# You’re One Funnel Away – Part 1

- Link: https://jarvislegacy.com/podcast/youre-one-funnel-away-part-1/
- Published: 2017-07-29T00:34:00-07:00
- Author: anchorwave

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You're One Funnel Away - Part 1

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You’re just one funnel away…

On this special two part episode you will hear the first part of Russell’s “One 
Funnel Away” presentation from Funnel Hacking Live. In this episode you’ll hear:

 * What the first product was that ever made Russell any money and how he only had
   to pay $20 for someone to write the software.
 * How Russell first hired employees and what he learned about having to actually
   pay them.
 * How Russell and his first team were able to make $55K in a two week period just
   in time to save Christmas.

So listen to this first portion of Russell’s story, and don’t forget to come back
for the second half.

—Transcript—

Hey everyone this is Russell Brunson, welcome to a special Marketing Secrets episode
where I’m going to let you guys see behind the scenes at one of our presentations
at last year’s Funnel Hacking Live.

So this presentation is one that I was really nervous at giving, it was called “
One Funnel Away” which is the whole theme of the last Funnel Hacking Live event.
It’s something that I wanted to share my failures, my bankruptcy stories, the ups
and the downs. Everyone here talks about the highlight reel; I wanted to share the
other side of it. I don’t typically release sessions from  Funnel Hacking anywhere
but this one had such a big impact on our audience and let people know that everyone,
including me, especially me, has big ups and big downs, yet we’re just one funnel
away from success each time. So as we’re preparing for the next Funnel Hacking Live,
which will be coming live soon at Funnelhackinglive.com, I was re-watching some 
of the presentations and saw this one and wanted more people to have this.

So I’m going to break this up into two episodes. This is episode number one, go 
check it out. Leave me a comment if you like it, subscribe, tell other people about
it and hopefully it will give you some hope and faith that the path you are on is
right and this process is going to get you what you want and desire and let you 
serve other people. So that’s the game plan, check out this episode and I will see
you on part two tomorrow.

Okay, so what I want to do is go on a journey with you guys, my journey, which started
way back over here on my timeline, in my back story. So those who know me or have
heard about me or know anything about this, initially I started learning about business
when I was a 12 or 13 year old kid, sitting there with my dad watching the news 
and I was like, “I can’t believe he hasn’t told me to go to bed yet. This is the
coolest thing in world.” And the news was on and when it ended Mash came on and 
I was like, “He must think I’m asleep or something. He hasn’t told me to go to bed.”
I’m sitting there trying not to move, I didn’t want to let him know. I’m sitting
there watching Mash with my dad, I thought it was the coolest thing in the whole
world.

Then when Mash got done, he still didn’t say anything, I was like, “He’s gotta be
convinced I’m asleep, this is whole cool.” Then the next thing came one and it was
an infomercial, a late night infomercial with Don Lepre. How many of you guys remember
Don Lepre? Yes, just an amazing person, he had an infomercial and I was so grateful
for his passion and excitement, talking about what he was doing.  The infomercial
was about how to place tiny little classified ads and you can make a fortune. And
it was it was the coolest thing. I remember sitting there listening to him and I
was like, “This makes so much sense.” I’m looking at my dad like, are you paying
attention to what’s happening? The whole thing made so much sense to me.

He said, “I took a classified ad, put it in the newspaper and I made 30 dollars 
and told my friends and family, ‘I made $30. I started a business this weekend,’
and they all laughed at me. So then I took that same ad and ran it in a thousand
newspapers the next month and made 30 thousand dollars.” And I was like, mind blown.
I’ve been ruined from that day on when it comes to the world. I can’t not do something
like this. I was so excited, saved a bunch of money mowing lawns and everything 
and eventually I bought Don Lepre’s kit on the infomercial and I read it all and
learned it and wasn’t able to actually do anything though because I didn’t have 
the money to direct mail and things like that.

But that’s how I first heard about the direct response market. I remember after 
I got Don Lepre’s kit I was so excited I was at the grocery store with my mom and
after we were walking out, on the checkout stand there was a magazine called “Small
Business Opportunity Magazine” that a whole bunch of cartoon people on the front
of it. How many of you guys have seen that magazine before? That’s it? This is the
greatest swipe file of direct response ads ever.

So I didn’t know it at the time, but there were thirty things, how to get rich quick.
I’m like, sweet, I want to get rich quick. That’d be awesome. So I had my mom buy
this magazine and I went home. If you look at it, it’s 140 pages of ads and four
pages of articles, it’s pretty awesome. I was looking at every single ad, “Oh my
gosh. I can sell gold chains at the mall and make money.” So I called this number
for a free info kit. Free info kit gets sent to my house. And the next page it’s
like something else. Page after page, all 140 pages I called every single 800 number
to request the free info kit.

And about a week later, I started getting these gifts in the mail. At first it was
2 or 3 letters, then it was 10 or 15, then it was 60 or 70 letters. And I think 
those companies started selling my name to other mailing lists, because soon it 
was hundreds of letters. And the mailman could not physically shove the junk mail
in the mailbox anymore because there was so much coming in. So I get home from junior
high. I’d come home and walk in the house and see it on the bar. I’d see two or 
three letters for my parents and Russell’s stack of junk mail. They’re like, “There’s
your junk mail.” And I’d take it my room and open it and read these things like,
this is so cool. And all these money making ideas.

So that happened at a young age. Unfortunately I couldn’t do anything, well I tried
once. This one person convinced me that direct mail was the key and all you do is
get a list of buyers who bought similar products and write a sales letter and you
mail it to those people and a percentage will buy. I’m like, “Awesome.” The only
problem is I can’t afford a mailing list, I don’t have any stamps or envelopes or
anything. So I’d done something, I made a little money doing some chores. So I asked
my mom to take that money and instead buy stamps and bring me home stamps. So she
brought me home 38 stamps. That’s how much money I’d made.

I had 38 stamps and I’m like, “This is so awesome.” I used to tell my brothers and
sister and parents, my parents didn’t tease me, but my brothers and sisters did.
I was like, “I’m going to be a millionaire any minute now. This is going to work.”
And they’d be like, “Oh, are you a millionaire yet?” and totally make fun of me.
So I had these 38 stamps and I’m like, “If I can get 10% of these people to buy,
that’s 3 people. If I sell a $50 product that’s $150. I’ll be rich.” I didn’t know
what to do, they talked about sales letters so I was like, “I’ll write a sales letter.”
So I printed it out on blue paper because blue paper they’d be more likely to read.
So I put it on my parents computer, wrote a sales letter, printed out 38 copies 
of it. I couldn’t afford an envelope so I just folded it and stapled it.

I didn’t actually have a mailing list, so I opened up the white pages and flipped
through and randomly picked 38 names, I’m like, “This is going to be huge.” So I
wrote it, put my stamp on it, and all my savings and put it in the mailbox and I
was like, “I’m going to be rich. This is going to be amazing.”  I sent it out, told
everybody, “When this gets out, it’ll be over. I’ll be able to move out, get my 
own house.  It’s going to be amazing.” Unfortunately nobody responded. That was 
the only time I was able to invest. I didn’t have the money to buy a classified 
ad in the newspaper so I just kind of kept reading all this junk mail and learning
from all these people.

A couple of years later I got into wrestling and forgot about making money. But 
there was this seed that had been planted. I wrestled through high school, had a
lot of fun, got a college scholarship, wrestled through college. When I was going
to college I met my insanely beautiful wife, that most of you guys….if not she’s
here hiding. I met her and fell in love really quick and spent the next 3 or 4 months
trying to convince her, in fact that was probably the hardest sale I ever had, to
convince her I was the right one. Did you see that picture? I was kind of a geek,
not going to lie. Anyway, I convinced her to marry me and it was amazing. About 
the time we got engaged, I realized my dad said, “When you get married, I’m not 
going to keep supporting you. That’s when you become a real man.”

I’m like, “What? But dad I’m wrestling.” And he’d always send me money to pay for
food and stuff but he’s like, “No, if you get married, you’re on your own.” I was
like, “Crap, I want to get married but I don’t want to grow up yet.” And my wife,
fiancé at the time, she was working and making money and got a second job to support
us and I was wrestling and didn’t have any money. I’m like, “I gotta do something.”
And luckily the greatest thing in the world happened, that happens to a lot of us.
I was up late at night stressing out about this and then this little thing popped
up on TV, it was an infomercial.

It was this guy talking about how people are making money with these little websites
and that they were doing an event at Holiday Inn the next day and you come and get
tickets. I’m like, “Oh! This is it.” So I called the number and get my tickets to
Holiday Inn and show up and it’s a little, tiny room with 50 really desperate people
sitting there. I get there and there’s a dude onstage all in a suit and tie and 
I’m like, “Whoa, that guy looks rich.” And then he started doing this thing and 
within 5 minutes he closed me on this $50 thing. I ran in the back and had my one
credit card with a $300 credit limit, that’s all I had earned so far. So I bought
my $50 dollar thing and I’m like, “I’m going to make so much money with this.”

And then he pitched on a website and it was $3 grand and everybody’s running back
buying websites and I’m like, “I can’t afford a website. Dangit.” And then he pitched
website hosting at $80 a month and all these things. They’re teaching, “If you call
your bank you can get your credit extended.” I’m like, “Oh, sweet. I didn’t know
that.” So I’m calling the bank like, “Hey can you make my credit line a thousand
dollars.” I’m learning all these things, getting my credit card bigger, which was
kind of cool. The I bought everything he told me. I needed the whole thing, so I
buy it all. He convinced me, he’s like, “Paypal is evil. You have to have a merchant
account. And it’s $6000 for a merchant account.” I’m like, “I don’t have $6000 yet.”
And he’s like, “Well you can’t make money online without a merchant account. $6 
grand.”

But I couldn’t afford that, but I had everything else. I went home and I was like,“
cool, I have a domain name, I got hosting, a thousand dollars worth of internet 
web stuff.” I jumped online and I’m like, “I’m going to have a website.” I was getting
excited. I started Googling things and eventually within 15 minutes I realized website
hosting is not $80 a month, I realized a domain name is not $1000. I was like, crap
I got taken. I was freaked out.

So I ended up calling the next day, I was like, “My son is a minor and he was at
your event last night and he charged all his credit cards and he needs to be out
of this contract.” And they got me out of the contract and gave me my money back.
That’s one trick, if you ever need to get out of a contract, it’s worked almost 
every time. So those are the real Dotcom Secrets.

So at that point I was in, I was like, “Oh my gosh. I need to sell stuff on the 
internet. That started this thing about the time my wife and I were getting married
and I was trying to sell stuff. I was selling all sorts of things. I remember initially
thought it was eBay. Maybe people make money on eBay. I remember driving to the 
thrift store buying everything I could find that I thought was worth value. On my
bike, with grocery sacks full of crap, riding my bike back home. I bought a Michael
Jackson record. I was like, “Records are so old, this has got to be worth hundreds
of dollars.” I ended up selling it for 13 cents on eBay. I was so depressed. I was
boxing and shipping things out and when all was said and done I made $40 or $50 
but my costs were $150-200. I was going and trying to find boxes for all of these
weird things I had bought. It was just horrible.

I was sitting at the post office with 18 different boxes of weird things, records
and all these things. And there’s this dude standing there with a big box full of
cd’s. hundreds and hundreds of cd’s, and I’m here with a wheel barrel full of odd
boxes and I’m like, “Dude, what are you selling?” and he’s like, “Oh I sell information
products.” I was like, “What does that mean?” and he’s like, “All these cd’s have
info burned on them and people pay me and I ship them a cd.” I’m like, “Is it the
same cd?” and he’s like, “Yeah, I have a cd burner. I just burn them. Then I put
them in these things and send them out.”

I was like, “Are you kidding me?” They’re all the same size. I could just buy one
box, it would be so much easier. So that’s when we started talking about information
products. I was like, “I didn’t know that was even a thing.” I got all excited about
information products and started Googling stuff and started learning about information
products.

I ended up buying this cd and it was a cd that 8000 coloring book pages for kids
and the guy was selling it, I emailed him and said, “This cd is cool. Can I buy 
the rights to this cd, I want to sell it?” and he was like, “I’ve never done that
before, but sure for $200 I’ll sell you the rights and you can sell it too.” I’m
like, “Sweet.” So I gave him $200 that I didn’t have and he gave me the rights and
I had the cd and basically all I had to do was burn it on a cd burner and I could
mail it out as many times as I wanted. And he had a big long sales letter he let
me use, so I put his sales letter up and started trying things.

What was cool, I started making sales. Not a lot, every other week it would make
a sale for $20. I would burn the cd and ship it out and I was like, “This is so 
cool.” Information products became the thing and I was trying to figure out how 
that whole thing worked and I started bumping into people like Yanik Silver and 
all these different internet marketing guru’s and watching what they were doing,
selling information products and I was just hooked at that point.

About that time I started watching what they were doing and I started learning and
creating different things. In fact, one of my very first products ever, does anybody
in this room remember the product Zip Brander? Three people. I had all these info
products and I was buying resell rights to other people’s products and I’m selling
these things. And I was like, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way if when I sent
this digital file to somebody, when they first opened it, instead of just getting
the file they see an ad for my product and then they see the file? That was my first
light bulb. It’s like zipping a file, but when you zip it would be branded and when
they open it, they see your ad first. I was like this is it. I thought this was 
it. That was my idea, I thought it was going to change the world as we know it.

So I bought zipbrander.com and I remember Arman Morin at the time was one of the
guys I was studying. I was like Arman is so cool. Every one of his sites were so
similar and I’m looking and Arman always had a big header graphic with his picture
with his arms folded with a suit coat on. I was like, that’s what I need. So I got
a picture of me folding my arms in a suit coat. And he had a header, so I had a 
header that looked just like his. His were always Ecover Generator so I was like
Zipbrander, looked identical. This is where my funnel hacking started. He had this
big long sales letter. I was like, this looks weird, but Arman’s doing it so I’m
going to do it.

So I looked at his sales letter and wrote my own based on that. Then I was like 
how do I create this, I didn’t know that. My first thought is I should just become
a computer engineer. That would be the coolest thing. I want to make software. So
I switched my major to Computer Information Systems so I could learn how to code.
It was about the time the semester was changing. So I get to class the first day
and the teacher gets up there and starts talking about code and databases and all
these things and structures and I was sitting there like, “oh crap. I have no idea
what he’s talking about. Not even a little bit.” Within about 15 seconds I realized
I am not a coder and never will be a coder. I couldn’t even understand. I thought
it was a Spanish class or something. I was like I don’t even know what he’s saying.

But I didn’t know how to change my major again, so I just kind of stayed in it. 
I kind of got depressed, that was my one idea. I guess I can’t do it. And then I
remember I was listening to a tele-seminar. I was at a wrestling tournament and 
we were driving to California, it was a 16 hour drive. I downloaded on my, it was
pre-iPod’s, it was this tape player thing, a whole bunch of tele-seminar’s that 
Arman had done. I’m listening to these things in the back of the car where all these
other wrestlers are partying and having fun and listening to music and I’m listening
to these seminars. They were totally making fun of me the whole time, if you meet
any of my wrestling buddies, they relentlessly made fun of me the entire trip. “
You’re such a nerd. You’re never going to be able make money.” I’m like, “I swear
I will.”

So I’m listening to these the whole way and on one of these things like 22 hours
into this thing Arman says, “I don’t code software. I go to Scriptlance and I pay
guys in Romania and India hardly anything to build stuff.” And I was like, Arman’s
not a programmer? I thought he was a programmer. There are people in India who can
do this? So literally that night I jumped on Scriptlance and actually prior to that
I had tried to hire a company to do it and they had quoted me $5 thousand. I was
like, “Okay, I don’t have that.”

So I took the same description I had given these guys and posted it on Scriptlance
and instantly I got, all these people started bidding on it. One guy was like, “
I’ll do it for $5000.” “I’ll do it for $2000.” “For $1000.” “For $500” and it came
all the way down to this guy in India who was like, “I’ll do it for $20” I was like,“
I got $20”  So I picked him.

He was like, “So this is how I’m going to do it.” I was like, “I don’t know what
you’re talking about. Just do it.” He spent 2 or 3 days and sent it back, “Here 
it is.” I tried it. Zipped a file and opened it and my ad showed up and I was like,“
you did it. Oh my gosh.” And he’s like, “yeah, thanks for the $20.” And I was like,“
No, this is going to be huge. I’m going to make millions of dollars and I feel guilty
giving you $20, can I give you an extra hundred?” and he’s like, “Yeah.” So I gave
him $100 and I felt good about it.

That was my very first software product that I ever did and it didn’t make me millions.
I probably made 10-20 grand with that product. But it was the first one that I had
a sales letter, started driving traffic, doing Google ads, I was finding JV, all
these things and I started selling it and that was the first thing that made me 
any money. Isn’t that exciting? How many of you guys want Zipbrander? The first 
30 people in the back….just kidding. It doesn’t work anymore.  The coding stopped
working 10 internets ago. So it’s done.

But that was my first software product, it was so cool. About that time was when
I started learning more about info products. That when the Potato gun came out, 
the potato gun DVD. All these things, doing all these little businesses and none
of them were huge smashing, million dollar successes. I didn’t pull a Dan Henrie
and read a book and 5 months later made a million bucks. I was like, “Hey I made
5 grand here. Oh I made 200 dollars here.”

These little things kept happening, it was so cool. And every project did a little
better. It was like slow momentum, every one did a little better than the last one
because I got more customers coming in and more people. I kept making things in 
different markets, potato guns and all these sorts of different things and every
one of them got a little better and it was fun. I remember back then I started doing
tele-seminars and I’d get 30 people online and I’d talk about something and sell
it at the end and some people would buy it and it was so exciting. That was the 
start of this whole thing for me.

Then one of my friends, BJ, he’s sitting over here. He was a wrestler in Nebraska,
I wrestled at Boise State, it was my senior year, I’d made pretty good money. Probably
$150-200,000, somewhere in there my senior year. He’d heard about and Boise State
was wrestling Nebraska and we’re sitting there wrestling and we’re glaring at each
other because we’re opposite teams and afterwards he’s like, “Hey man, someone told
me you’re making money. Is that true?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “How are
you doing it?” So we talked about it a little bit.

We flew back to our places to finish out college and we kind of talked back and 
forth for a little while. Then after college got done he’s like, “Hey man, I want
to do what you’re doing. Can I get a job?” I was like, “You want a job?” and he’s
like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “What would you do all day?” and he’s like, “I don’t know.
I’ll do what you’re doing.” I’m like, “okay, can we talk about marketing stuff.”
He’s like, “I love talking about that.” I’m like, “This will be so cool. I have 
no one to talk about this stuff.” I thought it was just me.

I’m like, “So you’re actually into this stuff.” He’s like, “Yeah man.” I’m like,“
Okay, yeah I’ll give you a job. Come on out.” So he jumps on a plane, flies to Boise
and literally moves into our office. Slept in our office for 6 months. He’s like,“
so how does this work?” I’d never had an employee before. “I don’t really know either.
I’ll pay you, we can talk about marketing and sell stuff and it’ll be awesome.” 
Me as an entrepreneur, I was in this mode of eat what you kill. I’d sell something,
make a bunch of money and I was like, sweet. Then we wouldn’t do anything for 4 
or 5 months, then create something, sell it, make a bunch of money and that’s the
model I was on for a long time.

Then BJ came and wanted to be an employee and I was so excited. I’m like, “sure.”
He’s an employee and the weirdest thing happened. Every two weeks he wanted to get
paid whether we made money or not. I had never heard that. I was like, “Okay, here’s
some more money.” And then two weeks later, more money. I was like, oh crap we haven’t
sold anything for a long time. Then he had some other friends who came along like,“
This is cool. I want to work for you too.” I’m like, “Alright come on over. Let’s
get jobs.” So I gave them jobs, his buddies and his wife and some other people. 
I got all these friends that want to talk about marketing with me, this is so fun.

So we had all these people coming over but the problem was that every two weeks 
they wanted to get paid, but we weren’t selling anything. So I’d go lock myself 
in the back room and be like, “Don’t bug me guys, I gotta make money so we can all
hang out again.” So I’d close the door and start working and selling stuff. They’d
be like, “Dude can we help you?” I’d be like, “Shut up! If you talk to me I can’t
make money to pay you, so go away.” They’re like, “We feel bad, we want to help 
you Russell.” So I’m like, “I don’t have time to train you, otherwise we can’t make
money to pay payroll.” That was this thing.

What’s interesting is, this is one of my first lessons as an entrepreneur, that 
was tough. We had 5 or 6 people at the time. We hired this video guy that was….there’s
so many side stories, I can’t tell you all of them. He was an Indian guy who had
shorts up to here and had a braid that went past his shorts. Because he told me 
in the interview, “Yeah, I’m a video guy.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? We could
do videos!” and he’s like, “Yeah, I got all sorts of video stuff.” So we hired him
and it turned out he didn’t know anything about video at all.

But I didn’t dare to fire him because I had never fired anyone and I was so scared.
Everyday we’re like, “I wish he would just quit. I don’t dare to fire him.” I don’t
know what to do. All these weird learning things. This went on for a while. I was
launching something every week trying to make money to cover payroll and it was 
this huge thing and became horribly not fun for a long time. It kept getting worse
and worse to the point where it was December, it was the beginning of December, 
it was freezing cold and I was looking at everything and every penny I’d ever made
was gone. Every idea I had how I could hustle and sell to different markets was 
gone. I was just drained, I didn’t know what to do.

It was Christmas time, I was outside and I went to go hang up lights around my house,
and someone had sent me an iPod Nano and Stu MacLarin had done an event, I don’t
even know if he knows this, he sent me the links, so I downloaded the links to his
event on this iPod, plug it into my ears and start hanging up Christmas lights, 
which I had never done before, it was a horrible job. Turns out you can hire people
for really cheap to do that and the lights look really straight. Mine were like,
they looked really bad. I kept stapling through the wires and kill the lights. It
was bad. And my fingers were so numb. I had this little light coat on and my fingers
were so numb and I had to have my gloves off to squeeze the thing and I’d put them
back in to get warm and I’d go back and I didn’t want to go back inside and get 
warm because I was so depressed.

I knew that the next payroll was coming up in a week or so and I was like, I don’t
have money. I don’t know what to do. Tomorrow I need to go in and tell these guys
or it’s going to be really awkward when payroll does come and I’m like sorry guys.
So I have to tell everyone this. So I stayed outside in the cold because I didn’t
want to go in and I was trying to think. So I’m stapling these Christmas lights 
around the house as I’m listening to this audio. In the audio there’s two different
speakers talking about different business models. Back then no one was calling these
things funnels, but they talked about these different business models that they 
were doing.

One of them was an offline guy, his name is John Olmos, some of you guys have heard
about him, he’s the guy that taught me about the attractive character. He said, “
I have this thing I’ve been doing where I create these cd’s and tell everyone it’s
so controversial that I can’t put it on the internet.” Which is the funniest thing
ever. “Because of that you have to pay me $5 and I’ll ship you this cd.” He said,“
What happens is I ship them this cd but then that customer financed me sending them
a sales letter.” I was like, that is brilliant, we gotta do that. I remember I filmed
this cd like two years earlier, or a DVD. I was like, we could do that. We could
burn that DVD and we could start sending that out.

So that was the first presentation, John Olmos. The next presentation was this guy
named Matt Bacak, who’s become a close friend since then. Matt was talking about
his business model, he said, “What I do is send out cd’s and people who bought cd’s,
I call them on the phone and we sell them coaching.” And I was like, “You can call
people on the phone.” I’m an internet nerd but I was like, “Wait..” and I was super
scared but I knew there was a guy that worked for me at the time, one of my 5 or
6 friends, who had sold things on the phone before

All the sudden I was like, “Oh my gosh. What if we figured out something we could
do where we could save this thing. It might actually be possible.” I’m started getting
more excited. I’m hanging up Christmas lights and I’m just like, this funnel was
going through my head and I’m like okay I think I’ve figured out a blend of what
these two guys are saying, it could actually work.

So by the time I got done hanging up Christmas lights I texted all of them, “Guys,
you don’t know this yet, we’re about to go bankrupt, but I got an idea that I think
can save it. Let’s meet tomorrow morning early, I’m going to walk you guys through
what I think could actually save this business.” Send.

They’re all texting back, “What? We’re going through bankruptcy.” And I’m like, “
Yeah, we’re about to.” Luckily they all came in the next day and I’m like, “Okay
you guys, I got a model. This is what we’re going to do. Remember that DVD I did
like two years ago? We’re going to take that, it’s going to be a free DVD, it’s 
going to be so controversial we can’t sell it on the internet. We’ll charge $4.95
shipping and handling. We’ll send this DVD out to them and inside the DVD we’re 
going to have a sales letter where we’re going to sell $5500.” I don’t know why 
we said that price, but they’re like, “cool, what are we going to sell for $5500?”
And I’m like, “I don’t know. What do you guys want to sell?”

So we had our white board and we’re like, “If someone is going to give us $5500,
it would have to be something amazing.” And we made this huge list for 2 hours of
all the amazingness. I was like, “That would be awesome, but I’m not willing to 
do half of that stuff.” We’re not going to have them sleep at my house, we’re not
going to…we crossed out all these things. I’m like, “I’m actually willing to sell
this. I think people would actually buy that. That would be insane.”

So we took that and at the same time we added a newsletter. So if somebody bought
the cd they joined a newsletter that was $37 a month. So they came here, joined 
the newsletter, $37 a month. And that was the funnel. Back then we didn’t have Clickfunnels
so luckily we had one or two nerds still working for us that were able to put these
pieces together and we had this really rudimentary, horrible looking funnel and 
it was live within a day and we’re like, “Okay let’s try it.” At the time I had 
a little tiny email list, this is pre-Facebook, this is Myspace days. So we push
some traffic to this and we end up selling a couple hundred of these cd’s. In the
cd we shipped out to them came a sales letter talking about this and it put people
in a continuity program and then we called everybody about the cd, “Hey you bought
the cd, how would you like to come to Boise and we’re going to give you this.” This
was our hail mary pass. Please let this work.

We did that, we focused on it. We drove traffic to it, and when all was said and
done, over the next two week period of time we got 800 people to get our free cd.
From that, the way we used to do it is everybody was on continuity. So we had 800
people that were on this $37 continuity, but it was free for a month, so we weren’t
making any money here. But we had 800 people’s phone numbers who we were able to
call.

So we started calling them, and we didn’t know anything about phone sales or anything.
We were like, “Hey man, you bought this cd, you want to come hang out with Russell?”
They were like, “Yeah.” And in that two week period of time we sold 10 people at
$5500 a piece, which ended up being $55k and that funnel saved Christmas. Is that
awesome? It’s awesome.

I was able to pay all of our payroll. We had some money left over, it was awesome.
And the cool thing is 30 days later, this thing started and all these people were
on continuity and suddenly we had a business. This is when I learned the power of
continuity. David Frye, who’s one of my favorite people in the whole world, he’s
here in the audience I think, he used to always say, “Until you have continuity 
you don’t have a business.” And I never understood that until this. There’s David
smiling over there. I love that guy. Now I found out, I had all these people.

So what happened, I don’t know the math, 800 times $37 a month, it’s like $25 k 
a month and we knew we have continuity now. Every single month we have $25k, that
means I can pay for employees. I realized, you don’t hire employees before you have
continuity. Now we had continuity. Now we actually had people covered and we could
actually focus and think and that was the first funnel that saved things and turned
it around for us.