Why We Turned Down a $35 Milllion Acquisition Offer With Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels

0.031 - 15.772 Nathan Latka

This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.

16.272 - 19.396 Russell Brunson

I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million.

19.416 - 36.478 Nathan Latka

He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Jose Avila. He is a 17-year-old that doesn't want to go to college and he wants to start his own business.

65.108 - 82.647 Nathan Latka

They loved when Tim Draper came on, who's raised over $10 billion. He was the first VC in California. And our guest today, I'll tell you what, is a rising trailblazer. His name is Russell Brunson, and he really is a first mover in the world of internet marketing. He became most famous for his sophisticated use of split testing.

83.007 - 102.702 Nathan Latka

Russell started his first business while studying at university, selling over a million dollars worth of his own products and services from his basement by the time he graduated. Since then, he's started and built diverse businesses, including software company ClickFunnels and coaching company DotComSecrets. Russell, are you ready to take us to the top? I'm ready, man. All right, let's do this.

102.782 - 111.51 Nathan Latka

First things first, just real quick, I want to focus on your university time because a lot of Top Tribe listeners are still in school looking to start their own business. What were you selling from your dorm room?

126.145 - 142.472 Russell Brunson

So that, and then I started building, hiring people to build software for me. So between software and how-to information products, that's how I got my start while I was in college. I love that. And how old are you now? Uh, 35, 35, 11, but dude, it's great.

142.492 - 152.98 Nathan Latka

Hey, you can still call up the reporter and pull off the whole young business guy story and get the free press, man. It's an advantage. All right. So take me back. Take me back.

153.02 - 170.831 Russell Brunson

Was Dotcom Secrets first or ClickFunnels? No, Dotcom Secrets was our coaching company we've had for, man, for a long time, five or six years. And it's been coaching, teaching entrepreneurs. And what's funny is I would do events and workshops all around the world. I spoke at Tony Robbins event everywhere, teaching this concept of funnels.

171.272 - 187.116 Russell Brunson

And people would get it and they get so excited, but then they didn't know what to do. Right. And so about a year and a half ago, I guess about two years ago now, we sat down and said, we need to build something that makes this process that we do and we teach actually easy for everyone. And that's kind of the catalyst for where ClickFunnels came from.

187.356 - 200.637 Nathan Latka

OK, so let's just I don't want to spend a lot of time on dotcom secrets. I want to spend time on ClickFunnels because I know a lot of our guests have actually they swear by it. You know, Carrie Wilkerson we had back in episode number 12. She commands 12K per speech and breaks down how she gets paid speaking gigs.

200.898 - 213.682 Nathan Latka

She told me the only conference she went to over the past few months was actually your conference. She said you, ClickFunnels, were your favorite tool. So you're paying the right people, Russell. Just kidding, just kidding. It's good. So break it down real quick. Dotcom Secrets, you did it for five years.

213.923 - 217.57 Nathan Latka

Were you just to have clients on retainer, basically, and you were doing consulting?

217.853 - 235.549 Russell Brunson

Um, a lot of things. We have a lot of information products. Like I just, I published my first book this year called.com secrets. And then we have, um, membership sites that have, you know, thousands and thousands of members. And then we have our hiring coaching program. So we have, uh, 12,000 to 25,000, a hundred thousand dollar coaching program. So we still, we still actively run those.

236.21 - 239.252 Russell Brunson

Um, and that's kind of what we've been doing for the last, you know, for a long time.

256.434 - 259.399 Nathan Latka

It's like the software you wish you had early on.

259.419 - 268.093 Russell Brunson

Yeah, a lot of it. In fact, a lot of our ClickFunnels members come over and they want the strategy behind it. You know, like what's the best way to use this? And that's where a lot of that consulting money comes from. Yeah.

268.175 - 276.77 Nathan Latka

Okay, I want to dive deep real quick on the, you mentioned you had a book come out this year. So walk, first off, what was the book title? Was it Dotcom Secrets?

294.09 - 309.668 Russell Brunson

So it, the book was kind of like the bridge between our coaching and the software. Like here's, here's how I think about funnels and, and how they work in the process. And I kind of, that's what the whole book's about. And he would get that book and they see it now. Like it makes us very clear, like, wow, this is what I need to be doing and how I need to be doing it.

310.148 - 330.295 Russell Brunson

And so it was kind of a, you know, an information piece to indoctrinate people into the whole world of funnel building and for whatever kind of business they have. So That's what the book was for, to kind of bridge that gap between the consulting and the software. Okay, and how many copies of the book did you sell? Month one, we sold 26,000 copies. Since then, we sell a lot of them.

330.455 - 335.222 Russell Brunson

I'm not sure the exact numbers. We're probably at 40-something thousand copies now.

338.387 - 353.97 Nathan Latka

In addition to, great. And that's amazing. I mean, one of the things I think, I think, I don't remember correctly, but I think I actually went on the page where you were selling us. Am I right in remembering that it was free, but you charged like you kind of, you doubled kind of what shipping would be. So you really made your money back on the book and on the shipping?

353.95 - 369.934 Russell Brunson

Well, the book was free. We lost money on the shipping. Shipping's $7.95 anywhere in the world. So on average, we lost about $12 per book. But because of the sales funnel, we averaged $32 for every free book I gave away. In terms of them buying ClickFunnels? From the sales funnel.

369.914 - 390.374 Nathan Latka

Yep. Oh, interesting. So give me just the call to action for people that don't have the book. First off, they should go buy it. OK, I will link to it in the show notes at Nathan Latka dot com forward slash the top one three seven. Russell, what was the call to action you gave in the book to get them to actually go online and jump into ClickFunnels? Um, I think, you know, it wasn't a lot.