Show Notes
25 years ago I paid a guy in Romania $20 to build my first software product. A decade ago, Todd Dickerson and I bootstrapped ClickFunnels from $0 to over $1 billion in sales without taking a dollar of outside funding. Today we're doing it again, in an AI world. This is Episode 1 of Bootstrapped Secrets.
Most entrepreneurs never hit their big break, and it's not because they're not good enough. It's because they're stuck in what I call a level 2 opportunity with a level 10 skill set. In this episode I walk through the pre-journey before ClickFunnels (Zip Brander, 150 funnels, the trip to Kenya I didn't want to take, the one sentence a friend said to me in a safari jeep that changed my life), the morning Leadpages raised $5 million and Todd said "I could build Leadpages today," the hardest decision we made at ClickFunnels [BEN #1 → "the $500M offer we turned down"], the hard years after ClickFunnels 2.0, and how we found our next level 10 opportunity: Overskill.
Then the lesson: how to tell whether YOU are in a level 2 opportunity, and why the only way to find your level 10 is to keep putting things into the marketplace until you're ready for it.
Every week on this show I'll document what we're actually doing to build our second billion-dollar company, so you can model it for yours.
What level is your skill set, and what level is the opportunity you're in? Tell me in the comments – I read them all (seriously).
Subscribe for a new episode every other week.
Want to build something amazing? Go to https://overskill.com
LISTEN ON THE GO Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00LEXOur6FQjMyd344PWcJ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1315130618
CHAPTERS 0:00 - My next billion-dollar business 0:50 - Welcome to Episode 1 1:20 - Who I am: 25 years, 3 books, ClickFunnels 2:31 - The new company: Overskill 3:37 - The pre-journey before ClickFunnels 4:50 - Zip Brander: $20 to a guy in Romania 6:50 - 150 funnels before the one that worked 7:31 - Kenya: the trip I didn't want to take 9:34 - Level 10 skill set, level 2 opportunity 10:46 - WP Undies and the ideas that failed 11:37 - Why bigger ideas find good stewards 13:14 - The morning Leadpages raised $5M 14:17 - The birth of ClickFunnels 15:26 - The $500M offer we turned down 16:33 - ClickFunnels 2.0, the dark years, AI 18:37 - Starting over: hunting the next level 10 19:53 - The software that stood out: Overskill 23:14 - Accepting the call (again) 24:30 - The 24-hour hackathon: 2,500 apps 27:13 - The one idea to take from this episode 29:54 - How to try Overskill
WHO IS RUSSELL BRUNSON? Co-founder of ClickFunnels, which he and a handful of partners bootstrapped from zero to a billion dollars in sales without venture capital. Author of DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets. Now building OverSkill — and documenting every step here.
CONNECT WITH RUSSELL: 🌎 Website - https://www.russellbrunson.com/home-page 𝕏 Twitter/X - https://x.com/russellbrunson 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/russellbrunson 📱 TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@russellbrunson 👨💼 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/russellbrunson 📘 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RussellBrunsonLIVE
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More from Bootstrapped Secrets
Welcome to Bootstrapped Secrets — a new podcast and YouTube channel by Russell Brunson.
Last week I told you the story of everything that led up to launching ClickFunnels — my original “One Funnel Away.” I ended it like the hero coming home victorious with the elixir. But here’s the thing about a hero’s journey: it always has a sequel. And the sequel is where it gets real.
When I was a kid, I mailed 38 hand-stapled sales letters to names I picked at random out of the phone book, absolutely certain I was about to get rich. Zero people responded. That was my very first funnel — and it flopped like almost every one that came after it. I’ve failed at more funnels than anyone I know. And that’s exactly why I eventually found the one that changed everything.
I have millions of followers across every platform… and when I go live, maybe 150 people actually see it. Back in the Periscope days, I’d hit “go live” and five or six thousand people would show up instantly, and we’d just hang out — that’s how I really built this community. Then the algorithms changed and quietly took that away. So I built my own way around it.
For years people have asked me the same question: Russell, if you could only build one funnel, what’s the best one? And my answer always frustrates them — it depends. But here’s what almost nobody realizes: inside every business, there’s only ONE funnel that actually matters. You might look at the two hundred funnels I’ve built and think it’s chaos… it’s not. All the rest are just appendages to the one funnel that rules them all.