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The Russell Brunson Show
The Overlooked “Old Way” to Sell That OfferLab Brings Back! | #Sales - Ep. 70
00:37:28
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Russell Brunson
This is the Russell Brunson show. Hey, what's up? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the show. We just finished the OfferLab launch. I think most of you guys probably watched it or a part of it. Hopefully you enjoyed it at the OfferLab launch, after the launch day, then we had a three day event happening afterwards. It's kind of a four day event and it was chaos and it was fun and it was exciting. We had over 40, I think 45 speakers who came and spoke and it was amazing. But I had a chance to do a special presentation each day that, that was really fun and I wanted to share here with you guys on the podcast. So the first presentation, this was really fun for me to give because I talk about how we made money before Facebook, before MySpace, before friends here back when we were just getting started in this game, how did you have successfully, how did you make sales and drive traffic when you didn't have these ad platforms to drive traffic from? And I showed everyone what was happening and one of the premises of this talk is like, if you want to understand how to be successful in the future, you have to learn about the past. Because right now there's a storm coming, traffic is changing, everything is shifting. And those who understand how we had traffic before Facebook, the ones who are gonna be successful now, that getting traffic is harder and harder on Facebook and the other platforms. And so that's this presentation is about. I hope you enjoy it. If you haven't got your OfferLab account yet, it's completely free. You just go to offerlab.com and get signed up. It's, it's really cool. And so go check it out and that's all you gotta do. So thanks so much, you guys. And we'll jump right into the first training right now. What I wanted to spend my first 30 minutes or so today before I start bringing all the other guest speakers is I just wanted to share with you guys basically a history lesson. My belief is that for you to be successful in the future, you have to understand the Past. And most of you guys who are even in this room, for sure, at home. Most of you guys haven't been doing this that long. In fact, I want to do a quick poll. How many of you guys have been in this game, this online business game, for more than a year? If you've got a year, raise your hand. Okay. More than five years. Keep your hand raised. More than 10 years. Keep your hand raised. More than 15 years. Keep your hand raised. MORE THAN 20 YEARS. Keep your hand raised. More THAN 25 YEARS. Keep your hand raised. There's one person in the room, me, and maybe one or two. Okay, so I've been playing this game for a long time. I know I look like I'm 11 years old. I'm actually 45 years old right now, which is crazy. I started this game when I was 21, so that's kind of when I got into this world. And back then, the Internet looked completely different. It's not like it is today. And we had to figure a lot of things out. And so what we were doing back when I was in my twenties is the secret to being successful moving forward. When I wrote the Traffic Secrets book, the introduction title was There's a Storm Coming. I talked about this four years ago. I'm like, there's a storm coming. Traffic's changing. Internet's changing. Those who don't understand these core principles are gonna struggle. And I've watched now, over the last four years since I wrote that in the book, I've watched as the Internet has changed, as ads have changed, as the plat. And so many people who I love and care about, who have amazing messages and products and services have fallen away because they didn't heed the warning then. And so this is me reheating the warning today. Because things are not going to get cheaper online. Traffic's not going to get easier. Going viral is not going to be an easier thing. And so the secret for you to be successful in the future is to understand the past. How did we play and win the game before we could buy ads, before we could just turn on, you know, make a video that went viral? Like, how did we do it before all that stuff? And if you understand that it's going to change everything moving forward, that's how you're going to be successful in the future. Because if and when your ad account gets shut down, you get delisted, your video stops going viral. All the things that can and will probably happen in the very near future for everybody. Happens to me. Happens to everybody. If you understand these principles I want to talk about this morning. It will give you the ability to weather the storm. Won't even matter. It won't even affect you in the smallest. OfferLab is a huge piece of that. It's what makes this part of the conversation actually possible, which is why I'm so excited for it, which is why I'm like, if you guys adopt this now, as you move forward in the future, it will protect you. It'll give you safety, security. It'll help your business to be around in the long term. And so that's why I'm so passionate, why this message is so important. And it's shifting from this solo entrepreneurship that we are doing, that we've been doing for the last decade, back into a collaborative environment that we were doing when I was in my 20s. The way that I grew my business, the way that most of the people you know nowadays who have been around for 20, 25 years, that's how we all did it. And so I'm gonna bring you guys some of that today. And so it's gonna require about business a little differently. It's going to require you to think about how offers work and funnels work a little bit differently. But if you're willing to go on that journey with me and you take these little shifts in your mind, I think that on the other side, you're going to find something really, really magical. So that's my game plan. That's what I want to talk about. I don't have any slides today. I just wanted to doodle some stuff. Most of the people in our community that I know of got into this business within the last 10 years or so. And the last 10 years have been the good old days when Facebook ads were cheap. Things were different. Like, it was a lot easier. So this is what most people's businesses look like in the last decade. What would happen is they would go and they would create a product. So there is the product, right? And then they like, we needed traffic to the product. So you go over here and you found this one partner. We're gonna call him Zuck. There's Zuckerberg. And he was the partner. He said, hey, Zuckerberg, will you send people to my offer and I will give you some money? And Zuckerberg's like, I would love to take your money. And so we would buy ads, right? And we would drive traffic. So we give Zuckerberg some money up here. People would come, they buy the product, and in theory, if we did it correctly, we would get $2 back out. And it was amazing. How many of you guys remember the good old days when Facebook ad clicks were a penny or 5 cents or 25 cents or 30 cents per click, and you were selling just the $37 product, and you could be profitable. Say you spend $10 an ad, you made $37. This is like a magic ATM machine, and you just do it, and you're like, this is the greatest thing in the world. I have the best partner in the world. His name is Mark Zuckerberg. I'm gonna figure out the planet because I don't need anyone. All I need is Mark Zuckerberg. He's like a drug dealer. Like, this is awesome. Give me some more. Give me another hit. I've never done drugs by soon as I don't, so. Right. And so we literally just, like, got rid of all of our friends, our partners, our JVs, our affiliate everything. And just, like, we focused on this one person because he was, like, the best in the world. He gave us all the good stuff, right? And then what happened is then Zuckerberg's like, hey, install this little tracking pixel on your site so we can optimize and find better audiences for you. He's so smart, and we're like, this is a great idea. And so we put these little pixels on our pages, right? And then he starts looking at stuff, and he starts realizing. He's like, man, okay, I know how much they're spending in here. So they're giving me $10. They're making $20. I'm gonna increase this from $10 to $15. 15 to 18, 18 to 19. Just enough that they're still making money, but not enough for them to actually succeed. But they got to the drugs coming. They can't turn it off, right? And so that was what's happening. And so costs are going up. We're like, ugh. And this is when, like, the funnel world started developing and started becoming a thing. It's like, okay, well, I can't do this. Mr. Dan Kennedy, the greatest marketing mind of all time, says, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. How do we do that? And that's when the birth of upsell started coming. It's like, well, okay, I'm spending a dollar getting two. I'm spending almost $2 getting two. This isn't working. I need to have an upsell. So we start adding in upsells, and then that would work for a while. And then Zuckerberg starts tracking his pixel here. It's like, ooh. They're making more money. I can charge them more. And they start going again. It starts happening. They're like, oh, now we need to add it down. So we're adding an order form bump. We start tweaking and optimizing these things. And so our got better and better, more and more sophisticated because we had to, because otherwise we made no money for Zuckerberg. And as we got better at selling, he got better at taking our money. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse, right? And that's the world we live in today, okay? And so for someone to be successful, it's not just like, I'm gonna put a product up and sell. In fact, I was at a Mastermind a month ago and had such a good time hanging out, and there's all these celebrities there. And how many of you guys know Derek Hough, the dancer from Dancing with the Stars? Like, super talented guy. And he comes to me, he's like, russell, I've seen your stuff online. He's like, he's like, I want a funnel. He's like, I have a book. I wrote a book. Should I do a funnel with that? And at first I was like, dude, Derek Hough's gonna have a funnel. This is insane. And then at the same time, I was like, for him to have a successful funnel, he's out of book. But how am I gonna tell him? Like, you gotta create an order form bump, and then to make that work, then you gotta create a $200 course, and then you gotta make a downsell course, and then probably have to make another course. If you have all these pieces in place, then we turn ads on, then you could break even. But then you gotta have something high take on the back end to sell, to actually make. And I was just like, how am I gonna. Like, it seems so hard, right? And that's what's like, it's hard. I have people come to my community all the time. They're like, russell, I wrote a book. Russell, I create a course. They come, they're so excited, like, hey, what do I do now? I'm like, cool, you wrote a book. Which is if anyone's ever written a book, if you do it the right way, it's like the hardest thing in the world, right? I have a meme that I share with myself every time I start writing a book. It says, the difference is that reading a book and writing a book is very similar. The only difference is when you're writing a book, the book's trying to kill you. And that's kind of what happens when you write a really good book, right? The book's trying to kill you. So you get the book done. You just put two years in this thing. It's like the book is done. You're like, cool, we can sell the line, but we need to create four other courses, a product and upsell a coaching program. Then you can actually maybe make money with it at the end. And it's just like people get overwhelmed, right? Which by the way, is one of the problems OfferLab solves. I'll come back to that later. But like with Derek Hough, for example, or whoever, I could be like, just put your book on OfferLab. And then you don't have to create an order form bump and upsell and downsell. They're like, find partners who already have these pieces. And now you can just drive traffic. And it works. You don't have to go and create 30 different products just to break even. You can actually just put your product on there, find other products, and it speeds you up to success. And over time you can go and you create your own upsell. Over time you can create something else. But in the short term, let's get money happening. Money follows speed. How do we get something out there as quick as humanly possible that gives us the ability to move fast? I just have one offer here, one course, one product, whatever, and I can plug in other people's things. And so again, that's kind of one of the big benefits of OfferLab and I'm come back to that. But that's kind of where business is today. That's been the last decade. So those guys have been playing this game last decade? Yeah, it looks familiar. I had this and then I added this and this. And now we're here, but I want to go back in time now. So again, your success in the future dictates is going to be 100% based on your understanding of the past. Because what's happening in the past is what's going to win. And most you guys weren't there in the past, so you're lucky. Old man Russell Brunson was there 25 years ago in college figuring this game out. And I'm going to show you what worked in the past. Because if you understand this, this is how we're going to be successful in the future. Okay, so in the past, rewind back to when Russell was 21 years old. I looked really young back then. It was really weird. Someone. This is like awkward, but somebody. I met somebody and they're like, you look really young. How old are you? I'm like, how old do you think I am? I'm looking at my fishing for a compliment, you know. And she goes, well, based on the crow's feet next to your eyes, you got to be at least in your 40s. I was like, I have crow's feet. Like, I was freaking out, like, oh no. Anyway, now I'm very self conscious of my. Anyway, okay, so back before I had crow's feet, 21 year old Russell Brunson. I was trying to figure this game out and figure things out, right? And so here's me and I had glasses back then. Ooh, there's me in the glass. Anyway, there's Russell now. Russell created a little offer. The very first product I ever created before potato guns, the very first thing I ever created was a little product called Zip Brander. So this was my product. This little software product sold for 67 bucks. And that was my product. And I spent all this time posting in forums and getting to know people because again, remember, this is the world before Facebook was around, before YouTube, before all these things, right? It was before MySpace. MySpace came out after this. It was back when there was no advertising networks outside of Google. You could buy Google Ads. That was about it. So I'm creating my first product as a band or I'm trying to drive traffic. And over time I built up a list, a little tiny list of, I don't know, a couple hundred people. So this is Russell's little list. And that was me. And I started going, I was like trying to figure out, like, are there other people playing this game besides me? I started searching online. I found some forums and different places. I started getting to know other people. And then one day I saw this dude and his name was Mike Philslane. So there's Mike. And Mike was in this forum and he had a brand new product, I think it was called. I text him this morning to see if. Oh, dang. He didn't text me back yet. I texted, I was like, what was the name of the product? I think it was called Carbon Copy something. Carbon Copy marketing or something. So he had this product and they were DVDs and he was literally burning them at his house. And you'd buy it and he'd ship you out this dvd and it's called Carbon Copy Marketing, right? So that was Mike's thing. It was the DVDs, carbon copy marketing. And so that was his product there. And then Mike had his little list of people. I think he had Probably, I don't know, two or three thousand people on his list, his little audience. So there's Mike's list. And I met Mike. I was like, what's going on, Mike? How's it, like, I love your product. It's so cool. And he was telling me what he was doing, how many he'd sold, and we're just excited, going back and forth. Then I was like, well, because, again, I can't. I have this product. There's no way for me to just go turn traffic on. Like, I'm gonna run for Facebook ads. I have a product. I'm just in college. My newly married wife. Money was not coming every day. Every once in a while would come in if we did something. So I went to Mike. I was like, hey, Mike, I have an idea. Your new product, Carbon Copy Marketing, looks really, really cool. I have a little list of people. What if I sent an email to my list of people and sold them Carbon Copy Pro? And then you said, email to your list of people and sell them Zip Brander. Then we both win. He's like, okay, let's do it. And so we set up a partnership. I sent an email to my list. I sold a whole bunch of Carbon Copy Pro. And then Mike, he kept half the money and gave me 50%. So I got half, he got half. It was awesome. Then Mike sent an email, his list on Zip Brander. Bunch of people bought it, right? I kept half the money. I gave Mike half the money. Partnership, joint venture. It was insane. I made money, he made money. And at the same time, guess what else happened? Both of our little lists got bigger because people on his list found out about me. People on my list found out about him. And so all of a sudden, my list got a little bit bigger, and there's more people on my list, and there's more people on his list. And we did this collaboration, and we both won. We both made money, both our audiences grew, and we had this partnership, and it was the coolest thing in the world. So that happened first, and then I was, like, talking to Mike. I'm like, that was so fun. My wife's pumped. We made some money. She didn't think I'm like, this homeless, jobless husband that she's supporting. I actually made some money in my business, and it was the coolest thing in the world. I was talking to Mike. I'm like, do you know anybody else doing this? I'm just kind of getting to know the players in our market. And Mike's like, oh, yeah, there's this other guy. And so he told me, there's this guy named Gary, Gary Ambrose. And he's like, here's Gary. You should meet him. So I go and I meet Gary, and guess what? Gary has his own product. I can't remember exactly what Gary's product was called, but Gary also had his only little list of people. I was like, dude, that's awesome. So I go to Gary. I'm like, hey, that product looks cool. And so I was like, what if I promote your product to my list and then you promote my product to your list, and we'll do a joint venture where we work together in collaboration? And Gary's like, your product's awesome. I would love to. So Gary sends an email to his list to go buy Zip Brander. Okay? Money comes in. I give half to Gary. I keep half of it. My list grows because a bunch of Gary's people join my list. And my list gets bigger. And then Gary. Then I send an email to my list selling Gary's product. Bunch of people bought. Gary gives me half the money. I keep half the money. We both win. And then his list gets bigger. I'm like, this is insane. This is the best thing in the world. I was like, people, I was studying business in college, and they're talking about all these weird things and everything. I was like, business has nothing to do with any of the crap they're teaching me in college. Business is just relationships because I'm doing more business than any of my college professors are. Sell my little product I created. It's just relationships. This is coming from Russell, the awkward introvert who's scared to death of people. So then I'm like, okay, how do I do this? And then they told me, hey, there's an event happening. This guy named Armin Moore, he's like the big guru in the world. He's doing this event called Big Seminar. We should all go to it. So I'm like, oh, that sounds amazing. So I go to seminar. Gary goes. Mike goes, all of us. We go to the seminar. We get in this room, there's 500 people who are all just like us. Bunch of nerds making money on the Internet. I was like, this is amazing. There's this person here, and there's this person here, and we start meeting all these people. And one thing that's interesting, each of these people had, number one, their own offer. And number two, these had their own list of people. Own. Offer, own list of people. Own. And I started walking around. I was like, every person in here is a partner. I'm not competitive with anyone. I'm a partner with every single one of these people. And so I started becoming friends with them. And back then, this is ag Myself as well. Okay, you guys remember Skype? Skype just got shut down, which is crazy. Before Skype, there's a thing called Yahoo. Messenger, and it was the greatest thing in the world. And so I got on Yahoo. Messenger. Hey, what's your Yahoo. Messenger? And we got a Yahoo messenger, and we started connecting, right? So a Yahoo Messenger. We all hung out and all the business deals happen. So my job, literally full time, I'm on Yahoo. Messenger Messaging, Gary and Mike and this guy and this guy, all right? And I'm introducing people into stuff, and we're figuring out deals. I'm like, hey, I have, you know, we from. So this is what's happening. And from this, my business starts growing and growing and growing. And again, I'm like, business is so great. It has nothing to do with math or ads or creative or anything. It has 100% to do with relationships. That's all it is. So introverted. Russell. I'm going to this event, meeting people, getting their Yahoo messenger links, which is really fun. And that becomes my business. It's funny, some of you guys may have heard me tell a story. I would go to these events, and again, I've never drink. I don't drink. But everyone, after the event's done, everyone's in the room like this, and they go out to the bars and hang out. And I'm like, scared as the kid who's never drunk before, I'm scared to death. Like, I don't want to go to a bar. I don't want people to think I'm drinking. And so I would go to the bars at night with these guys to hang out. But I was like, I need to make sure they know that I'm not drinking. So I would go to the bartender right? When I get there, I'm like, hey, can I order your milk? And he's like, what? I'm like, can I order your milk? Like, you want milk? I'm like, yeah. He's like, why do you want a milk? I'm like, because if you give me a Sprite, everyone's gonna think I'm drinking. I don't even know Colt 45 vodka. I don't even know what those things are. I'm like, if I got milk, they know I'm not drinking anything. And so. And the most cool is it was the best icebreaker Ever, ever could have been like, are you drinking milk? I'm like, yeah, like what? I'm like, yeah, I'm Mormon, I don't drink. Like. But you're drinking milk. Yeah. And then what was cool? This is the big secret if anyone wants to know. Throughout the night, the more drunk they got, the more stuff they just gave me. Like we became like, they're telling me all their secrets, all the best stuff. It was like insane, right? And then at that time when they're like half, half there, I'm like, hey, what's your, what's your Yahoo messenger, right? Oh, here it is. Sweet, man. I'll message you next week, right? And so I'm getting all these deals and so I started building this network of people. I'm like, all businesses is a network of people. The better relationship I have these people, the more money I'm gonna make. And that's exactly what happened. And so what happened is, then again, I promote him and that's how this whole thing started growing. And it was great. That was the season for a little while. But then what happened over time, over time we started thinking like, how do we be more creative? Cause I can promote Mike, Mike can promote me. That's great. I was like, how do we do actual collabs? What's the next level of this? What's the evolution of business? Instead of me, just us cross promot, what's the next evolution? How do we do this? And so we started playing with a couple different ideas. Was like, what if we created a product together that we both own. So instead of just like, here's Russell's product, here's Mike's product. What if we got, we came together, did a joint venture collaboration with each other. What if we created a co branded product? Create a co branded product and it's got Mike's face on it, it's got my face on it, right? We sell this product and then we both promote it. What happens is like now Russell is promoting Russell, Mike is promoting Mike. So the conversions go up because our lists know who we are. And so more people buy because of that, which is exciting, right? But then they come in here and we have this co brand product where we're teaching together. All of a sudden like, my credibility bleeds on Mike, Mike's credibility bleeds on mine. And we both look bigger in the eyes of our audience. We teach them stuff. And then when people buy this, we both get the customers, we both get the money, we split 50, 50 and this becomes the thing to do, right? And so we started doing that. In fact I found one this morning on the way back machine if my team can pull it up. This is one of the ones that Mike and I did back in the day. It was called Pre Launch Secrets. Can we pull on the big one too? Hopefully there. So this is the co branded product we did 10-20-2005. So I was 25 years old when this one came out. And so it was Mike Filsame Russell Brunson's Pre Launch Secrets. And if you scroll up a little bit you'll see this is the product we put together. And basically it was a teleseminar where Mike and I called each other and I did a bunch of. He done a bunch of successful product launches. I had a bunch of successful product launches. And so we just interviewed each other by like how'd you do this one? What did you do? What was the step by step process? This is before anyone was saying the word funnel. But basically here's the funnels I did for all these different campaigns, these things. And then Mike went through all the what his. I think we spent like three hours on the phone of us going back and forth just talking about this one niche, very specific topic which was like how to do a pre launch. We put it together. I think you can pull it down now. Put together Pre Launch Secrets. I promoted my list, my promotes to his list and all of a sudden a bunch of people start buying it and then people start messaging. That product looks awesome. Can I promote it? All these guys who see like can we promote like yeah, you can promote it. So then they're promoting it, they're promoting it, everyone's promoting it and we're making it like blows up, right? Making a bunch of money. And it was cool for me, Mike and I when someone bought, we both got the lead, right? And we split the money 50, 50. And then affiliates promoted and split the money and it was insane. Okay. It got so exciting. And so then I started like who else can I do partnerships with? And so I started creating products with a lot of other people. I did products with a guy named Jeremy Burns. I had a product with Gary Ambrose. We started doing these co branded products together. It was so fun. And each co branded product was interesting because what we would do is we'd figure out what's a specific thing. We're not creating these huge coaching programs and big courses and stuff. It's like what's one really interesting unique topic we can talk about A prelaunch. Mike had one that he did it Was called Fire Sell Seekers how to do a Fire Sell. We had all these different things. We pick one topic, we co brand a product together and it became a front end for us. We both promote this thing and we both get money, split it out and it was amazing. And then other affiliates thought they wanted to promote it and so it just became this thing. And then what would happen is each of Mike and I both had our own business in the back, right? So then I would get the customer, I'd get the customers, I get a thing and I'd sell my customers my product. Mike sell his customers his product. And so this became this front end where we introduce each other's audiences together, we both make a bunch of money, right? But then we get the customer's leads and then we can sell them stuff on our own behind the scenes. And that's kind of how we started playing business back in the day. And then for me, I was like, this is the secret. It's just collaborations. How do we create things together? Doesn't have to be Russell Brunson is this Russell Brunson this. We've created more things together as a community, as partners, right? And for the next decade of my business, that's what we did over and over and over again. Now, interesting fact, Mike's gonna be here this week, I believe, and he's gonna be speaking so you'll have a chance to hear from him. But back at this time when we were doing this whole thing, Mike and one of his business partners had an idea for a concept. I think they called it the upcoming upsell network. What if we create something because right now we've got. Russell's got his product, Gary's got his, he's got his. Everyone got these different products. We have co branded products we're making together. What if there's a way we could create a marketplace where everyone would upload their offers together. And then what I could do is I could build a funnel ease. I could have my product on the front end, I could have his upsell one. His is upsell two, and this is upsell three. We could just glue together something and then what's cool is everyone's involved in this funnel. Everybody promotes it because everybody wins. When someone buys, Russell gets his money, this person gets their money and everyone gets the leads along the way and we all win together. Mike started to build this thing again. I think it's called the Upsell network. And they tried to build it and technically they ran into hurdles where it technically wasn't possible. But he planted the seed. I remember this is again 2005, 2006, this is 20 years ago is when he kind of planned that idea and they tried to build it and didn't end up working out. And I don't know, whatever happened, the project kind of died. But I always remember thinking like, that's the coolest thing. Because right now for me to build a funnel, I've got to go and build every single step inside the funnel. I create 30 different offers, I have to create everything. And then I'm in the silo by myself. And then the only person who cares about that funnel's success is me versus this way. It was different. It's like, okay, we have a co branded product here. This guy's upsell. Now a lot of people are incentivized and it was essential back then because I didn't have the ability to go to the one partner who seemed to so nice to all of us before he screwed us. This guy. I didn't have the ability to go to him. Hey man, Sean Ads, he wasn't there. So I had to find other partners who is also in their best interest. I succeed as well. So I logged in there and so I put something together. I'm like, hey, I'm going to promote. You're going to promote. And we set up these deals and these partnerships and everybody would promote something at the same time. Everyone got sold stuff in the funnel. Everyone had a chance to make money and it was insane. So Mike tried to build an upsell network. Technically wasn't able to happen, but I remember always thinking if we had that, it would make this just so much more fun, so much easier. And that was again 20, man, almost 20 years ago. And then fast forward a few years later, Facebook comes out, ads start working and then everybody just kind of shifted. Everyone stopped working with partners and just had one partner, right? Everyone started moving from this collaborative thing where we're literally on Yahoo messenger 8, 10 hours a day, and then it moved to Skype eventually when Skype came like, oh, we're, we're cool, we're in Skype. What's your Skype handle? That was the next cool thing to be. In fact, I still have people to this day that I only contacted through Skype until they shut down last week or two weeks ago. Whenever it was. I have no idea how to get ahold of them now because I only had their Skype. It kind of sucks. I wish they would have warned us. I could have like contacted them. Hey man, what's Your real email. What's your name again? But that's where these deals were happening, right? And for me it was weird because we shifted from like, how do we collaborate, how do we create co brand stuff, how do we co create stuff, how do we create upsells and downs, how do we all win together? To this thing of everyone just kind of went in silos, everyone focused on their own funnels, and then nobody else was involved, it was just them. And hopefully Zuckerberg wouldn't screw them too bad. And hopefully they could figure out the math and numbers. And that was business for the last 10 years. There were times it was amazing times it was down, up and down, up and down. You see the cycles, you see where for a little while, Facebook or one of the platforms introduced a new feature like groups or they introduced fan pages. They want everyone to be successful or going Facebook Lives. And so they make it free for a little bit, right? And they reward you. So I remember Facebook lives first came out. I would open my Facebook Live. I'd click Live on Facebook Live. Do you guys remember the good old days? I click live. Within 30 seconds, 3,000 people were on. I'm like, what's up? 3,000 people buy my crap. And it was amazing. They would go buy it. Today I've got over a million followers on Facebook. When I go live on Facebook Live, I go Facebook Live. Guess how many people show up? 12, 13. So there's peaks where they're like, we're gonna get everyone addicted to the next drug, which is a Facebook Live. Everyone move off every other platform come to us. And so they addict you, they give you these amazing things and it's like, this is the greatest thing in the world. And then Zuckerberg's like, haha, I got you all boom. And then just disappears, right? Organic's like, I made a video on fire. This is insane. Oh, and everyone's getting addicted to it. And he's like, now you gotta pay for each and it just dies, right? And so there's these ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows. And so I've been watching this for 25 years now. The ebbs and the flows. And the only thing that never had ebbs and flows was this, right? Everyone has their own distribution channel, everyone's got their own part, even when they're small. Mine started with 200 people. Then Mike promoted, got to like 400 people and then 800 people and then 1,000. Eventually from 1,000 people to 5,000 to 10,000 to 100,000, right? And my status started growing, my following started growing, and it was all about this. We didn't have any ads. I literally did not run the first ad in my business until we were two years into Click Funnels. Click Funnels had over $10 million before I bought our first ad. How did you build Click funnels to $10 million a year without any ads? Russell? I look back in the past, I was like, these people all have my dream customers. I can go to Zuckerberg and pay them a premium or I can just go to them and do partnerships. And so Mike Filslam was one of my very first partners in Click Funnels. He did an event. He let me come and speak to the event and we spoke and we sold it. And then I gave him half the money. I kept half the money. And then he did a webinar later and he promoted clickfunnels and he promoted. It sold a ton of people. I gave him half the money. I got half the money. We Both won. And ClickFunnels grew. And I went to the next person and next person. I was on Skype hitting up everybody. What's up? Yahoo Messengers is still there. And me save my name is there, hitting up everybody. And all I did for the first two years of ClickFunnels before we bought our very first ad was just this. We just went and found people. And the coolest thing about this, when you do partnerships, okay, this is the get go. This is how you have to understand this. Zuckerberg, you pay him up front whether you make money or not, right? Does that seem fair to you guys? I could send you crap. Traffic doesn't matter. You still gotta pay me for it with these guys. Like when I did a partnership, when Mike did the webinar to promote Click Funnels, I didn't pay him up front. It was a partnership. We're both hoping this is going to work. So he was invested in it working. I was invested. We sat down, we talked about it, we figured it out. We did a promotion together. People went on there on the webinar. I sold. He was invested in being successful. He gave his own bonuses. We got more people to buy. We figured this thing out and we sold a bunch of stuff. And then after we collected the money and all the refunds are out there, I took half the money and gave it to him and we both won. So there's no risk, right? I would have been successful in business back when I was 21 years old because the risk would have been too high if I had to go paid For Zuckerberg, so many people come in my world, are like, okay, I got my thing. I'm gonna buy ads. I'm like, oh, why would you buy ads? You're now in this deficit immediately from day number one of risking money that you do not have to be successful. And how long do you got? 1,000 bucks, 5,000 bucks for running ad money? Go get $10 million before you run ads by doing this. Find partners, collaborate. That's the game. That's how everybody should be thinking about business differently, because it's not gonna get cheaper. It's not gonna get easier. There'll be things that get you addicted for a few minutes. They take it away, and they addict you, and they'll take it away. And these things are gonna keep happening at every single platform. TikTok, Instagram, the next one's coming out soon. It doesn't matter. They're all gonna go through these ebbs and flows. The thing that's consistent, that'll give you security and safety in your business today, tomorrow, and forever is this. If Facebook gets shut down, if TikTok is. Whatever they're trying to do, I don't know, politically, whatever, to shut down TikTok, if those things all disappeared, it wouldn't matter because I still have my list. Mike's still got his. They've got his. Like, everyone still has their stuff, right? And so understand that's like, I should probably be putting a little more time and effort into these relationships because business has nothing to do with math and algorithms and creative and copy and all that crap. Business is relationships. That's it. I tell people all the time, if I lost everything today and everything, if I lost all my money, my company, my business, my brand disappeared, I was like, it would take me less than 30 days to be a millionaire again. Like, What? I'm like, 30 days easy. That's all it would take. Like how? Jump on Skype. What's up, man? You want to create a product together? Yeah. Cool. I'll promote to my people. You promote your people and split the money. Sweet. Hey, man, what's up? That's it. That's the game. Okay, so I wanted to share that because again, your guys success in the future is going to depend on your understanding of the past. And most of you guys weren't there, so old man Russell's here to give you that history lesson. If you start thinking about business differently, stop getting out of this silo where you've got one partner and he hates you and he wants to take all your money, to the top. You have a lot of partners who actually care about your success, who actually want you to be successful, who you can co create with. You can create amazing things. You can serve your customers at a different level. If you start thinking about business differently, it changes everything. The coolest thing about OfferLab, when we came back and we built this platform, the goal was like, how do we make this process easy? Because I've explained this in the past. Here's how to make new partnerships and JVs and stuff. And I try to explain it, and then everyone just messes up. Like, I'm just gonna go back to Zuckerberg. Like, why? He's the worst. He doesn't even like you. He wants you to fail. He made you put pixels on his page so you can take all the money. That's what he does, right? Instead of finding partners. And so we built a platform. You guys have probably been in the platform. If not, it's free. Go to offerlab.com, create a free account. This is what the platform looks like. Over here, there's this little thing called Inbox. I want you to think inbox equals 2000. Yahoo messenger or 2000. When did Skype come out? 2005 Skype. This is your new Skype. This is where the deals are happening. I know I requested for a lot of people's products, and guess what? Those people didn't log in their inbox. I'm like, there's Russell Brunson asking to promote your product. And you're like, you didn't look at your inbox. That's like, me Skyping. Hey, man, can I promote your stuff? Hey, man, I wanna promote your stuff. Hey, I'm promoting your stuff. And nobody's like, are you insane? For me, this was how I made money back in the day. I would open my computer, open up Skype and Yahoo. Messenger, and that's how I made money. That was it. Every day, you should be logging into OfferLab, and all you should be doing is like, okay, inbox. This is where the partnerships happen. This is where people contact you. Hey, can I promote your crap? Yeah, you can, but if you're not paying attention, you're missing it. How many guys have logged into your OfferLab account this morning so far? Okay, if you haven't, there's probably people in there that want to work with you. Like, go find, like, Dialogue, Communication, introverts. I built this for you. You don't have to go to an event. You don't have to be carrying glass of milk to the Bar like I did. You literally can just log in right here and the people are already there for you. I did it all for you. I built this for me so I would have to talk to people face to face. It's the best thing in the world, okay? It's the best. So this is your Yahoo messenger, your Skype. That's where the inbox is. So make sure you log in every single day to offerlab and go in there, okay? Now obviously you want people to contact you, but if you want to be successful, you gotta contact people as well. So the cool thing is on the platform, you click on the marketplace, there's all these cool offers here. These are all people who are like you, who are saying, hey, I hate Zuckerberg and I want to do partnerships. Everyone in the marketplace, that's them. They're all here because they're partnerships. So you don't have to be nervous. Like, what if I annoy them? Like, no, annoy them. They want to be annoyed. So you message this person like, hey, man, your product's sick. Can I promote? They say, yes. And all of a sudden it creates a dialogue in here and you're like, hey, this is awesome. I want to promote it. I'm gonna put it for upsell number one. Hey, what if we did a co branded product together? I love how you do this. I do this. What if we create a product together, we put it on off lab platform together. Like, oh, yeah, it's awesome. Like all the collaboration, the partnership is here. Like, I brought all the people in one spot. Everyone who understands this game is here. I'm training, educating you guys all on this game, right? So all the offers here, the platform, so your job is to come to the platform, find these offers that are congruent, you contact the offer and start building relationships. When you have other people that maybe aren't on the platform yet, go to them like, hey, I want to do a partnership. Let's do a collab together. Let's create a co branded product together and let's put it on OfferLab. That way we can promote. Other people can promote it. The coolest thing about this, this is something I always wanted to do back in the day, but we never could do. But now with OfferLab, you can. Let's say Mike and I did a new project together, right? So we create Prelaunch Secrets 2.0. How many has to buy Pre Launch Secrets 2.0? Now a couple years to buy it, thinking like, I've done a lot of prelaunches since Then so Pre Launch Secrets 2.0, right? So let's just say like imagine this. I messed his mic through. I'm like, hey man, let's go back to 2005. Let's create 2.0 of pre launch Secrets. That'd be sick, right? So create prelaunch Secrets, right? It's got Russell's face on, it's got Mike's face on it. And what's cool about this is we can create two funnels. Okay? So Mike creates his version of the funnel, Russ creates his version of the funnel. But the front end product's the same, right? So then Mike's gonna promote his list here. Then Mike may be like, hey, this is the cool thing. I get a co brand with Russell, so I get the credibility from him. I get a co brand with Mike, I get credibility from him. But then what's cool about this is like I have my own products I wanna sell. So what if on my version after someone buys Pre Launch Secrets, then I go and sell, selling online. This is my product that I wanna sell, right? And Mike be like, hey, I don't wanna do that. I wanna sell groove, right? And so that's his product. So he can sell his and then we can both promote this front end product. But then I can upsell the things that I wanna upsell. He can upsell things he wants up sell. We still both get the customers, split the money, everything else. But now we can do that. And then you guys as affiliates, this is awesome. I love Russell. Mike, this new product there, this is amazing. I want to promote it, but I have my product. I'm going to put my other things upsell and then someone else can promote my product, but they can put their upsell. So now they're incentivized for being successful. Now it's like we're all making money because we can do whatever we want. You guys getting this? Is this all making sense? Okay. There's so many, like, thank you. If you start thinking about business a little bit differently, guys like this, it's going to change everything for you, literally. There's so many ways to leverage this and have fun on OfferLab and actually be successful with this. I just wanted today, this morning, before all of our other amazing speakers here, just like to kick this off and get the wheels spinning again. Your success in the future is going to take your understanding the past because the past is how we're going to win the game in the future. That's what it is. We built OfferLab literally for you guys to Be able to do, to play the game in a way that I wish I could have backed back when I was on Skype. This is it. Your inbox is your place. This is where you're networking. These are the offers here. These people start contacting, getting to know them, building relationships, building partnerships, collabing, doing partnerships together, adding an offer that's specific to you guys on the platform. There's so many cool, fun, easy, exciting ways to do this, and that's why we wanted to create this for you. So I'm hoping that you guys love the platform. I hope that it benefits you and your company, your business. I hope you build friendships, relationships. I think for me, looking back over the last 25 years in business, of all the amazing things, the thing that's meant the most to me is the friendships I built along the way. I mean, it's crazy. I've got people here that I've invited to be part of this. Who I haven't seen them in 10 years, and they flew out. In fact, some of them are going to be here today or tomorrow that I haven't seen in 10 years. These guys I met on Yahoo. Messenger back in the day, and I was doing the same. Hey, would you want to come and just talk about how you do offers? Like, yeah, man. And they flew out on their own dime to be here. Like partnerships, relationships. This is what makes the game fun. So many of us become cynical because I got to build a funnel and conversions and optimizations and ads and twists, all that kind of stuff. And I understand that part of the game. We still got to play it if we want to grow over on the platforms. But the reality is there's a simpler way to do it, a more fun way, a way that builds relationships and friendships and connection. A way to get you out of your silo of selling alone and brings it back together. The more we do that here on the OfferLab platform, the more success we're all going to have together. That was our gift to you guys, is creating this platform for you, for me, for everybody to be able to do more partnerships, have more collaboration, and it's going to be awesome. So that's what I had to prepare for you guys this morning. I hope you guys enjoyed that, got some value from it. That was your history lesson from old man Russell Brunson. Taking you guys back to when I was 21 years old, and that's how we played the game, and I hope it was valuable for you guys. All right? I hope you enjoyed that session and you got a lot of value from it. Hopefully you're starting to learn more and more about how you can use OfferLab to grow your business, to make more money, to have more fun, have more collaborations. I will see you guys on the next episode. We'll go Even deeper into OfferLab and how you can use it for your business.
- [37:13]
Expedia Narrator
Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.
- [37:24]
Russell Brunson
Oh, come on.
- [37:25]
Expedia Narrator
They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of the trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever you were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.