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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to a special Marketing Secrets episode where I'm going to let you guys see behind the scenes, one of our presentations from last year's Funnel Hacking Live. 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 will give you the answers. My name is Russell. Hi, I'm Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. Alright, so this presentation is one that I was really nervous about giving. It was called One Funnel Away, which was the whole theme of the last Funnel Hacking Live event. And it's something that I wanted to share. My failures, my bankruptcy stories, the ups and the downs. Everyone here talks about the highlight reel. I wanted to share the other side of it. I don't typically release sessions from Funnel Hacking Live anywhere, but this one had such a big impact on our audience and helped people know that everyone, including me, especially me, has big ups and big downs. Yet literally we were just one funnel away from success each time. And so as we were preparing for next year's Funnel Hacking Live, which will be coming live soon@funnelhackinglive.com I was kind of rewatching some of the presentations. I saw this one, I was like, I want more people to have this. So I'm gonna break this episode into two episodes. This is episode number one. Go check it out and leave me a comment. If you like it, please subscribe, tell other people about it and hopefully it'll give you some hope and some faith and the path you are on is right and that this process is gonna get you what you want and what you desire and let you have the serve other people. So that's the game plan. Now check out this episode and see you on part two tomorrow. Okay, so what I wanna do is I wanna go on a journey with you guys. My journey, which started way back over here on my timeline and my backstory. So those who know me or have heard about me or know anything about this, I got started initially I started learning about business when I was a 12 or 13 year old kid sitting there with my dad. He was watching the news and I was watching it with him and I was sitting there, I'm like, I can't believe he hasn't told me to go to bed yet. This is the coolest thing in the world. And the news was on. And then when the news ended, then Mash came on. And I was like, he must think I'm asleep or something. Like, he hasn't told me to go to bed. And I'm sitting there, like, trying not to move. I don't want him to know. So I'm watching MASH with my dad. I thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world. And then when Mash got done, he still didn't say anything. I'm like, he's gotta be convinced I'm asleep. This is so cool. And then the next thing came on, and it was an infomercial. Late night infomercial with Don Lapre. How many of you guys remember Don Lapre? Yes. Just amazing person. And he had an infomercial. And I was so grateful for him and for his passion, his excitement, Talking about what he was doing. And he was talking the infomercials about how to place tiny little classified ads. You can make a fortune, right? And it was. God, it was the coolest thing. I remember sitting there listening to him, and I was like, this makes so much sense. I'm looking at my dad like, you paying attention to what's happening. Like, this guy is. The whole thing made so much sense to me. He said, I took a class. I took a classified ad, I put it in a newspaper, and I made $30. And I told my friends and my family, like, I started a business. I made $30 this week. And they all laughed at me. He's like, so then I took that same ad and I ran it in a thousand newspapers the next month, and I made $30,000. And I was just like. And I've been ruined from that day on when it came to the world. I'm like, I can't not do something like this. I was so excited. I saved a bunch of money mowing lawns and everything. And eventually I bought Don the Priest's kid on an infomercial. I read through it all. I learned it. And I wasn't able to actually do anything, though, because I didn't have money to do direct mail and all sorts of things like that. But that's how I first heard about direct response marketing. I remember after I got Don the Priest kid, I got so excited. I was at the grocery store with my mom one time, and we were walking out, and on the checkout stand, there was a magazine. It was called Small Business Opportunity magazine. Had a whole bunch of little cartoon people in front of it. How many of you guys have seen that magazine before. That's it. This is like the greatest swipe file of direct response ads ever. So I didn't know at the time, though. I was just like, there's like 30 things talking about how to get rich quick. And I'm like, sweet. I want to get rich quick. That'd be awesome. So I had my mom buy me this magazine. I went home, and if you look at it, it's like 140 pages of ads and four pages of articles. It's pretty awesome. And so I'm looking at every single ad and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can sell gold chains at the mall and make money. And so I call this 1-800number for free info kit. I'm like, yeah, free info kit sent to my house. And the next page, it's like something else. Page after page, all 140 pages. I called every single 800 number to request a free info kit. And about a week later, I started getting these gifts in the mail. First it was like two or three letters. Then it was like 10 or 15 letters. Then it was like 60 or 70 letters. And I think those people started selling my name to other mailing lists. Soon it became like hundreds of letters. And the mailman could not physically shove the junk mail in the mailbox anymore because there was so much coming in. So I get home from junior high, and I'd come home and I'd walk into the house and I'd see on the bar, I'd see two or three letters from my parents and Russell's stack of junk mail. And they're like, there's your junk mail. I was like, oh. And I take it in my room and I'd open it and I'd like read these things. I'm like, this is so cool. And all these money making ideas. So that happened at a young age, unfortunately. Again, I couldn't do anything. Well, I tried once. So this one person convinced me that direct mail was the key. And all you do is you get a list of buyers who bought similar products and you write a sales letter and you mail it to those people and a percentage will buy. And I'm like, awesome. Only problem is I can't afford a mailing list and I don't have any stamps or any envelopes or anything. And so I'd done something. I made a little bit of money doing some chores, and I asked my mom to go take that money and instead buy stamps and bring me home stamps. So she brought me home 38 stamps. That's how much money I had made. And I had 38 stamps. And I was like, this is so awesome. I used to tell my brothers and sister and parents always used to tease. Well, not my parents didn't tease me, my brothers and my sister did. Cause I'd always say, I'm gonna be a millionaire any minute now. And like, this is gonna work. And they used to be like, oh, are you a millionaire yet? Oh, and totally make fun of me, right? So I had these 38 stamps. I'm like, okay, if I can get 10% of these people to buy, that's three people. If I sell a $50 products, $150. I was like, God, I'll be rich. So I didn't know what to do. And so they talked about sales letters. And so I was like, I write a sales letters. I printed it out on blue paper. Somebody, blue paper, they'll be more likely to read. So I went on my parents computer, I wrote a little cells that I printed out 38 copies of it. And I couldn't afford an envelope, so I just folded it and stapled it. And then I didn't actually have a mailing list. So I just opened the white pages and flipped through and randomly picked 38 names. I'm like, this is going to be huge. So I wrote it, put my stamp on and all my savings, put it in the mailbox. And I was just like, I am going to be rich. This is going to be amazing. I sent it out, told everybody, like, when this comes back, it's over. I'll be able to move out, have my own house. It's going to be amazing. And unfortunately nobody responded. So that was the only time I was able to invest. I didn't have the money to even buy a classified ad in a newspaper. So I just kind of after that, I just kept reading all this junk mail and learning from all these people. And then a couple years later, I got into wrestling and I kind of forgot about making money. But there was a seed that had been planted. So I wrestled through high school, had a lot of fun, got a college scholarship. I wrestled through college. And when I was going to college, I met my insanely beautiful wife. Most of you guys, if not she's right here hiding. So. And met her and fell in love really, really quick. And I spent the next like three or four months trying to convince her. In fact, it was probably the hardest sell I ever had to convince her that I was the right one. And luckily she said, did you see that picture? I was kind of A geek, not gonna lie. Anyway, convinced her to marry me, and it was amazing. And about the time we got engaged, I realized my dad said, well, when you get married, like, I'm not gonna keep supporting you. Like, that's when you become a real man. And you have to, like. I'm like, what? But dad, like, I'm wrestling and covering my school. But I. He'd always send me money to pay for food and stuff. And he's like, no. Like, if you get married, like, you're kind of on your own. Like, I'm like, crap, I want to get married, but I don't want to, like, grow up yet. Dang it. And my wife was fiance at the time. Wife. Now she was working and she was making money, and she got a second job to support us. And I was just, like, wrestling. I'm like, I don't have any money. And so I'm like, well, I gotta do something. And then, luckily, the greatest thing in the world happened. It happens to a lot of us. I was up late at night stressing out about this, and then this little thing popped up on tv. It was an infomercial, and it was this guy talking about how people are making money with these little websites and that they were doing an event at Holiday Inn the next day, and you could come and get tickets to it. I'm like, this is it. So I call the number, get my tickets to Holiday Inn. I show up the Holiday Inn. It's like a little tiny room with, like, 50 really, really, like, desperate people sitting there. And I get in there, and there's a dude on stage who's all, like, in a suit and tie. And I'm like, whoa, that guy looks rich. And then he started doing his thing, and within, like, five minutes, he closed me on this $50 thing. And so I ran in the back, and I had my one credit card. I think I had, like, a $300 credit. That was it. That's all I had earned so far. So I bought my $50 thing. I ran back. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna make so much money with this. And then he pitched just on a website, which was like, three grand. And I was like, oh. And everyone's running back, buying websites. I'm like, ah, I can't afford a website. Dang it. And they pitched website hosting at $80 a month and all these things. And so, like. And then they're teaching me, like, hey, if you call your bank, you can get your credit extended. I'm like, oh, sweet. I didn't know that. So I'm calling the bank, like, hey, can you make my card $1,000? Learning all these things and so getting my credit card bigger, which was kind of cool. And then I bought everything he told. Cause I was like, all right, I need the whole thing. So I buy it all. And he convinced me. He's like, paypal's evil. He's like, you have to have a Merchant account. There's $6,000 for merchant account. I'm like, I don't have $6,000 yet. He's like, well, you can't make money online without a merchant account. Six grand. I'm like, but I couldn't afford that. But I had everything else. So then I went home. I was like, cool. I got a domain name. I got hosting $1,000 worth of Internet web stuff and then jumped online. I was like, I'm gonna have a website. And I was getting excited. I started googling some things, and eventually, within about 15 minutes, I realized that website hosting is not $80 a month. I realized that domain name's not, like, a thousand dollars. I was like, oh, crap. Like, I got taken, like, for all these. And I was just like, I was freaked out. And so I ended up calling the next day. And I was like, yeah, so my son is a miner, and he. I was at your event last night, and he charged all his credit cards, and he needs to be out of this contract. And they got me out of contract and gave me my money back. That's one trick if you ever need to get out of a contract. It's worked almost every time. So those are the real dot com secrets. All right, so I got a contract. But at that point, I was in. I was like, oh, my gosh, I just need to sell stuff on the Internet. And so that started this thing about the time my wife and I were getting ready to get married. And I was, like, trying to sell stuff, and I was selling, like, all sorts of different things. I remember initially, I thought, maybe it's ebay. Like, people make money on ebay. And I remember driving to the thrift store, buying everything that I could find that I thought was worth value. And then, like, on my bike with, like, grocery sacks full of crap, like, driving my bike back home. And I remember, like, I bought a Michael Jackson record. So I'm like, dude, records are so. All this has got to be worth, like, hundreds of dollars. I ended up selling it for 13 cents on eBay. So depressed anyway, and all these things. And I was like. And I was boxing Them. And I was shipping these things out and like, when all of a sudden, I think I made like $40 or $50, but my costs were like $150, $200. And it was like I was going to trying to find boxes to box all these weird things I bought. And it was just horrible thing. And I'm sitting at the post office with like 18 different boxes of weird things, like records and all these things. And there's this dude standing there with a big, huge box full of CDs. Like hundreds and hundreds of CDs. I'm here with a wheelbarrow full of odd boxes. I'm like, dude, what are you selling? He's like, oh, I sell information products. I was like, what does that mean? He's like, all these CDs have info burned on them. People pay me, and I ship them a cd. I'm like, these are the same cd. He's like, yeah, I have a CD burner, and I just burn them. And then I put them in these things and I send them out. It's like, are you kidding me? They're all the same size. I could, like, buy one box and just like, it'd be so much easier. And so that's when we started talking about information products. I was like, I don't know if that was even a thing. And so I got all excited about information products. And so I started googling stuff and started learning about how information products. And I ended up finding this CD. It was called. It was a CD that had like 8,000 coloring book pages for kids. And the guy was selling it. So I emailed him. I was like, dude, this CD's cool. I was like, can I buy the rights from the cd? So I can. I want to sell it. And he was like, I've never done that before, but sure, for 200 bucks, I'll sell you the rights and you can sell it too. I'm like, sweet. So I gave him $200 I didn't have, and he gave me the rights, so he had the cd. And then basically all I do is I had to burn it on a CD burner and I could mail out as many times as I wanted. And he had a big, long sales letter he let me use. So I put his sales letter up and I started trying things. And what was cool is I started making sales. Not a lot. Like every other week we make a sale for 20 bucks. And then I'd go burn a CD and I'd put it in an envelope and I'd ship it out. And I was just like, this is so cool. Information products became the thing. And I was trying to figure out how that whole thing worked. And that's when I started bumping into people like Yannick Silver and all these different Internet marketing gurus and watching what they were doing selling information products. And I was just hooked at that point. And about that time, I started watching what they were doing, I started learning, and I started creating different things that. My flashlight's still on. Sorry about that. And I started creating things. In fact, one of my very first products ever. Does anybody in this room remember the product? Zip Brander? Yeah. Yeah, like three people. VJ does. So I had all these info products and I was buying resellerized other people's products and I'm selling these things. And I remember, like, I was like, wouldn't it be cool if there was a way where like when I sent this file, this digital file to somebody, it's like when they first opened it, instead of just getting the file, they would see an ad for my product and then they see the file. And I was like, that was my first light bulb. I'm like, oh my gosh. It's like zipping a file. But you'd zip it and they'd be branded, so when they open it, they'd see your ad first. I was like, this is the. I thought it was it. That is my idea. This is gonna change the world as we know it, right? And So I bought Ziprander.com and I remember Armin Morin at the time was one of the guys I was studying. And I was just like, Armin is so cool. Everyone of his sites look very similar. They're so cool. I'm looking and they arm inside. He had a big header graphic with his picture, like his arm folded with a suit coat on. I was like, oh, dude, that's what I need. So I got a picture of me folding my arms and suit coat and he had this header inside. The header looked just like his. His was always like E cover generator. And so I was like, zip brand looked identical. And then this is where my funnel hacking started. So he had this big long sales letter. I'm like, that looks weird, but Armin's doing it, so I'm gonna do it. So I looked at his sales letter. I wrote my own based on that. And then I was like, how do I. How do I. How do I create this? I didn't know that. And so my first thought is like, oh, well, I should just become a computer engineer. That would be the coolest thing I want to make software. So I switched my major to computer information systems so I could learn how to code. It was about the time the semester was changing. So I get to class the first day and teacher gets up there and starts talking about code and databases and all these things, structures. And I was sitting there like, oh crap, I have no idea what he's talking about, not even a little bit. And within about 15 seconds I realized that I'm not a coder and never will be a coder. And I thought I was in Spanish class or something and I'm just like, I don't even know what he's saying. But I didn't know how to change my major again and I kind of was. So I just kind of stayed in it and in a little while I kind of got depressed. I'm like, well that was my one idea. Like I guess I can't do it. And then I remember I was listening to a teleseminant. I was on a wrestling tournament. We were driving to California. It was like a 16 hour drive and I downloaded on my. It was pre ipods. It was like this little tape player thing, a whole bunch of teleseminars Armin had done. And I'm listening to these things in the back of the car where all the other wrestlers are like partying and having fun and listening to music. And I was listening to these seminars and they were totally making fun of me. The whole if you meet any of the wrestling buddies, they relentlessly made fun of me the entire trip. Like, you're such a nerd, you're never gonna make any money. I'm like, no, I swear I will. So I'm listening to these things the whole way. And in one of these things, like 22 hours into this thing I'm listening to, Armin says, like, yeah, I don't code software. I go to at the time, it's called Scriptlands. I go to Scriptlands and I pay guys in Romania and India really like hardly anything to build stuff. And I was like, armin's not a programmer. I thought he was a programmer. There are people in India that can do this. So I went like literally that night jump on Scriptlance. And actually prior to that I tried to hire a company to do it and they quoted me like $5,000. I was like, okay, well I don't have that. And so I took the same description I'd given these guys and I posted it on Scriptlance. And instantly I got a. I got all these people Started bidding on it. One guy was like, I'll do it for 5,000. I'll do it for 2,000. For a thousand, for 500. And came down, all the way down to this guy named Cyprian in Romania, said, I'll do it for 20 bucks. I was like, I got 20 bucks. So I picked him and he's like, all right, so this is how I'm going to do it. And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but just do it. So he did spent like two or three days. He sends it back. He's like, here it is. So I tried it and I like zipped a file and I opened it and my ad showed up. I was like, you did it. Oh my gosh. He's like, yeah, thanks for the 20 bucks. I was like, no, you. This is gonna be huge. I'm gonna make millions of dollars. I feel guilty giving you $20. Can I pay you an extra $100? And he was like, yeah. So I gave him $100 and I felt good about it. And that was my very first software product I ever did. And it didn't make me millions. I probably made, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 grand with that product. It was the first one I had. I had a sales letter, started driving traffic. I was doing Google Ads, I was finding jv, all these things. And I started selling it. And that was like the first thing that actually made that exciting. How many has one zip brander? The first 30 people in the back. Just kidding. No. Okay. It doesn't work anymore. The coding all stopped working like 10 Internets ago. So it's done. But that was my first software product. Was so cool. About that time is when I started learning more about info products. That's when the potato gun came out. Potato and dvd, all these things. I was just doing all these little businesses and none of them were like huge, smashing, like million dollar successes. I didn't pull Dan Henry and read a book and five months later made a million bucks. I was like, hey, I made five grand here. Oh, I made $200 here. And these little things kept happening. It was so cool. And every project did a little bit better. It was kind of this slow momentum. Everyone did a little bit better than the last one because I got more customers were coming in and more people and I kept just making things in different markets. Potato guns and all these sorts of different things, and each one got a little bit better and it was just fun. And I remember back then I started Doing teleseminars. And I'd get, like, 30 people online, and I'd talk about something, and I'd sell it at the end, and some people would go buy it. And it was so exciting. And that was, like, the start of this whole thing for me. And then one of my friends, bj, who's sitting over here, he was the wrestler at Nebraska, and I wrestled at Boise State. It was our senior year. My senior year. I'd made. I'd made pretty good money. Probably 150, $200,000 somewhere in there my senior year. And he had heard about it. And so Boise was wrestling in Nebraska. And we're sitting there wrestling, and we're glaring at each other. Cause we're opposite teams. And afterwards, he's like, hey, man, so someone told me, you're making money. Is that true? And I was like, yeah. He's like, how you doing it? How are you doing it? And so we kind of talked about it a little bit. And then, you know, we flew back to our places, figuring out college, and we kind of talked back and forth a couple, you know, for a little while. And then after college got in, he's like, hey, man, I want to do what you're doing. Can I get a job? I was like, you want a job? He's like, yeah. Like, well, what would you do all day? He's like, I don't know. I'll do what you're doing. I'm like, okay. And can we talk about marketing stuff? He's like, oh, I love talking about. I'm like, that feels so cool. I have nobody talk about this stuff. Like, I thought it was just me. I was like, so you're actually interested in this thing? He's like, yeah. I'm like, okay, yeah, man. I'll give you a job. So come on out. So he's like, all right. So he jumps in the plane, flies to Boise, and moves, like, literally into her office. Slept in our office for, like, six months. And he gets there, and he's like, okay, so how does this work? I never really had an employee before. I'm like, I don't really know either. I'll pay you, and we can talk about marketing. Then we'll sell stuff, and it'll be awesome. Now, me, as an entrepreneur, I was in this mode of, like, eat what you kill. I'd sell something, make a bunch of money. And I was like, sweet. And then we wouldn't do anything for, like, four or five months. And we'd create something, sell it, make a bunch of money. And then that's kind of the model that I was on for a long time, right? And then BJ came, and he wanted to be an employee, and I was, like, so excited. I'm like, sure, so he's an employee. And then the weirdest thing happened is every two weeks, he wanted to get paid whether we made money or not. I'd never heard that, but I was like, okay, so here's some more money. And then two weeks later, I get more money. I'm like, oh, crap, we haven't sold anything for, like, a long time. And then he had some other friends that came along that were like, this is cool. I want to work for you too. I'm like, all right, come on over, man. Let's get jobs. So I gave them jobs. One of his buddies and his wife, and then some other people. And soon I was like, I got all these friends that want to talk about marketing with me. This is so fun. And so we had all these people coming over, and then. But the problem was that, like, every two weeks, they wanted to get paid, and so. But we weren't selling anything. So I'd go lock myself in the back room, and I'm like, don't bug me, you guys. I gotta make money so we can all hang out again. So I close the door, and I start working. And I'd be working, and I'd be selling stuff, and then they'd be out there like, dude, can we help you? I'm like, shut up. If you talk to me, I can't make money to pay you, so just like, go away. And they're like, we really feel bad. We want to help you, Russell. I'm like, I don't have time to train you, because otherwise we can't make money to pay payroll. And so they just kind of. And that was like, this thing. And what's interesting is this is one of my first lessons as an entrepreneur. That was tough, right? And so I had. I don't remember. I had five or six people at the time. We hired this video guy that was. There's so many side stories. I can't tell you all of them. He was an Indian guy who had shorts run up to here, and he had a braid that went past his shorts. Because he told me in interviews, like, yeah, I'm a video guy. I'm like, you can't even. We can do videos. And he's like, yeah, I got all sorts of video stuff. So we hired him, and then turned out he didn't know anything about video at all. But I didn't dare to fire him because I'd never fired anyone. I was so scared. And like, every day we're like, I wish he would just quit, but I don't know what. Dare to fire. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Like, it was just all these weird learning things, right? And so this went on for a while. I was launching something, like, every week, trying to make money to cover payroll, and it's just this huge thing. And it became, like, horribly not fun for a long time. And it kept going worse and worse and worse until the point where it was December. It was the beginning of December. It was freezing cold. And I was looking at everything, and, like, every penny I'd ever made was gone. Every idea I had for, like, how I could hustle and, like, sell things to different markets was gone. And I was just, like, just drained. Like, I don't even know what to do. And it was Christmas time. I was outside, and I started going to go hang up lights around my house. And I had this little. Someone had sent me an ipod Nano, and Stu McLaren had actually done an event. I don't know if Stu even knows this. And he had sent me the links to it. So I downloaded the links to this event on this ipod, plug it into my ears, and I started hanging up Christmas lights, which I had never done before. It's a horrible job. Turns out you can hire people for really cheap to do that. And the lights look really straight. Mine were like. It was really bad. And I kept stapling through the wire, which would then kill the lights. And it was bad. And my fingers were so numb. I had this little light coat on. I remember, like, God, my fingers were so numb, and I couldn't. I had to have my gloves off to be able to, like, squeeze the thing. And so, like, I put them back in and get warm. Then I'd go back in. And I didn't really want to go inside and get warm because I was so depressed because I knew that, like, the next payroll was coming up in, like, a week or so. And I was like, I don't have money. Like, I don't know what to do. And like, tomorrow I need to go in and tell these guys, otherwise they're going to, like, it's going to be really awkward when, you know, you know, payroll does come. And I'm like, ah, sorry, guys. So I'm like, tomorrow I have to go tell everybody this. And so I stayed outside in the cold because I didn't want to go in. And I just was trying to think. And so I'm stapling these Christmas lights around the house. So I'm listening to this audio, and in the audio, there's two different speakers talking about different business models. Back then, none of us called these things funnels, but they talked about these different business models, what they were doing. And one of them was an offline guy. His name's John All. And this. Some of you guys have heard me talk about him. He's the guy that taught me about attractive character. And he said. He's like, I have this thing that I've been doing where I create these CDs. And then I tell everyone it's so controversial that I can't put it on the Internet, which is the funniest thing ever. He's like, so because of that, you gotta pay me $5. I will ship you the CD. And he said, what happens is that I ship him the cd. But then that customer financed me putting a. Like, sending them a sales letter. I was like, dude, that is, like, brilliant. I'm like, we gotta do that. And I remember I'd filmed the cd, like, two years earlier or a dvd. And I was like, we could do that. We could burn that dvd and we could start sending that out. So that was the first presentation was John Olinson. The next presentation was this guy named Matt Basak, who's become a close friend since then. And Matt was talking about his business model. He said, what I do is I send out CDs. And the people that buy these CDs, I call them on the phone and we sell them coaching. I was like, you can call people on the phone? Like, I'd never. I'm an Internet nerd. I'm like, wait. You know, I was super scared. But I knew that there was a guy that worked for me at the time, one of those. My five or six friends who had sold things on the phone before. And all of a sudden, I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, what if. Like, what if. Like, what if we figured out something we could do where we could, like, save this thing? It might actually be possible? And I started getting more excited. I'm hanging up with Christmas lights, I'm listening to stuff, and I'm just like, oh, my gosh. This plan, this funnel was going through my head, and I'm like, okay. I think I figured out, like, a blend of what these two guys are saying could actually work. And so by the time I got to hang up Christmas lights, I texted all of them. Like, you guys, you don't know this yet, but we're about to go bankrupt. But I got an idea that I think can save it. Let's meet tomorrow morning early, and I'm gonna walk you guys through what I think could actually save this business. Send. And they're all, like, texting back, like, what? We're going through bankruptcy? Like, oh, yeah, we're about to. And luckily, it's like, okay, let's all come in. So they all came in the next day, and I was like, you guys, I think I got a model. This is what we're gonna do. I was like, remember that DVD I did, like, two years ago? And take that. It's gonna be a free dvd. It's going to be so controversial. We can't sell on the Internet. We'll charge. I think it was $4.95 shipping and handling, and we'll send this DVD out to him. And then inside the DVD, we're going to have a sales letter where we're going to sell a $5,000. Actually, it was $5,500. I don't know why we said that price, but it's going to be $5,500. And they're like, cool. What do we sell for $5,500? I'm like, I don't know. What do you guys want to sell? All right. So then we had our whiteboard meet. On our whiteboard, we're like, well, if someone's giving us $5,500, we'd have to be something amazing. What if we did this? And we were like, and we listen. What if we did that? And we made this huge list for, like, two hours of, like, all the amazingness? And I was like, that would be awesome, but I'm not willing to do half of that stuff. So, okay, we're not gonna have him sleep in my house. We're not gonna have him do. And we kinda crossed out all these things, right, okay. And we're like, okay, I'd actually be willing to sell this. I think people would actually buy that. That would be insane. And so we took that, and then at the same time, we added a newsletter. So somebody bought the city. They joined a newsletter that was $37 a month. So they came from here and they joined a newsletter. It was $37 a month. And that was the funnel. Back then, we didn't have click funnels. So luckily we had one or two nerds still working for us who were able to kind of put these pieces together and we had this really rudimentary, like, horrible looking funnel, but it was live within a day. And we said, okay, let's try it. And at the time, I had a little tiny email list. This is pre Facebook, pre. It was back MySpace days. So it was back then. We pushed some traffic to this, and we ended up selling a couple hundred of these CDs. And then in the CD we shipped out to him inside the camera, sales letters talking about this. And then it put people on a continuity program. And then we called everybody, bought the CD and said, hey, you bought the cd. How would you like to come to Boise? And we're gonna give you this. And this was our Hail Mary pass. Like, please let this work. And so we did that. We focused on it, we drove traffic to it. And when all was said and done over the next, like two week period of time, we got 800 people to get our free CD from that. The way we used to do it is everybody was on continuity. We had 800 people that were on this $37 month continuity, but it was free for a month. So we weren't making any money here. But we had 800 people's phone numbers we were able to call. And so we started calling them. And we didn't know anything about phone sales or anything. We were just like, hey, man, you bought the cd. You want to come and hang out with Russell? And they're like, yeah. And in that two week period of time, we sold 10 people at $5,500 apiece, which ended up being 55K. And that funnel saved Christmas. Is that awesome? That was aw. I was able to pay all of our payroll. We had some money left over. It was awesome. And the coolest thing is 30 days later, then this started and all these people were on continuity. And suddenly we had a business. This is when I learned the power of continuity. David Fry, who's one of my favorite people in the whole world, he's in the audience here somewhere. I think he used to always say. He's like, until you have continuity, you don't have a business. And I never understood that till this. There's David smiling over there. I love that guy. And now I found out how suddenly I had these people. And then, so what happened? I don't know the math. 800 times 37amonth. It's like 25k a month. And we knew, like, we have continuity now. Every single month we have 25k. That means I can pay for employees. I realized, like, you don't hire employees before you have continuity, but now we have continuity. Now we actually had people covered and we could actually focus and think. And that was the first funnel that really kind of saved things and turned it around for us. Want more marketing secrets? If so, then go get your copies of my two best selling books. Book number one is called Expert Secrets and you can get a free copy@expertsecrets.com and book number two is called Dotcom Secrets and you can get your free copy@dotcomsecrets.com Inside these two books you'll find my top 35 secrets that we've used to become the fastest growing non VC backed SaaS startup company in the world.