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Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Russell Brunson: From Broke to $100M in Five Years, How I Bounced Back from Rock Bottom
00:55:40
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- [00:00]
A
I guess unfortunate that most entrepreneurs only share like the highlight reel of people and don't talk about the downsides. Entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs and it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for.
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B
Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non venture backed tech startup in the world.
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A
I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. It was my first time like growing a company and I was new, I was young, and I started hiring people probably hired too fast. We got a point. We had about 100 employees, but I had nine merchants accounts, one bank, and literally in one day they turned them all off. I thought everyone, my team was gonna be like, we're here together. We're gonna win this thing. And what's crazy is like as soon as people found out that there might not have a check, 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like my friends just left. So I lost my ability to generate money. I had no way to process money and I owed $200,000. I was gonna go to jail and, and I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail. Even though that was like the most painful, stressful time of my life, it also was the catalyst for everything we've built since then. We all go through cycles in entrepreneurship. Just know that if you keep showing up, you keep trying, you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go.
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B
How do you scale from 0 to 100 million?
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A
Oh man, it is.
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B
Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non venture backed tech startup in the world. ClickFunnels grew from zero to. Listen to this. A hundred million dollars in just three years. Unbelievable. So, Russell, first of all, so glad to have you here. Been watching you and binge watching your stuff for many, many years.
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A
Oh, I appreciate that. I'm excited to be here too. This will be so much fun.
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B
It'll be so much fun. But you were drawn to marketing and sales from a very young age. Can you take us back in time?
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A
How far back do you want to go?
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B
Ah, entitled collecting stuff. I want to go all the way back.
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A
All right. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I kind of saw him. He was always hustling, doing side businesses, but it didn't really cross my mind. And then I remember one night, I think I was like 12 or 13 years old and my parents always watched the news and I. And then my mom would go to bed and my dad would sit there working for a couple more hours. And usually they make me like, russell, go to bed. So I'd have to go to bed at night. And I remember one night my mom went to bed and my dad, I don't know if he didn't notice I was in the room, but he didn't make me go to bed. He was just working. So I was like, I watched the news with him, the news got done, and then MASH came on and we watched mash. I was like, I'm watching MASH with my dad. This is so cool. And then MASH ended. And then all of a sudden this thing popped up and I had no idea what it was. I now know it's an infomercial, but there's infomercial. And there was this guy on it named Don Lapre. And he was like, me times a thousand, like so much energy. He was so excited. And he's like talking about how you can make money with tiny classified ads. And I still remember he said, he's like, I placed an ad in a newspaper and it made $30. And all my friends and family made fun of me. But I took that same ad and I placed it in a thousand newspapers and made $30,000. And I was like, you know, my 12 year old brain's like, what? Like, I was totally freaking out. I was looking at my dad. I was like, dad, you have to buy this. My dad was like, whatever, you know, like just kind of making fun of me. And I remember, like, it got to the call to action. We're like, call this one, 800 number and you can buy the course for $40 or something. And so I remember writing the number down. I'm like, dad, you gotta call. He's like, we're not gonna buy this. I was like, dad, I have to have it. And they had like some bonus like you bought in the next five minutes you got this other free gift. So I was like, we have to hurry, dad, you know? And he told me no. And the next morning, I was so mad, he's like, look, if you want that, you can earn the money to go buy it. So I was like, okay, how do I earn the money? He's like, okay, if you start mowing the lawns, I'll pay you. I can't remember, five bucks a week or something. So I started mowing his lawn, other people's lawns. In about a month, I'd earned the $40 I needed to buy it. And so I remember telling my dad, I was like, I have the phone number but we have to call during the infomercial so we get the free gift. So he let me stay that night. We watched news and we watched mash and then the show came up and it came up again. So as soon as it got to the part where they said, call now, get the special bonus, we called and my dad bought the credit card. And it was the coolest thing in the world. I got the kit in the mail. In fact, I still have it to this day. I'm going to frame it or something. It's really cool. But I was like reading the books. That was my entrance into business. And it was like the most fun thing in the world. And then for me, it's like these ideas in my head about how you can make money. All of a sudden you can't stop thinking about it, right? And I remember my mom and I were at the grocery store and there's a magazine there, they still sell magazines called Small Biz Op Magazine. There's all these cartoons on it. So I'm like, mom, will you buy this magazine for me? So she bought me the magazine. And I remember in the magazine, if you ever get a copy, next time you're at the grocery store, Barnes and Noble, you can get one. It's like 140 pages of ads and then four pages of articles. And every ad is a different way to make money. And so I remember reading it like one of them was like, you can make donuts at the county fair and make money and call this phone number for the free info kit. So I'm like, call the number, send me free info kit. And the next page was like, you can make money by painting glow in the dark stars on people's roofs. Call the number for the free info kit. So I called number free info kit. Next page is like, you can make money selling gold chains by the end. So I call every 144info kits. I go and I order for every one of these businesses. And what's funny now is like I was in a funnel. I didn't know it, right? But the info kit shows up and all the info kit is, is a sales letter then selling the $100 version of it, right? Or whatever. So then you'd call it anyway and there's a whole thing. But as a 12 year old kid, I would sit there and I would get home from school and there'd be a stack of junk mail like this big. And I would sit there, I'd read all these sales letters about all these ways to make money and completely ruin me for life. But that's kind of how I started my young entrepreneur journey.
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B
Oh, my God. Most people are just not as driven, or kids, they're just not as driven. I don't know what made you so driven to collect these things and get curious about it. And you also loved wrestling, and actually, you were like, state champion in high school, and you had this massive passion. Do you think this shaped you also to who you are today?
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A
Definitely as a young age, I didn't realize the time, but definitely was very driven for the business thing, you know, like, I don't dabble in something if I get excited, like, I go all in. I'm so excited. You know, when I started, wrestling was the same thing I remember wrestling. And as soon as I won my very first match, I got my hand raised. I was like that feeling, I want that again. So I, like, started running. And so for the next eight years of my life, that's all I focused on was wrestling. And then when I got done my wrestling career, it's when I found out about the online business, and I jumped into that. And I think all those things kind of compound. You learn how to work hard, you learn how to be driven, you learn how to overcome. And sports are so great for that. You learn how to lose and then not give up. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. They'll listen to podcast and they'll read the book, and they. They love learning about it, but they're so scared if they take that step and if it fails and their dream dies, right? So because of. They get stuck in this learning loop forever. I think for me, it's because I'd stepped on the wrestling mat a hundred times a year, and I didn't win a lot of them. It's like I lose and then an hour later, back on the mat again. Back on the mat, and like next weekend again. And so it's like, I got good at learning. If I lose, it doesn't mean I'm a loser. I have to learn something from it, right? Like, I think the best example this, my junior year, I wanted to be a state champ in the very first match of the year. I wrestled a guy who takes his second state the year before. And I remember I lost to him, and it was, like, so painful. I told everyone all summer long, I'm going to be a state champ. It's going to be amazing. My very first match, I lost. And I remember my dad. My dad's very entrepreneurial as well. But he got the videotape of me losing. And he watched it that night I lost. He watched it probably a hundred times. Next morning I woke up, he's like, okay, I know how to beat this kid. And so we on the carpet, we would drill and how to beat him. And then that day, when practice I'd done, my dad would show up and we drilled again. We drilled it for four months. I drilled it and then come four months later, it was a state tournament. And I ended up wrestling that same kid in the finals. And I ended up beating him with the same move he'd beat me with. Cause I drilled it so many times, I knew how to do it. That carried over into entrepreneurship. Cause, like, entrepreneurship, like, I create offers all the time that I launch and they fail. And most people that would cripple them. For me, it's just like, okay, well, I failed. Like, what do we gotta tweak? Okay, just change the headline. Keep tweaking until it works. I think that's what people understand. A lot of times they give up on their business, and it's just like a couple tweaks away from having success, right? They give up on their athletic career where it's just like, you're a couple tweaks away from, like, hitting your dreams.
- [08:10]
B
It's so easy to stop 3ft from gold because fear is numbing. So fear will take more dreams than anything. But you somehow started this entrepreneurship endeavor back in college, and you did all these super crazy innovative potato guns. And can you take us back in time? I remember the first time when I saw this. I'm like, rewind. Am I sure that this is what he actually meant? Yes, that's what he actually meant. Russell, take us there for a second.
- [08:44]
A
So I got into college and I met my wife. We got engaged, and she was working after we got married, she was working to support us. And I felt guilty because I wanted to wrestle, but I also feel like I should help support. And so I was trying to figure out a way to make money. It's interesting because back then I was like, trying to study. There weren't a lot of people online doing it, but there were a few people doing online. In fact, one of them is Frank Kern, who a lot of guys know him nowadays, but he had this product, it was called the underachiever method. And it was like, how to make really simple products. And I remember his show. He had like one teaching how to do dog training, one like how to teach a parrot how to talk, and one how to do like all these little niche products. They create these little ebooks and then they would go and they'd buy Google Ads to sell them. And it was just like this really simple process. And I remember going through the course, I was like, this is so cool. But I was like, I don't know how to teach a parrot how to talk. You know, I don't know how to do those kind of things. And so I was kind of stuck trying to think what I would actually do. And then I remember I was in college, it was like spring break, and my buddy was like, hey, Russell, we should go shoot potato guns. I'm like, what's a potato gun? So he told me. And so during spring break, we went online and we found all the potato gun plans and how to make a potato gun, went to the Home Depot and bought the pipes and cut them up and we made these potato guns and we shot them. And all weekend long we had so much fun with it. And the next Monday I was back in school and I was like, I wonder if I could create a product teaching people. We just learned how to make potato guns. That was the idea. And so we went and we borrowed a video camera from someone and we filmed ourselves going through the whole process of buying the pipes, gluing them together, making potato guns, shooting them. And then that became my very first product I created and put out there on the Internet.
- [10:16]
B
You share. And I found that super inspiring that someone helped you break that four minute mile. And you have this beautiful story about how you broke the first million for yourself, et cetera, et cetera. Can you share a little bit of that?
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A
Yeah, for sure. So when I got started my online business, I'd never set a goal to make a million dollars. That wasn't my goal. I was just trying to figure out how to make some money so. So my wife wouldn't have to work. That was kind of how we started, right, with the potato gun and made other little products. And then I remember, man, we'd been married about a year. And I remember because we were on a family reunion. It was at this lake where there's no Internet access. I remember going to the library to check my email. I'm sitting in this little library in this lake town with nothing else around. I open my email and there's an email in there from this guy named John Reese. And it says something like, we did it or something was the subject line. I'm like, did what? And I opened the email and he's like, hey. Earlier today we launched a course called Traffic Secrets. It's a thousand dollar course. And in the first 18 hours we sold a thousand copies. Which means we're the very first people to ever make a million dollars online in a day selling a course. And I was like, what? And I remember sitting there in a chair and I was just like so perplexed. Like my goal was like maybe in my lifetime to make a million dollars. I'm like, there's a guy who's just like me, a couple years older than me, who made a million dollars in a day. I'm like, he can't be that much smarter than me, right? Like if he can do that, could I do that? And I was doing the math in my head. I was like, he had a thousand dollar course, he sold a thousand copies. I'm like, it's just math. Like how do I sell 1,000 copies of a thousand dollar product, right? That started my wheels, my head spinning. So I remember setting a goal. I was like, okay, cause I didn't believe you. I'm like, I don't think I could do a million dollars in a day. But could I do a million dollars in a year if I had a thousand dollar course? If I sell three a day, that would be a million dollars in a year. So I was like, okay. Very first thing I did is like, I need to make a thousand dollars course. Just like this guy did. It was my very first time. I funnel hacked somebody right before we called it that. And so I went and I put together an event, I recorded it, I made my first thousand dollar course. And when I launched on January 1, because everyone on New Year's Day will want to change their life. Little did I know everyone was going to be drunk January 1st. And the launch went horrible. Like the whole entire launch, we sold 20 copies of my thousand dollar course. It was devastating. But I kept trying, kept trying. And like the first year I got close. I think I can't remember six or seven hundred thousand dollars that first year, but then I missed it. By December I'm like, okay, January 1st, I'm starting over, setting the goal. I tried it again that year, I got close again, missed it again that third year I kept going and going and I didn't know which product was gonna sell, which offer. So I kept just putting out different offers, different things. And then it was crazy. There was this interview I did with a guy, his Name was Vince James, and he was an old school, like, direct mail guy. And he'd made $100 million through direct mail selling supplements. He wrote a book, and for some reason, he let me interview him. And this was like two or three years earlier. I was like a college kid at the time. He let me interview him for six hours. So I asked him all these questions about how he did it. And so again, three years later, I'm sitting there, I'm like, what's the next offer I could sell? I was like, what if I sold the interviews that I did with Vince? Like, that was a really cool interview. Maybe someone will buy that. And so we took that interview. We sold it for $37. And then the guy Vince that I interviewed, he had sold licensing rights to his book. And it was a $300 book. So I had bought the license to this book. And so I had somebody bought the interview for $37, and we'd upsell them a copy of the book for $297. The book was called the 12 Month Millionaire. So I had I own 12 month Internet millionaire.com, we launched this whole thing, right? Put the launch out there. And in seven days, that funnel crossed a million dollars. And that was the first one I'd ever had. And I was just like, this is insane. I interviewed a person. I laid the access to the interview, and we sold a million dollars. Like, it was the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that was the first time I'd actually done it. It was interesting. Cause I think the reason why a lot of people never make a million dollars is they never try to make a million dollars, right? And it wasn't till I was like, okay, I'm gonna try to do it. This is the goal. And I started working towards that. That, like, all of the things kind of showed up for me to be able to do that in clickfunnels. One created the two Comma Club Awards. I was like, I want to give people something to shoot towards. Like, when I was wrestling before, I knew I wanted to be a state champ. I was just kind of there doing the things when I realized, I want to be a state champ, I had something to shoot towards. Then I became really good. I think the same thing with this. And so that's why we created that, the 2 comma club awards, to give people something. Okay, this is the goal. And then when they have a goal, you can reverse engineer it and you can figure it out. But for me, that was as soon as I had that goal then. It was like everything to try to pursue that. And that's how I learned all the stuff I had to learn to make it possible. So, yeah, one of my favorite stories.
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B
And again, we have our millionaires club. We have the President club, because again, I want people to see what's possible, right? If you don't even know what's possible, you're still stuck with that.
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C
I'm just trying to do this move.
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B
From senior manager to senior senior manager. You know, I'm like, come on, there's more to life, right?
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A
It's all about leaping, right?
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B
But, yeah, you share at some point. You have the most brilliant videos, folks. If you didn't see that, you're revamping your YouTube channel, although I always thought it was very revamped. But go to his to rest all his YouTube channel like his videos. To me, it's just so inspiring. It's so beautiful. And you share so much with so much vulnerability and truth. And you share one of the hardest moments when you needed to lay off a lot of your team and just kind of rebuild. And I think it's just so important to listen to that too, because there's always going to be, like we said, challenges and things and setbacks and things that will hurt you to your core, but you somehow continue. Can you share that a little bit?
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A
I think it's unfortunate that most entrepreneurs only share, like, the highlight reel of people and don't talk about the downsides. And I. Same way. I was very nervous for a long time to share those things and I started sharing some of them. And so many people are like, wow. Like, that makes me feel so much better. I'm going through that same thing as well, in fact, to set up that story. It's kind of funny, during this time when everything was falling apart around me, I got invited to this little mastermind meeting in Mexico. And I was sitting next to this guy who's crazy rich, crazy expensive, and he asked me my story, and I was like. So I was kind of telling him the highlights. He's like, no, tell me your real story. I was like, well. And I told him, sir, I'm going to tell you right now how bad everything was and everything. And he was like, okay, cool. He's like, so you cycled once. I'm like, what? He's like, I'll never work with an entrepreneur unless they've cycled at least once. He's like, because otherwise they still believe their own bio. They're still drinking their own Kool Aid. And I was like, oh, that feels a lot better. I just cycled. All entrepreneurs cycle, like, okay, so reframed it for me, and hopefully it'll reframe for some of you guys, because entrepreneurship is a crazy journey of ups and downs and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for. So what happened is it was my first time growing a company, and I was new, I was young, and I started hiring people probably hired too fast at that point. We had about 100 employees. We had this building downtown Boise, Idaho, like, really, really cool. And, like, I felt like I was on top of the world again. I was, I believe my own bio. I was drinking my own Kool Aid. I thought it was so great. And then one day, it was in January, just one day, all of a sudden, one of our. Someone was trying to buy something, and the merchant account failed, and merchant account failed, and then another one failed. And we had nine merchant accounts. If you get merchants accounts, have them in different banks. That's the story for the day. But I had nine merch accounts, one bank, and literally in one day, they turned them all off. And so we couldn't process money. Like, nothing could happen. Our sales guys are like, I'm trying to run someone's car. Like, people wanted to give us money, but they couldn't. And, you know, you have 100 employees. You have payroll coming every 14 days. It's like that stress. And I remember calling the credit card company, and it was like, 2010, I think, and there was this huge merchant crackdown where Visa and MasterCard, anyone who was doing any kind of continuity offers, they just shut them all down. So it wasn't just me. It was hundreds and hundreds of people all got shut down the same day. And I remember calling the merchant account, and I couldn't get a hold of them for, like, two or three hours. Finally got ahold of me. I was like, I got shut down. What's happening? And they're like, if you got shut down, it means that you're never going to process again. The guy hung up on me. I was like, what? And it was just like, the scariest thing. And so. And then my whole team's freaking out. I was like, hey, everyone, go home tonight. Come back tomorrow. We'll have a plan. So everyone goes home. And then next they come back. I'm like, I have no plan. I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, tell people to send us checks or, like, I don't Know, you know, trying to figure out everything. And what's crazy is I thought everyone, my team was going to be like, we're here together. We're going to win this thing. And what was crazy is, like, as soon as people found out that there might be not have a check, maybe a check or something, they all just started leaving. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like, my friends just left and disappeared. Even, like, family members who were, like, just walked out on me. And it was like, the weirdest thing. And then we had a group of people who stayed behind. And I still didn't have money to pay for them, but I'd come back. And so every day I'd wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is I sell my cell phone. Like, okay, we're gonna do this. We got, you know, like, sell myself. And I'd go in the office and I'd meet everyone together, and I have to, like, sell all them. I'm like, this is going to work. We're going to try, you know, we try a new thing. And we tried so many things, and it was like, almost a year of that. We would open a new merchant account. We'd process a bunch of money, but we'd process too much too fast, and they would freeze our account and hold the money for 180 days. And, like, it was just chaos. We could not get a break. And it took about a year of going through that. Kept getting worse and worse and worse. And then at the end of the year, it was the next December, January. I remember my dad, he wasn't doing my books, but he was watching. My bookkeeper is doing the books. He called me or sent me an email, and he was like, hey, I reviewed the books, and turns out your bookkeeper has not paid payroll taxes in the last 12 months. She's been hiding it. She just, he doesn't have the money, so she didn't pay the taxes. And he's like, you understand, like, if you don't pay payroll tax, it's not like a fine. Like, they put you in jail for that. Russell. I was like, what? I'm like, well, how much is our payroll tax? And he was like, I can't remember. It was like a couple hundred thousand dollars. He's like, if you don't pay this soon, you could go to jail. And I'm like, I don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars. Like, we're out of money. And I remember the next day we had a call center of like, 40, 50 sales guys. They all just walked out. The next day they mass quit together. So I lost my ability to generate money. I had no way to process money and I owed $200,000. I was going to go to jail. And I was like, I want to quit, but I can't because I'll go to jail. So it's like, all right, what do we got to do different? Innovate. How do we change this? What do we got to do different? Just every single day. And it's crazy because it was like probably the most painful and scary time of my life. In fact, I remember waking up one morning just kind of lingering at my house, not wanting to go in the office. And my wife saw me. She could tell, like, I was not doing well. And I swear she grabbed me and like pulled me down to the ground to our knees. And she's like, we need to pray, like we need to ask for help. And I was like, okay. And so I remember us praying and just like, I don't know what to do. I'm out of options. I've tried everything. I need guidance, I need help. And I remember that was the first time I was willing to like, humble myself enough. And then it was go back to the office of the day and sell everybody else. And like, we're going to make this work. And we kept doing it. But what's crazy is those things, like in the moment of pain is like always like the hardest time. But then looking back, you realize that was actually God taking you down a very certain path, you know, because it's crazy because we lost everything out. We had to shrink to this little tiny office, like five or six of us. From there, we're trying to figure out how to make money just to pay off the thing. From there, like, I was doing different webinars every week, like rewriting my webinar, Rewriting Getting better and Better. Eventually we had a webinar that hit that paid off all the taxes. I was like, I'm not going to jail. Woo hoo. Then I was like, okay, now we got to create another offer. And like. And we went through that, but it was in that pain. That's where I met Todd Dickerson. I never would have met him otherwise. And he became my partner. He's the one who built clickfunnels. All these amazing blessings came because of that darkness that I had to go through. And looking back now, it's like, even though that was the most painful, stressful time of my life, it also was the catalyst for everything we've built since then reframing that in my head and hopefully for anyone else who's going through the hard times of it's just a cycle. We all go through cycles in entrepreneurship. It's okay. And just know that if you keep showing up, you keep trying like you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go on and the right people will show up, the right things will show up. Even though it may seem hopeless at times, if you keep at it, you never know what's going to happen.
- [21:23]
C
We need to pause for a super brief break and while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this. Because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now I want to check in with you. Yes, you are you driven? But maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be, do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence or impact? Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want with a paycheck? The thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom. Because that was me. And that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program which already changed thousands of careers and lives. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. Aq, adaptability, reinventing and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. But no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from your career in Life, go to leapacademy.com training check out this completely free training about ways to fast track your career and you'll even be able to book a completely free strategy call with my team. That's leapacademy.com training.
- [22:50]
B
In the venture world, as I was investing in companies, we call it the near death experience. Every founder has to go through what we call a near death experience because only then you know that they can actually go through it and actually continue. And every single one will have that. The way I look at it in Leap Academy is this is the muscle you have to build in order to become the leader that you're meant to be. And I think this is why you became more creative. So I do want to hear that story because it's a beautiful story of how you met Todd and how ClickFunnels was born. I have to hear that.
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A
So in that whole time where everything's Falling apart. And we're trying different offers and different things. I remember I went to the sites called Flippa.com and it's like people who are selling their businesses and stuff. And I went to it. I remember there was a site for sale, it was called championsound.com and it was an email text message autoresponder for bands. I didn't want to be selling to bands. I'm like, if I bought the email text message autoresponder, I could make a version for chiropractors and a version for dentists. And like, that was kind of the big idea. And so I took the rest of the money I had, plus borrowing money to go buy this company. We buy the company, they tried to transfer it over to our servers. And the guy who's transferring, it's like, your servers are Linux. We need Ruby on Rails. And I'm like, what does that mean? It's like, it's a different platform. I'm like, what are you even talking about? And so I had to buy this other server, they installed it. And then the couple guys I knew, the dev guys, like, that's like Chinese, I don't know how to speak Chinese, I can't fix it. And so we tried three or four times to hire people to do Ruby on Rails, which was a brand new language at the time, and they couldn't fix it. And I remember for a month we were trying to make this thing work and finally it was like I just had to give up. And so like, I remember just being sick to my stomach because like, that was all the money we had. And I just burned it on a stupid idea that it wasn't going to work. That day I emailed the server company, told them to shut down the servers because we can't afford to keep paying for it. And as I was like packing my bags, I was walking out of the office, I felt this really weird impression. Email your list to find someone who knows Ruby on Rails who can help you. I was like, I had this tiny little email list at the time of people trying to start businesses. I'm like, there's no Ruby on Rails developers. But I felt that impression. So I walked back in, turned my computer back on, sent email to my list. In fact, it's funny, Todd and I, we found the email, it's kind of crazy, but I sent it out saying like, I'm looking for a partner. If you know Ruby on Rails, message me back. I sent this out to my list, went home that night, and then that night, check my Email. And I get this email back from this guy named Todd. And he's like, I'm a Ruby on Rails developer. I've been semi retired for last three or four years. I got a side business that's making pretty good money. But yeah, I'm looking for partnership opportunities, so. So I just sent him login to the server. I'm like, here's the login, it doesn't work. Can you fix it? And that was kind of it. So the next morning I wake up and he's like, all right, I logged in. He's like, I fixed this, this and this. I added this. They're missing this. They should do this. I'm like, all this stuff. And I was like, whoa. Okay, cool. And then that's how we met each other. And then for the next year we started working together. And I didn't have money to pay him, and he knew that, but I was like. We kept talking about like, someday we'll partner on something. It'll be cool. So he just kept helping on these different offers. That webinar that I did, that paid off all the debt. He helped me to build the webinar platform that did that webinar. So he was like helping on all these different pieces. I'm like, I can't pay you yet because I gotta pay off the irs. So no worries. So I took all the money he made. I didn't pay him. I paid off the irs. But for a year, he didn't once ask me for money. He just like showed up every day, was working full days. He'd fly to Boise, we'd work on projects together and never asked for money ever. And in fact, I remember about a year into the relationship, one day he was in Boise and I looked over his shoulder at his email and there are all these like, job offers for Ruby on Rails developers who were in his inbox. And Ruby on Rails especially then was a really rare language, so there wasn't many people. And I was like, what are those? He's like, oh, just people trying to recruit me. I'm like, how much are they? What are they paying you? And he pulled up a couple and they were like, half a million dollar. Your starting salaries for these different roles. I was like, you should take that. I'll never be able to pay that much. He's like, no, I don't want to work for those guys. I want to build something cool. And so for the next year or so, we're trying different projects, having minimal success on little things here and there, but we kept building these funnels. It was the day that LeadPages, I think they got $5 million in funding. And he was flying to Boise that day. So that morning he woke up, he saw the leadpages, got $5 million in funding, he forwarded me the article, and then he was flying to Boise. I wake up in the morning, I see the article, I'm like, leadpages, I'm like, that's like the most simple software ever. And by the time he gets to Boise, he's like, I could build leadpages today. We could launch it tonight. Let's do it. Like, so excited. And then he asked the question before. He's like, well, if I'm gonna build leadpages, do you wanna add any other features? And I was like, oh, yeah, I'd love if you could do a sales letter and an upsell. And all of a sudden, we spent the whole week in front of a whiteboard mapping out what eventually became ClickFunnels. And we kept mapping out, like, what if we did this, then it did this, and we mapped out this whole thing. There was this dream of it'd be the coolest thing in the world if we could build this. And I remember we had this domain, it was clickfusion.com, and we'd launched three different things off clickfusion. All of them had failed. And I remember we got down. I was like, okay, we're calling this thing clickfusion. He's like, no, that domain, that's this jinx. Everything you do in qlikfusion fails. We can't call it that. I'm like, what else are we going to call it? And he's like, well, it builds funnels. We call it Click Funnels. And so I'm like, so we looked and the domain name was available, so we bought it. I'm like, hey, it's called ClickFunnels. That day, I was driving him back to the airport. He's gonna fly back home. I remember as we were getting to the airport, he told me, he's like, hey, if we do this, I don't want to do this as your employee, I want to do this as your partner. And for me, I'd been an entrepreneur for a decade of my life. I'd never had partners. I was scared. I was just like, I didn't want to. And I was just like. I remember sitting there for a second and then just felt impressed. And I was like, okay, let's be partners on this. And I told people this before, outside of marrying my wife, that was the best decision I've ever made in my life. Was partnering with Todd and he flew home. He spent the next eight months building what became ClickFunnels by himself. And then we came back, we ended up bringing another partner who built the editor and the UI, and we launched ClickFunnels a decade ago now. And it was the thing that took off and changed my life, changed his life, changed millions of people's lives around the world now. And that's kind of the ClickFunnels story.
- [28:29]
B
Oh, my God. What's beautiful is not just that it changed what you created, it's what you're making possible for so many people and the ripple that that creates because they're creating these amazing things that then have this mega impact on millions or billions or I don't even know which. Must be like the best feeling in the world.
- [28:51]
A
It's so cool. I mean, I think anytime you do business, like, initially you do it. I don't know. I think initially we do it for ourselves. I want to start a business, I want to make some money. And then you start making money and then really quick, that feels shallow. You're like, huh, that's not what I was expecting. When we started having our students, like people who are users, have success, that's when it was like, whoa, that feels so much, you know, it feels so much better. In fact, I thought about this, like, when I was a wrestler, I used, I love wrestling, getting my hand raised, like, the best feeling in the world. And then when I had my kids got to be wrestling age, one of my sons names Bowen. The very first year of wrestling, he would go to practice and matches and he lost every match the whole year. It was so devastating. He had a twin brother who was winning all his matches, and he lost every single match. And we tried so hard and worked so hard with him. And then the very last match of the season, he actually won. And I remember getting his hand raised and he was jumping around and like, I was like, nothing has ever felt better than watching him get his hand. That was the best feeling. Like, so much better than me winning a match was watching him win it. And it's the same thing. Like when I launch a funnel, it makes a bunch of money. It's like, hey, that's really cool. But I see some of our students do it and they launch it and they win a 2 comma club award. They have success or whatever. Like, that feels so much better. So addicting. In fact, people always ask me, why are you still doing this 10 years later, you could have retired 10 times ago. There's something about it, man, when somebody takes the frameworks and the software and they launch it and you see it change their life, it's like that's the most, I don't know, addicting feeling in the world. And so it's the best feeling watching people have success with it. It's been so fulfilling and so much fun.
- [30:12]
B
And like you said, you continue for a decade now. And I think what's interesting to see is also to view you, is how you reinvent yourself even within clickfunnels, how you reinvent yourself, first of all, as a leader, that somebody that can take something to this mega success, because I'm sure that needed a whole different mindset of money and leadership. Take us a little bit to how do you scale from zero to a hundred million? I just bragged to you that we're one of the fastest growing companies. But then after, here are you guys.
- [30:46]
C
I can't even say that.
- [30:48]
B
So how do you grow fast enough to be able to absorb that level of leadership and money risks and everything that comes with it?
- [30:57]
A
Oh man, it is. I always tell people, I'm like, I feel like God will give you something. He wants to test your capacity, right? So give you something and like what's going to happen? And then it's really heavy. It's like lifting weights, right? The capacity is really heavy. But then you get stronger because of it and they give you something more. It's harder and they get stronger because of it. Even the challenges that we deal with Today, I'm like, 10 years ago, those would have destroyed me. It's like when you have a kid, right? I've got teenagers now that are 18 and when they're born though, it's like there's little problems, they get a little bigger, but over time you grow with it. And I think we launched ClickFunnels. It was so fast and furious. And I remember, I don't know, there's just so many things happening that you don't know how to react. You're trying to figure em out, but it builds that capacity for the next thing, the next thing. One of the best examples is the very first year of ClickFunnels. We were a year into it and I remember When Todd built ClickFunnels, he was like, hey, the way I built it, it'll work for about 10,000 members or so. And then when it gets bigger, we have to change stuff. And I was like, I don't know what that means, but okay, so we launched it and it starts growing like crazy. It was interesting. All the other software companies we watched, they were growing by taking on VC money and then, like, using that to grow. And for us, we didn't have that, so we just. We would build funnels and use those. And so we got really good at drinking our own Kool Aid and building funnels to grow, click funnels. And anyway, it grew really, really rapidly. And eight or nine months in, it kept, like, having, like, we just go out for an hour or come back in or go out for 10 minutes and back in. And it's just like, why does it keep crashing? Like, what? And, like, and Todd's up. You know, it's just Todd by himself. Todd and Dylan are two partners. They're coding. And, like, it goes down again. Like, ah, you know, they're fixing it. And, like, it's got bigger and bigger. Kept happening more and more often. And I remember it was in Chicago speaking to Dan Kennedy event. Right before I was supposed to speak, it was down. And I called Todd. I'm like, what's going to happen? He's like, oh, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And I'm going on stage selling click funnels, knowing that it's down. I was like, this is so embarrassed. So I'm doing the thing and I come back up. Finally gets it back up before we're done. But then the next week, I'm flying to London. So I'm flying to London to go speak at this event, and the promoter invited my wife, my kids and stuff. So we're flying overseas. And so we're up in the air for however many 15 hours. And when we land, you have to hook the SIM card into your phone or whatever back then. So I put a SIM card in. All of a sudden my phone starts, like, texts, messages, voxers, Skypes, many. Like, every messaging platform, my phone's just blowing up. And these are people who are angry. Like, I'm gonna kill you, Russell. You owe me money. Like, it was insane. Like, what is happening? So finally I called Todd, what's happening? And all I remember he said it was down. He's like, and if I'm able to get it back up. And I was like, what? Like, if. Like, are you saying this is not something? Like. And I was. My heart dropped. And I was like, what do we do? And we. At that time, I'd been down like two or three hours. And people are upset, all of our customers, like, I don't. I don't know. What to do? Like, I'm a first time CEO and so I take my wife, my kids to the hotel and we had two rooms. I'm like, can you take all the kids? And just, I need to be in the room for a minute by myself. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, what do I do? And like, every instinct of me wanted to hide and just like, hide, you know, But I was like, we're down. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know. We're gonna back up. And so I remember we had this little Facebook group at the time. I remember going live in that Facebook group. And I was like, hey, we're down. And I don't know why, and this is not acceptable. All my businesses are down, all your business are down. We're hoping to fix it. We're trying all these things. And like, I was just very vulnerable and very. I told him the truth. I didn't try to hide it or try to justify, like, this is not good. This is our fault. I'm so sorry. We're gonna figure this out. Because I was like upfront and didn't try to hide it. It was really interesting because the community rallied behind us and everyone. And there were a lot of mad people, obviously, but as a whole, everyone's like, no worries, like, we got you. We're all praying for you. Da, da, da. All these sorts of stuff. And in eight hours they had rebuild the database on this other place and they copied everything over. And somehow, miraculously, eight hours, they got it back up live and it had been rebuilt on this new platform, which is way more stable. And what's crazy is I was assuming we'd lose half our members or most, you know, like, I thought everyone was gonna leave us. And what's crazy, look at the daily cancellations. Like, it didn't change. Like it was just almost nothing had happened. And that it drew the community closer to me and to us and everything. And then from there we kind of made that like a standard. Like, hey, when things are happening, we vulnerable. We'll tell people about it. Because obviously people respected that and they needed that. So I don't know. You don't learn that stuff. It's just in the moment, it's like, what's the decision? And sometimes. And that time I made the right decision. Tons of times I made the wrong decision. You learned the other way too. Like, that was stupid. I should not have done that, you know, but it's like that's this whole game that you get thrown into the fire. And as you're. Especially as you're going through right now, you guys are growing like crazy, right? You feel. It's like these problems pop up. Like, what's happening, you know, for us people, when clickfunnels start growing? Like, everyone's building their sites on there. But what's crazy is, I don't know. I can't monitor 10,000 people's sites or 100,000 people's sites. So we have people, like, doing illegal stuff. And, like, we're getting letters from the FBI because we're hosting websites. Like, why are you hosting things? I remember Taylor Swift sent us a huge lawsuit suing us because someone was selling Taylor Swift merchandise on their site. And I'm getting these things in the mail. I'm like, I don't. Am I going to jail? I don't even know. I don't know who these people are. We're trying to find their sites and turn them off and apologize to the FBI and all these things. So it's like. But you just keep showing up and going through it. Eventually, you get thicker skin and you get capacity. And they're like, okay, now we can handle these kind of problems. And you get things in place, but it's not something you can prepare for. You got to jump into the fire. And by doing that, God will qualify you. He always says he doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call. You jump out there, and by just being in the storm, that's how you learn the things. But that's why entrepreneurship. One of my friends, Steve Larsen, said, it's the greatest personal development course in the world, is being an entrepreneur. Because you jump out there, and it's like, you get to learn so much in such a short period of time. But then at the end of the day, like, man, what a great growth tool. How much do you grow by doing that versus anything else in the world?
- [36:10]
B
So one of the beautiful stories, I think also that you share, and I shared it a little bit with you. You talk about the Dream 100, which really impacted me, and I showed that earlier. And you talk a little bit about how you went ahead and created this amazing relationship with Tony Robbins, and also how that helped you with some really interesting decisions for yourself with clickfunnels and leading it. So can you share a little bit about that?
- [36:38]
A
Yeah, there's so many stories around that one. The concept of Dream 100, as you know, was we launched clickfunnels. I'm like, we can go out there and Try to get every single customer on our own. But there's already people who've already congregated those customers together. If we can build relationships with them and they promote to the list, you know, one person says, yes, they might promote to 100 or a thousand or a hundred thousand people, right? So we started building these relationships. And so one of the ones early in my career I started building was Tony Robbins. And we just. For a decade, I was serving him and trying. Every time he'd ask for something, I'd jump on and jump and call this team, like, help him through things. And when our Funnel Hacking Live event came out, our third Funnel Hacking Live, he came in, was a speaker, which was, like, the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that's kind of how it started. We built that relationship, but I was, like, very careful never to ask him for anything. I was like, I'll show up and serve him and show up and keep serving him, and eventually something cool will happen from it. And I remember that him and Dean Graziosi were going to launch a company. It was about masterminds and stuff. So I remember I went and I bought. We bought mastermind.com for. I think I spent like, 600 grand on it. And I gave it to him as a gift. Like, here you go. Hope you guys use this for your business. And they're like, what? And then they actually made me a partner. So we were a partner in that company together for a couple years. What's cool about it is when they launched it, we would help promote every single year. And the affiliate prize was like, you get to go to these retreats with Tony Robbins. The very first one was in Fiji, and it was like, you come to Tony's resort in Fiji, and then you get to be in this Mastermind. You can ask Tony any question you want. And it's cool. In fact, we've done it. I think I've done it four or five years now. I have a video of each one. We filmed and captured and made these really cool YouTube videos. So I flew out to Fiji. My wife and I, we were in this Mastermind. And it was this time in my life, I was like, clickfunnels is growing, but I don't know what to do. And, like, who do you ask questions like that? I don't have people in my world that, you know, my family that have done this kind of thing. And so it was kind of cool to have a chance to ask them a question. Every year I asked me a different question. But that first year, the question was like, what do I do? Do I sell the company? Do I not? What does that look like? And I remember he said he was like, why would you sell the company? You love funnels more than anyone in the world. He's like, when someone says the world click. Funnels are funnel. You light up like you're going crazy about it. And it's just like, selling something sounds exciting in the moment, but he's like, if you don't have the next thing that you're passionate about, you'll end up unfulfilled and not happy. And he's like, instead of selling it, what if you shifted how it was and you shifted from you being the CEO and the person running it to, like, you go on the board and give yourself a job inside the company that you're passionate about? Like, for me, building funnels and then hire someone to be the one in charge. You don't have to be that person. It never really crossed my mind. I was like, huh? After that first time, I went and we actually found someone. It was my partner, Dave Woodward. He became the CEO of the company. He was able to take those things on and run it, and I got a chance to focus on stuff I love doing. Anyway, super cool advice. Like I said, every year I go back and I get asked Tony another question about some aspect of my life or the business. And it's been. It's been really special spending time with him and getting to know him and then getting feedback directly from him. You know what I mean? Like someone who's influenced so many people and be able to say, like, here's where I'm stuck again. Like, how do I get out of this conundrum I got myself into, you know? Anyway, it's pretty cool.
- [39:24]
C
We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this. Because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, every cool opportunity you will ever find is most likely from a hidden market. It's the people who think about you when you're not in the room and bring the right opportunities to you. This means that the people you hang out with truly matter. That's why we created our flagship live event in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's February 26th to 28th and is the number one conference for reinvention, leadership and careers. And in the United States, it has speakers like the former president of Starbucks and many other leaders, including yours. Truly myself and I'd love to personally welcome you, give you a hug and hear what you think about the podcast. We'll have many networking opportunities, photo opportunities, and we already know every single person after this event will go supersonic on their reputation and career. So grab your tickets quickly because this event always sells out. So go to leapacademy.com leapcon or you can search on Google Leapcon 2026. It's L, E A P C O N. Don't miss out where the most impactful leaders hang out in February. So go to leapacademy.com leapcon I will see you there.
- [40:51]
B
I'll urge people. You know, if you're listening to this, I think this is a video that really did impact me. I think you call it Dream 100. But I think first of all, just the patience that you have in terms of, yes, I want everything yesterday. That's who I am. Right? And it's not going to happen yesterday, it's not going to happen tomorrow either. So building that relationship takes time and also just a lot about giving and finding the wins for them. John Maxwell calls it the people's pile. There's a big people's pile with Tony Robbins. I told you, for me it was Richard Branson. Like we need to somehow learn how to break that people pile to create that connection. And I think the idea of spending $600,000 was like mesmerizing for me. But seriously, like the patience together with the investment because that's exactly what I've done with retrobrands and to some extent just not with that level. And I think that just taught me so much.
- [41:47]
A
Oh yeah, I think it's interesting. People like to do business with people they like. So it's like, how do we build an actual relationship? And I'm sure you get this as well. I get all the time where it's like people will come into my world and you can tell from the get go they're there for like something for them. So like for me it's like I'm very guarded. I was hard to get through my gatekeepers because it's just like so many people in my life who come to me, it's like they always have an ulterior motive. And so for me it's like I never want to be the guy who someone gets that feeling. So I'm like, how do I just show up and just literally figure out how to be their friend? How can I help them from. That's when the best stuff happens anyway, right? But it's not coming in. Like, what can I take from this person? It's like, what can I get from this person? And hopefully something cool happens. If not, I'm cool with that too. But like. And I think that's the key. And everyone's looking for the short term. The hit the win really quick is going to be the thing versus There's a book called Dig youg well before you're thirsty. It's that it's like digging your well. Just building relationships. Whenever I talk about Dream 100 people, like, so when do I start the Dream 100 process? I'm like, yesterday. Start building relationships. Your business become infinitely better. Like, if I lost everything tomorrow, within 30 days, I'd be back on top. I call a dozen people who I got great relationships with and it'd be fine. Like, there's no. I don't have fear of that anymore because I've built deep relationships with a lot of different people. I think that's what people are missing is they're looking for this. I'm going to get something from this person, therefore I'm going to do this thing. And it's just like, that's not how you win long term. Maybe in the short term you may trick someone or get something out of it, but the long term is like putting in the effort, putting in the time, you know? And I think that's the key that most people miss.
- [43:07]
B
I love that you said that. I'm sure you're getting a thousand. Hey, can you make me this introduction to the president of Starbucks or Shopify? No, like, can we move on? Like, I don't know you, so you're right. It's. It's really about how do you see things. But I think again, it's that give, give, give mentality. How do you find win wins for them? Because if there is no win, you know, it's not going to make sense. And I think also your ability to put yourself in a room with people who are just so smart, that will force you to leap if you will. Right? No pun intended.
- [43:41]
A
So one of the very first events I went to, it was Armin Morin's big seminar. And I was there and I met this other kid. I can't remember his name now. He had an interesting name, but I remember we were about the same age. He might have been a year older than me. And I remember Armin made an offer. It was like a $25,000 mastermind. And the kid ran the back and he bought it and he came back. I was like, first off, how'd you have $25,000 to buy that? I couldn't comprehend that, but I was like, why would you buy that? And he told me something that was so simple and so powerful. He's like, there's two ways to get to top Russell. You can work your way in or you can buy your way in. He's like, I just bought my way in. He's like, now I'm in the room. I have a relationship. I get to know these people. And he's like, it's worth $25,000 every day of the week. And for me, I was like, oh, my gosh. I never. What's it going to teach me for this worth 25? I was trying to figure that out, and it's like, no, no. Like, how do you get in the room? Like, with the people? Like, you work your way, which takes a lot of time, versus buy your way. And after I learned that from us, okay, same thing. Like, how do I buy my win? You know, like, for the Tony thing? Like, I knew that the prize was to go and to be in Fiji with him. Like, there's. I couldn't buy that. There was no amount of money, so I had to work my way in, you know? And so, like, I went and I promoted, and we sold a bunch of stuff to get in that room. Like, I need to figure out other times. In fact, here's a funny Richard Branson story you probably don't know about me. 17, 18 years ago, him and his mom did an event called the Rock the Casaba. And somehow I got invited to the Rock the Kasbah event, which was weird. I'm in this room with all these famous people and entrepreneurs, and they were doing an auction, and during the auction, they're bidding a bunch of stuff. And one of the auction items was to get your name on the side of a virgin airplane. I was like, that would be awesome. And so I started bidding on that, and I started bidding, and during this bidding war, me and Dean Graziosi ended up getting in a bidding war over this plane. We're going back and forth and back and forth, and eventually I stopped at 45,000, and Dean bid 50. I was like, I'm out. My wife's like, stop raising your hand. So I stopped. And then Branson comes on stage. He's like, who Was that did 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane, too. And I was like, yeah. So he came on stage, he got pictures with me and Dean and Richard Branson and all this stuff. And on the side of one of the planes, it says.com Secrets Air to this day because of that. But I can't remember going with the story other than that's how I got to know Dean eventually. I met Dean a year later or something. And it was kind of like this things like, who's this guy? And I was like, hey, you don't remember me, but do you remember this? I showed the picture of him on stage with the plane. I was like, that's me. He's like, you're the guy I got the bidding war with. And it was like instant friends because of that. But open up all these different doors. And anyway, so there's a random story.
- [45:54]
B
Oh my God, I love that story. This is so good. And I love that sentence work or crawl your way or buy your way. I just love that you are pretty open, if that's okay, to go there for a second about something that usually nobody is. It's your difficulty to have children. And the reason why I would love to go there for a second is because I think this is like, for a lot of people, one of the hardest times in their life and nobody can talk about it. Do you mind sharing it a little bit?
- [46:26]
A
For sure. It's been a little while now, now that we got, you know, I know.
- [46:29]
B
You stopped me with 18 year olds. Yes.
- [46:31]
A
Such a blur. Yeah. But after wife and I got married, we tried to get pregnant. We weren't able to forget. And my wife's older than. My wife's six years older than me. And so she had anxiety anyway, of like, you know, wants to have babies before she's too old, stuff like that. And so we just weren't able to get pregnant and we didn't know what to do. And it's interesting because she was actually watching Oprah and on Oprah, there was a doctor who was like a fertility doctor who happened to live in Boise, Idaho. I remember she called me that day from work and she's like, I just watched this thing. There's a fertility doctor who lives in Boise, Idaho. I'm like, what? This is crazy. And so we booked the thing and we went in there and I remember first month, went through the whole process, you know, took the shots, do all the, you know, everything, step by step. And then nothing happened. The second month and he went through the whole process, nothing happened. And then the third month, it was actually the same month I was graduating from college because I remember we went through the whole process, did the test and Then that day, my family and her family both coming in because I had graduation the next day. So they were all driving in, and about two minutes before they pulled into the driveway, club was outside getting the yard ready or whatever. And the phone rings. I pick it up, and the nurse is like, hey, congratulations. You guys are pregnant. I'm like, what? And I walk out to Colette, and I was like, you're pregnant? She's like, what? She was crying. She wouldn't believe it. She's like, you know, and all of a sudden, we're sitting at the front porch just bawling her eyes out. And all of a sudden, all the cars drive of our family, she's like, don't tell anyone. I'm like, what? She don't tell anyone. I'm like, oh. So we inside, and, like, everyone came in, and we're like, just tears in our face. We're trying this conversation, like, smiling. And finally, she looks at me. She's like, okay, let's tell. I'm like, klatt's pregnant. Anyway, it's funny because I've shared that story, and people are like, why would you share that story? That has nothing to do with business. And I remember at that time, I'd go to speak at events, and I would always tell. Like, I would tell my wrestling stories. I tell stories about my business, stuff like that. And it was weird because when I would sell something, people would buy from me. Usually, like, athletes and people who are very similar to me, right? And I remember for some reason, one of them talking, and all of a sudden, like, I just feel this impression to tell the story about my kids. And I was like, what? Like, and I don't know, I start telling the story, and I get emotional on stage. I'm crying, and it's just talking about how grateful I was for that doctor who was willing to, like, put themselves out there to, like, get on the Oprah show. It's not easy to get on. Like, they go out there to get themselves on Oprah because their message changed my life. That's why I love entrepreneurs. Because, like, everything good in my life came because some entrepreneur risked everything to figure out how to, like, change someone's life. And so for me, it's like, that's been my mission. So I shared that, and I was, like, bawling, and I tell the whole story. And then at the end of that event, it was crazy seeing the people that bought from me. They were like, the athletes still bought from me. And I was like, wives and mothers and families that are buying my stuff. And I was like, how fascinating when you're willing to share parts of yourself that most people aren't willing to share. What's crazy about that is it opens you up where now people, they will connect you to different levels because, like, wow, that person went through what I had to go through, or, like, what I'm going through right now or something. And you're able to bring people into your world. And I think for anyone listening, like, one of the most powerful things you can do is, like, to tell those things of your life that are harder, that may not make sense, but when you do that, like, that's how you build actual connection with your audience. When you're willing to share this with most people won't. It comes away. Everyone wants to hear the highlight reel, and it's like, talk about the stuff that's real, and then that's when people will come to you. And so, yeah, that's why I share that story. Because again, for me, it's like, that's why I do what I do. Because I know what one entrepreneur can do, how they change my life. And if I can help one other entrepreneur help change someone else's life, what gets better than that? Nothing.
- [49:42]
B
That's incredible. And I think that is really, really, really inspiring to hear your level of authenticity and just honesty, because I think it is missing in a lot of the leadership that we see today. But I also understand that it's easier to tell the stories from the scars, not from the wounds, when it's really, really, really open. It's hard. You need to sometimes let it scar a little bit. So really based on everything. And again, you write a ton of books. I have one here. I have trazillion others on my audible. Like, how do you do it all? And what would be an advice to people who are listening or to your younger self based on all of it?
- [50:24]
A
Oh, man. Well, I'm able to do it all because I've got a great support network and team around me to be able to do what we're doing at scale. Like, you know, I've got an amazing wife at home who takes care of the kids, who make sure that the home's great. I have amazing team here in the office that help support me. I had a mentor when I first got started who said something so powerful. He said, he's like, there's two types of people in the world. There's people really good at starting things, and people are really good at finishing things. Like, he said, figure out who you are. And then surround yourself with the opposite. And I was like, I'm really good at starting things. I'm really bad at finishing things. And so if you look at my company, you know, there's me who starts stuff, and I got 400, 399 other people who are just finishing the projects behind me. And so for me, it's like I get to work on the stuff I'm most passionate about. But I know that if I'm going to write a book or I'm going to do something, it's like I got to cut time out from other things. Like, I got to make sure the team's in place. Okay, everyone's in place. Cool. I'm going to go deep. I'm going to spend the next 90 days, I got to work on this project over here. Right now, we're in the middle of a big project, and so everyone's blocking and tackling so I can focus on getting it all done. Because in a week from now, a week from today, actually, we're rolling out this new offer. So it's like, that's what we're all encompassed on, but it's just having a really good team of people around you who also believe in the mission, who are capable, who can pick up the reins around you so that you can do the things. And then I think it's really focusing on what are the biggest leverage, impact points that you can do in your business. Right. For me, it's like, there's a lot of people that can do operations, they can do meetings, they can be a CEO, but there's only one person that can write my book. Right? It's me. So it's like the one person can do the video. It's got to be me. Like, those are the pieces that are unique to me, like, my unique skill. I think for everyone, it's like understanding what your unique abilities are and figuring out how to build a team around you so you can focus on your unique abilities and your team can focus on their unique abilities. And when you can do that, everyone's, like, focusing on their unique abilities. That's when things can blow up, when things can grow and things can scale. It's when you're not doing your unique ability, other people aren't doing theirs. It just feels hard. It's not fun, and it's just, like, miserable. But when you get where everything's going the right direction, then it's just. It's exciting. It's fun. Like, everyone enjoys what they're doing versus you. Know the other side. And so I think for me, that's. It's just to have an amazing support network and then trying to double down on the things that are your unique ability that no one else can do, that you can do. And then, like I said, leverage, impact. Like, for me, it's like of all the things, like, we've launched hundreds of courses and funnels and offers and events and everything. But like, for me, the things that have made me the most money have the most lasting impact, like click funnels. For sure. My books, for sure, people will come to me like, Russell, I bought your course four years ago and changed my. No one ever says that. They always say, I read your book and it changed my life. So for me, like, books are such high leverage, high impact. Like, I'm willing to spend a lot of energy there because I see the results that come on the backside of those more than almost anything else I do. So that's why I love, I love doing them. Even though I'm the middle of a book right now and spending almost four years on it. It's painful. It's like giving birth to a really fat, overweight baby. But it's like, I know when it's done, it'll be like the next thing that people tell me is the thing that changed their life. So it's like you birthing this book.
- [53:07]
B
Well, I'll be reading it for sure because I read every single one. But seriously, Russell, anything else that you would want our listeners to hear about you?
- [53:17]
A
A lot of people struggle in business because they're trying to figure out how to make money. And like I always tell my audience, I'm like, if you're coming to my world or your world, if you're in this business, my guess is that it's not just because you want to make money. It's because you've heard. My friend Alex Charfen calls it the call to contribution. I want to contribute more. You feel a call to contribution, and I'm a big believer. If you felt that call, it's not just some magic feeling or butterfly. I believe that we're all called of God, that we're all called to serve a certain specific group of people. And it's based on, yes, our talents and the things we're good at, but also the things you've gone through, like the pain, the scars, the, the trials, the frustration, the stuff you had to go through, you overcame. And because you overcame that, you know, you know how to do that, right? And so the call to contribution is typically like you went through a whole bunch and you've become something great. You can change other people's lives. You've been called to serve this group of people because of what you've gone through. For me, when I, when I realized that's what it was, when it shifted for me, like, thinking how to make money, to make, I feel like God's called me to serve this group of people. Like, it changes everything. Then you're, it's easy to get through the ups and the downs and the hard stuff because you're like, these are the people's lives I'm supposed to be changing. And I think, you know, for the final things for people, just if you lean into that and realize that it's not just you trying to make money, but it's like there's something bigger that you're, you're striving towards someone's life, you're changing. It changes the dynamics of it. It makes the business fun. It makes it so that during the hard days, the hard times, like, you can overcome those things. I think when you, you make that shift mentally, like everything else changes for you.
- [54:38]
B
I totally agree, Russell. This was so, so, so inspiring. Thank you so much for everything.
- [54:45]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It's fun watching what you're doing. I'm proud of how fast you're growing. It's so exciting to see. I love watching entrepreneurs have success. It's the best.
- [55:04]
C
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