Podcasts about caleb you

Matt Grimshaw, Founder of The Pioneers joins Bold Founder Caleb Parker for the eighth episode of Season 6 they discuss how company culture is created in the workplace. They talk about creating workplaces that are both flexible and suitable for the needs and growth of the people within them, and explore what workplaces and company culture may look like post pandemic. Matt shares his insights on the future of company culture, how to build a workplace that will complement the needs and interests of employees, and how working from anywhere might impact the future of our workplaces.   Connect with Matt Grimshaw on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/grimshawmatt/ Connect with Caleb Parker on LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebparker/ If you have any questions or feedback on this episode, email podcast@workbold.co Value Bombs: I think there's a human need for being with the people you work with. - Matt If I had a crystal ball in front of me, I would see a large percentage of employees in companies around the world fitting into a third category; a hybrid category. - Caleb You've got to create a space that's attractive for people and people either need to use because they have to use those facilities, or that they want to use it. - Matt  We can't just sell a big white box with a bunch of desks in it and think that's good enough these days. We're at this point now where we know that we don't have to have an office to be productive and to get shit done and to grow our company. - Caleb Organisations with high psychological safety tend to outperform others. They tend to be more innovative and they tend to make fewer mistakes as well. - Matt I'd like to think that the office and the workplace can still be leveraged as a tool, as part of the mix to support culture. - Caleb   Scale-ups grow very, very quickly and they are also trend setters. If you're working in an office place with a pool table, table football or free coffee, that started from the scale-up space. I think keeping an eye on what these innovative companies are doing is important and interesting. - Matt Resources: TSK Documentary The Pioneers Website  The Pioneers Twitter DS Smith  Oxford University  TSK Article: The Pioneers – Where place meets culture The Pioneers: Why culture determines how you get work out the door article Shout Outs: Tom Duncan Liam Smith    Edgar Schein  Amy Edmondson John Preece   About Our Guests: Matt Grimshaw Connect with Matt Grimshaw on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/grimshawmatt/ Matt is the founder of The Pioneers, who help scale-ups create cultures that make their people, customers, and investors happy. They do this by helping them design and build their People Operating System, a systematic approach to people management that enables their clients to create a coherent people experience and a workplace that flows.  Matt got his law degree at Oxford University and prior to starting The Pioneers in 2008, was an HR change manager for a FTSE 100 manufacturing group DS Smith.  About Our Host: Caleb Parker https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebparker/ Caleb Parker is an American entrepreneur in London, and Founder of Bold (acquired by Newable/NewFlex in 2019).He believes in "challenging the status quo" and is a champion for entrepreneurial and innovative thinking.Caleb has served as founder, Board member, advisor, investor and consultant to numerous start-ups and small businesses, and has a keen focus on innovation and technology, with interests in the MICE market, Space-as-a-Service, and the future of work.Caleb has been a guest lecturer, speaker, and moderator for topics such as entrepreneurship, the sharing economy, the future of work and commercial real estate at academic institutions and large corporations. He regularly takes the stage at numerous trade conferences as keynote speaker, MC, host or facilitator.Earlier in his career, Caleb was named one of Savannah, Georgia's “40 under 40” business leaders" in 2006 after launching two successful small businesses in the city's booming hospitality industry. A year later he moved to Washington, DC to join the The Regus Group DC management team. In 2009, Caleb co-founded a flexible workspace consulting firm where he brokered flexible workspace and advised businesses on agile working strategies.Caleb is one of the first licensed commercial real estate agents to speak on the flexible working trends and the rise of flexible workspace, and has been quoted in numerous publications. Timestamps [05:35] Matt gives a description of how The Pioneers support scale-ups. Matt outlines how as a start-up founder your personal influence is your key tool to get the best out of your team. As your company grows this will be insufficient and you will need a people management system that helps people work together effectively.  The Pioneers help people to build these systems. [07:35] How is company culture created? There's no ‘one right answer' to this question. A definition of culture taken by Edgar Schein describes company culture as shared learning or a distributed learning. It influences what people pay attention to and influences their decision-making and behaviour.  As a start-up, you try things. If they work you stick with it and the more ingrained that becomes within your organisation and within your culture. Larger organisations will have a set of social norms that define what people need to notice, think, feel, and do in order to be accepted or to feel like they belong to the group. This is what is meant by culture.   There are four influences on organisational culture. The first is the personality, the values, the behaviours of your leaders and founders. The second is events, the things that happen within the organisation. You'll respond to it. And if it works, you'll tend to stick with it.  The third thing is a meta culture. The cultural norms that apply across companies.  The cultural assumptions will differ between companies and sectors.   The fourth factor is the situation or the system in which people work. [09:50] What effect does ‘working from anywhere' have on company culture? Some companies have managed to create good company culture in a fully remote working environment. The hybrid workplace is a more challenging as there's less established answers that you can pull out of a meta culture and apply to your organisation. Fully remote organisations that work really well tend to be software-oriented companies that are comfortable with that asynchronous communication. And it's less well-suited where there are organisations have that human need to be together. [14:00] How do you manage and give people the tools they need to excel under those guidelines and policies? When you look at the workplace as part of a system for how you manage your people or how you want to work, it opens up opportunities for doing different things with your workplace in order to support the particular ways of working, or the culture you're trying to create within your organisation. It's about creating workspaces that work for people in and out of the room and to have access to different types of environments that will support the different needs of individuals on any given day.  In the future, shared workspaces may become more important and utilised for specific tasks.  [18:40] What trends are you seeing scale-ups utilise in order to grow and manage this growth? Companies are moving away from traditional longer leases, big fit-outs and big spaces. Scale-ups need the flexibility in how they engage with all the other providers that service their business. [20:55] How do you see the workplace fitting in as a central place for employees to congregate at times? Companies need to create a space that's attractive for people, and create a space people need to use either because they have to, or want to use the facilities within them.  If you can create a space that really connects and resonates with people's needs, then people will keep coming back to you. [22:50] When marketing a workplace, should we be proactive or reactive regarding how we make that space suitable for the company's culture? Both are important but establishing the needs, values and desired culture of each organisation is essential.  Providing the things that influence people's decision about whether they should join, thrive and stay in an organisation is important.  Working collaboratively and having the flexibility to tweak spaces as people grow is necessary to create culture.  The use of shared spaces for scale-ups is both collaborative and more cost effective.   [24:30] Coming out of COVID do you think there's lessons that more established companies could learn from scale-ups in terms of workplace and hybrid and remote working? To change things that aren't working. Be flexible in the workplace and respond to the unpredictability that we are currently facing.  Utilise the space in a way that gives you competitive advantage. Use your space in a way that drives a particular aspect of your culture or a particular aspect of your employee experience.  [27:30] Quickfire Round Questions Matt's go-to for inspiration is an old philosophy teacher, Mark Rock Rocky. Matt would like to use a magic wand to bring hidden aspects of company culture to the surface, and to help organisations be more flexible, adapting to people's needs to allow them to flourish. Matt's favourite holiday destination is Italy. He loves the food and the weather there.   Sponsors Headline Sponsor: TSK TSK creates inspiring workplaces for some of the world's biggest brands across the UK and Ireland, They've been working for 25 years to deliver the best employee experiences and the vision of their clients. Not only do they create great places to work, TSK share workplace content every week from the latest data to inspiring spaces they've designed and built. You can read their latest insights at www.tskgroup.co.uk or check out their LinkedIn and Instagram pages to become a follower, fan and friend. Fortune Favours the Bold Bold merges property management & Space-as-a-Service to drive asset value and help office customers grow faster. Now part of NewFlex (www.workbold.co)  Future Proof Your Portfolio with NewFlex NewFlex delivers and manages a range of branded solutions for every type of building, in every type of location, for every type of occupier. Including the flexibility to develop your own brand. All enabled by flexible management contracts where we are invested in making money for you. (www.newflex.com) Launch Your Own Podcast Kopus.com is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, and guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@kopus.com Subscribe to the #WorkBold Podcast https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/workbold-podcast-6868874680095277056

Welcome back to The Originals Podcast! We're thankful for each person who engages with our community, for your feedback and for sharing these conversations, so more people hear about us and the incredible people we get to meet. If you're loving what you're hearing, we'd love for you to leave us a review, to help more people find community within Originals. Now, if you haven't listened to Part 1 of this two-part episode, titled "Everything Matters - Conscious Living with Stevie" stop reading and listen to Part 1 first. It serves as a preface for this episode. In Part 1, Stevie shares about the work she's a part of through NFP organisation, The RT Foundation. The story of how Stevie became involved with what was the beginnings of theThe RT Foundation, at just 18 years of age, was the catalyst for a career shift and claimed a new mandate and purpose for her life therafter. Pre-COVID, Stevie would basically spend equal time in India as she does Australia each year. So, she's taken the opportunity, while international travel is on pause, to work remote and to see more of our beautiful country, living and travelling in her bus with ther two sons, aged 9 and 11. Stevie applies the concept of "conscious living" in her parenting, consumption of food and material pocessions, her general outlook on life and realationship with people and the world around. She's educating her children in a way that they wont become immune to the injustices they see in the world, rather advocate for the voiceless and instigate change wherever they can. We're inspired by what Stevie shares and think youwill be too. We hope you enjoy this episode! OG Recommendations: Stevie: WikiCamps Australia (https://apps.apple.com/au/app/wikicamps-australia/id505365608) GK: Wardrobe Crisis - A podcast by Clare Press (https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/wardrobe-crisis-with-clare-press/id1272011505) Caleb: "You can curate how people communicate with you." ie. communication platforms, social media, messenger, what's up, emails, text, etc... Socials (aka. Instagram): Stevie: @we_fre3 (https://www.instagram.com/we_fre3/) Caleb: @calebhearne (https://www.instagram.com/calebhearne/) GK: @gkhearne (https://www.instagram.com/gkhearne/) Special Guest: Stevie Moore.

The roundtable interview with Matt and Caleb Maddix and a small group of people who are trying to change the world. Enjoy part two of this special 4 part episode series. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. So I have got to ask you, what did you think about episode number one of the World Changers Roundtable? Hopefully, you loved it. There were so many things covered in that 42 minutes. Anyway, we are moving on to the next part of this interview. As you know, this is going to be broken down into four parts because they kept me there, handcuffed to a table, until 3:00 AM. I'm just joking. They didn't really. But, the question was so intriguing, we were having so much fun, we just kept going and going until finally I was like, "I have to fly out in three hours. I need to get back to my hotel." But now we're going to go dive into the second part. This next episode is probably another 30 to 40, 45 minutes or so as well. So these are some things we'll be covering in this one, which is really fun. We talk about, number one, why my business partner, Todd Dickerson, is so amazing, and hopefully give you ideas about if you're pursuing opportunities and trying to land your dream job or partnership or whatever. Number two, we talked about personality profiling, how we actually are hiring here at ClickFunnels. We talked about where my love for learning came from. We talked about transition for me, going from an athlete to a business person and a marketer. We talked about some of the lessons I learned from Lindsey Stirling, things I was not expecting to hear from her that totally changed everything for me. We talked about people who intrigue me, my interest in health and bio hacking. We talked about is there anything that happens inside of this business that gets me as excited as what I felt in wrestling. We talked about what thing is close, but nothing actually has ever hit it. We talked about the first Two Comma Club Awards. We talked about how to upgrade your identity as you grow. We talked about the fact that you have to cycle and fail and rebuild in your businesses. We talked about the launch of ClickFunnels and how it wasn't just the fact that I was a genius, because I wasn't. There are so many things. Talking about the grace of God and how it tied into the launch of ClickFunnels. We talked about some of my early products, like Zip Brander and Forum Fortunes. We talked about my Christmas Grinch sale, which was the very first big sale, big launch I ever did, to my little tiny list that made enough money to cover Christmas for my wife and I when we were first getting started. We talked about becoming worthy. We talked about list building, how it's better than buying ads, and a whole bunch of other things. It's amazing, this could be 40 courses all wrapped into one super podcast episode. So if you liked the last episode, I think you're going to love this one as well. And I've got two more after this, coming back, going deeper into this conversation with the Roundtable of World Changers. So, that said, we're going to cue the theme song. When we come back, we'll dive right into the second section here of the interview. Matt Maddix: Dave and Todd, I mean, just wow. Those dudes are like... But what about those guys? Russell: So here's Todd's story. So the real long story short, I bought some software, it was coding Ruby on Rails, didn't know that. Bought this company with the last... I didn't have the money. So I borrowed money, bought this company, coded on some platform we didn't know, and I was like, "Screw it," right? And I tried to hire people to fix it, nobody could fix this platform until finally I was leaving the office one day. I literally emailed the people saying, "Turn off the servers." We lost all of our money to this company. They shut it down. And I'm walking out of the office and I had this impression of like, "There could be someone on your email list who knows Ruby on Rails." I was like, "That's weird. I had a bunch of internet marketing nerds. There's no one that's like, 'Ruby on Rails...'" Anyway. It was starting with the impression from God, I stopped, turned back around, set the computer to open back up, sent an email to my list. "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner. I bought a software company and it's not working. Please send me a message." Send. Matt: And that's all you said? Russell: Yeah. And lo and behold, three years earlier, Todd bought some random thing from me, happened to be on my email list. He built the website three or four years earlier that was making six figures a year on autopilot. Hadn't worked in four years. Just hanging out relaxing with his wife and his daughter. And an email comes in and it says, "If you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner." He's like, "I know Ruby on Rails. I can be Russell's partner." Emails me back. And at first I see him and his beautiful wife and I'm like, "There's no way he's a programmer. There's no way." That was literally my thought. But he was the only person that responded back so I was like, "Okay, well, here's the login to the site. Fix it. I don't know what to do. I'm not a coder." I went to bed, woke up the next morning. He's like, "Cool, I fixed the site. Plus I found this, this, and this. And I changed this. And I moved these things,", and all of this stuff. He's like, "It's working now. Do you have anything else you want to do together?" I'm like, "Huh." And so I give him another project, another project. And for an entire year Todd and I worked together, and never once did he ever ask me for money, ever. Matt: Wow. Russell: Not a penny. And I remember he started finding Boise to work on a project together ... Matt: You're telling me he worked for you for an entire year? Russell: For free. More than a year. Caleb Maddix: Why was that? Russell: I don't know. I found out later. He'd gone to Robert Kiyosaki at this event and he said, "Find someone who's doing what you want to do and work for them for free." So he told me that years later. I didn't know that. Matt: Todd, if you're watching dude. I love you man. You're legit. Russell: And so he kept coming and he started coming to Boise and we started becoming friends. The smartest developer I've ever met. Literally the smartest person I've ever met. I'll go that far. Just genius. And he'd come out to Boise and we'd work on projects and ideas. We tried to launch a couple of things. None of them really worked. And we were just trying stuff. He was just always there, always serving, always doing stuff. And one day were in Boise and I was looking over his shoulder cause we're looking at stuff and I saw his email. And there's all these emails from some recruiting site or something. I was like, "What's that?" He's like, "Oh, it's people recruiting me for a Ruby job." And I was like, "Do you get a lot of those?" And he's like, "I get three or for a day." I'm like, "Really? Are they good offers?" He's like, "I don't know. Let's check it out." He opened it up and the first one was like $400,000 a year starting salary. I'm like, "What?" The next one is $350,000. The next was 5 ... Insane things. I'm like, "Why don't you do that?" He's like, "I don't want to work for them. I want to be your partner man." I'm like, "What?" And then I all of a sudden had this realization that I hadn't paid him in a year. We didn't have much money at the time, we're still at the backside of a business failure when we met. I'm like, "I can pay you maybe $50,000 a year. Can I pay you that?" He's like, "Whatever." So I told our little bookkeeper, "Pay Todd $50,000 a year." And they're like, "Okay." So he did that and next year we're paying $50,000 a year. We're doing stuff and we have more things. Started to get a little success here and there. Making more money. Back in Boise again. And I'm like, "Can I pay you some more?" And he's like, "Whatever." Matt: So he wasn't ever just asking? Russell: Never in his life has he asked me for money. Ever. So we bumped it up to $100,000 a year because that's what we got, the year before that, after a year or two working together. And then, it was crazy, the day Leadpages got the first round of funding for $5,000,000, the same day Todd was flying to Boise. And he gets the email. It's east coast so he's two hours ahead. He's awake and on the plane, he sees the email, forwards it to me, and then jumps in the plane. He's flying for four hours. I wake up. I see the email and I was like, "Leadpages? Got 5 ..." I was like, we built landing page software in the past. I was perplexed and angry. And then Todd lands. And Todd, he's a little guy, he comes into the office all angry. He's like, "Leadpages got 5 million!" He's like, "I can build Leadpages tonight. Do you want to build lead pages?" I'm like, "Yeah. Let's compete with Leadpages." He's like, "All right." Matt: No way. Dude. I love this. Russell: This is like angry Todd. I love angry Todd. I like all Todds, but angry Todd is the best Todd. Matt: Is it? Okay. Russell: He's just pissed because he's like, "I can build this tonight. Everything thing they got we can have done tonight." So we're getting all ready. What should we call it and everything. And then he's like, "Wait, we're building this. You want to add anything else to it?" And I was like, "Oh. Yeah. What if it did this? And what if it did this?" And we spent a week in front of a white board saying, "What if it did?", and we mapped out ClickFunnels. Matt: So you're talking about a week where you guys just locked in and you were just having fun. Just doodling and whatever. Russell: Yeah. He's like, "Oh, I can do that. We can do that." We're brainstorming all sorts of stuff so we map the whole thing out. Matt: Did you know at that moment you were onto something big? At that moment right there, when you guys were like ... Or was it just still like ... Russell: All lot of people have tried something like that. I tried before other people tried. No one had done it. So I was kind of skeptical but Todd's like, "I can do this. This is easy." I'm like, "Okay because I tried it ..." He's like, "No dude, I can do it. This is easy." So I was, excuse me, optimistically hopeful because he's a genius but I was also nervous. But anyways, we map it out and then we bought Clickpros.com. I wanted to call it ClickFusion because I own ClickFusion, but we'd had three failed businesses called ClickFusion. All of them failed and Todd was like, "No. It's bad karma. We can't." I'm like, "But the logo is so cool dude." Matt: I love it. You love the logo. Russell: And he's like, "No, we can't." He's like, "It's got a jinx on it or something. We can't do that. You have to come up with a different name." I was like, "But ClickFusion is the coolest name ever." So we're trying things. Click everything and then ClickFunnels. We're like, "Ah." That was the thing. We're so excited Matt: Who first said it? Do you remember? The words ClickFunnels. Caleb: It's almost like God saying, "Let there be light." Russell: I would assume it was me but I'm not positive. I'll have to ask Todd on that one. Caleb: Well, when you said it, was it instant? Like fire? Russell: It was insane, it was available. Matt: Oh, you know that feeling, right? Checking domains. You're like… chills. Russell: How has no one thought of this before? And so we got it and I remember I was driving him to the airport at the end of the week to take him back home. And we got to the airport. Boise airport, It's a small airport. So we pull up to the thing to get out and you can tell he's probably nervous waiting. And before we get out of the car he's like, "I really want to do this man. I'm excited." I'm like, "Me too. Me too." He's like, "I don't want to do this like your employee though. I want to do it as your partner." And in that moment, I was just like all the fear of ... I'd tried partners in the past. It hadn't worked. All this stuff and all the everything. And it was just this weird thing of just all the emotions were hitting me as he sat in the car, about to get out the car. I have 15, 20 seconds before he's going to to go. I was just thinking about him. I was like, he's never asked me for money. He's never done anything. He's served. He's given everything. I was just looking at him. I was like, "All right let's do it." He's like, "Cool." And he got out of the car and he's gone. Matt: Wait a minute. So at that moment? Is was that quick? Russell: That was it. Matt: It was a gut feeling that you just knew. That he was ... Russell: It was him. Yeah. And I was literally... I said this on stage at Funnel hacking live, outside of marrying my wife, it was the greatest decision I ever made. Matt: Yeah. I remember you saying that with tears. Russell: Yeah. Matt: Why though? I'm curious because it's not just ClickFunnels. Russell: He's amazing. If you look at our personality profiles, it's fascinating. We have the same personality profiles. The Myers-Briggs. Except for one letter's different. Where I'm a feeler he's a thinker. And it's been magical as a partnership because we both have so much respect for each other that we don't try to fight each other. And it's very much like if I wanted to do something, I'm like, "This is what I want to do. This what I'm feeling. What do you think?" And he'll come back and be like, "Well, I think this." And so I come up from feeling instead of thinking and it's really cool. So sometimes his thinking will trump my feeling. And I'm like, "You're actually right. Let's not do that." Or vice versa. Where he's like, "I'm thinking this." And I'm like, "I don't know why but I feel this." And he'll be like, "Okay." He respects that. We just have such mutual respect that we've never been in a fight. We've never argued. We've never had problems. It's been amazing. Matt: Wow. Russell: And he's similar to like we talk about with Dan. He went back home after us white boarding that, sat in his basement for five or six months and built ClickFunnels by himself. Caleb: Really just by himself? Russell: 100% by himself. Caleb: No other team. No other dev? Russell: It was just him. And the right before we launched, we brought in another partner, Dylan, who built the front-end editor and did a lot of the UI. And so then it was those two as we got closer and closer to the launch. And then for the next year it was just those two that did everything. And then after a year, we started bringing in other developers. But it was 100% Todd. Matt: Wow. Russell: He's amazing. In all aspects. You know you have friends you think they know everything about everything. That's like Todd except he actually knows everything about everything. You ask him anything and he's just like ... I don't know how he does it. And I'll always fact check him, like, "Oh my gosh. He's right again." He's brilliant. It's amazing. Matt: So for those of us who have partners or are maybe going into partnership, what's your best advice? And what do you feel like he does right that other partners don't do? Russell: I think the hardest thing with partners is typically we want to partner with someone who is just like us. We did a podcast most recently. Dean, Tony and I, right? We've done two partnerships. Both partnerships made it through the launch and they stopped. Made it through the launch and stopped. The podcast was like, "Why?" I love Dean. I love Tony. They're amazing. The problem is that me and Dean had the exact same skill set. Matt: Oh. Russell: And so the problem is that both of us are right. We both understand it right, but we do it differently. And so it's like You have two people, and so typically you want to partner with those people who are like you. You're like, "Oh, we think the same. We should be partners." But that's not necessarily the right thing because then you've got two alphas with the same skillset, and someone has to win and someone has to lose. And it's hard. Whereas me and Todd, we have different skill sets. There is never a winner or a loser. We can both win because different skill sets, both the same mission. It's really easy. So I think the biggest thing is you're trying to find the yin yang. You're not trying to find someone who thinks like you or acts like you. In fact, this is true in most hiring processes as well. I used to have people like, "Send me a video if you want this job." Right? So I get these videos, and the people that I wanted to hire were the people like me. I'm like, "This person's awesome. They think like me. They're a genius. They're amazing." You'll hire them, and within a week I'm like, "I hate this person." It's horrible. So we started shifting the way we do our hiring based on personality profiling instead. DISC profile drives most of my own personal hiring so I know that I'm a high D, high I, high S. No C at all. Right? And so the people I need to hire around me are high S, high C. The problem is the people I who I watched their videos and I'm pumped, they're high D, high I. So I'm like, "Yeah. These people are awesome. They're charismatic. I'm going to love them. They're drivers, they're awesome. Worst employees ever. Matt: Right. Russell: Right? So when people send us this profile, first I find the right profile and then from there I do interviews. Because if I interview ahead of time I get sold by the people who sell and then they're horrible employees. And so I make sure they're high S high C, because I know that if I talk to high S high C, I'm going to be kind of bummed out. Like, "Oh, I don't know if this is the kind of person that I'm going to jive with." But they're the best people to surround myself with because I'm such a high D high S. I'm a creator. I'm throwing things up in the air and I need people who are S and C, who are faithful finishers, who are going to take the things, capture them, and make sure that it's amazing. Matt: Do you feel like businesses and entrepreneurs are making a mistake by not having their employees and their team take these tests? Russell: 100%. I have a new company we're launching all about personality profiling because I'm such a big believer in it. Matt: Really? Tell me why. Top three reasons. Russell: It's in all things in life. If you're going to be a partner. If you're going to date someone. Understanding who they are is such a big part of it. Right? Because we think everyone sees the world the same way we see it and it is not true at all. The way you see it, the way we all see is so different and so if we don't understand that at a deep level, then I get upset by what you do and at what everyone's doing because it's like, "Don't you see what I see?" And the reality is no they don't. So if you start understanding people better ... In fact, the software can be called Understand About Me. It's a place you go and you take all the personality profiling and it gives you a page that can show somebody this is me. So in five seconds I can understand you perfectly they're like, "Oh, now I know how to work with you." Because I understand what you are, what your beliefs are, what your values, all the things I need to know about you, I can find it really quickly. Where normally you're going to go years with somebody before you understand them. I can look at a thing and get pretty dang close in a minute. Matt: Wow. Russell: Now I know hot interact with you and spend time with you and work with you. Things like that. Caleb: Question. Where does your love to learn come from? Because one of the things I noticed from being around you, it's always like yeah, so I had this moment where I geeked on this and I geeked out on this. It was health and suppliments, and marketing and personality types. There's all these different things you geek out on. Have you always been that way? Is it like you geek out on marketing, you saw the rewards from it, and you're like, "Wow, what if this goes into other areas?" Where does that come from? Russell: Yeah, I didn't always have my life. In fact, I had a fascinating conversation with Tom Bilyeu about this, because when I was growing up in high school I always thought I was a dumb kid. I thought I was an athlete, so I focused there. I thought I was an athlete, so I was a wrestler, that was my identity, that was where I focused at. I thought I was dumb. Because of that, straight C student high school and college, my cumulative GPA graduating from college was 2.3. Straight C's and one B maybe somewhere in there, right? Because I was a dumb kid. When I got done I ended my wrestling career, so I stopped being an athlete, and I was like, "Oh crap." I started to learn this business stuff and I don't like to read. I'm a dumb kid. What do I do? It was fascinating. Tom told me, because I had this epiphany, I'm not actually dumb. He's like, "Actually, the reality is you probably really were dumb. But then you changed, right?" So for me it was like I shifted. It was fascinating. Do you remember the Funnel Hacking Live where we had Lindsay Stirling perform? One of my favorite parts of that, she did a whole performance. If you guys don't know, Lindsay does violin dancing stuff, and afterwards I had a Q and A with her afterwards. I had this question I was so pumped to ask. I was waiting for her just to like, the question is, she was on America's Got Talent, and I think she took 7th place. When she got kicked off, Pierce Bronson or whatever said, "You've got no talent. You're no good." Whatever, right? So I was like, do you remember that time when he said that? What I thought she was going to say was, "Yeah, I proved him wrong. Yeah." I was like, "What did you feel after that?" She's like, "Yeah, I got home and I realized he was right. I wasn't very good. So I went back and I started practicing and I started working harder and eventually I became good enough." It was like, oh my gosh. I got chills when I was saying it again. Matt: Yeah. Russell: I remember when Tom said it to me, he was like, "You probably were dumb." I was like, "I was." Because I wasn't reading things. So with marketing that was the first thing for some reason that caught my attention, that got me excited, right? And then if you look at my DISC profile, ROI is my highest value. I have to see ROI in something or I don't want to do it. So when I saw an ROI on this reading, I was like, "Oh my gosh. I read a book, I got one little sentence, changed a color, made more money. Oh my gosh." That is where it started, 100%. I started learning that and I started getting obsessed with those things. As this business grew for me I started being more, I always joke that crazy people got attracted to me, right? The best health people, the best fitness people, the best in every market kind of came into our world somehow. So I started getting to meet all these people. When you're around someone who's the best in the world at the thing, and they start talking about the thing, you can't help but be like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." Right? You zone in on that. So whenever I meet someone that's amazing and I have a chance to talk to them like this I just geek out. Like when I met your dad the first time with you guys. That's when I bought your parenting course and everything. I was just like, I saw you and I saw him and I was like, "I want that." So I started going down that rabbit hole, right? I met Anthony DiClementi, I was like, "I love this guy. I have respect for him, I love him." Every time he talks about anything, he fascinates me, when he talks about something it fascinates me. I have to look down those things, right? When people fascinate me, the things that fascinate them start fascinating me and that's when I kind of go down those rabbit holes. This person is so intriguing and fascinating. What makes them that way? What are they doing. It's interesting. I'm not a good question asker. You guys are so good at question askers. I've never been good at asking questions, but I'm really good at watching what people do and then seeing it and trying to go down the rabbit hole. What are they doing, why are they doing it, that kind of thing. Caleb: He's a true master in it. You can just tell. What are some things you want to take the time to geek out on? I'm sure you see something and you're like I want to get on that but it's not a priority, I've got to do this. What are some things, if I had a week or two? Russell: Just free time with nothing else involved? Caleb: What's the next thing you're going to geek out on? Russell: Oh. I would say every probably three years I get re-excited about SEO, for some reason. I start going down that path again, because I love it. There's times in my business when that was the focused. It's not now at all, but I went through a couple ... Brian Dean's a real cool SEO guy, couple guys… I started dabbing my toe in again and I'm like, I just want to get back into it so bad. Right now SEO is actually our number 11 lead source as of today in ClickFunnels, which is amazing. So we handed SEO the first four or five years, now we're focused on it again. It's doing really well for us. I want to go deep there because I like that. Anyway, I haven't had a chance to do that. Any of the health stuff really, really fascinates me. Matt: Why? I'm curious. Why are you drawn to that so much? The health stuff. Russell: Because I've seen with myself ... My history is I got in wrestling, at the PAC 10 tournament was my last actual wrestling match. My wife was giving herself fertility shots in the stomach during PAC 10 so the next month se was pregnant. So I got done wrestling, got done competing, got done running, got done lifting. All my athletic career ended, and then my wife got pregnant. She's eating for three kids, and I'm pumped because I don't have to work out right now, she's hungry, I'm hungry, we're eating. We just kept eating and eating. So over the next seven to eight months my wife gained like 60 pounds, I gained like 60 pounds. We were doing it together so who cared, it was amazing. Then one day she has two babies and she loses like 45 pounds and I'm like, oh crap. I'm stuck here. Where did you go? This for me? Matt: Yeah. Russell: Thank you. Then at that time the business was starting and I was stressed out trying to figure it out and I didn't get healthy again. I just was in that state of being 65 pounds heavier for years. But I didn't know the difference, I didn't know that I felt differently, because I'd never been in a spot where I spent eight hours sitting behind a computer, so I didn't know what good felt like or bad felt like. I knew if I tried to wrestle I'd puke, so I was like I don't feel like I'm an athlete. I just felt normal, I thought. Eight years in I was like, I don't know, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, "Oh, what happened to you?" You know what I mean? I'm sure hopefully everybody's had a chance. I was like, huh. It was hard because in my head I knew how to work out, I knew how to train, I knew these things. Finally I was like, "I need to get a trainer." So I got a trainer for the first time. I'd never really done that before. Started going, and got me from I don't even know, 27, 28% body fat down to 12% in a matter of seven or eight months. I looked better, I felt better, but what's crazy is I could work twice as hard and twice as long. I wasn't tired. I was like, "I can keep going. My brain's on fire. This is amazing." Matt: Wow. Just from the ... Russell: I had no idea until I lost all the weight. All of a sudden it was just like, I can do so much more. I think, when I first met Anthony DiClementi the first time I was like, this is my problem right now. I am at work all day slaying dragons, doing all these things, I have this energy. I get home at night and my two little twin boys are there, and my little daughter, and I'm spent and I have no energy. How do I still be a present dad and how do I have these things? The next tier was the bio hacking stuff. How do you do these things? How do you increase energy? There's so many ways to do that, from light therapy to supplements to sleeping to sound to breath, all these crazy things that seem stupid. The first time Anthony's like, "We're going to do breath work." I'm like, "We're going to breathe? That's your bio hack? We're going to breathe together?" He's like, "Yeah, it's going to be amazing." I'm like super annoyed. What's the ROI on this, I've got to get back to work. So he sat me down in our gym. You've been in our wrestling room. He sat me down and he's like, "You have to sit because if you're standing you'll hit your head and you'll die." I'm like, what are you talking about? He sits me down and we do these breathing exercises where he's yelling at us and screaming. All this stuff is happening. If anyone's ever done deep breath work it's nuts. We're doing this thing where we're supposed to do this heavy, heavy breath work until he's like, what's going to happen is the world is going to ... Has anybody done jiu-jitsu here? Been tapped out before? Matt: Yeah. Russell: So you get choked out. What will happen, the carotid artery gets choked and the world starts shrinking like this. If you take pressure off it, it comes back to life. If you don't, it goes darker and darker until it disappears and you're gone, right? If you've never been choked out, that's what happens. It's a really fun experience. But you have the minute when you see it shrinking around you and then it's gone, right? He told me that's what's going to happen. You're going to breathe so much that the world around you is going to start shrinking. If you don't stop you're going to pass out. So we go all the way to where it starts shrinking, stops, and then when you hit that point you let me know and then you hold your breath for as long as you can. He's like, "How long can you hold your breath for?" I'm like, "Maybe a minute." He's like, "You'll do it for at least five." I was like, there's no way. So he says sit down, we're doing this breath thing, we're going like crazy and sure enough the walls start doing weird stuff. I feel like I'm on drugs. I'm sweating like crazy. We keep doing it. He's yelling at me. All of a sudden the world starts closing around me, I'm like, "What is happening?" And then he stops and is like, "Hold your breath." He starts the clock. I'm sitting here holding my breath forever, looking around. We had three or four of us guys all doing it at the same time. I'm freaking out. And then it starts getting quieter, things are slowing down, we're sitting there and then he's like let some of the pressure out but don't breathe in. Let pressure out, pressure out, pressure out, keep doing that, and it gets done and the stop clock is over five minutes. I'm just like, I just held my breath for five minutes. Matt: And you didn't even know it. Russell: Insane. And then the rest of the day we were on fire. It was just like, whoa. Right? We brought a cryo-sauna at our house and we go freeze in the cryo-sauna and the rest of the day you just feel ... That's the thing I love now, these little weird things. Light therapy, breathing, weird things that just seem stupid. You do it and you can go longer, you can think better, you can do stuff. All those things just get me so excited. Anthony's fun because he randomly will just ship me weird stuff in the mail. Just the weirdest things. It makes my wife so mad. It just shows up. There's a big old box. She's like, what's this from? I'm like, I'm hoping it's from Anthony, it's going to be amazing. Just weird things. Tons of stuff. I love that kind of stuff because the ROI on it is crazy. They're always these weird things. I have this headband someone sent me. You put this headband on, you put an app on and you start working and it just makes you not tired, makes you focused. These weird things. How does this work? I don't know. And they're like oh, it works because the waves over here sync your brain and change your brain waves and the creative state and all these things. I mean, I don't know how it works but I just wrote two chapters. Caleb: Do you do breath work every day? Russell: No, because it's so intense. If I had a coach who could walk me through it. I have a recording of Anthony doing it and I almost dread it because I know how hard it is. By the time you're done you're sweating. Caleb: I've got to get that recording. Russell: I'll get it to you. By the time you're sweating, you're like what just happened? I just breathed for five minutes. It's weird. Anyway, I would love to understand it on a deeper level but I don't understand a lot of the things now. Some of them I've gone deep on, but a lot of them I do without knowing why. I hate it because my wife will be like, "What's this do?" And I'm like, I don't know. Matt: Just love it. Russell: One of my buddies, Preston Eli, he wrote this blog post, he called it the Warriornaire Workout. In there he explains part of his morning workout. He's like, why do I do it? He's like, because Tony Robins does, and I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence. That quote goes to my head all the time. People ask me, why do you do that? I'm like, because I obey all giants who fly helicopters and have stage presence, that's it. I'm like, I don't know the reason why, Tony says so, therefore I will do it. I would like to understand it at a deeper level so I have a better response than I obey all giants with helicopters and stage presence. But that's a pretty good reason. Anyway. Matt: Real quick, does anybody else want to throw in a question for Russell? Anybody else here live with us? Caleb: Let me ask one more real fast. Because I want to. I want to ask this. We were just having sushi, I was asking you, what are some of the favorite periods of your life? One of them you said was wrestling, which I found funny because by far one of my favorite periods is baseball, which people wouldn't expect because obviously I've been on stage and all this other stuff and that should take the cake. But those moments when you're just on the field, you're in the zone, there's nothing better. Where, with what you get to do now, whether it's being live on a webinar or being on stage or whatever it is, where do you get the same feeling of wrestling? Do you know what I mean? You know, the feeling in your chest? Russell: Today while we were in line at the grocery store I talked to your dad about this. I said that the best feelings I ever had in my life were from wrestling. The feeling of winning a hard match that I wasn't supposed to win and getting your hand raised, I never felt something like that, that felt as good as that, ever. I've been searching in business to find that, and I've never found it. Speaker 3: Do you feel like sports is like business in any sense? Matt: Good question. Russell: For sure, yeah. There's a lot, for sure. What I was going to say is the closest I've ever gotten to feeling that is when you serve at an event and you see a table rush and you see not only people where they get the a-ha, but enough of an a-ha where it gets them to get up and to move. That's the closest I've ever felt to that. It's not as good, but it's the closest I've ever felt to that. Which is why I love doing the big things. I get a glimpse of that. Caleb: How close? Scale of one to 10. Wrestling's a 10. Where does that rank? Russell: If wrestling's a 10, I'd say it's about an eight. In fact it's interesting because when I first started in business I was racing for that, trying to find it, trying to find it, trying to find it. It took me years before I was like ... Matt: Is it disappointing? Russell: For sure, yeah. We launch today and make a million dollars and it's like, huh. That sucked. What else have we got. Give me something else. Matt: Exactly. Russell: The money goal is always what I thought was going to be the thing, and those always were just like, huh. In fact, literally one of the main reasons I did the Two Comma Club Awards, for me I need, maybe it's just from a decade of my life someone grabbing my hand and raising it. I was like, entrepreneurs need that. No one raises our hands. Two Comma Club Awards, for me, is me lifting their hands like you did it. I needed that, they need that. That's one of the main reasons I did that, because that's the equivalent of that. Anyway. Matt: How many millionaires have you created? Russell: This year we passed 1,000 people that won the two comma club award. We're over 120. Matt: How does it feel to say that? To say it? You know how sometimes it's like so many people that have passion or goals or huge dreams and visions, rarely do they really celebrate what's happening on the journey. Do you find yourself ever getting where your vision is so big and your passion is so deep that even saying things like there's 1,000 millionaires. Dude, that's huge. Man, 1,000 people that are millionaires because of you. Russell: I think the first time I really got that, probably the most impactful time, was the very first Funnel Hacking live that we gave away Two Comma Club Awards. It was the third Funnel Hacking live. It was a couple of months before that we had the idea of a Two Comma Club and an award, talking about that. I legitimately didn't know. I wonder if anyone in ClickFunnels has actually made a million dollars. I don't even know. So Dave went back and the database guys went through everything and I remember he came back and was like, there's 79 people right now that made a million dollars. I was just like, are you serious? Matt: Was it a boost of confidence? What did it do for you? Russell: It was one of those things, looking back on me doing these events where two people showed up and nobody showed up, hardly anybody, where I was so excited about this? I was like, how come nobody cares? To now it was like, this is actually, I've talked about this long enough people are believing it and now they're doing it. You start seeing it, and there's the fruits of it. In my mind I was like a million bucks, even then, ClickFunnel was new, I was like a million dollars is hard. Most of my friends I knew were like made somewhere near a million dollars. There were people who have been in this business for a long time. A million bucks is a big deal. That was most people's goal still. The fact that 79 people had done it, that was just weird to me. I think that was the biggest one, the realization that just like, oh my gosh. It's not just a theory and I think it works, it's working. It's working at a scale that was unfathomable to me at the time. 79 people. To go to 200 and then 500 and then 1,000 is crazy. Matt: What was your question, buddy? Speaker 4: You're talking about how at each level of success you hit, some of your mentors hit that ceiling, right? Because of the posturing, right? So ultimately I feel like when you get to a new level of success it requires you to upgrade your identity, your self image. What have you found is the number one routine, what's your process for upgrading the identity, upgrading your self image? Because I think that's so important because it can either hold you back and have you self sabotage and not take action and go after what you want, or it's going to be the thing that keeps you at that level and continues to propel you forward. What's kept you ... Russell: That's good. It's weaved through everything, right? The one that's the most obvious external, especially in our world, because you see marketers, most people when they first start selling whatever it is they're selling they're bragging about themselves. Here's my ad, here's my name. It's all about them, that's the first tier of it. And then the second tier, when they start having the realization, I feel like is when they stop talking about themselves and start talking about the people they've helped. Speaker 4: Mm. Russell: You see externally. You don't hear me talking about how much money I make. I'm not like, oh, check out what I got. I talk about all the other people. It's like, that's next year, is that. And then for me the third tier now, which has been really cool, is talking about Lady Boss, right? The success story isn't Kailin, it's Kailin's customers, right? So it's like that next tier. What you're talking about is like the external version of that. There's a lot of internal things that you've got to deal with, but you'll notice it shifting in people when you look at just their messaging and what they're saying. From the way they podcast, they video, they market, their ads and everything, it's the shift of it's not about me, it's about them. It's not even about them, that's the external version of it. Internally I think it's really, it's what we talked about, I can't remember why, but we brought up yesterday or today I had this really successful guy I met one time who the first time we met he was like tell me your story. So I was telling him the wrestle posturing story about how great I was. He was like, no. Tell me about the time you failed. So I was like, well, I'm in the middle of one right now. So I told him let me tell you. I told this whole thing. I remember afterwards I was so embarrassed. He's going to think I'm an idiot. You know, that fear? He was like, good, you cycled. I was like, what? He was like, I will not work with entrepreneurs who haven't cycled at least once. Because if they haven't then they still believe their own bio, right? I think that's the biggest thing, the internal version is that. The first time around, before you cycle, you think it's all you. I know for me it was. I remember doing this the first time, I'm like, I am a genius. I'm the smartest guy in the world. And then when it collapsed I was like, oh, there's a lot of things outside my control. This is not me. There is a team, there's God, there's all these other things that are making this possible. There's a scripture, I can't remember where it's at, it's the Bible, Book of Mormon, but it says you can either be humble or God will humble ... Ah, I'm misquoting it by far. But it's like God will humble people. You can be humble or he will humble you. So it's like, looking at that, I'm like round two I'm going to be a humble person because I don't want to be humbled again, right? Matt: I still feel it. Russell: This is not me. I understand, I look around now and it's 100% like there's no way I would be where I am right now if Dan Usher didn't make videos the way he does. There's no way I'd be here right now if Todd Dickerson could not code software the way he does. There's no way, all these things are so many people. Matt: You're so right. Russell: Then there's so many success stories that inside of it there's just so many people. And then there's the grace of God. I just look at the timeline of when ClickFunnels came into the market. I've now got funnels for a decade, nobody cared. Then all these things were happening, we started having the idea for ClickFunnels, started building it, we're creating it, and then literally we go to traffic and conversion, Todd's halfway done building ClickFunnels, and Ryan Deiss stands on stage in the biggest event at the time and he spends the entire four days talking about funnels. Talking about how funnels are the greatest thing. Everybody's like, what's a funnel? They're all taking notes. Me and Todd are like, does he know we're building? He's talking about funnels. He's talking about funnels like crazy. And then the next day everyone gets home from traffic and conversion and everybody that day, the next day 8,000 funnel consultants pop up. Everybody's a funnel consultant. Everyone is on Facebook talking about funnel consultants and teaching funnels and all this stuff. We're like, oh my gosh. Todd, get this software done, everybody's talking about funnels right now. So he's coding like crazy, all this stuff is coming around, all of a sudden everyone's like, millions of funnel consultants, everyone's doing it, and all of a sudden we're like, hey, we created this thing called ClickFunnels, here it is. All of a sudden all of the consultants and all the people and everyone came and we were the only platform. I look at that, as smart as I think I am, there is so much grace and timing. If I'd launched a year earlier, a year later, it would not have hit the way it did. 100% it was the timing of all these things that have to happen. If it wasn't for that ... I can act like I'm smart, I'm a genius, but man, there's so much divinity that came into all the things. There's no way it could happen without that. Anyway, just understanding those things. Matt: What did you learn when you were cycling? Russell: So many lessons. Russell, you are not that good looking. Or cool. Or anything. Matt: It's basically not about you, right? Yeah, I feel that. So what was hardest? What were the tough lessons? Caleb: How many times did you cycle? Russell: Two big ones for sure. Matt: Really? Do you mind sharing? Russell: Yeah, the first time was after I was trying to figure this thing out. I remember one of my buddies was like, you're making money online? I'm like, yeah. He's like, that's cool. I'm like, do you want a job? He's like, what? I'm like, you're the first person I know who's interested. I'll pay you to come hang out with me. He's like, all right. So I hired my friend. He's like, I have some friends too. I'm like, okay. So I start hiring all these people because I want someone to talk to. Anyway, it was really bad. I ended up having a whole bunch of employees nobody knew how to do anything. I didn't know how to train anybody. I was hiding in the room trying to make money to pay payroll while they're standing outside like, do you want us to do anything? I'm like, don't talk to me, I've got to make money to pay your payroll. They're like, we can help. I'm like, I don't have time to explain anything to you. It was horrible. I built it up to the point where it was just like, I was launching a new thing as fast as we could just to pay payroll. As an entrepreneur, you kill something you get to eat, right? It's like the greatest thing in the world. Employees, they want to get paid every two weeks whether they killed anything or not. I did not realize that until they were like we need money and I'm like, but we haven't made any money. They're like you have to pay me. I'm like, what? I'm so confused. Like, okay. Anyway, it had grown and we didn't have a model, sustainable. Speaker 3: You just launched stuff to see if it works? Russell: Yeah. When I was by myself it was like, I had an idea today, let's try it. You launch it, it makes some money, sweet. And then it was like, I made 20, 30 grand. It was my wife and I, so it was like, that lasts nine months. You know? Caleb: What did you sell? Obviously I know the potato gun backstory. You said I talked about funnels for like a decade before that. What were you selling during that decade leading up to ClickFunnels? I know it's an inordinate amount of stuff. Is there anything not even close to funnels, like something ... Russell: Yeah. The very first, pre-potato guns, my very first big idea was ... Back then what everyone was doing, you know who Yanik Silver is. Yanik would write a book and then he would sell the resale rights to the books. Someone else would buy it and they could sell it. I remember I got online, I saw these books, I bought a book from Yanik and I'm like, I can sell this. I bought a book from somebody else. I was buying all these eBooks I could sell. But then inside the books they would have links back to all their sites. I'd sell the book and I was like, I made 10 bucks selling the book. And then inside the book Yanik is selling his thousand dollar course and seminars and things. They make all this money. I'm like, I got 10 bucks. He made like $1,000 off of me selling his book. I remember being mad. I was like I wish there was a way I could brand this ebook so that before somebody opens it and sees his ad they'd see my ad. That was the first idea I ever had, ever. So my first product was called Zip Brander, it was this little thing that would take an ebook and it would brand it. You open it up and it popped up an ad. You see the ad and you click a button and it would take you inside the ebook. It was my first thing. We launched that and I sold 20 or 30 copies of it. But that was the first money I ever made, it was amazing. I had a customer list, I was like this is amazing. And then the way I was selling those, I was going to forums. This is pre-Facebook, so all you little kids, before Facebook, before MySpace, before Friendster, we used to go to these things called forums. They were these things where people would talk all day. So we'd go to these forums. One of the rules in the forums is you could comment all you wanted but you could have a signature file. At the end you could have like, Russel Brunson, check out my new software Zip Brander. I'd go to these forums and I would just spend eight hours a day answering questions and asking questions and everything. People see my ad on every little thing. My footer was on everything. That's how I was selling Zip Brander initially. I was in 50 forums posting like crazy but I couldn't keep up with it. I was like, man, if I could create a software that would manage this whole thing, that would be amazing. So my second product is called Forum Fortunes. It was this little software that would manage your posting on every single forum. You post and you could see if someone responded back on Forum 49 it would pop up and you're like, oh, you can go find it and go back and comment and keep the discussion. I made it for myself and then we started selling that. We sold more of those because I now had a little customer base here and went bigger. After that it was the next. It was always what's the next thing. That's kind of how it started back in the days, little tools and things like that. Speaker 3: How do you know when you're shooting all these bullets, how do you know when you shoot a cannonball? Matt: Good question. Russell: The thing about it initially, I had been married, I was making zero dollars a year as a wrestler, so for me to make $600 in a month, that was a cannonball. That was insane. I thought I was the coolest kid in the world. $600 was insane. So I did four or five little things. I remember it was Christmastime and I remember my wife wanted to buy a couch and it was a $2,000 couch. I was just like, oh, I can't afford that. I don't have a job. I'm getting sick to my stomach. I had this idea, what if I do a sell and just sell a whole bunch of crap that we had. I had a bunch of eBooks I bought rights to, a couple of things I had created, so we made this Grinch sale. I remember I wrote the copy, it was like, it was the Grinch Before Christmas or something. It had a picture of the Grinch and his heart growing three sizes, I don't know. I wrote this copy. My wife and I had been married a year, she really wants a couch, I can't afford a couch, so if you guys buy this, if I sell 32 of these things, I can buy her a couch and put it under the Christmas tree. It will be amazing. Caleb: You said that in the copy? Russell: In the copy, yeah. It was the reason why. I still have the page, I can show it to you. I know exactly where it's at, I can show it to you. So I had the whole page and then only an email list of like a couple hundred people at the time. I still had an affiliate program, so at the top it had an affiliate link. So I sent an email to my list and went to bed that night. Someone on my list was a guy named Carl Galletti, I haven't heard about Carl in a long time. He was a big famous copy writer at the time. Carl went and saw the thing, bought it, and started affiliating. So he joined the affiliate program, he was like this is awesome. He took that email, sent it to his entire list of this huge thing. So I go to bed. I wake up the next morning, we're at $10,000 in sales. Matt: How much before you went to bed? Russell: Oh, like $30, $40 or something. I was like, what just happened. Did I rob someone? I didn't know what happened. I looked at my email and there's all these people who were like, hey, I bought two of them, I hope you can get your wife that couch. Oh, I sent it to my friend. All these people. Because Carl promoted it, all these other people who follow Carl saw it. Carl is like it's converting like crazy. Tons of people are buying it. I'm freaking out. I'm going to wrestling practice trying to answer customer support. I'm late for practice, I ran into wrestling practice, I get back out I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I made like $600 in sales." I'm freaking out. Anyway, the whole thing goes through and over that, I think it was a seven day sale or something like that, we made $35,000. Which is more money than I'd seen in all my lifetime combined times 100, right? I paid probably 10 grand in affiliates. We made, I don't know, $25,000 that we got to keep. I was like, "Oh my gosh." I told Colette, and Colette's like, my wife. I love her. She doesn't understand the business part of things at all. I was like, "We made $25,000." She was like, "Is it illegal?" First thing. "Are you going to go to jail? Is it illegal?" I'm like, "No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure." The first thing I did is I went and bought the couch for her, for Christmas. We got it back, I got a picture of her, sent it out to the list saying thank you so much, you got the Christmas gift, the couch. They all celebrated together, all the people. I was like oh my gosh, this is the greatest game of all time. This is so much fun. I was like, what's the next idea, what's the next thing. It was like that, these little things. After that one was done now I had way more customers, all these people that had bought my product knew who I was now so the next thing was easier so it incrementally kept growing and getting bigger. Somewhere along the line I launched the potato gun thing. Upsales of things. We didn't call them funnels back then. We called them sales flows or sales processes. Talk about your sales flow, what's your sales flow. Caleb: Sales flow. Russell: I remember Dylan Jones was our partner at ClickFunnels. Before Todd we tried to build something like ClickFunnels, we called it Click.com.com, which is a horrible name. But Dylan's, I still have all the UI images, and in there we had a whole section for sales flows and all these things. It's like, this was the first ClickFunnels. Because Dylan was on the UI eventually on ClickFunnels anyway, but we literally designed something like this five or six years earlier. Just crazy. Matt: Do you think that all those little failures and all the trying and that kind of energy is what brought you here today? Russell: For sure. It's the key. I wish I could grab everybody because everybody's like, okay, I'm waiting for my ClickFunnels, or I'm waiting for my thing. They're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting. I was like, the reason why I got this thing was because I didn't wait. If someone were to give me ClickFunnels initially it would have been bankrupt in 15 minutes, right? You have to become worthy of the thing eventually. You don't become worthy by waiting, you become worthy by trying. And trying and trying and trying. Eventually, if you keep doing that, over time, then God's like, all right, he's going to do it. He's built 150 funnels, now I'll give him the idea. Matt: Wow, that's powerful. Speaker 3: How much more did you feel that all your other friends are in the same game? Matt: I hope you guys take there's more that's caught than Todd. That's some gold in what he just shared right there, what you were just sharing. But go ahead. What was the question? Speaker 3: I was just saying how much more would you fail if all your other friends were playing the same game? Russell: All my friends were like why are you launching more stuff? Why do you keep doing things? They do like one product launch a year. They got so annoyed. They were like, dude, stop doing stuff. I'm like, why would I stop doing this? This is so much fun. It was just confusing to me. Why don't you guys do more? Everyone, they make money they'd just be done. Caleb: Why would you keep doing more? Was it genuinely like one funnel away? Like this next funnel's the one. Were you just like you sold yourself on it, this is it, so you keep going? Or did you just really enjoy it? Russell: Well each one I thought was. Each one, every time I was so surprised, like this is amazing. That was the one. The next one's bigger. Oh my gosh, that was even better, who knew? And then I just kept going from there, you know what I mean? So I wasn't waiting for ClickFunnels or anything like that. I was just enjoying the journey every time. It was so exciting. Eventually it was like, oh crap, who knew that that was going to do what it did. Caleb: Was it all emails? Was there any ads or was there anything to scale the traffic? Russell: First 10 years was 100% emails, partnerships. There wasn't ads back then. I mean, there was Google ads, but the first initial Google slap happened about the time I was getting started. Prior to that a lot of guys I knew built their email list off of Google ads and then the slap happened. A lot of them had lists. I started getting to know those guys, going to events, meeting them, so that's how it started initially was tons of that. And then there was this big gap for years where paid ads weren't a thing. Some people did banner ads, but it wasn't consistent. It wasn't like it is nowadays. It was harder. You worked harder and all the stuff wasn't there. Mostly we focused on ... If you didn't have an email list, you weren't playing the game. It's like, who's got lists, how can you build lists, what can you do? Matt: You still think that's true to a degree? Russell: 100%. That's why the traffic seekers book was so important for me to write, I feel like, because most of the people in the game today have been blessed with Zuckerberg's simple Facebook ads that make the game easy. Matt: Wow. Russell: They've never focused on building lists. I was like, you guys, just so you know, Zuckerberg is going to screw us all. It's going to happen. Matt: Yeah. Caleb: It will happen. Russell: It's like, if you don't have a list you're all screwed. I've been through this for 18 years now, I've been through five or six cycles. I've seen people who made millions of dollars who now are not online. The people who have waded the storm the whole time are all the list builders. They're the ones who survived. Everyone else who's good at ads, they come and they go and they come and they go.

There are many tools available if you want to achieve financial freedom. Factors like time, skills, and money are all relevant. Still, usually, they become commodities used to control you rather than you controlling them. Fortunately, wealth is within your reach if you start to understand how it works and where you can find it in your life. In this episode, we talk to Caleb Guilliams, the founder and CEO of Better Wealth. He discusses the ideas and philosophies that influenced him and how he creates an impact by managing other people’s assets. Listen to this episode if you want to know how you can have control over your money while maximizing your future wealth. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about Caleb’s values and superpowers. Know how you can challenge your scarcity mindset and shift your perspective toward wealth. Discover the four principles of Better Wealth and how you can improve your relationship with money. Resources https://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-Magic-Story/dp/1939438632 (The Richest Man in Babylon) by George Clason https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful/dp/1982137274 (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) by Stephen Covey https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331 (Think and Grow Rich) by Napoleon Hill https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612680194 (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) by Robert Kiyosaki https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-Results/dp/1885167776 (The One Thing) by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan https://www.amazon.com/Smartcuts-Hackers-Innovators-Accelerate-Success/dp/0062302450 (Smartcuts) by Shane Snow https://www.amazon.com/Asset-secret-save-your-money-ebook/dp/B07H6SMS7N (The And Asset) by Caleb Guilliams https://seekgocreate.com/?p=2201 (Episode Details) 5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode [04:13] “I’m 24 years old in an industry where the average age of a financial advisor is 58.” [28:30] “Wealth starts in how we think. A lot of people read my book, or listen to my show, or hear me speak, and they want a tactic. There's nothing wrong with tactics. I love efficiency hacks. But I'm telling you: you are missing the point if you don't understand that wealth begins with how you think.” [30:22] “The solutions that we find to our weaknesses become our greatest strengths.” [48:52] “When we play the long-term game, we have to understand that every decision we make has a consequence. Going back to the time value of money, a dollar today is worth way more than a dollar. A dollar loss today is worth way more than just a dollar.” [54:34] “I hated life insurance when I first started. And then when I truly understood it, I realized it's not the what; it's the how people are using it. It's how people are teaching it. And it can be an amazing foundational asset to store your capital and use it throughout your life.” About Caleb Caleb Guilliams is a financial prodigy who started his career at the age of 19. He founded Better Wealth Solutions, a company committed to showing people how to be more efficient and reach their highest potential through wealth. He is the author of The And Asset, a book that explains compound interest as an effective way to save and use your money at the same time. Are you interested in reaching out to Caleb? You can contact him through his https://calebguilliams.com/ (website) or https://www.facebook.com/calebbetterwealth/ (Facebook), https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebguilliams/ (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCThFkB73A_ICEu-LJV2abbw (YouTube), or https://www.instagram.com/calebguilliams/ (Instagram). Enjoy This Podcast? Seek Go Create is for anyone seeking excellence, moving towards success, or creating something new. We share topics, stories and conversations that allow us to rethink how we live, work and lead. If you were inspired and educated by this episode, feel free to subscribe to us on

Messy Grace (Part 1) - Kaleb KaltenbachMessy Grace (Part 2) - Kaleb KaltenbachMessy Grace (Part 3) - Kaleb KaltenbachFamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Embracing the Truth Guest:                         Caleb Kaltenbach                            From the series:       Messy Grace (Day 2 of 3)   Bob: How ought we live, as followers of Jesus, in a culture that is moving away from a biblical foundation for life? Caleb Kaltenbach says Jesus demonstrated what life looks like, full of grace and truth. Caleb: I think another way to say it is that there is a big difference between acceptance and approval. I think that we have to understand that, not just with the LGBT community, but we are moving into a culture where people go with whatever they want to do. There are going to be new things that come out that just really scare Christians, and we don't know how to handle it. We think: “Okay; do I keep my relationship with this person? Do I not?”  It's not just the LGBT issue; there are so many issues that are going to come down the pipeline. We have to understand that we are missionaries, and there is a difference between acceptance and approval; and there's a tension between grace and truth. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, July 3rd. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  1:00 If you've found that life is getting harder to navigate, as a follower of Christ, we'll see if we can help with some directions today. Stay with us. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. You know, years ago, there was a lot of controversy around a children's book that had found its way into libraries. I think it was called Heather Has Two Mommies. It was a children's book designed to provide a picture of normalization for a child who might be growing up in a household where there were two mommies or two daddies, trying to present that as maybe a new normal. We have somebody with us today for whom that was the normal, growing up in a home with two mommies part of the time and with a bachelor dad the other part of the time. Dennis: Yes; and Caleb, I just want to say, “Thanks for being on our broadcast and sharing your story.”  2:00 Caleb Kaltenbach joins us again on FamilyLife Today. Caleb, welcome back. Caleb: It's great to be back. Dennis: He's written a book called Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction. The reason I just appreciate you being on the show, talking about this, is I think there are a lot of people, like me, who may not have a lot of gay friends; or if we do, we don't know it. We need coaching / we need understanding. We need someone to take us near and begin the journey for us. I feel like your book did that for me. I really liked being able to peer into your family, where you were raised by two moms and your dad, who later came out as a homosexual as well. You were raised in the midst of no faith / no Christian worldview. I think we're clueless! 3:00 Really, the Christian community's not really wise about who our audience is, and where they are, and where they aren't. Caleb: No; absolutely. I think that we have come to a point in our nation where we have to realize that we are the away team. We are not the home team anymore. We realize that more than ever at our church. We firmly believe in the inerrancy of Scripture / we believe in God's sovereignty—we believe in all these things—but we're all very intentional in being missionaries in our context / missionaries in Southern California and understanding, as we talked about earlier, that not everybody is at the same point in the spiritual journey.  We just surveyed our church three weeks ago and found out that 42 percent of our attendants, on any given Sunday, is unchurched—meaning that we're the first church they've been to or they haven't been since they were a kid—because we're so intentional about going after the lost sheep that Jesus talks about in Luke 15:1-7. But we do that without compromising the gospel and the message; because we have to learn where we are, and we have to understand—  4:00 —I think, specifically with this issue, or any other issue that we're dealing with—that there's a huge tension between grace and truth.  I think another way to say it is that there is a big difference between acceptance and approval. I think that we have to understand that, not just with the LGBT community, but we are moving into a culture where people go with whatever they want to do. There are going to be new things that come out that just really scare Christians, and we don't know how to handle it. We think: “Okay; do I keep my relationship with this person? Do I not?”  It's not just the LGBT issue; there are so many issues that are going to come down the pipeline. We have to understand that we are missionaries, and there is a difference between acceptance and approval; and there is a tension between grace and truth. Bob: You've already shared with us that your impression of Christians, growing up, was that they were bigoted/hateful. When you were with your mom, Christians would mock, and would shout, and would be hateful toward your mom.  5:00 Less so with your dad, because he wasn't out of the closet at this point; but your dominant thought was, “Christians are just not worth much.” You wound up at a Bible study in high school, and you went into that Bible study with the intent of wanting to undermine everything that was being taught there. Over time, something shifted in your heart and your thinking. Caleb: Yes; because I saw that Jesus was not representative of how people on the street corners were acting. I think today we would say Jesus is not representative of how some Christians act on Facebook®, social media, or Twitter®, Snapchat, Periscope, or whatever—that Jesus is not reflective of that. When I think about the people who are on the street corners, I think to myself, “What about what Paul said in Romans 2:4, when he says, ‘Don't you know that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance?' What about what Paul said in Romans 12:18: ‘Live at peace with everyone'?” That doesn't mean that we agree with everybody, but that means that we're not going to belittle people.  6:00 What about what Jesus said in Matthew 5:43-48?—you know: “…love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you”—and by the way—“if you only love those who love you, what reward are you going to get?”  I look at the people on the street corners, and really, in my life too—for me, messy grace is ultra-legalistic, fundamentalist Christians. You know, that's my version of messy grace that I have to love and be mindful about. Am I exemplifying what Paul says in Romans 2 and 12? Am I exemplifying what Jesus says: “If you only love those who love you, what reward will you get?” Dennis: I'm glad I had a man in my life who called me to love / he called me to truth too; but he said: “The preeminence of love—it is the banner of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Yes; we do stand for the truth.” I'll tell you why that was important in my life, Caleb. You can comment on this, because you've undoubtedly run into quite a few guys like me.  I think I, like a lot of other Christians, have a high need to be right. I don't think we have a high need to make sure we're loving.  7:00 That, for me, has helped me move from pressing the point of the gospel—which is the truth / it is right—but it's pressed me back to going, “How do I show love to other people who are broken?” We're all broken—not just them—I am too.  I think, for the most part, we in the Christian community really don't know how to love people who aren't like us, and who don't love us, and who don't think like us and believe like us. Caleb: I think the reason is that it is much easier to make a point / it is much harder to love somebody. When you make a point, you can be right. The woman caught in adultery in John, Chapter 8—and the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who placed her before Jesus after humiliating her, they did not care about her life—restoring her/reconciliation. They were willing for her to die for them to be right. In other words, they believed that their theological conviction was a catalyst to allow them to mistreat other people.  8:00 Our theological convictions must never be catalysts to mistreat others. If anything, our theology should drive us to love people and treat them well.  I think about Jesus, and here's what Jesus did—here's what Jesus did—Jesus called the disciples into a discipleship relationship before they even believed He was the Son of God. I'm willing to bet—I don't know, but I'm willing to bet—that Matthew was not a good synagogue-going boy, in Matthew 9; and yet Jesus still looked at him, despite all that, and said: “Hey, you're coming with Me. Follow Me. I want you to be a part of what I'm doing.” Jesus regularly spent time with people, and here's where I think He models the difference between acceptance and approval. Jesus loved people where they were / Jesus loved them for who they were, but Jesus was not content to leave them where they were. He said, “God has something greater embedded in you that only His sovereignty can bring out.” I think about that and I think to myself: “We need to do the same thing.  9:00 “We have to love people where they're at.” That doesn't mean we approve of every life choice that somebody makes. Dennis: Right; right. Bob: You began to get a picture of who the real Jesus was as you were going to this Bible study in high school; but it had to dawn on you pretty quickly that, if this was true and if you were going to buy into this idea that the Jesus presented in the Bible is who He says He is—that He's God / that Christianity is true—that's going to put you at odds with your mom, with your dad, with your mom's partner. This is going to turn your whole world upside down. Caleb: Absolutely. I spent so much time studying what the Bible had to say about marriage relationships, gender, sexuality, intimacy—everything. I came to this conclusion, the one that I still hold today, that God designed sexual intimacy for the expression in marriage between one man and one woman—I believe that today. I believe anything outside of that is a sin.  10:00 That it is between a man and a woman in marriage—that's what God designed intimacy for.  Now, I also believe, to reinforce what I said earlier, that our biblical beliefs should not allow us to berate anyone. Our biblical beliefs should build us up to the point, where we are willing to love people; because the more that we love God, He gives us margin to love people who seem to be unlovable to us. I think the real mark of Christian maturity is: “How well can you love those whom you disagree with, don't like / don't like you, are difficult, or are just plain different than you are?” Bob: I'm trying to imagine you coming to this conclusion / this understanding of what the Bible has to say about gender, and marriage, and sexuality, and going back to your mom and having the conversation—or to your dad—and saying, “You know, I've come to believe something different.” Caleb: Imagine how a young teenager, who is gay or same-sex attracted, feels when they come out to their conservative Christian parents.  11:00 I was a 16-year-old teenager coming out as a Christian to my three gay parents. You would expect love and tolerance; because that's what my mother, and her partner, and my dad, in his own way, always preached. But I got the opposite—they kicked me out.  I went back, eventually, kind of slowly built up that relationship. Again, I realized that the more I loved God, the more margin He gave me to love people who were difficult in my life—I had to forgive. Bob: That love was tested; because as you attended the Bible study, you decided to go to church. You went to your dad's church, and that turned out to be a bit of a surprise to you as well. Caleb: Yes; I went to my dad's church and—you know, I'd gone off and on. They really didn't teach the Bible.  Then I got invited by a friend of mine, who was a Christian, and his dad was a pastor at a church. I got invited to go to his church. I went, and I found Jesus was preached and talked about much differently.  12:00 I found a group of individuals who firmly believed what Jesus said and what Scripture claimed, but also believed that that should never compromise our love for other people. We can't compromise conviction or love whatsoever. I remember being in this group and seeing them and thinking to myself, “This is something I could get onboard with.” God just began to develop in me this passion to be able to tell people about the Jesus I discovered. Bob: I want you to take me, if you can / if you remember it, to the first conversation you had with your mom or with your dad, where you said, “I've started to change my thinking.” Caleb: My dad told me that I had spit in the eyes of God, because he had me baptized Episcopalian/Anglican when I was a kid/baby. I remember, when I told him, he was so reactionary and angry. I didn't understand why then. I know now—because he was in the closet, and he was hiding it.  13:00 When I told my mom, on the other hand—I mean, my mom—I love her to death; but drama, drama, drama. My mom—we were driving from Concordia, Missouri—that's where my parents would meet / in Concordia, Missouri, at McDonald's® in between Columbia and Kansas City—my dad dropped me off and looked at my mom and said: “Well, good luck, Mary Lou. You're going to love this.”  I got in and I told my mom. She started crying—just crying, crying, crying. My mom, when we got home, went in; and I stayed in the car, because I didn't want to go in yet. I waited about 15 minutes, and she told Vera by then. As I said, Vera didn't get along with me / I didn't get along with her. She was a PhD psychologist, who had a very liberal view, not only on psychology but on everything. I sat down; and I remember she asked me, “So you're a Christian now, Caleb?” I said, “Yes.”  14:00 It was just very contentious—again, to the point where my mom said, “Hey, you're not going to come back for a while,”—basically kicked me out. My dad had told me the same thing at his house, and it was very difficult. Bob: So you called friends and said, “Can I crash at your house?” Caleb: Yes! Dennis: You were 16? Caleb: Yes. Dennis: Not long after that, someone invited you to a Youth for Christ conference? Caleb: Youth for Christ, also known as CIY, Christ in Youth. It was a great conference, but I had never been to a Christian conference. It was so great being with other high schoolers, who were my own age, and getting to know them.  I remember, again, one morning, I woke up and I just couldn't imagine myself doing anything else other than telling other people about this Jesus whom I had learned about. I mean, I figured I had lived 16 years of my life away from Jesus / I want to spend the rest of my life telling other people about Jesus and saying, again: “He's not like the people on the street corners!”  A week to the day that I was baptized, I said, “I want to give my life to full-time Christian vocational ministry.” Bob: A week after you were baptized? Caleb: Yes. 15:00 Bob: Okay; there are folks, who are listening, who are going: “Well, there's a pattern here. I mean, this guy grows up and he has two moms. One of them doesn't like him and doesn't like men in general, and his dad's in the closet. He's just looking for a way out of the trauma that he's been in for 16 years. He's easy pickings for this kind of stuff.” Caleb: But it wasn't trauma for me. I didn't want people to know about my mom. Dennis: It was your normal. Caleb: It was my normal! Absolutely! I knew—it was different enough, where I didn't want to broadcast it in the school—but in no way, shape, or form was I walking around saying, “Woe is me.” I'll be honest—my mom and her friends were fun. They were fun people to be around! There were some things that I saw that I shouldn't have seen; but back in my day, when I would go to somebody's house for a house party with my mom, I would take my Atari®, or Commodore 64, or Nintendo® / original Nintendo Duck Hunt™, and I would go find a room.  16:00 I still saw things that were inappropriate, but I did not have this—at that point—this scarred idea of my life. It wasn't until after I saw Jesus, and how He set things up, and how He originally created things to be until Adam and Eve rebelled / until sin entered the world, that I realized, at that point: “This was not right. This is not how God designed—this is not God's best. You cannot have a reflection of Christ's relationship with the church in any relationship other than a heterosexual relationship.” I mean, I realized so many things. And if there's ever—listen, if there's ever anybody who wanted to disprove, you know, what the Bible said about sexuality, it was me!  I mean, even after I changed my view on sexuality, if somebody brought up a new idea, I would still look at it; because my relationship with my parents was damaged. Why would I go from an environment where I had absolute peace with my parents to now an environment where there was chaos? 17:00 Bob: Let me ask you about that; because in the last five years, there have been books published presenting an evangelical view that maybe we've misunderstood all the texts that you were reading in high school. They say it's possible to be gay and to believe the Bible and to love Jesus. You've seen those books. You've read those books; right? Caleb: Oh, absolutely. Here's what these books do—they have no exegetical or historical ground to stand on. They have to do fancy exegetical footwork / they have to do fancy footwork with a background narrative and the backgrounds of the New Testament, especially with Romans 1 and so on and so forth.  They have to do an argument of silence, where they say something like, “Hey, Jesus never said anything about same-sex relationships, so that makes it okay.” Well, there are a lot of things that Jesus didn't say anything about, so “Let me get my list ready,”—you can't make that argument. I remember, after I came to Christ, having a conversation with a lady who was a dean at a liberal seminary in Kansas City.  18:00 My mom “sicced” her on me at one of her GLAD events. I still went with my mom when I was a high schooler / when I was a Christian, because I wanted an opportunity to tell people about Jesus in different conversations. She [the dean] automatically started challenging me. It really came down to the fact, where she said: “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. So that makes it okay.”  Now, we look at it—and you can even get very academic if you want—and say: “Well, Jesus was sent to Israel. In Israel, under a Pharisaical rule, they did not deal with homosexuality like Paul did when he was sent to the Gentiles / to the Roman Empire.” That's another whole ball of wax. If you really want to get exegetical, let's look at Matthew 19, when Jesus has an opportunity to define marriage as anything other than a man and a woman; and does he? No; He affirms what God says in Genesis 2. 19:00 Dennis: So, here you are. You're this on-fire 16-year-old, who now has been baptized. You've been to a conference and surrendered to God's call on your life to move into full-time Christian ministry. I can only imagine—when you went back to Columbia— Bob: Yes—how that news went; yes. Dennis: —and back to where your two moms lived in Kansas City, how did those conversations go down? Caleb: Well, it went down just about like a lead balloon would. Have you ever ridden a lead balloon before? Bob: Just crashed. Caleb: It crashed. It wouldn't get up off the air. I mean, I had committed the unpardonable sin; right? Bob: Becoming a Christian's one thing / now, saying, “I want to be a pastor.” Dennis: “I'm all in.” Caleb: Well, and you throw on top of that, “Hey, I've changed my view of sexuality.” Bob: Right. Caleb: You know—I mean, now I'm one of them in their eyes. The people who were supposed to show me tolerance—they were showing my anything but tolerance. Dennis: How did you do, loving your mom in that situation? Caleb: It was difficult at first; but I got encouragement from my friends, saying, “Caleb, you need to love her no matter what.” I started reading the New Testament.  20:00 Whenever I had free time, I was reading, reading, reading, reading—especially the words of Jesus—and then moving on to Romans, so on and so forth. I really latched onto what Jesus said there and the mercy that He said, even in the beatitudes, when Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” I cannot own how my mother treats me / I cannot own how somebody else reacts to me—what I can own is my own reactions—how I respond and what I do. That is what God holds me accountable to. I can own how I'm going to love people, no matter what / follow the example of Jesus, when He was hanging on the cross and He said: “Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.” Now, if the Son of God, who is innocent, could say that, after everything He was through, I'm pretty sure I could look at my mom and say: “I forgive you. I'm choosing every day not to hold this against you.” Dennis: I think you're ministering to some parents, who have children, who've come out and who have said, “I think I'm gay.”  21:00 I think you're also ministering to some family members, who may have been invited to a wedding of a relative in their family, where they're struggling with, “What's our response to be?” I think you're also ministering to folks, Caleb, who work in places, where they have close associates, whose lifestyles are different than theirs. You're exhorting all of us, regardless, to go back to the Book / back to the life of Christ and love others the way He loved us. Bob: Well, and I think your example helps there, too, and what you've shared with us of your own story, and what you share in your book, Messy Grace. I think that gives us a blueprint / a living illustration that we can follow and know how to engage with our friends or our family members. We have copies of Caleb's book, Messy Grace, in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. You can go online to request your copy; or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order a copy of the book, Messy Grace.  22:00 Again, the website: FamilyLifeToday.com; or call 1-800-358-6329—that's 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.” I know we probably have some of you, who are tuned in today because this is a holiday week for a lot of folks—people taking time off—and maybe some of you, who don't normally listen to FamilyLife Today, have been able to catch the program. We're glad that you joined us.  FamilyLife® is a non-profit organization. We exist to effectively develop godly marriages and families. We believe those godly marriages and families can change the world, one home at a time. This daily radio program is just one aspect of all that we do, here, at FamilyLife. All that we do, here, at FamilyLife is possible because friends, like you, make it possible. We are listener-supported; and your donations help cover, not only the cost of producing and syndicating this program, but all of the outreaches of FamilyLife. All that we're involved with couldn't happen without your support.  23:00 If you're a regular listener, and you've never made a donation, we'd love to have you join the team that supports this ministry. If you're a first-time listener, or a new listener, we hope you'll continue to tune in; and you can download the FamilyLife app from your app store. Just type in FamilyLife as one word and that will give you immediate access to our program every day, so you can listen to it on your time schedule. To donate, go to FamilyLifeToday.com—you can donate online—or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a donation over the phone. You can always mail your donation to us as well. Our address is FamilyLife Today at PO Box 7111, Little Rock, AR; and our zip code is 72223. By the way, let me just say we believe that your first priority, when it comes to giving, needs to be your local church; so make sure that you're investing well there before you do anything to help support this ministry. 24:00 We hope you can join us back tomorrow when Caleb Kaltenbach will be here again. We're going to talk about how we should interact with friends, coworkers, neighbors—people who we know who identify as LGBT. How do we let them know who we are, and what we believe, and how do we build a relationship there? We'll talk about that tomorrow. I hope you can tune in. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas; a Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © 2018 FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com  

What is it that motivates us as believers to overcome our discouragement, and actually share the gospel with those we encounter on our way? In a continued discussion from our last episode with Pastor, teacher, and founder of “The Exchange Ministry” Jeff Musgrave says that he believes we should be motivated by heavenly rewards and having an approach that works. [Jeff] “As a pastor, if you wanted to have a great alter call, just preach on family devotions or evangelism, because everyone feels guilty. We try hard never to motivate people out of guilt. … we want to motivate them out of, “I think this is going to work”. [Caleb] “You talked about rewards … it’s almost like we don’t want to be motivated just by rewards, but … who invented the rewards?” [Jeff] “There are two things that we have to believe about Him to please Him. (Hebrews 11:6 ) Constant awareness that He’s with me. He’s a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.” The Exchange tools that Jeff sees as a gift from God, greatly simplify the process of sharing the gospel, giving confidence to us as believers that we can do this! But more than that, God Himself rewards us to do his will. Scripture teaches us that God rewards us for doing good works, denying ourselves, showing compassion to the needy, and treating our enemies kindly. As we’ll learn today these rewards from God include rewards for faithfully sharing the gospel with those we meet. Welcome to Echoes of Faith, a podcast about God working in our lives today and how His Word impacts our future. In this episode our host Caleb Phelps continues his discussion with Jeff Musgrave. He and his wife Anna founded “The Exchange” in 2010 and have presented their training in over 200 churches, to thousands of people. They recently delivered this training at Faith Baptist Palm Bay in September of 2019. Jeff and Caleb sat down to talk about the approach and how you the Podcast listener can be more motivated by God’s Word to put these principles into practice. And now, here’s pastor Caleb. https://exchangemessage.org/

What is it that motivates us as believers to overcome our discouragement, and actually share the gospel with those we encounter on our way? In a continued discussion from our last episode with Pastor, teacher, and founder of “The Exchange Ministry” Jeff Musgrave says that he believes we should be motivated by heavenly rewards and having an approach that works. [Jeff] “As a pastor, if you wanted to have a great alter call, just preach on family devotions or evangelism, because everyone feels guilty. We try hard never to motivate people out of guilt. … we want to motivate them out of, “I think this is going to work”. [Caleb] “You talked about rewards … it’s almost like we don’t want to be motivated just by rewards, but … who invented the rewards?” [Jeff] “There are two things that we have to believe about Him to please Him. (Hebrews 11:6 ) Constant awareness that He’s with me. He’s a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.” The Exchange tools that Jeff sees as a gift from God, greatly simplify the process of sharing the gospel, giving confidence to us as believers that we can do this! But more than that, God Himself rewards us to do his will. Scripture teaches us that God rewards us for doing good works, denying ourselves, showing compassion to the needy, and treating our enemies kindly. As we’ll learn today these rewards from God include rewards for faithfully sharing the gospel with those we meet. Welcome to Echoes of Faith, a podcast about God working in our lives today and how His Word impacts our future. In this episode our host Caleb Phelps continues his discussion with Jeff Musgrave. He and his wife Anna founded “The Exchange” in 2010 and have presented their training in over 200 churches, to thousands of people. They recently delivered this training at Faith Baptist Palm Bay in September of 2019. Jeff and Caleb sat down to talk about the approach and how you the Podcast listener can be more motivated by God’s Word to put these principles into practice. And now, here’s pastor Caleb. https://exchangemessage.org/

What's the best XKCD? Is poetry boring? How old is Caleb? You can find out when you listen to Episode 2 of What Should I Name My Podcast?!