Russell Brunson: From Rock Bottom to $100 Million in 5 Years with ClickFunnels

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Speaker 2 I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step.

Speaker 3 Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non-venture-backed tech startup in the world.

Speaker 3 ClickFunnels grew from zero to a hundred million dollars in just three years. Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for.

Speaker 2 My first time at growing a company, I was new, I was young, and probably hired too fast. At that point, we had about 100 employees.
I had no way to process money, and I owe $200,000.

Speaker 2 I was going to go to jail. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like my friends just left.
And I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail.

Speaker 3 How do you scale from zero to a hundred million?

Speaker 2 I always tell people, I'm like.

Speaker 3 Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non-venture-backed tech startup in the world.

Speaker 3 ClickFunnels grew from zero to listen to this, a hundred million in just three years. Unbelievable.
So Russell, first of all, so glad to have you here.

Speaker 3 Been watching you and binge watching your stuff for many, many years.

Speaker 2 Oh, I appreciate that. I'm excited to be here too.
This will be so much fun.

Speaker 3 It will be so much fun, but you were drawn to marketing and sales from a very young age. Can you take us back in time?

Speaker 2 How far back do you want to go?

Speaker 3 Ah, it's tiled, collecting stuff. I want to go all the way back.
All right.

Speaker 2 My dad was an entrepreneur. So I kind of saw him.
He was always hustling, doing side businesses, but it didn't really cross my mind.

Speaker 2 And then I remember one night, I think I was like 12 or 13 years old. And my parents always watched the news at night.

Speaker 2 And then my mom would go to bed and my dad would sit there working for a couple more hours. And usually they'd make me like Russell, go to bed.
So I'd have to go to bed at night.

Speaker 2 And I remember one night. My mom went to bed and my dad, I don't know if he didn't notice I was in the room, but he didn't make me go to bed.
He was just working.

Speaker 2 So I was like, I watched the news with him. The news got done.
And then MASH came on and we watched MASH. I was like, I'm watching MASH with my dad.
This is so cool. And then MASH ended.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden, this thing popped up. And I had no idea what it was.
I now know it's an infomercial, but there's infomercial. And there was this guy on it named Don Lapri.

Speaker 2 And he was like, me times a thousand. I was like, so much energy.
He was so excited. And he's like, talking about how you can make money with tiny classified ads.

Speaker 2 And I still remember he said, He's like, I placed an ad in a newspaper and it made $30. And all my friends and family made fun of me.

Speaker 2 But I took that same ad and I placed it in a thousand newspapers and made $30,000. And I was like, you know, my 12-year-old brain's like, what? Like, I was totally freaking out.

Speaker 2 i was looking at my dad i was like dad you have to buy this my dad was like whatever you know i just kind of making fun of me and i remember like it got to the call to action we're like call this 1-800 number and you can buy the course for 40 or something and so i remember writing the number down i'm like dad you got to call he's like we're not going to buy this i was like dad i have to have it and they had like some bonus like you bought in the next five minutes you got this other free gift so i was like we have to hurry dad you know and he told me no and the next morning i was so mad he's like look if you want that you can earn the money to go buy it so i was like okay how do i earn the money he's like okay if you start mowing the lawns i'll pay you i came over five bucks a week or something.

Speaker 2 So I started mowing his lawn, other people's lawns. In about a month, I'd earned the $40 I needed to buy it.

Speaker 2 And so I remember telling my dad, I was like, I have the phone number, but we have to call during the infomercial so we get the free gift. And so he let me save that night.

Speaker 2 We watched news and we watched MASH. And then the show came up and it came up again.
And so as soon as it got to the part where they said, call now, get the special bonus.

Speaker 2 We called and my dad bought the credit card. And it was the coolest thing in the world.
And I got the kit in the mail. In fact, I still have it to this day.
I'm going to frame it or something.

Speaker 2 It's really cool. But I was like reading the books.
That was my entrance into business. And it was like the most fun thing in the world.

Speaker 2 And then for me, it's like these ideas in my head about how you can make money. All of a sudden, like, just you can't stop thinking about it.
Right.

Speaker 2 And I remember my mom and I were at the grocery store, and there was a magazine there. They still sell magazines called Small Biz Op Magazine.
There's always like cartoons on it.

Speaker 2 So I'm like, mom, will you buy this magazine for me? So she bought me the magazine.

Speaker 2 And I remember in the magazine, if you ever get a copy, next time you're at the grocery store, Barnes and Nova, you can get one. It's like 140 pages of ads and then four pages of articles.

Speaker 2 And every ad is a different way to make money. And so I remember reading it.
Like one of them was like, you can make donuts at the county fair and make money.

Speaker 2 And then they call this phone number for the free info kit. So I'm like, call the number, send me free info kit.

Speaker 2 And the next page was like, you can make money by painting glow-in-the-dark stars on people's roofs. Call the number for the free info kit.
So I call the number for free info kit.

Speaker 2 Next page is like, you can make money selling gold chains by the inch. So I call every 144 info kits.
I go and I order for every one of these businesses. It was funny now.

Speaker 2 I was like, I was in a funnel. I didn't know it, right? But the info kit shows up and all the info kit is a sales letter, then selling the $100 version of it, right? Or whatever.

Speaker 2 So then you'd call it anyway. And there's a whole thing.
But as a 12-year-old kid, I would sit there and I'd get home from school and there'd be a stack of junk like this big.

Speaker 2 And I would sit there and I'd read all these sales letters about all these ways to make money and completely ruin me for life. But that's kind of how I started my young entrepreneur journey.

Speaker 3 Oh my God. Most people are just not as driven or kids.
They're just not as driven.

Speaker 2 I don't know what made you so driven to collect these things and get curious about it and you also loved wrestling and actually you were like state champion in high school and you had this massive passion do you think this shaped you also to who you are today definitely it was a young age i didn't realize the time but definitely was very driven for the business thing you know like i don't dabble in something if i get excited like i go all in i'm so excited you know when i started wrestling it was the same thing i remember wrestling and as soon as i won my very first match and i got my hand raised i was like that feeling i want that again so i like started running it so for the next eight years of my life, that's all I focused on was wrestling.

Speaker 2 And then when I got done with my wrestling career, it's when I found out about the online business and I jumped into that. And I think all those things kind of compound.
You learn how to work hard.

Speaker 2 You learn how to be driven. You learn like how to overcome.
And sports are so great for that. Like you learn how to lose and then not give up.

Speaker 2 I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step.

Speaker 2 They'll listen to the podcast and they'll read the book and they love learning about it, but they're so scared if they take that step. And if it fails, then their dream dies, right?

Speaker 2 So because of of that, they stuck in this learning loop forever. I think for me, it's because I'd stepped on the wrestling mat a hundred times a year and I didn't win a lot of them.

Speaker 2 It's like I lose and then an hour later, back on the mat again, they're back on the mat and like next weekend again. And so it's like, I got good at learning.
If I lose, it doesn't mean I'm a loser.

Speaker 2 It's, I have to learn something from it, right? Like, I think the best example of this, my junior year, I wanted to be a state champ.

Speaker 2 And the very first match of the year, I wrestled with a guy who takes second state the year before. And I remember I lost to him.
And it was like so painful.

Speaker 2 I told everyone all summer long, I'm going to be a state state champ. It's going to be amazing.
And my very first match, I lost.

Speaker 2 And I remember my dad, my dad's again, very entrepreneurial as well, but he got the videotape of me losing and he watched it. That night I lost, he watched it probably 100 times.

Speaker 2 Next morning, I woke up. He's like, okay, I know how to beat this kid.
And so we on the carpet, we would drill how to beat him.

Speaker 2 And then that day when practice I've done, my dad would show up and we drilled again. We drilled it for four months.
I drilled it. And then come four months later, it was the state tournament.

Speaker 2 And I ended up wrestling that same kid in the finals. And I ended beating him with the same move he'd beat me with because I drilled it so many times.
I knew how to do it.

Speaker 2 That carried over into entrepreneurship because, like, entrepreneurship, like I create offers all the time that I launch and they fail. And most people, that would cripple them for me.

Speaker 2 It's just like, okay, well, I felt, like, what do we need to tweak? Okay, just change the headline, keep tweaking until it works. I think that's what people understand.

Speaker 2 A lot of times they give up on their business and it's just like a couple tweaks away from having success or they give up on their athletic career where it's just like you're a couple tweaks away from like hitting your dreams.

Speaker 3 It's so easy to stop three feet from gold because fear is numbing. So fear will take more dreams than anything.

Speaker 3 But you somehow started this entrepreneurship endeavor back in college and you did all these super crazy, innovative potato guns. And can you take us back in time?

Speaker 3 I remember the first time when I saw this, I'm like, rewind. Am I sure that this is what he actually meant? Yes, that's what he actually meant.
Russell, take us there for a second.

Speaker 2 So I got into college and I met my wife.

Speaker 2 We got engaged and and she was working after we got married like she was working to support us and i felt guilty because i wanted to wrestle but i was like i should help support and so i was trying to figure out a way to make money it's interesting because back then i was like trying to study there weren't a lot of people online doing it but there were a few people doing online in fact one of them is frank kern who a lot of guys know him nowadays but he had this product it was called the underachiever method and it was like how to make really simple products.

Speaker 2 And I remember his show, he had like one teaching how to do dog training, one like how to teach a parrot how to talk and one how to do like all these little niche products.

Speaker 2 They create these little ebooks and then they would go and they'd buy Google ads to sell them. And it was just like this really simple process.

Speaker 2 And I remember going through the course, I was like, this is so cool. But I was like, I don't know how to teach a parrot how to talk.
You know, I don't know how to do those kind of things.

Speaker 2 And so I was kind of stuck trying to think what I would actually do. And then I remember I was in college and it was like spring break.

Speaker 2 And my buddy was like, hey, Russell, we should go shoot potato guns. I'm like, what's a potato gun? So he told me.

Speaker 2 And so during spring break, we went online and we found all the potato gun plans and how to make a potato gun. Went to the Home Depot and bought the pipes and cut them up.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we made these potato guns and we shot them. And like all weekend long, we had so much fun with it.

Speaker 2 And then next Monday, I was back in school and I was like, I wonder if I could create a product teaching people we just learned how to make potato guns. That was the idea.

Speaker 2 And so we went and we borrowed a video camera from someone and we filmed ourselves going through the whole process of buying the pipes, gluing them together, making potato guns, shooting them.

Speaker 2 And then that became my very first product I created and put out there on the internet.

Speaker 3 You share,

Speaker 3 and I found that super inspiring, that someone helped you break that four-minute mile. And you have this beautiful story about how you broke the first million for yourself, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 Can you share a little bit of that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. So when I got started my online business, I'd never set a goal to make a million dollars.
That wasn't my goal.

Speaker 2 I was just trying to figure out how to make some money so my wife wouldn't have to work. And that was kind of how we started, right? With the potato gun and made other little products.

Speaker 2 And then I remember, man, we'd been married about a year. And I remember because we were on a family reunion.
It was at this lake where there's no internet access.

Speaker 2 I remember going to the library to check my email. I'm sitting in this little library in this lake town with nothing else around.

Speaker 2 I opened my email and there's an email in there from this guy named John Reese. And it says something like, we did it or something was a subject line.
I'm like, did what? And I opened the email.

Speaker 2 And he's like, hey, earlier today, we launched a course called Traffic Secrets. It's a $1,000 course.

Speaker 2 And in the first 18 hours, we sold a thousand copies, which means we're the very first people to ever make a million dollars online in a day selling a course. And I was like, what?

Speaker 2 And I remember sitting there in a chair and I was just like, so perplexed. Like my goal was like, maybe in my lifetime to make a million dollars.

Speaker 2 I'm like, there's a guy who's just like me, a couple years older than me, who made a million dollars in a day. I'm like, he can't be that much smarter than me, right?

Speaker 2 Like, like, if he can do that, could I do that? And I was doing the math in my head. Like, I was like, he had a thousand dollar course.
He sold a thousand copies. I'm like, it's just math.

Speaker 2 Like, how do I sell a thousand copies of a thousand dollar product, right? That started my wheels, my head spinning. So I remember setting a goal.
I was like, okay, because I didn't believe it.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I don't think I can do a a million dollars in a day, but can I do a million dollars in a year?

Speaker 2 If I had a thousand dollar course, if I sell three a day, that would be a million dollars in a year.

Speaker 2 So I was like, okay, very first thing I did is like, I need to make a thousand dollar course just like this guy did. It was my very first time I funnel hacked somebody, right?

Speaker 2 Before we called it that. And so I went and I put together an event.
I recorded it. I made my first $1,000 course.
I remember I launched it on January 1st.

Speaker 2 I was like, everyone on New Year's Day will want to change their life. Little did I know, everyone was going to be drunk January 1st.
And the launch went horrible.

Speaker 2 Like the whole entire launch, we sold 20 copies of my $1,000 course. It was devastating, but I kept trying, kept trying.
And like the first year, I got close.

Speaker 2 I think I can't remember, six or seven hundred thousand dollars that first year, but then I missed it by December. I'm like, okay, January 1st, I'm starting over, setting the goal.

Speaker 2 And I tried it again that year, I got close again, missed it again. That third year, I kept going and going.
And I didn't know which product was going to sell, which offer.

Speaker 2 So I kept just putting out different offers, different things. And then it was crazy.
There was this interview I did with a guy. His name was Vince James.

Speaker 2 And he was an old school, like direct mail guy. And he had made $100 million through direct mail selling supplements.

Speaker 2 he wrote a book and for some reason he let me interview him and this is like two or three years earlier i was like a college kid at the time he let me interview him for six hours so i asked him all these questions about how he did it and so again three years later i'm sitting there i'm like what's the next offer i could sell i was like what if i sold the interviews that i did with vince like that was a really cool interview maybe someone will buy that and so We took that interview, we sold it for $37.

Speaker 2 And then the guy, Vince that I interviewed, he had sold licensing rights to his book. It was a $300 book.
So I had bought the license to this book. And so I had someone bought the interview for $37.

Speaker 2 $37 and we'd upsell them a copy of the book for $297.

Speaker 2 The book was called the 12-month millionaire. So I had, I own 12-month internetmillionaire.com.
We launched this whole thing, right? Put the launch out there.

Speaker 2 And in seven days, that funnel cross a million dollars. And that was the first one I'd ever had.
And I was just like, this is insane.

Speaker 2 I interviewed a person, I laid the access to the interview, and we sold a million dollars. Like it was.
the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that was the first time I'd actually done it.

Speaker 2 It was interesting because I think the reason why a lot of people never make a million million dollars they never try to make a million dollars right and it wasn't until i i was like okay i'm going to try to do it this is the goal and i started working towards that that like all the things kind of showed up for me to be able to do that and click funnels one of the things we did is we created the two column club awards i was like i want to give people something to shoot towards like when i was wrestling before i knew i wanted to be a state champ i was just kind of there doing the things when i realized i want to be a state champ i had something to shoot towards then i became really good i think same thing with this and so that's why we created that the two comic club awards to give people something okay this is the goal and then when they have a goal you can reverse engineer it and you can figure it out but for me that was as soon as i had that goal then it was like everything to try to pursue that and that's how i learned all the stuff i had to learn to make it possible so yeah one of my favorite stories and again we have our millionaires club we have the president club because again i want people to see what's possible right if you don't even know what's possible you're still stuck with that i'm just trying to do this move from senior manager to senior senior manager you know i'm like come on there's more to life let's go right it's all about leaping right

Speaker 3 But yeah, you share at some point. You have the most brilliant videos.
Folks, if you didn't see that, you're revamping your YouTube channel, although I always thought it was very revamped.

Speaker 3 But go to his, to Russell's YouTube channel. Like his videos, to me, it's just so inspiring.
It's so beautiful. And you share so much with so much vulnerability and truth.

Speaker 3 And you share one of the hardest moments when you needed to lay off a lot of your team and just kind of rebuild.

Speaker 3 And I think it's just so important to listen to that too, because there's always going to be, like we said, challenges and things and setbacks and things that will hurt you to your core, but you somehow continue.

Speaker 3 Can you share that a little bit?

Speaker 2 I think it's unfortunate that most entrepreneurs only share like the highlight reel with people and don't talk about the downsides. And I say, I was very nervous for a long time to share those things.

Speaker 2 And I started sharing some of them. And so many people are like, wow, like that makes me feel so much better.
I'm going through that same thing as well.

Speaker 2 In fact, to set up that story, it's kind of funny. During this time when everything was like falling apart around me, I got invited to this little mastermind meeting in Mexico.

Speaker 2 And I was sitting next to this guy who's crazy rich, crazy expensive. And he asked me my story.
And I was like, oh, so I was kind of telling him, you know, the highlights.

Speaker 2 He's like, no, tell me your real story. I was like, well, and I told him, I'm going to tell you right now how bad everything was and everything.
And he was like, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 He's like, so you cycled once. I'm like, what? He's like, I'll never work with an entrepreneur unless they've cycled at least once.

Speaker 2 He's like, cause otherwise they still believe their own bio, they're still drinking their own Kool-Aid. And I was like, oh, that's, that feels a lot better.

Speaker 2 I just cycled like, all entrepreneurs cycle. Like, okay.
So it reframed it for me.

Speaker 2 And hopefully it'll reframe for some of you guys because entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs.

Speaker 2 And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for.

Speaker 2 But so what happened is it was my first time growing a company and I was new, I was young and I started hiring people, probably hired too fast. At that point, we had about 100 employees.

Speaker 2 We had this building downtown, Boise, Idaho was like really, really cool. And like, I felt like I was on top of the world.
Again, I was, I believe my own bio. I was drinking my own Kool-Aid.

Speaker 2 I thought I was so great. And then one day, it it was in January, just one day, all of a sudden, one of our, someone was trying to buy something and the merchant account failed.

Speaker 2 The merchant account failed. And then another one failed.
And we had nine merchant accounts. If you get merchant accounts, have them in different banks.
That's the story for the other day.

Speaker 2 But I'd nine merch accounts in one bank. And literally in one day, they turned them all off.
And so we couldn't process money. Like nothing could happen.

Speaker 2 Our sales guys are like, I'm trying to run someone's car. Like people wanted to give us money, but they couldn't.
And you know, you have 100 employees, you have payroll coming every 14 days.

Speaker 2 It's like that's stress. I remember calling the credit card company and it was,

Speaker 2 I guess, it's like 2010, I think. And there was this huge merchant crackdown where Visa and MasterCard, anyone who was doing any kind of continuity offers, they just shut them all down.

Speaker 2 So it wasn't just me. It was hundreds and hundreds of people all got shut down the same day.
And I remember calling the merchant account and I couldn't get a hold of them for like two or three hours.

Speaker 2 Finally got a hold of me. I was like, I got shut down.
What's happening? And they're like, if you got shut down, it means that you're never going to process again. The guy hung up on me.

Speaker 2 I was like, what? And it was just like the scariest thing. And so.
And then my whole team's freaking out. I was like, hey, everyone, go home tonight.
Come back tomorrow. We'll have a plan.

Speaker 2 So everyone goes home and then next day come back.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I have no no plan i was like i don't know what to do like tell people to send us checks or like i don't know you know trying to figure out everything and what's crazy is i thought every team was like going to be like we're here together we're going to win this thing and what was crazy is like as soon as people found out that there might not have a check maybe a check or something they all just started leaving 40 50 60 people who i thought were like my friends just left and disappeared even like family members who were like just walked out on me and it was like the weirdest thing and then we had a group of people who stayed behind and i still don't have money to pay for them but i'd come back and so every day I'd wake up in the morning.

Speaker 2 And the first thing I'd do is I'd sell myself. I'm like, okay, we're going to do this.
We've got, you know, like sell myself and I go in the office and I'd meet everyone together.

Speaker 2 And I'd like, sell all of them. I'm like, this is going to work.
We're going to try. You know, we try a new thing.
And we tried so many things. And it was like almost a year of that.

Speaker 2 We would open a new merchant account. We'd process a bunch of money, but we'd process too much too fast.
And they would freeze our account and hold the money for 180 days. And like, it was just chaos.

Speaker 2 We could not get a break. And it took about a year of going through that.
I kept getting worse and worse and worse. And then at the end of the year, it was the next December, January.

Speaker 2 I remember my dad, he wasn't doing my books, but he was watching my bookkeepers doing the books.

Speaker 2 He called me or sent me an email and he was like, hey, I reviewed the books and turns out your bookkeeper has not paid payroll taxes in the last 12 months. He's like, she's been hiding it.

Speaker 2 She just, he doesn't have the money. So she didn't pay the taxes.
And he's like, you don't understand, like, if you don't pay payroll taxes, it's not like a fine.

Speaker 2 It's like they put you in jail for that, Russell. And I was like, what? I'm like, well, how much is our payroll tax? And he was like, I can't remember.
It was like a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 He's like, if you don't pay this soon, you could go to jail. And I'm like, I don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Like, we're out of money.

Speaker 2 And I remember the next day, we had a call center of like 40, 50 sales guys. They all just walked out.
The next day, they all quit. They mass quit together.
So I lost my ability to generate money.

Speaker 2 I had no way to process money. And I owe $200,000.
I was going to go to jail. And I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail.

Speaker 2 So it's like, all right, what do we got to do different? Innovate. How do we change this? What do we got to do? And just every single day.

Speaker 2 And it's crazy because it was like probably the most painful and scary time of my life. In fact, I remember waking up one morning, just kind of lingering at my house, not wanting to go to the office.

Speaker 2 And my wife saw me and she could tell like I was not doing well. And I swear she grabbed me and like pulled me down to the ground to our knees.
And she's like, we need to pray.

Speaker 2 Like we need to ask for help. And I was like, okay.
And so I remember us praying. It was just like, I don't know what to do.
I'm out of options. I've tried everything.
I need guidance. I need help.

Speaker 2 And I remember that was the first time I was willing to like humble myself enough. And then it was go back to the office today and sell everybody else.
I'm like, we're going to make this work.

Speaker 2 And we kept doing it.

Speaker 2 What's crazy is one of those things like in the moment of pain is like always like the hardest time but then looking back you realize that was actually god taking you down a very certain path you know because it's crazy because we lost everything we shut everything out we had to shrink to this little tiny office like five or six of us from there trying to figure out how to make money just to pay off the thing from there like i was doing different webinars every week like rewriting my webinar rewriting getting better and better and eventually we had a webinar that hit that paid off all the taxes i was like i'm not going to jail

Speaker 2 then i was like okay now we got to create another offer and like and we went through that but it was in that pain like that's where i met todd dickerson like i would never met him otherwise and he became my partner he's the one who built click funnels all these amazing blessings came because of that darkness i had to go through and looking back now it's like even though that was the most painful stressful time my life it also was the catalyst for everything we've built since then you know reframing that in my head and hopefully for anyone else who's going through the hard times of like it's just a cycle we all go through cycles in entrepreneurship it's okay and just know that if you keep showing up and keep trying like you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go on and the right people will show up the right things will show up, even though it may seem hopeless at times.

Speaker 2 If you keep at it, you never know what's going to happen.

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Now back to the show.

Speaker 3 In the venture world, as I was investing in companies, we call it the near-death experience. Every founder has to go through.

Speaker 3 what we call a near-death experience because only then you know that they can actually go through it and actually continue. And every single one will have that.

Speaker 3 The way I look at it in Leap Academy is this is the muscle you have to build in order to become the leader that you're meant to be. And I think this is why you became more creative.

Speaker 3 So I do want to hear that story because it's a beautiful story of how you met Todd and how ClickFunnels was born. I have to hear that.

Speaker 2 So in that whole time when everything was falling apart and we're trying different offers and different things.

Speaker 2 I remember I went to the site called flippa.com and it's like people who are selling their businesses and stuff. And I went to it.
I remember there was a site for sale.

Speaker 2 It was called championsound.com and it was an email text message autoresponder for bands.

Speaker 2 I didn't want to be selling to bands, but I'm like, if I bought the email text message autoresponder, I could make a version for chiropractors and a version for dentists.

Speaker 2 And like, that was kind of the big idea. And so I took the rest of the money I had, plus borrowing money, to go buy this company.
We buy the company. They try to transfer it over to our servers.

Speaker 2 And the guy who's transferring is like, your servers are Linux. We need Ruby on Rails.
And I'm like, what does that mean?

Speaker 2 It's it's like it's a different platform i'm like what are you even talking about and so i had to buy this other server they installed it and then the couple guys i knew the dev guys like that's like chinese i don't know how to speak chinese i can't fix it and so we tried three or four times to hire people to do ruby on rails which was a brand new language at the time and they couldn't fix it and i remember for a month we were trying to make this thing work and finally it was like i just had to give up and so like i remember just being sick to my stomach because like that was all the money we had and i just burned it on a stupid idea it wasn't going to work that day i emailed the server company and told them to shut down the servers because we can't afford to keep paying for it.

Speaker 2 And as I was like packing my bags, I was walking out of the office, I felt this really weird impression. Email your list to find someone who knows Ruby on Rails who can help you.

Speaker 2 I was like, I had this tiny little email list at the time of people trying to start businesses. I'm like, there's no Ruby on Rails developers.

Speaker 2 But I felt that impression. So I walked back in, turned my computer back on, sent an email to my list.
And in fact, it's funny, like Todd and I, we found the email. It's kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 But I sent it out saying, like, I'm looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, message me back.
I sent this out to my list, went home that night.

Speaker 2 And then that night, check my email and I get this email back from this guy named Todd. And he's like, I'm a Ruby on Rails developer.
I've been semi-retired for the last three or four years.

Speaker 2 I got a side business that's making pretty good money, but yeah, I'd blow up and looking for partnership opportunities. So I just sent him log into the server.
I'm like, here's the login.

Speaker 2 It doesn't work. Can you fix it? And that was kind of it.
So the next morning, I wake up and he's like, all right, I logged in. He's like, I fixed this, this, and this.
I added this.

Speaker 2 They're missing this. They should do this.
I'm like, all this stuff. And I was like, whoa, okay, cool.
And then that's how we met each other. And then for the next year, we started working together.

Speaker 2 And I didn't have money to pay him and he knew that but i was like we kept talking about like someday we'll partner on something would be cool so he just kept helping on these different offers that webinar that i did that paid off all the debt he helped me to build the the webinar platform that did that webinar so he was like helping all these different pieces i'm like i can't pay you yet because i gotta pay off the irs so he said no worries so i took all the money he made i didn't pay him i paid off the irs and we but for a year he didn't once ask me for money he just like showed up every day was working full days he'd fly to boise work on projects together and um never asked for money ever and in fact i remember about a year into the relationship one day he was in boise and i looked over his shoulder at his email and there are all these like job offers for Ruby on Rails developers who are in his inbox.

Speaker 2 And Ruby on Rails, especially then, was a really rare language. So there wasn't many people.
And I was like, what are those? He's like, oh, just people trying to recruit me.

Speaker 2 I'm like, how much are they? What are they paying you? And he pulled up a couple and they were like half a million dollar year starting salaries for these different roles.

Speaker 2 I was like, you should take that. I'll never be able to pay that much.
He's like, no, I don't want to work for those guys. Like, I want to build something cool.

Speaker 2 And so for the next year or so, we're trying different projects, having like minimal success on little things here and there. But we kept building these funnels.

Speaker 2 It was the day that lead pages, I think they got $5 million in funding. And he was flying to Boise that day.
So that morning he woke up, he saw the lead pages, got $5 million in funding.

Speaker 2 He forwarded me the article and then he was flying to Boise. I wake up in the morning, I see the article.
I'm like, lead pages. I'm like, that's like the most simple software ever.

Speaker 2 And by the time he gets to Boise, he's like, I can build lead pages today. We could launch it tonight.
Let's do it. Like so excited.

Speaker 2 And then he asked the question before he's like, well, if I'm going to build lead pages, do you want to add any other features? And I was like, oh, yeah. I'd love you.

Speaker 2 You do a sales letter and an upsell. And all all of a sudden, like, we spent the whole week in front of a whiteboard mapping out what eventually became ClickFunnels.
And we kept mapping it.

Speaker 2 Like, what if it did this? Then it did this. And like, we mapped out this whole thing.
There was like this dream of it'd be the coolest thing in the world if we could build this.

Speaker 2 And I remember we had this domain. It was clickfusion.com.
And we'd launched three different things off ClickFusion. All of it failed.
And I remember we got down.

Speaker 2 I was like, okay, we're going to call this thing ClickFusion. He's like, no, that domain, that's this jinx.
Everything you do in ClickFusion fails. We can't call it that.

Speaker 2 I'm like, what are we going to call it? And he's like, well, it's like, it builds funnels. We call it ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2 And so I'm like, so we looked and the domain name was available so we bought it like hey it's called click funnels that day i was driving him back to the airport he's going to fly back home i remember as we were getting to the airport he uh he told me he's like hey if we do this i don't want to do this as like your employee i want to do this as your partner and for me like i'd been an entrepreneur for a decade of my life i'd never had partners i was scared i was just like i didn't want to and i was just like i remember sitting there for a second and then just felt impressed.

Speaker 2 I was like, okay, let's be partners on this. And I told people this before, like outside of marrying my wife, that was the best decision I've ever made in my life was partnering with Todd.

Speaker 2 And he flew home. He spent the next eight months building what became ClickFunnels by himself.
And then we came back. We ended bringing another partner who built the editor and the UI.

Speaker 2 And we launched ClickFunnels a decade ago now. And it was the thing that took off and changed my life, changed his life, changed millions of people's lives around the world now.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of the ClickFunnels story.

Speaker 3 Oh my God. What's beautiful is not just that it changed what you created.

Speaker 3 It's what you're making possible for so many people and the ripple that that creates because they're creating these amazing things that then have this mega impact on millions or billions or I don't even know, which must be like the best feeling in the world.

Speaker 2 It's so cool. I mean, I think anytime you do business, like initially you do it, I don't know, I think initially we do it for ourselves.
Like I want to start a business. I want to make some money.

Speaker 2 And then you start making money. And then really quick, that feels shallow.
You're like, huh, that's not what I was expecting.

Speaker 2 When we started having our students, like people who are our users have success, that's when it was like, whoa, that feels so much, you know, it feels so much better.

Speaker 2 In fact, I thought about this, like when I was a wrestler, I used to, I love wrestling, getting my hand raised, like the best feeling in the world.

Speaker 2 And then when I had my kids got to be wrestling age, one of my son's name is Bowen. The very first year of wrestling, he would go to practice and matches and he lost every match the whole year.

Speaker 2 It was so devastating. He had a twin brother who was winning all his matches and he lost every single match.
And we tried so hard and worked so hard with him.

Speaker 2 And then the very last match of the season, he actually won. I remember getting his hand raised and he was was jumping around.

Speaker 2 And like, I was like, nothing has ever felt better than watching him eat his hand. That was the best feeling, like so much better than me winning a match was watching him win it.

Speaker 2 And it's the same thing. Like when I launch a funnel, it makes a bunch of money.
It's like, hey, that's really cool.

Speaker 2 But I see some of our students do it and they launch it and they win a two Comic Cup Award and they have success or whatever. Like that feels so much better.
It's so addicting.

Speaker 2 In fact, people always ask me, why are you still doing this 10 years later? Like you could have retired 10 times ago. There's something about it, man.

Speaker 2 When somebody takes the frameworks and the software and they launch it and like you see it change their life, it's like, that's the most, I don't know, addicting feeling in the world.

Speaker 2 And so it's the best feeling watching people have success with it. It's been so fulfilling and so much fun.

Speaker 3 And like you said, you continue for a decade now.

Speaker 3 And I think what's interesting to see is also to view you is how you reinvent yourself, even within ClickFunnels, how you reinvent yourself, first of all, as a leader, is that somebody that can take something to this mega success because I'm sure that needed a whole different mindset of money and leadership.

Speaker 3 Take us a little bit to how do you scale from zero to 100 million? I just bragged to you that we're one of the fastest growing companies, but then after hearing you guys, I can't even say that.

Speaker 3 So how do you grow fast enough to be able to absorb that level of leadership and money risks and everything that comes with it?

Speaker 2 I always tell people, I'm like, I feel like God will give you something. He wants to test your capacity, right? So he'll give you something and like, what's going to happen?

Speaker 2 And and then it's really heavy it's like lifting weights right the capacity is really heavy but then you get stronger because of it then you're something more gets harder and they get stronger because of it even the challenges that we still we deal with today i'm like 10 years ago those would have destroyed me it's like when you have a kid right like i've got teenagers now that are 18 and like you know when they're born though it's like there's little problems they get a little bigger but over time you like you grow with it and i think we launched click funnels it was so fast and furious and i remember like I don't know, there's just so many things happening that you don't know how to react.

Speaker 2 You're trying to figure them out.

Speaker 2 And like, but like, it builds that capacity for the next thing, the next next thing one of the best examples is the very first year of click funnels we were a year into it and um i remember todd built click funnels he was like hey the way i built it it'll work for about 10 000 members or so and then when it gets bigger we're gonna have to change stuff and and i was like i don't know what that means but okay so we launched it and it starts growing like crazy it was interesting all the other software companies we watched they were growing by taking on vc money and then like using that to grow and for us we didn't have that so we just We would build funnels and use those.

Speaker 2 And so we got really good at drinking our own Kool-Aid and building funnels to grow ClickFunnels. And anyway, it grew really, really rapidly.

Speaker 2 Eight or nine months in, it kept like having, like, we just go out for an hour or come back in. It would go out for 10, 10 minutes and back in.
And it's just like, why does it keep crashing?

Speaker 2 I went and like, and Todd's up, you know, it's just Todd by himself. Todd and Dylan, our two partners, they're coding it.
Like, it goes down again. Like, ah, you know, they're fixing it.

Speaker 2 And like, it's got bigger, bigger, kept happening more and more often. And I remember it was in Chicago speaking to Dan Kennedy event right before I was supposed to speak.
It was down.

Speaker 2 And I call Todd. I'm like, what's going to happen? He's like, oh, I'm working on it.
I'm working on it. And I'm going on stage selling click funnels, knowing that it's down.

Speaker 2 I was like, this is so embarrassing so I'm doing the thing and I come back up finally gets it back up before we're done but then the next week I'm flying to London so I'm flying to London go speak at this event and the promoter invited my wife my kids and stuff so we're flying overseas and so we're up in the air for however 15 hours and when we land you have to hook the SIM card into your phone or whatever back then so I put a sim card in all of a sudden my phone starts like texts messages foxers skypes many like every messaging platform my phone's just blowing up and these are people who are angry like i'm gonna kill you russell you owe me money like like it was insane I'm like, what is happening?

Speaker 2 So finally, I called Todd. I'm like, what's happening? And all I remember, he said, it was down.
He's like, and if I'm able to get it back up. And I was like, what?

Speaker 2 Like, if, like, are you saying this is not something? Like, and I was, my heart dropped. And I was like, what do we do? And then we've, at that time, I've been down like two or three hours.

Speaker 2 And people are upset. All of our customers.
I'm like, I don't, I don't know what to do. Like, I'm a first-time CEO.
And so we take my wife, my kids, the hotel. And I went to two rooms.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I'm like, collect, can you take all the kids and just, I need to be in the room for a minute by myself? And I'm sitting there. I'm like, what do I do?

Speaker 2 And like, every instinct of me wanted to hide and just like hide you know but i was like we're down i don't know what's gonna happen i don't back up and so i remember we had this little facebook group at the time and we're going live in that facebook group and i was like hey we're down and i don't know why and this is not acceptable all my businesses are down all your businesses down we're hoping to fix it we're trying all these things and like i was just very vulnerable and very i told them the truth i didn't try to hide it or try to justify i'm like this is not good this is our fault i'm so sorry we're gonna figure this out because i was like upfront and didn't try to hide it it was really interesting because the community rallied behind us and everyone, and there are a lot of mad people, obviously, but as a whole, everyone's like, no worries, like, we got you.

Speaker 2 We're all praying for you.

Speaker 2 All these sorts of stuff. And in eight hours, they had to rebuild the database on this other place and they copied everything over.
And somehow, miraculously, eight hours, they got it back up live.

Speaker 2 And it had been rebuilt on this new platform, which is way more stable.

Speaker 2 And what's crazy is I was assuming we'd lose half our members or most, you know, like with, I thought everyone was going to leave us.

Speaker 2 And what's crazy, you look at the daily cancellations, like it didn't change. Like it was just almost nothing had happened.
And that it drew the community closer closer to me and to us and everything.

Speaker 2 And then from there, we kind of made that like a standard. Like, hey, when things are happening, we'll be vulnerable.

Speaker 2 We'll tell people about it because obviously people respected that and they needed that. And so I don't know, you don't learn that stuff.
It's just in the moment, it's like, what's the decision?

Speaker 2 And sometimes, and that time I made the right decision. Tons of times I made the wrong decision.
You learn the other way too. Like, that was stupid.
I should not have done that, you know?

Speaker 2 But it's like, that's this whole game. Like, you get thrown into the fire.
And as you're, especially as you're going through right now, you guys are growing like crazy, right?

Speaker 2 You feel, it's like these problems pop up like, what's happening?

Speaker 2 You know, for us, people, when when ClickFiles start growing, like everyone's building their sites on there, but what's crazy is I don't know, I can't monitor 10,000 people's sites or 100,000 people's sites.

Speaker 2 So we have people like doing illegal stuff and like we're getting letters from the FBI because we're hosting websites. Like, why are you hosting these things?

Speaker 2 I remember Taylor Swift sent us a huge lawsuit suing us because someone was selling Taylor Swift merchandise on their site. Like, I'm getting these things in the mail.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I don't know, like, I might go into jail. I don't even know.
I don't know who these people are.

Speaker 2 We're trying to find their sites and turn them off and apologize to the FBI and like all these things. Like, you know, so it's like, but you just keep showing up and going through it.

Speaker 2 And eventually like you get thicker skin and you get capacity. And they're like, okay, now we can handle these kind of problems and you get things in place, but it's not something you can prepare for.

Speaker 2 Like you got to jump into the fire. And by doing that, God will qualify you.
It always says like, he doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the call, right?

Speaker 2 Like you jump out there and by just being in the storm, that's how you learn the things. And, but that's why I love entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2 One of my friends, Steve Larson, said it's the greatest personal development course in the world is being an entrepreneur because you jump out there and it's like, you get to learn so much in such a short period of time.

Speaker 3 And, but then at the end of the day, like, man, like, what a great growth tool like how much did you grow by doing that versus anything else in the world so one of the beautiful stories i think also that you share and i shared it a little bit with you you talk about the dream 100 which really impacted me when i showed that earlier and you

Speaker 3 talk a little bit about how you went ahead and created this amazing relationship with tony robbins and also how that helped you with some really interesting decisions for yourself with click funnels and leading it.

Speaker 3 So can you share a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's so many stories around that one. The concept of Dream 100, as you know, was we launched ClickFunnels.

Speaker 2 I'm like, we can go out there and try to get every single customer on our own, but there's already people who've already congregated those customers together.

Speaker 2 If we can build relationships with them and they promote to the list, you know, one person says yes, they might promote it to 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 people, right?

Speaker 2 So we started building these relationships. And so one of the ones early in my career, I started building was Tony Robbins.

Speaker 2 And we just, for a decade, I was serving him and trying, anytime he'd ask for something, I'd jump on and jump a call with his team and like help him through things.

Speaker 2 and when our funnel hacking live event came out our third funnel hacking live he came and was a speaker which was like the craziest thing in the world for me and so that's kind of how it started we built that relationship but i was like very careful never to ask him for anything i was like i'm gonna show up and serve him and show up and keep serving him eventually something cool happened from it and i remember that him and dean graciosi were gonna launch a company it was about masterminds and stuff so i remember i went and i bought we bought mastermind.com for i think i spent like 600 grand on it and i give it to him as a gift like here you go i hope you guys can use this for your business and they're like what and then they actually made me a partner so we were a partner in that company together for a couple years what's cool about is when they launched it we would help promote every single year and um the affiliate prize was like you get to go to these retreats with tony robbins the very first one was in fiji and it was like you could come to tony's resort in fiji and then you get to be in this mastermind you can ask tony any question you want and it's cool in fact we've done it i think i've done it five four or five years i have a video of each one we filmed it and captured and made these really cool youtube videos so we i flew out to uh to fiji my wife and i we're in this mastermind and it was this time in my life where i was like clickfronse is growing but i don't know what to do do.

Speaker 2 And like, who do you ask questions like that? I don't have people in my world that, you know, my family that have done this kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And, and so it was kind of cool to have a chance to ask him a question. Every year I get asked him a different question.
That first year, the question was like, what do I do? Do I sell the company?

Speaker 2 Do I not? Like, what does that look like? And he, he said, he was like, why would you sell the company? You love funnels more than anyone in the world.

Speaker 2 He's like, when someone says the world, ClickFunnels are funnel, like you light up like, you're going crazy about it.

Speaker 2 And he's just like, Selling something sounds exciting in the moment, but he's like, if you don't have the next thing that you're passionate about, you'll end up unfulfilled and not happy.

Speaker 2 And he's like, instead of selling it, what if you shifted how it was and you shifted from you being the CEO and the person running it to like, you go on the board and you know, give yourself a job inside the company that you're passionate about, like for me building funnels and then hire someone to be the one in charge.

Speaker 2 You don't have to be that person. It never really crossed my mind.
I was like, huh. You know, after that, first time I went and we actually found someone, it was my partner, Dave Woodward.

Speaker 2 He became the CEO of the company. He was able to take those things on and run it.
And I got a chance to focus on stuff I love doing, you know? Anyway, super cool advice.

Speaker 2 And like I said, every year I go back and I get asked Tony another question about some aspect of my life or the business and it's just been it's been really special spending time with him and getting to know him and then getting feedback directly from him you know what i mean like someone who's influenced so many people and be able to say like here's where i'm stuck again like how do i get out of this conundrum i got myself into you know anyways pretty cool i'll urge people you know if you're listening to this I think this is a video that really did impact me.

Speaker 3 I think you call it Dream 100. But I think, first of all, just the patience that you have in terms of, yes, I want everything yesterday.
That's who I am. Right.
And it's not going to happen yesterday.

Speaker 3 It's not going to happen tomorrow either. So building that relationship takes time.
And also, just a lot about giving and finding the wins for them. John Maxwell calls it the people's pile.

Speaker 3 There's a big people's pile with Tony Robbins. I told you for me, it was Richard Branson.
Like, we need to somehow learn how to break that people pile to create that connection.

Speaker 3 And I think the idea of spending $600,000 dollars was just like

Speaker 2 mesmerizing for me but seriously like the patience together with the investment because that's exactly what i've done with retro branson to some extent just not with that level and i think that just taught me so much oh yeah i think it's interesting people like to do business with people they like so it's like how do we build an actual relationship and i'm sure you get this as well i get all the time where it's like people will come into my world and you can tell from the get-go they're there for like something for them so like for me it's like i'm very guarded i was hard to get through my gatekeepers because it's just like some people in my life who come to me it's like they always have an ulterior motive and so for me it's like i never want to be the guy who someone gets that feeling so i'm like how do i just show up and just literally figure out to be their friend how can i help them from that's when the best stuff happens anyway right but it's not coming in like what can i take from this person it's like what can i give to this person and hopefully something cool happens if not i'm cool with that too but like and i think that's the key and most everyone's looking for like the short term like the hit the win really quick is going to be the thing versus like you know there's a book called dig your well before you're thirsty it's that it's like digging your well like just building relationship like whenever I talk about Dream 100, people are like, so when do I start the Dream 100 process?

Speaker 2 I'm like, yesterday. Start building relationships.
Like it's your business become infinitely better. Like if I lost everything tomorrow, within 30 days, I'd be back on top.

Speaker 2 I call a dozen people who I've got great relationships with and it'd be fine. Like there's no, I don't have fear of that anymore because I've built deep relationships with a lot of different people.

Speaker 2 I think that's what people are missing is they're looking for this. I'm going to get something from this person.
Therefore, I'm going to do this thing.

Speaker 2 And it's just like, that's not how you, it's how you win in the long term.

Speaker 2 Maybe in the short term, you may trick someone or get something out of it, but the long term is like putting in the the effort, putting in the time, you know, and I think that's the key that most people miss.

Speaker 3 I love that you said that. I'm sure you're getting a thousand.
Hey, can you make me this introduction to the president of Starbucks or Shopify? No.

Speaker 3 Like, can we move on? Like, I don't know you. So you're right.
It's, it's really about how do you see things. But I think, again, it's that give, give, give mentality.

Speaker 3 How do you find win-wins for them? Because if there is no win, you know, it's not going to make sense.

Speaker 2 And I think also your ability to put yourself in a room with people who are just so smart that will force you to leap if you will right so no fun intended so one of the very first events i went to it was armin morn's big seminar and i was there and i met this other kid i can't remember his name now he had an interesting name but i remember we were about same age he might have been a year older than me and i remember armin made an offer it's like a 25 000 mastermind and the kid ran the back and he bought it and he came back i was like first off how do you have 25 000 to buy that i couldn't comprehend that but i was like why would you buy that And he told me something that was so simple and so powerful.

Speaker 2 He's like, he's like, there's two ways to get the top, Russell. You can work your way in or you can buy your way in.
He's like, I just bought my way in. He's like, now I'm in the room.

Speaker 2 I have a relationship. I can tell these people.
And he's like, that's worth $25,000 every day of the week.

Speaker 2 And for me, I was like, oh my gosh, I'd never, what's it going to teach me for this worth 25,000? I was trying to figure that out.

Speaker 2 And it's like, no, no, like, like, how do you get in the room like with the people? Like, you work your way in, which takes a lot of time, or it's just buy your way in.

Speaker 2 And after I learned that from him, I was like, okay, same thing. Like, how do I buy my way in?

Speaker 2 You know, like for the Tony thing, like, I knew that the Philly Prize was to go and to be in Fiji with him. Like, there's, I couldn't buy that.
There was no amount of money.

Speaker 2 So I had to work my way in, you know, and so, like, I went and I promoted, and we sold a bunch of stuff to get in that room. Like, I need to figure it out.

Speaker 2 Other times, in fact, here's a funny Richard Branson story you probably don't know about me. 17, 18 years ago, he did a, him and his mom did an event called the Rock the Casbah.

Speaker 2 And somehow I got invited to the Rock the Casbah event, which is weird. I'm in this room with like all these famous people and entrepreneurs.
And they were doing an auction.

Speaker 2 And during the auction, they're bidding a bunch of stuff. And one of the auction items was to get your name on the side of a virgin airplane.
I was like, that would be awesome.

Speaker 2 And so I started bidding on that. And I started bidding.
And during this bidding war, me and Dean Graciosi end up getting in a bidding war over this plane.

Speaker 2 We're going back and forth and back and forth. And eventually I stopped at 45,000 and Dean bed 50.
I was like, I'm out. My wife's like, stop raising your hand.
So I stopped.

Speaker 2 And then Branson comes on stage. He's like, who was it at 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane too.
And I was like, yeah.

Speaker 2 And so he came on stage, got pictures of me and Dean and Richard Branson and all this stuff. And on the side of one of the planes, it says dot-com secrets air to this day because of that.

Speaker 2 But, like, I can't remember going with the story other than like, that's how I got to know Dean. Like, eventually, I met Dean a year later or something.

Speaker 2 And this, and it was kind of like this thing's like, who's this guy? And I was like, hey, you don't probably remember me, but do you remember this?

Speaker 2 I showed him the picture of him on stage with the plane. I was like, that's me.
He's like, you're the guy I got the bidding war with. And it was like instant friends because of that.

Speaker 2 But open up all these different doors. And anyway, so there's a random story.

Speaker 3 I love that story. Oh, this is so good.
And I love that sentence: work or crawl your way or buy your way. I just love love that.

Speaker 3 You are pretty open, if that's okay to go there for a second about something that usually nobody is. It's your difficulty to have children.

Speaker 3 And the reason why I would love to go there for a second is because I think this is like, for a lot of people, one of the hardest times in their life and nobody can talk about it.

Speaker 3 Do you mind sharing it a little bit?

Speaker 2 For sure. It's been a little while now now that we got, you know.

Speaker 3 I know. You started with the 18 year olds.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Such a blur. Yeah.
But after my wife and I got married, we tried to get pregnant. We weren't able to for, and my wife's older than me, wife's six years older than me.

Speaker 2 And so she had anxiety anyway of like, you know, wants to have babies before she's too old, stuff like that. And so

Speaker 2 we just weren't able to get pregnant and we didn't know what to do. And it's interesting because she was actually watching Oprah.

Speaker 2 And on Oprah, there was a doctor who was like a fertility doctor who happened to live in Boise, Idaho. I remember she called me that day from work and she's like, I just watched this thing.

Speaker 2 There's a fertility doctor. He lives in Boise, Idaho.
I'm like, whoa, this is crazy. And so we booked the thing and we went in there.
And I remember

Speaker 2 first month went through the whole process, you know, took the shots, do all the, you know, everything step by step. And then nothing happened.

Speaker 2 And the second month, since he went through the whole process, nothing happened. And then the third month, it was actually the same month I was graduating from college because I remember

Speaker 2 we went through the whole process, did the test. And then that day, my, my family and her family was coming in because I had graduation the next day.
So they were all driving in.

Speaker 2 And about two minutes before they pulled into the driveway, Clette was outside getting the yard ready or whatever. And the phone rings, I pick it up.

Speaker 2 And the nurse is like, hey congratulations you guys are pregnant i'm like what and i walk out to collette and i was like you're pregnant she's like what she starts crying she wouldn't believe it she's like you know and all of a sudden we're sitting in the front porch just bawling her eyes out and all of a sudden all the cars drive of our family she's like don't tell anyone i'm like what she said don't tell anyone i'm like oh so we went inside and like everyone came in and we're like just tears in our face from trying to have this conversation like smiling and finally she looks at me she's like okay let's tell i'm like Colette's pregnant anyway.

Speaker 2 It's funny because I've shared that story and people are like, why would you share that story? It has nothing to do with business.

Speaker 2 And I remember at that time, I'd go to speak at events and I would always tell, like, I would tell my wrestling stories. I'd tell stories about my business, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And it was weird because when I would sell something, like people would buy from me, usually like athletes and people who are very similar to me. Right.

Speaker 2 And I remember for some reason, one of them talking and all of a sudden, like, I just feel some impression to tell the story about my kids. And I was like, what?

Speaker 2 And I don't know. I start telling the story and I get emotional on stage.
I'm crying.

Speaker 2 And it's just talking about how grateful I was for that doctor who was willing to like put themselves out there to like get on the Oprah show.

Speaker 2 It's not easy to get on like they go out there to get themselves on Oprah so that because their message changed my life.

Speaker 2 That's why I love entrepreneurs because like everything good in my life came because some entrepreneur risked everything to figure out how to like change someone's life.

Speaker 2 And so for me, it's like that's been my mission. So I shared that and I was like bawling and I tell the whole story.

Speaker 2 And then at the end that event, it was crazy seeing the people that bought for me, they were like the athletes still bought for me.

Speaker 2 And I was like wives and mothers and families that are buying my stuff. And I was like, how fascinating?

Speaker 2 Like when you're willing to like to share parts of yourself that most people aren't willing to share.

Speaker 2 What's crazy about that is it opens you up where like now people, they will connect to you to different levels.

Speaker 2 Cause like, wow, that person went through what I had to go through or like, well, you know, what I'm going through right now or something. And you're able to bring people into your world.

Speaker 2 And I think for anyone listening, like, one of the most powerful things you can do is like to tell those things of your life that are harder that may not make sense. But when you do that, like.

Speaker 2 that's how you build actual connection with your audience. When you're willing to share stuff, most people won't.
It comes away. Everyone wants to share the highlight reel.

Speaker 2 And it's like, talk about the stuff that's real. And then that's when people will come to you.
And so, yeah, that's why I share that story. Cause again, for me, it's like, that's why I do what I do.

Speaker 2 Cause I know what one entrepreneur can do, how they change my life. And if I can help one other entrepreneur change someone else's life, like what gets better than that? Nothing.

Speaker 3 That's incredible. And I think that is really, really, really inspiring to hear your level of authenticity and just honesty, because I think it is missing in a lot of the leadership that we see today.

Speaker 3 But I also understand that it's easier to tell the stories from the scars, not from the wounds. When it's really, really, really open, it's hard.
You need to sometimes let it scar a little bit.

Speaker 3 So, Vini, based on everything, and again, you write a ton of books. I have one here.
I have Trazillion others on my audio ball. Like, how do you do it all?

Speaker 3 And what would be an advice to people who are listening or to your younger self based on all of it?

Speaker 2 Oh, man. Well, I'm able to do it all because I've got a great support and networking team around me.

Speaker 2 To be able to do what we're doing at scale, like, you know, I've got an amazing wife at home who takes care of the kids, who makes sure that the home's great.

Speaker 2 I have an amazing team here in the office that helps support me. I had a mentor when I first got started who said something so powerful.
He said, he's like, there's two types of people in the world.

Speaker 2 There's people who really get starting things, people who are really good at finishing things. Like, he said, figure out who you are and then surround yourself with the opposite.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'm really good at starting things. I'm really bad at finishing things.

Speaker 2 And so if you look at my company, you know, there's me who starts stuff and, and I got 400, you know, 399 other people who are just finishing the projects behind me.

Speaker 2 And so for me, it's like, I got to work on the stuff I'm most passionate about, but I know that if I'm going to, if I'm going to write a book or do something, it's like, I got to cut time out from other things.

Speaker 2 Like, I got to make sure the team's in place. Okay, everyone's in place.
Cool. I'm going to go deep.
I'm going to spend the next 90 days. I got to work on this project over here.

Speaker 2 You know, right now we're in the middle of a big project. And so everyone's blocking and tackling so I can focus on getting it all done.

Speaker 2 Because in a week from now, a week from today, actually, we're rolling out this new offer. So it's like, that's what we're all encompassed on.

Speaker 2 But it's just having a really good team of people around you who also believe in the mission, who are capable, who can pick up the reins around you so that you can do the things.

Speaker 2 And then I think it's really focusing on what are the biggest leverage impact points that you can do in your business, right?

Speaker 2 For me, it's like there's a lot of people that can do operations, they can do meetings, they can be a CEO, but there's only one person that can write my book, right? It's me.

Speaker 2 So it's like, it's only one person can do the video. It's got to be me.
Like, those are the pieces that are unique to me, like my unique skill.

Speaker 2 I think for everyone, it's like understanding what your unique abilities are and figuring out how to build a team around you so you can focus on your unique abilities and your team can focus on their unique abilities.

Speaker 2 And when you can do that, everyone's like focusing on the unique abilities. That's when things can blow up and things can grow grow and things can scale.

Speaker 2 It's when you're not doing your unique ability, other people aren't doing theirs. It just feels hard.
It's not fun. And it's just like miserable.

Speaker 2 But when you get where everything's going the right direction, then it's just, it's exciting. It's fun.
Like everyone enjoys what they're doing versus, you know, the other side.

Speaker 2 And so I think for me, that's, it's just to have an amazing support network and then trying to double down on the things that are your unique ability that no one else can do that you can do.

Speaker 2 And then like I said, leverage impact. Like for me, it's like of all the things like we've launched.
hundreds of courses and funnels and offers and events and everything.

Speaker 2 But like for me, the things that have made me the most money have the the most lasting impact, like, ClickFunnels for sure, my books, for sure.

Speaker 2 People will come to me, like, Russell, I bought your course four years ago and changed my life. No one ever says that.
They always say, I read your book and it changed my life.

Speaker 2 Like, so for me, like, books are such high leverage, high impact.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm willing to spend a lot of energy there because I see the results that come on the back side of those more than almost anything else I do. So, that's why I love, I love doing them.

Speaker 2 Even though I'm in the middle of a book right now, I've been spending almost four years on it. It's painful.
It's like giving birth to a really fat, overweight baby.

Speaker 2 But it's like, I know when it's done, it'll be like the next thing that people tell me is the thing that changed their life. So it's like you're birthing this book.

Speaker 3 Well, I'll be reading it for sure because I read every single one. But seriously, Russell, anything else that you would want our listeners to hear about you?

Speaker 2 A lot of people struggle in business because they're trying to figure out how to make money.

Speaker 2 And like, I always tell my audience, I'm like, if you're coming to my world or your world, like if you're in this business, like my guess is that it's not just because you want to make money.

Speaker 2 It's because you've heard what my friend Alex Sharfin calls it the call to contribution. Like, I want to contribute more.
I want to, like, you feel a call to contribution. And I'm a big believer.

Speaker 2 Like, if, if you felt that call, it's not just like some magic feeling or like butterfly. Like, I believe that, that we're all called of God, right?

Speaker 2 That we're all called to serve a certain specific group of people.

Speaker 2 And it's based on like, yes, our talents and our, the things we're good at, but also like the things you've gone through, like the pain, the scars, the, the trials, the frustration, the stuff you had to go through, you overcame.

Speaker 2 And because you overcame that, you know, you know how to do that, right? And so the call to contribution is typically like you went through a whole bunch and you become something great.

Speaker 2 You can change other people's lives.

Speaker 2 you've been called to serve this group of people because of what you've gone through for me when i when i realized that's what it was and when it shifted for me like thinking how to make money to like i feel like god's called me to serve this group of people like it changes everything then you're it's easy to get through the ups and downs and the hard stuff because you're like these are the people's lives i'm supposed to be changing and i think you know for the final things for people just if you lean into that and realize that it's not just you trying to make money but it's like there's something bigger that you're you're striving towards someone's life you're changing it changes the dynamics of it makes the business fun it makes it so that during the hard days the hard times, like you can overcome those things.

Speaker 2 I think when you make that shift mentally, like everything else changes for you.

Speaker 3 I totally agree, Russell. This was so, so, so inspiring.
Thank you so much for everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
It's fun watching what you're doing. I'm proud of how fast you're growing.
It's so exciting to see. I love watching entrepreneurs have success.

Speaker 3 It's the best.

Speaker 1 I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends.

Speaker 1 Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com/slash training. That's leapacademy.com/slash training.

Speaker 1 See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy Wuzzilana Golan Show.