Building ClickFunnels And Getting Partners That Love Doing What You Hate

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Dylan Jones is an entrepreneur and cofounder of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels has grown into a massive, massive online success allowing anyone to create sales funnels online with just a few clicks of the mouse. Their goal this year is to hit $100 million in revenue up from $30 million a year ago.

We’ll be discussing how he started ClickFunnels with Russell Brunson and how he was able to buy a condo for his mom. He discusses the growth trajectory of the business and how the business generating $30,000 the very first month was actually a huge failure. He also discusses how free self-education online can absolutely change your life and the best way to get started in business today.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Hear as Dylan shares more about what he did prior to starting ClickFunnels.
• Find out why Dylan dropped out of high school early on in Grade 10.
• Why Dylan’s first product was an absolute failure, and what he would have done differently.
• Understand the importance of knowing your customer, and not trying to do too much at once.
• Learn more about ClickFunnels and the different roles each founder plays in the company.
• Dylan shares more about how their team at ClickFunnels is structured and functions together.
• Hear about the management and communication tools Dylan’s teams uses to work remotely.
• Find out more about the ultimate vision for ClickFunnels as a company, going forward.
• Learn why Dylan believes it’s crucial to find company partners who love doing what you hate.
• Dylan shares how he gets outside of his comfort zone by not overthinking the situation.
• Find out what failure means to Dylan, and why he believes it is just a part of life.
• Hear Dylan’s advice and action steps to those just looking to start a business.
• The quote that had the most profound impact on Dylan’s life, and what it taught him.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“You’re always going to try and figure out what's worked best.” — @getnodo

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[0:26:50].1]

“You should be producing more than you’re consuming. If you’re not, you’re doing something wrong..” — @_robnunnery

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[0:43:57].1]

“You have to attach yourself to what you’re actually trying to do rather than the thing itself.” — @getnodo

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[0:45:42].1]

“Failing means you just haven’t figured it out yet.” — @getnodo

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[0:46:36].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Dylan Jones — [e-mail].

ClickFunnels — https://www.clickfunnels.com/

Dylan on Twitter — https://twitter.com/getnodo

Dylan on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/dylan.dub.jones

ClickFunnels Facebook Group — https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClickFunnels/

Pivotal Tracker — https://www.pivotaltracker.com/

GitHub — https://github.com/

Slack — https://slack.com/

Flowdock — https://www.flowdock.com/

Trello — https://www.trello.com

Stripe — https://stripe.com

Braintree — https://www.braintreepayments.com/

Transcript Below

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EPISODE 009

“DJ: I remember even going out, I didn't — I don't really drink. I didn't start drinking until I was like 20, and I would go with my friends on the weekend and they’d drink, because you’re like just doing that. I remember thinking, “This is such a waste the time. You guys are going to spend here four or five hours going drinking and doing stuff, or I can go home and learn C++.” I would just leave and then spend my whole night trying to learn something. I just felt like I needed to learn and I needed to do it before anyone, because I didn't want to wait for anybody anymore.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:32.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:56.9] RN: Hey there, and a welcome to the show that believes you are destined for more and that bailing your way to an inspired life is the only way to get there. Today we are sitting down with Dylan Jones, he is an entrepreneur and cofounder of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels has grown into a massive, massive online success allowing anyone to create sales funnels online with just a few clicks of the mouse. Their goal this year is to hit $100 million in revenue up from $30 million a year ago.

We’ll be discussing how he started ClickFunnels with Russell Brunson and how he was able to buy a condo for his mom. He discusses the growth trajectory of the business and how the business generating $30,000 the very first month was actually a huge failure. He also discusses how free self-education online can absolutely change your life and the best way to get started in business today.

But first, if you'd like to stay up-to-date on all the Fail On Podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter that's at the bottom of the page. Again, that’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:09.6] RN: Hey there and welcome to the Fail On Podcast. I'm extremely excited about our guest today, it's Dylan Jones. Dylan is the cofounder of ClickFunnels, which allows individuals and businesses to set up online marketing funnels in just minutes.

Dylan, welcome to the Fail On Podcast my man.

[0:02:29.4] DJ: Hey man, I’m excited to be here. This is awesome.

[0:02:32.6] RN: Beautiful. Obviously, ClickFunnels has turned into a massive success. You guys just hosted that event in Dallas, which my entire social media for I think, the 3, 4 days was literally of just funnel hacking. That’s literally my entire Facebook feed during that time.

[0:02:51.1] DJ: I felt like the whole world was there. All my Facebook was just like, “Is there anybody not of this event at this point?”

[0:02:56.7] RN: It looked awesome. You guys had Tony Robbins. It looked just, it looked phenomenal. All the feedback that I got was great.

[0:03:03.3] DJ: That’s awesome. Thank you man.

[0:03:04.3] RN: The thing is I don't think many people actually know you exist, not in a bad way of course, but I mean Russell Brunson's obviously the face of the company doing most of the promotion and marketing and I just don't think many people realize that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. So I'm really excited to hear and share your story with the listeners.

[0:03:22.1] DJ: Perfect. I'm excited too. There's a lot to tell.

[0:03:25.2] RN: Can’t wait to get into it. So what were you doing before even getting on that crazy ride with ClickFunnels? Give us an idea of how you got started in business pre-ClickFunnels days.

[0:03:34.3] DJ: Pre-ClickFunnels, I was basically doing what a lot of internet markers do which is like the whole launch thing. Basically I was a web designer and a developer partnering with other people that were the face which is exactly the situation I'm in kind of now, which is Russell is the face. He’s the one that can sell everything, but we’re the ones that can actually create the software and do a lot of that kind of stuff. This is a pretty normal situation for me to be in where I’m behind the scenes doing all these launches.

The problem with before was we did launch constantly, like every month we did a new software. So I think I created like at least 50 different software products doing the designs and programming. It just gets exhausted. Finally, when we partnered with Russell to do all this awesome stuff with ClickFunnels, it was like, “We’re only going to do one product, right? It’s just going to be the one thing and we’re going to do it for the next five years.” Like, “Sweet. Thank God. Let’s just do that.” That's what I was doing before ClickFunnels.

[0:04:25.0] RN: That's crazy. 50 different software products. That’s obviously —

[0:04:27.8] DJ: That’s what I can remember. There’s probably even more.

[0:04:31.7] RN: Just take me back to one of those projects. For example, how long would it take you to create that software? Were they all pretty similar, or were you rebuilding it from scratch? Was it an ongoing product that people used for years and years, or was it kind of just a smash and grab type thing?

[0:04:47.1] DJ: That's a good question, because a lot of them were WordPress related, so back in the day, like a few years ago, WordPress and WordPress plugins was the easy way and that was because you can create software and people can just use it right away because the issue was they have to install it and they have to setup PHP, and it was just harder. WordPress came out and it was just easy to develop on it and everyone was using it, so we just made a bunch of WordPress plug-ins.

Honestly, near the end of it, I just built my own framework so it was easy to make plug-ins. The hard part was the idea and the design and making sure people wanted it. It actually was maybe a few weeks of just actually making the stuff. Most products are pretty easy, like they do this and then they output this and you just keep doing that. So it wasn't a big thing.

[0:05:28.8] RN: Got you. Going back to all of those, I mean I'm sure even before that, how did you get into — Are you more on the design side? Are you more on the development side?

[0:05:39.6] DJ: I’m on both. This is the Fail On Podcast, I have some interesting story of how I actually started doing this. So I'll start when I was young and how I got basically into the whole entrepreneur game and everything like that. That would kind of answer the question that you just asked.

When I was in high school, my mom was sick. She has a disability, right? When I was in grade 9 I wanted to be a video game designer. So I found out that all or most videogame designers work with Epic or Ubisoft and all these places actually were like modders for video games. I was like, “Sweet. If I can get a videogame and I can mod the videogame, show what I can do and then I get a job at Ubisoft so I can go to college and do the whole normal career path thing.”

Then in grade 9 I started a rock 'n roll kind of hard-core punk band. I was kind of a rebel when I was a kid, and we needed a website, so I was like, “Oh, man. I’ll do that.” I was making videogames and stuff, so I was like, “I’ll make a website. That’s no problem. I probably needed needed a website for my videogame anyway, so sweet. That works.”

I started making that, and then near the end of grade nine, I remember one teacher came up to me — It was like part of the class and these people in the class were kind of being annoying. Then he just stopped everything he was doing and he's like, “What’s the point of teaching you math,” that's what it was, “You’re just going to be working at McDonald's anyways.” I was like, “What?”

[0:06:57.5] RN: Motivational teacher of the year, huh?

[0:06:58.2] DJ: Yeah. Yeah, great, but he actually was the favorite teacher of the school. Everyone loved this dude, and so I was kind of excited to have him teach me, and he just became this huge jerk and then I was like, “This is the guy who’s teaching me? He says the best I can do is McDonalds? What the heck?” That’s when I was kind of getting started to be disillusioned by the whole system as a punk rocker.

So I remember one class I had, I was doing some web design stuff and a teacher came over, a different teacher came over and he’s like, “Oh! That’s great. You should maybe do web design as your career.” I was like — The first thought I had was like, “F that! I will never work for a client.” For some reason in my head I thought this was working for the man. I was like, “I’m never going to do this. I’m not going to work for the man,” like a punk rocker dude.

[0:07:39.8] RN: What year was this, by the way?

[0:07:41.9] DJ: What’s that?

[0:07:42.4] RN: What year was this? Just for some context. Was web design still really new at that time? Where it was like a —

[0:07:47.5] DJ: It was like 12, 13 years ago, so I’m not sure what year that is. Whatever the math is. But yeah, I wanted to be like a web — Or, he told me I should be a web designer. I was like, “No. That’s not what I want to do. I never want to work for a client.” For some reason, I thought that was the worst thing ever.

Then I started getting more disillusioned with school, and then school stopped becoming about learning and more about just going to work at McDonalds and then also started becoming, “I just have to go to school, because if I’m not in school my mom doesn’t get her disability check, or at least to support us, right? Like a thousand bucks extra a month.

So school stopped becoming being relevant at all only for me to actually just be physically present and I was always skipping school because I was learning coding and I was like, “It’s more important for me to stay up all night and code than it is to go to school.” So again, all these pressures to go to school, but only because I needed to — Basically it was framed as “if you’re not going to school, you’re screwing your mom over money and you’re being the worst kid ever”. I was like, “That’s terrible!”

Then a week later after the teacher told me to be a web designer, I went and find — I was like, “How to get a job as a web designer?” I found this website, getafreelancer.com, and then I found a little job for $200 bucks. I did it. It took me a day to do, and I did a few more jobs and then I made a few thousand dollars. Then the week after, I dropped out of high school because I realized the biggest F.U. to the system is to go my own way and not let them stop me and give me all these bullshit, really. That’s how I started being a web designer. From there —

[0:09:15.3] RN: What grade were you when you dropped out?

[0:09:17.1] DJ: All that kind of stuff happened in grade nine and it’s basically the start of grade 10.

[0:09:21.1] RN: Oh wow. So pretty early on in high school then.

[0:09:22.6] DJ: Yeah. No, totally. Like right from the start, basically.

[0:09:25.6] RN: What was your process there, like your thought process? What did your mom think in terms of you doing that to not be able to get that disability check?

[0:09:37.2] DJ: I think everyone was kind of scared, but I just knew that like if I can