December 7, 2020 • 48 mins
In this episode I speak with Dave Woodward The CEO of ClickFunnels and host of the weekly Funnel Hacker Radio Podcast.
In just 6 years, the company went from 0 to 125K Customers, 350 employees and $150 Million in annual revenue, and what it meant for him.
Did we mention they did it with zero funding?
We also went through a variety of topics, including:
- how to instil a company’s culture from a small team to hundreds of employees
- how to build a community with people, not for them
- the work people should prioritise to become more effective leaders
Upraw media: https://uprawmedia.com/
Episode highlights: https://uprawmedia.com/blog/customers-clickfunnels
If you are keen to know more about Upraw Media or be a Masters of SaaS guest speaker, visit uprawmedia.com or DM us on LinkedIn. We are also on Youtube if you'd like to put a face to the names and voices of the best in SaaS. Thanks for tuning in!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Todd Chambers (00:08):
Hey guys, welcome to the Masters of SaaS podcast
brought to you by Upraw media, agrowth marketing agency for SaaS
specialising in paid mediacontent and conversion rate
optimisation. I'll be your host,Todd Chambers. I have the
absolute pleasure of chattingwith really smart people from
the SaaS industry. The goal isto extract as much value as
(00:29):
possible. What are theirstrategies, their tactics, their
failures, funny stories, keylearnings? All of this can then
be used to help you grow andscale your own SaaS business.
In this episode, I speak withDave Woodward, the CEO of
ClickFunnels, and host of theweekly funnel hacker Radio
Podcast. ClickFunnels has125,000 customers 350 employees
(00:51):
and generates 150 million inannual revenue. They achieved
this in just six years and withzero funding. We discuss how
they use webinars to fuel thegrowth of the company.
Interestingly, they devised astrategy to increase their
customers upfront payment toaround $1,000. This allowed them
to spend considerably more oncustomer acquisition and bypass
(01:12):
the traditional SaaS paybackperiod. We also dive in today's
responsibilities of a CEO, theimportance of having a personal
assistant, and the key metricsthat Dave watches like a hawk.
Alright, let's do it.
Hey, Dave, welcome to the show!Thanks so much for being here.
Dave Woodward (01:28):
I'm so excited.
Thank you, this is going to be alot of fun!
Todd Chambers (01:31):
Good stuff. Well, let's start off with a basic
introduction. Who's DaveWoodward? What's your
background? And how did you endup at ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (01:40):
My background is I've been an entrepreneur my
entire life. I'm completelyunemployable, no one would ever
hire me. I've had theopportunity of working with
ClickFunnels since we gotstarted and have a part of
ClickFunnels from the beginning.
I've never out of all thecompanies I've ever built
here's nothing more exciting,more fun, and nothing I've been
more passionate about and reallyhelping small to middle- sized
businesses and entrepreneursscale and grow and build their
(02:02):
businesses using ClickFunnels.
So it's been right in my life.
Todd Chambers (02:07):
Am I right in saying that you had an agency
before Click Funnels?
Dave Woodward (02:10):
Very good. Yes! You did your homework! Um, yeah,
I had it. This was pre-internetdays. So it was direct response
marketing, a lot of financialservices. So I had real estate
agencies and mortgage brokersand financial planners and
insurance agents and really kindof cut my teeth in that industry
and knew it really well. Had acouple of agencies that sold
(02:33):
myself, and so I just took mymarketing skills and building
those other agencies we sold andused those to help further grow
and scale other businesses.
Todd Chambers (02:42):
Just on my own personal interest, obviously, we
run an agency. How does youragency days compared to being
the CEO ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (02:50):
There are pros and cons to both I guess.
Honestly, I think the one thingI have loved more than anything
else about ClickFunnels is theSaaS revenue. There's just
something about monthlyrecurring revenue that I think
the hardest thing for me inhaving an agency was: you
basically go out, you kill whatyou want and then you got to
(03:10):
fulfil on that. And so it wasthis cycle of feast or famine
for so many years until I wasable to build it well enough to
where I had enough of a team todo a lot of the selling side
first. But I think that was thehardest part with an agency for
sure.
Todd Chambers (03:25):
Yeah, I think it's a common thread, isn't it?
I hear, particularly, on SaaSpodcasts. So many people that
start SaaS companies came froman agency background, and I
guess the scale of a SaaScompany and the unit economics
make a lot more sense thanselling time. Right?
Dave Woodward (03:38):
It totally does.
Todd Chambers (03:40):
Yeah. Cool, for people that don't understand,
can you explain maybe in themost simplistic terms, what is
ClickFunnels? What does itactually do?
Dave Woodward (03:48):
So Click Funnels is for any small to middle-sized
business who's either trying togenerate a lead online or to
sell any product, physical ordigital online. So if you've got
a product or service you'retrying to sell online, you're
trying to generate a lead, ClickFunnels is for you.
We've got a drag and drop editorthat allows you to build out
your entire online salesfunnels. You can do webinars,
(04:09):
auto webinars, you can havemembership sites, all the
follow-up funnels and the emailautomation sequences is really
one of the biggest things thatmost people use ClickFunnels
for. For every dollar comes inthe front end, there's typically
anywhere from 15 to 17 in thefollow-up sequences, and the
great thing about ClickFunnelsis you can actually see where
people fall out throughout thatfollow- up the funnel. One of
(04:29):
the biggest things we find for alot of e-commerce business
cart abandonment is always thebiggest issue. And so by having
the funnel that controls thecart, and also being able to
split test, the actual way thisshopping cart is set up, linked
with all the automationsequences is really one of the
main things that people loveabout ClickFunnels
Todd Chambers (04:49):
you probably get this question all the time, so
apologies I'm gonna ask itanyway. I can see it's on your
website, and I read quite alengthy article about the
difference between what I guesswhat you do define as a sales
funnel and a typical marketingfunnel. This seems to be the key
differentiation betweenClickFunnels and perhaps some
other landing page building typesoftware. What, in your mind is
(05:11):
a sales funnel? And how doesthat apply to ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (05:14):
Sure, I think a lot of it also ties into just
the difference between a websiteand a sales funnel, we see that
comparison as well. Typically,what you'll find for most
websites or a lot of othersfunnels is it's really this
massive billboard. It's a hugeshopping place where a person
comes in, and they just getdistracted.
I think the hardest part thesedays is most people's patients
(05:36):
online is just a click away. Andif they can't find their answer
super, super fast, they're gone.
Now one of the great thingsabout ClickFunnels and having a
sales funnel is you have one oneproduct, or you have one problem
you're trying to solve. And byhaving one problem you're trying
to solve, you can dedicate allof your focus to that person
who's landing there, whethercoming from something you've
done organically or through paidtraffic, they literally land
(05:59):
there, and they know exactlywhat they're looking for, they
get the answer. The idea behindthe sales funnel is you then
sell them one product at a time.
Unlike typical shopping carts,where they have massive sticker
shock at the end, and they havehuge cart abandonment issues.
What will happen is, you'll gothrough, and you sell them one
product, and then it gets addedto the next and then it gets
added to the next, and sothere's no sticker shock. They
(06:19):
are literally just buying oneproduct at a time.
We just recently did Russell's(Brunson) most recent book
Traffic Secrets. Again, $7, freeplus shipping, but our average
cart value at the end is around$60. Did "Perfect webinar
secrets" just over Black Friday,Cyber Monday; again it's a $7
front end digital product in ouraverage cart value, that's $42.
(06:40):
So the whole idea behind it isallowing them to buy one product
at a time. So they get that itchscratched, and they solved that
problem. And then it's on to thenext.
Todd Chambers (06:50):
Yeah, understand.
And you're there are twoco-founders, and I believe
you're a partner. How did thatkind of manifest?
Dave Woodward (06:57):
Sure. So Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson are
our two co-founders. Russell isthe marketing genius, and Todd
is the development tech wiz, andwithout the two of them,
ClickFunnels would not exist. Iwas brought in right at the very
beginning as well, and so wehave our two co-founders, and
there are four other partners.
Todd Chambers (07:17):
So when you first came into the company, was it
literally just you three? Or wasthere already a small team at
that point?
Dave Woodward (07:22):
So Russell had John Parkes working for him for
quite a few years in his priorbusiness. And so they came in as
partners, myself brought in fromthe outside. And then we brought
in our Chief Technology OfficerRyan Montgomery.
Todd Chambers (07:36):
Maybe anyone doesn't understand the size of
ClickFunnels. It's quite anachievement! I think you guys
are around six years old, maybeyou can give some context into
the revenue the headcount,anything you're comfortable
sharing.
Dave Woodward (07:48):
I'm pretty open.
So whatever you'd like to know.
Yeah, six years, September 142014, when we launched, so we're
six years old and during thatperiod of time, we've had over
125,000 customers. This year,we'll do close about 150 million
in annual revenue. Majority ofthat is annual recurring
revenue, which is nice as a SaaScompany. In addition to that, we
(08:08):
got about 350 employees, themajority of those are in our
customer support, servicing inour clients and trying to make
sure they have the greatestsuccess using our platform.
Todd Chambers (08:17):
With regards to the headcount, how is the tea
structure? That's quite a lotof people, and we can talk ab
ut your role in a second as CEand how that's changed. But ye
h, what is it what is the maority of the makeup of those
Dave Woodward (08:30):
So we're 100% remote. I'm here in our Boise
employees?
office, our Boise office isprimarily an executive office.
That's me, Russell, Brent, andJohn are here primarily. in add
tion to that, Todd has an offce in Atlanta, but everyone els
is remote. Our customer suport is remotes, our dev
lopers, remote, again, it's a rmote company. I think that's all
(08:52):
wed us the opportunity of realy recruiting the very best tal
nt. We didn't need to recuit them in Boise, we didn't nee
to recruit them in Atlanta. Soherever the best talent was any
here in the world, we had theopportunity of using that as a w
y of bringing them onboard.
I think the other thing,especially for a lot of our
developers, they have theopportunity of actually working
on something that they can seethe end user actually having
(09:13):
success with. Unlike a personwho's working for Facebook or
Twitter, where they're, they'redealing with little tiny pixels
and things that really doesn'thave that much impact. Any of
our developers that are on theteam people we work with on our
team, they actually have massiveimpact in the lives of our
customers.
Todd Chambers (09:32):
When I see a ClickFunnels page, they have a
kind of a certain look and feelwhich we'll get onto in a
second. Does Click Funnels kindof cater to a specific you
mentioned small to medium-sizedcompanies, but does it lend
itself particularly well to acertain type of product or
service for example?
Dave Woodward (09:51):
We started primarily with the information
marketers, coaches, consultants,things of that area. Since then
we've grown rapidly into a lotof the e-commerce play, so
people who are (10:01):
Amazon shops, Etsy, Shopify, anything at all
like that. Recently with COVID,we've seen a lot of professional
se (10:09):
doctors, dentists, accounts, attorneys, real estate agents,
more physical people who aretrying to bring people in. A lot
of them also realising they canstart doing things, telemedicine
has become huge. And so we'reseeing the opportunity of
expanding much more than yourgeographic limitations and so
those been probably some of thethree largest areas. Agencies
continue to use our platform fortheir clients as well.
Todd Chambers (10:33):
So the big question is, how the hell did
you grow from zero to 150million ARR in six years? And I
know that's a really bigquestion. I'm sure it's tonnes
of hard work and cumulativegains over the years, but kind
of looking back now, are thereperhaps one or two or two or
three things that stick out inyour mind? Actually looking
backwards, those are thefundamental things that we got
(10:55):
right, and that's how we've beenable to scale so big.
Dave Woodward (10:58):
I think the first thing you kind of have to
understand is we're totallybootstrapped, we have no debt.
And we don't have any partner,financial partners. So because
of that, we learned very earlyon that we had to get very, very
good at what we did to bringpeople in. And I think Russell
literally had decade's worth ofexperience marketing online,
(11:20):
really, one of the main thingswe saw was, for us, if we were
to look at a trial, a typicaltrial is going to run anywhere
from $130 to $150 per trial, andrealising that it's a 14 day
free trial with a credit card.
After 15 days, we're gonna havea 40% to 45% conversion.
So to have someone pay $97, it'sgoing to cost us almost $400, to
have that happen. So then we'rereally four months out before we
(11:43):
actually get a return on that.
So our CAC versus return andverything else is not a four-
onth out if we were to go thatirection. So what we end up
oing instead was do what wenew worked, and that was
reating funnels to generatelients for free.
So our whole thing is trying tofind two metrics we pay a lot of
We tried doing a whole bunch ofother things in the beginning,
attention to, and that is (12:03):
what' our cost acquire a customer?
nd what's our average cart vale? So for us, we knew that one
of the main things that when were selling other types
of information was providina product or service that
as bundled with information. Andso for us, the very first th
ng that really took ClickFunnelsto our first 10,000 (we've b
(12:24):
en even using it these days riht now) was webina
trying to bring people onthinking that "if you build it,
they will come" type of approachdid not work. What we found was,
actually was Russell wasspeaking at one of his, one of
his friends, live events. Andduring that live event, we had
(12:46):
the table rush take effect. Andwe're offering ClickFunnels
bundled with information on howactually to use the product. At
the time as $1,000 product for ayear's worth of ClickFunnels but
what they received with thatwas, it was called our funnel
hacks webinar. They received atonne of information on how to
actually use the software, howto actually create products
online. There were probably fouror five different additional
(13:10):
education training components.
Actually in addition to thatwhat they received was a year's
worth of Click Funnels.
Since that we've now dropped itdown to six months of
ClickFunnels and then whathappened was, we took that live
event onto a webinar. And westarted doing webinars through a
lot of affiliates, and thenthrough paid traffic. And that
really has been the main thingthat's helped build
(13:31):
ClickFunnels.
Todd Chambers (13:32):
You touch on a really interesting point about
the unit economics. You'resaying it's costing you 400 to
acquire a customer, but you'reonly gaining that money back at
approximately 100 per month. Soyou have this kind of payback
period of four months. And ifyou really want to scale
something big, then you end upin this kind of negative cash
flow trope. And it sounds likeyou kind of eat your own dog
(13:55):
food. And that's kind of whatthe product is, it's to help you
build these funnels. And that'show you built it.
Selling the information and thecourse content first I guess
most companies sell the productfirst. And then as an
afterthought, there's like anonboarding, this is how you use
it. You guys have it the otherway around.
Dave Woodward (14:11):
Yes, for us, the great thing is it brought in
$1,000 upfront. The nice thingis brought $1,000 upfront, but
the great part of the webinar ison the thank you page is where
we had a free trial. And so eventhough a typical webinar, we're
going to close you know, 20%,25-30% of the attendees. What we
(14:32):
found on all the registrants wewould pick up probably three to
four times that amount of peopleactually starting the free trial
just because they went throughthe funnel to sign up for the
webinar. And so we picked up atonne of free trials. Typically
we would look at we'd get asmany free trials as we actually
had customers.
Todd Chambers (14:48):
Just in terms of your role. I believe you were
previously the CRO, the ChieRevenue Officer, and now you
re the CEO. What was your rolas CRO, and how did the tr
nsition happen to CEO and kid of what is the difference of
your role at the moment?
Dave Woodward (15:03):
I think the role is pretty much the same. So my s
ill set is in growing and saling businesses, that's what I
do the best. And because of tat, revenue is what you need t
grow and scale a business. Ad so chief revenue officers r
ally kind of what I spent theast four yearsfive years on,
eally making sure we were growin.
(15:25):
We looked at the typical, youknow, SaaS thing where we're
trying to get two years oftripling and three years of
doubling. That's really how welooked at it. And so I set the
goal of what was it gonna taketo triple our revenue and our
customers in the first threeyears? Triple in the first two
and then double for the nextthree. And that's really what
(15:45):
kind of the roadmap that I setout to do, working with Russell
and, and with John Brent andwith the other people on the
marketing and sales team. Tryingto make sure that we hit those
types of numbers was critical toour growth.
Obviously, the other thing thatreally plays into revenue is
going to be churn. So workingwith these quite a few different
companies these days to actuallyhelp reduce churn and voluntary
(16:06):
churn versus voluntary churn,trying to get that down as low
as we possibly can. But then, asfar as CEO, I've been in that
role, I guess, for the last twoyears. And we officially made it
this last year. Primarily,Russell and Todd are brilliant
at what they do. But managingpeople isn't one of the things
that bring them a lot of joy andsatisfaction. And so I've taken
(16:27):
on that opportunity to reallymanage the team and try to grow
and scale and build the businessthat Russell and Todd are still
heavily involved in taught stillquite a bit daily basis inside
of the tech Russell does thesame on the marketing. And my
skill set really is helpingscale and build a business.
Todd Chambers (16:43):
So when you log in, and you sit down to work on
a Monday morning, what atraditional day look like for
you? Is it a lot of lookingafter your managers? Is it
hiring? What does the kind ofday to day look like?
Dave Woodward (16:56):
So our Mondays are
first two hours is knock out allof our meetings. And so we have
an executive, we call it ago-meeting, it's based on their
goals and objectives. So thefirst 30 minutes is me with our
executive team. The next 30minutes is the executive team
with the managers and the last30 minutes is the managers with
people they work with. And thenwe have a company-wide pulse
(17:18):
meeting.
Do you think that's a huge partwhen you have such a big team,
So within two hours, everyonethroughout the company knows
what the goals and the plansare, what objectives we need,
what obstacles we need toovercome. So our goals and
obstacles, trying to make surewe knock those things out.
Everyone knows what everyone'sworking on for the week. And we
and you have hundreds of peoplebelow you? Do you think having
target that and make sure thathappens. I'm really not a
meeting type of person. My go-totools are Voxer, Slack and
that personal assistant, aperson who's got your back, was
(17:42):
email. And I rarely ever checkedmy email. I've got the most
at a critical turning point foryou?
I can tell you for me nomatter how big your company is,
amazing assistant in the world,Courtney Nicoll works with me, a
d she manages all my email ad everything else and so tho
e things are priority she letse know about, but I really try
to spend time just on strategynd working with the te
(18:15):
I think the very first hire youhave to hire is an assistant. I
think that they will take off somuch of the stuff that you were
you're struggling to deal withon a regular basis that just
occupies your time that youdon't need, and they're worth
their weight in gold. I've beenblessed to have great assistance
through my entire career. And tome, it's just a necessity.
Todd Chambers (18:39):
Now I'm really intrigued. So if you're hiring
assistant, it sounds likeCourtney's doing a great job. So
well done to Courtney! What doyou look for in a personal
assistant? I guess they havequite a broad range of different
skills. When you're hiring, whatdo you look for?
Dave Woodward (18:52):
So for me, the main thing I'm looking, and
everyone's different on that,but I look at what are the
things that I don't want to do,that's going to take away time?
I'm trying to buy back time.
First thing I hire an assistantis I'm just buying time.
Email is one of the things thatjust occupies a tonne of my
time. I don't want to mess withemail, I don't want to mess with
scheduling calendar stuff. Idon't want to mess with anything
(19:15):
that I mean, she literally takescare of everything as far as
transferring domains, buyingproducts, buying services,
travel. Literally, anything thatI don't need to personally be
involved in, she does all ofthat. She's just the most
amazing woman to work with. I'vebeen blessed to have her for
quite some time now. And shejust steps up, and we have a
(19:37):
daily meeting at eight o'clock.
We go through and if I can'tmake that call, I just Voxer the
things I need, and she's on topof it. She typically will say
"hey, you know what, these arethe priorities, these are things
you need to reach out to thesepeople today". She's more than
just a gatekeeper. She's kind ofmy second brain. She thinks for
me in a lot of areas which Ihave been blessed to have.
Todd Chambers (19:59):
So I'm not familiar with Vox. Is that
project management software? Oris it something else?
Dave Woodward (20:02):
Voxer. And it's like a walkie talkie on your
phone. The thing I like mostabout it is I can go at four
times the speed, so I can listento content and consume content
really quick. The thing that'salways hard for me is people
typically won't get to the pointfast enough. And so for me, I
can spe (20:25):
team members can ask me questions, I can respond. Again,
it goes back to the idea as faras being reactive or proactive
in your communication. I don'twant to be sitting there where
I'm having to react to everybodyall the time. I prefer to be
much more proactive. Everyoneknows that if you need something
right away, Voxer is the bestway of getting to me. If it's
(20:49):
something by the eod type ofdeal, Slack is where I go to
next. And then if it's somethingthat I just need information on,
that's what emails for.
Todd Chambers (21:00):
Gotcha. You speaking about Monday morning,
you just like to knock themeetings, I get them done. And
everybody knows what theblockers are. Everybody knows
what the objectives are for theweek. How do you communicate
that? You know, kind of top downis that done through project
management, through slack? Is itdone through the managers? How
does that filter down?
Dave Woodward (21:18):
It's done through the managers, but we use Slack
quite a bit. Clickup is what weuse for all of our project
management. We've done Trellowe've done Asana, we've done
Monday.com, ClickUp seems to bethe most recent one we're on. It
works really well for us.
Todd Chambers (21:33):
We also transitioned to ClickUp around
six months ago. And I think it'sa steep learning curve. I was a
little bit resistant in thefirst couple of months, now
we've embraced it. And I'vereally got my head around. It's
really adaptable. So yes, shoutout to those guys.
You mentioned webinars beingkind of your core traction
(21:55):
channel back in the day. Andthese days, of course, you are a
much bigger company, have muchmore resources, many, many more
people in the marketing team. In2020, what are kind of the core
channels that work particularlywell for you, because you're
still growing quite considerablyyear over year? So how are you
guys doing that?
Dave Woodward (22:13):
We're still using webinars. We're huge proponents
of webinars. In addition tothat, Russell's written three
different books (22:21):
Dotcom secrets, Expert secrets, Traffic Secrets,
just released this year. Russelis now in New York Times
bestselling author because ofthat book, and it sold almost
close to 100,000 copies now.
We use a lot of front ends, wehave 20 different front ends
that John Parkes, our ChiefMarketing Officer, runs to drive
(22:43):
our traffic to. The books havebeen a huge opportunity because
it provides a lot of content.
Obviously, within the books, itsells and pitches ClickFunnels.
The other really big thing thisyear, we've been doing now for
the last two years. And that isour One Funnel Away Challenge.
That has probably been the bestthing to help us not only for
(23:05):
client acquisition but moreimportantly, for retention and
decreasing churn.
The idea behind One Funnel AwayChannel it cost me 100 bucks,
we give that $100 away to anyaffiliate who promotes the
challenge. But the idea behindit, it's: it literally takes
someone in and within 30 daysand get their funnel up and
built and running and tested andhaving sales. I think the most
(23:31):
important thing, whatever you'reselling is you have to have the
buyer consume the product. Andthe more consumption that
occurs, the greater chancethey're going to either rebuy it
or refer it or whatever else youmight be trying to do with that
product.
The way it works is every singleday, there's a basically it's a
(23:52):
10,000-foot level, it's given byRussell, and then it's broken
down kind of 1000 foot level.
And then we have our coaches whoget in daily on Facebook,
communicating with people justtrying to make sure there's any
hurdles they're running against,or any offices they have that
those things are gettinganswered. The whole idea here is
giving them bite-sized piecesthat they can tackle within a
day. And every single day,they're just doing a little bit
(24:14):
more.
By the end of the month, theybuilt everything, they'd rent
traffic to it, they've testedthings that got results. And
that way they're like "Iactually can see something
taking place". That for us hasbeen probably the biggest
game-changer for especially froma retention standpoint, we see
by you know, month six and eightand twelve at that point where
we're seeing you a 50% increaseover clients who didn't go
(24:38):
through the One Funnel AwayChallenge.
Todd Chambers (24:40):
It seems like you've also built a really great
community. I know you have aFacebook community, you also
have a live conference. How muchof the community aspect do you
think kind of plays into theculture and the growth of the
company?
Dave Woodward (24:51):
I can tell you for from our perspective,
culture is the most importantpart these days. Again, I joke
around as far iPhones, I got thenew iPhone 12. It's literally
the same thing as iPhone 10, abetter camera but it the same
thing. I bought it just becauseI have been with Apple for so
(25:12):
many years, it's just the nextthing that I do. I may skip a
version or whatever. It'sbecause I believe in the Apple
culture. I must have probably 15or 20 different if Apple
products as far as my familymembers and things.
We look at ClickFunnelsfollowing that same type of
(25:32):
initiative. And it's really isthat it's that culture, it's
that getting you to go way backto you know, Steve Jobs original
1984 commercial of introducingthe Mac for the first time. I
think the idea behind it is youget people who are that
passionate about your products,that they literally just, again,
we've got t-shirts, we give outall the time, you go through our
(25:53):
signup flow, you get a funnelhacker shirt, so you can then
identify I am a funnel hacker,I'm part of the community.
I think the biggest problem mostpeople struggle with as far as
an entrepreneur or smallbusiness owner, it is so lonely
and so scary. And you just youdon't have anybody to talk to
who knows what you're goingthrough. I remember when I was
(26:15):
running my agency, people justhad no idea. I mean, a lot of my
friends and their spouses (26:18):
they had businesses and jobs that
were nine to five, and they'relike, I just don't understand
what you're doing how it justmade no sense. And because that
I, you know, go out to dinner, Ijust didn't have anything to
talk to me back. So I'm like,we'll talk about family and
kids, but professionally, ourlives were so different.
(26:38):
And I think the main thing thatClickFunnels provides is it
provides a community for thosepeople who want to be a part of
want to grow at scale and buildtheir own business. And that for
us is probably one of the mostfun things for me. We were
fortunate to have our funnelhacking live event in January,
right before the whole COVIDthing you know.
Todd Chambers (27:01):
You were lucky with this!
Dave Woodward (27:02):
We were. We're looking out to 2021 trying to
find the right date becausepeople love to get together as
entrepreneurs. They love to be apart of it, they want us, and
they love seeing the success weaward. We have our two comma
club awards, and our two commaclub x and two comma club c
awards, just trying to recognisethe success of other businesses
and entrepreneurs.
Todd Chambers (27:22):
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head for me. I'm
familiar with ClickFunnelsanyway, but looking into this,
there's definitely thatentrepreneurial spirit within
the community, it's people thatkind of want to make it and
having that content and havingthose people around that can
answer those questions and guideyou I think is...yeah what
creates that culture within thecommunity.
(27:45):
Essentially, I think in 2020, ifyou look at, you know, software,
realistically, you're probablynot going to win the race if
you're building based onfeatures because, you know,
these days we can buildanything. Development is almost
a commodity. I think the brandand the community is the thing
(28:05):
that's going to differentiateyou and yeah, and keep people
retained with within theproduct. Super smart bit. Yeah.
How about COVID? And youmentioned you had your event in
January, which I guess was justbefore the sh*t hit the fan. How
has COVID affected you? Youmentioned your you remote team,
(28:29):
I assume?
Dave Woodward (28:29):
Yeah.
Todd Chambers (28:31):
Okay, so you were quite well placed for COVID. But
how is it been on the company,anything you've kind of
comfortable sharing?
Dave Woodward (28:38):
The biggest mistake I made was not buying
zoom stock four years ago when Istarted using it, but aside from
that, from a company'sperspective, it's been a huge
blessing. Um, it's hard for meto talk to other businesses I
know who. I got a lot of friendswho've lost their businesses
because of COVID, and I'msensitive to that pain and that
(28:58):
frustration. Having gone throughthat in 2008-2009, I know how
painful that is.
For us, at ClickFunnels It wasactually a huge boom. We had a
large spike in customers whowere trying to figure out how to
go online. I think the mainthing COVID did was it
accelerated and pushed peoplethree to four years into the
(29:19):
future, as far as just onlineusage.
Again, take a look at anyone. Imean, Amazon. Everyone's
shopping on Amazon right now. Imean, look at what we just went
through in Black Friday. Theyactually started Black Friday on
November 1 just trying to getthe retailer's money because,
again, Cyber Monday's actuallysells more than Black Friday.
(29:43):
That's these days just becauseof, of COVID and because of
what's happened now. I thinkthat you're seeing a lot of your
professional services a lot ofpeople who even our gyms one
of my trainers here. He's had ahuge successful gym here for
years, but now he's going onlinejust because of the whole COVID
situation. I think what itprimarily did was it started
(30:08):
making, forcing people to feelmuch more comfortable doing
things online, buying online,shopping, just consuming content
online. And I think because ofthat, we happen to be one of the
beneficiaries.
I know a lot of other companiesare in that same situation. But
I think as you look forward, thebenefit of COVID is, I think
(30:29):
you're gonna see a lot ofcompanies actually accelerate
their growth online, where theyotherwise would have waited
three to five years to do it.
Todd Chambers (30:37):
Yeah, indeed.
Well, you're so right. There areso many unfortunate losers in
this in this situation. And youmentioned that you had a similar
feeling in 2008, or 2009. Do youmind sharing what happened to
you there?
Dave Woodward (30:50):
I was heavily involved in the mortgage real
estate. Most of my clients werein that area. And I started
paying in advance for clientsmarketing, knowing we get it on
the back end, and they justdidn't pay. And so it was a, it
took me to my knees, I guess, alot of times.
Todd Chambers (31:11):
Were there any particular lessons from that
period looking back?
Dave Woodward (31:17):
I could do a whole podcast just on the
lessons learned! I think one ofthe main ones: I got
overleveraged, for sure, Itrusted too much of my clients.
I'm a much more astute businessowner, and I run our business
much more by numbers. You can'trun just by numbers, you got to
(31:39):
have a gut check out there aswell, but I think I trusted too
much for sure in my clients andthought we were working
together. And again Iunderstand, when it's your
business and your family, theycome first. And so because of
that, I didn't get paid onthings that should have been
paid on. But again, I think themain thing was just building
reserves. And just beingcautious. I'm not a person who
(32:05):
runs my life by fear at all, I'mvery optimistic about everything
that's happening. But I think atthe same time, the primary thing
I learned was you make sure youhave reserves. Cash flow is
king, and especially when you gointo hard times, everything goes
on sale. And it would have beena nice time to actually buy
things instead of sellingthings.
Todd Chambers (32:22):
Are there maybe 2,3,4 metrics from a numbers
perspective of ClickFunnels thatyou kind of have on the pulse?
Would it be new users activatedusers churn? Like what are those
few metrics that you watch likea hawk?
Dave Woodward (32:37):
So ClickFunnels is a 14 day free trial with a
credit card. And so when theyfirst come in, they sign up,
step one is sign up. Step two isto enter the credit card. I look
at those numbers every singleday: how many people are coming
in and enter their email addressand signing up? How many people
are actually entering theircredit card, and then obviously,
day four day 15, when they payor the so those are the first
(32:59):
things.
For us, the really big number Ialways look at is day 105.
That's 14 days plus threemonths. That's really where I
see churn, I think 14 days freetrial, again, we're in the tiny
business to small business,middle-sized businesses. So
there's going to be a lot ofpeople; it's more of a paid
trial for three months. Wereally look at after three
(33:22):
months, those are customers whoare really going to stick and
move forward with it. So I lookat that. Obviously, MRR is a
huge issue. I look at churn onan on a very frequent basis. If
not daily, I always look atleast weekly. And then the other
thing, obviously, is I take ahuge look at EBITDA, and
saturation, SaaS quick ratios.
Todd Chambers (33:43):
Just to take another random question that
came into my mind. And again, Iwas thinking about the size of
the company, and you're the CEO,but you also have the two
co-founders I'm sure to havequite a strong opinion about the
strategic direction of ClickFunnels. How do you kind of come
to those big strategic decisionsin the direction of the company?
Is it is that designated to oneperson and he takes point or is
(34:05):
it more of a collaborativeeffort there?
Dave Woodward (34:10):
I've known Russell now for, gosh, 12 years,
I've known Todd for the lastnine years now. We're pretty
much always on the same page.
Todd Chambers (34:24):
Okay.
Dave Woodward (34:26):
I think one of the things I learned from the
whole 2008-2009 is very carefulwho you partner with. And I was
hesitant to have anotherpartnership later. But for me,
when you find the rightpartners. I spend as much time
with Russell and Todd as I dowith my wife. It's almost like
another marriage. We're verysimilar, we're very focused on
(34:50):
the same direction we're tryingto go. I guess if it came right
down to as far as to push orshove I mean, really, Todd and
Russell the two that would havethe final win, they have the
most equity.
Todd Chambers (35:02):
yeah. So what is the future of ClickFunnels? What
is the strategic direction youguys are looking to? Is it more
of the same? Or is there adifferent angle?
Dave Woodward (35:10):
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this! It's
actually a different angle. Partof it I can say and part of it,
you'll have to wait till laterthis year, as we look at some
other things. I think the mainthing you're going to see,
primarily with ClickFunnels andwith other companies in our
space (35:27):
I think you'll probably see over the course the next two
to three years, a large roll-upof companies, especially as we
start hitting a recession oranything like that would be a
huge trigger for a roll-up inthis industry. Payments are
going to be a really largeopportunity for us.
(35:47):
We have a deal right now withStripe we have anywhere from two
to $3 billion that getsprocessed on the platform that
we can track on an annual basis.
So payments is a huge, hugeopportunity. Another machine for
ClickFunnels is internationalgrowth. We've organically grown
to where the majority of ourcustomers are actually outside
of the United States. And so wehaven't ever done any massive
(36:08):
marketing pushes to actuallygrow and scale internationally,
it definitely is one of thethings we take a look at in
growing and scaling. And that'sa huge opportunity for us. A lot
of the other countries aroundthe world are becoming much more
inclined to do things online aswell.
Todd Chambers (36:27):
I'm just thinking the best professional question I
can ask you before I maybe tieup on personal questions. For
me, I think one of the hardestthings about growing a business
has been hiring. And I'm surefor you hiring is a huge part of
what you do. Are there anyspecific things around hiring
(36:49):
that maybe if you're givingadvice to someone that we're
looking to grow a SaaS company?
What do you think are thefundamental principles of
hiring?
Dave Woodward (36:56):
We've been really blessed and really fortunate for
the most part. I was actuallytalking to a friend of mine is
that a C level executive in apublicly-traded company for the
last 20 years, I mean, justthat's where he's cut his teeth.
But, interestingly, the advicehe gave me was basically, from
(37:20):
zero to 500 employees should allcome from referrals. He said,
especially these days, withculture being so important, and
with people being so remote,they can work anywhere, culture
fit is going to be the mostimportant part. You can teach,
and you can train a skill set.
Culture is something you reallycan't teach or train. You can
try to find the right ones.
Still, realistically from zeroto 500 employees... honestly, if
(37:44):
you can get to that levelwithout having an HR department
and just focusing on hiring fromfriends and referrals, that's
going to be your best growthopportunity. And I can tell you
our first, probably 200employees was that way and then
we started going outside and,and looking at HR and going that
(38:05):
direction. Not saying we havebad hires, but it was a
different hire.
I think the hardest part whenyou're growing and scaling a
business is to maintain theentrepreneurial founders' vision
and the culture that exists in astartup that as other people
come in later, they don'tappreciate or don't feel all the
(38:29):
blessings and the greatness ofwhat got you to where you're at.
I'm a huge believer in what gotyou here won't get you there and
who got you here typically won'tbe the same people who get you
there unless they're willing togrow and change and grow with
that. So I would highlyrecommend when you're looking at
growing and scaling from anemployee standpoint, if you can
get referrals from your existingcustomers, that's by far the
(38:49):
best way of doing it.
Todd Chambers (38:51):
I feel like hiring on culture is yeah,
that's a really solid piece ofadvice. But how practically, do
you do that? I think it soundsmaybe easier than it actually
is. Let's say you are evengetting referrals from the
customers, how do you ensurethat you do get someone that is
culturally the right fit?
Dave Woodward (39:07):
For us, I can tell you, our support teams, all
came from customers. Some peopleusing the power platform, they
were passionate about what wedid. And so it was a very easy
culture fit because they had nodesire to come work with us
unless they wanted to, to takethat culture and to grow and
build and scale that and help inthat area. So from a support
(39:29):
standpoint, that's one of thethings we did.
When looking at developers, wedidn't have a large friend
network in the developmentspace, and we reached out to a
couple of headhunters. Still,the one thing I found what was
when you're looking at a culturethat...we're in the process of
Russell creating an ononboarding for new employees
(39:53):
that will be all culture-based.
A lot of video content, thingsthat success of our customers,
what our customers really like.
I think part of that culture ishelping them identify who the
avatar is. And I think it'simportant that it's hard to fall
in love with the culture if youdon't love the avatar you're
serving. And for us, trying tohelp our customers and our
(40:14):
employees really understand whothat avatar is, what pains
they're going through, so thatit's important as an employee,
whether you're on the dev side,or on the customer support side,
or on the sales side, you needto know what the other person on
the other side is experiencingand feeling. We're looking at
having each of our developersand all of our customers
actually spend time in support.
(40:35):
Tony Shea recently just passedaway, Zappos co-founder, huge,
huge fan of everything he did atZappos, and really taking a look
at making sure that every singleemployee spent time with that
customer. I think the best wayof instilling culture is to make
sure they know your customers,they love the customers, they're
excited about the customers,they want to have those
(40:56):
customers have success. That'swhere culture comes into play.
Todd Chambers (41:00):
Well, that's kind of wraps up on the professional
side, if you don't mind. Justthe last couple of questions on
a personal note, how is yourpersonal relationship with money
changed? I think there's there'scommon advice that once you get
to a certain salary, that yourhappiness doesn't increase after
a certain point, right? Is thatsomething that you've
experienced yourself?
Dave Woodward (41:23):
Money is just an amplifier. It amplifies whatever
type of person you are. So ifyou're a good person, having
more money's gonna make you abetter person. If you're a bad
person, having more money makesyou a worse person. I can tell
you that I think all of us havea, there's a baseline dollar
amount. And it's different forevery person on how much they
need to make to feel safe tomake them feel secure. It might
(41:46):
be 50,000 100,000 200,000,whatever that number is. And,
again, I find it's typically setby how you grew up, or your
experiences with money when youwere younger.
For me, I know, six figures,man. If I could just get through
past that six-figure mark,that's when I feel safe and
secure and able to provide formy family. I think once you hit
(42:07):
that the real key is learninghow to make sure that money
doesn't run your life. And I'm ahuge believer in, in tiding in.
And I think that no matter howmuch money you make, I remember
when I was a financial advisoryears when I first started my
career, even though I'm a hugebeliever from religious purposes
(42:27):
on why tithing is so important,I think, just spiritually
amongst in no matter if you haveany spiritual belief at all,
just the idea of giving away10%, you pick whatever charity
you want. What it does,psychologically, is it tells you
you can live on less. And bydoing that, if you can start
living on 90, so I look attithing as an attempt. If you
can live on 90%, whatever you'remaking, that in and of itself
(42:50):
helps you overcome a lot of thefears and the money mongering
type of thing that happens forso many business owners and
entrepreneurs as well as otherpeople. So I'm a huge believer,
as far as tithing, I think theother thing is that, that the
more money you make, you know,all it does is so you can I
(43:14):
heard it said years ago, youdon't have a problem if you can
solve with money.
So money is just a way ofkeeping score for me. Obviously,
the bigger the businesses, thebigger the problems. It's just
newer devils you deal with. AndI think the key is making sure
that you're fiscally responsibleas a business owner, especially
(43:37):
we've had such boom time for solong, that it's really easy.
People think "Oh, it's alwaysgoing to be this way!" I felt
that way in 2008 and nine andgot my teeth kicked in 2010
through 12. and realise that'snot always the case. What goes
up doesn't always have tocontinue going up. So it
typically comes down. Andbecause of that, I think the
most important thing when itcomes to money is to make sure
(43:59):
you have a minimum of two monthsreserves if not three to six
months reserves to be able tomake sure that you can weather
the storm. There's nothing worseas a business owner than being
forced into making a baddecision because you don't have
resources.
Todd Chambers (44:19):
Yeah, I was reading a survey, actually about
marketing agencies, funnilyenough. And they were saying
that I think the vast majorityof marketing agencies only have
around one and a month to twomonths of cash flow. So if the
sh*t hits the fan...
Dave Woodward (44:33):
Oh, yeah!
Todd Chambers (44:34):
And then as you just said, you're forced to make
those bad decisions, which isnot a good place to be.
Dave Woodward (44:38):
Well, especially you're paying attention to ROAS,
and your return on ad spend. Ifyour return on ad spend is out
in two to three months, then youbetter have six months worth
because it's going to take yousome time to capture that's why
I was looking at trying to getthis as quick as possible.
Todd Chambers (44:54):
My last question there. Thank you so much for
your time. Correct me if I'mwrong, I think I I saw that you
meditate. And I also saw yousleep geek like me. Which of
that two meditation or sleep(tough question) do you think
(45:15):
has provided the kind of thebiggest gains for you as a human
being?
Dave Woodward (45:20):
For me, I think it's meditation. Okay, I can
tell you from a sleepstandpoint, my sleep is never
consistent. My aura ring tellsme that every day.
Todd Chambers (45:33):
Your readiness was terrible on several of your
Instagram..
Dave Woodward (45:37):
Yeah, I know, at least for me, sleep-wise, I'm a
six to seven-hour a night. If Iget six to seven hours a night,
I'm good. When it starts dippingless than six, a couple nights
in a row, it catches up to me.
For me as far as meditation, Ihave an infrared sauna I love
spending time in and especiallyduring the winter months. And
for me, that's a time ofmeditation. And I think when I
(46:00):
look at meditation, it's I'mmeditating a lot of different
ways. Some of it's through justprayer. Others are just trying
to just kill the noise around mejust so I can think through
things.
I'm a huge believer in askingbetter questions, the better
questions you ask, the betteranswers you're going to get. And
(46:20):
the only way you can ask goodquestions is you have to have
time to think through. And sothat's really my meditation is a
lot more thinking through a lotof the questions and things and
just trying to get things quiet.
I've got the benefit of having abeautiful wife and four boys,
and we have an active lifestyle.
And so because of that, findingstillness is a tough thing at
(46:41):
times. So for me that meditationin the morning, I'm a morning
person and again 15 minutes isabout all it takes, and I just
need to be able to calm thingsdown.
Todd Chambers (46:52):
It's really interesting is that when you if
you don't meditate for whateverreason, even if it's just for
say, three days, four days, whenyou wake, and you're at work you
really do feel the difference.
Meditation, the over the years,it really does just calm you
kind of balances you gives youthat equanimity you need to be
the eye of the storm.
Dave Woodward (47:14):
That's the best way of looking out for sure!
Todd Chambers (47:17):
Listen, Dave, I know you need to go you've been
incredibly quick with your time.
So thank you so much. Where canpeople reach you if they want to
find you?
Dave Woodward (47:27):
ClickFunnels is obviously where I'm at! As far
as my personal stuff, Instagramand Facebook, the two channels I
use the most.
Todd Chambers (47:35):
Awesome, thank you so much for your time and
have a good day!
Dave Woodward (47:38):
Thanks, Todd.
Todd Chambers (47:40):
Thanks for listening to the podcast, guys.
If you want to get links to anyof the resources we discussed in
the interview, head over toUprawmedia.com/podcast. Until
next time, take it easy!
Hey guys, welcome to the Masters of SaaS podcast
brought to you by Upraw media, agrowth marketing agency for SaaS
specialising in paid mediacontent and conversion rate
optimisation. I'll be your host,Todd Chambers. I have the
absolute pleasure of chattingwith really smart people from
the SaaS industry. The goal isto extract as much value as
(00:29):
possible. What are theirstrategies, their tactics, their
failures, funny stories, keylearnings? All of this can then
be used to help you grow andscale your own SaaS business.
In this episode, I speak withDave Woodward, the CEO of
ClickFunnels, and host of theweekly funnel hacker Radio
Podcast. ClickFunnels has125,000 customers 350 employees
(00:51):
and generates 150 million inannual revenue. They achieved
this in just six years and withzero funding. We discuss how
they use webinars to fuel thegrowth of the company.
Interestingly, they devised astrategy to increase their
customers upfront payment toaround $1,000. This allowed them
to spend considerably more oncustomer acquisition and bypass
(01:12):
the traditional SaaS paybackperiod. We also dive in today's
responsibilities of a CEO, theimportance of having a personal
assistant, and the key metricsthat Dave watches like a hawk.
Alright, let's do it.
Hey, Dave, welcome to the show!Thanks so much for being here.
Dave Woodward (01:28):
I'm so excited.
Thank you, this is going to be alot of fun!
Todd Chambers (01:31):
Good stuff. Well, let's start off with a basic
introduction. Who's DaveWoodward? What's your
background? And how did you endup at ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (01:40):
My background is I've been an entrepreneur my
entire life. I'm completelyunemployable, no one would ever
hire me. I've had theopportunity of working with
ClickFunnels since we gotstarted and have a part of
ClickFunnels from the beginning.
I've never out of all thecompanies I've ever built
here's nothing more exciting,more fun, and nothing I've been
more passionate about and reallyhelping small to middle- sized
businesses and entrepreneursscale and grow and build their
(02:02):
businesses using ClickFunnels.
So it's been right in my life.
Todd Chambers (02:07):
Am I right in saying that you had an agency
before Click Funnels?
Dave Woodward (02:10):
Very good. Yes! You did your homework! Um, yeah,
I had it. This was pre-internetdays. So it was direct response
marketing, a lot of financialservices. So I had real estate
agencies and mortgage brokersand financial planners and
insurance agents and really kindof cut my teeth in that industry
and knew it really well. Had acouple of agencies that sold
(02:33):
myself, and so I just took mymarketing skills and building
those other agencies we sold andused those to help further grow
and scale other businesses.
Todd Chambers (02:42):
Just on my own personal interest, obviously, we
run an agency. How does youragency days compared to being
the CEO ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (02:50):
There are pros and cons to both I guess.
Honestly, I think the one thingI have loved more than anything
else about ClickFunnels is theSaaS revenue. There's just
something about monthlyrecurring revenue that I think
the hardest thing for me inhaving an agency was: you
basically go out, you kill whatyou want and then you got to
(03:10):
fulfil on that. And so it wasthis cycle of feast or famine
for so many years until I wasable to build it well enough to
where I had enough of a team todo a lot of the selling side
first. But I think that was thehardest part with an agency for
sure.
Todd Chambers (03:25):
Yeah, I think it's a common thread, isn't it?
I hear, particularly, on SaaSpodcasts. So many people that
start SaaS companies came froman agency background, and I
guess the scale of a SaaScompany and the unit economics
make a lot more sense thanselling time. Right?
Dave Woodward (03:38):
It totally does.
Todd Chambers (03:40):
Yeah. Cool, for people that don't understand,
can you explain maybe in themost simplistic terms, what is
ClickFunnels? What does itactually do?
Dave Woodward (03:48):
So Click Funnels is for any small to middle-sized
business who's either trying togenerate a lead online or to
sell any product, physical ordigital online. So if you've got
a product or service you'retrying to sell online, you're
trying to generate a lead, ClickFunnels is for you.
We've got a drag and drop editorthat allows you to build out
your entire online salesfunnels. You can do webinars,
(04:09):
auto webinars, you can havemembership sites, all the
follow-up funnels and the emailautomation sequences is really
one of the biggest things thatmost people use ClickFunnels
for. For every dollar comes inthe front end, there's typically
anywhere from 15 to 17 in thefollow-up sequences, and the
great thing about ClickFunnelsis you can actually see where
people fall out throughout thatfollow- up the funnel. One of
(04:29):
the biggest things we find for alot of e-commerce business
cart abandonment is always thebiggest issue. And so by having
the funnel that controls thecart, and also being able to
split test, the actual way thisshopping cart is set up, linked
with all the automationsequences is really one of the
main things that people loveabout ClickFunnels
Todd Chambers (04:49):
you probably get this question all the time, so
apologies I'm gonna ask itanyway. I can see it's on your
website, and I read quite alengthy article about the
difference between what I guesswhat you do define as a sales
funnel and a typical marketingfunnel. This seems to be the key
differentiation betweenClickFunnels and perhaps some
other landing page building typesoftware. What, in your mind is
(05:11):
a sales funnel? And how doesthat apply to ClickFunnels?
Dave Woodward (05:14):
Sure, I think a lot of it also ties into just
the difference between a websiteand a sales funnel, we see that
comparison as well. Typically,what you'll find for most
websites or a lot of othersfunnels is it's really this
massive billboard. It's a hugeshopping place where a person
comes in, and they just getdistracted.
I think the hardest part thesedays is most people's patients
(05:36):
online is just a click away. Andif they can't find their answer
super, super fast, they're gone.
Now one of the great thingsabout ClickFunnels and having a
sales funnel is you have one oneproduct, or you have one problem
you're trying to solve. And byhaving one problem you're trying
to solve, you can dedicate allof your focus to that person
who's landing there, whethercoming from something you've
done organically or through paidtraffic, they literally land
(05:59):
there, and they know exactlywhat they're looking for, they
get the answer. The idea behindthe sales funnel is you then
sell them one product at a time.
Unlike typical shopping carts,where they have massive sticker
shock at the end, and they havehuge cart abandonment issues.
What will happen is, you'll gothrough, and you sell them one
product, and then it gets addedto the next and then it gets
added to the next, and sothere's no sticker shock. They
(06:19):
are literally just buying oneproduct at a time.
We just recently did Russell's(Brunson) most recent book
Traffic Secrets. Again, $7, freeplus shipping, but our average
cart value at the end is around$60. Did "Perfect webinar
secrets" just over Black Friday,Cyber Monday; again it's a $7
front end digital product in ouraverage cart value, that's $42.
(06:40):
So the whole idea behind it isallowing them to buy one product
at a time. So they get that itchscratched, and they solved that
problem. And then it's on to thenext.
Todd Chambers (06:50):
Yeah, understand.
And you're there are twoco-founders, and I believe
you're a partner. How did thatkind of manifest?
Dave Woodward (06:57):
Sure. So Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson are
our two co-founders. Russell isthe marketing genius, and Todd
is the development tech wiz, andwithout the two of them,
ClickFunnels would not exist. Iwas brought in right at the very
beginning as well, and so wehave our two co-founders, and
there are four other partners.
Todd Chambers (07:17):
So when you first came into the company, was it
literally just you three? Or wasthere already a small team at
that point?
Dave Woodward (07:22):
So Russell had John Parkes working for him for
quite a few years in his priorbusiness. And so they came in as
partners, myself brought in fromthe outside. And then we brought
in our Chief Technology OfficerRyan Montgomery.
Todd Chambers (07:36):
Maybe anyone doesn't understand the size of
ClickFunnels. It's quite anachievement! I think you guys
are around six years old, maybeyou can give some context into
the revenue the headcount,anything you're comfortable
sharing.
Dave Woodward (07:48):
I'm pretty open.
So whatever you'd like to know.
Yeah, six years, September 142014, when we launched, so we're
six years old and during thatperiod of time, we've had over
125,000 customers. This year,we'll do close about 150 million
in annual revenue. Majority ofthat is annual recurring
revenue, which is nice as a SaaScompany. In addition to that, we
(08:08):
got about 350 employees, themajority of those are in our
customer support, servicing inour clients and trying to make
sure they have the greatestsuccess using our platform.
Todd Chambers (08:17):
With regards to the headcount, how is the tea
structure? That's quite a lotof people, and we can talk ab
ut your role in a second as CEand how that's changed. But ye
h, what is it what is the maority of the makeup of those
Dave Woodward (08:30):
So we're 100% remote. I'm here in our Boise
employees?
office, our Boise office isprimarily an executive office.
That's me, Russell, Brent, andJohn are here primarily. in add
tion to that, Todd has an offce in Atlanta, but everyone els
is remote. Our customer suport is remotes, our dev
lopers, remote, again, it's a rmote company. I think that's all
(08:52):
wed us the opportunity of realy recruiting the very best tal
nt. We didn't need to recuit them in Boise, we didn't nee
to recruit them in Atlanta. Soherever the best talent was any
here in the world, we had theopportunity of using that as a w
y of bringing them onboard.
I think the other thing,especially for a lot of our
developers, they have theopportunity of actually working
on something that they can seethe end user actually having
(09:13):
success with. Unlike a personwho's working for Facebook or
Twitter, where they're, they'redealing with little tiny pixels
and things that really doesn'thave that much impact. Any of
our developers that are on theteam people we work with on our
team, they actually have massiveimpact in the lives of our
customers.
Todd Chambers (09:32):
When I see a ClickFunnels page, they have a
kind of a certain look and feelwhich we'll get onto in a
second. Does Click Funnels kindof cater to a specific you
mentioned small to medium-sizedcompanies, but does it lend
itself particularly well to acertain type of product or
service for example?
Dave Woodward (09:51):
We started primarily with the information
marketers, coaches, consultants,things of that area. Since then
we've grown rapidly into a lotof the e-commerce play, so
people who are (10:01):
Amazon shops, Etsy, Shopify, anything at all
like that. Recently with COVID,we've seen a lot of professional
se (10:09):
doctors, dentists, accounts, attorneys, real estate agents,
more physical people who aretrying to bring people in. A lot
of them also realising they canstart doing things, telemedicine
has become huge. And so we'reseeing the opportunity of
expanding much more than yourgeographic limitations and so
those been probably some of thethree largest areas. Agencies
continue to use our platform fortheir clients as well.
Todd Chambers (10:33):
So the big question is, how the hell did
you grow from zero to 150million ARR in six years? And I
know that's a really bigquestion. I'm sure it's tonnes
of hard work and cumulativegains over the years, but kind
of looking back now, are thereperhaps one or two or two or
three things that stick out inyour mind? Actually looking
backwards, those are thefundamental things that we got
(10:55):
right, and that's how we've beenable to scale so big.
Dave Woodward (10:58):
I think the first thing you kind of have to
understand is we're totallybootstrapped, we have no debt.
And we don't have any partner,financial partners. So because
of that, we learned very earlyon that we had to get very, very
good at what we did to bringpeople in. And I think Russell
literally had decade's worth ofexperience marketing online,
(11:20):
really, one of the main thingswe saw was, for us, if we were
to look at a trial, a typicaltrial is going to run anywhere
from $130 to $150 per trial, andrealising that it's a 14 day
free trial with a credit card.
After 15 days, we're gonna havea 40% to 45% conversion.
So to have someone pay $97, it'sgoing to cost us almost $400, to
have that happen. So then we'rereally four months out before we
(11:43):
actually get a return on that.
So our CAC versus return andverything else is not a four-
onth out if we were to go thatirection. So what we end up
oing instead was do what wenew worked, and that was
reating funnels to generatelients for free.
So our whole thing is trying tofind two metrics we pay a lot of
We tried doing a whole bunch ofother things in the beginning,
attention to, and that is (12:03):
what' our cost acquire a customer?
nd what's our average cart vale? So for us, we knew that one
of the main things that when were selling other types
of information was providina product or service that
as bundled with information. Andso for us, the very first th
ng that really took ClickFunnelsto our first 10,000 (we've b
(12:24):
en even using it these days riht now) was webina
trying to bring people onthinking that "if you build it,
they will come" type of approachdid not work. What we found was,
actually was Russell wasspeaking at one of his, one of
his friends, live events. Andduring that live event, we had
(12:46):
the table rush take effect. Andwe're offering ClickFunnels
bundled with information on howactually to use the product. At
the time as $1,000 product for ayear's worth of ClickFunnels but
what they received with thatwas, it was called our funnel
hacks webinar. They received atonne of information on how to
actually use the software, howto actually create products
online. There were probably fouror five different additional
(13:10):
education training components.
Actually in addition to thatwhat they received was a year's
worth of Click Funnels.
Since that we've now dropped itdown to six months of
ClickFunnels and then whathappened was, we took that live
event onto a webinar. And westarted doing webinars through a
lot of affiliates, and thenthrough paid traffic. And that
really has been the main thingthat's helped build
(13:31):
ClickFunnels.
Todd Chambers (13:32):
You touch on a really interesting point about
the unit economics. You'resaying it's costing you 400 to
acquire a customer, but you'reonly gaining that money back at
approximately 100 per month. Soyou have this kind of payback
period of four months. And ifyou really want to scale
something big, then you end upin this kind of negative cash
flow trope. And it sounds likeyou kind of eat your own dog
(13:55):
food. And that's kind of whatthe product is, it's to help you
build these funnels. And that'show you built it.
Selling the information and thecourse content first I guess
most companies sell the productfirst. And then as an
afterthought, there's like anonboarding, this is how you use
it. You guys have it the otherway around.
Dave Woodward (14:11):
Yes, for us, the great thing is it brought in
$1,000 upfront. The nice thingis brought $1,000 upfront, but
the great part of the webinar ison the thank you page is where
we had a free trial. And so eventhough a typical webinar, we're
going to close you know, 20%,25-30% of the attendees. What we
(14:32):
found on all the registrants wewould pick up probably three to
four times that amount of peopleactually starting the free trial
just because they went throughthe funnel to sign up for the
webinar. And so we picked up atonne of free trials. Typically
we would look at we'd get asmany free trials as we actually
had customers.
Todd Chambers (14:48):
Just in terms of your role. I believe you were
previously the CRO, the ChieRevenue Officer, and now you
re the CEO. What was your rolas CRO, and how did the tr
nsition happen to CEO and kid of what is the difference of
your role at the moment?
Dave Woodward (15:03):
I think the role is pretty much the same. So my s
ill set is in growing and saling businesses, that's what I
do the best. And because of tat, revenue is what you need t
grow and scale a business. Ad so chief revenue officers r
ally kind of what I spent theast four yearsfive years on,
eally making sure we were growin.
(15:25):
We looked at the typical, youknow, SaaS thing where we're
trying to get two years oftripling and three years of
doubling. That's really how welooked at it. And so I set the
goal of what was it gonna taketo triple our revenue and our
customers in the first threeyears? Triple in the first two
and then double for the nextthree. And that's really what
(15:45):
kind of the roadmap that I setout to do, working with Russell
and, and with John Brent andwith the other people on the
marketing and sales team. Tryingto make sure that we hit those
types of numbers was critical toour growth.
Obviously, the other thing thatreally plays into revenue is
going to be churn. So workingwith these quite a few different
companies these days to actuallyhelp reduce churn and voluntary
(16:06):
churn versus voluntary churn,trying to get that down as low
as we possibly can. But then, asfar as CEO, I've been in that
role, I guess, for the last twoyears. And we officially made it
this last year. Primarily,Russell and Todd are brilliant
at what they do. But managingpeople isn't one of the things
that bring them a lot of joy andsatisfaction. And so I've taken
(16:27):
on that opportunity to reallymanage the team and try to grow
and scale and build the businessthat Russell and Todd are still
heavily involved in taught stillquite a bit daily basis inside
of the tech Russell does thesame on the marketing. And my
skill set really is helpingscale and build a business.
Todd Chambers (16:43):
So when you log in, and you sit down to work on
a Monday morning, what atraditional day look like for
you? Is it a lot of lookingafter your managers? Is it
hiring? What does the kind ofday to day look like?
Dave Woodward (16:56):
So our Mondays are
first two hours is knock out allof our meetings. And so we have
an executive, we call it ago-meeting, it's based on their
goals and objectives. So thefirst 30 minutes is me with our
executive team. The next 30minutes is the executive team
with the managers and the last30 minutes is the managers with
people they work with. And thenwe have a company-wide pulse
(17:18):
meeting.
Do you think that's a huge partwhen you have such a big team,
So within two hours, everyonethroughout the company knows
what the goals and the plansare, what objectives we need,
what obstacles we need toovercome. So our goals and
obstacles, trying to make surewe knock those things out.
Everyone knows what everyone'sworking on for the week. And we
and you have hundreds of peoplebelow you? Do you think having
target that and make sure thathappens. I'm really not a
meeting type of person. My go-totools are Voxer, Slack and
that personal assistant, aperson who's got your back, was
(17:42):
email. And I rarely ever checkedmy email. I've got the most
at a critical turning point foryou?
I can tell you for me nomatter how big your company is,
amazing assistant in the world,Courtney Nicoll works with me, a
d she manages all my email ad everything else and so tho
e things are priority she letse know about, but I really try
to spend time just on strategynd working with the te
(18:15):
I think the very first hire youhave to hire is an assistant. I
think that they will take off somuch of the stuff that you were
you're struggling to deal withon a regular basis that just
occupies your time that youdon't need, and they're worth
their weight in gold. I've beenblessed to have great assistance
through my entire career. And tome, it's just a necessity.
Todd Chambers (18:39):
Now I'm really intrigued. So if you're hiring
assistant, it sounds likeCourtney's doing a great job. So
well done to Courtney! What doyou look for in a personal
assistant? I guess they havequite a broad range of different
skills. When you're hiring, whatdo you look for?
Dave Woodward (18:52):
So for me, the main thing I'm looking, and
everyone's different on that,but I look at what are the
things that I don't want to do,that's going to take away time?
I'm trying to buy back time.
First thing I hire an assistantis I'm just buying time.
Email is one of the things thatjust occupies a tonne of my
time. I don't want to mess withemail, I don't want to mess with
scheduling calendar stuff. Idon't want to mess with anything
(19:15):
that I mean, she literally takescare of everything as far as
transferring domains, buyingproducts, buying services,
travel. Literally, anything thatI don't need to personally be
involved in, she does all ofthat. She's just the most
amazing woman to work with. I'vebeen blessed to have her for
quite some time now. And shejust steps up, and we have a
(19:37):
daily meeting at eight o'clock.
We go through and if I can'tmake that call, I just Voxer the
things I need, and she's on topof it. She typically will say
"hey, you know what, these arethe priorities, these are things
you need to reach out to thesepeople today". She's more than
just a gatekeeper. She's kind ofmy second brain. She thinks for
me in a lot of areas which Ihave been blessed to have.
Todd Chambers (19:59):
So I'm not familiar with Vox. Is that
project management software? Oris it something else?
Dave Woodward (20:02):
Voxer. And it's like a walkie talkie on your
phone. The thing I like mostabout it is I can go at four
times the speed, so I can listento content and consume content
really quick. The thing that'salways hard for me is people
typically won't get to the pointfast enough. And so for me, I
can spe (20:25):
team members can ask me questions, I can respond. Again,
it goes back to the idea as faras being reactive or proactive
in your communication. I don'twant to be sitting there where
I'm having to react to everybodyall the time. I prefer to be
much more proactive. Everyoneknows that if you need something
right away, Voxer is the bestway of getting to me. If it's
(20:49):
something by the eod type ofdeal, Slack is where I go to
next. And then if it's somethingthat I just need information on,
that's what emails for.
Todd Chambers (21:00):
Gotcha. You speaking about Monday morning,
you just like to knock themeetings, I get them done. And
everybody knows what theblockers are. Everybody knows
what the objectives are for theweek. How do you communicate
that? You know, kind of top downis that done through project
management, through slack? Is itdone through the managers? How
does that filter down?
Dave Woodward (21:18):
It's done through the managers, but we use Slack
quite a bit. Clickup is what weuse for all of our project
management. We've done Trellowe've done Asana, we've done
Monday.com, ClickUp seems to bethe most recent one we're on. It
works really well for us.
Todd Chambers (21:33):
We also transitioned to ClickUp around
six months ago. And I think it'sa steep learning curve. I was a
little bit resistant in thefirst couple of months, now
we've embraced it. And I'vereally got my head around. It's
really adaptable. So yes, shoutout to those guys.
You mentioned webinars beingkind of your core traction
(21:55):
channel back in the day. Andthese days, of course, you are a
much bigger company, have muchmore resources, many, many more
people in the marketing team. In2020, what are kind of the core
channels that work particularlywell for you, because you're
still growing quite considerablyyear over year? So how are you
guys doing that?
Dave Woodward (22:13):
We're still using webinars. We're huge proponents
of webinars. In addition tothat, Russell's written three
different books (22:21):
Dotcom secrets, Expert secrets, Traffic Secrets,
just released this year. Russelis now in New York Times
bestselling author because ofthat book, and it sold almost
close to 100,000 copies now.
We use a lot of front ends, wehave 20 different front ends
that John Parkes, our ChiefMarketing Officer, runs to drive
(22:43):
our traffic to. The books havebeen a huge opportunity because
it provides a lot of content.
Obviously, within the books, itsells and pitches ClickFunnels.
The other really big thing thisyear, we've been doing now for
the last two years. And that isour One Funnel Away Challenge.
That has probably been the bestthing to help us not only for
(23:05):
client acquisition but moreimportantly, for retention and
decreasing churn.
The idea behind One Funnel AwayChannel it cost me 100 bucks,
we give that $100 away to anyaffiliate who promotes the
challenge. But the idea behindit, it's: it literally takes
someone in and within 30 daysand get their funnel up and
built and running and tested andhaving sales. I think the most
(23:31):
important thing, whatever you'reselling is you have to have the
buyer consume the product. Andthe more consumption that
occurs, the greater chancethey're going to either rebuy it
or refer it or whatever else youmight be trying to do with that
product.
The way it works is every singleday, there's a basically it's a
(23:52):
10,000-foot level, it's given byRussell, and then it's broken
down kind of 1000 foot level.
And then we have our coaches whoget in daily on Facebook,
communicating with people justtrying to make sure there's any
hurdles they're running against,or any offices they have that
those things are gettinganswered. The whole idea here is
giving them bite-sized piecesthat they can tackle within a
day. And every single day,they're just doing a little bit
(24:14):
more.
By the end of the month, theybuilt everything, they'd rent
traffic to it, they've testedthings that got results. And
that way they're like "Iactually can see something
taking place". That for us hasbeen probably the biggest
game-changer for especially froma retention standpoint, we see
by you know, month six and eightand twelve at that point where
we're seeing you a 50% increaseover clients who didn't go
(24:38):
through the One Funnel AwayChallenge.
Todd Chambers (24:40):
It seems like you've also built a really great
community. I know you have aFacebook community, you also
have a live conference. How muchof the community aspect do you
think kind of plays into theculture and the growth of the
company?
Dave Woodward (24:51):
I can tell you for from our perspective,
culture is the most importantpart these days. Again, I joke
around as far iPhones, I got thenew iPhone 12. It's literally
the same thing as iPhone 10, abetter camera but it the same
thing. I bought it just becauseI have been with Apple for so
(25:12):
many years, it's just the nextthing that I do. I may skip a
version or whatever. It'sbecause I believe in the Apple
culture. I must have probably 15or 20 different if Apple
products as far as my familymembers and things.
We look at ClickFunnelsfollowing that same type of
(25:32):
initiative. And it's really isthat it's that culture, it's
that getting you to go way backto you know, Steve Jobs original
1984 commercial of introducingthe Mac for the first time. I
think the idea behind it is youget people who are that
passionate about your products,that they literally just, again,
we've got t-shirts, we give outall the time, you go through our
(25:53):
signup flow, you get a funnelhacker shirt, so you can then
identify I am a funnel hacker,I'm part of the community.
I think the biggest problem mostpeople struggle with as far as
an entrepreneur or smallbusiness owner, it is so lonely
and so scary. And you just youdon't have anybody to talk to
who knows what you're goingthrough. I remember when I was
(26:15):
running my agency, people justhad no idea. I mean, a lot of my
friends and their spouses (26:18):
they had businesses and jobs that
were nine to five, and they'relike, I just don't understand
what you're doing how it justmade no sense. And because that
I, you know, go out to dinner, Ijust didn't have anything to
talk to me back. So I'm like,we'll talk about family and
kids, but professionally, ourlives were so different.
(26:38):
And I think the main thing thatClickFunnels provides is it
provides a community for thosepeople who want to be a part of
want to grow at scale and buildtheir own business. And that for
us is probably one of the mostfun things for me. We were
fortunate to have our funnelhacking live event in January,
right before the whole COVIDthing you know.
Todd Chambers (27:01):
You were lucky with this!
Dave Woodward (27:02):
We were. We're looking out to 2021 trying to
find the right date becausepeople love to get together as
entrepreneurs. They love to be apart of it, they want us, and
they love seeing the success weaward. We have our two comma
club awards, and our two commaclub x and two comma club c
awards, just trying to recognisethe success of other businesses
and entrepreneurs.
Todd Chambers (27:22):
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head for me. I'm
familiar with ClickFunnelsanyway, but looking into this,
there's definitely thatentrepreneurial spirit within
the community, it's people thatkind of want to make it and
having that content and havingthose people around that can
answer those questions and guideyou I think is...yeah what
creates that culture within thecommunity.
(27:45):
Essentially, I think in 2020, ifyou look at, you know, software,
realistically, you're probablynot going to win the race if
you're building based onfeatures because, you know,
these days we can buildanything. Development is almost
a commodity. I think the brandand the community is the thing
(28:05):
that's going to differentiateyou and yeah, and keep people
retained with within theproduct. Super smart bit. Yeah.
How about COVID? And youmentioned you had your event in
January, which I guess was justbefore the sh*t hit the fan. How
has COVID affected you? Youmentioned your you remote team,
(28:29):
I assume?
Dave Woodward (28:29):
Yeah.
Todd Chambers (28:31):
Okay, so you were quite well placed for COVID. But
how is it been on the company,anything you've kind of
comfortable sharing?
Dave Woodward (28:38):
The biggest mistake I made was not buying
zoom stock four years ago when Istarted using it, but aside from
that, from a company'sperspective, it's been a huge
blessing. Um, it's hard for meto talk to other businesses I
know who. I got a lot of friendswho've lost their businesses
because of COVID, and I'msensitive to that pain and that
(28:58):
frustration. Having gone throughthat in 2008-2009, I know how
painful that is.
For us, at ClickFunnels It wasactually a huge boom. We had a
large spike in customers whowere trying to figure out how to
go online. I think the mainthing COVID did was it
accelerated and pushed peoplethree to four years into the
(29:19):
future, as far as just onlineusage.
Again, take a look at anyone. Imean, Amazon. Everyone's
shopping on Amazon right now. Imean, look at what we just went
through in Black Friday. Theyactually started Black Friday on
November 1 just trying to getthe retailer's money because,
again, Cyber Monday's actuallysells more than Black Friday.
(29:43):
That's these days just becauseof, of COVID and because of
what's happened now. I thinkthat you're seeing a lot of your
professional services a lot ofpeople who even our gyms one
of my trainers here. He's had ahuge successful gym here for
years, but now he's going onlinejust because of the whole COVID
situation. I think what itprimarily did was it started
(30:08):
making, forcing people to feelmuch more comfortable doing
things online, buying online,shopping, just consuming content
online. And I think because ofthat, we happen to be one of the
beneficiaries.
I know a lot of other companiesare in that same situation. But
I think as you look forward, thebenefit of COVID is, I think
(30:29):
you're gonna see a lot ofcompanies actually accelerate
their growth online, where theyotherwise would have waited
three to five years to do it.
Todd Chambers (30:37):
Yeah, indeed.
Well, you're so right. There areso many unfortunate losers in
this in this situation. And youmentioned that you had a similar
feeling in 2008, or 2009. Do youmind sharing what happened to
you there?
Dave Woodward (30:50):
I was heavily involved in the mortgage real
estate. Most of my clients werein that area. And I started
paying in advance for clientsmarketing, knowing we get it on
the back end, and they justdidn't pay. And so it was a, it
took me to my knees, I guess, alot of times.
Todd Chambers (31:11):
Were there any particular lessons from that
period looking back?
Dave Woodward (31:17):
I could do a whole podcast just on the
lessons learned! I think one ofthe main ones: I got
overleveraged, for sure, Itrusted too much of my clients.
I'm a much more astute businessowner, and I run our business
much more by numbers. You can'trun just by numbers, you got to
(31:39):
have a gut check out there aswell, but I think I trusted too
much for sure in my clients andthought we were working
together. And again Iunderstand, when it's your
business and your family, theycome first. And so because of
that, I didn't get paid onthings that should have been
paid on. But again, I think themain thing was just building
reserves. And just beingcautious. I'm not a person who
(32:05):
runs my life by fear at all, I'mvery optimistic about everything
that's happening. But I think atthe same time, the primary thing
I learned was you make sure youhave reserves. Cash flow is
king, and especially when you gointo hard times, everything goes
on sale. And it would have beena nice time to actually buy
things instead of sellingthings.
Todd Chambers (32:22):
Are there maybe 2,3,4 metrics from a numbers
perspective of ClickFunnels thatyou kind of have on the pulse?
Would it be new users activatedusers churn? Like what are those
few metrics that you watch likea hawk?
Dave Woodward (32:37):
So ClickFunnels is a 14 day free trial with a
credit card. And so when theyfirst come in, they sign up,
step one is sign up. Step two isto enter the credit card. I look
at those numbers every singleday: how many people are coming
in and enter their email addressand signing up? How many people
are actually entering theircredit card, and then obviously,
day four day 15, when they payor the so those are the first
(32:59):
things.
For us, the really big number Ialways look at is day 105.
That's 14 days plus threemonths. That's really where I
see churn, I think 14 days freetrial, again, we're in the tiny
business to small business,middle-sized businesses. So
there's going to be a lot ofpeople; it's more of a paid
trial for three months. Wereally look at after three
(33:22):
months, those are customers whoare really going to stick and
move forward with it. So I lookat that. Obviously, MRR is a
huge issue. I look at churn onan on a very frequent basis. If
not daily, I always look atleast weekly. And then the other
thing, obviously, is I take ahuge look at EBITDA, and
saturation, SaaS quick ratios.
Todd Chambers (33:43):
Just to take another random question that
came into my mind. And again, Iwas thinking about the size of
the company, and you're the CEO,but you also have the two
co-founders I'm sure to havequite a strong opinion about the
strategic direction of ClickFunnels. How do you kind of come
to those big strategic decisionsin the direction of the company?
Is it is that designated to oneperson and he takes point or is
(34:05):
it more of a collaborativeeffort there?
Dave Woodward (34:10):
I've known Russell now for, gosh, 12 years,
I've known Todd for the lastnine years now. We're pretty
much always on the same page.
Todd Chambers (34:24):
Okay.
Dave Woodward (34:26):
I think one of the things I learned from the
whole 2008-2009 is very carefulwho you partner with. And I was
hesitant to have anotherpartnership later. But for me,
when you find the rightpartners. I spend as much time
with Russell and Todd as I dowith my wife. It's almost like
another marriage. We're verysimilar, we're very focused on
(34:50):
the same direction we're tryingto go. I guess if it came right
down to as far as to push orshove I mean, really, Todd and
Russell the two that would havethe final win, they have the
most equity.
Todd Chambers (35:02):
yeah. So what is the future of ClickFunnels? What
is the strategic direction youguys are looking to? Is it more
of the same? Or is there adifferent angle?
Dave Woodward (35:10):
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this! It's
actually a different angle. Partof it I can say and part of it,
you'll have to wait till laterthis year, as we look at some
other things. I think the mainthing you're going to see,
primarily with ClickFunnels andwith other companies in our
space (35:27):
I think you'll probably see over the course the next two
to three years, a large roll-upof companies, especially as we
start hitting a recession oranything like that would be a
huge trigger for a roll-up inthis industry. Payments are
going to be a really largeopportunity for us.
(35:47):
We have a deal right now withStripe we have anywhere from two
to $3 billion that getsprocessed on the platform that
we can track on an annual basis.
So payments is a huge, hugeopportunity. Another machine for
ClickFunnels is internationalgrowth. We've organically grown
to where the majority of ourcustomers are actually outside
of the United States. And so wehaven't ever done any massive
(36:08):
marketing pushes to actuallygrow and scale internationally,
it definitely is one of thethings we take a look at in
growing and scaling. And that'sa huge opportunity for us. A lot
of the other countries aroundthe world are becoming much more
inclined to do things online aswell.
Todd Chambers (36:27):
I'm just thinking the best professional question I
can ask you before I maybe tieup on personal questions. For
me, I think one of the hardestthings about growing a business
has been hiring. And I'm surefor you hiring is a huge part of
what you do. Are there anyspecific things around hiring
(36:49):
that maybe if you're givingadvice to someone that we're
looking to grow a SaaS company?
What do you think are thefundamental principles of
hiring?
Dave Woodward (36:56):
We've been really blessed and really fortunate for
the most part. I was actuallytalking to a friend of mine is
that a C level executive in apublicly-traded company for the
last 20 years, I mean, justthat's where he's cut his teeth.
But, interestingly, the advicehe gave me was basically, from
(37:20):
zero to 500 employees should allcome from referrals. He said,
especially these days, withculture being so important, and
with people being so remote,they can work anywhere, culture
fit is going to be the mostimportant part. You can teach,
and you can train a skill set.
Culture is something you reallycan't teach or train. You can
try to find the right ones.
Still, realistically from zeroto 500 employees... honestly, if
(37:44):
you can get to that levelwithout having an HR department
and just focusing on hiring fromfriends and referrals, that's
going to be your best growthopportunity. And I can tell you
our first, probably 200employees was that way and then
we started going outside and,and looking at HR and going that
(38:05):
direction. Not saying we havebad hires, but it was a
different hire.
I think the hardest part whenyou're growing and scaling a
business is to maintain theentrepreneurial founders' vision
and the culture that exists in astartup that as other people
come in later, they don'tappreciate or don't feel all the
(38:29):
blessings and the greatness ofwhat got you to where you're at.
I'm a huge believer in what gotyou here won't get you there and
who got you here typically won'tbe the same people who get you
there unless they're willing togrow and change and grow with
that. So I would highlyrecommend when you're looking at
growing and scaling from anemployee standpoint, if you can
get referrals from your existingcustomers, that's by far the
(38:49):
best way of doing it.
Todd Chambers (38:51):
I feel like hiring on culture is yeah,
that's a really solid piece ofadvice. But how practically, do
you do that? I think it soundsmaybe easier than it actually
is. Let's say you are evengetting referrals from the
customers, how do you ensurethat you do get someone that is
culturally the right fit?
Dave Woodward (39:07):
For us, I can tell you, our support teams, all
came from customers. Some peopleusing the power platform, they
were passionate about what wedid. And so it was a very easy
culture fit because they had nodesire to come work with us
unless they wanted to, to takethat culture and to grow and
build and scale that and help inthat area. So from a support
(39:29):
standpoint, that's one of thethings we did.
When looking at developers, wedidn't have a large friend
network in the developmentspace, and we reached out to a
couple of headhunters. Still,the one thing I found what was
when you're looking at a culturethat...we're in the process of
Russell creating an ononboarding for new employees
(39:53):
that will be all culture-based.
A lot of video content, thingsthat success of our customers,
what our customers really like.
I think part of that culture ishelping them identify who the
avatar is. And I think it'simportant that it's hard to fall
in love with the culture if youdon't love the avatar you're
serving. And for us, trying tohelp our customers and our
(40:14):
employees really understand whothat avatar is, what pains
they're going through, so thatit's important as an employee,
whether you're on the dev side,or on the customer support side,
or on the sales side, you needto know what the other person on
the other side is experiencingand feeling. We're looking at
having each of our developersand all of our customers
actually spend time in support.
(40:35):
Tony Shea recently just passedaway, Zappos co-founder, huge,
huge fan of everything he did atZappos, and really taking a look
at making sure that every singleemployee spent time with that
customer. I think the best wayof instilling culture is to make
sure they know your customers,they love the customers, they're
excited about the customers,they want to have those
(40:56):
customers have success. That'swhere culture comes into play.
Todd Chambers (41:00):
Well, that's kind of wraps up on the professional
side, if you don't mind. Justthe last couple of questions on
a personal note, how is yourpersonal relationship with money
changed? I think there's there'scommon advice that once you get
to a certain salary, that yourhappiness doesn't increase after
a certain point, right? Is thatsomething that you've
experienced yourself?
Dave Woodward (41:23):
Money is just an amplifier. It amplifies whatever
type of person you are. So ifyou're a good person, having
more money's gonna make you abetter person. If you're a bad
person, having more money makesyou a worse person. I can tell
you that I think all of us havea, there's a baseline dollar
amount. And it's different forevery person on how much they
need to make to feel safe tomake them feel secure. It might
(41:46):
be 50,000 100,000 200,000,whatever that number is. And,
again, I find it's typically setby how you grew up, or your
experiences with money when youwere younger.
For me, I know, six figures,man. If I could just get through
past that six-figure mark,that's when I feel safe and
secure and able to provide formy family. I think once you hit
(42:07):
that the real key is learninghow to make sure that money
doesn't run your life. And I'm ahuge believer in, in tiding in.
And I think that no matter howmuch money you make, I remember
when I was a financial advisoryears when I first started my
career, even though I'm a hugebeliever from religious purposes
(42:27):
on why tithing is so important,I think, just spiritually
amongst in no matter if you haveany spiritual belief at all,
just the idea of giving away10%, you pick whatever charity
you want. What it does,psychologically, is it tells you
you can live on less. And bydoing that, if you can start
living on 90, so I look attithing as an attempt. If you
can live on 90%, whatever you'remaking, that in and of itself
(42:50):
helps you overcome a lot of thefears and the money mongering
type of thing that happens forso many business owners and
entrepreneurs as well as otherpeople. So I'm a huge believer,
as far as tithing, I think theother thing is that, that the
more money you make, you know,all it does is so you can I
(43:14):
heard it said years ago, youdon't have a problem if you can
solve with money.
So money is just a way ofkeeping score for me. Obviously,
the bigger the businesses, thebigger the problems. It's just
newer devils you deal with. AndI think the key is making sure
that you're fiscally responsibleas a business owner, especially
(43:37):
we've had such boom time for solong, that it's really easy.
People think "Oh, it's alwaysgoing to be this way!" I felt
that way in 2008 and nine andgot my teeth kicked in 2010
through 12. and realise that'snot always the case. What goes
up doesn't always have tocontinue going up. So it
typically comes down. Andbecause of that, I think the
most important thing when itcomes to money is to make sure
(43:59):
you have a minimum of two monthsreserves if not three to six
months reserves to be able tomake sure that you can weather
the storm. There's nothing worseas a business owner than being
forced into making a baddecision because you don't have
resources.
Todd Chambers (44:19):
Yeah, I was reading a survey, actually about
marketing agencies, funnilyenough. And they were saying
that I think the vast majorityof marketing agencies only have
around one and a month to twomonths of cash flow. So if the
sh*t hits the fan...
Dave Woodward (44:33):
Oh, yeah!
Todd Chambers (44:34):
And then as you just said, you're forced to make
those bad decisions, which isnot a good place to be.
Dave Woodward (44:38):
Well, especially you're paying attention to ROAS,
and your return on ad spend. Ifyour return on ad spend is out
in two to three months, then youbetter have six months worth
because it's going to take yousome time to capture that's why
I was looking at trying to getthis as quick as possible.
Todd Chambers (44:54):
My last question there. Thank you so much for
your time. Correct me if I'mwrong, I think I I saw that you
meditate. And I also saw yousleep geek like me. Which of
that two meditation or sleep(tough question) do you think
(45:15):
has provided the kind of thebiggest gains for you as a human
being?
Dave Woodward (45:20):
For me, I think it's meditation. Okay, I can
tell you from a sleepstandpoint, my sleep is never
consistent. My aura ring tellsme that every day.
Todd Chambers (45:33):
Your readiness was terrible on several of your
Instagram..
Dave Woodward (45:37):
Yeah, I know, at least for me, sleep-wise, I'm a
six to seven-hour a night. If Iget six to seven hours a night,
I'm good. When it starts dippingless than six, a couple nights
in a row, it catches up to me.
For me as far as meditation, Ihave an infrared sauna I love
spending time in and especiallyduring the winter months. And
for me, that's a time ofmeditation. And I think when I
(46:00):
look at meditation, it's I'mmeditating a lot of different
ways. Some of it's through justprayer. Others are just trying
to just kill the noise around mejust so I can think through
things.
I'm a huge believer in askingbetter questions, the better
questions you ask, the betteranswers you're going to get. And
(46:20):
the only way you can ask goodquestions is you have to have
time to think through. And sothat's really my meditation is a
lot more thinking through a lotof the questions and things and
just trying to get things quiet.
I've got the benefit of having abeautiful wife and four boys,
and we have an active lifestyle.
And so because of that, findingstillness is a tough thing at
(46:41):
times. So for me that meditationin the morning, I'm a morning
person and again 15 minutes isabout all it takes, and I just
need to be able to calm thingsdown.
Todd Chambers (46:52):
It's really interesting is that when you if
you don't meditate for whateverreason, even if it's just for
say, three days, four days, whenyou wake, and you're at work you
really do feel the difference.
Meditation, the over the years,it really does just calm you
kind of balances you gives youthat equanimity you need to be
the eye of the storm.
Dave Woodward (47:14):
That's the best way of looking out for sure!
Todd Chambers (47:17):
Listen, Dave, I know you need to go you've been
incredibly quick with your time.
So thank you so much. Where canpeople reach you if they want to
find you?
Dave Woodward (47:27):
ClickFunnels is obviously where I'm at! As far
as my personal stuff, Instagramand Facebook, the two channels I
use the most.
Todd Chambers (47:35):
Awesome, thank you so much for your time and
have a good day!
Dave Woodward (47:38):
Thanks, Todd.
Todd Chambers (47:40):
Thanks for listening to the podcast, guys.
If you want to get links to anyof the resources we discussed in
the interview, head over toUprawmedia.com/podcast. Until
next time, take it easy!
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