Perseverance and Innovation Strategies for Business Growth with Cody Sperber

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What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I found a really cool interview that I wanna share with you. It's an interview I did, man, probably 6 or 7 months ago. I was out at Tony Robbins Mastermind Group and I met up with someone who had become, I'd seen him for years, his name's Cody Sperber. He's in the real estate market and he's kind of someone I've been watching remotely for a long time. And we had a chance to both meet at that event and kinda hit it off and really cool guy, really enjoyed hang out with him, and then while we were there, he was like, hey, do you wanna do a podcast in my hotel room? And I was like, sure, man. So we went up there and he had lights and microphones and everything set up and we did a really cool interview talking about this business and about the transition from personal growth to actually serving people and helping them, and a whole bunch of other really cool things along the way. And I thought there was a lot of value and a lot of really interesting, unique questions he asked me, and I think there's some value for all you guys in it as well. So that's why we brought you guys this really cool interview with Cody Sperber, and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you enjoy this interview and you get a ton of value from it. If you do, please let me know. It's always fun to hear from you guys, either in the form of you guys sending reviews to the podcast, or just taking a screenshot of the podcast as you're listening right now and then post it on Instagram or Facebook, whatever, and tag me and let me know what your biggest takeaway or aha was from the episode. So, hope you enjoy it. With that said, let's check out this cool interview with me and Cody Sperber. 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 gonna show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.

Are you ready to take action to attain the lifestyle of your dreams?

It's a great way to make a lot of money fast. The Clever Investor Show.

What is going on, Clever Investors? Welcome to the Clever Investor Show. It's Cody Sperber, your lucky host, the OG Clever Investor, and today we have somebody I'm super excited to I don't even need to introduce you to, but I'm super excited to bring to the Clever Investor Show one of my favorite marketers on planet Earth, somebody who's made my life so frickin' easy with his amazing software called ClickFunnels. This is one of the best marketers on planet Earth, somebody who really doesn't need an introduction. We have the amazing Russell Brunson on the show. Dude, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, excited to be here, man.

I'm lucky because I caught you at the right time. You know, I pulled you off of the beach with your family and said, we're here at this mastermind. Uh, which you've been involved in with Tony and Dean forever.

So you're number one.

Yeah. You guys are homies.

Yeah. Like you're number one. I was actually partner in the project. And so, um, I don't know if you knew this, I bought mastermind.com.

Dean told me.

Yeah. I gave it to them and then we were partner. And after year 2, I was just, so much stuff's happened with ClickFunnels and they were doing their thing and I was like, you guys just take it, dude.

I need a friend like you who just buys like a million dollar domain and just been like, oh, by the way, bought this for you guys.

Mastermind.

Watch in exchange.

Mastermind.com.

Ooh, show off the Richard Mille.

So this is the watch Dean and Tony gave me back in exchange.

That's, that's, that's, that's fire right there. Look, look, how do we earn a watch like that, Russell? How many, how many potato guns do we got to sell in order to get us—

it's a lot of potato guns.

It's a lot of potato guns. Which is kind of when I first heard about you, okay, many, many years ago, uh, you were like doing like really interesting like direct response around potato guns.

Yeah, when I was in college, that was the first product I ever created. Which, you know, the first product never makes a ton of money, but it's the story. So then I figured out how to make money with Potato Gun and then, um, I sold that for a while and then it stopped working. Then I started, um, adding Potato Gun, um, kits as an upsell. I found a guy in Northern Idaho that was making kits. So someone would buy my DVD and then they upsell them the kit. And that was like the first time that we'd ever done a funnel, which, you know, back then we didn't call 'em funnel, but like that was the big aha, which then let, um, you know, eventually 10 years later led to ClickFunnels and, you know, which is Tooken, tooken, taken, taken the industry by storm.

I mean, like literally you changed the game for, for taking a person who back, I can't even tell you how much on programming, graphic design, all of the pieces. Like nobody really understands until you're working with a Russian programmer, a Ukrainian programmer, people over in the Philippines, like, and trying to pull all these team members together to build a simple funnel. You made it to where like you could literally click, you have a funnel, you can do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is amazing. Cause you empowered a lot of people who had a great idea, had a, their own potato gun idea, but they had no idea how to bring it to market and would never have been able to pull all those pieces together. So how did you even, were you just building funnels and you're like, screw this, this is a pain in my ass, I'm gonna build something that's easy?

Honestly, I think everyone knew that was, that needed to be built. Like I had tried to build it twice prior, so I was like, I want this, I need it. Other people tried it and just everyone kept trying and no one ever executed on it correctly. And then after the second time I tried it, I ended up firing all my programmers, kind of giving up on it. And then, um, ended up meeting a guy whose name's Todd Dickerson and he came and started building funnels for me for a while. But he's, um, one of the smartest guys ever. And he was like, we should build software that makes this easy. And I was like, dude, I've tried it. Everyone's tried it. It's not possible. It's not gonna be a thing. And, um, Todd's like literally the smartest person I met my whole life. So he went home and, um, he actually flew, he lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He flew to Boise one week and we spent a time on a whiteboard mapping out like what, He's like, what would be your dream if we could do anything? So I like mapped out, I want to do this and this, and we figured out the whole thing. And he went home and said he was gonna work on it. And you know, again, I was like, I don't think it's gonna be possible. And then 4 or 5 months later he came back. He said, okay, this is the beta version of ClickFunnels. I want you to, or of this, we actually, we'd bought the domain name that week. So this is the beta version of ClickFunnels. What do you think? And I started looking at it. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, did you, did it? Like, this is, this is the real thing.

This has potential.

And then, um, we had another partner at the time named Dylan Jones who he had built this really amazing website editor and and we had Todd's backend, it was ClickFunnels' web, and I was like, so we messaged Dylan and we ended up giving him equity in the company. He gave us his website editor, which is like the greatest website editor ever. Then they spent the next 2 or 3 months plugging those 2 things together and then it became ClickFunnels and we launched it. And it's been almost 10 years, it's been 9, about 9 years since we launched it. And it's just been, it's been crazy. It's been a, it's been the ride of a lifetime.

So is the, is the game now for you, cuz like you've taken this insane journey where you, you, you're the author of tons and tons of books. DotCom Secrets was one of the biggest marketing direct response books ever. You've done the being an author, you've done building this massive game-changing innovative software company. We were talking yesterday and you were telling me about your legacy and the library and everything that you're trying to do. Like, when you look back on this insane journey, was it just a series of moments where you're like, I have this problem, And I know these two guys, this guy does some technical stuff and this guy has a website editor and I'm sandwiching them together. Like, how are you, like when you look back, like what are those pivotal moments along the way? Was it just a bunch of relationships?

Yeah, it's, it's weird cuz like I've been in this game now 20-something years, so it's like 20 years ago for some reason I got excited about marketing, you know, which is, it's always weird. Like why do we get desires? Like why did you care about investing and how, like who knows? But somehow we get these desires in our mind and then we start pursuing these things not knowing where they're going to lead to. So for me, it was just like initially I want to make money and then I got excited by the marketing behind it and then the whole funnel thing started happening that like I would just geek out for, for weeks at a time, like learning those things and it was just crazy. And then, but eventually like as you're acquiring the knowledge information, like gets to the point where it's like you have the ability now to help other people, right? Same thing I'm sure with you, you probably sold who knows how many houses, flipping houses, like you do a bunch of houses, eventually get so good at you're like, this has been really good for me, but there's, um, now I can actually use what I've learned to help other people. And it's this transition that most people, not most people, but that people need to go through. It's where the first phase is like growth, like personal growth and development, right? Until you become something or you learn something or like you figure something out. And then transition is shifting from growth to contribution. And that's when you become an entrepreneur. When it's not just about you growing, making money, learning, whatever it is, it's that transition to like Boom, now I'm contributing to other people, you know? And I looked at everyone in the Mastermind this week, like Jim Quick, right? Like he was memory guy and learning and speed learning. And for a long time it was him doing it for himself. He was personally growing. And then somewhere he made that transition from growth to like contribution. How do I help other people with this now? And that's when he becomes an entrepreneur. And so for me, like it's been fun in our journey is with ClickFunnels is like that's where we're finding people. We're finding people who have typically, they've gone through this growth phase of their life and they're loving it. And then it's like you can make money, you can help other people make money and like serve other people with the thing that you've learned. In fact, I spoke at an event 2 days ago before I got here and the question someone asked is like, I can't figure out who my dream customer is or who am I supposed to be serving? Or I was like, you don't understand, like the person you're supposed to be serving is you 5 years ago. Like where were you 5 years ago? What were you struggling with? Like that's the person you've been called to serve. Like go and help them with the thing that you're a master at now. And all these people are like, oh, I had this big aha, but like that's what it is, right? It's growth to contribution. And so, what's been so fun for me over the last decade of doing this now is just like we're finding the people who are in that transition point of like they've been growing and now they're like trying to serve other people and it's like the most fun people to hang out with.

So, when you're throwing your big events and now it's so massive, everybody's in these like 2 Comma Clubs and massive, you know, they now scaled their businesses. Who are some of the more interesting characters that you've had come on your stage or use your your software that now you kind of look at them and you're like, wow, like that, that, that person really is interesting to me.

It's interesting cuz I think what's my favorite thing about like the movement that we've created with ClickFunnels is just that like prior to this, like I used to go to marketing events and most people in marketing events were people who were doing marketing, right? It was like everyone had the same business for the most part. Where now it's like last year with Tyson Durfee who spoke at Funnel Hacking Live and Tyson Durfee is a world champion calf roper. And he was on the road traveling, doing calf roping and away from his family 'cause he's in these trailers and they're on the road like half the year going from rodeo to rodeo. And at nights he would read Expert Secrets and then he's like, oh, I can help other young rodeo people. So while he was on the road, he starts filming videos of him showing young athletes how to do calf roping and stuff like that. And he built this whole like online course teaching calf roping while he was calf roping. And it led to the point where now he's able to retire from, from being on the road all the time because now he's got this whole following of young calf ropers who he— so he leveraged like the thing he was doing anyway. And like, so he spoke last year and it was just so cool to see this guy who's like, I was a calf rope, right? I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm not a business owner, I'm not anything, but I realized that like I had unique abilities I could share with other people. Like, like that's the fascinating thing to me. Um, we had someone who was at last— or the event 2 years ago, her sis— her sister-in-law was speaking, and so she had come to support her sister-in-law. She's like, I've never and she was an actress. She was in High School Musical Part 2 or something. I don't even know. She's in one of those movies. And she's sitting here watching her sister speak on stage and she's attending the whole event. And halfway through she has the idea of like, I know something. She's like, I'm really good at understanding people's charisma types and how they work and what they're good at and what they're not good at. And as a speaker, she's like, I have this skillset that I didn't even realize that other people would find useful. And so from that, she created this whole movement and this whole business teaching people like us, like, 'cause like the way you speak is way different than how I speak. And a lot of people will see you or see me like, oh, I have to learn how to have charisma like Russell does or like Cody or whoever, you know? Like they try to be like us as opposed to like understanding there's different types and like, and identifying like what's your type and like, and owning like who you are. And then, hey, we should build a whole business on the backside of that. And it's just, anyway, there's a million, like literally probably close to a million different stories I could tell, but it's just people from all walks of life who come in with like some weird thing that they're good at. And then learning like how they can turn that into something they can change the world with.

Um, when you, when you were going through the scaling of ClickFunnels, how, uh, how bumpy was that ride? You know, cuz I, I know just from my personal experience, like people look at it and they go, Russell was on this rocket ship and he just murdered it. And they don't realize like the amount of like, um, employees that left and stole part of your team or times you got sued or times you were right there on the edge. Like I, there was one point Russell where I had scaled a little too fast, and I had a little over a $550,000 Amex bill due in one day, and payroll was hitting that next day, and I had like maybe $250,000 in cash sitting in a bank account, and I had like maybe $750,000 worth of bills due in 24 hours. And I'm thinking, and I'm, I'm literally in my 9,000-square-foot house on the water in this premium gated community, in my theater room, in my boxers at 3 AM crying, just going, what the fuck? How did I get myself here? Like, this business, I'm gonna have to go. And I, at the time, I had about maybe like 80 team members at this, this company. And I remember just thinking, oh my God, I can't let these people go. I'm responsible for these people. Like, how do I break this news? Um, do you ever have any moments like that where you're back just against the wall and you're like, Yeah, all right, here we go.

First of all, I'm— I don't know how you solved it because you sucked me in that story. What was the end of it?

Yeah, yeah, that's that. We're gonna take that story and put it at the beginning of this podcast and leave that open loop for you guys. And then, uh, you know, you just— I get creative. You know what I did? I did exactly what you teach people to do. I sat there and I threw my little pity party, and then I manned up, and I'm like, you know what, I know how to sell, I know how to market, people. I have— I saw people's problems in the real estate investing space. I'm going to launch a product that goes with a live event, and I'm going to sell my way out of this thing real aggressively. You cut deals. I start talking to people and saying, listen— and I just had to be authentic with my team and say, this is the situation we're in. I called Amex and I said, I'm gonna not make my payment. What are my options? Right? And I ended up paying off the Amex, but You know, I learned what their grace period was, 'cause like with Amex you pay, you know, or they shut your card off and all that. But I was running my ads through the card, like everything would've started melting down. And so within 24 hours I had a new offer up and out the door. We sold hard, we brought in a couple hundred thousand dollars because of that. And I tell everybody, like when I'm training my real estate people, I always ask them whether it's real estate or I'm teaching people how to scale a business or build a personal brand or, Even in my supplement companies, I'm like, dude, our real business is email marketing. Like, I love email marketing. That's like, really, once you have an email list and you have a customer base and they love you, you have a relationship with them, you can sell them, you can sell them stuff if they believe in you and it's a good product. And so I just sold my way out of it. It took a while. I did lose a couple good people that— and I had to trim the fat. It forced me to make a lot of difficult decisions that I was scared to do because I didn't want to hurt people's feelings or whatever.

Um, were you here to stand and tell the story?

I did. And, and it, it, those moments happen a lot more than people think when you're an entrepreneur and you're, you're gunning and you're playing the game. So like, what are some of yours that you kind of like, maybe have you been sued and like, it been like the injustice in this is so insane.

Last time I got sued.

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It's great. We have to— at this point, we have full-time legal counsel because we're getting lawsuits all the time, not just from us, but from, you know, 100,000 active members. Like, we got Taylor Swift sued us a couple of months ago because one of our members set up a page and had all our Taylor Swift songs and music. And so I get the legal, I get the lawsuit. So yeah, lawsuits now we just like laugh, like, oh, they're always coming. But there were a lot of hard things. I think the one that was the hardest for me, that was like the biggest growth for me was about a year into ClickFunnels. And I remember when, when we, when Todd first built it, he's like, the way I built it, he's like, it'll be stable up to about 10,000 members and we have to like rethink the technology after we pass 10,000 members. I think initially, like, if we got 10,000 members, can you imagine how cool that would be? Like, we'll like, we'll deal with that in the future. Like, we'll never, like, who knows? And within a year we were 10,000 members and it was just like, and all of a sudden like they started glitching and like it would go down for an hour and they'd be back up and be out for 15 minutes. And it was just like this weird like thing and I didn't know what to do. And I was like, I don't, I have no technical ability. So I'm like, what's happening? And Todd's always positive. Like, oh, we're doing this, we're trying this, we're updating servers. And it's like, it was always trying to happen, but it just kept getting happening more and more often. You know, with that, there's people in the community getting upset. You're down for 30 minutes and they're running ads to a page. I mean, understandably, they're pissed at me and they were angry. And so we're trying to figure these things out. And about the time I'm supposed to go speak at an event in the UK, and the promoter invited my family with me. So like we jump on a plane and my whole family's on the plane. We take off and we're, you know, however many hours it takes to get to the UK, 8, 10, 12 hours, whatever it is in the air. And then we land and we get there and, um, we have to go get SIM cards. We can reconnect to our phone. You know, we're driving the hotel. I get SIM card in my thing. I click it. As soon as it does, My phone starts exploding like messages, text messages everywhere. And from people like death threats, people want to kill me, like all. And I have no idea what's happening. And I'm just seeing this stuff coming through and I'm looking, trying to find Todd's message and he's got a whole bunch of messages to me. So I'm listening and so I finally call him on the phone. He's like, dude, what's happening? He's like, we've been down for 3 or 4 hours. He's like, and I remember, all I remember is this phrase he said, he's like, if we're able to get back up, then da da da. And I just heard the word if and I was like, I was like, oh crap. I don't even know what that means or what. And I'm supposed to be speaking the next day to all these people, like talking about ClickFunnels is the greatest thing in the world, right? So I'm sitting there and we get the hotel room and my kids and everything bouncing off the walls 'cause they just got to the UK and London or whatever. And I had put them in the separate room. Like, go into the room, I gotta figure this out. And so we're trying to figure things out and they didn't know, Todd didn't know, no one knew. Like they're trying all these things. We had no idea if or when we'd be back up again. And it was like that moment where I was like, what do I do? Like, I just wanted to disappear or hide or I don't know. And so it's one of those weird things where I was like, this is like my first chance to like be a leader. And I don't even know what that feels like. What do I do? Or what's right or wrong? Or so I went in our Facebook group at the time, probably had 10,000 members, which are all of our active members. And I went live and I was like, hey everyone, we're down. I can't even email you to tell you we're down 'cause all our emails are on ClickBank. I can't even tell you like, we're down and it's not okay. And I pissed at myself and pissed at our team. Like, this isn't okay. This is unacceptable. Like, and I just owned it and I told them and I was like, my stuff's down, your stuff's down. Like, I know all you guys are spending money. Like, I don't have an answer for you, but this is what we're doing and we're trying and I'm gonna like, you know, do it. We're doing our best and I'll get back to you. And, and so I went live and it was crazy 'cause I was expecting everybody to be sending in the Facebook group to be messaging what I was getting on my text message. 'Cause they weren't, they weren't nice. And it was the opposite. Everyone came back like, thank you for being transparent. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you. Thank you. And like, ended up taking us 8 hours to get everything back online. And there's a longer story behind that, but it was actually, it forced us to switch. In that 8 hours, I switched to a different database structure, which we're still running on today, which gave us the ability to grow and be stable for forever. But anyway, I remember the next day it was like damage control. Like, okay, how bad? Like, did we lose half our members? Everyone like leaving us? And the percentage of cancellations over that little window of time didn't shift at all. It was just, it was like, because I was vulnerable and like owned it and like didn't try to talk out of my way out, I'm like, no, we were stupid. Like, this is not okay.

So even though you didn't know what being a leader looked like, but you knew that you had to be one. Yeah. And actually went and owned it and you realized that's being a leader.

Yeah.

You know, you did exactly what anybody should have done in that situation is point the finger at themselves and say, Hey, we own this, it's messed up, and we're going to work around the clock to fix it. That's, that's a great story. I, I, I love hearing when entrepreneurs have to be kind of, you know, have that bounce-back spirit and have their back against the wall, that underdog energy, because there always is a lesson and a blessing in every one of those moments. I call them, you know, they're pivotal moments where you can recalibrate. And now you just said you're running on a better architectural system And you were able to scale. How many members do you have right now?

Uh, over 100,000. We used to—

how much is ClickFunnels worth? Like, how does that work? Like, does somebody roll in some, some big private equity company and they're like, all right, Russell, we wanna buy your company and you're just like, make up a number? Or is there a formula?

It's funny cuz people always like, oh, well SaaS companies trade it and they always have a number. But then when like, we looked to try and sell 3 or 4 years ago and it's not as cut and dry of like, oh, this is your revenue, therefore this, you know, like I wish it was that easy. Um, I don't know exactly it would be worth.

Um, you got it.

You got a number though.

Um, you got a number.

You got—

I think somebody rolled in and gave you a couple hundred million bucks.

Uh, we had an offer, um, we had an offer 2 years ago for close to half a billion and we turned it down. Um, I think we're worth more than that. And so I think— I don't think we're worth a billion dollars yet, but that's where I'm trying to get it to before I'd be willing.

So they said $1 billion, I'd probably—

I'd probably drop Mike and walk out at that point. Who knows?

Should be hard to say no. Hard to say no. Well, I hope you get it. I think you, I think you will get it. Yeah, I really do.

We have a, we have a really cool strategic next step that we're working towards that'll be rolling out next 3 or 4 months.

I think we're gonna integrate, integrate some AI or some other, a lot of AI stuff tied into it.

Yeah. There's a lot already in it right now and we have some really cool things. Um, I mean, I think the future, if someone asked me this the other day, like, what's the future of like next year or two? Where's, where's websites and funnels? Like where it's happening? And I was like, The, the reality is right now, like you create a, I mean, you know this, we create a static website the best we can, knowing all sales and psychology and persuade, all the things we know. We make the best possible version. We send traffic to it, try to sell 'em something. And if we're good, you know, 3, 5, 8% maybe buy the thing, but 95% don't cuz the message doesn't connect with them. I think the future of AI is, um, every single person's webpage will be built on the fly based on who they are. So when you show up to it, you'll see a different thing than I do. Like, when I show up, it's going to be like, I write this headline for a 43-year-old man in Boise, Idaho, who's worth X amount of dollars and has 5 kids and is a, um, you know, and, uh, whatever my personality profile is. And it'll write the headline and the copy and the page based on who I am. And then when you show up, it'll be clearly different. It'll be writing everything in fine. I think that's where things are going.

It's like, it's like right now we're kind of like got like a shotgun approach and that's like sniper rifle.

Oh yeah. Right.

Conversion. Can you imagine? Talk right to the person.

Imagine if we get conversions up to 30% on the front end, like, it changes everything for me or you.

Oh, and, and it's weird, as a marketer, we're always fighting for those incremental— like, can I get a percent here? Can I split test and get a half a percent here? Because those little percent over time, they add up. That's like an exponential leap in ability to get an increase. That's really cool. Really fun. Well, well, maybe I'll finally start getting some of my ClickFunnels awards.

Russell, apply for the awards. You need them. Come on stage and get them.

I'm gonna sell a bajillion. I'm gonna help you hit That billion-dollar evaluation. Um, okay, so dude, what— you know, yesterday we were talking, you surprised me because I'm just getting to know you. You know, we, we have a lot of mutual friends, and I know you and Dean have been super close forever, and you and Tony. And we're here in Palm Beach at a mastermind with you guys. Uh, when you're hanging around like these caliber of people, like when I see you or think of you now, like you're so much bigger than a marketing guy to me. Um, I think of you more like you have all this insane experience, and when I hear you talk, like, you're very inspirational to a lot of entrepreneurs. Is that the future of Russell Brunson? Like, you're hanging out with these guys.

Are you—

do you have a book that's going to come out instead of like DotCom Secrets? It's like, it's like, you know, Unlock Your Most Powerful Self by Russell Brunson Secrets.

Actually, uh, well, uh, yes, actually.

So, hey, I knew it, I knew it! I haven't worked my personal development book, so Um, you can't hang out with Dean and Tony and this level of people and not elevate.

No one. Well, it's interesting and you know this in your business too, like we have a mechanism to teach people, right? I teach marketing and funnels. That's the thing. But what the reality is when people come to me, like the thing that keep 'em from success is rarely the funnel or the thing, right? It's, it's always the conversation in their head, right? And so like, I think all of us, like we, like you're a real estate guy. I'm like, everyone's got their thing. But inside of that, like the work I'm doing with people is rarely, it's rarely funnels, you know, I'm sharing, here's a strategy and then I gotta work on them like that. Get people to believe that they're worthy and to believe that they can actually do it. Believe that the market will pay them what they're worth. Like, oh, like that's what's 90% of it's the, the head stuff. And so, um, and I've always fought that cuz I, I was like, Tony's the best in the world. There's all these people are doing that. I didn't really want it to do that. Um, but, uh, it's interesting. I talked about earlier, like you look at the, the journey of an entrepreneur, right? It's growth first, personal development. They become, they learn something and they realize they can switch to contribution, help more people. So right now my world is based on people who were making that shift to contribution. I was like, I wanna get into the conversation of their mind way earlier. Like if I can get somebody when they're on the journey to like growth and I can help them through that journey and then show them how like earlier in their life, like, hey, you're a great wrestler, you're learning these things, you can actually help other people and you can make money by doing it. Like if I can like, meet them earlier in that journey and help them find that out faster, they can help more people, right? So the book I'm writing, so, so I'm launching a new company called Secrets of Success. So there's, there's the company and the brand. I wasn't gonna call the book that, but I don't think the book's gonna be called that. Um, but the book I'm writing right now, and I'm, I'm, uh, probably co-authoring it with Ben Hart. Uh, do you know Benjamin Hardy?

No. Uh, no.

He's written half dozen amazing, like some of the best books in the world. He's, he's awesome.

But, um, Ben Hardy.

Ben Hardy.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, his books are— his new book's called 10x Is Easier Than 2x, and it's insane. Um, you know, Who Not How, you know, he's written a whole bunch of, uh, really good books. But the, the thing, the, the principle working on this book is, um, you know this, you know the hero's two journeys, right? The hero's journey, which is like the, the storyline that every movie, every book, every, every work of fic, of every storytelling book from the beginning of time till now is all based on this the same framework, right? The first step in the hero's journey is called the call to adventure, where the heroes live in their ordinary world, they have this call to adventure to go accomplish something. So the working title of the book right now is The Call to Adventure. So it's for anyone, could be an athlete, a, you know, a business person, whatever. You have this call to adventure where you're leaving your ordinary world and you're going on this journey. Like, how do you have success in that journey? And if you look at the hero's journey, there's all these different steps that every hero goes through, but the last step that the hero goes through is called Return with the Elixir, where the hero comes back with the answer. They went on this journey, they come back with the answer. So what I wanna do is I wanna meet people in this journey where they're going on this journey and here's the steps of how to be successful. But the end of it, like you're returning with the elixir, like you're bringing back, like here's the thing I learned on the journey, right? When I was wrestling, I was a wrestler in high school and I was a state champ. I took second place in the nation. And I remember after my senior year, my coach invited me to come to a wrestling camp. So I'd always been like on this journey to become a good wrestler. And then he had me come to this wrestling camp and he wanted me to teach other wrestlers. It was the first time I was like, all these skills I had, and I got paid. My first time I ever made money as a wrestler, I got paid to be a coach. And I came back and I was teaching these other kids. It was so exciting and fulfilling to like to show them and teach them that stuff. And I was like, I feel like I'd like learn— I'd found this, this secret. I'm bringing it to these kids and I'm showing to them. They're becoming better wrestlers. And like that feeling that— that's the entrepreneurial feeling, right? That like that I crave. And I want other people to have that because people have— so many people have achieved stuff throughout time, but most of them never contributed back. It's like it's their journey, is not understanding that the end of the hero's journey is always about like returning with the elixir and bringing it to the next, the next person. And so that's like the book is gonna be, it'll be, it'll become something that eventually long-term is to bring people still into ClickFunnels in our world and business and marketing, but it's reaching them earlier in their journey and helping them to have success faster. And then hopefully helping to see like the end goal of success is little about us and more about the people we can serve with what we learn.

So yeah, you're gonna smash it with that book. There's so many people can resonate with that. And I think with your, uh, with your marketing abilities— I had Joel Marion on, on the podcast, and he wrote his first book and he failed because he didn't know how to market. Yeah. And then he taught himself how to market. You are the greatest marketer out there, and you, you know, you know everybody's going to get behind that. So I think that's really cool. Is that the legacy now? Like, you're kind of like shifting away from like— because like for me, like when I talk about real estate, there's, there's times I'm like, how many more times can I talk about wholesaling real estate? Like, it's pretty It's so simple, guys. Like Google it at this point. Um, is that how you feel about marketing tactics sometimes? Cause like, I love real estate, don't get me wrong. Like, and when I, when I get on a roll, like I'm there, I'm there.

But there are times like, I very, again, I love marketing and I've written 3 books on it. And for me it's like, like the answers, like I wrote 'em all in the books. Like for every time someone's like, what, like what should I do? I'm like, it literally is in the book. Like everything's in the book. They just go back to the book. So I'm very much similar. Like I'm just not, I, I feel like I've said the new things I wanna say in marketing, like it's been done and it's there and it's not gonna go away. Like, um, I'm trying to sell, um, I've sold a million copies of my 3 books combined. I'm trying to get to the point where each one sells a million. It's like, I still like that message. I don't wanna stop. I wanna keep pushing that out there. But you're right. Like, like I talk about squeeze pages or funnels.

Like, can you tell me about headlines again, Russell?

You're like, oh, Google it. Yeah. And so for me, it's actually funny cuz at dinner the first day we met and you asked like, what are you working on right now? And I was like, oh, old books. I bought 15,000 old books in the last 2 years. You're like, I did not think that was gonna be—

did not expect that one to come out, which is cool because as you were telling me though, that like, I'm a— I wanted to be a 9th grade history teacher. Oh really? That's what I wanted to do. If you would ask me as a little kid, I would have said one of two things. I would have said a marine biologist or history professor or teacher for 9th grade. Um, but anyway, so I love old things. I love like that understanding. Like, I was in the lobby here at the— we're at the or Breakers Hotel, and I'm reading all the things about how this hotel became— because it's pretty famous here in, in Palm Beach. And, uh, fascinating story, by the way, of how this thing came to be. So when you were talking about old books, I'm like, tell me more, like, how does that work? And, uh, so you're building literally one of the coolest projects I ever heard of for entrepreneurs and like history buffs, especially if they're into books. You're building a library and you did something really cool to actually get the funding to build the library. You used your marketing skills and your resources in the marketing world to raise money, right? Like, to build this epic library. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, it was, um, and I'm not a builder, so I don't buy properties or house anyway, so this is new. The whole thing's new to me. So, um, we, uh, I, I bought the land, got the architecture done, and then went to a bank. I was like, hey, I need $20 million to build this big building with statues and books and an event center in Boise, Idaho. And, and, um, the bank's like, like, what? No, you're an idiot. Like, there's nothing in Boise worth $20 million. I'm like, no, this is gonna be amazing. And anyway, they thought I was dumb.

And so, don't you know who I am? I'm Russell Brunson.

Yeah. I'm like, I have a vision. It's gonna be amazing. They're like, so is this library people gonna come to? I'm like, well, not really. It's more just like a museum for me and some of my friends. Like, and then like, anyway, the bank's gonna figure out. So they told me no. Every bank's like, no, no, no, no, um, you're, you're dumb. And so I was like, well, crap, I got to figure out a way to make— to pay for this, right? And so my mentor is Dan Kennedy, and he always says, when you have something you want to buy, he's like, send the bill to the herd. So just like you, when you were like sitting there, 9,000 square foot house, and you're freaking out, like you wrote an offer, send it to the herd. So I was like, hey, we need to make an offer. And so I was looking at our event center. There's 100 seats in it. I was like, if I sold those seats, like rights to those seats, similar to what they do when people— like when football stadiums are built, right? They sell seat licenses. Yeah. And so we did an offer at our inner circle or my mastermind in Mexico and I sold seat licenses where they could pay $1 million to get 2 seats in the event, uh, for the first 2 or 3 rows. And then the back, there's, uh, $200,000 seats they can get as well. And we sold it and raised $14 million for my Mexico mastermind. And I got a dozen or more seats. We're still trying to finish selling out, but that'll fund, uh, the entire building of the library, uh, slash museum. And then, um, and give me some more money to buy some more old books.

And you've done some cool marketing around that, right? Like, didn't I saw something with a DeLorean and, uh, You did one in front of the library or books or something?

Yeah, we had a green screen. We went downtown and rented the Burbank and went to like one of those green screen studios they film movies and stuff in. And so we filmed me in the whole thing and then they took the architectural library and built a 3D rendering or something. And then I was like actually walking through it and like showing people what it was so people could see exactly. And it's all just— So now I can visualize what I'm investing in Yeah, this is where this is gonna be. Yeah, it's really fun. It's been fun for me 'cause like—

But you did it twice. I think that the lesson I wanna pull out though is you did the first one and you raised some money and then are you doing a second one or did you already do the second version with the DeLorean?

We filmed the second version and then we rolled that out to our, to my internal audience or to my, the rest of my audience. Yeah. Yeah, that went out a little while ago.

'Cause sometimes as marketers you got, you come up with a hook, it does a certain amount. Yeah. And then you gotta kind of reset and rethink like, okay, how do I get to the rest? Of the audience, because not everybody resonates with every message. And so you just did what you teach, different angles, and keep trying. And you tried again, you got some more. And so, so how much left did you say? A couple million dollars?

Um, yeah, there's a couple more million-dollar seats left, and I think one or two left of the $200,000 seats.

But yeah, if you got a— if you got a hot extra million just laying around, you want to be able to go hang out at this really dope spot. Uh, it's amazing. I— if, if some— one of my listeners buys one of these off of this, I want free ClickFunnels for life, bro. I want a free account.

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Let's get them over with.

The—

tell me about the books, though. Why are you nerding out on these books? Because you were talking about you. You have a book that is worth or costs $1 million.

I have 2 books now that I've spent $1.5 million on, 2 different books. So, yeah, the books are amazing. They're expensive, though. It's an expensive hobby to get into.

But one day you were just sitting there and you're like, I love old books. I'm going to go drop some moolah on some books.

Well, okay, so let me, I'll tell a little bit more story. But so if you look at like what I am, a lot of people say, oh, Russell, you're an author, you're an entrepreneur. I don't look at myself as an author. Like I look at myself as a curator. Like all 3 of my books were not like, here's Russell's original ideas. It was Russell's a nerd. He goes out and reads a whole bunch of books, goes a bunch of seminars, tests everything, and then based on that writes a book. So you look at my books, I'm always like, I always give reference like, oh, I learned this from Dan Kennedy and from Jay Abraham and from this person. Like I always give credit cuz I'm not a, I'm a curator. I curate ideas and I put 'em into, into a format that's simple for me to understand where I can doodle it. I can show it to people and they can be like, oh, it makes sense to me, right? And so the same thing here is like personal development. There's been some amazing people, so much stuff's been said over the last however long. And so I started going out and buying it. I want to find the original first editions of these books and manuscripts, like from the first people that were thinking about this. And so I got deep in the history of personal development, like 1850s, the very first person to write a book on personal development was a guy named Samuel Smiles in the UK, wrote a book called Self-Help. And then that was like the first time, and it launched this movement. It's called the New Thought Movement, where people started thinking like, well, you can think and change your life. Like, no one— that wasn't a thing pre-1850s. Pre-1850s, you just did what you're supposed to do, and then last person did, you just worked hard. Yeah. So Samuel Smiles writes this book and starts writing a whole bunch of books, and then people in London, UK, that area, start like learning about personal development the first time ever. And then one of those books somehow got to America, and this guy named Orson Sweet Martin, who's a little kid in his parents' attic, and he finds this book, self-help. He reads it and it's like, oh my gosh, I can think and change my life. And so he starts writing a bunch of books, and he is the guy who started Success Magazine. Launches Success Magazine, it becomes this huge thing. Now people all across the country learn they can like think and change their life, and they can actually be successful, not just based on, you know, where you were born, but you could actually change your life and your circumstances. And from there, a whole bunch of amazing authors sprung up, and they were doing seminars all around the world. And from there, like Napoleon Hill was like one of the people, like If you read Napoleon Hill's source material, almost all of it's coming from Orson Sweet Martin. That's who he learned these things from. And like, you know, he wrote Think and Grow Rich, which was the first personal development book that went viral and sold 40, 50 million copies. And like, um, so for me, I was like learning the history and the people and how they all fit into it, you know. And from there, like, where did Jim Rohn come from? And from there was Tony Robbins. So I have this whole like the, the like family tree of personal development all mapped out. And then like, what did every person— what books they write, what manuscripts, like what do they do? And so That was like the beginning of this, of me like trying to figure out like that part of it, which was just kind of like me treasure hunting. But then as I go, I'd like find, find things these people wrote, right? And so I found like a whole bunch of like old Napoleon Hill books and manuscripts he never even published. So I found some of those. I bought that stuff. And then I found the book, The Laws of Success was Napoleon Hill's first book set he wrote in 1928. But 3 years before he wrote that, he printed some just by himself, like at a printer. And then he sent them to, um, like the, the president of the United States, like Andrew Carnegie, the Queen of England. He sent him a bunch of people, like, like we would do with Write a Book. He sends your friends ahead of time. So he sent these out there and he signed one of them, and there's only two known copies in the world. Um, one of them I saw two days ago at this other guy's library, and then there's only one that's signed, and I saw that one on eBay for $1.5 million. And I was like, it's three years before the first edition, like a pre-printing signed one of one, like the only one in the world. And I was like, Ah, it's like that was the first big purchase I got.

You pulled the trigger?

I did. And what was crazy, as I pulled the trigger, the guy who bought it, um, I got to know him. He had been collecting Napoleon Hill stuff for 20 years, so I actually flew out to meet him and I saw his little stuff and I bought his entire collection at once.

No way.

We rented a private plane, we loaded the whole private plane up, so I flew that all back. So then I had like all these insane things, like magazines that I'd— Napoleon Hill published two magazines. Back in the day. They're like, you can't find them anywhere.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I've never even heard of this.

They're amazing. The first one was called Hill's Golden Rule, and he wrote it, and he had his typewriter, and he was writing this thing, and he, um, he knew that someday he wanted to have a bunch of people writing it, but he had no other— he couldn't pay other authors, so he wrote every single thing under pen names, like 8 different pen names of authors, but they were all Napoleon Hill. Yeah.

And so I'm covering— you're like peeling back the layers to this onion. You're realizing, oh, I can actually go down this rabbit hole and like Treasure hunt, like you said.

So many cool things in books, and like one thing leads to the next and the next. And, um, and I met the guys around the Point Hill Foundation, become friends with them, so they sent me Napoleon Hill's actual typewriter. So I have his typewriter, and then they sent me like—

because that was one of the first big books like that, you know, oh, you kind of hear about is like Thinking Grow Rich, and somebody hands it to you and you read it, and it's like at first it's kind of dense, and you're like, all right, I kind of understand some of the time. But when you really go down the rabbit hole and you understand just who he was hanging around and how he pulled together his information. And so it was a game changer.

So that's the— that's what— when people are like, you bought 15,000 books? Like, yeah, I wouldn't— that's the rabbit hole I've been down and having the time of my life. Like, as soon as I find out who an author, and I go to eBay and I buy all their stuff, and I've got some collectors I've met, I'm like, what do you got? And they're like, oh, and they find things and they're sending them to me. And like, um, and then like my role in this is to go through and to research and read them. And I've got teams now of like readers and researchers who are going through stuff for me and like pulling out ideas.

Step 1, become super successful so you can nerd out on whatever weird thing you're into. Oh, some people are into cars, some people are into private jets. Russell is in old books. If you want to speak his love language, just find some really hard-to-get old books. And, and there's some truth in what I'm saying here right now, by the way. So many people DM you, DM me, will you mentor me, can I get access to you, can I hang out with you? And it's like, no, dude, like, I don't have any time for strangers. That are just like asking. But if I rolled up and I said, Russell, I've been listening, I've been paying attention, I know you're really into this, I got you this, you know, I can't afford much, but I got you this thing that's really hard to find, this manuscript, and I think you'll appreciate it. That's like your love language. Like, all of a sudden, and if they started supporting you consistently in all the things you did, eventually they paid attention.

Even they couldn't afford— even they're like, I found access, here's— like, there's a guy that I bought something from on eBay, his name is Milton. And I actually had just wired him $35K or $30,000 this morning. 'Cause he can't buy stuff, but he finds these things.

He's a hunter.

And he's like, I found 3 Success magazines from 1897. I found this, I found this. He's like, do you want 'em? I'm like, yeah. I have no idea how much he's buying 'em for. But he's like this middleman. And I don't know, he has access to these people. And he goes to yard sales all over the place. And like, yeah, he just, and like, I love the guy. Like, he texts me 2,500 times a day and I respond to every single one of 'em.

This is great. This is like— this is when people say, will you pay attention? I say, go find me a good deal. Yeah, you want it. You want me to pivot and focus? Go find me a good deal. These bird dogs, these deal finders, and we teach it, right? It's like, you don't have money, you don't have resources. In real estate, you never have a money problem, you have a creativity problem. And it's like, dude, just get more creative. Figure out a way to find out those— where those deals are and go find them. You don't need the money to do it. I got the money. Money. Bring the deals to me. Yeah. Now we got, we got to get like 10 more Miltons.

Yeah, I know, right?

Because now you're gonna—

you have a list of all stuff I'm looking for and I'm scouring the world for.

What's like, what's the thing that you're like, if I ever would get my hands on that, like, it's done, I don't care how much it costs, done deal, I'm doing it?

Oh man. Um, so there's, uh, one of my favorite female authors— only two really prolific female authors from this time period, early 1800s. Uh, one's named Elsie Lincoln Benedict, and she had a school called the School of Opportunity. And she would actually go on the road. She spoke to over 3 million people during her lifetime, going these little, uh, little workshops around the country teaching success and personal development. And she has a book set called Brainology, the little mini books. There's like 14 of them. And I have the complete session set of that. I found one. Okay. She has another book set called, um, How to Get Anything You Want in Life. It's little blue books and there's a 14-book set. And I have like, uh, I have 11 of the 14 books. There's 3 that I cannot find anywhere. I've been like, I'm finding her family members. I'm finding— I try and— everyone out there like searching, right?

23andMe reports, like, all right, we're gonna go all the way down the tree.

Booklets that I'm missing, then I have a complete set. Like, that's the one of all things, like, I would give anything for that.

You just need to post that on social and just be like, look, these are the 3. Find these things for me.

That's actually interesting.

Yeah, you can get— you can get— I will put you front row at the next, um, Funnel Hacking, front row we'll even announce you from the stage, like just make a little spectacle out of it. And I guarantee those 3 books are going to magically show up. Okay, because I don't know what the— I don't know, is the magic in you hunting them down? Is that part of the fun?

It is, but like, but if I find it through somebody else, that's part of the story too. Like, yeah, the Brainology book set was one, is super rare. I found one book on eBay and it was part of a set, and so I started searching for that one. And again, this is— people always ask me like, who finds these for you? I'm like, mostly it's me. Like I'm the only one that cares enough, right? I remember I was searching, like there's only one reference of it in all of Google. There's only one reference to the book. And then on Etsy, somebody like 10 years ago sold an incomplete book set. So I found the Etsy person. I found the person who had sold it. I was like, I will pay you to tell me who you sold it to. The guy's like, I can't, it's against terms or whatever. I'm like, I don't care. I'll pay you 10 grand to tell me who you sold this thing to. The guy wouldn't do it. And then I went into Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. Anyway, on Instagram, no, 8 years ago, some bookstore in the UK posted a picture of the full book set.. And it was in— I found it in Google Images, like, like 500 scrolls deep. I was like, that's it. And so I contacted the bookstore and I was like, do you have this book set? And they were back there, yeah, we do. Would you like— we still have it, do you want to buy it? I'm like, holy crap, yes. And it was funny, after I had that initial conversation, I was driving my son to school that day. I was telling him about like the treasure hunt and how I found it and stuff. He's like, Dad, how much you gonna pay for it? And I was like, I'm gonna offer him $5,000, but, um, but I'd be willing to pay more. He's like, how much would you pay? And I was like, okay. Me and him are going back, he's a 12-year-old, and I was like, how much do you think you should pay? And he's like, I think I think you paid 10 grand. I was like, I think I'd be willing to pay 50 grand for that book set. He's like, you'd be 50 grand? I paid 50 grand for it. Anyway, I got home from dropping him off and the lady emailed me. She's like, it was in British pounds. She's like, she's like, um, I'll sell you the book set for £500. I was like, I was like, yes, overnight it to me, here's the money.

Before she changed her mind.

What is £500?

Like $420 or something like that.

Hey, score on the book set. Oh yeah, I was like, I would have paid $50,000 for that and Anyway, so, you know, there is something about that perception of value. Oh yeah.

Well, you know, in real estate there's a big perception of value. You know, it's like what I'm going to do with the property might be totally different than what you'll do with the property. I, I see a vision. I see what I'm going to do with it. You see what you're going to do with it. And like when you're building out this library, because the library is going to be dope, it is half event center, half library. I heard there's going to be like some James Bond spiral staircase, you know, that goes to the rarest of the rarest books that Only very lucky people ever get to go down there and see where the million-dollar books are. And are you going to build it all dope with like lights and like—

Yeah, it's amazing.

We have— Are we going to have lasers? Like, we need to have anti-theft lasers.

Even if they don't work, we should have those in there just so that we just let people like— you break in, like, shut the door.

Those are the dope books right there. Those are the things.

Yeah.

And then you just need to have like the first ever— what's your most famous book?

Dotcom Secrets?

Yeah. Yeah, first ever, first printed out right there. And you need to sign it at some point. You never know, 50 years, 100 years down the road, that book might be a million-dollar book.

Because like 500 years from now, some kid on eBay who finds my book is like, this guy named Russell, and like geeks out. That's the way that I am right now. Yeah, yeah, it'd be really fun.

Cool, dude. I mean, it's funny when you find things that really light you up, just how happy and enjoyable something can be. Can make you, like hunting down old books. What is yours? If you're watching this right now, what's that thing that lights you up that you're just like, oh my God, if I can make money in my business, 'cause people struggle with this a lot. Like they're like, Cody, I'm not really into real estate, but I know I can make a lot of money in real estate. What I'm really into is this thing over here. It's like, dude, get in the right money-making vehicle, sacrifice a little bit, work really hard, stay consistent, learn the skills and capabilities, dominate at them, make the money so you can be empowered to go teach guitar. Yeah, to, in, to kids for the rest of your life, for sure. Um, so perfect, thank you. Uh, look, a couple more questions and we gotta wind down because, because you gotta go. When you and Tony and just these super high-level people are sitting around, what are you guys talking about? What are you guys hanging out? Are you guys hanging out like talking sports? Are you guys talking about old books? Are you talking about how to take over the world? What scares the shit outta you guys? Like, are you like, oh my God, like within 3 years the whole world's imploding. We're all moving to Dubai. AI's gonna kill everybody. Like, what's the process? What's the escape plan?

That's actually really interesting. Well, the, the, the coolest time I had with Tony, the first time we did this affiliate contest, the, the meetup, whatever, is in Fiji. So went to Fiji and it was my second time being to Tony's in Fiji. But this time, like, he's one that welcomed us off the bus, gave us hugs and stuff. And then right, we got off, he's like, hey, let's go eat. So we went directly to this lunch. It was me and Tony, my wife, and we had lunch together, which was like, you know, you're like looking around. I love Tony.

Guys, do you see what's happening here?

I love Tony, but I'm still scared to death right now. I'm just like, oh. And it was crazy because, like, you know, he's obviously the alpha in any room, so he's like leading the conversation. But it was fascinating because he was talking about just— you could, you could— I, I could see, like, the— in his mind, like, he has his own plane, which is like, I've flown it once, it's insane. It's like an old Southwest plane that he turned into. It's amazing. Like, after you fly it one time, it's the big boy plane. Oh, it's amazing.

Yeah.

So like, we flew it once. So he's talking about that, but he's talking about, he didn't say guilt, but like, you could tell like he felt guilt because he knows how much, you know, carbon or whatever, or gas it costs to fly this thing. He felt really guilty about it. So then he was telling this deal he had figured out with the, I'm not gonna remember the details, but the Prince of Saudi Arabia to do this thing where he was gonna, where he was gonna change the way they shipped some things, which actually would lower carbon across the world by like this huge amount, which was 100 times more than his plane could ever do in like his entire lifetime. And like, he like figured out how to justify this by like solving the problem over here. And it was so cool to see that. I was like, oh my gosh. Because sometimes we're like, you feel guilty about something or you're doing this thing, but like, ah, and he's trying to like, he wants the net positive of anything he's doing to be way more positive. And so he's telling these stories about this and that and all these things. And like when he got sick, like the type of water he had to drink to like heal himself. And I'm just like taking notes like, I gotta buy that water. Like whatever it was, you know? Like with Tony, it's just him telling you all these insane things that— and how like he was trying to like, after the last meeting we had here, he was— he flew out from here to go to some like peacekeeping thing to try to figure out with all these like national leaders like how to, how to solve peace and problems that we're having in America and across the world through social— like just like that stuff he's dealing with. It's like I'm just sitting there just like, like, so you're listening. I'm listening and not knowing— knowing that like right now I can't solve those problems, but understanding like the way he's solving those problems is really fascinating. Like, it wasn't him like, I'm gonna go whatever. He's like, okay, for me to solve this thing that I think the world's struggling with, who are the people I need to connect? So Tony's using his connecting abilities like, hey, we need this, like gets the 5 or 6 people, flies them all together, sits in a room and like solves the problem. And, um, it's just cool seeing the way his brain thinks versus most like me. I'm just like, ah, that's too big a problem for me. Where he's like, okay, who are the people that can solve this? Let's get him in a room, make it happen.

And unfortunately, that's gonna elevate your thought.

Yeah, it starts getting you thinking differently. And so, um, anyway, he's, he's fun just to hear because, you know, those are the problems he's, he's doing.

Would you say he's probably like the biggest, most famous person that you're like homies with?

Oh, for sure. Yeah, by like, he's, he's like, he's consulted like the last 10 presidents or something crazy like that, you know what I mean? And the Queen of England and Princess Di. And like, he's just, he's connected to everybody.

Like, there's nobody— we're here because we supported them in their mastermind.com, uh, launch. And we were— I got lucky because you've already done it since the beginning, so, uh, I was able to actually play in the game and do really well in the launch. So as affiliates, you get a reward to— when you, when you market well and you sell well, you get to come to these private events. And so one of the things that I won, or all of us here, all 10 of us, is the ability to ask Tony any question you want. Do you have your question? I do have my question. I struggled with it though for a long time.

I still struggle every year.

It's like, it's like, okay, I have to boil it down to one freaking question to ask Tony Robbins. Uh, and, uh, so I, I took me about a week of really thinking about it. I don't want to say it. I'm not going to say it until I ask him because I want to hear it. No, I want to hear his— I want to hear his response. But it's interesting too because like, if you had one ability to ask one of your favorite people still alive a question, who would that person be and what question would you ask?

Yeah, I remember last year I asked the question too, and I, I asked the question that was this way, and as Tony was answering it, he does his Tony voodoo thing where he like sinks in on you, and halfway through he shifted and started talking about one of my sons that was struggling with— I don't even know how he knew that or whatever— and went down, spent next like 20 minutes with me going deep on this thing. That, um, the first one, it was a really good question in my head that was probably more surface level, and he shifted it. By the time I left, I was just like, holy cow, like, it was like life-changing. And so that's the thing with Tony too, is just like, you ask one thing, you never know what you're actually gonna get, because he's just so in tune with those— just all the things, you know. And, um, anyway, you're gonna— you're gonna love it. This is my fourth time doing it. You're gonna love the experience.

You have your— you have your question? Not—

are you gonna— I'm the same way. I'm kind of— yeah, I can say my nervous— Jake, you have a shot. Like, because people ask me, do you text Tony all the time? Like, no. Like First off, I'm scared to death of him. Second off, like, I'm not gonna waste his time unless there's something really, really important. Like, yeah, because someday, like, um, yeah, someday there's gonna be something that I want to like message him for, and I don't want to be like, you know what I mean? I want to be that kid that like annoyed him all the time, he starts ignoring me. I want to make sure that if something bad happens in my family or the world's coming to an end or I gotta bug out and be in Fiji because, you know, I didn't want to use that.

I love how raw and authentic you're being because people look at you, they put you up on a pedestal, they see you guys always hanging out and doing events and speaking on the same stages. And even me, I get in some rooms with some people and I'm nervous. Oh yeah, I'm just like, all right, I'm just gonna play cool here. Hey, cool, Sperber. But, uh, thank you for your time, man. This has been fantastic. Um, if people wanted to support you, get behind things, where would— obviously clickfunnels.com, but what else? How do they—

how do they— um, if you want my new project, by the time this goes live, I think, um, it should be live, but secretsofsuccess.com is my new personal development brand that we're rolling out. We have a newsletter that'll that'll be basically every day you get a, you get a 2-minute like motivational success thing. And then on the back of that, we're republishing a lot of Napoleon Hill's stuff and books and manuscripts. We have— I just got the rights from the Napoleon Hill Foundation. There's a book that he wrote that never got published. I get to publish a bunch of the cool things. So we're working on all that right now. So all that stuff will be there eventually. It's my big passion project I'm most excited about right now. Uh, but if you go to russellbrunson.com, there's links to all my companies and brands and everything kind of off that hub there.

So dude, thank you so much for your time, guys. Uh, look, this, this show just keeps evolving, man. We keep getting cooler and cooler guests and going down different rabbit holes, and I couldn't be more grateful for all of you that subscribe to this show and support us, uh, along the way. It's been really great to get to know some of you guys, especially in the comments. Uh, the engagement's been really fantastic lately, so thank you for that. And, uh, go support Russell and go find him those 3 books. He needs to find those 3 books, whatever they are. You need to Be clear on which of the 3 you're missing so the, the Clever Investor tribe can go find those for you. Till next time, we're out of here. Take care. Comb your hair.

Peace.