# Interview With My Original Mentor – Part 2 of 4

- Link: https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast/interview-with-my-original-mentor-part-2-of-4/
- Published: 2020-08-24T08:00:00-07:00
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Interview With My Original Mentor - Part 2 of 4

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Want to know how ClickFunnels became so popular so fast? Or how we generated over
$10,000,000 in revenue our very first year, right out of the gate?

I’ll give you a hint: We didn’t sell ClickFunnels as a software.

To find out how we were able to grow so fast…and how YOU can grow YOUR company by
hacking what we did, listen in to part 2 of my interview with Mark Joyner!

—Transcrtipt—

Russell Brunson: Hey everyone. It’s Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing
Secrets Show. I hope that our last episode, you enjoyed episode number one of four
with my interview with Mark Joyner. And it’s fun having chance to relisten to it
and rewatch it, and just I had so much fun that night, it was such a cool experience.
And so with that said, I’m not going to do too much more other than set up the second
part of this interview with Mark. And I hope you guys enjoy it.

If you are enjoying this series, please, please, please take a screenshot of this
on your phone, wherever you listen to the podcast and post it on Facebook or Instagram.
And tag me in it, do #marketingsecrets, tag me, and please give me your comments
or feedback, your ideas, your aha’s. I’d love to hear them. And with that said, 
I’m going to cue up the theme song. When we come back, you’ll listen to part two
of my interview with Mark Joyner. Mark Joyner: All right, what would be the third,
most significant strategic move? Russell: Oh, there’s a couple different directions.
I could go on this one. Can I give two halves? Mark: Please, I love it. I love it.
Russell: So one half is when we launched ClickFunnels, It wasn’t just that we were
going to build a software company. In fact, it was probably a month or two before
we came out with ClickFunnels. I went with… I don’t if you know David Frye, but 
David’s one of my mentors. Mark: Yeah, I love David. Russell: His wife’s actually
my second aunt. So anyway… Mark: Oh wow. Russell: When he was dating his now wife,
I was like a little snot nose kid running around at my grandma’s house. And anyway.
Mark: I love David. He’s my buddy. He’s a great guy. Russell: Yeah, he’s amazing.
And we were at this network marketing convention, and I remember we were there and
the company was a software company. We’re sitting there with like 5,000 people in
the room. And all the people are coming on stage and they’re crying and all this
stuff. And I’m just confused, like this doesn’t make any sense. And I remember he
leaned over to me after two days of watching this and he said, “You see what they’re
doing?” I’m like, “No, I have no idea what’s happening. I’m so confused.” He’s like,“
They’re not selling software, so they built a community.”

And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s the thing. They have this community. They have
a culture. And so when we started doing ClickFunnels, it was that mindset. How do
we build a culture? So it’s not just like a software. I want to build something 
where people feel part of it. Like it’s not Russell’s company, because Russell’s
company they’ll go to whoever’s the cheapest. Whoever’s got the new feature. If 
it’s their company , it it’s their culture, that shifts everything. And so we started
this whole thing from day one, of like, “We’re funnel hackers. This is our movement.
This what we believe in.”

And two weeks ago we had our Funnel Hacking Live. We had 4,500 people in a room 
and people are going crazy. We got people with ClickFunnels tattooed on their arms,
people wearing custom funnels. And we had people coming on stage crying. And I’m
looking out and I’m like, six years ago David Frye pointed out to me, that became
a big piece of it. So I think it was not just having this as a software product,
but having this as a movement, where it’s bigger than that.

So, that was one big strategic thing that I think a lot of people miss. And then
the second one is, I think, again, it comes back to us as marketers. We get so excited
about the next thing. What’s the next offer we’re going to create, and everything
like that. And I remember after the first year, ClickFunnels grew to a certain point,
and then me I’m like, “I want to create something new.” Even though the market didn’t
necessarily needs something new, but I wanted to do something else.

And so what I started doing is I realized, this funnel’s in the middle of my value
add. The webinar funnel and tons of people had seen it. It was starting to fatigue
a little bit. And that point, we’d done over $10 million in sales. That’s what we
launched the second funnel to bring people to ClickFunnels. That’s when basically
I wrote the DotCom Secrets Book, and that became a book funnel. And people come 
and they buy the book, they go through the book funnel. And then at the end the 
book funnel, we just send them up into the webinar. Mark: See that funnel right 
there, by the way, the links up there for that. Russell: Oh, very cool. Mark: You
guys should check that out by the way. That’s another very, very interesting thing.
You guys need to funnel hack what the guy who teaches funnel hacking does. Because
this dude has a mastered this stuff and that funnel is sick. It is sick. Anyway,
keep going. Russell: Yeah. Well, so I’ll tell you a story that shows why this is
so powerful. About a year and a half, two years into ClickFunnels, We started getting
all the calls. This is when the VCs and other people start noticing you. And they’re
like, “Hey, we want to be part of your journey.” And I was just like, “I have no
desire to do any of that.” And then one time, some guy was like, “We’re in Boise
State, can we meet with you?” I’m like, “Okay, sure, let’s go to lunch.” And turns
out they were in San Francisco, they jumped in a plane, a private plane, flew in
and then drove to our office and were like, “Hey.” And I’m like, “Where you guys
staying?”

“Well, we just flew in.” I’m like, “When? Just right…?” It was a whole thing that
they tricked me into thinking they were right there. So I went to lunch with these
guys and they start asking me all the VC questions like, “Well, how much does it
cost to acquire a ClickFunnels customer?” And I was like, “Well, if we drive ads
to the homepage, it’s like”, I can’t remember at the time, “$150 to acquire customer.”
And the guy starts getting all excited and he’s like, “Okay. So if we were to give
you $40 million in funding”, and he was doing the math, like how many customers 
that would equal all sorts of stuff. And he’s getting all excited.

And I was like, “Wait, wait, wait”, I was like, “We actually turn those ads off.”
He was like, “What? Why would you do that? That’s a great cost to acquire customer
in the bay”, or whatever. And I’m like, “because I’m bootstrapping this thing. I’m
paying for these customers out of my pocket. I’m not paying $150 for a trial. I’m
going to be broke in a week and a half.” And so I said, “But instead, what we did
is we created these book funnels, where someone comes in, they buy a book.” And 
I said, “On average, we spend about $20 in Facebook ads to sell a book. But then
there’s a funnel. So the audio book and there’s a course. And there’s a couple of
different products in the funnel. And so we spend $20 to sell a book, but we make
$40 in the book funnel. So I net $20 cash in my pocket.And then I tell these people,“
After you read this book, you’ll understand the strategy of funnels. Now you need
to use ClickFunnels. So technically all of our customers actually pays $20 before
we introduce them to ClickFunnels.” Mark: And this is the other book funnel, by 
the way, guys, if you guys want to check that out. Yeah. And both of these are pretty
sick, because the first one was Dotcom Secrets and then Expert Secrets. Russell:
And then Traffic Secrets is coming out in like a month. So that’s the third book.
Mark: And I’m going to be at that event. Can I say that. Can I say it? Russell: 
Yes, please do. Mark: Can I say it? Russell is holding this awesome live event. 
He invited a small group of speakers. Only 200 people are going to be there in the
audience. But he’s going to be broadcasting this live all over the world. I’m going
to be there. I’m going to be one of the speakers. I was very flattered and grateful
that Russell invited me to be part of this. This is going to be sick. Russell is
going to spread this thing all over the place. It’s going to be madness.

Everything that Russell has put on since… Well, over the last few years, everything
you’ve done has just been nuts. But it’s been getting better and better and better.
I’m so excited to see what you do with this one, because I have a feeling this is
going to eclipse any of the past campaigns you’ve ever done. I got a little feeling
in my gut. Russell: I was so excited for it. It’s like, as I’m writing the book,
all I can think about is how we’re going to sell the book, like this is going to
be so much fun. Mark: Oh dude. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Russell: So fun. 
But what’s crazy was I’m sitting there that lunch with the VC, I’m telling this 
stuff. And he doesn’t understand it the first time, I explaining it three or four
times. And finally remember he said something really profound. He said, “If what
you’re telling me is true, this will change business forever.” And I was like, that’s
the whole thing. A software company that’s grown to the size we have, all of them
have taken on money. I can’t find any that didn’t. Mark: That’s right. Russell: 
Maybe a couple. But for the most part, they all took on money to grow. And I was
like, instead of bringing on cash to grow, you just use a funnel and it finances
itself the whole way. And so I think that’s a big strategic thing is like, we drink
our own Kool-Aid. I literally today was working with my funnel team on our next 
funnel for the next campaign, to bring more customers in for free that we can then
bring into ClickFunnels. So I think that’s another big piece is just understanding
you can grow a company without taking on cash, it’s just understanding this funnel
game where your customers finance the growth. And I think that’s the best way to
do it. Mark: Well, I got to tell you what. For me personally, my experience in the
VC world and in the acquisition world and all of that, back in the early days of
online marketing, you were still in college, but before the first dot-com bubble
burst, I’ll just give you guys one example of one of the ugly things I saw. Every
company that I’ve ever started was bootstrapped, but we had some of the same things.
We had people coming in trying to acquire stuff. I started the second pay-per-click
search engine. While Google was still in college. I started the second pay-per-click
search engine.

Well, I want to be very careful about how I phrase this here. Let’s just say around
that same time, there was a group of people who attempted to acquire one of my companies
and through some shady, reverse merger, backend, crazy deal, these guys basically
bamboozled us out of everything. And it turned out that a lot of the guys who were
involved in that ended up going to jail for stock fraud later. And that kind of 
thing, by the way, people don’t understand, this is common.

So not only are the VC guys who were the legit VC guys, those guys are sharks too.
But there’s a layer underneath those guys who were like straight criminal sharks
as well. So you have to be extremely careful when you’re swimming in that world.
And this is why, for me, I don’t want to accept outside funding for anything. I 
want to bootstrap everything. I want to surround myself around people who are as
motivated as I am, so that I can grow it by pulling our own selves up by our own
bootstraps. And then we’re going to own everything. We’re going to get all the profit,
and we don’t have to worry about some VC jerk off telling us how to run the business
when they don’t really understand. Russell: You want to know something cool? Mark:
Please. Russell: I just bought bootstrap.com. And my next book is going to be called
bootsrap.com. Mark: I love it. Russell: You said it five times. I’m like, “I’m so
excited right now.” Mark: That’s awesome. Okay, so after the trilogy, you’re starting
a whole new thing. Russell: Yeah, because the trilogy has been how-to books. This
one’s not going to be a how-to book. This is going to be like the story of… And 
what’s crazy, ClickFunnels was built remote, all of our team’s remote. So almost
every conversation has happened on Boxer. So we’ve recorded every important conversation
in ClickFunnels. So I’m getting them all downloaded and transcribed right now. So
it’s going to be like, this is actually what Russell said. In fact, you could listen
to the conversations. Anyway, I’m excited. That’s going to be my next project starting
in about a year from now. Mark: Beautiful. So, man, I’m going to have to skip a 
couple of these. All right, so here’s one… Russell: I’m feeling good so we can keep
going. Don’t worry. Mark: All right. Awesome. Awesome. Well, you’re always super
energetic, man. Every time I talk to Russell, I get more energized. I’m generally
a pretty energetic guy, but I just vibe, because Russell’s got this amazing… He 
effervesces energy. All right, so what would you say are the three biggest barriers,
or bottlenecks for growth in businesses right now? Russell: In my specific business,
or just business as a whole? Mark: Well, either one. You pick either one. Russell:
Interesting. So three biggest bottlenecks for growth. I think this may be a little
early, but I think one of the biggest things people are going to see, right now 
we’ve been in this amazing season where advertising has been easy. When I first 
got started online, grateful for you, because I don’t know how you guys can figure
it out back in the day. We were building lists and there was no Facebook. Google,
wasn’t really there the way… I was lucky enough to hear your audio is on viral marketing.
And we were building these viral sites to acquire customers email addresses. And
I remember sitting listing the farewell package, and you talking about with crazy
stuff you guys would do to get a list. So you got my mind thinking like that. Mark:
Yeah, we had to get super creative. We had to get super creative. Russell: Oh yeah.
No one thinks of that anymore. So what’s happened is Facebook came out. It’s easy.
Everyone’s in business and it’s been like that for the last decade. So business 
has been so, so simple. And I don’t think it’s going to last that much longer. I
think either some government regulation is going to happen, or they’re just going
to do a Google, where they start shifting away from smaller brands and just elbow
us out and go after bigger companies.

And I think in fact, that’s a big reason I wrote the Traffic Secrets book. Hopefully
you guys all have a chance to read it when it comes out, but it’s very much not 
tactical, like here’s how to run a Facebook app. I don’t show the Facebook editor
once. It’s very much a strategic book, like how do you start thinking differently?
Because when Zuckerberg comes and we always joke, it was probably because I was 
writing the book right when Avengers: Endgame came out. And Thanos, who does the
Thanos snap and half the world disappears. We always talk about Zuckerberg. We nicknamed
it off as Zanos.

I’m like, Zanos is going to snap his finger, and half the entrepreneurs and businesses
will disappear. And we’re seeing it. I’ve had probably five or six people that are
friends, in the last week alone, who’s got Facebook ads shut down. And it’s going
to be coming. And so I think the biggest thing is that people have had it really
good and really easy, because they’ve just been like, “I’d run Facebook ads, or 
I run a Google ad.” they’re just doing the basics, that are simple. It’s going to
get harder. And so I think it’s time for all of us to start resharpening our marketing
mind.

In the Traffic Secrets book, I have a whole chapter on integration marketing. I 
learned this from my mentor, Mark Joyner, you guys need to start learning this stuff.”
Just all these different things that, that people haven’t had to learn. I’m definitely
looking at it and. And I keep giving you so much credit, because so much of my mindset
initially was based on your teachings. But we spend so much effort right now focusing
on list building, because I know that it’s going to get harder to build lists.

Like right now, from clickfunnels.com site, we get about 1500 opt-ins a day. And
then for my other funnels, we get about three to 4,000 opt-ins a day. So we got 
almost 5,000 people a day opting in. And that’s our focal points. Because I’m like,“
I’m going to keep building these lists like crazy, because someday these other things
might disappear, or get harder, or more expensive. And I’m going to have these lists,
and I’ll be able to weather the storm.” Where a lot of people are not going to be
able to, because they’re not focusing on list building and building relationships
with those lists. They’re just out there buying Facebook ads, because it’s easy.
And I think that’s one of the biggest things that I’m fearful for myself. I’m doubling
down on, I think other people need to as well. Mark: I want to interject really 
quick here about something, because it’s funny you bring this up. Because this is
something I’ve been talking about a lot. So I’ve been doing a lot more public speaking
lately. And one of the things that I’ve been talking about is exactly this. And 
I want to show everybody a little bit of an interesting phenomenon in it. Russell,
I think you’ll appreciate this.

So if you guys remember Chris Anderson writing the book about the Long Tail, right?
And if this is the unit numbers sold of any particular… Let’s say you imagine you
take Amazon’s entire marketplace. This is the number of units sold and this is the
rank. So the number one selling book is going to outsell the number two selling 
book by an order of magnitude, at least. So it’s like the inverse of an exponential
growth curve.

So Chris Anderson’s whole theory about the long tail, was that because automation
is making everything so easy, was that yeah, traditionally people used to focus 
all their energy in here, because this is where all the money was. But now, because
of the improvements we have in supply chain technology and deliveries, there’s so
much money in the long tail of the graph. And if you could have an inventory of 
billions and billions and billions of units that represents enormous economic potential.

But here’s what happened, the exact opposite of what Chris Anderson predicted is
the reality of what happened. See Facebook, YouTube, all of these platforms, they
built themselves on our backs. We were the ones that created all of the content 
so that these guys could be so big. And now we’re the eyeballs, but guess who they
care about now? If you take this out and you put in, you take this same graph and
you speak in terms of ad spending, they only care about this portion of the graph.
Why?

While this represents a lot of economic potential. It also represents an enormous
pain in the ass for the company that has to manage it. Russell: They hate customers.
Mark: They hate the customers. And this is why when you’re on Facebook and we’re
on YouTube, now, your ads are getting shut down algorithmically, or they’re getting
shut down by some low-level employee that doesn’t really understand what’s going
on and they don’t give you any explanation. And Russell, you’ve probably heard so
many stories like this. People wake up in the morning and then they have this business,
it’s going great guns. And they’re saying to their wives, “This is it. We’ve made
it.” And then the next day they wake up and then because something happened algorithmically
in Facebook, they completely get shut down, that their lives are basically shattered
as a result of that.

So unless you’re here, in terms of ad spend, you don’t get their attention. They’re
not going to explain to you why they shut you down. And this is why we started this
thing called integration marketing society. So you talked about integration marketing.
So we’re building integration marketing society, so people can band together and
buttress ourselves against the threat of this. That’s what that whole thing is all
about. So I want to have another conversation with you about that another time, 
because I think that there’s a lot of potential synergy there. I’m glad you’re seeing
that same thing. So what would you say is the number two and three bottlenecks now,
then? Russell: Let’s see. So definitely traffic’s the biggest one, I think. And 
I don’t know historically how all this all works, but advertising’s all about the
pattern interrupt. We’re still seeing stuff happening. And then like the thing that
catches our attention, it interrupts. And it used to be, back when we first got 
started, you figured out a pattern interrupt and nothing would last for months, 
or years before people caught on and figured it out. And now it’s tough because 
we come out with the new pattern interrupt, we post it on Instagram, and within 
like 15 minutes, there’s 800 other people doing the exact same posts. They see, “
It worked for us it must work for me.” And they start doing it.

And it’s interesting, because it’s so easy now to clone and to copy and things like
that. And so I think for people who are truly trying to grow companies and serve
in a different level and like be creatives, being creative is harder. And I think
that it takes… I don’t know exactly how to phrase it right. But I think that the
me-too stuff’s going to get worse and worse, because there’s some people copying,
right? Mark: Yes. Russell: I’m going to get better at the creation and better at
creative and better at figuring out how to break the pattern and break the pattern,
and stay in front of that all the time. Because it’s crazy how fast things get knocked
off now. We have a campaign, or something that’s working and it’s crazy. In fact,
I had this conversation with Dean Graziosi, He’s become a dear friend and Dean ran
infomercials for a year. And he said that he would record a show, an infomercial,
and the lifespan was like 18 months. every 18 months, he had to record a new show.
Then he came on the internet and he’s like I started doing my ads and I would launch
them on Facebook, or Instagram. He’s like, “They’d be killing it for a day and a
half, two days, and then it’s gone.” And he’s like, “What?”

And they couldn’t figure it out. And he basically came back, he said I’m testing
a bunch of stuff. He said, the biggest thing he figured out, he has to create tons
of creative. I said, “Well, how much? One ad a week, two ads a week?” He’s like,“
No, no, no.” He’s like, “I carry my phone wherever I go, like two to three ads a
day, minimum.” And he’s walking around with his book, like, “Here’s an ad here.”
He walks to his daughter’s soccer game, he’s doing an ad there. And then he’s in
the elevators, doing an ad there. And just tons and tons and tons and tons of creative.
And I figured out how to break the pattern, how to like how to grab people’s attention.

And so it’s like, if you don’t love your thing enough to like, “I got to create 
a lot more creative”, it’s going to be hard, because people are just knocking you
off. So I think that’s a big part for us. We used to spend so much time being slow
on creating ads and stuff. Now it’s more like, how do we stay in front of that curve
and get excited where the art isn’t in creating next product or the next campaign,
or the next funnel, the art becomes, “What’s a new way I can sell the thing you 
already have.” And it’s that big shift. In fact, in our company, I like building
funnels. I’m a little obsessed with it. And so for a long time- Mark: Yeah, to say
the least. Russell: Yeah. The way we kept growing is I create new funnel and create
a new funnel. And the tough things is it’s just hard to keep doing that, because
then every time you create a new funnel, you got to create the new ads and it’s 
a lot more work and effort. Whereas, now it’s like we shifted our focus in less 
funnels, but more creative for every funnel. And it’s just a different mindset shift.
And so it’s not super clear the way it came out, but it’s one of the big problems
I’ve seen that we’re having is ad fatigue. It burns out super fast if you’re not
in front of just creation, always trying to figure out different ways to break the
pattern. You’re going to get left behind really, really quickly. Because the copycats
are so many of now, that even if you are copying the gift pattern, the diminishing
return hits so fast. Mark: Well, the problem is, is people also don’t know how to
copy. For me, there’s like three levels of copying, one is straight out plagiarism.
And then the next one is, is people take your surface stuff and they change a few
words and then they pop that up. Which to me is just as dumb and is just as shady.
Because first of all, changing a couple of words doesn’t make sense when you’re 
dealing with a completely different product. Russell: All sorts of stuff. Mark: 
Yeah. So many different things are different. And this is where you really got to
get into the real understanding of when you’re funnel hacking something, or you’re
modeling something, what you have to understand is the psychological structure behind
it. And this is what Breakthrough Advertising, the classic Eugene Schwartz book 
that everybody should be reading. I had to read that probably about five times before
it finally sunk in. Holy crap. I didn’t really understand it at first. I was like,“
Oh, okay. It’s interesting.”

But then when it finally clicked. And his whole idea, it’s basically based on the
notion that you’ve got to analyze how to connect your product with the market forces
that already exist. And every product, in every market is going to have a different
way of connecting that. And you can’t copy that from someone. The only way to get
that correctly, to have a real big legitimate breakthrough in the business is through
the process of analysis.

And this that’s the core idea of… There’s so many nuggets of wisdom for breakthrough
advertising, but that’s the core thing that people had better get good at, because
I tell you what, if they don’t, here’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to become
like the quants in the trading game. The quants are like, “Hey, let’s see who can
shave a quarter of a millisecond off the trading time on the stock market.” Well,
if the marketing world becomes like that, good luck to you unless you’re the guy
with the best quants. The only other way to compete then is to train your creative
mind, to come up with creative answers.

And as you remember from the farewell package, there are so many ways to do that.
There are so many out of the box ways. You don’t have to do things the same way 
everyone else is doing, but everybody’s getting lazy now, because they see the quick
way to get it done. But I think what’s going to happen to those people, it’s going
to be what happened to the people early on in the early internet era. When the guys
got the big, quick SEO money. Because remember I was telling you, “Hey man, don’t
do the ad set. Don’t go too far down that AdSense rabbit hole. Build your list.”

Well, remember all those guys who are killing it with AdSense. And then were, boom.
Thanos snapped his fingers and then all of them money was gone. That’s going to 
happen to everybody who doesn’t build their creative muscle. Russell: 100%.