0 (2s):
Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today we're pulling a classic EOFire episode , from the archives, and we'll be breaking down building a sales Funnel. To drop these value bombs, I brought Russell Brunson into EOFire Studios. Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs and become a New York Times bestselling 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.

0 (43s):
And today, Fire Nation, we will talk about how whoever can spend the most money will acquire the most customers they will win. Advertising is expensive. as an entrepreneur, you can either raise a lot of money so you can start to acquire customers or go with a smarter and cheaper way, build a funnel and so much more. Fire Nation And a big thank you for sponsoring today’s episode goes to Russell and our sponsors, The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kutcher is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business acts, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.

0 (1m 27s):
Listen to Gold Digger, wherever you get your podcasts ever thought of giving a TEDx talk, it's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. In four time TEDx, speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought-Leader can help you get there. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx Talk and spread your message to millions. Russell say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (2m 1s):
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 I've been called to serve and, 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 fulfillment.

0 (2m 37s):
Fire Nation, you are hearing the voice of Russell Brunson and we're 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 on how to make potato guns to losing money per sale when Google raised their ad rates. But then you discovered sales funnels.

0 (3m 18s):
Tell us about the process that you went through that led to this discovery

1 (3m 23s):
And 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. I was like, I give up, I missed the, the.com bubble I it burst and 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 wanna, I want a Big Mac. He said, what's the first question they ask you? And I said, do you want a fries, And A Coke? Right? He's like, that's called an upsell. And I was like, okay. And he is like, he's like, he had a very similar business to mine. He's like, I just put back to all my old websites and I started adding these things called upsells.

1 (4m 8s):
And I said, well, how's it work? He said, well figure 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 a make a potato gun kit that you could plug in there. And he's like, my guess is like one outta three people will pay you more money for the kit. And I was like, okay. And I didn't wanna make a kit, so I found somebody online who actually sold potato gun kits, as crazy as that is. And I did a partnership with them and we started selling these kits for $197. And what was crazy is just like he said, I kept, I started selling my DVDs again, but then one out of three people paid an additional $197 for that potato, for the potato gun kit, which now I was making way more profit from every sale.

1 (4m 51s):
And I was like back in business. And while I didn't make a ton of money from the potato gun 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, of funnels. And so that's kind of how I got introduced to, to what a funnel is before I even called 'em funnels back then though.

0 (5m 10s):
Yeah. And then you decided to go ahead and launch a company called ClickFunnels. And I mean that's just obviously been, was taking you from, you know, a successful entrepreneur to just like a mind bending entrepreneur on fire. So how did like 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 wanna make this simpler. What did that look like?

1 (5m 37s):
Yeah, there was 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 'em, but I found really good partners and developers and programmers. And so every time I had an 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 it 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, 25% of the time, once a year we make money. And the other three times we were trying and failing, trying, failing, trying, failing, then oh, we hit it again. Right? And so it was, it was a lot of work cost, a lot of money was not, you know, it took so long that it was scary.

1 (6m 21s):
'cause if one in four succeeded, it just took a lot of time. And fast forward now, man, 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 little tweaks and differences, And, A, couple of things. But he is like, I think we could build software that would make this process easy. And it was funny 'cause like 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, I can do it. And so he went, he lives in Atlanta, he went back home and he locked himself in a, in his closet for, for six months and came out with the first version of ClickFunnels and he sent it to me and said, Hey Russell, I wanna see if you can build a funnel.

1 (7m 5s):
I don't want, I don't wanna do it. I Don wanna 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, I created my very first funnel and it was done. And I was like, I do 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's when we launched ClickFunnels as a company. And the last seven years has been, has been a the ride of a lifetime

0 (7m 26s):
For sure. And man, I've been watching from the sidelines and of course as one of your affiliates for so long now and And A user of course. And you know, seeing, you know, the hundreds of thousands of people who have been implementing ClickFunnels 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 gonna be sharing one of his favorite stories of an actual ClickFunnels user who saved their business using an upsell. So Russell, you can think about it during the break and we'll be right back. Artificial intelligence is at the top of everyone's newsfeed. So we all know there are plenty of business pros out there benefiting from ai.

0 (8m 7s):
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0 (8m 46s):
So you can publish the AI generated content directly into your landing pages and emails from your CRM. So work smarter not harder. Head to HubSpot.com/campaign-assistant to test drive campaign assistant for free. Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And Thought-Leader can help you get there. Thought-Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDx talks. Thought-Leader is not affiliated with Ted or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder Taylor Conroy is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EOFire guest.

0 (9m 30s):
You might be thinking a TEDx Talks sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that is going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online and more. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire, join Taylor for his free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's Thought-Leader.com/fire. So Russell, we're back. And 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 ClickFunnels user who literally saved their business because of an upsell.

0 (10m 14s):
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. What's one of your favorite stories? Yeah,

1 (10m 25s):
And I could tell so many of 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 that come to my world are people who are authors, right? And they wrote a book and they're so excited 'cause they think the book is gonna be the thing that makes them, you know, a ton of money. And, and they launch these books and they put 'em out there more than once. I've seen authors do that. And so 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? It's making their their $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, and I saw them like, Hey, we're launching our books.

1 (11m 9s):
Tony Robbins is one, Dave Asprey was another one. And both of 'em 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 profitably buy ads on Amazon because Amazon takes a big percentage of the money, plus there's no upsells. You know, Amazon does have upsells, but they're selling your competitors' products, not yours. And so I went back and I, I messaged both Tony and Dave Asprey and I said, Hey, can I build a funnel for your guys' books? And luckily both of 'em 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 asked, someone buys the book, what's the next thing that they need? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm 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 they should go through is his, what's the, the product he has from his infomercials?

1 (11m 53s):
It's the, the, the ultimate, the ultimate edge. He's the ultimate edge. Next. I said, okay, make a video Now pitching the ultimate edge, we made a video pitching the ultimate edge. I'm like, natural, ultimate edge. What's the next thing they need? He's like, well man, the next thing I think they're they should get is the love and relationship program. Like, hey, make a video of that. So we filmed a video of Tony selling his love and relationship program. I said, okay, I got everything I need. And then Dave Aspers the same way, it was his Bulletproof cookbook. And I said, you have someone buys the cookbook, what's the next thing they need? He's like, well next they need is they need my oils and my, you know, the empty MCT oils and the this and the that and they need the coffee and all this stuff. So we made a video in pitching that. In fact, we filmed the whole thing at his bulletproof store in, in LA and we filmed the, those videos. We came back and, and then built out a FUNNEL both for Tony and for Dave aspr and said, okay, now you have a, a funnel you can actually pay ads.

1 (12m 35s):
And so while Tony was on tour going everywhere talking about his book on you know, every news station possible, we were also able to have his team fall behind him buy ads selling the book profitably because they weren't just driving it to, to Amazon or just selling a book one off day. Now we're making money from every single person who bought 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 spin ads and you know, grew the, grew the company and you know, sold a whole bunch more books than they would've without it.

0 (13m 0s):
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 in 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 gonna 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 enters your world.

0 (13m 41s):
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 59s):
Yeah, I think understanding that Advertising and 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 and, 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 a funnel and we spent $20 on Facebook ads to sell a book in the funnel. We'd make $40 inside of the Funnel and then we introduced 'em to ClickFunnels and we were able to grow faster and bigger than both of those companies.

1 (14m 39s):
A hundred percent fueled by funnels as opposed to VC capital. 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 is the secret. It's the way you can do it. You retain all the ownership in your company, your customers finance them coming into your business and it changes everything. And so whoever can spend the most money to acqui to acquire a customer always wins. And so that's what a Funnel allows you to do.

0 (15m 1s):
Fire Nation, you can tell why Russell is the Funnel master and if you haven't already, it's time for you to pre-order The Common Path To Uncommon Success. 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 gonna pop off 'cause 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'm 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 for people in the US. Outside, we're gonna give you digital access immediately.

0 (15m 44s):
So we are going all out for this. It's an absolute brainer. And there's actually four other insane bonuses. Uncommonsuccessbook.com get over there, cost me money with every single pre-order I make 'cause this book is gonna 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.

1 (16m 5s):
Thanks man.

0 (16m 8s):
The Gold Digger podcast hosted by my good friend Jenna Kutcher is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business acts, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must listen episode is one of Jenna's recent on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. Listen to Gold Digger, wherever you get your podcasts ever thought of giving a TEDx talk. It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. In four time TEDx. Speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought-Leader can help you get there. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx Talk and spread your message to millions.