The Russell Brunson Show

What to know why I’m freaking out? Listen to this episode to find out. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I'm on my Onewheel, driving to the office. Hopefully, the wind's not too loud. I'll try to talk loud, but forgive me if there's any sound noise. But it takes longer to drive on the Onewheel, so maybe we'll get a longer episode today. I got some cool things I'm excited by, things I want to share with you guys. Yep, there's a car driving by. If you have been long-time listeners, you know that when I first launched this podcast, it was called The Marketing in Your Car podcast. We call today The Marketing on Your Onewheel. With that says, let's keep things going. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Well, hopefully, you can hear me. The wind hits every once in a while. I'm doing my best. Anyway, so today's episode, what I want to talk about is something fun that I'm geeking out on right now. There's a principle. There's a concept that we've taught over the last, man, 10 ... longer than that, long, long time called the bridge funnel. And a bridge funnel is, basically, when you're trying to bridge the gap between what somebody wants and what somebody needs. Right? For example, everybody in my world needs click funnels. Right? Sometimes it's hard to sell click funnels because it's like, "Well, why do I need software? What's a funnel? I don't even know." Right? So I had to find what's something they want that I can give them right away? And then, by doing that, I can then bridge them over to what they actually need. Whoa. Some guy just drove by in an original Hummer. Sorry. That was really cool. All right. So that's what a bridge is. Right? I'm trying to draw a bridge between these two different things. And I used to share the example to explain this back in the day, back when we were doing more business opportunities stuff. I talked about if you would go to ... let's say you went to the food court at the mall. Right? And at the food court, there's all these people are eating. This is pre-COVID, so there's tons of people eating and tons of noise. And if I sit up on a chair in the food court and I yelled and said, "Hey, everybody! Look over here." And they look at me and I'm like, "Hey, who here wants a funnel to grow your business?" Of everybody in the food court, what percentage of people would raise their hand? And the reality is probably very, very few. Right? Probably nobody. But if I was to stand up on the thing and say, "Hey, who here wants to learn how to make money on the internet." Right? Like two-thirds of the room would raise their hand. And then I can say, "Okay, cool. Come over here." And then I could pull people aside and say, "Okay, the way that we make money on the internet is through this thing called a funnel." And I'm like, "Who here wants a funnel?" And now I can obviously sell them the thing that they actually need. And so that's the concept of a bridge, is you're taking this thing that they need that they may not understand yet, and you're bridging them through something that they do understand. Right? And so, for a long time, we used to do bridge funnels a lot. But over the last few years, as we've grown click funnels, we've done a good job of building a brand and making the popular rising ... I hate to say that word ... making popular the concept of funnels. And so it's not like I have to go and convince people to funnel because most people in my retargeting circles that we target on the internet, at this point, know what it is. And there's a million other people, all teaching talking about funnels. And so it's been really good for us. Right? The more noise, the more people talking about funnels, the better we do. But we're always trying to go beyond the boundaries and try to figure out the next step and the next level. Right? How do we acquire it? How do we get more people? And so recently, we started combing back through all of our data and click funnels. We've got like 100 different front-end offers. And so we've got a lot of data, and it's hard to go through it all. But we now have a business intelligent team who literally go through and just looks at all our data and finds numbers and patterns and things of that forest. And one of the interesting things that we found recently that was fascinating is that of all the front end offers we have, and this is like book funnels, opt-in funnels, webinar funnels, all the things, the funnels where the person is most likely to join click funnels and become a click funnels customer in the first 30 days is actually through one of our ebook funnels, which is crazy, so like the marketing secrets black book and the funnel cookbook. If they opt into those things, download the PDF that we give them, they're most likely to become a click funnels member in the next 30 days, which is crazy, especially since those are two funnels I built four or five years ago. And we haven't touched them or looked at them or done anything with him since. They're literally just like ... I forgot about them. I didn't realize we were driving any traffic to them. And so I was like, "Well, crap. We should look at these again." So we looked at them again, and how do we optimize these now? How do we make something truly amazing? And so I started looking at ... it was interesting because people would opt in for the black box, and we never talked about click funnels. So on the thank-you page, we don't talk about click funnels. It's like ... sorry, more cars coming. Maybe I shouldn't do marketing in the Onewheel. Anyway, so the more I started looking at these funnels, I'm like, "It's insane that they somehow bridge that gap, and they find the people." Because I'm not bridging that gap for them. Right? They're these random funnels we built years ago and forgot about, and they're out there. And so I said, "Okay, we should bring these things back, but let's strategically figure out how do we get somebody now who's going to go through this funnel?" And then, if they download the book, how do we bridge them now over into click funnels? Right? And so that was the next thing we started looking at. So we're going back through all of our webinar funnels, especially since the last couple of months when you've had all the issues with Apple and Facebook fighting, and cookies, and just all the things. Right? All right. Cost has gone up. So we're looking, and right now, it's costing us anywhere from 20 to 25 bucks for a webinar register, which is crazy. But our opt-ins are still lower, like three to five bucks to register. And so anyway, yesterday, I built about for these yesterday with Nick on my team. I had so much fun doing it. But the funnels, these bridge funnels, are very, very simple. Basically, come to the page, and it's like, "Hey, get this free book. Opt-in right here. It's the opt-in for the free book." And then the thank-you page is sweet. There's a video of me saying, "Sweet." I just emailed you the first gift. It's coming to you. I promise you guys the value of this episode is going to be worth all the noise. Anyway, so I said, "The first gift is coming to you. It's in your inbox. Go check it out there." So notice, I didn't give them the downlink on the thank-you page because on the thank-you page, I needed them to do something more important, which was register for the webinar. And the thank-you page is like, "The first gift is in your inbox. The second gift is actually more important. It's a web class I'm putting on called Funnel Hacking Secrets, where we're going to show you guys how to actually use the stuff we're talking about in the book, the ebook that you're getting. And it's going to be awesome." Right? "So go register down below." And the whole page is structured in a way to get them to register for the web class that's coming up. By the way, we tested web class, webinar, masterclass, and like a dozen different variations, and web class crushed all other versions of that phrase. So start calling webinars web classes, and it will help conversion. So there's another little marketing secret for you. So anyway, that's what we've been building, these little bridge funnels. And again, they have not gone live yet, so I don't know the exact stats. But if they stay true and we average five bucks a lead to give away an ebook, right, which, it is what it is. But if we get one out of five people hit the thank-you page and 20% conversion and the thank-you page to register for the webinar, we're actually getting the webinar leads for the same cost as we were paying before. Right? Because 20%, five people, that's 20 bucks. I'm probably doing the math wrong, but $20.00, $25 per webinar registrant. But the thing that's different is that when we pay 25 bucks a webinar registrant, we're getting one lead. Right? Here we're getting five leads. We're giving them value upfront. They're getting an ebook. They're getting a gift. They're opening their email. They're downloading the thing, so It's increasing our open rates, our click-through rates, which will get more email delivered for all of our lists across the board. Right? They're getting value in advance. They get this really cool ebook. They're like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Look at this cool thing that Russell just gave me." Then they register for the webinar. My thought, I'm not sure yet, but positioning the webinar also as a bonus gift as opposed to like, "Hey, register for a webinar." I think we'll get more people to show up and actually consume it. We'll find out. And now it's bridging them over into the funnel world. So anyway, we built four of these yesterday. The ads will be starting the next day or so. I'll return the report back and let you guys know how they're doing. I have two more that I came up with last night, and I'm like, literally, if this works, any piece of content ever created from the beginning of time until now, I could use, and I could put into these little bridge model things. Right? Like, "Opt-in to get my presentation from Funnel Hacking Live." They opt-in. Cool. I just emailed it to you. That's gift number one. Gift number two, though, gift number two is this web class you need to go register for right now. And then they register down below, and boom, now they're in the webinar funnel. Right? And so anyway, I'm just freaking out excited. And it was so simple, but it's something I've forgotten about. And it's coming back to these ebook bridge funnels, or these content bridge funnels, or these one-pager bridge funnels. Let me do a test today. We're going to build one out for a one-pager. We'll say, "Hey, opt-in here to get the one-pager on my top webinar hacks. They opt-in, boom, "Hey, the one-pagers in your email. Go check it out." And then the second gift is the web class. Right? And just keep this process happening over and over and over and over and over again. So anyway, I'm hoping that it does as good as I think it will. I think it will. I'm going to have six of these rolling out in the next seven days, so if you follow my ads and hopefully you do, you'll start seeing them. And I recommend going through the process, funnel hacking, and watching slowly. They're simple two-page funnels that lead to our webinar. And then, the email sequence pushes people to click funnels as well as the webinar. So anyway, highly recommend watching it. I'll report back on how it does, but I think it's going to open up a whole new world of customers and buyers and just exciting things for us. So I'm excited for it. I appreciate you guys listening. Hope you all are doing amazing, and we'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye, everybody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen in as Russell answers marketing questions during a recent live episode on Clubhouse. To be on the next Marketing Secrets Live episode, register at ClubHouseWithRussell.com Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. It's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I'm going to be letting you guys listen into a live Q&A I did on a recent Marketing Secrets Live Show. If you're not yet part of the Marketing Secrets Live Show, it's a live version of this podcast where I hang out and answer questions live, and it's so much fun. We usually do them about once a week. And if you want to be a part of the next one, go to clubhousewithrussell.com, go and register, and that way you'll be notified the next time I go live. With that said, I'm going to jump into Q&A and hopefully one of your questions is answered. If not, make sure you come on the next live show. So what we're going to do now, we're going to spend 15 minutes or so opening up for Q&As for any of you guys, have any questions. So Yhennifer, do you want to walk people and me through the process of how we're going to be doing the next step of the podcast? Yhennifer: Yes, awesome. All right, guys, I'm going to bring up five people. So just make sure that if you want to speak, if you have a question, just hit the little raising the hand button in the bottom and we'll bring you guys up. As you come on here, make sure that you mute your microphone. So that way there's no background noise in the back. And let's see, we're going to bring some people on here. All right, we've got a few people here that want to join. There we go. All right, make sure you guys mute yourselves. First, we're going to have Carolina. Carolina, welcome to the club, to the room today. We're so excited to have you here. I know you are a mentor in the Spanish world and also a 2 Comma Club award winner. So what questions do you have for Russell? How do you want to contribute to this conversation? Carolina: Hey Russell and Yhennifer, thank you so much for this room. It's been amazing. I was taking notes from everything everyone said, so thank you so much. Russell: So good to hear from you. Carolina: Yeah, it's always good to hear from you Russell. I hope I can make it to FunnelHacking in September. I hope they let me travel. Russell: You just got to sneak out. There's always a way. Carolina: I know. Our country is still not allowing us to travel for leisure, just emergencies, but I will say it's an emergency. Russell: This is an emergency. FunnelHacking Live is a huge emergency. Carolina: I agree. I wanted to ask you just about, maybe not related necessarily to the marketing secrets mentioned today, but just there's a huge community in Latin America, Spain who love ClickFunnels, who love you. And they keep asking me when is ClickFunnels going to be available in Spanish, but also your books. I guess that's my biggest question. Do you guys have any plans for expansion to the Spanish speaking markets? I'd love to hear that from you Russell. Thank you so much. Russell: Yeah, that's a great question. The answer is yes, emphatically yes. Next year will be our year of internationalization. That's how you say that, right? We had to do a lot of coding on the ClickFunnels platform to make it so that we can start translating quickly into languages. And that part of the process is actually finished. So we do have translators. In fact, Spanish is the first language that's been translated. The way it works, this is actually kind of cool for the non-techie guys like me when I learned how it works, is they had to go through the whole software and basically any place that there's a sentence or a phrase or something, they had to go and write code around it and say like, this is the phrase, and this is the thing, right? And so obviously there's a lot of places that happens. And then what happens now, it makes this database where it shows all the sentences, the phrases, the words, the paragraphs, all the stuff. And the translators go in and just retranslate every single thing. And then now we can click a button and it just changes the language across the whole platform and makes sure that the translations are correct. So we do have a team right now doing the Spanish one and making sure that, obviously, not just a direct translation, but one that makes sense. So that's kind of been happening. My guess is shortly after FunnelHacking Live is when we'll be rolling out that inside the ClickFunnels platform, which is exciting. And then we're trying to plug in other languages as well. So that's that. On the books. Yes, I'm learning about publishers and contracts and things like that because one of my friends, Sharon Lechter, if you guys know her. She was one of the co-authors of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. She also wrote, or did the first version of Outwitting The Devil, which is one of my favorite books of all time. And it was interesting because Outwitting The Devil's already in 40 languages. I'm like, how did you do that? And she's like, when I signed the contract, I kept the international rights and I was able to go and quickly do it across the board. Unfortunately I didn't do that with mine because I didn't know that was a thing. So I've been working with our publishers to see how we can speed up the timeline. I know there's translations happening in four or five languages right now, but the process is slower than I thought or imagined. As you know, you messaged me the day, the original version of Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets are in four or five languages, but it's the older version. And so we're doing all the new updated ones right now. In fact, I got one the other day. I can't remember if it was Vietnamese or something. It was really cool. So yes, they're in process. I wish it was going faster. I'm trying to work with the publishers to figure out a way to move faster on all of it because I agree that's our next big thing for next year is to be able to rebuild all of our funnels in Spanish with the Spanish versions and different languages. And then also have the platform being able to handle that from the languaging inside, but also local merchant accounts that work in different countries because they don't all work in every single country, and then having support teams in each country as well. So we're working on it. It's a bigger process than we had planned initially. But next year is the year that we're trying to get as much of that done as possible. There's the goal. Carolina: Awesome. Thank you Russell. And hopefully, maybe even some of your courses like adding subtitles and stuff like that, that would be really neat as well. Maybe 2023, I don't know. Russell: Let's do it. There was actually, it's funny, there was a company that came out that was doing that, where they would take a YouTube channel or a video contract courses and you give it to them and they'd retranslate the whole thing. And we were about to hire them and they went out of business right when we were about to hire him. So if you want to start that company, let me know and we can start dropping everything. Literally it was really cool, you give me your YouTube channel. They go through scrape it all, rewrite it all, and launch the Spanish version or the French version or the German version. Anyway, yeah, if someone wants to start that company, I will give you money to do that for me. Yhennifer: You heard it first here. Carolina, such a great idea. Spanish market, here we come. Our Spanish people need some of ClickFunnels Russell. Carolina: I'll talk to some people. I'll talk to some people and reach out to you. Russell: All right, awesome. Yhennifer: Awesome. Thank you, Carolina for being here. Next up is Christine. She's a social media specialist, content creator. She manages social media platforms. Christine, the mic is all yours. Christine: Hi, I'm Christine and I'm in Dallas, Texas. And unfortunately Russell, I had never heard of you until I met Nikki Nicole. And she is teaching in a room here, excuse me, on a book that you have, Dotcom Secrets. Russell: Okay, very cool. Christine: Yes, exactly. So now I'm in a room with you. Russell: Welcome to the room. Glad to be hanging out. Christine: Thank you. And so I have ordered the book. Russell: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Christine: All right. That she's training out of, and I'm waiting for the forms and everything to come. What would you say to me is one of the most important item in the book that you would like to make sure that she lets us know in training from your book? Russell: As she's training? Oh man. Well, the Dotcom Secrets book. That's the first book I ever wrote. It's by far the one that's my favorite. Everyone's got their favorite one, but that's my favorite one. I think the biggest thing is really understanding the customer journey. That's where I think funnels and all the things we do today are based on that. Most businesses I go into, they're very much like they have a product, they sell the customer the product, and that's the business. I would say the majority of business, that's the way they look at things. Whereas the thing that I've geeked out on for the last two decades of my life is the customer journey. Someone comes in, what's the first thing, and what's the second thing, where do we take them? And how do we move them? And where do we send them to? And how do we serve them at the highest level? And I think a lot of times business owners are scared. Like, well, if I, if I give them an upsell, if I sell them something else, or if I move them from step one to step two they're going to be offended or whatever. It's like, if you realize that the products and services and things you're creating, that's how you serve your audience, right? When you really believe that, then it's like, okay, how can I serve this person? They come into my world the very first time, right? Right now you've bought the book. You're going to get the book in the mail and now you're going to be into my funnel. And so you'll hear me talk about different things. I'm probably going to invite you to our 2 Comma Club live event that's happening next week right, because that'd be the next thing. And then after you experience that, then I'll invite you to come to FunnelHacking Live, our big event. Then from there we'll invite you to join our coaching program. Not because I'm a salesman trying to sell a bunch of stuff, but because I honestly believe, and I've seen as we've taken people on this journey, this is the process and the path that gets people success the fastest. And so I think as you're going through the book, realizing that this is about serving at a higher level. That's the whole key. That's what funnels are about. That's what ascension, that's what value ladders, that's what all these things are about is figuring out how to serve your people at the highest level. And I always tell entrepreneurs, I believe that if you felt that entrepreneurial call and you're starting a business or you're trying to, or whatever, wherever you are in the process, that call is literally a calling from God. Where he's saying, look, there's a group of people you've been called to serve. I've given you unique talents and abilities and things that you can do. And your job is to go figure out how can I take these talents and I can serve these people. And so the Dotcom Secrets book is going to help you with, okay, now that I've found these people, how do I find them? How do I move them? How do I actually serve them at the highest level possible? So that's what I would say is looking through business with that lens, as opposed to, what most businesses are, which is write out your business plan and things like that. It's like, no, how do I serve my customers at a level that nobody else has done yet? And then I can change their lives. And that's how you actually grow a business. So I hope that helps. Christine: Thank you so much. And so what I got from it to just make sure that you stick with the process to ensure that you're going to make it to the end, is what I'm hearing. Russell: Definitely. Christine: Well, you can thank Nikki Nicole for bringing your book to her room. And just know that I appreciate you both because I'm hanging in there. Thank you. Russell: That's awesome. Thanks so much. Yhennifer: Thank you Christine for being here. Russell, you got people reading your books in other rooms here in Clubhouse. Russell: I love it. Yhennifer: That is amazing. Russell: Tell Nikki thank you. That's amazing. Yhennifer: Yes, awesome. Stephanie, you're up. She's a homeschool mama turned seven figure digital marketing agency owner. Also a coach. Welcome, Stephanie. What is your question for Russell or contribution to the conversation? Stephanie: What's up guys? Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be here. Dude, okay, so I've been in the ClickFunnels world and the Russell Brunson world for a long time now. And I have watched you journey through your entrepreneurial journey, and it's just been absolutely incredible. And so, as you were just talking about serving your people at the highest level possible and recognizing the calling from God in your life to reach a certain people group, I've seen in your journey that as you do that and you take hold of that more and more that you have also too worked really hard in your family in order to serve in your family at the highest level possible as well. And I've seen, as you're very transparent and you're vulnerable about it's a struggle as a parent who wants to be intentional with running a business where you want to kill it, you want to serve well, but you also too, don't want to leave your kids behind in the dust, right? And so why would we build a business to lose, I don't know, for me personally, they're the reason I started the business. And so I guess my question for you is, do you have any, you've got marketing secrets, but as you've built this business, oh, by the way, just plug for Russell's podcast. If you have not listened to the most recent uploads of the Roundtable of World Changers. Oh my gosh, that was so incredible. Russell: That was a fun one. Stephanie: Oh, it so incredible. And I keep going back and kind of relistening because the adventure that you took with your kids to go with Matt Maddix, and just kind of go out and just hear from kids that are younger and aspiring to these big dreams and everything, it was just incredible. So you guys go listen to those. But Russell, do you have anything, it doesn't have to be like super anything totally profound, but just for you, what are some of the secrets you've found between managing serving well in your business and serving your family well and loving them well? Russell: Oh, such a good question. And it's interesting. It's probably not for everybody, but for me business is way easier for me than being a dad. Being a dad is hard and it's emotional. And so it's tough because by default I'm like, I could deal with these things where I can like, oh, business leads, I'll slide over here and do business. And I think that a lot of us have those problems. We have our things that we're really, really good at and then we have things we struggle with, and we always slip to the thing that's going to be the easiest. But man, like every morning I wake up and I love driving my kids to school. I love being there in the morning when they're getting breakfast, and helping them, and just being around them. And try to pay attention to them. And then I go to work. And at the end of the day, I got to come back because I know they're going to be there. And so I try when my kids are at home, I want to be home as much as possible too. But it's definitely, it's this mental war that all of us have. In fact, I think you know this, I'm in the middle of writing my fourth book right now. And one of the fascinating things, and I found this stat somewhere, and when I found it I was like, oh my gosh, I realized so many reasons why I struggle with things now. But basically the stat was like, the human brain, I think, weighs three pounds. But 25% of our calories are burned by our brain. In fact, Joe McCall, I think he's down in the group down below, he sent me an article after I mentioned that at the FHAT event. He said that it was an article, I'll mess with the stats, but it showed like chess players who play these chess tournaments, when they're sitting there just moving pieces around, but their brain's working so hard. They'll lose like 20 pounds in a week playing chess at a, at a chess tournament. That's how much our brain is doing. So our brain is burning all these calories and it's tired. So our brain's like I've got two options, I can go work really hard and do this thing or I can find the easiest path. So our brain's always looking for the easiest path. So for me, it's like, okay, my teenage son is driving me nuts. He's insane. And it's like, I got to go deal with this or I can just go in the office and write a webinar, right? And so for me my brain's like, oh, webinars are way easier. You've done it a million times. It's easier for it to slack off and go there as opposed to confront the situation. Now, as I'm more and more aware of this, I'm looking at this debate with my brain and it's like, no, this is more important because my son, even though he's driving me insane, there's a window where I can like do something here. And if I slip back and go to the easier route, I'm going to miss that window and it's going to be gone. And so just being more aware of that, I think where we realize that our brain wants to do whatever's easiest. And for me, as much as I love my wife and five kids, it's not the easiest path for me. The easiest path is by far business. For whatever reason, I got good at it. So it's the easiest path. And so it's looking at that and saying, don't always default to the easiest thing, default to the most important thing. And I have a quote that I share all the time is from David O. McKay, says, "That no success can compensate for failure in the home." And I think about that a lot where it's just like, oh, I can go and do this thing that will be so easy. And I'll make more success and all my fans and followers will think I'm awesome. Or it's like, I can have this hard conversation with my kids and I can help them. Or I can go take them to the homeless shelter. Or I can leave everyday at three o'clock and go to wrestling practice with them because I need to be there for them. And that's more important than me stroking my own ego, right, and getting the, you know. I don't know, it's not a perfect science and I mess up a lot. I'm sure my kids will tell you stories someday about how, as parents are, but I try the best I can. I think the big things is just understanding that the easiest thing's not always the best thing, and understanding that again, no success can compensate for failure in the home. So don't forget the family. Especially for, like Stephanie you mentioned, most of us got in this business because it's like, I want to spend more time with my kids. I want to help. And that's how we got started. And then we got the adrenaline rush and the high from success. And you want to keep defaulting to that because it feels good. And I've seen so many families and marriages destroyed in the wake of success, which is like the worst thing, right? What's the point of it at all at that point> so it's remembering those things so that you don't, in fact, what's the quote? There's some quote that's like, what profit the man if he gains the whole world, if he loses his own soul? I hear that. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't want to lose that. Stephanie: Ah, that's so powerful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And thank you for just journeying out loud Russell. Just from all of us to you, thank you. Russell: No worries. Thank you. And for anyone who's got kids, it is hard. So don't think, someone the other day told me, it's got to be so nice to have the perfect family and perfect life. I started laughing. Like, are you kidding me? I was telling him, like two months ago I was about to, I didn't tell him, I won't repeat the details on recording, but it's tough, but it's amazing. Yhennifer: That was so good. So Russell, you see everybody like flashing their mics. That's equivalent to like clapping. So everybody's like clapping. Russell: Thanks for clapping guys, that's exciting. Yhennifer: Yeah, that's a Clubhouse thing. Russell: I'm learning the ways. Yhennifer: If you see me and Stephanie, were like clapping away and kind of cheering you on on the things that you're saying here. Family is so important and that was so good. And we do appreciate you sharing your journey, like Stephanie mentioned. Awesome. Thank you Stephanie for being here. Up next, Yasim. She's an Instagram expert. What question do you have for Russell? Take it away. Yasim: Thank you, Yhennifer and Russell. What an honor to be speaking to you. I am a huge, huge fan. And just actually before I ask you the question, how you mentioned about family, to me, you are not just a marketing expert, but for me you are one of the biggest ambassadors of women because I have never heard you speak about marketing before you start your sentence with this happened thanks to my beautiful wife. Every single time, you always honor Colette. Every single time, whether I listen to you at that ClickFunnels Live, or it's a podcast or a blog post. And I hit the fortune to meet Colette because I was so curious after hearing about her, and she's a beautiful being. And we know that you mean it with all of your heart. I am single, and I can tell you, I think for all of us single women in the world, you are giving us so much hope and you are modeling such a beautiful way of behavior. So wanted to thank you for that, first of all. Russell: Thank you, I appreciate that. Yasim: That comes from all of my heart. Russell, did you think of actually crowdsourcing this international thing? Because I'm one of your fans, and I know you have fans all over the world. I speak five languages. I would be very happy to help you just to help you. Russell: Oh, very cool. I hadn't thought through that, but maybe as we get closer. We're still trying to figure out all the details of it. So that's great to know. And maybe you can do all the work for all the languages if you've got five. I barely speak English right. Yasim: Thank you. Yeah. I've been in touch with John Parker because I had met him also in ClickFunnels Live. So I can just mention it to him. But yeah, just I thought in your community I'm sure you have people from all the languages. So now my question is, and I'm embarrassed to ask this question because I have been in your world and doing your trainings for a while, but I am only now since few weeks starting the webinar journey myself. And I know you were telling us to start it a lot earlier and I'm embarrassed. I did not. But anyway, I'm watching the trainings and reading the book again. And the one part I'm really unclear about is how do you make the distinction between your origin story and the vehicle? In case it's more clear, I teach about Instagram. So I tell in my origin story that I tried to learn it from the free videos and then I watched online recordings. But social media algorithms change so quickly that you cannot learn this by watching a prerecorded video. You literally need to have live coaching, and that's what I do. But for me, that's the origin story and the vehicle. If you can please help me make the distinction, I would very much appreciate it, thank you. Russell: Yeah, definitely. In fact, at the FHAT event we did this week, I spent probably 15 minutes on a slide trying to explain that because I've had that question a lot. And I explained it and people were like, I finally understand after all these years. So that was cool. So I wish I had the slide in front of me so I can remember exactly how I said it. The answer is you do the webinar and the first part is the origin story about how you discovered the framework, right? I went through this process, I discovered the framework, and this is the framework, right? So for me, it's called FunnelHacking. And then secret number one is now I'm going to show you guys how I developed it. So the origin story is the discovery of the framework. And secret number one is the story about how you developed it, right? So if you look at mine, it's like, a discovery of the framework was me funnel hacking, right? So I went and I bought… it’s me showing the Neuracel funnel, right, so I bought this, and I funnel hacked, and I saw the thing, and I launched my own funnel, and oh my gosh, it made a bunch of money. So that's showing this is how I discovered the framework of funnel hacking. Now here's me how, oh, what's the word again? Discovery of the framework's the first one, and then the development of it, right? So then I come back. Here's how I develop it. The first thing, Tony Robbins told me this. And then I had this over here, and I had this over here, and then I actually teach the strategies. So then step one, this is step two, step three, step four, and you teach the actual strategy. So that's the big differences. It's a little nuanced, but it's origin story's here. Here's the origin story of the framework and how I discovered it. And then this is the origin story of how I developed it. And then you actually teach the strategy in that secret number one. Does that make sense? Yasim: So are you telling a different story for both of those? Because I understand the distinction between the strategies, but I have difficulties creating a different story for the two of them. Russell: Yeah. They are different stories for me. So again, the one is how you discovered it. How I bumped in like, oh, I had the epiphany of, oh, this is the framework and this is kind of the result of it. So I don't go deep into it there. And the second one's now like, okay, now as I was discovering it, let me walk you through how I actually developed this. The first thing I do when I'm developing is I did this, I studied this. It's like the second tier. It's like going deeper in on the story, right? The first one's I discovered, and then here's how I actually developed it. Yasim: Oh, got it. So like you say, this is how I discovered it, and now we are moving on to the secret, secret number one. And that's how you make the liaison, so to speak. Is that correct? Russell: Yep. Because they're tied together. So the first thing, you show your story, how you discovered it. And then like, oh cool, this is awesome. And I was like, okay, now we're going to get to teaching. Step number one, secret number one. And then now I'm going to show you, tell the story of how I developed it. Yep. Yasim: Thank you so much, Russell. This is Yasim, the lady in orange, red. I'm definitely reaching out to you to offer my help with everything because you are awesome. Your teachings are awesome. And the love you always show to your wife and your kids, you are not only a leader in marketing, but you are literally a leader for love, women. I love you with all of my heart, Russell. Russell: Thank you so much, I appreciate that. Yhennifer: Awesome. A shout out to Colette, right? Shout out to Colette. Thank you so much, Yasim. And our last guest here, Ariel. Ariel is a marketing expert in the Spanish speaking world as well. Also an award winner here in the ClickFunnels community. So Ariel, what is your question or what do you want to share here with Russell? Ariel: I do have a question for Russell. Hey Russell, how you doing? Russell: What's up man? Good to hear from you. How you been? Ariel: Good to hear, good. Very good. Very good. I listened to Carolina before, and I say to all the community in Spanish, we are working very hard to bring the first 150,000 Argentinian users to ClickFunnels this year. Really, really, really good to see you here in Clubhouse and hear you, and I'll see you soon. Russell: Yeah. Ariel's been a huge help on our side getting the international stuff. Will you do me a favor? Ariel: Of course. Russell: Will you tell people the story about how you found out about our community? Because I think it's really interesting. Ariel: In Spanish. Russell: The Dotcom Secrets book, how you found that. Ariel: I meet Russell in a plane. A customer called me from United States, and I need to take a plane to Miami. And they found the book. I lose my ticket and I can't fly on business like almost every flight. And I was a tourist. And I found Dotcom Secrets in the pocket of my front seat. Russell: Somebody left the book in the pocket and he found it in the pocket of the seat as he was flying. Ariel: Yeah. That means two things. The planes never are very clean. No, was a great discovery. And I fall in love with you, ClickFunnels, the community, the books, and start that relationship with you and all the ClickFunnels team til now. So was great. Was great discovered the book in 2000, what, 17? Russell: Yeah, probably about then. Ariel: Yeah. Russell: Anyway, I hope that was a crazy story. And then since then he's won 2 Comma Club, 2 Comma Club X, 2 Comma Club C awards and about a million other things. So we are grateful for you and having you in our community, especially your help with all the internationalization stuff we're doing together. Ariel: Thank you. And we will broke again another award. So we have two, maybe 2 Comma Club X this year. And again, the 2 Comma Club C. Will be amazing to give a hug in the stage again. Russell: Excited to see you again soon. Ariel: Thank you, Russell. Yhennifer: That's awesome. Ariel: Thank you Yhennifer, thank you. Yhennifer: Yeah, you're welcome. Congratulations. And we're excited to see you at FunnelHacking Live. I want to reset the room one more time before we close out this episode. Want to remind you guys that we are recording. Also, please click the green little house at the top, the Marketing Secrets Live house so that you can get, excuse me, club so that you didn't get a notification when Russell goes live again. If you loved this information, go onto your social channels and let us know how much fun you had here as well in this live. And Russell back to you. Russell: Awesome. Well thank you Yhennifer for helping. Thank you everyone for hanging out today. That was fun. As long as you keeps showing up and keep having a good time, we'll keep doing these. If you want to hear the recording, this stuff later, it will be on the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Just make sure you go to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe. And other than that, thanks you guys for hanging out. I had a good time. Thank you Yhennifer. Thank you for everyone on our team who helped put this together today. And with that said, we'll see you guys, hopefully all at FunnelHacking live. We're 105 days away from it starting. If you don't have your tickets yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com. The party is happening. We're going to be in person, we're having a good time, and we want to make sure you guys are all there if you're able to be there. And other than that, thanks everybody. And we'll see you guys on the next Marketing Secrets Live Show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Marketing Secrets Live, Russell explains the big “ah-ha” he had during a recent FHAT (Funnel Hack-A-Thon) event. To be on the next Marketing Secrets Live episode, register at ClubHouseWithRussell.com Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Again, this is episode number two from a recent Marketing Secrets live show. I've been doing more of these podcasts live and having so much fun with it. Hopefully you enjoyed the last one where you had a chance to hear some really cool marketing secrets from some of my friends. This episode, I'm actually going to go deeper into something that I've been geeking out on. And I've been thinking about, that I think you are really, really going to enjoy. What I'm going to cover in this episode is actually one of the big ahas I got from a recent event we ran. It was our first live event we've had in, man, in a year and a half, two years, crazy. And it was called the FAHD event, the Funnel Hackathon event. I share one of the big epiphanies that a lot of people had at the FAHD event. If you want to get on our next Marketing Secrets Live show and get your questions answered live and hang out with us, make sure to go to clubhousewithrussell.com, go register for the clubhouse and you'll be notified the next time I go live. All right. Well, I'm excited. Typically, when I record the Marketing Secrets podcast it's me on my phone clicking record and talking. That's what's going to happen for the next 15 minutes or so, it's just sharing you guys the biggest thing that's on my mind right now. And so this week we actually did our very first live event since COVID, which was amazing. Here in our office we have an event room that holds about 60 people and so we did an event. The event is called the FHAT event, and it's not F-A-T, like overweight people who eat donuts and stuff for two days, it was the Funnel Hackathon. So Funnel Hackathon F-H-A-T. So they all nicknamed it the FHAT event. And this is an event we used to do. Four years ago was actually the very first FHAT event we ever did. And it was helping people to figure out their messaging, their story. And then we actually built out a webinar presentation with everybody in the audience, and we did it four years ago. And if you see inside of ClickFunnels community, some of the people who have had the biggest, most successful webinars, people that a lot of seven, a few eight, and a couple of nine figure earners who were in that room at the time, who crafted the webinar that went on to build out their entire businesses and their followings based on that. And so we did it once and then we ran versions of the FHAT event three or four times afterwards. And then, you know, when things work really good, like a lot of us business owners and marketers do, we stopped doing it. So we stopped doing it. I think I was tired of doing the live events. We kind of just paused it and didn't do it for a couple years. And recently I got excited and I'd been working on webinars and frameworks and just things like that. And I was like, I want to do the FHAT event again. And so we put it together. We invited some of our inner circle and some of our Two Comma Club X coaching students to come to it. And we had about 60 people in the office here in Boise the last two days, and then four or 500 people watching from home and it was amazing. It was two days and it was cool because we had a chance, it wasn't just like strategically teaching, like, oh, here's the strategic concepts, but it was very tactical, like, okay, here's slide number one, let me explain the strategy. On slide number one, this is what we do, why we do it, how we do it. And then everyone would jump in and they'd actually build out slide number one. Then we do slide number two, three, and we build out the entire presentation. So it was cool because when it was finished, everybody had a presentation that's done. They can go and they can actually use it to sell their stuff. And so that was what's happening the last two days. So obviously this is what's been top of my mind. And the last day of the event we went around the room and had everyone share their biggest aha and their biggest takeaway. And what was interesting to me is that the thing that came up the most often, that was people's biggest aha was something that I was kind of confused. I didn't realize that it was going to be even that big of a deal, and it was interesting. So before I share what that is if you know how the Perfect Webinar Framework works that we teach, right? When somebody comes on a webinar, first, we have an introduction. From there we share the origin story about how we discovered our framework, and then we have secret one, two, and three. Secret number one, you teach the strategy behind the framework. Secret number two, you teach the strategy behind the internal false belief they're going to have about the framework. Secret number three, you teach the external, false belief that they may have about their ability to use the framework. And then you transition to the stack and the closes. And that's kind of the Perfect Webinar framework, right? If you don't know how it works, if you go to perfectwebinar.com, seven bucks, you can buy the framework and the training that shows you the process. Or read the Expert Secrets book. I go into excruciating detail in that book, walking through the process as well. And so that's kind of, real quick overview of the framework for those who don't know it. Those who have gone through my stuff, you understand how the framework works. And the biggest takeaway people kept saying was fascinating was after they would introduce the webinar, they transitioned to their origin story. And what people were doing is they were just telling their origin story. Like, here's how I became me. Right? And they're telling their origin story. And even people who had really successful webinars, that's what they were doing. And when I kind of rebroke it down, slide by slide, I showed them that it wasn't just the origin story of themself that they're sharing, yet that's what most people were doing. It's the origin story about how you discovered the framework that you're actually teaching on the webinar. So for example, if you watch the webinar that we used to launch ClickFunnels, the framework that I'm teaching is this framework of funnel hacking, of how we find successful funnels. We look at them and reverse engineer them and we build our own funnels. That's the framework that I'm teaching. And so the framework, the origin story I'm sharing is not the origin story about, you know, how I met my wife or the origin story about how I started the business, that's not the origin story I'm sharing. Yet that seemed like for most of the people who were there, they've been sharing their origin story just about their life. Like, I was born on a cold winter night in blah, blah, you know, whatever, like they're telling their story, as opposed to it's the specific story about your discovery of the framework. Like, how did you actually find that framework? That's the story that's being told. Because when you do that, that then gives people the desire to go deeper on the framework. And so when we were building out everyone's webinar, the very first step we did with everyone is, okay with this webinar, there's a result you are promising. What is the result that everyone's, if they go through this 90 minute presentation with you, what's the result that they should be able to get? And so every business was different. There's some people there in the weight loss market, so I'm going to show you how to get six pack abs, how to make a million bucks or how to speed read, or you know, whatever the person, the result they had. And so it became super clear. What's the result? And the second question was, what are all of the things that people are currently doing to try to get that result? Like if someone's registering for your webinar it's probably not the first time they've like, oh, I want to lose weight. I want to make money. In fact, Kaelin Poulin said that the average woman goes through eight diets a year. So almost every month they're starting a new diet, so when they come and they register for your weight loss webinar this is not the first time. They've tried eight other vehicles this year to try to get that one result. And so that's the key is, first off, what's the big result you're promising? What are the other vehicles people are trying to use right now currently to get that result? And this webinar is about what is the new opportunity? What's the new vehicle that you're trying to show them? And so that first origin story is literally telling your story about how you've tried these other vehicles too. I tried this, I tried this, none of these things worked. And that's when this thing happened. Either I had an epiphany or I had an inspiration from God, or I met somebody and they gave me this nugget, this piece, this thing. And that's how I discovered this framework. And this framework is a new opportunity. It's the vehicle, it's a different way to get that result than all the things you've tried in the past. And this is how I found it and why it worked. So that original story, that first 15 minutes of your presentation is you're telling that story of how you discovered this framework. And that's the thing that gets the desire for them to like, okay, now I want to dive into secret one, secret two, secret three, and moving through the stack and the close and the rest of the presentation. And so again, there are probably four or five other people in the room that, that was their biggest takeaway was I always thought the origin story was just telling my story, but it's not. It's the origin story of how you discovered this framework, this vehicle, whatever you want to call it, the new opportunity that you are using to get someone the result that they've been trying to get through all the other things they've been trying in the past. And when they discover that and they hear your story about how you discovered it, all of a sudden, it's like, oh my gosh, now I get it. Now I got to figure this out because you're right. I've tried all these other vehicles. I've tried all these other ways to lose weight, or to make money or to whatever. So you're sharing those. And then this is the discovery that I found, the new opportunity, the thing that's different. And now they're intrigued, and now they're going to go through the actual teaching part of your presentation. So that's what I wanted to share with you guys is just understanding that the origin story is the origin story of your discovery, of the framework that you're going to be sharing with them during the presentation. And so hopefully that helps. And as you guys are creating your presentations again, anything you're trying to sell. In fact, I learned this originally from Perry who was on a little bit earlier, he said that, I think it was back when he was running Digital Marketer. It was like, they looked at all their old sales videos and their ads and stuff like that and anytime in an ad, they tried to convince somebody of more than one thing, the conversions dropped in like half. If they tried to convince them of two things it dropped like 100%, two to 300%. And so when you're creating your presentation, the only thing you're trying to do is get somebody to believe that this framework you're sharing is the best way for them to get the result that they're trying to get. That's the entire goal of the presentation. And so we understand that it's like, okay, what is the result I'm trying to get somebody? What are the other things they've been trying to get? And then this is the key. This is the framework that's going to get them that result. So that's what I wanted to share with you guys today, as you are crafting your sales presentations, it works for webinars, it works with video sales letters, works for upsell offers, works for your ads, works for everything you're doing, it's like that framework, that concept is the same. Sharing the origin story about how you discovered the actual framework. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Marketing Secrets Live, Russell brings on some of his best marketing friends and asked each of them to share their biggest marketing secret! You don’t want to miss out on this valuable info! Register for the next LIVE episode at ClubHouseWithRussell.com Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. I've got something special for you guys for the next three episodes. Some of you guys know we've been recently doing the Marketing Secrets Live show because as much as I love recording podcasts, it's kind of fun when I do the live versions, which means there's different energy people come on and they ask the questions. It's awesome. So recently we did a Marketing Series Live show, and if you want to be on the next one we do, make sure go to Clubhouse with Russell.com, Clubhouse with Russell.com. When you go there, you can subscribe to the Marketing Secrets Live Clubhouse group. And then when I go live, you get notified. It is on the Clubhouse app, but it's fun because it pops up, we can talk, you have to just hangout, I bring a special guest, and then I talk for a while and then we do Q&A at the end. And so some of you guys have had chance to hang out with me and get your live questions answered and so much fun. So if you want to be part of that, all you've got to do is go to Clubhouse with Russell.com, it's free and we record these things live. So the last one we did, it was a little over an hour long. The first section I brought in some of my friends and guests and asked them what their biggest marketing secret was. And these guys dropped gold. Like it was so good. In fact, one of them completely changed how I'm doing one of my funnels because of just one idea. It was amazing. And then after that I talked about some cool things I'm interested in, and then we opened Q&A. So I'm going take that live episode, we're going to break it out over three episodes. And so this first one is going to be where you have a chance to listen to some of my friends coming and sharing their biggest marketing secret. So with that said, I'm going to jump right into the podcast. You have chance to listen in. And like I said, if you want to be on the next one, go to Clubhouse with Russell.com, go sign up. Right now they're kind of sporadic. We'll probably find a date and a time that's consistent, but the format I'm really liking. So it starts off with people coming on, sharing their number one marketing secret, then I share the thing I'm most excited by, and then I open it with Q&A. So make sure you have the live ones. With that said I'm excited to let you guys kind of jump right in here to the last Marketing Secrets Live Show we do. All right everybody, I want to officially welcome you to Marketing Secrets Live Show. I'm so excited to have you all here. This is really fun doing it on Clubhouse. I've got five special guests who have agreed to come on today and share their biggest marketing secret before we dive into the actual podcast episode. And so I'm really excited to have you guys all on for that. In fact, one of them is the dude who actually told me to join Clubhouse back when it first came out. And so, I'll let you see him here in a minute, but I wanted to lead first off with Anthony Morrison. So Anthony is someone who I have known now for... Before he knew me, I guarantee I used to watch him on infomercials. I remember the very first time I saw him, we were at some event and he was sitting at the table with all the cool kids and I was on the table next to him with none of the cool kids, and I was like, "Someday, I'm going to meet that guy, we're going to be friends. It's going to be awesome." And now, I think he's won like 2000 Two Comma Club awards from us. He's one of the people that has been a huge supporter since day one, super grateful for him. He's one of our... In fact, I think he is the top affiliate inside of ClickFunnels right now. And not only top affiliate, but again, if you can see even his profile picture here on Clubhouse, he's won pretty much every award we've gotten four or five or 20 times. So with that said, Anthony Morrison, how are you doing today, bud? Anthony Morrison: What's up, man? What's up? I'm doing good. How about you? Russell: I'm doing awesome. I'm having fun trying to do a podcast live. So this is kind of a cool process. But I know you're short on time, so what I would love is, obviously the podcast is called the Marketing Secret Show, and I would love for you to share whatever your biggest marketing secret is right now inside your businesses having success. And with that, I'll hand it over to you. Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I've got a few things obviously that I'm working on, and I think trying to pick which one is always my thing, right? Like, "Which one is going to give the most value to the people listening here?" And I think maybe for me, it's probably still kind of going back to... I know a lot of people, Russel, that are following you, that are part of the ClickFunnels community. I mean, most all of them are creating a product, they're creating their own informational product, they want to get it out to the world and they're using funnels to make that happen. And so I'll tell you my most successful funnel. How about that? Would that'd be good? Russell: Yeah, that'd be awesome. Anthony: Okay. My most successful funnel for the past three years, and it's interesting because some of the guys up here with me, I know Perry, Keyala, Kevin, these guys have also been kind of instrumental in giving me tips and strategies and stuff for the last three years that I've implemented in this funnel. But it's a funnel that sells a product for seven bucks. So it's kind of against the grain. I know that we often hear so much about how we always want to sell for more, sell at a higher price, make higher ticket sales. For me, what I did was I kind of went against the grain and I created a $7 product. It's called Partner With Anthony. I don't suggest any of you go and buy it, but you can go look at the sales page and check it out and see how we've set it up. But the cool thing about this is that I started thinking about how Russell set up these funnels, right? And it's with the intent of the minute that somebody hits this page, we want to essentially funnel them, right? Into becoming a buyer. Right? And so what I thought about, Russell, was why do we stop the funnel there? Why can't the education also be a funnel? Why can't we have an educational funnel so that once they buy through your sales funnel, your education also becomes a sales funnel. And so what we did with this product was we said, "Hey look, let's get as many people as we can into our ecosystem by selling something for seven bucks. And then once people get into the education, once they're in this educational platform, let's create the education in a way that kind of is broken down almost like you would do..." I mean look, you do this at Funnel Hacking Live, and I know everybody else that does events, you do this long three-day event. And at the of that event, there's a sale. But all the information in the previous two and a half days was designed to help create the desire for people to buy that thing that's being sold. And so that's what I do inside of the education. The education is designed to create content for purpose. So that's what we really do. And the purpose is to deliver the value and on the promise that we made. So if we teach people, like in the Partner With Anthony program, we're teaching them to become affiliate marketers. We're showing them how to be affiliates, right? So we want to make sure that is up. You're not paying attention to everything you're hearing, because you're also looking for, "What's he going to sell me? What's the price going to be?" All that stuff. But when we transfer ourselves out of that and we put ourselves into the education that we've purchased, we let our guard down a little bit. We quit being so closed off. We quit looking for red flags. We quit looking for, "What's going to cost me this, and what's going to cost me that?" And we really start to consume the information that we've bought. And when you do that, when you have a person in that environment, it's much easier to sell them, right? Because they don't realize they're being sold, you're selling through education. And so that's what we do with this little $7 funnel. We push as many people as we can into this educational sales funnel, if you will. And throughout that education we sell, and a lot of people ask me, "Man, how am I the number one ClickFunnels affiliate?" I don't ever run specific promotions. You don't ever see an ad for me on Facebook that says, "Here, come buy ClickFunnels. It's awesome." It's always sold through education. That is how I've sold all of these ClickFunnels accounts. I'm selling through education, not necessarily through my sales funnel. And so Partner With Anthony is one of those things that allows me to sell ClickFunnels through my education. So I would say one of the things you ought to start looking at is don't stop your sales funnel at the end of the sales funnel. Just transfer that selling into your education and start creating this educational sales funnel, so that once somebody comes through, now you continue to sell through education. That funnel, man, is doing seven figures a month for our company at a $7 price point. It's actually more successful than pretty much any funnel I've ever run. And it's been successful on every platform. We find high ticket, low ticket, all these, they work in different platforms. I mean, we're able to have positive return on investment from Facebook, from YouTube ads, from YouTube Organic and pretty much anywhere and everywhere we promote it. So maybe just don't always look at the highest ticket item. If you really want to create a company and a business that's going to thrive and going to continue to grow, in my opinion anyway, you need buyer velocity. You need a lot of buyers. You need a lot of people coming into your ecosystem so that they're introduced not only to your brand, but also all of your products, and this little $7 funnel is how we're making it happen. Russell: That is awesome. I think it's interesting too, especially the way you do it because the education is not free, it's $7, but then inside of education, you recommending the tools and the things like that. And so I think some people may be nervous like, "Oh, well, what if they feel like I'm upselling them on the next info product?" Or whatever. But it's like, you're not only selling the info, but you're selling the tools that you need to implement the thing that they just learned. Right? Which I think is, it's fascinating to think Anthony: Think about in college, right? This always amazes me. So people always say, "Well, wait a minute, people are going to get mad when you sell them something." Well, I know people... Look, we all know this, if I go to your website, Russell and I click buy, and then right after I clicked buy and I put in my information, and then you have a little video that pops up and says, "But wait, you can upgrade and get all this better stuff." People are like, "Oh man, I'm so mad. Why didn't you just tell me everything upfront?" Right? We hear that, people don't love upsells. But here's what's interesting, when the upsell is within the education like this, and it's not positioned necessarily as an upsell, but more so as either an essential tool or an added benefit, something that can help you grow within this course, people don't feel the same way about it. And if you think about it, it's a lot like college, you pay all this money to go to college, the minute you sit down in a desk, they give you a list of all the books you've got to go buy and they charge you thousands of dollars for these books that are 20 years old. And then they say, "Hey, you've got to have a specific calculator, and you've got to..." And people go and buy all those things, and they're not mad at the college. They don't go screaming and hollering at the college saying, "You didn't tell me I needed a calculator and these books." You know what I'm saying? So, once it's something that you're using I guess to consume and implement the education that you've purchased, I think that that disdain for the upsells kind of fades a little bit and it becomes more of like, "Hey, I'm going to do this because I've already bought into this. So now I need to get all the tools, resources, and help that I can to make this work." Russell: Very cool. Well, awesome, man. I appreciate it, that's an awesome tip. We could teach the whole three-day course on that concept alone, but hopefully everyone who's listening like "There's a nugget, there's a marketing secret." That you guys can all look at as like, "How do I build a front education system that sends people to my other products and services or the ones I affiliate for, and then selling it for $7?" You can get as many people in as possible. It's awesome. So, thanks, man. I appreciate you sharing that marketing secret. Anthony: Absolutely man. Russell: Very cool. All right, with that said, we'll move on to our next guest. We've got five total here. So let me see, number two. Let's see. How about we bring on Kevin David. So Kevin, I actually met Kevin for the very first time at Funnel Hacking Live when he was on stage getting a Two Comma Club award. And then I met him the next year getting a Two Comma Club X award. And anyway, someone who's been just killing it. He's got a huge YouTube channel. He's got a bunch of other stuff, won a whole bunch of awards from us, dream car winner, a bunch of other things. With that said, Kevin, how are you doing today? Kevin David: Hey, what's up Russell? I just want to take a minute to appreciate Anthony's…. Okay. Awesome. I just said I wanted to appreciate Anthony's profile picture. For people who are on the podcast not seeing it, he's literally standing in front of every award that ClickFunnels has ever created. And it's just an epic picture. So I should repost that somewhere. But yeah, no, it's funny. I told the story a lot of times, Russell that... The first and only two times we've ever met in person were getting in to Comma Club and then me on stage telling you I'll be back next year for the eight figure award. And I actually forgot to apply for the 50,000,000 one. But maybe I'll get around to it this year. Russell: You better hurry. We're 105 days away from Funnel Hacking Live. So you've got a little time to get it in, but you've got to hurry. Kevin: Absolutely. Russell: Very cool. All right. So with that said, I'd love if you want to share your number one marketing secret with anyone who's listening right now. Be awesome. Kevin: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm going to give two, and I'm kind of going to assume that your audience is a little bit more advanced, right? For a lot of the introductory stuff, people can find it on YouTube and blogs and things like that, but kind of the stuff that's much more difficult to find is kind of the more advanced stuff that happens more so for the kind of marketers that are really doing things at a large level, spending millions of dollars and things like that. And so, I've talked to Anthony and many people about this, and a lot of the guys kind of coordinate and figure out what works and what doesn't. For me, I'm going to give two simple ones that are really immediately implementable. So on YouTube, you can actually do a variety of different types of targeting, right? You can do keywords, you can do in-markets, topics, and target specific things like that. A lot of people try to get super over complicated and put these huge thousand keyword lists into YouTube to target them. But what I've found is you can actually target people on YouTube from what they've searched on Google in the last seven days. And that's really, really powerful because in-stream marketing on YouTube is actually much cheaper than Google keyword marketing. And so instead of trying to get all fancy and do these big thousand keyword long tail lists, what we've found is literally just uploading a single keyword, one keyword literally, into those in-markets, excuse me, into those in-stream segments actually works extremely well. So for example, we might upload an entire audience as a one keyword list just for the word money. Another example is we've proven and found that the keyword "business business business", literally that word three times is actually 20X profitable for us. And it has been for years for whatever reason. And we found that just by putting the word "business" as a broad match keyword campaign, and then Google actually auto-populates multiple variants of that based on "business" and then adding "business business" three different times, even though that seems ridiculous, that particular keyword, "business business business", has made us tens of thousands of dollars over the course of however long we've been doing things. The second one that I'll give is kind of a little strategy for people that kind of run Typeform Funnels, or any type of funnels that have purchases. What we've found is instead of having just a single "Thank you" page, we actually differ… find people similar to those higher qualified leads, which just makes everything so much more profitable and so much more successful on paid media. Russell: Dude, that's awesome. Very cool. I lost some audio on my side for a second, but I got most of it though. That was awesome. Hopefully I don't... I think it was something on my phone, so I think everyone's got it. So very, very cool. Anything else you want to share with people before we move on? Kevin: I mean, not really. I just... Every time we get to talk, Russell, it's always an honor. You really helped me a lot. And so the people listening to Russell's podcast, you guys are listening to one of the best, if not the GOAT in marketing. So I just appreciate every time we get to connect brother. Russell: Very cool, man. I appreciate you. Well hopefully some day we'll hang out in real besides just on stage, but we'll see you in a couple of months on getting the next awards. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you coming on. Kevin: Absolutely. Russell: Very cool. Hey Yhennifer, before we go onto the next guest, do you have any announcements that you want to make sure that... I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the things I'm supposed to be doing? So as a newbie Clubhouser, let me make sure I'm doing this right. Yhennifer: All right. Awesome. We're going to reset the room really quickly here. I just want to send a reminder to everyone that we're recording for the Marketing Secrets podcast. Also, you see that little plus sign at the bottom? Ping your friends, add some people into this room that you feel will get tons of value from this podcast episode. And one more thing, make sure that you click on that green little house, Marketing Secrets Live on the top of this room and follow the club for more episodes. Take it away, Russell. Russell: Awesome. Thank you, Yhennifer. Okay, our next guest, I'm excited to bring on. The next guest is someone who literally... I'm reading through the bio here. The first year of using ClickFunnels at over eight figures, multiple eight figures actually very first year, which is crazy, has gone on to do a whole bunch more cents then, and excited to bring our next guest. Who is Keyala. How are you doing man? Keyala: Whoa, buddy. We've never even met and you said my name right. Kudos to you my brother. Russell: I'm not going to lie, I'm a little nervous. I was making sure I got it correct. So I nailed huh? Keyala: You know that you did a good job, and first I just want to thank you for having me out. You have some all-stars on the stage and you even invited Perry too. Russell: Shots fired. Keyala: Shots fired. Yes. Perry Belcher: Remember, I know where you live. Keyala: That's a true story. All right. So marketing tip, Russell. I'm going to give something that's a little advanced, I think. Russell: Okay. Keyala: So the question most often, right? Is so when we... I started out, to give you some history, I started out as an affiliate marketer. And at the end of 2016, the last week of November, 2016, I launched our courses and coaching business, teaching people affiliate marketing, and within four months we got to seven figures a month. Over the next year and a half or so I had 80 million views on my top performing YouTube ad. So kind of the question that I get most often is how did I ramp up growth that fast? And it really comes down to this concept, which is I think simple but often overlooked. And that concept is knowing your numbers. So for me, the game of scaling is just a game of mathematics. So what do I mean by that? So knowing my numbers means that I knew that the reason that I was able to scale so quickly is because I knew what every customer was worth. So I was running a funnel, a webinar funnel, where somebody could buy a low ticket sub $100 front end, and when they bought that low ticket sub $100 front end, they would then qualify to speak to my sales team. My sales team would then interview them. If they were a fit, we'd make a 10K offer. Well, I knew every time I got somebody to spend $99 on our front end product, I ultimately would make a thousand dollars within about 60 days, because I just followed the numbers as we were scaling up the campaigns. Once I knew what that customer was going to be worth to me in 90, sorry, 60 days, I was then able to go into... And this is an advanced strategy, but negative customer acquisition. So a lot of marketers that I've talked to are trying to break even on day zero or day one. Right? Russell: Yeah. Keyala: And in contrast, I was spending sometimes as much as $500 acquiring a $99 customer. So why is that significant? It's significant because whoever can spend the most in the marketplace on customer acquisition is going to own that marketplace. So engineering my YouTube views on my YouTube ads was the simple fact that I was willing to, because I knew my numbers so well, I was willing to spend more than my competitors were willing to spend. And we have a method in our media buying process we call The Bully Method, which I actually took the term from Tim Burg, where we would go in and we would just outbid everybody else who was... So we would manually bid an outbid everybody else in our space. So we would take what we're paying for a CPM, cost per thousand impressions, and we would 10X that amount just to force our ads into the feed, because I knew that I could outspend all of my competitors, right? So I was able to engineer through that process, through knowing my numbers, I was able to engineer that growth, and that's how we were able to hit those seven figures per month within just four months of launching. Russell: That's awesome. Keyala: And when you know your numbers, it really gives you a level of freedom. So as an example, when I sat down... February of 2017, I sat down with my team. We were looking at what the numbers were trending for over the past 90 days of running ads. And I said, "Listen, so next month, we're going to hit a million dollars a month. And here's how we're going to do it." And I broke it down for them. I said "In order for us to hit a million dollars next month, we need to have this many appointments on the calendar for our sales team. In order for us to get that many appointments on the calendar, we need to have this many front end buyers." Not every front end buyer would book an appointment on the calendar. I knew exactly what the ratio was. "In order for us to have that many front end buyers, we need to get this many people registered for the webinar." Because I knew exactly what percentage of registrants actually converted to a front end buyer. And then I said, "In order for us to be profitable on all of that, we can't pay more than 12..." It was roughly about $12.50, somewhere in that ballpark, per registrant. "So, marketing team, can we do that? How do we engineer so that we're driving up X amount of registrations a day, at or below $12.50 so that we can hit this seven figure, this million dollar mark, the following month in March?" And we ended up hitting it about three weeks into the month. So oftentimes when I'm talking with marketers at masterminds or at events, they'll be asking about how to grow their business, how to scale their business. And a lot of it had to be... To be mean, it's just a lot of pin the debt... Pin the tail on the donkey tactics, right? They're kind of running blind, because I'll start asking, "Well, what does every customer that clicks the buy button, what are they worth?" "Well, I don't know." "Oh, what does every person that speaks to your sales team worth?" "I don't know." Or they'll say things like, "Well, the average customer... Our most common product is this product." And I'll say, "Well, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking you the moment that somebody gets to your order page and submits that credit card information, ultimately, what does that customer worth to you?" And if they don't know, then they are, to a degree, running blind, right? They're trying to scale their business without having the metrics to know how to scale it. And therefore, playing pin the tail on the donkey. The good news is I love math, so it works out really well. But if you don't, there's data analysts out there that you can hire that will come in and run that data for you and help you figure these numbers out, which will give you a game plan that you can follow. It's a treasure map to the promise land, so to speak. So that would be my number one tactic. Russell: That's awesome, man. I appreciate. I remember the very first event I ever went to 19 years ago, I heard Mike Litman speak and he said, "Amateurs focus on the front end." And when he said that it made no sense to me, but I remember hearing that and I was like, "Oh crap, am I an amateur?" I literally was focusing on the front end. And it was a couple of years later as I kept learning this game where I started to kind of realize what you're talking about now, which is like, "Okay, here's the funnel. Here's the pieces. What's the profit at each step?" And a hundred percent, since we were able to figure those things out and we knew, "Oh, we can spend, again, $70, $80 to sell a free book, or to give away a free plus shipping." Or whatever it was, because we knew to value everything. And then that's when we started scaling as well. So I think that's awesome. I appreciate you sharing that for sure. Very cool. This is fun. I'm actually really enjoying this. I'm getting good ideas on my side. If you guys like it as well, let us know. Okay. We've got one more guest speaker. Before we do, I'm going to pass back over to Yhennifer to make sure that we've got the room set up for everything before we move on to Perry Belcher. Yhennifer: So I'm excited to have all you guys here. Thank you for being in this room. Just again, another reminder we are recording here for the Marketing Secrets podcast. Make sure that you click on that little green house at the top to follow the club so that you can get notifications when Russell goes live again, we're planning to do many, many more of these. And also ping, some friends in the room, invite some people so they can come in here and join us for this awesome conversation. Back to you, Russell. Russell: Awesome, thank you so much. All right, so my last special guest today before we transition to full podcast, is someone who I have been a friend and an admirer of for, man, as long as I think of, 10, 15 years. He's one of the co-founders of Digital Marketer and about a million other things. Probably the greatest storyteller I've ever met. One of my favorite people to hear speak and teach and listen. And he's the person who told me to get on Clubhouse initially. So all of those people, if you put them all together is Perry Belcher. So Perry, thanks for jumping on today, man. I appreciate you. Perry: All right, man. Well, let me start off by griping a little bit. So number one, with the exception of Kevin, who's a really nice guy, I went to his place. I ate good food, he was nice to me. I don't really like anybody else on this whole panel. Morrison in front of his fancy schmancy wall of awards. And I've got a bone to pick with you, Russell. How much stuff have I sold on ClickFunnels? You sent me nothing. I got nothing. I get no respect here. I got stuff on the wall from ClickBank. I got stuff on the wall from YouTube. I got stuff on a wall from everybody. I got nothing from ClickFunnels. I'll tell you that. I get no respect. Russell: Have you filled out the form that says, "I apply...?" Perry: Whatever. Forms shcmorms, whatever. Keyala know-it-all, talks all the time. These guys, I don't know where you find them. Russell: Well with that intro, man I... Perry: What can I do for you? Can you get me to help you pick better panelists next time? I'll tell you… Russell: That would actually be super helpful. Perry: These guys, I don't know. Not all of these guys obviously. But I do think we ought to make Morrison box up half of those things and send them to me. It's only fair. Russell: It's only fair. Anthony: They can't get 18 wheelers down my street. So can I send you a 10th of them? Russell: Oh, that's awesome. Well, Perry, you've done pretty much everything in this business from physical products to info products, to coaching, to flying to china... Everything I think people could do to make money, I think you've done it three or four times. I'm curious, right now through the lens, what would be your biggest marketing secret you could share to people right now today? Perry: Actually I was thinking about this because when I talked to, I think it was Miles the other day, he kind of gave me a prompt what the question was going to be. Really two things, and one's extensive, and that's learning to tell a really good story. I think people really don't... Most people have no clue how to tell a story about themselves, their company or their products, or what they do. And I think I've been really good at that. I kind of had a natural talent for, but I've gotten really, really good at over years. And I think that's been a big help for me. And the trick or the cheat on top of that, if you're not good at it or if you are, it's even better, is something that almost nobody does but me. And that's physical premiums. I use physical premiums in every marketing campaign that I have, and Morrison and I were talking the other day, I kind of know some of his numbers, but I got a $7 offer like his now, and my CPA yesterday was $22 because I gave away a $5 hat, you know? And his is I think considerably more than that I'm guessing. Anthony, is that still true? Anthony: Oh yeah. It's definitely a lot more. Perry: Yeah. I just love physical premiums and I use them all the way through the funnel. I start with a physical premium. When I go to the upsell, I add another premium and go to the next step sell, add another premium. And people just really don't understand the leverage that a physical premium gives you. I'm not talking about a book, I'm talking about something that somebody wants. Not something that they need, but something that they want. And really, all right so what's a premium? What is that? It's a gift that you give somebody for taking a certain action that you want them to take. Like Russell, you've got a beautiful wife and when you proposed to her, I'm guessing that you had a premium in your offer. Didn't you? Russell: It wasn't me. Yeah. I was the afterthought. Perry: Yeah, it's called a diamond ring. You've got all of us... Got to hock that ring, and you've got to give them the premium because they know they're going to get some old guy that sits in a recliner and farts for the rest of his life. So the big prize ain’t that great. So you got it. But seriously though, I've worked on campaigns for LifeLock and we gave away shredders and built all our campaigns for survival preparedness, and now I've got that hat that I got on, the CEO hat, is my newest premium. And for my CEO journal, CEO 5,000 club. And I can acquire really great business buyers who are very aspirational for 20 bucks to cold traffic. That's a 19.4% front end conversion rate yesterday. It was insane. Russell: Is the offer actually... They had the offer for something else when you're attaching a hat to it. Perry: The offer is the hat in the beginning, and the upsell is a five day CEO challenge that comes with a big framed certificate. I give people awards. I do. I send it to them. If they're good people, I send them a freaking award. I'm not like some people that I know who just, "You fill out the form..." You know what" Russell: That second step is hard. Step one, earn it, step two, ask for it. So I get it. Perry: Yeah right. But anyway, I'm joking. But yeah, the second step is challenging, and because if I didn't have the framed certificate there, which is a very nice premium award, we would probably only get a 15, 20% take rate on the upsell, but instead I get right now in the neighborhood of a 42% up-sell rate on the $47 challenge. And then there's a VIP registration after that, I think it's about 30%. And I think I'll increase that this week, because I didn't have a premium attached to it. I'm going to put another premium that I give them when they buy the VIP for another a hundred bucks. And a good premium, Russell, only has to be something someone wants. It doesn't have to be something they need. For years and years banks gave away toasters when you opened a bank account. The toaster didn't have anything to do with a bank account, but everybody wants a new toaster or a set of steak knives or whatever. You just find something that somebody wants an ideally, if you're using the premium at the front of the funnel, like I am with this one, you want a premium that identifies the market that you're looking for. If you've got a fishing club or a fishing stuff you want to sell, then you need a fishing hat or a fishing t-shirt or a fishing rod. Something that identifies that front end buyer, that low dollar front-end buyer as having a certain aspiration or interest. But I don't think anybody understands the leverage of it. You'll get in the math... So what people do that screws them up in the head. And I know Morrison and I've talked about this. He still ain't done it. Right? They get to think, "Well, I got to ship a thing. That's going to cost 10 bucks." Yeah. But your CPA advertising costs is going to go down by 70. Right? So why would you not do that? But that's okay if nobody ever wants to do it, it's good with me. I like being in this ocean all by myself, right? But seriously, you'll never give away a physical gift, a good one that's thought about, thought through, that will increase your cost of delivery more than it will reduce your cost of acquisition. I've never... It's never happened. Russell: I'm freaking out on my side, because I'm thinking about we have our book funnels all the time, but I was late for the Dotcom Secrets book. If I gave a t-shirt that was like, "I Build Funnels" that came with the Dotcom Secrets book. Right? Perry: Then I'm going to rat out my best partner. So Ryan brought out his book, The Invisible Selling Machine. Remember that? Russell: Yep. Perry: So we sent that to the digital marketer list who love him like a fat kid loves cake, right? And that offer went out and he got a 3.9% conversion on it. And he was so disappointed. We were all disappointed. We put a digital marker "I'm smarter" t-shirt with it, conversion went to 11.1%, on a bundle. So you're talking about a $5 shirt, you know… Russell: 3X the conversion Perry: Well, you can say it increased the version, which it did, but it also reduced the cost of acquisition by three fours. Russell: Yeah. Perry: So whether you're... If you're buying media to it, it's emphatically important. And as we put more and more premiums down funnel, we see the same thing happen where the down funnel sales double and triple, and you just keep increasing the value of the premium as you keep increasing the price of the down-funnel products for sale. I'm into it so much I bought a... I've got a 24,000 square foot warehouse here now, where we make and print and embroider all of our premiums and we do it for some of our other people. But I got so into it that I wanted to be prime on it. So we make all of our own stuff now. It's a big deal. Russell: That's killer. Dude, Perry, thank you for sharing that. That was a big one for me. I'm sure it's awesome for everyone else. Perry: No problem. Russell: Very cool. Well those were our guest speakers for today. So I want to thank all of our guests for jumping on and sharing their biggest marketing secret. I got a bunch of notes to myself for myself here, which is exciting, which is awesome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After tons of questions about the difference between a 2 million dollar and a 40 million dollar a year company, now I’m going to show you behind the scenes. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com Also check out marketingsecrets.com/2ccl ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today's episode I want to talk about obsessing over your average cart value. All right. So I've been having so much fun in business recently. A lot of good things are happening. Things I can't tell you about yet. Things that at funnel hacking live will become apparent. And by January 1st of next year, it will become, you guys will see the future. I've been there. It's amazing and I'm coming back and I'm going to show it to you guys. But anyway, I can't tell you all the details. But I can tell you the things I am obsessing about right now because they're exciting. And one of the questions that I got a lot, there's an episode I did five or six episodes ago where I talked about the difference between a $2 million a year company and a $40 million company. And I just talked about there's two businesses I know of that sell basically the same product. One's doing 2 million bucks a year and one's doing 40. And I talked about just thinking strategically different, but I didn't, excuse me, I didn't give all the details behind it for a couple of reasons. Number one is I'm trying to acquire the $40 million a year company and I'm under all sorts of NDAs and stuff. So I can't talk about it, but after the acquisition is done, I guarantee you I'll be like... Anyway, you know I'm not good at keeping secrets. I'm the worst. This web podcast is called Marketing Secrets. My books are all called... Whatever secrets I got I just give you all the secrets. Somebody asked me, "Russell, can you keep a secret?" I'm like, "No." I've got no ability to keep secrets. I'm just going to write a book about it or do a podcast. Anyway. So don't tell me your secrets, but I'm sure that I will share with you guys more as I'm able to. But anyway, this I can share though, is as I'm watching again, the difference between $2 million offer and a $40 million a year offer is obsession with one thing. Can you guess what it is? I told you the intro. So now you know, it's obsession with your average cart value, the ACV. So what's the average cart value? That is how much money on average a customer gives you when they come into your funnel. Right? So a good example, this is my books, right? So someone buys a book and they may pay $9.95 shipping handling for the hard cover .Com Secrets book, right? So they buy that. But it doesn't mean my average cart value is 10 bucks because from there they can, there's the order form bump and then upsell one, upsell two, there's all, there's the whole process we take people through, right? So as they go through this process, the average person, so for everyone who buys the book let's say we sell a thousand books and some people buy upsell one some buy upsell one and two, everyone's buying different things, but if you do the average of all of them, it means on average how much you make for every book buyer. So a good example is when we first launched the Traffic Secrets book, I remember the average cart value was $70. So for everyone who bought a book, we averaged $70 in collected revenue during the immediate funnel, the point of sale funnel, right? It's not talking about over the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Because there's lifetime value customer there's always other metrics we look at, but for average cart value is how much money they make immediately, point of sale, while they're hanging out with you. Right? And so that's the number. Now we launched the book Funnel, obviously when you first launch it, it's like your most excited audience, right? Like all you guys were probably like, "I'm going to buy Russell's book." And you're like, "I'm going to buy all the upsells." And you did and I'm grateful for that. But the average cart value was amazing, it was like 70 bucks a book. And over time as you go to colder traffic, that'll usually taper down and maybe it ends at 35, 40 bucks average cart value. Right? But knowing that, "Hey, I can spend 40 bucks to sell a book and I'm still profitable." That's a big deal. Right? That's the reason why we're able to sell so many books is because I can spend $40 to sell a free book, whereas everyone else in the publishing world they're selling them on Amazon for 20 bucks, they can spend 20 bucks maybe, and that's about it. So I can spend twice as much to acquire a customer or more because I control the cart. Plus, again, after the cart's done, then there's the email sequence, all these other things that we monetize and so that customer becomes a lot more, worth a lot more to us over time. But the average cart value is the key, right? Especially in this game, there are obviously companies we compete against who have outside investors and funding and they'll go six. They'll go negative. So they'll spend $200 or a thousand dollars to get a customer and it takes them six months to get their money back. But for me, and for you guys who are Smart Funnel hackers, who understand this game, for the most part you should be able to break even in real time. Right? So you should, when you spend a hundred dollars on ads, you should make a hundred dollars, worst case scenario, right? Just because that's, we're, we all should be. The amateurs in this Funnel Hacker world, we should be better than the majority of businesses. Right? You should be able to break even at point of sale. And so that's the first thing, right? That's how we're able to grow with scale these businesses is that we could spend $40 to sell a free book and we still break even. And now everything on the backside of that is gravy. So hopefully that makes sense because I'm going to go a little deeper here now, but that's the first part. And I'm sorry, there's so many, I know for some of you guys who've been around me for a long time and you're like "Yeah, that's a no brainer." For somebody who's maybe newer, who might be like, "I don't understand how this works. I thought that was my business was my funnel?" And it's like, "Yeah, but that's the first funnel, right?" One of my first mentors, actually the first seminar I ever went to, I heard Mike Limon say, he said, "Amateurs focus on the front end." And I didn't know what he meant for years, but I was trying to, I was trying to make money on my front end funnel and what he was saying at the time, I remember he was saying he was spending $30 to give away a free DVD. And I was like, "How are you doing that?" But I didn't realize that people gave away the free DVD. They called him on the phone two weeks later, he sold them a 5,000 coaching package and he had this whole business model. And so he's able to go in the hole because he knew that 30 days later he was going to make money. Right? And so that's, amateurs folks on the front end we're Funnel Hackers, we're not amateurs. We're the ones who understand this game and so we can make really good funnels that are profit on front end and then we've got the backend on top of it. So that's why we're able to grow companies so quickly. Right? So anyway, I digress. The thing I want to ask you guys about today is obsession over average cart value. So what I typically do, and this is my bad habit is we get together, we launched the funnel, then at launch time we're split testing, we're tweaking, we're testing, we're trying to get the average cart value as high as we can. And then after two or three weeks, Russell gets bored, he goes on to the next offer and he leaves. Okay? And my friend, who we're purchasing his company that did $40 million in sales last year, I've watched him, he's got, I don't know, four or five little front end funnels that he focuses on. Actually for him, he doesn't have a back end, which is why we're acquiring them because ClickFunnels would be perfect backend, right? But he's making all his money just off the front end funnels. But his obsession is with the average cart value, right? How much can you make for every person that comes through the funnel? And right now, just to put it in perspective, I can't remember exact numbers, but his average cart value is something like $160. So it makes it $160 every single person who buys his front end thing, which is insane. It means he can spend $160 to sell one of his things, and it's things not a free plus shipping. There's, there's a cost in it and I'm not going to tell you the pricing yet, because I can't, but it's crazy. And as I've been talking to him, as we've been doing this negotiation and buying it, purchasing the company, he'll send me messages about things he's testing and he's still the same offer he's been writing for five or six years now, it's killing it. That I might, I'd be like, there's no way to make this better. He's like, "Show me the things they're doing." And they're not like, a lot of us do split test. Right? I try this headline versus headline this versus this. And that's great, but he's not just doing that. He's been testing so much at such a deep level, he's doing these big radical shifts, right? You show me this process of where when somebody comes in after X amount of seconds this thing pops up and then for a coupon they email in. And then he sends out this email sequence and he's split testing two or three different email sequences, see which one gets the highest take rate and on and on, on. All these things, you know? And that's his obsession, is this deep dive on average cart value, making it better and better and better, you know? And when he got this focus on funnels initially, the average cart value was $60 bucks. Right? Which is good. I would have been celebrating "Ooh, 60 bucks. Good to go." I think that would have been a break even at that point because they're spending about 60 bucks to break even but then he's obsessed with. Like, "Okay, we need another upsell. What's the down sell? How do we change this? How do we change this? How to tweak this? What's the email sequence? What's the post, the pre, the landing page? What are the, like he geeks out on all these pieces at such a deep level. I started realizing that that's my, one of my biggest problems on my side, is that I do some testing up front, it's good enough, we run it and then our ad team run it, and then it runs till it's not profitable anymore and then we pause it and come back three months later and try to run it again. Right? Whereas he just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. And so on my side, we started building out a team specifically just to do this. He's in of my sites inspired me, "Okay, if I'm making $40 average cart value in a book, what would the metrics look like if I get to $80? If I get to $80 average cart value that changes everything, right?" It's not a little tweak, I could spend an $80 to give away a free book. The metrics on that are insane. Right now I can sell millions of copies of book versus right now we're selling hundreds of thousands of copies of the book. Right? But it's that. But I had to figure that out. So I don't know how to do it yet, but it becomes the obsession. Right? I did a clubhouse, which is probably going to be on this podcast soon. I did a marketing CS podcasts or clubhouse and on that I asked people their biggest marketing secret and Perry Belcher dropped this bomb. You may have heard this, but he said the biggest thing he found, the biggest marketing secrets he has are now are adding premiums to things. And he specifically said that when Ryan Deiss launched his book, he was getting 3% conversion rate, and so he added a t-shirt with it. Now that adds premium and went from a 3% conversion to 11%. And he didn't talk about average cart value but come on now, you get three times as many customers to buy for the exact same ad spend? Your cart value could three X, right? You can go from a $40 average cart value to a $120 by adding a t-shirt to go with your free thing. Or something crazy like adding a premium. So I don't know if that's going to work or not. I have no idea, but guess what we're testing this week? We're going to test you buy a dotcom secrets book you get an I Build Funnels t-shirt right? Let's see how that works. Because if that increases cart value by whatever, that's insane, right? The three X of my cart value, now I can spend three times more money to get customers. And then he talks about, he was doing premiums not on the front end, but on the upsells and the down sells and things like that as well. It's like, what are the premiums that can be added that make people more likely to take the offers, which increases the average cart value?What's the email sequences, what's the actual offer? Could we make the offer better to offer to be more expensive? Does it need to be less expensive? There's just a million things you could test. But most of us are like, "Okay, I tested headline A, headline B and that's it. Right? Or we don't test at all but it's like, man, after you have a funnel that works, like my buddy here, he spends obsessively for four or five years now the same product that another one of my really, really good marketing friends does 2 million bucks a year on, he's doing 40, and the difference is obsession with cart value. Because he can outspend everybody else, 10 to one. Right? And so that's the question for you is how can you obsess about your average cart value? What things can you do? Can you build a team or a process? I used to have a mantra in our company back in the day, it was when Todd was not developing ClickFunnels for full-time, but he was doing more stuff on the marketing, he would come up with split test ideas and we tried to compete against each other all the time. It was really fun. And so our mantra at the time was like, how do we give ourselves a raise every day? And it's like, well, the way we do it is by split testing, right. Let's test this versus this versus this and keep testing different things. And we have a winner, right? You add a t-shirt premium offer let's say to your book funnel and all of a sudden it goes from a 3% to 11%, you just 30 x your money or more, that's, you just gave yourself a raise today. Right? So that was always the question is how do you give yourself a raise today? How do we give ourselves a raise today? What's the next thing? What's an idea? What could we do to drive the needle, make those changes. And so for you, that's what I want to post this in your mind, right? After you have a funnel that works, instead of doing what I do, moving on to the next funnel, or focusing on something different, come back and say, "Okay, here's my cart value. Every single day how do I increase the cart value? What can I do today? What can I trust today? What can I try today? What else can I do? How do I shift the offer? How do I position it from... What can I do to it to increase that cart value? And the more you start thinking about it, the more ideas will come, the more bigger highs you have, all these things we'll tweak and change based on that. So anyway, that's what I want to encourage us to do, is starting to obsess with the average cart value. ACV, average cart value, how much do you make for each customer that comes into your world? All right. With that said, I'm going to end this podcast because I'm getting into traffic and I don't want to wreck. So there you go. Anyway, I appreciate you guys listening. Hopefully you got some value from this episode and hopefully it starts a new obsession for you on the thing that could take your funnel from a $2 million a year to a $40 million a year thing. Obsession with the average cart value. Thanks again guys. And I'll talk to you soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enjoy this replay of a special episode from a few years ago. Russell breaks down this simple 3 step system on how to be coachable. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Hey everyone, I’m really excited, I know I’m always excited, but today I’m especially excited because yesterday I hired a new coach. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for 5 years like you should have been, I’ve talked about this before in the past. But I’m a big, big, big, big believer in coaching. When I was wrestling I always had a coach, I usually had 3 or 4 coaches. I had a freestyle coach, Greco coach, nutrition coach, strength training coach. But sometimes we get in business and we’re like, “Oh we’re so smart, we don’t need coaches.” And no, you’re wrong. In fact, it’s kind of funny because a lot of people I know who are really successful in this business for a long time who no longer are, they’re like the last people to go and get coaching. It blows my mind, because they think they know how to do it all. I’m kind of at the top of my game right now, I don’t know, maybe it’ll go higher, but I definitely think I’m 9 ½ minutes into my 10 minutes of fame, what it is 15 minutes of fame, 14 ½ minutes in. So who knows when this whole thing will go down, but for me I’m at the peak of where I’ve ever wanted or dreamt of being. I’m still trying to find coaches to coach me in different areas of my life and different aspects and different things. I’ve had health coaches, business coaches, all sorts of stuff. Yesterday, actually two days ago I was listening to a podcast, actually the Freedom Fast Lane podcast by Ryan Moran, and he was doing a call with this dude, and the guy coached him through this thing on the podcast. I was like, that was insane. I said out loud that I want that guy to do that thing for me every Monday morning to keep me focused on what I’m doing. And I’m not going to tell you his name, not because I wouldn’t share, but because I don’t want all you guys trying to hire him, because that’s not his core business. But anyway, the next day I messaged Ryan I was like, “Dude, I need this guys info.” And he’s like, “Oh.” And then I messaged 50 other ways and finally Dave got a hold of him and two hours later I was on a call with him. During this call he literally did a laser coaching thing with me and I was like, “This is so awesome. I want this every week.” And it’s kind of funny, this isn’t his full time gig, doing coaching like that. He’s like, “Well, where do you want to go?” I’m like, “I want to write you a big check for money and then you do this every Monday morning for me.” And he’s like, “Okay.” So I did, I wrote him a check. And now next Monday I have my first actual thing and it’s so exciting. I’ve had different coaches in my life. I have a coach every Tuesday morning I meet with more on like, it’s Tara Williams, who is an energy coach, but it kind of goes in different directions, from spiritual to physical to mental to business to relationships, all over the place. So that’s one that touches on different areas of my life, but this is very specific on focus and intent and I’m so excited. I’m excited for that. I wish you guys could see how I was jumping around, crazy. I was so excited to give someone money to be able to coach me. Because it gets hard, the different levels you get to, it’s harder to find a coach who’s there, who can take you through a different aspect, so it’s just exciting for me. I’m so excited. In fact, that’s why as a coach, I obviously coach a lot of entrepreneurs, I don’t want my students or friends, whatever you want to call them. I want to keep progressing myself so that they keep having something to tap into, if that makes sense. I’ve had a lot of coaches throughout the years, that I came in and really quickly we met and then surpassed and I’m like, I can’t get stuff out of it. I don’t want my people ever feeling that way. That’s why I’m always pushing myself, pushing myself, pushing myself just so that I’m always as sharp as possible so I can keep serving and giving and coaching. But anyway, I’m just excited and what’s interesting, and this is the point of the podcast, not that you guys care that I hired a coach. But more so it’s because at the last Inner Circle meeting last week, we had 4 days of Inner Circle and I got 4 days next week too, I’m so excited. But what’s interesting, I watched a pattern. It was such an interesting pattern. First off, people in the inner circle are people who, they hear what I say, they do it and then they succeed. It’s really interesting. They hear what I say, they do it, and then they have success. Hear, do succeed. Hear, do, succeed. When I was wrestling, I remember one of my coaches telling me, “You’re one of the most coachable people I’ve ever had.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well you hear what I say and then you go and do it. I literally between matches will show you your level was too high. You need to lower your levels, be moving more. Next match you’re doing that. Most people I tell them that over and over and it takes weeks or months or years to even attempt it. I tell you something and you just do it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, isn’t that how it should work?” You hear someone you trust, that you hired, that you are paying to be a coach, someone who is your coach, you hear them, you then do that thing, and you make money. Or you hear that thing, do it and then wrestle better. That’s the process. So the key first off, you gotta tap into somebody that you trust. Someone who you know is not going to lead you astray, someone who knows more than you do. So when you hear them, you’re not second guessing should I do that, should I not? You gotta pick the mentor that you have 100% faith and trust in. It could be me, someone else, I don’t care, just pick somebody where you’re like, I have absolute faith in that person’s opinion. Therefore I will do whatever they say. I will hear and then I will do and then I’ll have success. But what’s interesting is during this whole inner circle, again, I’m watching and most of these people, that’s who they are. They hear, they do, they succeed. That’s why there are able to afford 25 grand to come hang out with us a couple of times a year. That’s why they’re having success. But as I was watching, not all of them, but probably 60% of our inner circle members are also coaches in different markets, different industries, things like that. And what’s interesting is almost all of them said “I’ve got these students and they just hear what I say and do it and they have success. But I’ve got all these other ones who don’t.” And I was like, it’s so fascinating to me that people that have success what do they do. They heard, they did, they had success. The one’s who didn’t, they heard, they questioned, they thought about it, they flip flopped, they over analyzed, they studied something else, they did this, they….they get stuck in this thing in the middle that they don’t really hear. And it’s just so fascinating for me. Yesterday when I heard, two days ago when I heard that podcast and the second I heard it I was like, “I heard it, now I’m going to go do so I can be successful.” How am I going to do it? I know I’m going to forget or it’s going to be hard so I’m going to pay someone so I can do it. So I heard, did, boom now I guarantee you guys will see in the next 6 months, the changes in my company and hopefully in me personally because of this coaching. Again, I could have heard the podcast and thought about it and tried things, but no I heard it, I’m going to go do it and then I’m going to be successful. So if anything you get from this, there is a pattern of people who are successful in all areas of life. The pattern is number one, they find the mentor, the person, the coach, whatever they believe to get them where they are, and then they put on blinders. They hear, they do, they succeed. Hear, do, succeed. Hear, do, succeed. That’s it.  And if you’re not successful, something happened. Number one you picked the wrong mentor, so you picked someone you’re not really trusting or they have bad advice, bad strategy whatever. So if that’s the case, pick somebody that has the right strategy that you trust. That’s number one, so you do it. Number two, you have to listen to them. Now listening, I said this to one of my friends one time. There’s two types of listeners in the world, those who listen and those who wait to be heard. And a lot of you guys are hearing stuff, but you’re waiting to be…..You’re trying to inject this thing in the middle, and I don’t want you guys being the people who are waiting to be heard. You are hiring a coach so you can listen. So stop, get the right person with the right strategy, pay them whatever it takes, then listen. Listen. Even if you think you know a better way, you read a blog post or a book or someone who has a different…it doesn’t matter. There’s a million ways to skin a cat. Pick a strategy from a person and then listen to what they say, and then whatever they say, do it. That’s it, just do it. And then what will happen? You will have success. Listen, do, succeed. Listen, do, succeed. It’s a pretty simple strategy. It’s somewhere between the listening and the succeeding we get caught up trying to think or over analyze or whatever it is. In fact, it’s interesting, people that are really good at school typically, the reason I think they don’t succeed in this kind of world is because they listen and they analyze and think….it’s good to think for yourself, but you’re hiring someone who already thought through these things for you. Like this dude yesterday, I don’t know, I’m guessing he was surprised at how he said something and I’m like, “Okay, I’m doing it. Done.” I listen, I heard, I did. I’m not like, “Well, my company is bigger than yours and I did this…” or whatever. No, I listen, I do, I succeed. I trusted him enough to give him money, therefore I’m trusting his strategy with 100% certainty that this is the way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have picked him, I wouldn’t have paid him, I wouldn’t have whatever. I chose that person, therefore I will listen with 100%, I have 100% certainty that everything he says is going to be truth, therefore I will listen, I will do and I will succeed. So this message is mostly for those of you guys who are struggling. My guess is that somewhere between this little chain that you’re missing. You picked the wrong person to tap into a strategy. But if you’re listening to this, you’re listening to me, so obviously you picked the right thing. So you got the right strategy to listen, do, and succeed. Boom, that’s it. I look at Brandon and Kaelin, literally Brandon and Kaelin come to every event, they’re at everything we do. They listen to every podcast, they’re probably listening to this right now smiling and saying, “Russell keeps dropping our name again.” They listen to everything. They picked somebody they trusted, they listen, and they do. I will literally be onstage at an event talking about a concept and I get off stage, and Brandon’s like, “hey that thing you just said, I just launched it.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “yeah, While you were talking I did it.” He’s listening, he did it, he’ll succeed. That’s why their company is going….. Everyone else in the room is sitting there listening, listening, taking notes, thinking about how cool it would be, and then they hang out in networking and they’re talking and….No, Brandon is there listening, doing and that’s why they’re so successful. So for you, look at that chain, there’s four elements. Pick the right mentor with the strategy and have absolute certainty in what they say, listen to what they’re saying, again listen, not waiting to be heard. Listen, then do it. Whatever they say, don’t even… Just do it. Just jump off the cliff. I trusted this person, therefore I will jump off the cliff if they tell me to. Just do it. And then get success. That’s it. That’s it, it is really that easy. So easy. It’s insanely easy. I don’t know why we keep complicating this. So don’t complicate it. If you do this thing and don’t have success, there’s somewhere in here, either you didn’t hear it right, or you didn’t do it right, or you picked the wrong strategy. If you get the right strategy up front, you listen and you do, then you’ll have success. It’s inevitable. You can’t not succeed. So there you go guys, I hope that helps. It should help you, but it should also help the people you’re coaching. It should help, so many ways. Understand that guys, that’s the key. So, I appreciate you all for listening and subscribing to the podcast. If you’re not subscribed yet, go to iTunes.com and subscribe or I guess marketingsecrets.com there’s a link to the iTunes, that might be easier. And then please rate, review, let us know, share this, if you got any benefit from this. Appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything and I will talk you all again soon. Bye everybody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy the final section of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey, what's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to introduce you to the exciting conclusion of our World Changers Roundtable podcast. This has been the last three episodes you've had chance to listen to them behind the scenes as Matt Maddix and his son, Caleb, and a bunch of amazing people asked us a ton of questions, and I hope you've been enjoying them. Now, as I told you guys earlier, this interview went for almost four hours. This next episode is about 45 minutes or so long, actually technically 43 minutes. And for the most part, the interview is great, except for, I think that by that time of night, the batteries and the microphone started dying. And so towards the end, some of the audio is not as clear as possible. So you have two choices. Number one, is listen to it and be like, "Oh, it's all right." Or number two, when you get to the bad audio, just skip to the next podcast. But there's some really cool stuff that happens during that time. So I didn't want to just cut it out because I thought it's just really good stuff I think you're going to enjoy. So some things to talk about on this episode is my morning routine. Like, what does it look like? How do I do it? How do I shift it around? Another one is I talked about my mission. A lot of you guys know I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I spent two years in Jersey knocking doors and I talked about what I learned from that and like the experiences and things like that. We spent a lot of times talking about Operation Underground Railroad and how I got involved and some of the inspiration that came, that led me down the direction we did with that. I talked about Tim Ballard and some of what he has to deal with as running Operation Underground Railroad and how people are fighting against him and the amazing mission he's doing and how you'll see no matter what mission you're trying to accomplish, Satan and the adversary are always trying to fight against as well. And we talked about how the fact that as you're publishing and you're sharing... One of my big beliefs that comes from scriptures, that your sheep will hear your voice. And so, there's a lot of cool things and steps. We always talk about owning the devil towards the end. And then we talked about some of the experiences feeding the homeless and the kids and a whole bunch of other stuff. So, anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode. I apologize that some of the audio cuts out at the end, but, you know, battery life. We should be upset at the people who make Lav mic batteries because they're the ones whose batteries died. No, just joking. But for the most part, hopefully you have a chance to hear it and get some good value from it. Again, I hope you enjoyed this series. We had so much fun doing the interview, and hopefully you got a ton of value for you and for your family. And let me know if you want more of this kind of stuff, this is different than my traditional Marketing Secrets podcast, but hopefully you loved it. If you did, let us know, and we'll continue to make more content like this as well. With that said, we can keep the theme song, we'll jump into four of four of the World Changers podcast interview. Speaker 2: So I just want to know your daily routine. I just really been getting into my spiritual side, right. Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Speaker 2: So just tapping into that, more of the importance of that and doing the morning, and if you do anything. Russell: Yeah, for me, it's- Speaker 3: Good question. Russell: ... weird because one of my close buddies, his morning routine is like four hours long. He literally said it to me. I was like, "Oh my gosh." But he has no kids. And so it's tough because I got five kids. So by seven o'clock it's on. It's on like Donkey Kong. It's crazy. It's like kids and food and... So it's like if I have a morning routine at half 7:00, before 7:00, it doesn't happen. And so, it depends. I go through different cycles. Sometimes if I'm writing, I'll get up at 5:00 because that's like really good time from 5:00 till 7:00 when I'm writing. If I'm not writing usually closer to 6:00 and that's the time where I'm reading. I've never got into meditation, but I do read scriptures. I read things. I want to, I've never had... I need someone to give me a meditation experience that's like magical. Do you know what I mean? I've tried before, I get the apps or whatever. And I'm like, I feel... or whatever. So I would love to go somewhere and have like a really cool... I've just never had one yet. So it's not part of what I do yet. And I take a lot of supplements. So, after my nighttime, I try to put as much supplements into my body as possible- Speaker 4: What do you take? Russell: A lot. I could show you the list. There's a lot. Speaker 4: Okay. Matt: Well we do know that protein ice cream is one of them, just to let you know. Speaker 5: How did you develop your supplement line? Do you have like a DNA doctor or... Russell: Anthony DiClementi has helped me a lot. I think he's cool. I've done blood tests and stuff like that to shift things. I read a lot, study a lot, try things, test things, see what helps, what doesn't. So, I like having just supplements for my body from morning till noon, just because... I don't know, I feel like it's just absorbing all the amazingness from them. And then seven o'clock hits and that's when it's just like, all right from 7:00 till about 8:30, it's like getting kids ready, driving kids to school. My kids are in four different schools, so it's here, there, back and forth, all sorts of stuff. Male: Do you take them? Russell: Yeah, I love it. We do, but I love driving to school. It's my favorite part. Because it's like... Anyway, yeah, I fight to drive them. It's like, sometimes they can bring their friends with them. So I get to hear them talk with their friends. And it's just like a cool time, I get to see them go to school. And I don't know, they're just so cute. They jump out and they try to be all cool when they walk in. It's just, I don't know- Matt: It's a bonding time. It's driving your kids to school. Russell: Yeah. And I try to get them in a good state, try to listen to music because school's horrible. I don't know about... I hated school. Matt: Ahh damn, me too. Russell: And I know I'm about to send them to the thing I hated the most. So I'm like I need to get them in a good state to listen to music, this type of thing. What are you most excited about after school? And trying to give them something so when they send them to like- Male: Prison. Russell: ... Oh yeah. And then, so right now I'm wrestling. I have a tournament next week and I'm wrestling. And so- Caleb: When can we all watch it? Russell: I'll send you the footage afterwards… Matt: We need a private Facebook group, man, where you can Facebook live just as a group. Russell: We're filming it. If I do all right, I'll show you guys. Male: Okay. Russell: So right now, at 8:30 at home, and then one of my wrestling buddies shows up. So from 8:30 to 9:00 we wrestle and just beat the crap out of each other, which is like awesome. When we weren't wrestling it was lifting and stuff like that. And then from then I got like all my focus times done, supplementation, kid time, workout. And then I go to the office and that's where my team time's there. So I got a team, that's where we'll be building stuff, a lot of people and- Female: What time? Russell: Let's see 8:30 to 9:30. It's about 10:00, 10:30-ish, I'll show up, a lot of them will show up. And that's when we're doing more stuff together. I mean, it just depends on... He's got crazy ideas and wants to stay later or whatever. But yeah, I use that and then I get home and I try to play dad from then till about 9:00, taking the young kids to bed by 9:00, and then the older kids are a little later. 9:00 till we pass out and my wife and I can actually spend some time together. Male: Do you work on Sundays or not really? Russell: I have a church calling and so I'm doing a lot of social media missionary work and generate leads for the church and stuff. So I do that on Sunday, but it's all focused on church stuff. Male: You did the 2 year missionary thing. Where'd you go? Russell: New Jersey. Male: ... and how was it? Russell: It was amazing. Male: What did you think about it. What'd you- Russell: It was the greatest experience of my life. I was telling these guys yesterday... Typically in someone's life it's the most selfish time of your life. 19 years old, what do most 19 year olds do? Like you're thinking about yourself and your… Yeah. So, it's like you literally are taken from that, you're shipped across the country, across the world. They get rid of your name. You're no longer Russell. I became elder, Elder Brunson. White shirt, white tie, yeah. No, I'm not an elder anymore. I'm not an elder anymore. I got released. But yeah, there's no dating. There's no calling home, none of that stuff. So you're in a spot where you can't do anything for yourself for two years. You can only serve other people. And most people are angry at you for even doing it. And so it's like just a really cool experience where it's not about you for two years. And imagine the shift that makes in your life where now it's like you come back and it's like... Anyway, it shifts everything, there's no way- Matt: Yeah, because like you were saying to us, if you can... The best training is gospel work, man, is out there talking to people about Jesus- Russell: Do you want to hear my pitch? Matt: ... Huh? Group: Yeah. Russell: This isn't the real pitch, but this is like... I mean, think about it. It's you knock on their door and you're like, "All right, this is the deal. If you give up alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, all premarital and extramarital sex, and 10% of your income for the rest of your life, you may get salvation if you don't screw up." Like that's the offer. Male: Damn. Russell: So you get home from that and you're like, "I got to sell software. I got to sell Cutco knives." So like pastoral is super easy. That's why all door-to-door salesmen were Mormons. All the companies recruit out of Utah, almost all network marketing companies are founded by Mormons. We love selling. You get home, it's like, "I can use these powers for evil. This is amazing." It's awesome. Female: So say that one more time. You went so fast. That was great. What was it? Russell: Alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, or premarital and extramarital sex, extra like other partners. You can have sex with your wife all you want. And 10% of your income for the rest of your life. Matt: And then you may make it if you don't screw up. How do you say it? Russell: Yeah. You may get salvation if you don't screw up- Male: If you do all that, you can still make it, is what you're saying. Russell: ... But that's the offer, yeah. Male: Wow. Russell: Give up all those things. Male: What do you think is the most important problem and not being solved today? Or you think needs more attention? Matt: Good question. I would love to end on human trafficking. Russell: That was good. Actually, I literally didn't go. Human trafficking is... I mean, I can't think of anything worse than that. You know what I mean? Like, I- Matt: I'd love for you to share your experiences with Operation Underground. Just some of the behind the scenes, whatever you can. And just some of the stories you've heard and just kind of like why you got into it. Russell: Yeah. That organization is amazing. Tim Ballard is like an angel. I don't know. Matt: Yeah. Russell: And I feel bad for him because he's in a spot where literally Satan is trying to destroy him. So he is giving his life, his blood, his sweat, his tears, like literally putting his life on the line every single day. And you have good intentioned people from around the world trying to destroy him. And so it's like, can you imagine that? Like you're going into the deepest, darkest parts of hell and trying to save little children and that's not the scariest thing. Then you get people attacking you and your character and your family and your life. There's a special place in heaven for him. Matt: Yeah, I agree. Russell: He's an amazing human. And so that's what I lead with. But then, man, it's been cool being on this journey just because I believed in miracles before, but the stories, when you hear them coming back from these raids and these missions and the miracles that happen consistently over and over and over again, it's just like... It says in the scriptures, "All things denote that there's a God." And you see these things consistently happening. Like God's hand is in it. The way I got involved in this whole... It's crazy because I told you, I got a call one day from somebody asked me to be a part of it and I was like, "Yeah, I'd love to help." And so, the first thing I did is, my ego is like oh, I know how to solve this problem. So I'm like, "Okay, we're going to build a funnel." We mapped it out and this whole thing. And I'm supposed to go to Utah to present this to all the guys. And I'm totally in my... Trying to serve, but also at the same time, like, "I know how to do this. This is my thing." Matt: Yeah, you're the- Russell: Yeah. And I didn't ask God for advice or opinion. I was just like, "Got it. I'm here. I'm going to do this thing." And it's crazy, the day I'm supposed to be driving to Utah, that morning in the shower and I just had this uneasy feeling like... And first time, am I nervous? I'm nervous. Obviously I'm going to be presenting this. What if they don't like it, whatever? But it was more than that. It was just like, "Ah, something's not..." I don't know something's just not quite right. So finally, I broke down and prayed. I'm presenting this to these guys, is this the right thing? Would you have me do something different? And I don't know if you guys have felt like inspiration from God before, whatever, it is weird and powerful. In that moment it literally was just like, "That's not what you're supposed to do." And I'm like, "What?" And it was like, "You're supposed to be building a documentary. And Nick Nanton is going to help you film it." And I was like, "Nick Nanton?" I met the guy once six years earlier, in passing at a Genius Network event. Maybe said three words to him. I was like, "I don't know if he knows who I am." And so, I'm sitting there, I literally just got out of the shower. My towel's on, I was like, "Nick Nanton?" So, I find Facebook, I'm like, "I don't know if we're Facebook friends," and we were. So I was like, send an audio, "Hey man, I don't know if you know who I am or not. But we met one time. I know your documentaries, you're really good at it. So this is crazy. But I don't know if you believe in God or whatever, but I just had this impression I'm going down today to Utah to present this thing, Operational Underground Railroad. I don't know if you've heard of it, you should go look it up. But I had a very, very distinct impression that you were supposed to film a documentary for these guys that's going to change... It's going to save a bunch of kids. Do you want to help?" And that was the message. And I sent it. And I was like, "Oh," started getting dressed. And then come back a bit later on, on the phone there's a message back from him. He's like, "Dude, I just looked it up," He was like, "I don't know what this is," but he's like, "if you'll cover the hard costs for my team to produce this, I'll do everything else for free. I won't take any royalties, any extras, I'm 100% in." Matt: Wow. Male: Wow. Russell: And I was like, "Okay." And so then I called Jake, my designer, like, "Could you make a DVD cover of a movie because we're about to pitch a movie instead of... It could be a design idea, here's the funnel." Like, "We're not doing any of that." So they're designing the stuff. It's crazy- Matt: This is the day of? Russell: ... Yeah. So we're driving down to Utah and anyway, we present it to these guys and it's just crazy. We present it, we filled with the Spirit like it's super powerful. And then we got to make a documentary. So Nick Nanton sinks these guys and like so many miracles are mysterious, crazy. So they were trying to go... They want to go to Haiti because... Have you guys all seen the Operation Toussaint documentary? Male: Yes. Russell: Okay, if you haven't, it'll change your life forever. This is the story- Male: Have you seen it? Russell: ... It's the whole Operation Underground Railroad story. And the main story is about this little kid named Gardy, who was stolen from... It was actually a church, his church, his dad was the Bishop of the church and his dad actually owned a business. And he'd fired one of his employees and his employees came to church and knew the kid and was like, "Oh, come here." And to get back at his dad for firing him takes him out and gives him to some people, just to mess with him. And the people were traffickers, took the kid off, shipped him out. And anyway, crazy. Anyway, there's so many stories I could tell you. But anyway, so they went down to go interview Guesno Mardy who's the father because that's how Operation Underground Railroad started because this family, this kid. So we go down to interview him. And as they're interviewing him, a year earlier, Tony Robbins actually went on a sting operation with him to Haiti- Matt: I want to hear about that a little bit. Russell: ... I don't know much about it. I just know that I saw a picture of him, he's undercover, he had a beard on, he was in a boat. So Tony went on this thing, they arrested all these traffickers on Superbowl Sunday, arrested all these traffickers. And like three months later, the government let them off. Matt: At the Superbowl, the government, what? Russell: No, it was Superbowl Sunday and Tony was in the boat, with Tim, those guys, arresting all the people. And anyway, so they arrested all these people, Tony was there, it was amazing. But there's so much corruption in the Haitian government. So they paid off the people and they let them all go. And so what's crazy is that we're trying to recapture these people, all sorts of stuff. And anyway, so long story short, Nick Nanton's team fly down to go interview Guesno Mardy. So, fly down to interview Guesno Mardy and they're sitting there interviewing him and all of a sudden Tim gets this thing like we found the head lady of the brothel. We located, we know exactly where she's at. We know where all the girls are at. They refound the people from when Tony did the arrest. And so, Nick's here filming this testimonial video and they're like, "We're going to arrest her tonight. Do you want to be part of it?" And he's like, "What?" And so they get the cameras out and everything. And Nick's undercover, his whole team. Like a bunch of videographers has showed up and now they're undercover in bulletproof vests and so crazy. But anyway, they're going to arrest these... We have all the footage. If you've seen the documentary, you see all the footage of the stuff they just happened... They were not planning on capturing any of the arrests or anything, it just happened because they were there. And one of the really cool stories that Tim told me is that as they were pulling up to go arrest her, they're pulling up in the minivan and they've got GoPros hooked everything there, they're filming stuff. And this guy was like, "I need a GoPro on my helmet." And they're like, "We're jumping in the car in 30 seconds to arrest... " And his guy's like, "You have to run right now. I just have this feeling. You have to put the GoPro on my helmet." Like, "Dude, we don't have time to find..." Fine, so they duct tape a GoPro on a thing, click record. And they go, jump out, they arrest this girl. And what happened in the arrest, they arrest the girl, and as they're arresting them, they find her, she's the kingpin of the whole thing. They arrest her, some of the people around, they don't know where the brothel is. And this guy looks over and he sees this little kid like looking out a door and then he goes back in and like, "I wonder if that's her brothel." So he runs over there and comes in to the brothel and walks in and finds all of these men raping kids, like in the act. And so people start jumping up and running out and he's like... We're trying to capture people, they all escape. Anyway, it comes out of the things, we found the brothel, we saw the people and it's this horrible thing. And Tim walks over and looks up and he's like, "Dude, look at your helmet." And the GoPros they're flashing and they had video... Like you walked in and saw every single trafficker's face as you walked around the thing. They had the things, they were going there to arrest them. Matt: Chills. Russell: And there's so many crazy experiences like that, that happened in every single way. They're crazy, they're just insane things. Every time he comes back, I talk to him like, "Tell me another story." He tells you stories. There's so many miracles that happen just on these journeys and these missions that are... It's just crazy. So anyway, it's powerful. I don't know, it's like the plague of our lifetimes that we've got to figure out how to solve. And I was telling Caleb and Matt, we've got a big project we're working on called the Save a Child Challenge where we're rolling out soon, that I think is going to be- Matt: You'll love this. Russell: Anyway. It's going to be big what we're going to be trying to do, but it's trying to shine a huge light on this problem. And we may roll out at Funnel Hacking Live. Matt: Can I ask you a question, spiritually, when you start getting involved in this, you were talking and sharing with us a little bit yesterday which is some spiritual wisdom because I always say new levels, new devils, but that's a territory that as you know, I mean, when you start getting in that, that's like Satan's number one playground. To me, that's like the whole reason we're going through what we're going through right now is because of the fight over the purity of our children in the future. So, what have you seen Tim go through? Or whoever involved? I know you've had some stories too, man. What are some things that you've seen? And then what's your advice to people that get involved or want to get involved? Maybe tell a few stories. Russell: I'm trying to think what would be the right ones. It's weird, like a lot of people who've gotten involved in the organization, they get involved, I think, initially for pure reasons. And then things happen. Like initially they actually filmed the whole documentary and documentary series before we started working with them. And the people capture all this footage and then they went insane. It's like just crazy. They wouldn't give the footage, or wanted money, all these things. It was just like when we went to Tim, like the biggest thing is Nick Nanton was like, "There's no money in this for me at all. This is at cost. This is pro bono. This is everything. You own the rights, you can do whatever you want with it." We're the same way. We came in like, "We're doing this. I want to make sure there's no way that I could ever make money off of this. I don't want any..." And I think it's like... I don't know, people go into these things like looking for how can we make money on this? And it's just crazy. It's insane. I can't fathom it, but it's just crazy. And since I've been around them, I've seen it happen four or five times, people come in, somebody will have good intentions, they come and do something and then they're like... It's just crazy. I can't even fathom it. And then it's funny because I've watched him, he's been so protective of funds. He looks like he's the guardian of the money that people come in. This is a sacred stewardship for him. And so much like, their family literally lives in poverty. We chipped in and helped buy them a van because they brought home two Haitian kids they adopted and they needed a bigger car. And like he writes books to be able to fund things. He gets $0 salary from OUR. He also became the head of The Nazareen Fund for Glenn Beck. He's the CEO of The Nazareen Fund. So he's running these huge charities, huge organizations, gets $0 salary, but he writes these books so his family could eat. He does these different things. And so you got people coming in like, "Oh, he's just doing this to sell his books, all these things." He's just like- Matt: God bless him, man. Russell: "Literally I'm trying to feed my family and I'm working for free saving thousands of kids." And just like crazy- Matt: Going places nobody else will go. Russell: And so you see people attacking him. In Utah it's on the news. Like, "Oh..." It's just insane to me. And so it's like the more pure, the more good you're trying to do, it's like swimming upstream. And so it's just like, "Man, we need more of us. People like us who love, who understand, who care, who are on the same mission to help support and help push. Because I can't imagine swimming that stream by myself." You know what I mean? Male: It's easier not to get involved. Matt: Yeah, exactly. Male: It's easier to stay out of it and keep... Because once you get dug into that... Oh, just thinking about it just makes me sick. Female: How do you get involved? Male: Oh, there's so many ways and we'll talk about it after, but there's just... With Tim, here's what's crazy is, we've worked with OUR and the things that we did out here, and it's crazy how I heard stories about Tim that people would make up stories about how he's this person and he's involved in this and he's in... And you're like, "How sick." I mean, you're talking about satanic, like where people take somebody doing something so beautiful and you start hearing this person's involved in this. And somebody says something about me. And then I got one of the most powerful people in Arizona making a comment about me. And you're just like, "This is..." You're doing good, this guy's doing good. He sacrificed, he's put himself in harm's way. And it's disgusting. I was once asked by a reporter, they said... They tried to make me out to be conspiracy theorist about child sex trafficking. Of course it was never anything good. And they go, "Do you think anybody higher ups involved?" And I said, "Really? If you and I don't pay our taxes, do they send us a letter or they show up at our door, IRS?" Yeah. I said, "How does $150 billion industry go untaxed?" And he was just like, "Okay." And he changed the whole topic. The reporter didn't want to report on that. And then, they attack, they attack, they attacked. And from our rallies that we did last year, along with OUR, worked hand in hand with them, love, amazing. I had one of the guys from the Dream Center, one of the largest rehab centers come up to me just the other week. I met him at an event and he said, “Adel, I know who you are." And I was like, "Really?" He's like, "Yeah," he's like, "you have no idea just from doing what you guys did the amount of money that was donated to our center." I said, "Really? Because they were writing how bad we were for raising awareness about child sex trafficking." He said, "Man, we could have spent millions of dollars on marketing and withdrawn so much money." He's like, "I have to take you out." I said, "I don't want you to take me out." I said, "Thank God." I said, "You just made my night, man. That was the best thing I've ever heard that just..." And he was like, "No, you have no idea. I seriously can't even tell you how much money it brought in." He's like, Mommas Miracle Movement, started emailing all those people," I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "They changed everything." So, my point being is, it's easier not to get involved with child sex trafficking because you get in there and you start... One day before a rally, one of my family members got exploited on social media and it's crazy because it had never happened. And as you're doing a rally, thousands of people showing up raising money, doing this and that, next thing, you know what happens, it's somebody in my family. And I get a message... Matt: Yeah, he packs the rallies here, y'all. You need to go to one of his rallies, they're powerful, if you've ever been… Male: That's just evil. But I don't want to take away from what you're saying… But, God bless you, man, for fighting with them and doing everything. Because that's what we're doing, God's work at the end of the day and that's all you're going to do. Matt: Yeah. And it's exciting to see other people involved, young men out there. So what grabbed your heart on it? What was the initial like, "I'm going to do something. I'm not just going to stand back"? Russell: I didn't know about it. We were wanting to get involved, it kind of explained a little bit. And so, that night I remember going online and reading about it and watching some videos and stuff. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea that any of this was happening." And how can you not after you... I remember that night I was vlogging, I said to someone, I was like, "I'm pretty sure this is going to change the direction of my life forever." Matt: Did you feel that? Russell: Yeah. It was just like, "How can you not?" If your kid was taken, what would you do? I can't imagine that. When someone says something mean to my kids, I'm ready to go blow up the school, you know what I mean? Matt: Do you think it's going to come to a point... I agree. Do you think it's going to come to... The world has to shut down until we find these kids. In other words- Russell: Christ has to come again. Matt: Yeah. Russell: I mean, honestly. Matt: Yeah. Russell: Until he comes again, it's… do our best until... Anyway. Matt: But I'm talking in my life, where I'm talking about nothing about shutting, I'm talking about, where we all say... You know how if a child comes up missing everybody in the community will come together to where we say, "Okay, for the next 30 days, every veteran, every person that believes in children and our future, we're going to use every ounce of energy and focus to find these children because there's got to be a way. There's got to be a way, isn't there? Or are they just locked up? Is it just too hard?" Russell: I don't know. The most of it, it's tough because they don't... That was my big fear initially when I got involved with Tim. I was just like, "If somebody had stole my kid..." And he's like, "That's not how it works." He's like, "It happens sometimes." Because the traffickers don't want to pick a high profile person with a bunch of monies and they can search you and take you out. He's like, "The kids they exploit, because they take the ones that don't have parents, the parents don't have money. They don't have the resources. They can take them, there's not implications, because they just want to sell the kid. They make the money selling their product." So it's like they're not looking for... The people they go after, people that don't have a voice, they can't fight back. It's like that's where a lot of that stuff's happening. And it's the Americans who are flying to different places, different countries to where they can... Yeah, that's what's messed up. The Americans are the ones who are the- Matt: Do you think you'll ever go on a mission or- Russell: ... We're planning on going... I was supposed to go on one this year with them and then COVID hit and I've been nervous. Because that's the thing is like, you watched it on film and it's horrible. I can't imagine seeing the kids. I don't know. But at the same time, you'll get the work of the Village Impact. We donated money to Village Impact and then when I went there and experienced it, it changed me, man. It became part of me, you know what I mean? So part of me wants to do that because I feel like for me to be able to help next level, it has to… Yeah, you have to sit in the pain to be able to figure out a solution, as hard as that is. So I think I will, at some point. Matt: Did you feel the... Speaking of the Atlas, that's probably one of the things where Atlas, I felt that. Male: Yeah, I know I did. Matt: Yeah. And you, I mean, and I just wondered, like you said, you feel like you could do so much, and then you look at... You ever meet Jaco Booyens? Russell: Mm-mm (negative). Matt: Do you know who he is? He was on the White House Sex Trafficking Council. His sister was rescued. I think he rescued her after 26 years or something- Russell: Oh, wow. Matt: ... Something crazy, great guy. But he's been fighting for a long time. I remember when we first got into it, he was just like, "Man, you can literally want to do everything," but he's like, "you just have to focus on some part because there's so much to this." And I don't know, did you feel that too, as being involved? Because you feel like you're so powerful in a lot of things you can do when you talk about inspiring entrepreneurs, but how does it feel despite what do you- Russell: There's something like, whatever, two million children are done, it's like I think I said... When I met OUR they helped 1,000 kids. Now you have like four or 5,000- Matt: Think about that. 1,000 kids. Russell: ... And it's amazing being like two million. Matt: 1,000. So, there's still two million you're saying. Male: I really love how you're so open about your faith and it's really something that's evident in everything you do. So I just wanted to ask where that really comes from, in your life? Russell: A couple of things. One, yeah, I honestly believe it's true. So, that's important. Number two, I feel like if I don't acknowledge His hand in what's happening, like... And as a father now it's weird but I think one of the reasons why God has us be parents is because we get a little glimpse of ourselves. Like I look at my kids, I can give them everything in the world and like made, and all of something that I do it means the world. If I don't, it's just like, it hurts. And it's like, I feel like if I don't acknowledge the gifts, like, I don't think you have your gifts. You know what I mean? I'm a big believer that... I think all of us as we, especially in this entrepreneur world, but in all parts of life, it's like I'm looking for the next step and the ideas and things like that. And it's not something I'm remembering, it's like things are being handed. So it's like, where's that coming from? It's not my own. I never read a book that said this was the path, but it's showing up. Like the answer's there. It's coming from God. And I feel like God gives us ideas. And then we're either a good steward of those ideas or we’re bad. Like we take it and we do something with it, then he gives us more. And if we do something again, like it keeps moving forward. And it's just like, I feel like if we don't acknowledge Him, if we're not grateful for those things... I don't want those ideas to stop because then I'm troubled and I can't do my mission. Right? Male: Yeah. Russell: And it’s the mission he gave me, right? Tthat's a big part of it. Number two, I think that, for me, I think more people want to talk about it and they're scared of it. And I think when I do it, then I think more people feel empowered to do it. And then that's great because I think people should be, we all should be doing that. And there's so much negative talk and people talking about every horrible thing out in the world and no one's talking about God. Like that's messed up. Matt: Yeah, God is the coolest conversation. Russell: Yeah, so if I give other people permission to do it, because I have that effect of like, "Man, I can't believe you did that." Like, "I'm going to say something." Like, "Good. That's awesome. Let me be the bad guy if that's what it takes. I'm okay with that." So those are some of the things. And I don't know, I think it's interesting because like anything I do, I post anything related. There's always some people like literally messages, like, if you post about God, that's a hard out or something. I'm like, "Whatever. All right." But the majority is people like, "Thank you." Even if they're like, "I don't have the same beliefs as you, but thanks for... It's cool that you want to share it." It's rarely been negative. It's been really positive. So the more I do it, the more the positive comes from it. I'm like, "Okay, this is not a bad thing." And the same thing, I'm a big believer in this. So Christ in, I think the book of John said, "The mighty sheep will hear my voice. And they will follow me." And I think that's true for in all our businesses. For me, my sheep will hear my voice and they follow me. Your sheep will hear, it's okay. So, if I'm going to speak and someone's offended by me, doesn't listen, that's okay. They don't have to follow me, they're my sheep, right? Maybe they like Grant Cardone, go for it. If that's your flavor, go for it. I'm not called to serve you. I'm called to serve these people. And so if I'm not willing to talk about the things that are important to me, then my people aren't going to hear me. And so I think it's an eternal principle that Christ taught. And he had tons of people, they crucified him, they didn't love him. But he still shared the things that his sheep heard him. And they came to him and they followed him. And like all of us, we've each been called to serve a group of people. So it's like for those people, be you and your sheep will hear your voice and they'll come to you. And own it. So anyway, that's my beliefs. Male: Thank you. Matt: We're all World Changers. We want to do something big. What is one question or one thing that we need to know that we didn't ask, that you feel like you guys missed the ball? This is a good question. What do we not know that we don't know? Just the whole thing. Russell: Let me talk about the car on the way here. Like it's probably because I’m geeking out on this book right now, it's like my favorite book. But if you read Outwitting the Devil, it's like literally one of the greatest books of all time. Yesterday we talked about backstory of it. Do you guys know Napoleon Hill? Think and Grow Rich? Male: Oh, yeah. Russell: Think and Grow Rich. In 1929, 1930, he wrote this book called Outwitting the Devil. And it's a book where you literally... Well, literally in the book, he has this conversation with the devil asking him like, "How do you get people..." He calls them... "To become drifters? To fall away, to not have success? Like, what are you doing?" And it's like, he's got Satan, he's got the devil where he's like interviewing him like in a courtroom. And the devil has to answer every question he has. So he's asking these questions, like, "How do you do it? What's it look like?" And it's one of the most fascinating conversation of all time. Matt: It is. Russell: It's amazing. So it's crazy because he asked these questions and Satan's like... The devil literally says, "It's like 98% of the children, man, I control." He calls them drifters. He says, "Get people to drift. And after they drift, I control them, I own them." There's only 2% of people aren't drifters. He calls these people, people who have... I'm doodling in my new book. Yes, a definitive purpose. Perfect. He talks about Think and Grow Rich as well. But in this it goes deeper. So only 2% of the world has definitive purpose. They have a purpose moving forward is the plan. And the book's amazing because it's talking about... Like here's all this, right. And you've got two options, and it's fear and respect. So fear is what he uses to get us to become drifters. Like I'm afraid of being poor, being unhealthy, all these things. Six fears he uses to get somebody to shift and to become a drifter. And 98% of people are drifters, and 2% of people who have... Say it again? Male: A definitive purpose. Russell: And it's really important. And that's faith. So he talks about in every situation you can take fear or faith. And fear makes us the drifter. Faith makes us definitive purpose. So it's like that's the thing. And so it's fear and faith. And so every situation, think about just like... Not to get political or social, what's this... COVID, what's happened. Everyone comes, it's like fear or faith. Like that's the option everyone has. And if they take fear, what happens? But it's in all aspects. In marriage, in a relationship, in business, fear and faith is the thing. And every time you take fear, you become a drifter. And you take faith you're moving forward with definitive purpose, you have a success. And it's crazy because he talks about all the things he does to get people to shift into drifting and how to keep them there. And then the point he'll ask him, he's like, "Well, if someone is definitive purpose, are they free from your control?" The devil, he says, "No." He's like, "As soon as they're definitive purpose, they've got all sorts of tools to get them to become drifters." And one of these examples is, for example, they make a bunch of money that they're following their path. And then I get them to go start eating more. They're successful. They eat more and they gain more weight. They start getting unhealthy, losing their desire and they shift and become drifters. And I own them then. Or they have too much money. Or they get into sex or drugs or all these sort of things. And all the things he uses to get people who have definitive purpose to become drifters again. Male: Wow. Russell: And so, for me, I've been reading that. I read the book three or four times in the last couple of months. And I made diagram, all the things. What are all the things that he uses to make people become drifters? What are the things that I need to do to move to definitive purpose and what are all the temptations he uses? Because he go through all of that in the book. It's insane. And so, for me, it's like, "Okay, how do we get ourselves to the spot where, in every decision that we encounter, we move to faith and not fear?Because that's the thing. And it's- Female: Staying present. Russell: ... It's cool. Yeah. Matt: It's what? Female: It's staying present, in the moment, like realizing what you're thinking and then you have a choice. Russell: Yeah. Because most people, the default's fear. Female: Because you're in that path to the future. Russell: Yeah. Female: Anyway. Russell: It was like… how do we get our minds to the spot where we consciously choose moving forward to faith and not fear in all things? And how do we protect ourselves so that when we are and have definitive purpose of moving forward, trying to become World Changers, we're trying to do these things, we don't slip back over? As soon as you get some success... Someone came with this at dinnertime... Just like I've been doing this now 18, 19 years. And the amount of people in those years that have had successes and crashes, back and forth. Like there's not many people that have been doing this as long as me, because most of them, they have that success and then become drifters. It's insane. I can tell you hundreds and hundreds of people who I've seen on this road who are making insane amounts of money, very successful and then they're gone. Where are they at? Male: They're broke, or where did they go? Russell: Not here. Female: So Russell, it's your character, is that what you're saying? Russell: What's that? Female: Like your character that keeps you like that? Russell: Yeah, character and just consistently like not shifting to... Like understanding, like how do you not shift? How do you not quit? How does someone have a business making millions of dollars a year and then they're broke? You had all the skills, you had all the things. What are the things that he's doing with it that are keeping us from that? I think most time we're not aware of it. And that book was the best thing I've ever read. It keeps you aware of it. These are the things he's doing. Male: Wow. Female: What turns you off? Matt: Yeah, what turns you off, Russell Brunson? Russell: People that just want to make money. We used to do this, smaller events in a room. I would look in five minutes who would be successful and who wouldn’t. Like the questions they're asking. Like they're trying to make money, they rarely made money. They're there because like, "Hey I've got this cool product, here I am." I believe in this thing, it was like huge factors. You get the random ones who still make money and they do make money. But for the most part yeah, it's just, I don't know. I feel like it's such a gift. Like the entrepreneur personality type we have, it's like such a gift that can be used for good or for evil by so many... I don't know, so many people use it stupidly. They use it selfishly. Matt: Yeah, so was that amazing? Group: Wow. Matt: There's a lot of people that would love to spend this much time with Russell Brunson in this kind of an intimate setting. Just thank you, seriously, for all you poured out. Russell: You told me this was going to be the best podcast interview I ever did and it's made my day. Matt: You think so? Russell: You promised me that… Male: For an introvert this must have took a lot of energy. Matt: Okay, real quick, for those that maybe who were watching, real quick, describe just some... Next few minutes before we leave, like your experience in the streets of the homeless visits and what it was like for your boys to get to be around Caleb and all that? And just what was that like for you? Russell: Yeah, for those who know, we brought my twins who I love them, but man, they've been... Having teenagers has been like the challenge of my life so far. It's so much harder than business and so I try to figure this puzzle. In fact, I don't know... I haven't told you this yet. So have you guys read Shoe Dog? Group: Yeah. Russell: So yeah, by- Group: Phil Knight. Russell: ... Yeah. In the book, one of his sons hates him. You know what it's like. You talk about headaches. He refused to wear Nike shoes, he only wore Reeboks, all sorts of stuff. And then later, at 32, I think, died in a scuba diving accident. And at the end of the book, he finishes his life story. And he talks about the only regret he ever had in life was that he never figured out the puzzle of his son. Matt: Wow. Russell: And when I read that it hit me like, Dallin specificly. It's just like I had this kid, I love him. Like I remember praying and like everything I went through to be able to get him here and then all the years growing up in his spot now where I can't figure him out. I love him and I care about him. I want him to... And just like everything I had tried seems like it pushes it the opposite way and like trying to figure out this puzzle. And so for me, one, super grateful just because I saw Dallin light up so much around you, Caleb, you have no idea how much, internally, I am grateful to you for that. Seeing Bowen, my son who's traditionally more awkward and nervous and seeing him light up and trying to hypnotize people. He told me, he's like, "I think that I'm literally a better person because of this trip and it's all your fault. Anyway, so it was just special because like of all the... Like I say this almost every time I speak, no success can compensate for failure at home. And there's times where I'm like, "I'm failing in my home. I don't want to do. I can't figure out this puzzle." Like I've tried. Matt: Wow. Russell: I've gone through every parent report, everything. And I'm just like this just perplexed to the point where I just want to go hide in the office because I'm like, "This is so easy to do this." And anyway, I feel like just the last two days for me has been like... I feel like you're looking over my shoulder and helping me move the puzzle pieces around... Hey, I feel like there's hope again. I'm grateful for that. I think for them, it's really cool for them to see. I thought their experience was going to be more like, "Oh my gosh, we're homeless." But it was different than I thought, in a good way. Matt: Yeah. Russell: Like before I was like, after first night, I'm kind of walking away and saying, "How's this been for you?" Thinking he was going to be like, "Oh, it's freaky." He was like, "It's so cool that I want to give everyone here a hug." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh." I thought it was going to be so scary, like intense, whatever. But it was the opposite. And Dallin's a little more quiet about it. But you can see him... It was special. So yeah, that was that from the kid's side. And from my personal side, it was just... I think the last time I experienced something like this was on the mission 20 years ago when I was in Jersey knocking doors and spent time in Camden and some of these areas that were similar to this and it was just... And I haven't done that for- Matt: Brought back something. Russell: ... Yeah. And we used to knock on doors and go talk to people and spend... Bringing Jesus to drunk people, all the time, like so much fun. And that was the closest to experience that again. It was just I forgot how much I love that part. And I'm hoping for Dallin, because I don't want Dallin and Bowen someday going on missions and they'd be so scared of it. I was like, I wanted to explain, that's what we did for two years. Like it was that kind of stuff. And talking about God with people and like trying to share your beliefs. And it was just... Anyway, so it was kind of like deja vu, one of my happiest times of my life again, which was special. Anyway. Matt: Yeah, thank you for that. Guys, I'll say this real quick. I tell you I've met all the social media influence, all of it. This is the most real one out there, study him. I told Caleb, I was like, "Listen, you study Russell, no alternative, do what Russell says. It's not a joke. Study this man right here, because he's been..." The Bible talks about, "There is a man sent from God." He's sent from God for this generation. And you guys getting to be here is very special. So cherish this and thank you, man. You've changed my life as a dad, as a man. I'll never be the same, just these last two days with you, man. Just your example, just the way you let your light shine, just your wisdom, the way you carry yourself, your humility, your kindness. Just, you're such an inspiration to see. It's refreshing to see. And that's something I've always cherished as a dad because I don't like a lot of the fake that I see in the chase of success and the illusion of, everybody wants to be the next Gary V or whatever that is. You know what I mean? He's like, "Why would you want to do it?" But it's like, to me, you've been like the lighthouse in the ocean. You've been like that safe place that I could grab my son. That's why I got into funnel hacking life because it was like, "Yes, this is the one event that's pure. It's real. It's fresh. And the leader of it's real." And even like you come in here, dude, and going to the homeless with us, man, didn't he? I mean, this guy's... Dude, your time alone, there's no telling what an hour is worth to you. So all the time that you invested, thank you so much, man. Seriously. You guys agree with that? Group: Yeah. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part three of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you've been enjoying this series so far. This is The Roundtable of World Changers, a conversation I had with Matt and Caleb Maddix, and a whole bunch of young entrepreneurs, who are literally out there trying to change the world. This is part three of a four part episode, because the conversation went for three or four hours. And so, this episode's also going to be about 40 minutes long, and it's the next set of questions they asked me. And if you've listened to the last two, you know that these guys ask a lot of questions, in a lot of different directions, and angles, and went all over the place. And I think this time is probably 01:00 or 02:00 in the morning. And so, the questions started going from everywhere, from business, to relationships, to families, and a whole bunch more. So I hope you enjoy this next episode. Here's some of the bullet points of things you're going to learn about. We talked about the 10 commandments of marketing. I talked about my very first mentor, and a thing he taught me, not just to make money in the short term, but how to build a business that now has lasted me for almost two decades. I talk about one of my friends and mentors, Daegen Smith and something that he taught me. It was so simple, yet it's been the key to help me get thousands of people a day to join my email list. We talked about leadership, delegation, scheduling. We talk about, as you're building a team, understanding people's unique abilities. Talked about how much time you spend thinking about the future. Talked about proximity with billionaires. We also talked about how to balance your business and married life, so you can be a good husband and a good father, which is something that I stress about all the time. We talked about a principle that I learned from Stacey and Paul Martino, that has been one of the most powerful things I've learned, which is called demand-relationship. I talk about that. We talk about some relationship tricks, for those who are either married or getting married. Some of the newlyweds, and the engaged couples, were asking some questions about that. Hopefully I don't get in trouble for sharing some of my tricks. We talked about knowing what your values are, and your priorities. Talked about being vulnerable, and being honest, versus staying positive through challenges. We talked about some of the biggest principles and things I learned from Tony Robbins, including how to change your state whenever you need to. And we talked about my 12 year relationship with Tony Robbins, and all the things behind that. We talked about... I don't want to spoil any more. You guys, this is a fun interview. And hopefully, you've been enjoying these so far. So with that said, we're going to cut to the theme song. When we come back, we're going to take you guys immediately back into this conversation. This is, again, The Roundtable of World Changers, part three of four. Matt Maddix: Let's say there was a Russell Brunson 10 commandments. You know how God had one. Russell: Thou shall build a list. Matt: Yeah. How high is this in the 10 commandments? Russell: My first mentor, Mark… Matt: And what would be some of the Russell Brunson... Let's come up with some of them. Like, "Thou shalt..." Russell: We need some stone tablets. Matt: "To all the funnel hackers, thou shalt and thou shall not." I want to hear- Russell: That would be a fun presentation, actually. Matt: Yeah, that would be, actually. Caleb Maddix: That would be. Russell: That would be cool. Matt: Dude, you need to do that. Russell: Come back from the mountain, we have 10 things. Matt: Yeah, seriously. Caleb: Wow. That'd be awesome. Matt: No, the five 'thou shalts', and like, "Thou shall..." and then- Russell: "Thou shall..." Matt: ..."Thou shall not, no matter what..." What would some of those be? Russell: That could be a really cool presentation, actually. Well, so I would say, in my first venture was Mark Joyner, and he was the one... So in context, in history, 18 years when I started, Mark Joyner... I don't think it's probably known. He's brilliant. But he built a company, and sold it off. And at the very end of his career as a coach person, I got to meet him and get to know him a little bit. But I remember, at that time, Google AdSense was this thing that came. And so, if any of you guys are old enough, just try and remember the Google AdSense days. It was insane. They were software. You click a button on software, it would pop out of site, pop out another site. And these sites would make anywhere from 100 to $1000 a day. And you just keep clicking this button, it would pop out another site. And so, people were making $1 million a month. They had teams in the Philippines, that these guys just clicking the button to build the software. It was just... But it was all fake. But it was tons of money. Insane amounts of money. I had friends making so much money. And shiny object, very shiny object, the most sexy shiny object of all time. You click a button, you can make $1 million. That was it, that was the pitch. And it was true. Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: For so... Everyone I knew. Can you imagine that? Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: If I go back in time, 18 years ago, I would move to the Philippines, I would hire everybody, and we would just click buttons. And I would've been- Caleb: Wow. Russell: ...a billionaire. It was- Caleb: Wow. Russell: It was insane. That's how Google got people adopting the AdSense program. So people would put ads on every single site, every single everything. And so, I'm getting in this game, I'm seeing this, and I'm morons making insane amounts of money. And I was like, "Ah!" And Mark had just become my mentor, the very first time, and he's like, "That's going to go away. Focus on building a list." I'm like, "But this guy's a moron. He made $1 million last month clicking a button. No strategy, no brains, no nothing." He's like, "I know, but it's going to go away. Focus on building a list." I'm like- Matt: Wow. Russell: But- Matt: Seriously? Russell: "He's clicking a button. Building lists is hard." He's like, "Build a list." I'm like... And I remember fighting him and fighting him, he's just like, "Dude, trust me. I've been on cycle. It's going to go away. Just focus and focus." And I was so upset, but I listened because I do that. One thing I pride myself on, I'm very coachable. Coach tells me something, I do it. I obey all giants with helicopters and stage presence. Matt: I love it. Russell: They tell me to do it, I do it, right? So I was like, "Ah, but there's free money in piles-" Matt: Even when it's hard- Russell: "All right." Matt: ...you do it. Russell: So I did it. And sure enough, I was doing that, and doing that, within six months, this things collapsed, disappeared, destroyed people's lives. Because you're making $1 million a month clicking buttons, what do you do? Especially as a young kid. Matt: Spending that much money. Russell: You're buying Lambos, and Ferraris, and helicopters, and pilots, and girls, and insane amounts of money. And then it disappears overnight. Devastating, ruined these guys, ruined them, so many people. Matt: There’s no skill behind that at all. Russell: Yeah. And I had a list, and I just coasted through it. Right? And I've looked at the SEOs, every single up and down, up and down, through the years, and I just listened to Mark and just focused on building my list, focused on building it, and- Matt: So you still feel that as strong today, as when you heard it? Russell: 100%. Matt: Even then. Russell: 100%. That’s one of our KPIs. How many people doing lists today? Every single day. Matt: Really? Everyday? Russell: Everyday. Because I did it for a long time- Matt: Even now, you're saying? Russell: 100%, everyday. John Parkes everyday sends me a number. “How many people joined our list yesterday?” That’s all I want to know. Caleb: What's your guys' email open rates? Russell: It fluctuates. 20 ish percent. Caleb: Okay. Russell: Around there. But it was funny because I remember, I had forgotten that lesson after a while. And if you guys know Daegen Smith, Daegen, he's getting back in the game now. He's brilliant. But I remember I had a list, and I was my money off of it. I wasn't focusing on it. And I remember he asked me a question, he said, "How many..." It wasn't, "How many people are on your list?" Because that's what most people ask, "How big's your list?" But he asked me a different question, which input output, right? Matt: Yeah. Russell: The question was, "How many people joined your list today?" And I was like, "I don't know." He's like, "Go look right now." I'm like, "Okay." So I log in, and look at the thing, it was like 12. And I was like, "12?" And I was like, "Is that good or bad? I don't know." And he's like, "Let me show you mine." And he showed me his, and it was like 1400. And I was like, "You had 1400 people join today?" He's like, "Yeah." "Wait, how'd you do that?" He's like, "I just look at it everyday. And when I look at it everyday, somehow it grows." And I was like- Matt: Wow. Russell: "Okay." So then, everyday, after I log in and look at my thing, it was like 12, I'm like, "Ah." In my head, I'm like, "Fricken Daegen had 1400. I only 12." Caleb: Yeah. Matt: Wow. Russell: And also, I was like, "What do I do to get people to join the list?" Matt: Yeah, start optimizing. Russell: And then, your mind starts thinking differently, and all of a sudden you start focusing on it. And it's crazy. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs, that have been in my world, who have gone up and then come down. And what happens, mostly, is they do something, they build a big list, they stop adding fuel to the fire, they have this list, they sell things to the list, the list atrophies, and eventually starts shrinking and dying. And then, they don't know how to build lists, the business crashes and dies. Matt: I hope you guys are really listening. Really. I mean, he's- Caleb: That's powerful. Matt: ...saving your life right now. Russell: The question, the goal, every single day, is that, because it's a fuel to your fire. And what happens was you stop putting fuel on the fire, and it doesn't die immediately. So you're like, "Oh, I've turned off Ads, so I'm good. But I'm just going to focus on emails, let's focus that." But just every email you send out, your list atrophies, shrinks, dies. And then, eventually, it'll just die. And so, yeah, if you're not consistently, constantly feeding the list, every single day- Matt: And once you have the list, what's the biggest mistake people make with their list? Russell: They don't email it. Matt: Yeah. Russell: They're scared to... You think it's too much emails. It's not, it's the opposite. It's that they don't email. Caleb: Okay. Russell: Minimum of three times a week. Closer to everyday. Matt: Wow. Russell: If you talk to Daegen, it's twice a day, everyday. Matt: Really? Caleb: What other KPIs do you have sent to you every single day? Russell: I want to know how much we made yesterday, striped. Because first off, it's cool to know. Caleb: Yeah. Russell: But second off, also it's like, I want that number to be bigger everyday. So it's like, actual money in the thing, how many people joined the list today, and how many books are sold, how many ClickFunnels members. Those are the ones for me. Our teams have other KPIs they focus on. But those are the ones I care about. Matt: So out of 30 days, when you hear the numbers, how often are you pissed and how often are you like, "Yeah."? Russell: Nowadays, it's always pretty good. Matt: Nowadays, it's like, "Woo." Russell: Because it might go up or down a little bit, but the numbers are big enough, that it's just like, "That's so crazy." I remember... Anyway. I remember just the growth of ClickFunnels, because you know Stripe dings every day with your numbers. I remember when we started going, it got to the point where it's like $10,000 a day, I was like, "$10,000 a day is insane. That's just so cool." And then, it got to a point where it's like $20,000 a day, and then 30, and then $50,000 a day, and then $100,000 a day, and then 150, then 200, 250, 300. I'm just like, "This is insane to me, that this is a daily thing that come..." it was just... Anyway, that's when it got just weird. And it makes me mad because Todd made a commitment to me, that as soon as we passed $500,000 a month in sales, he'd move to Boise. Matt: And he didn't yet? Russell: No. So... Matt: You were out of there already. Russell: And then, I was like, "Well, we have $500,000 a day." And then, he still hasn't come. So I don't know. Some day. Do you think Todd will ever move to Boise? Speaker 4: Plus I'm curious if I could pop in to ask a question. Russell: Yeah, feel free. Speaker 4: I've always wanted to ask someone of your stature, that's done as much as you have, impacted as much people as you have, and really built the business that you have. So I'm curious on your take on leadership, building a team, delegating, and your schedule and how you go about scheduling your day, and prioritizing what's important for you, as a business owner, and what you delegate to your employees and their responsibilities as well. So leadership, delegating, and scheduling. Russell: Good question. It's interesting because I would say I'm not the best leader on my team, by any stretch. And so, it was interesting because I spent the first four or five years with ClickFunnels as the CEO, trying to do my best with it. But it wasn't my unique ability, is leadership. I feel like I'm good at leading a community, but I struggle a lot more with employees and teams, internally. And so, about a year ago or so, I handed the reins to Dave Woodward, to be the CEO of ClickFunnels. And he's been amazing. Man, what he's done inside the company has been awesome. And I think a big part of it is understanding, at least for me personally, I was trying to be a leader, and trying to develop that, but I wasn't the best at it. And I think sometimes we think it's always got to be us. Like, "It's my company, I got to be the CEO. I got to be the leader. I got to do these things." It's understanding that a lot of times there's people who are really good. Who's the best you could find to be that? Or any part of our business. You know what I mean? It's a big part of it. The second thing is, if you've studied Dan Sullivan at all, one of his biggest things is unique ability. That's the thing. What's your unique ability? What's everybody's unique ability? And I think when you start a company, it's tough because it's like everyone's in charge of everything, right? I'm the CEO, but I'm also taking out the garbage, I'm also doing... everyone's Speaker 4: Yeah. Russell: ...doing a little bit of everything, which is cool. When you're scrappy in the beginning, that's important, and everyone's doing that. But as you grow, that starts hindering you more and more and more, where we had people who are insanely talented, who if I could just get them doing this thing, 100% of the time... And that's when it got to the point with ClickFunnels, is that my unique abilities are writing, are being in videos, are building funnels, doing the... Those things are my unique abilities. Caleb: Engineering. Russell: Yeah. And I was spending maybe 10% of my time on that, and 90% of the time in meetings, and trying- Matt: Wow. Russell: ...coordinate people, and leadership. And it was stressful and it was hard. Matt: And you were draining. You were probably drained doing that. Russell: Yeah. And I was miserable, that was just... I wasn't good at it. Not feeling good, like, "Ah, I'm not getting through to people. I can't figure this out." But I felt like I had to own, I had to be the guy, I had to do the thing because this is my baby, this is my business. And the last 12 months has been crazy, because I handed it to someone who actually is good at that, that is his unique ability. And I'm watching company structure, and meetings, and KPIs, things that I was never super good at doing, and consistently having it all happening now. And now, I'm in the marketing department again, and I'm building funnels. People are like, "What do you do all day?" I'm literally in ClickFunnels, building funnels. "No, but you have funnel builder..." No, I'm literally in ClickFunnels, building funnels. I didn't start this business because I wanted to be a CEO of a big huge company. I did it because I love building funnels. I'm an artist, when it comes down to it, this is my art. Matt: Wow. Russell: And that's what I get to do now. And it's amazing. So Dan's got Fridays we book out, and we spend videos, he's got a whole bunch of YouTube videos, we film five or six YouTube vlogs last week, on Friday. So we have that times blocked out to do that, right? I'm writing my next book right now, so I've got my mornings blocked out to write books, because that's when my mind's got not a million things so I can do that. And then, after morning comes in, after I do my wrestling practice, I come in. And that's my teams there, and that's when we're building funnels. I got my designer and my copywriter, the people, and I get to facilitate that. And I feel like the... What's the guy in the orchestra, the maestro? Caleb: Conductor? Russell: Yeah, like I'm the conductor, I'm conducting all these talented people. And everyone's bringing... And I'm alive, and it's exciting. And at night, I can't sleep, because I'm excited again. And so, I think that's the biggest thing, is taking the pressure off yourself if you're not the best leader. That's okay. What are you the actual best at? And success, in business, I think, at least for me, I always thought I had to be the best at everything. And it's the opposite, where it's like, "How do you focus on the thing you're best at? And get the rest of the people around you." Speaker 4: Yeah. And it gets- Matt: And it's... You had to have been willing to let go of your ego, man. Or you wouldn't have been able to grow so much. If you try to do it all yourself... Caleb: So I have a question. How much time do you spend actually thinking about the future? Because it seems like, from what you've told us, you're very dialed in and obsessed on the process, and that's how you've gotten to where you are, up to this point, because you're in love with the game. How much of your time do you spend thinking about the future, and what's on the horizon next year, five years, 10 years? Does that cross your mind? Or what does that look like? Russell: It's interesting, I can't remember who was talking to about this... The further out you look, the fuzzier it gets. You know what I mean? And so, I think for me, it's like we have... I know where I want to go, but the in between is really, really fuzzy, right? It's hard to know. And so, it's like I know... For me, the last big boat was $100 million, the next one's a billion. So we know there's the thing. But it's so far from... I don't know the steps to get there. You know what I mean? And so, for me, it's more like, "Well, here's where we're at." In fact, that was my... We had a chance, last month, to go spend a day with Tony Robbins, and we each had a chance to ask him one question. So that was literally my question, just like... Matt: What was your question? Russell: My question... It'll be a blog soon. Not yet though. No, but it was basically like, "We've gotten to this point, and I know to get to the next goal, the things we've been doing are great and they got us to this point, but I have to think differently to here. I don't know how to think differently. How do you think... It's not another book I'm... Is it a book? How do I think differently?" And what Tony said, that was... it's a very... He said a lot of things, but one of the big things was like, "Proximity is power," like, "You have to be in proximity with people who have already accomplished the thing that you're trying to do." And it was interesting because I look at the path of how I grew ClickFunnels, I did that 100%. I was like, "All right, who are the..." and we found the people, got proximity, and then grew it to this point. So eventually, we kind of coded out of the people who I was aware of. So I asked Tony, I'm like, "Well, where would you go to?" And he's like, "Well, if it was me," he's like, "Who's built the billion dollar company?" He's like, "Marc Benioff." And he started naming all these different billionaires. And this and that, all these things. And I was just like, "I never even assumed those people could... I could be..." it seems so far away. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's..." Having a proximity to those people, and start thinking differently, because I don't know the journey but they've done it. Because someone in our world, and like, "How do [inaudible 00:16:13]?" I'm like, "This is literally a 13 minute project. There you go. [inaudible 00:16:16]." It's like I've done it so many times, it's not hard, right? But for them, it's like this is the rocket science to figure it out. And then the same way with these guys who have built billion dollar companies. So now it's trying to proximity to those people, and trying to get around them, and trying to figure out the journey. So the first thing we did, literally, I got out with Tony, Tony gave the answer to the question, and I knew the first guy I needed to get into proximity with. So I texted Dave, Dave called him up, we brought him on retainer. And now, we've got him an hour a week, to get on the phone with him and just ask him all of our questions. And have him introduce us all the different players at that next level. So a lot of it's that. Dave, who's the CEO, was very focused on all the... He's very much like, "Okay, first, to get to this goal, we have to have everyone here, here, here. These are the percentages, the numbers, all the..." Those things stress me out, I hate spreadsheets. He's always got spreadsheets. But he comes back with all the spreadsheets, I was like, "All I need to know from you is... Because I'm going to be building a funnel. What's the goal? What do you need from me to be able to do that?" He's like, "We need more ClickFunnels trials." Like, "Done. I can... Okay. That's where I'm going to focus my energy." And then, it's like, now I can creative on that piece, because I know this is the metric that I can do, with my skillset, to drive it. And everybody's got a metric, right? The traffic team, everybody's got a metric. But for me personally, it's like the only thing I actually affect in a short term, micro, and then I can focus all the creativity and effort on that, while trying to figure out how to shift my mind set to be bigger, to... Caleb: If Marc Benioff offered you $1 billion for ClickFunnels, what would you say? Speaker 4: Good question. Russell: I'd ask him for five. Matt: Good response! Rob: Can I ask you a question, outside of business? Matt: You asking a question? Oh. Rob: Yeah. Matt: Oh, go ahead. Rob: So I remember you were talking about your wife earlier, with how you wanted to get her the couch. Me and my fiance actually met at ClickFunnels, at your event. Matt: Yeah. Rob: So- Matt: ClickFunnels wedding. Russell: No way. Rob: So what I'm curious about is- Russell: Am I going to be the best man at the wedding? Caleb: I told you, you've got to come, I'm like, "You've got to invite Russell." Rob: So what I wanted to ask you is, obviously you run a nine figure company, and there's a lot that goes into that, how do you balance with, let's say, number one, your wife and then your kids as well? And then, what is your secret to a really successful marriage, that's worked for you? Matt: Dude, what- Rob: I think that's something that many entrepreneurs have good marriages that don't really get asked about. So I was just curious about that. Matt: Yeah. Russell: So I hear three questions in there, right? So balance, happy wife... What was... There was a third one? Caleb: Kids. Rob: Yeah, just balancing it, running a company. I mean, you do all these things, you also have a wife, you have kids. Russell: Yeah. So I would say a couple things. So number one is balance is this thing that we all, for some reason, in our mind, we all seek after. But everything great in my life has come from times of radical imbalance. When I wanted to become a wrestler, I wasn't a great wrestler because I was balanced, it was because I became radically imbalanced in that thing. Matt: Dang. Russell: It became the most important thing in my life, and everything else suffered. But I had to do it to be considered successful. When I met my wife, we didn't create a great relationship because we were balanced, I became radically imbalanced. And all my time and effort and focus was on her. And that's why it became great. ClickFunnels, same way. We built ClickFunnels, I was not balanced. We had to become radically imbalanced for a season, to focus actually to get... So that's the thing to understand. In anything great in life, you can't do it in a point of balance. It's radical imbalance that causes greatness. Matt: And that's golf. Russell: And so, you got to be okay with that. But it can't be for forever. It's got to be something that goes, and it comes and goes. Because people who get radically imbalanced for a long time, they can lose their family, they can lose their kids. Rob: Was there a point where you had to tell your wife, "Hey, this is what I really want to do."? Russell: A lot. She had to- Rob: And she had to just- Russell: ...be on board with- Rob: ...get on board. Russell: She had to get on board, yeah. And if she wasn't, I had to say, "Okay, what's more important?" If it was her, then I had to say no to that. And there's been many opportunities in my life I've had to say no to. Rob: What's that dynamic like, being that guys are together, just as far as working out just normal little things? Russell: So I- Rob: Just decisions, those kind of things. Russell: Yeah, well, marriage, you're going to find out, it's hard. Just so fully aware. No one told me that, going into it. I was like- Matt: Yeah. Russell: I was like, "This is going to be amazing. This is going to be the greatest thing in the world." And it is, it's awesome. But man, it is way harder than I thought. Rob: Just to be a person. Russell: Yeah, someone's... I, actually, I would highly recommend Stacey and Paul Martino have a course that my wife and I have gone through the last year, and it's amazing. There's a principle they teach about demand-relationship. If you just go through their... They have a 14 day quick start, it's like $100. But if you just learn the principles of demand-relationship, what they teach. The biggest game changer in a relationship I ever... Of all the things I've studied... Rob: Why? Russell: It is amazing. Rob: What was your take-away? Russell: The principle of demand-relationship is that, throughout history and society, the way that most of us get things done is that... So in a relationship, there's a power player, and there's someone less, right? And if I want my wife to do something, I'm going to demand, like, "I need you to do these things." Right? And that works, until the other person has the ability to leave. So prior to divorce being a thing, men, throughout history, have had a dominant relationship over women. They used to manage and get what they want, and women couldn't leave. And so, it was a horrible thing, right? But they couldn't leave. As soon as divorce happened, boom, it started happening. Right? When parents come over to their kids and give demand-relationship, as soon as the kids are able to leave, it breaks. And then, breaks his relationships. And so, that's the problem, is that for the last 5000 years, that's been our DNA, that men force women to do these different things. And that's what the demand-relationship is. Their whole training, their whole course, everything they teach is the opposite of demand-relationship. How do you create a relationship, where transformation happens through inspiration, not through demanding, and chasing. And it's tough because, for all of us, especially men, it's been so ingrained in our DNA that if we want something, we... That's how we do business, how we do things. But in a relation, especially an intimate relationship, it's the worst thing that could possibly happen. And that's what we all do. So it'd be worth... I'm hoping she writes a book some day, because it's... In my new book, I have a whole chapter, actually, teaching her framework on in demand-relationship. What's that? Rob: Were you high school sweethearts? Russell: College, we met in college. Rob: So she was with you before you started... Russell: Yeah. Rob: ...and had the huge success- Russell: Yeah. Rob: ...basically. Russell: Yeah. Rob: What was that transition like, from you guys, I guess, being... struggling, and you guys stay together- Matt: Good questions, Rob. Rob: ...to now- Russell: His mindset's on this. Rob: Yeah. Russell: Going into it. Rob: What is that like? I'm just curious, because I mean people don't really talk about this, I guess, a lot. Caleb: Relationship genius. Russell: Yeah. And it's different, because some relationships, both the people are in the business, some aren't. My wife's not involved in the business at all. She... Rob: Oh, okay. Russell: ...doesn't understand it, and she doesn't want to be part of it. And that's okay. It's like sometimes that's been the biggest blessing for me, sometimes it's been hard. Caleb: Yeah. Russell: Right? Sometimes I see the power couples, who are both in the business, and it's really, really cool. But I ask them, and they're like, "Sometimes it's a great blessing, sometimes it's really hard." So there's pro's and con's both ways. But I think the biggest part is just, this has been good for our relationship, and at first we didn't always have this, but it was like... Just figuring out how to get... You both have to have that same end goal, otherwise you're fighting against each other, right? And so, when we were building ClickFunnels and stuff, it was hard at first, because she didn't really... She's like, "What are you guys doing? You spend all this time and..." didn't understand it. And it was tough because I was trying to explain it. And luckily, for me, is that Todd was part of this too, and his wife was kind of struggling. So they had each other to kind of talk through it. But it wasn't until the very first Funnel Hacking Live, where... Because my wife had never been to one of my events before, anything we'd really... She knew what kind of we did, but not really. And she came to Funnel Hacking Live, the very first one. And she didn't come down at first, because she didn't realize what was happening. And she was doing some stuff, and then, she came down with one of her friends and walked in the back of the room, and saw all the stuff. And she started just crying. She was like, "Oh, this is what you're... I had no idea this is what was happening, and what was..." And then, it became real for her. And that was such a huge blessing for me, because now, the next time, it was like, "We have to work hard for this." Or, "We're planning for..." whatever, she was able to see this is the fruits, and like, "Oh, that's why you're doing it." Now, if you notice, my wife's, every Funnel Hacking Live, front row. She doesn't understand a word we're saying, but she's there, she's paying attention, because she's like, "Look at all the people, and their lives are changing, and impacting." And now, it's different, where when I got to do work, work late nights, or whatever, she sees the vision, and she's on board with it. So it makes so much easier. The other secret I learned is if I tell her, if it's like 05:00 at night, I'm like, "Crap, I got to stay late tonight." And I call her at 05:00 at night, nothing good can come from that. It's better if you just go home, right? If I know Wednesday night, I'm going to be working late, I tell her Monday. Like, "Hey, Wednesday night, there's a good chance I'm going to be late." And then, if I tell her that, she's totally cool with it, right? But you don't tell them the day of. It'll destroy your marriage more than anything. Matt: That's good wisdom. Russell: The other secret, this secret don't put on camera, I don't want my wife to... Matt: Is that right? Russell: Yeah, if I have any inclination that people are coming to town, or something's happening, I always like, "Just so you know, next week, Matt and Caleb are coming to town. There's a good shot we might go to dinner at night, just so you're fully aware." And she's like, "Cool." And then, it's fine. The other secret, this is the real one. So don't share this outside this room. Speaker 4: This is the off camera one. Russell: Yeah. So especially after... For my wife and I... So we started having kids, the same time I started this business, right? And so, I'm traveling, I'm going to events. And she's at home with the kids. And so, we never traveled before, so I'm going on these vacations, I'm meeting these cool people, I'm in hotel rooms. So every night, I'm getting back, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And I'm like, "Okay, I met so and so, and then..." all these things I'm so excited, so pumped about these things. And I'm telling her about stuff, and she's at home with twin babies, miserable, tired, horrible, feet hurt, body hurt. And I'm out having the time of my life. Matt: Yeah. Russell: And I'm thinking she's going to be pumped for me, right? Matt: Right. Russell: No. And for probably a year or so, I was just like... And then, one day, I remember I'm at some event, and I get cornered by people. And then, introverted Russell's like... anxiety, and it was horrible. And somebody cornered me in the bathroom, and asking me questions while I'm peeing. And it wasn't even... At least, sometimes, most of the time, they fake pee next to you, so at least it's not awkward. He was sitting next to me, watching me pee. I'm like, "Can you at least fake pee?" And so, anyway... It was so bad. And I got home that night, and I call her on the phone, and I was just like, "It was horrible." I went off about how horrible it was, and I was miserable. And she's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." But then, she was cool. It was awesome. And I was like, "I didn't get in trouble." And so, the next time I went out, I got home that night, call her, I was like, "Oh, it was horrible. My feet hurt, my back hurts." Anyway, and I've told so many people this, entrepreneurs and friends, who do that, and they shift... Because they don't want to hear you're having this... Anyway, is this truly good or not? I don't know. It saved my marriage. Matt: Is it true? Russell: Literally saved my marriage, and it saved so many of my friends, who… so many of friends, who had the same thing. They want to hear the stories, but not in the moment. When you come back home later, you tell the stories, they love it. But in the moment, when they're miserable, and you're having fun, it is not... First time with Tony Robbins, when I walked on fire, I call her that night, I'm like, "I just walked on fire. Waaa!" And I hear the kids screaming in the background, and she was angry. And I was like, "Huh." And I'm like, "Cool, I'm sending you to walk on fire next month." I sent her to walk on fire, and then she was on fire. But it was like... Caleb: She's like, "No." Russell: Later, she wants to hear, but not in the moment, because it's just like... Anyway, so- Rob: Yeah. Russell: ...that was- Rob: Makes sense. Russell: ...life changing for... Anyway, so... And then, the other thing is just you have to understand what your values are. I learned this from Tom Bilyeu at a level that was fascinating, recently. But- Caleb: Who was that? Russell: Tom Bilyeu, he runs Impact Theory. Caleb: Oh, okay. Rob: Impact Theory. Caleb: Gotcha. Russell: But he writes out his values, but he prioritizes them. So his number one value is his wife, number two... And he has the values written out. And so, when a conflict comes in place, or he gets asked to speak at a huge event, speak for the Queen of England, or whatever, but it's the same weekend as his wife wants something. He's like, "My wife trumps the value... 100%, she trumps it. So the answer's no, and it's not hard for me to say no." Caleb: Wow. Russell: And so, it's figuring it out for yourself. What are your values? Personally, with your family, the wife, everything like that. And you define them, and then it's like there's no question. That's what hard, is when you value something here, and your spouse values something differently, and the conflict of that is what causes the fights, right? But if you get on the same page, like, "Look, this is number one, two..." You have these things, then it makes it easier to navigate those things, because it's like, "No, I understand this is one of the values we have together, as a couple, you should go do that thing." Or whatever the thing might be. So anyway... Caleb: That's awesome. Russell: But marriage is one of the hardest things, but one of the most rewarding things, at the same time. So it's worth it, but it's a ride. Go through demand-relationship, man. That's- Rob: That's a great point. Russell: ...so good. Speaker 4: I got a question. Rob: Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 4: So two big things that I heard from you, amongst your story, you were talking this positivity. When you were doing great at something, or you learned something, you're so excited about it, you're so positive, but then there's this other part of you that's very vulnerable. Russell: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Speaker 4: And so, you experience anxiety, or you have challenging days, or you're discouraged. How do you find the balance between those, of being vulnerable and being honest with how you're feeling, versus, "Hey, this is a challenge. I'm an entrepreneur, I can overcome this."? Matt: Right. Speaker 4: What's the balance? Russell: Yeah. That's good. One of the... Everyone who's met Tony has a story about how Tony's changed their life. But one of the biggest things that I... There's three or four things that I got from Tony, the very first time I went to his event and I heard him speak, that had a huge impact on me. One of the biggest ones was state control, understanding that. Have you ever heard him talk about the triad and things like that? Speaker 4: Yeah. Russell: I'd never heard that before, and I remember watching him do these things on people in the audience. And it was fascinating. He took a lady, who was... He picked somebody in the audience who was suicidal, and he's like... It was the weirdest thing. And he talked about the triad, right? There's three things that change your state, right? There's your language, there's your focus, and there's your physiology, right? So he takes someone, he's like, "I need someone who's suicidal." He takes this beautiful girl. I remember, we were up in Toronto, so then he takes this girl, and he's like, "I need you to get depressed. Not a little bit depressed, clinically suicidal." She's like, "What?" He's like, "Just get there in your mind. Whatever it takes, get dark." And you see her state change, right? And he keeps pushing her, and keep pushing her, and he gets her to this point. And anyway, it's crazy I'm watching this. And I'm kind of freaking out, because I'm watching him do this to this girl, getting her to a point... And soon, she's bawling her eyes out and everything. And he's like, "You got to get deeper. Get darker. More miserable." All this stuff. And you see him change this girl's state. And all of a sudden it stopped. And finally, it seemed like forever, finally he stops and he's like, "Everyone look at her. Watch her. Look at this." He's like, "What do you notice? What's her physiology?" You see her body, you see tears, and all this stuff. And you see her just broken. And then, he's like, "What do you say?" And he goes through the whole triad with her. And he shows that. And he's like, "Now I'm going to show you how quickly you can shift this." To the point where it's like... Anyway, it was crazy. And then, he shifts it, and he starts taking her back through, shifting the physiology, shifting her shoulders, shifting everything, shifting her meanings, shifting focus, shifting what she's saying. And he gets this girl, within three or four minutes, to literal ecstasy, it was crazy watching this. And you see her, where she's laughing... the opposite side of it. And I'd never seen somebody like that, the flip of emotions, how easy it was, by just shifting these three things in her. And it had such a profound impact on me. Caleb: Is there video of that? Russell: Not maybe the one I saw, but he does it at every UPW, he does it... I'm sure there's YouTube videos of it, as well. But if you type the triad, I think he calls it the triad or state control, things like that, you see it happen. But I saw that, and I was just like, "Oh my gosh, I never realized that we had control over that. I thought my feelings were my feelings." Like, "Here's your feeling." Like, "Okay, crap, this is the feeling I have today." And after experiencing that, I was like, "I could actually change this." I didn't know that. And it's interesting because I think sometimes when we're depressed, or we're sad, or we have these things, I think some of us like it. I've had times before, I don't want to be happy. I'm enjoying feeling miserable. And sometimes, I sit in there because I enjoy, because we do, it's weird. It's messed up. But I felt that. I'm like, "I could change this but I don't want to." But other times, I'm like, "I have to change it." Now that I've learned that. It's crazy you can shift your state, and you can do that and show up the way you need to be. And one practical example of how I use it a lot is, when I get home at the end of the night... And this kind of comes back to your question, I think, earlier, too. How do you do all the things? And I told you this yesterday. One of the things that I got the biggest, from being around Tony Robbins, the most impressive thing about him is when... Tony's got... As busy as any of us are, take that times 10, and that's Tony, right? He's the most busy person ever. But if you have a chance, a brief moment with Tony, where he's going to say a million things, and you have a second with him, he is the most present person I've ever met. The world dissolves around it, and it's just him and you, and there's nothing else. You can tell. And he's just zoned in on you, and it's this magical experience. And as soon as it's done, he's just gone, he's on the next thing. But that moment, he's hyper-present. And so, for me, when I'm doing things, it's like... Like, when I get home at night, at the end of the day, park my car, I walk in, and there's the door before I come into the house. And sometimes, I'm anxious, I'm thinking about work, and thinking about stuff, I'm stressed out, the FBI sent me a letter today, Taylor Swift suing me, whatever the thing is. And I'm like, "Ah." And then, I'm like, "I'm going to walk through that door, and I can't do anything about it now. My kids are there, my wife's there." And it's just like, "Okay, I got to change my state." And right there, before I walk through the door, I change my state. Get in the spot, and then like, "Okay, here we go." And I walk through the door, and it's like then I'm dad. And it's different, right? And so, I think it's learning those things. Because it's not... Your feelings are weird, they're going to show up in one way or the other, but the fact that you can control them, which I didn't understand or know how. But as soon as I realized that, it's just like, "I don't have to be sad, or miserable, or anxious, or whatever. I can actually change those things in a moment, if I understand how." And that was one of the greatest gifts Tony gave me, was just understanding how to do that, and seeing it in practical application with somebody. And now, it's like I can do it myself, any time I need to, if I need to. Matt: How do you act around Tony Robbins? Especially from the beginning to now, because you guys are close now. He probably looks at you like I look at a lot of these guys, that are Caleb's friends. I look at them like nephews, these are like... I'd do anything for them. And I know that... I can see that's how Tony starting to look at you. But take us from the very first time, because he didn't he have you come to an event, ask you a bunch of questions, take notes, and then just leave you hanging, or something like that. Tell the story, real quick. Russell: Oh, man. Tony's so intense. I still get scared to... It's still like, "Ah." Anyway, every time I see him, it's just like... I don't know, it's weird. His presence is- Matt: He still makes you nervous. Russell: Oh, yeah, for sure. But the very first time... So yeah, it was... I don't know, it was probably 04:00 in the morning. I don't even know. The shorter version of the long story is they asked me to come meet him in Toronto, at UPW, same event as this whole experience happened. So I went up there, and supposed to meet him one day, and it shifts to the next day. And if you ever work with Tony, just know if he tells you he's meeting you at 10:00, it could be like four days later you actually meet. You're on Tony time. Yeah, it's- Matt: That's just how it is. Russell: It's crazy, yeah. Just waiting. But it's always worth it, so you just wait and be grateful when it happens. But anyway, so we finally get to the point where we meet, and I have to drive 45 minutes. This is pre-Uber, so I'm in a taxi to some weird hotel. And we get there, and then me and his assistant stand outside for another hour, waiting in the lobby. He kept looking at his phone, nervously, like, "Ah." He's like, "Okay, Mr. Robbins' ready to meet you. Let's go." So we run up the stairs, we go to this thing, we walk in this room, and there's- Matt: And this is the first time you ever- Russell: ...body guards everywhere. First time I ever met him, yeah. Yeah, he's like a giant, comes and gives me a huge hug. And we sit down, and he's like, "You hungry?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he was vegetarian at the time, so he's like, "Get Russell some food." And brought me out this amazing plate of... I don't even know what it was. But it was... I was like, "If I could eat like this is every night, I'd be vegetarian." Because it was amazing. It was- Caleb: It was? Russell: ...insane. And then, got his tape recorder out, he's like, "You okay if we record this?" I'm like, "Yeah." So he clicks record, picks out a big journal, he's like, "You're Mormon, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "I love the Mormon people. When I was eight years old, I went to a Mormon church and they told me to keep a journal. I've kept a journal ever since. Do you mind if I take notes while we talk?" Matt: Wow. Russell: I'm like, "Eh, okay." So he's recording, taking notes, and then he drilled me for an hour. Just like do, do, do. Just like- Speaker 4: And how long ago was this? Russell: This is 13, 14 years ago. Speaker 4: Okay. Russell: Anyway, it was intense. And I can't remember what I was saying, I was so scared, I'm second-guessing everything I've said. And then, he's asking me numbers and stats, because we were trying to do this deal with him. And it was so scary. Matt: So he was just drilling you with questions, and just trying to- Russell: Oh, like crazy, yeah. I'm trying to just... Yeah, dude. Anyway, it was crazy. And then, he had to go back to UPW to speak again, so he's like, "You want to drive with me?" So I'm like, "Yeah." So go down, and jump in his Escalade together, we're in the back seat, and we're driving. And it's just crazy. And I remember he asked me a question about this one... I won't say the person's name because the story isn't positive for the person. But he asked, he's like, "What do you think about so and so?" I'm like, "Oh, that person's really cool and really talented." He's like, "He's a very significant..." and he just talked about six human needs, earlier that day, so I was very aware of here's what the needs are, right? And he's like, "Yeah, I don't think I'd ever work with him, because he's very significance driven." And I was like, "Oh, that make sense." And all of a sudden, I was like, "Ah, Tony is reading my soul, right now." I was like, "What drives me? I don't even know what drives me. Does he know what drives me?" Like, "Oh my gosh, am I significance driven?" I'm freaking out, like, "Ah." And all I remember is panicking, thinking, "He knows more about me than I know about me, at this point." And all these things, I'm freaking out, we're driving in his Escalade. And we get to the thing, and he's like, "I got to go inside. Thank you so much, brother. I love you." Jumps out the car, shuts the door. I'm sitting in the Escalade, like, "What just happened?" Matt: It was that fast. Russell: It was insane, yeah. Matt: It was just like- Russell: And then, the driver's like, "Do you want to get out here? Do you want me to drive you somewhere?" Like, "I don't even know where we are." We're in Toronto somewhere, that's all I know. And so, it was just the craziest experience. And then, I don't hear from him for four or five months, nothing. And I'm like- Matt: What were you thinking? Did you think- Russell: I was like, "He must've hated me. Maybe I failed the test. Am I significance driven?" I'm freaking out about all the things. And then, one day, I get this random... It was actually my wife and I, we were celebrating our anniversary, so we were at... It was a StomperNet event, but we took her, it was this cool thing. And she'd just gone to UPW. I sent her like three months later. So she walked on fire, and she was like... And Tony talks about Fiji there, so she was like, "Someday we should go to Fiji." And then, we get this call from Tony, and it was like, "Hey..." Or it was Tony's assistant. Like, "Hey, Tony wants to know if you want to speak at Business Mastery in Fiji, in two weeks." I was like, "Tony Robbins..." I started saying it out loud so Collette could hear me. "Tony Robbins wants me to speak in Fiji, in two weeks?" And Collette, my cute little wife, starts jumping on the bed, like, "Say yes! Say yes!" Caleb: Aw! Russell: And I was like, "Yes, yes, yes. Of course, we will." And then, we're like, we've got three kids that are all toddlers at this time, and like, "Can we bring kids?" They're like, "There's no kids allowed on the resort." I'm like, "We've got three little kids." He's like, "Ah, all right. We'll figure it out." So I hang up, and we're like, "We don't have passports for the kids, we don't have anything." So anyway, it was chaos, we're freaking out. We ended up getting them there, they literally built a fence around our... The Bula house, where's Dan at? The Bula house we were in. They built a whole fence around, so our kids wouldn't die because- Caleb: Did they really? Russell: ...there's cliffs off the back. Yeah, it was crazy. And then, I'm speaking to this room, and there's less than 100 people. I'm speaking, and Tony's sitting in the back of this room, I'm like- Matt: While you're speaking. Russell: ..."I thought he was not going to be here. This is really scary." Yeah. And he's paying attention the whole time. Matt: Does it make you more nervous? Russell: He introduced me, he brought me on stage, which was like... I still have the footage of that, it's really cool. He brought me on stage, which was crazy. And then, I remember, because in the thing we're talking about lead generation, I was talking about squeeze pages. And afterwards, he got on. He comes up afterwards, he's like, "Yeah, I heard squeeze pages don't work anymore. Is that true, Russell?" He's like, "People say they're kind of dead, they don't work anymore." And this is, again, 12 years ago. And I was like, "Who told you that? They totally still work." Which is funny, because we still use them today. But he was just like, "Somebody had told me they don't work anymore." And I was like, "They..." anyway, "They work, I promise." But anyway, and then I don't hear from him for five years, and then something else happens. It's just weird, these long extended periods of time. But then, every time, every moment, I tried... Five years later, it was a call, it was like, "Hey, Tony's doing this thing. He wants your opinion on it." So I spent like two or three hours with his team, consulting, giving feedback, as much ideas as I could. And like, "Cool, thanks." And then, nothing for two years, and then something else, and then... Little things keep happening, and happening, and can do more and more together. And then- Matt: What did you learn from that? You think that's just- Russell: A couple things I've learned. Number one, I'm sure you guys get this a lot, people who want to work with you, they show up and the first thing they show up with is, "All right, I got an idea how we can make a bunch of money together." Right? They always come, and want to figure out how they can take from you. And I was so scared, and grateful, I didn't ever ask Tony for anything. The first time I asked Tony for anything ever was 12 into our relationship, after Expert Secrets book was done. I had just paid him $250,000 to speak on our stage, and just finished the interview promoting his book. And I was like, "Hey, I wrote a new book. Do you want one?" Matt: Wow. Russell: And he's like, "Oh." And he took it. I'm like, "Cool." And then, a week later, I'm like, "Ah, will you interview me on Facebook with this?" He's like, "Sure." And then, he did, and that video got three and a half million views on it. It was crazy, coolest thing ever. But it was 12 years before I asked him for anything. And I had- Matt: Wow. Russell: ...served him at as many different points as I can. I think the biggest lesson from that is that... And I get it all the time, people come to me and it's like they're trying to ask and take. It's just like... I get it, and it makes sense. But it's just like, "This game's not a short game. If you do it right, it's your life. This is your life mission." Right? Matt: Yeah, that's good. Russell: And so it's just understanding you're planting seeds, and you're serving, and if you do that, eventually good things will happen. And something may never happen with Tony, and that's cool. I do stuff for a lot of people, and nothing ever good ever comes from it. But hopefully something does. Sometimes it's indirect, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just karma, or whatever you believe in. But if you just always go with the intent to serve, not to like, "What's in it for me?" It just changes everything. And then, if you do that, if you lead with how to serve, stuff comes back to you. But if you lead with trying to get stuff, it just doesn't work. The energy's different in the whole encounter. You know what I mean? Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: So I'm sure you guys have felt that with people, when they first come to you, and it's just like, "Ah." Matt: So is there a point where you... You went to his house. Russell: That was cool. The thing I can say is it was really cool, because most times when I'm with Tony, you're around people. In Fiji, it was fun seeing him, because he's more personal and stuff like that. But it was really special in his home, because it was him and his wife, and it was cool. It was fun just seeing him as him, like as a kid. And even my wife, like, "He seems like a kid here." He was so excited, and showing us his stuff, and all the things. Matt: Ah, well, guys, listen. Russell: Anyway- Matt: A few more questions, because I mean, man, you've been at it for almost two hours, dude. I can go all night, and I know he could. But Brea Morrison, give it up for her for letting us be here. Thank you so much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part two of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. So I have got to ask you, what did you think about episode number one of the World Changers Roundtable? Hopefully, you loved it. There were so many things covered in that 42 minutes. Anyway, we are moving on to the next part of this interview. As you know, this is going to be broken down into four parts because they kept me there, handcuffed to a table, until 3:00 AM. I'm just joking. They didn't really. But, the question was so intriguing, we were having so much fun, we just kept going and going until finally I was like, "I have to fly out in three hours. I need to get back to my hotel." But now we're going to go dive into the second part. This next episode is probably another 30 to 40, 45 minutes or so as well. So these are some things we'll be covering in this one, which is really fun. We talk about, number one, why my business partner, Todd Dickerson, is so amazing, and hopefully give you ideas about if you're pursuing opportunities and trying to land your dream job or partnership or whatever. Number two, we talked about personality profiling, how we actually are hiring here at ClickFunnels. We talked about where my love for learning came from. We talked about transition for me, going from an athlete to a business person and a marketer. We talked about some of the lessons I learned from Lindsey Stirling, things I was not expecting to hear from her that totally changed everything for me. We talked about people who intrigue me, my interest in health and bio hacking. We talked about is there anything that happens inside of this business that gets me as excited as what I felt in wrestling. We talked about what thing is close, but nothing actually has ever hit it. We talked about the first Two Comma Club Awards. We talked about how to upgrade your identity as you grow. We talked about the fact that you have to cycle and fail and rebuild in your businesses. We talked about the launch of ClickFunnels and how it wasn't just the fact that I was a genius, because I wasn't. There are so many things. Talking about the grace of God and how it tied into the launch of ClickFunnels. We talked about some of my early products, like Zip Brander and Forum Fortunes. We talked about my Christmas Grinch sale, which was the very first big sale, big launch I ever did, to my little tiny list that made enough money to cover Christmas for my wife and I when we were first getting started. We talked about becoming worthy. We talked about list building, how it's better than buying ads, and a whole bunch of other things. It's amazing, this could be 40 courses all wrapped into one super podcast episode. So if you liked the last episode, I think you're going to love this one as well. And I've got two more after this, coming back, going deeper into this conversation with the Roundtable of World Changers. So, that said, we're going to cue the theme song. When we come back, we'll dive right into the second section here of the interview. Matt Maddix: Dave and Todd, I mean, just wow. Those dudes are like... But what about those guys? Russell: So here's Todd's story. So the real long story short, I bought some software, it was coding Ruby on Rails, didn't know that. Bought this company with the last... I didn't have the money. So I borrowed money, bought this company, coded on some platform we didn't know, and I was like, "Screw it," right? And I tried to hire people to fix it, nobody could fix this platform until finally I was leaving the office one day. I literally emailed the people saying, "Turn off the servers." We lost all of our money to this company. They shut it down. And I'm walking out of the office and I had this impression of like, "There could be someone on your email list who knows Ruby on Rails." I was like, "That's weird. I had a bunch of internet marketing nerds. There's no one that's like, 'Ruby on Rails...'" Anyway. It was starting with the impression from God, I stopped, turned back around, set the computer to open back up, sent an email to my list. "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner. I bought a software company and it's not working. Please send me a message." Send. Matt: And that's all you said? Russell: Yeah. And lo and behold, three years earlier, Todd bought some random thing from me, happened to be on my email list. He built the website three or four years earlier that was making six figures a year on autopilot. Hadn't worked in four years. Just hanging out relaxing with his wife and his daughter. And an email comes in and it says, "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner." He's like, "I know Ruby on Rails. I can be Russell's partner." Emails me back. And at first I see him and his beautiful wife and I'm like, "There's no way he's a programmer. There's no way." That was literally my thought. But he was the only person that responded back so I was like, "Okay, well, here's the login to the site. Fix it. I don't know what to do. I'm not a coder." I went to bed, woke up the next morning. He's like, "Cool, I fixed the site. Plus I found this, this, and this. And I changed this. And I moved these things,", and all of this stuff. He's like, "It's working now. Do you have anything else you want to do together?" I'm like, "Huh." And so I give him another project, another project. And for an entire year Todd and I worked together, and never once did he ever ask me for money, ever. Matt: Wow. Russell: Not a penny. And I remember he started finding Boise to work on a project together ... Matt: You're telling me he worked for you for an entire year? Russell: For free. More than a year. Caleb Maddix: Why was that? Russell: I don't know. I found out later. He'd gone to Robert Kiyosaki at this event and he said, "Find someone who's doing what you want to do and work for them for free." So he told me that years later. I didn't know that. Matt: Todd, if you're watching dude. I love you man. You're legit. Russell: And so he kept coming and he started coming to Boise and we started becoming friends. The smartest developer I've ever met. Literally the smartest person I've ever met. I'll go that far. Just genius. And he'd come out to Boise and we'd work on projects and ideas. We tried to launch a couple of things. None of them really worked. And we were just trying stuff. He was just always there, always serving, always doing stuff. And one day were in Boise and I was looking over his shoulder cause we're looking at stuff and I saw his email. And there's all these emails from some recruiting site or something. I was like, "What's that?" He's like, "Oh, it's people recruiting me for a Ruby job." And I was like, "Do you get a lot of those?" And he's like, "I get three or for a day." I'm like, "Really? Are they good offers?" He's like, "I don't know. Let's check it out." He opened it up and the first one was like $400,000 a year starting salary. I'm like, "What?" The next one is $350,000. The next was 5 ... Insane things. I'm like, "Why don't you do that?" He's like, "I don't want to work for them. I want to be your partner man." I'm like, "What?" And then I all of a sudden had this realization that I hadn't paid him in a year. We didn't have much money at the time, we're still at the backside of a business failure when we met. I'm like, "I can pay you maybe $50,000 a year. Can I pay you that?" He's like, "Whatever." So I told our little bookkeeper, "Pay Todd $50,000 a year." And they're like, "Okay." So he did that and next year we're paying $50,000 a year. We're doing stuff and we have more things. Started to get a little success here and there. Making more money. Back in Boise again. And I'm like, "Can I pay you some more?" And he's like, "Whatever." Matt: So he wasn't ever just asking? Russell: Never in his life has he asked me for money. Ever. So we bumped it up to $100,000 a year because that's what we got, the year before that, after a year or two working together. And then, it was crazy, the day Leadpages got the first round of funding for $5,000,000, the same day Todd was flying to Boise. And he gets the email. It's east coast so he's two hours ahead. He's awake and on the plane, he sees the email, forwards it to me, and then jumps in the plane. He's flying for four hours. I wake up. I see the email and I was like, "Leadpages? Got 5 ..." I was like, we built landing page software in the past. I was perplexed and angry. And then Todd lands. And Todd, he's a little guy, he comes into the office all angry. He's like, "Leadpages got 5 million!" He's like, "I can build Leadpages tonight. Do you want to build lead pages?" I'm like, "Yeah. Let's compete with Leadpages." He's like, "All right." Matt: No way. Dude. I love this. Russell: This is like angry Todd. I love angry Todd. I like all Todds, but angry Todd is the best Todd. Matt: Is it? Okay. Russell: He's just pissed because he's like, "I can build this tonight. Everything thing they got we can have done tonight." So we're getting all ready. What should we call it and everything. And then he's like, "Wait, we're building this. You want to add anything else to it?" And I was like, "Oh. Yeah. What if it did this? And what if it did this?" And we spent a week in front of a white board saying, "What if it did?", and we mapped out ClickFunnels. Matt: So you're talking about a week where you guys just locked in and you were just having fun. Just doodling and whatever. Russell: Yeah. He's like, "Oh, I can do that. We can do that." We're brainstorming all sorts of stuff so we map the whole thing out. Matt: Did you know at that moment you were onto something big? At that moment right there, when you guys were like ... Or was it just still like ... Russell: All lot of people have tried something like that. I tried before other people tried. No one had done it. So I was kind of skeptical but Todd's like, "I can do this. This is easy." I'm like, "Okay because I tried it ..." He's like, "No dude, I can do it. This is easy." So I was, excuse me, optimistically hopeful because he's a genius but I was also nervous. But anyways, we map it out and then we bought Clickpros.com. I wanted to call it ClickFusion because I own ClickFusion, but we'd had three failed businesses called ClickFusion. All of them failed and Todd was like, "No. It's bad karma. We can't." I'm like, "But the logo is so cool dude." Matt: I love it. You love the logo. Russell: And he's like, "No, we can't." He's like, "It's got a jinx on it or something. We can't do that. You have to come up with a different name." I was like, "But ClickFusion is the coolest name ever." So we're trying things. Click everything and then ClickFunnels. We're like, "Ah." That was the thing. We're so excited Matt: Who first said it? Do you remember? The words ClickFunnels. Caleb: It's almost like God saying, "Let there be light." Russell: I would assume it was me but I'm not positive. I'll have to ask Todd on that one. Caleb: Well, when you said it, was it instant? Like fire? Russell: It was insane, it was available. Matt: Oh, you know that feeling, right? Checking domains. You're like… chills. Russell: How has no one thought of this before? And so we got it and I remember I was driving him to the airport at the end of the week to take him back home. And we got to the airport. Boise airport, It's a small airport. So we pull up to the thing to get out and you can tell he's probably nervous waiting. And before we get out of the car he's like, "I really want to do this man. I'm excited." I'm like, "Me too. Me too." He's like, "I don't want to do this like your employee though. I want to do it as your partner." And in that moment, I was just like all the fear of ... I'd tried partners in the past. It hadn't worked. All this stuff and all the everything. And it was just this weird thing of just all the emotions were hitting me as he sat in the car, about to get out the car. I have 15, 20 seconds before he's going to to go. I was just thinking about him. I was like, he's never asked me for money. He's never done anything. He's served. He's given everything. I was just looking at him. I was like, "All right let's do it." He's like, "Cool." And he got out of the car and he's gone. Matt: Wait a minute. So at that moment? Is was that quick? Russell: That was it. Matt: It was a gut feeling that you just knew. That he was ... Russell: It was him. Yeah. And I was literally... I said this on stage at Funnel hacking live, outside of marrying my wife, it was the greatest decision I ever made. Matt: Yeah. I remember you saying that with tears. Russell: Yeah. Matt: Why though? I'm curious because it's not just ClickFunnels. Russell: He's amazing. If you look at our personality profiles, it's fascinating. We have the same personality profiles. The Myers-Briggs. Except for one letter's different. Where I'm a feeler he's a thinker. And it's been magical as a partnership because we both have so much respect for each other that we don't try to fight each other. And it's very much like if I wanted to do something, I'm like, "This is what I want to do. This what I'm feeling. What do you think?" And he'll come back and be like, "Well, I think this." And so I come up from feeling instead of thinking and it's really cool. So sometimes his thinking will trump my feeling. And I'm like, "You're actually right. Let's not do that." Or vice versa. Where he's like, "I'm thinking this." And I'm like, "I don't know why but I feel this." And he'll be like, "Okay." He respects that. We just have such mutual respect that we've never been in a fight. We've never argued. We've never had problems. It's been amazing. Matt: Wow. Russell: And he's similar to like we talk about with Dan. He went back home after us white boarding that, sat in his basement for five or six months and built ClickFunnels by himself. Caleb: Really just by himself? Russell: 100% by himself. Caleb: No other team. No other dev? Russell: It was just him. And the right before we launched, we brought in another partner, Dylan, who built the front-end editor and did a lot of the UI. And so then it was those two as we got closer and closer to the launch. And then for the next year it was just those two that did everything. And then after a year, we started bringing in other developers. But it was 100% Todd. Matt: Wow. Russell: He's amazing. In all aspects. You know you have friends you think they know everything about everything. That's like Todd except he actually knows everything about everything. You ask him anything and he's just like ... I don't know how he does it. And I'll always fact check him, like, "Oh my gosh. He's right again." He's brilliant. It's amazing. Matt: So for those of us who have partners or are maybe going into partnership, what's your best advice? And what do you feel like he does right that other partners don't do? Russell: I think the hardest thing with partners is typically we want to partner with someone who is just like us. We did a podcast most recently. Dean, Tony and I, right? We've done two partnerships. Both partnerships made it through the launch and they stopped. Made it through the launch and stopped. The podcast was like, "Why?" I love Dean. I love Tony. They're amazing. The problem is that me and Dean had the exact same skill set. Matt: Oh. Russell: And so the problem is that both of us are right. We both understand it right, but we do it differently. And so it's like You have two people, and so typically you want to partner with those people who are like you. You're like, "Oh, we think the same. We should be partners." But that's not necessarily the right thing because then you've got two alphas with the same skillset, and someone has to win and someone has to lose. And it's hard. Whereas me and Todd, we have different skill sets. There is never a winner or a loser. We can both win because different skill sets, both the same mission. It's really easy. So I think the biggest thing is you're trying to find the yin yang. You're not trying to find someone who thinks like you or acts like you. In fact, this is true in most hiring processes as well. I used to have people like, "Send me a video if you want this job." Right? So I get these videos, and the people that I wanted to hire were the people like me. I'm like, "This person's awesome. They think like me. They're a genius. They're amazing." You'll hire them, and within a week I'm like, "I hate this person." It's horrible. So we started shifting the way we do our hiring based on personality profiling instead. DISC profile drives most of my own personal hiring so I know that I'm a high D, high I, high S. No C at all. Right? And so the people I need to hire around me are high S, high C. The problem is the people I who I watched their videos and I'm pumped, they're high D, high I. So I'm like, "Yeah. These people are awesome. They're charismatic. I'm going to love them. They're drivers, they're awesome. Worst employees ever. Matt: Right. Russell: Right? So when people send us this profile, first I find the right profile and then from there I do interviews. Because if I interview ahead of time I get sold by the people who sell and then they're horrible employees. And so I make sure they're high S high C, because I know that if I talk to high S high C, I'm going to be kind of bummed out. Like, "Oh, I don't know if this is the kind of person that I'm going to jive with." But they're the best people to surround myself with because I'm such a high D high S. I'm a creator. I'm throwing things up in the air and I need people who are S and C, who are faithful finishers, who are going to take the things, capture them, and make sure that it's amazing. Matt: Do you feel like businesses and entrepreneurs are making a mistake by not having their employees and their team take these tests? Russell: 100%. I have a new company we're launching all about personality profiling because I'm such a big believer in it. Matt: Really? Tell me why. Top three reasons. Russell: It's in all things in life. If you're going to be a partner. If you're going to date someone. Understanding who they are is such a big part of it. Right? Because we think everyone sees the world the same way we see it and it is not true at all. The way you see it, the way we all see is so different and so if we don't understand that at a deep level, then I get upset by what you do and at what everyone's doing because it's like, "Don't you see what I see?" And the reality is no they don't. So if you start understanding people better ... In fact, the software can be called Understand About Me. It's a place you go and you take all the personality profiling and it gives you a page that can show somebody this is me. So in five seconds I can understand you perfectly they're like, "Oh, now I know how to work with you." Because I understand what you are, what your beliefs are, what your values, all the things I need to know about you, I can find it really quickly. Where normally you're going to go years with somebody before you understand them. I can look at a thing and get pretty dang close in a minute. Matt: Wow. Russell: Now I know hot interact with you and spend time with you and work with you. Things like that. Caleb: Question. Where does your love to learn come from? Because one of the things I noticed from being around you, it's always like yeah, so I had this moment where I geeked on this and I geeked out on this. It was health and suppliments, and marketing and personality types. There's all these different things you geek out on. Have you always been that way? Is it like you geek out on marketing, you saw the rewards from it, and you're like, "Wow, what if this goes into other areas?" Where does that come from? Russell: Yeah, I didn't always have my life. In fact, I had a fascinating conversation with Tom Bilyeu about this, because when I was growing up in high school I always thought I was a dumb kid. I thought I was an athlete, so I focused there. I thought I was an athlete, so I was a wrestler, that was my identity, that was where I focused at. I thought I was dumb. Because of that, straight C student high school and college, my cumulative GPA graduating from college was 2.3. Straight C's and one B maybe somewhere in there, right? Because I was a dumb kid. When I got done I ended my wrestling career, so I stopped being an athlete, and I was like, "Oh crap." I started to learn this business stuff and I don't like to read. I'm a dumb kid. What do I do? It was fascinating. Tom told me, because I had this epiphany, I'm not actually dumb. He's like, "Actually, the reality is you probably really were dumb. But then you changed, right?" So for me it was like I shifted. It was fascinating. Do you remember the Funnel Hacking Live where we had Lindsay Stirling perform? One of my favorite parts of that, she did a whole performance. If you guys don't know, Lindsay does violin dancing stuff, and afterwards I had a Q and A with her afterwards. I had this question I was so pumped to ask. I was waiting for her just to like, the question is, she was on America's Got Talent, and I think she took 7th place. When she got kicked off, Pierce Bronson or whatever said, "You've got no talent. You're no good." Whatever, right? So I was like, do you remember that time when he said that? What I thought she was going to say was, "Yeah, I proved him wrong. Yeah." I was like, "What did you feel after that?" She's like, "Yeah, I got home and I realized he was right. I wasn't very good. So I went back and I started practicing and I started working harder and eventually I became good enough." It was like, oh my gosh. I got chills when I was saying it again. Matt: Yeah. Russell: I remember when Tom said it to me, he was like, "You probably were dumb." I was like, "I was." Because I wasn't reading things. So with marketing that was the first thing for some reason that caught my attention, that got me excited, right? And then if you look at my DISC profile, ROI is my highest value. I have to see ROI in something or I don't want to do it. So when I saw an ROI on this reading, I was like, "Oh my gosh. I read a book, I got one little sentence, changed a color, made more money. Oh my gosh." That is where it started, 100%. I started learning that and I started getting obsessed with those things. As this business grew for me I started being more, I always joke that crazy people got attracted to me, right? The best health people, the best fitness people, the best in every market kind of came into our world somehow. So I started getting to meet all these people. When you're around someone who's the best in the world at the thing, and they start talking about the thing, you can't help but be like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." Right? You zone in on that. So whenever I meet someone that's amazing and I have a chance to talk to them like this I just geek out. Like when I met your dad the first time with you guys. That's when I bought your parenting course and everything. I was just like, I saw you and I saw him and I was like, "I want that." So I started going down that rabbit hole, right? I met Anthony DiClementi, I was like, "I love this guy. I have respect for him, I love him." Every time he talks about anything, he fascinates me, when he talks about something it fascinates me. I have to look down those things, right? When people fascinate me, the things that fascinate them start fascinating me and that's when I kind of go down those rabbit holes. This person is so intriguing and fascinating. What makes them that way? What are they doing. It's interesting. I'm not a good question asker. You guys are so good at question askers. I've never been good at asking questions, but I'm really good at watching what people do and then seeing it and trying to go down the rabbit hole. What are they doing, why are they doing it, that kind of thing. Caleb: He’s a true master in it. You can just tell. What are some things you want to take the time to geek out on? I'm sure you see something and you're like I want to get on that but it's not a priority, I've got to do this. What are some things, if I had a week or two? Russell: Just free time with nothing else involved? Caleb: What's the next thing you're going to geek out on? Russell: Oh. I would say every probably three years I get re-excited about SEO, for some reason. I start going down that path again, because I love it. There's times in my business when that was the focused. It's not now at all, but I went through a couple ... Brian Dean’s a real cool SEO guy, couple guys… I started dabbing my toe in again and I'm like, I just want to get back into it so bad. Right now SEO is actually our number 11 lead source as of today in ClickFunnels, which is amazing. So we handed SEO the first four or five years, now we're focused on it again. It's doing really well for us. I want to go deep there because I like that. Anyway, I haven't had a chance to do that. Any of the health stuff really, really fascinates me. Matt: Why? I'm curious. Why are you drawn to that so much? The health stuff. Russell: Because I've seen with myself ... My history is I got in wrestling, at the PAC 10 tournament was my last actual wrestling match. My wife was giving herself fertility shots in the stomach during PAC 10 so the next month se was pregnant. So I got done wrestling, got done competing, got done running, got done lifting. All my athletic career ended, and then my wife got pregnant. She's eating for three kids, and I'm pumped because I don't have to work out right now, she's hungry, I'm hungry, we're eating. We just kept eating and eating. So over the next seven to eight months my wife gained like 60 pounds, I gained like 60 pounds. We were doing it together so who cared, it was amazing. Then one day she has two babies and she loses like 45 pounds and I'm like, oh crap. I'm stuck here. Where did you go? This for me? Matt: Yeah. Russell: Thank you. Then at that time the business was starting and I was stressed out trying to figure it out and I didn't get healthy again. I just was in that state of being 65 pounds heavier for years. But I didn't know the difference, I didn't know that I felt differently, because I'd never been in a spot where I spent eight hours sitting behind a computer, so I didn't know what good felt like or bad felt like. I knew if I tried to wrestle I'd puke, so I was like I don't feel like I'm an athlete. I just felt normal, I thought. Eight years in I was like, I don't know, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, "Oh, what happened to you?" You know what I mean? I'm sure hopefully everybody's had a chance. I was like, huh. It was hard because in my head I knew how to work out, I knew how to train, I knew these things. Finally I was like, "I need to get a trainer." So I got a trainer for the first time. I'd never really done that before. Started going, and got me from I don't even know, 27, 28% body fat down to 12% in a matter of seven or eight months. I looked better, I felt better, but what's crazy is I could work twice as hard and twice as long. I wasn't tired. I was like, "I can keep going. My brain's on fire. This is amazing." Matt: Wow. Just from the ... Russell: I had no idea until I lost all the weight. All of a sudden it was just like, I can do so much more. I think, when I first met Anthony DiClementi the first time I was like, this is my problem right now. I am at work all day slaying dragons, doing all these things, I have this energy. I get home at night and my two little twin boys are there, and my little daughter, and I'm spent and I have no energy. How do I still be a present dad and how do I have these things? The next tier was the bio hacking stuff. How do you do these things? How do you increase energy? There's so many ways to do that, from light therapy to supplements to sleeping to sound to breath, all these crazy things that seem stupid. The first time Anthony's like, "We're going to do breath work." I'm like, "We're going to breathe? That's your bio hack? We're going to breathe together?" He's like, "Yeah, it's going to be amazing." I'm like super annoyed. What's the ROI on this, I've got to get back to work. So he sat me down in our gym. You've been in our wrestling room. He sat me down and he's like, "You have to sit because if you're standing you'll hit your head and you'll die." I'm like, what are you talking about? He sits me down and we do these breathing exercises where he's yelling at us and screaming. All this stuff is happening. If anyone's ever done deep breath work it's nuts. We're doing this thing where we're supposed to do this heavy, heavy breath work until he's like, what's going to happen is the world is going to ... Has anybody done jiu-jitsu here? Been tapped out before? Matt: Yeah. Russell: So you get choked out. What will happen, the carotid artery gets choked and the world starts shrinking like this. If you take pressure off it, it comes back to life. If you don't, it goes darker and darker until it disappears and you're gone, right? If you've never been choked out, that's what happens. It's a really fun experience. But you have the minute when you see it shrinking around you and then it's gone, right? He told me that's what's going to happen. You're going to breathe so much that the world around you is going to start shrinking. If you don't stop you're going to pass out. So we go all the way to where it starts shrinking, stops, and then when you hit that point you let me know and then you hold your breath for as long as you can. He's like, "How long can you hold your breath for?" I'm like, "Maybe a minute." He's like, "You'll do it for at least five." I was like, there's no way. So he says sit down, we're doing this breath thing, we're going like crazy and sure enough the walls start doing weird stuff. I feel like I'm on drugs. I'm sweating like crazy. We keep doing it. He's yelling at me. All of a sudden the world starts closing around me, I'm like, "What is happening?" And then he stops and is like, "Hold your breath." He starts the clock. I'm sitting here holding my breath forever, looking around. We had three or four of us guys all doing it at the same time. I'm freaking out. And then it starts getting quieter, things are slowing down, we're sitting there and then he's like let some of the pressure out but don't breathe in. Let pressure out, pressure out, pressure out, keep doing that, and it gets done and the stop clock is over five minutes. I'm just like, I just held my breath for five minutes. Matt: And you didn't even know it. Russell: Insane. And then the rest of the day we were on fire. It was just like, whoa. Right? We brought a cryo-sauna at our house and we go freeze in the cryo-sauna and the rest of the day you just feel ... That's the thing I love now, these little weird things. Light therapy, breathing, weird things that just seem stupid. You do it and you can go longer, you can think better, you can do stuff. All those things just get me so excited. Anthony's fun because he randomly will just ship me weird stuff in the mail. Just the weirdest things. It makes my wife so mad. It just shows up. There's a big old box. She's like, what's this from? I'm like, I'm hoping it's from Anthony, it's going to be amazing. Just weird things. Tons of stuff. I love that kind of stuff because the ROI on it is crazy. They're always these weird things. I have this headband someone sent me. You put this headband on, you put an app on and you start working and it just makes you not tired, makes you focused. These weird things. How does this work? I don't know. And they're like oh, it works because the waves over here sync your brain and change your brain waves and the creative state and all these things. I mean, I don't know how it works but I just wrote two chapters. Caleb: Do you do breath work every day? Russell: No, because it's so intense. If I had a coach who could walk me through it. I have a recording of Anthony doing it and I almost dread it because I know how hard it is. By the time you're done you're sweating. Caleb: I've got to get that recording. Russell: I'll get it to you. By the time you're sweating, you're like what just happened? I just breathed for five minutes. It's weird. Anyway, I would love to understand it on a deeper level but I don't understand a lot of the things now. Some of them I've gone deep on, but a lot of them I do without knowing why. I hate it because my wife will be like, "What's this do?" And I'm like, I don't know. Matt: Just love it. Russell: One of my buddies, Preston Eli, he wrote this blog post, he called it the Warriornaire Workout. In there he explains part of his morning workout. He's like, why do I do it? He's like, because Tony Robins does, and I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence. That quote goes to my head all the time. People ask me, why do you do that? I'm like, because I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence, that's it. I'm like, I don't know the reason why, Tony says so, therefore I will do it. I would like to understand it at a deeper level so I have a better response than I obey all giants with helicopters and stage presence. But that's a pretty good reason. Anyway. Matt: Real quick, does anybody else want to throw in a question for Russell? Anybody else here live with us? Caleb: Let me ask one more real fast. Because I want to. I want to ask this. We were just having sushi, I was asking you, what are some of the favorite periods of your life? One of them you said was wrestling, which I found funny because by far one of my favorite periods is baseball, which people wouldn't expect because obviously I've been on stage and all this other stuff and that should take the cake. But those moments when you're just on the field, you're in the zone, there's nothing better. Where, with what you get to do now, whether it's being live on a webinar or being on stage or whatever it is, where do you get the same feeling of wrestling? Do you know what I mean? You know, the feeling in your chest? Russell: Today while we were in line at the grocery store I talked to your dad about this. I said that the best feelings I ever had in my life were from wrestling. The feeling of winning a hard match that I wasn't supposed to win and getting your hand raised, I never felt something like that, that felt as good as that, ever. I've been searching in business to find that, and I've never found it. Speaker 3: Do you feel like sports is like business in any sense? Matt: Good question. Russell: For sure, yeah. There's a lot, for sure. What I was going to say is the closest I've ever gotten to feeling that is when you serve at an event and you see a table rush and you see not only people where they get the a-ha, but enough of an a-ha where it gets them to get up and to move. That's the closest I've ever felt to that. It's not as good, but it's the closest I've ever felt to that. Which is why I love doing the big things. I get a glimpse of that. Caleb: How close? Scale of one to 10. Wrestling's a 10. Where does that rank? Russell: If wrestling's a 10, I'd say it's about an eight. In fact it's interesting because when I first started in business I was racing for that, trying to find it, trying to find it, trying to find it. It took me years before I was like ... Matt: Is it disappointing? Russell: For sure, yeah. We launch today and make a million dollars and it's like, huh. That sucked. What else have we got. Give me something else. Matt: Exactly. Russell: The money goal is always what I thought was going to be the thing, and those always were just like, huh. In fact, literally one of the main reasons I did the Two Comma Club Awards, for me I need, maybe it's just from a decade of my life someone grabbing my hand and raising it. I was like, entrepreneurs need that. No one raises our hands. Two Comma Club Awards, for me, is me lifting their hands like you did it. I needed that, they need that. That's one of the main reasons I did that, because that's the equivalent of that. Anyway. Matt: How many millionaires have you created? Russell: This year we passed 1,000 people that won the two comma club award. We're over 120. Matt: How does it feel to say that? To say it? You know how sometimes it's like so many people that have passion or goals or huge dreams and visions, rarely do they really celebrate what's happening on the journey. Do you find yourself ever getting where your vision is so big and your passion is so deep that even saying things like there's 1,000 millionaires. Dude, that's huge. Man, 1,000 people that are millionaires because of you. Russell: I think the first time I really got that, probably the most impactful time, was the very first Funnel Hacking live that we gave away Two Comma Club Awards. It was the third Funnel Hacking live. It was a couple of months before that we had the idea of a Two Comma Club and an award, talking about that. I legitimately didn't know. I wonder if anyone in ClickFunnels has actually made a million dollars. I don't even know. So Dave went back and the database guys went through everything and I remember he came back and was like, there's 79 people right now that made a million dollars. I was just like, are you serious? Matt: Was it a boost of confidence? What did it do for you? Russell: It was one of those things, looking back on me doing these events where two people showed up and nobody showed up, hardly anybody, where I was so excited about this? I was like, how come nobody cares? To now it was like, this is actually, I've talked about this long enough people are believing it and now they're doing it. You start seeing it, and there's the fruits of it. In my mind I was like a million bucks, even then, ClickFunnel was new, I was like a million dollars is hard. Most of my friends I knew were like made somewhere near a million dollars. There were people who have been in this business for a long time. A million bucks is a big deal. That was most people's goal still. The fact that 79 people had done it, that was just weird to me. I think that was the biggest one, the realization that just like, oh my gosh. It's not just a theory and I think it works, it's working. It's working at a scale that was unfathomable to me at the time. 79 people. To go to 200 and then 500 and then 1,000 is crazy. Matt: What was your question, buddy? Speaker 4: You're talking about how at each level of success you hit, some of your mentors hit that ceiling, right? Because of the posturing, right? So ultimately I feel like when you get to a new level of success it requires you to upgrade your identity, your self image. What have you found is the number one routine, what's your process for upgrading the identity, upgrading your self image? Because I think that's so important because it can either hold you back and have you self sabotage and not take action and go after what you want, or it's going to be the thing that keeps you at that level and continues to propel you forward. What's kept you ... Russell: That's good. It's weaved through everything, right? The one that's the most obvious external, especially in our world, because you see marketers, most people when they first start selling whatever it is they're selling they're bragging about themselves. Here's my ad, here's my name. It's all about them, that's the first tier of it. And then the second tier, when they start having the realization, I feel like is when they stop talking about themselves and start talking about the people they've helped. Speaker 4: Mm. Russell: You see externally. You don't hear me talking about how much money I make. I'm not like, oh, check out what I got. I talk about all the other people. It's like, that's next year, is that. And then for me the third tier now, which has been really cool, is talking about Lady Boss, right? The success story isn't Kailin, it's Kailin's customers, right? So it's like that next tier. What you're talking about is like the external version of that. There's a lot of internal things that you've got to deal with, but you'll notice it shifting in people when you look at just their messaging and what they're saying. From the way they podcast, they video, they market, their ads and everything, it's the shift of it's not about me, it's about them. It's not even about them, that's the external version of it. Internally I think it's really, it's what we talked about, I can't remember why, but we brought up yesterday or today I had this really successful guy I met one time who the first time we met he was like tell me your story. So I was telling him the wrestle posturing story about how great I was. He was like, no. Tell me about the time you failed. So I was like, well, I'm in the middle of one right now. So I told him let me tell you. I told this whole thing. I remember afterwards I was so embarrassed. He's going to think I'm an idiot. You know, that fear? He was like, good, you cycled. I was like, what? He was like, I will not work with entrepreneurs who haven't cycled at least once. Because if they haven't then they still believe their own bio, right? I think that's the biggest thing, the internal version is that. The first time around, before you cycle, you think it's all you. I know for me it was. I remember doing this the first time, I'm like, I am a genius. I'm the smartest guy in the world. And then when it collapsed I was like, oh, there's a lot of things outside my control. This is not me. There is a team, there's God, there's all these other things that are making this possible. There's a scripture, I can't remember where it's at, it's the Bible, Book of Mormon, but it says you can either be humble or God will humble ... Ah, I'm misquoting it by far. But it's like God will humble people. You can be humble or he will humble you. So it's like, looking at that, I'm like round two I'm going to be a humble person because I don't want to be humbled again, right? Matt: I still feel it. Russell: This is not me. I understand, I look around now and it's 100% like there's no way I would be where I am right now if Dan Usher didn't make videos the way he does. There's no way I'd be here right now if Todd Dickerson could not code software the way he does. There's no way, all these things are so many people. Matt: You're so right. Russell: Then there's so many success stories that inside of it there's just so many people. And then there's the grace of God. I just look at the timeline of when ClickFunnels came into the market. I've now got funnels for a decade, nobody cared. Then all these things were happening, we started having the idea for ClickFunnels, started building it, we're creating it, and then literally we go to traffic and conversion, Todd's halfway done building ClickFunnels, and Ryan Deiss stands on stage in the biggest event at the time and he spends the entire four days talking about funnels. Talking about how funnels are the greatest thing. Everybody's like, what's a funnel? They're all taking notes. Me and Todd are like, does he know we're building? He's talking about funnels. He's talking about funnels like crazy. And then the next day everyone gets home from traffic and conversion and everybody that day, the next day 8,000 funnel consultants pop up. Everybody's a funnel consultant. Everyone is on Facebook talking about funnel consultants and teaching funnels and all this stuff. We're like, oh my gosh. Todd, get this software done, everybody's talking about funnels right now. So he's coding like crazy, all this stuff is coming around, all of a sudden everyone's like, millions of funnel consultants, everyone's doing it, and all of a sudden we're like, hey, we created this thing called ClickFunnels, here it is. All of a sudden all of the consultants and all the people and everyone came and we were the only platform. I look at that, as smart as I think I am, there is so much grace and timing. If I'd launched a year earlier, a year later, it would not have hit the way it did. 100% it was the timing of all these things that have to happen. If it wasn't for that ... I can act like I'm smart, I'm a genius, but man, there's so much divinity that came into all the things. There's no way it could happen without that. Anyway, just understanding those things. Matt: What did you learn when you were cycling? Russell: So many lessons. Russell, you are not that good looking. Or cool. Or anything. Matt: It's basically not about you, right? Yeah, I feel that. So what was hardest? What were the tough lessons? Caleb: How many times did you cycle? Russell: Two big ones for sure. Matt: Really? Do you mind sharing? Russell: Yeah, the first time was after I was trying to figure this thing out. I remember one of my buddies was like, you're making money online? I'm like, yeah. He's like, that's cool. I'm like, do you want a job? He's like, what? I'm like, you're the first person I know who's interested. I'll pay you to come hang out with me. He's like, all right. So I hired my friend. He's like, I have some friends too. I'm like, okay. So I start hiring all these people because I want someone to talk to. Anyway, it was really bad. I ended up having a whole bunch of employees nobody knew how to do anything. I didn't know how to train anybody. I was hiding in the room trying to make money to pay payroll while they're standing outside like, do you want us to do anything? I'm like, don't talk to me, I've got to make money to pay your payroll. They're like, we can help. I'm like, I don't have time to explain anything to you. It was horrible. I built it up to the point where it was just like, I was launching a new thing as fast as we could just to pay payroll. As an entrepreneur, you kill something you get to eat, right? It's like the greatest thing in the world. Employees, they want to get paid every two weeks whether they killed anything or not. I did not realize that until they were like we need money and I'm like, but we haven't made any money. They're like you have to pay me. I'm like, what? I'm so confused. Like, okay. Anyway, it had grown and we didn't have a model, sustainable. Speaker 3: You just launched stuff to see if it works? Russell: Yeah. When I was by myself it was like, I had an idea today, let's try it. You launch it, it makes some money, sweet. And then it was like, I made 20, 30 grand. It was my wife and I, so it was like, that lasts nine months. You know? Caleb: What did you sell? Obviously I know the potato gun backstory. You said I talked about funnels for like a decade before that. What were you selling during that decade leading up to ClickFunnels? I know it's an inordinate amount of stuff. Is there anything not even close to funnels, like something ... Russell: Yeah. The very first, pre-potato guns, my very first big idea was ... Back then what everyone was doing, you know who Yanik Silver is. Yanik would write a book and then he would sell the resale rights to the books. Someone else would buy it and they could sell it. I remember I got online, I saw these books, I bought a book from Yanik and I'm like, I can sell this. I bought a book from somebody else. I was buying all these eBooks I could sell. But then inside the books they would have links back to all their sites. I'd sell the book and I was like, I made 10 bucks selling the book. And then inside the book Yanik is selling his thousand dollar course and seminars and things. They make all this money. I'm like, I got 10 bucks. He made like $1,000 off of me selling his book. I remember being mad. I was like I wish there was a way I could brand this ebook so that before somebody opens it and sees his ad they'd see my ad. That was the first idea I ever had, ever. So my first product was called Zip Brander, it was this little thing that would take an ebook and it would brand it. You open it up and it popped up an ad. You see the ad and you click a button and it would take you inside the ebook. It was my first thing. We launched that and I sold 20 or 30 copies of it. But that was the first money I ever made, it was amazing. I had a customer list, I was like this is amazing. And then the way I was selling those, I was going to forums. This is pre-Facebook, so all you little kids, before Facebook, before MySpace, before Friendster, we used to go to these things called forums. They were these things where people would talk all day. So we'd go to these forums. One of the rules in the forums is you could comment all you wanted but you could have a signature file. At the end you could have like, Russel Brunson, check out my new software Zip Brander. I'd go to these forums and I would just spend eight hours a day answering questions and asking questions and everything. People see my ad on every little thing. My footer was on everything. That's how I was selling Zip Brander initially. I was in 50 forums posting like crazy but I couldn't keep up with it. I was like, man, if I could create a software that would manage this whole thing, that would be amazing. So my second product is called Forum Fortunes. It was this little software that would manage your posting on every single forum. You post and you could see if someone responded back on Forum 49 it would pop up and you're like, oh, you can go find it and go back and comment and keep the discussion. I made it for myself and then we started selling that. We sold more of those because I now had a little customer base here and went bigger. After that it was the next. It was always what's the next thing. That's kind of how it started back in the days, little tools and things like that. Speaker 3: How do you know when you're shooting all these bullets, how do you know when you shoot a cannonball? Matt: Good question. Russell: The thing about it initially, I had been married, I was making zero dollars a year as a wrestler, so for me to make $600 in a month, that was a cannonball. That was insane. I thought I was the coolest kid in the world. $600 was insane. So I did four or five little things. I remember it was Christmastime and I remember my wife wanted to buy a couch and it was a $2,000 couch. I was just like, oh, I can't afford that. I don't have a job. I'm getting sick to my stomach. I had this idea, what if I do a sell and just sell a whole bunch of crap that we had. I had a bunch of eBooks I bought rights to, a couple of things I had created, so we made this Grinch sale. I remember I wrote the copy, it was like, it was the Grinch Before Christmas or something. It had a picture of the Grinch and his heart growing three sizes, I don't know. I wrote this copy. My wife and I had been married a year, she really wants a couch, I can't afford a couch, so if you guys buy this, if I sell 32 of these things, I can buy her a couch and put it under the Christmas tree. It will be amazing. Caleb: You said that in the copy? Russell: In the copy, yeah. It was the reason why. I still have the page, I can show it to you. I know exactly where it's at, I can show it to you. So I had the whole page and then only an email list of like a couple hundred people at the time. I still had an affiliate program, so at the top it had an affiliate link. So I sent an email to my list and went to bed that night. Someone on my list was a guy named Carl Galletti, I haven't heard about Carl in a long time. He was a big famous copy writer at the time. Carl went and saw the thing, bought it, and started affiliating. So he joined the affiliate program, he was like this is awesome. He took that email, sent it to his entire list of this huge thing. So I go to bed. I wake up the next morning, we're at $10,000 in sales. Matt: How much before you went to bed? Russell: Oh, like $30, $40 or something. I was like, what just happened. Did I rob someone? I didn't know what happened. I looked at my email and there's all these people who were like, hey, I bought two of them, I hope you can get your wife that couch. Oh, I sent it to my friend. All these people. Because Carl promoted it, all these other people who follow Carl saw it. Carl is like it's converting like crazy. Tons of people are buying it. I'm freaking out. I'm going to wrestling practice trying to answer customer support. I'm late for practice, I ran into wrestling practice, I get back out I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I made like $600 in sales." I'm freaking out. Anyway, the whole thing goes through and over that, I think it was a seven day sale or something like that, we made $35,000. Which is more money than I'd seen in all my lifetime combined times 100, right? I paid probably 10 grand in affiliates. We made, I don't know, $25,000 that we got to keep. I was like, "Oh my gosh." I told Colette, and Colette's like, my wife. I love her. She doesn't understand the business part of things at all. I was like, "We made $25,000." She was like, "Is it illegal?" First thing. "Are you going to go to jail? Is it illegal?" I'm like, "No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure." The first thing I did is I went and bought the couch for her, for Christmas. We got it back, I got a picture of her, sent it out to the list saying thank you so much, you got the Christmas gift, the couch. They all celebrated together, all the people. I was like oh my gosh, this is the greatest game of all time. This is so much fun. I was like, what's the next idea, what's the next thing. It was like that, these little things. After that one was done now I had way more customers, all these people that had bought my product knew who I was now so the next thing was easier so it incrementally kept growing and getting bigger. Somewhere along the line I launched the potato gun thing. Upsales of things. We didn't call them funnels back then. We called them sales flows or sales processes. Talk about your sales flow, what's your sales flow. Caleb: Sales flow. Russell: I remember Dylan Jones was our partner at ClickFunnels. Before Todd we tried to build something like ClickFunnels, we called it Click.com.com, which is a horrible name. But Dylan's, I still have all the UI images, and in there we had a whole section for sales flows and all these things. It's like, this was the first ClickFunnels. Because Dylan was on the UI eventually on ClickFunnels anyway, but we literally designed something like this five or six years earlier. Just crazy. Matt: Do you think that all those little failures and all the trying and that kind of energy is what brought you here today? Russell: For sure. It's the key. I wish I could grab everybody because everybody's like, okay, I'm waiting for my ClickFunnels, or I'm waiting for my thing. They're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting. I was like, the reason why I got this thing was because I didn't wait. If someone were to give me ClickFunnels initially it would have been bankrupt in 15 minutes, right? You have to become worthy of the thing eventually. You don't become worthy by waiting, you become worthy by trying. And trying and trying and trying. Eventually, if you keep doing that, over time, then God's like, all right, he's going to do it. He's built 150 funnels, now I'll give him the idea. Matt: Wow, that's powerful. Speaker 3: How much more did you feel that all your other friends are in the same game? Matt: I hope you guys take there's more that's caught than Todd. That's some gold in what he just shared right there, what you were just sharing. But go ahead. What was the question? Speaker 3: I was just saying how much more would you fail if all your other friends were playing the same game? Russell: All my friends were like why are you launching more stuff? Why do you keep doing things? They do like one product launch a year. They got so annoyed. They were like, dude, stop doing stuff. I'm like, why would I stop doing this? This is so much fun. It was just confusing to me. Why don't you guys do more? Everyone, they make money they'd just be done. Caleb: Why would you keep doing more? Was it genuinely like one funnel away? Like this next funnel's the one. Were you just like you sold yourself on it, this is it, so you keep going? Or did you just really enjoy it? Russell: Well each one I thought was. Each one, every time I was so surprised, like this is amazing. That was the one. The next one's bigger. Oh my gosh, that was even better, who knew? And then I just kept going from there, you know what I mean? So I wasn't waiting for ClickFunnels or anything like that. I was just enjoying the journey every time. It was so exciting. Eventually it was like, oh crap, who knew that that was going to do what it did. Caleb: Was it all emails? Was there any ads or was there anything to scale the traffic? Russell: First 10 years was 100% emails, partnerships. There wasn't ads back then. I mean, there was Google ads, but the first initial Google slap happened about the time I was getting started. Prior to that a lot of guys I knew built their email list off of Google ads and then the slap happened. A lot of them had lists. I started getting to know those guys, going to events, meeting them, so that's how it started initially was tons of that. And then there was this big gap for years where paid ads weren't a thing. Some people did banner ads, but it wasn't consistent. It wasn't like it is nowadays. It was harder. You worked harder and all the stuff wasn't there. Mostly we focused on ... If you didn't have an email list, you weren't playing the game. It's like, who's got lists, how can you build lists, what can you do? Matt: You still think that's true to a degree? Russell: 100%. That's why the traffic seekers book was so important for me to write, I feel like, because most of the people in the game today have been blessed with Zuckerberg's simple Facebook ads that make the game easy. Matt: Wow. Russell: They've never focused on building lists. I was like, you guys, just so you know, Zuckerberg is going to screw us all. It's going to happen. Matt: Yeah. Caleb: It will happen. Russell: It's like, if you don't have a list you're all screwed. I've been through this for 18 years now, I've been through five or six cycles. I've seen people who made millions of dollars who now are not online. The people who have waded the storm the whole time are all the list builders. They're the ones who survived. Everyone else who's good at ads, they come and they go and they come and they go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part one of this special 4 part episode series.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices