How Stephen Diaz Used AI to Rebuild a $10M Business from Near Bankruptcy

Let me tell you about the dark side of the coaching industry. Our Instagram account got taken down. Sales just fell off a cliff. I sold people into leaving. I was like, you need to leave. There's no more money. We're in debt. I don't know how we're going to keep going. Don't come back unless you could go 6 to 9 months with no pay, and then I still fire you. I will never forget getting back on that call Monday. I'll probably have like 3 or 4 people on with me. I just started seeing names pop up in there. It makes me tear up just thinking about these people.

What was that like when you realized, oh my gosh, I got to take my workforce from 120 down down to like 20. How did you do this, man?

Today's guest has a special and repeatable story. He didn't just follow the ClickFunnels playbook once, he followed it twice. Stephen Diaz started as a wedding photographer. He found the ClickFunnels playbook, applied it, and built the Rainmaker Family, a coaching company that helped thousands of moms launch Amazon businesses. They grew to 120 employees, made the Inc. 5000 number 148 in America, were ranked number 2 in education, earned the Two Comma Club, the Two Comma Club X, and the Two Comma Club C. And then in a single season, 3 things hit all at once and the business nearly didn't survive. He laid off 100 people. He almost went bankrupt. But what we want to focus on today is what he did next. Because instead of walking away, he opened a blank page and ran the same playbook again, same funnel principles, completely different market. We've got a lot of ground to cover. Stephen, welcome to the show.

What's up guys? Good to be here. Love the show and excited to talk to your audience. Going to be awesome.

What an intro, Dante. That was awesome.

Well, when we have a Stephen Diaz—

I'm on the edge of my seat and I've lived it.

When we have Stephen Diaz on the show, we got to roll out the red carpet.

Come on.

Yeah, well, one thing, one thing I've noticed first, and I was a little bit bummed, is your better half's not here. She's not joining us on the show. What's the story there?

I know, I'm so used to having the warm body right next to me, but, uh, she's on maternity leave. We're, we're big into serving family first entrepreneurs. And, uh, I was joking with you guys, like, every maternity leave has gotten longer. We're on our third. The first one we took a month off, second one we took two months off. This is our third, and she's taking a year off. So, man, living the dream. And she doesn't want to think anything about business right now. Otherwise she would be here.

Well, you mentioned kind of in messages, I think back and forth to Dante, you were like, I almost have to protect her from this because if she hears anything business, she's going to just try to jump back in even though we don't let her. So you're like, you're like isolating her, right?

Yeah. She's so driven. Like she's like honestly started a side hustle during maternity leave. Like she's not working in this business, but she's like reselling clothes, going to thrift stores and like started this whole thing. I'm like, you should just chill. But she loves it. She loves business entrepreneurship. Always been like that, even as a kid.

Well, can I point out how cool is it though, that you can sit back and look at each other and go, okay, priorities, you're going to take a year off.

Yeah.

Not many people have the ability or the freedom to just make those choices. Like, you know, some people call it, uh, it's crude, but some people call it F you money, right? Other people, like, I like to refer it as, refer to it as no thank you money. Like, if you don't want to do anything, yeah, you don't have to do it. You're like, no thanks. You know, which I think is amazing. But she's been an integral part of this, like of, you know, this rise and this fall and then this phoenix rising from the ashes kind of in a different way. Because I think there's a principle here, Dante, as well, like following this framework that we talk about over and over and over on ClickFunnels Radio, it's the same whether you're doing selling things online, whether you're selling coaches, I'm sorry, selling courses as a coach, or anything like that versus e-com, it's all like the same framework. And what I've noticed about entrepreneurs is it does not matter if they get knocked down, they get back up again over and over and over again. And it's a pattern, I've seen it, right? But the framework's the same. You dove into Expert Secrets, but I wanna go back before this. So you and Chelsea are, and you were in film and stuff like this, but you're also a photographer. You guys were doing wedding photography.

Yeah, it was our first kind of entrepreneurial venture just out of college. You know, I had a camera, I was a film major, and she was kind of into it. So we're like, of course we were young, so we had friends getting married and like, hey, can you shoot our wedding? And anyone who's in that industry, you know, kind of like every wedding leads to another. So we just did a friend's wedding and then it was like a friend of a friend's wedding and then like a slightly stranger wedding, you know, like, and before we knew it, we had a business and, and really that's where we cut our teeth with entrepreneurship and you know, the highs and the lows.

Were you working full-time too when you're doing weddings?

Oh, yeah, I was all freelance. Yeah, Chelsea was working at In-N-Out at the time, and then I convinced her to quit. I was always like the quit your job guy, and so I was like, babe, like, we're making so much more like shooting one shot, like, you know what I mean? Like, you do one senior photo session, you make more than you make at In-N-Out. So she eventually quit, even though her parents were like, that was like her safe, secure job, and now she's doing this creative starving artist thing. Yeah, yeah. But we did it. We, and we, uh, we grew that business to multiple six figures, but we, it really like it had a ceiling to it, you know, like we love the impact and income that, that we were able to like impact people and also make good money, right? Um, but it really had a ceiling and we got to the point where we were really overworked and overextended and overwhelmed. We were doing, you know, two weddings a weekend during the season and driving 3 hours, you know, to get there and back and like staying up late charging batteries and then doing all editing and wearing all the hats, you know, this is pre-AI, pre, like, even outsourcing mindset. Like, we were just doing it all. And I think if you— I probably don't, shouldn't do the math. Like, we were making, you know, a couple six figures, like $200,000, $300,000 a year. But if you really did the math between two people working probably 80, 90 hours a week, it was like, hourly rate was probably not that good. Um, but it did give us our start and we are grateful for that season, but I'm glad to not be in that season anymore. Yeah.

But I mean, There's a couple things here that I think people need to focus on. Like, if you're listening to this, if you're in a 9-to-5, you got a spouse that's doing this entrepreneur thing and you can help, or like, what would you tell somebody who's in a similar situation? Like, how do they communicate with their spouse? Like, for you, it was like, Chelsea, quit your job. Like, how do you then say, all right, how do we transition from 9-to-5 into this entrepreneurship? What would you tell people?

Man. Yeah. I mean, I was always like, how do we give ourselves a raise? Right? Like if you're going to trade time for money, right? Which a lot of jobs are, you put time in, you get money out. And that was the wedding job too. And we can only work so many hours, but the time per money, like trade was higher, you know, in and out, you're making $15 an hour. Right. And that's like your max. There's no more than that. You could work more hours, but there's only so many hours in the day. So we just traded that for something where the. Amount per hour was higher, but it still was capped. And so that was still left us kind of hanging in that, like, man, we know that we're capable of more, but like, we really maxed out our hours, you know. And so I think a lot of listeners are there, like, they're like desiring to make more income, make more impact, but you only have so many hours in the day. And that's where we found ourselves in the wedding industry.

Yeah, there was a moment, um, that I was kind of looking at, and you've told this story before, where you were literally at a wedding and you're shooting and you look at the numbers, you started selling things on Amazon and you looked at the numbers and you're like, Chelsea, we made more on Amazon today than we did shooting this wedding. Tell us about that.

Man, that was like our turning point because we were honestly, I call this the spaghetti season when I look back. You ever hear the phrase like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick? Like I was on every webinar, I was on every, webinars were kind of hot back then. So I was on every webinar, buying every program, trying to figure out like how to make money online. Because I was like, man, if we could figure out the internet thing, like, the possibilities are endless. And so we had like 7 or 8 side hustles. But Amazon, selling physical products on Amazon was one of those. And we were selling these little toys. If anyone's watching the video, I have one on the shelf over there, these little kendamas. Oh, those are like Japanese—

those were big.

My kids are into it. Yeah. Yeah. And this was like 20— man, 2017, 2018, which was like fidget spinner era. You remember that? Like, you guys had fidget spinners. So this was kind of a fidgety toy. And it started to take off on Amazon. And yeah, I never remember— I never forget that wedding because, I mean, first of all, we were in Chico, California, which is like 110 degrees during the summer. So we're sweating at this wedding, have been hauling gear all day.

That poor—

and you get like one moment to sit down, right? Yeah, I know, they need fans under those dresses, I think. But we, you know, as a wedding photographer, you get one time to sit down. Basically it's like dinner and you kind of like hide on the side and eat your food really fast and then get back to work, right?

Then go get all—

but I remember just pulling out my phone Exactly right. Yeah, pulling out my phone and being like, babe, like, look. And it was like on Amazon that day, this thing we had been building for months, of course, like it had made more money on Amazon than we had made at that wedding. And that's where I feel like she like clicked for her because she was like, you know, again, like security. It was like we had the wedding thing going. What are you doing over here just side hustling and figuring all this stuff out? Like, it's just like, okay, babe, she trusted me, but she was more of the stable one. I'm more the crazy entrepreneur one. And so it was where I think really clicked for her. She was like, Holy cow, like there's something there. And it was so cool to see the effect of that even in our wedding business. The next year we took on less weddings because it was like, hey, Amazon's bringing in the same amount, you know, let's lean in over there. And then we took in less weddings and actually the weddings we took on were more like dream clients then because it was like we could be picky about the ones we said yes to and the ones we said no to. It actually, it gave us a lot of time freedom back, which was really what we had been desiring. What we looking for? Leverage. Is that's what we kind of come back to in all of our businesses is like, how do we get more leverage, right? How do we put in an hour into something and it's like we put in 10 or 100 hours? Um, and that's where like we are just, man, this is it. Something, something here we got to run after.

Wow. Okay, so I don't know when you guys first had kids or where this fits into the business, but the next step that you had was teaching mostly moms how to do like similar Amazon sales. Is that right? This is kind of where the Rainmaker Challenge came in.

Yeah. So we were, we were selling on Amazon, right? And now we're, we're replacing our wedding income and it's, it's creating all this benefit, overflow benefit in our lives, right? Time freedom. And, and we don't have the winters anymore. We're freaking out about money because like summers are crazy with weddings, but then winters there's like no jobs. Right. And so we start telling all our wedding friends like, hey, we're doing this thing. Like you should try this. And honestly just start helping people. And then I saw, I think, a Facebook post from someone. I don't remember who, but I need to go back and thank them. And they were talking about Expert Secrets, right? Which I have on the shelf. And I opened this book and I'm like, Expert Secrets. I start reading this book and I'm like, I know this book already because remember I was on all the webinars buying all the products. So like when I read the webinar script, I felt like I'd figured out a secret. Like I was like, oh my God, Wizard of Oz parts the curtain.

You're like, that's what's happening back there.

That's what I've been watching all these years.

I was like, This is the thing.

This is the script. You have two choices. Like, it was like all the stuff I had been buying, so many of these things. I was like, this is the playbook, right? And so we ran a webinar, our first webinar we did. Like, again, like I was such a new marketer, I didn't really know the difference between warm and cold audiences. So I ran a webinar and I just invited my friends, you know, and we're like, hey, I don't know, we're not experts at this thing. We're just a chapter ahead, right? Using Russell's. And I literally had the book. On my desk and I was reading off of it. Like, while I think I turned my camera off, I had slides and I was like reading off the book, the script in there, like the webinar script. And that webinar did $60,000. We had 30 people enroll at $2K.

Hold up, hold up. This was just to your— this was just to your friends. We're going to break this down for a second now, Dante.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Hold on. Because I love these numbers. That was not your first go. There's no way that was your very first time you hit record.

That was our, yeah, first webinar. I mean, it was, it was ugly. It was an ugly webinar, but I think it was—

how many people were there though? Uh, you got a lot of friends.

Yeah. I mean, you must have 50 to 100 people there. I mean, like, I, I like hustled. I, I invited people via DM, you know, you like message a random person on Facebook and you see that message from like 2017. It's like, I think I messaged all my friends to, to like, you know, my friends on Facebook, which some of them are just acquaintances, you know, but I got a lot of people to show up and I don't remember again, I was not like a marketer at the time. I didn't know the stats of like close rates and any of those things.

You had 30 people sign up at $2K.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Holy smokes.

And then, um, I mean, me and Chelsea were, I mean, I got, we were floored because like to make that in the wedding industry, it would take us half a year, you know, and sweating at weddings and editing. Like we were like, dang, Russell's right. We're one file away. Like, we're gonna be millionaires. Like, we were freaking out, you know. But what I— the mistake I made after that was I didn't, again, know the difference between warm and cold markets. So I just was like, dang, let's go. I hired a Facebook ad agency, ran ads, and basically just blew all that money, like, trying to figure it out. Because, like, it wasn't an irresistible offer. It was just my friend that trusted me, and I was excited about something, you know. And luckily, I did take some of that money, and I bought in to, I think it was called 2 Comma Club or something.

Yeah, 2 Comma Club.

2CCX.

Yeah, 2CCX. We still run it, man.

It's awesome. Okay, okay. Yeah, I got into that with some of that money and met a lot of great connections there. And really that started to build the foundation for kind of the next thing, which was figuring out the challenge model. Like we were running the webinars, but the challenge model for our market was just so powerful. And I met Pedro Deo. Yep. And he's, you know, kind of the challenge guy. And he was on a call with us. He's like, dude, you got to do two things. One, run a challenge. And two, you need to niche this thing down, right? Like everyone's heard this advice. But I just— our thing was not for moms at the time. It was not niched down. And so we were actually not parents at the time. So this felt weird because it was like, moms, what do you mean? Like, but we looked at our case studies. So we, at this point, we had been doing it about a year with kind of our inner circle of friends. And the people that were really winning with it were moms. And so we just were like, let's take all those case studies. Like, it's kind of the fruit in the garden, right? And it's like, let's like nurture that. And so we just rebranded, made it all for moms and ran a challenge. And that was kind of the ticket to like really scaling this business. Um, uh, we did our first challenge. I think that it kind of matched that webinar. It had been like that webinar was a hit and then we had like a year of basically like no sales. Um, and we had trickle sales, you know, but then the webinar That was a year later, 2019. I think that did $60K. Our next challenge did $100K. And then our third challenge did $1.4 million. And then we just went on to do 7-figure challenges like every 4 months. And then we evergreened the challenge and got to $1 million a month. We even had a $3 million month on an evergreen challenge. So we just like rocket shipped that thing between 2020 and 2023.

Wow, Steven, I'm so curious. Yeah. What kind of things were you doing in your initial challenge? Like, what kind of tweaks were you making to grow it so incrementally?

I mean, the first challenge we did, I just took the Perfect Webinar script and I just stretched it over 5 days, essentially. So I just was like, hey, first day, big domino, you know, and, and I would just line up the testimonials with that, that topic. And then each day was kind of like overcoming objections.

Sure.

But it was a very like, I think Russell would probably see the challenge and be like, you taught too much, you know, like we were just giving too much. And so over time, we did make this challenge simpler. So it was like an easier result for people to kind of catch. And, you know, we, I mean, we really are true funnel hackers in that we, we split test like crazy stuff. Like I'm very much a marketing nerd now. Like I just love that stuff. But to get the Evergreen Challenge to work, it was like 200, 300 different tests to really get the conversion rate to a point where it could scale.

I hope people are hearing that, by the way. Like, this is not okay. Everybody hears like the highlight reel and we're going to get into some other things that aren't highlighted. Yeah, it's like, oh, we jumped on and we did $60,000 our first webinar. And that's usually the end of the social clip or the end, you know, the story.

Yeah.

But what you're telling here is 300 almost iterations of this. To just like make sure that this thing is rolling. And so I want people to be patient with themselves but also be persistent because you have to do this. You have to just get out there and do it and try and iterate and iterate. That's amazing.

Are there any split tests that stand out to you or that you still remember where it's like, holy cow, we did this thing and it was crazy what it got us?

Man, I feel like it's always like when you find them, you're like, duh, like, duh, why didn't we think of that? Like, it's so stupid, you know? Like, we had an opt-in page that was just like headline opt-in, you know, like just, just catchy hook, opt-in.

And then yeah, and like opt-in.

And we had done like a lot. We had at this point, we were at Morrissey's and this is now a VSL funnel. Right.

Okay.

And I mean, we grew that thing to, I mean, a million plus with no follow-up sequence, no, like no optimizations. And we finally started adding optimizations.

A book to a phone call, VSL book to a phone call or no?

This was, yeah, later in the journey. We got a sales team finally and did a VSL to phone call.

What was the price point?

Um, at that point we were at, I want to say $5,800 for the program. Okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's right over, I think, the cusp of where like a challenge can like close down immediately.

Yeah. Without having to have a little action. Yeah. The $2K product. And then we went to $3K, then we went to, uh, $5,800 or $4,800, $5,800. We kind of kept going up as demand was just slamming us.

And let me, let me break that down for people though, real quick, because if you're going to do a webinar, a one-off up to about $3,000 in about 90 minutes or something, you can close down without having to have anybody else do anything. You do this thing right, even up to maybe about $4,000, $5,000. Sweet spot is $997 to $2,997. Beyond that though, you get to that $5,000 barrier and it's like sometimes depends on what you're selling, but sometimes there needs to be a quick phone call, but always doing that perfect webinar on the front end where there's a challenge. Or whatever, like gets people past all of those, you know, buying concerns.

Yeah.

And now you're just usually taking a credit card. They want to make sure that you're real, that you're actually going to be there, that you have a team to support it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's interesting. That's a great trajectory that most people take is, all right, hey, we'll do a webinar, then we're going to jump into the challenge and eventually we're going to make that challenge into a VSL and then we can scale that thing a little bit higher by adding a sales team. So I love that framework because if you're talking about the one-to-many framework, we scale that up with a value ladder. Like, we'll get into the challenge for a little bit more. They'll spend more time, therefore they're going to spend more money. I just wanted to highlight that for people listening. Like, yeah, you followed that framework and that is Russell and Expert Secrets like 101.

Yeah, 100%. But yeah, to answer that question, it was a simple— we had an opt-in, you know, and a headline. That was it. We just added a freebie when they opted in. So they would go click the opt-in little pop-up, it'd be like, when you opt in, we'll also give you just a PDF. Like it was like a free PDF. I mean, that thing took our opt-in rate like from like, I don't know, it was probably 10% to like 40% on that funnel. And I mean, now I kind of have this, like I call it my tried and true marketing principles, right? And again, probably all this stuff is in Russell's world. I just wasn't paying attention to everything, you know? But one of the principles that our team really hammers now is like, we call it earlier is better. Right? So if you make a change earlier in the funnel, there's such a, like, ripple effect down the line. Like, you could change your close rate, which is at the very end of the funnel, but if you just change the opt-in rate at the very beginning, it's like all the other numbers also change. Like, it's a ripple effect, right? So if you double your opt-in rate, you double everything else without changing anything else. And so now we put a ton of time on the front end.

Yeah. When you're auditing that funnel, you tend to look at that front end and go, okay, If we're just pouring more people into this bucket, we know our conversion rate is, and it will just, it's just more in, more out.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people focus on those later stuff, but it's like, if the later stuff's kind of working, just get the front end really working and then all the other stuff works, you know? It just scales up with it. So we, yeah, now I put like almost like twice as much energy in that even just top of the fold, front of the funnel, you know, very first thing they see, whether it's the ads or that first page, piece of the funnel, because if you get that up, um, click-through rates up and opt-in rates up, it's just everything else flows so seamlessly. Um, so whenever we're— if you're listening and you're confused, where do I focus in my funnel? Just focus earlier. It's going to have a bigger effect. Right.

So like if somebody has, let's say they have a 2% conversion on their order form right now, yes, they could go rework the webinar and they could rework the order form and try and lift from 2 to 3%, or they could just go get an extra 100 leads every week and allow that to go down the funnel. I love that. It's great, Stephen.

Yeah, it is.

I want to accelerate this a little bit because once again, highlight reels. Um, you, you seem to be alpha predator here. Like, think about this. You're, you know, you're flying high. You're not looking up because you're not worried about anybody else eating you. And you've hit number 148 on the Inc. 5000 list. You're flying high. Rainmakers is happening, but then it all changes.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's a lot of people get to this point. They're like, yeah, man, I'm untouchable. I know what to do. We're rolling. But what happened? You mentioned that there were 3 things, like 3 punches in the face. What were they like? How vulnerable can we get here?

Yeah. So let me tell you about the dark side of the coaching industry.

Yeah, tell us.

So, you know, we're helping people make money online. You know, that's what we're doing and have a lot of success stories. But as you guys know, not everyone wins with the opportunity. And, you know, we had really scaled this business, impacted a lot of people, but unfortunately a small group of, you know, people that don't like you can make a big noise, you know? And so the 3 things that happened, it was kind of 3 things in a row that really took the business out almost like like to the point of considering bankruptcy, um, with the business, which is crazy to say. Like, we'd done $55 million, we got to $20 million a year, 120 employees, which again, also, this is my first rodeo with like building a massive team like that, you know. And so looking back, I definitely would— I am doing things differently with overhead because we had like 6-figure overhead every month just to like keep the thing rolling. So you just have to keep launching, keep going. And we had a— I won't mention any names, but we had an employee that we had let go in 2022, and she was like a friend of ours. And what happened was there was some offense, there was some bitterness. And like, looking back, like, I thought I was taking care of her. I thought I was, you know, reaching out, but I guess I wasn't, you know. And there was just a little bit of disconnect there. And as she saw us to kind of rise and she wasn't involved, That started to bubble up. And we lived in the same town, actually. And when we moved out of town, she knew she wouldn't see us around town. Man, she just went on like an internet rampage. And she had a pretty big client list of ours because she was a coach in our community. So she was elevated in our community. People knew her. She had a pretty big list. And she just went on like, you know, you ever see those like true crime documentaries on Netflix? She basically was like, I'm going to do that for this.

Wow.

And like, I'm gonna send a weekly newsletter out and just like tell my side of the story. And of course, like, you know, there was some truth in there and there were some just totally made-up stuff and some, some hurts. But she— it started kind of tame, and I would text her, but I mean, she would just— anytime I texted her, try to connect, she would turn it against us. Like, she was convinced in her mind that we had started a cult at this point. Um, and again, like, it started tame, but it— this newsletter ended with like here's how to get a refund from this company. Here's how to submit— here's how to report them to the FTC. Here's how to like, um, uh, oh, actually, I found a lawyer if you want to sue this company. Just fill out this form and you can— this lawyer will contact you. And so then this lawyer kind of was like, oh, look at this money pot. So they start advertising to our past clients, hey, did you try this and it didn't work for you? You could sue this company.

Are they going class action on you at this point? I didn't know any of this, Steven.

Yeah, not a class action. Luckily in our contract, that's not a thing. They sign a contract when they join. I mean, the contract also says no guarantees. No, like it's a very, I mean, a clear thing that's like, you know, hey, not everyone wins with this. We're very transparent. We, every time we do a challenge, we're like, this is how many people launch. This is how many people make money. This is how many people didn't make money. But you know, what I've kind of learned, the dark side of the coaching industry is that people can sue you for anything. They can say anything and sue you for anything. And that's really unfortunate. And there are, there there are shady lawyers out there that will take advantage of vulnerabilities, like, oh, your font size on your website is wrong, or you texted someone past 8 PM, and they'll hit you with a $25,000 to $30,000 bill. And so we ended up in a lot of lawsuits, and, uh, that was the first thing, the first punch.

Wow.

Um, and that really just— you know, now we're defending ourselves, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal just to defend ourselves. There's tons of refunds coming because She really swung people. She's a good storyteller, good writer.

Imagine if she would have just used that for good, like to jump in and like help these people make some money, right?

Yeah, I know. And she did in our community. I love this girl and like, I, I forgive her. And also, like, I always tell her, like, you, you are a multiplier, like, you are, you are an influencer, you know, and so like, she used that influence for not so good. And And we didn't really do anything about it. You know, I'm more of a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy and just, you know, hey, you know, like, you can say what you want to say, but like, I know who I am and I know the people we've helped, you know. And so out of, I mean, like, we had 100,000 customers, you know what I mean, like over the lifetime of this business. And we're talking about, you know, maybe 50 people that really don't like us. Yeah, but 50 people online, they can make a big— yeah, they can make a big splash. And so saw a lot of refund requests, um, a lot of legal fees, uh, you know, they were ganging up on us. Like, we had someone posting up on Reddit every day about us, just like nasty stuff. There's like about me, about the company, about look at this house they bought. They found our address and posted it. It was, it was gnarly. And, um, every day, like, for, for probably 9 months this happened. And so now, like, people Google us, they'd find this stuff. It was just killing sales. They started ganging up on our Instagram account, reporting it, because that was our main customer acquisition channel at the point. So our Instagram account got took— taken down, right? So our Instagram account is shut off. So now our customer acquisition channel just gets shut off. So that's the second punch, cuts our revenue in half. And now I still got a 6-figure team. People I love, you know, every month I'm paying to keep this thing going. Like, hey, maybe we'll break through, it's gonna be fine, this thing will resolve itself. And this is where I think like the hopeful visionary, there's like a ditch to it, you know. So for my visionaries in the room, you know, like, I'm such a hopeful, like, golden retriever optimist. Like, I'm just always like, hey, next month we're gonna turn this around, you know. And I just kind of kept prophesying to myself and the team, like, we're gonna be fine, it's gonna be okay. And I really wasn't taken the action needed, being real with the facts of like, shoot, we can't afford to have this team, you know? So I start burning cash now, just hoping it's gonna— oh, well, January is a good month for us. Like, let's keep going. We're gonna make it. January comes and not a good month, right? And then this is February 2025. This is kind of like the final nail in the coffin. So we had the disparagement campaign, you know, like punch number one. We had the Instagram account takedown, punch number 2, and then tariffs hit. Yeah. So tariffs was a big news story in, in spring of 2025. And while it didn't really affect Amazon sellers that much, like all of our people who are selling were totally fine. We had to adjust a couple of things, but it affected the general public's view of selling products on Amazon, like, pretty significantly. There was a lot of fear around it. And so like, basically sales just fell off a cliff at that point. And like, we were doing everything we could, getting on sales calls, just like flop, flop, flop. It was just like, just burning cash, burning cash, trying challenges, trying everything. And it was literally like, I put on all my different marketer hats, tried all the strategies, and this thing just was not working anymore, you know? And I think like, I want to speak to the people listening who like, maybe you had something like this, or you had something like this that you're just like, maybe it's even right now where you're like, shoot, is it time to pivot? You know, because like, I think in our world we're so good at powering through, you know. And I'm a big fan of like, don't just— like, we even teach this in our community. There's never 'I can't,' it's always 'How can I?' There's never walls, there are always ramps you can knock down up to the next level. And so we're big into mindset and keeping going. But at some point I just was like, with God, I'm like, God, is this thing done? You know, like, do I need to release this thing? Because sometimes you get comfortable in the thing that's like kind of like when working, right? And then when it pivots, the companies that die are the ones that don't adapt, right? You look at like the Sears, kind of like they were the ones that like put the magazines in people's homes and like they were Amazon before Amazon.

Totally.

And then when the internet came, they didn't adapt. They're like, oh, we got the magazines, we're good. And then like this thing goes under, you know? And so this is where we see like Russell talks about this a lot, like the cycle. Where like you have to— like, the true entrepreneur is the one that comes, comes back to the core stuff. But sometimes you gotta pivot hard.

I want to know, what was that like when you realized, oh my gosh, I gotta take my workforce from 120 down to like 20?

And I—

and even logistically, because I know these are hard decisions. Like, when, when this happens, you have to just rip off that Band-Aid. How'd you do it? Did you do it on like a, a phone call? Did you email everybody, say, I'll jump into a Zoom? How did you do this, man? And what, what did that feel like?

Yeah, it was— so we started in January, January of that year. We did like what's called a RIF, reduction in force, right? Where it's— this is like a mass layoff. Um, I guess it's not technically called a layoff, but it's called— I don't know, I don't know all the technical terms, but it was like the first one we thought we were cutting more than we— like, it was like I could— I wanted to cut— I'm doing visuals for the people just listening— like I had a, like, this is the what we need to cut, and I cut more than Yeah, right. It was like it hurt heart more than like, than, than it should have. And it wasn't a big enough cut. That's the crazy part. Like, it wasn't big enough. Like, and I, I thought I was stretching further. And so, man, like, and those were some really hard conversations.

These are friends, some probably even family members or people who've helped build this company.

I mean, these are people that have been with us, yeah, since 2020. And man, it was, it was super rough. We had a lot of those conversations one-on-one. Um, and, um, the first couple, like, I just went on live with the whole team and told them, you know, I was just like, hey, we're like, you know, if anyone's going through this, I got a whole playbook for like doing this because it's not easy. And yeah, and I had someone else kind of coach me through it, but I, I just told them, I was like, I don't want you to hear this from your manager, you know, I want you to hear it from me. Like, here's what's happening, like, we have to do this, and it's the only way we can keep going on this mission, which we all believe in. You know, and so at the end of this call, like, you're going to get one of two Zoom invites. You know, you're going to get invite to a one-on-one, which means today's your last day, or you're going to invite to a group call later this afternoon, which means you'll be part of our go-forward team. Right? So there's like a moment of suspense where everyone is like, doesn't know. And then immediately after call, we had it all coordinated. Everyone gets their invites. And dude, it was so hard. So hard. Um, and then, I mean, this is like, we did, we did one of those, and then it got to like, this is like May, and at this point, like, we still had too big of a team. We had like 70-something people, and we're just still burning money. And at this point, we're like in debt. I've been, I, I, I, I even like loaned the business money, um, and we're now like probably $800,000 to almost $1 million in debt, um. And so this is like like, uh, man, the hardest probably Zoom call I've done.

So you did— you have— you had to do a second riff then?

Yeah. So at this point, it's May, we had completely run out of money. We're, you know, almost $1 million in debt. And probably the hardest Zoom call I had to do. Again, like, we were being really transparent with the team because it's like, you don't want to catch people off guard and pretend things are okay, you know. It's a balance of like, hey, let's keep going, guys, but also like, this is real, you know. And at this point, they'd seen a riff before. And at this point, I was just like, okay, this paycheck was your last. Like, everyone, you have families to feed. Like, you should quit. And I basically had to take off my optimist hat completely because I was just like, this is the only loving thing I can do, is essentially not sell people into staying at all. And so I took all my marketer ability and I sold people into leaving. I was like, you need to leave. Like, there's no more money. We're in debt. Here's the numbers. Like, I don't know how we're going to keep going, but like, I'm going to be here next week serving these people because I believe in this thing. But like, you should not come, you know? And, and I told people, take the week off, think about it, but don't. And then come back on, on Monday if you want to keep going with absolutely no pay. And don't come back unless you could go 6 to 9 months with no pay. And then I still fire you. And like, if you have any resentment or anything like that, don't come back. And so I basically just like hardcore, like pitched. Yeah, yeah. You know, the company, because that's like what we needed to do. And I took the week off, like, I mean, the team took the week off, thought about— we had a lot of one-on-one conversations and, and I will never forget getting back on that call Monday. I had a couple of core people. I'm like, okay, I got— I'll probably have like 3 or 4 people on with me, you know? And man, like, you know, you're in Zoom and you have the waiting room. I just started seeing names pop up in there. You know, and it makes me tear up just thinking about these people because I had such loyal people. And, um, we had 44 people come back on Monday, you know, when we had nothing. And I mean, these are, these are employees, you know, that just, they're making a paycheck, just getting paid hourly. Like, they're not owners of the company, they're nothing, you know, but they had, they had ownership and they, they loved the people that we served and they didn't want to abandon them. And so like we had 44 people go on with essentially volunteering to keep the company going, you know, like that's incredible to me, incredible. And like I just, I just cried. I just like cried on that call in front of them and just was like, thank you, you know, you build something, you know, that's like a dream. Like it's just like, wow, I could not have predicted this 5 years ago that we'd build the impact this many people and do this thing that like you see entrepreneurs doing. It's just incredible. It's not about the money. It's about the people we're serving. And just to think of that, that might die. It's just like, it's like a baby dying, you know? And then to see these people show up saying like, we want to keep this thing going. There's like, there's nothing like that. And luckily I had a lawyer friend donate some time to me and he's like, you can't have people work for free. Like that's slavery, right? So like, luckily I had some legal counsel and we just, we went to to minimum wage. So like everyone on the team went to minimum wage for like the foreseeable future, right? And we just—

it—

what was super cool about that season, like looking back on it, was, um, you know, I'm a faith-filled guy, and I don't know about your audience, but like, um, I think sometimes you just see these supernatural ways that money comes in that you're just like, there's no way like that could worked. And it was so cool because like, I feel like I knew that kind of going into business. Me and my wife had really gone through that with God, like just being like, God is your provider. Like you can hustle and grind, but like at the end of the day, like there's a provision source that's outside your own effort. And what was crazy in that season was like our team got to experience that because everyone's on minimum wage. People couldn't make their mortgages, they couldn't make their, you know what I mean? And, and we just had a miracles channel that we started in Slack and we were just seeing these miracles happen. Happen. Like, wow, like, my son got into the school that would have cost so much, but it was free. Or, you know, I'm vegan and like someone donated meals to me and they're like vegan, you know. It's just like, wow, like, that's crazy, you know. Like, people were being provided for, which was so cool to see. And the team got just so tight. Like, we would just meet every week, we'd look at the numbers just super transparently, and we had this little thermometer that was like our debt, you know. I was like, guys, if we get to here, like, we're gonna bump the pay up. If we get to here, we'll bump the pay up. And, uh, the, the kind of like beauty in the ashes of that story was we at that point had decided like this, this product we were selling is no longer— we have to let it go. And so we, you know, I think like for you to receive a new thing, you almost have to have your hands open. And so we just released it. We're just like, okay, that thing's done. Let's like, let's just serve our current clients and find ways to serve them more, right? Uh, you know, like, I know Russell says it, the 3 ways to grow a business: sell more to your existing customers is one of them that not a lot of people think about, right? Get new customers, sell more to existing customers, and raise your prices, right? Those are the 3 ways. And so we just started selling more to the existing customers that knew us, liked us, trusted us. Um, and we actually split the team in half and we were like, you guys take care of the current people, sell more to them and take care of them, you know, and keep the business going. And then this other team, we call it the pioneer team, we're like, we need to start a new business. And this is where, you know, kind of your intro comes in, where it's like, okay, now we're starting from scratch, but we also have like just years of this experience of just following these playbooks and these frameworks and all the books we've read, all the masterminds we've been in. Like, how would we start again?

Do you remember, Stephen, that book that Russell had? It was the 30 Days book. And the whole premise— yeah, yeah. And he asks all these entrepreneurs, these two Comic Club Award winners, What if you lost everything and all you had was your ClickFunnels account and your know-how? Like, and I joke about this, like, you know, Back to the Future. If you get in the DeLorean and go back in time with all of your marketing, you know how it would do. But this is something that's literally happening to you at this moment. You find yourself at the beginning of one of these chapters in that book with your know-how, with the framework, and with some loyal people on your team. I can't wait to hear how this phoenix rises from the ashes, man. Keep going.

Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely— when I moved, I remember we moved, I was like, I was like, I gotta bring this book, you know. I think I— yeah, I have it right there. 30 Days, Russell Brunson. Yeah, yeah. And I should have cracked that book open in this season, but I didn't. It was just sitting there, you know. But really, I, I felt like I had tried all these strategies with the old business, you know. And so I was really kind of also just searching with God, like, okay, like, if we're gonna do this again, how will we do it different, you know? Because I don't think we did it wrong. Long in, in the last time. But I think like the, the times had changed. Now AI was a thing. And honestly, when we like started reducing the team, like even those 44 people, like, you know, people would— they stayed as long as they could. And so that team got down to like 20, and then we had to do another layoff. And, and I told them like, you know, everyone knew it was coming. Honestly, the last one was the easiest one because they were like, they were like encouraging me, you know. They're like, keep going, like thanks for letting me be involved. It was like crazy. I'm like, what? How is this a thing? Like my These people are so good. And honestly, we got them placed with a lot of friends.

That almost sounds like another episode though, is like, how on earth did you get this loyal band? Like, I mean, this was— you mentioned too, I love this thing you said, impact and income. Like the impact, I think you had sold that to these employees like, hey, the thing that we're doing really, really matters. I don't want to get too into that, but I just want to highlight that too. It's not all about the money all the time. And so even if it comes down to cutting them, these people still wanted to root you on. And keep you going.

Yeah, yeah. Which I'm so, I'm so grateful for. Like, thank, thank God, like, for the people that, that we attracted, you know, like, into this business.

And well, as you're talking about everything falling apart and everybody, you have to fire all these people and just the weight that that holds on you, I was gonna ask, and I was wondering, like, what made you even start this again after you have to go through such a grueling experience like that? Like, what makes you say, cool, let's go do that again. But it kind of sounds like everything you just said is that, like, what an experience you get to have that most people don't get to have, of like firing people is actually a beautiful thing, that at the end of the day you feel good about it. And to see the response from the people, man, that just had to be so uplifting and so encouraging and like, absolutely, let's get back on this. Was there anything else in that time that I'm missing that, that was like fuel for you to be like, Yes, let's do it. Let's start again.

I mean, I, you know, there were many days where I was freaking out too, you know, so I, I'm so grateful for communities, peers, like masterminds, because those are my people that like, honestly, I would call being like, I have no idea, like we have to make, we have to have $125,000 to make the next credit card payment by like Monday, you know, and I have no idea how we're going to do it. And these guys would just remind me who I was. They were just like, dude, you built this thing, you did this thing, like, like, your team is here for you. Like, and they would call me up when I was freaking out. And so I had a lot of freakout moments, but I, I'm almost grateful for how long the season went because it really built resiliency. You know, it's kind of like when you work out, you just work out once, you don't build muscle. But if you're just hitting that failure over and over and over, it's like you really build a strength that's next level. I feel like that's what I'm coming out of the season with, of like, I've been through the legal, I've been through the crazy, I've been through the debt, I've been— it's just like, I feel like so much stronger So looking back on the year, I'm so grateful. I mean, even our marriage, like, was just so strengthened during this time because there were so many freak-out moments together and vulnerable moments. And I think things like this could— they could make you or they could break you. And we do see a lot of marriages fail. We do see, like, or crumble during those seasons, right? And really, like, me and Chelsea, like, we just had an anniversary last month, and I was like, dang, babe, like, this one hit different because of the stuff we've event there.

You, you were mentioning, you were mentioning one thing too about like, you know, even last year you lose this entire workforce, you make all these difficult decisions, but now you got to figure out how to, one, like we said, back to the framework, back to the drawing board, but you don't have the team, but you want to keep servicing existing customers. And you started kind of implementing some AI into that. Tell us how you used AI to kind of keep things rolling.

That's kind of honestly where the new product came from. So we, you know, at this point we're down to like, I think 12 was kind of the final lowest number we had of team. And, you know, we're now doing the work of 120 people, you know, like, of course our client volume is a little bit lower, but really AI was the thing that really helped us just, I think, survive during that season. And, and like, so I, I mean, like, even like, I mean, when you build a big business $20 million a year. Imagine all the software subscriptions you have. You know, ClickFunnels is probably the lowest one, but like ActiveCampaign and Hiros, all these things end up being $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year. And so we ended up building an AI tool just to reduce our subscriptions, you know. And we built AI tools to help us with the hiring and firing process, right? We built stuff during that season. And kind of the principle I come back to a lot is that Um, I believe you're never left empty-handed. It almost feels like it in those seasons, like you're empty-handed, but I feel like you always have something in your hand. And so we teach our students this, but like, just even for you listening, like, what's in your hand right now? And when we were kind of asking that question, we kind of split the teams, right? We had the Pioneer team. We're like, what's in our hand? Like, what, what could we make a business off of? And really, it was the AI stuff. It was like all the stuff we had done to survive for the last year in the midst of all this craziness. And we had like a program that was like kind of like our level 2 program. It was like once they sold on Amazon, it was like how to like make a more mature business off of Amazon.

So like level 2 on your value ladder, like if they bought into this thing, yeah, yeah, yeah, or $5K, they could jump into this next thing. What was the, what was the price tag there?

Exactly. Uh, like $10K to $12K. Okay. Yeah. When we sold it. So we took that thing because it was like already a program. It was like, what's in our hand? We already had that thing. We had the AI stuff and we basically were like, shoot, let's make that program for business owners. We also were a little bit burned with the consumer market, like B2C. And so, you know, just based on what we've been through, I was like, let's try selling to business owners for a little bit. Like, I already have an offer, like they're already doing something, let's just take them to the next level. And so we basically remade that program with like an AI emphasis, like here's how to implement AI in your business and scale, right? And here's all of our kind of like highs and lows and what we learned and all the AI tools we built in the process to keep us going. And so we basically created this new product out of that season. And that's what we're doing to this day. Like we, it's kind of evolved from there. But it all, it actually started with software, which was so new to us. But yeah, like I know you guys are asking about like what funnel, like when you're in that mode of what funnel, I think the thing for us that like was definitely a priority building a new business was monthly recurring revenue. Revenue because it was like we had done the launch model and like, this is all— I love it, man.

Like, people are listening, like, Stephen is describing linchpin, like challenge model. You're jumping to this monthly recurring revenue. Like, this is textbook. Yeah, keep going, man.

Yeah. So, and, and yes, because we've been through the highs and the lows and you have these huge months, these low months. I was like, we need stability. And so let's build a SaaS product. But I'm still like, I still know the consulting industry so well. So I'm like, let's use the SaaS as basically a miffkey, right? Like we're going to use a bunch of Russell terms here.

Yeah, yeah. So use the SaaS as like a, as a super hot, most incredible free gift ever. That's a Dan Kennedy thing, by the way, for those who are listening to it.

Yes. Yes. So basically like the SaaS, because like in the world we live in now, AI makes this so easy. You can make an awesome software product and make it a lead magnet. Yeah, that's how crazy it is. Like we used to give away PDFs, you know, and now it's like I give away a full software. And so our SaaS became a hot lead magnet.

And you early on, Steven, you mentioned you had like 2 teams, one team that was kind of fulfilling on Rainmaker, but the other team was exploratory to find the new move. Is that like what— is that what that team was? You and a couple of people just figuring out where the move is?

Yeah, it was like me, a marketing guy, like my right-hand marketing guy. We had like a guy who used to do our Instagram, which at this point was like kind of nonexistent. He was looking for trends, so he would like find AI trends and then we would turn them into ads. And then, you know, it was like me and that marketing guy building the funnel. And the first funnel we did, we did try a VSL, but it just flopped. Like we just got the language wrong on it. And my failure on that first funnel was I was trying to make money on the software, like, and I forgot, oh wait, this is just a lead magnet for a backend high-ticket offer. So I was trying to sell the software right out the gate, $49 a month. And then I was like, duh, what am I doing? I just need to fill the calendars.

Yeah, you never lead with the software directly, right? You get like another free lead magnet or something, or you can sell it via webinar, via sell like bulk continuity. But like leading with just the software is hard.

Yeah. And like, again, back to the funnel hacking, we're always looking at what's working, you know, and seeing what's out there. And so I have seen, um, what's her name? Um, oh shoot, I'm blanking on her name. Marie something.

Marie Is it Maria Went?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maria. That's right. Maria Went. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Yeah.

So she had this like 25 courses for $25 offer that I saw and we had a couple of people like, hey, you should check this out. Like maybe this could be an angle for the AI toolkit. And so we basically took that angle. We're like 25 AI tools for $25. No one's doing that in the AI software space, like one-time payment and get it forever, which you can't do forever, by the way. It's not around anymore. But it was like what got this thing off the ground. It like brought us really good leads at a really low cost. And then we would basically do an implementation call with them, right? Setter call. Just, hey, let me help you use the toolkit applied to your business, make it a high ROI. And then they would set to a closer, closer call if it made sense to do the high-ticket consulting program. And so that was the funnel.

That's awesome. So VSL, we changed that up a little bit. Bit with the $25 for $25. Were you using VSL or no? I didn't catch that part.

That was just like a straight kind of sale funnel. Like, just like, hey, here's the offer right on the landing page.

But then you're going to setter closer still on a call.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So how do they set up that initial call with like the setter or the setter chase them down based off of leads?

Basically, like the funnel was like, opt in, hey, get our special deal, $25 AI tools for $25, opt in. And then it's like, here, go buy it, $25. Yep. We had an upsell, of course, you know, gotta get the upsell in there. We did an expansion pack that was $95. So it just raised the average cart value.

Okay. Take rate on that. Do you know the take rate?

About 25%, 25%, which is awesome. Especially when it was that one-time price point. Now it's more like 18%.

Now your average cart value is a little bumping up. Yep.

Yep. And then thank you page was, we had no downsell for a long time, but thank you page was just like, all right, your toolkit's almost ready, book a call and we'll get you started. So it was basically like part of the onboarding.

Perfect.

And some people did not like that. They were like, no, just give me my toolkit. But it did book a lot of calls. And then the setter would activate their toolkit, show them how to use it. And then if it was a good fit, they'd be like, hey, I'm surprised you got this, but not our business accelerator, AI business accelerator. And they'd set to the closer from there.

I hope people are paying attention to this. The fulfillment is also the sales. And if you do this right, like your conversion rate goes up. But pay attention to like Dante, you're talking to people all the time who are just getting in their first funnel. Like, make sure that you're adding these things. Don't add them all up front. Like, test this and see what works. That's why we're worried about like, hey, what was the take rate on this? And the thing that you learned, Stephen, is you're like, okay, well, people didn't like this onboarding call. Maybe it was something in what you said or the perception people were thinking like, oh, maybe I can smell the sale coming.

Yeah.

But if that setter is really, really good at this, they're going to help them onboard this and then say, hey, if you're interested, let's jump into this. And one key thing I want to point out is a lot of times people get the lead and then they have their phone or their sales team try to follow up with them. This has got to be part of the funnel and there's a direct booking link. Which I think is massive too. You're gonna have less fallout with that. So, all right, so then anyways, the setter gets on, on. So good, so good. And then they go to the, to the closer, what?

Uh, yeah, to the closer. And then the closer would sell— we basically have a monthly cohort of AI. We call it the AI Business Accelerator. It's an 8-week program, and it's basically like, here's how to implement AI throughout different departments of your business to save you time and get you an ROI. And so, yeah, we just started setting the closers and it took a while. It took some time to, you know, cause like we're figuring out a new script, a new offer and all that stuff.

And you're running a lean team.

Yeah. Lean team. Yeah.

So you don't have a ton of people who are setters and closers. Are you using VAs or AI for any of that stuff?

Uh, at this point, no, it was all like we had maybe, um, again from the past offer. So again, like their sales team's a little confused because they were like, which offer am I selling?

Sure.

Um, and so We think we had 2 setters, maybe 2 closers. Now we just have 1 setter, 1 closer.

Wow.

And, uh, even to this day. It's still a very lean team.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

Excellent.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we'll probably grow that soon. Um, but yeah, we've kept it really lean because, because we've started to use AI to really augment some of the stuff, the busy work that really takes up a lot of the, the, the time. Um, and it's, that's where I'm like, now we're building a business that has such healthier margins. And so as we're scaling this one, I'm just, I think like going through that season before, I'm just really watching those margins. I'm like, I don't want marketing to be more than 30% of revenue, right? If we're making $100,000 a month, I'm not spending more than $30K.

Which you would have never known first round.

No, I was just kind of like, let's spend it all back on the, like, like there were some months I spent 60% on ads, you know, like we do, you know, $3 million, but spend $1.5 million in ads, you know, So your rule now is 30%. My rule is 30%. Yeah. So if we're going over 30% in marketing, then we need to be creative and like hit the list and do some organic. Um, same with labor. I go 30% labor or under. Um, so if we're again, easy numbers, $100K, that means $30K a month in labor, which nobody could have told you, Steven, unless you did this yourself.

That's what's so wild about this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you've learned. And I'm not, I'm not like a I'm not a super math guy. Like, thank God for AI now, it helps me analyze things. But the guardrails are really helpful. Like, reading a P&L, my eyes kind of glaze over. But having little just percentages to run the business off, this has been so helpful for me to just be like 30, 30, 30. Like, it's not all your expenses, but like marketing, labor, and kind of expenses overhead and profit. And right now we're running under 20% on marketing and under 20% on labor. Which has just been great, you know, and it's just been like, wow, like, I wish I knew this in the last business because yes, we were able to scale really fast and impact a lot of people, but the margins were razor thin. And so when we took a few hits in a row, it just took us out, you know, and I'm just like, we're not going to get taken out again. We got to build stability, build good margins, like, use AI first as opposed to just hiring someone right away. And I mean, I mean, it's been an incredible ride and we're not out of the weeds fully yet, you know, but we're definitely, I think this business, like since June, we're probably about to cross a million in sales on the new business, which is incredible.

Within less than a year.

Yeah, like I think it's what, 8 months or something. Wow. You know, killer. Maybe 9 months. And yeah, I mean, definitely still split testing every day things and, you know, you gotta have that marketing stamina and now we're running a challenge as well. As the kind of lead magnet funnel. So diversifying and man, I'm having just so much fun. So we have 2 KPIs this year. One is make business fun again because we had really kind of 2 years of intensity and our whole team that's remaining went through the fire too. Like they're the people that also like we all have a little bit of trauma from the past season in business. And so we're like just trying to have fun this year and just like, man, what does it look like to have fun? That's like our number one question. And then the second one is monthly recurring revenue, like stability, build stability up for the company, uh, for our team and the remaining people. It's like, we need stability to, to keep this thing going. And that's been huge for us. Just like no big goals. Like we're not trying to hit $10 million this year. We're just like, let's grow slow. Let's stay stable.

Let's have fun. Well, you also mentioned at the beginning, you're like impact and income. I want to know Well, I want to make one point though, too. Like, I heard you say this. It seems so funny because you were like, yeah, we're using AI to like look up AI trends and then it's on an AI business. It's like it's AI just compounding on itself, which is funny. But you had mentioned impact. So fun is one, but talk to me about that vision and the impact you want to make in this business. Before it was moms. We want to, you know, help moms. Comes make money from home and like do this. What are you trying to do here as far as impact?

Yeah, so the vision for this is really, I see AI as really the number one way for family-first entrepreneurs to get leverage, which means time freedom back, have autonomy over their calendar and stop wearing all the hats. And so that's what we're doing. We're creating tools in the AI space to help entrepreneurs do that. Of course, we have our program that does that as well, but I'm honestly just having fun building it for myself first. Like, hey, this will free me up on some time and then just giving it to our people in our software and our program.

It's amazing. So yeah, you started out, so you make $25 for $25, you're modeling success that somebody's already having.

Yeah.

You're playing on the new field of AI, but you're leveraging the skill sets and the things that you've mastered and gotten really good at. And what's the funnel at now? Is that $25 for $25? Is that still your front end or has it changed over time?

Oh yeah. We knew that wouldn't work forever because it does cost money to run the AI tools, right? You pay the token costs. Right. And so we're like, we'll do that for the first 1,000 customers. And that was kind of the angle. And so we used Black Friday as the, as kind of like, okay, let's, let's do a Black Friday deal to get people on monthly recurring.

Nice.

And so we did a Black Friday deal where we were like, just $1, right? Because like, again, like a marketing principle is just remove as much friction as you can, you know, you may notice Russell's doing an AI challenge right now, free challenge, no friction, and then free trial into a monthly recurring thing, no friction. Action. Tony and Dean just did AI Challenge, same thing, free challenge, $1 VIP with a monthly recurring. So again, like, we're just looking at what people are doing right now, seeing what's working. And so we did the same thing, $1 trial to a, um, at the time I think it was $25 a month subscription. Nice. Of the toolkit, but they could try it for a dollar. And so that was our Black Friday deal. And then second marketing principle, if it's working, don't stop it. So we ran that Black Friday deal until February of 2026. Like, I think we just updated the funnel. Like, like, we took— I think we changed it to holiday special after Black Friday, and then we ran it through Christmas, and then like into January it was starting to hurt conversions. It was like, okay, like, yeah, we did New Year's special, and then it was like, okay, we can't come up with another holiday, let's just do— I think, what is it called now? I think it's just called like founding member special. I'm not sure, but it's still kind of—

sometimes you gotta have that urgency scarcity thing, but you can turn that in.

Yeah, yeah, different.

Just give reason.

I learned that from a buddy of mine, Paul Ace. He worked with our team for a little bit. He's a just marketing nerd like us. And he's like, he came up with a calendar of a holiday every 2 weeks of the year, you know, and he's like, I found a holiday for every 2 weeks. And like, we would just switch the holiday on the funnel.

And they're like legit holidays on the calendar.

Yeah, it's, it's a great angle because people want to get a deal and then they can try the thing for a dollar. And, uh, and then a lot of them stay subscribers. And so every month it's building their monthly recurring revenue. And then a percentage of those people will ascend into the high ticket. But yeah, we're still running that funnel, just optimizing it, getting it better over time.

Nice. What's the lead? What's— do you have a lead magnet for that funnel? Like a totally free lead magnet?

No, we're just going straight to the, straight to the toolkit. We probably should. You know, we've been so focused on the toolkit, but like we have done a couple free— we do a free challenge, you know, every month. Oh, nice. So that's kind of our, our lead generator. But yeah. Yeah, we don't have like a free evergreen low ticket or sorry, no price lead magnet right now.

Are these challenges live every single month? Like, are you getting up there and doing a 4-day challenge live?

Right now? Yeah, right now. I'm starting one tomorrow.

You're a savage.

I know, I know. Well, I did the evergreen thing for, I mean, we did live for 2 years, then did evergreen for 2 years. And so I love evergreen, of course, time freedom, light leverage, but AI is changing so fast. I'm having to change the challenge every month. It's like, listen, that thing I taught is now outdated a little bit, you know? So, and I'm still refining the challenge. Like, it's not at the conversion rate I want it to be yet. So of course, like, if this is another kind of tip, when you go evergreen, you usually lose out on conversion rate a little bit, right? So like, you want a live challenge converting at like 20% before going evergreen, get it at 10%, you know? And so I'm not there yet with this challenge yet. I'd like to get it up. That's the, that's the mastery in me. I just want to like improve it over time. And I'm having fun. I'm honestly having fun. Like, I feel like the Rainmaker Challenge, we did that so much by the end, I was like, I'm sick of teaching this thing, you know? And this one, I'm just like having a blast. Like, I'm going long. I'm just— you can just tell the energy's back there. So, um, I'm excited.

Yeah, you have to, you have to keep it fresh too. Like, you made such a good point there. That one is going to be harder to say, all right, like, all right, hey, here's— you could almost see it. Like, you'd be like, this right here is May 2026 with a big stamp on it. Like, whoa, this guy is talking about, you know, all the tools that don't work anymore.

Pretty wild. That's a fun, fun space. It keeps you on your toes, and it's awesome to see what everyone's doing. Russell's doing some awesome stuff in the AI space now. I know that it's incredible. Next Fun Hacking Live is the AI edition, which I'm excited for. It's going to be awesome.

These guys, and And listen, they always kind of stay ahead of the curve, but having, we had just for 2CCX, so I run that program now, Steven, and we just for 2CCX in March, we had Russell kick it off with an AI talk. And then we had Todd come in and he bookended it, which we never get those two at 2CCX together, which is unbelievable. But I'm sitting there and we have a lot of people in that program that are really savvy with AI and everybody is just, their jaws on the floor as they listen to all the different things that these guys what you guys are doing. They're so ahead of the curve. But I do wanna ask you this. Here's what happens. This is kind of rapid-fire section. I have this thing where every meeting I go to, every time we start talking about AI, there's 2 or 3 people in the group, and God bless 'em, they're awesome. I'm just not this guy. And they go, well, here's what you need, Chris. You need this plugin and then this, this, this, this, this. And they give me 15 plugins of their whole playbook they're doing, and I'm exhausted by even looking at that. I'm like, I'm not gonna implement any me that. But I remember I always used this analogy, like, back in the day, it was like, hey, what was going to win? Was it going to be Sony PlayStation or was it going to be Xbox? Was it going to be HD DVD or was it going to be a Blu-ray? So if you've got to predict the future, what is going to be the mainstream AI in the future? Like, what are maybe using the most of it? Who do you think is going to win? Is it Claude? Is it Perplexity? Like, who is it? Is it GPT is going to make a comeback?

What's the deal? What I recommend people do is choose an ecosystem and just, just buy into the ecosystem.

And then what do you mean by that exactly, Stephen? Do you mean like choose an LLM, choose a model, like choose Claude?

Yeah, yeah. Like I kind of see it like cars, right? You got like Ford, right? And you got like Chevy, but they're all vehicles. They all get you to somewhere and like, just choose a vehicle, you know, like choose a brand. You could be a Ford guy and get the Ford Raptor or the Ford F-150. Like there's different models. Same like OpenAI, you got ChatGPT, be, right? So like, I'm just like, choose a model, let's drive, you know? And so I— right now I would say Claude is winning, but you know, I think— I think right now too, yeah, Claude is winning for sure right now on like just the speed of what they're putting out. But everyone's copying each other, all funnel hacking each other. And so I tell people like, hey, if you see it—

AI hacking—

yeah, if you see a cool feature someone has, like, your company's gonna have it in 2 weeks. Like, it's gonna be fine. So like, I'm, I'm a big fan just like going all in with one because then you master it. And then like having some stuff that's disconnected, or like, um, what do you— like model agnostic, I guess, would be the term for it, where you could really easily bounce between them. Um, so like our toolkit we built has like all the models in it. So like a business owner can have Claude and they can have ChatGPT and they can have Perplexity all within there. Like we're basically kind of like white labeling those using their APIs. You don't get all the features, but for someone who's like, man, I like, I like Claude for writing and I like ChatGPT for brainstorming, they can have that in the toolkit. So I liked having like a hub that's kind of like decentralized where it's like your brain, it's all your information, and then you can plug it into different tools if there's a cool one next week. Like I can move really easily. But yeah, I think Claude, if I had to bet on one right now, it'd probably be Claude, although I really do like Perplexity. Yeah. Perplexity is kind of an underdog and they're our whole team. I got my whole team using Perplexity actually right now.

That's my number one research tool anytime I need research in any way. But Perplexity Computer is really powerful too, isn't it?

Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. What it is.

Yeah.

I have a question. It's just kind of been hankering at me. My question is basically this. You built everything up using funnels, using Russell's strategies. You just read Expert Secrets and did the thing and you built everything up and then everything fell. And then when you were going to build it up back again, you use the same principles, you use the same frameworks, you use the same funnels, you use the same concepts, use the same everything. And your, your belief in funnels and your belief in the frameworks and the strategies that never really shook. You have to fire 100 people. You have to ask your people to work for free. Like you had such emotions. This is almost a year later and you had real raw emotion doing this with us now today, just recounting the story. So like, why did that not— why, why did funnels never falter for you? Why was that never like, oh, we need to change that?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like, you know, like I said, I have my own internal, I call it the tried and true marketing principles, right? Like, these are things that, like, come feast or famine, you know, like war or peace, like, they work, you know? And it's the same thing with these funnel strategies. It's like they're all rooted in service, love, right? Like, uh, I have a mentor says love is the greatest business strategy. If you just, like, create an irresistible, stupidly irresistible offer, that's just called loving a customer at a higher level than ever everyone else, right? So if you can love people more than everyone else— 25 AI tools for $25 one time, and I have lifetime access purchase, that beats everyone else, right? And so again, we couldn't do that forever, but it, it's like we just had to come back to those principles of like, how do we love more than anyone else in our industry, right? How do we model after what's working so we're not reinventing the wheel, right? And how do we, you know, reduce friction and keep people going through the process? Because some people want to be loved on a $12,000 level, and some people want just the $49 a month thing, you know? And so there's, you know, like the whole thing, the value ladder, all that stuff. These are just the tried and true principles that work regardless of the industry. You just got to apply them. And you do have to try different ones because sometimes you try one and you're just trying to get to work and just not working. You got to pivot. And so we did that a couple times. And, and often it's like just pivoting the language just a little bit, changing the offer a little bit, changing the price. And we're just constantly just testing and just being like, all right, that didn't work. Let's try to be beat it, you know. And here we are. Awesome.

Amazing, man. That is amazing.

You know, anything else that you would tell people who are listening? I mean, knowing our audience, you know, I, I just love this journey that you've been on. It's, it's funny if you follow like the Heroes 2 journeys or you watch any of these Hollywood productions, you know, if somebody just got to the end and they're like, hoorah, we all nailed it, like, you'd be done at 40 minutes. But there's always —that transition, or I guess, you know, you have the wall and then you also have this challenge that happens after that, right? What would you tell people? Like, are there landmines that they can avoid? Like, what did you learn from all of this to maybe help people shortcut this? Everybody's gonna have their own journey, but like, is there anything specific that you'd want them to hear? Like, maybe just keep going, or what is it?

Yeah, I mean, I think I've said a handful of the things, but I can repeat them too, just to hammer them in. You know, one, I think there's always something in your hand, even when you're feeling like there's not, you know. So for the person who's listening, who's like kind of feeling hopeless, like I've been there. And, uh, I, you know, get around people that encourage you and remind you who you are, but also know that like you're not empty-handed. Look in your hands, like there's something in your hands that you can like that there's like, there's some sort of fruit there. It might be just a tiny little sprout of something you got to water. But I believe you always have something in your hands. Like nothing is wasted from the past. Like there's always some convergence of something that can be the next thing. So if you're feeling that tension, I think there's been a lot of people since 2020 that have had to do major pivots. I just say, look in your hands and like, go after that thing, you know, and then Yeah, I mean, I think for people facing adversity or facing intensity in business, marriage, life, I think like, again, another just encouraging word is that you're never, I don't believe, ever led into any battle that you don't already have the weapons for.

Oof, tell us, Stephen.

That was a good one. The battle like that you are facing, you actually already have the weapons for. And, um, and I couldn't have gotten through this past season without kind of the stuff I didn't know was there that just came out in that season. Like, you know, it's like, if you're gonna get squeezed, you might as well make lemonade, right? Like, I was like, God, let me get all the juice out of this squeeze. Like, I want to learn every lesson there is to be learned here. And, um, and I think like taking some hits like that, it, you know, you build an authority, you know, that you guys can hear it when I talk about it. It's like, it's different from someone who just can, like, uh, I, I love this quote. It's like, you know, some people, like, know, can, like, teach you about electricity, but there's nothing like touching a live wire, right? Like, you know, like, you can know a lot about electricity, but you touch a live wire, you learn a lot more, you know, really fast. And so, like, I, I feel like I've touched the live wire in this season, and, uh, I've, I've, you know, there's a temptation get disgruntled or offended, but I think those things are just going to keep you stuck, you know, like you have to rise above and just go, hey, you know, I, I see, like, I see what those people are saying. Like, I see that, you know, if you try something, it didn't work, and here's someone that you can blame and it's their fault, I get that. Like, it's, you know, uh, what does Russell call that? The, the grifter versus the—

yeah, the driven, the driven versus the driven, you know.

You've got a choice. And I could have chosen to go, I'm going to go drift and go like, I'm going to become a victim and these people hurt me. I'm going to hurt them back. I'm just going to, you know, like, but I just, that's just not who I am, you know? And I believe in seasons like this, it really reveals who you are. And as hard of a season as it was, I am thankful for it. For it. I do look back with thankfulness of this whole thing that happened because like we wouldn't be in this space if it wasn't for it. I might be stuck on that old thing still trying to make it work. And I wouldn't be the person I am today without it. And my marriage wouldn't be the marriage it is today without it. So as sucky as these seasons are, for someone who's listening, who's going through one of these seasons, like the juice is worth the squeeze, you're gonna make it and you'll have a story to tell. And So what a beautiful thing, stories that are, that are not just straight lines of success.

Yeah, there's multiple ways to get there. And we all have these moments where I always, I always kind of joke around about the GPS, right? Like, hey, I'm, I live in Salt Lake City, it's pretty easy for me to plug in Disneyland and I pretty much take I-15 the whole way. But there's these recalculating moments like, hey, sometimes we screwed up and we ended up in, I don't know, Reno or whatever. The thing is, the second that that thing says recalculating, you turn turn, you're kind of on that shortest distance again to your desired outcome. So listen, we all have rerouting moments, and, and I love how you shared some of this with us. And the resiliency is what makes all entrepreneurs some of my favorite people, is just being able to keep going. If somebody wants to get this free toolkit, where do they go do it?

Oh yeah, uh, we set up a special link for you guys. It's, uh, go.8fig.ai /cfr for ClickFunnels Radio. So that's go.8fig, as in 8 figures, 8fig.ai/cfr. Bingo. Okay, I love it. I had to remember the acronym. That's awesome. Yeah, check it out. So yeah, you can get free credits to the toolkit. You can check out what we're doing. And we built tools around all this stuff, like a lot of the frameworks, VSLs. Like I have done $12 million through a VSL. I have 20 friends who've all done million-dollar months through VSLs. There's now I think 50 tools in there. We're trying to get 100 tools for entrepreneurs in there that create time freedom and more profitability. So yeah, check it out.

Chelsea's home with the baby right now. We're excited to get to do a part 2 of this where we get to talk to both of you. But if Chelsea's listening to this, what's one thing you would hope that Chelsea pulls out of this episode?

Yeah, I mean, Chelsea, you know, has really been just such a strong rod in this season for our family. We moved right when all this drama started to happen. So that's a huge move and she's just really held hold down the family fort, you know. And, um, I think ultimately, like, at the end of the day, it's all about family, you know. Like, we want to impact outside the home, but like, if we don't impact inside the home, like, it doesn't matter. And so I'm so grateful for her and, and just how she championed me through this season and, and the family. That's incredible.

Stephen, you are an awesome entrepreneur, man. We really appreciate all the time and honesty you gave us today, man. You pulled back the curtain. You gave us real honest answers that, that our listeners can apply to their lives, to their businesses, to their relationships. And I just appreciate you greatly for doing that.

Thanks, man. It was good to be here. Thanks, Dante. Thanks, Chris. Absolutely.

Thanks again, Stephen. Thanks for being a great guest on ClickFunnels Radio. And we'll catch you guys on the next one.