In this episode of the Marketing Secrets Podcast, I continue our engaging Q&A series for the One Funnel Away Challenge. The feedback from our first session was overwhelmingly positive, so I'm excited to keep bringing you these insightful and interactive discussions. Joining me again is Dante Torelli, and together, we're addressing some of the most pressing questions from our vibrant ClickFunnels community. If you're an active ClickFunnels member, don't miss out on these valuable sessions - log in and join the live Q&A every Friday!

During this episode, we delve into a range of topics that are essential for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to elevate their online presence and effectiveness. From crafting compelling epiphany bridge stories for B2B contexts to identifying and tapping into hot markets, we provide actionable insights and strategies.

Key Highlights:

Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your approach, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you succeed. Tune in and get ready to take your empire to the next level!

I committed career suicide so I could pursue my calling so I could change the world so I could have the energy and excitement and be on fire once again, that whole concept. But if you think about any... So this is a copywriting principle, good copy, and this is copywriting, storytelling, anything.
The best storytellers, the best copywriters, they master contrast. So light and dark, smooth and rough, happy, sad. Contrast is what sells things. So what gets people engaged in the story. So you've got really good contrast here with career suicide versus calling. There's such good contrast between these kind of things.
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Russell Brunson:
What's up everybody? It's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. All right, so a little while ago I did the very first ever Q&A show where I took the question and answers that are happening on the One Funnel Away Challenge, and I posted them here on the podcast episode and the feedback was insane. You guys were so excited to not just hear me having a planned podcast from teaching something, but actually on the fly doing Q&A and going back and forth and having fun with it. And anyway, it was amazing. I had so much fun. And anyway, every week now, as you guys know, every Friday I'm doing these Q&A calls with our community. So if you're an active ClickFunnels member, you get these Q&A calls for free. You just got to log in the ClickFunnels and click on the link and go register for my calls and also Trey Lewellen, and he's doing calls every week as well.

So you got me and Trey. Trey's teaching you guys e-comm. I'm teaching you the expert business and how to use funnels. And anyway, the call has been fun. Some of the questions you guys have been asking are just unique and fun and different, and every time I get done I'm like, "Man, I want everybody in our community to hear this." And so I'm going to start posting more of these Q&As here on the podcast, but they're all going to come here. And also you're just listening to Q&A. If you want me to answer your question, come on the show, come hang out, come be part of it. Again, if you're an active ClickFunnels member, you can come in just every Friday I'm doing Q&A. If you are not an active ClickFunnels member yet, now's about time. I've been talking about this for a decade.

It is time to get started. So if you go to onefunnelawaychallenge.com and you can go register you basically for $100, you get access to the One Funnel Away Challenge and you get 90 days of ClickFunnels for free greatest offer we ever put out there. So it's available for you guys. All you got to do is go onefunnelaway.com and go listen in.

So that said, this is the second week of doing Q&As with the ClickFunnels and the One Funnel Away community, and again, there were so many cool ones that came out this time. I hope you enjoy it. You have a chance to listen to a whole bunch of QAs for me and the community. And again, if you wanted to get your question answered next time, make sure to come hang out with us. Go to one funnel away.com, go register for a hundred bucks. You get 90 days ClickFunnels for free, or just log in your ClickFunnels account. If you're already a member, boom, you got this already. All right, that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this session of Q&As inside the One Funnel Away Challenge.

Podcast Intro:
In the last decade. I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast.

Dante Torelli:
Good morning, good afternoon everybody. Great to see you guys. Great to be back with you here today. As many of you know, my name is Dante Torelli, I'm going to be your host and your coach for this challenge and today we have lunch with Russell. All right gang, without further ado, let's bring him out. Put your hands together for me and let's welcome Mr. Russell Brunson. How we doing today, Russell?

Russell:
So good. How are you guys all doing today? How are you Dante?

Dante:
I'm living the dream man.

Russell:
Oh, very cool. Well I'm excited hanging out with you guys. How's OFA going for everybody so far? Going good. You guys are on the right side of history. Everyone else is doing the e-comm stuff, which is kind of cool, but the expert stuff I think is way more fun, way better. I don't know, maybe I'm biased, but I love it. What's the plan dog? We jumping this stuff today or?

Dante:
Yeah. Hey, let's do some serious coaching today, Russell, we have tons of questions and let's knock down some roadblocks for people. Let's help get them over those mountains. Let's turn mountains to molehill. Here's how this session is going to go, gang, if you're not familiar, this is expert. So every single Friday we're going to send an email out three hours before this session starts. If you guys go look in your emails, more than likely you'll see that email already sent to you. And in the subject of that email it says, "Submit questions here." So just in case you don't know, we send out a question form before every single session so that you guys can ask your questions ahead of time. And that form has done pretty well today. I think we have about 13 questions on that form. So just so everybody knows the layout, we're going to start with the form first and we're just going to start rapid firing.

People have questions. I'm going to read the question. You'll be able to unmute yourself when I call your name, and then we can have a conversation with Russell and talk about the thing, you can go to building and doing the thing. We're going to start with our form. After the form we might still have some time, and if we do, we're going to hop over to the Q&A. So if you didn't already fill out your form or you didn't see it and it's your first week, perfectly fine. I don't want you to worry. You can always put your questions in the Q&A, but Russell, if you're ready man, let's hop right into it.

Russell:
Let's go. Let's have some fun man. I'm pumped.

Dante:
All right, yeah, let's have some fun baby. Absolutely. Okay, so first question is going to be from Cara Sue. Cara Sue says, "How do you tell the epiphany bridge story when your business is B2B? I have a training program from my companies to provide their entry level staff. So my story would relate to the staff, but not necessarily the business owner, but they're the ones who I'm pitching to in my marketing." I'm going to copy this, I'm going to put this question also in the chat so everybody can see and follow along. And it's also kind of hard to remember questions when Dante just reads them one time. So I just put that link in the chat. But go ahead, Russell, can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Russell:
Awesome. So the question is the 50 rich story. There are things B2B, she's got a story for the customer, or sorry for the end person, but not the person she's selling for.

Dante:
Yeah, she's got a-

Russell:
So the-

Dante:
Please.

Russell:
Okay, that's a good question. So the thing is, a lot of times people tell the wrong story. In fact, when we first started teaching the perfect webinar and Expert Secrets, I used to tell people to tell their origin story. And when I started watching and spot critiquing people's webinars, the origin story they would tell is their origin story about their entire life. And that's what people's webinars were like, 20 minutes to, "I was born in 1980 in Provo, Utah," and blah blah, and they're telling this whole story. And I was like, "Whoa. I'm like, stop. Origin story is not your origin story, it's the origin story of how you discovered this thing." And so problem is if you're speaking to the business owner, the epiphany bridge story you got to tell them is the one that's related to them. Now sometimes you're like, "Well, I don't have that epiphany bridge story."

Okay, now you have to understand epiphany bridge stories aren't always your story. It can also be somebody else's story. So I started looking like, who are your other clients? Who's somebody who had the same struggle, the same frustration, they were trying to resolve the same problem that the person who's listening to this right now that they're struggling with. And that's the epiphany bridge story you got to find, right? And so a couple of things usually happen. Either you've got one, you're like, "Oh yeah, okay, that's easy. I'm going to use so-and-so's story, I worked with them, they were struggling. I did this thing and this is how it all happened." Or if you don't have that person yet, then there's two other ways to do it. One is to go and develop that story, which is literally going and finding two or three people working for free for them doing the thing so that they have the experience.

So now you have a story to go back and tell. And I did that one. If you read the dotcom Secrets book, that's how I launched my inner I talk about in there. But Drew Cannoli was like, have any, I had success stories about my own stuff, but nobody else's yet. So I was like, I need a story to, so I found Drew Cannoli was the person I found. I went worked for him for free, we blew up his business, we did some funnels for them. And then that story became the story I told. But I went and worked to find that story to engineer it so that we had that story because I didn't have one prior to that and that's how I filled my inner circle. So I don't think it as like, "Dang, I don't have a story for this. I'm out of luck." It's like, no, go create that story.

Go find it. Go put the people in place. That's number two. And then the third option that works really well is trying to find stories, doing research and finding stories, other people's stories. They don't always have to be your story. They can be, for example, one of my stories that I tell when I'm trying to close somebody, I talk about when there's a price objection about, "I have to invest, why don't I have to invest in this? Can't give it to me for free?" I have a story that I use about my wrestling coach, my wrestling coach up, his name is Mark Schultz, he was Olympic champ, he was a UFC fighting champ. And I tell this story about him and how he came to my house, and you probably heard me tell the story before, but he came to my house and he knocked on my door and opened the door and he had this VHS tape and he's like, "Go get your wallet, Russell."

So I went and got my wallet, he took the wallet out, took all my money, put it in my pocket, and then he gave me the tape back. And then he told me, I was like, "Coach, why are you taking all my money?" He's like, "Because if I just gave you this tape, you would never actually watch it. But now that I've given it to you, you're going to watch it because you've invested." Because those who pay attention. So I tell that story all the time, but that's my story. But the reality is a lot of the people who I teach public speaking to and teach stuff, they use that story as well. They just say like, "Hey, my mentor Russell Brunson, he told me the story, it's so cool." And then they grab my story and they insert in there. So if you don't have a story yet, you can go look at, like you can at Elon Musk.

They'll say he did something. It's similar. It's like, "Oh, you Elon Musk," and boom, there's the epiphany bridge story you're plugging in. Could be from some other external thing, you're borrowing somebody else's story, someone else's credibility. So number one is you already got a story. Number two is you got to go develop and create that story. Or number three, it's like finding somebody else's story that illustrates the same purposes and using it and plugging it into your epiphany bridge. That's typically the ways that I look at it if I'm trying to create something. That helpful?

Dante:
I love that. And if you're with us, let me get that name again, Cara Sue, if you're with us, feel free to unmute.

Cara Sue:
Hi there, I'm so sorry I'm late. I had another call that I just jumped off, but thank you so much Russ. I feel like my story completely will resonate with the actual the people that I would be doing the coaching to. I just, in my mind, I'm thinking, so if I'm telling my story about how I was before I discovered personal development, before I started to really learn and how it fully changed my life, that's what I want the 20 somethings to learn. And I feel like I'm telling that story might not necessarily be the pain point for the business owner because I feel like-

Russell:
What's the pain point for the business owner?

Cara Sue:
That their employees are the Gen Z, they come to work whenever they kind of slack off, they think they're entitled, all of those kind of things.

Russell:
So that's good. So all you got to do is you just got to wrap that part of this. You're wrapping your story around that. So it's like, "Hey, business owner, how many of you guys are sick and tired of your employees being lazy." And it's like, "I was actually lazy back in the day until this thing happened." Now imagine. And then boom, and then so now you're kind of painting that picture for them like, "Oh my gosh, imagine my employees no longer being lazy. How would that change my life?" You know what I mean?

Cara Sue:
Oh my God, Russell, you just hit it in that one sentence. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Russell:
Awesome. Go crush it. I want to go see it. I want to see that when it's done, let me know.

Cara Sue:
I will, I will thank you. Thank you.

Russell:
That's awesome. Great to meet you.

Dante:
So good. We're off to a hot start. Okay, let's keep this train moving and grooving gang. Next we are going to go with Deb. Deb Kiersten. Deb says, "Russell recommends choosing a hot market. What if the market for your course is not hot yet but you think it will or could be in the future? Is that still a good option?"

Russell:
Interesting. Are they on right now?

Dante:
Deb, are you with us?

Deb Kiersten:
I am, yep.

Dante:
There she is.

Russell:
What's up Deb, how are you doing?

Deb Kiersten:
I'm good. How are you doing?

Russell:
Awesome. So can you tell me what the market is or that you're thinking about?

Deb Kiersten:
Yeah, so I actually have a literacy program for kids and I homeschooled my kids. So I've run a live program for 11 years now I've been doing it, but I'm trying to get into the online market. Now I know when I talk to people about it, everyone's like, "That's a great idea, kids need that." But then it's like when I talk to people, they're like, "I've got dance class, I've got karate, I've got everything." So they don't always have the time or the money to do it. Now, I think in the future that it's going to become more popular, but you talk about it being a hot market. So I'm not sure if it is a hot market right now, but could I make it a hot market? Could I... So that's kind of what I'm asking.

Russell:
So what I would say is you got to look at the... How do I explain it? The tangential market that it's attached to. Because for example, 20 years ago when I was like, "Sales funnels are cool," there was no market for sales funnel, nobody knew what it was. There was no market, but there was a market of people who wanted to make money on the internet and this was the hot market. And I was attaching onto this and being like, "Here's my spin on how to make money in this market." And now 20 years later, funnels is the big huge market, but it was not 20 years ago I would do an event, I lived an event and two people showed up and that was tons of... It was not a market. So it's like you had to find the market that is hot. So if you're talking about homeschooling, homeschooling's a huge market.

Deb Kiersten:
It's not just for homeschooling too. I'd like to break into school kids as well, but homeschooling is where I've been for the last 26 years.

Russell:
And the homeschooling market. I've got a lot of friends who actually sell stuff in that market. It's a good market. People are investing in courses, because they got stuff for their kids. I have a friend who she used to do these events, they're so cool. She'd do an event, she'd have a real estate speaker, a stock speaker, internet, always speakers. And then the kids would all, they had to buy one course to be their curriculum for the next six months. And so I spoke at one time, it's like half the audience bought my thing, because they had to buy something, it was the greatest thing in the world, but that market, they're great at buying and stuff. That's where I'd probably start with it just because that's the market that already is looking for there, and it's a big market you can attach onto it. And then from there, as you start cultivating more case studies, then it's easier to start growing that into a bigger thing.

But just starting something from scratch, like a market over here is really, really difficult. It's like you have to come... Steve Larson talks about this like a red ocean and a blue ocean. He's always talking about the, you want to be a blue ocean, but you're fishing out of the red ocean. So you attach to the red ocean, you're pulling people out into your blue ocean, just a blue ocean by itself, it's hard to get the initial traction. Are you friends or do you know all different, the people in the homeschooling market that are selling things?

Deb Kiersten:
I don't really know in the kind of bigger market, I kind of know in my own little community, but I was kind of tired of the homeschool market. I don't know, I've been doing it for so long and I was hoping to get into a different one, but then I don't know, it's the market. I know it's the market kind of people know me in. So if it's a good market too, I think maybe I just need to kind of go to the bigger market of it, get out of my own little community. And-

Russell:
I would look at that. There's a huge online community of homeschooling stuff that you can tap into. And again, you're still developing your own market, you're just fishing out of that market and bringing people over, people that are known buyers that are known to do this. So don't think, "Ah I have to go the homeschool market." You have to go to the homeschool market, you're developing your own thing, but all of the potential buyers are in the homeschool market. You're going to go save those people and bring them into your world so you can do whatever you want to do with them. You know what I mean?

Deb Kiersten:
Right.

Russell:
And you still get a design and structure and create your market however you want it to be and position it however you want it to be. You're just leveraging the known market you can go back into.

Deb Kiersten:
Right. Okay, well thank you very much.

Russell:
Yeah, no worries. Good luck on the project.

Deb Kiersten:
Thanks.

Dante:
All right, thank you for the question. That was fantastic. All right, I'm going to put the next one in the chat ahead of time so we can all read as we go. But this next question is from Karen and Karen says, "Question one, how do you structure to set up the funnel for a travel affiliate website, eShop or a blog, especially so that it counts for reaching the Two Comma Club? I've seen your funnel templates and video from opt-in funnel to e-commerce." So-

Russell:
The question is how to structure-

Dante:
Karen, if you're with us, feel free to unmute. I think, Karen, are you saying basically-

Karen:
I'm here.

Dante:
... you're going to be an affiliate, you're going to be passing people on somewhere else to make their money and they're going to make purchases somewhere else outside of the funnel. So how do we structure this so we qualify for Two Comma Club, is that about right?

Karen:
That's about right. So basically I don't have my own product yet, but I want to have print on demand stuff later on, but for now it's just affiliate links. So basically I create curate a selection with those specific links, affiliate links. And I know that Russell, you always say it's one hook, it's one product and so on, and I love that simplicity. But I see I have complex big pictures and I don't really know how to structure it. And now that we have now also the possibility of the hubs, I am a bit lost there. So if you can help me point me in the right direction, set it up.

Russell:
Of all the things you're selling, what thing is selling the most?

Karen:
I'm only just starting, so I haven't got traffic yet.

Russell:
And guess what? I got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is it's going to be hard if you're doing 50 different products. So even though you're like, "I'm different because I'm doing affiliate marketing," it's still the same thing. We still come out into one product, one traffic source, one hook, because otherwise it's almost impossible to be profitable. Because now you're driving traffic to 50, 60 different things and there's no processes, no orders or anything. So my question, let's step back a little bit. So what is the end result that your affiliate site is going to give somebody? Is it helping them to find travel is helping them to, what's the end result that they're going to get?

Karen:
So let's say it's a travel niche, so basically they could save time and not need to scroll bazillion offers. I do the selection for them so they can basically come to my landing page where I have only say for instance five on that one page and every of those five options is clickable.

Russell:
So it's like a prebuilt vacation for them or what exactly is it?

Karen:
Yeah, or at the moment it's basically just a very unique hotel say, which you can't find just like that. And then I thought later on the side margin on the very same page, I could also maybe put on print on demand, a T-shirt say for instance. But then again, we are in getting complex.

Russell:
Yeah, you're getting complex fast, better get making money on it. So I come back to like, okay, we got to find one thing to sell and we're going to sell that a lot before we pick up number two. So the thing you want to sell is you want to sell a dream vacation package or is it you've got a bunch of unique hotels that can't find anywhere else that you want to share and then... What's-

Karen:
That's more like it.

Russell:
Okay, so if that was the case, then I would look at again your hook. I'm just guessing it could be anything, but I would make a hook. It's like, okay, okay, sorry, here's an example. So there's a guy here in Boise, Idaho where I live and he's a realtor and he's kind of struggled. He was selling houses all over the place and then what he did is he created an email newsletter and it was like Boise's Luxury Home for Sale newsletter. Some thing. So someone sign up and they sign up for free for this newsletter and every week he sends an email out that's like, "Here's all the most expensive homes in Boise that are for sale right now." And so it's fun for me because every week I get an email, I see all the most expensive houses. But anyway, after being on his list for two or three years, I messaged him, I interviewed him, man this is a decade ago, but I was like, "Tell me what you're doing."

And he's like, "Well, I was a realtor just selling little houses." And he's like, "I realized that I make more commission on bigger houses." So he's like, "I started this newsletter, it's free. He's like, I got 10,000 people in Boise on this newsletter." He's like, "What's cool is that every week all the fluent people who get the newsletter, they're looking for expensive houses." He's like, "So I sell all those houses, so I'm getting the highest commission. I have 10,000 people who are all looking for expensive houses." He's like, "And then who has expensive houses on my list, and whenever they sell it, they message me, because I'm the guy with expensive houses." So he's like, "All the top expensive listings in Bois. I'm the buyer and the seller now I have this newsletter." So I almost think for you I would create an email newsletter that's like unique destination locations you can't find on blah blah, something like that, and making this value add that you have that nobody else can have.

That's exciting. Then your landing page is simple, it's just joining your email newsletter. They come in and then they join your list and now you can start sending out emails once a week, once a day, how often you want to do it with the things you're curating. "Oh, here's five cool places in Scotland, here's cool places over here in Arizona, here's cool..." Whatever that is. Because you're also kind of a weird spot with travel where, at least for me, I decide where I want to travel first and then I try to find the spot. I think if it's like, "Here's five places to travel," someone's coming there. I don't go looking like, where should I travel today?

I don't know if people do, maybe they do, but I'm more like, I know that my wife and I we're going to Greece then this month we knew we were going to Greece and then we're looking for stuff. But if you just gave me, "Here's five cool places," one's in Italy, one's in... I wouldn't have bought for you. But if you're like, "This week we're talking about Greece and here's the coolest places I found in Greece, or something in the newsletter, then it's like, "Oh, I'm going to Greece or I want to go to Greece." Now there's a destination tied to that thing where I'm excited about versus she gave five locations, I'm not going to these five places so I leave. There's no way for you to get money. You know what I mean?

Karen:
I was thinking the other way around because usually people set it up from specific destinations and maybe I'm the only one on earth, but sometimes I like to just see the beautiful hotel and I don't really mind so much where it is. Let's

Russell:
Do a pop quiz on the call now there's two options for everyone who's listening. If you are somebody who picks a destination and then looks for hotel, raise your hand right now. If you're someone who just looks for a hotel and then you're going to go find that destination later, raise your hand. Okay, so we're probably 90-10. So for me, I want to go in the markets where the most people are because I want to make money easy. There's always an easy way and a hard way. So I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's a whole segment of the market, I don't know, I don't know what the travel world enough to know, so I could definitely could be wrong. I'm just trying to give you the simplest path because right now I feel like you're going a really complicated path. It's like, oh, this is going to be really, really hard versus let's do a simple one where it's like give you the best chance of success with the least amount of pre effort.

Otherwise you're going to spend the next six months building out pages and t-shirts, drop shipping and affiliate links and all this kind of stuff versus I want you to make money this week. How do we get you to make money this week? You got to become an expert. You're curating the cool spots and locations and then let's get you on podcasts telling people why, "I found 10 new places. Let me talk about duh duh duh, come join my email newsletter." And doing something where you can start building a following stuff quickly without waiting, and then from there you start building an email newsletter. Then you test all sorts of stuff. You can try this and you send an email every day. You can try something different and the stuff that works you double down on, stuff doesn't work you stop doing, but I'm afraid-

Karen:
Basically what you're saying is you would focus on just use the click funnel for opt in and then send newsletter. You wouldn't put the newsletter kind of thing also on a landing page, is that what you're saying?

Russell:
After you send the emails or post it, you can post it in the blog post on ClickFunnels. Yeah. There's a lot of things you can do. I just don't want you to spend six months trying to build something versus like let's test the idea quickly and see if it makes money before you go and invest six months building something out. You know what I mean?

Dante:
On that note, Karen, your second question is how do I use flex containers versus the other? And just to piggyback off what Russell is saying here, which is a million percent, right as always, flex containers are really cool and really powerful, but if I had to guess 99.9%, I would guess you don't need a flex container right now to build what you need to build. We do not need it. It's amazing, it's powerful. It's a great tool. Let's go learn it after. Just focus on building that one thing, right? No distractions, no nonsense. All you need are rows and you'll be perfectly fine.

Russell:
You see the headline, an image, an opt-in box and then start getting people to join your newsletter and see what happens.

Karen:
Yeah, I've done that. I just didn't understand what the flex is, so I thought I used the occasion to put that question. Thank you so much.

Russell:
And good news for you. I don't know what it is either. I know my designers love it, but every time I see it like I don't understand what this is, so I'm sure it's cool, but I don't know.

Karen:
Excellent.

Dante:
It is.

Russell:
Not necessary for making money.

Dante:
It's cool, it's powerful. I will teach you that in the future, I promise. But for now we really don't need it. And really, I want you to just dial in on what Russell said there. Focus on the one thing, a print on demand shirt. We can send them an email after they book. How many times have we seen this ring true Russell? The more decisions you give a customer, the lower the conversions go because we don't want them having to, I want to show them the one truth thing that they need right now. We work on that thing, go sell them a trip, and then after that we can have an email sequence that sells them a print on demand shirt and then we can position that as, £Hey, get a travel shirt. Do you want a great travel shirt that you can be comfortable in and you can feel cool in?£ Then we can sell them a shirt down the line. But here we're focused on just the one thing.

Russell:
Confused mind always says no, but as soon you get some more than one option, your conversions drop to a fraction. You give them three options, it's even more. And yeah,

Karen:
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Russell:
There's a method to the madness, I promise.

Dante:
Awesome. Thank you for the question, Corrine. That was great. I'm sure tons of other people have the same exact question.

Russell:
My question is how many you guys are over complicating this not sticking to the simple structure? I know a webinar last week on simple funnels like simple, simple. I get into these debates with people who use some our competitor software and "Yeah, but we can do all this stuff." And I was like, "Cool, how much money did you make last week?" They're like, "Well, I'm still working out on my 45,000 email sequence." And I'm like, "Dude, simple sales funnels, this get you making money then you can complex things later." But even my business has done over a billion dollars in sales so far. My funnels are simple, simple sales funnels, simple sales funnels. It's the way everything else is complex. Everything else is because in the past we hired designers who get paid based on how many pages they create on a blog. So they want you to have 500,000 different things.

Because that's how they get paid. I want you guys making money. That's how I get paid. If you make money, then you make some money, you're enjoying my inner circle, you're enjoying my hiring, coaching, that's how I get paid. So I'm going to make you guys money. Then you can complex things later. Then you join Inner Circle and then first thing, when people join Inner Circle, they have to make a million dollars to be in Inner Circle and that was come like, "Russell, check it out. I've got six businesses." I'm like, "Cool. Step number one, you going to pick one and you're going to kill the other five babies." And they're always like, "What are you talking about?" I'm like, "You join Inner Circle because you want to get to 10 million a year. The way you're going to do that is by killing five of your babies and focusing on one." And they're like, "What?"

It always happens. Simplicity. Simplicity, every single level. And then they get to the next level and the circle's called Atlas, Atlas, they make 10 million to get there and they always come in, "Russell, I got three things I'm doing," and I'm like, "Cool, which one are you keeping because we're killing two of your babies." And they're like, "What are you talking about?" Every level you guys, just understand it's simplicity, simplicity, simplicity, right? So if you're starting complex, which most people do, it's like, "Ah, simplicity, that's where we make money." My only entire goal for you guys is just making money so you can give me more. So that's my motivation. So let's focus on making money so you can give me more and then I'll make you more money, give me more, then we all win. But if you get so caught up in the complexity of it, then nobody's going to win. I'm not going to win. So I want to make sure I'm coaching you guys on what actually is going to work so that you can give me more money in the future. There's my selfish motivations.

Dante:
Love that, love that. All right, let's keep this going gang. Who is having fun? Next one on our list is from whoops, sorry, let me get this set up. It's from Luke, Luke Mattis, and Luke says, let's put it back in the chat so we can all read together. "I have an email list of 900 people and I'm not seeing $900 a month. I'm also really busy and don't have much time. I have products, live trainings and mentorship to offer, but I'm time constrained. What do you suggest I design so that I can see the $1 email standard and do it on autopilot so that every time doesn't matter and I can serve my audience better?"

Russell:
Okay, is he on right now?

Dante:
Luke, are you with us? We'll give him a couple more minutes, seconds here. He might be scrambling.

Russell:
We can still address it anyway because I think this is something good for a lot of people. So-

Dante:
Agreed.

Russell:
Okay, so he's got email us 900 people. He's not making 900 bucks a month. He's really busy. He's doesn't have much time. So that's kind of the question, right? So my question is what are you busy with? Because this is the business you're creating. These are people you're serving. So the way you make $900 per name, per email on your list is you're serving those people. So it's like if you don't have time to serve as people, that's why you're not making any money on it. My question is coming back to okay, and even the second half question is how do an autopilot, he's looking for ways to get out of the actual work of doing this. It's like look, you want to serve an audience, you got to show up.

I'm extremely busy, you guys have no idea. I've got 400 employees, I've got a wife, I've got five kids, it's summer right now. My kids are going crazy, my wife, for her, she's got to deal with this all sort of stuff. I'm going to Mexico for a week to run an event. I did a webinar. I guarantee you I'm more busy than anybody and guess what I'm doing right now with you guys? I'm here serving, I show up for an hour hanging out with you guys, right? And why am I doing this? Number one, I care. I care a lot. I want you guys to be successful. But over time, if I keep showing up and keep showing up and keep showing up, guess what happens? You guys first off, are more likely have success, which means you're more likely to invest in things in the future, which means that's how you make money.

That's how you make dollar per name, per name on your email list. It's not by automating stuff and trying to hide from it. It's like showing up for your people. That's the difference. I've been in this game now for 22 years, two decades I've been doing this. And in the time I've been doing this I've come and seen hundreds of gurus who've come and gone, come and gone, come and gone. And the ones who don't show up for the people are the ones who don't last long. That's it. It's like why do we do funnel… And it's tough for me because I'm introvert too. I have extreme anxiety before I click go. You asked Dante, I showed up in minute late because I'm like, "Okay, here we go."

I hate that that's about me. I wish that I wasn't, but I do. I get nervous. I was nervous hanging out to come on with you guys, but I still show up because I care about you guys. I want it to be helpful. And this is me making deposits in the piggy bank of my audience and my people. I remember it is funny because I've seen you guys' faces, I love this too. We didn't used to be able to see people's faces. Now with Zoom it's so much cooler, but it's cool because I'm seeing you guys' faces and I guarantee that there's going to be a segment of you guys who implement stuff and I'm going to see you guys. We do calls like this in different programs, Inner Circle and 2CCX. I'll see a section of you guys who are progressing and moving.

I remember I, Dominic actually the last name pone, he was an OFA way back in the day. I remember seeing him all the time. Every call, he was just like, "You guys excited?" He showed up every OFA call. So I'd see him every week. I gave him to his face. He was so excited. He asked questions and then eventually he had more success and then the business started blowing up. Then he invested in our Two Comma Club X coaching program and every single month he was on Two Comma Club X coaches the right two years he was on there and they got his first Two Comma Club board, second Two Comma Club board, third. Then he has sent it from there to Inner Circle and he starts on Inner Circle meeting. That's how you make a dollar per name or $5 or $10. It is your coming and you're showing up.

So I would say if the mindset is like "I don't have time, I'm trying to automate this, I'm not making any money, why not?" It's like that's why because you don't have time, you don't care about the people. You're trying to automate it. You got to show up. It doesn't be a lot. I'm spending an hour a week with you guys, right? It is not insane amounts of time, but it is taking the time. So for me, if I had 900 people right now and I'm not making any money on like, okay, how do I serve these people? I got to find out what they want. I got to find out how to help them, what the struggles are, and that'd be step number one. How do I jump in and start answering questions being part of it? And that'd be where my focus point would be, right?

Part of this, one of my other evil motivations to doing this is it's really cool I get to hear you guys' questions, which gives me ideas for future books or webinars or trainings or at Funnel Hacking Live, what to talk about. All those things come from your audience. And so if you're not making money with your audience yet you got to spend more time with your audience. That's what I would say. And if you're like, I don't have time for that, then then it's probably not the right business for you then, and that's fine. There's different seasons of people's lives and if it's not the right season, that's totally cool. But if you want something to grow, you got to nurture it. You plant the seed, you nurture it, you spend time with it. And yeah, there's times you can automate things, but it's not at the very beginning, the very beginning. You got to put in the time and the energy effort to serve your people and then everything else good will come on the backside of that. So it's the lot of the harvest, planting seeds and then over time it grows.

Dante:
It is. And you got to have faith as you do it right? When you first start watering that seed, nothing pops up, you don't see anything pop out of the ground. But you go there the next day and you water that seed and you wait and then you see a little pop and now all we're so excited to go, everybody encounters this, gang. And if you're listening and you're encountering it and you're like, "Man, this is really great. I didn't know I was even going through that." Everybody has this happen. I've had it happen in my life just like Russell has and everybody else. So one thing, this is my own thing that I tell myself, but I have a concept, big fish by 12. Because we have the time. I'm going to get, get a little Dante version of Garrett White here because I get kind of passionate about this.

We have the time. You can't look me in the eyes and tell me you don't have the time. Russell Brunson makes time for things, right? Russell Brunson, as busy as he is, we all have time, but we all decide how we use that time. So if you find yourself, big fish by 12, have things, can I knock out by 12:00? I know you might have a consultation, you might have a business meeting and that might be at 4:00 and you can't change that. So we can't do that by 12:00, but how many of the little mundane minute tasks can we knock out by 12:00, get these things done and get us freed up? "Oh man, Dante, I really don't have the time. I sat down and I honestly looked at my schedule and I really do not have time." We do. We're going to wake up an hour early, we're going to wake up an hour early, we're going to change things up from how we're doing it.

We're no longer going to just sit for the last hour of our night. We're not going to watch YouTube, we're not going to watch entertainment. We have the time. How do you choose to use it? And if you truly find yourself with zero time left, make more. Wake up an hour early. Everybody can do those things. That was an awesome question. Really great. Let's keep it going gang. This is amazing. Let's hop over to Catherine and Catherine's question, which we will put in the chat right now so we can all follow along. Whoops, let's get that to everyone.

Catherine's question is, "Should I build a separate brand and subsequent website and social media just for the sponsorship work courses and resource of everything else that I do?" Catherine, are you with there? Excuse me. Are you with us?

Catherine:
Salutations.

Russell:
Hey Captain.

Catherine:
Yeah. So missing context to this is questions already mildly been answered by Russell's passionate, kill all the babies.

Russell:
I mean that very nicely though. Yeah,

Catherine:
I'm a dirt bike coach. So I got my start coaching and then in order to become a coach, I had to gain sponsorships to pay for it because I quit my job to do that. And then people ask me, "Catherine, how do you live it?" So I started coaching people on motor sports marketing and sponsorship. So now I have two things happening and the clinics that I do have a full team behind them versus the sponsorship stuff is just me. So right now I have the sponsorship stuff under all the clinic stuff. Because it's like some students that attend the clinics are interested in sponsorship even though some aren't. So I was just trying to figure out if I should break them apart into two separate brands or put one under my name instead of under the team name. I don't know.

Russell:
So right now, is it a personality based business with you right now or is it a brand, like a company based thing?

Catherine:
Leaky Mushroom Moto Ranch is the brand. Yeah. So that's-

Russell:
Are you also the brand though or?

Catherine:
Kinda. So it started with just me and now it's kind of integrated. So I have my own personal brand called Captain Hurley. And then the rest of the team has their own brand called Splat Moto. And we both have our own separate identities under the Leaky Mushroom. And then I have a separate separate brand called Don't Say Sponsorship because we're both athletes, so we both race, so we have to have personal brand. And then because we do coaching, we do that coaching under the Leaky Mushroom brand. And then my sponsorship stuff is all under Don't Say Sponsorship.

Russell:
Gotcha. Which business makes you more money right now?

Catherine:
Whichever one I focus on at the time.

Russell:
By the way, this is if it makes you feel any better as bad as all the rest of us. So literally we just killed six businesses in the last year myself. I'm like, "I got to take my own advice." So we all have this problem, I get it. And I remember telling my inner circle after the first time I talked to kill the babies and people were all kind of offended. And I talked about, I was like, "Remember when I had a business between $3 million a year and I got capped at $3 million a year." So I was like, "I bet you that if I create a second business, I'll have two, $3 million businesses." So I created a second one and sure enough, this one got point was making one, two, $3 million, but this one started making less and less and the end of the year it's like, "I made $3 million." I'm like, "Huh, twice as much work, same amount of money."

So I was like, "Okay, I'm not an idiot, I need more businesses." So next year I launched 12 and so I had 12 businesses and all of them were like, "Duh, duh, duh." And end of the year we did the counting and I made $3 million. I was like, "Something is wrong." And so for me it's like compounding interest. It's like compounding attention. Everything has to fuel the next thing. And so it's like when you're splitting, it's like that's the problem. So for me it was like when all my folks paying ClickFunnels, then everything was compounding.

And there's things inside ClickFunnels. We have ClickFunnels, we have Funnel Hacking Live, we've got, there's all these other pieces, but it's all based on one thing. So someone buys this and they're going to buy this and they're going to buy this, but it wasn't like, "There's this business and then there's separate things." And so that's what you kind of think through is like that because as far as a nowadays people connect more with personal brands and businesses. Almost like if I was you like, okay, you're the brand, right? That's the thing. And that's the thing you got to focus on to build up. And then from there it's like there's the coaching stuff, but does the coaching lead to the sponsorship or is it completely separate?

That'd be the question. And it's like how do you make it where it's like everything's focused on one thing. For me, everything's focused on funnels. It's ClickFunnels, it's Funnel Hacking Live, it's Funnel Scripts, everything's in this one vein. And every time I introduce something that's like tangential, I start focusing, then yeah, that's when the whole like, "Hmm," starts happening.

Catherine:
Okay, cool.

Russell:
Now I will give you one other caveat. The people I know who are good at... Because our people are good at this, but what they've found is they have to have different operating teams. And this comes back to how much money and people, and I don't know any of those details, but if you're able to have a different operating, I always tried in past where I had one team doing 12 things and that's when nothing would work. The people I know who have had success is because they have a different operating team for each one. So there's a person that's operating and running this, person operating, for example with me, the things I have that aren't ClickFunnels related. So it's like I've got Dan Kennedy's business I bought, but there's a whole team and an operator and everything. It is running independently of me, whether I do anything or not.

I can add stuff to it, I can promote it or Russell can talk about Dan Kennedy and it'll grow. But just without me, it functions and it lives and survives on its own. Same thing as Secrets to Success. These are kind of my side businesses, but they're separate. I can apply energy to them and they grow, but if I don't apply energy, they're still growing independently. But it takes separate teams. It's when my same team's trying to do this and they're jumping to this and they're jumping and they're jumping, that's when the whole juggling thing starts happening. So that's what I look at. If you're passionate and you do want to do it, only way we do that is if you've got the resources to do that. If not, I'd probably pause something, blow up the thing you have, 10X that, and then if you're still passionate about it in three years from now when you've made 10 times more here, then take the revenues, build the team, and then have it run like that.

Catherine:
Okay. Thank you, Russell. Thank you.

Russell:
Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but maybe it's the thing you need to, I don't know.

Hopefully

Catherine:
Kill me. Anyway. Make it a shirt.

Russell:
Russell made me kill my baby. Like, "Oh, I'm sorry." I got to think of a better analogy for that because it's really, I don't even know, but yeah. You know what I mean? Hopefully.

Dante:
I don't know. I love it. People aren't going to forget that. And that's what we need. When they go in and they're in the moment and they're in the heat and they're going to hear Russell say the thing, that's perfect.

Russell:
The problem is as entrepreneurs, this is our superpower and the thing that we're the worst... For everything we have in life. There's always a double-edged sword things. Your superpower is also your kryptonite at the same time. And so for us, we're entrepreneurs. We have this idea and we bird that we love, it's our little baby. It's so cute and we love it. And then we have another one, another one. Soon we've got all these babies and we love them all. And I'm the worst of this. I have these things that I love that just like I create them, and I love them. I don't care if it makes money. I love this thing. I'm going to give four hours a night. I'm going to quit sleeping to focus on this thing because we love it, but it's sometimes they're drowning us. We have to remember they're not actual people and we can put them on the shelf.

So I remember when I started doing this, I wouldn't cancel any of them because when I canceled, it was losing a part of me because this is an idea that I birthed, I loved. And so what I started doing is I started, actually, I created a whole Trello board for this and it was called the shiny penny or shiny object or something. So all these ideas that were done or partially done that I was pausing. I didn't say I was killing it. I was like, "I'm pausing, I'm putting it over here and I'm going to come back to you later."

So I put it over there. That way I didn't feel like I lost this thing. I'm coming back to this, "I'm not going to focus out, I'm going to come back later." And then I kept stacking these things over here and it's funny, you come back two years later, you look at it, you're like, "Whoa, that idea was dumb." It was just funny because in the moment they're so good. And then later you're like, "Huh. That was definitely a big distraction." And then sometimes you go back and you're like, "Actually this now makes perfect sense because now it fits over here. Now it's like all those kind of things." So, anyway.

Dante:
Amazing. Amazing. Next is going to be from Ezra and Ezra says, let me get this in the chat so we can all read together. Okay. Ezra says, "What are some examples of measurements Russell uses to determine the viability of business opportunities?" You want to talk about that before we go forward anymore, Russell?

Russell:
So what measurements? Okay. Yeah.

Dante:
Yeah. Basically how do we find the good ones and know which ones a dud?

Russell:
Yeah, this is a great question. So it depends. Different parts of my career, it's looked differently. The biggest thing I look for is a lot of times what people do is they try to start with the idea or the product or the thing. For me, the problem with that is you spend all this time building the thing and then you go and you try to find traffic to apply to the thing. And that's where a lot of times it falls apart where I can't find traffic profitably or whatever. So for me, the way I start initially is I try to find the audience first. Try to find if I was to build this business, if it was done today, how would I turn traffic on instantly? Where can I find that, right? I remember a couple years ago, when was it? It was two election cycles ago, so if you remember, this is when the whole prepper market went crazy where everyone was survivalists and all that kind of stuff.

I can't remember when it was, anyway, whenever that was, it was going crazy and that market blew up. There was people with huge blogs, huge email newsletters. There was 200 email newsletters you could rent that all had a million plus people on them. And so there's this huge audience. So I didn't ever create an offer in that market, but I was like, this is the market I could go into because it's a hot market email. I know exactly. If I had an offer today, I would go there and I could buy, add to this person's list. That person, it would be super easy to blow it up. It was very simple. Same thing when I created my neuropathy supplement. This is pre ClickFunnels. We created a neuropathy supplement and I didn't even know what, at the time, I did not know what neuropathy was. We hired a doctor to formulate something.

All I knew is I knew exactly where to find neuropathy, traffic. That's it. I knew exactly here's the traffic source. So they have an offer that's based on neuropathy. I can flip a switch and traffic's coming. So we built the whole supplement, turn the traffic on and boom. So I think the biggest thing for me is like, do I know where the traffic source is at? Like right now we're working on a couple offers, their ClickFunnels related offers, but they're, anyway, you guys will see them soon. They're kind keeping them secret right now. But I'm building these specifically. They're not going to be like, you're not going to see Russell Brunson's face on all that kind of stuff. Because I know a certain type of offer and I know exactly where you get traffic and I can get 1,000 ClickFunnel signups a day from the traffic source if I had this kind of offer. Found traffic source, create an offer to match traffic source, that's the biggest thing for me. So a lot of people ask me, "What market should I get into? I don't know what market to get into."

It's like, "Well go find the market first." And sometimes we think about the market like internet, the online market, but sometimes make it simpler. I live in Boise, Idaho, and every Saturday downtown there's the farmer's market. So they take three blocks of Boise and they wall off the streets and all these people come to the farmer's market and they all have different booths. There's someone selling corn, someone's selling ice cream and someone's selling soap and kombucha and all these different things. All these things, and so that is a marketplace. So if I go to the marketplace and first I'm look around like, oh my gosh, there's all these people coming here. There's people that are here. I'm looking around like, okay, there's a booth selling this and sell this, sell this. If I want to go into the marketplace, here's the existing traffic source.

What am I going to create? If I had my own booth, what would I sell here? What do I think people want? We'll say, "Okay, I'm looking around. There's like, there's all these different things. Okay, what am I going to create that's going to be something that these people actually want?" That's how I would do it if I was in a local business. The same thing online. It's like I got to find the market. So if you're interested in health, I'd look like where's the biohacking market? Oh my gosh, there's a huge market. There's like 50 podcasts about biohacking, tons of email newsletters, tons of Facebook groups, all these people talking about biohacking. It gives the known existing marketplace. I can go in that marketplace and see who are all the gurus, who are all the people that have booths, what are they all selling?

And I'm coming in and saying, "Okay, what do I have that's unique that I can bring that marketplace and I can blow it up." I'm not going and creating something on my own. Like, "How do I get traffic this now? How am I going to find traffic." That's the harder part. So for now I'd, the question I'd be asking if I want to make sure I'm going to have a business with the best likelihood of success. For me, it's like I got to find where the market's at first and then look at what the people are already buying and I'm creating something that's my version that's going to go into that marketplace of existing audiences are already there. So that's kind of how I look at opportunities when I'm first jumping into them.

Dante:
That's beautiful. I learned this from you a really long time, Russell, but I think a lot of people, this is maybe their first time hearing it. Go find traffic first. I just, I've been coaching for a long time for Russell, and I've seen it time and time and time again. Like Russell said, you have an amazing idea. This thing hit your brain. You're like, "Oh man, this is an awesome idea. I can turn this into a product and I can go help people do the thing." And they'll build the funnel.

They'll write the copy, they'll design everything. They'll come up with the color scheme, they'll come up with everything before looking at their traffic source, and then they come to find out, oh, the traffic source is very minimal, or, Ooh, there's a huge traffic source, but now my funnel is very much so not congruent with that. We build for the traffic. That is a huge one.

Russell:
By the way, did you notice that? I think it was, was it deb talked about homeschooling?

Dante:
Yes.

Russell:
That's why when she asked me a question, I was like, homeschooling market. There's existing market. And then someone else had just asked, where do you find the different traffic categories? So what I would do if I was like, "Okay, homeschooling is the marketplace. That's downtown Boise walled off. There's a whole bunch of people there already. I know it's there. I'm going to go set in my shop." The first thing I would do is I would go grab my phone, I'd open up iTunes podcast app. And I would scroll through and try to find how many podcasts are there about homeschooling. And so I'd look at there and there's probably 10, 20, 30, so I'd find all those podcasts and I'd write them down so there's existing traffic. Then I would go to Facebook and I'd click on search and you can search for groups.

I'd say homeschooling groups. I'd see how many groups. There's probably 100 Facebook homeschooling groups, but on Facebook shows you how many people. This one's got 20,000 people, this one's got 50,000, this one's got. So I look at that. Then I would go to Amazon, I'd start searching homeschooling books and see who are all the authors who wrote a book on homeschooling or some version of that. There's all the authors. Then I would go and I'd find those authors on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, on LinkedIn, wherever I go follow those people because like, "Oh my gosh, this person wrote book on homeschooling and they got 300,000 followers on Instagram." I go follow that person. It's like, this is how I'm finding the marketplace. I'm looking for the people that, who are the players in this marketplace, who are the people who already have the traffic, who are already making the money.

And so I'm finding all those people, connecting all together like, "Okay, look at this. I know where on Facebook everyone homeschooling, whether they're on Facebook, everyone on Instagram, here's all the email lists I found. Here's the authors, here's the podcasts." Now I've got the known traffic, so now I'm going to go listen to the podcasts. I'm going to go get into the Facebook groups and join them. I'm going to follow the Instagram people and I'm just going to watch what's happening as I'm trying to decide my products going to be, how am I going to position it? What's makes mine unique? I'm just going to start seeing what everybody else is doing, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, this is cool. So-and-so's doing homeschooling, but they're teaching this, and so-and-so's doing homeschooling, but they're doing this." I see all these different things and I start seeing in this little ecosystem, where do I fit in?

If I'm going to go buy a shop at downtown Boise at the marketplace, if there's five chiropractors, I'm not going to go set up a booth that's another chiropractor. There's five dudes doing chiropractor. If I'm a chiropractor, I'm going to think, "How can I position this differently? Well, I'm a chiropractic acupuncturist who does massages while you..." I don't know. I position myself differently, so I don't like all the rest of them. That's what the funnel was, right? I'm positioning the thing I'm selling differently, so I don't look like... Because if there's five chiropractors in a row and someone walks by in the marketplace, $50 adjustment, $50 and $50 adjustment, what's this person doing? They're doing adjustments for holistic stuff. They're different. They're unique, right? Boom, there's your unique offer. There's your hook. There's something that's different and that's your funnel. But for you to really create that and understand it's very helpful to jump into the marketplace and see what's actually happening, what's already being sold, and see from there, you start to get ideas.

And then when your product is done, now it's easy. Now you come back to these podcasters and you're like, "Hey, 30 podcast people that run homeschooling podcasts. I've listened to our last 10 episodes and you had so-and-so on that talked about this and this. I have something unique that I do. I do this. Can I come to your podcast and talk about it?" And they're like, "That is unique. Yes, please, come on." Boom. Now you're in that podcast and the next podcast, next podcast. You go in the Facebook group. I find the owner of the Facebook group, "Hey, this is really cool. Can I do a live web class for all the followers in your Facebook group? I got this really cool thing that I do that's unique. Nobody else does." Like, "Oh, sure," boom, you're in a Facebook group. And it is just like that's the game that we play.

And so I hope that was helpful, just maybe a little different way to look at business. But yeah, when you start looking at it that way, it's like, oh, now I know the marketplace. I know the audience. Now I can start creating the offers that are going to get me the most likelihood of getting in front of these audiences because I'm unique, because I'm different. Again, if you think about it from the marketplace like downtown Boise, maybe that helps maybe it more simple in your mind as well.

Dante:
And Russell, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what you do every single day. When you want to break into a new marketplace, you don't go back to Boise State University and learn about a new industry. You just go find the people that are currently succeeding in the industry and watch them. Is that right?

Russell:
Yeah, 100%. That's the game. That's why you've got people like-

Dante:
So you guys go-

Russell:
People are like, "You're on social media, Russell, why are you on social media? Are you wasting your time?" I'm doing research. I'm finding new audiences, new gurus new. I'm just constantly using this as a research tool to find new audiences because you find one person... Just to put this in perspective, when I launched the .com secrets book, I messaged two or 300 podcasters. I sent him a copy of my book, like everything, and none of them responded except for one guy. His name is John Lee Dumas. He runs Entrepreneur Fire. He messages back, "This book's amazing." He's like, "Can I promote it for you?" I'm like, "Yes, you can."

And he had me on the podcast, his emails list. He by himself sold over 1,000 copies of my book, which was crazy. But from that, they bought the book. They bought the upsells, they signed up for coaching, they bought click. I would say conservatively, it was at least $1 million in revenue directly to my bottom line, because one person said yes, right? It's like, is it worth my time to research on Instagram trying to find people and build a relationship with them? Yeah, one yes, $1 million, that's great. But if we've got two yeses this week, it becomes a really fun game.

Dante:
If you guys are on the fence, or if you guys are like, "Man, I'm still having a hard time positioning my thing for my people," that's my challenge for you. Take a week, take this next week, cut out all the fluff and the nonsense. No more entertainment. If you're on YouTube, it's only because you're researching your niche, watching different video styles and looking at comments and seeing what people are saying. Go do that for a whole week. Obsess over that industry, obsess over that thing, and you will find the inspiration. It might just be one video, it might be one snippet, it might be one sentence somebody says, where you're like, "Ooh, that was the thing." And now your brain starts going and then you can go build that thing. Amazing. This is so cool. Okay, Russell, really quick. There was a second part. You cool if we go over that?

Russell:
Yeah.

Dante:
His second part of the question is how much revenue a business opportunity needs to be able to generate for him to move forward. And Russell's been doing this for a really long time, so I think I'd like to position this as if we're just starting out. If we don't own a multimillion-dollar company, if we're not Russell Brunson as is today.

Russell:
Yeah, yeah for sure. Mine's different and mine's pretty simple in my mind. If I'm going to create something, I need to make sure that during the launch it makes at least $1 million and then I want continuity built into it where it's going to add at least a hundred grand a month to continuity from the launch for me. Be excited to like, okay, now we're going to drive more energy into this. So that's my metric. For you guys, it is different. I think, again, I'm a big believer in residual income. I know the OFA challenge. We're not talking too much about that yet because everything's baby steps. When I lead with, "Creative membership site and continuity program," people get overwhelmed because it's a lot, right? So the simple one, like OFA focus is creating a course, creating VSL, launching, getting something out there to test it.

But the goal is over time is figure out how do you get continuity built in things, which continuity is just recurring income. So having something where you get paid every single month. I spent the first decade in my business just selling one-time courses, which was great. I made really good money doing it, but if I didn't show up and sell a course, then we didn't make any money. And we launched ClickFunnels the first time I got my taste of like, oh, someone signs up for it. They pay every single month. This is great. So when I bought Dan Kennedy's company, I bought it because he had a newsletter recurring business. When I launched the Secrets of Success brand, it's because there's a membership set, like the recurring. So for me it's like how do I create something where I can do an initial launch and I get money for doing the work and the effort, but then it puts people into some kind of membership site. And then for you, it's just figuring out like, "Hey, what would this membership site need to make to be awesome?"

So me as it's like now, if I make five grand a month, I could quit my job. It'd be amazing. That would be a number. Then it's like, "Hey, can I realistically get to the point where it's making $5,000 a month where I can quit my other job and make this full-time?" If so, that would be the number, or maybe it's $10,000 a month, whatever that number is, where it's like, this is where I could go full-time where I could go pro in this business is if I had this much recurring revenue coming in, that's what I'd be looking at. So how do I launch something and then from there it pushes people in recurring and then that becomes now my retirement plan, the money that's coming in every single month for the work and the effort I'm doing. So those are the things I'm looking at.

Dante:
Absolute gold. All right, let's hop into the next one. I'm going to put it in the chat for all of us right now and I love seeing you guys in the chat. You keep communicating. This is amazing. This question is from Hemanchu. Hemanchu says, "I'm doing a 30 day challenge, which you posted on YouTube. Any tips or other challenges I should do?"

Russell:
Oh, very cool. So if you guys don't know, this week on YouTube I launched a video. So I read Dave Goggins book, which is 30 days... Or sorry, it was Jesse Itzler's book 30 Days with the Seal where he literally hired David Goggins to live with him for a month. And then David Goggins just beat him up for a month. It was a really good book, by the way, if you want a fun read, it's so good. So then I did a YouTube video like, "If you were to live with Russell for 30 days, what would it look like?" And so if you go to YouTube to my channel, and it's the most recent video we'd just posted. So it's on there. You can see here Woulds be my 30 day plan. So that planner is pretty in depth I think, I went step by step and I even give a PD, you can download it.

So it's like, "Here's what we do every single day for 30 days." But yeah, I would go download that or go watch that video as the core. But the reality is it is pretty simple. I'm a big Napoleon Hill fan. It's always like step number one is figuring out your definite purpose. What are you doing and why and by when? Very specific like, "In 30 days I want to accomplish blah, I want to get six pack abs in 30 days." Cool, we can do it. You just got to pick a thing that's tangible, that's doable. And then from there it's all reverse engineering backwards. Like, "Okay, what are the steps to be able to do that?" The reason that most people don't have success is because they don't have a definite purpose. They just are like, "I want to make more money."

"Well, what does that mean? You find a dollar on the street, you made more money. Congratulations. You hit your goal. It doesn't help." Me saying, "I need to make $10,000 by the end of this month." There's a specific goal, the deadline, now we have something we can talk about. Cool. How are we going to do that? Let's reverse engineer it, $10,000 by end of the month. You've got three weeks on end of the month, do $10,000. Like, "Okay, we've got a couple ways to do it. We can sell 1,000 copies of a $10 product. We can sell a hundred copies of $100 product or 10 copies... My math might be wrong, 10 copies of $1,000 product. Like me, it's like, "Oh, 10 copies of a thousand. Our products probably going to be the easiest of all these different things." So I could create a $1,000 products.

So step number one, I could create a thousand product, but before that I need an audience. Okay, how am going to get the audience? Step number one, I'm going to go find the marketplace. I'm going to go do a Russell said a few minutes ago, find every podcast, every YouTube video, everything. I'm going to find those people and find out where's the audience. That's step number one. Number two, if I'm wanting these people promote for me in the next three weeks, I need to get to know. So I send messages to all these different people on the platform, see if I can build a relationship to anybody and hopefully one person respond back. One person responds back and they're like, I'd probably try to do some co-op with them. Like, "Hey, I got this really cool thing I can create. Let's do a collab. We'll split 50 50, it's $1,000 product we're going to create. You teach half, I teach half. We'll split the money 50 50 and let's do the big thing to your audience for it."

And I'll be trying to reverse engineer like that, figure out a plan, put it in process, and then we just start running towards it as fast as we can and see if we can execute on it. So that's the biggest thing. I think the biggest problem most people have while they're not successful is because they don't have a definite specific goal with the timeline. They're just kind like, "I want to make more money. I want to lose weight." "Cool. You want to lose weight? How much? I don't know. I want to feel better." "What does that look like? There's got to be a tangible like, 'I feel better now.' There's not a tangible, you'll never know if you get there, right?" And so again, you watch the YouTube, that's kind of day number one.

We would just spend the whole day figuring out what is your definite purpose? What are you trying to accomplish buy when, and from there we can reverse engineer. It's the reason why in ClickFunnels, why we created the Two Comma Club award. People were coming in and they were building funnels, but they had no goal. There was no thing. And as soon as I was like, "When you get a million dollars, you get to Comma Club award." Suddenly people are like, "That's my goal. By next year's funnel hacking live, I want a Two Comma Club award." It became a definite purpose for, and then holy cow, what happened was insane? First year we did it, 79 people hit Two Comma Club. Next year was three or 250. Next year was like 300. It's grown every year since then because there's a tangible goal. They want to get on stage to get the award and they all pursue it and they run towards it. So I hope that helps.

Dante:
Absolutely. That was gold. Do you have time for one more? We have a great question here.

Russell:
Yep, we got one more.

Dante:
Cool. Okay. Let me put this in the chat for all of us. I love this question and I want to say congratulations to Justin for doing the thing. Justin says, "I left my job as an administrator and was told I was committing career suicide. How can I tell that story in a way to help parents see that success for their teen isn't always what they think."

Russell:
Ooh, that's awesome. So career. So if this was me, I would start playing with career versus calling. That's what I do. I can make a career suicide so I could pursue my calling. Having that be the transition, yeah, you hear career suicide, people's heart shut up like, oh, because we're in such a mindset, probably everywhere, but definitely in America. You got to go to school, get a degree so you can have a good career so you'd be safe. They all want to be safe, right? It's like, "Ah you gave that up." So there's going to be the fear of that. Like play off that fear. I committed career suicide so I could pursue my calling so I could change the world so I could have the energy and excitement and be on fire once again, that whole concept. But if you think about any... So this is a copywriting principle, good copy, and this is copywriting, storytelling, anything.

The best storytellers, the best copywriters, they master contrast. So light and dark, smooth and rough, happy, sad. Contrast is what sells things. So what gets people engaged in the story. So you've got really good contrast here with career suicide versus calling. There's such good contrast between these kind of things. And so I think there's a really cool way to tell that story in a way that will get attention because you got the career suicide, but then gets people the thing they need to move to pursue because the contrast there is really exciting. And helping parents be okay with their kids going after their calling instead of their career. It's a big deal. The careers, what we had back in the '90s. Nowadays people don't want a career, they want a calling.

Dante:
Absolutely. That was gold.

Russell:
That's fun.

Dante:
All right, well man, Russell, we are at 1:00. Thank you so much.

Russell:
These are good guys. We should do this every week. How many of you guys want to do this every single week? I really enjoyed this. You guys got some value from it? Awesome. Awesome. All right, thanks everybody. Have fun today with Dante. Thanks man.

Dante:
See you Russell. Thank you.