Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Russell Brunson: From Rock Bottom to $100 Million in 5 Years with ClickFunnels | E60
Tue, 10 Dec 2024
At age 12, Russell Brunson was inspired to become an entrepreneur after watching an infomercial about making money. Over the years, he faced massive personal and professional setbacks, from losing 60% of his staff to battling infertility, financial struggles, and nearly going to jail. But instead of giving up, he turned each failure into a lesson, tweaking his approach and ultimately co-founding the multi-billion-dollar company, ClickFunnels. In this episode, Russell shares with Ilana how he transformed his toughest setbacks into the foundation of his thriving business, offering powerful lessons on resilience, success, and the impact of authentic relationships. Russell Brunson is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and digital marketing expert. He is widely recognized as the co-founder of ClickFunnels, a leading marketing software company that helps businesses worldwide boost conversions and drive sales. In this episode, Ilana and Russell will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:54) The Infomercial That Turned Him Into a Young Entrepreneur (05:29) What Wrestling Taught Him About Overcoming Failure in Business (07:55) Launching His First Business, The Potato Gun (09:52) Russell’s Rollercoaster Journey to His First Million (14:25) Key Lessons from His Toughest Year (21:27) The Birth of ClickFunnels (26:61) Finding Fulfillment in Helping Others Succeed (28:58) Leading ClickFunnels Through Its First Major Crisis (34:18) How Serving Tony Robbins Led to Lifelong Mentorship (37:32) Building Lasting Relationships with the Dream 100 Strategy (42:45) The Emotional Story of Russell’s Fertility Journey (44:38) Why Vulnerability in Business Can Lead to Unlikely Success (46:51) Tips for Building a Winning Team That Drives Your Success (49:58) Turning Your Pain into an Asset Russell Brunson is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and digital marketing expert. He is widely recognized as the co-founder of ClickFunnels, a leading marketing software company that helps businesses worldwide boost conversions and drive sales. Over the past 19 years, he has built a community of over a million entrepreneurs and authored New York Times bestsellers, including DotCom Secrets and Expert Secrets. Connect with Russell: Russell’s Website: www.russellbrunson.com Russell’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbrunson/ Russell’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/russellbrunson Resources Mentioned: Russell’s YouTube: www.youtube.com/@russellbrunson The 12 month millionaire Droplets: Vincent James's Unmissable Revelations by Vincent James: https://www.amazon.com/month-millionaire-Droplets-Unmissable-Revelations/dp/B0CXJGPXNN Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You'll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Well-Before-Youre-Thirsty/dp/0385485468 Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Chapter 1: What inspired Russell Brunson to become an entrepreneur?
He's like, okay, if you start mowing the lawns, I'll pay you, I can't remember, five bucks a week or something. 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. 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 the credit card and it was the coolest thing in the world. And I got the kid in the mail. In fact, I still have it to this day. I'm going to 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. And then for me, it's like these ideas in my head about how you can make money. Also, I'm 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 all these like cartoons on it. 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 copy, next time you're at the grocery store, Barnes & Noble, you can get one. It's like 140 pages of ads and then four pages of articles.
And every ad is a different way to make money. And so I remember reading it. Like one of them was like, you can make donuts at the county fair and make money. Call his 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 called number free info kit. Next page is like, you can make money selling gold chains by the inch. So I call every 144 pages.
info kits i go to order for every one of these businesses it was funny now i was like i was in a funnel 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 hundred dollar version of it right or whatever so then you'd call it anyway and there's a whole thing 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 mail like this big and i would say that i'd read all these sales letters but all these ways to make money and completely ruin me for life but that's kind of how i started my young entrepreneur journey
Oh, my God. Most people are just not as driven or kids. It's 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. 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?
Definitely, as a young age, I didn't realize at the time, but definitely was very driven for the business thing. I don't dabble in something. If I'm excited, I go all in. I'm so excited. 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 started running.
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Chapter 2: What lessons did wrestling teach Russell about failure?
And I remember he showed you like one teaching how to do dog training, one like how to teach a parrot how to talk and one how to do like all these little niche products. They create these little eBooks and then they would go and they'd 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 kinds of things. 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.
And then next Monday, I was back in school and I was like, I wonder if I could create a product teaching people 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 put out there on the internet.
You share, and I found that super inspiring, that someone helped you break that four minute mile. And you have this beautiful story about how you broke the first million for yourself, et cetera, et cetera. Can you share a little bit of that?
Yeah, for sure. So when I got started in my online business, I'd never set a goal to make a million dollars. 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. And that was kind of how we started, right? With the potato gun and made other little products. And then I remember, man, we'd been married about a year.
And I remember because we were 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. I'm sitting in this little library in this lake town with nothing else around. 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. It was a subject line.
I'm like, did what? And I opened the email and he's like, hey, earlier today we launched a course called Traffic Secrets. is a thousand dollar course. And in the first 18 hours, we sold a thousand copies, which means we're the very first people to ever make a million dollars online in a day selling a course. And I was like, And I remember sitting there in a chair and I was just like so perplexed.
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Chapter 3: How did Russell's first business venture with potato guns begin?
And I was like, okay, now we've got to create another offer. And like, and we went through that, but it was in that pain. Like that's where I met. Todd Dickerson, like I would never have met him otherwise. And he became my partner. He's the one who built ClickFunnels. All these amazing blessings came because of that darkness that I had to go through.
And looking back now, it's like, even though that was the most painful, stressful time of 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, you 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, even though it may seem hopeless at times. If you keep at it, you never know what's going to happen.
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 one 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 So I do want to hear that story because it's a beautiful story of how you met Todd and how ClickFunnels was born. I have to hear that.
So in that whole time where everything was falling apart and we're trying different offers and different things. I remember that I went to a site 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 sell. It was called championsound.com. And it was an email text message autoresponder for bands.
I didn't want to be selling to bands. 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 was kind of 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 try to transfer it over to our servers.
And the guy who's transferring is like, your servers are Linux. We need Ruby on Rails. 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 of guys I knew, the dev guys, like that's like Chinese. I don't know how to speak Chinese. I can't fix it.
And so we tried three or four 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're trying to make this thing work. And finally it was like, I just had to give up. And so like, I remember just being sick to my stomach. Cause like that was all the money we had.
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Chapter 4: What key lessons did Russell learn from his toughest year?
All of our customers are like, I don't, I don't know what to do. Like I'm a first time CEO. And so I take my wife, my kids to the hotel and I wait two rooms. I'm like, I'm like, 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 can be wanted to hide and just like hide, you know?
But I was like, we're down. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know. We're going to back up. 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 business are down. All your business is down. We're hoping to fix it.
We're trying all these things. And like, I was just very vulnerable and very, I told him the truth. I didn't try to hide it or try to justify. I'm like, this is not good. This is our fault. I'm so sorry. We're going to 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. All these sorts of stuff.
And in eight hours, they had to rebuild the database on this other place and they copied everything over and somehow miraculously eight hours, they got it back up live. Um, and it had been rebuilt on this new platform that, which is way more stable. And what's crazy is I was assuming we'd lose half our members or most, you know, I thought everyone's going to leave us.
And what's crazy, look at the daily cancellations. 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 kind of made that like a standard, like, Hey, when things are happening, we'll be vulnerable. We'll tell people about it. Cause yeah.
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? And sometimes, and that time I made the right decision. Tons of times I made the wrong decision. You learn the other way too. Like that was stupid. I should not have done that, 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's like these problems pop up, like what's happening? You know, for us people, When ClickFunnels started growing, like everyone's building their sites on there, right?
What's crazy is, I don't know, I can't monitor 10,000 people's sites or 100,000 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? I remember Taylor Swift sent us a huge lawsuit suing us because someone was selling Taylor Swift merchandise on their site.
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