One Funnel Away: Evolution - How We Scaled ClickFunnels to $1 Billion | #Success - Ep. 138

Summary

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The Russell Brunson Show

Episode 138: One Funnel Away: Evolution – How We Scaled ClickFunnels to $1 Billion
Date: July 27, 2026
Host: Russell Brunson | YAP Media

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Episode Overview

In this inspiring and deeply personal final episode of The Russell Brunson Show, Russell Brunson delivers a candid, behind-the-scenes narrative of the evolution of ClickFunnels after its initial launch. Framed as a continuation of the “One Funnel Away” story, he guides listeners through the highs and lows of scaling ClickFunnels into a billion-dollar company—touching on critical decisions, technical catastrophes, incredible wins, devastating losses, betrayals, and ultimately, rediscovering the “why” behind the mission. This is more than a business case study; it’s an honest, vulnerable account of leadership, vision, and unwavering faith in serving entrepreneurs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Moving Beyond the "Hero's Journey" – Starting a New Chapter

• Russell relates the original One Funnel Away story as the classic “hero’s journey”: building up to the ClickFunnels launch as the victorious return.
• He challenges the notion of a “final destination”:

  “The reality is, when you finish one of your hero's journeys, what usually happens is there's a sequel. Part two is going to happen, right?” (09:46)

• The past decade became “the sequel”—the new, uncharted adventure filled with unforeseen challenges and growth.

2. Early Days of ClickFunnels: Serendipity Meets Hustle

• 2013–2014: Building ClickFunnels’ foundation—Russell in Boise, Todd Dickerson coding in his Atlanta basement.
• A pivotal moment at Traffic & Conversion (TNC) Summit: industry leaders declare it “the year of the funnel,” validating everything Russell and Todd had been building.
• A critical partnership with designer Dylan Jones (“brilliant but flaky”) led to the breakthrough in user interface, after a race against time to merge Dylan’s Pulse Editor with ClickFunnels just weeks before launch.

  “I wanted to strangle him, but then I wanted to hug him.” (25:40—about Dylan Jones)

3. Flopped Launches & the Pivot That Worked

• The initial product launches failed; each time, Russell and team tried new strategies, finally succeeding with a high-ticket webinar offer at Mike Filsaime’s event.
  • Nov 7: The first real live webinar marks the “true” ClickFunnels launch.

4. Explosive Growth—And Growing Pains

• 2015: ClickFunnels becomes one of the fastest-growing SaaS platforms, soon hosting 10,000+ members, all managed by a team of two (Todd and Dylan).
  • Massive infrastructure challenges.
  • Service outages lead to customer fury (“death threats & angry messages”), but Russell’s vulnerable, honest communication reverses sentiment:

    “Instead of me trying to hide like I wanted to, I just kind of took ownership. And what's cool is after I posted that, all the sentiment went from 'Mike Russell want to kill you' to 'we support you.'” (48:30)

5. "Not Taking Money": The Founder’s Path

• Russell’s pivotal encounter with Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz/Moz), who warned against taking VC money:

  “All the people use my platform make tons of money...I can't grow.” (1:01:30)

  • Decision to remain bootstrapped: “Let’s not take on money. Let’s keep this thing ourselves.”
  • This independence, Russell explains, became ClickFunnels’ strategic advantage—and its cross to bear.

6. Building a Movement: Books, Events, Mainstream Recognition

• Launch of Dotcom Secrets (the “doctrine” of the movement), then Expert Secrets (bringing in a new, even broader audience).
• Key hires (Dave Woodward), community-building (Funnel Hacking Live), and industry innovations (the “2 Comma Club” awards).
• Viral growth: Collaborations with Harmon Brothers (Squatty Potty), resulting in ClickFunnels’ own viral video and a “world record” influencer launch (largest bubble soccer game).

  “We set a world record for the largest bubble soccer game of all time. At that event, we showed the Harmon Brothers video, and this video started going viral.” (1:38:00)

7. Making Real Impact: Giving & Service

• Russell is called to help Operation Underground Railroad. Pivoting from clever marketing plans to making a documentary that captures an actual undercover rescue in Haiti.

  “This is the plan. And ... we’re making a documentary.” (1:50:30)

  • The resulting film debuts at Funnel Hacking Live, raising over $1 million for the cause.

8. Record Wins…and Karmic Gut-Punches

• 2018: $3 million+ sales in 90 minutes at Grant Cardone’s 10X event—“the craziest thing.”
• Partnership in mastermind.com with Dean Graziosi & Tony Robbins.
• But the next year: a disastrous GrowthCon presentation marred by technical issues—that “bombed.”
• Mentorship from Tony Robbins: Step out of the CEO role, “pick the roles you want to do.”

  “He was like, 'Why are you trying to be the CEO? ... Get someone who's a really good CEO and have them be the CEO for you.'” (2:13:20)—advice from Tony Robbins

9. The $110 Million Decision: Mission Over Money

• In 2020, a bank offers over $1 billion to acquire ClickFunnels—a deal that would net Russell and Todd each $110 million personally.
• Torn, Russell and Todd ultimately reject the offer in favor of the bigger mission:

  “We sat down…Let’s push some money away. We got a bigger mission. Let's go figure this thing out. Let's go change the world one more time.” (2:29:00)

10. Catastrophe & Resilience: Loss, Betrayal, and Rediscovering Purpose

• 2021–2023: Intense challenges. Launching ClickFunnels 2.0 amid internal chaos and painful transitions.
  • The sudden illness and tragic passing of Dave Woodward—Russell’s longtime friend and right-hand man—deeply shakes the company and Russell personally.

  “He was always one. Every night I'd be working late, he would show up, he'd be sitting there right next to me in the room.” (2:51:15)

• Massive technical challenges (overloading the new platform) lead to mistakes; customer frustration and defections—some by close friends and past “success stories.”
• Viral "cancellation" moment: Russell faces an online backlash after a wrestling tournament incident, resulting in thousands of death threats and negative coverage, including Joe Rogan’s show.

  “If you haven’t had a chance to get canceled yet, does not feel good.” (3:09:45)

11. Rediscovering "Who I Am"—and the Mission

• At a low point, Russell accepts a spontaneous invitation to Andy Elliott’s event, is welcomed like a champion, and is “reminded who I am.”
  • This rekindles his resolve to serve, even after betrayal and hardship.

    “There’s always going to be headaches…that’s okay. It doesn’t keep you from doing your mission, your calling. You still step into it, right?” (3:20:00)

12. Unifying the Community—Why the Mission Outlives Obstacles

• Reflection: The true purpose is to empower entrepreneurs to fulfill their callings, and the ClickFunnels community is the vehicle to do that.
• Legacy of Dave Woodward:

  “Every time it would get hard and I get a spot where I was just like, why are we doing this?…He’d look at me: 'This is not just a business. This is something bigger. This is from God.'” (3:25:12)

13. Looking Forward

• Russell closes with a charge to listeners: remember your callings, don’t let your “fire egg” dim when you leave events or face setbacks, and stay with your tribe.
  • Announces the next chapter: Bootstrap Secrets Podcast and renewed focus on supporting the movement.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Everyone’s got a plan till they get punched in the face. And the last ten years has been a lot of that. A lot of successes, a lot of highs, a lot of lows, a lot of getting punched in the face. But it’s been an amazing journey.” (09:55)
• “We were the talk of the [TNC] event. Everyone was talking about us. People were freaking out. I remember that night…Dave looked at me, he's like, ‘Hey, I want to be part of this.’” (46:10)
• “If I was you, and you don’t have to, I would not take on any money.” (1:01:35 —advice from Rand Fishkin)
• “16,000 people to join the new platform…Adding 16,000 people to a platform overnight was definitely a Russell mistake…I will take credit for that one.” (2:46:25)
• “If you haven’t had a chance to get canceled yet, does not feel good. But especially doesn’t feel good amongst people…who thought were your friends.” (3:09:45)
• “There’s always going to be headaches…People are going to take advantage of you. It just happens…Doesn’t matter who you are. Doesn’t matter how much of a business you build…People are like, ‘You built ClickFunnels. You’ve been happily ever after, right?’ Kinda.” (3:20:00)
• “I am here in the trenches with you every single day. I am a funnel hacker like you. I’m building funnels. I’m launching funnels every single day.” (3:21:55)
• “The only thing that matters to us is the mission. The mission is to free entrepreneurs so they can go back to changing the lives of the people they’ve been called to serve.” (3:23:45)
• “This is not just a business. This is something bigger. This is from God. That’s why we can’t stop.” (3:25:12—Dave Woodward, recalled by Russell)

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:40–07:20 | Recap of the podcast’s journey and setup for the “sequel” | | 09:00–13:00 | "One Funnel Away" hero’s journey, transition to sequel | | 19:40–38:00 | The Dylan Jones saga & first launches | | 43:10–49:50 | The 10,000-user meltdown and Russell’s leadership moment | | 53:00–1:02:20 | On not taking VC money, meeting with Rand Fishkin | | 1:09:40–1:15:10 | Community building, Dotcom Secrets, 2 Comma Club | | 1:32:50–1:41:00 | Harmon Brothers viral campaign and bubble soccer launch| | 1:47:00–1:53:00 | The OUR documentary and “divine detour” | | 2:08:45–2:13:20 | Advice from Tony Robbins: step out of CEO role | | 2:27:00–2:32:00 | The $110 million “walk-away” moment | | 2:44:00–2:56:00 | ClickFunnels 2.0 launch, technical/cultural fallout | | 3:09:00–3:13:30 | Viral “cancellation” wrestling incident | | 3:19:30–3:22:45 | Andy Elliott intervention—rediscovering self | | 3:23:30–3:27:00 | Charge to the tribe: the mission outlives obstacles |

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The Russell Brunson Tone: Authentic, Humorous, Faith-Driven

• Candid about failures ("...definitely a Russell mistake. I will take credit for that one.")
• Humor and storytelling (“I made it on the Joe Rogan Show. Yes. Congratulations. I finally made it on Rogan.”)
• Unvarnished vulnerability and faith (“Heavy is the head of him who wears the crown...That’s why we keep showing up.”)

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Final Takeaways

• Success is not linear; heroic moments are followed by new, unexpected challenges.
• Openness, humility, and authentic leadership—especially in adversity—build deep community loyalty.
• The mission of ClickFunnels, and entrepreneurship in general, transcends money and personal glory. It’s about answering a calling to serve and empower others.
• The show is winding down, but the movement continues—next up: Bootstrap Secrets Podcast.

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For aspiring or established entrepreneurs, this episode is both a masterclass in perseverance and a rallying cry to stay true to your calling—through every sequel, punch to the face, and unexpected plot twist along the way.

Transcript

[A]

Do you have a funnel? But it's not converting. The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com podcast. That's sellingonline.com podcast. This is the Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody? This is Russell. Okay, this is. This is the time. This is probably going to be the last episode of the Russell Brunson Show. I'm not going to lie. Ever since I changed the name from marketing your car to marketing secrets to Russell Brunson show, I felt like I hated that name. I was just like, I feel. Who names the show after themselves? I don't know. I did because I want to talk about all sorts of stuff and I realized I just didn't love it. I hate to call him the Russell Brunson Show. He knows when I was like, welcome back to the show, I never even said the name. So we're going to be winding down this chapter of the podcast and I'm excited for relaunching YouTube channel. Actually multiple YouTube channels and a couple podcasts that are going to be different and better. The core one you guys will be subscribed to automatically is the Bootstrap Secrets podcast, which I'm so excited for. We're filming those this week episodes coming out soon, but as we're preparing getting a bunch of them in the can so I can start sharing with you guys. I wanted to be able to give you guys two last episodes. So last week I gave you guys listen to the original one Funnel away presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. And afterwards, hopefully you all got your [e-mail] because is the last one ever is happening. This is a one time only encore event. We're doing all about AI and it's going to be insane. So that's number one. And then today I'm going to give you guys the second one. Funnel away presentation Again, the first one talked about everything we did to get up to the spot where we launched ClickFunnels. Second one was all about how we grew and scaled clickfunnels to over a billion dollars in sales and the emotional journey. There were ups, there were downs, all sorts of stuff. I hope you guys enjoy this one. After you do watch this, go get your [e-mail] and then get prepared. I think the next episode you're Gonna see is gonna be Bootstrap Secrets episode number one. At the very first Funnel Hacking Live, where we introduced the 2 comma club awards, I did a presentation called you're one funnel away. This is before the one funnel away challenge for anything. It was called one funnel away. Let me throw up slides real quick. This is the presentation. Anyone remember this? The original One Funnel Away presentation when people joined ofa. I have everybody watch this. And this was basically, we had just launched clickfunnels. It was like going into orbit. It was really, really fun. And I told everyone the story, like the last decade of my life. Here's all the things that happened. Here's all the ups and the downs, the ups and the downs, like the highs and the lows that got us to launching clickfunnels. Getting out into the world. It was interesting. Cause basically it was me telling my hero's journey up to that point, right? Like, it was me, this awkward kid, and I was doing these things. I was in my ordinary world. And then I heard the call to adventure, and we went on this journey. And this is kind of the timeline. A lot of things. Like, when I was a kid, I had a junk mail collection. Then I made zip brander. I meant potato gun DVDs. And then the webinar where everything was failing. I created a webinar and saved Christmas for me and my team. And then we had a call center, the groups, 100 employees. And the whole thing crashed and fell apart. And I met Todd Dickerson. And then Todd built click funnels. And then we launched clickfunnels. Nobody bought it. And we tried over and over and over again. Finally, I did a. I spoke at Mike Filsim's event. We crushed it. We created webinars. We started doing webinars all the time. And then we started growing clickfunnels. So that was this whole hero's journey. I told the whole story. It was very emotional, up and down. And then it kind of ended. Ended with clickfunnels launching. I thought about that at the time. I was like, in my head, I'd gone through this hero's journey. I returned the victor. And then at the end of the hero's journey, you return with the elixir and come back to your people. And like, I found the answer, right? And that's what it felt like coming back funnel hacking live. Like, I solved all the answers. Here's the elixir. And I was sharing with everybody, okay? But the reality is, when you finish one of your hero's journeys, what usually Happens is there's a sequel. Part two is going to happen, right? And all of a sudden you hear the next call of adventure. And so this presentation I'm calling ofa Evolution, I want to talk about what's happened since then. We launched clickfunnels. It was a huge success, right? And then all of a sudden, I get called on this new Heroes of venture, which has been the last decade of my life. And it's interesting because you. I think it's hard is typically when you're with people, you share like here's a highlight film. Like how many years know most of the highlights of the clickfunnels of the last decade? You saw this and I grossed with all these things. But the reality is it's not just sunshine and roses. And I don't think it serves you guys for me, like, it was amazing. Every fun we built was awesome. People loved us. Nothing wrong ever happened. Look how successful we are. So instead, I want to talk about just the last decade, the different timeline, the ups and the downs, and hopefully from there, there'll be something you guys can grasp for yourself. And hopefully, if nothing else, helps you guys understand that your hero's journey is not going to be sunshine and roses. You're going to feel that call to adventure. You're going to find a plan. And like Mike Tyson said, everyone's got a plan to get punched in the face. And the last 10 years has been a lot of that. A lot of successes, a lot of highs, a lot of lows, a lot of getting punched in the face. But it's been an amazing journey. So I want to kind of walk through a couple of those things. If you're cool with that. It's cool with that. Okay, so 2013 is when we started building click funnels. We had the idea, we were working on it. Todd was in Atlanta in his basement coding things. I assume his basement could have been his kitchen. I have no idea. He was at his house coding things. I was at home trying to figure out how to market this thing. And all these things happened in 2013. The beginning. 2014, the biggest event in our industry is called traffic conversion. Have you guys been to TNC before? So we go to tnc. We're kind of broke at the time. So me and Todd are sharing a hotel room together. And we're sitting there and Todd's building Cliff Thrones we're talking about. We're so excited. We go to TNC that year. And the craziest thing, Ryan and Perry get on stage and literally Basically, that year becomes the year of the funnel. Not because of us, because Ryan and Perry get on stage and, like, everyone, there's this thing called a sales funnel. And they start talking about it. And me and Todd are in the audience, like, holy cow. Everything they're saying is like, what we are building right now, right? And they're talking philosophy and stuff like that. And so we're kind of freaking out. Like, this is what we're building. Like, we're. It's crazy. So TNC happens the weekend after tnc. Everybody on the planet instantly becomes a funnel expert. It's kind of crazy, right? Everyone's selling, consulting. I do funnels. And, like, this word funnel starts getting flying everywhere. Everyone's talking about funnels. And Todd and I are like, this is insane timing. We are about to have the platform, the only platform to actually build sales funnels. And people were talking about it. People were all coaching on it. And it was this weird, I don't know, luck timing. But everyone starts talking about this thing, not knowing that we're behind the scenes building the solution to actually how to do this. And it's kind of this fun thing, right? So we're at tnc, we're having this conversation. We're kind of freaking out. And Todd's been building the whole thing. And the backend looks really good, but the problem is that the ui, Todd's a great backend developer. He's great everything, but he's not, like, the best UI developer ever. And there's this guy that I knew. I'd done projects with him five or six years prior to doing all sorts of design work with him. One of the most talented people I've ever met in my life. But he's also a little bit flaky. And I tell him this to his face. I'm okay saying this on camera. He would, like, need some money. He'd message me. He's like, hey, man, do you have any projects? And so I'd give him like five projects. I go to bed, I wake in the morning, all five were done. And they were always insane. Like, what? How did you do this? I paid the money. And then he disappeared. Like five or six months. I messaged him, hey, man, can I get some help? Can I get some help? And he just. Crickets. And all of a sudden, five or six months later, he popped back up. Hey, man, I need some money. You got any projects? I'd be so mad at him. I just wanted to strangle him, right? And I looked at all of the projects I've done the last five or six years, five or six months that other designers do. And so I take the exact same project description I sent all those people. It took us six months to build. I just took those copy and paste them. Sending. Here's some projects. I go to bed in the morning, I wake up the next morning, all of them are done a hundred times better than the ones before. I'm like, how does he do that? Like, I wanted to strangle him, but then I wanted to hug him. So. So I wire him the money and then he's gone again. And this is the pattern for six years, okay? I have a love hate relationship with this guy. Driving me crazy. Anyway, Todd and I are sitting at TNC talking about click funnels. They just like this now. It's all industry. The funnels are the greatest thing in the world. We're freaking out, and I'm looking at Todd's coding. I'm like, this is awesome, but it doesn't look like software. I don't know. And we're sitting there in a hotel room under my bed, and all of a sudden I look at Skype and I look over and I see Dylan Jones, his name, and it's lit up and I'm like, dylan's never on Skype. I was like, huh? So I messaged him like, hey, man, you need some money? Blink. He messaged me back, yeah, what do you got? I was like, okay, I got him. I know, I know Dylan. He's insanely talented, and if I can get his attention for a few minutes, I was like, I need you to fly to Boise next week. I'm going to buy a week of your time. What's it going to take to buy a week of your time? And he tells me, and it was not too crazy. And then I was like, what we're doing, we're building this thing. It's a funnel. I explained the whole thing to him and he's like, oh, I'm building the exact same thing. I was like, oh, well, do you want the money? He's like, yeah, I still need the money. So he's basically. He's like, I'm gonna fly to you. I'm build a competitor to myself. But I need the money, so I'm in. So the next week he flies to Boise, Todd flies to Boise. We get him in a room, we give him some money, and we're like, all right, this is the vision. So Dylan starts building the ui, the edit, starts building all this stuff, and. And he makes the most beautiful version of Clickfunnels ever. It's insane. He even shows me, like, I'm building on my little website build over here. We're like, yeah, whatever, it's not a big deal. I didn't think too much about it. He builds this whole thing and then he flies back home to Canada. And Todd goes home, starts coding it all, and within a couple months, we have the very first version of ClickFunnels done. It's summertime. In fact, I remember we were at Bear Lake with my family and we did the very first initial launch of ClickFunnels. This is before the September launch. Have you guys anybody here remember the July launch that year? Okay, a couple people, yeah. Ashley and Jimmy. So we launch it. But the problem is that there wasn't like a. There wasn't a really good website editor. Like the funnel. There wasn't a good editor. The page, it was kind of like if you guys really use lead pages, like we had the page and you could edit, like they had like very similar lead page. It was kind of basic, but the funnel builder was insane. Funnel builder was great. Everything was great. But the editor was like, it was okay. So we do the big launch, we get a bunch of people in, we shut down the doors, and the editor's horrible, it's breaking, things are falling apart and we're just like pulling our hair out. And it was just like so frustrating. And then we're getting close to our actual launch, which is gonna be in September. And so we're getting everything ready. And then two weeks before the launch, Dylan sends me this video. It's just a 60 second video. He's like, hey man, remember I was telling you I was working on a project? I got it done. Check it out. And he's called it Pulse Editor. And he sends me this video. I start watching it and it is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's this editor where you can drag and you can drop things, you can move things, you could edit things. And I was like, oh, crap. I was like, this is so much better than our editor. And I remember watching that video probably 30 or 40 times. And I said to Todd, I was like, hey, check out Dylan's editor. He's like, dang. I said, we have to have that editor. He's like, I know. I'm like, how do we do it? I don't know. So I'm like, hey man, do you need some money? And he's like, well, I'm going to launch this. I'm making A bunch of money. I should be fine. I'm like, we're gonna launch clickfunnels. He's gonna launch this thing. And his wasn't have any backend. It was just the page editor. But it was so beautiful. And I was telling Todd, like, we have to figure out. We have to. So I started messaging Dylan. And Dylan's smart. He's like, after going back and forth, like three or four days, me just begging him, he's like, okay, I will do this, but you can't buy it from me. I want to partner with you. I'm like, we spent the last two years building this. We don't, like, you can't partner with us right now. He's like, all right, I'm just gonna launch on my own. Then, like, oh. So we finally figured out a negotiation to make Dylan a partner. But then we had two weeks to launch, and we have this beautiful editor, Clickfunnels. And I don't know how coding works tonight to mush them together. So I'm like, todd, Dylan, fly to Boise. They both flew to Boise for two weeks. And I'm like, we're launching in two weeks, right? I have launch sites out there. Like, everyone knows about this. Figure out how to smush these two things together. And so they spent the next two weeks literally no sleep. It was insane smushing these two things together. As we get closer and closer to launch date, the day before launch, it's looking good, but the problem is, like, half the functionality didn't work. So we had this good idea. What if we do a reverse launch where we launch it with no features, and then every day we release a new feature? That'd be brilliant, right? So we do our launch, people sign up and there's no features inside of it. And we're like, no, it's going to be cool. Every couple days, we'll launch a new feature. And so we do this reverse launch. Every couple days, we'll launch a new feature. And because the launch was so backwards and wasn't quite ready, it didn't take off. As soon as it didn't take off, people stopped promoting, and the whole thing kind of like, screeched to a halt. And it was just like, oh, crap. Two years of our life, all of our savings gone, and nobody's promoting this thing. It's not working. And that's kind of the first kind of crossroads. And so after that, that's when we started trying the different versions. We tried, you know, the product launch didn't work. Then we tried just a regular SaaS version. We tried another one. We tried four or five times. And after the fifth time, that's when Mike Philslam invited me to come speak at his event. He's like, hey, you should come sell click funnels at the event. I'm like, dude, we've been trying. Nobody's buying the free trial. This is not gonna work. And you guys have heard this story. I went out there to the event, created a thousand dollar offer. We pitched it on the webinar or pitched it on the live event. It crushed, came back home, we started doing live webinars. In fact, I found the date this morning, the very first actual live webinar I did after Mike's event. First webinar was November 7th. I did two webinars that day. And that month I kept doing them and doing them and doing them. And that was kind of the launch of ClickFunnels. Now I moved to 2015. 2015, TNC is the very beginning of the year again. So we go back to traffic conversion, and this time ClickFunnels is done. We show up, everybody's talking about funnels, everybody talking about click funnels. It's the greatest thing in the world. And then. Anyways, probably shouldn't say this on camera, but here we are. I remember Ryan Dice. I love Ryan. He's on stage at this event. And Todd and I are sitting in the audience. We're just like listening to everything. And then Ryan's like, yeah, TNC is like the greatest thing. Because of us, companies like clickfunnels were built. And we're like, did you just take credit for clickfunnels? Like, we've been killing ourselves. Like, it was, like, so frustrating. We were like. And then I wanted to speak on the big TNC stage. They wouldn't let me. But there was these little breakout rooms, okay? So they gave me a breakout room. I was gonna speak. And they're like, you can speak, but you can't sell. I was like, what? I can't sell. Like, my name's Russell. It sells like SEL is in my name. I have to sell. Like, I don't know what to do with this, right? And like, when you get 60 minutes, you can't sell. And I have a 90 minute presentation. 30 minutes of selling. 60 minutes. So I'm like, all right. And so we're getting there. And we have these. There's like six different breakout rooms. I'm competing with all these other speakers. And one of my friends at the time, he shows up there and we're hanging out, and it's Dave Woodward. A lot of you guys know Dave. And I'm like, dave, I'm on stage in, like, two and a half hours. I'm competing at six other people. How do we get people into our booth? He's like, I don't know. What do you need? I'm like, you know, it'd be awesome. Just as a joke, I'm like, imagine if we had a whole bunch of booth babes. And then we, like, lined up the wall so that everyone sees these gorgeous women, and they just walk in. And we get everybody to funnel into our room and none of the other rooms. And Dave's like, okay, how many do you need? I was like, I'm like, I'm up here, like, two hours. He's like, just give me a second. So all of a. Dave's on the phone dude, making all these phone calls, all sorts of stuff. And then I'm like, there's no way this is gonna happen. And then I don't know what he did or who he called, whatever. Anyway, 20 minutes later, he comes up to me, okay, he's taken care of him. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, it's done. I'm like, what's done? He's like, there's gonna be a whole bunch of beautiful women here who are gonna funnel people into your room. I was like, okay. And sure enough, 15 minutes later, like, eight gorgeous tall women show up, and Dave's putting click funnel shirts on every single one of them, right? And we're lining them up. And so people come out of the breakout room, walk over, and they're like, whoa. And all of a sudden, all these people funnel right into our room. One of the greatest sales funnels of all time. So we jam all these people. Like, they're standing. People are like fire marshals yelling at us. People are wrapped around the walls, like, everybody's in our booth. And I get up there, I'm doing the funnel hacks presentation, but I'm not allowed to pitch. So I do the very first 60 minutes. I'm going through people going crazy. They're melting out. Everyone's freaking out at the very end. I'm like, thanks for hanging out, you guys. Appreciate y'. All. Bye. And I was like, but real quick, we have a booth in the back, and if you want the rest of this presentation, I have a DVD back there that's got the entire presentation. Go check it out. And people run out there. They run to our booth, and they get A DVD of me doing the whole presentation. And that was it. And that was our first thing at tnc. And it was crazy. And we were the talk of the event. Everyone was talking about us. People were freaking out. I remember that night afterwards, we were out to dinner, just kind of like, joke about whole things and laughing about the fact that Dave was able to pick up the phone. And all of a sudden, all these beautiful women show up to help us. And I remember Dave looked at him. He's like, hey, I want to be part of this. How can I be part of this? Like, what do you mean? He's like, I want to be part of this. I was like, you want a job? He's like, yeah. And I was like, how much money are you making right now? He told me. I was like, I can't afford you. And he's like, I know, but like, I just want to do this. What's it going to take? I was like, dude, dude. You're like, yeah, sure, you're hired. And so we brought Dave in at that time to start doing stuff with us. And then that year, this 2015, that year got crazy. I've been writing this book, the dotcom secrets book. I think the next month after teensy, we launched the book, which was cool because the book became like, the doctrine of the movement, right? Think about every good mass movement of all time. If you look at the charismatic leader leads with the book, look at any religion. How do they lead? There's always a book, right? And so for us, it was like people were coming to clickfunnels world. They're starting to understand it. But then we led with the book. People got doctors, and they'd read like, oh, I understand it now. And so we launched the dot com secrets book, which is crazy. And clickfunnels starts growing faster than we even knew what to do. I remember when we first built clickfunnels, Todd's like, clickfunnels can be amazing to the point we get about 10,000 members, and then we're gonna change our technology or something. And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, if we had 10,000 members, that'd be amazing. So we're just running and running and running, and we go 1,000 members, 3,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000, 12,000. It's just growing like crazy this first year. And again at the time, it's Todd and Dylan, two dudes doing the whole thing, running everything. And within a very short period of time, I Don't know if you guys know this, like, clickfunnels today is one of, like, the top 20 most trafficked websites on the planet. Because think about, we're taking. Yeah, it's crazy. It doesn't show it in stats. Cause I clickfunnels.com, but, like, we're hosting all of your funnels, all your websites. When any of you guys get 5 million views a day, that's on our backs. Like, the infrastructure to handle that is there's not many human beings on the planet that know how to do that. We didn't know how to do that. Todd had never built a software that's gonna be running, you know, with top 20 websites on the entire planet. And so what happens? Start growing. All of a sudden, clickfunnels starts doing these weird, glitchy things where it goes down for 10 minutes, then it comes back, like, what's happening? I don't know. And try to fix things. And it goes down again. It comes back, and it's just this weird time where everyone's like, clickfunnels is glitchy. It's going in and out. And like, if we didn't know how to fix it, what to do. And Todd's like, remember back two years ago when I told you that 10,000 members is gonna fall apart? I'm like, yeah. He's like, yeah, that's what's happening. I'm like, what does that mean? He's like, we have to fix this. And we were trying to figure out how to fix it. And the craziest thing, not to get technical, but all of our databases were in spot, and we had to move them to a different database structure. The problem was the database company that we were hosted on. We were their biggest client, and they did not want us to leave, therefore, they would not allow us to leave. And so we were in this weird thing where we couldn't move the data, we couldn't do things, and there's all sorts of problems happening. And it kept getting worse and worse. That year, I remember speaking at Dan Kennedy's event, which is crazy now, because this is now Dan Kennedy's event. But I was thinking, at Dan Kennedy's event, I did the pitch. I remember I was backstage, I was about to come on stage, and I'm looking at something and clickfunnels down. And it's down. I'm messaging Todd like, dude, it's down. He's like, I know he's trying to fix it. It's down. It's down. And all of a sudden they're like, russell Brunson, you're up next. I'm coming on stage knowing that clickfunnels is down. I'm like, I gotta tell people that clickfunnels are the greatest thing in the world. Which it is. But it's. So I'm on stage, I'm freaking out, like, is this even gonna work? And so I do the presentation. We signed up a lot of people. Luckily, Todd got it back up again. After that, it was just this up and down, up and down. And then fast forward a week later, I was speaking in London, and the promoters invited our entire family. So me and my kids, my wife, we all jump in a plane and we're flying to London. And it's really fun, right? And we get to London and we land there. And this is 2015. And so back then, we had to get these little. Those little chips, you know, those chips in your phone, whatever they call it SIM cards. Yeah. So we get to London, we get a SIM card. I plug in the phone. Snap, plug it in. My phone's like, brrr. And it's thousands of messages from every platform. Skype, Instagram, messenger, email, phone calls, text messages. And I'm noticing patterns. I'm reading through these. Most of these are people threatening to kill me. Very angry people. I'm buying ads right now. Click funnels are down. You owe me. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I'm like, what? And a lot of these who were my friends like, 20 minutes ago now are like, f you, Russell. I hope you die. Like, I'm like, what just happened? As we were flying, So I go, I call Todd. I remember Todd's like, yeah, we've been down for three or four hours. And he said something. I don't remember anything other than the word if. He's like, if we're able to get it back up. And I was like. I'm like, we're like a year into this business and, like, if we can get it back up and I don't know what to do, and I'm freaking out. The database place that we had had crashed. They couldn't reboot their servers fast enough. Todd knew to move forward. We had built something different. We had another partner, Todd, named Ryan, who had just. He was on vacation. He'd just come home. And so Todd and Ryan are trying to figure out, like, how do we do this thing? And so they're rebuilding our entire database structure somewhere else while we're trying to get this one back up. And I'm in London with my kids. We're all like jet lag in a hotel room. And I was like, had colletting kids and I go in the other. We had two, two rooms, joining rooms. I go in there real quick and I sitting there and I'm like, my first time ever being a CEO or being part of something, like, what do I do? Like, I wanna just hide. People wanna kill me. But I feel like we should do something I didn't know. And so I remember getting my phone out and I went live to our little ClickFunnels community at the time I went live. In fact, if you go back there, you can scroll through, you can find the video still in there. And I was like, hey, we're down. And I just got landed in London to tell people here about clickfunnels. And I was like, it's not okay. Like, all my stuff's down, your stuff is down. And it's not okay. It's not acceptable. And instead of me trying to hide like I wanted to, I just kind of like took ownership and I was just like, I'm so sorry, we're trying to figure this out. This is my fault and it's not acceptable. And what's cool is after I posted that, all the sentiment went from Mike Russell want to kill you to like, we understand, we support you. And everyone started dropping in comments and it shifted the whole tone of it all in a really cool way that I wasn't expecting. And during the whole process, Todd had rebuilt the entire structure over here. There. Luckily there's a backup that happened like an hour or two earlier. He's able to recopy the whole thing over. I don't know, he'd have to tell you technical things. I know it was a nightmare. But about eight hours later, it was back up on the new servers. We needed things to run on long term and it came back up and I was just waiting. We were waiting for like a mass exit. Everyone was going to leave clickfunnels the next day. And we look over the next two or three days and it wasn't like it didn't increase cancellation. It just everyone got over it and it was okay. And for me, as like the person at the time, like, I learned such a good lesson of just like trying to not hide and trying to share what was happening. And so that was one of the big hiccups. But that was such a big thing for us to go through as a community, as a leadership team, trying to figure these things out and got us in. So that was Excuse me, that was 2015. That same year. It was weird. Cause, again, we're a year into this, and I thought when we launched Clickfunnels, all my closest friends, all the marketing nerds like me, were gonna be so excited. And I cannot get any of my friends to use our platform. It was the weirdest thing. I'm like, you guys, I built what we've been dreaming about. And they're like, yeah. And no one would use it. Like, new people would come and they would use it. I couldn't get my closest friends, people in the market to use it. It was so frustrating to me. So we decided to go and, like, let's just start building funnels for people and show them how it works. And so Brandon Fisher, who's somewhere here, one of our team members last decade, we started flying around the country. And so we went and met Neil Strauss, who's a famous author. We flew out to him, and we built funnels for him. We recorded videos and built funnels. Then we flew to Dave Asprey, who was the middle of, like, the Bulletproof Movement his team was using click funnels we saw. So we flew out there, we filmed a bunch of stuff with him. We launched funnels for him. We did funnels for Tony Robbins. We flew to Australia doing funnels out there. We hung out with Lizbenny Longboy, captured her story, and it was like, this time where we're just like, I'm gonna prove to people this stuff actually works. We're flying around building funnels for free, pro bono, just to show people, like, here's Tony's funnel. Here's this one. Here's this one. And it was, like, such a fun thing to, like, try to prove to our market, like, this stuff actually works. I believe in it. I need you guys to believe in it. And it was such a fun. It was such a cool thing. About this time, too, people keep asking, like, crypto launch is growing like crazy. Like, you guys take on venture capital. And, like, I'm like, I didn't know. Maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn't. I didn't know how the whole thing works. And I remember that there was an event that happened in Boise that year, 2015. End of the year, a guy named Rand Fishkin. Anyone know who ran Fishkin? Ran was the CEO of a company called SEOmoz. If you remember, SEOmoz eventually became Moz, and Moz had gone. We both started business at very similar times, but Moz had gone a different path where they took on money and from the Outside, it was amazing. You see him growing, all sorts of successes happening. And so I'm like, well, maybe that's what I needed. Maybe that's our next step. And I remember I went to. We went to this event. He's his best friend, lives in Boise, Idaho. So he's in this little event with, like, 100 people at it. I go show up to it, and he's talking about Maz and, like, their whole story, talking about them taking VC money and what happened. And this is, like, amazing story. I'm like, yeah, that's the next step. We're gonna take on a bunch of money. When the event gets done, Introverted Russell's ready to leave. But I was with my extroverted half, BJ, right at the time, and BJ's like, dude, we gotta go talk to him. Like, no, he's fine. No, we gotta go talk to him. So BJ pulls me up there, and he's like, hey. He's like, ran. So Russell's got a click from his house. Like, 12,000 customers. Like, they're growing like crazy. He's like, would you recommend they take on money? And first Rand's like, yeah, actually, you know, and then he kind of stopped for a second, and he's like, just between you and me, you guys want to talk for real? Like, yeah. And he's like, okay. He's like, I have a board of directors that sets my salary. I can't afford a car right now. I live in an apartment. All the people use my platform, make tons of money with it. I'm not able to contractually because I can only work for this one company. He's like, I've been going through depression for the last two or three years because I can't grow. We took on money, and now because of the money we took on these companies, the people who invested in us, they're making us do things I ethically don't feel good with, but I have to do it because they want growth month after month. So we're doing things I don't feel comfortable with, I don't feel good with, but I have to because they own me. And he's like, if I was you, and you don't have to, I would not take on any money. I was like, whoa. Just this little private moment. I'm so grateful for him for actually sharing that. It's crazy. Four or five years later, he wrote a book called Lost and Founder. If you guys want a really good book about what happens when you go VC route, he goes through the whole story there, really good book. But he told me that. And I remember on the drive home, I remember voxing Todd and everybody on our team. I was just like, hey, this is what's happened. I was like, let's not take on money. Let's keep this thing ourselves. Let's do it so we can do it the way we want to do it. So we're not being dictated by a board of directors who we owe money to. Let's stick this and do it our way. And luckily, they said yes too. Thank you. It's actually interesting to me. Every one of our competitors at this point have all taken on money. And it does give them strategic advantages in some things. As you will see over the next 24 months of my life, I don't have any of the shackles. They do. And you will see some really cool things happening. We are a bootstrap company through and through. And I'll leave it at there. I'll tell that chapter. Thank you. I'll tell you guys that chapter next time we all hang out. Okay, 2015, new members in 2016. Now it starts getting exciting. Clickfunnels is growing. Things are happening. That prior year, we'd done our very first ever funnel hacking live here in Las Vegas. We're now doing our second funnel hacking live in San Diego. We decided we should get a keynote speaker. We never had, like a keynote. First FHL was all my buddies that came and spoke for free. Second one, all my buddies, like, we need a keynote. And at the time, I was obsessed with a TV show called the Prophet. Anyone here seen the Prophet? Marcus Lemonis. And so we figured out how to get a hold of Marcus. We offered him to come speak. At the time, he wasn't speaking anywhere. He said yes. And I'm freaking out. Cause I'm like, this guy, his business, if you look at his business, people come in, he invests money in their business, and he goes and fixes them, right? And so I want him to come talk about that. And so Marcus Lamortis comes to fhl. I'm expecting, you know, to be a high maintenance person coming in with taxis or coming in with like, limos and stuff. But no, Marcus shows up in an Uber, jumps out. Hey, guys, what's up? He's hanging out in the audience. Hanging out, like, so different. We thought he was so awesome. And then before fhl, before he went on stage, we. We had a chance to go backstage for like 15, 20 minutes. Can I talk to him? And he comes in, he's Just got biggest smile. He's like, what is happening out there? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, this is. He's like, I thought I was speaking at a website conference. These people are insane. He's like, what? Like, what is happening here? I was like, oh, no, we don't do websites. We do funnels. He's like, what's a funnel? And I start trying to explain technically what a funnel is. And he's just, like, glazing over, right? And I was like, ah, I'm breaking Russell's number one rule. No technobabble. So I'm like, hey, what's my story? So we come back and we start telling him a story about funnels and how they work and how it changed my life and how it's changing these other people's lives. And I remember I explained it to him, and he's sitting back there, he's like. He's like, wow. So he's like, how would you do a funnel for Sweet Pete's? Like, we would do something like this. How would you do a funnel for Camping World? How? He started explaining it, different businesses that he owned. And I was thinking like, wow, every business needs a funnel. I was like, marcus Lemonis just said. I was like, yeah, I. Freaking out. Then he gets on stage, he does his whole thing. He gets off, gives us a hug, jumps into Uber and takes off. I was like, that was so weird. And he leaves. And like 15 minutes later, he texts me, hey, do you wanna be on the TV show the Prophet? I was like, yeah. Like, what? I'm like, yes, I would love to. He's like, cool, I'll message you in a little while. So then fast forward. Like a month later, Dave and I were at the Genius Network event. We're sitting there in this, like, Mastermind, meeting all these different people. All of a sudden, my phone lights up. Boom. It's like, Marcus Lemon. So I was like, uh. Oh. And so I'm like. So I'm like, acting like I have to go to the bathroom. I grab the phone, walk outside, and he's like, hey, Russell, this is Marcus. Hey. I'm recording live on the show right now. And I'm just curious, would you be willing to come and build a funnel for Flex watches? And I'm like, yes, I would love to build a funnel for Flex watches. And then this weird conversation. We're apparently on camera having this conversation. I don't know. And then ends. And he texts me there. Thanks, man. We gotta figure out time to fly out You. So you can build these guys some funnels. And I'm like, anyway, so this whole thing happens. So we're trying to figure out how do we. How do we build a funnel, like, on national tv? And so anyway, it's this crazy thing, and a couple months later, we're flying out there to California, and we decide, like, instead of, like, building a funnel, it's kind of hard to build a funnel. Like, let's build it on these huge cardboard cutout things. We designed these cutouts the night before where Kinko's trying to get these things printed out. And, like, it was all sorts of chaos. And eventually we had a chance to actually be on the show. How many of you guys saw the. Our episode with the Flex watches? It was such a cool thing. So we recorded this whole thing. And then a couple months later, we are live on national tv, all over the place, introducing clickfunnels to the world. And it was just one of the coolest, most surreal experiences to see. Like, this thing that we had made up in a basement was becoming mainstream. People were hearing about it. Funnels weren't just, like, a weird culty thing that we were doing over here. Other people were talking about it. It was getting on tv. It was this crazy thing. The next month after that, I met this dinner with Dean. It was genius Network. And I'm there, and I get invited to this dinner. I show up to dinner. I sit down, and I'm sitting right across from Dean Graziosi. First time I had a chance to meet him. We're talking, we're hanging out. I don't remember anything of that conversation other than in the middle of it. I felt another call. You guys ever had that before? For me, I'd written the book Dotcom Secrets. It was very painful. I was like, I will never write a book again. This is the worst pain I've gone through. I'm sitting there talking to Dean. We're talking. All of a sudden, I feel I, like, hear listening. I was like, you need to write another book. I was like, no, no, no, I don't do that anymore. One and done. No more books. And I was like, you need to write a book. It's called Expert Secrets. And it's gonna be the next step in your guys journey and Dean Steve talking to me. We're talking. I was like, what? No, I'm not writing a book. Go back and forth, back and forth. Finally, dinner. I'm walking back to my hotel room, and Dave and I were actually sharing a hotel room that night. And I walk in there. I was just like. And I walk in, he's like, how was dinner? I'm like, God told me something. He's like, what? He's like, I'm supposed to write a book. He's like, what? I thought you were gonna write a book again. I'm like, I know. I don't wanna write a book, but I know the name. It's gonna be Expert Secrets. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah. And Dave starts jumping on Dave. He's like, we're writing another book. He's freaking out. I was like, oh, man, I don't wanna write a book. It's so painful. And so that starts this new thing of, like, Expert Secrets. Another random. I don't know why this story popped my head. Another random story. I remember in the hotel room that night, I was cleaning my ear with Q tips. I was like, man, this is the second best feeling in the world. I love Q tips. Anyway, a week later, I get a box from Amazon, like a big box, and Dave sent me this huge box of Q tips. He's like, I can't help you with the first best feeling in the world. But here's the second best feeling. I was like, I still have boxes of Q tips from that box to this day. So Dave continues to serve me. So, okay, so Expert Secrets. So then we start writing Expert Secrets. And then during this time, more crazy things happening. We're like. We decided, like, we should launch a reality TV show. And so Brandon Fisher and I were like, we're watching the thing called Funnel Hacker tv and we start filming these stories. Like, Anthony, we go build biohacking funnels for him. We do this all crazy experience, make this, like, TV show. We launch it on YouTube and then we do another one. And we start filming these TV shows, showing people what funnel hacking was and showing behind the scenes, like getting the community actually building funnels for people. And we're doing person after person after person. Just all these fun things were happening. 2017, we come out and Expert Secrets finally gets done. And we launched that back into the world. And it creates this whole new movement, right? The first movement, Dotcom Secrets, was interesting. It was gathering all of the people who are into funnel building, people who are trying to understand marketing and funnels, right? But Expert Secrets opened up clickfunnels through this whole new market. It was people who didn't know they needed a funnel yet. All they knew is they had a calling. They were an expert. They were supposed to create something. And Expert Secrets Started gathering those people. I was like, hey, you're an expert. And they've come in here and we teach them how to be an expert, how do I find their voice, how to do things? But then the answer was always like, but to get your message out, you need a funnel. And so it brought new people into our world and helped introduce them in a really cool way into funnels. And that's when clickfunnels started growing again really, really rapidly. 2017 also, I had. Earlier that year, maybe the year prior, I had seen a really cool viral video with a pooping unicorn. Anyone remember seeing Squatty Potty? When it first came out? The Squatty Potty ad comes out, and I'm watching this thing, and it's already gotten like 100 million views. And it's just, if you haven't seen it yet, type Squatty Potty and watch it. It's this unicorn that's pooping ice cream. And basically, anyway, I'm not getting the product. It's amazing. And I'm watching this. I'm like, it's hilarious. But I was also like, this is some of the best copywriting I've ever seen. It's like copywriting in a funny ad. I'm like, this is like, I've never. I'd seen funny ads before, and I'd seen really good copyrights, but never, like, these two things blended together. I was like, I want Harmon Brothers to make a video. They're the ones who do Squatty Potty and a whole bunch of viral videos. At the time, Fiber Fix, they had like 10 home runs in a row. Thing after thing after thing. I was like, I want to hire these guys. And so I remember contacting them on their website. I'm like, hey, how do we hire you guys to make a video for clickfunnels? They don't respond. I'm messaging them, not responding, not responding. Like, all these things. And I cannot get these guys to respond to me. I found out later the reason why is that they thought that funnels were things that people use if they were scamming people online. In fact, my whole career, it's been tough. When I first got started, 20 plus years ago, everyone thought what we were doing. Like, oh, you're just scamming people on the Internet. It was so weird to me. Nowadays, 20 years later, people are like, oh, these. Like, everyone gets it now, but 20 years ago, nobody got it. And even 10 years ago, when we launched clickfunnels, like Harmon Brothers, who had these viral videos, who were understanding marketing they still. They did not understand funnels. They thought they were these weird, scammy things. They refused to respond back to me until something happened. And this is the best. They launched the FiberFix ad. Fiber Fix ad goes, it blows up. It's the fastest growing viral video of all time. People watch fiber fix ad, they go to a Shopify store, and what happens? They hit a brick wall, and nobody converts. And they keep trying. They keep trying. They keep trying and the whole thing. The company spent millions of dollars on this video, his campaign, and nothing's converting. And finally, they had to do something. They had to go reach out to the devil himself. Russell Brunson, say, our funnel. Our page is not converting. Russell. I'm like, oh, it's because you have a Shopify store. Like, how would you fix this? I'm like, oh, you need to build in click funnels. Like, but those things are scammy. I'm like, well, do you want to actually make money or do you not want to make money? They're like, okay, fine. And so they wanted me to build a funnel for them. I wanted them to build a viral video for me. And they said, okay, this is the deal. We'll make a viral video for you, but you can't tell anyone we made it, because we don't want anyone to know about that. We're using click funnels like you. What is wrong with you guys? How many of you guys ever get frustrated when you're trying to grow your business and people are like, it's just. You're just like, do you not understand? Anyway, so I'm like, fine. I don't even care. We're making a viral video, and it's going to be awesome. And then I'm going to fix your problem. So we go build a funnel for them, fix their problems, blow up their company. Like, it's awesome, right? And then they come do a viral video. And if you look at the Harmon brothers, the way they do their process is really cool. The first thing they do is they hire three different sketch comedy writers to write a script for you. So we have three different people all writing a script for how they would sell clickfunnels. And then they rent a cabin in Sundance, and you come to the cabin in Sundance, and they have all three scriptwriters stand up, and the first one reads. And they're comedians, right? They're hilarious people. They read their script, and next person reads their script. Next person reads their scripts. You see all three scripts, and from the three, then you pick which one's your favorite. You're like, ooh, number two is my favorite. So they go take that back. And then they go sit in a room for three or four hours, and they all the comedy garage work together and then write a new script. They come back out and they pitch that one, and you laugh at it, and they tweak some things. They go back and you do this for two days. They come out with, like, the perfect script. And what was weird, when we got to the cabin, the Harmon Brothers, you could tell that they did not want to be there. They did not like us. They thought I was a scammer, but they needed us. And so they're in there, and it was, like, the weirdest, like, cold feeling. Like, these guys really hate us. Like, I don't understand why they don't like us, but they felt obligated to help us. And so we're hanging out for two days, and we're just like, you know, it was actually the middle of the Expert Secrets book launch. Like, we're launching the book. We're talking about it. We're sharing success stories we're telling. So within, like, a day, day and a half, we fall. Like, these guys fall in love with us. All of a sudden, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. We're showing stories like Brandon and Kayla and Poland and other people, all these things, like, like, how these funnels are changing people's lives. And so by the time the two days rolled, like, we had broken them, where they're just like, oh, my gosh, we understand it now. We didn't get it before. And so when it was done, they said, okay, we want to produce this. They were initially just going to do the script for us. Like, we want to produce this, and we'll be proud to put the Harmon Brothers name on it. I was like, okay, thank you. So they produced this viral video for us, and I'll tell. I'll jump ahead a little bit just because it's kind of cool. After that, they fell in love with us. They fell in love with the mission. They fell in love with everything. They started using funnels to sell their own courses. They had. And I still remember two years later on stage, I didn't know that they had won a two comic award, but I'm on stage and two comic awards. All of a sudden, I look over, they announced their names, and entire Harmon Brothers come up, and they came giving me hugs. And they're like, we wanted too complicated. We did it, too. I was like. It was like, the coolest thing. Have that whole thing come full circle, right? It was awesome. Yeah. So Harmon Brother video gets done, and we're like, well, if we're gonna launch this, we gotta, like, we gotta launch this, right? We don't want just like, here's the video. Good luck. We gotta make a lot of noise around it. So we're brainstorming. How do we launch this? What do we do? We should do a big influencer launch. And there's so many funny stories about this. Just brainstorming as a team, like a management team, were throwing ideas out there. And I remember we were trying to get, like, a bunch of big influencers to come to it. And when we were calling Dan Fleischman, I think Dan might be in the room somewhere. I asked Dan. We're like, how do we get people to show up? He's like, we gotta do something crazy. He's like, influencer. If you want, like, the good influencer show up, you gotta get a Ferrari and drive it off a cliff. I said, what? He's like, yeah, that's how you get influencers. Because they want footage of you, like, of them driving a Ferrari off a cliff. That's how you get these guys distracted. Can I pay him something? He's like, no, it's gotta be crazy. I'm like, okay, like, well, like, what's number if we don't get a Ferrari and drive off a cliff? Do you have another idea? And so we kept going through ideas, and then finally we're like, what if we tried to set a world record? And, like, oh, that'd be cool. We get a bunch of people that way. And so we decided, okay, what if we tried? And so we're trying to figure out a world record we could do. And then we're like, what about bubble soccer? We create the biggest bubble soccer contest in the world. We could win a world record. I'm like, where are we going to do this at? Like, what if we rented out the Boise State football. Anyway, it was almost like if you give Mouse the cookie things. And so within, like, 14 days, Dave had rented out the Boise State football stadium. He had called every single in, like, five or six states around this place that had bubble soccer balls and had him ship all these bubble soccer balls to us. We had called every influencer. I literally sat in my car for, like, six hours. I had a list of every YouTube influencer, Instagram influencer, like, hundreds, probably close to a thousand names. And I would record a video for every single one. Hey, what's up? What's up, Casey? Neistat. How's it going, man? Hey. We're doing a bubble soccer party. Da da. We want to invite you to that, right? Made a video. Next person. I sat for six or seven hours making a custom video for every single influencer we could dream of on the planet. It was the most painful thing ever, but I was like, we need to get some of these influencers to show up. So we made that. Then we had to go send these video out, put them on video cards, send them out to all these different influencers. We ended up getting a whole bunch of amazing people to come to this thing. And we did this bubble soccer thing in the Boise State football stadium. We set a world record for the largest bubble soccer game of all time. Any of you guys are in the room for that. Couple of you guys were at was the most insane night. And then at that event, we showed the Harmon Brothers video, and then we had everybody promote it. And this video started going viral. We got 3 or 4 million views on this thing. And it was kind of this new face, this new brand lift. Of course, clickfunnels, with, if you guys saw the videos, this gold prospector being all weird, and that became the face, the mascot of ClickFunnels for the next year. So it was this gold prospector, and that was a lot of fun. That same year, 2007, all these things were happening. We were doing one of the very first ever fat events. I was on stage of the fat events. I get off stage, and there's a phone call from somebody in my church who's really high up. Kind of freaked me out. I thought I was. Anyway, I didn't know. I was kind of scared. And I get on a phone call, and they asked me. They said, have you ever heard of Operation Underground Railroad? I was like, no. What's that? They said, it's this organization that helps save children from sex slavery, and we feel that you need to help somehow. And I was like, thank you. And I was like, how? How do you want us to help? And they're like, I don't know. That's like, God told us you're supposed to do something, so you go figure it out. I was like, what? So, okay. So I had a chance to go down and meet Tim Ballard and people who ran the Our and got to know kind of what they were doing. And then I went back home and was like, hey, I'm supposed to do something. So instantly I put on, like, my consultant hat. Like, if I was a consultant, what would I do. And so we built out this whole plan, what we would do. And it was just a weird thing where we mapped out a funnel that we thought would help bring exposure and all that kind of stuff to this organization. And. And so we're putting it all together, and I'm supposed to drive down to Utah to kind of present this to everybody. Here's what we're gonna do. And that morning, I had this weird, uneasy feeling where I'm just like, it doesn't feel right. Like something feels off. I don't know what it is. Like, strategically, it's the best plan in the world. But it was my plan. And I had this really weird epiphany. Said my plan wasn't the right plan. There was another plan that God had, and I wasn't listening. Anyone ever had that before. So I'm in the shower that day, and I'm just, like, kind of nervous. I'm getting ready and stuff. And then all of a sudden, I was like, what if I don't do my plan? What do I do? I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Then you guys are gonna shower. And all of a sudden, like, these ideas start popping in your head. So in the shower, all of a sudden, this idea pops in my head. And it's crazy. Cause I'd met this guy named Nick Nanton, like, five years earlier at an event. And Nick had won, like, 20 Emmys from documentaries. And I don't know if he even knew who I was. I just, like, crossed paths with him. And so I get out of the shower, and all of a sudden it pops in my head. Nick Natton's name. I was like, that's weird. And there's like, you're supposed. He's going to build a documentary for you to help. To help this organization. I was like, what? Nick Natt doesn't know who I am. So I'm standing. I'm literally in my towel. So I pick my phone, I'm scrolling through Facebook, and I find Nick Natt. And, like, we're both following each other. I'm like, oh. So I messaged him, like, hey, weird thing. I'm supposed to build this documentary God just told me. And it's going to help save a lot of children. And you're supposed to do it. And I don't know, what do you think? Send. And then I'm getting my clothes on, and by the time my clothes are. I walk back out and there's a message back from him. I listen the message. He's like, whoa. He's like, dude, I felt that. Okay, I'm in. If you cover the hard cost, we'll do it for free. Other than the hard cost, we'll do it for free. They can keep the rights to it. I'm not gonna make like, I'm in 100%. I was like, what? I'm like, all right, so, yeah, give Nick Dan a huge round of applause. And so I'm like, we're making a documentary. So I call my team. You know the plans. I'm pitching in, like, five hours. I'm driving, like, it's all canceled. We're doing documentary now. Like, about what? I'm like, I don't even know. But that's the plan. Like, that's the worst plan. Like, that's not even a plan. That's just like. I'm like, I don't know. Like, that was. I was told. We're just doing it. Nixon. It's gonna be amazing. So we drive down and I tell them. I'm like, hey, we're gonna make a documentary. And then, like, someone else did Document in the past, but then they. It was this weird thing where they had the rights to it and they were suing us. It was like this whole nightmare. I was like, okay, well, Nick said that, like, we're gonna do it, and then it's yours, and then you do whatever you want. We don't want any money for it. We don't want any royalties. Like, it's just yours 100%. Like, there. And they're like, what? Why would you do that? I'm like, I don't know, because God told us. So we're just gonna, like, that's the plan. And they're like, okay, let's do that. And so we started this. This crazy process. And so, man, there's so many weird stories I wish I could tell you guys about. About that experience. But Nick ended up going down and filming them, capturing the story. And then they went down to Haiti to go film, I guess. No, Marty, his story with his kid, Garthy, who. Who got stolen. And they're down there filming this interview with him. And all of a sudden, while it's happening, this trafficker they've been trying to capture for a long time. Also, they found her. And Nick Natt and his team are. Are there in Haiti just trying to be normal, interviewing someone. Also, like, we're doing a mission tonight. And, like, what? And so Nick and his entire camera should throw. They throw these guys in, like, armored clothes, throwing the back of the car with their cameras. Nick's getting like these GoPro cameras and strapping them to all the sergeants helmets. And it's like this crazy experience. And they go down there and they go and they find this ring, they bust it, they take it all down and the whole thing gets captured on film for this documentary. It's one of the craziest things in the world. All I remember is that night Nick Natton messaged me. He's like, bro, he's like, this is insane. He's like, came down here to interview these guys. He's like, and then there was the mission and they took us and we arrested like 30 people. It's like I'm pretty sure that they're gonna come and kill us. We're racing to the airport, they're gonna get us out of here. This was the most insane experience ever, man. I'll message you when we land. I'm listening to Foxer message. I'm like, wait, what, what's happening? I'm messaging back, no response, no response. I'm like, he might be dead for all I know. I have no idea what's happening. Like, I'm freaking out. Five or six later, hours later, he messaged him. He's like, we're in America. He's like, we're safe. He's like, we got all this footage. It's insane. And anyway, there's so many stories that happen and from that they film this documentary. Fast forward now, two months later, we're at Funnel Hacking Live. And this Funnel Hacking Live was crazy. There's so many crazy things happened that year. In fact, 30 days before, before that, Funnel Hacking Live, I got asked to speak at Grant Cardone's event in Mandalay Bay. You guys have probably heard this story before and this is 2018. 2018 was one of the most crazy years in the world. 2018 happens. I can go to Grant Cardone's event. I knew at the time the world record for the most that had been sold from a stage was like 1.2, 1.3 million. I was like, I want to beat the world record, what's it going to take? So we set a goal. How do we make $3 million in a 90 minute presentation? That's the equivalent of like a million dollars an hour take home for me, which would be like the craziest thing. So we figured it all out, reverse engineer it and you guys have heard this story. I'm not going to go deep into it, but we do the presentation at 10x. We close. $3.2 million in sales. Insane. Like the craziest. One of the craziest things in my life. Yeah, it didn't feel real, right? We're in this stadium talking about funnels and people are freaking out. I'm like, this is the same thing. Fifteen years ago, I do an event and nobody would show up to it. Now we're in a stadium and people are freaking out. And then 30 days later, we come to funnel hacking live. And this is the first funnel hacking live where we introduced two common Quebec's coaching program. At that funnel Hacking live. It was like the perfect storm. One of the most crazy things in the world. Night one of that event, we introduced Tim Ballard to operation Underground Railroad. And that night we watched the Our documentary that we had filmed. And it was crazy. If anyone was in the room, like, we're all out here bawling our eyes. That was crazy. All of the families from Haiti with lost kids were there. They were all on stage with us. It was the craziest thing. And during that event, we raised over a million dollars for operation Underground railroad, which was insane. It was crazy. Then we launched two comic book x coaching program. We launched that, and during that, we did over $12 million in sales. From that, I'm like, we go from three and a half million dollars to 30. Is there 12 million? Like, it's just like everything we touch is on fire. Feels like we are on top of the world. Everybody loves us. We're like, the hero's journey is all happening. Like, everything's perfect. It was crazy. That same year, I go to a mastermind with Dean Graziosi, Brendan Burchard. We're hanging out, having this whole thing. On the flight back, I'm sitting next to Dean. Dean's like, I have this idea. We're building this company where it does masterminds. I was like, you should go buy the domain name mastermind.com. he's like, no, it's too expensive. We're not gonna buy it. And so I was like, how can I build a good relationship with these guys? And so I find out. I go to mastermind.com and it's owned by someone who had a two, club board. They're on the homepage holding two comic club award. I'm like, oh, if they've got a two comic club board, I got it in. I can figure out how to get ahold of these guys. And so Dave figured out how to get ahold of them, got him on the phone, and we ended up buying mastermind.com from them for $600,000. And then I gave it to Dean Antonio as a gift. I'm like, dean, you really should buy mastermind.com, he's like, no, we're gonna call it something else. I was like, okay, here. I bought the domain. Merry Christmas. There you go. He's like, what? You bought me this? I'm like, yeah, you just need to have it. It's the coolest thing in the world. So we gave him the domain after that. It was crazy. He called me back, him and Tony, and said, hey, that was insane. And then they made me actually a partner in the business. And so the first year, we did this insane launch, and Tony and Dean and launched it as a partner in the business, and it was great. And then after that, after the first year, I was like, you know what? I want to focus on. Clickfunnels I actually gave back my equity and then became a great partner in the business, but no longer kind of a partner in it. But for the first year, we were partners in Mastermind, which was really, really cool. And that was all 2018. It was just one of the. It was just crazy. We felt invincible for a while. Then comes 2019. Then we got invited back to GrowthCon, and we did the second GrowthCon, which was in the Mariners baseball stadium. Any of you guys happen to be at that one? Couple of you guys. It was crazy. Supposedly Grant Cardone, like, parachuted into the stadium. Years later, we found out it probably wasn't Grant Cardone, but it was crazy. That happens. And then grandson station peeking. I'm right after, and we're thinking, okay, there's 30,000 people in the room. I'm doing the math in our head, if we did off 9,000 this much, how much we're making here, we're just planning on killing it. And I do the pitch, and if anyone was there, I get on stage, this huge stadium. I start talking. First thing, my microphone goes out. So then they hand me, like, a handheld, which I'm, like, talking. Like, forget to hold it up. Am I talking? And anyway, and then there's this weird echo reverb. So I'm doing this presentation, and you can't hear anything. And I talk at Russell speed, right? So I'm like, that's what happened. I'm talking, and it hits the back wall, and it bounces back, and then it hits me, and I hear it, and I throw me off. And then the audience is hearing, like, three or four reverbs, and nobody can understand a word I'm saying. And I'm just like. And the confident barbers be like, slow down, slow down. I'm like, I don't know how to slow down. Like, I have 90 minutes to give a two hour presentation and nobody can hear a word. And then people are getting up. It was just the weirdest thing. And anyway, we did a whole documentary, if you guys want to see the whole story. It was crazy. But we did this event and it kind of bombed. And it was weird because we. Yeah, it was like everything kind of went down after that. It was just the weirdest thing. Like, it didn't work. They ended up figuring out they opened the roof a little bit. There was less echoes. Other speakers had the echo. But for me, it was so bad that nobody understand a word I was saying. And it was just like. It was one of those things that was just like one of those punches in the gut. Excuse me. 2019, I also had a chance to go to Fiji in a mastermind group and ask Tony Robbins a question. And the question I asked him was just. I was like, I love building funnels, but, like, in this role, I'm not building funnels. Like, I'm a CEO. I've got meetings, I got things. I'm like, I don't get to do what I love the most. And Tony gave me a really cool piece of advice. That whole documentary is online as well, if you want to see the whole story. But he was like, well, the problem is, like, why are you trying to be the CEO? He's like, you shouldn't be the CEO. He's like, be on the board of directors, then pick the roles you actually want to do. He's like, get someone who's a really good CEO and have them be the CEO for you. And I was like, oh, my gosh, that would be insane. Because I'm not good at the whole management and people part of the business. And so I get home and Todd and I start talking about this, and there was only one person that made sense. There's only one person who I thought in our organization who could be the person who I would trust with the reins of clickfunnels. And obviously that was Dave Woodward. And so that year is the year that I kind of stepped down from being CEO. Give Dave a round of applause. And I gave Dave the reins and I was like, okay, I'm gonna go build funnels. You can do the rest of it. And man, for the next year or so, just. It worked. It was working really, really great. It was really Fun. About that time, I remember we got this random phone call from a company, and they were representing a big bank, and they were looking for a company that did payment processing. And obviously clickfunnels processes, you know, one and a half, $2 billion a year in payment processing. And they messaged us like, hey, this company's looking to acquire someone, and they're interested in actually acquiring you. And we're like, we're not for sale. We're bootstrapped. No. And then. And the guy's like, well, are you sure you don't want to entertain this? I'm like, we wouldn't entertain unless the offer is over a billion dollars. The guy comes back, can I talk to him? They'd be interested. They'd be willing, if the number's right, to do over a billion dollars. We're like, what? That was a joke. Here's another joke. And it comes back. And anyway, like, okay. And so that was the first time. Like, well, are we worth that? What does that even look? I wouldn't even know. And so we started part this guy who's like, we can go find out, see what ClickFunnels is actually worth. And so they went together, and I don't know how it all works. They put together a package, and they put it out there. And then from that, we end up getting three or four hundred people are interested in looking at the package. And then this is basically this big, huge funnel, right? So these people look at the package, and then from 300, 400 people, it's like 800 people are like, ooh, I'm actually interested. I want to send NDAs and go deeper. And then from there, and it kept getting smaller and smaller. And so, like, we're running clickfunnels doing stuff. There's this weird distraction where we keep hearing these numbers, hearing these things, and have conversations. People fly out to Boise to meet the team and see what we're doing. We're trying to, like, not pay attention. We're trying to, like, keep doing what we're doing, but there's this weird distraction that keeps happening in the background. And again, this is 2020. And it gets closer and closer to the spot where he gets down. There's, like, I think, four companies at the end, and they start actually giving us, like, real legitimate numbers. And it. What, you know, initially people started, it's gonna be a billion dollars. And it got smaller and smaller because of the, like, these guys are really smart. You start learning about, like, they're very smart, looking at, like, oh, it would be that if it was this. But then there's this and there's this. They kept getting small. It kept tweaking and changing. And finally it was actually 2020 was the day of the election. I actually jumped in a plane and I flew out to Atlanta to go hang out with Todd because I knew that the offer's coming in the next morning, and we kind of had ballpark what it was going to be. And I don't think I'm allowed to say exactly what the offer coming be, but when all said and done, both Todd and I personally would have walked away with over $110 million. Cash ourselves in our pockets. Like, boom, we're out. See you guys later. Now, has anyone who had opportunities like, there's 110,000 or. Sorry, $110 million. 110,000 is not that big of a deal. $110 million each would have been each of our personal take home on the thing. So imagine there's the table right here with $110 million. You could just grab and then just be like, peace, I'm out of here. Or there's option two, which is like, go back and keep struggling for four or five more years because you have another hero's journey you got to go on. What would you guys do in that situation? Let's go. Right? It's crazy. And so Todd and I are sitting there, and it's just like, man, we're there for a day or two, talking back and forth, and I don't know, it's just one of those things. And it was weird because I was scared. I was like, todd's not gonna want. Todd's just gonna want to do that. And I'm. We kept talking back and forth, and both of us are like, man, I don't feel like we're done yet. I don't feel like. I feel like there's something we're supposed to be doing or like, again, that call, the contribution, that thing was like, it doesn't make sense. So we're there for like, 48 hours or so, and the next thing I know, Dave's like, I'm at the airport. I'll be there soon. He's like, I'm not missing this party. So then Dave flies out to Atlanta, and so we're sitting in a room, and we're trying to decide what do we do? Like, clickfunnels is great, right? It's been really good. It was like, there's things we know we need to do to get the next level. Like, there's stuff we gotta do, there's foundational stuff that we can't do in the existing platform. So either we can create the plan, give it to this new company, they can go do and execute it, or we can go back to the drawing board and build something that gives us the ability to do the vision that we have. What do we do? What do we do? And I remember we sat down. Oh, in fact, check this out. I have a couple slides here. This is the night before the offer came. We throw slides up real quick. This is me jumping in a plane. I almost died that night. Actually, we get in this plane, we're flying to Canton, Georgia, which, if you know Canton, it's like, there's Atlanta, there's a little tiny place called Canton, and there's a little private airport next to it. So we're flying this private airport, and the guy gets above the private airport and he's like, all the lights are off down there. Like, what? He's like, yeah, there's no one down there. He's like, messaging him. There's no lights down there. He's like circling. He's like, there's no one down there. We can't land. And Todd's like, in his jeep down there waiting for me. I'm like, but he's. He's right there. How do we just kind of jump out? Like, I don't want to go right there. Like, sorry. And there's some wind and stuff. And so, like, we're going to go fly like an hour, like, somewhere else. I'm messaging Tom, like, they're flying me some other airport. So Todd's like, racing this airport, like, at 2 in the morning. I end up flying and they land somewhere else. Anyway, it was kind of crazy. So we come back next day, we're sitting here. This is the day we're getting the offer. We're freaking out. We're like, what do we do? What do we not do? There's Todd mapping out world nomination on the board over there. This is the next day. Dave flies out. We go to Todd's lake house. We sit down and say, okay, we gotta do something great. And first we need to get the pad of paper. We say, okay, this is again middle of election season. So make clickfunnels great again. What do we gotta do to make clickfunnels great again? Like, it's really, really good. How do we make it great again? What does it actually look like? And we sat down and started thinking about and brainstorming, like, what would it look like, how long would it take? What would it. And this was. It was fun. It was exciting. It was like going back to the very beginning. We were first mapping this out. Like, what would that look like? This is Todd coding stuff. During this night, this conversation was Todd first reached out to Andrew. You guys had a chance to meet Andrew. Andrew had built this platform called Bullet Train that Todd wanted to build new clickfunnels on. He reached out to Andrew. At night, we start talking. This whole thing starts going together. This is us doing more planning. And that's me and Dave at the end of the week, flying out after we decided, like, you know what, let's push some money away. Like, we got a bigger mission. Let's go figure this thing out. Let's go change the world one more time. Which is crazy. Which is scary. It's still crazy. I'll talk about something the next couple years. But it's always weird to me that, like, I don't know, when people get frustrated at me for something and it's like, you understand, like, all these things I'm doing are for you guys. I don't need to be doing this. I could have walked away. You know what I mean? Anyway, I'll get to that later. But. We did this because we know you guys. We love you guys. We know what you're capable of. Like, I think I understand and believe more in each of your divine potential than most of you guys do. I know what you're capable of. I know the people's lives you can change. And I don't want to not be part of that. That's why we keep showing up and keep doing this despite all the obstacles. Okay, so that starts this journey, 2021. Now Todd is in building mode. It was top secrets, like the Skunk Schwartz project. Most of our team doesn't know about it. They're rebuilding this thing. They're rebuilding this thing. They're rebuilding this thing as fast as they can from the ground up to rebuild what our vision was. During that time, we start doing some acquisitions. We buy a company called Voomly with a bunch of products. Dan Kennedy's company comes on the market. We decided to buy Dan Kennedy's company. And it's like this heyday of the chaos and all sorts of stuff happening, right? Todd's building this. We're acquiring companies, focusing on the growth. Like, all sorts of stuff's happening. It's kind of crazy. And we are a week away from closing on the magnetic marketing offer with Dan Kennedy. I'm so excited Because I'm freaking out. This whole thing's about to happen. I don't know where the part of this story goes, so. So about a week before the magnetic marketing deal was done. So Dave and I are sitting in the office, we're talking, we're trying to figure things out. And I just remember Dave wasn't feeling good for reasons, and he was kind of struggling with some stuff. And he's like, oh, something's wrong. I can't figure it out. I gotta go to the doctor to go figure things out. But you know, man, he's like Superman. Like, bigger than life. Like, I don't think much about it. Goes to the doctor and then comes back. We're just working on some stuff and in the middle of the day, I look over at his desk and I see him. He's on the ground praying. And not that I hadn't seen him pray before, but never like that in the middle of the day next to his desk and waited until he was done and walked in. And I was like, hey, what's going on? And, oh, man, he told me. He's like, hey, the doctor's calling. I have a tumor. And those of you guys haven't had a chance to meet Dave. This is Dave. He spoke his Captain America one time. Fun, rocking live. Shows me his pictures. He's like, I don't know what that means. He's like, I don't know what's going to happen. All we knew was really. It was a really bad one. It was really fast and things started moving so fast. Within like a day or two, he was in surgery. And, like, I don't even know. It was like. Anyway, I don't know. Things started happening so fast and it was just. It was crazy. Next man, he was in surgery. He's coming out. We're all cheering for him. Everyone's got Team Dave shirts on. And anyway, I don't. A lot of that phase was a blur for me. I don't know. I don't remember all the things. All I remember is, like, the person who I was the closest to, who I spent the most time with. It was just. I don't know, it was hard trying to figure things out and trying to figure, you know, he was running clickfunnels. He's running a company and he's going through this. And I remember that night. For the next two or three months, I couldn't sleep. And I think about him and his wife and his kids and, like, what they must be going through and, like, the fear and I just. I don't know all the things. And on top of that, we have this clickfunnels. We're building a new platform. We just bought two companies. We acquired like five or six hundred employees overnight. And I don't know what to do. And I'm trying to figure anyways, just. I don't know, it was just so much chaos, so fast and things are so much pressure and so much things. And like it was just such a scary dark season. I couldn't. I mean, I couldn't sleep for months and months. I still struggle sleeping, honestly. Just trying to figure out the things and some of the. Some of the parts behind it. Not knowing what's going to happen. That year, we had announced to the at Funnel Hacking Live that we were working on on ClickFunnels 2.0. And we were so excited to share it with everybody. We'd been building for over a year and we were sharing it and we thought we were probably closer than we probably were. We told everyone was coming, so everyone was so excited and we were excited. We were racing towards this thing. And during that time we had competitors coming in who were taking shots at us. But we were like, it doesn't matter because we got this new thing coming out. It's gonna be so great. We're so excited. And we got closer and closer to the next Funnel Hacking Live during this window, right? We just bought Dan Case company, just got vomily, Dave just got diagnosed. Everything's happening. Funnel hacking's got to happen. And people are giving so much pressure. Like, we need Click Funnel super. We need this. We're leaving the platform, like all these kind of things that year. Funnel Hacking Live and I'll take responsibility for this. I was like, we need to get this to the market. We need to get everybody access to this. And so that year, Funnel Hacking Live, we showed it off the first time. And it's something we'd been using for the last six months. Like, we are proud of it. We're. But what's crazy is like we build software. We built clickfunnels the very first time. Day number one, you don't have 10,000 customers. Day one, you get one, then you get five, then you get 10. And little hiccups come, little bugs. You fix them along the way, right? So we've been using clickfunnels for six months ourselves. We figured all the bugs was flawless. And shortly after, like Live, we decided to do the launch, let people in, and we told people, it's a beta launch, you're Going to continue to have access to clickfunnels. Classic. But you also get 2.0. You can test it out. And so we do this launch, and in one week, we get 16,000 people to join the new platform. It's crazy, But, man, adding 16,000 people to a platform overnight was definitely a Russell mistake. I will take credit for that one. And things came in and it was like, everyone's starting to hit on it. Tons of load and pressure, and we're trying to figure things out. And again, when we launched, I told everyone, I was like, you still have class to give to people. This is beta. Use both of them and figure things out. But unfortunately, a lot of people came in and they didn't like the experience initially as we were fixing bugs and keeping things up. And we lost a lot of people during that window. And it was tough. And it's weird to me because again, instead of people like, oh, it's not ready. I'll just focus on classic. People got angry in a really weird way. Not everybody, but some people did. And again, it was in the middle of all this stuff happening. It was just like, we're trying to get this out. We're trying everything. We literally walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars to create this. We're so proud of it. And, yes, there's gonna be issues and be problems, but we were trying to work through them as fast as we could. And that year started for man, started for me, like, a really tough time. It was weird. I started seeing people who were. Who were close friends and partners, people who had been with us the whole, like, the whole journey, who all of a sudden were, like, turning their backs on us and walking away. And I started seeing people who. I remember them being on stage, getting to comic awards, crying their eyes out, like, Russell, you changed my life. You changed my life. And then seeing them the next month, running a Facebook ad with them with the 2 comma Club Awards, saying, I switched from ClickFunnels to this one over here, to my white label. You should go try it over here. And, like, competing directly against me, talking trash, man. Like, putting out lies and stuff, because they were opportunists as opposed to sticking with us to the mission. And it was, like, the weirdest thing. And for me, it became a very dark time almost for the next year and a half, two years, where I was struggling because it was like, I was so frustrated. Like, I was called to serve you guys as customers, and there were customers who came in who took everything, which I loved, giving everything we could and then took that and then would compete against us and, like, in ways that were really painful. And for me, it got to a spot, if I'm completely honest, where I was just like, I don't want to help people anymore, because if I help them, what's it going to mean? Right? I'm training people who are going to compete against me. And, like, it was really hard for me. I'm sure a lot of you guys have gone through that before in your life where it's like, the people you're called to serve. Sometimes things happen. You're just like, man, I don't know if I want to serve these people anymore. And it was hard. It was like this weird thing for me. I'm trying to figure things out. And I had people who were like, it's weird. People who left, like, hey, you. You forgot about me. You stopped. You stopped messaging. Start treating me. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, I was drowning. Like, I wish that someone was able to reach back out to me as opposed to what happened. 2022 in the midst of this, as we launch clickfunnels, as we're working through these issues as we are fixing things, Todd and the team are amazing as they're fixing things as fast as we can. They're improving upon things, strengthening things. Like, they're killing themselves. We're doing things our side. In December of 2022, I was leaving. I was leaving wrestling practice with my kids and then got a message from Dave's wife. And they said, hey, you should come over tonight. This might be the last time. And so we went over and just had such a cool experience to be with him and pray with him and to talk to him. And I remember when the last conversation I had, he looked at me directly in the eye and he says, russell, you changed my life. And. Shortly after that, we had a chance to have a great memorial for Dave and talk about him and share his life and just. I started thinking about, like, through this whole journey, the one person was consistent the whole time was always Dave. He was always one. Every night I'd be working late, he would show up. He'd be sitting there right next to me in the room. I'd be going through so much pain. He'd come to me, what can I take off your plate? What can I take off your plate? What can I do? It was just so, so many, just insanely great memories of him and, like, on this journey. And I know that there's no way I could have gotten myself here without him. Right. And it was. Anyway, that was the end of 2022. In 2023 starts the journey without Dave for that next year. And that year was tough. It was me trying to re, jump back into a CEO role and trying to figure out how to run things and trying to. And we were bringing people in and again we just bought these companies, we're trying to. How do we juggle these companies with our own companies? Plus we're trying to launch this new platform. And I don't remember a lot of 2023, I don't remember a lot of was tough. Towards the end of 2023, my twin boys, our first born kids, they turn 18, which is crazy. And so proud of them. Man, I love my, my kids are. I have amazing kids, all of them. And I remember at the end of 20 years, at 2023, they had their 18th birthday as twins, 18 year old birthday. And we were planning in our minds, like, you know, when you have kids, like you figure like you have your kids, they're going to graduate high school and at that point they're going to leave and you're prepared for that. So we were preparing for them like that year leaving. And I remember when our kids turned 18, one of our sons was like, I'm 18. And he was ready to leave and to go into the world. And he did. And I'm proud of him. He's doing such a great job. But I don't think Colette and I were ready for that. Like he leaves and it's just like when you're not ready for that and going through the emotional turmoil that I don't understand, like, how does this work? He's not here anymore. He's living somewhere else. And like as a parent, like it's really scary in fact. And then Bowen, his twin, just left on a mission like a month ago. So he's gone for two years now. So it's like we're learning this new phase of being parenting, right? Of being parents. And it's hard, it's emotional. It's one of these things where it's like your whole life you're pouring into these kids and all of a sudden like they're adults and they're in the real world. And it's like if you haven't experienced that yet, you with younger kids, like it's coming and it's horrible and amazing all at the same time. So 2023, we're learning how to do that in 2024. I won't go into the whole thing, but the beginning of 20, 24. You guys know, if you guys don't know, I'm mildly obsessed with wrestling myself. One thing I'm so proud of is I've been trying, I've always tried to be very present with my, with my kids. I want to be there when they're competing, when they're all sorts of, especially in wrestling, which is my favorite love. So I don't think I missed a wrestling practice. My entire kid's career, through middle school, through high school, every single practice, every single meet. In fact, there was one time we were in a riding retreat with the Harmon Brothers and I was in riding retreat that morning. And then they had a wrestling match that night. So I charted a plane. It cost me $30,000 to fly from the Harmon Brothers retreat. So I did not miss my kids wrestling match that night. That's how important like wrestling is to me. And, and this is my son, Bowen, senior year at wrestling. I'm there all summer long. We worked out every single day, worked out every single day practice. I didn't miss a single practice. Getting closer and closer. It's the end of his season and we're getting closer and closer. And we're at a tournament at the beginning of the year and I'm sure a lot of you guys probably saw the video. It was after a night the night prior. My wife and I hadn't gone to bed till 2 or 3 in the morning because of some reasons. Next morning I'm at this wrestling tournament and terms happening my son's wrestling. And I'm not justifying what I did because what I did was completely wrong. My son gets put into an illegal move. As a dad, I freak out. I'm three feet away from my jump off. I push the kid off too aggressively. It was definitely not okay. It was not right what I did afterwards, I apologized to the family. We drove out there, we apologized to them and the family. Everything should have been okay. Of course somebody caught a video clip from really, really far and saw an opportunity. And so that video, it goes viral. Anybody who doesn't like Russell Brunson sees the video and is so excited. This is their chance to finally the guy who's got the perfect outside looking and takes jabs. And people who I thought were friends start reposting the video, start talking about they hate me. Why they hate me. These videos go viral. One of the videos actually made on the Joe Rogan show. I made it on the Joe Rogan Show. Yes. Congratulations. I finally made it on Rogan. These videos get tens of Millions of views. And over the next three weeks of my life, I get, conservatively, probably three to 4,000 death threats. People want to kill me because. Yeah, and if you haven't had a chance to get canceled yet, does not feel good. But especially doesn't feel good amongst people a lot of times who thought your friends, who are the ones, you know, pushing it forward. And that was hard. That was the beginning of the year, and last year was a hard year for me. It was hard because I'm like, I want to serve people, but, like, I don't want people to turn on me. Like, fear of that. Fear of, like, if I put my face online, I'm gonna get 500 people to talk trash about me. Fear of, like, all these things. And the fear got heavier and heavier and heavier for me, where I was just like, how do I show up? Like, I'm supposed to do this thing. I have this calling, right? I don't feel worthy now. I'm an idiot. Look what I did on national tv. Everyone in the world saw it. I feel like just thing after thing. I don't want to do this. I want to. I want to shrink. I want to hide. Like, I don't. Like. I don't know. It was tough. I'm like, what do I do? Do I just walk away like, it's done? And in real life time, I'd been seeing Andy Elliot online. This is how I got to know Andy. And I messaged him, like, hey, man, love what you're doing. Love your energy. And he was like, bro, come out to Arizona. I was like, I'm so. I can't come to Arizona. I said, no, you need to come to Arizona right now. And so I don't know why. For some reason, I felt that tug. All right, go out there. So I jump in a plane, fly out to Arizona, and I walk in, and if you guys. I show some video clips. But I get to this place, we show up in a jeep, and he's got Andy. The Elliott army shows up around the jeep. They start shaking this jeep, and they're not about to knock this whole thing over. And we're waiting. They open the door. I remember my phone fell out and smashed on the ground. They pick me up. They start throwing me in the sky. They throw me out. I'm flying through. I'm like, what is happening? And then I come out, and then all of a sudden, they're like, hey, the way you introduced Russell Brunson is not by shaking his hand. This is how you do it All Of a sudden, there's four or five guys who all start stripping their clothes off, and they're in wrestling singlets. There's a little guy, a bigger guy, and a guy who's like 400 pounds in a wrestling singlet. They bring out like this 4x5 wrestling mat under the Arizona scorching sun. And I'm sitting there in my nice clothes, my Louis Vuitton shirt, and it's like, all right, Russell Brunson, we want to wrestle you right now. And I see drones flying above cameras, every camera, and like, like, what am I about to do? But if you take my strengths finder, my number one thing is competition. I cannot turn down to competition. And I was like, all right, so I take my shoes off. You guys want to lose in front of all these cameras? I'm up for it. As I'm thinking in my head, like, I don't know who these kids are. They could be national champs. They could be like, that guy's 400 pounds. He could crush me. But I'm going to wrestle. So I'm stripping down my clothes. I walk out there, my jeans, bare feet, and my nice Louis Von. Louis Von. You know, I'm trying to, like, dress nice to show up for these guys, Shake hands, and we are wrestling on this mat. Luckily, I beat the first guy. Boom. And then the scorching sun on these mats gets hotter where it is like 2000 degrees. The kid I'm wrestling, he has blisters on his feet from being so hot. So I jump off and I'm like, so, okay, good, we're done. Our feet are bleeding. We're good. They're like, pull the mat to the shade. Like, what? Like, no. So I pull the mat from the shade, put it, cool off for a few minutes. Like, all right, match number two. So I'm wrestling the next guy who happens to be like a jiu jitsu guy. And I kind of know jiu jitsu, but not great. So we're doing jiu jitsu. Luckily, I get him, tap him out. Next guy comes out, wrestle that guy, beat him. And all of a sudden, the 400 pound guy comes out. I'm like, please don't make me wrestle him. That guy is huge. And so that guy wrestled the guy. That guy beat him. Then I beat that guy. And then I was done. I was like, okay, I'm done. And for the next, like, I don't know, 10 hours, Andy's there, and he's like, do you know who you are? Like, you're Russell Brunson. He's like, you changed my life. And he's freaky. I was telling everyone who I am. I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot. I'm Russell Brunson. He's like, dude. And he's showing every single person like, this is Russell Brunson. You know, this guy is. Sa. He reminded me who I was. And I remembered who I was. I was like, oh, this feels good. I started thinking about that. I started thinking about the journey. I started thinking about the last decade, last two decades. I started thinking about the people who came on stage, the people who were crying. It didn't matter what they did with that. What matters is that it changed their life. And it changed their life, right? And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, he's right. I'm Russell Brunson. I remembered who I was. For a lot of you guys, you just need someone like me to remember who you are. Someone in your family. Who are you? Right? You were called to this. I was called to this. There's always going to be headaches. We were always going to get punched in the face. There's always going to. People take advantage of you. It just happens. That's okay. It doesn't keep you from doing your mission, your calling. You still step into it, right? Because there's somebody else out there who you are supposed to meet. And you're going to go through. People are going to take advantage. You're going to go to people who are going to make you feel less than you are going to take advantage of you and make fun of you in front of other people. That's gonna happen. Doesn't matter who you are. Doesn't matter how much of a business you build. People are like. You build clickfunnels. You've been happily ever after, right? Kinda. I had. Someone told me, so when did you know that you arrived, like, when was that feeling? And I was like, what? He's like, you know when you, like, you figured it out? I have no idea. I'll tell you when I figured out. Like, I'm still in the game with you guys, right? I'm not like everyone else who stopped. I'm not everyone else who gave up. Like, I am here in the trenches with you every single day. I am a funnel hacker like you. I'm building funnels. I'm launching photos every single day. Okay? I've got the same mission. I'm drawn by the exact same thing you guys are. I hear the calling. I keep stepping up. I keep stepping up. Even if I'm scared. Even if people are laughing at me, even when it doesn't make any sense, because we've been called to something greater than what we are now. Okay? So as this last year, I've remembered who I am. My job is to help you guys remember who you are, okay? Every one of you guys have a calling, okay? And if nothing else, I want you. I want me to be an example of, like, I'm gonna get. I got the crap kicked out of me for a couple years, and it's tough. And it's not all sunshine and roses. I wish I told you today it's all great. No, no, no. Okay. I know where I'm going. We're in momentum. You guys feel it here in the clickfunnels world. You guys feel the momentum. Okay? It's coming. But I'm stepping into a new hero's journey. I had to step. The refusal to call was hitting me for the last year, year and a half. Okay? I have broken through that again. And now I'm on the journey. And it's not the end. It is the beginning, and it's gonna be brutal. But we are going to win. And it's fun. Okay, man. I just want to tell you guys, like, the last. I mean, I've been in this business now for two decades. The first decade I thought was crazy, and we launched clickfunnels. I thought we were done, but, man, this last decade has been even more crazy, but it's also been more fulfilling. The relationships I built, the people I've met, the friendships, the growth, myself, personally, but also your guys is like, seeing what you guys have done with this stuff, right? 20 years ago, I was doing an event. I told you guys, two people showed up. I was so excited to tell people they could change the world. This thing called sales funnels, and nobody cared. And the fact that now it's here and I'm seeing it happen day after day, day after day, I'm seeing it happen to you guys. I'm seeing how you guys are changing the world. That's all that matters to me. It doesn't matter. Our job right now, as you guys see with Offerlab and things we're doing, we're reuniting the industry, we're reuniting the community. When all is said and done, the only thing that matters to us is the mission. The mission is to free entrepreneurs so they can go back to changing the lives of the people they've been called to serve. That's what we're doing. And I'm here To serve you guys at whatever level, whatever capacity I can, because I believe in you. I know what that calling feels like, but I also know how hard that calling can be. It is heavy. There's a quote. It says, heavy is the head of him who wears the crown. You can't do it on your own. I can't do it on my own. I've got a team, I've got a community. I've got people. I've got all of you guys, right? And that's why we do this funnel hacking Live is a community for you guys to get together. Okay? And again, I'm gonna. We're take a break here. In a minute, I'll come back and I'm gonna do one last presentation about what the future is. But for right now, like, I don't want this to end for any of you guys. The worst thing is you hear in this fire eggs, this inferno. Fire egg. You guys are on fire egg. How many guys feel it right now? Like, I'm gonna go home and, like, I'm gonna take over the world, right? And then a lot of times that flame leaves the fire and it flickers and it dimmers. And I don't want that to dim for you. That's why we create the coaching office. Why we create this is we want to take this with you guys on the road. We want to continue on Monday. We want you guys jumping in the training. We want you guys doing the next step so we can help you in that mission to continue to do it. Okay? You guys need a tribe. I need a tribe. We got to stay close together because that's how we're going to individually each get our collective missions, how we're going to do it. Okay, I want to end the session with this one quote that I just. Guys, earlier, this is from Gary Halbert. He said, if you guys remember this earlier, he said, properly exploited, one good idea that occurs to you while walking on a beach is worth More than 10 lifetimes of hard work. Okay? And this is kind of like the how to make money version of it, which is cool and it's inspiring. But I think if we were to tweak this a little bit for our message and start thinking about, like, one idea, one calling, like, one group of people, when you understand how to execute it correctly, like, we'll be able to change more people's lives than any other industry, any other organization has ever done prior to this, by what we know and what we can do. Do you guys believe it? Cause I do. I've seen it. We've been doing this for the last decade. I've seen it over and over and over again. One thing that Dave used to always talk to me about, every time it would get hard and I get a spot where I was just like, why are we doing this? Like, we should just give up. We have people stop filing lawsuits, people angry, all sorts of stuff. And he would look at me. He's like. He's like, this is not just a business. You know that, Russell. I'm like, I know. He's like, no, no. He's like. He's like, this is something bigger. This is from God. That's why we've been called to do this. He's like, that's why we can't stop. Okay? So for me, when I remembered faith in the purpose, this purpose was not something I made up, right? It was planted into my heart, okay? And I have faith that came from something beyond myself, which is why we're here, why we keep showing up, the reason why we didn't take $110 million and be like, peace, see you guys. Cause that's not why I'm here. I could have taken that money to be done. That's not why I'm here. I'm here because of you guys, because I know what you're capable of if I know the impact and the ripple effect that will happen when you guys figure out how to take your message and your voice and get it out to the marketplace. And that's why we're here.