The Pattern Recognition Playbook: How Andrew Culver Built His Way to ClickFunnels President

Go look at my GitHub profile. I'm cranking, dude. They have this little thing that tells you how much code you write. I'm back in it. AI is changing everything. The solo devs are crushing it. They're obviously loving it because they're able to adopt it and do so much more. The bigger the company, the harder it is. Nothing could be further from the truth with the team at ClickFunnels. I am so proud. We have a staff member, he's the chief of staff. He's shipping full apps. The real roadmap, I think, for ClickFunnels as a platform in 2026 Welcome back to another episode of ClickFunnels Radio.

My name's Chris Cameron, and joined with me is the ever handsome Dante Torelli. What's up, my man? Good to see you.

Easy now with the intro.

Hey, you know, I used to do this with Ben all the time. I don't know if you remember those episodes. Like, I'd always come up with something random, so I'll come up with some different adjectives for you. You know, they'll always be good.

I said easy, but what I really meant was keep going, tell me more.

You're like, stop, stop.

Stop.

Oh my gosh. Well, hey, I am super, Dante, I'm super excited today. This is a little bit different episode. Like if we go back a few episodes, we had that episode with Todd and Ashley and I have had, I don't know about you, but I've had so much feedback about kind of like opening the curtain to ClickFunnels. We were at our 2CCX mastermind and somebody literally stood up and we're like doing takeaways and it was question time for Todd and Ashley and I was kind of MCing the thing. Throw the catch box and Sarah Grace Allred's like, I have devoured your episode on ClickFunnels Radio. She's like, I love hearing these stories from another perspective. We always hear Russell's perspective, right? And now we've heard Todd's, but one of the things that I wanna dive into today and one of the reasons that we're doing this is everybody sees, you know, mostly Russell, right? And now Todd a little bit more, you know, and if I liken it to a car, you know, you're seeing the shiny paint, you're seeing the wheels, you're seeing the tires, you're seeing all these awesome things. But there's an engine that is running inside of this thing that is moving that entire, like, directive forward. And I want to highlight some of that today. And so today we brought on Andrew Colver, who is the president of ClickFunnels, who hasn't been as forward-facing. We're going to pop the hood and we're going to dive into like what keeps this machine having momentum and everything like that. And I also want to say this, I've said this about other guests. Is we have people who are amazing marketers, who are geniuses, who are masters at the craft. But beyond that, we attract some of the most genuine, real people to the show, to the business, to ClickFunnels, and to our audience. Like always. I don't know if you found that, Dante. Like, we have people who are genuinely just incredible, good people, just some of the greatest humans I've ever met, from founders to members.

It's incredible.

Well, let's welcome to the show without further ado, the president of ClickFunnels, Andrew Colver. Welcome out to the show, my friend.

Hello guys. How are you?

So good to have you, Andrew. We're amazing. How are you?

Oh, this is great. I'm glad that I'm finally here, Chris.

Well, it's funny that you say that because here's what everybody does not know is that Andrew has been a driving force behind this whole ClickFunnels Radio, like, upleveling. I think it was last year, maybe towards the end of the year, November or something like that. Andrew's like, let me just fly in. We'll look at a couple podcast spots. I see, I love the content, but I wanna like do more with this thing. Um, and so we're having a lot of fun with this, but it's really, really cool because when we jump into this, you had a vision for this podcast. And I mean, gosh, you look incredible too, but where I'm sitting, where Dante's sitting is all a result because of a conversation that you and I had last year. That you kind of put into motion. So maybe we start there. Like, why was it that you were so passionate about the podcast project?

Okay, so the podcast is awesome. You go back through the 800 episodes that we've got, the entire back catalog.

800, it's crazy.

The back catalog of conversations that Dave had, the conversations that you had, all the other co-hosts that we had over the years. It is a wealth, it's a treasure trove of, you know, conversations, teaching, stories, all of that stuff. Stuff. And for me, we've seen the transition in the industry with podcasts that they've gone from audio to video. And it just seemed to me like it was time to actually sort of focus our talents. And there's so much of this video production, set design, all of these things, just to upgrade the production of the podcast to really like live at the same level as the content that is being produced. Like the seed is the same. It's the same stories. It's It's the same narratives. It's stuff that, you know, people who are looking to pursue entrepreneurship can hear from people who have gone before them and actually had success. And then the people who are running businesses, learning tactics that can unlock like another level of growth for them. That's all the same, but it was time, I think, for the podcast to have the production match the content.

Well, this kind of foreshadows and leans at, I think, what we're gonna end up talking about a little bit. Dante and I were talking, And one of the things Dante told me was he's like, Andrew's so good about like pattern recognition. And we always joked about this back and forth, me and Dante, about like even on the first episode, I think I had you on, Dante. I was like, where's the puck going? You know, it's a hockey analogy. And like, that's, that's a great, that's a great analogy because you've noticed and we're going to dive into some of this in our stories, but I think ClickFunnels Radio is another I guess, example of you saying, okay, hold on, I see opportunity here and I think we need to dive into that opportunity. So, but I want to go back, okay? Because this pattern recognition didn't start at ClickFunnels. It didn't start, you know, with some of the other things you did. This started very, very early. And I know your wife is a big part of your entrepreneurial journey. So I would love to hear some of that story from the start. Take us back.

Yeah, 100%. I think this is a valuable one. It doesn't have to be in the entrepreneurial journey. It's not necessarily your spouse. Your husband, your wife, but everybody needs somebody who's that supporting person. And the reality is it's not gonna be your entire friend group. That is just not the entrepreneur experience.

That's very real.

Right? Most people actually, when they decide to pursue entrepreneurship, whether it's spoken or unspoken, they end up bumping up against the resistance of people who aren't thinking entrepreneurially are, you know, maybe they're risk-averse or whatever. The reality is that's where my story started, in fact. So the reason I live in the United States is because of my wife. She's American, I'm Canadian. So I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, and I am quintessentially the person who married up. I'm so grateful that my wife Carly chose me because I loved her from basically the moment I met her, if I'm being honest, from the first moment I met her, but we did not become a couple for like 4 years.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, she was seriously out of my league. I cannot overstate that. So we became friends. And I am that guy that was like solidly in the friend zone. But amongst our friends, I'm sort of a legend because I'm the guy that was in the friend zone and after years actually got out. So—

Broke her down.

I don't know, you have to ask her. Maybe you can interview her and get the backstory.

Yeah, maybe we'll do that.

But the point is that Carly, I always, was an ideas person, right? Like I was always building, creating, you know, it's why I learned how to program, all of that stuff. Like I was always into that stuff, but Carly had a different experience. So her experience, you know, growing up with, you know, entrepreneurship definitely left her more in the category of people that are gonna be resistant, you know, risk-averse, looking for stability, all of that. And that was the agreement. So the agreement, literally when we got married and I'm graduating college and we're getting started, her whole thing was like, just whatever you do, get a job, get a job. Don't start your own business, just get a job. And I'm like—

Really?

I got the girl. I don't care about anything else. Like whatever this girl asks me, I'll do it. And so at that point, we basically had a pact. That was I was gonna go get a corporate job. And I worked at a Fortune 1000 company in downtown Norfolk. And for 4 years, I started there as a software developer, became a software development team lead, then manager. And I was sort of solidly on this track of being like a corporate worker. Yeah, that was it. That was, that was kind of like the agreed upon path and the entrepreneurship stuff came after.

But I'm curious from you, Andrew, were you always entrepreneurial minded? Were you always, you know, risk inclined growing up before you met Carly?

I don't know that I was risk inclined, so to speak. Like I didn't have anything, any stories or anything that really proved that that was the case. But I was the kid that like in 6th grade, had like a company letterhead and was like inviting people to be part of my video game development studio. Do you know what I mean? Like that kind of stuff. And that, so there's that side of it, like that idea that like businesses are cool, teams are cool, collaboration is cool. And then on the other side, the creative urge, like the creative instinct, which was, and that for me goes really, to the earliest years for me, when I first saw a computer hooked up to a television and you could control what was on the screen. The first time my opa who ran a drywalling business, my mom would do office work for him and she had a photocopier. And the idea that I could like produce something and then produce 50 of it, that was everything, right? So that stuff definitely, yeah, that stuff was there. And I think those instincts are part of what builds either a creator or an entrepreneur.

So as you're growing up, you're entrepreneurial, you're go-getter, you're doing the thing, maybe not taking super big risks in 6th grade, like leveraging everything, but you're doing the thing, right? And then men, no strangers to sacrifice for the things that we want. You meet your wife and you're like, oh my gosh, I got the girl. And then she hits you with, don't do the thing you've been doing your whole life. Is that like, what's that? Is it easy going through that? Is it like, oh yeah, sure. You know, 'cause as you said it, you kind of made it sound to me and it felt like, oh, easy, you know, easy. I'll just give this up and I'll just bury that thing and no worries. I go on my life. But was it that easy or was it more challenging?

I think it was, for me, it was very, very easy because of the space that Carly occupied in my mind and in my heart. She was everything. And the reason I'm indulging, like, thank you for indulging me on this. The reason I'm, lingering on this is, to me, it's all about priorities. I do have friends who in business or in personal pursuits have bumped up against that conflict between their priorities and the priorities of their loved ones or their spouse, partner, kids, whatever. And it is, I think, very important to make sure that the things that provide the foundation in your life, that you don't risk those or compromise those. And sometimes that takes patience, Right. Sometimes it takes patience, but definitely that as a priority made it very easy for me.

Well, you made a decision, and this is something I think we see a lot of people do. We don't make decisions. We live in indecision. But actually, every decision we don't make is a decision we do make. So I'm hearing from you just such a decision of intentionality there and actually truly making a decision and not just floating wherever the river happens to take me.

Yeah, I think it's easy when you're making decisions. If you're making decisions based on principle, that's everything, right? Then you can be confident. In fact, we had one of these, we literally on a call this morning, we had our product prioritization sync, and there was a question that came up about something. And the question was, do you do this or do you do this? And one of the things clearly was more aligned with sort of high standards that we hold ourselves to. Is it like a principle thing? And so decision-making's hard, there's a lot of factors, things like that. But the easy answer, the quick answer, in this case, was the one that's just based on like, hey, this is who we are as a, like, in principle, but in the shortcut of decision-making, just going with the thing that resonates with our principles, that makes for easy decision-making. So yeah, in this case, it was pretty easy to decide not to be an entrepreneur when I was like 22 or 23 years old, whatever it was. At that that period of time because I didn't have the appropriate support that I needed to pursue that, you know, with the strength that would later be required. And it was, it was definitely a team effort. When I finally did pursue entrepreneurship, it was a team effort, myself and Carly.

I wanna go to that point. I wanna go to that point because I think you mentioned earlier something just off camera about managing corporate dysfunction. You kind of have an idea of like, we're handling this, we're doing all this stuff. But you weren't content there. You realized like, oh my gosh, I don't want to just do this. I want to go build something. Is that like started to build inside you? And then you're like, Carly, I got to do something else. I got to build something. Is that when you guys kind of discussed this and started doing, you know, consulting, etc., stepping more into that risk?

Yeah, 100%. What happened was internet entrepreneurship was starting to become a more obvious thing, more accessible to people who didn't have huge amounts of capital. So we were starting to see stories of people who were launching products and bootstrapping them. Like that was the big thing, right? There was also a ton of venture capital that was being invested into people who needed people to build stuff. And so there was a lot of consulting work. Both of these things were true at the same time, right? So the money was on tap for people who wanted to be consultants, and there was an ability, you know, new hosting platforms, new payment processors, Stripe, Heroku, all of these tools that made it easier than ever to build and launch things. And so some of us, it wasn't just me, there was another guy that I work with, his name was Brian Smith, and he was tapped into all of this as well. And we would start talking to each other like, oh, do you want to do something on the side? Like, this feels like the thing. For me, what made the most sense, because at that point I was like an entry-level manager at a team of about 13 people, I was getting to manage a lot of disciplines, do team building, it was cool, I loved it. But for me, the right next step, some people would just like quit their job and go all in on it or whatever. For me, given where I was coming from, the right next step was what's something that's like one level up of risk? And for me, it was, I had a friend who was way more prone to risk, like way, had a much higher tolerance for risk, who had started a consulting company. To take advantage or basically capitalize on this opportunity that existed. It's easier to build and there's a lot of money in the ecosystem. And so he started a consulting company and offered me really like a pretty privileged spot. And so spoke with Carly about it. It's still a job, there's still benefits, it's somebody else's business.

There's a mixture of risk and security.

Yeah, so it was like the right level of like edging into it. It was the right level of edging into it. And so that was it. So I made the jump and it was a really safe move in many ways because I did my exit interview with the CEO of this company. And we ended up spending like all, I don't know, it was hours, hours up in his room on the 19th floor of the office building that we were in. He, you know, at the end of that conversation, he said, you know, go do this thing. Go do your startup is what he called it. It wasn't my startup, but like, go do this startup thing. And if it doesn't work out, come back and there will be a spot for you here. And this is relevant in the narrative because there is a time where the decision has to be made, right? So the, you know, do you move forward or do you go back? And that is really the sort of culmination of all of this and where Carly's change in thinking came and where we, you know, move forward together in alignment to actually pursue entrepreneurship.

I was just wondering what the next things were. I want to know, like, what you dove into and how those things worked out. Like, did you fail? Did you fall on your face? Like, what were the next steps?

Yeah.

So it was interesting. The consulting company was an interesting experience. And it was a mix. The team was really a mix. There were people that were very high achievers, go-getters, like definitely people in that business that were generating more value than they cost the business. And then there were other people, like, I'll just say it, there were other people that were, did not live, you know, up to that level. And the reality is the financial situation in that business was good for a bit. And then when it got bad, this is the thing about consulting companies. This is important to know whether you run a consulting business or whatever, especially if you have staff. If you get into consulting and you have staff, you can end up upside down really fast.

Mm-hmm.

People are really expensive. And if the revenue isn't consistent, then you end up in a spot where you burn through a lot of money keeping people on staff.

Really. It's the easiest thing to do though, because you have emotions involved in this. You have people and their families. But the easiest thing to do is to just get bloated fast. But looking at things that are essential and saying, okay, well, I've got to do this to make sure that my ROI and my profit is there, that's huge. I mean, so the earlier you recognize that, the better.

Yeah. So, uh, wasn't recognized early enough. Decisions weren't made early enough. And the reality is, like, I woke up one Monday morning, I went into the office, and there was this commotion and I'm like, "What's going on?" And somebody was like, "Did you get paid on Friday?" And I was like, "I don't know, let me go check." And what had happened was one set of people in the office had been paid and another set of people in the office had not been paid. Like literally the owner of the business couldn't make payroll. And so some people, I mean, it was just a judgment call on his part who got paid and who didn't get paid. And literally, I think, And the reasoning was like, some people are more responsible than others. And, you know, he sort of like knew people's situations. And so there were some of us that he just was like, okay, those are the people that I'm gonna bounce the check on. And so this is like, what? Like all of our worst fears, right? Everything about this experiment of like, oh, take more risk. And you just get hit by a bus, like, oh, it's over. Like it's over. And literally for me, I had a conversation with the owner of the business that day and I'm like, hey, this isn't survivable. Like if you're in that situation, I gotta go. I got a family to provide for. I got two kids at that point. I'm out.

Once again, Andrew's seeing where the puck's going, recognizing like, hold on a second here. It's a critical decision time.

Yeah, and the reality is I basically bartered or negotiated with the owner of the company and said like, hey, look, I get that this hasn't worked out well, but I have an incredible relationship with the customer that I'm servicing right now. Like I'm building a platform. I'm the founding developer of this wedding, two-sided wedding marketplace, vendors and people that are planning weddings. And like, we've got traction, we've got customers, we have revenue, and this thing has legs. And so myself and the founder of that company, basically negotiated with the owner of the consulting company to allow me to continue working on their contract, but as an independent consultant. And that, that is the moment of truth. Because now the question is, am I going to be an entrepreneur? Or am I going to cling to the safety? Because the safety was there, right? The safety is I can go back to my corporate gig. I still know everybody over there. I like half of them. I can go work with these people, right? And that's stability and a salary and benefits, or I can actually take on, you know, entrepreneurship and, you know, go down this path that's higher risk, but potentially also higher reward.

There are so many people right now that are listening, Andrew, and who do listen to ClickFunnels Radio, who are in this exact spot. So many people are like, I'm comfortable, I'm in my 9 to 5, but it's golden handcuffs. And they're now thinking this. And I want you all who are listening to be like, hey, Andrew was in a certain spot. And how many other episodes of ClickFunnels Radio have you heard our guests talk about that exact spot of like, okay, I'm going to make this decision. Is there anything else, Andrew, that you would tell them as they're making this transition or considering this transition? Like, what are people supposed to do? Can they have their cake and eat it too? Or is it a big jump? What would you tell them?

If you want something to pattern match for, it's the idea of capitalization, right? So capitalization is seeing something that's in front of you and knowing that we need to take advantage of that opportunity to focus on, to do. It's just a matter of identifying what you should be capitalizing on. And so that was it. That was really it. It was, it was a clear-eyed evaluation of, I can go back to my corporate gig, but now I know how much money people can make over here doing this thing that's, yes, higher risk, but it's much higher reward. Like the revenue was just so much greater doing the consulting stuff. And I loved it. I was like in my element as this like founding engineer at a startup. The only thing that was a dependency for whether I went back or I went forward again was the support of my wife. And I remember exactly where we were when Carly put it all together. And I'm giving her the lay of the land. And I'm like, you know, this doesn't have to be a thing. We're safe. I can go back. Like I can just go back to the company and get that job. And she stopped and she thought about it. And she said, you know, you could, but I kind of want to see what you can do.

Oh, I love that.

And even better than that, she said, you know, what's the worst that could happen? We could lose the house, but you'd still have me. And you'd still have the kids.

Wow. Break it down, people. Like, what's the worst that can happen? Take your shot.

I, I think what it really signifies is, um, the, the— when, when you put the stakes that way, what it really represents is the incredible love and support we are receiving. Whatever people's situations are, when somebody chooses to believe in you and support you, and it doesn't have to be your partner or your spouse, like it could be that friend that is investing in you, that they're willing to hear the stories, the ups and the downs of your entrepreneurship journey without sowing seeds of doubt or, you know, kind of thinking in their head like, ah, they'd be better off if they just had a job or whatever. When you identify that person who's willing to be your ride or die on your entrepreneurial journey, that has so, so, so much value.

Did Carly have a shift at some point in this process, Andrew?

I think it was, she could see that I was really, really good at what I was doing. Like that I had a real skill and a talent for the type of consulting that I was doing. That I was a good developer, I was a good architect, that the things that I built had a tendency to be successful. And so I think her confidence level went up. And I think that comes back to the patience piece, right? Is building up your reputation or building up the confidence. You have to put your reps in, you have to do the work, you have to get your 10,000 hours or whatever. There's value in that process, right? And so I think there may be people listening today. I know tons of them exist because I have friends that are in the same situation. Where they have the idea, they have the plan, all of that. And what, there's a gap though between their ability to capitalize on it or pursue it. There's something that's holding them back. All kinds of things can be holding people back. But if the thing that is holding you back is your confidence that it's gonna work, literally the only way that you can prove to yourself that it's gonna work is get started. And there's so many versions of getting started. You got to pick the one that you can do, but you got to do something. The thing that will never work is doing nothing and just waiting. Nothing will ever change.

Yeah.

Okay, so break it down for us, Andrew. Carly looks at you, she says, I want to see what you can do. What do you do? What's next?

Yeah. So I continued working with that startup and we were successful. We, grew revenue, we built a sales team, we launched market by market, we had new features, all of that stuff. It was really, really good. But the real opportunity to build my own product actually came from something that we experienced while we were growing that business that was not their core focus, but was clearly something that there was like a missing tool for this problem. I won't get into all the weeds of it, 'cause it's, actually it still affects people today. But what it was is we thought we're building this recurring revenue business. We've got people's credit cards on file, they're buying advertising from us. This is the easiest thing ever. We sell them the advertising, they'll be on a recurring thing. And then as long as we're providing value, sending them good stats, who's gonna turn that off, right? Well, it turns out a lot of people are gonna turn it off. Even though they didn't mean to, their credit cards, 10% of all of our credit cards every month that we had on file would churn because of expiration, fraud, reissued cards. And this whole world has changed now, but at the time, this was like a real problem. It wasn't easy to solve. The credit card processors weren't automatically updating cards. The industry had not caught up. And so I built a tool called Churn Buster.

So Churn Buster was what, a churn software that monitored people's churn rates and just helped them get back online faster?

That was basically it. So the, the way that the platform worked, it hooked up to their Stripe account, got the webhooks, and like just sent emails and scheduled phone calls. And then there were phone calls that went out to talk to the people that needed to update their payment information. That simple. But how many people, like, think of how many businesses there are, and sure, many people have sales departments and things like that. But think think of how many recurring revenue businesses don't have a sales team, or even, you know, in some cases, like, administrative support. There were so many people that were so happy to pay for not just having emails go out reliably and a streamlined update process, but also having those phone calls. Yeah, like, so it worked.

What was the percentage of churn again? You said 10%, though?

10% of every card we had on file every month.

Month? Monthly.

Monthly.

Yeah. So that's crazy. Like, that's, that's absolutely crazy to think about. So enter Churnbuster.

Enter Churnbuster. I basically identified— so I was spending a little bit of my consulting time solving this, charging an hourly rate for it, right? Solving this every month. And the bill— and what, what I realized was the more I focused on this, the better retention rates I could get. I— and so the software algorithm for like when you send emails and all of that, the more effort I put into it, the more they were retaining. But the reality was it wasn't the core of their business. And so what I proposed to the CEO of Borrowed in Blue was the name of the company, the startup. What I proposed was, hey, can I work on this independently? I will charge you, I think I said like $500 a month, which was way less than I was charging them as a consultant. Can I charge you $500 a month and I will have unbounded effort solving this problem? Spoiler: in the end, I've got people on the phones calling customers, like getting the credit— well, getting them to go online and update their credit card to draw their attention to the emails we were sending. Like, I went to the nth degree, right, solving this problem, and they were only paying $500 a month. You can't beat it. It was a bargain for the CEO. But what I said to him is, I'm going to make all my money back by selling it to 100 other people. And I, at that point, I had other friends that were asking me like, hey, what's that thing that you're doing? And I even had one friend who said like, oh, you have that problem? I don't have that problem. And I was like, you definitely have this problem. And he's like, what do you mean?

You just don't know it.

Yeah. And I was like, log into your Stripe account right now. And so we log into the Stripe account and he has so much revenue that's not coming in and he wasn't, it wasn't even on his radar. So that's when I knew I've got something. And, uh, the, the rest is history. That really was like my first foray into being a full-time consultant and bootstrapping a business on the side.

Far too many people are not having that conversation. Think I gotta go out and do this on my own. I gotta go figure this out. Sometimes there's opportunity just, you know, in between things, right? Like, go find it and have that conversation. Andrew, you're really good at that.

The most important thing is to do stuff. Like, you got it. Whatever, whatever stage you're at, figure out the next stage you want to be at and just start doing things that are in that direction. Doing stuff begets doing stuff. You don't always even know what the next step is. Start working in that direction. And start a process of discovery. That is literally all it was. We were building businesses and we didn't know what problems we were going to run into. And then when we ran into the problem, we either solved them in that business or in the case of Churnbuster, as a consultant, I realized that's my product opportunity.

We talk about risk and we talk about risk mitigation. When you go into this, are you calculating that and saying, okay, you have that fallback plan, but was there any other way that you're like, okay, I'm going to go do this. And I know if it doesn't work, I have this much of a leash I'm willing to go. You ever do that?

I don't know that at any point I was even in a situation where there could have been a downfall.

You're just going net free, man. You're like, we're going to walk across this tightrope across the Grand Canyon. I got this.

Yeah, literally every, every step of the way, it was always very logical how I didn't have much to lose. You know, even though Carly said that, like, you know, very dramatic, like, what's the worst that could happen? We could lose the house. The reality was that that was never in the equation, right? Revenue was solid, revenue was good, and revenue was the ultimate validator of every decision that we were making at each stage. I was never overinvested into something that wasn't gonna provide a return. It was this process of, go like land a client. It's literally the same thing for people that aren't familiar with what we teach people as part of the One Comma Club. The approach to One Comma Club is go get clients, like find people that you can do this for. And that is how you know I need to become a rainmaker because you've identified the opportunity and now you have to capitalize on it. So again, it's the, the capitalization thing. It's the same thing over and over and over. And so this was just doing stuff begets doing stuff. If you take action, you will then see more clearly, identify what was maybe once unknown, but now you know it. You may not know how, but you know that you have to figure out how. Because you can see the opportunity. It's— for me, it was that simple.

This is the pattern that you saw that nobody else was tackling. Like, you're working in the business, you're seeing this happen over and over and over. So how did you validate this is the pattern I want to attack? Like, how did you actually make that decision?

I think if there was a pattern, it is take all cash offers. There was a band when I was growing up, they had a song called "Taco." Take the money. Yeah.

Okay.

They, yeah, so, and it was this concept of like, hey, if somebody's offering you money, take it, right? Like that's it.

Yeah, figure out the rest later.

Revenue is the ultimate validator, Dante. So in this case, it was the fact that somebody was willing to pay for it. Somebody who's willing to pay for this, like willing to do a value exchange. And if there's one of them, there's probably 100, right? Like it wasn't so proprietary or so specific a fix. I think that's the other thing that's valuable is consulting, you don't have to be abstract, but I think in products you do have to be somewhat abstract. That's where pattern recognition is helpful 'cause it helps you identify what level to build a product at. So that it matches the problems of as many people as possible, that it appeals to as broad an audience as possible. That's important in products. The nice thing though about that, that's hard. The nice thing about consulting is you only need one customer or two customers or three customers, and you can ratchet up what you're charging based on the number of customers that you've got as you're providing more and more value. And the revenue is on tap. Like it's easier to build a consulting business for quick revenue than it is to build a product. And so, yeah, like the, and the reality is for most funnel builders, the right way, there are people obviously that have businesses that learn how to do funnel building to juice their business, love that. But for most people that are trying to leverage the skill of funnel building, more people can learn funnel building and how to be a rainmaker for businesses than there are people who have products, who have been able to create a product that has product-market fit. And so the real opportunity, in my opinion, is consulting. It's learning a skill, applying it within many, many different businesses. But the beautiful thing when you serve many, many businesses is you start learning how to think abstractly. Because one of them is like a lawn care business, one of them is drywall, another one is HVAC, right? But you start to see the commonalities between the different businesses, and then you identify the real opportunities, how you can create something for all of them. So you start by making money, and you're basically doing customer development as you go And then at some point you identify, I got a product that'll work for all of them. And then guess what? You want to know if anybody will pay you for it? Well, you've got an entire clientele that you can go and be like, hey, pay me a $500 retainer for this. Pay me a $500 retainer for this. And then you really know that you've got a product and now you've got recurring revenue, you've got continuity, all of that. So, okay.

So You sold Churnbuster. That was fantastic and amazing. But I don't really— I don't really know you from Churnbuster. I actually, in all the research, I had to like go deep on Churnbuster and your early years. I know you from Bullet Train. So how did we get from Churnbuster to Bullet Train?

Yeah, that's right. So after about 2 years of running Churnbuster, we raised a round at Borrowed in Blue. So the founders of that business were basically at that point transitioning from bootstrapping to raising capital. And it wasn't, it's kind of like a complicated situation, but ultimately the decision that I made at the time was to sell Churnbuster. Around that time, we moved to California. When I sold Churnbuster, I had the opportunity to invest in the resulting company, right? So you do the asset purchase agreement, it goes into a new corporation, and they themselves were actually raising like a friends and family round. And so they said, hey, we would be happy to have you as an investor. I can't get in, it's a funny story, I can't get into the specifics of it, but the value of that investment, first of all, I'll just say it, it was a good investment for Carly and I. Like, financially, it was a good move. Um, even though you wouldn't have thought it necessarily on paper, the people that I sold that business to were incredible operators. That's all I'll say. The other big thing that came out of selling Churnbuster was a sabbatical that my wife and I took, moving to Japan for 6 months, living in Tokyo. Uh, and that was a life-changing experience for us. I didn't work, I actually departed Borrowed in Blue. I had vested a significant portion of my equity there, and I had a really good position. I basically had more equity in that business than every other employee combined. Like their entire employee pool was, you know, yeah, it was good. It was a good spot. And the, but the point was I was ready for a sabbatical. I don't know that I would actually recommend anybody at the 10-year mark in their career. I don't know that that's the right time to take your foot off the gas. But it was for Carly and I. And so we went to Japan, we did some work with our church, um, we hosted a ton of people, like over 50 people in the time that we were over there. We loved that. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, all of that. And so that we got a sabbatical out of it, and then we came back to California and it was time to get back to work. And that was where Bullet Train came from, which is how you know me.

What did, did Bullet Train come from, like the name of it from you actually riding bullet trains in Japan?

Oh, 100%. That was definitely the inspiration. Well, yeah, you consider that the programming language that I used was Ruby, and in Ruby, the development framework is Rails, right? This is the same one that Todd Dickerson—

Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails. So, or ClickFunnels was built with Ruby on Rails. And so for me, the idea of Bullet Train was let's make product development even faster than rail.

What's the fastest thing on rails?

Yeah, a bullet train. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I'm not gonna lie, I was gonna call it Shinkansen, uh, but a friend of mine, Patrick McKenzie, was out at lunch one day and he speaks fluent Japanese. I don't, um, I speak like entry-level, like can get around Japan. Dante, you and I have been in Japan.

You're very modest. You're much better at speaking Japanese than that. I was just there with you. You're much better.

So I have friends that would refute that, the ones who have put in the 20-year effort. But the— and we're out at lunch one day and Patrick said like, hey, I know you're thinking of calling this thing Shinkansen. I told him the idea and he's like, yeah, it's a good idea. Um, but may I make a suggestion?

What—

I know what Shinkansen is. You know what Shinkansen is. May I suggest you call it Bullet Train? And as soon as he said it, I was like, oh, that's it. That's the name. So yeah, and the rest is history.

Does the shinkansen— does that mean bullet train?

Yeah, that's like the shinkansen is what you take when you're on a trip to Japan. It's called the shinkansen, but it is, uh, and it says that on the signs and stuff like that, but everybody knows, everybody knows it's a bullet train.

It's a bullet train.

Yeah, this is a big thing in branding though, like period. Um, I don't want to go off the rails too much, but Jen and I went to this, um, Korean restaurant. And literally, if you're in Utah, you don't even know what I'm talking about. Maybe, maybe not. This guy called this Korean restaurant Popeyes. And then we were talking to the owner and he's like, yeah, it's this character that everybody knows. I'm like, I told him straight up, I said, may I give you some feedback? I said, nobody, nobody's kids knows who Popeye the Sailor Man is. And they'll also think this is a fish and chips joint. Like, you need to call this. And it was Pot Pies. He thought it was so funny. He's like, no, get it. Pop-I Pot Pie. I'm like, no, I get it, but nobody else does. Like, you want to nail this, call it like K-pop pie or something. But I think it's funny because we get in our heads like this, Andrew. The reason I say that is we get in our heads and we think, oh, this is such a great idea. But collectively asking and like pulling some people to, to get idea, because when I listen to Bullet Train, the idea, it is genius on so many levels. And I think that's how you got connected with Todd Dickerson. Is that right? Is through Bullet Train?

100%. So this is—

If you called it the other thing, do you think you would have gotten connected with Todd Dickerson as much?

I don't know if it would have gotten the same sort of audience. Who knows? You know what, actually, I will say this. I probably would have connected with Todd Dickerson, but it may not have been as successful a business. And I may not have been in the position to capitalize on the opportunity that Todd Dickerson presented me with if it hadn't had the sort of like great branding, and it was really well received. So for people listening, the core concept of Bullet Train as a product was a starter kit for people to build SaaS businesses, right? Businesses like ClickFunnels and other software as a service products. It was like this accelerator for people building those. Todd would have still found out about it because Todd is incredible at leverage. He is incredible at identifying what the things are that are out there that can accelerate an effort and capitalizing on them. It happens over and over and over and over in our business. He's like rare, like he's proficient at that, or he's adept at that in a way that is pretty rare in our industry. So I build Bullet Train and it's not like a home run business. It's a great product that has great reception in a pretty small market. It is specifically for Ruby on Rails developers. If it had been a generalized tool or something like that, And there were some people that took that angle and I think had more traction and more success being more technology agnostic, but I just didn't conceptualize that right.

It was niche.

It was niche in a way that meant that it was never gonna be a main thing, but you know what it was good for? It was an incredible lead generator for development contracts because the people who are looking for something like Bullet Train are people who have a new idea They're trying to launch a new product and oftentimes they need help to build it. And so if I built the tool that can accelerate your development, save you all this money, and I'm the person who knows it better than anybody, and the team of people that are building this product are available to you on contract, then you're gonna take that deal. And so we had contract work on tap. We did, I worked on some incredible stuff because of Bullet Train. I learned a lot, everything from like small startups to huge government contracts. Contracts that I got to be a part of as a result of the work that I was doing on Bullet Train because that was the tool that was being utilized. Great partnership opportunities, all of that. But the real, like, that's a whole thing in and of itself. The real culmination of that story was when Todd picked up Bullet Train and used it in a partnership that he and Russell had to build a product with some other partners and launch it. And they built the thing in 6 weeks. So that's a business that still exists to this day that they had contributed to growing, building, launching. And when Todd's done on that project that they finished in 6 weeks, he reaches out to me and says, "I have an idea for ClickFunnels." That's like the biggest thing we've ever done. And I think Bullet Train is the right tool for the job. Do you know anybody that can help? And we get on a phone call and the end of the story is like Todd basically makes us an offer I cannot refuse. And over the, you know, it starts as like a consulting, mentoring the team, things like that. And being involved in the development of ClickFunnels 2.0. And it ends up growing into like an all day, every day. Everybody on the team is effectively focused on the development and the growth of ClickFunnels 2.0. Okay.

I mean, an offer that you can't refuse is one thing, but I also recognize throughout your entire career you're seeing opportunity and you're recognizing these patterns throughout. Is that something that you use the same filter and the same lens as you were like, okay, I'm talking with Todd Dickerson. I see this as another new opportunity because I've just seen this over and over as we go. Was that similar? Did that also play into it on top of like, hey, you know, it makes, makes, makes sense financially?

It was definitely more than just this makes sense financially. It was the really the true scope of the opportunity that was ahead of us that we're still capitalizing on to this day. Right. Like, I'm still here. I have only taken on more and more responsibility in ClickFunnels as a company, in my partnership with Todd and Russell. The opportunity was so big that I literally left another partnership. I bowed out of another partnership in GovTech that had been part of the work that I was doing on Bullet Train, left it to a friend of mine actually to take over my part in that company as their CTO to pursue what we had the opportunity to build with ClickFunnels.

But we're talking about this pattern recognition over and over and over. What was it specifically about ClickFunnels that you were like, oh my gosh, this is it? And how did that play into that decision?

Yeah, so the financial piece is, I mean, that's just business, right? Like it's, you have clients and whatever. It was ClickFunnels as a business. I already had some exposure to ClickFunnels because Jamie Smith, creator of CF Pro Tools, had used Bullet Train for CF Pro Tools, right? So I already kind of knew, and I knew that ClickFunnels was using Bullet Train in some capacity. It was like a skunkworks project. I didn't know what the project was, but I knew that they were using it. So ClickFunnels was on my radar. I think when evaluating the opportunity, the thing that is so special about ClickFunnels as a business is it isn't, just a software company. It is a software platform that has incredible teaching and education, events, community, and frankly scale, right? Like already a huge, at that point, already a huge established audience. And we were looking to do something totally new, like completely new, new vision, all of that. So you put all of that together and to me, That makes for a really, really special business. And, and that is something that when you're talking about pattern recognition, when people are thinking about the business that they want to build, I think it has got to be more than just a product, right? Um, if you have just a product, that's not going to make for a great funnel, right? Like if you have just a product, then it's just the, it's whoever sells that thing, it's a commodity, whoever sells it the cheapest. It is about building—

You gotta decommoditize that.

You have to decommoditize. And decommoditization looks like being an authority or an expert in the sphere of thing where you have a product. You need a product 'cause you need to make money or a service, right? Product or service. But being an expert, what's your proven process? What's the thing that you have that like if people give you money, you can guarantee a result? So people have to ask themselves like, what is it? You know, at ClickFunnels, this sounds crazy because we've been doing funnels for so long. It's still funnels. It's still funnels after all these years. There are still people out there that do not understand a funnel. On the internet as a way of turning visitors into customers and maximizing revenue, LTV, increasing your ability to spend on ads, all of that stuff. We've run into people, and I don't just mean like beginners on the internet that are signing up for ClickFunnels, you know, prospectively, I'm talking about people that I meet in business that still don't know how to run ads profitably and all of this stuff. So there's still a, there's a proven process. But even more than that, it's about the community and the events and all of, you go back to the very beginning for me, and it is, do you pursue entrepreneurship or don't you? I talked about Carly as she was somebody who supported me in entrepreneurship. Man, there were so many people along the way that were giving us the side eye, or when you're catching up about work, that they were insinuating that somehow it would be easier if we just went and got a job or something like that, right? Um, there's so much of that. And so having not only a tool where people without the help of a developer can pursue entrepreneurship online, right, on the internet, help other entrepreneurs be more successful, right? That's funnels, right? And that's what we do with the Funnel Builder Certification Program, teaching people how to help other entrepreneurs be more successful. Being a bootstrapped business ourselves. So leading by example in that way, providing a community and events like FHL, where everybody can get together with their tribe, there's not a single person there that is not going to support you in your entrepreneurial journey, because they're on the journey with you. That is such an incredibly special thing. And it's, yeah, so even in the early days, before I was in as deep as I'm in now, it was obvious to me that this was something special. And not only was it itself special, but it resonated with who I was as a person, having been an entrepreneur myself. And Bullet Train— I built Bullet Train to help other people pursue entrepreneurship. That was the idea. And the perfect culmination of that was for Bullet Train to be used to build a platform that helps way more people, not just developers, but everybody. Every type of business in every industry can benefit from funnels. And so, yeah, it was just the perfect sort of conclusion to the Bullet Train story.

You make two points here that I think I want to dive into a little bit more. And Dante, build on this too. One thing is you bring up Funnel Hacking Live. I think the whole internet right now is like, wait a minute, I thought that was over. They left the shoes on the stage, like retired. And we're 18 months after the final FHL and coming out of retirement. I think AI may be playing a part in that. Like Russell's kind of alluded to that as well. Like everything is happening so fast and even Todd Dickerson brought all of your developers together at the beginning of the year because things are happening so darn fast. So one, I want you to talk maybe about why FHL again too. And then I want to dive in just briefly on once again, where's the puck going and your ideas about AI? And maybe you combine those answers together. I don't know, like, that's why we're doing FHL. I don't know, but, but, but riff on that for a second. I'm just curious why we're bringing it to FHL and talk to me about AI.

Yeah, I mean, first with FHL, when Russell, uh, at the end of FHL as we knew it, he really said this isn't the end, this is the last FHL. In this format. So there's something coming and it's gonna be different. It'll have some similar feel, like is it something about it?

You needed a little bit of space, right? Just like you did in Japan. I was just thinking about that. Like sometimes entrepreneurs need this space to figure out what's next.

They had done it for 10 years and grown it and grown it and grown it bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, I think actually, I don't know that any of us knew that we would come back to it so quickly. But being able to identify that, like, hey, this has probably reached a local maxima. Actually, that's a super valuable concept. If people aren't familiar with it, go look it up. But the idea that this is the best that it can be in this scope. But then sometimes when you step back from it, you can see the much bigger picture. And so I think with FHL, It's twofold. It's having identified what some of the core pieces of what was so valuable about FHL and making sure that we don't lose that, right? So it's, this is a smaller event. This is more intimate. And I love that because it's accessible to everybody. Anybody can come, but it's smaller. So what does that mean? It means you're gonna have the people that are running 9-figure businesses there. Along with the people who are still wondering, maybe their step is coming to the event to see what's up and see who's there and see who they connect with, right? So all of those people in one room and then you reduce the room size. That's magic. I love, I love that. That gives me goosebumps. So that's one. And then two is definitely what's the theme of the entire event? It's AI. AI is the thing that has changed everything. And you've got people that are anti, you've got people who are scared, and then you've got people like us who are just pumped. Could not be more excited for—

They're out there with their surfboards ready to ride this wave.

Oh yeah.

Already riding it. We sat, so you hinted at it. Todd Dickerson brought the whole team together in Georgia. To the ClickFunnels sort of software headquarters, so to speak, and got everybody together, flew people in from all over the world to get the team together and really kick off on an AI journey together. And what it was, was like this time last year, so we did the big launch in Japan, which was heavily, this is last year, heavily facilitated by AI. The translation was up to snuff. Like the translation was incredible. The tooling, I literally built the tool that we use to translate all of the software. And it was vibe-coded. I didn't write a single line of code. You can go look it up. It's called Honyaku, is the name of the, H-O-N-Y-A-K-U. It's Japanese for translation. And it's this little Ruby gem that we created that facilitated the translation of ClickFunnels. Which started with one developer. And by the time we were done, 32 people were like involved in the effort to get this ready for launch. And then we launched it in Japan, big event. It was awesome, absolutely amazing. Dante and I were there together.

[Speaker:DANTE] It was incredible.

[Speaker:ARTHUR] It was so cool. But the point was that was facilitated by last year's AI. And then the models that came out in like November and December, we did so much experimentation last year. Todd Dickerson was on a deep dive And then when the models dropped in Q4 of 2025, that was when it was very clear, like, this is happening. It's a complete reinvention of how we develop software. And so Todd had the foresight to pull the team together and get everybody on the same page and make sure that, you know, don't be anti and don't be scared. Let's attack this problem together in unison and with full force. And they set a goal. This is the craziest statistic to me. They set a goal that by the end of the year, 95% of our code would be written with the assistance of AI. By the end of the year, it was like 95% of all code written or whatever. I forget what the exact description was, but we came back at the end of January the first month of the first quarter of the year, and we had hit that target.

Holy cow.

It's unbelievable. I am so proud, blown away. My, we have a staff member, he's the chief of staff now, but he started at ClickFunnels as my executive assistant. He's shipping full apps that help with the operation of our business. Like it's in HR, it's in finance, it's in engineering, product, revenue. Everybody, everybody is using AI and not just using AI like a search engine, like ChatGPT or whatever. Our senior director of marketing is using Claude Code, has no developer background. At all. Shout out to you, Jesse. Um, it's, it's incredible. It's awesome.

I mean, once again, this pattern recognition, and I'm thankful for leadership that's, that's doing that. I mean, we've seen this over and over, like you recognize where things are going and the, the timeline and so on and how quickly we have to move. You mentioned, you know, getting to that goal within the first month. Are you got— are we going to be sharing more of that type of stuff at Funnel Hacking Live AI, or like you want to tease anything that's up and coming? And now I know you probably won't, but I got to ask, like, what can you share with us?

You have to be at the event. So if anybody's listening, right, like there, if you got to this point in the episode, like if you're listening this long, please come to FHL AI, be there in Vegas, come meet me because you now know me, which is kind of cool. Sort of a side effect of, you know, trying to pull out hopefully like just little things that people can connect with in their entrepreneurial journey. But to give you a little bit of background and a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, like Chris said, on how, what's happening internally and who is operating internally behind the scenes at ClickFunnels. So we'll have more people, I think, we got So many incredible people on staff that can, can hang and really deliver incredible value to the people that, that choose to show up and listen. Be, be at the event, Chris, man. They don't have to wait that long.

Yeah, well, FHL is September 21st through 23rd in Las Vegas. FunnelHackingLive.com. There's still seats available. You guys know how this goes to the earlier you get, you get the better seats. And then man, when there's like a month to go, these things are going to be gone. Like it's, it's going to be crazy, but it's one of my favorite events too. My gosh, Andrew, Dante, you guys have seen this, like how many people go to that event and then they come back and tell their story. Maybe they're on ClickFunnels Radio at some point. And they're like, usually that story and that transition point was a Funnel Hacking Live. Like Dante's told it, I've told it, you know, it's, it's amazing. Dante, anything else you've got before we wrap?

I don't think so. As always, Andrew speaks so concisely and answered so many of my questions, man. I appreciate you coming on and being being honest and vulnerable with us about your story and the transitions and all the different things that, that you've gone on. I find myself reflecting on my own story and I find a lot of parallels, and this is super valuable to me if I'm going to be selfish for a second. But if it's helpful to me, I think it's going to be really helpful to all of our listeners. So thank you for coming in and sharing all that.

I want to thank both of you guys. Um, people don't see it, but I see it, the effort that you put in, the amount of pre-work and everything that you put into making this the best podcast that it can be, knowing that, yeah, for those of us who are on it, I mean, it's really about the people who are listening that are— [Speaker:TODD DICKERSON] For sure. [Speaker:GT] That can benefit from these narratives, benefit from the anecdotes, benefit from the stories, so that will help them take the next step. I know That's why we do what we do. So I want to thank both you, Chris and Dante. Thanks for doing this. We appreciate it so much.

We appreciate your support. Thanks so much, Andrew. See ya.

See you guys.