Russell Brunson: From Rock Bottom to $100 Million in 5 Years with ClickFunnels

[00:00:04] I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. [00:00:11] Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing, non venture backed tech startup in the world. ClickFunnels grew from 0 to $100,000,000 in just 3 years. Unbelievable. [00:00:28] Entrepreneurship's a crazy journey. Ups and downs, and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for. My first time, like, growing a company, I was new. I was young and probably hired too fast. [00:00:39] We got to point we had about a 100 employees. I had no way to process money, and I owed $200,000 or I was gonna go to jail. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like my friends just left. And I was like, I wanna quit but I can't because I'll go to jail. [00:00:51] How do you scale from 0 to a100,000,000? [00:00:53] I always tell people I'm like. [00:01:08] Russell Branson, entrepreneur, author, marketing genius, started ClickFunnels, the fastest growing non venture backed tech startup in the world. ClickFunnels grew from 0 to, listen to this, a $100,000,000 in just 3 years. Unbelievable. So, Russell, first of all, so glad to have you here. I've been watching you and binge watching your stuff for many, many years. [00:01:35] I appreciate that. Well, I'm excited to be here too. This would be so much fun. [00:01:39] It'll be so much fun. But you were drawn to marketing and sales from a very young age. Can you take us back in time? [00:01:47] How far back do you wanna go? [00:01:49] A child collecting stuff. I wanna go all the way back. Alright. [00:01:54] My dad was an entrepreneur, so I kinda saw him. He was always hustling doing side businesses, but it didn't really cross my mind. And then I remember 1 night, I think I was, like, 12 or 13 years old, and my parents would always watch the news at night, and then my mom would go to bed, and my dad would sit there working for a couple more hours. And usually they'd make me, like, wrestle, go to bed, so I didn't have to go to bed at night. And I remember 1 night, my mom went to bed, and my dad I don't know if he didn't know because I was in the room, but he didn't make me go to bed, he was just working. [00:02:17] So I was like, and he was like, many times a1000, like so much energy, he was so excited. And he's like, he's talking about how you can make money with tiny classified ads. And I still remember he said, he's like, I placed an ad in a newspaper, and it made $30. And all my friends and family made fun of me, but I took that same ad, I placed it in a 1,000 newspapers and made $30,000. And I was like, you know, my 12 year old brain is like, What? [00:02:53] Like, I was totally freaking out. I was looking at my dad, I was like, Dad, you have to buy this. My dad was like, Whatever. You know, just kinda making fun of me. And I remember, like, it got to the call to action where, like, call this 1 800 number, and you can buy the course for $40 or something. [00:03:05] And so I remember writing the number down. I'm like, dad, you gotta call. He's like, we're not gonna buy this. So I was like, dad, I have to have it. And they have, like, some bonus, like, you bought in the next 5 minutes, you got this other free gift. [00:03:13] So I was like, we have to hurry, dad, you know. And he told me no. And the next morning, I was so mad. He's like, look. If you want that, you can earn the money to go buy it. [00:03:20] So I was like, okay. How do I earn the money? He's like, okay. You start mowing the lawns. I'll pay you, I came here, $5 a week or something. [00:03:25] So I started mowing his lawn, other people's lawns. In about a month, I'd earned the $40 I needed to buy it. And so I remember telling my dad, I was like, I have the phone number, but we have to call during the infomercial so we get the free gift. And so he let me stay that night. We watched news, and we watched MASH, and then the show came up, and it came up again. [00:03:41] And so as soon as it got to the part where they said, Call now, get the special bonus, we called, and my dad bought us the credit card. And it was the coolest thing in the world, and I got the kit in the mail. In fact, I still have it to this day. I'm gonna frame it or something, it's really cool. But I was like reading the books, that was my entrance into business, and it was like the most fun thing in the world. [00:03:58] And then for me, it's like these ideas in my head about how you can make money, all of a sudden, like, just you can't stop thinking about it. Right? And I remember my mom and I were at the grocery store, and there was a magazine there. They still sell magazines called Small Biz Op Magazine. There's always, like, cartoons on it. [00:04:11] So I'm like, mom, will you buy this magazine for me? So she bought me the magazine. And I remember in the magazine, if you ever get a coffee, next time you're at the grocery store, Barnes and Noble, you can get 1. It's like a 140 pages of ads, and then 4 pages of articles, and every ad is a different way to make money. And so I remember reading it, like 1 of them was like, you can make donuts at the county fair, and make money. [00:04:31] Call this phone number for the free info kit. So I'm like, call the number, send me free info kit. And the next page was, like, you can make money by painting glow in the dark stars on people's roofs. Call the number for the free info kit. So I I called the number for free info kit. [00:04:43] Next page, like, you can make money selling gold chains by the end. So I call every 144 info kits. I go and I order for every 1 of these businesses. It was funny now. I was like, I was in a funnel. [00:04:52] I didn't know it. Right? But the info kit shows up, and all the info kit is is a sales letter, then selling the $100 version of it. Right? Or whatever, so then you'd call it anyway, and there's the whole thing. [00:05:01] But as a 12 year old kid, I would sit there. I'd get home from school, and there'd be a stack of junk, they're like this big. And I would sit there and read all these sales letters, but all these ways to make money and completely ruined me for life. But that's kinda how I started my young entrepreneur journey. [00:05:14] Oh my god. Most people are just not as driven or kids. They're just not as driven. I don't know what made you so driven to collect these things and get curious about it. And you also love wrestling. [00:05:28] And, actually, you were, like, state champion in high school, and you had this massive passion. Do you think this shaped you also to who you are today? [00:05:37] Definitely, as a young age, I didn't rise at the time, but definitely was very driven for the business thing. You know? Like, I don't dabble in something. If I get excited, like, I go all in. I'm so excited, you know. [00:05:45] When I started wrestling, it was the same thing. I remember wrestling, and as soon as I won my very first match, I got my hand raised. I was like, that feeling, I want that again. So I, like, started running. And so for the next 8 years of my life, that's all I focused on was wrestling. [00:05:56] And then when I got done with my wrestling career, it's when I, like, I found out about the online business, and I jumped into that. And I think all those things kinda compound. You learn how to work hard. You learn how to be driven. You learn, like, how to overcome. [00:06:06] And sports are so great for that. Like, you learn how to lose and then not give up. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs nowadays who they're so scared of failing that they'll never take the first step. They'll listen to podcasts, and they'll read the book, and they they love learning about it, but they're so scared. If they take that step, and if it fails, then their dream dies. [00:06:23] Right? So because of they stuck in this learning loop forever. I think for me it's because I'd stepped on the wrestling mat a 100 times a year, and I didn't win a lot of them. It's like I would lose, and then an hour later, back on the mat again, the back on the mat, and like next weekend again. And so it's like, I got good at learning. [00:06:37] If I lose, it doesn't mean I'm a loser, it's just I have to learn something from it. Right? Like I think the best example of this, my junior year I wanted to be a state champ, and the very first match of the year I wrestled a guy who takes a second state the year before, and I remember I lost to him, and it was like so painful. I told everyone all summer long, I'm gonna be a state champ, it's gonna be amazing. And my very first match I lost, and I remember my dad, and my dad's he get very entrepreneurial as well, but he got the videotape of me losing, and he watched it. [00:07:03] That night I lost, he watched it probably a 100 times. The next morning I woke up, he's like, okay, I know how to beat this kid. And so we, on the carpet, we would drill how to beat him. And then that day when practice had done, my dad would show up, and we drilled again. We drilled it. [00:07:13] For 4 months, I drilled it. And then come 4 months later, it was the state tournament, and I ended up wrestling that same kid in the finals, and I ended up beating him with the same move he'd beaten me with, because I drilled it so many times, I knew how to do it. That's carried over into entrepreneurship, because like entrepreneurship, like I create offers all the time that I launch, and they fail. And then most people that would cripple them. For me, it's just like, okay, well I failed. [00:07:33] Like what did we do? I tweak. Okay, let's change the headline. Keep tweaking until it works. I think that's what people understand. [00:07:38] A lot of times they give up on their business, and it's just like a couple tweaks away from having success. Or they give up on their athletic career where it's just like you're a couple tweaks away from, like, hitting your dreams. [00:07:47] It's so easy to stop 3 feet from gold because fear is numbing. So fear will take more dreams than anything. But you somehow started this entrepreneurship endeavor back in college, and you did all these super crazy innovative, potato guns, and can you take us back in time? I remember the first time when I saw this, I'm like, rewind. Are you am I sure that this is what he actually meant? [00:08:16] Yes. That's what he actually meant. Russell, take us there for a second. [00:08:20] So I got into college, and I met my wife, we got engaged, and she was work after I got married, like, she was working to support us, and I felt guilty because I wanted to wrestle, but I was like, I should help support, and so I was trying to figure out a way to make money. It's interesting because back then I was like trying to study. There weren't a lot of people online doing it, but there were a few people doing it online. In fact, 1 of them is Frank Kern, a lot of guys know him nowadays. But he had this product, it was called the Underachiever method, and it was like how to make really simple products. [00:08:47] And I remember his show, he had like 1 teaching how to do dog training, and 1 like how to teach a parrot how to talk, and 1 how to do like all these little niche products. They create these little ebooks, and then they would go and they would buy Google Ads to sell them, and it was just like this really simple process. And I remember going through the course, I was like, this is so cool. But I was like, I don't know how to teach a parrot how to talk. You know, I don't know how to do those kind of things. [00:09:07] And so I was kind of stuck trying to think what I would actually do, and then I remember I was in college, it was like spring break, and my buddy was like, hey, Russell, we should go shoot potato guns. I'm like, what's a potato gun? So he told me, and so during spring break we went online and we found all the potato gun plans, and how to make a potato gun. Went to the Home Depot and bought the pipes and cut them up, and, you know, we made these potato guns, and we shot them. And like all weekend long, we had so much fun with it. [00:09:30] And then next Monday I was back in school, and I was like, I wonder if I could create a product teaching people what we just learned how to make potato guns. That was the idea, and so we went and we borrowed a video camera from someone, and we filmed ourselves going through the whole process of buying the pipes, gluing them together, making potato guns, shooting them, and then, that became my very first product I created and and put out there on the Internet. [00:09:52] You share, and I found that super inspiring, that someone helped you break that 4 minute mile. And you have this beautiful story about how you broke the first million for yourself, etcetera, etcetera. Can you share a little bit of that? [00:10:08] Yeah. For sure. So when I got started my online business, I'd never set a goal of making $1,000,000. That wasn't my goal. I was just trying to figure out how to make some money so my wife wouldn't have to work. [00:10:16] And that was kind of how we started, right, with the potato gun and made other little products. And then I remember, we'd been married about a year, and I remember because we're on a family reunion. It was at this lake where there's no Internet access. I remember going to the library to check my email. And I'm sitting in this little library in in this lake town with nothing else around. [00:10:33] I open my email, and there's an email in there from this guy named John Reese, and it says something like, we did it or something with the subject line. I'm like, did what? And I open the email, and he's like, hey, earlier today we launched a course called Traffic Secrets. It's a $1,000 course, and in the first 18 hours we sold a 1,000 copies, which means we're the very first people to ever make $1,000,000 online in a day selling a course. And I was like, what? [00:10:57] And I remember sitting there in chair, and I was just like so perplexed. Like my goal was like maybe in my lifetime make a $1,000,000. I'm like, there's a guy who's just like me, a couple years older than me, who made a $1,000,000 in a day. I'm like, he can't be that much smarter than me. Right? [00:11:09] Like, like, if he can do that, could I do that? And I was doing the math in my head, like, I was like, he had a $1,000 course, he had to fill a 1,000 copies. I'm like, it's just math. Like, how do I sell a 1,000 copies of a $1,000 product? Right? [00:11:19] That started my wheels, my head spinning. So I remember setting a goal, I was like, okay. Because I didn't believe you. I mean, I don't think I could do a $1,000,000 in a day, but can I do a $1,000,000 in a year? If I had a $1,000 course if I sell 3 a day, that'd be a $1,000,000 in a year. [00:11:30] So I was like, okay. Very first thing I did is like, I need I need to make a $1,000 course just like this guy did. It was my very first time I funnel hacked somebody, right, before we called it that. And so I went and I put together an event. I recorded it. [00:11:41] I made my first $1,000 course. And when I launched on January 1st, it was like everyone on New Year's Day will wanna change their life. Little did I know everyone was gonna be drunk January 1st, and the launch went horrible. Like the whole entire launch, we sold 20 copies of my $1,000 course. It was devastating, but I kept trying, kept trying. [00:11:56] And like the 1st year, I got close, I think I can't remember, like $6 or $700,000 that first year, but then I missed it by December. I'm like, okay, January 1st, I'm starting over, setting the goal. I tried it again that year, but I got close again, missed it again. That 3rd year I kept going and going, and I didn't know which product was gonna sell, which offer, so I kept just putting out different offers, different things. And then, it was crazy. [00:12:15] There was this interview I did with a guy, his name was Vince James, and he was an old school direct mail guy, and he made $100,000,000 through direct mail selling supplements. He wrote a book, and for some reason he let me interview him, and this was like 2 or 3 years earlier, I was like a college kid at the time. He let me interview him for 6 hours, so I asked him all these questions about how he did it. And so again, 3 years later, I'm sitting there, I'm like, what's the next offer I could sell? And I was like, what if I sold the interviews that I did with Vince? [00:12:38] Like that was a really cool interview, maybe someone will buy that. And so we took that interview, we sold it for $37, and then the guy, Vince, that I interviewed, he had sold licensing rights to his book, and it was a $300 book. So I had bought the license to this book, and so I had someone bought the interview for $37 and we'd upsell them a copy of the book for $297. The book was called The 12 Month Millionaire. So I had I owned 12 month internet millionaire.com, we launched this whole thing, right? [00:13:03] Put the launch out there, and in 7 days that funnel crossed $1,000,000. And that was the first 1 I'd ever had, and I was just like, this is insane. I interviewed a person, I gave the access to the interview, and we sold a $1,000,000 like it was the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that was the first time I'd actually done it. It was interesting because I think the reason a lot of people never make a $1,000,000 is they never try to make a $1,000,000. [00:13:26] Right? And it wasn't until I I was like, okay, I'm gonna try to do it. This is the goal, and I started working towards that that, like, all of the things kinda showed up for me to be able to do that. In ClickFunnels, 1 of the things we did is we created the 2 comma couple works. It's like, I wanna get people something to shoot towards. [00:13:39] Like, when I was wrestling, before I knew I wanted to be a state champ, I was just kinda there doing the things. When I realized I wanna be a state champ, I had something to shoot towards, then I became really good. I think the same thing with this, and so that's why we created that, the 2 comma couple of words, to give people something, okay, this is the goal. And then when they have a goal, you can reverse engineer it and you can figure it out. For me, that was as soon as I had that goal, then it was, like, everything to try to pursue that, and that's how I learned all the stuff I had to learn to make it possible. [00:14:01] So, yeah, 1 of my favorite stories. [00:14:03] And, again, we have our millionaire's club. We have the president's club. Because, again, I want people to see what's possible. Right? If you don't even know what's possible, you're still stuck with that. [00:14:14] I'm just trying to do this move from senior manager to senior senior manager, you know. I'm like, [00:14:20] come on. [00:14:20] There's north to life. Let's [00:14:22] go. Right? It's all about LinkedIn. Right? [00:14:24] But, yeah, you share at some point. You have the most brilliant videos. Folks, if you didn't see that, you're revamping your YouTube channel. Although, I always thought that was very revamp. But go to his to Russell's YouTube channel. [00:14:38] Like, his videos to me is just so inspiring. It's so beautiful. And you share so much with so much vulnerability and truth. And you share 1 of the hardest moments when you needed to lay off a lot of your team and just kind of rebuild. And I think it's just so important to listen to that too because there's always gonna be, like we said, challenges and things and setbacks and things that will hurt you to your core, but you somehow continue. [00:15:07] Can you share that a little bit? [00:15:08] I think it's unfortunate that most entrepreneurs only share, like, the highlight reel people, and they don't talk about the downsides. And I was saying, I was very nervous for a long time to share those things, and I started sharing some of them. And so many people are like, wow. Like, that makes me feel so much better. I'm going through that same thing as well. [00:15:21] In fact, to set up that story, it's kinda funny. During this time, when everything was, like, falling apart around me, I got invited to this little mastermind meeting in Mexico, and I was sitting next to this guy who's crazy rich, crazy expensive, and he asked me my story, and I was like, so I was kinda telling him, you know, the highlights. He's like, no. Tell me your real story. I was like, well and I told him, sir, I'm gonna tell you right now, how bad everything was and everything. [00:15:42] And he was like, okay. Cool. He's like, so you cycled once. I'm like, what? He's like, I'll never work with an entrepreneur unless they cycled at least once. [00:15:48] He's like, because otherwise, they still believe they're on bio. They're still drinking their own Kool Aid. And I was like, oh, that's that feels a lot better. I I just cycled. Like, all entrepreneurs cycle. [00:15:55] Like, okay. So it reframed it for me. Hopefully, it'll reframe for some of you guys, because entrepreneurship is a crazy dirty, ups and downs, and then ups and then more downs. And it's just the nature of the career we all signed up for. But so what happened is it was my first time growing a company, and I was new, I was young, and I started hiring people, probably hired too fast. [00:16:12] At that point, we had about a 100 employees. We had this building downtown Boise, Idaho. It was like really, really cool, and like I felt like I was on top of the world. Again, I was I believe my own bio, I was drinking my own Kool Aid, I thought it was so great. And then 1 day, it was in January, just 1 day, all of a sudden 1 of our someone was trying to buy something, and the merchant account failed. [00:16:29] And the merchant account failed, and then another 1 failed. And we had 9 merchant accounts. If you have merchant accounts, have them in different banks. That's the story for the day. But I had 9 merchant accounts with 1 bank, and literally in 1 day, they turned them all off. [00:16:39] And so we couldn't process money, like nothing could happen. Our sales guys are like, I'm trying to run someone's car. Like people wanted to give us money, but they couldn't. And, you know, you have a 100 employees, you have payroll coming every 14 days. It's like, that's stress. [00:16:50] And I remember calling the credit card company, and it was, past, it was like 2010, I think, and, there was this huge merchant crackdown where Visa and Mastercard, anyone who was doing any kind of continuity offers, they just shut them all down. So it wasn't just me. It was hundreds and hundreds of people all got shut down the same day. And I remember calling the merchant account, and I couldn't get a hold of them for, like, 2 or 3 hours. Finally, they got a hold of me. [00:17:09] I was like, I got shut down. What's happening? And they're like, if you got shut down, it means that you're never gonna process again. The guy hung up on me. I was like, what? [00:17:16] And And it was just, like, the scariest thing. And so and then my whole team's freaking out. I was like, hey, everyone, go home tonight. Come back tomorrow. We'll have a plan. [00:17:21] So everyone goes home, and then next day come back. I'm like, I have no plan. I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, tell people to send us checks, or, like, I don't know. Send you know, try to figure out everything. [00:17:29] And what's crazy is I thought everyone on my team was gonna be like, we're here together, we're gonna win this thing. And what was crazy is like as soon as people found out that they might not have a check, maybe a check would be, or something, they all just started leaving. 40, 50, 60 people who I thought were like my friends just left and disappeared. Even like family members who like just walked out on me, and it was like the weirdest thing. And then we had a group of people who stayed behind, and I still didn't have money to pay for them, but I'd come back. [00:17:53] And so every day, I'd wake up in the morning, and the first thing I'd do is I'd sell myself. I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this. We gotta you know, and I'd sell myself. And I go in the office, and I meet everyone together, and I'd sell all of them. I'm like, this is gonna work. [00:18:03] We're gonna try you know, we tried a new thing, and we we tried so many things. And it was like almost a year that we would open a new merchant account, we'd process a bunch of money, but we'd process too much too fast, and they would freeze our account and hold the money for 180 days. And like, it was just chaos. We could not get a break, and it took about a year of going through that. It got me worse and worse and worse. [00:18:21] And then at the end of the year, it was the next December, January, I remember my dad, he wasn't doing my books, but he was watching my bookkeepers doing the books. He called me, or sent me an email, and he was like, Hey, I reviewed the books, and it turns out your bookkeeper has not paid payroll taxes in the last 12 months. She's been hiding it, she just He doesn't have the money, so she didn't pay the taxes. And he's like, You understand, if you don't pay payroll taxes, it's not like a fine, it's like they put you in jail for that, Russell. And I was like, What? [00:18:47] I'm like, Well, how much is our payroll tax? And he was like, I can't remember, it was like a couple $100,000. He's like, If you don't pay this soon, you could go to jail. And I'm like, I don't have a couple $100,000, like, we're out of money. And I remember the next day, we had a call center of like 40, 50 sales guys, they all just walked out the next day, they all quit, they mass quit together. [00:19:03] So I lost my ability to generate money, I had no way to process money, and I owed $200,000 or I was gonna go to jail. And I was like, I wanna quit, but I can't, because I'll go to jail. So it's like, alright, what do we gotta do different? Innovate, how do we change this? What do we gotta do different? [00:19:17] And just every single day. And it's crazy because it was, like, probably the most painful and scary time of my life. In fact, I remember waking up 1 morning just kind of lingering at my house, not wanting to go to the office. My wife saw me, and she could tell, like, I was not doing well. And I swear she grabbed me and pulled me down to the ground to our knees, and she's like, we need to pray. [00:19:35] Like, we need to ask for help. And I was like, okay. And so I remember us praying. It was just like, I don't know what to do. I'm out of options. [00:19:42] I've tried everything. I need guidance. I need help. And I remember that was the first time I I was willing to, like, humble myself enough, and then it was go back to the office today and sell everybody else, and, like, we're gonna make this work. We kept doing it. [00:19:51] But what's crazy is those things, like, in the moment of pain is, like, always, like, the hardest time, but then looking back, you realize that was actually God taking you down a very certain path, you know? Because it's crazy, because we lost everything, we pushed everything out, we had to shrink to this little tiny office, like 5 or 6 of us. From there, we were trying to figure out how to make money just to pay off the thing from there. Like I was doing different webinars every week, like rewriting my webinar, rewriting, getting better and better, and eventually we had a webinar that hit, that paid off all the taxes. I was like, I'm not going to jail, woo hoo. [00:20:18] And I was like, okay, now we gotta create another offer. And we went through that, but it was in that pain, like that's where I met Todd Dickerson. Like I've never met him otherwise, and he became my partner. He's the 1 who built ClickFunnels. All these amazing blessings came because of that darkness I had to go through. [00:20:33] Looking back now, it's like even though that was the most painful, stressful time in my life, it also was the catalyst for everything we've built since then. You know, reframing that in my head, and hopefully for anyone else who's going through the hard times of, like, it's just a cycle. We all go through cycles in entrepreneurship. It's okay. And just know that if you keep showing up and keep trying, like, you'll be directed in the path that you're supposed to go on, and the right people will show up, the right things will show up. [00:20:55] Even though it may seem hopeless at times, if you keep at it, you never know what's gonna happen. [00:20:59] In the venture world, as I was investing in companies, we call it the near death experience. Every founder has to go through what we call a near death experience because only then you know that they can actually go through it and actually continue. And every single 1 will have that. The way I look at it in Leap Academy is this is the muscle you have to build in order to become the leader that you're meant to be. And I think this is why you became more creative. [00:21:26] So I do wanna hear that story because it's a beautiful story of how you met Todd and how ClickFunnels was born. I have to hear that. [00:21:34] So in that whole time where everything was falling apart and we're trying different offers and different things, I remember I went to a site. It's called flippa.com, and it's, like, people who are selling their businesses and stuff. And I went to it, I remember there was a site for sale. It was called championsound.com, and it was an email text message autoresponder for bands. I didn't wanna be selling to bands. [00:21:52] I'm like, if I bought the email text message autoresponder, I could make a version for chiropractors and a version for dentists, and, like, that's kind of the the big idea. And so I took the rest of the money I had plus borrowing money to go buy this company. We buy the company. They they try to transfer it over to our servers, and the guy who's transferring it is like, your servers are Linux. We need Ruby on Rails. [00:22:12] And I'm like, what does that mean? It's like, it's a different platform. I'm like, what are you even talking about? And so I had to buy this other server. They installed it, and then the couple guys I knew, the dev guy's like, that's, like, Chinese. [00:22:21] I don't know how to speak Chinese. I can't fix it. And so we tried 3 or 4 times to hire people to do Ruby on Rails, which was a brand new language at the time, and they couldn't fix it. And I remember for a month we were trying to make this thing work, and finally it was like I just had to give up. And so I remember just being sick to my stomach, because that was all the money we had, and I just burned it on a stupid idea that it wasn't gonna work. [00:22:40] That day, I emailed the server company and told them to shut down the servers because we can't afford to keep paying for it. And, as I was, like, packing my bags as I was walking out of the office, I felt this really weird impression. Email your list to find someone who can who knows Ruby on Rails who can help you. I was like, I had this tiny little email list at the time of people trying to start businesses. I'm like, there's no Ruby on Rails developers, like but I felt that pressure, so I walked back in, turned my computer back on, sent emails to my list, and in fact, it's funny, like, Todd and I, we found the email, it's kinda crazy, but I sent it out saying like, I'm looking for a partner. [00:23:09] You know Ruby on Rails, message me back. I sent this out to my list, went home that night, and then then I checked my email, and I get this email back from this guy named Todd, and he's like, I'm a Ruby on Rails developer. I've been semi retired for the last 3 or 4 years. I got a side business that's making pretty good money, but, yeah, I do I've been looking for partnership opportunities. So so I just send him a login to the server, and I'm like, here's the login, it doesn't work, can you fix it? [00:23:28] And that was kind of it. So the next morning I wake up, and he's like, alright, I logged in. He's like, I fixed this, this, and this, I added this, they're missing this, they should do this. I'm like, all this stuff. And I was like, woah, okay, cool. [00:23:38] And then that's how we met each other. And then for the next year, we started working together, and I didn't have money to pay him, and he knew that, but I was like we kept talking about like, somebody will partner on something, it'll be cool. So he just kept helping on these different offers. That webinar that I did that paid off all the debt, he helped me to build the webinar platform that did that webinar. So he was like helping in all these different pieces. [00:23:56] I'm like, I can't pay you yet because I gotta pay off the IRS. So I was like, no worries. So I took all the money we made, I didn't pay him, I paid off the IRS, and we but for a year, he didn't once ask me for money. He just like showed up every day, he was working full days, he'd fly to Boise, we work on projects together, and, never asked for money ever. In fact, I remember about a year into the relationship 1 day he was in Boise, and I looked over his shoulder in his email, and there were all these like job offers for Ruby on Rails developers who were in his inbox. [00:24:19] And Ruby on Rails, especially them, was a really rare language, so there wasn't many people. I was like, what what are those? He's like, oh, just people trying to to recruit me. I'm like, how much are they what are they paying you? He pulled up a couple, and they were like half $1,000,000 a year starting salaries for these different roles. [00:24:32] I was like, you should take that. I'll never be able to pay that much. He's like, no, I don't wanna work for those guys. Like, I wanna build something cool. And so for the next year or so we're trying different projects, having like minimal success on little things here and there, but we kept building these funnels. [00:24:45] It was the day that Leadpages, I think they got $5,000,000 in funding, and he was flying to Boise that day. So that morning he woke up, he saw the Leadpages, he got $5,000,000 in funding, he forward me the article, and then he was flying to Boise. I wake up in the morning, I see the article, I'm like, Leadpages? I'm like, This is like the most simple software ever. And by the time he gets to Boise, he's like, I could build Leadpages today. [00:25:04] We could launch it tonight. Let's do it. Like, so excited. Then he asked the question before, he's like, Well, if I'm gonna build Leadpages, do you wanna add any other features? I was like, Oh, yeah. [00:25:12] I'd love if you could do a sales letter and an upsell. And all of a sudden, like, we spent the whole week in front of a whiteboard mapping out what eventually became ClickFunnels. And we kept mapping out, like, What if we did this, then we did this? And we mapped out this whole thing, and it was, like, this dream of it'd be the coolest thing in the world if we could build this. And I remember we had this domain. [00:25:27] It was clickfusion.com, and we'd launched 3 different things off Clickfusion. All of it failed. And I remember when we got down, I was like, okay. We're gonna call this thing Clickfusion. He's like, no. [00:25:34] That domain, that's this jinxed. Everything you do in Click Fusion sales, we can't call it that. I'm like, what are we gonna call it? And he's like, well, it's like it builds funnels. We call it ClickFunnels. [00:25:43] And so I'm like, so we looked and the domain name was available, so we bought it. I'm like, hey, call it ClickFunnels. That day, I was driving him back to the airport. He's gonna fly back home. I remember as we were getting to the airport, he, he told me, he's like, hey. [00:25:54] If we do this, I don't wanna do this as, like, your employee. I wanna do this as your partner. And for me, like, I'd been an entrepreneur for a decade in my life. I'd never had partners. I was scared of I was just like, I didn't want to, and I was just like, I remember sitting there for a second, and then just felt impressed. [00:26:08] I was like, okay. Let's be partners on this. And I told people this before, like, outside of marrying my wife, that was the best decision I've ever made in my life, was partnering with Todd. And he flew home, he spent the next 8 months building what became ClickFunnels by himself. And then we came back, we ended up bringing another partner who built the editor and the UI, and we launched ClickFunnels a decade ago now, and it was the thing that took off and changed my life, changed his life, changed millions of people's lives around the world now, and that's kind of the the ClickFunnels story. [00:26:39] Oh my god. What's beautiful is not just that it changed what you created. It's what you're making possible for so many people and the ripple that that creates because they're creating these amazing things that then have this mega impact on 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 or I don't even know, which must be, like, the best feeling in the world. [00:27:00] It's so cool. I mean, think I think anytime you do business, like, initially, you do it I don't know, I think initially we do it for ourselves. I wanna start a business, I wanna make some money. And then you start making money, and then really quick that feels shallow, you're like, that's not what I was expecting. When we started having our students, like people who are our users, have success, that's when it was like, woah. [00:27:16] That feels so much, you know, it feels so much better. In fact, I thought about it. It's like, when I was a wrestler, I used I love wrestling. Getting my hand raised is like the best feeling in the world. And then when I had my kids got to be wrestling age, 1 of my sons' names, Bowen, the very first year of wrestling, he would go to practice in matches, and he lost every match the whole year. [00:27:33] It was so devastating. He had a twin brother, he was winning all his matches, and he lost every single match. And we tried so hard and worked so hard with him. And then the very last match of the season, he actually won. I remember getting his hand raised, and he was jumping around. [00:27:44] And, like, I was like, nothing has ever felt better than watching him use his hand. That was the best feeling, like, so much better than me winning a match was watching him win it. And it's the same thing, like, when I launch a funnel and makes a bunch of money, it's like, hey, that's really cool. But I see some of our students do it, and they launch it, and they win a 2 Comma Club award, they have success, or whatever. Like, that feels so much it's so addicting. [00:28:03] In fact, people always ask me, why are you still doing this 10 years later? Like, you could have retired 10 times ago. There's something about it, man. When somebody takes the frameworks and the software and they launch it and, like, you see it change their life, it's like, that's the most, I don't know, addicting feeling in the world. And so it's the best feeling watching people have success with it. [00:28:19] It's been so fulfilling and so much fun. [00:28:22] And like you said, you continue for a decade now. And I think what's interesting to see is also to view you as how you reinvent yourself even within ClickFunnels, how you reinvent yourself, first of all, as a leader, that somebody that can take something to this mega success, success because I'm sure that needed a whole different mindset of money and leadership. Take us a little bit to how do you scale from 0 to a 100,000,000? I just brag to you that we're 1 of the fastest growing companies. But then after hearing you guys, I can't even say that. [00:28:57] So how do you grow fast enough to be able to absorb that level of leadership and money risk and everything that comes with it? [00:29:06] I always tell people, I'm like, I feel like God will give you something. He wants to test your capacity. Right? So give you something and, like, what's gonna happen? And then it's really heavy. [00:29:15] It's like lifting weights. Right? The capacity is really heavy, but then you get stronger because of it. And they give you something more. It's harder and they get stronger because of it. [00:29:20] Even the challenges that we still we deal with today, I'm like 10 years ago, those would have destroyed me. It's like when you have a kid. Right? Like, I've got teenagers now that are 18 and, like, you know, when they're born though, it's like there there's little problems. They get a little bigger, but over time, you, like, you grow with it. [00:29:33] And I think we launched ClickFunnels, it was so fast and furious, and I remember like I don't know, there's just so many things happening that you don't know how to react, you're trying to figure them out, and like but it like it builds that capacity for the next thing, the next thing. 1 of the best examples is the very first year of ClickFunnels, we were a year into it. And, I remember Todd built ClickFunnels. He was like, hey, the way I built it, it'll work for about 10,000 members or so, and then when it gets bigger, we have to change stuff. And and I was like, I don't know what that means, but okay. [00:29:58] So we launched it, and it starts growing like crazy. It was interesting. All the other software companies we watched, they were growing by taking on VC money, and then, like, using that to grow. And for us, we didn't have that, so we just we would build funnels and use those, and so we we got really good at drinking our own Kool Aid and building funnels to grow ClickFunnels. And anyway, it grew really, really rapidly. [00:30:14] 8 or 9 months in, it it kept like having like, we'd just go out for an hour, or come back in, or go out for 10:10 minutes, and back in, and it's just like, why does he keep crashing? What? And like and Todd's you know, it's just Todd by himself. Todd and Dylan are 2 part they're coding it, and it goes down again, like, ah, you know, they're fixing it. And like it's got bigger, bigger, kept happening more and more often. [00:30:31] And I remember I was in Chicago speaking at a Dan Kennedy event. Right before I was supposed to speak, it was down. And I called Todd, I'm like, what's gonna happen? He's like, oh, I'm working on it, I'm working on it, and I'm going on stage selling ClickFunnels knowing that it's down. I'm just like, this is so embarrassing. [00:30:44] So I'm doing the thing, and I come back up, it finally gets it back up before we're done. But then the next week I'm flying to London. So I'm flying to London to go speak at this event, and the promoter invited my wife, my kids, and stuff. So we're flying overseas, and so we're up in the air for however many 15 hours. And when we land, you have to hook the SIM card into your phone or whatever back then. [00:31:01] So I put a SIM card in, and all of a sudden my phone starts like texts, messages, Foxers, Skypes, many like every messaging platform, my phone's just blowing up. And these are people who are angry, like, I'm gonna kill you, Russell. You owe me money. It was insane. I'm like, What is happening? [00:31:15] So finally I called Todd, What's happening? And all I remember he said, It was down. He's like, And if I'm able to get it back up. And I was like, What? Like, If? [00:31:23] Are you saying this is not something like And I was my heart dropped, and I was like, What do we do? And then we'd at that time, I'd been down like 2 or 3 hours, and people were upset. All of our customer I'm like, I don't I don't know what to do. Like, I'm a first time CEO. And so I take my wife and my kids to the hotel, and I wait 2 rooms. [00:31:37] So I'm like I'm like, Clark, can you take all the kids and just I need to be in the room for a minute by myself. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, what do I do? And like, every instinct of me wanted to hide and just like, hide, you know? But I was like, we're down. I know what's gonna happen, I don't know if we're gonna back up. [00:31:49] And so I remember we had this little Facebook group at the time, and we're going live in that Facebook group, and I was like, hey, we're down, and I don't know why, and this is not acceptable. All my businesses are down, all your businesses are down. We're hoping to fix it, we're trying all these things, and like I was just very vulnerable and very, I told them the truth. I didn't try to hide it or try to justify. I'm like, this is not good. [00:32:07] This is our fault. I'm so sorry. We're gonna figure this out. Because I was, like, upfront and didn't try to hide it, it was really interesting because the community rallied behind us and everyone and there are a lot of mad at people obviously, but as a whole, everyone's like, no worries, like, we got you, we're all praying for you, da da da, all sorts of stuff. And in 8 hours they had to rebuild the database on this other place, and they copied everything over, and somehow miraculously, 8 hours they got it back up live. [00:32:28] And it had been rebuilt on this new platform that was just way more stable. And what's crazy is I was assuming we'd lose half our members or most you know, like, I thought everyone was gonna leave us. And what's crazy, you look at the daily cancelations, like it didn't change. Like, it was just almost nothing had happened, and that it drew the community closer to me and to us and everything. And then from there, we kinda made that like a standard, like, hey. [00:32:48] When things are happening, will we be vulnerable? We'll tell people about it because obviously people respected that and they needed that. So I don't know. You don't learn that stuff. It's just in the moment, it's like, what's the decision? [00:32:57] And sometimes and that's how I made the right decision. Tons of times I made the wrong decision. You learned the other way too. Like, that was stupid. I should not have done that. [00:33:03] You know? But it's like, that's this whole game. Like, you get thrown into the fire, and as you're especially as you're going through right now, you guys are growing like crazy. Right? You feel it. [00:33:09] It's like, these problems pop up, like, what's happening? You know, for us people when ClickFunnels start growing, like, everyone's building their sites on their bread. What's crazy is, I don't know, I can't monitor 10,000 people's sites or a 100000 people's sites. So we have people, like, doing illegal stuff, and, like, we're getting letters from the FBI because we're hosting websites. Like, why are you hosting these things? [00:33:26] I remember Taylor Swift sent us a huge lawsuit suing us because someone was selling Taylor Swift merchandise on their site. Like, I'm getting these things in the mail. I'm like, I don't like, am I going to jail? I don't even know. I don't know who these people are. [00:33:37] We're trying to find their sites and turn them off and apologize to the FBI and, like, all these things. Like you know? So it's like but you just keep showing up and going through it eventually. Like, you get thicker skin, you get capacity, and they're like, okay. Now we can handle these kind of problems and get things in place, but it's not something you can prepare for. [00:33:51] Like, you gotta jump into the fire, and by doing that, God will qualify you. He always says, like, he doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call. Right? Like, you jump out there by just being in the storm, that's how you learn the things. [00:34:01] And but that's why I love entrepreneurship. 1 of my friends, Steve Larsen, said, it's the greatest personal development course in the world is being an entrepreneur. Because you jump out there and it's like, you're gonna learn so much in such a short period of time. And, but then in the day, like, man, like, what a great growth tool. Like, how much do you grow by doing that versus anything else in the world? [00:34:19] So 1 of the beautiful stories, I think, also that you share, and I shared it a little bit with you. You talk about the dream 100, which really impacted me when I showed that earlier. And you talk a little bit about how you went ahead and created this amazing relationship with Tony Robbins, and also how that helped you with some really interesting decisions for yourself with ClickFunnels and, leading it. So can you share a little bit about that? [00:34:47] Yeah. There's so many stories around that 1. The concept of Dream 100, as you know, was when we launched ClickFunnels, I'm like, we can go out there and try to get every single customer on our own, but there's already people who've already congregated those customers together. If we can build relationships with them and they promote to the list, you know, 1 person says yes, they might promote to a 100 or 1000 or a 100000 people. Right? [00:35:04] So we started building these relationships, and so 1 of the ones early in my career I started building was Tony Robbins, and we just for a decade, I was serving him and trying every time he'd ask for something, I'd jump on it, jump a call with his team, like help him through things. And when our Funnel Hacking Live event came out, our 3rd Funnel Hacking Live, he came in with a speaker, which was like the craziest thing in the world for me. And so that's kinda how it started. We built that relationship, but I was, like, very careful never to ask him for anything. I was like, I'm gonna show up and serve him and show and keep serving him. [00:35:26] Eventually, something cool happened from it. And I remember that him and Dean Graciosi were gonna launch a company. It was about masterminds and stuff. So I remember I went and I bought we bought mastermind.com for, I think it's been like $600 on it, and I give it to him as a gift. Like, here you go. [00:35:39] I hope you guys use this for your business. And they're like, what? And then they actually made me a partner, so we were a partner in that company together for a couple of years. What was cool about it is when they launched it, we would help promote every single year, and, the affiliate prize was like, you get to go to these retreats with Tony Robbins. The very first 1 was in Fiji, and it was like, you can come to Tony's resort in Fiji, and then you get to be in this mastermind, you can ask Tony any question you want. [00:36:01] It is cool. In fact, we've done it, I think, about 5 4 or 5 years from now. I have a video of each 1 we filmed and captured and made these really cool YouTube videos. So I flew out to, to Fiji, my wife and I, we're in this mastermind, and it was this time in my life where I was like, ClickFunnels is growing, but I don't know what to do. And, like, who do you ask questions like that? [00:36:16] I don't have people in my world that you know, my family that have done this kind of thing, and and so it was kinda cool to have a chance to ask them a question. Every year I get asked me a different question. That 1st year, the question was like, what do I do? Do I sell the company? Do I not? [00:36:27] Like, what do I what does that look like? And he Emery said, he was like, why would you sell the company? You love funnels more than anyone in the world. He's like, when someone says the world click funnels or funnel, you light up, like, you're going crazy about it. And he's just like, selling something sounds exciting in the moment, because if you don't have the next thing that you're passionate about, you'll end up unfulfilled and not happy. [00:36:44] And he's like, instead of selling it, what if you shifted how it was, and then you shifted from you being the CEO or the person running it to like you go on the board and, you know, give yourself a job inside the company that you're passionate about, like for me building funnels, and then hire hire someone to be the 1 in charge. You don't have to be that person. It never really crossed my mind. I was like, You know, after that, it's the first time I went and we actually found someone. It was my partner, Dave Woodward. [00:37:04] He became the CEO of the company. He was able to take those things on and run it, and I got a chance to focus on stuff I love doing, you know? It was super cool advice. Like I said, every year I go back and I get asked Tony another question about some aspect of my life or the business that it's been it's been really special, spending time with him and getting to know him, and then getting feedback directly from him. You know what I mean? [00:37:23] Like, someone who's influenced so many people and be able to say, like, here's where I'm stuck again. Like, how do I get out of this conundrum I got myself into? You know? Anyway, it's pretty cool. [00:37:32] I'll urge people, you know, if you're listening to this, I think this is a video that really did impact me. I think you call it dream 100. But I think, first of all, just the patience that you have in terms of, yes, I want everything yesterday. That's who I am. Right? [00:37:49] And it's not gonna happen yesterday. It's not gonna happen tomorrow either. So building that relationship takes time. And also just a lot about giving and finding the wins for them. John Maxwell calls it the people's pile. [00:38:01] There's a big people's pile with Tony Robbins. They told you for me, it was Richard Branson. Like, we need to somehow learn how to break that people pile to create that connection. And I think the idea of spending $600,000 was just, like, mesmerizing for me. But seriously, like, the patience together with the investment, because that's exactly what I've done with Richard Branson to some extent, just not with that level, and I think that just taught me so much. [00:38:28] Oh, yeah. I think it's interesting. People like to do business with people they like. So it's like, how do we build an actual relationship? And I'm sure you get this as well. [00:38:35] I get it all the time where it's like, people will come into my world, and you can tell from the get go they're there for, like, something for them. So, like, for me, it's like I'm very guarded. I was hard to get through my gatekeepers because it's just like some people in my life who come to me, it's like they always have an ulterior motive. And so for me, it's like I never wanna be the guy who someone gets that feeling. So I'm like, how do I just show up and just literally figure out how to be their friend? [00:38:54] How can I help them? From that's when the best stuff happens anyway. Right? But it's not coming in, like, what can I take from this person? It's like, what can I give from this person? [00:39:00] And hopefully, something cool happens. If not, I'm cool with that too, but, like and I think that's the key. And everyone's looking for, like, the short term, like, the hit, the win really quick is gonna be the thing versus, like, you know, there's a book called Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty. It's that. It's like digging your well, like, just building relationships. [00:39:13] Like, whenever I talk about Dream 100, people are like, so when do I start the Dream 100 process? I'm like, yesterday. Start building relationships. Like, it's your business will become infinitely better. Like, if I lost everything tomorrow, within 30 days, I'd be back on top. [00:39:24] I'd call a dozen people who I've got great relationships with, and it'd be fine. Like there's no I don't have fear of that anymore because I've built deep relationships with a lot of different people, and I think that's what people are missing is they're looking for this, I'm gonna get something from this person, therefore I'm gonna do this thing, and it's just like, that's not how that's how you win in the long term. Maybe in the short term, you may trick someone or get something out of it, but the long term is, like, putting in the effort, putting in the time, you know, and I think that's the key that most people miss. [00:39:48] I love that you said that. I'm sure you're getting a thousand. Hey. Can you make me this introduction to the president of Starbucks or Shopify? No. [00:39:57] Oh, can we move on? Like, I don't know you. So you're right. It's it's really about how do you see things. But I think, again, it's that give, give, give mentality. [00:40:06] How do you find win wins for them? Because if there is no win, you know, it's not gonna make sense. And I think also your ability to put yourself in a room with people who are just so smart that will force you to leap, if you will. Right? No pun intended. [00:40:23] So 1 of the very first events I went to, it was Armin Warren's big seminar. And I was there, and I met this other kid. I can't remember his name now. He had a he had an interesting name. But I remember we were about the same age. [00:40:32] He might have been a year older than me. And I remember Armin made an offer. It's like a $25,000 Mastermind, and the kid ran the back and he bought it. And he came back, and I was like, first off, how do you have $25,000 to buy that? I couldn't comprehend that. [00:40:42] I was like, why would you buy that? And he told me something that was so simple and so powerful. He's like, there's 2 ways to get a top, Russell. You can work your way in, or you can buy your way in. He's like, I just bought my way in. [00:40:51] He's like, now I'm in the room, I have a relationship, I get to know these people, and he's like, it's worth $25,000 every day of the week. And for me, I was like, oh my gosh. I'd never what's it gonna teach me for this worth 25 I was trying to figure that out. And it's like, no, no, no. Like, how do you get in the room, like, with the people? [00:41:04] Like, you work your way, which takes a lot of time, versus buy your way. And after I learned that from him, I was like, okay, same thing. Like, how do I buy my way? You know, like, for the Tony thing, like I knew that the affiliate prize was to go and to be and feed you with him. I couldn't buy that, there was no amount of money, so I had to work my way in, you know? [00:41:20] And so like I went and I promoted, and we sold a bunch of stuff to get in that room, like I need to figure out other times. In fact, here's a funny Richard Branson story you probably don't know about me. 17, 18 years ago, he did, him and his mom did an event called the Rock the Kasbah, and then I got invited to the Rock the Kasbah event, which was weird. I'm in this room with, like, all these famous people and entrepreneurs, and, they were doing an auction. And during the auction, they're bidding a bunch of stuff, and 1 of the auction items was to get your name on the side of a Virgin airplane. [00:41:44] I was like, that would be awesome, and so I started bidding on that. And I started bidding, and during this bidding war, me and Dean Graciosi ended up getting in a bidding war over this plane. We're going back and forth and back and forth, and eventually I stopped at 45,000, and Dean bet 50. I was like, I'm out. My wife's like, stop raising your hand. [00:42:00] So I stopped, and then Branson comes on stage, he's like, who is it that 45,000? If you do 50, I'll put your name on a plane too. And I was like, yeah. So he came on stage, he got pictures of me, and Dean, and Richard Branson, and all this stuff, And on the side of 1 of the planes, it says Dot Com Secrets Air to this day because of that. But, like, I can't remember going with the story other than, like, that's how I got to know Dean. [00:42:18] Eventually I met Dean a year later or something, and this and it was kinda like this thing's like, who's this guy? And I was like, hey. You don't probably remember me, but do you remember this? And I showed him a picture of him on stage with the plane. I was like, that's me. [00:42:28] He's like, you're the guy I got the bidding war with. And it was like, instant friends because of that, but open up all these different doors. And, anyway, so there's a random story. [00:42:35] Oh, yeah. I love that story. Oh, this is so good. And I love that sentence, work or crawl your way or buy your way. I just love that. [00:42:45] You are pretty open, if that's okay to go there for a second, about something that usually nobody is. It's your difficulty to have children. And the reason why I would love to go there for a second is because I think this is, like, for a lot of people, 1 of the hardest times in their life, and nobody can talk about it. Do you mind sharing it a little bit? [00:43:07] For sure. It's been a little while now now that we got, you know [00:43:10] I know. You start me with 18 year olds. Yes. [00:43:13] Such a blur. Yeah. But after my wife and I got married, we, tried to get pregnant. We weren't able to for and my wife's older than me. My wife's 6 years older than me, and so she had anxiety anyway of, like, you know, wants to have babies before she's too old, stuff like that. [00:43:24] And so, we just weren't able to get pregnant, and we didn't know what to do. And it's interesting because she was actually watching Oprah, and on Oprah, there was a doctor who was like a fertility doctor who happened to live in Boise, Idaho. I remember she called me that day from work, and she's like, I just watched this thing. There's a fertility doctor that lives in Boise, Idaho. I'm like, What? [00:43:40] This is crazy. And so we booked the thing, and we went in there, and I remember 1st month went through the whole process, took the shots, do all the everything step by step, and then nothing happened. The 2nd month, Cindy went through the whole process, nothing happened. And then the 3rd month, it was actually the same month I was graduating from college, because I remember, we went through the whole process and did the tests, and then that day, my my family and her family was coming in because I had graduation the next day, so they were all driving in. And about 2 minutes before, they pulled into the driveway. [00:44:08] Club was outside getting the yard ready, whatever, and, the phone rings. I pick it up, and the nurse is like, hey, congratulations. You guys are pregnant. I'm like, what? And I walk out to Colette, and I was like, finally she looks at me, he's like, okay, just tell her. [00:44:36] I'm like, Clint's pregnant? Anyway, it's funny because I've shared that story, and people are like, why would you share that story? It has nothing to do with business. And I remember, at that time, I'd go to speak at events, and I would always tell, like, I would tell my wrestling stories, I'd tell stories about my business, stuff like that. And it was weird because when I would sell something, like, people would buy from me, usually like athletes and people who are very similar to me. [00:44:56] Right? And I remember, for some reason, 1 of them talking, and all of a sudden, like, I just feel this impression to tell the story of my kids. And I was like, what? Why? And I don't know why I started telling the story, and I get emotional on stage, and I'm crying, and it's just talking about how grateful I was for that doctor who was willing to, like, put themselves out there to, like, get on the Oprah show. [00:45:13] It's not easy to get on. Like, they go out there to get themselves on Oprah so that because their message changed my life. That's why I love entrepreneurs, because like everything good in my life came because some entrepreneur risked everything to figure out how to, like, change someone's life. And so for me, it's like that's been my mission. So I shared that, and I was like bawling, and I tell a little story. [00:45:30] And then at the end of that event, it was crazy seeing the people that bought from me. They were like the athletes still bought from me. Now it's like wives and mothers and families that are buying all my stuff. And I was like, how fascinating. Like, when you're willing to, like, to share parts of yourself that most people aren't willing to share, What's crazy about that is it opens you up where, like, now people, they will connect to you at different levels, because, like, wow, that person went through what I had to go through, or, like, what I'm going through right now, or something, and you're able to bring people into your world. [00:45:54] And I think for anyone listening, like, 1 of the most powerful things you can do is, like, to tell those things in your life that are harder, that may not make sense, but when you do that, like, that's how you build actual connection with your audience, when you're willing to show us what most people won't. It comes away everyone wants to share the highlight reel, and it's like, talk about the stuff that's real, and then that's when people will come to you. And so, yeah, that's why I show that story. Because, again, for me, it's like, that's why I do what I do, because I know what 1 entrepreneur can do, how they change my life. And if I can help 1 other entrepreneur change someone else's life, like, what gets better than that? [00:46:23] Nothing. [00:46:24] That's incredible. And I think that is really, really, really inspiring to hear your level of authenticity and just honesty because I think it is missing in a lot of the leadership that we see today. But I also understand that it's easier to tell the stories from the scars, not from the wounds. When it's really, really, really open, it's hard. You need to sometimes let it scar a little bit. [00:46:48] So maybe based on everything. And again, you write a ton of books. I have 1 here. I have Tresilient Others on my Audible. Like, how do you do it all? [00:46:59] And what would be an advice to people who are listening or to your younger self based on all of it? [00:47:06] Oh, man. Well, I'm able to do it all because I've got a great support and networking team around me. To be able to do what we're doing at scale, like, you know, I've got an amazing wife at home who takes care of the kids, who makes sure that the home's great. I have a team here in the office that helps support me. I had a mentor when I first got started who said something so powerful. [00:47:24] He said, he's like, there's 2 types of people in the world. There's people really good at starting things, and people really good at finishing things. Like, he said, figure out who you are, and then surround yourself with the opposite. And I was like, I'm really good at starting things, and I'm really bad at finishing things. And so if you look at my company, you know, there's me who starts stuff, and and I got 400 you know, 399 other people who are just finishing the the projects behind me. [00:47:43] And so, at least like, I I gotta work on the stuff I'm most passionate about, but I know that if I'm gonna if I'm gonna write a book, I'm gonna do something, it's like, I gotta cut time out from other things. Like, I gotta make sure the team's in place, okay, everything's in place, cool, I'm gonna go deep, I'm gonna spend the next 90 days, I gotta work on this project over here. Like right now, we're in the middle of a big project, and so everyone's blocking and tackling so I can focus on getting it all done. It's in a week from now, a week from today actually, we're rolling out this new offer, so it's like that's what we're all encompassed on, but it's just having a really good team of people around you who also believe in the mission, who are capable, who can pick up the reins around you so that you can do the things. And then I think it's really focusing on what are the biggest leverage impact points that you can do in your business, right? [00:48:19] For me, it's like there's a lot of people that can do operations, they can do meetings, they can be a CEO, but there's only 1 person that can write my book, right? It's me. So it's like, so 1 person can do the video, it's gotta be me. Those are the pieces that are unique to me, like my unique skill. I think for everyone, it's like understanding what your unique abilities are, and figuring out how to build a team around you so you can focus on your unique abilities, and your team can focus on their unique abilities. [00:48:39] And when you can do that, everyone's like focusing on their unique abilities, that's when things can blow up, and things can grow, and things can scale. It's when you're not doing your unique ability, other people aren't doing theirs, it just feels hard, and it's not fun, and it's just miserable. But when you get it where everything's going in the right direction, then it's exciting, it's fun, like everyone enjoys what they're doing versus the other side. And so I think for me, it's just to have an amazing support network, and then trying to double down on the things that are your unique ability that no 1 else can do that you can do. And then like I said, leverage impact, for me it's like of all the things, like we've launched 100 of courses and funnels and offers and events and everything, but like for me the things that have made me the most money had the most lasting impact. [00:49:14] Like ClickFunnels, for sure, my books for sure. People will come to me like, Russell, I bought your course 4 years ago and changed my no 1 ever says that. They always say, I read your book and it changed my life. So for me, like, books are such high leverage, high impact. Like, I'm willing to spend a lot of energy there because I see the results that come on the backside of those more than almost anything else I do, so that's why I love I love doing them. [00:49:35] Even though I'm I'm in the middle of a book right now, I'm spending almost 4 years on it, it's painful. It's like giving birth to a really fat overweight baby, but it's like, I know when it's done, it'll be like the next thing that people tell me is the thing that changed their life. So it's like you birthing this book. [00:49:48] Well, I'll be reading it for sure because I read every single 1. But seriously, Russell, anything else that you would want our listeners to hear about you? [00:49:58] A lot of people struggle in business because they're trying to figure out how to make money. And, like, I always tell my audience, I'm like, if you're coming to my world or your world like, if you're in this business, like, my guess is that it's not just because you wanna make money, it's because you've heard what my friend Alex Charfen calls it the call to contribution, like, I wanna contribute more, I wanna like, you feel that call to contribution. And I'm a big believer, like, if you felt that call, it's not just like some magic feeling or like butterfly, like, I believe that we're all called to God, right? That we're all called to serve a certain specific group of people, and it's based on like, yes, our talents and our the things we're good at, but also like the things you've gone through, like the pain, the scars, the trials, the frustration, the stuff you had to go through, you overcame, and because you overcame that, you know how to do that, right? And so the call to contribution is typically like you went through a whole bunch and you become something great, you can change other people's lives. [00:50:43] You've been called to serve this group of people because of what you've gone through. For me, when I when I realized that's what it was, when it shifted for me, like, thinking how to make money to make, I feel like God's called me to serve this group of people, like, it changes everything. Then you're it's easy to get through the ups and the downs and the hard stuff because you're like, these are the people's lives I'm supposed to be changing. And I think, you know, for the final things for people, it's just if you lean into that and realize that it's not just you trying to make money, but it's like there's something bigger that you're you're striving towards someone's life you're changing, it changes the dynamics of it. It makes the business fun. [00:51:12] It makes it so that during the hard days, the hard times, like, you can overcome those things. I think when you you make that shift mentally, like, everything else changes for you. [00:51:19] I totally agree, Russell. This was so, so, so inspiring. Thank you so much for everything. [00:51:26] Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It's fun watching what you're doing, and I'm proud of how fast you're growing. It's so exciting to see. [00:51:31] I love watching entrepreneurs have success. It's the best.