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

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This is the Russell Brunson Show. Hey, what's up? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the show. Um, we just finished the OfferLab launch. I think most of you guys probably watched it or part of it. Hopefully you enjoyed it. At the OfferLab launch, uh, after the launch day, then we had a 3-day event happening afterwards. It was kind of a 4-day event and it was chaos and it was fun and it was exciting. We had over 40, I think 45 speakers who came and spoke. And it was amazing. But I had a chance to do a special presentation each day that I thought was really fun, and I wanted to share here with you guys on the podcast. So the first presentation, this one was really fun for me to give because I talk about how we made money before Facebook, before MySpace, before Friendster, back when we were just getting started in this game. How did you have success online? How did you make sales and drive traffic when you didn't have these ad platforms to drive traffic from? And I showed everyone what was happening. And one of the premises of this talk is like, if you want to understand how to be successful in the future, you have to learn about the past. 'Cause right now there's a storm coming, traffic is changing, everything is shifting, and those who understand how we had traffic before Facebook are the ones who are gonna be successful now that getting traffic is harder and harder on Facebook and the other platforms. And so that's what this presentation's about. I hope you enjoy it. If you haven't got your OfferLab account yet, it's completely free. You just go to offerlab.com and get signed up. It's really cool, and so go check it out, and that's all you gotta do. So thanks so much, you guys, and we'll jump right into the first training right now. What I wanted to spend my first 30 minutes or so today before I start bringing in all the other guest speakers is I just wanted to share with you guys basically a history lesson. My belief is that for you to be successful in the future, you have to understand the past. And most of you guys who are even in this room, for sure at home, most of you guys haven't been doing this that long. In fact, I want to do a quick poll. How many guys have been in this game, this online business game, for more than a year? If you've got a year, raise your hand. Okay, more than 5 years, keep your hand raised. More than 10 years, keep your hand raised. More than 15 years, keep your hand raised. More than 20 years, keep your hand raised. More than 25 years, keep your hand raised. There's one person in the room, me, and I don't, maybe one or two, okay. So I've been playing this game for a long time. I know I look like I'm 11 years old. I'm actually 45 years old right now, which is crazy. I started this game when I was 21. So that's kinda when I got into this world, and back then the internet looked completely different. It's not like it is today, and we had to figure a lot of things out. And so what we were doing back when I was in my 20s is the secret to being successful moving forward, okay? When I wrote the Traffic Secrets book, the introduction title was There's a Storm Coming. I talked about this, man, 4 years ago. I'm like, there's a storm coming. Traffic's changing, internet's changing. Those who don't understand these core principles are gonna struggle. And I've watched now over the last 4 years since I wrote that in the book, I've watched as the internet has changed, as ads have changed, as platforms have changed, The platforms have changed and so many people who I love and care about who have amazing messages and products and services have fallen away, 'cause they didn't heed the warning then. And so this is me reheating the warning today, because things are not gonna get cheaper online. Traffic's not gonna get easier. Going viral is not gonna be an easier thing, okay? And so the secret for you to be successful in the future is to understand the past. How did we play and win the game before we could buy ads, before we could just turn on, you know, make a video that went viral? Like how did we do it before all that stuff? And if you understand that, it's gonna change everything moving forward that's how you're gonna be successful in the future. Because if and when your ad account gets shut down, you get delisted, your video stops going viral, all the things that can and will probably happen in the very near future for everybody, okay, happens to me, happens to everybody, if you understand these principles I wanna talk about this morning, it will give you the ability to weather the storm, won't even matter, it won't even affect you in the smallest, okay? And OfferLab is a huge piece of that, it's what makes this part of the conversation actually possible. Which is why I'm so excited for it. Which is why I'm like, if you guys adopt this now, as you move forward in the future, it will protect you, it'll give you safety, security, it'll help your business to be around in the long term. And so that's why I'm so passionate, why this message is so important. And it's shifting from like this solo entrepreneurship that we are doing, that we've been doing for the last decade, back into a collaborative environment that we were doing when I was in my 20s. The way that I grew my business, the way that most of the people you know nowadays who have been around for 20, 25 years, that's how we all did it. And so I'm gonna bring you guys some of that today. And so it's gonna require you to think require you to think about how offers work and funnels work a little bit differently, but if you're willing to go on that journey with me and you take these little shifts in your mind, I think that on the other side you're gonna find something really, really magical. So that's my game plan, that's what I wanna talk about. I don't have any slides today, I just wanted to doodle some stuff. So most of the people in our community that I know of got into this business within the last 10 years or so. And the last 10 years have been like the good old days when Facebook ads were cheap, Things were different, like it was a lot easier. So this is what most people's businesses look like in the last decade, okay? What would happen is they would go and they would create a product. So there is the product, right? And then they like, we needed traffic to the product. So you go over here and you found this one partner, we're gonna call him Zuck, there's Zuckerberg, and he was the partner. He said, hey Zuckerberg, will you send people to my offer and I will give you some money? Zuckerberg's like, I would love to take your money. And so we would buy ads, right? And we would drive traffic. So we give Zuckerberg some money up here, people would come, they buy the product, and in theory, if we did it correctly, we would get $2 back out. And it was amazing. How many of you guys remember the good old days when Facebook ad clicks were a penny, or 5 cents, or 25 cents, or 30 cents per click? And you were selling just the $37 product, and you could be profitable. Say you spend $10 in ads, you made $37, you're like, this is like a magic ATM machine. And you just do it, and you're like, this is the greatest thing in the world. I have the best partner in the world. His name is Mark Zuckerberg. I'm gonna figure out every other human being on earth on the planet, 'cause I don't need anyone else, all I need is Mark Zuckerberg. He's like a drug dealer. We're like, this is awesome, give me some more, give me another hit. I've never done drugs, but I assume that's what, I don't know. So, right, and so we literally just like got rid of all of our friends, our partners, our JVs, our everything, and just like we focused on this one person, 'cause he was like the best in the world. He gave us all the good stuff, right? And then what happened is then Zuckerberg's like, hey, install this little tracking pixel on your site so we can optimize and find better audiences for you. He's so smart, and we're like, this is a great idea. And so we put these little pixels on our pages, right? And then he starts looking at stuff, and he starts realizing, he's like, man, okay, I know how much they're spending in here, so they're giving me $10, they're making $20, I'm gonna increase this from $10 to $15, $15 to $18, $18 to $19, just enough that like they're still making money, but not enough for them to actually succeed, but they got the drugs coming, they can't turn it off, right? And so that was happening, and so costs are going up, we're like, ugh, and this is when like, the funnel world started developing and started becoming a thing, right? It's like, okay, well, I can't do this. Mr. Dan Kennedy, the greatest marketing mind of all time, says whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. How do we do that? And that's when the birth of like upsells started coming. It's like, well, okay, I'm spending a dollar, getting two. I'm spending almost $2 to get two. This isn't working. I need to have an upsell. So we start adding in upsells, right? And then that would work for a while. And then Zuckerberg starts tracking his pixel here. It's like, ooh, they're making more money. I can charge them more. And they started going again, right? It starts happening. They're like, oh, now we need to add a downsell. Oh, we're gonna add an order form bump. We start tweaking and optimizing these things. And so our funnel Sales funnels got better and better, more and more sophisticated, because we had to, because otherwise we made no money for Zuckerberg. And as we got better at selling, he got better at taking our money, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse, right? And that's the world we live in today. Okay? And so for someone to be successful, it's not just like, I'm gonna put a product up and sell it. In fact, I was at a mastermind a month ago, and had such a good time hanging out, and there's all these celebrities there, and how many of you guys know Derek Hough? The dancer from Dancing with the Stars, like, super talented guy, and he comes up and he's like, Russell, he's like, I've seen your stuff online, he's like, He's like, I want a funnel, I have a book, like I wrote a book, like should I do a funnel with that? And at first I was like, dude, Derek Hoff's gonna have a funnel, this is insane. And then at the same time I was like, for him to have a successful funnel, he's got a book, but how am I gonna tell him like, you gotta create an order form bump. And then to make that work, then you gotta create like a $200 course, and then you gotta make a downsell course, and then you probably have to make another course, and like if you have all these pieces in place, Then we turn ads on, then you could break even. But then you gotta have something high-ticket on the back end to sell to actually make, and I was just like, how am I gonna, like, it seems so hard, right? And that's what's like, it's hard. I have people come to my community all the time, they're like, Russell, I wrote a book, Russell, I created a course, they come, they're so excited, and like, okay, what do I do now? I'm like, cool, you created a, you wrote a book. Like, which is, if anyone's ever written a book, if you do it the right way, it is, it's like the hardest thing in the world, right? I have a meme that I share with myself every time I start writing a book, it says, the difference is that reading a book and writing a book's very similar, the only difference is when you're writing a book, the book's trying to kill you. And that's kinda what happens when you write a really good book, right? The book's trying to kill you. So you get the book done, you put 2 years into this thing, it's like, the book is done, you're like, cool, we can sell it online, but we need to create 4 other courses, a product, an upsell, a coaching program, then you could actually maybe make money with it at the end. And it's just like, people get overwhelmed, right? Which by the way is one of the problems OfferLab solves, I'll come back to that later, but like, with Derek Hough for example, or whoever, I could be like, just put your book on OfferLab, and then you don't have to create an order form bump, and an upsell, and a downsell, they're like, find partners who already have these pieces, and now you can just drive traffic traffic and it works, right? You don't have to go and create 30 different products just to break even. You can actually just put your product on there, find other products, and it speeds you up to success. And over time you can go and you create your own upsell, over time you create something else, but in the short term, like, let's get money happening, right? Like, money follows speed. Like, how do we get something out there as quick as humanly possible, right? And so that gives us the ability to move fast, because I just have one offer here, one course, one product, whatever, and I can plug in other people's things, okay? And so again, that's kind of one of the big benefits of OfferLab, and I'm gonna come back to that, But that's kinda where business is today, okay? That's been the last decade. So those of you guys who've been playing this game last decade, yeah, it looks familiar. I had this, and then I added this, and this, and now we're here, okay? But I wanna go back in time now. So again, your success in the future dictates, is gonna be 100% based on your understanding of the past. 'Cause what's happening in the past is what's gonna win. And most of you guys weren't there in the past. So you're lucky old man Russell Brunson was there 25 years ago in college, figuring this game out, and I'm gonna show you what worked in the past, 'cause if you understand this, this is how we're gonna be successful in the future. Okay, so in the past, rewind back to when Russell was 21 years old. I looked really young back then. It was really weird. Someone, this is like awkward, but somebody, I met somebody and they're like, you look really young, how old are you? I'm like, how old do you think I am? I'm looking, I'm like fishing for a compliment, you know? And she goes, well, based on the crow's feet next to your eyes, you gotta be at least in your 40s. And I was like, I have crow's feet, like I was freaking out, like, oh no. Anyway, now I'm very self-conscious of my, anyway, okay. So back before I had crow's feet, 21-year-old Russell Brunson, I was trying to figure this game out and figure things out, right? And so here's me, and I had glasses back then. Ooh, so there's me with the glasses. Anyway, there's Russell. Okay, now Russell created a little offer, the very first product I ever created before potato guns. The very first thing I ever created was a little product called Zip Brander. So this was my product. This little software product sold for $67, and that was my product, and I spent all this time like posting in forums and getting to know people, 'cause there's, again, remember, this is the world before Facebook was around, before YouTube, before all these things, right? It was before MySpace, like MySpace came out after this, okay? It was back when like there was no advertising networks outside of Google. You could buy Google Ads, that was about it. So I'm creating my first product as a founder, I'm trying to drive traffic, and over time I'd built up a list, a little tiny list of, I don't know, a couple hundred people. So this is Russell's little list. That was me. And I started going, I was like trying to figure out like, are there other people playing this game besides me? I started searching online, I found some forums and different places, I started getting to know other people, and then one day I saw this dude, and his name was Mike Filsaime. So there's Mike. And Mike was in this forum, and he had a brand new product, I think it was called, I texted him this morning to see if, Ah dang, he didn't text me back yet. I texted him, I was like, what was the name of the product? I think it was called Carbon Copy something, Carbon Copy Marketing or something. So he had this product, and they were DVDs, and he was literally burning them at his house, and you'd buy it and he'd ship you out this DVD, and it was called Carbon Copy Marketing, right? So that was Mike's thing, was the DVDs, Carbon Copy Marketing, and so that was his product there, and then Mike had his little list of people. I think he had probably, I don't know, 2,000 or 3,000 people on his list, his little audience, so there's Mike's list. And I met Mike, I was like, what's going on Mike, how's it, like, I love your product, it's so cool. And he was telling me about what he was doing, how many he'd sold, and we were just excited going back and forth. And then I was like, well, 'cause again, I can't, I have this product, there's no way for me to just go turn traffic on, like I'm gonna run some Facebook ads, like, I have a product, I'm just in college, my newly married wife, money was not coming every day, it was like every once in a while it would come in, if we did something. So I went to Mike, I was like, hey Mike, I have an idea. Your new product Carbon Copy Marketing looks really, really cool. I have a little list of people. What if I send an email to my list of people and sold them Carbon Copy Pro, and then you send an email to your list of people and sell them ZipRender? Then we both win. He's like, okay, let's do it. And so we set up a partnership. I sent an email to my list, I sold a whole bunch of Carbon Copy Pro, and then Mike, he kept half the money and gave me 50%. So I got half, he got half. It was awesome, right? Then Mike sent an email, his list on ZipRender, Bunch of people bought it, right? I kept half the money, I gave Mike half the money. Partnership, joint venture, it was insane. I made money, he made money, and at the same time, guess what else happened? Both of our little lists got bigger, 'cause people on his list found out about me, people on my list found out about him, and so all of a sudden my list got a little bit bigger, and there's more people on this, and there's more people on his list, and we did this collaboration, and we both won. We both made money, both our audiences grew, and we had this partnership, and it was the coolest thing in the world. So that happened first, and then I was like, I'm like, talking to Mike, I'm like, that was so fun. Like, you know, my wife's pumped. We made some money. Like, she didn't think I'm like this homeless, jobless husband that she's supporting. Like, we actually made some money in my business. And it was the coolest thing in the world. And I was talking to Mike, I'm like, do you know anybody else like doing this? Like, I'm just, I'm just kind of getting to know like the players in our market. And Mike's like, oh yeah, there's this other guy. And so he told me about this guy named Gary, Gary Ambrose. And he's like, here's Gary, you should meet him. So I go and I meet Gary. And guess what? Gary has his own product. Right, I can't remember exactly what Gary's product was called, but Gary also had his own little list of people. Right, I was like, dude, that's awesome. So I go to Gary, I'm like, hey, that product looks cool. And so I was like, what if I promote your product to my list and then you promote my product to your list and we'll do a joint venture where we work together in collaboration. And Gary's like, your product's awesome, I would love to. So Gary sends an email to his list to go buy ZipRender, okay, money comes in, I give half to Gary, I keep half of it. My list grows, 'cause a bunch of Gary's people join my list, and my list gets bigger, and then Gary, then I send an email to my list, selling Gary's product, bunch of people bought, Gary gives me half the money, I keep half the money, we both win, right, and then his list gets bigger. I'm like, this is insane, this is the best thing in the world. I was like, people, like, I was studying business in college, and they're talking about all these weird things and everything, I was like, business has nothing to do with any of the crap they're teaching me in college. Business is just relationships, 'cause I'm doing more business than any of my college professors are, selling my little product I created. Right? It's just relationships. Okay? Now this is coming from Russell, the awkward introvert who's scared to death of people. So then I'm like, okay, how do I do this? And then they told me, hey, there's an event happening. This guy named Armand Moore, he's like the big guru in the world, he's doing this event called Big Seminar, we should all go to it. So I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing. So I go to the seminar, Gary goes, Mike goes, all of us, we go to this seminar. We get in this room, there's 500 people who are all just like us. Bunch of nerds making money on the internet. I was like, this is amazing. This person here, and there's this person here, and we start meeting all these people, and one thing that's interesting, each of these people had, number one, their own offer, and number two, each had their own list of people. Own offer, own list of people, own, and I started walking around, I was like, every person in here is a partner. I'm not competitive with anyone, I'm a partner with every single one of these people. And so I started becoming friends with them. And back then, this is, again, aging myself as well, okay? You guys remember Skype? Skype just got shut down, which is crazy. Before Skype, there was a thing called, Yahoo Messenger. It was the greatest thing in the world. And so I got on Yahoo Messenger, I'm like, hey, what's your Yahoo Messenger? And we got on Yahoo Messenger and we started connecting, right? So on Yahoo Messenger we all hung out and all the business deals happened. So my job, literally full-time, I'm on Yahoo Messenger messaging Gary and Mike and this guy and this guy, alright? I'm introducing people into stuff and we're figuring out deals. I'm like, hey, I have, you know, we from, so this is what's happening. And from this my business starts growing and growing and growing. I'm getting, I'm like, business is so great. It has nothing to do with math, or ads, or creative, or anything. It has 100% to do with relationships. That's all it is. Okay, so introverted Russell, I'm going to this event, meeting people, getting their Yahoo Messenger links, which is really fun, and that becomes my business. It's funny, somebody has maybe heard me tell this story. I would go to these events, and again, I never drink, I don't drink, but everyone after the event's done, everyone's in the room like this, and they go out to the bars and hang out, and I'm like scared, you know, as the kid who's never drunk before, I'm scared to death, like I don't wanna go to a bar, like I don't want people to think I'm drinking, And so I would go to the bars at night with these guys to hang out. But I was like, I need to make sure they know that I'm not drinking. So I would go to the bartender, right? Right when I get there, I'm like, hey, can I order a milk? He's like, what? I'm like, can I order a milk? Like, you want milk? I'm like, yeah. I mean, he's like, why do you want a milk? I'm like, because if you give me a Sprite, everyone's gonna think I'm drinking, I don't even know, Colt 45 vodka. I don't even know what those things are. I'm like, if I got milk, they know I'm not drinking anything. And so like that. And the most cool is like, it was the best icebreaker ever. Everyone kind of be like, are you drinking milk? I'm like, yeah. Like, what? I'm like, yeah, I'm Mormon, I don't drink. Like, but you're drinking milk? Yeah. And then what was cool, this is the big secret if anyone wants to know. Throughout the night, the more drunk they got, the more stuff they just gave me. Like, we became like, they're telling me all their secrets, all their best stuff, it was like insane, right? And then at that time when they're like half there, I'm like, hey, what's your Yahoo Messenger? Right? Oh, here it is. Sweet man, I'll message you next week. Right, so I'm getting all these deals. And so I start building this network of people, I'm like, all business is is a network of people. The better relationship I have with these people, the more money I'm gonna make. And that's exactly what happened, okay? And so what happened is then, again, I'd promote him, he'd promote me, and like, that's how this whole thing started growing. Okay, and it was great, that was the season for a little while. But then what happened, over time, over time we started thinking like, how do we be more creative? 'Cause like, I can promote Mike, Mike can promote me, that's great. I was like, how do we do actual collabs? What's the next level of this? What's the evolution of business? Instead of me just, us cross-promoting, What's the next evolution? How do we do this? And so we started playing with a couple different ideas. Was like, what if we created a product together that we both own? So instead of just like, here's Russell's product, here's Mike's product, what if we got to, we came together, did a joint venture collaboration with each other, what if we created a co-branded product? Create a co-branded product and it's got Mike's face on it, it's got my face on it, right? We sell this product and then we both promote it. What happens is like, Now Russell is promoting Russell, Mike is promoting Mike, so the conversions go up because our lists know who we are, and so more people buy because of that, which is exciting, right? But then they come in here, and we have this co-brand product where we're teaching together, and all of a sudden like my credibility bleeds on Mike, Mike's credibility bleeds on mine, and like we both like look bigger in the eyes of our audience. We teach them stuff, and then when people buy this, we both get the customers, and we both get the money, we split 50/50, and this becomes like, this becomes the thing to do, right?. And so we started doing that. In fact, I found one this morning on the Wayback Machine, if my team can pull it up. This is one of the ones that Mike and I did back in the day. It was called Pre-Launch Secrets. Can we pull in the big one too, hopefully? There. So this is the co-branded product we did in 2000, October 20th, 2005. So I was 25 years old when this one came out. And so it's Mike Filsaime and Russell Brunson's Pre-Launch Secrets. If you scroll up a little bit, you'll see this is the product we put together. And basically it was a teleseminar where Mike and I called each other and I did a bunch of successful, he'd done a bunch of successful product launches, I had a bunch of successful product launches, and so we just interviewed each other about like, how'd you do this one, what'd you do, what was the step-by-step process? This is before anyone was saying the word funnel, but basically here's the funnels I did for all these different campaigns and these things, and then Mike went through all the what-his, I think we spent like 3 hours on the phone of us going back and forth just talking about this one niche, very specific topic, which was like how to do a pre-launch. We put it together, okay, I think you can pull it down now. I put together the Pre-Launch Secrets, I froze my list, Mike froze his list, and all of a sudden a bunch of people start buying it, and then people start messaging us, that product looks awesome, can I promote it? All these guys, who see it like, can we promote it? Like, yeah, you can promote it. So then they're promoting it, they're promoting it, everyone's promoting it, and we're making, it's like blows up, right? Making a bunch of money, and it was cool for me, Mike and I, when someone bought, we both got the lead, right? And we split the money 50/50. And then affiliates promoted and split the money. And it was insane, okay? It got so exciting. And so then I started like, who else can I do partnerships with? And so I started creating products with a lot of other people. I did products with a guy named Jeremy Burns, I did a product with Gary Ambrose, I did a product, we started doing these co-branded products together, it was so fun, right? And each co-branded product was interesting because what we would do is we would figure out, like what's like, what's a specific thing, like we're not creating these huge coaching programs and big courses and stuff, it's like, what's like one really interesting unique topic we can talk about, a pre-launch, okay? Mike had one called, that he did, it was called Fire Cell Secrets, like how to do a fire cell. We had all these different things, so like we picked one topic, we co-brand a product together, and it became a front end for us, right? We both promote this thing, and we both get money split out, and it was amazing. And then other affiliates thought they wanted to promote it, and so it just became this thing. And then what would happen is that each of Mike and I both had our own business in the back, right? So then I would get the customer, I'd get the customers, I get things, and I'd sell my customers my product, Mike sold his customers his product, and so this became this front end where we introduced each other's audiences together, we both make a bunch of money, right? But then we get the customers' leads, and then we can sell them stuff on our own behind the scenes. And that's kind of how we started playing business back in the day. And then for me, I was like, this is the secret. It's just collaborations. How do we create things together? It doesn't have to be Russell Brunson's this, Russell Brunson's this. We've created more things together as a community, as partners, right? And for the next decade of my business, that's what we did over and over and over again. Now, interesting fact, Mike's gonna be here this week, I believe, and he's gonna be speaking. So you have a chance to hear from him. But back at this time when we were doing this whole thing, Mike and one of his business partners had an idea for a concept. I think they called it the Upsell Network. What if we create something? 'Cause right now we've got, Russell's got his product, Gary's got his, he's got his, everyone's got these different products, right? We have co-branded products we're making together. What if there was a way we could create a marketplace where everyone would upload their offers together? And then what I could do is I could build a funnel really easy, where I could have my product on the front end, I could have his as upsell 1, his as upsell 2, and this as upsell 3, right? We could just glue together something, and then what's cool is like everyone's involved in this funnel, everybody promotes it 'cause everybody wins, right? When someone buys, Russell gets his money, This person gets their money, and everyone gets the leads along the way, and like we all win together, right? And so Mike tried to build this thing, again I think it was called the Upsell Network, and they tried to build it, and technically they ran into hurdles where it technically wasn't possible, but he planted the seed, and I remember this is again 2005, 2006, this is man, 20 years ago, is when he kind of planted that idea, and they tried to build it and didn't end up working out, and you know, I don't remember what happened to the project, but it kind of died, and But I was thinking like, that's the coolest thing. 'Cause right now for me to build a funnel, I've gotta go and build every single step inside the funnel. I create 30 different offers, I have to create everything. And then I'm in the silo by myself, and then the only person who cares about that funnel's success is me. Right? Versus this way was different. It's like, okay, we have a co-branded product here, this guy's upsell this, and now a lot of people are incentivized. And it was essential back then, because I didn't have the ability to go to the one partner, who seemed so nice to all of us before he screwed us, this guy, I didn't have the ability to go to him and be like, hey man, try an ad. He wasn't there, so I had to find other partners who it was also in their best interest I succeed as well. So I logged in there, and so I put some together, like, hey, I'm gonna promote, you're gonna promote, and we set up these deals and these partnerships, and everyone would promote something at the same time, everyone got sold stuff in the funnel, everyone had a chance to make money, and it was insane, okay? So again, Mike tried to build an upsell network, technically wasn't able to happen, but I remember always thinking like, if we had that, it would make this like so much more fun, so much easier, and so, and that was again 20, man, almost 20 years ago. Okay, and then fast forward a few years later, Facebook comes out, ads start working, and then everybody just kind of shifted. Everyone stopped working with partners and just had one partner, right? Everyone started moving from this collaborative thing where we're literally on Yahoo Messenger 8, 10 hours a day, like, and then it moved to Skype eventually when Skype came out, like, oh, we're cool, we're in Skype, what's your Skype handle? That was the next cool thing to be. In fact, I still have people to this day that I only contact acted through Skype until they shut down last week, or 2 weeks ago, whatever it was. I had no idea how to get ahold of them now, because I only had their Skype. It kind of sucks, I should've, I wish they would've warned us, like contact, like hey man, what's your real email? What's your name again? But that's where these deals were happening, right? And for me it was weird because we shifted from like, how do we collaborate, how do we create co-brand stuff, how do we co-create stuff, how do we create upsells and downsells, how do we all win together, to this thing of like everyone just kind of went in silos, everyone focused on their own funnels, and then nobody else was involved, it was just them, and hopefully Zuckerberg wouldn't screw them too bad, and hopefully they could figure out the math and numbers, and that was business for the next, the last 10 years. And there were times it was amazing, times it was down, up and down, up and down. And you see the cycles, you see where for a little while Facebook, or one of the platforms, introduced a new feature, like groups, or they introduced fan pages, they want everyone to be successful, or going Facebook Live, and so they make it free for a little bit, right? And they reward you, so I remember Facebook Live first came out, I would open my Facebook Live, I'd click live on Facebook Live, you guys remember the good old days? I click live, within 30 seconds 3,000 people were on, I'm like, what's up 3,000 people? Buy my crap! And it was amazing, they would go buy it. Today, I've got over a million followers on Facebook, when I go live on Facebook Live, I go Facebook Live, guess how many people show up? 12? 13? So there's peaks, where they're like, we're gonna get everyone addicted to the next drug, which is Facebook Live, everyone move off every other platform, come to us. And so they addict you, they give you these amazing things, and it's like, this is the greatest thing in the world. And then Zuckerberg's like, ha, I got you all, boom, and then it just disappears, right? Organics, like I made a video, went viral, this is insane, oh, and everyone's getting addicted to it, and he's like, now you gotta pay for reach, and it just dies, right? And so there's these ebbs and flows, and ebbs and flows, and so I've been watching this for 25 years now, the ebbs and the flows, and the only thing that never had ebbs and flows was this, right? Everyone has their own distribution channel. Everyone's got their own part, even when they're small. Mine started with 200 people, right? Then Mike promoted, it got to like 400 people, and then 800 people, and then 1,000, and eventually it's over 1,000 people to 5,000 to 10,000 to 100,000, right? And my status started growing, my following started growing, and it was all about this. We didn't have any ads. I literally did not run the first ad in my business until we were 2 years into ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels had over $10 million before we bought our first ad. How did you build ClickFunnels to $10 million a year without any ads, Russell? I looked back in the past. I was like, these people all have my dream customers. I can go to Zuckerberg and pay him a premium, or I could just go to them and do partnerships. And so Mike Filsaime was one of my very first partners in ClickFunnels. He did an event, he let me come speak at the event, and we spoke and we sold it. And then I gave him half the money, I kept half the money. And then he did a webinar later and he promoted ClickFunnels. He promoted it, sold a ton of people, I gave him half the money, he gave me half the money, we both won. And ClickFunnels grew, and I went to the next person, and the next person, and I was on Skype hitting up everybody, what's up? Yahoo Messenger is still there, and the save name was there, hitting up everybody, and all I did for the first 2 years of ClickFunnels before we bought our very first ad was just this. We just went and found people, and the coolest thing about this, when you do partnerships, okay, this is the get-go, this is the way you have to understand this. Zuckerberg, you pay him upfront whether you make money or not, right? Does that seem fair to you guys? I could send you crap traffic, doesn't matter, you still gotta pay me for it. With these guys, like when I did a partnership, when Mike did the webinar to promote ClickFunnels, he didn't, I didn't pay him upfront. It was a partnership, we're both hoping this is gonna work. So he was invested in it working, I was invested. We sat down, we talked about it, we figured it out, we did a promotion together. People went on there on the webinar, I sold, he was invested in it being successful, he gave his own bonuses, we got more people to buy, we figured this thing out. And we sold a bunch of stuff. And then after we collected the money and all the refunds were done, then I took half the money and gave it to him, and we both won. So there's no risk, right? Like, I would have been successful in business back when I was 21 years old because the risk would have been too high if I had to go pitch to Zuckerberg. So many people in my world are like, okay, I got my thing, I'm gonna buy ads. I'm like, oh, why would you buy ads? Like, you're now like in this deficit immediately from day number 1 of risking money that you do not have to be successful. And how long do you got? $1,000, $5,000 to be running ad money? Like, go get $10 million before you run ads by doing this. Find partners, collaborate. That's the game. That's like, that's how everybody should be thinking about business differently. Okay, because it's not gonna get cheaper, it's not gonna get easier. There'll be things that get you addicted for a few minutes, they take it away, and they addict you and they'll take it away. And this is gonna keep happening at every single platform. TikTok, Instagram, like the next one's coming out soon. Like, it doesn't matter, they're all gonna go through these ebbs and flows. Okay, the thing that's consistent, they'll give you security and safety in your business today, tomorrow, and forever is this. Okay, like if Facebook gets shut down, TikTok is— whatever they're trying to do, I don't know, politically, whatever to shut down TikTok, those things all disappeared, it wouldn't matter because I still have my list. Mike's still got his, they've got his, like everyone still has their stuff, right? And so understand that's like, I should be, I should probably be putting a little more time and effort into these relationships because 'Cause business has nothing to do with math and algorithms and creative and copy and all that crap. Business is relationships. That's it. I used to tell people all the time, like, if I lost everything today, and everything, if I lost all my money, my company, my business, my brand, it disappeared, I was like, it would take me less than 30 days to be a millionaire again. Like, what? I'm like, 30 days, easy, that's all it would take. Like, how? Jump on Skype. What's up, man? You wanna create a product together? Cool, I'll promote to my people, you promote to your people, and split the money, sweet. Hey man, what's up? That's it, that's the game. Okay, so I wanted to share that, 'cause again, your guys' success in the future is gonna depend on your understanding of the past, and most of you guys weren't there. So old man Russell's here to give you that history lesson, okay? If you start thinking about business differently, stop getting out of this silo where you've got one partner and he hates you, and he wants to take all your money, to the thought we have a lot of partners who actually care about your success, who actually want you to be successful, who you can co-create with, you can create amazing things, you can serve your customers at a different level. If you start thinking about business differently, it changes everything. The coolest thing about OfferLab, when we came back and we built this platform, the goal was like, how do we make this process easy? Because I've explained this in the past, like here's how to make, to do partnerships and JVs and stuff, and I try to explain it and then everyone just messes up, like ah, I'm just gonna go back to Zuckerberg. Like why, he's the worst, he doesn't even like you, he wants you to fail. He made you put pixels on his page so he could take all the money. Like, that's what he does, right? Instead of finding partners. And so we built a platform. You guys have probably been in the platform. If not, it's free. Go to offerlab.com, create a free account. This is what the platform looks like. Okay? Over here, there's this little thing called inbox. Okay? I want you to think inbox equals 2000 Yahoo Messenger or 2000— when did Skype come out? 2005 Skype. This is your new Skype. This is where the deals are happening. Okay, I know I requested to promote a lot of people's products, and guess what? Most people didn't log in their inbox. I'm like, there's Russell Brunson asking to promote your product, and you're like, you didn't look at your inbox. That's like me Skyping, hey man, can I promote your stuff? Hey man, I wanna promote your stuff. Hey, I wanna promote your stuff. And like, nobody's like, are you insane? For me, this was how I made money back in the day. I would open my computer, open up Skype and Yahoo Messenger, and that's how I made money. That was it. Like every day you should be logging into OfferLab and all you should be doing is like, okay, inbox, this is where the partnerships happen, okay? This is where people contact you, hey, can I promote your crap? Yeah, you can, but if you're not paying attention, you're missing it, okay? How many of you guys have logged into your OfferLab account this morning so far? Okay, if you haven't, there's probably people in there that wanna work with you. Like go find those, like dialogue, communication. Introverts, I built this for you. You don't have to go to an event, you don't have to be carrying glasses of milk to the bar like I do, automated. You literally can just log in right here and the people are already there for you. I did it all for you. I built this for me so I don't have to talk to people face to face. It's the best thing in the world. Okay, it's the best. So this is your, your Yahoo Messenger, your Skype. That's what the inbox is. So make sure you log in every single day to OfferLab and go in there. Okay, now obviously you want people to contact you, but if you want to be successful, you got to contact people as well. So the cool thing is on the platform, you click on the marketplace, there's all these cool offers in here. These are all people who are like you, who are saying, hey, I hate Zuckerberg and I want to do partnerships. Everyone in the marketplace, that's them. They're all here to do partnerships. So you don't have to be nervous like, oh, what if I annoy them? Like, no, annoy them. They want to be annoyed. So you message this person like, hey man, your product's sick. Can I promote it? They say yes. And all of a sudden it creates a dialogue in here and you're like, hey, this is awesome. I want to promote it. I'm going to put it for upsell number 1. Hey, what if we did a co-branded product together? I love how you do this. I do this. What if we create a product together? We put it on an offline platform together. Like, oh yeah, it's awesome. Like all the collaboration, the partnerships here. Like I brought all the people in one spot. Everyone who understands this game is here. I'm training, educating you guys all on this game, right? So all the offers here on the platform. So your job is to come to the platform, find these offers that are congruent, you contact the offer and start building relationships, okay? When you have other people that maybe aren't on the platform yet, go to them like, hey, I wanna do a partnership, let's do a collab together. Let's create a co-branded product together and let's put it on OfferLab. That way we can promote it, other people can promote it, okay? The coolest thing about this, this is something I always wanted to do back in the day but we never could do, but now with OfferLab you can. Let's say Mike and I did a new project together, right? So we create Pre-Launch Secrets 2.0. How many of you guys have bought Pre-Launch Secrets 2.0 now? A couple of you guys have bought it? Freaking like, I've done a lot of pre-launches since then. So, Pre-Launch Secrets 2.0, right? So let's just say, like imagine this, I message Mike through, I'm like, hey man, let's go back to 2005, let's create 2.0 of Pre-Launch Secrets, it'll be sick, right? So we create Pre-Launch Secrets, right? It's got Russell's face on it, it's got Mike's face on it. And what's cool about this is we can create two funnels. Okay, so Mike creates his version of funnel, Russ creates his version of funnel, but the front end product's the same, right? So then Mike's gonna promote his list here, then Mike may be like, hey, this is the cool thing, I get to co-brand with Russell, so I get the credibility from him, I get to co-brand with Mike, I get credibility from him, right? But what's cool about this is like, I have my own products I wanna sell, so what if on my version, after someone buys Freelance Secrets, then I go and sell Selling Online? This is my product that I wanna sell, right? And Mike'd be like, hey, I don't wanna do that, I wanna sell Groove, right? And so that's his product, so he can sell his, and then we can both promote this front end product, But then I can upsell the things that I want to upsell. He can upsell things he wants to upsell, right? We still both get the customers, split the money, everything else. But now we can do that. And then you guys as affiliates can be like, this is awesome. Russell, my kid, this new product is amazing. I want to promote it, but you know, I have my product. I'm going to put my other things upsell. And then someone else can promote my product, but they put their upsell. So now they're incentivized for being successful. Now it's like we're all making money because we can do whatever we want. You guys getting this? This all making sense? Okay. There's so many, like, thank you. Like if you start thinking about business a little bit differently, guys, like this, it's gonna change everything for you. Like it literally, there's so many ways to leverage this and have fun on OfferLab and actually be successful with this. And so I just wanted today, this morning, before all of our other amazing speakers here, just like to kick this off and get the wheels spinning, okay? Again, your success in the future is gonna take your understanding of the past, 'cause the past is how we're gonna win the game in the future, okay? And that's what it is. And so we built OfferLab literally for you guys to be able to do it, to play the game, in a way that I wish I could have back, back when I was on Skype. Okay, this is it. Your inbox is your place. This is where you're networking. These are the offers here. These people start contacting, getting to know them, building relationships, building partnerships, collabing, doing partnerships together, adding an offer that's specific to you guys on the platform. Like there's so many cool, fun, easy, exciting ways to do this. And that's why we wanted to create this for you. So I'm hoping that you guys love the platform. I hope that it benefits you and your company, your business. I hope you build friendships, relationships, I think for me, looking back over the last 25 years in business, like of all the amazing things, like, the thing that's meant the most to me is the friendships I've built along the way. I mean, it's crazy, I've got people here that I've invited to be part of this, who I haven't seen in 10 years, and they flew out, in fact, some of them are gonna be here today or tomorrow that I haven't seen in 10 years. These guys I met on Yahoo Messenger back in the day, and I was doing the same, hey, would you wanna come and just talk about how you do offers? Like, yeah, man, and they flew out on their own dime to be here. Like partnerships, relationships. This is what makes the game fun. So many of us become cynical because like I got to build the funnel and conversions and optimizations and ads and twists and all that kind of stuff. And I understand that part of the game. We still got to play it if we want to grow over on the platforms. But the reality is like there's a simpler way to do it, a more fun way, a way that builds relationships and friendships and connection, a way to get you out of your silo of selling alone and brings it back together. And the more we do that here on the OfferLab platform, the more success we're all going to have together. That was our gift to you guys, is creating this platform for you, for me, for everybody to be able to do more partnerships, have more collaboration, and it's gonna be awesome. So that's what I had prepared for you guys this morning. I hope you guys enjoyed that, got some value from it. That was your history lesson from old man Russell Brunson, taking you guys back to when I was 21 years old, and that's how we played the game. And I hope that hopefully it was valuable for you guys. All right, I hope you enjoyed that session and you got a lot of value from it. Hopefully you're starting to learn more and more about how you can use OfferLab to grow your business, to make more money, to have more more fun, have more collaborations. I will see you guys on the next episode. We'll go even deeper into OfferLab and how you can use it for your business.