BTS of ClickFunnels Tech Genius - Todd Dickerson - CFR #540

Welcome to Click Funnels Radio, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales dominate their markets and how you can get those same results. Here is your host, Dave Woodward.

Welcome back to ClickFunnels Radio. This is gonna be the episode that you've all been dying to get and you didn't know where to get it from. Everyone always asks, how did you guys actually create clickfunnels? And everyone understands Russell story. They understand the potato gun. They and Russell's been on stage. And so, so many of you guys have seen the. The marketing genius that Russell has and how it started at an earlier age. Even you go back to where he was getting a ton of mail sent to his house, just any type of an ad, just so he could go through when he had tons and tons of boxes of junk mail. And we even have a picture of Russell having to throw out his. His last box from before he moved out of the house. And so so many of you guys know that story. The story you don't know is the whole reason why clickfunnels exist is because we have the most amazing genius behind the technology you've ever met. Todd Dickerson has been. Is our tech co founder. The great part about it, you've seen him on stage. But I want to pull the curtain back here and really expose who Todd really is, how he became the genius that he is. Todd gets recognized by many people outside of our own small universe as far as marketing goes. And if you take a look at any other technology company, Todd compares with any of the greatest best out there. And so with that, I want to introduce my dear friend, Todd Dickerson. Todd, welcome to the show.

Dave, man, thanks for that intro. Thanks for having me. How are you?

I'm so excited. Again, Todd, we've been so. I think we've had this podcast scheduled for over a year and with everything we've got going, it keeps getting postponed and postponed and postponed.

But I appreciate a couple things going on. So. Absolutely.

Dave, few things and I think I'd love just to help people understand, let's kind of start real quick just at where you kind of met Russell and the foundation of ClickFunnels. But from there, then let's go back to the foundation of how you actually became who you are today.

Yeah, absolutely. So, man, it's tough to even know where to start with this other than our direct relationship started with him emailing his email list. And I happened to be on his email list because I had bought some micro Continuity. That's what it was. Bought micro continuity, years before that. So I was on his email list. We were kind of in the same ecosystem. I'd been playing in the Internet marketing game for a little while there and he was looking for a partner on a company that he had bought. And my context at the time was not much more than that other than specifically he was looking for someone to partner with. I was in a good spot with my business personally that I felt like I could reach out and do something more. And basically I reached out and I was like, hey man, I'm not looking for a job or anything, but absolutely, if you want to partner on a project, I'd be more than happy to check it out. It just so happens to be. I know that programming language and everything. I can do this thing. And yeah, he sent me over the stuff and I knocked out the project in the weekend that I had and we ended up basically hitting it off and deciding to do more things together after that.

I love it. I think that the part that I've always loved about working with you is no one over delivers more than you do. That's why I'm so, so grateful that both you and Russell as dear friends and partners. But when it comes to over delivering Todd, again, just the way you think from a technology standpoint is just amazing to me and I'm so excited. I'd love to know, how did you get involved in tech?

Oh man. Well, that goes just about as far back as I can remember. So I pretty much literally like I've basically always been interested in computers and programming and you know, it probably started originally from like video games back in the day. Right. You know, 38, 7 years old now, but, you know, so back in the day I was playing video games. But you know, back then you couldn't just as simply like load up your iPad and play whatever video game you wanted. Like you had to go find these video games, buy them, and then your computer was almost always like actually too slow to run it. So I got into like overclocking computers, making my computer faster than it was supposed to be so I could actually run the game that like fast enough performance. So I got into like building computers and doing all this kind of stuff. So, you know, that goes, it goes way far back. But my dad actually was a programmer for AT&T and, and you know, I. To me there was no connotation on programmers being nerds or geeks or whatever. It was always like, this is the coolest job ever. Like, look at all this stuff they're making. And I just always was basically like, yeah, of course I'm going to be a computer programmer. What else would I be like? There was never really like any doubt in my mind growing up in an elementary school, even going back that far. So I love it.

So, yeah, again, great example from your dad. And I think that the cool part is as I take a look at just kind of where you are now and the people who are attracted to you, it's unlike any other developers I've ever worked with. And I think it's been fun for me just to kind of see, see the way that you've actually helped people understand how to develop in a different way. We're going to talk about that in just a second, but I'd love to know kind of from where you were there, what were some of the jobs, some of the things that you did to get even up to college.

Yeah, absolutely. So probably the first thing I remember actually doing back was in elementary school actually, and I started a magazine I called Tip Pro at the time and it was like a video game cheat code magazine. And I recruited all my buddies to like submit their best cheat codes. And I had a couple guys that were like artists that did graphics and artwork for. And this is, I think, fourth grade, fifth grade maybe. Super, super, yeah, a long, long time ago. So I recruited these guys. We printed it, we made copies, we like distributed and sold it. I had a whole little enterprise in elementary school. I went to dollar stores and started buying like video game memorabilia and stuff that was on like bulk sell. And I'd bring it into class and be like selling it for like 25 cents a dollar, like whatever. Be selling it in class with people. So like, that's. That was one of my first businesses beyond like just, you know, trying to sell lemonade at home, you know, like that kind of thing with the family. But first thing that I tried actually creating was. Yeah, it was probably fourth or fifth grade when that happened.

Entrepreneurial bug was early in your teens there.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then I started probably around sixth grade, I started building websites. So I started like, there wasn't much out there around websites at the time. Like I think we were using like Dreamweaver, like an HTML notepad document to like create pages and stuff. And I started building sites and just more for fun, I would review video game stuff. But cheat codes out there. This was before Napster was a thing, if you guys remember Napster now, right, where people would do like sharing of music and MP3 files and all this thing, right? So all my buddies would always ask for MP3s and I decided to put up a website. So I put up a website, I hosted something like Multiple thousands of MP3s at the time. And a little bit after I started that site, Napster did come out and then they started getting more press and then like the penalty was announced for like distributing files like that, like $250,000 per, per file. And I was like, well, you know, I can't pay this back and I'll be in jail for the rest of my life so I should probably take this website down. But like that was like back in the day, one of the first popular websites I had. I had, you know, a couple different hardware companies at the time would send me like things to review, video games hard, like new controllers and mice and like this kind of stuff to review back then. So that was, that was probably my first site that actually got traffic that had people going to it. This was sixth, maybe seventh grade at the time, something like that. So it was a long, long time ago when I started actually getting that bug.

So the preteen bug here, 1112 years.

Old, 13 years old.

So from that period of time you took that, where'd you go next with it? You've always been involved in the whole tech thing and it's fascinating for me to see how it progresses. So from, what was the next venture after that one?

Yeah, so. Oh man. I think, you know, during high school and stuff there were some things where I was in like the business development class or something. I forget what it's called now, but basically like, you know, we did a contest where it was like which school could build the best website thing meeting certain requirements and load the fastest and all these things. And like I won a contest back then in like probably 8th or 9th grade for being able to do that kind of stuff. So I kept, I kept going down that path, still going through school and doing the thing. But at some point I think it was probably right when I got my driver's license I was like, well, I guess I need to get a real job and start making some money. So I went and got a job at a grocery store and that was like my wake up call to be that I, to realize that I never wanted to have a regular job ever. I was not good at taking orders and being told what to do and told to stand at a cash register and you know, it was just like, I was like, I got to find a way out of this as fast as possible. So going into high school, I think I worked there for a little while, like six months, a year or something, and then realized I should be actually building sites for people. Like, this was just now kind of when it was getting popular, like 2000 type era. Like, the dot com stuff's going crazy, and I'm like, ooh, all right, I'm in high school, but I can. I can figure out a way to make money here. So I came up with the idea that I wanted to do work exit in high school. So, you know, a lot of high schools do this thing where it's like, oh, you get a job and, like, you go to school till lunch, and then after lunch, you, like, work at a job for high school credit and that kind of thing. So I was like, well, can I just work for myself? Like, I just start my own business. I'll build websites. So I'll just go to school till lunch and then go home and build websites. They're like, yeah, that's. That's not gonna. That's not gonna cut it. I'm like, all right, all right. So I bet I can make this happen. So I have a buddy whose dad worked at, I think it was Siemens. He was like Fortune 500 executive kind of guy. But he. I knew the guy. We always talk computers and talk shop and stuff. And he was like, well, I'll do it with you. He's like, I'll start the company for you. I'll sign your papers. Like, let's do it. Like, we'll set it up. You know what? I can. I can get some clients. Like, nope, still. So he just. He basically started the business with me, and we started going around to, like, local businesses, and he would pitch them on building a website and networking their business and, like, bringing them up into the 21st century, right? And I do most of the work. And he partnered on that. Yeah, it was. And it worked out. I got to do work exit out of high school, too. So that was my first kind of legitimate business where we were building building sites for clients. And I was still in, I don't know, 9th, 10th, 11th grade, something like that. When we were building these sites for businesses, they didn't know I was doing it behind the scenes, right. Talking to this guy, he's like, oh, you can do it. It's sweet. Like, let's build these things. So, yeah, that was the first one where I was, like, legitimately having clients building sites, doing the thing, and, yeah, it's a fun experience. I definitely learned a lot. Um, you know, I, I don't think client work necessarily was for me. I kind of realized I enjoyed doing it more for myself, but the money was good. So, you know, at the time, that was, that was kind of my thing in high school.

So as you kind of got through high school, obviously college was probably in the next foray there. What was the, what was the bridge from high school to college?

Yeah. So, you know, after high school, I went away to college. I went away to uga, right? So the University of Georgia was like, you know, a couple hours and I was like, well, can't really still keep running this like website business thing and go to college. So I guess I'll put that on hold. So he kind of like took the business and I went to college and I started somewhere in here, I started getting interested in cars. I was already, I guess, interested in cars, but I started seriously getting interested in cars. You know, you're in high school, like 18 year old, that's the thing, right? So I got interested Fast and Furious had come out at the time and Toyota Supras were all the rage. Well, I bought one in high school right before the movie came out. Movie comes out, all of a sudden, everybody wants one. And I'm like, all right, I'll sell mine. So I sell it, make a few thousand dollars over what I paid, and I'm like, wait a minute, this is more than I made like all summer doing this other work. Like, this is something to this. I'm just going to buy cars and flip them. So I started going around looking for good deals on cars. And over the course of college, I ended up flipping over 50 Toyota Supras. And I wasn't a mechanic. I didn't like, fix them up. I would go find good, negotiate a good deal on a car. I'd drive cross country, like at my. My now wife Ashley hates me because, like, we would drive all the way to like north, like Indiana, pick up a car and then drive back in like 24 hours. And I get back and I basically figured, I figured, you know, I can buy this thing, I get to drive a nice car for free, and then I'll sell it. I'll make a couple thousand dollars whenever anyone's interested. So I buy cheap, buy low, sell high, right? Like buy a cheap and list it immediately for a premium price. And within, you know, some period of time, there are a couple of months, maybe I get a, I get a bite at my premium price because the cars were super rare and in high demand. So, yeah, I realized, like, that was Kind of how I paid my way through college. More so, more so than doing websites and technology. That was more for fun and just something I was interested in. But I would flip cars and I'd do one every quarter or so and that would pay for all my expenses.

So the crazy part is I actually, after I was married, a buddy of mine had his dealer's license, so we, I flipped cars on the side he was buying at the auction. But I wasn't doing all that. I wasn't driving across the country like.

You and Ashley were. Yeah, yeah, that, that wasn't the best part. But, you know, it's fun. I got to see a lot of the country at the same time and, you know, I didn't have much else to do. I was in college, I was learning and exploring the country and getting to drive fast cars. You know, these cars, some of them would have like 600 horsepower and you know, it's a blast.

So that is so cool. Well, tell me, so were you. Were you studying computer program? What was the, what was your course to study and where to go from there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was doing computer science. I went straight into computer science at uga. And then I actually within. Within the first year, I basically decided I was going to move back to Kennesaw, which is closer to where I. Where I actually grew up. And I moved back and I picked back up doing websites as well. So I went and joined backup with. Guy's name was Scott at the time. And I joined back up with him and I was doing websites. It just wasn't a full time thing. So I was flipping cars, doing websites and I just kind of realized I was like, you know, George was fun, but it's also a party school. There's a lot of distractions. And I was like, I am not. This is probably not the best thing for me. I should probably move back to where I was being way more productive than this. Like, I can still get my computer science degree and like Georgia was having problems with some kind of computer science accreditation thing at the time anyway. And I was like, you know what? Just not going to deal with it. So I moved back to Kennesaw and actually graduated from Kennesaw. I got my computer science degree there, worked full time. Man, I just remembered something else too. I guess somewhere in there is when I started doing adsense websites. I think I was working.

I remember the whole four hour work week. You became the expert when I very first met you.

Yeah, absolutely. That was when I moved back to Kennesaw shortly After actually. So I picked up a, a regular job there somewhere that would pay like normal salary for, for like a few months. And it was a pool store. And I got the job as a sales guy. And anybody that knows me knows I'm kind of an introvert. I don't really like, I'm not like a face to face salesperson. I love marketing, but I'm not going to come up and like convince you to buy a spa, like, which is what this job was. And I, you know, like, I didn't do great at that role in the company. But I did realize they had, were not picking up anywhere near the traffic they needed to enter their location. So I took over, rebuilt their entire website, got them ranked number one in Google for all their keywords and all this stuff, figured out all the local business SEO stuff. And I was at that time still learning this AdSense thing. Man, I'm trying to like, there was a whole lot going on in this period of college, right? This is the time when you're learning and trying to figure all this stuff out. I had, at some point I decided I was going to get rich doing real estate too. Which at the time, like, if you put yourself back to this time, you know, it's actually kind of close to right now where everybody was flipping houses, everybody's doing real rich dad, poor dad had just recently come out, you know, like, it was like, oh yeah, obviously I need to build a real estate empire. So somewhere here I started going to a couple different real estate conferences and I was trying to figure that out. I was trying to figure out how to make money online with ads and like figuring out this stuff. And I had a, I had a forum hosting website where I hosted other people's message boards, right? So I hosted their message boards for free. I put my ads on their message board, made a little bit of money, right? Not a ton, but I made a little bit of money. So I was trying to figure that out. I was trying to figure out ways to like maximize that revenue. I was trying to figure out real estate. And then I still remember I went to this real estate conference and you know, they're teaching like how to get your first house with zero down and do all this stuff. I've just been, you know, I've been struggling through it, trying to put together enough funds to buy a down payment. They're like, oh, you need zero down, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, okay. Then I'm signing on and doing this thing for an introvert. I don't Want to go into a bank and, like, convince a banker to, like, do. And it was just like, this doesn't sound fun, right? Like, you know, so I'm sitting here trying to figure this stuff out, and I remember getting back to my room and going back and like, checking my ads, my ad revenue from Google at the time, and I'd made like $30 that day on one of my websites. And I was like, at the time, I probably had, like, a few dozen websites. And I'm like, man, took me, like, a day to make. And it made $30 today. It made 18 yesterday. I made 10 the day before. I'm like, if I did flipped a house, I'd make like $200 a month in cash flow on this thing. And I can make a site in a day, which is a lot more up my alley, a lot more in line with my superpowers, and actually enjoy what I'm doing. So I basically made this decision to not do real estate. And they focus back on what my interests lie, where my interests lie, but not just my interest, but I think my skills and my talent. And I think that's actually probably an important lesson in retrospect, looking back, that, like, a lot of people are just looking for the next thing, right? Like, the next most interesting thing. What's working for that guy? What's working for that guy? And there is value to what I would call following the bags of money, right? So looking at the guy who's successful and seeing what he's doing, like, and following the most successful guy you can find and considering and looking at how he's making his money, right? But there's also something to be said for looking at your own skill set, and it's not necessarily what you're most interested in. It's like finding the joy and finding the excitement in what you're doing and what you have good skills at, right? So, like, it's not that I enjoy coding more than anything else in the world, but I'm good at it, and I can find joy in what I do. I can find the flow state. I can find excitement and whatnot in it. And I just didn't have that with real estate. And I realized that, and that was kind of like an important kind of turning point. Otherwise, you might be learning from Todd Dickerson, the real estate guru right now. You never know.

Clickfunnels never would've come about.

Yeah, I might have a few apartment complexes or something, though. Who knows? But, yeah, so, I mean, like, that was, like, a super exciting time and after I made that shift, I just. I went in full bore. I had. I went and I started writing software to automate site building, looking at what other people in the industry were doing, what other tools were working. There were a number of people figuring this stuff out around the same time. But instead of using, like the off the shelf tools, I decided to build my own stuff. And I kind of automated site building. I had it like point and click ready, where I'm like, all right, these are the keywords I'm going after. Here's some images, here's some topics. And I'd like, press a button and it would build like 10 sites. And I went through a time period there where I built probably a couple thousand websites that were all generating ad revenue. And I still, Man, I don't even know if this site still exists. But I created like a site at one point and there was a photo on it where the headline was like, college kid, you know, generates more money than his professors or something, right? Like, it was like, I started considering the sales route because I was generating tons of traffic, tons of ad revenue, but I had not collected one single lead, not one single email address. And I've got probably millions of visits per month coming through this network of sites. And I'm like, it didn't click. I didn't know that I needed to. I didn't want to, like, collect email addresses and sell things. I just was like, putting sites up in my bedroom and like, making lots of money from ads. Sounded great to me. Well, at some point, I discovered a guy named Yannick Silver, who I know, you know, he's a good buddy of ours now, right? And I discovered him and he had a seminar at the time called the Underground Online Seminar, right? And I know you've been like, it's been like the industry event probably before funnel Hacking Live was the thing, right? It was the Underground Online seminar. And I was like, you know what I need to learn from these guys? I need to go check this thing out. And I went and I went to. I think it was either his first or second underground seminar that he had ever hosted way back. And I went to the thing and I was learning tons. And I, like, something somebody said was like, talking about collecting leads and building email lists and like, the money's in the list. The money's in the list. I'm like, okay, well, I haven't collected any leads. Like, I should probably collect some leads. So I made that shift then, and I went back and I started, like, actually trying to figure out how to like build themes in my sites because I was all over the place to like build an email list. And for a little while there I went back and actually created a little coffee business. Cause I had a bunch of traffic around coffee. So I'm like, I'll sell coffee to people like, you know, I'll figure something, some way out to sell that. And you know, we didn't call them sales funnels at the time but you know, built the first sales funnels back then and yeah, that was man, there's a whole lot of excitement back then and like the time of just learning and figuring it out. And it was the wild, wild west, even more so than it is now. It's probably way easier now than it used to be. But you know, it was exciting.

No, I love it. It'd be fun to actually. We had to get a hold of Yannick and actually find out kind of get a registration of who was at those first two or three because that's where I met. I met Jeff Walker, I met Tailman Knudsen was there. I met so many of the people who became some of the OGs basically. And I remember talking to Jeff Walker at the time where he was like I had quite. I literally just bought his is. I think it's PLF 1 or 2 at the time. And it was just crazy and I'm sure just like now people trying to get hold of Russell. You couldn't get hold of Jeff as easy as you could back then either. So it's.

Oh man. I've got an interesting story around that because so I think Jeff Johnson was probably like the main reason I went to that event because he was, he was the SEO expert period. Right. Like Yahoo went to him for like SEO because Yahoo is actually the largest content provider or at the time was. So like he was like the guy when it came to SEO. He explained like buying Page Rank site like links to like Google's own SEO team because they didn't even know people were doing that. Like it was literally like before any of this stuff. So I was like, I gotta meet this guy. I gotta like learn his stuff. So I think I drove. Yeah I did because it was. I drove in this little S2000 from Georgia all the way up to his event in like DC and I listened to Jeff Johnson and Jeff Walker on like repeat. I feel I bought PLF and stuff too, right? So I'm listening to their stuff. I'm driving up super late. It's like a 10 hour drive or something. I pull in it's like midnight getting into the hotel. I pull up, I'm like half asleep, half hyped up on Red Bull, and I get out of the car and I'm trying and I'm going to get in line to check in and Jeff Johnson and Jeff Walker are in line in front of me and nobody else in the entire place except for them. And I'm like, what are the chances? All right, so, you know, I'm like, what's up, guys? Like, I've been listening to you guys on repeat for the past 10 hours and like just introduce myself for the first time and, you know, actually Jeff Johnson and actually hit it off that week and get good buddies and have like hung out a bunch since then at like all these conferences and stuff. So anyway, like I. It was just this like kind of surreal moment for me, but it was diving straight into the deep end of Internet marketing world back then.

Well, I think that's for us at ClickFunnels, that's probably one of the greatest blessings we have is you as a tech co founder genius actually has a marketing background. And I don't think people can understand or appreciate that actual value. Especially when you're trying to talk to a developer who doesn't understand the marketing behind just. There's such a disconnect. And I think it's why you and Russell have always gotten along. So, I mean, you guys are kindred spirits.

It's the coolest thing to watch because.

You guys both get it. And it's always been fun for me to sit back and to watch Russell launch something. All of a sudden you'll come behind and you'll split test it, just trying to beat what he's doing. And I think it's that kind of a relationship that's allowed us to build it to where we're at. But so I'm kind of curious. So it's so funny because I'm thinking of Yannick's event and I met Jeff Johnson there. I met Eben Pagan there. I met all these crazy, crazy people. I'd love to know if we actually were probably the same event. All right, I know this is going to feel like a huge abrupt halt stop, just a quick audio jump cut. But I had so much fun talking to Todd and I thought, you know what? There is so much content here that I want to make sure people focus in on it. So I actually broke this, my interview with Todd down into three different interviews. You just heard the first one. The next one is going to be the three filters that you need to find the right experts. Todd literally is the smartest person I've ever met. And you're going to find out why on the next episode. So please make sure you listen to that one and then the other one after that is Todd's side, the other side of who built Clickfunnels, how and why. So you wanna make sure you get that one as well. So those will be the next two episodes. And hang on, hold tight and you'll get a ton of value out of both these. Well, I hope you absolutely love all the value of that podcast. Speaking of value, right now, one of the things we're really trying to do is over deliver. And the thing we've seen that has probably created the greatest opportunity for us to over deliver to all of you, and that is our One Funnel Away Challenge. In fact, you can actually see it@clickfunnelsradio.com OFA Again, clickfunnelsradio.com OFA if you gone through the One Funnel Away challenge in the past, this is something totally new. We started the one funnel away challenge back in 2018 and it is now, two and a half years later, we decide to completely redo it. Everything brand new, Simplifying the process, making it just as easy as possible for you to get results quick. Just spend 30 minutes every single day and what you're going to get is Russell teaching you exactly what you need to do to get your funnel up and running in the next 30 days. So go to ClickFunnels radio forward slash OFA. You can get all the details there. Thanks so much and we'll talk to you soon.