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10 Years of FunnelHacking Secrets

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Episode Recap:

At this year’s Funnel Hacking LIVE, I took the stage at the very beginning and took the chance to reflect on some pivotal moments from our journey as FunnelHackers over the last 10 years. This year marks the 10th anniversary of ClickFunnels, and I opened the event with a special presentation, giving what a "ClickFunnels State of the Union." Throughout the episode, I touch on key lessons from my entrepreneurial path, including a personal revelation from a quote by Napoleon Hill that transformed my approach to success.

I also reminisce about one of the most important moments that shaped my business—an event from 20 years ago that altered my perspective on what’s possible in the world of entrepreneurship. During this episode, I break down how these pivotal experiences can help you define your own path, focusing on a specific quote from Napoleon Hill that emphasizes the power of "definiteness of purpose." Along with this, I share insights on how radical imbalance and burning desire play critical roles in achieving your goals.

Key Highlights:

  • Reflections on ClickFunnels’ 10-year journey and the growth of the Funnel Hacking community.
  • The untold part of a famous Napoleon Hill quote and its life-changing impact on my entrepreneurial mindset.
  • The importance of radical imbalance in achieving success, and how to find your “definite purpose.”
  • Behind-the-scenes stories from Funnel Hacking Live, including personal milestones and business updates with Todd Dickerson.

This episode is filled with motivational takeaways, actionable advice, and a behind-the-scenes look at the strategies that have driven ClickFunnels' success. Tune in and discover how you can apply these lessons to your own journey!

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Best Quote:

So our mission, obviously, for the past decade has been to free entrepreneurs so you can focus on actually changing the lives of your customers. That was what I've set out to do from a software perspective since the very beginning in those early conversations. It was always about, how do we make this easy? There's constant challenges, constant tech hurdles. And that's been our vision, and been our goal for well over a decade now. And yeah, we've got exciting new things to help make that even easier now going forward, too.

Sponsors: 

  • ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
  • Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."
  • Traffic ​Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.
  • DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels.":

Transcript:

Russell Brunson:
What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets Podcast.

Hope you are having a great day today. I'm actually in Wise, Virginia, Napoleon Hill's hometown, today. And I've spent the last couple of days here going through the archives, and finding just some really cool things, and having a great time. And tomorrow, we actually have a mastermind group here with our top 10 affiliates for the Seekers of Success Business, and I'm hoping to record my intro session for you guys tomorrow. I'm going to be talking about some cool Napoleon Hill stuff, and if I am able to do that, that'll be our next podcast.

So look forward to that, hopefully. And then, today's podcast is going to be a little different. Not hugely different, but this year's Funnel Hacking Live. I did an intro presentation the first day of the event. It was kind of a ClickFunnels State of the Union Address, which was cool because, as you know, ClickFunnels turned 10 years old this year. We've been here doing this for a decade now, which is amazing. But a lot of other cool things are happening. And so, this presentation... I'm not going to ruin the surprise, but a couple of cool things. Number one, there's something that happened 20 years ago that changed my life, and I talk about what that was, and how it changed my life, and how I think it can change your life as well.

I'm going to walk you guys through some funnel hacking, One Funnel Away. Russell Brunson style stuff that I think you'll enjoy. But there's one thing in here that I'm excited to reveal to you, and it's basically an Napoleon Hill quote. And you guys have heard me share this quote a million times, and I always talk about the first part. It says, "There's one quality which one must possess to win, and that's definiteness of purpose. The knowledge, will, and wants," and then something. I'm leaving that part blank because I always talk about having a definite purpose. Knowing exactly what you want, and writing it down. And being like, "I want this thing by this date, by this time." Having a definite purpose, and direction you're moving in.

But the second half of the quote is what I never talk about. And I spent more time on this episode talking about it, and I think it's going to be the real thing that's going to have the biggest impact on you from this episode. So I don't want to ruin it for you, but it's in there buried. You're going to find it. I share the Napoleon Hill quote. Wait for part two, and see where I take it because I think you're going to love it. And then on top of that, at the end, Todd Dickerson comes on the stage with me. We talk about some of the cool updates with ClickFunnels, how many people won have won awards, how much money you guys have processed in the last year, which is crazy.

And then we actually had Dante, who is the One Funnel Away coach. Came and interviewed me, Todd, and then Andrew Culver who is Todd's partner in crime on the development side about all of what's happening inside of ClickFunnels and the software. Anyway, really exciting, really cool, and I think you guys are going to love it. And it should get you fired about ClickFunnels, what's happening. And that's all I'm going to give you, so listen to this episode. I hope you love it. I hope you enjoy it. So let us know, and I'll see you guys in the next episode. We're going to go a little bit deeper into some of my thoughts from the Napoleon Hill Foundation...

We got my inner circle here in the room. This makes it so much easier, and more fun. So fun. We got 10,000 of you guys all around the world hanging out with us. It's going to be insane. I'm so excited for the next four days, three and a half days, whatever it ends up being. It's going to be amazing. And, man, I was sitting backstage as Devon was talking. Showing Funnel Hacking Live at the very beginning, which is crazy. It was 10 years ago was the very first Funnel Hacking Live here in Las Vegas. It was something we were going to do once, and once only. We had no plan of making this an annual event. We launched ClickFunnels, and I remember the presentation I used to launch. It was called Funnel Hacking. We're teaching how to funnel hack, and stuff like that.

And people inside of the Facebook groups started calling themselves funnel hackers, and I was like, "That's kind of cool. This is the thing. It's catching up. Yeah, we're Funnel Hackers." And then they started doing these meetups around the country like, "Hey, we're all going to meet over in Austin. Who wants to come? Hey, we're meeting in San Diego. Who wants to come?" And I was like, "This is happening whether we're doing it or not. Maybe we should do an event, and call it something." I'm like, "What should we call it?" And I said, "Well, we're funnel hackers. We're funnel hacking. Let's call it Funnel Hacking Live," and that was the whole initial idea.

We rented a space in Las Vegas. It held... Was it 600? 800? Do you remember? 800 people? And we told people about it, and 800 people showed up. And I remember I was so scared. I had done an event four, or five years earlier where we'd sold a bunch of tickets to the event. And we showed up to the hotel, got everything ready. And then we opened the stage, and we walked out, and I think we had three or... It was set for 300 or 400 people, and there was 60 in the room. I walked in, and everything's empty. And I was like, "This is going to be really painful." And for three days I did an event, and it was horrible. All the empty seats, and I was like, "I will never do an event again." And that was the plan, and Funnel Hacking Live, we decided to do that.

And I remember sitting backstage being so scared like, "What if nobody shows up? No one's here." I remember looking through the curtain, that little curtain that Devon showed, I was looking through the curtain, and I was like, "Oh, there's people here. Okay. This is fantastic. People showed up." And we did the first one. And I remember the very end of the first one, we're like, "Should we do this again? That was kind of fun. People showed up." I'm like, "Okay. Let's do it again," and now we are on Funnel Hacking Live. This is nine and a half, which I don't know if you guys know that. Our next Funnel Hacking Live, which is 10. Which is going to be a big show is here in Vegas again, and it's happening in February. In fact, it's during Valentine's Day.

So you need to bring your wives, and your sweethearts, your husband. Whoever it is, bring them to the party because we're having Valentine's Day in Las Vegas next year, which is where we're be doing Funnel Hacking Live 10. And it's going to be the biggest, the craziest. It's going to be amazing. So I don't want any of you guys to miss that event. It's going to be insane. And so a lot of people are like, "Well, what's this one right here? Last year was nine, that one's 10. What is this?" And it's changed a couple times. At first, I was like, "Well, we..." Prior to COVID and those things happening, we were doing Funnel Hacking Live at the very first quarter of the year. I loved it. It was like New Year's resolutions were kicking this thing off, and that was a lot of fun.

And then the whole pandemic happened, everything shifted around, and we ended up shifting the event till September. Which was great, except for that's when all of our kids go back to school, and all sorts of things. And it was just this weird timing where it was really, really hard to do in September. And we did it three or four years in a row, and then two years ago we're like, "Let's see if we can get it back to the first quarter of the year." And so, that was the shift to move it to the first quarter of the year. But then there was an 18-month gap between Funnel Hacking Live 9, and 10. And 18 months is a long time to not hang out with my friends. And so I was like, "What if we did a little one in between called Nine and a Half?"

And we did it virtually, and we rented Eric's studio. Which is this insane studio, you guys who are here. It's insane. So that was the vision, and now we're... I can't believe we're here. And so, this is Funnel Hacking Live Nine and a Half, Funnel Hacking Live International. And in six months from now, during Valentine's Day, we'll be doing it in person again. So for everyone, especially everyone who's a home watching now, I would set a goal for you guys. I would love to have you guys at Funnel Hacking 10 for the big show because it's 10 years. This is our 10-year birthday. It's 10 years of ClickFunnels being around, and it's been an incredibly insane ride, and it's been a lot of fun.

So that's some of the backstory. A couple of things we're going to do new this time because it is virtual. I want to do something fun. We tested this two or three weeks ago at an event we did in front of my office, and it turned out to be a really smashing success. We had so many people that were virtual. It was like, "How do we network when we're not in person?" Obviously, all the inner circle guys, you guys are all going to have so much fun in the next four days. We'll all be networking, and hanging out. But everyone else, I know you guys are kind of remote, and I don't want you to lose the networking experience. So what we decided to do is we set up a group inside of school, and I'll tell you guys why we did it.

A lot of you guys are like, "Why would you do it in a school?" I'll explain that in a little bit. But we set up a group inside of a school where, right now, everyone's coming. And between each session we're setting up a new thread for everyone to come and comment, and drop their, "Ahas." In fact, if you were on the pre-show last night, I showed it yesterday, and I asked them, "What was the number one thing you're trying to get from Funnel Hacking Live this year?" And we had over 1,000 comments in the last 12 hours since I posted that in the group, which is kind of cool. So what's going to happen is each session, before we go live, we're going to open up a new thread in that group, and then want all you guys who are home to open it separately in another thing.

And as you're hearing me or the other speakers talking about whatever it is, when you have any, "Aha," and somebody comes in, drop in that thing. And we want to see how many comments, how many, "Ahas," things that you pull out of the presentations in that one group, which is a lot of fun.

So this is where to go. If you go to hangoutwithrussell.com at home, if you go to that site right there, it'll take you to our school group that we set up. If you're not in there already, you might have to go ask for access to it, but my team's in there approving people as fast as possible. So they're approving people as fast as possible. And then at the very top, there'll be a pinned comment that basically has whatever the session is. So right now, there's probably a pinned comment, I'm assuming, from my team that says, "Comment on Russell's presentation."

So over the next hour or so that I'm up here, as you guys are getting, "Ahas," or insights, or anything, drop them in there. I want to see if we can get a couple 1,000 comments for every single session. And then what's cool about this for the speakers when they're on stage, when they get done, they'll have a chance to go back into the comments, and see what you guys said about their presentation. So feel free to also, if you're talking to them specifically, tell them your favorite thing, what you loved about them, about their story. And as a speaker, it feels really good afterwards to get good feedback from people. So does that sound fair? You guys good with that? So, hangoutwithrussell.com. Okay. All right. With that said, I got a couple of fun things I want to talk about before I bring Todd out here to share some really fun things that are happening inside the ClickFunnels world right now.

But I want to start with something that happened last month that was a turning point for me in my life. August 17, 2014, so this is 20 years ago last month, something crazy happened. This guy right here on the picture, this is John Reese next to Tony Robbins. And 20 years ago, I had just gotten into this world. I was still in college. I had just married my wife. We didn't have any kids yet. We're trying to figure out this whole business thing. I was trying to figure out how to make money on the internet, and I was on a bunch of different people's email lists. And I remember one day I started getting all these different emails from people talking about, "This product coming out. It's called Traffic Secrets. It's so cool. Everyone should go buy it."

And I remember going to the page, and it was $1,000 course. I'm like, "I don't have a thousand dollars, but that looks awesome." So that kind of happened, and then a couple hours later... In fact, I think I have a picture of this. This is a library that's... on the Utah-Idaho border there's a little lake called Bear Lake, which my family goes every single year. And we were at Bear Lake when this whole thing was happening, and this was before we had cell phones, before we had internet, before Wi-Fi was everywhere. So if you wanted to get on the internet at Bear Lake, you had to go to this library. And so I remember after the day was over, I jumped in my bike, or my car, or something. We drove over to this library, got in there.

And do you guys remember this back in the day when you had to get internet? So there's two computers in the library, and there's a line of people. Everyone's just waiting to check their email. It's so weird now because none of us would do that. So I'm standing in line waiting to check my email. First person gets done there, second person, third person. I finally get in line, I sit down, I'm pulling my email up. It pops open, and there's an email from John Reese. And at the top of the email, it says, "We did it," or something like that. I'm like, "We did what?" So I open the email, and I start reading it. And John basically announced that they had launched this course called Traffic Secrets earlier that morning, and in the first 18 hours...

It was $1,000 course. They sold 1,000 copies of this course, and they made $1,000,000... I shouldn't say, "They made." They'd sold $1,000,000 of this course in 18 hours. So again, 20 years ago. I'm sitting there, young kid. At the time, I'm 40, or 20. What? 44 now. So I was 24 years old, just gotten married. I'm sitting there at the library, and I remember sitting back in my chair, and just thinking. I was like, "I can't believe there's a human being just like any of us who made $1,000,000 in a day."

And when I got started in entrepreneurship, I thought I had a big vision. I was like, "I'm going to become a millionaire someday. In the next 20 years, I'll become a millionaire." Thinking I was this big thing.

And I saw a dude who made $1,000,000 in a day. I probably sat there two or three minutes just like, "I can't even..." The whole world, my whole paradigm, just shifted what was even possible. And I remember thinking, "Okay. If that guy can make $1,000,00 today, I wonder if I... Is that even possible? Maybe I could make $1,000,000, not in my lifetime, but what if I did $1,000,000 in a year?" I don't know. All these things started shifting my head, and I started having more and more belief. What's crazy is I didn't realize at the time, but I started talking to a lot of my other friends. And for them, it was the same thing. They saw this happen, and it was just like, "Oh, my gosh. If he can do it, I can do it."

How many of you guys have been around long enough that you remember this experience? Anyone here in the room who is... A handful of you guys remember this. It was a turning point for so many of us, and I remember thinking that... I said, "Okay. This guy, John Reese, he had a Two Comma Club in just 24 hours." And I remember thinking that, and I was like, "If that's true, if he really did this, I'm going to focus 100% of my time, energy, and effort figuring out how in the world he did this. I said, "If that's true, I'm going to drop everything else, and just focus on this." And when I was making these slides, and I wrote that down, I started thinking about a movie that had a similar experience. How many of you guys have ever seen this movie right here?

Okay. There's a scene from this movie I want to share, but actually, I got some street cred from some young kids that are friends of my friends. We were talking to a bunch of them about what we do, and they're like, "What do you do for a living?" And I was telling them, and they're like, "Oh, yeah. I know a guy kind of like that. His name's Jordan Belfort. You ever heard of him?" I was like, "Actually, I was on his podcast." They're like, "What? You were on Jordan Belfort's podcast?" I'm like, "Yeah." So I got some street cred from the kids because of that, which is cool. But anyway, so this is a clip from Wolf of Wall Street, which kind of sums up how I felt after John Reese did the $1,000,000 day.

Hazel:
Excuse me. Is that your car in the lot?

Jordan Belfort:
Yeah.

Hazel:
That's a nice ride.

Jordan Belfort:
Thanks, man.

Hazel:
I'm Hazel.

Jordan Belfort:
Hey, Jordan Belfort. Nice to meet you.

Hazel:
How you doing?

Jordan Belfort:
Yeah.

Hazel:
Hey, what do you do, bro?

Jordan Belfort:
What do you mean what do I do?

Hazel:
For work, what do you do?

Jordan Belfort:
I'm a stockbroker.

Hazel:
Stockbroker?

Jordan Belfort:
Yeah.

Hazel:
You make a lot of money?

Jordan Belfort:
Yeah, I do all right for myself.

Hazel:
How much money you make?

Jordan Belfort:
I don't know. $70,000 last month. No, I'm serious.

Hazel:
I tell you what. You show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it, I'll quit my job right now, and I'll work for you. Hey, Paulie, what's up? No, yeah, no, everything's fine. Hey, listen, I quit.

Russell Brunson:
So that's how I felt after watching John Reese. I'm like, "If this is true, if he actually did that, nothing else matters to me right now. I'm going to stop everything I'm doing, and focus on figuring out how in the world he did that." If a human being just like me can do $1,000,000 in a day, what could I do? $1,000,000 in a year? I don't even know what's possible, but I was like, "I have to figure this out. Whatever it takes." Now, I started looking like, what was John doing? And this is me, the young funnel hacker, 24 year old Russell who didn't know what funnel hacking was. This is something we talked about, but I was like, "What do you do?" I got to reverse engineer this.

I remember going to trafficsecrets.com at the time, and it wasn't like a traditional website like I was used to. It was a funnel. It was a two-page funnel. It had a long form sales letter. It was a 150-page sales letter, if anyone ever remembers seeing it. It was not short at all. I remember printing it out, and it was this fat. I'm like, "This is insane. People actually read this stuff?" Blew my mind. 150 page sales letter with an order form, and that was the very first thing. I was like, "This looks different than what I've seen before. This is not how people make money on the internet. This is the weirdest thing world." I'm like, "This is what he did. So if that's how it worked, I wonder if I could do it."

I remember thinking, if he could create a funnel... If he could do that, could I do the same thing? What would it look like? How do I model that? I remember wondering if I could create a funnel, it could get me into Two Comma Club. So I started thinking again. Reverse engineering, funnel hacking. I was like, "Okay. How did John do it?" Well, John had $1,000 course, he sold 1,000 copies. That's $1,000,000. I was like, "It's just math." $1,000 course, 1,000 copies. It's $1,000,000. I was like, "I don't think I can do $1,000,000 in a day." My brain wasn't ready to comprehend that. But I was like, "If I did $1,000,000 in a year, what does that look like?" I was like, "Well, $1,000 course. If I sold three a day, that gets me over $1,000,000."

I'm like, "Okay. Can I create $1,000 course? Can I sell three a day? What would that look like? How would I get traffic?" I didn't know the answers to these questions, but these questions started giving me the desire to figure things out. How does this work? How do I find traffic? How do I get enough traffic to sell three a day? Have $1,000 course? And so I did exactly what I teach you guys to do all the time is funnel hacking. So John had $1,000 course. First thing in my head is like, "Cool. I got to make $1,000 course." So I made my very first $1,000 course, and it was called the Dotcom Secrets Home Study course. This is way before there was ever a book called Dotcom Secrets. I bought the domain name way back in the day. I thought it was cool.

A lot of my friends have made fun of me about the name, but still for me, it means a lot to me. So I still keep it, but it was the Dotcom Secrets Home Study course. I went, and we rented a hotel room. We filmed us teaching this whole course, put it on a DVD because John's, of course, was basically a seminar he had done. Took the DVDs, and made it work. So I modeled it exactly like he did. He had, I think, 12 sessions, or eight sessions. I had 12. I had the exact same amount of sessions. He had different handouts, I had the same handouts. I tried to model as close as I could because that dude made $1,000,000 a day selling the course. I'm going to just model it as close as I can, and just do what he did, and I'm going to be successful. So I went out there, we made $1,000 course, we launched it, and how many of you guys think I made a 1,000 sales?

Unfortunately, I didn't, but I'll tell you what we did here in a second. I forgot that's the next slide. So I went back to the funnel again. This is what John's funnel looked like. I thought it was awesome. So I built the same thing. I modeled it. I modeled the look, the feel, the layout as close as I could.

Modeled the price point as close as we could. I did my big launch, $1,000 course, and I sold... I didn't actually sell 1,000. I launched it. I did this big huge core day launch, trying to model the way that John had done his, and during the launch... I had a really good idea that turned out to be a really bad idea. You guys ever do that? I was like, "If I launch this on New Year's Day, it means the first day of the year I'll make $1,000,000 before January 1st is over. This will be insane."

So I did this whole quarter day product launch. And I remember I called John ahead of time, and he's like, "So you're going to launch this on New Year's Eve?" I'm like, "At midnight, we're going to launch it." He's like, "Do you think people are going to buy on New Year's Eve?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah.

They're all going to be sitting around waiting on a computer for me to launch so they can buy my new course." He's like, "I know you're Mormon and stuff. And you don't drink, and things like that. But usually on New Year's Eve, that's not what people are doing." I was like, "No. Dude, you have no idea. You're wrong." So with New Year's Eve, we launched this course. I know Brent was there in the room. We were all excited waiting for sales to come in. And there were a couple people who are waiting to buy, but not very many.

And during the entire launch sequence, seven days, whatever, we ended up selling a whopping 21 copies of the course, which is awesome. Yeah. Only problem is, back then to build a course like this... Just so you know that... I was convinced I was selling $1,000 copies. We had to print DVDs, workbooks, papers. And so, my cost to print 1,000 copies of my home study course was a lot more than $21,000. So when all was said and done, we didn't make $1,000,000 dollars. I made negative dollars, but I did it. I funnel hacked, and went out there. I did the process, tried it out, and that was kind of the thought. It's like, "Don't. Oh, okay." Now, what a lot of people do at this point is to think, "John Reese is a scam. Russell Brunson's a scam. These internet gurus are all scam," and they just quit.

But I want to share the message that Setema Gali spoke at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego the very first time. He shared a message from the stage that meant so much to me. He said, "Everyone, you have to learn how to stop stopping. So many people hit an obstacle, and then they stop." He's like, "If you want to be successful at anything in life, you have to stop stopping. You have to keep moving forward." And so, I was thinking about that. I was like, "Okay. It didn't work. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means I didn't do it right, or I didn't figure the right process, or I picked the wrong product, or something. I got to stop stopping. What's the next phase? What's the next step? What's the next step?" And then, we started going back. Now, for a lot of you guys who may have been... Maybe at home have tried some.

How of you guys, by the way, have launched at least one funnel so far that has not worked? I'm curious. Okay. Everyone in this room here has done a lot. Back home? In fact, don't see hands going up. How many of you guys back home have you guys done at least one funnel that hasn't worked? Okay. Well, you guys are still here, which is good. Most people stop though. So you've got to stop stopping. "But Russell, you said that I was just one funnel away. I did a funnel. Why am I not rich yet?" The reality is it's not the first funnel. I never said you're first funnel away. You're a funnel away, but we don't know which one it's going to be. And I didn't know which one it's going to be. I did funnel, after funnel, after funnel, after funnel. I didn't pull the slide up here, but in the past, I have a slide that's showing every one of my funnels I could find in the past.

It was 150 funnels that I had successfully launched, not successfully made money, but successfully launched before we had the ClickFunnels funnel. That's from everything. From graphic design, product creation, sales, letter, traffic, all this stuff. 150 funnels we had done over that period of time before we launched ClickFunnels. Okay? And so, I'm just going to say you're one funnel away. It doesn't mean that's the end. It's the beginning. You do the first funnel, and you keep trying. A lot of you guys know my favorite author is Napoleon Hill, and he's got a quote that I love. And there's two parts to this quote. I'm going to share both of them here because I think sometimes we miss the second part. So this is the quote. Napoleon Hill says, "There's one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, and the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it." Okay?

So the first thing is definiteness of purpose. If you study Napoleon Hill... It doesn't matter which one of his books you read. You read Think and Grow Rich, you read Laws of Success, you read How to Raise Your Own Salary. If you read any of his books, the first law in basically everything he talks about is definiteness of purpose. That's knowing exactly what it is you want. Okay? Now, most of the guys who are... Especially I know the inner circle here in the room, you guys pretty much all have a very clear path. "I know exactly what I want, and what I'm going for." For people who are not having success yet, this is one of the biggest problems we find is that they don't have definiteness of purpose. They don't know what they're going for. Remember when I first got started in this business, I didn't know what I was going for. I got online. I was like, "I'm going to make some money on the internet."

That was my definite purpose, and I was just wandering around hoping I could figure this out. Hopefully, I bump into something, and I was... I didn't know what I was doing for two or three years. I look back during that window before the whole John Reese incident where I saw what someone was doing. I was selling stuff on eBay, and I was trying to sell this, and that. I was just trying a bunch of things, but I didn't have a definite purpose. I was just kind of wandering. And then August 17th, 20 years ago last month, John Reese sets $1,000,000 day. Sitting in that chair in the library looking at it, I was like "That, that's what I want to do. I want to do that." I know exactly what it is. I had a definite purpose. It shifted from, "I'm going to try and make some money," to like, "No, I want that. I'm going to build a course. It's $1,000 course. I'm try to figure out how to sell 1,000 copies," and I had a definite purpose.

And I shifted from just wandering around, just bumping into things, to having a direction. Having a target. Having something I was moving towards. It shifted everything for me. That's the very first step. I think about other areas of my life where I've had success, and probably the best one for me... I mean, outside of business, the other thing I've really had success with in my life was wrestling. And I remember when I first started wrestling, I went... Initially, because my dad forced me to go because that's how most good things happen. My dad forced me to go wrestling practice, and I didn't want to be a wrestler. I started liking a little bit, having some fun, and then my dad took me to the state tournament that year. And I remember there were two guys on my team who had made it to the state finals, and I kind of knew them because they were in the room.

They were the cool guys in the rooms because I remember seeing them like, "Oh, those are the good guys." And so I went to the state tournament to watch them compete, and I remember there was our, I think, 120 pound, or something like that. A little tiny guy. His name was Matt Woods. He'd won the state title two years in a row, and this was the senior year. He went out there, wrestled the match. He won, beat the guy, and I remember seeing him get his hand raised. And I don't know what it was. I'm sitting in this huge stadium arena. There's a whole bunch of wrestling mats, all these matches happening. I saw Matt Woods get his hand raised. I remember sitting there, and everything got quiet. And I was like that, "That, that thing that he just experienced. I want that more than I want air, more than I want anything. I want to feel that feeling," and that became the definite purpose.

I want to be a state champ. I remember going home, and telling everyone, "I'm going to be a state champ. I'm going to be a state champ." And they laughed at me because I was not very good.

They're like, "Okay, cool. You lost your match last week to the guy that was 12th string, and you want to be... Yeah, good luck with that," and they teased me. They made fun of me, but didn't matter to me because I knew exactly what it was. I had a definite purpose. I wasn't just going to practice dinking around. I was like, "I'm going to be a state champ. I got to work out like a state champ. I got to train like a state champ. I got to figure things out." And I had a definite purpose, and gave me something to move towards hard and fast. Okay? So that's the first half of this quote.

"One quality which one must possess to win is definite purpose." But the second half, this is where most people miss it. The second half is you also have to have a burning desire to possess it. I want to talk about burning desire for a minute because I think this is where a lot of people miss it. When I was wrestling, I remember going to school every day, and I barely... I struggled in school. It was hard to pay attention, and I thought I was dumb. But the reality is, the reason why I struggled in school so much is because all I could think about was wrestling. That was it. If you look at my notebooks back in the day, I was drawing pictures of wrestling mats. There's a circle in the square. I couldn't draw a wrestler. I'm a really bad drawer, but it was wrestling mats.

And then I would think about it, and I remember if you're wrestle, you cut a lot of weight. So I was cutting weight every week. So I remember sitting in classes, and my teachers were talking. I was making a list of the foods I wanted to eat after weigh-ins like, "I want this." And so I'd sit there for an eight hour day at school writing out every single food I could dream about eating next time I could eat. And then what I would do is, each day as I got closer and closer to weigh-ins, I'd look at that list. I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. I would narrow it down. And the night before weigh-ins, my mom would take me to the grocery store, and I'd pick. Of all the things I've been dreaming about this week, these are the three things I want to eat the most.

And we buy those three things, and after weigh-ins, I'd eat them. And then I'm sitting there... If I would lose a match, I would think about it. I would watch the video. I was all consumed. How do I beat that person? At practice, if somebody beat me, or someone did something... It became almost obsessive compulsive. That's the level of desire I had. I wanted this goal so bad, so bad, so bad.

Same thing happened when I got into business. I saw John Reese do that. A lot of people saw that. A lot of people were like, "Oh, that guy made $1,000,000. This is insane." A lot of people saw that. I think the difference between me, and a lot of people, was I became obsessed with it. It wasn't just like, "Okay. I'm going to dabble, and try to make some more money." I was like, "No, this is my definite purpose," and I had a burning desire.

I was going through everything. I mean, people have asked me, "Russell, how did you write all these books? How do you understand how funnels work so good?" I went through every funnel on the internet I could find. Every single person, I bought their products. I went through the funnel hack. I was calling people like, "What'd you do on your funnel? How did it work? What were the conversions?" I became obsessed. I was like this little annoying kid who was just watching everyone studying, and trying to figure out what was happening. I would go to marketing events kind of like this one. Some of you have heard this story before, but I bet most of our at-home audience hasn't heard this. I would go to these big seminars, and there'd be 1,000s in the room. I'd be learning from all the speakers.

Then after the seminar gets done, everyone goes down to the bars, and networks. You guys know about this? How it works? So I'd never been to a bar before. I'm like, "I'm this Mormon kid. I don't drink. This is going to be awkward. I don't want people to think I'm drinking." So I'd go down to the bars afterwards, and everyone's down there. And so I would order a milk from the bartender so that nobody would think I was not drinking. And I have this big old cup of milk, and everyone's like, "Brunson, are you drinking milk?" "Yeah." They're like, "Why?" I'm like, "The Sprite looks like vodka." I don't know. I didn't want people to be like, "Oh, Brunson's drunk." So I have a glass of milk while I'm down there in a bar. And what's crazy is the more people drink, the more they start just sharing their best ideas.

And the better stuff kept coming out, and coming out. The more drunk they are, and I'm the only sober one in the room. I'm like, "I can't believe they're sharing this." I'm taking notes like crazy. It was insane. But it wasn't just like I wanted to become better at building funnels. I didn't want to start a business. I was obsessed with it. It was a burning desire. All consuming day, and night until I figured it out. How to figure it out, how to figure it out, how to figure it out. That's the kind of passion that you have to have to be successful in anything in life. And I know I'm preaching to the choir because you guys are in the room here, you guys are at home. You're the ones who are obsessed with this. But I want to understand to be successful in anything in life, it takes a little bit of weirdness, a little bit of obsession.

How many you guys have friends, family members, spouses who are like, "You're mildly obsessed over here, and it's freaking me out"? Anyone here have that? Okay. Just so you know, you're in a good crowd. To be successful in most things in life, you got to be a little crazy. You got to be mildly obsessed. There are times in your life... Everything good in my life has come during times of radical imbalance. I get this question a lot on the podcasts. "Russell, how do you have such a balanced life?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" In theory, that sounds really, really nice. But I was like, "Nothing in my life great came from times of balance." Think about wrestling. When I became obsessed with wrestling, everything else got completely out of balance, radically imbalanced for a season. When I was focusing on wrestling, I was not a 4.0 student.

Even close. My cumulative GPA was 2.3, so I was a 2.3 student. So I barely passed all my classes because I was not focused on my classes. I was focused on this dream. I did the least possible I had to do in every other area of life so I could consume, and be successful in this dream. Okay? Same thing when I met my wife, Collette. I met Collette, right? I fell in love with her. I was like, "She's amazing." Now, if I just kind of dabble, and I build a relationship, it's not going to happen. My life became radically imbalanced. I was pursuing her, trying to make her fall in love with me. And eventually, she said yes, which is amazing. Yay, Collette. She rolls her eyes. I love it. All right? Same thing was true in business. When I came into business, my life was not balanced.

It was radically imbalanced. I remember when Bowen and Dallin, our twins, were born. Man, they're 18 years old, almost 19 years old now. So 19 years old. They're born, we're in the NICU for two weeks because they were preemies, super early. And I remember sitting there in the NICU.

Collette was out cold. We take turns, we take shifts. So she was sleeping. I was down with the babies at 4:00 in the morning, and I got the babies. I'm rocking them with my laptop, and I'm writing copy. I kid you not. I remember I was writing copy for a product called LinkBrander while I was in NICU with the kids. It's a really good copy. Anyway, I was really proud of it, but that's what I was doing back then. Radical imbalance. Anything good in life comes during times of radical imbalance. So it comes back to, again, Napoleon's quote here. "There's one quality which one must possess to win. That's definite a purpose."

So number one, you got to know exactly what you want. And number two, "Having the knowledge of what you want, and then having a burning desire to possess it." And I think that if you're struggling, that's a lot of times, the thing. It has to become an obsession. People tell me all the time, "I just don't have time to build a business. I don't have the energy to build it." I'm like, "Are you kidding me? You don't have the time?" They go, "I have a job. I work eight hours a day." I'm like, "There are 24 hours in a day. There's not eight. And then while you're working, are you literally thinking about what you're working? Your brain can thinking about whatever it wants. Nobody knows." During this time, I'm in school. I was not thinking about school at all.

I was thinking about wrestling. When I was in business, I was like... It becomes all consuming. So if you want to be successful in anything in life, it comes during times of radical imbalance. Having the burning desire to do it, becoming mildly obsessed for a season. Now, what's nice about it is it's not forever. I'm not saying to burn the bridges, ruin your families, and things like that. It's times.

Everything's moving different places. But if you want to do something great, it takes times of radical imbalance. If you're wondering how do you that with a family, you talk to the family. "Hey, this is what I'm pursuing. This is the goal." So Collette knew what my goals were, and she's like, "Okay, I understand. There's times you have to be doing these crazy things." When we were building ClickFunnels, do you think it was easy for Todd, and me, and our wives? For Ashley, and Colette?

There were times when Todd would fly out to Boise. We spent three weeks working on the platform before launch. It was like three weeks of us pulling all-nighters night, after night, after night, after night, and then we'd fly back home. There were times I'd be working all day, and I'd get done working at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when Todd would be waking up East Coast time at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. He'd be working, and we'd be talking in between. Then I'd pass out, he'd be working all day, and I'd come back in. It was radical times of imbalance to create something amazing. And that comes down to knowing exactly what you want, and having a burning desire to possess it. So for you guys, I want you to think about, what is it you want? You're here at Funnel Hacking Live for a purpose.

What is your reason? If it's just, "I'm here to hang out. Hopefully, I get something." That's not what I'm talking about. That's this drifting thing. If you're here saying, "I'm at this event because I got to figure out this one thing. I got to figure out how to do this. I'm trying to figure out how to get through to the Two Comma Club, how to fix my funnel. My company's struggling right now. How do I get it back on track?" Okay? "My funnel's not converting. No one's coming to my site. I have no traffic. What is the problem?" Everything you're looking for is here over the next four days, I promise you that. We've curated the greatest speakers to come here, to give you guys very specific things, to help you in different parts of your journey. And everyone's journey is different. That's why we had to create an event that touches on a lot of different things.

But I promise you, if you are struggling with something right now, the answer is here, and it'll be here in the next three and a half days. But only if you show up. Maybe the thing that you've been waiting for, the thing that's going to give you the key that unlocks the next door for you. If you miss it because, "I took that session off," or, "I went to the grocery store," or whatever that thing might be. Do not miss it. Everything here is created, and curated for you guys on purpose. The speakers we have for the next couple of days, it's going to be really fun. I just know on my side of the presentations that I've been working on, I'm so excited to share with you guys some of the stuff I have not talked about before. A lot of new stuff. A lot of cool things.

I'm going to showing you guys behind the scenes of some of our funnels, and anyway, today's going to be really fun. Okay. A couple more things I'm going to jump into. So my One Funnel Away story. After watching John launching it, not making enough money to cover. I was like, "Hey, what else is there?" Launching funnel, after funnel, after funnel, after funnel, after funnel. We kept doing this. Obsession, "I got to figure this out. Try this one. Try this one. Try this niche. Try this market. Try it over, and over, and over again." And then I remember on October 1, 2007, I launched this product, and this product's interesting. There's a guy that wrote a book called The 12-Month Millionaire. Anyone here ever read the book? It's like as fat as a phone book. It's amazing. I have the rights. I should put it somewhere cool for you guys to be able to read.

Anyway, I read this book, and it was about a guy named Vince James. He sold supplements through direct mail, and in 18 months he built a company that did $100,000,000 dollars in sales. I remember reading this book, I was like, "This is crazy." This is the beat of my journey before I ever made $1,000,000, or anything. And I remember reading this book. I was like, "This is the coolest thing in the world," and so I called him. I was like, "Can I interview you?" And for some reason he picked up the phone, and he was like, "Sure, that'd be great." And so we set up an interview, and I remember it was on a Saturday. And I went through the entire book. I took the outline of the book, and I had questions for every single chapter. I interviewed him for three hours. When the three hours were done, we were only halfway through the book.

He's like, "You want to do again next Saturday, and ask the rest of the questions?" I was like, "Yeah, that'd be amazing." So I interviewed him for another three hours the next Saturday, and it was six hour audio of me just picking his brain, asking him questions about how he built his company. And it was never meant to be a product. It was just like... I don't know. I just interviewed him, and I had this thing. And sat in my hard drive for a year and a half, two years. I never did anything with it. And I'm launching funnel, after funnel, after funnel. I was like, "I wonder if anyone would buy the interview I did with Vince James," and that was the thought. I said, "Let's try it out." So we took that. October 1st, we launched it as a product. And I remember this was the very first time that we'd ever used video in a funnel.

So what happened is you'd come to the site, and you bought the interview. The interview and the transcripts for $37. And then, you come to the next page. This is pre-click funnels. This is pre-one-click upsells. You guys know back in the day we couldn't do one-click upsells? So what we'd have to do is that you go put your credit card in, and you go the next page. "You want this, too?" "Yeah." "Cool. Put your whole credit card in again." So they have to re-put in their whole credit card again. It was a nightmare. One-click upsells is the greatest thing in the world. Anyway, but back in the day, we didn't have that. So people would put their credit cards in again. And this is when YouTube just first came out. You can tell because the video's square, and I had a shaved head. And we'd bought the rights to be able to sell Vince's book for $300.

I should have found the video. I probably have it. I should have found it. Anyway, it's me sitting our desk like, "Hey, guys. Thanks for buying my interview with Vince James. If you like the interview, you might want the book, too. This book's huge." I kind of talked about the book. Do you remember this office? That's the one. Anyway, this is our first actual office we had back in the day. So me pitching the book, and there was a video. I remember people messaging me. They're like, "Dude, we saw your funnel. That was insane. You had a video upsell." No one had ever seen it before. I was one of the first ones ever to do it. It converted like crazy. $287 for the book. And then we had a membership site where people would get all the interviews, and all the stuff like that.

Launched it in October 1, 2007, and October 16, 2007 is when I officially joined the Two Comma Club with this funnel. So, yeah. It was the first time that one of my funnels ever done that, and it was the craziest thing. It was just one of those things where I had launched so many funnels. It was funnel, after funnel, after funnel. It's funny because I had this mantra. You guys probably heard me say it before, that you're one funnel away. I share the mantra, and it's funny because all the funnel hackers are like, "Yes, this is amazing." But there are people online who hate me because of it. They rip me apart. It's so funny, and aggravating, and a bunch of stuff. But they're like, "Russell says you're just one funnel away," and this is why that's not... Anyway, I get a lot of crap because of it, but I'm like, "Man, for me, this was the thing."

I launched a dozen funnels prior to that, and then for some reason, that was the one that hit. And it was just like that changed my whole life. Everything was different. I was like, "Oh, my gosh." We had $1,000,000 in one funnel in what? 16, 17 days? And it was like, "Hey, how do we make a better funnel, and a better funnel?" And then for the last... How many years ago was that? 18 years? 17 years? However many years since then we've launched 100s of funnels. But this was the very first one for me that ever did it, and it was awesome. How many guys... Especially guys in the room here. How many of you guys remember the very first funnel you had that crossed seven figures in sales? It's special, right? You know exactly which one it is. In fact, the very first Two Comma Club I ever ordered because we were getting it tested, and I was talking to Dave. Dave's like, "We're going to print a sample."

He's like, "What product name do you want on it?" I'm like, "Twelve Month Internet Millionaire" That was the very first product. So the very first Two Comma Club award ever printed had this for myself. And then I went through the archives like, "What funnels have I have done that made $1,000,000?" We found all of them. I printed an award for myself for every funnel I'd ever created that did $1,000,000. So the real reason why the Two Comma Club Award is literally just for me, and then I let you guys participate in it because I thought it was a cool award. Anyway, so there you go.

So that's what it was, and it changed my whole life. I'm going to talk more about One Funnel Away later afternoon, so I'll share some of those stories. But, man, this was the very first time, and it changed my life, and gave me belief that I could do this for a living.

I still remember because my mom... I was graduating from school at this time, and I was doing this stuff. And my mom kept asking me, "So when are you going to get a real job?" I was like, "Mom, I have a real job." She said, "No. But where you work for somebody, and they pay taxes?" And I'm like, "Mom, I have a real job," and she would not believe me. How many of you guys know David Frye? David's one of my favorite people in this whole industry. So David's actually my second uncle, or second... Yeah, something like that. And I remember he does very similar business to all of us, and I didn't know that. I reconnected with him after a couple of years. He messaged me. He's like, "Wait, you do internet business, too?" And then he showed me his stuff.

So I called my mom, and I was like, "I'm doing the same thing David Frye is doing." And she's like, "Oh, he makes really good money. Okay, you can do that then." It was the first time this business was ever legitimate in my mom's eyes, even though this was happening behind the scenes.

Anyway, kind of funny. So 2016, was the very first time. And after that, we kept building funnel, after funnel, after funnel. I was like, "If we could build some software that made this funnel process easier, I think that would be a good thing for me to sell." And so, 2009 is actually the very first time I tried to build ClickFunnels, which is funny. This is before I'd ever met Todd, or any of the other guys. But I did know Dylan Jones, and Dylan was one of our original co-founders. Dylan was the one who built the original editor. We ended up buying him out a couple years into ClickFunnels, but he was the first person. And Dylan actually designed my very first try at doing this.

The domain name we had was clickdotcom.com, which is so confusing. Are you guys glad we changed it? But this is what it looked like. This is the landing page at clickdotcom.com. You come in there, you sign up, and then you come through and this is the payment plans. And then, this is where you sign up. We didn't call them sales funnels back... Sales funnels wasn't a word back then. We called them sales flows. So you can see your product, your follow-ups, and your sales flows. You set up your sales flow. Sales funnels is so much cooler, but yeah. That was what we called it back in the day. And then, we had this where you could do all your things. Anyway, this was the whole site, and we spent, I don't know, three or four years trying to build this, trying to launch it, trying to code it.

This is the thing I needed in the world the most, and I wanted it for myself. I knew the market wanted it. We kept trying, and it wasn't just me. There were tons of people also trying to build some version of this. Everyone I knew was all trying to build this thing, and it was an arm's race of us all trying to build a platform to make these funnels we were creating simpler and easier. And we tried it over... So 2009 was the very first time that I tried this, and we did over time. Eventually, the company that we had that was building this, it kind of fell apart, and we had to fire everybody. It was kind of a dark side in my journey where just everything fell apart, and I was like, "All right. We're never going to do that." I remember it was a spot where we'd gone from about 100 employees. We let go probably 95 of them.

We moved from this big, nice office, and moved into this little tiny office with five of us in there. And we're trying to figure out how to pay the rent. We're trying to figure out how to pay off some debt.

We had a bunch of IRS money we owed. It was just this painful time in my journey, in my life, and I was trying to figure what am I supposed to do? What's the next thing? There's got to be something out here for me to do. And I remember going to Flippa.com. Anyone here ever go to Flippa? Flippa sells websites. I went to Flippa, and I'm looking at all these sites. I'm trying to find my next idea.

What's the thing that's going to help me be successful? And all of a sudden, I saw this website pop in there. It's called Champion Sound, and it was a text message, email marketing platform for bands.

And it was the coolest thing. I was like, "This is amazing." Not that I wanted to be the guy doing texts, and email messaging for bands. But I was like, "If we bought this company, we could take it. And then we could rebrand it, and do a text marketing system for chiropractors, and for dentists, and for..." So that was the whole vision. And so they were selling this site thing for $20,000. I did not have $20,000, or a credit card, or anything. And I was trying to figure out how to make some money, and I was hustling a bunch of things. I was selling stuff. I had to earn the $20,000, and finally, got enough money. I bought this on Flippa. I was like, "Cool. This is the future. I'm going to change the world. We're going to give email and text message to all the responders in every market."

And so we bought it, and then they were trying to transfer... After I've wired them the money, these contractors signed. So I can't get out of it. I'm trying to transfer the website from theirs onto our servers. And not to get nerdy with you guys, but we have different servers. They're like, "We need servers that you can host Ruby on Rails on." I'm like, "What does that even mean?" They're like, "Ruby on Rails. It's a programming language." I was like, "A programming?" They're like, "Yeah. You do PHP, which is English. And Ruby on Rails is Chinese." So asked my developers, I'm like, "Do you guys know Chinese?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Can you do Ruby on Rails?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Dang it." So we couldn't transfer it over. So finally, we had to get some new server. They moved it over to our server, and then they left.

And all my developers are like, "We don't know Ruby on Rails. I don't know how to do this. You're kind of screwed." I was like, "That was the last $20,000 I didn't have. This has to work," and they're like, "Sorry." I remember we went to oDesk. I was trying to hire programmers to fix it. I was trying all sorts of stuff. The customers I had were all angry because it was falling apart. It wasn't working.

I didn't know what to do, and I remember I was like, "I just wasted $20,000 we didn't have. I don't know what to do. I can't fix this thing. Customers are yelling at us." And so I remember emailing my developer, I was like, "Just cancel the servers, and shut it down, and we'll just walk away from it." And I was at my office, and I remember getting up, and I left the office. And as I was walking out the door, I had this weird impression. You guys ever have those impressions?

And the impression was email your list, and see if there's a Ruby on Rails programmer that works that's on your email list. I was like, "What? My list is teaching people marketing stuff. There's not a Ruby on Rails." I didn't even know what Ruby on Rails was. And my list wasn't that big at the time, but when I hear impressions like that, I try to follow them as much as I can. So I stopped, I walked back into my desk, I sat down, opened my email, and I was like... The subject line was like, "I'm looking for a partner who knows Ruby on Rails," and decided I'm like, "Hey, this is the email is probably not for any of you guys, but if there's one person out there who happens to know Ruby on Rails, I bought a site. I'm looking for a partner who wants to help me fix the site. Send me a message. Here's the site." And I send the email out to my list thinking nothing's going to happen.

I go back home that night, check my email, and sure enough I get a couple of people who respond back. And I'm reading through the different things, and I'm looking at the different resumes. And I don't even know what's right, or what's not right. And all of a sudden, one of the people who popped through was this guy right here, and it was Todd. And I remember I was like, "Hey, I have the site. If you want to partner with me, let me know, and here's logins. Good luck." And I remember I just sent him everything because I didn't know what to do. And I went to bed. Next morning, I woke up, and he's like, "Hey, I fixed this, I fixed this, I fixed this. This was dumb. I changed this, I added this, I moved this around, and it's all working great. What's next?" And I was like, "What?"

And everything started working. I was like, "This guy's awesome." And so we started something else, and I remember at the time, we had no money at all. I was like, "This is awesome. I can't pay you, but if we ever make money from this, we can share some of these." He's like, "Cool." And never asked me for money, and it's crazy because he kept going through our business. He worked with us probably over a year, and he would fly out to Boise. We'd work on projects. We try to launch.

Sometimes we made some money, most times we made no money. We would try different things, and different stuff. And he just came and just... If we made some money, we'd pay him, but it was just kind of random. And I remember one day he was in Boise, and I was looking over his shoulder. And he had his laptop open, and they were all these... It's emails full of people offering him jobs.

I'm like, "What's that?" He's like, "Oh, it's people. Ruby on Rails is kind a rare language, so it's really easy to get jobs if you want them." I was like, "How much are people offering you for jobs?" He's like, "I don't know. Let's check it out." He opens up an email, and it's people offering him $350,000 a year. "I'll pay you 400,000." All these things. The whole email box is full of these job offers. I was like, "You should take those deals. I'm paying you $0 a year. That's a way better deal than this." He's like, "No, I don't want to work for anybody. I want to be a part. I want to do this kind of cool stuff." And so after that, I remember I was kind of freaking out. I'm like, "If he ever leaves, I'm in big trouble." So I was like, "Hey, we don't have very much money, but I think I could probably could pay $50,000 a year. Is that okay?"

He's like, "Yeah, whatever." So I'm like, "Cool." So I'm like, "Okay." So we set up to pay $50,000 a year. And then a little while later we launching some stuff, make a little more money. And then I remember coming back, I was like, "Hey, I think I can pay $70,000 a year now. Is that cool?" He's like, "Yeah, whatever." So up $70,000 a year. Eventually, got a hundred grand a year, but he never once asked me for money. He was just there to help, to serve, hoping for the best, hoping something cool happened. And I remember one day he was flying out to Boise, and it was right after Leadpages had just gotten their $5,000,000 round in funding. And he's about to leave Atlanta, and he sees that. Takes a picture of it, texts it to me. He's flying in the air for four hours.

I wake up in the morning, I see this text from him, and I'm like, "Leadpages? They give them $5,000,000 for Leadpages..." I was so confused. I couldn't understand it. By the time Todd got there, he's like, "They gave Leadpages $5,000,000." I'm like, "I know, this is insane." He's like, "I could build Leadpages tonight." I'm like, "You could?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Let's build lead pages tonight. Let's do it then." And then he's like, "Cool, we're going to do this. We're going to do it." So we're like, "We're going to build lead pages. This is going to be amazing." And he's like, "Do you want anything else besides what they have? Any other features you want?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah. What if we did this, and then this?" And then we sat in front of a whiteboard for a week. Every idea we had possible, he listed them all out, and he looked at it all.

He said, "Okay. That's what we're going to go build." And he flew home, and over the next eight or nine months, he built the very first version of ClickFunnels, which is insane. So I got one last story, then I'll bring him out. I remember after we had that whiteboard meeting, and I'm driving him to the airport to drop him off. I remember we pulled up, and... Pulling up to the airport, and we're kind talking back and forth. And before he gets out of the car, he is like, "Hey, if we're going to do this," he's like, "I don't want to do it as one of your employees." He's like, "I want to do this as a business partner." I remember in that moment... I'd never had a business partner before, and I was just like, "Ah."

I had all the fear of like, "N, I'm the entrepreneur. I want to be the business. No." I went back and forth, back and forth, and there was probably a thousand conversations in my head in 20 seconds.

So I'm sitting there, and he's about to the other the car. And I was like, "All right. Let's do it, man.

Let's be business partners on it." And he got out of the car, and he left. And I remember being scared, and nervous. And looking back now, a decade and almost 12 years later from when we first started building ClickFunnels. 12 years later, I look at that as probably the second greatest decision in my life, and the first one would be marrying my wife, Colette. And the second one was when I told Todd, "Yes, I'd love to be your business partner," and that moment completely changed my life forever. And I'm so grateful for him as a friend, as a person, as a partner, and someone who I have so much love and respect for. And I'm glad that he's here. So with that said, should we all stand up, and put our hands together for Todd Dickerson? Yes.

Todd Dickerson:
What's up man? That was amazing.

Russell Brunson:
You're too kind. It's Todd. This is amazing.

Todd Dickerson:
Oh, my God. Wow, you are way too kind. This is too cool. I'm super excited to be here with you guys in Vegas. My girls are at home, I think, watching live. Hey, girls. Yeah. This is so cool. Oh, man. I'm sitting backstage. I'm listening to that conversation. I'm thinking through my head of my side of what I was thinking at the same time because I sound a little crazy. "This guy just wouldn't take money. I tried to pay him, and he wouldn't take..." But when that email came through, I felt that tug, that calling. It was this, there's something here. There's something more. What you're doing is cool. I was building software, and doing cool stuff I thought at the time. But there was this tug of like, there's more. There's something more to work on. There's some bigger impact to make some bigger changes, and yeah. I just channeled my inner Eileen, and was like, "Do it now. Reply. It's in the email." Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
I know this is for everybody, but the leap of faith of any new journey is always scary. Right?

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
Especially entrepreneurship, and you're coming into this explain to your wife, "Hey, I'm going to go work for free for these guys. I have no idea if anything's going to happen. We have no good ideas yet, but we're just going to try." How did they deal with that? How did your wife feel?

Todd Dickerson:
There was definitely a lot of conversations around, "We need a new car. Maybe we should make some more money. We should do this thing." And I'm like, "No, it's fine. We got enough to get by.

We have a successful..." I had a four-hour work week style business that was paying the bills, and it was like, "No, we're good. I've got a bigger plan. There's something here." I didn't know what it was at the time. I, obviously, was just following my instincts. The calling of just like, "Let's keep going.
Let's see what we can do."

Russell Brunson:
What's funny about this is... I'm going to talk about level 10 opportunities tomorrow with you guys, some really cool stuff. But I remember we were trying to think, what's our level 10 opportunity? We were at TNC in a hotel room just talking about that, and I remember that we thought we had the big idea, "This is going to be the future. It's going to change the world," and I have the logo not on the slides. But what we thought was going to be the thing that changed Worldforce was a site. It was WPundies.com, and it was the WordPress logo wearing tidy whitey undies. I'm like, "That's the thing that's going to change the world."

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
And It was funny. That actually was the first thing that, eventually, became ClickFunnels, which is-

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah, it grew into that. That was one of the random prototype software projects I built at the time, too. Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
Yeah, it's fun.

Todd Dickerson:
It's awesome.

Russell Brunson:
So I've got some dates and stuff here. So this was crazy. So September 23, 2014. This is the day that ClickFunnels officially went live, which is crazy because crazy because

Todd Dickerson:
Crazy.

Russell Brunson:
... that was 10 years ago.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah, it was almost exactly 10 years ago

Russell Brunson:
Four. So in 10 days from now will be our 10-year birthday.

Todd Dickerson:
So close... Oh, I wasn't planning on saying this, but I just thought of this, too. When we were going live with this, I was literally at the computer talking back and forth with you. We're doing this promotion, we're doing all this stuff. And my wife is like, "We got to go to the hospital. I got to go to the hospital," and-

Russell Brunson:
I remember this was 2:00 in the morning when you're talking to me.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah, yeah. I'm talking to Russell online, and she's like, "Oh, no. What's wrong? What's wrong?" And basically, we had a miscarriage. So at the same time we're launching ClickFunnels. We were going through that, too. So-

Russell Brunson:
Yeah.

Todd Dickerson:
... it was a tough time. But also, an exciting new time of a birth of a new business, and a birth of a new thing. So-

Russell Brunson:
Yeah.

Todd Dickerson:
... super cool, too.

Russell Brunson:
It's crazy.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
Anyway, getting all emotional here.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah, I'm sorry.

Russell Brunson:
I wasn't a fan on that. All my friends are in the room. Anyway, it's crazy. So it's been several years since we launched it. A couple cool stories. These are the original logos. When we first launched it, that we were going through. I found all these. I'm like, "This is crazy. This is..." We're trying to figure out what is ClickFunnels? What's the branding? What's that actually look like?

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
Initial logos. This is the room where it all happened. That's Dylan Jones on the left-hand side, Todd Dickerson, and me. And we're sitting there mapping out ClickFunnels. There's the left-hand menu.

We're mapping out page by page on these whiteboards, and taking pictures, and dreaming about crazy things. I remember we got it done, we launched it. When we first launched it, it wasn't... I thought as soon as we launched this, we're going to get... I think our goal was 10,000 customers in week number one, and we didn't. And then we kept trying different versions, and different things.

And it wasn't until this event. I think it was two or three months into ClickFunnels. Maybe it was October. Maybe a month, a month and a half into ClickFunnels.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
We got invited to speak at an event, one of my friend's events. And he's like, "Hey, we need to come and sell ClickFunnels this event." I was like, "You don't understand. We have a free trial of ClickFunnels right now, and nobody's buying it." He's like, "Yeah, but you got to come. I already put your name on the sales letter. You're coming to speak." And I was like, "I don't know how... This is... Okay." And he's like, "I need you to sell $1,000 version." If you have never spoken at an event. The way it works when you speak in an event is you create an offer, you sell it. And then the promoter gets half money, you get half the money. So he's like, "Create $1,000 offer of ClickFunnels, and come and sell at the event."

So we came to this event. We put it together. I remember we're working on slides as we're flying out there. We did the first demo. Dylan was inside of the event room doing the first demo live as we're going live. We did this whole presentation. The end of it, we did the offer to sell it, and it was crazy. We did the pitch, and people were jumping over the tables, running the back room, people knocking each other over. And I'm sitting there just like... I'd heard people talk about table rushes before, but I'd never actually experienced before. And people were jumping over, and it was the craziest thing. We closed more than half of the room at that event. And then night, I remember going to dinner, and we're sitting there, and I was like...

We're celebrating. First off, we actually made some money, which is fantastic. We were completely broke. And so that was really nice, first off, and we're all happy. I think we ordered good food that night because we're like, "This is..." And I remember sitting there telling you and Dylan, and I was like, "I don't think you guys understand. I've never had people respond to something we've done like that ever. I've been doing this for 10 years at this point. I've never seen people do a table rush." I was like, "I know the path now to get us to the point where we're going to be rich. We're going to be crazy rich from this." And that was the kickoff of this whole movement. And from there we went and just... Yeah. 10 years later, here we are, which is just crazy.

Todd Dickerson:
I still remember that conversation. You were just like, "This changes everything, guys. You don't realize this is it. This is how we teach the strategy, how we teach the software, how we do it."

Russell Brunson:
Now, we can run. So do you want to talk about some of the things that have happened over the last little bit since we've launched this little company called QuickFunnels?

Todd Dickerson:
Absolutely. Yeah. I can't wait to talk a little bit about what we've been up to for the past year, but it's much more important to talk, first, about what you guys have been up to. So jumping straight into it. Over $12,000,000,000 have now been processed through QuickFunnels, and sells by you guys.

Just insane.

Russell Brunson:
It's crazy.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah. Almost $2,000,000,000 in the past 12 months alone. Just insane volume. You guys are crushing it.

Russell Brunson:
Wait, you skipped like it's not a big deal. $2,000,000,000 in the last 12 months alone you guys have processed through QuickFunnels, which is insane. That's a lot of money.

Todd Dickerson:
Congratulations to all the guys. Yep. That's over 2,500 people who have joined the Two Comma Club. So that's people that have made over $1,000,000 in a funnel. Over 2,500 now how crazy is that? 2,500.

Russell Brunson:
Congratulations. Yes.

Todd Dickerson:
Yes.

Russell Brunson:
Our first Funnel Hacking Live had 800 people. The second one had 1,230. Third one, we had 1,300. I mean, it was like five Funnel Hacking Lives before we were able to get 2,500 people be in a room, and now 2,500 people have wanted Two Comma Club Award, which is insane.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, 343 Two Comma Club X winners that have done over $10,000,000.

Russell Brunson:
$10,000,000.

Todd Dickerson:
We didn't have that many more people in Vegas 10 years ago, so that's crazy.

Russell Brunson:
Yeah.

Todd Dickerson:
It's insane. We had 105 Two Comic Club C winners. So that's you guys that have done it over $25,000,000. Wow, that's crazy. And nine Two Heart winners. So if you guys are familiar with this...

Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
Of all the awards, this is my favorite one because this is the one it's not how much money you make, but it's how much money you give. And I remember when we first did this the first time, I thought this may be something we'd give an award every decade. Maybe someone actually will do this. And so, nine of you guys have donated over $1,000,000 to charity from the money you made from your funnels, which is-

Todd Dickerson:
So awesome.

Russell Brunson:
It's amazing.

Todd Dickerson:
Yeah.

Russell Brunson:
So, love it. Very cool.

Todd Dickerson:
Thank you, guys.

Russell Brunson:
This is the big question. How many of you guys... So the next Funnel Hacking Live is not a year away, which is crazy. The next Funnel Hacking Live is like five and a half months away. How many guys at home, I want to say by a raise of hands, how many of you guys have a goal next year to be on stage with us getting your Two Comma Club Award? If that's you, raise your hands. Let's go. It's going to be awesome.

Todd Dickerson:
That's awesome. So our mission, obviously, for the past decade has been to free entrepreneurs so you can focus on actually changing the lives of your customers. That was what I've set out to do from a software perspective since the very beginning in those early conversations. It was always about, how do we make this easy? There's constant challenges, constant tech hurdles. And that's been our vision, and been our goal for well over a decade now. And yeah, we've got exciting new things to help make that even easier now going forward, too.

Russell Brunson:
So this is our 10-year official birthday party. So happy birthday to ClickFunnels. Let's go. All right.

Everyone, I hope you love that episode, and you got some cool value from it. Basically, right now, I want to make sure that you know about Funnel Hacking Live 10. It is the last dance. It's the last big Funnel Hacking Live mega event we're ever doing. So the last, man, four or five years, we had 5,000 plus people at Funnel Hacking Live. It is the greatest party, rock concert event ever. And this year, we're going out with a bang. It's year 10, and I'm ready to retire from mega events. It's a lot of work. We have something new coming. It'll be different, but this will be the last time we do it this way. And I want to make sure you come out to it for the last big party for our 10 anniversary.

If you are someone who was a Funnel Hacker in the past, I want to invite you to come back. If you are somebody who's new to our world, then come experience it before it's gone. It's going to be insane, and amazing. And I want to make sure you guys are there at the event. So get your tickets at funnelhackinglive.com. I will be speaking there. One of my friends, Tony Robbins, will be speaking there, and that's all the speakers I've announced so far. So over the next few months, you'll find out who else is coming, but I want to make sure get your tickets before they sell out. We sold that every year in the past, and we'll sell out this year as well. So go to funnelhackinglive.com, and get your tickets to FHL 10.

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