The Simplest Way to Start a Business When you Have No Idea What to Sell

He set out to help people in the ClickFunnels community completely for free with zero intention of building a company.

I got dozens of people that were reaching out to me like, how can I pay you for this? Like, how can I get you money? And I'm like, finally, after the 20th person asked me the same question, if I were going to charge for a solution, what would I feel good about charging for?

He's a ClickFunnels VP, he's a top affiliate, and he's a multiple Two Comma Club Award winner and the founder of CF Pro Tools. Jamie Smith is here and his story will make you rethink where your next business idea may come from.

CF Pro Tools and ClickFunnels as a partnership. It's a separate business. I run it separately. And what's good for ClickFunnels will eventually be good for me too. So the 90% problems I leave to ClickFunnels, the 10% problems I take on at CF Pro Tools.

He stopped trying to build the perfect thing and just started helping people.

Like, what do I need to set aside for taxes? And I'm like, dude, you haven't even made a dollar yet. Just do that first and then we can solve that problem. This is Jamie Smith.

Welcome back to another episode of ClickFunnels Radio. So excited to have Jamie Smith here on with us. Jamie, your story is so, so unique, and I think that it resonates with so many entrepreneurs, right? Like sometimes people don't know where to start, or they've thrown, you know, mud at the wall to see what sticks for years and years and years. But yours has been unique in the fact that you just started, I want to say, kind of just solving problems and serving people. When did you realize that that was actually the business?

Yeah, definitely. I went into this way back in like 2015, 2016, getting into ClickFunnels and started realizing that people had a lot of the same questions. And because of my background as a web developer, I was able to answer some of those technical questions. So, I just started dropping value and that was always my go-to, like, oh, I wanna get in the community, I wanna kind of get known, so I'll just get in and just provide a bunch of value. And it was a few months and I had kind of built out this membership area of like, here's how I can share this stuff for free. It was never intended to be a business. It was just like little solutions with little video training, little copy and paste scripts, dropped them into a members area. And after a few months, we had like 700 people that had registered for this free membership. And I got dozens of people that were reaching out to me like, hey, how can I pay you for this? Like, can I— why aren't you charging for all these solutions that you're providing? Why are you not? charging people for it? Can I send you PayPal? Can I, can I, how can I get you money? And I'm like, no, this is just my way of giving back. And finally, after, you know, like the, you know, 20th person asked me the same question, like, okay, what, what could I build to turn this into a business? Like, if I were going to charge for a solution, what would I feel good about charging for? And yeah, and then it just turned into a business from there. So yeah, it was, went in with absolutely no intent. Just my, my philosophy has always been, and I think it's a, it's a good one. Is just give with no expectation of return, and then eventually that you'll get so much return on that investment that you you won't even be able to shut it off. So, and it's yeah worked gangbusters for me in that case.

Wow! What what kind of what kind of stuff were you giving Jamie?

Yeah. So in this case, you know, it was ClickFunnels, and a lot of people had you know these were early days of ClickFunnels. So there were a lot of things that people wanted to do, or they'd seen people doing in other platforms, and like oh for example Trey Llewellyn. Early on, he's like, "Hey," reached out to me. Had kind of seen me in the Facebook community. He's like, "Hey, on this other platform, I see all these people selling e-com products, and they're like highlighting one of their options as the best seller. And it's like a yellow background with a border around it. It kind of pops on the page. I want to do that in ClickFunnels. How can I do that?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I could put a little script together that will will make that happen." And so I built that out. We call it the best seller highlight, and it was just little at the time, just little copy paste. JavaScript code, drop it into your footer codes in your ClickFunnels page. And I put that into a members area with just a little video of like, here's how to customize it for your installation. And, you know, send out an email to everybody on the list and said, hey, there's this new bestseller highlight, go check it out. So things like that, you know, the first, very first one I built was somebody that had reached out in the Facebook community, just made a post and said, hey, I want to put a checkbox on my submit button So that somebody has to check the box before they can submit the form. And so, I just called it the check button and it was just a little piece of JavaScript that found the button on your page, inserted a checkbox, and made sure that you had to check the box before you could actually click submit. Simple copy and paste JavaScript code and I just, hey, here's the code. Here's a little video instructions on how to install it, where to put it, and all that fun stuff. And she's like, this is brilliant. And then, a bunch of people also raised their hand like, hey, can you send that to me? Can you send that to me? Can you send that to me? And finally, I'm like, you know what? Instead of just sending all these people DMs with this code and how to go get it, I'm just going to put it into a members area inside of ClickFunnels and everybody can just go sign up for free and get access to all of it. And eventually, we had about 20 things in there just like that, just little simple copy-paste codes that, you know, we threw in there before we ever charged anything. And that was when people were like, hey, there's like 20 things in here. Like, why aren't you charging for this? This could totally be your business.

Right.

So yeah, just kind of built from there. Now we've got over 100.

Wow. It's interesting. And I heard you say something, Jamie. I'm curious. You were like, everybody comes to you and they're like, hey, how do I send you money? Can I PayPal you? Why aren't you charging for this? So then I started thinking about how I could turn this into a business, but it kind of sounds like you already had the business and people were already like, oh, let me just pay you for that. So what, what did the next step— you were using ClickFunnels. And in the ClickFunnels community, people wanted their funnels or web pages to do extra little things. So you said, great, I can help you do that. You gave them those things for free to help them do that. And that was where CF Pro Tools was really born.

Yeah. So like making that transition from like, hey, this is just a value add, this is just my way of giving back to the community, here's some free stuff, and really jumping into like, okay, now, now we actually have a paid product. Now, this is a monthly, and I started with a recurring, like, hey, it's a monthly charge or it's an annual, however you want to pay.

How did you craft this first offer? What was that like for you?

Yeah, really, it was like, in my thought was like, and I think a lot of people struggle with this, it's like, oh, I don't know if I have anything of value. And I still suffer from this today. I think Russell's talked about this many times. It's like when you're good at doing something, it doesn't feel as valuable to you as it is to others.

Right.

So, you know, it's a bit of a struggle to figure out like, oh, how do I price it? Would anybody really be willing to pay for this on a monthly basis? That sort of thing. So, my initial thought was like, okay, if I were a business owner and I'm not me and I don't have the skill set to do this, what are the things that I could build that would be valuable enough to actually— that I would be willing to pay for? Like, what are the things that are actually going to make me more money so that it feels like a no-brainer? Like, oh, I pay $37 a month for this, but it makes me an extra $370 a month or an extra $3,700 a month, whatever it is. Like, how do I get 10x to 100x the value back from this thing? And the first one I actually built and released was the add to cart. At the time, ClickFunnels was built around the concept of sell one thing with an order bump and sell another thing and sell another thing. So there was no functionality to say, hey, I wanna add more than one of these to my order. So, for example, selling t-shirts, you know, hey, maybe I want to actually sell 2 or 3 or 5 of these t-shirts. And so, we just added a quantity selector because I was able to see from the code that the pages were generating that, like, hey, this field, this order, this product ID actually accepts multiple values. So, I bet if I passed in multiple values, I'd get back an order that had multiples of those things in it. You know, again, years of doing it, just I could kind of read the matrix a little bit on how it worked on the back end. So I figured that I'm like, okay, there's not too many people that would be able to figure that out. And man, if somebody could sell 2 of something instead of 1 of something or 5 of something instead of 1 of something, they'd make a lot more money. So I rolled that out as the first paid add-on.

Yeah, this is awesome. So you though, you are starting though with like 700 people in community. Was this like a Facebook community?

Yeah, just a ClickFunnels course that I just inside of the ClickFunnels Facebook group. I actually just got in there and, you know, on a regular basis people would ask questions and I'd go in and I answer those questions. I would, and a lot of them were like, oh hey, I created a little custom script for this. Here's how to go get it. And they'd be like, oh, how do I go get it? Here's a link to the free Facebook or a free ClickFunnels members area.

Okay. So the ClickFunnels members area was your own though. You weren't working for ClickFunnels at the time.

No, no. This was before I even joined ClickFunnels. Yeah. So this was—

but you used So, you used ClickFunnels to go create the membership area, get them in there, and you had this tipping point of like 700 or so where people are like, okay, it's time that you start charging.

Yeah. So, when I went to my first Funnel Hacking Live in 2016 in San Diego, which would have been Funnel Hacking Live 2. Yeah.

You were an early adopter, man.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And again, I came into ClickFunnels as a customer. I had no intent of building a business around this. My purpose for showing up in ClickFunnels and starting to use it was because I wanted— I had written a fit, a weight loss or fat loss ebook, and I wanted to distribute that. That was, that was my, you know, pitch. I'm like, that's why I'm here. Everything else, like, I did not come in to provide technology solutions. It was—

Well, you've been following Russell for a long time. Is that how you kind of came up with this? Okay, I got an info product that I'm going to work on.

Yep, exactly. Yeah, that was it. So I, again, I'd been doing web development for since 2000, you know, building websites, building applications, work from, you know, huge companies to small mom-and-pop local shops. So I'd been doing it for a long time, but I'd always been following all the OG online marketers, Russell included, Frank Kern, you know, Ryan Deiss, you know, Perry Belcher, all these guys, you know, and like, that's, that's what I want to do. I want to have my own kind of online marketing thing. I love the psychology of online marketing. And, and so I just always enjoyed that.

I want to interject because you just, you just said Oh, that's what I want to do. Do you remember, was there a moment in time where you're like, that's it? Dante and I have talked about this with so many people, is where they go and they're looking at life, you know, as a menu or whatever, and finally they don't even know what they're looking for, and then they see somebody else order, right? And you're like, oh shoot, you out-ordered me. I should have ordered that. That's what I want, right? Is there a moment where you're listening to Frank Kern or Russell or one of these guys, or Perry or Ryan, and you're like, oh, that's it? Because you mentioned it was there. Can you take us to that point?

Yeah, yeah. I don't— I, you know, honestly don't recall a specific, but I do remember a tipping point of like, okay, I've got to figure out how to make this actually work. Because I'd been, you know, for years had been dabbling and doing the like shiny object syndrome. Like, you know, every month try a new thing, try a new strategy, you know, that didn't work, or that worked a little bit. And, you know, I still remember my first, you know, first money I made online. Was back in the days of, you know, the AdWords, like Google was just getting started with AdSense and it was the arbitrage. It was like the Google Cash days. Chris Carpenter, I think, was the guy who wrote the Google Cash book. And it was like, this is how you go find affiliate products, just run ads to them and like go send straight to the vendor with your affiliate ID and get paid, you know. So sign up for ClickBank, pick a product, run ads to it. So I did that. I think I remember landing in Vegas for a short vacation and getting to the hotel and immediately pulling out my laptop and be like, okay, I'm going to— I just started an ad campaign before we left, got to the hotel and opened it up like, oh, you made $800. And I'm like, yes, first money ever making money. And then like, literally—

Let's go to the crack table.

Yeah, exactly. Like literally a week later, like Google like slaps everybody and it's like no longer works anymore. And I go, crap, well, that one's out the window. Let me go try something else. And I did that over and over and over again. Little minor successes here and there, and it wasn't until like I had been investing in these programs, some of them monthly, and it's like eventually it's like oh man spending so much money on this stuff but I'm not getting anything back. Like gotta make this work. Like and actually had a conversation with my wife and she's like look what's this charge on the credit card showing up? Oh it's that it's this thing I'm paying for you know I'm gonna make it work. And she's like look we keep we either gotta Make this work or stop doing it. One or the other.

Listen, babe, the band's gonna make it. All right, we're getting a new drummer. That's a real combo, man. Like, was this— had been going on for a while and she's like, Jamie, like, this is bleeding. This is going the wrong way. You're spending money, not making money. Was that a pretty critical, like, uncomfortable conversation?

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it was spot on too. It was like there was no lie in any of it. It's like, yeah, you're right. You know, and it was that, that hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, okay, I'm not ready to give up on this. But at the same time, you're 1,000% correct. Like, I actually have to commit and do this the right way and get it figured out. But, and at this time, I'd already been through enough things. I'm like, okay, anything could work. What's the most likely thing to work? And for me at the time, it was like, okay, I don't have time to build a brand new product. So, let me figure out how I can build an audience and then sell other people's product. So, again, fat loss, I'm like, okay, there's a ton of products to choose from in the fitness space. I had just lost about 50 pounds of fat. I had gotten in some pretty decent shape. I'm like, okay, let me go that direction. Let me go find some good products. Let me write an ebook about what I had done to start attracting this audience. And let me figure out how to get distribution on that thing. And then, let's see if we can build a business out of that. And truth be told, that never got anywhere because while I was doing that, this ClickFunnels opportunity came along. I just happened to choose ClickFunnels as the route because Russell running an ad, hey, Funnel Hacks webinar, you should go sign up for this thing. So, I went and watched the Funnel Hacks webinar. He's like, man, you need a funnel. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I need. I need a funnel. And so, I bought into ClickFunnels and I got in and used it. And from day one, I loved it. And then I'm like, well, what have I done before that's been helpful to get engaged with the people that are using this thing? So I like, well, let me go find the Facebook group. So I just jumped into ClickFunnels Facebook community and started sharing what I could, like helping where I could, answering questions where I could. And, you know, before long it was like become the go-to guy.

I love that we're there because I think a lot of people— I've had people come up to me and say, hey, you know what? Can you refer people to me, like in the group or whatever? But what Russell teaches is adding value. And one of the things I was going to say too is this is the Zig Ziglar quote, right? You can have anything in life if you'll just help other people get what they want.

Yeah.

And I think that's huge that you were doing in this Facebook group because so many people, you can see it. I also have a rule. Dante's heard this one where it's like, hey, if somebody is like, hey, who is the person that can help me with SEO? Let's just say something dumb, right? The first person that raises their hand and says, I can help you with SEO, don't ever, don't ever flip and hire that person. You gotta find the person who's been adding the value, or they say, oh, you know what? Hey, Jamie's actually been doing a lot of this cool stuff. You should check it out. I see other members in our community that have learned this. How did you approach this? Because without being like raising your hand to be like, oh, I'm the guy, or I do this, can you tell us a little bit more about how you added that value constantly in this group so people were just naturally drawn to you? How did that work? Because it's not an easy thing to do.

Yeah, for sure. I think the big thing, and I, and I always preach this as well when I see people doing it in the Facebook groups or in different areas, it's like, um, don't, don't just raise your hand and say, hey, I can help you, DM me and I'll give you the help. Like, if they have a question, answer the question so that everybody else sees it, because that's usually a dead giveaway for me That like if somebody is like, oh, I can help you, but you asked a very specific question and I don't give you an answer, I just tell you I can help, send me a DM. It's like, well, that's the first sign they're going to try and pitch you on a service or something. Exactly. Yes. Just actually provide the answer. Like, and that's all I did is like somebody would have a question, I would answer the question. Like there was no, there was no like, hey, let's get in a side convo. Let me try and sell you something. I had no intent of sale. I didn't want to do this. This wasn't my business. I was just there to help. just there to provide value. It was really just my way of giving back again. And I think you have to go in with that mindset of like, here, I'm just here to provide value and eventually that'll come back to me. I think so many people go backwards. They're like, oh, how do I actually— like, how do I do this in a way that I'm guaranteeing my return? It's like, no, don't worry about the return. Just worry about are you providing value? And eventually, the return will come and it'll come back 10 times. Um, you know, and that story's always true.

Did you like have like a cadence or anything where you're like, okay, once a day I'm gonna say, okay, I've seen a lot of people with this problem, I just did something that helps a little bit? Or were you just scouring like to find the questions? And then in addition to that, like, were these like Looms? Did you like record Looms so you could show people kind of how to do stuff? Or was this all you writing it out in text, like long form?

Yeah, you know, honestly, I just scoured. I was just active in the community. I was just in there. I'd see every post. I'd every comment, see every question that comes through, and just like, hey, just started with just, hey, just drop a comment. Like, hey, here's a solution, here's the code, like, go grab it. And then those ones that are like, okay, this requires a little explanation, then yeah, I would record a video and drop it. Like, hey, here's a video that walks through how to do this. And back in the day, you could, you know, actually go live inside the ClickFunnels Facebook group. So some of them would be like, hey, I'm gonna go live and walk through this problem. I've seen 2 or 3 people have it. Some of them were just one-offs. It wasn't about like, oh, we got to have 10 people ask this question before it's worth my time to answer. It's like, no, every question that comes up, if I have an answer, let me jump in and answer it. And yeah, again, just how do I help as many people? And then, like you said, it turns around and turns into like then you become the one that other people are recommending. So instead of you having to be saying, hey, I can help you, it's everybody else is saying, hey, Jamie can help you. And then it's like you don't even have to pitch yourself. And it's so much more powerful when you've got others making the recommendation than when you're saying, I've got the skills to help you. It's like if 10 other people say you've got the skills to help them, then it's like, well, I don't need to look for anybody else.

Somebody else's recommendation always goes so much farther than your own. 100%. If you can have an army of people recommending you, you will always be more successful. Than recommending yourself all day. Jamie, what's your actual title here at ClickFunnels?

I am the VP of Product Strategy at ClickFunnels right now.

That's exactly right. You have a tremendous amount of responsibility here at the company. You have a tremendous amount of opportunity, and I know your workload 'cause I get to work next to you. It never stops. It never ends. But even still, when I also go in the Facebook group—

It's the overnight problem solver, right?

Yep. But when I go to the Facebook group, guess who is still there answering questions? And guess who else is still there answering questions Well, not just like 5, 5 words to kind of give you an under— like writing paragraphs and giving full descriptions for questions that are very simple questions that honestly could be answered if you would just read DotCom Secrets. If you just read chapter 1 of DotCom Secrets, you would have all these answers. Jamie doesn't judge people on their answer. Jamie doesn't judge people for not reading the book. Jamie doesn't judge on questions. And you've been able to go from there to here. So like, What is in you or what thing inside of you could others focus on to cultivate? So we actually have that real servant's mindset. That is number one reason why people don't have the success they think they are. They're not doing it to serve. They're not doing it to help. They're only doing it with a paycheck or, or with, with something for them in mind.

So how do you do that?

Yeah, I think that, I think the first step is just that belief and that, that one, that you're putting good If you put good into the world, that good will come back. I mean, that's just foundational. You have to truly believe that. And like with anything else, if you want to form a belief, look for the evidence. Like, look at the evidence in the world of where that's the case. There are so many people that put good into the world. Some of the best people in the world have a servant's heart. At the end of the day, you know, I, you know, they always say, like, nobody's going to remember you for you know, certain actions, but they can remember how you made them feel. And they remember when you gave value, they're just gonna remember, man, that guy was always looking out for me. That guy was always there to help. Anything he could do, he was always willing to do. He made me feel good about myself. Those are the things I want to be remembered for because those are the people I look at and be like, yeah, that's somebody I want to be around. That's somebody I want to be friends with. That's somebody I would want to be in a business relationship with, is somebody who just got a good heart and is looking out for people. You know, I don't— I'm not necessarily concerned with the guy who's made the most money in the world. You know, if, if from the outside, and I think we all see these people, you know, from the outside, yeah, he's got all the success in the world, but you look at him and just go, man, I don't think I— I don't think I'd want to— I don't think I'd be friends with that person. I don't, I don't think I'd feel great about that person. You kind of avoid them. You know, some people get enamored with that. But honestly, I'd rather— I'd just rather be the good guy. And that's, you know, and honestly, in our world, Russell's the good guy. Like, Todd's the good guy. Brent, John, everybody at ClickFunnels, we're the good guys.

That's—

and that's what I love. And so, I think you just have to have that in you to begin with. But then you have to, like, foster that belief and, like, look for that evidence. Like with anything else, if you want to really form a belief, like really, like, lock it in, Just go look for the evidence that proves that thing to be true. And then, just remember that.

I mean, your life to where you are right now is evidence too. Like, I mean, there's the saying, right? Proof is in the pudding. And, you know, what you have practiced has led you to where you are. Multiple Two Comma Club— how many Two Comma Club Awards at this point, Jamie?

Yeah. So, we've got the 3 up behind me here, 1 for my company and the 2 working directly with Russell. Um, so awesome. Yeah. And then, you know, more to come. So absolutely more to come.

That's right.

But you're going and serving, you're doing all this, you're creating this. CF Pro Tools launches. When do you finally get the attention of Russell and Todd? They're like, wait a minute, who's this Jamie guy? What's going on here? Maybe he can kind of come and help us as well. What was that story?

Yeah, so that was actually early on as well. So again, started, uh, like January, like late, late 2015, like December of 2015, early 2016, really kind of building out CF Pro Tools, like early days of memberships. Yeah, super early in ClickFunnels. I had kind of actually met Russell at the first FHL I went to in 2016 in San Diego. I actually had some shirts printed at that time. I had, again, I went to FHL, I had 700 people or so on my email list at at that point that were, you know, that were members in this members area and had access to the free stuff I was given. There was no paid— no paid anything at that point. Um, and so I went in, I was able to find him standing at one of the back tables. This was back in the day when, you know, Russell was like, hey, actually working the event, you know. And, uh, he, he was standing at the back and I was able to go up and, you know, say hi, shake his hand, get— drop him off a t-shirt. And so, yeah, not too long after that, actually, that was the FHL where, uh, Steve Larsen got introduced and started working for Russell. And Steve would reach out to me because he had been in the Facebook community as well and seen what I was— some of the stuff I was doing. And Russell would come up with like, oh, we want to do this thing, but ClickFunnels doesn't do it out of the box. Is there a way we can make it work? And Steve would like ping me on Facebook or on DM or whatever and be like, hey, we got this question. Is there any way we could do this? And usually it was like, oh yeah, I've already done that. Or, oh yeah, that's simple. You know, one of the examples— and honestly, one of the people I got connected with early on was Dean Graziosi. Still work with Dean and his team to this day on little customizations and CF Pro Tools code. And, you know, like just here a couple of years ago, the Matthew McConaughey event, you know, it was like millions and millions of people saw those landing pages. And I'm like, how cool is it that CF Pro Tools is running on this Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Matthew McConaughey event? I never in a million years imagined that would be the case, that those would be the people I'd be working with. But yeah, early on, you know, and there was one where Russell wanted to charge international shipping for his books. Like, he's selling books and running a book funnel. It's like, man, it's killing us to like ship these things international. Like, how can we— how can we make it so if somebody is shipping internationally that we can charge a different price than if they're, you know, shipping it domestically?

Things that you would never think of. You're building this whole thing out and you just don't think of those things, but they pop up and you're like the Fix-It Felix, right? That's in there.

It's like, I got it.

I'll just duct tape this thing together to grab me some, you know, I'm a guy, or get me some Juicy Fruit. Let's go.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And like, you know, little things sometimes, like the other one that, that I always remember seeing, I'm like, oh man, how cool is that? Was Russell did the old FiberFix funnel. Like if you remember the FiberFix commercials, those, you know, Harmon Brothers hilarious commercials, but they were struggling with the funnel like to be profitable. So I worked with Russell and he's like, hey, You know, let me rebuild your funnel and make this thing like really awesome. And one of the first things they reached out was like, hey, we've seen that thing you did with the bestseller highlight. Like, we got to put that in the funnel. And I'm like, this new funnel launcher, it's like see a Pro Tools like right up front. I'm like, ah, so simple but so powerful and made so much more money in that funnel because of just this little, little custom script that they dropped in.

Yeah. And that wasn't that you weren't just fixing things like this was not necessarily just Oh, let me, let me patchwork this. Like, you realized as a marketer and everything else that these little things made a huge difference. Dante works with so many people like that are new, right? I work with a lot of people that are 2 Comma Club Award winners, and sometimes we see that it's that one little tweak. We iterate those things and you found those and shared those with the communities. Now everybody's conversions go up.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's always my goal. Like everything I build is, it's one of the things that goes into it. It's like some stuff is, yeah, it might save you some time in order processing because, you know, hey, address verification, things like that. You know, those things are helpful in a business operating and saving time, saving money. But most everything else that I've built in has been like, how does this actually convert more customers? How does it increase average order value so I make more money in my funnel? Bestseller Highlight was one of those that early on actually did a went to a mastermind in Greece back in 2018 and brand new people. I'd never met these people before. I knew the guy who was hosting it, but I didn't know anybody else there. A lot of people in the e-com space. So I show up and like the first evening of this mastermind and we're like, you know, introducing everybody and like, you know, standing around fixing dinner. Like, I'm standing by the grill, you know, like, I can do that. I can stand by the grill and watch the food being cooked. And I'm talking to this couple and, and I started to introduce myself like, hey, I'm Jamie. You know, I run a company called Sierra Pro Tools. Like, yeah, we know who you are.

I'm like, What?

Like, how is that? And they're like, yeah, we use CF Pro Tools. I'm like, oh, you're kidding. That's crazy. And he's like, yeah, we installed the bestseller highlight script on one of our funnels selling sock caps, like winter hats. And we installed the bestseller highlight on that. And we went from a $24 average order value to a $48 average order value.

From that one change?

Installing that one thing. Just making that one simple change. They're like, it's crazy. And it was free. Like, and it's still, you know, it's still one of the free ones. It's like, holy cow. And then a few weeks later, one of the other guys that was at that event, I was talking to him and I said, you know, hey, like, I notice you're not selling multiple quantities of this product you're trying to sell. It was like tulip lights, like path lights for your sidewalk. And he was like selling one, doing the normal funnel stuff, sell one and then upsell into other things. And I'm like, dude, would you be open to like letting me configure this so you had multiple quantities and put the bestseller highlight in there and see if you make more money? And so we installed again that one thing and I reached out to him a couple of weeks later. It's like, how's it going? He's running Facebook ads. I'm like, how's it going? He's like, man, went again, went from like $42 or $47 average order value to like $83 average order value. That's like crazy. Just installing simple things can make you so much more money. And that's always what I look for is like, how can this Make people more money, um, in their, in their funnels. Get more conversions, get more people on your list, get more buyers, and get each of the buyers to actually give more money during the process.

That's the kind of software I like.

Come on with it.

So how did you then craft it into your first offer? I, I, I totally understand how it came to be now. I get that. That's like looking back to— that's Russell 101, you know, service The money always follows the service. Go provide massive value. Let your customers reach out to you. It's amazing. What did you do though for your first offer? How did you price it? You said it was monthly, but like, what's that look like?

It was, it was one of those things like sometimes you just gotta throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. And, and, you know, so you gotta experiment, right? You gotta throw something out there. Yep. And so, you know, went through and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna price this. $37 seems like a reasonable price. And it was that price. I started with that price. It was that price for multiple years. We've, we've upped it a little bit since then because we've got so much more in there. But the first thing out was like, okay, well, I don't have this huge library of things other than the stuff I've been giving away. And I'm not gonna start charging for that because it's— I'm already giving it away. So I continued just giving away the free stuff as free. If you wanted to sign up for it, you could do that. But if you wanted the extra sauce, I started out with just one thing. And then the pitch was like, hey, I'm gonna add something to this every month. And I actually did. Every month for like two years would launch two new add-ons every month for two years solid, and I'm like, and you know I'm gonna do weekly trainings. I'm gonna do you know you get all so you get all the instruction videos. You get the code. You get how to install it. You get you know VIP customer support. You get two new things every month. And it was just because I'm like, well, who's gonna pay monthly for this thing? Like okay, there's got to be a reason to keep. keep people coming back every month. It's like, oh, every month we're going to add something, add something, add something. And so, that was my initial pitch. And yeah, it was great. I think, you know, this is the largest success I ever had. So again, going into the launch, August 1st, 2016 was actually the first official day that you could buy the paid CF Pro Tools. And we did 5 figures that first week and I'd never ever done that with anything online.

That's awesome.

I'm like, oh, You know, and I was with a small list at the time. And yeah, it was just like kind of build up this anticipation. I spent, you know, probably 2 weeks leading up to it, like, okay, I'm building this thing. I'm going to turn this into a paid product. So let people know. And people were just clamoring for it. So it's like, you know, we call it that pressure launch. You know, you build up the pressure a little bit like this thing's coming, this thing's coming and open the doors. And like a ton of people went out and bought, a ton of people went ahead and paid for the annual right off the bat. So I tried to make it At the time, I made the annual way less expensive than what it'd be to pay, you know, for 12.

What was that ratio? Because I think this is really cool for people to learn this. Like, usually we'd say, okay, pay for like 10 months, get 2 free. Did you have more of a discount than that?

Yeah, it was more of a discount. So, if I remember correctly, it was $37 a month or $197 a year was my pitch for annual. And so, and the reason that I did that—

Becomes a no-brainer for people to just go annual.

Exactly.

It's very affordable.

They're already paying for ClickFunnels, right? Like, you want to make this super affordable.

Yeah, exactly. And that was the thing, you know, it's like, okay, because cash is never bad. Like, and I didn't know, like, how is this going to go? Are people going to stick more than, you know, a couple of months? You never know, especially when you're starting out. You don't know how long your— what your LTV is going to be or how long people are going to stick. I just remember I actually talked with Brandon Poland. A lot of people probably know Brandon, Kalen with LadyBoss. So I actually talked with Brandon, like, how did you guys decide to set your annual price? Because I'd done some work to help them early on and they're like, so I was just talking to them like, how did you guys decide what to set your lifetime price at? Because they did a lifetime offer. It was either monthly or just pay once. And he's like, well, here's the thing. Like, we figured out that on average people stuck 4 months. So if I charge 5 months, 5 times the monthly price, we're still making more money from that customer than we would if we just only offered the monthly. And so I'm like, okay, well, I don't know how long they're going to stick. So let me just take like 5 times the, you know, and try to make it sound good number. You know, $197 sounds like a, you know, a price that you would charge somebody. So I'm like, well, let me keep it around there. And if some— all they do is pay the 1 year and never come back, then I'm still probably making more money than I would if they churned out after 4 or 5 months.

That's— people don't— yeah, people don't understand that so much in software. I mean, a lot of people do, don't get me wrong, but some people that are just starting, they're like, I'll get the software and okay, we'll do it monthly. But this is such a ninja hack, right? Is— and this is a Russell thing. This is how he did Funnel Hacks webinar. You said you joined ClickFunnels because of this. Like when he started, he was like, okay, we're trying a bunch of different things. You modeled this too. Bulk continuity is something he teaches in this Lynchpin. You have monthly recurring revenue, which is, you know, $97, $197, $37 a month. But if you don't know how long they're going to stay, you don't know what that lifetime value is. So this is the hack, right? Go and say, okay, all right, I'm going to give a full year. I love a year too, because then it's not lifetime. You're not stuck fulfilling on something, you know, when you're old and gray and don't care anymore, right? Or they don't care anymore.

The love—

the perfect thing about doing a year is, hey, oh, you know what? I was using that. That's only $197. Did you set this on like auto renew? I just— I love this bulk continuity idea.

Yeah.

So at the end of the year, They got tagged again automatically for the $197.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was just, uh, either way it was a subscription. It was either monthly subscription or an annual subscription. So either way they were getting hit again unless they canceled, of course, you know, and cancel anytime. All the, all the risk reversal stuff we build in, guarantee, you know, 30-day money-back guarantee, you know, if you don't like it, it doesn't work for you, whatever, we'll give you your money back. Um, but yeah, it's just automatic subscription one way or the other.

Did you sell it through webinar at all?

I, you know, I've never done— I've done webinars, but I never sold CF Pro Tools through like a webinar. I did actually. I take that back. I did one webinar where I did pitch a $997 offer and I've never gone back and done it again. I probably should. Russell has told me.

Why did it scare you? It didn't work or what?

No, it worked. It was just— it didn't— I just needed to go back and rework it to actually make it a little bit stronger of a hook. So I didn't get a ton of attendees. But, you know, the numbers held true. Like Russell's got his normals. You know, his averages that he looks at for conversion rate on registration, conversion rate on people that show up and how many buy and all that.

I think it's 388 of DotCom Secrets. I think that's the page number that has all those.

So, but no, it's always just gone well otherwise. Like, so I've just never focused on webinar. It's, you know, yeah, it's low ticket enough. It's easy for me to, like, pitch without it. So I've just never, never really focused on that. But I've sold some other things on webinar. I've done some courses, some more high ticket stuff. And Sold those through a webinar, and those have been good.

Or drive your traffic to other people's webinars.

I mean, exactly. Yeah, and definitely done a lot of that.

You won JV contests and affiliate stuff. I think it's so funny that you started with that, and you're like, oh, now I got my own product. But you kind of keep returning to that, and like you on these leaderboards, Jamie, like I see you over and over, and like dude, it's Jamie right there, like with all the big dogs too. Like have you just continued to grow that list and then find aligned audiences and aligned products?

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's it's it's always great to promote. Russell's stuff because pretty much the reason people are on my list is because they were on Russell's list and then they needed a little extra. Like, you know, they started using ClickFunnels, they needed CF Pro Tools, so they showed up on my list as well. So, yeah. But, you know, that's— I just continue to grow that, continue to provide as much value as I can and help people the best way that I can and they stay on the list. You know, we're— you know, we've got a, you know, not a huge list by any stretch, but, you know, pretty decent list now.

Do you mind sharing how big?

We're about 40,000.

Yeah.

So we've— yeah.

And you're taking down people with 500,000 people on their list. Is this because it's just niche? Like, you know, I mean, Doug Bouton's a great example of this. He started with a really small list, but he's super engaged, right?

Exactly.

So 40,000, this is all pretty active and they're in the right space that aligns when you pick a product or what?

Yeah, I think that's the thing. So yeah, so out of the 40— so we've had 40,000 subscribers, some of the, you know, so probably active Engaged, we're probably closer to 20.

Still great.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's a nice-sized list. It works well. I think the big thing is that it's, it's just the right audience. The, the offers that do well, again, any, anything in the online marketing space, business owner space, entrepreneurial space tends to work well because, yeah, I've got a pretty engaged list. And, you know, and they're trying to do things. Like, they're, they're not on my list because they're, they're dabbling.

They're—

it's called CF Pro Tools, right? They're trying to do it a little, just add that little bit extra. And especially anything Russell does, they already know, like, everybody loves Russell. And so, it's like it just becomes a no-brainer. So, I always just try and sweeten the pot a little bit and do that. And, I love Russell, have for years. And so, it's super easy for me to promote and truly believe in it. I think that's one of the things that I think also people on my list understand is like I'm not just promoting everything that comes along, It's truly stuff that I believe in. It's people that I believe in. It's product that I believe in, and it's solution that I believe in. And so, that helps a ton. Like, people get that. That's like, I'm not, you know, I'm not just out slinging stuff.

No, this goes back to your servant heart that Dante was talking about.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, if you don't— if I don't truly believe in the product, there's no point in me promoting it because, you know, if I'm not going to use it myself or I don't think of benefit, like, good or bad, it comes back to you.

You, right? You're like, yeah, exactly, tell me to do this.

Yep, exactly. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, if we're going to talk affiliate contests, a 40,000-person list is a fairly small list, but that really makes me think about something Russell's talked so much about. You know, it's his Dream 100. If anything, Russell's a purveyor of information, right? He didn't come up with a lot of the concepts, strategies, and frameworks that he teaches every day. He just learned them, mastered them, and then teaches them. But Dream 100 is something that you could say is Russell's, and that If you have 100 people, 100 loyal fans that follow you, they'll buy anything from you and you can have a successful life and a successful business just on that. So even though it's only—

That's the 1,000 true fans. Dream 100 is where you're going out and reaching out to the people like that you want to have like promote your stuff, et cetera.

Right? Yes. Yes. Sorry. Thank you. So just 1,000 true followers, 1,000 true fans that like truly believe in you. and you care about that relationship that you have with them, if you can just have that, you can do huge things. And it's really great proof of it because you smash people in these competitions. It is awesome to watch.

If you share something with somebody and they get value from it, whether you're the person that actually gave them the value or not, they're going to attribute some of that back to you. Some of that value comes back to you along the way. You know, like Russell's the one delivering the software and delivering the training and delivering the education. I'm just making the connection to people of like, this is how it's going to you. But still, people are like, oh, that was so awesome. Thank you for that. So—

It also opens up a ton of doors. So, you know, going back a few minutes, you know, you see Russell back there, you give him a t-shirt. At one point though, they're like, hey, you need to start working with us. I think you even went out and spent some time with them. And the last day they were like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Tell us that.

Yeah. So, it was actually, you know, so I again gotten entrenched in the community a little bit, got to know— I actually met Dylan Jones, one of the original founders, Russell, at the first FHL in San— my first FHL in San Diego, 2016. So, I'd kind of gotten connected, you know, built a little bit of a name in the community. And I remember it was— it would have been probably April of 2017. Dylan actually reached out and was like, hey, I'm going to be in Boise working on the ClickFunnels editor. We've seen all this cool stuff you're doing. And Dylan reached out and was like, you're doing all this stuff and you don't even have access to the ClickFunnels like software. Like, imagine what you could do if you— if we got you into the software. Could you help us like build the editor and make it better? I'm like, dude, that would be awesome. He's like, yeah, we're gonna be there for a week. Would you fly out and like work with us? I'm like, I would love to. So, I flew out here to the Boise office. We sat in a room, me, Dylan, Winter Jones, Russell, for a week and just worked on the ClickFunnels editor at the time. And, and then that last day he's like, you know, we're wrapping up the day and like Dylan and Russell like cornered me in the little glass office. I was like, okay, you can't leave until we figure out how we can make this work. Like long term, you can work with us like forever. Like, and I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. Let's, let's figure out how it works. And yeah, I've been doing it ever since. So yeah, I joined ClickFunnels proper in like May of 2017.

No kidding. And you were one of the first that I met too. And I came in 2018. And I just have to say, like, you talk about that servant heart. I remember a number of times. I remember it was Funnel Hacking Live, maybe 2019, and we're at the Gaylord Opryland and we were down by the river and I was, you know, doing the speaking team and then maybe some partnership stuff at that point. And I just— Jamie is the guy who literally comes, Dante, and he'll just ask you questions like, dude, how are you? Like, how's that going? Like, what's going on? Are you doing okay with this? And I just remember feeling super seen, just so you know that, like, live on air. Like, dude, I felt super seen in that moment. I don't know if you remember that moment, but you're like—

Absolutely.

And I just remember like, man, we're trying to land these things, we're doing this, everything's moving fast. And I'd come from corporate America. You're like, dude, you just gotta roll with this. And it's really, really cool. I, I do want to know though, how do you balance your full-time gig at ClickFunnels and then still operate and run CF Pro Tools and then do the affiliate stuff. How do you balance all that stuff? And does anything ever get muddy? Like, wait a minute, I guess I could just come in the backend and code this for ClickFunnels. Or how do you decide if that's a CF Pro Tools product? I know that's probably a weird line for you to kind of like navigate.

Yeah, it is for sure. And, and I've had that conversation with, with Andrew, with Todd, with Russell. Like, we get, we all get that it's a muddy line. And, you know, Andrew's actually said like, you have like, you are literally the biggest conflict of interest and we love it. Like, we're down for it.

Yeah.

And that's always been my thing. And I think part of that is too, like, again, from the very beginning, I viewed CF Pro Tools and ClickFunnels as a partnership, even though it was like, hey, it's a separate business, I run it separately, and I'm just out here on the outside serving. Like, even at the very beginning, I'm like, anything I can do to help these customers have a better experience with ClickFunnels and accomplish the things they want, is better for ClickFunnels and what's good for ClickFunnels will eventually be good for me too. And so, I always looked at it as like, what are the things that if— because I know what it's like to run a big software company and even more so now being on the inside, it's difficult to move that ship sometimes. And so, I'm like, what are the things that if they did it, it would take longer and still only serve a small percentage of the audience versus if I do it from the outside and I can like sprinkle a little you know, a little pixie dust on the code and make it work and serve that 10% of the underserved audience, then it's good for everybody. Like, let's ClickFunnels, the engineering team, go focus on the bigger problems, the bigger fish, the things that are keeping 90% of the customers awake at night. Like, oh, if we just had this feature, you know, then I could be able to make more money. So, the 90% problems, I leave to ClickFunnels. The 10% problems I take on at CF Pro Tools. Like, it's like, oh, like the bestseller highlight. Like, not everybody needed that at the time. You could, you could make a really good funnel without that, but it just added that little extra sauce. Trey reached out. He's like, man, I'd love to be able to do this thing. It works great for e-com. It works really well. We found out for a lot of things, but not everybody needed it or was looking for it at the time. For example, like in Classic, there, there didn't used to be a PayPal integration. And I started to solve that problem. And eventually, I actually reached out to Todd and I'm like, hey, Todd, this— everybody should have this. Like, here's a way to make this work. And I just gave him my code for the PayPal integration. And he's like, that's awesome. We'll go build this into ClickFunnels. So, they built the PayPal integration into ClickFunnels as a solution. But I'm like, I'm not going to just keep this for myself because So many people could benefit from this. And so, that was one where like early on, like it started as like, well, let me just see if this is even possible and what it would take and then hand it off like, yeah, ClickFunnels should just have this. I still do that today from the inside. It's like, yeah, it's always that decision point of like, okay, is this really easier for me to just build from an outside perspective or should it just be part of the software for everybody? And yeah, so that's always been the way I've looked at it.

That's wielding some power for sure, Jamie, but there's a lot of trust that I think that they've given, you know, Because you've proved it year after year after year.

Yeah. And that's always the thing. Again, you know, it goes back to that, you know, I'm still trying to serve everyone here, like the entire company of ClickFunnels. I want every— I love every one of our people. Like, man, I've been blessed to meet so many people in our company over the years and work with some amazing people. And not just, you know, Russell, Todd, Like everybody, like we have one of the most amazing teams in the world. And so, truly a blessing for me. I'm like, what can I do to benefit everybody? And if the way I can benefit is by building something for CF Pro Tools so that somebody else doesn't have to build it inside of ClickFunnels, then that's the way I can serve in that moment. If it happens to benefit me, that's great. And it usually does come back because it benefits the customers. It's like I'm always looking for that win-win-win.

Wow, that's amazing. I want to echo Chris's— one of Chris's questions too. How do you balance it all? Because you do balance a lot. You have, you have a wife that you care about, you have a very, very responsibility-heavy job here, and a business that you run, and you seem to handle it all so well. How?

You have to have seasons. There's never true balance. Like, you just have to be ready to— like, because there are times when, hey, this thing needs my total focus right now. There are moments and we're getting ready to do a launch at ClickFunnels like, hey, I got to spend all of my effort over here. So, everything's going to get out of balance for a moment. You know, it might be a couple of weeks, might be a month, might be a couple of days. But there are plenty of times when Russell's genius is, man, he can— when it comes to crunch time, he can crunch and crank.

Oh, yeah.

And so, sometimes you have to be able to run with that. It's like sometimes the last 2 days before the event, That's when you go big.

Oh my gosh, the night before. Yeah.

Exactly. It's like, sorry, we're gonna—

That's when the genius sometimes comes out.

It's crazy to watch.

Exactly.

Sometimes you just have to be prepared to be unbalanced, you know, radically unbalanced in that moment.

For a season.

Yeah, for a short time, usually for some sort of a season, and then it shifts. And then, you know what, next month it's gonna be, okay, I'm gonna focus on CFO Tools because I'm gonna do something cool. I'm building a new add-on, or I've had this problem, or hey, you know, servers are having an issue, whatever it is. There are times when it has to get unbalanced. And, there are times when you just got to step back and say, okay, hey, I need to spend some time with family now. I need to travel. I need to take a vacation or whatever. So, I wouldn't say there's ever any true thing is like, hey, we're just completely balanced all the time. It's really hard to pull that off. I don't think anybody ever truly pulls that off. They might say, yeah, I've got good work-life balance, but it doesn't work that way.

Right.

I got some really good advice from a church leader once. The guy's name is David Bednar. He talked about how, listen, you know, if you got church responsibilities, you got family responsibilities, kid responsibilities, work responsibilities, all these other things, this is the advice he gave. He's like, when you are in that moment, be in that moment. So if you're at home and you're being family or dad or spouse or whatever, be engaged, right? And if you are at work, to be— to dive in and be engaged there, and then you've got to come back. But it's hard, right? Because you're switching this all the time. One of our biggest struggles, Jamie, is this, is I feel like we've got this ball and chain constantly. Like, man, Slack's on the weekend or everything else. It's like, how do you then hyperfocus on the one thing? You going on like do not disturb or anything like that and be like, no, I'm penciling out this time? Is it calendaring? Do you have any tips for that?

Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think you nailed it. Like, when you identify that, hey, I've got to be hyperfocused on this thing right now, yeah, do the best you can to like cut everything else out. Like, I have separate laptops, I have separate devices, like, and I get in moments where like, hey, I can't even work on that other thing right now because it's on my other machine. If I'm going to, if I'm going to events where I know like, hey, I need to focus on ClickFunnels for this event, I see if Pro Tools laptop stays at home. Like, it's like, there you go. There's nothing I could do right now.

That's actually interesting. A separate laptop. Yeah, that's actually pretty smart. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, separate machines, separate purposes. You know, phone like for this, getting prepped to come in here and talk to you guys. It's like, okay, great. Computer goes on do not disturb, phone goes on do not disturb. Like, we're locked in. Like, we're here for this. And then, you know—

Which imagine if you're on a date with your wife and you put that phone in your pocket on do not disturb and you're locked in there, people notice that stuff.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I still— I always like to tell the story. I just saw Dave Lindenbaum. We all know, know and love Dave. He's amazing. But I remember, and this probably would have been maybe even that same FHL you were talking about, it was, it would have been Nashville, like the Gaylord in Nashville for an FHL. And my wife was with me at that event. And we were standing out waiting on a taxi or an Uber or something. And Dave walked up and so I started talking with Dave and he, I introduced him to my wife, Nikki, and, and he started talking with her. And she to this day says, I love that guy, because she remembers in that conversation he was 100% locked in and present. There were hundreds of people walking around, people he knew. Him and I had been talking for years. Like, he wasn't interested in anything else that was going on but talking with her in that conversation.

I'd like to get back to your pricing. So you started out, you So you take $37 a month, uh, $197 annual, but that's changed recently, hasn't it?

Yeah, really. You know, it's like looking at— and I think everybody should do this— look at, you know, your profitability. Like, hey, what's the reality of like where things are at? So it's like, look and say, hey, if people are staying, you know, for a long time on a monthly, then maybe an annual doesn't make sense at all. Because hey, if they— if on average my customers stay for 18 months, Then, you know, then the annual might not make any sense at all. Most people, it will. Like, typically with software, you know, you're going to see churn that's less than 12 months, but some enterprise software is way longer than that. So, you know, annuals don't make sense unless you're doing an annual contract just to make it affordable for the customer. But, you know, typically, you know, again, early on, you don't know. So you take a guess. Okay, so I guessed at 5 months, and we'll go from there. And then once you get 5 months' worth of data, see, okay, how long are people actually sticking on the monthlies? And eventually over time, it's like, okay, you know what? People are sticking like 8, 9, 10 months. Okay. So now we can up that annual price because it's still a savings. It's still more affordable for them than paying monthly would be. And it's still— we're getting enough out of it that like we're not losing by letting— by giving people too much of a discount on the annual. You know, $37 a month versus $197 a year was a big discount.

Yes.

But it wasn't necessary to get the conversions. So we upped it eventually to $247 and then eventually $297, and then we did a $347. And again, it was still a, you know, basically at that point you're a, hey, pay for, you know, pay for 10 months and get 12 months. And it was still a little bit of a discount below that. And that's what we stuck at for a long time. At one point we tried a lifetime or, you know, an unlimited plan, we called it, at $397, just one-time payment. And that crushed as well. People loved that, you know, one-time payment option. We eventually took that away when I actually converted over to instead of just being a ClickFunnels members area, we converted into software because what I found was like, hey, copy-paste code is great until you have to make an update because something changed and it broke. And then it's like, oh, now I got to go back to everybody and say, hey, you got to go get the latest, copy the thing and go paste it in again, do all the configuration. So, we turned it into software. So, it was like, I'll manage the updates, I'll manage the changes on the software side, and people love that. So, I'm like, well, we actually have costs that go into, like, running the servers and doing all that stuff. And so, then we went just straight recurring, whether monthly or annual from there. But again, we kept that same pricing for a long time. And then we did, you know, once it got, you know, to the point where it's like, there's literally you know, over 100 different add-ons in there. We did an increase and just added in the tiered pricing, like, based on, like, what we like to call value metrics. And so anybody that's thinking of doing— and I know there's so many people today looking to start their own software companies.

Yeah, especially with, like, Overskill and all these other things that are out that are exactly making it stupid easy to build software.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's getting so much easier, but pricing is always one of those big questions. So, one of the things that I learned, and we looked at this on the ClickFunnels side, I've looked at it on the CF Pro Tools side, and I think everybody needs to understand it is like base your pricing around value metrics. Like, figure out what your value metric is for your software and for your customer. Like, what's the thing that they're gonna equate? Like, for every unit of this thing I pay for, I'm gonna get back additional value and preferably like 10x the value. So, ClickFunnels, it's, you know, typically contacts. Like if you have more contacts in the system, you're probably making more money with the software. Therefore, you're willing to invest more to pay for it. If you look at companies like ActiveCampaign, you know, MailChimp, things like that, a lot of email senders, things like that, it's based on, wait, how many emails are you going to send? How many contacts do you have on your list? Those are your value metrics.

Like, how are you figuring that out though? Are you just looking at what people are doing inside the app? You're like saying, okay, here's what I can tell and here's what I know. Because that's very different than lifetime value or average cart value.

Yeah, no, I think the big thing is like every software is a little bit different. So, you know, you kind of figure out like we could— you could look at it from one, you know, let's take just ClickFunnels for an example and say, okay, well, we could charge based on the number of funnels you create. Like, but then you have to ask the question like, well, is it guaranteed that somebody is going to make more money for every funnel they create? Probably not. But for every contact, every lead they generate as a result of 1 funnel or 100 funnels, that, you know, the goal is like, okay, you make $1 per contact per month and that's your revenue. So if I go from 1,000 leads to 10,000 leads, I should be making more money. Therefore, it's easy for me to invest a little bit more money in a monthly subscription and bump up a tier and ascend to a higher level of that software. But at some point, like, somebody may only have one funnel and be generating a million leads a month. Like, so if you're charging them $27 or $97 or whatever for one funnel when they're generating millions of leads, that's not a fair, like, value metric on either side. So then you look at like, okay, well, what is the thing that if I help this customer get this, they're going to be more able and willing to pay a higher price for my software?

Most people aren't looking at that. Most people aren't looking at that. They're looking at the other, just, you know, like I said, the other numbers, but value-based metrics, you have to dig a little deeper for sure.

Exactly. Yeah. And you said, because it changes based on the, you know, value prop of your software. Like if it's meant to generate leads, then leads is probably the number of contacts you generate is probably the value prop, but not everybody is that. Some, some of them could be like, you know, based on the number of ad campaigns you generate. Like there's plenty of like looking for like Blake Newbar. You know, runs Rocketeer, like, okay, you're gonna use that to generate ad creatives, like, that is probably your value prop because, you know, could be based on the number of users you have on the platform. So, there's plenty of softwares that provide software to business and that for every person in the company that uses the software, they get additional value out of it. So, they're willing to pay per user on the platform. So, you just gotta kind of weigh, like, what does my software do? And, and then, you know, where's, where's the real value derived? Is it the number of people that are using it? Is the number of leads I generate? Is the number of creatives? Is the number of output of the platform? Number of scripts generated? If you've got like video scripting software, this is the other thing that's, you know, can be difficult and you have to really pay attention to it is you can't just, you can't add in like some people will add in like a bunch of stuff, a bunch of limitations to the actual pricing, and a bunch of features pricing that they think are actually the thing that adds value.

Oh, they think, right? That they're assuming a lot.

Exactly. You make a lot of assumptions, but it can actually go the other way where if you say like, oh, hey, well, I'm gonna add in the number of contacts, but also a number of users and a number of funnels and a number of other things. Some people don't Some people are like, well, great, to bump up to the next tier, I get 10 users unlocked. I don't need that. So, it feels like I'm paying for something I'm not actually gonna get the value from. So, if you add too much in at certain tiers and people aren't actually gonna use that thing, it can have a negative effect. So, you have to be real. I mean, pricing is a science.

Have you taught this at like Inner Circle, man? This is gold right here.

Yeah. And I am far from the expert on it. Trust me on that. I'm trying to think of his name. There's the guy who started ProfitWell and has since sold it. This is something that ProfitWell actually does. They have a whole pricing strategy, whole pricing course workshop that they do. It's really good. Yeah. But yeah, there's a whole art and science that goes into how to price your product and how to build the tiers and what should get included in those things and like looking at things like value metrics. And, you know, the negative bias that comes with adding in too many things that somebody is not actually going to use versus making those things— maybe those things become add-ons that like, hey, here's the tiers based on your value metric. But if— yeah, but like, hey, if you want to bump it and add this special feature, you can add it on any tier à la carte for an extra $27 a month or whatever.

A good example of this is we just ran into this because, you know, we run a bunch of meetings with Zoom. And so I was talking to Courtney, our executive VP of operations, and we were just talking about like, hold on, what's more important? How many people we can have in a Zoom room or how many simultaneous? Because I've got a team, we're all running a bunch of facilitations and I'm like, I got to have 2 or 3 meetings that are all open at the same time, but I want it in the same account because I have all the meeting templates in there and everything else. And that was more important than saying having 5,000 people attend, right?

Yeah.

And so we were able to look at those plans and pick the right one based on that. These are the types of things that you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you look at Zoom, like they have multiple different features that you can unlock that each have their own subscription and pricing. Like you can run just meetings or you can add in their webinar feature and that's got a separate pricing as well. And it's got separate tiers based on that. So those, those really operate almost as separate tiers with their own value metrics, because then when you go to webinars, Like, well, how many people can attend?

The pricing is not real clear, though, Jamie. Sometimes, like, I think sometimes you almost get to get like a rep on the phone and be like, hold on, why do this? So if you're smaller and doing this, make those extremely clear, the options they can get. But you don't want too many options because then what you're going to have is like, you know, I know there's sayings for it. You're just overloaded because there's too many options.

Exactly. Yeah. You get that decision paralysis like, oh, I don't know.

That's what it is, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Analysis paralysis is what I was looking for.

Yeah.

And that is that art side of things, right? Like you have to do it in just the right way that, you know, you don't overwhelm somebody.

That's the beauty of ClickFunnels, right? Go and iterate and split test it, see which one works. Is that what you were doing then with CF Pro Tools when you changed this? You said, I'm gonna look at all this, test out a couple, this is a new pricing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I didn't— I never split test one price versus the other because I've always felt like, you know, you can't go back. Like once—

Yeah, you got to start low and keep raising your prices, right? You don't want to say, you know, charge you $347, but this guy got $247.

Exactly. Yeah. So, I've always tried to be super respectful of my customers. They're most important. Like, I'm who I am, you know, partly the value I've received out of this is because of the customer. And so, that's a big deal to me. So, I try to be very respectful of that. And so, I never want somebody— and I always feel bad. Like, I always call it the Comcast model of like, oh, yeah, Yeah, we actually charge our most valuable customers more than what we do to brand new person. Like, I get it from a business perspective, but I'm like, if I'm brand new, I get 6 months free. But if I've been paying you for years, I actually paid 2 or 3 times as much.

Oh, this used to drive me crazy about like DirecTV. Like, dude, I just saw $59 a month and I'm paying like $130, right? Right.

Yeah. I'm like, sorry, that's for new customers only. I'm like, what? That's silly. Like, you want your long-term customers to be the one that feel the most valuable. And so, yes, I've always just tried to respect that price and like, hey, if you signed up at $37 a month, I still have people that signed up in 2016 that are still paying like 10 years later, still paying that same price. I still have some people that are paying $197 a year. It's like, and they still get full access to everything that we have. But it's like, yeah, you You helped me early on. You saw the value early on. You were an early adopter, and you still get that benefit that comes with it. I try to respect that for sure.

I didn't think we'd get this out of that. That was a great question, Dante, because I didn't think we were going to get some of this value-based metric stuff.

That's awesome. I didn't either. It was great. I'm curious too, Jamie. Gosh, we're already getting— I knew this was going to happen, man. When Jamie comes to Atlanta, we always have lunch and we have amazing conversations. He's just a wealth of knowledge. We're already, it's already been an hour. Holy cow. Jamie, when you're crafting offers, we always, we always articulate those offers to the customers with an offer stack. When you get this plan, you're, that's gonna come with this and this and this and this and this. So when you're making your offer stack, do you have any real strategies on that? Like for instance, Russell loves to talk about in a webinar, When you're doing a webinar and making a stack or an offer in a webinar, the brain remembers only the last thing that it was told. So make sure in your stack that the last thing that you hit them with is unbelievably wild value. And he does that in all of his webinars. Do you have any sort of, any sort of offer science that you've figured out that works really well?

You know, I've always tried to do that. One is always the 10x rule. Like whatever you're charging price-wise should feel like the value should feel 10 times greater. than what you're actually paying.

So, basically, you'd say, okay, hey, I'm going to give this thing to you. I'm not going to charge you $100,000, but it's worth that. And I can justify that. I'm going to show you why. You can see why this is worth it. But today, if you take action, I'm going to give it to you for $10,000. That's what you mean by 10x the value?

Yep, exactly. Yeah. So, that's kind of a no— that's what makes it a no-brainer in everybody's mind. And then, the other piece is like the bonuses that you offer, the stack that you provide. should, should honestly all go towards the objections that, you know, are going to come up in people's mind. And some of those objections are price. So you make it, hey, this is worth 10 times more than I'm going to charge you for it. That's the easiest way to handle the price objection. But then others are like, oh, I don't have the time to do this. Well, we're going to give you the shortcut cheat sheet that walks you through. So now that's no longer an objection.

Which, by the way, are usually the 2 biggest objections when we're talking about external false beliefs. Like time, time and money. So you have to hit those.

Yeah. So any bonus you can add in that's like, hey, you know, we're going to give you that shortcut cheat sheet, um, that's going to get you up and running in the next 30, you know, 30 minutes, whatever, um, is a great bonus to stack in. And you can show how that thing is worth whatever, $197 just by itself, because it's gonna, you know, compress your time it takes to actually implement the strategy. Um, and then, you know, you know, all the, well, I'm not smart enough. Well, guess what? We're going to give you the step-by-step step guide that tells you exactly every step of this thing to implement. So, somebody can't say, well, I'm not smart enough. Like, no, you literally— if you can copy-paste, and that's why I do SEO Pro Tools, is like you don't have to be a web developer. You don't have to know how any of this works. Yeah.

We're going internal false beliefs. You got to overcome all of this in your offer.

Yep, exactly. And so, it's just stack up those things that are going to knock down all of those false beliefs, knock down all of those objections. So, by the end of it, it's like, Oh, they literally have given me everything that I could possibly need to be successful with this, and it's worth 10 times more than what they're going to charge. It's a no-brainer offer.

And it doesn't have to be a logical thing. They just have to feel like, oh, listen, I— yeah, he said a bunch of stuff, and I know Jamie's going to take care of me. They don't have to remember it all. That's why you throw it up in the stack and you have all the things right there in bullet point. Yeah, like it's the last thing they're gonna remember.

Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. Yeah, I do think, you know, again, and I think this is maybe I've not heard Russell talk about this, but I do think there are those— you have to play that line of like, what are the things that the majority of people that are going to take this offer are actually going to benefit from? Because you do have people, and we still see people like, oh, I already bought that thing that you're offering as a bonus. I have it over here. I already have this other thing that taught me that. I don't need that. Can you give me a discount? Like, they feel like if you do too much of that and you If you give everything and the kitchen sink and they really don't need, you know, 50% of that stuff, then you actually are doing a disservice to the offer. So, it should be, again, just handling the objections that the majority of people are going to have and stack that in. Anything over that where if you're like, well, I'm not sure why I'm adding this in, it just sounds cool or it just increases the value. Like, you have to be selective about like what increases the value and is actually handling objections somebody's going to have. for the offer, for the strategy, for the vehicle, and solve that. If you do too much, it can actually go the opposite where they start to feel like, oh, I'm not going to get that value because I'm not going to use that piece of the offer.

Yeah. Or they feel overwhelmed and they're like, shoot, man, that's way too much that I'm never going to touch, right?

Yeah, exactly. I don't have the time to go through all this stuff. It's going to take me, you know, a week to—

I feel like I've got to go back to school now, right? I've got 4 years to do this. No.

Yep, exactly.

But what if somebody's just starting, Jamie? Like, what about you when you were just starting and you had 700 people on your list. You didn't have this amount of data. You didn't have all the split tests. You didn't have all this. So do you have a recommendation for like somebody who might be just starting, or Jamie when he was just starting, on how to create your first offer?

Didn't you have a brother who you were dealing with? And like, he was like, even like, I need to figure out how to even set up like a bank account. Yeah. Like, what— I love this question that Dante asked. Like, how would you tell somebody who's just starting? Maybe that brother story is a good one to lead in with.

Yeah, it's honestly just start and then stop stopping. Like so many people I see, this is again, I see so many people ask, they're like, they want to get started. And again, you know, my brother's reached out, he's like, oh man, I want to build this online business. I want to do this thing. What kind of bank account do I need to get set up? So when I make money, I can pay taxes out of it. Like, what do I need to set aside for taxes? And I'm I'm like, dude, you haven't even made a dollar yet. Just do that first. Like, go make a dollar and then we can solve that problem. Like, don't, don't try to solve every problem before you get started. So, just start. And so, like, for somebody wanting to just create their first offer, their first thing of value, like, what's the thing you can actually help with today? Start with that thing. What's the, what's the thing that people come to you for where you could say, oh, here's step 1 of how to solve that problem. Yeah. Here's, you know, what's— what are you known for? Like, even just in your friend group, what do your friends come to you for when they need advice or they need help? And what's your little strategy that you've figured out over years, over experience, you've learned from somebody else that maybe not everybody else knows, whatever, that you actually tell people like, this is the way to get started. And, you know, in a lot of— a lot of times it's just start by generating leads. Like, if you don't have a product and you don't have an audience, well, the first thing to do is start collecting an audience. And you can do that with a simple cheat sheet, checklist, 3-step strategy guide, whatever it is. You don't have to have some full-blown product to start generating an audience. You just have to have something of value and you probably already have that. And it's super easy to build a 2-page funnel using ClickFunnels that just collects leads and one thing at a time. And eventually, okay, now I've got 2 or 3 things. Okay, well, let me put it into a members area and let me just— when somebody asks, here's the thing, go sign up for free. And then after a while, I've got 700 people on email list, and that 700 people turned into an audience that was ready to buy a $37 a month or $197 a year product that I turned into 5 figures in a week. Make a sellable offer and go from there. You don't have to start with some grandiose offer to start with. Just get started.

Before we wrap, Jamie, this has been amazing. You are incredible. We do a little segment here that we call Rapid Fire Questions. And let me tell you how this works. Okay.

Let's go.

Is Dante's going to ask a rapid fire question. That means you give a rapid fire answer. We're going to ask these boom, boom, boom. But this segment is brought to you by Funnel Hacking Live. If you don't have your ticket yet, what are you waiting for? We're bringing Funnel Hacking Live back September 21st through 23rd at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas. Go to funnelhackinglive.com/cfr. And get your ticket now. We will see you there. Are you ready, Jamie, for rapid-fire questions? Let's go.

All right, Jamie, you lose everything tomorrow. What's the first funnel you build to build it back?

Boy, first funnel, lead generation funnel right off the bat. Like curiosity-based hook. What's, what's the thing I have expertise in? Like, you know, what, what's knowledge I have that not everybody has? Build a funnel around that. Just start capturing an audience and eventually ask them, hey, what can— what else can I do What can I give you that would help you more than what I already have? And they will tell you exactly what they need. Make that into an offer, sell them something.

That is the literal game. Gang, I'm sorry. I wish it was harder. I wish there was more for me to tell you than that. That was it, Jamie. Stop stopping. I love that. So good.

You guys are all making it harder. All you listeners, like, that's, that's how it works. Just do that and iterate and move. See what people want.

You just do that and stop stopping and watch what happens. What's your best piece of advice for people building their first funnel?

Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect. Again, stop stopping. Like, so perfection is the enemy of progress, right? It's like if you try to make it perfect, you're gonna struggle. Like, if you just build in a really strong hook, if you focused on that, that should be 80% of the effort that goes into building the funnel is like, what's the hook? What's the headline? Spend your time figuring that out, especially when it comes to lead gen funnels. That's all it takes sometimes is a headline and an email box. And you will get people to sign up because they just want to know, like, what's the hook? Um, and, and build that in and go. That's, that's it. That's the game. Like, figure that hook out and you've won already.

Of all the different types of hooks out there, what's your favorite hook type?

Man, I will tell you, uh, this I got from Myron Golden. I think what works really well for hook types is, is the negative. There are more people in the world that are, uh, that are pain aversion focused versus pleasure achievement.

Such a good example.

Like, more people will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure. So you lean into that in your hooks, and it'd be like the 3 deadly sins that online marketers make when they're creating their first funnel and how to avoid them in 30 seconds or less. You know, that sort of hook is like, okay, yep, I totally want to avoid this 3 deadly sins, you know, Like, that will hook people if it fits into what they're trying to accomplish and it helps them avoid pain. It's going to be a banger.

Wow. Absolutely. Um, looking back, is there anything you would do differently today knowing what you know now that along your journey, any big mistakes that you wish you could take back or do different?

One, not doing it sooner, not focusing sooner, because again, I spent You know, close to a decade just following the thing that I wanted to do but not ever focusing. You know, I like the definition of focus that I've heard from Dan Martell is follow one course until successful. Like, just pick the thing and do the thing. You can be successful in anything you try if you stick to it. Like, there's not a strategy for online marketing that's not successful. If somebody's teaching it, They've had success with it. But just, again, just choose one and go and do that one thing until successful. And this is why Russell teaches, like, when you join his inner circle, he's like, we're not going to help you with 3 businesses. We're going to help you with one business. You have to pick one and you have to follow that one. And also teaches you should do a webinar every week until that thing is dialed in and you've made $1 million with it. It's like, pick one, and go in, you know, full bore and just do that thing until you're successful with it. And then you can go dabble in other things. The meme of the, the 2, you know, miners that are digging for gold and digging for diamonds, you know, the one is like, you're right there, you just didn't go just quite long enough. And then, or do you want to be the one that actually busts through and hits the gold on the other side?

I love talking to you, Jamie. That was a great answer. Um, okay, you've worked with Russell for over a decade now, what's something that you see Russell do constantly that other people don't do?

Wow. You know what? Um, just the other day we had something, uh, and it was really cool to see it happen. And it might not be the biggest thing, but, um, if you've, if you've been in Tony Robbins' world for any amount of time, you know Tony talks a lot about state management and like being able to manage your state in any situation is what can make the difference between being successful or not successful. And I've always heard that and believed it, but I've never seen it quite implemented to the degree that it did the other day. I was actually backstage. We just had an event with the Inner Circle. It was a joint event, Inner Circle, 2 Comma Club X, Marketing Secrets AI people here in Boise just a couple of weeks ago. And Russell was there and he was getting ready to go out on stage. I was just sitting back in the little green room behind stage and I saw him start Like jumping up and down and like, you know, hitting his knees to his hands and like, you know, getting himself. And like, he— I'm like, dude, he is like getting pumped. It's like to go out. It was not a huge event, but it was a couple hundred people. But even to this day, like after a decade of watching him go out and speak to thousands and thousands of people, he still gets nervous. But the way he overcomes that is he's going in, he's getting himself amped up before every— like, and he's already— this is like 3/4 of the way through the day. He'd already been out on stage. Chris, you were there.

Yeah.

He's been out on stage so many times at at that point, but he's still doing it every time, like managing that state, like getting amped up, getting ready to serve, because he again has that servant's heart. Like, he's— what do I need to do to get myself in the best place I can be to go out and serve this audience at the best of my capabilities? And like, to see that happening, um, after all these years, it was super cool to me.

And adversely, you've been able to work with Todd for the past 10 years. What's something you see Todd do that most others Yeah.

I think the thing with Todd, man, is he's— Todd is that like unicorn of like he gets technology. He's smarter than anybody else that I know from a technology perspective. But he also understands the business and he understands the marketing. So, he knows what's going to work, what an audience is going to be attracted to, and not just how to build the thing but like what's actually going to be attractive to an audience. So, it's really important I think for a lot of people to not just understand one aspect of their business, but actually get at least some level of understanding of all the aspects of business. And Russell does this on the ops side too. Like Russell, you know, obviously went to college for computer science. I know he likes to tell the story about how he, you know, barely passed and all that. And, you know, true or not, either way, he's got some, at least a little background to understand what's possible with technology. And so, you have to kind of understand what's possible. And then fill in the gaps. Work with the people that you know maybe fill out your your you know your weaknesses with strengths. But Todd has this you know amazing capability to like understand it from all the different directions, and I think that's so valuable. And he really does that you know better than anybody I know. Really?

Absolutely. This might be a tough one for you to answer, but is there like a most common mistake that you see ClickFunnels users making over and?

I think honestly, the mistake that I see people making too much is like taking— it's probably that, you know, analysis paralysis, like taking too much time choosing the right funnel type versus like thinking from like, okay, what is it I'm actually trying? What do I have that serves the customer? And just how do I get that out to them in the simplest way? Whether it's generating leads or whether it's generating sales, or whatever, too many people get caught up in like, oh, well, Russell's doing a challenge. Well, let me go figure out how to build a challenge funnel. It's like, well, do you really need a challenge funnel? Like, you probably don't. You probably— the simplest way, you know, there's the old Occam's razor, which is like the simplest solution is probably the right solution. And so, like, strip that down to like, okay, do I actually need a 5-day challenge to sell my $100 product? Probably not. Like, Russell does that when he's got a $5,000 product to sell. It's like, so But too many people get caught up in like the latest fad. I see this other marketer doing a challenge, I have to do a challenge. Like, no, you don't necessarily have to do that. Like, what is the simplest way to take your current offer and get it to your potential customer? And because you can't iterate on something, if it takes you 6 months to build it, you're only gonna— you're not gonna iterate on that thing. But if it takes you 6 minutes to build it, you can iterate on it all day long and improve it every time. So yeah, just stop overthinking what funnel type do I need? What, you know, how do I have to stack 50,000 different things on top of this offer to make it work? Like, no, just, just get started and stop stopping.

You know, just stop stopping. How many times do we have to say this? Last question for you, Jamie. Your brother's starting a new business. What's the very first thing you tell him?

Where to get his bank account and how to do his taxes.

Yeah. Here's the number of 3 good accountants. No, it's literally go build an audience. Like, again, the breakdown for me is always like, do you have a product?

No.

Do you have an audience? No. Go build an audience first and then ask them what they need and give them that product. This is, you know, that is the way to do it. Like, it doesn't do any good to go build the product first if you don't know if anybody wants it. So, the best way to figure out if they want it is to go collect the audience first and then give them what they ask for. And that would be my advice to anybody just getting started. It's like, figure out an audience you want to serve where you've got some level of expertise, you've got some passion around it. And it doesn't have to be that like, oh, if you do what you're passionate about, you'll never work a day in your life. It's like, okay, yeah, there's a little bit of truth in that, but you can also serve some really crummy customers if you pick the wrong avenue. Like, Pick people that you'd like to actually, I don't know, work with every day, people that you dream customer one-on-one. Yeah, exactly. So choose that customer and like, and make sure that they're willing and able to pay. Like if you, again, you could choose an audience of something you're, you know, you're not that you're passionate about. But if the people that are also there are not willing or able to pay, again, you know, we've seen people that are like in the engineering space, you know, sell, trying to sell engineers on a product. I'm like, well, those people aren't willing to pay because they make good money and they're very analytical. they're like, oh, I'll figure this out on my own. Like, okay, well, that's not an audience to go serve. You're like, you should have to serve them in a different way with a different product. And so, yeah, just, you know, just pick out an audience that you want to serve, that you can serve, start to build that audience, and then ask them like, hey, how can I deliver value to you? And then go through that list, collect the feedback, pull out, yep, I can do that. I can solve that problem. I can solve that problem. I can solve that problem. And then deliver that back to them as an offer and you'll kill it.

Oh, bingo, baby. That is rapid fire. Jamie, those are not easy to do. I never know the questions until we actually get to rapid fire session. So great job on that, man.

Awesome. Thank you, sir. Yeah, great questions.

Jamie, you've been an amazing guest here on ClickFunnels Radio. If somebody wanted to follow you or join your list or get CF Pro Tools, like just tell us where they should go to find you, follow you. What should they do?

Yeah, absolutely. cfprotools.com. If you're interested in CF Pro Tools, wanna, you know, make more money with your ClickFunnels pages, that's definitely Definitely the way to go. Um, on Instagram @CFProTools, uh, those are the best ways to follow.

Love it, Jamie. You rock, man, and I can't wait till we get to hang out again together, which is coming up soon at Funnel Hacking Live. Yeah, make sure you go get your ticket, funnelhackinglive.com/cfr, and we will see you there. And we will see you on the next episode of ClickFunnels Radio. Thanks, everybody.

Awesome. Thanks, everybody.