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What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk to you about unicorns.

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So the big question is, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, were spending money from our own pockets? How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast.

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Will give you the answers.

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My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing Secrets.

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Okay, so I'm sure you guys have all seen the movie the Social Network. If not one of the greatest movies of all time, you should go watch it. It is the. The movie about the Facebook startup story, how Facebook got started. But there's one scene in there that is. That is very, very impactful for me. In fact, looking backwards now, I can't remember, the movie came out seven or eight years ago, but when it came out, I was on the brink of bankruptcy. I was trying to figure out my next step. I was trying to throw a Hail Mary pass. I had some friends over in the UK and Ireland doing some crazy things. So I spent money I didn't have, flew out there to Ireland, met with a bunch of them, tried to talk to them, see what they're doing, try to figure out, like, what's the next step for me. And while I was over there, I remember there was this big yacht party on my buddy Andrew Fox's yacht. There happens to be a big yacht party. And you know what happens on yacht parties? I didn't know. But as the Mormon kid, pretty quickly I was like, I don't feel comfortable here. I'm gonna go bounce. And right next to the yacht thing, because we were in. We were docked the yacht. There's a movie theater. So I. Oh, there's a movie theater. And I remember the movie was playing was the Social Network. It just come out. We were all excited to see it. Went over there. I remember, got Haagen Dazs cookie dough ice cream. How do I remember these details? It was really good, though. And I went in there and watched the movie and we ate the ice cream. Now, during the movie, there's a scene, Justin Timberlake's character sitting down with Mark Zuckerberg, and they're talking everything. And then. And then Eduardo is like. And that's when he said it. And then there's a scene where he says, you know, a million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars. Boom. And that's like the line. That's the line that like, is so cool, right? So I remember sitting there on the brink of bankruptcy, trying to figure out what I want to do with my business that was in shambles. And all I knew is like, I want to create something big. Like, it'd be so cool to build like a Facebook or something like that. I remember a couple weeks later I went to ClickBank, which is here in Boise. I remember going to ClickBank offices, walking around, seeing these huge offices, and they had a section, I remember where there are all these people sitting in cubicles and they had these clocks over each time zone because they had support for 24 hours a day. So, like, you see what time it was in, you know, in Germany and in Russia and in China and Australia. And it was really cool. I was like, oh, like I would die to have a business like this someday. But I didn't think it was possible. I was just like, oh, I'm a dude who creates info products and sells them. That's kind of my, my what I do, right? And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I love that business. But I remember I was like, I wanted, I want to build something like that, but I know what it was or what it was going to be. So fast forward to a couple years later we, I met Todd Dickerson, aka the man we built ClickFunnels, aka the product. And the last five and a half years has been history. It's been crazy. And I remember a couple years into it, we were having some success. I think we had passed, I don't know, $70 million in sales that year. And we're like, what's like next is 100 million, then after that, like was a billion. Like, oh, like that's such a far out goal. And I remember just kind of being like, oh, like we're never gonna hit that. And then I remember Todd Dickerson sent me the gift in the mail. A gift. And it was this, this poster board. It said, a million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars. I remember seeing that and I was like, it's been in my wall ever since last two or three years as we started moving towards that goal of how do we get to a billion dollar company? So the question is like, what's a billion dollar company mean? Does that mean it did a billion dollars in sales? Is it worth a billion? Is it traded publicly for a billion? Did the owners make a billion? Like, there's so Many different things. And so I'm trying to figure out like, what's the actual definition? Like what makes something a billion dollar company. And as I went on this journey to try to figure out like a metric that I could start sinking my life towards and sinking my goals towards, it was interesting because they always talk about companies that passed a billion dollars in value valuation, like that's what they're worth. They were going sell somebody, they get a billion dollars, they call them unicorns, like they're the rare thing, it's a unicorn. And as I studied all these different unicorns, it's been interesting because almost every unicorn that, that's out there, you know, you look at the path, they create a product, you know, they get to whatever $10 million in sales, they take on venture capital, they get to 200 million and they take on the next round and they go through this thing and they get there. But very few, very, very few, if any, have gotten to a billion dollar valuation without taking on any money. In fact, I don't know if I could even. There's got to be some out there, but I'm not sure they are. That's something interesting I should look at anyway. And as I get closer and you look at like, what is the street? That's what all the cool kids call the street, which is Wall street or the Valley, which is like Silicon Valley. Like what do they value? What do they consider unicorn? What's the metric? What's the number? And in the software business, which I'm in, the metric is ARR. Annual recurring revenue. So the way to basically as soon as you get to $100,000,000 ARR. Annual recurring revenue as a software company, you're probably going to sell for at least 10x, which means you're a billion dollar valuation, you're officially a unicorn. And so that became the number. It's interesting is that we've done the last two years in a row well over $100 million in sales. But those sales weren't all in RR recurring revenue. They were in event sales and coaching sales and all sorts of these different things. Right? And so our annual recurring revenue, which is just the, the money from this, from the Software, from the SaaS subscription is not at $100 million yet. Yet. Yet is the keyword. But it was close. Last year was close. We were. Well, I don't know if I'm allowed to tell my numbers or not. I don't even know anymore how those things work, but we were about 90% of the way there. I'll tell you that there's the benchmark. So we're at 90% of the way to hitting 100 million MRR. And so my goal, my focus over the last six months or so is like, well, how do I, how do I increase mrr? What's the strategy? What's the secret? How do I do that? Like, what are the levers I gotta turn? So those of you who've been watching the clickfunnel story, you noticed one of the levers I pulled about four or five months ago, and at Funnel Hacking Live, you'll see that that lever pushed the rest of the way down and the next lever. And if I play my cards right, I think I will, hopefully I could screw it up. You never know. But if I do play my cards right, by the time funnel Hacking live is over, we will have passed the hundred million ARR of annual recurring revenue. So that would officially make us a unicorn and give us a billion dollar valuation. Now, I'm not there yet, we got a long way to go. But I'm excited and I'm not sure why I'm telling you other than just hopefully it gives you guys a goal to shoot towards. It's interesting, like the times my business where I had a goal, it was really easy to get up and to work hard and you know, first the goal is just like to feed my family, which is a very noble goal. That was the first one. And so it gave me a reason to wake up and figure this stuff out. But after my family was fed, my needs were met. Then it was like, okay, now what? And obviously have the impact goals, but like, it's hard to, to, to quantify an impact goal. I want to change the world. Okay, like how do you quantify it? I don't know. So we quantify it with revenue, right? It's like, well, if I can make a million dollars in sales, this means I've helped X amount of people. If I can get to 10 million means this many. A hundred million is this many, right? And so for me, each of those tiers, you know, first was a million dollars and boom, got to the million dollars and then it was 10 million. And it took me, man, decade and half to $10 million a year in sales. And then it was, you know, the hundred million. Then we got there a couple years later and then it just keep, you know, keep, keep going. And, and again after I passed $100 million a year in revenue, I was just like, the next goal is so far away. A billion dollars in revenue. And I Think that's still a goal, but it's so far away. It was kind of like I got in wrestling in, in college. The next, the only next goal was the Olympics. And the Olympics seem so far away from. From where I was at right there that I didn't decide to go on that journey. And so for me, the next goal was the billion dollar valuation to become a unicorn. And so that's what we're going towards. And it's given me and the team and the people who are pushing this new motivation, new excitement, new, like, passion to run towards that goal, that vision, that thing. So I hope that if nothing else, some of you guys set a goal to become a unicorn, because I think that's a super cool goal. Number two, though, I hope it helps you figure out the goal that you're chasing towards because, you know, it's. It's funny. We, we, we talk a lot about, like, the money doesn't matter, and it doesn't, but it is how we keep scores, how we know, like, what tier am I at? Am I here? Am I here where I need to go? Like, what do I got to do, what I got to push to get to where I want to be? So hopefully you're setting those goals, you're figuring them out, and you're running towards them. And so I just want to share with you guys my goal running towards becoming a unicorn. So hopefully I get it there sooner than later. A couple other cool things. I won't spoil this, but I have started work on the next book. Now these three books are done. It's funny. I'm like, I'll never write again. And then the second is done. It's like, unless it's this book, then I really want to write again. So the next book I'm gonna write is not, it's not the. It's not like another Secrets book. The Secrets trilogy is officially closed. There will be no more books. After added to that, there'll be micro books like network Marketing Secrets, and we'll probably do like, a lot of little micro books, but there'll be no more, like, added to the trilogy to the box set. So next book for me to write and, like, story for me to tell is the story of Clickfunnels, how we went from zero to becoming a unicorn without taking on any money. And so I actually bought Bootstrap.com, which is crazy. And now the book's been called Bootstrapped and I'm going to tell the story. Well, we got to finish the story first. Hopefully I Get the story. Hopefully we get to the end of the story here soon, but that's the story I'm gonna tell. It's gonna be fun. And I gotta learn how to write completely different. Cause I've written how to books, a lot of them, but I've never written, like, a storybook. And so it's gonna be my next challenge, my next mission, my next fun thing. I'm gonna take a year off, but then that's. That's next goal, the next thing I'm gonna run towards. So I'm excited for that. It'll be a fun project to kind of tell you guys the stories behind the stories. You guys have heard the. The story arc of everything as we've gone. I've been pretty transparent with most things, but there's obviously things that I can't. Haven't been able to share yet. That'll all be coming out in the book in three years from now. So just don't stress about it. It's not coming soon, but it's gonna be a fun project. So anywho, it's half the fun is creating the story so you can then write it later. Right? All right, well, I'm in the office. I got about 8 million slides. I got to do photo hacking labs a couple days away. Appreciate you guys for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Let me know what your goal is. If you enjoy this podcast. Take a snapshot of it, go to Instagram, Facebook, post it, tag me on it, use marketing secrets, and let me know what your goal is for this upcoming year and this upcoming decade. Thanks, you guys. Appreciate you all, and we'll talk soon. Bye, everybody. Hey, everybody.