About a month ago, I did a special presentation for a friend that, for the first time, explained my newest framework called "The Linchpin" in possibly the simplest way yet, starting with the key strategy to ClickFunnels' drastic growth in the past. I've cut it into 2-parts, and in this episode I'll break down how we turned ClickFunnels into the success story it is today, and in part 2 we'll show you how to take your strategy to the next level using 'The Linchpin'!

And all of a sudden, I'm seeing this. And I remember thinking in my head, I was like, "There are human beings who are just like me, who literally put on pants the same way I do, who stepped on stage and made a $100,000 in an hour. That was more money than I had fathomed in a lifetime. You know what I mean? And they were doing that in an hour. I saw over, and over, and over, and over. I remember thinking when I left that, "I have to learn this skill. I have to learn how to do this." It became an obsession.

Hey, what's up everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. And, today I feel like I'm giving you guys a huge cheat code. This is something that I have not shared in a free format yet. I've talked about this in my high-end Inner Circle Mastermind group, which is anywhere from $50,000 a year to $250,000 a year. I shared parts of the Funnel Hiking live last year, but they year's Funnel Hiking live, we're going to deep into this framework that I call the linchpin, because I feel like this is the best way to grow and scale a business today. Obviously, y'all know that I'm obsessed with funnels, but this is the evolution of funnels. It's the evolution of the value ladder, it's the evolution of how we do everything.

It's literally the thing that we did to grow ClickFunnels. And it's one little tweak and change we did that is the difference between ClickFunnels being a $10 million a year business to a $100 million a year business, was this principle called the linchpin. And it's interesting because I did this when we launched ClickFunnels. It was something that was me and Todd hacking around and we figured out this thing that helped grow ClickFunnels. And then, after about two years, I forgot about it. And, I shifted away from it, stupidly, as we do sometimes. And it wasn't until about two years ago I was doing a presentation for my inner circle showing them how we grew and scaled ClickFunnels and I realized that I had forgotten and we'd stopped doing the thing that made us amazing.

And so, over the last 18 months or so we've been doing this. If you've been watching what I'm doing, you're seeing it. And it is by far the thing that is growing our companies faster than anything else. We're doing it, actually, actively today. We're in the middle of doing a challenge with our new supplement company, and we're using the linchpin model to grow our supplement company continuity program. We're using it to launch our new personal development program. We did it to launch our video hosting platform. We're using it to grow ClickFunnels 2.0 at an astronomical rate. It is the key.

I tease and I joke about it with my Inner Circle, the Mandalorian who's like, "This is the way." I can tell, we're like, "This is the way. This is the you grow and scale a company today." And it's through this principle called the Linchpin. Now, again, I've not shared much of this publicly yet. In fact, my social team posts something on my social the other day like, "If you're not using the linchpin, your business will not succeed in 2025 or whatever." And everyone's like, "What's the linchpin? What's the linchpin?" And, nobody knew. And I was like, "I haven't actually shared this publicly anywhere."

So, this is the first time. I hope you guys are excited. This is a presentation I did for one of my buddies, Anik Singal, has a webinar that he does with a whole bunch of people teaching webinars. And I was like, "What can I share with these guys that nobody else would talk about?" Right? There's a lot of things you talk about webinars, and scripting, and the perfect webinar, but I was like, "I want something different." So, I shared the linchpin formula, specifically as it relates to webinars. Now this is not the full linchpin. There's other pieces, there's high ticket stuff. There's a lot of other pieces that I didn't get into during this. But this is one of the best breakdowns I have of the core principles you have to understand for the linchpin to work for you.

And so, I'm going to give you guys this presentation. And I'm doing it selfishly for two reasons. Number one, I want you to understand this concept because if you do, you're using ClickFunnels to build out your linchpins. But number two, it's because this year's Funnel Hacking Live is going to be different than any other year. Most years in the past, I talked about a lot of different things. This year, everything we're teaching for the four-day event is all pieces of the linchpin. So, you'll hear these principles reinforced, you'll hear us going deep, deep, deep on them. You'll see best practices, hacks, tricks, tips, whatever you want to call them, for every aspect of the linchpin. And so, when you hear this, the biggest thing I want you to take away from is, "I need to be at Funnel Hacking Live this year, because this is where Russell is going to spend four days going deep into this framework with us, with some of the greatest marketers on the planet."

So, with that said, this is a pre-sale of Funnel Hacking Live. If you don't have your tickets yet, you need to get them. We are 80 days away from Funnel Hacking Live, which is crazy. It's insane. Less than three months away. So if you don't have your tickets yet, now is the time to go to funnelhackinglive.com and get your tickets.

And as you're listening to this presentation, I want you to think about how this can apply to your business specifically, and after you hear that, then go run as fast as you can, get your tickets for Funnel Hacking Live, and make sure you're there. So I can go deep with you for four days on this framework and how you can use it to grow and scale your company. Again, it is the evolution of a funnel. It's the evolution of the value ladder, it is the key. So, all right, with that said, we're going to break this down into two different podcast episodes. Podcast number one is called the Two Beliefs Required to Make the Linchpin Work For YOU. And so, that's the first one. And then on episode number two, we'll come back and I'm going to show you guys three simple keys to building out your linchpin. So, that said, let's keep the first part of the presentation.

Hey, what's up everybody? Thank you Tom, so much for the introduction. I'm so excited to be here with you guys today talking about webinars. And the reason why I'm so excited to talk about webinars is because webinars are literally a thing that changed my life forever. I know you guys know that. I know that. But, it's completely true for me. And I'm going to tell you a little bit of my backstory and then I'm going to jump into what I actually want to share with you guys. I know there's so many good speakers talking about all sorts of things, from how to give a webinar, how to do presentations, how to close sales, how to do funnels, all that stuff. And it's something different. I was trying to figure out, what's something I can bring to you guys that's unique that's different than what anybody else would actually talk about?

And so, I'm going to be teaching you guys a framework we developed. And literally, it's the difference between ClickFunnels being a $20 million a year company and it being a $200 million a year company. And it's this little tweak to how we do our webinars that I've never seen anyone talk about or really share. And so, it's something that we figured out when we first launched ClickFunnels, we kept doing it. And, honestly, nobody really copied us, which was surprising, so much so that, we almost forgot about it for a season. And then, when we realized it, we brought it back. And ClickFunnels has been growing now faster than it ever has because of this one piece. And that's something we'll be sharing with you guys today.

But, to step back, I wanted take you guys on a journey just to how I got to the spot to become obsessed with webinars. And hopefully, this will be motivational for any of you guys who may not feel like you're good speakers. Maybe you're just beginning out your career and you're trying to figure things out out. So I remember, when I had gotten into this whole internet marketing world, I was geeking out, I was having so much fun. And this is, man, probably 20 years ago now. I was in college going to... I was wrestling at Boise State. And, that was my journey. And I started learning about internet marketing. I became obsessed with it. I started reading all the eBooks, and buying the courses, and doing all the training, and Googling all the different keywords about how to make money. And, I became obsessed with that. And I remember I started having a little bit of success here and there. Enough I could make it a couple thousand dollars a month here and there.

And then, I remember at the time, there was this big seminar going on. And the big seminar was called the Big Seminars, Armand Morin's Big Seminar. And, Armand was someone who was a mentor. In fact, I remember I used to listen to Armand . He would do these teleseminars back in the day before we had webinars or videos. He would do teleseminars. And usually, the teleseminars would happen when I was at school or whatever. And so, I would take the audio of it, I would burn it on a CD, and I'd burn a whole bunch of CDs of Armand teaching internet marketing. And then, I'd go on these road trips where we'd be wrestling. And so, we'd be going from Boise up to Oregon. We have an 18-hour bus ride. And so, I'd be sitting in the back of the bus with my headphones on listening to Armand Morin talk about internet marketing.

And I got so excited, learning all these things, and understanding these principles. And, I remember, about that time, he was doing, I think, it was Big Seminar 4 or something like that. And that was the big event in the industry. And I was like, "I need to go. I want to go." And tickets I think were a $1,000, which was a lot of money. Plus, you got flights, and hotels, and all the things, right? But I was like, "That's where I got to be. I need to learn internet marketing from these people who are doing it." And so, I took a little money I'd been making so far, bought a plane ticket, bought a hotel, got a ticket, flew out there, and I attended the Big Seminar.

Now, I want you to put this in perspective, this is awkward, shy Russell. I know you have Russell who's trying to speak from stage, and I talk fast, and all stuff. But, I was the nerdiest of the nerdy. I had glasses on. I wore a suit and tie, because I thought that's what business people did. I didn't want to be embarrassed. I had a buzzed head. I was so shy. I was so awkward. So I get to this event and all these people. And I sat in the back, hiding with my laptop, taking notes. Ready to learn internet marketing, right? I just remember the very first speaker got on stage and they started speaking. And doing their presentation. I was just mesmerized. It was the coolest thing in the world to see the whole thing happen, right? And so, the speakers started speaking. And after about 90 minutes or so, he made an offer. And I was so confused. I didn't know the business, the industry at all. So he made an offer, and all of a sudden people started jumping up and running to the back of the room.

And I remember, I think the offer was $2,000. And, as people were running back the room, I'm confused. I look back, and I'm doing the math. I'm counting the people, "1, 2, 3, 4. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12." And by the time he was done, I think it was 50 or $60,000 this guy had made. And I was like, "What did I just witness? That was insane." And then, I just remember the thrill, and the emotion, and all this stuff that just I saw this thing. And then, Armand gets on stage and announces the next speaker. Next speaker gets on stage and I'm like, "Okay. And I'm going to learn internet marketing from this guy." And he's speaking, talking about whatever. And, after 90 minutes, he made an offer for $5,000 packages he had created. And suddenly people start popping up over the audience, running to the back.

And I'm like, "What is happening?" And I'm counting the people like, "5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30." And that guy made over a $100,000. And I started watching this happen speech, after speech, after speech for the three-day event. And, I was just blown away. I didn't even know what I was witnessing. But I was doing the math, figuring out the numbers. And then the very last speaker was a guy named John Childers, who at the time, was the number one public speaking coach. Not public speaking, like learning how to speak eloquently on stage and that stuff, but how to speak to sell. I still remember he got on stage, and he's like, "There's two ways to make money as a speaker. First way is become famous. And the second way is learn how to sell from stage." And then, he started talking about all these famous people that got paid a $100,000 to speak on stage or $250,000 on stage.

And then he talked about him. He's like, "I'm nobody. No one knows my name. But I get paid more than these guys for speaking from stage, because I know how to speak to sell." And he's like, "You guys saw it this weekend, you witnessed it. Right? And I was like, "Yeah, I witnessed it." He's like, "If you want, I can teach you how to sell from stage." Then he made a pitch for $20,000. And everyone's running to the back, and I'm running to the back, and it was chaos, right? And, that was my first experience seeing somebody speak to sell, one to many selling. And, I remember shy, awkward, introverted Russell 20 years ago, who was coming to learn internet marketing, because I could sit behind a keyboard, and a screen, and never talk to a human, and make money.

And all of a sudden, I'm seeing this. And I remember thinking in my head, I was like, "There are human beings who are just like me, who literally put on pants the same way I do, who stepped on stage and made a $100,000 in an hour. That was more money than I had fathomed in a lifetime. You know what I mean? And they were doing that in an hour. I saw over, and over, and over, and over. I remember thinking when I left that, "I have to learn this skill. I have to learn how to do this." It became an obsession. And so, I got home, and I remember a little while later, one of my friends was writing an event. He's like, "Hey Russell, do you want to speak at my event?" I was like, "Yes, I would love to."

And so, I came to the event. I remember thinking in my head, I was like, "Okay, last one I went to, I saw those speakers. They're really good at selling. But, they weren't teaching the best stuff. I know way more than these guys do." And so, I started going and writing my presentation. And I was like, "I'm going to teach them everything I know. I'm going to blow their minds. They're going to give me tons of money." And so, I created what I thought was going to be the greatest presentation ever. I get on stage my very first event, and I taught everything. I did the sell and I didn't know how to sell. In fact, I remember, my close was, "I'm not going to insult to you like the others. I'm not going to insult your intelligence like the other speakers. I'm not going to try to tell you how much does it cost. All I'm going to do is..." It's a $1,000. Whatever. So I offered a $1,000 offer. And it was crickets. Nobody moved. Nobody got on the stage.

Usually, when you get done speaking, the person in the back is supposed to crank up the music so you don't feel awkward as you're walking off-stage. That guy I don't think knew I was done, because my pitch was probably 20 seconds long. And so, it was just awkward, quiet. I'm standing on the stage. Nobody moved. And I'm just like, "Well, that's it." I awkwardly walk off and everyone's confused. And then, the guy turns the music on. And, it was the worst thing ever. And so, people came over like, "Russell, that was a great presentation. Good job. Good job." And, it was that awkwardness of that whole thing.

And then, after it all ended, next appeared on stage, I went back, I'm like, "So how many did I sell?" And, the guy looked at me, he's like, "You didn't sell any." And I was like, "Oh." Oh, I was so embarrassed, I wanted to quit. In fact, I did for a few minutes. I quit. I remember, I left the room, beelined to the elevator, went to my hotel room. I had a room to stay there for the whole time in the event. So I sat in the hotel room. I was too scared to leave. And for three days, I remember I sat there watching movies on TV, eating Haagen-Dazs and coconut shrimp from room service. And that's all I did for three days. I was like, "I'm never going to leave. I don't want to see anybody else." And then, when I snuck out the last day to fly home and I was like, "I will never speak again. That was the worst experience ever."

But then, I kept seeing it, see it happen, people doing it over, and over, and over again. I was like, "I have to learn the skill." And so, then I started hiring actually public speaking coaches. I learned from Bill Glazer, Dan Kennedy, from Armand Morin, and from John Chills, from all these amazing speakers. And eventually, I learned how to actually sell from stage. And then, I started going to seminars. And, I remember the very first time I sold and somebody bought, I made a $1,000 course and I sold six. I was like, "I made $6,000. This is crazy."

And I kept doing it, kept practicing, kept practicing it. And I kept getting better at my presentations, started tweaking, and fine-tuning things, getting better, and better, and better. And I'm not, during this presentation, be talking about the scripting. I'm sure there'll be other speakers that talk about that. But just understand that, this is a learnable skill. I went from being the most awkward person of all time to -forward, 15 years later, I had a chance to speak at the 10X stage. And, did my 90-minute presentation, did my pitch, and we closed $3.2 million in sales in 90 minutes, which I believe is the world record. Nobody has told me they beat that yet. I haven't seen it yet. Not in payment plans. That was collected in 90 minutes in our Stripe account.
And so, I went from being the worst of the worst, literally blanking, getting zero sells, to setting the world record of selling the most. And so, I want you to understand this, this is the learnable skill. All you guys can learn this, it's powerful. Learning, it's different than just teaching. It's understanding persuasion, and sales, and those things. Okay?

And so, like I said, there's going to be speakers, I'm sure, at this event to go deep into the psychology, and how to speak, and present. But for me, that was the thing, I spent next five or six years on the road speaking, doing stage presentations. And then, 2008 hit, and the speaking industry dried up. And so, there were no longer seminars happening around the world. And so, we jumped online. And I was like, "I have to replicate this." And so, we started doing it on teleseminars. And so, I remember doing teleseminars every single night, selling stuff from teleseminars. And then, I remember this thing called GoToWebinar came out. We were all freaking out. Like, "We can do a teleseminar, but they can see our slides." Which was a big deal, because most of us, at the time, were doing slides at live events. Right? And so, we're doing these webinars in GoToWebinar and we started making even more money.

And so, I remember the first year GoToWebinar came out, we did 70 webinars, and just got better, and better, and better, and crushed it. And we kept doing more, and more, and more. And then, some of you guys have heard me tell this story before, ClickFunnels came out. And, I'm like, "How are we going to sell this thing?" And so, of course I did what every software company does, make a landing page, had a trial, we started driving traffic to it, and guess what happened? Nothing. People weren't signing up. And I kept trying, kept trying. And no matter how many times I tried to sell this thing, people weren't trying it. And it was a free trial. I'm like, "This is crazy. It's a free trial. Why is nobody actually signing up and joining ClickFunnels?" This is the thing that everybody needed eight, nine years ago. We were the first-to-market with anything like this. And it was what everybody needed.

And so, we're promoting it, and nobody's signing up for it. And I was so confused. I remember, about six weeks into us launching ClickFunnels, one of my friends was like, "Hey, I have an event coming. Can you come, and speak, and sell ClickFunnels?" And I was like, "Well, here's the reality. Right now, it's free. We have free trial. Nobody's buying it." And he's like, "Well, I already have you on the sales page. People are planning on you coming. You need to give a presentation on ClickFunnels." And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He was like, "You have to give a presentation on ClickFunnels and I want you to sell it for a $1,000." And I'm like, "Oh. Okay."

And so, I remember still, the event was in San Diego. And he was streaming online. So I remember, I actually started watching online. I was still in Boise at my desk, as I'm working this presentation I'm like, "Hey, I need to create a presentation that I can go to sell ClickFunnels." And so, I pulled out my old slide deck for my old products back in the day, and I started just changing stuff over. Like "Okay. Well, here's the new offer. Here's the new thing. What's the presentation? How I'm going to craft this thing out." And so, I wrote this webinar presentation to sell a $1,000 version of ClickFunnels. I remember finishing it, and then heading to the airport, jumping in a plane, flying to this place, got there, got on stage, did my 90-minute presentation selling ClickFunnels for a 1,000 bucks. And I had no idea if it was going to work or not work. And I did the pitch at the end.

And, have you guys ever seen table rush before? Table rushes are one of the coolest feeling in the world I've ever experienced is beating someone in a wrestling match. Getting your hand raised is the best feeling. Second best feeling, table rush. It is amazing. You see people running, jumping over the tables. And so, I did my pitch that day. And no kidding, table rush. People were literally jumping over tables, fighting at the back, trying to get the first people to put their credit card in. And I was like, "This is crazy." I'm just watching this whole thing happen.

And so, that night, I remember, we got the order forms, and we closed, I think, it was like, 60% of the room had signed up for ClickFunnels for a $1,000 version of it. And I remember that night I went to dinner with Todd and Dylan, who are my partners, we created ClickFunnels together. And, we're all excited and celebrating. And I was like, "Do you guys understand what just happened?" They're like, "Yeah, we made some money finally. Yay." I'm like, "No, no, no. We have a presentation that converts." I'm like, "Yes, I did it on stage, but we closed 60% of the room. That's rare. That's unique. I don't even understand how important or how powerful that is." I'm like, "I can go home now and that presentation, I can do it a 1,000 times over, and over, and over again." I was like, "Here's what I understand, we're going to be rich." And they smiled like, "We're going to be rich?" I'm like, "Crazy rich. You have no idea."

And so, they're like, "Okay. What's the next process?" I'm like, "We're taking this presentation. We're going to do a webinar." And so, the next morning, I'm flying home, I start texting people like, "Hey, I have a presentation that's conversed. Do you want to do a webinar with me?" And they're like, "Yeah. Do you want to do a webinar?" And so, I'm texting everyone, emailing everybody I know, and starting doing these things.
And so, I get back home. And literally, this is how we launched ClickFunnels. So, I do the webinar right when we get home to somebody's list. And, it did great. And this is one of the lessons I want to give you that hopefully separate from what I've been teaching is about this framework here in a second. But, the first lesson we understand is, I did the webinar presentation...

Actually, even one step further, as I was leaving the hotel lobby before I flew home, I'm leaving, and I met someone in the lobby and they're like, "Oh, your presentation was so good. I wish I could have bought it. But the problem is, I don't run a supplement company. I'm a coach, so I can't use ClickFunnels." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" She's like, "Well, your case study shows supplements. And I don't have a supplement company. I'm a coach, so I can't use ClickFunnels." I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I'm a coach too. I have coaching. I have courses. I got proxy. You can use ClickFunnels for that." She's like, "Are you serious? I had no idea. I thought you needed to have a supplement company for it to work." I'm like, "What am I doing?" So she ran back in, grabbed two of her order forms, grabbed two of her friends that came out. And they all signed up while I'm leaving the lobby.

And so, I realized in my head, "My presentation only showed supplement funnels, I should show other funnels." So as I'm flying, I'm editing my slides. And like, "Okay. Let me show a coaching funnel and a network marketing funnel. And so, I'm tweaking the presentation, right? So when I get home to Boise, I do the very first webinar live, someone's list. And I can't remember, we had 500 people registered. I did the webinar. And man, it's been eight years, so I don't remember the numbers perfectly, but it was something like, we made 30 or $40,000 in the webinar, which was great. And then, I had another webinar that was queued up for four hours later. So the first thing we did is after the webinar's over, I looked at all the questions from GoToWebinar. We took the questions out and I started reading them. I was like, "Oh my gosh, on slide 10, everyone's asking the same question over and over again." So I went back and I edited slide 10 to answer that question. I came down like, "Oh, on slide 32, they asked this question. Oh, in the pitch they're confused about this."

And so, I spent two or three hours tweaking my slides, getting everything done. And then, again, three or four hours later, we had the next webinar, and almost the same size. I think it might have been less people, 450, 500 people had registered, and 250 whatever showed up. We did the presentation. And the second time, it did a $100,000 in sales. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. This is amazing." So then, I took that same presentation, pulled out the questions, went through it again. Kept tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. And I ended up doing that presentation... I did it anywhere from one to five times a week live for over a year. I think it was 70 or 80 times I did that presentation live. And every single night I did it live, export the questions, tweak slides. Export questions, tweak the slides.

I didn't do what most will do, which is like, "I did a webinar. Good. I'm going to automate it." I wanted to master this presentation. I got better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better. In fact, in my hard drive, my computer, every time I would do the presentation, I would take it, I would save that one. And then, my next webinar, I would re-save it. I have the date on top of it. And then, I would go and I would export questions and redo it. So I have a folder on my computer which has 80 whatever versions of that webinar, everyone redone, redone, redone, little tweaks, changes, tweak, changes. And over time, that presentation became perfect. Right? I knew that if I was on a live webinar, I would close 15% every single time. If I was in a room, it'd be 45 to 50% of people in the room would close every single time just because we'd done it so many times.

And so, for those of us who are doing presentations and webinars, understanding that's the magic. Doing the presentation, then doing it again, and doing it again, and doing it again, and crafting it, and perfecting it. Because if I would've perfected it at 8%, ClickFunnels would've done done well. But I perfected at 15%, 16%, right? I mean, twice as much sales, the same amount of traffic, it changes all the metrics. Everything changes, right? And then, I did it for over a year before we ever automated and ever-greened it.

So, there's a couple Russell wisdoms I want to share with you guys before I get into the actual framework, because I think those are key things to understand, this is the learnable skill. You got to practice it. You got to get better. You got to understand presentations, the psychology, how to actually craft them. And then also, it's doing it, and then doing it again, and doing it again, and doing it again. But if you get one webinar that works, that'll change your life forever. That one webinar went from us having this ClickFunnels thing, we were at the bottom of our business. We were making hardly any money at the time. We'd put everything into developing the software that wasn't selling when we first launched it, got one correct webinar pitch, and it changed the world, changed us forever, right? Next year, we'll pass a billion dollars in sales from ClickFunnels. Which is crazy. We haven't been in business 10 years yet, we'll pass a billion dollars in sales all off the back of this one webinar.

So, that's the power of what webinars can do for you. Okay? But today, what I want to talk about is... Again, I want to share something unique there. I know you have a lot of people talking about a lot of different pieces of the webinar and I'm like, "What's the piece I can bring that's different than anything else?" And so, if we can zoom out real quick, this is a framework we developed. It's called the linchpin. And so, I'm going to talk about this framework. I'm not going to go through all of it. There's a lot of pieces of them. I'm going to talking about the two or three pieces that were the big needle driver. This is the difference between ClickFunnels being a $20 million a year company and a $200 million a year company, was understanding a couple little pieces here.

Now, most of you guys are doing all these things right now anyway. Some of you guys already are doing virtual events. Some of you guys are doing webinars. Some of you guys are doing challenges. Some of us have continuity. But, if you look through your business through the lens I'm going to share with you, a couple of things are going to be uncomfortable, because it's like, "But I do it this way. But I do it this way. I'm already doing this this way." It's going to be a little uncomfortable. But these are the shifts and changes. If you are willing to make these changes, it will exponentially grow your business. Okay? It's the reason why we're still able to outspend all of our competitors, even people who have literally gotten hundreds of millions of dollars of VC capital, because of this framework right here and how it all works. Okay?

So again, I call it the linchpin. This is something I only work on... Right now, we only work on with people inside of my inner circle and my high-end coaching programs. Eventually, we have a book coming out and some other stuff. But, this is the first time I really shared it publicly outside of just in my world. And so, I'm hoping that you guys grasp this. Again, there's going to be some things that... It's going to take some of the conventional wisdom and things you're used to and flip them on their head. So, I want you to for a minute to instead of saying, "No Russell. No Russell." I want you to say, "What if... What if Russell's not crazy? What if Russell built a $200 million a year company off of the back of one webinar? Maybe he knows one or two things. Trust him." Okay? So, that's the game plan.

So, there's two core principles that we have to lead with for this whole thing to make sense. Okay? Principle number one, this is something I learned from David Frey, who's one of my friends and mentors, one of the smartest guys in our industry. David Fry said something really powerfully one time. He said, "If you don't have continuity, then you don't have a business." Okay? That's going to hit hard for some of you guys. Some of you guys are like, "I have webinars. I make a $100,000 dollars a month in webinars." "Do you have continuity?" "No." You don't have business. You have a promotion. Which is great. That promotion is amazing. You make a $100,000 dollars every single time you do it, which is awesome. But if you don't have continuity, you don't have a business. Okay?

Now, I didn't understand this. I was just like you for a long time. I was really good at webinars. So I'd go to event, I'd speak on stage, I'd do a webinar, I make a bunch of money. I'd take three months off. I get it. That was the world that we lived in, right? But David Fry said this, "If you don't have continuity, you don't have a business." And for me, that was really hard. I didn't understand it until I started building ClickFunnels. Okay? When I started building ClickFunnels, everything I did... You guys heard of the principle of compounding interest, or I think Einstein said, it's the eighth one of the world. "Compounding interest is great, but what's even better than compounding interest is compounding continuity." Okay? This is the key. When you start shifting and you start building out your business this linchpin model I'm going to share with you guys, every single thing you're doing, every webinar, every challenge, every live event, every time you go live, everything's all compounding your continuity program. Okay?

And the time I really got this, we launched, ClickFunnels started growing. And, it was interesting, because our continuity... You guys have the Stripe app on your phone every morning, you wake up and then Stripe pops up and it's how much money made the night before. Or, how much money you made that morning. Whatever it is. It pops up every single day. It's the greatest feeling in the world. I remember, when ClickFunnels came out, I remember it first started popping up. I was like, "I made a 1,000 bucks today. I haven't got a bed yet. This is amazing." Right? But then, we kept doing this process, kept playing this playbook, kept adding more people continuity. And that continuity number started growing. Went from a $1,000 a day to $5,000 a day. From $5,000 a day to $10,000 a day. 10,000 to 50. 50 to a 100. A 100 to 150. 150 to 300. Right?

And every morning waking up, I'm like, "I have not gotten out of bed yet, we already made $350,000 today." That's the power. Okay? A promotion's great. A whole bunch of money goes away. But, compounding continuity is the key. This is how you actually have a business. So, number one thing I want you to think about is, whatever it is you are selling, don't sell a course or a product one time. Create something that's actually continuity. Okay? And we're doing this now. I'll show you some examples. We're doing this with Dan Kennedy's company. We're doing it with our company. It doesn't matter. It can be software. It can be info products, it can be supplements. I'm doing in all those industries. But, the core fundamental principle in our business is, if we don't have continuity, we don't have a business. Okay? That's the first thing you have to understand.

So, if you look at the linchpin model right here, down here in this corner, this is continuity. So everything we have is leading to this. Everything is compounding continuity. The front end traffic, the challenges, the webinars, the live events, the only goal is to get more and more people into continuity. That's it. Okay? So that's the first premise for you to understand, because I promise you guys, this is why most people get wrong. At the end of their... Here's a challenge or webinar. So, you challenge or webinar, then if you sell your 1,000, you're 2,000, you're $5,000 course, make a bunch of money, and then it goes away. Okay? Instead, I'm going to talk about it in a minute about how we shift our offers so everything's continuity, and that will change everything in your business. So premise number one is, if you don't have continuity, you don't have a business.

Premise number two is, we have to move the SLO. SLO stands for self-liquidating offer. Okay? Now, most of you guys in this room I'm sure understand what a self-liquidating offer is. And so, I'm going to show you guys what traditionally happens for most people in the webinar business, right? In fact, when we first launched ClickFunnels, when I first did the first five or six webinars, this is exactly what we did. Okay? So what would happen is, we would drive traffic to our webinar registration page, right? So here's the registration page. People email in here, they submit, and then from there, we would take them to a thank you page. Right? So, register, there's the webinar, thank you page, thank you for registering webinar, hope you enjoy it. Here's the day and the time.

And then, sometimes you put in a special offer right here, which is, again, we call it SLO, a self-liquidating offer. So we might have something where it's a $17 ebook, or a $27 video, or whatever. We have some self-liquidating offer. So, what people will do is they would go and you spend some money over here with Zuckerberg, right? Let's say, you spend a $100 in ads, from that you get 10 people to register. And then from that, you get three people to buy the self-liquidating offer. And, we call it a self-liquidating offer, because hopefully we make that a $100 back and that way you got all the registers for free. That's the goal traditionally with a self-liquidating offer, right? Okay? And then, from there, then the webinar happens. So, you do the actual webinar. And the end of the webinar, you sell something, right? You sell your 1,000, your 2,000, your 5,000 course, whatever it is. And this is where most of you guys actually end up making your money. Right?

So let's just say, for numbers' sake, I'm going to say a $1,000. You can sell obviously for everyone. But say, this is where you sell your product, and that becomes a $1,000 offer. Okay? So, when we launched ClickFunnels, initially, that's exactly what we did. That was the play. And so, we'd drive traffic, people registered, thank you page, we'd sell whatever it was. I can't remember what it was, a 17, 18, $20 product. Try to cover our ad costs. I do the webinar, I sell the thing at the end. And, at first, it worked. The first four or five webinars was like, "I'm doing this making, again, 30 grand, first 100 grand, next one, next one I'm doing 50 grand." I'm webinar for webinar. I'm in my element. I'm running, I'm doing my webinars.

And, I wouldn't have changed anything. But luckily, for me, I have a business partner who's way smarter than me. Some of you guys know Todd Dickerson. Todd's the one who built ClickFunnels initially. And, Todd was like, "I didn't get in the software business to get back in the webinar business." I'm like, "But... What? Dude, we're killing it. We're making tons of money." He's like, "Yeah, but all that money is just one-off sales." Right? "If we don't have continuity, we don't have a business." And Todd was like, "I didn't get in the software business to get back in the product launch business. When Russell does something, we make money, but otherwise we don't." He's like, "The whole purpose of this was recurring income." And I was like, "Well, at the end of..." We were giving people a year access to ClickFunnels, "So in 12 months from now, they'll start getting billed the $97 a month, whatever it was at the time. So, there'll be continuity, but not for a year from now."

He was like, "We need continuity now. That's the whole reason why we started a software company." And so then, Todd had this brilliant idea. And it's so simple. It's so dumb. It's so easy. But this is the difference. This is what I'm going help you guys understand here in this linchpin model. What Todd's big idea was, "What if instead of having our self-liquidating offer here, we got rid of that. And on thank you page, we gave people a trial to our continuity program." Okay? Really simple. And so we did that. And at first, it was weird, because people registered, they pay the thing, they get trial. But, we didn't make any money right out of the gate. But they had a 30-day trial, 30 day. And at the end of 30 days, then they started getting billed in $97 a month, right?

And so, we started doing that. We started shifting. What was cool is people registered webinar, from here we get a bunch of people that would sign for the free trial. Then the webinar happened. The end of it, I would sell this course that we bundled with 12 months worth of ClickFunnels, and that was the process. And so, we ran that playbook for a year. Okay? Now, I want to show you guys the numbers in a year, because at first, I didn't really get the impact of it, until we were a year into business. So ClickFunnels is in business for a year. At the end of the year, a couple cool things happened. Number one, we had 2,500 people that had bought this. Right? So, 2,500 people times 1,000 equals what? You guys know the math, right? Business math easy. 2.5 million. And that's a huge success. Most people are like, "You did two and a half million dollars in sales your first year. That's crazy." Right?

In our world, we give away Two Comma Club, "That's two and a half, Two Comma Club awards. This is amazing." Okay? But what you would've missed is a couple things. We had 2,500 people who bought the thing. But what's crazy is, from this trial, fast-forward 365 days from that, we actually had 7,500 people who stuck on continuity. So, after the cancel, refunds, all kinds of stuff, 7,500 people stuck on continuity. Okay? 7,500 times $97. I'm going to write a 100, because it's easier for my math brain. $750,000 a month in recurring income, times that by 12 months, equals $9 million. "What? Wait, what? The SLO trial thing made you 9 million?" Most people are missing the 9 million, because they're so focused on the 2 million. Okay?

Now what I mean by moving the SLO, moving the self-liquidating offer, we started looking at our business different. We started saying, "This $1,000 is not our business." For most of you guys, that is your business right now. The thing you sell at the end of the webinar is your business. For me, it's not. This is my self-liquidating offer. Okay? This 2.5 million, I did not pocket any of that. We took that 2.5 million and we dumped it back into ads over here. So, the 2.5 got dumped into ads, and kept growing, and kept growing. Everyone kept falling here in the trial. And this became, what we call, compounding continuity. Kept growing, and growing, and growing, and getting bigger, and getting bigger, and getting bigger, and getting bigger. You guys getting this? Okay? So these two little tiny shifts, two little shifts. And they're not difficult. But it's the shift to mindset.

Number one, you have to understand you're not in the course business, you're not in the... You're in the continuity business. For this model to work, you have to understand. So you have to change it. Okay? Change it from whatever you're selling from. Like, "I'm selling a $1,000 course." To, "I am selling a continuity program and it's a $1,000 a year. It's a $100..." Whatever it is, right? It's shifting your business, understanding that the thing you were selling is always continuity. Everything else is just appendages to that. And number two is, you're moving the self-liquidating offer from the thank you page to the thing that you think is your business right now will become your self-liquidating offer. Okay?

Dan Kennedy, my number one mentor in this business, he always says, "Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins." The reason why I can beat everybody else is because the thing to everyone else is their business, I dump 100% of that back into advertising and it brings people back through and the continuity is the key. Okay? So those are the two caveats that we got to get out the door initially for this whole model to make sense. Is that that cool? You guys getting it so far?

All right, everyone, that's part one. Hope you enjoyed it so far. Hopefully you're seeing like, "Oh, this is why Russell's so excited. This is compounding continuity. That's the goal. This is going to be so exciting." So hopefully, you've enjoyed part number one. Again, on part number two, next episode, we're going to go into the three simple keys you need to actually start building out your linchpin. And, so far, those who saw this presentation, especially my internal team who have seen me talk about the linchpin a lot, they said that, this is the simplest and the clearest way I've ever taught it before. So, even if you've been struggling to understand, this should help clear up a lot of things for you, make this even more simple for you.

So, with that said though, if you're starting to see where I'm going here and why this is so important, again, we're spending four days together in Orlando, Florida in a couple months with the entire funnel hacking community, going deep on the linchpin at this year's Funnel Hacking Live event. So if you don't have your ticket yet, now is the time. Go to funnelhackinglive.com. It's going to be amazing experience and I want you there. All right? That said, thanks so much you guys. And, we'll see you on the next episode.