big inner circle meeting last week. And so these people pay anywhere from 50,000, $250,000 to be in the room with us.

and most of them are some type of coaches in different industries but what a lot of them are doing now I think Taylor Welch is actually one who's kind of I was on a zoom with Taylor yesterday oh very cool I actually have never met him in person I study him and I watch him he's speaking at WealthCon next week oh very cool he's fascinating I really he's smart he's really smart and it's fascinating it's like half of my group are also in his group like we have a lot of

Yeah. Similarities. So all of them come back and they're like, Oh, we're doing this new thing. I think calls it, um, revolving price, revolving pricing. What's it called? I don't know. But the gist of it is what he's doing is instead of like, like right now where I sell my, um, my mid-level coaching program is 25 grand a year, $2,500 a month. Right. Yeah. People come in the problems. They come in for two or three months and they can't handle it. They freak out. They bounce. What he does interesting is he has initially when you come in, there's an onboarding. So it's like 10 grand up front and then it's 25 or whatever it is. Yeah. Um,

But the psychology is they come in, the 10 grand gives you the ability now to use, first off, that 10 grand you can put into ad spend. So like you're making money back plus the 10 grand, the upfront you make, excuse me, the upfront you make, you can put into like the customer experience. So you have a really rich onboarding where it's like you come in first 30 days or 90 days, whatever it is, really cool onboarding because the cash collector, they can spend a lot of time and energy on that and just make an amazing experience. Plus you have more money to acquire customers. And then it rolls into the $1,000 a month, whatever the continuity is.

and people can stay and they can leave whenever they want but they're less likely to leave because they've already spent the big upfront investment if they leave they lose that if they come back they'll repay that so people stick way longer as well we do a version of that with our all starts 25 for the year and then after that it's a thousand a month okay this rolls yeah super interesting so we're um anyway it's funny because we have dan kennedy's uh a

event next month. So I'm trying to restructure the offer base, like around that concept and some of our things like that's really fascinating. But again, it comes down to continuity. It comes down to like, how do you build in the continuity gets people to stick. So the people that are, that are really successful in coaching, it's like, they're doing all the same things. They're doing a high ticket. They're doing events. They're doing VSL, the phone calls, doing those things, but they're not just leaving it off at just like a one-time sale. Like they're tying in recurring. So they have the stability and,

when times get crazy and ups and downs and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. You know, it's funny. So I was talking to Taylor yesterday. We did an IG live to promote wealth con. And then I was like, Hey, can you hop on a zoom real quick? So I hopped on a zoom with him for like 40 minutes. And I was like, Hey, I'm thinking about,

doing this and this and this. He's like, bro, let me just show you this. Okay. And so he shows me his page. Cause I was like, I can't get my low ticket to self liquidate. It just can't do it. Yeah. He's like, all right, change this, this, this, this, you know, don't put the price right at the top, but put it somewhere else. Um, you know, like just, just like you at your events. Yeah. The price is by it. Yeah, I know. I'm like, dude, it's $27. If you're like turned off by that, I don't know what to tell you. Right. But, um, he's like, he basically said, Hey,

I, you know, I'm not concerned about the front end. I'll sell it for $3. I don't care. He's like, but you know, the backend is where you're going to make your money. And he's like, I'm, I'm more worried about backend continuity on like a higher ticket thing, not the $97 thing. Right. Yeah. Um, see, I, I'm, I'm kind of a blood. I'd rather have both. If you can, why not have both? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I like, I like a mixed book of business of one thing goes bad or whatever. And like I had a couple of years ago, right before COVID, I got tired of my mastermind. So I shut the whole thing down.

I couldn't have done that if that was my only recurring, you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, so yeah, just get burnt out or what? Yeah. It's got burned out. We had, it was weird dynamic. We had a lot of like internal feuds. People like joined the group and they became business partners. They started hating each other. And I was like the big, like the dad in charge of these things. I was like, no. So we killed it. I brought it back to like three years later, but with strict rules of just like, dang,

Like, yeah, I'm not your dad. You do business deals together. It's on you. Don't bring it to me. You know, like, yeah, I'm not shifting, not arbitrating this with people who are like, you're like, we have multiple meetings, like, okay, well, it's also coming here. Cause I'm not going to, and there's this whole thing. I'm like, this is, I'm not sharing what I'm doing. Yeah. If they're in my industry. Yeah. So it was just, it got weird. So, uh,

yeah so but it was you know i was able to do that because it's like oh well i have this over here i got this other thing i don't need this so i'm a big believer in just having multiple different types of uh when i was asking him because i was the four funnels i was telling you about earlier i was like hey taylor what do you think of these and um he's like look dude i'll be honest with you what you're trying to do because i was telling i was like i'm gonna meet with russell tomorrow and he was like

One Russell, Russell has been buying our stuff lately. He's like, he knows what we're doing and everything else. But he's like, but to Russell knows for sure how to do what you're trying to do with the 97 stuff better than me. He's like, I'm basically the model you explain. He's like, I'm just trying to get them in for, you know, higher end stuff and whatever. But he goes, he goes, you know, when Russell talked about the value ladder 10 years ago or whatever, he's like, that was built for a recession. He's like, this,

The stuff that's been happening the last bunch of years where people will just straight up buy a 25 or a 10 and you don't need all this other stuff. Yeah. That, that works when times are good. He's like, but when times are bad, he's like,

Right now, people still have money. It's just they're less trusting. Yeah, they're holding it back a little more. Yeah, and he's like, you got to just give them such insane value for so cheap that now they're not looking at Ryan versus somebody else. They're just looking at, okay, dude, Ryan really crushed it for this price. Like, I trust. For sure. It's interesting because I almost have to – it almost is harder for me to sell –

Like the low ticket. I look at my book funnels. It's like a 30-page sales letter to sell a free book. You know what I mean? To sell a free book. And then our continuity is the same thing. So I'll show you the continuity funnels we have. We call them MIFKI funnels. It stands for Most Incredible Free Gift Ever. Yeah. But it's like – it's like the continuity, but it's like they're getting –

this huge box of stuff that's even more than like when someone's like joins a $25,000 program, they don't get as much cool stuff up front as they do for the, for the continuity, low take economy. Cause it's harder to get someone in that level, but then you get them in. Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, it's just, it's interesting. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm new in the journey, but like, it just makes sense, man. You know, I'm just thinking if I could go get 5,000, 10,000 people on a 97, like,

That's a good business, man. Sure. And, you know, obviously there, there's way more stuff that comes from that, you know, working together, partnerships, deals, ascensions, all the other good stuff. But, um, it gets your, it gets your, uh, your raving fans like tied into you. Like it takes them off the market. You know, someone's not going to join,

10 continuity programs. It's like one or two. And so they, if they decide to stick you, it's like, and then you're their guy. Like they're not going to, you know what I mean? So it kind of like, it ties people to you. It's one of these Dan Kennedy time because Dan Kennedy's when we bought his company, it's a newsletter company, right? He's got his newsletter, but he's like, when you have the newsletters, like it's like the,

that continuity. It's like, he calls it the tent pole that holds the rest of the tent together. Yeah. It's like now they're, they're paying for you to like, to market to him. They're listening to you more because they're paying you like, yeah, right now, like we're posting social stuff, hope people pay attention, but it's free, but the people who are paying, like those who pay, pay attention, right? They're showing up, they're listening. And so they'll consume the thing that they're paying for, but they're more likely to consume everything else.

they're, they're listening more of the podcast. They're listening because they're like, man, this is my guy. I'm paying for it. I got to make sure I'm getting my value worth. So it's like, it makes them like hyperactive people who then they're more likely to send by coaching, to go to masterminds and everything else comes from that. So it's like, that's why I love having the load, low take continuity. Cause just it,

It all just brings it all together. Yeah. It is like you said, the linchpin, it makes everything work. Everything else grows because of it. Yeah. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about just products and offers and, and obviously running the company, but I want to talk about some applicable things to just people listening. So,

One question I always get, because it's like we've been talking about webinars and these different ways to get people to buy, usually digital products, right? What can brick and mortar businesses and local businesses, how can they start using funnels better? Yeah. Give me an example of a business like. I don't know. Let's just say the plumber. The plumber. Man, it's so interesting because like.

Typically, it's funny because people struggle to figure out how to do funnels for local businesses, but it's actually so much easier. What we do is so hard because we're competing against a million people. We're trying to figure out

you know, creative and hooks and different angles and stuff like that. Like if I was a plumber, I would just buy something like emergency plumber in Boise, Idaho.com or something like that, where it's like, I think about the plumbers that I've hired is always like at two in the morning when my toilet is flooding. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I don't have a plumber on speed dial. And so I would, I would build a really simple funnel and I just want to call someone. So I have a one page funnel with a phone number on top of it. I'd rank it for, for Boise. I don't know. Boise plumber. I think I would search for, we had this, we bought our new house. Um, it's my son's.

nine years ago now and the second day we were in there it went from like having a went from a 3,500 square foot house to 11,000 square foot house we move in it's like amazing our kids are going crazy and um the people owned it before they did it for like 11 12 years and and they when they left they were single there was just them you know so there's no one using the house yeah so we move in we're flushing toilets we're doing sinks everything it's like i just remember like

the second night it's like 11 or 12 o'clock at night and I don't know all the kids were showering at the same time or whatever and then just it died the water was off everything's gone we couldn't flush to it you know I'm like what do you do so I grab my phone so I always put myself in the mind of myself if I was going to look for that thing so that's it was me I'm like

emergency plumber Boise and then the first one popped up I click on it and if there's a phone I click on it try to talk to them right now I don't want to fill out a form on you know so thinking through that reverse engineering like how I'd want it to do it and then just making sure you're there for the keywords and that's it like it's pretty simple like you don't need a complex funnel you need a landing page you don't need VSLs or or content yeah yeah um very rarely I mean especially something like they already know what they want you know I mean like

typically with like when, when we're in the, in the expert business, we're trying to like, we're trying to bring something new, like try and bring something new to them. Right. There's a new idea. I knew something. So we had to like, we had to figure out a hook and an angle and a story and all these kinds of things. If I'm, if I'm looking for a gym in Boise, Idaho, I just got to find a gym. You know, I'm not looking for, so like the person who's up top is going to win the person who's got whatever, like a simple offer is the key, right? Like come in for 30 days for free or a free, um,

like the free challenges or something like that. We're the cheapest gym. We're the most exclusive gym. Yeah. So let's figure out what's the offer that's going to grab somebody, but it's not super complicated because most people are horrible marketers, right? Yeah. Your competition is easy in those local businesses. It's funny because back in the day when I was in, when I first joined the Dan Kennedy world 20 years ago, we'd go to events and they would talk about like yellow page strategies, right? Cause like you'll be yellow pages, the pizza section, there's 800 pizza stores. And so,

They would talk about like every pizza store is like name and phone or name and phone number. And then like their one person would buy a big old ad that's like, hey, get a free topping when you call it. And like that person would get 99% of all the business because it's like the only ad amongst all the other things. I have the same thing here. It's just like, how do you dominate the yellow pages? It used to be a little bit better than everybody else, right? Yeah. And it's not hard to rank.

uh, locally for almost anything, you know, buying paid ads, uh, click to call like stuff like that. So that's a couple of things. The one thing that I think if I was in a, in a truly local business, like a local area, um, that I would try to do is I would, um, in fact, I have a, I have a realtor friend who's done this in Boise. He does really well. He, he, um,

he started like a Boise luxury newsletter where you sign up for it. It's like every single house in Boise, Idaho, it's over a million dollars. He sends them out each week. So you can see like the cool things. Right. So he launched this, you know, a whole bunch of campaigns and promotions for, I don't know,

six months in Boise. And he had a building list of like five or 6,000 people who wants to do the most expensive super qualified list. And it was super. And then every Friday he sent an email out and it would be like, here's the five coolest expense houses from the MLSP or whatever. And like, and what started happening is number one, everyone started coming to him to list their expense houses. And then everyone's buying through him. So he's getting,

Just from a stupid little newsletter. Yeah. And so I was like, if I was, if I went to a gym, I'd do the same thing, but I would say, okay, I need to find five or six partners. I own a gym. I'm going to find a yoga place, a juice place. Uh, like what are all the places that like the gym person goes to, right? I find like 10 different businesses. I go to all these businesses like, Hey, I'm gonna start a newsletter, like getting fit in Boise, Idaho. And what I'm gonna do is every single person comes to my doors. I'm going to put them on this newsletter. I want you guys to all do the exact same thing. And we'll do is every single week we'll promote different one of the businesses.

And then what happens is you start capitalizing on foot traffic from 10 different businesses, all building one email list. And then one day you promote the gym. Next week you promote the juice place. Next week you promote the yoga studio. And everyone's just building this list. And pretty soon you have a list of 5,000 people in Boise, Idaho who you know are health and fitness related. Then it's like I'm going to make my own supplement brand and launch these people. I'm going to do my own.

yoga retreats, like whatever it is. Yeah. Um, those are some of the ideas I would do if I was running a traditional local business, you know? Okay. So that's the traditional local. Now, what would your advice be today to somebody who's trying to now do an online business? Um,

I guess you could say e-com or you could say coaching. How would you start today? Because I'm going to imagine it's probably a lot different than when I heard your first speech in 2018 compared to like, oh, well, now social media is a huge part of today. We're talking about organic content. You're talking about continuity. You understand that. Would you start with a continuity? Would you start with high ticket? How would you do that? Yeah, I think –

So the hardest thing is, you know, initially is building an audience, like to get people you're able to like talk to. So my first step would probably not be like, let's launch Instagram channel, start posting. Like it would be in there, but it wouldn't be the first focus because it can be so slow. My first thing that I can, who's already has eyeballs of the people that I want to, to talk to you. Right. So, um, probably the easiest way to do that is I grabbed my phone. Um, in fact, we just, we're launching a business right now in personality profiling. So I literally just did this. We grabbed our phone, open up the iTunes app, um,

And then we found the category that was closest, it was like the personal development industry, right? And iTunes ranks podcasts from one down to top 200, right? So we have 200 top podcasts in personal development. I looked at that and there was only one in the 200 that had anything to do with any kind of personality stuff. I was like, sweet, we have an angle, right? I always look at like, in every market there's an ecosystem. And what most people do is they try to come into the ecosystem and copy somebody else. Like, oh, I'm going to copy someone else. What I try to do is I look at the ecosystem and like, okay, like,

like this, this business or person or brand or podcast is all about this topic and this topic and all different pieces in the ecosystem, right? Like, again, I'm not a real estate guy, but I assume in the real estate market, there's probably guys who do wholesaling, guys who do flipping and guys who, you know, all different people. So like, there's kind of this, this, this ecosystem in my world, in the, in the online marketing world, same thing. There's people who focus on social and then paid and then funnels and then webinar. There's all these things. So I'm like, like, where do I fit in this ecosystem where I'm unique? I have a unique, different message than everybody else.

Um, cause you can figure that out. Then, then you have access to everyone else's platform very, very easily. Right. Cause people have podcasts looking for content. And if you contact them, you're like, Hey, you've got a person or you have a, uh,

um a relationship podcast you're getting a million views a month um and my my guru for our business she's she does personality profile like she can come to them like hey can i do uh i have a really cool uh process we can teach your people on how to do uh personality profiling for the relationships they can figure out how to you know connect with their spouse and whatever right like that's an interesting topic now for relationship podcasts um you can go to business podcasts like hey i can show you how how business owners can use uh personality profiling to hire better now that's an interesting hook for

for business podcasts. And like, we can take her hook and we can hit a hundred different podcasts. And if we get on,

three or four of those podcasts. Like now we have a business as a guest or as a sponsor, as a guest initially, ideally guests. Yeah. Coming in. Cause guess as long as you bring a unique angle, unique hook, like that's what most podcasters looking for is just, you know, it's just like TV. Like, by the way, we use our personality profiles for hiring and everything. Me too, dude. We can geek out on that for days. I love that stuff. We use predictive index. Okay. I like that one. Yeah. I like disc and any, I like all of them. So we usually, I just interviewed Patrick Lencioni. He has a new one coming out too. That's really cool. Uh,

Um, this is fascinating. So I don't know if you know, like I, I'm obsessed with Napoleon Hill, but he wrote a personality profile back in the 1900s. I got, I got the original copy of it. Um, and his actual test results. So I'm trying to reverse engineer that into like one that someone could take online. It's kind of cool. Well, that is cool. But yeah,

Yeah, that'd be the game plan. And now it's like, now you're getting people's podcasts and you can push to whatever your social is like push to your own podcast or push to your, you can chop it up into content and ads, social proof for sure. But that's how you start. It's like, you have to get an audience and building was hard. So it's like, I want to go leverage other people's audiences. So podcasts are easy. Social. It's just like, but you have to come in with your own like angle, your own hook. Like what is the thing that you do that's different than everybody else's? So it's really doing your homework and understanding the ecosystem. Do you think that, and like, this is a hard thing for me to teach because I'm

I never did any of those things. Like, obviously, you know, being on a podcast is great. And so like, I've been on lots of podcasts, but I always did from the jump. I was like, I'm going to build my own foundation. I'm going to be the, I'll build my own stage. I'll build my own podcast. I'll create my own traffic. I'm not going to rely on anyone.

And literally to this day, my affiliate income is like non-existent from both me affiliating other things and then people affiliating my stuff because I just don't try. Yeah. And how many podcasts have you been on? I mean, I've been on most of the big business ones, but like I should try to be on a more. I just it just percentage of your audience came from that, though.

I don't think a lot. I think it's all come just organically from, because like up to this point in the last four years, I've gotten over a billion views myself organically. So I don't know what a billion views is worth, but like,

they, they find, yeah, they find it. So like, you know, sure. If I like, I've been on the bigger pockets podcast, which is the biggest real estate, um, three times. And I don't know how many downloads or views that got, but I do know for a fact when I was on it the first time in 2018 being unknown for sure. Yep. Huge for me at the time I didn't have education or anything to sell, but like huge thing for me. Um, but then, you know, thereafter, uh,

Like at that point, like most people kind of already knew me in the real estate space. Maybe some new people. It's like a launch pad. It's how do you – because again, the whole goal is I got to acquire an audience I can sell to, right? So it's like starting that from scratch is hard. It's very hard. But I do think – what's interesting I found is that like – is that people don't switch media. Like people have their favorite thing. Like people who listen to podcasts listen to podcasts. It doesn't mean they watch YouTube. People who watch YouTube watch YouTube. It doesn't mean they watch podcasts. And so what we found is like –

if the platform I want to create is a podcast that I'm going to get on everyone else's. Cause like, I don't know about you, the way I consume podcasts, I'm subscribed to four or five. I listen all the time. That's it. And the only way I get introduced to new ones is when somebody on a podcast comes on and there's fascinating me, then I go find that person. But like, I don't see a Facebook ad come on a podcast, right? Yeah. It's in the YouTube bag. I don't, I'm not Instagram. And I mean, there are people who want,

go to Michigan to YouTube, but it's, it's shockingly small. How many crossover, but people are on YouTube on YouTube. So if I want to grow a YouTube platform, um, yes, I'm gonna go post my channel, my thing, but then I'm gonna get as many other people's things possible. Cause that's how people find you. And so that's, that's kind of the bigger thing. And you're right after, after a while you hit critical mass where it's less, uh,

uh, it's less important, but for sure when you're starting, Oh, 1000%. But I do think now with reels and shorts, that is another way people are now finding podcasts. Just seeing all the clips. Yeah, I do agree with that. It's also interesting. Cause like, um, I've noticed this man, I've been in the business 20 years now. So like anytime a new platform comes out or new thing they want to reward you for, uh, or they want you to use, they reward you for, right? It's like right now reels are the thing that, that,

that they're pushing. And so their rewards, like nowadays I see people come out and they'll post a video and get a million views. And it's like, Oh my gosh, that didn't happen before. And it won't happen in the future, but right now it works. Right. It was like Facebook groups and Facebook groups first came out. I remember, I remember sitting there, uh, watching TV and there was an ad on a TV for a Facebook group. Like they're pitching, uh,

Google or Facebook, an ad on TV about Facebook. I was like, oh crap, this is the number one thing. So that's when we launched the ClickFunnels Facebook group and it blew up because like, that's what the, like they're rewarding people that today so much. So they're buying ads on TV about like focus on that. Like, um, you know, like every platform. And so like, I remember when, uh,

I was even calling it. It was Google. When Google had like their Google meetup or get Google hangouts. Yeah. When that popped, it was, it was in the spot where like, if you made a Google hangout video for any keyword, you were ranked on page one in Google within minutes. So I was doing thousands a day with lists of keywords. I was like, boom, click it up. Hey, what's up? This is Russell Brunson. That, that, that insert keyword, insert keyword, insert keyword, call to action done. And there's another one, another one. And like, it was crazy. Cause they, they're rewarding it. So we were like dominating everything in search engines, just busting out video after video. And then it,

died and they de-indexed everyone who was gone, but there's a window, right? So I think right now there's a window where reels, shorts, like that's the thing. And so like people can capitalize and they can, they can cheat the system and get ahead because, because of that. But just knowing that eventually the window closes, it always does. And there'll be a new one that opens, but it's just, it's playing the trends, but also understand that the trend's not there. You can still do it just by like finding the eyeballs, getting in front of them and bringing the people back to your platform. Well, I think like, this has been my realization now, you know, going on,

four years of like really going hard at content. Like the way I did it obviously is like the much harder way, right? Like what you're explaining, I think is for 99% of people. And like, I think back now and I'm like, yeah, I mean for most people just build it, just getting on other people's podcasts, just consistently do that and you're going to get traffic and everything else. It is really hard to like do it yourself and build brand and stand out like in such a crowded place and like,

You know, and also too, I just realized that social media is, um, dude, it's a skill. Like it's a talent and it's not a talent that everyone has for sure. And you know, you're, you, yeah. And you're shockingly good at it. Like I literally with my wife, I was watching videos last night. I'm like, gosh, he's so freaking good. Like I even like to myself, like,

I'm just game a long time and I'm not as good at you at this. Like you're anyway. So it's, yeah, it's definitely, there's a skill set and there's different levels of it. And like, even for me, like I'm not as good socially as a lot of people I know and I'm trying and I'm working, but it's like, it's way harder for me to like, that's why you have the personality test. Yeah. You can know like what you're naturally inclined to be great at. I think it's people understand like in, again, for click files, I have to, I have to be at all the platforms with most people. It's like, you can build a huge, uh,

seven figure plus a year business, just focusing on platform. In fact, most people that try to do two or three or more, like that's when they fail because they're trying to juggle. It's like, just pick one. Like you can be a seven figure, your podcaster or seven figure YouTuber, or it's harder to be all of them. You know, like again, I got 400 people to work for me so I can do, I can do stuff people can do. Like, yeah. Like how do you get some stuff done? Like, well,

I got 400 times the labor force. Yeah. It's way different. So like, if you're getting started, don't do 10 just because Russell's doing it. Cause you're doing like, yeah. Did you start with 10 or did you start with just one? You know, I first started with just tick tock. I was like, dude, I think this tick tock thing is going to pop off. Like,

Like, I don't know why. And then eventually it was gaining traction. I was like, all right, I think I'm going to try some YouTube too. But that was it. I wasn't focused on anything else. I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have anything. People make that mistake. They see where we're all at at this point. They try to copy that. Like, I've got to be everywhere. It's like, no. Like, don't. In fact, this is – I don't know if you know Rachel Hollis, if you follow her. She's fascinating. She wrote Girl, Wash Your Face. It became the best-selling book of the year. She blew up everywhere. It was insane, right? And so she was doing –

speaking towards, she was in stadiums with like 60,000 people. I was watching week after week. It was crazy, right? Just like she blew up overnight. She was doing all things, podcast, everything. And then, you know, everything comes and goes and dust settled and things kind of, you know, changed around. And I talked to her and it was fascinating because she's like, I was doing so much stuff. I was so stressed out doing everything. And then she's like, I realized of all things I was doing, the thing that was like the least effort, maybe the most of my money was my podcast. So I killed everything else, fired her staff. Now she does the podcast. She's making way more money, way less effort.

And she's someone who had access to every channel, like known to man. And she went back down to just one. So I think for me, I was just like, man, I keep trying to like do all things. Like just if we focus better at one thing, they can become really, really good at it. It's better. Well, I was going to ask you that because like,

You've been focused on ClickFunnels for 10 years. Now, clearly having such a big audience and community, you get opportunities left and right. Partnerships, businesses, ideas. And you're like, dude, that idea sounds good. That sounds good. Like we could integrate that into ClickFunnels or I could definitely push that to my email list or whatever. Right. Yeah. How have you stayed focused? Yeah.

I can't. It's so hard. I'm now simplifying. I've gotten rid of so many of my businesses to simplify. I go through that and flow that too. In fact, we just shut down six side businesses that were just costing more than they were making because of effort. But I'm an opportunist. I love it. I get so excited, especially if someone comes to me like, hey, here's an idea. That's a great idea. You build the funnel. I'll give you 50%. I'm like, ooh. I get excited, but it never works out good. So for me, what I've had to do, that's why I have my inner circle, 100% is because I

that's not true i'd say 80 of the reason why i have it is because it gives me the ability to like flex my creative muscle on someone else's business but then when get your face when it's over they go home and i don't have the you know it's like it's like i can have the one night stand without having the baby afterwards you know what i mean it's like for me that's what i've had to do because it's hard like i get that itch of just wanting to yeah i see some friends who i've got you know like hermosi is a great example you know he came into our program way back in the day and now he's out there he's taking equity on people's businesses and the party's like oh it'd be amazing but then like

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man, as soon as someone gives you equity in your business, like they expect you to be there. They expect the world. So that's been for me is like, but I, I still stumble into, I get excited and I, well, but like also to your opportunity cross cost has, you know, gotten so high where it's like, yeah, this could maybe make $10 million, but like, but then what's the cost? Yeah.

If I saw what I could do the webinar over here and you know what I mean? Like, yes, it's, it's tough. And so for me, it's like, this is, this is the, what I've looked at to like make it the thing as I look at like, who's my dream customer?

like that's who I'm actually serving. So everything from software to books to everything's like just about this one avatar, the person I've called to serve. And so that's what I look at through lens and just like, well, this actually helped them resist my ego. Cause that most time it's just my ego. Like, Oh, I could do this versus like, that's me for sure. Yeah. Versus like, um, is actually gonna help them more than me doing what I'm doing now, more than me doubling what I'm doing now. So that's kind of how I try to, cause like, for example, I did launch one business this year, which is a passion project of mine, but it's also, it's like,

it's, it's a personal development brand and stuff like that. But then what business is this? Secrets of success. Okay. And then the personality one. So I got to you, sorry. Um, but both of those are like, are things that I believe. Cause like most of the people who come into my world, they don't fail because the tactics aren't there. Right. Like I've written three books, like read them all tactics. And you're like, they're there. I feel like you have so many, well, there's three that are real books. I've written like a dozen, but like there's three that were published magnets. Yeah. However, yeah. I look at three that have been published. I'm working on my fourth, but like,

But like the reason why they're failing it literally 100% is because of the psychology. Like they, they just, they're stuck in their head and they can figure out they have too much fear. They have like,

like all the things. It's like that business is to help serve those people who are like, let me get you unstuck so you can actually just do the thing. Cause the thing's not that hard. Building a funnel is not hard. Like launching an ad, not that hard. Like, you know, it's all said and done. It's just like, you follow like these 10 steps and you have the thing done. So why isn't everyone doing it? It doesn't make any sense. It's all because of like this stuff. I know we talked about it. You don't have that problem. I don't have that problem. Like, cause I was able to just to do it. But the majority of people, and I actually think it's fascinating because I think athletes are better at this than most people because they're

um to be successful in wrestling i'm sure same thing with baseball right like there's so many things you have to go through to figure out that most people never do that yeah they come to business and they've never failed and so like oh if i failed i'm a failure and they're so scared to try versus like you know how many games a year did you play a lot how many times i step on the mat and i lost like tons yeah and you get used to it but most people have never experienced that like they were in their high school band or musical or drama there's not a winner and a loser like they're just and so they come into entrepreneurship it's like what if i fail

And they're not used to that. So they're like, yeah, you are. Yeah. You're going to, that's part of it. And so I think for that, the personal development business is to help those because like, it's such a sticking point there. And so that's a big one there. And the personalities, because it's the hiring, like people are hiring. It's like so wrong. I'm going to say, wait, we hire based on personality profiles, 100%. And so like that whole business is built around that. So it's like, how do we like, what's actually gonna help these people the most. And so that I'm also fascinated in. So that's kind of how we, yeah. But you're, you're ultra disciplined with,

Especially to like, are you acquiring businesses or mainly all yours are always startups? We acquired two businesses. I don't think I'll acquire businesses again. That was not, I don't know. Everyone's like talking about acquisitions, how great they are. So we acquired Dan Kennedy's business, but actually it was, that was great. Yeah. You've talked about that. That was, that was,

fit in like everything. We acquired another company. We, we spent way too much money on it and they had a hundred plus employees. And again, as someone who's never acquired a business, so anyone who's listening to this, people who acquire businesses, they have a, a mergers acquisitions division, their team who like does the thing. I bought the business. I bought the business and they hand me the keys to it. I also have a hundred new employees. And I'm like,

I don't know what to do with this. I'm not an operations person. And the operations person was the owner and he was gone. And I was just like, we're screwed. And it costs way. Anyway. So, um, I have not had a success with that. So, um, I don't think we'll be doing at least not until we hire, not till we get someone who's good at that kind of thing. So we haven't, um, and I don't think I'll do it again. Um, uh, unless there's something really strategic that makes sense in, in the business. But even that point, I don't think I'd acquire, I think I would just partner and do it in a way where it's like,

I'm not taking over this business. Like I'm, we're merging a hundred percent. Yeah. Cause as soon as you lose the entrepreneur. Yeah. That was my, yeah. That was, if you want to have a podcast about business mistakes, I can tell you about all the mistakes. That was the biggest one I think is acquisition. We acquired a company way too much, lost the, lost the founder. And like, yeah, it was, it was brutal. We, we almost didn't survive that one. So, wow. Yeah. What, um,

speaking of founders you know you mentioned you have two co-founders and you guys all obviously been together this whole time actually uh there's been some breakups so that's basically so well i was gonna talk about because like i've had partnership breakups and you know to like maintain a partnership for so long is like dude it's hard enough to stay married yeah you know like to stay in a business partnership yeah it's hard it's very hard so my core partner todd diggerson we're still um

he was the one who built ClickFunnels from the ground up. Like he's, he's still a partner, but it was me who initially started it. And then we brought in a third co-founder named Dylan Jones, who's genius. Like one of the most talented people I ever met. He was the one who built an original editor. He did all the UI. And then a couple of years into it, it just, it just wasn't working. And luckily this is my biggest advice in this process is like, I'm grateful that we had a smart lawyer who, when we started the company, like had us,

figure out like what does it look like if someone exits because otherwise that's when yeah you know so for us it sucked it was painful for us it was painful for him but we have like this is how the game is played so we're able to do that um and we brought in a couple other partners throughout time and then another one we just recently bought two of our partners um we've bought out both cost so much money that you're just like oh but um anyway so

Why did you bring him in? Like after the fact, like, was it for capital? Was it for knowledge? Skill sets. Yeah. Things we needed. Uh, when Dylan came in, it's like he built the editor and the UI. He was so, again, we need, he was so essential for it working. Uh, Ryan was the next part we brought in just because we had never scaled the company, you know, the click phones look at right now. I think we're like the top, like 30th most visited website on the planet.

it whoa look at bandwidth so it's like to to because it's like is that because that is accounting all the users websites okay got it yeah so to be to do the the back end architecture and databases you need a lot of tech it's insane so we didn't know like we i remember todd first built he's like this will last we have about 10 000 members and then we'll need to change things and i know that man i was like selling my crazy and sure enough year one we start getting 10 000 members and it's like going out it's glitching it's like and like and so we had a partner we brought in and he helped

figure that out, like build out the infrastructure and the servers and the, and like, we were just, why did you need a partner? Why couldn't you just, you know, hire some, he did, he came in as an employee for a year. And then he was just like, this is like, you know, he, and he's up Christmas morning fixing, you know, I need more. And he was after a year. He's just like, he's like, I was going to give us a year. And he's like, at this point, he's like, I'm either going to leave or,

Cause I can make more money doing less or I want to be a partner. And, and we needed him and he was a great guy. We loved him. He was, you know, so we brought him in and he was there for five years or so, but then it got a point when it just didn't make sense for other reasons. And so, yeah, we had to exit that. And so, yeah, that's the kind of the thing, but the biggest thing is like having that upfront, even with him, same thing. It's like,

you know, lawyers get involved. They're all trying to yell each other back and forth. And it's also done. Luckily we have like, here's the, here's how it plays out. And we played out according to the rules and,

And now it's done. And, but how is it like, um, cause 10 years ago, you know, you weren't, um, let's just say you have your fame that you have today. Right. Because like some partners, you know, and unfortunately it's not a lot of companies start, yeah, let's do it 50, 50. And then, you know, one person starts really putting in the work or whatever. And the other person's just kind of hanging around. Like, have you had to deal with that too? I've been lucky. Todd, Todd is a workhorse. Like he's, um,

i've never felt where like i was it was unequal yeah so and i kill myself and he kills himself so i think i've been lucky there um there's definitely other situations where in fact that the reason why the other ones we had eggs is we started feeling that it was just like and us seeing trajectory here's where we're going it's like it's not fair because they've kind of they stopped and we're going here and it's like they were needed for this stage and they're gonna make money all the upside that they're not involved they're not doing and like so it's like we decided because part of it's like you just leave me there forever and who cares but it's like

you know, that, that mental gymnastics, that was hard to, to deal with. I have, I have a friend though, who, um, they have a business that's half a billion dollars a year right now. And when they first created the company, they had three partners. One of them came up with the name, they incorporated, they started, they launched it. And then he left in like three months, never showed up since. And, um, very, they all hate each other. Won't talk to each other. They have to send him a third there. I mean, hundreds of dollars a year. And they, they just did that an ESOP. And so they were cashing, like making like, you know, huge chunk of cash and,

And the guy got this huge, it was there for three months. That's crazy. That was it. So like, you have to be really careful. Like there's, yeah. You know, I think especially in the internet world, like everyone's like, oh, let's be business partners. They started a business and they just hope for the best. And like one of the worst things that happens, you're successful. And they're like, oh crap. One of the worst things that happens. I gave the guy $100 million because he came up with a domain name. Like that's the worst, you know, like. Wow. Anyway, it's crazy. That is crazy. That is crazy. And so now it's like interesting. We've brought in people now, like,

not so much like a partner partner, but like we bring them in, we give them royalties and rev share, but it's based on like where they came in at. Right. So like we've built this foundation. Yeah. You're not getting any like, this is ours. Yeah. So like, here's where you're at. And if you leave it, it stops. It's like, that's been so much smarter. We'll be able to attract really good talent. But initially we didn't know. We were just like, yeah, we'll just chop up the company. And this, you know, so much better. There's smarter people out there that I wish we would have asked ahead of time on how to structure things like that. But be careful giving away equity because it's,

How do you deal with, because you have 400 employees now, like how do you deal with hiring and turnover and all those things? It's a lot of people. Luckily, I don't deal with any of it, which is nice. So there are three core personalities you need to launch a company. And most of us, including us, didn't have the third one. So you have to have somebody who's obsessed with the product, which was Todd, obsessed with software. Somebody obsessed with marketing, which was me.

And that's all you need to launch a company, which is why, you know, but as it starts growing, the third person you need is someone who's obsessed with operations. We did not have that person for a long, long time. And we were able to make up with this really good marketing, really good product, really good sales. Yeah. People forgive you. Yeah. Yeah. But it got to the spot where it was like unsustainable for us. And we tried, we had people try to learn operations, try to hire people. We tried and it was, it was, um,

Honestly, until about three years ago, we finally got someone who came in who was a marketer first. Kevin Richards, he's a marketer, which is great, but he also done operations because we bring these high level, like, you know, 300, 500,000 a year operations, you

COO people that come in and they don't understand our business at all. And just like, they don't know the internet business or people who know the internet business, but they can't do operations. So he was this weird hybrid that we got. And it was the first time it was like, Oh my gosh, now we have structure and there's meetings and there's things happening and there's firing and onboarding, offering HR, all that kind of stuff. So if I was ever started company over from scratch and I would, I would have this, even though he only operations day one, I'd have three people before we started. Cause I,

that's the one that I think most of the creatives forget about until it's too late and so much pain associated. But it's nice now. Cause like,

I just say, I need this role. And then I tell somebody and next thing they know, they, they interview a hundred people. They bring back three applications. Here's our three best. I look at those and I'm like, I want to talk to that person. And then it's just fast and easy, you know, or firing. Like, I'm just like, Oh, this is bloated division. We should change things. And then they, they take care of it. I don't even know what happens. It's just, you know, it's like, that's what you have to get to, but you have to have a really good operations person or else it, you're on a shaky foundation that is really hard to, hard to manage the growth.

What do you think? Um, you got me thinking about this cause you mentioned, um, poor Mosey a minute ago, like who are like the most successful, like stories to come out of click funnels because, um,

You know, I've had Alex on the show and he's spoken at some of my event before. And, you know, great dude, obviously super talented. And I remember people I met my whole life. Like he's shockingly talented. And he was talking about how, like, I think it was you that inspired him to do gym launch because he was just doing brick and mortar. And then you're like, dude, no, like that you're in a level one vehicle or whatever. And, you know.

whatever. Right. So who are some guys that have come through that have been really like impressive? Yeah. Um, that just needed a tweak or something. Yeah. Alex, they're big, uh, Brandon, Kate and Poland launched lady boss. They were, you know, they built that company up to $30 million a year. Then I actually bought it because that was,

dumb but anyway but yeah so uh they build that company up um a lot of people most of them are probably familiar but they're like the gurus of different industries so for example uh annie grace she is um alcoholic nominate aa's like number one competitor oh wow she's figured out a i think a is like 10 success rate she's like a 70 80 success rate her stuff i guess i didn't even know like aa was like a business yeah oh yeah it's all business yeah i didn't know that um

Yeah. And they, and so she's, she's built a huge company. She's, she's multiple time New York time bestselling author now, but she came into our world, had written this book and that was it now built funnels and build follow. She's been on every TV platform you can dream of multiple times, you know? And so she's changing the whole alcohol addiction market and she's the number one outside of like the known establishment. She's the number one person and rapidly gaining on them. Um,

Ryan Lee and Brad Gibb, they're in the financial market, right? They're taking like financial planners and they're like training financial planners how to actually like be marketers. So it's like they're taking a lot of our stuff into that world, that market. And they've got two sides of the market. They call one is their,

their muggles one's the wizard so like they're they go to like like normal people like helping them investing it's like they're growing that scale like crazy and they've got the wizard side which is all the entrepreneurs and they're basically doing all of the investing on the back end for all the people in our world who are really successful entrepreneurs who are really good at making money not so good at keeping money they're like taking the money and hiding it and making it turn into more money which is cool um we've got uh chris wark who crispy cancer.com like he's one of the most prolific cancer um

researchers on the planet. And so, you know, anyway, there's thousands of stories like that. Like all in the most, I don't know, things that most fulfilling for me is like, when I first got in the business world, it was, I'd go to events and everyone in the events were all like people, business, people teaching business people how to do business. Like that's what it was. And so it was just, I always felt weird. And ClickFunnels is fun because the community is like, it's people from every industry you can dream of. Like in alcohol, like marriage, Stacey and Paul Martino there, they have like a,

They help relationships. I think the national average of like divorce is like, it's like 40% of marriages make it 60% divorce rate. And they have like a less than 1% success or 1% divorce rate with their, with their students. Like, and people come to them when they're like on the brink of divorce. Like, it's like that whole segment of the market, you know? So it's like all these, it's just been so fun because it's like every, every,

every guru in almost every industry you can think of ends up in our world somehow, either from a book or from software. And so it's, it's just been like, for me, it's been the most fascinating journey because I get to like hang out at these meetings with the top thought leaders in every market you can, you can dream of, you know what I mean? What do you think separates those people from the rest? Obsessive compulsiveness about their thing. Like they're just like the greatest people in every market and anything. It's like they're,

They're not typically the best business people, but they are obsessed with their art, whatever their thing is. It's like me. I don't know. I think about funnels. I draw funnels. I dream about funnels. I write about funnels. I'm just obsessed. Every website I go to, I spend hours looking at people's things, buying everything, looking at the process. I'm obsessed with it. Same thing. All these people, they're just obsessed with their art. And it's not like...

It's like an eternal obsession. Like it doesn't stop, you know, like the people don't succeed or people who are obsessed for a window and then they, they learn what they learn and they kind of like stagnate. Yeah. It's the ones that are always on the bleeding edge. They're always trying to stay in front of it because the internet, whatever, like it wants the new, right? And so the people are always in the cutting edge. They have the new, it's like, it's, it's that momentum that like that, that blows people up, you know? It feels like you have to create new so much more now than ever.

And I mean, that goes back to the Facebook ad thing and everything else. Like, I just feel like everyone is so hungry for new. Yeah. Like, I've already heard you say that before, dude. And I think it's interesting. I think people are getting, I mean, I don't know if it's actual smarts, but because people now, you know, thinking about back in the day, someone might read one book a year. Like that's the, that's the input they get inside their brain. Now,

like my kids like they'll watch 500 tiktoks in an hour and they're getting so much right or wrong yeah so like people like they see more they understand more and so um because that's like you have to be you have to have something that's unique otherwise they're they're flopping or whatever you know they're moving through it so it's like those things and there's always like a huge new idea as much as like a way to wrap it in entertainment you know what i mean where where like does that make sense like

So I think that the real estate market, for example, again, there's not, I don't know, maybe there's, there's like, I only know like, no, there's not a dozen ways to do real estate. That's it. Right. And there's a lot of people teaching. So like you have to wrap it in your own entertainment, your own edge, like you're like, that's the, that's the key. Um, I gave him my world. Like, you know, I wrote a book on funnels 10 years ago. Like,

The book's still true, but I got to wrap it in different, different rappers all the time, you know, and I have to be entertaining around and stuff like that. It's not enough to just be, just be good as to be, you have to entertain and you can't just say, read the book. Yeah. They, they gotta like be tricked. Well, I don't say tricked, but they'll be connected to care. Like they're not gonna read the book unless they're connected to you as the author. It used to be weird. We'd find a book and read it and like, who's this author? Now it's like you become such an author. Okay. I, I trust the person that I'm going to go read the book now. It's like fascinating. In fact, right now I'm, I'm working on my next book. And so,

I was thinking about this. I was like, if I just like write the book and then launch it, like it'll do all right to my existing audience. But I was like, what if I spend the next like year writing the book? And I, and I, I bring people in the process the whole time. So I started this, like this little series on Instagram and Tik TOK where it's like, uh, this is Russell Brunson's day. Number one, writing a bestselling book and hopefully selling a million copies. And I talk for a minute when I'm doing that day and just every single day I'm doing it. And it's fascinating because, um,

those videos are like are scaling faster than anything else we've ever done. And I had, um, actually someone messaged me on, um, one of my friends is an author. And he's like, can you imagine a year from now when this book's done? He's like, these reels will be getting five, 10 million views each one. And then you release the book on the backside of it. Like,

You're building such anticipation. Yeah. It's cool. So I think a lot of that too is like we're entertaining people. We're bringing on a journey with us. It's not like let me hide. Like here's my thing. It's like the more they're engaged in the process. I think – I remember when Marvel was doing – You're waiting for Infinity Wars. When Endgame happened, Infinity Wars, that all happened like –

Like I was like watching all the actors. I see what they're going to leak something. Like, yeah, I should know better. But I was like in, I was like sucked in the whole thing as well. You know what I mean? It's like, that's what people want. They want to be voyeuristically. Obviously that we're looking into your life and like, and living with you. And then they're bought into like the rest of it. Yeah. So it's like social media gives you a really cool ability to do that, that we've never had before. Interesting. Where do you think all this goes, man? Because like,

For example, right? Like we lived in the information age where it's like, I don't know if we're still in it or what, but like it used to be selling education was, um, easier because information wasn't widely available. So like really you just had to have the information. Yeah. Now the information's, you can go learn anything right now. So like, how do you differentiate yourself? And you know, besides repackaging, because when I think about repackaging, um,

To me, that's just marketing. You know, it's like, all right, I got to like get them aware of this, this offer and this, this opportunity and this product, whatever. But at the end of the day, still like,

To me, it can't just be more information. Yeah. It's interesting when I bought Dan Kennedy's company, like it came with like, they run a newsletter for 20 years, but they also like a CD of the month club and people pay 97 bucks a month for, for an extra, an additional $97 a month for CD each month. And so I looked at all, I was like, this is crazy. This is just a podcast episode.

people have an infinite amount for free now. Yeah. And back then they're like, that was a hundred dollars a month to your CD. We interview an expert. Like it was such a big deal. It's like, yeah, there's no value in that at all right now. Right. And it's true. Cause like even, um, yeah, like on YouTube you can get, yeah. And podcasts, like the information becomes such a commodity now. So like,

I think that the two things that we have that, that are decommodity, that we can decommoditize information is number one, the relationship, the audience, like that's something we have that nobody else can have. Right. And then number two is like,

The information is free. The implementation is what people go to, right? Yeah. They're coming to your event this weekend because they've got the information, but they want your help to implement it. They come to ClickFunnels. They want to implement it. They come to my inner circle because they want implementation. And I think that's really key. I think it's cutting through the noise of like here's all this information to like here's what you actually need. Like here's the steps to do it. You know what I mean? I think that's where we're at right now.

but with my fear then the next phase was like ai and stuff i mean right now funnels like we're doing some really interesting things with ai where you can literally type in like i want a product launch funnel like jeff walker i want a webinar funnel like russell brunson and it'll go it'll write the copy creates it does all the invitation for you for free it doesn't cost anything you're right yeah it's getting it's not perfect yet it's getting better and better and it's like so that's the question is like when implementation now is just a commodity because it's like ai will do all that for you like that's

That's what's interesting. Like what's on the other side of that? I'm not 100% sure. What do you think? I don't know. I think it's going to be weird for the info product people and businesses. I mean do you think it's community at that point? I think for sure. Community but I also think it's like how do you structure your stuff where the people paying for it aren't the people learning it, right? Like I was thinking about this with the podcast. Like right now we're shifting the podcast where I'm selling ads on it.

And, you know, it's fascinating, like BMW, Airbnb, Geico, these people are now buying ads on my podcast, which is ridiculous. It cracks me up. That's actually a thing. But it's like those people, those are like utilities and like utilities will always be here. It's like almost like,

Like how do you create something where you can just do your whole experience for free and the utilities are paying for it? You know what I mean? It's like even YouTube, like you get a good YouTube videos going, you're making 30 grand off the thing. It's, it's the utilities that are there that make the money. So I don't know. I feel like, I don't know. I'm not a hundred percent sure. Yeah. But I do think, I do think there's, there's that. Like if you're building community, you're building the things and you're giving people access to that community that do have the ability or the willingness, the, to spend money. I think that's where I've started preparing for too. Yeah. I think it,

It comes down to community and experiences, you know, like, and I know you guys have done this before too, but it's like, man, we have retreats, you know, we have obviously these events and everything else. And it's like, dude, humans just crave connection. Yeah. And an online community is great, but like nothing beats that.

you know, in person experiences. Yeah. And in my opinion, I think that's where it all goes, you know, to be, and that's why funnel hacking live and wealth con or, you know, so people keep coming back. Yeah. Because where else can you be around like-minded people? Yeah. Like, you know, are these people coming back, like truly like learning that much more? Like if they're in the coaching program, probably not like they're already getting the information, you know? So why are they still coming? Yeah. Yeah.

connection. I remember the very first Kennedy seminar I went to, he, he asked, he said, who here has been coming to my, my events, you know, for more than a year. So standups ever stands up and then more than five years, more than 10 years, more than 30 years. And it was like,

I remember we got to like 40 years and it was like three people still standing back. And it was funny because he said something. He's like, you guys realize I haven't had an original thought for 40 years. He's like, but why do you keep coming? He's like, you keep coming because the community and because the relationship with the attractive characters. Like that's the reason why people keep showing up. I remember that was like really impactful because I was like eventually I'm going to run out of ideas. What else am I going to say? Why do we keep watching the rock movies? It's the same crap. You want to see the rock, yeah. Yeah.

It's fascinating. I think about the podcast I listen to. The people I connect with that I listen to is because I get some kind of weird comfort from hearing them. Even if I'm not implementing, it's just like I have some connection where it's just like, yeah, they understand me or something. You know what I mean? It gets that connection to the attractive character or the community. Dude, you know, you actually just reminded me of something that you said back in 2018. So at Funnel Hacking Live, I remember you were like, you know, this is the new TV. And you were like,

you know, yeah, this, um, you know, Instagram's this, this, and this, he's like, but you're competing not with just social media, you're competing with Netflix, you're competing with, you know, every other thing that captures attention. And it's like, that's the currency. I mean, that's literally what ads are. They're just, you're buying attention and it's really the only non-renewable resource. It's like, yeah, we only have so much

discretionary time. We all have 24 hours and you know, we're busy for however many hours doing work and stuff and we sleep. And it's like, how much time do you really have? Like you choosing to listen to this podcast right now, you, you, you chose this over everything else you could have been doing. Yeah. Like that's the value. Interesting. Yeah. So the better you get, the more likely our people are going to come to you, which again, it comes back to like the obsessed people that people are obsessed with their art. Well, I was, I was saying it to our students on, on Tuesday, um,

And I was like, guys, think about this. Like, well, um, uh, Netflix, they got the lowest churn in the world, like for a company that size and everything. I was reading about it. They're like less than 5%. And, um, well, they have like over 200 million users or something. So, I mean, they're bringing in a couple billion a month, like just chilling. And I was just like, but what if Netflix stopped putting out new content? What would happen?

They would just slowly just, you know, everyone would jump off and some other competitor would have the fact there's a billion movies on there. You know, I still go to Netflix. I spend like an hour trying to find something like, let's just go to bed. Yeah. But then you see like, Oh, new release. Oh, the new top. Like I just watch off the top 10, you know, it's like, Oh, okay. They got the new top. Cool. Like, I'll just go to that. And like, if they stop producing new content, originals, buying movies, whatever, like,

They would just drop off a cliff, even though they built up such a great brand. Yeah. All this work to that. And I was like, man, it just never stops. Like, it's funny. Cause you asked me that off camera. You asked me like, you know, why don't you just stop doing quickly? You have enough country coming in, but it's like, I think the same thing. It's like, you can lose relevancy so fast. Yeah. And if you don't says that, yeah, it's, it's so, it's crazy. Cause I remember like, it used to be longer. Like you, like,

Like you could say you don't email your list for 30 days and email again, like you'd be fine. Right. But now it's like, if you don't send an email out to your list multiple times a week, they forgot who you are by Friday. You know what I mean? Like, and same thing on social media. Like if you're not in someone's feed, they,

Yeah. You're just competing against all this noise. And it's like, goes back to the infomercial. Like nobody wanted that time. There was no competition. And they're like, Oh, this time is actually kind of valuable. Like more competition arises. And then, Oh, tick tock and reels are kind of valuable. Oh, okay. Oh, podcast. Let's let's create podcast. So my mind is always thinking, even as a marketer and a content creator and this guy who just like thinks about the future a lot, like, where does all this go? Like,

We know that attention is the resource people are fighting for and that's where they're throwing their dollars, you know, same thing. Like there's lots of events, man, for somebody to choose to come out here to Vegas next week and, you know, not only put up money, but just step away from their life, their kids, their business. I think about that and I'm like, that is a huge commitment. Yeah. And I better perform that event and make it really good or else I'm

guess what if they have a bad experience it don't matter that the five before we're good yeah they're like you're as good as your last show dude it's crazy but that's what it is yeah i see this on the opposite of that too how cool the world we live in now like i remember um in youtube you see this a lot but the first time i had the realization i was at funnel hacking live 5 000 people in the room we taught for

five days right and i started like looking at like 5 000 people if i was to try to download this week to one person and i did it to another person another person you line them up i was like i can't remember the math it was like 400 years it take me to do that that we got done in a weekend you know you see youtube video that pops it gets a million views and shows you how many hours watch time like yeah it's just like it's crazy what how much influence we are able to have though with our thing and like

I think at least for me, that's what's inspiring to like why I love doing it. Cause you're just like, man, if I, if I do something, I create, it goes out there. It's the equivalent of me going, not knocking on a thousand doors to give the same amount of value to the world as that one thing can do. And if I do every day or consistently keep doing it, like, um, the compounding interest that over time is insane. Yeah. It's really, it's, I've talked about that before. Last year we had, um,

It was like 1.2 million watch hours on YouTube. And so, you know, you bundle that up and it's like 150 years. Like in one year, you know, people consumed 150 years of content. Like that's crazy. I'm going to waste their time. What a waste. When I say it was important. No, but like it just, it shows, but also to the great thing about the world today in tech is that the, the,

Like the higher the quality gets rewarded. You know, it didn't used to be that way. Five years ago when you were talking about Instagram, it was pay to play. Yeah. You know, like there was no like videos that popped off and ways to be found and then reels and all that changed it. Like, yo, if you were good, the algorithm is going to show you YouTube. If you're good, you're going to get seen. It's just a matter of time. Yeah.

And I talk about that all the time with organic versus paid. I'm like, what other way could you make, like, go get free marketing? They'll push it more if it's good. And it costs you, they'll actually pay you to do it. Yeah. And you get all of it.

And they'll put it out there forever. It doesn't stop when you stop paying. It grows over time, yeah. That's what's cool. The ad, as soon as you turn the ad off, it stops. You're dead. It never existed. I think about it too. When do we hit a point of critical mass? You know, like

because that's the goal, right? You put enough stuff out there that like the traffic keeps coming. You don't have to keep, you know, I thought about click phones. I'm like right now, look at our ad spend. I was like, if we just turn off our ad spend for like six months and just roll it for like, for how long, like, you know, um, or anything else we're doing, you know, like, like when do you get the point of critical mass? You put enough, you put enough stuff out there where it's just like, it keeps rolling, whether you're out there or not, you know, like, I think that's,

you know, cause I don't know about you, but there's no way any of us can do this forever. I've been doing this game for 20 years now, which is awesome. I got probably another 10 where I'm like, there's not many who've made it that long. Yeah. There's the, the, the list is short. Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone. I don't know who else. Yeah. It's been, it's been a few, but I was like, you know, if I spend the next 10 years, really just keep doubling down on this. It's like, it's fascinating to think. Cause again, one of my side passions is I love old books. I'm obsessed with my buy books from people who have died.

to collect their works, first editions, manuscripts, and like the amount of people who are still relevant. If I named off the names, you've probably heard like three of the names, right? Of these, you know, thousands of us people I'm collecting, but it's because they never got to critical mass. They, they brilliant. They wrote a book and they were buying newspaper ads and radio ads. And they just kind of fizzled. Right. The few that made it like mainstream, some like Napoleon Hill who sold a hundred million copies of thinking or rich, like, like that was so rare, but it's like with us, like if we put in a decade of stuff, it makes me fast. It makes me wonder, like,

Like when we hit critical mass, where it just keeps rolling and keeps, keeps happening or for a while. I think you brought up a good point about books. Like books are the one piece of content that stand the test of time. A hundred percent. I, okay. So I wrote my very first book and it was so painful. I was like, I will never write a book again ever. Yeah. Um, I swear I never would. And before my book, I probably launched conservatively 50 different products. Um, since then another 50 or so products. And what's crazy is to this, and it,

to this day, the only people ever remember him out, like click funnels or another books. That's it. They don't remember anything else. It's so fascinating. Um,

And like, it got, ClickFunnels got a point, like we had so much recurring, like daily money coming in. Like we do a big product launch and you see the Stripe things. It was like, here's how much they make. And then we'd go down. I'm like, we killed ourselves for like that little blip. Like it was not even worth the effort, but then like, and it was gone. Like no one remembered it a month later. It's gone. But like the books have like this weird longevity. So that's what made me obsessed with books. Now I've written three. I got my fourth one.

in the queue right now. And because that was just like, I think it's the only thing that outlives the life of the author. I think about this, like even our live events, we do a live event, right? Amazing experience. People come in, we change their lives and then it ends and it's over. And it's like, ah, like the only thing that outlives the life of the author, at least in historically is the written word. Yeah. And I'm curious to see what happens with podcasts, you know, and with video, like these things now that are more, you know, have the ability to be around long-term. Well, I mean, like, look, like I think,

To what we're saying, like books, historically, they stand the test of time. You know, the Bible's been around long thousand years and it's still here. And yeah, people can make all the content and give all the sermons and everything, but the Bible's still here and that's still, you know, the source now with, you know, content and podcasts and everything. It's like,

you know, it's like, I think too, movies and everything. Yeah. You'll watch classic movies and those will come back. And so like really highly produced things, but like, you know, I don't know that anybody's watching YouTube videos from 10 years ago that, you know, like they just want the new, right. So I just think that anything that takes a lot of effort can last, which this podcast did not take a ton of effort to create, you know, a documentary can last, a book can last, you know, things that,

And I think like even like Hormozy realized that too with his books and like building out this series of, I think it's genius. Cause you know, I think he was saying the other day, he, I don't know, he makes a few hundred thousand a month just from the books. And it's like, that's only going to keep increasing. Cause like you don't even have to promote it. Like just because it's a top seller, it will just constantly, you've seen that with Napoleon Hill and atomic habits and these nuts, they're consistently in the top. They just sell themselves. Yeah. It's been, it's,

my goal with this new book is to sell a million copies. I think it's like 0.04% of books sell a million copies. So because I've been studying like all the books have sold a million copies in our life and before trying to understand like what was different in the intricacies, like how they're written, how they're marketed. And it's like, what's such a fascinating thing. What have you found? The books that sell over a million copies, almost all of them have one point they're trying to make just one. The rest of the book is around trying to like,

trying to prove that one point from a lot of different angles. They're not like, there's this and there's this and there's this. Like my, my first three books, all of them have sold well. I think combined the three sold a million copies. It's like whatever, 250, 300,000 each. But like my, those books are all, they'll never be like the huge best sells because they're,

they're they're principlists but it's like you have to step one step two you know like you can't just grab my book and open up a chapter and like get something like you have to like read it in order to get it right like you look at the books like you could grab something and read it it's like hitting the same angle from a different direction it's kind of fascinating they're all like building upon each other but they're all like like the core books based around a topic um you just have something that's like super hard to believe but it's different than what the belief is like think and grow it's like like you might be like cool but like

especially when it first came out, like, can you, like, can you really think and grow rich? It's so simple, but it's enough to get the curiosity of it. And then it's, you know, things like that. A bunch of other things, but it's, it's, it's breaking things down to like very, very simple things like atomic habits. It's he's,

He's not like the most simple writer. Like he's hard to read, but the concepts are simple. It's not like, it's not hard. It's like, how do you just sell something down to like great core thing that like, and I also think it's the audience. Anybody can read it and get value. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because it's got to be mass, mass appeal enough that,

So anyway, that's what it's been fun for me to try and work on this one. Cause this is the first one that's, it's not a business, it's personal development, but it's trying to be like, it could be like athletes could read it or business owners or whoever, but it would, it would be, it would, it could, it could grow outside of my, my niche. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I have no idea if it's going to work or not, but like, I'm trying to, when is it going to be done? You think, well, I signed the contract with Hay House three years ago. And so, but I'm not even close. So they keep asking me, I'm like, I promise when it's done, it's going to be amazing. Um,

Yeah, I would say, I don't know. I'm surprised you signed with a publisher and you know,

Because you're not going to be able to do all the cool things you want to do. Hay House actually is really good for authors like us in our contracts. Brandon Bouchard actually worked with them initially. And he was like, I need to do free shipping offers. I need to be able to write speed. And so he kind of blazed the way for all of us. And so Hay House is the only traditional publisher, like big publisher who lets us do what we need to do. Got it. I love that. They give you added credibility and things like that that are great. So that's why I say like a real book. They're all published through a – in my mind, those are real books versus speed magnets. Yeah.

And so, yeah. And they've been great partners with us and,

yeah they have distribution they get you different languages like uh every two or three months i get one of my books and some random like the contractors they get someone to do it in in portuguese or chinese or vietnamese whatever and then like they have to send me a box of the books i just get random boxes my books and like different languages it's like the coolest thing in the world like oh this is so cool i have no idea like yeah i'm not gonna deal with my other books you know what i mean yeah no you guys whatever you want to do with them who cares yeah just more distribution yeah it's really fun yeah

Well, bro, this has been great, man. I mean, for your first interview in three years, man, we talked on a lot. A lot of topics. Hopefully you got something. Yeah, dude. There's a lot of clips for sure. There's a lot of things. But no, dude, I appreciate you coming out here, man. And I'm just excited to...

you know, obviously see the book when it's done. I'm excited, uh, you know, just see everything that, you know, it's unfolding and I'm excited to, uh, you know, continue to just build my own business based off a lot of, you know, the things that you've already pioneered. And so I'm thankful for that. And, uh, just want to encourage you. Don't worry about the haters, you know, just freaking, uh,

Keep doing what you're doing, man. It's impacting and helping a lot of lives, dude. I appreciate it, man. It's been really fun watching you over the last couple of years. Anyway, I'm always watching everybody and some people...

some people pop for a little bit and then they they don't become relevant it's just been fun to watch you as you've grown consistently over time yeah um anyway proud of you and just fun watching all the stuff you're doing how people you're serving so yeah awesome appreciate it bro guys if you're not already go get on click funnels we'll link to it down below go catch uh russell's other books we'll link to them on uh you know all the other sites amazons and what's what's the website where they can get lynchpin because i already that's a great book yeah uh

I think it's the lynchpin book.com. The lynchpin book.com. We'll link to it. That's a really good book. I, I enjoyed it. So, um, we'll link to all that and guys make sure you subscribe and we'll see you on the next one. Peace.