Is This One of Our Final Podcast Episodes?

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What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And, um, I don't know yet, this may be one of the final episodes, so I don't know. I'll talk about that here in a minute. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. My name is Russell Brunson and I'm what you call a serial entrepreneur, but with a twist. You see, 50% of my time I'm the CEO of ClickFunnels, helping over 100,000 brands to grow their companies with funnels. And the other 50% of my time, I'm actually in the trenches using ClickFunnels to grow the startups I believe in. During this podcast, I'll take you behind the scenes and show you how we are bootstrapping ClickFunnels and my other businesses from startup to 9 figures and beyond. Welcome to the show. All right, everybody. So man, it's been a little while since I recorded an actual podcast. We've had a couple of replays last month or so. And at the time I'm recording this, we're less than a week away from Christmas. Which I'm excited for, but man, I am not gonna lie. This has been one of the most difficult seasons of my life. In fact, this year's been hard as a whole. So I was just thinking back about, it was basically 12 months ago, a little over 12 months ago that my closest friend, my business partner, Dave Woodward passed away. It's crazy 'cause that came on the back of us launching ClickFunnels 2.0, which has been a crazy ride as well. And then it's just been, it's been a tough year. I'm not gonna lie. We've had some big ups, some low downs. You know, I think I was at a wrestling tournament this weekend with my son and I was talking about wrestling. I said wrestling, I love it because it has like the highest highs and lowest lows. Like when you win, you win, it's like the greatest feeling in the world. And when you lose, it hurts so bad, but it's what makes the pursuit and the win so, feel so great. You know what I mean? So this year's been similar. We've had some great wins, but also some big losses, and obviously the biggest, the hardest one for me has been Dave. He was one who I would talk to every single day. He was one that I brainstorm with. He's one I have crazy ideas and he helped me implement them. He was the one that, you know, was my biggest cheerleader, and I don't know, it's crazy how hard that is when you lose that, you know, and still having the same mission, the same everything, but missing that person who was such a big just a big part of it all. So anyway, it's been an interesting year. And you know, we launched ClickFunnels 2.0 and it was a crazy, I don't know, launching new software is always hard, right? We have, you know, we've been working on it for over 2 years. We've been talking about it for a year. People were anxious, they were waiting. And so we launched it and it's crazy though, 'cause you know, we'd spent a year using it. We'd built out membership sites, built out funnels, built out, like it was working great. It worked great for us. But you know, when you launch it Day one, we had 18,000 people sign up in the first week. Also, you start finding out what's working, what's not working, and I'm so proud of our team. They've killed themselves to do an amazing job of support and the dev team fixing things and adding things and improving things, and that's what this year's been. This year's been reactionary of we launched this thing and then the reaction of just keeping up with it. When we launched ClickFunnels the first time we launched it, there were 10 customers, then 50 customers, then 100 customers, We were able to fix things in real time as we were growing, but man, starting a startup where the first week you get 18,000 customers is hard. It's something we were not prepared for and ready for, and definitely harder than I thought. And it was crazy, we launched, and then right after that Dave passed, and then it was just, it was hard, I think, 'cause a lot of people who I consider friends, people who had, you know, we had helped grow inside of ClickFunnels, people who had struggled, they came into our training, they had success, they went to comic clubs, and then to see the negativity. And it was frustrating, 'cause like, you know, I thought it was like, we gave everyone 2.0, which is this beta software, we let them keep 1.0, so they got both for the same price, and inside of that it was still hard, we had a lot of frustrated people, which, you know, is my fault, and I've been working hard to remedy that and fix things, but I love it, I mean, ClickFunnels 2.0 is awesome. I think that there's a learning curve that we're trying to simplify and clean up and stuff like that, but man, we've been running ClickFunnels on it now for 2 years, we've been running our own stuff on it, And it's amazing. We just did the big Secrets to Success launch on it. It's really amazing. It's just kind of, I don't know, it was just, anyway, launching a startup for that many people is hard. So this year's been kind of tough for that. I'm trying to figure out the right decisions, the right moves. Anyway, so I don't know why I'm telling you this other than I think a lot of times my podcasts are like Russell, all my energy and excitement and stuff like that. And I am excited, I have energy, but especially today, especially tonight, I'm just worn out and tired. Actually, I came over to the book office just to go and spend some time organizing books because that sounded like the most fun thing for me to do and spend time. You probably know the last 2 years, almost 3 years now, I've been buying these old books. It's crazy. I had a handful, a small collection, and then when Dave came down with brain cancer, it was crazy because nights I couldn't sleep. And so what I would do is I jump on eBay and I'd search for books. It was the thing that brought me peace and happiness and a relief from the real world, you know, and Now I've got these two different offices full of— it's kind of ridiculous if I'm honest with myself, but man, it's just crazy how much happiness it brings me looking at these books who are people who passed on. Most of these are, you know, I'd say 95% of my books are more for people who passed on. And so it's just fun for me to sit here and realize all these people, you know, at one time were just like me trying to take over the world, trying to change the world, trying to do the best they could. They're writing books, they're publishing stuff way back when it was so much harder than it is today, you know, before Google Docs and things like that. Anyway, I get comfort just looking at like how excited they must have been when they were publishing these and writing them and getting them out there. And then they had people who read the books and changed their lives and just how they must have felt, you know. For me, that's the thing that's kept me going over the last decade of doing this whole ClickFunnels, Marketing Secrets thing is just, you know, seeing people's lives change. And so anyway, I just, I don't know what it is. I just, I love this. I love being around These books, I'm sitting on the floor right now next to a whole bunch of them. Some of my favorite authors are right here next to me. Charles Hannell is one of my favorites. Robert Collier. Robert Collier, man, a lot of the marketing guys and gals in my world, you'll know him from the Robert Collier Letter Book. But that was a book he talked about his advertising principles. But he learned that by advertising his personal development books. And he's got dozens of books he wrote that are so good. And magazines, he published two different magazines that one, there's only 7 issues of. I found 4 of the 7. I'm still trying to find the last couple. And then second, magazine that he published. Each issue's like these little books, like, they're so cool. And then all these other cool things, you know. And I think about, like, you know, that scene from Dead Poets Society. I played it at Funnel Hacking Live, where Robin Williams is sitting there with this new class and he's talking about their future. He shares the poem. In fact, I found an original first edition of this book after watching it again. But the poem is like, says, gather you rosebuds while you may, right? It's like He starts talking about like, why is it so important for you to pursue these things now? Like gather the rosebuds while you may, like doing it right now. It's because, you know, soon we're gonna be gone and this life is such a short glimpse. And then he shows the, he has all the class lean in to look at the pictures of these people on the wall. And they're like these old, or, you know, they're not old, they're young people, but there's black and white photos. And he said, look at their eyes, look at the, they were just like you. They were excited about their future, what they're gonna create, what they were gonna do. He's like, look at them now. He's like, they're worm food, you know? He says, but right now they're calling, they're whispering something from the ground. Listen in close, listen in close. So he has everyone getting close and then from the back you hear him saying, carpe diem, carpe diem, and seize the day. He's like, that's what these guys are telling you. It's like, our day is over, now seize the day. I think when I'm amongst these books, that's what I feel is just like that feeling of like seize the day. Like, what are you trying to create, Russell? What are you trying to do? And I think for me, I've lost vision of that for the last little while, mostly because I've been— I don't know, do you guys go through this? This is like the vulnerable Russ. I'm one of those episodes I shouldn't post, but it's been tough. Like, you know, when you have a partner that you're pursuing something and you're talking about it, and then you've got, you know, man, over 2 years now where you don't have anyone to talk about it as much, and it's different. You know, my business partners who I love to death, you know, Todd's not in the office, he's on the other side of the country, we don't talk that often. And, you know, I think while we're so aligned in some things, we also have different visions of what we want and we're trying to do as well. And so for me, I think I feel like I got lost on the path for a while. Like I was just kind of doing a lot of different things and launching different businesses. And it's so interesting, like, do you ever do that thing where you teach somebody something and you believe something, then you do the opposite? You know, before we had ClickFunnels, the thing that I would do is I'd create a new business every 90 days and we relaunch it and launch next one, next one. And I love doing it. And we decided to launch ClickFunnels. You know, Todd told me, he's like, we put so much into this. He's like, you need to focus on this for a year. And so I was like, okay, I'll commit to a year. I did commit for 8+ years before COVID hit. And COVID, I got bored a little bit. You know, Todd was coding ClickFunnels 2.0 and I didn't have as much to do. And so I'm trying to figure out what can I do? And I bought a supplement company, then a second one, then this and that, and then all these projects I started working on, but they weren't my core focus. They were just things I was excited by. And so because of that, none of them got done. Now I'm looking, we're at year 10 of ClickFunnels and I need to be focusing 100% on ClickFunnels. And I have all these side projects that are just taking time, energy from me and from our staff and our team. And so I laugh because when Inner Circle, every time someone would come in and they would try to, You know, they would have some projects, all the projects. The very first thing I would do is have them tell me all the different projects they have. I'm like, okay, number one, you have to kill all your babies. You're allowed to have one business and one only. I'd force them all to kill their businesses and people would fight me every single time and then they come back and like, I killed all my businesses and I was able to focus and it's crazy 'cause now I made blah blah blah, our business exploded. It's just so funny 'cause the advice I give everyone else, in fact, just even last year, I gave people that same advice. They're like, well, how come you have so many businesses? I'm like, oh, well, you know. Do what I say, not what I do. But then looking back and I was, you know, my advice was correct before. It's just funny, so I'm in the process right now of killing a whole bunch of businesses that suck, that I've put time and energy and money and effort into that just aren't producing and are sucking away time from my number one opportunity, right? We all have one core opportunity that we can and should be pursuing and so, yeah, so for me, obviously it's ClickFunnels, that's my, It's my core thing, so I'm committed to, and so I'm actually really excited. You know, today, started looking at, like, if I'm gonna put 100% of my effort into ClickFunnels, like, what's the thing that I can or should be doing that'll have the biggest impact, that's gonna change things the most, you know, like, what does that actually look like? And I can't tell you yet, but there are 4 things. I was like, holy crap, we do these 4 things, like, we will crush everybody else. It'll be, they won't even know what hit 'em, like, it's gonna be really fun. And so I got excited by that, energized by that, and so I'm gonna be pursuing that doing those things and working towards them. I think you'll see most of them, and actually what's funny about these is, well you'll see a couple of them, there'll be a couple you'll see, there'll be a couple you will not see, most likely won't see, but they're gonna be big and they're gonna be moving very, very quickly on them and I'm excited, like, you know, it's just one of those things that, I don't know, I'm just like really excited to jump back in and really see what I can do over the next couple years and see how big we can grow ClickFunnels So that's, I think, the really good news. But also, you know, these books and my vision and what I wanna do with the books are still here as well. So Secret Success will continue to be my side business. I'll have one, one that I'm passionate about and I love, partially because it lets me use ClickFunnels every single day, you know what I mean? Like I'm in there, I'm building stuff, I'm trying stuff, we're finding the bugs, we're finding the errors, we're finding what's not working, and it's giving us a really good loop back. Plus all the 2CCX training, all my other trainings are based on us growing that company, so. But those would be the two things I'll be focusing on, that's it. The core focus would be ClickFunnels obviously, and then the side will be my little side hustle, which is these books and what we're doing with them. And for the time being, that'll be the focus. And who knows, maybe in 3 or 5 years from now, or whenever it makes sense, maybe I'll step down and hand over ClickFunnels to someone smarter than me and focus just on this side business where I'm hanging out with books and all that kind of thing. But definitely for the, But for the short term, it's gonna be 100% focused on that. And so I'm excited for it. And so for any of you guys who are listening, I think that'd be my aha or my takeaway. Hopefully I can give you this year of stress and anxiety and whatever you may be going through, 'cause I don't know, we're all going through stuff, right? And we've got stuff we're going through, business stuff, but also we're having a lot of teenager issues that we're struggling with right now. Anyway, it just all kind of adds up and I know that we all go through those things, but anyway, that's my, if I can give you a gift that I'm giving myself right now is to kill all your babies and focus on what? Focus on your best opportunity. And I think especially over the next, I don't know, the next 12 months is gonna be crazy with elections and chaos and AI and all these things that are happening. Like, I think now it's time to really focus on one thing and try to do your best to capitalize on it. Yeah, so that's my goal. So my goal is in the next 90 days is to at least 2x, maybe 3x the lead flow of people that join ClickFunnels every day. You know, we're over 1,000 people a day that still join ClickFunnels, and I wanna dramatically increase that while increasing stick rate and a bunch of other things. And so it's gonna be fun. I'll keep you in the loop on what we're doing. I'll share with you the ideas and what's happening. And I mentioned this may be one of the last Marketing Secrets podcasts, not because I'm gonna stop podcasting, but we're kind of relooking at my content strategy as a whole. We spend so much money on paid ads and paid ads are getting so much more expensive. Even with us, we've got the deepest funnels in the world, you know what I mean? We're pretty good at that side of things. It's just still getting harder and harder at scale. And so that's one of the things that I'm trying to focus on is really getting more focus on organic traffic. And so with that, I'm like, well, this podcast is great, but but it could do more, could do a lot more if I looked at it differently. I remember talking to Rachel Hollis last year, and she's like, you know, I look at all my businesses and they're all doing well. She's like, I have this podcast I put almost no effort into, and yet it makes me, you know, X amount of dollars a year. She's like, man, if I focused much effort there as in those other places, like, what would my business— like, it would be insane. And so she doubled down. I went and saw her going from, you know, one podcast episode a week to 3 or 4 a week, and selling ads and sponsorships and making great money off it and building that as her primary business. And anyway, I just keep coming back to like, man, if I focus on the organic side and really put year to years into it, it could and should be the spot where it can overtake what we're doing on the paid side, which would be insane. That'd save me a million bucks a month, you know? $2 million a month probably, so $20, $30 million a year if I can replace that. Maybe I can't, maybe I still keep paying that, but now I get other traffic for free on top of it, and that's even better. So you'll be seeing me going down. So I have an idea for a new podcast that'll hopefully be coming out early in the new year, and, um, we're relaunching our YouTube channel, Instagram. Like, we're doing a lot of things to, to really focus on organic side. So that's kind of happening here. And, and yeah, my goal is in the next 12 months, so that by this time next December we'll re-meet here, I'll be like, hey, Guess what? Right now ClickFunnels has 250,000 active members. Boo-yah, we did it. So despite the storms, despite the elections, despite all the craziness, so anyway, it'll be fun. I'm looking forward to it, I'm looking forward to simplifying my life and my stress and my anxiety and still trying to figure out the details on how to do that, but I think it'll be amazing. So all right, with that said, I appreciate you guys listening and hopefully a little more raw, vulnerable version of the podcast is helpful for some of you guys who may be struggling this time of year as well. I appreciate you all. Thanks for listening. I'm cheering for you. I'm rooting you on. And let's hit this next year at a level we never had before and have some fun. So that said, thanks guys so much, and I will talk to you soon.