Russell Brunson: How To Build a Mass Movement

Again, blows my mind. If anyone ever got this, that would be a huge success.

Russell is the co-founder of ClickFunnels, which grew to over 100,000 users without a dollar of outside funding.

Movement comes when the guide comes in and basically says, "This doesn't work anymore. It's over. Like, here's the new thing." That's what gets people to move and to mobilize. There's something new.

Russell Brunson spent years studying every major movement in history, religion, politics, and corporate. 5,000 of them show up to his live events every year, some with his logo tattooed on their arm.

Every single one of the movements they all have 3 core things that were essential for the movement to actually happen. The first is there's a person, a guide, and I call this like the attractive character. Number 2, the guide offered people what I call new opportunity. And the third thing is—

Yeah, I love that. In this episode, Russell walks through the framework that he used to build the movement that makes people stop thinking of themselves as customers and start thinking of themselves as part of something bigger.

This is one of the things like, I wish that somebody would've told me this when I first got started in my business. If I could start it from scratch now, I would not have—

Russell, I'm so excited to have you on.

I'm excited to be here too, man.

All right, so we're gonna teach you about how to turn followers into a movement. Give people a taste of what it's looked like in your life and business to build movements at scale.

Yeah, so for me, it's funny, um, the first time I ever thought about this was before I launched, uh, my company ClickFunnels. And I actually was at a, a network marketing event and I was sitting in this room and there's like 5 or 6,000 people and I was watching something that didn't make any sense to me. All these people were getting on stage and they're talking and they're crying, and I was kind of confused. And I'm sitting here for like 3 days of this event watching it, waiting for them to teach content, and none of that was happening. And the guy sitting next to me, his name's David Fry. David, he kind of nudged me. He's like, do you, do you see what they're doing? I'm like, no, I have no idea what's happening here. And he is like, they didn't build a company, they built a movement. I remember saying that and I was like, it just clicked in my head. I was like, oh my gosh, like all these people here feel part of this company. It wasn't like there's me and there's this company. Like they felt like they were part of this, this thing. And, uh, about the time is when we were building ClickFunnels. I remember thinking like, my company is software, which by itself software's kind of boring.

And like, yeah, it's like sterile.

Yeah. Then maybe they're gonna use it and it's a tool and they'll be happy about it. But I was like, I wanna create what they did. How do you actually create a movement where, again, it's not my company or my software, but like, this is our, this is our community. This is our soft, you know, like making it something bigger.. And so I started trying to study like, okay, all the movements throughout time that, that had success, right? And I was looking at like, uh, at like religious movements and look at those and I look at like political movements. I looked at businesses and, and then I looked at like really negative, like how do cults and, and like, you know, things that normally I wouldn't have looked at, like how do they do it? And I, I started looking at it and over time I saw like they all had a very similar pattern. And so when we started building ClickFunnels, I started like just doing some of these things. And so we'll map out what those things all are. Had a big impact. And I look at, you know, ClickFunnels now a decade later, like we've got, you know, 100,000+ people on our platform. We've got, we do events, we get 5,000, 6,000 people to show up. People showing up like with our logos tattooed. We got people going crazy. Like, like people where it's like they're part of this thing, right? Yeah. They call themselves, they have their own names, they call themselves Funnel Hackers. And it's like, it's so much different than just like, I have a software company that you could use if you want to, you know? And so for me, like my focus, you know, I have a business partner that focuses on software and I focus on like how do we build this community and this tribe Where it's where people feel like they're part of what we're doing, not, you know, just a, just a, a follower or an influencer. Like it's, it's like something more special. So that's kind of what it is and it's changed everything. We've made, you know, built a huge company because of it, huge community, and, uh, had a chance to serve tons of people because of it.

Yeah. That's amazing. And so I think we make it relevant for someone who's maybe at like half a million a year in revenue and they're really earning an incredible living as an educator. But then they're saying, hey, I wanna take this to a much bigger scale. Like, how do you think about, about that?

Yeah. Well, that's what this whole thing's about because again, it's, it's like, and I see this all the time, people that are creators or they're building courses or coaching, whatever. And it's like, it's almost like teacher-student, like that's the, the relationship, right? Where it's like, I'm learning from this person. And the, the shifting from the movement is like, is like, it's no longer like this relationship where I'm gonna teach you something, but it's like, like you're part of this community. And you can think about like, in, I think everyone in their life, there's certain like movements that they're part of. Like I was a wrestler growing up and there's definitely like, there's wrestlers like, this is who we are. And then, you know, my faith, like we're like, there's like, we're these kind of people. And like, and it's like, if you look at those areas of your life, think about how you look at it differently. Like I don't, like, yes, there's my wrestling coach and these, these guys who I look up to in the wrestling world, but like, I'm a wrestler. That's who I am. This is my identity. And like, and it's like, that's the shift. You don't want people looking at you as like, oh, this is just my coach or my educator because eventually there's another coach comes along or a different educator or something like that. And so you can make a good living. But when you start shifting this where like these become your people and it's your like bigger than that, that's when it gives you the ability to grow faster and better. Not necessarily like by just buying ads, but by this community that grows organically because of who the people are.

I love that. I'm in. Let's dive in.

How do we? All right.

What goes into this? You've got a pyramid here.

We got a pyramid. This is not a pyramid scheme, I swear.

Uh, but there we, we have a triangle.

Yeah, we have a triangle. It's, it's a triangle. Okay. So when I was going through all these things, again, I was studying all these different groups from religious movements to businesses, everything. Uh, when I started doing this, I started mapping out like the pattern and I saw that every single one of the movements throughout time that we're aware of, that we can see and we can study, they all have 3 core things that were essential for the movement to actually happen. So the first one, if you wanna draw the first one, the first is there's like, uh, a person, a guide, like there's, okay.

Um, it might mean, can I do it? Just do a stick figure. Just make a stick figure. Yeah. Okay. I love stick figures.

Um, in my community I call these the attractive character. So it's like, it's the person interacting with the audience, right?

Okay.

Um, you don't see big movements that don't have a head. They're just not there. Like there's always, you look at Apple, there's Steve Jobs. Like we know who that person is. Like there's, he's like someone we're looking at, we're following. Like there, there's always kind of that, that person. Um, and so again, I call this like the attractive character or the guide or whatever you wanna call it. And my guess is most of the people who again are half a million dollars a year, Uh, in business, this is probably what the core thing that we're actually really good at. Like, I, I'm an influencer, I got a following, I'm a guide, I'm taking people on a journey, I'm helping 'em. And so that's kind of the first core element that all of them had. Um, and again, think about religious movements. Like every major religion, there's a person, you know, you got, you got Christ, you got Muhammad, you got, uh, you know, whatever it is that there's always somebody that's at the front of it. Business the same way, cults the same way. Like, yep, there's always a guide.

It's like a, it's a universal thing. Yeah. And you just accept it.

And yeah. And it's for humans cuz it's like we connect with somebody. And so there's always like the leader of the movement and usually the guide, like there, there's like, they have their origin story. They've got, there's, there's things like people connect with that like draw them and get people to kind of follow the guide.

Okay. Okay.

So that's the first one. Number 2, the next thing that, um, that every single mass movement offered is they didn't offer, a lot of people create offers to people and they, they create, uh, what we call an improvement offer. Like I'm gonna help you be better or faster or stronger. And no movement led with an improvement offer. Um, every single, uh, movement throughout time in history, the guide offered people what I call new opportunity.

Okay.

If you wanna draw a little dude there and have him like holding out something like, uh, on a, on a silver platter. So this is what's, this is like probably the one that's, um, um, the most confusing for people when I explain this, but it's like one of the most essentials. Like you think about Steve Jobs, when Steve Jobs came and he's building Apple, so he's the guy that everyone's following in.

Yep. And this is a new opportunity.

Yes. New opportunity. Like when he came out, he didn't come to his audience and be like, all right everybody, you know, I created a CD that doesn't hold 12 songs, it holds 50 songs. Like that would be an improvement offer. Yeah. And people are like, okay. You know, instead he comes there, he gets in front of everybody, all the share shareholders, the streaming, everyone. He's like, hey guys, you know, this is a CD. It holds 12 things. He's like, we don't use this anymore. And out of his back pocket pulls out The iPod, boom, you got 1,000. Like it's not a better version of CD, it's completely new opportunity. Mm-hmm. Right? Same thing with the phone. When he did the iPhone, it was, it was not like this is the better phone. This is like, okay, this is all these things and it's, it's a new opportunity. And so a lot of times, especially in the creator economy, a lot of times I see guides and they're trying to teach somebody like, here's a better way to do the thing. And I think one, one of the problems is that's, that's how business was taught forever. Like when I was in college, I remember a business class, they're like, uh, if you wanna be successful, you gotta just build a better mousetrap. Like that's what they taught everybody.

It's 10% better. Sweet.

Great.

Yes.

Go and sell it. Yeah. And, but you look at movements are never created on that, right? They, in fact, one of the books, there's a book called The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, which is about mass movements. And he talked about how like, look at the way that governments and, and even businesses work. Like you, you, you started at this level and you slowly start sending up and you start moving to better positions over time. He's like, that's not how movements are born. The movement comes when the guide comes in and basically says, this doesn't work anymore. It's over. Like, here's the new thing. And that's what gets people to move and to mobilize. There's something new. Like when we came to, to ClickFunnels and we launched it, I wasn't coming back and like, here's a better way to build a website. Here's a faster way to make a website. I was like, websites are the worst thing in the world. They're dead to me. Right? This is the future. It's called a funnel. Like, what's a funnel? They don't even know what it is. And they plug in cuz people love new. They want, they want that's what gets people to actually move.

And you gave them the tagline and the wording and all of that where someone said like, yeah, I'm gonna build a website for my— and someone in your community could be like, why would you do that?

Yeah.

That's so 5 years ago.

Like 8-tracks. I got an iPod now. Like, why would I do— like, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So those are the first 2 things. So there's the guide, there's new opportunity. And the 3rd thing is the guide is always offering what's called a future-based cause. Okay. So yeah, if you have somebody there, um, we could have them preaching or actually just looking into the future, uh, thinking about where they're going. So, um, it's interesting when I was writing this, uh, this is a couple political elections ago when I was first starting studying this. I remember I was writing this and I was trying to like, I had identified the future-based cause and I was trying to think like, what's some examples I can share? And at the time, uh, I was working on this on my computer and my TV was on on the side, but the, the sound was all the way down. And it was during the elections. And I'm not a political person, so I'm not trying to get political, but I looked over and it was, uh, Hillary and Trump were the two on the thing. Mm-hmm. And no sound was on, but I'm looking at it and I was like, really interesting. So I look over and I see the campaign slogan signs behind their heads during the debate. And, um, and I look at it and Hillary's was very present-based. I think it was like, I'm with her, or there's a couple things like that. Mm-hmm. I was like, interesting. That's like a, that's a very present-based thing. And then I looked at, uh, I looked at Trump's and it was like, whatever, the Make America, whatever. It was like a future-based cause.

Yeah.

I was like, I wonder if this holds true, like backwards in time. So I went to Wikipedia, I was like, presidential elections from the history of time. And so I went back and I started going and I was looking back, I looked at Obama and Obama, his was like change. Like talking about his future-based cause versus, again, about political, who was he running against? Bush or whoever, whoever the other one was, was like, yeah.

And now I can't even think. It shows how much we care about it.

Flame us in the comments. We don't even know. Um, but I found that one and I went back and I went back every single election back to the year I was born, 1980. And every single one, it was crazy. I had the, the campaign slogans and the winner 100% of the time ran on a future-based cause and the loser always had a present-based cause. And so if you're, if you're coming to your audience in your movement, you're like, hey, things are awesome here. It's gonna be great. Like that does not get people to move, right? It's this moving, like, this is like, this is where we're going. Like painting a vision, casting a vision for people and showing them what's possible and where they're going is the transition, right? Like when we started again launching ClickFunnels, like the future-based cause I started talking about was, was like helping people understand like, um, like wherever they are in their life, like we're trying to get you over here.

Like, uh, that was the, your one funnel away. Yeah.

Your one funnel away was, was the thing where it's like, this is future-based cause. Like you're one funnel away. We come over here and it gives people like hope of something new. Um, because hope is what gets people again to move. Mm-hmm. And so when you have a business that incorporates these things, and my guess is for most people, they're probably doing at least one.

Yeah.

But most of 'em are here, maybe, maybe one and two. But when you have all three of 'em, like that's, that's the thing that creates actual movement where people are like, I'm going to leave the thing I'm doing now cuz I wanna be part of this. There's a, there's a clear vision of what this looks like. This is completely new, and this is the person I trust to take me on that journey. And those are the things that, that, that have all the things. So you can think about, again, if you think about any political movement, religious movement, whatever it is, you'll see it. Like, uh, for Christians, you think the guide, you've got Jesus Christ, new opportunity, right? He's like, the law of Moses is dead. Here's the new law. Boom. Your future-based cause. Like, like that's all that faith is, right? Right. Just future-based cause. Um,. But then you can look at it, you can look at really, really bad versions of this, right? Like, uh, Hitler in World War II. I was looking at it and I was like, you have Hitler, right? New opportunity. Like they're like, the German people are under oppression because of, uh, World War I, all these kind of things.

Yep. And, uh, economic conditions and all that. It was prime for him to come in. Yeah.

And he didn't come in and was like, hey, I'm gonna make this a little better. We're gonna like try to lower the taxes. He was like, no, this, what are the Treaty of Versailles? Rips it up. We're changing everything. This is the new, and like people rally behind this. Let's go. And it's like, this is where we're going. This is the future. And paints this vision and people started moving. And so these things can be used really negatively or positively.

Yeah. Which is always kind of scary. It's a very powerful tool.

Yeah.

And then we get to decide how we use it.

Yeah. So when, when you're building your company again, wherever you're at, it's like, okay, how do I start thinking about this differently? Like, how do I, what's the language I'm gonna use? Um, but how I'm introducing my opportunity, it's even interesting because, um, a new opportunity versus like an improvement offer, a lot of times the product doesn't change, just how you, how you position, how you, how you talk about it.

Right.

Because me saying ClickFunnels, like, hey, it's a website builder. It is. Yeah. And it's like, cool, that's a, it's a better website builder. Right. The, the keyword I always say if it's, if you tell something's improvement, if it has ER in it, like better, faster. Like when you try to pitch somebody in your product, yeah, it's better than, ah, you got improvement offer.

Like we're, we're just solidly in the 10% better.

Yeah. Or whatever. So it's like, it's all in just like the positioning and how you frame it of like, no, this is actually a new opportunity. And like this one seems like takes the longest for people to figure out, but when you figure that out and it clicks, I always think about new opportunity. It's the difference of like, let's say I'm selling a car. It's like, here's a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Like those are all cars, even though they're different. Like new opportunity is like, no, no, we're not gonna drive there. We're gonna jump in a plane. Like that's, it's a new opportunity. It's a different way to get the end result that someone's trying to get. So that's the core, the core pieces.

Okay. So what we've got here, the guide, that's the, the key player in here. I think every creator has that new opportunity. I wanna dive into that. Maybe with a specific example for a creator. And I think the future-based cause is so important of like, what are people aspiring to? And that's where, like, I am not a Trump fan at all, but like, you have to, from a marketing perspective, you have to look at like, Make America Great Again is such a good slogan, which he stole from Reagan, which I didn't know that till I was going through.

And that was Reagan's thing back in whatever it was. He literally, that was his thing.

Well, that's the other thing, like the number of times that throughout history that someone is just like, That works. I know.

Copy paste. I was running for politician. I would just look at the old ones like, oh, that was really good. Right?

And you're like, oh, it looks like we're running on Teddy Roosevelt's platform.

It worked before. It's gonna work again.

So if we make this really tangible for creators, what I'm thinking about is, does someone come to mind who implemented this? Whether like maybe before they were just, they were an educator and they, they switched into the guide mentality. And does anyone come to mind that?

Yeah. Um, I thought of, uh, there's a, uh, two guys in my space, um, Ryan Lee and Brad Gibb, and they're financial planners.

Okay.

Um, which is a very— I love those guys if they're listening. It's a boring business. Like, okay, then, you know, and they were like, how do we turn this into a movement? So again, they became the guides, they became these experts and they, they spent a lot of time developing themselves as that person. Right. Um, future-based cause. So over here they start thinking about like, what is the end result? Like why does somebody get financial planning? Mm-hmm. You know, and why do they want to go and buy insurance or whatever that thing is? Right. You think about like the end, the end goal. And a lot of people think, well, it's for stability, or it's because if they, whatever their thing might be, right? And they went, spent a lot of time on this and finally realized this, like the people that, of their customers who were putting money into, into their thing, what they actually wanted to do is they wanted to be free. Like they were very much, um, uh, like security driven. They wanted to be, have freedom. Like freedom was the, the core value that people had.

Mm-hmm.

So they built this whole future-based cause. It was like, live, uh, rise up and live free. So it wasn't like invest some money with us and whatever. It's like, no, right. Invest some money. Within 10 years you will be free. Like that's the future-based cause. We're gonna rise up. You're gonna become free, um, free from finances, from all that kind of stuff in 10 years or less. And so that became this future-based cause. Mm-hmm. So now they're like, you should invest with us. They're coming in saying, hey guys, you come with us, we're gonna build a plan within 10 years. The shackles are gone. Future-based cause. This is where we're going. Right. And people were so excited cuz it's like, I can see that.

Something that I'm noticing is these future-based causes tend to go abstract. Mm-hmm. Like as an educator, we're like, here's the concrete, here's the step-by-step. Right. And The, you know, rise up and live free. You're like, that could be about all kinds of things. Yeah. But so long as you, you like within finance, it makes perfect sense. Yeah.

Right. And usually it's interesting cuz like a lot of times you'll find this based on the value of the guide. Like what I found is true for at least for me and most people I work with is like, um, whoever the, the guide is, like the things, the values you have that are kind of out there are the reasons why people are attracted to you. Right. Um, and so I think a lot of the times, uh, when you, when you folks are like, Like what are the values of the guide? Those, those, your, your, your followers are gonna follow you for the same values, right? Like people that follow me, they follow me cuz they like my business ideas. They like the fact that I'm a family person. They like that I'm married. They like that I'm, uh, that I follow my faith. Like they, they fall based on similar values. Checking out what's the value that people are following me for. And then based on that, usually the future-based cost comes out of the value, right? It's like, this is the thing that means the most to me. Like for me, freedom wasn't my number one value. That's not why I'm in business. Otherwise I would've retired a decade ago. Right? Like for me it's creation. Like I love like I feel like what I do is a, is a calling from God. And so I, I tell people that. So my, a lot of my future-based college is just, is I'm explaining to people like, if you're, if you're drawn to this conversation, like I believe it's a calling from God and he wants you to change people's lives. You've been called to serve this group of people over here and that's what you gotta do. So like, because that's what I believe myself, I share that. And then that's why people come to me. 'Cause they're like, I feel the same way. Like I feel this, like this weird pull where I can, like, I don't know if I even wanna be in business,, but I know I need to help these people. And so I feel like it's a calling. And so I share that future-based cause with people. That's what connects them with me because it's a shared value I have with them. Mm-hmm. And I can build the future-based cause based on that.

The running, I love that. And I wrote down origin story as well, cuz you'd mentioned that, right? It ties in, you know, who are you? Like, don't try to become someone else.

Yeah.

You know, find those core attributes, your values, your origin story, all of that. Yeah. And you might choose things to amplify or say like, oh, actually that's a good part of it. I, I should tell people that.

I should tell more people this more often.

Yeah. Now if we, if we take the example of financial planners, how would you frame the new opportunity?

Yeah.

Within that.

Cool. So like if you look at core finance, like what financial planners are doing, they're all selling the same thing, right? It's like for the most part, it's like, here's insurance. Like this is what, this is what it is. So like when you go like, hey, we have insurance. And like, I, I hear I have friends are, I have every, my friends who does insurance pitches me out when I see them. So they're all like, oh, our company's better. We've been around for 150 years and blah, blah, blah. Oh, my company's better cuz we're newer and we can, you know, like That's all the, the things that they're always fighting.

Yeah.

Incremental. The reason, the reality is like, I don't care. Like I couldn't care if your company's been around for 150 years and whatever, even though like that's the thing they're driving down on. So look at Brad and Ryan when they built their future-based cause, they never talk about insurance. Like I didn't even know, like I invested all my money with them. And so what they brought to me was a vehicle that got the future-based cause. Like, hey, we have a process and a system. Um, and they honestly, they kind of explained it, but I didn't even want to know it. I just, I wanted this, right? Yeah. And so they came in and said, this is the way we do it. And there's a process. And so they have like, uh, they had their system and their whatever. But I don't remember off the top of my head exactly what they called it. But that's what it was. And when you look at like the mechanic, you open up, it's like, okay, you're going to invest in insurance. And then from there we're pulling money out and we're going to put it into real estate. And then there's this whole like their unique mechanism they went and created, right? And they had a unique name for it and unique framework and that kind of stuff. And so that was the opportunity. Like you can invest in insurance with every other financial planner or with us you get the— ah, they're going to kill me watching this. Like I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but but it's something that they package unique. And yes, insurance is a piece of it, but it's a whole process. It's a whole step-by-step thing that walks them through everything, right? Where it's different, it's unique, it's not the same thing everybody else is doing.

Hey, so I got a comment the other day, which was, what do you actually do? They'd been listening to the show for a while, been enjoying the content about growing a creator business, but didn't understand what I do. And they thought maybe you're a full-time podcaster. They didn't realize that this is the side hustle. My main thing is building Kit. Kit is an email marketing platform for creators. I think one of the groups that should really pay attention to and start using Kit is anyone who's grown a lot on social but doesn't own that audience. Kit is built for the creators who mean business. So those are the people who have gotten a bunch of attention on social and then turned it into a sustainable business with a diversified revenue stream, automations, a team, and more. So if that's you or you want to become that type of creator, go check out kit.com and learn what we can do for you. I think the big thing that stands out to me is that it's, it's not incremental. Yeah. And so I think it's a great call out when you're Putting your offer together of looking for that, the ER, right? Better, faster, stronger, whatever. Yeah. Um, that, that's not what we're going for. Transformational. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

I like that. Those are core pieces. And like I said, they're so simple when you hear 'em, right?

Yeah.

It's really, really simple. But most when they talk about it, it's like they never share this stuff with people. They're just selling the better version of what everybody else is trying to make a better mousetrap. And so because of that, they get stuck at a couple hundred grand a year versus like, how do you get it where people plug in this? And all of a sudden, like They're sharing the future-based calls with the people. Yeah. Like, hey, I'm one funnel away. Hey, I'm gonna rise up and live free. They're telling their friends like, hey, I'm, I met these guys and they're helping me to like, to like live free in 10 years. So I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be debt free. Right. Like that's the, that's the message that gets amplified. Right. Uh, that's the one where they're at a party with their friends and, and they're telling like, oh, I met this, I, I, I follow this guy and he's got this thing and I'm, you know, and like that's what, that's what creates that like the viral rip, like the viral effect, whatever you wanna call it, that it creates a movement. Cuz if you try to, You try to rely 100% on your own efforts to grow movement, it's hard to grow, right? If you try to do 100% based on ads, it's gonna be really hard. It's like really identifying and figuring that out is then when people come in and then how you make it spread.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things like your ultimate product has to be good. 100%. Right. And we have to be creating a transformation in people. But there's so many things, like there's so many fundamentals in life that you have to get right. Mm-hmm. That you can help people with any one part of this, like, you know, whether it's their finances their fitness, relationships, any of those things, like you can get them into a pretty incredible future-based state that they would love to tell all their friends about.

Yeah.

Um, and you just have to package it correctly.

And then especially when they start getting some success with the product you're offering 'em, and then people are like, what are you doing? Like, well, you know, versus like, oh, I have this, uh, I'm doing financial planning. Like, oh, I know what a financial planner is. And it just dies versus like, you know, I'm gonna be, I'm 3 years in, I'm gonna be 10 years, I'm gonna be definitely like, how did you do that? Tell me how you did it. I got this guy. Boom, boom, boom, brings him in.

Yep. I like that. I'm going to put transformational here. That sounds good. Transformational is too long, so we want to transform.

We're just going— we're transforming.

That's a new opportunity. Okay. This is fantastic. Now you have other things drawn right here. Yes. We've got a podium. We've got a stair set.

All sorts of really cool stuff.

Where are we going here?

Okay. So Again, this is the core, like, underlining premise of the entire thing. Like, again, as I was studying stuff before we built ClickFunnels, I'm like, okay, these are the core things I'm gonna be weaving in. But then there's like the tactic, like, well, how do you, how and where do these things right start showing up? Right. Um, okay. We both draw on doodles. Do you wanna draw a dude right here? I'll draw a dude right here.

All right. So we've got a customer right here.

Not just any customer though. This is like your dream customer. So the dream customer, he's gonna have blue hair, I think.

I like it.

But, uh, This is one of the things like, I wish that somebody would've told me this when I first got started in my business. I remember I was probably, man, 4 or 5 years into my business and one, one morning I woke up, I was laying in bed. I remember laying there and I was like, I wish I had a boss so they could fire me. Like if I didn't go in the office today, but I didn't.

It was me. Right.

And I remember like driving to the office that day. I was like, why am I so miserable? I was like, I don't love my customers.

Mm-hmm.

And what happens, I just created a product and started selling it and then people started coming to do it. Cause I didn't think about any of this stuff initially. And so people started buying it and like the people who bought it weren't who I would, would've chosen to serve or to work with. And it was just like, it was such a horrible thing. And I remember, um, because I was going through this whole process and I was like, if I could start it from scratch now, like, like I would not have picked these customers. And I think part of like the messaging I put out brought the wrong customers in. And so I remember getting in the office that day and sitting there like, like who, who would my dream customer actually be if I could pick that person? Like if I could draw 'em out. And so I did some calls, like thinking about like, hey, if for the men I want to serve, like I was like, they used to be an athlete in a past life, but now they're like retired and they're looking for more. I'm looking for somebody who's driven, who's had some success and maybe coached somebody and he had that feeling of like he had some success and he wants to give back more. And like I listed all these different attributes and I remember I went to Google Images and I typed in all of this, copy and pasted in and clicked submit and all these faces popped up. I was scrolling through, I'm like, ah, and there was this guy, I was like, That's the guy. I clicked on it and I printed it out and I wrote Mike on top of it and I put it on my wall. I'm like, there's Mike. I'm like, that's the guy I wanna serve. And then I was like, who are the women I wanna serve? And I, same thing. I was like, well, I want, I made all these attributes, went to Google Images, posted in there, scrolled through. I found this picture and I was like, that's her. And I printed her out. I wrote Julie on the top and I pasted it. So I had Mike and Julie, like my dream customers, and I knew what was important to them. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna rebuild my business. So I literally, I just stopped talking to my dream customers. We didn't have any content. They'd already bought products, but I was just like, I'm not gonna, We're not buying more ads. We're not gonna try. I'm gonna build this new thing. And what was crazy that came from this exercise is like, I realized that everything I was selling right now, Mike and Julie would never bought it. And I was like, the thing that I wanted to create, I was like, in fact, it was, it was, um, my first, not like a real book, my first book I put together. Yeah. I was like, I wanna show people the thing I wanna geek out about is my split testing. I'm like, we split tested every page, every, I have so much cool data. And if I show my current customers, they'd be like, why are you showing me this? I was like, Mike and Julie would freak out about that. So I took all my split tests that we found on 108 different split tests that we had won. I put 'em in a book and I, again, I sent an email to my existing customers. I'm like, who wants to buy this book? And we sold like 3. I'm like, ugh, from like probably 60,000 subscribers. I was like, ugh. I'm like, well, I'm gonna put it out there. And we started buying ads and going stuff. And what was crazy, because I created the bait that would get my dream customer and I started putting it out there, the people started buying this book were different people. I didn't realize it at first. And I remember at the backside of that, we did an event. We had 100 people come to it. And I remember in the past if I did events, I'd kind of hide in the back. So I was like, uh, I don't know if I wanna see my, I don't wanna talk to these guys. This time I went out there and I was like, every one of these people I would hang out with, like they were like my dream customers were geeking out about these nerdy things. And it was like, those are my dream customers. And so I always lead with that because you can attract people easily. You put out the right message, you get the right people. But right. Understanding that spend time figuring out like, who do you actually wanna serve? Who's the person that like, Even if you made $0, you would still wake up every morning pumped to serve them. If you figure out that first, like that's, that what makes all the rest of the stuff actually work.

So the trap that I, I think you're talking about and that I see people fall into is they see, they say, I have message number 1 and that brought in X number of people and message number 2 and that brought in Y number of, you know, or X plus 10% or whatever. So the second message is the better one.

Yeah.

And what you're saying is like, follow that to its logical conclusion. Are those the people that you wanna be in a mastermind with?

Yep.

Serving, answering support tickets for staying up late. Life is short.

If you're serving the wrong people, it's not a happy existence.

That's the thing. Someone asked me why I haven't sold Kit or why I don't want to. And I'm like, I get to spend all my time serving my dream customers. It's all of my favorite people, all these authors and creators and just love hanging out with them. But you can absolutely get into these other markets where there's plenty of people who have tried to buy Kit over the year, tried to become a customer. Or have, and then they're like, okay, now you need to go build all of these things. And I'm like, I don't, I don't like, I don't want to. And they might be like, there's great revenue there, but it's like, ah, it's not, yeah, it's not compelling. And it would take us in a totally different direction.

For sure. You even, you know, off camera you told me how a feature you didn't even want to build cause you didn't believe in it for your customer. Like even though everyone, like it'd probably make you a ton more money, but you're like, right, that's not what my dream customer should not be doing that. I disagree with it. Therefore you didn't do it, which is like, Super cool.

But yeah, I love that. Okay, so we have the dream customer.

Where do we go from there? So now I look at this, I think about, um, we talked about politics earlier, future-based cause, but I think about this like when you come out there and you become this guy who wants to go and speak to people, like you're not the only voice. Mm-hmm. There's, there's, if, if you're in the weight loss industry, there's 500,000 people shouting from Instagram and YouTube, like from the top of the lungs, like campaigning for your dream customers. And so we just draw a person here, like as if they're campaigning.

Okay.

For the dream customers. And just realize that they're competing with a whole bunch of other people, right?

Do they have a sign?

Yes, they do need it. Let's give them a big old sign.

Here's the sign. Their arm got long enough to hold the sign.

I love it. I was thinking about this during political season because we both live in Boise. So like you drive down the street in Boise and you see all the signs. The signs are like the person's last name with the year. Yeah. I'm like, like—

I know what year it is.

Who did you spend? Like, who did you hire? Like, please hire me. Like, like what is the future-based cause that's gonna get this dream customer to move move towards you, right?

Right. Yeah. What transformation are you creating? What new opportunity? All of this.

And it's like, and your thing is like Barry 2026. And you're like, and there's like 40 different names down. I've been driving down. I'm like, I don't know what any of you guys believe. Like what's in it for me? Like, oh, we can make so much money if we just became political marketers. Anyway, I kind of wanna, I kind of wanna run for like a big political office just to win, but I don't want to, I don't wanna do it. Like, okay, you can have him back. I just want to prove to you that marketing works. Okay, so here's the thing. And so when I started thinking about this with, with, um, with my business, right? When we started going after our dream customers. So for me it's like, uh, these are, uh, impact vision-driven entrepreneurs who, um, who feel called to change the lives of customers. Like that's who my dream customer is. When I looked at my avatar, um, and that was the thing. So I'm like, what is the messaging that's gonna cut through all the noise to get these people to come to me? And it comes back to some of these things here, right? It's like, it's a blend of like your future-based cause, your new opportunity. And I remember we, we didn't have this for a long time and it was, I think it was our second or third event, our Funnel Hacking Live event. I was in ClickFunnels writing the headline for the event. And the way I write headlines, I look at swipe files of other people's headlines and stuff to just get ideas. And there's a guy, one of my, you know, one of the, the legends in the advertising space named Gary Halbert. And he had this headline he wrote one time that said, you're one sales letter away from being rich. I was like, oh, that feels really good. So I remember on top of my, top of my, uh, the page. I was like, you're one funnel away from being rich. And I was like, yeah. And then I was like, like my dream customers, like yeah, they probably wanna make money, but most of 'em, like that's not their driving force.

Like it's in, in pursuit of something else. Yeah.

I would've got some people to come to me. So I like deleted that. I was like, we're one funnel away from more impact. And I was like, there's a segment that's the right thing, but some people maybe not. Like one funnel away from firing your boss, one funnel away. And I had all these different things I kept trying. I remember deleting 'em all and then I was sitting there and the headline said one funnel away, dot, dot, dot. And I was sitting here, I looked at it, I was like, I was like, oh, like that's my campaign slogan. If I was gonna be campaigning for my dream customer, like you're one funnel away.

Like what does that mean for you? Let them fill in the blank.

Yeah. Let them fill it in. Hmm. And so that became my, my big rallying call. So one funnel. My handwriting's way worse than yours.

That says one funnel away.

One funnel away.

I like it.

But that became like the rallying call for all my people. Like you're one funnel away. And like, and trying to get them to start coming to me and helping cast this future-based vision, right? Of like, this is for, this is for you. It's like, um, you know, and again, depending on when my dream customers are coming to me, they're, everyone's at a different time point in their timeline, right? Uh, you probably the same thing with Kit. People come in, I don't have any newsletter, right? It's like there's a different message for them. So it's like you're one funnel away from, from freedom, from whatever your thing is. But then other people who've got a bigger business, like there's a different thing.

And so how do I break through a million in revenue?

And it's like, well, you're one funnel away, right? And so for me, like this became the rallying call. But if you looked at my social when we first came out, like It was me telling my One Funnel Away stories. I was like, I remember when I was broke and I tried this and this and this. Yeah. And then this potato gun DVD, this was the first one I put together that worked and I made somebody like, that was my first one. I shared that. And then the beginners who were like, oh, I've been in that same spot. Mm-hmm. And that One Funnel Away story resonates with them. But then a different reel or YouTube video, whatever, I'm telling a completely different story where I'm talking about like, hey, I was growing my company. We were stuck at a million dollars a year for like 5 years in a row. I couldn't figure it out. And then we created this funnel. This is how we launched it. And we told it and we went from a million to 10, right? And then that, there's a different segment of dream customers who hear that and they come in. Other ones talk about impact, ones where like I was able to like be at every one of my kids' wrestling matches because I evergreened a funnel, right? And I was one funnel away from spending time with my kids and never missing a single practice. And then like, so it's just like every variation of like how this lived out in my life as the guide. And then sharing those stories over and over consistently, we're just, just grabbing different segments. These dream customers, they're like, That's the vision. That's the future that I want to be only part of for myself.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then you, you end up with almost endless stories. Yeah. Because you can tell all of your stories and then as you create transformations and people, you can tell their stories.

Yeah.

And you just keep coming back to that one thing.

Yeah. It gets better. It's, it's interesting. Like, um, I've had people tell me like, I don't have that many stories or I'm gonna get bored after a little bit. And it's like the goal, like you said, it's 100%. It's like there's value in you telling your stories, but there's way more value in you telling your customer stories. Yeah. And then there's even a third tier to that is like, so like for me, for example, it's like I've got a million stories of me building funnels. I stopped telling most of my stories back in the day 'cause it gets annoying to keep hearing mine. We had so many, so many students. So I started sharing those like you said. But what was interesting is like, like a good example is Brandon and Kaelin Pollan. So they came into our world, they built a couple funnels to help women overcome weight loss. And in those funnels, I think at the time before they sold the company, they had like 1.3 million women had joined their list. Wow. They had hundreds of thousands of success stories and things like that. And so then almost my, the stories I share, I wasn't just like Brandon and Katelyn, it was like the success stories of their students. Like, of like, yeah, these people's lives were changed because they did, you know? So it's like, it's going like 3 levels deep. And when you get there, it just, again, it keeps bringing more and more of these people into, into your world.

Well, we live in this world where like all the entrepreneurs that we're serving are people who may have started down the path of business cuz they're like, look, I need to create this transformation in my life. I would love to not be stressed about a mortgage or whatever else.

Yeah.

But then they pretty quickly meet that bar and then they're all about the transformation that we're creating. And so when your messaging is about that, yeah. You know, and the future-based cause and all that, it's like, think of the impact that you could have on 10,000 people or more.

Yeah.

Then yeah, everything gets so much more clear and it's just, it's so much more compelling.

It makes, it makes the business so much more fun. I was gonna say, come back versus like, uh, what's the average ad copy for the next thing I gotta write versus like, Let's talk about these cool— anyway, it's just—

but I think that, so the thing that's most interesting to me about this is not only that it's, you know, about the new opportunity in that, that new future, but that you actually made it way more compelling by making it more general, by letting people fill in their own things. Like if you were to go with probably a bunch of the political slogans, like going back to Trump or Reagan or whoever, right? Make America Great or It doesn't say anything about how.

Yeah.

And it lets people fill in the blank. Yeah. Which is interesting on a, from a marketing perspective, almost always specificity or niches are better. Yeah. And so this is like an interesting place where it's like actually specificity is not better.

Yeah. You could let the, you cast the vision, but let them plug it in. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about that with, um, when the year that Obama won, his, his campaign was change. And it was same thing. It was like, it was like everyone, everyone just wasn't happy where they are, which I don't think people are ever happy where they are. Like, right. That thing was simple, but everyone had a version of like, oh, I think when he mean, when he wins, change means this, or I think it means this, or I think it, everyone had their version what they thought change would mean again, which is why he won. I think it's very similar here. It's like if you were to ask everyone of my clients, like what One Funnel Away meant to them, it was different, you know, and probably different, different times of their, of their life too. Different circumstances.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the other thing that I noticed about it as a slogan is you don't outgrow it because you always want, like, it's human nature. We want things to change. We want forward progress. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're one funnel away from not being stressed about your mortgage. Well, 2 years from now, I might be one funnel away from actually being able to feel like I can be present at my kids' soccer games. Right.

And that goes from there. And also it's like a big thing I think is like also living this yourself because, um, I told you we had some ups and downs the last couple of years and in, and, uh, I rallied my team like last December. I was like, you guys, the message I've been preaching for the last decade of you one funnel away, like, so are we. Like, like we're one funnel from changing our future of what we are as a company. And it's, I, I mentioned earlier in January we launched a new challenge called the One Funnel, or the One Comma Club Challenge. And that was a funnel and it launched and it crushed. And it's like the first thing we've done, like we've had a lot of, again, funnels that we've been trying the last couple years and that one hit again. And, and I told my team afterwards, I was like, I told you guys, like we were one funnel away just like everybody else. Like, Different levels and scale, but it's like the exact same thing is true. And so like if you're living it, then I can go back to my audience that, and then like, oh, like we should rally and do it again. You know, like re-motivates them. So yeah, if, if you create something that you don't outlive or it doesn't matter where, where in the, the continuum you are, it's still just as relevant.

Yeah. I love that. Okay, so where, where do we go from here?

Okay, so people hear the rallying call of the, the leader, they decide to come and follow you. The first thing you gotta do after somebody comes into your world is you have to give them an identity shift. So let's draw a little person here. I can draw a blue cape on them.

Uh, okay. What's this person doing?

This person's, uh, looking this direction. How do you make stick figures look in directions?

Well, I tried on the other sheet and I wasn't sure that it, you know.

That's pretty cool.

That'll work.

I'll give him a huge old cape.

I like it.

Yeah, they're flying.

And then this, this was our leader. So I'll label that. Okay. Cool. And this you, um, label identity shift. Yeah.

Okay. We'll go. So this is our dream customer. So the dream customer heard your message, followed the leader, and this is what people do is like, you get somebody, here's the message, they come on Instagram, they follow you, and then you kind of let 'em, let 'em go. Yep. And then you're like, now they're gonna follow me passively for a long time. Maybe they'll buy something somewhere in the future. What we try to do is like, is Axiom comes into our world. It's like, how do we give them an actual identity shift?, and there's so much behind this. We go deep in the psychology of it, but the biggest thing is like, if you can shift their identity, this is what we, I mentioned earlier, like I don't want them thinking that this is my business and their customer, but I want them thinking that this is us, this is who we are. And so this is something I kind of stumbled upon. Uh, the very first webinar I did to sell ClickFunnels, uh, I created a framework called funnel hacking and I was like, here's the funnel hacking. And I kind of showed this thing. And then what was crazy is in the comments, uh, after the event, people would start doing it and then they'd go in our, in our, uh, Facebook group and they're like,, what's up Funnel Hackers? Hey, I'm funnel hacking. And they start, they started like, that was the word they started using first. I was like, oh, that's kind of catchy. And they started calling themselves Funnel Hackers. And so then I, I went immediately and I had my designer make a t-shirt that said Funnel Hacker, right? And it had 3 dots underneath it. And so I, I wore the shirt and on a Facebook Live and people were freaking out like, I want a Funnel Hacker shirt. So like we started shipping 'em out to people and, um, and then I was like, wait a minute. I said, what if everybody who came into our world, um, we almost like a superhero, like Superhero puts on a cape. Like, how do we make it so it's like they're coming in normal as one person, we get them to put on a cape where they're identifying with this thing that's bigger than them? Uh, and so we had it set up when someone joined a ClickFunnels account, we'd ship 'em all a t-shirt.

Well, so I remember something specific. I've gone through your onboarding. Uh-huh. And what I remember, cuz from a software perspective, I'm trying to study everybody, right? Yeah. It would be if you went through the onboarding and completed these specific onboarding steps.

Yep.

Then you got a t-shirt. Yep. And so it was like, It was almost in the identity shift. Like you made them do work. Yeah. And now it was work that would make them successful, create this new opportunity, adopt the pro— like all of those things. Yeah. But it was like, oh man, I, I earned that.

I didn't get that for free. I earned the shirt.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was such, it was such a big thing. And so we shipped the shirts out and I remember we did it for 2 or 3 months and it gets expensive. Cause you're printing a shirt, shipping it. Yeah. And they didn't pay for it. They just, they had to set up a trial, but we're sending them out a shirt. I remember my accountant's like, oh, he is like, you know, you know how they are like, oh, this is just like wasting money. Why are we doing this? This is so stupid. It's founders. Yeah., and I was about to cancel it. And I remember somebody, I don't know who it was, I wish I could go back a decade and find it, but they sent me a message and, uh, it was this guy and he is like, I joined ClickFunnels, whatever, 3 or 4 months ago. He's like, I've never logged into the software, but he's like, I got the t-shirt and I feel like I'm part of this tribe and this community. Mm-hmm. And he's like, I'm never gonna cancel because like, this is like my, this is who I am now. And I remember I was like, oh my gosh, like that's That's so interesting, right? So I was like, no, keep on shipping. And I think we've shipped, I don't know, probably, probably close to, I don't know, half a million or more shirts we've shipped out. Wow. I get pictures of people all the time who are like, my friend's like, I'm in Bali and there's some dude riding a bike wearing a Funnel Hacker shirt. And they send me a picture. I'm at the gym in, you know, in Dubai and there's 3 Funnel people walking around. It's like, you know, I'm on a plane. And so like, you give it and it's like literally like a uniform. Now a couple things we learned. So I started sharing this with, with, um, with my dream customers and they were in it. And one of the first people who did it was, uh, Brandon and Kaylin Poland. And so they're, they, they shifted the name of their company because of this. 'Cause they're like, their company at the time is called Tool Time Trainers. That was her last name. And, um, and she's like, no, that's not an identity. That's, that's me. That's a business about me. She's like, if I'm trying to get like people, I gotta change it. So they changed it to Lady Boss and then they made shirts and they tried a bunch. They, they were, they made a lot of money selling swag and merch and stuff, but One of the things they, they found that I had done not knowing, cuz my shirt said Funnel Hacker and they tried a whole bunch of ones and the ones that just said Lady Boss, uh, were the best. And they said the reason why is cuz it's an I am statement. I am a funnel hacker. I am a lady boss. I am a, and so if you can, if you can have something like that where like it's the self-identify, like this is who I am, that works better than some fancy quote or some funny thing or just your brand. Yeah. If I had ClickFunnels, like I am, uh, ClickFunnels is them, right? Whereas I'm a funnel hacker. This is, this beyond, it's identity. I happen to use the software, but this is who I am.

This is So I'm thinking about what we've done with kit that has worked the best in shirts or things like that. We've put values statements on there. Two that we've done a lot of is Create Every Day and Teach Everything You Know. And those people wear all the time and they love and all that. We have not done anything related to— a kit creator is not branded in some way. Creator is the term we use the most, but that's universal. That's not specific to Kit. Yeah. Um, so maybe first, like, how important is it to have that I am identity statement?

I think it's big. I mean, I look at even the other businesses we're launching, like, uh, we have a bootstrap business. It's like bootstrappers. We have, uh, a personal development business and, um, they call themselves round pegs in square holes. Like, it's, it's things like that where they can self-identify. It's like, this is who I, this is who I am. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So in that, we've done a lot with the phrase, I am a creator, especially back like 2018, 2019 when that wasn't a common phrase. Now I feel like it's so common that it's not ownable.

Yeah.

I don't know. Does anything come to mind of like—

You should run something like a survey to your audience and get them even like, hey guys, what would you call yourself that's different? Again, I always think about, some are easy 'cause like Bootstrap to Bootstrappers is an easy one. Funnel Hackers was more like, you know, the community drove it. Round pegs in square holes is, I just heard that quote, Steve Jobs did not make that quote, but he's, everyone thinks he did it because it was the Mac commercial about round pegs in square hole. We had one of our, for our higher-end coaching program, one of our guys gave, gave a testimonial on video. And I remember he was talking about it and he's like, it's like, this program is not easy. It's hard. He's like, but if you're one of the 1% crazies, this is perfect for you. And I was like, 1% crazies. So our identity for our coaching program is the 1% crazy. So everyone gets the t-shirts that says 1% crazies and they're all like, we're the crazies. And like, and it came from just a testimonial from a member who said something. And that phrase was like, I am one of the 1%.

But again, it's identity based. Yeah. Like the, the ground peg, square hole. It's an identity-based thing. So always looking for that. Seth Godin has this line where he talks about in your tribe, right? Movement tribe, all of that. It's people like us do things like this. And so it's like, okay, well, what's the, you know, what are the common traits? And I think for our audience with kids, our customers are the people who are deeply invested in their community, right? They're building valuable businesses and it's not just valuable for, for them and their family, but it's like we're creating a, a business that provides real tangible value. Like we're investing in our audience. So it'd be finding something like, that's not it, but finding something that can play on the identity there.

Yeah. Everyone's gonna come up like, big part is like going back to your dream audience and again, the testimony of the guy saying that, just like, oh, like they already, Your people already feel that identity. I was telling you before, I heard a po— a YouTube video, uh, this weekend where the guy was like, my kit newsletter's like, he's already identified. It's not an email newsletter, it's not his newsletter, it's his kit newsletter. Like, here's your people already identifying with you. Um, I would just like listen to what they're saying and try to find something that can turn to an I am, boom. And then it becomes an identity. And then, and then you wrap it in like our event's called Funnel Hacking Live. This is where funnel hackers come together.

You're reinforcing all these points. Yeah.

It keeps coming back together. And then, uh, you kind of from Funnel Hacking Live and like, again, we, uh, there's so much swag that we give away. Like every presentation I give, there's a t-shirt that goes with it. That's an identity thing. Oh wow. Like, like we did a whole thing about building funnels and we get that, uh, and give 'em I, uh, I build funnels shirts. So it's like, boom, I build funnels. Then we did, uh, when we released our, our email, uh, marketing stuff. Yeah. Uh, we called them follow-up funnels. Like I build follow-up funnels and people are like, I build follow-up funnels. And so like, it's always like trying to like reinforce the identity and the sub-identities., and then my mind, in my mind it's like they're superheroes. They go home and they're like, you know, they're in their normal day thing and then when they go build on computer, they, they go to the closet, put a Funnel Hacker shirt on and sit down like, now I can, I'm a super, my superpower's on. Now I can build a funnel.

The shirt's on, noise canceling headphones.

Yeah. Everything's different now.

I love it. So they've made that identity shift. Yeah. Now we've got stairs. Like where, where are they going? Yes. What's up the stairs?

Okay, so this was interesting. So people came to our community, they started doing this, they became funnel hackers. We did a couple events., and then with, with people, especially, especially like people that are plugging into movement, the future-based cause, like it has to be, it needs to become tangible, right? There's a quote from, uh, Napoleon Bonaparte that says something like, uh, like man, like, uh, like people will, uh, what's the quote? Something about people would give their entire life for a scrap of ribbon. Like they, they want an award, they want something, right? And so our third big event, we were doing this and, um, I remember actually I did a podcast interview with a guy who was, um, he'd been in the music industry before. And so he's like talking to his desk and behind him he's got all these like records on the wall.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, that's so cool. Like, uh, he's like, yeah, this is for my, I don't know, Emmy and Grammy.

This album went platinum. Yeah. That one.

I was like, this is so cool. And I remember thinking in my head, I was like, it's not fair that like, like there's something for, for every profession there's awards, but in entrepreneurship there's nothing. I was like, I wish we had an award. I want a record.. And then I was like, what if we created something? And, uh, anyway, came with the name Two Comma Club cuz way back in the day there was a newsletter I was subscribed to like 20 years ago called the Two Comma Club. I found that dude and I was like, hey, can I buy your domain from you? And he hadn't been publishing, so yes, I bought the domain from him. Uh, we trademarked it and then, uh, I was like, hey, let's figure out how to get records built. And we called it Two Comma Club. So two commas in a million dollars. So someone passes a million dollars, let's give them this record. And at first I didn't, I didn't really know what was gonna happen from that. And I didn't know if anyone on our platform had even done it yet. Like, I was like, I have no idea. So, my partner Dave at the time, I was like, hey, go like, you know, go through the database and find out like how many people have processed over a million dollars on ClickFunnels and, and let me know. So it took him a day or two to come back. He came back, he's like, 79. What? That blew my mind. I didn't really, I thought maybe the big 3 or 4, but like 79, I was like, that's a big deal. So our event was coming up, so we called all 79 people and we're like, hey, you're gonna be a funnel hacking live? Like, no, like you have to come. We have something for you.

Like, okay.

So these people all came and then before the very first, uh, or, uh, on day 2 or whatever the event, I was like, hey, we have something special we wanna do. No one knows about this yet. And I pulled out this award, boom, big old record with 2 commas in it. And, uh, I was like, this is like for us entrepreneurs, like something to strive towards. This looks like, and, uh, I kind of told the story behind it. Because for me, like when I got started in business, there was this guy named John Reese who had made a million dollars in a day. And that like, that like, like North Star for me to move towards, like he made a million dollars in a day. If I can make a million dollars in a year, right? It gave me belief.

It would happen. If he can do it a day, I can do it a year.

Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, there's so many examples where someone shares their numbers in a way and you're like, I can actually, it's like frame breaking. I had no idea that that was possible.

Yeah. Yeah. So we did an event and so we bring out this award. Boom. Two commas on it. Yep. And, and I was like, just so you guys know, there's 79 people in this room that have won. Everyone's like, wait, what? And then we call the first person's name and he gets up and he comes out and it's like their peers sitting next to him and they see someone come up. They're like, what? We give the first one, I get a picture with him, the next person, we do it. And it took us like, I don't know, hour and a half to do this. I thought people were gonna just like wander away. Nobody budged. They were all sitting there and, for the entire time do these awards and people are freaking out.

And they, because you're in a room of what was like 1,000 people?

Yeah. A couple, I think 1,500 people or something.

1,500 people. And like, you're, you're like, One at a time. So go, oh, the person who was sitting in front of me. Oh, the person who's two rows over. You know, you're like, wait, you as well?

Yeah. So our audience had all, suddenly everyone had this belief like, oh my gosh, it's not just Russell on stage or the speakers on stage. Like, right. My peers are actually doing this too. And I asked people afterwards, I was like, what was that like for you? And they're like, all I could, like the whole time I'm sitting there, I'm like, next year I'm gonna be on the stage. Next year I'm gonna be on the stage. And sure enough, a year later we do this again and like 350 people want it. Next year was like another, you know, And, uh, to this point, we're like 7 or 8 years into this. Uh, about once a day somebody wins a Two Comma Club Award. And it's just like, just, it keeps happening. And people tell me like, uh, I didn't use your competitor because I wanna win that award. Like that's, that means something to me. Right.

You know? And so for anyone who's not following the, the two, two commas is when you get enough figures in there, right?

It's a 1 followed by a comma, 3 digits, comma, another comma, 2 comma digits.

And so, you know, if you built a one comma business, congratulations, you're somewhere between $1,000 and $9,000. Yeah. Right. But two commas means you broke $1 million, which has got to be this insane, you know, people are like, I can, I can earn a living, but like I could never do that.

Yeah.

And now you're saying it's happening like almost every day and I could see it, you know, the, the dream customer is like, I want that. The person who's on the journey who's like, oh, this is hard. Let me keep going because I want it. The person who's in the middle of it who says, actually, I'm gonna switch to a competitor and do something else.

And they're like, but I'm at 800. I don't want that award.

I don't want that award.

And what's interesting too is like, I, I always joke about this, but people are like, so what's your role at ClickFunnels? I'm like, I'm the belief cheerleader. Mm-hmm. Because if you know how it is, if someone believes that they can do something, they usually do it. The hard thing is like, oh, it doesn't work for me. And like the belief, right? And so like this for me became the belief engine where people are like, they see every event. We still, we're doing another event, uh, in 5 months from now.. And the only reason I do the event, cuz we canceled our event, but I'm doing an event just for these guys so they can come and get their awards. Cuz it's like, it means so much to them and people see it and our community sees it and it's like, I can do this. And they double down and redouble down and keep going. And so that's what this is. Now I got a couple stairs here.

Okay.

I like it. Cuz what happens after 2 or 3 years, everyone's getting this and then all people like, they won 1 and 2 and 3 and then they're like, like the future's gone now. Like they, they accomplished it. And they're, they're kinda like, well, what do we, what do we do now? I was like, well, what happens when you get past 10 million? I was like, The Roman numbers, numbers X. And so we made it the next award and we called it Two Comma Club X and there's a big X in it. And, and so they're like, oh, they all freaked out again. Everyone, they double down. And then, first year we had that, we opened this award, we had, 17 people. Next year was like 35 people and just, it gave them again the next thing to start chasing, to go for that, that little scrap of ribbon. 'Cause all these people started sending to there. And then the, next year we had people that got multiple of these, like, what's the next thing? And so. Then we made a big one that was like, there's 4 records and each record counts as 25. You put 'em together, it's, uh, it's 100.

Okay.

And so then they went there. So people kept going and we've got tons of people now that have won. I think we're like 3,500 that won this. Anyway, it kind of goes up, up through there.

I love the idea of always having something that you've gotta, you know, move towards and all of that. How many people have won the, the big one? The big one.

You'll know, you'll see it in the background of all their videos cuz they always wanna show it up.

Yeah.

Um, So again, they get the big one, they get the first record. So 25, they get the first one. Every time they get another record—

Oh, that's smart.

—until it fills it. Yeah, because I was like, this is a big jump from here to here. Right. And so we did that.

10 to 100.

So you can tell if you see it on someone's video, look in the back how many records are actually in there, where they're at. But people have qualified for the first version. I think it's like 70 or so people that have gotten that. So it blows my mind. I thought if anyone ever got this, that would be a huge success. And people grow with you because they're part of this whole thing.

So, okay. So I'm going to put milestone awards at the end.

Here. Yeah. So think about that, your version. Like what do you have? Like you're taking people on this journey, this future-based cause. Like what are the milestones that get them to where they're going? We do the same thing. We have a certification program. We sold the certification, did okay. When we shifted and we started building this path of like, all right, uh, in fact we have a One Comma Club Award for certified people and then we've got a bronze badge and we have a silver badge and we have all these different things and just, it's what moves people through.

I mean, it's the fundamentals of every video game, all the, right? What you're saying here, you're just like, You're like, all of politics, all of video games. All of it works.

We just blend it into our creator business and hey, it worked really well. It worked really well. Okay. Yeah. All right. I want you to draw a big arrow here. Okay. Um, because, uh, I'm sure a lot of you guys have probably studied the hero's journey. Like, I love it. Yeah. I'm obsessed with it. And what's interesting, the hero's journey is great and the, there's a journey the hero's already always on, right? Which is the journey of achievement. They're trying to achieve something. Okay. So this is like in any movie, we always know the hero's trying to achieve something. Like Frodo's trying to get to Mordor to throw the ring in. Rocky Balboa's trying trying to win the world. Like there's always, this is the, the journey everyone's aware of, right? Um, but the reason why people like, they, the characters that are the best, it's not this hero. They're, um, uh, my friend, uh, Michael Hauge wrote a book called The Hero's Two Journeys. He's a Hollywood, uh, producer and scriptwriter. And he said that the, the magic in a script is not the hero of achievement. Everyone knows what's happening, but the second one is the more important journey, which is called the hero of tra— or the, the journey of transformation. Who does the person become along the way?. And so if we draw another arrow down here, cuz this is like, everyone's trying to get this, trying to make a bunch of money, they're trying to win the awards. And like, that's good. That's the achievement that people want, especially, you know, your dream customers wanna move towards those things. But ideally over time you're trying to make somebody become, so I'd say journey of transformation. And it was interesting cuz as we started getting people going from 1 Comma to 2 Comma to 2 Comma Club C, like these different awards, um, it was actually, uh, Alex Hormozi. You guys probably know him, one of the biggest creators in the world. He'd won all these things and then he was like, He's like, what's next? And I was like, I don't really know. And he's like, you know what I would want? I'm like, what? He's like, he's like, I wanna give $1 million to, to charity. He's like, do you have an award for that? I was like, I will before our next event. And so we created an award, uh, we call it the Two Heart Award. Um, and so there's two hearts in it and it's for somebody who's donated $1 million to charity. So he, him and Alex and Layla were the first ones to win that. And I think we've had 8 people have done that now. So our audience now, like, yes, they're trying to do this, but also at the same time we're like, trying to make them givers and, you know, along the way. And it's cool 'cause this, like, this is my favorite award at the event. 'Cause you see people come up and it's just like, wow, that person. Yeah, they did, they achieved something, but like they're a great person giving back.

When that brings it back to the movement, right? That you're trying to create. Yeah. Because then this is all about status. It's all about, you know, this, you know, that dream customer and all that. But then you're saying like, look, it's ultimately about impact. And so let's systematize. Yeah. That transformation and the impact that we're having long term.

Yeah. This is like, again, what creates this? You know, it's this foundation. And then it's like thinking about this process, like who's your dream customer? What's like, what am I gonna say to get them into my world? Right. And then from there I can give 'em identity shifts. They're gonna stay with me. They're gonna be part of this. Then what are they trying to achieve in this future-based cause? Let me make these milestones so that they have, they know if they're succeeding or not. Right, right.

And then along, and they see people around them succeeding.

Yeah. Giving them belief of it. But then help them understand, like, I couldn't care less if you want any of these. What I care is that you become this kind of person. Even on the money, like, I want you, like, this is, this one all said and done, you create that, which again comes back to future-based cause and like just all these things and it makes people stick so much better than just here's how to make some money or here's how to lose some weight or whatever it might be.

Yeah. So I'm, I'm thinking about this and we've talked about doing milestone awards at Kit for a long time. We've never like pulled the trigger on figuring out exactly what to incentivize and, and all of that. Are there other companies that you've seen do something similar to this? Like, so that we can give like another example.

Tons of my clients now.

Tons of your clients as you teach this.

The company that makes that, I should've bought stock in them 'cause there's so many people making records and things like that. Rehab, they do this, right? They're bringing these things to pull people through.

Right. You think about this— Use your coin, your, you know.

You think about it with donations, like charities. A lot of times you come to charity and like, oh, he's a gold donor, he's a silver donor. He's like, gives people status as they're moving Moving through things, you know, like, any, like a lot of these legacy companies have been around a long time. You look at 'em and they've got some version that's built into what they're actually doing.

And I guess simple examples would be like YouTube, you know, they're past 100,000 subscribers. There's your plaque. A million and then 10 million. Yep. And then, and again, it's a status thing, right? Someone will, you'll see it in their ads. It's on the wall everywhere. They just like, should you trust me that I know what I'm doing?

Yeah. Yeah. The plaques say so.

Yeah, exactly. Shopify does it with, I believe number of orders. And so if you pass 100,000 orders or a million, you guys can do subscribers easy. You can do somebody, you know, subscribers is a little hard cuz it's like you want people to clean your list at the same time.

That's a good point. Yeah. That's a great point actually. Yeah.

But like an example, you know, our commerce product, um, has good adoption, but it could be way better. And so if you did a whole campaign to get people to sell through KitCommerce, then like, well incentivize that, you know, and you can incentivize it. Monetarily, or you could incentivize it with status and going back to the Napoleon quote, like they might care more about the little ribbon.

100%.

They do. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. As we zoom out, is there anything else in here that's really important or, or that you're, you know, wanna hit home?

I think, and this comes back to like the future-based cause I share with my people, like if you're happy just selling stuff and having transactions, that's great. And like you can build an amazing life on that, but like. For me, like, that's what my business was for a long time until it was like, I felt like this, this role wasn't just a role. Like it was a calling. Like I, I believe, um, I believe that there, that for every person on this planet, especially ones who like, who get, who are drawn into this whole world of like entrepreneurship and business building, like, like that, that feeling that makes you want to do this, I think is a calling. I believe it's from God. You can believe whatever you want. And the calling is not for you to make money. God doesn't care about any of this. What he cares about is that there's a group of people that you, with your information and your stuff, you can change that, that those people's lives. And when I actually believe that, like I've been called to change these people's lives through the stuff I'm doing, that's what made this fun as opposed to like, cuz this is work. This is not like an easy transaction. They buy, they leave. Like we're building community, we're doing events, we're doing like, this is, this is all consuming, right? To create a movement. Like this is not just like a, like a part-time thing. And so. If you want to go all in, and it comes back to like, do you believe this is something bigger than just yourself? If so, like, it's worth putting the time into, because like the transformation, the people, like what happens in this journey for you as the, as the leader, as the guide, is insane. And the people whose lives you get to change is, is second to none. But, um, it comes back to like, if you're doing just for the money, you're going to stop somewhere because it's too hard. Yeah. But if you're doing it because like you really feel called to do this and you want to change the lives and the world for the group of people you've been called to serve, like this is the path to do it at a level that, that I think it's the highest level we can do.

Yeah. That's amazing. You have so many great frameworks. Thanks for coming and teaching this one. Yeah. Uh, where should people go if they want to follow more of your content, learn more of your frameworks, use ClickFunnels, all of that?

Um, well, if you wanna read, if you want, I, I wrote a book, Expert Secrets is that book that goes deep in this. So you can find the book on Amazon or expertsecrets.com if you wanna go really, really deep in just this and really understand it and see tons of examples. Um, other than that, just follow me on Instagram or wherever on Russell Brunson and that's where I'm at.

Sounds good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, man. If you enjoyed this episode, you'll wanna watch episode 82 with Dan Martell. So Russell gave you the framework for building a movement once people are in your world. Dan picks up on that piece that comes before it, how to build a personal brand strong enough to get them there in the first place. He grew a $100 million business by treating that brand as a deliberate system, and the way he thinks about the guide role maps directly onto what Russell laid out here. That's episode 82, Dan Martell. Like the video if you enjoyed it, hit subscribe on YouTube or wherever you're listening, and I'll see you next week.