How I Found My NEXT Billion-Dollar Business

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 overskill.com

LISTEN ON THE GO
Spotify: ⁠open.spotify.com/show/00LEXOur6FQjMyd344PWcJ⁠ (open.spotify.com/show/00LEXOur6FQjMyd344PWcJ)
Apple Podcasts: ⁠podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1315130618⁠ (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 - ⁠russellbrunson.com/home-page⁠ (russellbrunson.com/home-page)
𝕏 Twitter/X - ⁠x.com/russellbrunson⁠ (x.com/russellbrunson)
📸 Instagram - ⁠instagram.com/russellbrunson⁠ (instagram.com/russellbrunson)
📱 TikTok - ⁠tiktok.com/@russellbrunson⁠ (tiktok.com/@russellbrunson)
👨‍💼 Linkedin - ⁠linkedin.com/russellbrunson⁠ (linkedin.com/russellbrunson)
📘 Facebook - ⁠facebook.com/RussellBrunsonLIVE⁠ (facebook.com/RussellBrunsonLIVE)

#BootstrappedSecrets #RussellBrunson #Bootstrapping

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