0 (2s):
Light that spark Fire Nation, JLD here with an amazing conversation on building a sales funnel. I have brought none other than Russell Brunson onto rock the mic because he has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs and become a New York times. Best-selling author through selling hundreds of thousands of copies of his books. Over the past 19 years, he popularized the concept of sales funnels and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace. And of course I featured Russell as chapter 12 in my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success in his contribution is absolute fire.

0 (43s):
Today. We'll be talking about the significance of creating a Sales Funnel. We'll be talking about upsells and of course we'll be touching upon Russell's journey of becoming the entrepreneur on fire. He is today and so much more Fire Nation. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, how can you make money? That's the big question right now, as COVID has changed how we do business with Thinkific, you can monetize your skills by launching your own online course. It's time to scale the business you love visit Thinkific.com/eof that's Thinkific.com/eof. Hiring is challenging, especially with everything else you have to consider today.

0 (1m 24s):
But there's one place where hiring is simple, fast, and smart that places ZipRecruiter try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire. That's ZipRecruiter.com/fire ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire Russell say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 49s):
What's up Fire Nation. So one of the things I believe that is essential for you, for people to be successful is that it's, it's really aligning yourself with the mission that I believe God has for everybody. I'm a big believer that I feel like entrepreneurship, that everybody has been called to serve a group of people. And when you look at business through that lens, it shifts the way you do business. Instead of trying to create a product and forcing someone to buy it, you start looking at who are the people that I've been called to serve and what can I do? What can I create? How can I serve them? And that's where you get inspiration from God, you get ideas, you get, you get like all the things you need to be able to, to really serve those people. And that's where you find the most value

0 (2s):
Fire Nation. You're hearing the voice of Russell Brunson.

0 (2m 25s):
And weren't talking about today, building a sales funnel. I mean, who in the world would be a better person to talk to about building a sales funnel, who in the world would be a better contributor to chapter 12 of The Common Path to Uncommon Success than Russell Brunson? Because he is Mr. Building a funnel himself and Russell, you went from netting $17 per sale for a DVD, or how to make potato guns to losing money per sale when Google raised their ad rates. But then you discovered sales funnels.

0 (3m 6s):
Tell us about the process that you went through that led to this discovery.

1 (3m 11s):
This discovery that literally changed my life. It's now been my mission for the last 18 years, but yeah, my potato gun DVD was selling and then Google changed their algorithm. I got Google slapped and I started losing money on my ads. And I had a friend who had a similar business to me and I had just that day, shut off my ads. It's like, I give up, I missed the, the .com bubble burst. I missed it. And he messaged me and he said, Hey, I think I figured out the secret. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, okay. I was at McDonald's. And he's like, you know, when you go through the drive-through and you say, I want to, I want a big Mac said, what's the first question they ask you. And I said, do you want a fries and a Coke? Right. That's called an upsell. I was like, okay. And he's like, he's he had a very similar business to mine. He's like, I just pull him back to all my old websites.

1 (3m 53s):
And I started adding these things called upsells. And I said, how's the work? He said, we'll figure it out. Like after somebody buys your product, what's the next logical thing that they need. And so for me, I was like, well, if they buy a potato gun DVD, the next thing they need is they have to go to the store and buy the pipes and the glue and all this stuff. He's like, make it make a potato gun kit that you could plug in there. And he's like, my guest is like one out of three people will pay you more money for the kit. And I was like, okay. And I didn't want to make a kit. So I found somebody on mine who actually sold potato gun kits. It's crazy that it is. And I did a partnership with them and we started selling these kids for $197. And what was crazy is just like he said, I can I started selling my DVDs again, but then one out of three people paid an additional $197 to that potato potato gun kit, which now is making way more profit from every cell.

1 (4m 39s):
And I was like back in business. And while I didn't make a ton of money from the potato gum business, cause that's, you know, not that big of a market, it gave me a framework. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I could use this in any business. And I started launching company after company using this concept of funnels. And so that's kind of how I got introduced to, to what a funnel is before we even called them funnels back then though.

0 (4m 58s):
Yeah. And then you decided to go ahead and launch a company called ClickFunnels. And I mean, that's just obviously been with taking you from, you know, a success launch, newer to just like a mind bending entrepreneur on fire. So how did that actual concept come to fruition when you're like, you know what, I'm having so much success with funnels, but it's such a pain in the booty to create them with a million different processes. I want to make this simpler. What did that look like?

1 (5m 25s):
Yeah. There's a big gap between the potato gun and ClickFunnels and that gap in between there was me building funnels over and over and I'm not technical, so I wasn't actually building them, but I found really good partners and developers and programmers. And so every time I had idea for funnel, we would custom build out every single page and then the shopping cart and the order process. And like, it was, it was a, it was a big process on average would take us about three months to build a single funnel. And we were really good at it. And then one out of four funnels would actually work, like actually make enough money that it was worth it. So we were like, you know, twenty-five of the time, once a year we make money. And the other three times we were trying and failing, trying, failing, trying, failing, and, Oh, we hit it again. Right. And so it was, it was a lot of work cost.

1 (6m 5s):
A lot of money was not, you know, it took so long. That was scary because if one in four succeeded, it just took a lot of time and fast forward. Now probably 12, 13 years after that, that's when Todd Dickerson who at the time was building funnels for me as a, as an employee and a friend, he kind of came back and said, look, we keep building the same thing almost every single time. Like there's a little tweaks and differences, a couple of things, but he's like, I think we could build software that would make this process easy. And it was funny cause like w I wasn't the first person, we weren't the first people with that idea. Other people had tried and failed. I didn't even tried in the past and failed. I was like, I don't think it's possible. And Todd was like, no, I can do it. And so he went and he lives in Atlanta and went back home and he walked himself into his closet for, for six months and came out with the first version of ClickFunnels.

1 (6m 50s):
And he said it to me and said, Hey, Russell, I want to see if you can build a funnel. I don't want, I don't want to do it. I want to see if you can do it this time. And I remember trying it the very first time. And I remember the power I felt when I created my very first funnel and it was done. And I was like, I did that by myself. I didn't need a tech person like this. This is it. And I started freaking out. And that that's, you know, shortly after that, when we launched ClickFunnels as a company and the last seven years has been, has been the ride of a lifetime.

0 (7m 14s):
For sure. And man, I've been watching from the sidelines. And of course, as one of your affiliates for so long now and a user, of course, and, you know, seeing, you know, the hundreds of thousands of people who have been implementing click funnels into their business, into their lives to make their business just overall better for very obvious reasons and Fire Nation don't go anywhere. Because when we get back Russell's and be sharing one of his favorite stories of an actual click funnels user who saved their business, using an upsell. So Russell, you can think about it during the break and we'll be right back finding great candidates to hire. It can be like trying to find a needle in the haystack. Sure. You can post your job on some job board, but then all you can do is hope that the right person comes along, which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire.

0 (8m 2s):
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0 (8m 42s):
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0 (9m 25s):
Whether you're a guitar teacher or an executive business coach, then Kevin can help you expose your business to millions of people worldwide. Join the thousands of entrepreneurs, creating, selling their own online courses and start monetizing your skills today at Thinkific.com/eof that's Thinkific.com/eof. So Russell, we're back as I kind of teased before the break, I would love to have you kind of go into your memory banks right now and think of a click funnels user who literally saved their business because of an upsell. You said that you saved your business with upsells back in the potato gun days. And you know, that's just something that a lot of people have been able to implement successfully in their business.

0 (10m 6s):
What's one of your favorite stories.

1 (10m 8s):
Yeah. And I get to tell somebody my own stories, but it's always more fun to hear the others. And there's been so many amazing ClickFunnels entrepreneurs have come through. But one story that's really, really common is a lot of times people come to my world. They're people who are authors, right? And they wrote a book and they're so excited because they think the book is going to be the thing that makes them, you know, a ton of money. And, and they launched these books and they put them out there more than once. I've seen authors through that. And they put the book out there to launch it. And it, it doesn't make that much money. They sell on Amazon. They sell on Barnes and noble, right. Just making their, their now your $19, 1995, whatever. And about that time is when I was doing my, my book funnels and stuff and for my own books. And I went to some of these authors who I was friends with, people like Tony Robbins and other people I had.

1 (10m 50s):
And I saw them like, Hey, we're launching our books. Tony Robbins is one, Dave Asprey was another one. And both of them were launching their books at the same time on Amazon. I was like, okay, that's good. But like, you can't pay like you can't properly buy ads on Amazon because Amazon takes a big percentage of the money. Plus there's no upsells that, you know, Amazon does have upsells, but they're selling your competitor's products, not yours. And so I went back and I messaged both Tony and Dave Asprey. And I said, Hey, can I build a funnel for your guys's books? And luckily, both of them said, yes. And so I flew my team out there and we, and we filmed the book video to sell their book. And then they thought they were done. I said, no, this is the deal. Like what they ask someone buys the book. What's the next thing that they need. And like, what do you mean? Like we're building a funnel. It's not just a one-off book purchase. Right? So Tony was like, well, the next thing that they should go through his, his what's the product gets from his infomercials.

1 (11m 36s):
It's the, the ultimate, the ultimate edge. He's the ultimate edge next. I said, okay, make you figure it out. Pitching the ultimate edge. We made a video pitching the ultimate edge. I'm like natural wood edge. What's the next thing they need. He's like, well, man, the next thing I think they should get us to the love and relationship program. Like, Hey, make a video of that. So we filmed the video of Tony selling his love and relationship program. I said, okay, I got everything I need. And then Dave, Asprey's the same way with his Bulletproof cookbook. And it's like, if somebody is a cookbook, what's the next thing they need. He's like, well, next they need is they need my oils in my, you know, the empty MCT oils and the, this and the, that. And they need the coffee. And all of a sudden we made a video in pitching that. In fact, we filmed the whole thing. It is Bulletproof story in LA and we filmed those videos. We came back and then build out a funnel for Tony and for Dave Asprey's soaking. Now you have a funnel, you can actually pay ads.

1 (12m 18s):
And so while Tony was on tour, going everywhere, talking about his book on every new station possible, we're also able to have his team follow behind him by ads selling the book profitably because they weren't just driving it to Amazon or just selling a book one off day. Now we're making money from every single person about the book. A percentage bought the ultimate edge and a percentage bought the, the love and relationship program. And now it made it profitable. So they could spend ads and, you know, grew the, grew, the company and, you know, sold a whole bunch more books and they would

0 (12m 43s):
Got it. I mean, Fire Nation, how much power are you given when you have the opportunity to literally generate more revenue from every single customer you bring in. And that's exactly why I wanted to bring Russell in and just share this genius of course, on this episode today, but specifically within chapter 12, which is build your funnel and the common path to one common success. And he did just that. And in fact, Russell, to end our conversation here today, I pulled out a quote that I'm going to read to you right now. My favorite quote, from your contribution. So you can bring this home for us strategically thinking through your customer journey, that is your sales funnel will help you make more money from every person that entered your world.

0 (13m 24s):
This will allow you to spend more money to acquire a customer. And as my mentor, Dan Kennedy says, whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. I love that quote that you shared. So bring this home for us. What do you want Fire Nation to take away from that quote and funnels overall in general,

1 (13m 43s):
Understanding that advertising attention is not free today and it's expensive. And so there's two ways to grow a company. One is to go and raise money and go get people to, you know, give you tens of millions of dollars. So you can go in and you can start acquiring customers or the other better, smarter, cheaper ways to build a funnel where now you can spend more money. You know, I look at ClickFunnels and when we launched ClickFunnels, we were competing against two companies who literally had raised over a hundred million dollars in funding. And they were dumping their money into customer acquisition. And we didn't have that. I was broke, right? And so instead we build the funnel and we spent $20 on Facebook ads to sell a book in the funnel, we'd make $40 inside the funnel. Then we introduced them to click funnels and were able to grow faster and bigger than both of those companies. I'm a hundred percent fueled by funnels as opposed to VC capital.

1 (14m 26s):
I think if you realize that it's like, man, if you really want to get more customers in the door, no matter what business you're in a funnel as the secret. So the way you can do it, you retain all the ownership of your company, your customers, finance them, coming into your business, and it changes everything. And so whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer always wins. And so that's what a funnel allows you to do.

0 (2s):
Fire Nation. You can tell why Russell is the funnel master.

0 (14m 45s):
And if you haven't already it's time for you to the common path to uncommon success. Russell Russell is featured in chapter 12 for obvious reasons. And you get five insane bonuses when you pre-order one of them and Russell, I know your head's going to pop off because you'll understand you like you like to make money when people pre-order your books. I actually, for some weird reason like to lose money. Cause I am shipping to everybody's door. All three of my journals, the freedom journal, the mastery journal and the podcast journal to every single person who just pre-orders one copy of The Common Path to Uncommon Success. That's what people in the US outside, we're going to give you digital access immediately.

0 (15m 27s):
So we're going all out for this. It's an absolute no-brainer and there's actually four other insane bonuses, UncommonSuccessBook.com get over there cost me money with every single pre-order I make because this book is going to change your life. So Russell, thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hiring is challenging, especially with everything else you have to consider today, but there's one place where hiring is simple, fast and smart that places ZipRecruiter try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire. That's zip recruiter.com/fire ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire.

0 (16m 9s):
How can you make money? That's the big question right now, as COVID has changed how we do business with Thinkific, you can monetize your skills by launching your own online course. It's time to scale the business you love visit Thinkific.com/eof that's THINKIFIC.com/EOF.