Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to a late night, well not too late, it’s about 8 at night, so a later night Marketing In Your Car. Alright everyone, so I’m heading back to the office, we are day two of our hack-a-thon, which is so much fun. So we had the last, we had about a 4 hour smack-down today deciding the future of Clickfunnels and it got heated, it got a little bit….a little tension, but it was all good because it’s just interesting. I love my partners and love the people in the company, everyone has, we’re all definitely people who are great at what they do, so we have strong opinions, but when all was said and done, a couple of things I think are very true. One is we all respect each other, like insanely, a ton. And number two is that we care about the customers, and that’s really where the conversation keeps going to, is what is best for our customers, which is awesome. Way better than, what does the board of directors want, which is once again why I will never do the whole VC thing, on top of all the other jokes. But it was really good and we have some really cool directional things that we’re doing that, some things make me nervous but they’re going to be huge. Game changing type things. So I’ll share more as we keep going on, but I just wanted to kind of share that.

And then I wanted to talk to you guys about something that I think is really important, that’s on my mind. It’s interesting, I looked at the last 12 years of me being in this business, and first year I was just hustling and tried to make a little bit of money and I did and that was awesome. And then I tried to make a little more and I remember I was just hustling. We’d do a promotion and make $15- $20K and then I wouldn’t do anything for 3 or 4 months. Then we’d try something else and we’d make a little more, here and there. And I remember one day one of my friends who’s in the business was like, “Did you pass six figures yet?” I was like, “ No.” because in my mind six figures a year is insane, that’s not even possible. Then I was like, wait. I started doing the math, I was like “Oh my gosh. I did, I passed six figures this year. That doesn’t make any sense to me. That seems outside of logic.” It wasn’t something I believed was happening. So then I got excited, now I got a goal. I want to make a million dollars in a year.

So we went towards that goal, and went towards that goal. It’s funny because I think it took me 3 or 4 years to cross a million dollar mark, and there’s some mental barrier. I missed it by a few ten thousand dollars 2 or 3 years in a row. I just remember I was like, why can I not break the million dollar mark in a year? It just seemed so impossible for some reason and I couldn’t figure it out. And then after I finally did break the million dollar mark, then that mental barrier was gone and I shot to the next level and we got to the point where I think my best year we did 8.9 million in the calendar year, and I think we did 10 if we looked at it from a start day. A 365 start day from the peaks. But in the calendar year, from January 1^st to December 31^st, on tax is 8.9 million was the biggest year I had. After that is when the company crashed, if you listen back through all my old marketing in your car’s you’ll hear all those stories. That’s not for today.

Then we restarted, and we started growing and we stuck at 3 million dollars a year, for 5 years in a row, stuck, stuck, stuck. We tried focusing, which got us to 3 million, we were like let’s diversify, let’s launch 10 companies. We launched 10 companies and we still made 3 million. Then, it was just thing after thing after thing.  And then we started having a little more success when some of our other offers started going bigger. Neurocell did well and a couple of other offers started doing well. Anyway, it was just……but it still, then I think we were hovering around 6 million or so. I was like, “How do we get back to 10 million without having a hundred employees? How is that possible?” And I remember going to marketing events and people would be like, “Okay, this is the whatever guy. This is the whatever person.” And everyone would have their thing, and be like, “Russell, what’s your thing?” and I was like,, “We’re all things marketing. We do copywriting and we do funnels, and we do traffic.” We just kind of did everything. And I always thought that was a strategic advantage. “You can go to this guy to learn whatever, but we’re going to teach you the whole thing.” And that was always our whole thing. We want to teach everything.

Just by nature, we were good at everything, so we wanted to show everything and teach everything in this market and that’s what we did. And the problem is we just kept getting stuck and stagnant. And I never could figure out why. And then the whole Clickfunnels thing came and it wasn’t something we even invented the conversation. People had been talking about funnels, we’d been talking about funnels for 8 or 9 years. And I remember at the time, Ryan Deiss Traffic and Conversions Summit was all about funnels, seems like it was a hot topic right when we were building this tool. It really was a perfect storm when we launched it and all these things and it took off. And I wrote my book, and my book wasn’t ever really about funnels. Like if I was to re-title it now I probably would change the title, at least the subtitle, to be more about this is a funnel book. But it didn’t it was just me teaching my process, but it all came down to funnels. When you look at the whole process, it was all funnels. And people read that book and because that came so close to Clickfunnels people associated it as this is the guide book or the handbook for funnels and this is the software, and that means Russell, therefore, is the funnel guy.

But at first I didn’t like that because I was like, there’s a lot of people teaching funnels, I’m not the funnel guy, I’m the guy who does everything. And it’s interesting, but that’s kind of like I had this weird pride thing that I wanted to bigger than funnels, or I wanted to be whatever, but people kept kind of pigeon holing it, you’re the funnel guy, you’re the funnel guy. And finally after a while I started embracing it and shifting things and now all of our products are being tied to that. Funnel Scripts, here’s the scripts to your funnels. We had High Ticket Secrets, which is your high ticket funnel, and we had all these  other things that we have rolled out before and since. And then we started tying things to Clickfunnels. We have our Quick Start Program, which is helping people set up. We’ve got our funnel certification program, even my Inner Circle, interesting enough, transitioned to a funnel inner circle. Someone even mentioned it, last meeting. The reason why we’re in this room is because Russell’s the best in the world at funnels. I was like, how interesting is that? And I really think that the big….I mean obviously there’s a lot of things that happened, but one of the biggest thing for us that took us from where we’re at now to this year, I don’t want to share numbers or anything, but it’s going to be, I mean 3 or 4 maybe even 5 times more than my biggest year of all time. It’s just kind of crazy.

And I really feel like it’s because we picked our thing. And that’s what we’re focusing on. Everything we’re doing is around this one concept of funnels and we’re trying to become the best in the world at funnels. Our coaching’s around funnels, our products around funnels. Our front end offers are around webinar funnels and book funnels. Everything is tied to this conversation that we are trying to become the best in the world at, and I think that that’s one of the keys. As much as I hated to go that way and I didn’t want to, and I fought it for so long. Because I’m good at a lot of things, I wanted to be all these things, but I don’t think that’s the key. The key is figuring out what are you the best in the world at? What is your thing? And then everything you create is tied to that one thing. You know, Ryan Deiss just posted, I think Digital Marketers, he’s says it’s been 5 years now and I was reading this post. It was really cool, I really enjoyed it. But he was talking about how every year their business model changes. They were this, they were this, and they were this. You know, one year they were funnels, the next they were consultants, the next year they were whatever, and this year they’re doing certifications and it’s kind of like, their business keeps changing and I know they’re doing well, but my guess is that if they would pick a track and stick with it, and they’re trying to obviously, one of them is going to become the thing for them, but if you were to ask people 3 years ago who does funnels in the industry everyone would have said Ryan Deiss, but they shifted away from that. They shifted their focus to the next thing. It was the machine in email marketing and then it was…..and now it’s certifications. So I’m hoping they find their spot, I think certifications; I think what they’re doing with certifications is unique and cool and nobody else is doing it. We’re definitely not going that direction. I think that there’s this area that they’re going to carve out and just kind of own. I hope that’s the plan. I hope. I love to see what they can do if they execute hard on that for 3 or 4 years and just focus there.

I look at us we’re focusing now on this one thing and I start looking at a whole bunch of things are going through my mind right now. How do I build a community? Surround a topic? Our community, we’re funnel hackers. We funnel hack. We can have live events, hack-a-thons, the funnel hacking live event. It’s funnels and …. And it’s suddenly all these things and if you want to build a cult or a culture, it comes down to becoming the best in the world at one thing and then tying everything you’re doing around that concept.

Kind of a fun idea behind that. One of my close buddies, Chad Woolner, he’s a chiropractor and he’s been kind of trying to figure out his spot in the world outside of his practice. What does he want to do? How does he want to serve people outside of that? A little while ago he decided he wanted to help serve chiropractors and help other one’s get to the point that he’s gotten, really free themselves from the startup of a practice and those kind of things. So he started a podcast, he’s doing all these things, and they’re all good and he’s teaching everything from how to do this to this, all these things which are broad and good. And we were at a camping trip the other day, and I was sitting there and I was like, “Would I go on Paychat to learn how to grow my Chiropractic business?” and I was like, “I don’t know if I would.” Not that he doesn’t know his thing, because he does, but I don’t think he’s the best in the world at all those things that he’s teaching, all those things. What could Chad be the best in the world at. And I was thinking, and this isn’t the answer for everyone, but for him I was like, “Dude, you’re probably the only Chiropractor on Earth that knows anything about funnels. You build funnels, you build your own funnels, online funnels, offline funnels. I would venture to assume that you are the best in the world at Chiropractic funnels right now. That should be your thing man. You should shift all your branding and everything around that one thing and make that your focus. If that was your focus and I was a chiropractor I would come to you in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t come to you to learn how to build a chiropractic business, because you don’t have the biggest Chiropractor business, so I wouldn’t come to you for that. I would go to whoever did. But you’re the best in the world at chiropractic funnels. I would come to you for that. If you were to come to an event, let’s say there’s a big event in your industry you could say ‘hey, I’m the Chiropractic Funnel Dude.’ They would allow you to speak because you are that person.”

And I was looking at the other Chiropractic guru’s and there’s a social media one, there’s different ones and each of them would have their little spot in the ecosystem. I’ve always, again like I said, I always was kind of resistant to that and fought that, but now I really think that’s the key. Anyway, I just wanted to leave that while I’m driving back to the office to kind of think on. What is your thing? I know you’re good at everything, because you’re amazing. So of all those things, where, when someone says, “Oh, so and so, they’re the funnel dude. They’re the social media dude. They’re the eat fat and butter dude. Or put butter in your coffee dude.” Or whatever your market is. What makes you unique? What makes you different?

It’s kind of funny, I was looking at our old products, we had micro-continuity, which was cool, but it was just another random thing where now I can be like, “hey micro-continuity funnels.” And suddenly takes a concept and wraps it in a way that is unique to me and now it gives context and now people care. Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully that helps some of you guys and I hope you take some time to kind of carve out where in the world you fit into your ecosystem. And don’t fight it because you feel like you’re better than it. Own it. And I think that’s how you go deep with people and your audience. That’s where you’re going to see the biggest transformation. So there you go you guys. I hope you enjoyed that. That’s all I got. I appreciate you all, thanks for listening. Thanks for being part of this crazy community we’re trying to build, and I’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.