How Online Marketing Evolved From $100,000 Launches to Million Dollars Launches

Do you want to create a million-dollar launch? The record of the past can have a great deal of significance, but the events themselves have significance only if you apply them to your own business and make the right conclusions.
Recently I came across a webinar from Mike Filsaime that he promoted as an alternative to watching Netflix during the Corona Crisis.
Did you know that Mike Filsaime, the Co-Founder of GrooveFunnels was the second person to do a million-dollar launch?

During the webinar, he shared plenty of interesting stories about Russell Brunson, Clickfunnels, Kartra and his new software GrooveFunnels.
I decided to write down some of the background stories of online marketing you’ve probably never heard (unless you were present during that webinar).
So if you want to know the story of how Russell Brunson “scammed” Mike Filsaime and the late Andy Jenkins to promote Clickfunnels when they were about to launch Kartra read on.
You’ll learn why Clickfunnels stopped to develop an all in one software and focused on just being a landing page builder or things like why Kartra has to license software from GrooveDigital.
So let’s dive right into it. Shall we?
The First Million Dollar Launch in Online Marketing History
The first one to a million-dollar launch in the online marketing space was John Reese with Traffic Secrets on August 5 of 2004.
Afterward, John wrote a report called
“One man, One product $1 million in One day.”
This report was released on August 31. Before John Reese sold $1,000,000 during one launch, nobody had was able to do that.
The most ever done in the day was about $45,000. That’s why Jeff Walker’s email address was Jeff@sixinseven, which meant he made six figures in seven days.
Jeff Walker was known for making $100,000 in seven days with his Product Launch Formula before he even made it a brand.
He shared his results with John Reese and told him:
You need to set up set a goal to do 1000 units at a $1,000 price point.
John said. “Wow, that’s interesting” and wrote a report about how he did it.
GrooveFunnels Vs Kartra: How Mike Filsaime Became the Buzz Aldrin Of Online Marketing
So whether you choose to use Kartra or GroovePages to run your online business, you know that Mike Filsaime used after all his experience from his first 1 million dollar launch before he even thought about creating WebinarJam, Everwebinar, Kartra and now GrooveFunnels.
I hope this inspires you to have your million dollar day with one of the software Mike invented.
He registered the domain name Butterfly Marketing on August 31, 2004, after John Reese wrote the report that inspired Mike to take his software and make a million-dollar day out of a million-dollar brand.
Mike Filsaime’s First Flagship Product Butterfly Marketing
Butterfly Marketing was Mike Filsaime’s flagship product which he first launched back in January of 2006 and he has sold over 5000 copies.
The full product was sold for $1997.
According to Omar Martin Butterfly Marketing was a complete home-study course that consisted of 4 parts…
- The Manuscript,
- The Software,
- The Videos and
- The MP3’s
When You bought the product you got access to
- 120 page book (manuscript)
- 3 printed ebooks called:
- Prelaunch Secrets,
- Firesale Secrets &
- Outsource Secrets
- 8 Physical Discs consisting of:
- Quick Start CDrom
- Video Presentations
- The Secrets Collection MP3 calls,
- Bonus Audio Interview with Mark Joyner
- Bonus Audio Interview with Craig Perrine
- Bonus Audio Interview with Michel Fortin
- Bonus Audio Interview with Gary Ambrose
- Bonus Audio Interview with Richard Schefren
If you just want to check the facts type in Butterfly Marketing, look at the date that was registered.
At the time, Mike was fascinated with chaos theory and the butterfly effect.
Small changes can have these huge results. You know you open up an email saying and who knows what path you will take because of reading it.
During a webinar, Mike contemplated what would have happened if he didn’t see that email.
Online Marketing history would be different. There would be no successful ClickFunnels launch, no Kartra, and no GrooveFunnels.
Back then, he didn’t just want to call it viral marketing. He wanted to say that there are tiny, seemingly insignificant things that you can do in your business that over time can have a dramatic impact on your business.
As he registered the domain name Butterfly Marketing, he hired a programmer.
During the webinar, he told us that on August 31 of 2004 he set out to do a million-dollar day. And on January 31, 2006, he and his team launched.
Butterfly Marketing Generated $540,000 On Launch Day
They generated $540,000 that day, and in four days, they did a million dollars.
Even back then, Mike was super passionate about software. During the same webinar he told a story how he solved a programming issue in HighSchool within 24 hours that took his teacher almost a whole month to figure out.
If you are starting your own business, remember that it took him almost a year and a half to be the second person to do a million-dollar launch.
But during the same year and about six people did it.
The Difference Between Being 2nd And Being Left Behind
Being the 2nd one did wonders for Mike’s career.
After telling the story, Mike asked if anyone in the room knew any man who walked the moon other than Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
None of the 135 people present none could name any of them out of his head.
I bet you don’t recognize any of them as well.
Here is the full list from the Nasa.
- Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)—Apollo 11
- Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (1930-)—Apollo 11
- Charles “Pete” Conrad (1930-1999)—Apollo 12
- Alan Bean (1932-2018)—Apollo 12
- Alan B. Shepard Jr. (1923-1998)—Apollo 14
- Edgar D. Mitchell (1930-2016)—Apollo 14
- David R. Scott (1932-)—Apollo 15
- James B. Irwin (1930-1991)—Apollo 15
- John W. Young (1930-2018)—Apollo 10 (orbital), Apollo 16 (landing)
- Charles M. Duke (1935-)—Apollo 16
- Eugene Cernan (1934-2017)—Apollo 10 (orbital), Apollo 17 (landing)
- Harrison H. Schmitt (1935-)—Apollo 17
And to this day, Mike claims he is still Buzz Aldrin. It helped his career in more ways than he can explain.
So what did he do with that? He paved the ground to almost everything that he is known for today.
He had a website called pay.com to complete with ClickBank. It was an affiliate marketplace just like GrooveAffiliate and did very well. We were making $8,000 a day $8700 a day at its peak. It was incredible, but he sold that I wanted to do something better.
That’s when he created evergreen business system.
During the webinar, he said:
We set the world on fire and showed the world what an automated webinar platform can do.
But it wasn’t a Software as a Service (SaaS) but a desktop application. You had a download at work like WordPress, and he said: Never again, will he ever do something that is like installed on somebody’s servers.
Then they set out to create Deal Guardian. Then JVZoo came out while they were working on this project and he realized that he does not wan do just DealGuardian.
He wanted to add email marketing to it, which was then called DealGuardian enterprise and let people also use their merchant accounts.
The True Story How Russell Brunson “Scammed” Kartra Into Promoting Clickfunnels

This was around the time when his good friend Russell Brunson came out with Click Funnels.
Russell reached out to Mike and said to him.
“Hey, guys, do you want to help us promote it?”
He said to his partner, the late, great Andy Jenkins who passed away in 2019 because he had cancer.
Hey, Andy, Russell wants us to promote clickfunnels. Are you cool with that?
According to Mike, Andy said: Hell yeah, let’s do it.
Get on the phone. Hey, Russell, we will promote you. But you’re not planning on coming out with anything that can sell or have an affiliate program to it or do email.
Russell said: No, we’re just going to be a page builder.
That’s when Mike and Andy said.
Okay let’s do this.
During the webinar, Mike mentioned that he still has an award being the number one affiliate for the year because during that webinar they did $250,000 in sales.
How Genesis Digital Sold All of Their Future Customers to Clickfunnels

And then about six weeks later, Hector Hauge the CTO of Kartra and Genesis Digital, told them:
“Hey, did you see this? Russell announced Actionetics and backpack as well, what the heck is that? He is getting into email. And he’s getting into selling products.”
That’s when Andy and Mike realized they just sold all of their future customers to Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels.
Andy’s Amazing Reaction
However, afterward, Andy pointed out to Mike. “Well, it’s his company. He can do anything that he wants if it’s best for his company.”
We can’t hold him to, to that promise, but you know what that means?
Well, boys, I guess we’re in the page builder business.
That’s when Mike and Andy tried to find a framework to build their software on.
They wanted to do some rapid development, but everything that Mike showed to Hector Hauge was not bootstrap and was rejected. This was in 2014.

The development framework bootstrap came out at the end of 2011.
It’s the latest framework and was developed by Twitter, right and was all the rage. And finally, Mike finds this. The framework was called Page Set which was owned by Mattijs Naus who is now the Co-Founder of GrooveDigital.
GrooveFunnels vs. Kartra – Why the Kartra Page Builder Uses a Licence From GrooveDigital
Still at GenesisDigital, Mike and Andy tried to buy the license but it was not for sale. So, in the end, Mattijs Naus licensed the software.
That’s why the Kartra Page Builder uses the license from GrooveDigital.
But you got to hire me for two years to help you finish this thing.
And at that time, Mike said to Andy and Hector.
“Guys, we can’t be deal guardian any longer. We’ve been deal going for two years as now we’re adding email, a membership, and a page builder. All these different things.”
Why Mike Filsaime Still Believes Kartra Is the Best Software in the World
Then he said something really interesting. Mike said, and I will never forget these words.
“Kartra is a great program. It is the best program out there in the world. It is my first child. Absolutely. Anybody that’s using it. I’m very, very happy for you. I’ll never say a bad thing about it ever. I’ve worked really hard on that as much as I work on GrooveFunnels now.”
If you want to know why I left Genesis Digital?
And then referring to his former partner Andy Jenkins:
“Well, you know, mommy and daddy got a divorce. And that happens sometimes. And you know, they kept the kids (WebinarJam, Everwebinar & Kartra) and you know, I took the buyout, right. And that happens. That’s business, right? I think everybody understands that.

Then he told us he signed a two-year non-compete agreement which meant you had to wait on the sidelines, all of 2016, 2017 until the middle of 2018.
That’s when he meat the other Co-Founder of GrooveDigital. They hired this guy named Matt Naus.
At that point, Mike believed that he finished what is known today as Kartra pages.
He didn’t know that Matt didn’t work on it for two years. When he left GenesisDigital Matt was asked to hire his replacement.
He hired a guy named Finn, who was on the webinar as well to complete Kartra pages, so after his contract ended, he was hired by GrooveDigital as well.
What Happened After Mike Filsaime Left Kartra and Genesis Digital
After the non-compete, Mike was launching GrooveKart to compete with Shopify and wanted to have a page builder for GrooveKart. He set out to find the find that old framework that was used for Kartra Pages.
It was sold for $3,000. This meant anyone could create their own SaaS company to create a page builder.
Mike paid the $3,000 and launched that company as GrooveKart Studio.
That was the point when Mike started slowly to envision what would become GrooveFunnels, but back then, he planned to hire a couple of developers and we can call this thing GroovePages.
A page builder was all it was ever going to be. Mike and his Co-Founders just wanted to take a SaaS framework created by Matt Naus.
But just two weeks later Mike said, his plans for this thing got bigger and bigger. So big, he started to panic.
He found out that Matt’s frame was not enough anymore because it was still
Build on the bootstrap technology.
(Sidenote This is why there is now GroovePages 1.0 (which is now called FreePageBuilder) and GroovePages 2.0.)
After Finn’s contract expired with Kartra after he completed Kartra pages is no more work for him; he joined GrooveDigital, which means the most important developers that developed Kartra Pages are now working at GrooveDigital, to work on GroovePages (1.0).
Why GrooveFunnels Is Better Than Kartra (And How Matt Naus Broke Mike Filsaime’s Heart)
After working a couple of weeks, Matt reached out to Mike and said:
“Can we talk?”
Mike said: “Yeah, shoot.” but Matt goes, can we do it on the phone?”
You can probably imagine how Mike was feeling.
And they start talking, and Mike almost passed out. (I’m making this up 😉 )
However, Matt told him: I can’t do it. I cannot work on GroovePages any longer.
The bootstrap technology – it’s nine years old buddy.
And then Mike want to interrupt him.
“Guys, don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t tell me that. I partnered with you for paycheck because you have this code. We’re 90% of the way there. Well, 90% of the way there. And he says, Yeah, Mike. We can do this, he says, but all we’re going to do is we’re going to be in a metoo Page Builder. You have to have the best page front end developers in the world.
We’re not excited about this. We want to redo this thing from scratch.
(Btw. These are the word you’ll see Mike uses all the time in his video sales letter now)

Matt asked: “Do you want to be a me-too page builder? Or do you want to leapfrog everything?”
So I said, Why do we need to do this?
That’s when they explained to him the limitations of bootstrap.
Being an avid Kartra user there are some things I don’t like that much in that software.
For example, the relatively slow loading websites (compared to GroovePages) and how the builder is loading in iframes.
Kartra’s Limitations (That You Won’t See In GroovePages)
When I created the Pareto Summit, and I had more than ten blocks I noticed Kartra’s limitations. Everything get’s a little bit slower and when I clicked on something and it takes a few seconds, especially on my big sales pages.
That’s why most people recommend that you never want to have something with more than ten blocks in Kartra.
While I don’t think this is a huge deal because of all the time you save because everything is in one plage, designing a website in Kartra can sometimes be a little frustrating.
This is quite different in GroovePages, and during the rest of the Webinar Mike displayed GroovePages and GrooveSell.
I have to say. It was impressive.
How GrooveFunnels Raised $2,000,000 From Their Ideal Customers
To raise the money to develop GrooveFunnels, Mike, Matt Naus, Matt Serralta, and John Cornetta realized they needed money to make their vision come true.
They did not want to take it out of their profits. That’s why they created the backer project in June 2019, which raised $850,000. And since then, it had raised another $250,000.
And then we decided to launch GrooveFunnels as a beta program, and raised an additional $1 million.
This allows them to hire the best people.
In software development, this makes a huge difference. You can either hire three people that are getting paid one third, but they will never be as good as one quality guy getting paid whole.
(You can read Perry Marshall’s book 80/20 Sales and Marketing if you want to understand this whom I interviewed for the Pareto Sales & Marketing Summit as well. I still offer to get access to my interviews with Mike Filsaime, AJ Roberts (who now runs Kartra), Perry Marshall and many more if you decide to sign up for GroovePage with my affiliate link).
While they were working on the new page builder Mike realized, he wanted to create something better than Kartra.
He wanted to add GrooveSell and GrooveMail, and even WebinarGroove, all these different things. And that’s why everything merged into GrooveFunnels, now.
Which the Kickstarter Project and the Beta launch GrooveFunnels is still raising money through sales faster than they ever dreamed possible.
During the webinar, Mike referred to his team as a dream team and compared it to the 1992 Olympic basketball team.
This team included Donna Fox Joe Jablonski, Finn Unroot and Matt Naus, John Cornetta, and Matt Serralta. John Garcia and Tom Beal, and many others.
What’s the Difference Between GroovePages And GrooveFunnels?
GroovePages is just the landing page builder, and Groove Funnels is a complete suite of software and will be one of the most affordable marketing Softwares in the world as you can see in their pricing plans.
If you compare GrooveFunnels vs ClickFunnels you, know that’s only part of the whole story.
How Clickfunnels Changed The Course Of Online Marketing
Mike called the previous platform in his previous company Kartra. Because when they started developing that, the 800-pound gorilla in the industry was a shopping cart company called Infusionsoft.
And their goal was to compete with Infusionsoft. This changed when Clickfunnels came around, and Kartra suddenly was in in the page builder business.
Russell Brunson has shown the industry that it’s not about the shopping cart.
People first think of their landing pages and their funnels, and then everything else is relegated to support that. Most people would agree with that.
First, you realized that you need your presence on the web. Your landing page software is the foundation of what you want to start with.
Then at the end of the day, you want to have world-class email.
In the end, you will need email; you need a shopping cart and a membership platform.
But you really want to know that you have the world-class page builder leading the front just like ClickFunnels.
Mike and his team felt that calling it GroovePages it wasn’t enough. That’s why they named it GrooveFunnels
What’s the Difference Between GroovePages and Clickfunnels?
If you look at the current online marketing space, there are developers who create amazing software tools and marketers.
Mike Filsaime is a software developer. He literally understands code.
That’s where how his mind works (combined with a passion for marketing.)
Russell Brunson is very, very good at marketing. He partnered with Todd Dickerson how is the co-founder and lead developer at Clickfunnels.
However, at some point, they found Clickfunnels had to admit they could not handle the complex software they have built. In terms of software ClickFunnels could not innovate over the years.
They’ve gotten overly complex. That’s why on September 23rd, 2019, Russell Brunson announces to focus on their core business and to make Funnelflix part of the Clickfunnels platinum upgrade and to “sunset” some of their features.
Why Clickfunnels Focused on Being A Landing Page Builder
They decided to focus on being an education company with a landing page builder.
In essence, they said: “We don’t know email, and affiliate marketing and selling products and all those different things.”
So they no longer doing that upgrade for $299/month.
They were left with a dilemma. Because if they can’t get you for tonight at $99 /month what is their upgrade?
Instead, what they did is they took the $99 offer, and they started deprecating.
Now you don’t get unlimited funnels; you get 20 funnels and only 100 pages.
You don’t get priority support all these different things why?
In the industry, this is called a price decoy. You go and Google ClickFunnels pricing, you will see one thing and then an entire page dedicated to Click Funnel Flix because they want your upgrade to get the $299 a month.
They’ve decided: “we are going to focus on just being a landing page software.”
That’s it. We’re good at that. We’re going to do our one thing, and to get you at $299 we’re going to give you content.
The amount of content they produce is amazing.
Just right now, Russell released his latest book.
However, if you want to build an online business keep in mind this quote from the Shawshank Redemption
To get busy living or you got to get busy dying.
Clickfunnels gives you so much content. They get you busy learning but at a certain point you got to get busy doing.
Why Clickfunnels Entire Model Is to Keep You Busy with Content
Clickfunnels’ entire model is to keep you busy to stick with them at a $299 a month price point because they failed at developing great software like Kartra or GrooveFunnels.
In Online Marketing, you can go with a company at $299 a month that wants to over-educate you and just give you a page builder that is about to become outdated or use stay on the edge of development with software like GroovePages.
In my opinion, Mike is like Steve Jobs. GrooveFunnels is his NeXT Computer. His agenda is to create the world’s best software.
In the past, almost every online marketer was using OptimizePress.
OptimizePress had such a hold on the marketplace.

Everybody thought they couldn’t be outdone. And Hector and Mike even said back then.
“We don’t think that we should compete with them. They’re just too big.
Everybody’s using OptimizePress Let’s do a shopping cart project. I think we can do Deal Guardian I have familiar with this. I’ve done this with PayDotCom. Let’s do a better PayDotCom.
And that’s when they gave up that project.
Do you know what happened next?
All out of the blue, all of a sudden Leadpages came along and many marketing pages back in 2012, 2013 and 2014 we’re built on Leadpages.
And then Russell comes out in 2015. He started the end of September 2014. And then explodes in 2015, with a product called ClickFunnels.
However, did you know that Russell failed in 2014? Back then, ClickFunnels was buggy. He released a really cool landing page software in beta but announced it as it wasn’t in beta.
How Mike Filsaime Repeated the same Mistake Clickfunnels Made in 2014
That’s the same mistake MikeFilsaime made in December 2019 (but Mike realized that within 3 days) .
Do you know what everybody in the online marketing word said?
Russell is crazy. If he thinks he can take on LeadPages and Infusionsoft.
Nobody’s gonna switch.
And then fast forward one or two years later, funnel hacking live and he has Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, and build hundred million dollar company.
GrooveFunnels might be the next LeadPages or Clickfunnels.
And you are reading it now, and I hope that you can High Five me one day
GrooveDigital with Mike Filsaime, John Cornetta Matt Serralta, and Matt now, Donna Fox partners. Joe Jablonski, Finn, will be able to innovate so much that 18 months, everybody’s going to be talking GrooveFunnels.
In the industry, you don’t hear anybody talking about LeadPages anymore.
Everybody follows what ClickFunnels and Russell Brunson are doing.
However, there is a lot of room, more innovative companies like Kartra and GrooveFunnels.
At some point, Clickfunnels will just not be able to compete anymore.