10 Years of FunnelHacking Secrets

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What's up everybody?

This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Hope you are having a great day today. I'm actually in Wise, Virginia, Napoleon Hill's hometown today. And I spent the last couple days here going through the archives and finding just some really cool things and having a great time. And tomorrow we actually have the mastermind group here with our top 10 affiliates for the Secrets of Success business. And I'm hoping to record my intro session for you guys tomorrow. I'm gonna be talking about some cool Napoleon Hill stuff. And if I am able to do that, that'll be in our next podcast. So look forward to that hopefully. And then today's podcast is gonna be a little different. Not hugely different, but this year's Funnel Hacking Live, I did an intro presentation the first day of the event. It was kind of a ClickFunnels State of the Union address, which was cool because as you know, ClickFunnels turned 10 years old this year. We've been here doing this for a decade now, which is amazing. But a lot of other cool things are happening, and so this presentation, I'm not gonna ruin the surprise, but a couple cool things. Number one, there's something that happened 20 years ago that changed my life, and I talk about what that was and how it changed my life. And how I think it can change your life as well. I'm gonna walk you guys through some funnel hacking, One Funnel Away, Russell Brunson style stuff I think you'll enjoy. There's one thing in here that I'm excited to reveal to you, and it's basically a Napoleon Hill quote. And you guys have heard me share this quote a million times, and I always talk about the first part. It says, "There's one quality which one must possess to win, and that's definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and then something." I'm leaving that part blank because I always talk about having a definite purpose, knowing exactly what you want and writing it down and being like, "I want this thing by this date, by this time," having a definite purpose. And direction you're moving in. But the second half of the quote is what I never talk about, and I spent more time on this episode talking about it, and I think it's gonna be the real thing that's gonna have the biggest impact on you from this episode.

So I don't wanna ruin it for you, but it's in there buried.

You're gonna find it. I share the Napoleon Hill quote. Wait for part 2 and see where I take it, 'cause I think you're gonna love it. And on top of that, at the end, Todd Dickerson comes on stage with me. We talk about some of the cool updates in ClickFunnels, how many people have won awards, how much money you guys have processed in the last year, which is crazy. Anyway. Really exciting, really cool, and I think you guys are gonna love it and should get you fired about ClickFunnels, what's happening.

And that's all I'm gonna give you.

Haha.

So listen to this episode.

I hope you love it. I hope you enjoy it. If so, let us know, and I'll see you guys in the next episode. We're gonna go a little bit deeper into some of my thoughts from the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over $1 billion of my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale scale of business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. We got my inner circle here in the room. This makes it so much easier, more fun. So fun. We got 10,000 of you guys all around the world hanging out with us. It's gonna be insane. I'm so excited for the next 4 days, 3.5 days, whatever it ends up being. It's gonna be amazing. And man, I was sitting backstage as Devon was talking, showing Funnel Hacking Live at the very beginning, which is crazy. It was 10 years ago. Was the very first Funnel Hacking Live here in Las Vegas. It was something we were going to do once and once only. We had no plan on making this like an annual event. It was just like we launched ClickFunnels and I remember the presentation I used to launch it was called Funnel Hacking. We're teaching how to funnel hack and stuff like that. And people inside of the Facebook group start calling themselves funnel hackers. And I was like, that's kind of cool. This is like, this is the thing that's catching on. Like, yeah, we're funnel hackers. And then they started doing these meetups around the country. Like, hey, we're all going to meet over in Austin. Who wants to come? Here we're meeting in San Diego. Who wants to come? And I was like, this is happening whether we're doing it or not. Maybe we should do an event and like call something. I'm like, what should we call it? I was like, well, we're funnel hackers, we're funnel hacking, let's call it Funnel Hacking Live. And that was the whole initial idea. We rented a space in Las Vegas that held, was it 600, 800? Remember, 800 people? And we told people about it and 800 people showed up. And I remember I was so scared. I had done an event 4 or 5 years earlier where we'd sold a bunch of tickets to this event and we showed up to the hotel, got everything ready, and then we opened the, We opened the stage and we walked out, and I think we had like 300, it was set for like 300 or 400 people, and there was like 60 in the room. I walked in, everything's empty, and I was like, this is gonna be really painful. And for 3 days I did an event and it was horrible, all the empty seats, and I was like, I will never do an event again. And that was the plan, and Funnel Hacking Live, we decided to do that. And I remember sitting backstage being so scared, like what if nobody shows up, no one's here? And I remember looking through the curtain, that little curtain that Devon showed, just looking through the curtain, I was like, oh, there's people here. Okay, this is fantastic. People showed up and we did the first one. And I remember the very end of the first one, we're like, should we do this again? That was kind of fun. People showed up. Like, okay, let's do it again. And now we are on Funnel Hacking Live. This is 9.5, which I don't know if you guys know that. Our next Funnel Hacking Live, which is 10, which is the big, gonna be the big show, is here in Vegas again. And it's happening in February. In fact, it's during Valentine's Day. So you need to bring your wives, your sweethearts, your husband, whoever it is, bring them to the party, 'cause we're having Valentine's Day in Las Vegas. Next year, which is where we're gonna do Funnel Hacking Live 10, and it's gonna be the biggest, the craziest, the— it's gonna be amazing. So I don't want any of you guys to miss that event. It's gonna be insane. And so a lot of people are like, well, what's this one right here? This is— last year was 9, that one's 10, what is this? And it's changed a couple times. At first I was like, well, we— when prior to COVID and those things happening, we were doing Funnel Hacking Live the very first quarter of the year. I loved it. It was like New Year's resolutions, we're kicking this thing off, we're having a lot of fun, and then the whole pandemic happened, everything shifted around, and we ended up shifting the event till September, which was great, except for that's when all of our kids go back to school and all sorts of things, and it was just this weird timing where it was really, really hard to do in September. And we did it 3 or 4 years in a row, and then 2 years ago, like, let's see if we can get it back to the first quarter of the year. And so that was the shift to move it to the first quarter of the year, but then there was an 18-month gap between Funnel Hacking Live 9 and 10, and 18 months is a long time to not hang out with my friends. And so I was like, what if we did a little one in between called 9.5?, and we did it virtually, and we rented Eric's studio, which is this insane studio, you guys who are here. It's insane. So that was the vision, and now we're, I can't believe we're here. And so this is Funnel Hacking Live 9.5, Funnel Hacking Live International, and in 6 months from now during Valentine's Day, we'll be doing it in person again. So for everyone, especially everyone who's a home watcher now, like I would set a goal for you guys, like I would love to have you guys at Funnel Hacking 10 for the big show, 'cause it's 10 years, like we're at, this is our 10-year birthday, it's 10 years of ClickFunnels being around, And it's been an incredibly insane ride, and it's been a lot of fun. So that's some of the backstory. A couple things we're gonna do new this time, because it is virtual, I wanna do something fun. We tested this 2 or 3 weeks ago at an event we did for my office, and it turned out to be a really smashing success, because we had some people that were virtual, and it's like, how do we network when we're not in person? Obviously, all the Inner Circle guys, you guys are all gonna have so much fun the next 4 days. We're all gonna be networking, hanging out. But everyone else, I know you guys are kind of remote, I don't want you to lose the networking experience. So what we decided to do is we set up a group inside of school, and I'll tell you guys why we did it. A lot of you guys are like, why would you do it in school? I'll explain that in a little bit. We set up a group inside of school where right now everyone's coming and between each session we're setting up a new thread for everyone to come and comment and drop their ahas. In fact, if you were on the pre-show last night, I showed it yesterday and I asked everyone like, what was the number one thing you're trying to get from Funnel Hacking Live this year? And we had over 1,000 comments in the last like 12 hours since I posted that in the group, which is kind of cool. So what's gonna happen is each session before we go live, we're gonna open up a new thread in that group, and then we want all you guys who are home to open it separately in another thing, and as you're hearing me or the other speakers talking about whatever it is, when you have an aha, and something comes in, drop in that thing, and we wanna see how many comments, how many ahas, things that you pull out of the presentations in that one group, which is a lot of fun. So this is where to go. If you go to hangoutwithrussell.com at home, if you go to that site right there, it'll take you to our school group that we set up. If you're not in it already, you might have to go ask for access to it, but my team's in there approving people as fast as possible. So the proof things have passed is possible, and then at the very top there will be a pinned comment that basically has whatever the session is. So right now there's probably a pinned comment, I'm assuming, from my team that says like, comment on Russell's presentation. So over the next hour or so that I'm up here, as you guys are getting ahas or insights or anything, drop them in there. I wanna see if we can get a couple thousand comments for every single session. And then what's cool about this for the speakers, when they're on stage and they get done, they'll have a chance to go back into the comments and see what you guys said about their presentation. Feel free to also, if you're talking to them specifically, like tell them your favorite thing, what you loved about them, about their story. And as a speaker, it feels really good afterwards to get good feedback from people. So, does that sound fair? You guys good with that? So hangoutwithrussell.com. Okay, alright, with that said, I got a couple fun things I wanna talk about before I bring Todd out here to share some really fun things that are happening inside the ClickFunnels world right now. But I wanna start with something that happened last month that was a turning point for me in my life. August 17th, 2014. So this is 20 years ago last month. Something crazy happened. This guy right here on the picture, this is John Reese next to Tony Robbins. And 20 years ago, I had just gotten into this world. I was still in college. I had just married my wife. We didn't have any kids yet. We're trying to figure out this whole business thing. I was trying to figure out how to make money on the internet. And I was on a bunch of different people's email lists. And I remember one day I started getting all these different emails from people talking about this product coming out. It's called Traffic Secrets. It's so cool. Everyone should go buy it. I remember going to the page, it was a $1,000 course. I'm like, I don't have $1,000, but that looks awesome. And then, that kind of happened. And then, a couple hours later, in fact, I think I have a picture of this. This library right here, this is a library that's on the Utah-Idaho border. There's a little lake called Bear Lake, which my family goes every single year. And we were at Bear Lake when this whole thing was happening. And this is before we had cell phones, before we had internet, before Wi-Fi was everywhere. So if you wanted to get on the internet, at Bear Lake, you had to go to this library. And so I remember after the day was over, I jumped in my bike or my car or something. We drove over to this library, got in there. And do you guys remember this back in the day when you had to get internet? So there's like, there's 2 computers in the library, and there's a line of people. Everyone's just waiting to check their email. So weird now, because none of us would do that, right? So I'm standing in line, waiting to check my email. First person gets done there, second person, third person. I finally get in line. I sit down. I put my email up. It pops open. And there's the email from John Rhys. And at the top of the email, it says, we did it, or something like that. I'm like, "We did what?" So, I open the email and I start reading it, and John basically announced that they had launched this course called Traffic Secrets earlier that morning. And in the first 18 hours, it was a $1,000 course, they sold 1,000 copies of this course, and they made a million dollars. Not just they made, they'd sold a million dollars of this course in 18 hours. So, again, 20 years ago, I'm sitting there, young kid, at the time I'm 40, or 20, 40, what, 44 now. So, I was 20. 24 years old, just gotten married. I'm sitting there at the library. I remember sitting back in my chair and just thinking, I was like, I can't believe there's a human being just like any of us who made $1 million in a day. When I got started in entrepreneurship, I thought I had a big vision. I was like, oh, if I can make it, I'm gonna become a millionaire someday. The next 20 years, I'll become a millionaire. Thinking that was like this big thing. I saw a dude who made $1 million in a day. I remember, I probably sat there like 2 or 3 minutes just like, I can't even. Like, my whole world, my whole paradigm just shifted that what was even possible. And I remember thinking like, okay, that guy can make $1 million a day. What if I— like, is that even possible? Maybe I can make $1 million, like, not in my lifetime. What if I did $1 million in a year? Or, I don't know, like, all these things started shifting in my head and started having more and more belief. What's crazy is I didn't realize at the time, but I started talking to a lot of my other friends, and for them it was the same thing. Like, they saw this happen. It was just like, oh my gosh, if he can do it, I can do it. How many of you guys have been around long enough you remember this experience? Anyone here in the room who was A handful of you guys remember this, right? It was a turning point for so many of us. And I remember thinking that, I said, okay, this guy, John Reese, he hit a 2 comma club in just 24 hours. And I remember thinking that, and I was just like, I was like, if that's true, if he really did this, like, I'm gonna go, like, I'm gonna focus 100% of my time and energy effort figuring out how in the world he did this, right? I said, if that's true, I'm gonna drop everything else and just focus on this. And when I was making these slides and I wrote that down, I started thinking about a movie that had a similar experience. How many of you guys have ever seen this movie right here? So, okay, there's a scene from this movie I want to share, but actually, I got some street cred from some young kids that are friends of my friends. We were talking to a bunch of them about what we do, and they're like, what do you do for a living? And I was kind of telling them, they're like, oh yeah, I know a guy, kind of like, his name's Jordan Belfort, you ever heard of him? I was like, actually, I was on his podcast. They're like, what, you were on Jordan Belfort's podcast? I'm like, yeah. So I got some street cred with the kids because of that, which is cool. But anyway, so this is a clip from Wolf of Wall Street, which kind of sums up how I felt after John Rhys did the million-dollar day. Excuse me, is that your car in the lot?

Yeah.

That's a nice ride. Thanks, man. Tony Azoff. Hey, Jordan Belfort. Nice to meet you. What do you do, bro? What do you mean, what do I do? For work, what do you do? I'm a stockbroker. Stockbroker?

Yeah.

You make a lot of money? Yeah, I do all right for myself. How much money you make? I don't know, $70,000 last month. I'm serious. I tell you what, you show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it, I quit my job right now and I work for you. Hey, Paulie, what's up? No, yeah, you know, everything's fine. Hey, listen, I quit. So that's, that's what I feel like watching John reset. I'm like, if this is true, if he actually did that, like, nothing else matters to me right now. I'm gonna stop everything I'm doing and focus on figuring out how in the world he did that. Because if a human being just like me do a million dollars in a day, what could I do? A million dollars in a year? I don't even know what's possible. But I was like, I have to figure this out, whatever it takes. Now I started looking like, what was John doing? This is me, the young funnel hacker, 24-year-old Russell, who didn't know what funnel hacking was. This is something we talk about, but I was like, what did he do? I got to reverse engineer this, right? I remember going to trafficsecrets.com at the time, and it wasn't like a traditional website like I was used to. It was a funnel. It was a 2-page funnel. It had a long-form sales letter. It was like a 150-page sales letter, if anyone ever remembers seeing it. It was not short at all. I remember printing it out and it was like this fat. I'm like, this is insane. People actually read this stuff? Blew my mind. 150-page sales letter with an order form, and that was the very first thing. I was like, this looks different than what I've seen before. This is not how people make money on the internet. This is the weirdest thing in the world. I'm like, this is what he did, so if that's how it worked, I wonder if I could do it. I remember thinking, if he could create a funnel, like, if he could do that, how can I do the same thing? What would it look like? How do I model that, right? I remember wondering if I could create a funnel that could get me into the 2 Comma Club. So I started thinking again, reverse engineering, funnel hacking. I was like, okay, how did John do it? Well, John had a $1,000 course. You sold 1,000 copies, that's $1 million. I was like, just math, right? $1,000 course, 1,000 copies, it's $1 million. I was like, I don't think I can do $1 million in a day. My brain wasn't ready to comprehend that. But I was like, if I did $1 million in a year, what does that look like? I was like, well, $1,000 course, if I sold 3 a day, that gets me over $1 million. I'm like, okay, can I create a $1,000 course? Can I sell 3 a day? What would that look like? How would I get traffic? I didn't know the answers to these questions, but these questions started giving me the desire to figure things out. How does this work? How do I find traffic? How do I get enough traffic? To sell 3 a day of a $1,000 course. And so I did exactly what I teach you guys to do all the time, is funnel hacking. So John had a $1,000 course, first thing in my head is like, cool, I gotta make a $1,000 course. So I made my very first $1,000 course, and it was called the DotCom Secrets Home Study Course. This is way before there was ever a book called DotCom Secrets. I bought the domain name way back in the day, I thought it was cool. A lot of my friends made fun of me about the name. But still, for me, it means a lot to me, so I still keep it. But it was the DotCom Secrets Home Study Course, I went and we rented a hotel room. We filmed us teaching this whole course, put it on DVD, because John's course was basically a seminar he had done. Took the DVDs, made a workbook. So I did like a model exactly like he did. He had like, I think, 12 sessions or 8 sessions. I had 12, right? I had the exact same amount of sessions. He had different handouts, he had the same handout. I tried to model as close as I could because that dude made $1 million a day selling the course. I'm gonna just model it as close as I can and just do what he did, and I'm gonna be successful. So I went out there, we made $1,000 on our course, we launched it, and how many of you guys think I made 1,000 sales? Unfortunately, I didn't, but I'll tell you what we did here in a second. I forgot, that's the next slide. So I did, I went back to the funnel again. This is what John's funnel looked like. I thought it was awesome, so I built the same thing. I modeled it. I modeled the look, the feel, the layout as close as I could, modeled the price point as close as we could. I did my big launch, $1,000 course, and I sold, I didn't actually sell $1,000. I launched it. I did this big huge core day launch. I modeled the way that John had done his, and during the launch, I had a really good idea that turned out to be a really bad idea. You guys ever do that? I was like, if I launch this on New Year's Day, it means the first day of the year, I'll make a million dollars before January 1st is over. This will be insane. So I did this whole coordinated product launch. And I remember I called John ahead of time, and he's like, so you're going to launch this on New Year's Eve? I'm like, at midnight, we're going to launch it. He's like, do you think people are going to buy it on New Year's Eve? I'm like, oh yeah, they're all going to be sitting around waiting on a computer for me to launch so they can buy my new course, right? He's like, I know you're Mormon and stuff, and you don't drink and things like that, but usually on New Year's Eve, that's not what people are doing. I was like, no, dude, you have no idea. You're wrong. So, New Year's Eve, we launched this course. I know Brent was there in the room. We were all excited, like, waiting for sales to come in. And there were a couple of people who were waiting to buy, but not very many. And during the entire launch sequence, 7 days, whatever, we ended up selling a whopping 21 copies of the course, which is awesome. Yeah. Only problem is, back then, to build a course like this, just so you know, because I was convinced I was selling 1,000 copies. We had to print DVDs, workbooks, papers, and so my cost to print 1,000 copies of my home study course was a lot more than $21,000. So, when all is said and done, we didn't make a million dollars. I made negative dollars, but I did it, right? I funnel hacked it, went out there, did the process, tried it out, and that was kind of the thought. I was like, oh, okay. Now, what a lot of people do at this point is they think, John Reese is a scam. Russell Brunson is a scam. These internet gurus are all scam, right? And they just quit. I want to share the message that Satyama Gali spoke at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego the very first time, and he shared a message on stage that like meant so much to me. He said, everyone, you have to learn how to stop stopping. So many people hit an obstacle and then they stop. He's like, if you want to be successful at anything in life, you have to stop stopping. You have to keep moving forward. And so I was thinking about that. I was like, OK, it didn't work. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means I didn't do it right, or I didn't figure out the right process, or I picked the wrong product, or something. I got to stop stopping. What's the next phase? What's the next step? What's the next step? We started going back, right? Now, for a lot of you guys who may have been, may at home have tried some, how many of you guys, by the way, have launched at least one funnel so far that has not worked? I'm curious. Okay, everyone in this room here has done a lot. Back home, I don't see your hands going up. How many of you guys, back home, have you guys done at least one funnel that hasn't worked? Okay, well you guys are still here, which is good. Most people stop though. So you gotta stop stopping. But Russell, you said that I was just one funnel away. I did a funnel, like why am I not rich yet? The reality is it's not the first funnel. I never said you're one, I never said like you're first funnel away, like you're a funnel away, right? But we don't know which one it's gonna be. And I didn't know which one it was gonna be. Like I did funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel. I didn't pull the slide up here, but in the past I have a slide that's showing every one of my funnels I could find in the past. It was like 150 funnels that I had successfully launched, not successfully made money, but successfully launched before we had the ClickFunnels funnel. That's from everything from graphic design, product creation, sales letter, traffic, all this stuff. 150 funnels we had done over that period of time before we launched ClickFunnels. And so, just 'cause we say you're one funnel away doesn't mean that's the end, right? It's the beginning. You do the first funnel and you keep trying.

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A lot of you guys know my favorite, uh, my favorite author is Napoleon Hill, and he's got a quote that I love. And there's two parts to this quote. I'm gonna share both of them here, uh, because I think sometimes we miss the second part. So this is the quote Napoleon says: there's one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose and the knowledge of what and a burning desire to possess it. Okay? The first thing is definiteness of purpose. If you study Napoleon Hill, it doesn't matter which one of his books you read, Think and Grow Rich, Laws of Success, you read How to Raise Your Own Salary, if you read any of his books, the first law of basically everything he talks about is definiteness of purpose, right? That's knowing exactly what it is you want. Okay? Now most of the guys who, especially I know the inner circle here in the room, like, you guys pretty much all have a very clear path, like, I know exactly what I want, what I'm going for, right? For people who are not having success yet, this is one of the biggest problems we find, is that they don't have definiteness of purpose, they don't know what they're going for. Remember when I first got started in this business, I didn't know what I was going for. Like, I got online, I was like, I'm gonna make some money on the internet. That was my definite purpose, right? I was just like wandering around, like hoping I could figure this out. Hopefully I bump into something. I was— I didn't know what I was doing for 2 or 3 years. I look back during that window before, before the whole John Rhys incident, I saw what someone was doing. Like, I was selling stuff on eBay, and I was like, I was trying to sell this, and I was just trying a bunch of things, but I didn't have a definite purpose. I was just kind of wandering, right? And then August 17th, 20 years ago last month, John resets the million-dollar day. Sitting in that chair in the library, looking at it, I was like, that. That's what I want to do. What that guy just did, I want to do that. I know exactly what it is. I had a definite purpose. It shifted from like, I'm going to try to make some money, to like, no, I want that. I'm going to build a course. It's a $1,000 course. I'm going to try to figure out how to sell 1,000 copies. And I had a definite purpose. And I shifted from being just like wandering around, just kind of like, you know, just bumping into things, to like having a direction, having a target, having something I was moving towards. Right? It shifted everything for me. That's the very first step. Okay? I think about other areas of my life where I've had success, and probably the best one for me, I mean, outside of business, the other thing I've had really had success with in my life was wrestling. And I remember when I first started wrestling, I went initially because my dad forced me to go, because that's how most good things happen. My dad forced me to go wrestling practice. I didn't want to be a wrestler. And I went to it. I started liking it a little bit, having some fun, and then my dad took me to the state tournament that year. And I remember there were two guys on my team who had made it to the state finals. And I kind of knew them because they were in the room. They were the cool guys in the room. So I remember seeing like, oh, those are the good guys. And so I went to the state tournament to watch them compete. And I remember there was a 120-pounder, something like that, a little tiny guy. His name was Matt Woods. He'd won state title two years in a row. And this was his senior year. He went out there, wrestled the match. He won, beat the guy. And I remember seeing him get his hand raised. And I don't know what it was. I feel like I'm sitting in this huge stadium arena. There's a whole bunch of wrestling mats, all these matches happening. I saw Matt Woods get his hand raised. I remember sitting there, like everything got quiet, and I was like, that, that thing that he just experienced, like, I want that more than I want air, more than I want anything. I want to feel that feeling. And like, that became like the definite purpose. I want to be a state champ. I remember going home, like, telling everyone, I'm gonna be a state champ, I'm gonna be a state champ. And they laughed at me because I was not very good. They're like, okay, cool, you lost your match last week to the guy, like, that was 12th string, and you want to be— yeah, good luck with that. And they teased me, they made fun of me, but didn't matter because like, I knew exactly what it was. I had a definite purpose. I wasn't just going to practice, like, dinking around. It was like, I'm going to be state champ. I got to work out like a state champ. I got to train like a state champ. I got to figure things out. And I had a definite purpose. It gave me something to move towards hard and fast. So that's the first half of this quote. One quality which one must possess to win is definiteness of purpose. The second half, this is where most people miss it. The second half is you also have to have a burning desire to possess it. I want to talk about burning desire for a minute, because I think this is where a lot of people miss it. When I was wrestling, I remember going to school every day, and I barely— like, I struggled in school. It was hard to pay attention, and I thought I was dumb. But the reality is, the reason why I struggled in school so much is because all I could think about was wrestling. That was it. If you look at my notebooks back in the day, I was drawing pictures of wrestling mats. There's a circle and a square. I couldn't draw a wrestler. I'm a really bad drawer. But I was like, wrestling mats. And then I would think about it. And I remember, if you're a wrestler, you cut a lot of weight. So I was cutting weight every week. So I remember sitting in class as my teacher were talking, I was making a list. Of the foods I wanted to eat after weigh-ins. Like, I want this. And so I'd sit there for an 8-hour day at school writing out every single food I could dream about eating next time I could eat. And then what I would do is each day as I got closer and closer to weigh-ins, I'd look at that list, and I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. And the night before weigh-ins, my mom would take me to the grocery store, and I'd pick like, of all the things I've been dreaming about this week, these are the 3 things I want to eat the most. And we'd buy those 3 things, and after weigh-ins, I'd eat them. And I was sitting there. If I would lose a match, I would think about it. I would watch the video. I was just like all consumed. How do I beat that person? At practice, if somebody beat me or somebody did something, It was just, it became like almost obsessive compulsive, right? Like that's the level of desire I had. Like I wanted this goal so bad, so bad, so bad. Okay? Same thing happened when I got into business. I saw John Rhys do that. A lot of people saw that. A lot of people like, "Oh, that guy made $1 million. This is insane." A lot of people saw that. I think the difference between me and a lot of people is like I became obsessed with it. It wasn't just like, "Okay, I'm going to dabble and try to make some more money." I was like, "No, this is my definite purpose." And I had a burning desire. I was going through everything. I mean, people ask me, Russell, how did you write all these books? How do you understand how funnels work so good? It's like, I went through every funnel on the internet I could find. Every single person, I bought their product, I went through a funnel hack, and I was like calling people, like, what'd you do on your funnel? How did it work? What were the conversions? Like, I became obsessed. I was like this little annoying kid who was just watching everyone, studying, trying to figure out what was happening. I would go to marketing events, kind of like this one, and I remember, somebody has heard this story before, but I bet most of our at-home audience hasn't heard this. I would go to these big seminars, right, and there'd be 1,000 people in the room. I'd be learning from all the speakers. And after the seminar gets done, everyone goes down to the bars and networks. You guys know about this, how it works? So I'd never been to a bar before. I'm like, I'm this Mormon kid. I don't drink. This is gonna be awkward. I don't want people to think I'm drinking. So I'd go down to the bars afterwards, and everyone's down there. And so I would order a milk from the bartender so that nobody would think I was not drinking. And I have this big old cup of milk, and everyone's like, Brunson, are you drinking milk? Like, yeah. They're like, why? I'm like, because like the Sprite looks like Vodka? I don't know, I don't want people like, oh, Brunson drinks. So I have a glass of milk while I'm down there in a bar. And what's crazy is the more people drink, the more they start to sharing their best ideas. And the better stuff kept coming out and coming out. And like, the more drunk they are, and I'm the only sober one in the room, I'm like, I can't believe they're sharing this. I'm taking notes like crazy. It was insane, right? But it wasn't just like I wanted to become better at building funnels. I didn't want to make, you know, start a business. Like, I was obsessed with it. It was a burning desire. Like, it all consumed me day and night till I figured out. I had to figure this out. I had to figure it out. Had to figure it out. Like, that's the kind of like, passion that you have to have to be successful in anything in life, right? And I know I'm preaching to the choir because you guys are in the room here, you guys are at home, like, you're the ones who are obsessed with this. But I want you to understand, to be successful in anything in life, like, it causes— it takes a little bit of, like, weirdness, a little bit of obsession. A lot of times— how many of you guys have friends, family members, spouses who are like, you're mildly obsessed over here and it's freaking me out? Anyone here have that? Okay, just so you know, you're in a good crowd, right? To be successful in most things in life, like, you got to be a little crazy. You got to be mildly obsessed. There are times in your life, like everything good in my life has come during times of radical imbalance. I get this question a lot on podcasts. They say, Russell, how do you have such a balanced life? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, in theory, that sounds really, really nice. But I was like, nothing in my life great came from times of balance, right? Think about wrestling. When I became obsessed with wrestling, like everything else got completely out of balance, radically imbalanced for a season, right? When I was focusing on wrestling, like I was not a 4.0 student. Even close. My graduating— my cumulative GPA was 2.3. So I was a 2.3 student. So I barely passed all my classes because I was not focused on my classes. I was focused on this dream. I did the least possible I had to do every other area of life so I could consume and be successful with this dream. Okay? Same thing when I met my wife, Colette. I met Colette, right? I fell in love with her. I was like, she's amazing. Now if I just kind of dabble and I build a relationship, it's not gonna happen. My life became radically imbalanced. I was pursuing her, trying to make her fall in love with me, and eventually she said yes. Which is amazing. Yay, Colette. So she rolls her eyes. I love it. All right. Same thing was true in business. When I came in business, my life was not balanced. It was radically imbalanced. I remember when Bowen and Dawn, our twins, were born. Man, they were 18 years, almost 19 years old. No, so 19 years old, they're born. We're in the NICU for 2 weeks because they were preemies, super early. And I remember sitting there in the NICU. Colette was out cold. We take turns. We take shifts. So she was like sleeping. I was down with the babies. 4 in the morning, and I got the babies I'm rocking with my laptop, and I'm writing copy. Kid you not, I remember I was writing copy for a product called Link Brander while I was in the NICU with the kids. It's really good copy, I like to see— anyway, I was really proud of it. But like, that's what I was doing back then, right? Radical imbalance. Anything good in life comes during times of radical imbalance, right? So it comes back to like, again, Napoleon Hill's quote here. There's one quality which one must possess to win, that's definite of purpose. So number one, you gotta know exactly what you want. And number two, right, having the knowledge of what you want, and then having a burning desire to possess it. Right? I think that if you're struggling like that, a lot of times the thing like that has become an obsession. People tell me all the time like, I just don't have time to build a business. I don't have the energy to build a— I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't have the time? They go, I have a job, I work 8 hours a day. I'm like, there are 24 hours in a day, there's not 8. Right? And then while you're working, are you literally thinking about what you're working? Like thinking about like, your brain can think about whatever it wants, nobody knows. Right? During this time, like I've been in school, I was not thinking about school at all.

Right?

I was thinking about wrestling. When I was in business, I was like, it becomes all-consuming. So, if you want to be successful in anything in life, it comes during times of radical imbalance, having the burning desire to do it, right? Becoming mildly obsessed for a season. Now, what's nice about it is it's not forever, right? I'm not saying to burn the bridges, ruin your families, and things like that, right? It's time. It's like everything's moving different places. But if you want to do something great, it takes times of radical imbalance. If you're wondering how you do that with a family, you talk to the family. Hey, this is what I'm pursuing. This is the goals. Colette knew what my goals were. She's like, okay, I understand. There's times you have to be doing these crazy things. When we were building ClickFunnels, you think it was easy for Todd and me and our wives, for Ashley and Colette? Like, there were times when Todd would fly out to Boise, we'd spend 3 weeks, like, working on the platform before launch. It was like 3 weeks of us pulling all-nighters, night after night after night after night, and then we would fly back home. There were times, like, I'd be working all day and I'd get done working at 2 or 3 in the morning when Todd would be waking up East Coast time at 4 or 5 in the morning, he'd be working, and we'd be talking in between, then I'd pass out, he'd be working all day, and I'd come back in and it was like, Radical times of imbalance to create something amazing.

Right?

And that comes down to knowing exactly what you want and having a burning desire to possess it. So for you guys, I want you to think about like, what is it you want? Like, you're here at Funnel Hacking Live for a purpose. Like, what is your reason? If it's just like, I'm here to like, hang out and hopefully I get something, like that's not what I'm talking about. That's this drifting thing, right? If you're here saying, I'm at this event because I gotta figure out this one thing, I gotta figure out how to do this, I'm trying to figure out how to get to the 2 Comma Club, how to fix my funnel, my company's struggling right now, How do I get it back on track? OK, my funnel's not converting. No one's coming to my site. I have no traffic. What is the problem? Because everything you're looking for is here over the next 4 days. I promise you that. OK? We've curated the greatest speakers to come here to give you guys very specific things to help you in different parts of your journey. And everyone's journey is different, right? That's why we had to create an event that kind of touches on a lot of different things. But I promise you, if you are struggling with something right now, the answer is here, and it'll be here the next 3 and a half days. OK? But only if you show up. Because maybe the thing that you've been waiting for, the thing that's going to give you the key that unlocks the next door for you, If you miss it because I took that session off, I went to the grocery store, or whatever that thing might be, like, do not miss it. Okay? Everything here is created and curated for you guys on purpose. The speakers we have for the next couple days, it's gonna be really fun. And I just wanna say, the presentations I've been working on, like, I'm so excited to share with you guys some of the stuff I have not talked about before. A lot of new stuff, a lot of cool things. I'm gonna show you guys behind the scenes of some of our funnels. And anyway, today's gonna be really fun. Couple more things I'm gonna jump into. So my One Funnel Away story, after watching John's thing, launching it, not making enough money to cover, I was like, hey, what else is there? I could keep launching funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel after funnel. We kept doing this, right?

Obsession.

I gotta figure this out. Try this one, try this one, try this niche, try this market, try it over and over and over again. And then I remember on October 1st, 2007, I launched this product. And this product's interesting. I— there's a guy that wrote a book called The 12-Month Millionaire. Anyone here ever read the book? It's like as fat as a phone book. It's amazing. I have the rights to it. I should put it somewhere cool for you guys to be able to read. Anyway, I read this book and it's about a guy named Vince James. He sold supplements through direct mail and in 18 months, he built a company that did $100 million in sales. I remember reading this book, I was like, this is crazy. This is the beginning of my journey before I'd ever made a million dollars or anything. And I remember reading this book, I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world. And so, I called him. I was like, Can I interview you? And for some reason, he picked up the phone. He's like, sure, that'd be great. And so we set up an interview. And I remember it was on a Saturday. And I went through the entire book. I took the outline of the book. And I had questions for every single chapter. I interviewed him for 3 hours. When 3 hours were done, we were only halfway through the book. He's like, you want to do it again next Saturday and ask the rest of the questions? I was like, yeah, that'd be amazing. So I interviewed him for another 3 hours the next Saturday. And it was a 6-hour audio of me just picking his brain, asking him questions about how he built this company. And it was never made to be a product. It was just like— I don't know, I just interviewed him and I had this thing and it sat on my hard drive for like a year and a half, 2 years. I never did anything with it. And I'm launching funnel after funnel after funnel. I was like, I wonder if anyone would buy the interview I did with Vince James. And that was the thought. I said, let's try it out. So we took that, October 1st, we launched it as a product. And I remember this was the very first time that we'd ever used video in a funnel. So what happened is you come to the site and you bought the interview. It could— interview and the transcripts was $37. And then you come to the next page. This is pre-ClickFunnels. This is pre-one-click upsells. You guys know back in the day we couldn't do one-click upsells? So what we'd have to do is that you'd go put your credit card in, you go next page, you want this too? Yeah, cool, put your whole credit card in again. So they have to re-put in their whole credit card again. It was a nightmare. One-click upsells, like the greatest thing in the world. Anyway, but back in the day we didn't have that. So people put credit cards in again. And this is when YouTube just first came out. You can tell because the video's square, and I had a shaved head. And we bought the rights to be able to sell Vince's book for $300. And so this video, I should have found the video. I didn't. I probably have it. I should have found it. Anyway, it's me sitting at our desk like, hey guys, thanks for buying my interview with Vince James. If you like the interview, you might want the book too. This book's huge. I kind of talked about the book. Do you remember this office? That's the one. Anyway, this is like our first actual office we had back in the day. So me pitching the book, and there was a video. I remember people messaging me. They're like, dude, we saw your funnel. That was insane. You had a video upsell. Like no one had ever seen it before. I was one of the first ones ever to do it. It converted like crazy. $297 for the book. And then we had a membership site where people would get all the interviews and all the stuff like that. Launched on October 1st, 2007. And October 16th, 2007 is when I officially joined the 2 Comma Club with this funnel. So, it was the first time that one of my funnels had ever done that. And it was the craziest thing. It was just one of those things where like, I had launched so many funnels. It was funnel after funnel after funnel. It's funny because I had this mantra, you guys probably heard me say it before, that you're one funnel away. I share that mantra and it's funny because like all the funnel hackers are like, yes, this is amazing. But there are people online who hate me because of it. They rip me apart. Like it's so funny and aggravating, a bunch of stuff. But they're like, Russell says you're just one funnel away. And it's like, this is why that's not— anyway, I get a lot of crap because of it. But I'm like, man, for me, like this was the thing. I launched a dozen funnels prior to that. And then for some reason, that was the one that hit. And it was just like, that changed my whole life. Everything was different. I was like, oh my gosh, we made a million dollars in one funnel in what, 16, 17 days? And it was like, how to make a better funnel and a better funnel, right? And then for the last, how many years ago was that? 18 years, 17 years, I haven't made years since then. We've launched hundreds of funnels, but this was the very first one for me that ever did it. And it was awesome. How many of you guys, especially guys in the room here, how many of you guys remember the very first funnel you had that crossed 7 figures in sales? It's like special, right? You know exactly which one it is. In fact, the very first 2 Comma Club I ever ordered, because we were getting it tested and I was talking to Dave, he's like, what, like, we're gonna print a sample, he's like, what product name do you want on it? I'm like, 12 Minute Internet Millionaire. That was the very first product. So the very first 2 Comma Club award ever printed had this for myself. And then I went through the archives, like, what funnels have I done that made a million dollars? We found all of them and I printed an award for myself for every funnel I'd ever created that did a million dollars. So the real reason why the 2 Comma Club Award is literally just for me, and then I let you guys participate in it because I thought it was a cool award and it's Anyway, so there you go. So that's what it was, and it was, yeah, it changed my whole life. I'm gonna talk more about One Funnel Away this afternoon, so I'll share some of those stories. But man, this was the very first time it changed my life and gave me belief that like, I could do this for a living. I still remember because my mom, I was like graduating from school this time, I was doing this stuff, my mom kept asking me, so when are you gonna get a real job? I was like, Mom, I have a real job. She's like, no, but like, where you work for somebody and like, they pay taxes and all this. I'm like, Mom, I have a real job. And she would not believe me. And then, how many of you guys know David Fry? David's one of my favorite people in this whole industry. So David's actually my second uncle, or second, yeah, something like that. And I remember he does very similar business to all of us. And I didn't know that, and I met, or I reconnected with him after a couple years. He messaged me, he's like, he's like, wait, you do internet business too? And he showed me his stuff. So I called my mom, I was like, I'm doing the same thing David Fry's doing. And she's like, oh, he makes really good money. Okay, you can do that then. And it was the first time like this business was ever legitimate in my mom's eyes. Even though this was happening behind the scenes. Anyway, kind of funny. So, 2016, the very first time. And after that, we kept building funnel after funnel after funnel. I was like, if we could build some software that made this funnel process easier, I think that would be a good thing for me to sell. And so 2009 is actually the very first time I tried to build ClickFunnels, which is funny. This is before I'd ever met Todd or any of the other guys, but I did know Dylan Jones. Dylan was one of our original co-founders. Dylan was the one who built the original editor. We ended up buying him out a couple years into ClickFunnels, but he was the first person. And Dylan actually designed my very first try at doing this. The domain name we had was click.com.com, which is so confusing. Are you guys glad we changed it? But this is what it looked like. This is the landing page at click.com.com. You come in there, you sign up, and then you come through and this is like the payment plans, and then this is where you sign up. We didn't call them sales funnels back. Sales funnels wasn't a word back. We called them sales flows. So you can see like your product, your follow-ups, and your sales flow. So you set up your sales flow. Sales funnels is so much cooler, but yeah, that was what we called it back in the day. And then we had this where you could do all your things. Anyway, this was the whole site. And we spent, I don't know, 3 or 4 years trying to build this, trying to launch it, trying to code it, trying to— because I was like, this is like the thing I need in the world the most. And I wanted it for myself. I knew the market wanted it. We kept trying. And it wasn't just me. There were tons of people also trying to build some version of this. Like everyone I knew was all trying to build this thing. And it was like, an arms race of us all trying to build a platform to make these funnels we were creating simpler and easier. We tried over. So 2009 was the very first time that I tried this. And we did it over time. Eventually, the company we had that was building this, it kind of fell apart and we had to fire everybody. It was kind of a dark side in my journey where just everything fell apart. And I was like, all right, we're never going to do that. And I remember it was a spot where we'd gone from about 100 employees, we'd let go probably 95 of them. We moved from this big nice office, we're into this little tiny office with 5 of us in there. We're trying to figure out like how to pay the rent, we're trying to figure out how to like pay off some debt. We had a bunch of IRS money we owed. It was just this painful time in my journey, my life. And I was trying to figure out like, what am I supposed to do? Like, what's the next thing? There's gotta be something out here for me to do. And I remember going to Flippa.com. Anyone here ever go to Flippa? Flippa sells websites. I went to Flippa and I'm looking through all the sites, I'm like, I'm trying to find my next idea. Like, what's the thing that's gonna like help me be successful? And all of a sudden I saw this website pop in there. It's called Champion Sound. And it was a text message email marketing platform for bands. And it was the coolest thing. I was like, this is amazing. Not that I wanted to like be the guy doing text and email messaging for bands, but I was like, if we bought this company, we could take it and then we could rebrand it and do like a text marketing system for chiropractors and for dentists. And that was the whole vision. And so they were selling this, I think, for $20,000. I did not have $20,000 or a credit card or anything. And I was like trying to figure out how to make some money, and I was hustling a bunch of things. I was selling stuff I had like to earn the $20,000, and finally got enough money. I bought this from the, on Flippa. I was like, cool, like this is the future. I'm gonna change the world. Like we're gonna give email and text message autoresponders to every market. And so we bought it, and then they were trying to transfer, after I wired them the money, it's contract to sign, so like I can't get out of it. I'm trying to transfer the website from theirs onto our servers, right? Not to get nerdy with you guys, but we have different servers. They're like, "We need servers that you can host Ruby on Rails on." I'm like, "What does that even mean?" They're like, "Ruby on Rails, it's like a programming language." I was like, "A programming language?" They're like, "Yeah, you do PHP, which is like English, and Ruby on Rails is like Chinese." I was like, I asked my developers, "Do you guys know Chinese?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Can you do Ruby on Rails?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Dang it." So, we couldn't transfer it over. So, finally, we had to get some new server. They moved it over to our server, and then they left. And all my developers are like, "We don't know Ruby on Rails. I don't know how to do this." They're like, you're kind of screwed. I was like, that was the last $20,000 I didn't have. Like, this has to work. And they're like, sorry. So we went on, remember we went to like, oDesk, I was trying to hire programmers to fix it, I was trying all sorts of stuff. The customers they had were all angry, 'cause it was falling apart, it wasn't working. I didn't know what to do. And I remember, I just, I was like, I just wasted $20 grand we didn't have. I don't know what to do, I can't fix this thing. Customers are yelling at us. And so I remember emailing my developer, I was like, just cancel the servers and shut it down, We'll just walk away from it. And I was in my office and I remember getting up and I left the office and as I was walking out the door, I had this weird impression. You guys ever have those impressions? And the impression was like, email your list and see if there's a Ruby on Rails programmer that works, that's on your email list. I was like, what? Like my list is teaching people marketing stuff. Like there's not a Ruby on Rails, I don't even know what Ruby on Rails was. And my list wasn't that big at the time. When I hear impressions like that, I try to follow them as much as I can. So I stopped, I walked back to my desk, I sat down, opened my email, and I was like, subject line was like, "I'm looking for a partner who knows Ruby on Rails." Inside, I'm like, "Hey, this email is probably not for any of you guys, but if there's one person out there who happens to know Ruby on Rails, I bought a site, I'm looking for a partner who wants to help me fix the site, send me a message. Here's the site." And I send the email out to my list thinking nothing's going to happen. I go back home that night, check my email, and sure enough, I get a couple people respond back. And I'm reading through the different things. I'm looking at the different resumes. And I don't even know what's right or what's not right. And also, one of the people who popped through was this guy right here. And it was— it was Todd. And I remember, I was like, hey, I have this site. If you want to partner with me on it, let me know. And here's logins. Good luck. And I remember, I just sent him everything, because I didn't know what to do. And I went to bed. Next morning, I woke up. And he's like, hey, I fixed this. I fixed this. I fixed this. This was dumb. I changed this. I added this. I moved this around. And it's all working great. What's next? I was like, what? It just, everything started working. I was like, this guy's awesome. And so we started something else. And I remember at the time we had no money at all. I was like, this is awesome. Like, I can't pay you, but if we ever make money from this, we can like share some of it. He's like, cool. And never asked me for money. And it's crazy, because as we kept going through our business, like, he worked with us probably over a year. And he would fly out to Boise, work on projects, we'd try to launch them. Sometimes they made some money, most times they made no money. We would try different things and different stuff. And he just came in like, and just if we made some money, he would, we'd pay him, but it was just kind of random. And I remember one day he was in Boise and I was looking over his shoulder and he has laptop open and they're like all these like job, like email, simple emails full of people like offering him jobs. I'm like, what's that? He's like, oh, it's people like Ruby on Rails is kind of a rare language. So like it's really easy to get jobs if you want them. I was like, how much people offer you for jobs? He's like, I don't know, let's check it out. He opens up an email. It's like people offer him like $350,000 a year. I'll pay $400,000. Like all these things, like the whole email box is full of these job offers. I was like, I was like, you should take those deals. Like, I'm paying you $0 a year. That's a way better deal than this. He's like, no, I don't want to work for anybody. I want to do this kind of cool stuff. And so after that, I remember I was like kind of freaking out. I'm like, if he ever leaves, I'm in big trouble. So I was like, hey, we don't have very much money, but I think I could spend— I could probably like, we could pay like $50 grand a year. Like, is that okay? He's like, yeah, whatever. So I was like, cool. So I'm like, okay. So they set up to pay $50 grand a year. And then, you know, a little while later, we're launching stuff, making a little more money. And then I remember coming back. I was like, hey, I think I can pay you like $70 grand a year now. Is that cool? He's like, yeah, whatever. So I put him at $70 grand a year. Eventually got to like $100 grand a year. And he never once asked me for money. He was just there to help, to serve, hoping for the best, hoping something cool would happen. And I remember one day, he was flying out to Boise. And it was right after Leadpages had just gotten their $5 million round in funding. And he was about to leave Atlanta. And he sees that, takes a picture of it, texts it to me. He's flying in the air for 4 hours. I wake up in the morning, I see this text from him. I'm like, Leadpages? They give him $5 million for lead— I was like so confused, I couldn't understand it. By the time Todd got there, he's like, he's like, they give Leadpages $5 million. I'm like, I know, like, this is insane. He's like, I could build Leadpages tonight. I'm like, you could? He's like, yeah. I'm like, let's build Leadpages tonight, let's do it then. And then he's like, cool, let's do it, like, we're gonna do this, right? We're gonna build Leadpages, we're gonna, like, it's gonna be amazing. And then he's like, do you want anything else besides, like, besides what they have, like, any other features you want? I'm like, oh yeah, like, what if we did this? And then this. And we sat in front of a whiteboard for a week, like every idea we had possible, I list them all out, and he looked at it all, he's like, "Okay, that's what we're gonna go build." And he flew home, and over the next 8 or 9 months, he built the very first version of ClickFunnels, which is insane. So, I got one last story, then I'll bring him out. I remember after we had that whiteboard meeting, and we're driving, I'm driving him to the airport to drop him off, I remember we pulled up, and Pulling up to the airport, and we're kind of talking back and forth. And before he gets out of the car, he's like, "Hey, if we're going to do this," he's like, "I don't want to do it like as one of your employees." He's like, "I want to do this like as like a business partner." I remember like in that moment, I'd never had a business partner before. I was just like, "Ah." I had all the fear of like, "No, like, like, no, I'm the entrepreneur. I want to be the business." Like, "No." And I was going back and forth, back and forth. And it was like probably 1,000 conversations in my head in like 20 seconds. I'm sitting there. And he's about to get out of the car and I was like, "Alright, let's do it, man. Let's be business partners on it." And he got out of the car and he left. And I remember being scared and nervous. And looking back now, a decade and almost 12 years later, from when we first started building ClickFunnels, 12 years later, I look at that as probably the second greatest decision in my life. And the first one would be marrying my wife, Collette. And the second one was when I told Todd, "Yes, I'd love to be your business partner." And that moment and completely changed my life forever. And I am so grateful for him as a friend, as a person, as a partner, and someone who I have so much love and respect for. I'm glad that he's here. So with that said, should we all stand up, put our hands together for Todd Dickerson? Amazing.

Oh my God.

Wow.

You are way too kind.

That was—

this is too cool. I'm super excited to be here with you guys in Vegas. My girls are at home, I think, watching live. Hey, girls. Yeah, this is so cool. And I'm sitting backstage. I'm listening to that conversation. I'm thinking through my head of like my side of like of what I was thinking at the same time, because I sound a little crazy. Like, like this guy just wouldn't take money. Like, he wouldn't— like, I tried to pay him and he wouldn't take. I'm like, But when that email came through, I felt that tug, that calling. It was this, "There's something here. There's something more. What you're doing is cool." I was building software, doing cool stuff I thought at the time, but there was this tug of like, "There's more. There's something more to work on. There's some bigger impact to make, some bigger changes." And yeah, I just channeled my inner Eileen and was like, "Do it now.

Reply. Send the email. Do it." I'm curious, like, because I know, like, I mean, this is for everybody, but like the leap of faith of like any new journey is always scary, right? Especially entrepreneurship. And like, you're coming into this, like, explain to your wife, like, hey, I'm gonna go work for free for these guys, but I have no idea if anything's gonna happen. We have no good ideas yet, but we're just gonna try. Like, was it— how did they deal with that?

How's your wife felt about that? There was definitely a lot of conversations around like, you know, we need a new car, we need like, maybe we should make some more money, we should do this thing. And I'm like, no, it's fine. We got enough to get by. We have a successful— I had a 4-Hour Workweek style business that was, you know, paying paying the bills. And it was like, no, we're good. I've got a bigger plan. Like, there's something here. I didn't know what it was at the time. I obviously was just following my instincts, that calling of just like, let's keep going.

Let's see what we can do. What's funny about this is, I'm going to talk about Level 10 opportunities tomorrow with you guys, some really cool stuff. But I remember like, we were trying to think like, what's our Level 10 opportunity? We were at TNC in a hotel room, like, just talking about that. And I remember that we like, we thought we had the big idea, right? This is like, this is going to be the future, it's going to change the world. And I have the logo, not in the slides, but we thought was gonna be the thing that changed world for us was a site. It was wpundies.com, and it was the WordPress logo wearing tighty-whitey undies. We're like, that's the thing that's gonna change the world. It was funny, that actually was the first thing that eventually became ClickFunnels, which is—

Yeah, it grew into that. Like, that was one of the random prototype software projects I built at the time too, yeah. Yeah, it's fun.

It's awesome. So I'm gonna, I've got some dates and stuff here. So this was crazy. So September 23rd, 2014, This is the day that ClickFunnels officially went live, which is crazy because that was 10 years ago.

Yeah, it was almost exactly 10 years ago.

What is today?

The 4th.

So in 10 days from now will be our 10-year birthday.

So close. Like, oh, I wasn't planning on saying this, but I just thought of this too. Like, when we were going live with this, I was literally like at the computer talking back and forth with you. We're doing this promotion, we're doing all this stuff. And my wife is like, We got to go to the hospital. I got to go to the hospital.

I remember this was like 2 in the morning when you're talking to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm talking to Russell online and he's like, "Oh no, what's wrong? What's wrong?" And basically, we had a miscarriage. So, like at the same time we're launching ClickFunnels, like we were going through that too. So, it was a tough time but also an exciting new time of a birth of a new business and a birth of a new thing. So, super cool too.

Crazy. You know, I'm emotional here.

I wasn't planning on that.

All my friends Anyway, it's crazy. So, September 23rd is when we launched it. A couple cool stories. These are like the original logos when we first launched it, when we were going through. I found all these. I'm like, this is crazy. This is like we're trying to figure out what is ClickFunnels? What's the branding? What's it actually look like? Initial logos. This is the room where it all happened. This is, that's Dylan Jones on the left-hand side, Todd Dickerson and me, and we're sitting there mapping out ClickFunnels. Like there's the left-hand menu in ClickFunnels. Like we're mapping out page by page on these whiteboards and taking pictures and dreaming about crazy things. And when we got it done, We launched it. When we first launched it, it wasn't like, I thought as soon as we launched this, it was like, we're gonna, I think our goal was like 10,000 customers week number 1, and we didn't. And then we kept trying different versions, different things, and it wasn't until this event, I think it was like 2 or 3 months into ClickFunnels, I think it was October, maybe a month, month and a half into ClickFunnels, we got invited to speak at an event, one of my friend's events, and he's like, hey, we need you to come and sell ClickFunnels at this event. I was like, you don't understand, we have a free trial of ClickFunnels right now and nobody's buying it. He's like, yeah, but you gotta come, I already put your name on the sales letter, You're coming to speak. And I was like, I don't know how, like, this is okay. And he's like, I need you to sell a $1,000 version. Because if you have never spoken at an event, the way it works when you speak at an event is you create an offer, you sell it, and then the promoter gets half the money, you get half the money. So they create a $1,000 offer of ClickFunnels, come and sell at the event. So we came to this event, we put it together. I remember like we're working on slides, we're flying out there. We did the first demo. Dylan was in the side of the event room, like doing the first demo live as we're like going live. We did this whole presentation, the end of it, we did the offer to sell it. And it was crazy because like we did the pitch and people were jumping over the tables, running back there, people knocking each other over. And I'm sitting there just like, what? Like I'd heard people talk about table rushes before, but never actually experienced before. Yeah. And people were jumping over and it was just, it was the craziest thing. We closed more than half of the room at that event. And then I remember going to dinner and we're sitting there and I was like, we're just, we're finding, we're celebrating. First off, like we actually made some money, which is fantastic because we were completely broke. And so that was really nice, first off, we're all happy, and like, I think we ordered like good food that night, like this is, you know, and I remember sitting there telling you and Dylan, I was just like, I was like, I don't think you understand, like, I've never had, like, I've never had people respond to something we've done like that ever. I've been doing this for 10 years at this point. I've never seen them do a table rush. I was like, I know the path now to get us to the point we're gonna be rich, like we're gonna be crazy rich from this. And that was the kickoff of this whole movement. And from there we went and just, yeah, 10 years later here we are.

I remember that conversation. You were like, you're just like, this changes everything, guys. Like, you don't realize like this is it. This is how we teach the strategy, how we teach the software, how we do it.

Now we can run. So do you want to talk about some of the things that have happened over the last little bit since we've launched this little company called ClickFunnels?

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

Like, just insane.

It's crazy. Yeah, almost $2 billion in the past 12 months alone. Just insane volume.

You guys are crushing it. Wait, you skipped that. That's not a big deal. $2 billion in the last 12 months alone you guys have processed through ClickFunnels, which is insane. That's a lot of money. Congratulations to all of you guys.

Yep, that's over 2,500 people who have joined the Two Comma Club, right? So that's people that have made over $1 million in a funnel. Over 2,500 now.

How crazy is that? Congratulations, yes! We should think about our very first Funnel Hacking Live had 800 people. The second one had 1,200. Third one had 1,300. I mean, it was like 5 Funnel Hacking Lives before we were able to get 2,500 people to be in a room. And now so many people have won a Two Comma Club award, which is insane.

Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, 343 Two Comma Club X winners that have done over $10 million. We didn't have that many more people in Vegas 10 years ago, so that's crazy.

It's insane.

Um, we had 105 Two Comma Club C winners, so that's you guys that have done over $25 million. Like, wow, it's crazy. And 9 Two Heart winners. So if you guys are familiar with this, yeah, this is my—

of all the awards, this is my favorite one 'cause this is the one, it's not about how much money you make, it's how much money you give. And I remember when we first did this the first time, I thought this may be something we give an award every decade, maybe someone actually will do this. And I said, 9 of you guys have donated over $1 million to charity from the money you made from your funnels, which is so awesome. It's amazing, so love it. Thank you, guys. This is the big question, how many guys, so the next Funnel Hacks Live is not a year away, which is crazy, next Funnel Hacks Live is like 5 and a half months away. How many guys at home, I wanna see by raise of hands, how many guys have a goal next year to be on stage with us getting your 2 Comma Club Award? If that's you, raise your hands. Let's go! It's gonna be awesome.

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

So this is our 10-year official birthday party. So happy birthday, ClickFunnels!

Let's go! All right, everyone, I hope you love that episode and you got some cool value from it. Basically right now, I want to make sure that you know about Funnel Hacking Live 10. It is the last dance. It's the last big Funnel Hacking Live mega event we're ever doing. As you know, the last 4 or 5 years we had 5,000+ people at Funnel Hacking Live, and it is the greatest party, rock concert event ever. And this year we're going out with a bang. It's year 10, and I'm ready to retire from mega events.

It's a lot of work.

We have something new coming, it'll be different, but this will be the last time we do it this way, and I wanna make sure you come out to it for the last big party for our 10-year anniversary. If you are someone who was a Funnel Hacker in the past, I wanna invite you to come back. If you are somebody who's new to our world, come experience it before it's gone. It's gonna be insane and amazing, and I wanna make sure I wanna make sure you guys are there at the event. So get your tickets at funnelhackinglive.com. I will be speaking there. One of my friends, Tony Robbins, will be speaking there, and that's all the speakers I've announced so far. So over the next few months, you'll find out who else is coming, but I wanna make sure you get your tickets before they sell out. We've sold out every year in the past, and we'll sell out this year as well. So go to funnelhackinglive.com and get your tickets to FHL10.