OFA Origin Story
It started out with a dream and ended with him becoming the greatest of all time. Does that sentence sound familiar? I hope so! It literally is in every superhero, sports documentary, or Pixar Film ever created. Its the story of how a character goes from one point of his or her life and then goes on a journey to becoming a mighty hero or beloved character. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been participating in the One Funnel Away Challenge put on by Russell Brunson and the Clickfunnels team. The goal of this challenge is to learn the Art of the Hook, Story, Offer. When I first learned about Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels I thought It was about learning how to create a webpage and drive traffic to that page little did I know that it was so much more.
Hey, my name is Zack French, I’m an (Insert Title Here), insert title here, Zack what are you talking about. That's what I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been going through this course, who and what am I? I’m not a guru or even an expert. Heck, I’ve got very little Facebook Ad experience and I’ve spent most of my money and time reading books by experts & most of my life trying to figure out how to get to that dream life where I can afford a beautiful big house and provide my daughter and wife with the best life possible. I bet you can relate, can’t you? You hear and see people achieving the dreams and living the lifestyle you have always wanted to live but like me, you just don't know how to achieve it. I’ve always been a follower and student to the greats in business marketing and in sales and when I was a struggling college student who was working three jobs and was on my fourth community college. I had this theory that if I took all the classes I wanted to take and then leave before I had to take my gen eds I would have enough credits to graduate. Let me tell you I was dead wrong. After failing and dropping out of college I decided to go into the wonderful world of car sales. During this time I learned about the goat himself Grant Cardone and tried to mimic his personality and be just like him. If he wore polo’s in a video I would wear polo’s on the car lot, if he wore a suit to a meeting I would wear a suit to the meeting. This helped out at first until I got trapped in the struggle of what I now know as “Techno-Babble”. I went from 10 car sales in the first month to 3 the next. I was devastated and frustrated thinking to myself why won't this work I’m doing all the stuff that my sales manager and all the sales training that Grant was telling me why doesn’t this stuff work. I don’t know about you but that’s just frustrating! Little did I know that in the next following weeks I would run into the man who would change my life forever.
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It was a crazy hot day on the lot and a guy came up and wanted to buy 14 cargo van’s while I was talking to him I realized that he owned a contracting firm that did business with large oil companies. I thought yes!! this is my whale I’m going to get him to buy these vans and man is he going to love my presentation. Well, long story short he went on the test drive and told me, Zack, can I give you some advice? I said sure! He told me to focus on the emotion more and less on the facts. I told him that I didn’t know what he meant and he told me, “kid, you went on and on about how this van is great and how much it can hold and tow but you never once asked me about what I was going to truly use it for”. I was shocked, I told him “Wow” your right. I then proceeded to walk with him to his luxury sedan and when I saw him open the door I saw a book on his dash and being a curious mind I asked him what the book was he replied it was called “Expert Secrets” and it was written by a guy named Russell Brunson. I asked him if it was any good and he later told me that he hadn’t read it yet and then told me goodbye and drove off. Russell Brunson, I said… that name would be etched in the deep recesses of my brain for years to come.
Fast forward 4 years later I’ve gotten married to the love of my life and I’m still looking into the whole concept of passive income. Something happened in my life that changed my life forever. My wife Elizabeth got sick and was hospitalized. I don’t know about you but nothing is scarier than having your loved one go from super healthy one day to sick the next and to top it all off she got so sick that she wasn’t able to work. Now I want you to imagine, the love of your life sick and unable to work and then in what felt like a Thanos type snap (if you don’t know that reference, please go to google and type “Thanos Snap”) everything was slowly disappearing. All the money we had saved GONE, we started getting phone calls from debt collectors, medical bills started piling up, and to top it all off my wife's car got repossessed in the middle of the night. I want to tell you nothing is more humiliating and stressful than to get your car repossessed in the middle of the night. Still to this day if I hear a noise on my street I get up to check and make sure no one is taking on of our cars. The saying that the “Fear is Real” doesn’t even touch the surface. During this time I did what most people do when they hit rock bottom, they look for a solution.
And the solution I found was I would learn how to sell products off of ClickBank and make all this money and get super-rich and then I would never have to worry about money again. The only problem was I didn’t know how to A. set up a Clickbank account & B. I didn’t know how to create a funnel. So I looked for a teacher someone who wasn’t a Charlton aka someone who would just take my money and run, I wanted someone who knew what they were doing. Mind you during this time all I was seeing on my Facebook newsfeed were ads of people holding up these awards that said clickfunnels and they were standing next to Russell Brunson. So I finally found this teacher who was going to teach me how to do the whole funnel thing and I went to buy his course and I was denied. Why? Insufficient funds… so I did the second option which was going to Paypal and seeing if they would front me the money I applied…. denied again. I thought Zack, you're a failure you can’t even pay for a course to better yourself and to better your family. I told my wife that hey it looks like I’m not going to be able to do the whole online sales thing and she told me that it was okay and that something else would come up. Little did she know that 3 weeks later I would start to listen to a podcast which would lead me back to Russell Brunson which lead me to the One Funnel Away Challenge. And while I write this I think back to what I mentioned earlier about not knowing who I was… well, now I know exactly who I am! My name is Zack French, I am a Father and a Husband! I am also a Digital Marketer and a #funnelhacker. The mindset and culture change that happened to give me a stronger purpose didn’t come cheap it required dedication long nights and drive to get to where I am today and you can get there too.
Thanks for reading this inaugural posting! And remember you truly are just one funnel away from getting closer to your dreams!
