Offers Will Change Your Life: The Stories Behind My Biggest Turning Points | #Success - Ep. 90

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Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you wanna learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast. What's up everybody?

Welcome back to the show.

I hope you're all doing amazing.

This is probably dropping during Thanksgiving week, so hopefully if you're in the States, you're having a great Thanksgiving. If you're anywhere else, hope you're having a great week. And we appreciate you guys always paying attention and listening. Today I wanted to give you guys a bonus episode. This is from, I had a chance a little while ago to speak at Myron Golden's event. 'Cause Myron is the man and basically when he asks me to do something I say yes.

So that's kind of the relationship we have.

He's amazing and he asked me if I could speak at this event for him and with him and it was so much fun. The whole event was about offers and so he wanted me to put my spin on offers and what I've learned and how they work. And I had a couple presentations that I did at that event but this one was one that I thought was really cool I want to share with you guys because hopefully I'll be starting thinking about offer creation and the different offers you can create. And like, and the fact that, you know, the people in each market that make the most offers, the ones that have the most success, and it goes through a lot of different offers and things that we've created over time. And anyway, it was a really fun presentation to prepare and to give, and I hope that you guys get a ton of value out of it during these holidays. And then after that, get back to making some offers.

Black Friday offers, Cyber Monday offers, Christmas offers, New Year's offers, like Put out those offers because that's, they say an offer a day keeps the taxman away.

I don't know, something like that. All right, that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and we'll talk to you soon.

This is the Russell Brunson Show. A lot of you are going to be really, really nervous. Like, I don't know how to put offers out there. Like, it's like, there's going to be anxiety and stress and what if my offer sucks? What if nobody buys it? But the second side you have to understand is that the person in any market who's willing to put out the most offers is the person who wins. So it's not just like I'm gonna put one offer out there and hope it does well. It's putting out offer after offer after offer. Just in the last 30 days alone, I've probably put out 12 different offers to my market. I'm putting out offers all the time, trying to see what works, what doesn't work. Sometimes I put out offers and they completely bomb. Even today, I put out an offer and I think I'm pretty good at this at this point, I still put out offers sometimes that don't work. Other times I put out offers and they blow up, and you never really know. So when I was preparing this presentation today, I was thinking about, Man, I've been in this business now for 20, 21, 22 years, something like that, which is crazy 'cause I look like I'm 14, but I've been doing this for a long time. I'm 43 years old right now, and I started my business when I was in my early 20s, and so, yeah, it's been over 20-something years I've been doing this, and I was thinking about the offers I put out there that actually changed my life, 'cause there were definitely like 4 or 5 that were like huge shifts that changed everything for me. And so if you guys don't mind, I'm gonna tell a couple stories about that, and hopefully it'll give you some inspiration about just the reason why this is so important, why it's something that's essential for you guys to do, 'cause one good offer you put out there can and will change your life forever. So when I got started, again, 20-some-odd years ago, I just married my beautiful wife. Anyone ever seen my wife online socially, she hates being on social stuff, but she's on there every once in a while. I met her, fell in love, I was like, I wanna marry this girl. My wife's 6 years older than me, and so I was like, how do I impress her? Like, I'm broke, she's like beautiful, like all these things, right? And I don't know, somehow I tricked her. She was the very first sell, the very first time I closed somebody. I was like, I can't believe I closed her on me, this is ridiculous. So she married me and it was amazing. And I was wrestling at the time, so I didn't have a job, so she also had to marry me and she had to support me, which is like, I'm a good closer, right, if I can do that. And so she marries me, then she's supporting me and everything's happening. And at the time I'm like, I gotta figure out how to, how to help her, because long term, when I get done wrestling, like, I gotta support her. Like, what am I gonna do? And so while I was in school, I started trying to figure out how do I make money? How do I, how do I create something that will make us money? And I tried a whole bunch of different things. Some of you guys have heard my story. My first, one of my first products was teaching people how to make potato guns. Uh, I made little products called Zip Brander. It was a little software product. I created a whole bunch of different products and put them out there, and I had mild success with a lot of them. Like, nothing like You know, I didn't become a millionaire selling DVDs on how to make potato guns, but I made a little bit of money here and there, right? That's how I got started. And I remember the very first time that I actually made an offer. I didn't even know that it was called an offer at the time, but it was our second Christmas together. My wife and I had been married for 2 years. It was our second Christmas together. And my wife's super low maintenance. Like, she thinks all this stuff is, like, when she comes to events like this, she's like, why are people here to hear you talk? This makes no sense, right? It's like, oh, she's amazing. One of my friends told me like, if you didn't marry Colette, your head would be so big, but she doesn't care about any of this. Like, it's so funny. And so anyway, but I remember we got married and I was trying to figure this business thing out. I had a couple, I was selling these potato gun DVDs, I was selling a couple other things like that, and I had a little email list at the time. It wasn't huge, but I don't know, probably 1,000 people or so who joined my email list. And I remember like, we had these couches and they were couches. Again, she was 6 years older than me. So when she, when she moved out of home, she bought some couches and then those were only couches she had for, you know, prior to us getting married. And then we got married and I had nothing. So I was like, not only like you're going to marry me and you're going to support me, like, do you have any couches? So she had the couches and like, they were these old couches, you know? And like, anyway, and I was just like, man, I would like to get her something nice. And she had mentioned like someday, like if you ever get a job, we should get some new couches, right? And so anyway, that Christmas I wanna buy her some couches. But couches are expensive, they're like, I don't know, $3,000 or $4,000, which I did not have. So I was like, put together an offer. Again, I don't know if that was the name for it, but I'm gonna put together something and see if I can make enough money to buy my beautiful wife some couches. And so it was Christmas time, and so I remember I called it the Grinch Sale, so I had a picture of the Grinch on it. I was like, the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day, and he wanted to get this cool thing for his wife. And I just told the story, I was like, I wanna get my wife a couch. I can't afford it, but I wanna get a couch, and so I'm gonna create a really cool offer. So I create an offer, I was like, if you sign up for this thing, it's $37, you're gonna get this, and you're gonna get this, and I put together 5 or 6 really, really cool things that were worth way more than $37, but I was like, if you pay for it, if you pay the $37, I'll give you like $300 or $400 worth of stuff, right? I put together this thing, again, I didn't know it was called an offer at the time, but I put it together, sent an email out to my list, and I went to bed. And this will come back in a little bit, I'm gonna talk about Hook Story Offer, but I told the story, I didn't try to hide it, I wasn't like, hey, buy this really cool thing over there, I literally, the headline was like, I'm trying to buy my wife a couch for Christmas, if you guys buy this thing, I will buy her the couch, and then I will put your name on the Christmas card as one of the people who helped support me in buying my wife this beautiful couch. And so I sent the email out, the story, the picture of the Grinch on it, had the law, had the story about it, had a couple pictures of the things that were gonna be included in this offer, sent the email out, Went to bed, woke up the next morning, and I sold like a dozen of them or something. I was like, this is amazing, like $37 times a dozen is, you know, $300, $400 in sales, it's amazing. What I didn't know is one of the people that bought it was this guy named Carl Gledney. And at the time, Carl Gledney had a huge email list, and on the thank you page, I had an affiliate link where I said if you sign up as an affiliate, you can promote this as well, and we'll split the money 50/50. So he bought it, he's like, this is a really good offer. And so he took the link, signed up as an affiliate, and then he sent an email out to his list. So that day I'm going to school, my wife's going to work, I have no idea what's gonna happen. I go to wrestling practice, I get done with wrestling practice, I come back home and I open my little PayPal account. $20,000 in sales in my PayPal account. I was like, what the crap? I could buy 2 or 3 couches for this much, like, but part of me is like, something went wrong. 'Cause I don't, I was like, I only have 1,000 people on my list, and like, this doesn't make any logical sense. And then what else happened is some of those people who bought saw on the thank you page, like, they joined as an affiliate, they sent it out, And so the next day more sales came in, more sales came in, and it was a little 3-day sale. At the end of 3 days, we'd sold $37,000 worth of this thing. And I was just like, are they gonna take the money back? Like, am I gonna go to jail? Like, $37,000, to put in perspective, like, my parents made like $37,000 a year. I made that in 3 days. Selling this thing that had a picture of the Grinch on it. The story about I want to buy my wife a couch with a little offer. I had no idea that was possible. I'm a college kid, right? And so then I'm like, do I tell my wife? Do I not? Like, and so I didn't even tell her. So then like, I was like, hey Colette, I'm going to buy you a couch. She's like, we don't have money for a couch. I'm like, no, we kind of do right now. Let me explain. So I tried to explain to her what just happened. And she's like, wait, people, what? She could not fathom it. I couldn't fathom it. It was this crazy thing. But then all of a sudden the emails started coming in and people were like, hey, did you buy your wife the couch yet? Did you buy your wife the couch yet? I bought that thing, I bought 3 of them 'cause I wanna make sure you get, and like all these people bought something. And so my wife and I went down to R.C. Willey, which is where we bought the couch, bought the couch, got it back, took a picture of me and her, sent an email out to all the people who bought, like, thank you so much, this is what you were able to get for my wife and I for Christmas. And it was the first time that I'd ever seen the power of an offer. I was like, this is crazy. Like I'd made $37,000 in my entire life up to that point. 3 days because we made a really, really good offer, okay? Some of you guys are the same way. Some of you guys have been doing this business for a while and you've been struggling. Maybe you put a product or an offer out there and you tried something and something and it didn't work yet, right? You have to understand that you're literally just one offer away. Like, what if you put one really good offer out there and boom, somebody takes it and it goes viral, whatever happens, it can change everything for you. And so, that was the very first time an offer really had a big impact on me. And I started looking through this morning, I was writing down like, what are the other times? There were 5 core, times I put out an offer that shifted everything. The next time was, fast forward a couple years later, I'd started to grow my business, I had a couple employees by then, and the weirdest thing that you're gonna find out, how many of you guys have employees right now? How many of you guys are just solo right now? Okay, for the solo people, this is something I didn't know about employees till I hired them. So as an entrepreneur, you only make money when you sell something, right? You kill something, you get to eat it. That's how we like, we kill it, we get to eat it, right? But when you start hiring employees, It blew my mind. I'd never had a job before, so, 'cause I was a student athlete, I'd never had a job before. This is the first thing I ever did. But employees expect to get paid every 2 weeks, whether you make money or not. Did you know that? Yeah, I had no idea. So like, I hire my friends, they're working for me, and they're like, hey, it's payday, when do we get paid? I was like, what are you talking about? We have to kill something before we eat. And they're like, no, no, we get paid every 2 weeks. I was like, oh crap, like I had no idea. And so I'd hired these people and they wanted to get paid and so I was like, ah, so I started like getting better at making offers 'cause like I gotta pay these guys. So I'm like, I create an offer, send it out to the list, make a bunch of money, pay them, and I'm like, okay, whew, and start working on the next project and all of a sudden they're like knocking on the door, hey, it's been 2 weeks, when do we get paid again? Oh crap, okay, so I go in and make a quick offer, send it out to the list, make a bunch of money, pay them again, and like this was the cycle and it was just like overwhelming. I was doing that for 5 or 6 months leading up to about Christmas time, and it was just, it was hard. Like, I was hustling to make money to pay these people back and forth, and, and, um, at a point where I remember it was, it was December, and I was like, I don't have money to keep paying my employees. Like, I'm, I'm out of money. Like, I don't have anything to do. I'm out of ideas for offers. I don't even know what to do. And I remember it was, um, like I said, it was Christmas time. I was outside hanging up Christmas lights, and I just remember it was freezing cold outside. I didn't have gloves on, so I had this like stapler. Anybody ever hung Christmas lights before? One nice thing about making offers, you make enough money, you can hire someone to do it, but I didn't have money at the time to hire someone. So I'm out there on a ladder stapling in Christmas lights around my house. It's a horrible thing. It's freezing cold in Boise, Idaho. Snow outside, I'm shivering. And I'm sitting there, and I didn't want to go inside because I was so stressed about how do I pay payroll in the next 2 days? I have no money, I don't know what to do, I have no ideas for offers. So I sat out there just stapling these lights, sick to my stomach about how am I gonna go and fire all my friends and family members in December right before Christmas. Like, I had no ideas. And so at the same time, I'm also listening to some audios. This is pre-podcast, so I downloaded some seminars. I was listening to some things, and I remember that at the time, somebody had taught they had a high-ticket coaching program, and I had never heard about high-ticket before. This was a new thing. I didn't understand it. I'm listening to this audio, and they talked about how they had these things, and they sold for $5,000. They had people come to their office, and they would teach them how to do a thing. And I was like, okay, maybe, like, maybe I could do a high-ticket offer. And I started thinking through this, and like, that was the first time I'd ever thought about like a high-ticket offer, right? And I'm like, what would I do for high ticket? I have no idea. And then anyway, as I was hanging up Christmas lights, I started getting more excited, like what I could create. Would people actually pay me for, pay me money? I couldn't figure that whole thing out. How many of you guys ever feel like, would people actually pay me $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000? I'm a kid who's hanging up Christmas lights outside. Why would somebody pay me $5,000 for something? But I had this little spark of belief. Some of you guys, I'm hoping that this event, if nothing else, it gives you that spark of belief. For some reason, I'm hanging up Christmas lights, I had this spark of belief, like I think I could create something that people would pay me $5,000 for. And so I remember that morning, the next morning I woke up and I emailed my little staff. I said, hey everyone, I think it was a Saturday morning or something, I'm like, hey, I haven't told you guys this yet, but I'm out of money. I got no money for payroll, but I think I have an idea how we could save Christmas. If you guys all come to the office, I'm gonna brainstorm. And so I sent that out to everybody, texted a couple of them. The next, you know, an hour or two later we're at the office, there's 5 or 6 of us. I was like, okay, so if we wanna pay, if you guys want salary to pay for Christmas stuff like that, I got no money. I listened to this audio, this guy's selling high-ticket stuff, we gotta create something high-ticket we could sell. And they're like, well, what are we gonna sell? I'm like, I don't know, what could we, like, let's make up an idea. So we sat in front of a whiteboard like this, and I was like, what could we sell? And they're like, what if people like flew out here and they did this? So we made like the first thing. And we were like, let's sell a second thing. We started just listing out all the crazy things. I was like, right now everything's on the table, the crazier the better. Like, what if they flew and they stayed at your house? I'm like, let's put it on the board, right? What if they came and like your wife cooked them breakfast, lunch, and dinner for them? I'm like, put it on the board, right? And we started putting all this stuff up there. And we could do this with people, we could do this. And we started just mapping out. And so we had this whole whiteboard full of all the crazy things we could possibly do. And then we started looking at it, I was like, my wife will kill me if she's like, you know, we can't do that one, so we crossed out that one. And that one would be really hard, and that's gonna be too expensive. And started taking off the things that we weren't willing to do. One of the problems some of you guys make with offers is that you will be so excited initially, you'll wanna promise everything in the world, and then later you'll be miserable because you overpromised. And so initially during the brainstorm, we put everything out there, but then we start taking things away. What are our non-negotiables? What are we not willing to do? I had a friend who, she's amazing, and she did this little event in Boise, Idaho, and she sold a $5,000 package, and I remember I saw her right afterwards. I came and spoke at the event, 'cause she was in Boise, and it's like, she did the whole thing, and she signed up like 10 people at $5,000, and she was like on top of the world, like, "This is amazing, I made $50,000!" She was so excited, right? And then I saw her like 8 months later, and she was like miserable. I'm like, "What happened?" She's like, "Well, when I sold the $5,000 thing, what they got is they gotta come to my house, 3 different times throughout the year, times 10 people, means 30 3-day events, one-on-one with people, and she was like, she was just broke, she was so miserable, and she's like, I promised everything, I wanted people to buy, and then like, the fulfillment of it crushed me. And so when she finally finished it, we sat back like, hey, this time let's structure an offer in a way that's not gonna kill you. And so just a word of warning for you guys, after you brainstorm the greatest offer of all time, take away the things that will destroy your happiness. And so we started taking those things away, we created a new offer, And I remember I had a little email list at the time, and we sent out this email to the list and said, hey, this is what we're doing, it's a $5,500 offer, this is how it's gonna work, and we walked through, and we made just a really, really good offer. You're gonna fly to Boise, you're gonna be here for 3 days, we're gonna do this for you, we're gonna do this for you, we mapped out, it was just a really, really irresistible offer. Sent the email out to our little list at the time, and this is the very first time we'd ever done phone sales, but I said, if you're interested, fill out a form and we'll call you on the phone. And for the next week or so, me and some of my buddies, We're calling people on the phone and trying to explain the offer to them, and in the first 10 days after we made that offer, we had 11 people who signed up for the $5,500 offer, which is like, what, almost $60,000. Saved Christmas. I paid everyone's Christmas fees. People started coming in, and all of a sudden I was like, I had an offer. I had a really good offer. And that same offer, we ended up using that offer. We tweaked little variables of it, but that offer was basically my offer for the next 5 years. From that, we ended up building a sales team of over 60 full-time salespeople. We had people coming in and out of Boise, like, every single month coming in for events and live coaching and stuff like that, all based off this one little offer. I think $15-20 million in sales came off that one little offer that we'd created. So for you guys, again, like one little offer. And usually, I don't know if it's always the pattern for me, but usually the greatest offers come at a time where I'm about to lose everything, right? It's like I gotta come up with something, and that's when I start getting ideas for really good offers, okay? So that was the second offer we'd made that changed everything for me. The third one was after we'd built up the call center, we had 60 full-time salespeople, it was growing, we had 20 full-time coaches, we were doing events, and it was like I had built So we set this up, huge overhead, which that's an event for another day. If you cannot have overhead, the less overhead the better, but we had huge overhead. And I remember this was back, man, probably 14, 15 years ago. Everybody in our industry was all using the same merchant provider. And there were some people who were using that merchant provider who were doing some really shady stuff. And so they got pushed back by Visa and MasterCard. And so overnight they shut down like, I don't know, 3,000 or 4,000 people's merchant accounts just overnight, just turned them off. Anyone here remember that? Some of the old OGs in the room will remember this whole thing. Anyway, so I had 14 merchant accounts, and one day all of them disappeared. They got shut down. And when you have, you know, 60 salespeople, 20 co— 100 full-time employees, and you're processing a lot of money to keep everything overnight, it all just froze, and we lost All of our merchant accounts, the ability to process money disappeared. So one note for all of you guys, uh, 1 is the scariest number in business. Always make sure you have backups. Uh, we had no backups. Um, and then because of that, everyone got merchant accounts shut down. Everyone was trying to get merchant accounts. It was really, really difficult. It was hard. It was just, it was a different day back then, but it was really hard to get merchant accounts. Um, and so much so that I had to start laying people off. I was literally hiring or like firing 20, 30 people a day. Like, oh, all you guys, you have to leave. I can't afford you. I have to leave. And like, it was painful. I started firing friends. I was firing family members. I was firing all sorts of people just to keep our business afloat. And I remember we went from this huge 20,000 square foot building to the point where we'd fired everybody, we had no room for it, I couldn't pay the lease on it anymore, and I was just like, I'm in trouble. And I remember I told the landlord, like, I can't keep our lease. He's like, okay, well you need to leave and we're probably gonna sue you. And I'm like, cool. Well, I got nothing left, so come and sue me, like I don't even care. So we were packing up our office and getting everything out, and I remember we were throwing everything away, just trying to downsize, and we ended up eventually moving into this little 2,000 square foot building with the 5 or 6 of us that was left. But I remember the last night I was in this building. This was like, you know you have a dream, like this was my dream. We'd built this up, we had, there was an event center, people were coming to events in there, like it was like, I was like, my identity was so tied to this building, this location, it was like the most beautiful thing in the world. I remember the last night we were there, everything was gone, all the desks were gone, everything was done, and I remember I was trying to think like, how am I gonna pay for the building, for the 2,000 square foot building? I have no money even to pay for that. I was like, I need to create, I need to create an offer, I gotta create something so that we can be in this building. And so I sent a couple emails out to my list at the time, I hadn't done a webinar, and I remember, it's crazy, I was sitting in this little room, it was my old office, there was no desk left, I remember I had my shoes off, so I was in my socks, I was sitting on the floor 'cause there was no desk, and I promoted this webinar, and actually, that's not true, it was the teleseminar. Me and Myron talked about this last night. Pre-webinars, we did everything on the phone. There was these things called teleseminars. And so I'm sitting on the floor with my laptop, pick up the phone, a whole bunch of people had registered for this call, and I started talking, and I was telling them a story, and I made them an offer. And I was like, in my head, I was like, if nobody buys this, I'm in big trouble, I don't know what to do. And so I gotta make this offer as good as possible, and I remember putting together this offer for $1,000-something, I put together an offer, made a really good offer stack, and did the webinar, or did the teleseminar, made the offer, and at the end of that offer, I remember, Like I made, I pushed the sales and then I was done, hung up the phone and then I remember like putting my laptop, walking out the door, shutting the door, door's locked behind me and I was just like, that was an era of my life, it's over. I remember walking home, getting in my car, driving home and just kind of like, I don't know, just that feeling of just like kind of sadness and depression and like, man, like I let down all these people, all this staff, all these employees, all these people I cared about, just kind of let them down. And being upset and frustrated and all those things and scared. Getting home, walking in, see my wife, see my beautiful kids, you know, putting them to bed at night, and then getting my laptop just to check to see if I made any sales, and opening it up, and still, like, just one of those things, like, look at my account, and we sold over 30 people the $1,000 offer, $30,000 in the account. I was like, oh my gosh. And next day sales kept coming in. We sent out a replay of the audio, and over the next week period of time, we did over 6 figures in sales on this offer. Which gave me the ability to pay for the new office, gave me the ability to pay for the employees we had to make sure we could fulfill on everything. It wasn't an offer that we blew up and scaled, but it was an offer that saved me at a time that I needed it. Dan Kennedy, who's my original mentor, he's the guy that I learned all this stuff from initially, he used to have a saying he would say. He's like, if you need money, he's like, you gotta create an offer and then you send the bill to the herd. So he's like, if I wanna buy a brand new house, what do you do? So you create an offer and you send the bill to the herd. The herd will pay for your house. You've probably heard the story about John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Back in the day when they were top of the game, they were sitting there one day and they're like, we need to, like, I want a swimming pool. I think it was John, I think it was John Lennon said, well then we should just write ourselves a swimming pool. And they sat down and they wrote the words to the song Love Love Me Do, sold that, boom, made enough money to pay for the swimming pool. So they wrote themselves a swimming pool. Like, that's what you guys have the ability to do when you start creating offers. Right, you write yourself a swimming pool. Like, what do you want? You want a new house? You want a new car? You want a new couch? You need money to save yourself? You need like whatever? Like, you just, you write, you create an offer, and you send the bill out to your people. And people come in. When Dan Kennedy, when Dan Kennedy got divorced the second or third time or something, he told me, he's like, I got divorced, and he's like, the next, or he's like, I was going through a divorce, and he's like, the next day, one of my longtime members sent me a fax, 'cause you only communicate with Dan Kennedy through fax machine, even to this day, which is weird, but whatever. But he's like, uh, he's like, so-and-so faxed me and he asked me, he's like, when are you going to be sending out the offer? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, he's like, well, you're going through a divorce, uh, divorce. I'm assuming you're gonna make an irresistible offer to us to be able to pay for it. And, uh, the audience was like, train. Like, he's like, you are correct. And they create an offer, send it out and paid for the door. Like, um, but that's like the thing you guys will start, like if you master this skill. Yes. Uh, if you master the skill that we're talking about over the next couple of days, It'll give you guys the ability to do that. It'll change your life forever. Okay, so there's 3 times. I think I have 2 more I was gonna share, and then I got some cool teaching points I wanna share with you. Oh yeah, the next one was, so after we shut the office down, everything went away, we made that offer, which gave us breathing room. Then over the next 3 or 4 years, I was creating all sorts of offers. I put out offers every week, every 2 weeks, we put out another offer, another offer, and I was trying this and trying that, trying to figure out what did the audience respond to, what did they want, what did they not want, and I kept putting offer after offer. And while we were doing that, every time we would create an offer, we would put it into like what I call a sales funnel. Some of you guys are familiar with what that is, but we create sales funnels. And so we create a sales funnel, launch that offer. It would work or it didn't work. Create another one, work or didn't work. And during this window of time, we put out over 100 different funnels, 100 different offers. And what I found is like as I kept creating these different offers and putting them into a funnel, as we were building a funnel and another funnel, another funnel, my team was like, we are so tired of building these funnels for you, Russell. It's taking so much time. And one of my buddies, he's my business partner now, One of the guys that worked for me at the time, his name's Todd Dickerson, and Todd was like, I could build software that just made this really, really easy. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, we could build software and then instead of me custom building a funnel for you every single time, we could just make it really simple where even you could do it, Russell. And in fact, it was the joke while they were building ClickFunnels, like, if we can build something so simple that Russell can use it, then anybody can. I was like, what does that mean? Like, that's not very nice. I'm definitely the non-technical co-founder. Like, I had no tech skills. And so that was the goal, make it so simple Russ could do it. So Todd built what became ClickFunnels, right? And so when ClickFunnels was done, I was like, this is gonna be the greatest thing in the world. We're gonna change everyone's life. We're gonna sell this thing like crazy. And so we created the very first ClickFunnels offer. How many of you guys have ever created an offer and you launched it and it didn't work? And you're like, oh, I suck at this, right? So if it makes you feel any better, I've been doing this for a decade and a half at this period. We created ClickFunnels. Arguably, I think, the greatest offer of all time. I created an offer and we launched it to our list and it was crickets. Hardly anybody bought it. I was like, oh, this is not good. We spent so much time and energy and effort and money, like everything we had to make to build this thing. We launched it, it didn't work. I was like, okay, the offer was wrong, let me redo it. So we rechanged the offer, we tried it again, we launched a second time, nothing. Like, oh crap. Came back, refigured out the offer, launched it again. Refit the offer, launch again. 6 times. 6 times I had to rebuild the ClickFunnels offer. The 6th time, it was literally the point where I was about to give up. We were like, we spent all of our life savings, all of our work, all of our effort building this thing we thought was gonna change the world, and nobody was buying it. Like, what's wrong? Why is it not working? And one of my friends called me, he's like, hey Russell, I need you to speak at an event. And the event had probably this many, about 300 people, so half the room, the size of the event. He said, I need you to come speak at this event, and I want you to sell ClickFunnels. I was like, I got bad news for you. Nobody's buying ClickFunnels. He's like, I want you to come in, I want you to sell it for, I can make a $1,000 package and sell it at the event, we'll split the money 50/50. I was like, you don't understand, right now ClickFunnels is free, it's a free 14-day trial, and nobody's buying this thing. I've tried everything, I've tried 5 different ways to sell this thing, nobody's buying it. He's like, well, I have your face on the sales letter, you have to come and sell ClickFunnels to my audience. And I was like, you didn't ask me and you put my face on the sales letter? He's like, people are buying tickets based on the fact you're gonna be there. I'm like, ugh. So the event's happening, and I remember he was streaming it, it was right at the very beginning, people weren't streaming events back then, but for some reason he was streaming this, so I was in my office, and I was watching the event happen, I watched day number 1, I was speaking day number 3, so I'm watching the event happen, I'm flying out day number 2, I'm stressed out like, how am I gonna create an offer to sell ClickFunnels for $1,000? Like, okay, I was like, how am I gonna do this? And so I started putting together a webinar presentation, how am I gonna position this, and I was like, I need to create a really good offer, so I was like, okay, We're creating an offer, we're gonna give them ClickFunnels, we're gonna give them ClickFunnels for a year, and then like, what else can I put in there? And like, oh, we could put in like a course that teaches them how to use funnels. A lot of people don't know what funnels are. And what if we put in this? I started creating an offer. I put together the offer, the next day I fly to San Diego where this event's at, I show up in a room with this many people, and I'm like, in my head, I'm like, nobody's buying ClickFunnels, I gotta convince these people. And so I put together this presentation, started going through the slides, and at the end of an hour we transition to the offer, Putting together the offer, went through, boom, boom, boom, boom, started doing the offer stack, showed people what the offer was, and when it was done, it was crazy. I'd seen people have table rushes in the past. You've seen table rush before? People start jumping over and like, I'd seen it before, but I'd never had it happen before. So I make this offer, I go out there, put my tone, for $1,000 you get ClickFunnels for a year, plus you get this, plus you get, I made this offer, and people started like jumping over the seats. People were knocking each other over, people were throwing credit cards, people were like, and I'm watching this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this feels great, this is amazing. And I'm not even half, I'm not even finished with my pitch, people running, I'm like, and so I, at first it caught me so off guard, I'm like, whoa, I was like, look at this, you guys, these guys get it. And everyone looked over to everyone else that's like sprinting through and then they're all like freaking out and they're jumping over and it was crazy, I couldn't even finish my pitch 'cause the offer was so good and people were going crazy. We ended up selling like 50, 60% of the room bought the thing at that moment. It was crazy. We get done and the promoter hands me this big stack of order forms And I'm like, this is like, this is crazy. Like, everyone's order form is worth $1,000, right? Which is blowing my mind. And that night I went to dinner with Todd Dickerson and his wife, who's my business partner, his wife. And then Dylan Jones, who's our other business partner, we're sitting at dinner, we're just laughing, having a good time. And I was like, do you guys realize what just happened? They're like, yeah, that was amazing. I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. I was like, I have never had that happen before. That is the greatest offer I've ever put together and see people react like that. I was like, we're gonna be rich. And they're like, ah, you don't understand, not like million-dollar rich or $10 million rich, like we're gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars with this. Like, you serious? I'm like, this is the greatest offer I've ever had. Okay, within, so that was 9 years ago, that was that event. This year I will cross a billion dollars in sales from that one offer. Thank you. Isn't that crazy? I didn't think that was possible. That's the power of a really good offer, okay? I got one more story and then I got some teaching points. I have no idea how long I gotta go for, so someone will just pull me off stage when we're done, is that cool? 'Cause anyway, so last one is about 2 years ago I had a vision for something really weird, and I was like, I want to build a library/museum in Boise, Idaho, I wanna have big old statues in it of Atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulder. I wanna buy the most rare, expensive books on the planet. And people are like, why? I'm like, I have no idea. It just seems like the right thing to do at this time in my life. And so I started pursuing this vision, right? And so like I start buying these old rare books. And so I was telling the group yesterday, in the last 2 years I've bought over 15,000 first edition books in all my favorite genres, personal development, religion, business, marketing. I spent about $12 million in just books, like old, old, old books and manuscripts. And it's the coolest, weirdest, nerdiest thing in the world. And I think my staff thought I was insane because every day I'd be on eBay and I'd buy 40, 50, 60 books, and then eBay would deliver 40, 50, 60 books. In fact, during about a 12-month period of time, everybody at the post office knew who I was in Boise. It was ridiculous. Because I was getting so many packages coming every single day. Because you're buying one book at a time, 50 books, 15,000 packages delivered to my office in a year. So that's, you can do the math on how many a day. People thought I was crazy. My entire staff's like, should we lock him up? Do we need to delete the app from his phone? Like, get rid of eBay? Like, something is wrong with Russell. I'm like, no, no, I promise, I see a vision, it's gonna be amazing, I don't know how to explain it yet, but there's something big happening. So I was working towards that vision, working towards it. And then, man, 2 months ago, I was like, this is getting really expensive, like, I wonder if I can somehow send the bill to my herd. How can I get other people to help me finance this thing, 'cause this is a lot of money in books, and I gotta build a building, it's a $20 million building. Between the building and the statues and the event center, all the kind of stuff we're trying to build. And I go to the bank, and I was like, hey, bank, will you give me $20 million to build this building? And they're like, why? I'm like, because I'm buying these old books, it's going to be really cool, people will come to Boise to see the old books, and then it'll be awesome. And the bank's like, what? They're like, you want to build a building with statues in it? I'm like, yeah, there's like, if somebody hasn't seen, like, there's 3 statues, one of Atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, one with Atlas standing and shrugging, and one with him walking away. It's a 9-foot statue holding a 6-foot globe. And they're like, you don't understand, if we give you the money for this building and you default on loan, there's no other human on this planet who will give us money to buy a building with 3 statues in it and a stadium in Boise, Idaho. This is the weirdest thing ever. And so I went to like 20 different banks and all of them are like, we're not giving you any money for that. We're not giving you any money. I'm like, you don't understand that the vision is huge. We're gonna make so much, we're gonna change the world with it. They're like, you're an idiot. I'm like, I swear, I've got a good track record. I can't explain it well, but this is gonna change the world. No banks gave me any money. So 2 months ago, I'm in Mexico with my mastermind group, and I'm about to, the week before we go, we had the idea, like, what if we create an offer where the seats that are actually in the event center, what if we sold the rights to those seats? Where someone could pay $1 million and they would have access and they could come whenever they want and they have a seat. So anytime we do events and seminars, they own that seat, it would be their seat. Like, how much would we charge? Like, let's charge $1 million for that offer. It's like, no one's gonna pay $1 million to rent a seat in your library, Russ. Like, no, no, I think they will. It's gonna be amazing. And then we gotta make this offer irresistible. How do we make it where it's like literally free? They spend a million dollars for the seat, but then they can run an event at the event center, which they'll make at least a million dollars from that. Plus like what if we give them virtual tickets? We started creating this offer, like virtual tickets where they could like sell those tickets to their audience, they make money from that. And what if we did this and we sat down and we started brainstorming, how do we make an irresistible offer? So we created this offer, and I was like, this is really, really good. So before we left Mexico, I sat down and I recorded a video of me telling the story. Okay, I'm gonna get in this hook story offer, but I told a story. This is the story, like, why I'm creating this, what it is, and why you can be part of it. And we made this offer. So I go to Mexico, we've got about a little less than this people in the room. I'm nervous, like, I still get nervous every time I have a new offer. Like, what if everyone makes fun of me? What if they reject me? What if they think I'm a hoarder because I have so many books? And like, all the different things, right? Some of my staff said the only difference between hoarding and collecting is the size of the space that you're putting it in. I was like, I need to get this library before people start putting me on the show. Anyway, so I'm in Mexico and I almost chicken out. I'm like, ah, do I do this? They're all gonna make fun of me. What if it doesn't work? All this stuff that I'm sure you guys feel every time you put an offer out there. I'm freaking out. Planning, like 10 minutes before I'm going on stage, I decided I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna show them the video, but I'm not gonna make the offer. I'm just gonna do it. I'm sitting backstage, or back behind the audience, and then Eileen Wilder walks up. And you guys are gonna hang out with Eileen, I think today or tomorrow. Coolest people in the world, she comes up to me, she's like, hey, you gonna make the offer? I was like, ah, no, like, I'm gonna show them the video, I'm not gonna make the offer, like, anyway, she's like, you have to make the offer, these people want it, Russell, like, you're gonna change their life again, you have to make the offer, and I was like, but like, what if, what if they laugh at me, what if they make fun of me, I'm gonna freak out, she's like, you have to make the offer, and like, he's standing, and she's like this little skinny nice person, but she's like yelling at me, you have to make the offer, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make the offer, and she sat down with me, like, how to make this better, and she's tweaking it, and she's like shifting things with me, I'm like, oh, And so then I'm texting my team, I'm like, we're making the offer, like what are you talking about, we haven't planned this yet. I'm like, I know, like create an order form, like right now, they're like, you're on stage in like 30 seconds. I'm like, oh, I'll make an order form, and make it, I can't remember, I gave them a link, like make this link right here, and make an order form there, 'cause we're doing this thing. And so they're backstage, behind the scenes, like trying to set up an order form, the internet access in Mexico's horrible, so they're like trying to connect, they're trying to get things out, printing out an order form, I'm on stage, I show this video, I come off, I'm making the stack, I'm making this offer on the thing, And in my head, I'm like, nobody, like no sane human being on this planet is going to pay $1 million to get a seat at my library. But I have to put this out there because Eileen just yelled at me and I trust her and she's amazing. But what I was thinking, so I put the $1 million offer out. And guess who's the first person that bought? Myron Golden. He's the first person. It's not always my room. I talk about this, he does this every single day. He's the very first person to sign up, and then somebody else signs up, and somebody else signs up. By the time we leave Mexico, over $14 million raised towards my $20 million building. Isn't that crazy? All from making offers. An offer will change your life, you guys, in a lot of different ways. And it's gonna change at different points. When I was, you know, 22-year-old Russell, newlywed, trying to get a couch for my wife, an offer changed my life, right? When I'm 43-year-old Russell who's trying to change the world with this vision for this insane thing, an offer made it possible. Like, learning how to create and structure offers will change your life.