The Overlooked “Old Way” to Sell That OfferLab Brings Back! | #Sales - Ep. 70

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This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Hey, what's up?

This is Russell Brunson.

Welcome back to the show.

We just finished the Offer Lab launch.

I think most of you guys probably watched it or part of it.

Hopefully, you enjoyed it.

At the Offer Lab launch, after the launch day, then we had a three-day event happening afterwards.

It was kind of a four-day event, and it was chaos, and it was fun, and it was exciting.

We had over 40, I think, 45 speakers who came and spoke.

And it was amazing.

But I had a chance to do a special presentation each day that I thought was really fun.

And I wanted to share here with you guys on the podcast.

So the first presentation,

this one was really fun for me to give because I talk about how we made money before Facebook, before MySpace, before Friends are back when we were just getting started in this game.

How did you have success online?

How did you make sales and drive traffic when you didn't have these ad platforms to drive traffic from?

And I showed everyone what was happening.

And one of the premises of this talk is like, if you want to understand how to be successful in the future, you have to learn about the past.

Because right now, there's a storm coming.

Traffic is changing.

Everything is shifting.

And those who understand how we had traffic before Facebook are the ones who are going to be successful now that getting traffic is harder and harder on Facebook and the other platforms and so that's this presentation is about I hope you enjoy it if you haven't got your offer lab account yet it's completely free you just go to offerlab.com and get signed up it's uh it's really really cool and so go check it out um and uh that's all you got to do so thanks so much you guys and we'll jump right into the first trending right now

What I wanted to spend my first 30 minutes or so today before we start bringing all the other guest speakers is I just wanted to share with you guys basically a history lesson.

My belief is that for you to be successful in the future, you have to understand the past.

And most of you guys who are even in this room, for sure at home, most of you guys haven't been doing this that long.

In fact, I want to do a quick poll.

How many of you guys have been in this game, this online business game, for more than a year?

If you've got a year, raise your hand.

Okay.

More than five years, keep your hand raised.

More than 10 years, keep your hand raised.

More than 15 years, keep your hand raised.

More than 20 years, keep your hand raised.

More than 25 years, keep your hand raised.

There's one person in the room, me, and I don't, maybe one or two.

Okay.

So I've been playing this game for a long time.

I know I look like I'm 11 years old.

I'm actually 45 years old right now, which is crazy.

I started this game when I was 21.

So that's kind of when I got into this world.

And back then, the internet looked completely different.

It's not like it is today.

And we had to figure a lot of things out.

And so what we were doing back when I was in my 20s is the secret to being successful moving forward.

Okay.

When I wrote the Traffic Seekers book, the introduction title was there's a storm coming.

I talked about this man four years ago.

I'm like, there's a storm coming.

Traffic's changing.

Internet's changing.

Those who don't understand these core principles are going to struggle.

And I've watched now over the last four years since I wrote that in the book.

I've watched as the internet has changed, as ads have changed, as platforms have changed, and so many people who I love and care about, who have amazing messages and products and services, have fallen away because they didn't heed the warning then.

And so this is me reheating the warning today because things are not going to get cheaper online.

Traffic's not going to get easier.

Going viral is not going to be an easier thing, okay?

And so the secret for you to be successful in the future is to understand the past.

How did we play and win the game before we could buy ads, before we could just turn on, you know, make a video that went viral?

Like, how did we do it before all that stuff?

And if you understand that, it's going to change everything moving forward.

That's how you're going to be successful in the future.

Because if and when your ad account gets shut down, you get delisted, your video stops going viral like all the things that can and will probably happen in the very near future for everybody okay happens to me happens everybody

if you understand these principles I want to talk about this morning it will give you the ability to weather the storm won't even matter it won't even affect you in the smallest okay and offer lab is a huge piece of that it's what makes this part of the conversation actually possible which is why I'm so excited for it which is why I'm like if you guys adopt this now as you move forward in the future it will protect you it'll give you safety security it'll help your business to be around in the long term and so that's why i'm so passionate why i'm so why why this message is so important um and it's shifting from like this solo entrepreneurship that we are doing that we've been doing for the last decade back into a collaborative uh environment that we were doing when i was in my 20s the way that i grew my business the way that most of the people you know nowadays who are who have been around for 20 25 years that's how we all did it and so i'm going to bring you guys um some of that today and so it's going to require you to think about business a little differently it's going to require you to think about how offers work and funnels work a little bit differently.

But if you're willing to go on that journey with me and you take these little shifts in your mind, I think that on the other side, you're going to find something really, really magical.

So that's my game plan I want to talk about.

I don't have any slides today.

I just wanted to doodle some stuff.

So most of the people in our community that I know of got into this business within the last 10 years or so.

And the last 10 years have been like the good old days when Facebook ads were cheap, things were different, like it was a lot easier.

So this is what most people's businesses look like in the last decade.

What would happen is they would go and they would create a product so there is the product right and then they like we needed traffic to the product so you go over here and you found this one partner we're gonna call him zuck

there's zuckerberg and he was he was the partner he said hey zuckerberg um will you send people to my offer and i will give you some money and zuckerberg's like i would love to take your money and so we would buy ads right and we would drive traffic so we give zuckerberg some money up here People would come, they buy the product, and in theory, if we did it correctly, we would get $2 back out.

And it was was amazing.

How many of you guys remember the good old days when Facebook ad clicks were a penny or 5 cents or 25 cents or 30 cents per click?

And you were selling just the $37 product and you could be profitable.

Say you spend $10 an adjusted $37.

This is like a magic ATM machine.

And you just do it.

And you're like, this is the greatest thing in the world.

I have the best partner in the world.

His name is Mark Zuckerberg.

I'm going to figure out every other human being on the planet because I don't need anyone else.

All I need is Mark Zuckerberg.

He's like a drug dealer.

And we're like, this is awesome.

Give me some more.

Give me another hit.

I've never done drugs, but I assume that's what

I don't.

So, right and so we literally just like got rid of all of our friends our partners our JVs our everything and just like we focused on this one person because he was like the best in the world he gave us all the good stuff right and then what happened is then Zuckerberg's like hey install this little tracking pixel on your site so we can optimize and find better audiences for you

He's so smart and we're like, this is a great idea.

And so we put these little pixels on our pages, right?

And then he starts looking at stuff and he starts realizing he's like, man, okay, I know how much they're spending in here.

So they're giving me $10 and they're making $20.

I'm going to increase this from $10

to to $15, $15 to $18, $18 to $19.

Just enough that they're still making money, but not enough for them to actually succeed.

But they've got the drugs coming.

They can't turn it off, right?

And so that was happening.

And so costs are going up.

We're like, ugh.

And this is when the funnel world started developing and started becoming a thing.

It's like, okay, well, I can't do this.

Mr.

Dan Kennedy, the greatest marketing mind of all time, says whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins, how do we do that?

And that's when the birth of like upsells started coming.

It's like, well, okay, I'm spending a dollar getting two.

I'm spending almost $2 getting two.

This isn't working.

I need to have an upsell.

So we started adding in upsells, right?

And then that would work for a while.

And then Zuckerberg starts tracking these pixels here.

It's like, oh, they're making more money.

I can charge them more.

And they start going again, right?

And it starts happening.

They're like, oh, now we need to add a downsell.

Oh, we're going to add an order for him.

We start tweaking and optimizing these things.

And so our funnels got better and better, more and more sophisticated because we had to, because otherwise we made no money for Zuckerberg.

And as we got better at selling, he got better at taking our money, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse, right?

And that's the world we live in today.

Okay.

And so for someone to be successful, it's not just like, I'm going to put a product up and sell it.

In fact, I was at a mastermind a month ago and had such a good time hanging out.

And there's all these celebrities there.

And how many of you guys know Derek Coffee?

The dancer from Dancing with the Stars, like super talented guy.

And he comes up.

He's like, Russell, has I seen your stuff online?

He's like, he's like...

I want a funnel.

He's like, I have a book.

Like, I wrote a book.

Like, we do, can I do a funnel with that?

And at first, I was like, dude, Derek Hoff's going to have a funnel.

This is insane.

And then at the same time, I was like,

for him to have a successful funnel, he's got a book.

But how am am I going to tell him, like, you got to create an order form bump?

And then to make that work, then you got to create a $200 course.

And then you got to make a downsell course.

And then you probably have to make another course.

And like, if you have all these pieces in place, then we turn ads on, then you could break even.

But then you got to have something high-tech on the back end to sell to actually make.

I was just like, how am I going to, like,

it seems so hard, right?

And that's what's like, it's hard.

I have people come to my community all the time.

Like, Russell, I wrote a book.

Russell, I created a course.

They come.

They're so excited.

Like, okay, what do I do now?

I'm like, cool.

You created, you wrote a book.

Like, which is, if you haven't written a book, if you do it the right way it is it's like the hardest thing in the world right

I have a meme that I share with myself every time I start writing a book it says the difference is that reading a book and writing a book is very similar the only difference is when you're writing a book the book's trying to kill you and that's kind of what happens when you write a really good book right the book's trying to kill you should get the book done you put two years in this things like the book is done you're like cool we can sell the line but we need to create four other courses a product and upsell coaching program then you could actually maybe make money with it at the end and it's just like

people get overwhelmed right which by the way is one of the problems that Offer Lab solves.

I'll come back to that later.

But like,

with Derek Cuff, for example, or whoever, I could be like, just put your book on Offer Lab, and then you don't have to create an order for a bump and an upsell and a downsell.

They're like, find partners who already have these pieces, and now you can just drive traffic and it works, right?

You don't have to go and create 30 different products just to break even.

You can actually just put your product on there, find other products, and it speeds you up to success.

And over time, you can go and you create your own upsell.

Over time, you can create something else.

But in the short term, let's get money happening, right?

Like

money follows speed.

Like, how do do we get something out there as quick as humanly possible right and so that gives us ability to move fast because you i just have one offer here one course one product whatever and i can plug in other people's things okay and so again that's kind of uh one of the big benefits of offer lobby and i'm gonna come back to that but um but that's kind of where business is today okay that's been the last decade so those guys have been playing this game the last decade again it looks familiar i had this and then i added this and this and and now we're here okay but i want to go back in time now so again Your success in the future dictates is going to be 100% based on your understanding of the past.

Because what's happening in the past is what's gonna win.

And most of you guys weren't there in the past.

So you're lucky.

Old man Russell Brunson was there 25 years ago in college figuring this game out.

And I'm gonna show you what worked in the past.

Because if you understand this, this is how we're gonna be successful in the future.

Okay, so in the past, rewind back to when Russell was 21 years old.

I looked really young back then.

It was really weird.

Someone, this is like awkward, but somebody,

I met somebody and they're like, you look really young.

How old are you?

I'm like, how old do you think I am?

I'm looking at my fishing for a compliment, you know?

And she goes, well, based on the crow's feet next to your eyes you got to be at least in your 40s i was like i have crow's feet like i was freaking out like i don't know anyway now i'm very self-self-conscious of my anyway okay so back before i had crow's feet 21 year old russell brunson um i was trying to figure this game out and figure things out right and so here's me

um and i had glasses back then oops there's me the glass anyway there's russell okay now russell created a little offer the very first product i ever created before potato guns the very first thing i ever created was a little product product called Zip Brander.

So this was my product.

It's a little software product sold for $67.

And that was my product.

And I spent all this time posting in forums and getting to know people.

Because again, remember, this is the world before Facebook was around, before YouTube, before all these things, right?

It was before MySpace.

MySpace came out after this.

It was back when there was no advertising networks outside of Google.

You could buy Google Ads.

That was about it.

So I'm creating my first product, Zipbander.

I'm trying to drive traffic.

And over time, I'd built up a list, a little tiny list of,

I don't know, a couple hundred people.

So this is my, this is Russell's little list.

And that was me.

And I started going, I was like trying to figure out, like, are there other people playing this game besides me?

I started searching online.

I found some forums in different places.

I started getting to know other people.

And then one day, I saw this dude.

And his name was Mike Philstein.

So there's Mike.

And Mike was in this form, and he had a brand new product.

I think it was called, I texted him this morning to see if...

Ah, dang, he didn't text me back yet.

I texted him this morning.

I was like, what was the name of the product?

I think it was called Carbon Copy, something, Carbon Copy and Marketing or something.

So he had this product, and there were DVDs, and he was literally burning them at his house, and then you'd buy it, and he'd ship you out this DVD.

And it's called Carbon Copy Marketing, right?

So that was Mike's thing, was the DVDs, Carbon Copy Marketing.

And so that was his product there.

And then Mike had his little list of people.

I think he had probably, I don't know, two or three thousand people on his list.

His little audience.

So that's Mike's list.

And I met Mike.

I was like, what's going on, Mike?

How's it going?

Like, I love your product.

It's so cool.

And

he was telling me back what he was doing, how many he'd sold.

And we're just excited to go back and forth.

And then I was like, well, because again, I can't, I have this product.

There's no way for me to just go turn traffic on.

Like, I'm going to run for Facebook ads.

Like, I have a product.

I'm just in college.

My newly married wife, money was not coming every day.

Every once in a while to come in if we did something.

So I went to Mike.

I was like, hey, Mike, I have an idea.

Your new product, Carbon Copy Marketing, looks really, really cool.

I have a little list of people.

What if I send an email to my list of people and sold them Carbon Copy Pro?

And then you send an email to your list of people and sold them Zip Brander.

Then we both win.

He's like, okay, let's do it.

And so we set up a partnership.

I sent an email to my list.

I sold a whole bunch of Carbon Copy Pro.

And then Mike, he kept half the money and gave me 50%.

So I got half, he got half.

It was awesome, right?

Then Mike sent an email.

His list on ZipBrander.

A bunch of people bought it.

I kept half the money.

I gave Mike half the money.

Partnership, joint venture.

It was insane.

I made money, he made money.

And at the same time, guess what else happened?

Both of our little lists got bigger.

People on his list found out about me.

People on my list found about him.

And so all of a sudden, my list got a little bit bigger.

And there's more people on this.

And there's more people on his list.

And we did this collaboration and we both won we both made money both our audiences grew and we had this partnership and it was the coolest thing in the world so that happened first and then I was like uh talking to Mike I'm like that was so fun like you know my wife's pumped we made some money like she didn't think I'm like this homeless jobless husband that she's supporting like we actually made some money in my business and it was just the coolest thing in the world I was talking to Mike I'm like I'm like do you know anybody else like doing this like I'm just I'm just kind of getting to know like the players in our market and Mike's like oh yeah there's the other guy and so he told me there's a guy named Gary Gary Ambrose and he's like here's Gary you should meet him so i go and i meet gary and guess what gary has his own product right i can't remember exactly what gary's product is called but gary also had his only little list of people right i was like dude that's awesome it's like so i go to gary i'm like hey that product looks cool and so i was like what if i promote your product to my list and then you promote my product to your list and we'll do a joint venture where we work together in collaboration and gary's like your product's awesome i would love to so gary sends email to his list to go buy zip random okay money comes in i give half to gary i keep half of it my my list grows because a bunch of Gary's people join my list and my list gets bigger.

And then Gary, and then I send an email to my list selling Gary's product, a bunch of people bought.

Gary gives me half the money.

I keep half the money.

We both win, right?

And then his list gets bigger.

I'm like, this is insane.

This is the best thing in the world.

I was like, people,

I was studying business in college and they're talking about all these weird things and everything.

I was like, business has nothing to do with any of the crap they're teaching me in college.

Business is just relationships because I'm doing more business than any of my college professors are selling my little product I created, right?

It's just relationships, okay?

Now this is coming from Russell, the awkward, awkward introvert who scared to death of people.

So then I'm like, okay, how do I do this?

And then they told me, hey, there's an event happening.

This guy named Armin Moore.

He's like the big guru in the world.

He's doing this event called Big Seminar.

We should all go to it.

So I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing.

So I go to the seminar.

Gary goes, Mike goes, all of us, we go to the seminar.

We get in this room.

There's 500 people who are all just like us.

A bunch of nerds making money on the internet.

I was like, this is amazing.

There's

this person here and there's this person here.

And we start meeting all these people.

And one one thing is interesting, each of these people had, number one, their own offer.

And number two, these had their own list of people.

Own offer, own list of people.

And I started walking around.

I was like, every person in here is a partner.

I'm not competitive anyway.

I'm a partner of every single one of these people.

And so I started becoming friends with them.

And back then, this is,

again, AG myself as well, okay?

You guys remember Skype?

Skype just got shut down, which is crazy.

Before Skype, there's a thing called Yahoo Messenger.

And it was the greatest thing in the world.

And so I got on Yahoo Messenger.

I'm like, hey, what's your Yahoo Messenger?

And we got a Yahoo Messenger and we started connecting, right?

So a Yahoo Messenger, we all hung out.

And all the business deals happened.

So my job, literally, full-time, I'm on Yahoo Messenger, messaging Gary and Mike and this guy and this guy, right?

And I'm introducing people into stuff.

And we're figuring out deals.

I'm like, hey, I have a, you know, we from my, so this is what's happening.

And from this, my business starts growing and growing and growing.

I'm again, I'm like, business is so great.

It has nothing to do with math or ads or creative or anything.

It has 100% to do with relationships.

That's all this.

Okay.

So introverted Russell, I'm going to this event, meeting people, getting their getting their their Yahoo Messenger links, which is really fun.

And that becomes my business.

It's funny.

Some of you guys may heard me tell a story.

I would go to these events.

And again, I've never drank.

I don't drink.

And but everyone, after the event's done, everyone's in the room like this.

And they go out to the to the bars and hang out.

And I'm like scared, you know, as the as the kid who's never drunk before, I'm scared to death.

Like I don't want to go to a bar.

Like, I don't want to go think I'm drinking.

And so I would go to the bars at night with these guys to hang out, but I was like, I need to make sure they know that I'm not drinking.

So I would go to the bartender right and I get there.

I'm like, hey, can I order your milk?

he's like what i'm like can i order milk like you want milk i'm like yeah i mean he's like why do you want milk i'm like because if you give me a sprite everyone's gonna think i'm drinking i don't even know cult 45 volume i don't even know what those things are right like i if i got milk they know i'm not drinking anything and so i that and the most cool is like it was the best ice breaker ever ever kind of be like are you drinking milk i'm like yeah like what i'm like yeah i'm more but i don't drink like but you're drinking milk yeah and then what was cool this is this is the big secret if anyone wants to know throughout the night the more drunk they got the more stuff they just gave me Like, we became like they're telling me all their secrets, all the best stuff.

It was like insane, right?

And then at that time, when they're like half of the half there, I'm like, hey, what's your Yahoo messenger?

Right?

Oh, here it is.

Sweet man, I'll message you next week, right?

And so I'm getting all these deals.

And so I started building this network of people.

I'm like, all businesses is a network of people.

The better relationship I have, these people, the more money I'm going to make.

And that's exactly what happened.

Okay.

And so what happened is then, again, I'd pro him, they pro and like, that's how this whole thing started growing.

Okay.

And it was great.

That was the season for a little while.

But then what happened

over time,

we started thinking like, how do we be more creative?

Because I can promote Mike, Mike can promote me, that's great.

I was like, how do we do actual collabs?

What's the next level of this?

What's the evolution of business?

Instead of me just us cross-promoting, what's the next evolution?

How do we do this?

And so we started playing with a couple of different ideas.

It was like, what if...

What if we created a product together that we both own?

So instead of just like, here's Russell's product, here's Mike's product, what if we came together,

did a joint venture, collaboration with each other, and what if we created a co-branded product?

Create a co-branded product, and it's got Mike's face on it, it's got my face on it, right?

We sell this product, and then we both promote it.

What happens is like, now Russell is promoting Russell, Mike is promoting Mike, so the conversions go up because our lists know who we are, and so more people buy because of that, which is exciting, right?

But then they come in here, and we have this co-branded product where we're teaching together.

And all of a sudden, like, my credibility bleeds on Mike, Mike's credibility bleeds on mine.

I'm like, we both like look bigger in the eyes of our audience.

We teach them stuff, and then when people buy this, we both get the customers and we both get the money.

We split 50-50, and this becomes like, this becomes the thing to do, right?

And so we started doing that.

In fact, I found one this morning on the Wayback Machine, and my team can pull it up.

This is one of the ones that Mike and I did back in the day.

It was called Pre-Launch Secrets.

We pull on the big one too, hopefully.

There.

So this is the co-branded product we did in 2000, October 20, 2005.

So I was 25 years old and this one came out.

And so it was Mike Phil said, Russell Brunson's pre-launched secrets.

And if you scroll up a little bit, you'll see this is the product we put together.

And basically, it was a teleseminar where Mike and I called each other.

And I did a bunch of successful.

He done a bunch of successful product launches.

I had a bunch of successful product launches.

And so we just interviewed each other by like, how'd you do this one?

What did you do?

What was the step-by-step process?

This is before anyone was saying the word funnel.

But basically, like, here's the funnels I did for all these different campaigns and these things.

And then Mike went through all the what his.

I think he spent like three hours on the phone of us going back and forth, just talking about this one niche, very specific topic, which was like how to do a pre-launch.

We put it together

Okay, I think you can put you can pull down now put together pre-launch secrets I promise my list Mike throws it to his list and all of a sudden a bunch of people start buying it and then people start messages that product looks awesome.

Can I promote it?

All these guys who see like can we promote like yeah, you can promote it So then they're promoting it there promoting everyone's promoting it and we're making it's like blows up right making a bunch of money and it was cool for me Mike and I when someone bought we both got the lead right and we split the money 50 50 and then affiliates promoted and split the money and it was insane Okay, it got so exciting.

And so then I started like who else can I do partnerships with?

And so I started creating products with a lot of other people.

Right.

I did products with a guy named Jeremy Burns.

I had a product with Gary Ambrose.

I had a break.

We should do these co-branded products together.

It was so fun.

Right.

And each co-branded product was interesting because what we would do is we'd figure out like, what's like, what's a specific thing?

Like, we're not creating these huge coaching programs and big courses and stuff.

It's like, what's like one really interesting, unique topic that we can talk about, a pre-launch, okay?

Mike had one call that he did.

It was called Fire Cell Seekers, like how to do a fire sell.

We had all these different things.

And so like, we pick one topic, we co-brand a product together, and it became a front end for us right we'd both promote this thing and we both get money split out and it was amazing and then other affiliates thought they want to promote it and so it just became this thing and then what would happen is that each of Mike and I both had our own business in the back right so then I would get the customer I'd get the customers like a thing and I'd sell my customers my product mike's so his customers his product and so this became this front end where we introduce each other's audiences together we both make a bunch of money right but then we get the customers links and then we can sell them stuff on on our own behind the scenes and that's kind of how we started playing business back in the day and then for me i was like this is the secret it's just collaborations how do we create things together it doesn't have to be Russell Brunson is this Russell Brunson is this what we've created more things together as a community as partners right

and for the next decade of my business that's what we did over and over and over again now

interesting fact Mike's gonna be here this week I believe and he's gonna be speaking so you have a chance to hear from him but back at this time when we were doing this whole thing Mike one of his business partners had an idea for for a concept they I think they called the upsell network like what if we create something because right now we've got Russell's got his product Gary's got his he's got his his every got these different products right we have co-branded products we're making together what if there's a way we could create a marketplace where everyone would upload their offers together and then what i could do is i could build a funnel really easy right like i could have my product on the front end i could have his is upsell one his is upsell two and this is upsell three right we could just glue together something and then what's cool is like everyone's involved in this funnel everybody promotes it because everybody wins right if someone buys russell gets his money this person gets their money this and everyone gets the leads along the way and like we all win together right and so mike started to build this thing again i think it was called the upsell network and uh they tried to build it and technically they ran into hurdles where it's technically wasn't possible but he planned this seed and i remember this is again 2005 2006 this is man 20 years ago uh is when he kind of planned that idea and they tried to build it and didn't end up working out and you know i don't know whatever happened the project that kind of died and uh but i always remember thinking like that's the coolest thing because right now for me to build a funnel i've got to go and build every single step inside the funnel i create 30 different offers create everything and then i'm in the silo by myself and then the only person who cares about that funnel success is me right versus this way it was different it's like okay we have a co-branded product here this guy's upsell this guy now now now a lot of people are incentivized and it was essential back then because I didn't have the ability to go to the one partner who seems so nice to all of us before he screwed us this guy I didn't have the ability to go to him that hey man trying ads he wasn't there so I had to find other partners who is also in their best interest I succeeded as well so I logged in there and so I put something together like hey you I'm gonna promote you're gonna promote and we set up these deals and these partnerships and everyone promotes something at the same time everyone got sold sold stuff in the funnel.

Everyone had a chance to make money and it was insane.

Okay.

So again, Mike tried to build an upsell network.

Technically wasn't able to happen.

But I remember always thinking, like, if we had that, it would make this so much more fun, so much easier.

And so,

and that was, again, 20, man, almost 20 years ago.

Okay.

And then fast forward, a few years later, Facebook comes out, ads start working, and then everybody just kind of shifted.

Everyone stopped working with partners and just had one partner, right?

Everyone started moving from this collaborative thing where we're literally on Yahoo Messenger eight, 10 hours a day.

And then it moved to Skype eventually when Skype came like, oh, we're cool.

We're in Skype.

What's your Skype handle?

That was the next cool thing to be.

In fact, I still have people to this day that I only contacted through Skype until they shut down last week or two weeks ago, whatever it was.

And I haven't really had to get a hold of them now because I only had their Skype.

It kind of sucks.

I wish they would have warned us.

I could have contacted them.

Hey, man, what's your little email?

What's your name again?

But that's where these deals were happening, right?

And for me, it was weird because we shifted from like, how do we collaborate?

How do we create co-brand stuff?

How How do we co-create stuff?

How do we create upsells and downset?

How do we all win together to this thing of like everyone just kind of went in silos?

Everyone focused on their own funnels.

And then nobody else was involved.

It was just them.

And hopefully Zuckerberg wouldn't scream too bad.

And hopefully they could figure out the math and the numbers.

And that was business for the last 10 years.

And there were times it was amazing, times it was down, up and down, up and down.

And you see the cycles.

You see it where for a little while,

Facebook or one of the platforms introduced a new feature, like groups, or they introduce fan pages.

They want everyone to be successful.

We're going Facebook Lives.

And so they make it free for a little bit, right?

And they reward you.

So I remember Facebook Lives first came out.

I would open my Facebook Live.

I'd click live on Facebook Live.

Just remember the good old days?

I click live.

Within 30 seconds, 3,000 people were on.

I'm like, what's up, 3,000 people?

Buy my crap.

And it was amazing.

They go buy it.

Okay.

Today, I've got over a million followers on Facebook.

When I go live on Facebook Live, I go Facebook Live.

Guess how people show up?

12?

13?

Okay.

So there's peaks where they're like, we're going to get everyone addicted to the next drug, which is a Facebook Live.

Everyone move off.

Every other platform come to us.

And so they addict you.

They give these amazing things and it's like this is the greatest thing in the world and then Zuckerberg's like ha I got you all boom and then it just disappears right organics like I made a video on fire this is insane oh and everyone's getting addicted to it and it's like now you gotta pay for each and it just dies right and so they're like there's these ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows and so I've been watching this for 25 years now the ebbs and the flows and the only thing that never had ebbs and flows was was this

right everyone has their own distribution channel everyone's got their own part even when they're small like mine started with 200 people right then Mike promoted it got to like 400 people and my 800 people and then a thousand eventually from a thousand people to five thousand to ten thousand to a hundred thousand right and my status started growing my following started growing it was all about this we didn't have any ads i literally did not run the first ad in my business until we were two years in the click funnels click funnels and over ten million dollars before i bought a first ad how did you how did you build click funnels to ten million dollars a year without any ads russell um i look back in the past I was like, these people all have my dream customers.

I can go to Zuckerberg and pay him a premium, or I can just go to them and do partnerships.

And so, Mike Phil Sam was one of my very first partners in ClickFunnels.

He did an event.

He let me come to speak the event, and we spoke and we sold it.

And then I gave him half the money, I kept half the money.

And then he did a webinar later, and he promoted ClickFunnels, and he promoted it, sold a ton of people.

I gave him half the money,

half the money.

We both won, and ClickFunnels grew.

And I went to the next person, the next person, and I was on Skype hitting up everybody.

What's up?

Yahoo!

Messengers is still there.

And these statements are there.

Hitting up everybody.

And all I did for the first two years of ClickFunnels before we bought our very first ad was just this.

We just went and found people.

And the coolest thing about this, when you do partnerships, okay,

this is the get-go.

This is the understand this.

Zuckerberg, you pay him up front whether you make money or not, right?

Does that seem fair to you guys?

Like,

I could send you crap traffic.

It doesn't matter.

You still got to pay me for it.

Right?

With these guys, like when I did a partnership, when Mike did the webinar to promote ClickFunnels,

he didn't, he didn't, I didn't pay him up front.

It was a partnership.

We're both hoping this is going to work.

So he was invested in it working.

I was invested.

We sat down, we talked about it, we figured it out.

We did a promotion together.

People went on there on the webinar.

I sold.

He was invested in it being successful.

He gave his own bonuses.

We got more people to buy.

We figured this thing out and we sold a bunch of stuff.

And then after we collected the money and all the refunds were on, then I took half the money, I gave it to him, and we both won.

So there's no risk, right?

Like I would have been successful in business back when I was 21 years old because the risk would have been too high if I had to go pay for Zuckerberg.

So many people in my world are like, okay, I got my thing.

I'm going to buy ads.

I'm like, oh, why would you buy ads?

Like, you're now like in this deficit immediately from day number one of risking money that you do not have to be successful.

And how long do you got?

A thousand bucks, five thousand bucks for running ad money?

Like, go get $10 million before you run ads by doing this.

Find partners, collaborate.

That's the game.

That's how everybody should be thinking about business differently, okay?

Because it's not going to get cheaper.

It's not going to get easier.

There'll be things that get you addicted for a few minutes and they take it away and they addict you and they'll take it away.

And these things are going to keep happening at every single platform.

TikTok, Instagram.

The next one's coming out soon.

Like, it doesn't matter.

They're all going to go through these ebbs and flows.

Okay.

The thing that's consistent, they'll give you security and safety in your business today, tomorrow, and forever is this.

Like, if Facebook gets shut down, if TikTok is,

whatever

they're trying to do, I don't know, politically, whatever, to shut down TikTok, if those things all disappeared, it wouldn't matter because I still have my list.

Mike's still got his.

They've got his.

Everyone still has their stuff, right?

And so understand that.

It's like,

I should probably be.

putting a little more time and effort into these relationships because business has nothing to do with math and algorithms and creative and copy and all that crap business is relationships that's it

i used to be all the time like if you if i lost everything today and everything if i lost all my money my company my business my brand it disappeared i was like it would take me less than 30 days to be a millionaire again like what i'm like 30 days easy that's all it would take like how jump on skype it's up man uh you want to create a product danc yeah cool I'll promote to my people, you promote your people, and split the money.

Sweet.

Hey, man, what's up?

That's it.

That's the game.

Okay.

so i wanted to share that because again your guys success in the future is going to depend on your understanding of the past and most you guys weren't there so old man russell is here to give you that history lesson okay if you start thinking about business differently stop getting out of this silo where you've got one partner and he hates you and he wants to take all your money to the top where you have a lot of partners who actually care about your success who actually want you to be successful who you can co-create with you can create amazing things you can serve your customers at a different level if you start thinking about business differently it changes everything okay the coolest thing about offer lab when we came back and we built this platform um

the goal was like, how do we make this process easy?

Because I've explained this in the past.

Like, here's how to make, do partnerships and JVs and stuff.

And I try to explain it.

And then everyone just messes up.

Like, I'm just going to go back to Zuckerberg.

Like, why?

He's the worst.

He doesn't even like you.

He wants you to fail.

He made you put pixels on his page so you can take all the money.

Like, that's what he does, right?

Instead of finding partners.

And so we built a platform.

You guys have probably been in the platform.

If not, it's free.

Go to offerlab.com, create a free account.

This is what the platform looks like.

Okay.

Over here, there's this little thing thing called inbox.

I want you to think inbox

equals

2000

Yahoo Messenger or 2000.

When did Skype come out?

2005 Skype.

This is your new Skype.

This is where the deals are happening.

I know I requested a lot of people's products, and guess what?

Those people didn't log in their inbox.

I'm like, there's Russell Brunson asking to promote your product, and you're like, you didn't look at your inbox.

That's like me Skype.

Hey man, I can't promote your stuff.

Hey, man, I don't want to put your stuff.

Hey, I want to pray your stuff.

And like, nobody's like, are you insane?

For me, this was how I made money back in the day.

I would open my computer, open up Skype and Yahoo Messenger, and that's how I made money.

That was it.

Like every day, you should be logging into Offer Lab.

And all you should be doing is like, okay, inbox.

This is where the partnerships happen.

Okay.

This is where people are contacting you.

Hey, can I promote your crap?

Yeah, you can.

But if you're not paying attention, you're missing it.

Okay.

How many guys have logged into your Offer Lab account this morning so far?

Okay.

If you haven't, there's probably people in there want to work with you.

Like go find like dialogue, communication, introverts.

I built this for you.

You don't have to go to an event.

You don't have to be carrying glass of milks at the bar like I did.

You literally can just log in right here and the people are already there for you.

I did it all for you.

I built this for me so I would have to talk to people face to face.

It's the best thing in the world.

Okay, it's the best.

So this is your Yahoo Messenger describe.

That's what the inbox is.

So make sure you log into every single day to offer lab and go in there.

Okay.

Now, obviously you want people to contact you, but if you want to be successful, you got to contact people as well.

So the coolest thing is on the platform, you click on the marketplace, there's all these cool offers in here.

These are all people who are like you who are saying hey i hate zuckerberg and i want to do partnerships everyone in the marketplace that's them they're all here to do partnerships so you don't have to be nervous like uh what if i annoy them like no annoy them they want to be annoyed so you message this person like hey man your product's sick can i promote they say yes and all of a sudden it creates a dialogue in here and you're like hey this is awesome i want to promote it i'm going to put it for upsell number one hey what if we did a co-branded product together i love how you do this i do this we've created a product together we put on an off-lab platform together like oh yeah it's awesome like all the collaboration the partnerships are here like i brought all the people in one spot everyone who understands this game is here.

And I'm training, educating you guys on this game, right?

So all the offers here on the platform.

So your job is to come to the platform, find these offers that are congruent, you contact the offer and start building relationships, okay?

When you have other people that maybe aren't on the platform yet, go to them, like, hey, I want to do a partnership.

Let's do a co-lab together.

Let's create a co-branded product together.

And let's put it on Offer Lab.

That way we can promote it.

Other people can promote it.

Okay.

The coolest thing about this, this is something I always wanted to do back in the day, but we never could do.

But now with Offer Lab, you can.

Let's say Mike and I did a new project together, right?

So we create pre-launch secrets 2.0.

How many of us have buy pre-launch secrets 2.0 now a couple years to buy it speaking like i've done a lot of pre-launches since then so pre-launch secrets 2.0 right so let's just say like imagine this i message mike through i'm like hey man let's go back to 2005 let's create 2.0 of pre-launch secrets it'll be sick right so create pre-launch secrets right it's got uh russell's face on it's got mike's face on it and what's cool about this is we can create two funnels Okay, so Mike creates his version of the funnel Russell creates his version of the funnel, but the front end product is the same, right?

So then Mike's gonna promote his list here.

Then Mike might be like, hey, hey, this is the cool thing.

I get a co-brand with Russell so I get the credibility from him.

I get a co-brand with Mike.

I get credibility from him, right?

But then what's cool about this is like, I have my own products I want to sell.

So what if on my version, after someone buys pre-launch secrets, then I go and sell selling online.

This is my product that I want to sell, right?

And Mike be like, hey, I don't want to do that.

I want to sell Groove, right?

And so that's his product.

So he can sell his.

And then we can both promote the front end product, but then I can upsell the things that I want to upsell.

He can upsell things he wants upsell, right?

We still both get the customers, split the money, everything else.

But now we can do that.

And then you guys as an affiliate, like, this is awesome.

I love Russell.

Mike created this new product.

product there's amazing i want to promote it but i know i have my product i'm going to put my thing in this upsell and then someone else can promote my product but they put their upsell so now they're incentivized for being successful now it's like we're all making money because we can do that like whatever we want you guys getting this this all making sense okay there's so many like thank you

Like if you start thinking about business a little bit differently guys like this it's gonna change everything for you I get it literally There's so many ways to leverage this and have fun on off lab and actually be successful with this and so I just wanted today this morning, before all of our other amazing speakers here, just like to kick this off and get the wheels in your head spinning, okay?

Again, your success in the future is going to take your understanding the past because the past is how we're going to win the game in the future, okay?

And that's what it is.

And so we built Offer Lab literally for you guys to be able to do it, to play the game in a way that I wish I could have back

when I was on Skype.

Okay, this is it.

Your inbox is your place.

This is where you're networking.

These are the offers here.

These people start contacting, getting to know them, building a relationship, building partnerships, co-labbing, doing partnerships together, adding an offer that's specific to you guys on the platform.

There's so many cool, fun, easy, exciting ways to do this.

And that's why we wanted to create this for you.

So I'm hoping that you guys love the platform.

I hope that it benefits you and your company, your business.

I hope you build friendships, relationships.

I think for me, looking back over the last 25 years in business, like of all the amazing things,

the thing that's meant the most to me is the friendships I built along the way.

I mean, it's crazy.

I've got people in here that I've invited to be part of this who I haven't seen them in 10 years.

And they flew out.

In fact, some of them are going to be here today or tomorrow that I haven't seen in 10 years.

But these guys I met on Yahoo Messenger back in the day.

And I was doing the same.

Hey, would you want to come and just talk about how you do offers?

Like, yeah, man.

And they flew out on their own dime to be here.

Like partnerships, relationships.

This is what makes the game fun.

So many of us become cynical because it's like, I got to build a funnel and conversions and optimizations and ads and twists and all that kind of stuff.

And I understand that part of the game.

We still got to play it if we want to grow over on the platforms.

But the reality is like there's a simpler way to do it, a more fun way, a way that builds relationships and friendships and connection, a way to get you out of your silo of selling alone and brings it back together.

And the more we do that here on the Offer Lab platform, the more success we're all going to have together.

So that was our gift to you guys is creating this platform for you, for me, for everybody to be able to do more partnerships, have more collaboration.

And it's going to be awesome.

So that's what I had to prepare for you guys this morning.

I hope you guys enjoyed that.

Got some value from it.

That was your history lesson from old man Russell Brunson, taking you guys back to when I was 21 years old.

And that's how we played the game.

And I hope that hopefully it was valuable for you guys.

All right.

I hope you enjoyed that.

session and you got a lot of value from it.

Hopefully you're starting to learn more and more about how you can use Offer Lab to grow your business, to make more money, to have more fun, have more collaborations.

I will see you guys on the next episode.

We'll go even deeper into Offer Lab and how you can use it for your business.