366: Sock It to Me: How the Cofounders of Bombas Became eCommerce Millionaires

Russell Brunson knows a ton about building effective marketing funnels. It's a skill he learned after spending nearly 10 years making money online by building funnels for all sorts of things, from potato guns to coupons. Now as the CEO and co-founder of ClickFunnels, Brunson heads one of the fastest-growing bootstrapped companies in the world. "We're growing faster than any VC-backed company that I know of, and we do it because we had to do it smarter, and we do it through the funnels that we practice and we preach, and it works," Brunson says. In a mere two-and-a-half years Brunson has grown ClickFunnels to more than 36,000 active customers and, even more impressively, he's been able to turn those customers into a passionate community of evangelists loyal to the brand. He's since taken his talent and knowledge for building effective sales funnels and has distilled it all into an incredibly easy tool that anyone can use, as well as a number of bestselling books. But it hasn't been an easy road and it's taken a heap of knowhow, expertise, and foresight to get there. Luckily for us, he's sharing his best advice with the Foundr audience. In this week's episode you'll learn: The key to building an effective sales funnel How to inspire and build a community around your brand What qualities you need to be a leader who inspires Why the best way to understand your market is to be your own customer How to find and keep A-players on your team & much more!

8 Juni 201736min

Tony Robbins advises billion-dollar CEOs, celebrities, even heads of state, but today, he's going to show you how to become a master of money. The New York Times-bestselling author has once again topped the charts with his latest book Unshakeable, and to date, the world-renowned speaker has inspired tens of millions of people all over the globe. Successful people from Bill Clinton to Oprah have sung his praises, and he's had sit downs with the likes of Nelson Mandela. What you might not know, however, is that before it all, Tony was a penniless kid growing up in Azusa, California. After leaving home at 17, Robbins decided to skip college so he could start working, which at first meant sweeping the floors as a janitor. But he constantly strove to continue learning and feed his voracious curiosity. Every millionaire finds their start somewhere, and for Robbins it was in the pages of endless books that he found himself glued to. He was determined to be a millionaire, and he wasn't going to let a lack of formal education be a barrier, eventually working his way to the top. Today, he's the one writing the books, sharing all the wisdom he's collected over all those years. And his latest topic of obsession is finance—how to master money and become truly free from worries about wealth. Robbins has decades of experience in business and investing himself, but in recent years, he's been questioning the world's greatest financial minds to get to the bottom of that question. Many of the answers are in his new book, but fortunately for Foundr fans, Tony Robbins joins us today to share some of his most important lessons. In this episode you will learn: The secret to living well, no matter how much money you have How to spot a million-dollar opportunity The simple strategy that has led Robbins, and millions of his followers, to financial freedom Financial advice specifically targeted at startup founders Hidden principles of finance Robbins has discovered in his research & much more!

31 Maj 201745min

In 2012, Gretta Rose van Riel, like most aspiring entrepreneurs, found herself spending all of her free time building a business. It was nothing more than a passion project at the time, something to do in her spare time when she wasn't working at her day job. Despite the fact that she had no real plans to become a full-time entrepreneur with her own business, it wasn't long before that passion project grew into something bigger. She soon knew that this was something she just had to devote all of her time and energy to. "Basically, I had an idea that resonated with me so strongly, I just knew that it was something that I had to pursue," van Riel says. The result was a multimillion-dollar ecommerce business called SkinnyMe Tea, the world's first teatox using the natural benefits of tea to help you achieve your health, fitness, and nutrition goals. That alone is impressive enough, but what really separates van Riel from the rest of the pack is that she didn't just build one multimillion-dollar business, she's built many. In five years, Van Riel has transformed herself from just another employee to serial entrepreneur, with multiple ecommerce businesses under her belt. She's effectively cracked the code on how to successfully build a business online, including coming up with the perfect idea, the best way to market it, and how to rapidly scale. In this week's episode you will learn: How to build an incredibly loyal customer base through social media The easiest way to hack into the power of influencer marketing to build your brand Gretta's method to developing the perfect product from idea, to validation, to selling Why Instagram should be your number one channel for customers and sales The foolproof marketing formula guaranteed to double your revenue & much more!

24 Maj 20171h 15min

In this very special episode of the Foundr Podcast, we answer all the questions you've ever had about building an ecommerce business and more! The first installment in what we're calling the Foundr Incubator series, we recorded a live coaching session between one ambitious Foundr community member and the head of a billion-dollar company. We organized a call with Jake McKeon, the up-and-coming founder of multiple ecommerce businesses, to receive one-on-one coaching from Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of unicorn startup Quest Nutrition. Like so many other entrepreneurs out there, McKeon was doing well, but looking to grow and not sure how. That's where Bilyeu, with his years of experience and wisdom, stepped in. The result is a fascinating and honest conversation in which Jake asks just about every question an entrepreneur might have about how to grow, how to market yourself, and generally how to take an online business to the next level. Tom doesn't hold back and answers all of these questions and more, sharing his insights on what it takes to create a successful ecommerce business and a thriving community around your brand. This is an episode you definitely do not want to miss, with so much gold being shared that you can't help but feel empowered and inspired after listening. In this interview you will learn: How to stay relevant in your market and stay ahead of the competition Why you need influencers on your side and how to find them The metrics you need to focus on to grow your sales Where to find A-players when you're growing your team The three things you need to focus on to build a successful e-commerce business & much more!

17 Maj 201755min

Sean Ellis is not just another marketer. In fact, he's something entirely different. He's the world's first growth hacker. Originally selling advertising in the print industry in Budapest, Ellis found his calling when a friend began building a new company on this relatively new thing called the internet. Despite not knowing that much about it, Ellis immediately recognized the opportunities that online marketing presented. "Nobody knew much about the internet at the time. But because I was selling advertising, I really liked the idea of being able to target specific ad messages to specific people," Ellis says. In the years that followed, Ellis continued to stay ahead of the curve. While the rest of the world was still trying to grow their startups the traditional way, by pounding the pavement and paying for advertising with little understanding of the results they were getting, Ellis was already breaking the rules and experimenting with every possibility that the internet offered. Instead of just focusing on marketing as something separate from the product that was being built, Ellis wanted to experiment and see if he could combine both product and marketing together. The result was a method he called "growth hacking," a term he coined in 2010 that would come to revolutionize how startups looked at marketing, and eventually become the name of his company Growth Hackers. He tested his methodology over the years and played a key role in successfully growing companies like Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni, eventually becoming the go-to guy in all of Silicon Valley for startups looking to grow as fast as possible. Today, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone with more experience, knowledge, or passion about the power of growth hacking. In this week's episode, you'll learn: The definition of growth hacking Ellis's early experiments with growth hacking and how they still work today A behind-the-scenes look at what powered the rise of companies like Dropbox and Lookout The framework Ellis uses for growing any business How to identify the right strategies for you to become a fast-growth startup & much more!

11 Maj 20171h 4min

At 20 years old, Daniel DiPiazza was comfortable. He wasn't making millions of dollars at his hourly wage job, but he wasn't struggling for money either. Like a lot of people in their early 20s, he just didn't know what he wanted to do. While the life he led was fine, it was a never ending cycle of making enough money to pay the bills, and that was about it. It wasn't exciting, more than anything it was dissatisfying, and after a few years, DiPiazza found himself restless and wanting more out of life. "It got to this point where I showed up at work one day and I was intensely irritated. It wasn't anything specifically that happened that day, it was just a culmination of a few years of doing things that were just ... very annoying. I made a decision that day that I was going to make a change," DiPiazza says. From that point on, it was like a switch had been flipped inside him. Instead of looking at all the things that held him back, DiPiazza began looking for opportunities. If no one was going to give him a job doing what he wanted, the next logical step was to simply find a way to give himself a job where he could follow his passion. It started simply enough, with a little freelancing on the side helping college students prepare for their exams, which soon grew into a self-perpetuating machine that eventually led to owning his own company, Rich20Something. Today DiPiazza is a bestselling author and uses his own experience to inspire others in his generation, teaching them how they too can build their own businesses and start carving that bit of financial freedom and independence for themselves. Not bad for a kid who had no idea what he was doing in his early 20s. In this episode you will learn: The best content marketing tactics to use to promote yourself How to never run out of clients as a freelancer Where to go to start skilling yourself up as an entrepreneur How to come up with and validate your business ideas with a few simple steps Strategies to build up your personal brand and influence & much more!

4 Maj 201751min

One of the best ways for an entrepreneur to come up with a great business idea is by scratching their own itch. If something's giving you trouble, it's likely that other people out there are feeling the same way. That's how it all started for Mike McDerment, back when he created FreshBooks. At the time, McDerment wasn't looking to create a new business, or invent some sort of revolutionary product to sell. He was just trying to solve his own problem—he was tired of using Microsoft Excel as a way to create and send invoices to clients. It originally started off as simple digital product to make his own life easier, but it wasn't long before others started taking an interest in McDerment's new tool. Instead of selling a complete software package, the common approach at the time, McDerment decided to try out a new business model that was relatively unheard of at the time. "The truth is, we were SaaS before there was SaaS. We were cloud before there was cloud," he says. While most people were selling software as licenses, McDerment was determined to build a product that would guarantee a predictable, recurring revenue. It was a new idea, and one that many consultants and others in their space advised against. And it's true that things didn't look great for McDerment and his co-founders after two years of developing and selling the product. "We had only 10 paying customers paying about 10 dollars a month each. To be making a hundred dollars month after that many human years of effort is by all accounts a failure. And we stuck with it because we really loved what we were doing and our customers were telling us that it was great. It was a little more colorful in the early days," McDerment says. Refusing to give up, McDerment and his co-founders pushed on, and in the years since, they've served more than 10 million customers, and grown into a company with over 250 employees. Today, FreshBooks is one of the most widely used and preferred methods of accounting and invoicing for small businesses everywhere, and it all began with a simple idea, the passion to never give up, and some interesting strategies for growth. In this episode you will learn: Why you shouldn't necessarily follow best practices How to grow and adapt as a leader Why the best leaders never need to have all the answers The importance of instilling the right values within your team and company culture What "guardrails" you need in order to have your company grow as fast as possible & much more!

26 Apr 201735min

Many of us have a secret desire to make a living by following our passions, but not all of us have a passion quite like Vanessa Van Edwards'. Back in college, she loved reading academic and scientific journals. She tore through them. That might lead you to believe that she wanted to become an academic or work in a lab somewhere, but Van Edwards also had the soul of an entrepreneur. Even as a young adult, she had several successful businesses under her belt. Listening to that entrepreneurial spirit within her, she wondered if there was a way to link up her two loves—business and science. "All these researchers spend years and years doing this research, and they publish 20-page papers and they get read by, if they're lucky, a hundred people. And I wondered, is there a way to make a business out of this science research? Is there a way to turn science into business?" Van Edwards says. In 2012, she started the Science of People, a human behavior research lab dedicated to understanding the science behind what makes people tick. Whether it's unraveling the building blocks of a charismatic personality, decoding body language, or just delving deeper into the psychology of relationships, she built a business around her passion for science, with a focus on translating dense academic language into something that everyone can understand. In her writing, including her latest book, Van Edwards takes the latest research and uses it to explain how to read faster, make excellent small talk, and easily capture the attention of an entire room of people with nothing but your words. In this episode you will learn: How to use content marketing as a way to validate your business idea What qualities make a person a charismatic How to connect with influencers and get the "yes" you want Hacks to improve your networking, communication, and leadership Tricks to dealing with difficult people and how to spot them a mile away & much more!

23 Apr 201741min