← Living The Red Life
Living The Red Life
From Potato Guns to ClickFunnels: Russell Brunson’s Billion-Dollar Journey
00:19:15
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- [00:00]
Rudy Moore
I have a true marketing legend sat here today, Russell Brunson. Russell, thanks for coming. Welcome.
- [00:05]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, man, great to be here.
- [00:06]
Rudy Moore
Russell Brunson is a marketing legend and best selling author, celebrated for co founding Click Funnels, the software that made sales funnels accessible to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.
- [00:15]
Russell Brunson
With decades of experience.
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Rudy Moore
Russell continues to lead the digital marketing world, empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. You know, you're constantly bringing ways, I think to like get the community more engaged because as you know, you can have the best training plan in the world, but if people aren't using it, it's never going to get there.
- [00:32]
Russell Brunson
I look at my business always as like developing entrepreneurs. That's. Yeah, they're my people who I love to serve. So everything from our coaching programs to the old books, success books, like, everything we're doing is like, help entrepreneurs. And I was like, what's the next thing? Like, what do entrepreneurs need?
- [00:45]
Rudy Moore
More biggest things. You've seen over thousands of successful funnels and offers come through clickfunnels. What are some key, you know, denominators of success?
- [00:54]
Russell Brunson
The people are the most success are ones who have, they have kind of two things. Like they have one really solid funnel that's like, they're like a really good conversion funnel that's just like they can put paid ads on, they can turn it on and convert and they spend a lot of time like tweaking and just adjusting that, especially as ad costs keep going up. It's like a constant so that that thing's happening. But then when they're getting the customer some stuff, the mistake a lot of people make is they just.
- [01:16]
Rudy Moore
My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the BL pill. Take the red pill. Join me in wonderland and change your life. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I have a true marketing legend sat here today, Russell Brunson. Russell, thanks for coming. Welcome.
- [01:38]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, man, great to be here.
- [01:39]
Rudy Moore
So I'm so excited for this. You don't really need an introduction, but I would love to just start with like, you know, you built arguably the biggest or one of the biggest companies in our industry and been a pioneer for so many years for so many people. But I'd love to go back and I know your story, but it's a very fun story and relevant to Boise. So can you start with how it all came About.
- [02:01]
Russell Brunson
Yes. I was in school actually wrestling at Boise State University, and met my wife, fell in love, we got engaged, and then I realized I didn't have a job, and I was wrestling. And I'm like. My dad's like, so how are you gonna support her? And I was like, huh, Maybe I should have thought about it for a proposed. So I was like, I figured I'd make money. So I went on Google and typed in how to make money on online. That started the. That started the journey. And for the next little while, I was trying a whole bunch of different things.
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Rudy Moore
Well, what year was that, roughly?
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Russell Brunson
That would have been, man, 2002, 2003.
- [02:35]
Rudy Moore
Yeah, something like that.
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Russell Brunson
Yeah. And back then, there were a couple people doing stuff online, but it was. It was not like today. It was very rare. And people who were. Most people thought they were scammers and stuff. And I started studying from some guys like Armin Moore and Frank Kern. And Frank kept talking about this thing he called underachiever products. He's like, find this little product, underachiever product, and you can create something and sell it. And I was like, I don't know what I could do. I have no idea what I could do. And then it was spring break, and during spring break in Boise, you know, wrestling season's just ended. All the wrestlers went down to Vegas, and they're having fun. And my buddy and I were only two married guys on the team, so we were kind of stuck at home with our wives, like, not sure what to do. And my buddy Nate was like, we should go make potato guns. I'm like, what's that mean? He's like, yeah, these are potato guns. And you can. You build them out of PVC pipe and you can go shoot potatoes like, 100 yards. I was like, all right. And so we spent the whole week building potato guns and had so much fun doing it. And then the next day, I was at school on Monday, and I was thinking about, what am I gonna do to make money? What could I create? And then all of a sudden, I was like, wait, what if. What if I made a DVD teaching people how to make potato guns? And it was, like, my first big idea. And I was like, I wonder if anyone's looking for this. I went online, and back then, there was a site called Overture, and you could type in any keyword. It would show you how many times a day it was being searched. And it was like, I think it was 18,000 people a day were searching for how to. How to make a potato gun. And I was like, all right. So I called Nate back up. I was like, hey man, let's go just make a DVD of us, you know, making a potato gun. He thought I was so weird, but he agreed to it. And so we, we got a little hand, hand camcorder back in the day before we had iPhones, went to Home Depot and we filmed ourselves buying the pipes and cutting them and gluing them together and did the whole thing and made a DVD out of it and then put up a little website like I was learning and turn on some Google Ads and lo and behold, people started buying my D. I was like, this is crazy.
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Rudy Moore
Isn't it fascinating to like, do you ever look back and go like the, like the Home Depot visualization and then where you are now?
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Russell Brunson
Yeah. Well, it's funny because I, I just, I couldn't, I mean everyone, all these people were making money. Couldn't I figure it out? I was like, if I just had an idea. And again that happened. I was like, I finally have, have an idea. And then the, the coolest thing is the first time that somebody pays you for something made, you're like a stranger on the Internet. Send money for a potato gun dvd. It was, you know, my wife and I are burning them at home and we're putting in the thing and shipping them out. We're like, I can't be someone who bought this thing.
- [04:55]
Rudy Moore
So I remember, I, you know, I was a personal trainer all my life, moved to America and I launched ebook because I had lost all my clients and I was sat on Clearwater beach on a deck chair. I'd launched my funnels and stuff and I got my first $19 sale. And yeah, it is a cool feeling that last time. Right. I always remember. So, so. And what I love too is I teach a lot. I'm like, don't fall in love with your first products. It's probably not going to be your last. Right? It's kind of cool. Potato gun course to click funnels, right? So, so let's fast forward to click funnels for sake of time. You know, talk about building that. The growth. You know, it goes from an idea solving a problem to a massive enterprise.
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Russell Brunson
Yeah, well, it was our is my problem because after potato guy then we launched another. We did a speed reading business and a couponing business and dating. Like we were just doing every, you know, so much fun. But it was like a pain to like custom code every page and design it. I'm not technical so I can do anything. And it wasn't like a big idea. Everyone knew, like, everyone's like, we're going to build. We didn't call them. We didn't call them funnels back then, but everyone knew they were trying to build something like that. It was almost like an arms race where everyone was racing.
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Rudy Moore
And this is like HTML or WordPress.
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Russell Brunson
Or whatever back then, pre WordPress, FrontPage and Dreamweaver.
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Rudy Moore
Yeah, Dreamweaver. Yeah, I remember dreamweaver.
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Russell Brunson
Yeah. When WordPress came out, we're like, this is insane. Insane.
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Rudy Moore
This is so cool.
- [06:09]
Russell Brunson
But, yeah, everyone was trying to do that. And then I tried twice and failed, trying to build the software. And then eventually I met my business partner, Todd Dickerson, who lives out in Atlanta, and we've done a bunch of projects together. And then one day he was like, we should build. We should build this thing. And I was like, I've tried it before. Everyone's tried it. It's not going to work. He's like, I think I can do it. And so we sat down in front of a whiteboard. He flew out to Boise. We sat in front of a whiteboard for a week, just mapping out, like, well, what if it did this? What if it did this? And then. And just like, dreaming, like, what, you know, everything I wish they could do. And then he went home to Atlanta, sat down and started coding it. About six months later, he's like, all right, log in and see if you can build a funnel. And I logged in, and it was super clanky. And, like, it didn't work, but it worked. Was just kind of like, you know, but it was the first time I was like, I was able to do something. I was able, like, go on a page, like, move something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Type something. It would show up. And I was just like, I felt for me as an entrepreneur, I feel like I have hand called. I was like, I can actually do this. And I was like, I knew that. As excited as I was, I'm like, this is going to be a big deal. So we started. We launched it, man, almost 11 years ago now. And first, it took a little while for people to catch on. People couldn't quite figure out, like, what I was talking about. Like, these things have funnels and you do upsells and down sales. I was trying to explain it and. And people that were marketers understood, but most funnels, like, I don't know what you're talking about. And so about the time I wrote my first book, Dot Com Secrets, which explained, like, what funnels are and kind of the psychology behind Them. And we launched that book. And after people started reading the book, then, then it took off. Then it was like, oh, that's what these are. And then. And we were doing. I started doing webinars. I was doing a webinar three or four times a week, just teaching about clickfunnels and selling it. And within a year, we did $10 million in sales. Our first year, within three years, we passed 100 million. And last year we passed a billion dollars in sales. So it's. Yeah.
- [07:55]
Rudy Moore
Kind of crazy to go from Home Depot to that.
- [07:58]
Russell Brunson
Guns to that. Yeah. But it's interesting though, because you talk about the first idea is not gonna be your best. First idea is what led me to the next catalyst. I've already known that I needed a funnel or any of these things. Like by doing the pro. I think by just like, people just do the process. Like it. That's when the ideas and the opportunities to start showing up as you're doing the.
- [08:15]
Rudy Moore
Well, you learn the skills too, right? Like, you know, now my main focus is a TV movie studio, which is a big change from fitness to then like agency and celebs. But it's like all the skills I learned for 10 years makes like, well now. And now I've brought all the marketing skills to an industry that has never had it before or never done it. So it's kind of cool to, To. To have that. And I do remember too, like, I. It's probably nine years ago, eight, I signed up for Click Funnels. And before I just had, you know, these. I, I didn't, you know, a smaller business. I had these developers in India and places, right? And you'd be pulling your hair out, trying to explain, like, move the headline, no hair. Yeah, yeah. And I, I still remember, like, dragging something and it's like this, like you've just invented the light bulb, right? It's like you drag it and then you refresh the page and it's there and it's like. So it's cool that it still has that now. I'm sure for users, right, the first time they get it, it's like simple thing. So. So let's talk a bit about now. What's next for you? You know, you've obviously built this massive business, but now you're doing things that, you know, you may be fulfilling for you beyond that, right? Like the books and the education side that you still love. And, you know, you're constantly bringing ways, I think, to like, get the community more engaged. Because, as you know, you can have the Best training plan in the world. But if people aren't using it, it's never going to get there. So I see offer labs. Can you talk about what you're up to these days?
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Russell Brunson
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I look at my business always as, like, developing entrepreneurs. That's. Yeah, they're my people, so I love to serve. So everything from our coaching programs to the old books, success books, like, everything we're doing is, like, to help entrepreneurs. And about a year and a half ago, we were thinking about, like, with click funnels and, you know, when we first launched clickfunnels, there was nobody else. Now there's, you know, a thousand competitors. And so it's just the water's all murky and there's a lot of people doing stuff. And I was like, what's the next thing? Like, what do entrepreneurs need more? And I remember back when I got started this before there was Facebook ads, before there was MySpace, before friends strike, I got started back at the very beginning of this whole game. And we had to do. The way we got traffic was different. We had to do it all through partnerships and collaboration and stuff like that. And nowadays in our market, it's kind of dead. Like, everyone's in their own silos, everyone's running their own things. There's not a lot of collaboration happening. Like, what if we built a platform where. Where I could build a funnel and let's say it's my product, but I could use your product as upsell one. I use someone else's product upsell too. Yeah, we just put it all together and then I can promote it and we all work together. And that's. That's where the wheel started. Kind of thinking, like, how would that look? Like, what could we do? And. And so. And like, we want to make something that's not going to be competing with everybody, but actually would, like, unite the industry. It doesn't matter if you're using my platform or any of the competitors you could still use. You can still use what we were trying to create. And so we built OfferLab. It's a free platform. And what's been fun is we did our official launch just like a week or two ago.
- [11:04]
Rudy Moore
I was gonna come. It's two weeks? Yeah. Last week. Last week, two weekends ago. 10 days ago. Yeah. 10, 10 days ago? Yeah, yeah.
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Russell Brunson
And it was really cool because in the first, like, 72 hours, we had over 1600 people put their offers on the platform. So it's cool, like, people that, like, you have won multiple Comic Club awards and their offers on the platform, other people who are new beginners and like. And so that's kind of cool. So it's like this huge platform of all these offers and then affiliates or you know, anybody honestly can come in and be like, okay, I'll build a funnel. I'm going to have, you know, I'm take Rudy's first thing, Russell's thing. You click four or five buttons and in 30 seconds you have a funnel. You start promoting. And so it's fun. We're seeing influencers now who have big followings and have gotten little sponsorship deals and now they're coming in, they're like, oh wait, what if I just go boom, boom, boom. They, they launch a funnel and half people in offer lab are paying hundred percent commissions on their offers. It's like, so it's really cool watching like people who are traditionally getting not paid very much with the traffic they have also making insane amounts of money.
- [11:56]
Rudy Moore
It's kind of like Alibaba. You know, I work a lot with Alibaba and they were so revolutionary when they like gave dropshippers the opportunity. Right? It's like just unlock this whole world. So it's, it's kind of like that more for the education info in some capacities, all these, you know, beginners can like. Because I think the biggest problem with beginners too is they spend 612 months trying to make the product and they don't realize it may not sell. You know, so now they can get.
- [12:21]
Russell Brunson
Their hands dirty and then figure out what people actually want before you go make your product or you, you have a chance to select the best people's products in the world. I was showing, I was going to train the other day because we're getting like Robert Kiyosaki stuff like book and his game. And I was like, I was like, how many guys have read Rich dad por everyone's hands go like, how many guys like the book? Yeah, I mean I just recommend that book to another. Like all raise your hand. Like, okay, let me show you a magic trick. Like take his book, take the games upsell and then take my 300 course. And then so and so's $400 course. I'm like, literally 30 seconds, you got a funnel. Now go online and hold your copyright ad and be like, hey, this book's really good. If you want a copy, click link down below. That's all you got to do. 30 seconds to set it up, you know, 25 second reel and you're done and you can start making sales. Coming through. They're buying the book, buying the upsells and the down sales.
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Rudy Moore
And it's almost like we just got. I'm sure you've looked into this like viral clipping thing. It's almost like that for offers. Now he's getting all this traffic.
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Russell Brunson
Ooh, that's a good.
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Rudy Moore
Right? That's a great way to like. Yeah, it's like clipping offers, right? Like he's getting all that influx from all these random people. So it's. And also with the viral clipping, when we did it, you actually like I hired a couple of people from that were clipping because you start to take note of like selling. So like he'll. If he sees an affiliate or someone selling thousands of copies, it's a really cool ecosystem. So I got to ask you just as we get to the end today, I can't have someone sat here that saw probably more offers and funnels than anyone. Some funnel marketing questions. So just a couple of quick ones. Right. Like biggest things you've seen over thousands of successful funnels and offers come through click funnels. What are some key, you know, denominators of success?
- [13:53]
Russell Brunson
Yeah, the, the people are. The most success are ones who have. They have kind of two things. Like they have one really solid funnel that's like their, like a really good conversion funnel. That's, that's just like they can put paid ads on, they can turn it on and convert and they spend a lot of time like tweaking and just adjusting that. Especially as ad costs keep going up. It's like a constant. So that that thing's happening. But then when they're getting the customers and stuff, the mistake a lot of people make is they just, they just focus on that piece.
- [14:18]
Rudy Moore
That was me originally. Yeah, yeah.
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Russell Brunson
And so it's people who are then taking the list that they're. They're generating. And then I call it a dramatic demonstration. So it could be a webinar or a channel or something fun where it's like an event that's happening. And the events do a couple things. One, like it gets your list. The buyers like re engaged and re excited. Like people think about the offers people see every single day. It's overwhelming. So someone will come into my world and they buy something at least within 30 days I'm doing some kind of event, some kind of webinar or channel or something where they're getting engaged, they're coming on and then we're spending time face to face. You know, we're building relationship with them and rapport and Then we can sell them the next thing. And the next thing is pure profit because you made all, all the money got caught up here. And so the people that are winning the best are the ones who are. It's like that one two punch of like a really good front end. You know, one funnel is breaking even on media and then they're doing these like monthly events with their audience just to like to provide value, build a community and then make offers for the next things in their, in their business. And it's, it's. I think that's the biggest secret.
- [15:14]
Rudy Moore
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I first business fitness. I didn't have back end stuff, so I did like 8 million and then I did the maths that, you know, I would have probably made about 24i3x there. That's kind of my rule of thumb. And I was like, I left about 24 million behind that. Yeah, but okay, so next rapid fire question. You know, there's a massive, I've grown to about 130 employees and there's a massive change from like 0 to 20, 20 to 50. And then like beyond that, what are some of the lessons you've learned? Growing a big, actual big company, Growing.
- [15:45]
Russell Brunson
Business, big companies hard. Because it's not like our skill set. Right. It's not a marketing problem. I think when any businesses start the three core personalities that a business needs and I only had two of the three for years, which caused a lot of our, you know, growth issues initially. So it's like you to someone who's obsessed with the product, if someone's obsessed with the marketing, someone who's obsessed with operations and the operation one is one that we all hate as entrepreneurs because like what, what are they doing? Especially the beginning. Like you're operating what you're, you're making system for all both of us, you know, and they seem useless at the beginning, but as soon as you have any success, that's when the business gets really wobbly. And so what most entrepreneurs do, they try to sell more to like cover up the sins and cover up the mistakes they made. Right. And it gets bigger and it gets more wobbly and more wobbly and, and that's where so many businesses crash. So for us it was like finally like getting in good operations people and systems people and all that kind of stuff. And that was what gave us the ability to really start scaling past, you know, from 10 million to 20 to 50 to 100 and beyond, which is having those things is, you know, hr, like all the legal, like all the things that aren't exciting about a business that I think they probably teach in business college we didn't go to. So I don't know. But yeah, those are the things that actually make a lot more sense and you need them a lot more as you start growing.
- [16:49]
Rudy Moore
Good. Last question. So you're obviously visiting us in Miami in our studio here, but you're also here filming because we're doing a series on iconic, infamous people that have had a lot of success in life and have a lot of lessons to share. So before we tee you up on the main set, what are a couple of life lessons you could go back 20 years and teach yourself?
- [17:10]
Russell Brunson
Oh, I think this is one that I've been a believer for a long time. It's like when I was thinking about is that no success can compensate for failure in the home. I think so many people start a business because they are trying to create something for their family, their life, whatever, and they get so caught up in the business that the family falls apart. And so I think that's one big thing. I think understanding that, like, I don't know, the last 20 years, I feel like I'm in a rush. Like, I gotta hurry because something's about to happen. And looking back now, it's like I should just. I wish I would have like, enjoyed more along the way and just been like, this is all gonna be, this is fun. It's gonna be. I'm doing this for 20 years, for 30 years, who knows, and not stress about as much, which I'm trying to do a lot more nowadays. And then just realizing, like, all my closest friends have come from the business, like investing in people, employees and partners and all that kind of stuff.
- [17:58]
Rudy Moore
Good. Love it. And last question. What's next for you and you know, your life adventures?
- [18:04]
Russell Brunson
Man, we. We just have. We have five kids and three of them have left the house now to go to college and stuff. So we're, my wife and I, down to two kids at home. So for us it's about. I think we're trying to figure, like, what do we want the next decade of our life to look like? Like the last decade was, was like kids in business and chaos. And so I think a lot of it is, you know, we're starting. First time I've ever done is instead of just training people, we're starting to do more partnerships. Like, we're coming in and taking the resources and the teams we have. We've got the best funnel building copywriters, you know, video team on the planet. And we've only done my own projects. Now we're starting part with other people. We're doing some of theirs. And it's been fun to, like.
- [18:38]
Rudy Moore
Oh, nice.
- [18:38]
Russell Brunson
Like, leverage our systems as opposed to just using them over and over again. And so, yeah, some of the fun things are working good.
- [18:44]
Rudy Moore
Well, guys, you know, awesome session that I've wanted to do for two years since I launched the podcast. So, Russell, thanks for coming in and check the links below, because we will be linking Russell's full episode on one of our shows that's going to hopefully dive even deeper into his life story and all of his lessons along the way. And of course, check out offer labs and all the new stuff he's up to. Russell, thank you, buddy. Yeah, guys, take care.