A Sales & Marketing Coaching Session with Russell Brunson

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Okay, Russell. So, um, I was hoping we could pretend or a- um, act as if this is a business coaching session. You have people rocking up to your office for consults and stuff, people in your mastermind.

Russell Brunson 0:09 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 0:10 So if I rocked up as, like, a new client or something, how would, how would a business coaching session with you-

Russell Brunson 0:17 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 0:17 Like, what would that look like?

Russell Brunson 0:18 What does it look like?

Ali Abdaal 0:19 How, how do, how do, how do we start?

Russell Brunson 0:20 It depends if we've just met. If we just met, like, I'd try to figure out what in the world you do. So I kinda know what you do, which helps a lot. But, um, I guess the biggest question is, like, what... Like, there's always a gap to where you are and where you wanna be. Like, what's that gap? What's it look like?

Ali Abdaal 0:32 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 0:32 'Cause I know where you're at right now, where you're trying to get to, and then we can kinda figure out-

Ali Abdaal 0:35 Sure

Russell Brunson 0:35 ... what's missing.

Ali Abdaal 0:36 Okay. So last year we did about $5.5 million in revenue.

Russell Brunson 0:39 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 0:39 We're operating at about, like, 55, 60%, uh, gro- operating profit pre-tax, whatever the, the EBITDA, whatever the number that is. Um, and that's cool. And-

Russell Brunson 0:52 So what, what percentage was it?

Ali Abdaal 0:53 Uh, like 55, 60.

Russell Brunson 0:54 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 0:54 Something like that.

Russell Brunson 0:55 Awesome.

Ali Abdaal 0:55 Um, and what I would love to do in the game of entrepreneurship is to go from 5 million to 10 million, and also ideally try and dissociate the business revenue from me having to show up and continuously film YouTube videos.

Russell Brunson 1:08 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:08 So th- I guess those are our two main things. Grow revenue, but do it in a way that doesn't necessarily require... Yeah, a- allows me to take a month off without the business then tanking.

Russell Brunson 1:17 Yeah. For sure. Um, where's the revenue breakdown? Like course sales versus other stuff versus what's it, where's the re- that 5 million come from?

Ali Abdaal 1:24 Yep. No, so about 2 million-ish is from our content, which is sort of AdSense on YouTube videos and sponsorships, and the other 3 million-ish is from course sales.

Russell Brunson 1:34 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:35 And so last year the only course we had was our Part-Time YouTuber Academy, which is just a single product. Uh, we were d- we were doing that as a live cohort for about three years, and then last year we switched it to evergreen. We did a final cohort, did a big launch, did 2 million for that launch, which was nice. And so we have that as a $1,000 self-paced course now. And we also have a 5K a year kind of coaching-y program for YouTubers, our YouTuber Accelerator, where, um, my team gives people one-on-one support for growing their channels.

Russell Brunson 2:04 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:04 Uh, we think 5K for 12 months is probably way too cheap given how much-

Russell Brunson 2:08 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:09 ... how much of a nightmare it is to fulfill on that. So we're now thinking of-

Russell Brunson 2:12 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:12 ... turning that into-

Russell Brunson 2:12 Have other people charge for something similar, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:14 Yeah. [laughs] 'Cause we were, we were feeling like, "Oh, we need to give so much value," and then we're like, "Ah, crap, we've sort of signed ourselves up for this 12-month thing." So we're thinking of turning that into, like, 5K for three months, which feels a bit more reasonable. We're thinking of turning our YouTuber self-paced course into $1,000 a year community membership type thing. We're thinking of maybe add- adding in a $300 product. But then a month ago, we created a new value ladder for productivity, which is the thing that I'm known for. It was a bit accidental that we ended up making all this money from YouTube because I'm, uh, I'm not known for the guy who teaches people how to grow on YouTube. That's, that's not my shtick.

Russell Brunson 2:44 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:44 My shtick is how to be more productive. So we launched Productivity Lab, which is a $1,000 a year membership community,

Ali Abdaal 2:49 and we sold 500 spots within 48 hours, and we capped it at 500.

Russell Brunson 2:53 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:54 Um, and that's been going for a month now, and people love it, and it's great.

Russell Brunson 2:57 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:57 And so we really wanna scale that up, but without, like, diluting the quality of the community by having too many people in it.

Russell Brunson 3:03 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 3:03 We're thinking maybe adding, like, a one-on-one productivity coaching offer on the back end, and maybe a sort of $300 course above, uh, sort of at the top of the value ladder as a way of getting people in.

Russell Brunson 3:15 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 3:16 So I just threw-

Russell Brunson 3:16 Cool

Ali Abdaal 3:16 ... a lot of that at you.

Russell Brunson 3:17 Got it.

Ali Abdaal 3:17 I don't know if any of that makes sense.

Russell Brunson 3:18 100%.

Ali Abdaal 3:19 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 3:19 Now, um, right now, so basically each of those you sold during a launch, right? So you did a launch. I'm guessing that you send emails. You were creating videos specifically for it, and then anything else is happening when you're launching those?

Ali Abdaal 3:30 Yeah. So we launched... We, we start by building a wait list, um, by funneling traffic from socials and from YouTube occasionally and from my newsletter into this wait list. We build up a wait list, and then we do, like, a launch sequence, like 10 to 15 days worth of emails, um, to that wait list, and then that's how we do the launches when we were doing launches for our YouTuber Academy and when we did the launch for Productivity Lab.

Russell Brunson 3:51 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 3:51 But where I'd love to get to, and I'd love to get your take on this, is for me, like, launches are quite a stressful way to run a business, and it... When we were running live cohorts for our YouTuber Academy three times a year, it was a real, like, fingers crossed, like, this one week where we can get sales-

Russell Brunson 4:05 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:05 ... out of, like, a four-month period. Like, let's hope we make enough money. Um, and that feels kinda stressful.

Russell Brunson 4:09 Oh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:09 So I'd love for it, for, for the revenue to be a little bit more, like, chill, a little bit more recurring-

Russell Brunson 4:14 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:14 ... which is why we like the idea of turning YouTuber Academy into evergreen self-paced course.

Russell Brunson 4:17 Yeah. The launch, the launch game, like, people live or die by it, 'cause it's like sometimes they hit a launch and they get, you know, $3 to $5 million in sales, and then a year later they do the launch again, and this time it hits $100,000 in sales. And, like, but they built up thinking it's gonna be as big as the la- you know, all that kind of stuff.

Ali Abdaal 4:30 Mate, we had exactly that.

Russell Brunson 4:31 It stresses me out. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:32 During the pandemic, the course completely, like, printed cash.

Russell Brunson 4:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 4:35 Straight after the pandemic, it stopped printing cash, and we were like, "Uh-oh."

Russell Brunson 4:37 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:37 "All of our, all of our projections were based on this continuing to print cash." Money does not grow on trees. It felt kinda bad.

Russell Brunson 4:43 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:44 So I wanna avoid that kind of state of affairs.

Russell Brunson 4:45 Yeah. So right now, if you're not doing a launch though, sales aren't coming in. So is there... Or are they... Is there evergreen kinda working now or-

Ali Abdaal 4:51 Yeah. So we have one evergreen product. Oh, okay. So, so we have a... Actually, if I draw it out-

Russell Brunson 4:55 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:55 ... it might be, might be easier.

Russell Brunson 4:56 For sure.

Ali Abdaal 4:58 So we kinda have... Nice. Ooh, nice thick pens. So we have our sort of YouTube value ladder, and we have our sort of productivity stuff. So on the YouTube we have a $1 self-paced course, which upsells people into a 1K self-paced course, which in theory gets people to apply for the 5K 12-month program. But we-

Russell Brunson 5:19 When you said apply, so do you call them on the phone to sell or what's the process?

Ali Abdaal 5:21 Uh, yeah, we had a sales guy. So they would apply, and then the sales guy would get on a call with them, and then if they were the right fit, great. Um, we've closed sales for this right now because we wanna revamp the offer 'cause it, it was a bit much.

Russell Brunson 5:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 5:32 So each-

Russell Brunson 5:32 This, this is a dollar just for... What is it?

Ali Abdaal 5:35 Just... Oh, it's like a YouTube for beginners course.

Russell Brunson 5:37 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 5:37 Um-

Russell Brunson 5:37 Got it

Ali Abdaal 5:37 ... so roughly we get a f- like maybe, I don't know, 200 sales a week of this.

Russell Brunson 5:42 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 5:42 200 per week. And roughly 4% of people take the upsell to the $1,000 product. But, and overall of the $1,000 product, we get, like, 20 to 30 sales per week. Uh, so this is doing, like, 20K a week. Um, but I'd love the numbers to go up.

Russell Brunson 5:56 And this is just evergreen coming through?

Ali Abdaal 5:58 This is evergreen, and this is currently closed because we are trying to figure out what to do with it.

Russell Brunson 6:01 And then this is only mean- Is this, like, they buy this and this is, like, an upsell? Like- In funnel or is this happening, is there some other mechanism that you're selling this out?

Ali Abdaal 6:08 Oh, yeah. So they could either buy this directly. Um, there's a $27 auto-order bump, thank you for that idea,

Ali Abdaal 6:13 um, of which maybe 30% of people take that. Um, and then also they could just buy this directly. So some, uh, a handful of sales each week trickle in from the upsell, but a bunch of sales come in directly from, uh, th- them just landing on the thing, because this is really aimed at complete beginners. This is how to get your first two videos out there.

Russell Brunson 6:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:33 Whereas this is more like the whole shebang, like everything about growing on YouTube.

Russell Brunson 6:36 Yeah. Okay. And then do you sell this through a webinar or just a VSL or, or just-

Ali Abdaal 6:42 A landing page. [laughs] A really, really long landing page that really-

Russell Brunson 6:44 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 6:45 ... needs to be shorter, but that's the only way we sell this.

Russell Brunson 6:47 It's lo-... Like, is it copy based or video ba- like, what's on the landing page?

Ali Abdaal 6:50 Uh, there is a video at the top, but then there's shit tons of copy.

Russell Brunson 6:52 All right.

Ali Abdaal 6:52 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 6:53 Why do you wanna make it shorter?

Ali Abdaal 6:54 Um, I don't know. It feels like it's a bit too long.

Russell Brunson 6:57 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 6:58 Uh, uh, in- actually inter- inter- interestingly, our, our conversion rate on this landing page is about 0.4%. Oh, dear. 0.4% conversion rate on this landing page.

Russell Brunson 7:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:06 So from person visiting landing page to sales-

Russell Brunson 7:08 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:08 ... about 0.4%, which feels a bit low-

Russell Brunson 7:10 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 7:10 ... 'cause it's mostly organic. I th- I mean, we, we started doing paid a couple months ago, and I actually don't know what the conversion ra- rate is of, like paid versus organic, so that's actually, uh, something to think about.

Russell Brunson 7:20 Um-

Ali Abdaal 7:21 P versus O.

Russell Brunson 7:22 And then are people like... The, the organic side, is it... Are, you have videos specifically promoting this, or every video, like in your description you push this, or what's-

Ali Abdaal 7:31 Yeah

Russell Brunson 7:31 ... how's the sales coming in?

Ali Abdaal 7:32 Got it. Yeah, yeah, good point. So we have every video promoting this thing, but also w- uh, I have a handful of videos on my channel that are like how to grow on YouTube. Those get evergreen traffic, and-

Russell Brunson 7:41 Very specific ones

Ali Abdaal 7:41 ... I casually mention, "Oh, by the way, I've got a course." And I think people are clicking on those although... And we have UTM tracking, but I haven't looked at it in a while, so that's a good point.

Russell Brunson 7:49 Yeah. Cool. Okay, I understand that.

Ali Abdaal 7:51 You understand this. And then on this end, we basically have this 1K per year kind of community membership type thing, which we launched last month. The idea behind this is that it's like Peloton for productivity. So every day there's like Zoom co-working sessions. Every week we're doing facilitated weekly planning. Every month there's obsession. Every quarter I do a weekly w- I do a quarterly webinar to plan your next quarter. We wanna do in-person events and everything, and all of this is 1K a year. And at the moment we've got 500 people in this. Um, we've been doing it for a month. They're all really happy. Um, and we'd love to scale this value ladder, and also this one-

Russell Brunson 8:26 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 8:26 ... to get us to this goal of 10 million in a way that doesn't require me to always be showing up and churning out videos.

Russell Brunson 8:32 And then revenue from this versus this, this is?

Ali Abdaal 8:34 This did about 3 million last year.

Russell Brunson 8:37 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 8:38 And this so far has done, well, 500K.

Russell Brunson 8:40 Oh, yeah. 500K a year. Cool. Uh, which one are you more passionate about?

Ali Abdaal 8:45 This one.

Russell Brunson 8:46 Really? Interesting.

Ali Abdaal 8:47 I love talking about productivity. I no longer love talking about YouTube. Um, this is our YouTuber academy, and so I'd kind of love to, love to get to the point where... Like, to be honest, like my team is now more YouTube experts than I am.

Russell Brunson 8:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 8:58 I just like... It's so systemized that I just rock up and do my thing.

Russell Brunson 9:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 9:01 And so my YouTube producer is like an actual expert on how to grow on YouTube, and so I want him to be doing like mini courses and webinars and stuff within the YouTuber academy, 'cause he's like boots on the ground.

Russell Brunson 9:09 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 9:10 Our editors are freaking amazing, and so I want them to be doing stuff. I don't know anything about video editing anymore, so it's like... [laughs]

Russell Brunson 9:15 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 9:15 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 9:16 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 9:16 Whereas this productivity is-

Russell Brunson 9:17 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 9:17 ... kind of my jam.

Russell Brunson 9:18 Yeah, productivity.

Ali Abdaal 9:18 This is what I enjoy.

Russell Brunson 9:19 Um, was it hard to sell the thousand dollar a year thing? Like, for your, like-

Ali Abdaal 9:24 Yeah. So we had a wait list of like 30,000 people. This was, uh... So they signed up before they knew what the price point was, and we did some post-sign up segmentation and found like 70% of them were making under 2 grand a month, so they wouldn't qualify for the product anyway. Um, but no, we sold 500 within two days. Uh, within the first like 10 minutes we got like half the spots sold. So it, it seemed like there was a lot of demand for this offer. But also, my whole shtick is productivity. We've got like 5.5 million subscribers for productivity, and this was the first time we've released a product other than my book-

Russell Brunson 9:53 Right

Ali Abdaal 9:53 ... uh, which is about productivity. So yeah.

Russell Brunson 9:57 Very cool. And did you close down signups for that, or just is it-

Ali Abdaal 10:00 Yeah, this is kind of closed

Russell Brunson 10:01 ... waiting right now?

Ali Abdaal 10:01 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 10:02 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 10:02 And we're building a wait list. We've now got 50,000 on the wait list for this. Uh, but a- again, like our, our post thingy segmentation's a bit dodge, so I don't exactly know how many of them would actually qualify to buy this product.

Russell Brunson 10:12 Yeah. And you make them qualify by how much money they make, or by what?

Ali Abdaal 10:16 Um, uh, one of the questions is how much money do you make, and that's helpful. Uh-

Russell Brunson 10:22 Do you only sell to people who qualify, or do you sell to anybody?

Ali Abdaal 10:24 As in, we sell to any- anyone, but it's, it's more like... 'Cause it's j- it's a, it's a low friction sale. They can just sign up. Um, but I'm assuming that if someone makes less than 2K a month, they're not gonna buy this.

Russell Brunson 10:34 You'd be blown away.

Ali Abdaal 10:35 Really? [laughs]

Russell Brunson 10:36 100%.

Ali Abdaal 10:36 I'm, I'm also assuming that if like they're outside of the US, the UK, and Europe, they're also not gonna buy the thing.

Russell Brunson 10:40 Uh-huh.

Ali Abdaal 10:41 Um, which kind of bro- broadly holds true. Like 70% of our customers are US.

Russell Brunson 10:44 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 10:44 Average age is 38. Uh, so they-

Russell Brunson 10:47 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 10:48 ... they all have jobs/are entrepreneurs.

Russell Brunson 10:49 Yeah. I'm gonna tell you a funny story about Hermosy.

Ali Abdaal 10:51 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 10:51 So when Hermosy shifted from going out and doing gym launches for people, and he started selling, uh, the license to his product, the very first phone sell he did, it was for, he sold it for 6K, and the guy was like, "Done." And he's like, "Oh." So then the next call he's like, "Uh, it's 8K." And the guy's like, "Done." He's like, "Oh." So the next guy he's like 10. He kept going up, till eventually it landed, I think it was like $36,000 a year to sign up. But the crazy is the average gym owner only takes home $25,000 a year. So they were paying more than their yearly take home for this thing because they believed it was gonna help them to make more. So anyway, just-

Ali Abdaal 11:22 Oh, interesting

Russell Brunson 11:22 ... from a pricing stand point-

Ali Abdaal 11:23 Sure

Russell Brunson 11:24 ... people will buy what they want, not what they necessarily can afford or need. Anyway, but-

Ali Abdaal 11:29 Hmm

Russell Brunson 11:29 ... and, and price elasticity is huge, especially on something like this where if you have someone launch a YouTube channel, how much money a year could or should they be making off of a YouTube channel?

Ali Abdaal 11:38 Oh, if it's big, then stupid numbers.

Russell Brunson 11:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 11:40 [laughs]

Russell Brunson 11:41 But for an average, an average person, like someone who's like... The person who's coming in here and starting, like what do you think year one?

Ali Abdaal 11:48 Like nothing.

Russell Brunson 11:49 Nothing.

Ali Abdaal 11:49 I, I think for beginners to YouTube, You- YouTube is not a make money scheme.

Russell Brunson 11:53 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 11:53 It's only a make money scheme for a very small number of people.

Russell Brunson 11:55 All right.

Ali Abdaal 11:56 Um, most people-

Russell Brunson 11:57 Is it positioned as a make money thing or-

Ali Abdaal 11:58 No

Russell Brunson 11:58 ... is it positioned as a-

Ali Abdaal 11:59 It's positioned, it's positioned as a "We'll save you time on the journey of growing a YouTube channel."

Russell Brunson 12:02 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 12:02 Um, maybe you'll make money, maybe you won't, but I guarantee in two years if you do it every week, it'll change your life.

Russell Brunson 12:07 All right.

Ali Abdaal 12:07 That's our whole pitch.

Russell Brunson 12:08 Interesting.

Ali Abdaal 12:08 And our, our most common customer ... is

Ali Abdaal 12:12 the 38-year-old accountant who always wanted to start a YouTube channel because she has a passion for knitting and wants to share that, and doesn't really care about making money from it. And of course, if she made money from it, it's a, it's an a- it's a bonus.

Russell Brunson 12:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:23 Uh, so that's about 70%. And-

Russell Brunson 12:25 These wanna talk. That's crazy.

Ali Abdaal 12:25 Yeah, they just love it.

Russell Brunson 12:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 12:27 And the 30% is like, "I'm an entrepreneur, I've got an offer, I want leads."

Russell Brunson 12:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:30 "Help me out."

Russell Brunson 12:31 Gotcha.

Ali Abdaal 12:31 We also sort of, [laughs] in the background, we're trying to do like a 10K a month thing-

Russell Brunson 12:37 Mm

Ali Abdaal 12:37 ... which is sort of done for you videos, uh, where we have, I think your friend Ryan Dice as one of... as our first client.

Russell Brunson 12:42 Oh, cool.

Ali Abdaal 12:42 So we're working with him to try and do done for you for his YouTube channel.

Russell Brunson 12:45 Like, he is filming and editing, or just editing or what?

Ali Abdaal 12:47 Uh, so he's f- he's filming the stuff, and then we're doing all the editing, the titles, the thumbnails, the whole shebang.

Russell Brunson 12:52 All right.

Ali Abdaal 12:52 So one of my team members is sort of leading on this and trying to grow this as a mini agency.

Russell Brunson 12:56 Yeah. That's really cool.

Ali Abdaal 12:58 That's a bit of a, a experimental one.

Russell Brunson 13:00 [laughs] You see if you like that business too.

Ali Abdaal 13:01 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 13:01 [laughs] Yeah, we'll see.

Ali Abdaal 13:02 See how it fits. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 13:04 Okay. Um, awesome. So with any business, there's like 1,000 things you could do.

Ali Abdaal 13:09 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 13:10 So I'm just looking at like if this was mine and if I was to take... Like, say I bought this company from you tomorrow-

Ali Abdaal 13:13 Yeah

Russell Brunson 13:13 ... like what would be the first thing I would do? Um, and so like, I think the... I mean, I think I would focus here first 'cause there's bigger revenue and I feel like also right here, you're, you're not ready to turn this into 5,000 people, right? 'Cause you said you're nervous about just the fulfillment and keeping the community.

Ali Abdaal 13:31 Yes.

Russell Brunson 13:31 You have a, you have a thing. You wanna make more money but you wanna keep the community small. It's like-

Ali Abdaal 13:34 Yeah, I want to-

Russell Brunson 13:35 It's a weird-

Ali Abdaal 13:36 I know. Yeah

Russell Brunson 13:36 ... dynamic.

Ali Abdaal 13:36 So I want, I want more people to come into this, but I want, I want the exper- I don't want the experience to be diluted.

Russell Brunson 13:41 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 13:42 Uh, we're trying to figure out ways to do this. Like, do we do quarterly launches where I, I do a quarterly planning webinar, and then we do like a 90-day cohort so that then they're in a smaller group of people and so they feel as if they're part of a small group. We're thinking of splitting up into like Harry Potter houses within that, so there's another smaller group. And so if we can, if we can nail how do we cut this community into smaller groups that they feel that, that personal connection in, then this can really scale.

Russell Brunson 14:07 Right.

Ali Abdaal 14:07 But we haven't nailed that yet, so we're still in the sl- uh, experimenting. Our next cohort for this is launching like next month, and so we're gonna let in a couple of hundred more people and experiment with this 90-day model and just figure out how do we get this to scale without it ruining the experience.

Russell Brunson 14:20 Is there progression over time inside of here? Like, for your programs, they're like, they're trying to get to this level and like, you know, what I mean? Is there progression in it or is it-

Ali Abdaal 14:27 Uh-

Russell Brunson 14:28 ... more circular?

Ali Abdaal 14:28 It's, so the idea, the, the promise is we'll help you double your productivity.

Russell Brunson 14:33 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 14:33 Um, and so we g- they do a survey at the start and a survey at the end, and like actually, we're actually pretty close to doubling people's productivity. Just doubling, uh, in just a month, which is kinda nice.

Russell Brunson 14:41 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 14:42 But it's sort of like, it's, it's not like it's gonna take your business from 10K to 100K.

Russell Brunson 14:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 14:45 It's more like,

Ali Abdaal 14:47 hey, these are just generally useful habits where every day you rock up and do some deep work, every week you do a weekly review, and it's just a thing that keeps on going.

Russell Brunson 14:53 But is there stuff where like ... The reason I'm asking is like-

Ali Abdaal 14:56 Yeah

Russell Brunson 14:56 ... 'cause I, I know I wanna solve this problem if there's like a progression of like, okay, someone comes into this and they're gonna go through this and then they're gonna graduate or get a certificate or something, right? They, they've accomplished this, now they're gonna move to the next step and like there's, there's milestones. Is there milestones that someone can progress through or is it more circular? It's just like you keep-

Ali Abdaal 15:13 It's more circular. It's more like, uh, CrossFit, like exercise classes.

Russell Brunson 15:16 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 15:17 Yes, you could go to the... The, uh, I mean, ultimate- fundamentally you keep showing up to the exercise classes-

Russell Brunson 15:21 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 15:21 ... to stay in shape.

Russell Brunson 15:22 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 15:22 Into that sort of idea, but for productivity.

Russell Brunson 15:24 Gotcha. Okay. There's probably some version, 'cause my biggest fear on this one for you is like-

Ali Abdaal 15:28 Yeah

Russell Brunson 15:28 ... um, my, what I've noticed with people, if there's subconscious blocks in growing something, they won't grow it. And so like right now you have a subconscious block 'cause you don't want to mess up the community. And so for you to go from 500 to 5,000 members would not be hard technically. Subconsciously you're gonna fight it 'cause you're like, "Uh," you know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 15:45 Interesting.

Russell Brunson 15:46 So yeah. Usually it's, it's almost always psychology that keeps people back. It's very rarely tactics.

Ali Abdaal 15:51 Okay.

Russell Brunson 15:52 Um, so that'd be the thing is like I think if you can fix that problem, then that one will open up.

Ali Abdaal 15:55 Yep.

Russell Brunson 15:55 It's like the way I ... Again, I don't know the answer, but like we're doing this right now in our certification program 'cause we had the same thing where people are coming in and all of a sudden, we're selling it throughout the year. So you come in and you have someone who's been going through the program, they're a great funnel builder, doing all sorts of stuff, but then the problem is like brand-new person comes in and they're asking questions and the person who's been doing this for a year and a half is like annoyed by this whole thing. And so the way we're restructuring ours, and it's really, really cool is, but it, it's based on there's, there's, um, modules and milestones, right? So I look at a timeline here where it's like you come in, and then this is the first milestone. So in our world it's like you make your first, first 10K as a funnel builder. Then the next milestone there's 50K, and there's 100K, and then there's a million, right?

Ali Abdaal 16:33 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 16:33 So there's these goals we're moving towards, and inside there, there's these little badges that people have to do to get the next goal.

Ali Abdaal 16:38 Nice. Yeah.

Russell Brunson 16:39 Um, and then what's cool about this is we have a process where it's like when you first come in, you have, you have, um, you as like the, you know, or me who are, like the guru teaching, but then internally there's, there's mentors. So people who are past the 10,000 mark, they're, like part of the, their role to get to here is like to become mentors.

Ali Abdaal 16:56 Mm.

Russell Brunson 16:56 So they're coming in and instead of being annoyed like, "Oh, this person's a beginner," they're like, "Hey, I'm, I'm gonna mentor." So they help get somebody to this spot.

Ali Abdaal 17:02 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 17:03 And as soon as you get to the spot, then you get the new mentors who have been here, but then you also become a mentee for people who are behind you.

Ali Abdaal 17:08 Nice.

Russell Brunson 17:08 So now there's like, they're always, they're-

Ali Abdaal 17:10 That's cool

Russell Brunson 17:10 ... they're moving towards but also pulling back. And then what's cool is then, then you can keep dumping people in here and they're going through this, and when someone's on a call or a question, you're like, "Oh, well, I'm on, I'm on level three right now or level four," then they know exactly where they're at and then you or the people know how to help 'em. Like, "Oh, I was stuck at level three too. Biggest problem is you, you gotta figure out how to do blah," you know? It helps move the progression. So this gives you the ability if we could have 5,000 people and it doesn't get overwhelming for the community if you can figure out some version of this for yours. I don't know exactly what it'd look like, but...

Ali Abdaal 17:38 Nice. That's a good-

Russell Brunson 17:39 Until, until you're pumped about getting 5,000 people in there, it's gonna be hard for you to get more than that. You know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 17:43 Yeah. 'Cause right now if we 10X it overnight, I'd be like, "Oh my, oh, uh, uh-oh." [laughs]

Russell Brunson 17:48 Yeah. You, your mind, your subconscious mind will, will definitely burn that to the ground before it lets you get there. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 17:52 Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

Russell Brunson 17:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:54 So once we nail, yeah, nice, something like this, milestones, small group experience, something like that, at the point where I feel like, hell yeah, we can scale this to 5,000-

Russell Brunson 18:00 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:00 ... then it becomes a lot easier to do.

Russell Brunson 18:01 Yeah, 'cause it's not, it's ... Yeah. There's always like it's either a math problem or a drama problem,

Russell Brunson 18:06 and like the math one's easy.

Ali Abdaal 18:07 Wait, a m- a math problem or a what?

Russell Brunson 18:07 A math problem or a drama problem.

Ali Abdaal 18:09 Oh, okay.

Russell Brunson 18:09 The math problem you solve with like, okay, we just create a funnel, drive some math, you know, that's easy. The drama problem's, it's not real but it's, it's in our heads, and that'll sabotage us solving the math problem 'cause we're like, "Ah," you know what I mean? So.

Ali Abdaal 18:21 Hmm.

Russell Brunson 18:21 So that'd be like solve that, then we can talk about the funnels there. This one I feel like this seems like it's all in place, where like if you went to 200 a week, you wouldn't stress out.

Ali Abdaal 18:30 No, I would love that.

Russell Brunson 18:30 Yeah, you'd be fine. So this is the easier one to solve right now, 'cause this-

Ali Abdaal 18:34 Yeah

Russell Brunson 18:34 ... is just math problem versus this is a drama problem. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 18:36 Interesting. That's fun. I'm gonna label this.

Russell Brunson 18:38 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 18:38 This is great. I have ne- never heard of this framing of it before, but that's cool. So this is math, and this is drama. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 18:43 Yeah. [laughs] Solve the drama, then we'll do the math. That'll be easy.

Ali Abdaal 18:46 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 18:46 Yeah. I got it from Brooke Castillo-

Ali Abdaal 18:48 Yeah

Russell Brunson 18:48 ... who's like the greatest life coach of all time. She came to our audience and started talking about like it's either math or drama, and it's funny 'cause we did a whole Q&A of people stuck, and, and every time they'd come in, it's like, okay, before answers, is this a math problem or a drama problem? And they're like, "It's drama." Like, "Okay, let's just solve that," because [laughs] it's not, it's not real, it's just, it's psychology versus like-

Ali Abdaal 19:04 Damn

Russell Brunson 19:05 ... actually solving it.

Ali Abdaal 19:05 That's really, really good.

Russell Brunson 19:06 [laughs] So, okay, so then it goes back-

Ali Abdaal 19:09 Yeah

Russell Brunson 19:09 ... like, okay, the math problem we gotta solve is just this, 'cause everything else is all-

Ali Abdaal 19:13 Yeah

Russell Brunson 19:13 ... you know, you gotta raise this to like 15K or something. But-

Ali Abdaal 19:16 Yeah

Russell Brunson 19:16 ... that's... The big thing is like this is the bottleneck. Then-

Ali Abdaal 19:19 Yeah

Russell Brunson 19:19 ... if you fix that... 'Cause if you're getting 20, 30 a week organically off of .4% conversion rate-

Ali Abdaal 19:24 Yep

Russell Brunson 19:24 ... um, yeah, if, if you fix this piece, that becomes 200 a week's not hard. 'Cause you're gonna still get the organic, and then it gives you the ability to turn on ads.

Ali Abdaal 19:36 Yep.

Russell Brunson 19:36 Um, so wish I could see this page. So this page right now, I'm assuming you're saying it's-

Ali Abdaal 19:42 Yeah, it's like really... Yeah, yeah

Russell Brunson 19:43 ... video sales letter of you selling it?

Ali Abdaal 19:45 Uh, yep.

Russell Brunson 19:45 And then long form-

Ali Abdaal 19:46 And then like loads of other-

Russell Brunson 19:47 How long, how long's the page, do you think?

Ali Abdaal 19:49 Like tens of thousands of words. [laughs] This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget. Now, for many people, money is a cause of guilt and anxiety. You're never entirely sure where all your money goes, and you're left feeling guilty about purchases, big or small. Money is often associated with restriction, fear, and uncertainty, but your money is an extension of you in many ways, and it's obviously not ideal to feel so bad about it. Now, YNAB is an app that's helping millions of people change their mindset around money. It's built on four simple habits which could transform the way you think about money. These habits are, firstly, give every dollar a job. Two, embrace your true expenses. Three, roll with the punches. And four, age your money. Now, these habits are actually really simple. Giving every dollar a job basically just means that you plan out the different things you want to spend your money on after you've been paid. Then all you have to do is stick to the plan knowing that you already have enough to cover everything. Your true expenses refers to those big non-monthly outgoings, like trying to buy a car or a holiday deposit. You wanna break these down, and you wanna save in advance so that hopefully you're not hit by a big charge that you were not expecting. And one of the things that I really love about YNAB is their idea of rolling with the punches,

Ali Abdaal 20:51 'cause sometimes life does throw things at you, like a piece of tech breaks and you need to have it fixed, or you get your stuff stolen from the back of your car like happened to me, or a pipe bursts and you have to call a plumber. YNAB helps you set money aside in advance to help cushion you from life's unexpected expenses. They also recognize that we can feel really guilty for spending money. So if you do spend more than you planned, that's totally okay. Just move your money to wherever it's needed. It's yours at the end of the day. And you can even age your money, spend less than you earn, and have a nice stack of saved money waiting for your bills as they come in, not the other way around. In an ideal world, money really shouldn't be scary or stressful for us, and we actually have way more control over our money than we often think. So if you're interested, you can try out YNAB today, and you can see if this approach to budgeting can make a difference in the way that you think about money. So thank you again, YNAB, for sponsoring this episode of Deep Dive. Uh, we've just, uh, recently in, uh, we, we're working with a CRO agency. Um, they've, we've installed, uh, Microsoft's Hotjar equivalent, whatever it's called.

Russell Brunson 21:43 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 21:43 Um, found out what areas the h- the heat map are like more. It's like, okay, cool. Uh, some of the testimonials are outdated and the graphs, the growth graphs that we have are outdated. So there, there's basic things that we can do-

Russell Brunson 21:52 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 21:52 ... to, like, tweak that.

Russell Brunson 21:54 Yeah. So the bigger thing is the, I, I'm sure there's ways you optimize this. Usually optimization you go from .4 to like .6 or something, so it's not like-

Ali Abdaal 22:03 Oh, it's not gonna be that big. Yeah

Russell Brunson 22:04 ... a radical shift. Um, the radical shift is like shifting the funnel, the way you're, you're actually selling it.

Ali Abdaal 22:09 Okay.

Russell Brunson 22:09 'Cause selling it, selling a thousand dollar offer through a video sales letter long form page is like, uh, a less, um... It's a tool, but it's not the most effective tool.

Ali Abdaal 22:18 Oh, okay. What do you mean?

Russell Brunson 22:18 Do you know what I mean? So shifting the tools how you do it. Like, for me to sell a thousand dollar course, there's two tools that are like the best in the world to sell a thousand dollar course, and one is a webinar, one's a challenge. And so it's shifting the tool.

Ali Abdaal 22:29 Ah.

Russell Brunson 22:29 'Cause on a, 'cause on a webinar, if you get, if you get people on a webinar and they watch the presentation-

Ali Abdaal 22:34 Yep

Russell Brunson 22:35 ... if you're n- like, if you do a good webinar, 10% of people who come to the webinar will buy.

Ali Abdaal 22:40 Okay.

Russell Brunson 22:40 So it's just, it changes the math of it all, right?

Ali Abdaal 22:42 And are we talking like live, or are we talking about fake live? Or are we talking about-

Russell Brunson 22:45 The very first time is live.

Ali Abdaal 22:46 Yep.

Russell Brunson 22:46 And I do it live a, a few times till you master the pitch.

Ali Abdaal 22:48 Ah, yep.

Russell Brunson 22:49 And then you transition. So for example, I launched ClickFunnels, um, the very first, um... So we, we tried six different times to launch ClickFunnels, and I was trying sales letters, I was trying, I was trying the wrong, the tools that work but not well.

Ali Abdaal 23:01 Yep.

Russell Brunson 23:01 And I was trying thing, the thing, and then, um, uh, like four or five months into ClickFunnels, I got asked to speak at an event. And all the older versions I was selling just like a trial. Like, "Sign up for a trial," and it was costing us like 200, 300 bucks to get someone to sign up for a trial. It was just like... It was, it was, it wasn't working, right?

Ali Abdaal 23:16 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 23:16 So my friend's like, "Hey, come speak at my event. I want you to speak, and then at the end of your presentation, I want you to sell ClickFunnels." I was like, "Nobody's buying ClickFunnels." He's like, "Well, make a thousand dollar version that you can, like, you can bundle it together and then make a, make an offer." So I spoke at his event, did the, did the webinar and, um, and in a room of 300 people, we signed up like 100 and something people.

Ali Abdaal 23:34 Whoa.

Russell Brunson 23:34 Like just, I was just like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." Um, so I did the webinar. So I did... You know, it wasn't webinar. It was, it was on stage. But I, I did the presentation, and it, it crushed.

Ali Abdaal 23:42 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 23:43 And it was interesting as, uh, when I was leaving the hotel to, to go fly home, uh, I was in the lobby and there was this lady ran up to me. She's like, "Oh, your presentation was awesome." She's like, "The problem is, like, I'm a coach and so I can't use ClickFunnels." I was like, "What do you mean?" And she's like, "Well, during your presentation you showed how, how you use funnels to build a supplement company, but I'm a, I don't have a supplement company. I'm a coach and I can't use ClickFunnels." And I was like, "I have coaching funnels too. Like,

Russell Brunson 24:04 you have no... Like, this works for coaches too." She's like, "Are you serious?" And she had no idea. So she ran back into the event room. It was still going on another day. And she grabbed one of her friends. They grabbed order forms. They came out. Both of them handed me an order form, like, "We had no idea this would work for, for coaches. I thought it was just for supplement people." I was like, "Oh, my gosh," like I didn't, I need to mention the fact. So on the flight home, I take my, my- ... my presentation and I added in, like, a s- like, two or three slides. Like, "Hey, if you're a coach, this is how it works, and if you're a, you know, if you're a... This is how it works." And so I could, like, tweak the webinar a little bit. So then, uh, when I got back home, uh, I started lining up webinars to, to start doing more of these webinars.

Ali Abdaal 24:36 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 24:36 And, uh, I remember the very first day back, I had two webinars lined up. So I did a webinar in the morning, I think I had, like, 600 people register for it. Did the webinar, and we did, like, $30,000 in sales off the webinar, which is not bad. I was like, "This is pretty good." But then, um, before the next webinar happened, I had another webinar that night that had about the same amount of people registered, and my, um, uh, my business partner, Todd, he went, he went and he exported all the questions from the first webinar. And he was like, "Hey, just so you know, at minute 12, everyone's asking this question. They're confused." I was like, "Oh." I looked at my slides, and I'm like, "Oh, I can..." So I just resolved that, like, I added it, right? And then he's like, "Over here they were confused." So, like, we found all the sticking spots, and so I found all those things we, uh, in the offer. They were confused about the offer, so we tweaked that a little bit. We changed some stuff.

Ali Abdaal 25:14 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 25:15 And then I did a webinar, same size audience, and that time we did over $100,000 in sales.

Ali Abdaal 25:18 Whoa.

Russell Brunson 25:18 And I was like, "Dang."

Ali Abdaal 25:19 Right.

Russell Brunson 25:19 So then after that, then Todd exported the, the questions again, and we did that 70 times.

Ali Abdaal 25:24 70?

Russell Brunson 25:24 70 webinars in over-

Ali Abdaal 25:25 Whoa

Russell Brunson 25:25 ... to the point where it got so good, like, I can do the webinar by memory now. Um, but, like, every concern before it came up, I was able to resolve it. Like, if you watch, it was just like you had to buy. Um, and so y- long term, definitely evergreen it, but short term, like, you gotta do it at least three or four times to go through that process of just figuring out what those things are.

Ali Abdaal 25:44 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 25:44 'Cause the first time you never know until... But the audience will tell you exactly, like, where they're confused, like, people are... Yeah. So for me it was like, that's what I would do first. I would, like, I'd s- Let's make, let's create a webinar that's selling this $1000 course. Let's do a live one to your audience.

Ali Abdaal 25:56 Yep.

Russell Brunson 25:57 We test it. In fact, I, I literally just did this right now. To, uh, last week I did a new, uh... I bought salesfunnels.com, so we did a webinar there. We had 10,000 people register. Did the webinar, found the mistakes, tweaked it all, and then that was last Thursday. So today I'm doing it again. Uh, we've got four, 4,500 people registered for today. I'm gonna do it again, and then we're gonna tweak it again.

Ali Abdaal 26:15 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 26:16 And I'll do that three or four times, and then now that it's... Then we'll have the evergreen version, then we'll turn it on, and then we'll have 30,000, 40,000 people a month to watch that webinar for the next two or three years.

Ali Abdaal 26:24 Wow.

Russell Brunson 26:24 We just keep driving traffic, and it's just crushing thousands of sales.

Ali Abdaal 26:26 So the, so the ads are getting people to the webinar.

Russell Brunson 26:28 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 26:28 And then you're just sort of measuring the effectiveness of-

Russell Brunson 26:30 Yep

Ali Abdaal 26:30 ... and that's figured out your-

Russell Brunson 26:31 Yeah. Then you figure out, okay, it's gonna cost me, you know, $10 to get someone to register for the webinar. From there we get 30% show up rate. From 30% show up rate, we get 10% to buy, and the follow-up sequence usually will double the sales. And so you just look at the math on that and say, "Okay, cool. Right now we spend $10,000 a week and we make $30,000." So then you start cr- Then you can go to 10,000, you know, $100,000 a week, make $300,000. Go to a million a week. You know, it's just, just ramping

Russell Brunson 26:54 up the, the equation. Just like a slot machine at that point. You, like, put money in, you get it back out.

Ali Abdaal 26:58 Damn.

Russell Brunson 26:59 But that's the magic. For this, like, that's the best way to sell this is, is creating a webinar-

Ali Abdaal 27:02 Yep

Russell Brunson 27:02 ... and just doing it three or four times. Once you have an audience, once it's cold ads, it's traffic, and then you perfect it, and then now you evergreen it. And then moving forward, like, that thing's just selling for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ali Abdaal 27:12 Dude, that's sick. Can I do webinars in ClickFunnels?

Russell Brunson 27:14 100%.

Ali Abdaal 27:14 Sick. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 27:15 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 27:16 Perfect. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 27:16 You better do them in ClickFunnels.

Ali Abdaal 27:17 [laughs]

Russell Brunson 27:17 They don't work anywhere else. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 27:19 Okay. Talk to me about challenge.

Russell Brunson 27:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 27:21 What, how does, how does challenge work?

Russell Brunson 27:22 So challenges are very similar to webinars. Um, webinars, like, traditionally it's like a 90-minute presentation. So everything's coming in, you register, 90-minute presentation, you make an offer, make this offer at the end of it, and then there's the whole follow-up sequence-

Ali Abdaal 27:33 Yeah

Russell Brunson 27:33 ... and all that stuff. Challenges, like, traditionally people would do a three-day challenge or a five-day challenge. It's the same script as the webinar, but it's broken. Instead of... Um, like, if you look at my webinar script, it's basically this is the clock. So this is, this is an hour, so I'm gonna do, I break it down into four quarters. Like, there's four things you teach during the webinar-

Ali Abdaal 27:53 Yeah

Russell Brunson 27:53 ... to, uh, break false beliefs to get them to wanna buy, and then the second half, um, you're gonna do 30 minutes, which is, like, your, your, your pitch, right?

Ali Abdaal 28:01 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 28:01 And so it's a 90-minute, it's a 90-minute presentation. With the challenge, it's the same, the same structure, but it's broken up by day. So, like, day number one, you do basically this part and this part.

Ali Abdaal 28:11 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 28:11 Day number two, you're doing this part. Day number three, do this. And day number four is this.

Ali Abdaal 28:15 Got it.

Russell Brunson 28:15 It's just kind of broken up longer form. So it's nice for, like, educators, 'cause you get to, you get to teach. Like, here I'm ta- I have 15 minutes to talk about this shit. You got an hour or an hour and a half. You get more teaching time.

Ali Abdaal 28:24 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 28:25 You get more time in front of people. So challenges work great. The only downside of challenges is, like, I don't know, doing a five-day challenge five or six times to perfect it is a lot of work.

Ali Abdaal 28:35 Mm.

Russell Brunson 28:36 Um, and it's harder to evergreen a challenge just 'cause it's, there's more break-off points, right? Like, there's people registering, then people show up day one but not day two. And then day two but not day... You know, like, there's more breakage points.

Ali Abdaal 28:45 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 28:46 Whereas here I try to get, I try to max. So I'm, I'm a webinar guy. I love webinars 'cause I can maximize having people showing up and selling, and, and I can, I can control this and tweak this a lot easier than, than a challenge. Um, but we have people in our community who just kill challenges, like, so-

Ali Abdaal 28:59 Yeah

Russell Brunson 28:59 ... they're both, they're both good tools. It just kind of depends on-

Ali Abdaal 29:02 Nice

Russell Brunson 29:02 ... the style you like better, you know?

Ali Abdaal 29:04 That's very interesting. And if we turn this into a 1K, uh, for 12 months type offer where you get access to the community as well, and events and stuff, it... Say the same thing, like, webinar is better to sell a 1K product.

Russell Brunson 29:14 100%. Yeah. At that price point, like, yeah, selling a $1000 offer off of, off of just a straight sales page is very hard. Like, one of the hardest. So, like, .4% is not bad on a $1000 offer.

Ali Abdaal 29:25 Oh, okay.

Russell Brunson 29:25 Like, I was like, that's, like, not bad at all.

Ali Abdaal 29:26 Okay. Cool. That's useful to know. Yeah, 'cause the conversion rate on this one is, like, 20%. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 29:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:29 Because it's a $1 product.

Russell Brunson 29:30 It's a dollar, yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 29:31 And I'm like, "0.4%?"

Russell Brunson 29:32 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:32 I'm like, I heard industry average was 1%. Surely we can double it.

Russell Brunson 29:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:35 But you know, that's-

Russell Brunson 29:35 On a $1000 offer, though.

Ali Abdaal 29:36 Okay.

Russell Brunson 29:36 But then the other thing is, like, what's cool is someone will register for the webinar and they go through. So, like, if you look at my webinar sequence, so the way I do it is [coughs] we start the sequence over every week. So there's a, there's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and so this is the sequence, right?

Ali Abdaal 29:50 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 29:51 So what we do is we buy ads Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and half a day Thursday, and then Thursday I usually perform my webinar. It doesn't have to be Thursday. It can be Wednesday. It can be, like-

Ali Abdaal 29:59 Yeah

Russell Brunson 29:59 ... for me, for my audience and my time, I figure, I've found that's been, like, the best-

Ali Abdaal 30:02 Yeah

Russell Brunson 30:02 ... time for me. Um, and then that's done, and then what happens on a Friday, then you give them a replay. Uh, Saturday, then, then what I try to do is I try to think about different modalities,

Russell Brunson 30:11 right? Everyone, everyone consumes things different ways. Some people like to watch YouTube videos, some people like podcasts, some people like to read, and so I'm trying to give them different modalities 'cause some people are gonna show up live, some people will never show up live, right? So you might get- 20 to 30% who actually show up live. That means 70% didn't, right? So then I'm, I'm targeting those other 70%, like, get them to watch a replay, 'cause they, they want it, they just want it on their, their time schedule, right? So then they have a day or so to kind of, to go through and, like, watch it here on Friday. Then on Saturday, I start shifting, like, okay, what are the modalities? I'm like, oh, um, what, the way we position is like, uh, those who didn't have time to actually watch the webinar, I got a CliffsNotes version of the webinar. You c- you could actually read the whole thing, and I'll send them to this page right here.

Ali Abdaal 30:47 Mm.

Russell Brunson 30:47 So this becomes like, this is the CliffsNotes of the webinar, so they can watch the shorter video, read it all. And so what happens is you start picking up a lot of people here. But most of them already went through the sequence, so the, the conversions will go up no matter what because there's so much pre-framing that happened here and here. Then you get people to read it, so then that was, and the different modality people who buy here. And then usually, um, Saturday and Sunday, this is where we try to bring in, uh, urgency, um, Saturday and even Monday. And so what happens here is then, um, we give urgency and scarcity. So basically it's like, this campaign shuts down Monday at midnight.

Ali Abdaal 31:18 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 31:18 And so you got till Monday to decide to go all in. And so it goes down there, and then Monday at midnight the offer closes down for everyone in this cohort.

Ali Abdaal 31:25 Yep.

Russell Brunson 31:26 And so if they click on the links after midnight, it redirects them back to the registration page, then go re-register, but it starts the whole sequence over. But it cl- it, it does close down, they can't buy anymore. And then Monday we start back over, new ads, new funnel, start driving traffic, and then just keep it going through.

Ali Abdaal 31:41 Bloody hell. And so can people then buy this evergreen or-

Russell Brunson 31:44 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:44 ... oh, okay.

Russell Brunson 31:45 It's evergreen.

Ali Abdaal 31:45 So they can-

Russell Brunson 31:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:45 ... but also-

Russell Brunson 31:47 But it, but, but it's, it... 'Cause people always say, like, "Why do you close down the cart if they can still buy it?" I'm like, they, they can, like, it closes down, like, this sequence, like the sequence closes down and the offer disappears. Like, you can't buy it through this funnel. Like, if they wanna go, they could go find this page, they could buy it.

Ali Abdaal 32:02 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 32:02 Or they can go re-register and go through the whole sequence again. But it's-

Ali Abdaal 32:05 Yeah

Russell Brunson 32:05 ... legitimate urgency and scarcity that we close this down at midnight, where it's like, you can't, you can't-

Ali Abdaal 32:10 Damn

Russell Brunson 32:11 ... you can't buy it.

Ali Abdaal 32:11 Mm.

Russell Brunson 32:11 So that's what happened last, two weeks a-

Ali Abdaal 32:13 Yeah

Russell Brunson 32:13 ... or last week we did the webinar, we had 10,000 people register. As soon as, as soon as Thursday started, we turned off, uh, we turned off the registration page for the next week, boom. And so what's been happening is last week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tue- like, people are still registering from the ad. So we had 4,000 people that are lined up for today, and then we'll hit that one. And so today the, they'll flip to the registration page, and it just keeps rolling and keeps rolling and-

Ali Abdaal 32:33 Wow. That's so cool.

Russell Brunson 32:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:36 And then do you connect these up to your CRM through ClickFunnels and stuff as well?

Russell Brunson 32:40 Yeah, ClickFunnels is the CRM, so it's all inside of there.

Ali Abdaal 32:42 Oh, it is. Oh, oh, fine. It's all inside. Yeah.

Russell Brunson 32:43 We're everything ClickFunnels, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:44 Nice.

Russell Brunson 32:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:45 That's so cool.

Russell Brunson 32:46 And that's kind of it. And then, like I said, you can still do YouTube videos and, like, push to like, "Hey, go watch my web class about whatever."

Ali Abdaal 32:51 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 32:51 Um, which is great, but-

Ali Abdaal 32:53 That's kind of a nice pitch, 'cause it's like a free thing.

Russell Brunson 32:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:55 And they're getting something for free by like-

Russell Brunson 32:55 Watch my free web class.

Ali Abdaal 32:55 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 32:56 Yeah. And then from ad standpoint, like, pr- putting ads, uh, webinars on ads is the best, the best way we do it. Like, w- we can, of all the things we drive traffic to, the thing that's most profitable to paid ads are webinars, because we're making more money back here, right?

Ali Abdaal 33:09 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 33:10 But also we get so many leads coming in.

Ali Abdaal 33:11 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 33:12 Because, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:15 Damn.

Russell Brunson 33:15 And the other thing you can do is, that I also use, like this right here. So when someone registers for the webinar, on the thank you page you go, "Hey, by the way, go with my dollar thing." So you, you'll start selling tons of these too-

Ali Abdaal 33:25 Yeah

Russell Brunson 33:25 ... just by having it in the signup flow.

Ali Abdaal 33:27 Okay. Question.

Russell Brunson 33:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:28 Should we, um, have a $300 midpoint between these two things? 'Cause we're thinking of making this $1,000 a year as like a thingy, uh, with, like, all of the stuff, or like a lighter version of, like, the YouTuber operating system for 300-

Russell Brunson 33:43 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 33:43 ... as a self-paced course.

Russell Brunson 33:44 Yes. If I, if, I say yes, the, where you position it in your sequence is key. Like, you still want, like this would be, still be the thing I'd sell on the webinar, 'cause it's got the highest price point.

Ali Abdaal 33:53 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 33:53 Easiest for you to make money back and be profitable. And then, um, what we typically do is after the campaign closes down for them and, you know, Monday midnight it closes down, then, um, uh, Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins do this the best. They call it the No Customer Left Behind campaign. So when Tony and Dean do the big launches and they close it down, uh, a week later they message everyone like, "Hey, hope you enjoyed the challenge or the webinar. If you did enjoy it, you know, if you signed up, congratulations, excited to work with you. If you didn't, we don't wanna leave anyone behind. We want everyone to leave with something." And so they have this, uh, other offer. So, uh, the offer they put out is called, it's, uh, tonyrobbinsinnercircle.com, and it's like 100 bucks a month and you get a Tony Robbins lucky hat, and you get whatever. It's 100 bucks a month, and they send everyone to that after the sequence is over. And they do like, I can't, I don't know, they do like $8 or $9 million a year off of this-

Ali Abdaal 34:36 [laughs]

Russell Brunson 34:36 ... this offer that's like-

Ali Abdaal 34:37 Nice

Russell Brunson 34:37 ... on the backside of it.

Ali Abdaal 34:38 Wow.

Russell Brunson 34:38 So what I would do is after you've gone through this, you've done your best case trying to get this, then when the campaign ends, then I'd come back and say, "Hey, for those who weren't able to get started, we have this really cool thing. Maybe you couldn't afford it. This is something to get you started and get you-

Ali Abdaal 34:49 Yeah

Russell Brunson 34:49 ... blah, blah, blah." So like that's where I would s- I would position that in the sequence.

Ali Abdaal 34:51 So that's how I, um, well, when it comes to ads, but, like, let's say if someone, if an organic lead from YouTube were, were to go to youtuberacademy.com or whatever, would you show that, hey, we've got 300, we've got 1,000, we've got apply now, would you-

Russell Brunson 35:04 Like in your description you mean, like or, or-

Ali Abdaal 35:05 No, just like, like on the, on the page. On the, like if you go on youtuberacademy.com.

Russell Brunson 35:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:10 It's like, "Hey, welcome to YouTuber Academy. We have these three things for you. We've got a 300 thing, we've got a 1,000 thing-"

Russell Brunson 35:14 Gotcha

Ali Abdaal 35:14 ... we've got a 5K thing. Is that like-

Russell Brunson 35:16 I think that's fine for organic, but-

Ali Abdaal 35:17 Right

Russell Brunson 35:17 ... in, in the paid world, no one ever sees that. You only, they always, they always-

Ali Abdaal 35:19 Oh, so they only see the funnel

Russell Brunson 35:20 ... they always see what you pointed to, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:21 Cool. Yeah.

Russell Brunson 35:21 So yeah, I, I wouldn't have any problem with that-

Ali Abdaal 35:23 Yeah

Russell Brunson 35:23 ... somewhere else, but again, I'm not as good organically, so none of my people would ever see that if they-

Ali Abdaal 35:27 Yeah, fair. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 35:28 It'd be, it'd be hard for them to find it, like [laughs] but.

Ali Abdaal 35:30 Yeah, this is the thing, so like even, even with, like, Brendan's stuff. Like I signed up more for, for his Experts Academy through an ad.

Russell Brunson 35:35 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 35:35 And I was trying to find it-

Russell Brunson 35:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 35:37 ... on Google. I was like, "Why, why does he make it so hard to, for me to pay money to him?"

Russell Brunson 35:40 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 35:40 'Cause I'm trying to recommend it to people and I'm like, I c- I literally can't find the URL. [laughs] But yeah.

Russell Brunson 35:44 [laughs] And that's why.

Ali Abdaal 35:45 Yeah, that's the one.

Russell Brunson 35:46 We wanna be able to control, control the buying situation, right? 'Cause you think about it, socially you have all this chaos, all these people, and it's like, for me it's like, hey, take chaos or ads, whatever, and it's like I need to move them to a spot where I'm controlling the conversation.

Ali Abdaal 35:58 Yep.

Russell Brunson 35:58 And that's cool about the funnels, it gives you the ability to, like, slow things down and take them through the logical sequence of events you need to be able to make the argument for why they need to buy your thing and, and all that kind of stuff.

Ali Abdaal 36:07 Okay. I always struggle with this. So Jakob, who's our head of marketing, will often, he's been pushing me to do webinars for ages.

Russell Brunson 36:14 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 36:14 And he'll make the slides, and then when it comes to the sales bit at the end, I, like, blitz through it and I, like, my energy towards it is very, like, "Oh, yeah, but you don't need to buy the thing. It's all good."

Russell Brunson 36:24 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 36:24 And he's, like, tearing, he's like, "Bro, what, what are you doing?" Um-

Russell Brunson 36:28 You're such a content developer, you don't wanna sell. Like, no. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 36:30 Yeah. Any, any tips? [laughs]

Russell Brunson 36:32 [laughs] Yeah. Um- That's really funny. Yeah, a lot of people struggle with that. Um, I mean, there's two things. There's the, there's the math and the drama, which one you want? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 36:42 [laughs] I think the drama probably.

Russell Brunson 36:43 So here's the drama.

Ali Abdaal 36:44 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 36:44 The drama is people feel uncomfortable selling-

Ali Abdaal 36:46 Yeah

Russell Brunson 36:46 ... because they feel like they're doing something wrong or they're-

Ali Abdaal 36:49 Yeah

Russell Brunson 36:49 ... they're, or like, "I'm doing this to you."

Ali Abdaal 36:51 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 36:51 Which is like what keeps people, they... So, um, especially people who are really good content developers, it's like they've been giving so much content for free forever that as soon as they're asking specifically for you to do something, it feels awkward.

Ali Abdaal 37:01 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 37:02 Um, so the big thing is just, I think really understanding that, like, at least my, my belief and what I've experienced, like if people don't pay, they don't pay attention. Like, they get free stuff and they, they feel good, but then the people who actually do something, it's, it, you know, it's like a funnel. Like, the number of people who actually do something is smaller and smaller. Like, the people in my world who have had the most success are also surprisingly the people who invested the most amount of money, 'cause they pay, they pay attention, they keep showing up. And so I realized for me it's like, I have all these people I'm serving and I love these people, I care about them, want to be successful. But if I actually want them to be successful, I have to convince them to make an investment themselves to get them off the sidelines and into the game, right? So like that's the, that's the thing. So like when I believe that, and it's not just like lip service, but like I subconsciously believe, like, if I don't convince this person to, to buy, then I can't actually help them, then it shifts everything. Like when I'm speaking on stage and I'm selling, like I literally pray before I go out there like, "Please help me to have the ability to convince these people so I can get them to like actually be successful." Like, I can't do it just by giving them free stuff 'cause they're not gonna commit. It's like I need to get them to do something. So this is the... So for me, it's like it, it's no longer hard for me to sell because it's like, as much as I love and care about these people, the only way I'm actually gonna be able to get them to do the shifts they need is I have to get them to, to invest themselves or they won't. And so they, that- that's the biggest problem, that's the drama, is like you gotta convince yourself of that. And then the math is just like here's how we structure the, we have to structure it, you know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 38:23 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 38:23 Um, does he, does, does your, does your guy, does he do his, his, uh, his pitch side similar how I do mine-

Ali Abdaal 38:29 Yeah

Russell Brunson 38:29 ... like stacking and stuff like that? Um, so the biggest thing is like the people I've seen who have been uncomfortable with it, it's the ones who are trying to like, to be me, or they're trying to, um, uh... Like, there's a way to make it your own that's not me, right?

Ali Abdaal 38:43 Mm.

Russell Brunson 38:44 Like, I have my method and so a lot of people like try it in my way and they're like, "I feel so uncomfortable." I'm like, "Yeah, well you're not me." Like-

Ali Abdaal 38:49 Yeah

Russell Brunson 38:49 ... like the psychology is there. The psychology is like, um, you're making them offers and you're, you're making an offer, right? And there's, there's value to each thing. And, um, if, if I show you, like [paper rustles] when I was like trying to learn how to speak from stage, I went to every... I went for four or five years, I was going to two or three events, uh, a month just to like watch people speak and how they were selling. And like what most people would do, I think we've transitioned a lot, like in the last couple years, but what most people would do is they would like, they would talk about what they had to offer, right? They're like, "And the first thing you're gonna get is this, and then you're gonna get this, and you're..." And so like, they share like this is the thing that they have that's worth like $10,000, and then this is the bonus that's worth $1,000. This is my bonus worth, you know, $50, and then this. And they get, they get down to like, usually the last bonus is like the worst one, right? And then from there they're like, "So the price, you know, it's worth, it's worth $5,000. Um, but I'm only gonna charge you $1,000," right? But the problem is the human mind, you probably know this better than I do, but the human mind only really remembers the last thing that it was told, right? Uh, especially in the moment. So right here I'm telling you that there's a $5,000 offer and, um, and but all you remember is like, th- that bonus you gave me is not worth $5,000. And then all of a sudden you have this internal conflict and I'm like, "But you get it for $1,000." You're like, "But this, this ain't worth $1,000." Like they forget about the thing, right? So the way the stack works, and again, I do it more, more salesman style 'cause that's my, my style, but if you understand the psychology, the psychology is like if you're making an offer, right, the first thing you gotta do is like here's, here's the first component of the offer. And you explain it, you talk about it, you show us why it's wi- why it's awesome. And then what you do is you create a stack slide to show like, so the first thing you're gonna get is this, and here's the value associated with it, right? So that's how much it's worth. Then you introduce the next thing, right? You talk about that, and then you come back and then you have to stack it. So you show the next thing. It's like, so what that means is you're gonna get this thing plus this thing. If you add those two things together, this is the value of it. Then you introduce the third thing-

Ali Abdaal 40:34 Oh

Russell Brunson 40:34 ... so on and so forth.

Ali Abdaal 40:34 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 40:34 And at the end of it is you come back and like then you have all of the things they're gonna get in the offer, and this is where now you introduce like whatever the-

Ali Abdaal 40:41 Yeah

Russell Brunson 40:41 ... its value is. 'Cause then they associate it with this, not this. So that's the psychology. So you can do it in a way that's less Russell Brunson used car salesman pitchman-

Ali Abdaal 40:50 [laughs]

Russell Brunson 40:50 ... whatever you wanna call me, right? You can do like the Ali version, which could be different. It could be as simple as like not even using slides. You could like print out a copy of the course and be like, "This is the first thing you're gonna get. It's gonna be amazing. And this, like I'm gonna put it right here. And this is the course I would sell for $1,000. Then this is the next thing." Like, you know? And you can figure out your version. It's just the psychology-

Ali Abdaal 41:06 Yeah

Russell Brunson 41:06 ... of like, of helping them see so that the, when they see everything they're gonna get-

Ali Abdaal 41:10 Mm-hmm

Russell Brunson 41:10 ... that the, that the price, the, the price differentiation ma- makes sense, and that way when you drop the price it's like, "Oh, this actually is a really good value." You know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 41:18 Yes. Yeah.

Russell Brunson 41:18 I've seen people do it. I've seen people who have like, who've done it where they, they write out the things on a whiteboard and they cover it with tape and they just pull it off like, "Oh, this is what it's gonna be." I've seen other people who don't do slides at all, they're just explaining it.

Ali Abdaal 41:27 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 41:28 They explain the parts and they show pictures of it and they... or you know what it is. So just figure out a way that you feel comfortable. 'Cause you're just going to your friend and like saying like, "This is the cool... Like, let me show you all the cool things I'm gonna give you for 1,000 bucks." And then you think about it that way, hopefully it feels like a salesman.

Ali Abdaal 41:40 Yeah. Like if I had someone looking over my shoulder and being like, "Hey, what's in the course?" I'd be so... I'd be like, "There's this and there's this, and you get, there's our camera confidence course bundled in, and also there's our creative entrepreneur course bundled in." But for some reason when it's on a webinar with slides, which I guess slides that someone else has made-

Russell Brunson 41:54 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 41:54 ... so maybe I, I, yeah, you, hearing you say-

Russell Brunson 41:56 And you don't even have to do slides.

Ali Abdaal 41:57 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 41:58 I, I te- like I'm a slide guy, so I do slides. Dean Graziosi, if you watched him, Dean's got one slide and it's this one.

Ali Abdaal 42:03 Mm.

Russell Brunson 42:03 He does the entire thing teaching, serving, doing it his way. He does stuff.

Ali Abdaal 42:06 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 42:06 At the very end he's like, "Here's my slide." And so it doesn't have to be... Again-

Ali Abdaal 42:11 Yeah

Russell Brunson 42:11 ... think the psychology. It's, it's like taking the psy- the, the structure and psychology of it-

Ali Abdaal 42:14 Yeah

Russell Brunson 42:14 ... and then making a version that's your own. Especially like your people are coming off YouTube, like they're used to seeing you in a very certain light. Like I would do it at your desk. I'd have, you know-

Ali Abdaal 42:22 Yeah

Russell Brunson 42:22 ... like make it look, feel like a YouTube video.

Ali Abdaal 42:24 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 42:24 Um, and just make it feel your style. Don't do my style, do your style.

Ali Abdaal 42:28 Yes. Nice. Yeah, I think in my mind I, I had to copy you-

Russell Brunson 42:31 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:31 ... 'cause I've seen you do this on YouTube a bunch of times and I'm like-

Russell Brunson 42:33 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:34 ... "That feels weird."

Russell Brunson 42:34 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 42:35 But you saying that, oh, I can just do it in my own way-

Russell Brunson 42:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:37 ... suddenly makes me go, oh yeah, I can do it in my own way.

Russell Brunson 42:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:39 Yeah, I think I'm more the Dean style than the you style. I was like, great.

Russell Brunson 42:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:42 Like, I've seen his, him do it as well, and it comes across as very nice.

Russell Brunson 42:44 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 42:45 It's like so friendly. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 42:46 That's nice. See, for me it's like I-

Ali Abdaal 42:48 Yeah

Russell Brunson 42:48 ... I do it my way for a couple reasons, 'cause like when you teach, um, when you teach, you know, it's like if I'm teaching for whiteboard I'm freestyle, I'm going. When I'm trying to sell, like, I don't freestyle because I have this- very certain things I need to do. So for me to remember where I'm going, it's, it's all slide driven.

Ali Abdaal 43:04 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 43:04 Um, so for me it's like the slides help me to remember the story and the thing and where I'm going, so that's why I do it that way.

Ali Abdaal 43:09 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 43:10 Um, some people need that, or some people have their own style. You know, like we talked earlier about YouTube videos. You got your three things. Like, you know, here's the things that I gotta cover. Just follow that, that process and make it your own, you know?

Ali Abdaal 43:20 That is very cool. Um, okay, next question.

Russell Brunson 43:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:24 This is absolutely sick, by the way. Thank you.

Russell Brunson 43:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:27 Um, one thing that... So we had a great chat with Ryan Deiss, and one, one thing we were talking about is, you know, I was saying this thing around, you know, we wanna try and dissociate business revenue from me showing up to make YouTube videos.

Russell Brunson 43:41 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:42 The problem is sort of right now our entire company is... Uh, whoops. It's sort of like, um, you know, Ali Abdaal company, and there's sort of like the content team, and then there's sort of like the commercial team, which has these two courses, the YouTube course and the productivity course, and we're sort of doing some software stuff on the side, but we don't need to talk too much about that. Um, what-

Russell Brunson 44:08 [coughs]

Ali Abdaal 44:08 ... what Ryan suggested was that think of sort of YouTuber Academy and Productivity Lab as, like, almost separate entities with Ali Abdaal Media as, like, your content arm. So that means the team for Ali Abdaal Media can just be focused on creating content-

Russell Brunson 44:24 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 44:24 ... and growing the email list and driving book sales. Great. Nice and easy. YouTuber Academy team would have a head of growth and a head of product, and they can, you know, Ali Abdaal Media can drive leads to this and drive leads to Productivity Lab, but actually these guys are now trying to get their own, like, paid ads and stuff. And having a dedicated head of growth for this thing, which is kind of, kind of 2 million a year, trying to grow it to five. And then this is probably gonna do, like, 1 million this year, and we're trying to grow it to five.

Russell Brunson 44:50 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 44:50 This would also need a head of growth and a head of product. And so then Ali Abdaal becomes just one of the lead gen channels for each of these two different products.

Russell Brunson 44:58 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 44:58 And by separating them out into their own mini businesses, mini companies with their own, like, ClickFunnels account, their own, like, CRM, their own, like, landing pages, their own whatever, it means that these then become more saleable assets, whereas no one's ever gonna buy Ali Abdaal Media.

Russell Brunson 45:10 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 45:11 What's your-

Russell Brunson 45:11 I would buy it, but, you know, just kidding. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 45:14 [laughs] Yeah. What's your take on this approach of, like, separating out the different products into different as- sort of websites, assets, entities?

Russell Brunson 45:22 I agree with that. My, my structure's very similar, 'cause I got, I've got Russell Brunson. I don't call it Russell Brunson Media, but it's like there's me doing the stuff I'm doing, right?

Ali Abdaal 45:29 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 45:30 And then we've got, like, the ClickFunnels company. We have, uh, the Russell Brunson, they're called Marketing Secrets, which is all my info product businesses.

Ali Abdaal 45:37 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 45:37 Then I've got, like, Dan Kennedy's business we bought. I got Secrets to Success with my personal loan business, and each of those has their own team of, like, an integrator-

Ali Abdaal 45:44 Yep

Russell Brunson 45:44 ... operator who's running it, um, and things like that. Um, then we have, like, one, you know, just like you have, like, one content team, we have one ads team who are, who are working across all of them, though.

Ali Abdaal 45:54 That would make sense.

Russell Brunson 45:54 You know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 45:54 It would make sense for ads to be, like, a shared service across the business.

Russell Brunson 45:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 45:57 Like media buying and stuff.

Russell Brunson 45:58 Yeah. Same thing, like, other, HR stuff like that-

Ali Abdaal 45:59 Yeah

Russell Brunson 45:59 ... is all shared. But as far as, like, you are correct, it's like there's not someone focusing on the business and the growth. It'll just atrophy and die over time.

Ali Abdaal 46:07 Yeah, 'cause we have, like, one marketing guy who was previously trying to grow, like, all the things, and it just, like, split focus.

Russell Brunson 46:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:12 Similarly, we found for social media, when our social media person is trying to grow all the platforms, they grow at a tiny rate.

Russell Brunson 46:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:17 When she focuses on just one thing, it grows massively.

Russell Brunson 46:19 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:19 It's sort of like, yeah, the focus thing. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 46:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:21 I keep on seeing this so many, so often in business that I just, I always forget-

Russell Brunson 46:24 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:25 ... that it's, it's a thing.

Russell Brunson 46:26 Yeah. For sure. [coughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:28 Um, speaking a little bit philosophically, one drama thing I often run into is... Uh, this is a good distinction, math and drama. One d- drama thing I often run into is, do I even need to grow the business to 10 million? Like, what's the point? I've got enough money. Like, uh-

Russell Brunson 46:42 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:43 Am I just being, like, a capitalist pig?

Russell Brunson 46:45 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:45 You know, greedy, blah, blah, blah. Like, and then part of me is like, no, like I enjoy the game of entrepreneurship. This is fun. I love talking about this. That's so cool. I'm looking forward to, like, diving in and, like, thinking about these funnels and things. Uh-

Russell Brunson 46:55 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:55 Do you, do you get this sort of drama with people that you coach and talk to?

Russell Brunson 46:58 [laughs] Yeah. It's different cultures too. You think about in America, it's probably a different culture than Europe, right?

Ali Abdaal 47:03 Oh, yeah.

Russell Brunson 47:03 Um, I think you guys struggle with that more than here.

Ali Abdaal 47:05 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 47:05 Where here it's, like, cutthroat, like, you know, we're capitalists. Like, that's, that's the American culture. But overseas, other places we work with clients, it's definitely, it's definitely harder I think sometimes.

Ali Abdaal 47:14 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 47:15 Um, but I think for me it all comes down to, like, the motives of it, right? Like, if this is your game, like, if you're, you know, if you're an athlete, like you wanna be the best athlete in the world, right?

Ali Abdaal 47:25 Mm.

Russell Brunson 47:26 That's, you know... You, you... There's people who go on a team that are there, but, like, they're not trying. But, like, you think about this with if, if your sport is entrepreneurship business and you're an athlete on the team, like, what's the point if you're not trying to do something, you know? Like-

Ali Abdaal 47:38 Mm

Russell Brunson 47:38 ... yes, I have enough money. Yeah, Michael Jordan's, like, yes, he won, he won a championship-

Ali Abdaal 47:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Russell Brunson 47:41 ... but, like, but, but what else are you gonna do with your life, right?

Ali Abdaal 47:45 [laughs] Yeah.

Russell Brunson 47:45 It's like, I feel like we're on this, we're... You know, the time we're here on the earth is sh- it's a short period of time obviously, but at the same time it's like there's not a lot to do. It's like I spend time with my wife and my kids, and there's, like, there's still, like, eight hours a day to, like, do something. Like, I can watch Netflix or I can, like, create something of value that doesn't, that, like, fuels me, but also, like, changes people's lives. Like, yeah. I think when you s- at least for me, when I started transitioning it less to, like, I gotta make $10 million to, like, if I make $10 million, the amount of people I'm gonna be able to affect is double. Like, that, that fires me up even more so, just realizing that part of it. And then you start seeing the ripple effect of that, right? Like, when we launched ClickFunnels, that was one of the cool things is, like, initially it was, like, a vehicle and tool for me and my business partner Todd to make money, and then we started seeing people having success. We're like, "Whoa, those guys are making money." It became more exciting, like, "Look how much money these guys are making." And then the obsession became, like, helping them. And then what was cool was, like, then these people who were all small entrepreneurs, they started hiring teams and people. And, like, I remember one time we did an audit, we tried to figure out- Uh, just of ClickFunnels active users, how many employees each person had was like on average like 2.5. So like that's, that's 250,000 employees that have jobs because of the ClickFunnels ecosystem, right? And then we start thinking about, I started looking at each individual entrepreneur like, uh, like Caitlin Poland launched LadyBoss, and they had like 1.5 million women on the email list who were following them. They had, uh, like 100,000 active customers who bought their products who lost weight. And I was like, that one entrepreneur that affected, you know, 100,000-plus people. And you start looking at the ripple effect, how it starts going. And then for me, like that's what fires me up more than the 10 million. It's like, like how, how many lives are changed because you did this thing? Like, that's the, the more exciting thing, right? And this actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna caveat this 'cause this is, comes back to a question you asked like an hour ago, but like the ads, like how do you create ads long term? But like, if you start shifting the, if you start looking at this differently, like the, the, um, the first level ads people have is like them telling a story like, "Hey, I'm Ali. I'm successful. You wanna be successful? Go, go watch my webinar," right? Which is a, which is good. But then what's, what's better is when you come down and, and you talk about, or your customer's stories. Like this is a much better story and it's a much better ad. Like having this person come on and be like, "I went through Ali's course and blah, blah, blah, and it changed my life, da, da, da. It was amazing. Like, if you guys wanna check it out too," boom. Like-

Ali Abdaal 49:55 Yeah

Russell Brunson 49:56 ... that ad is, will out convert you doing the ad, right? And you could have tons of these people all telling... Like every time you give someone a success story, you capture them telling the story, and that becomes the ad which fuels the thing. Like we're talking about you have like 30, whatever Al- uh, Alex told you, 30 ads a month or whatever. Like it doesn't have to be you doing 30 ads. Like get 30 people success stories, and those people each create three ads. Now you got ads for next 90 days, right?

Ali Abdaal 50:17 Mm.

Russell Brunson 50:18 And so it's like looking at that like there, there's like the, the, the first tier, which is most entrepreneurs focus on themselves. And then the second tier, which most people never get to, is like the focus of the customers, and then that becomes the success stories that drive the business to the next level and, and beyond. So anyway, it gets more-

Ali Abdaal 50:33 It's like-

Russell Brunson 50:33 It gets more fun that way 'cause then it's like-

Ali Abdaal 50:35 Yeah

Russell Brunson 50:35 ... we changed someone's life and you capture that. So like for us, when we started, when I started realizing this, when someone would have success and they win Two Comma Club award or something, like we'd fly them to Boise and we'd fly to them. We, um, Dan Ash and our team r- uh, he bought a, he bought, um, like a camper trailer and he took like four months off and just drove around the country to people's houses to capture these stories. We brought them back, and they became little mini documentaries. They became videos. They became ads. They became like all this social assets. And like hearing, you know, Gabe Schillinger in San Francisco, who was a musician, the fact that he never won a Grammy, but he's got three Two Comma Club awards on the wall us- selling his music beats. Like that's way more fascinating than, "I sold a potato gun 25 years ago. Let me tell you my story."

Ali Abdaal 51:14 [laughs]

Russell Brunson 51:14 You know, like that's, that's inspiring, that's fascinating, and then it opens up a whole new world of people. It's also tough because like in our audiences, like people either like me or they don't like me, right? Or they relate to me or they don't. But when Caitlin Poland came and she did her whole story, like she's a female entrepreneur and all of a sudden that brought all these female entrepreneurs in our world. When I had somebody else tell a story, like it brings different segments-

Ali Abdaal 51:36 Yeah

Russell Brunson 51:36 ... of the world in that, that may not relate with me or with you or whoever it is.

Ali Abdaal 51:39 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 51:40 Um, anyway, so that kind of maybe a- hopefully answers two questions a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 51:45 Yeah. No, that's great. Like what I'm, what I'm getting from that is like actually, you know, in my mind, I've been thinking, "Oh, the goal is, the goal is 10 million," because, and various people have said, "Oh, it's usually useful to work back from a revenue goal."

Russell Brunson 51:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 51:55 But just changing the way, the, changing the framing of it more towards, um, no, the, the goal is to change more, more people's lives with these products.

Russell Brunson 52:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:03 And like, yeah, sure the videos are good and sure the book is good, but like really the people, for example, going through Pro- Productivity Lab, and some of the people who've gone through YouTuber Academy, have genuinely had their lives changed and are just like raving fans now.

Russell Brunson 52:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:15 And if we could get like more of the, like those are the people we're serving, and s- shifting from that, I wanna get to 10 million revenue f- because it's fun, and more towards I wanna serve more people because it's fun and just nice and-

Russell Brunson 52:24 Mm

Ali Abdaal 52:24 ... just like it's what I do and I need something to do to pass the time. That makes it feel a lot better, and probably means that I'll, I'd be less subconsciously sabotaging myself-

Russell Brunson 52:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 52:33 ... en route to... Yeah.

Russell Brunson 52:35 And the other thing-

Ali Abdaal 52:35 And then I guess the revenue takes care of itself

Russell Brunson 52:36 ... the other thing, you start taking these people and you start putting them up on a pedestal, then other people aspire to that as well.

Ali Abdaal 52:40 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 52:40 'Cause it's like, oh my gosh, like... Especially if you start bringing these people on your YouTube channel, they're telling their story on your YouTube channel. There are people like, "Oh my gosh, like if I'm successful, maybe you'll have me." And so they start working harder.

Ali Abdaal 52:49 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 52:49 Like we started doing Two Comma Club Awards and people started seeing it, then they're like, like, "I want that. I want that." And they all started, they became more aspirational and started working harder because they wanted that thing too. You know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 52:59 Nice. Dude, thank you so much.

Russell Brunson 53:00 No.

Ali Abdaal 53:00 This has been absolutely wonderful. Any final parting advice? Like we've spent a couple of hours together, so you have a sense of like-

Russell Brunson 53:05 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 53:05 ... what my stuff is. Any unsolicited feedback, any advice, anything you would say?

Russell Brunson 53:09 Um, yeah. I think the biggest thing, like I said, we just need the right webinar, the right funnel to sell a thousand dollar course. Like you have so much traffic and eyeballs on the front end for free that I'm so jealous of. And I think converting those people through a free we- free web class will make you money. But then a- again, the ability to turn ads. I think scaling to f- to an extra $5 million when you turn ads on is not gonna be that difficult. The profit margins will shift. You said, I think you said earlier 60%-

Ali Abdaal 53:35 Yeah

Russell Brunson 53:35 ... profit margin. Like when you're doing paid ads, you're closer to probably 25, 30% is more. So just realizing that as you gr- as you're doing paid ads, the profits shrink a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 53:43 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 53:43 Um, but I think getting to 10 million won't be, like... Soon as you get the ads thing working, you'll be able to scale past that a lot quicker.

Ali Abdaal 53:50 Got it.

Russell Brunson 53:50 That make sense? Like remember when Hormozi first joined inner circle, the first, the first call he's like, "My goal, if I can make an extra 20 grand a month, that would change my life forever." [laughs] And I was like, dude, I get jealous by talking to him, like that he was, you know, he was gonna be insanely good. Um, I was like, for you, if we only make you 20 grand a month, like we're, we did everything wrong.

Ali Abdaal 54:06 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 54:06 Like same thing, like, like to get an extra $5 million in sales, right now you're doing what? Two product launches a year and you're at 5 million, you know roughly what it is.

Ali Abdaal 54:13 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 54:13 Like you just turn on every group of people can buy every day instead of twice a year, like you should at least double your... You should at least get to 10 million.

Ali Abdaal 54:20 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 54:20 If you don't go aggressive with it. If you go aggressive with that, I think you could get 20, 30 million just by pushing it hard, you know? So I don't know.

Ali Abdaal 54:26 Yeah. Thank you. Oh, final question. Um, any key hires that you think, like important whos to help like facilitate this? Should we, like at the moment we're working with an ads agency, but should we bring it in-house? We've got about 20 people on the team, about 10 on the content side and about 10 on the courses side. Um, I wonder, yeah, who are some key hires to think about?

Russell Brunson 54:47 That's such a hard... So specifically ad stuff, in the short term, obviously you don't wanna shift your focus, like learning to learn how to build a paid ad scene.

Ali Abdaal 54:55 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 54:55 But over the long term, it's also tough, like, working through an agency, 'cause agency by definition is, like, you have a percentage of their focus and their time-

Ali Abdaal 55:02 Yeah

Russell Brunson 55:02 ... which makes it harder. Um, 'cause ideally, if you had somebody who's in-house long-term, who's looking at all your so- like all the content you're making right now-

Ali Abdaal 55:10 Yeah

Russell Brunson 55:10 ... and looking, "How can I take that and how can I turn that into, into paid ads," right? Because you're doing more content than anybody right now. You have so much out there. Like, every video you put out there could turn into four different ads or five different... You know, but you need someone who's be able to see that. But an agency is not gonna be that, 'cause they're gonna come back and be like, "Hey, we need... Here's six scripts. If you can..." You know, they're gonna give you that versus, like, someone... So maybe seeing, like, somebody just an ads-focused content person on your team whose only goal is to, like, watch what you're doing, and then from there figure out what are the, what are the sound bites we can turn into ads to push to the course. You know, and like, and pulling those things out for an agency 'cause the agency's just not gonna give you the hands-on you need. But in the short term, you also don't wanna build an ad agency. That sucks too.

Ali Abdaal 55:47 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Russell Brunson 55:48 So maybe, like, having someone on your team just focusing on, like, on pulling the, the, that kind of stuff out. Um, and I, I, I mean, honestly, I would, I would have some... Maybe you already have this person, but somebody who, uh, is in charge of the funnels, like watching it, optimizing it, tweaking it, looking at stats, looking at numbers. Like, um-

Ali Abdaal 56:08 Yeah

Russell Brunson 56:08 ... you know. It's, it's funny, I went to... I don't know if you know Andy Elliott. He's very sales driven. I went to his office and he's got 90 sales guys and two people running their funnels. I was, like, so fascinated. You come to my office, [clears throat] we've got, you know, one salesperson and, like, 30 people working on the funnels. 'Cause I'm-

Ali Abdaal 56:21 Oh, wow. Yeah

Russell Brunson 56:21 ... fun- funnel focused.

Ali Abdaal 56:22 Yeah

Russell Brunson 56:22 We're optimizing conversion and numbers and stats and trying to figure all those things out. So having someone who can do that, because the difference in, difference in getting your landing page conversion from, um, from 30% to 40% doesn't seem that big of a deal, [clears throat] other than that means you get 25 more, 25% more people to show up to every single webinar, which is insane. Like, over-

Ali Abdaal 56:40 Yeah

Russell Brunson 56:40 ... over time, that's an extra $2 million a year by just having someone focusing on that, right? Or f- focusing on getting show up rates or focusing on the, the close. Like, all those little pieces.

Ali Abdaal 56:48 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 56:48 It's just like, that's like a little, uh, you know, a little, uh, hinge that swings a huge door.

Ali Abdaal 56:54 Nice.

Russell Brunson 56:54 'Cause so many traffic's coming in there and sales on the back end.

Ali Abdaal 56:56 Yeah.

Russell Brunson 56:56 So, like, having someone who's just focused on the funnel and the optimization of it would be probably the one that I think would be really helpful for you.

Ali Abdaal 57:02 Amazing.

Russell Brunson 57:03 Um.

Ali Abdaal 57:03 Great stuff. Thanks, man.

Russell Brunson 57:04 Sweet, man.

Ali Abdaal 57:04 Good sesh.

Russell Brunson 57:05 [clears throat] That was really fun.

Ali Abdaal 57:07 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.