My first mentor that helped me to finally have success online was Mark Joyner. This is a four part series where I had a chance to be interviewed by Mark about how I’ve grown a company since I met him all those years ago. Here are a couple of the questions Mark asked Russell on this episode:

-- What are the 3 biggest blunders you made along the way?

-- What are the 3 most strategic and pivotal decisions since founding ClickFunnels?

So listen in to find out what Russell had to say!

So Russell and I met when he was trying to make money to pay off his college debt. And I'll tell you what, man, he had to convince his wife to spend a thousand dollars on a program that he couldn't afford that I was offering. And that started his online career, and I'm very grateful. He credits me as his first mentor, but I'm at a point now where I'm learning from him. And I want to tell you guys, if you are a teacher of any kind that the best blessing you could possibly have is a student that surpasses you. If you have any kind of humility or if you understand what life is really all about, that is one of the ultimate things that can happen because what that means is you did your job well, partly, and it also means that you got an opportunity to learn something from someone.

-- 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!)

-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

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What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And we've got something really fun in store for you over the next four episodes.

So, when I first started this game back in the day, I struggled throughout almost two years trying to figure out how to play, and what to do, and how to get traffic, and how to sell stuff. And the person... I think everyone who figures out this game, there's a mentor you bump into. And I am so honored and grateful that so many people have... that I was the person for them. They read the book, or whatever, and the light bulbs clicked for them.

But I'm also very aware that I'm not everyone's guru. I'm not the person... And I'm so grateful for all the other teachers out there who are teaching things who give other people the ah-ha’s. I always tell people our goal at ClickFunnels is not to get people to use ClickFunnels. Our goal at ClickFunnels is to help entrepreneurs to grow their companies. And so, I don't care if it's me that clicks with, or if you click with somebody else. I don't care as long as you get that aha moment.

And so, for me, for whatever reason, the person that gave me aha moment was my first real mentor, and his name is Mark Joyner. And kind of putting this into a timeline, back when I got started in this business, he was just ending. He had built a huge internet marketing company, and he got tired of being in the market, so he sold off all his assets, and he did this thing called the Farewell Launch where he sold this Farewell Package for a thousand bucks, and it was the first course I'd ever bought, and I went through it like the most intense, crazy student of all the time. And I learned it, I mastered it, and I implemented it, and that was... man, 15, 16 years ago now. And he was the one that gave me the shifts that helped me understand... helped all the things light up and make sense so I could be successful.

And so, I'm grateful for Mark. He's been a mentor; he's been a friend, and someone I have a ton of respect for. And it's funny, because in the middle of all the chaos over the last couple months, he messaged me, he was like, "Hey, I'm launching this new podcast called the Mark Joyner Show, do you want to come on and be one of my guests?" And I, honestly, didn't have the time because there was so many things happening, but I was like, "You know what, for Mark... For you, Mark, I would do anything." And so, we set up a time, it was late at night, we jumped on, and because it was after hours and my kids were already in bed, we were able just to go and talk, and we talked for a couple of hours, and it was really, really cool.

And so, if you follow Mark, you probably saw that interview. And if not, I asked for his permission to allow me to play it here on the podcast over the next couple episodes. And so, I'm excited for you guys to hear it. I think you will get a lot of value out of it. We talked a lot about different topics and different things. Talked about things I learned from him, things that I discovered since then. Anyway, hopefully, you guys enjoy this conversation. We broke it up over four episodes. So, this is the first of four episodes. So, I hope you enjoy it. We'll play the theme song, and when we come back, we will jump right into the interview with Mark Joyner.

Mark Joyner: All right, everybody. We are live. This is Mark Joyner. Welcome to episode number two of the Mark Joyner Show. And man, I am so happy to have this guest on today. And it was very hard getting this young man. I call him young man now, to me, he's always a young man. I knew him when he was like this college kid. I know, right? And now he's turned into this enormous, behemoth giant that cannot be unseen on the internet. You can't turn on the internet without seeing Russell Brunson's face. I don't know if Russell even needs an introduction, but I'm going to give you guys a very, very brief one just in case. So I'll tell you a little bit of the backstory here.

So Russell and I met when he was trying to make money to pay off his college debt. And I'll tell you what, man, he had to convince his wife to spend a thousand dollars on a program that he couldn't afford that I was offering. And that started his online career, and I'm very grateful. He credits me as his first mentor, but I'm at a point now where I'm learning from him. And I want to tell you guys, if you are a teacher of any kind that the best blessing you could possibly have is a student that surpasses you. If you have any kind of humility or if you understand what life is really all about, that is one of the ultimate things that can happen because what that means is you did your job well, partly, and it also means that you got an opportunity to learn something from someone.

And if you've got a guy who not only surpassed you in certain ways, but is also humble and generous and wholesome the way Russell is, you are doubly and triply blessed. And that is what we have seen with Russell since his genesis in the online marketing community, when was it? Probably 1991, '92.

Russell Brunson:  I don't even remember anymore. Well, when was the farewell package? That's right when I got started.

Mark:  About '91. Yeah. So, right as I was leaving, you were entering in.

Russell: I was jumping in.

Mark:  You were jumping in. And Russell, I tell you what, I knew from the start Russell had ... he had some stuff that a lot of people didn't have. First of all, he was an all state wrestler. Now, a lot of you guys don't know this, but Johnny Hendricks, the first guy to really give GSP an ass whooping in UFC fought Russell Brunson in an all state wrestling tournament. Now, Russell didn't win that, but from what I hear, Russell should've won it. I see him gritting his teeth a little bit.

Russell: I'm good. My hands are sweating, let’s call him up right now. I lost by one point to him. And to this day I regret that because it'd been so cool if I actually won that match.

Mark: I know, right? Well, fighting the guy and coming that close, and I mean, even though you should have won, that's bragging rights in itself. This is the guy who was the first guy to give GSP a real ass whooping: Johnny Hendricks, okay? Russell fought that dude, and wrestling is the single most challenging athletic program in school at all. So what that means is you come into the game with some mental toughest. Now, I saw Russell's curiosity, his humility, the mental toughness he had. I saw all of that in him early on. And I knew something amazing was going to happen. I had no idea the heights he would reach.

Now, ClickFunnels is on the way to becoming a billion dollar company. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And we've only got a certain amount of time because Russell is on a very, very tight time schedule. So what I'm going to do here is after I give Russell a quick chance to say hello, I'm going to rapid fire a bunch of questions at Russell. We'll see how much time we have for a little bit of Q&A after that. If you guys have questions, post them inside there. I've got a list of questions that other people have asked, but I'm going to shotgun blast Russell with a whole bunch of rapid fire questions first. But before all that, Russell, thank you so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it.

Russell: No worries, man. I am so grateful for you. It was funny, we were cleaning up something the other day, and I don't know if you remember this, but my wife and I had just gotten married and bought your farewell package. And it was a year later because you kind of disappeared for a year, and then you came back. And you did this phone call with me. And at the time, I had this tape recorder. And I recorded all my phone calls. And I remember I did this call with you. I got done. I wrote on the tape, the cassette tape, I wrote a hundred million dollar call with Mark Joyner.

And I need to find a tape player, so I could actually listen to what we said way back in the day. But I saw it recently and it's on again. And so it's really cool because I just remember you taking the time back then when I was a nobody, just trying to figure out my way. And just you were always so gracious with your time with me. And man, I listened for so much time. I'd plug in the farewell package in my head, and I'd hear you talking over and over again of just different concepts and things that were just blowing my mind. And so many things that, to this day, I still use that all came initially from you. So I'm just grateful for you and you allowing me to hang out with you again, man. I love this. This is so much fun for me.

Mark:  Well, I'm humbled and honored, man. And I would love to hear that tape, actually because I'm curious to know what was said.

Russell:  I've got to find it.

Mark:  We're going to have to find maybe one of the five cassette decks that exist in the universe now. They're all in the trash heap of history. All right. Well, dude, I have tons of rapid fire questions I just want to throw at you. And this is not going to be easy. I apologize in advance because these are going to be tough questions. I don't know how quickly we're going to be able to get through these, but I've got some really powerful ones that I think are going to deliver the most value.

And you mentioned something there, you said, I took the time to spend with you. I always like to be as generous as I can with my time. And I know you do, too, but as your life progresses, you got to be more and more strategic and more and more careful about that. Now that we have this platform where we can get this information out to a lot of people. I want to deliver that as absolutely maximal value as we possibly can to the listeners of this call. So I have some very strategically designed questions. Before I jump into those, anything else you'd like to say?

Russell:  I'm just excited to be hanging out with you and excited to be sharing. I think when I started ... I mean, what are we, 15, 16 years ago when this whole thing started, I didn't know it was even possible, but I believed, and I believed you. I watched you as Mark's student. I can figure this out. And hopefully, if anyone's watching tonight, everyone's going to be at different levels. Some people are just getting started, some have existing businesses, but I think a big piece of it is just believing that it's actually possible for you because I just believed you right out of the gate. I'm like, "Okay, I trust Mark. I believe him. I'm just going to do it." And now, 15 years later, here we are. And I think for so many people, the techniques or tactics aren't hard, it's just the belief in themselves is the hardest thing.

So if I give you guys anything, like I tell people all the time, my job at ClickFunnels is to be the cheerleader, to get people to believe in themselves. And so as you listen to these things, there's going to be a lot of stuff that comes up for most people like, "Oh, that'll work because he's Mark," or, "because he's Russell," or whatever. It's like, "C'mon, if you'd have seen me 15 years ago, I was a little punk kid who was just begging Mark to get on the call. On the forums, geeking out."

And it's just time and belief and putting in the work, so. Anyway, hopefully that is a good lens people can go through this because I'm sure some things we'll talk about may seem impossible, but I tell you what, I did not think what we've been through with ClickFunnels was possible and here we are. So you never know.

Mark:  Well, first off, I think it's about 19 years actually, because if it was 2001, it's 2020 now, so. And I remember having a conversation with you early on. You were saying, "How did you want to become a guru?" And one of the things that I told you was you just decide that you're the guru, okay? But if the gurudom is a matter of perception. Now, there are a lot of people who misunderstand that and they say, "Hey, I want to be a brain surgeon. So I'm just going to chuck up a shingle on a door that says, I'm a brain surgeon." It's like, "No. That means you internally have faith in yourself, but that doesn't mean you act like you're something that you're not because somebody who is a real teacher, a real guru, somebody who's really mastered anything, understands that the learning's never end," right?

And once you get to that point where you think you've got it all figured out, I guarantee you stagnation is the very, very next phase. So I'm going to dive right into these questions, man. And I'm going to start out with probably ... I'm going to start out on a slightly negative one, and then we're going to get into more positive ones.

Russell: All right.

Mark: Okay? And we'll start with ... so just rapid fire, if you could think, off the top of your head, the three biggest blunders you have made along the way. And I got about seven of these rapid fire questions like this I want to go through. So I'm putting you under time pressure. Biggest blunders, what would they be?

Russell: From the beginning of time or just since ClickFunnels' time? Or how far back are we talking?

Mark: Well, you know what, up to you. Up to you because all of these lessons are relevant. The lessons that you learned early in life mattered to you later on in ClickFunnels as well. And I mean, you can say ClickFunnels, earlier on in your life, whatever you think is appropriate.

Russell: Okay. All right. So the three biggest blunders: I would say the first one ... I think most entrepreneurs have this initially because I think most of us get started because we want to make money. That's the thing. And so for the first couple of years of me being in this business, a lot of it was chasing like, where's the money at? It's over here. It's over here. And I get cheap money, and I don't know, you probably don't remember this, but one of the big, profound things you told me, because this is the same time that Google AdSense was becoming this thing. I had friends that were throwing up these crappy little AdSense sites where you just click on them like crazy. And people were making crazy money doing that.

And I was like trying to figure those out, and something, I don't know if you said it verbally to me or since I was listening to you so often, but you kept talking about like focus on the fundamentals, build the list, build the list, build the list. And I was like, "But everyone's making money over here, clicking on ads on garbage sites." And you just kept drilling my head, like focus on the list, focus on the list, focus on the list. And so eventually, I started focusing on that thing. And then what was interesting is that led to the list of people, and then it started listing to what do the people want? It was less about what I wanted to create or what I wanted to ... how I wanted to make money. But it was more like, "These people are on my list. What do they actually want? How can I serve them? What are the things I needed to create? Who I need to become? What are those things?"

And so I think the biggest blunder was chasing money or chasing the shiny object. And the resolution of that was really starting to understand that business is just people. And it's like, "How do we serve these people?" I talk all the time, I feel like business is a calling. I believe it's from God. Some believe from whatever, but it's a calling. You're called to serve a group of people. And you look at it from that lens.

Okay. How do I serve this group? What do I need to do? And when you do that and you shift to that, that's when money starts coming. So that'd be the first blunder. I think that took me two or three years to figure through.

Another one, I think is I spent a lot of time, for a while ... there's the strategy of business and the tactics, and I can get on the tactics so much. So I was doing tactical things that would get me a little pops of money or pops of cash or things like that, or a little bit of traffic or whatever it was. But it wasn't until I started stepping back and started trying to think more strategically, which is a hard thing for a lot of us entrepreneurs, because it's not as fast. It's like it's slower. But when you strategically put things together and connecting things, that's when the big stuff starts coming.

In fact, I don't know if you remember this, this is another funny thing on the journey. It was a podcast interview I did with you probably seven, eight years ago. I think I asked you a question specifically about that. And you said the biggest problem you have right now, Russell, is you're focusing too much on the tactics. And I was like, "What is he talking about?" I didn't even know. And then I stepped back, and I think at first I may be a little offended or like, "What are you talking about? I'm doing really good."

And then I really internalized that like, "Okay, what does that mean? What's the difference between strategy and tactics and let me understand that." And then it's like, "Okay, let me look at these ... instead of looking at it from this tactical lens up close, how do I step back and look at it at a bigger point?" And that's where ClickFunnels was born from was us stepping back. And part of it was it happened because we had some hard times in the business, whereas we had to re-figure things out. And we didn't have time to like ... you're out of money to goof around, and it's like, "We've got to make the right move. Let's think about this before we just jump." That's probably number two.

And then number three is ... I think this, it's just a lot of my lens right now is I didn't understand the advertising laws for a long time. And I think now we have in house legal attorneys, and we've got everything we write goes through ... everything I publish literally has to go through an attorney first to make sure I'm saying ... I wish I would've understood that from the very beginning because there's so many things that us as a marketplace are doing that are illegal that we don't even know. We think that like, "Oh, because we've got this person's success story, I can tell that success story." And it's like, "Even if that thing is true, you can't just tell that story." There's advertising laws that dictate that. And I think in the last two years is where I've really started to understand that and respect that.

And first, as marketers, we hate all the rules and the regulations, then you start respecting it, and then it actually makes you a better marketer, a better business person. And I think you can serve people better when you start understanding those things. And so I think that's something I'm going to be talking a lot more to our community as a whole about just because I'm starting to understand it so much better. And there's some people that are having success, but they're doing it, saying things that they shouldn't be in and they can't be saying. So those are probably the biggest ... anyway, three big blunders for me.

Mark:  Well, I'd tell you what, man, if this were any other guest, I would be commenting back and forth. And I have a lot to say about everything that you just said, could not agree more with all those things you said, but because we have such limited time and because you are such an extraordinary phenomenon right now, I'm going to use this time instead to shut up and extract more information out of you because there are so many good lessons that we can get from you. Next three I have are ... now this is going to be very interesting. So this is one I'm probably the most curious about. The three most significant/ pivotal strategic moves or decisions that you have made since the inception of ClickFunnels.

Russell: Oh man, these are good. Okay. The first one is definitely easy. The first one ... so my business partner is Todd Dickerson. He's my co-founder. And he's the brains that the built ClickFunnels. I always tell people on the dancing monkey on stage talking about it. He's the guy who got his hands dirty because I can't code. In fact, the joke is he was building ... he was like, "If I can make something so simple that Russell can use it, the rest of the world is going to love this thing." And so initially, Todd worked for me for a long time, and we did projects together. And he lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and he'd fly to Boise about once or twice a year, and we'd sit down and brainstorm ideas.

And I remember the time he came out, and we talked about building ClickFunnels, and I was like, "I've tried to build something like this before." I think it wasn't a unique idea. I think everybody had tried to build it at one point like, "Let's build software that makes this whole funnel thing easy." Everyone had that idea. It wasn't unique. Then Todd was like, "We should build it." I'm like, "Okay, I've tried it before. It didn't work. Everyone's tried it." But he's like, "No, I think I can do it."

And so we sat down for a week in front of a whiteboard and mapped out what the dream would be, the vision, if we could have all these things. And I remember after the week was done, I was driving back to the airport. And as we got to where I was going to drop him off, he kind of stopped for a second and said, "Hey, if we're going to do this project together or this project, I don't want to do it as your employee. I want to be your partner."

And I remember that, that was the moment where it's just like, "But I'm the entrepreneur, I'm the one that's ..." The ego was just there. And I had all this fear and all this anxiety. All these things that were just like, "Ah." And as I was sitting there, I literally, in that moment, made the second best decision in my life outside of marrying my wife. And it was like I said, "Let's do it." And I said yes. And that little shift from "I'm the guy" to "let's do this together" meant everything. And he went home and built ClickFunnels. And he has been, to this day, the most amazing business partner anyone could have ever dreamt of. And so I think that's the big thing is the strategy of getting out of your own ego and being okay with building a team and realizing you don't have to be the person.

I was talking about some funnel hacking live, I think one of the big things that entrepreneurs do is we're going on this journey and we get stuck. And we're like, "How do I do the thing?" We get into this procrastination mode of trying to learn how to do things. And the question should be asking ourselves is who. Who already knows how to do this thing. And then we started assembling our dream team. And if you look at any good movie series, right, the Avengers you've got Nick Fury comes in, assembles the dream team, they go and take out Thanos. You got Justice League. Every good movie, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Eleven, this person comes in, build the dream team, and they go attack this thing.

And I think most entrepreneurs have so much ego and pride that they don't do that. And, man, looking back it was like that was the first time I said, "Okay, I'm going to have a partner." And we brought in other partners. And now, one of the biggest reasons why I've been able to grow is because I have this amazing team of people around me who have equity in the company. They're up tonight working just like I am because they care and they love it. And they're vested in it. And I think that was probably ... man, if I would've said no to that, nothing would happen. It would've been a complete different landscape.

Mark: Right. Todd wouldn't have been vested into the whole program the way he is now. But now, he's super motivated because he knows that every bit of effort he puts into it, he's going to get an outsized return way beyond what he would've received had he just been an employee. Okay. Beautiful. All right. What's the number two then?

Russell: Number two. So the strategic planning ... I'm trying to think how to explain it right. When we first launched ClickFunnels, I had an idea. I remember we created the way I thought we were going to sell it. It was a funnel. I think I actually sent you a video about this, but we had a funnel at night, and I launched it. We launched it. I was like in my mind, I'm like, "We'll have 10,000 customers the first month." And we launched it. And it was a bomb. The funnel didn't convert. A couple affiliates promoted it and it didn't convert, so they all stopped. It was just like, "We've spent a year of our life creating this thing." It was just like, "Er."

Mark: I remember this.

Russell:  And you've watched me before this because I didn't know what I was going to do for a long time. We were launching a new offer every quarter for six or seven years because I didn't know what ... I was just doing thing after thing. And so that was the pattern just because I didn't know how to run a business or all these things. And this was going to be the thing we thought, and we launch it and nothing happened. And then it was like, "I need to launch something else." And I was like, "I can't because we put so much time into this." And I remember Todd said something to me. He's like, "We have to focus on this for a year just to prove to everybody that this is actually a real thing."

And that meant we had to just ... all in. And so we had this point where it's like, "Can we shift to another offer real quick and make money to keep us all afloat, or we can just burn the bridges." And so we had a supplement company we got rid of. We shut down all these side projects. We just turned them all off. And it was like revenue's like, "Er. Flying to the bottom, but we have to focus. We have to focus. And we launched four or five or six different versions of the funnel. None of them worked. And it wasn't until I got asked to speak at an event. And they wanted me to do presentation to sell ClickFunnels, and I was like, "I've been trying to sell ClickFunnels, nobody's buying it."

And the promoter was like, "Well, you need to make a thousand dollar version of it." I'm like, "I have a free trial. I can't get people to take the free trial." And so he basically he's like, "You're on the sales page. You have to speak." And so two days before we met, I was trying to think of what's the messaging? How am I going to sell this? And I created the first version of the webinar to sell ClickFunnels, went to Savannah. I stood on stage, and I delivered this presentation. And it was like I had figured out ... I didn't realize until I did the presentation, but I got the messaging right. And as soon as I did that, it was crazy because I think 30, 40% of room who ran in the back and bought. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, we got the messaging right."

I remember going to dinner that night with Todd and a couple of the partners at the time. And I was like, "You guys, just so you know, that was it." They're like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "That's the message. Did you see how people ran to ... I've never had people run to the back. We got the messaging right. It's game over." And what normally would happen in my prior life is like, "Cool. We made a bunch of money." I would've went to the next offer. And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do that webinar at least once a week, every week for a year." And I ended up doing it a lot more than that. I mean, I was doing it two or three times a day sometimes.

But we got back home. I was calling everybody I knew. We were buying ads. Everything's this webinar. And I did that webinar every single day. And the webinar happen ... I do webinars, get the sales date, look at the questions, and we go back through, read them, and then we tweak the webinars, do it again, tweak webinars, do it again, tweak it, do it again. I think I did that webinar live, I think it'd be like, 70 or 80 times the first year live. People are like, "Why didn't you automate it?" And I'm like, "No, no, no. This is my baby." I'm not automated. I need to perfect this message. I need to understand every concern, every problem, everything. And we focused on that. And that hardcore focus on mastering the messaging of it was huge.

I think some people try something, and they step back and it's like that's why things don't scale because you have a good message, but ... it's funny because I always tell people, if you can get 10% of the people to buy your webinar, it's a million dollar a year business. A little lower than that, you're a six figure business. But if you go from 10% to 15%, which seems like a small incremental change, and that's the difference between a million dollar a year business and a hundred million dollar business, 5% increase in conversion. And so because I did that presentation 70 whatever times in a row, we mastered it. And so we had the messaging right. And so that was the first part.

And second part was the funnel structure. This is where I made a video for you. But because the first time we tried to launch ClickFunnels was just like sign up for the trial because it was hard, I couldn't afford to pay ads for the trial. I couldn't go negative in the hole, affiliates wouldn't promote. It was just ... it was hard. Then we had the thousand dollar webinar, they got a year worth of ClickFunnels. We promoted that, and we made a bunch of cash, but it was like there was no cash flow. So it was kind of like I was back in a launch model, which we didn't like that either. And the winning combination we figured out was we have some registered for the webinar, on the thank you page you say, "Hey, the webinar's going to be in a day or two, go get a free ClickFunnels account and try it out just so that when you come to the webinar, it will make sense."

And so people go get a free trial. And the webinar happened, which would train the people that already had a trial, and hopefully they would retain longer. But a percentage of those people would buy the thousand dollar version. And so that combination was like ... that's when it was like, "It's on like Donkey Kong." And we started going crazy. And after 12 months, we ended up having 10,000 members that joined, 2,500 that paid the thousand dollar cash. And the other 7,500 were people who had stuck from the thank you page, and that was your number one. And then it was just ... it gives us a bit where we could spend money to acquire customers because the thousand dollar thing, but it was building up this recurring income at the same time. And it just took it from the ground into lift off. So mastering the message and mastering the funnel was probably the second big strategic thing.

Mark: You know what I really love about that is how you're training people to see what the monthly cost would be when they sign up for the trial. And then when you give them that big offer at the end, stacked with all those other things, it becomes so irresistible because you are training the mind to perceive it a particular way.

And then boom, it's a huge pattern interrupt with the way you do it. Now, I would love to see what your latest and greatest version of the webinar is. I've seen a couple versions of it, but I want to know, and I think I asked you this before, I was like, "Man, show me what the ultimate version of it was," because you're automating it now, right?

Russell: Yeah.

Mark: Oh dude. See. And yeah, anybody watching this, if you don't go find out the automated version of that, and by the way, I'm going to give you guys a banner that you guys can look at. I think a place where you can see this is go to this URL here. This is the basic ClickFunnels website. If you sign up for the two week trial there, you will probably be shuttled in to watch the webinar.

Russell: You'll start seeing the actual webinar. They'll show up.

Mark:One way or another, they're going to get you to watch that damn webinar. If you guys go to simpleology.com/clickfunnelsfree, start the two week free trial. If for nothing else, just to see how Russell structures this, you need to do it. Now, disclosure, my company uses ClickFunnels now. I've been involved in three other companies before Russell started ClickFunnels that were trying to build the automated WYSIWYG funnel building. None of them did the job very well. We use ClickFunnels now because what they built is so damn good. I'm like, it doesn't make any sense. And by the way, there is a classic thing ... and I'm going to say this very quick before I shut up and get back into questions for Russell, but there's a very classic business lesson a lot of people don't understand, and there is a conundrum between build or buy.

And the build or buy conundrum is this: if you take your own internal resources and you build something, you got to understand that that's energy, that's time, that's assets that you could be committing to growth, right? If you can take a little bit of money and buy a solution that's already pre-made, often, even though it's expensive, it makes way more sense because I can guarantee you the time, energy and money that it would take you to build your own ClickFunnels version would be astronomically higher than what it would cost for a ClickFunnels subscription.

So when you have the choice between build or buy, you almost always buy, unless there's nothing out there in the marketplace that gets the job done well. And by the way, I've tried all of these other funnel builders. A lot of them claim to be better. Well, I'll tell you two more things about this, okay? Russell's is better, okay? And two, the culture of the company has proven to be stable over a long, long period of time. I see a lot of companies coming out now with like, "Oh, we're trying to be better than ClickFunnels." And I'm like, "Yeah, this is coming from the same dudes that started 20 other companies that lasted six months and disappeared."

Russell:  At least know for lifetime access for 27 bucks. And I'm like, "Right." With how much I spend on customer support alone. It's like, there's no way you can survive.

Mark: Yeah. There's no way you're going to compete with Russell. I mean, good luck to all those guys. Competition is fair and everything, but you think you're going to compete with this dude? Sorry. I wouldn't compete with you in this marketplace. No way, man. You've got such a huge foothold.